If You Liked School, You'll Love Work

Miss Arizona

IT’S GOTTEN BEYOND cold and I don’t feel uncomfortable no more. It’s nearly my time and I don’t even care. Why in God’s name should I? I ain’t leavin without her and I sure as hell can’t take her with me.

It ain’t like I’m feelin anythin; my arms or legs, and I ain’t even sure whether or not my eyes are open. I guess it don’t much matter that all I got is thoughts. They ain’t worth shit but I don’t see them stoppin for a while. The joke is that it’s gonna be the cold that’ll take me away, when outside, beyond those thick stone walls, they got people frying in that heat. Guess we all gotta go sometime. It’s just the circumstance I would never have figured in a thousand years.

I suppose I paid for my arrogance, just like he did. And yeah, I finally understand that crazy ol drunk now: just another asshole who fell on the sword of his own vanity. You get to thinkin that you’re the man: the ice-cool, shit-talkin, big-dicked artist. Everyone else: why, they’re just your itty-bitty subjects. So then you reckon this means you can just do as you damn well please. That it somehow gives you rights. But it gives you no goddamn rights at all.

When did it start?

It started and it ended with Yolanda.

Miss Arizona.

She was an ol gal, who looked like she’d been rode hard and put away wet. Yep, she said she was Miss Arizona at one time. Well, I was darned if I ever could see it. She sure was one heavy lady; I’d seen gals in Louisiana trailer parks had asses didn’t wobble like the flesh on her arms did when they moved — usually to pick up a drink. Ol Yolanda had the type of red hair that might have been comely at one time, tho I reckon it had long since come outta bottle; piled high and lacquered stiff on that big piggy-eyed head of hers. Her skin was white as your momma’s sweet milk; the sort that don’t take too kindly to the sun, and that’s one thing they got plenty of round here.

Miss Yolanda mostly kept away from it. If she were outside she’d be in the shade, sometimes sittin on the back porch over-lookin that small rear garden, with its little scrap of grass as brown and dry as the ruined old ranchlands that surrounded her house. The scrubby patch sure did contrast with that beautiful, turquoise swimmin pool. Even though Yolanda often sat in a candy-stripe one-piece swimsuit (usually with a big floppy straw hat sat on her head and a robe over her shoulders, while a big fan blasted her with cool air), she never seemed to get into that pool. Probably didn’t want to mess up that hair of hers. But that damn pool was kept so good I always reckoned it was a crime for it not to be used, specially in these parts. But yeah, skin like that and here she was in this place; right in the middle of the goddamn desert, a good three hours’ drive from downtown Phoenix. She just sat there on that chair under the parasol, with ropes of blue vein runnin out from those pale, flabby thighs, turning coal black as they got down to her skinny calves. Yep, she was Miss Arizona. Reckon right about when that state was counted under Mexico.

I remember the first time I pulled up outside that big ranch house. I was thinkin that when somebody puts up a house that belongs in cattle country right here in the desert, you know two things right away: first is they got money, the second bein they ain’t lookin for too much in the way of company.

That’s ol Miss Yolanda. But it strikes me that as this looks like being my last story, it might be time to talk a little bit about myself. My name is Raymond Wilson Butler. I’m thirty-eight years old, divorced, and a native of West Texas. Before I met Yolanda I was livin in a one-thousand-bucks-a-month rented apartment near downtown Phoenix with my girlfriend, Pen. What about her? I could go on forever. But all I can think to say right now is that she sings beautiful songs, when she ain’t working in a bookstore in a city mall. My life changed for the better when I met Pen. She was the best damn thing that ever happened to me.

But Yolanda was different. She changed everybody’s life. Every single sonofabitch she came into contact with. I started seeing her through my work; every other day I’d drive out to her place. I guess I should tell you how that went.

To get to Yolanda’s from our apartment, I had to drive west right out of Phoenix. It would never fail to amaze me how the city stopped so suddenly, town-to-desert within the arc of a drunkard’s piss. Then you’d pass one or two subdivisions, mostly completed, some now just bein redeveloped after standin crumblin in the sun: concrete and steel carcasses, for almost twenty years. A lot of people thought land was the primary resource out here and went bust buyin it. Not when you only get around seven inches rainfall a year it ain’t. The buildin only started up again when they finished the canal system, comin down from the Rockies to hook up this region with precious water.

Then, when the last of the subdivisions passed, you had a long haul through desert before you got out to Yolanda’s. Driving out to see her, I always had a goddamn thirst on me. This kind of terrain didn’t help the likes of me much. Cruisin down that interstate they all had a shot of trying to tempt you to stop for a cold one; Miller’s, Bud, Coors, and even some of the drinkable ones. And damn, was it hot.

The particular day I’m thinkin of was my second visit to Yolanda’s, the one after I had secured her agreement as to how she could be of service to me. It was midday and the sun was at its cruelest and even an old Texan boy like myself, living in LA till fairly recently, could sometimes forget how fierce it could be. Out there the bastard baked all the freshness out of the air, leaving it feelin like particles of iron in your lungs. As your throat seared your respiratory system started bangin and you sweated like a solitary truck-stop hooker gaspin goodbye as the last lusty buck in that convoy pulled on his dirty ol jeans.

My first jaunt out to Yolanda’s had reminded me how much I liked to drive that Land Cruiser into the desert. I’d headed off the interstate and onto the back roads before goin right off that grimy ol track, just veerin onto what looked like virgin sand but was really more kinda broken shale; tearin through it like a wet cloth across a dusty table. You couldn’t take your ass outside the car for too long, as I learned on that second visit. I had the inclination to step out for five minutes to the sound of that dirt crushin under my boot and the buzzards squawkin in the distance over some roadkill. That was just about all you could hear in this clear empty country, where the sky met the earth unbroken, every direction you turned. I looked northeast and couldn’t even see an indication of the jagged, ridged mountains that were probably only a few miles away.

Takin in that emptiness and feeling the isolation, you could just about distance everythin. Through this comforting filter of solitude, I’d think about Jill and the terrible mistakes I’d made. Then I’d cheer myself at how I’d been blessed with this second chance with Pen, which I was determined not to blow.

I distrusted Phoenix, in much the same way as I did all them shabby sunbelt cities with their pop-up business districts, soulless suburban tracts, strip malls, used-car dealerships, and bad homes almost but not quite hidden by palm trees. And then you had the people; drying out like old fruit in the sun, brains too fried by heat and routine to remember why they ever did come here in the first place. And that was just the poor. The wealthy folk you only saw under glass; in their malls and motor cars, breathing in the conditioned air that tasted like weak cough medicine. I was used to heat but this place was so dry the trees were bribin the dogs.

On this day though, headin to my first proper session at Yolanda’s, after my introductory approach to obtain her agreement with my business proposal, I’d got lost in my thoughts and wandered outside for a little too long. I didn’t realize how that sun had got to me till I looked back at the distance I’d aimlessly strolled from the vehicle and instantly thought I’d better close it fast. The Land Cruiser looked like a mirage in that shimmerin heat; there was no way to determine how near or far it really was. I was panickin some, till my hand suddenly seemed to make contact with the scorching metal of the chassis. I slipped back into the shit-sweet coolin of the vehicle, to find my head throbbin with blood, forcin me to flop down across the passenger seat and max up that air con. It took me a good few minutes before I felt okay bout haulin myself up onto my butt. When I did, I pulled the newspaper from above the dashboard. The terror alert was green and the burn limit stood at sixteen minutes.

As I recall, that was when my cellphone went off. This registered cause it was my agent in LA, Martha Crossley, who never, ever called me on my cell. Nothin was so urgent or important it couldn’t wait till I got to my landline. — Got some good news, she squealed in that high whine of hers, — you’ve been shortlisted to shoot the Volkswagen commercial!

— That’s fine. But you know that they’re going to give it to the likes of Taylor or Warburton, I told her. I ain’t normally a glass-is-half-empty sort, but I knew that I was makin up the numbers on that list against the big-dicked assholes with the track records and the contacts.

— Hey! Buck up, cowboy, ya gotta be in it to win it! I’ll keep you posted, she enthused, — Ciao!

I put the phone on its cradle and pulled a cold one from the icebox; not beer no more, though that terrible thirst will always be there, just waitin till things get bad. Right now there ain’t no room at Ray’s for that ol slut these days. I wasn’t for fillin my gut with no soda nor cola either; that shit’s drivin us all to a lard-assed hell, clogging arteries and sidewalks both. No, it was cool, clear water going down my hot, raspin throat, always so damn dry, and it felt good. After a while I started up the Cruiser and powered through the shale, back up onto the road.

Like I did so many times, I turned for a second to the passenger seat to imagine Pen sittin alongside me, shades on, sweet perfume fillin the cab, the painted nails on her fingers as she fiddled with that radio dial till exactly the right tune would fill up the Cruiser. It’s in there somewhere and she can always find it. That’s something I never could do on my own, and I guess that’s cause there ain’t no right tunes without that gal. That night I’d go along and hear her play her fine music and sing her pretty songs. But first I had business with ol Miss Yolanda. Glen Halliday business.

Glen Halliday, my obsession, was the all-American anti-hero. The legendary filmmaker spent his last reclusive years out here, and he spent them in the company of that woman. Yolanda was his second wife, the first being Mona Ziegler, an ol gal from his hometown of Collins, Texas. It was that town that was the inspiration of many of his films (and in my view the best of them), particularly The Liars of Ditchwater Creek.

Mona I’d already seen several times last year and talked to her at some length. She’d remarried and now lived in a dull subdivision of Fort Worth. She was polite but cold about her relationship with Glen. Basically Mona reckoned that Glen just worked, and when he wasn’t doin that he drank and hollered. I suppose because Glen Halliday was my hero and my inspiration, I didn’t take too kindly to what I was hearing. I guess I’d put a lot of it down to Mona’s bitterness and I left her to her suburban life. Unfortunately, he didn’t get a better posthumous reception back in Collins. It was a small conservative town and some folks were mighty irked by the way he’d portrayed them. But I came from a similar shithole and reckoned he’d got it just about right, and nothin I heard or saw in that place convinced me of anythin to the contrary.

The desert abruptly gave way to another walled and gated subdivision, and I was thinking that those places were what Halliday railed against in his films and writings. His overridin concern was how we’d gone wrong; concrete, preachers, emperor television, and the greed of the smilin suits that made a killin from that whole crock of shit. And those raggedy dumbassed baboons that just smiled and rolled over as those jerks shafted them where the sun don’t shine. I met some of those assholes back in Collins, and Glen Halliday’s vision was still touchin their nerves from beyond the grave.

