John Shirley - Wetbones (2 page)

Amy. Was there someone he should inform? Her dad had abandoned the family when she was little. Her mother was dead. Cirrhosis. Her brother was a biker somewhere. Where, was anyone's guess. Prentice could call his own parents, but they'd never liked Amy, they'd been glad when she'd left him. His Mom had bugged him about finalizing, getting a divorce, settling down with "someone more stable. God knows, you
need
someone more stable."

He looked at the paper sack that held Amy's effects. Now he knew why she'd sent his last two checks back; why she'd burned her bridges with him. She'd been getting money somewhere else. Even a Gold Card. The card was in the sack, along with her wallet, a gold chain ankle bracelet, an address book. No addresses in the address book, just cryptic scribbles and two phone numbers. It was like her: she kept most of her addresses on little scraps of paper in her wallet. Used to drive him crazy. He was fanatically methodical about addresses. Rolodexes, black-leather-bound planners. Now he even had an electronic address book that looked like a calculator.

If he didn't click with Arthwright, he might have to hock that calculator soon. Prentice looked once more at the detritus of Amy's passing on the bed. Like the nest of a dead pheasant, the American peacock, found in the tall grasses, after the hunter's downed the bird. Nothing left but a handful of feathers and dead grass.

He went downstairs, jangling his hotel and rental car keys together in his hand.

Alameda, California Just Across the Bay from San Francisco

Ephram chose a girl he saw working at the' cash register, in Dresden's Hardware Store.

She was at Cash Register Three. Maybe it was the faint pattern of freckles on her cheekbone, the same configuration as the negative constellation. The constellation Kali, that no one saw but him: Ephram Pixie, who saw so much, ha ha, that no one else saw.

The girl was plump but pretty. Soft brown eyes with a little too much eyeliner. Tammy Fayeish eyelashes. White gloss on lips that carried on the Zaftig theme of her slightly oversized body. Full breasts for a girl, oh, sixteen or so. Her honey-blonde hair charmingly ruined by being up in one of those strange do's that teenage girls were affecting lately, a "pump", it was called: a little ridge of hair jutting straight up above the forehead, like a radar scoop of some kind, yet delicate and bound in place by lots of big blowzy curls. The esthetic blindness of it fascinated him. Here was real innocence.

And she wore a little charm bracelet made of small gold hearts about one wrist. He counted them: there were seven little gold hearts. Seven of hearts: his omen card in the Negative Deck. Another sign.

About her neck was her name in gold, hanging from a necklace. C-O-N-S-T-A-N-C-E. Constance? Oh, really? Ha ha.

She wore a raspberry coloured dress, with a frilly collar; raspberry Adidas tennis shoes, that looked gauche with the dress, but again she was unaware of that. The sneakers weren't gauche with her dress at her high school after all, ha ha.

Ephram was buying a coil of rope when he spotted

her. He felt a warm, sweet tingle when he saw the girl and at the same time became sharply aware of the rope's texture in his hands. The delicious coincidence of it . . .

The rope was quarter-inch soft white synthetic fibre, and it would do very well.

"Hi, how are you today," she said, automatically, not quite looking at him. Looking at the price tag on the rope and ringing it up.

"I'm glad you don't use those machines to read the - what are they? - those atrocious little bar-symbols that computers read," Ephram said. Just to get her to say a few more things to him. To dawdle there as he got a fix on her.

"Hm?" she said, blinking at him, "Oh, those computer price reading things? Bar codes, I think, it's called. I wish we
did
have theme A nervous little laugh like a trill on a toy piano. " - because, um, like, they're faster. The lines get long in here and everybody gets, you know, they want to get in and get out . . . . That's three-ninety-five."

"Here you are. Yes, well, that's a shame. I like . . . lingering here, myself. This is a charming hardware store. So cluttered and old fashioned."

She looked at him, to try to decide if he was serious. People didn't talk like that, in her little world, with words like
lingering,
describing a hardware store as charming. He smiled broadly at her. Not hoping to interest her in him, no, ha ha. He was a squat little man, with a soft wheel of fat at around his middle, his oversized head mostly bald, a few colourless hairs slicked across it. An astrological glamour just barely visible, if you looked close, in the back of his deep-set green eyes. And if you looked closer . . .

