Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 25, No. 7, July, 1980

Bottomed Out by Robert Twohy

Ranee Rangoon was going to make a comeback...

When you’re in a coffin, you feel out of touch. It’s absolutely quiet. For maybe the first time since your glands started working, you have time to think. So you think of things you did and didn’t do, and of the people who passed in and out of your life. You’re glad you knew this one, sorry you knew that one.

I lay there and was sorry I’d known Marsha. If I hadn’t, I probably wouldn’t have been shot down at age thirty-two, life’s prime time.

On the other hand, maybe I would have been. Marsha wasn’t the only woman I was having an affair with. When you’re an actor in Hollywood affairs come in clusters. If I hadn’t got plugged that April night in Marsha’s apartment in Westwood it might have happened the next night, next week, next month, in somebody else’s apartment — Melinda’s or Zizi’s or Savanarella’s.

Somehow Marsha’s husband, Alfred Grout, a real-estate tycoon, got wind of our affair and that Thursday he didn’t go East on business as scheduled, but cabbed back from Burbank and let himself into the apartment while we were out to dinner. When we came back, he was in the bedroom. He wasn’t alone — he held a big .45, and its cold eye was fixed on me.

I’m not sure he even knew who I was when he pulled the trigger; all he knew was that I was a guy with broad shoulders and lots of shiny teeth who had been having a thing with Marsha.

So time passed, and I came to and I was in this coffin, and it took me a while to realize that. Then I started thinking of the things I’d done, the people I’d known.

Then, clear as the tinkle of a highball glass, I heard a laugh. Not a jolly laugh — more like sardonic. I said, “Who laughed?”

“Irwin Groggins — you can call me Grog.” It was a flat, nothing voice. “Just don’t call me Frogface. I hate that. Even when it’s said in good humor.”

“Where are you?”

“Right above you. Marcelina is with me.”

“Hi,” said a soft voice.

Then I heard ripping sounds, like a crowbar ripping up nails, and called, “Hey, wait!” But the ripping went on. Then the blackness over me was cut with an angle of light. Not much light — pretty wishy-washy — but after stone-dark, you’re glad for anything.

I wondered out loud, “How come I didn’t get a faceful of dirt?”

“You want a faceful of dirt?”

“No, but—” I hitched my shoulders, shifted my hips, moved my head, lifted my arms to stretch. In the pale light I could see my hands. No, not hands — I saw a lot of skinny finger bones.

I raised a foot and saw hanging from it a shred of shoe and, under and around the shred, nothing but bone.

I said, “I’m a skeleton.”

The top was all the way off the coffin now. I put my hand bones on the edges and pushed myself up. As I got vertical there was a rustling sound; I looked down. Shreds and scraps of clothes were falling off me.

“Hey!” I was embarrassed. A woman with a pretty voice was out there, and here I stood in my bare bones — not looking my best at all. Call it vanity, but I used to take pride in my smooth muscles and healthy skin tone.

Now there was no muscle, no healthy skin — no nothing. Just bones and more bones.

I started to sit down.

The woman’s voice said, “Oh, don’t be an old silly. You look fine.”

“I look awful.”

“No — you’ve got cute clavicles and your teeth are terrific. Come on out.”

A pink hand took my nearest hand bones and I looked up from it and saw a pretty face with tawny gold hair around it. Gazing back at me were bright green eyes.

So I let myself be led out of the coffin. And now I stood in a stone place — stone floor, stone walls. A still and stoneish place. I kicked the shred of shoe off my foot bone and asked, “Where am I?”

“In a crypt.”

“A crypt!” I hadn’t ordered a crypt in my will. I hadn’t made a will.

“U-G-A paid for it,” said Marcelina. “It was a great funeral. Front-page pictures from here to Bangkok. Great advance publicity for the movie.”

“What movie?”

“The movie about you.”

A movie about me? “Are you sure you’ve got the right guy?”

“If you’re Ranee Rangoon, you’re the guy,” said Groggins.

“Not really. That was my agent’s idea. My real name is Homer G. Wermcraft, from The Dalles, Oregon.”

“That’s beside the point. You’re the only Ranee Rangoon in a holding pattern.”

