Complete Stories (75 page)

“I believe that you’re Andy. It’s just Dina who was wondering.”

“I’d like to go to a pet-shop and really get an ant-farm and pour it all over her.”

“Calm down, Andy.”

“And you smell bad, Carlo. You and Dina both stink. Even if this is a dream in a dream, it’s no way for me to live.” He waved the wad of bills which was still in his hand. “Are there any decent hotels in Surf City?”

“Nothing really fancy. Just motels, you know. I guess we could go to the Ocean Inn.”

“You’re planning on coming with me?”

“Sure, man. Didn’t we show at Castelli’s together? We’ll get a couple of nice rooms and maybe do some more art. Dina and me can take showers so we don’t stink no more.”

“All right. We can get two rooms next to each other. Do you and Dina ever have sex? I’d like to watch that.”

“So would I,” said Carlo. “Only it ain’t too likely to happen when I got all this vodka. Look, Andy, why don’t we make such a big sandcandle today that after we light it tonight we don’t have to come back. I don’t wanna be Carlo the bum no more. I liked it a lot better in the dream last night—I liked being a successful artist.”

“That’s the one good thing about you, Carlo,” said Andy.

They found Dina gnawing on the block of Velveeta, her lips and chin stained a bright yellow from the junky cheesefood dye.

“Andy’s got a lot of money, babe,” said Carlo. “We’re moving to the Ocean Inn!”

“They got heaters in the room there,” said Dina. “Each room with its own thermostat.”

“Hot water, television, and clean sheets too!” exulted Carlo.

“This sounds like real top of the line luxury, all right,” said Andy. “Duncan Hines four stars. I hope they have room-service.”

“Not really, but you can like send out for pizza,” said Carlo. “Or for videos. We can watch videos and TV.”

“And, like you said, we’ll make a really really big sandcandle,” said Andy. “And if I’m still here tomorrow, I may just slit my wrists. Or, no, I’ll electrocute myself with a radio in the bathtub. While listening to the Supremes.”

They walked the mile back into town along Route 1, carrying a bag with the sandcandle supplies: the paraffin, the pan and the string. They left the trolls. Carlo had wanted to bring his full half-gallon of vodka, but Dina didn’t want him too because she was scared he’d get arrested. Andy solved the argument by tossing the bottle off the Durban house’s deck so that it smashed on a rock. “Think of it as a symbol,” Andy told Carlo. “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.”

“Oh yeah?” said angry Carlo, not quite making sense. “What if it’s the rest life of your last
day
?”

Checking into the Ocean Inn was a non-trivial task. The young guy behind the counter was a Surf City local who was quite familiar with Carlo and Dina, having seen them sliming around town for years. And having Andy insist on signing in as Andy Warhol didn’t help things either. In the end, Andy had to pay cash in advance for the rooms and put down a two hundred dollar cash damage deposit.

But then finally they were upstairs in private rooms, with a connecting double door in between them. Dina and Carlo’s room had a wide California king bed. Everybody showered, and then they sat around wrapped up in sheets and blankets while the maid took their clothes out to a laundry. The boy at the desk had spread the word about Andy’s liberality with cash, and it was easy to get good service. The Surf Prajna Pizza delivery-man brought in a big hot pie for them, and they ate it while watching TV. Carlo wanted some beer or wine, but all he got to drink was an assortment of organic Oddfella juices that Andy had ordered from Surf Prajna Pizza.

“So try this kiwi-kelp-betelnut smoothie, Carlo” said Andy, studying a juice label. “It has ginko bilboa for your nerve dendrites. And, hey Dina, look at this one. With honeybee pollen pellets and royal jelly. We all know how much you love insects!”

“Don’t rag on me,” said Dina quietly. “I’m enjoyin’ myself here, Andy. I don’t wanna make a scene and ruin it.”

They ate and drank and stared at the television, with Andy using the controller to switch up and down.

“Daytime TV has gotten so degenerate and foul,” said Andy after awhile. “It’s kind of great, isn’t it? Watching this makes me want to start vomiting and never ever stop.”

“I don’t like TV,” said Carlo. “It reminds me of being in jail.”

“Are you and Dina going to fuck now?” Andy wanted to know.

“Oh man …”

There was a knock on the door and the maid was back with their cleaned clothes, all warm and fluffy from the drier.

