Already Dead: A California Gothic Read Online Free Page A

Traded it to the devil for some bauble.
    An ache had coiled itself around his arm from wrist to shoulder. His perspiration dripped, hissing, onto the hot steel. What were these things in his hands? The anvil rang as he pounded the orange tip of the rein-forcing bar, the kind used in concrete construction, flattening it. What kind of fireplace tool was this? Maybe another knife. A sword. The anvil’s cries were feminine, operatic.
    Was there somewhere another noise? he stilled himself, head hanging, the hammer dangling from his fist—the beating of mighty wings? The future tattering his walls with its beak. Something flared beyond this room, headlights, possibly, stroking the fog. Although many of these sparks and vibes signaled nothing, and most meant less and less as he evened out after those many days and nights spent flying in the talons of a wondrous beast, some sounds were real, some were seeds, blossom-ing into events.
    This one, for instance, quickly placed: somebody from the barefoot welfare life was in his driveway. That toylike Volkswagen rattle. VW
    vans from the sixties survived in this county inexplicably, like frail kites in an attic. The noise of the little engine stopped.
    He stood at the door of his shop holding the hammer tightly in his right fist, reaching with his left hand to cut the overhead light.
    A small voice cried Help! when the light went out.
    “What do you want?” he asked loudly, and in the dark moved away from where he’d just let himself be heard.
    “I can’t see—and so I want to see!” A woman—one with a foreign accent. “Please light your door for me or I can’t take one step or I’m going to fall.”
    By the uncharted logic of his wars, anybody openly approaching had to be neutral, and he flipped the switch again.
    “Thank you, yes!” Who was this turning up out of the foggy dark?
    She came at him at a kind of diagonal, like a little dog. “I was just driving by,” she said, “and I saw you. I saw you glowing.” He recognized her now. The Iron Curtain chick—immigrant from Already Dead / 17

    the tortured lands. Skinny, devoutly New Tribe—ethereal, yes. She had a beautiful face. She wore a white turban on her head.
    Once or twice, but not lately, he’d dealt with her. The van she’d driven up in would be the Sheep Queen’s.
    She looked a little wrecked, her mascara descending in streaks. Maybe she’d come from a party, left suddenly after a disastrous scene. Mussed and tearful. She was appealing like that. He wanted to participate in her fugitive chemistry.
    “Oh my God,” she said, “you’re beautiful! Sweating, half naked, torn clothing!”
    “Yeah? Maybe I should tear your clothes, too.” He hadn’t wanted anybody since Yvonne.
    It was not unprecedented for women to walk up to him like this, right out of the void—his size and power, his rippling beauty. Van Ness had explained it years ago: they were drawn to him exactly as they were drawn to horses standing in the sun.
    “It stinks inside here. This is a bad pollution,” she said, although she was smiling.
    “It’s sulfur smoke.” He sensed no need for delay. “I think I’ll rinse off in the hot tub,” he said, and took off his shorts. He was wearing only his big work boots now, his Wolverines.
    “There’s no fat,” she said. “Your physique is perfect.” Her clinical tone was a disappointment. “Why are you here?”
    “I heard it’s no more Yvonne. You’re lonesome.” She took a step in his direction, and he thought he might as well lift her up and hold her against him so they were face-to-face.
    “Are these silk?” he asked, fingering the waist of her baggy slacks.
    Wagging her feet, she kicked off her thongs. “They’re silk from India,” she said, and kissed him very softly. Her second kiss was ardent, needy.
    He tasted lemon and tequila.
    “Yeah,” he said, “your name’s Melissa. I kind of remember us getting it on one time last winter, at the hot springs.”
    “And