Now I could see him — a little guy with a wide, lippy mouth and protruding eyes who you could see at a glance why he hated to be called Frogface, even in good humor. He wore a plainish grey robelike thing and held a paper shopping bag by the handles. Marcelina wore a green robelike thing that didn’t show her figure but I knew she had a good one, because her face was the kind of face that goes with a good figure. I d always been the one to find out which faces go with good figures. Except for the robes, these two looked like people you’d see in the streets anywhere, when you’re alive.

Groggins said, “Sit down.” He waved toward a crooked stool.

“Why?”

“So Marcelina can start fixing you up.”

I sat down. “For what?”

Marcelina said, “Want to see what you look like?”

“No.”

She took from inside her robe a small hand mirror, which she held up in front of me. And there was my face without any face on it at all. Just shiny bone, black eye sockets, a black nose socket, and yards of grinning teeth.

I went, “Gaahh!” Seeing your hand bones and your chest bones and all your body bones is bad enough, but seeing your face with no face on it is ten times worse. Your face — you always have the thought that, whatever it looks like, it’s you — and you’re it. With it gone, are you really you? “How can I see with no eyes?”

Groggins said, “Same way you can talk with no tongue, hear with no ears, move with no nerves or muscles, remember things with no brain.”

“That doesn’t tell me anything.”

“That’s ’cause I don’t understand it myself.”

The woman had brought a roll of bandage from under her robe. She started wrapping it around my skull. It seemed to be some kind of self-sticking bandage. She worked fast, seemed to know what she was doing. “Open your jaw. Not too far — that’s far enough. I’ll wrap you so you can open it that far. Then you’ll be able to show those great pearlies.”

“Hey, you’re bandaging right across my eye sockets!”

“Don’t worry. I’ll poke holes when I’m finished.” She went on wrapping.

With nothing to do or look at, and not knowing what was going on, I thought I might catch up on things. “How about Marsha? Did Grout slug her too?”

“No,” said Groggins. “After he shot you he aimed at her, but she told him to behave himself, this wasn’t the Dark Ages, this was Hollywood, the Swinging Seventies, so he should act like a grownup and not do something foolish. So he apologized to her.”

“How’d his trial come out?”

“They let him off on the grounds that he was suffering from acute diminished capacity.”

“What’s that?”

“Don’t ask me. After the trial U-G-A hired him as chief consultant on the movie they made of your life — and death. Mostly your death. It was a smash. Everybody wanted to watch you get shot. As long as you’d been shot, they thought they should see it.”

“Who played me?”

“Tack Tustine.”

“That goof?” He was the biggest moron in Hollywood, a total illiterate. He was a fine athlete though — he’d been a basketball All-American at a major university in the Midwest. “He played me?”

“Uh-huh. He was great. He won the Academy Award.”

I was speechless. Tack Tustine playing me in the movie celebrating my death and winning the Oscar for it! It made me wonder if those awards are truly indicative of an actor’s inner essence.

Marcelina said, “Finished. Now I’m going to poke in the eyeholes.”

I braced myself, but it didn’t hurt a bit. Though completely lacking eyes and what they connect to, I could see through the holes she poked with a nail file through the bandage — not as well as through the unbandaged sockets but as well as when I was alive.

Groggins said, “Now for the shades.” I watched him dig into the shopping bag and hand Marcelina a pair of old airplane goggles with an elastic band. She pulled the band over my bandaged skull. The glasses were curved so they fit snugly. “Shake your head... Harder. Now up and down.” She looked pleased. “They seem pretty secure. Can you see all right?”

“Fine.”

“Want to see how you look?”

“No.”

She held up the mirror and all I saw was white bandage and two buglike eyes. It was creepy and awful-looking, but better than the bare bones.

Groggins dug into the bag again and got out a big, dark, gangster-style hat with some darker stains on it. I didn’t ask what they were. He gave it to Marcelina and she plopped it on my head.

“Now for the scarf and gloves.” He tossed her a mangy orange scarf, which she wound around my neck bones, and grey gloves. “Hold up your hands,” she said. I did, and she pulled the gloves over them and buttoned a button against the inside of each wrist.

Groggins came over with a white shirt and put it on me, buttoning it up till it was firm around the scarf. He went back to the bag and took out a pair of baggy grey pants with a green glaze here and there. “Pick up your feet,” he said. I did, and he knelt and pulled the pants onto my leg bones. Marcelina went to the bag and took out faded purple socks and scuffed brown shoes. She handed them to him and he worked them over my foot bones. “Stand up.” I did, and he pulled up the pants. They had frayed red suspenders attached, which he looped over my shoulders. “Now for the overcoat.”

