The Hollywood Spiral

by Paul Neilan

  Brand scowled. Charlie Horse smiled at him.

  “I’ve seen that face before,” Charlie Horse said. “You look like your sister after a rough shift playing dress-up.”

  “You son of a bitch,” Brand said, taking a step forward.

  I put my hand out to slow him.

  Santos shut the door behind us.

  “Speaking of, Harrigan,” Charlie Horse said. “I don’t see my fucking Danish.”

  “She’ll explain,” I said, unclipping the silver key drive from the chain around my neck.

  I handed it across the desk.

  “This better be good,” Charlie Horse said, plugging it into the dark screen.

  I was standing in front of the desk. Charlie Horse was behind it. Too far. Brand was on my left, a little back. Tor and Sig were behind us by the wall. Santos was on my right. Close enough.

  The dark screen came to life. There were no waves undulating. No filament of light. No theater mask. It wasn’t Mirror Mirror. It was a guy in clown makeup, fucking a horse from behind. We all stared at the screen.

  Charlie Horse turned his head, looked back and forth, stared at me.

  “You think this is funny, Harrigan?” he said.

  I looked at the screen. Thought about Moira and her light fingers. One last magic trick.

  “Little bit,” I said.

  “You have betrayed us!” Brand said, stepping forward. “I! Your deliverer!”

  “Unless you got a fucking pizza up your ass you better shut the fuck up!” Charlie Horse said.

  “I could eat a slice,” Santos said.

  “And you, Harrigan,” Charlie Horse said. “I’m gonna give you something to laugh about, my friend. Something to cry about too. I’m gonna break your fucking heart, right after I do the same thing to both of Anna’s legs. And the four of you get to watch.”

  “You will never own her!” Brand said. “Not again!”

  “She’s already mine!” Charlie Horse said. “Every fucking piece!”

  “Never!” Brand said, lunging forward, his arm outstretched.

  Charlie Horse was quicker. He had his gun out and fired before Brand could loose his flame. The bullet caught him in the leg and Brand fell sideways towards the couch, arm reaching to the ceiling as the fireball leapt from his armband and triggered the sprinklers above.

  There was a half-second pause, and then they gushed. I moved on Santos before the water hit me. He was reaching for his gun. I tied him up with my bad arm, swung with the good. His nose gave under my knuckles. I kept throwing. Got another one in before he hurled me into the wall, his gun under my chin.

  Brand was moaning on the couch. Sig and Tor stood frozen against the wall. Charlie Horse looked at me and smiled.

  The door opened. And Evie came through. She had her gun out, trained on Charlie Horse. The chain around her neck was in her other hand. The Scorpio ring, dangling.

  “Zodiac,” Evie said. “Put it down, Charlie.”

  “I don’t care who you’re wearing, honey,” Charlie Horse said. “You’re in the wrong fucking room.”

  Evie’s eyes flickered to the screen behind him. Charlie Horse followed her glance. The guy in clown makeup was still giving it to the horse, its tail twisted in his fist like a flayed serpent. The horse was whinnying.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you, Harrigan?” Charlie Horse said.

  I shrugged, the gun under my chin.

  “Put it down, Charlie,” Evie said. “I won’t tell you again.”

  “You won’t have to,” Charlie Horse said. “Santos, put her down.”

  Water poured from the sprinklers, slid down my face. Evie and Charlie Horse faced each other. Santos looked from one to the other, took the gun off me.

  “Can’t do that, boss,” Santos said, pointing the barrel at Charlie Horse.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” Charlie Horse said. “Et tu, Santos?”

  “Et me, boss,” Santos said.

  “After everything we’ve been through?” Charlie Horse said. “All I’ve done for you? And you hang me out like this? Talk about dying alone, you miserable sack a shit.”

  “It doesn’t have to go this way, Charlie,” Santos said.

  Charlie Horse cocked his head. “You know something, Santos?” he said. “As long as I’ve known you, that’s the first time you ever called me that.”

