Winter 2007 (9 page)

After Shalin runs off
upstairs, Bazit finally asks the reason for Cliff’s visit, and, fumbling for an
excuse, Cliff explains that some nights after work he doesn’t want to drive
home, he has an engagement this side of the river, he’s tired or he’s had a
couple of drinks, and he wonders if he can get a room on a semi-regular basis
at the Celeste.

“For tonight? It would be
an honor!” says Bazit. “I think we have something available.”

Suddenly leery, Cliff says,
“No, I’m talking down the road, you know. Next weekend or sometime.”

Bazit assures him that Dak
Windsor will have no problem obtaining a room. They shake hands and Cliff’s
almost out the door when he hears a shout in a foreign language at his back.
“Showazzat
Bompar!”
or something of the sort. He turns and finds that Bazit has
dropped into a half-crouch, his left fist extended in a Roman salute, his right
hand held beside his head, palm open, as if he’s about to take a pledge, and
Cliff recalls that Ricky Sintara performed a similar salute at the end of each
movie. He goes out into the driveway and stands beside his car, an ‘06 dark
blue Miata X-5 convertible, clean and fully loaded. The April heat is a shock
after the air-conditioned office, the sunlight makes him squint, and he has a
sneaking suspicion that somehow, for whatever reason, he’s just been played.

Chapter Three

Sunday morning, Cliff puts
on a bathing suit, flip-flops, and a Muntz Mazda World T-shirt, and takes his
coffee and OJ into his Florida room, where he stands and watches, through a
fringe of dune grass and Spanish bayonet, heavy surf piling in onto a strip of
beach, the sand pinkish from crushed coquina shells. The jade-colored waves are
milky with silt, they tumble into one another, bash the shore with concussive
slaps. Out beyond the bar, a pelican splashes down into calmer, bluer water.
Puffs of pastel cloud flock the lower sky.

Cliff steps into his
office, goes online and checks the news, then searches the film geek sites and
finds a copy of
Sword of the Black Demon,
which he orders. It’s listed
under the category, Camp Classics. Still sleepy, he lies down on the sofa and
dreams he’s in a movie jungle with two blue-skinned witches and monkeys wearing
grenadier uniforms and smoking clove cigarettes. He wakes to the sight of
Stacey Gerone standing over him, looking peeved.

“Did you forget I was
coming over?” she asks.

“Of course not.” He gets to
his feet, not the easiest of moves these days, given the condition of his back,
but he masks his discomfort with a yawn. “You want some coffee?”

“For God’s sake, take off
that T-shirt. Don’t you get enough of Muntz World during the week?”

Stacey drops her handbag on
the sofa. She’s a redhead with creamy skin that she nourishes with expensive
lotions and a sun blocker with special cancer-eating bacteria or some shit,
dressed in a designer tank top and white slacks. Her body’s a touch zaftig, but
she is still, at thirty-eight, a babe. At the lot, she does a sultry Desperate
Housewife act that absolutely kills middle-aged men and college boys alike. If
the wife or girlfriend tag along, she changes her act or lets somebody else
mother the sale. Jerry plans to move her over to his candy store (the new car
portion of his business) in Ormond Beach, where there’s real money to be made.
For more than a year, he’s tried to move Cliff to Ormond as well, but Cliff
refuses to budge. His reluctance to change is inertial, partly, but he doesn’t
need the money and the young couples and high school kids and working class
folk who frequent Ridgewood Motors are more to his taste than the geriatric
types who do their car-shopping at Muntz Mazda World.

As Cliff makes a fresh pot,
Stacey sits at the kitchen table and talks a blue streak, mostly about Jerry.
“You should see his latest,” she says. “He’s got a design program on his
computer, and he spends every spare minute creating cartoons. You know, cartoons
of himself. Little tubby, cute Jerrys. Each one has a slogan with it. Every
word starts with an M. What do you call that? When every word starts with the
same letter?”
“Alliteration,” says Cliff.

“So he’s doing this
alliteration. Most of it’s business stuff. Muntz Millennium Mazda Make-out.
Muntz Mazda Moments. Trying to find some combination of M-words that make a
snappy saying, you know. But then he’s got these ones that have different
cartoons with them. Muntz Munches Muff. MILF-hunting Muntz He took great pains
to show them to me.”

