“I guess so,” he said. Then, from a height of about two feet, he dropped me.
10
The one you want to talk to is Donnie,” said the Mountain, sitting on the sink.
“Is he the cute one with the guitar?” Jessica asked. She was perched, cross-legged and precarious, on the edge of the urinal. The Mountain had chosen the men's room as the site of our private talk. Since all the seats were taken, I was standing.
“Cute?” I said, massaging my ribs. I felt like a collapsed accordion.
“Sure,” she said. “You don't think he's cute?”
“Cute as a case of crabs,” I said.
“What's crabs?” Jessica asked. “I mean, I know what a crab is, but what's a case of crabs?”
“Little girl,” the Mountain said, “you don't need to know that yet.”
“Or maybe ever,” I added.
“Or maybe ever,” the Mountain agreed. “Anyway, he's the one who was tightest with her. Goddamn, she was pretty. Like to break my heart when she came in. Poor little Dottie.”
“So why do you think she didn't show up today?” I asked.
“Shit,” the Mountain said. “She hasn't come around for weeks. I just put the egg in the basket because I was hoping she was okay. Like magic, you know? If the egg was here, maybe she'd show up.” He made a hopeless gesture with his big hands.
‘‘How do you stand to work here?” I said.
“Well, once in a while I can make one of them call home. Then, maybe, I can make them go home. Anyway, Tommy's teaching me sumo.”
“How often does one of them go home?”
“Never,” he said.
“Why sumo?” Jessica said.
He looked from me to her. “I'm fat,” he said.
“You're big,” Jessica said, qualifying instantly for the United Nations. “Men are supposed to be big.”
The Mountain looked at her sadly. “Honey, I'm not big. I'm fat.” He looked back to me. “Is this joker really your godfather?”
“Ever since I was born.”
The Mountain stared down at the little yearbook picture of Aimee cradled in his enormous hand. It looked like a microchip. “Poor little Dottie,” he repeated.
“So how do I talk to Donnie?”
“I go get him, don't I?” He looked at the picture again, then sighed and hauled himself off the sink, which creaked gratefully. “I'll be back,” he said, giving me the picture as he opened the door.
“You're sweet,” Jessica said. The Mountain was blushing when he left. “I've never been in a men's room before.”
“Glad to hear it.”
“It's pretty seamy.” She leaned forward to see if she could peer under the wall of the stall surrounding the toilet.
“All part of your education.”
“Is this really what you do for a living?”
“I guess so.” At the moment I was wishing that Eleanor weren't in China and trying to figure out what to tell my parents and Roxanne, all of whom had expected me. I had a feeling it was going to be a late night.
“Can we sleep in town?” Jessica said. “I'd love to sleep in town.”
“Jessica,” I said. “I borrowed you. I didn't buy you.”
The door swung violently open, and Jessica lost her perch on the edge of the urinal. She went down, grabbing for support, and her hand splashed in the water. “Oh, no,” she said, sitting on the floor and staring at her wet hand. “Cooties and then some.”
“Wash it,” I said. The Mountain blossomed horribly in the doorway, looking like the Masque of the Fat Death, if there is such a thing. “He's gone,” he said.
“Thanks, Jessica,” I said unsympathetically. “I should have worn a T-shirt that said Detective.”
“I saved your life,” she said, scrubbing her hands vigorously. “This nice man would have killed you.”
“What about the little girl?” I asked the Mountain.
“Gone too.”
“Well, heck,” I said, editing my language unnecessarily for Jessica's benefit. “So what do we do now?”
The Mountain rubbed the back of his neck with the awful-smelling rag and screwed up his eyes. Then he pursed his lips and blew out noisily. He seemed to be undergoing some kind of crisis of conscience. “I guess I break the rules,” he said at last. “I guess I take you to his squat.”
“What's a squat?” Jessica whispered as we walked single file, the Mountain in the lead, down a dark block of Vista. Vista of what? I wondered. The only thing I could see was a tract house and a chain-link fence. “Where a runaway lives,” I said.
“How romantic,” she said. “Isn't there anywhere to lie down?”
“Two houses down,” the Mountain said. “Across the street.”
The house two down and across the street had burned down, some time back, from the look of it. Blackened timbers poked up at irregular angles in the fine mist. The front porch was untouched, but behind it something that had once been a house sagged, black and fractional. The remaining walls of the house were no higher than my shoulder, and the roof would have been something to look at the stars through, if there had been any stars. A little kid's bright plastic pedal car sat forlornly in the middle of the rectangular brown patch that should have been the lawn. A tiny sneaker lay next to it, dead-center in a coiled dog-chain with the collar still attached, as though the dog, deprived of its child, had wasted away into nothing. The entire doleful panorama was surrounded by the ubiquitous chain link, and a sharp smell of charred wood filled the air.
“He lives
“In the garage,” the Mountain said. “In the back. It didn't burn.”
The fence was eight feet high, topped by a long, lethal, lizardy spiral of razor-wire. “How do we get in?” I asked.
“Yow,” the Mountain said. “You get in. I won't fit.”
“You have an inferiority complex about your weight,” Jessica informed him. “You're a very attractive man, actually.”
“Honey,” the Mountain said, “you have a sweet mouth. At times,” he added after a moment's thought.
He parted some oleanders, poisonous and probably hallucinogenic if you could figure out how to use them; they're related to laurel, which was what the oracle at Delphi chewed before uttering her holy nonsense. From what I'd read of her advice, she was pretty stoned.
“Under there,” the Mountain said.
I squinted into the dark. Hidden from view by the oleanders was a little hole that led under the fence, like the holes dogs dig to escape. Maybe it had been the dog that belonged to the little kid. Jessica could get through it. The Guitar Player, with his twenty-inch waist, could get through it. The Mountain certainly couldn't. For that matter, I wasn't sure I could.
“You're joking,” I said.
“Oh, come on,” Jessica said in her steeliest tone. “You're not going to quit now.”
“You're not, are you?” said the Mountain. I might have imagined the menace in his voice, but it wasn't a theory I wanted to test.
“Of course not,” I said immediately. “An involuntary ejaculation, devoid of meaning.”
“I know about
