Clive Barker - The Great and Secret Show

"That's just the start," she said to him. She rubbed at the places on her neck where he'd bitten her.

"And what am I supposed to do?" Grillo asked.

She opened the door. Cooler air brushed against his face.

"Lick your fingers," she said.

Only now did he remember the sound he'd heard, and half-expected to see Philip retreating from his spyhole. But there was only the air, drying the spittle on his face to a fine, taut mask.

"Coffee?" she said. She didn't wait for an answer, but headed to the kitchen. Grillo stood and watched her go. His body, weakened by his sickness, had begun to respond to the adrenaline pumped around it. His extremities trembled, as though from the marrow outwards.

He listened to the sound of the coffee-making: water running, cups being rinsed. Without thinking he put his fingers, which smelled strongly of her sex, to his nose and lips.

Jokemeister Lamar got out of the limo at the front of Buddy Vance's house and tried to wipe the smile off his face. It was difficult for him at the best of times, but now—at the worst, with his old partner dead and so many harsh words never healed between them—it was virtually impossible. For every action there was a reaction, and Lamar's reaction to death was a grin.

He'd read once about the origins of the smile. Some anthropologist had theorized that it was a sophisticated form of the ape's response to those unwanted in the tribe: the weak or unstable. In essence it said: You're a liability. Get out of here! From that exiling leer had evolved laughter, which was the baring of teeth to a professional idiot. It too announced contempt, at root. It too proclaimed the object of mirth a liability: one to be kept at bay with grimaces.

Lamar didn't know how the theory stood up to analysis, but he'd been in comedy long enough to believe it plausible. Like Buddy he'd made a fortune acting the fool. The essential difference, in his opinion (and that of many of their mutual friends), was that Buddy had been a fool. Which wasn't to say he didn't mourn the man; he did. For fourteen years they'd been lords of all they'd convulsed, a shared success which left Lamar feeling the poorer for his ex-partner's death despite the breach that had opened between them.

That breach had meant Lamar had met the sumptuous Rochelle once only, and that by accident, at a charity dinner in which he and his wife Tammy had been seated at an adjacent table to Buddy and his bride of the year. That description was one he'd used—to gales of laughter—on several talk shows. At the dinner he'd taken the opportunity of putting one over on Buddy by insinuating himself with Rochelle while the groom was emptying his bladder of champagne. It had been a brief meeting—Lamar had returned to his table as soon as he saw that Buddy had seen him—but must have made some impression because Rochelle had called personally to invite him up to Coney Eye for the party. He had persuaded Tammy that she'd be bored by the shindig and arrived a day early to have some time with the widow.

"You look wonderful," he told her as he stepped over Buddy's threshold.

"It could be worse," she said, a reply which didn't mean that much until, an hour later, she told him that the party thrown in Buddy's honor had been suggested by the man himself.

"You mean he knew he was going to die?" Lamar said.

"No. I mean he came back to me."

Had he been drinking he might well have done the old choking and spraying routine, but he was glad he hadn't when he realized she was deadly serious.

"You mean...his spirit?" he said.

"I suppose that's the word. I don't really know. I don't have any religion, so I don't quite know how to explain it."

''You're wearing a crucifix," Lamar observed.

"It belonged to my mother. I never put it on before."

"Why now? Are you afraid of something?"

She sipped at the vodka she'd poured. It was early for cocktails, but she needed its comfort.

"Maybe, a little," she said.

"Where's Buddy now?" Lamar asked, impressed by his ability to keep a straight face. "I mean...is he in the house?"

"I don't know. He came to me in the middle of the night, said he wanted this party throwing, then he left."

"As soon as the check arrived, right?"

"This isn't a joke."

"I'm sorry. You're right of course."

"He said he wanted everyone to come to the house and celebrate."

"I'll drink to that," Lamar said, raising his glass. "Wherever you are, Buddy. Skol. "

Toast over, he excused himself to go to the bathroom. Interesting woman, he thought as he went. Nuts of course, and—rumor had it—addicted to every chemical high to be had, but he was no saint himself. Ensconced in the black marble bathroom, leered down upon by a row of ghost-ride masks, he set up a few lines of cocaine and snorted himself high, his thoughts turning back to the beauty below. He'd have her; that was the long and short of it. Preferably in Buddy's bed, with Buddy's towels to wipe himself off afterwards.

Leaving his smirking reflection he stepped back on to the landing. Which was Buddy's bedroom? he wondered. Did it have mirrors on the ceiling, like the whore-house in Tucson they'd patronized together once upon a time, and Buddy had said, as he put that damn snake of a dick of his away: one day, Jimmy, I want a bedroom like this?

Lamar opened half a dozen doors before he found the master bedroom. It, like all the other rooms, was decorated with carnivalia. There was no mirror on the ceiling. But the bed was large. Big enough for three, which had always been Buddy's favored number. As he was about to return downstairs Lamar heard water running in the en suite bathroom.

"Rochelle, is that you?"

The light was not on inside, however. Obviously a tap had simply been left to run. Lamar pushed the door open.

From inside, Buddy spoke:

"No light, please."

Without the coke in his system Lamar would have been out of the house before the ghost spoke again, but the drug pumped him up long enough for Buddy to reassure his partner that there was nothing to be afraid of.

"She said you were here," Lamar breathed.

"You didn't believe her?"

"No."

"Who are you?"

"What do you mean: who am I? It's Jimmy. Jimmy Lamar."

"Of course. Come in. We should have words."

"No...I'll stay out here."

"I can't hear you too well."

"Turn off the water."

"I need it to piss."

"You piss?"

"Only when I drink."

"You drink?"

"Do you blame me, with her down there and me unable to touch her?"

"Yeah. That's too bad."

"You'll have to do it for me, Jimmy."

"Do what?"

"Touch her. You're not gay are you?"

"You know better than that."

"Of course."

"The number of women we had together."

"We were friends."

"The best. And I must say you're real sweet, letting me have Rochelle."

"She's yours. And in return—"

"What?"

"Be my friend again."

"Buddy. I missed you."

"I missed you, Jimmy."

"You were right," he said when he got downstairs. "Buddy is here."

"You saw him."

"No, but he spoke to me. He wants us to be friends. Him and me. And you and me. Close friends."

"Then we will be."

"For Buddy."

"For Buddy."

Upstairs, the Jaff turned this new and unexpected element in the game over, and judged it good. He had intended to pass himself off as Buddy—a trick all too easy, given that he'd drunk down the man's thoughts—to Rochelle only. In that form he'd come visiting two nights before, and found her drunk in her bed. It had been easy to coax her into believing he was her husband's spirit; the only difficult part had been preventing himself from claiming marital rights. Now, with the partner under the same delusion, he had two agents in the house to assist him when the guests arrived.