Timothy Hallinan - Everything but the Squeal

“Wayne,” I said, flourishing the knife. It was an improvement on the pen. “I can take out your kidney from the front too, you know.”

“Yeah, sure,” he said. “Aimee,” he said. He was all jitters. His eyes shifted left to right and his knees bounced up and down. He seemed incapable of controlling the fluttering of his hands. They flew around him like demented butterflies. First they smoothed his hair, then they laid flat the wings of his collar, then they checked his buttons, and then they brushed the cloth of his trousers.

“The hands,” I said. “Sit on them.” I'd checked his hip pockets, but his hands were making me nervous.

“Sure,” he said, following orders. “Look, I'm sitting on them.”

With his hands imprisoned, the kinetic energy in his body jolted willfully through his other systems. His shoulders twitched as though they had an agenda of their own. He crossed his legs and then uncrossed them. His feet tapped on the floor.

“You're a very jumpy man,” I said.

“Well, who wouldn't be?” he said with a pale attempt at defiance. “I get a call from some kid saying Aimee's here and then you stab me in the back, and all I was doing was having a good time.”

“Wayne,” I said. “You absolutely can't imagine what an asshole I think you are. Let's talk about your wife.”

He retreated into himself, growing physically smaller, if possible, as he did so. “No,” he said, “you win.”

“Aimee,” I prompted.

He sagged on the bed. With his hands under him he couldn't straighten himself. “She wanted it.”

“She wanted someplace to sleep.”

“Aaaah,” he said, blinking. His eyelids were as thick as a lizard's. “She knew what she was doing.”

“No, Wayne,” I said. “You taught her what she was doing. You and some other respectable citizens. You know why she came to Hollywood? To become a star, that's why.” I tested the edge of the knife against my thumb. “She really believed she could become a star. Isn't that a joke? To become a star.”

“Well,” he said, eyeing the knife, “maybe she will.”

“What?” I said. “What does that mean?”

The bathroom door creaked.

“Hey,” he said wildly. “I thought you said we were alone.”

“I said we were as alone as we were going to be.”

“Cops,” he said, standing upright. “I don't have to be afraid of cops.”

“Sit,” I said.

“We're not cops,” Jessica said.

He turned toward her and then to me. I was between him and the door, the knife in my hand. He gave her a long look, tried to make sense of it, and then gave up. “Who's she?” he said, pointing at Jessica.

“The Ghost of Christmas Past,” I said. “Are you going to sit, or not?” He sat, doing a jitterbug of conflicting emotions. He pulled at the crease in his pants and he tugged at the wispy little beard. It stayed on.

“What do you mean, Aimee will be a star?” I asked.

“She got an agent,” he said. He sat back down on the bed.

I didn't believe my ears. “An agent? What was his name?”

“I don't know,” he said.

“What kind of an agent?”

“A kids' agent, what do you think?”

“How’d she find the agent?”

“Got the name from some kid, I guess. Jesus, I don't know.”

“The name, Wayne.”

“I told you. I don't remember.” He brightened. “Some kind of vegetable.”

“A vegetable?” I said, slicing through the air with the knife.

“A vegetable,” Warner said. “Even if you cut me, I don't remember nothing more.”

“That's good enough,” Simeon,” Jessica said.

“It's good enough when I say it's good enough. This little bedbug has a way to go yet.” I got up from the chair. “This is going to hurt me more than it does you,” I said, “although that's probably not true.”

He squirmed back and finally fell full-length on the bed, his hands still trapped obediently behind him.

“Holy Jesus,” he gasped. “I told you, I told you, I don't remember. God, don't you think I'd tell you? I hate knives. What do you want from me?”

“Everything,” I said.

“She was going to have her picture taken,” he said with a burst of inspiration. “She told me she was going to have her picture taken.”

“Did she tell you the photographer's name?”

“Yes. I mean, no. I mean, yes, but I'm no fucking good with names. Holy Jesus, I told you this much, why wouldn't I tell you the name?”

It was a good point. “I sure hope you keep this knife sharp, Wayne,” I said. “Where was the photographer?”

“Somewhere on Melrose. She said Melrose. Near here, probably.”

“And the agent?”

“I don't remember. Please, can I go home now?” He was wringing wet.

“The agent's name, Wayne.”

“I told you. Holy Jesus, I told you. Some kind of vegetable.”

I looked at Jessica, who was watching openmouthed, and closed the knife.

“Some kind of vegetable,” I said.

An hour later Jessica had talked to Annie and Wyatt, and I'd been hung up on by my parents and Roxanne. My mother had sworn at me with Irish creativity, and Roxanne had made me listen to a page being torn out of her phone book.

“You know my number by heart,” I'd said unwisely.

“I didn't before,” she said, “and now I won't again.” That was when she'd hung up.

Jessica was sitting on the bed, regarding me as though I were someone new. The business with the knife had impressed her, and not in a way I'd hoped to impress her.

“Mad, huh?” she said.

“Madder than Qaddafi.”

“Who?”

“Jessica, don't you know anything?”

She sat back, stung. “He's that greaser in the Gulf,” she said. “I just needed to think for a second.”

“Well, think for a minute more. When I get back, we'll have a quiz on the politics of the Mediterranean.” I got up and went out the door.

“Hey,” she said plaintively as the door closed, “don't leave me alone.” It was a little late in the day for plaintive.

The old dame in the Lucite fortress stared up at me disbelievingly. It had only taken eight rings on the bell to get her to turn away from a late-night rerun of WheelofFortune , the last three minutes of which I'd watched over her shoulder on a tiny black-and-white TV so old that it probably ran on steam.

“Another room?” she repeated as though I were crazy.

“Another,” I said very slowly. “Room.”

“You mean, two?” she said.

I sighed and held up two fingers. Verbal communication was getting me nowhere.

“Full up,” she said, as pleased as her place in life made it possible for her to be. “Where's my twenty?” She grinned, showing me a raddled picket fence of decaying calcium with much potential for expensive dental work.

“Waiting for a room key.”

“You already got a room key.”

“Yes, I do,” I said wearily, “and I need another.”

“Can't have one,” she snapped. “No vacancy.”

“In this rathole?”

“My twenty,” she said, looking over her shoulder at the TV. “I could rent your room too,” she added. “Rent it five times by sunup. Rats or no rats.” She gave me the ruined teeth again, like a preview of a mine collapse in West Virginia.

“But you'd have to stop watching Vanna,” I said, tearing my gaze from the dental disaster area and up to her fierce little eyes.

“She's over in a few minutes. The twenty. I don't get it, I call the cops. They'd love the Little Woman.” She infected both words with a kind of swampy, virulent meaning.

“What about a roll-away?” I said.

“The twenty.”

I gave it to her. There was nothing else to do.