Sweet Dream, Silver Screen
by Moxie Mezcal
Smashwords Edition
copyright 2009 Moxie Mezcal
1. I wish we could share something other than blood
I awoke to find myself in the passenger seat of an unfamiliar car, groggy and disoriented, unable to remember where I was or how I got there. Hell, it took me a while to even remember who I was. My head throbbed, my body ached, and I felt like I was going to puke. All in all, there were nicer ways to wake up.
I felt a sharp, blinding pain in my side as I climbed out of the car, a pink ‘56 Coupe De Ville. Once clear, I lifted my tank top a little to check myself and saw a huge purple bruise spread across my ribs. As I looked down, warm beads of sweat dripped into my left eye, which caused me to curse and instinctively wipe away at it with the back of my hand. Then I pulled my hand away and saw the deep crimson smear on my pale skin, and I realized it wasn’t sweat.
Just fucking wonderful, I muttered to myself while looking around to see if there was anyone else in sight. I was standing in front of a derelict service station at the side of a desert highway in the middle of nowhere. There didn’t appear to be another soul for miles.
I pulled my top off completely and wadded it up to mop the blood off my forehead. Then I knelt down to look myself over in the driver’s side mirror. As I swept back my long red hair from in front of my face, the reflection staring back at me was a mess. A large gash over my left eye had scabbed over and turned purple, and my right cheekbone was swollen and bruised. My tongue slipped out and felt the split in my upper lip, which still tasted slightly coppery. There were bruises on my neck where it looked like someone tried to strangle me. Makeup was smeared everywhere. Well aren’t you just the prettiest little thing?
Standing upright, I looked over the Caddie again, and this time something stirred in my memory. I saw a vision of this same car parked in front of a bar, a roadside dive with a neon side that read Fat Man Lounge.
This was last night, late at night, I remembered. I had been hitchhiking and got a ride from a middle-aged lesbian in a Mustang somewhere around Barstow, and she agreed to take me all the way to my stop even though it was eight miles out of her way. Her name was Dawn, she had short blonde hair, and she smelled like sandalwood.
Dawn pulled in just behind the Caddie to drop me off, and I wished that I had some way to repay her, but didn't. So instead I gave her the tiny pewter Ganesha charm off my backpack as a token of thanks.
The Fat Man Lounge was a tiny little dive, dimly lit and filled with smoke, that had been decorated along the theme of atomic warfare. There was a large neon sign hanging over the bar with colored fluorescent tubes twisted into the shape of a mushroom cloud, and the walls were lined with newspaper and magazine clippings about the atomic bomb testing that used to take place in the desert near here along with a few items about Hiroshima and Nagasaki mixed in. Even the juke box blasted oldies from the Cold War era like Link Wray's "Rumble" and Lloyd Price's "Stagger Lee" – music to sound an air raid alarm to.
I was easily the youngest person there by at least a decade, possibly two. As soon as I walked through the door, every guy’s eyes were locked on me, openly leering like a pack of hungry pigs. I’m used to guys looking at me, at a certain point you just have to give in and write it off as they don’t know any better, like dogs licking their balls. But for some reason this bothered me, their dead sallow faces, the naked lust, mixing with the noxious dense air, making me feel sick to my stomach. They barely even looked human, but more like fat, mutant rednecks, deformed slobbering lumps left out in the sun and radiation too long.
There was one guy, though, who didn’t seem to notice me. He was sitting off by himself at the far end of the bar, perched on his stool as he slowly nursed a whiskey sour. He looked to be a little younger than everyone else, probably in his mid-thirties, with chocolate-colored skin, bleach-platinum hair and a razor-thin, neatly-manicured goatee. He wasn't exactly handsome – his features were a little too the off in their proportions and symmetry to be a pretty boy – but he was in great shape with the physique of an athlete. He was dressed like a cowboy in a black Stetson hat, tight wife-beater, dusty old cowboy boots – and a tight pair of bright pink jeans. Let's see if I can guess who the pink car belongs to, I thought to myself.
I walked up to the bar tender, pulled a photograph out of my backpack, and laid it on the counter top in front of him. He looked at me with amusement, his eyes staring at my tits and slowly working their way up to meet my gaze, looking everywhere but at the photo. His thin lips twisted into a mocking smile, and he ran his short, purplish tongue over his teeth. He was in his early-forties with greasy brown hair, leathery skin, three-day scruff, and a scrawny, anemic build.
I tapped on the photo with a black-nailed index finger, "Do you know this woman?"
Reluctantly, the bartender lowered his eyes to look at the picture, which showed a woman in her early twenties dressed in a t-shirt with a silkscreen of Warhol's portrait of Marilyn Monroe; she was posed in front of the Golden Gate Bridge. She looked exactly like me, except her hair was dyed blue instead of red.
The bar tender looked back at me and chuckled. "So I guess you must be Scarlett."
I nodded. "Did she tell you about me?"
"She left something for you," he said, then motioned toward the back of the bar with his head. "I have it in the office, if you want to come see it."