Marcelina gave him a big wadded brown coat from the bag. He shook it and dust and hairs and stuff flew around. He got behind me, hitched the sleeves up my arm bones, got the shoulders in place, walked around in front of me, pulled things here and there, buttoned me up, stepped clear, looked me over, and said, “You look pretty good.”

I looked down. The coat drooped around me, its green glaze matching the glaze of the pants.

“Where’d you get all this crummy stuff?”

“Do you really want to know?”

I decided I didn’t. He reached in his robe, pulled out a wad of money, and counted it. “Here’s eighty-eight bucks.” He shoved it into one of my coat pockets. “Now you’re all set.”

“For what?”

“You’re off to Hollywood.”

“Why?”

“Don’t you want to go?”

“What am I supposed to do there?”

“I dunno. Play it by ear.”

“How long do I have?”

“Who knows? Did you ever know in the old days how much time you had?”

“I guess not.”

“Why should you know now?”

I didn’t know anything. “You bandage me up, give me funky old clothes and flying goggles like nobody wears, and tell me I’m off to Hollywood — one of the toughest towns in the country to make it in even at your best.”

Marcelina said, “Don’t forget, you’ve got a pocketful of money.”

“Eighty-eight bucks.”

“And you’ve got those dynamite teeth.” She showed her own in a bright smile. “You don’t seem to realize that you’re a pretty attractive guy.”

I shook my head, feeling despondent. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

“Whatever you do,” said Groggins, “it’ll be you doing it.”

“What does that mean?”

He shrugged, then waved a hand. “See that wall? Start walking toward it. When you reach it, it’ll kind of fade out — or it should, if things work right. Just keep on walking and you’ll find yourself outside, in the cemetery. Walk to the low wall you’ll see, go over it, turn left, and walk to the bus stop on the corner. The bus’ll take you to Hollywood Boulevard. From there, go anywhere you want.”

I took two steps toward the wall. “You say I can just walk through it?”

“Uh-huh. It seems to be working. You’re getting fuzzy around the edges. So long, Rangoon. Have a nice time.”

“Good luck,” said Marcelina.

I looked back. I didn’t see them. Things were just kind of misty back there. I kept walking. Now things were misty all around.

Then the mist was gone. I was standing on grass. It was moonlight. All around me were pale-white blobs — tombstones. I stopped, turned, and looked at the big one I stood in front of. On top of it was sitting a good-looking male angel, not wearing much, gazing in a kind of spaced-out way over the horizon. Under him was a bronze plaque: RANCE RANGOON — MARTYR TO LOVE. 1942–1974.

I liked that. U-G-A had done pretty well by me, even if it had been mostly to push the movie. “Martyr to love” — that was kind of sad and poetic.

I walked away from my memorial. Ahead was the low stone wall. It was about chest-high. I put my hand bones on it and pushed myself up. Being just bones, I was really light. I sailed over, and if I hadn’t grabbed the edge of the wall just in time I’d have nose-dived onto the sidewalk on the other side.

I let myself down. I was outside the cemetery now. I turned left, as Groggins had told me, and started walking toward the corner, where I could catch the bus downtown.

It was dark and forlorn on that corner, with the cemetery behind me and just trees and country around. A small, sick-looking dog came along, stopped, looked at me, and howled mournfully. I told it to beat it, and it did. Nobody else came.

I stood, hands in coat pockets, wondering what I’d do when I got to Hollywood. Maybe I’d stop into a bar. I could order a margarita and have it in front of me and pretend to drink it and look at the people, listen to their talk and to the tunes on the jukebox, start to get the feeling of being back in circulation again. I remembered classy bars I’d been in and began to feel a little hum of excitement inside my empty rib cage. I was on my own with money in my pocket, free to do whatever I wanted. For how long I didn’t know, and eighty-eight dollars wouldn’t last long, but a smart guy can build up a stake.

Suddenly I flashed on the idea of a card game. I used to play poker a lot; I’d been one of the top non-pros in Hollywood. I didn’t need the money I made then but it had been fun to get the better of studio big shots who you had to smile at and be buddy-buddy with for business reasons, all the time loathing them. Maybe I could get into a big poker game and run my stake up.

