Mystery Girl: A Novel (19 page)

The rest of the film is pretty much a continuation of the above, with the chicks knocking off the dudes, separately and together, in an increasingly baroque manner. Plot support is provided by Mark, an anthro major with a crush on Val, and Jim, a cop investigating the killings who likes Cassie, as they first pursue the girls as dates, leading to some nice comic relief, then as suspects, and finally as supernatural
victims. Meanwhile Val and Cass are researching their own plight and the whole thing comes together, somehow, in a crazy battle in the library involving flying books, their pages flapping like bat wings, fire-breathing devils, decapitated bodies trying to rape cheerleaders, and a naked battle to the death between Val and Cassie and Nenemah and Lillith, with each actress playing her own double, in purple or green body paint.

In the end, the living triumph, and the two couples (the expected, hetero-human couples, that is) get together for a well-deserved vacation. As Val and Mark, Cassie and Jim cozy up in adjoining hotel rooms, all is well. Or is it? A certain demonic expression in their lovemaking (curled lips, wild eyes, gelled hair, moaning), some aggressive cross-cutting, (boob, tooth, painted nail, boob, tongue, boob), the (rising, throbbing, groaning) music, and the passive happiness of the men, all suggest that the succubi have not been entirely banished to hell.

PART IV

ANXIETY’S RAINBOW

44

WHEN I OPENED MY EYES,
Mona, the dead girl, was looking down at me.

The last thing I remembered, I’d left Milo and MJ wasted on the couch, and stumbled into my room after
Succubi!,
too wiped out to brush my teeth. Now I was in bed, flat on my back in the morning light, with the face of Mona, the girl I’d seen leap to her death, peering in my bedroom window. She was frowning, but otherwise looked pretty good for someone whose body had been splattered on the rocks and then beaten to froth by the sea.

“Mona?” She looked me in the face, eyes wide in alarm, and ducked down out of sight.

“Mona!” I threw back the covers and jumped to my feet. On the mattress beside me was Milo, utterly nude and curled into a fetal pose. I gasped again, momentarily thrown, and checked myself. I had boxers and socks on. A small mercy. Mona, meanwhile, had vanished. I made a dash for the door, slid on my socks and landed hard on my assbone. I scrambled up, ran to the front door, tried to unlock it, realized it had been unlocked already, unlocked it again, and ran outside.

It was a beautiful morning. At this hour, which I rarely saw, the sky was still transparent and the street was clean. The world smelled fresh for a change, as if newly baked overnight. I scampered around the house in my underwear, hoping the neighbors didn’t see, and dashed into the flowerbed that lay outside my window. She was gone. I crept around in the bushes, checked the backyard, and peeked like a spy into my own garage, where my car innocently slept. I went
back to the spot beneath the window, looking for footprints or bent leaves. There were plenty, probably all mine. I looked through my window at my now empty and too, too sullied bed. I ran out front and stood on the lawn for a moment, hoping to catch a trace: a car light, a flash of hair, a tiny breath of perfume. Then my lawn sprinklers went on, drenching me and my undies. They were set to go off at seven every other morning but I’d never actually witnessed it before. I squealed like a child and ran inside. I could hear Milo singing in the kitchen as I dashed into my bedroom and grabbed a towel. I dried off and, unable to find my robe, wrapped the towel around my waist as I hobbled back out.

Milo was in my robe, and no doubt nothing else, frying something on the stove. “Nice jog?” he asked.

“Did you see her?”

“Who? MJ? She’s here somewhere.”

“No…”

“You mean Lala? She’s back?”

“No. Another girl. Looking in the window at me. This morning. I tried to catch her but she’s gone.”

“Like a female Peeping Tom? Do they even have those? A Peeping Tonya?”

“Yes, exactly. Did you see her?”

“Get out of here. A girl was spying on you naked? You wish.”

“Actually you’re the one who was naked, but let’s leave that for now. I was asleep, and when I woke up I saw her…” I took a breath and said it: “She was the girl I was following, Mona.”

“I can’t sleep with clothes on, OK? It’s not natural. I can’t breathe.”

“Do you get what I’m saying? Mona. The girl who killed herself. She was here. Just now.”

“You mean like a ghost?”

“No, for real.”

“Dead people don’t come back to peep in your window for real. Only ghosts or zombies. Hey, maybe she’s a succubus now. She probably would have blown you if you’d pretended to be asleep. Here’s
your breakfast.” He peeled two burned lumps from the pan and plopped them on a plate.

