Deathbird Stories (21 page)

It was November in Los Angeles, near sundown, and unaccountably chill even for the fall in that place always near the sun. He came down the sidewalk and stopped in front of the place. It was gothic hideous, with the grass half-cut and the rusted lawnmower sitting in the middle of an unfinished swath. Grass cut as if a placating gesture to the outraged tenants of the two lanai apartment houses that loomed over that squat structure on either side. (Yet how strange...the apartment buildings were taller, the old house hunched down between them, but
it
seemed to dominate
them.
How odd. )

Cardboard covered the upstairs windows.

A baby carriage was overturned on the front walk.

The front door was ornately carved.

Darkness seemed to breathe heavily.

Rudy shifted the duffel bag slightly on his shoulder. He was afraid of the house. He was breathing more heavily as he stood there, and a panic he could never have described tightened the fat muscles on either side of his shoulderblades. He looked up into the corners of the darkening sky, seeking a way out, but he could only go forward. Kristina was in there.

Another girl answered the door.

She looked at him without speaking, her long blonde hair half-obscuring her face; peering out from inside the veil of Clairol and dirt.

When he asked a second time for Kris, she wet her lips in the corners, and a tic made her cheek jump. Rudy set down the duffel bag with a whump. “Kris, please,” he said urgently.

The blonde girl turned away and walked back into the dim hallways of the terrible old house. Rudy stood in the open doorway, and suddenly, as if the blonde girl had been a barrier to it, and her departure had released it, he was assaulted, like a smack in the face, by a wall of pungent scent. It was marijuana.

He reflexively inhaled, and his head reeled. He took a step back, into the last inches of sunlight coming over the lanai apartment building, and then it was gone, and he was still buzzing, and moved forward, dragging the duffel bag behind him.

He did not remember closing the front door, but when he looked, some time later, it was closed behind him.

He found Kris on the third floor, lying against the wall of a dark closet, her left hand stroking a faded pink rag rabbit, her right hand at her mouth, the little finger crooked, the thumb-ring roach holder half-obscured as she sucked up the last wonders of the joint. The closet held an infinitude of odors—dirty sweat socks as pungent as stew, fleece jackets on which the rain had dried to mildew, a mop gracious with its scent of old dust hardened to dirt, the overriding weed smell of what she had been at for no one knew how long—and it held her. As pretty as pretty could be.

“Kris?”

Slowly, her head came up, and she saw him. Much later, she tracked and focused and she began to cry. “Go away.”

In the limpid silences of the whispering house, back and above him in the darkness, Rudy heard the sudden sound of leather wings beating furiously for a second, then nothing.

Rudy crouched down beside her, his heart grown twice its size in his chest. He wanted so desperately to reach her, to talk to her. “Kris...please...” She turned her head away, and with the hand that had been stroking the rabbit she slapped at him awkwardly, missing him.

For an instant, Rudy could have sworn he heard the sound of someone counting heavy gold pieces, somewhere off to his right, down a passageway of the third floor. But when he half-turned, and looked out through the closet door, and tried to focus his hearing on it, there was no sound to home in on.

Kris was trying to crawl back farther into the closet. She was trying to smile.

He turned back, on hands and knees and he moved into the closet after her.

“The rabbit,” she said, languorously. “You’re crushing the rabbit.” He looked down, his right knee was lying on the soft matted-fur head of the pink rabbit. He pulled it out from under his knee and threw it into a corner of the closet. She looked at him with disgust. “You haven’t changed, Rudy. Go away.”

“I’m outta the army, Kris,” Rudy said gently. “They let me out on a medical. I want you to come back, Kris, please.”

She would not listen, but pulled herself away from him, deep into the closet, and closed her eyes. He moved his lips several times, as though trying to recall words he had already spoken, but there was no sound, and he lit a cigarette, and sat in the open doorway of the closet, smoking and waiting for her to come back to him. He had waited eight months for her to come back to him, since he had been inducted and she had written him telling him,
Rudy, I’m going to live with Jonah at The Hill.

There was the sound of something very tiny, lurking in the infinitely black shadow where the top step of the stairs from the second floor met the landing. I t giggled in a glass harpsichord trilling. Rudy knew it was giggling at
him,
but he could make no movement from that corner.

Kris opened her eyes and stared at him with distaste. “Why did you come here?”

“Because we’re gonna be married.”

“Get out of here.”

“I love you, Kris. Please.” She kicked out at him. It didn’t hurt, but it was meant to. He backed out of the closet slowly.

Jonah was down in the living room. The blonde girl who had answered the door was trying to get his pants off him. He kept shaking his head no, and trying to fend her off with a weak-wristed hand. The record player under the brick-and-board bookshelves was playing Simon & Garfunkel, “The Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine.”