  I saw the mole under his left eye twitch. The squatting fly taking flight.

  I was diving for the floor before his gun went off. Santos fired back as he fell. And Evie opened up.

  I stayed down until it was over. It wasn’t long.

  “Harrigan?” Evie said, into the sudden, spreading silence.

  I picked myself up off the floor, nodded.

  Brand was mute and bleeding on the couch. Tor and Sig were hugging each other against the wall. The guy in clown makeup was still fucking the horse on screen as the sprinklers spouted.

  “This is what happened,” Evie said, holstering her gun.

  sunday

  It wasn’t raining.

  I was standing outside Griffith Observatory, on top of the hill above the city, looking out at the Hollywood sign with a glass of champagne in my hand. A string quartet played to a mixed crowd full of types I didn’t like. Downtown dignitaries, gangsters gone respectable, industry insiders, Grid stars I’d never heard of. All of them Zodiac stooges.

  “I don’t trust this place,” I said.

  “You don’t trust anyplace, Harrigan,” Evie said. “I love seeing you uncomfortable, but you can relax. Everybody’s taking the night off for the comet. Scores don’t matter, for now. It’s a citywide truce.”

  “It won’t last,” I said.

  “It never does,” she said. “But it beats your flooded apartment.”

  I didn’t mind. I could skip rent this month, tell the landlord it was part of the cleanup. It was worth a shot.

  “Tell me again about the girl who pickled Eddie Lompoc,” she said, like it was her favorite bedtime story.

  I told it to her. Schrödinger’s daughter. I did the Lompoc impression as best I could. How he never saw the angle of the cucumber coming. All the way up to Beatrix in her rocking chair, creaking back and forth until she wasn’t anymore.

  “I could listen to that all night,” she said, smiling at me. “Fucking Eddie Lompoc.”

  Evie had a story too. She’d left Fatales with the Danes, told me to meet her here the next night. Charlie Horse and Santos were stone cold on the floor, their blood spattering the walls behind them. She took the silver key drive. She knew what it was supposed to be. She could play a few angles herself, Evelyn Faraday. When she had to.

  The clouds parted above us and the comet showed. A faint chalk smudge on a blackboard, a few other stars breaking through. The city had gone dark to fight the light pollution. It was part of the truce. None of the people around me were even looking. They were too busy shaking hands, smiling at each other, snapping shots with their screens, looking over their shoulders to see who came next. There was a line to pose beside a bronze bust of James Dean. From the right side you could catch the Hollywood sign in the background.

  I took another glass of champagne from a passing waiter in white gloves.

  “How do you put up with it?” I said, looking around. “Zodiac. All this bullshit.”

  “I could ask you the same thing,” Evie said. “Sleeping underwater.”

  She clinked my glass.

  “You ever want to come into the fold, Harrigan, I could put in a good word,” she said. “Zodiac’s always looking for somebody with your kind of—”

  I looked at her.

  She laughed.

  “You make it hard to keep a straight face,” she said. “But you’d really look so pretty, wearing a ring. I know exactly which one it would be.”

  Shelly strolled past holding a tall glass, did a double take when she saw me.

  “Harrigan,” Shelly said, looking me over. “You’re the last person I expected to encounter at
this kind of event.”

  “I don’t mind seeing how the other half lives,” I said.

  “So long as you don’t have to participate,” she said.

  “I’m drinking your booze,” I said. “Isn’t that enough?”

  “Have you heard from Anton?” she said.

  “I thought everyone was taking the night off,” I said.

  “We are. But tomorrow’s another day. I’m Shelly,” she said, turning to Evie. “Virgo.”

  “Evelyn,” Evie said. “Scorpio.”

  “And here I thought you didn’t have a handler,” Shelly said to me.

  “He needs all the help he can get,” Evie said.

  “Apparently,” Shelly said. “A pleasure meeting you. I’ll be seeing you again, Harrigan.”

  “Keep an eye on her,” Evie said as we watched her walk away. “I think she likes you.”

  “I don’t,” I said.

