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“Know how I did it?”
“Magic?”
She flipped the deck so that I could see the cards. It was fifty-two identical jacks of diamonds.
“That’s not real magic,” I said.
“Fooled you.”
“Cheat. You distracted me.”
“I have the power to cloud men’s minds.”
“That you do.”
She slid under the covers still wearing the top hat and mustache and we made love that way. The top hat fell off, but she wore the mustache until morning.
The night after her card trick, I told Alice about magic. I told her it was real and that I was a magician. She liked me well enough by then not to fifty-one-fifty me to the cops, but she looked at me like I’d just told her that I was the king of the mushroom people. So, I pinched the flame off one of the candles she’d lit and made it hop across my fingertips. I charmed old magazines, dirty shirts, and Chinese-restaurant flyers up from the floor, formed them into a vaguely female shape, and had them strut around the apartment like a fashion model. I made my neighbor’s yowling cat speak Russian and Alice’s tattoos move around like little movies under her skin.
She loved it. She was like a kid, shouting, “More! More!” What she didn’t want was anything serious. Every civilian I’d ever shown magic to had the same response—how can we use it to get rich? Let’s manipulate the stock market. Turn invisible and rob a bank. Throw on a glamour so that cops can’t see us.
Alice didn’t ask for any of that. I showed her magic and that was enough for her. She didn’t instantly wonder what the magic could do for her. She loved the magic itself, which meant that she could love me because I wasn’t likely to make anyone rich. We hadn’t been going out that long and she wasn’t sure about me yet. It didn’t matter. I was already nine-tenths in love with her and could wait for as long as it took for her to come around.
It took two more days.
She showed up at my door with a box from a run-down magic shop in Chinatown.
“I can do magic, too,” she said.
“Let’s see.”
The magic box was about the size of two matchboxes. She lifted the top off. Her middle finger lay inside the box, wrapped in bloody cotton around the bottom. The finger wiggled. Stiffened. She held up her hand so the severed finger flipped me the bird, the cheapest of cheap gags. Of course, she hadn’t chopped her finger off. She’d slid it up through a hole in the bottom of the box that already had cotton and fake blood inside. It was about the stupidest thing I’d ever seen.
I kissed her and took her inside. We never talked about her moving in. She just came in and never left, because she knew this was where she should be.
Later, when Alice and I were in bed and still drunk from our one month anniversary party, I told her that I had a dream where we were on a road trip, eating lunch in some anonymous little diner. She told the waitress that we were driving to Vegas to get married by an Elvis impersonator and held up her engagement ring for everyone to see. It was the magic store box, still on her finger. When I finished telling her the story, she bit me lightly on the arm.
“See?” she said. “I told you I can do magic.”
Two
I SNAP AWAKE at the sound of the door slamming downstairs. I sit up, relieved that the pain in my ribs is gone. The good feeling is short-lived, however, when I realize that the room looks like a bad night in a slaughterhouse. The bloody jacket and shirt are still on the floor where I dropped them. I’m covered in dried blood, a lot of which I’ve managed to smear in a crimson Rorschach blot all over the bed while I was asleep.
I toss the jacket and shirt onto the dirty sheet, pull it off the bed and onto the floor. In the bathroom, I use up most of a roll of paper towels scrubbing the blood off me. The bullet wounds are just black welts surrounded by psychedelic-blue-and-purple bruises. If I twist the right way, I can feel the .45 slugs nestled inside me, like marshmallows in Jell-O salad. I’ll probably have to do something about getting them out, at some point, but not now.
The wet paper towels I toss on the sheet with the bloody clothes. In a little storage cabinet under the sink, I find a roll of black plastic garbage bags. Tear one off and stuff the bloody remains of last night’s square dance inside.
It hits me then that I still have a problem. I’ve just thrown away half of my clothes, leaving me with nothing to wear but taped-together boots and scorched jeans, which are starting to crack and come apart in places. For a second, I consider stealing the shirt off Kasabian’s body, but that’s too disgusting even for me. Plus, opening the closet door will just start his head screaming again.
I toss the room, tearing open boxes, looking for a lost and found or something one of the college kids might have left behind. I hit the jackpot—a whole box of store T-shirts is stuffed in the back, under the worktable. The shirts are black, with MAX OVERDRIVE VIDEO printed in big white letters on the back. Printed on the front is a fake store name tag that says Hi. My name is Max. Cute.
I stand by the door for a second, listening to Allegra move around downstairs. I can almost see her in my mind’s eye. She’s young. Bored and annoyed at having to open the store so soon after Christmas. I get a sense of brains and something else. Something she’s trying not to think about as she straightens the shelves and counts the cash in the till. Quietly, I open the door and start down the stairs, then turn around and go right back up. The .45 and Brad Pitt’s stun gun are lying on the floor. I stuff them under the mattress, then head back down.
Allegra is by the door, backlit by the light through the window. She looks to be not much older than I was when I was carried off to Oz. Maybe old enough to drink. Maybe not. She doesn’t wear much makeup. Black around her eyes. Gloss on her lips. She’s thin, with darkish café au lait skin. She’d look like Foxy Brown’s little sister, except her head is shaved smooth. Her coat and skirt are thrift store hand-me-downs, but her boots look expensive. An art school girl with priorities.
