Timothy Hallinan - Skin Deep

"What do you go through, Dixie?"

"You should live to be a hundred," Dixie said, "and not find out."

We got off at Van Nuys Boulevard, a street that runs down the center of the Valley, as straight as the filling in a tamale. Dixie accelerated left through a red light and coasted across Ventura, heading south. The neighborhood did a quick-change act. Behind us were stucco storefronts and asphalt alleys, and in front of us were old oak trees, rolling lawns, dusty patches of ice plant, and ranch-style houses that rambled expensively through twelve to fourteen rooms.

I put my hand against the window, and it felt hot. We were surrounded by money, but the money hadn't been able to intimidate the heat.

"I hate locations," Dixie said, using up a little of the venom he'd been suppressing. "Hatteras, right?" He swung right, not waiting for an answer. "Wherever we are," he muttered, "here we are."

An oak tree ancient enough to command its own complement of Druids divided the road in front of us. Tacked to it like a G-string on a dowager was a cardboard sign reading HIGH VELOCITY . Beyond the tree was a scattering of equipment-trailers, moving vans, arc lights, and cameras- and a knot of people who seemed to be focused on one of the larger lawns. "People," Dixie said bitterly, braking. "Airplanes, weather. The light changes by two f-stops every thirty seconds. Noise. Crickets, for Christ's sake. Any of them can screw you up, force you to spend even more time with the actors. Give me a sound stage any day."

The wheels squealed against the curb, and we stopped. I threw open the door and climbed out, hot air slapping me in the chest. Dixie climbed out on his side, his face screwed up into a martyr's scowl. "The torture chamber," he said, indicating a van, larger than any of the others, that had MR. VANE painted on its side.

As we approached the set, the confusion began to resolve itself. Lights and big reflectors were angled to illuminate an area of brick walkway that led from the front door of a big wooden house down to the street. Bushes in tubs had been placed on either side of it to make the scene more lush. Two people I'd never seen before, a middle-aged woman and a gigantic male, came out of the open door, strolled down the walk, and paused there, doing nothing. Lights were focused on a black circle of paper hanging from the giant's neck. I saw Toby standing on the sidelines, arms crossed, looking sour and critical.

"Stand-ins," Dixie said. "They're lighting the shot."

"Who's Paul Bunyan standing in for?"

"Toby."

"That's the best you can do? He's twice Toby's height."

"That's John," Dixie said in a guarded voice. "That thing around his neck is where Toby's face will be. You want Toby, you get John. He's dumber than dirt, but Toby likes him."

"Hey, Simeon," someone called. A slim figure in blue jeans and a tank top came toward us, hugging a clipboard. As she neared she turned into Janie Gordon.

"What are you doing here?" she and I asked simultaneously.

Janie laughed, went onto tiptoe, and kissed me. "Working continuity," she said. "I've been on the show all year."

"How's your mom?"

It wasn't an idle question. Janie's mom was a seriously crazy lady who spent half her life driving away the people she loved and the other half trying to get them back. She'd hired me to bring Janie back, and I'd done it twice before we decided it wasn't doing anyone any good. We had more or less coerced her mother into therapy with an oily shrink who made his patients call him Howard, with the result that her mother had married and then divorced the therapist, and Janie had escaped into her own apartment. The last time I'd seen Janie, her mother was trying to get the therapist back.

"About a week away from Thorazine," Janie said. "Doctor Fine, that's the new one, and he's so ugly I don't worry about him, Dr. Fine is on vacation. She's at the stage where coffee gets her manic and she starts calling every fifteen minutes. That starts after the third cup, about ten-thirty. First thing I do when I get home every night is spend half an hour erasing everything on my answering machine. Jesus, you look great. When are you going to get old, anyway?"

"When I give up my bad habits. What's her complaint?"

"Guess. Nobody loves her. The world has forgotten her." Janie rolled her eyes in an exact imitation of her mother. "She could have been a great actress if she hadn't given it all up for Daddy and me. Of course, she hadn't worked for years before she got married, but she doesn't remember that. And she sounds so alone."

"She's not alone," I said. "She's got Snuggie." Snuggie was a loathsome little fox terrier, the only dog I'd ever met who should have been born a cat.

"That's the problem. Snuggie ran away."

I tried not to laugh, but I couldn't help it. After a reproachful glance, Janie joined in. She put her hand on my arm and dropped her clipboard. "At least," she said between giggles, "she's forgotten about Howard." She bent down to pick up her clipboard, then snapped back up as someone gave her rear end a loud slap.

"Hey, champ," Toby said, letting his hand rest on the back of Janie's pants. He was grinning. "I see you've already met the beautiful Miss Somebody."

Janie dusted his hand off her rear and picked up the clipboard. She looked from Toby to me, and she wasn't laughing. "Don't catch anything," she said to me, "that you can't cure." Looking betrayed, she turned and walked quickly back toward the cameras.

"What a behind she's got on her," Toby said. "It's enough to make you believe in God. Almost. What happened to you last night?" The swelling on his lower lip had nearly subsided. His face was orange with makeup.

"I had to go someplace," I said.

"Hey," he said, throwing an arm around my shoulders and guiding me toward the set. "Don't wear yourself out apologizing. We could have had fun, you and your little bartender and Nana and me." He waved off a middle-aged woman who had materialized, autograph pad in hand. "Later, darling," he said. "Old Toby's working." He grinned at her sweetly and then turned to a beefy individual in a high velocity T-shirt who had apparently followed him. "Get that twat to the other side of the street." He was still grinning, but the steroid user jumped as though he'd been goosed with a cattle prod. The last I saw of the fan she was being hustled across the asphalt to the other side of the street.

"Did she want that autograph for herself?" he asked rhetorically. "No. It would have been for her cousin or her daughter or the milkman." His arm was heavy on my shoulders. "It's like asking for an autograph is admitting you're a retard, but tucked away somewhere in some low-rent dogshit house there's someone who's just dumb enough to want one. Still, they ask, and I suppose that's something."

We had reached the set, and people parted before us like the Red Sea in front of Moses. Toby plopped down into a canvas chair and stretched out his denim-clad legs. He was wearing lizard-skin boots. "A chair for my friend," he said, snapping his fingers in the direction of a nervous-looking girl wearing surplus-store military camouflage. Abashed that her cloak of invisibility hadn't worked, she scurried away and, seconds later, pressed a chair against the back of my legs. I sat, turning to smile thanks, but she was already in full retreat.

"So," Toby said, poking me with a finger. "You're mine now."

"Back off," I said. "Nobody bought me for you. I can go whenever I want."

"Okay," Toby said placidly. "You're on loan. Norman doesn't have a lot of good ideas, but this is one of them."

"You mean you like it? Why? I'd hate it."

"Nah. I can use a baby-sitter. Hell, I know that. I don't like to get into trouble, you know." He sounded as though trouble descended on him from the skies unexpectedly and at random. "And besides, I've got a piece of the syndication bucks. I sold my residuals to Norman for a couple million, but I've got a contingency if the loot tops forty."