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BAD EGGSTwo L.A. NovellasJOHN IRELANDPreviously published under the title The Ballad of Johnny Something-else & Stuff HappensCopyright c John Ireland 2000, 2010. All Rights Reserved ABOUT HER DEAD HUSBAND 1"Fate can't come to the phone right now," says the answering machine, "but leave your name and number and the day and time you called, I'll get back to you right away." Night in Los Angeles. An open-air coffee and donut stand where people gather and huddle in the light. An old Korean woman leans on the cash register. Waiting. Watching bugs throw themselves against the stuttering fluorescent bulbs overhead. Out of the shadows, pushing a shopping cart filled with blankets and bags, steps Eddie Fate. His dishwater blonde hair falls across his boyish face. Parking the shopping cart, he searches through his suit of rags for the price of the house specialty. "Has Leon been around?" The old woman shakes her head. Eddie fumbles some loose change onto the counter and lets his pale blue eyes reach up to the menu. "Is that enough for a bear claw?" The old woman's head swings back and forth. Eddie screws at the ground with his shoes. "Gimme a regular donut?"The old woman takes the oldest one from under a plastic dome and puts it on the counter in front of Eddie. He looks at it for several seconds. The old woman eases her wrinkled ass onto a stool and sucks at a rancid piece of meat between her teeth."Will you tell Leon I was here?" The old woman stares at him without answering. Eddie Fate snatches his donut and takes it over to the curb. The sweet cake is dry and clots under his lips as he watches the evening traffic. His reflection dances in the windows of passing cars. Eddie thinks about the subpoena in his pocket with Leon Kohl's name on it. Eddie thinks about catching Mrs. Balducci with her neck brace off. Eddie thinks about the Mercedes he is supposed to repo tomorrow. Eddie thinks he'll make his rent this month. Eddie thinks about “The Appointment in Samarra” as retold by the writer W. Somerset Maugham in 1933. Eddie thinks about the servant who goes to a Baghdad marketplace and sees Death among the crowd. Believing that Death is looking for him, the servant borrows his master's horse and flees Baghdad for the town of Samara, where he hopes Death will not find him. The servant's master goes to the marketplace and confronts Death, asks why Death made a threatening gesture to the servant. Death replies that it was not a gesture of threat, but an act of surprise. Death was surprised to see the servant in Baghdad, for they had an appointment that night in Samara.Sunrise. An aging two-lane highway cuts across the Mojave Desert. The highway is an arrow through the heart of Oscar Ortuso. Oscar loves the high desert in the winter. He loves the patches of frost gathered like broken glass in the ditches next to the narrow country roads. He loves the faded old trailers that huddle among the willows and sagebrush, like wagon trains that have abandoned their search for a promised land. Oscar Ortuso loves the Saturday night brawls in the Basque restaurant and the hellish scream of the fighter jets from Edwards Air Force Base and the laughter of the kids on their way to see an occasional space shuttle landing. In a Saigon alley twenty-three years ago, a dying monk's last words made Oscar Ortuso a believer in reincarnation. And in his next life on this planet, Oscar hopes to come back as one of the big black crows that dip and swoop and laugh as they ride the desert winds from Lancaster west to the Tehachapi Mountains and back. The laughter of the crows promises Oscar that his next life will be better, without clocks or money or envy or love or sadness. The road from Rosamond, past Willow Springs, is straight and empty. Eight miles ahead, the crows are circling to show Oscar the way. Eight miles ahead a body lies across a fading white dotted line.The Big News at 5:30. Inside the television studio, Jean Bruckner sits on a stool next to an electronic wall of green. Her age loiters on the way to forty. Her hands shuffle through pages of notes. She hesitates as something cold touches her. She can't see it or smell it or taste it or hear it, but it touches her and she glances at herself in the monitors that marry her to video weather maps and baseball scores and the latest numbers from Wall Street. The TV monitors make past present and future simultaneous... side by side in the same moment. Jean relaxes, satisfied that her attempts to arrest life's clock are successful...her golden hair, quiet white skin, and athletic breasts are still the envy of younger women. Anchorman Jack Kelly huffs and puffs his words with a carefully rehearsed energy. "...and we've just got time for Jean Bruckner's last Business Report before she begins her vacation." In thousands of homes throughout Los Angeles, Jean's face stares out from the glass window. And thousands of people believe that she is looking directly at them. "Thanks, Jack. Last night, though banks don't like to hear it, I explained how at times it is safer to bury your money. Today we'll discuss the investment alternatives to real estate and the stock market." The Highway Patrol car slams to a stop. Officer Oscar Ortuso eases his large frame out of the car and studies the bloodstains on the front of the dead man's shirt. Red ants explore the corpse's nose and lips, the eyes look up at the sky in a frozen moment of embrace. Oscar looks deeply into the dead man's eyes...Oscar knows the secret of life is just behind them and he wonders how he can learn the secret without leaving the living. Formality tells Oscar to wait for the autopsy, but Oscar already knows Sam Bruckner died because of two shots from a .380 automatic. Oscar considers the .380 as one of those in-between guns...small enough for someone who doesn't believe in handguns, yet big enough to make a hole that counts when someone gets religion...or hollow point bullets. Oscar Ortuso likes the .380, carries one himself as his backup weapon. The fact that Sam Bruckner was killed by hydro shock ammunition tells Oscar that the killer was serious. Oscar isn't afraid to die. Cancer doesn't scare him, heart disease doesn't scare him, blacks and Mexicans don't scare him, his boss doesn't scare him. But seeing the world he loves disappear, watching Los Angeles roll over the mountains and spread into the desert valley like a stucco fog, that scares the shit out of Oscar Ortuso. Later at the Devonshire Cafe, Oscar tells the flesh colored lizard pouring him a cup of coffee that he wishes it was 1952, he wishes he could have been in his forties way back in 1952, when all a cop who’d made a mistake had to worry about was getting the clap. The setting sun attacks Jean's eyes as she slams through the studio's huge doors and knifes her way between two giant dunce caps from the canceled game show, "Teacher's Pet." Andy Staub, Kleenex keeping makeup off his collar, snaps his legs briskly to stay up with Jean as she heads across the parking lot. His youth and ambition are like a strong cologne and Jean warns him. "Andy, it's my segment, do it my way, the way I wrote it." "But what about what I want? I don't speak like you..." "It's only for two weeks so learn." His arm betrays his impatience and spins her to a stop. "What the hell's bothering you?" "It bothers me that all the words and...friendship and all...the bullshit, was just a backdoor run at my job." "No, what bothers you is that Vickie is going to give it to me. You're the one using friendship, Jean." Jean is already walking away. He shouts after her, "You're getting old for the major markets. In another year...in another year, you'll be lucky to be doing ski reports back in Reno." Andy is smiling until he notices that he's also sweating and ruining his makeup. He sits in the empty studio for thirty minutes, then with pleasurable deceit, Andy eases himself into Jean's office and begins rewriting her Business Reports.In the 1950's of Oscar Ortuso's dreams, the Silver Lake section of Los Angeles was too eclectic in demographics and architecture to suit the speculators. Even worse, it wasn't flat and new. But the economic trends of one decade had become the blood spoor of another. Now the narrow streets of Silver Lake are now stalked by real estate appraisers, and Open House signs rise up like tombstones and mark the passing of the old timers. Oscar drives slowly as he looks for an address. The sound of Jean's tired blue Porsche precedes it around the lake, the song of the engine bouncing off the water and up toward the pink frosting sky. Without even touching the brakes, Jean wheels the coupe up the driveway and into a wood frame garage that mimics its adjoining house. Purse, briefcase, and two armfuls of dry cleaning keep Jean too busy to notice the unmarked police car lurking across the street. Inside the house, she throws her burdens on the living room couch, flips on the stereo, and dashes toward the bedroom as Ravel begins swirling through the air. Everything about Jean's home suggests turmoil and indecision. The furniture is where the moving men left it, pictures stand on the floor and face the walls like naughty children, stalagmites of books rise from the carpet. Passing through the bedroom door, her hand brushes a plane ticket taped next to a note screaming "Do Not Forget Me!" She strips down to her panties. The air makes her pubic hair tingle. Her heart is pounding with excitement. On the bed waits an open suitcase, clothes scattered all around it. She looks down the years to when she first planned the trip and wonders what to take and what to leave. The doorbell cuts through the Ravel and her deliberation. Jean grabs her robe.On the other side of the peephole stands a khaki beetle wearing Ray Bans. Jeans sighs "yes?" and the beetle offers up his police ID. "I'm Officer Ortuso, of the California Highway Patrol. It's about your husband, Mrs. Bruckner." Jean clutches her robe tightly and slowly opens the door. "If this is an old traffic ticket, you're a little late. My husband committed suicide six years ago."Suddenly the right lens of Ortuso's sunglasses drops out. He catches it, "Mrs. Bruckner, your husband was murdered three days ago." The note has been folded and opened and folded and opened over and over and over during the past six year. Sam Bruckner’s handwriting is like chicken scratches but Jean's heart has memorized her late husband’s final love letter. “Sweetheart, I'm sorry. I woke up this morning and I thought, today is going to be perfect. Who would have known. Please believe me, this is not about you. I am running away, but not from us. I love you so much, Jean. I wish I could think of some other way.”Jean imagines the shotgun blast that left small red teardrops on the paper. She remembers walking down the pastel yellow hallway. She remembers the spectacular ocean view as she entered the room. Ortuso interrupts. “What did Sam...Mr. Bruckner mean, 'I am running away but not from us?'"Her eyes still see the blood running down the wall. “I don't know. I guess he means death, taking his own life.” "You're still speaking in the present tense." "What's the difference?" "The difference is, that note, you've kept his suicide note all these years. Hey...look...if you want to wait until tomorrow, I can get you a room..." "No! Tonight," Her voice trembles. "I have to know if it's really Sam." Rain runs down the police car windshield, making sad shadows on her face. She refolds the note and returns it to her wallet. The police car's headlights probe the darkness before them. Oscar leads her along the halls and down the elevators and through the doors of bureaucracy. Jean is shrinking, becoming a little girl in elementary school, being led by a teacher to get a vaccination from the school nurse. Then the refrigerated chill of the morgue reaches down the hall and brings her back to the present. Her legs feel like lead and her heart is racing.This is always the worst part, the part that makes Oscar nervous. Not the sight of a body twisted or burned or rendered limb from limb or exploded from bullets or oozing and decomposed from time. The blood and the gore have never fazed Oscar. It's the grief that is so hard to stomach, the wails and the moans and the violent twisting as loved ones collapse at the sight of their dead.Jean knows the body is Sam before she sees his face. The angle of his feet under the sheet at the far end of the slab is something she saw every morning of their marriage. Jean Bruckner finally looks at the face of pale quiet dead Sam Bruckner and realizes that even being killed twice hasn't changed him. Jean takes Sam's hand, neither death nor six years has robbed it of how it should feel. "I've only seen two dead people in my life, and both times it's my husband." She lets go of Sam's hand and walks back into the hallway. Sam is still Sam. But death is no longer death. There are no surprises this time. Oscar Ortuso's office is a plastic cubicle. He stands in the doorway without a door and pours brown mud into two Styrofoam cups. "When the coffee gets this thick I start thinking about adding beans and calling it chili." Jean isn't listening. "I don't understand, was it amnesia? If he was alive all this time, why didn't he let me know?" Ortuso smiles but doesn't answer as he hands her the coffee. His legs carry him behind his desk, then bend so he can sit. Jean's day has suddenly gotten long. "In the beginning Sam and I didn't think our marriage would last a year. But it...we...we refused to let it fail. And finally I thought it was paying off, working. I was pregnant, his law practice was doing well..." She sips the coffee, chokes, "Jesus, this is awful..."Oscar hasn't been listening, he's been trying to remember the last time he was with a woman. Lately Oscar has been checking his dick, certain that it is growing smaller and smaller from lack of use. He sees that Jean is making a face over his coffee. "Mrs. Bruckner..." "Do you have any cream or sugar?" Ortuso points to a little red box beside the electric pot. Jean follows his finger and repairs her coffee. "Mrs. Bruckner..." "Call me Jean." "Mrs. Bruckner, if that wasn't your husband who committed suicide six years ago, whose body was it?" "I don't know." "You identified it.""I thought it was Sam. There was nothing left of his face, but...he...it...whoever...was in Sam’s clothes and lying on our bed...it was Sam’s shotgun, his handwriting on the note..." Jean returns to the desk, sits, blinks nervously. "...we all thought it was Sam." Ortuso studies her, opens a file on his desk. She watches Ortuso comb through the pages. She is bored and tired and sad and confused. Ortuso is content. Murder is a rare treat in a job filled with the careless death of the highway. Jean looks around the room for something personal about Ortuso, something on a wall or the desk. The obvious is missing so her eyes become microscopes. She looks at his hair ...the top third is all gone and what is left has the choppy style of a man who cuts his own. Ortuso's uniform shows patches on the cuffs and collar of his shirt, his tie is shiny from too many dry cleanings. His wristwatch is cheap, his black shoes are Taiwan vinyl. Ortuso sucks in his stomach in denial of lunch. "It says here that you ordered the body cremated.""What...?" "According to the records, it was you who ordered your husband's...the dead man's remains, be cremated." Those were Sam's wishes." "But it wasn't Sam's body." Ortuso inhales deeply and tries to smell her. He wonders what she's really thinking as he watches her lips fumble for more words. "I didn't...I believed it was Sam," a knot forms in her throat, "Sam and I had...we both wanted cremation...and and I guess I'll have to do it again.""Someone's already claimed his remains. Alice Bucks." "Who's she?" "Claims she's his wife. She arranged for the mortuary to pick up the body tomorrow." Ortuso watches the hurt and confusion well up in Jean's eyes. Then her face gets a surprised look. Ortuso's been here before and when she disappears below the desk, Oscar can smell her lunch and he sighs with the realization that now the Mexicans won't empty his wastebasket. He fishes a business card out of his wallet and shoves it in Jean's handbag. The black-and-white of the bathroom tile makes Jean think of Italian restaurants. She thinks of the plane she missed and the vacation she isn't taking. She splashes cold water on her face, looks in her open purse and sees the card Oscar put there. A small cheap business card and the words printed on it become a giant weight on top of her. The paper towels feel like sandpaper on her face. She looks at the door for several seconds before pushing through it. As soon as she comes out of the ladies room, Oscar falls in step beside her. "Why do I need a private detective? Am I a suspect or something, are you going to arrest me?" Ortuso feels a fart rolling around in his colon and his gut begs for mercy. "Look at it from my point of view," sighs Oscar, "I've got two murders, possible...hell...probable insurance fraud, and you." She wants to start crying all over again. "Where does this...this other wife...this Alice...?" "Bucks…Alice Bucks. Chicago." "What was Sam doing there?" "I was hoping you'd tell me. I figure the reason Sam was murdered is the same reason he faked his own suicide." "What if I don't want this woman to claim his body?" Oscar wrestles the pocket of air in his gut and wonders what will happen if he tries to sneak it out. "She's his wife." "So was I...and first." "The number one thing a cop learns," Oscar tries walking so he...it...won't make noise, "...avoid domestic disputes." The air rushes into Oscar's shorts with silent success. "I booked you a motel room for the night, State of California is paying."Oscar waits outside the Best Western Inn until he sees Jean enter her room and close the door. Then the cop turns the big police cruiser onto Sierra Highway and rolls back into the desert night. The city lights quickly disappear and soon Oscar is doing ninety miles an hour down K Street. Only the occasional naked lightbulb on a weathered porch breaks up the darkness of Oscar's drive. A rabbit dashes into the car's headlights, and Oscar feels its life being crushed by his radial tires. Somewhere in the darkness a coyote hears the thump and knows dinner is served. Somewhere in the darkness people make love inside cheap stucco homes, the shadows of their TV's dancing on the wall. Somewhere in the darkness a lonely dog lies next to a plastic bowl of water and hears Oscar's car racing down a road to nowhere. Jean's gift from the State of California is barren and simple and made almost entirely of petroleum products. Polyester curtains, fiberglass doors, synthetic sheets and blankets, plastic water glasses. Jean turns on the TV and works her way through the channels, all Los Angeles via cable. When she comes to The Big News with Jack Kelly and the Big Team, she tosses the remote control onto the bed. As she dials the phone, a card next to it suggests that Jean have a drink in the motel's Desert Sky Lounge. Jean debates a little action with some local yahoo. On the third ring a message machine answers and a commercially produced rap song tells her to wait for the beep. Finally Jean gets to reply. "Mom, its Jean. A) I think it's a little late for you to be out, B) I'm not going to Italy, something's come up, can we have lunch tomorrow? And C) I love you and it's none of my business how late you stay out so forget A." She hangs up, goes in the bathroom and dampens a washcloth. On the TV, Andy Staub begins the Business Report. She leaves the bathroom, sits on the bed, wipes her face with the damp cloth and watches him. Andy is cute, cracks jokes, makes financial puns...everything she doesn't do. And Jean's heart sinks, she knows that the suits upstairs at Channel 12 are also watching Andy and loving what they see. Andy smiles and presses his face toward the camera. "And I couldn't close tonight without wishing my good friend, Jean Bruckner, Bon Voyage, wherever you are." Jean leans forward and turns off the set. "Fuck you, you little prick." 2Fate's primal clock never stops amazing him. He can feel the first rays of dawn when they're still three thousand miles away. He feels connected to the whole world even though his body is only in one part of it. Eddie hates the thought of camping out, yet he saves "Wilderness Adventures" ads and he knows that if he ever went out there, he would never come back. The idea of sailing around the world on a one-man boat also fascinates Eddie. No books or radio or paper and pencil, just the sea and the birds and fishes and sky and wind and Eddie and the boat. No meaning, no history, no destiny, no Fate. Just Eddie. On or about two-thirty in the morning Fate parks his motorcycle in front of a pawnshop, across the street from a whorehouse. Fate looks into the pawnshop window, not searching for give-or-take, but to admire three time machines. A gun, a camera and a watch. Eddie Fate loves them all for the same reason. They reduce eternity into a single moment. Eddie knows there is a fourth and more powerful time machine. Unlike the gun, the camera and the watch, this fourth time machine expands the universe, can stretch a second into an eternity. Eddie silently inhales the name of the fourth time machine. It whispers past his lips, crashes into his lungs, then rushes back out and collides with the night. "Love," smiles Eddie Fate. He plays a game as he waits for Leon. Fate tries to remember the names of the women he has spent his heart on. The first was the girl who was the monitor in the ice cream line at West Park Elementary, she never had a name to Eddie. Then there was the girl in the six grade, Judy Bennett, who was only pretty for that year before puberty began to elongate her bones and muscles in odd ways and they all graduated on to Bancroft Junior High School. The next three years for Eddie were not about history or math or the rules of grammar, it was about tits and pimples and the inequities of Phys. Ed. The lockers were small and close together so everybody had to smell everybody and no one could hide how much or how little hair was sprouting out of their bodies. Back then Eddie worried that God was going to shortchange him in the dick department...at least that's how it looked as he finished the seventh grade and Bonnie whatever-her-name-was made a fool out of him by going steady with Eddie from first period to lunch, after which Brad-the-giant-muscle took her back and Eddie found his best jacket on the ground by the metal shop. The women in Eddie's life came and went briskly because none of them bothered to stick around or even slow down to consider what Eddie had to offer. There was Vee with two great tits and an overbite that made Eddie think of the cars of the future at the AutoRama Show. Vee liked Eddie because he reminded her of the dead actor James Dean. Vee also liked tarot cards and kept trying to find a tragic early death in Eddie's future. And there was Rosalyn LePage who got so wet when they made out that she became embarrassed because it looked like she wet her pants and so Eddie took her home to change but she never came back out of her house. There was Maria who thought Eddie was cute and funny but she let Earl knock her up and Earl and Maria got married and then Earl joined the Navy and then Eddie fell in love with Linda Baken who he really didn't love and she really didn't love him, but they enjoyed making out and petting even though she wouldn't let him put his hand in her pants or take off her bra, which didn't bother Eddie too much because she could get them both off just dry fucking through their clothes. Eddie knew he would call her today if he had her number. But she died in a car accident the following semester so he knew he'd never get her number. Eddie gives up remembering girlfriends because in the reflection of the pawnshop window, Eddie sees Leon Kohl come out of the whorehouse. Even in a reflection, even from across the street, Eddie can see that Leon is greasy and fat and Eddie knows that underneath Leon's rolls of blubber are heat rashes and yeast infections mixing with thick body oil. Even in the reflection, even from across the street, Eddie knows that Leon will be mad as hell when Eddie hands him the subpoena. Fat greasy smelly Leon climbs into his big Mercedes sedan and chirps the tires as he races away from the whorehouse. Eddie fires his motorcycle engine and slaloms through the traffic in pursuit. A mile later the engine on Eddie's motorcycle dies and he coasts to a stop in front of Honest Mike Motors. Dawn brings the smell of hot coffee and baklava. Fate walks among a sea of wrecked and rusting Italian sports cars. He pokes his nose in this one and that. At the other end of this ocean, small and dark skinned Mike Fouad uses a screwdriver to probe the nerves and guts of Eddie's red Japanese motorcycle. Eddie's curiosity sings across the broken machines to Mike. "I knew a guy in college...he said that Italian cars are really great...but that they take over your brain...or something like that. What do one of these run?"Mike's tee shirt is full of holes, his eyeglasses are held together with paper clips. He looks around, "What do you mean, one of these? Every car here is different. What are you driving now?" "You're fixing it." Eddie walks over and squats down next to the small dark man working on the motorcycle. "How many miles on it?" grunts Mike Fouad. Eddie shrugs. Mike stands up, kicks the starter and revs the engine. Eddie is impressed. "Hasn't sounded that good in years." As Mike wipes his hands with the dirty cloth, Eddie can see that the grease and grime are never removed from Mike, just relocated, from rag to hands to tools to neck to machine to forehead to the rag again to some piece of metal and then back to flesh. "You know why you drive a motorcycle?" smiles Mike. "I'm too cheap to spend the money on a car?" Mike shakes his head, "It's not about money." He motions for Eddie to follow him into the shade of a concrete block building. "I was born in Lebanon but my mother was Italian and one year we went to visit her family in Sicily. I was ten years old and I saw my first racecar. I never went back to Lebanon." Inside the plain gray building, a gray metal desk has been lost under a mountain of old invoices and auto parts manuals. The walls are loaded with posters showing swoopy red Italian cars. Eddie nods at the grease and chaos. "I'm not looking for a car." Fouad isn't listening, he's pulling Eddie toward a dark corner of the building, toward something that-once-was-red. "I'll tell you why I never went back to Lebanon. At this race I met a young man...about twenty-five or so, but to me he was old and wise. He was a racing driver, and he let me sit behind the wheel of his car and put on his helmet." "Mr. Foouaa?""Call me Mike.""Mike, I don't...""Eddie, I don't want to sell you a car, that's not my business, I want to show you a car." Mike stops beside a grill poking out from under torn seats and old tires and other miscellaneous parts. At the center of the grill is a shape that resembles a crown. "But it is not a crown," says Mike Fouad, "it is Neptune's Trident." Eddie feels sick and doesn't want to ask, but he does. "What's it connected to?""History," glows Mike, "the story of Neptune's Trident is an epic saga worthy of the Greeks. It is the story of four brothers, and of their victories and failures, and of the cars that bore their name. Maserati. Eddie, listen to me, do you know why you ride a motorcycle? Because you are a man who must travel alone. To drive a car with Neptune's Trident is to also be that kind of man." Mike Fouad begins to pull the junk obscuring the car's soiled metal. "You know what kind of car that young racing driver had?" Eddie doesn't have to answer. Mike is already beaming. "Yes, he too was driving Neptune's Trident. And what he told me that day are words that changed my life forever. He said, 'It is not important to learn what you want to do with your life, but instead, what your life wants to do with you. My mother, being an Italian communist, didn't understand. My father, being an Arab Muslim, did. And yet I always saw my mother as the romantic one and my father as the logical one. And now that you have me thinking about it again after all these years, I suddenly realize that you didn't come here to have me fix your motorcycle, you came here to help me see the truth about my parents." At now Eddie can see what-once-was-red...and the chrome letters that spell out Maserati...and Eddie is already backing up, but he can't take his eyes off Neptune's Trident. "I know it looks rough," wiggles Mike Fouad, "but when I get it cleaned up, I want you to drive it." "I really don't want to buy that car." Mike laughs. "And I don't want to sell it. Honest. But what does your life want to do with you? And what does my life want to do with me?" Sunlight dapples the living room floor. The front door opens, Jean leans against the frame, then enters, closing the door with her foot. She turns off a lamp, drifts down the shadowed hallway to the kitchen, takes a carton of milk from the fridge, smells it for freshness then drinks it thirstily. After the milk, she stands there lost in thought about the other times she's been lost in thought only to find herself pulling up the driveway in her car or walking down a hall or gazing into someone's eyes and unable to remember why or where or what or how she got to the moment. In the six months she has lived in this house she still has not moved in. Nothing has been given a place, including herself. She didn't think life could be more temporary and now it has become exactly that. She considers masturbation but no fantasies come to mind. She considers killing herself but she's more curious about why Sam pretended to. A wet tapping creeps into her consciousness, grows louder and louder and louder and cuts through her thoughts. Her eyes open wide with fear, then with recognition. She steps forward and instantly the tapping shrinks back to its normal size, just water dripping from a tired spigot into an old porcelain sink. She leans on the faucet. The drip stops, but not her fear. The intruder's water glass is upside down on the counter. Jean slowly reaches out and wraps her fingers around the glass as if shaking hands with the dead. She picks it up. The glass makes a little suction pop from the water gathered where the rim meets the tile. It startles her, she drops the glass and it smashes into a hundred angry diamonds.Red lights flash. Neighbors gawk. Jean nags after a plainclothes cop as they walk from her porch to his car. "Okay, forget my faucet dripping, but the water on the lip of the glass, that would have evaporated by now." "We found no signs of forced entry." "He could have had a key...""Who's he?" "I don't know, I...I...I don't know." "Mrs. Bruckner, if someone broke into your house, why didn't they take anything?""Maybe...I...I don't know..." The cop opens the door and gets in his car. His partner starts the engine. "Mrs. Bruckner, there is no one in your house now. Tomorrow get all the locks changed if that makes you feel safer. But to be honest, if all he took was a glass of water, I'd suggest you consider yourself lucky and call it a..." "What the hell do you guys do for a living?" He pulls a business card from his shirt pocket. "Forget it, somebody else already give me one." She turns to walk away and feels angry when she sees the questions on her neighbors' faces. Six months and they are all still strangers. Six months and not a mutual word about the sky at dusk or the lesbian running for the City Council District or the neighborhood owl. Six months and neither friends nor enemies have sprouted from the human garden. Something is wrong with the world. Jean remembers when as a kid, her family changed neighborhoods, and new relationships came as easy as the morning. She wonders what is wrong with the world. It's not television...that's just an electric fireplace. Maybe its telephones...that feels right, telephones connect people who are not connected and disconnect us from people who are right next door. She thinks about tearing out the phone, but first she has to make a call.Jean remembers what Sam used to say about the way she went through her purse. Sometimes it was with calm and certainty over the outcome. Sometimes it was with the care and curiosity of an archaeological dig. Sometimes it was in panic. Like now as she yells into the phone: "Ortuso...Ortuso...he works there! My god, you people live in the desert, in the middle of nowhere, how many Ortuso's can there be?" She turns her purse upside down and dumps the contents onto the table. "Can I leave a message? He'll know what it's about. I just gave you my number...no, that's work ...yes, that's my home. Thanks. For nothing." She hangs up. Amongst the chaos from her purse, her hand finds the card Ortuso gave her. Her lips silently repeat the numbers as she dials. The phone rings several times, a recorded voice answers. "This is Eddie, I can't come to the phone right now but leave your name and number and the day and time you called and I'll get back to you right away." Jean waits for the beep. "My name is Jean Bruckner, I was given your name by a Mr. Ortuso of the California Highway Patrol. I think I need..." A squeal of audio feedback and a male voice interrupts her. "Hang on, I'm here, I'm here. Just let me turn off the machine..." Jean wants to meet right away, but Fate puts it off until the next afternoon. Eddie hangs up and heads for the Beverly Hills Hotel. Myrna Wayne is waiting in the Polo Lounge. Eddie orders pancakes and listens to her rambling philosophy about life and why it is a great act of poetry that Eddie will repo the Mercedes she gave to Conan Gates at the very hotel where Eddie is now eating pancakes and Gates is screwing Myrna's best friend, Ilene Clemente. Eddie gets nervous. "You gave it to him as a gift, didn't you?"Myrna nods, "But so what...the prick didn't live up to his side of the bargain...""Which is?""Which is, I'm his squeeze. Me and only me.""And he understood that was the arrangement?"Myrna's getting angry. "What? You think I give a Mercedes to every guy I fuck? Shit, whatever happened to good old-fashioned values like loyalty?"Eddie knows the gig is a dud and he tries to bow out gracefully. "Myrna, I believe you are a person of high principles...""You saw my film? The good one, without the cum shots?"Eddie pushes on. "...the legal question is, do we...I ...do I have a right to take possession of the car. Is he behind in payments?""What payments...I bought it for him. It's paid for.""And is the title in his name?""Yes. I just said, I bought it for him.""Then you...I...can't just take it and drive off. It isn't yours...it belongs to him." Eddie quickly finishes his pancakes because Myrna is staring at her napkin and thinking about who she should call next since this dickless private eye isn't going to be any help. Eddie excuses himself to make a phone call and he never goes back to the table. If the job had panned out he would have been glad to pay for the pancakes. Driving home, Eddie's heart stops when a giant air horn screams behind him. Eddie almost dumps his motorcycle but then he hears the voice of a madman calling..."Eddie! Eddie!" Eddie glances behind him and there is Mike Fouad in the once-was-red-Maserati. Eddie knows he'll need help saying no, so he has Mike follow him to Nigel's Pool Hall in the Latin Quarter of North Hollywood. Nigel’s is famous for cold beer, level tables, straight sticks, round balls, and earthquake survival kits for only $29.99 available at the cash register. Mike Fouad and Nigel shoot a couple of games while Eddie takes the big Maserati for a drive. The inside of the car is like a small airplane. Gauges and switches fill the black matte dashboard. The ignition key is small and elegant and it slides into the ignition and no sooner does Eddie turn the key than the big Maserati straight six bursts to life and then settles into a dark bubbling rumble and waits for Eddie to make up his mind.The wood and aluminum steering wheel is as delicate as the slender gearshift lever. But the clutch pedal is as stiff and heavy as an exercise machine. The gear lever snicks into first gear, Eddie's calf trembles as he eases the clutch back out. The engine races with the slightest touch of the throttle and then the car is moving.Eddie pushes the throttle down a little farther and the car moves faster...the engine revs climb higher...and first gear feels like it could last forever. Eddie quickly shifts into second, the Maserati lurches...Eddie eases up and glances around the tobacco leather interior. The seats are old but the leather is still soft and strong. And everywhere Eddie looks, he cannot find a trace of plastic.The Mall is young and old at the same time. Open only a year, it is already stained and bruised and broken and its gargantuan splendor is worn into tarnished convenience. Jean and her mother ride the escalator upward through the strata. There's an aggressive flashiness about Gladys Lambert, a cross between a salesman and an evangelist. "A detective? Jesus, Jean! Look, I say forget it and go to Italy like you planned." "You told me to do that the day before I married Sam." "And now you can see that I was right. Look at the mess you're in." "I'm not in a mess." "You will be."Gladys disappears into a changing booth and comes out wearing a cobalt blue leather suit with a plunging neckline. Jean watches her mother twist and turn in front of a three-way mirror. Gladys adjusts her breasts, then clutches at the saleslady. "Do you have this with pants instead of a skirt?" "Also in a ten?" Gladys makes a face. "I'll see if we have an eleven."Jean stares at her mother. "That's like something you wouldn't have let me buy." Greasy Leon Kohl loves girls with hard plastic tits. Leon loves girls in short skirts who don't wear underpants. Candee Candoo takes fifty dollars from Eddie and walks down the block and squirms onto a seat at Leon's donut stand. The old Korean woman is going to wait on her but Candee Candoo crosses her legs and Greasy Leon moves in for the kill. Leon gets hard watching Candee Candoo eat her second chocolate eclair. She says for a hundred bucks she'll eat him. Leon invites her to visit his Mercedes. Candee Candoo does. Leon gives her the hundred bucks and sprawls in the backseat of the big car. He's in heaven and thinks he might fuck her in the ass afterwards just to teach her a lesson. Leon doesn't want whores hanging around his place, at least not after today. Candee gets him ready to squirt just opening his fly. Then she says she hopes he isn't one of those guys who won't let her swallow it, she says she loves to swallow. Leon's prostate is throbbing. As she plucks a few loose hairs from the head of his dick, Candee asks Leon what his name is. "Leon," he barks, so she'll shut up and suck. Candee Candoo laughs and grabs Leon by the balls. Leon opens his mouth to scream and Eddie reaches into the car and stuffs the subpoena between Leon's fat lips. Leon Kohl gags and sputters and almost pukes his anger as he threatens to kill Eddie. Eddie and Candee Candoo run like hell, jump into the once-was-red-Maserati, and leave two strips of black rubber as they turn left on Melrose. Eddie takes Candee Candoo to a nice Italian place in Pasadena. The