I followed him back to the far corner of the bar by the pay phone and bathrooms. He led me through a door that had been hand-painted in large white letters with the phrase I am become death, the shatterer of worlds. This brought us into a cramped little office overflowing with boxes of paperwork, cases of alcohol, and promo items from liquor companies like rolled-up posters, neon signs, and life-size cardboard cut-outs of bikini-clad women with fake tits holding beer bottles. Somewhere buried under all that was a small metal desk. He knelt down to unlock its bottom drawer and opened it to remove a small black box in the shape of a perfect cube. As he stood up, he pulled off the small white card that had been taped to it and handed it to me. It bore my name written in a neat cursive script.
He set the box on the desk, and I sat down to inspect it. When I picked it up, I was surprised to feel how heavy it was. The thing was solid metal, hard and cool to the touch. As I turned it over in my hands, I realized there was no obvious way to open it – no seams, latches, or hinges. The only thing that broke up its smooth, polished surface was a small metal keyhole in the middle of one of its faces, which looked like the keyhole on a filing cabinet.
"Do you have the k--?" I started to ask as I looked over my shoulder towards the bar tender, but cut off my question when I saw him holding an oversized beer stein with a German beer company logo over his head.
He brought it down on my temple, sending me toppling out of the chair and sprawling onto the ground. He was on top of me in a flash and wrapped his hands around my throat. I reached out and clawed his face with my nails, digging chunks of flesh out of him. He screamed and relaxed his grip enough for me to lunge forward and sink my teeth into his nose, sending tiny jets of blood squirting everywhere.
He rolled off me and curled into a ball, crying like a baby. I stood up, grabbed the box off the desk, and bounded for the door. Unfortunately, as soon as I got it open, I found myself facing down a massive bearded skinhead in a muscle shirt. Before I had a chance to react, he sent his meaty paw sailing into my face, hitting me square on the jaw with a crushing force. I instantly dropped to my knees, and struggled to raise my head just in time for him to land another blow right in my eye.
"Stupid fucking bitch," he spat, as I collapsed into a heap. "You think just because you change your hair color we're actually gonna believe it's not you?"
I started to open my mouth to say something snappy in retort, but then felt like I might end up puking all over myself instead, so I just flipped him off. Meanwhile, the man pulled out a cell phone and hit a few buttons. "Tough gal, ain't you?" he growled while pressing the phone to his ear, waiting for an answer on the other end. "Just sit tight while I call The Saint. We'll see how tough you are when he gets his hands on you."
It was then that I noticed the man in the pink jeans creeping up silently behind the skinhead. He grabbed the larger man by the shoulder and spun him around. With dizzying speed and surgical precision, he hit the man square in the neck to crush his windpipe, then shattered his nose, and finally blew out his knee with a swift kick.
By the time I could even process what happened, he was already on his knees, beside me, scooping me up off the ground.
"Are you okay, sweetie?" he asked in a gentle voice while flashing me a reassuring smile.
"I'm need to find my sister," I mumbled deliriously, clutching the box to my chest as I blacked out.
The black box, I thought with alarm, and I ran back to the pink Cadillac to make sure I had brought it along. Poking my head in the passenger window, I saw it sitting next to my army-green canvas backpack at the foot of the seat and breathed a sigh of relief. I reached inside to pick both items up and set them on the hood so I could dig a fresh shirt out of my pack. I found a faded red t-shirt with a drawing of a curvaceous devil girl waving the American flag.
As I slid the shirt over my head, I heard a voice say, "Well at least you're not dead."
I popped my head through the neck hole and saw the cowboy in the pink jeans walking out of the service station along with a second man, a tall grease-monkey in blue jeans and a light grey work shirt.
"Come on inside," the cowboy said, "You can clean up and have a bite to eat."
One sink-basin bath and two microwavable pita pockets later, the three of us were sitting around the service station's break room table, and I was explaining how I came to be here.
"This is my sister, Violet," I said, showing them the picture I had shown the bar tender. "We're twins."
"Obviously," the man in the pink jeans, who I found out was named Tennessee, said.
"Yeah, well she left home when we were eighteen, six years ago," I continued. "She was always the good one – smarter, more outgoing, more ambitious. She got a full ride scholarship to go overseas for college, and she jumped at it. I, on the other hand, was kicked out of school for selling crystal meth on campus. But I guess sometimes them's the brakes.
"Anyway, at first Violet kept in touch from school. We'd trade e-mails regularly, and every once in a while stay up for an all-night IM session. She was having a great time, getting involved in theater, meeting a lot of people, and really starting to discover herself. So it didn't come as much of a surprise to me when she stopped writing. I mean, really, who wants to keep checking in with your podunk hometown when you're busy living a brand new life in a brand new country?
"That's why I didn't give it a second thought until I got this letter from her." I paused to dig a worn and tattered envelope out of my backpack, and then set that on the table next to the photograph. "It said she was in trouble and asked me to come out to California and find her. It also contained a travel voucher with enough miles to cover a one-way plane ticket out here.
"But by the time I got there, she had already moved out of the address she had given me. So I've spent the past few weeks now trying to track her down, following her from city to city, picking up the little pieces of her trail and trying to figure out what kind of trouble she's in."
The two men exchanged looks. "That's quite a story," Tennessee said. I couldn't tell if that meant he doubted it was true or not.
"So what's in the box," asked the other man, who was named Adam.
"That's a good question," I replied with a shrug. "Figure out a way to open it, and I'll tell you."
He picked it up from the table and looked it over for a moment before asking, "Do you mind if I take this out to the shop and take a shot at it?"
