Night Film(119)

“No,” I said calmly, sitting on a chair in front of her. “We’re here because we want to know about Cordova.”

“Cordova.”

She said it with wonder, as if she hadn’t intoned the word in years, almost sucking on his name hungrily like a hard candy.

“His daughter’s dead as a doornail,” she blurted.

“What do you know about it?” I asked, surprised. Obviously we didn’t have the full picture of Marlowe’s mental state; she knew Ashley was dead.

“Girl never stood a chance,” she muttered under her breath.

“What did you say?” Hopper demanded, stepping toward her.

I wanted to kill him for interrupting her. She was gazing at him with a knowing smile as he sat down on an adjacent velvet chair.

“This must be Tarzan, Greystoke, Lord of the Apes. You’re missing a grunt and a club. Can’t wait to see you in your loincloth. Now, who else do we have here?” Enunciating this acidly, she leaned forward to survey Nora. “A chorus girl. You won’t be able to f*ck your way to the middle, Debbie. And you.” She turned to me. “A wannabe Warren straight from Reds. Every one of you, the farting demeanor of the artfully clueless. You people demand to know about Cordova?” She scoffed dramatically, though it sounded like a handful of pebbles rasping in her throat. “And so fleas look up at the sky and wonder why stars.”

“Drop the crazy actress shtick,” Hopper said.

“It’s not shtick,” whispered Nora, sitting stiffly on the couch.

“We’re not leaving until you start talking—”

“Hopper,” I cautioned.

“Then I suppose we’ll be shacking up together. You’ll sleep in the guest room. My days of bull riding are over. Though I warn you. The sheets haven’t been changed since I bedded Hans, so they’ll be sticky.”

Abruptly, Hopper stood up, strode to a lamp in the corner, and, switching it on, drenched the room suddenly in blue light. It was as if he’d thrown acid on her. Marlowe hunched forward, gasping, burying her face in her knees.

“Turn it off,” I said to him, though he didn’t appear to hear me. I realized this situation was swiftly eroding, though the more I reprimanded Hopper, the more it seemed to invigorate Marlowe.

“Ashley Cordova. What do you know?” he demanded, looming over her.

“Diddly squatkis! You deaf, Romeo?”

“Hopper.” I stood up.

“Poop,” chirped Marlowe. “Zilch-o. Goose egg. From the day she was born, she was toast.”

“She doesn’t know what she’s saying,” said Nora.

“Are you going to shake it out of me? Murder me? Good. I’ll finally get my postage stamp. Unlike Ashley. No one will remember her. She died for nothing.”

Before I could react, Hopper bent over her, roughly shaking her by the shoulders.

“You don’t hold a candle to her—”

I leapt forward and wrenched Hopper away from her, shoving him back onto the couch.

“What the hell’s the matter with you?” I shouted.

Hopper appeared to be as stunned by what he’d just done as I was. I turned back to Marlowe. She was slumped in the chair, motionless.

Jesus Christ.

It looked like he’d just shaken the last bit of life out of her.

Now we were all going to meet Old Sparky.

Nora raced back over to the lamp, switching it off, and the room again melted into dark drowsy vines and sharp rocks, Marlowe a slippery black animal lying wounded in the chair. After a moment, I realized with a wave of horror that Marlowe was whimpering, frail moans that sounded as if they were trickling out of some dark corner inside of her.

“We’re sorry,” Nora whispered, crouching beside her, putting a hand on her knee. “He didn’t mean to hurt you. Can we bring you something to drink? Some water, or … ?”

Abruptly, Marlowe stopped crying—like someone had flicked an off switch.

She lifted her head.

“Oh, yes, child. There’s some, uh, club soda just”—she twisted around the armchair, craning her neck toward the other side of the room—“there, in the bookcase, second shelf; behind Treasure Island you’ll find some, uh, water. If you could just fetch it for me, dearie.”

She was pointing emphatically at the shelves lining the far side of the room, around them a painted fresco of trellised roses climbing to the ceiling. Nora ran to it, fumbling behind the rows of books.

“There’s just booze here,” Nora said, pulling out a large bottle, reading the front. “Heaven Hill Old Style Bourbon.”

“Really? What a shame. Lucille must have confiscated my Evian. She’s always riding me hard about my water drinking. Wants me to go to meetings for it, Hydrated Anonymous or whatever the f*ck. I’ll have to make due with that, uh, bourbon, child. Bring me my Heaven Hill. And don’t drag your feet.”

Nora was reluctant.

“Give it to her,” I said.

“What if it mixes with the pills she’s taken?”

My gut told me ol’ Marlowe wasn’t on pills—or anything at all. When she’d jumped down from that countertop like a flying monkey out of The Wizard of Oz she’d had superb reflexes. Whatever irrational phrases she was spewing seemed purely mental, a side effect of being alone and locked inside this apartment for a couple of years. For all of her feigned terror at our break-in, I could see, too, she was eager for a live audience.