Los Angeles (27 page)

I thought of Angela inside the crematorium, her body bursting into flames.

I had been wrong. She hadn’t called from the dark — she had called from the light.

From the light.

And the pain I heard in her voice was the pain of burning.

The light.

Red. Orange. Bright yellow. Burning.

Looking into her face that morning, the morning she stole those hyacinths, I had felt like I was looking into the heart of
light.

I had been looking into the future, I thought now.

And when I drove home from Lester’s funeral parlor, I was shaking.

And when I arrived at San Raphael Crescent, I was still shaking, thinking that I had loved her, had loved Angela, Jessica,
Cassandra, whatever her fucking name was, loved her like I had never loved anyone.

In the apartment, I immediately poured myself a mug of Jack, letting it sting my mouth, letting my tongue go numb first, then
the rest of me. I opened the childproof cap of the apricot-colored plastic bottle of Hapistat, still quivering, vibrating
like an old man with delirium tremens in complete alcoholic withdrawal, and in full knowledge of the fact that no amount of
Inderol or Xanax or Elavil could ever make me stop shaking.

Pure happiness — that’s what I needed.

Hapistat.

My ears filled with blood and all I could hear was a rushing sound like heavy waves senselessly attacking a beach, a silence
filling the universe, an emptiness far beyond my powers to describe it.

I ate a whole handful of the dry little pills.

Happy, happy Hapistat.

The worst thing, Frank had said.

And this was worse, far worse than anything I could have seen in any nightmare.

I grabbed the bottle of Jack and the little plastic container of meds, got back into the Cadillac, and drove, riding through
the city — my city, Los Angeles. I experienced a migraine like never before, my brain going supernova. I welcomed it, pulling
over every now and then to puke into the gutter, drinking another swallow of bourbon, taking another tab of Hapistat, or two,
repeating this process continually until the sun was fully up, blaring down like the angry eye of God Himself.

Finally, I pulled over to the side of the road in Malibu and closed my eyes, imagining the unimaginable.

______

She stepped out of the back door of the Velvet Mask, having changed into a pair of jeans, an old ImmanuelKantLern T-shirt,
and high leather boots. Lester had been waiting under that firefly-yellow bulb. It was late, almost morning, and he was smoking
his customary joint, inhaling the whole thing in a few swift hits.

“Save me a toke,” she begged.

I imagined that he smiled his little-boy smile and handed her the roach. She took it between her thumb and middle finger and
smoked what was left, inhaling expertly, deeply. He always had the best shit, she thought. “Will you
fucking
come with me?” Lester’s voice was soft, girlish. He flashed his glittery tooth. There was something about it that persuaded
her. Lester had never asked Angela for anything before, and so, she thought tonight, why not? She followed him to the long
black limousine he used to drive mourners to the cemetery. He even held the door open for her. She wasn’t sure what he wanted
but had always been curious about Lester’s life. He had asked earlier, as a matter of fact, approaching the stage while she
was dancing. She had leaned down, naked, and he had whispered a question in her ear, he wanted to show her something, could
she meet with him after they closed?

Why not? she had said, tickling his chin.

Why the
fuck
not?

They pulled out of the Velvet Mask parking lot onto Sunset. “Where are you taking me, Lester?”

He smiled faintly. “I want to show you where the
fuck
I work.”

“The funeral parlor?”

“Yeah.”

He had a soft mustache, the kind you see on the faces of fourteen-year-old kids. Just to be nice, to show a little affection,
she slid across the seat of the limo and leaned against him. “Why do you want me to see your funeral parlor?”

She had placed her bag on the floor by her feet, but she had her cell phone in the pocket of her jeans. It was hard against
the protruding bone of her hip.

“Because,” Lester said, “just because.”

“Do you want to be alone with me?” she teased.

He released a bashful breath and looked away, stopping at a light. He smelled like cigarettes and aftershave, and the skin
of his neck bulged out around the collar of his shirt.

“How come you never wear anything but this crazy old suit?” she asked playfully.

“I have other clothes,” he answered. “It’s just that I’m always
fucking
working.”