  We watched the comet, moving imperceptibly, directly overhead.

  It was close to midnight. The string quartet had started a slow countdown with their bows. The crowd milled and mingled.

  “You should’ve come to me when you found it,” Evie said. “Mirror Mirror.”

  “Then I would’ve had to tell you I lost it again,” I said.

  “You still haven’t told me how,” she said.

  I took a drink.

  “It could’ve gone much easier. For both of us, Harrigan,” she said. “No need to play it hard.”

  “I was trying not to play it at all,” I said.

  “That never works,” she said. “You know that.” She took a drink. “She’s something though, Mirror Mirror. Isn’t she?”

  “She is,” I said. “You tracked her down at The Accelerator.”

  “I was right behind you,” Evie said. “What did she tell you, the first time you talked to her?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “She didn’t finish. It had something to do with time.”

  “That makes sense,” she said. “They don’t think it works the way we do. It’s hard for them to follow. It helps them to have a countdown. Like a fuse.”

  The voices around us were chanting sixteen…fifteen…fourteen…thirteen…

  “How about you?” I said. “What did she have to say for herself?”

  “All kinds of things,” she said. “She talked about you. She told me what to ask you.”

  Eight…seven…six…five…

  “So tell me, Harrigan,” Evie said. “Who’s the fairest of them all?”

  I looked at her as the crowd said one. Saw her face alight as the first explosion sounded.

  after

  The spotlight snapped on the stage, stark and sudden. A skinny guy I didn’t recognize wound his way through the tables, towards the front.

  “I love animals,” he said into the microphone. “I really do. Sometimes I love petting them. Sometimes I love eating them. Sometimes I love doing both at the same time. Not at a restaurant or anything. Not anymore. I still love going out to eat though. I like to treat the food like fine wine. Really taste it, you know? I’ll get a nice piece of veal, sniff it, take a bite and say, I’m getting notes of a tender, baffled sadness. The hue of a truly horrific childhood. Earthy undertones. This one definitely died covered in its own shit. And the waiter says, Might I suggest the lobster? You can really taste the screams. And I say, Can I pet him first? And the manager fires the waiter immediately and then asks me to leave. Love is complicated sometimes.”

  I watched him step offstage.

  “No screens in this place,” Evie said, looking around the room as she sat down.

  “Maxwells is off Grid,” I said. “We can talk here.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Nobody’s bugging an open mic.” She leaned back in her chair, raised her glass. “The look on your face, Harrigan, when it all blew. It really was beautiful.”

  I took a drink.

  The Accelerator was the first explosion, the entire complex imploding in a hail of shattered glass. The mansion on Franklin came next, fvrst chvrch mvlTverse going up like a signal flare in the dark. The Zodiac Discretionary Annex blew right after, a thirteen-story Roman candle bursting into flames. The ground rumbled, shaking the hills, and as the crowd outside Griffith Observatory screamed there were sparks at the base of the Hollywood sign, the letters coming unmoored as the sky opened up and the rain began to pour. And they slid down the hill, one after the other, each letter cutting a trail through the mud and scrub.

  That was the image on all the screens, all over Grid, the first iconic shot. The bronze bust of James Dean, face slick with tears, weeping as Hollywood fell behind him. The second one came the following morning, when all the Travelers gathered. Not at their destroyed sanctuary, but at the base of the hill, trying to raise the Hollywood sign again themselves with ropes and pulleys. I recognized one of the faces, his eyebrows smeared in mud. It was CMB Roach, amid the ruins, smiling out from every screen like he promised.

  “Who’s Zodiac looking at for it?” I said.

  “Everybody,” Evie said. “The Parallax Liberation Faction’s taking credit, but fvrst chvrch mvlTverse isn’t off the hook either.”

  “They blew up their own headquarters?” I said.

  “It’s been done before,” she said. “Zodiac was closing in. Time to pick up stakes. Move the operation. And they’ve never been more popular, after that stunt with the Hollywood sign.”

