The Little Men (6 page)

“Pilot light. Damn near took the roof off,”
one of the patrolman said. “The kitchen looks
like the Blitz. But only one scorched, inside.
The girl. Or what's left of her. Could've been
much worse.”

“That's always true,” the detective said, a
billow of smoke making them both cover
their faces.

Another officer approached him.

“Detective Noble, we talked to the pair next
door,” he said. “They said they warned the girl
not to go back inside. But she'd been drinking
all day, saying crazy things.”

“How's the landlady?”

“Hospital.”

Noble nodded. “We're done.”

It was close to two. But he didn't want to go
home yet. It was a long drive to Eagle Rock
anyway.

And the smell, and what he'd seen in that
kitchen—he didn't want to go home yet.

At the top of the road, he saw the bar, its
bright lights beckoning.

The Carnival Tavern, the one with the roof
shaped like a big top.

Life is a carnival
, he said to himself, which
is what the detective might say, wryly, in the
books his wife loved to read.

He couldn't believe it was still there. He remembered
it from before the war. When he
used to date that usherette at the Hollywood
Bowl.

A quick jerk to the wheel and he was pulling
into its small lot, those crazy clown lanterns he
remembered from all those years ago.

Inside, everything was warm and inviting,
even if the waitress had a sour look.

“Last call,” she said, leaving him his rye.
“We close in ten minutes.”

“I just need to make a quick call,” he said.

He stepped into one of the telephone
booths in the back, pulling the accordion door
shut behind him.

“Yes, I have that one,” his wife replied, stifling
a yawn. “But it's not a dirty book.”

Then she laughed a little in a way that
made him bristle.

“So what kind of book is it?” he asked.

“Books mean different things to different
people,” she said. She was always saying stuff
like that, just to show him how smart she was.

“You know what I mean,” he said.

She was silent for several seconds. He
thought he could hear someone crying,
maybe one of the kids.

“It's a mystery,” she said, finally. “Not your
kind. No one even dies.”

“Okay,” he said. He wasn't sure what he'd
wanted to hear. “I'll be home soon.”

“It's a love story, too,” she said, almost a
whisper, strangely sad. “Not your kind.”

After he hung up, he ordered a beer, the
night's last tug from the bartender's tap.

Sitting by the picture window, he looked
down into the canyon, and up to the Hollywood
sign. Everything about the moment felt
familiar. He'd worked this precinct for twenty
years, minus three to Uncle Sam, so even the
surprises were the same.

He thought about the girl, about her at the
station. Her nervous legs, that worn dress of
hers, the plea in her voice.

Someone should think of her for a minute,
shouldn't they?

He looked at his watch. Two a.m. But she
won't see her little men tonight.

A busboy with a pencil moustache came
over with a long stick. One by one, he turned
all the dingy lanterns that hung in the window.
The painted clowns faced the canyon
now. Closing time.

“Don't miss me too much,” he told the sour
waitress as he left.

In the parking lot, looking down into the
canyon, he noticed he could see the Canyon
Arms, the smoke still settling on the bungalow's
shell, black as a mussel. Her bedroom
window, glass blown out, curtains shuddering
in the night breeze.

He was just about to get in his car when he
saw them. The little men.

They were dancing across the hood of his
car, the canyon beneath him.

Turning, he looked up at the bar, the
lanterns in the window, spinning, sending
their dancing clowns across the canyon, across
the Canyon Arms, everywhere.

He took a breath.

“That happens every night?” he asked the
busboy as the young man hustled down the
stairs into the parking lot.

Pausing, the busboy followed his gaze, then
nodded.

“Every night,” he said. “Like a dream.”

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2015 by Megan Abbott

Cover design by Kat Lee

978-1-5040-1911-8

Published in 2015 by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
345 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
www.mysteriouspress.com
www.openroadmedia.com