This Must Be the Place: A Novel Read Free Page A

dot of ketchup from the corner of his mouth with her left fingertip. Who would teach him how to navigate, how to survive, how to fall in love with LA’s charmingly daft will—finding its resolve to exist for its own superficial sake perfectly romantic and not a terminal fool’s dying delusion. Who would teach him to fall in love with her. Who would be his friend and his lover and then his wife, who would be his home, who could create life from metal and rubber and wires for the sake of a few frames of film, and who would, at 7:48 on a Friday morning in early October, send ten thousand volts from the tip of the same finger that had wiped the ketchup from his lips through all the chambers of her heart.
    Amy, who would be killed instantly.
    Amy, who would make Arthur Rook a widower at thirty-two.
    “Hey, Arthur, your phone.” Between students, Max jerked his head at Arthur’s coat, draped over an open equipment trunk. “Been ringing like crazy.”
    Arthur set down his empty coffee cup and flipped his cell phone open. He had ten missed calls.

    Of the ten calls missed, there was only one message, left by Amy’s boss, Stantz. His real name was Bill Bittleman, but he loved
Ghostbusters
and wanted everyone to call him Stantz—everyone Amy worked with loved at least one movie like a religion; they loved movies, period, but there was always one movie above the rest. Bill Bittleman’s was
Ghostbusters
.
    “Arthur, I’m so sorry—oh, Christ, Arthur, I’m so sorry,” said Stantz’s message. “Call me. Call me on . . . this phone, this number, Icouldn’t find your number so I looked it up on Amy’s . . . phone. Call me
immediately
. Where
are
you?”
    Arthur was cold. Freezing.
    His fingertips were numb when he redialed Amy’s number. Her picture appeared on the tiny screen of his phone: Amy with Ray Harryhausen draped across her shoulders like a fur wrap—a very alive, very pissed-off wrap.
    Why was Stantz using Amy’s phone?
    “Arthur!” shouted Stantz. “Arthur, I—I don’t know how to tell you this.”
    Bill’s voice cracked. Bill was crying.
    “It was an accident,” Stantz said. “It was just a stupid accident, a stupid—”
    Arthur heard a high whine. The sound of crystal vibrating.

    Arthur was lying in bed in the dark, under the covers, fully clothed. His sneakers were still on and his mouth tasted like tin. He couldn’t remember Max dropping him off after work. He didn’t remember if he’d fed Harryhausen. He kept more regular hours than Amy, so feeding the cat was his—responsibility—

    Arthur was standing in the shower. A freezing cold shower. He was resting his head against the tile in the corner, and when he stood back, he felt a ridge pressed into the skin of his forehead. His throat was sore. His hand—hurt—Jesus, what did he do to his hand? His knuckles were raw and stung, bloody, under the cold spray from the showerhead. He turned off the water and stepped out of the shower and there were little red polka dots all over the bathroom sink, and Arthur saw that someone had punched the bathroom mirror. It hadn’t shattered but it was cracked in one corner and dangling off the cabinet’s glide track.
    He wrapped a towel around himself and opened the door.
    Ray Harryhausen was lying in the middle of the hallway, his furry bulk puddling over his paws so that he looked like a striped brick with a cat’s head.
    “Are you hungry?” Arthur asked him. “Did I feed you? Huh, Harry?”
    Harryhausen, who tended to be either inert or asleep, wasn’t exactly behaving oddly by lying in the middle of the hallway, but something was wrong about it. Something was wrong about
him
. Arthur and Harry had never liked one another—Harry was really Amy’s cat, had been her roommate for years before Arthur came along—
    Amy’s cat—
    Harryhausen made a horrible, horrible noise and Arthur sank to the carpet on his knees. Everything that had happened that day, everything he lost, flooded back as a