by Laird Barron
Lionel slapped my arm.
“Meg mentioned you’re having nightmares. Lemme tell you mine.”
“Oh no,” I said.
“This spring, while you were off on that thing in the city, I took Minerva camping off the Silver Lode Trail. Remember, I told you a dog ain’t a dog ’til she’s gone on a camping trip.”
“Did you?”
“Made a honkin’ bonfire and slept in the portable hammock the Walkers bought me for Christmas. Minerva climbed in there and whined. I told her everything was cool. I fell asleep as the fire died to coals. Man, I don’t know what it is about the mountain air, but I always have technicolor dreams. A gorgeous, naked blonde woman materialized amid the shadows of the trees and walked toward the camp. She raised her arms and embraced me, but we started wrestling, and not in a good way. She squeezed my throat and clawed my eyes. So, I tripped the bitch and hauled ass along the trail, and here she came flying like a Claymation harpy. I woke as her talons grazed the back of my neck.
“Minerva was on my chest, growling at the bushes. The campfire had blazed to life—flames were shooting into the lower branches. Freaked me the hell out. I suddenly recalled those Catskills stories about Bigfoot and witches and shit. Broke camp in fifteen minutes flat and hightailed for the car. The main thing that sticks in my mind? It’s damned difficult to run with a boner.”
Booze arrived in enormous goblets of blown glass. The girls ordered something blue and frothy as chemicals reacting in a beaker. I nursed a double bourbon. Lionel quietly settled in to drink Nail Ale like a boxer working the heavy bag.
My companions seemed content for a while.
The opening acts were a magician who did erotic card tricks, a comedienne, and a cellist. An emcee in a pin-striped suit introduced the performers and kept the crowd warmed up with canned patter.
House lights dimmed. Midnight Star sashayed to her mark in a raven wig, domino mask, and a silk wrap. My girl for certain. She sang a medley of classic jazz and blues tunes in a smooth contralto, capped by a rendition of “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?” that resonated as an inauspicious augury. I’m a wary believer in signs and portents. The universe is always muttering threats.
“Chicks in domino masks are so hot.” Meg pressed a sweating goblet to her cheek.
“Yeah, totally bangin’,” Lionel said, although I don’t think he’d even noticed the mask until she mentioned it.
A striptease artist in the finest sense of the tradition, Midnight Star’s clothing melted, article by article, reducing to gemstone-studded tassels and matching panties. She half absorbed, half reflected the arctic beam of the spotlight. Its remnants spilled over her shoulders and formed a crescent moon backdrop. She could’ve made do inside a phone booth with that mesmerizing shimmy and shake.
The manager paid us a courtesy call between numbers. A bland, professionally unctuous man, who probably had Curtis on his mind as he inquired whether we were enjoying the show and complimentary liquor. I assured him all was well, especially for Lionel, who’d amassed a serious graveyard of beer bottles.
I then mentioned that we’d love ever so much to meet Ms. Star and score an autograph. I knew the dancers were strictly off-limits; such is the rule in upscale clubs. The manager didn’t blink. Of course, our group was warmly invited to an exclusive after-party. VIPs only. Before he could escape, I caught his arm and showed him Harold Lee’s photo. The suit gave a tight nod and said yes, he’d seen the gentleman. He wriggled free and skedaddled.
Midnight Star returned for an encore, clad in a slinky black dress and pink boa. She’d stripped gloriously naked (or almost) by the time she danced her way over to our table and serenaded Lionel with A-ha’s seminal ’80s number, “Take On Me,” her slipper planted on the chair near his crotch. He drooled while his date sipped her cocktail and glared murderously.
Up close, Midnight Star was a heart-stopper. She flaunted a timeless, voluptuous figure reminiscent of Rita Hayworth and Betty Brosmer—a strutting, crooning Varga Girl in living color. Sex and malice crackled in her eyes. The woman belted the high notes too—when she cut loose, ice rattled in cups.
Midnight Star segued to Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal.”
