Timothy Hallinan - Crashed

Thistle made a choked sound and it took me a moment to recognize it as a laugh.

“That’s good, baby,” Doc said. “Keep those feet going, and let’s see if you can’t get your eyes open for a couple of minutes. By the way, the tall ugly guy on the other side of you is named Junior. Hey, Junior, do you know any movie stories? I just told the only one I know.”

I wasn’t exactly a film encyclopedia-none of my books had led me to it-but I knew a few things, one of which I had picked up that morning, courtesy of Rodd Hull. “Um, Claudette Colbert,” I said.

Thistle said something that was all sibilants, and Doc said, “What, sugar? What did you say?”

“Shaid … she’sh … good,” Thistle said, very slowly.

“She, um, hated the left side of her face,” I said, trying desperately to remember Rodd’s story, “and she always-”

“Timing,” Thistle said. “Had, uhhhhhh, timing.”

“Yeah, timing,” I said, and glanced over Thistle’s head, still hanging on her chest, at Doc, who made a rolling gesture with his free hand that meant, Keep talking . “So,” I said, “her face,” and Thistle said something. “What?”

“Side … moon,” she whispered.

“Right, dark side of the moon.” I considered and rejected a bunch of stories that suddenly came to mind, and then remembered something else about Colbert. “She had one of the funniest lines I ever heard,” I said. “In a movie made in the middle thirties. I don’t remember the name of it, but she’s a poor girl who’s working in a hat shop and having an affair with an unhappily married older man, and the man’s unpleasant wife comes in to try on some hats. Colbert chooses one for her and helps her put it on, and studies her for a minute, and then says, ‘That hat does something for you. It-it gives you a chin.’ ”

This time Doc laughed, too, and Thistle managed a couple of unclassifiable sounds, more damp little whuffles than guffaws, but progress. I was ready to talk about Bogart in Casablanca , how George Raft turned the part down, but I remembered how young Thistle was, and my chat with Rina the prior afternoon came to mind. I did ten or fifteen reasonably interesting minutes on dead wet girl ghosts, on the derivation and iconography of dead wet girls in Asian film, and by the time I’d used that up, Thistle was almost keeping up with us, although she still hadn’t lifted her head, and without us she would have fallen in a heap.

“Keep it up,” Doc said. “You’re doing great.”

“That’s it,” I said. “I can’t think of anything else.”

“So make something up. Talk about whatever comes to mind,” Doc said. “How’d you get your face so banged up? Have you seen his face, Thistle? Looks like somebody thought it was a piece of beef and tried to grind it. Go on, take a look. You can do it.”

The head turned a few inches, and the flax-colored hair parted just enough for me to see an eye, surprisingly deep green, uptilted at the end, and heavy-lidded. Then she let her head drop again and stumbled, but we had her in our grasp, and a few steps later her feet were moving again.

“Isn’t he ugly?” Doc said. “Tell her, Junior. Tell her what happened to your face.”

So for the third time in two days I described my encounter with Rabbits’s chandelier and Rottweilers. Doc got so interested he almost walked us into the couch, and I had to pull us left to avoid a stumble. I could feel the energy returning slowly to Thistle’s body; she was bearing more of her own weight and walking less erratically, so I stretched the story out, elaborated on it, exaggerated the number of marital aids and the size of the dogs, turned the swing on the chandelier into the kind of adventure Tarzan might have had if Tarzan had been an interior decorator. She laughed two or three times, although they could have been coughs. By the time I finished, she was walking relatively well, and we stopped in the center of the carpet.

Thistle removed her arm from Doc’s shoulder, wobbled once, grabbed my hand to steady herself, and turned her body slightly toward me. Her head came up slowly and the hair fell away from her face.

I bit my tongue.

Drug-battered, stoned, muzzy-eyed, exhausted, debilitated, undernourished, Thistle Downing was still fundamentally ravishing. The elfin qualities in her face, the tilted eyes, the high cheekbones, the puckish mouth with its surprisingly full lower lip-they were all still there, older and more blended, and maybe even more beautiful than before. Clean up her system, feed her, put her to bed for six weeks, give her a haircut and a reason to live, and she’d be stunning.

She smiled at me, and the whole awful room brightened.

“You’re funny,” she said, and then her eyes rolled to the ceiling and she went down like a stone.

“Okay,” Doc said. He took in a deep breath and blew it out. The flask made another appearance. “Shower time.”

She squealed when the cold water hit her and then fought back with startling strength, kicking and sputtering. Soaking wet, the thick terrycloth bathrobe must have weighed twenty pounds, and it was a good thing it did because she came at both of us with her claws out. Dragged down by the robe, she didn’t have the strength to step over the edge of the tub, and Doc pushed her down onto the bottom and aimed the shower straight at her. Over his shoulder, he said to me, “Better call the studio and tell them where we are. Talk to Tatiana. She’s the only one with any sense. Oh, and see if there’s any coffee around.”

I went back into the living room and made the call.

“This is not going to make Trey happy,” Tatiana said.

“She’s probably dealt with bigger issues.”

“Why don’t you just haul her over here? We’ll get a bunch of coffee going and bring her around. She might be more comfortable with girls.”

“The street is full of cops,” I said. “Some sort of investigation. I don’t think it’s a great idea to drag a semi-conscious woman into a car when half the badges in Hollywood are looking. We’re going to get her walking first.”

“How’s she look?”

“Pretty good. I was expecting Miss Havisham or whoever it was when they took her out of Shangri-La, but she’s still beautiful.”

“Give her a couple more years and she’ll wear holes in her skin. What about the sore on her lip?

“I didn’t notice.”

“Uh-oh,” Tatiana said. “Don’t get interested.”

“Don’t be silly. But I have to say, now that I’ve seen her, I think for the first time that Trey’s not crazy to be doing this movie.”

“No, she’s not crazy,” Tatiana said. “Inhuman maybe, but not crazy. I’ll tell everybody it’ll be another hour or so.”

I closed the phone, thinking, no one hangs up phones any more. Another linguistic artifact, like dialing a number. From the noises coming out of the bathroom, Doc had his hands full. I decided he was better qualified than I to deal with it. A quick check for coffee revealed none, which wasn’t surprising since there was no stove in the kitchen, not even a hotplate-just an expanse of greasy wall and some closed-off gas lines where a range had once stood. I did find five open and partly consumed bags of cookies, four of which were Oreos, which I took to mean that Thistle had company from time to time. No single person would open all those bags without finishing at least one first. This was the detritus of multiple cases of the munchies.

There were also two half-empty, screw-top bottles of three-buck red wine, and-next to the end of the couch that faced away from the door-three chipped glasses with dried red wine dregs in the bottoms. Definitely company. I tried for a moment to imagine red wine and Oreos together and gave up. Maybe that was why she drugged: it killed her taste buds. I went into the bedroom to find some clothes Thistle could get into once she had fully rejoined us.