I'm speaking in ellipses. Here is what happened.
Pulling into the driveway, I remembered the day Phil and Sasha stood there with Bloodstone masks on, waving goodbye, Flea snoofing around in the bushes. I turned off the motor and sat awhile listening to the quiet: cheerful birds, the busy hiss of insects, a distant car driving off. There were all the blooming cactus we'd planted together when he first moved into the house. From the car I could look through one of the front windows and see some of the objects in the living room.
Something moved in there.
I sat up straight in my seat.
Something showed for a moment in the window and then disappeared just as quickly. A head? A child hopping across the line of vision of the window? I couldn't tell. No child belonged in the house of a man – days dead.
There it was again. Jumping. It was a child: short hair, yellow shirt, waving hands in the air as it bounced past.
I got out of the car and found the keys to the house and burglar alarm on Sasha's key ring. Walking down the short path, I watched for the head but saw nothing.
"Hey, you!"
I turned and saw Mr. Piel approaching, Phil's next-door neighbor.
"How are you, Mr. Piel?"
"Gregston? Well, I'm glad it's you and not some more of them ghoul groupies. You should see what we've been getting up here since the news got out. Real fuck-brains. Bloodstone fan clubs. Some fat guy even stole the arm off the mailbox! Leave the dead alone, I say.
"It's bad, bad news, Weber. He was a good fella. I liked him. His movies were shit, but the guy was nice and didn't make noise. I don't know why he killed the goddamned dog, though. A real cute thing. He could've given it to my wife. She cried for a day when she heard that."
"Has anyone been inside since the police were here?"
"Nah, cops closed it off for their investigation, and I've been keeping a close eye on things since. Nobody would've gotten in there that I didn't know about. Naturally, Sasha's been in and out, but no one else, after the cops."
"There's no one in there now?"
"No one I know of. You going in?"
"Yes."
"You got a key? Where'd you get it?"
"Yes, Mr. Piel, I have a key. Am I keeping you from anything?"
"You telling me I should take a hike?" He crossed his arms over a thin chest. He'd worked as a key grip once, but his real calling in life was professional busybody. One minute you liked his feistiness; the next you wanted to punch him out.
"My best friend blew his brains out in there, Mr. Piel. I'm about to go in and look at his blood on the furniture. I'm not in the mood to be civil. Thanks for watching the house."
He turned and started to walk away. "Some people don't know how to be grateful. I should let them tear the house down. What do I care?"
Ignoring him, I went to the door and did the necessary twists and turns to deactivate the alarm. I was curious about who or what was inside, not afraid. Too much had happened to cause any more fear. An explanation of some kind was near, and I was hungry to know it.
Opening the door, I heard a too-familiar tune.
"Whistle and hop
and blow your top,
it's the Finky Linky Show!
Your feet are long
and your math is wrong
but your head is sure to growwwwww –"
I walked into the living room just as the child came hopping in from the kitchen, singing along with the theme song.
At first I thought it was about a seven-year-old boy, the dark hair was cut so short, but the singing voice was the high and delicate bell of a little girl.
Barefoot, she skipped around the room in a pair of blue jean overalls and a black T-shirt. The longer I looked at her, the more I realized she was a real beauty, not just a cute little kid. This one had all the makings.
The beauty part slid away when I saw how misshapen her stomach was. Under the overalls it looked as if she were hiding a basketball. She kept looking at me until she knew I was staring at her stomach. Then she stopped in the middle of the floor and took off the jeans and shirt. She was pregnant.
It was obscene and comical. She stood with her hands at her sides and smiled at me. I couldn't take my eyes off her form. There was nothing sexual or prurient about the stares, either. It was too outrageous to be sexy, something Eric Fischl or Paul Cadmus might have included in one of their paintings. Or Bosch.
Bosch! The Garden of Earthly Delights. After Midnight first appeared, Phil said in interviews he'd gotten most of his visual inspiration from that painting. At Harvard he'd kept a large print of it over his desk. I could remember only certain details, but looking at this little pregnant girl I was somehow sure she was in the painting too. That chilled me more than anything else.
Chill two came when she spoke. It came out a deep, hoarse, chocolate mousse of a voice: Lauren Bacall's in To Have and Have Not, sexy and available. A voice that had smoked thousands of cigarettes and would stay out all night with you.
"This is what you want." She went to a side table, picked up a book, brought it to me. "It was the one he was reading before he shot himself." I wanted to look at her and at the book at the same time.
She offered it open to a specific page. I reached out hesitantly and took it: The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke. There were red stains over the white page. "The Second Elegy." The girl walked to the television set and switched it off. Turning to me, she spoke slowly and clearly.
"Every angel is terrifying. And yet, alas,
I invoke you, almost deadly birds of the soul,
knowing about you. . . .
But if the archangel now, perilous, from behind the stars
took even one step down toward us: our own heart, beating
higher and higher, would beat us to death. Who are you?"
"You're Pinsleepe, aren't you?"
"Yes."
I didn't know what more to say. She was Pinsleepe the angel. The angel that had come to Phil before he died and told him to stop making the Midnight films because they were evil.
"Was he really reading about angels before he did it?"
Her nakedness was smooth and angular. Women have curves, little girls angles. Even pregnant little girls. She stood there smiling.
"I think so. I'd come over to make him a sandwich for lunch. When I got here, he was sitting on the patio with that book turned to that page."
"Sasha told me she came over to make him lunch!"
"She did. We did."
"I don't understand."
The girl took my hand and led me to the couch. "Do you remember a night in Vienna when you and Sasha went out to the –"
"Look, get to the point! I don't understand any of this, see? My best friend killed himself. Called me up to talk about thumbs, then killed himself. That doesn't make sense, does it? I've heard stories about him for two days. Tattoos coming alive. Videotapes! One of them had my mother dying on it. Now you . . . Christ! Just tell me what the fuck is going on!"
She picked up a pink pillow and put it over her hairless lap. "My name is Pinsleepe. I came because he was in trouble."
"What kind of trouble?"
"With God."
"Look, I believe in angels. Truth! But you're not what I believed. Understand? They don't have to come out of the sky, or – I've dreamt of them all my life. I looked everywhere for them: in friends, and on the street like lost coins. I even knew a woman once. . . .