Wetbones

5

Culver City, Los Angeles

"Hi – I'm Sargeant Sparks. I'm looking for Jeff Teitelbaum…?"

Even the cops here had the irritating California habit of making statements sound like questions, Prentice thought, looking up at the open living room door. So, like, I'm going into therapy tomorrow? And I've got all these abandonment issues?

Well, Prentice always wanted to ask, do you or don't you?

Prentice got up from his perch on the arm of the sofa and stood awkwardly trying to decide if he should let the guy in or wait for Jeff to come out of the bathroom. "Uh, yeah -"

But then the bathroom door banged open and Jeff crossed to the front door. "Yeah, officer, right here," Jeff said, opening the screen door for the cop who stood there. "C'mon in."

Officer Sparks was shaped like a bowling pin, narrow shoulders and wide hips. He wore thick-rimmed designer glasses and an air of weary authority. He had a sad, panda face. He came in carrying a clipboard.

Every so often the walkie-talkie clipped to his belt muttered to itself and cleared its throat of static.

"Have a seat, officer," Jeff said, rubbing his palms against the hips of his khaki shorts. He was nervous, working too hard at not actively hating the cop for being a cop.

"We've been looking into your report about your brother Mitch Teitelbaum?"

"Right," Jeff said "Mitch." He stood by the door as if ready to open it for the cop again as soon as possible.

"And we've gone out to talk to Mr. Denver?"

"You personally?" Prentice asked. He wasn't sure why it seemed important.

"Hm? Yes sir, I went myself. Me and another officer. We came to the conclusion that the boy is not there and Mr. Denver doesn't know where he is. But maybe I should ask – have you heard from him?" He smiled with one side of his mouth. "We're looking for him, too. He's supposed to be in Juvie Hall. For all know he's in the next room sleeping it off."

"He's not here and we haven't heard from him," Jeff said. His voice flat. "What do you mean, sleeping it off?"

"He was doing some time for -" He glanced at his clipboard. "Possession of cocaine. Chances are, he's on a run somewhere."

"He's not a drug addict, he's not 'on a run'." Jeff crossed his arms over his chest, then dropped them by his side, then crossed them over his chest again. "Did you guys search the Denver place?"

"No sir, we didn't have a warrant and we'd need a lot more to go on than the word of a kid you talked to in Juvie Hall."

Prentice considered bringing Amy into it. Her turning up dead, her connection to Denver. The credit card. The stories of the More Man. But it would seem irrelevant to the cop. One thing at a time, please. Just the facts. And it sounded kind of silly to Prentice, now, when he imagined explaining the connection.

''That guy Denver is up to some weird shit," Jeff said. "I know he is."

"Seemed like a regular Malibu producer type to me," the cop said. "Which means he might be up to some weird shit, but probably not kidnapping. I get a feeling about these things, I learn to respect those feelings, you know? The kid is not out at the Ranch. That's my feeling… You have any evidence of kidnapping you haven't given us?"

Jeff chewed his lip. Finally he said, "No. But -"

Sparks scribbled on his clipboard, then glanced around, as if it had just occurred to him that they might be in "possession of cocaine" themselves, since Mitch had been. Thoughtfully, he said, "You have any evidence of kidnapping, best thing is to go to the FBI. One of their specialties." He looked at Jeff. "Do you think, sir, that Mitch could be hanging with some of his drug-using buddies? I mean – we have to assume, given his record -"

"That's all. Forget it, man. We should have known better," Jeff said sharply, opening the screen door so hard its hinges squealed.

The cop stood up, glancing around the apartment, stalling. "I was going to ask if I could use the phone -"

"They got one at the donut shop," Jeff said, gesturing toward the door.

The cop's jaws worked and his cheeks mottled. "This isn't a good way, sir, to get help from the police," he said, crossing the room.

"Nothing from nothing is nothing," Jeff said, slamming the door after the guy. "Christ!"

He and Prentice looked at each other. Then burst out laughing. Prentice's laughter more genuine. "'They got one at the donut shop!'" Prentice repeated, shaking his head, laughing.

Then he stopped laughing, and said, "Hey."

Jeff was crossing to the kitchen. He paused and looked over. "What?"

"He said, The kid's not out at the Ranch. That was the way that fat-ass cop put it. Like…"

Jeff nodded. "Familiar, calling it the Ranch. Like he was using a nickname for it. Like he knew the place pretty well…"

Los Angeles

Ephram was tired. But'they were nearly there. It was eight p.m., just getting dark in the California summer, and the Porsche was flying along the Santa Monica Freeway, on its way to Venice. There were more palm trees, now, and the traffic had eased. The sky was going brown-violet at the horizon.

