by Unknown
“What’s up, Dad?” Livy said, slipping an arm around his waist and giving him a quick kiss. “The Scorsese deal didn’t fall apart, did it?”
“No, and I’m not about to let it happen. Acting in Marty’s movie, it’s like breaking bread with Jesus.”
“You look kinda worried, that’s all.”
“Probably hunger pangs.”
“I haven’t eaten anything either. Stomach’s still a little nervous from the audition.”
“Mom’s out for the evening, Josh said he’s spending the night at Colin’s, so—looks like just the two of us. Date?”
“Sure! Where do you want to go, the Ivy?”
“I was thinking about the little Chinese place in Studio City. Been a year, at least.”
“Chinese. Mmmm, yes!”
“How did the callback go?”
“There must have been thirty people in the room this time.”
“Producers and Network, mostly. You pick out one face to—”
“I know, and ignore the rest. I did okay. Actually I think I did great”
“I could give Jerry a call, see how it’s going.”
Livy grabbed his elbow. “No, you won’t! That’s why I use mom’s maiden name. Livy Jefford. If I’m gonna have a career it’ll be because I earned it, like Bryce Howard did… Dad?”
“What?”
“You’ve got that look again. Something’s wrong, I know you.”
Greg shook his head and responded to his cue for a reassuring smile.
In the auto courtyard where Lester had parked the borrowed Hummer, which needed a wash job, Greg offered the keys to Livy. She shied away as if he had dangled a shrunken head in her face.
“Dad—we’re not taking that thing?”
“Why not? Have you ever driven one?”
“And I never will!” she said indignantly. “Global warming, Dad! And that—that is an ecological Frankenstein!”
Greg laughed, and looked up at the moon. It wasn’t an image of Universal Studio’s venerable monster that came to his mind just then. Nothing make-believe. Infinitely worse.
He wondered how he was going to get through the next few hours without going mad.
The little man, with a ruddy face as round as the moon outside, was holding forth at the bar when Greg walked, alone, into Moe’s at two minutes past eleven. He was chattily entertaining a couple of barfly regulars in his childishly treble voice while keeping one blue eye on the door. He gave no sign of recognition when Greg appeared, but his small mouth tightened ominously.
Greg chose a booth, signaled for a beer. He didn’t have long to wait for the little man to join him.
“Where is she? Where is Olivia?”
“We had dinner together at a little place on Ventura Boulevard. Then… I put her in a limo and sent her home.”
The little man squeezed into the booth opposite Greg, letting out his breath in a catlike hiss, riffling his fleecy beard. His eyes glittered. Greg watched him calmly, unblinking, focusing on a small wen between the fulminating blue eyes. An actor’s trick. Greg knew fine clothing and great tailoring. The little man, for all his hard-to-fit butterball size, was sartorially splendid. Double-breasted red blazer with handcrafted gold buttons featuring bas-relief dragons, a shirt that gave off highlights when he breathed, curled and uncurled his chubby hands on the chipped formica tabletop.
“You never said who you were. I’d like to know.”
“Eye have nothing further to say to you. Eye am not accustomed to being treated this way! Even for an actor you are notably bereft of scruples or honor. Your reward will be oblivion. The floor of Moe’s toilet is much too good for you.”
The little man raised his left hand. An ancient ring with a fiery stone overwhelmed the pinky. Within the stone a dark eye opened malevolently. Greg braced himself.
“Now hold on just a minute, Shorty—”
He was showered with radiance from the ring’s eye, forced to shield his own eyes. After a few seconds the light abruptly failed, and the eye closed, perhaps disappointedly.
The little man shook his hand, yelping as if he were snakebit.
“Yeah, I’ll bet that stung,” Greg said amiably.
The little man stared at his baroque ring. Then at Greg.
“But—but you can’t still be here!”
“Why shouldn’t I be? I’ve done everything you asked of me. I have brought you my firstborn. She’ll be walking in the door any time now.”
“What?”
