Max realized this was what he had been aiming for. All he’d wanted was to escape the pressure, escape the fishbowl, and go back to his life before he became a movie star.
For a moment there, he’d lost his way. For a moment, he’d gone back to being what he’d been before—an addict. He’d faltered. Max knew if he went back to LA, he would go right back to the drugs, the alcohol, just to survive. This was the last, best chance he’d ever have to transform himself.
“OK.”
“Ha ha,” Luther said, patting Max on the back. “I knew it! Tell you what. Let’s go to my place, OK? Let’s get you all taken care of, get you started on those gutters. Then we’ll see what’s what.”
As they walked, Max became aware of a car tracking them. He thought about walking into the nearest store when Luther said under his breath, “Should’ve known.”
A seventies-era Cadillac in mint condition pulled up beside them. A large man bounced out and opened his arms wide. “Luther, my boy! How are you faring?”
Luther stayed where he was and said, “I’m good, Unc.”
“Motel receipts?”
“Up.”
“Excellent! Give me a hug, boy, and introduce me to your friend.”
Luther introduced his uncle as Sam P. Noon.
“Call me Sam P. That’s what everyone calls me, son,” he said.
Max looked from one to the other. Luther had long stringy hair. His uncle had long stringy hair. Luther was shaped like a pear. His uncle was shaped like a pear. Sam P. looked like one of those inflatable clowns you’d hit and they’d spring back at you.
Sam P. was looking at Max. His eyes narrowed. Then he smiled. “Luther, my boy, we’ve got to talk. Why don’t you tell your handsome friend here you’ll meet up later?”
Luther glanced at Max. “Go ahead over to the motel. I’ll meet you there soon as I can.”
MAX APPROACHED THE Rat Motel cautiously, from the alley, and melted into the shade of the same tree he’d hidden under last time.
Good thing he did. The limo was back—parked outside the motel office, engine running, probably to keep the air conditioner on. A few moments later, his two former captors marched outside, clearly in a foul mood.
Seeing them walk out angry made Max feel better. He remained in shadow and watched as the limo turned the corner and accelerated away.
He was about to walk over when the sound of an engine starting up caught his attention.
A white truck was parked half a block up—a shiny new Chevy. The truck executed a U-turn and turned onto the street the limo had taken a few moments before.
Max hung back in the shade, his heart pounding.
He had the definite impression the white truck had been waiting for the limo. Were the people in the truck following the limo because they were looking for him?
Max wondered if he was getting just a little bit paranoid.
Better safe than sorry. And so he waited.
And waited some more.
Finally, Luther drove up to the motel and Max walked across the street to meet him.
They drove out of town past a clutter of houses and businesses and up a dirt road between scruffy five-acre spreads to a place partially hidden by a fence of live bamboo. The white brick ranch could have belonged to the Rat Pack—if they’d been on a budget.
Luther opened the door to the house. “What do you think?”
He took in the sixties-era furniture arranged on a beaten-down white carpet.
“Nice,” Max murmured, to be polite. Frigid air-conditioning blasted the sunken living room. Luther showed him the house. It didn’t take long. Lots of white, lots of threadbare, lots of old.
“We can go out by the pool,” Luther said, motioning to the yard beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows. “I have extra swim trunks, if you want to take a dip.”
Max declined.
He was glad, though, to be outside that frigid house, even in July. They sat in the shade of the terrace. Luther asked him the usual questions. What was it like to be a rich, famous movie star?
Did he really have a Vincent Black Shadow motorcycle? (Yes.) And was it true it once belonged to James Dean? (No.) What was it like to sleep with a babe like Talia L’Apel? Were they really going to adopt a baby from Africa like it said in the tabloids? Wasn’t he just in rehab? As the questions got more personal and prurient, Luther pulled a bottle of Coca-Cola from the antique vending machine and held it up. “Coke?” Max nodded. It looked like the original bottle, the heavy greenish glass shaped like a woman.
“Sure.”
Luther turned away to open the bottle on the door and asked if Max ever had three-ways with Paris Hilton. With Lindsay Lohan? Were there ever guys? The questions were insulting, but he was used to that. Everybody thought his life belonged to them, and they could tell him how badly he was fucking up and give him all kinds of advice and ask rude questions. He hated that shit, but it was nothing unusual.
At least the Coke tasted good.
Luther disappeared inside the house and returned with a baking sheet of heated-over taquitos, the frozen kind, like Max’s mother used to make. He realized he was ravenously hungry. He ate four or five in a row and tried to keep up with the conversation. Luther handed him another Coke. Max watched the ice lumps clinging to the bottle, watched them slide down and drip between his fingers. He thought about telling Luther he could mind his own fucking business, but forgot about it when he heard a loud voice say, “Freeze!”
It was as if someone had spoken forcefully in his ear. A man’s voice, authoritative. But Max turned his head and no one was there. It was just the two of them here. He really was losing it.
“Max? You all right, buddy?”
Max focused on Luther, who was still proffering the cookie sheet. Luther’s voice was bright and uncommonly loud.
“Why did you say that?” Max asked Luther.
“Say what?”
“‘Freeze.’ Why’d you say it?”
Luther stared at Max, clearly puzzled. “I didn’t say ‘freeze.’ Why would I say that?”
“I don’t know,” Max said, suddenly weary. It was probably another hallucination—this time an audible one.
“I didn’t say ‘freeze.’ ” Luther said again.
“OK.”
Luther held out the cookie sheet. “Taquito?”
Max wanted to rip the smirk right off Luther’s face, but he couldn’t. He just sat there, the ice water tricking through his fingers. Feeling he was untethered from the earth—not an unusual sensation at all.
A little different this time, though.
And that was his last coherent thought.
“THAT CLERK WAS lying,” Hogart said to Riis as he gunned the limo out of the motel parking lot. “He was stonewalling us.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do, that’s all.”
The radio crackled. It was Gordon White Eagle, telling them to quit Paradox and drive to the Sunset Point Rest Area.
“This is bullshit,” Hogart said, taking the interstate going north. “He’s still in Paradox. I can feel it.” The actor had gone to ground like a scared rabbit, about what you’d expect from a guy who made his living pretending to be fictional characters.
The rest area at Sunset Point was closed, orange cones blocking the roads in and out; place looked like an abandoned prison camp.
“Arizona’s so lame,” Riis said. “You can’t even find someplace to take a leak anymore.”
“Gotta do it the old-fashioned way,” observed Hogart. “Find a bush.”
“Yeah, well, the wife don’t like it. She’s got to pee like every five minutes when we’re on the road. Money’s tight, and now we gotta go to a McDonald’s or something, and it’s getting so those kids at the counter are looking for people just coming in for the facilities. I’m sick of the dirty looks.”