guy at the door doesn't like the looks of Candee but he owes Eddie and that at least gets them a table near the kitchen. Candee excuses herself and when she comes back she says this is the first place she's been to that doesn't sell rubbers in the restrooms. Eddie says it's because of the Pope's visit next week, all the Italian restaurants take out the rubber machines when the Pope is in town. Candee doesn't know he's joking and Eddie decides it's better not to tell her and then Eddie doesn't know what to say and then Candee asks the waiter for a meatball sub and then Eddie sees a woman who had him repo her husband's boyfriend’s Corvette and the woman looks at Eddie like she recognizes him and then she looks at Candee Candoo and decides she doesn't know Eddie from Adam and Eddie excuses himself to make a phone call and he calls his answering machine and then he calls Oscar Ortuso but Oscar isn't home so Eddie goes back to the table and asks Candee who her favorite author is and she says she doesn't know anybody named Arthur and Candee laughs at her own joke and she tells Eddie how she dropped out of college because the more she learned about the world the more she became convinced that human beings were a form of cancer and so she abandoned all the intellectual bullshit that people use to hide who they really are. Then Candee Candoo asks Eddie Fate which TV weatherman he likes best. Jean pretends she is in Europe. She and Gladys roam through a huge assortment of plaster of Paris statues...cheap reproductions of the classics, cheaper originals that emphasize breasts and butts. Venus and David come in all sizes, from pocket to garden to casino. Gladys lets her eyes pinch the merchandise. "It dawned on me the other day that when you lease cars to guys who have gold nuggets for teeth, it is sacrilegious for a company called Venus Car Leasing not to have a statue of Venus in the parking lot...ahhhh!" Gladys rushes to a five foot high statue of Venus, circles it, studies it. "Too big? Too small? Maybe it should be painted. Now don't criticize me but do you think they have one with the arms back on?" Jean hangs back for a better look. "I think the tits were a lot smaller on the original, and I think you ought to drop me back at my car or I'll be late."Gladys suddenly feels like a mother. "What time are you meeting him?" "He's coming by at five." "I'm sorry about Sam. You really ought to just get on that plane..." "I can't." "Won't." "Won't." "You've got to let go of this...fall in love, or at least go to one of those male strip joints."Jean grabs Gladys and hugs her for a long moment. "I love you, Mom." Gladys wipes a tear from her eye. Well...who's that new kid filling in for you at the station? I like him. A lot."Fate rummages in a trash barrel and mumbles into his micro tape recorder. "Subject uses Light Days Mini-pads, isn’t on the pill, hasn't entertained recently, prefers fish to red meat, no signs of poultry...uses cosmetics from companies that don't test on animals, prefers stockings to panty hose, and hasn't changed her bank branch in fifteen years." Eddie wonders what she looks like as he turns and moves up Jean's driveway.Lost in thought, Jean doesn't hear the car horn honking ...but then it reaches through and pulls her eyes away from the train of taillights in front of her. Dr. Chris Schwartzman sits in his Mercedes and waves to her from the next lane. His libido's computer instantly takes over. His age is her age, his hair is sandy, his smile is open and good-natured, his voice only slightly tentative. "Long time no see. You haven't changed a bit."Speechless, Jean slows her car to a crawl. He also slows, pacing her. The timber of his voice now has more confidence. "Okay, I'll remind you...we shared hot tubs bare-assed, you rolled the skinniest joints at USC, and I was best man at your wedding." She forces the words past the lump in her throat. "How are you, Chris?" He wiggles his hand in the so-so gesture. "When did you move back to L.A.?" "Four months ago." "The Marina?" She shakes her head. "Sold it. Silver Lake." "You in the book?" Traffic starts complaining before she can answer. He has to raise his voice. "I want to see you. Call me, I'm in Century City, let's have dinner." She nods, waves. He waves back and disappears into the rush hour. She pulls over to the curb and has a good cry. Silver Lake is golden with afternoon. Jean's blue Porsche finds its own way up the driveway and into the garage. The backdoor key finds her hand by rote and begins to enter the door but the door is already unlocked and her touch starts it swinging open. The door squeaks. Her legs are jelly. She steps into the kitchen. Cupboards and drawers are toothless smiles, their contents spilled across the floor. A pool of water from melting ice cubes gathers in front of the open refrigerator. The decaying sun turns her world into shadows and silhouettes. She slowly crabs down the hallway and into the living room. A lamp has been knocked over. Pillows thrown off the couch. Records are pulled from their sleeves. Books flung in frustration. She feels Sam's presence, is afraid his body is somewhere in the house, its face missing, blood on the walls, a note beside their bed. She keeps moving. Down another hall. Towards the closed bedroom door. Her hand shakes as she turns the doorknob and pushes. The room looks as if it has been raped. At the same moment, something moves behind her. An arm grabs her around the neck, a hand covers her mouth, she moans, her eyes dance, a face presses next to her ear. "Are you Jean Bruckner?" She nods. "Okay... don't be afraid, I'm going to let you go." He abruptly releases her and steps away. Fear squeezes Jean into a corner of the room. "Who are you?""Fate, Eddie Fate, I'm your five o'clock appointment." Eddie can't take his eyes off Jean. Her vulnerability makes him feel guilty. His arms can't let go of the memory of how she felt. He knows everything that is going to happen and he knows he should run like hell and he can't and instead...he apologizes. "I'm sorry, but I gotta be careful. I almost got shot once because I confused the client with the person I was supposed to follow. You okay?""Do you have any I.D.?"He fumbles through his pockets, holds out a card. "How about something more official than a business card."He fumbles some more, holds out a driver’s license. "I let you go, didn't I? Rapists and muggers don't do that." He flips the driver’s license over and waves the reverse side at her. "And here's my private investigator's license, good through last month."Jean resigns, her body sags, her eyes spastically search the room, the mattress slashed violently, her clothes every-where, her mouth moves but is speechless, mesmerized by the carnage. Eddie holds out his hand, reaches the remaining inches and takes her hand. The joining of their limbs sends a warm rush, like acupuncture, through Eddie's body and he slowly leads her from the room. "We'll talk about it later, just look around and tell me if anything is missing. Either way you aren't staying here tonight." "Shouldn't we call the police?""You already had the police. That's why you called me. Don't worry about the mess, I've got people that'll clean it up."Stopping in the living room, Fate points to the TV and stereo. "See, junkies would have grabbed those and been high five minutes later. You have any idea who or why?"Jean mutely shakes her head...looks at a broken lamp. He lets her pick up the pieces, but as soon as she does, they fall through her fingers and back to the floor. She shakes her head in confusion. Eddie Fate tugs on her hand and feels it all the way into his heart. "Let's go."As the big once-was-red Maserati rumbles through the afternoon city, Mike Fouad's greasy palm prints are still all over the hood, but Neptune's Trident sparkles and gleams on the front grill. Eddie searches the passing landscape for his words. He wants to start speaking a million times and yet he doesn't. Just as he begins to enjoy the relaxation of no words, he sees a billboard with a picture of the Big News Team...Jean is the last picture on the right side of the sign. "You look different than on TV. On television, every one is the same height, the same size. Then you see the person in real life and they're short or have fat legs...or maybe they are real tall…I always think of funny people as short, but some are real tall."At first she doesn't answer him. Eddie's obvious attraction to her becomes a contraction inside her. She scrambles for something to push him away. "How old are you?""That's a stupid question," he is alarmed at the edge he feels in his throat."I didn't mean to...to...offend you.""You didn't offend me, you just made yourself look stupid. You know you only have to be twenty-one to be a cop.""And again, I'm sorry.""Anyway...twenty-nine...almost twenty-nine...twenty-eight...in three months."Now Jean studies the passing scenery and wonders what she should say. She surrenders to the flow of traffic and the deep pulse of the Maserati's engine. "What kind of car is this?""Maserati.""It looks old. The bumpers...you can see them...not like on new cars...the new cars all look the same, just different colors...like Easter eggs.""This is a 1967 Maserati Mistral...named after a wind in France.”"You know a lot about cars?"Eddie shakes his head, "I don't even know a lot about this car."His honesty make her smile. "Where are you from?""Here. I was born in this big hospital that’s now a Scientology Center…its up on Franklin. You?""Long Beach.""So, two native Angelinos. What keeps you here?”She shrugs.Eddie lets his eyes glance at her legs. "I keep saying I'm going to leave, but then I can't make up my mind where to go.""New York?""Have you been there?""My honeymoon.""You didn't tell me you were married." "Because I'm not. Are you?" "Not yet. I'd feel uncomfortable living in someone else's apartment and I don't want someone moving into mine so..." he shrugs the unsaid words.She is staring at him, wondering about him. He hates it but he smiles. Then his smile feels uncomfortable and so he stops talking and looks out the windshield and drives the once-was-red-Maserati. One entire wall is a garage door covered by a black-and-white mural that recreates the opening scene from the movie "The Wild One." But instead of Marlon Brando, the leader of the motorcycle gang is a large smiling Buddha. Buddha and the biker gang rise up as the garage door opens. Outside is an alley. Through the open door arrives Eddie and Jean in the Maserati. Eddie uses a remote control to close the garage door mural behind them. He parks the car next to his motorcycle. Surrounding them is a veritable museum of patio and lawn furniture.Instead of carpets, the floor is covered with Astroturf. The dining area is redwood benches and a picnic table with an umbrella sticking out of the center, surrounded by a white picket fence. The bedroom area is a large tent, with an electric campfire in front and a cardboard tree next to it. Jean struggles out of the Maserati's deep leather seats. "I feel like I'm in the Outdoor Living display at Patio World."Eddie nods as he gives his world the once-over. "You got it, first time. My dad would take me shopping and I always loved the sporting goods and camping section.""What did this place used to be?""Laundra-mat." He walks to the refrigerator lined up next to the stove and sink along the far wall. A red curtain partially hides a toilet, and a clear plastic curtain, drawn back, reveals the shower. "That's why all the plumbing is against this wall." Eddie opens the fridge. “I wasn’t expecting company…but I’ve got beer, Dr. Pepper, Triscuits, and Laura Scudders peanut butter. He offers, she shakes her head. Standing in the center of the room is a grand piano. An amber hue is added by the late afternoon sun pouring through a large, waxed-over window. Across the window move the shadows of pedestrians on Melrose Avenue. Eddie takes a beer, gestures for her to sit. She tries the piano's bench. "You play?" Eddie asks. She chooses Satie...Eddie walks over and leans on the piano. Jean enjoys the silent compliment and plays a little better. He is closer to her than he wants to be. "I got it as a partial fee for a case. I've been thinking about learning...you sure I can't get you a beer?"She nods."Yes I can, or yes I can't?""Either."Again he moves away from her. She studies him as he looks for the coldest bottle. She silently curses the tremor in her voice as she asks "Am I a typical case?""No, usually I do Workmen's Comp...lots of sitting around and waiting to catch some guy playing golf when he should be wearing a back brace.""You mean it's not like in the movies?""We've got a saying in the business. Old private eyes never die, they just fall asleep in front of the TV.""Doesn't seem like your style."She stops playing. Eddie's heart is falling through space as he opens the beer and hands it to her, then sits on a deck chair opposite her. He pulls on his own beer and takes a pad and pencil from his jacket pocket. "So how did you meet Uncle Oscar?"The name throws her. "Uncle Oscar?""Officer Ortuso, the Highway Patrol guy, he's not really my uncle, but he likes to act like he is." "If my husband disappeared six years ago, could you find him?"Eddie shrugs."What if he faked his own death?""Why would he do that?""That's what I want you to find out."Eddie stares at her and she's uncomfortable and he senses it and looks down at the blank page and doodles. A pounding throbbing noise starts coming through the ceiling. Jean flinches with surprise. Eddie answers the question she hasn't asked. "The Zipper. An after-hours club. Actually they're open all hours...probably auditioning a band." He finishes his beer, holds up the bottle as a way of asking her if she'll have another. She shakes her head. The setting sun outside the large window adds to the room's surreal mood. Eddie grabs a fresh bottle, turns and looks at Jean, keeps looking at her. She reminds Eddie of Patty Icky-lips. Even at age ten Eddie knew Patty would have great tits...even at age ten Eddie found Patty's wide full mouth so tempting that he had to invent a name that would acknowledge his attraction but hide his feelings. It was a faraway Saturday and Eddie rode his bike the block and a half just to see the soft pink flesh of Patty's lips. She smiled at him and his heart started pumping so fast he could only yell "yahhhh!" and he raced home and announced he was forming The All American Girl Haters. All Jean sees is an almost twenty-eight year old private eye getting a hard-on. And she wonders out loud, "Can you help me?He takes a long time to answer, not wanting the moment to end. "Sure.""Will you?""I hope so."Much later Jean wakes up and almost screams. But doesn't. She's in a stranger's home in a stranger's bed. It isn’t even a bed, it’s a camping cot. All she has is her purse and her car keys and three hundred in cash and the clothes she was wearing but that are now lying on a lawn chair. She is angry at Sam for not staying dead. Fear stops her breathing when she thinks she whiffs Sam's smell. But then it turns out to be the woolen blanket she is under. She forces her eyes shut and blackness becomes total and she goes into it.Eddie lies in a sleeping bag under the grand piano. From his bedroom tent comes the whisper of Jean's breathing. He wonders if she heard him wake up, gasping for air. When it happens it only happens just as he shuts his eyes and darkness embraces him. He holds a finger to his throat and times his pulse with the neon clock over the Buddha. He's angry at himself for being so afraid. But that doesn't stop him from reaching out, from grabbing one of the piano's legs and hanging on. Once again he shuts his eyes and tries to face his enemy. He wonders what he would do if he became lighter than air and started to float away. Eddie doesn't want to think about that. Eddie doesn't want to think about Jean. So Eddie thinks about the books he read and he thinks about the ones he's likes the best. "The College of Silence" is about a guy who spends forty days in retreat where he cannot speak...and he's really a crook on the run...and he talks to himself inside his head. And when the forty days are over, he discovers he doesn't want to end the silence and he becomes a traveling monk and people come and look at him as if looking at themselves in a pond of water. And there's "Mars, Ohio," about a small town where the local politicians aren't elected, but are selected at random, like jury duty, and they serve a certain time as part of the local government. They might be the Chief of Police or the mayor or the head of the school board or the dogcatcher or whatever...but that is their job and they can't turn it down. It is the story of a year in the life of the town of Mars, Ohio...and it is a history of America...the world...the universe. There is "God from a Machine" about a junior high school history-and-music teacher who becomes a serial killer once a month, and remains all of the good things he is for the rest of the month. There is the complete works of John Steinbeck...Eddie likes Steinbeck the best because his books are like sitting down with someone you love being with and hearing a story from their lips. It is while remembering the beginning of "The Log from the Sea of Cortez" and hearing John Steinbeck talk about the death of Ed Ricketts that Eddie falls asleep.Four miles west of the Tire Barn and the Villa Basque Restaurant sits two acres of land called The Desert Winds Trailer and Mobile Home Park. The tires on Oscar’s 1956 Alumo-Deluxe Slim-Line 550 Adventurer have long since decayed and merged with the dry sandy earth. The angle and attitude of the blue liquid in the Windex bottle over the bathroom sink advises Oscar of the approximate level of the trailer in relationship to the rest of the planet. Tonight Oscar Ortuso sits under the stars on a Lazy Boy recliner and watches Katherine Hepburn and Rossano Brazzi in "Summertime" on the Channel Six Late Show that floats down from Bakersfield when the nights are clear. The images of Venice and love are snowy and filled with ghosts, but even with the sound turned almost all the way down the voices fill up the space under the old willow tree, and Oscar's heart breaks and he can feel the eyes of a young coyote also watching the movie from the shadows. Oscar sips from a bottle of tequila and dips his hand into a bag of microwave popcorn. All of Oscar's big dreams have been abandoned. Now all that Oscar asks of life is that it give him a little warning. 3An hour ago the shadow of the 747 chased a dirty Buick across the heart of Kansas. An hour before that an eight year old boy looked up from a school yard in Kanab, Utah. The boy pointed his finger at the plane and made a killing noise with his mouth and wondered how many people were in the plane. He watched the plane until it disappeared. He stuck out his jaw and tried to see his lower lip while fantasizing what it would be like to watch so many people die. He decided he was glad his finger was just a finger, but he also decided that someday he would like to have power that was not pretend.All that is left of the day is a crescent of light at the edge of the world. And then it is night. Eddie doesn't really have to use the rest room, he just wants to walk around the plane to get the wrinkles out of his linen suit and study the faces of the passengers watching the movie. One by one throughout the cabin the little overhead lights are turned on. No one thinks about flying. No one dares to for the same reason no one dares to read about the jet that crashed that morning. The reason for the crash is as unexplainable as the reason just one little girl survived. Fate wonders if this plane started to crash if there would be anything he could do to save his life. He imagines running up into the cockpit and grabbing the controls and wrestling the big 747 out of its steep dive. He imagines, just before impact, using his jacket to block the smoke that will fill the cabin. As he strolls back to his seat, he counts the number of aisles to the different exits. Jean has her seat reclined and her eyes closed when Eddie sits next to her. The question scratches his throat as it comes out. "You said Sam had a sister."Jean doesn't open her eyes. "Clair, she was just a kid, seventeen or so when Sam and I got married. He always said how fragile she was, but I chalked that up to big brother looking out for little sister.""You never met her?"Jean shakes her head. "She was in school in Europe and couldn't get to the wedding, and then..." Jean opens her eyes and looks at Eddie. "I...I guess it is odd, isn't it?" Eddie smiles. "A guy in a movie said it was logical that illogic should contradict logic." "Meaning?""Meaning nothing is odd.""Then it must be me. What I mean is that...all my life I've liked to talk about...about whatever is going on. But now...suddenly it sounds so strange to hear my own life...out loud...like this...the...the words feel funny in my mouth, like they're not me, like what I'm saying isn't about me. But I know it is.""Don't try to think about it, just...talk it...say it straight out.""A month after Sam died, I got a letter from a doctor saying that Clair had herself committed to a mental hospital.""You remember the doctor's name or the hospital?""No." Jean doesn't like feeling like she's under a microscope and changes the focus. "How did you meet Ortuso?""Wouldn't you rather hear how I got the name Fate?""Ortuso says you were fired. Why?""Because my parents' name was Fate."She laughs. Fate likes the sound of her laugh, he didn't expect it, he didn't expect it to be so pure and musical, he didn't expect her to be able to laugh so completely. Her laughter ripples into a smile and her smile relaxes into a sigh and her sigh turns her head to the window. Jean pretends she is looking out the window but it is black outside and she is really looking inside herself.Eddie's voice is almost a whisper. "What do you see?" Her answer whispers back. "I sees my father puffing on cigarettes in between gasping breaths of oxygen from the tank that was his bride for the last two years of his life. I'd get phone calls in the middle of the night, he'd panic as he realized he was suffocating himself. I loved him and I was glad when he finally died and it all was over." Eddie nudges her. "Oscar sort of took me under his wing when I was a rookie. A couple of prisoners got killed, Oscar was wounded, they said I was partially to blame."She stares at him, still thinking of her father. "Were you...partially to blame?""I've given up trying to make up my mind. Some days I'd think yes, some days I'd think no...the truth is simply that I wasn't where I should have been." "Are your parents alive?"Eddie nods. "My father's an inventor.""What did he invent?""Being second in line. Actually he didn't even invent that...he just perfected it. My mom couldn't take it anymore so she moved to Portland, she teaches eighth grade."They both watch the in-flight movie without sound for a few minutes. "And where does your father live?"Eddie looks out the plane's window. "Down there somewhere. The IRS has been after him for years." "He's a fugitive?""He's an anarchist.""What's his name?""Mickey...he doesn't like Mike or Michael...he likes the name Mickey. My mom's name is Rachel.""Do you ever see her?""We stay in touch.""What does that mean?""Means I'm feeling guilty. My turn to squeeze on you. Sam..."Jean feels an unexpected pain in her stomach and she takes a deep breath. Instead of talking, she lets the air out and takes another breath and feels her face getting red and her pulse racing."Sam loved everything. He loved his work, he loved being a Democrat, he loved writing letters to good friends, he loved cooking, he loved looking at magazines, he..." tears begin rolling down her cheeks, "...he loved reading poems written by people that time has forgotten, he loved Laurel and Hardy comedies, he loved having clean sheets when we made love..." And now she sobs uncontrollably. Her whole body seems to collapse inward. "He loved the smell of me on his hands after we made love." Eddie sees her hand grip the arm of the seat as if in some horrible pain. He leaps into the ocean of sadness by placing his hand on hers. Jean's fingers clutch him and squeeze...and the full force of her grief is let loose. A stewardess stops by, Eddie nods that everything is okay...his free hand turns out the overhead lights. In the darkness, Jean's tears flow with the smoothness of a river. After more minutes, the sobs dissolve into panting breaths, and finally into silence. Her hand relaxes and let's go of his. Eddie massages where her nails dug in. "You okay?" he asks."Yeah.""You want go on?""Yeah.""You sure?"She reaches up and turns on the overhead light. Her lips have that bruised look that only comes from sex and crying. She smiles shyly and starts to put on fresh makeup. To hide what he feels, Eddie squeezes his eyes as they explore the surface of her flesh. "What do you want me to find out? Why he left you? Who killed him?""I want to know if he ever really loved me.""Ant farms," mumbles Eddie as he waits for the airport conveyor to spit out their luggage. Jean signs the rent-a-car forms, thanks the clerk and turns for the exit. Head down, she doesn't see the man. His arms shoot out and prevent the collision. She looks up in surprise at the equally surprised face of Chris Schwartzman. His mouth has a mocking smile. "If I didn't know better, I'd swear you were following me."She throws her arms around him. "What are you doing here?""A little mini-convention on noses, tits and tax planning. You?"Eddie appears next to them with the baggage. Chris looks at him questioningly. Jean keeps the moment from growing more awkward. "Chris Schwartzman, this is Eddie..."Eddie holds out his hand. "Fate...Eddie Fate." Chris Schwartzman's enthusiasm cools dramatically. The men feel each other’s hands without sincerity. Jean tugs on Chris' sleeve. "Wait right here..."Eddie and Chris watch her run to a white courtesy phone. Moments later, as she walks back to them, the PA system broadcasts..."Dr. Dover, Dr. Ben Dover, please come to the white courtesy phone, Dr. Ben Dover, come to the white courtesy phone, please."Jean shrugs her shoulders and feels silly. But Chris smiles with approval. Years vanish from her eyes, the corners of her mouth relax, her heart beats and her lungs draw air without effort. Eddie is all but invisible as she makes Chris the first offer. "So, when? I won't wait another six years."Chris checks his watch. "Dinner?""Late?" "Where are you staying?""Eddie and I haven't decide. I'll come to you.""The Hilton."Jean is beaming. "Can we give you a ride?"Eddie fidgets, unhappy. Chris glances at Eddie, shakes his head. "There's a bunch of us traveling together."A very old bellhop enters the room first, turns on all the lights, opens the bathroom door, the door to the adjoining room, the closet door, all in slow motion. Moments later, Jean and Eddie follow. Eddie carries all three suitcases, which he drops in the center of the floor. "You don't think it's weird he shows up?"Jean goes to a mirror and looks for the years. "He's an old friend.""If he was such a friend, where's he been all those years?""The same place I was.""Where's that?""Licking my wounds."The bellhop has run out of doors to open and stands there with his waxy, bloodless hand out. Eddie looks at him. "Six years later, this guy shows up, just as her husband is found murdered."The bellhop clears his throat. Jean looks in her purse but all she's got are large bills. "Give the bellman a tip."Eddie turns to Jean. "Did you hear what I just said?""Did you hear me? Give the bellman a tip.""He didn't carry anything.""Give him a tip, Goddammit!"Eddie pulls some singles from his pocket, shoves them in the old man's hand. The old guy gives a shaky salute and vanishes unnoticed.Eddie watches Jean play with her face in the mirror. She sees him watching and it bothers her. Eddie feels like a jerk so he tries to sound like they hadn't been yelling at each other. "So where are we going for dinner?"Jean takes her bags into the next room and slams the door. Eddie walks over to the door and shouts through it. "I said where are we going for dinner?" He hears her turn on the television set. He looks at the one in his room and does the same, selects the adult channel but turns down the sound. High ceilings, black-and-white tile floor, marble and garlic and Italian waiters everywhere. Chris and Jean work on an open bottle of wine while she explains and dismisses Eddie in as few words as possible. Chris is disturbed by Sam's second coming and going, but not curious. "I'm sorry...I'm shocked...I...I wish I knew what to say, how I could help you.""So do I." "Let's talk about something else. Like, where have you been?"Jean makes a dozen different funny faces as she reviews her choice of words, then with a great sigh it all rushes out. "After Sam....afterwards, I got a job in Reno doing the books for a local TV station. There was a state tax initiative on the ballot and the news director asked me if I would go on camera and explain it to the viewers.""Were you frightened?""No, I figured it would be a one-shot, a joke, for fun. The next day almost half the women in Reno called the station. One thing led to another...""And a star is born."She laughs. He seems happy too. She remembers when he was young and suddenly she sees herself that young and she is washed with the sound of her own laughter and the excitement of heavy breathing and the days when every kiss was an adventure. Chris waits until her eyes say she's returned. "Is that what brought you back to LA?"She shakes her head. "I came back because it's my home and I missed it.""I was hoping you'd call me, and then I was almost ready to call you.""What stopped...us?"His eyes sting with embarrassment. "I wasn't sure you wanted me to." The waiter arrives. His arms swoop and bend like a happy spider as he serves the food. Chris tries to maintain eye contact with Jean through the flurry of plates and limbs. "You have a choice, Puccini, Verdi, or Orbison."Jean laughs, "Orbison? Orbison who?" "Roy Orbison," Chris nods to the waiter. The waiter pulls out dark glasses and sings a cappella. I close my eyes, then I drift away.Into the magic night I softly saya silent prayer, like dreamers do.Then I fall asleep to dreammy dreams of you.In dreams, I walk with you.In dreams, I talk with you.In dreams, you're mine, all of the time...The other waiters drop in and harmonize a musical phrase or two as they pass by with their food. Jean hears the words all the way inside her. The words haunt Jean's heart and awaken her hungers. She finishes all the wine in her glass.Chris and Jean, his arm around her, weave across the sidewalk to a waiting cab. Parked in the shadows, Eddie watches the taxi pull away. He spits out the window, starts the engine and edges the rent-a-car into the evening traffic. The cabby drives very carefully so he can watch in the rearview mirror. The man and the woman are making out, very hot. The man's hand goes under her dress and when it comes down, he's pulling her wet panties. Her kissing becomes hungrier, her hands clutch at the fly of his trousers.He grabs her breasts. "My hotel's a block away. I want it inside you."She begins to rub him with a desperate frenzy. "No, like this...just...like this, with our hands." She pulls his hand up between her legs, begins thrashing and moaning, sucking his tongue.Eddie can see the cabby's eyes in the taxi's rearview mirror. Eddie always hates it when he wants something that doesn't belong to him. Eddie rushes into his hotel room, turns on the TV and jumps on the bed with the remaining half of a six-pack of beer. An old black-and-white movie stutters into view, Fred MacMurray slaps Barbara Stanwyck. The door between the adjoining rooms is open. Eddie hears Jean enter. Moments later she closes the adjoining door. Eddie gets up, walks over to it and knocks gently. There's no answer, but a few moments later Eddie hears the Fred MacMurray movie on Jean's TV.There's no breakfast in the morning. They don't even share coffee. Jean knocks on the door when she's ready to go. Eddie doesn't answer until she knocks again. Inside he feels as if he's somehow punishing her.Lake Michigan borders one side of the street. On the other side a row of industrial warehouses crowd together. Wet scabs bob up and down in the murky water. Dry scabs cling to the buildings' stained and fading concrete walls.Jean and Eddie park next to the giant letters spelling Bucks Imports. Her angry voice escapes outside the car's closed windows. "Well are we going in or not?" "Do whatever the hell you want," sulks Eddie."I'm paying you to help me find out what happened to Sam...""You're paying me for my expertness in criminal matters...""...that does not involve my personal life...""And if you don't want to listen to my advice then why the hell are you paying me?""Enough. That's enough." Jean feels herself smoking with anger. She takes a deep breath. "Look..." She takes another deep breath and another. "Look, the clock's ticking and it's my dime. Either join me inside or use that round- trip ticket. And expertness is not a word." She gets out of the car and slams the door. The outside looks like any warehouse but as Jean steps through the front door the chill of a catacomb, a pyramid, a mausoleum embraces her. The air around Jean is the temperature of stone walls. A sign and a yellow line on the floor guide her to and through the walls within the walls. Fate reads the morning paper. The story is continued on page A27, column two. "...and mother are listed among the missing. Jennifer said, 'The plane shook and trembled and then all the lights went out and then suitcases flew through the air.” The child went on to say that she then ‘heard the sound of ripping walls and I could feel the rushing air of the sky and then I felt a big bump and then I felt myself wake up and I could hear a woman's voice crying for mercy from a pain.' Rescuers state they found Jenny still strapped in her seat and hanging in a tree." Fate turns to the horoscopes. He stops and reaches in his jacket pocket and takes out a small dictionary. A plain brown counter separates Jean and an officious man with thin hair and eyes that wobble in their sockets and fingertips covered with Band-Aids. When Mr. Breitling speaks, his voice has a hiss to it and he emphasizes any pronoun that refers to himself. "I wouldn't presume to call Mrs. Bucks at home. But if you're the friend you claim, please feel free to use my phone.""I would if I had her home number.""Well, I certainly can't give it to you, Miss...?""Bruckner."Eddie ambles in the door and up to the counter. Jean pauses for a moment to look at him before turning back to Breitling. "I’m not asking you to give it to me, I'm asking you to call her for me and give her my name. I wanted to talk to her before the services for Sam on Monday."Breitling taps a pencil, glances at Jean, then Eddie, then back to Jean. "Bruckner?""Yes. Jean...""Tell her Sam's first wife," smiles Eddie. A current of electricity jumps inside Breitling, he picks up the phone and dials.Eddie takes a small pocket dictionary from his jacket and drops it on the counter in front of Jean. "Expertness is too a word."The rent-a-car negotiates the winding driveway up to the large Tudor-style home. Eddie's heart beats fast, it always does seeing this much money. The second day he and Oscar Ortuso sat in a black-and-white together, Oscar told Eddie to watch out for money. Oscar told Eddie that money kills more good cops than all the crooks and all the bullets and all the donuts ever made. Eddie didn't believe Oscar, Eddie thought it was just Oscar's marijuana talking. Oscar smoked more marijuana in an average month than Eddie did in three years of college. Eddie looks at the large Tudor-style home and Jean tells him to wait in the car.Jean stands by the front door and feels jealous that Sam had such a nice home and didn't share it with her. The home makes Sam seem like a stranger.The door opens and Jean is staring at Alice Bucks. "Is this a shakedown or whatever they call it?"Jean doesn’t know what to say and just stares at Alice Bucks. Several years younger than Jean, Alice's expensive clothes, jewels and other vanities do not soften her hard edges. Nor does the scotch on her breath. Alice steps back, an invitation for Jean to enter. Jean feels attacked by the look in Alice's eyes. Silently both women find the living room and opposing couches. "I'd offer you a drink, but why waste it if I'm going to have you thrown out.""It's the thought that counts."Alice moves to the bar, admires the honey colored liquid, and pours herself three fingers. She downs half of that and adds three fingers more. "How long were you married to Sam?" grunts Alice."According to the law, until he died five days ago."Eddie gets out of the car and eyes the house, measuring Sam. He ambles toward the driveway and follow it. The backyard reaches all the way to the edge of the lake. Halfway there is a two-story garage with room for four cars.Inside the garage resides two Mercedes, a Ford station wagon, and in a corner something low-slung hides under a dusty brown tarp. Eddie quickly searches the two Mercedes, the glove boxes, trunks, between the seats, under them. The station wagon is next. He finds nothing and turns to the form under the tarp. Slowly reaching out, Eddie grabs a corner of the tarp and pulls. A dirty cloud fills the air. Eddie gives a long admiring whistle. A beautiful gray 1952 Jaguar XK-120 roadster looms out of the dust like a ghost ship. Eddie thinks of Mike Fouad as he walks around it, opens the driver's door and gets behind the wheel. The leather is blood red, the wood is dark and polished, the old DMV registration form is still wrapped around the steering column.The two women eyeball each other a few moments.Without choking, Jean asks Alice "How long ago did you meet Sam?""Right after he came to Chicago. It was like we'd known each other all our lives." She gets up and begins wandering her own living room.Alice has her back to Jean and it makes Jean nervous. Suddenly Jean wishes she hadn't begun the journey. She sighs her story. "This week, a man knocks on my door and tells me Sam's body has been found and he hasn't been dead for years but only a few days.""Now that deserves another drink," Alice immediately goes back to the bar, "and if you don't want it, I'll have yours too." Alice pours doubles, gives hers a little extra. "I could tell Sam was running from something. And he could tell I was as good as he was going to get without having to answer a lot of questions." Jean surrenders and starts to feel sorry for Alice, almost likes her. "Do you know what he was doing in California when he died?" Alice carries the drinks to the couch. "Sam did lots of traveling. Where was it...Land-something...near Los Angeles?""Lancaster...just north of..."Alice snaps her fingers, smiles, "Landcaster...yeah." "What about his sister, do you know where we can find her?"Alice stares at her drink, her mind is fuzzing over, her story is finished; she lays her head back, closes her eyes, and shuts down her brain. "Any kids?"Jean feels the knot of the memory. "Just an almost."Alice's brow furls for a moment. "What's an almost?""I had a miscarriage after Sam...afterwards." Jean sees that Alice is already asleep. Jean drives. Eddie