Past Due

Back from the hospital in the few moments before I had to leave to meet Lo

It was the lack of a face in the photographs, the missing lens through which we view another’s humanity. Lies, despair, love, secrets, lust, all of it is found in the one part of this woman at which I couldn’t gaze. I had liked that missing ingredient before, it had allowed me to imagine, to match the perfection of the captured body with my own inventions for her eyes, her cheeks, her nose, her mouth. It had made the pictures all the more alluring, all the more seductive. But right now, I was still suffused with the memory of my father’s old lover standing in that hidden room, leaning over that open treasure box, the glint of gold in her eyes. The recesses of her soul were becoming ever darker and more mysterious to the man who had lay naked with her not a few hours before, and that was what I found frightening.

I wondered again who she was, this woman, whose objective beauty was pi

I took a step back from the photographs so that the whole array became visible at once. The legs, the torso, the sweet thin arms, the neck. The beauty mark on the edge of the areola of the right breast.

And as I stared at the whole of it, once again the photographs all came together for me, once again all the varied parts of that miraculous body melded into one another and became as one, a vision standing out from the wall, separate now from the individual photographs that inspired it.

Except, this time, there was a difference.

This time I began to see a face, the mysterious missing face. The features weren’t yet clear, the contours of her jaw, the shape of her eyes, it all wasn’t yet clear, but it was slowly crystallizing for me. And damn if she wasn’t starting to look like Chelsea.

Chapter 31

“BACK IN THE day, Dude,” said Lo

“Were you there?” I asked Chelsea.

Chelsea smiled, gave an expression of fake shock. “No girls allowed, at least no girlfriends allowed.” She sipped her blue martini. “A regular boys’ club.”

We were at the bar of the Continental, a smoky, swanky restaurant carved out of an old chrome diner. I knew the old place, I had eaten there, and generally to see a diner tarted up as some swank joint for a swank crowd made me angry and sad, but this diner had actually been foul, nowhere near as swell as the diner that still parked across the street. And so, as much as it pains me to say it, the Continental, with its power crowd and neon lights, with its padded walls and skewered olive light fixtures and frou-frou food was, actually, an improvement.

“The parties,” said Lo

“Lo

“Victor here asked what it was like back in the day, so I’m just telling him. Drinks, drugs, a long-legged girl with a mouth like a washing machine. And that was just the car. We had it going, Dude. And the chicks at home, they never knew a thing about it.”

“Don’t be stupid, Lo

“No way. No frigging way.” He tilted his head. “How?”

She picked up her glass by the stem, stretched her lovely neck, drained the last of her martini, placed the glass back on the bar. “We paid one of the regular whores to tell us.” She glanced at her watch. “I have to make a call.”

Lo

“Could be. There wasn’t much they wouldn’t do for money.” A hearty laugh. “Wasn’t much at all. Dude, you really should have been there.”

“Lo

“Hell, it’s not like you needed a driver’s license. What with the limos driving us down the Black Horse Pike. Others would fly in from all over the country, from Boston, from Miami, from Phoenix. All coming to the same place to celebrate. There’d be a reason, usually a bachelor party, but I’ll tell you this, it was, all of it, just an excuse. Hell, a lot of these guys just got married so we could have the party. Wild times, man, wild. You want a bone?”

I declined. Lo

“The twins, they would put money in the casino cage for each of us, so as soon as we arrived we could stride onto the floor, tap into the account, and start throwing the dice. Some of the guys, they played blackjack, but I always liked the dice. It’s quicker, Dude, if you know what I mean? I figure if I was going to win I was going to win, but if I was going to lose, fine, let’s get it over with so we could get it on.

“Upstairs, the twins, what with all the money they was putting into the cages, would get comped a huge suite with all kinds of co

“A dozen of them, really prime, you know what I mean. Not like the skanks for sale in Philly, no way. This was Atlantic City and the twins knew how to get the best. Dancing, stripteases, lesbian love, whatever game you was into. The music would be pumping, the girls would help themselves to the drugs, the clothes would come off, the shrimp would fly, things would spiral way out of control. And, Dude, it would go on and on and on. The secret was meth, a little meth you could go all night, and I used to score that myself for the boys. That was my special thing. And with enough drugs, after a while you wouldn’t know who you were screwing and you wouldn’t care. We would go on all night, dancing and screwing and getting high, until everything just collapsed like a burst balloon.