show.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Talk to my pal Marty Spence who teaches at Irvine. He knows Orange County like I know L.A. And there’s one other guy you ought to meet. You know, the most amazing people turn up in L.A. Did you know Wyatt Earp lived for years just off Slauson?”
“No, Mike, I didn’t know that. You’re not going to tell me to go see Wyatt Earp, are you?”
“He died in ’29. No, but it’s almost as amazing. Up one of the canyons in Orange County is the most famous detective L.A.’s ever had. He’s 93 and long retired but he always keeps a finger on the pulse. Philip Marlowe.”
“Thanks, Mike. That’s exactly what I need, a mythical old fart.”
Back at the apartment, Maeve was lying flat on her stomach holding two thin stringers of balsa wood against a model as Anna applied the glue. The TV game whickered and hissed in the background, then it roared suddenly, a strange roar that didn’t sound anything like the reactions of a sports crowd.
“Who’s winning?” Mike Lewis asked.
“Frank Lloyd Wright,” Anna said.
No matter what he did she wouldn’t tell him anything more about his father. The clamor in the corner had stopped and when he finally looked up, the picture on the television was gone, to leave only an even blue and a band of type scrolling across the bottom.
PICTURE INTERRUPTED AT POLICE REQUEST . USC QUARTERBACK BUDDY HARRIS HAS APPARENTLY BEEN SHOT FROM THE STANDS . PLEASE STAND BY .
“How come you had this on anyway?”
“Don’t you know? USC has more Romany kids enrolled than any other college in the country. It’s our school.”
FIVE
The Welcome Bridge
He held back the big rectangular metal block called the receiver and poked out the locking lever to release the whole assembly. One twist and the 9mm barrel was out. He explained it all as he did it, so his Martian friend would understand. He sniffed at the barrel and then set it on a newspaper on his red desk, wrinkling up his nose. You could sure tell it had been used. It was only a crummy Spanish-made Star auto that he had bought years ago at the unofficial swap meet in the alley behind the Santa Ana gun store, after working up his courage on a dozen dry runs. It had been very cheap because the alley was mostly a Latino marketplace and Latinos really only wanted revolvers, maybe from seeing all the posters of Pancho Villa.
Billy Gudger screwed the handle onto the jointed cleaning rod and then threaded a little square of cotton into the hole at the top end. He told the Martian that it would take five or six of the patches doused with Hoppe’s Powder Solvent before one came out clean. If you didn’t clean up after you had to use a pistol, the barrel would start to corrode from the residue of the gunpowder gases. His friend always appreciated lucid explanations.
For years Billy Gudger had been offering his Martian friend explanations of everything, from how the muscles of the body worked as you walked along to the store, to the characteristics of the post-modern in architecture, to how an internal combustion engine sucked in a fuel-air mixture when the intake valve opened. His friend was attentive, polite and unfailingly grateful for the explanations. Of course, Billy Gudger knew perfectly well there wasn’t actually a Martian visitor floating alongside him to keep him company—he wasn’t crazy—but it was a comfort nonetheless.
I wish people would stop making me use the pistol, he told his friend. It makes things complicated.
Or were you enamour’d on his copper rings,
His saffron jewell, with the toad-stone in’t.
—Ben Johnson, Volpone (1605)
He had left his mother snoring away on the sofa and covered her with the threadbare quilt that she said her mother had made for her. He figured it was probably just another of her bogus memories. It was hard to tell when she was spinning out one of her fibs. Denny at work had said, “Women, man—when the lips are moving, that’s how you can tell they’re
“Uh-huh.”
“Talk to my pal Marty Spence who teaches at Irvine. He knows Orange County like I know L.A. And there’s one other guy you ought to meet. You know, the most amazing people turn up in L.A. Did you know Wyatt Earp lived for years just off Slauson?”
“No, Mike, I didn’t know that. You’re not going to tell me to go see Wyatt Earp, are you?”
“He died in ’29. No, but it’s almost as amazing. Up one of the canyons in Orange County is the most famous detective L.A.’s ever had. He’s 93 and long retired but he always keeps a finger on the pulse. Philip Marlowe.”
“Thanks, Mike. That’s exactly what I need, a mythical old fart.”
Back at the apartment, Maeve was lying flat on her stomach holding two thin stringers of balsa wood against a model as Anna applied the glue. The TV game whickered and hissed in the background, then it roared suddenly, a strange roar that didn’t sound anything like the reactions of a sports crowd.
“Who’s winning?” Mike Lewis asked.
“Frank Lloyd Wright,” Anna said.
No matter what he did she wouldn’t tell him anything more about his father. The clamor in the corner had stopped and when he finally looked up, the picture on the television was gone, to leave only an even blue and a band of type scrolling across the bottom.
PICTURE INTERRUPTED AT POLICE REQUEST . USC QUARTERBACK BUDDY HARRIS HAS APPARENTLY BEEN SHOT FROM THE STANDS . PLEASE STAND BY .
“How come you had this on anyway?”
“Don’t you know? USC has more Romany kids enrolled than any other college in the country. It’s our school.”
FIVE
The Welcome Bridge
He held back the big rectangular metal block called the receiver and poked out the locking lever to release the whole assembly. One twist and the 9mm barrel was out. He explained it all as he did it, so his Martian friend would understand. He sniffed at the barrel and then set it on a newspaper on his red desk, wrinkling up his nose. You could sure tell it had been used. It was only a crummy Spanish-made Star auto that he had bought years ago at the unofficial swap meet in the alley behind the Santa Ana gun store, after working up his courage on a dozen dry runs. It had been very cheap because the alley was mostly a Latino marketplace and Latinos really only wanted revolvers, maybe from seeing all the posters of Pancho Villa.
Billy Gudger screwed the handle onto the jointed cleaning rod and then threaded a little square of cotton into the hole at the top end. He told the Martian that it would take five or six of the patches doused with Hoppe’s Powder Solvent before one came out clean. If you didn’t clean up after you had to use a pistol, the barrel would start to corrode from the residue of the gunpowder gases. His friend always appreciated lucid explanations.
For years Billy Gudger had been offering his Martian friend explanations of everything, from how the muscles of the body worked as you walked along to the store, to the characteristics of the post-modern in architecture, to how an internal combustion engine sucked in a fuel-air mixture when the intake valve opened. His friend was attentive, polite and unfailingly grateful for the explanations. Of course, Billy Gudger knew perfectly well there wasn’t actually a Martian visitor floating alongside him to keep him company—he wasn’t crazy—but it was a comfort nonetheless.
I wish people would stop making me use the pistol, he told his friend. It makes things complicated.
Or were you enamour’d on his copper rings,
His saffron jewell, with the toad-stone in’t.
—Ben Johnson, Volpone (1605)
He had left his mother snoring away on the sofa and covered her with the threadbare quilt that she said her mother had made for her. He figured it was probably just another of her bogus memories. It was hard to tell when she was spinning out one of her fibs. Denny at work had said, “Women, man—when the lips are moving, that’s how you can tell they’re
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