Read Grist 04 - Incinerator for Free Online Page B

belatedly to mind. She was dead, though, and this was a male.
    “Patrick Henry, at the Times.”
    I rubbed my eyes with a hand that smelled like a rubber glove full of wet cigars. It had to be important for Pat to call himself Patrick. He’d been my student once, when I was still teaching English at UCLA.
    “You’re up early,” I said. Good. I congratulated myself. A civil sentence.
    “And you’re on the front page,” Pat said.
    “Slowly, Patrick,” I said. “Of what?”
    “The Times.”
    It took both hands to make my head feel smaller. “Pat,” I said, pressing the phone between ear and shoulder and working on my temples with fingers that felt like Smithfield hams, “it’s Sunday.”
    “That means you’re reaching our biggest circulation,” he said proudly. He’d always been a smart-ass.
    “Sunday,” I said, “is a day of rest. Go rest somewhere.” He sputtered at me, but I hung up. Then, at long last, I yanked the cord out of the back of the phone, rolled over onto my left side, and grabbed my other pillow. It smelled terrible in a familiar fashion. It growled at me.
    “God damn it, Bravo,” I said, shoving at the foul-smelling pillow, “where did you come from?”
    Bravo Corrigan, Topanga’s itinerant generic dog, exhaled a bagful of dead fish at me, got to all four feet, and shambled to the foot of the bed, pausing just long enough to shake himself. With a fine snowfall of long dog hairs settling over me, I shut my scratchy eyes and aimed myself toward the Land of Nod.
    Bravo’s stomach rumbled. I forced my eyes to remain closed. I thought about getting a drink of water. I thought about it for so long that I finally fell back asleep and dreamed of helicopters dumping tons of cool water over acres of fire. It didn’t do any good. The water exploded like gasoline.
    When a hand touched my shoulder, I jumped all the way to the foot of the bed, clawing at the air for a weapon. Instead, my foot found Bravo, and then my other foot found nothing at all, and I collapsed on the floor, shoulder first.
    “For heaven’s sake, Simeon,” Eleanor Chan said.
    I got my eyes open and focused with an effort that seemed to involve even my stomach muscles. Eleanor stood there, looking cool and unruffled and amused, wearing a loose, wrinkled white shirt—one of mine, from the years when we’d lived together—and tight, ragged bleached jeans with a rip exposing one creamy knee. She’d had her black, perfectly straight hair cut short and spiky on top. On her it looked good.
    “You’re green,” Eleanor said. She’d always been observant.
    “Hammond,” I said by way of explanation. I tried to unknot my legs. “Dawn patrol.”
    “Poor baby,” she said. She liked Hammond. I liked him, too, but I’d never have called him baby. “And speaking of Baby,” she said, holding out a newspaper.
    “I can’t read,” I said desperately. “I can barely talk.” I became aware of the fact that I was naked and plucked up a corner of the dank sheet. Eleanor laughed.
    “The media should see you now,” she said. “Hello, Bravo.” Bravo’s tail thumped.
    “Eleanor,” I said, getting experimentally to my feet. The room swam. “Can I go dynamite my teeth or something before you start telling me about the media?”
    “You’re a star,” she said, waving the paper at me in an aggressive fashion.
    I shrugged it off for the moment and slipped laboriously into a pair of drawstring pants. Standing on my left leg took most of my day’s meager allotment of equilibrium. “Make coffee,” I said, barely avoiding dropping to my knees in supplication. “Please?” I went into the bathroom and tried to scrub off the residue of the night. Hot, cold, hot, cold. Then some more cold. Wash the hair twice. Slap both sides of the face sharply under the stream of icy water. It was a routine I’d practiced frequently in the weeks since Hammond’s wife had left. Hammond was doing fine, I reflected, pulling on a T-shirt. I was