have an exaggerated perception of every gust. Since he’d long ago rejected his old man’s screwy philosophies, he figured that if Skeet could stand erect with no risk of being spun away like a Frisbee, then so could he.
Raising his voice, Skeet said, “This is for the best, Dusty.”
“Like you would know what’s for the best.”
“Don’t try to stop me.”
“Well, see, I’ve got to try.”
“I can’t be talked down.”
“I’ve become aware of that.”
They faced each other, as though they were two athletes about to engage in a strange new sport on a slanted court: Skeet standing tall, like a basketball player waiting for the opening toss-up, Dusty crouched like an underweight sumo wrestler looking for leverage.
“I don’t want to get you hurt,” Skeet said.
“I don’t want to get me hurt, either.”
If Skeet was determined to jump off the Sorensons’ house, he couldn’t be prevented from doing so. The steep pitch of the roof, the rounded surfaces of the barrel tiles, the wind, and the law of gravity were on his side. All that Dusty could hope to do was to make sure the poor son of a bitch went off the edge at exactly the right place and onto the mattresses.
“You’re my friend, Dusty. My only real friend.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence, kid.”
“Which makes you my best friend.”
“By default,” Dusty agreed.
“A guy’s best friend shouldn’t get in the way of his glory.”
“Glory?”
“What I’ve seen it’s like on the Other Side. The glory.”
The only way to be sure that Skeet went off the roof precisely above the fall-break was to grab him at the right instant and hurl him to the ideal point along the brink. Which meant going down the roof and over the edge with him.
The wind tossed and whipped Skeet’s long blond hair, which was the last attractive physical quality that he had left. Once, he’d been a good-looking boy, a girl magnet. Now his body was wasted; his face was gray and haggard; and his eyes were as burnt out as the bottom of a crack pipe. His thick, slightly curly, golden hair was so out of sync with the rest of his appearance that it seemed to be a wig.
Except for his hair, Skeet stood motionless. In spite of being more stoned than a witch in Salem, he was alert and wary, deciding how best to break away from Dusty and execute a clean running dive headfirst into the cobblestones below.
Hoping to distract the kid or at least to buy a little time, Dusty said, “Something I’ve always wondered…. What does the angel of death look like?”
“Why?”
“You saw him, right?”
Frowning, Skeet said, “Yeah, well, he looked okay.”
A hard gust of wind tore off Dusty’s white cap and spun it to Oz, but he didn’t take his attention off Skeet. “Did he look like Brad Pitt?”
“Why would he look like Brad Pitt?” Skeet asked, and his eyes slid sideways and back to Dusty again, as he glanced surreptitiously toward the brink.
“Brad Pitt played him in that movie,
“Didn’t see it.”
With growing desperation, Dusty said, “Did he look like Jack Benny?”
“What’re you talking about?”
“Jack Benny played him once in a really old movie. Remember? We watched it together.”
“I don’t remember much. You’re the one with the photographic memory.”
“Eidetic. Not photographic. Eidetic and audile memory.”
“See? I can’t even remember what it’s called. You remember what you had for dinner five years ago. I don’t remember yesterday.”
“It’s just a trick thing, eidetic memory. Useless, anyway.”
The first fat drops of rain spattered across the top of the house.
Dusty didn’t have to look down to see the dead lichen being transformed into a thin film of slime, because he could
A daunting image flickered through his mind:
“Billy Crystal,” Skeet said.
“What — you mean Death? The angel of death looked like Billy Crystal?”
“Something wrong with that?”
“For God’s sake, Skeet, you can’t trust some wise-ass, maudlin, shtick-spouting Billy Crystal angel of death!”
“I liked him,” Skeet said, and he ran for the edge.
5
As though the great guns of battleships were providing cover fire for invading troops, hard hollow explosions echoed along the southfacing beaches. Enormous waves slammed onto the shore, and bullets of water, skimmed off the breakers by a growing wind, rattled inland through the low dunes and sparse stalks of grass.
Martie Rhodes hurried along the Balboa Peninsula boardwalk, which was a wide concrete promenade with ocean-facing houses on one side and deep beaches on the other. She hoped the rain would hold off for half an hour.
Susan Jagger’s narrow, three-story house was sandwiched between similar structures. The weather-silvered, cedar-shingle siding and the white shutters vaguely suggested a house on Cape Cod, although the pinched lot did not allow for a full expression of that style of architecture.
The house, like its neighbors, had no front yard, no raised porch, only a shallow patio with a few potted plants. This one was paved with bricks and set behind a white picket fence. The gate in the fence was unlocked, and the hinges creaked.
Susan had once lived on the first and second floors with her husband, Eric, who had used the third floor — complete with its own bath and kitchen — as a home office. They were currently separated. Eric had moved out a year ago, and Susan had moved up, renting the lower two floors to a quiet retired couple whose only vice seemed to be two martinis each before dinner, and whose only pets were four parakeets.
A steep exterior set of stairs led along the side of the house to the third story. As Martie climbed to the small covered landing, shrieking seagulls wheeled in from the Pacific and passed overhead, crossing the peninsula, flying toward the harbor, where they would ride out the storm in sheltered roosts.
Martie knocked, but then unlocked the door without waiting for a response. Susan was usually hesitant to welcome a visitor, reluctant to be confronted with a glimpse of the outside world; so Martie had been given a key almost a year previously.
Steeling herself for the ordeal ahead, she stepped into the kitchen, which was revealed by a single light over the sink. The blinds were tightly shut, and lush swags of shadows hung like deep-purple bunting.
The room was not redolent of spices or lingering cooking odors. Instead, the air was laced with the faint but astringent scents of disinfectant, scouring powder, and floor wax.
“It’s me,” Martie called, but Susan didn’t answer.
The only illumination in the dining room came from behind the doors of a small breakfront, in which antique
