Just like he’d told her about the tickets?
Laura spun the Rolodex, and found Eric Parker’s home number.
She was going to feel very dumb about this tomorrow, when Doug told her he and Eric had gone out to meet a client, or that they’d simply decided not to answer the phones while they were working. She was going to feel like crawling into a hole, for thinking—even minutely—that Doug might not be telling her the truth.
She was afraid to make the call. The gnawing little fear rose up and gripped her by the throat. She picked up the telephone, punched the first four numbers, and then put it down again. She phoned the office a third time; no answer, after at least twenty rings.
The moment of truth had arrived.
Laura took a deep breath and phoned Eric Parker’s house.
On the third ring, a woman said, “Hello?”
“Hi. Marcy? It’s Laura Clayborne.”
“Oh, hi, Laura. I understand the time’s growing near.”
“Yes, it is. About two weeks, more or less. We’ve got the nursery all ready, so now all we’re doing is waiting.”
“Listen, enjoy the wait. After the baby comes, your life won’t ever be the same.”
“That’s what I’ve heard.” Laura hesitated; she had to go on, but it was tough. “Marcy, I’m trying to get in touch with Doug. Do you know if they went out to meet a client, or are they just not answering the phones?”
There was a few seconds of silence. Then: “I’m sorry, Laura. I don’t know what you mean.”
“Eric called Doug from the office. You know. To finish up some work.”
“Oh.” Marcy was silent again, and Laura felt her heart beating hard. “Laura…uh…Eric went to Charleston this morning. He won’t be back until Saturday.”
Laura felt the blood burn in her cheeks. “No, Eric called Doug from the office. About an hour ago.”
“Eric’s in Charleston.” Marcy Parker gave a nervous laugh. “Maybe he called long distance?”
“Maybe.” Laura was light-headed. The noise of the rain was a slow drumroll on the roof. “Listen…Marcy, I… shouldn’t have called. I shouldn’t have bothered you.”
“No, it’s all right.” Marcy’s voice was uneasy; she wanted to get off the phone. “I hope everything’s fine with the baby. I mean, I know it will be, but…you know.”
“Yes. Thank you. You take care.”
“Good-bye, Laura.”
Laura hung up.
She realized the music was over.
She sat in her chair in the den as rain streamed down the windows. Her hand gripped the two green ticket stubs, to a theater she’d never been to. Her other hand rested on her swollen belly, finding David’s warmth. Her brain felt full of thorns, and it made thinking painful. Doug had answered the phone and talked to someone he called Eric. He’d gone to the office to work. Hadn’t he? And if he hadn’t, then where had he gone? Her palm was damp around the tickets. Who was Doug with if Eric was in Charleston?
Laura closed her eyes and listened to the rain. A siren wailed in the distance, the sound building and then waning. She was thirty-six years old, two weeks away from giving birth for the first time, and she realized she had been a child way too long. Sooner or later, the world would break you down to tears and regrets. Sooner or later, the world would win.
It was a mean place to bring a child into, but it was the only world there was. Laura’s eyes were wet. Doug had lied to her. Stood right there and lied to her face. Damn him, he was doing something behind her back, and she was carrying their baby in her womb! Anger swelled, collapsed into sadness, built back again. Damn him! she thought. Damn him, I don’t need him! I don’t need any of this!
Laura stood up. She got her raincoat and her purse. She went out into the garage, grim-lipped, got into the BMW, and drove away, searching in the dark for a place where there were people, noise, and life.
4
Mr. Mojo Has Risen
SHE TASTED HIM IN her mouth, like bitter almonds.
The first time, she’d wanted it because she missed it. The second time, she’d done it because she was thinking of how she could get a better rate on the acid. Now she stood in the bathroom, brushing her teeth, her hair damp around her shoulders. Her gaze followed the network of scars on her stomach, down to the ridges of scar tissue that ran between her thighs. Freaky, Gordie had said. Looks like a fuckin’ roadmap, don’t it? She’d been waiting for his response, steeling herself for it as she’d taken off her clothes. If he had laughed or looked disgusted, she didn’t know what she might have done. She needed him, for what he brought her, but sometimes her anger rose up as quick as a cobra and she knew she could reach into his eyeballs with two hooked fingers and break his neck with her other hand before he figured out what had hit him. She looked at her face in the mirror, her mouth foamy with Crest. Her eyes were dark; the future was in them.
