“I don’t really know where I’m going or what I’m doing.”
“That’s hard to believe,” Owen said. “You look like someone who knows exactly what she’s doing.”
“I was studying design-jewellery mostly-at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, but I can’t really afford it. My father’s been in prison forever, as I guess you know, and the student loans are going to cripple me for life. I’m not sure it’s worth finishing. I thought I’d make a killing as a croupier, but that’s actually a hard job to get, and let’s just say my family background didn’t help.”
“What are you going to do now-I mean about Bill?”
“I don’t know. I can’t stay at his place anymore, obviously. I can’t even go to work or he’ll find me. I was going to leave Vegas in a couple of weeks anyway. It’s kind of depressing being in a town where everyone’s losing money.”
“We’re heading to Tucson tomorrow. Why don’t you come with us?”
“What would I do in Tucson?”
“Well, you won’t get beaten up, for one thing. And I guarantee no one’s going to quote the Bible.”
“Just Shakespeare.” That smile again.
“Come on. You’ll have a good time. We always do.”
“Well, if you think it’s all right. It might be a good way to put some space between me and Bill before I head back to New York.”
“Oh, I’m old, I’m old!” Max had turned off the television and was struggling, with much groaning, to rise from the sofa. “What doth gravity from his bed at midnight?” He shuffled toward them in a pair of white slippers bearing a Hilton monogram. “How now, boy? Feeling better?”
“Hey, Max, is it okay if Sabrina grabs a ride with us to Tucson?”
“Aha! The angel takes flight! My dear, I’m a mean old man-selfish, hideous, and somewhat given to excess-but I’ve never yet said no to a beautiful woman. You’re fleeing the Caliban of the parking lot?”
“I have to. But there’s no reason why you should help me. You’ve already done enough.”
“Nonsense. We have a brief appointment in the morning. You can pick up your goods and chattels, such as you require, and we’ll be three for the road. Right, boy?”
“Right.”
“Day or two later, we’ll be continuing on to El Paso. Perhaps you’d like to come along and visit your papa?”
“Uh, no. I doubt that I’ll be visiting my father.”
“What? But the man’s in hospital now. They finally let him out of his cell.”
“You and I have different opinions about my father. And, sorry, but I think mine is probably better informed. Can we just leave it at that?”
“Tsk. A melancholy thing, family discord.” Max looked from Sabrina to Owen and back again. “I trust that in time your conscience will be your guide. And so, weary with toil, I haste me to my bed.” He lumbered toward his bedroom, pausing at the door. “On matters of gender, nakedness, sexual congress and all manner of behaviour falling under the general category of lust, Owen, I shall be brief: you are to remain a gentleman at all times.”
Owen rolled his eyes, which made his head throb even more than it already was.
“Hey, listen,” he said when Max had closed the door. “Let me take the top bunk. That’s where I always sleep. Otherwise, we’ll have to change the sheets.”
“Don’t you move. Just tell me where they are.” But Owen forced himself to sit up, climb to the top bunk, then lie down again, pretending the whole time not to be in agony.
Sabrina switched off the light. When she began to undress, Owen turned his back to her, another painful and by no means fast operation. Still, he couldn’t help hearing, item by item: the drop of her sneakers, the zipper of her jeans. Then her weight on the bed frame as she got into the lower bunk. But soon the exhaustion that follows a flood of adrenalin washed consciousness away and he plummeted into dreamless sleep.
Max had all his life been one of those blessed individuals who have the knack of being able to drift off anywhere, any time. He was as comfortable in the Rocket’s queen-size bed as if he had been born in it. But now he lay on his back, staring at the ceiling and listening to the persistent crump, crump, crump of some dimwit’s subwoofer a few trailers away. He thought of the upcoming show, going over in his head the various roles he, Owen, Pookie and Roscoe would play.
Then time left him for a while-he had no idea for how long-and when he came to himself again, he was assaulted by the acrid smell of cigar smoke. Some droop-lip trailer trash, no doubt clad in overalls and baseball cap, was sneaking a midnight smoke outside the Rocket. And then a noise, a rustling sound. A newspaper?
He sat up, goggle-eyed.
There was a man sitting in the corner of his tiny bedroom reading the Los Angeles Times. Curlicues of smoke and the crown of a fedora were visible above the headline: TRUMAN VETOES TAFT-HARTLEY.
“Who the hell are you?” Max managed to say. Smoke was stinging his eyes and throat. The man paid him no attention, hidden behind his paper. “What do you want?”
A rustle of paper as the Times was lowered. The man’s features were hidden in the shadow of his hat brim. He sat forward, bringing his face into the light. His left eye was no more than a blood-filled socket, the lower half of his face a mask of gore.
“They got me, Max. I was having a great time, but they got me.”
“What are you talking about?” Max’s lower lip trembled so that he could barely form the words. “Who got you?”
“New York. Who else?”
Max gathered the bedclothes around his chest. He hadn’t been this frightened since prison.
“You’re Bugsy Siegel.”
“Bugsy.” The man puffed hard on his cigar so that the tip glowed neon red. “I’ve killed guys for calling me that.”
“But you’re dead.”
The man shrugged. His suit was big in the shoulders, a wide chalk-stripe riddled with bullet holes from which wisps of smoke were coiling. His face minus the blood and with both eyes in place would have been handsome. A part of Max’s brain registered that this was not Bugsy Siegel but Warren Beatty playing Bugsy Siegel.
The gangster raised a finger to his face. “Got me in the bridge of the nose. Right through the newspaper.” He held the Times and blew a thin plume of smoke through the.45-calibre hole. “Force of the thing blew my eye out. Stings, too.”
Bugsy got up and came around the side of the bed, reeking of blood and cigar.
“No.” Max cowered against the bedboard. “Get away from me.”
“I only came to warn you.”
“Stay away.” When the apparition didn’t move, Max added, “Warn me of what?”
“Same thing’s going to happen to you.”
“No, no. I won’t let it. Now get away. Get away from me. Please.”
“Here.” The thing held out its hand. “Take it as a reminder.”
“Get away, I tell you. I don’t want it.”
“It’ll help you see it coming.”
“I don’t want it, blast you.”
“Take it!”
The voice would not be denied. Max’s hand travelled of its own accord out from under the bedclothes, palm up. Into it, the creature pressed a flesh-hot eyeball.
Max screamed and tried to throw it away, but it refused to leave his hand. He screamed and screamed and covered his head with his blanket and curled himself into a damp ball. He remained that way for some time, listening for the sound of the newspaper, but there was nothing. Eventually he heard worried voices. He lowered the blanket just enough to look into the alarmed faces of Owen and Sabrina.
NINE
You would never have guessed that the man who was standing before the grill, flipping pancakes and whistling a tune from Gilbert and Sullivan, was the same man who had been quivering in his bedclothes scant hours before. But that was Max. Owen had never met anyone else who could change so completely from one mood to another, often mixing despair and sunshine in the confines of a single hour. Now he was pouring pancake batter into artful shapes-Marilyn Monroe, Mickey Mouse, a tapir (or so he claimed)-and chatting away as if he had passed a peaceful night of sweet dreams.