From the Teeth of Angels Read online

  Only it wasn’t like kids today. Sophie was calling in the IOU, and the tone of her voice said she meant it.

  “Look, Wyatt, there are now only three people in the world who matter to me. You, my brother, his wife. If I were to lose Jesse, that would take away a third of the loves I have left. If I don’t go over there to look for him, I’ll hate myself forever. But I don’t trust myself in situations like this. I get crazy and emotional and don’t have any calm places inside me to go and think or regroup.

  “You do. You’re the king of cool and order. I know how sick you are. Believe me, I know. I lived with Dick, remember, right up till the end. I’ll take care of you. I swear to God I will, but I need you to go with me. If you do… Come on, you can understand.”

  “I understand, but I don’t want to go. You’re creating an impossible situation—a choice between our friendship and what’s left of my health. I’m dying, and a trip like this will exacerbate things. That’s how I feel. If you insist, I’ll go. But I don’t want to and I resent you for it. There’s nothing else to say.”

  Her voice came out as hard and cold as mine. “Fair enough.”

  I tried on words like Austria and pack your bag as if they were clothes I was modeling in a mirror. None of them fit. I felt odd and uncomfortable in all of them. How could I do this, friend or not? You’re dying, man! People with cancer of the blood do not get up and head for the airport.

  Except me.

  But indignant and worried as I was, I knew I had nothing else to do. Except die. Die comfortably and safely in familiar surroundings with all the best care in the world. If Sophie hadn’t called and made her demand, what would I have planned for the rest of that day? Or week or month? Take my pills and drops as directed? Read a few pages in the book I couldn’t get interested in, eat, make some phone calls? Such dreary, dreary stuff. If the last days of my life were so precious, why was I living them indifferently? I didn’t want to travel with Sophie because I was afraid of becoming gravely ill in another country, but what difference would that make? I’d recently watched a television biography of the composer Frederick Delius. Told he was going blind, Delius had friends lead him up a favorite hill at daybreak so that he could watch the sun rise for one of the last times in his life. I loved that moment in the show, and whether or not it was true, I believed it. Now I was in much the same situation. Only when I was offered the chance to see great and possibly important things for the last time, I cringed and whined. I wanted my bed, my doctor, the dumb book on the living room table that had bored me from the first moment I’d picked it up.

  Despising myself for feeling that way, here is what I did to overcome it. I went out for a long ride in the car to think things through. On the way back to my apartment via Hollywood Boulevard, I stopped at a toy store that sold rubber masks. The walls of the place were unfortunately covered with familiar faces made of latex and fake hair. John Kennedy, Elvis, Santa Claus. I could readily decipher who the masks were supposed to portray, except for certain uncelebrated monsters with five eyes or a dwarf arm erupting out of the top of the head. But a number of them were very badly done. That is not what I wanted. For what I had in mind, I needed the face of someone I didn’t know.

  The man who ran the store was a little bald guy who kept a constant cigarette going in a marvelous silver-and-black holder, a la Franklin D. Roosevelt.

  “Can I help you?”

  “Yes. I’m looking for a mask, but it’s gotta be of someone unfamiliar or unknown. Know what I mean? It can’t be Michael Jackson or Arnold Schwarzenegger.”

  “How about one of Finky Linky?” He pointed to a face on the wall I’d already seen. There I was, in the rubbery flesh. The one-time famous Finky Linky. I smiled at the store owner and we shook hands.

  “A very popular mask in its time, and still requested now and then. Very popular. You get your show syndicated and you live forever. This we all know, right? How’re you doin’, Finky Linky? I just want to tell you, my grandchildren loved your show, and I watched it right along with them a couple of dozen times myself. We miss you! You had the only good kids’ show on TV. Now it’s only Japanese space kid cartoons and big animals teaching you how to spell.

  “But that’s another subject, and you got business here. How about Chernenko?” His eyes lit up. He had something cooking.

  “Who?”

  “I think I still got an Andropov too. Wait. I can probably sell you ten of each, if you want.” He began turning to some drawers behind the counter but stopped to ask a final question. “You’re not in the party, are you? I mean, I don’t do this stuff out of any kind of disrespect, you understand. It’s just business. Simply business.”

