The Golem of Hollywood (2 page)

Halfway to her, a muffled clap froze him in panic.

He glanced back.

The alley was empty.

As for the girl, she hadn't noticed the noise; she continued about her business, raking out the last of the rubbish with her fingers.

She set the tub down.

She untied her hair and began to regather it, and her raised arms formed a wide-hipped lyre, oh lovely lovely shape, and his blood boiled afresh and he started forward again. Too eager: his shoe caught the cobblestone and sent a pebble clicking toward her and she went rigid and turned, her mouth already poised to scream.

She didn't have time enough before his hand mashed against her lips and he twirled her, her back to his belly and his stiffening prick. Practical hardworking girl, she kept her nails cut short; hard rounded calluses clawed ineffectually at his arms and face before a deeper prey instinct took hold of her and she sought his instep to stomp it.

He was ready. Number Four, Edinburgh, had done the same. A sharp little heel; a broken metatarsal; a good pair of loafers, ruined. Heap had learned his lesson. He had his feet splayed as he braced against her. He twined his fingers in her hair and yanked her head back to form a graceful convexity of her gullet.

He reached up to stroke the blade.

But she was a resourceful lass, and it seemed she must have fingernails after all, because she made a spittly hiss and he felt a hideous stab in his eye, like an awl driving through the lens and the jelly to scrape his optic nerve. False colors gushed. The pain made him gag and loosen his grip on her hair and his hand went up to protect his face. He had prey instincts, too.

Her distorted form broke away from him and ran for the steps.

Groaning, he lurched forth, grabbing at her.

Another hiss; another stab of pain, his other eye, driving him stumbling into the rubbish bins, both eyes streaming, the knife flung from his hands. He could not understand. Had she shot him? Thrown something at him? He blinked forcefully to clear the blurriness and he saw the girl reaching the top of the steps, disappearing round the corner onto
, and her waning form brought the awareness of a dawning catastrophe.

She had seen his face.

He struggled to his feet and started after her, and from behind he heard a hiss and pain knocked him flat, as if someone had buried a claw hammer in the base of his skull, and as he pitched against the hard ground, his fine roaring brain grasped that something was happening to him, something wrong, because the girl was long gone.

Sprawled on his stomach in scattered rubbish, he opened his tearing eyes and saw it, half a foot away, a coin-sized spot, glittering blackly on the cobblestones.

A hard-domed insect, shimmering antennae, long black thorn sprouting from its head.

It charged him, driving itself into the center of Heap's forehead.

He screamed and swatted at it and tried to stand up, but the thing kept coming at him, fast and vicious, the growl of its wings audible in every direction, like a cattle prod touched to Heap's neck, his spine, the backs of his knees, herding him away from the steps and backing him into the wall of the synagogue, where he balled up with his arms thrown over his head.

Abruptly, the assault broke off, and the night went still save a faint wooden clapping noise. Heap waited, shaking. Puncture wounds seeped along his hairline, blood trickling along the side of his nose and into his mouth.

He uncovered his head.

Down on the cobblestones, the bug squatted, peering up at him.

Full of hate, Heap rose to his full height.

Raised his foot to crush it to pulp.

Brought his foot down.

Missed.

It had dodged and was waiting, several inches to the right.

He tried again, and again it moved, and again, and they engaged in an absurd little wrathful dance, Heap stamping and jerking while the foul creature darted in mocking circles.

At last he came to his senses. He was chasing an insect, and meanwhile the girl who had seen his face was God knows where, saying God knows what to God knows whom.

He had to leave. Now. Never mind his things. Catch a taxi straight to the airport and depart posthaste for jolly old, never to return to this awful place.

He turned and ran and crashed into a wall.

A wall that hadn't been there before.

A wall of mud.

Broad as an avenue, taller than the synagogue, soaring upward like some manic cancer, climbing, expanding, ballooning, reeking of stagnant waters, rotting fish, mold, oily reeds.

