Dead Lines, A Novel of Life... After Death Read online

  Peter rewarded her with a wry smile. My friends ashes are in the trunk, he said. I'm taking him down to the beach.

  That sobered her right up. She watched owlishly as he returned to the car with directions to the YMCA on Los Gamos Drive.

  First, however, with the moon still up and the night still bright, and enough gas in his tank, it was time to send the last of Phil back to nature.

  CHAPTER 13

  THE WIND OFF the Pacific lifted sand from the beach in translucent sheets and sent it shushing through scrub and low trees. The moon was at it's highest point and Peter could clearly make out the waves, long rough rollers grumbling in from an unhappy ribbon of black sea. Sand got in his eyes. He had thought of standing on a rock and dispensing fistfuls of his friends ashes to a wide swath of ocean, but that clearly was not going to be practical. Lets choke the fishes, not me, he murmured, pulling up the collar of his coat to keep the sand out of his eyes.

  Carrying Phils urn, he walked down as close to the waterline as he thought practical, then danced back as the spume hissed forward with unexpected energy. After a few tries, he found a good compromise position, stooped, unscrewed the thick plastic lid, and waited for the foaming burble of ocean to creep back. The best technique, Peter thought, would be to apply Phil a dollop at a time. Pouring out the contents of the tub all at once would leave a gray wet lump to be worked over like the stub end of a wet cigar. Not good.

  Peter dispensed the gritty ashes in small handfuls. After five minutes, his ankles and knees ached. He thought of all of Phils maladies: Heartburn, the beginnings of emphysema from so many years of smokingPhil had smoked like a chimney, said it made him feel normal. A mole on his chin and beside his nose. An attack of shingles. Nerves in social situations.

  In 1987, Phil had been a joyous, leering wreck at the Playboy Mansion. To calm him, Peter had sat him down at a table and pulled out a sketchpad. Together they had performed dueling cartoons until well past midnight. Phils characters had been quickly sketched Everyman nebbishes with long noses and knowing eyes. Peter had drawn more detailed, world-weary devils with little horns and wry expressions. Right and left, cartoons had been handed out to a growing crowd of beautiful women and envious men. Hefner had sat with them for a few minutes, and later had published several of the cartoons. The checks had totaled over six thousand dollars. Phil had called that his finest moment.

  He had suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder. Not washing his hands over and over, but making sure light switches were turned off, appliances that might overheat were unplugged. Peter had once waited twenty minutes while Phil had checked his apartment, unlocking and then relocking the door ten times. Coffeemaker, TV, space heaters, all had to be off or unplugged, because you never knew where an electrical fire might start, and Phil was fanatic about protecting his stuff.

  Peter tossed another fistful into the foam, staying out of the blowback as wind sang over the waves. He then crab-walked down the beach, another dollop, another step.

  He had researched cremation for the horror film that Joseph had refused to finance. In older crematoria, bodies often had to be turned and poked and rearranged to be burned clear to ash. It was a tough, low-paying job, taking tongs and turning the hot, smoking bodies. Sometimes the heart, a tough hard lump of muscle meat, had to be picked out and hammered or ground up separately.

  Or so some funeral planners had told him over drinks at a bar on Cahuenga.

  Jesus, he murmured, and bent to let the spume wash his hand. The things Ive done for you, Phil. I swear.

  But it felt right. It was worth it. He could imagine Phil liberated from nerves and pain and bad memories. But the waves were also dissolving Phils weird, crackpot humor and eyes gleaming as he talked about finding a rare pulp in excellent condition at Collectors Bookstore. The cold salt water, filled with breaking, hissing bubbles, was also sucking up the Phil that had waved his arms and laughed as they had discussed the stops on their Old Farts Escapade and Tour. Pismo Beach. Albakoykee, Lompoc, and Cuc-A-MONGA-a.

  Gone also, the inner experience that had driven Phil to express himself about Peters loss, tears rolling down his cheeks. Shit, Peter, you never deserved anything this bad, never. Peter had almost quaked himself apart with grief in Phils arms. Two grown men, hugging and crying.

