FAREWELL GHOST

by Larry Caldwell

  The girl produced a key and they climbed the stairs to the upper unit, which was barely large enough to call a studio. Fridge, dresser, desk, queen bed, hardly any personal possessions. It could have been an AirBNB. Or a modest place to turn tricks. And Clay wondered if he’d unknowingly become a john, if at any moment the girl would drop the sultry pretense and start naming prices.

  She didn’t. She locked the door behind them and didn’t bother taking off her mask or turning the lights on. Her body found his, and she kissed him hard enough to part his lips and slip her tongue through. Clay heard her tennis skirt unzipping, and any hesitation evaporated. He grabbed her hips, but she knocked his hands away, even as she pulled the blouse over her head.

  In her immaculate white underthings, her body fell sideways onto the bed and she beaconed Clay to follow. Her aggression shouldn’t have surprised him. After the reach-around in the men’s room, did he really think they’d exchange biographies and astrological signs? It’s not me she wants anyway, he realized. It was a rock star. She didn’t know, or want to know, that he was just another human being with shortcomings. No. What she wanted was a God incarnate.

  And what Clay wanted was…

  Her thighs were soft and slender under his calloused guitar fingers. She moaned as he seized her buttocks through her panties. “Yes.”

  Clay slipped the panties down to her ankles.

  “Do me now,” she moaned.

  He dragged her across the bed. “Rougher!” she cried.

  Her flesh was cold, his own skin on fire in comparison. Cold front, warm front, they might have created a thunderstorm between their bodies. Clay slipped his hands between her knees and spread them. His groin ached for release, but he hadn’t lost his mind completely. “Do you have a condom?”

  “What for? You think I’m a slut who does this with everyone?”

  “Of course not. But how do you know I’m not?”

  Her teeth were as white as her thighs in the dark. “You’re not rock royalty yet,” she assured him. “You’re as lovesick as a puppy over your guitar player.”

  Clay’s silence incriminated him.

  “Right now she’s fucking that hot guy she was talking to. Probably in his car behind the Whisky. Trust me, I smell my own. And do you think she’s making him wear anything? Forget her, look at me—I’m drunk and I’m sad and I want to be screwed right through this mattress. So put it in me, or go back to the Viper and cry in your beer.” Abruptly her tone upshifted from cynical mocking to a girlish, seductive coo: “Come on, let me swallow you all up down there.”

  Clay hung over her, the head of his cock poking through his boxer briefs.

  The mask. Something about her mask worried him. Like she was going to tear it off and reveal Kiss Kiss’s burned face. Or worse. But for now, the urge to mate was stronger. He lowered his jeans and briefs, watched as she licked her palm and seized him—much harder than in the bathroom—and delivered him to the fork of her legs.

  No! his mind screamed. Don’t!

  The girl lifted her hips quickly and lowered them slowly, lifted and lowered; her labia slide up and down his shaft, parting for his stiffness. Clay’s moan was helpless, his climax already building. A few thrusts was all it would take for deliverance. “Yeeeees,” the girl cooed, and though they were face to face, Clay felt no huff of breathe from her lips. “Explode in me.”

  That was when he became aware of a growing commotion outside. Feet pounding up the stairs, arriving at the door. A fist slamming the wood.

  “Clay? Clay! Open up!”

  The girl’s eyes went wide in the dark. “Who the fuck is that?”

  “I don’t know,” Clay said. But that was a lie. Because even if the voice was tinged with panic, he recognized it and was as disoriented to hear it as he had been in the Viper Room.

  Essie again.

  “Clay, get away from her right now!”

  The voice was so adamant that Clay reacted, disengaging from the groupie on the bed. “No!” the girl gasped. “Not when you’re so close.”

  “Open the door!”

  The girl reared up. “No. No!” she screamed. “I’m giving you everything without even knowing you. You owe me!”

  Clay stumbled away from the bed, hiking up his jeans over his confused, twitching cock. And the girl was climbing off the mattress, coming after him. And Essie was shouting and slamming her fist into the door.

  “Who the hell is that anyway, your mother?” the girl mocked. “Mommy, mommy, come to my rescue? You fucking pussy!”

  “Clay, don’t listen to her. She’s not a girl anymore!”

