Edward Gorman - The Autumn Dead

A rusted-out five-year-old Toyota is not necessarily built for speed, but I did a very slick job of setting a few Indy records on the way to my apartment.

You find my place in the inner part of the inner city, on a block where every house has stucco siding and a fair majority of the people you pass on the cracked sidewalks are probably armed. Donna, determined to make my efficiency apartment more "livable," had come over one day armed with draperies and slipcovers she'd bought at Sears, bright and nubby materials they'd been too, but after half an hour she'd dropped to the floor in a kind of semi-yoga position and said, "There just isn't any way to decorate around water stains on the wall, Dwyer. There just isn't."

The vestibule smelled of bleach, marijuana, beer, and Chinese food (there's a take-out place a block away).

I went up the stairs two at a time, now having worked myself into one of those states of stress the magazines always say give you at the least hemorrhoids and at the worst cancer, and then I pushed my key into the gold Yale dead bolt (the only thing in the house that's less than eighty years old). And then, groping for the wall switch, I stared deep into shadow.

"Come in and close the door, okay?"

The table lamp, the one with the beer-stained lamp shade, clicked on and there she sat.

Donna. Editor of Ad World. Sitting in the corner of a couch with a white bath towel pushed up against her head.

The towel was soaked with blood.

"God," I said. And for a moment that's all I could do. Just stand there and say over and over, "God." Half the time it was a prayer, the other half it was a curse.

"So you opened the door and then what?"

"So I opened the door and came in."

"And?"

"And nothing. I turned on the light and looked around and I thought, Boy, Dwyer's really got to get out of this place. I mean, I saw cockroaches again tonight. The size of Shetlands, Dwyer."

"Forget the cockroaches. What happened next?"

"I picked out a shirt and jacket and pair of pants from your closet."

"And then?"

"And then I went and used the biffy. Have you ever heard of Tidi Bowl, Dwyer?"

"Donna, are you going to tell me or what?"

"How I got hit on the head?"

"Right."

"Well.''

"Why are you hesitating?"

"Because now that I think about it, I'm not sure I remember exactly.” She touched a hand to the back of her head, the way Glendon Evans had earlier today. She wore a white blouse and gray tweed jacket and designer jeans. She has red hair and green eyes, one of which strays to a small degree, like Karen Black's (though I never mention Karen Black to her, Donna not thinking much of her acting), and she's one of those women who is very erotic in an almost offhanded way.

(The only time she ever tried to be overtly sexy was when she got a baby-doll nightie, and I sort of spoiled it for her because her debut in the nightie coincided with Larry Holmes's title defense against Michael Spinks. She'd walked back and forth in front of the TV set about fifty times, so often I wondered if she wasn't doing some kind of aerobics, and finally she said, "Notice anything, Dwyer?" And all I'd said was, "Yeah, Larry looks old as shit." And then she'd walked out of the room and come back in and said, "Notice anything now, Dwyer?" She was completely naked.)

"You came out of the biffy," I said, leading her on like a prosecuting attorney.

"I came out of the biffy."

"And then he hit you."

She closed her eyes and thought a moment. "No."

"No?"

"No. I came out of the biffy and then. ."

"And then?"

"Then I. . " She thought a moment longer. “Then I leaned down to pick up your clothes where I'd rested them over the chair over there with just the one leg and then somehow she came up from behind me and hit. ."

"Wait a minute."

"What?"

"You said she."

"Yes."

"She?"

"Perfume. Very sweet perfume. So I assume it was a she."

"God."

"What?"

"A woman."

"Equal opportunity, Dwyer. No reason there can't be female thugs."

"All right. Anything else?"

"Just a weird sound.'

'What kind of weird sound?"

"A kind of-creaking."

"Creaking? Like an old house?"

"No-creaking like. ."

Then another paranoid image formed. "Creaking the way leather creaks?"

"Yes. Exactly. That's very good." She was getting excited.

The guy on the motorcycle with the black leather. It's a woman.

"Did she say anything?"

"No."

"God."

"What?"

"She wants the suitcase."

"What suitcase?"

"You hungry?"

"Was that an answer?"

"I just mean why don't we have a close look at your head and then if you seem to be all right, go have something to eat and then I'll tell you all about the suitcase."

"Dwyer."

"Yes."

"You haven't kissed me."

"I didn't want to hurt your head."

"You won't hurt my head. I mean I don't want a big lip lock or anything but just a nice discreet little kiss that says I care for you very much."

I took her hand. "How about if I tell you that I care for you very much and then I kiss you and kind of reinforce the message?"

"That would be nice."

So that's what I did. That's exactly what I did.

Most recording studios are designed to resemble expensive bomb shelters, tight as cocoons. Not only are the floors carpeted, so are most of the walls. Not only do the doors close tight, they are sealed along the edges. The baffling used to make the studios soundproof combines with somber indirect lighting to give the impression that even if Armageddon did come along, you'd never know about it inside here. You work in shadows, and the studio people seem to think this is just ducky, state of the art.

On the other side of a huge slab of glass, at a control panel the folks at "Star Trek" would envy, sat a very sleek guy with razor-cut hair and a mean black gaze and the kind of colorful, casual clothes that pass for southern Californian out here. He said, "Jack, I don't believe it. I mean, you're not coming across, you know?" He would take my six-second bit and mix it into the rest of the spot. Once he got me to read the way he wanted me to, anyway.

"Huh?"

"Look at the script, okay?"

I looked at the script.

"What does it say?"

"It says: 'If it wasn't for the home-equity loan I got at First National, I wouldn't have been able to send Timmy to college.' "

"Right."

"Well, you've got to sound grateful."

"Right. Sorry."

"You all right this morning?"

"Long night."

He grinned. "Chicks?"

"Nah."

"You know Betsy our receptionist?"

"Yeah."

"She thinks you're cute."

"Great."

"Really." He whispered over the intercom. "Take it from me, Jack. This chick knows things that'll make you blush. And take a gander at those gazongas. Playboy material or what?"

Steve, his name was, and at least the way he told it, he'd slept with no less than 50.7 percent of the women under age ninety-six in the city. But he had an annoying habit of never giving them any attributes but sexual ones. They were never smart or dumb or even pretty or ugly, they were always described only by the size of their breasts or various exotic tricks they seemed to know that nobody else had even heard of. (Over beers one night he'd mentioned a "Mexican sleeve job, you know, like in that 200 European Sexual Positions," and I had been left to ponder what that could mean-why Mexican? And what in hell could a "sleeve job" be?) "You should try her," he said.

"Actually, I've got a friend."

"Oh, yeah. That ad chick. Man, nice-looking."

I guess I should have mentioned earlier that Steve is fifty-seven years old and a tribute to Grecian Formula. He works out not once, not twice, but three times a day, and confided to me once that he attributes his self-described "amazing virility" to massive doses of bee pollen ("I don't have to tell you about bees, do I, Jack?") He is also, for all his unctuous gonadic style, the best recording engineer and director outside of L.A. He takes advertising copy very, very seriously, knows how to make even the most unlikely lines play well, and the agencies are only too happy to send to his place, on a regular basis, big trucks loaded with green Yankee cash.