Created By by Richard Matheson Page B

care.
    Alan was starting to get a kick out of this soldier of fortune who did whatever he felt like; used violence and brutality to solve everything.
    It was fascinating.

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lunch
    L e Dome was filling up for lunch with fever and dread.
    Method-trained food-stamps in red vests bustled, handing parking tickets to the lithium royalty who smiled and entered.
    The restaurant held court on Sunset, just west of La Cienega, and was a preferred Vatican for deals and meals. Poseurs, profiteers, and sleek warheads came to suture deals that were stillborn, bleeding to death, or worse. They came to eat, to sell; to hang upside down in the cave, looking for blood.
    The whole place had a shadowy, well-bred virulence and every glance hunted for something. Every nod collected rumor. Expiring starlets, nibbling on angel hair, made Down’s syndrome conversation with their managers, trying to grasp why they’d made the ugly, gunshotcollapse from features to miniseries to guest shots on daytime. They would softly wipe Mattel faces and not see their lives oozing into the mausoleum as their managers listened sympathetically, scanning for new flesh and bones who sat at the bar, fresh in from nowhere. In time, the managers would carve their initials in virgin bones, use them up, and walk away, crunching through the sediment.
    “Anyway, she tells me she can’t have oral sex because she’s got bulimia.” Jordan acted it out like a grim Mummenschanz routine. “Seriously. Not making this up. So, I say what’s the matter ’cause she’s just … staring at it like it’s junk mail and out of the blue she bites the head. So, I say, are you kidding me? And she gets so upset, she sticks her finger down her throat and launches a lovely evening at Spago onto the couch.”
    Jordan sighed, surgically disassembling a plate of ahi; a fish bypass. “… now it looks like a piece of sectional vomit.”
    He dumped some Pellegrino into his stomach. Let the bubbles punch pink lining. Shrugged with disappointment. “I don’t think the relationship is happening. How’s your lunch?”
    Jordan sniffled, rubbed his nose with a napkin. The repaired septum was making him sound wrong.
    “I tell you I just signed a gang? Bunch of real motherfuckers. Crips from south central. Some ex-Cannell guy is over at 20th doing a cop pilot, using street gangs.”
    “Yeah, yeah. What is that? ‘Bad Blood’?”
    Jordan nodded, pronging more dead fish.
    “Anyway, he wanted the real flavor, so he was gonna hire this paroled gang member to give him input, right?So, I said, fuck that, and I signed another whole gang. Crips. These guys like whack white people on their day off just for a fucking goof. Anyway, I negotiated with Twentieth and the whole gang is under contract as consultants on the series.”
    “Weird …”
    “Pretty okay guys. For fucking cannibals with Uzis. I have ’em out to the house and they just hang on the sand, bring their ‘ho’s’ and get high. They’re about danger and anger … but they actually have a story sense.”
    Jordan tensed, gestured with his eyes, changing the subject. A gay studio head, with Joan Collins’s skin, stepped politely to the table and Jordan traded quick hugs. They bartered gossip. Launched distortions. The older man wanted to be introduced.
    “Victor, Alan White. Just sold a series to Andy Singer.
Total
fucking missile.”
    “Well, consider us a target. We’re looking to get into the hour business, again.” The cashmere smile grew and he shoulder-squeezed Jordan