I’ve been around the block and seen it all. What happened next caused me to reconsider my skeptical position on witchcraft and voodoo. Lionel shook free of his drunken stupor, bounded semi-gracefully to his feet, and danced with all the rubbery loose-limbed agility of the King of Pop himself, if the King had downed half a gallon of malt liquor and hard whiskey. There is every possibility my friend won her heart when he executed a brief moonwalk that ended with him collapsing into his chair to scattered applause. He undeniably won mine.
She gave him a playful slap with her boa and sauntered back to the dais to conclude the show. And when I say sauntered, I mean slow-motion, smash close-up; every man and woman in that club was mesmerized by the motion of the ocean, so to speak.
My three-quarters-full glass of bourbon had gone inexplicably dry.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Staff escorted us to a rise overlooking the deserted golf course. Strings of paper lanterns illuminated our path. At the summit, upon a plaza of irregular paving stones, twin firepits blazed against the darkness and veined the rising mist with red. Guests clustered, their conversations indecipherable as the chirr of insects infesting the nearby swamp.
I mildly relished watching rich folks huddle with instinctive dread of nature. Laughter, high and thin, drifted past me, toward the forest. Combinations of mating calls and utterances of nervous frivolity. The dancers accompanied a cadre of stiff-backed gentlemen in suits. Midnight Star stood aloof in her own circle of adoring patrons.
Meg hooked her arm through mine.
“Midnight Star is Delia Labrador, daughter of Jonathan Labrador. Mr. Labrador is the superindustrialist, chairman of the board and majority shareholder of Zircon Corporation. Delia’s grandfather Matthias founded the corporation right after World War Two. Zircon is headquartered in Albany. Defense and communications systems are the core interests; it also strongly pursues medical, security, and aerospace fabrication tech. Two of its largest affiliates develop pharmaceuticals. Internationally, the company and its subsidiaries employ a quarter of a million people at factories and research facilities. Government contracts galore—no surprise.”
“Wow. Where did you—?”
“Wage slave at the library, dear.”
“Clearly, I should have shown you the photo,” I said.
“But then you would’ve had less of an excuse to ogle the dames.” She flicked my tie. “Delia frequents the library two or three times a month. Heavy reader. She digs ornithology and regional history. Volumes of neglected verse.”
“What’s your read on her?”
“My ‘read’ on her? Is that a librarian joke?”
“Maybe.”
“Watch that razor wit, Coleridge. She’s sweet as pie; demure. Doesn’t advertise she’s a society-page heiress. Wears a kerchief and shades. Sometimes she travels with security.”
Currently, Delia wore cat eye glasses, a bullet bra, and a metallic skirt. She basked in the firelight while supplicants mingled in the shadow of her radiance. These supplicants were fellow performers, slavering men, and the wives and girlfriends of the slavering men. Her bodyguards waited, conspicuous as a pair of misplaced Stonehenge slabs.
“Tonight, she’s Midnight Star,” I said. “By day, she’s Delia Labrador. Interesting.”
“Delia-by-Day is another mask. I doubt anyone has seen the real her, except for her victims.” Meg acknowledged my raised brow. “Broken hearts. Notches on her bedpost. Love ’em and leave ’em. She’s a destroyer of worlds.”
“Isn’t that a femme fatale’s purpose?”
“I’ve heard rumors to that effect. Women talk, especially about other women.”
A yard to my left,
Lionel and his date were in the midst of conversation or the nascent stages of an argument.
“What do you call ’em?” Lionel pointed indecorously at Delia Labrador.
“Bullet bra,” Robin said.
“They still make those things? Thank Baby Jesus anyway.”
“It’s vintage, Lionel. Vintage.” The you lout was implied.
A server plied us with pink champagne. So armed, we approached Delia and her circle. She observed our group imperiously as an ice queen noting an incursion of filthy peasants in the throne room. Her bodyguards edged forward. They watched me and I smiled jauntily. Their posture indicated military training. Both were strapped.