He glanced at Constance. He felt the ache, again, that had been plaguing him. Her eyes were sunken. Why did this bother him? He knew it would happen. It always happened. Her expression was composed and happy. The way she kept it.

Ephram shifted down as the traffic thickened, people up ahead rubbernecking a minor accident.

She hates me, he thought.

Then he thought: No, she doesn't. Because I have her soul in my hands, and I make it perform for me like a small, trained animal; I squeeze it and reshape it like gelatin. She feels what she is commanded to feel. And it certainly wouldn't matter, if she did hate me.

The traffic slowed to a crawl; his attention was freed up. So he reached into her. Without even looking at her, no acknowledgement from him about what he was doing but a faint, smug smile on his lips; he reached into her brain with the 'plasmic fingers and squeezed her pleasure centre. She squirmed on her seat and moaned. He prompted her and, accordingly, she said: "I love you, Ephram."

He looked at her. No, she didn't love him.

He could make her mean it, though. He reached more deeply into her…

"I love you, Ephram," she said, turning to look at him, her eyes glazing with devotion, with sentiment. But her voice betraying a hint of desperation.

A black cloud swirled inside him. "No. you don't."

He reached over and grabbed her hand and began to squeeze her fingers together, hard. She whimpered with pain. "Now you love me?" he demanded. "When I do this to you?"

"Yes!"

He squeezed harder. Could feel the bones in her hand on the verge of cracking. She cried out.

He hissed, " Now you love me?"

"Yes. Yes." No pleasure in her now, just pain and fear and the steel corset of his command: Tell me you love me.

He let go of her hand, but reached under her skirt, grabbed her pubis, through the filmy panties and began to twist the soft handful of skin and flesh. "Now you love me?"

"Yes. Yes. Yes!"

She experienced no masochistic enjoyment of this whatsoever. He could see that clearly.

He twisted her crotch again. Harder. "You hate me."

"No, I love you."

"Hate me."

"Love you!"

He could let go of her mind and see what she said. She'd probably still say she loved him, out of fear.

"You disgust me," he said, letting go of her.

Then he gave her a charge of pleasure, to keep her quiet. She made a low, humming sound and nestled deeper into the leather of the bucket seats.

Maybe, he thought, if I spent enough time at it, I could make her really sincerely love me, giving her no option but that. Enough pressure on the mind would bend it into any shape at all. And that would be sincere love, wouldn't it? What sort of ridiculous contortions did people go though – and put others through – to make people love them, in ordinary relationships? This was more honest.

It would be real love. As much as there was such a thing as real love…

He wished it were night, so he could see the stars, look for guidance in the secret constellations. The sunset was taking its languorous, smog-blurred time. The lights of the city were glimmering brighter in the twilight. The drug dealers would be out on the street… And some of Denver's people, too, would be there…

Probably stupid to come to Denver's town. Could I be steering myself to self destruction, somehow? he wondered. Why did it matter so much what the girl felt today?

What was wrong with him?

He gave himself a small jolt of pleasure – something he was very cautious about doing, normally. Didn't want to bum himself out.

But he felt better, almost immediately. The evening took on a different cast. It went from tragedy to comedy.

When they drove up beside the traffic accident, they had a good long look It was worse than he'd imagined. There was blood and broken glass.

If he'd been here at the time, he could have made the victims of the traffic accident enjoy the crash, the mangling. Have to try that sometime. That'd be funny. A little auto-motive psychic tampering. That'd be a gas, ha ha.

The bitch hates me.

The San Fernando Valley

"I'm sorry, sir, we were told invitations only. You got to have a printed invite." He was a stocky, gum-chewing kid of about nineteen in a Burns Security uniform, with walkman earphones pulled down around his neck. He'd stopped them walking up the drive to Arthwright's place. It was a long, circular drive leading to a modern, jutting house with as many round windows as square ones. In the balmy evening, soft red and blue "Malibu" lighting painted blush and eyeshadow on the house's facade. The drive was ornamented with a cactus garden and miniature palms. Jags and Rolls-Royces and BMWs and Corvettes and the occasional Volvo lined the drive, nose to tail. "You can stay, sir," the security guard was saying to Jeff, "but -" He looked apologetically at Prentice and shrugged. "Sorry.''

Jeff said, "This is bullshit, this guy is my partner and he's a good friend of Arthwright's -" Both exaggerations. "- and Arthwright's gonna be pissed if he doesn't get in. He didn't know Tom was in town -"

"Forget it, Jeff," Prentice said. This was typical of Jeff – and of Prentice. Jeff was a pusher, a don't-take-no hustler; Prentice was a more cautious angler.