“Hey, Ginger!” Gordie called from the bedroom. “We gonna try the acid now?”
Mary spat foam into the sink. “I thought you said you had to meet your girlfriend.”
“Aw, she can wait. Won’t hurt her. I was pretty good, huh?”
“Far out,” Mary said, and she rinsed her mouth and spat into the sink again. She returned to the bedroom, where Gordie was lying on the bed in the tangled sheet smoking a cigarette.
“How come you talk like that?” Gordie asked.
“Talk like what?”
“You know. ‘Far out.’ Stuff like that. Hippie talk.”
“I guess because I used to be a hippie.” Mary crossed the room to the dresser, and Gordie’s shiny eyes followed her through the haze of blue smoke. On top of the dresser were the Smiley Face circles of acid. She cut two of them away with a small pair of scissors, and she could feel Gordie watching her.
“No shit? You used to be a hippie? Like with love beads and all that?”
“Love beads and all that,” she answered. “A long time ago.”
“Ancient history. No offense meant.” He puffed smoke rings into the air, and he watched the big woman walk to the stereo. The way she moved reminded him of something. It came to him: a lioness, silent and deadly in one of those documentaries about Africa on TV. “You into sports when you were younger?” he asked innocently.
She smiled slightly as she put a Doors record on the turntable and switched on the power. “In high school. I ran track and I was on the swim team. You know anything about the Doors?”
“The band? Yeah. They had a few hits, right?”
“The lead singer’s name was Jim Morrison,” Mary went on, ignoring Gordie’s stupidity. “He was God.”
“He’s dead now, right?” Gordie asked. “Damn, you’ve got a nice ass!”
Mary set the needle down. The first staccato drumbeats of “Five to One” began, and the raspy bass bled in. Then Jim Morrison’s voice, full of grit and danger, snarled from the speakers: Five to one, baby/ One in five/ No one here gets out alive/ You get yours, baby/ I’ll get mine…
The voice made memories flood through her. She had seen the Doors in concert many times, and had even seen Jim Morrison up close once, as he was going into a club on Hollywood Boulevard. She’d reached out through the crowd and touched his shoulder, felt the heat of his power course up her arm and shoulder like an electric shock, blowing her mind into the realm of golden radiance. He had glanced back at her, and for a brief second their eyes had met and locked; she had felt his soul, like a caged and beautiful butterfly. It screamed to her, wanting her to set him free, and then somebody else grabbed Jim Morrison and he was taken along in the surge of bodies.
“That’s got a good beat,” Gordie said.
Mary Terror cranked up the music a notch, and then she took the LSD to Gordie and gave him one of the yellow Smiley Faces. “Allllright!” Gordie said as he crushed his cigarette out in an ashtray beside the bed. Mary began to lick the circle, and Gordie did the same. In a few seconds the Smiley Faces were smeared and their black eyes were gone. Then Mary got onto
the bed and sat in a lotus position, her ankles crossed beneath her and her wrists on her knees, her eyes closed as she listened to God and waited for the acid to work. The skin of her belly fluttered; Gordie was tracing her scars with his index finger.
“So you never said how you got all these. Were you in an accident?”
“That’s right.”
“What kinda accident?”
Little boy, she thought, you don’t know how close you are to the edge.
“Must’ve been a bad one,” Gordie persisted.
“Car wreck,” she lied. “I got cut up by glass and metal.” That much was true.
“Whoa! Heavy-duty hurt! Is that why you don’t have any kids?”
Her eyes opened. Gordie’s mouth was on his forehead, and his eyes were bloodred. Her eyelids drifted shut again. “What do you mean?”
“I wondered, ’cause of the baby pictures. I thought…you know…you must have a thing about kids. You can have kids, can’t you? I mean…the accident didn’t fuck you up, did it?”
Again, Mary’s eyes opened. Gordie was growing a second head on his left shoulder. It was a warty mass just beginning to sprout a nose and chin. “You ask too many questions,” she told him, and she heard her voice echo as if within a fathomless pit.
