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.
John heard a hum up the hill Ivan's treadmill buzzing to life at its usual six-thirty time slot. Company! He walked up to Ivan, who was also watching the morning news on an ancient 14-inch TV placed on its usual perch on a lawn chair. John-O.
Ivan.
You look like shit. Up all night? Ivan's treadmill was on 3 out of a possible 10.
Yeah. This was not uncommon.
Watch anything good?
Actually, no. I read something.
You read ?
A script, actually.
My,my. High School Graduates Eat Steak. When was the last time you even touched a script?
John had to think. Yeah, yeah. Whenever.
Something we can use?
I think so. It's okay.
Okay good, or okay crap?
Okay good. Okay great, actually.
Spiel forth, pardner.
John started to describe the film.
What happens after the Galveston blowup? Ivan was hooked.
We go back in time to the famous Tungaska meteor explosion of 1909.
Isn't that the one where half the trees in Siberia got knocked down?
That's it except it turns out it wasn't a meteorite explosion. It was this hoop thing.
Not aliens, I hope. The market's supersaturated with alien shit. Ivan timed some sort of pulse or throbbing in his body with his stopwatch.
Not aliens. The hoop is from Switzerland. From Bern, Switzerland. It's from 1905, and it was made by a voluptuous Russian Jew down the hall from Einstein's apartment. That was the year he discovered the Theory of Relativity.
Vol up tuous? What kind of word is that? Where are we, John-O 1962?
Okay okay. But she's hot.
She's hot ? Are we in 1988 now?
God, Ivan. She's hot in a cold kind of way. Her parents died and she had to go back to Siberia from Bern. But when she's there, there's the accident the Tungaska explosion.
What kind of psychic energy creates an explosion that levels half of Siberia?
The woman's first orgasm accidentally funneled through an amplifier ring within the hoop.