Crucifax (3 page)

"No," Jeff said, his mouth dry. "I didn't see anything. Come on." He took her elbow and led her toward the restaurant.

He suddenly felt as if he had lied to his sister. But he hadn't; there had been nothing to see. Nothing.

And although it was a hot, damp night, he suddenly felt a chill….

Three

A few minutes before Jeff Carr walked out of the Studio City Theater, his mother, Erin, was holding the head of a fat man between her hands, pressing her thumbs down hard on his eyes. His smiling mouth opened and closed when she tugged the string she'd threaded through the small hole in the top of his skull.

The arms of his headless body dangled limply as she lifted it from the table and attached the head. Pushing her chair back, Erin stood and lifted the T-shaped handle to which the little man's strings were attached. She carried him to the full-length mirror on the broom closet door and lowered him until his feet touched the floor. Manipulating the strings with her fingertips, Erin made his arms move up and down, then close together in an embrace; smiling, she put him through a gentlemanly bow, a little of the old soft shoe, a belly-jiggling laugh—and his left eye popped off.

"Shit!"

Bending down, Erin plucked the staring eye from the carpet with thumb and forefinger and returned to the kitchen table with a sigh.

She had been working on Mr. Spiropolous for days, and he
had
to be ready by noon tomorrow. First his jaw had been loose, then his head wouldn't nod. Next his belly didn't jiggle properly—now the eyes were popping off.

Fine,
she thought,
so I'll be up awhile longer.

She probably couldn't sleep anyway, hot as it was. Her temples were damp with perspiration, and her salmon-pink top, though light and sleeveless, was spotted here and there. She could only afford to run the air conditioner during the day, when the heat was at its worst. At night she opened the doors and windows and hoped for a breeze; mostly she got flies.

Erin poured herself a glass of ice water and took it out on the patio.

It wasn't a patio, really, just a small rectangular space, a folding chair, a waist-high wooden railing with a window box on it. But it was all the patio she needed.

She touched the cold water glass to her forehead and rolled it back and forth. It left beads of cool moisture on her skin; she didn't wipe them off. Leaning back on the rail, she looked through the sliding screen door at the round and lifeless form of Mr. Spiropolous and smiled a little, pleased with the little man, even though he wasn't holding together just yet.

Erin had been holding three jobs for almost two years; one of them paid better than making puppets, but neither of them made her feel as good as she felt when a puppet was finished and she had transformed an assortment of cloth and screws and hinges and a few pieces of wood into a little person. Some were better than others, but they all gave her a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction that she didn't get from her other jobs. She would gladly devote all of her time to making puppets and drop the other work, but two kids, rent, utilities, and a dozen other expenses kept her from it.

When Ronald left, he had taken not only the television set, the VCR, and the car, but also the only income Erin, Jeff, and Mallory had. The three of them had moved into this smaller apartment in North Hollywood, and Erin had immediately taken an old friend, Kyla Reilly, up on a long-standing offer.

When Mallory was a baby, Erin had made a few dolls. Erin's friend Kyla saw them one day and had gasped enthusiastically.

"Erin! These are beautiful! I didn't know you did this. These are
gorgeous!
You should make puppets for the theater! We could pay you. Not much, but we could pay you something."

At that time, Kyla had been working nights as a stripper at the Playland Bar in Van Nuys. During the day, she and a couple friends ran the Holiday Puppet Theater. Parents hired them to perform at their children's birthday parties and at Halloween and Christmas parties. Kyla started the business with a great deal of doubt, but it had been more successful than she'd expected. Despite the growth of the Holiday Puppet Theater, Erin continued to turn down Kyla's offers.

When Ronald left, Erin not only started making puppets for Kyla but took a job as a stripper at the Playland. Not long after that, Kyla gave up stripping in order to satisfy the growing demand for the Holiday Puppet Theater throughout the Valley and Los Angeles and even rented a small building in which to give regular afternoon performances during the summer.

