Spares - Michael Marshall Smith [126]
I tried to bend the world, and didn’t bend enough myself. I wasted so much time looking for someone who would light up the forest that I didn’t see what I had. Henna was a beacon who would pull me out of the woods, with a strength in her arms which had been put there by my lack of love. I’d stand in front of her, bedraggled and sad in the discovery that what I’d chased was not worth the catching, and believing that Henna never knew what I was really like because I lied. And of course she understood all along, and loved me anyway.
She’s not here anymore, so there’s no one to pull me back. Pinocchio was rescued, and in time turned into a real little boy. The rest of us stand shivering in the rain, and bray.
Howie believed most of what I told him had happened in The Gap, though he did inquire exactly how much Rapt I’d taken. Then he asked me what I was going to do, and I told him.
“How, precisely, are you intending to do that?” he asked, handing me a beer. The bar outside was crowded and noisy, but the office felt like it was miles away from all that.
“There’s a memorial service for Louella Richardson tomorrow,” I said cheerfully. “Maxen’s going to be there, salving his conscience. He’s going to have an uninvited guest.”
“How are you going to get in?”
“I have a plan,” I said.
Howie nodded. “You want some help with the details? Like where exactly you’d like to be buried?”
I smiled at him, thinking how weird life is. I met Howie when I was asking after a murder once, and leaned on him hard for information. He’d refused to play ball for so long, and so imaginatively, that I found myself kind of admiring him. Then I found myself ending up in his bar when I wanted a drink, and even brought Henna and Angela a few times. Now he was the only person in the world prepared to help me, however ridiculous my ambition. Vinaldi had made it clear before leaving that he was having no part of it. His argument was with Yhandim and the others, not Maxen.
“No,” I said to Howie. “But thank you.”
Howie shrugged, drained the rest of his beer.
“Good haircut, by the way,” I said.
Howie ran his hand ruefully through his hair, which was spiking considerably more than usual. He looked like he had a blond hedgehog sitting on his head. “The fuck it is,” he said. “But I’ve got a detailed and well-thought-out plan.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m going to firebomb the fuckers. That’ll teach them that when I say ‘just a trim’ I mean it.” He explained his theory that hairdressers sprayed some chemical on your head that made your hair look longer than it really was. When they asked you if they’d taken enough off, you always looked in the mirror and said no, take a little more. Then the moment you left the shop, all your hair shrunk back to its normal length again, making you look as if you’d been designed for cleaning round the U-bend of a toilet. You couldn’t blame the hairdressers, because you’d told them to take more off, and they’d achieved their real aim of making every man look a complete fucking idiot. It was a good theory, and I applauded him for it.
Howie stuck around for a little longer but in the end headed back to the bar in search of peperoncinos. I sat in the glow from the lamp and cleaned my gun for a long time. It didn’t really need it, but it seemed like the thing to do. Then I got a couple more cheeseburgers sent through and munched on them instead.
Later, I heard a knock on the door behind me and turned to see Nearly standing there with a bottle of wine and two glasses.
“I’m not going to try to talk you out of it,” she said. “I just thought I’d make sure you went off to certain death with a hangover.”
“You look nice,” I said. She did. She was wearing a long dress, and when I ran my eyes over the pattern I realized it had to have come from the same store where Suej’s first and only piece of clothing had been bought. I started