by Jim Fusilli
“Once I wanted to be the greatest, Two fists of solid rock,” she sang, getting to the refrain. Bitch. Penny should have told Miss Tallysee that using a pottery wheel wasn’t the same as getting sixteen-year-olds to actually do their equations homework. Maybe if she’d seen the way Calvin scowled at her under his Red Sox hat, cocky to the point of delusion that he was one baseball scholarship away from being somebody who could call grown woman bitches and be praised for it.
One of the lights went out above her, but Penny kept singing, letting her adequate voice hit all the right notes. Each word died on delivery, no muscle but no mistakes either. Coming soon to a shotgun wedding near you.
Her song ended soon enough, and she made her way to a barstool. The whiskey was formaldehyde strong, which kept Penny from gulping the whole thing and being done with it. She rolled a quarter around and watched men watch the pretty young thing on stage high kick to some prerecorded marching band dreck. The girl—just turned twenty-one, according to her rambling intro—might as well have been waving hunks of dead snake at a field full of hawks. Penny would have had some sympathy back in Baltimore or even Charlottesville, but those cities belonged to Angry Penny, not Hopeless Penny. Who was judging this flea circus anyway? Sometimes it was hard to tell, but she had her money on the owner’s wife loitering by the sound booth in a pastel sweatsuit and rhinestone tiara.
The girl’s music ended with a clash of symbols, and Twenty-One (yeah, right) twirled one more time for good measure, finishing two beats after the band. Then the whooping of course, the applause and stomping of predators sounding vicious against the plywood beneath their feet. Penny signaled for another, clapping when her quarter rolled out of reach.
The dancer made her way toward the bartender, beaming at her own triumph. She ordered a strawberry daiquiri and turned toward Penny, expectantly.
“Hey, nice song,” she said. “You write that yourself?”
Penny was excused from answering as the blender turned on. The emcee paused, too, shuffling his index cards and waiting for the racket to end. It did, and the bartender slid a dripping pink concoction toward the girl. She took a gulp and pressed at her temple. “Good and cold,” she said. “How I like my men.”
Penny didn’t believe her, but didn’t respond either. A girl like that at her former school? She’d have the pick of the litter. No boys with bitten nails and rebuilt junkyard cars. She was quarterback material, at least second string.
“I’m Lark, by the way. You a songwriter?” she tried again.
“Nope, I only play.” Penny took a sip of her drink and stared at the initials carved into the bar with ballpoint pens.
“My grandma on my dad’s side paid for some piano lessons, but they never stuck. Dancing, though? Dancing came natural. Like your guitar, I bet.”
Penny glanced down when Lark gestured toward their feet where a plain black case sat, collecting whatever filth this place had to offer. Penny liked how nondescript it was and refused to muck up the exterior with band stickers. Besides, what was the point of advertising for other people and not getting paid for it? Lark kept talking, ignoring the slick man who sidled up to her and eavesdropped, looking for an opportunity.
“Community college, you know?” Lark said to Penny who nodded, unsure of the question. “Say, you look pretty out of it. They serve food here?”
The hoverer took his opening. “Fries and such. You want I get you some?”
Lark finally turned toward him. “Sure, aren’t you a charmer?”
The man smiled and loped off. Penny rubbed her head, knowing she shouldn’t get involved and knowing she would. There was something about these girls that always got to her. She never won any teaching awards, but she’d stay late to help the homecoming queen attendants, do her best to get them to look beyond the walls of a concrete classroom, its asbestos hidden like so many well-kept secrets: pot in the tampon dispenser, eight traffic summons in Mr. Mulholland’s glove compartment, a first grader who bore a striking resemblance to Principal O’Connor. The kind of place to let indiscretions slide. Just not hitting a kid.
“Watch yourself,” Penny said, then cleared her throat to speak more forcefully. “He’s no ticket out.”
Lark scrunched her delicate features in confusion. “Oh, the fries? Girl’s gotta eat.”
