Then he shoveled junk off the backseat of the car and collapsed. In his dream, Emily Sweet danced for him, her feet bare, singing something he couldn’t make out.
Later that morning he blew through Vegas: the Stratosphere, Caesars, the Riviera looming like monuments to lurid gods. There was a reason the tourist shots always showed Vegas at night, glowing like fireworks. By the bright light of early morning, the glitter seemed surreal and cheap. A hangover after a night of bad decisions.
And far quicker than a hangover, it vanished. But somewhere in the desert beyond Vegas, the feeling started.
Excitement.
With every numbingly dull mile he knocked down, it grew. A palpable feeling in his chest, a joyous bubbling warmth. He was almost home. The answer to every question was only a few hours away. He didn’t know what he would find, but atleast it would be something.
Shortly before noon, he merged from I-15 to the 10. Smooth, wide lanes bordered by concrete under an electric blue sky. It didn’t look that different from a lot of the country he’d covered in the last days: car dealerships and strip malls and chain hotels. But it felt right. The streets and towns had names he could taste like ice cream flavors— Covina, Pomona, Alhambra. Each more familiar than the last.
Half an hour later, when the Los Angeles skyline rose in the distance, the mirrored towers bearing the names of banks and insurance companies, the concrete basin of the river shining with shallow puddles, he felt his heart swell against his ribs. Traffic had slowed, and on his right was a convertible driven by a blonde whose hair stirred like a dream of summer; to his left, a guy yelled into a cell phone as he steered his Hummer. The Hollywood sign was just visible through a nicotine-yellow haze. Radio stations came and went like transmissions from the moon; billboards proclaimed that dieting sucked, suggested he get the lap band. It was November, and seventy degrees.
Los Angeles. Home.
He forced his attention back to the situation. The insurance card address was in Malibu, not L.A. proper. But the Candy Girls house was in Venice.
No, asshole, it’s not. It’s in a studio somewhere. The walls are façades and the sky is a light grid. Emily Sweet doesn’t exist. She’s just a symbol your messed-up brain designed to get you back to Los Angeles.
Well, bravo, two points for the subconscious. But no need to get ridiculous.
He flashed on an image, a dream, maybe? Emily Sweet standing
THE TWO DEATHS OF DANIEL HAYES 73
in front of a window, wrapped in sunlight, gauzy with it, her dark hair shining. Her lips were pink and parted as if she were about to say something. She wore fitted jeans and a black bra, and he could see the humming softness of her stomach, the curve of her shoulder, a hint of nipple through lace.
Of course, Venice is more or less on the way to Malibu. What’s an hour or two?
In his mind’s eye, Emily Sweet’s lips twisted into a molasses smile, a promise she’d meet him there.
The show wasn’t specific on where the house was supposed to be, but there were frequent intercut shots of local landmarks. The faded letters V E N I C E above Windward Avenue. Jim Morrison looking down from a mural. The boardwalk, Rollerbladers and jugglers and homeless. When he’d seen those on television, he’d recognized them, though the recognition came without any context, the same way he could visualize the Statue of Liberty but had no idea if he had ever actually seen it.
But now that he was here, he did feel a charge, a sense that he had been here. He had driven these streets, eaten in these restaurants. It was jarring in a good way, a pleasant sort of déjà vu, and he found himself growing increasingly excited. Every time he turned a corner, the feeling that he knew this place grew, and around each he expected to see . . .
What? Emily Sweet leaning over a porch railing, waving at you?
Well, yeah. Kind of. And so he drove slow, taking in every stylish boutique, every yoga studio, every tattoo parlor. Lawn-mowered the BMW up and down wide boulevards and narrow streets, looking for the one that held the Candy Girls house, and if not Emily, then at least some answers.
Three hours later, he had a headache, a sick feeling, and the dubious claim of having driven every block of Venice.
The house wasn’t there.
Of course it’s not. You knew that when you started.
Still, it hurt. A surprising amount, actually. Maybe it was just wishful thinking, but during the drive she had become a symbol for him, a sign that all of this had some larger purpose. She was Home and Mother and Lover rolled into one, the temptress with a crooked smile and all the answers.
Get it through your head. There is no Emily Sweet.
By the way, there’s no Han Solo either, and no Santa Claus. Sorry, kid.
Daniel found a place to park, stomped to a restaurant, and ordered a Cuban sandwich and two beers. He sat at a wobbly sidewalk table, chewed numbly, and watched people go about their lives.
It didn’t matter. He hadn’t come here for that. He wasn’t crazy. Confused, yes; scared, certainly. But not crazy. Whacked-out dreams of her may have pursued him across the country, but he’d made the drive based on tangible evidence. The address on the insurance card. That was why he was here.
Sure, it would have been nice to have this strange and glorious symbol guiding him. It would have exempted him from the things he’d done, and it would have given him faith that there was an order, a purpose to things. But wanting didn’t make it so.
Maybe an address on an insurance card is a lousy, prosaic way to stake a claim on your life. But it’s what you have. Deal with it.
He wiped grease from his fingers, downed the last of the beer, and walked back to his car. Time to hit the PCH, see what Malibu had to offer.
Twenty miles and forty minutes later, Daniel discovered he was wrong.
Turned out he was crazy after all.
ACT TWO, PART ONE
“In L.A., you think you’re making something up, but it’s making you up.”
—Steve Erickson, Amnesiascope
A
blurry week ago he had woken on one coast. It had been cold and gray and lonely, beautiful in a desolate sort of way. It had nearly killed him, and maybe he had wanted it to.
Then the dreams, and the police.
The midnight cities in blurs of light.
The Midwest, flat and pale.
The endless fields of grain.
The gaudy playland of Las Vegas.
The heat shimmer of the desert.
The bright bustle of Los Angeles.
The Pacific Coast Highway, a ribbon winding between knuckled