John Shirley - Wetbones Read Online Free PDF

her name.
    "Hm?" She looked at him from the other side of a fog bank. "Um - I don't know." Indifferent. Normally she'd have run around like a decapitated chicken, looking for the necklace.
    She looked tired, too. She didn't smell like crack smoke or pot, but . . . all the other signs were there. She was wobbly on her feet. Not meeting his eyes. Distancing. Indifference to what used to be important to her.
    How could it happen so fast? It just didn't happen that way overnight.
    "What is it, hon?" he said gently. "Was it cocaine or what?"
    "What do you mean?" Her voice dreamily monotone. Normally she would have said, Da-ad! I'm sure! Gross!
    "Where's the car, Constance? I didn't see it outside."
    "Car?" She blinked. Twice. "Oh. God. I left it at the mall. I'm sorry." She smiled distantly. "Happiness comes in places you never expect, didn't you say that once, Dad?"
    "Uh - yeah."
    "You were right. I would never expect . . . a guy like . . ." She shut her mouth. Rather abruptly.
    "A guy like who, Constance? Hon - did someone give you drugs?"
    "No." Soft-spoken conviction. Convincing understatement.
    "You fall in love?" That was a kind of drugging. "Falling in love" released hormones, endorphins, made you feel drugged. He knew it was grasping at straws but he grasped at it anyway.
    "Sort of."
    "Sort of? Who with? Some guy you met at the mall?"
    "Yeah. His name's . . . Michael. And he's leaving town." And I can't stand to stay around this summer without him. So . . ." Suddenly she got all chirpy, sitting up straight and beaming at him as she asked it, as if to say, How could you say no, Dad? "Could I go visit his family in Los Angeles? They'll chaperone us."
    She was explaining, all this with uncharacteristic verbal clarity. Maybe it was just an infatuation drunkenness, after all.
    "This is pretty sudden," he said. "Can't I meet this guy before you take trips with his family? I mean, you only met him yourself today, sweetie."
    "Um - sometime. You can meet him sometime. I better go pick up the car, okay?"
    "I'll go with you," Garner said, watching for her reaction. She frowned, but didn't argue.
    They went. They took the last bus and picked up the car. It looked abandoned in the midst of the vast parking lot. In silence, they drove home. Garner cooked dinner; she ate her food mechanically but thoroughly. She continued to deny any drug use; quite convincingly, though with a weird detachment. Normally an accusation of that sort would have made her first outraged and then sulky.
    She went up to her room, to go to bed early.
    Garner finally dropped off to sleep about three a.m. He woke at six, knowing something was wrong.
    Knowing, with a cold-sweat certainty, that Constance had gone.
    2
Los Angeles, a Day Earlier
    Prentice drove the rented Tercel down Sunset to Highland, made his way to Barham, bypassing the freeway where sunlight lanced off the thick metallic flow of traffic. He followed the curving road through the hills, past condos and ranch homes, and down into Burbank. His eyes burned as he drove into the valley. The palm trees looked gray as dead skin here.
    Arthwright had a development deal with Sunrise Studios and they gave him a little bungalow office on the old studio lot. Sunrise had bought the lot from MGM; somebody else had recently bought Sunrise, Prentice had forgotten who. A soft drink company or an oil company. Or possibly a soft drink company owned by an oil company which was maybe owned by a plastics conglomerate. The Security guard at the gate's little Checkpoint Charlie - a black guy in cop-style mirrored sunglasses - scanned a clipboard list to be sure Prentice really did have an appointment with Arthwright, then directed him to Parking Area F.
    "F for full," Prentice muttered, looking at the rows of Porsches and Jags. There was only one empty space,
    where the tarmac was stenciled LOU KENSON . The erstwhile star had lost his deal with Sunrise and was now on the actor's Out List. Kenson could be