“Why do you work so much, Lester?”

“There’s nothing
fucking
else to do.” Finally, he turned into an empty parking lot behind an old, underlit building. He stopped the car and said,
“Stay here.”

Angela waited in her seat while Lester walked the long way around the limo and opened the door for her.

“Oh,” she said, getting out, “a gentleman.”

“It’s inside.”

“What is?”

“What I want to
fucking
show you.”

She got out and Lester closed the door after her. She followed him to the back door of the funeral home. It was covered with
pipes and ducts, a smokestack rising overhead. He opened the door and she stepped in ahead of him. It was just a little room
filled with machinery, a panel of knobs and switches above a desk and chair, the minuscule game of Scrabble laid out on the
desk. Along the wall ran a conveyor belt, and resting on top of the belt was a metal box. She turned around and Lester was
locking the door behind him.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Sorry for what, sweetheart?”

“It’s not
fucking
personal.” He went to the metal box and opened the lid.

“Lester, what are you talking about?”

He came toward her, his huge hands moving so quickly she didn’t have even a second to react. He lifted her, sweeping her off
her feet like a bride at a honeymoon hotel, and carried her toward the box.

“Lester,” she said. She wanted to scream, wanted to say something more, but her voice got caught in her throat. “Lester, please,”
she whispered.
“Please.”

He placed her inside the box, and she clawed at him, leaving a bloody scratch across his face with a sharp, glittery nail.

She started pleading with him, telling him she’d do anything, absolutely anything he wanted if he would only —
stop this.

Then the lid came down.

She was in the dark. She tried to push it open from the inside but it wouldn’t budge. She was still pleading with him. It
was so hard to get a breath. She heard something, a whirring sound, a machine coming into service, the grinding of gears,
then something jerked, and she felt the box moving, sliding inexorably toward its destination. The air was growing warmer,
heating up in the panicked darkness. She had to force herself to think, and that’s when she remembered the cell phone in her
pocket. She reached in and found it, opening it quickly. The greenish liquid crystal light came on and she saw my name,
Angel,
representing the last number she had dialed. She pushed
send,
waiting for it to ring. She didn’t know what she thought she would tell me. She didn’t know how I was supposed to save her,
but I was.

I was supposed to save her.

The box traveled along the rails, continuing, moving steadily along the conveyer into the heart of the oven as her telephone
signal traveled through the air.

“Hello?”

“Angel?”

Click.

Imagine the light, the heart of light, the very center of a hydrogen sun, no reflections, no shielding of your eyes. Angela
felt her eyelids melt away, felt her skin bubble and burn and her flesh reveal itself and the cell phone disintegrate along
with her connection to me, liquefying in her hands, plastic and metal turning to gas, and her hair was burning, on fire, wouldn’t
go out. She felt her bones turn to embers like coals in a bonfire. She was still alive, still alive and burning. She kept
saying my name,
“Angel,”
saying it over and over as if I could save her, as if saying it could save her. She was ash. Her hands were dust. Her eyes
were melted glass. Her bones were coal. Her body was cinder, charcoal, soot. She was black and gray and white, blown into
the corners of the metal cremation box, which tipped now, the ashes of her body cooling, and she was poured into an urn, taken
away in Lester’s arms, held like a bottle and poured out in the weeds behind the parking lot, mingled with the soda cans,
cigarette butts, and fast-food wrappers.

Lester kicked at the ground, spreading her body in the weeds so no one would see her remains, saying,
“Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

Ashes to ashes.

But the truth of Angela, the significance, her soul, had merged with the fire, had become the light.

I came to the conclusion that Angela herself was in a superposition.

Particle or wave?

She was Schrödinger’s girlfriend, I thought, sitting there in my mother’s Cadillac, and I was Schrödinger.

Angela was neither alive nor dead.

And it was up to the observer — it was up to me, Angel Jean-Pierre Veronchek — to determine the outcome.

The light. The
fucking
light.

I had to look into the light.

It had to be decided. Particle or wave? Which would it be?

