Empire Of Salt (16 page)

"Come on in," Veronica beckoned. "We have the swamp cooler going and it's almost habitable inside."

Natasha glanced at the ground and the palms and wondered how bad it could get. How much could the ground shake before it opened up and swallowed them whole? She shuddered at the idea and hastened to follow Veronica.

Soon they were all safe inside Veronica's trailer, with a cool draft blowing over them. Old blinds cut the light into slits, throwing lines of shadow across everything. The room was clean and furnished with green vinyl chairs and a long sofa.

An older Hispanic woman wearing shorts and an LA Dodgers T-shirt, with her graying black hair pulled back, was busy picking up things that had fallen over in the earthquake. As they entered she was tutting over a broken dish depicting the Statue of Liberty. In the kitchen, an older Hispanic man fiddled with the back of a radio with a screwdriver.

"Auntie, these are the people I told you about," Veronica said. "This is my Auntie Hermana and that's my uncle in there."

The old woman greeted them and immediately put them to work helping her repair the minor damage the earthquake had caused. All told, there wasn't much. She'd used earthquake wax to hold things against the walls and tables, so most of her ornaments were unbroken.

Afterwards, Natasha and Derrick followed Veronica to her room. Veronica immediately flopped onto the bed, lying on her stomach, feet in the air.

Natasha and Derrick stood in the middle of the room, mesmerized by the conglomeration of images on the wall. There were thousands of magazine photos of musicians, sports heroes, politicians, Bible characters, animals, insects and all manner of things. There wasn't a single space on the wall or ceiling that hadn't been covered, sometimes repeatedly, by black and white and color images.

Veronica saw them staring. "After my brother was shot, my parents kept me inside the house for almost a year. I didn't go to school. I didn't even go into the front room for fear that someone would spray the front of the house with bullets. Because my room was in the back of the house, it was the safest, so I stayed there. To keep from getting lonely, I cut pictures out of magazines, books, cereal boxes, anything I could get my hands on. I would have gone crazy without them. It got to the point where these became as much my family as anything."

"But why here? Why do it now that you're living with your Aunt?" Natasha asked.

"Because I got used to them." Veronica smiled self-consciously. "I realized that I missed them, so I raided abandoned trailers, took the magazines and removed the pictures. It's funny. Although I can leave anytime I want, sometimes my Auntie has to kick me outside. I like
mi familia
," she said, pointing at the walls. "I know them better than I know anyone."

"Do you know who everyone is?" Derrick asked.

"Some. The famous ones."

"And the others?"

"I invented names for them. Like that one," she said, pointing at a straight-haired man, sitting in a barber chair about to get a haircut. "I call him Charles and he's a butler for a Duke and Duchess living in San Diego. He hates dogs and cats but loves birds. His favorite color is violet and he sleeps with a teddy bear."

Natasha grinned, but couldn't help asking, "Are you serious?"

"Of course."

"What about that one?" Derrick pointed.

"That's Roger Daltry, the lead singer of The Who."

"And this one?" It was a rail-thin young woman with her blonde hair seemingly glued to her head.

"That's a woman who has just been fired from her first job. I call her Susanna. She lives in London and hates driving on the left side of the road. She wishes she were American, and is a fan of Country and Western music. She has a tattoo of Bigfoot on her ass."

Natasha leaned in close and put her finger on the picture in question. "Are you talking about this one?" When Veronica nodded, she added, "Her real name is Twiggy. She was a model in the 1960s, I think. My mother had a picture of her in her scrapbook. She wanted to grow up and look just like her."

"So says you," Veronica said without blinking. "To me she's Susanna."

Natasha was about to argue, but then decided against it.

She plopped down on the bed next to Veronica. "Was that a big earthquake?"

"Not really. I'm told there are a lot larger ones, but that's about what we get here. It scared the shit out of you, didn't it?"

"Well, yeah. Who wouldn't be scared, you know?"

"What about this one?" Derrick asked, ignoring the girls' conversation, too entranced by the images to care.

"Sissy Spacek in
Carrie
."

"She looks pissed," he said. He moved along the wall, his fingers flowing across the images like they were Braille and he was a blind man.

"Do the earthquakes cause any damage?" Natasha asked.

"Not really. I mean, some of the old trailers in Bombay Beach are real dumps to begin with. Each one of the tremblers takes them a step closer to collapse. That's why Will and that asshole Hopkins tell everyone to stay out of them. They say it's dangerous."

"And you don't believe them?"

Veronica made a face like she'd smelt something bad. "Oh, I believe them, but what do they really know about danger? I just have a problem with
them
telling
me
to be careful. It's like telling a woman who has cancer to look both ways when she crosses the street."

Natasha wasn't sure the metaphor was accurate but she could tell that she'd struck a nerve. "What about Hopkins? Why doesn't anyone like him?"