talks. "The matching Mercedes are both being leased, low miles.""I don't believe Sam ever fucked that woman.""The wagon is for the servants, it has lots of miles.""Sam might have been married to her but he never would have fucked her... okay...maybe once if he was as drunk as she was, but I was married to Sam...""So was she.""Goddammit...I know Sam...and he wouldn't have fucked a woman like that.""The old Jag probably hasn't been driven in years, but it's beautiful...""Gray?" she interrupts, "An old gray convertible? The real old swoopy kind?""Yeah...you know the car?""Only pictures, Sam said he gave it to Clair. But if he took it back from her..." Eddie completes her thought. "Then Clair knew Sam was alive all the time."Jean's ears ring, her heart pounds, her face gets red, she steps on the gas, begins weaving through traffic. Eddie slaps at the steering wheel. "Hold it, slow down ...this isn't how you go about these things." She eases her foot from the gas, the car settles down. He pulls an old airline ticket from his pocket. "Under the passenger seat I found this...American Airlines, round trip Washington DC to LA and back. It's dated the same week Sam supposedly took his life. But the return half was never used." He glances at the name. "Mark Gurney, ever hear of him?"Jean shakes her head. "Who was he? What was he..."Eddie shoves the ticket back in his pocket. "Relax, it could mean...it could mean...nothing...it could be a ticket that fell out of someone's pocket, it could be...who the hell knows. Don't worry, I'll check it out. Okay?""I still can't believe Sam and the woman…" "I agree. I also took a peek inside the house. Mr. and Mrs. Bucks kept separate bedrooms." "I guess I should be impressed, but instead I feel dirty.""Hey, nobody hires a private detective to find a saint.""I want this over as soon as possible.""That's what you say now. That's what everyone says in the beginning...but just wait until we get close to the stink, that's when you'll start wishing you never hired me, that's usually when a private eye gets stiffed for his fee...that's when..."She reaches over and turns on the radio."I'm trying to make a point.""You made it." She finds something soft and Latin and they both keep quiet. For a while, until Jean needs to speak. "Whose side did you take when your folks split up?""I bounced back and forth...I didn't know which one I wanted to believe in. And in the end I didn't believe in either of them.""Have you ever been to Italy?"Eddie shakes his head. "Never been out of the country. Well that's not true, I went to Vancouver once...by mistake. I was in Seattle and I got on the wrong plane, ended up in Vancouver. I didn't stay, I got right back on another plane and went back to Seattle and then got on another plane and came back to Los Angeles. What's your favorite song?""You mean composer or type of music?""No. Song...what's your favorite single song...the one song that makes you stop whatever you're doing because you love it so much.""Well...I'm a big Ravel fan...""You're missing the point. I'm not talking about music or opera or that kind of stuff, I'm talking about songs... like Frank Sinatra or Elvis or someone new...you understand...just songs.""Those aren't songs, those are singers.""Yeah, but they sing songs. And each of them did a song so well that it becomes a person’s favorite.""I don't have a favorite...song. And I don't like Frank Sinatra or Elvis. And I don’t care what your favorite song is. Got it?" Eddie wants to tell her but doesn’t. Alice Bucks is partially obscured behind a black veil but the sunlight is caught in the tears that roll down her face. Jean watches the coffin being lowered into the ground. The earth looks hard and angry. Jean thinks about Sam's first funeral six years ago, remembers the faces of his mourners...her friends, sharing their grief in the same way they all shared Sam's life. This time Jean is a restless stranger, the minister's rituals are for everyone but her. Eddie watches from the car while he writes down license plate numbers. He watches Jean edge her way through the crowd and toward Alice, but suddenly the always officious Mr. Breitling is at Jean's side. "Mrs. Bucks wondered if you would like to visit Mr. Bucks' office."Jean is surprised, off guard. "Ah...yes, I would.""If two o'clock this afternoon would be convenient...?""There's no rush, tomorrow...""Mrs. Bucks plans to leave this afternoon for a month's rest. While she's gone, the company will be closed down and liquidated. Is two o'clock this afternoon agreeable?"The door to Sam’s office opens. Breitling gestures. Jean enters. Breitling closes the door. Jean is alone. The only light is that which creeps in between the Venetian blinds. The furniture is sparse and plain, the couch is old dark green leather, a couple of hard wooden chairs tensely face a scuffed brown wooden desk. Eddie shuffles down an alley, past huge garbage and trash containers. When he gets to those behind the Bucks Imports building, he climbs inside one.Jean moves to the center of the old carpet and turns in a circle. A wall holds a window that looks nowhere, another wall holds the door she just walked through, the third wall holds a map filled with push pins, and the fourth wall has a bulletin board neatly covered with notes. Jean's feet hate the sponginess of the carpet as she walks behind the desk and sits in Sam's chair, and her hands have to be forced to reach out and touch things. The black phone. A paper clip dispenser. A ballpoint pen. Each is cold. Lifeless. She leans back in the chair, inches open the desk's center drawer, then boldly pulls it out. Her hands move over a box of Kleenex, a toothbrush, dental floss, Band-Aids, pushpins for the wall map. She bangs the drawer shut. Frustration builds, she moves down to the next drawer and finds files of no consequence. A janitorial service contract, vendor invoices for boxes and packing crates, phones systems, and drape and carpet cleaners. She feels dizzy and closes her eyes. The fatigue and futility weigh her down and she abandons her search. As she leaves the office, Breitling is standing outside the door, waiting for her. He smells dusty."Is there a rest room I can use?""Down the hall, first turn to the right, first door on the left..." A phone starts ringing. He jumps. "Excuse me, I'm the only one here today." He bustles off toward the front.She watches her own feet stop at the ladies room door. Across the hall she sees another door. Ajar. And inside it, an office and desk, modern and masculine. She doesn't feel her feet move, she only sees the door getting closer. She presses her face to the opening, the door swings out of her way, and she is inside. On the desk she finds a framed photograph of Alice Bucks. Now Sam's presence overwhelms her, this time everything on the desk teases her fingers, dares them to touch...as if he had just stepped out of the room for only a few moments. Breitling appears in the open door behind her. "What are you looking for?""This was Sam's office... wasn't it?" Now she faces Breitling, looks at the Band-Aids on his fingers. "You showed me your office, this is Sam's."Breitling sighs. "Mrs. Bucks wanted to...make a gesture and at the same time she wanted to maintain her own privacy. And now you have to go."Jean strides toward the door, stops and looks back at the room. Sam is slipping away again and she looks for something to hang on to. "What did Sam import?""Medical supplies," stutters Breitling. Afternoon sun angles through the hotel bar's large windows and turns the cocktail glasses into diamonds. Eddie dips olives into a martini and sucks on them while he flips through a stack of Rolodex cards. Jean's legs are tired as she walks toward the table. Her legs want to kick Eddie, but instead they bend and she sits opposite him. "Why didn't you wait for me?"You want a drink?" The waitress arrives. "Give her a double shot of Jack Daniel's.""I want a martini.""Vodka.""Gin.""And I'll have another glass of olives."The waitress stands there, waits, no one contradicts anyone so the waitress smiles and retreats. "Why didn't you wait for me?"Eddie studies a Rolodex card and pockets it. "What about Sam's parents?""They both died when Sam was in college. He was just nineteen.""And Clair never came and stayed with you for the holidays or stuff like that?"Jean shakes her head. "Sam was appointed her legal guardian, but..." Eddie interrupts her flow of thoughts as he pockets another Rolodex card. "But...I never met her. The only time I talked to her was over the phone. She was always calling Sam, at all sorts of hours, and they'd argue most of the time. It was one of those love/hate relationships. I got the feeling that sometimes she wanted to kill Sam. And sometimes she...I'd swear she wanted to..." "Fuck him?""Forget it. That's just 'Jealous Jean' talking. The last year of our marriage everything was great. Clair even stopped calling..." Jean stops and watches Eddie pocket another Rolodex card, and another. "What...what are those?"He takes the cards he hasn't put in his own pockets and dumps them in her purse. "Hang onto these. I'll keep the rental car, you check out. I'll see you in LA.""Wait a damn minute!""And stay away from Dr. Schwartz-his-name."Her silence demands an answer. He finally takes one of the cards he put in his own pockets and hands it to her. She shakes her head as she reads Chris Schwartzman's address. "They sell medical supplies, maybe he....you don't even know if those came out of Sam's Rolodex.""That card means that someone at Bucks Imports had Dr. Schwartz-his-name's address in their Rolodex." Eddie pulls out two more cards. "Miss Clair Bruckner. 48 J Street, Chicago."Jean stares at him defiantly. He reads the next card very slowly. "Mrs. Jean Bruckner 1910 Horn Avenue...Los Angeles...and crossed out on the back side is an address in Reno, Nevada..." Jean's hand shakes as she grabs the card. "He had my address. He had my address."The waitress arrives with Jean's drink and more olives for Eddie. Eddie takes an olive out of his vodka and sucks on it before speaking. "The reason I didn't wait for you was because I had to make a phone call." He pulls a final Rolodex card from his pocket. "Mrs. Mark Gurney...she's the wife of the guy who bought the plane ticket I found in the Jag." "Did she...?""Claims she never heard of Sam Bucks or Sam Bruckner, has no idea what her name was doing in his Rolodex. But her husband disappeared six years ago and hasn't been seen since...and three months after he disappeared, Mrs. Gurney received a package containing twenty-five thousand dollars in cash...anonymously. She told the police but they were never able to trace it."Jean kills her martini in one swallow."We can stop right here, Jean. We can stop and you can walk away." She looks desperate. She looks sexy. She looks in Eddie's eyes. "No."Eddie's glad. "Okay, so when you get back to LA, I want you to go to the public library and comb the newspapers...look at everything for two months before and after Sam faked his suicide." “Look for what?”“Anything…everything…you’ll know it when you see it.”The crows probably saw it first as they circled above the mountains. And the Basques, herding their sheep, probably smelled it on the wind and felt it trembling in the earth. Oscar Ortuso read about it in his morning paper. The price of real estate flipped and flopped like an ambitious whore and now Los Angeles was pregnant. A desert rat named Calvin Ryan sounded the alarm. Calvin sat in his bent aluminum chair next to his trailer and he drank beer and watched the sun tickle the landscape with ever changing shadows. It was a world in which every smell and sound and shape was familiar. Calvin was one of the desert rats who saw the four-door Oldsmobile gliding down into the dry hot valley, carrying the real estate agent and the lawyer. Later that week Oscar Ortuso had to arrest Daniel Clogg at Yolanda's American-Chinese Restaurant for getting drunk and attacking a stranger who drove up in an Audi. Dan claimed the Audi was a sign from God that the end was nearer...that Los Angeles was coming. And Dan Clogg was right. Soon people started painting their houses. And selling them. Iranians and Pakistanis bought most of the gas stations. And the developers began leapfrogging from the San Fernando Valley, out past Sylmar, out past Valencia, out past Solodad Canyon, and finally over the last mountain and down into Lancaster/Palmdale. And with names like Casa Elegante and Grand Oaks and Bridle View...the home buyers couldn’t resist and they kept following the home builders. But Oscar was wrong about one thing, it didn't come like a fog, it came like a flood. At the north end of the valley just over the Kern County line just past Rosamond and Willow Springs, the desert rats are gathering and waiting for the last charge. Some are brewing hemlock tea and some are buying guns and some are just walking out into the desert and dying. The Desert Winds Mobile Home and Trailer Park sits one mile west of The Tire Barn. The Desert Winds is home to forty-three regulars...folks who have been there at least fifteen years...and it is almost home to nine "others"... folks who have only been there about eight years and maybe haven't made up their minds. Oscar is a year shy of being a true regular but is already accorded that status because of his badge. The rules of the Desert Winds are simple. Absolutely no foundations more permanent than flat tires and rusty wheels. Concrete blocks are only allowed on sagging corners or to hold up butane bottles. No one remembers which came first, the grove of willow trees or the trailers scattered among them. And no one admits remembering who came up with the name Desert Winds. At night the willows give the wind its whisper. In the rain, the willows let their leaves become a damp carpet. In the summer the willows form huge overlapping pools of shade. At Christmas, no one has to buy a tree, they just string their lights among the willows' naked branches. Oscar Ortuso sits in his trailer. A pyramid of portable television sets fills one corner of the combined living room/bedroom. Only the top set gets a picture. Next to Oscar's single bed is Oscar's only chair. And next to Oscar's only chair is Oscar’s only concession to the power of money... a high end record player. Not tapes, not CDs, not videos. Records. The walls of the trailer are filled with Oscar's collection of rock and roll classics. Oscar sits in his only chair and looks at the suitcase he packed six years ago and the Pan Am flight bag next to it. Oscar lights a joint and cries softly. Outside, the wind throws sand against the aluminum airflow cocoon and only those who press their ears to the smooth cool metal can hear what Oscar Ortuso hears...side two of the Beatles' Abbey Road album. Oscar opens the Pam Am bag and looks at all the money and he cries some more. Oscar knows that a bullet out there is coming towards him, coming straight for his head, and the reason he can't duck is because he hasn't heard the shot and he hasn't heard the shot because he knows that you never hear the bullet that kills you. 4Leon Kohl belches. The smell of pastrami rises up from his belly and fills the cabin of his Mercedes. He waits until he can't smell it anymore before he opens the door and gets out of the car. He glances across the street at the whore-house, then he turns and looks in the window of the pawnshop. Leon Kohl steps into the pawn shop and he can smell the owner's greed just the way he could smell his own lunch. Leon smiles at the man and thinks how sweet life is. Leon walks with the owner to the window and points to what he wants...a time machine, Smith and Wesson .38, a basic simple tool that will introduce Fate to Eternity. Andy Staub pulls golden eggs from a stuffed goose as he explains home mortgages, but his words can't be heard because the TV's sound is turned off. Jean and Gladys eat microwave dinners off of TV trays. Jean wears her oldest pair of jeans and takes delight that they still fit loose. She enjoys the feel of her bra-less breasts under the tee shirt. The couch looks like a giant doily. The wallpaper is deep lavender. A forest of little tables are covered with small statues of deer and rabbits and unicorns. Gladys wears a frumpy bathrobe and her invisible mother's hat. "You're doing this to aggravate me," mumbles Gladys."The therapist said that's normal.""What therapist?""The one you made me go to when I got my period.""Your period had nothing to do with it.""Mom, let's stop this.""Why won't you stay here?""Because I have my own home.""But Mr. Fate told you to...""Call him Eddie, Mr. Fate sounds too strange.""Eddie told you not to stay there.""I don't want to talk about it."Gladys points her fork at the TV. "Can't we hear what he's saying?""No.""Then call your office and let them know you're back in town and ready to go on the air." Jean shakes her head."Why?""I've got things to do.""Like what?""Mom, I'm going to go home if you don't stop."“You’re going to go home anyway according to you.”“Mom…”Gladys stops. Both women eat in the silence common to mothers and daughters when they give discussing their mutual past. Gladys remembers the only time she slapped Jean. It was either 1969 or 1970. She caught her daughter giving a hand job to a kid named Kevin. Kevin ran out of the house and Jean locked herself in the bathroom. Gladys was speechless and so she went into the living room and cried. If she’d known Jean would’ve stopped with just a hand job, or at least a blow job, Gladys wouldn't have been so frightened, but every woman knows it doesn't stop there, it begins there. Two hours later Gladys went and knocked on the bathroom door. Jean didn't have to answer, Gladys could feel her daughter's anger and confusion on the other side of the door. Jean didn't have to answer, she could feel her mother's fear and regret on the other side of the door. And then Jean heard her mother say "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to slap you, I meant to tell you to be careful and not let anyone hurt you or abuse you. I meant to say that I love you very much and you mean so much to me and I'm jealous that I've made so many mistakes in my life and you have so many more years ahead of you than I do and I don't know how to tell you about my mistakes so you won't make them. Jean? There's nothing I can do to take back the slap but if you want to hit me, I'll let you. You can...well you can't make a fist...but you can slap me if that will make you feel better. Jean? I love you so much and I'm sorry."Jean remembers when Gladys announced that she was divorcing her husband, Jean's father. Jean was only four at the time and wasn't sure what her mother was really saying but she remembers how frightened Gladys was and how that frightened Jean, and Jean's main impression of it all was that you really couldn't count on a man to stick around. Now Jean can only remember photographs of the man. Now she can't remember him in the flesh. Gladys pokes at her plate and looks at Jean's. "How's the Fish Divine?""Great, how are your crab cakes?""Not as good as Mrs. Paul's...can we watch Star Trek?" Jean hands her mother the remote control. Gladys pushes her plate away and flips through the channels. "When does your…Mr....your Eddie...get back in town?""He didn't say.""It's been two days.""It's been forever."Jean's reflection floats on the screen of the microfilm reader. Her eyes peer intently at time moving backwards, newsprint blurs in and out of focus, dates, headlines, words shift left and right...obituaries, July, 25...Sam Bruckner... she doesn't read it. More dates, car accidents, zoning disputes, local elections, visiting heads of state, untested cancer cures. She stops and reads: March 27. Formal charges were dropped by the Food and Drug Administration against Dr. Christopher Schwartzman for the illegal importing of non-approved cancer medication. Dr. Schwartzman and his attorney, Sam Bruckner, had no comment for reporters, but Schwartzman's supporters, who have nicknamed him "the good Samaritan," claim this is a victory for non-traditional approaches to cancer management... Jean scans forward, again passing Sam's obit...past the story about auto insurance rates prompting industry and consumer groups to sponsor ballot initiatives...past the story about the residents of a Riverside neighborhood learning they live next to the largest toxic waste dump in the western United...past the story about Greenpeace demanding that the French government...past the story of two Highway Patrol officers...She slows the march of time and reads that on a rainy day Officer Oscar Ortuso arrested two illegal immigrants and was transporting the prisoners to jail when his car was stopped by two other cars. The two male prisoners were executed with six shots from a shotgun. Drugs are considered the motive for the ambush. Officer Ortuso was wounded with a pistol shot to his left leg. Officer Ortuso returned fire, emptying both his shotgun and his service revolver at the assailants, but the suspects, four Latinos, escaped in their cars. The names of the two dead men have not been released pending notification of next of kin. Officer Ortuso is in satisfactory condition at a local area hospital. In an unrelated matter, Officer Edward Fate, a rookie still in his probationary year, was discharged for unspecified bad conduct. Jean feels a flutter in her heart as she watches the enlargements of the stories fall into the copy machine's basket. Eddie begins day four of sitting in his rental car and watching the address belonging to Clair Bruckner. The accumulated trash in the rental car includes nine wrappers from taco chips, twelve beer cans, Motortrend Magazine, six McDonald's wrappers, Hustler Magazine, two fried chicken buckets, Screw Magazine, two giant diet cola bottles, and Consumers Digest. Two days ago Eddie used his phone to confirm that Alice Bucks packed her bags and flew to New York City. Yesterday Eddie confirmed that the phone to Bucks Imports was now no longer in service and there is no new number. Now Eddie watches 48 J Street and no cars come or go to or from the address and no lights turn on or off.Finally Mr. Akio Yamaguchi parks his pickup truck in front of 48 J Street and Eddie watches Mr. Yamaguchi mow and edge the front lawn, then trim the hedges, then turn on the sprinklers and let them run while he goes in the backyard and repeats his efforts. Eddie is leaning on the pickup truck when Mr. Yamaguchi returns from the back of the house. They talk about how Eddie has watched Mr. Yamaguchi and likes what he saw, about how much it would cost Eddie for Mr. Yamaguchi to do the same for him, about whether or not the lady who owns this house would give Mr. Yamaguchi a good recommendation. Mr. Yamaguchi is very honest. His price is very fair. His work is very good. But Mr. Yamaguchi has never met Miss Bruckner, has only talked to her once, on the phone, three years ago. That was when she hired him and gave him his instructions. Since then he has received a monthly check from her in the mail. An hour later, Mr. Yamaguchi is just a memory to Eddie. Eddie senses today will be the day he meets Clair Bruckner. Under the lush trees hanging over the fronts of the two-story wood and brick homes, the mailman again makes his rounds at the union-negotiated unambitious pace. Eddie drags an electric razor over his chin while holding a pair of mini-binoculars to his eyes. Today, the mailman finds the box at 48 J Street is filled to capacity. The mailman looks at the house, all the shades are drawn. He takes the mail, walks to the front door...rings the bell. No answer. He walks to the side and looks down the empty driveway. Eddie watches the mailman put the letters back in his sack and continue on down the block. Eddie gets out and crosses the street, walks down the driveway to the dusty garage window and peers inside at the empty oil-stained space where a car was often parked. Eddie turns from the garage and studies the house. A buzzing filters into his consciousness, gets louder. He looks for it until a swarm of flies begins attacking his face. He shoos them with his hand and his eyes follow them upward to the house, to the second floor, to the chimney. Eddie sees that the flies are coming from inside the house.The drawn living room shades barely let in enough light to see. The roar of the flies is terrifying as they attack something big lying in the center of the room. The flies can hear voices outside. A hand punches a hole in a pane of glass, reaches through and unlocks the front door. Men and light come pouring inside. The flies become a huge cloud as they rise up from the thing on the floor. Through the storm of insects, the policemen and Eddie gasp. The foul odor is unbearable. One cop rushes to a window, pulls down the shade and breaks the glass. The flies become even more agitated. Eddie can now see that the hulk on the floor is two people who are no longer people but two decomposing masses. One of them pops like a seed pod. The maggots inside ooze out and wiggle with embarrassment. A young cop with a camera staggers outside and pukes in the bushes. Eddie follows, his eyes watering from the methane stench. Two goons in Day-Glow orange jumpsuits carry a stretcher and body bags toward the house.The bigger man asks, "Okay to go in now?"Eddie wipes his eyes. "Get your boots, it's messy.""How messy?" says the man at the back of the stretcher."As in soup." Eddie's answer causes the two men to pause in their journey. "Man or woman?" they ask Eddie."One each according to their shoes."The auditorium is dark except for the stage. The students have all left. Chris Schwartzman stands below a large screen. He uses a remote control to cycle back through his power point lecture images of faces that have undergone cosmetic surgery. The images go backward, first the after, then the before. Beauty to ugly, good to bad, happiness to anguish. Jean calls from the darkness. "You do nice work."He turns slowly, stares into the black. "Were you here during the class or did you just arrive?"Jean slowly walks down the aisle to the bottom of the stage. "Just got here. What do you like best, the teaching or the surgery?""The golf." Chris hits a switch, turning on the auditorium's lights. He turns off the images and walks down the steps that put him beside Jean. "What do you like best?"Floor-to-ceiling glass and the early evening sky provide the light in Chris Schwartzman's office. Jean clears off his desktop. Chris undoes his shirt and tie while talking on the phone. "Tell him I want him to stop taking the Zantac next week. Yes, yes...the Erythromycin, twice a day starting two days before surgery." He listens, kicks off his shoes. Jean pulls her dress over her head, drops her slip, undoes her bra, but leaves her panties on as she sits in his desk chair. Her breasts are already firm with expectation."The seventeenth? I can't make it, I'm booked the entire day. No I go to Houston the next morning. The week after that I'm on vacation. What about Dr. Osprey? He knows the procedure."Jean motions for Chris to come over to the desk and stand in front of her. He points that he's still on the phone but she mutely insists. He follows her instructions. "Yes, Dr. Eagles will be assisting." She undoes his belt, unzips his fly and pulls on the elastic of his shorts. Chris locks his fingers in her hair. He can't take it any longer. "I've gotta go, Frank, I've got a...someone really needs my attention, I'll call you later."He bangs the phone down on the receiver. His hand slides down her back and into her panties. Her hands slide down his back, taking his shorts with them as she grabs his bare ass. Their mouths lock, their hands grope, their legs entwine, they ease onto the cold surface of the desk, one moment she's on top, then he's behind her, her mouth bites the inside of his leg, his hand covers her triangle of damp hair, his face pushes between her glistening breasts, her lips pout and her body trembles with each thrust.The only sound is the shower in an adjoining bathroom. Jean lies motionless on the desk. Spent, exhausted, her eyes slowly focus, and the last hour is abruptly and completely erased. Jean is staring at the floor and all the items she took off the desk. The Rolodex. Her fingers reach out, begin flipping through the cards...the "B's." She sighs in relief as she finds neither the name Bruckner nor Bucks Imports.Chris is lathered and now rinsing off. Jean's blurred figure appears outside the shower's glass door. "Is there another bathroom I can use?""Sure...just past the nurse's desk, and to your right.""And you're sure I won't run into someone?"His laugh seems honest and relaxed. "We're the only ones here, trust me."Jean clutches her clothes in front of her and scampers past the open doors leading to the examining rooms. Bearing right at the nurses' desk, she's confused by an intersection of three more corridors. She tries the first door on her right, locked, the second...it's a storeroom. She almost closes the door but stops, reopens it and turns on the lights. Shelves. Filled with boxes of supplies. Many have labels or paper ribbons with the name Bucks Imports.Chris calls out from his office. "You find it?"Jean backs into the hall and closes the door so fast she leaves the light on in the storeroom. She instantly moves to the next door, opens it, finds the small bathroom. "Yes...I found it, thank you." She steps inside, shuts the door behind her and locks it. Shaken...shaking...she fumbles into her clothes. A knock on the door almost sends a scream exploding from her throat."Jean?""Yes?""Didn't you want one with a shower?""No, this is fine, I changed my mind, thanks.""You sure, you can use mine...""Thanks, I'm sure...but thanks."Chris finishes tucking his shirt into his trousers. "I'll be in my office making some calls. When you're done we'll get something to eat. Okay?" She doesn't answer. She dresses faster. "Jean, is that okay?""Yes, that will be fine."She listens to what sounds like him walking down the hall and into his office. After several seconds, Jean opens the door a crack and peeks out. Chris is gone. She pulls on the rest of her clothes as she moves down the hall in her stocking feet. Passing the nurses' station, she notices one of the phone lines lighting up. Next to the phone, like a giant wheel, is the office's master Rolodex. Her hand reaches for it, knocks over a plastic box of paper clips. The noise feels like a gunshot. The light on the phone goes out immediately. She glances at Chris' office, sees his shadow moving toward the open doorway. She ducks behind the desk.Chris steps into the hallway, looks around, steps back into his office and shuts the door. Moments later the desk phone light comes back on. Jean stands, returns to the Rolodex, and without having to search, she finds Bucks Imports. One number is typed, a second...for Sam Bucks...is handwritten. She looks at the phone...carefully picks up the receiver, brings it to her ear, hears Chris' voice."I'm not sure she knows anything."The phone on the desk rings loudly. Another line starts flashing. Jean jumps, covers the mouthpiece, gently but quickly hangs up. A second later Chris opens his door and looms in the hallway. She tries not to act guilty. "They're both blinking, I don't know which one to answer."He moves toward her. "Let the service get it. Where do you want to go for dinner?"She notices she's left the Rolodex open to Bucks Imports, she covers by accidentally knocking it over with her purse. "Shit, excuse me..."Chris picks it up good-naturedly. "That's okay. Greek food sound good?"She's backed up against the desk, feels as if he's cornered her. The phone stops ringing, but the other line keeps blinking, on hold. She glances at it. "Can I take a rain check?"The expression in his eyes questions. Suddenly he seems vulnerable.She stammers, "I'm sorry...""Did I do something wrong? I..."She shakes her head."I thought you wanted me as much as..."She touches his lips, cutting him off. "It's been a long time...we...we're remembering who we were but maybe that isn't who we are. I'll call you tomorrow."He nods and follows her as she leaves. He sees the light under the supply room door. She tenses but stops with him as he opens it, gives the room the once-over, turns off the light and shuts the door. He shrugs and smiles, she gives a nervous smile in return and kisses him on the cheek. He escorts her as far as the reception area. Jean rushes toward the elevator, rounds the corner and comes face-to-face with Eddie. Her heart stops. She's already sweating. "Shit. You scared the hell out of me."Eddie doesn't say a word, just pushes the down button. His attitude says he's been there a long time. She's both relieved and angry at the same time. "Why didn't you call and let me know you were in town?"He still doesn't speak...just stares into her eyes. She stammers an explanation...a justification. "Well I can tell you for sure, he's buying supplies from Bucks Imports." She immediately feels like the betrayed and the betrayer. The pressure of Eddie's silence weighs on her. The elevator door opens, Eddie walks in, Jean follows. "Did you find Clair?" He still doesn't answer, pushes P-1. The doors close, the elevator descends. They ride in silence. After several floors he asks, "What level are you parked on?" Jean reaches over and pushes P-4. Eddie grabs her arms and holds them, kisses her on the lips, forces her mouth open until she kisses back. Then he breaks the kiss, let's her go. "Clair Bruckner is dead. Looks like a double suicide...her and some doctor named Hector Sabato."The elevator jerks to a stop, the door opens on level P-1. Eddie steps out. "You still taste of him, but that's not why I'm quitting." He turns and walks away. The door closes and she stands there alone, trembling all the way down to P-4. The door opens again and after several seconds Jean slowly steps out into the gray hollow cavern and begins walking though the pools of light. The garage is partly empty, the remaining cars parked in clusters. A pair of taillights blink, a car lurches backward, Jean jumps out of the way. The car drives off. She is alone. The echo of a car door closing floats out of the shadows.Jean approaches her coupe, keys out. She looks around but doesn't see anyone. She edges sideways to avoid a dirt-covered Ford parked next to her. Something cracks under foot. It grinds as she sidesteps away. She bends down to see what it is. At that moment three bullets from a silenced pistol smash through her car window.Jean falls to the floor, glass showering her. She gasps for air, her eyes try to find her assailant. She hears feet running, but can't tell if they're coming or going. A shadow passes over her, she rolls under a car to hide, then drags herself under the next car, and the next, and the next...until she becomes stuck.Fear pours down her face, she wrestles with the sound of her own breathing. She looks back at her car, sees her purse lying on the ground and her keys lying nearby. With a steady rhythm, footsteps approach from the distance...unhurried...deliberate ...as if guided directly to the purse. Jean watches them stop, moments later, a hand reaches down and picks up the purse, and just as casually the footsteps retreat. The car's keys are missed and left behind. She waits a long time. She watches a large rat sniff her car keys. Jean has to pee so bad she's in pain. She holds it. The rat is watching her from a couple of cars away. She has to pee so bad she surrenders to chance and crawls from under the car. She's dirtier than she imagined. She hurts. She can't wait. The garage is quiet and dark. She goes behind a car and urinates on the floor. She starts to cry. "Goddamn you, Sam." 5Eddie lied about his father just in case Jean was really from the FBI or the IRS. Eddie's father is a fugitive and lives sixty miles north of Los Angeles, in Oxnard, at the Sea Breeze Seniors Center on Boats Away Way, under the name Johnny Moran. Sea Breeze is close enough for Eddie to keep tabs on Mickey Fate aka Johnny Moran, far enough away for Eddie not to have to visit every day or even every week. And Johnny Moran sends postcards crammed to the edges with words, addressed to Eddie Moran, care of Nigel's Pool Hall. Johnny Moran writes to his son that "streets are to life what chapters are to books. Main Street is near the epicenter of LA's birth, it reaches from the courts and the music center, down into the third world. The longest street in the city, Sepulveda Boulevard, connects the southern tip by the harbor, with the ghosts of the orange groves in the north, and not a single block of Sepulveda is considered beautiful or inviting, just mile after mile of bland function. Chandler Boulevard is without fame and yet down its middle are the railroad tracks built upon the silt deposits created by the digging of LA's harbor, and in front of a plain little house is a tree planted by Amelia Earhart and her mother. Hollywood Boulevard was to movies what New York City's Broadway was to theatre. Time has turned the names of stars filling the squares of the sidewalk, into epitaphs of an era. And Boats Away Way, in Oxnard, California, is where souls come to stare at the ocean before they begin their final voyage." Eddie tears up the postcard into little pieces and drops it in the bottom of his glass and he thinks about the street he is on. Melrose Avenue was a poor cousin to the bigger east/west boulevards that flanked it. Then in the eighties, the counterculture merged with Reaganomics and created a trendy high rent district complete with expensive northern Italian restaurants and gen-X-rebels. Then came recessions and high tech and another recession and Eddie orders another drink.The pseudo-Mardi Gras of Melrose swirls around Jean as she leans on one of the few remaining pay phones, hears the familiar sound of her mother's answering machine, bangs the receiver down in defeat. The doorman's muscles say he's also the bouncer. It takes a mention of Eddie's name for the bouncer to excuse Jean's appearance and let her up the stairs. At the top, an enormous blue jean-clad bulging crouch made out of plaster is the main entrance to The Zipper. Once inside, her soiled and grimy clothes rate only modest attention. The band sounds like a murder in progress. Jean finds Eddie at the bar, swaying back and forth on his stool. She spins him around, and then has to keep him from falling to the floor. Eddie's eyes admit he's glad to see her, and the only thing louder than the music is the sound of his heart breaking. "I thought I quit."She explodes, slugging him on the arms and shoulders. "I don't owe you any goddamn explanations, or apologies, so I screwed him, so that's life, that's me, you don't like it, tough shit.""Is that all?""No. In the elevator you mentioned Hector Sabato. He was the doctor who wrote me when Clair committed herself. And while you were here, getting shit-faced, someone tried to kill me." Water hits Eddie square in the face. Jean, holding him up in the shower, is getting just as wet for her efforts. She tries to sound matter-of-fact. "Before I married Sam, Chris and I had a thing for each other. Even afterward...in the beginning, for a little while. Sam knew and we wrote it off to the, you know...the modern world.""Sorry I missed it." Eddie hates being younger than she is. He watches the grease and dirt run down her face in rivers. "You need this more than I do," gargles