Carrion

by Gary Brandner

  “Terrific,” Jillian said. She huddled against the opposite door.

  “That’s it?” he said. “No applause? No hugs? No flowers strewn at my feet?”

  She did not respond to his bantering tone. “Mac, what happened there tonight?”

  “I became a rich man, that’s what happened.”

  “That woman was dead.”

  He waved it off. “What the hell is dead, anyway? You heard that doctor. Suspended animation or something. Medical science still has a lot to learn.”

  “That’s bolshoi, and you know it. Leanne Kruger was as dead as President Lincoln. We both saw her in that tank thing. Then you pulled that funny stuff with the colored sand and the candles and that weird humming, and she came back to life. What did you do, Mac?”

  “Got lucky, I guess.”

  She punched him in the shoulder, not lightly. “Cut it out. You don’t want to face it. A dead woman sat up and talked. God knows what she’s doing now. You made it happen. Was it that voodoo stuff?”

  “Nah. I didn’t pay attention to what that old witch doctor told me. All I wanted from him was some atmosphere.”

  “You had that, all right.”

  He grinned into the darkness. “It was a pretty good show, wasn’t it. Too bad we had to close it after one performance.”

  Jillian shuddered. “God, don’t even think about doing it again.”

  “No way,” he said. “I could never top tonight. And hey, I’m not forgetting that you helped.”

  “I want to forget it,” Jillian said. “It’s not right.”

  “Who says?”

  “Mac, stop and think. You didn’t just read somebody’s tea leaves tonight. How can you be so casual about it?”

  He made a pass and plucked Elliot Kruger’s check from the air. He waved it gently under Jillian’s nose. “This helps.”

  She turned angrily away. After a minute she said, “Mac, I don’t want to stay over at your place tonight.”

  “Why not?”

  “I just don’t feel like it, that’s all.”

  “Maybe it’s just as well,” he said. “I am pretty tired, and I’ve got lots to think about tomorrow. I’ll have Garner run you out to your place after he drops me off.”

  “Thanks,” she said softly. She was looking at him in a strange new way.

  Chapter 9

  The exhilaration of the night’s events carried McAllister Fain from the limousine up the stairs and into his apartment without letting his feet touch the ground. Or so it seemed. Friday night at Elliot Kruger’s Holmby Hills mansion had been a turning point in his life, and he knew it.

  Fain was not yet ready to examine exactly what had happened in that oversized bedroom, or how it happened. The important thing was his success, and he was not going to question it.

  Once inside, he fitted a Herbie Hancock album onto the turntable, poured himself a stiff Jose Cuervo, and settled into his recliner to savor the sudden upturn in his fortunes.

  Instantly he was exhausted beyond words. The music faded to a background hum. The glass of tequila slipped and almost fell from his hand before he caught it. He had just enough energy to hoist himself out of the chair, tuck Kruger’s check safely into his nightstand, and fall into bed.

  The dreams followed one another without a break. Elliot Kruger was in most of them. Usually he was surrounded by the trappings of wealth — greenbacks, gold coins, jewels.

  Fain wandered through a dreamscape filled with limousines and castles, swimming pools and squads of servants. Sometimes Jillian Pappas was there, but always at the edge of things, almost out of sight. She was trying to say something to him. Her mouth moved, but Fain could never make out her words. Too many other things were going on.

  Once his parents showed up — his mother in an apron, hands floury from baking, his father with his usual distracted expression, the slide-rule badge of his profession peeping from a shirt pocket. Then, disconcertingly, his father had turned into Elliot Kruger and was handing him money. Worse, his mother became Leanne Kruger, reaching for him seductively from a huge bed. While her hands writhed and clutched at him, the beautiful face was pale and frozen, as he had seen it through the window of the cryogenic tank.

  Fain woke up tangled in the sheets and sweating. He had a fierce thirst. He stumbled into the kitchen, broke loose an ice tray, and filled a glass with cubes and water from the tap. He drank it down, filled another, drank that.

