Winter 2007

by Subterranean Press

  “Why don’t you tell me where her body is?” Ashford asks for perhaps the tenth time in the space of two hours. “We’re going to find her eventually, so you might as well give it up.”

  Cliff has blown up a balloon, peed in a cup, given his DNA. He’s fatigued, and now he’s fed up with Ashford’s impersonation of a homicide detective. His take on the man is that while he may drink his whiskey neat and smoke cigars (their stale, pungent stench hangs about him, heavy as the scent of wet dog) and do all manner of grown-up things, Ashford remains the same fifteen-year-old punk who, drunk on Orbit Beer (six bucks a case), helped him trash the junior class float the night before homecoming, the sort of guy no one remembers at class reunions, whose one notable characteristic was a talent for mind-fucking, who has spent his entire adult life exacting a petty revenge on the world for his various failures, failures that continue to this day, failures with women (no wedding ring), career, self-image…Another loser. There’s nothing remarkable about that. It is, as far as Cliff can tell, a world of six billion losers. Six billion and one if you’re counting God. But Ashford’s incarnation of the classic loser is so seedy and thin-souled, Cliff is having trouble holding his temper.”

  “I want to call my lawyer,” he says.

  Ashford adopts a knowing look. “You think you need one?”

  “Damn right I do! You’re going to pick away at me all day, because this doesn’t have anything to do with my guilt or innocence. This is all about high school.”

  Ashford grunts, as though disgusted. “You’re a real asshole! A fucking egomaniac. We got a woman missing, maybe dead, and it’s all about high school.” He pulls back a chair and sits facing Cliff. “Let’s say I believe someone’s trying to set you up.”

  “The Palaniappans. It has to be them! They’re the only ones who know about the movie.”

  “The movie. Right.” Ashford takes a notebook from his inside breast pocket and flips through it. “Sword Of The Black Demon.“ He gives the title a sardonic reading, closes the notebook. “So you had one conversation with the Planappans…”

  “Palaniappans!”

  “Whatever. You had the one conversation and now you think they’re out to get you, because the daughter looks like a woman you caught the clap from back in the day.”

  “It wasn’t the clap, it was some kind of…I don’t know. Some kind of Filipino gunge. And that’s not why they’re doing this. It’s because, I think, I started sniffing around, trying to figure out what’s going on with Bungalow eleven.”

  Ashford grunts again, this time in amusement. “Man, I can’t wait to get your drug screen back.”

  “You’re going to be disappointed,” Cliff says. “I’m not high, I’m not drunk. I’m not even fucking dizzy.”

  Ashford attempts to stare him down, doubtless seeking to find a chink in the armor. He makes a clicking noise with his tongue. “So tell me again what happened after you and Marley left the Surfside.”

  “I want a lawyer.”

  “You go that way, you’re not doing yourself any good.”

  “How much good am I doing myself sitting here, letting you nitpick my answers, trying to find inconsistencies that don’t exist? Fuck you, Ashford. I want a lawyer.”

  Ashford turtles his neck, glowers at Cliff and says, “You think you’re back in Hollywood? The cops out there, they let you talk to them that way?”

  Cliff gays up his delivery. “They’re lovely people. The LAPD is renowned for its hospitality. As for where I think I am, I trust I’m among guardians of the public safety.”

  Ashford’s breathing heavies and Cliff, interpreting this as a sign of extreme anger, says, “Look, man. I know what I told you sounds freaky, but you’re not even giving it a chance. You’ve made up your mind that I did something to Marley, and nothing I say’s going to talk you out of it. Lawyering up’s my only option.”

  Ashford settles back in his chair, calmer now. “All right. I’ll listen. What do you think I should do about the Palnappians?”

  “That’s Palaniappans.”

  Ashford shrugs.

  “If it were me,” says Cliff, “I’d have a look round Bungalow Eleven. I’d ask some questions, find out what’s happening in there.”

  “What do you think is happening?”

