John Shirley - Wetbones

Arthwright had drifted away and Prentice felt at a loss for a moment. She looked at him with finely tuned expectancy. He went for it. "You one of the 12-step crowd that only drinks mineral water, or can I get you a drink?"

"I'd really love a beer," she said. Her voice was husky, warm, its tone seeming to say, Don't worry about it. Just take it easy and we'll be fine.

He went hurriedly to the bar. Jeff was at the other end, hitting on a skinny girl with Mayan designs cut into the hair on the sides of her head. Ordering the beer, Prentice had a moment of uncertainty about whether to include the slice of lime; lime with beer had gone from hip know-how to unhip fad, lately, but she might expect it. He discarded the lime, and came back to her with the beer, and she smiled and said, "Dead on."

Prentice was feeling better about the party all the time. Sure, the girl was probably going to be a typical L.A. air-head, but what the hell. Take some time and live, man, he told himself. Maybe the sense of emergency that'd been dogging him was a phantom. Maybe Mitch's disappearance wasn't really his problem. and it wasn't so important. Maybe it was time he put Amy out of his head too. Because there was nothing he could do about her. And as a lot of L.A. bumper stickers said, Guilt sucks.

"So – you work with Zack?" he asked. As if he were on a first name basis with Arthwright.

"Well, not yet. I'm a model. But really I'm an actress…"

He nodded mechanically – then she giggled behind her beer bottle. "You nod so gravely, but I saw the look in your eyes. I was kidding. I'm not a model or an actress. I'm a secretary at the studio. But Zack fucked me a couple of times and, in consequence, he feels like he has to invite me to parties so he doesn't feel like a shit."

He almost choked on his drink.

"I'm sorry," she went on. "Am I supposed to be less candid than that?"

"No, no – that's great -" He laughed. "You got me twice. Once with bullshit and once with the truth."

"Yeah. You're fun. Maybe I can say something to make you trip and fall into the pool."

"Have mercy, okay?"

"Oh, all right. I really did like Broken Windows.

I thought I saw that funny-and-sad middle period of Truffaut's in there."

"Yep. You got my influence on a platter. That period of Truffaut and – sometime I'd like to do an updating of Noel Coward."

"Noel Coward for the 90s – that's almost a high concept pitch. Except the illiterate MBA's that run things around here never read him or saw his plays."

"Good point," he admitted. "You like Kurosawa?"

The conversation veered between film makers and novelists and painters, and Prentice felt good about it. He felt he was coming off up to date and reasonably witty. Necessary groundwork for getting laid.

The innuendo flickered from time to time, the flirtation, the lingering moments of eye contact. Then she said, "Hey – let's go look at Arthwright's etchings. I wanta show you something…" She led him away by the wrist as Jeff watched, catching Prentice's eye to put on a comical look of disgusted envy.

Near Malibu

The same moment: another party. A flame-twisted shadow of the party at Arthwright's…

Mitch was watching it out the window, peering between rose-vines. There was music playing, that foreign sounding music with its slightly-warped record but an unwavering beat. There were people dancing but they had the look of extras dancing in a rehearsal for a movie, just going through the motions in an absent sort of way. There were knots of people talking with drinks in their hands, but they all seemed forced and furtive; and each one glanced, now and then, toward the doors of the guest house. Or toward the green, green darkness of the pool.

There was a wind; the roses nodded heavily on their vines. Trees at the edge of the backyard, their clutch of leaves scaly with the slippery sulfur light of the fire, swayed like stoned junkies. But despite the wind the surface of the pool was motionless, glassy as polished green-black obsidian. Perhaps the houses blocked the wind down there (did he hear a noise from the next room – something scraping across the floor? Weren't those two dead yet?) but no, he could see the breeze lift the lank blond hair of a sunken eyed hipster standing six feet from the water, and hustle a few brown leaves along the pool's edge. But the water remained motionless.

Maybe it just looked that way from this distance. (A drawn out scrape from the next room. Why didn't they…)

The light came from the moon, from a couple of table lamps brought out on extension cords, looking awkwardly out of place. Couldn't the dude afford better? Not one of his priorities.

And there was more light from a fire in an outdoor fireplace…

No, it was a bonfire, Mitch saw, looking closer. And it was made up of chairs. A couple of the wooden chairs that had been scattered around the terrace had been piled together. Someone had shoved rags under them and lit the whole thing on fire. The crumbling, burning frames of the chairs looked like the weird geometric structures you saw in your head when you hallucinated on drugs…

Thinking about drugs made him think about the Head Syrup. The painkillers weren't enough.

Someone came into the three intersecting circles of light – the larger wavery yellow circle from the fire, the two smaller duller steady circles from the lamps at opposite corners of the terrace. It was a tall, thin woman with stooped shoulders and hanging, flattened breasts – he could see her tits clearly because she'd slipped out of the arm-loops of her gown and peeled it down to her waist so it hung like an apron. She was walking from the guest-house, carrying something that squirmed in her right hand. It was a thatchy yellow cat. She had it by the tail. She approached the fire and swung the cat underhand into the fullest depths of the flames. Completely engulfed, blinded and turning itself end over end in nerve-rioted confusion, the cat managed only one single high note of anguish before it went into shock.

Mitch looked away, muttering, "You fuckin' assholes."

No one reacted to the small, sadistic event. The woman only stayed to watch for a moment and then, expressionless, walked back toward the house.

Then, abruptly, she stopped walking. She turned, began walking in a new direction. Her feet suddenly uncertain of themselves, moving erratically, she walked a twisty line to a large white metal table around which sat six people. All of them men, one of them the More Man.

The woman pushed between them, shoulders twitching, and climbed onto the table. She flopped heavily onto her back, drew her knees up over her stomach like a surrendering dog, and began to claw herself, slowly and deeply.

Mitch wanted to look away but the More Man glanced up at his window. Seemed to see Mitch there, despite the shadows and the rosebushes. And Mitch found he was unable to look away from the scene.

How did she get the strength to do that to herself? Mitch wondered distantly, watching. Skin was really pretty strong stuff, after all. Peeling it away like that with your bare hands must be hard to do. Once she got the skin out of the way, though, the stuff underneath came more easily. It was much softer, most of it.

Someone got up from the table, walked to the pool. A middle aged man in one of those Mexican suits with the ruffled shirts and glowing lavender lapels. The guy in the pretty suit turned his back on the pool. He got down on his hands and knees, and then lowered himself, filly dressed, into the pool.

No ripples spread out from him as his body broke the surface. Just as his head vanished under the green, green waters, Mitch saw his expression change from indifference to terrified realization. Then he vanished without a ripple.

Mitch watched a while, expecting the guy to bob up again. Nothing.