by Paul Slatter
“Gill Banton.”
Dan laughed to himself and stared at the floor. Then said, “What makes you think I want to do this stupid bullshit anyway?”
“Because you’re good at it.”
Dan looked to Chendrill, making friends now, saying sorry in his own way. Chendrill spoke for him, “Dan’s more interested in electronics.”
Sebastian’s eyes lit up.
“Good for you. Maybe we can you put you through some kind of college course?”
Dan shook his head, he knew more than the lecturers.
“He’s way beyond that,” Chendrill said, answering for him again.
Mazzi Hegan, who’d been sitting in the chair quietly, piped up, “We do art here, Dan, not bullshit.”
And quick as a flash, Dan replied, “Your art doesn’t make it to the art galleries where the real art is—and if you don’t like the truth, then you can suck my dick.”
As soon as he’d said it, he realized this was the wrong thing to say to Mazzi Hegan, who simply said, “You couldn’t handle the pleasure baby.”
“Mazzi,” Chendrill stepped in, “you shouldn’t mock him. We’ve all got our talents. Dan’s is electronics; some’ve said he’s a genius.”
Who gives a shit? Mazzi thought. He was here to make people look good and when he was distracted, Dan was just that. He said, “Dan’s got a talent for looking good also, put the hobby on hold and grab the cash.”
“What cash?” Dan asked.
Sebastian answered him, “You’ve a lot of cash, Dan—some now, but a huge amount coming. I want you to sign with us exclusive for the next 5 years.”
“I could almost be a doctor by then if I wanted.” And he could, as nutty and stupid as he was, he easily had the smarts, and he knew it.
Listening to what he said and giving it some thought, Sebastian reached to the floor and picked up Fluffy, placing him gently on his lap and said without looking up, “Daniel, I’m sure you could, but a second ago you were an electronics genius, love. What we want to do is not let you get ruined and left on the side of the road after signing up with a company that does just that.”
“Marshaaa’s doing all right with them,” Dan replied, stretching out the end of her name for effect.
“Marshaa’s a girl Daniel, and if Gill Banton was into girls, I’m sure that’s where she’d be right now.”
Dan sat there listening, watching Mazzi Hegan stroking his hair, Chendrill looking out the window at his new car and Sebastian stroking his dog and just being nice. Why would they think he’d ever want to go work with a crazy nut like this Banton woman anyway? He had no intention of going anywhere. The truth was he didn’t even want to be here. But the money was there, he knew that, and the chicks that were giving him the eye now wherever he went was a bonus. Soon, if he played his cards right and didn’t keep popping it out in his pants, he’d get some. So, he said, “Okay I want four things, though. First, I want an open account with the pizza delivery joint of my choosing. And second, I want Patrick to look after me because I like his style, but I don’t want to have to listen to his bullshit. And the third is that I’d like a new computer and a decent soldering iron and bench with a vice for my room for the electronics I like to do.”
Mazzi Hegan looked around, then with attitude said, “That’s three things.”
And Dan replied, “That’s good you can count because the fourth thing I want is your Ferrari.”
And he got it.
******
Rann Singh sat in his apartment, which no longer had a bucket, a china tea set, weights, or a deck chair for the balcony, and checked the internet on his new computer. Using his tracking number, he saw exactly where his shipment of pills were in the freight system. He had about three days to go now and they’d be here. Malcolm Strong was playing it up though, giving him ridiculous stuff about Chendrill that even his granny could spot as just plain nonsense. But like an idiot, he’d used it. He’d taken the bait and made himself look stupid—real stupid. Now Chendrill had turned it around on him, gone poking around in his affairs and found out about the shipment. How much did the guy know, though? Everything, like he was making out? Or just ten percent and bluffing the rest like Rann liked to do himself? At least he hoped, but what if it wasn’t a bluff? What if Chendrill had called customs like he had said he would and told them there’s a package coming in addressed to this guy, Rann Singh. But it wasn’t addressed to Rann, it was addressed to Bill Moore, who’d rented the locker and handed the keys over to Rann so as his wife wouldn’t find out about what he sometimes did on his way home late at night.
