Wetbones

3

Oakland, California

Constance was a virgin, certainly. In more ways than one, Ephram decided.

They were in a motel room Ephram had rented. The standard fifty dollar motel room. Ephram had decided it would be unwise to be seen bringing in another young girl to his condo. And the Pakistani people who ran the motel had not seen him bring the girl here. It was an "adult" motel, out near the Oakland airport, which meant that it had a pornography channel on its television. Constance and Ephram sat side by side on the bed, lazily drinking wine and watching the pornography channel. Actually, Ephram only pretended to drink wine. It dulled his control.

She watched the video-snowy close-ups of intersecting genitalia; watched it big eyed and with some confusion but happily, contentedly, because he'd pushed the appropriate buttons in her brain. She could watch a Roto Rooter man clean out a sewer, now, and find equal delight in it.

She was more deliciously innocent than Megan had been. Constance had never before watched pornography

– though she'd had an opportunity once to watch "a dirty video" at the house of a fiend, as she'd babblingly told Ephram on that first wave of the psychic high. She'd said no, wrinkled up her nose at the chance to watch movies of people rehearsing reproduction, till now. She thought about boys in terms of romance and dancing and dating and a little kissing, mostly, and read teenage romance novels which were so chaste there was scarcely even a kiss before the end of the book. And had never even masturbated. She had seen pictures of male genitals, and her dad told her anything about sex she wanted to know quite freely, in a clinical sort of way, and she knew how to have sex without getting pregnant or diseased. And she was curious about the act. Until now, only mildly curious.

Ah, he thought: Curiouser and curiouser, ha ha.

Being hardly more than a child, she'd never really had the desire, until Ephram rewired her for it. Using the associative technique he'd perfected with Numbers Nine through Fifteen.

It was ever so simple. You subjected the female to the pleasure-receiver stimulus, continued it as you subjected her to certain kinds of visual input, and then physical input. After receiving enough induced pleasure coupled with the sexual input, the subject associated all pleasure with that input, and her complicity became quite implacable and compulsive. Even frenzied – at least for a time, until the figures and sloughs of despond began to set in. Even then, one could always squeeze a few more drops from the sponge, if one was proficient…

The master switch supervened the other circuits of the brain. Supervened over choice, native character, self respect, self image or hope.

And then, of course, there was the punishment. An essential part of the programming and, lately, increasingly of interest to the jaded appetites, ha ha, of Ephram Pixie. And Ephram's friend; his unseen companion.

The "ghetto blaster" was playing certain Beethoven string quartets which had an astrological significance to Ephram – significance in the esoterica of the negative astrology – and the people on the little wall-mounted TV screen were copulating with energy, albeit no real enthusiam, when he at last began to fondle Constance.

She shied a bit at first, though grinning with the waves of pleasure he was sending through her. She made some tentative effort to escape him. But already her hips were making the involuntary humping motions, already the drugged look was so deep in her eyes all personality was drowned in it, and he knew he had his fingers on the strings of this pretty little marionette.

He made plans for her. He could make her love anything. He could make her love the bottom of his shoes. He could make her adore a German Shepard. He could make her plead to drink his piss and sigh with contentment when it was provided. He could make her as he had Number Twenty-one, who had been an enthusiast for the Humane Society – take delight in torturing small animals and then rolling naked in their half-vivisected bodies as they squealed and died. He could make her love a mouse trap, or a dead cat, or the taste of dog food; he could make her take pleasure in mutilating herself with scissors. She would beg him to let her mutilate herself with scissors a second time, if he gave her the pleasure waves when the first mutilation began. He could make her deeply desire to clip his toenails with her teeth. He could make her take joy in masturbating in a bathtub full of earthworms… Or he could force her to do things, with the Punishment. He could force her to eat a pigeon alive – and use punishment to make her do it even when she had no pleasure in it. Or, he could induce her to love eating a pigeon alive. To experience bliss in it.

He could even make her want to kill her own father.

From the Journal of Ephram Pixie, "9 May 1987"

It has always ruled us, of course, no matter what we are doing. If we feel a little pleasure at having cleaned out a file box, it is the brain rewarding the pleasure receiver. If we feel a little regret at having hurt someone – an emotional excrescence I've trained out of myself – it is the punishment receiver that experiences the regret as an inward pang. If we feel a little happiness in the smell of a breeze, or the fit of a new shoe, or the taste of ice cream, or the thrill of taking part in an athletic competition, or the sense of having done a good day's work, or the good feeling that some people experience on performing acts of charity – the happiness is simply the brain rewarding the animal as it has been programmed to do. It has its sociobiological reasons for all of it. Sometimes the rewards and punishments come in tiny little increments, so small we're scarcely aware of them… we're constantly moving to the choreography of reward and punishment… Beyond it, of course, is the audience at this grotesque ballet, the invisible world. Through the invisible world, and an understanding of the dark astrology, it is quite possible to transcend the tyranny of the choreographer, the Great Programmer of Reward and Punishment. But this transcendance is given to only a few of us…

Garner had almost lost the Porsche at the traffic light on Fifteenth. He'd had to run the light, risk the police and a wreck and risk that whoever was in the Porsche would notice him.