The guard was squaring his shoulders and shaking his head, when Jeff spotted Arthwright stepping out the gate to say goodbye to someone. Arthwright's voice came to them distantly. "I just wished you coulda stayed longer, Sol – it's so great to see ya -"

"Hey Zack! Zack!" Jeff fairly shrieked it.

Prentice winced. "Christ, Jeff, forget it!"

Arthwright was about to go back through the gate – he looked up, spotted Jeff, and strolled over, one hand in a pocket of his casual dinner jacket – worn with jeans – the other scratching the back of his head. "What's the problem – um, you're Jeff, right?"

"Yeah, man. Jeff Teitelbaum. You know my buddy Tom Prentice here – we're having some trouble getting past the Gestapo -"

The guard heaved a theatrical sigh. "You told me no invite no entrance, Mr. Arthwright."

"That's okay, Billy, I got this one covered. Keep at it." Arthwright waved for Jeff and Prentice to follow him.

"Look, I don't mean to crash the place, Zack," Prentice began. "Jeff seemed to think since he had an invite it was for two -"

"Sure, sure, no prob," Arthwright said, leading them in through the wooden backyard gate. There was a TV camera mounted on a pole above the gate post. Prentice could feel its cold lens watching the back of his neck as they went in.

"Make yourself to home," Arthwright said, in a mimicry of a generic country accent, "and I'll get you a drink." He stepped up to a small, portable bar that had been rolled in on casters, spoke to the bartenders, good-looking Mexican fellows in white tuxedos.

Prentice looked around. Jeff had said it was a Pool Party, but no one was in the pool. No one was even in a swimming suit. They milled about the ornamental-tile verge of the pool with cocktails and little plates of mesquite grill, or sprawled in aluminium loungers, in the soft rippling of reflected chlorine-tinted pool-lights. Soft Mexican music played from hidden speakers.

"Our special Sangria," Arthwright said, returning with a frosted glass in each hand. He passed them to Jeff and Prentice, winked, and said, "Party hearty." And vanished into the house.

"He wasn't pleased," Prentice said, feeling humiliated by the whole episode. "We probably pissed him off. And I'm trying to get a deal with him."

"He's probably embarrassed you didn't get an invitation," Jeff said. "Don't worry about it."

"Last thing you want to do is embarrass a guy like that." He forced himself to add, "But thanks for getting me in."

"You hungry?" Jeff asked. "I'm starved. But I don't like this mesquite stuff. Trendy bullshit. They had catered Dim Sum at the Studio's release party -"

"And Dim Sum's not trendy? You must be kidding. It's like Sushi. Most Americans can't stand that stuff but they choke it down -"

"Hey I fackin' love Sushi, man. God, check out that platinum blonde. Holy shit. God, do the legs never stop on her? Be still, my heart."

"Your heart's not the organ in question."

"Oh, listen to Mr. Sensitive. Boy, you stupped so many of these bimbos -"

"Not these, I'm sorry to say. You think maybe that one's had surgery? Her breasts are too perfect."

"Not necessarily. There're more beautiful girls – oh God look at that one, half Japanese and half black. That's, like, the most beautiful combination – uh, anyway," Jeff went on, after breathlessly gulping his Sangria, "there really are more beautiful girls in Los Angeles. It's the movies, they draw 'em like a magnet. For seventy some years now. All that money, all that glamour draws 'em, and they come here and get married and they have kids and there's a whole gene pool of incredible women here -"

"And guys who look like that one." Prentice nodded toward a tanned, muscled young Adonis in a muscle shirt and loose, fashionable, San Francisco tie-dye pants. He strolled by, talking about His New Project with an anorexic model-who's-really-an actress.

"Guys who look like that make me sick and they should all die," Jeff said, joking but with a spice of real envy.

"Half of these people probably had cosmetic surgery, man. Five years ago all these L.A. Jewish Princesses had their noses clipped and straightened – now it's fashionable to have a prominent nose with a little bump so they're having the bumps put back! I'm serious!"

Jeff and Prentice wandered slowly through the crowd, catching bits of conversations, checking out the Looks. A group of tanned, muscletoned people with elaborate razorcuts were passionately arguing about the benefits of free weights as compared to Nautilus machines. Another group advised one another on where to get Sushi without any worms in it. There were trendy punks too, the Beverly Hills variety with all their rebellion acquired in expensive Melrose shops; there were a great many people in white peon shirts, with raw crystals on thin gold around their necks. At least half the crowd drank Perrier and Calistoga instead of cocktails and Sangria and the Mexican beer. Only once did Prentice spot two people disappearing into the bathroom together. "Hardly anyone does cocaine anymore," Prentice said, "And that's good, and health is in so a lot of people don't drink, and that's okay, but it's like they all replaced it with Narcissism. Even the women are body builders."

