The Face

for fragile porcelains didn’t surprise Corky. Regardless of how rough we may appear on the exterior, each of us has a human heart.
        Corky himself had a weakness for old Shirley Temple movies, in which he indulged once or twice a year. Without embarrassment.
        As Trotter watched, Corky emptied the 9-mm magazine, shattering one porcelain with every shot.
        [424] In the months since he had unintentionally wounded Mina Reynerd in the foot, he had become remarkably proficient with handguns. Until recently, he’d never much wanted to use a firearm in the service of chaos, for it had seemed too cold, too impersonal. But he was warming to the instrument.
        He replaced the first magazine with a second and finished off the Lladro collection. The humid air was full of a chalky dust and the smell of gunfire.
        “Seven o’clock,” he said.
        “I’ll be there,” said the chastened Trotter.
        “Gonna take a magic carpet ride.”
        After replacing the second magazine with a third, Corky slipped the Glock into his shoulder holster and walked out to the veranda.
        He proceeded slowly through the rain to the Land Rover, boldly turning his back to the house.
        He drove down out of the Malibu canyons toward the coast.
        The sky was an open beaker, pouring forth not rain but the universal solvent for which medieval alchemists had sought in vain. All around him, the hills were melting. The lowlands were dissolving. The edge of the continent deliquesced into the tumultuous sea.

CHAPTER 64
        
        FRIC IN THE ROSE ROOM, IN A CHAIR BY THE windows, looked out at his mother’s love-affirming gift of high-piled bronze road apples.
        The picnic hamper stood on the floor beside his chair, the lid closed.
        Although he would spend time here to support the story that he had stupidly spewed out to Mr. Devonshire, he would not actually pretend to eat nonexistent ham sandwiches, partly because if someone saw him, they would for sure think Like mother, like son, but largely because he didn’t have any nonexistent dill pickles to go with them.
        Ha, ha, ha.
        At the time of the incident, almost two years ago, his mother’s publicist explained to the weasels in the scandal-hungry press that Freddie Nielander had been admitted to a private hospital somewhere in Florida. She was said to be suffering from exhaustion.
        With surprising frequency, supermodels were hospitalized for that reason. Apparently, being wildly glamorous twenty-four hours a day could be as physically demanding as the work of a plowhorse and as emotionally draining as tending to the terminally ill.
        Nominal Mom had done one Vanity Fair cover too many, one [426] Vogue spread more than had been wise, leading to the temporary but complete loss of muscle control throughout her body. That seemed to be the official story, as far as Fric could understand it.
        No one believed the official story. Newspapers, magazines, and the gossipy reporters on the TV entertainment-news shows spoke darkly of a “breakdown,” an “emotional collapse.” Some actually called it a “psychotic episode,” which sounded like an installment of I Love Lucy in which Lucy and Ethel mowed down a bunch of people with submachine guns. They referred to her hospital as a “sanitarium for the richest of the rich” and as an “exclusive psychiatric clinic,” and Howard Stern, the shock jock on radio, reportedly called it a “booby hatch for a broad who’s got more boobies than brains.”
        Fric had pretended not to know what the media were saying about his mother, but secretly he had read and listened to every scrap of coverage that he could find. He’d been frightened. He’d felt useless. Reporters disagreed over which of two institutions she might be in, and Fric didn’t have an address for either of them. He couldn’t even send her a card.
        Eventually, his father had taken him aside in the rose garden, which had already been moved away from the house, to ask if Fric had heard any strange news stories about his mother. Fric had pretended to be clueless.
        His father had said, “Well, sooner or later, you’ll hear things, and I want you to know none of it’s true. It’s the usual celebrity-bashing crapola. They’ll say your mom had some nervous breakdown or something, but she didn’t. The truth isn’t pretty, but it’s not half as ugly as you’ll hear, so Ming and Dr.