Wetbones

by John Shirley

  Wetbones

  John Shirley

  Wetbones

  John Shirley

  1

  Los Angeles, California

  They slid her body out in a long aluminium drawer on small, well-oiled rollers in a room that was sterile and cold, so cold he could see his breath: a little cloud steaming out over her, dissipating, pluming again, vanishing.

  She was under a plastic wrapper, like something in a supermarket meat department. The morgue orderly peeled the plastic wrapper back so Prentice could see her face; her torso down to the sternum. Blue gray. Wasted. That's the word the doctor had used. The wasting of her.

  She looks like a fucking mummy, Prentice thought.

  Less than a day dead and she looked like a mummy, gray skin clinging to her skull, sharply outlining her jawbone, her collarbone, her ribs. Her eyes – it was as if someone had plucked out her eyes and replaced them with peeled grapes. Lips skinned back, flat and blue, as if painted on, exposing her teeth in a grimace. Gums so receded you could see the roots of her teeth. Long, thick white scars braided her right arm, rope-like sear tissue that pinched the sections of flesh together, and a jagged reddish-white scar bisected her right breast, just missing the shrivelled blue nipple.

  Self mutilation, the doctor had said. The body was barely recognisable as Amy, but there was the grinning-bat tattoo above her left breast, a breast flattened, now, to an old woman's droopy pouch.

  Faintly, he could smell her. Acid splashed up into his esophagus. "Okay," he rasped, and the orderly slammed the drawer shut with a clang.

  Prentice wanted to belt the guy for not showing more respect; but it would have been absurd. Respect? Life and death had already shown Amy its fullest contempt. Prentice turned and walked out. He went looking for the L.A. sunlight.

  Hollywood

  "Look," Buddy was saving wearily, "I've been pitching you heavily to Arthwright, telling him you're not one of these Hollywood hacks. Tom, you're a screenwriter. An A writer fuh Chris' sakes. This guy is special, I'm telling him. He hears that stuff a lot from agents, how's he supposed to know it's true for Tom Prentice? You don't show up, he's gonna think you're a flake."

  "Look – if you'd seen her – " Prentice began, his knuckles white on the hotel phone. "She was all…" He broke off not knowing how to explain it in a way that wouldn't make him seem, yes, flaky. A whiner. Buddy was his agent, not his therapist.

  "I know how you feel," Buddy told him. "But you can't cancel on Arthwright. Isn't done. Especially not you and not now." Buddy's telephone voice had the distant cave-echo quality that meant he was using his speaker phone. He almost always used the speaker; fussing around his office, scribbling notes and signing papers or maybe mixing a drink while he yelled across the room at the phone's remote mike. ''I don't want to cancel," Prentice said. "I want to postpone." He was sitting tensely on the edge of his bed, in his hotel room.

  "It's the same. He isn't gonna have time for you whenever you're damn ready."

  "Come on, Buddy. He'd understand if you told him about Amy."

  "He'd understand, but that don't mean he'd find time for you later on. You know? He'd promise but would he do it? Not very fucking likely."

  Prentice nodded to himself. In the back of Arthwright's shrivelled little producer's heart, the son of a bitch would feel that appointments with him were more important than anything else in your life. Including grieving for the dead who, after all, were not consulted in movie marketing surveys.

  And, really, Prentice had known what his agent would say about cancelling the meeting. He knew Buddy, though he'd only actually met him twice, both face to face meetings quite brief. Prentice had told himself he was going to cancel the meeting anyway. But now, pressing the phone against the side of his head so hard it hurt, Prentice felt the shaky feeling that meant he was weakening, was probably going to give in. Especially not you and not now, Buddy had said. Like putting a rubber stamp on Prentice's forehead: He was on the Out List. He had to get back in. It was just too good a gig to lose. He couldn't handle the humiliation of going back to the only other work he knew how to do. Bartender. Maybe end up serving a cocktail to Arthwright. " Well Hi, Tom… Prentice? Right, how are ya, doin' a little moonlighting from scripting huh? Hell, Tom, I may be in here washing dishes or something myself, if I don't jumpstart some box office rentals here. We'll have to talk sometime. Ummm – I'll have a matgarita and this lovely young lady here takes, I think, a tequila sunrise? Great. Thanks Tom. So anyway, Sondra…"

  "Tell me something, Buddy," Prentice said now, venting some steam. "How do people get to be on the Out List in this town anyway, huh? There are all these guys, they write films that make no goddamn money, they get no critical recognition, but they still get contracts. Just because they had something produced once? Then I get one bomb and I'm supposedly on the Out List. How's that happen, huh?"