Jeff nodded. "I'm getting back into working out myself. Hey, we sneer about it cause we're in bad shape. I'd love to look like Mr. Perfect over there, I admit it. But no way I'm gonna give up drinking. I'm gonna get that bartender to put a big shot of tequila in this thing."

"I'm with you, man."

They went to the bar, stiffened their drinks, and ran into a few of Jeff's friends and a line producer Prentice had worked with. A couple of drinks later, Prentice began to relax. The Mexican music was replaced by another trendy appurtenance, a House Music DJ who played mostly hip-hop mixed with 60s Motown classics. A dozen couples danced self-consciously beside the pool. Arthwright waved cheerily at Prentice as the producer threaded through the crowd. This time Arthwright seemed genuinely friendly. Maybe this was the moment to hit him up about commissioning the script. Or at least get some kind of feedback.

No. Chances were Arthwright hadn't read it yet and, though lots of Business was done at parties, it wasn't initiated by a guy lower on the pecking order. Talk of business at a social event had to be among equals, or initiated by the holder of power; the one clinging to the higher rung. Anyway, Arthwright had gone from view, now, sucked into the social vortex.

But he reappeared minutes later with the platinum blonde in tow. She was a tall, busty, blue-eyed woman, tanned and leggy, very much the California girl except for the black lace see through corset under her open red shorty jacket; the black lace corset was more of a New York club-scene look. She wasn't wearing any crystals, at least. She had ceramic Mexican Festival of the Dead ear-rings shaped like happy skulls, and figured-silver snake bracelets with little emerald chips for their eyes, and a rather cryptic tattoo on one shoulder. He couldn't quite make out the pattern…

"Tom, this is Lissa," Arthwright said, grinning like one of the Mexican skulls. "She wanted to meet you – she's a fan of Broken Windows!"

"Really? A woman of rare taste," Prentice said, "especially if you actually bought a ticket in the five minutes before it went to video." Trying for charming self deprecation.

She smiled. There was a ruby in her one of her incisors. "Oh yeah. I bought a ticket and everything."

Arthwright had drifted away and Prentice felt at a loss for a moment. She looked at him with finely tuned expectancy. He went for it. "You one of the 12-step crowd that only drinks mineral water, or can I get you a drink?"

"I'd really love a beer," she said. Her voice was husky, warm, its tone seeming to say, Don't worry about it. Just take it easy and we'll be fine.

He went hurriedly to the bar. Jeff was at the other end, hitting on a skinny girl with Mayan designs cut into the hair on the sides of her head. Ordering the beer, Prentice had a moment of uncertainty about whether to include the slice of lime; lime with beer had gone from hip know-how to unhip fad, lately, but she might expect it. He discarded the lime, and came back to her with the beer, and she smiled and said, "Dead on."

Prentice was feeling better about the party all the time. Sure, the girl was probably going to be a typical L.A. air-head, but what the hell. Take some time and live, man, he told himself. Maybe the sense of emergency that'd been dogging him was a phantom. Maybe Mitch's disappearance wasn't really his problem. and it wasn't so important. Maybe it was time he put Amy out of his head too. Because there was nothing he could do about her. And as a lot of L.A. bumper stickers said, Guilt sucks.

"So – you work with Zack?" he asked. As if he were on a first name basis with Arthwright.

"Well, not yet. I'm a model. But really I'm an actress…"

He nodded mechanically – then she giggled behind her beer bottle. "You nod so gravely, but I saw the look in your eyes. I was kidding. I'm not a model or an actress. I'm a secretary at the studio. But Zack fucked me a couple of times and, in consequence, he feels like he has to invite me to parties so he doesn't feel like a shit."

He almost choked on his drink.

"I'm sorry," she went on. "Am I supposed to be less candid than that?"

"No, no – that's great -" He laughed. "You got me twice. Once with bullshit and once with the truth."

"Yeah. You're fun. Maybe I can say something to make you trip and fall into the pool."

"Have mercy, okay?"

"Oh, all right. I really did like Broken Windows.

I thought I saw that funny-and-sad middle period of Truffaut's in there."

"Yep. You got my influence on a platter. That period of Truffaut and – sometime I'd like to do an updating of Noel Coward."

