High Life Read Free Page B

small cable station. The presenter was a punky blond chick called Lorn. She didn’t care much about the actual movies people made, but she went all out for the people themselves—the actors, directors, producers, anyone rich and connected to the industry. Relationships, money, houses, cars, practices and preferences, addictions and detoxifications—she was jacked on all of it. I never missed a show.
    Robert Downey Jr. was having hassles over drugs and guns and Don Johnson had broken his ankle. On a lighter note, Ray Liotta and Michelle Grace were engaged, Mickey Rourke and Carre Otis had been spotted looking totally cool in New York, and Goldie Hawn was in London for the premiere of The First Wives Club . At Heathrow Airport she wore a cute black see-through number that gave a fetching glimpse of her nipples. Back in L.A. at House of Blues, Noah Wyle and Anthony Edwards were hanging out at some MTV gig. Anna Nicole Smith was writing the story of her life and George Clooney had gotten pissed off over intrusive TV journalism.
    The tape finished. I wanted to run another one, but I couldn’t concentrate—thoughts were starting to break through.
    My wife of a year was dead and I hadn’t told the police she was mine. Anyone else would have burst through that tape shouting incoherently about wife and relationship and Oh My God …
    But not me.
    And it wasn’t like I could brush it off with the knowledge that they would be coming around to the apartment anyhow. Because they wouldn’t.
    She hadn’t used her married name since the novelty of it wore off a few weeks after the ceremony, and she’d never converted any of her ID to my name or address. And getting a make on her from someone around where she was found was unlikely; no one knew her in Santa Monica—she hung out almost exclusively in West L.A. and Hollywood. Even if they did find someone who recognized her, the chance of me being located was still almost zero. We lived separate lives, she never brought her friends back to the apartment. As far as the world at large was concerned, there was very little connection between us. And anyhow, what was one more dead whore to Los Angeles?
    We met in a bar. I’d been in L.A. about a year and I wasn’t making much of a success of it. Beyond evening courses in telehosting, held in small private soundstages whose only business was evening courses, I hadn’t integrated. I knew how to hold my head so shadows didn’t form in my eye sockets, I could read an autocue and I could keep a smile in place, I could project that flawless, unflagging vitality so important to holding an audience. But plugging myself into the city just wasn’t happening and my contact with the general population didn’t rise much above sitting on a stool in a bar with a beer in front of me.
    I’d come west shackled with the usual dream of making a lot of money fast then spending the rest of my life in the sun enjoying it. But it hadn’t happened. In the absence of being mythically rags-to-riches discovered by some part of the media industry, an unskilled thirty-year-old tends to be channeled toward the dish washing end of things. And I didn’t get discovered.
    So I got a job at Donut Haven. It meant I could survive. But even by the time I met Karen, after I’d been a doughboy for almost a year, I didn’t have a pot to piss in. My only financial achievement was that I’d stayed out of East L.A.
    She’d been working that night. I’d never been with a hooker, but I said yeah when she stumbled against me and slurred that I could do her if I had the cash. Why not? After a certain point, city depression makes almost any offer of physical contact attractive. We went to my place and when it was over she stayed the night. She didn’t have a place of her own.
    Karen was a short skinny blonde who lived on the streets, a twenty-two-year-old with a collection of borderline addictions. When she didn’t have a trick she slept in an all-night theater or under a