A Porsche. Not something most teenage kids drove. Something a drug dealer might drive.

Now he sat in his '83 Toyota, outside the motel, trying to make up his mind about what to do. They'd gone into the motel and any doubts about what was up were banished. His daughter knew about birth control; maybe he shouldn't stop her from experimenting with sex. Maybe. But the guy was obviously fucking her judgement before Constance herself, with the drug. No way was Garner going to let that happen.

The Porsche was alone on the dark side of the motel parking lot, parked in front of the only room showing a light. That had to be the place. Constance must be in that room with the son of a bitch.

Garner considered calling the cops. Did he really want the police in on this? Constance could end up in custody. If he charged in without the cops, though, he could end up dead – and maybe Constance too. If the guy was a dealer he was probably armed. Garner wished he'd seen the driver of the Porsche more clearly – he hadn't pulled up in time to see them walk into the motel room together.

Garner felt a pang at having betrayed his daughter's trust. Turned into one of the Over Thirty monsters Abbie had warned him about. But on some other level, following her was the right thing to do. This was the only way to get the truth. And seeing Aleutia had made Garner determined on the truth.

Not my daughter. I won't have her trapped like that. Even If I have to be an asshole about it and follow her, just to be sure.

He'd almost had himself convinced it hadn't been drugs. You who talk about the mote in your friend's eye, take the beam out of your own, pal. He'd been hiding snugly in his own denial.

And then he'd awakened… heard that back door open. And knew instantly.

He made up his mind about what to do. He got out of the car and got the tyre iron from the trunk.

He walked around to the motel room and tried the knob. The door was unlocked. He took a deep breath and opened it. He stepped inside.

He stepped into glue. A world of glue. He couldn't move. He couldn't see.

Someone took the tyre iron from his hand. He heard the door close behind him. Then his senses closed down completely. He could hear nothing, feel nothing. Someone had hit him, was his last thought, as he slipped into a world where everything was gray and endlessly inert.

Constance was beginning to suspect that this wasn't a dream. As the waves of pleasure receded, she began to feel the rug under her bare feet. It scraped at her. She could feel the air on her skin. Sticky, foul. She could feel the weight of the metal rod in her hand. She could see, quite clearly now, the look on her father's face.

It was empty.

The one who'd called himself Michael had taken control of her father's brain. Michael had a pinched look of concentration, as if he were having difficulty keeping a grip on both of them.

Maybe she could fight him now…

Pain like a rain of fire. Pain raining over her skull, burning down her spine. Malicious and all consuming and beyond screaming about.

"Please," she heard herself say.

"Raise the tyre iron over your father's head," Ephram told her. He sounded happy, though he had to grunt the words out through his concentration.

She obeyed instantly, hoping it would make the pain stop. The pain diminished a great deal, but didn't stop. Not quite.

"Drive the tyre iron through your father's right eye," Ephram said. She could tell he enjoyed saying your father's right eye.

"No," she said. It was all she could get out.

The pain last time was a campfire compared to the forest fire that now consumed her senses. Every last shred of her was looking for a way out.

It was easy to get out. Just push the tyre iron into…

But her father's face appeared through a veil of fire. No. No. No. I'm not going to do it.

The pain was unspeakable. She was knotted with nausea; she was wrung out by the hands of an ice giant.

She drew her arm back slowly and aimed the tyre iron, and struck.

It struck where she'd aimed it: at the side of her dad's head. She tried not to think about what she hoped to get away with…

Her father went down, blood splattering, coursing from the head wound. But he was alive.

She heard someone laugh. Two short monosyllables.

Like, Ha ha. "I'm not stupid, my dear. Do it for real this time. Bend over him…"

There were sirens in the distance. She waited. The man who called himself Michael waited.

The sirens warbled into a lower register, and faded away.

But the sirens had given Ephram pause. Who knew for sure this man hadn't alerted anyone? Perhaps they'd be along any minute. And find a corpse, here. Messy, as always. A problem.

If he killed the girl's father, and if the father had told the cops where he was going, perhaps just before coming in…

Well. They might get a description of Ephram from the Pakistanis. But of course when he'd registered he'd given them a phony license number and they hadn't checked. So that wouldn't be of any help to anyone.

If dad here didn't turn up dead, the cops would be less inclined to search out Ephram. And they wouldn't take the man seriously. After all, he'd seen nothing – he couldn't swear his daughter was in here. Evidently he'd seen her get into the car, though. Even so… she was old enough that the police would regard her as a probable runaway. There'd been no struggle, when she was taken. Not a visible one.