  Feeling a little better, he checked the time. It was still dark outside, so he figured he could not have slept long. The clock said 8:15. What the hell? It took a minute to get his brain into gear and realize that it was 8:15 P.M. Saturday. He had slept away the entire day. The knowledge made him suddenly hungry. He had not eaten for more than twenty-four hours.

  He took a brisk shower and called Jillian’s number in Studio City.

  “Hi,” said the answering machine in a friendly tone, “this is Jillian Pappas. I can’t take your call personally right now, but when you hear the beep — ”

  Mac dropped the phone back into its cradle, cutting off the recorded voice. He hated talking to machines. At least Jill’s message was straightforward. Worse were the cute ones. Still, he felt like a fool talking into somebody’s recorder for playback at a later time.

  And where the hell was Jillian on Saturday night, anyway? Then again, was it any of his business? He had made a big point of avoiding commitments, so he could hardly object if she had something else going. Still, it would have been nice to see her, have an intimate dinner someplace, slip into bed naked together afterward.

  Ah, the hell with it. He walked up to the corner of Sunset and Alvarado, bought a green chili burrito at the Burrito King, and took it home for a solo dinner washed down with cold Heineken. Then, to his surprise, he found he was tired again, so he changed the sheets, went back to bed, and slept, this time without dreams.

  • • •

  On Sunday, Mac Fain awoke shortly before noon, feeling like a million dollars, or a good portion thereof. A brilliant sun erased all memory of the recent rain. He scrubbed his teeth, shaved, and showered. Then he sat down on the edge of the bed and took Elliot Kruger’s check from the nightstand and read it again. The figures had not changed. The signature was still there. He passed the slip of paper under his nose and inhaled, imagining he could detect the aroma of riches. This was the way a man’s life ought to smell. Rich leathers and five-dollar cigars, corks from dusty wine bottles and the heady perfume of expensive women.

  He tucked the check into his wallet and strolled out to greet the day, tossing the bulky Sunday Times inside. In the yard next door Xavier Cruz continued his never-ending battle with the rusting van. Fain went over to join him.

  “Buenos Dios, amigo.”

  Cruz looked up wearily and wiped his face with a grease-stained kerchief. “Man, why don’ you just talk English. You know what you just say to me? You say ‘Good God.’ Hello goes Buenas días. Comprende? ”

  “Whatever,” Fain said cheerfully. “I wanted to thank you for sending me to the man over at the clinic.”

  “Forget it. You got nothing to thank me for,” Cruz said, leaning back into the engine compartment.

  “The guy was full of baloney, sure, but he gave me some good ideas,” Fain said.

  Cruz straightened up again to look at him. The coffee-brown eyes showed no glint of humor. “Man, if you think what he tol’ you was baloney, you keep thinking that. Now you seen Le Docteur, you take my advice; you stay far away. Don’ press him, and don’ ever make him mad.”

  “No problem, amigo. I got all I wanted from the old boy. He wouldn’t even take any money. Maybe I’ll make a donation to the clinic. Think he’d like that?”

  Cruz shrugged. “Who knows?”

  Fain stood for a moment shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “Hey, you feel like a beer? I’ve got cold Heinekens in the fridge.”

  “No, man, I got things to do.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe later.” He wait
ed for Cruz to say more, but the Cuban was occupied again with the battered works of the Volkswagen. They had been neighbors now for what, four years? There was a wall between them that was never going to come down.

  “Adiós,” he muttered, and walked back out to the sidewalk and up the steps to his apartment.

  Here he was newly rich, driven around in a limousine, catered to by millionaires, and he couldn’t even get his semiliterate Cuban neighbor to have a beer with him. Damn, he thought, it’s lonely at the top.

  He resolved not to spend Sunday alone. He went inside and dialed Jillian’s number, mentally preparing a flippant message to leave on her answering machine this time.

  “Hello?” It was Jillian’s live voice that answered.

  “Hi. What you doing?”

  “Eating lunch.” Very cool. Warning flags went up in Fain’s head.

  “Want to do something?”

  “I am doing something.”

  “I mean later. Dinner. A movie. A few chuckles. Whatever.”

  “I can’t. I’ve got a reading.”

  “Are you mad about something?”

