Graham Masterton - Mirror

'I don't know. I guess I dropped it.'

'Find it... give it to me. Come on, quickly.'

'Theo — if it's that dangerous —'

Theo lifted his head. His mouth was so bloodstained he looked as if he had been cramming raspberries into it all morning. Sticky, red, peculiarly childish.

'If you don't give me that key, I'm never going to speak to you again.'

The threat was so absurd that Martin realized Theo was serious. He dabbled around in the spreading lake of blood, and there by the leg of Theo's dark-stained pants was the key. Theo reached out for it, and Martin pressed it reluctantly into his hand.

The ambulance had parked on Sunset, outside the entrance to Butterfield's; and the paramedics were already hurrying down the steps. Theo closed his eyes and for a moment Martin, kneeling in his rapidly cooling blood, was sure that he was dead. The paramedics came up to him and lifted the table aside and said, 'Okay, sir, give us some space, will you?'

Theo lifted one bloody arm. 'Martin . . .' he mouthed. 'Martin . ..'

Martin tried to get close to him, but one of the paramedics backhanded him away. 'Come on, friend, this man needs space.'

'Martin!' Theo choked. 'Martin!'

Martin pleaded with the paramedic, 'I have to get close. Listen, I have to hear what he's got to say.'

'You want to kill him, or what?' the paramedic demanded. 'This man has a punctured lung. Now, do us all a favor, and take a powder — and that's being polite.'

They were testing Theo's vital signs and unwrapping an oxygen mask. But before they could press the mask over Theo's face, he propped himself up on one elbow and bubbled, 'Martin! Martin, listen to me! The Hollywood Divine! The Hollywood Divine!'

'What?' asked Martin, baffled.

'Used to go there .. . when I was a boy . . . father took me .. . cocktail lounge .. . Here! take the key! The Hollywood Divine! Leopard-skin banquettes .. . gold-tinted mirrors . . . Here! Martin! The key!'

Theo waved the key; and impatiently, one of the paramedics passed it back to Martin. 'Guy's out of his tree,' the paramedic remarked, covering Theo's face with the oxygen mask.

Martin waited while the paramedics sent back Theo's vital signs to the hospital. Then he asked, 'Where are you going to take him?'

'Sisters of Mercy, that's the nearest.'

'All right,' said Martin, Til follow you.'

'No tailgating, that's all,' the paramedic told him as he rolled Theo's bloody body onto a stretcher.

'In a Rabbit?' said Martin bitterly.

CHAPTER SIX

Theo died at 3:46 that afternoon. Martin was sitting in the reception area when Sister Michael came rustling up in her white habit and white wimple to tell him that all their efforts to save him had been to no avail.

'Was he a close friend of yours, Mr Williams?' Sister Michael asked him, with a face like the Angel of Solicitude carved in wax.

Martin said, 'No, I met him for the first time today.'

'We did everything possible. But his lungs collapsed. You can talk to the doctors later, if you wish.'

Ramone appeared, wearing a black T-shirt and black jeans and looking unhappy. 'I called his house. Some boy answered. His boyfriend, I guess. Said he thought there was a sister in Indiana, anyway he's going to check through his address book and call her.'

'At least he's at peace now, in the Kingdom of Heaven,' said Sister Michael.

'What?' asked Ramone. Then, 'Sure - oh, yes.' He glanced at Martin and made a face. Martin had already told him about Theo's description of the world beyond, with its talking turtles and its people with stretched-out heads.

Sister Michael laid a cool pale hand on Martin's shoulder. 'If there's anything else that I can do, please don't hesitate to call me. When somebody passes on, we do recognize the need to comfort those who are left behind.'

'Yes, thank you,' said Martin.

Ramone sat down on one of the gray fabric couches and tightly crossed his arms. Up above his head, a painting of a gentle-faced Madonna smiled down at him, with an expression that forgave all human weakness. 'What do we do now?' Ramone wanted to know. 'If Homer Theobald couldn't help us - if he wound up getting wasted - then what hope do the rest of us have?' He leaned forward and asked, 'You really think it was the mirror that wasted him? All that way away?'

Martin shrugged. 'He seemed to think so. I showed him that key and he went white. I mean he was gibbering. I wish to God I hadn't now. He might still be alive.'

Ramone took out a cheroot, but the nun at the nurses' station silently pointed to the sign which said Nofumadores.

'How did she know I speak Spanish?' Ramone whispered, replacing the cheroot in its carton.

'She must've guessed. Or maybe she read / Viva Las Patillas! on the back of your T-shirt.'

Ramone said, 'Let's take a look at that key.'

Martin handed it to him. While he had been waiting to hear if Theo would survive, he had taken it to the hospital washroom and carefully rinsed Theo's blood off it. Ramone turned it over and over and then handed it back. 'It's just a plain ordinary key.'

'Well, maybe it is and maybe it isn't. I think we should go to the Hollywood Divine and find out, don't you? There's nothing to keep us here.'

'I don't even know if the Hollywood Divine is still standing,' said Ramone. 'They demolished most of that block last year.'

'AH we can do is take a look.'

Sister Michael intercepted them again as they walked toward the elevators. 'Mr Williams! Mr Perez! Did you want to view Mr Theobald before you left?'

Martin looked at Ramone, and Ramone bulged his eyes in an expression which unequivocally meant 'no way'.

'Thanks,' said Martin. 'But I think I'd just like to remember him the way he was.'

'How was that?' asked Ramone as they went down in the elevator to the hospital lobby.

'Alive,' Martin replied.

The Hollywood Divine Hotel had been erected in 1927 by Daniel T. Rolls, the wealthy second son of the Rolls hotel family of Pasadena. It stood two blocks north of the celebrated intersection of Hollywood and Vine, a fanciful creation in the neoclassical picture-palace style that had been popularized by Eve Leo.

In its heyday, the Hollywood Divine had been celebrated for its eccentric and arty clientele - the West Coast equivalent of the Algonquin in New York. But with the squalid death of its founder in 1938 (cocaine, bourbon, inhalation of vomit), it had quickly lost its cachet. Now it stood shabby and seedy and ready for demolition, its pale pink stone corroded by vehicle fumes, its marquee half collapsed, its marble steps stained with urine and measled with chewing gum.

'I could have sworn they knocked this place down already,' Ramone remarked as they parked outside in Martin's Mustang.

They were immediately approached by a thin-faced kid with a crimson punk hairstyle. 'Hey, friend, take care of your car?'

Martin reached into his shirt pocket and gave the kid two dollars. 'There's another three where that came from if the stereo stays where it is.'

'You got it,' the kid told him.

Three young hookers were standing outside the hotel, two black and one white, in skintight satin miniskirts and halter tops. They were all pretty: one of them was almost beautiful. She winked at Martin as he went up the steps and he couldn't help smiling back.

'Made yourself a friend?' asked Ramone.

They pushed their way through the bronze and glass doors of the Hollywood Divine and into the gloomy lobby. The carpet was rancid; so filthy and stained that it was impossible to tell what color it had originally been. There was a suffocating smell of marijuana and body odour and disinfectant. Six or seven scarecrows were sitting on the ripped-open leopard-skin seats where John Barrymore and Bette Davis had once sat, sharing bottles of muscatel from brown paper bags and sniffing in chorus.