La-La Land isn't exactly what you'd call a safe haven after dark, even in my part of town, and being gang-raped by a group of bikers high on Angel Dust wasn't my idea of a fun way of spending a Wednesday evening. Paranoid, huh? You should try living here for a while.
There was nobody there, which didn't make me feel any better because that meant one of three things: they'd gone, they were hiding, or they'd gone round the back of the house and were breaking in as I stood with my eye pressed against the front door. Look, just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean there aren't a couple of guys out there with shotguns, OK? I went back to the study and the doorbell rang again. I thought of calling the police right away but decided against it because if I was wrong and if I was over-reacting I knew that it wouldn't be long before tales of Jamie Beaverbrook, the Vampire Hunter who was afraid of the dark, would be circulating among the boys in blue.
I went back and put my eye to the viewer. It was her. It was almost midnight and she was standing outside my front door. What the hell was going on? I opened the door and she smiled up at me.
"Hi," she said. She was wearing a black linen jacket with the sleeves pulled up to her elbows, a black t-shirt, black leather jeans and wraparound sunglasses. She meant it when she said that black was her favourite colour. God knows how she managed to cross the road without getting run over.
"Do you know what time it is?" I asked.
She grinned. "Late," she said. She looked at my clothes. "You weren't in bed were you?"
I wanted to ask her what she was doing, why she was there, how she'd got my address, and how come she looked so bloody attractive so late at night.
"Aren't you going to ask me in?" she said, almost petulantly.
A weird thought flashed through my mind, the bit in all the old Dracula movies where the Count stands on the doorstep waiting to be admitted, because unless you invite the vampire over the threshold he can't get in.
She saw the look of hesitation on my face and shrugged. "OK, fine. I just wanted to thank you, that's all."
She turned to go and I stepped towards her and touched her shoulder. "I'm sorry, don't go," I said. "It's late, that's all. And I was surprised to see you."
She turned back to me, smiling. "You were so kind to me, you really seemed to care, you know.
They were giving me such a hard time. I just came to say thanks."
I held the door open for her. "Come on in," I said. Her jacket brushed against me as she went inside. Somewhere up in the hills a dog howled like its balls had been trapped in a vice. I followed her inside and closed the door.
She walked through the house, checking it out like a prospective purchaser. "Neat," she said. "I like it."
"Turn left," I said. "We'll go into the study."
I watched her hips swing as she walked. God, she looked good. She stood in the middle of the study, looking around. She took off her sunglasses and turned to look at me. I'd forgotten how black her eyes were. There were no marks on the skin of her cheek, but I couldn't tell if they'd gone or if she'd hidden them with make-up.
"This is different," she said. "I never pictured you in a room like this. It's, I dunno, pretty severe. Not like the rest of the house at all."
"Yeah, this is the one room my wife let me call my own. She designed the rest."
She raised her eyebrows. "Your wife?"
"Ex-wife," I corrected.
"She has good taste, for sure. What was her name?"
"Deborah," I said, a bit miffed that she rated her taste above mine. I mean, I liked the wood panelled, rugged intellectual look. I put a lot of thought into it.
"Divorced. Or did she, like, die?" The straightforward way she said it took me by surprise.
"Divorced. Take a good look at the place. It won't be long before I have to sell it."
"Alimony?"
"Alimony," I agreed.
She went over to the bookcase and scrutinised my diplomas.
"These are pretty impressive," she said. "What does the D stand for?"
"Dean," I said.
"Jamie Dean?" she said, then realisation dawned. "James Dean? Your parents named you after James Dean? That's really cute."
"Yeah, my mother was a fan. I was born on the day he died."
"Friday September 30, 1955. Highway 46. Cholame Valley."
I was impressed. Most Californians knew where he'd died but not many people would have known the exact date.
"He crashed his Porsche at 5.45pm. I was born just after six. My parents had decided to call me Derek but when the news came over about the crash my mother wanted to change it and my dad agreed."