The little man looked around at the entrance to Moe’s, outlined in twinkling Christmas lights that were never taken down. The door remained closed. The little man faced Greg again with his cupid’s bow mouth pursed angrily. He trembled as if in the first stage of a tantrum.
“The ring knows, doesn’t it?” Greg said. He took an envelope from his coat pocket and tossed it down in front of the little man.
“What is this?”
“The birth certificate of my firstborn. Jennifer Ellen Garmon, age twenty-five. Born in Ruttlen, Utah. She doesn’t go by my name, but I am on the birth certificate as her father.”
“Ridiculous! A lie! A clumsy ruse—” The little man rose half out of his seat, then shook the hand with the ring again. “Ouch! All right.” He settled down, confounded, beginning to perspire.
“You have had only two children! Eye should know. Eye never make mistakes. Eye know everything about each of my—”
“Clients? Victims?” Greg took out another dun-colored envelope. “DNA tests. Mine. Jenny’s. A match.”
The little man wheezed and fumed. “Anything can be faked.”
“Maybe. If there’s enough time. The DNA tests for proof of paternity go back four years. Jennifer is my daughter. Not that you will have any doubt of it once you’ve seen her. My true firstborn, Shorty.”
“Stop calling me that! I am… Shalamanázar!”
“I’d never have guessed. Okay, Shal. I know you’ve had your heart set on Livy. But a deal’s a deal, right.”
Shalamanázar dabbed sullenly at his sweaty face with a large handkerchief.
“Jenny is not exactly someone you, ah, ‘settle for.’ I think you’ll agree as soon as—oh, here she comes.”
Jennifer Garmon had made her entrance. Immediately she claimed the attention of everyone in Moe’s who wasn’t blind drunk or under a table.
As Greg had said, her paternity was obvious in her face. But the long lissome body, her dark raffishly chopped hair, her large, luminous, dreamy eyes were all woman.
Jennifer looked around the semi-dark bar, acknowledged her father with a slight, almost timid wave, then looked with a delighted smile at a pair of pinball machines.
“Just finishing up some business here, honey,” Greg called to his firstborn. “Go ahead and play if you want to.”
She waved again, Thanks, Daddy, then went quickly to the candy-bright, glowingly futuristic machines, studied each carefully while deciding which one to play.
Shalamanázar drew a long wheezy breath. His face was an incandescent pink. His expression tipped Greg that he’d instantly been smitten.
“Jennifer? Does she understand—”
“That she’s going with you tonight? Yes.”
“Well, then,” the little man said, sparing Greg a glance but unable for long to take his eyes from his unexpected prize. His flush was deepening. He twitched in anticipation.
Greg looked at his watch. “But try not to rush her. Pinball is her favorite game. Let her enjoy a game or two.”
The suggestion made Shalamanázar uneasy. He passed his other hand over the bulge of the ancient ring as if to quiet a deep-lying rumble. “Eye suppose a few more minutes won’t matter.”
“Do you have far to go?” Greg asked casually.
“Only a short cab ride to—” Shal looked up with a hint of suspicion as Greg stood. He laid a set of car keys on the table.
“A little something extra for you. It’s the black Hummer in front of the launderette across the s
treet.”
“Really? That is… awfully decent of you, Greg. Eye must admit eye was too hasty in denigrating your character.”
“So I’m renewed for another ten years, top-tier at the box office? And after that—”
“After that, enjoy a long-lived retirement in the company of your lovely wife, numerous grandchildren, and your third Academy Award. Or, if you choose, you may run for public office. Success is assured.”
“Wow.”
“As I speak, so is it written. Good night.”
“Good night to you, Shal. By the way, a small favor? Jenny looks mature, but she has always been, ah, exceptionally shy.”
“I understand. Say no more.” Shalamanázar’s gaze was momentarily softer as he watched Jennifer rock a pinball machine, jockeying her point total to stratospheric numbers, showing surprising strength in spite of her gamin slenderness.
On his way out Greg paused to kiss the back of Jennifer’s neck. She smiled absently, absorbed in her game.
Lester was in his Chevy Colorado parked two blocks south of Moe’s. Greg got in beside him.