This subdivision was like interminable others I had passed on the way out here. They all had a huge Old Glory hangin outside in the still desert air, as limp as the dick on one of them ol fellas in the rest homes that lined the route. Then I’m through it, back into more desert land, so complete it was like a mirage recedin to nothin in the rear mirror. So I got to Yolanda’s farm where they now only used the water for the swimmin pool nobody swam in, the land long turned bear-assed brown.

The house itself was a low stucco dwelling. It was large enough, but nuthin near as spectacular as the surroundin huge, perimeter stone wall, nor them big iron gates, which a wheezy, thirsty ol motor opened up when I rang the intercom. The residence was painted white, with some plants and cacti growin a few feet up its walls.

As I said, that ol Yolanda gal didn’t get much in the way of company. Only other fella I saw out here was the pool-cleanin boy. That pool was always full and thoroughly maintained. Always struck me as really crazy out here, especially with her not usin it. But I guess you don’t live out there alone in that kinda place without being just a little crazy.

Drivin past the pool, the boy couldn’t have missed the Land Cruiser, but he didn’t take no notice, just carried right on rakin up the scum from the water’s surface. He had a mean face. His eyes squinted tightly, and his mouth was just as ungenerous: a tight slash under his nose. Yolanda was standin in the doorway to greet me, in that swimsuit. She kissed me on the cheek and I screwed up my nose a little; there was a strange rank odor comin from her that I hadn’t noticed on my first visit. I followed her inside. Her front room was painted white, two big circular fans overhead whirling to the max. But most of the cool seemed to be coming up from the floor. She went to fix me some lemonade and I could hear her talking to herself. — Esmeralda, why are you standing around looking at me like that…

At first I reckoned that there was somebody else in the house, then I guessed she was talking to this cat or pooch. Then I realized it was a stuffed cat, which was mounted on an old mahogany sideboard. She was a strange ol gal, okay, but in fairness to her, Yolanda, as she insisted I called her, had been generous enough to cooperate with me in my researches on her late husband.

What I liked about being out here was that it was always so goddamn cool, especially those slate tiles on the floor. When she came back with the drinks, lemonade for me and gin for her, I had slipped off my shoes and my soles were freshinin up real sweet. — This is so good, I told her in appreciation.

— Underground cooling. There’s a refrigeration system that feeds the water we pump up from the aquifer. It supplies that pool too, once we put it through the filter, but we still get a lot of minerals and deposits. That’s why I need Barry to come by a whole bunch. She pointed outside to where the pool boy was still doin his thing.

I didn’t know with any great precision what an aquifer was, but the sonofabitch sure as shit must have held a whole bunch of water. I was gonna ask her but I reckoned she was the sort who could go on a little and I had my specific business. — As you know, ma’am, I’m trying to find as much as I can about Glen. He was your fourth husband, right?

— Check, she smiled, raising a glass of gin to her lips.

— Would you say you were close? I asked, then realizing how I sounded, quickly apologized. — Sorry, ma’am, I’m soundin like a local DA here. I guess I’m just tryin to understand your relationship.

She smiled at me, and settled back into the chair like a big cat, content with her drink and her audience of one. — Honey, as you said, he was number four. I’ve married for love, sex, and money but by the time you’re on your fourth your expectations are pretty low.

— Companionship?

She flinched a little, then screwed up her face. — God, I hate that word. But it’s probably as good as any, she conceded and in her voice and expression I could, for the first time, sense bitterness toward Glen Halliday.

— What did you know about his work as a filmmaker?

— Not a whole bunch, she said, takin another sip of her drink then raisin her eyebrows over the glass in classic lush style. — As you well know Glen was an independent, and I’m strictly a Burt Reynolds girl. Poor darling never had anything, he had to scrape and hustle for every dime to make his damned movies. Thought that I was money, I reckon.

I gotta say that at this point I found it hard to see Glen Halliday, Mr Integrity himself, cast as a gold digger. I’d seen him lecturing to NYU students at Hunter College, and again at Sundance, sharing a platform with Clint Eastwood. Both times he spoke with such passion and certainty. I couldn’t see him as a gigolo, man-whoring his weary ol ass to get a picture made.

I guess it must’ve showed in my face as Yolanda felt moved to elaborate. — He got plenty pissed at me when I wouldn’t sell this place.

This place was nice enough if you liked that kinda thing. But I was thinkin that if I had that ol gal’s money I sure as shit wouldn’t be spending the last of my days dryin out in the desert. I decided to digress and I asked her, — You pretty much settled here then, Yolanda?

Maybe it was just the liquor kickin in but I swear the wattage on her grin upped a little. — Pretty much. Oh, don’t get me wrong, it ain’t nothing special but it’s got memories. Besides, it was Humphrey’s legacy. He was my first husband and my one true love, she explained with a peachy glow. — When I pass on this’ll go to our son… he lives over in Florida. Humphrey Marston was the one I never managed to replace, and she gave a faraway smile, — the rest never even came close.

Ol Yolanda’s wrinkled lips pursed round the slice of lemon in the gin. She sorta sucked it up and kinda kissed it, before lettin it fall back into the glass. By now I was startin to get a little restless. I was sure that Humphrey was a fine man, but my business was with the other guy. — So about Glen, he was broke when you married him?

Yolanda looked a little bored, then she refreshed her glass, the act of doing so seemin to enliven her. — You know the type of films he made, she said impatiently, then softened a little. — I mean, he made them for love, not money. Anything he earned for him went on drink. A terrible lush, and such a bad drunk. My third husband Larry, Larry Briggs, he was the one before Glen, now there was a good drunk, she roared in celebration of the memory. — He wrote checks when he was loaded, bought gifts, pressed flesh, her voice dropped, — in bed he was just about the hottest darned thing… Her hand rose to her jaw. — This big mouth of mine, she cooed in a kind of simulated embarrassment.

I have to confess that I did find something mighty fetchin about her little performance, and I weren’t shy about lettin her know it. — Don’t worry, ma’am, as we say back in Texas, this ain’t my first rodeo.

She slapped her thighs and I tried not to stare at the seismic activity that followed, as she burst into uproarious laughter. — I’ll bet it ain’t. You got that look in your eye! You’re gonna ask me about Glen in the sack… right?

— Ma’am, I would never presume… I protested, then I conceded, — but seein as you mentioned it n all…

And as those words fell from my mouth, I swear that, there and then, I could feel the extent of my betrayal. What in hell’s name was I doing? This was one of the great masters of American independent cinema. Up there with the likes of Cassavetes or Sayles. I wanted to write a tribute to an important, admired, and inspirational artist who’d help drag me from the sleazepits and here I was indulgin in the kinda smut I thought I’d escaped five years ago. When I was shootin those porn flicks from that San Fernando Valley lockup, just to pay the bills.

Two long years in the Valley wrecked things between me and Jill. I recall her sayin to me in one of our lush discussions, — You spend so much time shootin pussy, you don’t wanna fuck it no more.

Poor gal was only half right. Cause I certainly did, but the problem was that that shit was on offer all day long. By the time I got home I guess I’d had my fill of it, but I could always use another drink. That might be oversimplifyin the matter somewhat, but I do believe that there’s something about being around all that meat and sweat that sucks the soul right out of a man. I know that there are some people who can work in that industry a long stretch and just wash its stink off every night, but I certainly wasn’t one of them. On the plus side I sure learned how to light a set and frame a shot.

But there I was in the Valley, a stupid, still youngish guy who should have been like a kid in a candy store, but I was miserable as a coyote with hemorrhoids and two bust back legs. Then, durin some downtime, I walked into a fleapit cinema on Hollywood Boulevard where I took in The Liars of Ditchwater Creek, Halliday’s portrait of a West Texas town similar to the one I grew up in. That was it. I was hooked. Walking out from that ol picture house exhilarated, I wanted to do what Halliday was doing. Still do. It was both my salvation and my torment.

— Glen was fine at first, a real Texan bull as I recall, Yolanda grinned a little then let her expression dissolve into a wry smile. — But like most men it didn’t last.

I didn’t reckon that she was diggin me out; at that point I’d told her little about my own life, but I guess it was hard not to hear echoes of Jill’s bitter asides of the latter months in her voice. I tried to remain impassive and waited for her to carry on.

— I didn’t have no luck with men, she told me in a sad lament, her mood evidently mirrorin my own. — Humphrey Marston, he was a lot older than me, but he was about the only one of them who left me with anything other than bills. This is his place, sat right on this big aquifer.

That word again. I looked a little dumbfounded, and it must have showed as she raised her eyebrows at me. — Ma’am, excuse my ignorance, but I’m gonna have to ask you what an aquifer is. I’m figurin some kinda underground lake?

— You got it in a nutshell, she explained, topping up her drink. — The developers were always knocking on our door with big checks in their hands, but Humphrey reckoned the water was an asset worth keeping. Twenty-odd years ago, before they brought the stuff down from the mountains, there was enough of it here to keep a few new housing developments and a golf course going for years. But their money didn’t interest Humphrey. So the developers and the state fought dirty; tried all sorts of ways to get their hands on it. Humphrey was a very gentle fella, but he could be as stubborn as a mule; took em all the way and whopped their asses in court every time.

— Good ol Humphrey, I smiled and raised my glass to toast him. I was likin this ol boy more all the time.

Yolanda reached over and clinked glasses with me, killed her gin and refueled. With her back to me, I watched the dimpled hams spill out from under that one-piece as she poured. I looked away as she turned around, drink in hand. — He inherited the place from his father who wanted him to work it. But all he was interested in was animals, she explained. — He took his bachelor’s degree in zoology…

She pointed at the stuffed cat, mounted on a plinth. I noticed it was caught in that classic cat sitting pose, its hind legs tucked under it, the forelegs extended, looking up as if expecting a feed. — This is what he did, this was his work.

I guess I was pretty impressed by this. Most taxidermists I’d seen, and there was a lot of em in the big hunting states, they tended to go for action poses, even in domestic pets. — I like the way he got that ol boy in an ordinary cat position, rather than leapin on some invisible prey.

— Yes, Humphrey studied compulsively so that his compositions would be anatomically correct. She pointed over to a wall full of certificates and a cabinet stacked with trophies. — He was the best in the state. I used to assist him. I was so damn squeamish at first… Her expression went coy as her hand waved away a phantom objection or compliment.

In spite of myself, I was getting plenty curious. — What happened with you and Humphrey, if you don’t mind me asking?