  Clay fled to the door and flipped the lock. The groupie charged after him, but then Essie was in the room, lowering a hard shoulder into the smaller girl, knocking her back. “You think I don’t recognize a corpse when I see one?” she yelled.

  “What?” was all Clay could manage as he fumbled along the wall for the switch. As if the lights would ground this chaos in reality.

  With his other hand, he tugged on Essie’s arm, as if to physically demand an explanation. And the girl used this to her advantage—drew a knife from the dresser and came for the both of them. Essie snatched her wrist. They banged back into the dresser, rocking it on spindly legs.

  Clay’s hand fell over the switch and the overhead lights burst on. Essie had the naked girl pinned to the wall. “Look!” she grunted at him. “Look at what she is.”

  With the back of her hand, she swatted the mask off the girl’s face.

  Even with the light reinstated, it was hard for Clay to fathom what he was seeing. At first he thought Essie hadn’t knocked the mask off at all, even though it was lying there beside his foot. The girl’s soft face was dark around the eyes, black scabs with red fissures of gore peaking through. She had been cut, or had cut herself, in the exact pattern of the masquerade mask. And then she had… peeled the flesh away.

  The girl saw his horrified expression and groaned—a helpless, heartbroken sound that filled Clay with empathy. She was disfigured, horribly disfigured. Even Essie let up.

  And the girl used their revulsion to wring herself loose.

  Essie screeched and stumbled. “Shit. Clay, help—”

  But the girl’s fist was clenched in Essie’s hair and she spun Essie around and slammed her straight into the wall, hard enough to dent the plasterboard. And Clay understood what was going to happen next, but wasn’t nearly fast enough to intercede.

  The girl—or whatever she was—had all the time in the world to drive her weight forward, to thrust her blade into the soft spot beneath Essie’s breastbone. To bury it to the hilt and renew her smile as Essie hissed in pain and mortal terror. Clay locked eyes with his housemate and froze halfway to her, as much from the shock of witnessing her murder as knowing he was too late to change its course.

  “You ruined it!” the girl screamed. “Now he’ll never fix my face!” She grunted and twisted the knife violently one way, then the other, the muscles in her narrow back twisting with the violence of each motion.

  Essie’s eyes rolled to whites and her attacker released her, letting her crash forward. On cement legs, Clay reached out and slowed her fall. Then the girl was in his face, her wound fully exposed, a puss-colored tear leaking out of a fissure under one eye. “All I want is my life back,” she said, calming, petitioning him to understand. “It would’ve been easy if it wasn’t for your mother. Now what am I supposed to do? Tell him I failed?”

  “Who’s him?” Clay said. “What does he want with me?”

  The girl shook her head as if she hadn’t heard. “I’m not going back without the job done.”

  She reached out, placed a hand on the button of his jeans, unsnapped it again. Her wrists were bruised black in several places. Paralyzed, Clay watched her smear Essie’s blood across the crotch of his denim.

  “You can help me.” The school girl returned, sugary, forcefully sweet. “I can still be that piece of worshipping ass you wanted so badly. I’ll make it qui
ck, then leave you and Mommy to your night.”

  “She’s not my mother,” Clay heard himself say.

  The girl only shrugged. Her bloody fingers pulled the teeth of his zipper apart. And fuck, he couldn’t help it—Clay reacted to her, stirred under her touch. “You can help me, can’t you, Ray?”

  Clay shut his eyes. “Yes,” he gasped, as she pressed herself to him. “Yes.”

  Her fingers reached through his open fly.

  Clay stamped his foot down on hers and shoved backward with everything he had. The girl’s legs struck the corner of the bed and she went flopping over the mattress, slamming the top of her head against the floor.

  He ran to Essie, meaning to lift her, drag her from the room. But the girl was already rolling to her feet, nimble as an acrobat—and Essie was already dead, her eyes hooded and unseeing. “I’m so sorry,” he told her, his voice breaking.

  Then he hit the door and took the stairs two by two.

  The faster he ran the slower things unfolded. The girl was on his heels, yelling, “I’ll take it from you. I don’t care if I have to break it off first!”