Eddie. She looks at her arms, sees the dirty truth, wedges his naked body into a corner of the shower, steps back and begins removing her soiled clothes. His thoughts escape from his mouth. "You know, there really isn't that much difference in our ages." Eddie starts to fall. Jean catches him and pushes him back under the water. "Eddie, I'm a confused woman whose life is in crisis and you're coming on to me like a shoe salesman looking up my dress." She joins him under the water. Their eyes lock, both are nude, the music from The Zipper feels like it’s inside them. "I did that," he smiles, "in college, I sold women's shoes.""You went to college?""A couple...one and a half...semesters." She holds out her hand. "Soap."He grabs the bar, brings it up between them, but he grips it so tightly it squirts from his grasp and falls to the floor below. They both look down, then back in each other's eyes. He tries to bend down but changes his mind. "Sorry. My knees...aren't..." She looks at him blankly, then bends down. He squeezes his eyes closed and waits. She seems to be down there an eternity, he can feel her skin just inches from his, he can feel the air moving between them, he thinks of Patty Icky-lips and he can feel he's getting a hard-on. Finally she stands up. He senses it, opens his eyes. She glances down. "I'll consider it a compliment." Turning her back, she passes him the soap over her shoulder, and tries to contain her smile. "Please."Jean likes the feel of Eddie's bathrobe...the soft plaid has a distant smell of Vicks. She finds a forgotten piece of candy in the right pocket. She types into his computer a list of all the names involved in Sam's life. A tingly nervous blush of infidelity makes her pause. She feels more disloyal to Sam wearing Eddie's bathrobe than she did when she was having sex with Chris. The music from upstairs throbs away. Eddie, wearing a towel and carrying two cups of tea, enters his bedroom tent. "So?""It’s a very old computer, you should get a new one.""Well…I…it does what I need to do." He stops, embarrassed. "I got it from this tax guy, a partial fee for getting the goods on his wife.""Another man?""Yeah...me. But I didn't tell him that part."She hits the print button and accepts a cup of tea from him. He sits on the cot and points at the keyboard. "So what did you get?""Lots of stuff, financials, title searches..." "On who?""On everybody.”"You can do that?""I was a hacker in college."Fate sips his tea. She grabs the first page from the printer, studies it, points at the computer's screen. "Look..." her hand dances from name to name, "...Bucks Imports, a medical corporation; Dr. Hector Sabato, a medical corporation; Dr. Chris Schwartzman, a medical..."He's looking over her shoulder but really smelling her hair. "...corporation.""And each has one thing in common, Pioneer Medical Technologies owns a large share of all their stock and..."Eddie grabs a page from the printer. "And the major stockholders in Pioneer are Clair Bruckner and Alice Bucks and...""The address for Pioneer Medical is under the name of Dr. Hector...""Sabato. And look who owns the land...Dr. Schwartz-his-name." Jean turns away from the computer's screen."He's involved in this too, Jean...damnit, he's involved in this too.""I know. I know." She shrugs and shrugs again and a shiver runs through her from the effort. "It just hurts." The front of the plaid bathrobe falls open. Eddie smiles. "God, you've got great tits.""Most men wait until after dinner to say that.""I had a late lunch.""I haven't eaten since breakfast."Eddie leaps to his feet and digs through a metal file cabinet, tossing clothes from it onto the cot. "Try one of these, something ought to fit." She begins to hold the clothes up for examination. "How did you get to be a private investigator?""After I got fired from the Highway Patrol, I got a job repossessing cars for leasing companies...mostly expensive German stuff. I still do it when things get slow. You should tell your mom about me."Jean holds up a sweatshirt that has a picture of George Bush dropping an enormous bomb on Iraq. On the side of the bomb are the words Party Hearty. She throws the shirt back at him, "I don't believe I took a shower with you." He tosses her another sweatshirt with pictures of Janis Joplin and Leonard Bernstein and the words Party Arty.The blackness of the country road is broken by a blinking sign announcing the Cafe Zonga. Connected to the sign is a rose-colored wall interrupted by a warped screen door that is being held open with a pot of geraniums. Eddie's once-was-red- Maserati basks in the stuttering neon glow. Out of the surrounding night rolls a black-and-white Highway Patrol unit. The tires skid to a stop in the gravel. Oscar Ortuso grunts to his feet and slams the door behind him. Acres of wrinkles adorn his khaki slacks, big circles of sweat create shadows on his shirt. Oscar feels tired and wonders if he's developing heart disease. He looks around and gives his ass a good scratch before hauling it through the door.Soft lights and candles and dark wood and low ceilings all frame Madame Zonga's plump and powerful arms carrying three plates of food through the empty restaurant and to the table holding Jean, Eddie and Ortuso. Ortuso exhales with anticipation. "Ahhhh, the best leg of lamb west of France. Madame Zonga, I love you more than anything else in the world."Madame Zonga kisses Ortuso on the forehead. "Oscar, the closest you've been to France is a douche bag. If you tipped as well as you lie, I'd trust you." She shakes her finger at Eddie, "Bon Appetite and remember, no checks or credit cards." She shuffles off to yell at the kitchen staff. For the first few minutes everyone eats. Jean watches the two men. They attack their food with the purpose of putting it inside them as efficiently as they can. Jean takes her time because her first bite tells her that Oscar Ortuso may be right about this being the best lamb outside of France. She sighs deeply, has a drink of water followed by some wine and decides it's time to talk business. "So as I left his office, someone shot at me."Ortuso tries to talk without interrupting his food. "Well maybe one thing has to do with the other and maybe not..." Eddie jumps in, "I'm telling you, Oscar, it's all the same thing.""Damnit Eddie," potatoes muffle Ortuso's aggravation, "you don't know that."Jean's appetite is curbed by the air of dissent. "What the hell does that mean?" Eddie tries to calm her. "It means he thinks you’re not telling us everything." Her fork almost spears Oscar, "Fuck him." Oscar Ortuso cringes, "Eddie's a little off the mark, I was trying to say that maybe you know more than you're telling.""Fuck both of you, I know someone broke into my home...tore it up, I know someone killed my...hus...ex-hus...Sam..."Eddie tries to flag her down but he chokes on Madame Zonga's lamb. Ortuso washes down what's inside his mouth with the wine. "Slow down...slow down...I didn't say you were hiding anything, I just think that you're the key to a puzzle... and maybe you know more than you think you know."Slowly the air settles, calm returns to the table, the people return to the food. Madame Zonga swears loudly in French at someone in the kitchen. Eddie makes little combinations with his food as he thinks. "Oscar, you know a doctor out your way named Hector Sabato?"Ortuso looks up, "We just got it on the wire this morning...local guy, got himself shot dead in Chicago."Eddie expands the facts. "He died in the house owned by the sister of the late Sam Bruckner"Jean wants her place back. "Her name is Clair." Eddie corrects her. "Was Clair...had all the signs of a double suicide."Ortuso's plate is getting light. He looks at Jean's. "Mrs. Bruckner...""Jean...""Mrs. Bruckner...""Shit Oscar, stop acting like a cop," snaps Eddie."Look, goddammit, I am a cop, I can't get..." Oscar looks at Eddie, then Jean, then back to Eddie, "...I'm not personally involved. Mrs. Bruckner, I only care about one case, the death of Sam Bruckner. And so far I've got no motive and no suspect. All I've got is you."Jean's silverware angrily hits the plate. "What about Alice Bucks?"Oscar gurgles through the lamb, "That's the Chicago cops' side of the line." Jean gets up from the table and walks out the front door. Oscar burps, "Where's she going?"Eddie sees Jean through the screen door, standing outside. "Where can she go?"Jean fingers the geraniums under the blinking sign and asks herself the same question. She looks at Eddie's Maserati and Oscar's police car. She's the outsider...she feels the center of her universe slipping away...she feels surrounded by Oscar Ortuso and Chris Schwartzman and Sam and Fate...she feels that cold stab of fear. Eddie wipes his empty plate with a piece of bread and Ortuso eyes Jean's plate, "You think she's done with hers?" Oscar doesn't wait for the answer, he forks the rest of Jean's lamb onto his plate...and then a couple of carrots to boot. Eddie laughs. Oscar grins and some juice runs down his chin. "You and me are exactly alike Eddie, a little murder never ruined a good meal." "Go back to the beginning, Oscar, why did Sam Bruckner fake his own death?""Okay, try this. Suppose they...Sam and his wife, decided to go separate ways, but they wanted to have some change in their pockets, a grub stake...so they fake his death and split the insurance.""A grub stake?""Goddammit, it's an expression...from the old west...""Oscar...""I hope you have a real shitty old age," Ortuso throws his face back in his food, "and remember, there was a dead guy in her bed that she identified as her husband?" Oscar barely swallows, pulls a piece of paper from his pocket and drops it on Eddie's empty plate. "I won't make you guess because you were right, it was like you figured. We made him this morning through Virginia DMV. Mark Gurney, same age and general description as Sam Bruckner...and get this, he was a professor at the Washington DC college attended by Clair Bruckner. Being dead explains why he didn't use the return half of his plane ticket. Have you told your client?"Eddie shakes his head."How come? Don't you trust her?"Eddie shrugs, "How does Gurney end up in Sam's bed?""They needed a body. Your client lures him there...""I don't buy that.""When you get a better explanation, you let me know." Ortuso is overfull. He leans back and sighs and sighs again, as if expelling air will reduce the feeling he's going to pop. He glances at his watch, hands Eddie the check. "Don't let your pecker make the big decisions. Remember the last time you got all wrapped up with some girl, it cost you your job.""And you introduced me to her, Uncle Oscar.""I did this time too." They flip each other the finger. Oscar walks away. Eddie stops him. "Uncle Oscar, have you been following me?"Oscar looks back, "You think someone is?"Eddie isn't sure whether to nod or shake his head, so instead he shrugs. Oscar looks worried. "You still got a gun?" Eddie nods, waves for Oscar to go. Jean leans on Eddie's car, glances at Ortuso as he comes out the door and crosses to his black-and-white. He gives her a mock salute. "Nothing personal.""Bet you say that to all the girls."The police car engine rattles to life. Ortuso drives away. Eddie ambles through the screen door, holds out a toothpick. She takes it. "Great food, but the location leaves a lot to be desired. How did you find it?""Madame Zonga's the client who gave me the piano."It's hot. Only nine in the morning and already a little sweat has dampened Eddie's upper lip as he walks among Mike Fouad's rusting sea of wrecked Italian cars. At the other end of the yard, Jean inspects her Porsche's repaired window and tests it. Mike Fouad stands next to her, holding the bill. "I didn't charge you for the oil change and the new spark plugs."She pauses as she pulls out her checkbook, "I didn't ask for an oil change or new plugs.""That's why I didn't charge you for them.""Then why did you do it?""A gift...from me to the car. Don't worry." He points to the date of manufacture on the doorpost, "I spent five years at the Porsche factory. See that date, I was working there then, I probably helped build this very car." He moves some grease from a rag to his hands to his forehead. Jean takes a step backward. "Where do you live, Mike?""Here...in the back.""And what do you drive?"Mike smiles, "Everybody else's cars." Jean yells over her engine. "So what happened to this race driver?"Eddie grimaces at the Porsche's speedometer. "He died. At the wheel of Neptune's trident." The speedometer needle bounces wildly between seventy and one hundred and twenty. "How do you know how fast you're really going?""You push your foot to the floor until you can't wiggle your toes." "And how fast is that?"Jean laughs, "As fast as you can go."The black crows are watching and Jean's Porsche is hitting one hundred and six miles per hour as it drops out of the mountains and streaks across the floor of the Antelope Valley. Eddie feels a shadow fall across him. He looks up at the sky. A giant cloud resembling Neptune is blotting out the sun. 6An old weathered house sits back a hundred feet or so from the two lane tarmac. Nothing moves. The windows are boarded up, giving the house square, dead eyes. An old truck sits on tireless wheels surrounded by tall, dry grass. Jean's blue Porsche is parked two hundred yards down a dirt road, in the shadow of a thirsty willow. Eddie is sweating. He hasn't sweat like this since he and Oscar parked behind the Tire Barn in their black-and-white and smoked dope. His sweat gets in his eyes and makes him refocus his mini-binoculars. "So that's the corporate address of Pioneer Medical Technology.""Let me see." Jean grabs the glasses before Eddie can hand them to her. She looks at the old house. "Think anybody's inside?"He leans back and shuts his eyes. "We'll find out.""When?""When somebody leaves or arrives."She moves her view from the house to a big crow, its beak is stabbing at the highway's dotted white line. "I see a crow pecking at something on the road.""Probably something dead...a snake or a...you know crows love road kill, they'll eat...""Okay...okay." Jean immediately returns to looking at the house. A mail truck stops by the box, drops off some letters and moves on. "The mailman just delivered the mail.""To the box or the front door?""The box." Jean keeps the glasses to her eyes. Eddie's eyes stay closed. "Anybody come out and get the mail?" "Not yet, it just arrived.""I've got the same feeling I had at Clair's house... that nobody really lived there. Wake me up when someone shows.""Shit!"Eddie opens one eye, "What's wrong?""Nothing...I just remembered I've been having all my mail held at the post office because I'm supposed to be on vacation."He closes the eye, "No sweat, you'll get it later.""I'm not paying you to sleep.""I'm not sleeping, I'm thinking.""Well think with your eyes open if you want to get paid for it.""I told you this day would come. Soon as we start to get close to the answers, the client starts bitching about the bill." "How can I be bitching about the bill when you haven't even given me one yet?""That's the point, the client starts bitching about the bill before they've even see it.""What about after they see it?"He opens his eyes and looks at her. "Are you bitching about last night?""What about last night? Nothing happened.""That's what I mean. Okay, so I got a little excited in the shower, but nothing happened.""What if I said something did happen?""If something happened, I don't remember it." "But if it did?""Did it? I don't remember it if it did.""I'm just asking what if.""Well don't because I don't want to know that something happened if I can't remember."She smiles.Jean's silhouette moves across the moon. Eddie hears her zipping the fly of her jeans. She gets back in the car. Eddie doesn't lower the binoculars. "You're lucky you didn't pee on a rattlesnake." "Did you use those to watch me?""No...it’s too dark.""How do you know it's too dark...?""Okay, okay, so I tried." He hands her the glasses. She looks at the house. Nothing has moved or changed. Her view shifts to the highway. "It's been eight hours...""Let's give it a little longer.""Why?""So we don't walk into something and get shot.""Well we have a gun too."Eddie is surprised, "We do?""Don't you?""No...Oscar gave me one a couple of years ago, but it's not with me."She sees a pair of headlights slowly approach. "You're just like Karl Schmidt.""Who's that?""When I was nine years old, Karl Schmidt and I broke into a deserted house and found a box of rubbers." Jean follows the car with the binoculars, it slows more. "Karl knew what they were for but he was too small to make them fit. I taunted his manhood until he agreed to press himself against me and make me a mommy. Monday at school I announced to our classmates that Karl and I were going to have a baby. Karl looked so devastated when his mother came and took him out of the classroom. He sort of disappeared after that." Eddie feels his heart beating faster, his mouth is dry. "You ever make love to a younger man?""These days it seems like they're all younger." She watches the car creep toward the house. "You ever slept with an older woman?""Lately it feels like they're all older."The car stops. She puts her arm on Eddie's to get his attention. "There's a little silver car stopping at the mailbox."Before he can grab the binoculars, she's put them to his eyes."Damn...where is it...okay I see it...it's driving past. Are you sure it stopped?" "I'm sure. It's dark, but I'm sure it stopped.""I can't see shit...you're sure...""I'm sure. All we have to do is look in the mailbox. If the mail is gone, the car picked it up. Which means there probably isn't anyone in the house." Jean's hand opens the mailbox, Eddie's hand aims the small flashlight. The box is empty. Eddie exhales and he feels like a cop and he starts sweating like a cop and he remembers how much he hated being a cop and how Oscar could tell Eddie wasn't cut out for it. Eddie feels something like a band tightening around his left arm and he tells himself he's too young for a heart attack and then he realizes it’s Jean grabbing his arm as they move past the front door of the old house and around to the side. Eddie stops by the old truck, reaches inside the cab, and finds a rusty tire iron. He shows it to her and he hefts it like a weapon and they continue on.The back door is unlocked and opens with a loud, awful groan. Jean and Eddie enter as if walking on eggs. In the circular beam of Eddie's flashlight they can see the empty outlines on the wall where the stove and refrigerator used to be. A large stack of boxes fills the center of the floor. They find a packing slip on top of the boxes. Jean whispers the contents, "Rubber gloves, suture thread, gauze, talcum powder, adhesive tape, and ether.""Two to one it's really cocaine." Eddie opens one of the boxes, lifts away the sheets of plastic bubbles protecting the contents. But the contents are as harmless as the packing slip's promise. He checks another box. "Shit...same stuff."Eddie feels the ghosts of all the people who lived here watching him. Eddie can see their sad-eyed children and he can hear the grunting of their screwing and he can smell their morning urine and he can hear their breakfast eggs cooking and their TV barking decades of gibberish. Eddie and Jean continue the search into the living room and find that it too is barren of furniture, just more crates piled to the ceiling. Eddie tears open a packing slip and then the crate. Again it all matches. More cheap medical items. They head for the next room. As they pass the bathroom, he hands her the flashlight. "Go ahead, I'll catch up." He steps into the bathroom and closes the door. He hears her listening. She hears him bang the seat and she moves down the hall because suddenly the sound of him peeing is sexual and she isn't sure she's ready to go there. In a small room at the end of the hall, the flashlight finds a desk and chair, a telephone, a file cabinet, and an electric coffee pot. Jean's first stop is the desk, the top drawer is filled with envelopes of artificial creamer and sweetener. The second drawer has files of packing slips and invoices and shipping documents from Mexico, to Bucks Imports in Chicago. Others are from Bucks to Pioneer Medical. And still others, from Pioneer to various doctors throughout the United States. She keeps going back and forth through the different slips, again and again...then she digs in her purse and pulls out some of the Rolodex cards Eddie gave her. She hears the toilet flush, a door open, footsteps come down the hall and a figure appears in the doorway. She points the flashlight. "Is something wrong?" Eddie stares at her. "I've got some good news and some bad news. The good news is, I think we're really onto something.""Guilt is very sexy on you. What's the bad news?"A hand from outside the door pushes Eddie into the room, then Breitling enters, holding a gun. "The bad news is...me." Breitling finds the light switch, a single overhead bulb snaps to life, he waves the gun. "Both of you on the floor, back to back." He smiles and laughs. "Hey, I just thought of that. Pretty good, huh?” Jean and Eddie hesitate, Breitling cocks the gun. "Please, don't push me, I'm very new at this."As they follow his orders, Breitling moves behind the desk and goes through the papers and Rolodex cards. He nods at what Jean's found. "Sam said you were smart."Jean's heart feels like it's been jump-started. "Sam told you about me?"Breitling fidgets, his mood becomes melancholy. "Sam was acting crazy, he told me he was going to the police. I even thought of killing him myself, I mean I could hear all the guys at the gym saying 'poor old Pooper...'"Jean can't wait, interrupts, "Who did kill Sam?"Breitling is surprised. "Didn't you?" Jean shakes her head. "Neither of you?" Jean and Eddie both shake their heads. Breitling is becoming confused. "But...but I thought you caught onto us and...and...and...you know...blackmail...?"Eddie recalls Oscar's advice about never letting a suspect complete a sentence. "Caught on to what?"Like a child, Breitling's mood relaxes, turns upbeat. He walks to one of the shipping crates. "Hell, you haven't figured it out yet, have you? Come here!" Eddie cautiously rises, sees the fear and relief teeter-tottering inside Breitling's nervous eyes. Breitling is so excited he uses the gun to pound and pry open one of the boxes. "It's all here, in these crates." Eddie shakes his head, "We've already looked in those."Breitling smiles, "We fooled you! And it was my idea...I thought of it." Jean gets to her feet. Breitling steps back so Eddie and Jean can see for themselves. Breitling laughs, "You're looking at gold, it's cheap to make, and people are..." he twirls the gun like a child playing cowboy, "...people are dying to get their hands on it." Eddie digs through the box, can't find what Breitling is talking about. He goes to another box, and Breitling laughs even harder and louder. The laugh becomes a cackle that makes Eddie shiver. Eddie looks at Jean, they both shake their heads, unable to understand Breitling's riddle. Baffled, Eddie sits limply on one of the boxes. Breitling walks up, grabs a handful of the bubble wrap. "Dummy, you've been looking right through it." He squeezes the plastic bubbles, they burst like overripe fruit, and clear liquid oozes out. Eddie grabs a handful and does the same. And another handful, over and over. Each time, instead of air, a clear liquid pops out of the bubbles. Jean joins the squeezing game, then looks at Breitling. "What is it, heroin?"Breitling leans back, pleased with himself. "Don't be tacky. It's…well it’s called what the Food and Drug Administration refers to as unproven methods of cancer management. Very illegal in this country, but in Mexico and other parts of the third world, lots of clinics use it. Each one of those bubbles is a single dosage." Eddie pulls out a sheet of bubble wrap, it stretches to the floor. "There's thousands of them."Breitling's eyes are now glassy. Jean's hands glide over the plastic bubbles. "What about Hector Sabato and Sam's sister?"An air of importance fills Breitling's stature. "Clair, I never met her...Sabato is a joke." Suddenly Breitling is jealous. "Hey, don't give them any credit for this, they're just dummies, names for the blank spaces." Eddie turns from the crates. "Mr. Breitling? What's your first name?""Horace.""Horace, all...all my client," Eddie indicates Jean, "all she is interested in knowing is why her husband faked his own death six years ago?"Breitling looks at Eddie and Jean, walks over to the file cabinet and slides open the top drawer. "That was before my time, but you may find something in here. Sam once told me to clean all this out, but I never really got around to it." Jean moves to the cabinet, hesitates before reaching into her wants and fears.Eddie nervously watches the gun in Breitling's hand. "So why did Clair have herself committed to a mental...?"Breitling stops playing with the gun. "Clair? Hell, it was Sam that had her committed...he said he was trying to protect her from herself...she either tried to kill herself ...or maybe someone else...I never got the whole story...hey ...maybe...maybe Clair killed Sam." Eddie is already shaking his head. "No way. I saw the bodies, Clair and Sabato were dead a good week or so before Sam was..." The words hit Breitling between the eyes and stand him straight up. "Dead?! Sabato is dead?"Eddie nods. Breitling's mouth springs open and is about to speak...but a single shot from a pistol interrupts his thought and knocks out his front teeth on the way to destroying his brain. Before the body of Horace Breitling can bounce, Eddie knows what's happened and throws one of the boxes at the overhead light. The room is plunged into darkness. More shots come from the hallway...the noise is like a drum in the hands of an angry child, orange flames spitting from the gun's muzzle illuminate the room like a strobe light.Jean is already on the floor, sees Breitling's gun lying nearby. She grabs it, points it at the open doorway and fires. The shots leave her ears ringing. Eddie smells something...ether is leaking from a bullet hole in one of the crates. He tears it open, takes out another bottle of ether and some gauze. In seconds he's fashioned a Molotov cocktail. He pats at his pockets but doesn't have a match. Footsteps are moving in the hallway. Two more shots spit into the room. Eddie sees a cigarette lighter that has fallen out of one of Breitling's pockets. Jean pulls the trigger again. Click, click...no more bullets. Eddie lunges for the lighter, slithers back to safety, ignites the cocktail, and throws it into the hall. Fire fills the doorway, the silhouette recoils backward. Eddie and Jean are illuminated by the flames. They can hear the shooter retreat. Eddie rushes the doorway but the fire is now too hot and blocks escape. Eddie looks at the boxes crowding the room, realizes they are also filled with ether. The smoke is starting to blind them. Jean pulls the shade off the room's only window. Staring back at her are wooden boards. Eddie grabs a box of medical supplies and dives against the boards. Eddie and the box land outside on the ground...just in time to see greasy Leon Kohl's Mercedes driving away. Eddie runs back to the window, Jean is filling her arms with files from the cabinet. "What the hell are you doing? Get out of there...now!"Jean doesn't reply, the walls and ceiling are ready to explode, the peach fuzz on her cheeks is singed, her eyes are watering, the membrane in her nose and mouth is burning. She runs to the window and throws the files through it, hitting Eddie in the face. "Take these...""Goddammit, Jean..."She's already back at the desk, shoving paper invoices and packing slips into her pockets, her purse, and when those are full, down her blouse. The ceiling erupts in a terrifying whoosh of fire. She feels dizzy, no more air in the room or in her lungs...her legs are like lead, her body moves in slow motion. Eddie starts climbing back in the window...screams, "You're going to kill us both."But now she's done, and she falls at Eddie, pushes Eddie back out the window and tumbles after him. The sky is surrendering to the dawn. Fire engines, red lights flashing and sirens wailing, rush by the twenty-four hour coffee shop that hovers next to the highway. Inside, half the truckers are having the Salisbury steak dinner, the other half are having the blueberry pancake breakfast. Jean is getting on a plane. She knows that Sam is the pilot but she isn't sure if it is safe to approach the flight crew door. The stewardesses run up and down the aisle, waving machine pistols and demanding dinner orders. Another woman slips into the flight crew's motel room...its Alice Bucks. Jean sees her mother Gladys there too. The files are still spread all over the table. Eddie slides into the booth seat opposite Jean and gently wakes her up. Jean knows it was a dream but it seems restful compared to her real life nightmare. Eddie looks at her cold coffee. She nods. He drinks it. "I finally got Ortuso, filled him in.""Are you sure, can you prove it was this Leon...?""Don't have to prove it. I know it was Leon. Leon knows it was Leon. He's just being a bad sport." "A bad sport...Jesus...he killed someone.""And he saved our lives. That isn't what he had in mind, but that's how it worked out. Oscar will get the word to Leon that we're even.""But what about...""Breitling wasn't going to let us walk out of there...""He...that...silly little man was...harmless...""No, he was frightened. Frightened people and crazy people are dangerous. And angry people too. Hell, I guess everyone is dangerous." Jean feels sick to her stomach. "I think I want to quit now.""Just a little longer, Oscar is sending a car, wants me to meet him at Sabato's office." Eddie nods at the mountain of paper in front of her. "What's the story?"Jean pushes the files as if trying to make them vanish. "It's a mess but what I can figure out is that seven years ago Sam had a client, a young guy named Tomas Cortez, and he got cancer working around some chemicals at his job. Sam took the kid to Chris...but it was too late. The kid, Cortez, was terminal. But he had two brothers, and they started bringing in an illegal drug from Mexico.""The fake cancer stuff..."Jean nods, "Fake…unproven…anyway Cortez died. But Sam..."Eddie interrupts, "...and Dr. Schwartz-his-name..."Jean nods, "They decided to keep the business going. Also..." she shuffles the papers, "the day after Sam faked taking his own life, Hector Sabato and Chris Schwartzman had Clair committed to a private hospital. Three months later, Sabato signed Clair out of the hospital, case closed. So, back to question number one, who was the dead man in my bed and why did Sam want me to think it was him." She peers into the darkness beyond the plate glass window. Eddie searches through the maze of papers until he finds his half-eaten tuna sandwich. But he can't put the food into his mouth until the truth comes out. "Jean, the dead man in your bed was Mark Gurney. Remember that plane ticket we found in the old Jag? They made a positive ID yesterday...""Yesterday...you knew this yesterday?""Oscar told me...""Oscar! Is Oscar paying you? I thought you were working for me?""I am damnit...it's just that sometimes...I wasn't holding out on you...""Yes you were.""I just wanted to try and put a few more pieces together."Jean starts to get up, Eddie reaches over and grabs her by the wrists. "Please, just listen. A black-and-white Highway Patrol car appears outside the window. Jean sees the car first and begins gathering up the files. "Your taxi's here."Eddie ignores the car, pleads with Jean. "Please, go back to my place, I'll only be a couple of hours. I'll meet you there." She slaps him across the face. "Jean, I wasn't...yes I was...I didn't mean to...yes I did ...I'm sorry...I held out on..."Jean slaps Eddie again. "Mr. Fate, you're fired, because you're a fucking immature asshole." The police car honks its horn. Eddie sees its pointless trying to talk to her. He gets up and walks outside. She watches as the black-and-white takes Eddie to his rendezvous. Officer Sawyer is as crisp and pressed as his uniform. The black-and-white drops Eddie off at Mojave Blvd and 14th Avenue, near the middle of Lancaster, near the middle of nowhere. Hector Sabato's office is a brown door on the second floor of a brown stucco building. The parking lot is empty, the streets are empty. It's five thirty in the morning. Six thirty in the morning. Seven thirty in the morning and Hector Sabato is long since dead and Oscar Ortuso is long since late and wherever Oscar is, Eddie is sure he won't show up. Eddie wonders if Oscar is now dead too. The Iranian in the quickie-mart watches Eddie with suspicion. The Iranian doesn't give Eddie change for a ten until Eddie buys a bag of Day-glo orange cheese puffs. Something about the color of the cheese puffs makes Eddie think of anti-freeze so he throws them in the trash and makes his fourth phone call. Oscar still isn't at his office. Eddie makes his fifth phone call. Oscar still isn't at home. Eddie goes upstairs and kicks in the door to Hector Sabato's office. It's just like the house in the desert. Boxes and boxes of cheap medical supplies. And inside the bubble wrap, thousands of doses of false hope. Destinations are listed in a UPS shipping book. In a filing cabinet are all the clients in alphabetical order, and a picture of Hector Sabato in 1978 graduating medical school in Mexico. Eddie rubs the dust off the picture so he can get a better look at the idealism in Hector's face. The message light on the answering machine is blinking. Eddie hits the play button. The voice doesn't leave a name and doesn't have to. Eddie knows its Sam because it's the kind of voice Jean would fall in love with. Sam's message tells Hector to cancel his trip...Clair has suffered another breakdown...is making violent threats...that Jean's Big News Business Reports are now syndicated and seen in Chicago...that Clair has seen Jean on TV...but then Sam's sixty seconds are up. Eddie can also hear in Sam's voice that he loves Jean. Eddie takes the tape from the machine and puts it in his pocket. He realizes that Hector never got the message and none of it matters anymore since Sam and Clair and Hector are all dead.Eddie turns around and finds two Lancaster police officers with their guns drawn. They warn Eddie to move very slowly as he put his hands over his head. Oscar Ortuso sits in his car at the intersection of K Avenue and 135th Street. He can look in any direction and see nothing but desert scrub. A car has not passed this x on the planet for over two hours. Even then it didn't pass and it wasn't even a car. It was Isaac Holt's tractor turning into Isaac Holt's driveway which is a third of a mile east of the intersection where Oscar Ortuso sits in his car and looks at the pudgy hands lying in his lap. Oscar decides it is his hands that have guided his life. Not his eyes or his lips or his ears or his brain or his heart. It's always been his hands. They were his first sex. And they wrote his first lie. And at age eleven, they aimed the gun and pulled the trigger that killed the neighbor's dog. If Oscar Ortuso could amputate his history by amputating his hands, he would. But now it is too late to do either. The hands and history of Oscar Ortuso are bonded with the glue of the desire to survive. Just one more day. That is all Oscar's hands ask for. Forget the money. Forget the dreams. All Oscar and his hands want is another day of life. Oscar starts his car. He'll find this guy Leon and kill him. Oscar owes Eddie that. 7The noon sun turns pedestrians into a shadow movie on Eddie's large, waxed-over window. A man's shape moves to the big window and tries to peer through, to see the inside. Finally the figure moves away. The only sounds in the room are the computer's muffled “I’m busy” noises, and the water in the shower. The water pours over Jean's face. She is unwilling to end it until all the hot water is gone. Later Jean walks naked around the big room and talks on a cordless phone. "Hi mom...just calling to let you know I'm still alive. I'm... well, I'll explain where I am when I see you..." Buddha and the motorcycle gang are gazing on her naked body so she turns her back to the large mural "...but I didn't want you to worry. I love you and I'll call you later."She crosses to the small TV sitting on top of the piano, turns it on, selects Channel 12...a montage of ambulances, police cars and fire engines dance across the small screen. The announcer says it's time for Los Angeles' hottest midday news, The Big News with Jack Kelly and The Big News Team, plus Joe Cook with Sports and Andy Staub's Business Report!Jean kills the sound on the TV and dials the phone furiously. Jack Kelly smiles, video graphics show a falling stock market, and then there is Andy. The ringing phone is answered. Jean almost chokes on her anger, the words bark out of her throat. "Vickie Field please. I know you're on the air, this is Jean Bruckner...no...now!" Jean pushes her face up to the TV set and stares at the close-up of Andy. With the sound almost off, his overacting is even more absurd. Vickie answers. "Vickie? Its Jean. When the hell did it become Andy Staub's Business Report?" Jean feels stomach acid turning her guts into fire during Vickie's reply. "No, Vickie, I'm here in L.A., what the hell does that have to do with it?" Sam is forgotten, Alice Bucks is forgotten, Chris Schwartzman is forgotten, Oscar Ortuso is forgotten, Fate is forgotten. "I didn't go anywhere on my vacation, stop giving me the runaround...when did you decide to give Andy my spot?" Jean's ears are ringing. "Then who did make the decision? When? And why?" Her heart is being cut out by the words from the other side of the conversation. She turns off the TV and leans against the piano, her back to the window. "I want to meet with them about it." As she listens to Vickie's reply, Jean sees is a mural of angry fantasies, she sees herself firing a gun, over and over ...but she doesn't see the man's shadow return to the window. "Bullshit, my vacation is over now!"The shadow again tries to look inside. Frustrated, it moves toward what used to be the front door. Jeans turns toward the window. "If not tomorrow, Monday." Now she sees the shadow...her words grind to a halt. "They can...make...the time." The shadow moves across the window, stretches out and falls across Jean's face, sapping her voice of all strength. "Vickie, please don't...please..." Jean's voice just stops, her mouth hangs open. The shadow's arm reaches for the doorknob, turns it slowly to the left...nothing happens...the doorknob is twisted slowly to the right. Vickie's voice is like the buzzing of a fly. Jean's eyes fix on the doorknob. The shadow outside leans on the door, tries to push it open. The dead bolt and steel rods are shaken, shaking. Jean disconnects the call but doesn't let go of the phone, doesn't even breath. The shadow stops rattling the door. It bends down. It reaches for the large mail slot at the bottom of the door...easily big enough for an arm to reach through. The slot trembles, starts to open. Jean tries to turn her head away but her eyes won't let her. Like intestines from a slaughtered animal, letters and magazines fall through the slot and onto the floor. The shadow of the mailman stands