Last Call: Expiration Date Part 33

"This root beer will not pa.s.s away, Pete. Have you drained it yet?"

"-Yes." The blood was thudding in his ears, and he felt as though he were standing behind his own body, leaning over its defeat-slumped shoulder. "At least you swam out."

"We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. You should have drank more.

" 'We are but older children, dear, Who fret to find our bedtime near.' "

"That's from Alice," said Sullivan.

"Through the Looking-Gla.s.s, actually," Sukie said.

"Why do-you all-quote those books so much?"

"They're not nonsense here, Pete. The little girl who falls down the deep well that's lined with bookshelves and pictures-call it 'your whole life flas.h.i.+ng before your eyes'-the collapse of all the events of your timeline, down to an idiot unlocated point that occupies no s.p.a.ce-the Alice books are an auto-mortography. And then you're in a place where your ... 'physical size' is a wildly irrational variable, and distance and speed are problematical. And you can't help but go among mad people."

The volume was perceptibly diminis.h.i.+ng; the vibrations of the quartz filament in the Langmuir gauge in the other room were becoming increasingly randomized.

"I-" said Sullivan, "wanted to talk to Dad, actually ..."

"He doesn't want to talk to you, actually. You're just going to have to be a little soldier about this. Lewis Carroll wasn't dead, but he knew a little girl who did die-he had taken photographs of her, and he caught her ghost in a Leyden jar, just like Ben Franklin used to do. She told Lewis Carroll all those stories, and he wrote 'em down." She paused then, and when she spoke again her voice was gentler. "You're probably looking Commander Hold-'Em in the eye right now, aren't you?"

Sullivan was. (He felt even further removed from his seated body than he had a few minutes ago, and he knew that, if Elizalde refused to give him back the .45, he could easily find something else-h.e.l.l, he could walk in two minutes from here to the ocean, and just swim out.) His father had not forgotten nor forgiven. Over the reeks of burnt mint and Bradshaw's cinnamon-and-rot breath and his own beery sour sweat, Sullivan could smell Coppertone lotion and mayonnaise and the terrible sea.

"If you care," he whispered.

"I've got to take a moment to say ... good. But! It's just that he doesn't want to talk to anyone over this open line, Pete. He wants you to go pick him up. He says Nicky Bradshaw will know where he is, he has apparently dreamed about Nicky. Dream a little dream of me ... not." Her voice was definitely fading now.

"Beth," he said loudly, "I ran away from you too, can you-"

At the same time she was saying, "I worked hard to ruin your whole life, Pete, can you-"

With their old skill of each knowing what the other was about to say, they paused-Sullivan smiled, and he thought that Sukie was smiling somewhere too-and then they said, in perfect unison, "Forgive me?"

After a pause, "How could I possibly not?" they both said.

Sukie's voice faded away into the increasing hiss of the speaker; for a few seconds everyone in the kitchen heard a dog barking somewhere deep in the amplified abyss, and then the roaring hiss was all there was.

For some reason Kootie whispered "Fred?" and began crying again.

Sullivan hung up the telephone. He lifted his head and looked at Bradshaw's impa.s.sive, squinting face. "I need to go pick up my father," he said hoa.r.s.ely. "Apparently you know where he would be."

"Turn off your telephone," whined Bradshaw aggressively. "Every psychic from San Fran to San Clam is probably picking all this up."

Sullivan stood up and pushed the sweaty hair back from his forehead. "True. h.e.l.l, it's probably been breaking in on TV sets and radios," he said, "like CB transmissions." He walked stiffly into the dark office and crouched to unplug the transformer from the wall socket. The air in here was sharp with the oily, metallic, but somehow also organic-smelling reek of ozone.

Bradshaw had followed him, and now swung open the outside door. Late-afternoon sunlight and the cold sea breeze swept into the room, and Elizalde and Kootie and Johanna shuffled blinking out of the smoky kitchen onto the office carpet.

Sullivan twisted the cable clamps off the van battery's terminals, and then began disconnecting the wires that linked the components of their makes.h.i.+ft device. "We're off the air," he remarked.

