Once Bitten (8 page)

“How's this?” I asked.

She put her head on one side and nodded thoughtfully. “Neat,” she said. “But you should put the collar up.”

“A la James Dean?”

“Try it.”

I did and she smiled. “It looks great.”

“Where are we going?” I asked her.

“It's a surprise.”

“Is it far.”

She laughed. “About an hour's ride on a good horse.”

“What?”

She grinned at my confusion and shook her head. “It was a joke,” she said. "Not far. Come on,

let's get your car.“ She took me by the arm and half-led, half-pushed me to the hall. ”Kitchen?"

she said.

“What?”

“Kitchen. Where is it?”

I nodded to the left and she took me into the kitchen. “Rice?” she said.

“Rice?”

“Rice. Do you have any rice, Jamie?” She spoke slowly as if I was a retarded child, but smiling as she did.

Yeah, I had rice. Deborah had some special Japanese stuff that she used for her sushi parties.

“Cupboard by the fridge.”

She knelt down and took out the large glass jar. “Neat. Garbage bags?” She looked over her shoulder. “Garbage bags?” she repeated. I pointed to the drawer. She stood up and pulled it open and took out two black plastic garbage bags. There was a brown paper bag on the work surface and she poured three or four handfuls of rice into it, screwed the top closed and put it into her jacket pocket. She rolled the garbage bags up and then waved them at me like a conductor winding up an orchestra. “Let's hit the road,” she said.

“Terry, where are we going?”

“It's a surprise.”

“I don't like surprises.”

“You'll like this one. Trust me, Jamie.”

She walked up to me, her black eyes seeming to swallow me up as she drew closer and put her arms around my neck. I could see the distorted reflection of my face in her pupils. I looked frightened. Her nose barely reached my chin and she looked up at me. “Trust me, Jamie.”

I melted. “OK.”

“Yeah!” she said, then stood up on her toes and kissed me lightly on the cheek. “Come on.”

She grabbed my hand and took me through to the garage. It was only when we were driving through the city that I realised that she hadn't had to ask me the way to the garage, as if she already knew where it was.

She wouldn't tell me where we were going but gave me directions that took me to a part of LA that I hadn't been to before, dark streets, broken down buildings and vacant lots, burnt-out cars and littered sidewalks. Not my normal part of town, if you get my drift. I was sure that at one point we'd gone around in a circle and for a wild moment I feared that she was setting me up for something. There was, when all was said and done, a corpse with a slashed throat that needed explaining and as far as I knew De'Ath only had one name in the frame. Her's.

“There,” she said, and pointed.

“What?”

“There. Park there.”

I drew the car into the side and switched off the engine. It turned over for a few seconds before clunking to a halt. The timing was starting to go again. I made to go put she put a restraining hand on my thigh.

“Wait,” she said. Images flashed through my mind. A dark sidewalk. A figure in a long, black coat walking up to the car. Bending down. A flash of bright steel. A red curtain. Her mouth. Her smile. Her teeth.

“Are you all right?”

“What?”

“Jeez, Jamie, I know it's way past your bedtime but you're behaving like a total zombie. Wake up. I said, are you all right?”

“I'm fine.”

Her hand was still on my thigh. I could feel her nails through the material of my jeans. I hadn't realised how sharp they were, like the claws of an animal. “Will you do something for me?” she asked.

I looked into her eyes. “Anything.”

She slowly took her left hand out of her jacket pocket and dropped the rice-filled brown paper bag into my lap. “Put that down your trousers.”

“What?”

“Jamie, will you stop saying 'what'. Just do as I say, OK? Shove the bag of rice down the front of your pants. Trust me.”

I did as she said and then we both got out of the car. She walked round to my side and linked her arm through mine.

“Don't you ever lock it?” she asked.

“No point. They'd just cut through the soft top.”

“They?”

“The bad guys.”

She laughed. “You're crazy.”

“I'm a psychologist.”

“They're not mutually exclusive, you know.”

“Maybe you're right.” I stopped walking and turned to look at her. “Terry, will you answer me one question?”

“Sure.”

“Why am I walking around with a bag of rice down my trousers?”

She giggled and gently hit me on the head with the garbage bags. “That'd shitfire sure spoil the surprise,“ she said, and tugged at my arm. ”Come on, we're nearly there.”