Yolanda looked sadly at me, then grimaced in a caustic smile. — Nothing with me and him, just him. I came home from the mall one afternoon and found him dead in his workshop. He was stuffing a raccoon when he had a massive coronary. Darned if I didn’t find him right there, bent over his subject, as lifeless as that poor creature he was working on, she told me, brushin at a tear as if the loss was just yesterday. — I reckoned it was those constant battles with the developers and the state that took it all out of him. Her expression turned bitter as her incisors flashed. — Even if you beat those bastards, you always pay a price.

I couldn’t disagree there. It struck me that ol Humphrey was like a hero in a Glen Halliday movie; an ordinary Joe standin up to those moneyed assholes and power trippers, just cause he could, and hell, because it was the right thing to do.

— It just made me all the more determined that I would never sell up. She shook her head emphatically. — They said that I was cutting off my nose to spite my face and that the canal waters would soon be rolling in from the mountains and that I should cash in while I could. And sure enough, it eventually did come flowin down, but not before some of those miserable rat bastards who had tried to take my Humphrey’s water went bust sittin on their useless adjoining land!

And she talked on and on about ol Humphrey and I was darned if that ol gal didn’t have tongue enough for ten rows of teeth. But there wasn’t much I could do about it. She was upset and I had to let her go on. She told me how she’d met Humphrey at a pageant when she was Miss Arizona, and, how in contrast to the others, he was a real gent who always treated her like a lady. It sure was a strong love, no doubt about that. So I learned a lot about Humphrey and taxidermy, and while I admired this kindly ol guy who just sat on his land, stuffin animals, developers and the state, he wasn’t Glen Halliday. It took me a long while to get back there and when I did I could tell it was mighty disappointin for Yolanda.

— Glen Halliday lived for his work, she said ruefully. — We got together as friends first, then got married in a whirlwind. After six months he was a lousy lay. I didn’t see enough of him. He was always running off onto the set of one film after another, or hiding out in bars, she grinned at me in conspiracy. — If Glen had a grande passion, then, honey, I certainly wasn’t it.

Emboldened by this lady’s candor, I asked without thinkin, — Who do you think was?

— C’mon, darlin, you know the answer to that as well as I do, she chided, but she looked at me like she was genuinely let down. And she was right to be; it was the performance of an honors graduate asshole. In her mind I now either had balls of jello or the savvy of a virgin in a bordello. — Ms Sandra Nugent, she said slowly, her look of judging compassion makin me feel like the teenage daughter of the house who stormed out screamin ‘fuck you’ only to return in tears with a swollen belly six months later.

I knew full well, as did any undergrad who took an elective in American independent film, that Sandy Nugent was universally regarded as Halliday’s muse. She was the actress who starred in some of his finest movies: Ditchwater Creek, Mace, A Very Cold Heat. Over the years they had what the likes of Entertainment Weekly might call ‘a tempestuous on-off relationship’. She killed herself back in ’86, in a roach motel in a scuzzy part of Florida. They found her with the contents of a strip mall drugstore still bubblin in her gut long after her ass had gone polar.

I’d researched Sandy extensively, prior to meeting Yolanda. The only public comment he made on her death had lost Halliday plenty of friends (sadly, I was learning that he seemed to specialize in that art). Talkin to a London magazine at the Edinburgh Film Festival back in 1990, he said, ‘Nobody likes to see a good piece of ass wasted.’ Of course, Glen Halliday was a chronic drunk by then. I know that ain’t no excuse for that kinda talk, but I sure as shit also know that it can be a reason.

Glen Halliday was one of the most talented and underrated filmmakers I had come across. But the more I learned about him the less enamored I was by the guy. It seemed, and not only from Yolanda, that the magic was in the movies, not the man. And while I know more than most what ol John Barleycorn can do to a fella when things ain’t goin his way, my hero was starting to sound like a guy who had his head up his ass.

He married Yolanda ten years after Sandy’s death, then he himself apparently died of a heart attack, right here in Phoenix six years after that. Obviously the thing with Sandy, though they never tied the knot, really did seem to be Glen Halliday’s big one, but she wasn’t for tellin. Also, most of their mutual associates in the world of independent film had been pretty damn guarded.

But not all of them; back in New York, I had met Jenny Ralston, one of Sandy’s best friends, who’d been mighty obligin. Jenny had been mentored by Sandy and had a respectable list of indie credits and the odd Hollywood B-movie to her name. She was a dark-eyed beauty, finer than frog hair, and, maybe guided a little too much by her perspective, I’d regarded Yolanda Halliday as just a crazy afterthought, a place for drunken ol Glen to lay his tired head in this period of dark decline. But now somethin was eatin at me. I was darned if some strange loopy voice wasn’t whisperin in my ear that it was this relationship with Yolanda, ol Miss Arizona herself, that was going to be the key to unlocking the Glen Halliday enigma. Perhaps this strange woman was slowly becomin more interestin to me as I was gettin a little disenchanted by her most recently deceased husband.

As we kept yakin, me tryin to keep her interest by tellin her about my life past, and the one present with Pen, which interested her more, Yolanda seemed to be strugglin. I’d no idea how many gins she’d had before I’d called round and the booze seemed to be gettin to her. I soon got to reckonin that it might be best to wrap it up for the time being. — I really enjoy chatting to you, Raymond, she slurred, — I feel like we’ve really connected.

— I really enjoy talkin to you, Yolanda, I told her in all honesty, despite bein a mite concerned at the way those crazy eyes kept holdin me in their gaze.

I thanked her for her time and made to leave, as I had somewhere I needed to be. I fixed another appointment to see her, then headed back to the car. The pool was still ocean blue and the pool guy, skinny but muscular in his yellowin wife-beater, glanced at me for a second with hard, suspicious eyes, before turnin and rakin more gunk from the pool’s surface.

I got into the car and drank my second bottle of water. I called Pen on her cellphone but it was switched off, as was her habit. I hooked another bottle into the holder on the dashboard. The road was dead as Yolanda’s pets and I made good time before pullin into Earl’s Roadhouse, the bar where Pen was playing. It was still pretty damn early and I could feel that ol lush pull tuggin at me, insistent as a mall brat beggin his momma for candy. Surprisingly, for a night owl, it was always in the daylight hours when the draw was strongest. But I guess there’s nothin like walking sober into an evening bar full of drunks to convince you that you’re makin the right lifestyle choice.

I ordered a soda water with lime from Tracey the bartender. I liked her. She had a very cold dykey thing going on with the guys who came in. It just intrigued them and made them hit on her all the more. And hit on her they did, cause that gal always dressed like a million bucks. Not in an obvious way, cause she wasn’t one for puttin much flesh on show, but pretty damn classy all the same. She liked me, approved of the way I treated Pen. She told me as much one time, when she was a little drunk. Not in that hittin on you type of way, just in a mature sense of genuine appreciation. Tracey put Pen up on a pedestal. I reckoned I knew that pedestal well enough and once told Pen that I thought Tracey might be a girl’s girl.

She just laughed in my face and said, — Baby, she’s as straight as they come. For an older guy, you still ain’t got much of a clue about women.

She wasn’t too far wrong. Reckon all the women in my life had kinda said the same thing at one time or another. Jill made that point frequently, and much less charitably than Pen. My agent Martha had recently said similar stuff about Julia, the heroine in the first draft of my screenplay Big Noise. Or maybe she was a bit more blunt: ‘She isn’t a cardboard cutout, honey, she’s a little paper-thin for that.’

Sure enough, a few days later we spotted Tracey throwin gutterballs at Big Bucky Boy’s Bowling with some strike-hittin real-estate-sales type of guy who was probably married, but definitely fucking her. I felt like even more of a sleazeball than this asshole looked.

It was more than just women. I guess I outta have known a whole heap more about people than I did for a fella with my ambitions. And my crazy, conceited ass thought that by doing this book and a possible documentary on Halliday, I’d grow to understand the master’s mind, and somehow be able to unblock the writer in me, and become the great auteur that he was. But it was fanciful bullshit, and Yolanda Halliday was proof of that. After a couple of meetings I still didn’t know what that ol gal’s thing was.

The bar started to fill up, nine-to-five sorts who looked like they’d put in a hard day’s work; forklift drivers, grease monkeys, retail clerks, and office types, all lookin for what everybody has looked for in places like this since folks first sat down and chewed the shit together.

Pen came in dressed in a leather jacket and tight jeans, her hair tied back in a blue ribbon lookin kick-ass rock chic. She’s seventeen sweet years my junior, and her perfume smells good as she greets me with a melting smile and throws her arms around me. We kissed long, hard, and hungry, then softened it up a little and it tasted real fine and I could measure the goodness in life in the sweetest drips from those big red lips. And I knew I was lucky cause every guy, every sweaty workin stiff in that shithouse of a bar wanted to be me at that point in time and if they didn’t then they goddamn well should have.

Tracey saw her come in and set her up a beer.

Sure enough, one of the ol boys caught an eyeful of that divine denim-cased rear and darn near tumped his beer. Then his mean ol eyes took their register of my own weather-beaten face, and seein that it wasn’t much younger than the battered-lookin thing that greeted him in the mirror each mornin, fixed me a bitter scowl. I just gave him back a shit-eatin grin that said: Yeah, I know I’m maybe a little too old and these days definitely a load too straight for her, but it’s me she’s goin home with, so fuck you, buddy.

Then I ignored that sorry old fool and held up my cellphone to Pen in a playful reprimand.

— Yeah… I know, she said, tilting her head to the side, — I forgot to charge the bastard up.

— But I’m the possessive type, honey, I gotta have you on call, twenty-four/seven.

She opened a couple of pop-out buttons on my shirt and put her hand inside, rubbin at the hairs on my chest. — Yeah, I know, and I love it.

— Not as much as me, baby, I told her.

She raised a sculptured brow. — But you got another woman in your life right now, the one you’re spendin all this time with, she teased. — How’s this Halliday woman then? Bet she was a looker, huh?

— As she keeps tellin me she was once Miss Arizona.

— Before they started keepin records, right? Pen laughed and took a big suck on her Pabst.

I felt somethin rise in me a little and forced it back down, smilin back thinly at Pen. She didn’t mean nuthin by it, cause that gal ain’t got a bad bone in her body. All she was doin was repeatin my own silly jokes back at me. But somehow disrespectin Yolanda just didn’t sound right no more.