"Noel Coward for the 90s – that's almost a high concept pitch. Except the illiterate MBA's that run things around here never read him or saw his plays."

"Good point," he admitted. "You like Kurosawa?"

The conversation veered between film makers and novelists and painters, and Prentice felt good about it. He felt he was coming off up to date and reasonably witty. Necessary groundwork for getting laid.

The innuendo flickered from time to time, the flirtation, the lingering moments of eye contact. Then she said, "Hey – let's go look at Arthwright's etchings. I wanta show you something…" She led him away by the wrist as Jeff watched, catching Prentice's eye to put on a comical look of disgusted envy.

Near Malibu

The same moment: another party. A flame-twisted shadow of the party at Arthwright's…

Mitch was watching it out the window, peering between rose-vines. There was music playing, that foreign sounding music with its slightly-warped record but an unwavering beat. There were people dancing but they had the look of extras dancing in a rehearsal for a movie, just going through the motions in an absent sort of way. There were knots of people talking with drinks in their hands, but they all seemed forced and furtive; and each one glanced, now and then, toward the doors of the guest house. Or toward the green, green darkness of the pool.

There was a wind; the roses nodded heavily on their vines. Trees at the edge of the backyard, their clutch of leaves scaly with the slippery sulfur light of the fire, swayed like stoned junkies. But despite the wind the surface of the pool was motionless, glassy as polished green-black obsidian. Perhaps the houses blocked the wind down there (did he hear a noise from the next room – something scraping across the floor? Weren't those two dead yet?) but no, he could see the breeze lift the lank blond hair of a sunken eyed hipster standing six feet from the water, and hustle a few brown leaves along the pool's edge. But the water remained motionless.

Maybe it just looked that way from this distance. (A drawn out scrape from the next room. Why didn't they…)

The light came from the moon, from a couple of table lamps brought out on extension cords, looking awkwardly out of place. Couldn't the dude afford better? Not one of his priorities.

And there was more light from a fire in an outdoor fireplace…

No, it was a bonfire, Mitch saw, looking closer. And it was made up of chairs. A couple of the wooden chairs that had been scattered around the terrace had been piled together. Someone had shoved rags under them and lit the whole thing on fire. The crumbling, burning frames of the chairs looked like the weird geometric structures you saw in your head when you hallucinated on drugs…

Thinking about drugs made him think about the Head Syrup. The painkillers weren't enough.

Someone came into the three intersecting circles of light – the larger wavery yellow circle from the fire, the two smaller duller steady circles from the lamps at opposite corners of the terrace. It was a tall, thin woman with stooped shoulders and hanging, flattened breasts – he could see her tits clearly because she'd slipped out of the arm-loops of her gown and peeled it down to her waist so it hung like an apron. She was walking from the guest-house, carrying something that squirmed in her right hand. It was a thatchy yellow cat. She had it by the tail. She approached the fire and swung the cat underhand into the fullest depths of the flames. Completely engulfed, blinded and turning itself end over end in nerve-rioted confusion, the cat managed only one single high note of anguish before it went into shock.

Mitch looked away, muttering, "You fuckin' assholes."

No one reacted to the small, sadistic event. The woman only stayed to watch for a moment and then, expressionless, walked back toward the house.

Then, abruptly, she stopped walking. She turned, began walking in a new direction. Her feet suddenly uncertain of themselves, moving erratically, she walked a twisty line to a large white metal table around which sat six people. All of them men, one of them the More Man.

The woman pushed between them, shoulders twitching, and climbed onto the table. She flopped heavily onto her back, drew her knees up over her stomach like a surrendering dog, and began to claw herself, slowly and deeply.

Mitch wanted to look away but the More Man glanced up at his window. Seemed to see Mitch there, despite the shadows and the rosebushes. And Mitch found he was unable to look away from the scene.

How did she get the strength to do that to herself? Mitch wondered distantly, watching. Skin was really pretty strong stuff, after all. Peeling it away like that with your bare hands must be hard to do. Once she got the skin out of the way, though, the stuff underneath came more easily. It was much softer, most of it.

Someone got up from the table, walked to the pool. A middle aged man in one of those Mexican suits with the ruffled shirts and glowing lavender lapels. The guy in the pretty suit turned his back on the pool. He got down on his hands and knees, and then lowered himself, filly dressed, into the pool.

No ripples spread out from him as his body broke the surface. Just as his head vanished under the green, green waters, Mitch saw his expression change from indifference to terrified realization. Then he vanished without a ripple.

Mitch watched a while, expecting the guy to bob up again. Nothing.