He had some new plans for this girl, after all. He planned to redesign her, with reward and punishment. Instead of killing her, he could make her into a happy and carnal accomplice. For a while. He'd hate to have to give her up now just to make escape more feasible.

Ephram sighed. "I will be magnanimous, girl. Your father will live. We will move him out to his car, and then we'll be going out to our own. I'll need to get rid of the Porsche soon. Bother…"

But, really, this was quite exciting. How much better it was, without the Akishra, diverting him from his divine inspirations.

Where would they go? He wondered, bending to lift the father up, make him look like a drunk supported between Ephram and the girl.

Someplace they could fit right in, he and the girl. Someplace it wouldn't look strange for an older man to have as companion a girl her age. Someplace corrupt enough to provide camouflage.

Wasn't it obvious? Los Angeles.

Alameda

Garner was sitting at his kitchen table by the phone, pressing an ice pack to his throbbing head, waiting for a police detective to call him back. But thinking the cops were probably a waste of time.

With his free hand, he touched the bandage around his head. It felt too tight. And it partly blocked the sight in his right eye.

He tried, once more, to remember the assault. He remembered opening the door. And then, wham. That was all. Next thing he remembered was paramedics bending over him. Someone had found him in the parking lot.

The phone rang and he answered before the first ring had finished. ''Hello."

"Reverend Garner? This is Brent at Alameda General -"

Carrier sighed. He did a lot of counselling for the hospital. They knew him well in the Emergency room. He counselled recovering ODs; sometimes he comforted the AIDS patients. But just now all he wanted to do was start looking for Constance. "I'm really caught up in something now, Brent -"

"I know – I heard. But there's a girl dying here and she keeps asking for you. She's on the verge of a coma. Crack overdose. Some really massive amount. I guess her old man ripped off a dealer and they smoked all night… Girl named Berenson."

"Oh Hell." On the verge of a coma. With crack that probably meant Aleutia was dying…

He heard Aleutia's voice as soon as he stepped into the E.R. Whimpering, pleading.

Garner turned and saw her in one of the alcoves, lying on a hospital bed under heaps of ice.

He knew what the blanket of ice meant. It was a last ditch treatment to lower a soaring body temperature. A killing fever that came with crack overdose.

She was dying. And the baby…

Two nurses and a doctor worked over her. Machinery beeped softly as it monitored her vital signs. She lay there motionless, now. She'd stopped whimpering, stopped squirming.

"We're losing her again," the doctor said, his voice flat.

"Where's the obstetrician?" one of the nurses said, sounding like she was fighting hysteria.

Carrier wanted to go to Aleutia, hold her hand, try to reach her. But it was too late; she was unconscious, babbling in delirium, and he was afraid of getting in the way. He just stood there and prayed.

A slow minute later, as he stood riveted, watching, the heart monitor flatlined. The monitor made a single, empty tone, whistling into forever. A Code Blue. Her heart had stopped.

They tried CPR; they failed. They tried re-starting her heart with electrical jolts from a defibrillator. That hardly ever worked. It didn't work for Aleutia. She was gone.

"What about the caesarian?" a nurse said.

"We've lost the baby too," the surgeon said.

I prayed into a vacuum, Garner thought bitterly.

The cops. Go to the cops. Tell them about Constance. Find her.

Mouth dry, head thumping, Garner walked on wobbly legs to the exit. He just wanted to find Constance. We've lost the baby too.

"So did I," Garner said, aloud. "Lost my baby too…" He said it to no one in particular.

Or maybe he said it to God.

Los Angeles County Juvenile Detention

The visitors' room was painted white, overlit, and furnished with cheap orange plastic chairs, most of which were so bent they were a danger to sit on. There was a single decoration, a retouched photo of an autumn scene in New England. It was cemented to the wall. Some kid had scribbled on it with a ballpoint pen, drawing in a word balloon over the forest lake, which was reflective with sunset orange: Get me out of here! I'm drowning in this orange shit!

Prentice and Jeff sat alone in a corner, waiting for Lonny. The counsellor had said Lonny was Mitch's room-mate, and a friend of his from before the arrest. "A friend of his?" Jeff had said. "It's weird that I never met him."

"No it's not," the counsellor had said.

In the other corner of the room a Chicano boy talked earnestly in Spanish with his mother. The boy was overweight, the skin of his face pocked, his hair puffed up in the sort of pompadour that's stylishly dimpled in the middle. It looked to Prentice like there was a hole going down into his head. The boy had a fake gold chain around his neck.

Jeff shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "You think that doctor was full of shit? Doctor Drandhu?"

"Christ, that name sounds like the villain of a Flash Gordon serial or something." Prentice shrugged. "That's something we can ask Lonny. If that shit was self mutilation."

"That's just not a Mitch thing to do. He might do all kinds of weird shit but Mitch hated pain. Hell, he hated any kind of discomfort, he was not your Spartan type, you know? And if he was into mutilating himself it would've showed up before now. I mean, he was never that fucked up."

