about my name. But had I ever known her name was anything other than Candy Kane? I searched my mind as the note
continued its lazy–and seemingly endless–swoops back and forth, and the answer was an honest and resounding no.
Her name had always been Candy Kane, we’d joked about it many a time, and if we’d had a few rounds of office
slap-and-tickle, what of that? She’d always enjoyed it. We both had.
Did she enjoy it? a voice spoke up from somewhere deep inside me. Did she really, or is that just another little fairytale
you’ve been telling yourself all these years?
I tried to shut that voice out, and after a moment or two I succeeded, but the one that replaced it was even worse. That
voice belonged to none other than Peoria Smith. I can quit actin like I died and went to heaven every time some
blowhard leaves me a nickel tip, he said. Ain’t you picking up on this newsflash, Mr.
Umney?
“Shut up, kid,” I said to the empty room. “Gabriel Heatter you ain’t.” I turned away from Candy’s desk, and as I did,
faces passed in front of my mind’s eye like the faces of some lunatic marching band from hell: George and Gloria
Demmick, Peoria Smith, Bill Tuggle, Vernon Klein, a million-dollar blonde who went under the two-bit name of
Arlene Cain . . . even the two painters were there.
Confusion, confusion, nothing but confusion.
Head down, I trudged into my office, closed the door behind me, and sat at the desk.
Dimly, through the closed window,
I could hear the traffic out on Sunset. I had an idea that, for the right person, it was still a spring morning so
L.A.-perfect you expected to see that little trademark symbol stamped on it somewhere, but for me all the light had
gone from the day . . . inside as well as out. I thought about the bottle of hooch in the bottom drawer, but all of a sudden
even bending down to get it seemed like too much work. It seemed, in fact, a job akin to climbing Mount Everest in
tennis shoes.
The smell of fresh paint had penetrated all the way into my inner sanctum. It was a smell I ordinarily liked, but not
then. At that moment it was the smell of everything that had gone wrong since the
Demmicks hadn’t come into their
Hollywood bungalow bouncing wisecracks off each other like rubber balls and playing their records at top volume and
throwing their Corgi into conniptions with their endless billing and cooing. It
occurred to me with perfect clarity and
simplicity–the way I’d always imagined great truths must occur to the people they occur to–that if some doctor
could cut out the cancer that was killing the Fulwider Building’s elevator operator, it would be white. Oyster white.
And it would smell just like fresh Dutch Boy paint.
This thought was so tiring that I had to put my head down with the heels of my palms pressed against my temples,
holding it in place . . . or maybe just keeping what was inside from exploding out and making a mess on the walls. And
when the door opened softly and footsteps entered the room, I didn’t look up. It
seemed like more of an effort than I
was able to make at that particular moment.
Besides, I had the strange idea that I already knew who it was. I couldn’t put a name to my knowledge, but the step was
somehow familiar. So was the cologne, although I knew I wouldn’t be able to name it even if someone had put a gun to
my head, and for a very simple reason: I’d never smelled it before in my life. How could I recognize a scent I’d never
smelled before, you ask? I can’t answer that one, bud, but I did.
Nor was that the worst of it. The worst of it was this: I was scared nearly out of my mind. I’ve faced blazing guns in the
hands of angry men, which is bad, and daggers in the hands of angry women, which is a thousand times worse; I was