  “Jesus Christ!” Cliff throws up his hands in frustration, and closes his eyes.

  “Seriously,” says Ashford. “I want to know, because from what you’ve told me, I don’t have a clue.”

  “I don’t know, okay?” says Cliff. “But I don’t think it’s anything good.”

  “Do you allow for the possibility that nothing’s going on? That given everything you’ve said, the multiple occupancies, the sign, the vehicles disappearing…” Ashford pauses. “Can you remember any of the vehicles that disappeared? The makes and models?”

  “I’m not sure they’ve disappeared. I haven’t been able to check. But if not, they must be piling up back there. But yeah, I remember most of them.”

  Ashford tears a clean page from his notebook, shoves it and a pen across the table. “Write them down. The model, the color…the year if you know it.”

  Cliff scribbles a list, considers it, makes an addition, then passes the sheet of paper to Ashford, who looks it over.

  “This is a pretty precise list,” he says.

  “It’s the job. I tend to notice what people drive.”

  Ashford continues to study the list. “These are expensive cars. The Ford Escape, that’s one of those hybrids, right?”

  “Uh-huh. New this year.”

  Ashford folds the paper, sticks it in his notebook. “So. What I was saying, do you think there could be a reasonable explanation for all this? Something that has nothing to do with a witch and a movie? Something that makes sense in terms someone like me could accept?”

  This touch of self-deprecation fuels the idea that Ashford may be smarter than Cliff has assumed. “It’s possible,” he says, but after a pause he adds, “No. Fuck, no. You had…”

  A peremptory knocking on the door interrupts Cliff. With a disgruntled expression, Ashford heaves up to his feet and pokes his head out into the corridor. After a prolonged, muttering exchange with someone Cliff can’t see, Ashford throws the door open wide and says flatly, “You can go for now, Coria. We’ll be in touch.”

  Baffled, Cliff asks, “What is it? What happened?”

  “Your girlfriend’s alive. She’s out by the front desk.”

  Cliff’s relief is diluted by his annoyance over Ashford’s refusal to accept that he and Marley are not lovers, but before he can once again deny the assertion, Ashford says, “Your house is still a crime scene. You might want to hang out somewhere for a few hours until we’ve finished processing.”

  Cliff gives him a what-the-fuck look, and Ashford, with more than a hint of the malicious in his voice, says, “We have to find out who that blood belongs to, don’t we?”

  Chapter Six

  In the entryway of the police station, Marley mothers Cliff, hugging and fussing over him, attentions that he welcomes, but once in the car she waxes outraged, railing at the cops and their rush to judgment. Christ Almighty! She woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep, so she went to a diner and did some brooding. You’d think the cops would have more sense. You’d think they would look before they leaped.

  “It’s my fault,” Cliff says. “I called them.”

  She shoots him a puzzled glance. “Why’d you do that?”

  He remembers that she knows nothing about the Black Demon, the blood, the slit porch screen.

  “You left the door open,” he says. “I was worried.”

  “I did not! And even if I did, that’s no reason to call the cops.”

  “Yeah, well. There was weird shit going on last night. I got hit by vandals, and that made me nervous.”

  They stop at a 7-11 so Cliff can buy a clean t-shirt—it’s a touch choice between a white one with a cartoon decal and the words Surf Naked, and a gray one imprinted
with a fake college seal and the words Screw U. He settles on the gray, deciding it makes a more age-appropriate statement. They go for breakfast at a restaurant on North Atlantic, and then to Marley’s studio apartment, which is close by. The Lu-Ray Apartments, a brown stucco building overlooking the ocean and the boardwalk—with the windows open, Cliff can hear faint digital squeals and roars from a video arcade that has a miniature golf course atop its roof. It’s a drizzly, overcast morning and, with its patched greens and dilapidated obstacles, a King Kong, a troll, a dragon that spits sparks whenever someone makes a hole-in-one, etcetera, the course has an air of post-apocalyptic decay. The dead Ferris wheel beside it emphasizes the effect.