  The front door was in reach. Clay had it halfway open before the girl leapt from the staircase onto his shoulders, yanking his head back. He went with the momentum and drove himself hard into the banister. The metal sang. The girl grunted and her grip slipped and Clay was off again, through the door, into the night.

  On the empty street, his feet sounded like applause from a single pair of hands. Sprinting as hard as he could downhill. Wondering, even in the terror of the moment, if anyone in the dark houses around him were witnessing the unlikely scene of a man running for his life from a beautiful naked girl.

  Gradually the noise of The Strip increased. Clay didn’t dare look back, for fear he’d find the groupie right there. Knowing that a moment before he reached the safety of the boulevard, she would seize him and drag him into a back alley and get what she wanted from him. He ran with his shoulders up, anticipating her fingers, the bloody knife.

  Closer, closer, until Sunset at last intersected with his mad dash. Clay turned the corner and ran smack into a crowd of people. Any other day, a wild-eyed goon smeared in blood might have drawn screams. Tonight, he was just another refugee from the Halloween parade.

  Clay hurried back in the direction of the Viper Room. Several times, he spun, bracing for the girl to emerge from the costumed mass.

  But she was nowhere. Clay had lost her in the crowd.

  Police cruisers, two of them, made the sharp turn onto Horn Street, their lights cutting red swaths through the dark. Clay had called them right before he’d called his father. Peter’s voice had sounded concerned, but measured, like he thought Clay was pulling his leg, the old let’s-tell-dad-his-girlfriend-got-hurt prank. “Hurt how, Clay?”

  And Clay swallowed. What Peter was mistaking for hyperbole was, in fact, restraint. Hurt like dead, Dad. “Somebody stabbed her,” he managed.

  “Jesus Christ, did you call an ambulance?”

  “I called the police.”

  “Where is she? Are you with her?”

  “I’m on Sunset. Close to where it happened.”

  That had been twenty minutes ago. Time Clay had spent with his back to a brick wall, watching everyone and everything.

  Now the police were on their way up to the duplex where Essie lay dead. Clay waited for the inevitable backup, the ambulance with its lights off, the unmarked forensics van.

  Instead, the cruisers returned to Sunset, in no apparent hurry. Had they gone to the wrong place? He had described the building and its location to a tee. Had they found the second-floor apartment locked? Wasn’t a report of murder grounds to force entry? Or had they not taken him seriously? The old there’s-a-stabbed-corpse-on-Halloween trick.

  Clay was dialing 911 again when he spotted his father’s Mercedes and flagged him down. Even if he had deliberately avoided getting his band involved, it was a comfort not to be alone anymore.

  Peter pulled to the curb and the passenger window drew down.

  “Dad, we have to go up and check…”

  The words died right there.

  Estelle was sitting in the passenger seat, as full of life as the day he’d met her. “Essie! Where did you find her?”

  “Right in front of your snake club,” Peter said, with deliberate patience. “She called me when I was speeding over. Told me you ran off somewhere and did I know where?”

  Essie, for her part, wouldn’t look at Clay—as if they were siblings in hot water together. And yet, she wasn’t any more wounded than before she’d arrived to help him.

  “Essie? Where’s the blood, the knife—”

  “I was worried when you ran off,” she said. “You haven’t done any drugs, right? I told your father you weren’t about that anymore.”

  “Es. You were in that room with me. Tell him.”

  “The Viper? Yes, and you were superb. But where did you go after your set—”

  “Your blouse. You changed your blouse.”

  “My blouse? No, I haven’t.”

  “It was canary-yellow before, now it’s white.”

  “I’ve been wearing this one all evening,” she replied. “You can ask anyone.”

  “Who?” Clay gestured along the boulevard. “There’s no one who’d know but you and me!”

  “Why did you call me and say Essie was hurt?” That tone again, coupled with Peter’s cross-examining glare. “Are you mad I didn’t come to your show?”

  “I saw it happen.” Clay’s own voice was helplessly defensive. His eyes were everywhere, searching for any hint that Essie had been in that room with him, that she had come to his aid and paid for it in pain, in blood, in shock, in life. “I saw the knife go into you. The girl with half a face—the only reason I got away was because of you. Tell him!”