Funny thing was that I guess that I was kinda gettin to like that old gal. The woman had shown me great courtesy and hospitality, but desire, no sir, no way, you have got to be jerkin my wire. Why, Miss Yolanda had at least a good thirty years and a bad eighty pounds on me. Having undergone every plastic surgery procedure known to man, her face was almost paralyzed; the last time I saw something that looked like it, it was perched on the side of Notre-Dame cathedral over in Paris.

And to my shame, I had said somethin along those lines to Pen after I first met her, set that ol gal up as a figure of fun. I dunno why. Always tryin a little too hard to be a smart-ass, I guess, then regrettin it after when the folks you shit-talk don’t turn out to be so bad after all. But then the static thump of tubby fingers on a microphone head interrupted me from my thoughts.

Earl was a big and feisty ol boy, always wore those two-button brocade vests of the type JR used to sport, so damn snug you wondered how they stayed fastened, and I never saw him without his big Stetson hat. He was up onstage and he introduced Pen to a great big cheer. Then she got right up there and just blew them all away. I’m darned if that gal couldn’t rock the hell out of a joint. It might have only been a sleazy little dive bar where if somebody left the door open the throatful of heat and dust that followed them in made everybody suck down another cold one quickstyle, but she was headin for bigger things, no doubt about it. But I liked it best when she put down the Gibson and picked up the twelve-string acoustic and set her sweet ass on that stool and sang those soft honey-sugar ballads of hers. They broke this old wreckage’s sorry heart and made me want to set up just one little beer to cry into. But I knew where that would lead and as long as I had her in my arms I sure didn’t need me none of that.

I loved this dirty little dive so much and the only damn reason was her. I’d first come in to Earl’s six months ago, just after I’d moved to Phoenix, to try and start this damn book on Halliday. It just wasn’t happenin up in that lonely apartment, so I got out for a while and drove around a little, endin up just out of town, in this place. I found it was always better to pretend to write in the corner of some bar rather than in an empty apartment. Sometimes a face or a comment overheard could lay down the bones of a character or a snatched conversation trigger an idea for a plotline. Even though I wasn’t drinkin I still couldn’t break that particular habit.

I hadn’t been in long when she sat down next to me at the bar and asked me for a cigarette. I told her that I was sorry but I didn’t smoke, and was moved to add that right now I wished more than just about anythin that I did. She laughed and said that maybe I could buy her a drink instead and I was delighted to do so. After takin note that I was passin on the liquor, she looked deep into my eyes and said, ‘Well, you don’t smoke, or drink, but do you…’ and she skipped a beat, took a long drag on the cigarette that Tracey had given her, those big brown eyes full of mischief and asked, ‘… listen to rock n roll?’

When I told her I most certainly did, she got up on that stage and played me some. I guess I fell in love with her right there and then, and it’s been that way ever since. I started hangin around Earl’s and then another couple of bars she played, and we just began seein each other. Then, when the rent was up on her apartment she just moved her stuff into mine. One night when we was lying on our backs in bed, looking up at the ceilin after just having made love, she said, — You know, I think I’m gettin better, maybe growin up a little. I got a boyfriend who ain’t an asshole.

I quickly quipped, — Just add alcohol, honey, but grinnin at her through the darkness, I was thinkin, maybe it’s ol Raymond Wilson Butler here who’s the one that’s getting better. Cause sure as shit there ain’t gonna be anymore alcohol.

I was researchin the Halliday book and bangin out my screenplay of Big Noise, which took up a lot of time, but I liked to go out with Pen when she played. Some of those bars were rough dives, and although she could look after herself, I guess I worried about all sorts of things, from guys hittin on her to perverts and stalkers.

But that night she was sittin alongside me in the Land Cruiser, a little tired after the gig, maybe a little drunk after the six Pabsts and four Jack and Cokes she’d had. (I couldn’t help countin, I’m conditioned to do this now.) She said to me, — You know, if I came home with a guy like this before, I’d be all tough and bitter. Now I can be exactly as I like, in that I don’t have to think about it.

We went to bed and slept in each other’s arms. We would wait till the mornin before making love.

The next day Pen headed out to the bookstore, while I got back to Big Noise, and pretended I was a real writer. I wrote me a long list of what the problems with my first draft were. The main one, and I guess what most of the others kept comin back to, was Julia, my hard-assed Texan matriarch. Yeah, my agent Martha Crossley was right. She was thinner than a wet piece of newspaper. Problem was, I just didn’t know who she was. At first I thought of her as based on my own momma, then a twisted version of Jill, and at one stage I even considered that she just might be Martha. Every time I clicked on my laptop though, I had the feelin that I was making this thing worse instead of better. I sat until my head throbbed, then went to the DVD and watched Ditchwater Creek for the hundredth time.

I realized that it was almost lunchtime and I’d achieved nothin. I tried to call Pen to meet for some lunch but her cellphone was off again, so I called in at the store. We went to a pretty gross place in the mall, where minimum-wage kids dispensed poison to the other storeworkers and housewives present. It was good to see her comin toward me, that wild mane of hair fightin to get free from the black velvet band it was tied in, and those bangles, bracelets and rings danglin from her wrists, fingers and ears. I needed to talk to somebody, and there was nobody like her.

— You’re being too hard on yourself, honey; finish the Halliday book first, then go back to Big Noise, she implored me as we ate our club sandwiches. — Your head’s all over the place. Take the advice you always give me: one thing at a time, huh?

— I guess so, I smiled, — at least if I knock out another chapter on that this afternoon, I’ll feel that the day won’t be wasted. Maybe I’ll land that big-buck car commercial shoot, I laughed, givin up on the shit I was eatin and pushin my paper plate aside, — then at least I’d have some money and I’d have to work to the discipline of a damned schedule. Then again, hogs might just fly over the state of Texas.

Pen winked at me and made some kinda clickin noise. — You’ll get it, baby. I got a feelin about this one.

— Like you had that feelin about that Majestic Reptiles video I didn’t get?

— You were number two, honey, she grinned. — You’re gettin closer all the time.

— As close as I’m gonna get, you mean. I’m always shortlisted; the dirty ol bridesmaid who’s been round the block once too often to ever get the goddamn gig.

She stood up, and brushed some crumbs from her jeans. — Well, I gotta leave my sweet little bridesmaid and get back to work, and she bent over and kissed me, then as she went, pulled out the back of my collar and tupped down the ice she’d left in her drink.

— What the f—I yelled, then laughed as it melted down my spine and the crack of my ass.

— You know I’m a bitch, she smiled, blowing me a kiss as she scampered across the mall, her heels clickin on the polished granite floor, — but I love you!

I got up and walked out to the parkin lot, my back and ass bone dry in the bakin heat by the time I got inside the Land Cruiser. I went home and did what I suspected would be the only writing I ever could: a straight hack job on my Glen Halliday book, transcribed from the tapes I’d made talking to Yolanda.

The next day I was back out to the Halliday Ranch, or the Marston Ranch as I should have probably started callin it. It seemed ol Glen was only an occasional tenant, sleepin off his hangovers: hangin his head in between shoots and hustlin for cash. I started to imagine his life with Yolanda as more like my later life with Jill; all slammed doors and long silences, punctuated by drunken, yellin rows with a sad ‘where did we go wrong’ lament in postscript.

Yolanda greeted me with another pitcher of her homemade lemonade, and as I stepped into the cool house it sure did feel good to get some respite from the furnace outside. I immediately noticed that she seemed unsteady on her feet. Her eyes were red and she’d discarded the swimsuit for a red tank top and white pants. Although it was nice and cool here, there were beads of sweat on her face and her breathin seemed mighty labored. — This is Sparky, she explained, pointin at a stuffed cat on her window ledge. I hadn’t seen this one before. I had gotten used to old Esmeralda, but this was a mangy, mean-looking sonofabitch. — I brought him up to see you.

— Nice, I said, looking at that pouncin cat. It was as stiff as Esmeralda, but it didn’t seem nearly as placid. Then I spied a small stuffed dog, some sort of terrier, standing guard outside a restroom.—That’s Paul, she told me, — after Paul McCartney of the Beatles.

Paul looked a feisty lil ol sonofabitch. The glimmer in his glass eye and his full set of exposed teeth made me feel happy that his little butt was stuffed. — Humphrey do these?

— No, I did these ones by myself, she told me, moving across to her cocktail cabinet where she mixed herself a gin and tonic. — I wasn’t formally trained of course, but very few practicing taxidermists are. I picked lots up through helping Humphrey. Then, when I married Dennis, I kept it up, she wheezed, as she lowered herself into a chair and bade me to do the same. I did, and placed my tape recorder on the small table by her side. — He was a big hunter, an NRA man, and he got me stuffing and mounting his prey. I did a bunch for him, but I got rid of them all after he left. She pursed her lips. — I found it disagreeable to have wild creatures killed for sport. I preferred to work on the ones I loved, as a tribute, so I’d remember them for all time.

She explained to me that the two cats and the small stuffed dog were old pets of hers. Ditto the two lovebirds in a bamboo cage she pointed out to me, hangin over the entrance to the kitchen. — I couldn’t let them go, you see. I loved them so much, she said, the recall makin her a little distressed. — I was embarrassed to show you them. Do you think I’m a crazy woman, Raymond Wilson Butler?

Funny, but it didn’t really bother me none. — No, not at all. I can see why you do it. Some people have their pets buried or cremated. You’ve got their remains there, to remind you of them.

She seemed not to hear me. — I still talk to them, Raymond, she contended, still lookin right on at me, — and I swear that there are times when I can even hear them talking to me. Does that sound strange?

— Not at all, ma’am, I told her. — I reckon that sometimes we just gotta take comfort where we can, I smiled, stretchin over and laying my hand lightly on the soft, white flesh of her arm. I could tell she was more than a little drunk, and sure enough that bottle of gin by the cocktail cabinet looked far from full.

I guess some folks might have found it a little weird, but the woman was just lonely. Way I see it was she had the money and the skill and it was a hobby that gave her pleasure; something that she had shared with Humphrey, the real love of her life, and it probably made her feel a little closer to him. Yolanda struck me as just another eccentric flutterin harmlessly in the twilight, doing what helped make her feel good. This state was full of em, ol boys and girls, brains sizzled in the heat, slowly crumblin into more desert dust.

Miss Arizona.

I thought about Dennis. If Nice Guy Humphrey was husband number one and Dirty Larry number three that must have made him number two. — What happened to Dennis?

— Oh, that was one that I did end myself. She shook her head and looked almost accusingly at me. — Right after he broke my jaw.

For some reason I sort of assumed that ol Dennis was another drunk, and one of the worst kind. — So Dennis was violent in drink?

