Hex-Rated

by Jason Ridler

  We walked down the hall, Merle Haggard singing about Folsom Prison. Bee exclaimed, “When Jonah wakes up he’s going to dance a jig on your head.”

  “Then I look forward to our next dance.”

  “Be careful, girl,” Bee said as we strode down the hall. “Don’t let the fancy duds fool you. You’re rolling dice with a snake.”

  Nico’s body bristled at the word.

  And now I knew what it was that maimed her.

  THE STARLIGHT WAS WHAT A KIND SOUL MIGHT SAY IS “NOSTALGIC” for people ten years my junior who prefer to think of the Fifties as the era of pretty innocence. In layman’s terms, it’s a sack of comfortable lies.

  Red vinyl seats. Lime green counter tops. Tiny juke boxes in every booth with Chuck and Elvis and the Killer at the ready, and currently playing a sad Sinatra song about how lonely a Saturday night could be . . . if you were as handsome, rich, and powerful as Ol’ Blue Eyes. The aroma of the Starlight was working man’s sweat and burned coffee grounds, coupled with Comet dust and deep-fried everything. The magic bubble of the fifties was as much an illusion as anything else in LA. Race riots. Freedom Riders showing as much courage as Marines at Iwo Jima. Those Japanese Americans who’d been fresh out of the barbed wire hell we’d shoved them in since Pearl Harbor coming home to find themselves treated like enemies, their homes sold and their neighbors rich off the spoils. When LA burned under the Watts riots , I volunteered with the a Red Cross unit, patching up black, white, Latino and Asian Americans caught in the crossfire of hate and degradation.

  The only ones who talked about the “Good Old Days” were folks of one flavor: vanilla. These myopic twits wished all those blacks would go back to where they’d come from before they helped us win the war by doing dangerous munitions and navy work, and that kind of racist amnesia also fed the battle cry for all the Asians to go back home, even though most of them had been here long before the current set of whites who’d fled the dustbowl came to California and proclaimed it their white Shangri La. So the pseudo Fifties that I heard too many moaning about had started to rise like a lost Utopia, wiped clean of the ugliness that was alive and well on the streets and in the alleys when Johnny America went to sleep.

  It wasn’t the bullshit ambience that had me coming back. The Starlight offered coffee, biscuits, and what they called “steak” for two bucks. The biscuits and steak were tougher than I was, but the coffee wasn’t strong enough to defend itself.

  I dunked the biscuit into the mug. All the while, the jukebox ended the glory days of Sinatra the Hairpiece and played songs that upset no one but annoyed the hell out of me. The current rotation was some “invented” rock and roll band that dressed like Archie comic and sang about women as if they were condiments and candy, saccharine-sweet Don Kershner junk that was slowly starting edge out the fuzzy guitars of long-haired kids who seem to have given up on whatever rebellion they’d believed in back in last year. I pined for the haunting notes of Django Reinhardt, the Gypsy jazz wunderkind with only two fingers who played as if he had five hands. Music made against the odds, no matter how loud or quiet, always made me feel hopeful. But “Sugar, Sugar” was giving my soul diabetes, if I even had a soul left.

  A murky green plastic cup of water sat before Nico, exterior abrasive, the kind you give children who are learning to grasp things without handles. Her hood was still up, but I saw her plain as day. Sparkling blue eyes, heavy lids, and the bite marks across her face like scars on the Mona Lisa. Every other woman in LA was a beauty queen or movie star in waiting, but Nico held your attention without trying, even while marred. She’d been silent during ride over, and she seemed jumpy enough to dash out of Lilith if our conversation got too tough.

  But I was on the clock and burning daylight. “Snake, huh?”

  Her hands became talons, gripping her cup.

  “Something tells me it wasn’t slipped into your bed.”

  Her eyes darted from the glass. “How did you know?”

  Two fingers on my right hand became crooked. “The gashes. Their angle of attack wasn’t crooked. They came down from above.” My fingers relaxed. Her grip didn’t. “Why don’t you start an hour before anything happened. We’ll go forward from there.”

