Wetbones

by John Shirley

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  The Valley; Arthwright's Party

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Glancing up at the mirror.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Near Malibu

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

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

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

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

  Why was he thinking about this now?

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

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

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

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

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

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

  So big deal, Big, fucking deal.

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

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

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

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

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

  It was hard to see from up here, but…

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

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

  A squeak from the next room.

  A noise outside the door.

  Mitch felt himself testing the waters of catatonia.

  The San Fernando Valley

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  6

  East L.A.

  Bugging out on the school bus wasn't hard. That was the easy part, Lonny thought. The bus that carried the work crew from Juvenile Hall to Griffith Park, where they were supposed to spend the day painting park benches, was a standard school bus with the emergency exit back-door. The emergency door wasn't locked and when the armed driver, halfway to the park, got in a shouting match with a UPS truck driver who was blocking two lanes with a sloppy double park, Lonny saw his chance and kicked open the back door and jumped down and dodged through traffic and climbed over a fence and skidded down the concrete embankment into the big culvert containing the skimpy stream that was called The Los Angeles River. He ran down the culvert a ways, then climbed up a drain pipe, went over another fence: crossing into East L.A., into a pretty fucked up barrio where he was going to find Eurydice and bring her out…