xxxxx.

To live and die in L.A. with a stake to the heart and blood in your brain. She likes cocaine.

summer 1986

Shane Del Rio drives a fast old car and wears slick shades. 

He cruises down the streets of Los Angeles like a space-aged superman, like a speeding bullet. 

He loves the way the neon signs blur and smudge around him. The top is down, and the Cadillac’s fins cut through the L.A. smog like toothpaste green knives. 

Shane Del Rio wears a cross on a gold chain around his neck, wears shirts without sleeves and flexes his biceps to make the snake tattoo on his left arm writhe. 

He blazes past the hookers with their patent-leather heels and doped-up demeanor, screams past the clubs and bars and drug deals gone bad in dark alleys of the night. 

There is a small Icon of Jesus on his dashboard, his hands outstretched beside him and palms-up; Jesus seems as though he wishes that Shane would cut him loose one of these days. 

Riding with Shane gives Jesus palpitations. 

The cocaine Shane snorted back at Big Mike’s shoots through Shane’s bloodstream like a rocket, it’s as if someone has lit a fuse that goes from his nose to his brain to his c**k. 

Sending him up, up, up with fire and explosions and bright, bright lights. 

Sending him careening at breakneck speeds down narrow streets bordered by palm trees. 

Sending him up into the Hills and to the door of the house of a woman whom he has never met. 

Shane Del Rio is supposed to knock on the door, not ask any questions, just do as the lady says. He’s hoping that she’s just some rich old broad who needs a good lay. They love him, these faded Old Hollywood remnants. 

She answers the door wearing nothing but a silk kimono, black as the hair on a Japanese girl’s p***y. 

Hey,

Shane oughta know; sweet Mitsuko was always pushing his head down south. 

Ah, Mitsuko. It’s too bad she had ties with that former Yakuza scumbag. Nearly lost his dick the last time, running out of there with gunshots zinging just behind him. 

Anyways, this broad in the short kimono, she’s got legs up to here and hair down to here and before Shane can say so much as a howdy-do, she’s yanked him inside by his shirt and shut the door behind them. 

“Ay! What’s the big idea? Stretchin’ my threads like that?” 

The babe in the robe doesn’t smile, doesn’t laugh. 

Her lips are very red, bright and jammy like a strawberry-filled doughnut. 

Shane shoves his hands in his pockets, unsure now what to do. He doesn’t like feeling out of place, but something about this mansion, all glamour and marble and tropical plants, makes him feel like s**t. 

Red-Lips picks up a long-stemmed glass of what is probably red wine, downs the whole thing in one. 

Damn, Shane thinks. 

“Vic sent you to me, that right?” she says after smacking those glossy lips a few times. Her voice is fantastic; a little smoky, a little breathy, and very very alluring, like someone pouring thick syrup over hot pancakes real slow. 

Shane leans against a nearby end table in an effort to seem nonchalant. 

In reality, his heart’s already going a mile a minute from the coke, and not knowing what’s coming next is not really putting him at ease. 

There’s a grand staircase in the foyer that they’re standing in; a huge portrait of some classy-looking dude hangs center-stage at the top. Someone is playing Debussy on the baby grande in the parlor. 

“We don’t have a long time, kiddo. Join me upstairs, won’t you?” she says, and his heart feels a little calmer. 

Now, this, this Shane can do. He’s been sleeping with rich women for favors and money since he was 17 years old. Ain’t a chick in L.A. hasn’t sung his praises with her feet in the air and her claws in his back. 

What he wouldn’t give to hear some quality tunes, though. 

Some Aerosmith, a little Guns n’ Roses; something with screaming guitars and screaming vocals to match the fury with which his blood is throbbing inside him. 

Shane Del Rio follows the woman in the black silk kimono up those grand stairs and tries (and fails) not to look at her a*s. 

Emerald DiBenedetto is very tired. 

She is tired of being surrounded by crass, grabby-handed men and brassy, squawking women. 

She is tired of fast cars and sushi dinners and exotic vacations with wealthy investors. 

She is tired of L.A. and the smog and feeling as though she has to wake up for the world. 

Emerald DiBenedetto is almost 27 and she is very tired of this glitzy, lacquered, gold-plated facade of life in Hollywood. 

She is tired of the endless nights, and of living them alone. 

This is why she swallowed down her distaste for the man and dialed Vic Valentine’s number on her pearlized rotary phone. 

With her long, red, dagger-like nails. 

The boy he sent is young, very young, and he smells like sweat and aftershave that’s too expensive for him. 

The chain he wears around his neck reminds her of her Italian-immigrant father, and immediately Emerald knows that this is the right boy. 

His dark hair is spiky with sweat, and his muscles are tight cords moving underneath the deeply tanned skin of his arms. 

His eyes are coffee-black and vulpine, but holding something else, something more vulnerable behind the inevitable Young Dude swagger. 

Emerald can hardly remember what it’s like to be that young. 

She takes Shane up to her boudoir, this huge, classy suite with a jacuzzi tub and a king-size bed, potted banana plants and palms in every corner. The floor is a very ornate parquet, but Shane doesn’t know that or care. 