She looks up as I unlock the chain at the bottom of the stairs.
“Morning. You must be Allegra.”
Her head snaps up in my direction. “Who are you? Where’s Mr. Kasabian?”
“Kasabian had to leave town. Some kind of family crisis. I’m an old friend. I’ll be in charge of the place while he’s gone.”
That wasn’t the right thing to say. Allegra is angry. She tries to hide it with surprise, but doesn’t pull it off.
“Really?” she asks. “Have you run a video store before?”
“No.”
“Ever run any kind of retail operation?”
I come up front and lean on the counter, checking the floor for blood as I go. Only a few drops that I can spot. I tend not to bleed for very long, and it looks like Brad Pitt’s clothes soaked up most of what leaked out of me.
“Let me clarify. When I say I’ll be in charge, that doesn’t mean I’m going to actually be doing anything. I’ll mostly be gone or working upstairs.”
“Ah,” she says, even colder than before. She knows exactly what Kasabian does up there and she doesn’t approve. An L.A. girl with a conscience. They’re about as rare as unicorns.
“Not doing anything is Mr. Kasabian’s management style, too. You’ll fit right in.” Her heartbeat kicks up and her pupils dilate. Why the hell am I noticing these things?
She frowns, looks down, then up at me. “Please, don’t tell him I said that.”
“Your secret is safe with me.”
Her breathing slows. She relaxes, just a hair. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“What the hell is wrong with your clothes?”
“Yeah. I had a little accident coming into town,” I say, giving her a sheepish grin. It’s a look that girls used to like when I was young and not entirely unhandsome. Talking to a cute human girl that I might have flirted with in my former life, I forget for a second that I’m no longer young or handsome. I shift to what I hope is a more neutral expression.
“I might need to pick up some new things. What do you think?”
“Don’t bother. I hear that arson is the new black.” She crosses her arms, giving me her best defiant look.
“Stark.”
“Stark. Just the one name then, like Madonna?”
“Or Cher.”
“Okay, Mr. Stark …”
“Stark. No ‘mister.’ Just Stark.”
“Okay, Just Stark. Here’s the thing—I quit. I can run this place in my sleep, but Mr. Kasabian obviously doesn’t trust me enough, so he brings in some, if you’ll excuse me, thug buddy to keep an eye on me? No fucking thanks.”
“The last thing I’m here to do is keep an eye on you. The truth is, I don’t have any place to stay and Kasabian told me I could crash upstairs. The running-the-shop thing is purely honorary. As far as I’m concerned, you’re in charge. Run the place any way you like.”
“You still look like somebody I probably shouldn’t know.”
“Yeah, you said that.” I take a step toward her, waiting to see if she’ll take a step back. She doesn’t. Nervous, but brave. I like her already. “Listen, a thug is someone who’s out for no one but himself. Me? I take care of my friends.” Alice’s face flashes in my brain, a reminder of how empty a promise like that can be. Good intentions and a dime won’t get you a damned thing in this world. Reluctantly, I push Alice back into the dark. “Stay here and I guarantee that you’ll work in the safest video store in L.A.”
“Gee, that’s not at all terrifying.”
“Also, whatever Kasabian has been paying you, I’ll give you a fifty percent raise.”
Now I have her attention.
“You can do that?”
“There’s no one here to tell me I can’t. I figure, as long as I’m technically in charge, I can pay people whatever I like.”
“When will Mr. Kasabian be back?”
“I have no idea. You know how these family things are. It could be a while.”
She nods, looks down, then up at me. “Okay. I’ll stay. For now.”
Hallelujah. “Thank you, Allegra.”
“You’re welcome, Just Stark.”
I WAIT FOR an hour upstairs, until the store fills with the lunch-hour crowd. When there’s enough ambient noise downstairs, I figure that I can check on Kasabian and be covered if he starts screaming again.
He’s right where I left him on the shelf. When he sees me, he doesn’t scream. He just moans.
“For chrissake, put a bullet in my head or change the goddamn channel!”
On the set, some daytime talk show is playing. An older guy in a suit and a bottle blonde are talking about an actress I never heard of and a pasta maker that’s going to change everyone’s life.
“Please, turn this shit off.”
“I don’t know. That sounds like one damn fine pasta maker.”
“Fuck you.”
“Do you have a car?”
He stares at the TV, ignoring me. I reach over and turn down the sound.
“The keys are in my right hand pocket,” he says.
I tilt his comatose body to the side so I can reach into his pocket. Got ’em.
“What kind of car is it?”
“Give me back my body.”
“Where’s Mason?”
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Trust me, if I knew how to send you to Mason, I’d do it in a heartbeat. Then I’d ask him to let me watch as he ripped your balls off.”
I turn the talk show back up and lock the closet door. Muffled profanity comes from inside.
I grab the garbage with the bloody clothes and sheets and head down the stairs to the store. Allegra and another kid are behind the counter, busy with customers. There’s a rear exit to the store in a small storage room behind the porn section. I get out the bone blade and try a trick that worked in Hell. Placing the tip of the blade into the lock, I push it inside and turn. The lock clicks open.
