Burn Down The Night (26 page)

Graveyards do
strange things to people.

I try to move my
arms and they ache so bad I can barely move them. Every joint in my body aches, my back aches, my
neck is stiff. I can tell Deirdre feels the same way. We disengage, roll out of each other's
arms.

Didn't sleep much,
either of us. Too much acid still in our systems. We held each other all night, caressing,
talking about everything and nothing.

We slowly crawl
into our clothes, helping each other get dressed. We stand together for a while, arms around each
other, watching the first faint gleam of the sun streaking the sky. Going to be light real soon.
The first rays of the morning sun make her hair and body shine as if they were golden. I've never
felt so close to anyone in my life.

As she had lain in
my arms, I had thought of Tamara. Wondering most of the night why I had never been able to allow
myself to love her, to release control, to just let myself be vulnerable. As I am now.

I think I
experienced a genuine regret, maybe mourning so much time wasted pretending a love I could have
truly felt.

But now it's
Deirdre, and the things I feel inside aren't made up, aren't part of my play-pretend self-defense
routine.

Deirdre puts her
torn shirt on, her breasts still ex­posed. Her hair looks like a wild animal mane, all rumpled
from lovemaking. We hug each other, kissing, still liking the feeling of being body to body, even
in clothes. I really love the way she looks, tastes, feels.

"You're
beautiful," she says, holding me tight.

"We better get out
of here," I say, looking around, wondering where everybody went.

The cab is not too
far away, the doors open.

"What a night!"
says Deirdre, letting me go, stepping back. "I could sleep for a week."

"With
me?"

"Who
else?"

We walk toward the
cab, holding hands. The old man is stretched out in the front seat, looking like a knockout in a
bare-knuckle prizefight. She really belted him in the face. His eyes look black, swollen. He's
got a couple of wine bottles, now empty, at his feet. He really drank himself into never-never
land.

Morrison's in the
back, too acidized to sleep and too drunk to move. He stares at us, not really liking
us.

"It's the lovers,"
he says, slurring his words. "Fresh from a deck of Tarot cards."

"We better get out
of here," I say. "It's morning. There's gonna be people in here soon and we don't want to be here
when they come."

"Spectators are
vampires. We don't let them in," says Morrison, too drunk to make much sense. "We'll barricade
the gate. Keep them out."

"Then they'll put
us in jail and keep us in," I say.

Deirdre looks in
the front seat. "We better wake him up," she says. "Hey whatsis your name! Get up!"

She pokes him in
the side but he's pretending like he belongs in the graveyard on a permanent basis.

"Hey, come on."
She pokes him harder. His head turns sideways and Ralph starts snoring. "What a pig!" says
Deirdre, and then she really gives him a shot in the ribs.

She might as well
have been flogging a dead bondage-and-discipline disciple for all the action she gets. Ralph is
absolutely drowned in wine. He might not resurface for a week.

"What's matter?
Old Ralph gone nitey-nite on you?" asks Morrison, staring at us bleary-eyed. He leans for­ward
unsteadily, almost falling over, and tilts his bottle of wine over the front seat. The wine
bottle's half full.

The wine splashes
all over the old man's face and he snorts, coughs, the wine going up his nose, choking him. Ralph
jerks his head, turning sideways, swollen eyes coming open. He falls off the seat with a dull
thud, his head dropping outside the cab door.

Ralph stares up at
us, totally obliterated, head angling down toward the ground.

"Wah? Wahsa?"
Ralph mutters, wine streaming from his eyes and nose.

Deirdre puts her
hand on the back of his head and pushes him back into the cab until he is sitting up un­der the
dashboard.

"Wah?" says Ralph,
looking around at us, absolutely no idea where he is or who we are. Really totaled.

"I better drive,"
says Deirdre, shutting the door so Ralph doesn't fall out the open car door on his
face.

"Smy smoo," says
Ralph, staring at the dashboard, nodding at it in a positive, confidential fashion. He leans
against the glove compartment, having found a long-lost friend.

"That's what I
call drunk!" says Deirdre. "The dumb old bastard."

Morrison's trying
to open another bottle of wine, not that he really needs any more. The bottle keeps slipping out
of his hands and falling into his lap. Another candidate for oblivion.

"I'll get the
cemetery gate when we get to it," I say. "Are you sure you can drive?"

She looks back at
me as I slide in beside Morrison. I would have got in front with Deirdre but good old Ralph is
taking up too much room. "Don't worry," she says, giving me a special smile. "I'll get us out of
here."

Deirdre gets the
cab started, shifts and begins backing out. I look out the cab windows, noticing our surroundings
for the first time in the light. Jesus. You can tell we've been here! We left ruts all over the
grass, wine bottles everywhere.

Deirdre backs into
a tombstone, denting a fender and knocking over the marble slab.

She frowns, takes
it out of gear, puts it in first and we go forward, narrowly missing another tombstone. She cuts
across a bunch of graves, leaving deep ruts as she takes a shortcut across a gently sloping hill
and comes out finally on the road that goes through the graveyard. I look out the back window.
Somebody's go­ing to be really pissed off. As many wheel marks as that heavy cab left, somebody's
going to get the idea a sports car rally went through there in the dead of night.

When we get up to
the gates, Deirdre's driving pretty good. But somebody has already beat us there. Some old guy in
work clothes is staring at the gates, holding the chain and padlock in his hands. He's got the
gates open, nice of him to be so thoughtful, so we don't stop to chat with him.

Deirdre floors it
and we go roaring by him. He stands there with his mouth open, watching a yellow cab rac­ing out
of the graveyard. Deirdre turns and gives him the finger as we go by, almost losing control of
the car. Deirdre's tall in the saddle and her breasts are exposed over the top of the driver's
side door.

