Blue World (42 page)

“Your wife?”

“Yeah. She’s about Debra’s age.” He noted the hustler’s strange expression. “My third wife,” he explained. “Not the mother of my sons.” He opened the refrigerator again, found a carrot, and chewed on it. “Debra’s worked hard. She deserves a good shot. You’re going to make sure she gets it. Right?”

And John said it, quietly: “Right.”

“Good boy. Now, listen up.” Joey Sinclair walked to John and stopped, and John saw the deadly darkness in the other man’s eyes. “Debra’s got potential. Real potential. Maybe she’s not as good a judge of character as she thinks she is, but I’m going to tell you something, and you’d better understand it.” He leaned his face close to John’s. “I’ve seen your kind in every gutter I ever stepped over. You don’t give a shit for anybody in the world but yourself. Well, I understand that. Maybe I’m like that too. But… you hurt Debra in any way--you make her shed one tear--and I’ll start right here…” He placed his finger on John’s forehead. “… and I’ll split you open down to here.” He jabbed John’s testicles. “Get it?”

“Got it,” John answered.

“You’re stupid, but you’re not dumb.” He crunched on the carrot, and then he said, “Nine o’clock Thursday morning. I’ll send the Rolls. Be here.” Joey Sinclair walked to the door, opened it, and left without a backward glance.

John stood at the bay window in the golden afternoon light and slowly he sank to his knees.

He could say a hundred thousand times “Hail Mary, Mother of Grace,” he realized, and still the storm inside him would not be stilled. How had he come to this place, weak and on his knees in the apartment of a porno star? Oh, Holy Father… this was more than his soul could withstand…

He sensed a stealthy movement beside him, and looked to his right. The crab had joined him. It hunkered down on the carpet and just sat there.

John clasped his hands before him, closed his eyes, and offered his face to the sun. He began to pray for guidance, for the tumult in his soul to be soothed, for his blood to stop its fiery racing through the avenues of his veins. He must be delivered from this tangled web of ev--

There was the click of a key turning in the lock. The door came open, and there she was.

He twisted his head around, but didn’t have time to leap to his feet. Debbie wore her jeans and a bulky pale blue sweater. Her face looked a little used and tired, as if she’d gone several nights without decent rest. Her hair was damp--from a shower or bath? he wondered--and it was pulled back again into a raven ponytail.

She smiled, and it was like the sun emerging from gloom. “I saw the note was gone!” she said. “Uncle Joey must’ve let you in, right? I knew you’d come back! Lucky, I’m so glad to see you!” She closed the door behind her.

John stayed where he was, frozen in an attitude of prayer.

She bent over and kissed him on the forehead. Her lips seared his flesh. Then she got down on her knees beside him, facing the sun. Their arms rubbed. “I like to meditate too,” she said. “It’s a kick.” She closed her eyes, and began to intone, “Ommmmmmm…”

I’m going to scream, John thought. I’m going to scream so loud the windows will explode.

“Do you believe in reincarnation?” she asked him suddenly, her gray eyes soft and inquiring.

“I…” His tongue tangled.

“I’ve read all of Shirley MacLaine’s books,” she went on. “I had a dream once where I was an Egyptian queen, and I was watchin‘ them build the pyramids. It seemed like a real place. I mean… it was cosmic. So that’s why I read her books.” She turned her body toward him and took both his hands in hers. The golden light streamed around them and merged their shadows. “You know what she says? That people who loved each other in past lives always meet again. Somehow or other, they always get together. But sometimes you can miss your lover, and that’s why people live unhappy lives. So you’ve just got to hang in there, and maybe in the next life you’ll find your soul mate again. Do you believe that?”

He couldn’t lie about something like this. “No,” he said quietly, and he saw the disappointment well up in her eyes.

But it was quickly gone, like a little cloud past the sun. “I don’t either, not really,” she said. “But it would be nice to pretend, wouldn’t it?” She took his silence for agreement. “Anyway, I’ve found my soul mate this time around!” She squeezed his hands. “Lucky, I’m so glad you came back!”

“I couldn’t stay away,” he said, before he could think about it. And added, “You had the padlock key.”

“Yeah. Guess I pulled a fast one on you, huh? Forgive me?”

How could he not? “Of course.”

She got up and stretched her body. “Wow, I’ve had a day! Hi there, Unicorn! Uncle Joey come by and feed you yet?” She saw the tuna chunks, and also the spilled cookies and packets of cocaine on the counter. “You do that?” she asked him.

