Fadeout (13 page)

"The Pauline ideal," Dave said. "You should be a priest, Anselmo." 

"Shit," Anselmo said. "They fake it too. I know them. It's money they want. And to run people. Anyway, I like sex. I like it a lot. But not like I've got a faucet and somebody's thirsty so they tum it on and drink and then tum it off and walk away. Like this cat in Venice Beach. I'm down there goofing and he takes me to this pad where they got mattresses and pillows allover the floor and everybody is laying around naked and blowing pot and, like, stroking each other. Real gentle, you know?" 

He sat forward and the beads rattled against the table. "
Kerista
, love by touching. It feels good. And everybody there is real cool. Only not me. I'm not hip to the scene. Right away my cock is up. And then he's doing it to me. Well, he's a nice guy. Beautiful. I want to do it to him too. Only he won't let me. So . . . I come and he goes. I went back to Venice four, five times looking for him. Noplace. Then I ran into him in a head shop on Fairfax. He tried to duck out but when he knew I saw him he gave me this shit-eating grin and split. He was with this chick. It made me feel bad.... 

"Almost as bad as the woman I went with first. My first time. She was on this bus I used to ride home from school, and she had this house and these little kids, and she took me there and laid me. But good. And it went on. And then one time there's this man there when I come. And she runs me off. Says it's her husband. I'm fourteen. I believe her. Then I find out he's just a new stud. She has new studs every couple months. It made me feel bad .... " 

The music stopped. Dave rose and turned the record. Numbly. He brought coffee from the kitchen, refilled the cups, sat down, gave Anselmo another cigarette, lit it for him, lit one for himself. The boy went on: 

"It happens to me all the time. I met this guy on Hollywood Boulevard. Not a kid. A man, like you. Nice. I went with him because I liked him. And afterward, he tried to give me money. Five dollars. Shit!" Despair twisted the childish mouth. "I cry. Every time. Lay on my bed with my face in the pillow and cry like a little kid. And do you know what I keep saying when I'm crying? I never even knew I was doing it at first. 'Dave,' I say, 'Dave.' " 

"Anselmo, if this is a put-on ... " Dave began. 

"No!" The boy shouted it, meant it. "I been in love with you from six years old. Sure, I didn't know it waslove. I didn't know what it was. Just a feeling like you were the best, you know? The greatest. I used to wait for you to come to the shop. And then after a while you didn't come no more. But I didn't forget. And when Rod threw that party and my mom told me you'd be there, I begged her to take me. To see you. I had to ditch school and she didn't like it. But she let me go because I bugged her so. And then I knew I was in love with you. That day." His eyes were accusing. "I bet you don't even remember." 

"I remember," Dave said. 

"You took a shower. You were beautiful, naked. I wanted to get in with you." Anselmo shrugged. "I didn't know nothing. Like what to do. I just wanted to be with you and put my arms around you and kiss you. Little-kid stuff. I mean, I was jacking off all the time, by then, but I didn't connect it up. Sex. With love, with what people in love did. Anyway, there was Rod." 

"You understood about that?" 

"Not too good. My mom told me. She put it pretty vague and I was dumb. I didn't really understand, but I knew you don't bust up somebody's thing, dig? So I just said to myself, 'Forget it,' and looked for somebody else. But they were all bad trips, freak-outs. And I kept remembering you. I couldn't help it. Then Rod gave me the key that time and I came in here. Just walked in. My heart was beating loud and I was shaking, scared. I had it in my head you'd be here. I was like fifteen then and I didn't have no control. It would have been wrong. Because of Rod. I understood by then. But I was out of my head wanting you. It had to happen. Only"—Anselmo laughed at himself, softly—"you weren't here." He watched his small, chickengreasy fingers tum the cigarette in the ashtray. He shook his head, shamed. "You know what I did? Took off my clothes and got in your bed and pretended you were there. Kids do crazy things." 

"One of them is doing a crazy thing right now." 

Anselmo didn't hear. "I came back and did it every time I could for a while," he said. "Then—I don't know—it only made me feel worse. But I kept the key.... " He drank coffee and set down the cup. "Then Rod died. The funeral was the first time I got to see you in years. You were still very beautiful to me. But you were hurting too bad. I couldn't say nothing to you then. So I waited as long as I could and then I tried to call you but you didn't answer the phone. I came here and knocked but you didn't open up. I used the key. It was very dusty in here. And you were laying on the bed in your clothes and you looked right at me and you didn't even see me. I said hello, or something, and you didn't say nothing. It was scary." 

