Manifesto for the Dead (17 page)

“I am afraid it's lost.”

“Lost? It's my only copy.”

“No carbon?”

“I've got fragments. Bits and pieces. But not the whole manuscript.”

“That's a shame—but maybe you could fill in the gaps somehow. Of course, your time is valuable, I know, and our list for next fall, it's pretty full. No guarantees, you understand.”

Thompson realized he was being given the kiss off. For some reason, he did not care. In a way, it was liberating. He didn't have to worry about it anymore.

He told Alberta.

“I'm finished,” he said. “I give up.”

She brought him some collard greens she had made, and sat down pleasantly at the table beside him. She reached out and touched his thigh. He could smell that old cornfield now, as if it were right outside the window.

“Should we go do something this evening?” she asked.

“That would be nice.”

They went out for malts at a drive-in diner, and sat in the car. Girls in skates brought the food, and kids hung around running combs through their greased-up hair, as if they all lived in an earlier decade.

“Let's take a drive,” she said.

They drove for hours. Down to Bunker Hill, then out to Santa Monica, along the Palisades, and back up through the Malibu canyons into the city, but at the end of it he was still not quite ready to go home, and neither was she, and so they drove up Whitley Terrace, and he pulled down the gravel road overlooking the freeway. Alberta wanted to get out and look at the Whitely Cross, and the lights of the cars rushing down towards Hollywood, so that's what they did. After a while, they wandered over to the other side of the hill, Thompson could see the spot where the girl lay buried, he was pretty sure, down slope, below the eucalyptus, just off the trail. Weeds had started to grow over the site, and Thompson knew now it would be a long time before anyone found her body.

“I'm sorry,” he told Alberta.

“Why?”

“For everything. The rummy apartment. The crummy smell in the upholstery.”

She didn't say anything.

“I can't give it up.”

“What?”

“None of it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was down on the Boulevard yesterday. I had a drink.”

“I know,” she said.

“I have an evil in my heart.”

“I know that, too.”

She leaned against him—accepting him again, as she had done in the past, the old circle spinning around, so it was her fingers reaching for his—then she kissed him, hard, and he felt a thrill within him, the old erection erecting, and she put a hand on his belt, and he looked her in the eyes, and there was a gleam that frightened him, and he remembered that hungry girl she had been, and how much she had surprised him with her ferocity.

Meanwhile, there was that other girl down there, still in her grave. Whatever her name was. The innocent one.

“What did you do with Lucille?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“You saw her when she was here?”

“No.”

“You wanted to see her?”

He hesitated. “No,” he said.

She did not believe him. She was jealous, he guessed. Anyway he could see a gleam in her eyes, a hunger, and a little bit of anger too. They went home then, and though her anger was still there, she rolled sideways in the bed, pulling him towards her, and he felt the hot flush of the blood rising to his skin. He pulled up her nightgown, feeling her nakedness there, her stomach against his, and her breath heavy in his ear. As he touched her, he thought about the book he had written and how he might salvage what was left. He would call his editor. As he caressed her, in his mind, he had already made the call. He could hear his editor's voice.

“What's your idea?”

“I'll use pieces of the old book, the parts I have left. And I'll write another book around it. About an old man, in Los Angeles. He's a crime writer, trying to write a story about his life. Except he doesn't realize it until the last few pages, and by that time, well, he's become character in his own book.” And the more he thought about it, the more the lines dissolved, between the living and the imagined, between those who called and those who were summoned. Because while it might be Lieutenant Mann's job to separate good from evil, his own was quite the opposite.

“Sounds great, Jim.” It was a flat voice, full of irony. “What will you call it?”

Thompson hesitated. “Same title.
Manifesto for the Dead.”

“Brilliant.”

Even as he spoke, he knew the new man was only humoring him, betting the manuscript would not be finished. That old Jim Thompson would kick the bucket, or otherwise disappear. And as he turned again towards his wife—both passionately involved and distant, separated from her even as he felt his erection growing and felt too the wild thrill of her flesh, as if their whole life had been building towards this instant—Thompson figured maybe the editor was correct. Maybe he would not write the book. He would not live. He felt himself already becoming a figure in someone else's story, drifting over the border. If it wasn't the Oklahoman who got him, it would be something else. A stroke. Congestive heart failure. A stranger slipping through the window and taking him in the middle of the night. He was joining that other world. Maybe he already had. Maybe he lay on his deathbed and this moment, now, was pure imagination. He was a figure in someone else's dream. It didn't matter. He was on top of Alberta, she was clasping him to her. He couldn't help himself. He loved the moment of descent, he could not resist, and neither could his wife. There was fierceness in the air. Lust. Desire. Her body was skeletal, hideous, beautiful in its ugliness, homely and horrifying. He kept after her, and she was pulling him down into her, and he felt his heart pounding too heavily, the blood rushing to the head, and she was whispering in his ear, incomprehensible words, beckoning him closer, and that's what he was doing, plunging into that forbidden darkness. Then more darkness, and figures moving there, and somewhere a border that once you crossed you did not come back. He knew before long he would slip over that border, into that blackness, and he would leave behind his own calligraphy, a dark looking-glass, for those who would follow him down.

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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 © 2000 by Domenic Stansberry

ISBN: 978-1-5040-1199-0

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