  "Look, don't get pissed at me, how the fuck do I know, Tom? It's pure caprice, right? It's gossip or something, probably. Some guys, when things go sour, they don't get talked about, they don't get blamed. Some do. I don't know. Maybe it's because you're out of town until now, you're not here networking, you didn't make Warner's season-opener party, you're not at the Golden Globe receptions, people notice who's there and who isn't, you know – "

  "I tried to rearrange my schedule so I could fly out for the Globes reception, but I had this thing – "

  "Prioritize, Tom, you know? Got to prioritize. You've got to be here hustling close to the bone, schmooz any time you can, keep the relationships going so people stay loyal. They're always looking for somebody to backbite. If you're not around, it's your back that gets bitten…"

  "Okay, okay, you're right. I'm here now. But Buddy – when I saw Amy's body today- " His voice broke. He swallowed, and got the masculinity back into it. "The guy said she lost fifty pounds in two days. Without liposuction, without surgery, and it wasn't losing blood and it wasn't losing water weight. It was – It was just her." "Fifty fucking pounds in two days? Bullshit! Somebody screwed up, clerical error in the hospital records, you know? Couldn't have been that much. She lost some weight, well the woman wasted herself on drugs, you know than – " A double peep in the background as Buddy's secretary informed him someone was on the line for him. "Just a minute, Tom. Lemme- " A couple of dry clicks. Static. Another click. "Tom? I gotta go here, I've got to call somebody back. But uh… Well, hey, about Amy: She was probably doing crack or crystal or something. You can't feel responsible."

  "She was my wife, Buddy, dammit."

  "Not for years, not really. You were divorced, and let me tell you, I know – my therapist, he put me on to this: the secret is, you got to let go. Let go of resentment, responsibility, after a divorce. Just write the checks and write it off." Again, the background peeps of Buddy's secretary, letting him know he had another call. This time there were three peeps, a signal that let Buddy know it was someone important, a key client or a major player. Prentice knew Buddy's phone habits the way another man knows his partner's facial expressions. "Hey," Buddy was saying, "I got to take that, Tom. Look, show up for Arthwright. Pitch him. Then do your grieving, what have you. Work is therapy. And you can't afford not to take that meeting. Got to go-"

  "Buddy – "

  Click. Buzz. Gone.

  Prentice banged the phone down on the receiver. Pitch Arthwright, then do your grieving, what have you.

  "What have you?" he muttered. "Christ." Prioritize, Tom, prioritize.

  Prentice stood up. Wobbled for a moment on his legs as the circulation shivered painfully back into them. He put on his sunglasses, thinking: Go ahead, get self righteous about the way people are in L.A. But you know you're relieved Buddy talked you into going to the meeting…

  Amy. Was there someone he should inf
orm? Her dad had abandoned the family when she was little. Her mother was dead. Cirrhosis. Her brother was a biker somewhere. Where, was anyone's guess. Prentice could call his own parents, but they'd never liked Amy, they'd been glad when she'd left him. His Mom had bugged him about finalizing, getting a divorce, settling down with "someone more stable. God knows, you need someone more stable."

  He looked at the paper sack that held Amy's effects. Now he knew why she'd sent his last two checks back; why she'd burned her bridges with him. She'd been getting money somewhere else. Even a Gold Card. The card was in the sack, along with her wallet, a gold chain ankle bracelet, an address book. No addresses in the address book, just cryptic scribbles and two phone numbers. It was like her: she kept most of her addresses on little scraps of paper in her wallet. Used to drive him crazy. He was fanatically methodical about addresses. Rolodexes, black-leather-bound planners. Now he even had an electronic address book that looked like a calculator.

