Kill the Dead

IT TOOK ME months to start thinking of the apartment as Vidocq’s and not mine and Alice’s. François-Eugène Vidocq is my oldest friend. He’s two hundred years old and French, but don’t hold that against him. I’m glad he took the place after Alice died. Six months in, the apartment is so transformed that I can’t find a shred of my or Alice’s life there. It was strange the first time I saw it that way. Allegra told me that in ancient Egypt, when the new pharaoh smashed the statues and hieroglyphs of the old one, it wasn’t just good old-fashioned hooligan fun. The new pharaoh was trying to wipe the old one out of existence, erase him from the universe. To the Egyptians, no images meant no person. That’s how it was when I first walked in. I felt erased. Now it’s a relief not to be reminded of my old life every time I go over.

Vidocq, with Allegra’s help, has turned the place into the Library of Alexandria, only French, with a schmear of L.A. art school punk. On a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf sits the foot-high three-thousand-year-old statue of Bast that Vidocq stole from an aristocratic bastard back in France. Next to Bast, Allegra has propped a pink Hello Kitty doll with tentacles. Hello Cthulhu.

The rest of the place is stacks of old manuscripts, crystals, weird scientific instruments, potions, herbs, and the gear to cut, cook, and mix them. Merlin’s workshop with a big flat-screen TV and stacks of movies Allegra brings home from the Max Overload. There’s porn stashed under the sofa, but they don’t know I know about that. I think they watch it together.

“Where did Vidocq say he was going?”

“Out for mazarine ice.”

“Sounds like wine cooler. What is it?”

“When he gets back, he can tell us both.”

When I met Allegra her head was shaved smooth. Now she’s letting it grow out short and shaggy. It suits her. It’s pretty.

My shirt is off as she smears green jasmine-smelling paste on my burned shoulder with her hand. Somewhere in L.A. there’s some poor guy who dreams about having a pretty girl rub paste on him, but none of the girls he knows will do it. Here I am taking his turn at bat and not even appreciating it.

“Does this hurt?”

“It’s fine.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“Nurse, some psycho is making mud pies on my blisters with her hairy meat hooks and it hurts.”

“That’s more like it, baby boy. Knowing when I’m hurting you and not hurting is how I get better at this.”

“You’re doing fine. I’m a happy guinea pig.”

Allegra sets down the jar and uses the lid to rub the excess paste from her hand.

“Why is it you come to me these days instead of Kinski? I’m not complaining. Patching you up is a great crash course in the whole healing thing.”

“You’re good at it, too. When people find out, you’ll steal all of the doc’s business.”

She puts a couple of wide red leaves on top of the paste and wraps my arm in gauze, then uses white medical tape to hold the gauze in place.

I put my shirt back on. The arm still hurts, but it’s definitely better.

“As for Kinski, I don’t need any more neurotic angels in my life. Aelita wants to mount my head on a wall like a stuffed trout and Kinski is in his own remake of Earth Girls Are Easy.”

“Avoiding Kinski doesn’t have anything to do with Candy?”

“You’re the second person who’s asked me about her today.”

“You should call her.”

“Candy doesn’t factor into anything. And I have called. She doesn’t answer the phone anymore. It was only Kinski for a while. Now it’s no one. I haven’t talked to either of them in weeks.”

“You only come over here anymore when you’re bleeding. You don’t talk to Eugène. Kinski is gone. You’ve been avoiding everyone who cares about you. All you do is lock yourself up with Kasabian, drink, and drive each other crazy. Speaking as your doctor, you’ve got serious issues. You’re like those old guys you see at diners, staring at the same cup of coffee all afternoon, just sitting around waiting to die.”

“Sitting around? Tell that to my burns.”

“That’s not what I mean. You came back to get the people who hurt you and Alice and you did it. Great. Now you need to find the next thing you’re going to do with your life.”

“Like learn the flute or maybe save the whales?”

“You should grow up, clean up, and treat yourself like a decent person.”

“I’m pretty sure I’m not either of those things.”

“Says who?”

“God. At least everyone who works for Him.”

Allegra looks past me into space, thinking.

“If I gave you some Saint-John’s-wort, would you take it? It might help your mood.”

“Give it to Kasabian. He’s the shut-in.”

Allegra pulls me over to the window and examines me under the light.

“Do you think your face is getting worse?”

“Define ‘worse.’”

“Are the changes becoming more noticeable?”

“I know what I think. Tell me what you think.”

She nods.

“It’s worse. Your old scars are healing and your new cuts aren’t disappearing like they used to. You still heal fast, just not ridiculously fast.”

“Can you stop it?”

“Leave it to you to ask for the opposite of everything I’ve been learning for the last six months.”