looked back at his chest, watching as he methodically dug the knife into himself, observing as coolly as a man shaving or squeezing a pimple, that kind of half focus and meditative distance. All the while plowing the ragged blade-edge into the soft white skin, wishing he'd built himself up more so there was more muscle to get into. Push, push, the skin and muscle and fat tissue of his pectoral resisting the blade, it was like trying to cut open a package that was sealed in heavy plastic, the stuff stretching under your letter opener. Push. Punch. It broke through, the blade jabbing out under his nipple, red blood arcing and – for a moment he felt some pain.
Oh, shit, how did I get here and what am I doing?
But then the head syrup came back, the pain vanished, and he relaxed. Jerked the blade loose, and jabbed it through his jeans, deep into the meat of his skinny thigh.
He was not on drugs. He was not insane. He felt no pain at all.
Culver City, Los Angeles
'I haven't seen ol' Mitch for, oh, six or seven weeks,' Jeff said, around a mouthful of Doritos.
Tom Prentice and Jeff Teitelbaum were watching the Dodgers get their asses kicked by the San Diego Padres. They were sitting on a sofa-futon in Jeff's second story apartment, near the open French doors onto the balcony. The room smelled like stale cigar smoke; Jeff had trotted out the cigars when Prentice showed up. Jeff liked smoking cigars with his friends because it was playing at 'Guy Stuff.' Guy Stuff was a joke and very serious with Jeff, both.
In the background were laughing squeals and taunts from the swimmers in the complex's swimming pool; the sounds of splashing, a teasing underscent of chlorine. It was a high security 'singles' apartment complex, with security guards at the gate and TV cameras and its own hot tub spa and weight room and sauna and game room.
Jeff's living room was undecorated except for a Norman Rockwell print of a small, rosy-cheeked boy with a fishing pole proudly holding up a string full of fish, only Jeff had cut out small men's magazine photos of naked girls and pasted them on over the fish: a small boy proudly holding up a string of naked girls. On TV, a couple of baseball players drank Budweisers with Phil Collins, and then the game came back on. Fernando was on the mound, but his arm was cold today: Martinez was up to bat and whack, he drove a line drive out past third base for the eighth goddamn Padres run of the game and it was only the top of the fourth inning. Prentice was doing his best to space out completely on sports and Tecate beer, because it was the way he got out of his head. Amy was in his head, and it was too crowded in there for both of them.
He didn't want to hear about Mitch, either. Jeff's little brother, nine years younger, always screwing up. Jeff's parents divorced when Jeff was ten and Mitch was one, and Jeff had gone to live with his dad, who worked for the NRA lobbying against gun control, and Mitch had gone to live with his mom, who was 'a whiner,' Jeff said, 'and a sponge.' Prentice had never heard Jeff say anything good about her. She'd been the one to leave; maybe Jeff was forever mad at her for abandoning him when he was ten.
Jeff hadn't seen Mitch for years, because his parents hated each other and his mom ducked out on the visitation rights. Then Mitch turned up at Jeff's door, two years ago, run away from their mom's new boyfriend. 'A real asshole' was the extent of his report on the guy. So Mitch had moved in with Jeff, and Jeff had taken care of him through various traumas, most of them drug-related, for two years, 'Trying to straighten the kid's head out', and then, bingo, he'd disappeared. Phoning to New York, Jeff bent Prentice's ear endlessly about Mitch; Prentice had heard all the Mitch stories. He didn't feel like hearing any more, especially now when he was trying to think about nothing but baseball. The stately jumble, the clunky Zen of baseball.
It wasn't working very well. He couldn't keep his mind on the game. He was remembering the first time he met Amy. The experience summed her up…
He was in a New York cafe on a wet October day, lunching with Gloria Zickurian, a book illustrator. Cabs the same yellow as adult bookstores rippled as they passed the rain-streaked window. Prentice and Gloria drank cafe lattes and ate salads and cheese croissants. It was a date, more or less. More for Gloria, Prentice thought, and less for him. Gloria was pretty in a wistful, slightly weak-chinned way. She had big, dark eyes and curly black hair allowed to tousle wispily around her red beret. She wore a rust-coloured, gypsyish dress with a gathered bodice that displayed her cleavage in a way that made him think of bread dough.
