'Ephram?' she asked. 'Could you give me a little more Reward now?'
'Oh yes, my dear. Here's a little. That's all for now.
'We'll talk more of this later. We'll talk of the Nameless Spirit. First, let me play some Mozart for you, and let us have a bite to eat. I know how you like pizza, and I ordered one for you in anticipation of your return. I'll just put some in the microwave. Then we'll drink in more Reward, and contemplate, together, a fine and elegant murder…'
Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles
It was a relief when Lissa opened the door. Though the sunny afternoon seemed to make a joke of his fears, Prentice had been irrationally certain that Arthwright would be waiting at Lissa's place, smirkingly poised behind the door. 'I should have been cool and waited to see you at the party,' Prentice said. 'But -' He shrugged ruefully and hoped he was coming off charmingly smitten. 'I just had to see you.'
She smiled. 'I can live with that.' She was wearing a sky-blue Japanese robe, embroidered with red dragons, open in the front to show only a white string bikini. 'You wanted to see me – and you can see me pretty well, in this thing. I was out back getting a tan. Come on in.'
He'd been hoping that coming here would drive the burden of Amy's imagined presence from him. He'd felt dogged by memories of her, almost by a sense of her nearness, for days. It was wearing on him. Sometimes it very nearly terrified him.
But the nagging intrusiveness, the taint of Amy's point of view, stuck with him as he followed Lissa into the house. Tacky robe she's wearing, he imagined Amy saying. And these paintings. What is she, a Hare Krishna?
The wall was adorned with framed prints of Hindu deities, scenes from the Uppanishads; brilliant-hued panoplies of spirits from the tormented fertility of India.
They stepped into a modern living room with a flagstone floor scattered with sheepskin rugs, and a tinted glass back wall; out back, a cinderblock fence enclosed a kidney-shaped pool, a redwood hot tub, and immaculately gardened strips of Bird of Paradise, gardenia bushes and yucca. The back door was open and the heavy odor of gardenias hung almost cloyingly in the air. 'You live rather well,' Prentice began, pausing to look around. He had almost finished by saying, For a secretary. But that would have been rude. Still, it was odd. This place was large and expensive.
'The place is left over from a former marriage; he got the cash and I got the house,' Lissa said; she said it rather glibly, Prentice thought. She looked at him thoughtfully a moment, then went on, 'I was just going to have a light beer. You want one?'
'Sure. Thanks.'
Beers in hand, they settled on the white couch. 'You look kind of tense,' she said.
'Do I? I guess I am. It's a couple of things. Not knowing how to act today with you – how much of what happened at the party was a fluke of your mood or… or what. And I've been bothered by… Well. Maybe I should tell you about Amy.'
She raised a casual hand. 'Hey. You're under no obligation to apologize for having girlfriends and wives or whatever.'
Prentice imagined Amy remarking, You might know the slut would take that attitude.
He took a long pull at the beer, and then said, 'You misunderstand, Lissa. Amy's dead. She was my ex-wife. I identified her body not that long ago… I'm still a little freaked out by it.'
He expected the ritual noises of sympathy from her. But she only nodded slowly, and squeezed his arm. And said, 'Look – the only thing you can do is let go. Just let go of her. And feeling responsible – I see that in you, that you feel responsible. But we're not responsible for how other people end their lives. You know? You get out of yourself you'll feel better. I've got an idea…'
She disappeared into a side hall, past the kitchen area, and he wondered if he were supposed to follow her back to the bedroom. He imagined Amy saying, God what a bitch. 'Just let go of her' she says. That's easy for this slut to say…
'Stop it,' he muttered to himself
Lissa came back with something cupped in one hand. She sat down and opened her hand; in it were two large gel capsules of white powder. Prentice stared at it, then shook his head hastily. 'No. No thanks. I don't indulge. Too many of my friends have taken the big plunge behind drugs…'
'This isn't anything addictive. It's MDMA. You know – Ecstasy.'
He knew. He remembered Amy had taken it…
She went on, 'With a little demerol mixed in, just a little, to take the edge off because these are pretty big hits.'
'Uhhh…'
'It's a great aphrodisiac.'
She knows your weakness, all right.
'Sold,' he said defiantly, taking a capsule. He downed it with beer, and she took hers as she walked to the CD player. She put on some George Benson. Then crooked a finger at him, opened her arms. He stood and walked to her, and he thought he could hear Amy saying, You've done it now, dumbshit. She's completely -
But then Lissa slipped into his arms. And with that contact, the imaginary voice cut off. The stifling memory of Amy, the presence that had dogged him – simply vanished. Instantly.
Prentice and Lissa danced. By the end of the third tune, there was an electricity flickering between his teeth and along his spine, his nerve ends sang along with the music, his dick was hard, and he was convinced Lissa was the finest girl in the world.
9
Watts, Los Angeles
'Yeah right,' Garner said irritably. 'I'm supposed to give you my – ' He broke off not wanting to let her know he was down to his last fifty dollars. It was amazing his money had stretched this far, considering the night of smearing his lungs with crack residue.
'Your cousin steals my van and a big roll of my money and you want me to give you more money?'
'That was Hardwick, shit, I'm not Hardwick. Anyway what I trust you for either? You ran out on me.'
'I went to look for that asshole. Shit, why should I stay? You weren't living up to your side of the bargain.'
Meaning, she hadn't put out. The crack had affected him with an outrageous sexual desire, and it was a tacit part of the deal that she come across for her share of the stuff. She'd kept inching away from him, saying, 'Just hold on now, it's worth waiting for, we going get real here in a minute, lemme see that motherfuckin' pipe first.' Slipping into something closer to ghetto English now that she was fucked up and tired.
Tired. Both of them, now, on the street corner, staggering through the conversational wrangling like zombies, sagging from their bones. That's how Garner felt, anyway. Gretchen looked tired but a little fresher than him. She's used to this shit, he thought. Probably got herself tuned to sleep for two days once a week.
About seven a.m. Hardwick's room had become a shrinking box. Garner had gone out to see if he could catch sight of Hardwick, improbable as that was. Any loony move could seem like a good idea, loaded on this shit, he reflected. You got stoned and everyone could see it: could see your highbeams on, your eyes and mouth gaping, your exposed brain with a smoking hole in it. They could chuck anything they wanted into that hole in your skull. They saw you coming and they took you. It was a street skill they had: picking out the ones stoned enough to be stupidly tunnel-visioned but not yet stoned enough to be dangerously paranoid.
Whatever indignity crack left him open for – every indignity, ultimately – it did one thing for him in exchange: Crack totally and entirely occupied his mind. It pushed out even visions of Constance shoved alive into a crushing machine…
Take another hit
He'd found a place down the street that'd rent him a room for a few hours, and he'd holed up there, knocking back a bottle of wine and six Ibuprofen, which combination, he'd heard, would shoehorn him into sleep. It worked for a while; something close enough to sleep descended on him in the roachy hotel, until a pain in his gut woke him;