— No, the weird thing was that he seldom, if ever, took a drink. Didn’t need it to be a complete bastard. With that goofy smile and his churchgoing, sober ways, you’d’ve thought that butter wouldn’t have melted in his asshole, she slurred, the liquor now visibly taking effect on her.

I shot a tight smile back at her.

Something flared in her eyes. — Put me off sobriety for good, she spat bitterly, movin to the glass and fillin it up. — Ironically, I met him through Humphrey, she smiled, instantly becomin more whimsical at the recall. — Dennis Andersen was one of his best clients. He seemed a perfect gentleman, and I guess to the outside world, that’s exactly what he was. Then I found out he’d had two previous wives, one in Albuquerque, one right here in Phoenix, that he’d left looking like busted fruit with nothing more than a pile of hospital bills.

Unfortunately, this recollection sparked off another diatribe. The problem with this was that Yolanda was now more inebriated than I’d seen her before. She was growin mighty shrill while talking about Dennis, wailing like a tomcat in heat and highly resistant to my attempts to steer the conversation back to Glen Halliday. I started to wonder just how well they knew each other. Guess I was thinkin again about Jill and me: lovers for years, strangers at the end. And how when the love goes the stranger is the only damn thing you can ever recall.

I made my excuses and prepared to embark on that long and lonely drive back into Phoenix. It was then that Yolanda went kinda weird on me. Pulling herself up out of that old chair, she teetered toward me. — Please stay a little while longer, Raymond, she begged, — I really like talking to you…

She took a stumble forward and I had to catch her and steady her or I swear to God her ol blubbery beauty queen butt would have ended up on those cold tiles. — Hey, come on, Yolanda, you just had a little too much sauce and you’re a little tired, I smiled, tryin to make light of things. — Maybe you should lie down. I can all come back tomorrow now, y’hear?

Her face was now rodeo-assed red and her big, watery eyes not much far from the same as she looked up at me and pleaded, — You’ll bring a tape of your girlfriend singing and playing her songs?

— Sure, if that’s what you want.

— I’d like that, she said, as she steadied herself. — It’s so good that the both of you have a talent. A talent can never be allowed to go to waste…

— Well, we’re both tryin, I guess. I smiled at her and made my excuses and left.

By the time I got on to the road it had gotten plenty dark, which I didn’t mind. Just drivin in that silent night, sometimes I could feel the past fadin in my synapses, and blowin through me, like a howling ghost across that desert. It made me want to stop, so I got out for a while, just to look up at that silver moon. It settled my brain, and made me focus back on the things that were important to me; Pen, my work and specifically the Big Noise screenplay and the Halliday book, in that order. The key to it was that it had to be a book about Halliday, not about an old gal with four husbands, sitting out in exile in the middle of nowhere.

When I got to the apartment, Pen was waitin up. I was tired but she wasn’t and that gal wouldn’t say no. Then afterwards, my head was buzzin and she was soon fast asleep. — You’d best check the messages… she said as she fell into a slumber, — gonna miss you, boy bridesmaid… or is it bride…?

I looked at her, tried to shake her awake. She just turned around, eyes still shut, mouth a little open and murmured, — The voicemail… you gotta check it…

I did. To my delight and astonishment, Martha had called from LA, telling me that I’d been offered the car commercial I was being touted for! It paid big bucks, and for three weeks’ work — one recce, one filming, one post-production — it would keep me on the Halliday book for around six more months. On the downside I guess it meant that the next draft of Big Noise would have to wait just that little longer again, but nobody, least of all my agent, was holdin their breath for that one.

I thought about ol Glen Halliday, who would have laughed in their faces and talked about the integrity of the artist to some post-grads in Austin or Chapel Hill for two hundred bucks, his gas, and a couple of nights’ free minibar at the local Holiday Inn. Or so I thought. More likely he got Yolanda to supplement things by writin him out a check. I sure wasn’t going to turn into that version of Halliday. Pen worked long hours at that bookstore during the day and the gigs in those shitty bars at night and I was determined I wasn’t going to be no kept man. And this was as near as damnit a six-figure check for three weeks’ work. I wasn’t even gonna debate with myself the possibility that I might say no.

I couldn’t sleep, so I sat up and looked at my notes on Halliday. Just who in hell’s name was this sonofabitch? A Texan who loved Texas but hated what it had become: a place where Ivy Leaguers and religious nuts could wave the flag and we’d fall in behind it and fight pointless wars for their oil. Or perhaps he was just another scumbag hypocrite who used people, women, for what he could get out of them; an insecure actress whose head he fucked more than her pussy and a crazy heartbroken ol gal sitting on a gold mine in the desert.

In the mornin I said a sad goodbye to Pen and packed up for the long drive to LA. It would take me two days. I was driving out to see Yolanda first, then I’d take the interstate. En route at a gas station I picked up the newspaper and checked the terror-alert coding (orange) and the burn limit (fourteen minutes).

Passing Earl’s I saw the pool guy, Barry I think she said his name was, going in with his buddy. Something made me stop and get out and follow them inside. I checked out his pickup truck in the lot outside as I went by; an ’88 Chevy with a sticker in the rear window: ‘Ass, Gas, or Grass — Nobody Rides For Free.’

I squinted as I got into the almost empty bar: dark and cavernous after the blindin light outside. Barry Pool Guy and his buddy were shootin eight ball in the corner. I sat on a bar stool for a spell, readin the paper and watchin some of the play from the previous evenin’s ball game. After a while, Pool Guy came up and bought a couple of beers. — Hey, you work over at Mrs Halliday’s, I said.

— I work a lot of places, he snapped back, an ugly ol leer distortin his mean face even more.

I shrugged and turned back to my paper. The kid was an asshole. I finished my club soda and left the bar and climbed back into the Land Cruiser and took that long and dusty drive out to Yolanda’s. It wasn’t a comfortable ride. The confrontation with the kid at the bar was eating at me; it was minor pussy stuff, especially when I think of the situations I got into when I was full of liquor, but I was annoyed at puttin myself in a position where I could be rebuffed in that manner.

Anger burned me, and I guess I wasn’t concentrating too much on the road. I heard a swish, then a thud, followed by an almighty clatterin sound tellin me that I had hit something. I stopped and saw the outline of a doglike figure splayed out in the road. It was a coyote, and by the looks of it a full-sized one. I approached the sonofabitch warily, but it seemed to be dead. I pushed at its head with my boot. Yep, it was gone. But the gray-and-yellow body looked unmarked by the impact of the car; it wasn’t torn open, and I could see no blood from the mouth, ears, or eyes. It looked like it was asleep, as if it was an ol pooch curled up in front of the fireplace, cept its eyes was kinda half open.

Suddenly I heard the sound of a vehicle approaching over my shoulder. My heart sank as I turned and immediately realized it was a goddamn police car. One patrolman got out, and started moving slowly toward me in a loping John Wayne stride. Evidently he was worried that I still didn’t take him for a grade A1 asshole, so he kept his shades on as he addressed me. — Goin a little fast, ain’tcha?

— I wasn’t aware, officer, I—

— License and vehicle registration please.

I figured it would be pointless arguing so I complied and produced the documents. He took off his shades to study the paperwork and smiled at me. He was a country goofball; a snide, pig-eyed mutant with a small, petty heart masqueradin as a good ol boy.

He looked back at his partner in the car, a fat guy who was munchin through what looked like a taco (I knew there was a Taco Bell a couple of miles along the highway). This guy shot me a look that said, ‘If I gotta get my lardy ass out of this car, there’s gonna be big trouble.’

— We got ourselves a little problem, John Wayne grinned, exposin big, capped teeth. — This coyote fella, he’s listed. Means a shitload of paperwork for me, all these environmental types gonna be up in arms. How far you goin, mister?

— I’m just over to Loxbridge, I—

— Fine. That’s in the next county, out of my jurisdiction. Now what say you just get a hold of this roadkill and stick him in the trunk of your nice big car, and when you cross that county line, maybe a respectable few miles inside, sling him out by the side of the road? Then I can get on with doin the things folks in this county want me to do.

— Well, I—

— That would be us quits. What d’ya say?

I swallowed hard, my rancor tastin like bad whiskey in my gut. — Yessir, I appreciate it.

This prick was full of shit. Ain’t no damn state in this Union gonna list the coyote as a protected species; since we killed all the wolves they were as common in these parts as squirrels in Central Park. We both knew this, of course; the mean bastard was bustin my ass just because he could.

All talk was gonna get me was a night in jail, so I moved over to the coyote and grabbed its front and back legs in each hand. I’m a pretty strong guy, around five ten and one hundred and eighty pounds, but I was strugglin in the heat with the shiftin weight of the thing. The asshole cop looked around all furtively, checkin nothin was comin up on us, then helped me bundle the ol boy into the back.

As he moved back to the patrol car, where I caught Fat Boy shaking his head in petulant disgust as he crammed more gut-filler into his mouth, John Wayne gave me a mockin salute. — Drive careful and have a nice day.

— Thank you kindly, officer, I smiled through gritted teeth.

I had a dead animal in the back of my wheels, which would start to stink it out in this heat before I got close to the county line. I was livid and I couldn’t but wonder what Halliday would have done. Would he, like one of them stoical, rebel heroes in his pictures, have just taken the night in the county jail for the pleasure of comin out with some smart-ass line? Or would he have done the same thing as me? It was right about then that I got me some inspiration. I was going to see what Yolanda would make of this one.

I drove real slow, nervy after the encounter with the cop. I crossed the county line but didn’t stop till I got to Yolanda’s. The big gates were open and I pulled up as close to the front door as I could. Hell, it was a hot one. Yolanda opened the door, and as I went to step in, puttin my hand on the frame, a lizard jumped out from nowhere, danced over my old mitt, then ran up the side of the house. It froze for a second, pulsin slowly in the heat before slurpin into a crack in the wall like some vacuum had sucked it in.

It sure was a more sober Yolanda who greeted me this time around. — I’m so sorry about my behavior the other day, Ray…

— It’s your home, Yolanda, you can act how you darn well please out here, it ain’t nothin to do with me. I’ve mentioned my past with the drinkin, so I ain’t hankerin to sit in judgment on nobody else, I told her. And it was true; sometimes I couldn’t believe that I’d gotten out of LA in one piece, save for maybe a little liver damage. Now I was goin back, but this time sober and to some proper work.

— But it was so bad-mannered, she said, rubbing my arm. Under the cold air it made me shiver suddenly. — And you must think me so weird, all my stuffed animals!

