House of Blues (13 page)

"
What do you think it means?"

"
I don't know. The underworld. I don't know—in
a way it's where I live. I see the worst side of the city, but let me
tell you something—if it's perfect, we're all in trouble."

"Uh-uh. It's not about that."

"What, then?"

"It may be about Dennis. It may have something
to do with all that."

Skip remembered Toni's unsteady gait. She wasn't
slurring her words, but Skip figured alcohol and an eccentric view of
the world had probably combined to produce gibberish that was best
ignored.

"You've already suffered a loss, haven't you?"

She thought of Delavon's velvet-footed thugs and
laughed.

"Yeah. Of my dignity."

"
It will get worse." She reached out again.
"Let me see the other hand."

Skip complied, figuring it was a small price to get
her to talk about Dennis.

"
You have a formidable enemy. A very evil enemy.
And she's female." Toni cackled. "Maybe it's yourself."

The things she'd said about Skip's personal life were
true, but Toni had probably just made lucky guesses; either that or
said the same thing she always said. Skip was damned if she was going
to give it any credence. "Tell me about Dennis," she said.

"
He was here last night. Phil told you."

"
You met him then?"

"
Met him?" She seemed to find that
hilarious. "Met him? I've known him ten or twelve years. He
walks into my life, walks out, back in, back out. Then he gets
married and I don't see him for years, and then here he is again.
Same place, same time, same line."

"
Did he tell you anything about his life?"

"You mean about his father-in-law getting
killed? Not a god-damn word—Phil told me, I never even saw a paper.
All he talked about was his nice wife and his adorable kid. You
wouldn't have had the faintest idea there was anything wrong."

"
Was he drinking?"

"
Oh, heavily. I guess that was a clue."

"
What did he say about Reed?"

She looked puzzled. "Who's Reed?"

"His wife. I thought he talked about her."

"He called her ‘my wife.' I never thought
about it. I just assumed he married Evil."

"Evil?"

"
That's what I call Evie. His girlfriend when I
knew him. Her daddy was some big shot—owned a restaurant or
something, but Dennis never said which one. He's the one who was
killed, I guess."

Skip produced the wedding picture of Reed and Dennis.
"Is this she?"

"Yes." But she grabbed at the picture. "Let
me see that. I don't know. She used to be blond and she was skinnier.
Sure looks like her, though."

"Dennis didn't talk about what happened
yesterday?"

"
No. Believe me I'd remember—knowing what I
know now."

"
Did he seem okay?"

"
Okay?"

"Did he have any injuries?"

She laughed. "I'm the one with injuries. All
inflicted by the same damn man."

"How'd he look after all that time?"

"Oh, great. Same old Dennis."

"
There wasn't anything unusual about him?"

"What do you mean?"

"
Did he have blood on him?"

"Omigod. Blood. No, he didn't have blood on him.
He was just the same as always. Even dressed the same—T-shirt and
jeans. He's got a great rear end. Some things never change."

"Is this a place where you and Dennis used to
meet?"

"
Oh, sure. I've been a regular all the time I've
lived in the Quarter. And he used to be too."

"So he probably came here to find you."

"
Are you kidding? He came here to get
shit-faced. I just happened to—" She stopped and drummed her
fingers on the table.

"
Oh, wait a minute. Now that I think of it, he
might have wanted me for something. Oh my God, I think I've been
had."

I guarantee you you have.

"See, he didn't want to make love with me. I
don't think he even wanted a place to stay, especially. I invited him
to come home with me, just like I always did, so he did. But he—"

"Wait a minute—can I ask something? How'd you
get to your house?"

"Walked. Why?"

"I just wondered what he was driving."

"
Don't know. " She shook her head,
impatient to get on with her story. "Anyway, he came home with
me, but he kind of argued about it—he didn't want it that bad. Then
when we got there he just sort of crashed on the sofa, and he was
gone before I got up."

She shrugged. "Story of my life."

Skip was about to say something, but Toni had an
announcement to make. "Boy, am I pissed."

"
I don't blame you. But what do you think he
wanted you for?"

"He wanted to know where he could score."

"
Ah."

"So I told him about Maya's. Just use my name, I
said; no problem—Maya'll take care of you. Shit! He's probably
there right now. The bastard"

"Maya's?"

"Yeah, Maya's—party, party, party, all the
time party. God knows what Maya's into—but let me tell you, she
hangs with some major creeps. Not exactly southern gentlemen, if you
know what I mean."

"How's that?"

"Well, once I went in the bedroom, looking for a
bathroom, and the door closed behind me. I just had enough time to
see I was alone with two guys before the light went out." She
stopped and sipped, building suspense.

"
So what'd you do?"

"Screamed." She shrugged. "It worked,
but Maya was a little put out."

"
How mad at Dennis are you?"

"Pissed as all hell. Wouldn't you be?"

"I can think of a great way to get even. Why
don't you take me over to Maya's?"

A smile played at the corners of Toni's lips. "Maybe
I'll just do that."

"
Let me make a phone call."

Suddenly Toni seemed much more alert than Skip had
imagined. "Uh-uh. I might take you—I just might do that. But
no one else." She drained her glass, and Skip wasted not a
moment.

"Let me get you another drink." She
gestured to Phil, and then she changed the subject for a while. When
Toni had drunk half her wine and slowed down a bit, she brought up
Maya's again.

"Listen, Toni, I can't go there without backup.
How about if they stay outside? Just you and I go in?"

