“But now y’see what I mean ’bout dark matter?”
I sidestepped again toward the hallway, quietly unsnapping the plastic holster of my pepper spray as I did. “Not really.”
He reached into the pocket of his robe. When he pulled it out, I saw something black in his hand and swallowed hard. Who carries a gun in their bathrobe? Nobody sane. He seemed as surprised as I was to see it. He slid it back in and fished into the robe’s other pocket. Whatever he pulled out of that he pointed across the room toward me. The widescreen beside me blinked to life.
A TV remote.
“DVD,” he said, “’s a Science Channel thing on the cosmos or some such, ’bout dark matter. Been watching it all mornin’, tryin’ to sort this out. All this shit slidin’ toward th’ center, t’ward me. I mean, where do I go from here? M’whole comeback thing?” He nodded to the dead woman. “This’ll complicate plans a bit.”
A bit?
“You said it was an accident. I can’t imagine they’d—”
He waved my words away like gnats. “So I’m listenin’ to this show, about how dark matter’s invisible, but y’know it’s there cause it has gravity, ’cause it pulls things into its orbit. All sortsa things. And I’m thinking, see, how I’m sort of like dark matter.”
I said nothing. He sensed my confusion.
“Shit happens, you know? To me. All the time. I always seem to land right in the middle of it. And I had this...” He paused to enunciate. “... epi-phany. I just wanted t’show somebody.”
I looked at my watch again. Made a point of doing so. “Really gotta get back.”
“Won’ take long. Wanna drink?”
“Can’t.”
“I told you to stay.”
Those final words were hard and sharp enough to cut glass, scary, the dopey-drunk voice completely gone. I stared at him until something flashed in the corner of my eye. My first glance to the left registered nothing. The second registered something that didn’t compute at all. Why would a full-grown Siberian tiger be standing in the doorway, right between me and the only way out of the room?
Things started to add up. The giant shit pile in the hall. The suffocating litter-box smell. Even the shredded La-Z-Boy, which I suddenly realized was just an overworked scratching post.
“Really need to get going,” I said.
“Pussy, sit!” he called out.
The tiger didn’t move, just kept its intense yellow eyes fixed on me. It filled the door frame.
“Sit!” he commanded.
I sat back on the window ledge, just in case he was talking to me. Slowly, the tiger sat. Head level. Ears back. Gaze steady.
“That’s Pussy!” he said. “Raised ’er right here. Took ’er in as an orphaned cub, had ’er a year.” He wandered across the room and scratched the tiger between the ears. “Harmless old bird now. Mostly. No sudd’n moves, though. Big cats never lose those instincts. Don’t want ’er thinkin yer a threat. Y’sure don’ want her thinkin’ yer wounded.”
My body was flushed with primal juices. Every nerve was on fire. “It lives here?”
He shook his head. “Refuge. Up in Ventura. Snuck ’er out yesterday and drove ’er down in my panel van, brought ’er in after dark.” He gestured grandly around the room. “We lived here together once. Happy days, y’know, and I jus’ wanted her to see the place again, b’fore... well, you know.”
“I see.”
“Figured we’d spend a li’l time together before the big move.” He held an index finger up to his pursed lips. “Don’ tell the neighbors.”
“Not a word.”
“Nice people, but they’d go apeshit. Always do.” He tipped his glass toward the bathtub. “Course, now there’s this situation.”
“Complicated, like you said.”
“I still generate a lot of grav’ty, even if I’m invisible.”
“I’m sure you do.” I don’t know why, but I added: “I played AniMosity to death when I was a kid. Great album.”
“Thanks.”
I’d kicked into some weird survival mode, desperate to say anything that might get me out of this. He hadn’t threatened me. I didn’t think he was capable of violence. On the other hand, I was in a room with a dead groupie, a live tiger, and a desperate armed man who was drinking heavily before 10 a.m. Things were beyond weird already.
“I even liked the second album.”
I instantly regretted my phrasing, but he smiled. “Beastiary?” he said. “More mature, don’ you think? Record company hated it. After that, they just bailed on the third record. No support a’tall.”
“Bastards,” I said. “For what it’s worth, though, I bought Zoology too. Got all three.”
“Appreciate that.”
“You guys ever think about a fourth studio album? Reunion tour, maybe?”
“Never been that desp’rate.”
“I’d love to see that. Lot of people would.”
He drained the rest of his drink during the awkward silence, dumped the ice into the tub, and set the glass gently on the dead woman’s pubic mound. When he turned back toward me, the look he gave me had the same edge I’d noticed in his voice.
“So I guess we have a l’il situation, then?” he said.
“Meaning?”
“You barged into m’house like some stalker-fan. You and this woman.”
“You invited me... Wait. Me and this woman?”
The wheels were coming off this bus pretty fast. Could he hear how loud I swallowed?
“’s a big house,” he said, picking up the empty glass again. “What were you two doin’ upstairs all night, anyway?”
An alibi wouldn’t be a problem. I was at dinner with five friends until midnight. Which was completely beside the point. Nothing mattered now except the moment. And with this guy’s loose grip on reality, I was in no position to argue.
“My lips are sealed,” I lied. “You can handle this any way you want.”
“You’re in my house.”
“Yessir, I am.”
“You followed me in.”
“You told me to.”
“The hell I did.”
“I’ll just go then.”
I’d taken about three tentative steps toward the door where the tiger sat when the highball glass exploded against the window frame just beside me. Heavy crystal ricocheted off the back of my head. When I touched the spot, my fingers came away bloody.
Straight ahead, Pussy leaned ever so slightly forward.
Which would be a more pathetic end to my life? Death at the hands of my teen idol — now an aging, drunk rocker — or death by tiger attack in the rocker’s Balboa Island rumpus room? Either way, I imagined snickering at my funeral.
“You’re pretty upset, I can tell,” I said. “It’s a bad time...”
He walked halfway across the room, his chest heaving. Either he was working himself into a rage, or he was out of breath from throwing his glass.
“Don’t patronize, you little prick.”
“Never.”
“You have no idea what this is like for me.”
“I can’t—”
“To lose a home? To see everythin’ taken away? What tha’ does to a man?”
I knew. “This won’t help, but doing what I do, I know there are a lot of people out there going through exactly what—”
“Christ!” He swept an arm across a scene littered by the debris of his reckless life. “You think I’m a credit whore, doncha? You think tha’s what this’s about? I earned all this.”
“Of course you did. You rocked.”
He took a deep breath. “Don’t mind me sayin’, but it takes some big-ass cojones to come into my house, tell me I’m just like all those assistan’ credit managers and den’al hygienists and Roto-Rooters who couldn’t pay the mortgage on some—” He spat the next word. “—tract house. You thin’ they have a clue whaddit means to lose somethin’ like this?”