— No, ma’am, as a matter of fact I got me somethin that just might interest you, and I bade her to follow me. We stepped back outside into a heat that sucked the cool right out of me in two seconds. Through its haze I stumbled toward the Land Cruiser, as heavy as a drunk, and showed her what I had in the back. It was already starting to smell, but Yolanda didn’t seem to notice none.

— Oh, he’s beautiful; a beautiful boy, she said appreciatively. — You can help me cape this one. We have to get him inside, quick.

— What do you mean? I stood there scratchin my ass, as Yolanda pushed a button and a motor rolled the big garage doors open. She grabbed a trolley, which looked more like a gurney with its alloy frame and strong wheels with rubber tires. It was adjustable; through a handle at the back she lowered it to the height of the rear of the Cruiser, allowing me to pull the coyote onto it. Its body was slack in the heat, still too soon for rigor mortis.

— Caping is when you skin out your trophy, she explained as we wheeled the stiff animal into the house. As I cooled off, Yolanda vanished down into the basement, returnin with a set of white linen which she draped over the kitchen table. On her instructions I managed to wrestle the dead beast from the trolley onto the table. — The most deft skinning needs to be around the delicate parts, the eyes, nose, lips, and ears, and it’s always best to leave these to a pro.

— I’m more than happy for you to run the show, ma’am, I told her as I raised my hands to my face, catching a scent of the dead animal on them.

Yolanda headed on down to the basement again, comin back with what looked like a large aluminum toolbox. — Problem is that a lot of hunts happen in warm weather and it just ain’t always possible to cool the hide adequately. Most trophies are ruined in the first few hours. As soon the animal dies the bacteria begins to attack the corpse, she explained, clicking the box open. There was a power saw and a series of sharp, surgical-looking knives, as well as plastic bottles containin various fluids, some of which had the odor of strong spirit. — Heat and moisture is the ideal environment for bacteria to flourish. Caping spoils in the same way as meat does. That’s why I have the big fridge downstairs. How long has he been dead?

— About an hour and a quarter. Hit him back in Cain County.

— Well, we ain’t got time to waste, she mumbled, as she pulled out a knife, looking for a second like she was gonna stick it up the poor ol boy’s dead ass.

— This is the dorsal method of skinning, she explained, making the long cut from the base of the tail to the neck. Knock me stone dead if that carcass wasn’t pulled out in that one incision, leavin the head and feet inside the skin. There was very little blood. I heard a terrible bone-crackin sound and shuddered as she snapped the neck from the body, usin what looked like large nutcrackers. I winced as I watched her cheerfully unravel the beast, like she was peelin an orange, as she continued to enlighten me. — This is a good method on long-haired animals. Now I have to take him downstairs to freeze immediately.

She had the animal by its head, and it reminded me of a toy teddy bear I’d had as a kid: the stuffin had come out of its body and there was just a long tadpole-like tail of cloth hanging from his neck.

— Can I help you downstairs? I asked, lookin a mite distractedly at the pile of meat and bones left behind on the trolley.

— No, I’ll do the rest later. You take that carcass to the incinerator out back. Can’t miss it, it’s the big rust-colored thing. We gotta burn it or the buzzards will come. Stick it in there and I’ll fire it up later.

I don’t mind admittin that I was a little squeamish as I got the skinned dog’s body onto the trolley usin the sheet and wheeled it out to the incinerator. Out back, the house thankfully shaded me from the sun’s merciless blast, though I could feel my sweat ducts opening up. I spied an old wire broom and once I’d opened the metal door and adjusted the trolley height to its level, I used it to push the now stinkin bastard inside, as dirty big flies that had come from nowhere started buzzin round like small bats, makin my guts churn. I was happy to get back indoors to that kitchen as Yolanda shouted up from the basement, — Ray, honey, mix me a gin and tonic, will ya? Plenty of ice!

I wasn’t raisin much in the way of objections to kickin back a little. I did as she requested, refilling my own lemonade from the pitcher, though I gotta say that it was tastin a little sour in my belly now. I headed back into the kitchen and poured myself a big glass of water from the dispenser on the fridge. — Shall I bring it down to you? I shouted.

— Nope, you just hang fire and I’ll be up in a second.

I was so pooped after my efforts in the heat that I just lay down with my back on the cold floor, spread out like the savior on that ol cross, and God, did it feel good. I looked back at ol Sparky, then my eyes drifted across the room and there was an addition I hadn’t seen before: a huge German shepherd, lying with its paws spread out in front of it.

Yolanda returned quickly and sat back to enjoy the drink.

— I’ll start to mount it later, she said as I reluctantly dragged my own carcass off that cool floor and into the chair by hers.

I pointed at the big dog.

— That’s Marco, she said, — one of the best pieces of work I’ve done. He was such an angel, honestly, Raymond, the sweetest puppy you ever met. Somebody poisoned him, I don’t know who, but I have my suspicions, she spat, thinking, I guess, of one of her would-be property-developer neighbors. Things must have got pretty ugly at one time, but I was sure as damned that Marco’s puppy years had long passed when that big sonofabitch cashed in his chips. — Anyway, she said, more breezily, — I decided to bring some more of them up from the basement for you to have a look at.

This had all been a great education for me, but it had taken some time and with LA and the Volkswagen shoot on the horizon, I reckoned that commodity was getting a little scarcer. I quickly got settled and asked her about the husband she had before Glen Halliday.

— Larry Briggs was an alderman in town. Ran twice for state senate. The horniest sonofabitch I met, she said fondly, before her tone soured. — Problem was quite a few others knew him that way too. The main difference between Larry and Glen was that when I found Larry was after the ranch, for the water, it came as absolutely no surprise.

— What happened to him? I raised the cool, clear glass of liquid gold and contemplated it for a moment, then put it to my lips.

— Who knows. I reckon he ran away with some damned slut who fell for his smooth talk. That type never was in short supply. He’d had it here. After two failed state senate attempts nobody wanted him on their ticket. I wasn’t going to fund his drinking and womanizing, so he left. Last I heard he was down in Mexico. The strange thing is that in a roundabout way, I met Glen through Larry. She now sounded a little wistful. — Glen was doing a film about the water politics of Arizona and he talked to Larry and some other would-be developers. Came out here to see Larry, who by that time was gone. So we struck up a friendship. It was platonic… well, drink-based at first, and she reached for the bottle to recharge her glass. — I knew he was a lush from the off, but he was fun back then. I think at first he liked it here, liked being away from LA, which he always loathed, though he was always flying up for meetings.

— What about New York? How did he feel about the spiritual home of American independent cinema?

— Not a whole heap better.

That kinda made sense to me. All people who live in LA do is to say how shit it is, even if, I suspect, half of them don’t mean it. In New York they all tell you how great it is and I suspect that half of them ain’t properly convinced either. — I thought they’d be more understandin of what he was trying to achieve there.

— Perhaps at one time. Yolanda shook her head. — But I got the impression that he resented the new breed of independent filmmakers that were working there. I think it was because they were getting things done while all the doors were slamming in his face, she explained and she started, for the first time, to talk about Glen’s work and his future ambitions.

That ol coyote had eaten into our time but it was still a good session for me, I got the best stuff yet from her. But then things changed kinda sudden when I told her about the car-ad shoot and that it would be a few weeks before I saw her again.

Yolanda looked at me like I’d just announced the death of her firstborn. I’ll be darned if that blood didn’t just drain from her face. — But I will see you again, won’t I? she squealed.

I was pretty much taken aback at her reaction. — Course you will… that is, I mean, if you feel I ain’t just wasting your time. You’ve told me so much already, I—

— Please come back, Raymond, she begged, hoistin herself up outta that chair as I started to rise with her, — there’s some other stuff I have to tell you about Glen, some things I need to show you.

— Yes, I sure will, Yolanda… But can’t you tell me now?

— No, no, no, she said, with a brisk shake of her head, — we don’t have the time and I must let you go while I tend to our coyote friend.

All the while, though, I had noticed that after comin back from the basement the last time, she had let her hair down. At the time I had a horrible feeling it was for my benefit. This was confirmed when she gave it a fancy ol shake in my direction. Once upon a time that gesture and the accompanyin smile might have broken some buck’s heart into pieces, but right now it was grotesque in its ugly ol desperation. I couldn’t keep the repulsion outta my face and I guess she kinda caught it.

— I’m so lonely, Ray. So damn lonely. I was, even with Glen, she sobbed, shakin her head miserably.

— Yolanda…

— But you will come back to me, won’t you, Raymond? she implored again, steppin forward to grab my hand in hers. Her grip was surprisingly strong. This close I could see ol-hag spines of hair sproutin from under her nose and on her chin. — I’ve so many more stories I want to tell you.

— You bet, Yolanda, and I pulled her close to me and we hugged for a little while. But in that embrace I felt the sorry despondency on her part and, in turn, I must confess I felt pretty damn sad for her. But when it came to say goodbye she was already distracted, staring off into space, light years away. I let myself out.

When I got outside, I twisted my Dodgers cap round to cover my neck from that sun creepin up behind the house. That asshole Barry had arrived and he was carryin a silver tank on his back, which seemed to continually explode in the dazzling sunlight. He was comin round the side of the pool and we couldn’t avoid each other. Our eyes met in a now mutual sneer and I held it, forcin him to break off first, his shifty eyes contemplatin God’s earth.

It was a sad-ass victory but in spite of that it flushed me with triumph for a bit, as I climbed into the Cruiser and took off, Brad Paisley’s ‘Waitin on a Woman’ fillin up the car sweetly as I got out onto the interstate. At a station I filled up on gas and struck out for LA. Proper. I drove hard for a bit, trying to make good time on the highway so that I could goof off part of the journey along the back roads. A long red twilight, broken only by south-headin doves in flight for the river, stretched out before me as I slid off the interstate. I loved passin through them small towns, all the time hearin the thud and cranking of digging machines, and as the night fell, the barking of dogs and the mariachi music, while the low trees, covered as they were with insects, clicked, snapped, and whirred their own little tunes.

When I got to LA I was pretty beat but still runnin on adrenalin. The shoot went well. I got to be back behind a camera, and I’d forgotten how much I loved that. The concept was simple, the kind of shit that me and a million other would-be filmmakers could pull off with style and panache, without sweat touchin our ass cracks. What we basically did was to parody the car chase along the concrete dried-out LA riverbed in the movie To Live and Die in L. A. We emerged onto the streets outside a hospital and our faggot model jumped out with his heavily pregnant ‘partner’. We finished with the byline: ‘For Little Things That Just Can’t Wait’. None of us was foolin ourselves it was too smart or original, but then again it was an ass-fucking car ad. The big difference was that this time I wasn’t the bitter stiff in some Hollywood bar looking up from his stool at the finished product on-screen, saying how easy that shit was and how the guys who did that stuff were assholes getting paid top dollar for jack. I was the guy doin it. And they cut that damn check in time and whatever anyone said it felt pretty fuckin good.