“He’s probably hoping to
get lucky.”

Stacey gives him a pitying
look.

“You did it with Jerry?” he
says, unable to keep incredulity out of his voice.

“How many women do you see
in this business? Grow up! I needed the job, so I slept with him.” Stacey
waggles two fingers. “Twice. Believe me, sleep was the operative word. Once I
started selling…” She makes a brooming gesture with her hand. “Does it tick you
off I had sex with him?”

“Is that how you want me to
feel?”

“How do I want you to feel?
That’s a toughie.” She crosses her legs, taps her chin. “Studied indifference
would be good. Some undertones of resentment and jealousy. That would suit me
fine.”

“I can work with that.”

“That’s what I love most
about you, Cliff.” She stands and puts her arms about his waist from behind.
“You take direction so well.”

“I am a professional,” he
says.

Later, lying in bed with
Stacy, he tells her about the Celeste and Number eleven, about Shalin
Palaniappan, expecting her reaction to be one of indifference—she’ll tell
him to give it a rest, forget about it, he’s making a mountain out of a
molehill, and just who does he think he is, anyway? Tony Shaloub or somebody?
But instead she says, “I’d call the cops if I was you.”

“Really?” he says.

“That stuff about the
girl…I don’t know. But obviously something hinkey’s happening over there.
Unless you’ve lost your mind and are making the whole thing up.”

“I’m not making it up.”
Cliff locks his hands behind his head and stares up at the sandpainted ceiling.

“Then you should call the
cops.”

“They won’t do anything,”
he says. “Best case, they’ll ask stupid questions that’ll make the Palaniappans
shut down whatever’s going on. As soon as the pressure’s off, they’ll start up
again.”

“Then you should forget
it.”

“How come?”

“You’re a smart guy, Cliff,
but sometimes you space. You go off somewhere else for a couple hours…or a
couple of days. That isn’t such a great quality for a detective. It’s not even
a great quality for a salesman.”

Slitting his eyes, Cliff
turns the myriad bumps of paint on the ceiling into snowflake patterns; once,
when he was smoking some excellent Thai stick, he managed to transform them
into a medieval street scene, but he hasn’t ever been able to get it back.
“Maybe you’re right,” he says.

###

After a therapy day with
Stacey, Cliff thinks he might be ready to put
l’affaire
Celeste behind
him. She’s convinced him that he isn’t qualified to deal with the situation, if
there is a situation, and for a few days he eschews the binoculars, gets back
into Scott Turow, and avoids looking at the Vacancy sign, though when his
concentration lapses, he feels its letters branding their cool blue shapes on
his brain. On Thursday evening, he closes early, before nine, and drives
straight home, thinking he’ll jump into a pair of shorts and walk over to the
Surfside, but on reaching his house he finds a slender package stuck inside the
screen door.
Sword of the Black Demon
has arrived from Arcane Films. A
Camp Classic. He tosses it on the sofa, showers, changes, and, on his way out,
decides to throw the movie in the player and watch a little before heading to
the bar—refreshing his memory of the picture will give him something to
talk about with his friends.

It’s worse than he
remembers. Beyond lame. Gallons of stage blood spewing from Monty-Pythonesque
wounds; the cannibal queen’s chunky, naked retinue; a wizard who travels around
on a flying rock; the forging of a sword from a meteorite rendered
pyrotechnically by lots of sparklers; the blue witches, also naked and chunky,
except for one…He hits the pause button, kneels beside the TV, and examines the
lissome shape of, it appears, Shalin Palaniappan, wishing he could check if the
current incarnation of the blue witch has a mole on her left breast, though to
do so would likely net him five-to-ten in the slammer. He makes for the
Surfside, a concrete block structure overlooking the beach, walking the
dunetops along A1A, hoping that a couple of vodkas will banish his feeling of
unease, but once he’s sitting at the bar under dim track lighting, a vodka
rocks in hand, deliciously chilled by the AC, embedded in an atmosphere of jazz
and soft, cluttered talk, gazing through the picture window at the illuminated
night ocean (the beach, at this hour, is barely ten yards wide and the waves
seem perilously close), he’s still uneasy and he turns his attention to the
Marlins on the big screen, an abstract clutter of scurrying white-clad figures
on a bright green field.

