Sam took it reluctantly. The cover page read: Deep into the Dark. A decent noir title but probably a terrible script. Still, it hit him in the gut. “Where did you get this title?”
Rolf shrugged a bony shoulder. “I don’t know, it just came to me and seemed right for the material. Do you like it?”
“It’s a book title.”
“Oh, yeah? Who wrote it?”
“My shrink.”
“What? That’s cray! What’s it about?”
“Never read it. It’s nonfiction. Boring.”
Rolf rubbed his jaw in what Sam supposed was meant to be a pensively intellectual gesture. “Pops has tons of psych textbooks in his library. Research for his films. Maybe I saw it and it planted a bug in my brain. It’s a cool title. Wow, man. If that’s not a sign you were meant to be a part of this, I don’t know what is.”
“I thought you weren’t superstitious.”
“I’m not, but there’s a big difference between superstitions and signs.”
Sam didn’t ask for further elucidation on the distinction between the two. “The script is mine to keep?”
“Yeah, definitely. And bear in mind, it’s fluid. I would definitely make some changes if you came on board.”
Sam shoved it into his backpack, along with his scant emergency supplies—a bottle of water and a baggie with aspirin and a couple tranquilizers, just in case. “Your dad doesn’t want to produce it?”
“He hasn’t read it, he’s busy working on a film in Berlin. Besides, I need to do this on my own, get out from under his shadow and make my own name, you know? That’s why I’m in film school.”
“Makes sense.” Sam wasn’t surprised that Rolf hadn’t even asked for his name, even though he was hustling him to be a part of his stupid student film. There was a special brand of narcissism that existed in Hollywood and nowhere else on the planet. “Thanks.”
“I hope you read it. If you do and decide you want to be my lead, call me anytime.”
“I’ll put you on speed dial…” and then red lines started squirming like bloody worms on the kid’s forehead and Sam sank back down into his chair.
“Dude? Dude, are you okay? Are you having some kind of a seizure? Are you freaking out?”
Rolf’s voice was distant, echoing in his mind in a slow, distorted cadence as a word started to form. Sam pinched his eyes shut, willing the hallucination to go away, but it wouldn’t. Even with his eyes closed, a word eventually appeared, just like it had with Katy: Overdose.
But very different from Katy, the word on Rolf’s forehead quickly morphed into a YouTube-esque clip of a needle plunging into a collapsed, infected vein on a skeletal arm, followed by a close-up shot of saliva bubbling from the lifeless lips of a slack, graying face.
When Sam became aware again, there was a lot of black in the matrix of his memory, the blank spaces he was used to, and he was gripping Rolf’s arm. There were alarmed shouts, the squeal of metal chair legs scraping the floor, a siren in the distance.
“Dude, just relax,” Rolf was saying in a shaky voice. “It’s gonna be okay, there’s an ambulance on the way.”
Sam released his arm and saw the angry, white print of his hand on the kid’s sallow flesh. “I’m sorry.” Then he got to his feet and started running.
Chapter Twenty
SAM STOOD BY THE DUMPSTER BEHIND Pearl Club and tried to catch his breath, tried to find a better head space without pharmaceutical intervention before his shift started in fifteen minutes. He couldn’t go in until he did, and he couldn’t not go in and lose another job. Pearl was a record for him, six months. That looked okay on a résumé, but a year looked better if he was ever going to get a real job in his field.
No, Sam hasn’t freaked out once since he’s been working with us. He’s totally stable. In fact, he’s probably one of the most reliable employees we have.
Sam analyzed his circumstances in the context of mental health. He’d experienced two similar hallucinations and three blackouts today. There was no question his PTSD was escalating, his sanity was deteriorating. The hallucinations were triggered by stress. The blackouts were self-preservation, a psychological analog to the fight-or-flight response.
He thought about calling Dr. Frolich, then decided against it. He knew what she would say. He was in crisis. The episode with Katy on top of Yuki’s unexpected news had generated extreme anxiety, and anxiety was like the space around a black hole. The event horizon. Once you crossed it, you never came back.
And black holes were voracious. The hallucination he’d had with Katy fed the hallucination he’d had with Rolf, who looked like a reasonable candidate for a drug overdose. The kid’s incessant babbling about his film had created the YouTube video in his mind. He’d also made a reluctant connection with him and consequently tailored a tragic storyline that might serve his survivor’s guilt in the future. There were no such things as premonitions or supernatural phenomena, just brain problems, and he had plenty to go around. And if he didn’t drag himself out of his black hole and get over his obsession with death, it would keep happening.
“Dude, are you okay?”
Sam jerked his head up and saw Rolf standing a few meters away. He looked scared, frail. Fucking Rolf. “You followed me?”
“Hell, yes, I followed you. Fuck, man, I wasn’t going to let you run around Hollywood freaking out or whatever’s going on with you. It’s not safe. In your condition, you’ll get your ass rolled in a heartbeat.” He took a few cautious steps forward. “Can I give you a lift somewhere? That’s my ride.” He pointed to a black Mercedes AMG convertible. Monster engine, almost two hundred grand off the showroom floor.
Sam briefly let his mind drift into fantasy territory, imagining himself behind the wheel, then shook it off. “Thanks, but I’m already here. At work.”
Rolf looked up at the back façade of the club. “You work at Pearl?”
“Yeah.”
“Sweet place. Best tapas in town. Staff isn’t hard to look at, either. What do you do here?”
“Bar back.”
Rolf shrugged. “You could do worse.”
And I could do a hell of a lot better, Sam thought, briefly indulging self-pity. “Go on, Rolf. Enjoy your life, I’ll get through mine.”
“What’s your name?”
“You’re finally asking?”
“I should have before. I was just so stoked about the movie and you maybe being in it.”
“Will you go away if I tell you?”
“Maybe. Probably.”
“Why do you care?”
“I’m just asking for a name. I don’t want to think of you as the crazy guy from The Leaf because I don’t think you’re crazy.”
“Sam,” he finally relinquished.
He passed a wistful smile to the dumpster. “Telegram Sam.”
“What?”
“It’s an old T. Rex song, ‘Telegram Sam.’ Bauhaus did a bomb cover in 1980, way better than the original. Check it out on YouTube.”
YouTube. God, you couldn’t get away from it. “Yeah, I’ll do that.” Rolf’s unexpected, unwelcome appearance had done one thing—irritated him enough to make him forget about everything else and propel his ass into work just to escape. “Gotta go, take care.”