Back at my Santa Monica rental at night, when I didn’t have Pen on my mind, which wasn’t a whole lot, I kept thinking about Yolanda and her needy hunger. Cravin so much from people but lockin herself away, just incubatin that loneliness. So that when someone did come into her life, her desperation flooded them.

My script, Big Noise, seemed to keep on comin to mind, particularly the character of Julia. She was the reverse of Yolanda. That was her problem, she didn’t seem to need much of anythin from anyone, but was still in everybody’s face. One night, looking out from my balcony toward the Pacific, which was a few blocks away but felt like about twenty miles, I got to thinkin that maybe if Julia was older, faded, less cool, less in control…

Suddenly inspired, I got up, went to the kitchen table and clicked on my laptop, firing up Final Draft. I sat down and I pulverized that goddamn keyboard, scarcely believing those fingers were mine. As a writer I had always been a plodder, a diligent chipper. Now I was blazin, locked into my subconscious, and the pages were flyin out of me. Over those next three nights I bashed out another draft, still buzzin on the adrenalin and plenty of strong, black coffee.

I ain’t too stiff-assed to admit that I was tremblin with excitement when I took my disk down to a local Kinko’s and printed off a hard copy. When I read it I couldn’t believe how good it was but I tried to calm myself down. I know writers have a way of foolin themselves that what they’ve just done is the one. Sure, I figured that I should maybe stick it in a bottom drawer for a few weeks, see how different it read once I got a little distance from it. But for some reason I didn’t, I just read it again and went with that feelin, emailin a copy straight over to Martha.

The next mornin she calls me, her voice uptempo. I’m more excited than ever but I soon hit the earth with a bump. — Sorry, darling, I’m delighted that you’ve finished another draft of Big Noise and I’m happy to receive it, but I haven’t checked my email yet. It’s just that I have some very good news.

Then she tells that I’ve been offered this video shoot I’d been previously told I’d just missed out on, from this guy representing this hot new British band, the Majestic Reptiles, who were going to be touring out here next spring. The dude they had lined up had been in a motorcycle accident and had to pull out. And the money was good. Maybe not as good as the car ad but it sure wasn’t bad and it would be good to have somethin else on my showreel, which you couldn’t file under ‘fucksploitation’. I’d probably only got the gig as I was available in LA at the time, but fuck it, sometimes you need a goddamn break. Things were certainly lookin up, but my mind was elsewhere. — But you will look at the new draft of Big Noise, Martha?

— I promise you I’ll read it right now, if you promise that you’ll lighten up a little and celebrate your good fortune. Deal?

— Deal.

I was as good as my word. To celebrate I took two ol LA-based friends, Brett and Evan, out for a drink at the Chateau Marmont. For a bit it was just like old times except that I was the only one who wasn’t on the sauce. I kept thinkin bout what a motley crew we were; the porn rigger with ambitions to be an art-house writer/director, the standard LA wannabe-actor/bartender, and the songwriter who gigged in sleazepits like Pen’s, but who wanted to write film scores that would make Mancini wet his pants. As was our sad routine, we’d sit there fantasizing about our imaginary movies, casting then rejecting everybody who came in: Keanu, Kirsten, Val, Bob, Colin. Then, through their increasing inebriation, Brett and Evan made me painfully aware that I was the cold ass sipping the mineral water. As they blasted off to that other planet, I could feel their resentment bubblin thinly under the surface of the evenin. They grew belligerent and bitter as they decried the success of others, while I sat bored and tight-lipped for the rest of the night. I felt a blessed relief when it was time to piss in the fire and call a halt to proceedins. I ran them home to Westwood and Venice Beach respectively, the broken, desperate dreams of drunks crashin around in my ears. I couldn’t see no role for me in their lives but as permanent designated driver. Which is another way of sayin I could see no goddamned role at all.

Then the next day Martha called again. I swear to God I’d talked to her more in that last week than I had in five years of being on her agency’s books. But when she started to speak I didn’t know which one of us was the most awestruck. — I can’t believe what you’ve done with Big Noise, honey… it’s a work of art… no, forget that, a work of genius!

It was me who couldn’t believe what I was hearing. This was Martha, and that gal had never exactly been prone to hyperbole. But then again, I guess I hadn’t given her nothin much to get carried away about. — I’m glad you like it—

— Like it? It’s so completely realized… and Julia… she’s totally unrecognizable from the first draft. Look, I’m sending this straight off to Don Fennel in New York with a ‘read immediately’ tag stuck on it. God, what a streak you’re on right now, honey!

I called Pen with my good news and she decided to take a few days off to fly to LA, which cheered me up no end. Every spare moment I got we just hung out in Santa Monica; makin love, watchin television, eating pizza and Chinese, catchin rays and lookin out to the ocean. One day we were just hangin out on the beach at Venice, watchin some surfer dudes doing their thing and somehow the ‘M’ word came up. I dunno who started that kind of fool talk, but it all ended with me asking, ‘Will you?’ and her saying, ‘For sure.’ As we trawled round Santa Monica until we found a suitable ring, we were both joyous, and even the fact that she had to head back down to Phoenix couldn’t take the goofy smiles off our faces.

We floated around on cloud nine, makin plans, or rather scenarios of happiness; moving up to LA and finding our own beach apartment, taking Pen to meet my folks who were gettin on and who’d appreciate new, younger blood in the family. Life couldn’t get much better than this, surely. Then Martha called sayin that she wanted to meet me for dinner. She wouldn’t tell me what it was about but she sure sounded excited. We arranged to meet in a restaurant on Wiltshire and for the first time she was earlier than me. More importantly, she was lookin like the cat that got a whole big bowl of cream.

— I don’t quite know how to say this. Don Fennel loves your script so much he wants to produce Big Noise. He’s confident he can raise the cash. You did say four point five million dollars, right?

I was so convinced that she was dickin me around, I wasn’t even slack-jawed about this ‘news’. Don Fennel, after all, was one of, if not the, hottest indie producer in America. — Don’t do this, Martha—

— I told him that you had to direct and he was cool with that, she said. It was round about then I saw she wasn’t jokin and I had to stop myself shoutin at the maître d’ for a vodka Martini. Martha pointed to the glass of Dom Pérignon she’d already had. — I know you don’t, but I must. Darling, Fennel absolutely loved the showreel. If you can shoot it for four point five million—

— Of course I can!

— Then it’s definitely going to happen!

— How can he love the goddamned showreel? It ain’t nothing but a handful of ads, pop vids and a couple of shorts that did zilch at the half-assed festivals they got screened at! I gasped. I couldn’t believe it. This just all seemed too good to be true.

— I tell you, I’ve never seen Don Fennel so excited about a script. I said to him, ‘It reminds me of Halliday.’ He just scoffed and said, ‘When was Halliday ever as good as that?’

I almost fell off my chair at that one! The world had gone crazy! I’ll swear by my momma’s sweet life on a warehouse full of Bibles that it was the best week of my life! As I got back down to Santa Monica, Pen was packing her bags for Phoenix, and her eyes widened as I punched the air. I grabbed a hold of her, coughing out my news and we bounced on the bed laughin and foolin, until our eyes met in some primal gaze and we were helpin each other out of our clothes.

Afterwards, she sat up in bed and lit a cigarette. She rolled her eyes and said, — Now, honey, I really have to go.

The band’s shoot was scheduled for two days but took the best part of four. This was all down to the lead singer, who, like many of that breed, was a sullen, irritating, uptight asshole. At first he said that he didn’t want to be in the video. I told him that it was a long way to come from London just to catch some rays and get decent sushi, which he didn’t much appreciate. Then he wanted to wear a stupid leather jacket and a deerstalker hat and cavort with a bunch of models done up as cheerleaders. I was probably emboldened by my stock risin so dramatically lately, so I cornered their manager, a nice guy called Asad, and told him, — Tell that Limey bag of shit we do this my way or I fuckin walk.

To his credit Asad did, and after a band meeting, they decided that I was the man in the chair. The singer asshole, Tommy Sparrow they called him, well, he was hostile for a bit, before he did this complete about-face, spendin the rest of the shoot following me round like a fuckin puppy dog, telling me I was cool and wanting to get loaded with me. With his attention-seekin, he was still a tiresome pain in the ass, and I think I even preferred him sulky. Nevertheless, we finished the shoot if not on time then on budget.

All this and the other shit had shown me that I wasn’t really interested in Yolanda no more. I had all the material I needed on Glen Halliday. And that was who the book was going to be about, a great artist that was at the height of his powers, not some ol lush in decline with a drunken nutcase recluse of an ex-beauty queen turned crazy old crone.

All I needed from Yolanda was some specific information about the circumstances of Glen’s death. But while I was here in LA I had another opportunity to find out who the hell Glen Halliday was. There was a woman he spent ‘a lot of time with’ when he was out here, according to Sandy Nugent’s buddy, Jenny Ralston. And Halliday was out here a lot. Although he did most of his shooting on location in Texas, or occasionally Florida, he had a contact in an LA studio lab, and they let him do for cheap all his editing and post-production up here. He was also in town a lot on that relentless hustlin for cash merry-go-round that dominates the indie film scene.

His friend’s name was Andrea Lyons and she lived up on the hills in Pasadena. Andrea’s home was a smart colonial-style dwellin in an affluent neighborhood favored by Hollywood types. A big convertible sat in a three-car garage. Andrea herself was well groomed in a trashy kind of way, quietly smug with her lot, looking pleasantly surprised by the hand life had dealt her. She gave off the smell of a cocktail waitress who had snared and married the suit at the bar with the big bucks. There was somethin kind of upliftin about this gal, somethin that raised the spirits. I didn’t ask about her husband but I guessed that he was working away on some business trip, as she was very candid about her relationship with Glen Halliday. She told me that she and Glen were an item when he was in town. — I knew that he was hooked up with some mean bitch down in Phoenix, she said, taking a big drag on a Marlboro. — She had this useless old water farm but wouldn’t sell it.

So there it was, straight from the horse’s mouth. Glen Halliday was a gold digger and he was cheatin on Yolanda. I had this information confirmed and I now didn’t know whether I would bury it or use it.

