Midnight Lamp (29 page)

‘Fiorinda couldn’t do high heels,’ said Sage, absently. ‘Those shoes were just for dandy. Walking on the beach for the last time, she’d want to be barefoot.’

‘I feel so bad about this. She was talented and wise, and beautiful, and, and funny, and I suppose she’d just, just been through too much. I hope to God you don’t think it was failing the avatar test that finally—’

‘Go away, Harry.’

‘I’m sorry, I’m being crass, you want to be alone. Uh, later.’

Ax turned and looked after the A&R man, making sure he went back to his car and left the parking. ‘Can you believe that bloke?’

‘No.’

They’d washed Fiorinda’s ring in the sea. They clasped hands over it. Ax reached for Sage and the big cat rocked him, hugging tight.

‘Sssh, ssh, baby, baby—’

‘The Fiorinda I knew didn’t have pierced ears.’

‘No piercings at all, she didn’t like the idea. Th-that was a fucking stupid oversight on someone’s part.’

‘She could have had it done after she left us, for some reason we can’t guess. Maybe we’re kidding ourselves. Maybe that was Fiorinda, and it’s better than some outcomes.’

‘It wasn’t her, Ax. We both knew it. Hang on to that.’

The Committee’s position on the disappearence had been clear from the start. Fiorinda’s flipped. She’s wandered off, suffering from delayed post-traumatic stress, what a shame. Nothing to do with a horrific series of murders, or a doomsday, insane rogue Pentagon project. The Few had been railroaded into accepting this bizarre response at first, but they’d recovered their senses, if Ax and Sage had not. They believed in their rock and roll brat, hard as nails and totally courageous.
Something had happened
to Fiorinda, in the window between twelve thirty when she’d left Kathryn Adams, and six thirty, which was approximately when she’d talked to Ax and Sage at the cabin in the hills. Somewhere in those few hours they would find the key to her disappearence.

Anne-Marie performed her own ritual magic—hampered by the fact that Fiorinda’s lovers refused to take part, and reviled her attempts. She didn’t like doing this without her mistress’s consent, but it was an emergency. (Dilip called Sage
my lord
sometimes, and got away with it. Ammy knew she better not call Fiorinda
lady
, or
mistress,
to her face. But she often did so in her mind). She asked the incense fire, in which one of Fiorinda’s yellow ribbons burned, to give her a word, a message; guidance. Where did Fiorinda go? Did she check into a hotel for an hour with a Latin lover? Did she sing for the lunchtime trade in a piano bar, in the hope of founding a new career? Did she meet one of their movie-star acquaintances, and recognise the monster within? Or was there something else, a door that opened onto an abyss? Kathryn Adams says she was afraid.

What’s Fiorinda afraid of?

Doctors
.

This was the word that Ammy had been given.

Draw a circle round the Bullocks Wilshire, make it half an hour’s LA driving in radius. Remember she had the Rugrat, ace negotiator of the freeway maze, remember she could equally have stuck to the surface streets, or reached her appointment on foot. They did not know what the word
Doctors
meant, but since it had been given to them they downloaded lists of medical practices, hospitals, clinics, medical suppliers, from the public net. Ammy cut up the lists, played with them, slept with them, and reduced the number.

Now they worked with shoeleather and persistence, covering the territory in pairs. The women did the gynaecology, paediatricians, female cosmetic surgery. Chip and Ver tackled the suburbs with a hired car. Dilip and Rob were on general medicine. You locate one of the places Ammy rated as a possible: you send her a photo. It’s important, apparently that you be physically
there
. If she says yes, one partner stays outside. The other walks into reception, shows the picture, asks the question. See what happens.

Ammy rarely said yes.

The Rugrat had been found, with all Fiorinda’s possessions inside. Her lovers were at Carlsbad, waiting to view a corpse. Fiorinda’s friends doggedly pursued their mystery. Dilip and Rob, buddies because Anne-Marie had vetoed mixed couples, travelled by bus and taxi. They took the MTA into town, and continued where they’d left off the evening before. Even if she was dead, they still wanted to know. The rain had vanished, the sky was grey but the temperature was back in the mid thirties. They worked for a couple of hours, and stopped to eat corner-store sandwiches in a little park, with the inevitable palm trees; which no longer gave them that eye-kick that says
you’re not in London anymore
.