"If I'm supposed to know where he is," said Bradshaw, "then he must be at his grave in-the Hollywood Cemetery. I've been visiting the grave ever since he died-even after I died."

Nettled, Sullivan just nodded his head. "That's fine. Hollywood Cemetery, I know where that is, on Santa Monica, right over the fence from Paramount Studios. Straight up the Harbor Freeway to the 101. I should easily be back before dark." He would even have time to stop at Max Henry's on Melrose for a shot or two of Wild Turkey and a couple of chilly Coorses, before going on, north a block, to-to the cemetery.

It occurred to Sullivan that he had not been within the walls of that cemetery since the day of his father's funeral, in 1959. "Uh," he asked awkwardly, "where's his ... grave marker?"

"North end of the lake-by Jayne Mansfield's cenotaph-that means empty grave-she's buried somewhere else."

"Okay. Now I wonder if I could borrow your-"

"Explain to him," interrupted Bradshaw, "that I couldn't come along. Tell him I'm waiting here, and I-(gasp)-I've missed him." He raised his hand as if fending off an argument. "And you can't drive that van."

"No, I was just going to ask if-"

"No," Bradshaw insisted, "the van is out. It's a ... a disgrace. Take my car, it's a Chevy Nova. Full tank of gas. It drives a little sideways-but that'll help keep anyone from being able to see-which way you're going."

"Great," said Sullivan, wis.h.i.+ng he had a beer in his hand right now. "That's a good idea, thanks." He squinted through the open doorway at Elizalde, who had walked out across the asphalt and was taking deep breaths of the fresh air. "Angelica," he called, "can I have back the ... machine in the f.a.n.n.y pack?"

She gave him an opaque look-she probably couldn't see him in the dim interior-and then she walked back and stepped up inside. "What is Commander Hold-'Em?" she asked quietly.

"My sister's slang for death, the Grim Reaper. Is it back in the apartment?"

"You've named the gun that?"

Psychiatrists! he thought. "No," he said patiently. "I was talking about the gun, and then you asked a question about my sister's term for death and I answered you, and then I was talking about the gun again. Which I still am. Could I have it?"

"You showed me how to use it," she said. Her brown eyes were still unreadable.

"I remember. After you said you didn't believe in them." Suddenly he was sure that her patient, Frank, had killed himself with a gun.

"Kootie would be safer here," she said, "in this masked area, with Bradshaw or Shadroe or whoever your 'G.o.dbrother' is."

"I agree," said Sullivan, who thought he could see where this was going. "And so would the famous Dr. Elizalde, whose face I saw on the network news, night before last."

"I'm coming with you," she said. "Don't worry, I won't intrude on you and your father."

Bradshaw started to speak, but Sullivan cut him off with the chopping gesture. "Why?" Sullivan asked her.

"Because you should have a gun along with you when you go there," Elizalde told him, "and I won't let you go by yourself with a gun, because I think you're still 'looking Commander Hold-'Em in the eye.' " She was staring straight at him, and she raised her eyebrows now. "That is to say, I think you might kill yourself."

"No," interjected Bradshaw worriedly, "I won't take responsibility for the kid. I told you no kids."

"I won't be any trouble, mister," said Kootie, "just-"

"That's ... hysterical," Sullivan said to Elizalde. "Give me the G.o.dd.a.m.n gun."

"No." Elizalde jumped out into the yard and sprinted across the asphalt; when she was ten yards away, she turned and shaded her face with her hand to look back at him. She lifted the hem of her untucked old sweats.h.i.+rt, and he saw that she was wearing the f.a.n.n.y pack. "If you try to take it from me, I will shoot you in the leg."

His face hot, Sullivan stepped down out of the office. "With a .45? You may as well shoot me in the chest, Angelica!"

Her hand was under the flapping hem of her sweats.h.i.+rt. "All right. At least you won't die a suicide, and go to h.e.l.l."

He stopped, and grinned tiredly at her. "Whaa? Is this a psychiatric thing or a Catholic thing?"