  I was totally confused. “What party?”

  “The Communist Party, what’d you think? Not that there’s much left of it. Here. Here’s the Chernenko and heeeere’s, yup, here’s the Andropov. I thought I still had some of each. Unfortunately. I probably will till the day I die.” He brought out masks from the drawers and handed me two old, anonymous faces. Although I didn’t know the men, the masks themselves were superb.

  “Who are these guys? Are they famous?”

  “For about five minutes each, much to my bitter dismay. Each was general secretary of the Communist Party Central Committee. Don’t you remember? For about a week apiece. Then each of the sons of bitches had the nerve to drop dead and I got stuck with twenty units I ordered.

  “See, when Brezhnev was around, I sold a ton of him. People loved those eyebrows. That one big eyebrow going across the top of his head… a winner! When he croaked I sold five that day alone. Collectors. So naturally I thought the next boss of Russia would be a popular item too, and live as long, so I ordered twenty. That was Andropov, right? Or was it Chernenko first? I don’t know, I always get them mixed up. No matter. One came in right after the other but they were in charge only a couple of months before they died. Then they elected Gorbachev. And let me tell you, my thinking wasn’t so wrong there because I sell a lot of him, even today. A lot of Gorby.

  “But you want unfamiliar, take your pick from these two old jerks. As I said, I can give you one hell of a deal if you want to buy a few of them. Your special Finky Linky price.”

  Finky Linky needed only one and chose Chernenko, simply because it was in my hand at the time. After I’d paid and then signed the mask of me so the owner could put it up on his Wall of Fame at home, I left. Two steps out the door, I pulled the mask over my head to see how it felt. My plan was this. If I was going to make this trip, I knew there would be many times when I’d be scared and weak. That’s what the mask was for. I would keep it near me at all times and the moment I felt myself weakening or the fear coming, I’d put it on and let myself be scared or whatever. But after a certain time I would tell my fear that’s enough—it had to go now because I had other things to do. That seemed a fair deal with fear. Recognize and accept it fully, completely, totally. If it wanted me to shake or cry, so long as I was wearing the mask, I’d do it. But when its time was up, then it had to go away and leave me alone. Dying, I would split myself in two. Traveling, I’d take both me’s along and let each have its time of the day. But if I could be strong and a little lucky, then the weak me, Chernenko, would have less and less time. Like a child throwing a fit in the middle of the sidewalk—down flat on the pavement, kicking and screaming for the world’s pity and attention—he’d burn himself out in his own furious flames.

  “Pardon me asking, but just what the fuck are you doing?”

  The policeman was on a motorcycle at the curb in front of the store. Wearing a white helmet and reflective sunglasses, he gave me a smile that wasn’t a happy one. It was the smile of a person who has seen almost all and has very little humor or patience left for what he hasn’t. “Come here.”

  I walked over, still wearing Chernenko.

  “What were you doing in there, party boy?”

  “Buying this mask.”

  “What? Can’t hear you.”

  “
Buying this mask. That’s why I’m wearing it.”

  “Issat right? Take it off.”

  I took it off, and he wrinkled his forehead, as if somewhere in his macho brain he recognized me. “What else did you do?” He was a big man, whether from fat or muscle I couldn’t tell. When he shifted his body, the black leather jacket he wore groaned and complained quietly.

  “I just told you, officer, I bought a mask. Go in and ask the man.”

  “Don’t crack wise with me, party boy. Hand it here.”

  Unlike many Angelenos, I like the Los Angeles police. The majority of them are hard-working, courageous people who do impossible work pretty well. Yes, they have a reputation for being storm troopers, but I would storm too if I had to do their job. That’s not to say I hadn’t had a few unpleasant brushes with troglodytes in uniform like this one: tough guys who held all the power cards and knew you knew it. A friend had once challenged one of them and ended up in L.A. County Hospital with a cracked skull. No, thank you. I’d give him my mask and let him be King for a Day if that’s what gave him a hard-on. There were more important things at hand.