  The spume glowed pale as it drew the muddy last of Phil out to sea. Peter wiped sand and spray and fresh tears from his eyes and trudged back up the beach to the parking lot. It was four in the morning. Except for the Porsche, the parking lot was empty. He was too tired and wrung out to make it to the YMCA. He drove the car out of reach of the salt spray and sand and parked on a bluff. Then he curled his arms up in the tight bucket seat and leaned his head against a small pillow he carried to sometimes sit on.

  With Phil gone, he had almost nobody to talk to. Being alone for this long was the worst kind of failure, something he had always tried to avoid, usually with considerable success. Before his marriage, there had of course been lots of women, but also lots of friends. And quite a few who had been both.

  Phil, however, had always been there for the worst times. No more. No more.

  He dreamed in vivid jerks about the keys on the string. They hung before him, suspended from someones hand, a mans, not Lydias, as clear as could be, caught in golden light. Even the dirty string was Titian red.

  Then he woke and turned to see dawn glowing over the hills behind the freeway. His glasses lay folded on the dash. All the world outside was a blur. The ocean looked blue-gray and cold. His mouth tasted foul. He stank of salt water. There were cars on the road now. He couldn't just step outside and pee.

  He heard a knock on his window, as light as a tapping fly. A grizzled old man bent to peer in at him.

  Nice car, the old man was saying.

  Peter blinked and rubbed his eyes. Thanks, he murmured, reaching for his glasses. They slipped from his fingers and dropped between the seats.

  Porsche, right? The old mans voice sounded miles away.

  Yeah, Peter answered, neck hair pricking. He was feeling that tug again, the same wrench of demand he had sensed emanating from the image of Lydia in Phils bedroom.

  She's a beauty, such a cutie, and from the rear, she looks like bootie. How about a ride?

  The old man kept talking. It took several seconds for Peter, still unable to find his glasses, to realize that while the background of the parking lot, the ocean, and surrounding trees was blurred, the old man was in fact crystal clear, almost painfully etched with detail. Behind him stood three children. The children were waifs, thin and pale, hardly there at all.

  One of them climbed on a guardrail and did a balancing act, then jumped into the air and blew away like smoke.

  Younguns grow three by three, the old man observed, hang like monkeys from a tree.

  Peter frantically felt between the seats while at the same time trying to keep his eyes on the old man, who smiled with sardonic benevolence.

  Lonely out here, aint it? the old man said. What I need is some of that ol Smoky Joe, twist, cut, or blend. Got some for a dear old friend?

  Peter felt the tug now sharp as a fishhook snagging his chest. His hand found his glasses and he straightened his knees, shoving himself hard upright in the seat.

  Tough old world. Smoky Joe. Helps you see what you should know.

  Peter pushed the glasses over his nose, nearly poking his eye with a temple piece. The scene outside did a sickening reversethe landscape became sharp and clear, but the man and the children suddenly lost detail. They looked ragged, not in dress but in formdead but not decayednot in the least like corpses, more like marble statues, faces worn smooth by long years of acid rain.

  The old mans eyes were gray shadows, the nose a cartoon bump.

  Go away! Peter shouted. His voice cracked. You arent there!

  The old man jammed shapeless clay hands flat against the window. The tug hauled Peter so hard against the door that he bruised his arm.

  Come on, Peter, the gray
man said, his voice like insects trying to slap through the glass. Give us a break, don't be slow. Give me that ol Smoky Joe. We all know what you don't know.

  Then he started over again, exactly like a scratched and dirty record skipping to the beginning of the same old song.

  Nice car.

  The waif jumped up on the guardrail, did a balancing act, blew away like smoke.

  They were about to repeat the whole scene, with all the same lines, all the while tugging, tugging, sucking on what he was and what he knew like a lollipop, getting off on the sugar, the sweetness. Peters thoughts turned slow and cold. He needed to get away, needed to chill the heat behind his eyes before it scalded.