  If he didn't click with Arthwright, he might have to hock that calculator soon. Prentice looked once more at the detritus of Amy's passing on the bed. Like the nest of a dead pheasant, the American peacock, found in the tall grasses, after the hunter's downed the bird. Nothing left but a handful of feathers and dead grass.

  He went downstairs, jangling his hotel and rental car keys together in his hand.

  Alameda, California Just Across the Bay from San Francisco

  Ephram chose a girl he saw working at the' cash register, in Dresden's Hardware Store.

  She was at Cash Register Three. Maybe it was the faint pattern of freckles on her cheekbone, the same configuration as the negative constellation. The constellation Kali, that no one saw but him: Ephram Pixie, who saw so much, ha ha, that no one else saw.

  The girl was plump but pretty. Soft brown eyes with a little too much eyeliner. Tammy Fayeish eyelashes. White gloss on lips that carried on the Zaftig theme of her slightly oversized body. Full breasts for a girl, oh, sixteen or so. Her honey-blonde hair charmingly ruined by being up in one of those strange do's that teenage girls were affecting lately, a "pump", it was called: a little ridge of hair jutting straight up above the forehead, like a radar scoop of some kind, yet delicate and bound in place by lots of big blowzy curls. The esthetic blindness of it fascinated him. Here was real innocence.

  And she wore a little charm bracelet made of small gold hearts about one wrist. He counted them: there were seven little gold hearts. Seven of hearts: his omen card in the Negative Deck. Another sign.

  About her neck was her name in gold, hanging from a necklace. C-O-N-S-T-A-N-C-E. Constance? Oh, really? Ha ha.

  She wore a raspberry coloured dress, with a frilly collar; raspberry Adidas tennis shoes, that looked gauche with the dress, but again she was unaware of that. The sneakers weren't gauche with her dress at her high school after all, ha ha.

  Ephram was buying a coil of rope when he spotted her. He felt a warm, sweet tingle when he saw the girl and at the same time became sharply aware of the rope's texture in his hands. The delicious coincidence of it…

  The rope was quarter-inch soft white synthetic fibre, and it would do very well.

  "Hi, how are you today," she said, automatically, not quite looking at him. Looking at the price tag on the rope and ringing it up.

  "I'm glad you don't use those machines to read the – what are they? – those atrocious little bar-symbols that computers read," Ephram said. Just to get her to say a few more things to him. To dawdle there as he got a fix on her.

  "Hm?" she said, blinking at him, "Oh, those computer price reading things? Bar codes, I think, it's called. I wish we did have theme A nervous little laugh like a trill on a toy piano. " – because, um, like, they're faster. The lines get long in here and everybody gets, you know, they want to get in and get out… That's three-ninety-five."

  "Here you are. Yes, well, that's a shame. I like… lingering here, myself. This is a charming hardware store. So cluttered and old fashioned."

  She looked at him, to try to decide if he was serious. People didn't talk like that, in her little world, with words like lingering, describing a hardware store as charming. He smiled broadly at her. Not hoping to interest her in him, no, ha ha. He was a squat little man, with a soft wheel of fat at around his middle, his oversized head mostly bald, a few colourless hairs slicked across it. An astrological glamour just barely visible, if you looked close, in the back of his deep-set green eyes. And if you looked closer…

  But all she saw, he knew, was a funny looking little fat guy grinning at her from the other side of the counter. She stared at him, beginning to feel the feather antenna of his first probe in her brain. And then another customer came up and she turned gratefully to him: a black teenager with an earring and a Mercedes Benz hood ornament hanging on a chain around his neck. He was buying spraypaint. Fairly obvious, Ephram thought, what the boy was going to do with that, the vandal. Inexplicably, the girl squirmed with pleasure when the boy said something vaguely flirtatious, and shook her head, saying, "I'm sure."

  The boy really ought to be arrested, Ephram thought, for stealing that Mercedes ornament off someone's car.

  Carrying the rope out to the car, Ephram found himself thinking of calling a cop on the little son of a bitch…

  And then he laughed aloud at himself. Absurd that I of all people should be thinking of calling the police on anyone… Ha ha.

  When Garner saw Constance coming up the walk, he found himself looking to see how steadily she walked, and if her eyes were glazed.

