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“There’s no Nobel Prizes around here. Just tamales.”
“It’s time for you to call the missus. Tell her I’m going to die sorting discs.”
“Good. More tamales for us.”
“And once again, you’re not allowed down here. Go upstairs and stay out of my way.”
“Yes, boss.”
I go upstairs and pour myself some Aqua Regia.
If Abbot is right and Wormwood is playing games up here and Quay is doing business down there, it makes sense that they’re connected. I wonder if he’s the source of black milk? But how would he make money off it? And who else could be working with him? Maybe David Moore. He’s dead and had connections through a talent agency run by the Burgess family—Wormwood heavyweights. But that wouldn’t help Kasabian. He wouldn’t recognize Moore. Fuck me. I should have brought more peepers with me when I came back from Hell that last time. Just another in a long series of mistakes. Maybe there’s some other way I can see Downtown like Kasabian. Who could help with that? Maybe go back and ask the powers that be in Piss Alley? Maybe not. When they gave me the power to sidestep for a week, it aged me enough that I’ve got a few gray hairs. Who knows what price they’d want next time?
I go into the bathroom, strip off my clothes, and get into the shower. I need to wash the fight and as many lies off me as I can.
When I get out, I can hear Candy and Kasabian talking downstairs. She comes up and the first thing she says is, “Kas says you have a black eye. Are you all right?”
If Kasabian wasn’t already dead, I’d kill him tonight.
“I’m fine. I just bumped my head getting off Abbot’s damned boat.”
“Poor baby,” she says, and drops her vinyl eyeball bag on the kitchen counter.
She comes over and kisses my bruised eye.
“Maybe I can take your mind off all the pain.”
Candy opens the eyeball and pulls out the record Alessa Graves gave her. She puts it on the stereo and cranks up the sound. The trembling rumble of surf guitar fills the room.
Reaching under the towel, she begins to massage my cock, then kisses me hard. I lean against her, smelling her hair and neck. She pulls off my towel and pushes me down on the sofa, keeps pumping me with her hand. I pull her on top of me and start to roll her over when she says, “Wait a minute.” She throws off her short dress and underwear and pulls me inside her.
“Fukaku hamekonde chodai,” she whispers.
I have no idea what that means, but I don’t think it has anything to do with tamales. When she wraps her legs around me, I have the strange feeling it’s the music more than me that’s driving her, but it doesn’t seem like the right time to ask.
THE GOOD NEWS is that we don’t break any furniture we care about, just a secondhand lamp that was here when I moved in. I know that if I get another lamp, Candy will conveniently lose it and replace it with something horrifying. Something that spins and has talking robots or waving tentacles.
Candy crawls into bed and we divvy up the tamales. I take some down to Kasabian, and when I come back upstairs, she’s propped against a pile of pillows digging into her dinner. I take my plate into the room and join her in bed.
“Hey, do you remember me bringing home a folder or packet of some kind when I went to work with Abbot?”
She nods, holds a hand over her mouth, and chews.
“It’s on the floor next to the bureau. You put it there and I’ve been wondering how long it would take you to ask about it.”
“You looked inside?”
She nods, looking a little guilty.
“Sorry. A big envelope from the augur. How could I not look? Besides, knowing you, it was a check for a million dollars and you forgot about it.”
I mix some beans with rice and swallow a mouthful.
“I guess I don’t have a good history with money.”
“It’s not money. It’s authority. Someone gives you a job and you take it, but then they give you an envelope full of stuff to read and it’s like homework. You leave it on the floor hoping the dog will eat it.”
“And it never does.”
“You’re mad at the dog we don’t have?”
“Can we rent one to clean up my mistakes?”
“It would have to be a pretty big dog.”
I poke her in the leg with my fork and she punches my arm. Candy isn’t exactly human. She’s a Jade, which is kind of like a vampire, only worse. It also means she’s strong. Her love taps are like a velvet-covered baseball bat.
“Abbot said there was stuff in the folder about insurance.”
“Mmm,” says Candy around a mouthful of food. She swallows and says, “Yep. Medical and dental. There’s 401(k) stuff in there too.”
“Now he’s just fucking with me. He knows I don’t have any bank accounts.”
“He’s the augur. He has pull. Just because there’s paperwork that says you’re dead, it doesn’t have to always be that way. Talk to him. Maybe the Sub Rosa can resurrect the late James Stark.”
I shake my head and eat my tamales. I’m very hungry and then very self-conscious. We’re in bed naked and I wonder if I have any bruises on my body from the fight. I should have checked myself when I took a shower. It’s a good thing I’m not a spy. I’d blow my cover story two minutes into enemy territory. I change the subject.
“Did Julie tell you about the kid I brought her?”
“Yeah. He’s a friend of the Abbot’s or something like that.”
“Abbot was cagey. I’ve been wondering about that, but I don’t know what to think.”