Rann had worked out the positioning and rented the storage locker at the back of the one where the package would be placed and when all was well and good and he’d seen no one was there to nab him, he’d cut the corrugated steel away in the back of the locker and grab it.
But first he needed it to clear customs and, with Malcolm being a pussy, he was getting worried. He took a deep breath, and called him, “You trying to make me look like a cunt? Giving me shit information like that, you trying to make a fool out of me?”
Malcolm stayed quiet on the end of the phone and for a moment, Rann thought he could hear the man crying. He said, “What you fucking doing? What you snivelling for?”
Malcolm stayed quiet, then he heard him say, “Leave me alone.”
“What?”
“Leave me be.”
“You should have thought about that when you fucked those whores, shouldn’t you? Now it’s time to pay for your sins, pay for your sins you cunt and do as I tell you.”
The man was a monster. He carried on, “That’s what this born-again Christian wants you to do, pay for your sins. So, you’d better start.”
“There is no Christian man, a Christian wouldn’t be like you. I know it’s you and you can fuck off. I’m going to the police.”
Now Rann was silent. He’d pushed the guy too far, same with this PI guy and that realtor who likes it up the ass. He needed to stop, leave it, let the man settle. The tablets would be here soon and they needed to be checked through. But as his temper burst, he said, “You do as you’re told, you whimpering cunt of a man, or I’ll post all those photos of you on the passport office’s windows so as all your friends and work colleagues can see what a fucking nonce perverted cunt you really are. Then I’ll do the same at your fucking house. Do you understand me. You asked for this shit. You did these things not me. You. You did this to you. Not me. So, fucking man up, you cunt, own it and do as I tell you, or you may as well go fucking hang yourself because when I’m done with you, your fucking life will be worth shit.”
Malcolm Strong sat there on his own in his home, his wife out now. The phone in his hand was shaking, how long would this go on? It had to have been a year now of the abuse, the shouting, the name calling—muggers got less, murderers not a lot more. He could feel his heart pounding, it had been that way for a while now with him constantly on the verge of tears, putting on a brave face for the world to see, smiling on the outside, telling jokes, but crying within. The pain was incredible, this man on him unrelentingly, pushing him, destroying who he once was. And he wasn’t giving up. Taking a deep breath so as he would not burst into tears again, as he just had when he’d seen the number on the phone, he said, “Go fuck yourself. I’m calling the police.”
And that’s exactly what he did.
Less than half an hour later, Williams arrived outside Malcolm’s home and walked up and rang the doorbell. When no one answered, he went around the back and tried the back door. The lights were on, but nothing else; no TV, nothing, just lights. He tried the door again—still locked. The man had been crying on the phone the dispatcher had said, babbling, not making sense, saying he wouldn’t leave him be.
Williams tried the door again, this time putting pressure on it with his foot. It gave way and he stepped inside, calling out as he did. He moved through the kitchen, then into the corridor of the house. Into the living room, the drink cabinet was op
en here, a bottle of wine and an empty bottle of scotch on the floor. Next to them, open packets of tablets, some still on the floor.
Shit.
He moved on, checking the dining room and headed upstairs through the bedroom and then opened the bathroom door, which was blocked slightly by Malcolm’s leg. Malcolm was on the floor in his underpants, puke everywhere, blood everywhere, the bath full and still hot, the water red from the blood that had seeped out of his slashed wrists trailing over the dry porcelain and onto the floor where he’d gotten out and fallen, soaked, drugged, drunk, and bleeding onto the bathroom floor.
Quickly, Williams bent down and felt the man’s pulse; he was barely alive. He slapped his face hard once, then twice, trying to bring him round. He lifted him slightly, slapped him again and then, as he saw the man’s eyes open slightly, let him down again and called it in.
