“Like Clara.”
“Forget Clara. You’ve got Grace here with you, Frank. I’m real. Alive and real, and yes, a little lonesome. You can’t fix that, and I wouldn’t think there’s anyone who can, but we’re here together right now and this is a very lovely meal and for Christ’s sake let’s not talk about the damned picture.”
His eyes blinking, Frank sat up straight, knife and fork still in his hands, and sputtered for a few seconds before he ultimately erupted into a peal of throaty laughter. He laughed so hard that people at the adjacent tables started to pause their own conversations to have a look. When he finally began to catch his breath again, Frank laid his silverware down on the edges of the plate, wiped his mouth with the napkin in his lap, and said, “It’s a real horror, isn’t it?”
Grace’s mouth twitched, turned up into something like a smile.
“Oh, you noticed?”
“All I do is wire the lights, doll. I’m no critic. But I’ve worked a few shows so far and I’ve seen a mess of ‘em, and by God this one…”
“Jack Parson says he’s found the secret to turn it into art.”
Frank smirked.
He said, “I thought we weren’t going to talk about it.”
“Don’t you want to know the secret?”
“Tell me.”
“Darkness.”
“I don’t follow.”
She showed her palms and shrugged. “There you have it,” she said.
“A real horror,” Frank repeated.
A colored busboy swept the plates away like a phantom while a girl with a red bowtie appeared to inquire about dessert. Frank winked at Grace, letting her in on the code. He ordered a ginger ale, imported. Grace made it two. The girl returned shortly with two old-fashioneds.
“To your health,” Grace toasted.
“And may your star shine in Hollywood forever,” said Frank.
“Just keep the lights on me, baby.”
On the walk back, Grace hummed “Me and My Shadow” while Frank kept pace with her small, quick steps. His hands were stuffed in his trouser pockets and a cigarette smoldered between his grinning lips. Her bungalow was still four blocks off, as blocks in Hollywood went, when a hiss sounded between a nickel-and-dime store and a shuttered diner, in the narrow alley. Frank paused, peered into the shadows.
“That you, Petey?” he called out.
Grace stopped a few feet up, went silent and stared.
“Frank?”
“What’s the idea, Petey?”
Frank edged toward the alley and Grace stepped forward as a loud report split the air with a flash of bright white light. The flash only lasted a second but lingered, ghost-like, in Grace’s eyes. She screamed and Frank doubled over, rolling away from the alley and backing up against the front of the diner.
“Frank!”
“Get back,” he croaked. “Go home, Grace.”
“You chasing girls now, Frank?” a voice jeered from the darkness. “Oughtn’t be spending money on gashes when you’re in the red, boy.”
The alley oozed out a squat figure, a fireplug of a man whose face was obscured by the brim of his hat. In his hand was clutched a small revolver. Grace’s breath hitched in her breast as she shot her eyes from the gun back to Frank, who was fighting to produce one of his own from the inside pocket of his threadbare coat. The gunman saw Grace first, turned to her so that the revolver was aimed at her. Her neck flushed hot; the lamb and whiskey did somersaults in her gut.
“Don’t,” she squeaked.
The man Frank called Petey lurched forth, scanning the dark street around her. The shadows seemed to seize Grace by the temples, squeezing in on her like a vise. Then another shot rang out and the gunman grunted. He bent at the knees and threw his torso backward. The gun dropped from his fist and clattered on the sidewalk. The echo of the metal against stone crashed in Grace’s ears as loudly as the shot.
The hat fell from the man’s head and he stepped awkwardly to the side. His greasy brown hair spilled rivulets of blood down his brow like red ribbons. It ran into his eyes and his jaw fell open with a yawning groan before he collapsed and lay still. Behind him, Frank still held up his own weapon, a jet-black pistol. His free hand grasped his right side. Blood leaked between his fingers.
“Are you all right?” he said, his voice tremulous.
“God, Frank,” she said. “You’re shot.”
“Get home, Grace,” Frank said. “Get home. Now.”
There was muffled shouting in the middle distance. A dog barked. Grace took one last look at the dead man between her and Frank and spun on her two-inch heel to speed over the four blocks home.
She was behind a double locked door before she realized she must have left her bag at the scene, as it wasn’t with her now. Dropped it in her panic, she thought. Her breath came in short, spastic gusts. She didn’t dare switch on the lights.
It was the second killing Grace had ever witnessed, and it occurred to her that it didn’t get easier to see it.
15
“I need you to wake up, dude,” I said. I was trying to sound assertive. In response, all Graham did was beep — or at least that’s what all the sci-fi machinery he was plugged into did. “I’m supposed to be your wingman here. The sidekick. I’m Robin, for fuck’s sake.”
The one eye not mummified by all the bandaging encasing his head stayed closed and disturbingly bluish. I couldn’t tell if his chest was rising and falling at all, but it sure didn’t look like it was. But the machines kept on beeping and the oxygen pump kept on pumping. I didn’t figure they went to all that trouble for a corpse.
Florence Sommer was dead, her throat slashed. Graham was supposed to be dead too, but apparently he hadn’t gotten the memo. Somebody went to the trouble of putting a bullet in his head, and from what I gathered that usually got the job done. Not so here. By the time I’d arrived at Good Samaritan he’d been through the worst of it—it in this case being a bullet that split his skull and nicked his brain — but the stubborn son of a bitch forgot to die. I told him I loved him for that, and I added “no homo” for good measure when I realized one of the nurses was listening in.
That would have gotten a rise out of him if he’d heard me. He didn’t.
“Goddamnit, Graham.”
He didn’t like me much. Like a champ he acted like he did when he didn’t have to, but I knew better. I got on his nerves. I got on a lot of people’s nerves, and for the most part I couldn’t really care less. With Graham, I cared. I liked the guy, even if the feeling wasn’t mutual. My grandmother would have said he was a good egg, because that was what he was. Somehow, despite it all, I still considered him a friend. Probably the best I had. And here he was, in a coma with tubes in his nose and mouth and veins and head. One in his dick, too; a goddamn catheter. Maybe a vegetable. They didn’t know yet. I wanted to break something.
I finished out the old movie after he took off to catch lead with his noggin. It was incomplete, but still pretty long. I never made it a habit to watch movies with no sound, but this was important, so I paid attention. My general analysis was that it was a weird fucking movie. Not just because it was silent, though that added to the vibe. More of a Tarantino man, myself, Death Proof notwithstanding.
Anyway, all the sharp angles of the sets, the stark black and white of the costumes, and the performances — I was never one to put much stock into the hammy acting of silent-film actors, but with only their faces and bodies with which to transmit the characters, these people did some quality transmitting. When the girl got kidnapped, I felt her fear. And when they killed her…well, I jumped in my seat, honest to God. You get in a certain frame of mind watching movies that old, like you’re correcting for the times, for the severe content restrictions. Whoever was overseeing the censorship department for this baby was sleeping on the job that day. That shit was intense.