I walked around a little, finger-boning the wad of bills in my pocket, thinking of getting hot in a big game, winning big money, buying some nifty clothes. The greatest artists of plastic surgery have their offices in Hollywood. Those guys are used to unusual jobs and to keeping their mouths shut. Why couldn’t I get one of them to do a job on me, build me up into something as good as I used to be? Better than I used to be. Why not?

A great surgeon should find me a cinch to work on. Building on my good framework, he could give me any body I wanted. I’d get him to build steel rope into the plastic, and maybe he could work in some kind of solar motor that would cause the rope to ripple rhythmically so that when I strolled in shorts on the beach I’d be a moving symphony.

I walked around in a fast circle, so excited now I was thumping my gloved hand bones together. I thought of the face I’d have the surgeon make me. The old face had been O.K. — the new one would out-Robert Redford!

And with that new face and rippling torso I’d take myself to a top agent, who’d go all to pieces to sign me as a property. We’d work up a new name for me and a great background. Maybe I could be from Tasmania, where Errol Flynn came from, and I d got my terrific shape bulldogging kangaroos across the outback. In a couple of years I could be bigger than Flynn had been, than Redford is — bigger than Ranee Rangoon ever dreamed of being. Bigger by far than that moron Tack Tustine!

Lights showed down the road, and I hoped it was the bus at last. It wasn’t — it was a cab. It slowed as it passed me, and I waved it on past. The stake I had wasn’t much, and I might need all of it. If I found a game, good things could start happening. That’s the way it is in this town, if you keep fixed on the idea that, inside, you’re still hot stuff.

I had that thought, and then I heard Groggins’s flat voice: “Inside, you’re still just hot air.”

It startled me. I looked around, thinking he was near. I even said out loud, “Where are you?” But all I saw was the cab, which had pulled up a little way beyond me and was now backing up. Groggins hadn’t really spoken, it was just a negative thought that had filtered into my skull. I threw it out, fixing on the notion that I’d find a game, my stake would grow, and I’d get decent clothes, find a great plastic surgeon. The cab had backed even to me now. The door on my side opened. The driver’s face was a pale blob, looking at me.

I shook my head. “I’m waiting for the bus.”

“Buses haven’t run past here in eight years.”

At first I thought he was hustling me. Then I thought Groggins could have been playing a game on me. I didn’t know anything — why I’d been let out of my coffin, bandaged up, fixed up in lousy clothes, and sent out on the town. “How much to downtown Hollywood?”

“Nothing. I’m on my way in. Climb aboard.”

I walked over to the cab, which was black with wavery white letters painted on the door: ZACK’S CABS. I kind of fell in, swinging my hips to drop on the seat, swaying against the driver, hearing a kind of clattery sound which was my shoulder bones grinding together. I got straightened up and sprawled there.

The driver had a big-nosed, tough little face. He got out, strutted around the front of the cab to my side, and pushed the door shut. He strutted back, got in, put things in gear, and we took off at a good clip. He grunted, “You don’t look so swift. What happened?”

“I had some bad luck.”

“What hospital did you come out of?”

“Uh—” I tried to think of a hospital in the area. Not knowing the area, nothing came to mind.

“Vet’s Hospital?”

“Yeah. Vet’s.”

“Looking for a job?”

“Yeah.”

“Ever dispatched?”

“Cabs, you mean?”

“Yeah. We got some openings. You look awful worn down. But you could get built back up.”

That’s what I had in mind.

I flashed on the picture of me on the beach with my marvelous new face and body, trotting along, the foxes googling.

“Lots of guys in lousy condition have got their act back together at Zack’s. There’s a kind of dorm there for guys at rock-bottom. Look at me.” I did. “A little on the porky side, wouldn’t you say?” His tough face bunched in a grin. “You should of seen me twelve years ago when I first started working for Zack. You think you’re underweight? You don’t know what underweight is!”

A lot of tough night people have a soft spot for real hardcase losers. But I wasn’t the forlorn stray this guy thought I was. I’d been Ranee Rangoon, top-money star and poker ace who had played in games with thousands in the pot. I had my little stake and I wasn’t about to sit around in a sleazy cab office in the town where I’d been on top. With a run of luck, I could be on top again fast. A card game, fancy plastic surgeon — that was the route for me.