"Be my guest."
He left with it while Tennessee stayed behind with me. "So what's your next move, or do you have one?"
"Well I've got a couple leads. First off, the big skinhead at the bar mentioned someone named The Saint, so I suppose I could start asking around about that."
Tennessee raised an eyebrow. "Yeah, that sounds like a great idea – track down the guy with the large violent thugs who thinks you're your sister and is apparently holding a bitch of a grudge."
I grinned and said, "Well, I do have a Plan B." Then I reached once more into my bag and pulled out a beat-up paperback book.
He looked at me with a perplexed expression, but before he got a chance to press me for an explanation, Adam returned with the box, which was still completely intact.
"Nothing," he said. "I tried to cut through it, put it in a vice, even took a bloody blow torch to it, and it still won't open."
"Did you try to pick the lock?"
"Of course," Adam replied, taking out a giant ring of literally dozens of keys of varying shapes and sizes. He fitted one into the lock with only a modicum of effort, turned the key, and yanked on it; the whole cylinder came out. He passed the box back over to me, and I saw that there was a shallow hole in the box just big enough for the lock to fit back into, but it didn't open into any larger cavity inside or release any opening.
"Weird," I said.
"From what I can tell, this might not even be a box, " Adam said. "There's a good chance it's just a solid block of metal."
I grabbed the box in both hands and slid it back across the table to me. "I wouldn't rule that out as a possibility."
"But there most be something more to it," Tennessee protested. "Why would your sister leave that behind for you, otherwise?"
I shrugged my shoulders. "I'll be sure to ask her when I find her."
2. Looking so long at this picture of you
Back at the Fat Man Lodge, a very good-looking man with dirty blond hair and a long scar on his left cheek was settling onto a stool. He smiled pleasantly as he waited for Mitch the bartender to finish wiping off some glasses with a dirty rag. When Mitch was ready, he nodded his head casually toward the stranger. "What'll it be?"
"I'm glad you asked," said the man with the scar, who was wearing a rumpled dark blue suit over a green shirt. "I was hoping you could help me out on two fronts," He smiled broadly and had a gregarious manner that managed to temper the general hostility Mitch tended to feel towards anyone new who came into the bar.
"First," the man continued, "I'd like a scotch on the rocks. Johnny Black, if you've got it. And second..." he paused to dig a folded piece of paper from his breast pocket, "I was hoping you could give me some information."
"The drink'll be five bucks," Mitch responded. "The information will be more, depending on what you're asking."
The blond man grinned and reached into one of the pockets of his coat. When his hand reappeared on the top of the bar, it set down a badge in a leather holder with a neatly folded $100 bill sitting on top of it. "This should be enough to cover both, I hope."
Mitch snatched away the bill quickly, then proceeded to unfold the piece of paper the stranger had initially produced. It was a computer print-out of a blurry, over-lit photograph that looked to Mitch like it had been taken with a camera phone. It was a picture of me from about a year ago, looking into the camera with one eye while the other was hidden behind the locks of red hair spilling over my face. I took it while holding the phone over my head and kneeling on a bed with red silk sheets, which were faintly visible in the background. I was topless and had my free arm draped across my chest, presumably to preserve a modicum of modesty.
"What kind of a picture is that?" Mitch asked with a scoff.
"The only one of her I have," the man replied with a carefree shrug. "Have you seen her?"
"Yeah, on the security camera," he said and pointed out the clunky old camera perched over the top shelf of booze. "Apparently she and some other guy had it out with Randall, who was the bar tender on shift before me, and his buddy Ian. A customer who followed them outside said they left in a pink Cadillac."
"Pink Cadillac," the man repeated with glee. "So this customer who followed them out, he didn't by any chance get a license plate number, did he?"
Mitch nodded. "As a matter of fact he did, but it'll cost you another bill, though."
The man let out a good-natured chuckle and set a second hundred on the bar. Mitch found the scrap of paper with the number and transferred it onto a cocktail napkin.
"Did you phone in the plate number to the police?" the stranger asked.
Mitch grinned and shook his head. "No, we have someone else who keeps the order around here. Cops tend to just get in the way."
"I couldn't agree more," the stranger responded before taking the napkin from Mitch, gulping down his drink, and then quietly leaving the bar.
Meanwhile, Tennessee and I were back in the Caddie, about to cross the state line on the road to Los Angeles.
He had agreed to come with me as long as we shared the driving, which I thought was an unbelievably chivalrous gesture, but which he assured me was essentially a selfish act.
"Believe me, you've piqued my curiosity enough that you're doing me a favor letting me come with you. Long-lost twins, brutish thugs, a mystery box that can't be opened – it's all like some trashy pulp detective novel, if I don't find out what the hell's going on here I'll go mad."
I was behind the wheel while he thumbed through the dog-eared paperback I had been lugging around in my backpack. It was a cheap murder mystery called Invisible Ink that tried to ape the old hard-boiled detective stories of Mickey Spillane and Raymond Chandler with mixed results.
"I think you've just been getting too caught up in that book," I replied. "You should probably take a break before it really starts messing with your perception of reality."
"Too late, I've already decided I want to become a private dick," he declared. "Hang out in seedy dive bars, meet big menacing men in dark alleys – what's not to like?"
