A Man Named Doll by Jonathan Ames (popular books to read TXT) 📗

over to the front seat—he was a springy and athletic dog—and he started sucking on the bandage.

“Don’t do that!” I said, disgusted, and I yanked the infected bandage out of his mouth and, like an idiot, threw it in the back again, and George, naturally, thought this was a game, and he hopped back over the seat, got his prize, and came back with it and began shaking the bandage back and forth in his mouth like it was a dead animal.

So I yanked it away again but didn’t want to throw it out the window and litter, so I put it in the visor above the steering wheel, but that made George jump all over me to get at it, and he nearly clawed my suppurating tumor, and so then I shoved the bandage in the glove compartment and he scratched at that, going nuts, and I said, “Stop it, George! Stop it!”

And I thought I was going to lose my mind, but just then, thankfully, Maurais came rolling down the long driveway, and the black gate swung open. It was almost 3:30, and Maurais made a right onto Encinal, heading for the coast, and I counted to sixty and then followed after him.

George then forgot about the bandage, and he put his paws again on the dashboard and stared ahead intently, like a handsome sea captain at the prow of his ship.

17.

Thirty minutes later, we hit soul-crushing traffic on the Pacific Coast Highway, just south of Topanga, and George was asleep, snoring gently, and I had taken to moaning, clutching the steering wheel, and rocking in my seat.

When I wasn’t doing that, I was trying not to touch my wound, but every few minutes I couldn’t help myself and would probe it gently. There was a morbid fascination with feeling it and I kept glancing at it in the rearview mirror to disgust myself.

Between the elder Lusk and the younger Lusk and two go-rounds of surgery, my face had been turned into a piece of rotten meat. Something found in an alley outside a butcher shop. Behind a garbage can.

To mix things up, stuck in the deadly traffic, I also played, once in a while, with the goose egg on my scalp where Lusk Sr. had kicked me in the head.

But to my credit, I never weakened and reached for the Dilaudid, and at all times, I kept about six to eight cars between myself and the little Mercedes.

In total, we were on the PCH for about thirty miles, with the ocean to our right, and all along the coast, surfers in black wet suits waited in the water for the last few waves of the day, lined up like crows on a wire.

Things finally picked up a little when Maurais cut through the Palisades and headed east on Sunset Boulevard, but then we hit another dose of excruciating congestion and I thought for sure I was going to lose my mind this time, that this was it, but then I hit some sort of transcendent place with the face pain—like getting used to a teakettle whistle that never shuts up.

Then around 5:30, after two very long hours in the car, Maurais pulled into the driveway of a midsize apartment building on Doheny, just a little off Sunset, in West Hollywood.

As I went past the building, the garage gate had just finished sliding open, and the Mercedes drove in, went to the left, and disappeared beneath the building: it was a basement garage.

The sun was just about down and everything was purple again, which happens in Los Angeles at sunset, either because of pollution or the tilt of the world or the combination of the two, and I kept moving on Doheny. Then I did a U-turn, doubled back, and found a parking spot on a leafy side street kitty-corner to Maurais’s building, about midway down the block.

I parked facing his building and looked the place over. It was six stories, made of white bricks, and every apartment on the street side had a sliding glass door onto a balcony, with an elegant green canvas awning for shade.

There were palm trees in front, and a sign in script on the wall of the building said: THE OLIVE. The place looked well maintained and pricey, and I figured this for Maurais’s home, maybe because it looked like him. Old and from another time.

I took George out of the car but kept my eye on the entrance to the garage in case the Mercedes suddenly popped out.

We walked up the street in the violet light, in the direction of the Olive, and it was a miracle, but one of the houses we passed had a water bowl out in front for dogs, and George, very thirsty, the poor boy, made a dive for it.

I always love it when people do that for dogs, never more so than at that moment, and I wished I could drink from the bowl myself and nearly considered it. I was dry as hell.

After George had his fill, we went back to the car and watched the building for a few more minutes to give Maurais a little more time to get to his apartment, if this was in fact where he lived. Most likely there was an elevator in the garage that had access to the interior of the building.

My face was still doing its teakettle act, screaming at a high pitch, but I was focused and angrily determined: Maurais was close at hand, and he was going to tell me things.

Then I got out of the car with the bag of money and hid it in the trunk. I left George behind with the windows cracked open, and his eyes, of course, were sad, but I didn’t take him with me as I wanted my hands free in case I needed to put them on Maurais.

18.

The building entrance had double glass doors, and at one time there might have been a