High Life (41 page)

A little later I checked on Lorn. Her breathing was very shallow and the amount of blood on the floor around the table was frightening. I thought about unhooking her from the anesthetic, but with a wound like that on her guts, getting conscious again without major pain relief might have been even more dangerous than the build-up of sedative in her system. So I left her as she was, there wasn’t anything else I could do. I left Bella as she was, too.

On the way back to the Palm Grove I called the paramedics from a pay phone.

Epilogue

So, who says you can’t have everything? The men’s grooming gig went as planned, a juggernaut of publicity for shaving gel, shampoo, deodorant, and soap rolling across America with my face on the front. It made me a lot of money and it made me a celebrity. Not movie-star level, not quite yet, but I’m starting to get offers.

I bought a bigger house than the one I had on Willow Glen and I got a faster car than the Mustang. Evenings I go out to places where household names pass the time between films. On weekends I go to their houses for dinner. When I have a shoot I travel by limo and if it’s out of town I stay five-star. I can go to any state in the country and get recognized, interviewed, and laid. My agent tells me in a couple of years I’ll be the new Brad Pitt.

The paramedics got to Lorn, but they weren’t quick enough. She was dead before they could load her into the ambulance—a combination of blood loss and respiratory failure brought on by the anesthetic. If she’d made it through, I guess I would have tried to start up a proper relationship, and I have to say I felt pretty bad about what happened to her for a long time.

But it all worked out in the end. On a shoot in Marina del Ray I connected with a Hawaiian Tropic girl. We live together now. She’s the perfect partner for me—a blond Californian with good tits who shows up on TV and in magazines. We’re close, we have similar goals and interests, and if it isn’t exactly love, who gives a shit? We only have to step outside for that.

The police never decided exactly what happened to Bella. They couldn’t figure out if the same guy who killed her cut Lorn open as well, or if Bella did it herself for some reason before she got offed. Even the function and ownership of the Apricot Lane clinic couldn’t be satisfactorily determined because the paper trail on it dead-ended with a sugar company in Mauritius that went out of business six years ago.

I guess, after all, I got some kind of revenge for Karen. But even back when she died it wasn’t something that really mattered, and I care even less now. In fact, I find it pretty difficult to care much about anything that happened before Bella checked out. There was Rex, I suppose, a guy whose death I indirectly caused. And Powell, a semi-innocent man I helped murder. But Rex would have died eventually anyhow, and Powell wasn’t someone I could dredge up much emotion for.

The only person from that time I even halfway miss is Ryan. I’m not about to wish he was alive again, but at least he lives in my memory as someone of significance. He tried to frame me, he beat me up, and he fucked things between me and Bella, but he also forced me to recognize things about myself. Some people might say those kind of things shouldn’t be recognized. I don’t know, maybe they shouldn’t. But I figure if they’re in there, ignoring them won’t change the person you are. And, shit, I’m a pretty normal guy, I’m not that different from a lot of people. Maybe only a few men ever actually get to fuck someone who’s dead, but I bet a whole lot of others think about it.

And Bella? She’s already started to fade. I guess she did a lot for me before she turned nasty, and I know I should remember the good times. But I can’t. All I remember about her is the sight of shit pouring out of her ass, and the way she went still around my cock.