FOURTEEN

The Ultraworld!

[1994] (Hollywood, CA)

In the warm, daylit spectralities of Dirty D’s Donut Hole, both game players, no doubt by now sore from it, their eyes bleary, sat bent close over the game board, to appearances pathologically so, though it could be said that one player was, in his heart, rather less invested than the other.

“Move,” Davis said. “You have to move now. It’s your move and so that’s what you do.”

Willy paced the floor some short distance away, in tight, clockwise circles, his jaw fallen slack, mouth open in an O.

OFFICER FRIENDLY, unruffled with these several, small annoyances, having grown by now a layer of extra thick skin over those particular nerves, considered. “I’m thinking,” he said.

“Thinking. Thinking.” Davis, tapping the table in agitation.

“I’ve just moved…”

“This is the alternating double move. You move and then you move again now. That’s why it’s called that. Double move.”

“I’ve just moved the Body…”

“You move the Body, then you move the House. You have to do that. There’s nothing to think about.”

“That is the Body, right?”

“If the Body has been moved, then you move the House. It’s how it works.”

“And that is what that is? Because I’m not sure that’s what that is.”

“You move the House.”

“Okay, but where? And what is this?” Pointing. “What is this?”

Davis looked up, then down, then up again, then down. “The Body… The House… You move the House. You have to move the House. Anywhere. Move it now. Go.”

“But why?”

“Because you have to. That’s what you do. Go.”

“But I’m not sure,” OFFICER FRIENDLY drawled, leaning back, eyeing his opponent with suspicion, “that I believe you.”

Davis got a scared look in his eye – flat, opaque, like a cornered rat. Like, where do I run? Like, what can I chew through? His face drained of blood so that he turned white.

“Then ask the ghost.” But nobody knew who said that.

Willy turned around and around. His eyes were vacant and staring. In the kitchen, Jun-suh fussed over rolling out dough. Into nuts.

“Okay,” the policeman said, “let’s just say that I’m moving…”

“You move the House.”

“This. Like this…”

“Damn it.”