Dean Koontz - Sole Survivor

Not a ghost.

Rest in peace, Henry James.

As he progressed through Santa Monica toward the ocean, Joe’s brief embrace of superstition loosened, lost all passion. Reason returned.

Nevertheless, something about the concept of a ghost continued to seem significant to him. He had a hunch that eventually he would arrive at a rational explanation derived from this consideration of the supernatural, a provable theory that would be as logical as the meticulously structured prose of Henry James.

A needle of ice. Piercing to the grey matter in the centre of the spine. An injection, a quick cold squirt of… something.

Did Nora Vadance feel that ghost needle an instant before she got up from the breakfast table to fetch the camcorder?

Did the Delmanns feel it?

And Lisa?

Did Captain Delroy Blane feel it, too, before he disengaged the auto pilot, clubbed his First Officer in the face, and calmly piloted Flight 353 straight into the earth?

Not a ghost, perhaps, but something fully as terrifying and as malevolent as any evil spirit returned from the abyss of the damned, something akin to a ghost.

When Joe was two blocks from the Pacific, the cell phone rang for the third time.

The caller said, ‘Okay, turn right on the Coast Highway and keep driving until you hear from us again.’

To Joe’s left, less than two hours of sunlight lay over the ocean, like lemon sauce cooking in a pan, gradually thickening to a deeper yellow.

In Malibu, the phone rang again. He was directed to a turnoff that would take him to Santa-Fe-by-the-Sea, a Southwest restaurant on a bluff overlooking the ocean.

‘Leave the phone on the passenger’s seat and give the car to the valet. He knows who you are. The reservation is in your name,’ said the caller, and he hung up for the last time.

The big restaurant looked like an adobe lodge transported from New Mexico, with turquoise window trim, turquoise doors, and walkways of red-clay tiles. The landscaping consisted of cactus gardens in beds of white pebbles — and two large sorrel trees with dark green foliage and sprays of white flowers.

The Hispanic valet was more handsome by far than any current or past Latin movie star, affecting a moody and smouldering stare that he had surely practiced in front of a mirror for eventual use in front of a camera. As the man on the phone had promised, the valet was expecting Joe and didn’t give him a claim check for the Mustang.

Inside, Santa-Fe-by-the-Sea featured massive lodgepole-pine ceiling beams, vanilla-coloured plaster, and more red-clay payers. The chairs and tables and other furnishings, which fortunately didn’t push the Southwest theme to extremes, were J. Robert Scott knockoffs though not inexpensive, and the decorator’s palette was restricted to pastels used to interpret classic Navajo motifs.

A fortune had been spent here; and Joe was acutely aware that by comparison to the decor, he was a scruffy specimen. He hadn’t shaved since leaving for Colorado more than twelve hours ago. Because most contemporary male movie stars and directors indulged in a perpetually adolescent lifestyle, blue jeans were acceptable attire even at many tony establishments in Los Angeles. But his new corduroy jacket was wrinkled and baggy from having been rain-soaked earlier, and he had the rumpled look of a traveller — or a lush coming off a bender.

The young hostess, as beautiful as any famous actress and no doubt passing time in food service while waiting for the rote that would win her an Oscar, seemed to find nothing about his appearance to disdain. She led him to a window table set for two.

Glass formed the entire west wall of the building. Tinted plastic blinds softened the power of the declining sun. The view of the coastline was spectacular as it curved outward both to the north and south — and the sea was the sea.

‘Your associate has been delayed,’ the hostess said, evidently referring to Demi. ‘She’s asked that you have dinner without her, and she’ll join you afterwards.’

Joe didn’t like this development. Didn’t like it at all. He was eager to make the connection with Rose, eager to learn what she had to tell him — eager to find Nina.

He was playing by their rules, however. All right. Thanks.’

If Tom Cruise had undergone cosmetic surgery to improve his appearance, he might have been as handsome as Joe’s waiter. His name was Gene, and he seemed to have had a twinkle surgically inserted in each of his gas-flame-blue eyes.

After ordering a Corona, Joe went to the men’s room and winced at the mirror. With his beard stubble, he resembled one of the criminal Beagle Boys in old Scrooge McDuck comics. He washed his hands and face, combed his hair, and smoothed his jacket. He still looked like he should be seated at not a window table but a Dumpster.

Back at his table, sipping ice-cold beer, he surveyed the other patrons. Several were famous.

An action-movie hero three tables away was even more stubbled than Joe, and his hair was matted and tousled like that of a small boy just awakened from a nap. He was dressed in tattered black jeans and a pleated tuxedo shirt.

Nearer was an Oscar-nominated actor and well-known heroin addict in an eccentric outfit fumbled from the closet in a state of chemical bliss: black loafers without socks, green-plaid golf pants, a brown-chequered sportscoat, and a pale blue-denim shirt. In spite of his ensemble, the most colourful things about him were his bloodshot eyes and his swollen, flame-red eyelids.

Joe relaxed and enjoyed dinner. Pureed corn and black-bean soups were poured into the same dish in such a way as to form a yellow and black yin-and-yang pattern. The mesquite-grilled salmon was on a bed of mango-and-red-pepper salsa. Everything was delicious.

While he ate, he spent as much time watching the customers as he did staring at the sea. Even those who were not famous were colourful, frequently ravishing, and generally engaged in one sort of performance or another.

Los Angeles was the most glamorous, tackiest, most elegant, seediest, most clever, dumbest, most beautiful, ugliest, forward looking, retro — thinking, altruistic, self-absorbed, deal-savvy, politically ignorant, artistic-minded, criminal-loving, meaning-obsessed, money-grubbing, laid-back, frantic city on the planet. And any two slices of it, as different as Bel Air and Watts, were nevertheless uncannily alike in essence: rich with the same crazy hungers, hopes, and despairs.

By the time he was finishing dinner with mango bread pudding and jalapeno ice cream, Joe was surprised to realize how much he enjoyed this people-watching. He and Michelle had spent afternoons strolling places as disparate as Rodeo Drive and City Walk, checking out the ‘two-footed entertainment,’ but he had not been interested in other people for the past year, only in himself and his pain.

The realization that Nina was alive and the prospect of finding her were slowly bringing Joe out of himself and back to life.

A heavy-set black woman in a red and gold muumuu and two pounds of jewellery had been spelling the hostess. Now she escorted two men to a nearby table.

Both of these new patrons were dressed in black slacks, white silk shirts, and black leather jackets as supple as silk. The older of the two, approximately forty, had enormous sad eyes and a mouth sufficiently sensuous to assure him a contract to star in Revlon lipstick advertisements. He would have been handsome enough to be a waiter — except that his nose was red and misshapen from years of heavy drinking, and he never quite closed his mouth, which gave him a vacuous look. His blue-eyed companion, ten years younger, was as pink-faced as if he had been boiled — and plagued by a nervous smile that he couldn’t control, as if chronically unsure of himself.