"That was nice," she said.
"Yeah, maybe. Though I'm not sure how good an idea it was to saddle a kid with a movie star's name. Not a kid in the north of England, anyway. I got teased a bit at school."
"Is that why you call yourself Jamie and not James? And why you don't use Dean?"
"No, that's more for professional reasons. It'd be hard to be taken seriously as a psychologist with a name like James Dean."
"Sounds like the same reason to me, Jamie. It'd just that the people who'd tease you would be older, that's all."
I couldn't believe it. The girl was barely out of her teens and she was trying to psychoanalyze me.
"That's not why at all. It's not a question of being teased. It's just that…"
"I know, you didn't want James Dean appearing on your office door. People might laugh."
"It's not a question of being laughed at, it's a question of being taken seriously."
She looked at me with an amused smile, her eyebrows raised. She didn't have to say anything.
Maybe it was the same thing.
"Would you like a drink?" I asked.
"No thanks. I just came to thank you. And to take you out."
"Take me out?"
She laughed. "To show how much I appreciate your helping me. Get your car keys. Don't bother to change, you look interesting enough like that."
Interesting? An old pair of Levis and a Billy Idol t-shirt is interesting? That's not how Deborah would have described it. It belonged to the "You're not going out in that, are you?" school of fashion.
"You got a jacket?" she asked. "Something leather?"
"I've got an old motorcycle jacket somewhere, but it's been years since I've worn it."
She laughed. "Great, go get it."
I was in the bedroom going through the closet when I realised that I was following her instructions like a little kid. It was strange. She wasn't putting me under any pressure, I just wanted to do as she said. I wanted to win her approval. To win her smile. I found the jacket and to my amazement it fitted and I went back to the study and stood there with my arms outstretched.
"How's this?" I asked.
She put her head on one side and nodded thoughtfully. "Neat," she said. "But you should put the collar up."
"A la James Dean?"
"Try it."
I did and she smiled. "It looks great."
"Where are we going?" I asked her.
"It's a surprise."
"Is it far."
She laughed. "About an hour's ride on a good horse."
"What?"
She grinned at my confusion and shook her head. "It was a joke," she said. "Not far. Come on, let's get your car." She took me by the arm and half-led, half-pushed me to the hall. "Kitchen?" she said.
"What?"
"Kitchen. Where is it?"
I nodded to the left and she took me into the kitchen. "Rice?" she said.
"Rice?"
"Rice. Do you have any rice, Jamie?" She spoke slowly as if I was a retarded child, but smiling as she did.
Yeah, I had rice. Deborah had some special Japanese stuff that she used for her sushi parties.
"Cupboard by the fridge."
She knelt down and took out the large glass jar. "Neat. Garbage bags?" She looked over her shoulder. "Garbage bags?" she repeated. I pointed to the drawer. She stood up and pulled it open and
took out two black plastic garbage bags. There was a brown paper bag on the work surface and she poured three or four handfuls of rice into it, screwed the top closed and put it into her jacket pocket. She rolled the garbage bags up and then waved them at me like a conductor winding up an orchestra. "Let's hit the road," she said.
"Terry, where are we going?"
"It's a surprise."
"I don't like surprises."
"You'll like this one. Trust me, Jamie."
She walked up to me, her black eyes seeming to swallow me up as she drew closer and put her arms around my neck. I could see the distorted reflection of my face in her pupils. I looked frightened. Her nose barely reached my chin and she looked up at me. "Trust me, Jamie."
I melted. "OK."
"Yeah!" she said, then stood up on her toes and kissed me lightly on the cheek. "Come on."
She grabbed my hand and took me through to the garage. It was only when we were driving through the city that I realised that she hadn't had to ask me the way to the garage, as if she already knew where it was.