We’d reached the fringe of the city now. He was gabbing away the way cab drivers do. “I started as a dispatcher, finally got my strength and weight back — then Zack put me in a cab. I’d been a big shot, then had some bad luck, got wiped out. Would you believe I once was a big-time ad man?”

“Sure.” Why not? Like I said, this is a sudden town — you’re riding high and then your bottom drops out. That could have happened to this guy. He was probably feeding me abalone, but it was possible he’d been in the big time.

“So it was quite a comedown for me, pushing a hack, picking up goons who used to sit three hours in my secretary’s office hoping I’d give them ten minutes of my time. But I asked myself, what’s the alternative? I’d been as far down as you can get, and I didn’t want any more of that. How do I feel now? I feel great. Like I been born again. Smartest thing I ever did was listen to the guy who told me to come to work at Zack’s.”

I had him pegged. Like a lot of nice guys he felt so good being nice that he was going to make me feel good too, by getting me to do things the way he had done them whether I wanted to or not. He pushed too hard. That’s the trouble with nice guys. I said, “I don’t think I want to work at a cab company.”

He shrugged, drove a few blocks, made some turns, and we were on a downtown street. Not a first-class street — there were a few dumb little shops and bars, a hotel sign with all the lights knocked out — not the neighborhood I wanted to get the upbeat mood I was after. He had slowed, and now he pulled over to the curb.

He gave me a wise-guy look. “You look like a man in a hurry. You might be thinking of a card game to get back on your feet fast. In that hotel there, there’s a game goes on most nights. Should be going on now.”

“Yeah?” I felt the excitement inside me. I’d had the feeling that, one way or another, I’d turn up a game. And by luck this driver had set me down right in front of one. “You know the room number?”

“It floats around — but try four-seventeen.”

I pushed the door handle and the door fell open. I hitched across the seat and got out. “Thanks.”

He slid across the seat, got the door, pulled it shut, gave me a flip of his fingers, and put things in gear.

I got a funny feeling and almost called out, “Wait a minute.” Then I thought of the card game and the chance it’d give me to get things together in a hurry. All this guy had to offer me was a pipsqueak job, a bed in a dorm with a bunch of broken-down nobodies who had bottomed out, a group of insects crawling around on Hollywood’s floor. That wasn’t for me. I was Ranee Rangoon, Martyr to Love.

I gave him a creaky wave and watched him drive away. Then I turned and, moving pretty good, walked over to the beat-out old hotel.

In the lobby a few dismal specimens were zonked out in ratty-looking chairs and a clerk about eighty-five was collapsed across the desk. I went up the creaky stairs to the fourth floor, wobbly at first but getting used to it, walked down a dim corridor to 417, and knocked.

There were noises, then the door opened a crack. I said, “Card game? Zack’s Cabs tipped me.”

A short wait, then the door opened enough for me to slide in. The room was pretty dim, which was good. Four guys sat at a round green table. They all looked me over. They didn’t seem surprised at how I looked. The guy who had let me in was big and fat, with a hard hood’s face and mean little eyes that sized me up as someone who didn’t carry a gun and was no threat. He didn’t pat me down. I was glad of that — one pat from him could mean broken ribs. He had a rumbly voice. “What’s with the bandage, the gloves, the dopey-looking shades?”

“Bad accident. Burns.”

“You going to play with gloves, shades, a hat on?”

“If it’s O.K.”

He looked me over some more, then flopped a hand toward the table. I saw big stacks of bills, including hundreds, in front of the players. This was a big-time game. These guys weren’t flotsam like down in the lobby. They had good clothes. I didn’t recognize any of them but I’d sat in on games like this and gone to raunchy places to do it sometimes. And tonight I had in my pocket eighty-eight dollars.

I didn’t know if it was enough even to ante.

But the excitement was bubbling inside me. I had the feeling that the cards were going to run for me.

I sat down carefully, hearing a screech as some hip bones mashed together. I thought everybody must have heard it, but nobody seemed to.