"Yeah well. Amy was crazy but I never knew her to mutilate herself either. And she did it…

He broke off, embarrassed, as the Chicano boy and his mother bent their heads and began to pray together in Spanish. The counsellor had said, "Every single kid here is in a gang – for three exceptions, all of them white boys. Mitch was one of the exceptions."

There were tears rolling down the Chicano boy's cheeks as he prayed. This was not how Prentice pictured juvie gang members. But then, the kid's companeros weren't around to see this.

"You know," Jeff whispered, "they say the girl gangs are the worst. They've got these girl gangs out here now – they're son a like Apache women were supposed to be. Torture the prisoners. Just mean as can be. They say you won't live if they get pissed at you and catch you – some of the other gangs might let you live, after they beat you up, but never the girls."

"I'm glad this place isn't co-ed."

The door to lock-up buzzed and opened, and a boy came through. He looked half Oriental, maybe Vietnamese, half-Hispanic, some Cauc blood too. Long lank, black hair over his shoulders. He wore a Metallica t-shirt and jeans, high-top black Adidas. He swaggered just a little as he walked. His muscular arms were home-tattooed with snakes entwining cartoonish girls. Behind him came a potbellied black guard, his khaki uniform shirt popped open where his belly spilled over his shiny black belt, one hand on the butt of his holstered gun. "You got about ten minutes, Lonny," the guard said, "then you got Group."

"Group sucks," Lonny muttered, pausing to look awkwardly around.

"You axed for that group, homie," the wheezing guard said. He fished a cigarette from a shirt pocket, handed it over, lit it with an old Zippo, and left.

Jeff and Prentice crossed to Lonny. Shook his surprisingly soft hand. Introduced themselves. "Hi, howya doin'," Lonny said, politely but tonelessly. He stuck his free hand in a jeans pocket, the other one flicked the cigarette. He looked at Prentice and Jeff, then looked at the floor, then looked back at them. "So what you guys want?"

"I'm Mitch Teitelbaum's brother -"

"I know, you said that before. But whas'up, you know? I mean, I don't wanna be an asshole, but I got to check this shit out. Mitch was like my blood homie, you know?"

Jeff nodded. "Okay. Look – if you can answer some questions for us, we'll sign something for your lawyer, says you were helpful, it won't hurt when it's time to get out of here. We're trying to figure out where Mitch went. I'm not going to tell the cops anything you tell me – I want to go get him myself. You got any ideas?"

Lonny drew on the cigarette. He looked at them.

Prentice thought about offering him money. He had a sense, though, that offering money would have been taboo; Lonny's claim to close friendship for Mitch had the ring of truth about it.

"At the hospital," Jeff prompted, "they said someone saw him going out in a wheelchair, pushed by a funny looking kind of guy, older guy… Any idea who that might be?"

Lonny shrugged. "Maybe it's the More Man."

Prentice stared. Hadn't there been something in Amy's hospital evaluation papers about the More Man? Something she'd said more than once…

"I don't know who the fuckin' More Man is," Lonny said. "Mitch called the guy that, said someone at the Doublekey was going to help him break into recording. Mitch wanted to write songs and shit. All I know is, the More Man's hella rich."

"What's the Doublekey?" Jeff asked.

"It's this ranch, out by Malibu somewhere, people party out there a lot, girls go out and get free drugs an' shit. I heard that before, and Mitch told me about it too, you know."

"You ever tell the cops this?" Prentice asked.

"Fuck no." He snorted at the idea. He went to a chair that had a tin ashtray on its seat. He picked up the ashtray, brought it back, held it in one hand, tamped ashes into it with another. There was something curiously feminine about the way he did it.

"You ever see Mitch, uh… Jeff hesitated. "Hurt himself?"

Lonny grimaced, an expression fleeting as the lighting of a nervous fly. Then the impassivity returned. "Sure, yeah. I told him cut it out or I was going to kick his fucking ass for him."

Prentice waited for the boy to notice the irony in that. Stop hurting yourself for I'll hurt you. But he didn't. Maybe there was a reason…

Eyeing the cigarette to see whether there was a millimeter to smoke before the filter, Lonny said, "Yeah, shit, he dug this shiv into his arm down to the bone… plowed it all up… stickin' it real deep in himself all over… he was startin' to cut on his dick and shit too…

Jeff winced. Prentice's mouth went dry.

Lonny went on, "He didn't seem to feel no pain. I thought for a while he was bogartin' dope or something, to be doin' that, but I don't think so. He said it was spirits that did it, and I know there's spirits, I got an aunt, she can get spirits to come and take her over and she can put her hands in fire and it don't hurt her. I believe in spirits. Fuck, yeah."