The pay for Erin's puppets was minimal, to say the least, so she was still working nights at the Playland. She wasn't crazy about it, but if the men who gathered there were willing to give her ridiculously large tips for getting on stage and taking her shirt off, she wasn't going to deprive them of whatever fun they managed to derive from grabbing their crotches and making loud zoo noises.

She worked seven-hour shifts four nights a week, and so far she had managed to keep it from Jeff and Mallory. They thought she was waiting cocktails. Although Erin did spend half her time at the bar waitressing, she was uncomfortable with the untruth. She didn't like keeping things from them, but she'd like it less if they knew she was stripping.

Jeff would… well, Erin wasn't sure
what
Jeff would do. He was a sensitive boy. No—young man. Jeff had passed up boy some time ago. His initial reaction would probably not be strong, but she suspected that something—maybe something within Jeff, maybe something between them, maybe both—would change. She didn't want that. Jeff was much too important to her; she needed him too much.

Mallory, on the other hand…

Oh, wouldn't Mallory be tickled pink to find out,
Erin thought, wincing at the bitterness of the words as they were spoken in her mind.

No. She wouldn't do that, wouldn't be that way. It was true, Mallory would be pleased because it would, in Mallory's eyes, confirm everything she thought of Erin. But Erin didn't want to handle it with bitterness. She was biding her time, knowing that, once Mallory had grown a bit and was able to see things from a different angle—like how some husbands don't just leave their wives, they leave their kids, their whole lives behind, not because the little woman burns the roast or doesn't particularly enjoy performing fellatio, but simply because they
want
to leave, goddammit!—once that happened, things would change between them.

She hoped for that, anyway.

Erin finished the ice water and stretched her arms and legs, twisting around till her spine cracked like distant gunshots. She hadn't gone for her regular swim in a couple days, and she was getting stiff.

Tomorrow,
she thought, looking up at the rainless clouds.
I'll go for a swim tomorrow, right after delivering the puppets.

At thirty-seven, she was in good shape; not too tall, but very trim, with a minimum of noticeable lines on her face and, so far, no sign of gray in her long auburn hair. She had no trouble with aging, but the management of the Playland Bar did. It wasn't the most respected of jobs, but it paid very well, thank you, and it was better than nothing, which was what she was afraid she'd have otherwise. She hadn't finished school, had no skills, and couldn't afford the time it would take to go back to school and learn to
do
something.

When her mother called from Michigan twice every week, she always asked Erin, "So, are you still making those dolls?"

"Puppets, Mom. Marionettes. Little people with strings?"

"I know what they
are,
I just don't understand how anyone can possibly support two teenagers by—"

"Mom. Please. We're okay. Really. We're o… kay."

It made her feel good to say that and mean it. They were okay. They weren't great, things got tough sometimes, but they really were okay.

As she went back into the apartment Erin thought,
But we would be a lot better if things were different with Mallory….

She went into the living room, turned on the radio, and found a station that was playing something old and easy. Humming along with the music, she was about to return to Mr. Spiropolous's eyes when the phone rang.

Erin looked at the clock on the stereo; it was after eleven. She'd forgotten she was on call tonight.

Job number three.

"Hello?"

"Bunny?"

"Yes."

"Pen and paper?"

"Mm-hm."

"George would like you to call him back at eight-one-eight, seven-five-nine, sixty-one, sixty-one."

"Okay. What's he want?"

"The standard."

Erin had heard about Fantasy Line Phone Sex from Jess, her boss at Playland. She'd needed extra money to buy Mallory some new clothes and supplies for school. Jeff had a job at a bookstore in Sherman Oaks and pretty much took care of himself, God bless him.

She'd taken the job only two weeks ago and had no intention of keeping it much longer. It was a good way to make some quick cash, though. She was on call from twelve to four three nights a week and got fifteen dollars for each twenty-minute call. Not bad, especially considering most of them took much less than twenty minutes.

Erin carried the phone from its stand by the kitchen door to her bedroom. She closed the door in case the kids came home, sat on her bed, and dialed George's number.

"Hello?" It was a young male voice.

"Hello, is this George?"

"Yeah."