"It's me not wanting you dead, a.s.shole! Why won't you let me come along?"

Sullivan had lost his indignity somehow, and he shrugged. "Come along, then. I hope you don't mind if I stop for a drink on the way."

"Your sister drank, I gather?"

His exhausted grin widened. "You want to make something out of it?"

"I've got to make something out of something."

Bradshaw stepped down to the pavement behind Sullivan. "Take the kid!" he wheezed. "With you!" He seemed to be at a loss for words then. "On Long Beach sands," he said finally. "I can connect nothing with nothing."

Sullivan turned around. "What's the matter with you, Nicky? Kootie can stay in our apartment. He won't be any trouble. He'll probably just take a nap."

"Sure, mister," said Kootie. "I didn't get a lot of sleep last night anyway; I could use a nap. I won't be any trouble, mister."

Bradshaw just shook his head. After a moment he shook himself and dug into the pocket of his ludicrous old shorts, and then tossed a ring of keys to Sullivan. "Gray Chevy Nova right behind you," he said. "The blinkers don't work right-the emergency flashers come on if you try to signal. Use hand signals, okay?"

Sullivan frowned. "Okay. I guess we'll for sure be back before dark."

Bradshaw nodded bleakly. "Leave a dollar in the ashtray for gas."

CHAPTER 40.

"It's only the Red King snoring," said Tweedledee.

"Come and look at him!" the brothers cried, and they each took one of Alice's hands, and led her up to where the King was sleeping.

"Isn't he a lovely sight?" said Tweedledum.

Alice couldn't say honestly that he was.

-Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Gla.s.s THE CEMETERY IN THE late afternoon was full of ghosts, and at first Sullivan and Elizalde tried to avoid them.

Even before they parked Bradshaw's goofy car, while they were still hardly past the office, they saw semitransparent figures cl.u.s.tered around the big white sculpture of a winged man s.e.xually a.s.saulting a woman. The smoky figures might have been attempting to stop the winged man, or help him subdue the woman, or just conceal the atrocity from the street.

Sullivan swore softly and looked for a place to park. The broad lawns he remembered out front along Santa Monica Boulevard were gone, those s.p.a.ces now stacked full of shops-a Mexican market and a Chinese restaurant shouldering right up to the east side of the ivied stone buildings of the cemetery entrance, m.u.f.fler and bodywork shops to the west-but there was still a sense of isolation here inside, in this silent, far-stretching landscape of old sycamores and palms and canted gravestones. Looking through Bradshaw's winds.h.i.+eld at the ghosts that could hold their shapes in this still air, Sullivan wished the noise and smoke and spastic motion of the boulevard could intrude their vital agitations here.

Elizalde had Houdini's plaster right hand in her lap, and Sullivan was gripping the left one between his knees; the dried thumb was in his s.h.i.+rt pocket.

Past the ghosts was a crossroads, and he turned left onto the narrow paved lane and parked. "The lake's ahead of us," he said, hefting Houdini's plaster hand. "Let's walk up to it-the noise of the engine might spook him-" He winced at the unintended pun. "-and anyway, this car keeps looking like it's in the process of running off onto the gra.s.s."

Actually, he simply didn't want to get there. His father's ghost was to meet him? Would it be a translucent figure like the ones climbing on the statue?

I was only seven years old! he thought, with no conviction. It was thirty-three years ago! How can I-still-be to blame?

Still, he was profoundly sorry that he had let Elizalde talk him out of the preliminary drinks, and remotely glad that she was holding the gun.

"Okay." Elizalde seemed subdued as she climbed out of the car, and the double slam of the doors rang hollowly in the quiet groves. "Do normal people see that crowd by the entrance?"

"No," said Sullivan. "They're just visible to specimens like you and me."

Looking north, Sullivan could see the distant white letters of the HOLLYWOOD sign standing on the dark hills, and the words holy wood flickered through his mind. To the south across the stone-studded hillocky lawn, past the farthest palms, was the back wall of Paramount Studios, with the red Paramount logo visible on the water tower beyond the air-conditioning ducts.