“Hey, Cliffie,” says a
woman’s voice, and Marley, a diminutive package of frizzy, dirty blond hair and
blue eyes, a cute sun-browned face and jeans tight as a sausage skin, lands in
the chair beside his and gives him a quick hug. She’s young enough to be his
daughter, old enough to be his lover. He’s played both roles, but prefers that
of father. She’s feisty, good-hearted, and too valuable as a friend to risk
losing over rumpled bed sheets.

“Hey, you,” he says. “I
thought this was your night off.”

“All my nights are off.”
She grins. “My new goal—becoming a barfly like you.

“What about…you know.
Tyler, Taylor…”

She pretends to rap her
knuckles on his forehead. “Tucker. He gone.”

“I thought that was working
out.”

“Me, too,” she says. “And
then, oops, an impediment. He was wanted for fraud in South Carolina.”

“Fraud? My God!”

“That’s what I said…except
I cussed more.” She neatly tears off a strip of cocktail napkin. “Cops came by
the place three weeks ago. Guns drawn. Spotlights. The whole schmear. He waived
extradition.’”

“Why didn’t you tell me
sooner?”

She shrugs. “You know how I
hate people crying in their beer.”

“God. Let me buy you a
drink.”

“You bet.” She pounds the
counter. “Tequila!”

They drink, talk about
Tucker, about what a lousy spring it’s been. Two tequilas along, she asks if
he’s all right, he seems a little off. He wants to tell her, but it’s too
complicated, too demented, and she doesn’t need to hear his problems, so he
tells her about the movies he did in the Philippines, making her laugh with
anecdotes about and impersonations of the director. Five tequilas down and
she’s hanging on him, giggly, teasing, laughing at everything he says, whether
it’s funny or not. It’s obvious she won’t be able to drive. He invites her to
use his couch—he’d give her the bed, but the couch is murder on his
back—and she says, suddenly tearful, “You’re so sweet to me.”

After one for the road,
they start out along the dunes toward home, going with their heads down—a
wind has kicked up and blows grit in their faces. The surf munches the shore,
sounding like a giant chewing his food with relish; a rotting scent
intermittently overrides the smell of brine. No moon, no stars, but porch
lights from the scattered houses show the way. Marley keeps slipping in the
soft sand and Cliff has to put an arm around her to prevent her from falling.
The tall grasses tickle his calves. They’re twenty yards from his front step,
when he hears the sound of boomerang in flight—he identifies it
instantly, it’s that distinct. A helicopter-ish sound, but higher-pitched,
almost a whistling, passing overhead. He stops walking, listening for it, and
Marley seizes the opportunity to rub her breasts against him, her head tipped
back, waiting to be kissed.

“Is this going to be one of
those nights?” she asks teasingly.

“Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“A boomerang, I think.
Somebody threw a boomerang.”

Bewildered, she says, “A
boomerang?”

“Shh! Listen!”

Confused, she shelters
beneath his arm as he reacts to variations in the wind’s pitch, to a passing
car whose high beams sweep over the dune grass, lighting the cottage, growing a
shadow from its side that lengthens and then appears to reach with a skinny
black arm across the rumpled ground the instant before it vanishes. He hears no
repetition of the sound, and its absence unsettles him. He’s positive that he
heard it, that somewhere out in the night, a snaky-jointed figure is poised to
throw. He hustles Marley toward the cottage and hears, as they ascend the porch
steps, a skirling music, whiny reed instruments and a clattery percussion, like
kids beating with sticks on a picket fence, just a snatch of it borne on the
wind. He shoves Marley inside, bolts the door and switches on the porch lights,
thinking that little brown men with neat mustaches will bloom from the dark,
because that’s what sort of music it is, Manila taxicab music, the music played
by the older drivers who kept their radios tuned to an ethnic station—but
he sees nothing except rippling dune grass, pale sand, and the black gulf
beyond, a landscape menacing for its lack of human form.