‘The house where they filmed
Thriller
is around here somewhere,’ said Dilip.

‘We’ll have to bring Sage.’

They forgave Ax. Any fool knew that Ax had been fighting demons of his own all through this trip: no wonder he’d collapsed. They had to forgive Sage too, because…well, the Zen Self champion, towering genius, is notoriously wet kleenex in any emotional crisis. The guy can’t help it.

Rob sighed. ‘I wish he was with us on this. I hate to say it, because I truly love him, but Aoxomoxoa can be a
flake
, betimes.’

‘I hate to agree with you,’ said Dilip. ‘But you’re right.’

‘Back to the foot slog? Maybe we’ll snag another false positive.’

False-positives had acquired irrational value, they were such a relief from the endless negatives. Chip and Verlaine would even go into places when Ammy had said no, and do the private detective thing. The others frowned on this practice, but the kids maintained it couldn’t do any harm: Fiorinda’s disappearance was public knowledge by now. Rob glanced up at the dull sky, would it piss with rain again? Trust us to come to Southern California the year they have a shit summer.

‘DK? How much, er, “talent” do you think Ammy has?’

‘A nano-teaspoon in the Pacific ocean,’ murmured Dilip, leaning back with his eyes closed, ‘into which by some complex chance a fish may swim.’

‘You’re bushed, man,’ said Rob. He was trying to give DK plenty of rest-stops but he could see it was time to fall a halt. ‘There’s five on foot here, I’ll do them and we’ll quit for the day.’

‘
No
,’ said Dilip, ‘I’ll perform the ritual with you. It’s all we have. Ah,
Fiorinda
, who would have thought I would follow you down to the river?’

They walked together: the South London band-leader, righteous political brother, and the tranced-out Midlands intellectual, dance-culture veteran; alone in this alien city, bound together by a lost Utopia, and by their devotion to a certain wilful, heroic red-head. The next address was upscale, with a parking lot shaded by real, leafy trees.

‘This should be on the women’s list,’ said Rob.

Rob’s Trade Union points of order could be exhausting.

‘Let’s do it anyway.’

They called Ammy—who was back at Sunset Cape, sky clad, breathing the smoke of lavender and rosemary to sharpen her inner senses, Smelly Hugh in solemn attendance. They sent her a picture. She said yes.

‘False positive,’ said Rob. ‘Have you seen this girl? No, I’m not the police, I don’t have a licence. Then the bum’s rush. Do people really do this for a living?’

‘They have licences. Shall we both go in?’

‘No, we don’t break the rules. You stay out here.’

For a moment on the threshold Rob paused to consider that this might be the door with monsters on the other side, and if it was he was sure to screw up. He was not good with personal danger. Wish Ax was here: wish Sage was here. He squared up and went in. Dilip walked down the street and waited: with the option that he would
get out of here
and report back, should Rob fail to reappear.

Rob talked to the receptionist, who said, whoa, that’s Fiorinda!

‘Did she have an appointment here? About two weeks ago?’

‘Oh, you’re one too. One of those English radical rockstars. I recognise you! Well, I don’t know. It’s confidential, but, you’d better talk to Dr Trigos.’

Dilip saw Rob coming along the hot, grey street, in his parrot-blue suit: shoulders hunched, head bowed. ‘What happened? False positive?’’

Rob shook his head, and thrust into Dilip’s hands a page printed out from an electronic appointments book. He turned away, trying to control his emotion.

‘Oh, God,’ breathed Dilip. ‘She went to see a doctor!’

‘The doctor-lady says it was a positive consultation.’

‘What shall we do?’

‘Call them.’

Rob called Ax. ‘Hi. What’s happening with you?’

Silence, and then—

‘We’ve seen a body, a suicide we are told. No face. We’re on our way back.’