She was proud of the little cafe she'd picked on Central Park west, a yuppie coffee shop with Santa Fe style decor, specializing in salads, or 'salades' as the menu had it, and she talked of discovering it until Prentice dutifully said, 'Yeah, it's a great little place.' Then she launched into an interminable complaint about having been asked to illustrate a line of science fiction books, a field she knew nothing about, resulting in her attendance at science fiction conventions, 'where a lot of married fat guys with homemade swords and wide belts and medieval hats' made clumsy passes at her. She bitched about the abysmal taste in cover art at the paperback house she was working for. She droned a bit, when she was nervous, nasally stretching out the syllables; afraid of gaps in the conversation. The gaps, Prentice thought, were his favourite part, at this point.
That's when Amy slammed through the cafe doors, wearing a Walkman and the only miniskirted raincoat Prentice had seen this side of 1968. Amy was willowy, with a kind of blueblood prettiness that would only have been blurred by makeup. Her hair, hennaed cedar-red in those days, was pinned up so you could see the sweep of her long neck. Her earrings were little onyx bats.
Amy paused just inside the doorway, looking around with quick movements of her head, taking her time putting the Walkman in her pocket, closing her umbrella, letting everyone get a good look at the sweep of long legs in their dark purple pantyhose.
Spotting Amy, Gloria stiffened, looking as if she wanted to bolt, then sagged with a kind of polite despair when Amy spotted her and made a bee-line for the table. 'Glorie-uh!' Amy chirruped, going on with machine gun rapidity, 'I knew you'd be in one of these grotty places, where everything costs at least two dollars too much. Gloria, I have great news.'
'This,' Gloria said wearily to Prentice, 'is my roommate Amy Eisenberg. Amy, this is Tom Prentice.'
'God it took you long enough to introduce me, ooh he's a big one isn't he, I didn't think you liked big ones, big men I mean, I mean big physique'
Gloria stammered, 'Amy – did you, uh, need something?'
Amy kept her eyes on Prentice as she talked, looking him up and down. He smiled as neutrally as he could. Her wet umbrella was leaning against his chair, dripping on his pants leg. 'Your address book, sweetie. I need Polly Gebhart's phone number, I lost it -'
Gloria snatched up her purse, yanked it open, muttering, 'Why don't you get an address book and organize yourself, Amy?'
Amy took the address book. 'I going to, I have to now, that's my news, – there's a producer who's hot for me, for me as an actor I mean -' She made a conscious policy of pretending to stumble over sexual innuendoes, Prentice later learned. '- and he's having me do a call-back, it's for an off-Broadway show, a really happening show that half of Hollywood is trying to get the rights to -' She turned abruptly to Prentice, as if thunderstruck. Looking at Prentice but speaking to Gloria. 'Hey is this that screenwriter you told me about that you were -?'
'I'm only barely a screenwriter,' Prentice said modestly. A kind of pseudo modesty that was really a way of confirming his status. 'Just one credit.' He'd just had his first script produced, Fourth Base. First script? First one he sold. Fifth one he wrote.
'Amy, if you've got what you need,' Gloria said, brightly 'we -'
'Don't you listen to her,' Amy said to Prentice, 'it's her quaint way of asking me to join you. But only for a minute.' She pulled a chair from the next table, and sat herself on it with the air of a guest on a talk show who's just been asked to sit and tell the host what her newest project is. 'This is my first real break, this part in Sweet Fire, but I did that thing at Summer Stock with Julie Christie, you remember that, Gloria?' Gloria, who had sullenly lit a cigarette – she was one of those people who saved smoking for expressing anger – nodded briskly and blew smoke at the window. A waitress caught Gloria's eye and shook her head, and Gloria stabbed the cigarette out in her coffee cup. Amy hadn't waited for Gloria's answer. She went breathlessly on, '- And I think the Connecticut gig got me this job because Ervin – Ervin's my agent, Tom – Ervin got this producer a videotape of me working with Julie Christie, who played my mother… Maybe I'll just have a capuccino.' She grabbed the waitress's apron as the woman sped by, smiled sweetly into the glare this got her, and said, 'Could I have a capuccino with lots of chocolate sprinkles? I'd be infinitely grateful. Thanks.'
Gloria groaned and didn't bother to muffle it. Prentice shrugged and winked conspiratorially at her, as if to say, We'll wait her out and then we'll get back to our lunch.