He looked over at the table. The formerly white table was red, now. The men sitting at it had drawn their chairs back to avoid the pooling blood. The woman was steaming, faintly, from her wounds, and not moving any more. The More Man was looking up at Mitch's window.

Mitch was unable to leave the window. He looked away from the More Man, to the expiring bonfire of chairs where a greasy black twist of smoke screwed into the sky.

The Valley; Arthwright's Party

The first time he touched her, he was instantly twice as drunk.

They were in a large bedroom and there were indeed etchings on the wall, 20th Century work with an avantegarde look about them but also a sense of having been selected for interior decoration alone. There was an empty closet, and an open door leading to a small bathroom with a shower. They were perched on a large, circular bed with a golden spread, a brandy-coloured rug, and a wall to one side that was entirely mirror, the glass flecked with streaky black inlay, it functioned as a mirror for voyeuristic sex, but the black flecks attempted to disguise it as simple decoration.

As if in anticipation of their arrival, the overhead light had been already dialled low when they came in, and house-mix music pumped gently from some hidden stereo speaker. They could hear, through the curtained window, the muffled murmur of voices from the party still going on downstairs.

Prentice and Lissa, on the edge of the bed, made out with the economy of motion displayed by experienced adults. Prentice holding her slumped in his arms, their tongues swirling one another, mouths turning this way and that together as if seeking an unlocking combination that never quite turned up. Lissa undulating her torso, just enough to caress his pectorals with her breasts.

She pulled back and looked at him, amused. There was a faint flush around her mouth and her eyes were sleepy with arousal. ''You look a little freaked out," she said. "You've got that, 'This is so sudden!' look."

The reply that came into his head was, You're pretty familiar with that look, I take it? But instead he said, "It's more like pleased surprise."

"Now there's a writer's expert escape. Let's see if…"

The rest of it went unsaid: she didn't want to intimidate him into a bad performance by saying something challenging like, Let' see if you have the same expertise in bed.

He did feel off-centre. Not that it was the first time he'd snuck sex in an upstairs room of someone else's house during a party. He'd been working in Hollywood for a while. There were lots of rooms in this house and this one – being dusty and unused, its open closet displaying only empty hangers – was clearly a guest room where they weren't likely to be caught. But it was a little dismaying, being drawn so rapidly and seamlessly from the superficially friendly atmosphere of networking at an Industry party, to the seamy backroom perversity of a cheap porn video.

He told himself again relax and enjoy it. Question life too deeply and you miss its rewards. Who was that guru he'd liked when he was a teenager? Ram Dass? Be Here Now, Ram Dass had said. So, Prentice, be here now, he ordered.

He pulled her to him, a little roughly, and sought out her lips more hungrily – and he got that drunken feeling again, when they kissed. It was like the feeling poured out of her, into him Like a drug that came from her touch. He'd felt strange, exquisite sensations passed to him in sex before, but never anything this intense. This distinct. This strange.

Was it being in love? That seemed… an inadequate explanation. Whatever it was, it coursed furiously through him, and changed him as it went. The misgivings melted away, as he and Lissa melted together, pulling off their clothing and wriggling up onto the middle of the bed.

They were nude atop the bedspread. He took time to say, "Maybe we should get under the covers. The sheets might be more comfortable -"

"No!" She said it rather sharply. "No. I like it out in the open." She turned to look at the two of them in the mirror. And then rolled out from under him, crouched beside him and began to lap expertly at his hard cock. She took it deeply into her mouth, after a while drawing back, almost letting go of the straining organ, running a kiss down its length… tracing the pulsing veins…

Glancing up at the mirror.

Ten minutes later they'd shifted again, and Prentice was pumping into her, distantly aware of the music, Steely Dan segued into some mindless but on-target Madonna number. He was kneeling between her legs, pulling her buttocks toward him as he thrust, feeling rush after rush of the druggy sensation ripple through him; she was playing with her breasts – for herself, for him, and for the mirror…

Prentice closed his eyes to savour the sensation – and somehow this narrowing off focus opened a new channel to him. He seemed to see himself as she saw him, rearing over her like a raging horse, mouth slack, eyes wild, the skin of his chest mottled with flush and glossy with sweat. And then he saw the two of them in the mirror, as she saw it. The mirror provided a voyeur's charge of objectivity that somehow tightened the concentration on the act, for some people; crystalized it in the mind. She was one of those people. Staring at the two of them, focused on the three of them in the mirror…

Three of them. The guy on the other side was the third.

A guy sitting in the dark, rocking slightly on his chair, watching them through the trick mirror. Face unseen, hidden by shadow and by turmoil. Something writhing in the air like a nest of transparent snakes…

But the vision faded and Prentice felt himself drawn, quite powerlessly, into the sucking void of orgasm.