“What is that?”

“French toast.”

“I didn’t think we had eggs.”

“You don’t. I used oil. And you didn’t have any syrup or cinnamon or anything, so I had to substitute Swiss Miss cocoa powder and strawberry Jell-O mix.”

“Hmmm.” It looked, and smelled, like a meth lab gone wrong. “Where’s MJ anyway? I’m worried. Her car’s out front.”

Milo held the greasy spatula aloft. “Hold on, listen.” We listened. Muffled snoring filtered through. “I hear another demonic succubus.”

We found her on the couch. She was on her back, fully dressed but with her shirt pulled up over her head, exposing her very shapely breasts. A strangled snoring reached us from inside.

“I bet that’s her,” Milo said. “Nicer tits than I expected.” He prodded one with his finger.

MJ wriggled and groaned. “Stop! Help! You fucking asshole. Get me out of here. Rape!” We yanked her shirt down and revealed her sweaty red face, plastered with damp hair. “That was awful,” she gasped. “I dreamed a giant was sitting on my face.”

“You’re not the only one who had bad dreams last night,” Milo said as we trailed MJ back into the kitchen. She grabbed the pot and poured coffee. “Sherlock here dreamed that a dead girl came back and winked at him.”

“It wasn’t a dream. I was awake. I saw it.” Or I thought I did. Now I wondered.

“How do you know?” He waved the spatula for emphasis, sending a spray of grease across the kitchen. “How do you know you’re not dreaming right now?”

“Let’s test it.” I grabbed a big cleaver. “Hold out your hand.” He laughed.

MJ took the knife from me and chopped a piece of French toast, then took a bite. “As much as I hate to, I have to agree with Milo on
this one. The dead don’t walk the earth. Not till the rapture anyway.” She looked meaningfully at Milo, who shrugged.

“Go ahead,” he said.

“You,” she answered.

“It’s your idea.”

“What?” I said. “Just tell me. It’s not like I can’t hear you.”

MJ sighed. She took my hand.

“Sam, Milo and I are concerned, as friends.”

Milo took my other hand and then grabbed MJ’s, forming a triangle.

“We love you, bro,” Milo said.

“What the fuck?” I pulled loose.

“It’s this obsession with that dead girl,” MJ said. “It’s unhealthy.”

“It’s not an obsession. It’s a job. I’m investigating.”

“Investigating what?” she asked. “She killed herself. You saw it.”

“Don’t get me wrong. It’s a sweet deal.” Milo chimed in. “I mean if Inspector Giggles will pay, who cares? But you’re taking it too far.”

“Look,” MJ said. “It’s not just a job anymore, is it?”

I shrugged. She went on.

“At first I went along with it. Why not? Your wife left. You’re in a tailspin. I understand. Most guys would get drunk and bang a hooker. You follow a dead girl. Fine.”

“I did bang her.”

“Once!” Milo interjected. “And she jumped.”

“Don’t you see?” MJ took my hand again. Milo reached for the other, but I smacked him away. “You replaced Lala with her. Instead of thinking about your wife, missing your wife, talking about your wife, it’s this dead girl. In real life, Lala just left you for some dude. Sorry, but that’s it. But in your dreams, your wife is dead, and this new girl, who you idealize, who you feel guilty over, her you see, alive.” Her phone rang. “Sorry.” She went to it.

Milo patted my shoulder. “Are you masturbating enough? I can lend you some cool seventies porn from the shop. I know when the sperm backs up on me, I get crazy ideas.”

“I’m fine.”

MJ came rushing back with a shriek. “Oh my God! That was Margie, calling about your work.”

“Your Margie?” I asked her. “About what work?”

“Your novels, silly. What else? Remember when I asked you if I could show them to Margie?”

I remembered. It was a year ago, during a particularly low swing of despair when, as I prepared to douse both my work and my hair in kerosene, MJ had agreed to ask Margie about finding me an agent. Nothing had happened.

“To be honest,” I said. “I didn’t think she even read them.”

“Well, she didn’t. She doesn’t really have time for traditional reading. But I told her about them.”

“So?”

“She wasn’t interested.”

“OK then.”

“But!”—she paused dramatically—“I made her promise to keep you in mind. And guess whose office called asking for your work? And now wants to meet you about a writing job, a big one? This afternoon?”