I giggled and shook my head. "For the last five weeks my life has turned into one big pulp novel; trust me, it's not all it's cracked up to be."
He screwed up his face and turned away dismissively. "What do you know? I'll just ask this guy when we get to LA and get the professional's opinion." He held up the book with the back cover facing me, showing me the photo of the author.
I had found the book in a cardboard box of Violet's stuff given to me by her landlord in San Francisco. The box contained the sundry possessions she had left behind when she abruptly disappeared. Luckily it was a furnished room, or so the landlord explained to me, so there wasn't any furniture to worry about. All that was left behind were a few articles of clothing, a hand weight set, a shoe box full of photographs, a couple text books, an MP3 player, some half-used toiletries, and of course the book.
I tossed the garbage, took whatever was still usable to the Goodwill, and shipped the box of pictures to our parents. The only thing I kept for myself was the book, although at the time I don't think I could have even explained why. I've never been much of a reader; that was always more Violet's thing. Perhaps it just seemed like the most personal artifact in that box, a stupid little paperback that was so tattered and dog-eared that she had clearly read it a few times over. It helped that it was such a random book, an obscure genre work, rather than something more substantial or well-known. It clearly wasn't something she read for school or because it would make her look smart or be the kind of thing she could reference at cocktail parties; it was something she read just for herself, a guilty pleasure.
Though it was arduous at times getting through the hackneyed prose, it made me feel connected to her in a strange way – reading the same novel, my mind occupying the same fictional space as hers had. It was like now I was following her footsteps through her imagination in the same way that I was following her trail back in the real world. Or maybe I was just already sick of American TV and needed something to help me pass the nights in random hotel rooms in unfamiliar places.
But then, about a third of the way through, I came across a character who matched Violet's description perfectly down to her dyed blue hair, her tattoos, and the mole just below her navel. I was stunned; I literally threw the book down, spooked by the coincidence, like I had just witnessed a supernatural phenomenon.
Then, after a few seconds passed, my reason returned, and I picked up the book again. Flipping to the front pages, I saw that the copyright date was only two years ago, well after Violet had moved to California. Then I noticed the dedication page, which simply said: To V.
Clearly the author had known her and used her as a model for the character's appearance. I turned the book over to see the author's photo and the short bio of him. It said he lived Los Angeles.
I had explained this all to Tennessee before we set out on the road. "But you do realize that Los Angeles is a pretty big place, yeah? It's going to be hard to find one single man in a city of millions."
"Actually, I already found him," I replied. "I checked the listings online. There's only one person with his exact name in LA, and it gave his address."
"Diabolical," he responded, flashing a toothy grin.
Four hours later, we arrived at that address, which was a multi-use building near Venice beach. The ground floor was occupied by two storefronts, a taqueria and a pawn shop. An entrance around the side opened to the narrow stairwell leading up to the apartments. The names on the mailboxes told us that our man lived on the top floor, which we discovered meant roof once got up there.
It was actually a converted loft with a rooftop terrace, but you had to go out of the stairwell and cut across the terrace to enter the apartment part.
I gave the front door a couple good strong knocks, and the face that answered was unquestionably the face from the back cover of the novel.
"Ah, right on time. Although I can honestly say I didn't expect to see you again," he said, his expression filled with open astonishment.
I made an apologetic half-smile. "Sorry, but I don't think I'm who you think I am."
He looked confused for a second, but then his face lit up as the realization dawned on him. "Of course, you must be Scarlett."
He invited us inside and had us sit on his small brown imitation leather couch while he disappeared into the kitchen to get us something to drink
His living room was pretty much what you'd expect of a writer – cramped, messy, and full of books. The walls were lined with bookcases of varying sizes, shapes, and colors, all stuffed with as many books as they could hold. The only other furniture that wasn't bookcases were the couch we sat on, a matching love seat positioned perpendicular to it, a small end table wedged between them, and coffee table sitting out in the open space in front of them. Both the coffee table and end table had shelves under the surface that were crammed with magazines and more books, so they almost didn't really count.
Our host returned with a pitcher of iced tea and three glasses, and a picture frame. After serving us, he poured a glass from himself and settled into the love seat. Then he passed over the frame, and I saw that it contained the same photo of Violet that I had been carrying around.
"So, I probably should start by explaining why we're here," I said.
"Seems like as reasonable a place to start as any," he responded before taking a sip of his tea.
I recounted the story about my search for Violet, laying out my copy of the photograph along with the envelope on his coffee table. He picked up each item and looked them over with a studied eye while I spoke, even opening the envelope to read the letter inside. Then I pulled out the copy of his book and explained how I discovered it and found Violet's description, repeating my earlier guess that he must have known her and based the character on her.
"Well, you're half-right," he replied. "I certainly couldn't say I knew her, not in any meaningful sense of the word. But I did meet her on several occasions, and on one of those occasions she did me a great kindness, and so I wrote her into my novel as a tribute."
"But you wouldn't know where she is now?" I pressed.
He shook his head apologetically. "I'm afraid not. I haven't seen her in quite some time. But I might be able to offer a theory as to why she wrote to you and what kind of trouble she is in."
"That would be great," I said enthusiastically.
"But before I get started, I need to put my mind at ease as to your intentions."
"What do you mean, her intentions?" Tennessee jumped in, defensively.
