Chapter 7 of my novel in progress, By the Light of the Moon.

We passed two blocks from my house on the way to the bus stop. I had a lot of things I could have been doing at home. Including nothing at all on a fine Saturday morning. There's a little patch of lawn in front of my house that's either my front yard or the landlord's back yard, and there's a spindly lemon tree to one side of it. Sometimes I pull out an chair and read under the tree. Sooner or later, old Red, the landlord, limps out to talk, or abuelito--Jose's grandfather from next door--or bald Eddie the retired bit actor. I never get much reading done. But if I really wanted to read I would stay inside. I think the book brings them out. Nobody likes to interrupt you unless they think you're doing something. Their stories are better than the ones on the pages anyhow. And I can read the book whenever I want. Except when I'm trudging past a graffiti-covered laundromat with Dave, chasing down a woman I never want to see again.

We weren't far from the Sunset bus line, which would drop us off a couple of blocks from where Percival used to live. I didn't know whether he'd still be there, but he wasn't the kind of guy to make unnecessary efforts. If he hadn't been evicted, we'd find him. Not that that was a thought that filled me with joy. I could see a new light in Dave's eyes, though. Evidently he had never yet met Percival.

The light dimmed a little went we walked up to Percival's building. It was an old brick apartment hotel on Vine Street, in a part of Hollywood that didn't deserve to be famous, even fifty years ago, when there was something there. Now the old landmarks had been torn down to make room for fast-food joints and chain record stores on one side of the street. On the other side, which should have been torn down, was the faded Greyhound Bus station, the Pic-n-Save, a tire store, and the Villa Athena, which resembled the Goddess of Wisdom about as much as a dead horse would have. It had a row of shopfronts along the sidewalk: a liquor store, a cigar store that no one ever went into or out of, a used clothing store, a bar, and a newsstand selling mostly pornographic magazines. No store was more than twelve feet wide, and none of them was ever crowded. Even the bar. The residents of the Villa Athena preferred to drink at home. From what I remembered.

There was a dusty iron security gate across the arched tunnel to the courtyard, but it was propped open with what seemed to be the same piece of two-by-four that had been there years earlier. Dave followed me through.

A dreadlocked black kid who must have been six-foot-three and no more than a hundred and forty pounds nodded to us from behind his bug-eye sunglasses as he went out. The courtyard was empty except for the fountain and a few dead shrubs dessicating in squares of trampled dirt. There was nothing else to look at, except the inevitable litter of burger wrappers and styrofoam cups, which I think is becoming the emblem of America, forget the flag. The fountain had a basin about ten feet wide, but water hadn't run in it since before I was born. It was half-filled with broken beer bottles. No whole ones, and no cans: the scavengers took those to sell at the recycling centers for three cents apiece. Dave stared up at a small blue rectangle of sky. The Athena was six stories high, but from the dark well of the courtyard it seemed higher. One of the windows up near the roof had a window box with bright flowers in it, and a clean white curtain behind the cracked glass. That was not Percival's apartment.

The entrance to the stairwell was covered by a panel of new plywood held on by shiny zinc-plated gate hinges. It looked like the landlord was trying to keep the place up after all. There was a short piece of rope held to the door by an oversized staple. I pulled on it, and we went into the building.

Not much had changed. The stairwell was still dark between landings, the carpet was still gray with dirt and still smelled of piss. Maybe the holes in it and the dead roaches were bigger than before. Hard to say. You know how you romanticize the past. Maybe the roaches had been just as big in the good old days.

One of the apartments on the third-floor landing had no door. Inside it was a skinny Mexican-looking kid slouched shirtless on a dusty brown sofa. He stared vacantly into the room, where you could hear a radio or television playing. He didn't turn his head as we passed by. Dave didn't look so happy now. He was from New York, all right, but he wasn't from the part where people lived like this. I didn't like it either, but it wasn't my girl I was chasing down anymore.

Percival had been living on the fourth floor, number 402, last time I'd seen him. When we got to the door, it was still painted in psychedelic paisleys--a work of art that Kate herself had created for Sir Knight. If you looked at it right, you saw that some of the paisleys doubled as the breasts and hips of naked fat ladies. Kate had been truly proud of her painting. She had even signed it. Dave was looking at the signature when I knocked. Percival's nasal drawl called out from inside the door. He didn't sound like he had been expecting company. "A blast from the past, Perce," I answered him. "We come in peace."