For a moment, Lonny closed his eyes. His adam's apple bobbed. When he opened his eyes again they were moist. "I told him I'd kick his ass for him if he did that shit again." He said it this time with an odd kind of sentimentality. "He's like, my brother…" He gave Jeff a look that made him stiffen. ''You probably find him out the Double-key. You go get his ass and bring him home, but don't be fucking telling the cops this shit. If they go out there and he gets busted and it's my fault, man…"

"I don't want him busted either," Jeff said. "Don't worry, Lonny."

"I'm not kidding man. Swear on your dick, you'll lose it if you tell the cops."

Jeff started to laugh, then saw that Lonny was completely serious. "On my…"

"You heard me. You swear or I'll tell some of my friends on the outside to go out that Ranch, tell Mitch to split before you get there. Swear on your fuckin' dick, dude."

Jeff swallowed. He shrugged. "Okay I swear. On my dick." Lonny looked at Prentice meaningfully. Prentice sighed. "I swear…" He glanced at the Mexican lady who was standing now, hugging the boy. Prentice lowered his voice to add, ''… on my dick"

Los Angeles

"I've heard of the Doublekey ranch somewhere or other," Jeff said.

They were on the 101, in Jeff's Cabriolet, with the top down, but with no wind to cool them off. The traffic was backed up and desultory. The radio was playing, but low, Tom Petty was singing about good girls and bad boys, but Prentice couldn't make out much more than that. The sun made sundogs and quivery pools of light on the cars; it was slowly burning the crown of Prentice's head. He wondered if his hair was thinning up there. Male pattern balding, they called it. That'd be right in line with the rest of my luck, he thought.

Then he found himself looking at a black family with seven or eight sad-eyed kids packed into a battered old station wagon and just the way the clothes and odds and ends were crammed in around them made it clear they lived in that car…

And he thought: Prentice, stop feeling sorry for yourself.

"Jeff," Prentice murmured, "you ever wonder if there're things guiding us to see things… or not to see things? Influencing us? Like, if we're paying attention, we might be feeling sorry for ourselves and then something prompts us to notice someone worse off…"

"You mean, something guiding us like God? If you're guided, it's more likely being done by some part of your unconscious that knows self pity is dumb," Jeff said.

"I guess. Sometimes, though, I think…" He blew out his cheeks, feeling foolish. "Never mind. This fucking traffic sucks. Let's get off a here, get on the surface streets."

"If I can ever get to the goddamn exit."

The cars in front of them moved up a little; Jeff prodded his Cabriolet a few yards farther in the slow conga line, as Prentice asked, "You said you heard about this Doublekey ranch?"

"It's out near Malibu, like the boy said. I think… You know what it is, if I'm remembering right: It's Sam and Judy Denver's place."

"You say their names like I'm supposed to know who they are."

"Remember Honolulu Hello? That was their show. They produced that and Gun City and a couple of others and really cleaned up for a while which was pretty easy since their sponsor was -"

"Their sponsor was Horizon Soaps. Very funny. Stick to action writing, Jeff."

"Lighten up, man."

"Oh yeah, right," Prentice said, rankled. "Amy got chewed up and spit out by some asshole around here.

My career's in the dumpster. Then we hear all this depressing shit about Mitch. And the top of my head feels like you could fry an egg on it. And I'm supposed to lighten up?" Self pity again, he told himself. But it was hard not to take refuge in it. With Amy in a file drawer.

"So anyway," Jeff went on, "the Denvers used to host a very exclusive high powered little clique. They used to be quite fashionable. Then they sort of dropped out of sight. Supposed to be living quite comfortably off their residuals. Honolulu Hello is always in re-runs… I guess it was the molestation thing." Mitch grimaced. "The Denvers were accused of child molestation. The children of some maid they had for awhile…" His voice trailed off.

Prentice articulated what were probably Jeff's thoughts. "Child molestation? And Mitch is out there? He's not a kid but he's close enough…"

Jeff was chewing his lower lip. "I… don't know. Nothing was proven on them. But where there's smoke there's fire, or sometimes anyway. And there was lots of smoke."

"Well shit, then. Let's go to the cops, tell them that these accused child molesters have your teenage brother. They could be abusing him some way."

"I don't know, man. I promised Lonny -"

"You worried about your dick falling off, Jeff?"

"It's not my dick, it's my word, okay? But the other thing is – I don't want to give Mitch to the cops again. I mean, how much good were they doing for his 'rehabilitation' out in that place where he manages to carve himself up like a fucking turkey, you know?"

"You always hated cops anyway. How come?"

Jeff was silent for a minute or two. Then he said,

"I did some time when I was a kid too…"

Prentice nodded. His eyes had settled on Jeff's carphone. "Can I use your phone?"

"Sure. It's got kind of a crackly signal, but go for it, man."

"Thanks." Prentice took the phone off the cellular unit just under the dashboard and punched his agent's number.