“Come on, now, Andy,” urged Carlo. “Let’s go down and make that giant sandcandle. It’s stopped raining and, look, there’s even some sun.”

Here inside town, there were rangers to stop you from building a fire on the beach, but handy Carlo knew where there was a nearby hardware store that sold hand-held propane blow-torches. So they walked over there and got a blow-torch and, while they were at it, they glommed onto as much paraffin as the three of them could carry.

Down on the beach it was sunny and nice. They made a small sandcandle just to warm up the torch, and then Andy told his idea for the big one.

“We’ll make it the shape of a head. Let’s get into some of that really wet sand over there. I’ll carve out the shape of—of
my
head. A negative image. Wow. I’ve never carved in negative before. It’ll be like doing a painting by starting with a black canvas and filling in the white background.”

Andy knelt down near the water’s edge, his face for once looking alive instead of dead. Carlo watched him, getting the hang of what he was doing, and then he set to work carving out a head-shaped hollow of his own. Only Carlo’s hole kept collapsing. Somehow Andy was able to manipulate his sand so that his negative shape held firm. At Andy’s signal, Dina lit up the blow-torch. She really liked the flame; she lit herself four cigarettes in a row off it and started smoking them all at once. And then she got to work melting pan after pan of paraffin. Carlo gave up on his crumbling mold and helped Dina with the wax. As soon as they’d filled up Andy’s hole, Andy started on another one.

“I’ll go ahead and make three heads,” he said. “One for each of us. We’ll light them all up tonight and we’ll never have to come back to the nineties again.”

The wax heads cratered down a little while they were cooling, so Dina and Carlo melted extra wax to pour in on the top, making sure to keep the wicks pointing straight up. Finally they’d used up all of the paraffin and it was nearly night-time and they were done.

“What a complexion,” said Andy, digging up his head. Carlo and Dina each dug up their own, and they all stood there looking at the big heavy sandcandles. The resemblances were quite good.

Back in the room they drank up the rest of the Oddfella juices. Once she’d really started in on the cigarettes, Dina found she needed to maintain her boosted nicotine levels; smoking one at a time just wasn’t doing much for her. The possession of an entire carton had made her giddy and carefree. Four at a time was a bit much, but she could handle three. The only problem was the smoke alarm in the room went off, drilling holes in Carlo’s freefloating sense of happy anticipation. He took the chair from the little desk, stood up on another chair, and tried to remove the plastic case from the alarm, but the case shattered like an egg-shell. Carlo pulled one of the two wires free from the dangling little battery, and the shrill beeping stopped. Proud of his small victory, he chuckled at the way the alarm had fallen to pieces, thinking about how near the ocean people’s things were always cheesy and damp and swollen and touched with corrosion, thinking about how this applied to his art.

Dina thanked Carlo, turned on MTV and sat there staring at that, smoke pouring from her nose and mouth as if her brain were on fire. Andy got to work using a heated-up metal spoon to put the finishing touches on the sandcandles, scraping off the sand and carving in the facial wrinkles. Carlo got bored and started begging Andy until finally Andy gave him some money to go out and get a fifth of vodka.

Carlo drank about half the bottle in the street. When he got back in the room, Andy had lined up the heads on a shelf which was set into the wall behind the head of Dina and Carlo’s king-size bed. Carlo’s head was by the window, Dina’s by the door, and Andy’s in the middle. “I’ll drink some vodka too,” said Andy. “I’d like to go to sleep really soon.” He took the bottle and poured himself a half-glass of it. “Have you ever tried to stop drinking, Carlo?”

“Not in a long time. I’d be as glad as anyone else if my addiction could be removed. But I don’t have the energy to change no more.”

“Well since I’m being the good fairy, maybe I’ll fix you. How about your ants, Dina? Would you like to get rid of them too?”

“They
are
me,” said Dina. “The ants are little Dinas.”

“But wouldn’t you like to stop being crazy?”

“Yeah. I don’t like getting in so much trouble.”

“Then let’s go to sleep and let the magic begin,” said Andy, draining off his glass of vodka. “Let’s all get in your bed together and light the candles and fly back to New York City.”

“I’m keeping my clothes on,” said Carlo quickly.

“That’s quite all right, Carlo. You and Dina can just lie there like mannequins on either side of me. I was just joking about wanting to see you have sex.”