One thing I figured for sure was that it was time to get the hell out of Arizona. It had served its purpose. Pen and I decided it made sense to move up here and Evan knew enough people in town to get her gigs. I reckoned I’d now be making enough to help her in her music career, just as she’d helped me in my screenwritin one; get her some studio time, good backing musicians, and a quality demo tape knocked out. Hell, I was even thinkin of her and Evan in terms of scoring Big Noise.

I loaded up the Land Cruiser, paid my dues on the apartment, booking it for another six months for Pen and me, so we could find somewhere good at our leisure. Then I headed out of LA. This time on the drive down there were no self-indulgent detours, it was interstate all the way. When I crossed the state line into Arizona, I called Pen but her cellphone was switched off; again, no surprises there. I dunno why she bothers with them at all. You could see where she got the habit: bookstores, the stage, recording studios. When I got tired on the road I checked into a motel and watched trashy TV. I felt high, like I wanted to celebrate, so drove to a truck stop and instead of liquor bought a tub of Ben & Jerry’s and headed back to my motel. I watched some reruns of Sex in the City feelin like a goddamn pussy without really caring too much about it.

The next day I was up later than I intended. Hadn’t slept so long or so well in an age. Sun was near as damnit overhead by the time I got back on the road. After drivin most of the day, when I got to the apartment there was no sign of Pen, and her mobile was still switched off. It was a Saturday, and she never worked the bookstore those days. I figured I’d take a run out to Earl’s Roadhouse. It was dark by the time I got there, and I entered with anticipation, though I guess I was also a little tentative in case that asshole Barry was in. But I hadn’t seen his truck outside, nor, for that matter, Pen’s car. Ol Earl spots me right away and comes across. He told me that she ain’t on tonight and that she ain’t stopped by.

I looked behind the bar. No Tracey. Of course, it was her night off every other Saturday and she and Pen often went out for a drink together. It was their night to grab a bite and sink a few beers and I couldn’t begrudge them that; not being a sauce hound anymore I always worried that I was maybe just a little borin in company. I reckoned I’d leave them to it and elected to drive out to Yolanda’s, calling her first to check that it was okay. She seemed flustered — probably drunk — but was pleased to hear from me. She told me that she had some company she needed to get rid of and would appreciate it if I could hold off for a while. That suited me fine. I went back to the apartment for a while, lookin over the latest draft of Big Noise. This, I said to myself in satisfaction, was why I met Yolanda. I got so carried away I guess I lost track of time. An hour had passed. I called Pen again, without expectin much, knowing that when she and Tracey got together it was party time. Then I headed outside and back into the Land Cruiser and out of Phoenix. The dark sky seemed infinite as I cruised down the highway, thinking about Yolanda. This would be my last interview with her. I was kinda concerned that she’d go all psycho-bitch on me after the last time, but I’d never seen her so calm and serene. There was a wild glint in her eye and a crooked smile on her lips as she stood in front of me wearing a white smock and black slacks. — I seem to apologize to you a lot lately, Raymond. I’m sorry if I was rather undignified at our last meeting, she said. — But I assure you there will be no more apologies.

— No problem, Yolanda. I raised my hand, brushin off her concerns. — But I gotta tell you that this is probably gonna be our last meetin. Got some good news workwise; I’m movin back up to LA, then I’m shootin a movie down in Texas.

— I had kind of anticipated that, she said, with a kinda grim, distracted cheer. — You’re an ambitious man, Raymond Wilson Butler. You’re definitely going places.

I guess I was finding it hard to keep the crap-eater outta my smile. It was true. I was goin places. Yolanda got some drinks: a gin for her, and my usual lemonade. I ain’t sure whether it was cause I wasn’t gonna see her again, or perhaps I was just being an arrogant jerk, too flushed with my recent success, but I decided to ask her about her plastic surgery routines. — You… eh, I touched my own face, — had a little work done?

— Stating the obvious, huh? She laughed, not at all offended.

I went to protest but she silenced me with a grandiloquent wave of her hand.

— Don’t worry none. It was a long time ago and he wasn’t exactly the best guy in Beverly Hills, she grinned. — In fact he wasn’t in Beverly Hills at all, just some rat-bastard suburb in Houston. She laughed loudly at her own wit. Her face looked more gargoyle-like than ever at that point, nerves frozen with bad cutting and the stretching of old dead skin.

— What made you decide to go under the knife?

— It was Larry Briggs got me into that. Thought if I looked a little bit like how I used to, back when I was queen of this damned state, then I might be good for some votes when I was on his arm. I admit, though, I didn’t take too much pushing. She smiled sadly. — One strives to keep beauty with one.

I looked over at ol Sparky; way the light hit his glass-eyed stare it seemed alive, feral. Then there was Marco, forever loyal, waitin patiently by the door.

She caught my eye on them. Gave me a nod that was slow, knowin, and that creeped me out a little. — The coyote is done. I’ll show you him in a little while; he’s down in the basement. We have to think of a name for him though, Raymond. I think that you should pick one.

I was thinkin about how that mean coyote followed me everywhere, like I couldn’t get rid of him, and then I recalled Tommy Sparrow, the lead singer in the Majestic Reptiles. — Thank you, ma’am. How does Tommy sound to you?

— Tommy it is, she said with a grin as wide as the Mississippi. — To Tommy the coyote. She laughed and raised her glass and I found myself guffawin along with her.

When we stopped, it was with a nervous silence on my part and a cold detachment on Yolanda’s. I came clean and told her that I was shiftin the emphasis of the book squarely back toward Glen’s work, and away from her story and his personal life. She looked at me quite harshly for a split second, and I don’t mind sayin now that her glance set something crawlin down my spine. Then she seemed to grow more thoughtful, noddin slowly as if to encourage me to go on.

I sure didn’t want to sit around here much longer. There was just one thing more I wanted to know about. — I need to ask you, ma’am… when Glen went…

— What makes you think he’s gone?

A sudden big chill came over me, and this house no longer seemed cool, but as cold as death. I forced a laugh. — Yolanda, I’ve seen the headstone in the cemetery. His place of burial, back in the family plot in Collins.

— C’mon, honey, she said brusquely, standing up and moving over to the door leading down to the basement. I followed her down the metal steps. We came into a small room; it was nowhere near large enough to run the full length of the house. It had a concrete floor and stone walls, which had been whitewashed. There was a reinforced steel door and a porthole window next to it, all steamed up with condensation. She unbolted the door and ushered me forward. — You can go in, but be very, very quiet, she whispered. I hesitated, but only for a second, intrigued as to what in hell’s name was going on in there.

Because I suddenly saw it all in my head: Halliday was still alive! I had this fantastic vision of him bent over the desk of an editin suite in a secret basement studio, splicin together his masterpiece. I was so convinced, I was even startin to rehearse my greetin in my head.

Mr Halliday, sir… this sure is a surprise.

As I stepped over a metal ridge at the bottom of a door frame and into the room, a mist nipped at my eyes. This place was so cold, like a great refrigerat—I turned quickly, alarmed, but the door slammed shut behind me. I pushed hard but I could hear the bolts slidin over. I banged on the door with desperate ferocity as the cold stung my bare arms. — Yolanda! You fuckin crazy… but I could feel the fear rising up in me with the cold, takin the fight from me. — C’mon, cut it out… I was pleadin. — Look, we’re gonna stay in touch…

And then I saw her face in the porthole; monstrous, bloated and white as her voice crackled from a speaker above me. — They all want to go, but they never can. We all stay together. Always.

— Yolanda, this is crazy… and I turned to take in the room as my eyes adjusted to the mist. Then I could see them all standin, the four of them, lookin at me, their timeless eyes of dead glass starin ahead.

Glen Halliday, those coal-black beads sunk into his hangdog face. That red and dark blue gingham shirt and those stonewashed blue jeans that were a kind of trademark. The still thick gray hair, slicked back. He even has a bottle of beer, a Coors Lite, in his hand. And then there are the others; Humphrey Marston, with that look of intense concentration on his face that he must have brought to his job, sittin at his desk workin on a small animal. Standin behind him, Dennis Andersen, a rifle slung over his shoulder. He’s replete with that toothy, wholesome smile which probably never left him, even as his finger squeezed on the trigger to blow away some animal, or the back of his hand snapped out to bust a woman’s chops. And then there’s Larry Briggs, standin at a lectern, immaculately suited: rakish and shifty, even in death.

The four horsemen of her own personal apocalypse: that twisted ol witch. I pulled my cellphone out of my pocket. — Goddamn you, you sick old fuck—

— You won’t get a signal in here, my darling. This ‘sick old fuck’ has had the walls lined. It’s signalproof and soundproof. So please do spare yourself the terrible indignity of shouting and screaming for ‘help’. Poor Glen was such a terrible baby. A man so cynical about life in his latter days, but how he begged to hold onto it when his time came. Strange that, don’t you think?

I ignored the crazy old hag. There had to be another way out of this place…

Her voice was rantin on, cracklin through the speakers. — Who the hell do you think you are, Raymond Wilson Butler, with your artist’s conceit, thinking you can come into my life and take, take, take, just like the rest of them, get me to spill my guts and then walk away when you’ve had your fill? Cause it don’t work that way, honey! Not here!

Then I saw the door to an anteroom and made toward it. The coyote was standing there, hunched, ready to pounce through the mist. — You can’t go in there, I got Tommy to guard it, you see, Yolanda’s voice mocked.

I moved forward warily but as I got closer I saw that the coyote was as dead as a dodo. Sure enough it was the old boy I hit; twisted into an action pose by Yolanda’s craftmanship. I kicked it over and my hand gripped the cold brass handle on the door.

— I really wouldn’t go in there if I were you, angel, she cooed.

— Fuck you, you fat crazy ol bitch!

I pulled it open and as soon as I registered what was inside I fell to my knees. All I could do was scream no no no over and over again, as I looked up at her chemical-gray skin that devoured the meager light in the room. She had a guitar in her hand, and her mouth was open, blastin out a silent power chord, frozen that way for all time.

— Such a lovely girl. I went to see her play and then I invited her to come around. I think you’d made her a little curious about me. It took me a while to do her, we had to work very hard through the night to finish her, Barry and myself. He’s my son, you know: and such a big fan of hers. But we wanted her ready for you. This will be your little place together.

As the cold slowly starts to seep into my bones, because she’s turned it up now, all I can do is sit here in a defeated heap as my head starts to spin and I hear her voice, ol Miss Arizona, sayin, — You’ll always be together now, Raymond, we’ll all be together!