  Marley’s place is tomboyishly Spartan, a couple of surfboards on the wall, a Ramones poster, a wicker throne with a green cushion, a small TV with some Mardi Gras beads draped over it, a queen-size box spring and mattress covered by a dark blue spread. The only sign of femininity is that the apartment scrupulously clean, not a speck of dust, the stove and refrigerator in the kitchenette gleaming. Marley tells Cliff to take the bed, she has to do some stuff, and sits cross-legged in the wicker chair, pecking at her laptop. He closes his eyes, surrendering to fatigue, fading toward sleep; but his thoughts start to race and sleep won’t come. He tries to put a logical spin on everything that happened, works out various theories that would accommodate what he saw. The only one that suits is that he’s losing it, and he’s not ready to go there. Finally, he opens his eyes. Marley’s still pecking away, her face concentrated by a serious expression. In her appearance and mien, she reminds him of girls he knew in LA in the eighties, many of them weekend punkers, holding down a steady job during the week, production assistants and set dressers and such, and then, on Friday night, they’d dress down, wear black lipstick and too much mascara, and go batshit crazy. But those girls were all fashion punks with a life plan and insurance and solid prospects, whereas Marley’s a true edge-dweller with a punk ethos, living paycheck to paycheck, secure in herself, a bit of dreamer, though her practical side shows itself from time to time—for a week or two she’ll binge on schemes to resurrect her fiscal security; then, Pffft!, it all goes away and she’s carefree and careless again.

  These thoughts endanger Cliff’s resolve to remain friends with her, and more dangerous yet is his contemplation of her physical presence. Frizzy blond hair framing a gamin’s face; bra-less breasts, her nipples on full display through the thin fabric of her t-shirt; she’s his type, all right. He understands that part of what’s at play here is base, that whenever he’s at a loss or anxious about something or just plain bored, he relies on women to sublimate the feeling.

  Marley glances up, catching him staring. “Hey! You all right?”

  “Yeah,” he says. “Why?”

  “You were looking weird is all.” She closes the laptop. “You want anything?”

  “No,” he says, a reflex answer, but thinks about the things he wants. They’re all momentary gratifications. Sex; surcease; to stop thinking about it. He suspects that the real curse of getting older is a certain wisdom, the tendency to reflect on your life and observe the haphazard path you’ve made, and then he decides that what he wants above all is to want something so badly that he stops second-guessing himself for a while. Just go after it and damn the consequences…though in reality, that’s only another form of surcease.

  “What do you want?” he asks.

  She tips her head to one side, as if to see him more clearly. “I don’t think I’m getting the whole picture here. Did something happen last night? You know, something more than what you told me? Because you’re not acting like yourself.”

  “I’ll tell you later.” He shifts onto his side. “So what do you want? What would make you happy?”

  She sets the laptop on the floor and comes over to the bed and makes a shooing gesture. “Scoot over. If this is going to be a deep conversation, I want to lie down.”

  He’s slow to move, but she pushes onto the bed beside him and he’s forced to accommodate her. She plumps the pillow, squirms about, and, once she’s settled facing him, arms shielding her breasts, hands together by her cheek, she says, “I used to want to be a singer. I was in love with Tori Amos, and I was going to be like her. Different, but one of those chicks who plays piano and writes her own songs. But I didn’t want it badly enough, so I just bummed around with music, gigged with a few bands and like that. One of my boyfriends was a bartender. He taught me the trade, and I started working bar jobs. It was easy work, I met some nice guys, some not so nice. I was coasting, you know. Trying to figure it out. Now I think, I’m pretty sure, I want to be a vet. Not the kind who prescribes pills for sick cats and treats old ladies’ poodles for gout. I’d like to work out in the country. Over in DuBarry, maybe, or down south in Broward. Cattle country. That would make me content, I think. So I’m saving up for veterinary college.” She grins, fine squint lines deepening at the corners of her eyes. “Someday they’ll be saying stuff like, “Reckon we better call ol’ Doc Marley.”