“Miss Jenny be all right?”
“Yes.”
“What now?”
“I don’t think we’ll have long to wait.”
Five minutes passed.
“Ain’t that big ole moon somethin’ to see,” Lester said forebodingly, his misshapen fingers tapping on the steering wheel.
Shalamanázar emerged from Moe’s behind Jennifer Garmon, who stood about a foot taller than Shal. He spotted the Hummer and hustled her across Robertson. Traffic was sparse, the hour closing on midnight.
“That the dude?” Lester said. “Look like Santy Claws.”
“Jennifer’s always wanted to meet Santa.”
Lester grumbled in his throat, then said, “Why not just let me take care a him for you?”
“There’s a protocol to be observed. Besides, he’s got this ring. I don’t want to fuck with his ring.”
Lester looked dubiously at Greg as Shalamanázar helped Jennifer into the massive vehicle, which looked as if it had been imagined by a team of designers in a permanent state of road rage. He hustled around to the driver’s side and climbed aboard.
“I think he’s under some kind of time restraint,” Greg said. “Just a hunch. Okay, there he goes. Follow them, but don’t give us away.”
“Like I needs to be told that.”
Shalamanázar lived in Rancho Park, south of Pico and not far from the Fox film studio. It was a street of small, well-kept one- and two-story houses. Shal’s was tan stucco, with a flat tile roof and a three-foot concrete wall around it, topped with ornamental iron grillwork. An automated gate guarded the narrow driveway. There was a lighted porte cochere into which the Hummer would have fitted like a bullet in the cylinder of a revolver. Shal left the Hummer in the street in the only available space, at the foot of his own drive. He escorted Jenny into his house. From Greg’s vantage point, where the pickup idled in the mouth of an alley near Pico, his daughter seemed willing to be with Shalamanázar, although she kept her head down. Greg’s heart was cold from anxiety, his hands clenched.
“Boss?”
“According to the Almanac, the moon won’t be at its fullest for another seven and a half minutes.”
“Oh Lawd. This be makin’ me mighty nervous.”
“Tell me about it.”
Lester grumbled in his throat, but otherwise was fretfully silent.
Ten minutes passed.
“All right! Pull up in front of the Hummer. We’re going in for Jenny.”
“Hope we ain’t too late.”
The gate at Shalamanázar’s driveway was closed, but it was no trouble for either of them to get over the wall. There was a dog walker up the street, but his back was to them. Greg had no further concern about prying eyes in nearby homes. He was focused on his firstborn.
They went through the porte cochere to a kitchen door at the back of the house. Curtains covered the glass; Greg couldn’t see inside. He stepped back and nodded to Lester.
Lester broke in.
There was a light on over the sink. No evidence of an alarm system. Greg doubted that the wizard, or bane thaumaturge, or whatever he was, had need of one.
The kitchen was small, with glass-front cabinets, not a cup or spoon out of place. And it was suffocatingly hot. A low rumble below caused the house to tremble. Next to the pantry a door to the basement was slightly ajar. Reddish light flickered down there.
“What he need a furnace on in summertime?” Lester said, taking out a handkerchief to wipe his brow. His other hand was on the butt of the pistol he wore on his belt.
“I don’t think it’s a furnace, Lester. But we’re not going down there to find out.”
“Oh Lawd,” Lester moaned. “Miss Jenny is gone already, ain’t she?”
“Don’t say that. Come on.” Greg left the kitchen, calling: “JENNY!”
No reply. They searched the house, which took only a couple of minutes. They discovered several stuffed black cats in attitudes of agitation and, in the larger of the two bedrooms, a standing oval mirror that gave off turbid light that distorted reflections. The mirror frankly scared the hell out of Greg.
They retreated to the hall outside, breathing heavily in the heat, staring hopelessly at each other. In the kitchen glass broke.
Greg got there first. The refrigerator door stood open, vapor gusting into the kitchen.
Jenny frowned at a shattered bottle of orange juice on the tiles at her feet. She looked at Greg. Then down at her bloody hands.