“Malcolm, Malcolm, do you know where you are?” were the words Malcolm had first heard as he opened his eyes to see the contained security camera looking down at him. He didn’t.
The nurse moved toward him so he could see her and as he tried to move his arm, he found it was restrained, along with his leg.
“Do you know where you are?” she asked again, her voice kind and gentle.
He shook his head, not a clue. She said, “You’re in a secure ward, Malcolm. You tried to hurt yourself.” He looked to his free arm covered in cuts, some patched some still clear left alone to heal.
“You took an overdose, Malcolm.”
He took a look around the room, the nurse still smiling. His head spinning with confusion.
“Do you remember?” the nurse asked, he didn’t, he couldn’t remember a thing. He closed his eyes, and opened them again. Two hours had passed and Williams was still with him, standing in the room.
Chapter Twenty-Five
It wasn’t long before Dan’s wish came true and, having been dropped off at the showroom on Burrard by Belinda, he showed his licence to the salesman, who was doing well off of Slave this week, and who said to Dan in his best fake British accent, “You’re going to love this one, sir.”
Dan would, he couldn’t believe that only a few weeks back he had one thing he could call his own, and now he had two, a Ferrari and an Xbox his mum bought him for Christmas that he was already getting bored with.
This would be more fun. He loved the way he could make Mazzi Hegan’s rip away from the lights. Nothing had taken him yet and nothing was going to, not even Chendrill’s Aston Martin. He looked around, the place looking at him now, Dan feeling like a million-dollar king with a contract worth more than that with Slave—if he stayed looking sexy, as Mazzi had told him as they walked out of Sebastian’s office.
He looked over to a girl staring at his legs from behind her counter where she sat most of the day looking pretty. He gave her a wink. Then looked down to his feet. He had odd shoes on and they were both lace ups, both Converse—one red, one white. How the fuck did that happen? he thought. He didn’t even know he had two pairs. Then he remembered he did. He liked the white ones, but had lost them when he’d been trying to walk around the garden on his hands and couldn’t make it across the bit at the end which was gravelled and he’d taken down the neighbor’s fence.
Fucking great, all he had to do was find the other and he was back on track.
The girl was still staring at him, looking like she wanted him, looking him right in the eyes. Him there in his jeans and odd shoes with his shirt not done up because he had it on back to front and he couldn’t get the buttons in. It’s the way he was.
He gave her a wink, she smiled, he gave her another, she smiled, he gave her another and she smiled more. What do I do now? he thought. Go talk to her, he told himself. About what? he wondered. Doesn’t matter. What if she wants to fuck like that woman had? Not here, he thought, she’s at work. So what? they do that at these car showrooms. He’d seen it on late night TV when he was younger after he opened up the cable box and switched the wires around to get the porn channel working—then his mum had found him with one of her new fluffy socks and she’d taken the box away.
But now he was being offered it for real. In the movie, the guy had looked like Chendrill, in a Hawaiian, and the girl had been blonde with curly hair and she was wearing leg warmers through the whole thing, even when he was fucking her on the hood of the car and she’d screamed and shook her head and made funny faces with her lips and then so did he, getting all serious with his eyes, staring into nowhere and saying shit like, ‘fuck yeah, oh yeah fuck yeah, take it baby, take it’ and then grunting. Dan hadn’t got to see if he bought the car or not because his mum had come in getting all angry at exactly the same time that he’d come in his pants for the first time in his life.
The next day she took the box back to the cable company and they couldn’t work out what the boy had done to the electronics inside.
The girl staring at him and smiling had the same hair, long and curly and permed, like they used to in the late eighties, he called out to her asking, “You wearing leg warmers?”
She shook her head, she wasn’t. Shame.
He pulled the car out onto the main road and gunned it, listening to the engine purr and then watching as a guy in a Hyundai pulled past and disappeared into the distance. He pulled over, thinking this isn’t right and gave the engine a rev. It all sounded great. Then he pulled away again with his foot to the floor and gave way for a bicycle.
