“You ain’t ready for no catwalk either, babe.”
They laughed together, a harsh discordant cackling that froze everyone else in the room. “Been looking for you,” Deidre said. “Feels like forever.”
“You should hate me,” Boyle told her. “I’m the reason you’re dead.”
“But you saved me long before that. You got me away from abusive parents and a town that was never going to accept me. When you died, I’d have died either way.”
Overcome, Boyle grabbed the back of Essie’s head, pulled her toward him, and they hugged fiercely, impassioned with the tactile feel of each other.
And Priest took the occasion to casually bolt.
“Hey!” Savy yelled.
Boyle and Deidre broke their embrace and went after him.
Priest made it as far as the empty fountain in the front yard before Boyle seized his tailored jacket and dragged him down. Priest kicked and punched as they fell upon him, but he was like a tantrum-throwing child in the hands of seasoned parents.
Clay joined Savy on the stoop. And in the harsh glow of the motion light, they watched in silence as one of Priest’s Italian loafers went flying. Deidre was yanking at his pants, while Boyle tore his tie off.
“Are you alright?” Savy asked Clay. Half her hair was still pinned up, while the rest hung madly around her face.
“I think so,” he said, flexing his wounded tongue.
“You’ll regret this!” Priest cried furiously.
“Yeah,” Boyle laughed, “it’ll take The Man ten whole minutes to find your replacement.”
He shredded Priest’s silk shirt, sending the buttons shooting across the lawn and into the fountain. Deidre pulled down his briefs. There was nothing underneath. Not hair or genitalia, not flesh or bone, or fire and brimstone. And when Boyle pulled Priest’s face away, ripping it like the cheap mask it was, there was nothing between him and Deidre but the night air and the clothing lying at their feet.
“Just an empty suit, after all,” Clay said from the doorway. But there was no humor in his words. No emotion at all.
After they checked Peter for signs of life (he was alive and conscious, but in a nearly comatose state of shock), after they had stabilized his shattered arm and assured themselves he could nap in a Vicodin stupor for a little before going to the hospital, after they’d inspected the damage to the Rickenbacker (a crack in the headstock, but otherwise unharmed), after Clay and Savy had grown accustomed to witnessing their idol and his lady-love in the flesh again (and what repulsive flesh it was), Boyle asked Clay if he would collect a few armfuls of kindling.
Clay located the surviving tools behind the rubble in the back yard and chose the hand ax over the chainsaw. Savy joined him as he walked the grounds, hacking branches and whole limbs off of trees. They said little to each other, though Clay didn’t doubt their heads were full of chatter—whole conversations, questions asked and replies imagined.
In reality, their silence spoke loud enough.
Boyle and Deidre, on the other hand, seemed to know all the right things to say to each other. They’d had years to think it over, years of death to ponder a second chance at life. Standing in the dark among the Generator’s ruins, they spoke in a low, continuous murmur, and it occurred to Clay that “There’s No End to This Wanting” was as much about the longing of these two lost souls as about him and Savy. Clay went on cutting down branches long after there was enough, buying them as much time as he could.
Finally, he led Savy back to the ruins. “Ready?” Savy asked them, as they offered up the piles of wood.
“Hell yes,” Boyle replied. “These bodies are full of pain.”
Clay arranged the fresh wood on top of the collapsed roof, the way he had been taught as a Cub Scout in another, more innocent life. He stacked the heavier branches in the middle, with the thickest standing straight up, and dressed this frame with twigs and brittle-dry leaves. “Wish I had a badass Zippo to send you off with,” he said. All he could find was a matchbook from Chili John’s.
He tore a single matchstick loose, licked it across the striking strip, then set fire to the entire book and tossed it into the pyre. It hadn’t rained more than a drizzle in L.A. for longer than Clay had been living here; to say the wood combusted was an understatement.
As four, they stood together, watching the flames gather.
Boyle dropped a bony hand on Clay’s shoulder and Clay tried not to shrivel from that friendly, but horrid touch. “He won’t bother with you now, brother.”
“I’ve heard that before.”
“You’re too much a pain in the ass. There are other souls, far easier to corrupt.”
At this point, Boyle seemed to remember that Savy was standing on the far side of Clay and he left it at that. Clay stared into Karney’s single eye—seeing Boyle, in a manner of speaking, for the first time. “Thank you, Rocco. For the times.”
“You’ve built the skills, now go show ’em to the world. On your terms.”
“I’m sorry I harassed you when we first met,” Deidre added, and Clay nodded and wondered how often poltergeists actually apologized for their abuse. First time for everything.
“Wherever you guys go,” Savy said quietly, “I hope you go there together.”
“Same for you two,” Deidre replied, unaware. “You’re both clearly head over heels.” She hugged them each, then looked to Boyle. The love of her life, and death.
“Well, honey, it’s been a compelling existence,” Boyle told her.
“Got that right.”
Deidre leaned toward him and they kissed, the one-eyed skull and the bloody woman with the smashed face. Their teeth grinding together.
“Any last requests?” Boyle asked.
“‘Face the Music’,” Deidre replied. “You know it was always my favorite.”
The fire had spread four feet across and was now chest high, sending crackling sparks into the starry sky. Boyle and Deidre joined hands and, without the slightest hesitation, stepped into the flames.
And as the fire took
