Scott’s motorcycle had been found under the rubble by the Caveat east garage, not far from where the bodies of Ferdalisi and Claimayne had eventually been discovered.
Scott shook his head, recalling their ride up the L.A. River embankment. “I think I’ve used up my luck on bikes. I’ll wash the windshield first thing tomorrow.”
“The whole car could use it.”
“The whole car,” he agreed.
Claimayne’s gun had been found too, and an autopsy had revealed a .38 caliber bullet in Ferdalisi’s abdominal aorta; Scott had been questioned because of the location of his motorcycle, but his explanation that he had parked it by the garage on the previous day in order to work on it over the weekend appeared to have stood up.
“If escrow closes,” Ariel went on. “They could have put a better name on the parcel than Caveat.”
Scott nodded—every prospective buyer had seemed to flinch at the implicit Emptor after Caveat. “The actual full inscription wouldn’t have been much more attractive.”
“Scarier, really.”
Scott had told Ariel that the words on the stone lintel above the Caveat front door had originally been Caveat Progenies, and she had looked it up and found that the Latin phrase meant Let future generations beware.
She steered left on Hayworth, and in the lengthening shadows they could see through the windshield again, and soon she steered the car up the driveway of the Ravenna Apartments parking lot and braked to a halt in the space marked Reserved.
Scott hefted the bag from Greenblatt’s Deli as he climbed out. “The sandwiches smell great,” he admitted. He had suggested the Cactus Taqueria on Vine.
“They’re the best submarine sandwiches in the world,” Ariel said. “Aunt Amity used to bring them home. Her office was just a couple of blocks west of Greenblatt’s.”
Scott waved at Ellis in the lighted office as he led the way to the stairs. “I remember,” he said as they started up. “Right across the street was where I bought my bottle of bourbon.”
Tapping up the steps beside him, she asked, “Do you miss it? Drink?”
“It’s been nearly a month since my . . . brief relapse,” he said, “and I hadn’t touched any for more than a year before that. No, I still have dreams about it, but I don’t miss it.” He looked at her and raised his eyebrows.
Ariel shrugged and shook her head. “I had four years clean before my relapse—and my vice doesn’t even exist anymore.”
As he stepped up onto the green-painted cement second-floor walkway, Scott said, “Where do you want to eat?”
“Your place,” she said. “I want to see that obit.”
“If you subscribed, you’d have seen it this morning.”
“Why should I subscribe when my next-door neighbor does?”
Scott walked past her door to the door of his own apartment, digging in his pocket for his keys. He unlocked the door and swung it open for her, and as he walked in after her and closed it and switched on the lights, he said, “To drink?”
He had assured her that it didn’t bother him when people around him drank alcohol, and he had even bought a couple of bottles of Ravenswood zinfandel to have on hand for her, but she said, “Coffee will be fine,” as she crossed the carpeted living room to the kitchen and sat down at the little table.
“Coming up.” Scott followed her and got a can of ground coffee out of the refrigerator and began measuring spoonfuls into the coffeemaker on the counter.
He opened the refrigerator again to get a carton of milk, and he set it and a bowl of sugar cubes on the table. Ariel had already picked up the LATEXTRA section of the Los Angeles Times.
Scott took it from her, folded it to the obituary page, and handed it back. He tapped one of the names.
“‘Adrian Ostriker, 83,’” Ariel read, “‘passed away in early January at his Laurel Canyon home. Ostriker had been an actor, most recently in Empire of the Ants (1977), though he was best known for his role in Paradise Alley (1962). He also appeared in many television series, such as The Legend of Jesse James and The Guns of Will Sonnett. Ostriker was cremated.’”
Ariel looked up. “Same guy?”
“Laurel Canyon. Unusual name.”
“I remember talking to him when he was between names.” She sat back. “I’ve got to say he looked real good for eighty-three.”
“God knows how old he really was. He married our aunt in 1921. I think it caught up to him when the spiders stopped working. Like Dorian Gray when his picture got burned up.”
He glanced at the canvas propped on an easel in the living room below a glowing track light, but the coffeemaker started bubbling and hissing, and he turned to open the cabinet and take down the two coffee cups and set them on the table.
Ariel took hold of a lot of the sugar cubes in her fist, then opened her hand and let them fall back into the bowl. She picked up one to drop into her coffee and gave him a wistful smile. “Gotta let go or be trapped.”
Scott nodded, mystified. “I suppose so.”
He poured coffee into the cups and sat down across from her.
“Claimayne’s gone now,” she said. “I lived at Caveat with him ever since my parents both died when I was seven, and he was fifteen.” She stirred her coffee. “I always wondered . . .” she went on hesitantly, then shook her head. “But my parents were amateur mycologists, and they were careless in a lot of things—and he really didn’t like mushrooms. Luckily for me I didn’t either.”
After a pause, “Good God,” Scott whispered. “You think he—?”
“Maybe not.” She shrugged. “Everybody’s dead, we’ll never know.”
Scott tried to recall the event, but he had only been ten years old and had never met Ariel’s parents. All he remembered of them, and that vaguely, was the funeral. Fifteen-year-old Claimayne had worn a tie, he recalled. Afterward, adults had reminded young Scott not to eat mushrooms he found in the yard.
Now Ariel had turned to look at the canvas, and she got up and crossed the living room to stand in front of it. Scott followed and stood next to her.
It was a painting of Madeline and Valentino descending the stairs at Caveat; Valentino was an anonymous figure looking away, but Madeline’s face was turned back toward the viewer, lit by the antique sun that had been shining through the impossible open door to the side. Her expression was wistful, but Scott’s brush had also caught the glow of glad anticipation in her eyes.
Like I was walking into Narnia . . .
“You caught her perfectly,” said Ariel after a moment. “She’s happy.”
Scott shrugged. “I hope so. I hope they don’t find her under the rubble.” Beside the scare-bat, he thought, clinging to the grave marker of her foolish parents.
Ariel gripped his arm. “I was there, in real time. She got out. You know she did.”
He exhaled and gave her a smile. “I do know it.”
If there is a frail spirit buried down there, he thought, huddled in mingled love and resentment next to their makeshift grave, may it be the cast-off, always backward-looking ghost of my old self.
Scott stepped past Ariel to the window and pulled back the curtain.
Outside under the sunset glow the lights would be coming on in Beverly Hills and Westwood and way out along the coast in Malibu, and he thought of all the lights in Los Angeles, from the hills of Griffith Park to the docks in San Pedro, from LAX airport east to the 605 Freeway, and he wondered if every single one of those million lights could be reached from now—if there might not be one where Madeline stood looking out over a very different Los Angeles, thinking of him.
But the sky was dimming behind the palm trees, and the coffee was steaming in the cups on the table. He took Ariel’s arm and led her back to the kitchen.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
TIM POWERS is the author of numerous novels including Last Call, Declare, Three Days to Never, and On Stranger Tides. Powers lives in San Bernardino, California.
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ALSO BY TIM POWERS
Hide Me Among the Graves
Three Days to Never
Declare
Earthquake Weather
Expiration Date
Last Call
The Stress of Her Regard
On Stranger Tides
Dinner at the Deviant’s Palace
The Anubis Gates
The Drawing of the Dark
An Epitaph in Rust
The Skies Discrowned
CREDITS
Cover design by James Iacobelli
Cover photographs: © Bob Stefko / Getty Images (Hollywood sign); © Hong Li / Getty Images (web); © Shutterstock (vines and trees)
COPYRIGHT
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
MEDUSA’S WEB. Copyright © 2015 by Tim Powers. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
EPub Edition January 2016 ISBN 9780062262493
ISBN 978-0-06-226245-5
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