up and moves away...down the block.Jean tries to laugh with relief. The cordless phone in her hand suddenly rings. She jumps, a whimper escapes from her lips, she puts the phone on the piano and just looks at it and gulps in breaths of air. When she can answer, she is surprised and confused. "Yes...Chris? Hello. No, I'm not...living here...where did you get this number? My purse...how did you...what security guard?" The more he talks the more she feels cornered. Her eyes dart around the room for a way out. "No, I just wanted to... to be alone, do some work." She sees the files she saved from the burning house and she continues listening to Chris as she moves to the papers and gathers them up. His voice is haunted, sweet and sad, and his words are about things that happened millions and millions and millions of heartbeats ago. Music begins pounding from upstairs at The Zipper. "No, no my place is being worked on. Of course I need it, its got all my ID, my my credit..." She shoves the papers back into Sam's files but then is uncertain about where to put them after that. "Listen, I've got to run an errand, but why don't you meet me later." She glances at the ceiling. "At this club, we'll talk, have a drink...we need to talk." And then Chris is gone. One minute he was right in the room, right inside her head, and then he is gone. Hello and good-bye and life and death are all happening so fast that Jean sits naked on the floor in Eddie Fate's exaggerated dorm room that he calls his home. And Jean feels a cry rolling around inside her but it just won't come out and so she goes into Eddie's tent. Her game starts off a little dry until she can conjure up a fantasy. From then on it's as quick and to the point as any man's. Her hand prods her imagination and her imagination instructs her hand. And the end is damn good. Better than she expected considering the situation as a whole. She quickly gets dressed. Eddie stands in line, waiting his turn to use the one phone available to the jail's inmates. A young black man keeps chuckling to his girl, saying he loves her and how he wants her sugar when he gets out. Louie the guard looks up at the clock and yells a two minute warning. Eddie taps the black man on the shoulder. "Pal, I really gotta make a..."The black man flips Eddie the finger without even looking at him. "I'll give you fifty dollars."The black man holds out his hand."I don't have it on me...but soon as I make my call, they'll bring it to me and..."The black man doesn't wait to hear more. His open hand returns to its previous single digit. Eddie looks at the clock. Eddie looks at Louie. Louie is checking his watch. The black man feels a slight tugging on his hair, then it's over and he doesn't feel himself sliding to the floor. And he doesn't hear Eddie dropping his dime and dialing. And he doesn't hear Eddie say, "Madame Zonga, it's me, Eddie."The sun is setting as Madame Zonga watches Eddie break into Oscar's trailer. Eddie isn't sure if it's because he hasn't been to Oscar's in awhile, or if something has happened to Oscar...but the inside of the trailer smells of sadness. Eddie turns in a circle in the center of what Oscar called his living room. On the wall, among Oscar's great record collection, Eddie finds a picture of Oscar and a flashy looking blonde in a pale yellow jumpsuit. The woman is older than Oscar and from the way Oscar is hugging the woman, Eddie knows that she is Oscar's mother. In what Oscar calls the kitchen, Eddie pokes through the contents of the small surgical icebox. There's only room for what's already in it...three cans of beer, a jar of peanut butter, a jar of grape jelly, a half-a-package of English muffins, and a tube of prescription medication for rectal itching. Inside the microwave Eddie finds a half-a-cup of chicken soup. The sole inhabitants of the cupboard are powdered milk, corn flakes, two cans of tomato soup, one can of chili without beans, saltine crackers, a box of Milk Duds, and a five-pound sack of wild bird seed. The sink holds all of Oscar's eating utensils...three plates, two forks, six spoons, one knife. None of them match each other, all of them are dirty. In the phone-booth-sized bathroom, several paperbacks by L. Ron Hubbard are stacked next to the toilet. Oscar's closet is a collection of neatly-pressed uniforms and never- ironed civvies. And under a confused mountain of worn-out shoes, Eddie finds Oscar's treasure....Oscar's secret... Oscar's sin. Eddie finds one hundred thousand dollars.Oscar sits in his little Honda across the street from the whorehouse and watches Leon's Mercedes. The night air is cool and Oscar searches his car's radio and opens another beer. The radio spits and coughs and barks and burps a medley of fragments...the emotions of the words and singers never hook up with the rhythm of Oscar's heart so Oscar turns off the radio and loosens his belt and farts and studies Leon's Mercedes and Oscar knows how he'll work Leon because Oscar knows Leon because Oscar knows that there's a little bit of Leon in everyone. Jean's living room is bathed in moonlight. The engine of the Porsche sings up the driveway. Moments later, footsteps climb the steps to the front porch, a key invades the lock, the front door opens and Jean enters. She moves abruptly, with fear and determination. Her eyes sweep the room, ears prickle for every little sound. The carpet and rugs and wooden and tile floors rush by. Her imagination chases her like a shark after prey. Her memory struggles to recall the simplest things. Several drawers are opened and closed before she finds her briefcase, goes through it, grabs the newspaper stories she copied from the microfilm files. A barking dog and a groan from the front porch make her freeze. She hears a windowpane break.Jean keeps low and scurries to the kitchen door. She peers through the window, sees no one. The sound of the front door opening makes up her mind. She gently slips out the back door and as she slinks along the side of the house. She can see a figure inside...moving toward the bedroom. Jean quietly slides into the Porsche's seat and doesn't start the engine until she’s coasting down the driveway. The Porsche coughs to life and as Jean races down the block, she sees the intruder's figure run out into the street. Leon is laughing because he made the girl take it in the ass and after he squirted he pinched her tits until they bruised. She started crying so he didn't tip her. Leon hates whores that cry. Leon fires up the big Mercedes and turns the radio to Rick Amstel's Sports Highlights. Leon isn't interested in the little Jap car that follows him onto the freeway and across to the Westside and down Montana Avenue and onto Anita Way. Leon doesn't notice the little Jap car until he steps on the brakes for a stop sign and the little Jap car smacks into Leon's bumper. The early evening crush of traffic makes Jean realize it’s Saturday night, makes her realize she's been living in one long day until now. She uses the fragments of light from passing street lamps to scan the newspaper articles on the seat next to her. Her eyes and brain jump back and forth: glimpses...of the articles...snatches...of cars and lights ...Schwartzman's unproven cancer treatments and the FDA...a car honks...Jean swerves...the story of Sam's suicide... headlights coming right at Jean blinding her for a moment... the Cortez brothers...murdered...Officer Oscar Ortuso wounded ...a traffic signal turns yellow...Eddie is fired...the Porsche blasts through the intersection...dates...a woman steps into the street...all the stories are within two weeks of each other...Jean leans on the horn...she's about to hit the woman...the woman screams.Leon is out of the Mercedes and ready to beat the shit out of the guy in the Jap car until he sees the guy getting out of the Jap car and Leon realizes the guy's big. The guy in the Jap car is moaning how sorry he is and he tells Leon to get back in the Mercedes and turn on his tail lights to make sure they work. Leon is already figuring out how to screw his insurance company because the guy in the Jap car looks too poor to shit. Leon throws his right leg and all of his ass into the Mercedes and turns on his lights. He turns to look back at the Honda but the driver is right next to Leon and blocking his view. And now Leon sees something made of black metal moving toward him, and now it's against his chest, and now Leon looks up at Oscar's face.The first time Oscar pulls the trigger, Leon doesn't hear it, he only feels the pain in his chest and thinks he's having a heart attack. Then he feels another thump on his chest and something thick bubbles in his throat. It's dark but he can see Oscar raise the gun and Leon can feel it pressing against his head and then Leon's left ear burns and there is a bright light.Oscar can smell the shit as Leon's corpse loses control of its bowels. Oscar is already walking back to his little Jap car. The street is dark. Leon's blubber muffled the shots better than any silencer. Jean's angry fist bangs insistently on a door. A man's confused and muffled voice calls out for her to hold her horses. Seconds later Andy Staub opens the door a crack, sees Jean, and tries to slam the door. She blocks it with her briefcase. It's a pushing match. "Jean, you've got every reason to be angry, but not at me...""Goddammit Andy, open this fucking door and stop acting like a baby.""The fact is, you're too dry, this is showbiz, not the BBC.""Andy you jerk, I don't give a damn about the job, I just want...need to talk to you.""I don't trust you.""Trust your killer instincts. This is a story that could get you the new weekend anchor spot."The irresistible force and the immovable object pause. "Why would you help me?"Jean sighs, "Why would anyone help you?"Andy smiles like a game show contestant who knows the answer. "To save their own ass?""You got it."The door opens. Jean shoves her briefcase into Andy's arms, picks up the stack of Sam's files, and walks inside.Two hours later, when she leaves Andy's, she gets the feeling she's being followed. She knows it can't be whoever was at her house, but no matter how many times she circles the block, she can't get a look at who it is. So she decides it's her imagination. Jean moves through The Zipper like a swimmer through heavy water. The thickness of the dancing bodies slows her down, like a tide she is pushed back, then released to rush forward. People jump and sway and grind, lights flash and strobe. The band is a frantic beat and a fuzzy drone of feedback and static. A half-naked androgynous body does a mangled imitation of Jim Morrison singing "The End."Jean's eyes are excited as she takes in one person after another. She finally sees Chris sitting at a table across the room, looking completely out of place. Someone else is watching as Jean moves toward Chris. Chris sees Jean, calls out...voices are lost in the din so they wave to each other. As Jean reaches Chris' table, he stands, offers her the chair next to his. She very intentionally takes one across from him. They both sit at the same time. He smiles sheepishly, hands over her purse, tries to speak, realizes he'll have to yell above the music. "I thought you wanted to talk," smiles Chris."I also wanted to be in a place with a lot of people.""Why?" He knows she can see the lie on his face, hear it in his voice, smell it on his breath.Even shouting, she realizes their words are oblivious to everyone else. Anger cracks her voice. "You knew about Sam all along." "I'm sorry. Sam was my best friend and I did what I did because he was my friend. But I never would have hurt you... even for Sam.""You already did hurt me. And you destroyed yourself. And now Sam really is dead...and others...and for what? To con a bunch of dying people out of their money?""It didn't start out like that.""But that's how it ended, isn't it?"Chris nods, watches the dancers as he speaks. "Sam had this client...he brought him to me because the kid had cancer.""The Cortez boy..."Chris nods, "Sam was pissed off that the government approved the chemicals that made the kid sick, but wouldn't approve experimental medicine that might keep the kid alive. We both were pissed off."Jean is too. She slaps Chris hard. "Cut the good Samaritan crap." Chris starts to cry, she slaps him again...then is sorry, reaches out, touches his face. But now his shame refuses her. He pulls back and wipes his eyes. "I saw right away that the stuff wasn't saving lives. On the other hand, it gave people hope. Dying people spend their money on any hope they can find. I figured it might as well be mine." He sighs and takes a long drink of water. "Later, after everyone thought Sam was dead, Sam and I knew we could never see each other as friends again. We set up Bucks Imports and Sabato was the go-between. Sabato figured out my little secret right away, but he made the mistake of letting Breitling in on it."Jean feels electricity. "Sam didn't know about this? He didn't know it was all a rip-off?" Chris shakes his head."Then why did he fake his own death?"Chris is so surprised...and relieved...that he smiles. "You've got it all switched around. Sam's phony suicide had nothing to do with the Cortez boys or Bucks Imports. He pretended to kill himself because of Clair, what she did. She tried to kill you."Whoever is watching them can see but can't hear as Chris tells Jean the details. And when Chris is done, he and Jean stare at each other. He reaches for Jean's hand, she pulls away, confused, angry. She gets up and walks away from the table, through the dancers. Chris gets up and tries to follow. The dancing swells with frenzy and chaos. The leaping, gyrating bodies become a barrier, letting Jean get further and further away from Chris. The other person closes in on Chris from behind... neither Chris nor Jean see it coming. Only six feet or so separate everyone, the singer is screaming "I want to kill you father, I want to fuck you mother..." Chris is right in front of the band, the crowd surrounds him, suddenly his eyes roll up and as if swooning, he turns and slides down among the dancers, who close over him like quicksand.Jean hasn't seen, doesn't look back, pushes her way through the crowd and down the steps leading to the street.The dancers begin to realize something is below them, they part and form a circle. Chris is writhing on his back, his face holding amazed eyes and a smile of agony. The crowd claps encouragement to him until his movements create huge streaks and smears of blood on the floor. The dancers stop clapping, the band dribbles to a halt, everyone stands there watching Chris mime the last moments of his life. Jean moves down the alley behind the club. As she points the garage door opener, she doesn't notice the car parked in the shadows. A large rectangle in the black wall rises up and reveals Eddie's Kodachrome living room. Jean walks inside and electronically orders the door to close. She watches the black alley be replaced with Buddha and the motorcycle gang. Outside the waxed-over front window are the flashing red lights and anxious radio squawks of arriving police cars. Jean sees something on the floor by Eddie's piano. She bends down and picks up a tinted piece of glass, a circle, a lens from Oscar Ortuso's RayBans.Oscar Ortuso, looking like a pirate behind the other lens, steps out of the shadows. "Thanks, I was looking for that." Jean spins around. In Ortuso's hand is a .380 automatic with a silencer. Jean glances at the flashing lights outside the front window. Oscar indicates his gun. "You'd barely have time to make a sound...and this would make even less." He holds out his hand and indicates she should bring him the lens. She drops it on the floor and steps on it. It makes the same grinding sound she heard when she was shot at in the garage. "So what will you tell Eddie?"Oscar shrugs, "I'm luckier than smart. So I won't tell him anything.” "He'll eventually figure it out for himself.""All I want is the files Eddie phoned me about."She moves to the picnic table and sits. "That's not true. You also want...to kill me."Oscar circles in the opposite direction, as if afraid of her. "I don't want to.""But you will.""The files, Mrs. Bruckner.""They're gone.""You give them to Eddie?""No. Eddie doesn't have them and he hasn't had a chance to see what's in them.""You're lying." Ortuso steps up and points the pistol straight at her. "Mrs. Bruckner..."She looks directly up the gun's barrel. "Call me Jean.""Mrs. Bruckner, I've got to have those files.""I'll make you a deal."Desperate, coming unglued, he grabs her hair...pushes the gun up to her face. "You're in no position to deal.""Then shoot."Eyeball to eyeball...neither moves. Both are breathing hard. "What do you want?""One question."He sighs and hates himself. "Take it." She pauses to let her heart slow down. "How do you figure in all this?""It'll take too long.""In twenty-five words or less."Ortuso doesn't feel well, he's starting to sweat. "What do you already know?""Start with the Cortez boy...and about his brothers bringing illegal medication in from Mexico."Oscar is getting impatient. "Wait...wait...that isn't all the Cortez brothers were bringing in. I caught them with drugs. They tried to bargain with me for what they knew about Sam and the Doc. So we all put our heads together and came up with a payoff. One hundred thousand dollars. But then Sam blew his head off...or so we thought. I figured it was all going to hit the fan." "So you shot the Cortez boys and made it look like a drug ambush.""You know how many times a guy like me is going to ever see that kind of money?" Oscar wishes to God he didn't like her so much. All his life he's wanted a woman as smart as Jean to be part of his life. To save him from himself. And at this very moment, a sadness so heavy it pulls inside his chest, tells Oscar that he'll never have a woman like Jean any more than he'll ever spend the money in his trailer. "And Eddie, what about him?"Oscar feels his arms becoming weak. "Getting rid of him was the easy part. I set him up with this hot little bunny..."Jean smiles, "Spare me the details."He cocks the gun, it starts trembling in his hand, "I really like talking to you but I'm short of time. The files ...please."Jean clears her throat, amazed at how calm she now feels. "I'm sorry Uncle Oscar, but I can't help you. It's too late. I gave them to a young...a courageous television reporter. In about ten hours, Los Angeles will be having the story for breakfast." Ortuso's hand is vibrating so badly she's sure the gun is going to go off...but suddenly his trembling stops. Jean and Ortuso look in each other’s eyes. He's heard it, she hasn't, is confused. "Does this mean you're not going to kill me.?" He doesn't answer. Neither moves. Seconds later she hears it too...the sound of a once-was-red car with Neptune's trident on the hood. The garage door motor clicks to life, the Buddha begins to rise...Jean and Ortuso turn, and look. Eddie's Maserati glides into the room. The throb of the engine is like the blood pulsing in Oscar's temples. Eddie sees Jean, sees Oscar, sees the gun, but he stays calm as he gets out of the car. "Hey, Uncle Oscar!" Jean and Eddie are looking at the gun in Oscar's hand. Oscar does too. Oscar decides the gun is too heavy to hold much longer. Life is too heavy. Oscar smiles at Eddie and Jean. "On days like this when I was a child, my mom would let me stay home from school. I'd sit in my pajamas and watch television. I decided to become a cop from watching Dragnet...I'd get dressed up in a suit coat and slacks just like I was going to church, and then I would put my cap pistol inside my jacket and watch Dragnet and pretend I was riding the streets of Los Angeles with Joe Friday." Oscar sighs. "All that money...and I was always afraid to spend it." Jean is frozen, doesn't know what will happen. Oscar thinks of the crows out in Lancaster, he can feel their shadows as they circle his trailer. Eddie's eyes are stinging with tears, his mouth flaps before he can yell. "Oscar....No!"Oscar Ortuso looks foolish and sad as he raises the gun and puts the barrel in his mouth and pulls the trigger. The silencer kills the noise, the bullet kills Ortuso. The red and pink brain against the shower curtain are the gunshot's visual echo. 8Water rushes over Jean's hands as she finishes rinsing the dishes and places them in a drying rack next to the sink. She thinks about the night before, listening to Eddie tell her about the servant who goes to the market and sees Death. About how the servant flees from Baghdad and goes to Samara. Jean turns and walks down the hall to her living room. The house has been put back together...more...the house has been moved into. Pictures are now hung on the walls, mostly prints and posters, leaning to the moderns. In the center of the room is a new addition. Eddie's piano. She walks around it, let's her hand run over it. Next to the piano is her suitcase and a plane ticket with the old note screaming "Don't Forget Me!" She sits down at the piano and wants to play...but her fingers can't decide on a song and she ends up banging the keys in frustration and anger. Jean glances out the front window. The sun is warm. On the sidewalk, Eddie kibitzes with the lady mail carrier...joking about the armful she gives him. His voice is muted by the distance. As is the barking dog down the block. The lady mail carrier moves on. Eddie juggles the armful of postage and makes his way up the stairs two at a time. The door is unlatched and he lets himself in. "Well, here it all is." The room is empty. "Jean?""In here," her voice calls out.She lies on her bed and stares at the ceiling. Eddie's voice is cheerful as he steps into the doorway. "That's a pretty foxy mailman.""Mr. Hoffman has legs like beef jerky."Eddie watches her, can smell her. "I guess it wasn't Mr. Hoffman. But you had a ton of mail. It's amazing what piles up in a couple of weeks." Jean is thinking about something else. As soon as his eyes meet hers, she lets go. "I feel like I've been living in some crazy...some Shakespearean play...it doesn't make sense.""Tell me when stuff like this...tell me when murder ever does make sense." Eddie dumps the mail on the foot of the bed and sits and lets his hand find her ankle. "Jean...come on... hell, you gave me the answer yourself.""I did?""Sure...way back when...you said Sam was a little boy being a big brother... protecting his kid sister. Clair was crazy, she wanted Sam for herself. When you and Sam started to make your marriage work, Clair went off the deep end. And isn't that what...you know...Schwartzman told you more or less?""Thank you." "For what?""For not calling him Schwartz-his-name.""Didn't he tell you...Clair got her college teacher...Gurney...to try to kill you? Sam got home before you and he killed Gurney in a struggle. But Sam wasn't afraid for himself and he wasn't running away from you...he was trying to protect Clair...so he used Gurney's body to fake his own death and...and now it's all over, Jean. It's over now. It's over.""My sadness isn't over. And who killed Sam?""Oscar. Who else is there? He killed the Cortez brothers and Schwartzman...and damnit Jean, who cares, it's over. It’s over." She wants to pull away. He reluctantly lets her."Look...Jean...okay...wait...in the beginning you asked if I could help you and I said yes...and I did. So maybe we don't have all the answers...and maybe we do and don't see it. I mean I'd like to know who shot Kennedy and how...Jean listen to me, I'd like to know how the little girl on the news, how she survived that plane crash when everyone else was killed...but you know...sometimes stuff happens, and...sometimes life just doesn't give you all the answers. Now I'm sorry, and I'd offer to give you your money back..."A laugh interrupts Jean's tears, "But I didn't give you any."Eddie moves to her, hugs her. "And the truth is, you came up with more answers than I did." "Thanks for the piano.""God your tits feel good." Lightning streaks through Jean's eyes. "But...then how could Ortuso be upstairs in the club and kill Chris, then get downstairs before I did and be waiting for me in your place...?"Eddie lets his lips pause half-open. Since he doesn't have an answer, he lets himself be interrupted by sirens racing past the house and tires screeching to a stop down the block. Jean and Eddie rise from the bed and look out the window. He pushes sex out of his mind. "You didn't tell me about this."She pats his butt because he deserves that much. "The neighborhood doesn't usually get this rowdy until after lunch." Eddie starts worrying about how fast the front lawn will grow while Jean is in Italy and he is house-sitting. Eddie checks his watch. "You gotta be at the airport in three hours...go through all that mail, I want to see what's going on."Eddie comes down the steps and hits the sidewalk in a jog. Neighbors join him. An ambulance passes them, heading in the same direction. Fascination sucks them all to the end of the block, to the entrance to an alley, to the barking dog. Jean feel resigned as she shuffles through the envelopes...the bills fall to one side, junk mail falls to the other…then one envelope gets her attention...the one with Sam's handwriting.Eddie joins the crowd of people being held back by an older cop. The cop mumbles the mantra of crowd control... about staying away unless you can help identify the victim.Eddie eases his way to the edge of the police line. On the ground is an old man's body, wearing only white boxer shorts. A paramedic quickly determines that the man is dead, his throat cut from ear to ear. The older cop tries again, "I repeat, please folks, can anyone tell us who this man is?"A little boy pokes his head between the people. "Where are his clothes?" The boy's mother pulls him away, but turns back to the cop. "It's hard to tell, seeing him like this, but it looks like the mailman, Mr. Hoffman." Eddie spins around and looks down the block...the fear stings his eyes. The mail carrier's three-wheel car stands on the sidewalk in front of Jean's house. Eddie turns back to the cop...his words stick in his throat.The cop is busy showing the body to a shaking old lady who nods her head and moans. Eddie pushes past the people, grabs the gun from the cop's holster, turns and lurches down the street. The older cop spins around in surprise. "Hey, goddamn ...hey you. Hey! Stop!"Eddie runs harder than he has ever run in his life. His legs torment him with their numb slowness. He pumps his arms to drive his body faster but nothing is working right, his lungs forget how to breath, his mouth groans and makes desperate baby noises, his hands can barely hold onto the gun. The older cop and his partner are instantly in pursuit, the second cop draws his gun. "Damnit, drop that gun and freeze, Mister!" Eddie is only doors away from Jean's...Eddie can hear the breathing of the cops gaining on him...Eddie cuts across a neighbor's lawn...he can feel that the cop is going to shoot.A woman, with several kids hanging on to her skirt, comes down a driveway and watches as if it were on TV. The cops wave for her to get out of the way. Tears of desperation run down Eddie's face as he takes the front stairs three at a time. He throws open the door ...rushes into the center of the room...finds himself standing between Jean...and dressed as the mail carrier...Alice Bucks, holding a long knife. Eddie pushes Jean aside, knocking her to the floor. Steel sparkles in the sunlight as Alice slashes at Eddie. His shirt turns red, his back arches in pain and he turns and faces her. The knife cuts Eddie's arm, causing him to drop the gun. He grabs at the knife with his other hand, the blade slices through the flesh and hits the bone. The look in Alice's eyes tells Eddie that he's in serious trouble. He throws up his arms in self-defense, but she is cutting him to ribbons. The two cops crash into the room...the one with the gun points it at the two combatants. "Okay lady, step back, we've got him." A finger squeezes a trigger, the .357 Magnum's hammer arches back and falls forward. The sound rattles the windows...once...twice...a third time. Jean, holding the gun Eddie dropped, keeps firing... again and again...until it clicks on empty.The two cops stand there, mouths open. Eddie is equally stunned, not even feeling any pain. Jean, exhausted, stops pulling the trigger and lets the gun fall from her hands. Red circles mark where the bullets have entered Alice Buck's chest. A giant smear of blood covers the wall as she slides downward. Her angry soul strikes back, her arm slicing at the air in front of her with the knife. 9Andy Staub is dressed as Abe Lincoln...the words "penny wise and pound foolish" flash on the screen below him. But neither Gladys nor Andy can hear what he is saying because the television's sound is turned down. Gladys and Andy Staub sit on the giant doily of a couch, eating TV dinners on fold-up TV trays. Andy Staub's mouth is full of food, his voice is full of amazement. "So Alice Bucks was Sam's sister, Clair." Gladys also has a mouth full of food. "Clair killed Hector Sabato, she killed Chris Schwartz-his-name, and she killed her own brother, Sam...""Because they put her away?"Gladys takes in air and swallows. "No! Because... Alice ...Clair...thought Sam was going to start up with Jean again." Gladys takes another bite. "So she killed him...them...all of them.""Then who was the woman they found with Sabato?""The police say she was a hooker, Clair used Sam's trick, made it look like her body, like a suicide." Andy is torn between watching himself on TV and getting the rest of the story. "And that cop...?""Ortuso? Well...he did kill the Cortez brothers...and he killed himself...but his crime was being too stupid to be greedy. How's your crab cakes?""Well, they're not as good as Mrs. Paul's...how's the Fish Divine?""Wonderful, it's Jean's favorite, I should've listened to her years ago."Andy notices the table next to him, the little statues of deer and bunnies and unicorns, he can't resist picking them up. Gladys is watching to make sure he doesn't break any of them, then she wipes her mouth and finishes her story. "Anyway, Sam put everything down in a letter and mailed it to Jean. Clair caught up with Sam and killed him. But Clair knew she couldn't kill Jean until she was sure no one else would get the letter."Andy is back up to speed. "But Jean didn't get the letter because the post office was holding her mail until she got back from vacation."Gladys smiles, "Exactly. By the way, when do you two...?""Another month...when she gets back. After I explained to the station brass that it was really her story, well they didn't want her taking over as the new weekend anchor until I could join her as the new sports guy. They think we've got great chemistry."Night...in Los Angeles. The open-air coffee and donut stand. The old Korean woman is leaning on the cash register, watching the bugs throw themselves against the fluorescent bulbs overhead. Jean's face is calm...beautiful...as she silently reads Sam's suicide note, then folds the note into a little boat, places the note in the water and watches the note drift away and become another gondola on the Grand Canal in Venice. Andy's hand rests on the figurine of a black crow. The road to Willow Springs is straight. Overhead the crows circle the spot where Sam died, the crows are looking for...waiting for Oscar Ortuso's soul to join them. Andy asks Gladys, "Don't you think Eddie is too young for her?""Who, Jean?""No, you! What do you mean, 'Who Jean?'...Yeah, Jean!" Andy swallows some agitation, "Don't you think Eddie's too young for her?"Jean looks up at the muted old buildings. "That's a stupid question."Eddie moves from across the gondola and sits next to her. "Just asking." "You know you only have to be twenty-one to be a cop." Eddie smiles. With bandaged arms he skillfully pours them each a glass of red wine. The gondola slides away from Jean's past...farther and farther...until it is moving toward her future. Jean looks back at the note, drifting away, then takes a glass of wine. She studies Eddie's face. Momentary panic makes her heart flutter, Fate looks old and young at the same time.Eddie feels a shadow fall across him and he looks up and sees a statue...of an ancient God...a bearded man... Neptune...holding his trident. The End. THE NOBODY DIES EASY BLUES 1Outside. Night. Rain. An empty street. Latin jazz plays. Muted. Distant. Pushing and pulling, like a river, like a samba, like a woman on the loose, like a man on the run.Inside. Brown bodies dancing. Music explodes like angry traffic. The dancers are a sea of people. The women tease and the men anticipate. Asses and breasts and muscles and beer and promises and maybes. The musicians glisten with happiness. Johnny Saturday strains into a trumpet. His suit is neglected, his hair is convenient, his age is that no man's land between his first piece of ass and his second marriage. Sweat. Tits. Stella. Everything she is is there. Her body her heart her lies her needs. Her lips are a smoky invitation, her eyes are a warning, her flesh is as white and cool as snow, there's no bra under her tee shirt and her nipples are as dark as coffee stains. The dance floor is packed, Carnival in Rio. It takes a few moments for Johnny to realize Stella is by herself. Men offer themselves to her but she just dances away. Then she smiles and she moves toward Johnny. Johnny smiles back. "My dad always told me that the difference between a flirt and a fuck is the size of the lump on your head. And Dad was usually right."Stella laughs as she dances away. Johnny can smell the smoke, he can feel the heat, he just doesn't want to believe there's going to be a fire.A different club, a different night, a different music, a different people. Mostly young and white. Out of the crowd, like a ghost passing through a wall, dances Stella looking for Johnny. He points his horn at her and plays dirty sounds, then gestures he wants to talk. She doesn't say yes or no, just disappears back into the crowd. Johnny told Sam the Redman, "She's like one of those exotic cars that goes two hundred miles an hour." Sam said, "If that doesn't kill you, there's always a guy with a badge waiting down the road who will." A Mexican wedding. The families are poor, the booze is cheap, the laughter is rich. Johnny and an accordion player are the only two musicians. The bride and groom perform the Mexican Hat Dance. The guests clap out the beat. Suddenly Stella is there too, looking at Johnny with her body. This time he knows it isn't an accident and, well that says it all, doesn't it?Night. An aluminum Gypsy village made of several old trailers sits on flat tires and blocks of wood and is sandwiched in between two concrete walls. An old brown man sits under the stars and watches a kung fu movie on a portable TV. Johnny and Stella share a bottle of vodka as they stagger and stumble under the Jacob's ladder of wires supplying bootlegged electricity. "Sam the Redman says I've got the mark of the X on me. My bank account is an X, the motor in my car is an X, my apartment is an X," Johnny's voice and the Asian chatter from the TV are muted by a jet plane taking off. Stella spins in a circle, looks up at the sky and yells. "What is this place? Where the hell are we?""You're in a borrowed trailer, at the north end of Burbank." The ruins. Johnny doesn't bother to turn on a light. The moon sneaks in the trailer's one window and shows what they need to see. Books, a microwave, dirty laundry, a bed. Stella raises her tee shirt over her head. Johnny watches her breasts sway freely. "I'm sleeping on sheets stolen from an X girlfriend. Sam the Redman says..." "Sam the, Red, who is...?" She grabs the vodka bottle from him, takes a long swallow then drips some on her breasts. "Sam the Redman, he's my..." Johnny wrestles off his shirt. "He's my conscience." With her free hand she begins struggling with his belt. "I had a conscience, I figured out the difference between bad and good when I was five years old." She pours the vodka down his throat, and then down her own. "Even back then, I knew that bad was going to be more fun than good."She plants her mouth on Johnny's and they fall backwards. The trailer's small bed can barely contain them. Their limbs thrash, their voices grunt, their breathing comes in gasps and hisses and whimpers and growls. His hands are slow and sure. She likes it on top. The same place. Morning. The empty vodka bottle lies on the floor. Bursts of morning sunlight ricochet off the glass and splatter on her naked body lying spread-eagle across the bed. She sleeps like a tiger with fresh kill in its belly.Johnny, wide awake, naked, sits on a kitchen chair and shakes all over as he tries to bring a cup of coffee to his lips. The smell of her juice and his come fills the small trailer. He thinks of all the girls he's fucked and all the girls that have fucked him. None has been as good or as scary. None has been more of a stranger and yet more familiar. That's what makes Johnny shake, not the vodka or the fucking, but how well he knew her and she knew him, and how easy and relaxed and good it felt.Green trees hold laundry on hangers. The old brown man sits on the steps of his trailer, still watching the portable TV. A three year old brown child cranks the handle on a plastic ukulele and plays "Pop Goes the Weasel." Old man and child ignore the voices inside the trailer.Johnny yells, "Jesus, you just woke up and already your gone, try the coffee, talk for a second, I don't even know your last name.""Do you remember my first?" Stella explodes out of the trailer. Johnny appears in the doorway, holding the two cups of coffee. The little girl stops playing her ukulele and looks at them."Yeah, I remember. Sarah.""Stella. Stella."Johnny watches her disappear into the shadows of the willow trees. Oil fields. Day. Stocker Road west of LaBrea is a burial ground and a battlefield. Thousands of black pumps churn and plunge into the earth and suck out the thick blood-like goo. Murder and rape and money and success and death and dust-to-dust has turned the once-green hills into a lonely brown clay. The sky is so dirty the sun bounces off the air and rapes Johnny's eyes with glare as he drinks from a bottle of mescal. Sitting next to Johnny, Sam the Redman, a large Navajo wearing Lolita heart-shaped sunglasses, drives the battered Mustang convertible. Sam is long and tall and made of bones and skin. His fingers have been shaped by years at the keys of a piano. Music is his only occupation. Heroin is his only vacation. A dream is his only memory. Johnny isn't Sam's only friend, but he is the best. A Mariachi band laughs and cries from the stereo cassette deck. Johnny and Sam the Redman both wear tuxedos and sing along with the music and yell to hear each other when they speak.Johnny looks at the worm and shakes the bottle of mescal. "Knock-knock."Redman grabs the bottle and drinks. "Who's there?""Why is every girl a one-night stand?""Why is every girl a one-night stand, who?"Johnny takes back the bottle, "Ahhh, fuck you.""Because you're a musician.""That explains why I'm a one-night stand, but what about the girl? It was so good that even when we thought we were killing each other we didn't stop.""You were married.""That was a one-night stand, too. Fucking beggars have more brains than we do." Johnny drinks and swallows the worm. "They don't work, they just sit there and the money falls