Hotter Blood: More Tales of Erotic Horror

with padding, his long curly black hair dancing over those cubistic shoulders, his black eyes glittering with neon, the hollows of his cheekbones pooling shadows. He smiled as he saw her, a smile like a squiggle from a can of white Day-Glo spray paint.

She was going to ignore him. Just cross the street. If he wasn't dead, then he'd ditched her. He hadn't tried to contact her, he'd swept her under the rug, or under some girl's skirt…

Under some girl's skirt

Like a pile of dirt

If she got that band started with Sachet and Ellen she'd use those lyrics. If they let her sing.

Ignore him. Cross the street.

But she lingered, mad at herself for it, checking herself out in the glass of the record-store window. The little ponytail on top of her head like a water-fountain splash up there, kind of Valley Girlish, she thought now, but the neoprene shortpants and the skin-tight neoprene imitation snakeskin bikini top and the heels, they were killer, they ought to make Frank suffer.

As she'd suffered. How long had it been? (He was about twenty yards from her. There was still time to cross the street.) Six weeks? No, more like ten weeks. After three weeks of it, she'd heard he was dead. After five weeks — including two weeks getting drunk every day as a kind of endless wake for her dead Frank — meeting that mulatto dude in the Dead Monkey and getting it off with him, the whole thing another kind of drinking, really; and then the Skateboard Nazi, a skinhead jerk with a lot of tattoos. But his intensity had done something for her. Until he'd pushed his skateboard down on her face while he…

And then Lonny, three days with Lonny, surprised he didn't just split the next morning.

But he'd had to go back East to see his parents. Called once.

Last night with Greaser Guido hardly counted. But Lonny…

Come on, get real, that wasn't going to happen. Lonny was, like, a real prep type. And she was a bit relieved (Frank was about ten feet away — just time to dash across the street if she went now) that it hadn't happened with Lonny; it was too soon after Frank…

Frank and that bitch Pearldoll.

I mean, what kind of name is Pearldoll?

'Hi,' Frank said, and it was too late to cross the street.

'Hi,' she said. Saying it so it'd sting him, she hoped. Hi.

The sounds of the street, all those Saturday night cruisers, those lowriders in their chopped convertibles and Beverly Hills kids in their Mustang convertibles and those bored celebs in their limos, all of it a thousand miles away, somehow, when Frank stood there looking at her, talking softly…

Telling her he was sorry. A lot of weird shit had come down. He had been out of touch with everyone, even his agent. So you know it's serious.

'What kind of weird shit?' she asked.

'I was really sick,' he said. 'From… an OD. And Pearldoll — she died.'

Her heart jumped. She was a little ashamed when she recognized the provenance of the sensation. 'She died? You were doing up shit together and she OD'd?'

'No. No, I was alone, afterwards, when I OD'd.'

'So you OD'd because she died?' She said it accusingly. Though she knew she should be nice about it, because his old girlfriend had died; I mean, oh wow, death was pretty heavy shit.

But she couldn't help it. That tone.

'No. I… No, she died and… Well, I don't know, maybe. But, you know, I wasn't even thinking about Pearl, I was going with you then, and, you know, I guess I, like, hadn't seen Pearldoll in like —»

'Come on, you were always thinking about her.' Comparing me to her, Candy thought.

And thinking: I could always feel Pearldoll there, in the background, feeling like if she came around he'd leave me in a second. Well, he lived with her for three years, when he had that TV series on HBO, but when that fell apart and there was no more money, Pearldoll just cruised on, just left him, which should have told him what kind of cunt she was, but no…

'No,' Frank was saying, 'I wasn't thinking about her when I OD'd. I wasn't thinking about girls. I was thinking about acting. I guess Joey thought I was dead, I mean I guess I was dead, but they revived me, you know, got my heart started again, and I guess they didn't tell anyone…' He shrugged, with elegant dismissal. Life and death, a shrug.

He was so cool, the asshole.

'You mad at me?' he asked.

'What do you think? What's it been? Ten weeks? You haven't been in the hospital all this time.'

'Yes I have. But not the… not that kind.'

She stared at him. 'Oh Jesus. They put you in the —? A fifty-seven-fifty?' The mental hospital.

He nodded. Milking it, though she didn't realize it at the time.

'Oh shit, honey,' she said, taking his hands in hers.

Then she broke away. 'You still could've called me from the ward.'

'I was on all these meds… I could barely remember my name. And then when they let me use the phone I was, like, making crazy calls to the FBI and shit, didn't know what I was fucking doing, so they wouldn't let me use the phone after that… I'm lucky they let me out.'

'Oh.'

Feeling like the one in the wrong, now. How did he do it? Always leave her feeling like it was her that had screwed up.

'You wanna get a drink with me?' he asked.

Wham bam, thank you ma'am.

An old, old David Bowie tune playing on the sound system of Booty's. A mostly gay club, where Hollywood Kidz hung out, a lot of fag-hags and a few guys hoping to cop some X or some blow or something.

Candy and Frank stood at the bar, Candy drinking a Seabreeze, Frank with his eternal margarita. He was talking, and she was nodding, but only half listening at first. It was hard to make out with the disco banging away — now it was Jody Watley — and, anyway, her mind had taken a step back from him. Was looking him over. What was it that looked different? The suit? All bulky like that. Just heavier and… clumsy when he moved.

She thought she knew what it was. Meds. He was still on meds. Some antidepressant or maybe even stelazine.

Don't embarrass him by saying anything about it.

She was thinking pityingly about him, which invariably led to thinking tenderly about him, when he said, 'It was really weird, how Pearldoll died.'

God damn him. He was going to talk about her.

She remembered when she first realized how Pearldoll was always going to be there. She was at the Anticlub with Frank, their second date, they were, like, making out in the corner, walking everywhere holding on to each other, it was really close and sweet — and then Pearldoll walked up. And he changed. Just like that. Kind of froze up. Pulled away a little. 'Hi, Frankie,' Pearldoll said, like some torch singer in some old gangster movie. Hiya, Frankieboy. But real smug, too. Pearldoll was a cruelly pretty, painfully petite girl, half Japanese and half Swedish, her parents some kind of MDA-dealing hippies. Pearldoll smiling like the Mona Lisa at Candy. Condescendingly. Obviously an ex of Frank's. The look said, You might have him, but he's always mine. Just check him out if you don't believe me!

And it was true. Frank looked slack-mouthed after Pearldoll, gawked at her as she walked away.

'Okay, Frank,' Candy had asked him, that night. 'How long did you go with her?'

'Uh — kind of obvious, huh? About — couple years.'

'Pretty serious.'