  He turned the key. The motor sounded like an old oil can rolling and rattling in a drum. Each cylinder laboriously ascended it's round well, compressing a spume of gas, thenBANGtrudged down to expel a dead fume. He could make out every slowly working piece of metal in the sequence. His ears felt as if they were stuck in Jell-O.

  As he slipped the car into reverse and let out the clutch, the figures performed a frame shift, swinging beside him like transparent overlays on a theater screen.

  Adrenaline kicked in. Time sped up. The tires spun and dug in and the Porsches rear end waggled, kicking up a rooster tail of gravel. Peter toed hard on the pedal and roared and bucked onto the freeway, narrowly missing a red pickup and a big old Buick. The drivers honked and flipped him off. He did not care. He drove fasteighty, ninety miles an hourfor ten miles, weaving through the early-morning traffic with squealing tires and drifts of rubber smoke, very unlike Peter Russell.

  Two more near-collisions brought him to his senses.

  At an old-fashioned garage with four rounded pumps and an antique red Pegasus, he pulled over and stopped, grabbed the shift into neutral, set the parking brake, and tried desperately to stop shaking. He strained at the shoulder harness.

  The motor chugged and whined steadily behind him. Little puffs of blue smoke curled from the end of the tailpipe. He would need oil soon, he thought. The mundane world was returning, but now it had a real edge. The whole car smelled rank. He could not go to a business meeting like this. He was soaked. Gratitude for small favorshe had not shit his pants. Still, he was breathing okay. He was intact, not scattered across the freeway, with bits and pieces ground under the tires of an eighteen-wheeler.

  He was alive.

  He had to make himself presentable. His brain worked at high speed, using energy left over from the fear.

  Taking up the Trans, Peter spoke a numbera phone numberfrom memory. He had to say it twice, his voice was so shaky. Desperate times called for humiliation and retribution, in that order, probably.

  A womans throaty, sleepy voice answered.

  Jessie, it's Peter. Forgive me. I need your help.

  Forgive you? Jessie responded, her words languorous, as if she were lying back in bed. Never. You are an unutterable creep. Where are you?

  CHAPTER 14

  SHOW BUSINESS HAD long ago taught Peter that some men and women should not get old. Perhaps it was looking in the mirror and predicting trends that had pushed Marilyn and Elvis into drugs and death: critical inspections of neckline, midsection, upper arms, tummy, thighs. For the heartachingly beautiful, too reliant on the love of a fickle public, putting on a few autumn pounds for the coming winter was more horrible than being nailed into a coffin.

  She's fat.

  She's dead.

  Dead was better.

  For a woman like Jessie EnTrigue, the rules did not apply. Personality had trumped age. Peter had known her when she had been the loveliest nineteen-year-old in the exploitation-film business, a fresh face with a suppliant, beautiful body and sufficient brains to pick a decent agent and move on to some decent films. She had grown nicely from a soft-core princess to establish a lasting reputation as a scream queen.

  In 1970, she had starred in one of Peters better youthful efforts, Rising Shiner. They had lived together for six memorable months, and then she had packed up and moved on to better roles and better directors. Things just arent piggy anymore, she had told him.

  By piggy she had meant interesting and a little perverse.

  Decades later, growing large in thigh and bosom, she had played mature as an asset and became the sexiest horror-movie matron in town. Then she had quit altogether, when she could still claim it was her decision. Roles were still being offered. Peter had met her several times since at psychotronic film festivalsthe last venue for old talent or talent that had never quite made the cut. They had exchanged Christmas cards once or twice.

  Even now, standing in the doorway of the small, freshly painted tract home in one of the least expensive neighborhoods in Marin County, Jessie was aging beautifully. But then she lightly waved her arm to invite him in; just that, and it did not matter how old she was. Teenage boys still posted her pictures on their bedroom walls. Charisma only improved with age.

  How have you been? she asked, swishing into the living room in a purple-and-orange caftan.

  Peter followed her at two paces. Up to now, fine, but I think I'm going nuts, he said.

  She eyed him cautiously. You stink like youve been in a fight, she said, not unkindly.

  I need to borrow a shower, he admitted.

  Jesus, Peter. It's nine A.M. Of all the showers in all the world, it has to be mine. Jessie said. Like some coffee?