She laughed, and the emcee seemed to sense her joy from across the room. Ha-a-ha-a-ha-a-ha, he boomed into the mic. “The judges have judged, and we have a winner, chickadees.”
The burned-out stage light hadn’t been replaced, and his face was partly shadowed. He consulted his notes and awarded third prize, a set of shot glasses, to the ventriloquist. Penny held up her whiskey in mock salute, glad she wouldn’t have to cart glassware around. The coffee thermos from Richmond took up enough space already. Second prize went to a trumpet player Penny had missed because she was late. The emcee made a spit-happy drumroll with his tongue, and Lark grabbed Penny’s hand, hard. Startled, Penny found a small part of herself rooting, as well. When the name of a handsome singer in cowboy boots was announced, she was a little deflated by the faint blush appearing on Lark’s cheeks. The girl had planned to win.
“An inside job,” Penny said, giving the girl’s hand a squeeze before letting go.
“How you figure?”
Penny nodded at the tiara-clad wife-turned-judge for the evening who thought nobody noticed her patting the cowboy’s backside in congratulations.
“Oh well, isn’t that the pits.” Lark tugged at one of her spandex sleeves until it covered her wrist. She let go, and the fabric snapped right back to mid-forearm. “I guess it’s like that everywhere.”
Penny started to object, but stopped when Lark’s attention whipped toward the plate of fries and onion rings headed in her direction. The man carrying them grinned like he was delivering something he killed and cooked himself.
“Watch yourself,” Penny said again.
Without turning, Lark scratched at her ankle, knowing Penny’s eyes would catch the silver glint of a holster and a doll-sized pistol. Real enough for its unimpressive size. Penny should have been relieved by a young woman taking care of herself, but instead she was uneasy, sure that at some point her luck would run out. It always does.
The night’s live entertainment was at an end, and the jukebox blared to life. Customers began shouting their conversations, but Penny didn’t care. She didn’t have anything to say to anyone. Her drink was mostly water from melted ice cubes, and she swirled the liquid. Buzzed but not drunk yet, she wondered if she should call it a night, but it was ten, and her bus didn’t leave until eight the next morning. As far as she could tell, there wasn’t too far to meander in this town. Twenty minutes on foot would take her to the outskirts, and she’d never been that keen on wildlife. Bugs. They grow giant bugs in the South.
“A drink for my friend, please?” Lark signaled to the bartender who slung a wet rag over his shoulder and pulled out the cheapest bottle of whiskey available. He served it up neat, and Penny didn’t complain. You’d think he’d remember a small thing like ice. You’d think a middle-aged ex-schoolteacher wouldn’t be blowing through her savings to lose a country’s worth of talent shows, Penny reminded herself. She’d gotten better, lately, at perspective.
Lark plowed her way through the food and ordered another daiquiri, everything going on the man’s tab. Penny hated to see the scene if she didn’t give him her number at the end of the night. Number? Hell, he’d probably expect more than that. Penny hiccupped, surprised to find her glass empty all of a sudden. Not surprised to find she liked how the room seemed softer, the way voices altogether sounded like the whirring of a film reel. Not even the sad country song, something about empty beds and early mornings, dimmed her mood.
She eased herself off the stool and headed toward the bathroom, liking the hot sensation in her cheeks. She was warm, Florida warm, and if she could make it another 1,200 miles, she could survive the winter in Key West without too many motel rooms. Had she said that bef
ore?
“Sounds like a good plan,” Lark said, holding onto her elbow. Had Penny said that aloud? Must have.
They stumbled through the ladies’ room door, and Lark locked it behind them. The noise from outside was still there, pushing in on them, but for a moment, they were cocooned.
“Only us girls,” Lark said, pulling down her pants and hovering over the toilet. Penny turned toward the window and listened to the stream of urine. “You mind opening that?”
Penny unlatched the frame, and it groaned up, letting crisp air into the space. The alcohol-induced heat left her skin. She didn’t think it was right that she had seen this stranger’s panties, but she couldn’t say why exactly. Maybe the more and more certain feeling that Lark was a teenager with a fake ID. The toilet flushed, and Penny headed toward the door.