What the fuck? This is ridiculous, he thought, pulling over again. He did a U-turn and gunned it slowly back to the dealer, where, in his precise voice, the guy said, “The car’s fine sir. Sebastian’s had it fitted with a governor, sir. Said you can remove it when your twenty-one, sir. He said he wanted you to feel good and look good, sir. But that’s as far as it goes.”
******
Patrick took a suite at the Wiltshire in Beverly Hills and booked another one for Buffy along the corridor. ‘Marshaa’, as she now liked to be called, had gone home to the little place she had in Malibu and was worrying whether Patrick was going to sign the beautiful girl in the photo and, if so, whether she would be left behind.
Patrick said, “Girls as beautiful as you, Marshaa, don’t get left behind.” But the seed was planted. In her eyes, Dan was going to be a movie star and he was going to have an affair with the girl from the Ukraine and they’d go run off there together because it sounded hot.
Patrick went down and hit the bar and within ten minutes, he was in love with the waitress and everyone there knew his name and that he’d just dropped off ‘Marshaa’ in Malibu, and that they’d had the weekend together working on a project, and that he was the guy who secured the contract for the incredible sexy kid in the BlueBoy campaign who was about to do a movie because he was such a talent.
“Buffy’s about to land him a three-picture deal that’ll slide in nicely along with the next series of BlueBoy campaigns. The kid’s going to be tied up for at least three years.”
He sat down, then said, “Slave’s just signed him for five years exclusive. Gill Banton was just up at his house trying to sign him, but he’s with me.”
“I know that kid,” the executive at the bar had said.
“You can’t not know him, he’s worldwide. If I let him sign, those guys are looking at sellout distribution in theatres not just in North America, but all the Americas, Europe, Asia. He’s incredibly hot in Japan.”
Then the executive said, “We’re going to camera on the 15th with ours, the director’s Rupert Mikes—pure talent, did Fallen Warriors.”
“Oh yes,” Patrick replied, not having a clue. “Fantastic—I loved that show. Wow that guy’s talent. Who you got up front?”
“Dave Percell’s the lead.”
“Oh—Really?”
“He’s so talented.”
Patrick stayed silent. Then he said, “Great, oh totally, yeah well, good luck with that.”
Within the hour, Patrick had skim read the script and Dave Percell, the up-and-coming new sensation
, was out. Dan’s three picture deal that did not exist was being pushed and he was in the running for the lead, along with ‘Marshaa’ who was yet to show off her incredible acting skills to the world. Buffy, who was still in her room watching DVD’s and eating chocolate, was associate producer overseeing the 30% finance and worldwide distribution Patrick had personally guaranteed for the show via Slave—as long as they were shooting in Vancouver and, of course, he had a back-end deal for himself and sole rights to distribution sales within three countries in Asia he could think of off the top of his head, one of which was Japan.
The only problem now was that Dan couldn’t act, neither could Marsha, and he didn’t have a clue about distribution, let alone guaranteeing it worldwide and not a word had been said to Sebastian about the 2.5 million he’d casually put them on the hook for.
But who cared about minor details, because he was having fun; and an hour after shaking hands on the deal, the waitress was up in his room to talk about her new modelling contract with ‘Slave’. She would be his first signing and in the morning, the second was going to be ‘Marshaa’.
He was unstoppable.
*******
Megan Rawlis felt the early morning sun warming up the city as she made her way back to the apartment she shared with her friend. She had good news to tell her about what had just happened and how she’d met this guy and how within the week she’d be moving up to Vancouver to start her new life. The day before, she’d gone to work as a waitress and twenty-four hours later, she was a signed as a Slave model with a six-month extendable contract. This was what dreams were made of and it was a dream made true by a realtor who was still naked and laying on the big king size bed that smelled of sex, airing out his crotch because his balls were aching while he talked on the phone to the girl who had just been voted the most beautiful woman in the world, and who was in love with Dan because he couldn’t care less about any of it.
