Crashed

The door three down, on the right, stood open. Doc towed me the rest of the way down the hall, and we went through the open door into Thistle Downing’s world.

The door opened into what I supposed would be called the living room, although there wasn’t much on view to recommend the life that was being lived there. It was cramped, maybe ten feet by twelve, and haphazardly furnished with a threadbare, blood-red Oriental carpet in an abstract pineapple pattern, set crookedly on the linoleum floor, and a sagging couch, missing one front leg, all of it covered, except for the arm nearest me, with a dirty bedsheet. The carpet, the bedsheet, and the exposed arm of the couch were pockmarked with cigarette burns, as though butts had been laid down anywhere and everywhere to smolder forgotten. Big water stains surrounding some of them announced the places where fires had been doused. More water stains created a map of ghost continents on the ceiling. Grit scraped beneath my feet and dust rats huddled in the corners. It felt like the room had been sealed for a long time. The air smelled like cheese gone wrong.

Other than the sofa and a badly abused coffee table, the only pieces of furniture in the room were four old- fashioned standing floor lamps, probably rescued from dumpsters. They stood in the corners or leaned in exhausted poses against a wall. Scarves of red and orange had been draped over the shades, along with bright, cheap plastic beads that looked like the ones thrown from floats in the Mardi Gras. Between the scarves and the beads, the lamps reminded me of old Gypsy women. On the wall opposite the door, two small windows had been sloppily covered with aluminum foil.

“Through there,” Doc said, pointing at a doorway to our right. The room on the other side was darker than the one we were in, and I realized that Doc or someone had turned on one of the floor lamps in the living room. I followed him through the door and found myself in an even smaller room. This one had no furniture at all except for two more standing lamps and a mattress on the floor against the far wall. On the mattress I saw a crumpled form wrapped in something white and shapeless.

One hand hung over the edge of the mattress, dangling palm-up from an almost childishly slender wrist. Doc ripped a scarf off one of the lights and turned it on, and the blue veins in the wrist leapt into sharp relief. The figure did not move.

White and tightly curled, she looked like something that had been wadded up and tossed. “You’re sure she’s not, um-”

“Nope.” Doc pulled out the flask and took a nip, then screwed the top back on. “If she were dead, we’d be long gone. She’s out, though, and I mean out. Right through the transparent wall. You could set off firecrackers and she wouldn’t hear them. Heartbeat is steady, nothing wrong with her breathing. Skin’s not cold, so the circulation is all right. Her pupils are dilated, but it’d be a surprise if they weren’t. If she were conscious, she could probably see through the floor.” He bent over her and wrapped a big hand around the small wrist. “This is either gonna work or it isn’t and if it doesn’t, we’ll have to get her stomach pumped.” He looked up at me. “You gonna stand there, or you gonna help?”

“Right,” I said. “Walk her.”

“Get her other side.” I hesitated, reluctant to step onto the mattress wearing my shoes, and Doc said, “For God’s sake. When do you think was the last time these sheets were washed? Don’t be so fucking delicate. Just get her.”

So I got in between her and the wall and took her other arm, which was folded under her face, straightened it, and imitated Doc’s actions, putting the arm around my shoulders and grabbing the dangling hand. Throughout all of this, the unconscious woman never moved, groaned, or gave any sign that she knew she was being manhandled. I crouched there, her arm around my shoulders, and Doc said, “Up on three. Careful to come up with me, or I’ll put my back out, sure as the sun rises. You set?”

I allowed as how I was set.

“One … two … three,” Doc said, and the two of us straightened in unison. Doc grunted with the effort, but I had been anticipating much more weight and I came up too fast, so that for a moment it felt as though she and I were going to topple over onto Doc.

“Jesus,” Doc said. “You want to carry both of us? Now come on, just haul her off the mattress and get her into the middle of the floor.” One of her feet squealed on the linoleum, and I winced. “Toughen up,” Doc said. “You’re not going to do her any good if you treat her like she’s some kind of goddamn fawn. She’s tougher than you are. If she wasn’t she’d be dead.”