We joined a line of people standing outside a movie theatre. Even by Los Angeles standards they were a strange group. Everyone seemed young, at least ten years younger than me. OK,

maybe fifteen. Most of the men had make-up on, lots of mascara and eye shadow and black lipstick, and they were wearing long, shabby coats. The girls were in short black miniskirts and fishnet stockings and tops that showed off too much cleavage. Lots of make-up, too, just like the men. There were two big bouncers at the door, frisking everyone as they went in, but they were being friendly about it and there was a lot of laughing and joking. The line moved quickly and when we got to the front the film was obviously close to starting because the body search was fairly cursory. They checked my pockets and looked at Terry's garbage bags but that was about it. She had the tickets ready and on the way through the foyer I saw a couple of posters advertising the film we were going to see. The Rocky Horror Picture Show. A British actor, Tim Curry, playing the part of a kinky transvestite scientist called Frank-N-Furter.

“Have you seen it before?” Terry asked as we went into the darkened theatre.

“No,” I answered. “You?”

“Only about a thousand times,” she said. “Hurry up, it's starting!”

We were in the middle of the fifth row from the front and we had to squeeze past a motley collection of freaks and weirdoes who were all singing the opening song in time with a huge pair of scarlet lips on the screen. Men were taking off the coats to reveal low-cut dresses and suspender belts.

“Get the rice out,” Terry whispered as we sat down. I did as she said, and I could see a girl with spikey blond hair and purple eye-shadow a few seats along slipping a plastic bag of rice from under her leather mini-skirt. She saw me looking at her and winked.

The lips disappeared from the screen and Terry's right hand burrowed into the bag and came out with a handful of rice. She motioned to me to do the same. The audience seemed to have seen he film many times, judging by the way they were yelling out the dialogue and heckling and then,

when a wedding scene appeared, the air was filled with flying rice which showered down on us all to the sound of shrieks and cat-calls.

“Neat, isn't it?” laughed Terry, her lips pressed against my ear.

“I've never seen anything like it,” I agreed.

“It gets better,” she said. “Believe me, it gets better.”

An All-American couple called Brad and Janet were singing on the screen, and the audience were going wild. In the aisle a couple wearing outfits matching those of the actors jived and mimed to the soundtrack. Terry handed me one of the garbage bags. “Put this on your head,” she whispered.

“What?”

“Put it on your head. Trust me.”

There was a rustling around the theatre and it seemed that everyone was either holding a newspaper above their head or wearing a plastic bag. Terry put her bag on and as I followed her example the film changed, Brad and Janet were sitting in a car in a rainstorm. Water began to pour down from above, splattering over the bag on my head and trickling down the back of my neck.

Terry giggled. “There's always someone who manages to smuggle water in,” she whispered.

“It's really neat, isn't it?”

“Yeah, neat,” I said. “I just hope it's water they're throwing.”

The rest of the film was just as chaotic, members of the audience dressed like the characters on screen, lip-synching the dialogue, others screaming out the punchlines, still others rushing up the screen and pointing at things, pretending to help to push buttons, pull levers, open curtains, close cupboards. It was unnerving. Audience participation in an asylum. Terry seemed to know the whole script by heart and she sang along and yelled out punch-lines with the rest of them,

occasionally reaching over to squeeze my hand. She was having fun, and what the hell, so was I,

sitting in a darkened cinema with enough crazies to fill a year's subscription of Clinical Psychology.

The plot? I can't remember, something about building a man from spare parts, visitors from another planet, lots of men wearing suspenders, and Tim Curry murdering a lobotomised Meatloaf with an icepick. But Terry, her I can picture vividly, her black eyes wide with pleasure, licking her lips and laughing, her hair swinging backwards and forwards, her laugh so cute that I just wanted to take her in my arms and crush her. I was falling in love with her, I knew that with a dread certainty.

The realisation brought with it a flurry of doubts, about how she felt, about the age difference, and above all the fact that I was working for the LAPD and she was a suspect in a homicide investigation. The credits rolled and the lights came on and she turned and caught me looking at her. She frowned and reached up and stroked my cheek.

“Are you OK, Jamie D. Beaverbrook?”