Alive or dead?

There was only one way to find out. I had to change the outcome, I had to affect the experiment.

I had to open the box.

I had been driving, driving all over the city, the bottle of Jack nestled between my legs, the now-almost-empty bottle of
Hapistat in my shirt pocket.

I looked up from where I had parked and saw Zuma Beach, glorious, golden.

I didn’t even remember driving here. I swallowed the last of the Hapistat and a few more hard gulps of bourbon, pushed the
door of my mother’s Cadillac wide, and swung my powdery legs onto the sticky tar of the parking strip, thinking of the words
on the medication warning label:
increased sensitivity to the sun.

I slipped out of the car like a person getting out of bed, stepping gingerly onto the pebbly road. I removed my sandals, then
my clothes down to my boxers.

The soles of my feet comprehended every unsmooth particle, every bump and nodule. I didn’t bother to close the door behind
me, I simply walked over the grassy embankment that led to the waves. It was one of those zillion-degree afternoons. The sun
was a burning eye staring straight at my head, beating into my retinas, even through the lenses of my asshole glasses. The
sky, like my brain, had gone supernova, a flaming, atomic yellow. But I didn’t give a shit. I was the Little Prince, my white
hair sticking straight up. My eyes were already searing when I slipped my sunglasses off and let them drop onto the sand.
I didn’t know what time it was, but by the light, I thought it might be around two in the afternoon.

What day was this? I asked myself. It must have been a Sunday. What month was it?

July? August?

What year? How old was I?

I didn’t know anymore. I didn’t give a shit anymore.

The beautiful young men and women of Malibu were lying in the sun, their brown bodies glistening with suntan lotion and alpine-spring-water
perspiration. Their children were scampering and cavorting up and down the edge of the water like cartoon mice, running into
the waves and laughing, scurrying back, mock afraid. Somewhere out there, I knew, were dolphins — Melanie had pointed them
out, hadn’t she?— there were happy fucking dolphins swiftly jumping through the waves like these happy human children, wearing
permanent smiles on their permanently smiling sea mammal faces. The sand was dry and hot under my feet, burning, burning.
A woman nearby looked at me and smiled a sunbeam of a smile. She was radiant, resplendent, gleaming. She was a blossoming
flower, a dandelion growing on someone’s front yard. I opened my arms and lifted my face to the glow of the sky and thought
of Angela, the quick flash she must have felt like this, the warmth of the fire against her skin. I could feel it on my shoulders,
my back, the skin of my arms, my face, burning, already burning. Yes.
Orange. Red. Bright yellow. Burning.
Yes, I said to myself, looking into the light. “You’re going to need some of this.” The glistening woman presented a bottle
of sunblock. She had blond hair and wore a yellow one-piece bathing suit. Her skin was permanently damaged, covered in uneven
brown spots, destroyed by decades of solar abuse.

Jesus Christ, she was so happy.

Happy, happy, happy.

No, thanks, Mom,” I said back to her. “I’m trying to get a tan.”

She threw her head back and laughed.

I walked down to the water to get away from the happy, happy woman who reminded me of my mother, letting the acid sand burn
my feet, and finally touched the dampness of the ocean water. It didn’t seem fair — it was cool, wet, a relief— it seemed
wrong that I should feel any solace at all, so I walked back into the scorching sand and let the bottoms of my feet feel just
a taste of what Angela must have felt, the burning, quick flaring into light.

I walked back and forth along the edge of the water, watching the waves roll in and the squealing children run up and down
and their parents taking them by their little arms and pulling them back to the safety of the beach. So this is the light,
I thought. This is the metaphor. This is the all-caps symbol of TRUTH everyone loves so much. I held out my arms and smiled
at a little boy. The light danced off his comically red hair, flashed against a wave and shimmered on the sand. It burned
like a chemical fire. In the distance, it flared off the smooth metallic edges of the cars driving along the Pacific Coast
Highway. The light lay evenly against the lifeless mountains of Malibu Canyon. I thought I could even see the white-peaked
San Gabriels glinting in the distance.