Buddy kept him on hold for five minutes, but Prentice had nothing else to do as the car crawled toward the exit still a quarter mile away. Prentice glanced at Jeff…

And was surprised, and then not so surprised, to see that Jeff was crying. Silently crying; his bony cheeks coursing with tears. Thinking about his brother. Prentice looked away, gazed at the tract homes and Denny's restaurants and Macdonalds and Burger Kings, their toylike roofs visible down below the guard rail of the freeway. He tried to give Jeff some privacy, that way.

Finally he got Buddy on the line, shouting through the brassy pipe of the speaker phone. Buddy didn't palter with amenities. "Hey, Tom. How ya doin'. Say, I spoke to Athwright and he says he's giving your project 'serious consideration'. I don't know what that means except it's better than 'don't waste my time with that kind of shit' which is what he said about the last guy I sent over. But there's no guarantees. You know what you should do, if you want a break, dontcha? I mean, studios don't buy treatments much, they don't commission scripts too often anymore, nowdays they like to see that finished script. So they can make you rewrite it ten thousand times. But you know what I mean – a spec script, man -"

"Hey, I'm working on that." Which was a lie. Prentice had started half a dozen scripts but nothing came together in his head. It was like a locomotive with no steam pressure, it just wouldn't go, and he told himself If I get the money for a commission I'll be motivated, I'll be financially relieved too, that'll loosen up the inspiration… I need the money first… Some part of himself knowing he was making excuses. "But listen Buddy, it's still possible to get some money out front for, you know, people with a track record. I had a couple of misfires but I proved I can do it, I'm a Player, man, and if we act as if I'm not a Player then they 'll think I'm not."

"Look – a spec script gets you a lot more money. That's the bottom line."

"Like I said, I'm working on it. But that could take months. And in the meantime I need an advance. I got bills to pay."

"Well – I'm working on that. So. How ya doin', holdin' up okay? About Amy I mean. You feel okay?"

"Yeah I'm okay – uh -"

"Good, great, I'll call you if anything firms up, Okay? Ciao -"

"Buddy! Take a breath, pull your finger back from that button for one second. Listen – I'm not just whining here. I need some work." He was aware, on some level, that he was saying this partly for Jeff's benefit. In the hopes that Jeff would pull some strings somewhere. Jeff was connected. "I mean: I really need work. Starting with an advance."

A moment of static. Some of Buddy's reply lost in interference. " – think, you're not? I tell you what – just to pay some bills – I do have something. You willing to do a slasher movie? This is not Guild work, you understand, it's kind of under the board, you'd get maybe ten grand -"

"Are you serious?"

"I know it's piddly shit but hey if you need cash that badly, well… just to fill in, you could do it and forget about it. Do it under a pseudonym. It's going right to video – it's a made-for-video slasher film, see. It's called Class Cut-Up."

"Cute." Prentice thought about it for about five seconds. Decided he'd rather go back to bartending. But he didn't want to fling the one effort Buddy had made for him back in the guy's face… "Let me sleep on that, okay, Buddy? And if anything else comes up"

"I'll get back to you. I got another call here -"

"Take it. Ciao."

Prentice hung up the phone. It seemed he was going to be twisting slowly in the wind of Arthwright's whim.

Anyway, they'd reached the exit. That was a start.

But when they drove down onto the surface street, major street repairs were going on, complete with ear battering jackhammers and backhoes jetting clouds of blue smoke. The traffic down here was even worse.

Near Malibu, California

Mitch was at the bottom of a swimming pool. An old concrete swimming pool filled with water so green it was almost black.

For some reason, he could breathe in here, under water.

Something big was shaking and quivering over in that green obsidian corner. The big shaking thing was coming closer to him now. A cloud of wiggling things. Worms.

Wriggling worms, glinting in the faint light from above. Closing around him. When he inhaled, he sucked them wriggling into his throat, trickling and slithering into his bronchial tubes, squirming with a kind of funnybone pain inside his lungs…

Worms in his lungs!

He thrashed about, trying to gag them up.

He fell off the bed with a bruising thump. Felt the hardwood floor under his hands. A swatch of bedclothes against his cheek. He'd been dreaming. In bed. The hospital. He was…

… not in the hospital, he saw, now, as he got painfully onto his knees.

He was raw with pain; grinding his teeth with the punishment that came every time he moved. As he looked around.

It was a room he'd never seen before. It was dark, and the colours of the room seemed to shift one into another when he didn't look directly at them. Old wallpaper, peeling in the comer; a pattern of hook-shapes alternating with drooping rosebuds. Could be this was where the hallucination of the worms had come from; a pattern in the wallpaper.

He had a sense, though, for a fleeting moment, that the cloud of wrigglers was there, just out of his line of sight, poised and sensitive to him. Then he shook himself, and the hallucination was gone.

The room had an old brass bed. A four poster, with scratch marks around their metal posts, near the mattress. There was one door.