  “Oh-oh, what’s this? Blood?” He was off the bike and had his gun out so fast I barely had a chance to register what he’d said. Blood? What? Blood on my mask? From what? Had I shaved that morning? Suddenly I couldn’t remember. The fear came hard and fast as a cramp across the gut. I couldn’t remember something as simple as whether I’d shaved that day. Before these thoughts finished going through my head, he was standing next to me, his pistol against my temple.

  “Move slow, friend. We’re gonna go slow back in there. Pull any shit and you’re dead.”

  I put my hands up and let him push me back toward the store. Shock, panic, fear, and adrenaline all burst up through my body like fireworks, making me shake wildly.

  “I don’t—what—”

  “Shut up. Walk straight and don’t say another word till I find out what’s going on.”

  Going on? What was going on? I’d bought a mask, had a little chat with the owner, walked out of the store—

  “Open the door. Push it real slow and careful.”

  I did. There was the body. Starfished in the middle of the narrow space near the cash register, the owner’s body lay in its final violence. His head was a splattered mess.

  Someone had shot him from very close range. I think. How else could it have looked like that? There were strews and whip lines of blood on everything—the counter, the cash register, all over him.

  My knees buckled. I couldn’t pull any air down my throat. Thirty seconds. I’d been talking with this man, this blast of body, thirty seconds ago. What happened? What could have happened? When could there have been a holdup? There’d been no gunshot or scream. Standing right out in front, I’d heard nothing.

  But look. Look, there’s his cigarette holder, a smoking butt still inside. It had lived longer than he had. I’d seen death before, but not this close. Not this foul and obscene and fresh. Fresh was the absolute word for it. I said it aloud. “Fresh.”

  Then my slammed mind came back to the world and realized the cop’s gun was still at my temple.

  “Yeah, you freshed him, party boy. Nuked his fucking brains, then you walked out on the street wearing one of his masks. You’re a very cool customer, eh? A very cool guy you are, party boy. Get over to the counter, spread your arms and legs, and don’t move an inch.”

  “Officer—”

  “Do what I say. It’s easier and simpler to shoot you here and tell them I caught you in the act. A lot simpler for me. But do what I say now and I’ll try not to. And put that mask on.”

  “What?”

  “Put the mask on. Do it!”

  Madness. The cop, the dead man, me standing spread at the counter wearing a rubber mask, about to be arrested for murder.

  Your mind goes so fast. Whom could I call? Sophie. I’d call Sophie. Who was my lawyer? I couldn’t remember his name. Okay, okay, Sophie would know. What proof did I have? Nothing. Would I die in jail? When would they put me in the police car…

  “I can’t believe it.” My mouth, or some part of me, spoke. “I didn’t do it! I just bought a—”

  “Shut up. And take the mask off now.”

  “What?” I turned to look at him. He was down on the floor next to the body.

  “Take the mask off and face the wall. I’ll be done in a minute.”

  “Why did you want me to put it on?” I took it off and dropped it on the counter. What was this hell? He was a nice man. We chatted. Now he was dead and I was going to jail. Where had it come from? “This is wrong! The whole damned thing is wrong!”

  “Does it make any difference without the mask?” The cop’s voice was quiet and calm for the first time.

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “Turn around. Look at me.”

  I turned. There was no longer a body on the floor, but rather a picnic, all set out. Beautiful food, a white tablecloth, red wine in crystal goblets. Places set for two. No body. The cop had removed his sunglasses and was standing a couple of feet back from the picnic. His face was flat, eyes wide-set. A nondescript, healthy-looking man. That was all. Nothing more.

  “Do you feel better without the mask? Does the fear go away? Sit down, Wyatt. Have something to drink.”

  “What is this?”

  “Your mask plan—to put it on only when you’re scared? It won’t work. See what happened when you took it off just now? You felt exactly the same, right? Ready to piss in your pants. Fear’s never friendly or reasonable. I had to tell you that. Then I thought it better to show you. When it’s Death and Fear and Worry, all those big words that begin with capital letters, you can’t cut a deal with them, make them disappear by taking off a mask. They’re too strong and mean. They do what they want.