  He’s shamed, because this is all new information; he’s known her for three years and never before asked about her life. He recalls her singing about the house and being struck by her strong, sweet voice, how she bent notes that started out flat into a strange countrified inflection. He doesn’t know what to say.

  “You look perplexed,” she says. “You thought I was just an aging beach bunny, is that it?”

  “That’s not it.”

  “I suppose I am, technically, an aging beach bunny. But I’m making a graceful transition.”

  A silence, during which he hears cars pass. The beach is extraordinarily quiet, all the spring breakers sleeping in, waiting out the rain. He remembers a morning like this when he was eleven, he and some friends rode their bikes down past the strip of motels between Silver Beach and Main, hoping to see girls gone wild, and seeing instead spent condoms floating in the swimming pools like dead marine creatures, a lone girl crying on the sidewalk, crushed beer cans, the beach littered with party trash and burst jellyfish and crusts of dirty foam, all the residue of joyful debauch. It never changes. The gray light lends the furnishings, the walls, a frail density and a pointillist aspect—it seems the room is turning into the ghost of itself, becoming a worn, faded engraving.

  “Why do you always act scared around me, Cliffie?” Marley asks. “Even when we were together, you acted scared. I know the age thing bothers you, but that’s no reason to be scared.”

  “It’s complicated,” he says.

  “And you don’t want to talk about it, right? Guys really suck!”

  “No, I’ll talk about it if you want.”

  She looks at him expectantly, face partly concealed by dirty blond strings of hair.

  “It’s partly the age thing,” he says. “I’m fifty-four and you’re twenty-nine.”

  “Close,” she says. “Thirty.”

  “All right. Thirty. Turning a year on the calendar doesn’t change the fact it’s a significant difference. But mostly it’s this…blankness I feel inside myself. It’s like I’m empty, and growing emptier. That’s what I’m scared of.”

  “Well, I don’t pretend to know much,” Marley says. “I could be wrong, but sounds to me like you’re lonely.”

  Could it be that simple? He’s tempted to accept her explanation, but he’s reluctant to accept what that may bring. Rain begins to fall more heavily, screening them away from the world with gray slanting lines.

  “What do you see in me?” he asks. “I mean, what makes someone like you interested in a fifty-something used car salesman with a bad back. I don’t get it.”

  “Wow. Once you start them up, some guys are worse than women. Out comes the rotten self-image and everything else.” She glances up to the ceiling, as if gathering information written there. “I’ll tell you, but don’t interrupt, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “We’re friends. We’ve been friends for going on four years, and I like to think we’re good f
riends. I can count on you in an emergency, and you can count on me. True?”

  He nods.

  “You make my head quiet,” she says. “Not last night, not when I’m in party mode. But most of the time, that’s how I feel around you. You steady me. You treat me as an equal. With guys my age or close, I can tell what’s foremost on their mind, and it’s always a battle to win their respect. Like with Tucker. That may explain why I’ve got this thing for older men. They don’t just see tits and a pussy, they see all of me. I’m speaking generally, of course. I get lots of horny old goats hitting on me, but they’re desperate. You’re not desperate. You don’t have a need to get over on me.”

  “That might change,” he says.

  She puts a finger to his lips, shushing him. “Everything changes, everybody’s kinky for something. Some guy shows up at my door with a muskrat, a coil of rope, and three pounds of lard, that’s where I draw the line. But normal, everyday kinks…They’re cool.” She shrugs. “So it changes? So you’re fifty-four with a bad back? So I’m kinky for older men? So what? And in case you’re going to tell me you don’t want to be a father figure, don’t worry. When I’m around you, I’m always wet. Some times more than others, but it’s pretty much constant. I don’t think of you as my dad.” She blows air through her pursed lips, as if wearied by this unburdening. “Fucking is just something I do with guys, Cliff. It doesn’t require holy water and a papal dispensation. It’s not that huge a deal.”