  There was no reason at all to suppose his daughter was on drugs. Really, there was none. She stayed out too late sometimes, she didn't take school seriously – she worked in spurts to maintain a C average – but she was a careful girl, in most ways, and she didn't smoke or drink. As far as he knew.

  Probably unrealistic to think she'd never had a drink It was fucking 1990, man. The kids drank or were scorned.

  But when your old man is a drug counsellor – three days a week, when he wasn't doing pastoral work – you probably didn't get into drugs. Did you?

  Easy does it, Garner counselled himself. Let go, stop obsessing. This is Alameda. She's all right.

  Alameda, after all, is an island. An island of safety and an island geographically, neatly packed with houses and parks, with San Francisco Bay on one side and an estuary on the other. There were big signs just this side of the bridges onto Alameda: DRUG FREE ZONE. This Community mandates double penalties for drug violations.

  There weren't any drug free zones in America. The signs stood at the ends of the bridges to warn ghetto gangsters who drifted over from Oakland.

  The town was mostly an enclave of upper-middle class safety, tough cops, a big Navy base, half a dozen marinas, a 25 MPH speed limit. The local kids were fairly straight, and stuck to their own community. There was no open drug dealing at all. But there were lots and lots of liquor stores and bars, thanks to the military, and just a mile across the estuary was Oakland's East 14th, and anything could be had, there…

  Stop stressing out, he told himself again. She's all right.

  "How was work?" Garner asked, when Constance came in. Knowing how she'd answer.

  "Okay, I guess," she said. As always. What was there to say about working in a hardware store for the summer?

  Without pausing as she bustled by, she slid her purse onto the hall table, making the vase of dusty silk flowers rock. It was a clumsy blue and pink ceramic vase she'd made for him in a sixth grade art class; he grabbed it just before it toppled, turned to ruefully watch her walk into the kitchen to get herself the inevitable Diet Coke. Singing a George Michael song absently to herself. He thought about telling her that her skirt was too short. He stopped himself, amazed, not for the first time, to find himself turning into his own father. In the late 60s, when Garner came of age, Constance's skirt would have been prudishly long.

  Garner went to sit on the living room couch, looking out the picture window at the sunny suburban yard. July
in California.

  Somewhere above, in the province of passenger jets, fighter jets from the base's carriers, and the birds that choked on the jets' exhaust, a cloud drew itself over the sun. Far below, the cloud shadow spilled slowly and inexorably across the lawn.

  Clunk, clunk, Constance kicking off her shoes in the hallway. "Hey, Daddy Dude," she said, coming in with her can of Diet Coke, sitting in the easy chair across from him, feet tucked partly under her. She had those awkward little white socks they were wearing now, and a thin gold ankle bracelet. In the 60s she'd have had white go-go boots. At least she hadn't got one of those ugly fanny-paks yet.

  Garner was wearing jeans, sneakers – real Converse sneakers, which were hard to find – and his Oakland Street Ministry t-shirt. He knew the trappings of the Ministry embarrassed her a little, but she liked the t-shirt because its graffiti-style design was at least marginally hip. He knew she was proud of him, too, because he was cooler than some other dads. He let her stay out later, let her watch the movies she wanted, was tolerant of profanity up to a point, let her go to rock concerts alone, never said a word about loud music, though he couldn't stand most of the bands she liked. What was that band? Bon Jovi…

  She liked her father being politically liberal; it was hipper to be P.C., because MTV was mostly slanted that way. They both liked the Beatles and the Stones. He wished she'd known her mother. For one thing, her mother would know how to tell her she wore too much makeup…

  "Daddy Dude," she began, smiling sweetly.

  "Let me guess. The car. Had your license two months and you think you get to wheedle the car."

  "I'm sure, it's not like the only thing I ever talk to you about is wanting something, I mean -"

  "Not the only thing, no. But when you call me Daddy Dude, in that sweet voice, it's a dead giveaway."

  "Whatever. Daddy… Daddy Dad. We just want to go to the mall and the arcade."

  "I'm staying around here this evening because we're having a counselling group here. They're painting the Volunteer Centre in Oakland so it's got to be here. So yeah, okay. But if you hurta my car I breaka you face!"