“There aren’t that many secrets men usually have about a missing kid. The kid is dead. The kid was snatched by the mother and he doesn’t want to say so. Or he snatched the kid and doesn’t want to say. There’s another more common reason.”
“Come on. Tell me.”
“It’s his kid and maybe Mom is married to someone else.”
I try to picture that for a second. I don’t know anything about Abbot’s personal life. He could date women, men, or tentacled elder gods for all I know. I look at Candy.
“You’re getting good at that detective stuff.”
“I know,” she says. “That’s why I’m with Julie and you got fired.”
“Thanks for bringing that up again.”
“Blame it on the dog.”
When we finish the tamales, Candy grabs the plates, takes them into the kitchen, and ditches them in the sink. She comes back into the bedroom and crawls onto my lap.
I start to kiss her, but she pulls back.
“What’s wrong?”
“What happened to your eye?” she says.
I reflexively touch the bruise.
“It’s nothing. Like I said, I bumped my head leaving Abbot’s boat tonight.”
“Sandman Slim walks into doors?”
“Hey, a guy snuck up behind me tonight and sneaked a selfie before I knew it.”
“That I can believe,” she says, and rolls off me onto her back. “I know there’s something wrong with you, but I can’t help if you won’t let me.”
“I’m okay,” I say.
“No, you’re not. This isn’t the first time you’ve come home bruised. You’re usually better at hiding them, but I know your body pretty well, so I notice them even when I don’t say anything.”
I put a hand down on the bed and she reaches out and wraps her warm hand around one of my fingers. I don’t want to look at her, so I look at my hand. Old scars gleam white like I stuck my hand into a metal grinder looking for my car keys.
“I’m still getting used to this new life is all. I’m a little off balance.”
She rolls onto her stomach and looks at me.
“Know how we just talked about me being a detective? If you’re doing something to hurt yourself, I’ll find out.”
“Let it go this time, okay? I’m just a little off balance, but I’m getting better.”
“Okay,” she says uncertainly. “But I reserve the right to bring it up again if I suspect you of asshole behavior.”
“Agreed.”
She sits up and kisses me.
“You told me I could tell you anything. You can do the same with me.”
“I’ll remember that. Thanks.”
She puts her arms around me and I just hold her like that for a while. I feel something light slide down my chest. She’s crying or I’m sweating. Probably both. I feel like I’m fourteen, caught in a lie within a lie with no way to get out.
“Do you want to get a dog sometime?” Candy says.
“Not really.”
“Thank God. Neither do I.”
See? The truth didn’t hurt. Now I need to get out of this particular knot of lies by not going back into the fight pit.
“Get whatever kind of lamp you want for the living room. Flying robots. Naked witches.”
“You know I was going to anyway.”
“Yeah, but I just wanted to say it.”
“Thanks. You know if I find out someone’s hurt you, I’m going to eat their fucking heart, right?”
“I know.”
“I know you know, but I just wanted to say it.”
“Thanks. Can I ask you one more favor?”
“What?”
“Can you turn that goddamn surf record over and play the other side. You’ve played this one about fifty times.”
“This is my homework. Alessa is going to teach me surf guitar.”
“I bet there are songs on the other side you can learn.”
“Your wish is my command,” she says, and pads out of the bedroom to the stereo.
When she’s gone, I take a long, deep breath. This thing we have. I don’t want to fuck it up. I don’t want to lie anymore and I don’t want a dog. I just want Candy or Chihiro or whoever she has to be next to stay alive. We’re in this together and I’ll kick the ass of anyone who gets in the way. Even if it’s me.
“Did I tell you an angel gave me a birthday present tonight?”
She comes back into the room and flops onto the bed.
“No. Tell me every little thing about it.”
So I do. And we’re okay.
For a while.
CANDY IS GONE when I wake up in the morning. There’s a note on the kitchen counter when I go in to make coffee.
Jamming with Alessa at her rehearsal space after work.
Home late. Be naked.
There are some hearts and she’s taped a press-on tattoo of a sleeping cat at the bottom of the note. I lick a spot on my forearm and press down on the tattoo. A minute later I pull it off. No cat. Just a few frayed lines scattered across my scars. Once again, my stupid body rejects the simplest amusements. So, I make coffee. That’s one bit of pleasure that still works.
I don’t bother going downstairs and bothering Kasabian. He’s even drearier than me in the morning. Before he gets up and turns on the news or does something else to annoy me, I turn on the rest of a movie I started with Candy the other night: Amer. It’s a deconstruction of Italian giallo flicks. The directors tear it down to its essential elements—beats, images, violence, colors, sexual tension—but they do it almost wordlessly, like a silent movie. Just the thing for that time of day when words are still hard to come by.
I sip coffee and smoke, letting the movie run through to its end and one last little shock, then pick up my phone and thumb in Vidocq’s number. He picks up after a few rings.
