“So,” Candy says. “Different enough?”
“Plenty. Perfect. Still got your knife?”
She opens her jacket and shows me where she’s had someone at Lollipop Dolls sew in a leather sheath.
“Think my lunch-box gun will go with the ensemble?”
“I think you’d look naked without it.”
She grins and gets a little closer.
“Naked. I like the sound of that. I checked out my reflection on the way in. I’d do me. How about you?”
I shake my head.
“Careful. Out here in the world we’re still getting to know each other.”
She purses her lips and pulls the jacket around her.
“You’re goddamn paranoid. You should see someone about that.”
“I tried, but she kept writing things down. It made me more paranoid.”
Candy looks away at the bottles behind the bar.
“I went to all this trouble and I can’t even kiss you.”
“Grab a drink and come back into the corner. Julie and I are just about done with our meeting.”
“Fine,” she says.
I can hear the disappointment in her voice. She went way out of her way to change her look and all I can do is nod and smile like a tourist admiring the view. Truth is, even before Candy became Chihiro I’d been feeling funny about the two of us. When she was locked up in a Golden Vigil jail cell for attacking a civilian, she said some things. Like I was using her. Like I thought she was sick. Later, she said it was just poison talking after someone spiked her anti-Jade potion. She said it made her crazy and suspicious. Maybe. Because some of what she said hit close to home and I’ve been wondering about it ever since. There’s a lot of unspoken stuff between us. I used to think that was a good thing. Now I’m not so sure.
When I get back to the table, Julie says, “Who was that?”
“Guess.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“You’ll see for yourself in a minute.”
Candy comes over with a shot of whiskey. I swear I can smell it all the way across the bar.
She takes off her sunglasses and hooks them over her shirt. Grabs a chair and sits down at our table.
“What do you think?” she asks Julie.
“I can’t believe you’re the same person.”
“That’s the idea,” I say.
“Admit it, I look like a superhero, don’t I?” she says.
“I don’t know many pink-haired superheroes,” said Julie. “But if there are any, you’ll be stiff competition.”
Candy looks at me.
“See? She likes it.”
“I told you. I like it fine. We just have to be cool.”
Candy rolls her eyes.
“He thinks if I stand too close to him we’re going to get nuked.”
“He might have a point,” says Julie. “About playing down your relationship.”
Candy sits back in her chair.
“You two should start a band. The Buzzkill Twins.”
“Julie is going to have a new office soon,” I say, trying to change the subject.
That gets Candy’s attention. She sits up.
“Cool. If you’re hiring this scaredy cat, can I have a job too?”
“What are your skills?” says Julie.
“I was afraid you’d ask that.”
I say, “You used to run the office for Doc Kinski.”
“Yeah. I did.”
“I might need a receptionist at some point,” Julie says.
“Swell.”
I look at Candy.
“You really want to be a receptionist?”
“No,” she says. “I want to kick down doors like you, but apparently I’m not allowed.”
“I never said that.”
I want a drink and a cigarette. I want zombies, dinosaurs, and flaming giraffes to come crashing through the door so I don’t have to talk anymore.
“Look,” I say. “Maybe I am being a little paranoid. It’s just, we faked your death once. I’m not sure we can get away with it again. What do you think, Julie?”
“I think the U.S. Marshals Service isn’t dumb,” she says.
Candy sips her drink.
“So, I should hide out at Brigitte’s forever and learn to knit?”
I take her shot glass, drink half, and hand it back.
“It would probably be okay if we partner up, but you have to do it as Chihiro, not Candy. Pretend it’s the first season of X-Files.”
Candy leans back and smiles. The black lipstick with the short pink hair looks good. But I’m not sure she gets that I’m as frustrated by all this clandestine crap as she is.
“A Scully and Mulder thing? Yeah. I can handle that,” she says. “Does that mean I get to move back home?”
Julie gets her bag and stands up.
“This is getting a bit personal. I think I’ll go.”
“So, can I have a job?” says Candy.
Julie thinks for a minute.
“You can work with him as an unpaid intern. We’ll see from there.”
“Awesome.”
Julie slips the bag over her shoulder and looks at me.
“I’ll call you. Keep an eye on our guest.”
“My guest.”
“Call me if anything changes.”
“Bye. Thanks,” says Candy as Julie weaves her way through the crowd.
When she’s gone, Candy finishes her drink.
“Seriously,” she says. “We have to talk about some kind of timetable for me coming back to Max Overdrive. I love Brigitte, but I can’t live without a plan.”
“Trust me. I know how you feel.”
“Do you?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. I wasn’t sure for a while there.”
She pushes her leg against mine under the table. I look around, making sure no one can see. I think we’re okay and she feels good, so I don’t try to stop her.
“Look,” I say. “If we work together we’ll see each other all the time. Aside from that, give it until the later part of the month before you come back. Okay? Maybe by then I’ll have Sleeping Beauty out of the store.”
“Can I come over now?” she says. “Seeing as how we’re colleagues, I should have a look at the dead man.”
“I don’t see why not. But we can’t leave at the same time. I’ll go. You go and order another drink. Take off in, say, twenty minutes.”
She picks up the shot glass and rolls it between her palms.
“Twenty minutes is a long time to be all on my own. What if someone asks me for a date?”
“Do what you think is best, but remember that your guitar amp is still at Max Overdrive.”
“What do I have to do to get it back?” she says.
“Awful things. Depraved things.”
“You bad man.”
I get up from the table.
“Forget twenty minutes. Make it ten.”
“That’s the first sensible thing you’ve said all day.”
She heads back to the bar. I go out the door.
LOS ANGELES IS a busted jukebox in a forgotten bar at the ass end of the high desert. The city only exists between the pops, skips, and scratches of the old 45s. Snatches of ancient songs. Lost voices. The jagged artifacts of a few demented geniuses, one-hit wonders, and lip-synching frauds. Charlie Manson thought he was going to be the next Beatles and we know how that turned out. This city is built on a bedrock of high crimes and rotten death. The Black Dahlia. Bugsy Siegel. The Night Stalker. We’ve buried and forgotten more bodies than all the cemeteries of Europe. Someday the water is going to run out and the desert will strip this town down to its Technicolor bones. Even the buzzards won’t want it and the city knows it. Maybe that’s why I like it.
It’s not a long walk back to Max Overdrive and I can let my mind wander.
It’s funny to be thinking about the desert when there’s still so much water around, cutting off streets with blocked sewer drains. Signs of the weird floods that nearly drowned the city at Christmas are fading fast, but not completely gone. L.A. doesn’t have the luxury of hundred-year flood warnings. We don’t have that kind of relationship with water or the past. And this flood wasn’t anything to do with global warming or El Niños. It wasn’t real weather. It was the symptom of a disease. An organism worming its way into our world from another.