“Melting,” Jonah said gently. “Melting,” and he pointed toward the big, foggy mirror over the fireplace mantel. The fireplace was crammed with unburned wax milk cartons, candy bar wrappers, newspapers from the underground press, and kitty litter. The mirror was dim and chill.
“Melting!”
Jonah yelled suddenly, covering his eyes.

“Oh shit!” the blonde girl said, and threw him down, giving up at last. She came toward Rudy.

“What’s wrong with him?” Rudy asked.

“He’s freaking out again. Christ, what a drag he can be.”

“Yeah, but what’s
happening
to him?”

She shrugged. “He sees his face melting, that’s what he says.”

“Is he on marijuana?”

The blonde girl looked at him with sudden distrust. “Mari—? Hey, who
are
you?”

“I’m a friend of Kris’s.”

The blonde girl assayed him for a moment more, then by the way her shoulders dropped and her posture relaxed, she accepted him. “I thought you might’ve just walked in, you know, maybe the Laws. You know?”

There was a Middle Earth poster on the wall behind her, with its brightness faded in a long straight swath where the sun caught it every morning. He looked around uneasily. He didn’t know what to do.

“I was supposed to marry Kris. Eight months ago,” he said.

“You want to fuck?” asked the blonde girl. “When Jonah trips he turns off. I been drinking Coca-Cola all morning and all day, and I’m really horny.”

Another record dropped onto the turntable and Stevie Wonder blew hard into his harmonica and started singing, “I Was Born to Love Her.”

“I was engaged to Kris,” Rudy said, feeling sad. “We was going to be married when I got out of basic. But she decided to come over here with Jonah, and I didn’t want to push her. So I waited eight months, but I’m out of the army now. “

“Well,
do
you or
don’t
you?”

Under the dining room table. She put a satin pillow under her. It said:
Souvenir of Niagara Falls. New York.

When he went back into the living room, Jonah was sitting up on the sofa, reading Hesse’s
Magister Ludi.

“Jonah?” Rudy said. Jonah looked up. It took him a while to recognize Rudy.

When he did, he patted the sofa beside him, and Rudy came and sat down.

“Hey, Rudy, where y’been?”

“I’ve been in the army.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah, it was awful.”

“You out now? I mean for good?”

Rudy nodded. “Uh-huh. Medical.”

“Hey, that’s good.”

They sat quietly for a while. Jonah started to nod, and then said to himself, “You’re not very tired.”

Rudy said, “Jonah, hey listen, what’s the story with Kris? You know, we were supposed to get married about eight months ago.”

“She’s around someplace,” Jonah answered.

Out of the kitchen, through the dining room where the blonde girl lay sleeping under the table, came the sound of something wild, tearing at meat. It went on for a long time, but Rudy was looking out the front window, the big bay window. There was a man in a dark gray suit standing talking to two policemen on the sidewalk at the edge of the front walk leading up to the front door. He was pointing at the big, old house.

“Jonah, can Kris come away now?”

Jonah looked angry. “Hey, listen, man, nobody’s keeping her here. She’s been grooving with all of us and she likes it. Go ask her. Christ, don’t bug me!”

The two cops were walking up to the front door.

Rudy got up and went to answer the doorbell.

They smiled at him when they saw his uniform.

“May I help you?” Rudy asked them.

The first cop said, “Do you live here?”

“Yes,” said Rudy. “My name is Rudolph Boekel. May I help you?”

“We’d like to come inside and talk to you.”

“Do you have a search warrant?”

“We don’t want to search, we only want to talk to you. Are you in the army?”

“Just discharged. I came home to see my family.”

“Can we come in?”

“No, sir.”

The second cop looked troubled, “Is this the place they call ‘The Hill’?”

“Who?” Rudy asked, looking perplexed.

“Well, the neighbors said this was ‘The Hill’ and there were some pretty wild parties going on here. “

“Do you hear any partying?”

The cops looked at each other. Rudy added, “It’s always very quiet here. My mother is dying of cancer of the stomach.”

They let Rudy move in, because he was able to talk to people who came to the door from the outside. Aside from Rudy, who went out to get food, and the weekly trips to the unemployment line, no one left The Hill. It was usually very quiet.

Except sometimes there was a sound of growling in the back hall leading up to what had been a maid’s room; and the splashing from the basement, the sound of wet things on bricks.

It was a self-contained little universe, bordered on the north by acid and mescaline, on the south by pot and peyote, on the east by speed and redballs, on the west by downers and amphetamines. There were eleven people living in The Hill. Eleven, and Rudy.

He walked through the halls, and sometimes found Kris, who would not talk to him, save once, when she asked him if he’d ever been heavy behind
anything
except love. He didn’t know what to answer her, so he only said, “Please,” and she called him a square and walked off toward the stairway leading to the dormered attic.

Rudy had heard squeaking from the attic. It had sounded to him like the shrieking of mice being tom to pieces. There were cats in the house.