Part 10 (1/2)

Now she hears shuffling and muted curses from the back room. Emerging from their walk-in cooler turned honeymoon suite, Debbie and Joe go rus.h.i.+ng though this cluttered main room and out the Dairy Queen's front door like a pair of paramedics into a shopping mall after an earthquake.

'Jesus Christ, not the p.o.r.no playing cards I just scored!' Gloria hears Deb shout. 'Quick, grab 'em, Joe, they're from the fifties!'

Then she hears another sound. A different sound. It comes from upstairs. Lionel in his garret. Breathing in, she gets up from the couch and pulls her boots on and walks over to the ladder that leads to him and listens.

'I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry,' is what it sounds like he's saying. Over and over.

'Lionel?' she says softly up the ladder. 'Are you okay?'

She listens for a response but nothing comes. Just the creepy broken record above. 'I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry.'

Climbing up the ladder, her leg throbbing, Gloria thinks, He must be dreaming. And when she reaches the top and finds her bearings in this strange little room she stands here looking down at him in his narrow bed and knows it's not a good dream.

'I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I didn't stop them,' mutters the boy, his pale temple wet on the pillow, the sungla.s.ses pinned to his face like a bad joke, Babar kicked to the floor.

'Black Jesus,' she says, lightly touching his foot. 'Wake up, it's just a dream.' When he doesn't stir she shakes him by the leg. 'Rise and s.h.i.+ne, soldier!'

At this he springs up in his bed like a vampire in a B-movie, wrapping his hands around his chest as if it was freezing weather he woke to.

'Who are you?' he asks, his voice remote, brittle.

'It's me. Gloria. You're safe now. It's only a dream.'

'No it's not,' he says and something about the way he says it makes the dancer cold inside. 'Where's my mom?' he says.

'She's outside with Joe. The wind blew the tarp off its poles, things are blowing away.'

'I need my pills.'

Gloria doesn't answer.

'Can you get them for me?' says the boy.

'Are you sure you wanna keep taking those things? They can't be any good for you.'

'What else do I have?'

The stripper doesn't really know how to answer that.

'Please, Gloria.'

'Where are they?'

'Mom keeps 'em by the sink.'

On her way back up the ladder, the pill bottle in her back pocket, climbing with one hand, a gla.s.s of water in the other, Gloria hears Bea Two-Feathers' voice in her head: A fence to keep in the sadness.

So many different kinds of fences, thinks the runaway as she clears the ladder's last rung. White picket. Electric. Barbed wire. Strip pole. Desert camo. Pain meds. Old folks' home. What the f.u.c.k's the difference?

Now they sit side by side on Lionel's bed. In her absence the boy must have reached down and fished around on the floor for Babar because the stuffed elephant joins them now in a tangle of polyester blankets and bed sheets, his droopy gold crown, his white tusks turned a deep grimy yellow with time.

Contrary to the voice in her head, Gloria twists off the hard top and taps out two big pale tablets from the oversized flesh-colored bottle in her hand boasting words like 'OxyContin', '60 MG', 'Keep Out of Reach of Children'.

Then she puts them in his open palm. And he pops them in his mouth. Now she lifts the cool water to his lips and he drinks it down.

Outside in the blowing downpour they hear Debbie yell, 'Hoist it, Joe! Hoist it!' Fat Deb, the batty Ahab of Gay Paris.

'Thank you, Gloria.'

'For what? Feeding you this c.r.a.p?'

'I don't know what else to do,' he says and his voice shakes, his hand shakes.

'I don't either,' she says and takes his cold hand. 'But I'm gonna help you find it.'

'I doubt it.'

'Really. I promise. Enjoy the high while you can. I think I know a way we can put these things to better use.'

When the refrigerator door swings open in the charged silence of this apartment, Ross Klein emerges alien, discolored, wide-eyed and gasping for air like a rescued Han Solo in the Hollywood s.p.a.ce epoch of old.

A few blocks west you can hear Bebop's sad recorder blowing, soft but magnetic in its way. A melody to rock you, to heal you, to bless your life, to curse your fortune and blow you away. A little something to set you on your feet again, to lighten your load, to trick you into thinking that maybe you know what love means. A song to dazzle. One to spark a forest fire.

Standing here naked in his big vacant flat the critic catches his breath and has a last look around. The black sofa, the empty bed. The gleaming baseball bat in the corner. The silent record collection built into the wall. His German headphones. The bathroom door wide open, the dark mirror therein, the sink dripping slow, counting its own eerie time. And the drawn window shades at the far end of the s.p.a.ce, a thin crack of light through the one Tracy was known to stand at singing songs she wrote that no one hears.

Now he turns back to the sculpture he built while she slept. The figure. Its milk-carton head leaning coy and childlike atop its bent shoulders. Its lunchmeat-drawer hips c.o.c.ked in a way that might suggest the thing was hungry to strike up a jig. Its egg-rack feet at the ready. Its thin steel arms reaching.

Reaching for what?

Maybe for the thing we're all reaching for. That big feeling. The one we can't put our finger on, can't say its name.

Joy.

Love.

A clean conscience.

A cure for emptiness.

A warm putty to fill in all the holes that gape.

These things might approach it. But we reach for more. It's got to be out there. It just has to be.

Free nights and weekends.

Diet pill.

Radical cleric.

Get rid of worry lines.