VACANCY & ARIEL

Ashford continues to study the list. “These are expensive cars. The Ford Escape, that’s one of those hybrids, right?”

“Uh-huh. New this year.”

Ashford folds the paper, sticks it in his notebook. “So. What I was saying, do you think there could be a reasonable explanation for all this? Something that has nothing to do with a witch and a movie? Something that makes sense in terms someone like me could accept?”

This touch of self-deprecation fuels the idea that Ashford may be smarter than Cliff has assumed. “It’s possible,” he says, but after a pause he adds, “No. Fuck, no. You had…”

A peremptory knocking on the door interrupts Cliff. With a disgruntled expression, Ashford heaves up to his feet and pokes his head out into the corridor. After a prolonged, muttering exchange with someone Cliff can’t see, Ashford throws the door open wide and says flatly, “You can go for now, Coria. We’ll be in touch.”

Baffled, Cliff asks, “What is it? What happened?”

“Your girlfriend’s alive. She’s out by the front desk.”

Cliff’s relief is diluted by his annoyance over Ashford’s refusal to accept that he and Marley are not lovers, but before he can once again deny the assertion, Ashford says, “Your house is still a crime scene. You might want to hang out somewhere for a few hours until we’ve finished processing.”

Cliff gives him a what-the-fuck look, and Ashford, with more than a hint of the malicious in his voice, says, “We have to find out who that blood belongs to, don’t we?”

Chapter 6

IN THE ENTRYWAY of the police station, Marley mothers Cliff, hugging and fussing over him, attentions that he welcomes, but once in the car she waxes outraged, railing at the cops and their rush to judgment. Christ Almighty! She woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep, so she went to a diner and did some brooding. You’d think the cops would have more sense. You’d think they would look before they leaped.

“It’s my fault,” Cliff says. “I called them.”

She shoots him a puzzled glance. “Why’d you do that?”

He remembers that she knows nothing about the Black Demon, the blood, the slit porch screen.

“You left the door open,” he says. “I was worried.”

“I did not! And even if I did, that’s no reason to call the cops.”

“Yeah, well. There was weird shit going on last night. I got hit by vandals, and that made me nervous.”

They stop at a 7-11 so Cliff can buy a clean t-shirt—it’s a tough choice between a white one with a cartoon decal and the words Surf Naked, and a gray one imprinted with a fake college seal and the words Screw U. He settles on the gray, deciding it makes a more age-appropriate statement. They go for breakfast at a restaurant on North Atlantic, and then to Marley’s studio apartment, which is close by. The Lu-Ray Apartments, a brown stucco building overlooking the ocean and the boardwalk—with the windows open, Cliff can hear faint digital squeals and roars from a video arcade that has a miniature golf course atop its roof. It’s a drizzly, overcast morning and, with its patched greens and dilapidated obstacles, a King Kong, a troll, a dragon that spits sparks whenever someone makes a hole-in-one, etcetera, the course has an air of post-apocalyptic decay. The dead Ferris wheel beside it emphasizes the effect.

Marley’s place is tomboyishly Spartan, a couple of surfboards on the wall, a Ramones poster, a wicker throne with a green cushion, a small TV with some Mardi Gras beads draped over it, a queen-size box spring and mattress covered by a dark blue spread. The only sign of femininity is that the apartment is scrupulously clean, not a speck of dust, the stove and refrigerator in the kitchenette gleaming. Marley tells Cliff to take the bed, she has to do some stuff, and sits cross-legged in the wicker chair, pecking at her laptop. He closes his eyes, surrendering to fatigue, fading toward sleep; but his thoughts start to race and sleep won’t come. He tries to put a logical spin on everything that happened, works out various theories that would accommodate what he saw. The only one that suits is that he’s losing it, and he’s not ready to go there. Finally, he opens his eyes. Marley’s still pecking away, her face concentrated by a serious expression. In her appearance and mien, she reminds him of girls he knew in LA in the eighties, many of them weekend punkers, holding down a steady job during the week, production assistants and set dressers and such, and then, on Friday night, they’d dress down, wear black lipstick and too much mascara, and go batshit crazy. But those girls were all fashion punks with a life plan and insurance and solid prospects, whereas Marley’s a true edge-dweller with a punk ethos, living paycheck to paycheck, secure in herself, a bit of dreamer, though her practical side shows itself from time to time—for a week or two she’ll binge on schemes to resurrect her fiscal security; then, Pffft!, it all goes away and she’s carefree and careless again.