  Essie frowned. Her eyes rose briefly to meet his own, then danced away. She seemed embarrassed for him, afraid even. “You’ve got blood on your jeans, hon.”

  “Yes. Exactly,” Clay shouted with sudden triumph. “Let’s have it analyzed. Let’s do a DNA test. I bet it turns out to be yours, goddammit!”

  At that moment, Clay caught sight of himself in the Mercedes’ side mirror: hair tangled, face drained of color, arms flailing like a schizo preaching conspiracy. “This is what happened in Philly,” his father told his girlfriend. “He falls for the wrong girl, then starts lying to cover his habit. Only difference now is his mother isn’t here to pull him back from the edge.”

  Essie held his hand in both her own. “You can’t help anyone with rage and judgment, Peter. Let him in the car. Do you want to be let in, Clay?”

  “I’m not high. Look in my eyes.”

  “I thought we got past this,” Peter told Essie. “But first he tries to crucify you about your work history, then he thanks you for coming to his show by pulling another stunt.”

  “I’ve told you the truth about everything except trashing your room,” Clay retorted. “That, you wouldn’t have believed if I told you. But Essie does. Why don’t you tell him what you told me in my room the other night, Es. About your real career.”

  Her face was a blank, staring at the dashboard.

  “Oh, come on!” It was like trying to walk against a hurricane. “Do you have an evil twin now? Come fucking on!”

  Peter started to reply, but a public bus passed at the exact instant and by the sneer on his lips, Clay was glad not to hear the words.

  Essie still had his father by the hand. “Petey, just unlock the doors.”

  His eyes glassy, Peter scrutinized his son. In his mind he was already getting a nocturnal visit from the police, who would tell him that his only son, his last link to the woman he had spent most of his life with, had OD-ed behind some dumpster.

  “I saw what I saw,” Clay said, calm as he could. “I’m not crazy, Dad.”

  “No one said you were,” Essie assured him.

  Peter’s hands lay motionless in his lap; he made no move t
o the unlock button. “I’m holding up traffic.”

  “Tell me you believe me.”

  “Not going to happen, sorry.”

  “You’re sorry?”

  “I’ve done everything I could for you.”

  “Except the one thing I needed you to do,” Clay retorted. “So go. Fuck off!” And to Essie: “If none of that happened, then you didn’t save my life. So I guess you can fuck off too.”

  Now Estelle looked downright miserable. And his father had heard enough—no one told Peter Harper to fuck off twice. He sped away, and Clay watched his taillights drift into the oblivion of the boulevard.

  “It’s a mad-mad world, brother.”

  Clay whirled from Peter’s taillights to find a man leaning on the wall of the tattoo shop behind him. He knew the face just as quickly as the first time. Barrett Roethke was wearing a leather vest over a stained white shirt and a Lakers cap pulled low against his brow. How long he’d been standing there Clay couldn’t guess, but the drummer had been privy to at least some of his conversation with Peter and Estelle. “First, you see one thing, then you see another. Welcome to Hollywood. More illusions here than in a David Copperfield box set.”

  Clay took a few steps toward him. “You know what’s happening then?”

  “Bright lights cast a long shadow,” Roethke replied. “If I had to guess, I’d say things started going south for you when you paid your visit to Karney. The cops questioned me about the fire, you know? I didn’t tell them you and the Tigress were there that day.”

  “That’s very noble.”

  “I should’ve ratted. Thanks to you, I lost my second frontman in seven years. I’m closing on forty, I like drinking better than touring—how much more lightning can I catch in my bottle?”

  “So why not rat?”

  Roethke shrugged, his eyes drifting, as if looking for someone in the dark across the street. “I’ve been getting these e-mails,” he said cryptically.

  “From Savy?”

  “From someone calling himself Rocco Boyle. At first I figured it was some random dick and I explained to them how hard they could suck me off. But the e-mails started coming faster than I could delete them. Spam from hell. And when I finally read some, it was strange. There were things in them—little memories, band tidbits—I’m pretty sure no one in the world knew except Rocco and me.” From his vest pocket, Roethke withdrew a gold flask in the shape of Texas and fiddled with the cap. “Maybe I indulge too much, maybe that’s all it is. But I’ve convinced myself that my old singer is e-mailing me from the grave…”