in their laps.""Just proves that being smart doesn't mean being happy." "Being poor does?”Sam is losing patience with Johnny. "Are you happy? Right now, today, are you happy?"Johnny gives up the argument. "Sure you're not a Hindu?""One hundred and ten percent Navajo..."They finish the sentence in unison, "...a hundred percent for mom and dad, plus ten percent for the other guy."Redman grabs the mescal and drinks. "Never forget the other guy, never forget the other guy."Johnny laughs, the world spins, thunder rumbles and lightning cracks. Outside a pink box. Pouring rain. Day. The two story apartment building's cotton candy colored walls form a square horseshoe around a chlorine-green kidney-shaped pool. Johnny grunts boxes of his life from an old VW convertible. The cacophony of possessions fills his arms and the rain follows him up a flight of stairs. A multi-sexual slab of cellulite with orange hair and wearing an old kimono, sags on an oxidizing aluminum lawn chair by the pool and ignores the downpour. "No jam sessions."Johnny stomps through rain puddles, up another flight of stairs and along a balcony to #9. Inside. Everything is a cheap collection of leftovers. Johnny dumps his treasure on the Formica kitchen table, pulls out a six-pack, opens a beer, sticks the rest in the fridge. Back on the street. Johnny slows as he comes down the stairs. Sitting on the VW's fender is Stella, soaking wet. Stella kicks at him with her foot. "Ever hear of suitcases?"Johnny doesn't answer her as he grabs an armful of loose clothing from the car and heads back up the stairs. Stella enters #9 and sees that Johnny's dumped his armful in the middle of the floor. She checks out the fridge, grabs a beer and explores the hallway. She finds Johnny in the bedroom. The box spring and mattress rest on the floor. A pole lamp is the only other furniture. Johnny doesn't say anything, he just stands there, sucking on his beer and watching her. Stella begins making the bed with a set of wrinkled sheets. "What would you call this, minimalism, post-nuclear, what?"Johnny tears tinfoil from the inside of the window. "I call it postmortem. It reminds me of where Lenny Bruce died." "I liked the trailer better."He downs his beer, takes hers. When she's done making the bed, she kicks off her shoes and begins bouncing up and down on the mattress like a child. Johnny smiles. "You've got ten seconds to get out of my apartment or get out of your pants." Night and Mario's Italian romance. Johnny and Stella devour hours of assorted antipasti and wine. She laughs, "I don't believe you believe that. You're just saying that because you're bitter.""No, it's the truth. Artists are the shit, the crud, the fucked up failures of life...""Artists give beauty to our lives. Poets and painters ...they...art is to the soul what water and fire is to nature.""Absolute bullshit. Artists are the sponges, the...the hangers on, the mutant cripples who have no purpose but to flatter the hunters and doers. The builders." She throws an olive at him, he catches it in his mouth. A different night. He sits on the edge of the tub, she stands in it. Both are naked. She cuts his hair and combs it in a new style. "Without art life would be dull."He watches her progress with a hand mirror. "That's like saying without dessert, a steak wouldn't have any vitamins." She turns on the shower, soaking him. "What about all the great art in the museums, huh?""What about all the garbage in the dumps. Whoever finds it gets to name it. If you were in a shipwreck and a crate full of famous paintings floated by, you damn well know you'd climb on top of the crate, instead of holding it over your head." "Sure, if the ship is sinking.""The ship is always sinking."The Cellulite with orange hair croaks a laugh from the shadows of an umbrella. "God, what a pessimist." The sun shines on the chlorine lake. Stella sunbathes. Johnny drifts on an inner tube, squints at the wrinkled white body, unsure if it is a man or woman. "I'm a realist."The arguing is giving Cellulite a hard-on. "Beauty is in the eye of...""Exactly,” interrupts Johnny. “The audience is the real artist."Stella throws a small gift-wrapped package at Johnny. "Be a pessimist about this."Johnny opens the gift, inside is a gold watch. "Is this a joke?" Stella smiles, "No, it's a Rolex." "What do I do with it?""Keep track of time.""That's the drummer's job."Cellulite gargles and coughs. "Enough Johnny, I have to pee and I only have one kidney." He fills a Margarita glass from a nearby thermos. "You kids want anymore of this?"Johnny and Stella shake their heads. Johnny paddles in circles. "Do you own this place or just manage it or what?"Cellulite sighs a long memory. Then hiccups. And then sighs again. "Ohhhh I don't know. Well yes I do. Actually ...actually...actually Johnny, it owns me. Does that make sense?"Johnny nods and starts paddling in the other direction. Stella feels the sun baking the hair under her swimsuit. "It doesn't make sense to me." "Yes it does," says Johnny. "No it doesn't.""Yes it does.""Tell me how."Johnny gives up paddling in circles. "If I tell you, you won't believe me, or you'll think I'm trying to make you look stupid.""You're making me look stupid now.""No, you just look sexy now.""Fuck you." "I accept."She looks at him floating in the middle of the pool. She feels her face relax because none of his muscles are tense and angry. "Do you like the watch?""Yeah. Do I need to buy it batteries or anything?""No, you just wiggle your arm and it winds itself all by itself. Did you set it?""Yeah.""What time?"Johnny looks up at the sky, then at the watch, "Daytime."A bee is drawn to Stella by the sweet tanning lotion. She jumps up and begins waving a towel at it. "Oh shit... shit...I'm going upstairs...tell me when the goddamn bees are gone." She quickly retreats to #9.The pool is quiet. Water gently slaps at the sides. Far away a child cries and a horn honks and someone laughs and a car without a muffler is trying to get home.Johnny asks Cellulite if he has a family and Cellulite waves his butterfat arm in a wide arc and says that the tenants are his family. And Johnny asks if Cellulite ever gets personally involved or does he just hold court by the pool. And Cellulite tells Johnny about the year the entire building was rented for the winter by a small circus, about the year Cellulite fell in love with one of the midgets, about the year that Cellulite almost went broke and almost lost the building, and the midget, faced with leaving the circus for Cellulite or leaving Cellulite for the circus, leaped into the pool and drowned rather than disappoint either lover. About how since then Cellulite comes and sits by the pool and dreams of that winter and that circus and that midget. "Love will do that to you," smiles Cellulite.Johnny goes upstairs to #9. Stella's in the shower and Johnny fucks her in the shower and sucks her in the shower and they slip and laugh and come in the shower. One day sooner or later. Three Johnny's in a clothing store mirror. A tailor measures the cuffs on his new suit. Johnny's style is definitely changing. "...so I wrote all these songs and when no one bought them I began to fantasize that they were being stolen, that I was being ripped off. I dreamed my songs were being stolen because I didn't want to see the truth that they weren't any good, that I could play, but I couldn't write. Years later, when my...my ambition was dead..."Stella's reflections join his. "You mean your dick."Johnny shrugs to the tailor, then looks at Stella in the mirror and continues. "Ambition, dick, call it whatever you like. It died. But then I accepted earning my daily bread as a horn player on other people’s songs, and I fell in love. I knew there was another guy, but when I was with her, in her, it was like I was, writing a song." "Maybe you should write the word part instead of the music." She takes his arm and pulls the sleeve back to expose the Rolex. "You didn't set the date and the time." He laughs, "Relax, one day is as good as the next."Cosmo's alley. Night. An already forgotten rain has left the street looking sweaty. Johnny, Sam the Redman, and a couple of black guys with a bass fiddle and drumsticks come out a club's backdoor. Johnny's suit is new, his shoes are shined, his head is held high. Redman lights a joint as he staggers to his Mustang. "You got the address? West Adams just past LaBrea."Johnny tosses his horn into the VW. "Sam, I said I'm going home.""Hey, this is bebop, this is Bird. We need you."The black bass player laughs, "You're going blind, Redman. Look at him, he can't play any more tonight, his lips are soft from too much pussy."Johnny's engine rattles to life. "Good night guys."Blue/green glare. Cellulite floats in the pool like the yolk in an egg, the jade blue light throws his shadow up on the pink walls. Johnny waves as he jogs up the stairs."She's gone," calls out Cellulite. He begins to paddle to the pool's edge."What time did she go out?""She didn't go out. I said she's gone. Asked me to make sure you got this." The lump holds out a jelly-flesh arm and dangles an envelope from dough-like fingers.Johnny doesn't look at the civilization Stella has added to his apartment. Johnny isn't interested in the inexpensive prints on the walls, or the small bookshelf...with books...or the stereo, or the secondhand coffee table, or the third-hand throw cover on the fourth-hand couch. Johnny sits in the living room chair and listens to his phone ring until the answering machine picks up. Redman is angry. "Hey asshole, where the fuck are you?" Johnny hears the sound of Redman breathing for a few moments. "You miss another job and you better be dead, motherfucker!"The same but later. Maybe night. Johnny isn't sure. Johnny doesn't care. Pizza boxes, burger wrappers, and several days mail are piled on the coffee table. Johnny sits on the floor, building a pyramid of empty beer cans. The only calendar Johnny is sure of is the several days of stubble that crowds his chin. The phone again, the answering machine does its job. Redman is tired. "Goddammit Johnny, pick up the phone."Another morning. The same Johnny. Sitting in the same chair. Suddenly the door is kicked open, explodes inward. Redman fills the entrance, then moves sloth-like into the apartment. The Indian looks around. Johnny doesn't move. Redman goes into the kitchen, Johnny hears him open and close the fridge. Moments later Redman's back with a six-pack. He hands one can to Johnny and collapses onto the couch."You ever kill anyone, Johnny?"Johnny shakes his head. "You saying I should?""Maybe." Redman kills one beer, opens another. "Hell all the rules about life are just stuff people have made up to control everyone but themselves. Now you look at the animals and the birds and the fish and they don't have any rules, they just have the moment."Johnny laughs, "You're starting to sound French, Sam.""The French didn't invent this, this is the way the universe is. Shit, all the fucking French invented was talking things to death. What I'm saying is that the only rule you've got to live by is the same rule all the rest of living things live by, and that's this very second. Right now. Not yesterday or two hours from now. I say, if this bitch is breaking your heart, then let's go and tear hers out and be over with it. On the other hand, if you're just fucking with your own head, then stop blaming her and let's go back to work." They toast. Redman sighs, "It's good to see you looking like your old self." Inside the "g" spot. Frantic, sweating, blasting, mean, tough, Johnny rarely opens his eyes, his horn just screams until there isn't anymore or anywhere left in him. His lips feel like they're going to fall off. He can taste blood in his mouth. Sam is letting the needle do his work tonight, his timing is for shit, but his solo has a great sense of humor. A hundred yards of graves. A slow, casual, quiet ritual with only two participants, a priest and Johnny. The coffin is plain and gray, the sky is the same. Two young Mexicans sit on a mechanical shovel and watch from a distance. The Priest says the Lord's Prayer and the usual dust to dust stuff. When the priest mentions the name Ruth, Johnny feels a sting of electricity at hearing his mother called by her name. Johnny thinks about how his eyes didn't really want to see what he was looking at when he walked into his mother's house and found her on the kitchen floor. He could tell just from the color of her skin that she was dead. But he kept his eyes moving, her hands her feet her face a dared glimpse at her mouth, her lips her nose...but not her eyes. He touched her leg and it was as cold and hard as stone and he got up and walked into the other room and called the paramedics because he knew that they'd know the drill. Then he waited and wanted a cup of the hot fresh coffee sitting in the electric pot on the counter near his mother's body but he couldn't go in there and get a cup of coffee and ignore her so he waited until the paramedics came and told him to call a mortuary. They pronounced her dead and filled out reports and a policeman came and took another report and all this time Johnny could smell the coffee getting old and bitter. Then the mortuary people came and they took Ruth away and Johnny gave them the clothes he thought she'd like and some of her jewelry and her underwear and socks and shoes. And it was easier once everyone was gone, including Ruth. Johnny walked through his mother's home, saw the pictures of himself as a little boy, saw pictures of his mother and his ex-wife and the man that was called his father. And Johnny found his mother's Christmas decorations and silverware and collection of small wooden owls and the box with letters from Johnny when he first went on the road with a band. Johnny wanted to set the house on fire and walk away. But he knew that would make his mother mad. Anyway, Johnny could probably get some money out of the house so he drank a cup of the bitter coffee and a couple of hours later he tried to cry. Johnny feels the priest's hand on his shoulder and he hears the priest say, "I didn't know your mother, but was there anything else you wanted me to say, a special prayer perhaps?" Johnny shakes his head, "I didn't really know her either." Words slip out of the priest's mouth the same way his shoes glide over the grass. "There wasn't any other family?" Johnny wonders what he should be feeling, "I'm it more or less. I've got a daughter but she and my mom never met." The priest nods. "I'm the last of my family. My younger brother passed away a year go. Now I wonder who is going to bury me." Johnny and the priest start walking toward their cars and the two Mexicans start up their machine and begin digging another grave. The "g" spot gets hotter and darker as the orgy of sound comes together. The climax is sudden and tight. The audience's appreciation explodes. Johnny, the Redman, the others, are all wet and high as they leave the stage. In the storeroom, crowded between extra chairs and boxes of booze, the band takes their ten. Johnny's arms are shaking as he takes a hit and passes the joint on. Nobody has any words in them. All they think about is the music, they each remember the notes they hit right and wrong. They each recall the ecstasy of the coming together. Five minutes of silence pass. The bass player asks if anyone wants to go to New York. No one says yes or no. The sax player gets up and walks toward the men's room. The drummer decides to join him. Redman keeps his eyes shut as he leans his head back. Johnny pushes open the door to the alley and steps outside. The night air is cool and makes him realize how sweat-wet his shirt is. He looks up at the clear and starry Los Angeles sky and Johnny imagines he is in a spaceship all alone and floating through the solar system. He has no one to talk to or touch and smell or be with. Just his mother's furniture is with him in the spaceship. Just the stars and planets are outside. Johnny glances at his Rolex and wonders how many minutes of his ten are left. The stars look down at the water's edge. Stella comes up the steps reluctantly. Cellulite floats on a raft in the pool, can smell her and points at the darkness. "Cigarettes are under the bath towel."Stella finds them, lights one."I hope you didn't bring a lot of luggage, he's behind in his rent."Stella doesn't look back as she climbs the second set of stairs and heads toward #9. "How much?""Call it six hundred and fifty.""I'll give you a check tomorrow."Make it cash and it's only five fifty. But cash."Stella pauses. "You a man or a woman or a what?"Cellulite honks a laugh. "When?"The honking follows Stella to #9. She still has her own key and uses it. Johnny's mess. Stella is cleaning it up. Johnny walks in the front door. He watches her. She feels his eyes on her but doesn't look at him."You checking in or out or you just forget something or what?"She knows it's the wrong thing to say but she does anyway. "I'm sorry."He begins to pursue her through the apartment, undoing what's she's straightened or cleaned. "I'm married," she adds."Does he know?""Don't, Johnny."Johnny starts playing tug-of-war with the trash. "Don't what? Don't ask, don't care, don't hurt?" "I'm half in and half out of a marriage. I want you and I don't want to hurt him." He grabs her. "Knock off the bullshit, everybody hurts, everybody gets burned." He wants to slap her. "Everybody bleeds." She leans forward, places her lips less than an inch from his. "So take your best shot."He pulls her down to the floor and slowly rips open her tee shirt and then he squeezes her tits until she gasps and then he pulls at the button on her jeans, breaks the teeth of the zipper, his nails scratch her hips as he pulls her pants down to her ankles. He forces his hand between her legs and she isn't wet enough and tries to pull back but he runs his fingers through her triangle of hair and her juices quickly start flowing and he rolls her over and lifts her hips and reaches around and grabs a handful of tit and he picks her up and slams her down on his cock and she is so wet that he slides into her and she comes instantly and then starts coming again. Blue skies. Stella. Naked. Completely. Arms out-stretched, hair whipped by wind, she stands on the passenger seat of a black Porsche Speedster. Johnny drives. The engine snaps and howls as it devours the two-lane Mexican highway. A truckload of farmworkers is heading in the opposite direction. The men whistle and shout at Stella. The truck driver loses control, almost crashes.Stella collapses onto the passenger seat, strokes the hair between her legs until her fingers are sticky, then she pushes them between Johnny's lips. Her hands pull open his shirt, her tongue chases the sweat down to his navel, then she works open his pants and sucks his cock until she can feel him almost lose control. "I dare you to let me make you come." She gets her mouth over the top of his cock just in time to catch his peppery hot semen.Bellhops swarm around the Porsche. The brown skins and ill-fitting uniforms are disappointed and fight over Johnny and Stella's two small bags. The losers run ahead and open the doors. The riptide of welcome drags Johnny and Stella into the lobby. Her hand slips into his and when she pulls it back, he is holding a credit card. The white suit and mustache behind the registration desk smiles at her."Mr. and Mrs. Rex Holland," she smiles back. She nudges Johnny and he hands the desk clerk the credit card. Everyone is smiling now. The clerk snaps up the card and retreats to his computer for a few moments. Johnny says, "I feel funny about this."Stella presses herself against him. They kiss.The white suit is back, he returns the credit card to Johnny and slides Johnny a registration card, but his eyes are on Stella. Johnny looks at Stella. She nods. He signs the card. The White suit doesn't bother to check the card, he rings a bell and another brown body in an ill-fitting, starched uniform instantly appears.The room is cool and shady. Johnny listens to Stella in the shower. She's talking but he can't make out the words. He walks out on the balcony, sees a bowl of fruit. He tries the peach...the meat is soft and slips between his lips. The smell of sex and suntan lotion is carried on a breeze. He wishes he had a joint. For dinner Johnny thinks he'll have some good fish and a beer. Stella walks out of the bathroom. The cool air hits her wet body and he can see the goose bumps on her arms and her nipples become small and taut. Johnny figures it's time to ask. "What about him?""Who?""Who? Him! Your husband Rex, what does he do? I don't even know where you live. How come you can get away for so long and stay with me? Does he know about me? Why did you make me register under his name? Are you going to leave him?" She loses interest in sex and starts getting dressed. But she doesn't bother to put on underpants, just a loose cotton dress that Johnny can see through when the sun or lights are behind her. But Johnny won't let it go. "Don't you understand? I want more."Her heads drop back and her words rattle off with the emotional intensity of a shopping list. "He's in politics, he's a lawyer, he knows the marriage isn't right, but he doesn't know about you, and I already have left him because I'm here with you, but I'll have to go back sooner or later and face him and make a decision, and we registered under his name so, so I wouldn't feel so obvious. Any more questions?""I love you. Do you love me?"The San Felipe streets are crowded with poverty and happiness. The night air is thick as blood, the pavement is lined with classic race cars and beautiful drunken gringos and whores without bras and kids without shoes and old men without teeth and everybody is selling and screaming and snapping at the chance for money like sharks being chummed. Johnny and Stella stagger through the mob, chased by an ugly girl with a big ass and a cheap Polaroid. She thrusts a picture in Johnny's face. "Ten." Johnny thrusts them back at her. "It's not even in focus." He pulls Stella around the girl. The ugly girl is back, like a moth. "Seven dollars. You can afford it."As Johnny and Stella walk right by her, he challenges her price. "Two dollars." The girl runs around and physically stops Johnny and Stella with her body. "Five..." "...three..." "...five...please...I need it." Johnny grabs the picture, squints at it. "Four." He yanks some bills from his pocket, shoves them in her hand. The girl turns and runs away. Johnny immediately takes Stella's arm and resumes walking as if it never happened.Stella looks back at the girl. "One of those bills was a ten."Johnny slides the photo into his pocket."One of those was a ten.""I know, I know. This way she'll think she's a lucky liar instead of a good one." Stella spins him around and kisses him. Johnny accepts the kiss but tries to finish what he was saying."I was telling you a very important story."She kisses him again."I was in this club watching this little crippled French guy play piano and I suddenly felt like a fake, like I wasn't working hard enough..." She kisses him again, he kisses her back. "Okay, I give up. I'll never tell you stories about my life again.""I hate the past...anybody's...all of it.""Tell me something. What did you do after college?"Stella makes it a brag. "I didn't go to college.""Okay, high school."She shrugs her shoulders. "What do you want me to say?" Johnny feels an edge coming on. "Say? Say something. Anything. Everything." They've reached the Porsche. A ten year old boy jumps from the car and hands her the keys. "How much is this costing?" Stella gives the kid a five as she gets behind the wheel. "Three hundred and fifty a day and a dollar fifty a mile." Johnny gets in the passenger seat. She pouts and takes a bottle of tequila from under the seat and drinks. "Tell me about your wife."Johnny takes a drink. "Ex-wife.""Same thing.""Did I mention her?""You didn't have to. Any kids?""A daughter. She lives with friends. We stay in touch.""Bet she'd like to hear it put that way. Your wife?""Ex-wife.""Ex-wife.""Some days she's dead, some days she's alive.""You talking about her or how you feel about her?"Johnny shoves his mouth on Stella's. "You made your point, let's not ask any more questions." Stella laughs. "You mean the bear wants more honey, you want to suck me and fuck me. You want to stick it in and squirt 'til your brains come out."Black on black on black. The Porsche rampages down the highway and through the dark, the engine has a savage cackle, the headlights, like stilettos, carve up the future. Stella drives wildly. Johnny screams into the wind, "I don't give a goddamn shit about what makes sense and what doesn't. Who says life makes sense? At last I am the star. After a zillion years of being the beggar in my own life, at last I am the star." He collapses with laughter. A dirty bar. The beer is old and flat, the flies are fat and slow, the customers are drunk and tired. Johnny and Stella slow dance to an old Tommy Dorsey record. He whispers in her ear. "You know, my mother never had a picture of me smiling. But down here, hell even in the ones where you can barely tell it's me, you can see I'm happy and I'm...smiling.”A cheap aluminum heart. An old man stamps out the letters spelling Johnny and Stella - San Felipe, Baja California. She takes it and hangs it around Johnny's neck.La plaza de fantasy. Johnny pushes a wheelbarrow, in it sits a young boy holding a pair of bull horns. Stella pretends to be the matador. The young boy cheers each pass.The moon is a bullet hole in the sky. The Porsche blasts through the night and the tail lights finally disappear into the blackness.Early morning and San Felipe is empty. Johnny runs out of the hotel, jogs down the middle of the street, stops, turns and trots back the other way. The Porsche is gone, the gringo tourists are gone, the peasants and the photographers and the happiness are all gone. A recording studio. A job. A band. Redman on keyboards, Johnny one of the brass. As easily as Stella abandoned Johnny, he has abandoned the new look that she gave him. A black woman sings "You've Changed." As soon as the song is over the conductor drops his baton on the music stand and walks toward the door. He calls out that after lunch, he'll start with the horns. The musicians break into small groups, a few play a phrase or line they aren't happy with, the others begin the act of finding something to eat. The asshole palace. Johnny stands at a urinal. Next to Johnny is a row of toilets. Redman's legs dangle behind a stall door. Johnny glances at his friend's shoes. "I knew when she was lying and I knew when I was lying and I knew that in the heat of the moment, it didn't matter. Remember the very first time you heard a song that you loved? The first time you heard it, you didn't wonder how this is going to end. But it did end. As the song says, in the end it was the end. So fuck it, I woke up and I've been the screwer and the screwee enough to know the score. I didn't mind that she took back the Rolex, but she didn't leave me even one of those pictures where I was smiling, not a single one. So I got drunk and then I got drunker and then I got the next bus back to L.A." Johnny bends at the knees, shakes it off, zips it up, and looks at himself in the bathroom mirror as he washes his hands. "I haven't felt that down since when I was door to door selling encyclopedias." Redman flushes the toilet. "You keep talking about her and you'll be selling them again. I told you, I'm tired of this shit. You spent a whole fucking week checking every girl named Stella and every guy named Rex in every telephone book from Santa Barbara to San Diego." Johnny sees they don't have towels, just those hot air machines, so he stuffs his hands in his pants pockets and dries them there. "I yam whud I yam and dats all whud I yam." Redman exits the crapper, necktie dangling loosely from his fingers as he rolls down the left sleeve of his shirt. "Hey if that's what you wanna do, fine, I don't care what a person does. You wanna rob banks, that's fine with me, you wanna shoot dope, that's fine with me, but don't you ever fuck up the music. You got that? You're playing good now and that's what we are all about. But..." He and Johnny shout the last words in unison. "Don't ever never, even on Sunday, fuck up the music." Then they walk a couple of blocks to a greasy spoon that's been wedged between an adult video store and a patio furniture warehouse. Johnny chooses the fried egg sandwich on whole wheat, with Velveeta cheese and bacon. Sam the Redman goes for two pieces of apple pie. Sam says he needs a place to stay. Johnny offers his couch. The next day Sam arrives. His possessions are two suitcases of everything that needs washing, plus a black tux, a white tux, a blue blazer, a gray suit, the brown suit on his back, and his old but reliable Roland E-20 Synthesizer. Sam the Redman and Johnny start talking about songs they love and haven't played in years. And then they're playing them for each other. And then Cellulite is knocking on the door. And then they let the landlord in and Cellulite reminds them he said no jam sessions. And then they all smoke some grass and Cellulite sings a very nice falsetto arrangement of "Poor Butterfly." Late night on memory lane. Johnny is alone, he cruises under mercury vapor streetlights in his old VW convertible. He almost doesn't see it. But he does. Stops. Backs up. Pulls over to the curb. Behind an iron fence, under a canopy of light, sits a black Porsche Speedster just like the one in Mexico. A sign on the car's windshield says "Rent Me." On rubber legs, Johnny climbs out of his car, ambles to the fence, and finally makes it over the iron railing. He runs his hands over the car like it was Stella's body.Inside Fantasy Rent-A-Car. Light leaks through the window blinds and sketches out the files and desks. A savage kicking begins, seconds later the front door is dangling from its hinges. Alarms start shrieking. Johnny calmly turns on the lights and surveys the room and walks to the file cabinets and pulls open the drawers and comes to the letter "H" and his breathing quickens and his hands tremble and the names fly by. Hesper Hess Hink Hinkle Holden Holder Holland...Standing in the open door, two very tense policemen point their pistols directly at Johnny's back. "Mister, don't even move a muscle until we say so."Tears are streaming down Johnny's face as he slowly pulls the Holland file from the cabinet."Goddammit, freeze!"Johnny obeys. The cops move in, their pistols vibrating with excitement. As one of the cops throws Johnny against the metal cabinets, Johnny can smell the man's dinner. The file papers scatter to the floor. The cop rams Johnny's arms behind him. Johnny squirms away, dives to the floor, clutches at the loose pages, makes out the name Rex Holland, San Francisco, California.Redman gives up his fix money to make Johnny's bail. Johnny borrows on his VW to repay Redman's fix money. Redman gives Johnny a piece of paper with a name and an address. Johnny gives Redman the keys to #9. In the morning they find Cellulite sleeping at the bottom of the pool. His eyes are open and he's smiling as the coroner’s men pull his plump little body to the surface. His kimono waves in the water as if he was flying through space. The cops aren't really interested in what or why. Johnny tells a couple of detectives about the circus and they write down that Cellulite found a way to join his midget lover.Johnny leaves L.A. with all his clothes and his two trumpets. 2 Morning. Fog. Joggers. The Golden Gate Bridge reaches up to the sun. The Marina District. A beautiful old two-story house. Johnny watches it from his VW. Rex Holland comes out the front door, walks to a Mercedes and drives away. Distance obscures any concrete impression of the man. Johnny waits until the street is once again vacant before getting out of his car and walking toward the house.Johnny rings the bell. Waits. No answer. He hates standing there like a jerk so he heads toward his car, then suddenly changes direction, follows the driveway to the back of the house.Tight white seventeen year old flesh. Madeline is sliced into segments by her cobalt blue bikini. Little yellow plastic cups block the sun from her eyes, music snakes from a Walkman up to her earphones. Her body twitches spastically to the unshared rhythms. Johnny's eyes roam. The yard is crowded, a small swimming pool, potted fruit trees, a two car garage. He looks at the girl. Her left arm nervously moves a cigarette to and from her lips. She reaches inside her bikini and frees a pubic hair trapped by the elastic. Johnny steps into the sunlight, casting a shadow on her skin. She instantly stops twitching and removes the yellow blinders. Her emotions ricochet between fondness and fear as she tries to understand who she is looking at. She settles on fear, sits up and reaches for the phone next to her. Johnny tries to reassure her by stepping backward. "Please, don't be afraid, I'm looking for Stella. I'm a friend of hers, my name, my name is Johnny."Madeline shivers, gets off the lounge and keeps the phone in her hand as she backs away. "My sister never, she never mentioned a Johnny...""Saturday...Johnny Saturday.""Stella never mentioned a Johnny-any-day-of-the-week.""And Stella never mentioned she had a sister. If she’s home, just tell her I'm here."Madeline suddenly starts screaming. "Stop it stop it stop it! Shut up, will you, shut up!" Johnny, shocked into silence, stares at the teenager. Tears fill her eyes. She takes several deep breaths. "Stella was murdered by a prowler three weeks ago."Before Johnny can reply, the girl turns and runs into the house. Johnny wants to follow her but his legs don't move. What the girl said doesn't make sense. But the way she said it does. A still life. A bar before nine a.m. Johnny stares at the three empty shot glasses in front of him. The bartender sits on a stool and watches the overhead TV as Dr. Joan someone-or-other talks to “the children of sex changes.” The rest of the world hasn't shown up yet. During a commercial the bartender glances at Johnny to see if he wants another. Johnny shakes his head...considers saying something to the bartender...doesn't. Johnny is pretty sure Stella is dead. Johnny is pretty sure Stella was in Mexico with him. But Johnny isn't sure how she could be in two places at once. A thousand pages flutter in the wind under an enormous banner urging the students of the Marina Elementary School to "Save The Planet" and support the Paper Drive. Johnny's car moves past the stacks and stacks of old newspapers, then stops for a young boy proudly crossing the street, his arms full of his contribution. Johnny wonders if he looks like a bum to the kid but he asks the kid anyway. "Hey pal, where's 101 South?" The kid looks at Johnny. "101 South? How do I find it?" The boy crunches up his face in thought as he moves closer to Johnny's car. "101. You know, the free...way." Johnny's words fade as he looks at the top newspaper on the kid's bundle. A photo of Johnny and Stella in Mexico. The headline screams: Holland on Love Trip When Wife Murdered. Johnny leaps from his car and scares the hell out of the kid. The boy drops the papers, bursts into tears and runs for the safety of the other children and the teachers. Johnny picks up the paper, looks at the headline and the picture. Below the picture of Johnny and Stella is a picture of the woman who was murdered by a prowler...the real Stella...the real Mrs. Holland. Her face is a pleasant stranger that Johnny will never meet. Johnny runs to the stacks of newspapers lining the school yard. He tears at the bundles, tips them over, scatters them as his arms fill up with yesterdays' news. Sobered by exhaustion, Johnny sees the teachers herd the children together. They all stare at Johnny as if he were a dangerous animal. Johnny stumbles to his car, throws the newspapers into the back seat and races away. The foot of the Golden Gate. Johnny sits on the bumper of his car and reads about Stella Holland being murdered while her husband Rex was in Mexico with a girl named Jackie Meller. The photo of Rex with Jackie is one of Johnny and the woman he knew as Stella. It wasn't Stella who was in two places at once. It was Rex. The newspapers lie in wads at Johnny's feet. He knows he should point his car south and never look back. But he doesn't. He looks up and the fog rolls in and obscures him. A black street on a bright day. Johnny parks in front of a squat two-story building. The ground floor has no windows, the second floor has two little square ones that look like dead eyes. Over the beaten-up front door a crusty sign of naked forty watt light bulbs spells out "Gertie's Famous Bar - Oakland, California."Upside down Johnny checks out Gertie's mirrored ceiling. The room is dark and cool. Dart boards flank one wall, a long bar measures another, a bandstand and the double doors to the kitchen entertain the third. An oriental kid mops the wooden floor and never looks at Johnny when they speak. "Come back in an hour," says the mop."I'm looking for Gertie?""Come back in two hours.""I'm a friend of Sam the Redman." The kid raises his mop handle and thumps the ceiling. "Have a seat."A few seconds later, over an intercom by the cash register, comes a husky female voice with an Australian bark. "Look Buddha Baby, if you're not having sex with that mop, this better be very very goddamn important."The kid gestures for Johnny to answer. "Hello?""Hello my ass, who the fuck is down there?" "My name is Johnny Saturday.""Johnny...who...what the hell...?"Johnny hears what sounds like someone upstairs falling out of bed. The kid grabs the mop and bucket and disappears through the kitchen doors. Seconds later Gertrude "Gertie" Noonan bursts through the curtain behind the bandstand. Her platinum blonde hair is slicked back, her body and sweat soaked tee shirt has weight lifting written all over them. She eyes Johnny as she ambles behind the bar. He drifts along with her, finds a stool and sits. "You're a stranger or you'd know we don't open for another hour.""I'm a friend of Sam the Redman. My name is..." "Johnny Saturday. I heard you." She pours herself a cup of coffee, holds up the pot as an offer to Johnny. "It's hot and thick, like me." She laughs at herself.He nods, she pours a second cup and slides it to him. He sniffs the steaming brew and watches as Gertie leans against the cash register. Next to it hangs a double shoulder holster filled with matching 1911-A Springfield Armory .45 automatics. "Johnny Saturday. That's a pretty fancy name.""I had a band back in high school, we called ourselves Saturday Knights. My real name is Johnny something-else." "What's your axe, Johnny...something-else?""Trumpet."She considers him for several seconds. "So do your stuff."The second set that night. The audience mixes neighborhood locals, rich folks from over the bridge, students from Berkeley, and a few serious drinkers. Behind the bar a beautiful young black girl named Karen is all legs as she dances to the music while mixing drinks. Johnny plays with the house band. Cash and Carry Watson doubles on alto and tenor sax, Skinny Rosen sits behind the drums, Mel Shanker is the keyboard player. Gertie steps in front of the microphone, a blue spotlight reflecting off her matching .45 autos as she gives the audience her preamble."People ask about the iron and