The two of us now stood in the middle of the small bedroom with Thistle Downing dangling between us, limp as a Slinky. She was tiny. I was at least fourteen inches taller than she, so she couldn’t have been much above five feet, and she was light enough to be porous. Her arms and wrists were so slender I could close my hand around her forearm, with room to spare. The white garment she was wearing proved to be a terrycloth bathrobe that had long ceased to be dirty and was now certifiably filthy. It said PLAZA HOTEL in a crimson cursive script on the left, beside the lapel, and its bottom hem brushed the floor. Both it and Thistle had come a long way from the Plaza.

“Walk,” Doc commanded. “Not fast, but steady. And don’t lift her so much. Let her feet drag, or she won’t try to move them.”

And so the two of us walked, Thistle’s feet trailing behind, her head hanging down, veiled with hair. The hair was snarled but fine, slightly curly, a little past shoulder-length and the reddish-gold color of flax. It had been chopped any old how-I guessed she’d done it herself-and it smelled of cigarettes. I hadn’t actually seen her face yet. Her hand was cold and damp in mine. Doc kept up a stream of words, encouraging, cajoling, challenging Thistle to start walking, but her feet just dragged along the floor, no livelier than the robe’s hem, until we hit the edge of the carpet in the living room, and some impulse-probably an automatic reaction to a possible stumble-brought one of her feet forward, and she took two steps and sagged again.

“Turn around,” Doc said. “Drag her off the carpet again and then back onto it.” We did, and when we hit the carpet this time Thistle managed four steps. We reversed direction to get back onto the bare floor and repeat the procedure.

“That’s it, darlin’,” Doc said. “I knew you could do it. Boy, whatever you took last night, you ought to put it on your do not do list. Another couple of whatever they were, you’d have gone out of here in a bag. You know what they were? You know how many you took?” No response. “That’s okay, it’ll wait till later. That’s right, sweetheart, walk, you’re not a goddamn mermaid. You’ve got a big day ahead of you, lots of people waiting for you, half a dozen of them sitting around with mirrors and brushes, just can’t wait to make you beautiful. This’ll be an easy day, honey, five or six little shots, a few lines, and you can come home. Nothing compared to what you used to do. In the old days, you’d have done all of that and more before breakfast. You know Lillian Gish? Maybe a century before your time, but the first great American film actress, right? Wonderful story about Lillian Gish, somebody told me yesterday. She’d been working on a movie with D. W. Griffith back in the twenties, when they just went outdoors and shot in sunlight and nobody had to talk, although the great ones always did, always played their scenes like everyone would hear them. Even the indoors sets were just three walls and no roof, so the sunlight could come in, did you know that? So Lillian Gish had been working her elegant ass off for months, all over California, and then they had the big premiere and she went with Griffith, since he was her director. And when the movie was over, you know what she said to him? She said, ‘Did I do all that? All I remember is the waiting.’ ”

Thistle made a choked sound and it took me a moment to recognize it as a laugh.

“That’s good, baby,” Doc said. “Keep those feet going, and let’s see if you can’t get your eyes open for a couple of minutes. By the way, the tall ugly guy on the other side of you is named Junior. Hey, Junior, do you know any movie stories? I just told the only one I know.”

I wasn’t exactly a film encyclopedia-none of my books had led me to it-but I knew a few things, one of which I had picked up that morning, courtesy of Rodd Hull. “Um, Claudette Colbert,” I said.

Thistle said something that was all sibilants, and Doc said, “What, sugar? What did you say?”

“Shaid … she’sh … good,” Thistle said, very slowly.

“She, um, hated the left side of her face,” I said, trying desperately to remember Rodd’s story, “and she always-”

“Timing,” Thistle said. “Had, uhhhhhh, timing.”

“Yeah, timing,” I said, and glanced over Thistle’s head, still hanging on her chest, at Doc, who made a rolling gesture with his free hand that meant, Keep talking. “So,” I said, “her face,” and Thistle said something. “What?”

“Side … moon,” she whispered.