The Hell Yo - lanyon Josh - Страница 51

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myself. Guy’s hand closed on my shoulder. I turned back and saw him indicate an abandoned

table covered with empty glasses and spilled liquid.

I nodded. We fought our way upstream, grabbed the chairs, and sat down. I stood up

again. I’d sat in a puddle of beer. Jesus. I hoped it was beer. I grabbed some crumpled napkins

and mopped the seat to the great amusement of the spiky-haired and very drunk couple next

to us.

A waitress, dressed in red sequins – not many of them – flitted by, but didn’t stop to

take our order for drinks.

I couldn’t see Betty Sansone, but it was difficult to make out anything through the

combination of haze and bodies in motion. I became aware that Guy was trying to get my

attention.

I lip read his words. “Want a drink?”

I nodded. I’d need a lot of drinks if we were staying long.

He vanished into the mob.

I peered at the drunk couple at the table next to us. I realized they weren’t talking,

they were singing the background soundtrack to each other, their faces about one inch apart.

He had green spiky hair and rings in his ears and eyebrows. She had magenta spiky hair and

rings in her eyebrows and her nose – and a gleaming stud in her tongue. I wondered if they

had any trouble disengaging after a kiss. I watched her mouth the lyrics to her be-ringed

swain across the unsteady table.

“Save me from the nothing I’ve become …”

Maybe that was what it was all about, I thought. Sure, rebellion was part of it, but

maybe the fascination with the dark side, the flirtation with death and danger, was an

attempt to pierce the isolation and alienation inherent in adolescence and young adulthood.

Or maybe they were just the bored and pampered spawn of Satan and needed a good

spanking.

Guy was gone a long time. I watched the mob of dancers writhe and wriggle in tribal

ecstasy, awarding them points for persistence. As I watched, a girl slipped and fell on her ass.

No one seemed to notice, including her. She continued to gyrate from a sitting position.

At last Guy returned with two glasses of blood red liquid. It could have been poison or

Kool-Aid. I didn’t much care.

“Love Potion No. 9,” he shouted.

I nodded, made my stiff lips smile. I knocked mine back. Cheap red wine.

Guy’s brows drew together. He said again, “Is everything okay?”

I pretended I couldn’t hear him and turned away in time to see Betty Sansone stalk

through the front entrance with a coterie. I recognized one of her companions, the kid from

the Biltmore who looked a bit like Harry Potter. The rest of Team Wicked was unknown to

me.

I reached for Guy’s arm, nodded toward Betty.

He nodded back. Then he did a kind of double-take. I couldn’t tell what had startled

him; the next time I looked his way, his face was expressionless.

We watched Betty and the gang appropriate a long table across the room. Two of the

minions rose and shoved their way onto the dance floor to join the other thrashing bodies.

Harry Potter headed for the bar – and who would blame him?

Guy’s hand closed fleetingly on my arm, and we abandoned our table, making our way

through the carnival of souls toward our target. Guy was ahead of me. I saw him raise his

hand in a cursory greeting. Betty smiled, looked past him, saw me. Her pug features twisted

into disbelieving anger.

She made an aside to her compadres and pushed away from the table. There was a

shuffling of chairs and bodies, and a couple of scraggy youths rose to block us as Betty made

her way to the dance floor. I broke off from Guy and moved to intercept her.

The music blasting above our heads changed again, a driving beat that seemed to

ricochet off the black walls. I caught flashes of Betty in the lightning strikes of the pulsing

strobe.

She plowed her way through the dancers, but I was catching her up fast. Belatedly, I

wondered if she was armed – this was LA, after all.

Narrowly managing to avoid falling over three more downed dancers squirming and

rolling on the slick floor like earthworms on crack, Betty scooted past the DJ, darted around

the corner, and disappeared down a cramped hallway.

I plunged after her. A single bare bulb cast stark shadows over the graffiti-covered

walls. She paused at a doorway, turned back to me. I thought she was flipping me off, but

instead she made this funny flicking gesture with her hand. Had she given me the Evil Eye,

or was there something my hairdresser should have told me?

She wheeled and disappeared into the room optimistically labeled LADIES.

“Damn!”

“Where’d she go?” Guy yelled into my ear. I hadn’t realized he was right behind me.

I pointed to the restroom. He shook his head, apparently indicating game, set, and

match.

“It’s an old building, there’s probably a window.”

He shook his head again, apparently not understanding.

I indicated that he should stay and watch the door. I continued down the hall and out

through the back exit.

The dented door swung shut. I found myself in a long and badly lit back street. A low

wall separated this alley from an adjoining parking lot. The businesses on the other side of

the wall were all dark, though the parking lot was packed. I guessed that patrons of Hell’s

Kitchen were parking over there and then dropping over the alley wall.

I skirted along the outside of the throbbing building, looking for a window. After a

couple of minutes, I found one. It was unlit, the glass frosted, so that I couldn’t see inside.

Was this an office or was it the restroom? Was it the right restroom?

There was another window several feet down. It was also dark, but it stood open about

a foot. The screen appeared to have been kicked out.

Of course, she might have been hiding inside with the lights off, pretending she had

split.

If she had crawled out, where did she go? I looked up and down the alley. She had a

couple of seconds’ head start. How had she totally disappeared?

She had to have gone over the wall.

At the other end of the alley a car’s engine roared into life. Headlights flashed on. The

glare was blinding.

Oh, shit.

I started toward the Hell’s Kitchen back door.

With a screech of rubber on pavement, the car hurtled toward me. Zero to sixty in less

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