Prentice stood in the guest room's shower, feeling unreal, and a little sick. Drained; still mildly buzzed. She'd said, "You use the shower first. You know how women are, it'll take me forever to get myself back together… There's a bathroom down the hall I can use. I'm just gonna slip into my dress for a second and run down there… the Back Room Sprint, it's called… Now gimme a kiss. And we'll meet downstairs at the pool." She'd been tender about the parting, after having mouthed the usual "God you must think I'm so cheap" stuff which neither of them believed even before he gave her the ritual reassurances. It was obvious to him that she had no real regrets or insecurities about the incident at all.

Now, in the shower, feeling the water but not feeling it, as if someone else were showering, he thought of the vision he'd had, the voyeur behind the mirror…

Bullshit, he told himself. You're just stressed out and a little drunk and way paranoid, God knows.

And then Prentice returned, feeling dislocated, to the party. He seemed to see everyone in a new light, now. He could see the various mating dances, now that he had less reason to perform one himself. What odd contortions they put themselves through…

God, he thought, what's odd is me. Seeing things. Feeling drugged without drugs. Something put into my drink? No. It wasn't like that.

Where was Lissa? He didn't see her. He saw Jeff, though, waving at him from a lounge chair by the pool.

Jeff didn't look happy. Standing near Jeff, smiling crookedly, was Arthwright. When Arthwright looked over, nodding at Prentice, continuing that tilted smile, Prentice knew he hadn't imagined the man behind the mirror, and he knew who it had been.

Near Malibu

Mitch was watching the heavy set woman being carried to the pool, but he was thinking about his Mom.

She had left Dad, she said, because he was a drunk, that was the weird thing. Hypocritical bitch. After the divorce she started to get drunk all the time.

He remembered when she'd come home and taken him into her lap and kissed him on the neck and there was something sick about that kiss…

Not just the smell of liquor, although that always made him sick No, it was a lingering kiss and there was something about it being on the neck, on the throat; a sense of being used for something. Like a sex toy, he realized now, though she'd never actually touched his dick or anything.

Why was he thinking about this now?

The woman was actively struggling now, as a group of five men dragged her to the pool; she was grinning with effort and hysteria. They were nearly there.

They'd changed the music. Now it was an old Madonna song, Christ, from years ago. Material Girl. But then somebody turned the record player's speed down, so it was playing it at 16 rpm, and Madonna was singing baritone, I'm-m-m-m l-i-i-v-i-i-n-g i-i-i-n-n-n-n uhhhhhhhhh m-m-muhhh-t-earrr-i-i-www-urrrr-lll-dd…

Mitch was still thinking about his Mom; how she'd have a few drinks and start whining, almost crying.

Using him for a sympathetic ear. But shit, he was only a kid. How was he supposed to help her? It made him feel all shrunk up inside.

Aaaa-nnnn-d l-i-i'm uhhhhh mmmm-uhhhhh-t-e-eerrr-i-i-i-uhhhh-lll guh-ernrrrllll…

Once in a while he'd try to get away from Mom by going to his Dad, asking could he move in with him. He wasn't really able to tell Dad how weird it felt living with Mom. But Dad was mostly into his guns, all he wanted to talk about was guns, and the one time they were going to "do something together" he'd got Mitch down to an NRA volunteer office to help stuff envelopes for some anti-gun control mailing. His Dad would change the subject when he tried to talk about how he didn't want to live with Mom any more, and changing the subject was a message to Mitch, told him that Dad didn't want to get around to the possibility of Mitch moving in with him so that meant he didn't want Mitch around… Didn't really want Mitch at all…

So big deal, Big, fucking deal.

Someone switched the record speed again, this time to 78 so Madonna was keening:

I'm living in a material world and l'm a material girl oh l'm living in a…

Now they were peeling off the big woman's clothes. Her rolls of fat and tits flopping free. Nearby, a few people were poking absently at the collapsing bonfire of chairs. Mitch could just make out the black filigree of the cat's skull and skeleton in the guttering coals.

The Handy Man was at the pool, forcing the woman in with the others. Where was the More Man? Nearby. Very near. Mitch heard a sound from the next room: it was a human sound, from a human throat, but it was not a cry, or a whimper, or a groan. It was a squeaky kind of noise that said: There are places underneath despair.