The guy across from me had a skinny moustache on a spongy, unpleasant face. The ring on his pinky was money. The other players had different faces, all unpleasant, and all of them wore things that showed they were rich — cufflinks, rings, a jeweled tieclip. They looked at me. They didn’t like me but I was no worse than any other creep, because everyone was a creep. They didn’t look scared or surprised by my looks — I was just a super-skinny, bandaged creep in a mildewed overcoat and a stained hat.

The hood sat down at the far side of the table and picked up the deck of cards. He was the dealer. “Ante is twenty bucks.”

The guys all put in the ante. Still nobody said anything. I got out my little wad and pulled through it and got two tens out. “No limit,” said the dealer. He was the guy who ran the game. He was big enough to run any game anywhere.

He dealt. Fast, smooth — he was a dealer. I picked up my cards, finding I could manage them all right even with gloves on and nothing but bone under the gloves. I looked them over. I had tens full over treys.

The guy on the dealer’s left had the bet. He pulled hundreds from his stack, laid them in the pot.

“Bet’s four hundred,” the dealer growled at me.

I pushed my wad into the pot. “I’m in for that.”

He counted it with his eyes. “That’s sixty-eight dollars.”

“I know.”

He looked around the table. There were shrugs. They didn’t care. They’d let me play out my chickenfeed.

The guy on my left called the four hundred. The next guy raised to a thousand. The last guy dropped. The first guy called. The guy around me called.

The dealer said, “Cards.”

Everybody took one or two. I stood pat, and waited while the betting went around with another raise — big money now in the pot. Finally the calling was over, me just sitting there with my pat hand, and the raiser showed what he had. It was a high straight. The others folded their cards. I was left. I showed my full boat.

Somebody made change, and I got $136 plus my ante. The high straight took the rest.

That was the first hand.

The second was mine again. I doubled my $136 with three aces.

I doubled that the third hand.

“You’re having a run of luck,” said the dealer. The others nodded or shrugged.

The game went on, and it kept going that way. I won three more hands, then lost, then won five in a row, then lost again. Then I won twenty-two straight hands. All the big bills were in front of me now. Just a few bills were in front of the other players.

One of the guys got up from the table. His sour, skinny face was sick. “I’ve lost twenty-five thousand dollars. I have a wife and children. I’m not rich — this tieclip is glass. Most things that impress people are glass.” He took off the tieclip, went to the window, opened it wide, and threw the tieclip out. “I’m assistant manager of a bank. The money I lost was the bank’s. Now it’s jail for me, disgrace and ruin for my family.”

He stood at the window, staring down. I said to the dealer, who was closest to him, “Stop him.”

“Why?”

The man with the skinny moustache spoke. “This game has been boring.” He reached in his jacket and brought out bills — a huge handful of bills. “There’s two hundred grand here.” He dropped the bills on the table in a tumbled heap. He pulled the gold-mounted diamond ring from his pinky, dropped it on the bills. “That’s worth twenty-five grand. And here’s a platinum cigarette lighter.” It dropped by the ring. “Another twenty-five. I’ll play you for that,” he said to me, “against what you have on the table.”

“It’s not near what you have.”

“I didn’t ask that. I just want to win one hand, so that the night’s not a total loss.”

The man at the window stared down. “There’s no hope left for me.”

I said to the moustached man, “What do you want to play?”

“Cut for high card.”

One cut — one card. A hundred thousand to lose, $250,000 to win. I looked at the deck the dealer set between us and wondered if there was one more piece of luck left in there — one more card for me.

The man cut first, looked, turned his hand so we could all see. It was the ten of hearts. He placed his pile back on the deck.

I looked at the deck. I held my right hand bones over it and felt like I was waiting until the bones got the feel that they would make the right cut. I watched the glove move, close on the deck, and pluck up part of it — turning the cut first to the moustached man, then around the table so the others could see, finally to myself. The queen of spades.

The moustached man puffed his lips, shrugged, and stretched. “Oh, well.” He got up. “Coming?” he asked the other two men.

They said they guessed so. They got up and all three went to the door.

I looked toward the open window. I said to the dealer, “Where’d that man go?”

“He jumped.”

I thought of him for a few seconds, then looked at what was on the table. It was all I needed. Now I could look up that great surgical artist of plastic.

I got up, laid the ring and the lighter aside, and started to stack the heap of money. The other players had gone out the door, closing it behind them.

