John Shirley - Wetbones (14 page)

He thought,
What'd you expect, dumbshit?

But he kept stripping away wallpaper, revealing more and more of the splash - and then a place where the underpaper had been breached. Clawmarks, four of them, ran down the wall here, to the plaster beneath. In one spot exposing a crack in the wall. As soon as he'd exposed it, he felt a little puff of cool air from the crack. And a moment later heard the voices.

And the edge of the crack was outlined in light.

He bent, and pressed his right eye to the crack (
an icepick, there'll be an icepick spike coming through the crack into his eye - no, shake that bullshit off
 . . .) and squeezed his other eye shut. He could just make out pink shapes moving, in the next room . . . fleshy pink . . .

It took a moment for his eye to adjust. Then a piece of the neighbouring room came into focus. A man and a woman fucking on a bed. Fucking without rhythm on the bare mattress. He couldn't make out what they were saying. There was someone else, too, coming into Mitch's narrow field of vision for just a moment, moving to stand by the edge of the bed . . .

The More Man? He wasn't sure. He could only see an arm, a bit of his side. Then the guy moved back, into the shadows, and there were only the man and woman on the bed.

The couple on the bed were bleeding. They moved in sex like someone crawling across a desert. Like each movement was a fight with exhaustion. Each thrust a heave and a slump, a weak convulsion that was only technically sex. He could make out the knobs of the guy's vertebrae on his back. He looked so skinny, so used up. Blood runnelled down from a torn ear . . . the ear hanging by a flap . . .

They were crying, too. Weeping softly, the both of them. "Please," the man on the bed pleaded. "Let us stop. I can't . . . any more . . ."

"Yes please, please, please," the woman sobbed. "Just let us rest, we'll do a lot more later. A long, rasping, wracking sob.
"Please."

"More," said the man watching from the shadows. "More. More. More. More."

Then the motion of the two on the bed changed. The whole quality of their movement changed. Mitch tasted burning electricity, shivered with lust for the Head Syrup, as the man and woman begin to giggle - hoarse, moronic giggles. Then they began to hump faster, writhing in puppeted semblance of sexual delight.

The woman's leg was twitching . . . spasming. Her arm flopping like a live fish dropped on hot coals. The man turned his face from her - Mitch couldn't quite see the guy's face but he could see and hear what was coming out of it: a thick vomit of blood.

Vomiting blood but still he humped into her.

Mitch felt the strength go out of his knees. He slid down the wallpaper to the floor.

Then he was up, lurching across the room, throwing himself at the window frame, smashing at it so that glass flew. But he couldn't get it open, it was completely blocked off . . .

He stared at the splintery geometries of broken glass on the floor by the wall. He could use a piece of glass to slash his jugular . . .

But then he felt the watcher. He turned, and no one was there, but he could feel the More Man watching him, and he could sense the hand of the Spirit poised over him. Waiting to punish.

They'd never let him kill himself. He'd never be able to get the glass to his throat. The More Man would never let him get away as easily as that . . .

5
Culver City, Los Angeles

"Hi - I'm Sargeant Sparks. I'm looking for Jeff Teitelbaum . . . ?"

Even the cops here had the irritating California habit of making statements sound like questions, Prentice thought, looking up at the open living room door.
So, like, I'm going into therapy tomorrow? And I've got all these abandonment issues?

Well, Prentice always wanted to ask, do you or don't you?

Prentice got up from his perch on the arm of the sofa and stood awkwardly trying to decide if he should let the guy in or wait for Jeff to come out of the bathroom. "Uh, yeah -"

But then the bathroom door banged open and Jeff crossed to the front door. "Yeah, officer, right here," Jeff said, opening the screen door for the cop who stood there. "C'mon in."

Officer Sparks was shaped like a bowling pin, narrow shoulders and wide hips. He wore thick-rimmed designer glasses and an air of weary authority. He had a sad, panda face. He came in carrying a clipboard.

Every so often the walkie-talkie clipped to his belt muttered to itself and cleared its throat of static.

"Have a seat, officer," Jeff said, rubbing his palms against the hips of his khaki shorts. He was nervous, working too hard at not actively hating the cop for being a cop.

"We've been looking into your report about your brother Mitch Teitelbaum?"