  She brought the glass to her mouth. Sipped. Swallowed hard. “It was the last scene. Octavia wanted natural moonlight, so it was so late it felt like morning might break. We were on set for the final . . . scene.” I nodded, even though I knew we were talking about a skin flick and not the latest slice of genius from Billy Wilder. “My script didn’t tell me what would happen, just the blocking. I was awakening from a dream into a night full of stars, tied to a stake.”

  I hated this film already.

  “All I knew was that I’d be working with Maxine.”

  Now I was confused, then interested, then ashamed of myself. “The one who—”

  “Yes, and a friend.” Her innocence was endearing, but heartbreaking. Actresses had few female friends. They had rivals. And one wondered how deep Maxine’s desire for the spotlight was if she’d ravage Nico’s face. “She was the priestess of Hades, and I was to be her sacrifice. But she was supposed to fall in love with me and we’d . . .”

  My hand rose. “I can fill in the blanks.”

  She sniffed. “Maxine’s whole body was covered in glitter. She looked regal, like a queen.” A single fingernail did figure-eights on the cup’s abrasive surface. “I was so proud of her, you know? She was scared to do this scene, but I told it would just be nice. Sweet, even. But as she walked toward me, her gait got stiff, as if trying to reclaim her balance on a beam. I was so mad because I thought she’d gotten high. And here we were, and we had to shoot, and just make the best of it. And, of course, Fulton wanted the dawn so he didn’t stop.”

  “Fulton? He the director?”

  Nico nodded, but her lips pursed and part of her ease retreated.

  “Not a fan?” I asked.

  “Fulton is . . . he was in Vietnam.”

  “Okay.”

  “At Tet.”

  I exhaled. Reading about that horror show in the papers, I knew it was three times as bad as anything printed in the LA Times. And that particular horror movie was barely two years old. “He went from combat soldier to director?”

  “He jokes that it’s a better way to shoot people.”

  Black humor is far less dangerous than black magic, but no less unnerving. “So he’s trouble, huh?”

  The crazy eights she was tracing seemed almost like a comical way to write the sigil for infinity. “He’s proud of being a soldier. Still wears his fatigue shirt. But he’s . . . intense. His eyes . . .”

  A roustabout with the Electric Magic Circus, Flash Harrison, worked as a stunt man in westerns during the 1950s. Tough guy. Served in New Guinea during the war. Quiet fella but great at gin rummy and certainly no slouch at protecting himself. He worked on set with Audie Murphy, America’s most decorated killing machine. Like everyone else, I read To Hell and Back, but while other saw a role model, I’d felt I’d read the memoir of a broken man. On set, some nitwit actor from New York started to give Murphy grief about his line reading. Murphy, all five-foot-five of Kentucky rage, grabbed the guy by the throat. “And I saw it, James,” Flash told me after a few high balls of Old Crow and winning most of my tips I’d earned as the dreaded “Man Eating Chicken.” “That thousand yard stare. I’d seen it. Guys who looked at everything around them as a threat to their survival. Zombies of war, like in old monster movies. They lived in the haze of battle and there was nothing precious to life. The eyes saw through you.”

  I took a long sip of tepid coffee. “Is Fulton the one who—”

  “James?” The voice came from across the counter, barely a whisper but also clear enough that it irked me into the moment.

  I had assumed Chip “Father Creedy” Toledo would take the day off after the shenanigans at the cemetery. I would not underestimate his work ethic or need for rent again. I smiled big and friendly as he sauntered u
p with his scratch pad, apron, and freshly scrubbed face. “Well, hello Chip. And here I thought you’d be starring in Easy Rider II.”

  He snickered. “Not yet, man. Guess working funerals makes me an off-Broadway kind of guy.” Nico stared at her cup, body in full wince.

  “Why are you still wearing that outfit?” Chip said.

  I had no desire to share my funeral story with anyone, but especially not in a public place with a new client. “Chip, I happen to like this outfit and won’t return back to the shop until I’ve plum near worn it out. But then again, I was born when the Depression was eating families for breakfast and spitting them out as dust, so if you don’t mind I’d rather not drag up my hardscrabble past, as me and my friend here have business.”

  Chip’s face contorted as if he was trying to decode my words with his dimples. He blinked and said, “So, are you ready to order?”