The dealer sat there and looked at me with his hood’s eyes. He said in a soft voice, “Do you think you won all that yourself? I won it for you.”

“I’m going to give you something. Though we had no arrangement, and I think you dealt an honest game.”

“You won all but two hands and you think I dealt an honest game?”

“Luck is funny sometimes. I’ll give you a thousand dollars.”

All the money was stacked now, alongside the ring and the lighter. But now he had a .38 in his hand, and was slowly getting up. He had a crooked smile. “Half for me, half for you.”

I stepped back, then slowly took off my hat, laid it on the table, pulled off the goggles, laid them there, and pulled off my left glove. He stared at the bones of my hand, which I wiggled — his eyes were like he didn’t believe what he saw.

I pulled off my right glove. I moved around the table, wiggling my finger bones at him. Then I unbuttoned the coat and the shirt, showed him my rib cage and the emptiness it curved around.

The gun had dropped from his hand. He was backing away, his face a dead-white slab, his mouth wide and drooling, his eyes lacquered knobs. I moved to him, slow, and pulled at the face bandage, got an edge of it, pulled it loose, passed it around behind my skull, passed it around again, slowly moving in on him, passing the bandage around and around, unwinding it.

He was at the window. I dropped the bandage and pushed my bare face bones at him, dropping my jaw all the way and then snapping it shut, dropping it, snapping it, clicking my good teeth at him. He screamed, a wild and dreadful sound, and then he was gone, backwards, out the window.

I was alone in the room. I buttoned my shirt and overcoat, went back to the table, and put on the hat and gloves. I picked up the bandage and laid it on the table next to the goggles. When I had pocketed my money and jewelry I’d go down the hall, find the washroom, and put the bandage and goggles back on. On the table lay $300,000 and the ring and the lighter. I felt deep joy — I flashed on myself running on a sun-soaked beach, muscles rippling, the gleaming eyes of the hungry foxes.

Great thumps on the door. “Open up!” The door flew open.

There was a cop. Another was behind him. They had guns. One groaned and the other made gagging sounds. I clicked my teeth at them. They stood and stared at me. Others were in the hall behind them.

I moved to the window. They would close in on me and take me away. There would be doctors, scientists, theologians, social philosophers, newspapermen, TV cameramen. I would be photographed. They would examine me. Unable to identify me by finger- or toe-prints or the shape of earlobes, they would take impressions of my teeth. I would be identified. Pictures of Ranee Rangoon would fill the papers and TV channels — Rangoon as he was, Rangoon as he is now. All that hummed through my head as I stood at the window. The room was now full of cops, stalking toward me. I slid my hip bones over the windowsill, ducked my skull, fell backwards out the window — and was falling, falling through grey mist.

The funny thing is that when I landed I didn’t even know it. I just came to the idea that I wasn’t falling any more. I was sitting still on pavement and the grey mist was clearing. Over me was the dark sky, and the moon.

I got up and looked around for the bodies of the embezzler and the dealer, but I was alone on the pavement. And the hotel wasn’t behind me, city buildings weren’t around me. I was on a road with trees along it.

I started walking, not knowing where to, and suddenly there was a splash of headlights, and I heard a motor. I started to run into the trees, but a familiar voice called, “Might as well hop in.” I turned and saw Zack’s white-lettered black cab.

He opened the door and got out, leaving the motor running. It was the same tough-faced little guy. I walked over and he said, “So that’s what you look like under the bandage.”

He walked with me around the front of the cab and opened the passenger door. I got in. He closed the door, strutted around, and got in himself. He put the car in gear and we started off up the road.

I said, “I’m ready to go to work for Zack now.”

“Maybe you are — but we’re going back to the cemetery.”

I thought that over as we rolled along. What had Groggins said? I was in a holding pattern. That’s when an airplane hangs around over an airport, waiting for things to become clear so it can land or fly on to another airport.

I looked at the solid, fleshy hand on the steering wheel. “You’re real, aren’t you? You really are a cab driver. There really is a Zack’s Cabs. Real guys—”

“And women.”

“Real guys and women driving around, picking up real people, making change, fighting traffic. And all of you were just where I am now. All of you were once dead.”

He gave me his wise-guy grin. “You got in a holding pattern like I did. And you went to Zack’s and got yourself built up, flesh grew back on your bones. How does that work, anyway?”

