CHAPTER 13
RONI AND SHANNON AT HOME
When she first heard Shannon come through the door, Roni lay in bed awake, quietly seething. She pretended to be asleep. When he came in to look at her, she kept her eyes closed. He went into the next room, to sleep on the sofa, probably. That meant he didn’t want to argue with her. She stayed in bed and tried to sleep and did so only a little, lying half-awake until the alarm went off at six.
She got up to take a shower, finished fast and dried her hair with a blow-dryer and got dressed for work. Went into the living room, found him lying on the sofa with his boots still on, which annoyed her further.
“Hey. Slept out here, didn’t want to wake you up,” he said. “What you doin’ up so early?”
“Hobie wants me to come in early because Stella’s off.”
“Well, fuck him.”
“Out late last night, weren’t you?”
He sighed. “Yeah. Yeah, I was. Some stuff came up. Sorry about the Limbo, I couldn’t make it.”
“Something so important came up you couldn’t pick me up like you said you would, or even call to tell me—”
He sat up. “Hey, I just couldn’t get there. I don’t blame you for being pissed, but I couldn’t help it.”
“Oh, you don’t blame me! That’s so generous of you.”
“I said I’m sorry.” He lay back down, put his arm over his eyes.
“You’re always sorry. Aren’t you going to tell me what came up that was so important you forgot to pick me up, again? Did you have to go meet someone else at the last minute?”
“Yeah, but it wasn’t a girl, if that’s what you mean.”
“I didn’t even suggest it was girl, did I? All I did was ask—”
He interrupted with, “Okay, I was supposed to meet these three kids about,” he seemed to hesitate, “about a band.” He remained pokerfaced.
This admission surprised her. “Three kids?” Wait a minute, he probably went to the Limbo later and Heather blabbed about those kids showing up while I was there.
“Yep.” He lay back and put his arm over his eyes. This, she knew from experience, was a sign that he was lying.
“But… about a band. What do you mean?”
“A band, a music band. You know what a band is.”
“Why would you be meeting them about a band?”
“I was going to manage this rock band, make some extra money. You know construction business is down.”
“What do you know about managing a band?”
“I’ve known people in bands and stuff.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about it?”
“Because I knew you’d sneer at me over it, like you just did.”
“So you’re going to…” she almost growled in frustration. “Where did you even meet these kids in the first place?”
“It doesn’t matter because it’s not going to work out. They’re getting somebody else.”
Roni didn’t believe this story at all. She was about to ask whether they changed their minds because he didn’t show up where he was supposed to, but decided not to. “But it doesn’t have to do with dealing drugs or anything, of course.”
“Not unless music is drugs.”
“Because you used to deal drugs and, like you say, construction is down.”
“I did not deal drugs. I was just dealing a little pot sometimes. To my friends.”
“Pot is a drug.”
“Yeah, sort of. Not much money in it, though.”
“No money in dealing pot? That’s not what I always hear.”
“Not unless you— Oh for Christ’s sake. Maybe you think I should deal pot, then. I had you all wrong.”
She groaned. “You know, I can’t deal with this. I have to go to work.” She went into the bedroom, got dressed, came back out and said, “Will you please at least take your boots off if you’re going to lay on the couch?”
He groaned, but was sitting up and taking them off as she went out the door without saying goodbye.
CHAPTER 14
SKY SCREAMS
Todd sat in the armchair, watching the girl sleep as though viewing an early Andy Warhol movie. He’d gotten dressed in some of the clothes picked from his batch of dirty laundry. It occurred to him this was a strange thing to do, at least for most people. But it was basically similar to his usual activity in the last few months, sitting and watching porn videos on his TV set, not finding them stirring or engaging, but just something to watch. As though the images were dancing flames in a fireplace, and as though he had all the time in the world and no use he wished to make of it. Ordinarily at this hour he would be watching videos and drinking wine, nodding off occasionally. But the presence of a real girl was keeping him awake and alert, if as passive and listless as ever.
It seemed unreal to him that the girl, Sky, was a living thing, three-dimensional and made of flesh. Weird to think if she woke, she would be able to see him as much as he could see her. She was a thing that could be touched and could respond. Funny, at this point, he could hardly imagine that.
She stirred, snuggled her shoulders against the pillow he’d picked up from the floor in the small hours, and breathed deeply in her sleep.
He really ought to take this time while she was sleeping to clean up the place. Get those pants off the bathroom floor, do the laundry, the bedclothes especially. She could have the bed, he could sleep on the sofa, or in his chair. He usually did anyway.
She didn’t look much like Lenore, despite the hair. As he remembered her, anyway. Didn’t look much like Clare either. Clare was taller, more athletic, and a blonde, with fine hair and light coloring, hard and sleek angles in her face and figure. This girl Sky’s flesh was freckled but pale, which seemed to go with red hair and, though easily as alluring, somehow looked softer in texture than Clare’s. He wondered if it felt that way as well. She’d make a nice subject for a drawing, or even more, a painting. Not that he felt like trying to make one, it would just be frustrating to try. But he’d like to, if he could do it and be satisfied with the result. Satisfaction, that was always the problem.
Was it because of Clare he didn’t try to paint or draw anymore? All his ambition seemed to have dwindled away, ambition that had gotten to be as much a vice as drinking, and as destructive, in its way. His last project, the unfinished, never-really-begun mural for an outside wall at the Mirror, had been his most ambitious ever, though it wasn’t even basically his own idea.
It was Hobie, sort of his best friend back in high school, who couldn’t draw at all by himself, who had come up with the design for the mural. He’d described it as awkwardly and insistently as Walt Disney was said to have given instruction to his drudges in his animation factory during the making of Fantasia. It was to be a medievalesque rendering of the Harrowing of Hell, a phrase Todd had heard but didn’t know the meaning of until Hobie explained it. In the Harrowing, Christ descended into Hell for three days following his crucifixion. For what reason, Hobie didn’t say, but he visited the suffering and imprisoned spirits there. Todd didn’t remember this from Bible school when his religious crackpot parents were alive. He’d never paid much attention there anyway. But Hobie had read about it at some point, in his fixation on religion as a delightfully camp carnival of delusion.
Hobie’s vision was to have a glowing Christ figure hanging above the pitiful damned in a cavern with the dimensions and detailing of a cathedral, who would look up at him beseechingly out of a reddened muck, bearing the faces of dead movie stars, with a special emphasis on those associated mainly with horror movies, like Lugosi, Chaney Jr., Peter Lorre, Vincent Price, Paul Naschy, whoever else. For actresses, Hobie had mentioned Evelyn Ankers, Erika Blanc, Yutte Stensgaard, Barboura Morris and Susan Cabot, and of course, Sharon Tate. The Christ figure itself would be Ed Wood Jr. in something like his transvestite gear from Glen or Glenda, perhaps a white robe, definitely a blonde wig and make-up.