So Dina turned off the TV and Carlo turned off all the lights and pulled down the blinds. Andy lit the three huge candles. Once the flames really took root, the faces glowed with yellow light: Andy very realistic and waxy, Carlo kind of scary and twisted looking, Dina angelic and spacey. The three of them lay down in the bed, each of them under their candle. They got under the blanket and sheets, but kept their clothes on. Outside it had blown up cold and windy again.

Carlo sipped a little at his vodka, but then Andy took it away, and Carlo was too drunk to look for it. The light of the three candles fluttered hard against the opposite wall, making tripled little reflections on the convex screen of the TV. Carlo didn’t think it was going to work this time, but once again it did.

The candle flames reflected in the TV screen began to crawl up the wall, until Carlo could see their three softly luminous faces looking down from an angle high above them. Then fluorescent light took over, soaking in around the TV, so they could see it mounted on a high bracket on the wall. It wasn’t a motel wall anymore; the wall was high and blank and institutional green. There was a curtain, like a shower curtain, pulled back alongside the bed. And next to the bed was a little metal tray bearing a plastic cup and a straw, and beyond that a window whose sill was a vented heater blowing stale air through faded venetian blinds. Carlo felt himself get up out of bed, drawing Dina with him. And really there was no room for the two of them in the bed; the bed was narrow and it had rails; it was just big enough to hold Andy in the middle. Andy looked so pale and frail and wasted down there, sleeping without his wig on.

Carlo realized they were in a hospital. This third sandcandle trip had brought them to a bad place, the worst place, the hospital where Andy had died ten years ago.

“Andy, man! Wake up!” shouted Carlo. “You have to get out of here!”

Andy opened his eyes slowly, as if it were the last thing he wanted to do. “What are
you
doing here?” he asked haltingly.

“You brought us, man,” said Carlo. “Don’t you remember?”

“You said you could make Carlo stop drinking and make me stop being crazy,” chimed in Dina. “Now it looks like you’re the one needs help. Do you feel okay?”

“I—I don’t know,” said Andy, still groggy. “I said I’d help you?”

“Forget about that now,” said Carlo. “Just — where’s your clothes? We’ve got to go!”

Carlo went to a little closet like a storage locker in a corner of the room. He pulled it open but there was nothing in it. He went to the door but it wouldn’t open. He put his ear to the wood and listened for hospital sounds, the clatter of carts, phones, the intercom.

Nothing. He looked around for the phone, but there wasn’t one.

The whole room felt as if it were sinking, like an elevator car in free fall, plunging down a shaft that might not have a bottom.

“Something’s really wrong,” said Carlo, feeling a hollow, dropping sensation in the pit of his stomach. Dina and Andy looked at him calmly. Dina perched herself on the side of Andy’s bed by the door and lit another cigarette.

“Andy said he’d make us better, Carlo,” said Dina. “Don’t you remember?”

“Yes, yes, I remember now,” said Andy, suddenly growing animated and pulling his arms out from under the bed covers. “Come here you two. Lean over me and let me touch your heads.”

Carlo hesitated, walking over to the window. The blinds were tilted down, as if to keep the sun out. He peered through the slits, trying to see the street below. But there was glare on the glass, so much glare, and it seemed to be brightening, flaring into the room. In a panic, Carlo turned to Dina, but she was kneeling there on floor on the other side of the bed with her head bowed and with Andy’s hand trembling on her crown. Andy beckoned with his other hand and Carlo thought,
It’s okay. It’s Andy. It’s not like this is just some bum who latched onto us, some random weirdo messing with our heads. It’s Andy.
Carlo pushed aside the little rolling table and knelt down on the floor next to the bed, bowed his head, and let Andy’s trembling hand settle on him.

Andy’s touch felt as if there were a red hot finger reaching inside Carlo’s skull. Carlo wanted to jerk away, but he was scared something would break.

“Hold still,” said Andy. “I’ve almost got it.”

From Dina’s moaning, Carlo could tell that Andy had gotten into her skull as well. And now all of a sudden Andy groaned and there was a squinching sound like a tooth being extracted, and Carlo felt a bumpy writhing like something being pulled out of him. He and Dina snapped their heads back upright at the same time, staring at each other across the bed with frightened faces. The room lurched and seemed to fall even faster than before.

Andy was holding up two big gnarly things like ginseng roots, a black one from Carlo and a silver one from Dina. “These are your diseases,” said Andy. “They’ll never bother you again.”