45

THE BUCK NORMAN SPREAD,
set in the high country north of the city, looked more like a quaint village, or the set of a quaint village, than the luxury compound and high-tech multimedia fortress it really was. Like Disneyland, the gears and wires, guards and guns were hidden behind a happy, folksy façade: a wooden ranch-style fence, piney trees, a gravel drive, a big shingled house surrounded by barnish looking outbuildings, stables, and corrals. Two horses ran in synch, noble manes aflutter. Carefully curated wildflowers bloomed and grasses bent in a fresh breeze that never reached my part of
town, yet there was no smell of horseshit or sound of labor. My car was greeted by three friendly folks who approached in a loose triangle, smiling from different angles of fire. At point was a happy blond in her twenties, dressed in tight jeans and a pristine white T-shirt, hair up under a Dodgers cap. She looked sweet and homemade as cherry pie but her accent was from beyond the old Iron Curtain.

“Hi, how are you?” she said, though her eyes asked, Who are you and how are you armed? One of two extremely buff dudes in jeans and Abercrombie T-shirts smiled from behind her like a well-trained guard dog, while the other sniffed around my car.

“Hi, I’m Sam Kornberg. I’m here to see Mr. Norman. I’m a writer?”

“Oh the writer! Great. He’s a writer,” she told her pals, who smiled, clearly charmed. “In our country people admire very much writers. I am Joan,” she chirped cheerfully, pronouncing it slightly off, like “John.” “It is American diminutive for Russian name you can’t say.” I shook her hand. “This is Billy and Joel.” They waved.

“Hi guys. Is Joel a Russian name?”

“Americanization of Yoel,” she explained. “Now Buck expects you. Come in!”

I followed her into the house (her boys stayed outside). We passed through wide-open spaces floored in wood and flagstone, with Navajo rugs, African masks and modern abstractions on the walls. There was a buzz of happy business being done. Two bearded geniuses in knee-length cutoffs and skate sneaks looked up from a computer bay and waved. Hi! Smiling Mexican women chased squealing white babies among a wonderland of toys. Hi! A tall, bald German man in kitchen whites chopped brightly colored veggies with a huge gleaming blade. Hi, Joan! Lunch is almost ready!

Down a few hand-hewn stone steps, we entered a large sunny room, walled in books on two sides, with a huge stone fireplace and glass doors open on a garden, a pool and, down a little path, the beach. Buck Norman stood and took off his glasses. He was a nice-looking teacher type, with a trim salt-and-pepper beard, smart eyes,
and thinning hair, barefoot in a T-shirt and jeans. We shook hands warmly, full pumps.

“Sam! Come on in. Thanks for making the drive on such short notice. I’m Bucky. Have a seat. You thirsty? Want a water or anything? Joan, please tell Marcus we’d love two waters when he gets a chance.”

“Hi,” I said and sank into a leather couch. It was the kind where you had to lean back almost supine or sit on the rim. Buck perched on the edge of an armchair, but then stood right back up.

“So, you’re a novelist. Man! I have to admit I really admire that. I mean I’m a creator, I suppose, in my own humble way, but I could never do what you do. The focus. Day after day. Year after year. I can’t sit still long enough. Or shut up! Just between us, that’s why I direct, it allows for a lot of standing around and talking. Those are the main tasks, really. Sure you have to be quiet during a shot but how long is that? Five minutes sitting in silence? That’s your whole life. Just sitting there. And you love it. You wouldn’t change it for anything. I respect that. Thanks Marcus, that’s great.”

“No problem.” A grinning black fellow with long dreads handed us each a bottle of water.

“Thanks,” I said, trying to cross my legs without sliding backward.

“He’s a great guy, really talented,” Buck said, as Marcus loped out, then went on: “But as different as our jobs seem, me walking and talking, you sitting and thinking, aren’t we both the same in the end? Really, when you really think about it? What are we, Sam? What are you? And what am I?”

“People?” I guessed. “Just people?”

“Storytellers. Yes, people, true, good point, but people who are storytellers. I use images and sounds and action and dialogue to tell the story of say, a little league team of orphans who rob a bank to save their town in
Stealing Home
or two mixed-up people like you or me just looking for love, except one is a Nobel Prize–winning
cripple and the other’s an Olympic gymnast with Alzheimer’s, in
Thirty Days Hath September.
Or just a simple little tale about a boy who thinks he’s a robot meeting a robot who longs to be a boy in
Fritz.
”

“That’s a top pick at my friend’s video store,” I chimed in.