He picked up the envelope and letter. "Well, this letter is dated three years ago. That would correspond roughly with the time her current troubles began, as well as the last time I saw her. But I'm curious, if that is the case, why are you only now seeking out your sister?"
I shifted in my seat and picked at the chipped black polish on my fingernails. "Look, when the letter first came, I wasn't really at a place in my life where I felt like dropping everything and hopping on a plane. Truth be told, if I couldn't smoke it, snort it, or shoot it, I really didn't have much use for it. I rationalized that whatever trouble my sister had gotten herself into, she was smart enough to get herself out of, and if anything I would probably just end up dragging her down even further."
"So what changed?"
I chewed at my thumbnail a little, trying to work out what was the bare minimum I could get away with telling him. "I ran into a little trouble, and suddenly a one-way ticket out of town didn't look like such a bad deal."
"What kind of trouble?"
"The kind that doesn't have anything to do with where my sister is or how I find her," I said, perhaps a little too defensively.
He smiled at me somewhat patronizingly. "And now you think finding your sister somehow will atone for whatever it is you've done, is that it? There are easier ways of punishing yourself, you know."
I replied, "Well, that may be, but she's my sister and this is what I need to do. So why don't you try doing some of the explaining for a while?"
3. Stop me if you think that you've heard this one before
Adam was just about to close up shop a little early when he spotted the dusty old black Dakota turning off the highway. He briefly considered saying that he was already closed and just forgot to change the sign, but decided against it when he saw the driver climb out of the cab. The man was definitely gorgeous – big, well-built, muscular without being too meaty, nice barrel chest hiding under that dark blue suit. The suit was a bit rumpled for Adam's tastes, but that face more than made up for it. Square jaw, great smile, perfect teeth, and dimples – God, did Adam love dimples.
"Hi there, I hope I didn't catch you at a bad time," the man said cheerfully as he approached.
"Not at all," Adam replied. "Is the truck giving you grief?"
"No, but you might be able to help me out a different way. I'm looking for an Adam Washington, drives a pink Cadillac, do you know him?"
"Who wants to know?" Adam asked tentatively.
"Don't worry," the man said, flashing him a disarming smile. "It's nothing bad. I just scraped up against his car in a parking lot, and I didn't have any pen and paper to leave a note with. I ran off to find some, but by the time I got back he was already back in his car and pulling away. I couldn't flag him down, so instead I just made a note of the plate number. Then I called my buddy up at the DMV to get his name and address so I can square things up for the cost of the repairs."
"Well I'm Adam Washington, but I don't know anything about any damage to the car."
The man furrowed his brow momentarily. "Well someone else must have been driving your car because the guy I saw was black. He had a woman with him, young gal with bright red hair."
"That was my friend Tennessee. He's visiting from out of town, and I'm letting him use my car while he's here. But like I said, he didn't mention anything about any scrapes."
"Well, do you expect him back any time soon? Because I don't mind waiting around 'til we can take a look at the car together and see what'll be a fair amount as far as compensation goes."
"He probably won't be back until tomorrow. He and his friend went to Los Angeles. If you want to leave your name and number, though, I'll be happy to call you once we get an estimate for fixing the car."
"Los Angeles," the man repeated, losing his accent, and started to laugh. "That's too bad for you because I can't think of a single reason why I would need to go to Los Angeles under this stupid fucking pretext."
Adam looked at him, confused. "What do you mean?"
"I mean," the man answered as he pulled a butterfly knife out of his pocket, "that now I'm going to have to find out where she went the hard way."
The writer refilled his glass of iced tea before beginning his story.
"The first time I met your sister, I was still living up north and she had just moved into town to go to school. It's actually a dreadfully embarrassing story. I was sitting outside a cafe waiting to meet a woman I had been talking to on the internet. You have to understand, I was in the middle of a dry spell that lasted far longer than I care to admit, so in my desperation I had taken to reading online personal ads. One in particular piqued my interest from a young woman who had just moved into town and wasn't interested in anything romantic but was looking to make a few friends who could show her around town. I wrote to her, and after we traded a few e-mails, I managed to convince her I wasn't a complete pervert or dangerously psychotic. So we agreed to meet.
"She had never sent me a picture of herself, so I didn't know who exactly I was looking for, but she had given me a general description enough to have a rough idea. Anyways, I showed up to the café and waited... and then when I still didn't see her I waited some more... and I waited.. and waited... well you get the picture.
"And then two hours later you sister walked in, and while the woman I was looking for had never mentioned having bright blue hair, she did fit the rest of the description closely enough. Also, there was something about her that – I don't know, she just had the look of someone in a brand new city, that wide-eyed look of fascination you get when everything you see is still fresh and exciting. I figured it was worth taking the chance.
"So I got up and introduced myself and stammered around awkwardly for entirely too long before getting to the point and asking her if by any chance her name is Natalie. And of course she says it is not. And so of course I became very disappointed and my face sank into a look of abject humiliation, which made her laugh, and she said something like, 'Don't look so sad or you're gonna hurt my feelings.'
"I apologized and explained that I was supposed to meet someone who is new in town and wanted to be shown around, but I didn't know what she looked like because I found her on the internet, And as I said this, I realized how much deeper I was digging myself into the humiliation hole and my speech devolved into senseless mumbling as I was consumed by the shame of a thousand neutered bulldogs. Mercifully, she jumped in and said that, coincidentally, she was new to town and wouldn't mind getting the inside scoop from a local.