“Man!” Gordie said suddenly, his crimson eyes wide; “My hand’s gettin’ longer! Jesus, look at it!” He laughed, a rattle of drums that merged with the Doors’ music. “My hand’s fillin’ up the fuckin’ room!” He wriggled his fingers. “Look! I’m touchin’ the wall!”
Mary watched the head taking shape on Gordie’s shoulder. Its features were still indistinguishable, but the mass of flesh began to throw out cords of skin that looped around Gordie’s other face, which had started to shrink and shrivel. As the Gordie-face dwindled, the new face tore itself loose and slithered across Gordie’s shoulder, fastening itself onto the skull with a wet, sucking noise.
“My arms are growin’!” Gordie said. “Man, they’re ten feet long!”
The air was filled with music notes spinning from the speakers like bits of gold and silver tinsel. The new face on Gordie’s skull was becoming more defined, and a mane of wavy brown hair burst from the scalp and trailed down the shoulders. Sharp cheekbones pressed from the flesh, and a bastard’s mouth with cruel, pouting lips. Dark eyes emerged under glowering brows.
Mary caught her breath. It was the face of God, and he said, “You get yours, baby. I’ll get mine.”
Jim Morrison’s face was on Gordie’s body. She didn’t know where Gordie was, and she didn’t care. She drew herself toward him, her lips straining for the pouting mouth that had spoken the truth of the ages. “Wow,” she heard him whisper, and then their mouths sealed together.
She felt him slide into her, body and soul. The walls of the room were wet and red, and they pulsed to the music’s drumbeat. She opened her mouth as he drove deeper into her, and a long silver ribbon trailed out that spun up and up. The air was vibrating, and she felt the notes of music prick her flesh like sharp little spikes. His hands were on her, melting into her skin like hot irons. She traced the bars of his ribs with her fingers, and his tongue came out of his face like a battering ram and tore up through the roof of her mouth to lick her brain.
His power split her, tearing her atoms asunder. He was burrowing into her as if he wanted to curl up inside her scarred belly. She saw his face again, amid a blaze of yellows and reds like a universe aflame. It was changing, melting, re-forming. Long sandy-blond hair replaced the wavy brown, and fierce blue eyes rimmed with green pushed God’s eyes out of their sockets. The nose lengthened, the chin became sharper, like a spear’s tip. A blond beard erupted from the cheeks and merged into a mustache. The mouth spoke in a gasp of need: “I want you. I want you. I want you.”
It was him. After all this time. Lord Jack, here with her where he belonged.
She felt her heart pound and writhe, about to tear itself loose from its red roots. Lord Jack’s beautiful face was above her, his eyes glowing like the sun on a tropical sea, and when she kissed him she heard the saliva hiss in their mouths like oil on a hot grill. He was filling her up, making her belly bulge. She clung to him as God sang for them. Then she was above him, grasping his stony flesh. The veins moved like worms below pale earth, and her mouth found velvet. She seized him deep, heard him groan like distant thunder, and she held him there as he twisted and drove beneath her. Then she drew back as Lord Jack convulsed and beads of moisture shivered on the flat plates of his stomach, and she watched him explode into the silver-streaked air.
He released babies: tiny, perfectly formed babies, curled-up and pink. Hundreds of them, floating like delicate pods from a wondrous flower. She grabbed at them, but they dissolved in her grip and trickled down her fingers. It was important that she catch them. Vitally important. If she did not hold at least one of them, Lord Jack wouldn’t love her anymore. The babies glistened on her fingers and melted down her palms, and as she frantically tried to save at least one, she saw Lord Jack’s hard flesh shrivel and withdraw. The sight terrified her. “I’ll save one!” she said. Her voice crashed in her ears. “I swear, I’ll save one! Okay? Okay?”
Lord Jack didn’t answer. He lay on his back, on a field of tortured white, and she could see his skinny chest rising and falling like a weak bellows.
She looked at her hands. There was blood on them: dark red and thick.
She felt a sudden stabbing pain. She looked at her belly, and saw the scars ripping open and something reddish-black and hideous oozing through.
