Hymn (29 page)

Waldo waited until he had closed the door behind Angie, the last waitress to leave, and seen her safely across the sidewalk to her boyfriend's Corvette. Then he turned the key in the door, shot the bolts, and turned around the American Express placard that said CLOSED. He walked back across the darkened restaurant, between the tables set with fresh napkins and softly gleaming cutlery, and opened the sliding door that led out on to the balcony.

All around him, the lights of La Jolla glittered in the warm night wind, and the sea fussed and phosphoresced on the rocks of the cove. He had rescued a third of a bottle of Barossa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon from a party of elderly ladies who had got too giggly to finish it all, and he poured himself a glass and leaned on the wooden rail and took a deep breath of ocean air.

Although he wouldn't have presumed to usurp Lloyd's authority, he was beginning to enjoy the responsibility and the rewards of running the Original Fish Depot on his own. He had managed to keep the place busy and lively, and he had allowed Louis a free hand to try dozens of new fish dishes, including a spectacularly successful brill with oysters.

He had also become much more cheerful and sociable, and as his confidence had increased, his French accent had become less and less exaggerated—until, as Louis had remarked, he was practically speaking English.

He sipped the sauvignon and rolled it around his tongue. It wasn't quite cold enough but that didn't matter. He was enjoying the night too much.

He had been out on the deck for only a few minutes when he became aware that the seagulls were crying. He had never heard them cry in the dark before. He sensed a disturbance in the wind, an anxiety in the seething of the surf. He stood up straight and listened, and he was sure that he could hear somebody calling his name.

Waldo, don't run too far, don't run too fast! Grandpa is coming, Waldo. Grandpa is coming!

‘Grandpa?' he said, out loud. Then he shook his head, and smiled at his own stupidity. He must be really tired to imagine that he had heard his grandpa. ‘Finish your wine and lock up for the night . . . and get yourself some sleep,' he told himself, trying to sound the way his grandpa used to sound.

He turned, and shouted out loud in shock. Standing in the shadows at the end of the deck was a black figure with a pale face and dark glasses. A figure that stood and watched him and said nothing at all.

‘Who are you?' Waldo cried out, his throat tight. ‘This is private property. A private restaurant. Nobody is allowed here.'

The figure stepped forward, into the dim light that shone through the restaurant from the half-open kitchen door.

‘Not even the owner's fiancée?' she said, with a grey-lipped smile.

Waldo shuddered, and made an odd noise through his nose that sounded like hnyuh! The figure stepped closer still, so that Waldo could see himself reflected in her glasses, and the air was strong with the aroma of heated metal.

‘I'm looking for Lloyd,' she said, very quietly.

Waldo breathed with terrified heaviness, and he could feel his heart racing and plunging like a surfer trying to paddle out beyond the incoming waves.

‘I am having a nightmare about you,' he told her. ‘I am asleep, and you have come out of my dream. You must go away.'

‘Waldo,' Celia insisted, ‘I'm looking for Lloyd. I have to find him, before it's too late.'

She came a fraction closer, and Waldo screamed and lifted his arm to protect himself. ‘You must go away! You are absolutely dead!' He stumbled back against one of the chairs and had to snatch at the wooden rail to stop himself from falling. ‘Go away! Go away!'

‘How can I be dead, Waldo, when I'm right here in front of your eyes?'

Waldo had retreated right to the end of the balcony, and his back was pressed against the rail. He glanced quickly behind him, and it was a long drop down to the concrete footpath below. ‘Oh God help me, oh God help me!' he muttered.

Celia pushed aside the chair that Waldo had toppled over and came after him. The smell of heated metal seemed even more pungent, and Waldo coughed.

‘What do you want?' he asked her. ‘What do you want? You're a dead person, what do you want?'

‘Waldo, I'm not dead. This is me. This is Celia.'

‘But you're hot! I can feel it! You're hot!'

‘Waldo, my earthly body burned but my soul survived. You mustn't be frightened of my soul! It's still me, it's still the same Celia!'

‘Don't touch me!' shouted Waldo.

‘I'm not going to touch you.'

‘Then what do you want?'

Celia took off her dark glasses. In the shadows of the balcony, her eyes appeared to Waldo to be extraordinarily dark. More like pits than eyes. More like holes. He felt that he could see right inside the blackness of her head.

