Timothy Hallinan: Skin Deep

I've always had an active pharmaceutical curiosity, a vestige of several years of frequently terrifying experimentation. Against my will, I said, "What's that?"

"A load," he said. "Hey, don't make me talk, I've got to get some spit together." He worked his mouth for a moment, then threw his head back and tossed down all six at once. They went down as though he'd oiled his throat. "One perfect world coming up," he said.

"What's a load?" I'd never heard of it.

"Four codeine-four grams each-and two Doriden. I don't like you very much right now, but I could be crazy about you in a few minutes."

He swallowed hard a couple of times and leaned back. A mile glided by in the thickening dark. To our left, on the beach, one premature rocket slithered its lonely way into the heavens and then blew itself to smithereens, making a bright silver spider in the sky. "Have you got a mirror?" he asked.

I swiveled the rearview toward him without speaking.

He adjusted it and then looked at himself critically. First he extended the nipped tongue and regarded it. Then he took his nose, which I didn't remember having hit, between thumb and forefinger and bent it gently, once to the right and two or three times to the left. He touched a swollen lip and let out a whoosh of breath. "You messed me up pretty good," he said conversationally. "They'll have a shit fit tomorrow."

"What's tomorrow?"

"The usual, only earlier. I've got a six o'clock call."

"For what?"

He returned the mirror to something approximating its original position. "For what?" he repeated. "You're telling me you don't know who I am?"

"I haven't got the faintest idea who you are or who you're supposed to be. All I know is that you pick on people who can't pick back."

"Damsels in distress, is that the bit?" He whistled slowly and tunelessly between his teeth for a moment. "Damsel, that's a corruption of 'mademoiselle,' did you know that?" His voice was beginning to sound a little dreamy.

"Yes," I said.

"There are so many words," he said slowly. "Eskimos are supposed to have a hundred words for snow because it's so important to them. Not because they like it, but because it's important. Do you know how many words we have for chicks?"

"Well, chicks," I said. "That's already a bad beginning."

"Oh, spare me. I am so tired of men who are sensitive to women. That little girl tonight, Nana, now that's a chick. You know what's her favorite art form? MTV. What does she read on a cold winter's night? The Enquirer. When she wants a challenge, People magazine. That's why she likes me. Oh, J forgot. You're not supposed to know who I am."

"I don't know who you are, and I'm losing interest rapidly."

"But Nana's interested. Nana's more than just interested. Nana's going to put up with anything I do because I'm supposed to be somebody special. Anything I want to do, that's okay with Nana. I mean, she's pretty enough to look at twice, but she's just another brainless chick. One out of a hundred and fifty million." He swallowed again and closed his eyes. "Oooh, here it comes," he said. Whatever was coming, it arrived quietly. He sat with his head thrown back. His eyelids twitched. There was a half smile on his face, slack and unmuscled, that robbed his features of the malicious intelligence that had animated them so far. Up close he looked older, and I revised my estimate of his age upward: thirty-four, maybe, holding for dear life on to twenty-nine. Getting a little pouchy here and there, but preserved from ruin by his matinee-idol bone structure. Not for long, though.

It was almost enough to make me feel sorry for him. Almost, but not quite. If there's anything I've learned in my work, it's this: You can always find reasons to feel sorry for shitheads. And when you're finished, they're still shitheads.

He moaned. It sounded like a moan of pleasure. Then, slowly, he pulled himself upright and squinted through the windshield as if he were trying to figure out how far we'd come.

"We keep starting conversations," he said. He was talking very slowly now, as if he had to fish the words out of oily water. "But we never finish them. Nobody ever finishes them. How many conversations have you ever really finished?"

"I'll finish this one. As soon as you get out of the car."

"Every time I try to talk to you, you give me a one-liner."

"This is talking? I thought we were just passing the time until we got to where you could put some ice on your lip. There. That's a two-liner."

"Hey," he said. "You're a person. I'm a person, too. You don't know what was going on. You don't know why I punched her. You came into the scene after the exposition was over. You were just changing channels."

"I didn't like the show."

"What, you put your fist through the screen every time you don't like a program?"

"This wasn't a program. And I don't watch TV. I shot my last one when I was a kid and Nixon was telling me he wasn't a crook."

"Well, hell. At least I didn't use a gun."

"Nixon didn't feel the bullet. Now he's walking around acting like an elder statesman. Even his hairline looks better. Anyway, shooting a television set is one thing. Hitting a woman is another."

"The impulse is the same."

"Impulses are what civilization was created to protect us from."

"Dead wrong." He swallowed thickly. "Civilization was set up to allow the largest number of people to gratify the largest number of impulses and get away with it." His head lolled forward for a moment, and then he snapped it upright. "Money, for example. Civilization's proudest product."

"I thought it was room service."

"Without civilization, Nana's family could kill me. With civilization, money can make it okay. Money is civilization's way of saying you're sorry. Do you really think she wouldn't let me hit her again if there was enough money involved?"

"I think you're full of shit," I said. "Why don't you just sit there and nurse your cuts? Why should you want a conversation with me?"

"It's just the dope," he said after a moment. "Loads make you want to talk to everybody. You want one?"

"No, thanks," I said. "I don't want to talk to everybody."

We rode in silence for a moment. Then he began to laugh. "You really don't like me, do you? I'm Toby Vane."

"Simeon Grist," I said grudgingly. Manners are manners.

"Look," he said. "I'm sorry, okay? I've had a crappy day, a crappy week, in fact, and I was loaded on the wrong stuff. My momma always told me not to drink."

"I'm not the one you should apologize to."

"I'll call her, with you right there, when we get home. I'll go down on my knees. I'll weep and wail. I'll send her a fur coat. I think I've got one around someplace." He laughed again. "It's been a long time since anyone told me I was full of shit."

"Maybe that's your problem. Where do I turn, anyway? We're halfway to Oxnard."

"It's past Zuma. Encinal Canyon, do you know it?"

"I'll find it."

"Ooohh, ooohh, ooohh. Heading into the zone."

"What zone?" I started looking for a speed trap.

"The load zone. Loading zone. I don't know, whatever rarefied zone a load puts me into." He twisted the mirror back toward him and looked into it. "I'm a mess. I'm going to have to wear more makeup tomorrow than Joan Crawford. What do you do for a living?"

"I'm an investigator."

"But you're not a cop." There was some alarm in his voice.

"If I were a cop, you'd have ink all over your fingers, wouldn't you?"

"I put my footprints into cement once." He made a snorting sound, halfway between a wheeze and a laugh. "That's supposed to be a big deal."

"Okay," I said. "You're an actor. You don't need to wear yourself out with oblique references. Here's Zuma."