  “Positively poised,” I said, then looked at Nico. “The food’s lousy but the portions are grand. Would you like to help me split a steak and eggs with fries?” I’d been around actresses my whole life, and the only thing they cared more about than their face was their figure. It led to some bizarre behavior that I’d seen on with the circus, diets and traditions rooted in vanity and forcing them into cultish behavior, from bathrooms becoming vomitoriums to living off of Pall Malls and a stick of gum for two days. The result was skin deep pretty and three inches of sad. But if I bought the meal, perhaps she’d eat it, get a fistful of calories in her guts so she didn’t pass out once the adrenaline she’d been pumping finally ran dry.

  Nico shrugged.

  “And two coffees.”

  Chip left, looking back at the hooded beauty once because he was a man and there are few things more intriguing than a mysterious woman. “Sorry for the interruption. You were talking about Fulton.” I settled my face so it had the impression of my full attention. But outside, a blue Ford Thunderbird was parked in front of Lilith. The driver was working on a project in his lap, though far too precisely for a dirty masher who enjoyed an audience while he committed self-abuse on his sex. I kept my peripherals on him while Nico continued. “Was he the one who—”

  “No, not Fulton.” The timber in her voice was serrated. She wasn’t lying. She was just scared of Fulton as much as the truth. She shook, grabbed napkin, and sniffed. “This is the part where you think I’m crazy and toss me out.”

  My voice lowered to the tone my mother called “serious business.” You didn’t use it for gags. You never used it unless you meant it. You used it to be a life preserver for those who were flailing, to help keep alive the connection between the distraught and the helpful. I only wished it had worked on the loon who I called father before I got the hell out of Oakland.

  “Nico, we’ve just met. You don’t have much reason to trust me. But I don’t think you’re crazy. And I won’t toss you out. You’re my client. I’m here to serve you.” I cupped my hands and leaned forward. “If not Fulton, than who?”

  Tears slid down her cheeks, following detours created by the fresh scars, and winding their way down to two launching points: her delicate nose and soft but angular chin. In the track lighting of the diner, her set makeup was a melted version of its former glory, and yet didn’t look garish, just a different tone of beautiful. “Maxine. She . . . she kissed me.” She waited a heartbeat or two to see if I would cast judgment or make a rotten joke. Her eyelashes released a hanging teardrop. “At first it was nice, like when we’d practiced, but then . . . her tongue.” Her shaking hand covered her mouth. “I pushed her off, but her arms were so strong . . . and that’s when—”

  Chip Toledo arrived with timing of a hack comedian, and did his best imitation of a waiter who gave a damn. “Steak and eggs, as you like it, and a cup of our finest roasted coffee.” The pile of greasy innards sat before me, the coffee smelling like roasted ashes, all the while I tried to figure what in the hell Chip’s game was.

  The obvious smacked me so hard I almost fell out of my wingtips.

  He’d heard the words “producer” and “director,” and now he was auditioning for a possible connection to the film industry. None of which bought him a single glance from Nico, just many winces. It could only get worse from here. I took out the last hundred, held it between two fingers. “Thanks. Just the bill and give us some time before you return.”

  The mental math Chip did, about continuing his patter or taking a hundred and getting a tip probably broke a few circuits in this half-baked brain.

  He pulled the hundred from my fingers. “You got it, James! Anything for my favorite customer.”

  “Bye, Chip.” I sighed as he walked away. “Sorry, the service here is downright Shakespearean, at least when it comes to tragic characters.” I picked up the mug, which didn’t have a lick of heat. “Maxine pulled back, and?”

  Nico’s lips pursed as she exhaled. “Maxine threw back her head, and it crawled out of her mouth, tasting the air, wiggling above me.” She kept tracing the eight on the cup, then gave me a hard stare. “A snake.”

  I sipped what I soon discovered were the dregs of the day’s filter. “What color?”

  Now I had her attention. “Huh? Why?”

  “So I know what kind of snake.” An impetuous look cut across her wounded countenance. “Nico, I’m not laughing at you and I’m not being a schmuck. What color was the snake?”

  Her nails tapped the glass in her hand. “It was like . . . striped. Red, white . . . and black.”

  I shoveled in eggs so overcooked they were hard as Legos. “Are you sure?”

