The small man’s shoulders shrank.
“Right behind you,” I whispered.
“Are you one of them?” I heard a voice say from under the large dark hat.
“One of what?” I said.
“Are you Death chasing me?”
“Just a friend trying to keep up.”
“I’ve been waiting for you,” the voice said, not moving, the feet planted firmly in the footprints of Constance Rattigan.
“What’s it mean?” I said. “Why this wild goose chase? Are you scared or playing tricks?”
“Why would you say that?” the voice said, hidden.
“Good grief,” I said. “Is this all some cheap dodge? Someone said you might want to write your life and needed someone to help. If you expect that to be me, no thanks. I’ve got better things to do.”
“What’s better than me?” said the voice, growing smaller.
“No one, but is Death really after you or are you looking for a new life, God knows what kind?”
“What better than Uncle Sid’s concrete mortuary? All the names with nothing beneath. Ask away.”
“Are you going to turn and face me?”
“I couldn’t talk then.”
“Is this some way of getting me to help you uncover your past? Is the casket half-full or half-empty? Did someone else make those red marks in your Book of the Dead, or did you make them?”
“It had to be someone else. Or else why would I be so frightened? Those red ink marks? I’ve got to look them up, find which ones are dead already, and which are just about to die but still alive. Do you ever have the feeling everything’s falling apart?”
“Not you, Constance.”
“Christ, yes! Some nights I sleep Clara Bow, wake up Noah, wet with vodka. Is my face ruined?”
“A lovely ruin.”
“But still—”
Rattigan stared out at Hollywood Boulevard. “Once there were real tourists. Now it’s torn shirts. Everything’s lost, junior. Venice pier drowned, trolley tracks sunk. Hollywood and Vine, was it ever there?”
“Once. When the Brown Derby hung their walls with cartoons of Gable and Dietrich, and the headwaiters were Russian princes. Robert Taylor and Barbara Stanwyck drove by in their roadster. Hollywood and Vine? You planted your feet there and knew pure joy.”
“You talk nice. Want to know where Mama’s been?”
She moved her arm. She took some newspaper clippings from beneath her coat. I saw the names Califia and Mount Lowe.
“I was there, Constance,” I said. “The old man was crushed by a collapsed haystack of news. God, it looked like he died on the San Andreas fault. Someone pushed the stacks, I think. An indecent burial. And Queen Califia? A fall downstairs. And your brother, the priest. Did you visit all three, Constance?”
“I don’t have to answer.”
“Let me try a different question. Do you like yourself ?”
“What!?”
“Look. I like myself. I’m not perfect, hell no, but I never bedded anyone if I felt they were breakable. Lots of men say hit the hay, live! Not me. Even when it’s offered on a plate. So with no sins, I don’t often have bad dreams. Oh, sure, there was the time I ran away from my grandma when I was a kid, ran away and left her blocks behind, so she came home weeping. I still can’t forgive myself. Or hitting my dog, just once, I hit him. And that still hurts, thirty years later. Not much of a list, right, to make bad dreams?”