"It's ... somewhere ahead of us," said Sullivan, starting forward. He glanced to his left, remembering that Carl Switzer was buried right there by the road somewhere. Switzer had been "Alfalfa" in the old Our Gang comedies, and had been shot to death in January of '59. Alfalfa's grave had been only five months old when Arthur Patrick Sullivan was buried, and the twins, big fans of the Our Gang shows, had found the still-bright marker while silently wandering around the grounds before their father's graveside service. Neither of them had said anything as they had stared down at Switzer's gla.s.sy-smooth stone marker. It had been obvious that anybody at all could die, at any time.

"This is very pretty," said Elizalde, scuffing along next to him and holding Houdini's plaster right hand like a flashlight.

"It's morbid," snapped Sullivan. "Burying a bunch of dead bodies, and putting a fancy marker over each one so the survivors will know where to go and cry. What if the markers got rearranged? You'd be weeping over some stranger. Not some stranger, even, some cast-off dead body of a stranger, like a pile of fingernail clippings or old shoes, or the dust from inside an electric razor. What's the difference between coming out here to think about dead Uncle Irving, and thinking about him in your own living room? Okay, here you can sit on the gra.s.s and be only six feet above his inert old body. Would it be better if you could dig a hole, and sit only one foot above it?" He was shaking. "Everybody should be cremated, and the ashes should be tossed in the sea with no fanfare at all."

"It's a sign of respect," said Elizalde angrily. "And it's a real, tangible link. Think of the Shroud of Turin! Where would we be if they had cremated Jesus?"

"I don't know-we'd have the Ashtray of Turin."

She swung Houdini's plaster hand and hit Sullivan hard in the shoulder. One of the fingers flew off and bounced in the coa.r.s.e green gra.s.s.

Sullivan had let out a sharp Hah! at the impact, and he sidestepped onto the gra.s.s to keep his balance. "G.o.ddammit," he whispered, rubbing his shoulder as he stepped back down to the asphalt, keeping away from her, "give me back the f.u.c.king .45, will you? If you go trying to make some theatrical gesture with that, you'll kill someone." He noticed the gap in the hand, and looked around until he spotted the finger. "Oh, good work," he said, stepping across and bending to pick it up. "It didn't half cost my dead sister and I any trouble to get hold of these things, go ahead and bust 'em up, by all means."

"I'm sorry," she said. "We can glue it. I'm tired, I didn't mean it to be more than a tap. But you weren't saying what you believed, just what you wished you believed-that dead people go away and stay away, canceled. Are these ghosts or not?"

He thought her question was rhetorical until she repeated it in an urgent whisper. Then he stopped fiddling with the plaster finger and looked ahead.

"Uh," he said, "my guess is ghosts."

Three fat men in tuxedos were walking toward them, a hundred feet ahead, where the road was unpaved; the man in the middle had his arms around his companions' shoulders, and they were all walking in step, but no dust at all was being kicked up, and their steps made no sounds in the still air. Their mouths gaped in wide, silent smiles.

"Let's slant south, toward Paramount," said Sullivan.

He and Elizalde set off diagonally across the gra.s.s to their right with a purposeful air.

The sun was low over the mausoleum along the distant Gower Street border of the cemetery-the shadows of the palm trees stretched for dozens of yards across the gold-glowing gra.s.s.

Griffith's magic hour, Sullivan thought with a s.h.i.+ver.

Flat markers stippled the low luminous hills in meandering ranks, like stepping-stones, and some graves were bordered with ankle-high sections of scalloped pink concrete, and the interior s.p.a.ce of these was consistently filled with broken white stones; a few, the graves of little children, had plastic dinosaurs and toy cars and miniature soldiers set up on the stones to make pitiful dioramas.

Mausoleums like ornate WPA powerhouse relay stations stood along the dirt road ahead of them, and the bra.s.sy sunlight shone on the wingless eagle atop the Harrison Gray Otis monument; Sullivan was sure that the eagle had had wings in 1959. The cypresses around them rustled in the gentle breeze and threw down dry leaves.