"Anyways, to make a short story long, we ended up spending the rest of the afternoon and evening together. I showed her the park, and the modern art museum, and she mentioned she likes to read so I took her to my favorite used book store, and then we went out to dinner at my favorite little Thai place, and of course we had to cap it off with a couple drinks at my favorite little dive bar, and we were having such a good time and everything was going so well that I decided to spoil it all by making a sloppy pass at her and getting summarily rejected.
"I was sure I'd never see her again after that. But then a year later – and note that I didn't say approximately a year later, I mean exactly one year to the day – I met her again, again by chance. My first novel had just been published, making me a real Writer with a capital 'W' who was making real money for the first time in his life. And though I still couldn't get a date to save that aforementioned life, I did suddenly find myself with the kinds of friends one suddenly finds when one comes into money, even genre fiction money.
"So on this particular evening I was attending a party thrown by one of my newly acquired friends to benefit some noble cause or other, and I was bored out of my mind. And she was there too, playing the part of arm candy to some rich something-or-other who was way too old for her. But she herself looked absolutely stunning in a little black cocktail dress that showed off just enough to be enticing without being tawdry. She looked classic, like an old black-and-white movie starlet, except of course for that hair of hers. As soon as I saw her, though, I was mortified and spent most of the evening artfully ducking behind other guests and staying at the opposite end of the room just to avoid running into her.
"Of course, fate being what it is, the friend who invited me decided I must be introduced to Mr. Rich Something-or-Other, and by the way this is girlfriend Violet. And then after the ensuing dull conversation, her date and my friend both realized there were other more interesting people they could be talking to and left the two of us alone. I of course just stared at her blankly like a dear in the headlight, and then she says that she's offended beyond belief that I had been avoiding her all evening. Loosening up a bit, I asked if there was anything I could do to make up for it, to which she replied, 'Yes. Help me escape from this God-awful stuffed-shirt snooze-fest.' So I did.
"We stole a bottle of expensive champagne, climbed up the fire escape, and spent the rest of the night on the roof, just talking. She talked about school and her acting and the new life she built for herself over the last year. And I talked about what it's like to become a published author and complained probably more than I should have about the sense of disillusionment. And at the end of the night she said she wanted to see me again and gave me her address.
"Suave and tactful as ever, I went the very next day, but when I knock on the door, the woman who answered was not Violet. She was, however, the most beautiful woman I had ever laid eyes on – the kind of woman that seems to glow, like she's got an aura radiating off of her, with the kind of face that's so warm and inviting that you feel as though you've known her your whole life even meeting her for the first time. She was a little older than Violet, which of course made her more age-appropriate for me, and whereas Violet was the type of girl you would be willing to travel to the ends of the earth for, this woman was the type you would be willing stay in one place for – which in my experience is a much rarer breed.
"Anyways, when I asked about Violet, this woman explained that she knew her as a casual acquaintance but couldn't for the life of her think of why she gave me this address. I told her I had no idea either and asked that she at least mention to Violet that I stopped by; meanwhile, I was desperately casting about to come up with some pretext for sticking around a little longer, and the best I could come up with was asking to use the bathroom. She let me in, and I sat in the bathroom far too long, trying to think of a good angle to strike up a conversation, so that by the time I finally came out she already had tea and sandwiches ready and waiting on her dining room table. I didn't end up leaving her apartment until two days later, and by the time I next saw Violet we were married.
"Which of course provides the perfect segue to our next meeting, again exactly one year later to the day. My wife had seen her once or twice in the meantime, and we kept trying to set up having her over for dinner, but things just kept getting in the way the way things do. But it did finally happen, eventually, and we made it a double-date with Violet and her new boyfriend. He was about her age, olive-skinned, big as a house and built like an ox. He didn't really say much, but she was talking on overdrive, telling us about how bored she was with school and that she was going to drop out to become an actress, and how this new guy was going to take care of her while she got her foot in the door. Which of course sounded like a terrible idea, except that I'm not in any position to lecture anyone about getting a real job, and I had to admit that this guy did look like he had money, judging from the way he dressed and the expensive bottle of wine they brought us. Anyways, we had a nice enough dinner, after which they stuck around just long enough to be polite, and then left.
"That was the last either my wife or I heard from her for another full year to the day, exactly three years ago today. My wife was out with some friends from work, so I was enjoying a quiet evening to myself with a six-pack of Mexican beer and the Lakers game on TV when I heard a knock on the door. I had been secretly waiting for her to show up all day, so I didn't even have to ask who it was before answering.
"Violet walked in perfectly calm despite the blood trickling down in her forehead or the large bruise around her eye. I ran to grab the first aid kit, then helped her get cleaned up and covered the wound. I asked her what happened, and she told me an incredible story about how she and her boyfriend had been running a con on his boss, some billionaire who runs a computer company. They didn't get any money off him, but they took something that was very valuable, some priceless antique or some such thing. Then she double-crossed her boyfriend and took this antique – whatever it was – for herself.