"Right," Jeff said "Mitch." He stood by the door as if ready to open it for the cop again as soon as possible.

"And we've gone out to talk to Mr. Denver?"

"You personally?" Prentice asked. He wasn't sure why it seemed important.

"Hm? Yes sir, I went myself. Me and another officer. We came to the conclusion that the boy is not there and Mr. Denver doesn't know where he is. But maybe I should ask - have you heard from him?" He smiled with one side of his mouth. "We're looking for him, too. He's supposed to be in Juvie Hall. For all know he's in the next room sleeping it off."

"He's not here and we haven't heard from him," Jeff said. His voice flat. "What do you mean, sleeping it off?"

"He was doing some time for -" He glanced at his clipboard. "Possession of cocaine. Chances are, he's on a run somewhere."

"He's not a drug addict, he's not 'on a run'." Jeff crossed his arms over his chest, then dropped them by his side, then crossed them over his chest again. "Did you guys search the Denver place?"

"No sir, we didn't have a warrant and we'd need a lot more to go on than the word of a kid you talked to in Juvie Hall."

Prentice considered bringing Amy into it. Her

turning up dead, her connection to Denver. The credit card. The stories of the More Man. But it would seem irrelevant to the cop. One thing at a time, please. Just the facts. And it sounded kind of silly to Prentice, now, when he imagined explaining the connection.

''That guy Denver is up to some weird shit," Jeff said. "I
know
he is."

"Seemed like a regular Malibu producer type to me," the cop said. "Which means he might
be
up to some weird shit, but probably not kidnapping. I get a feeling about these things, I learn to respect those feelings, you know? The kid is not out at the Ranch. That's my feeling . . . You have any evidence of kidnapping you haven't given us?"

Jeff chewed his lip. Finally he said, "No. But -"

Sparks scribbled on his clipboard, then glanced around, as if it had just occurred to him that they might be in "possession of cocaine" themselves, since Mitch had been. Thoughtfully, he said, "You have any evidence of kidnapping, best thing is to go to the FBI. One of their specialties." He looked at Jeff. "Do you think, sir, that Mitch could be hanging with some of his drug-using buddies? I mean - we have to assume, given his record -"

"That's all. Forget it, man. We should have known better," Jeff said sharply, opening the screen door so hard its hinges squealed.

The cop stood up, glancing around the apartment, stalling. "I was going to ask if I could use the phone -"

"They got one at the donut shop," Jeff said, gesturing toward the door.

The cop's jaws worked and his cheeks mottled. "This isn't a good way, sir, to get help from the police," he said, crossing the room.

"Nothing from nothing is nothing," Jeff said, slamming the door after the guy. "Christ!"

He and Prentice looked at each other. Then burst out laughing. Prentice's laughter more genuine. "'They got one at the donut shop!'" Prentice repeated, shaking his head, laughing.

Then he stopped laughing, and said, "Hey."

Jeff was crossing to the kitchen. He paused and looked over. "What?"

"He said,
The kid's not out at the Ranch
. That was the way that fat-ass cop put it. Like . . ."

Jeff nodded. "Familiar, calling it
the Ranch
. Like he was using a nickname for it. Like he knew the place pretty well . . ."

Los Angeles

Ephram was tired. But'they were nearly there. It was eight p.m., just getting dark in the California summer, and the Porsche was flying along the Santa Monica Freeway, on its way to Venice. There were more palm trees, now, and the traffic had eased. The sky was going brown-violet at the horizon.

He glanced at Constance. He felt the ache, again, that had been plaguing him. Her eyes were sunken. Why did this bother him? He knew it would happen. It always happened. Her expression was composed and happy. The way she kept it.

Ephram shifted down as the traffic thickened, people up ahead rubbernecking a minor accident.

She hates me, he thought.

Then he thought: No, she doesn't. Because I have her soul in my hands, and I make it perform for me like a small, trained animal; I squeeze it and reshape it

like gelatin. She feels what she is commanded to feel. And it certainly wouldn't matter, if she did hate me.