The old man at the
gate's so surprised the heavy chain in his hand slips and drops on his foot. Looking out the back
window as we zoom away, I see him hopping around on one foot mad as hell.

"Where are we
going?" asks Deirdre as the cab shoots down the street.

"To the end of the
night," says Morrison from the back, maybe not aware it's already morning.

I take the bottle
out of Morrison's lap and twist the top. It's hard to open but I manage to get the cap loos­ened.
I hand it to Morrison. Morrison cradles the bottle against his chest, smiles at me. "Thanks," he
says. "But you're still a drag."

He leans back
against the seat. "I hate all my friends. I wish I could kill them with an ax."

Deirdre laughs at
him. "You don't have any friends," she says.

Morrison smiles
right back at her. "That means no enemies."

"Where do you want
to go?" I ask Morrison, figuring we can drop him and good old Ralph off somewhere so Deirdre and
I can be together. That's all I want to do, be with her.

"Take me to the
beach. Take me to the conquistador shore," says Morrison, not looking at us. "And fuck you
both."

The ride's made in
silence, mine and Deirdre's eyes meeting sometimes in the rearview mirror. Ralph's passed out
again, under the dashboard. Morrison's drinking, not looking at anything, just
drinking.

The sun feels
good, coming through the cab windows. I'm tired, a little hung over maybe, cottonmouthed from
drinking, but I feel good inside. Maybe I'm really falling in love. Maybe the Pope is really
Jewish. I stop thinking about falling in love because I never try to think about it. I do know I
feel good even if I don't exactly know why. It's better not to think about the why.

The fog's blowing
in over Santa Monica, walking across the highway down by Malibu beach. It's kissing the ground at
Zuma beach and that's where we pull the cab off the road.

Deirdre and I get
out. Ralph's snoring like a hibernating bear. He isn't going anywhere for quite some time
yet.

Deirdre stuffs
some money in his shirt pocket. "Thanks for the ride, daddycakes," she says.

Morrison sits in
the back, staring at us as we stand beside the cab, holding hands.

"You getting out?"
I ask him.

Morrison pushes on
the door, too messed up to get it open. We go over and help him. He crawls out and we have to
help him stand up. He shrugs us off, once he gets on his feet, leans back against the roof of the
cab, trying to keep his legs under him. He's pretty much out of it.

"Where's my
knife?" he asks. I can barely make out his words.

"I don't remember.
Must have dropped it some­where."

Morrison curses,
the wine bottle slipping from his numbed fingers.

"We're gonna
split. You okay?" I ask him.

"Fine," says
Morrison. "Pretty neat! Pretty neat!" He is not almost out of it, he is completely out of it. I
don't want to be his aching head tomorrow. His hang­over is going to be a blast at ground
zero.

I turn to Deirdre.
"We got to find someplace to go. Where do you live?"

She smiles at me,
squeezes my hand affectionately. "I've got a house in Beverly Hills."

"Great! Let's get
a cab and go there." I really want to be with her and it makes me feel strange because I nev­er
feel like that.

"We could," she
says, thinking about it. She hugs me, the breeze from the sea blowing her hair like a golden fan
around her head. "But you'd have to be gone by tonight."

"Why?"

"'Cause my husband
gets back tonight," she says. She bends over and looks at herself in the side mirror on the cab.
"Jesus! I'm a wreck!"

"Husband?" The
universe spins, does a nose dive. "Husband? You're married?"

"Yeah. Been
married about three weeks." She tries to straighten out her hair with her hand, smoothing it in
place. "It just sort of happened. Fell in love or something."

I just stand there
with my mouth open. Can't believe it.

"Married. You're
married!"

"Yeah. So, big
deal. He's a professional football player. He's on the road a lot. No sweat."

"But... but...
"

"Don't be a drag,"
she says. "You want to come over or not?"

"You've only been
married three weeks and you... and you..."

"Listen, if you're
worried he'll come home and find us, don't." She puts her arms around me, drawing me against her.
"He's flying in from New York. His plane doesn't get in until eleven tonight."

I push her away.
All I can do is stare at her. She looks at me, surprised. "Hey, what's wrong with
you?"

"Nothing," I say
and I feel the mask sliding back into place.

"Are you coming
with me? You know you're really a great screw. Anybody ever tell you that?" she says, tugging her
breasts down behind her tattered shirt. "I'll get us another cab."

"I think I'll stay
with him," I say, pointing back at

Jim, still leaning
against the cab, listening to us talk.

"He's out of it,"
she says. "Let the bastard find his own way home. Come on."

She puts a hand on
my arm but I shake it off, stepping back inside myself again becoming the machine with a face
that has nothing behind it.

"Are you pissed
off because I'm married? Is that it?" Now she's getting mad, puts her hands on her hips, glaring
at me. "'Cause if you are, you're a real frigging drag and who needs you anyway!"

"See you around,"
I say, hoping I never see her again.

"You're a goddamn
drag!"

"I enjoyed raping
you!"

She laughs, laughs
at me, at Morrison, at all of us.

"You didn't rape
me. I made you feel like you loved me," she says, absolutely merciless, "and didn't mean one
frigging bit of it."

She smiles and
it's cold and evil and I know she's the only one who ever had control, that she's the only one
who had the knife, the only one.

"And that's the
biggest rape of them all!" she says, blowing me a goodbye kiss.

I watch her
walking away, walking down the beach like she owns it. The sea breeze blows her hair out be­hind
her like a flag covered with honey. She's so beautitul it makes you ache, the most beautiful girl
I've ever seen, ever touched.