"'So now I've got to leave town,' she said, remaining completely stoic, completely emotionless. There was no fear in her voice, no regret, no remorse. She said it as simply and factually as if she were saying she had to go to the store or to pick up the dry cleaning. I packed her a backpack with some non-perishable food, basic first aid supplies, a California road map, and the emergency cash I kept in my writing desk – a few hundred dollars in odd bills. The last thing she said to me before she left was, 'Sorry I probably won't be able to see you again in a year.'
"That was the last time I saw of her, although there is an interesting postscript to the story. The next day, I watched a report on the news about some thug who got arrested. When they showed his mug shot, I recognized him right away as Violet's boyfriend. The police said he was long suspected to be some kind of enforcer for organized crime who went by the alias The Saint. They found him rampaging through downtown like a madman, bleeding from multiple gunshot wounds, but he still managed to take down three policemen before they could subdue him.
"But, like I said, I never saw Violet again. I still held out hope the next year when this date rolled around, but it came and went without any sign of her. It was then that I decided to write her into the novel I was working on, so that no matter what happened, there would still be a part of her that was immortalized. Or at least live on for as long as my work stays in print, which is after all the best I can do."
After the writer had finished his story, the three of us sat in silence for several minutes, staring at each other as if sizing the others up, trying to read their reactions. It was Tennessee who finally broke the silence
"Oh my God, that was the most rambling, pointless story I've ever heard," he groaned. "I could have told the same thing in like three sentences."
"That is quite a story," I said to the writer. "Is any of it actually true?"
"Mostly," he replied. "At least the important parts are. I may be fuzzy on some details, and I do have a tendency towards hyperbolizing. After all, I make up entertaining lies for a living." He stood up and raised his wrist to check his watch. "Look at the time. My wife'll be home from work soon. Would the two of you care to stay for dinner?"
Something about the tone of his voice said the offer was not entirely sincere.
"Sorry, we should really get going," I replied, and Tennessee and I got up to leave.
He walked us to the door, and as we were leaving, I put everything back in my bag except the paperback. Pausing just inside the doorway, I tapped my fingers against it for a second, then turned and handed it to him. "I want you to have this," I said, my voice taking on a serious, almost solemn tone. "I want you to be able to look at its dog-eared pages and creased spine and know how much it meant to her."
He smiled and reached out to gently grip my arm, just firmly enough to keep me from continuing on any further. Tennessee was already across the terrace, and I motioned for him to go ahead and start down the stairs while I hung back.
"Thank you for this," he said. "I didn't know if she ever saw this or not. I find myself wondering a lot if she would ever know what I did, and how she might feel about it if she found out. I--," he paused, at a loss for words. "I can't really explain what this means to me, and I really wish there was some way I could have done more to help you find your sister."
I opened my mouth to tell him it was okay, but he raised a hand to cut me off. "There is, though, maybe something else I can do for you. That man you are traveling with – I don't know who he told you he is or how you met him, but he's hiding something from you. I can't say for sure if he means you harm, but I'd hate for you to back yourself into a corner where you have to find out the hard way."
4. Moved by your screen dream
We rented a room in a cheap little motel just across the street from the beach, a two-story dive with peeling paint and a sun-faded vacancy sign.
I decided to have a long overdue shower before bed and enjoyed it despite the terrible water pressure and the spider that crawled out of the drain.
When I was done, I came out wrapped in a matted grey towel and found Tennessee sprawled on one of the twin beds watching TV. I set myself down on the foot of his bed and looked at the screen, which showed two oiled muscle men with impossibly large cocks writhing intertwined on a tiger-skin rug.
"No room service, no hair dryer, no soap in the shower, but at least they've got free smut," I said.
"Don't knock it," he said. "They're just a couple good small town boys like me trying to break into show biz."
I giggled and moved over to my bed. "Is that who you are, a starry-eyed kid on his way out west to chase a silver screen dream? Maybe you should try action flicks. The way you fight, I would have guessed you were a secret agent or something."
He laughed. "Maybe I am."
I dug the black box out of my backpack set it down on the bed spread, then stared at it silently, meditating on it.
"You're too quiet, it's suspicious," Tennessee said and glanced over to see what I was doing. When he saw the box, he asked, "Do you think that whatever they stole is locked inside that?"
"I was thinking it's possible," I responded. "But then again, it's just as likely that Adam's right and it's just a solid hunk of metal."
"But why would she leave it for you, if that's the case?"
I shrugged. "Maybe she never expected I'd actually come after her, or that I'd make it this far. She could have jut left it behind as a red herring to misdirect whoever she's been running from. I mean, those guys at the bar mentioned working for The Saint. If this really is the thing that they stole, why would he leave it sitting around, waiting for me to come collect it?"
Tennessee got up and came over to sit beside me. "Maybe they couldn't get it open, either. Maybe they thought you'd have a better shot at figuring it out, being her sister and all, and they're just waiting for you to get it open so they can swoop in and take it back."
I turned to look him square in the eyes. "You realize, though, that this theory makes your motives seem pretty suspect. I mean, they'd have to keep a close eye on me. And your timing, jumping in to save me when you did, has ensured that I haven't been too far from your sight since getting my hands on this thing."
Tennessee forced a smile and let out a dry chuckle, but his eyes betrayed nothing. "I didn't think about that. Funny, isn't it?"
