“Well, we got just about a decade before that happens, right?”
“Why?”
“2001?”
“Oh. Right.”
Tyler crossed his legs. “Jerry’s looking into hooking us up to the Internet, too.”
“Oh right. Internet. God. Hear the word floating around but still don’t really know what exactly it is.”
“It’s a cyberspace-satellite thing, I think, where you can go to all these different places for companies or ads or school stuff.”
“Okay. That doesn’t really help.”
“It’s like electronic billboards, or the Yellow Pages. Jerry wants to put one up for the shop, actually.”
“They’d allow that?”
Tyler shrugged. He clicked furiously but the screen had frozen.
“Hell with it,” Tyler said. “I’m off.”
The kid got up and Max assumed his seat.
“Oh, by the way,” Tyler said as he gathered his things. “Some guy came in here earlier in the evening, like eight-ish. Kind of a tall guy, scrubbed. Yuppie-type. Asked about you.”
“No name?”
“No name. Seemed disappointed you weren’t here, though. When I said you were on a trip he got kind of pale and asked if I knew who you went with. Told him I had no idea.”
Max nodded.
“Okay, man, I’m gone.”
“Yeah, go home and crash. Later.”
“See you.”
Nothing for the next three hours, a calm and empty night, and Max forced himself upon his sketchbook. Draw, draw. All efforts, all products of all efforts, plastic. Unconvincing. Come on, asshole. Feldman. It was Feldman who had siphoned, vampire-like, his drawing. Max had left his art in that unreal recess, buried in shadow, mere traces clinging to him, soon to dissolve in time. Goddammit goddammit goddammit.
A breath of relief when the door chimed open, and the night rushed in along with a purple-haired French girl in need of a vibrator. Nice nice breasts. Fun accent. Brimming with desire tangible. When she left, the drawing got easier, sort of. Little more fluid. It was as if she’d delivered a short burst of life-energy upon which Max fed.
Vampire-like.
***
“I owe you, don’t I?” Karen asked, as the van cruised down a vacant Centinela Avenue.
“Owe me what?” Dwayne said.
“Money—for everything.”
“You already paid me.”
“Yeah, but you and I both know that wasn’t your full price. Plus, I owe you for the gas and for this trip.”
Dwayne threw up an eh, whatever gesture but didn’t refuse the offer.
“Just come on up,” Karen said. “I’ll cut you another check.”
“Karen, honestly, don’t worry about it—”
She clamped her hands over her ears. “Shush! I’m gonna give you more money! Final!”
Dwayne said nothing further as he slid the van into a tight space half a block from Karen’s complex.
***
She opened the door and led Dwayne into darkness. A block north, Pico Boulevard spoke in hushed tones. Karen hurried to the kitchen light switch, then stopped by her room to unload her backpack.
Hands in pockets, Dwayne took in the scene before him: the coffee table a debauched skyline, towering bottles of vodka and gin and whisky. Some dented beer cans, fallen on the floor. Condom wrappers torn and strewn on the couch cushions. The odor of cigarettes and sharp skunky weed dominated the air.
“Someone had a hell of a time here,” Dwayne said.
“Vivian’s crazy like that,” Karen said from her room. She came out with her checkbook in hand and went to the kitchen where she poured herself a glass of water.
She noticed something on the counter.
“Looks like Viv actually wrote down my calls,” she said. Her eyes widened. Under an exasperated breath, she uttered, “How’d he get this number?”
“Everything all right?”
She downed the rest of the water. “Were you planning on leaving soon?”
“You mean here? Or—”
“Los Angeles. Were you planning to leave Los Angeles soon?”
“Well, after your job I was. Had some stuff on the itinerary but it can wait if need be. Why? What’s wrong?”
“I may need you to do something else for me. Just to set my mind at ease. And if there is something going on, then maybe we can gather enough evidence to go to the cops....”
Dwayne stepped forward. “What’s going on?”
“Hold on a sec,” she said, placing the checkbook and pen on the counter. “Be right back. Smallest bladder in the West, you know.”
As she scurried off to the bathroom, Dwayne went over to the counter and picked up the slip of paper Vivian had left for her. The girl’s handwriting was large and loopy, off-putting. But it was legible.
K—
A James C. called like 50 times for Penelope...(?) He from ur work?
***
Max slept for only four hours, the most he’d rested since returning from Twilight Falls a week and a half ago.
With sluggish momentum, he collected several pieces of art and took the Metro toward Venice Beach, carrying under his arm five works wrapped in a blanket. All the usuals, with one exception: Moon Watch. It sat now in his closet at his studio, the old acrylic face of Darren Higgins, the face that had become Clifford Feldman, sunk beneath three layers of Titanium White, the canvas now a virgin white soil in which anything could grow, entombing further the old work and the old face.
The sun was high and lively and beating at the beach, but a constant breeze undermined its warmth. Portentous fog gathered out at sea, an encroaching marine layer like a ghostly cavalry waiting to charge.
Jiggling change. Dwayne’s buddy. The bum. Johnny, was it?
“Support your local wino!” Johnny cried. “Help me to a liquor store! Help me forget my troubles!”
Max set up about twenty yards from Johnny on the fringe of a grassy hill. The base of a lone drooping palm, an oasis in the grimy cement rivers walkways winding across the shoreline. The sun bright. He fished through his pockets, checking for his sunglasses, then noticed something.
His neck was bare. The necklace. The gold cross. It wasn’t there.
Oh God—what the—where is it—mattress—okay—took a shower—had it off—left it by the mattress—left it by the mattress—forgot it—
—forgot it.
Two young men, hands in a white-knuckle twine, stopped to survey his work.
“Oh, I like this one,”