Outside, the men had the woman half into the pool, holding her down, so her legs and torso were under the surface. Mitch could hear her screaming now, a thin faraway sound that might have been the happy squeal of a woman being teased by her friends, if you didn't know better, if you couldn't see her, now, fighting like a cat trying to get out of a tub of bathwater – that look on her round, childish face like a baby with its blankets on fire. And then her back arching, as something under the surface of the pool found her. As something happened to her, under the water, something you couldn't see. Her eyes popping and her mouth open wide as it would go but no sound coming out. And then…

It was hard to see from up here, but…

It looked like something was forcing its way out of her mouth. Something white and shiny and wet and quivering with strength.

The others crowded round her, holding her down into the pool, the men yellow in the firelight, looking like a cluster of wasps he'd seen once feeding in the wound of a roadkilled puppy.

A squeak from the next room.

A noise outside the door.

Mitch felt himself testing the waters of catatonia.

The San Fernando Valley

Jeff was simmering about something. Prentice thought maybe Jeff was pissed off at him because he'd deserted him at the party, but then, as Arthwright walked away from Jeff to say goodbye to some producer with a lousy hair transplant who was taking his jiggly bimbo out to a white Rolls, Prentice saw the glare that Jeff sent at Arthwright's back. It was Arthwright Jeff was mad at.

"What's up?" Prentice said, trying not to look smug about Lissa as he sat down on the lounger next to Jeff.

Jeff looked him over irritably. "You just had a shower, looks like."

"Number one on the list of tell tale signs. Yeah. You look bummed."

"Arthwright's been hassling me to – Never mind, here he comes back."

Arthwright was strolling up with his hands in his pockets humming to himself along with the George Michael's tune the DJ was playing. Father Figure.

Arthwright stood a little too close, just between them. Prentice was still seated so Arthwright's crotch was level with Prentice's face. It made him vaguely uncomfortable.

"Can I have a quick word with you, Tom?" Arthwright said. It would have been more honest to say, despite the smile and light tone, Get your ass over here, I want to talk to you.

"Sure." Prentice got up, making a What the hell is this? expression at Jeff, though privately he was hoping it was about the script assignment. Prentice took his arm and led him away, toward the bar. The crowd was thinning out now. The bartenders wanted to knock off, were straining not to glare at people asking for drinks – some of the drinkers swaying, others casting deprecating glances at the drunks while asking for Calistoga.

Arthwright said, "Tom – I'm having a little tangle with Jeff Teitelbaum. I don't know, maybe it's because I'm not using him on the Dagger script, maybe it's something else, but he's started this weird thing of getting at me through my friends. I think that's what he's doing. My friends, the Denvers – Sam Denver? Well, Jeff sent a lawyer up there to the Doublekey, threatening a court order for inspection of their premises or something – he's got it in his head that his little brother is up there. It's really pretty crazy stuff. I figure, hey, the Jeff's overworked, and he's got a bug up his ass because we couldn't use him, all right, I understand, we all have ego problems, we're all human. So uh…" They'd reached the bar. "Drink?"

"Uhhh… no, no we're taking off here in a minute." He wanted one badly but he also wanted to seem relatively sober and level headed.

"So anyway, I don't hold this against Jeff and I don't want to encourage my friends to countersue or anything, I'm telling them, hold off, we'll just talk to the guy, calm him down… I thought – maybe just to help Jeff out, keep him from getting his ass in a legal sling because of a paranoid trip he's on about his brother – maybe he's got some kind of guilt trip about his brother and he's projecting it on us, right? Anyway, I thought maybe you could talk to him for me. And – well, I'd feel better about you and me working together. After that. I mean, Jeff and you are friends and – I don't want to just lump you together, but… you know what I mean…?"

Prentice had to snap his mouth shut. It had bobbed open when he'd realized just what Arthwright meant. It was as much in Arthwright's body language and tone as in the words. He meant: Get Jeff to lay off the legal attack and the snooping and I'll consider giving you that break you need right now. If you don't do it, you're fucked.

"Uh – sure," Prentice heard himself say. Felt a thrill of horror as he said it. "I'll talk to him. See if I can straighten it out." His teeth felt heavy in his mouth. What a weird sensation.

"Great. And then we'll talk, we'll have a lunch meeting, do some business – Whoa! Here's the vanishing beauty, back again!" This last as he turned to greet Lissa who pushed up beside Arthwright, reached past him to squeeze Prentice's hand.

Arthwright stood between Prentice and Lissa as they held hands. Arthwright was smiling – laying a hand on Prentice's shoulder, and one on Lissa's. A holstered intimacy in that touch.

As Arthwright kissed Lissa on the cheek and walked away, Prentice tried not to think about the man in the bedroom mirror, upstairs.