"Yeah, funny," I agreed, setting the box back on the nightstand between our beds. "Well, it's past my bed time. I'm going to turn in."
I woke up around 2:30 to the sound of Tennessee's snoring. Taking care not to make any unnecessary noises, I grabbed my backpack and shoes and slipped out of the room, leaving the box where it sat on the nightstand. I threw on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt while I made my way downstairs, not bothering with underwear, and sprinted off down the street. After about ten blocks I stopped to catch my breath and check to see if I was being followed.
When I was satisfied that the coast was clear, I continued on at a more leisurely pace. The sea breeze made the night air frigid and unforgiving, especially against the cool sweat on my skin. I crossed my arms across my chest as I walked on, trying to stay warm. I thought no one was ever supposed to get cold in California.
Twenty minutes later I had retraced our route back to the writer's apartment building, I went around the side and tried the door leading up to the apartments, but it was locked. They must close it after hours, I reasoned, and decided to double back towards the front to see if there might be another way in.
I circled around to the pawn shop entrance and tried the front door, but it was locked. Just as I stepped back, however, I noticed a TV switched on in the window display. It was a mid-sized tube model, probably ten years old, tucked in the middle of assorted electronic equipment sitting beneath a row of hanging electric guitars.
As the TV came to life, it showed a local news report from an Austin-based station. I couldn't hear the sound through the double-paned window, but as the middle-aged man with overly-moussed hair silently moved his lips, the caption Multiple Homicide in Westlake ran across the bottom of the screen. Then an image appeared in the upper right corner – a photograph of me labeled SUSPECT.
The screen paused on that image, and I noticed a movement to the right of the TV, then realized it was the reflection of someone behind me. I spun around quickly to throw a punch at the man, but he caught my fist and turned me back around to pin my arm behind my back. He shoved me forward into the window, and once again I was looking at him through his reflection in the double-paned glass.
He smiled broadly at me, a big friendly grin. He was a handsome man with deep green eyes and boyish good-looks despite the scar on his cheek.
"That was a neat trick, Dominic," I said to him through strained breaths as I struggled to get free of his grip.
"I thought you would appreciate it," he replied proudly, leaning in to whisper in my ear, "Who doesn't like to see themselves on screen?"
Suddenly, I snapped my head backwards hard, breaking his nose with the back of my skull. I felt his grip slacken and was able to twist myself free. Pumping my legs as fast as I could, I took off running down the street. I could hear his footsteps behind me, quickly gaining ground.
I reached out and grabbed the lid off a trash can on the side of the street and swung it back, hitting him in the gut just as he closed in on me. He doubled over with a loud groan, and I wasted no time in bringing the metal lid down on his head to floor him.
I hovered over him and delivered a couple good solid kicks into his ribs while he was down. On the third kick, however, he was able to grab hold of my ankle and pull me off balance. My back came down hard on the pavement, knocking the wind out of me. He was on top of me before I could react, gripping my hair by the roots and pounding my head against the ground repeatedly.
I blacked out.
When I came to again, I found myself in the back of a parked car, handcuffed to the door handle, with a blinding headache and an unsettling sense of déjà vu.
I tried the door, but there must have been a child lock on, and the windows were electric so they were no use while the car was off. I grabbed the chain of the handcuffs and gave it a few strong yanks to see how solid the door handle was. I didn't really expect anything to happen, and it didn't, but at least it was something to do.
Dominic came back a few minutes later. He had changed into a green vest over a blue-grey shirt and dark charcoal slacks, and had cleaned up pretty well from our fight. The only evidence was a slightly crooked nose, and even that somehow managed to look good on him, giving him a kind of rugged cowboy mystique. He was carrying two brown cardboard trays each loaded up with a hamburger, a grease-soaked paper sleeve stuffed with french fries, and a milkshake in a styrofoam cup.
"Isn't this great," he said as he climbed back into the driver's seat and passed one of the trays to me. "The quintessential American road food – greasy, fatty, basically delicious poison. I only wish some it had been brought out by some pretty blonde in roller skates, a cute little airhead with Jayne Mansfield tits in a tight pink cashmere sweater."
"And a poodle skirt," I added.
"Exactly," he said with relish. "You know that less than a mile up that road is the spot where James Dean died in a head on collision? How's that for the American dream?"
I sat silently as he stuffed his face full of that junk, making exaggerated moans to show how much he was enjoying it.
"You're not eating," he said after washing down a mouthful of fries with a gulp of shake. I could see his eyes reflected in the rearview mirror.
I didn't respond, just staring silently back at his reflection.
"This has been quite a chase you've led me on," he said. "Like the great American road trip, following you from city to city as you crisscrossed the southwest. But I caught you in the end, just like I said I would."
I smiled and said, "You may have me for the moment, but I'll tell you right now that I'm not going back to jail."
"You don't know how right you are," he replied with a chuckle. "The old man's wife, that sweet little octogenarian, slipped me $500,000 before I left to make sure you never even see the inside of a courtroom. I've already called it in; you died trying to escape. I'm just delivering your corpse back to the proper authorities."
I leaned forward as far as the handcuff would allow me and screamed in his ear, "So why don't you fucking do it? Right now, get it over with!"
Dominic just chuckled and turned the key in the ignition. As the engine roared to life, the radio came on and blared out "The Leader of the Pack".
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