I tell 'em it saves my voice. The first week we opened, I got so hoarse yelling for quiet, I couldn't sing. The next week," she slaps the holsters like a cross between George Patton and P.T. Barnum, "I haven't had to raise my voice since." Without missing a beat, she and the band slide into "Stormy Weather." Gertie's voice is as foggy as Mel Torme’s. The blinking sign outside Gertie's Bar is also outside Johnny's window. The bed is small. The adjoining three quarter bath doesn't have a door. Johnny, down to his jockey shorts, is brushing his teeth when he hears a knock. He spits out and rinses, then cracks the door. Gertie smiles back from the hallway, tries to peek inside. "What you hiding for, you got a little dick?"Johnny opens the door. "Didn't want to tempt you."That gives her a good laugh. She hands him fifty dollars. "I pay every night, that way I got nothing to remember or regret in the morning. In your case, I'm taking fifteen percent off the top for rent." He doesn't bother to count the money. She steps into the room and checks out Johnny's butt as he crosses to his bed and sits. "You got a cute ass. You ought to fill out one of those organ donor cards, it'd make some lucky soul up here a great umbrella stand." She feels her chin. "You got any pimple medicine?"He points to the bathroom. "You're everything the Redman said you were." He watches as she checks out her pimple in the mirror and squeezes it until it pops. When she comes out of the bathroom, she has a piece of toilet paper on the popped pimple, like it was a shaving nick. "So Johnny, I'm guessing that you didn't come to San Francisco just to play your horn."The cities in Johnny's life come and go like days and songs. Johnny is always waiting to play or playing. There is nothing else that measures his life. Johnny remembers Chicago and Seattle and Phoenix and New Orleans and Memphis and Miami and Newport Rhode Island and Newport California and Reno and Boise and maybe he'll play them again. He's been to San Francisco too. He's played in San Francisco and fucked in San Francisco and slept and ate and laughed and blown his horn and now he's back and it's the same song and it's also very different. Johnny watches from his car as Rex drives his Mercedes up to a high school and drops off Madeline. The instant Rex drives away, Madeline is surrounded by young men looking to make history. Johnny follows Rex.Swan's Oyster Depot is a line of occupied stools and a crowd of people waiting for one to empty. A juggling act of waiters moves behind the counter and dishes up plates of lobsters and oysters and clams and loaves of bread and draft beers. Rex is flanked by two friends. Johnny finds a place at the opposite end of the room and watches. Holland is like a mirage. At moments, at angles, Johnny finds their resemblance to each other uncanny. Other times it isn't there at all. The waiter makes a momentary mistake and almost gives Rex's lunch order to Johnny, so Johnny becomes nervous and leaves and waits outside.In and out of rainy traffic, Johnny stalks Rex through the slippery city. And tracking Rex in the reflection of windows allows Johnny to again see himself, to see the resemblance, to see it come and go like the pictures taken of Johnny in Mexico. Sundown in Oakland. Johnny sits in his upstairs window and watches the street outside Gertie's turn red with the hour. In a voice so soft only he can hear it, Johnny sings the songs he will play that night, he sings the lyrics the way he wants his horn to sing them. He thinks about what they say and what he wants them to say and what they want him to say. He sees himself as a little boy on the beach and a wave washes over him and he isn't a little boy anymore and the wave that washes over him is his own disappointment. Johnny feels the disappointment as it shapes his eyes and pulls on the muscles in his cheeks and presses his lips against his teeth. He wonders if the audience understands why musicians like Johnny have so much trouble listening to music on the radio or on records. He wonders if that many people even remember records. CDs seem so distant to Johnny, like video games and virtual reality. The name virtual reality makes Johnny think of jerking off. Either there is reality or there isn't. He wonders if people would pay twenty bucks for a virtual New York steak or a virtual piece of ass or a virtual brain operation that didn't remove the cancerous tumor. Virtual reality. Johnny laughs out loud. His reality is sitting in a window in Oakland. An old Chevy filled with Mexican teenagers drives by and slows as it gets to a stunning black BMW parked at the curb. At the same moment, Cash and Carry Watson comes out the front door of the club and spots the teenagers."Hey!"One of the teenagers flips Watson the finger. "Hay is what your mama eats." The boys laugh.Watson flips the finger back. "Your mama eats my dick." The car stops and two of the boys get out. Watson puts down his two saxophone cases. "Well com'on motherfuckers!"Gertie plows out the front door, makes sure the Mexican boys can see the twin .45s. "Okay my macho muchachos, he's too old and you're too young." The boys size her up. Johnny calls down from his window. "Honest-to-god amigos, if you think those guns look mean, you should see her tits. Fighting her would be like fucking barbed wire." Gertie laughs so hard she looks at the sky and sees Johnny sitting in his window. Cash and Carry Watson is still smoking. He pulls out a pencil and paper as he yells at the Mexicans. "I'm writing down your license, can you punks dig that? I've seen you boys looking at my car twice goddammit, but I've got your license now."The driver of the car mumbles something in Spanish to his friends. They jump back in the car and slowly cruise away.The People versus Poon. The prosecution of two Korean teenagers. The crime is robbery and murder. The boys drove into a gas station/mini-market. They had a .45 automatic loaded with bullets. They got two jumbo colas and a bag of Fritos and then they shot Frank Gula three times in the head. Johnny hunkers down in the back of the courtroom, watches as Rex makes the opening arguments. Fog and Sausalito. Rex briskly walks past a series of tourist shops, turns into a courtyard apartment complex, climbs a flight of stairs and knocks on #5B. A woman opens the door. Rex quickly moves inside. Johnny can see that the woman who opens the door is the woman Johnny was with in Mexico. He gives it a few seconds, then walks to the mail boxes. #5B. The name is listed as Ms Jackie Meller. Just like the newspapers said. Later. The last of the tourists stumble toward vanilla motel rooms. Johnny pulls out his mouthpiece and rehearses "As Time Goes By." Johnny remembers the movies he saw as a kid on his grandmother's TV, Johnny remembers how his mother's mother would make a chocolate cake and she and Johnny would eat it hot out of the pan and watch the All Night Show and see movies about guys who got hooked up with "the wrong dame." There was usually a nice girl who liked the guy but he couldn't see her for beans...not until the end when he came crawling to her with the wrong dame's fingernail scratches on his heart and a bullet in his gut. Finally Rex comes out of 5B, gets in his Mercedes and drives away. Johnny knocks on 5B. Again, louder. And almost again, but his hand stops because the door opens. Stella/Jackie's face is a puffy and bloody mess. Her eyes fill with terror but she can't speak because Johnny already has his hand around her throat. "I realize now that I got off easy, I'm not the victim, I'm just the alibi." Stella/Jackie pushes her words past his fingers. "I didn't know he was going to kill her..."Johnny slaps her face. "Why?"Stella/Jackie almost fights back. "Why me, why him, or why you?"Johnny slaps her again. Stella/Jackie gives up instead. "What the hell, there isn't much left so take your best shot. Everyone else is."Johnny slaps her again.She laughs. "Fuck you."He raises his hand...can't...and pushes his way past her and into the apartment. Jackie/Stella lies naked in the bathtub...arms, legs, breasts and stomach, all bruised. Johnny kneels on the floor, dipping a wash cloth into the water, cleaning the blood from her face. "He didn't...he never told you what he had in mind?"She winces. The water is becoming dark pink. "I knew it wasn't going to be legal. I had just been busted, it was my third offense, grand theft. Rex was the prosecuting DA, I was facing hard time and he offered me probation in return for sex. I thought it would end there."Johnny slides away from her, across the tile floor, finds himself looking in a mirror. "And me?" "You were serendipity. I was in LA, heard about this club, went to do some dancing, there you were. I mentioned you to Rex in passing. It was like he got a shot of vitamin B12, all his wheels began turning. He wanted to be in two places at once. That's why he had to...had me...change how you looked, dressed.""And why I registered under his name? And all the pictures?""He burned the ones that didn't look enough like him." "What about you and me? Was any of us real?Jackie/Stella studies him a long time. "Some of it. Sometimes.""Just sometimes?""Sometimes is a lot."Johnny punches the mirror, breaking it. "And the cops?"She panics. "No. No. Johnny, he said if I ever told anyone, he'd drag me down with him. He could say that he paid us both to be his alibi. He...he could..."Johnny is tired and confused, waves for her to shut up as he climbs to his feet."Johnny, I've already lied to the police once. Who would believe me now? How could we prove it?" Johnny walks out of the bathroom, Jackie gets out of the tub and follows him into the living room. She drips bloody bath water on the carpet and she shivers from the cold air and her growing desperation."Goddammit, Johnny, he could say we were trying to shake him down. Johnny, wait, stop, please Johnny, help me! Johnny, what are you going to do?"Johnny doesn't answer and doesn't look back. He just walks out the door. The hour is dark, the courtyard is a salad of shadows. Johnny steps into one and sags against the wall. He wipes his face with his coat sleeve, and starts trudging toward his car. A figure steps out of a doorway behind him, raises a pipe and strikes Johnny savagely on the head. Johnny dreams he's six years old and having his tonsils taken out. His mother has been lying to him all week. He knows something bad is going to happen, something with a doctor. He doesn't want to go to the hospital. He gets his BB gun and decides he'll shoot out the doctor's eyes when the son of a bitch tries to give him a shot. When he gets to the hospital, his mother keeps telling him everything is all right. Then they put a thing over his nose and mouth and then he is gone in the black water.The remnants of an old pier rises out of the Bay. A hundred yards away, houseboat lights flicker. Something splashes in the stillness. Inky ripples undulate. Seconds later a rowboat glides by the moon. A man's silhouette leans on the oars, stroking for shore. As the boat gets farther away, Johnny rises to the surface and floats face down. His body slowly sinks back under. The boat moves farther into the darkness. Moments pass. The water is still, quiet. Then it erupts. Johnny chokes, gasps, vomits the bay from his lungs. Blood runs from a large gash on his head. His arms flail to stay alive and they find a piece of the wooden pier and hang on. The figure in the boat turns around. His flashlight searches the choppy water for the source of the noise, but misses seeing Johnny. The water returns to quiet glass, the flashlight goes out, the figure in the boat resumes rowing. When it's safe, Johnny starts swimming for shore.The cabby, an old man who can barely hold up his own clothes, helps Johnny stagger inside Gertie's. The sign on the door says "Ladies Night." The band plays "The Man That Got Away." Women in ones and twos and threes are dancing and talking and cruising and necking and relaxing. Some are dressed as business men, some are dressed in uniforms, some are this and that and the other thing. The cabby smiles at the crowd as he eases Johnny up to the bar. Gertie, behind the bar, eyes Johnny, pours him a stiff shot. Johnny slugs it down. "Someone tried to kill me."Gertie pours him another. "You missed the first set.""Spoken like a club owner." Johnny sips at the second shot. "I owe this guy forty five bucks."The Cabby waves, Gertie spears the Cabby with her eyes. "Forty five dollars, where the hell you pick him up, China?""Sausalito." He likes the looks of Gertie. "You his wife or do I have a chance?"Gertie gives a raspberry, strides to the register, pulls out the money and slaps it on the counter. The Cabby winks at Gertie, pockets the cash, gives the room a last look and pats Johnny on the back as he leaves. "If you're sticking around here, don't plan on getting lucky."Gertie's kitchen is an art gallery of posters from Paris jazz clubs. Karen cooks. Johnny wears a pink quilted smoking jacket and sits on a chair next to the breakfast table. He shivers as Gertie cleans the gash on his head. "Johnny, you get blood on that jacket and they'll bury you in it.""I'll buy you a new one.""You can't. There's only that one.""I was just thinking...""If you were thinking, you'd be halfway back to L.A." Karen brings Johnny a steak and silverware, gives Gertie a peck on the lips and heads downstairs. "I'll check the stock and close out the register."Johnny eyeballs the rare meat but Gertie gets there first, reaching over him and cutting herself a bite and popping it in her mouth.Johnny grabs back the silverware, starts sawing on his T-bone. "He must have spotted me following him or something...what do you think?""Where did you go to school?""Hollywood High School.""Didn't Ricky Nelson go there?""He was before my time."Gertie gets misty-eyed. "Ricky Nelson was the only man I ever wanted to date." "Someone's been murdered.""Every day of the week." She's done and starts putting away the bandages. "Now, if you want revenge, go to the cops. If you want to make the world a better place...stick to music." She steals another bite of his steak. "So which is it gonna be, Johnny something-else?"Jackie comes out the back door of her apartment, goes down the stairs to the garage. She gets in the car. The cheap aluminum heart hanging on the rearview mirror says Johnny and Stella, San Felipe Mexico. Her own heart stops the moment she sees it. Her lips silently mouth his name. The car is warm with his presence. Sweating, shaking, Jackie begins to cry."Jesus Christ, he told me you were dead he told me he killed you. Jesus Christ..."Johnny's voice is a dead calm whisper from the empty rearview mirror. "Don't look back here, just start the car and drive.""I thought you were dead.""Shut the fuck up, damnit. Shut up and drive."Her hands fumble, the car engine sputters to life. "Just drive damnit. Go! Go!" A seismograph needle bounces gently. The large sign explains to all who pass this way that the Point Reyes Ranger Station is near the epicenter of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Johnny and Jackie are the only two people there. Jackie is mesmerized by the bouncing needle as a prerecorded tour guide explains about earthquakes.Johnny elbows her in the kidney. "How do you know he still has the gun?""He told me. How come that seismo-thing needle is moving but I don't feel anything?""Why would he tell you?""I don't know why, he just did. How come if there's an earthquake I don't feel the moving?""Aren't you listening, it says there are thousands every year but most are too small to feel. Did he tell you where it is?"She looks at him hopefully. "No. But I got ideas where it might be."Johnny smells more trouble. "So what do we do when we find the gun, give it to the cops?" For the first time she's interested in something besides the seismo-thing. "When we find the gun, then we'll have something to bargain with." "Bargain? For what?""For silence. We make him give us money to keep quiet, then we go away. You and me. We go away."A tired wooden fence wanders down into a ravine and comes to an awkward interruption. Twenty feet away in a jagged offset, the fence is abruptly resurrected and wiggles into the woods. Jackie stops at one half of the fence. "I don't believe it, this is phony, like those movie studio tours, it's just a trick." Johnny goes to the other half, raises his arms, sights along them as he reads from a pamphlet. "No, this is real. It says when the big quake hit San Francisco, this fence was torn apart. Can you imagine what it was like to be right here? The side of the land you're on actually moved from here to where you're standing now."She hugs herself with apprehension, stumbles across the ravine and joins him. "Let's get out of here, this place gives me the willies.""What if I just beat the shit out of him?""Look, Johnny, I didn't ask you to come up here, I didn't ask you to follow me."Johnny grabs her by the arms. "Hey, goddammit, you got it backwards, I didn't invite you into my life, you’re the one who crashed my party." He's pulled her closer than he planned. The heat of her body and the smell of her breath takes away his own. She reaches up and touches him, quiets his words, "You want an apology?" Johnny finds his desire is still alive, he kisses her, she kisses him back, her words are barely louder than their moans. "If you don't want to be involved, if you don't want to help me, I'll understand. Then just go back to L.A." They sink to the ground. She suddenly erupts in giggles. "You think we'll show up on that seismo-thing?" Gertie and the band are so hot everybody sweats with their commitment. Gertie sings to Johnny, his horn answers. The audience is enveloped in the music. A secret code is taking place, the drummer plays a rim shot on the second beat of the first bar of each measure, the bass plays just behind the beat, Johnny cuts the notes in half and cushions them through a mute, Cash and Carry Watson lets the melody roll out of his tenor like the fog under the Golden Gate. In the darkest shadows of the room is Jackie. The shadows in her eyes are even darker. She suddenly leaves her seat, edges through the crowd and down a narrow hallway leading to a pay phone. She drops in a couple of quarters and dials. The ringing of the phone mixes with the music. Her party answers. Johnny's solo reaches into the hallway. Her eyes glance toward the bandstand, the music wants her loyalty. She presses her lips closer to the phone. "Hi, it's me." Last night's rain is gone. Birds crowd the front lawns and pull the worms from the soggy earth. The morning sun warms the grass and creates clouds of steam. From inside the VW, Johnny and Jackie watch Rex leave with Madeline. "Think the girl's in danger?"Jackie's bitterness fogs the windshield. "When you reach puberty every girl is in danger. Drive around the block one more time."A credit card slips the lock on the patio door. Johnny and Jackie slide into the living room. Johnny hesitates by the door. "How did you know where to disconnect the alarm?""The sign on the front lawn." Jackie grabs his arm and pulls him after her. "I'd get jobs as a temp at security companies in their billing department. Got so I could look at a house and guess how much the owner spent and what corners were cut and where the switches were.""So how come you got caught?""I didn't get caught, I got betrayed. I got turned in so somebody else could do easy time."The living room carpets are deep, the ceilings are high, the furniture is antique, the art is modern. Jackie eyeballs the wealth and shivers with contempt. "You ever wonder how God chooses who gets everything and who gets nothing?""You believe in God?""Gotta blame somebody."Johnny instinctively reaches toward a nude statue, Jackie slaps his hand. "Don't touch anything, don't say anything. Just listen for sirens or cars outside." Johnny feels the sweat leave his left armpit and run down his side. "Let's go, let's get the hell out of here. He'd be crazy to hide anything in his own home." "I did a house once and you know where I found this lady's jewels? She hid them in her douche bag." They step through an open door and into Rex's den. Johnny can smell and feel the difference between himself and Rex. Johnny can tell that Rex never looks down at his shoes, that Rex has a clear picture of what he wants in life and where it is and how much it will cost. Johnny can tell that this room is not an oasis for Rex's soul, he doesn't come here to rest or reflect, it is a servant of Rex's plans. For all their physical similarities, Johnny can tell that he and Rex are not really alike at all. Johnny can tell that Rex is more like the person who now works the room with cool efficiency. Jackie uses her shirttails to prevent fingerprints. First she checks the desk, everything on it and in it. But nothing about the desk arouses her emotions. She moves to a file cabinet, finds something in the second drawer. She leaves behind the folder but tosses some papers at Johnny's feet. He picks them up and starts to read. "It's a will.""Hers. Put it in your pocket, we'll read it later."Johnny shoves the papers in his jacket. She moves to the bookcase, reaches over and behind them, feeling for something, anything. Disturbing nothing. They ascend the main stairs, Johnny instinctively touches the banister, she slaps his hand and wipes it off. "What if he misses the will?"Jackie laughs. "His wife is already dead. You don't think he read it first?” The carpet in the upstairs hallway is so soft Johnny feels like he's wearing slippers. A smell of flowers tickles his nose. As they pass rooms, Jackie nudges open the doors with her elbows, pokes her head in the room, then quickly moves on. Teenage Land. Posters of MTV hunks, scattered remains from the morning's panic over what to wear. Jackie stops in the doorway, lingers, peers inside. Johnny cranes his neck to see but she pushes him back. "Stay here."Jackie steps softly into the room, then her mood changes and she arrogantly flops on the bed and lies there, and her nose searches the air for the smells of adolescence, and she closes her eyes to get inside the head of the young girl who lives here. After a few moments she jumps up, snatches a skirt off a doorknob, holds it up and looks at herself in the mirror. Like a jealous friend, Jackie throws the skirt on the floor, picks up some stuffed animals, finds one she likes and suddenly begins twisting its head. The head pops off and out of the body Jackie pulls a plastic baggy of grass. She puts the dope in her pocket. Johnny leans into the room. "What did you find?"Jackie spins around and leaves. "Myself ten years ago."A door flies open. Jackie storms into the master bedroom as if conquering it. Johnny is right behind her. When she reaches the center of the room Jackie turns and faces the bed. "Can you feel it? He's removed all her things.""How can you tell?" "A woman knows when another woman has lived in a room, and then has been moved out." "I gotta pee."She points to the master bath. "Do it in there...and don't lift the seat and don't flush.""I know...fingerprints.""No, a calling card, the mark of a pro."Jackie watches Johnny step into the bathroom then she moves to the king-size bed, pulls back the blanket and runs her hands over the sheets. She grabs them and smells them, lifts up her skirt, pulls down her panties, and rubs a handful of the sheets between her legs until she and they are wet. She shudders briefly, steps back and lets the sheets fall on the floor. She pulls her panties back up as Johnny comes out of the bathroom. She doesn't want to look at him. "I've done everything in a bed this size but sleep. Someday I'm getting one of these.""All a bed has to be is big enough.""For what you've got in mind. But someday I'm going to have one of these and I'm never going to let anyone else in it.""Not even me?""Not even you."Jackie sits at the kitchen table, wolfs a sandwich and a glass of milk. "What do you hear from Sam the Redman?""He's back on smack and using my place until the rent is up." Johnny looks out the windows nervously. "Jesus Christ, let's get out of here." "We will, I’m still deciding which door." Johnny sees her hands, legs, her whole body is vibrating. "You're getting high on this, aren't you?"Gulping down the milk, Jackie takes the plate and glass and sticks them in the dishwasher. "You know what justifiable homicide is?" He doesn't."It's the Golden Rule of murder." She walks over and kisses him. "Whatever happens, I do love you, Johnny."A sports bar. The large screen TV plays a collection of the biggest knockout punches in history. Over and over, people are being beaten, heads snap, sweat flies in slow motion, bodies collapse in sad defeat. Johnny watches. Jackie flips through the papers taken from Rex's den. "Stella left Rex everything. Doesn't say anything in here about the sister, there must be another will somewhere." "He's got Stella's money...that's more than enough."Something raw and vulgar is included with her laugh. "Nobody does murder just to have enough." She pours half of Johnny's beer into her glass, does the beer and stands up. "I gotta go.""Where?"Her eyes burn with defiance. She doesn't answer him."You're going to fuck him, aren't you? Bullshit...I'm not letting you go back there." He sees hate in her eyes and it makes him afraid of her. "Sorry."She slaps him. "Sorry is what guys who come in your face say."He hates her and wants her at the same time. "So what do you want me to say?""Just tell me you're with me, you love me, you won't chicken out." The sun sinks behind the bronze mask of Mayor Moscone that freezes his story somewhere between the crowd's cheer and the scream of the bullet. Johnny's bladder is empty yet it hurts like he's dying to pee. He looks at the mask of Moscone. The sculpture tells him nothing about the man. Johnny feels his hair, looks down at his body. Jackie has again molded him into a duplicate of Rex. Jackie, out of breath, runs across the plaza, grabs Johnny and kisses him. "One hour ago he got on a plane for Seattle...an extradition hearing, he won't be back until tomorrow." She pulls Rex's wallet from her purse and flashes the badge.Johnny feels sick. "You're going to get us killed."Double doors and a giant chandelier. Johnny and Jackie enter and briskly cross the City Hall's imposing lobby. A flash of Rex's ID for the uniformed guard sitting next to a metal detector, Johnny nods at the visitors' log book and grunts an order to Jackie. "Sign in, room 934 is your destination."Lights snap on. Jackie withdraws her pick from the lock and closes the door behind them. "Make it look like you're him, put your jacket over the chair behind the desk. And turn on the small lamp." Johnny's feet move slowly but he does as he's told. Jackie uses the same pick to unlock the file cabinets. Johnny's eyes dance across the surface of the desk. "Want me to start here?""Forget it...too public to hide something like that." She points to the wall size bookcase and the library ladder. "Start on the books."Johnny slowly climbs to the top. "I still don't know what I'm looking for." Jackie pulls open the top drawer of the file cabinet. "You'll know when you find it." She explores the files...her hands dance over folder after folder. Johnny looks down at her. "This'll take all night, I've got a set to play at ten.""I phoned Gertie and told her you had to miss it." Jackie is fascinated by the files, the crime photos, police statements, mug shots, ballistics reports, autopsy photos, descriptions of stolen property and sketches of suspects. Johnny looks in and behind each and every book, mimicking the way he remembers Jackie went through Rex's home. Jackie finds the Holland file, photos of Stella lying on the living room floor and on the coroner's table, photos of the slugs taken from Stella's body. The coroner notes that a third bullet disintegrated, along with most of her brain. Near the back of the file is the list of the items stolen from the home. Jewels from Mrs. Holland's dressing room, a small TV, a CD player, silverware, a shotgun belonging to Rex. And behind the list, the statement from Madeline. Attached to her statement is her arrest record. Twice in the last year for possession of rock cocaine and heroin.Finished with the books, Johnny slowly climbs down the ladder, sits behind the desk, pulls open the desk drawers and pushes the contents around without interest. "I got zero. How about you?"I told you not to waste time on the desk." "I'm just being nosy." Johnny pulls a file out of the desk, sees Jackie's name on it, slowly opens it. Jackie gets to the letter "P"...to the People vs Poon, Tommy and Eddie. The two Korean teenagers Rex is prosecuting. She slowly ambles through their mug shots, pictures of the victim lying outside the gas station, pictures of the gun, pictures of the bullets...the ballistics tests. She goes back to the file on Stella's murder, pulls the ballistics tests showing the grooves made by the gun's barrel before the bullets entered Stella's body. She holds the ballistic photos side by side with the ones from the Poon file. It's a match. The bullets that killed the gas station owner and the bullets that killed Stella Holland came from the same gun. She pulls out both files. "The gun is here."The elevator is cold and noisy. Johnny holds the Poon and the Holland files under his arm. "Suppose we run into someone who knows him, knows him well?""It's after midnight. At this hour, I'll bet most people down here know who he is, but not what he looks like." He wiggles in his suit, adjusts his tie, runs his fingers through his hair. "Give me your mirror." She digs through her purse. Johnny sees the mirror, can't wait and grabs it. Johnny becomes calmer as he looks at his reflection. The elevator stops at the basement level, the door opens, a large sign announces they are entering a security area. They exit the elevator, turn right and walk down a faded and peeling lime green hall. Another sign announces they've reached the Jail. Booking and Holding are to the left, Evidence and Property to the right. A man starts screaming and yelling from somewhere. Jackie wipes Johnny's face with her sleeve. "Stop sweating."A stork-like man in a cop's uniform sits on a stool and watches an old movie on a mini TV. Jackie and Johnny step up to a window, the cop doesn't look at them, Johnny slides his ID through the window, glances at the Poon file, "I need to see item number...H 6471990...People versus Edward Poon."The cop glances at the ID and keeps his eye on the movie. A man spills his guts to a lady who will be his next victim. The cop slides a log book to Johnny. "You taking it with you?""Yeah."The cop slaps a receipt pad on the counter, checks the file number again, and begins walking toward a maze of shelves and counters. "Be sure to leave me the pink copy. I get all sorts of hell when you take the pink and leave me the green." Johnny smiles. "Thanks for reminding me." The cop disappears. Jackie grabs the log book, flip through the pages. "You don't say thanks to low life jerks like that.""When was she murdered?" "Four...and a half, no...five...five weeks ago, the seventeenth." She finds the seventeenth, her fingers scan backward to the sixteenth and fifteenth and..."Here...the bastard checked it out on the fifteenth." She scans forward now, the seventeenth, the twentieth. "And he didn't check it back in until the twentieth. We got him." She slams the book closed. Johnny hears the facts, and fear presses down on his chest. He realizes that Rex isn't an amateur, Rex is a man who has murder for breakfast. Jackie smiles. "He checked out a murder weapon from another crime, used it to kill his own wife, and then returned the weapon to the one place no one would look for it, the evidence lockers of the police department?" Jackie pushes the pink and green receipt pad to Johnny. "Go on...fill it in."The cop shuffles back from the maze of evidence, drops a plastic bag holding a big chrome .45 automatic on the table. Johnny picks it up, hefts it. He spins around, takes Jackie's arm and they start to leave.The cop snaps up the receipt pad, looks at it. "Hey?" Johnny stops, turns and slowly walks back to the window. The cop rips off the green copy and holds it out to Johnny. "Rules is rules." Johnny lies in Jackie's bed and examines the gun. "It feels like a murder weapon, like its tasted blood." Jackie lies next to him, reading the file on Stella's murder. Her eyes flick over to Johnny and pause to think about what she sees. "You put a gun in a woman's hand and she'll look at it like you've just given us the most useless thing in the world. But a man...you guys shake hands with a gun like you're greeting a brother." She slaps Johnny's ass with the ballistics report. "You ever kill anyone?""No, did you?"Her heart beats wildly as she looks at pictures of Stella's body. "I don't know. When I was a teenager I got in a fight with this girl. I hit her, real hard. She went down, bleeding. Blood was coming out from her nose and ears. It seemed so thick, like syrup. I ran. I never looked back, or asked, or found out what happened. I say we keep it realistic, don't ask for more than a couple of hundred thousand." "What happened to giving him to the cops?""Sure...after we get some money." Johnny gets up, goes to the window, looks out. On the street below, a man is walking under a lamppost. Jackie watches his back. "Well, why not?! What the fuck is he going to do with his money in jail...we might as well have it."Johnny points the gun and tracks the man through the glass. He cocks the gun, moves the gun across the room until it's pointing at himself in a mirror.Jackie gets nervous watching him. "Don't you see, we got him. All we do is shake the tree and pick up the apples. We take off and when we're a safe distance, we call the cops and send them the files and the gun. What are we waiting for?"Johnny swings the gun back to the window, to the nude reflection of Jackie in the glass pane, then to the man outside, then back to Jackie, then back to his own reflection. "Pow pow pow," he says.The morning sun burns down on Oakland. Johnny's VW cruises slowly along. He drives with one hand and holds his horn to his lips with the other. As he swings the car to stop outside Gertie's, reveille snaps out of the trumpet with military precision. Sam the Redman sticks his head out the window of Johnny's room. "Hey...knock off that shit." "Hey, yourself! What the hell are you doing here?"Gertie pokes her head from her window. "He covered your set, so he got your bed."A little black kid carrying schoolbooks stops on the sidewalk and eavesdrops. Johnny tries to pretend he doesn't see Gertie's anger. "Sam, what are you doing in San Francisco?"Gertie won't let Johnny do it. "Forget Sam, what are you doing in San Francisco, Johnny?"Johnny stands up on the seat of his car and bows deeply. He looks her in the eye. "Gertie, you've been a friend and I've pissed on you and I really am sorry."Gertie shrugs her shoulders to see how the apology fits. Johnny keeps one eye on her but turns the other back to Redman. "So who's staying at my place?""Nobody, your rent ran out. So I got a ticket, jumped on a plane, and here I am."Gertie looks at the little black kid.Ham and eggs and some Napa Valley red. Redman wolfs down his plate. Johnny takes a little more time and has the red wine with his. Gertie tunes in classical music on the radio and fills her own plate at the stove. The little black kid is eating too and follows the conversation.Johnny uses the wine to rinse the eggs from between his teeth. "But...in jazz I could see a whole life of music, I could see bad teeth and floppy tits and bald heads, I could see a...a future." Redman rolls his eyes back and smiles. "Sing it to me Johnny" the Redman says as he tries to snatch a piece of toast off Gertie's plate. She slaps his hand and attacks her food. "Let's get out of the flowers and into the shit. What kind of trouble does this girl have you in?""She's the one in trouble, not me."Gertie almost chokes on her coffee. "Johnny, I like women as much as the next guy, but there's an old saying, love your mother and fuck the rest."Johnny looks from the Redman, to Gertie, to the Redman. "Where do you two know each other from?""Gertie and I..."She'd rather say it herself. "That was a long time ago, before I...found myself."The black kid pulls one of the .45s from the shoulder holster hanging on Gertie's chair. Johnny grabs it from the kid, "Jesus!" Johnny examines it, then does the same with the second gun. Looking down the barrel, he laughs. "They're...plugged. You couldn't pee through them."Gertie takes them away and hangs them on the door. "Lotta you guys are the same way." She looks at the little black kid. "Don't you have to be in school?"Johnny and the Redman look at the kid too. The kid slides off his chair and waves goodbye as he leaves. Redman uses the moment, makes another grab at a piece of Gertie's toast. This time he succeeds, wipes his plate, pops the morsel in his mouth and sighs. "Gertie and I were married, for a little while." "We were both lousy lays.""I was into dope and Gertie here wasn't really into the sex stuff and..."After hours. The room is black except for the well light behind the bar and the exit sign over the bandstand. Johnny lies on top of the bar working on a bottle of gin. "And my dad used to say that if life gives you a choice, it's more fun to be the headache than the aspirin."Sam the Redman hunches over the piano, his hands float over the keys but he doesn't allow them to touch and make a sound. "Which Dad?""One of them." Johnny waves his bottle like a baton. Redman's fingers fall onto the piano's keys. Johnny's thin voice supplies the words in a meter and verse that become part of the music. "In the place where I grew up, we all drank from the same cup. At night the men would fight by the room's only light and I'd pretend the shadows on the walls were really dancers. An open window was my TV. And I made up each story, but I couldn't read or write so they came out songs. Then one day came a choice between the world and my own voice. And I faced the wall and joined the dancing shadows. It was just a one room joint but my life had found a point a point a point a point of no return." Johnny takes his horn and plays along. Redman abruptly stops. "That's coming along good.""Too old fashioned.""Not for me.""I don't have the ending.""Shit, I was in this great detox joint once and I couldn't tell if each moment I was screaming was the end or the beginning." Johnny sits up and takes another slug of gin. "I know she and I won't last, I know we're just...shooing flies off each other, but if I help her get some money out of this guy, then we'll turn him in. And I'll be out of here. Or something like that.""And what do you do with her?"Johnny doesn't answer, but tosses the bottle of gin.Redman makes a one handed catch, holds the bottle to his lips, drinks, and exhales a gin-reeking sigh. "Long as you're sure everyone has the same sheet music." 