There was silence, then: "Do I recognize your voice?"

"'Course you do, baby. Let us in."

"Who's with you?"

"No one you know. A harmless seeker of enlightenment."

We heard slow shuffling sounds behind the paisleys. "Okay," Percival said. "You've aroused my curiosity." There was the usual clacking of locks and bolts, and the paisley door swung open. I resisted the temptation to check out Dave's reaction.

When you describe Percival, you describe him a bit at a time--there's no other way. But you've got to understand that Dave saw him all at once. Fortunately for Percival's tender feelings, he was looking at me when he opened the door, to make sure, I suppose, that I wasn't somebody else.

Percival was not much taller than Dave but weighed about three hundred and fifty pounds, and since he couldn't fit into the Athena's bathtub, they were three hundred and fifty pretty ripe pounds most of the time. He had a tangled black beard, black hair that hung around his face in greasy strings, and black plastic hornrims that were continually sliding down his little snub nose. He was fat enough to have trouble breathing, so when he wasn't talking his mouth emitted a harsh rhythmical rasping. In that sense it was fortunate that he was usually talking. In other senses it wasn't. At home he was always barefoot, and since he couldn't reach his feet with his hands, his toenails were long, cracked, and yellow. His mouth hung open a little, and his breath blew hot and moist past our faces. I'm sure he wondered why we were there. I'm also sure he knew it had something to do with Kate. Why the hell else would I visit him otherwise.

He seemed to wake up a little. "Greetings, friend. We haven't seen each other in too long a time. Come in, make yourself some room and sit down."

It was not a realistic instruction.

Percival's room, at first glance, had the general aspect of a downtown alley, but when you looked a little more closely, you realized that there was an organizing principle at work. Everything large, such as the couch, the stereo, the TV, and an old trunk that served as coffee table, was on the floor. Everything else was also on the floor. Paperbacks, magazines, open cereal boxes, empty soda cans, clothes.... The books were mostly cheap science fiction, the kind with blondes in tin skirts holding ray guns on the covers. There were also several books on UFOs. The magazines, except for that essential document of American citizenship, TV Guide, pretty much covered the same ground. I did see one that seemed to be limited to government conspiracies. His taste in literature had grown since I'd seen him last. So had he. The mountains of clothes on the floor were a realm in themselves.

The walls were covered with rock-and-roll posters from the 'sixties, along with a couple more paintings by Kate. These were evidently relics from her LSD phase. The coffee-table trunk was crowded with sheaves of handwritten papers and dirty styrofoam plates and cups. There was also a scatter of hashpipes, including an elaborately decorated silver one that Kate had given him for his birthday when we were still together. It was engraved, "Love and dreams, Kate," in fancy script. I had the feeling that Dave was learning more about his beloved than he ever would have wanted to know, had he known what was coming. He was awfully quiet and didn't look too happy. I told him to sit down. He did. I found a relatively clear area on the floor and sat myself down there. Percival shrugged and wedged himself into the couch next to Dave. Perce and I looked at each other and Dave tried hard not to look at anything at all.

Percival broke off his heavy breathing and said, "I suppose this is about Kate."

I smiled and nodded. It felt good to be able to smile right then. I couldn't have done it in the same situation a few years earlier. "None other, Perce."

"And this gentleman?" He swayed his head slightly toward Dave.

"Someone you know indirectly. Kate's fella."

"Ah. So you are Dave." He fixed his hornrimmed stare on my friend. Dave nodded silently.

"Perce. You talked to her lately? Last few days?"

"I suppose so. We converse regularly." Percival was uncharacteristically laconic. "Why? Is something wrong?"

He was looking at Dave, but, as Dave didn't seem to be ready to speak, I answered for him. "She's off on one of her adventures, Perce."

"Ah, yes. She's an adventuresome girl."

"I know that, Perce. You know I know that. She's always worked real hard at being an adventuresome girl. But she always came home the next day. She's been gone four full days, Perce. Maybe she found some real adventure this time. We're kind of worried." Percival was staring at something past my shoulder. Dave was staring at the corner of the room where the shoes were piled. "When did you talk to her last, Sir Knight? Help us feel comfortable about this, will you?" I was speaking for Dave, of course. I felt comfortable. I felt wonderful. I never imagined being out of love could be so good. I felt sorry for us all.