  TWENTY MINUTES LATER, she watched him like a bored cat, as he sat down on her large, comfortable couch. Peter had washed his hair and now his head was chilly. He was wearing her long, thick velour robe. He kept his hands folded politely in his lap. She had taken his shirt and underwear at the bathroom door. Even now the damp clothes were rolling and ticking in the dryer.

  Jessies half-friendly demeanor was not providing much warmth. Someone after you? she asked.

  Ive been to a wake, he said. I'm going in for a job interview. I needed to clean up. Thank you, by the way.

  De Nader, as they say at General Motors. Who died? Anybody I know?

  Phil.

  Phil Richards? Sympathy crossed her face, but the expression quickly lapsed into watchfulness.

  Peter nodded. I spread his ashes at Point Reyes last night. He fumbled into the story with eyes averted, not wanting to tell it and start crying. He explained about Lydia and his money but left out the sandblasted man and the three transparent kids. It was rough.

  I remember Phil, Jessie said. Nice fellow. Hungry eyes. He didnt know how to hit on women, but he wanted to. Oh, did he want to.

  He was my best friend, Peter said with a flat simplicity that surprised both of them. He looked away.

  Rough to lose friends. He was your age, wasnt he?

  Two months younger.

  Jessie was six years younger than Peter. I'm going down to Oakland for a film festival later this morning, she said. But I'llmake you breakfast. Stoke you up for this interview. Then you have to go. She sauntered down the hall. Peter leaned back. He would have paid good money to watch her walk; it was pure music.

  From the laundry room, she called out, Is it show business?

  Not really, Peter said. Promotions, maybe more commercials. Telecom company. I'm going to prison.

  San Andreas? Don't try that joke around the natives. She returned and handed him his dry clothes, then gave him a look and thumbs-down. All those telecom guys should go to prison for real. My retirement is shot.

  She fixed him eggs and toast while he dressed in the bathroom. He looked at himself in the bathroom mirror as he shaved his cheeks and neck with her electric razor and recombed his hair. Presentable enough. He was starting to feel human again, if not confident.

  Jessie sat on a stool at the pass-through kitchen bar and rested her chin on her hands and her elbows on the Formica. She still had the greenest eyes, and she watched him eat the way a sated cat watches a canary. Why should I forgive you? she asked. Whats to forgive?

  Peter pretended he could not talk with his mouth full. Finally, into her expec
tant and patient silence, he replied, It just popped out.

  I left you, remember? Ran away with

  I remember, he said.

  You were a guy who needed variety. I could see that.

  I didnt, really.

  You're not here to try to hook up again, are you?

  Peter shook his head.

  Because I have a guy. A pretty good guy, a few years younger than me. Met him at a film festival. He thinks I'm a goddess. Chubby lights his fire. Isnt that wonderful?

  It is, Peter said.

  Back then, I knew that for you, brains were everything, as long as they came with long legs and a nice pair of tits. Something told me I wouldn't be growing old with you. She waved her hands past her ample bosom and hips, Look at me now.

  Thats not fair to either of us, Peter said.

  No, but I do forgive you. Now she had a distance in her eye. The visit was wearing. He was not piggy enough. Tell me about why you're going nuts, she said.

  Peter took off his glasses and wiped them with the clean paper napkin. No, he said.

  Ingrate, Jessie said, but blew him a kiss across the counter. Now get out. Gerry doesnt like me to consort with known photographers.

  Ive been seeing things, he said. Again, the desperation; he did not want to be alone, anywhere. That frightened him almost as much as the old man and children.

  Oh? The piggy gleam brightened in Jessies eyes.

  He told her about seeing the simulacrum of Lydia in the Tiburon house, and then, more reluctantly, he talked about the morning visitors at Point Reyes.

  Jessie was very into it by the time he finished. Peter was becoming a diversion, a story she could tell her friends. She stared at him intently, green cat eyes searching. Thats wonderful, she said matter-of-factly as she took his plate to the sink. Phantasms of the living. Doppelgangers. I made a film about that once.