The blood was streaming from her in torrents, washing over the barren field. She heard her voice scream: “NO!” Lord Jack tried to sit up, and she caught a glimpse of his face: not Lord Jack anymore, but the pallid face of a stranger. “NO! NO!” Mary screamed. The stranger made a gasping, groaning noise and fell back again. She looked around, the red walls quivering and the music flaying her ears. She saw an open door and beyond it a toilet. The bathroom! she thought as her mind lurched toward reality. Bad trip! Bad trip!
She scrambled up, flooding blood from the widening wounds in her belly, and groped toward the bathroom. Her legs were rubbery, and her foot caught in a tangle of sheet. She fell, making the record skip as she hit. She couldn’t stand up, and she gritted her teeth together and crawled toward the bathroom in a tide of blood.
Pulling herself across the tiles, she felt the madness beating in her brain like the wings of ravens. She gripped the edge of the bathtub with crimson fingers and hauled herself over into it. She wrenched on the tap; the showerhead erupted, stabbing her skin with cold water. Then she curled up beneath the flow, her body shivering and convulsing. Her teeth chattered, the blood flowing away down the drain, down the drain, down the drain drain drain…
Bad trip, she thought. Oh…bad fucking trip…
Mary Terror placed her hand against the scars. They had closed up again. The water was no longer red as it flowed away. Flowers were growing from the walls of the shower stall, but they were white and coated with ice. Mary drew her knees up against her chin and shivered in the chill. Dark batlike things spun around in the shower for a moment, and then they were caught in the spray and they, too, went down the drain. Mary offered her face to the water, and it flowed into her eyes, mouth, and through her hair.
She turned off the tap and sat in the tub. Her teeth clicked like dice. I’m all right, she told herself. Coming out of it now. I’m all right. The flowers on the walls were wilting, and after a while they fluttered down into the tub around her and vanished like soap bubbles. She closed her eyes and thought of her new baby, waiting in the closet to be born. What would she name him? Jack, she decided. There had been many Jacks, and many Jims, Robbys, Rays, and Johns, after God and his band. This one would be the best Jack of all, and look just like his old man.
When she could, she stood up. Still shaky. Hold on, wait a minute. She got out of the tub, pulled a towel off the rack, and dried herself. Little squiggly things squirmed on th
e bathroom’s walls like Day-Glo paisley amoebas. She was coming out of it, though, and she was going to be all right. She staggered into the bedroom, feeling her way along the wall. The music had stopped, and the needle was ticking against the record’s label. Who was that sprawled in the bed? She knew his name, but it wouldn’t come to her. Something with a G. Oh, right: Gordie. Her brain felt fried, and she could feel the little quivers of nerves and muscles in her face. The inside of her mouth tasted ratty. She walked toward the kitchen, her hands clinging to the walls and her knees still in jeopardy of folding, but she made it without going down.
In the kitchen, her vision began to go dark around the edges, as if she were peering into a tunnel. She opened the freezer and rubbed her face and eye sockets with ice cubes, and slowly her vision cleared up again. She got a beer from the fridge, popped the tab, and took a long, deep drink. Zigzagged blue and red lightning bolts played around her for a few seconds, as if she were standing at the center of a laser show. Then they faded, and Mary finished her beer and put the can aside. She felt the scars on her belly. Still stitched up tight, but damn, that had scared the hell out of her. It had happened a couple of times before, during other bad trips, and it always seemed so real even when she knew it wasn’t. She missed her baby. It was time to get Gordie out of here so she could give birth.
The Rolling Stone was still on the countertop where she’d left it, the Bangles on its cover. She got the last beer from the fridge and started in on it, her mouth like a dustbowl. Then, by force of habit, Mary turned to the classified ads section at the back of the Stone. She looked at what was for sale: Bon Jovi T-shirts, Wayfarer sunglasses, Spuds MacKenzie posters, Max Headroom masks, and the like. Her gaze ticked to the section of personal messages.
We Love You, Robert Palmer. Linda and Terri, Your Greatest Fans.
Need Ride, Amherst MA. to Ft. Lauderdale FL. 2/9, willing to share all expenses. Call after 6 p.m. 413-555-1292, Greg.