"Goddammit, okay!" She made a fist and
brought it down on the table. "I'm going to get that bastard for
what he did to me."

Skip wasn't sure what he'd done to her. Nothing much,
it sounded like. But Toni was the kind of drunk who lost track of
such considerations. Skip hoped she stayed loaded long enough to get
her to Maya's.
 
 

8

People had brought food to Reed and Dennis's, and
Nina had sent some from the restaurant. Grady and his mother had sat
down together, but neither of them had really eaten. Sugar did not
talk about Arthur, about her loss—even about Reed and Sally. She
talked only about Nina, how she was ruining the restaurant, how she
couldn't do anything right, how nasty she was to sweet Sugar, herself
a paragon of behavior and business sense.

That was okay for Grady, it was more natural—it was
the Sugar he was used to and for now preferred to the passive one,
the strange one of the night before.

She was with some friends now, friends of Arthur's.
Sugar didn't really make friends, and she and Arthur had so little in
common they didn't have couple friends. Yet people had come over, and
Grady was grateful. He had no idea how to take care of his mother,
had never seen the possibility he'd need to. He'd devoted his life to
protecting himself from her.

Grady had brought his computer over—a small
notebook that it had taken him a long time to be able to afford. He
was upstairs now, practicing his own peculiar brand of therapy—the
one thing that had gotten him through so far. He found that when he
wrote, when he created his own universe, he left this one behind. He
had problems with his father, a whole lot of problems, but he did not
want to think of what Arthur's death meant to him.

What had happened to Reed and Dennis and Sally was
another matter. In his heart he didn't feel they were dead, and he
was feeling less and less sure they'd been kidnapped, because there'd
been no ransom demand, and it had now been more than twenty-four
hours. He and his mother had carefully left telephone messages at
both their houses, so there'd be no problem getting in touch. And
there was always the restaurant—anyone could call there.

If they weren't dead, what? He didn't like to think
about it, what that might mean. And he thought it odd that his mother
wasn't trying to find them, wasn't bending everyone's ear with
cockeyed theories as usual. Instead she had turned her attention to
the restaurant, and to Nina, her newly declared enemy. There must be
a reason for that. And Grady thought he knew what it was. She had
fears about Reed and Dennis—the same ones he had.

He wanted to stop writing about the vampires, to
branch out, to write about reality. But how to go about that? The
thought of it made his stomach flop. Writing was important, it was
necessary, it was his obsession.

It scared him to death.

When he really thought about it, writing was like a
vampire. It caressed you, it wrapped its treacherous arms around you,
and it sucked you dry.

No, no, no, it isn't like that. A vampire would
suck your blood and cast you aside. Writing ensnares you; it keeps
you; it won't let you go.

Like Sugar would if anyone would let her.

But writing is the good mother.

Right.

So do it.

An idea came to him, simply to do a writing exercise
rather than a finished, publishable product. just to let his mind go
wild and see what happened.

He started writing what
appeared to be a children's story:

* * *

Once upon a time, there was a little boy named Bill.
Bill lived on a strange planet with some people he wasn't too sure
about, but it wasn't all that bad a life.

Children were allowed to do anything they wanted,
especially climb as many trees as they liked, and keep lions as pets.
Or tigers, if they chose, but Bill preferred a nice lion because you
could get a good grip on its mane when you rode it.

They ate nothing but fruit and spaghetti and
sometimes pizza, so no one had to cook very much and no animals had
to die. The spaghetti hung from certain trees that grew in a grove,
like Spanish moss hangs from certain trees here. Sometimes the people
asked the neighborhood giraffes to reach up and get it or, when it
grew low, they sent the children out on their lions for it.

Sauce for the spaghetti came down from a mountain, in
a sort of waterfall, and the people caught it in barrels. That
happened once a week, and every week the sauce was
different—sometimes you got tomato, sometimes pesto, sometimes
Alfredo or primavera.

Flying saucers made out of pizza dough blew through
now and then. The people caught them in nets they put in the tallest
trees and plants. You could put the sauce from the waterfall on the
saucers and make a very fine pizza if you didn't mind not having any
cheese. Which no one did because they never heard of it.

It would have been a very good life if it hadn't been
for the Evil One.

Bill found out about the Other Side when he was sent
out to pick spaghetti and couldn't reach it—someone had come along
and trimmed each strand an inch or two, maybe three, just enough so a
boy standing on a lion couldn't reach it. He was flabbergasted—so
flabbergasted he squeaked in amazement, causing his pet lion to bolt,
which caused Bill, in turn, to fall off him, onto the jungle floor.
The ground was usually soft with vegetation, so he wouldn't normally
have been hurt, but there was a hard root right under him, from the
spaghetti tree he'd been trying to pick. Bill hit his knee on the
root and knocked some of the skin off. He'd never in his life had an
injury. Such things were very rare on his planet and he didn't know
what to think.

He was terrified—so terrified he set up a howl that
sent all the elders of the town flying to his aid.

Then he was embarrassed—so embarrassed it made him
feel a way he'd never felt before—a nasty, red, jagged kind of way
that made his throat close and his cheeks hot.

He learned later that he was angry—so angry he made
his hands into fists and started hitting people; and kicking people.
In turn, that made some of the elders angry and they hit him and
kicked him back.

A buzzing began among them. He heard words he didn't
know. "Evil, evil. The Evil One. Evil One."