She wouldn't tell me where we were going but gave me directions that took me to a part of LA that I hadn't been to before, dark streets, broken down buildings and vacant lots, burnt-out cars and littered sidewalks. Not my normal part of town, if you get my drift. I was sure that at one point we'd gone around in a circle and for a wild moment I feared that she was setting me up for something. There was, when all was said and done, a corpse with a slashed throat that needed explaining and as far as I knew De'Ath only had one name in the frame. Her's.
"There," she said, and pointed.
"What?"
"There. Park there."
I drew the car into the side and switched off the engine. It turned over for a few seconds before clunking to a halt. The timing was starting to go again. I made to go put she put a restraining hand on my thigh.
"Wait," she said. Images flashed through my mind. A dark sidewalk. A figure in a long, black coat walking up to the car. Bending down. A flash of bright steel. A red curtain. Her mouth. Her smile. Her teeth.
"Are you all right?"
"What?"
"Jeez, Jamie, I know it's way past your bedtime but you're behaving like a total zombie. Wake up. I said, are you all right?"
"I'm fine."
Her hand was still on my thigh. I could feel her nails through the material of my jeans. I hadn't realised how sharp they were, like the claws of an animal. "Will you do something for me?" she asked.
I looked into her eyes. "Anything."
She slowly took her left hand out of her jacket pocket and dropped the rice-filled brown paper bag into my lap. "Put that down your trousers."
"What?"
"Jamie, will you stop saying 'what'. Just do as I say, OK? Shove the bag of rice down the front of your pants. Trust me."
I did as she said and then we both got out of the car. She walked round to my side and linked her arm through mine.
"Don't you ever lock it?" she asked.
"No point. They'd just cut through the soft top."
"They?"
"The bad guys."
She laughed. "You're crazy."
"I'm a psychologist."
"They're not mutually exclusive, you know."
"Maybe you're right." I stopped walking and turned to look at her. "Terry, will you answer me one question?"
"Sure."
"Why am I walking around with a bag of rice down my trousers?"
She giggled and gently hit me on the head with the garbage bags. "That'd shitfire sure spoil the surprise," she said, and tugged at my arm. "Come on, we're nearly there."
We joined a line of people standing outside a movie theatre. Even by Los Angeles standards they were a strange group. Everyone seemed young, at least ten years younger than me. OK, maybe fifteen. Most of the men had make-up on, lots of mascara and eye shadow and black lipstick, and they were wearing long, shabby coats. The girls were in short black miniskirts and fishnet stockings and tops that showed off too much cleavage. Lots of make-up, too, just like the men. There were two big bouncers at the door, frisking everyone as they went in, but they were being friendly about it and there was a lot of laughing and joking. The line moved quickly and when we got to the front the film was obviously close to starting because the body search was fairly cursory. They checked my pockets and looked at Terry's garbage bags but that was about it. She had the tickets ready and on the way through the foyer I saw a couple of posters advertising the film we were going to see. The Rocky Horror Picture Show. A British actor, Tim Curry, playing the part of a kinky transvestite scientist called Frank-N-Furter.
"Have you seen it before?" Terry asked as we went into the darkened theatre.
"No," I answered. "You?"
"Only about a thousand times," she said. "Hurry up, it's starting!"
We were in the middle of the fifth row from the front and we had to squeeze past a motley collection of freaks and weirdoes who were all singing the opening song in time with a huge pair of scarlet lips on the screen. Men were taking off the coats to reveal low-cut dresses and suspender belts.
"Get the rice out," Terry whispered as we sat down. I did as she said, and I could see a girl with spikey blond hair and purple eye-shadow a few seats along slipping a plastic bag of rice from under her leather mini-skirt. She saw me looking at her and winked.
The lips disappeared from the screen and Terry's right hand burrowed into the bag and came out with a handful of rice. She motioned to me to do the same. The audience seemed to have seen he film many times, judging by the way they were yelling out the dialogue and heckling and then, when a wedding scene appeared, the air was filled with flying rice which showered down on us all to the sound of shrieks and cat-calls.