“Sorry. I was looking for the key. I was going to clean it up.”

“Aw, I’ll get it.” She went to the counter, put everything back into the jar but one packet of cocaine. She began to get out the mirror, straw, and razor blade again.

At once John was on his feet. Debbie formed two lines on the glass with the razor blade, and leaned forward with the straw to her nostril.

Before she could inhale, John reached out and grasped the straw away. She looked up, puzzled. “Hey! What’re you--”

“I don’t want you to do that anymore,” he said. He snapped the straw and dropped it into the trash. “That shit… that stuff… isn’t good for you.”

“Oh, it’s good shit,” she said. “It’s fresh. I got it yesterday.” She lifted the mirror to her nose and inhaled first one line, then licked her finger, put it into the other line, and worked the powder into her mouth and gums.

Hopeless, John thought. He felt as strong as a wrung-out rag.

“How come you left me?” she asked. Her gaze had sharpened. “At the Mile-High Club. How come you walked?”

“I didn’t leave. I went into the bathroom. When I came out, that transves… I mean, Big Georgia said you’d gone.” He avoided her eyes. “With that guy you were dancing with.”

“Oh.” It came clear to her. That Big Georgia wanted every man she saw! “Oh, he wasn’t anybody,” she said, putting her drug paraphernalia away. “Just a good dancer.” She frowned and touched between her legs. “Gee, I’m kind of hurtin‘.” Quickly she realized Lucky didn’t yet know about her line of work, and she turned away. “I… did some modelin’ at a gym today. You know, leotards and like that. I had to do a lot of stretchin‘.”

My soul, John thought, is the size of a cinder.

Debbie picked up Unicorn and took him to his sandbox in the bathroom. Then she caught her reflection in the mirror, and she stood staring at herself for a moment. Her lipstick was smeared, and there were dark circles under her eyes.

I have to tell him, she thought. I can’t lie to him anymore.

She tried to shove that thought away, but it lodged in her like a thorn. If he listened, and ran out… well, he wouldn’t do that. Lucky was her soul mate, right? Believe it. And anyway, what kind of man would run out after she told him what had to be said? If there was any such man on earth, she hadn’t met him yet. She ran a finger lightly over her lips; they were a little swollen.

It was time. Now or never.

She went to a closet in the bedroom, opened it, and reached to the top shelf, having to stand on her tiptoes. Her body felt like a well-used glove. She grasped the brown leather photo album, brought it down, and went out to Lucky.

He was sitting in a chair, facing the window, with his head in his hands. He looked as if he’d had a rough day too. She came up behind him, and when she touched his shoulders, he jumped.

“I didn’t know you were there,” he said.

“You’re tight. Your shoulders. Lot of stress in there, huh?”

“Oh, yeah.” Much of it had come from Joey Sinclair. He felt her fingers work deep into the stiff muscles, and he closed his eyes and tried to relax.

“I have to tell you some things,” she said after a long pause. Her fingers kept kneading Lucky’s shoulders with slow, steady power. “I’m an actress. Remember, I told you that before?” He nodded. “Well… I’ve got a different name, too. An actress name.”

His eyes opened, but he kept his head lowered.

“Debra.” She hesitated. Four or five seconds went past. “Rocks,” she said, almost like an afterthought. “Get it? Debbie Stoner? Debra Rocks?”

“I get it,” John said softly.

“I came up with that one myself.” Her fingers kept working, but Lucky’s shoulders didn’t seem to be getting any looser. “Have you… like… ever heard of me?”

“No,” John said, and his heart clenched. He heard her release a breath she’d been holding.

She placed a brown leather photo album in his lap, and then she turned away, walked into the kitchen, and poured herself a glass of white wine.

He stared at the leather as if it covered a secret door. Beyond this point, he thought, there lie monsters.

His fingers were damp. He opened the book.

On the first page, under a thin sheet of plastic, was a postcard-size picture of a movie poster. The movie was titled

Carny Girls, and showed a man and woman passionately kissing against the neon blaze of a carnival’s midway.

Starring Tawnee Wells, Debra Rocks, and Cyndy Funn, read the credit line.

John turned the page.

The next facsimile movie poster announced

Closest Encounters. Starring Paula Angel, Heather Scott, and Debra Rocks.

He turned the page again.

Wild and Wet. Starring Cheri Dane and Gina Alvarado. Special Guest Star Debra Rocks.