The traffic slowed to a crawl; his attention was freed up. So he reached into her. Without even looking at her, no acknowledgement from him about what he was doing but a faint, smug smile on his lips; he reached into her brain with the 'plasmic fingers and squeezed her pleasure centre. She squirmed on her seat and moaned. He prompted her and, accordingly, she said: "I love you, Ephram."

He looked at her. No, she didn't love him.

He could make her mean it, though. He reached more deeply into her . . .

"I love you, Ephram," she said, turning to look at him, her eyes glazing with devotion, with sentiment. But her voice betraying a hint of desperation.

A black cloud swirled inside him. "No. you don't."

He reached over and grabbed her hand and began to squeeze her fingers together, hard. She whimpered with pain. "Now you love me?" he demanded. "When I do this to you?"

"Yes!"

He squeezed harder. Could feel the bones in her hand on the verge of cracking. She cried out.

He hissed, "
Now
you love me?"

"Yes. Yes." No pleasure in her now, just pain and fear and the steel corset of his command:
Tell me you love me
.

He let go of her hand, but reached under her skirt, grabbed her pubis, through the filmy panties and began to twist the soft handful of skin and flesh. "Now you love me?"

"Yes. Yes. Yes!"

She experienced no masochistic enjoyment of this whatsoever. He could see that clearly.

He twisted her crotch again. Harder. "You hate me."

"No, I love you."

"Hate me."

"Love you!"

He could let go of her mind and see what she said. She'd probably still say she loved him, out of fear.

"You disgust me," he said, letting go of her.

Then he gave her a charge of pleasure, to keep her quiet. She made a low, humming sound and nestled deeper into the leather of the bucket seats.

Maybe, he thought, if I spent enough time at it, I could make her really sincerely love me, giving her no option but that. Enough pressure on the mind would bend it into any shape at all. And that would be sincere love, wouldn't it? What sort of ridiculous contortions did people go though - and put others through - to make people love them, in ordinary relationships? This was more honest.

It would be real love. As much as there was such a thing as real love . . .

He wished it were night, so he could see the stars, look for guidance in the secret constellations. The sunset was taking its languorous, smog-blurred time. The lights of the city were glimmering brighter in the twilight. The drug dealers would be out on the street . . . And some of Denver's people, too, would be there . . .

Probably stupid to come to Denver's town. Could I be steering myself to self destruction, somehow? he wondered. Why did it matter so much what the girl felt today?

What was wrong with him?

He gave himself a small jolt of pleasure - something he was very cautious about doing, normally. Didn't want to bum himself out.

But he felt better, almost immediately. The evening took on a different cast. It went from tragedy to comedy.

When they drove up beside the traffic accident, they had a good long look It was worse than he'd imagined. There was blood and broken glass.

If he'd been here at the time, he could have made the victims of the traffic accident enjoy the crash, the mangling. Have to try that sometime. That'd be funny. A little auto-motive psychic tampering. That'd be a gas, ha ha.

The bitch hates me
.

The San Fernando Valley

"I'm sorry, sir, we were told
invitations only
. You got to have a printed invite." He was a stocky, gum-chewing kid of about nineteen in a Burns Security uniform, with walkman earphones pulled down around his neck. He'd stopped them walking up the drive to Arthwright's place. It was a long, circular drive leading to a modern, jutting house with as many round windows as square ones. In the balmy evening, soft red and blue "Malibu" lighting painted blush and eyeshadow on the house's facade. The drive was ornamented with a cactus garden and miniature palms. Jags and Rolls-Royces and BMWs and Corvettes and the occasional Volvo lined the drive, nose to tail. "You can stay, sir," the security guard was saying to Jeff, "but -" He looked apologetically at Prentice and shrugged. "Sorry.''

Jeff said, "This is bullshit, this guy is my partner and he's a good friend of Arthwright's -" Both exaggerations. "- and Arthwright's gonna be pissed if he doesn't get in. He didn't know Tom was in town -"

"Forget it, Jeff," Prentice said. This was typical of Jeff - and of Prentice. Jeff was a pusher, a don't-take-no hustler; Prentice was a more cautious angler.

The guard was squaring his shoulders and shaking his head, when Jeff spotted Arthwright stepping out the gate to say goodbye to someone. Arthwright's voice came to them distantly. "I just wished you coulda stayed longer, Sol - it's so great to see ya -"