"I don't remember," Dave said, "but I'm sorry." 

"No. I was a jerk. I thought I knew what it was to be sad. I didn't know." 

"Try not to find out," Dave said. 

"But today, when Madge said you were okay and working again and all that, I came back. You got to have somebody." He was solemn. His eyes were wide. "I want it to be me." 

Dave drew a deep breath. "How old are you, Anselmo?" Pride. "I'll be eighteen my next birthday." 

"And I'll be forty-five. Look . . . you're very beautiful. You must know that. I want you. You must also know that. But I'm not going to bed with you. Because there's something I know that you don't. It would be another bad trip for you. Maybe the worst." 

"Why? You mean because I'm a dumb kid? You'd get tired of me?" 

"You'd get tired of me first. My books, my music. And I'm a morose bastard. Rod used to say so. He was right. Find somebody young, Anselmo. If you'll forget me, that won't be so hard. Somebody to keep you laughing and happy, the way you should be at eighteen." 

"I won't be happy." The boy stood up, shaking his head. "Not without you. I'd rather have you for just one time than anybody else forever. Because ... I don't know what is this 'morose,' but you are good and kind and ... there isn't nobody else like you in the whole world and I've wanted you for . . . all my life. I don't need to laugh a lot. I'll listen to your music. I'll read your books. . . ." He came around the table and stood beside Dave's chair. "I'll do whatever you want." 

Dave looked away. "I want you to go home." 

"Why? The law? You think I'd fink on you?" 

"It never crossed my mind." Dave rose and looked down into the dumb black eyes that would never understand anything he said or did. He wanted to close the hard little body in his arms, to cover with his mouth the boy's mouth, dark, parted, waiting. Younger, he couldn't have stopped himself. He wasn't younger. He said, "I've explained. We wouldn't work out." 

Anselmo touched him. "Let's try and see." 

"I'm not talking about sex. I'm sure that would be fine. But we can't do that twenty-four hours a day for the rest of our lives. Now, look ... you said you'd do what I wanted." 

The boy dropped his hand. "
Sí
. Okay." Mournful, he went to sit on the kitchen floor and pull his boots on. Standing, he gave two little stamps of his feet, like a flamenco dancer. Then he looked at Dave. Gravely. "Only I'm not giving up. Sometime you got to let me. Otherwise there's no point in living." 

"You'll find somebody else." Dave steered him to the front door and stood there in the chill breath of the rain, watching the sad pantomime with the plastic coat, the straddling and kicking to life of the Yamaha. The boy rode it away woodenly, eyes front, down the dim street. Crying? Dave shut the door. The music had stopped. The house was very still, very empty again. 

In the kitchen, he made himself another drink.

He went to bed stoned. But not stoned enough. He had bad dreams. A giant wasp was trapped in the kitchen. It buzzed, buzzed, hurled itself against the fragile shutter doors. He leaned on them, held them, sweating, horrified. A barbed javelin-size stinger thrust between the slats. He opened his mouth to scream for help but no sound came. Then he was awake and knowing what he heard—the buzz of the doorbell. Insistent. Under a stubborn thumb. He staggered to the closet for the blue corduroy bathrobe and remembered it was still in a grip in the luggage compartment of the car. He dragged the top blanket off the bed, wrapped it around him, and stumbled to the front door and yanked it open. 

Maybe it was morning but it still rained and it was still dark. A big man in a cowboy hat stood there dripping. Dave didn't know him. But he knew the little man shivering beside him. Kohlmeyer. Black eye sockets, white skull face. The big man moved indoors. He didn't push, didn't touch Dave, didn't need to. Nobody could have stopped him. Dave backed. Kohlmeyer faltered in after the big man and Dave shut the door and switched on a lamp. 

"You'd be Lloyd Chalmers," he said. 

Chalmers's voice came down like a load of gravel out of one of his big red trucks. "Kohlmeyer tells me he told you a story about me. I want you to know it was a lie." 

"But you do know Kohlmeyer," Dave said. "And there'll be a record of the check you gave him. At your bank or somewhere." The thermostat control was on the wall next to the bedroom door. Dave started for it. Chalmers's hand was massive on his arm, hard as concrete. 