Behind the store is a short alley with a couple of Dumpsters. I toss the garbage bag and head for the street.
It’s nice out. Sunny, but not yet hot. I feel a lot more human and settled today, just another normal guy with a .45 tucked in the back of his jeans, out to run some errands. I counted Brad Pitt’s money last night and it came to twenty-two hundred bucks, so I’m sure I can get everything I need.
I keep pressing the little unlock button on the key chain and my good mood evaporates when Kasabian’s car finally chirps. A white Chevy Aveo with a dented trunk. Only rental companies buy white American cars, which means that not only is Kasabian’s car a piece of shit, it’s a used piece of shit. But who’s more pathetic, the guy who drives a used piece of shit or the guy who steals it?
IT’S WEIRD STARTING over from zero. It changes the scale of your ambitions. Instead of fantasizing about what kind of mansion you’ll buy when you win the lottery, you ask yourself, Do I own socks? Do I have a toothbrush? Do I have a shirt that’s not covered in blood?
Money is strange, too, if you haven’t used it for a while. Hell is mostly a barter economy. Especially among the high and mighty, having to buy something is a massive social faux pas. It means that you don’t have anything good enough to trade or you aren’t clever enough to swindle your way to your heart’s desire. Brad Pitt’s wad seemed like a fortune when I counted it, but I blow through most of it in a couple of hours.
The big money goes for a few choice items. A new pair of Caterpillar steel-toed boots, because steel is always a good idea. I also pick up a long, light overcoat. There’s a reason spies and private eyes wear trench coats in all those old movies. They’re big enough to hide a multitude of sins, especially the kind with bullets. I pick up a long, charcoal-gray silk overcoat at a West Hollywood rent-boy boutique. Anything heavier than silk will look ridiculous in L.A., and wearing a black overcoat is nature’s way of telling you to lay off the Bauhaus.
Down on Melrose, the movie biz show-offs and trust-fund bikers meet at smart cafés for lattes and burgers that cost as much as a face-lift. Out in front of the cafés stretch long, gleaming lines of $40,000 Harleys that have never seen a speck of dust or a splash of mud. As much as these clowns set off the self-righteous parts of my white-trash ego, I know there’s one good thing about them. They demand the best bike gear available.
At a bike shop that’s laid out more like a museum than a store, I pick up leather race pants and an armored motocross jacket. After getting shot and almost stun-gunned, I like the idea of having a layer of Kevlar between the world and me. I also get a Kevlar jacket liner, a kind of long sleeve mesh shirt with armored panels sewn in. I’ll wear the liner under the overcoat and hope it’s not so bulky that I look like a robot in a bathrobe.
I put on my new boots, pants, and the motocross jacket in one of the dressing rooms, and toss my burned stuff into the trash on the way out of the store. That’s just about the last of it, I think. The last physical connections to my former life. The only thing left is the Germs T-shirt, now full of blood and bullet holes, stuffed under the mattress back at Max Overdrive. Maybe I should have tossed it with the rest, but Alice gave it to me, so it stays with me until I crash and burn for good.
When I parked the Aveo earlier, I left the .45 under the driver’s seat. I do a switch when I get back, putting the .45 in the bag with my new coat and leaving the Aveo’s keys on the seat. Maybe some desperate-for-wheels kid will find it, or a few homeless guys can turn it into a condo. I carry my bags down Melrose to do some car shopping.
There’s only one way to steal a car and not feel guilty about it, and that’s to steal the most expensive car you can find. That way, you know that it carries the maximum insurance possible, so whatever happens, the owner is covered. I pick out a black Mercedes S600, go around to the driver’s side, and using my body to block the view, stab the bone knife into the lock. I hold my breath. The car chirps once and the lock pops. I slide in with my bags, jam the knife in the ignition, and the engine purrs to life. I do a check of the mirrors and windows. No one is even looking at me. Stepping on the gas, I guide the Mercedes into the afternoon traffic.
THE BUILDING IS like the Sphinx—eternal and unchanging—exactly as I remember it. Same wrought-iron bars bolted over the first floor windows. The chicken-wire-embedded glass in the upper floor windows reveals dusty curtains and tattered window shades. The building manager’s window is easy to spot: there are shreds of the gold-leaf letters that once spelled out the safe company’s name. Instead of a curtain, the manager’s window is covered in foil. I’ve always wondered what goes on in there that he’s so desperate to keep out the light. Someday I’ll have to find out.
I watch the building for the time it takes me to smoke three cigarettes. Nothing unusual or even interesting happens. Cars drive by. An old woman wanders by pulling a couple of tired-looking Jack Russells.
I’m not sure about the wisdom of walking into the place in broad daylight, but I’m not getting any demonic vibes off the place. I snap the Veritas off its chain and give it a quick flip inside the car. Should I go in or not? The coin comes down with the morning-star side up. The Hellion script around the edge reads, Go back to the store and talk to the pretty girl. Nice. My magic coin is trying to get me laid. While I appreciate the thought, the timing stinks. I get out of the car, tuck the .45 under my jacket, and jog across the street to the building.
