John Shirley - Wetbones Read online

  "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 an
d 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 ma
de 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 . . .