“No, your turn,” Lark said.
Penny hesitated then unzipped her own jeans and sat, not up to squatting above the seat. At first, nothing happened, then four drinks took over. Lark swung herself up onto the windowsill—half-out, half-in—and leveled her gaze at Penny. “Better?”
Penny nodded, thinking that the girl might escape into the night, leave the bar flirt waiting for her with a fresh drink. She turned to flush, but the tank hadn’t refilled, and the toilet paper swirled.
“Just a sec,” Penny said, wanting desperately to be out of the room. She was embarrassed and ready to leave the night behind her. She waited until the familiar suction sound of the flapper, then pushed down again on the handle. She moved quickly to the sink, and that’s when she saw that Lark had removed her pistol and was fiddling with the cylinder.
“You should use a stage name,” Lark said, squinting at the circle of bullets then popping them back into place.
“Excuse me?”
“Penny McAllister isn’t that glamorous.” There wasn’t any soap, so Penny ran her hands under the water, then wiped them on her pants. “Makes you easy to find, too.”
Despite her haze, Penny knew what to expect when she looked up into the mirror. Not the red blotches that had appeared on Lark’s face, but her unsteady hands holding the gun in front of her.
Penny thought at first—back in Providence—that she’d been running toward something, each new state a step closer to redemption, a life worth more than a lost pension. But no, aren’t we more often running away from ourselves? Aren’t we dodging the devil until he’s done playing?
“Here’s as good a place as any, I suppose,” Penny said.
“Calvin and me were going to start a life together. Then he starts losing. Missing pitches, missing practice.”
Penny sighed when she should have screamed. Not that anyone was going to hear over the music. “That kid was going nowhere fast. You’re better off rid of him.”
“Better how, exactly? I’ve got a 2.1 GPA and a part-time job selling lipstick at the mall. Nobody’s giving scholarships for girls in the color guard.”
“There are always options.”
It was Penny’s first lie of the night, and it sobered her. If she were in the mood for honesty, though, she would have told Lark that her boyfriend was an average ballplayer. Oh sure, good enough for high school, but not likely to make a college team. A brat to boot. And that’s what made her mad, not willing to admit that you’re like everyone else. It sounded too familiar, and Penny finally felt something like fear, that everything she could accomplish, she’d accomplished, that a gift certificate to a local bait-and-tackle store was the closest she’d ever come to success, to being the best at anything.
“What’s wrong with a C average and a job?” she finally said, knowing the answer was “everything.” The Greatest. Some joke. Penny was smiling when Lark pulled the trigger.
PLAYED TO DEATH
BY BILL FITZHUGH
GRADY SHERMAN CAME TO IN darkness and motion and pain. And from somewhere, music played, a song he’d never heard before. This mattered to Grady more than it would most people under the circumstances because Grady considered himself a music expert. He made a good living telling radio programmers what to play. He knew all the songs people wanted to hear and this wasn’t one of them.
But for now, Grady had to let that go. He was in the fetal position, dazed and confused as to how and why he’d ended up . . . wherever the hell he was. He tried to sit up but banged his head on something metal that put him back down.
Then, in the corner of the space, a light blinked four times, accompanied by a sound Grady recognized, the rat-a-tat of tires on pavement markers. Now he knew. Okay, I’m in the trunk of a car, he thought, that’s a start, but whose car? My own? Someone else’s? Was there an answer to either of those questions that could possibly explain why I’m in the trunk?
He didn’t feel so good.
Grady drank too much. He knew that. Didn’t need to be reminded. But this wasn’t the solution. Take my keys away, fine. Call a cab, whatever, but you don’t throw a man in the trunk of a car to get him back to his hotel. I don’t care how drunk he is.
He banged his fist on the trunk lid. “Hey! Let me out of here!” The yelling made his head throb even worse.