But all she saw, he knew, was a funny looking little

fat guy grinning at her from the other side of the counter. She stared at him, beginning to feel the feather antenna of his first probe in her brain. And then another customer came up and she turned gratefully to him: a black teenager with an earring and a Mercedes Benz hood ornament hanging on a chain around his neck. He was buying spraypaint. Fairly obvious, Ephram thought, what the boy was going to do with that, the vandal. Inexplicably, the girl squirmed with pleasure when the boy said something vaguely flirtatious, and shook her head, saying, "I'm
sure
."

The boy really ought to be arrested, Ephram thought, for stealing that Mercedes ornament off someone's car.

Carrying the rope out to the car, Ephram found himself thinking of calling a cop on the little son of a bitch . . .

And then he laughed aloud at himself.
Absurd that I of all people should be thinking of calling the police on anyone . . . Ha ha
.

When Garner saw Constance coming up the walk, he found himself looking to see how steadily she walked, and if her eyes were glazed.

There was no reason at all to suppose his daughter was on drugs. Really, there was none. She stayed out too late sometimes, she didn't take school seriously - she worked in spurts to maintain a C average - but she was a careful girl, in most ways, and she didn't smoke or drink. As far as he knew.

Probably unrealistic to think she'd never had a drink It was fucking 1990, man. The kids drank or were scorned.

But when your old man is a drug counsellor - three days a week, when he wasn't doing pastoral work - you probably didn't get into drugs. Did you?

Easy does it, Garner counselled himself. Let go, stop obsessing. This is Alameda. She's all right.

Alameda, after all, is an island. An island of safety and an island geographically, neatly packed with houses and parks, with San Francisco Bay on one side and an estuary on the other. There were big signs just this side of the bridges onto Alameda:
DRUG FREE ZONE. This Community mandates double penalties for drug violations
.

There weren't any drug free zones in America. The signs stood at the ends of the bridges to warn ghetto gangsters who drifted over from Oakland.

The town was mostly an enclave of upper-middle class safety, tough cops, a big Navy base, half a dozen marinas, a 25 MPH speed limit. The local kids were fairly straight, and stuck to their own community. There was no open drug dealing at all. But there were lots and lots of liquor stores and bars, thanks to the military, and just a mile across the estuary was Oakland's East 14th, and anything could be had, there . . .

Stop stressing out, he told himself again. She's all right.

"How was work?" Garner asked, when Constance came in. Knowing how she'd answer.

"Okay, I guess," she said. As always. What was there to say about working in a hardware store for the summer?

Without pausing as she bustled by, she slid her purse onto the hall table, making the vase of dusty silk flowers rock. It was a clumsy blue and pink ceramic vase she'd made for him in a sixth grade art class; he grabbed it just before it toppled, turned to ruefully watch her walk into the kitchen to get herself the inevitable Diet Coke. Singing a George Michael song absently to herself. He thought about telling her that her skirt was too short. He stopped himself, amazed, not for the first time, to find

himself turning into his own father. In the late 60s, when Garner came of age, Constance's skirt would have been prudishly long.

Garner went to sit on the living room couch, looking out the picture window at the sunny suburban yard. July in California.

Somewhere above, in the province of passenger jets, fighter jets from the base's carriers, and the birds that choked on the jets' exhaust, a cloud drew itself over the sun. Far below, the cloud shadow spilled slowly and inexorably across the lawn.

Clunk, clunk, Constance kicking off her shoes in the hallway. "Hey, Daddy Dude," she said, coming in with her can of Diet Coke, sitting in the easy chair across from him, feet tucked partly under her. She had those awkward little white socks they were wearing now, and a thin gold ankle bracelet. In the 60s she'd have had white go-go boots. At least she hadn't got one of those ugly fanny-paks yet.

Garner was wearing jeans, sneakers - real Converse sneakers, which were hard to find - and his Oakland Street Ministry t-shirt. He knew the trappings of the Ministry embarrassed her a little, but she liked the t-shirt because its graffiti-style design was at least marginally hip. He knew she was proud of him, too, because he was cooler than some other dads. He let her stay out later, let her watch the movies she wanted, was tolerant of profanity up to a point, let her go to rock concerts alone, never said a word about loud music, though he couldn't stand most of the bands she liked. What was that band? Bon Jovi . . .

