VACANCY & ARIEL

AFTER A THERAPY day with Stacey, Cliff thinks he might be ready to put l’affaire Celeste behind him. She’s convinced him that he isn’t qualified to deal with the situation, if there is a situation, and for a few days he eschews the binoculars, gets back into Scott Turow, and avoids looking at the Vacancy sign, though when his concentration lapses, he feels its letters branding their cool blue shapes on his brain. On Thursday evening, he closes early, before nine, and drives straight home, thinking he’ll jump into a pair of shorts and walk over to the Surfside, but on reaching his house he finds a slender package stuck inside the screen door. Sword of the Black Demon has arrived from Arcane Films. A Camp Classic. He tosses it on the sofa, showers, changes, and, on his way out, decides to throw the movie in the player and watch a little before heading to the bar—refreshing his memory of the picture will give him something to talk about with his friends.

It’s worse than he remembers. Beyond lame. Gallons of stage blood spewing from Monty-Pythonesque wounds; the cannibal queen’s chunky, naked retinue; a wizard who travels around on a flying rock; the forging of a sword from a meteorite rendered pyrotechnically by lots of sparklers; the blue witches, also naked and chunky, except for one…He hits the pause button, kneels beside the TV, and examines the lissome shape of, it appears, Shalin Palaniappan, wishing he could check if the current incarnation of the blue witch has a mole on her left breast, though to do so would likely net him five-to-ten in the slammer. He makes for the Surfside, a concrete block structure overlooking the beach, walking the dunetops along A1A, hoping that a couple of vodkas will banish his feeling of unease, but once he’s sitting at the bar under dim track lighting, a vodka rocks in hand, deliciously chilled by the AC, embedded in an atmosphere of jazz and soft, cluttered talk, gazing through the picture window at the illuminated night ocean (the beach, at this hour, is barely ten yards wide and the waves seem perilously close), he’s still uneasy and he turns his attention to the Marlins on the big screen, an abstract clutter of scurrying white-clad figures on a bright green field.

“Hey, Cliffie,” says a woman’s voice, and Marley, a diminutive package of frizzy, dirty blond hair and blue eyes, a cute sun-browned face and jeans tight as a sausage skin, lands in the chair beside his and gives him a quick hug. She’s young enough to be his daughter, old enough to be his lover. He’s played both roles, but prefers that of father. She’s feisty, good-hearted, and too valuable as a friend to risk losing over rumpled bed sheets.

“Hey, you,” he says. “I thought this was your night off.”

“All my nights are off.” She grins. “My new goal—becoming a barfly like you.”

“What about…you know. Tyler, Taylor…”

She pretends to rap her knuckles on his forehead. “Tucker. He gone.”

“I thought that was working out.”

“Me, too,” she says. “And then, oops, an impediment. He was wanted for fraud in South Carolina.”

“Fraud? My God!”

“That’s what I said…except I cussed more.” She neatly tears off a strip of cocktail napkin. “Cops came by the place three weeks ago. Guns drawn. Spotlights. The whole schmear. He waived extradition.’”

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

She shrugs. “You know how I hate people crying in their beer.”

“God. Let me buy you a drink.”

“You bet.” She pounds the counter. “Tequila!”

They drink, talk about Tucker, about what a lousy spring it’s been. Two tequilas along, she asks if he’s all right, he seems a little off. He wants to tell her, but it’s too complicated, too demented, and she doesn’t need to hear his problems, so he tells her about the movies he did in the Philippines, making her laugh with anecdotes about and impersonations of the director. Five tequilas down and she’s hanging on him, giggly, teasing, laughing at everything he says, whether it’s funny or not. It’s obvious she won’t be able to drive. He invites her to use his couch—he’d give her the bed, but the couch is murder on his back—and she says, suddenly tearful, “You’re so sweet to me.”

After one for the road, they start out along the dunes toward home, going with their heads down—a wind has kicked up and blows grit in their faces. The surf munches the shore, sounding like a giant chewing his food with relish; a rotting scent intermittently overrides the smell of brine. No moon, no stars, but porch lights from the scattered houses show the way. Marley keeps slipping in the soft sand and Cliff has to put an arm around her to prevent her from falling. The tall grasses tickle his calves. They’re twenty yards from his front step, when he hears the sound of boomerang in flight—he identifies it instantly, it’s that distinct. A helicopter-ish sound, but higher-pitched, almost a whistling, passing overhead. He stops walking, listening for it, and Marley seizes the opportunity to rub her breasts against him, her head tipped back, waiting to be kissed.