  “Mad? Why should I be mad?”

  “You sound mad.”

  “I told you, I’ve got a reading.”

  “A job?”

  “Just some friends. One of the boys is a playwright. I’ve told you about him. We get together sometimes and read his work in progress.”

  “Oh, sure. Well … I’ll talk to you later.”

  “Fine. See you.”

  A click and a dial tone and that was it. Served him right for getting mixed up with an actress. Jillian was all right, but her friends were a bunch of fringies. Boys with long lashes and tight jeans, girls who didn’t shave their legs, poets who couldn’t rhyme, writers who didn’t write. Mac had gone to a couple of parties with her and felt like an alien. Jillian, with all her eccentricities, was as straight as Marie Osmond compared to the rest of that crowd.

  He went into the kitchen and uncorked a beer. Back in the living room he shuffled through the Sunday Times for the sports section. Not much doing this time of year unless you were a hockey or basketball fan, and Mac Fain was neither. One game had a bunch of Canadians skating aimlessly and endlessly back and forth. The other involved ten glandular cases stuffing a ball in a basket from above.

  Baseball, there was a real sport. A man could get comfortable over the length of a season with the rhythms and drama of baseball. However, this time of year the teams were just opening spring training. There would be no real news until the season started, in six weeks.

  Fain tossed the paper aside and sat gloomily pulling on his beer. Sunday night alone with television. Maybe there would be a good movie on cable. Whoopee.

  He got out of the chair and smacked one hand into the other. This simply was not right. He was thirty-six years old, a not-bad-looking college graduate with a nice record collection and newly acquired riches. And here he was sitting home alone with a beer and the Sunday paper. Maybe that was all right for the Mac Fain of a week ago, but last Friday night should have yanked his life around and sent it in a new, exciting direction. He was on a different level now — a level where important things happened, where the beautiful people lived. McAllister Fain should not have to depend on the vagaries of cable television for companionship.

  The telephone rang.

  Fain let it ring four times. No use letting Jillian think he was poised by the phone, just waiting for her to decide that he was more fun than that flock of weirdos she ran around with. As the fifth ring began, he picked it up.

  The female voice that spoke to him was not Jillian’s. This voice was younger, more nasal, without Jillian’s stage-trained modulation.

  “McAllister Fain?”

  “That’s me.”

  “I’m Ivy Hurlbut. I’d like to come over and do an interview if you’ve got the time.”

  “An interview? What about?”

  “About what you did Friday night for Elliot Kruger’s wife. That was pretty sensational, you know.”

  “Where did you hear about that?”

  “We have our sources.”

  “And who is ‘we’?”

  “The interview would be for the L.A. insider. You know the paper?”

  “Yeah, I know it. You work for them?”

  “I’m a free-lancer, actually, but I’ve done stuff for the Insider before. I’ve got a photographer lined up, if you can spare the time this afternoon.”

  Fain hesitated. The L.A. Insider was not exactly People magazine. He was not thrilled to be included with women who had sex with space creatures and two-headed bushmen and babies who survived falls from the roof. But it was better than nothing. And face it, People hadn’t called. Besides, Ivy Hurlbut might help him fill what looked like a tedious Sunday.

  “I guess this afternoon is all right,” he said.

  “Neato. Want to give me directions to your place?”

  Neato? Oh, well, it was somebody to talk to. He told Ivy Hurlbut how to get to Echo Park from Santa Monica, where she was calling from, and hung up feeling a little better.

  • • •

  She arrived about three o’clock. Mac’s mental image of the girl reporter, picked up from television and old movies, was given a rude jolt. He figured she was twenty-two at the outside. Ivy stood about five-two with long, frizzy blond hair and an opulent body that was packed into stretch jeans and a baby-blue T-shirt that advertised the Minnesota Twins. A look at the thimble-size nipples pushing against the taut blue cotton erased any idea that she was a baseball fan.

  “Hi,” she said brightly, and poked him in the solar plexus. “Hey, you’re in good shape. You work out?”

  “I, uh, play a little tennis,” he said, staring at the huge young breasts.

