He drove Ivan's Chrysler sedan down into West Hollywood. Ivan and Nylla preferred the sedan because of its anonymity. It didn't look like a rental car, and it didn't look, as Doris had said, «ethnic or frightened middle class.»
Traffic was tolerable; the night's darkness still felt clean. He found a rental place, West Side Video. On entering he saw it was the kind of shop where the manager asserts personality by laser-printing signs highlightingEVIL MOTHERS ,CUTE & DUMB , and arcane subcategories likeGORE FESTS andLEMONS , where John was genuinely amused to see his old turkeys,The Wild Land and The Other Side of Hate.
He realized he had no idea what movies Susan had been in. He asked the clerk, name-taggedRYAN , if he had anything starring Susan Colgate, and the clerk squeaked with pleasure. «Meese Colllllll gate? I should think so. Right this way.» He led John to an old magazine rack filled with sun-faded tape boxes. Above the rack was a laser-printed sign readingST .SUSAN THE DIVINE . The top of the rack was camped up with altarlike candles and sacrificial offerings — Japanese candy bars, prescription bottles, a model Airbus 340 with a missing wing, and a mosaic of head shots of Susan culled from a wide array of print media. Ryan stood patiently, waiting for John's reaction, but John was silent, the inside of his brain firing Roman candles. He felt a sexual need to own the altar.
«She's something, isn't she?» Ryan asked.
«You did this?» John asked, looking at Ryan, a Gap clone — khakis, white T-shirt with flannel shirt on top. A pleasant Brady Bunch face. Like a gag writer at Fox.
«With tender loving care.»
«I'll give you a hundred bucks for it, right now.»
Ryan was taken aback. «Mr. Johnson — I'm sorry, but I can't pretend I don't know who you are — this is my shrine. It's not like I can just give it away like that.»
«Five hundred, but throw in the movies.»
«Mr.Johnson. I made it. It's not like a joke or something. Well, maybe a bit of a joke. But I've been saving these clippings for years.»
«Nine hundred. Half of what I've got. It's my last money. Everybody knows I'm broke. Even with Mega Force — that's in a trust.»
«Don't tell me this! Too much information, Mr. Johnson!»
«John.»
«Too much information, John.» Ryan put his hands on his hips and watched as John scanned the titles on the boxes' spines. The store was empty. They could speak loudly. «John, I'm a stranger to you, but let me ask you something.»
«Welcome to detox. Ask away.»
«Are you, how shall I say, in love with Miss Colgate?»
«What?» John was shocked, not by Ryan's forthrightness, but by the same sort of ping he used to get when he discovered whodunit in an Agatha Christie mystery. «Love? I — »
«Go no further. It's okay. I work for the forces of good. And it doesn't surprise me, you know.»
«What doesn't? I never said I was in love.»
«Psh. You're like the old RKO Radio tower shooting out bolts of Susan.»
«You're a ballsy little shit.»
«Now, now.» Ryan could see John didn't mind. In fact, quite the opposite. «I mean, both of you have done disappearing acts. Her after the plane crash three years ago, and you earlier this year.»
John wasn't going to fight it. «Go on. What's your point?»
Ryan rubbed his chin and became professorial. «Well, this would have to be a new thing, wouldn't it? Because if it was even slightly old, you'd already have seen all her old videos by now.»
«Bingo, Dr. Einstein.»
«When did you meet?»
«Today. At lunch. At the Ivy.»
Ryan whistled, then relaxed his posture. «Tell you what, John. Rent all the videos and I'll report them as lost or stolen.»
«Yeah?»
«Yeah. And don't waste your last money. I'll throw in the altar, but there's a catch.»
«It wouldn't be life on earth if there weren't a catch. «Qu'est-ce-que c'est, Ryan?» John found himself greatly liking this strange young man.
«You have to answer a series of skill-testing questions after reading a script I wrote.»
«Fair enough. Deal.»
«Good. I'll lock up and we can scan these tapes out of the system and load this stuff into your car.»
The two men carried the shrine by its ends over to the counter, where Ryan began to laser-scan the tapes' bar codes. John gave Ryan the address of the guesthouse, as well as his phone number. «Give these out to anybody and you're mulch. And let me ask you something, Ryan — why'd you make a shrine? You're not a stalker, because they don't make shrines — they stalk. What's your deal?»
Ryan looked up from the till, was about to say one thing and then visibly stopped and began to say something else. «Oh, you know, we all need an obsession, and mine's La Colgate: 3184 Prestwick Drive, Benedict Canyon, Wyoming driver's license 3352511, phone unlisted but messages can be left with Adam Norwitz, the IPD Agency.»
John stared at Ryan.
«She rents stuff here.»
John looked down at the tapes, some episodes of Meet the Blooms, Dynamite Bay and Thraice's Faces — On Tour with Steel Mountain. Crap. «There's another reason you like Susan Colgate. Mind telling me?»
«Fair enough. An LAPD guy told me I was the last person to ever leave a message on her phone line before her plane crashed — a few years ago. I can't explain it. And now here you are tonight. So I'm bonding with her again.»
The shrine fit neatly in the car's back seat. The air outside was surprisingly cold and John's skin felt clammy. «Here's the script,» said Ryan.
«Yeah, yeah,» said John, grabbing it.
«John — listen to me.» John stopped — he was unused to being addressed like this but didn't mind. «You're going to read this script and then you're going to get back to me right away. But that's not all.»
«It's not, is it?»
«No. You're also going to call me up whenever you need to, and we can talk about Susan.»
«Do you have any idea how fucking psycho that sounds, Ryan?»
«Psycho or not, I mean it. Other people aren't going to understand this when it breaks out. And it will. Not from me, but from you, because you're in love so you have a need to blab everything. Other people won't get it.»
John laughed. «Okay, Ryan, you win. When my heart gets ready to sing, you can be my Yoko Ono.»
«Good luck, Mr. Johnson.»
John gave the thumbs-up and drove immediately to 3184 Prestwick, parked across the street and looked at Susan's small blue Cape Cod house surrounded by overgrown ornamental shrubs. A porch light was on, but otherwise it was dark. An hour crept by, and the only activity John noticed was a dog walker and three cars driving by. He gave up, and late in the night he drove back to the guesthouse. The streets were surprisingly empty, and at Highland and Sunset he noticed a fog, but then realized it couldn't be because Los Angeles almost never had fog. His cell phone rang, but the caller hung up. John conceded that something must be on fire.
That night John didn't sleep. He read Ryan's script and drank raspberry juice cut with stinging nettle and mango. He looked at his cordless phone wondering what might be a remotely plausible time to call Susan. Seven-thirty? Too early. Eight? Yes. No. He'd look desperate. Eight-thirty?Uh, hello, Susan — yes, I know it's kinda early… . Nine? Yes — but how to get there through the ink and murk and smothering slowness of night?
By six o'clock the sky was lightening and a few doves skittered about in the shrubs. He put down Ryan's script, «Tungaska.» It was good. A Texas woman inherits a strange metal hoop from her father, which looks like an unjeweled crown or a creweling hoop. She holds it up to the light from a TV set for a better look and suddenly licorice-whip tornadoes descend from the sky, smashing her Galveston subdivision into a landfill of cracked plywood, broken furniture, branches, toys and cars and clothing. Only the room in which she's sitting is spared. It turns out the hoop is a portal that converts human psychic energy into nuclear energy.