Stephen Leather - Once bitten

She wouldn't tell me where we were going but gave me directions that took me to a part of LA that I hadn't been to before, dark streets, broken down buildings and vacant lots, burnt-out cars and littered sidewalks. Not my normal part of town, if you get my drift. I was sure that at one point we'd gone around in a circle and for a wild moment I feared that she was setting me up for something. There was, when all was said and done, a corpse with a slashed throat that needed explaining and as far as I knew De'Ath only had one name in the frame. Her's.

"There," she said, and pointed.

"What?"

"There. Park there."

I drew the car into the side and switched off the engine. It turned over for a few seconds before clunking to a halt. The timing was starting to go again. I made to go put she put a restraining hand on my thigh.

"Wait," she said. Images flashed through my mind. A dark sidewalk. A figure in a long, black coat walking up to the car. Bending down. A flash of bright steel. A red curtain. Her mouth. Her smile. Her teeth.

"Are you all right?"

"What?"

"Jeez, Jamie, I know it's way past your bedtime but you're behaving like a total zombie. Wake up. I said, are you all right?"

"I'm fine."

Her hand was still on my thigh. I could feel her nails through the material of my jeans. I hadn't realised how sharp they were, like the claws of an animal. "Will you do something for me?" she asked.

I looked into her eyes. "Anything."

She slowly took her left hand out of her jacket pocket and dropped the rice-filled brown paper bag into my lap. "Put that down your trousers."

"What?"

"Jamie, will you stop saying 'what'. Just do as I say, OK? Shove the bag of rice down the front of your pants. Trust me."

I did as she said and then we both got out of the car. She walked round to my side and linked her arm through mine.

"Don't you ever lock it?" she asked.

"No point. They'd just cut through the soft top."

"They?"

"The bad guys."

She laughed. "You're crazy."

"I'm a psychologist."

"They're not mutually exclusive, you know."

"Maybe you're right." I stopped walking and turned to look at her. "Terry, will you answer me one question?"

"Sure."

"Why am I walking around with a bag of rice down my trousers?"

She giggled and gently hit me on the head with the garbage bags. "That'd shitfire sure spoil the surprise," she said, and tugged at my arm. "Come on, we're nearly there."

We joined a line of people standing outside a movie theatre. Even by Los Angeles standards they were a strange group. Everyone seemed young, at least ten years younger than me. OK, maybe fifteen. Most of the men had make-up on, lots of mascara and eye shadow and black lipstick, and they were wearing long, shabby coats. The girls were in short black miniskirts and fishnet stockings and tops that showed off too much cleavage. Lots of make-up, too, just like the men. There were two big bouncers at the door, frisking everyone as they went in, but they were being friendly about it and there was a lot of laughing and joking. The line moved quickly and when we got to the front the film was obviously close to starting because the body search was fairly cursory. They checked my pockets and looked at Terry's garbage bags but that was about it. She had the tickets ready and on the way through the foyer I saw a couple of posters advertising the film we were going to see. The Rocky Horror Picture Show. A British actor, Tim Curry, playing the part of a kinky transvestite scientist called Frank-N-Furter.

"Have you seen it before?" Terry asked as we went into the darkened theatre.

"No," I answered. "You?"

"Only about a thousand times," she said. "Hurry up, it's starting!"

We were in the middle of the fifth row from the front and we had to squeeze past a motley collection of freaks and weirdoes who were all singing the opening song in time with a huge pair of scarlet lips on the screen. Men were taking off the coats to reveal low-cut dresses and suspender belts.

"Get the rice out," Terry whispered as we sat down. I did as she said, and I could see a girl with spikey blond hair and purple eye-shadow a few seats along slipping a plastic bag of rice from under her leather mini-skirt. She saw me looking at her and winked.

The lips disappeared from the screen and Terry's right hand burrowed into the bag and came out with a handful of rice. She motioned to me to do the same. The audience seemed to have seen he film many times, judging by the way they were yelling out the dialogue and heckling and then, when a wedding scene appeared, the air was filled with flying rice which showered down on us all to the sound of shrieks and cat-calls.

"Neat, isn't it?" laughed Terry, her lips pressed against my ear.

"I've never seen anything like it," I agreed.

"It gets better," she said. "Believe me, it gets better."

An All-American couple called Brad and Janet were singing on the screen, and the audience were going wild. In the aisle a couple wearing outfits matching those of the actors jived and mimed to the soundtrack. Terry handed me one of the garbage bags. "Put this on your head," she whispered.

"What?"

"Put it on your head. Trust me."

There was a rustling around the theatre and it seemed that everyone was either holding a newspaper above their head or wearing a plastic bag. Terry put her bag on and as I followed her example the film changed, Brad and Janet were sitting in a car in a rainstorm. Water began to pour down from above, splattering over the bag on my head and trickling down the back of my neck.

Terry giggled. "There's always someone who manages to smuggle water in," she whispered.

"It's really neat, isn't it?"

"Yeah, neat," I said. "I just hope it's water they're throwing."

The rest of the film was just as chaotic, members of the audience dressed like the characters on screen, lip-synching the dialogue, others screaming out the punchlines, still others rushing up the screen and pointing at things, pretending to help to push buttons, pull levers, open curtains, close cupboards. It was unnerving. Audience participation in an asylum. Terry seemed to know the whole script by heart and she sang along and yelled out punch-lines with the rest of them, occasionally reaching over to squeeze my hand. She was having fun, and what the hell, so was I, sitting in a darkened cinema with enough crazies to fill a year's subscription of Clinical Psychology.

The plot? I can't remember, something about building a man from spare parts, visitors from another planet, lots of men wearing suspenders, and Tim Curry murdering a lobotomised Meatloaf with an icepick. But Terry, her I can picture vividly, her black eyes wide with pleasure, licking her lips and laughing, her hair swinging backwards and forwards, her laugh so cute that I just wanted to take her in my arms and crush her. I was falling in love with her, I knew that with a dread certainty.

The realisation brought with it a flurry of doubts, about how she felt, about the age difference, and above all the fact that I was working for the LAPD and she was a suspect in a homicide investigation. The credits rolled and the lights came on and she turned and caught me looking at her. She frowned and reached up and stroked my cheek.

"Are you OK, Jamie D. Beaverbrook?"

I nodded and brought up my hand to hold hers. "I'm fine." I wanted to tell her how I felt, that she made my heart ache, but I held it back. Fear of rejection, I guess. Or ridicule.

"Do you want a drink? I know somewhere," she said.

"Sure."

We left the cinema arm in arm and walked back to the car. "Is it far?" I asked.

"A few minutes, max," she said.

"On a good horse?"

She giggled. "I like the way you make me laugh, Jamie," she said.