‘Waldo—I have to know where Lloyd is, that's all.'

‘He's not at home?' Waldo quaked.

‘Don't take me for a fool, Waldo. We both know that the house burned down.'

‘Well, I don't know,' said Waldo. ‘He doesn't tell me nothing.'

‘You're running the restaurant. You're in charge of his pride and joy. You must know where he is.'

‘Ms Williams—I swear—I don't have no idea.'

Celia unbuttoned her glove, and rolled it up. She tucked it into her raincoat pocket. Then, without warning, she snatched hold of Waldo's hand, and squeezed it tightly. Waldo shouted out, ‘Hey!' and shook his arm violently, to break free of her. But Celia clung on, and her fingers weren't only tenacious but burning hot.

‘Hey, you're hot, you're hot, you're burning my hand!' Waldo shouted out. ‘Get off me, go away!'

‘Where's Lloyd, Waldo? I have to know!'

‘I don't know where he is. I swear it! He went away and he didn't tell me where he was going! He did it on purpose, in case somebody should find out. I didn't know it was you!'

‘Waldo—I don't believe a word of it. Lloyd is one of those careful, careful men who never leaves anything to chance. He doesn't leave his restaurant to chance, he doesn't leave his house to chance, he doesn't leave his life to chance. But here's some unpredictability, Waldo. Here's a bit of improvisation. If you don't tell me where he is, I'm going to set fire to you.'

Gasping, Waldo tried to pull his hand away from Celia's, but suddenly her fingers flared so hot that she burned through skin and muscle and tendons, and fused their hands together. Waldo shrieked in pain, and dropped to his knees on to the balcony, but still he was unable to pull himself free. God, if pull myself free, I'll pull my whole hand off!

‘Don't! Don't! Don't!' he cried, but then Celia tugged open her raincoat with her free hand, and revealed herself naked and grey-skinned, and smelling of molten zinc. A curl of metallic smoke rose out of her coat-tails.

‘Tell me where he is, Waldo,' Celia insisted. ‘I have to know!'

‘I don't know, I don't know. I swear to God I don't know!'

But then Celia tugged off her left-hand glove with her teeth, and placed her bare hand on top of Waldo's balding head. There was a furious sizzling noise, and his scalp puckered up red and blistered. Smoke poured out from between Celia's fingers, and Waldo opened his mouth wide and let out a white scream of agony and fear.

Celia abruptly stopped that. With her fingers burned deep into the flesh on top of his head, so that Waldo couldn't have wrenched himself away without being scalped, she pressed his face flat against her bare stomach. His scream was muffled for two or three seconds. Then smoke billowed up between Celia's breasts, the smoke of Waldo's face burning; and she breathed it in with lubricious satisfaction.

‘Haven't you wanted to do that to me ever since you first saw me?' she taunted him. Then she rubbed his face up and down her stomach, and between her thighs, and he shuddered and shook in overwhelming agony. It was like having his face rubbed against an electric hotplate. With each rub, more strips of burned skin were dragged from his face. He felt the flesh seared from the side of his nose. His cheeks almost seemed to melt, like wax. But Celia kept on rubbing his face against her until his nose-bone was being clicked up and down against her like a skeletal trigger.

He could scarcely speak. His face was raw and blistered, and nobody would have recognized him now, nor would again. His eyes bulged from reddened sockets, his nose was nothing more than a twist of fried gristle, with two huge gaping nostrils, and his lips had swollen to three times their normal size. He was trembling in shock, but still Celia wouldn't let him go.

‘Listen to me, Waldo! I have to know where he is!'

She began to pull his face toward her again, but Waldo lifted a hand to stop her. His fingers crackled against the ferocious heat of her thighs, but he was too far gone to scream any more.

‘Be-beach-house. Dan Tabares' beach-house. Up at Del Mar.'

‘Thank you, Waldo,' said Celia. ‘Why didn't you tell me that in the first place? You could have saved yourself such pain!'