"I don't know. He just comes across as a know_it_all, and I hate know_it_alls."

"What about this one?" Derrick asked.

"That's Kevin Bacon. He's an actor."

Derrick moved on.

"You know, I saw him," Natasha said.

"Kevin Bacon?" Veronica sat straighter.

"Nuh-uh. Hopkins. That government guy. We saw him last night over at the desalination plant."

"Out there? Why would he be over there so late?"

"There were buses that came in and he was keeping track of them or something. He had a clipboard."

"Who was on the buses?"

Natasha shrugged.

"And this one?" Derrick poked his finger at the ceiling.

"John Wayne."

"The Duke. I thought that was him, but I've never seen him with the eye patch."

Natasha looked at Veronica and rolled her eyes. Then they began to laugh. Soon, Natasha had joined in the game and she was dancing around the room, pointing to picture after picture, taking turns with Derrick, and letting Veronica either tell them who it really was or making up a story to fill out their two_dimensional lives. All was hilarity until Veronica mistook the made-for-TV band the Monkees for the Beatles, which almost made Natasha hyperventilate at the insanity of the error. Soon she was telling Veronica the truth of the Monkees, and the state of American television in the early days:
Happy Days,
Laverne and Shirley,
The Love Boat,
and the best show in the entire universe,
Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp.

The dog was ill, there was no denying it. Abigail had broken down and fed it two pieces of chocolate. It had vomited several times and kept crapping in the corner, noxious streams of yellow-brown liquid. When it wasn't in the corner, it was pacing back and forth, unwilling to lie down.

Abigail had left a third of the chocolate in the box and had placed it back on the shelf so that the dog would leave her alone. She knew she shouldn't have given it chocolate, but what was she to do with the dog begging, starving, whining in front of her and not understanding why Abigail was eating and she couldn't.

When she could, Abigail fed it water. They had a never-ending supply of the stuff, and if they could wait out the creature and stave off her hunger, they could survive this episode.

Abigail lay back on the bed, her husband's fedora clenched in her arms, and stared morosely at the door. God, she'd love to live somewhere else, but all of their money had been sunk into the land and this trailer and no one, but
no one
, was buying land around the Salton Sea.

She was trapped in Bombay Beach as surely as she was trapped in her home. Any way she looked, she was trapped. It was all just so hopeless. She was just marking time until it was her turn to die.

Scratching came from the bathroom.

"Stop that, Trudie."

The scratching continued unabated.

"Trudie, I said stop that."

Trudie leaped on the bed beside her, panting rapidly.

And the scratching continued.

Abigail sat up in bed. If Trudie was right here, then what was it making that noise?

She got to her feet and crept to the bathroom door. She peered in and cocked her head. When the scratching came once more, she pinpointed the sound. It was coming from beneath the toilet.

What could be making that -

Was it the creature from the hall? Had it decided to try another way in or was it another creature come to get her?

She took a few steps towards the toilet. And why was it scratching there? Roger had steel-plated the walls and floor and ceiling. There was no getting in.

Except...

She remembered when she'd had Jose come over and repair a busted pipe. He'd said something then about the steel flooring. The price he'd quoted was unreasonably high, she'd thought, and she remembered telling him so. He'd brought the price down to a reasonable amount she was willing to pay, but had told her that he'd
have to cut corners.

Was one of the corners the steel plating?

The scratching answered her.

P
atrick's head should have exploded sometime between when it hit the pillow at 3 AM and when he was woken with a shove at 9 AM. If it had, he wouldn't be experiencing the pain he was feeling now. The dull throbbing he could take, but the hundreds of screwdrivers lancing his brain was another thing altogether. If he had the keys to the world he'd put a stop to it, but for now all he could do was gulp aspirins and glower at all things noisy - which apparently was everyone except himself - and hope to survive the next few seconds.

The restaurant was in full swing, although how long that was going to last he didn't know. Maude had handed in her notice. She'd said that with Gertie having run off and Lazlo dead, there was nothing left for her but bad memories. Patrick realized that her leaving would be a crippling blow to the restaurant, but in his condition he couldn't bring himself to care.

Auntie Lin slammed a plate of pancakes in front of him. He stared at them. Normally he'd dive in, especially with boysenberry syrup and butter, teasing his eyes and nose with the luscious look and taste, representing everything he loved about breakfast. But his stomach gurgled at the very idea.

Sam Hopkins slapped him on the back and plopped down on the stool beside him.

"That was some hell of a time, wasn't it?"

Patrick nodded as parts of it came back to him. Kristov had promised to guard them and escort each of them home last night. Patrick had an image of the mad Elvis impersonator holding a shotgun in the crux of his shoulder, leading a group of them to the safety of their trailers, a velvet-clad pied piper of drunken fools, singing
Suspicious Minds
like it was a military cadence.