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In her short time with B, Marla had grown used to his natural warmth. His charisma had
doubtless helped him in his career as an actor, and his descent into half-magical
dereliction had not made him any less sympathetic and approachable. Now he closed
up, his face becoming stony, a nearly physical wave of cold radiating from him.
“You should read the tabloids, Marla,” Rondeau said. “Is…ah, B, do you mind if I…?”
“Whatever,” B said. “The whole world knows.” He walked faster, putting some distance
between them, enough that he didn’t have to listen.
Marla fell into step beside Rondeau. “Well?”
“B had a lover,” Rondeau said. “I forget his name. He wasn’t an actor or anything, just
some guy. Anyway, they used to party a lot together, get drunk, go out, do drugs. But
one night, in some empty lot, B’s lover overdosed on something and died right there in
front of him, puking up blood and everything. That’s when B’s career went to hell.
After a pretty serious binge, he went into rehab for a while, and when he came out,
people thought his career would get back on track. Not long after that he tried to
strangle the director on his new movie, and that was it for his career. That was six or
seven years ago, I think.”
“How do you know all this?”
Rondeau shrugged. “When you’re a kid living on the streets, the sordid lives of
celebrities have an unusual allure. And I sometimes read those shitty newspapers I used
for bedding.”
B slowed down and resumed walking with them. “I didn’t try to strangle the director,”
he said, in a resigned tone. “He was hag-ridden. There was this monster clinging to his
neck, like a lamprey, and it was sucking out his blood or his mental emanations or
something and filling him with poison, making him mean, turning him into a monster
himself. Nobody else could see the monster, but after H—that was my lover, I called
him H—died, I could see all sorts of shit. H—or his ghost—told me how to kill the
monster, so that’s what I did, I soaked my hands in a potion of ditch water and
belladonna that enabled me to touch insubstantial things, and I choked the monster to
death. Everybody thought I was trying to kill the director. I didn’t care, though. Nobody
pressed charges—I think on some level the director knew I’d saved him, but it must
have been deep in his subconscious, because he sure screamed when he fired me—and I
didn’t want to be an actor anymore anyway.” He shrugged.
“So all this started after H died,” Marla said.
B nodded.
“And you still talk to him? To H?”
B shook his head sharply. “Fuck, no. I talk to his ghost, an echo, an afterimage. It’s not
the real H.”