Waldo tried to climb to his feet, but he was shuddering too much. Celia stood watching him, her coat flapping softly against her naked body, her skin subtly fuming like a metal baking-sheet. ‘You know what your trouble is, Waldo?' Celia asked him, although he probably failed to hear her. ‘You were always too loyal! A man like Lloyd needs people to question him. He needs people to needle him, people to upset him. You shouldn't give a man like Lloyd too much of an easy life. He'll take advantage of you, and forget to pay you for it, too.'

Dumbly, with the head-dipping motion of a wounded hippopotamus, Waldo shuffled on his knees toward her. She stepped back once, then twice, then stepped back again.

‘I'll kill you,' Waldo blubbered, through grotesquely inflated lips. ‘I swear to God that I'll kill you!'

He threw aside one of the chairs, then tipped over the table.

‘Whatever you are, I'm going to kill you!'

He tried to pick himself up, stumbled, and fell heavily on top of her. She jarred backwards on the balcony, and where her hand clawed against the planking, she burned black bitter-smelling fingerprints into the wood. ‘Kill you!' Waldo repeated, and lifted both fists high above his head, ready to smash them down on to her face, the way that he had once seen his father kill a berserk dog.

But Celia clung on to him, arms and thighs, and said wildly, ‘Come on, Waldo! Maybe you and I were always meant to make love together! A special kind of love, yes? Really hot!'

She pressed his blistered face against her bare breasts, and then she ignited him, like a bonfire. He shrieked and twisted and clawed for anything to help him get away. His shoes drummed against the planking of the balcony. ‘Help me! Somebody help me!' But the flames consumed him as fiercely as if he had been moulded out of paraffin wax.

The pain became so intolerable that he managed to drag himself somehow up on to his knees again, and then on to his feet. He was blazing from head to foot. His shoes crackled and spat as the polish burned.

He stood by the rail with the ocean wind fanning his flames until they roared. The pain, at first excruciating, seemed to burn out and fade, and soon he felt that it was possible to stand here ablaze and not to die. The seagulls were crying. It was dark but the seagulls were crying. He was sure he would hear his grandpa as they walked along the seashore. Don't worry, young Waldo. Never fear. Now you can fly, too.

He climbed burning on to the wooden rail around the balcony, and balanced for a moment with flames flying out behind him like a monstrous cloak. He opened his mouth to call to his grandpa and fire burst out from between his teeth. He felt as if he were alight both inside and out.

You can fly, Waldo. You can fly.

So, he flew. Over and over in the darkness, forty blazing feet, until he landed with a thunder of flame and a smack of steam into a bubbling hot tub on the balcony below. The tub was occupied by a hairy-chested orthodontist and a redheaded girl who wasn't his wife, and Waldo's fiery arrival in his hot tub marked the moment when his marriage, his affair, his practice and his sanity instantaneously and simultaneously vanished.

On the balcony above them, Celia listened to them screaming and gibbering in horror. Then she buttoned her gloves, walked through the restaurant, and let herself out. A Merecedes 380SL was waiting by the kerb, its engine running, its hood dull with bird-droppings and grime. Otto was sitting behind the wheel, his mouth pursed, his cheeks puffed out oddly.

‘Del Mar,' said Celia. ‘They're hiding in his lawyer's beach-house. I'll direct you.'

Otto nodded, without saying a word.

‘Are you all right?' Celia asked him.

Otto nodded again, and then opened his mouth. His tongue was crowded with twenty or thirty glistening green-and-black blowflies, all alive, all struggling, but stuck to his tongue with saliva. Otto closed his mouth again, then sucked, then crunched, then swallowed.

Celia said very little on the way to Del Mar, except ‘Right here . . .' or ‘Slow . . .' or ‘Watch this intersection . . .' She was beginning to feel that perhaps her burning had changed her more than she had realized . . . more than Otto had promised her. She knew that she had liked Waldo—loved him, almost. Yet she had felt no remorse when she had burned his face. She had felt no regret when he had plunged blazing off the balcony. In fact, she had felt something disturbing and dangerous—a pleasure in witnessing the agonized death throes of another human being that was almost sexual.

She slipped her hand into her raincoat, and cupped herself between her legs. Moisture and fire. Death and delight. She could hardly wait to find Lloyd again. She could hardly wait to hold him. She trembled at the thought of what they would be doing on the night of the solstice, when the year turned, and the fires burned, and the master race would be reborn.