He is caught up in the glamour and the way it all obviously shouts “Money!!!” 

The lady (she tells him her name is Emerald) asks Shane to take off his clothes and get in bed, and of course he’s tripping over his own feet trying to get out of his jeans and sneakers and tee. 

He doesn’t even feel that weird about the fact that he’s a*s-naked in her bed before she’s even kissed him. 

Emerald slowly pulls loose the bow of her kimono, lets it slip off her shoulders and fall to the floor in a silken black puddle. He’s never seen anyone do that in real life, and he is embarrassingly hard already. 

Underneath that robe, hot damn, she’s been hiding a body that would make any of Hef’s girls cry with envy. 

All dangerous curves and flat stomach and tits that he just wants to---

And she’s up on the bed now. 

And she’s crawling, f*****g crawling over to straddle him. 

And this might be the best job Vic’s ever sent him on, because she kisses him with her red-red mouth and brushes a hand over the shaft of his c**k, and Shane Del Rio knows that no woman is ever gonna do it for him again. 

They’re f*****g, for what feels like hours but could be only minutes and who cares, and then she’s whispering something in his ear with her hot breath. 

Shane can’t tell what she’s saying, but he doesn’t really give a s**t, because what she’s doing to him, it’s unreal. 

He feels like the star QB, the rockstar, the hot-shot CEO of the biggest company in the world. 

He tastes the wine on her tongue, sharp and bittersweet. 

He is thrusting wildly, with none of his usual pretense or practiced finesse, and she is all of a sudden biting the meat of his neck. Hard. 

It feels wet, like maybe there might be blood, but he can’t bring himself to care. 

She laps at it, still moving her hips and getting him there. 

Shane’s body feels like liquid fire has replaced his blood, like he’s speeding down Hollywood & Vine with the top down at 120mph. He feels the tongues of a million groupies on his skin, and all of a sudden he is thirstier than he has ever been in his entire life. Than anyone has ever been in the history of the universe. 

He comes, and it’s like all the synapses in his brain are firing at once. Supernova explosion of color and light and no sound, not one sigh or creak of a bed frame or anything. Silence. 

A rare cool breeze ghosts through one of the open windows and over his bare flesh, raising the tiny hairs and giving him goosebumps. 

Emerald gently removes herself from his shrinking member, pads daintily across the room in her bare feet, completely naked. 

When she comes back, she holds a glass of something cold and red to his mouth. 

The boy drinks it greedily, not asking what or why, and for that she is grateful. 

Emerald knows he will be angry when she explains what she has done, at least, for a little while. 

She is ready to deal with his anger. 

How she will rationalize, placate, uplift. 

Emerald needs a companion with whom to roam the lonely, dark denizens of the endless bright night. 

The boy is dozing, a single teardrop of drool seeping from the corner of his pretty, lipstick-stained mouth. 

Already, her blood will be destroying the weak human cells in his. Taking over, like a virus, like a parasite. 

When he wakes, he will know true thirst, true sight, true sense. She will offer him a cigar, a bath in her marble tub, and an explanation. 

The moon is full outside her window, tinged pink like the sky from all of the pollution. There is a loud party going on in one of the mansions nearby. People laugh and scream, synthetic drum beats hypnotize as the music blares. Champagne all round. 

For now, she will let him sleep. 

Shane Del Rio drives a fast new car and wears slick shades. 

He cruises down the streets of L.A. with his woman in the passenger’s side seat, her hair blown back and wild. 

He doesn’t need the white powder anymore, doesn’t like the way it tastes in another, either. 

Jesus sits on the dashboard still, a silent witness to their extravagantly vividly hopelessly depraved love. His eyes say that he forgives them, though, and that’s good enough for Shane. 

Emerald DiBenedetto is almost 27, but she never will be. She has been on the edge of 27 for more than two centuries. 

She wears all black, black sunglasses and black stilettos. Her baby-faced loverboy keeps her from the insanity that comes with living for too long and seeing too much of human nature. 

Together, they ooze through the back alleys and trendy nightclubs, galas and kegger parties. 

Hunting for the weakest in the droves. 

Together they drape each other in expensive things, worship each other’s bodies and minds. 

They make love on top of the Hollywood sign. 

Shane Del Rio and Emerald DiBenedetto are young and beautiful and rich, and dark and evil and cast out by God. 

They will drive and spend and drink and f**k and party for as many nights as they want, for as long into forever as they want. 

Blasting ZZTop from the car stereo, screeching into a sloppy halt in front of wherever they please. 

Someday, though, they may tire of it, Emerald thinks. 

Someday, they may want to leave L.A., leave the whole godforsaken state of California and drive off into the sunrise together. 

Someday, when they’re ready, they’ll take that old Cadillac with the convertible top and burn rubber straight on through morning, leaving only ashes and dust in the seats when they cross the state line. 

Author's Note

r&r :D

Reviews

[The Twin Arenas]

I read the whole thing.

Crazy.