  “They were working with the Fraction all along,” I said. “What happened to Brand and the Danes?”

  “They’re persons of interest in the bombings,” she said. “Brand was a known pyrophile, had a few hits on Grid. They’re not high on the list, but Zodiac’s looking at everyone. Leda Dresden’s name keeps coming up too.”

  “Good luck finding her,” I said. “What about Anna?”

  “She’s out, if she wants to be,” she said. “Free and clear.”

  “Just like that?” I said.

  “Just like that,” Evie said. “It helps to have someone on the inside, Harrigan. Helps to have someone on the outside too.”

  “Which one are you?” I said.

  She gave me a smile. I took it.

  CMB Roach strutted his way up to the microphone.

  “Ish the Roach,” he said, his head bobbing. “Makin vows…”

  When y’all wish upon a star

  Star don’t give a fuck who y’all are

  Star got problems of his own

  He dying up in space

  Iss a losin race

  Throwin light at some peoples in a far off place

  They peepin up above

  Trying to find they some love

  Should be lookin at somebody they know face to face

  Like a kite off the string

  Ain’t nobody kiss the ring

  Runnin wild

  Chosen child

  She be queen not a king

  Now the field be level

  Now that God’s the devil

  Know the angels by they voices why you hear they sing

  CMB takin bows

  Ain’t no future iss now

  Get yo self

  Off the shelf

  I done showed you how

  “I went to see Clyde the other day,” I said.

  “How’s he doing?” Evie said.

  “He’s gone,” I said.

  “I can’t wait until Jesus comes back,” the Rev said into the microphone. “The first time he walks into a church and looks up at the altar and says, What the fuck is this? Is that me? Hanging half naked on a fucking cross? And what’s with these stained glass windows? I’m getting the shit kicked out of me in all of them. What the fuck is that all about? I go away for a few years and you decorate my own house with every one of my worst memories? What kind of sadistic shit is that? I thought you guys were supposed to be my friends? All right, fine. I see how it is. That’s how you want to do it? Somebody bring me the sword. Here’s a revelation for you. I’m killing everyone.”


  “The nurse said Clyde checked himself out of hospice last Sunday at midnight, when the city was blowing up,” I said. “Said he had a comet to see.”

  “Lucky break,” Evie said, taking a drink. “Zodiac’s not publicizing it, but the Discretionary Annex blowout fucked everyone’s Score. There was some kind of electromagnetic pulse before the fire took everything. All the data was corrupted. Financial, location. All of it. They’re still trying to work out what happened. In the meantime, Borderlines like you and Clyde get a free pass.”

  “I’ll take it,” I said. “Still seems funny though, Clyde getting out when he did. Almost like he knew.”

  “He always was pretty sharp, old Clyde,” she said. “Almost like it runs in the family.”

  She took a drink.

  “I’ve been trying to explain the world to my friend who’s been in a coma,” a girl with straight hair parted in the middle said into the microphone.

  “What are you watching?”

  “The Cake Boss.”

  “Cakes have bosses now? How long was I asleep? What the fuck does he do all day?”

  “Hey you, coconut cream! Get back to work!”

  “What the fuck are you talking about? I’m a fucking cake!”

  “Listen up, you be more delicious or you’re fired!”

  “What am I supposed to do about it? You already fucking baked me! I didn’t ask for this shit! I quit!”

  “No, don’t quit! We need to unionize! That’s the problem! Solidarity!”

  “You shut the fuck up red velvet or you’re fired too, you commie prick! I never should’ve hired you in the first place!”

  “Oh yeah? Well fuck you! Who made you the boss anyway? What kind of fucking job is that, yelling at a bunch of cakes you fucking sociopath? If you pulled this shit at Carvel Fudgie the Whale would have you killed!”

  When I got back to my apartment there was a note on my table, folded over.

  Harrigan:

  i heard a song in Gaelic

  and it sounded like all the words the Inuit have for snow

  sung in a row

  in Gaelic though

  each one of them describing another way that it can go