John Shirley - Wetbones

Then he felt her go tense. "Nothing can stay like this," she said. "Why can't anything sustain for more than a few minutes? Or more than an hour at most? I could accept the downsides of life if there were more upsides. But there's an imbalance. It's mostly either downsides or dull gray areas, you know what I mean?"

"Yes," he said wearily. "I know what you mean." He was thinking that he was simply hearing the point of view that came when her depression hit her. She couldn't sustain simple warmth long, it was true. It was either a glittering up or a slide downward. There were few plateaus for Amy.

For the hundredth time he wondered how much of it was "a neurochemical imbalance" and how much was just the skew of her personality, her tendency to subvert happiness because of some childhood trauma. If it was the latter, it was something that could be overcome. But if he raised that point she'd get defensive…

Maybe he should just cut her loose. She was a basket-case and she didn't want to really do anything about it. He ought to let her basket drift like the baby Moses on the river. Trust that somebody would find her. He just couldn't take responsibility for another person's sanity.

"And that's what you did," Fellini's heroine said, on the TV screen, turning to look at him. "You cut Amy loose, didn't you Prentice?"

Prentice looked at Amy accusingly. "Don't put things in the movie. It's not respectful to the artist."

"You pushed me into leaving you," Amy said. "You wanted to get away from me. It was simple as that, wasn't it, Tommy? You had that affair and let me find out and then you acted as if you were sorry and wanted to go on but you were about as happy as a snail in a saltshaker -"

"A very colourful turn of phrase, Amy. I felt like a snail in a saltshaker. I felt like I was burning up with you. I had to babysit you constantly, and reassure you all the time, tell you it was all right ten thousand ways, and then endure your up moments – you were obnoxious when you were up as often as you were charming."

''So you cut me loose. Tom, how much is enough love? How much giving in love is too much? How do you tally it? You have units of love worked out on a calculator? How did you decide you were giving too much? You weren't the only one who gave. You could get pretty fucking moody yourself. You were really a pain in the ass when you were the aggrieved, sulking artiste because the screenplay was not going right or the critics had fucked you over."

"Yeah, probably. But it was a tempest in a teapot compared to your cyclone, Amy."

"To you. Anyway, I don't give up all that easily, Tommy. You're not really going to that party on Saturday, are you?"

He was staring at her. The golden reds and silky yellows with which Fellini had coloured his film were playing across her face, and the shadows seemed to run together in her eyesockets… to deepen in her cheeks and to etch out her breastbone…

She was sinking into herself. Shrivelling. Like the snail. Like the girl in the morgue.

He could smell the death on her.

He felt a purer fear, in that moment, than any he'd felt since early childhood. A four year old child was only four years and a few months from nullity – from the echoing void of pre-consciousness. That's why, he thought, small children could fear so deeply: in some visceral way, they remembered death.

Prentice shrank, too, from the blacklight, the negative shine of that fear truly pure and childlike fear of death.

He wrenched himself awake. Sat up on the sofa in Jeff's office, shaking and stupid with disorientation. That dream had been too well organized. It was far more coherent and thoughtful, in its argumentation and insights, than dreams ever were, in Prentice's experience. Dreams, if they meant anything, were metaphor. This one had been more like a goddamn essay…

And Amy was still with him. Her presence was almost palpable in the dim, cluttered office. He could taste Amy. He could smell her. He could feel her hair under his fingers.

He shook himself, muttering, "Cut it the fuck out," He went to get himself a drink, in the kitchen; some of Jeff's German stuff, Jaegermeister, chilled in the freezer! He poured himself a stiff one and drank it off. Amy drew away from him, a little. He poured himself another. Day after tomorrow was the party. Tomorrow, during the day, he'd try to get out of himself, enjoy himself. Give himself a chance to see things fresh…

Almost eleven-thirty, Friday morning. Prentice was strolling down Melrose Avenue. It was sunny but not yet too hot, and the street, on this block anyway, was reasonably clean. The exercise felt good, and the smog was mild. He was almost in a good mood.

He passed a newspaper vending machine, and glimpsed some headlines. LAPD ADMITS "WETBONES" IS HOMICIDE. He ignored it, very deliberately. He didn't want to know about whatever it was.

Not today, anyway.

He checked out a few of the displays in the windows of the self-consciously arty boutiques. Glanced over a display of black rubber outfits for casual wear. He imagined hearing Amy comment: How hot and sweaty and itchy are you willing to be for fashion?

Farther on, a mannequin that had been spraypainted in gold and silver graffiti was posed like a fan of Faith No More in mid hiphop frenzy, wearing a black and red lace miniskirt and corset; it was dancing in a tangle of barbed wire. Now that corset and skirt I love, Prentice imagined Amy saying. I'm such a sucker for underwear that can disguise itself as a dress… I wonder how much it is…

The boutique was playing a song by The Cars that he remembered, called "You Wear Those Eyes." Amy had been enamoured of The Cars. Ric Ocasek was "just so grotesquely adorable". Prentice couldn't stand Ocasek's singing voice. Now he found himself singing along. Which was surprising – he was sure he'd never learned the lyrics to this one. The singing sounded better to him now.

He realized he was hungry and thirsty and his legs were hurting. I'm in rotten shape, he thought. He stopped in at a cafe that attempted to be a Parisian bistro, and ordered soup, bread, brie, and capuccino. Amy would have found the soup too thick with stock, but he liked it that way.

He ate and rested. Buzzing a little on the capuccino, he paid the check and continued down the street, stopping in at a couple of galleries. One of them was the sort that sell decorator art and impressionist prints to people who don't want to take chances on their own taste. He saw a couple of coloured etchings there by the same artist who'd done the pictures in Arthwright's guest room. He thought about calling Lissa, and asking her if she wanted to join him, take a turn about the galleries with him. No, don't be pushy.

He moved on to a gallery of local artists, paintings by gay neoexpressionists with frantic, guilt-edged images of copulation and self mutilation. He thought about Mitch's arms…

He hurried on to another artist: Gaudy paintings that were really arty political cartoons: Bush and Gorbacev jacking each other off on a heap of starving, suffering underclass.

These pictures, Amy said, are too didactic to last beyond the time. The curse of preachiness.

What Amy would have said, he reminded himself.

There was one painting that was more personal than political: A woman alone, on foot, on a freeway overpass, evidently despite all the painter's cartoonish hysteria – considering jumping off the bridge into the thick, brutish flow of traffic beneath.

Looking at it, Prentice felt a surge of reawakened memory. Memory of a feeling, mostly: what he'd felt when Amy had first left him. A sense of betrayal mixed with relief. Or was that what Amy had felt? He wasn't sure. He wanted her, suddenly, in his arms… He could almost feel her. could taste her lips, the distinctive flavour of her flesh and her favourite lipstick.