He slipped and fled in the opposite direction, hitting another wall.

And then it surrounded him, the mud, mud walls, a city of mud, a megalopolis, vast and dense and formless. He raised his gaze to an indifferent sky, the stars blotted out by mud. Weeping, he cast his eyes down to the earth, where mud black as dried blood began to creep across his shoes, starting at the toes and inching upward. He screamed. He tried to lift his feet and found his shoes cemented to the stones; tried to kick them off but the mud had reached his ankles and grasped his shins and begun to climb. It was the source of the smell, viscous and putrid. It was an absence of color and an absence of space, an aggressive burning emptiness swallowing him alive.

He screamed and screamed and his voice came back close and wet and dead.

The blackness rose to his knees, grinding his bones in their joints; it moved up his thighs like too-tight stockings rolled incrementally up, and Heap's bowels opened of their own accord, and he felt his genitals pressed, slowly, back up into his body cavity; he felt his abdomen cinched and his ribs snapped and his windpipe collapsing and his innards forced up into his neck, and he ceased to scream because he could no longer draw breath.

In the wall of mud, two slits yawned, a pair of cherry-red holes at eye level.

Studying him. As he had once studied his own prey.

Heap could not speak, but he could move his lips.

He mouthed, “No.”

The answer came: a weary sigh.

Muddy fingers closed around him and squeezed.

As Heap's skull popped free of its spinal moorings, millions of neurons made their final salvo, and he experienced several sensations at once.

There was, of course, pain, and beyond that, the agony of insight. His was a death without benefit of ignorance, for he understood that he understood nothing, that his sins had not gone unnoticed, and that something unspeakable waited for him on the other side.

Finally there were the fugitive images that imprinted themselves on his fizzling, fading brain as his gape-mouthed head spun in the air: a night sky flocked with gentle clouds; the saffron glow of the lamps along the riverbank; the door to the synagogue garret, flapping open in the breeze.

LOS
ANGELES

SPRING
2012

T
he brunette puzzled Jacob.

First off, his memory of last night—a stunted memory, admittedly—featured a blonde. Now, in the light of morning, sitting at his kitchenette table, she was clearly dark-haired.

Second, while he could recall some frantic groping in a sticky vinyl booth, he was pretty sure he had gone home alone. And if he hadn't, he couldn't remember it, and that was a bad sign, a sign that the time had come to cut back.

Third, she was museum-quality gorgeous. As a rule he gravitated more toward average. It went beyond low standards: all that need and vulnerability and mutual comfort could turn the act more than physical. Two people agreeing to make the world a kinder place.

Looking at her, so far above his pay grade, he decided he could make an exception.

The fourth thing was that she was wearing his
tallis
.

The fifth thing was that she wasn't wearing anything else.

He smelled fresh coffee.

He said, “I'm sorry I don't know your name.”

She placed a hand on her throat. “I'm wounded.”

“Please try to be forgiving. I can't remember much.”

“There isn't much to remember. You were absolutely coherent and then you put your head down and it was lights-out.”

“Sounds about right,” he said.

He slid past her to fetch down a pair of handmade mugs, along with a lidded jar.

“Those're pretty,” she said.

“Thanks. Milk? Sugar?”

“Nothing for me, thanks. You go on ahead.”

He put the jar and one mug back, pouring himself a half cup, sipping it black. “Let's try this again. I'm Jacob.”

“I know,” she said. The
tallis
slipped a few inches, exposing smooth shoulder, delicate collarbone, a side swell of breast. She didn't put it back. “You can call me Mai. With an
i
.”

“Top of the morning to you, Mai.”

“Likewise, Jacob Lev.”

Jacob eyed the prayer shawl. He hadn't taken it out in years, let alone put it on. At one point in his life, the idea of covering a nude body with it would have smacked of sacrilege. Now it was just a sheet of wool.