Well, fuck that. Rob swallowed, ‘Fiorinda didn’t kill herself.’ He was so choked he could hardly speak. ‘Whatever the bastards want us to believe. We’ve just found out what she was doing that afternoon. She went to a fertility clinic, and the doctor-lady there told her she could have a baby.’

‘Did you know, this freaky rain is supposed to mean the big one is finally on its way? It’s all over the doom news.’

‘Really.’

Janelle brought two juice cocktails out onto the deck. Today it wasn’t raining. The poisoned beauty of the Rosa was a dazzling symphony of blue and white. Come and see me sometimes: well, she had her wish. Here he was, with his back to her weatherboard, arms around his knees like an Aztec mummy: the sun glinting on his curly cropped head, eyes hidden behind heavy shades.

‘Or would you prefer something stronger?’ she asked gently.

‘No thanks.’

‘Yep, this is earthquake weather. But they say that every year, and any kind of unusual weather will do. It’s great, Aoxomoxoa.’ She sat in her long chair, and sipped the cocktail. ‘That Snake Eyes number, wow.’

‘“Up Down Street”?’

‘Uhuh. Hard times anthems, I love ’em. The feeling you got on that reminded me of John Huston’s boxing movie,
Fat City
… Did I ever make you watch that? One of the definitives, California movies, maybe the greatest. The valor people find, when they know their defeat is everlasting—’

‘Mm, right.’ The shades still fixed on the ocean.

‘I thought you were coasting in your work after
Arbeit,
but now you’re playing with the full deck, not just the fx. Is that how it feels?’

They’d been working on his newest stuff, only sketches so far. She could have felt resentful, because Aoxomoxoa had moved out of shlock-weirdness and was invading her territory. But she was safe: he’d be back to his old groove next album. He was hooked on spectacle and fireworks.

Sage had decided not to let her loose on the
Unmasked
tracks, over which he’d struggled for so long. He hadn’t forgotten he was dealing with a competitor.

‘The
whole deck
, no-kidding digitised reality, would be powers beyond anything I’ve tried so far. The wildest thing is that it might be possible.’

‘You’ll be there in a year or two, I know you. Hey, you should take the contacts out. Be careful, you don’t want to overdo it.’

‘Okay,’ Biddable as a good child he took off his fx blockers and slipped the coding lenses out of his eyes. His beautiful hands stumbled over the task of getting them back into their case. Shit, he’s going to tear them—

‘Let me do that.’ She felt like his mother, the original older woman, and this was painful but true. His grief had made him a child again, available to her the way the adult male stranger had not been. She wanted to say something about his loss, but it’s hard to guess what will comfort the bereaved.

The English could be proud. Fiorinda’s death was a big hit with the public. Her shrine, traditional, spontaneous, at the gates of the studio village, was already a tourist attraction; crawling with media hounds, a hazard to traffic. No flowers, that was the strange thing. Candles, heaps of soft toys, embroidery, messages: no bouquets. Apparently the little diva hadn’t liked cut flowers. Digital Artists would hold a memorial service once the body had been formally identified: but the funeral would be private. There’s nothing romantic about a coffin going into the ground, or through the curtain to the furnace.

‘You don’t know that she killed herself. You only know she went away to study her soul, and took a walk on the beach. It could have been an accident.’

She wouldn’t insult him by suggesting the body wasn’t Fiorinda. They both knew the ‘formal ID’ issue was pure bureaucracy.

‘Does the bodhisattva thing help?’

‘I’m living in the same world as you are, Jan. In which everyone I love is going to die, including me, eh? If not now then some day, if not one cruel way then another cruel way, it can’t be avoided. Yeah, maybe it helps. But the refuge is available to anyone, though it’s not as easy to reach as it sounds.’

‘This is the old chop wood, draw water thing?’

‘Yeah, same only different. You’re having a nightmare. A ravening beast is rushing towards you. You run the other way, and there’s another monster. You realise there are monsters rushing at you from all directions, and you’re defenceless. How do you escape?’

Janelle shook her head. ‘Forget it. I can never get those fucking logic things. Drink you juice, it’s getting warm.’