“I dunno. It just kind of happens, gradual.”

“So after a while you’re built up again and Zack puts you in a cab. Then what?”

“I dunno. Something. Guys you know on the cabs, who’ve been there maybe a long time, maybe a short time — they’re not around any more.”

“Where do they go?”

“Someplace nice, you hope.”

“Then driving for Zack isn’t the end of it? It’s just where you put in time for a while?”

“Seems like that.”

“So you’re still in a holding pattern.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And I’m not in one any more. I wish I’d been given the whole rundown on this.”

I thought of the guy at the window, staring down — and me all wrapped up in the last cut of the cards. I said, “The dealer, the other players, the cops, the money — were they real?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Was the hotel real?”

“Oh, yeah, it’s real — but it’s abandoned, condemned.”

He had stopped the cab. We were at the low cemetery wall. He opened his door, got out, walked around, and opened my door. I got out. “Thanks for the ride. What do I do now?”

“Go back over the wall. So long, kid.” He pushed the door shut, strutted around, got back in, gave me his high-sign. I raised my hand to him and watched him drive away.

I got over the wall, walked a little. I thought of my big night on the town. Everything had sure seemed real.

“Hi.” She was sitting on top of my tombstone next to the spaced-out male angel. “You took off the bandage, huh?”

“Yeah. Where’s Groggins?”

“He went home to bed.”

I went over and leaned on the tombstone on the other side of the angel. “What now? Back into the coffin?”

“If you want. Or you can stay here in the cemetery. There’s a nice stream over that way, the birds sound nice early in the morning, the sun feels good, you can watch the people who come to visit. Sometimes dogs come around at night — some you want to watch out for, but some are fun to play with.”

“Sounds better than the coffin. Where’ll I stay though? Won’t people see me?”

“Sure, if you’re a show-off.” She gave a giggle. “Lie low — learn to move behind things quick. There’s a bunch of trees over on the west side that nobody goes around much.”

“I’m just supposed to — kind of hang around?”

“You’re not supposed to do anything. Do whatever you want to do. Go back to Hollywood if you want.”

“No.” I was through with my big idea of a comeback. “Am I still in a holding pattern?”

“I think so.”

“I thought I blew everything back at the hotel.”

“I don’t know what you did at the hotel. You’re here now — make the best of it.” She slid off the tombstone. “And take care of those really great teeth.”

She gave me a smile and a wag of her fingers, then turned and walked away. I watched her start to kind of fade at the edges. Then she was gone. All there was left was me and the tombstones.

So here I sit, on top of my memorial — a somewhat unprepossessing character in a gamy overcoat and a stained hat, my bare teeth grinning all over the place, though I don’t feel like grinning. I don’t know how long I’ll have to stay in this holding pattern. That grey mist seems to be coming down.

I’d rather be working at Zack’s. There I’d have guys to talk to, customers to yell at on the phone, and gradually I could start building myself up.

But maybe that’s not true either. Maybe there isn’t any Zack’s. Maybe they all came out of my head, and maybe even the cemetery and my tombstone I’m sitting on doesn’t exist, or the funky clothes I’m wearing.

Maybe I wasn’t ever in my coffin.

Maybe what really happened is that I’ve been shot by Alfred Grout and I’m badly wounded, maybe dying, and all this crazy stuff has whirled through my head in just a few seconds. The mist has gotten heavier, everything around me is misty, but it’ll clear, and maybe out of it will come the face of a little nurse, smiling, and I’ll hear her murmur, “Well, so you decided to come back to us. You’re going to be all right now — you’re going to be fine.”

That’s what I’ll fix on. Because, in this town, if you want good things to happen you’ve got to expect that they will.

So when the mist clears I’ll find myself in a hospital bed with a pretty nurse smiling at me, telling me everything’s O.K., and it’s nothing but a superficial wound.

I hear something. I’ve heard it before.

A mournful howl. Like a sick, scraggly little dog.

I guess I really am in the cemetery. Where I’ll stay, as resident spook, until some way I get out of this holding pattern and move onto something else.

The mist is lifting. And there’s the dog, sitting looking up at me with its foolish, pathetic eyes.

“Hello, you miserable screwed-up little mutt.”

It sure looks hungry.

Maybe if I look around I can find something for it to eat.