Advance praise for Rayo Casablanca and Very Mercenary!
“Mad as a bag of artistic squirrels. With guns. Very brilliant and very original.”
—Allan Guthrie, author of Savage Night
“Anarchy as art, rampaging hitmen, and some serious Daddy Issues fuel Rayo Casablanca’s violent, savvy, and propulsive Very Mercenary. Think Andy Warhol meets The Monkey Wrench Gang and you’re getting the picture. Casablanca’s writing cuts hard, fast, and deep as a buzzsaw. Reader beware: you’re going to bleed.”
—Craig Davidson, author of The Fighter
And outstanding praise for Rayo Casablanca and 6 Sick Hipsters!
“Casablanca nails the cheesiness of the neighborhood and its residents…there’s a good time to be had watching the skinny jean set suffer, and that may be enough to hook a chunk of readers.”
—Publishers Weekly
“6 Sick Hipsters is a wild, poignant, twisted, bitterly funny page turner with dead-on dialogue and a wonderful ensemble cast. Rayo Casablanca has written the big novel the hipster generation has been waiting for.”
—Jason Starr, author of The Follower
Turn the page for more praise for 6 Sick Hipsters….
“You’re not bound to read anything else this year quite like it. An engaging, knowing and purposely fucking nuts of a satiric novel.”
—Bookgasm.com
“Rayo Casablanca’s first novel is thoroughly amusing and utterly demented. It features a killer baboon, sewer diving, men in silly jumpsuits, hipster assassins that will stop at nothing to get what they want, and interesting information about paleontology and knitting. What else do you need to know?”
—Owen King, author of We’re All in This Together
“6 Sick Hipsters is a wild ride of a novel. Something of a magical realist noir that brings a whole new meaning to the fashionable idea of the death of the hipster. It’s enough to make one nervous about leaving the house in a Pavement T-shirt.”
—Jeff Parker, author of Ovenman and The Back of the Line
“Offers chills, laughter and a healthy grimace or two. Its social commentary is razor sharp and it wields satire like a blunt weapon.”
—Pressconnects.com
“6 Sick Hipsters is a wild ride into the underworld of hip that takes more daring, shocking, bloody turns than Pulp Fiction. Rayo Casablanca pulls no punches. Oh, but you’ll take ’em…and love every jolt.”
—Kemble Scott, author of SoMa
VERY MERCENARY
rayo casablanca
KENSINGTON BOOKS
http://www.kensingtonbooks.com
The insane are people who push creativity further than professional artists, who believe in it totally.
—John MacGregor Intuit (1998)
Contents
CHAPTER ZERO
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER ZERO
Nine days out
1.
The lights have been on for maybe five minutes and Lester King’s apartment is already boiling.
Leigh Tiller’s sweating in her Elie Saab evening dress and wishing she had just bailed on this whole thing. She heads to the upstairs bathroom where Marie from Senegal has all her makeup set up. On the stairs, she passes someone in a ratty monkey costume. The kind you see on people waving signs on corners. The kind you see on public-access kiddie shows. Leigh says, “Nice suit.”
The monkey doesn’t reply.
When she gets to the makeup room, Marie seems stressed. “Have a seat.” Her African patois is as thick as butter. Leigh has to repeat the sounds of it in her head several times to make sure she’s got the meaning.
Leigh sits and Marie loads up the mascara. Leigh complains, “Like a raccoon?”
“Hank wants it super thick.”
Leigh pulls out her iPod and settles into the makeup chair. She’s zoned out on something Bollywood when Marie nudges her. “Huh?”
“I said I saw that interview with Larry King you did with your dad two weeks ago. Really interesting. He seems like quite a character. You guys close?”
“No. Not at all.”
Leigh is so sick of talking about her dad. She wonders if there is a full moon out or maybe a comet passing close to the Earth. Something, anything, to explain why lately everyone is asking about her dad.
Marie frowns. “That’s a shame.”
Leigh shrugs. She doesn’t say anything, but the fact is she’s broken up over her dad. That their fucked-up relationship is eating a hole in her stomach. That the physical pain of it is so bad she saw a gastroenterologist and got scoped. And even though the doc suggested it might be emotional, he underscored that stress can wreck a gut just the same as too much digestive acid can.
Therapy hasn’t helped either. Like any good heiress, Leigh has been in therapy since she was old enough to remember her dreams. At eight, the psychoanalysis centered on her mother. When Leigh was twelve and Mom had been in the ground for two months, it was all about grieving. In high school it was about boys and friends and the fact that Leigh was sure she should be depressed but wasn’t. That was really concerning. At twenty it was panic disorders and Xanax. At twenty-two it was her ex, Lane, and biofeedback. Twenty-three was a mix of Dad, Mom’s death and Lane and lots of X. And now, at twenty-six, it’s just Dad. Dad, Dad, and more Dad. Dad not appreciating her. Dad not noticing her. Dad not loving her. Whenever anyone asks her about Kip Tiller, Leigh always replies the same, “He’s the world’s biggest prick.” Leigh didn’t invent that either. Her dad gets all sorts of hate mail and a good two out of ten times it’s addressed to “The World’s Biggest Prick.” Leigh suspects most of this mail comes from her aunt but she’s never actually read any of the letters.
Marie says, “You’re done.”
The scene they’re setting up, Leigh knows it’s going to be a nightmare. This is her favorite part in Morrissey’s original. The way it plays out in the 1970 version is Joe Dallesandro goes to this LSD freak’s pad and has a really fucked experience. Then, the LSD freak was Andrea Feldman and she was bonkers in front of the camera. It was Feldman’s shtick, her self-expression, both heartbreakingly brilliant and bizarre. She called her spiel “Showtime” and Feldman would commandeer tables at Max’s Kansas City and dance on top of them while whipping her top off. Just straight-up craziness. Blame amphetamines. Feldman jumped off the fourteenth floor of her apartment building in 1972. She died holding a rosary in one hand and a Coke can in the other. This movie, Hank’s remake, the LSD character is played by someone who goes by the name Liu. No last name, just Liu. She’s short and has a shaved head and smells like ozone.
Liu’s been hanging out in Lester’s kitchen the whole night eating fried chicken skin and talking to the director of photography, Srdjan Juerging (fresh from Yugoslavia), about Tantric sex. Liu has this skinny bald Yugoslavian cornered and she’s spent the whole evening prepping for