“Delia!” Meg said and the women side-hugged and did the air-kiss deal. She went around our party and introduced me last. “This is my boyfriend, Isaiah Coleridge. He’s an investigator.”
“How nice for him,” Delia said, whiskey-rough. “What does he investigate? Car accidents? Insurance fraud?”
“He investigates lying, cheating, murdering scum,” I said. “He’s particularly interested to discover why your boyfriend, Harold Lee, got it in the neck.”
“Meg, he’s bored me to tears in under five seconds. Who said it could be done? Bravo.”
An enigmatic expression flashed across Meg’s face. I did recognize her death grip on the champagne flute.
Delia had already moved on. She gazed past both of us, fastening upon Lionel.
“Ooh la la. You’re rather sexy. Isn’t he just, girls?” The girls were in accordance that he was definitely just.
His neck flushed as he kissed her hand. Mr. Gallant.
“Oh, baby,” Delia said. “You could be an actor. I’m not even teasing. What did you think of the show? Hot, right?” She thrust her hip at him.
Lionel blurted, “Hot? Honey, you’re so hot, you should be painted on the fuselage of a B-52!”
She graced him with a huge smile and scribbled on a napkin, embossed it with a lipstick smooch, and tucked it into his belt. Classic. Then she patted his cheek and walked away to rejoin her kind.
The powers giveth and the powers taketh away. Robin slapped him not too long after that. Full windup, dramatic as a whipcrack. He fell on his ass and sat there with a look of tragicomical bewilderment common to drunken louts the world over. She didn’t stick around to explain the error of his ways.
“But, I thought she was his wingwoman,” I stage-whispered to Meg.
“Yes, congratulations. You’re both idiots.”
* * *
—
I MAY HAVE SULKED A TINY BIT driving home from the party.
“Get anything useful?” Meg said to break the mood.
“Jack shit,” I said.
“For a moment there, I thought you might try the Columbo routine with Delia. ‘Oh, yeah, I’m an idiot, but one more thing . . .’ You know the routine.”
“That lady is bulletproof. Immune to my charms, at any rate. In short, no.”
“Worked for Peter Falk.”
“Round one. I’ll regroup and come at her from another angle.”
“Will it help?” Meg turned to partially conceal her smile.
“Ms. Star is smitten with Romeo.” I jerked my thumb toward Lionel, snoring in the backseat. Moments prior to collapsing, he’d muttered deliriously that this evening had gone far better than the last time I introduced him to a stripper.
“Even if she’s not head over heels, maybe she’s willing to bat him around like a mouse. We can hope.”
“Oh, dear,” she said.
I dropped her and Lionel at their respective homes and slumped into the easy chair in my cabin. I dreamed of Fred Astaire in a suit and tap shoes dancing in ethereal refinement with Ginger Rogers. Fred and Ginger morphed into Lionel and Delia; him in his outlandish buckskins and she in the altogether.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Lionel and I were in the main barn at Hawk Mountain Farm; ostensibly, repairing the tractor, but really we were bullshitting while Lionel got hammered. I asked if he had had a nice time at the burlesque show.
He removed his hat and crumpled it in both hands. That morning, my friend had, in a demonstration of grit that would’ve made Rasputin blanche, dragged himself out of bed at an ungodly hour to repair fences. His knuckles were scraped bloody. Filth blackened his nails. He bowed his head.
“The other day, last week? Yeah, last week, I didn’t walk the hill. Usually, most of the time, I walk that hill every day. Except, not that day. That day, I stayed in and finished a half rack of beer. I drank a dozen beers, a third of a bottle of vodka, and a swallow of Jim Beam. I watched a football doubleheader and the news, and then whatever was on. I didn’t shower, didn’t eat, didn’t do anything but drink and watch TV until I fell asleep. The next afternoon, hungover and fucked-up, I found a turtle on the hill. Squashed flatter than a flapjack in my path. Little sucker made it to the edge where the weeds are before a car got him.”
