I’m Losing You Read Online Free PDF Page A

subterranean maunderings. She hoped he would find no coons yet the satisfaction derived from knowing the thing was being faced head-on gave her a moment of peace that felt innovative, potentiating the effects of the Demerol. All her life she had taken solace from the good offices of those involved in service—the handymen of Rockwell’s America, armies of commonsense illuminati with natural born dexterous gifts, men who dismantled and trimmed, gutted and washed away, improvised and cobbled, unstopped, unplugged and unstuck; men who removed unwanted things, useless or dead. She wanted him down there forever, guard of the underworld; now and then, he could surface for a meal, sitting with her at the captain’s table of the kitchen banquette as she sipped her painkiller, telling all the Huck Finn things he’d seen from the mystic engine room as they trawled their way to the far sodalities of Raccoon Cove.
    It was cool and vast beneath the house. The place was like a showroom, tightly packed dirt so clean it might have been the floor of a natural history exhibit featuring basements of rich suburban hillside dwellers of the late twentieth century. The Dead Animal Guy liked this woman and was faintly embarrassed for her. He knew he would find nothing.
    Suddenly tired, Simon sat cross-legged, lighting a cigarette. Maybe he should call Calliope before dropping in—sometimes she went nutzoid if he didn’t. Oh the hell with it. He was so close, he’d stop and have a sandwich on the way back to Huntington Beach. Whatwas the problemo? Visiting the old homestead was a bit of a dysfunctional detour. He should really go straight home to work. Eight months ago, he’d bought half a dozen
Blue Matrix
episodes at Script City in Hollywood. They’d been gathering dust on the floor beside his bed; it was high time to enter ye olde Writing Phase. Back at Three Strikes Exterminators, before he was an independent contractor, he’d met one of the
Blue Matrix
producers on a job, removing what looked to be a mephitic, larva-shimmering leather shoe from the crawlspace beneath a Studio City home—
ur
-Fluffy, in fact. Simon had a
Matrix
premise concerning a dying Vorbalidian emperor, and the producer, Scott Sagabond, had been encouraging. The veterinary mortician still carried the man’s scuffed-up card in his wallet.
    â€œMother?”
    The voice resonated with eerie clarity, and Simon scurried to a vent. Pairs of feet shuffled above.
    â€œIs that you, Donny?” Serena asked.
    â€œJuana called me in the car.”
    â€œWhy did she do that?”
    â€œActually, I called
her
. I had a meeting nearby and wanted to pop in.”
    The old woman coughed with displeasure. “I don’t know why you called him, Juana.”
    â€œI didn’t, Mrs. Ribkin.”
    â€œI don’t like being spied on.”
    â€œMother, you’re being silly.”
    â€œNo one’s spying, Mrs. Ribkin.”
    â€œDon’t you patronize!” A pause. “Are you hungry?”
    â€œI’m fine.”
    â€œJuana, will you tell Veronica to make a tuna salad?”
    â€œIs someone here?” Donny asked.
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œJuana said someone was here.”
    Simon stubbed out his cigarette and emerged from under the house. He knocked on the door and the man answered. He was around forty, pudgy, with thinning orange hair. He wore a deep blue suit and glary, tieless white shirt fastened to the top, each button a different size and shape, ranging from chunks of ivory to tiny animal horns. As Simon began his spiel, Donny Ribkin was alreadydigging in his pocket for cash: He sent the Dead Animal Guy packing without benefit of a migratory discourse on vent-cover aesthetics.
    As he left, Simon heard the old woman call to her son, the nurse and whoever else might listen: “I tell you there is something dead in this house.”

    â€œOh hi, Mitch.”
    Simon poked his way