  “You want to know who I am, naturally.” He bowed and put a hand on his heart. “Death. Simply Death. Sometimes I come earlier than our appointment so that people can get used to me. But even then it’s hard. Don’t you want some wine? It’s all very good. I have a large expense account!” He smiled. “Only the best. My customer is king.” He stuck his index finger into the air.

  But it was He. Once He says His name to you, there is no question. It is Death. Death is talking to you now. He has come. He brings calm. You are calm although Death is with you.

  He bent over, picked a piece of rolled ham off a plate, and, dipping it in a little cup of the yellowest mustard, popped it into His mouth. “I’m sorry to disappoint you with your mask, but I wanted to save you valuable time.”

  “I am going to die. There’s no hope? None?”

  “None. Yes, you’re going to die; so is everyone. Most of them won’t get to talk to me about it. Consider yourself lucky on that score.”

  “Can I ask you questions?” As soon as I said it, I remembered the doomed man in Sardinia. How he had asked Death questions but suffered when he didn’t understand the answers. “Forget it! I don’t want to ask! Forget it.”

  The policeman’s eyes narrowed and he paused a moment as if considering. He licked his lips, and that dangerous moment between us shivered down to silence. Then his face softened again and he nodded. “Okay, your only warning. But if you ask that again, I’ll say yes, and you know the terms.” He moved to go.

  “Wait! Can I call for you? If I do want to ask questions?”

  “Yes. Consider this too: it’s getting close to your time, Wyatt. Not yet, I can say that. But soon. It might very well be worth it to take the chance. Perhaps you’ll understand my answers. There are a surprising number of people who do. Honestly. And once you commit yourself, we can talk about whatever you want.” He gestured toward the untouched picnic. “Sometimes it’s better to learn through shock than through persuasion. One last thing, if you’re interested: the travel agent, McGann? He isn’t dead. Let me know if you want to talk.”

  “Wait! One question. Just one. But no ties, no obligations. Please?”

  He nodded. “Ask
and I’ll let you know if I can answer.”

  “How I live till I die… is that my choice? Is there free will?”

  “Absolutely. We have no say in that. It’s your cruise. We’re only the last port.” He opened the door of the shop and walked out.

  ROSE

  Most often they ask what she looks like naked. Can you believe the chutzpah? What does your best friend look like with her clothes off. Which is hilarious, because anyone who has seen Arlen Ford’s films has seen her as naked as she will ever be. What does she look like in her birthday suit, and what is she really like are the two favorite questions. So okay, World, are you ready? Her right breast is slightly larger than her left, and she is almost entirely pleasant. But let’s face it, info like that is neither good copy nor ammunition, particularly for journalists. People want to know the dirt, the smudge, where this illustrious woman’s secret moles are, and what kind of temper tantrums she has when no one’s around to hear.

  She has temper tantrums. Who doesn’t? The only chocolate she will eat are Godiva “golf balls” at four dollars apiece, and she drives a ridiculously expensive automobile. Is that enough? Because that’s about it for scam. That’s all the dirt this horse’s mouth has to offer the interested. But their problem is, no one knows this woman better than I do, so they keep coming back hoping one day I’ll have more or new ugly to give.

  I am Rose Cazalet, Arlen Ford’s secretary and oldest friend. She refuses to call me her secretary, preferring instead either “adviser” or “companion.” Both certainly sound better, but unfortunately these days both words carry a decidedly gay aroma with them, so I prefer plain old “secretary.”

  Just to keep the records straight, we have known each other ever since we were fifteen at a private girls’ school in Connecticut, back when places like that were the rage (and not the plague). We both entered as tenth-graders and were assigned to be roommates. She was smarter than I, but I was better at math, which saved us both. My family had money, but my new friend had already had sex by the time we rolled around to talking about it, so I was entranced. Neither of us wanted to be there. Arlen was a scholarship student from New York who spent the next three years at the school feeling insecure and hopeless among all the money and power that belonged to the families of the Bitsys and Muffys. Arlen liked me because I was the first to point out that Bitsy and Muffy, combined, had the intelligence of a lawn sprinkler.