Another turn of the page.

Darkest Africa. Starring Debra Rocks and Black Venus.

Oh, my Lord, John thought. He felt as if his lungs were being squeezed by the weight of heaven.

Super Slick was the next poster.

Starring Cheri Dane, Debra Rocks, and Easee Breeze.

There were no actual depictions of sexual acts on these posters, but the poses, challenging stares, and red-lipped pouts were provocative enough. The bodies of the women were sleek and tanned, their faces and hair perfect. But there was something robotic about their expressions, as if they were staring at their own reflections instead of a camera lens, and mesmerized by what they saw. Even the face of Debra Rocks had that same blankness about it, a scrubbed sensual nothingness.

Cox Fox was on the following page.

Starring Raven Xaviera and Debra Rocks.

His heart stuttered. Debra Rocks--Debbie Stoner--had just walked into the room and stood beside his chair. He dared not look up at her. He kept turning pages:

She’s Willing; Acapulco Gold; Sweet Wet Honey; California Surfer Girls…

“You… must be very tired by now,” John said, his voice like the sound of air through a dry husk.

“I won’t do more than three guys at the same time,” she said quietly, as if reciting the terms of a contract from memory. “I won’t do bondage, or S-and-M. I won’t do animal acts, gangbangs, golden showers, or chocolate drops. I won’t do enemas or bi-three-ways or TV-threeways. I like to have location control too. No greasy garages or woods. I’m real allergic to ragweed and poison oak.”

He came to the last poster, after what seemed like twenty-five or thirty of them:

Animal Heat.

“That’s my new one. It just opened on the strip.”

He closed the book, and he sat there unable to say a word.

Her hands--oh, Lord, where had those beautiful hands been?--came down and took the book from his lap. He heard her walk back to her bedroom. Heard a closet door open and close. He felt lifeless, a puppet with broken strings.

“So what would you like for dinner?” she asked momentarily. There was just a hint of a nervous edge in her voice. “Ham or turkey?”

He stood up. It was time, now, for him to cast off his disguise as well.

But when he turned toward her he saw her not as a porno actress, a sex queen, a girl who survived by selling glimpses of false lust to unworthy strangers. Maybe he wanted to see her that way, so he could turn his back on her once and for all and grasp heaven’s ladder again for his torturous climb out of the basement. Maybe he did… but he could not.

He saw Debbie Stoner standing there, pony-tailed and weary-looking. And there was fear in her eyes too; a sharp, awful glint of it.

“You’re gonna stay for dinner, aren’t you, Lucky?” she asked.

I love you, he thought.

Oh, dear God… I love you.

“Ham,” he said. “That would be fine.”

She quickly turned away and took the dinners out of the freezer.

“Some guys might make a big deal out of it,” Debbie said as they sat at the kitchen table and ate their food. She’d lit candles, and the air was scented with vanilla. “You know. What I showed and told you.” Lucky hadn’t spoken much since he’d found out. She wasn’t sure he was all with her any longer, but at least most of him was still here. “I mean… it’s a job. Like anything else. Only…” She shrugged. “There’s not much of anything else I can do real well.” She ate a few more bites. “About the Mile-High Club,” Debbie ventured. “She goes a little crazy when the spotlight gets on her.”

“Her?” He looked up from the tasteless ham. “Who?”

“Debra Rocks. My actress self. See… sometimes I kind of feel like I can turn her off and on, like a switch in my brain. When the director says ‘Action,’ you’ve got to be right there, ready to go, because time’s money and… well…” Another shrug. “I’m a star.”

“How did you…” He stopped, altered his voice a little so the question wouldn’t sound so accusatory. “How’d you get into acting?”

“First off, I like sex. I mean, not twenty times a day like you might think. But it’s okay. I’d better like it, huh?”

He couldn’t suppress a quick smile.

“There you go! A smile makes you handsome.” She stared at the side of his head. “You’ve got nice lobes.”

“Pardon me?”

“Nice earlobes. They’re sexy. You need to have a pierced ear. I can do it for you, if you want.”

“No, I don’t think so.” That would be all the monsignor would need to see.

“How’d I get into acting?” she repeated, returning to his question after her brief avoidance of it. “I always liked attention, I guess. I thrived on it. I used to be a majorette. De Ridder High School. When I got out there and twirled, I could hear how quiet people got. Especially the guys. I knew I had a good body. Well, I wasn’t too pretty otherwise.”