"Neat, isn't it?" laughed Terry, her lips pressed against my ear.
"I've never seen anything like it," I agreed.
"It gets better," she said. "Believe me, it gets better."
An All-American couple called Brad and Janet were singing on the screen, and the audience were going wild. In the aisle a couple wearing outfits matching those of the actors jived and mimed to the soundtrack. Terry handed me one of the garbage bags. "Put this on your head," she whispered.
"What?"
"Put it on your head. Trust me."
There was a rustling around the theatre and it seemed that everyone was either holding a newspaper above their head or wearing a plastic bag. Terry put her bag on and as I followed her example the film changed, Brad and Janet were sitting in a car in a rainstorm. Water began to pour down from above, splattering over the bag on my head and trickling down the back of my neck.
Terry giggled. "There's always someone who manages to smuggle water in," she whispered.
"It's really neat, isn't it?"
"Yeah, neat," I said. "I just hope it's water they're throwing."
The rest of the film was just as chaotic, members of the audience dressed like the characters on screen, lip-synching the dialogue, others screaming out the punchlines, still others rushing up the screen and pointing at things, pretending to help to push buttons, pull levers, open curtains, close cupboards. It was unnerving. Audience participation in an asylum. Terry seemed to know the whole script by heart and she sang along and yelled out punch-lines with the rest of them, occasionally reaching over to squeeze my hand. She was having fun, and what the hell, so was I, sitting in a darkened cinema with enough crazies to fill a year's subscription of Clinical Psychology.
The plot? I can't remember, something about building a man from spare parts, visitors from another planet, lots of men wearing suspenders, and Tim Curry murdering a lobotomised Meatloaf with an icepick. But Terry, her I can picture vividly, her black eyes wide with pleasure, licking her lips and laughing, her hair swinging backwards and forwards, her laugh so cute that I just wanted to take her in my arms and crush her. I was falling in love with her, I knew that with a dread certainty.
The realisation brought with it a flurry of do
ubts, about how she felt, about the age difference, and above all the fact that I was working for the LAPD and she was a suspect in a homicide investigation. The credits rolled and the lights came on and she turned and caught me looking at her. She frowned and reached up and stroked my cheek.
"Are you OK, Jamie D. Beaverbrook?"
I nodded and brought up my hand to hold hers. "I'm fine." I wanted to tell her how I felt, that she made my heart ache, but I held it back. Fear of rejection, I guess. Or ridicule.
"Do you want a drink? I know somewhere," she said.
"Sure."
We left the cinema arm in arm and walked back to the car. "Is it far?" I asked.
"A few minutes, max," she said.
"On a good horse?"
She giggled. "I like the way you make me laugh, Jamie," she said.
She gave me directions and five minutes later we pulled up across the road from a black-painted windowless building. Steps led up to double doors which had been opened and above them was a neon sign which said The Place. The door was being guarded by a broad-shouldered bald Negro in a black suit. His impassive face broke into a grin when he saw Terry.
"Terry, my girl!" he boomed. "How's my favourite creature of the night?"
"Hanging in there, Toby," she said. She kissed him on the cheek. "This is my friend Jamie." she said as she breezed past him. Toby nodded at me, but I didn't get a grin. I followed Terry down a red hallway to another set of doors guarded by another Negro, even bigger than Toby. He also greeted Terry by name and pushed open the doors for her, allowing the throbbing beat of heavy metal music to billow out. The dancefloor was packed with pretty much the same sort of characters we'd seen in the cinema, lots of black, lots of leather, lots of skin and pierced ears and noses, and everywhere Terry was welcomed, a kiss on the cheek, a hug, a warm smile. She seemed to have an incredible number of friends and I felt a surge of jealousy, especially when guys touched her, but she never spent more than a few minutes with any of them before moving off with me in her wake.
Once bitten Page 7