All the same, he found her choice of covering profoundly weird. He kept the
tallis
in the bottom drawer of his bureau, along with his disused
tefillin
and a retired corps of sweaters, acquired in Boston and never shown the light of an L.A. day. If she'd wanted to borrow clothes, she would've had to dig through a host of better options first.

He said, “Remind me how we got here?”

“In your car.” She pointed to his wallet and keys on the counter. “I drove.”

“Wise,” he said. He finished his coffee, poured another half cup. “Are you a cop?”

“Me? No. Why?”

“Two types of people at 187. Cops and cop groupies.”

“Jacob Lev, your manners.” Her eyes brightened: an iridescent brown, shot through with green. “I'm just a nice young lady who came down for some fun.”

“Down from?”

“Up,” she said. “That's where you come down from.”

He sat opposite her, careful not to get too close. No telling what this one was about.

“How'd you get me into the car?” he asked.

“Interestingly, you were able to walk on your own and follow my instructions. It was strange. Like having my own personal robot, or an automaton. Is that how you always are?”

“How's that?”

“Obedient.”

“Not the word that springs to mind.”

“I thought not. I enjoyed it while it lasted, though. A nice change for me. Actually, I had a selfish motivation. I was stranded. My friend—she
is
a cop groupie—she left with some meathead. In
her
car. So now I've spent three hours chatting you up, I've got no ride, the place is closing, and I don't want to give anyone any ideas. Nor do I relish forking over money for a cab.” Her smile brought her into brilliant focus. “Abracadabra, here I am.”

She'd chatted him up? “Here we are.”

Long languid fingers stroked the soft white wool of the
tallis
. “I'm sorry,” she said. “I got cold in the middle of the night.”

“You could've put on some clothes,” he said, and then he thought:
moron
, because that was the last thing he wanted her to do.

She rubbed the braided fringes against her cheek. “It feels old,” she said.

“It belonged to my grandfather. His grandfather, if you believe family stories.”

“I do,” she said. “Of course I do. What else do we have, besides our stories?”

She stood up and removed the
tallis
, exposing her body, a masterwork, shining and limber as satin.

Jacob instinctively averted his eyes. He wished like hell he could remember what had happened—any part of it. It would provide fuel for
fantasies for months on end. The ease with which she stripped bare felt somehow less seductive than childlike. She sure enough didn't appear ashamed to show herself; why should he be ashamed to look? He might as well take her in while he had the chance.

He watched her reduce the
tallis
to the size of a placemat with three precise folds. She squared it over a chairback, kissing her fingertips when she was done—a Hebrew school habit.

“Jewish,” he said.

Her eyes took on more green. “Just another
shiksa
.”

“
Shiksas
don't call themselves
shiksas
,” he said.

She regarded his straining boxer shorts with amusement. “Have you brushed your teeth?”

“First thing I do when I wake up.”

“What's the second?”

“Pee.”

“What's the third?”

“I guess that's up to you,” he said.

“Did you wash?”

“My face.”

“Hands?”

The question threw him. “I will if you want.”

She stretched lazily, elongating her form, unbridled perfection.

“You're a nice-looking man, Jacob Lev. Go take a shower.”

He was under the spray before it had warmed, vigorously scrubbing pebbled skin, emerging rosy and alert and ready.

She wasn't in the bedroom.

Not in the kitchen, either.

Two-room apartment, you don't need a search party.

His
tallis
was gone, too
.

A klepto with a fetish for religious paraphernalia?

He should have known. Girl like that, something had to be off. The laws of the universe, the balance of justice, demanded it.

His head throbbed. He poured more coffee and was reaching into the cabinet for bourbon when he decided that it was, no question, time to cut back. He uncapped the bottle and let it glug into the sink, then returned to the bedroom to check the sweater drawer.

She'd replaced the
tallis
, snugging it neatly between a blue cableknit and the thread-worn velvet
tefillin
bag. As a gesture, it seemed either an act of kindness or a kind of rebuke.

He thought about it for a while, settled on the latter. After all, she'd voted with her feet.

Welcome to the club.