"Hi, George. This is Bunny. How are you?"

"I'm, oh, I'm fine." Very young. Probably underage. "So, your name is Bunny, huh?"

Erin heard a chorus of stifled laughs; someone hissed, "
Bun
ny?"
She knew immediately. It was a bunch of high school kids having a little fun. Probably charging it to Dad's credit card.
And,
Erin liked to imagine,
after Dad sees the bill, he and Mom have a little talk with Junior and ask how dare he call such filthy numbers on their phone, and Junior smiles and says, "I didn't think you 'd mind, Dad, I found the number in your wallet."

"That's right, George," she said, smiling at her little scenario. "What are you up to tonight, hmm?"

"Oh, not much. Just kinda hanging out, y'know?"

"Sounds like you've got company. Having a little party, George?"

"Well, yeah, I guess." George swallowed a giggle.

"Guess they'll just have to take care of themselves tonight, huh, George? What do you want to talk about?"

"Urn, I guess about you."

"'About
you'?
"
someone in the background croaked. "Tell her to suck your fat one, dude!
Sheezis.
"

"Okay," Erin said, trying not to laugh, too. "You want to know what Fni wearing, George?"

"Yeah."

"I hope you like lace, because I'm wearing a lace bra. Black lace. You can almost see my nipples through it. If I touch them and make them hard, maybe… you want me to do that, George?"

"Yeah, touch 'em."

" Touch 'em'?" someone rasped.

"Radical!" another said.

One of them guffawed.

The voices were suddenly silent.

Erin pressed the receiver a bit harder to her ear because she couldn't even hear George's breathing anymore.

One of the boys said quietly, "What… was that?"

Another: "Did the lights just… dim?"

Their voices were so hushed that Erin frowned and sat up a bit straighter on the bed.

"Something's…" George said, swallowing hard, "something's over…"

Erin's grip tightened on the phone, and for some reason it suddenly occurred to her that she had left the sliding glass door open, the
front
door, too, and all the
windows….

"George," she finally said, "is anything wrong?"

George said, "Something's… over the… house…."

The receiver clattered to a hard surface, and the pinched sound of hurried movements came through the earpiece: thumping feet and bumped furniture. No voices; they were silent.

"Hello?" Erin said, her phone voice gone; she sounded timid.

There was no reply.

Her next thought entered her head like a bullet, with such suddenness and ferocity that for a brief instant she thought she was having a heart attack and clutched her chest with one hand, sucking air into her lungs:

Sweet Jesus, something's happened to the kids.

The receiver slipped from her hand as she shot from the bed and out of the room, not really sure where she was going, just needing to move, just move because a snake had just crawled through the middle of her; that's what it had felt like, a snake.

She went to the patio with visions of mangled cars and fractured bones jutting through torn flesh. Leaning both hands on the railing, she took deep, slow breaths, thinking,
Please, God, let them be all right, let them both be all right, they're all I've got, please…

Erin thought she should probably call somebody because something—she didn't know what, but
something
—had just happened to her—anxiety, maybe?—that was making her think stupid things and scare herself. She would call someone and just talk, that's all, she just needed to… but she'd already called George….

Her thoughts took on a hazy glow for a moment, and she felt vaguely confused.

Something's…
over the…. house,
George had said.

Erin looked up at the sky.

Nothing.

When she went back in the bedroom and lifted the receiver to her ear, she heard a dial tone and felt, for a second, as if she'd just bitten down on a lump of aluminum foil.

She hung up the phone and sat on the bed again. Her hands were still trembling.

Erin picked up the phone again and dialed Kyla's number.

Just to talk…

Four

As Erin listened to the endless
burring
of Kyla's telephone eleven teenagers came to a silent halt in the parking lot of Fantazm. A couple holding hands unlaced their fingers and stepped away from one another; two broad-shouldered guys, whose laughter had boomed across the lot as they got out of a big four-wheel-drive pickup truck, seemed to forget what had been so funny as they turned their eyes upward; their smiles melted away to frowns as their heads leaned back.