She liked her father being politically liberal; it was hipper to be P.C., because MTV was mostly slanted that way. They both liked the Beatles and the Stones. He

wished she'd known her mother. For one thing, her mother would know how to tell her she wore too much makeup . . .

"Daddy Dude," she began, smiling sweetly.

"Let me guess. The car. Had your license two months and you think you get to wheedle the car."

"I'm sure, it's not like the only thing I ever talk to you about is wanting something, I mean -"

"Not the only thing, no. But when you call me Daddy Dude, in that sweet voice, it's a dead giveaway."

"Whatever. Daddy . . . Daddy Dad. We just want to go to the mall and the arcade."

"I'm staying around here this evening because we're having a counselling group here. They're painting the Volunteer Centre in Oakland so it's got to be here. So yeah, okay. But if you hurta my car I breaka you face!"

She laughed. Then her expression went ludicrously earnest. "Did anyone call for me?"

"No, hon, he didn't call, whoever he is. What's his name? Is he in puberty yet? Does he have pubic hair?"

"
Da
-ad!"

Ephram thought about doing away with Megan. He thought about it as he drove his '88 Porsche to the condo he'd rented near the beach, in Alameda. On the way, he drove through a neighbourhood of Victorian and Queen Anne houses, most of them prettily restored and trimmed, ostentatiously gardened. The matronly old houses seemed to wear the lush foliage of the street's many oaks and maples like fir stoles. He would have preferred one of the fine old houses to a condo. But anonymity was better, and you were more anonymous in a condo.

He left the old town neighbourhood, drove into the area of housing projects and condos and beach front

apartment buildings; an area of town rather glaringly open to the sky. It was a sweet summer evening for a drive by the beach, a few clouds strikingly purple against the lemon glow of the horizon. It was an evening to savour, an epicurean's evening, and Ephram regarded himself as the last word in epicureans.

A nice night to do away with Megan. She was mostly used up. There wasn't much left but the sticky, impure stuff at the bottom of the bottle that was her brain.

He always thought of it that way:
Doing away
. It was such a pleasantly euphemistic expression. It made him think of the way Valentine Michael Smith had rid the world of unwanted people in that novel, that bit of silliness from the 60s.
Stranger In
 . . . something. Valentine Smith would simply think them out of existence.

He couldn't do that with Megan, just think her out of existence when he was done with her. And having to
do away
with them physically, personally, was his least favourite part of the whole process. Well, the actual killing was all right, but the disposal - the away of it - was a bore and a mess. Literally, a mess. There was no truly pristine doing away, he thought. Not even incineration. There was always a mess of some kind. A cadaver leaving its mutely insistent signature on the scene, if only a little grease and ash.

Nothing for it but to roll up his sleeves . . .

Ephram arrived at the cluster of two-story security condos and pressed the door signaller that would let him into the parking lot. The gate lurched a little, then rolled aside. He drove through and neatly into his parking place. He was not a man to waste movements.

He went into his condo without bothering to check his mailbox. There shouldn't be anything in it except bills and trash. No one knew he was here. And, of

course, there was no one alive who would write him a letter, anyway, ha ha.

Megan was right where he'd left her, under the sink in the bathroom.

Part of her naked, pale, pinkwhite body was set aglow by a long bar of light that expanded from the hall when he opened the door. She had her back to him, lay on her side, curled up around the sink pipes like a snail around a stem. Her long red hair - now matted and oily - fanned across the bathroom tiles. Freckles across her back. He often chose freckly girls, or girls with birth marks. Marks on the skin were signs to him.

She groaned when he switched on the bathroom light, but of course she couldn't move. He hadn't given her leave to move. She was still cerebrally locked. He reached oat with an exploratory impulse, the probe making her shudder and gag a little as it passed through her skull. He tasted the pleasure centres of her brain. The
reward receiver
of the brain, as Ephram thought of it. There was some capacity left. Some cells not yet wrung out. More than he'd thought. Best use her once more before the doing away. Waste not, wanton. Ha ha.