“Hi,” he said, hitting me with a killer smile. I could feel the strength in his hands but his grip was gentle.
“This is Johnny Preston,” Bertha said even as I recognized him.
“Oh. I think you were doing business with my husband.”
“Who’s he?” the affable star asked.
“Theon Pinkney.”
“Yes, indeed. He put up the money for a heist script I’m producing. It’s called Inside Out. We’re hoping to shoot it next spring. You can tell Theon that.”
“He died,” I said.
“Oh.” The actor put on an appropriate frown. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Pinkney. So sorry.”
“Thanks,” I said. “So... you think you’re gonna make the film?”
“You never know,” he said, producing that well-rehearsed smile again. “I want to. I get to play a homicidal maniac. Maybe if they like it I won’t have to do any more surf films.”
I smiled and nodded.
“It’d be great to get the script money back,” I said. “Theon died kinda broke.”
“You’ll know when I do. His accountants, uh...”
“Chas and Darla?”
“Yeah. They’ve been on top of my manager.”
“Hey, Johnny,” a young woman called from down toward the beach.
“That’s my scene,” he said to me.
We shook hands and he sprinted away toward the cameras.
“That’s my son’s college fund,” I said to Bertha.
“Theon was a good guy,” she said, “but nobody could ever blame him for being too smart.”
Suicide sat next to me on the ride back from the beach. He was the same olive-skinned gentleman who was in the periphery when I had my orgasm. He was sleek and cool in a dusky gray sharkskin suit, in every way someone you’d want to know and whom you were afraid of at the same time. His smile was understanding, even friendly. He was armed but wouldn’t hurt you unless you crossed him.
My fingertips were numb, my lips too.
Suicide smiled easily. He wasn’t Death but merely an intermediary, like that door left ajar at the side of the house.
I knew he wasn’t really there next to me but I also knew that he was real. He’d been my bodyguard since the day my father died. He was my exit strategy, my best friend and guardian angel.
Mr. Suicide was as tangible as the blood in my veins, as the midnight special in my purse. He was why no one could hurt me or bully me or make me into something I didn’t want to be.
Suicide was a messenger who kept in constant contact with Aldo, my father.
“What do you want from me?” I dared to ask him as we crossed Sepulveda headed east on Pico.
He didn’t answer but his smile was resplendent.
“I need you to tell me,” I said, even though I was mostly sure that he wasn’t there.
Stopping at the next red light I turned my head to regard him.
His race was indiscernible, nonexistent among the varieties of men. He was a god, perfection, as real as the sky and as distant.
A sexual friction was rising in my lower abdomen. It was slick and bloody, vibrating at an incredible, feathery rate. It was the feeling I had for Theon when I was living at his place but we had not yet become lovers.
His interim girlfriend had been Venus Moxie, a frequent costar in his various films. They would do lines of coke and fuck in the living room where I watched TV. Theon would have his eyes on me while Venus rode his incessant erection.
I loved the attention. It made me feel that he belonged to me even if he was with her.
A horn honked loudly and I realized that I’d drifted out of my lane.
I pulled to the curb on Motor and took in deep breaths. Suicide was semitransparent there next to me. Theon and Venus were memories threatening to become real in the backseat. My fingers were numb, my wrists were burning, and I felt like I did just before stupid Myron Palmer made me come.
Everything was sex: the soles of my feet, the crazy bone in my left elbow, the smell of my sweat and perfume. I wanted to get down on my knees and have some nameless, tattooed biker fuck me with his bent dick. I wanted Suicide to take me without having to give him a thing.
Was that possible?
I pulled up in front of the lime-green bungalow on Darton Street just as the sun kissed the horizon. The sky had turned an iridescent orange and black from the sunset, cloud cover, and air pollution. On the way I had to pull my car to the curb eight times to avoid losing control.
I wanted to die but every time I imagined it a sexual tension ignited in me and the wish for death turned into a need for sex. This agony was exquisite and depleting. It took a quarter of an hour to climb out of the car and go to the door of the small house.
“Mama!” Edison yelled as he flung the door open.
I dropped to my knees and he rushed into my arms. I held on to him as if he were a single jutting stone in the middle of the ocean and I was a drowning woman fresh from a shipwreck.
“How are you, baby?” I asked.
He squeezed me for an answer.
“Did you save your mama something to eat?”
“Come on,” he said.
He took me by the hand and dragged me into the manicured living room. Delilah wore a cranberry pantsuit, standing there like a saleswoman for a well-maintained furniture showroom. The sofa and its companion stuffed chair were blue and plush. The floor was dark oak, as was the coffee table.
There was a gray cardboard box in the corner, overflowing with Edison’s toys. I imagined him straightening up his little boy’s mess for me while I was out in my car struggling to survive long enough to see him.
Delilah smiled. She was shorter than I, with big eyes and freckles across her copper-and-gold face. She was a few pounds over her perfect weight and lovely to me.
“Hi,” she said with a smile that added intention to the greeting.
“Hey.”
“Come on, Mama,” Edison said. “We got pizza in the kitchen.”
It was hard for me to fit into that evening with my son and stepsister. Edison showed me his room and his toys, his books and secret treasures. I paid attention like a forensic accountant gauging the worth of my little boy’s life.
Delilah loved him and cared for him in ways that I might never be able to. He could read at least a dozen words and he could count. He said please and thank you without reminder, and he was healthy and unafraid.
In other words — he didn’t need me. Delilah had brought him up into childhood with no scars or frowns on his face.
He loved me but he needed what my father’s adopted daughter had to offer. And she loved him; I could see that love in each gesture and in every corner of her home.
We watched a cartoon movie about a little beaver named Barney who had been driven out of the forest by a fire and who had to make a life for himself in the city. There he met cats and dogs, humans and other displaced forest denizens, struggled to survive, and finally found a natural paradise where the waters were clear and there was need for a dam.
By the end Edison and Delilah were both sound asleep. My hands felt huge, like baseball mitts. My head ached and my legs were numb but ambulatory.
I put Edison to bed and then woke up Deihl.
She gave me a sleepy smile and kissed me.
“You wanna stay the night?” she asked.
“I think I better. I really don’t feel like drivin’.”
She got me sheets and a blanket and fitted them to the cushions of the blue sofa.
“Me and Eddie are off early in the morning,” she said.
“Not early as me.”
There are states other than wakefulness and sleep. There is, for instance, the kind of unrest when you are so close to consciousness that you are not really out. You’re still there in the world — just separated by a thin barrier of black tissue.