Manifesto for the Dead by Domenic Stansberry

air was still and quiet and hot. His head hurt. He wondered if he had died and this were some uncharted circle of hell, reserved especially for himself.
    A car rolled into the drive. He lay as still as he could, flattening himself into the grass. The car was a late-model sedan, nothing fancy. Out stepped a Mexican woman in a white uniform. She did not glance in his direction but sauntered primly down the pink flagstones to the rear of the house.
    The maid, Thompson figured. And he realized he had not died after all. He was in Beverly Hills.
    Thompson scrambled towards a gap in the hedge, hobbling. The branches scratched his face, but he pushed through. On the other side, he hobbled some more; he had lost a shoe. He searched the hedge a while, then started down the hill. Maybe his shoe lay back on the grass, but he did not want to be caught loping about on some movie star’s lawn.
    What happened last night? he wondered.
    He had experienced blackouts before, but usually after a long night of drinking. Last night, he had barely begun.
    He patted himself down, found the bank envelope in his jacket pocket, money intact—but his wallet gone. It had been empty anyway, no identification, so in that matter, at least, he had lucked out.
    The hill bottomed at Sunset, and he crossed to the bus stop. After a little while a cop car drove by, then another, each turning up the way Thompson had just come, back up Beverly Drive. The cops had their sirens off, but they drove with a degree of urgency.
    The cops could be investigating anything, he told himself. A tourist in Bob Hope’s swimming pool. Doris Day’s orgasms. Zsa Zsa’s missing poodle.
    Finally, the bus arrived. It was a local and took him a little ways past Sunset Plaza. Lately this part of the Strip had been taken over by the hippies. Suburban riffraff, ghetto trash, aspiring actors, they wandered together up and down the street, all roaming about. At first glance it seemed they were mingling, engaged in some common enterprise. Up close, he realized they were each going their separate ways: hustling dope; buying bikinis, black lights, banana-colored slacks. Sitting at the open-air tables, eyes dim and glassy. Tapping the table tops with their fingertips and looking about, waiting for what was happening to happen. Washed up flotsam. Debris. Scum floating on a sea of nothingness. More all the time. They lounged in front of the Whiskey-A-Go-Go all night in their leather, then huddled under the billboards by day, passing their joints back and forth while overhead, painted and peeling, a giant blonde lounged beside a bottle of gin. Meanwhile the cars rolled by spewing exhaust, and Thompson felt himself, watery, dissolute, with an erection growing up suddenly, ridiculously, out of all this nothingness. An old man’s erection, nothing to write home about—unless, of course, you were an old man yourself. Down Sunset, the Hollywood bus was nowhere to be seen.
    He stepped into a notions shop and bought himself some sneakers and a clean shirt. The shirt was wide-collared, bright and gaudy, but it least it was not soaked through with sweat.
    He started to walk, just to be moving. He would catch the bus at the next stop along the line. Further on, he glanced up and saw the Château.
    Lussie was staying here.
    In the old days the Château had been a glamorous joint, and the tour agents used that glamour now to attract out-of-towners and conventioneers. Thompson decided what the hell. He would cross the street and walk into the lobby. He would ring her room. If what Alberta had told him was true, her husband would not be in town for a few days yet.
    The last time he’d seen Lussie had been in a hotel room in New York, maybe fifteen years back. He’d been in town trying to set up a book deal, and she had been on a business trip with her husband. The old man had been out for the day, so Thompson had gone up and knocked on her door.
    She had opened up and let