“It’s so hot down there,” she said. “I was thirsty. But the bottle slipped. I should’ve washed my hands first.” She began methodically to wipe them on her blouse, which already was soaked with blood. Tears fell from her eyes.
“Don’t worry, Sweetheart,” Greg said.
“I’m s-sorry, Daddy.”
“It’s all right. Let me get you cleaned up.”
“I was bad again, Daddy.” She looked at the door to the basement. Lester walked around her to the sink and wetted a couple of dish towels. “Daddy?”
“Yes, Sweetheart?”
“He w-wasn’t really Santa Claus.”
“I guess he had me fooled, Jen.”
Greg took the towels from Lester and began to clean his daughter’s hands, forearms, and spattered face. Not for the first time in her twenty-five years.
“I brought you a change of clothes. After you’re dressed, what do you say we get a chocolate shake and something to eat at the Burger King?”
“Yes!” she said, with a quick smile. Then she winced, pink teeth pressing into her lower lip. She looked hesitantly at her father.
“Then I have to go back to The Place, don’t I?”
“But you like it there, Jen. You feel safe at The Place.”
She shrugged. “I guess so. Only—”
“What, Sweetheart?”
“The pinball machine’s broken, and nobody’s come to fix it.”
“Know what I’m going to do? First thing in the morning?”
“W-what?”
“I’ll have six new pinball machines sent over, so you can play as much and often as you want to.” He cleaned a spritz of Shalamanázar’s blood from above her brow line. Some of the hairy growth on her forehead rubbed away with it, leaving fresh pink skin. Another twenty minutes or so, and she would be her old self. Flawlessly young, dewily beautiful.
Lester slowly closed the door to the basement and stood with his back to it, arms folded. The house continued to tremble as if from a mild earthquake. Jennifer didn’t look at Lester or the door. Most likely, Greg thought, except for a headache and torn nails she had no physical reminders of the horror she’d been through. And only a vague, nagging memory of it.
That was the blessing that accompanied her curse.
Jennifer put her cleaned arms and now hairless hands around Greg’s neck and kissed him joyously.
“You’re the best daddy in the wo
rld!”
“I have my moments,” Greg said. “Now why don’t we go change your clothes, brush your teeth, get that bad taste out of your mouth?”
As he was leaving the kitchen with Jen, he glanced at Lester. Lester sighed and opened the pantry door, looking for a pail and a mop.
A HOST OF SHADOWS
HARRY SHANNON
The individual has a host of shadows, all of whom resemble him and for the moment have an equal claim to authenticity.
–Soren Kierkegaard
“THIS MAY HURT a bit.” If Dr. Neumann is aware of the cliché, he hides it well.
The surgeon is a squat, balding gnome with yellowing, uneven teeth like chipped piano keys. The patient on the table is confused and frightened and does not remember anything except his name. Neumann turns from the table with busy, white-gloved hands. Meanwhile, the helpless man’s senses telescope as a wickedly long needle approaches and freshly starched medical greens whisper obscenities.
“Wait.” Quinn despises himself for sounding frail. “Not yet. What are you going to do to me?”
Neumann purses that ruined mouth, cocks his head. “Mr. Quinn, we have been over this a number of times.”
“I don’t remember.”
“This we know.”
“Are you comfortable?” There is a tall, coltish nurse, who would normally be considered attractive in a surfer-girl kind of way, but at the moment, standing in the corner, half covered in shadow, she most resembles a praying mantis. She is tactful, sotto voce; asking if Quinn needs more medication. He likes the hushed drug glow just fine, hell it’s better than a pitcher of martinis at Happy Hour, he’s nicely fucked up, but any more and he’s likely to fade out completely… and then what happens?
Quinn realizes he has waited far too long to answer. “No, I’m comfortable. I want to stay awake.”
“Remember, we can do this either way,” Dr. Neumann says, crisply. “But we must deal with your delusions once and for all.” He dons a thick pair of glasses, positions the needle sideways on a glittering silver tray. “It would certainly be helpful to have you cognitively present to contribute to this examination, but that is not absolutely essential to the success of the procedure.”