The song, the unfamiliar song, grew louder as someone in the car turned up the volume, apparently to drown out the yelling. Was this some sort of practical joke? Stuff me in the trunk of a car and play music nobody recognizes? If so, it damn sure wasn’t funny. Grady wondered if he had gotten belligerent at the bar. Wouldn’t be the first time. He could be a real prick. He knew that, but he didn’t care. He banged on the trunk again. “I’m calling nine-one-one asshole!”
Grady felt for his cell phone but it was gone. That discovery forced his pain to yield to fear and a feeling in the pit of his stomach like dread. No, it was more than a feeling, it was dread itself multiplying like ebola in his gut.
A sudden turn off the smooth pavement threw Grady against the trunk’s wall as the car made a jarring transition to a rough dirt road. Another song came on. Grady didn’t recognize this one either. This song wasn’t on any list he’d ever approved. Who would listen to this? None of this made sense to him.
Five minutes later the car stopped and with it, the unfamiliar music. The driver’s door opened. Footsteps approached in the gravel. “I’m going to open the trunk now,” a man said. “I have a gun.”
“Who are you?”
“Don’t do anything stupid.”
The trunk popped open. A man, older than Grady and sturdier, stood a few feet away, a gun in his hand. The man said, “Get out.”
“Who the fuck are you?”
“I’m the guy with the gun telling you what to do,” the man said. “Now do it unless you want to die right there. Up to you.”
Grady struggled to do as he was told. Good God, his head hurt, a chemical throbbing deep in the folds of his brain rendering him helpless, confused, feeble. Had he been drugged? Nothing else made sense. Hell, being drugged didn’t make sense. None of it made a damn bit of sense.
When he finally had both feet on the ground, Grady sat on the lip of the trunk, took a deep breath, tried to focus. The rot of dead fish filling his nose, he turned to see a lake, a wooden pier jutting into a spread of black water reflecting a half-moon. Grady said, “Who are you are? What’s this about?”
“I’m a consultant, for lack of a better term.”
“A consultant that kidnaps people?”
“I was hired.”
“By who?”
“The people I answer to,” the man said. “They hired me and I’m taking care of business. It’s not personal.”
“I don’t understand.”
“We did some call-out research,” the man said. “Results were unequivocal.”
“What are you talking about, call-out research?” Grady glanced back at the trunk. Maybe there was a tire iron, something he could use as a weapon.
“You know how it works,” the man said. “We had a good sample of the demographic we’re trying to appeal to and we asked what they wanted, and this is what they said. We�
��re just giving them what they asked for.”
“Which is what?”
“Bad news for you, I’m afraid.”
“Look,” Grady said, “I don’t know who put you up to this but . . .”
“Are you a religious man?”
“What do you care?”
“I’m asking as a courtesy,” the man said. “I want to give you the chance to pray if you’re so inclined.”
“Pray.”
“You know, when you find yourself in times of trouble, mother Mary speaking words of wisdom to you, all that. Some people take comfort in it,” the man said. “A last rights kind of thing, I guess.”
“What are you saying, last rites?”
“Put another way, this is the end of side two for you.”
It finally dawned on Grady. “Your research said I should be killed?”
“Yes. Do you want to pray?” The guy smiled and said, “Jesus is just all right with me.”
Something in the way the man said it was terrifying. Grady realized these would be the final moments of his life unless he did something. He knew he couldn’t outrun a bullet so he mustered all the cognitive skills he could and said, “Maybe you didn’t ask the right questions. You know, it’s not as easy as people think to get the questions right. To get the answer you need.”
“Trust me,” the man said. “We know what we’re doing and this tested really well. Off the charts, as they say.” He nodded, saying, “We’ve got faith in our research.”
“Listen,” Grady said, “you can get people to tell you they love whatever it is you’re selling, if you phrase the question correctly.”
The man shook his head. “You’re not doing yourself any favors talking like that.”
“Okay, look, I’ve got money,” Grady said, patting for his wallet. “Name your price. I’ll make you rich!”