He moved painfully to the door. He had laughed at old men, who moved the way he moved. I won't laugh anymore, he prayed, if that's what this punishment's for. He tried the brass knob of the old-fashioned darkwood door. Locked in two places; at the old skeleton-key lock and, he could feel, when he rattled the door, that there was a padlock on the outside, high up on the door.

He felt like crying, but he was incapable of it. It would take too much strength to cry. He took a deep breath. Told himself, it's okay, it's all right.

He sniffed the air. There was a cloying smell; a rotting flower stink. As if the rosebuds in the wallpaper were rotting.

There was also – somehow a function of the cloying stink of rotting petals – laughter, from somewhere; sticky, shrivelled laughter, and foreign-sounding music, sort of Arab and sort of Oriental and sort of American. Played on what sounded like a malfunctioning stereo.

The noise came through the room's single window. A big bay window all veiny with shadows and fragmented with light. It made him think of a biology class where he'd dissected a lizard and the teacher had him hold its bellyskin up to the light and you could see all the veins picked out in a rosy glow…

Roses. Big fat ones, he saw, as he hobbled up to the window. He'd never seen roses this big before. And the veiny shadows were made by thick rose vines, some as big around as his wrist, and all dinosaur-spiny with large thorns.

The window was nailed shut.

Bending to peer through a clear patch of window glass – and through a little rosebush cave of green and red – he could see, below, people moving twitchily across a twilit terrace strewn with trash. Most of them walked alone. Others stood singly in the shadows at the edge of the terrace. There was a big stone barbecue glowing with coals; on the grill were steaks, but they'd been allowed to curl and blacken. No one seemed to be eating. A woman moved erratically onto the flagstones, then stopped in the middle of the terrace, hunched over a little, hugging herself. Her shoulders began to shake. The others seemed to ignore her. Something fell from her hands: a large green wine bottle. It broke on the stones, splashing red wine and shards of green bottleglass. Then the woman collapsed, failing almost straight down, as if someone had kicked her knees from behind. She lay in a huddle. Still no one moved to help her, though a couple of people shuffled by, within a few feet of her. They didn't even look over at her.

After a few moments, the Handy Man came out onto the terrace, bent down, put his hands under her armpits, hoisted her upright. Strong guy for being so small. She got her footing, and he led her away. She seemed perfectly sure-footed now. (What was that music? Where was it from?)

The Handy Man, Mitch thought. The little dude from the hospital. Recognition brought back some memories, just flashes, images from a badly edited video: Darkness parting long enough to see out the window of a car, driving through a gate that rolled automatically aside. A black security guard holding a couple of snarling dogs back by their collars. A circular driveway. A big house. A wheelchair. The smell of roses and stale liquor. Another, smaller house. An old stone horse trough, and a stone jockey with a rusty iron ring in his hand. The hulk of a Mercedes, rusting on blocks in an overgrown yard to one side of the little house. Voices. Sobbing laughter. Darkness closing again.

The gate. Remembering the gate again he saw it was black metal, ornate along the top, with – painted in gold leaf – crossed skeleton keys as the centerpiece of the scrollwork.

Double keys. The Doublekey Ranch.

Down below, the music was suddenly switched off. A few seconds of silence, then raucous, jeering laughter. Then more silence. Then the sound of a dog barking. The dog yelped – and made a series of terrified, excruciating high pitched yips, and then that was silenced, too.

There were other voices, from the hall. A low, deep voice, whose resonance Mitch knew before he recognized the voice itself It was the More Man. Mitch moved as fast as he could bear to, crossed the room, pressed an ear to the door. "This one doesn't party, we cultivate him in-board. Give him a…"

Give him what? Something inaudible. Had it been "bedpan"?

The More Man went on, "In a month or two he…" Inaudible. But knowing with a sinking, plunging certainty, that the More Man was talking about him, about Mitch. "No, no, he's not going to be…" Couldn't hear it. "… doesn't matter too much but he could surprise us. Pair him with the…" Couldn't hear. A murmur of someone, maybe the Handy Man, replying to the More Man. And then the More Man's voice: "… unless that asshole Ephram comes back…" Lost. The sound lost. Then: ''… won't be looking for him, there's no need to -" He broke off speaking, suddenly.

He was aware of Mitch listening. Mitch backed away from the door.

Oh no oh no, said a scared little kid in Mitch's head. Just some part of Mitch himself going: Oh no, oh no, oh no.

Mitch told the little kid, It's okay, I'm getting out of here. I'll get out. But it was exactly like trying to comfort a small child when the house is burning down around him. The kid was smart enough to know…

The More Man had lied, Mitch knew, with magnifying glass lucidity. The More Man had lied always and all along, about trading the body-play time for favours in the music business, for being here a little while and then going free.

Free? There was no way he was ever going to let Mitch go, never, not ever…

It was dark outside, when Mitch woke up again. He didn't remember lying down, or going to sleep.

