That must have been some night, Sullivan thought now as he levered open the van’s driver’s-side door and stepped down to the pavement in the chilly morning air. Well, maybe she’s learned better now; here she is back in town, and, unless I miss my guess, the reason she’s come back is to make amends—to a more literal sort of ghost than any she was willing to acknowledge when she gave that interview.
If I can find Dr. Angelica Anthem Elizalde, he thought, maybe she could be talked into doing another séance. She knows how, and I’ve got Houdini’s mask, which has got to be big enough for both of us to hide behind. We could both deal with our ghosts from behind the mask, like Catholics confessing through the anonymizing screen in a confessional.
As he trudged up the sidewalk beside the brick wall of Miceli’s, he wondered if Elizalde felt differently about the Catholic Church now. Or about drinking.
Or even about men, he thought as he pushed open the door and stepped inside.
SULLIVAN WAS sitting alone at a table down the hall from the entry and just taking a solid sip of Coors when someone tapped him on the shoulder.
He choked and blew beer out through his nose—and he dropped the glass, for his right hand had slapped his shirt pocket for the bag with the severed thumb in it and his left hand had darted to the loop on the fanny pack that would open the thing with one yank, exposing the grip of the .45 inside.
“Jesus, dude,” came a startled, anxious voice, and a man stepped widely around from behind him, smiling and showing his hands self-deprecatingly. “Sorry!”
Sullivan recognized him—it was an old college friend named Buddy Schenk. “I spilled my friend’s drink, sorry,” Schenk said, looking over Sullivan’s shoulder. “Could he have another? Uh—and I’ll have one too.” Schenk looked down at Sullivan. “Okay if I sit?”
Sullivan was coughing hard, but could inhale only with strangled, whooping gasps. He waved at the chair across from him and nodded.
“Beer in the morning,” said Schenk awkwardly as he sat down. “You’re getting as bad as your sister. And you’re jumpy! You went off like a rattrap! About gave me a heart attack! What are you so jumpy for?” He had unfolded a paper napkin from the table and was mopping up the foamy beer and pushing aside the curls of broken glass.
Sullivan tried to inhale quietly, and was humiliated to find that he couldn’t. His eyes were watering and his nose stung. “Hi—Buddy,” he managed to choke.
My God, I am nervous, he thought. If I’d known I was so scared of deLarava I would have sat with my back to a wall.
He wished he could smell something besides beer, for suddenly he wanted to seine the garlicky air for the scent of clove cigarettes.
The waiter who had earlier taken Sullivan’s order for a meatball sandwich walked up then, and swept the soaked napkin and the broken glass into a towel.
After the man had walked away, Sullivan said, “Buddy, you asshole,” mostly to test his voice; and he could speak now. “It’s good to see you.”
Sullivan discovered that he meant it. This was his third day back in Los Angeles, and until this moment he had felt more locked out of the bloodstream of the place than the most postcard-oriented tourist. It was a new Los Angeles, not his city anymore—the freeways didn’t work nowadays, Joe Jost’s was gone, Melrose Avenue was ruined, Steve Lauter had moved across the 405 and had guns pointed at his head, and the people Sullivan was most concerned about were dead people.
“Well, it’s good to see you too, man,” Buddy said. The waiter brought two glasses and beer bottles to the table, another Coors for Sullivan and of course a Budweiser for Buddy. “How’s Twat?”
Sullivan smiled uncertainly, not sure if he’d misheard his friend or if the question was some vulgar variation on How’s business? He looked over his shoulder and took a sip of beer carefully. “Hm?”
“Sorry, Toot. We used to call you two Twit and Twat sometimes.”
Sullivan’s momentary cheer was deflating, and he had another gulp of beer. “I never…heard that,” he said.
“Well, you wouldn’t have. Hey, it was all a long time ago, right? College days. We were all kids.” Buddy laughed reminiscently. “Everybody figured Sukie had an incestuous thing for you, was that true?”
“I’m sure I’d have noticed.” Sullivan said it with a blink and a derisive snort, but he found himself gulping some more of the beer. The glass was nearly empty, and he poured into it the rest of the beer in the bottle.
The old shock was still a cold tingling in his ribs. (He had read that the weight of the Earth’s atmosphere on a person was fourteen pounds on every square inch of skin, and he thought he could feel every bit of the weight right now.) Sukie had been like the poor lonely ghosts, hopelessly trying to find that better half.
Old Buddy sure has a winning line of remember-whens, he thought.
“She’s dead,” Sullivan said abruptly, wanting to put a final cold riposte to Buddy’s thoughtless needling before it went any further. “Sukie—Elizabeth—killed herself. Monday night.”
Buddy frowned. “Really? Jesus, I’m sorry, man. What the hell have you—that’s why you’re alone. Were you with her? I’m real sorry.”
Sullivan sighed and looked around at the Pompeii-style murals on the high walls. Why had he come here? “No I wasn’t with her, she was in another state. I’m just in town for…business and pleasure.”
“Sex and danger,” agreed Buddy cheerfully, apparently having got over his dismay at the news of Sukie’s suicide. Sullivan remembered now that for the few months that Buddy had stayed with them in ‘82, he’d always remarked, upon going out in the evening, Off for another night of sex and danger!—and when he’d drag back in later he’d every time shrug and say, No sex. Lotta danger.
“No sex,” Buddy said now, grinning, “lotta danger. Right?”
“That’s it, Buddy.”
“You’re having lunch, right? Lemme join you, it’s on me and we’ll eat ourselves sick, okay? Whatever you ordered already is just the first course. We’ll drink to poor…Sukie. I’m supposed to be meeting a guy at noon, but I’ll call him and put it off till three or so.”
Sullivan was already tired of Buddy Schenk. “I can’t be staying long—”
“Bullshit, you’re staying long enough to eat, no?” Buddy was already pushing back his chair. “Order me a small pepperoni-and-onion pizza, and another beer, when you get your refill, okay?” He was calling the last words over his shoulder, striding away to the hallway where the telephone was.
“Okay,” said Sullivan, alone in the dining room again.
He was agitated by the conversation about Sukie. And the insult to himself! Twit and Twat! And he was sure that he and Sukie hadn’t picked up the Teet and Toot nicknames until…the early eighties, at the earliest. So much for the we were all kids disclaimer. It’s not just thoughtless—why is he jabbing at me this morning?
Sullivan tried to recall when he’d last seen Buddy. Had Sullivan said or done something rude? Sukie might have. Sukie could probably be counted on to have.
His beer was gone, and he looked around for the waiter. A pepperoni-and-onion pizza, he thought, and another Bud and maybe two more Coorses. It’s always been Bud for Buddy.
Even the waiter had known it.
Sullivan’s hands were cold and clumsy, and when he accidentally banged his fingers on the edge of the table they seemed to ring, like a tuning fork.