He set aside his hat and popped the top on a bottle of beer. The cheap stuff, since it was his tab today. The light through the window and the hay dust in the light lent him a halo. Then he belched and leaned into darkness again.
“I’ve helped turtles before. Picked them up and carried them into the bushes where it’s safer. Suckers cross there like pilgrims on the road to Damascus. He was just trying to make it to the creek in the gully on the other side. It’s a long crawl for a turtle. I didn’t walk the hill and so I wasn’t there, didn’t see him to get him out of the road.” He looked at me then, his eyes bright as nailheads. “That’s everything, isn’t it? Everything in the universe? You’re struggling on your belly to cross some fucking road and the one person who could help you is somewhere, not where you are, drunk off his wretched ass. And you’re dead. That’s it. That’s all there is.”
I massaged my temples, yet throbbing from last night’s smoke, loud music, and too much booze, and studied him.
“Are you . . . Lionel, are you a turtle? Is this a metaphor? Do you want me to give you a lift somewhere? I’m here, man. Tell me where you want to go. Jump on.”
“I want you to answer a question.”
“Sounds serious. What sort of question?”
“It will determine your moral character. Suppose—”
“The matter of my moral character stands resolved.”
“Suppose you could travel backward in time—”
“Theoretically or in an actual time machine?”
“Time machine.”
“Okay.”
“If you could go back . . .”
“I can’t. I don’t have a time machine. Besides, as a man loved to tell me, There’s no future and there’s no past, only the eternal now. Time is a ring; no beginning, no end, just a big hole.”
“. . . would you have become a hitter?”
“I don’t know.”
“No?”
“I don’t have a magical machine. I choose not to torture myself with What if? bullshit. I recommend it.” We stared at one another. “Gene and I were Keesh and Son of Keesh.”
Lionel shrugged. It was impossible to slip anything lit-related past him.
“Jack London? I read him as a teen.”
“Jack London. Gene was a devoted fan. He favored the weird, bloody works to the famous ones. ‘The Red One,’ and ‘The Story of Keesh,’ and Children of the Frost: ‘Keesh, Son of Keesh.’ The Keesh stories are nebulous, morally ambiguous. Especially the latter. It’s a paean to savagery and vengeance.”
“Two of my favorite things,” he said.
“Delia gave you her number,” I said.
“Aha! We arrive at last. I framed the napkin and hung it over my dresser.”
“Avail yourself of that number and ask her out on a date.”
“Can’t do it, Hoss.” He sipped his beer. The spooky part was, except fo
r this melancholy bent, he didn’t seem the worse for the wear after his epic evening while I was dying in slow misery.
“Okay. Why can’t you?”
“I’m playing hard to get.”
“But you aren’t hard to get. You’re completely the opposite.”
“She doesn’t know that.”
“Yes . . . Yes, she does. Every woman knows that about every guy.” I glanced at the garbage can. Three empty bottles nestled atop the detritus. My watch read a quarter past noon. “This is important. Pick up the phone, arrange a tryst, and let nature take its course.”
“A tryst? You poaching my Shakespeare collection again?”
“Young love inspires my poetic mood. Call her.”
“The rule is, uh, three days.”
“Today, and before you’re too drunk.”
Lionel killed the bottle. Flicked the dead soldier to rest with its brothers. He reached down behind the toolbox and produced brew number five.
“I’m guessing there’s a reason you’re so pushy. Something’s happened.” He closed his eyes and touched his temple. “Oh-oh, there’s a message from the void . . . Curtis has fucked us, or I don’t know what.” He opened his eyes. “That it? Curtis show his colors?”
“Let’s develop our leads. For the moment, several days at the outside, we keep our lips sealed and gather clues like obedient lackeys. Safest course. I’m going to personally evaluate Oestryke’s background in Michigan. You hang tight and watch the home front. Fair?”
“Fair,” he said. “Whole scenario is fucked, but yeah. You can’t walk away, can you? It’s the hookers. You’ve got that, I don’t know what to call it—a gleam, a fever glow—in your eyes.”