"Where you going?" "It's cold in here. I was going to turn on the heat." 

"You can go back to bed in a minute," Chalmers grunted. "What I've got to say won't take long." 

"But you drove two hundred fifty miles on a rainy night to say it." 

"I never said it wasn't important." 

"You deny you bought photographs from Kohlmeyer? Dirty photographs of your political rival?" 

"Rival, shit!" Chalmers scoffed. 

"He was winning," Dave said. "Everybody in Pima told me so. Persuading an opponent to quit a race because of an episode in his past is not an unknown tactic among politicians, Mr. Chalmers." 

"I'm not a politician," Chalmers said. "I'm a builder. A businessman. And a good one. The town's kept me in office because they knew I could run things and run things ~ight. Lived in Pima all my life. People know me and trust me. Olson was a jump-up stranger. A clown. They might kid about electing him, but when they got in the polling booth they'd have plunked down their X by Chalmers. Naw. If this idea of yours wasn't so nasty it'd be laughable." 

Dave looked at Kohlmeyer. The wrecked little man wore lavender silk pajamas under his topcoat. On his feet, which were blue-veined, thin, and white almost to transparency, were gold-embroidered scarlet Turkish slippers. Soaked. Chalmers had obviously dragged him here straight from bed. Now he racked up a smile. It tried for impudence but the effect was grisly and pathetic. So was the simpering toss of the head. You expected to hear bones rattle. 

"The check was for a painting. By a student." 

"My wife collects this modernistic junk," Chalmers growled. 

"But my story," Kohlmeyer said, "was considerably more amusing, don't you agree?" He winked. It couldn't have been more startling if it had happened in a waxworks. "I fear I have something of an impish quality I've never been quite able to suppress. These fancies spring to mind and"—the narrow shoulders rose, the hands came up and unfolded like diseased petals—"I just blurt them out. I mean, life's so relentlessly
drab
. My little fictions aren't meant to harm—they're meant to
vivify
, is all. I've been called malicious." It hurt him to speak the word. He widened his eyes and blinked. The shutter mechanism was rusty. "I'm not. Truly I'm not. I'm a very
loving
person. Anything I've ever said that's hurt anyone, I've been deeply, deeply sorry for. You must believe that. If I weren't contrite would I have telephoned Mr. Chalmers about this? I mean, the moment you walked out of the door, I realized I'd been elfin again. Pixie, if you please. I flew after you, but you'd gone." 

"I'm in the book," Dave said. "You could have phoned." 

"I couldn't remember your name. That happens to me now. I'm not old. It's the drugs they give me. For the pain." A tear ran down his face. He did nothing about it. He probably didn't know what it was. "But I had to shrive myself. I couldn't apologize to Olson. You said yourself no one knows where he is. I phoned Mr. Chalmers. Desperately. My dialing finger is a mass of bruises. It took hours to reach him." 

"I was at a dinner for the Governor in Fresno," Chalmers said. "Didn't reach home till after eleven. Kohlmeyer was on the phone. I placed who he was talking about." 

"How?" Dave asked. "We never met." 

"Pima's a small town. I heard about you." 

"And what I was after?" 

Chalmers snorted. "Proof Fox Olson wasn't dead." 

"Is he?" Dave asked. "You didn't have a conversation with him, say on the morning of October eighteenth? You didn't show him some photographs of himself in a homosexual act? You didn't suggest it would be better if he withdrew as a candidate for mayor? You didn't suggest he fake that accident with his car and leave town? For good? You didn't name a place to him where he could drop out of sight?" 

Chalmers's face was red. His eyes narrowed. His gravel voice shook. His fists made hammers. "You're damn lucky I brought a witness with me. Because if you were alone here, I'd take you apart so they'd never be able to figure out which piece came from where." 

"It's my job to be suspicious," Dave said. "Stop taking it personally." 

"I'll take it any God damn way I please." 

"If you stood to lose a hundred and fifty thousand dollars," Dave asked, "how genteel would you be about trying to hang onto it?" 

Chalmers stared, big jaw thrust out. 

"When a man dies," Dave said, "there's evidence—his corpse. A smashed automobile doesn't prove a thing. Olson is alive. But unless I find him, my company's got to pay. Now ... he disappeared for a reason. I've got a couple of explanations. They haven't led anyplace. I thought Kohlmeyer's might. You'll have to admit it adds up."