Someone was at the door. He could hear them messing with the locks. He thought of waiting by the door, rushing whoever it was, knocking them down, sprinting for the stairs.

But just sitting up hurt like a bitch.

If raw hamburger could feel, he thought, it'd feel like this. I did this to myself, Mitch thought, looking at his arms. I cut myself.

He had to tell that to himself, again and again, to be able to think about it at all. It just didn't seem real.

The door opened, and the Handy Man came in, carrying a plastic tray holding a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, a sponge, bandages.

Bandy-legged and puppet-faced, the Handy Man. Smelling of hot dog grease and creosote. He ignored Mitch's rasped questions, whistling rather loudly and tunelessly as if to blot up anything Mitch said, and lay him back on the bed, bathing his wounds with foaming hydrogen peroxide. He smiled as, with nail-less hands, he bandaged Mitch, and smiled as he gathered up his supplies and left. "See you in the hot tub," the Handy Man said.

He didn't lock the door behind him. Mitch stared at the door, slightly ajar, hope rising like a feeble dog in his chest, and then the More Man came walking in, and the dog died.

"Hi Sam," Mitch said. Trying.

"Howdy Mitch," the More Man said. Mitch always thought of Sam Denver as the More Man. That's what the kids called him, on the street. The More Man was carrying a wooden tray containing a bowl of sprouts, wheatgrass and tomatoes. A few grainy looking vitamins lying beside the ceramic bowl. A wooden fork. A ceramic cup of what was probably carrot juice.

The More Man was a tanned, muscular man wearing a white linen jacket over a blazingly colourful tie-dyed t-shirt. Linen pants, white canvas shoes, no socks. He had a slight suggestion of wattles, a lot of lines around his foggy blue eyes, his collar-length, swept back blond hair receding a little. But he seemed to move about on a wave of youthful energy.

Mitch knew the More Man wasn't armed and he knew that didn't matter.

"Wheatgrass, Mitch," the More Man said, in his boyish, hearty voice. "Wheatgrass!" There was a sense of distraction about the voice as if the speaker was not really listening to himself, despite the heartiness. ''Wheatgrass cleanses the blood, rebuilds the cells, revitalizes the chakras, energizes and feeds! Not too much, just enough, with a little alfalfa, some nice tomatoes. My dear Lord, Mitch, you're going to be shakin' the bacon and dancin' on air in no time!"

"Sure," Mitch said. He was sort of hungry. Queasy but hungry. "I'll eat it, Sam." All the questions were hiding just back of Mitch's teeth. Was it possible to ask this guy questions? Could a person even do it?

"And the vitamins!" the More Man said, setting the tray on Mitch's lap. "This one is Vitamin A. The carrot juice has a lot of A in it too! Good for healing! Needja strong! Got big happenins' comin down! The vibes are all there!"

"Great," Mitch said. What was he talking about? Songwriting?

"Record deals cookin' ", the More Man said, winking. "Hang in there. Sufferin' builds character – you're almost there. Just hang loose and heal. Record companies snappin' at my heels."

Mitch knew, this time, with a bedrock certainty, that the More Man was lying. There never had been any career in the making. Not for Mitch.

But. Say anything. Just say anything, Mitch told himself. Anything he'll like. "Great, rad, I'm stoked, Sam!"

"Just let ol' Handy take care of you!" The More Man flashed a fluorescent grin at him and started for the door.

Panic. "Uh – Sam! Listen – the pain. I need, I dunno, something. To chill out behind. It…"

"I'll get you a painkiller, just a little, wouldn't want you to get hooked!" The More Man chattered, opening the door, bouncing his head a little on his shoulders like Ronald Reagan used to do when he was in a good mood. Sort of like an excited cockatoo.

Sometimes there was a squirming at the More Man's crotch. Sometimes his eyes dimmed with euphoria. Sometimes his smile became a rictus.

"I was thinking of the Head Syrup… I mean, the Reward." Mitch said. Heart pounding. Hooked? He was already fucking hooked.

The More Man's smile went out like a popped lightbulb. He turned Mitch a look of sucking vagueness. "Rewards have to be earned," he said, lifelessly.

And Mitch was relieved when the More Man went out and shut the door behind him. Even though he locked it.

Mitch made himself eat the meal. Take the vitamins, washed down with carrot juice. The Handy Man came in and brought him a cap of something, maybe a "dilly", judging by the way Mitch was feeling after taking it. Feeling like he was melting into his bed. A dilaudid. The pain ebbed… the starved and beaten dog in his gut dreamed about being a happy and stupid puppy…

A noise outside the door. Sounded like it was down the hall a little, but coming closer.

Mitch opened his eyes and stared at the door and, after a minute, it came into focus. He listened.

It wasn't the Handy Man's padding footsteps. It was a dry, scraping sound, like something being dragged or… more like crawling. It kept going. After a while it was gone.