Megan Abbott: The Best American Mystery Stories 2016

Gazing through the booth’s glass accordion doors, she looked out at the long row of spinning lanterns strung along the bar’s windows. They reminded her of the magic lamp she had had when she was small, scattering galloping horses across her bedroom walls.

You could see the Carnival Tavern from miles away because of the lanterns. It was funny seeing them up close, the faded circus clowns silhouetted on each. They looked so much less glamorous, sort of shabby. She wondered how long they’d been here, and if anyone even noticed them anymore.

She was thinking all these things while Mr. D. was still talking, his voice hoarse with logic and finality. A faint aggression.

He concluded by saying surely she agreed that all the craziness had to end.

You were a luscious piece of candy, he said, but now I gotta spit you out.

After, she walked down the steep exit ramp from the bar, the lanterns shivering in the canyon breeze.

And she walked and walked and that was how she found the Canyon Arms, tucked off behind hedges so deep you could disappear into them. The smell of the jasmine so strong she wanted to cry.

“You’re an actress, of course,” Mrs. Stahl said, walking her to Bungalow Number Four.

“Yes,” she said. “I mean, no.” Shaking her head. She felt like she was drunk. It was the apricot. No, Mrs. Stahl’s cigarette. No, it was her lipstick. Tangee, with its sweet orange smell, just like Penny’s own mother.

“Well,” Mrs. Stahl said. “We’re all actresses, I suppose.”

“I used to be,” Penny finally managed. “But I got practical. I do makeup now. Over at Republic.”

Mrs. Stahl’s eyebrows, thin as seaweed, lifted. “Maybe you could do me sometime.”

It was the beginning of something, she was sure.

No more living with sundry starlets stacked bunk-to-bunk in one of those stucco boxes in West Hollywood. The Sham-Rock. The Sun-Kist Villa. The smell of cold cream and last night’s sweat, a brush of talcum powder between the legs.

She hadn’t been sure she could afford to live alone, but Mrs. Stahl’s rent was low. Surprisingly low. And if the job at Republic didn’t last, she still had her kitty, which was fat these days on account of those six months with Mr. D., a studio man with a sofa in his office that wheezed and puffed. Even if he really meant what he said, that it really was kaput, she still had that last check he’d given her. He must have been planning the brushoff, because it was the biggest yet, and made out to cash.

And the Canyon Arms had other advantages. Number Four, like all the bungalows, was already furnished: sun-bleached zebra-print sofa and key-lime walls, that bright-white kitchen with its cherry-sprigged wallpaper. The first place she’d ever lived that didn’t have rust stains in the tub or the smell of mothballs everywhere.

And there were the built-in bookshelves filled with novels in crinkling dust jackets.

She liked books, especially the big ones by Lloyd C. Douglas or Frances Parkinson Keyes, though the books in Number Four were all at least twenty years old, with a sleek, high-toned look about them. The kind without any people on the cover.

She vowed to read them all during her time at the Canyon Arms. Even the few tucked in the back, the ones with brown paper covers.

In fact, she started with those. Reading them late at night, with a pink gin conjured from grapefruit peel and an old bottle of Gilbey’s she found in the cupboard. Those books gave her funny dreams.

“She got one.”

Penny turned on her heels, one nearly catching on one of the courtyard tiles. But, looking around, she didn’t see anyone. Only an open window, smoke rings emanating as if from a dragon’s mouth.

“She finally got one,” the voice came again.

“Who’s there?” Penny said, squinting toward the window.

An old man leaned forward from his perch just inside Number Three, the bungalow next door. He wore a velvet smoking jacket faded to a deep rose.

“And a pretty one at that,” he said, smiling with graying teeth. “How do you like Number Four?”

“I like it very much,” she said. She could hear something rustling behind him in his bungalow. “It’s perfect for me.”

“I believe it is,” he said, nodding slowly. “Of that I am sure.”

The rustle came again. Was it a roommate? A pet? It was too dark to tell. When it came once more, it was almost like a voice shushing.

“I’m late,” she said, taking a step back, her heel caving slightly.

“Oh,” he said, taking a puff. “Next time.”

That night she woke, her mouth dry from gin, at two o’clock. She had been dreaming she was on an exam table and a doctor with an enormous head mirror was leaning so close to her she could smell his gum: violet. The ring light at its center seemed to spin, as if to hypnotize her.

She saw spots even when she closed her eyes again.

The next morning the man in Number Three was there again, shadowed just inside the window frame, watching the comings and goings in the courtyard.

Head thick from last night’s gin and two morning cigarettes, Penny was feeling what her mother used to call “the hickedty-ticks.”

So when she saw the man, she stopped and said briskly, “What did you mean yesterday? ‘She finally got one’?”

He smiled, laughing without any noise, his shoulders shaking.

“Mrs. Stahl got one, got you,” he said. “As in, Will you walk into my parlor? said the spider to the fly.”

When he leaned forward, she could see the stripes of his pajama top through the shiny threads of his velvet sleeve. His skin was rosy and wet-looking.

“I’m no chump, if that’s your idea. It’s good rent. I know good rent.”

“I bet you do, my girl. I bet you do. Why don’t you come inside for a cup? I’ll tell you a thing or two about this place. And about your Number Four.”

The bungalow behind him was dark, with something shining beside him. A bottle, or something else.

“We all need something,” he added cryptically, winking.

She looked at him. “Look, mister—”

“Flant. Mr. Flant. Come inside, miss. Open the front door. I’m harmless.” He waved his pale pink hand, gesturing toward his lap mysteriously.

Behind him, she thought she saw something moving in the darkness over his slouching shoulders. And music playing softly. An old song about setting the world on fire, or not.

Mr. Flant was humming with it, his body soft with age and stillness but his milky eyes insistent and penetrating.

A breeze lifted and the front door creaked open several inches, and the scent of tobacco and bay rum nearly overwhelmed her.

“I don’t know,” she said, even as she moved forward.

Later she would wonder why, but in that moment she felt it was definitely the right thing to do.

The other man in Number Three was not as old as Mr. Flant but still much older than Penny. Wearing only an undershirt and trousers, he had a mustache and big round shoulders that looked gray with old sweat. When he smiled, which was often, she could tell he was once matinee-idol handsome, with the outsized head of all movie stars.

“Call me Benny,” he said, handing her a coffee cup that smelled strongly of rum.

Mr. Flant was explaining that Number Four had been empty for years because of something that happened there a long time ago.

“Sometimes she gets a tenant,” Benny reminded Mr. Flant. “The young musician with the sweaters.”

“That did not last long,” Mr. Flant said.

“What happened?”

“The police came. He tore out a piece of the wall with his bare hands.”

Penny’s eyebrows lifted.

Benny nodded. “His fingers were hanging like clothespins.”

“But I don’t understand. What happened in Number Four?”