  She winced, shaking her head. “I knew it. You don’t—”

  “Your friend’s possessed.” That steadied her focus like a gunshot. I spoke lowly through the chewy eggs, keeping Chip out of earshot. “Someone on that set, or involved with her, or that had it in for you, worked some pretty serious . . .” I hated using the word “magic” to describe the real stuff. The Heka badness of this world, primordial forces both malign and benign. Magic was fun. Magic was safe. Magic wasn’t real, it was a trick, an effect, an illumination, a joke, a gag . . . but the scars on Nico’s face were no punch line. “This was no accident, Nico. And you’re right. It wasn’t Maxine’s fault. No one would do this to themselves. Someone did this to her.” Someone who knew how to use a human vessel to raise some kind of demon, letting them incubate within them until the right time to strike. “Someone pretty bad.”

  And sweat crept down my back, and it wasn’t because of the eggs and coffee. I’d just buried a body to keep all of this mojo out of my life for good. Just because I hated Edgar did not mean that I wished to skulk around in the embers and ash of supernatural power on my own. But incubating a demon with a living host? On some porno set? I was throat-deep back into the mana of the fantastic.

  “And here’s your bill,” Chip said. “Thanks so much!” Then he walked off, quick as a gunshot.

  No change from my last hundred dollars lay in the dish.

  “Stay put,” I said to Nico. “If you have the guts, enjoy the biscuit.” The kitchen door had fluttered closed as I stood. “I’ll be right back.”

  I walked at the speed between annoyed and “bladder about to implode.” Maureen, the blue-haired head waitress, who was reading the LA Times with almost the foot-long ash tip of her cigarette about to cascade to the floor, took no notice. Through the door, waves of greasy heat stuck to my skin as the line cook, a bearded Greek Civil War veteran named Ares, flipped thin, sizzling burgers in his stained brown apron and gave me a dirty glare.

  “The waiter ran off with my check,” I said.

  Ares tskd. The dripping spatula pointed at the back door.

  “Ευχαριστώ,” I said.

  “Whatever,” he groaned back. “Just make sure he’s not getting ηλίθιος.” I assumed in this context “ηλίθιος” meant “stoned,” nodded, and dashed out the back.

  Chip held a pretty intense bike chain with an open lock. “Little shits!” he said to two kids wit
h overgrown bowl cuts, driving down Rugby Ave. on his green ten-speed.

  “About to say the same thing, minus the plural.”

  Chip’s shoulders hunched, chain rattling like a novice Hell’s Angel. “Oh, come on, James!” He turned, big smile on his face. “I just thought you’d finally gotten around to paying me for that cemetery gig.”

  “Then why the getaway bike? And don’t tell me you have an audition because everyone has an audition and you have yet to become ‘everyone’ in this town.” Watching his brain stall to improvise a new script was painful and seemed to be giving him a mild stroke. “Chip, take your cut and give me the fifty that remains. Or I’ll tell the young lady you’re someone who can’t be worked with because they’re always stealing on set.”

  “I knew she was an actress.” Chip dug into his ass pocket, and took out the money clip he’d obviously been given by someone far classier within his family tree. He shaved off two twenties, two fives, and handed them over in a fist. I plucked them from his grip as if taking tissues.

  “Thanks, Chip. When I need someone to play a horse’s ass, I’ll be in touch.”

  “Count me out, James,” he said to my backside. “Your gigs are too weird.”

  “Chip, old boy, I do believe you’re—”

  Shattering glass echoed from the restaurant’s main room. I ran and slid across on the greasy tiles, and Ares hustled as if the ground was concrete and got to the main room as I tripped once before righting myself and getting back into locomotion.

  I shouldered my way through the kitchen doors.

  A Latino teen in green soccer jersey stood between the booth and the countertop. So did Nico. He held a .38 Special to her hooded head.

  CHAPTER 6

  ARES WAS FOCUSED LIKE A SHARK, HANDS AT HIS SIDES AND ready for action. He must have been a terror in the hills of Olympos. Maureen slowly chewed bubble gum, hands in the air. The gunman flexed his feet, shifting weight from side to side before the wreckage of my uneaten breakfast. The splattered guts of eggs and biscuit swimming on the dirty tiles had an aroma that pierced my gut. “Whatever you want, friend,” I said, “She hasn’t got it.”