I nodded and brought up my hand to hold hers. “I'm fine.” I wanted to tell her how I felt, that she made my heart ache, but I held it back. Fear of rejection, I guess. Or ridicule.

“Do you want a drink? I know somewhere,” she said.

“Sure.”

We left the cinema arm in arm and walked back to the car. “Is it far?” I asked.

“A few minutes, max,” she said.

“On a good horse?”

She giggled. “I like the way you make me laugh, Jamie,” she said.

She gave me directions and five minutes later we pulled up across the road from a black-painted windowless building. Steps led up to double doors which had been opened and above them was a neon sign which said The Place. The door was being guarded by a broad-shouldered bald Negro in a black suit. His impassive face broke into a grin when he saw Terry.

“Terry, my girl!” he boomed. “How's my favourite creature of the night?”

“Hanging in there, Toby,” she said. She kissed him on the cheek. “This is my friend Jamie.” she said as she breezed past him. Toby nodded at me, but I didn't get a grin. I followed Terry down a red hallway to another set of doors guarded by another Negro, even bigger than Toby. He also greeted Terry by name and pushed open the doors for her, allowing the throbbing beat of heavy metal music to billow out. The dancefloor was packed with pretty much the same sort of characters we'd seen in the cinema, lots of black, lots of leather, lots of skin and pierced ears and noses, and everywhere Terry was welcomed, a kiss on the cheek, a hug, a warm smile. She seemed to have an incredible number of friends and I felt a surge of jealousy, especially when guys touched her, but she never spent more than a few minutes with any of them before moving off with me in her wake.

The sound system was deafening, making conversation impossible, but by the look of it there was little if any interest in talking, just lots of body contact and flailing of limbs. I felt old. Hell, who an I kidding, I was old, it was just that my mind hadn't accepted it yet.

A bar ran the length of one side of the dancefloor, shiny black wood and brass rails, with half a dozen barmen in matching black trousers and waistcoats doing their best to deal with flow of orders. There was a crush at least three deep of people wanting to buy drinks, waving money and shouting to be heard above the brain-numbing music. Terry stopped and put her mouth up close against my right ear, so close I could feel her breath. I thought she was going to kiss me but instead she asked me what I wanted to drink. I put my mouth against her ear and said I'd better get it, she'd have no chance of getting through the crowds. She grinned and said that one of the barmen was a friend so I asked her for a vodka and tonic. She took me to a pillar and told me to stand there so that she could find me again and then she made her way to the bar for all the world like a black shark carving through a shoal of fish. She went to the far right of the bar where the crowd was thinner and where there was no barman serving and she stood on the footrest to give herself an extra six inches of height, but even so she didn't stick out and I reckoned it would be some time before she got served.

To my left a young guy in a red and green Mohican haircut and a t-shirt slashed with a dozen cuts gyrated in front of a girl with waist length blond hair in a tight rubber dress that left little to the imagination. Behind them two brunettes in matching leather outfits were dancing slowly and kissing, oblivious to the pulsating beat, lost in their own bodies. It was hot and I could feel sweat on my face and in the small of my back. I looked back at Terry. She still hadn't been served. She wasn't shouting or waving or doing anything that would attract the intention of any of the men behind the bar. Instead she seemed to be waiting and was staring intently at one of the barmen, a tall, thin guy with long black hair that was tied back in a feminine ponytail. He had long arms that seemed ungainly at first glance, jerkily moving from bottle to glass like a badly-manipulated puppet, but he was fast and never seemed to make a mistake. He had deep-set eyes and a narrow face which always appeared to be set in a frown with deep furrows across his brow. He seemed a very intense guy, and when he was taking orders he stared the customer right in the face, almost glaring at them, and then he'd nod curtly and fill the order. He always seemed to hear them correctly first time, he never asked them to repeat and, unlike the rest of the serving staff, he wasn't constantly leaning over the bar to hear better. It didn't seem to matter where he stood or how quietly the customer spoke. It was as if the music just wasn't there, as if he was working in total silence. He never spoke either, just keyed in the orders into the cash register and pointing when the customers queried the amount. He was deaf, I realised. He was deaf and he was lip-reading. He was doing it well, too, by the look of it.