  “Good for you. I like a man keeps himself in shape.” She walked by Fain into the apartment and left him standing in the doorway, facing a tall, sleepy-looking black man with camera equipment hung all over him.

  “I’m Olney Zeno,” the black man said. “I take pictures.”

  “Yeah. Right. Come on in.”

  Ivy dropped her tight-jeaned bottom on his tweed couch and patted the cushion next to her. She took out a pocket-size notebook and ballpoint pen. “Should we get started?”

  Zeno prowled about the room, his sleepy eyes missing nothing. A couple of times he checked a light meter and muttered something under his breath.

  “Can I … get you anything?” Fain said.

  “No, thanks,” Ivy said. “After, maybe.”

  “You got any beer?” Zeno said.

  Fain brought him a Heineken, half of which the photographer chugalugged, and sat down next to Ivy. Her round, plump thigh touched his, and he could feel the heat of her.

  They quickly dispensed with his early life — born in the Middle West, B.A. in psych from Western Michigan, unmarried, ten-year resident of Los Angeles.

  “Okay, now the good stuff,” Ivy said. “When did you first learn you could bring dead people back to life?”

  He chuckled as though they shared a joke. “Well, that isn’t really my business. I just happened to fall into that. What I do is more like character readings and like that …” His voice trailed off as he saw he was losing his audience. Ivy had stopped writing. She moved her thigh a fraction of an inch away from his. He picked up the pace, deepening his voice and giving her the gray-eyed stare. “But I guess it’s in the blood. The gift of power. Down through the generations, every so often one of my family will have the eyes of a gangan.”

  Ivy scribbled in her notebook. Her thigh pressed again against his. “Neato. What is that, exactly? A gangan?”

  “In the ancient religions brought to Haiti by the African slaves,” he improvised, “there is a hierarchy of the priesthood — those who have the dark power. Gangan is second only to the ho ungane.”

  “Wow, great stuff,” Ivy said, staring at him in open admiration.

  Her eyes were blue and guileless, and for a moment he felt guilt
y about giving her all this bullshit. Then she reached over and touched him on the leg, and the guilt pang went away.

  While Fain spun out fanciful tales of his occult adventures and described the resurrection of Leanne Kruger, Zeno moved about the room, snapping pictures from different angles. The click-whir of his camera had a lulling effect, like cicadas in a summer meadow.

  At one point the photographer interrupted. He pointed to a satanic poster Fain had mounted near the door to his bedroom. “How about one of you standing by this?”

  “Oh, that, ha-ha. Picked it up at a swap meet.”

  “Yeah, it’s cool. How about standing to one side of it.”

  Feeling foolish, Mac walked over and stood in the position the photographer indicated. “This okay? Is there enough light?”

  “Plenty of light.” Click-whir. “One more standing on the other side.” Click-whir.

  Zeno packed up his equipment. “Got all I need,” he told Ivy. “I’ll have ‘em for you tomorrow morning.” With a sleepy nod to Fain he went out.

  Mac started back toward the couch and Ivy. “I wouldn’t mind a glass of white wine if you’ve got some,” she said.

  “Sure.”

  He veered off toward the kitchen and poured two glasses from a chilled jug of Gallo chablis.

  “Would it bother you if I smoke?” Ivy called from the living room.

  “No, heck no. Ashtray right there on the table.”

  He screwed the cap back on the wine jug, returned it to the refrigerator, and started back with a glass in each hand. A whiff of acrid smoke from the other room told him Ivy was not smoking Virginia Slims.

  She was holding her breath, eyes half closed, when he returned and set the wineglasses down on the coffee table. She let the smoke out in a long gray streamer.

  “Thai stick,” she told him. “Good shit.” She offered him the tightly rolled joint. “Want a hit?”

  Fain hesitated. Heineken was his drug of choice, or Jose Cuervo for something heavier. But he did not want the plump little free-lancer to think he was a square. He accepted the joint and took a medium drag. He pulled the smoke deep into his lungs and held it. Little colored lights danced between him and Ivy’s round, smiling face. A nice relaxed feeling spread outward from the region of his navel.