3The two Korean teenagers listen disinterestedly as Rex parades before the jury. "Eddie and Tommy Poon weren't joy riding that evening, and had not been drinking. Tom did not have the flu, as he told his boss when he called in sick. Eddie did not find the gun that evening in a trash can..." Rex glances at the gallery and stumbles ever so slightly in his closing remarks. In the back of the gallery sits Johnny, wearing his Rex-look-a-like hairstyle and suit. Johnny smiles at Rex. Rex's voice loses its edge of confidence as he continues. "Eddie did not find the gun...he bought it a week before, from his cousin Charles Tsai. Even the type of ammunition Eddie and Tommy bought two days before the shooting was designed for one purpose, to make sure that whoever they shot wouldn't survive. This is murder in the first degree, nothing less. Underground. Rex bursts out of an elevator and zigzags through the gray cement beams of the parking garage. His eyes bulge with disbelief. A jagged mouth of glass teeth is all that's left of his car's windshield. Rex throws his briefcase into the mouth, his rage builds as he circles the car. He hits it with his fist.Johnny drives up in his VW, stops next to Rex, points his finger and thumb as if a gun, mouths the word "bang" and then races away.A half-assed softball game among great rolling clouds of fog. A party. Friends. Just enough players to give someone an excuse to try and hit the ball. Gertie is at bat, Buddha Boy is pitching, Redman is catcher and keeps goosing Gertie for a laugh. Johnny is first base, Jackie is right field, Karen is center field. Cash and Carry Watson, Skinny Rosen and Mel Shanker fill in on whichever side needs someone. Bottles of beer keep all the players company.The quartet of Latino teenagers that hassled Cash and Carry about his BMW once again cruise past Gertie's in their dirty Chevy. Johnny, alone, vaults the back fence of Rex's and retraces the steps and technique he learned from Jackie. Behind some bushes, he disconnects the alarm's master switch, then takes out a credit card and slips it into the patio door.The dirty Chevy circles the block and makes another pass at Gertie's. Mel Shanker and Skinny Rosen, carrying their baseball gear, come out the front door, get in their cars and drive away.A video camcorder stands on a tripod and faces Rex's bed. Johnny loiters in the center of the room...then peers through the camera's small black-and-white viewing screen. He sees two pieces of rope dangling from the headboard. He sees there's a cassette in the camera. He rewinds the cassette and pushes the playback button. On the camera's tiny viewing screen, Johnny watches a video of Rex and Madeline. First Rex helps the teenager shoot up, then he ties the girl to the headboard and puts his cock in her mouth. She pretends she doesn't like it, and then it's obvious that she does. Johnny takes the cassette out of the camcorder and puts it in his pocket. Johnny pushes open the door to Rex's den and calmly steps inside.Dusk. The Mexicans in the Chevy pull to a stop at the curb. Three of them jump out, shotguns appear from under their coats as they run in Gertie's front door. A volley of muffled explosions come from inside the club. A few seconds later, the three Mexicans run back outside, all laughing. "You crazy, boy. Loco!""You hear her fart when I stick this in her mouth?" "Never seen a head pop open like that."They jump in their car and race away. In their wake someone is screaming in fear and horror. The screaming inside Gertie's goes on a long time. And the street outside gets more and more quiet. Finally the little black kid and a friend come down the block and have the guts to walk up to Gertie's front door and peek inside. They immediately turn and run back the way they came. The sun slips below the horizon.Chinatown. Johnny and Jackie zig and zag through the early evening tourists. Johnny reads a fortune cookie. "Love is like revenge...because it pays to wait." Jackie smiles but looks tired. "So, tell me where you went after the game...you said you had to play the first set tonight."Johnny glances at his watch. "Still got time. You know what Stella's maiden name was?" "Caper, Carter...""Casper. Her parents died seven years ago." "So?""So Rex Holland worked for the law firm that is executor to her family's estate. That's where he met Stella." "How...Johnny...how do you know all this?" "Remember you said there had to be another will?"She can only nod."Well, I went back and found it. It's her parents' will. Very simple...""Shit, you could have been caught.""I had a good teacher." He tries to kiss her but she pulls away. "Okay okay, it was a risk. Anyway, Stella got half and Madeline got half. Speaking of half, Madeline is adopted, she's not a real sister, not a blood sister. And Madeline's half is under the control of an executor until she turns twenty one." Jackie is puzzled. "And Stella's half went to Rex?""Stella's half was gone before she died. She and Rex spent it." Jackie feels sick. "What about insurance?""Zip. Stella didn't have any.""So why did Rex kill her?"Johnny enjoys having the answers for a change. "He's next in line for Madeline's half." "But you said she doesn't get it until she's twenty-one.""If she lives that long. And if she doesn't, it goes to Rex." Johnny gives her a peck on the cheek. "Gotta go, call me later."Flashing lights. One ambulance, several police cars and a couple of coroner’s wagons. Curious neighbors lean over the yellow police ribbon that blocks the entrance to Gertie's Famous Bar. Johnny's VW coasts into the chaos. His stomach aches with fear. The VW bumps to a stop against the curb. Johnny stumbles toward the front door. Two cops grab Johnny before he gets inside. The cop with the dirty uniform loves his power. "Sorry Pal, you can't go in there."Johnny isn't listening, struggles to pull his arms from their grasp and he yells at the front door. “Sam?!" He acknowledges the cops, "It's okay, I live here. Sam! Gertie?!"The guy in the clean uniform is younger and nicer. "You live here? What's your name?""Johnny, Johnny Saturday. I play with the band. What's wrong, is...is...?"They corner Johnny. He keeps looking at the door. The dirty uniform smells a good roust. "There's been a shooting. Now Johnny...your name is Johnny?"Johnny nods."Johnny...we need you to identify..."Johnny doesn't want to talk, he makes a break, pushes past them and runs through the front door and into the club. The two cops are right behind him. The lights inside are up full, three blood-soaked sheets lie in craters of topsy-turvy tables, several cops are watching a photographer document something behind the bar. A lanky crewcut with sergeant stripes spots Johnny and yells at the two cops. "Goddammit, this is a crime scene, who let him in here?"Johnny stumbles to a halt by a sheet. The clean uniform grabs Johnny's arm. "He...said he works here. He might be able to ID the bodies."Johnny has become white. His knees are weak, the clean uniform slides a chair under him and Johnny sits at the foot of the bloody sheet. "Says his name's Johnny."The Sergeant grabs a diet soda and ambles from behind the bar. "Johnny what?"Johnny finds his own voice. "Saturday." The sergeant smiles. "And the Saturday Nights. I read something on you in one of those entertainment guides." The Sergeant unceremoniously throws back the sheet, Buddha Boy has been cut in half by shotgun blasts. Johnny sucks wind for several moments. "Kelly, Brian Kelly...we all called him Buddha Boy." The Sergeant throws the sheet back over the body, steps to another nearby sheet and pulls it back. Johnny doesn't look at the body. "Where's Sam and Gertie?"The Sergeant clears his throat. Johnny looks just long enough. "Watson, Cash and Carry Watson...first name is Ellis or something like that."The Sergeant grabs Johnny's jacket and begins hauling him toward the bar. Johnny pulls free, angry. The other cops grab Johnny and slam him down on a table. Johnny mellows with sad inevitability. "Okay okay, just tell me where's Sam?"The sergeant crooks his finger. "I ask the questions, Johnny. Now lean over the bar and tell me who this used to be."Johnny cautiously moves to the bar. He doesn't want to look. He puts his hand out to keep his balance.The sergeant smiles. "Watch out! That stuff near your hand used to be her head."Johnny recoils, turns away. "I can't."The sergeant checks his notes, "Young, about twenty-three, black...nice figure...""Karen Palms. She lived with Gertie, worked behind the bar." He forces himself to ask again. "Where's Gertie? And the big guy...where's Sam the Redman?"Pots and pans and a large pool of blood. Johnny stops beside it. Lying in the red sea are Sam's Lolita heart-shaped glasses. The lens have been shattered by the shotgun blasts. Sadness collapses from Johnny's lungs. "Oh shit oh Sam oh damn sweet Jesus."The sergeant knows it's time to be the good Nazi. "Okay Johnny, can you help us get an angle on this? Someone said they saw some Chicano types driving around earlier.""Maybe three," says Johnny, "Maybe four. I don't remember, they were giving Watson a hard time with his car.""Why?"Johnny shrugs. "It was nice and theirs was shit."The sergeant sits up front, Johnny sits in the back seat. Outside the car, Johnny sees ghosts standing on street corners. Sam the Redman, Cellulite, Stella Holland, Buddha Boy, Karen, Cash and Carry Watson. But when he looks again, it's always someone else. The sergeant looks back at Johnny, "This Sam the Red...""His real name is, was, Bell, Sam Bell.""He had tracks on his arms.""Sam was a junkie, but the old-fashioned type.""What's that?""He always paid his bills and he would never rip someone off."The sergeant taps Johnny's knee. "What about you?""What about me?"Gertie lives. She lies in a hospital bed, one leg in a cast and hanging in the air, a large bandage wrapped around her head. Johnny is out of tears as he walks in the door. Gertie can't stop hers. She reaches out for Johnny to hug her. "They're all dead, Johnny, I was afraid, I heard the noise and and Sam pushed me in the food locker. I could hear him begging for them not to shoot and those bastards kept shooting and I could hear someone else screaming hurting real bad. The bastards didn't even want the money. And they killed her. Why Johnny, why kill Karen? She never hurt anyone, so why?"Johnny holds Gertie tighter as she lets it all drain into his chest. After several seconds she calms down. He sees a big piece of mucus hangs from her nose. "You're leaking. How did you break your leg?"She blows her nose on his shirttail, suddenly starts shaking again. "I was fine, I was all right, but then I sort of went crazy and jumped out of the police car while it was still moving."A sea gull screams at the sun. The Tiberon Ferry chops its way across the Bay. On the upper deck, Jackie shows Rex a copy of the ballistic reports. He's angry, grabs them from her and throws them into the wind. She takes a .45 automatic bullet from her purse and hands it to Rex. His expression turns quizzical. At the same moment Johnny slams the barrel of the .45 into Rex's ribs and drives the air from his lungs. Rex gasps, his knees bend, he grabs the boat's railing and hangs on. Johnny presses his face to Rex's. For the first time they are close together. Both are fascinated, so much alike and so completely different. Again Johnny slams the gun into Rex's ribs. "From this moment on, each time you breath in and out, every second you see sunlight, is a miracle."Rex spits out his words. "If you were that sure of yourself I'd already be dead."Jackie is near tears. She begins kicking Rex's shins as she belches her greed in Johnny's ear, her voice is edged with fear and desperation. "Johnny, tell him about the goddamn money tell him we want two hundred thousand."Johnny jams Rex in the ribs again. "I don't give a shit about the money."Rex is talking for his life. "Be smart and take what you can get."Johnny almost shoves the gun in Rex's mouth. Jackie grabs him, trembling. "Goddammit Johnny you're blowing it. You're blowing it." "You saying you trust him?""I don't trust him. But he didn't kill Sam and Gertie. The cops told you. It was the Mexicans.""I don't give a shit what the cops said.""Listen to her Johnny, if you're smart you can have the money. You can have enough money so the two of you can live almost happily every after. Tell him, Jackie, tell him he can have it all."The big .45 automatic is broken down into bits and pieces and lies next to Johnny's trumpet. The bodies are gone from Gertie's. The living and the dead. Johnny sits alone on the bandstand, cleaning, reassembling, and loading the gun. Jackie stares at her red lips in the bathroom mirror, decides to change them and starts rubbing away the color. An open suitcase sits on the toilet, clothes hanging out of it.Johnny's VW rasps in third gear as it heads up the coast. Jackie, petulant, slumps down in the passenger seat. "What's the rush, he said it would take him a couple of days to get the money?"Johnny's mood is equally pissed. "The man lies when he shits. You know why he wants to do the switch way up in Oregon? It's out of town, it's where there's a big crowd and his face will be lost in it." The epicenter. The tired wooden fence wanders down into a ravine and comes to an abrupt end. Johnny finishes burying a brown paper bag. He gets to his feet, kicks the dirt over the spot.Jackie stands on her side of the fault line, "You shouldn't have buried the gun, he won't give us the money until he gets the gun.""I'll give him a gun. One of Gertie's guns, they're almost exactly alike.""What if almost isn't good enough?"Headlights bounce off thick fog. Jackie drives with white knuckles through the black night. "Goddammit, I can barely see the road, I don't like driving in this."Johnny abandons sleep in the seat next to her. "I just want to make sure no one is following us." They pass a sign. "Slow down, there'll be a bed-and-breakfast here on the left." "Shit, I've been passing bed-and-breakfast joints all night." The VW's headlights sweep across the gingerbread facade of the Old Milano Hotel. Johnny doesn't tell her he came here on his honeymoon. Johnny doesn't tell her about his wife and how history repeats itself, how on his honeymoon Johnny knew he was already out of love with his wife. Johnny doesn't tell Jackie any more than he told his wife. Johnny is out of the car first, grabs two small bags from the trunk. "The manager said the key would be under the mat."Jackie moves slower, sighs and stretches. A pay phone stands nearby under a naked light bulb. "Go ahead up, I want to call my mom in L.A.""At this hour?" She checks her watch. "When did twelve-thirty become late to you? My mom watches TV all night, it's her big thing in life."Johnny watches Jackie walk to the pay phone. He slowly heads for the front door, turns and looks back at her. She gives him equal scrutiny. Not until Johnny goes inside and shuts the door does she use a credit card number to make her call.Johnny lies on the bed and watches an old western on TV but with the sound off. He wonders if this is the room where he brought his wife. It doesn't look like it but he can't be sure. He wonders where and what his first wife is and doing. He wonders if she ever saw him driving by her place after they split up. He wonders if she did all of the horrible things he was afraid she'd do. He wonders if she knew he was worried about her, worried that if he hurt her she would break. He wonders if feeling guilty about hurting her buys him any forgiveness. He feels an achy tightness in his throat and he exorcises it by saying "shit" out loud.Jackie enters and immediately steps into the small bathroom and plays with her face in the mirror."What did your Mom say?""She had this guy over, asked me to call her tomorrow.""What's the happiest day you remember?" "What kind of question is that?""It's just a question, what's the happiest day that you remember?""In my whole life or what?""In your whole life."Her eyes look into the mirror, into her own eyes. A combination of moments spin by like a slot machine. "When I was twelve years old I let a kid named Albert take me up to his room. Later that day I did the same thing with Albert's father." She looks in the mirror at Johnny. "It's a day I was happy, it's a day I remember. What about you?" "When this is over, maybe I'll go to Europe.""What's in Europe?""Nothing, that's why I want to go there.""I don't know where I want to go." "You ever been to The Trees of Mystery?" She again looks at him in the bathroom mirror, can't find the energy to say no, just shakes her head. "It's a place where something very unique happened but nobody knows what." "So how do they know it was unique?""Because of what was left behind." "What was left behind?""The Trees of Mystery.""Shit, is this one of those you know...you remind me of a man, what man, a man with a power...""What power?""The power of voodoo.""Who do? You do. What? Remind me of a man?""Yeah.""No, this isn't like that, it's not a joke.""So why are we going to see the Trees of Mystery?""Got friends who live up there. Anyway, it's on the way.""And it's unique but nobody knows why?""They know why it's unique but they don't know what made it that way."Small signs and large ones leap out at the northbound traffic and proclaim "Beware, you are approaching The Trees of Mystery" and "Can you explain nature's greatest puzzle, The Trees of Mystery?" and "You won't believe it until you see it! The Trees of Mystery?"Paul Bunyan and his blue ox Babe. Carved in wood and sixty feet high. They tower above a parking lot of cars and campers and motor homes. Loudspeakers welcome the stream of tourists moving toward the ticket windows. "No one knows what happened those thousands of years ago. Was it a meteor hitting the earth? That's just one of the possibilities…or maybe it is part of a lost biblical prophecy?" Johnny and Jackie get to the ticket window, Johnny buys two, leans down to get a better look at the black lady behind the glass. "Is Brad Keefer working today?""Station Six at the top of the trail."Johnny and Jackie and the tourists follow a trail through a plastic dream. Trees zig and zag, left and right, in perfect ninety degree turns. The voice on the loudspeaker asks and answers its own questions. "Was it radiation? Maybe…but that would have taken a very high concentration of radiation that would still be in evidence today. And there is none."Some trees have perfect miniature trees growing up out of the branches. Other trees split, then comes back together like a surreal cartoon. Jackie tries to take Johnny's hand. "Looks like mother nature had a nervous breakdown!"Several older tourists smile at her. The voice on the loudspeaker seems less and less human. "Another theory is that a UFO may have landed in the area and somehow caused the mutations. But that creates many more questions than it answers. We can also rule out toxic waste because these trees were here long before man was." Johnny and Jackie break off from the tourists and follow a sign directing them to Station Six. Jackie wants Johnny's attention. "Who is Brad Keefer?The ocean and sky are blood red when seen from inside an enormous log house built high on a mountain. The living room is two stories, with a large open kitchen next to it. Brad Keefer's long hair and beard seem too wild for his neatly pressed Park Ranger uniform. Polly is pioneer cum earth mother, lots of sack-like denim, little or no makeup. She unloads a giant meal from the stove. Jackie rolls on the floor and gurgles with delight as three dachshund puppies’ crawl and wiggle all over her. Brad studies Jackie's breasts as he sets the table. "If you like dogs, I'll save you one. Three more weeks and they'll be weaned."Jackie suddenly stops playing, gets off the floor and looks out the window. "No, no I can't have animals."Polly brings the food to the table. "Your landlord?""No. I'm just not good with taking care of stuff. Animals. Living things. I had a cat and it died once."The moon hangs in the sky, the soft bluish light falls on the large redwood hot tub and the four people in it. Jackie wears a bathing suit, the others wear nothing, Johnny takes a hit on the joint and passes it to Polly. "The place is amazing, I can't believe it's finished."Polly laughs the smoke from her lungs. "Neither can Brad. Every time I came home I expected to find him minus an arm or leg and bleeding to death." She takes another hit, offers it to Jackie who waves it on to Brad. Brad inhales deeply, holds up his hand. "Six years... only lost half a finger." Jackie comes to life. "Can I?"Brad holds it closer to her. Jackie wants more. "Can I touch it?" Brad nods. She reaches for the truncated finger. He suddenly wiggles it. She jumps back. He laughs. Her body trembles with release as she laughs too.Brad passes the joint and the conversation back to Johnny. "So...?""Sam the Redman died last Sunday." The silence tells Jackie that Polly and Brad knew Sam. Neither asks how or why the Redman died. Brad makes a final offer to all with the joint. No one wants any so he dips the tip in the water and puts it on the sideboard. "Met a guy in his seventies the other day. He scared the shit out of me. He told me that he was seeing life so clearly that it left him speechless. He said that even if he could put it in words, he was sure I wouldn't believe him."Jackie feels a hand on her leg under the water but she isn't sure who it belongs to. "That sounds crazy."Johnny sighs. "Good smoke." Polly laughs. "They found a farm last week and the plants were so heavy with resin that Brad's shirt was as sticky as syrup. When he got home, we put it in a pot of hot water and made tea."Jackie feels the hand leave her leg. She's frightened. Silent. Allison, a pretty thirteen year old girl, steps out of the shadows. "I'm home."Brad waves her over to the tub. "Did you have fun?""Yeah, Mary says she wants one of the puppies.""Did you see who's here?" asks Polly.Allison takes a long time to speak. "Hi, Johnny."He takes equally as long to answer. "Hi, Allison. How are you?"Allison moves closer to him. "Good. You?"Johnny smiles and shrugs. Allison suddenly reaches over and kisses him on the forehead. Johnny takes her hand and squeezes it. After a beat, Johnny lets go. Allison steps back toward the shadows. "Goodnight everyone." No one feels they have to answer. Allison looks at Johnny. "Goodnight Dad." Johnny blows her a kiss. "Goodnight sweetheart."Allison takes one more step back and the darkness envelopes her. Jackie suddenly shivers. "Can you beat that, getting cold in a hot tub?" Sunshine. Signs announce that whoever reads them has passed The Trees of Mystery and should consider turning around and going back. Johnny drives straight north. Jackie curls up in the back seat as if trying to sleep but really watching the back of Johnny's head. "I couldn't live up here." Johnny doesn't answer. "Your daughter..." There's still no reaction from the back of his head. "She likes you. A lot."His silence continues. She tosses a small gift-wrapped package onto the seat next to him. "This one's real."He opens it as he drives. It's another gold Rolex. "The other one wasn't real?""Bought it off some guy in a bank parking lot." He puts it back in the box. She tells him to put it on. He doesn't answer her. Her heart sinks. "You're going to take the money and dump me, aren't you?" "I don't want the money.""You're going to dump me though, aren't you?""I'm not going to 'dump' you.""Call it whatever you like.""Do you care?" She doesn't want to look at him, doesn't want him to see that she has to breathe through her mouth she hurts so bad. Johnny remembers his wife. "So, let's just say we're dumping each other." 4Jugglers and kings and lovers and witches and poets and fools and comedy and tragedy and a high school marching band are all high stepping down the main street as a sidewalk audience applauds the festivities.Johnny and Jackie zigzag through the people and banners and bunting that proclaim the perpetual Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Johnny carries a large brown envelope under his arm.A soothsayer accosts Jackie. "Beware of the ides of March." Johnny gives Jackie's arm a tug and the Soothsayer is left in their wake.Jackie looks backward. "What did he say about the eyes of March?" "Ides, not eyes.""What's an ide...""The ides of March is the 15th of March...that's how they, how Shakespeare, how people spoke back then." "Okay smart ass, how did they say the 14th of March?"Johnny's answer is to increase his pace."I'll bet I've seen more Shakespeare movies than you." "They're plays, not movies."Jackie feels her victory. "And movies. Nothing's wrong with movies. In fact I've seen three of the Romeo and Juliet movies. And I saw Mel Gibson's Hamlet."Johnny spots Billy Bard's Bar and Grill and drags Jackie to the front door. "Yeah? What part did Mel Gibson play?"Jackie slugs him so hard he falls back against the door. Tears spill from her eyes and pain from her heart. She wants to hit him again, but her fists aren't sure where to strike. "I didn't even want to fuck you, I only did it because he was paying me to."She turns to walk away but can't because Rex is standing there. "How predictable. I'm dying for a drink, what are you two dying for?" Rex is excited. Johnny is afraid. Billy Bard wears a beef eaters costume and watches a shopping channel on his big screen TV. Billy doesn't take his eyes from the TV as Rex, Johnny and Jackie enter. "Kitchen's closed."The only other customer is a long-of-tooth Juliet who leans on her empty glass and mumbles softly to herself. Rex prods Johnny and Jackie toward a booth in the back."Three anything," Johnny suggests to Billy the bartender."Scotch, doubles, straight up," corrects Rex. He slides into one side of a booth, Johnny and Jackie take the other. Johnny glances at Rex's gold Rolex. "Nice..."Rex smirks, "You used to have one didn't you?"Jackie gets her own revenge, pulls back the sleeve of Johnny's shirt. "Still does. The real one."Rex's smile gets thin. He takes off his watch, examines it and realizes that he now has the fake. "You're good, Jackie, in fact, you're the best." No one speaks, they just look at each other until Billy delivers the drinks and returns to his TV. Johnny kills his drink in one swallow. "Where's the money?""Where are the files and the gun?" Johnny hands Rex the envelope. "The files now, the gun when we see the money." Rex peeks in the envelope and is satisfied. "Love has no bargains, let us seal this courtship with an hour and a promise. And do pray our enterprise less bloody than our hearts.""I don't know the play.""Ours." Rex tastes his drink. Jackie starts to get up, Rex grabs her wrist."I gotta pee." Rex lets go of her arm, she leaves. Johnny looks around. "Why all the way up here?Rex takes a small envelope from his jacket pocket and waves it under Johnny's nose. "Season tickets. Never miss it. Why don't we meet in the street outside the Stratford Motel at 9:15. You leave your goods in the trunk of your car, I leave mine in my room. We meet halfway and exchange keys." "How do I know the money will be in your room?"Rex snaps his fingers. "We'll wait in the street while Jackie goes up and checks." "And the kid, what about Madeline?""What a coincidence, she's here with me. Do you want to trade that too?" "Jackie hates your guts."Rex stands up and finishes his drink. "That's what makes her such a good fuck." He walks out. The room is filled with cheap plastic colors and worn-out furniture. Johnny throws their two bags on the bed, then he ducks into the bathroom and splashes water on his face. Jackie stops in the doorway. "The one across the street had a pool.""This one has adult videos." He doesn't see the love in her heart."Didn't think you were still interested." The bed at dusk. Jackie lies on it naked. Johnny, also naked, draws the curtains and plunges the room into cool darkness. Jackie holds up her arms and Johnny sinks into them. This time they just embrace and kiss. Instead of frantic heat, it is strangely tender. The softness is new and exciting to Jackie, she closes her eyes with pleasure and doesn't realize what's happening until Johnny closes one handcuff on her wrist and the other to the headboard.Her eyes snap open. Johnny is already off the bed. He makes sure she can't reach her clothes.Hate gurgles in her throat. "You fucking prick...what the hell is this?""Gertie liked dressing up as a motorcycle cop. She loaned them to me."Jackie tries to hit and kick him, but he's out of range. He pulls the .45 automatic out of his bag. "You're going to need more than one of Gertie's phony guns, you bastard. I called him and told him where you buried the real gun."Johnny sighs, looks at the gun. "This is the real gun. The one I buried was Gertie's."She grabs an ashtray and throws it at him. "It's horrible to be beaten at your own game, isn't it?" sighs Johnny. Johnny quickly dresses, disconnects the phone, puts the cord in his pocket. She wants to kick him but she knows it's no use."I'm sorry, Jackie.""Why? You didn't come in my face." "I'm sorry it wasn't real.""When did you figure it out?""In my heart? Down in Mexico. In my head, I probably never will." "Sometimes it was real, Johnny. Sometimes it was so real I got scared.""Love's gotta be more than sometimes." Johnny pulls the clip from the gun, snaps out the bullets, and throws it all on the bed by her feet. "If you're smart, you'll load it. And if you're lucky it'll be me who comes back, and you won't need to use it." He takes a video from his bag, slips it into the room's cassette deck and hits the play button. Jackie turns and looks at the TV. The porno video Rex made of himself with Madeline starts playing. Johnny blows a kiss as he slips out the door. "Enjoy the movie."A Hamlet kind of dusk. The street is full of people walking toward the center of town. Several versions of the Dane rush back and forth on the sidewalk, assaulting pedestrians with their common plight. A bizarre Hamlet in ragged Victorian clothes and Kabuki makeup juggles balls during his turn at the words. "To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles..." Without dropping a ball, the Kabuki Hamlet interrupts himself and opens his purse to accept the offerings of his nomadic audience.Another Hamlet is really two...their man/woman costume joins them at the back like Siamese twins...their voices are as one. "And by opposing...end them. To die: To sleep; no more; and by a sleep to say we end the heartache, and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to, tis a consummation devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep; to sleep: perchance to dream: Aye, there's the rub; for in that sleep of death what dreams may come, when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us pause..."Rex watches from the window of his second floor room as the street lights come on. Shadows disappear, colors become bright. A cowboy version of the Dane sees Rex watching. Addressing his performance to the second floor window, Hamlet's words are thick with drawl, and punctuated with gunshots from a six-shooter. "There's the respect that makes calamity of so long life: For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, the oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, the pangs of disguised love, the law's delay, the insolence of office, and the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes, when he himself might his quietus make with a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear, to grunt and sweat under a weary life, but that the dread of something after death, the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns, puzzles the will, and makes us rather bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of?" Rex sees Johnny park at the curb. Rex usurps the actor and shouts the soliloquy down at Johnny. "Thus conscience does make cowards of us all, and thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, and enterprises of great pitch and moment with this regard their currents turn awry and lose the name of action. Soft you now! The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons be all my sins remembered."Madeline lies on Rex’s motel room bed. A needle sticking from her left arm, her eyes stare blankly at the smoke detector on the ceiling. A fly comes walking out of her open mouth with no fear of her shutting it. Rex turns away from the window and leaves the room without looking at the young girl's corpse.The street, the crowds, the intersection. A stubby cop straddles his motorcycle and waves for the flow of people to keep moving. Johnny meets Rex in the middle of the street. Rex glances around. "Where's Jackie?" "I figured that the two of you were going to double-cross me..."Rex puts his hand in his pocket. "We did." Johnny looks at Rex's hand. Rex nods. "She phoned me and told me where you buried it, that you were going to give me a fake one or something like that."Johnny shrugs. "Here?""Down the alley and behind the theatre would be my choice. Nothing fancy, just boom-boom, bye-bye." They begin slowly walking. Rex glances around. "I hate to repeat myself but where's...?""Handcuffed to the bed." "That won't hold her.""Where's Madeline?""Never-never-land. With her record, no one will be surprised." "How will you explain the missing files?""In government, missing files are the rule not the exception."As they pass the festival's main theatre, they hear the audience inside applaud. Rex is beginning to feel loose. "So, what was your plan?""Play my horn and pay my rent." "I mean how were you going to get revenge or justice or whatever it is you want?""I'm just along for the ride. Jamming. You know, bebop. I play what I know or what someone puts in front of me." "That's a dumb way to live.""And you're smart?""You didn't bring my watch by any chance?""Have you got mine?"As Johnny and Rex reach the mouth of the alley, Rex tosses Johnny the fake Rolex, Johnny tosses Rex the real one. Three Witches step out of the shadows and surround the two men. "Round about the cauldron go: In the poison'd entrails throw. Toad, that under cold stone days and nights has thirty one swelter'd venom sleeping got, boil though first i' the charmed pot."Together they chant, "Double, double toil and trouble; fire burn and cauldron bubble."Rex pulls a handful of twenties and throws them into the night air. Wind catches them and the witches abandon their performance to scatter and chase the leaves of good fortune.Rex pulls out the big .45 and gestures for Johnny to step into the alley. As they walk, Rex puts on his watch, sighs, admires it. "Once I saw you were going to be a problem, I needed to get rid of this gun, needed to get it out of police custody in a way that couldn't be traced to me. So I arranged to be out of town on a case, and Jackie got you to...etc. etc." Johnny smiles. "A girl does what a girl's gotta do. I guess she was just covering her bets." Rex cocks the gun, "And I guess I'm about to cover mine."The audience fills the balconies and the yard in front of the recreated Elizabethan theatre where Shakespeare's works appeared. The play is "Julius Caesar," the place is Rome - before the Capitol. The Senate is sitting above.Caesar: "Are we all ready: What is now amiss that Caesar and his senate must redress?"Johnny and Rex stop by the giant doors where scenery is brought into the back of the theatre. Johnny puts on his watch. "I like this fake better."Rex points the .45 in Johnny's face. "And this is the moment of truth. Tick-tock, time is up.""That's the drummer's job."Jackie chokes on her anger as she steps out of the shadows. "You bastard. It was her money and her pussy."Rex spins around, sees Jackie coming at him. The .45 sways in her hands. Jackie keeps spitting her sadness. "It was never for me, was it? I was just the toilet paper you both wiped yourselves on." She twitches, her gun erupts, the bullet sings as it ricochets down the alley. Johnny tries to move but hate has turned the night air into thick mud. Rex levels his gun at Jackie, pulls the trigger. The plugged-up barrel explodes in Rex’s face, fragments of metal tear into his eyes. He screams with pain. In blind panic he stumbles up the loading dock and through the doors leading to the stage.Caesar is surrounded by assassins, the knives begin their parts.Casca: "Speak hand, for me!"Casca first, then the other conspirators, each plunges a knife into Caesar's robes. The stage turns red with blood. Marcus Brutus is the last to use his knife.Caesar: "Et tu, Brute? Then fall Caesar!"But Caesar does not fall, he and his murderers are paralyzed when they see Rex. Blinded by the shrapnel in his eyes, real blood gushing from his wounds, Rex stumbles onto the stage and swings his arms like a drowning swimmer."Goddammit! You fucking cunt!"The audience rises in pure silence. Jackie quickly makes her own entrance, levels the .45 and puts two bullets into Rex's chest. A lot of his insides come outside. Rex is dead before most of him knows it.Johnny follows Jackie's fury onto the stage. From one of the balconies, a confused patron starts to applaud, then reconsiders. Jackie turns and sees Johnny. She drops the gun, holds up her wrist with half the handcuffs still there, the other half shot away. "Jesus are you dumb. I'll bet you couldn't even steal a...a song." Johnny offers Jackie his hand. Jackie shrinks back, starts crying. "Get out of here, walk away, this doesn't involve you." A uniformed guard appears out of the crowd, leans down and checks Rex for a pulse. Actors and audience slowly move forward and surround the bloody improvisation. Sirens sing in the distance.Johnny puts his arms around her, she gives up. "How does life end up like this, Johnny? How? Can you tell me?"The answer plays silently inside Johnny's head. Sam the Redman would have told her that a life ends up the way a life ends up. Rex believed in plans, Jackie believed in promises, and Sam believed in music...in bebop. All Johnny can believe in is putting one foot in front of the other. And maybe, down the road, that will lead to believing in himself.Upside down Gertie's. Empty. Even the tables and chairs are gone. The only light is the noon sun blasting through the open front door. Johnny sits in the center of the room, using his trumpet case for a stool as he plays. Gertie uses crutches to support herself while she sings a song about a lying woman...but the singer doesn't care and tells her not to explain, just to hush now be quiet and let the lies and the other men all get blown away by the wind. And when the song is over, the little black kid applauds from the shadows. Johnny takes the fake Rolex off his wrist and tosses it to the boy.The ocean and the sky are the blues. The VW eases its way south along the coast highway. Gertie sits in the back seat, the cast on her broken leg sticking out into the wind like a giant white cannon. Johnny drives. He looks at his naked wrist where the Rolex used to be, and he shouts back at Gertie. "Someone should make a watch that just measures time in months. That's all I need to know. Anything else is the drummer's job." She doesn't answer. Johnny checks on her in the rear view mirror. She looks afraid. "Gertie, honest, you're going to like Los Angeles. Don't fight it? Sooner or later everybody goes there. And sooner or later, they learn to like it."Gertie takes the bait. "Why should I?""Because the girls are all beautiful and the guys all have little dicks."She considers what Johnny's said. Tears fill her eyes, she bites down on her sadness and looks up at the sky. "You're a man after my own heart, Johnny something-else."The car heads south, toward the sun and Los Angeles. Five miles later they stop to eat. While Gertie pays the check, Johnny calls his daughter, just to say hello. The End ................
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