I decided to try and play it indifferent.
“Whatever,” I said, closing my eyes and rubbing my temples as though exhausted and with headache (which was true), nurturing the role.
“You don’t have to believe me if you don’t want to, Calvin. But it’s all true. I have nothing to gain by lying to you.”
I snorted at her remark. I wanted to make her work to convince me.
(You know that won’t happen.)
“Well I’m glad that’s settled,” she said. “Feel better now?”
Her question seemed to carry a hint of condescension, and it made my recently dulled flame grow hot again. I figured this might be an ideal time to tell her about Manny’s unfortunate meeting with my fist and revel in her reaction.
“Sure—I feel better,” I said. “Don’t know about your buddy Manny though.”
“What do you mean? What about Manny?”
“Guy’s got no manners,” I said.
“So?”
“I taught him some.”
I sounded stupid trying to talk in this Hollywood-tough-guy way. It just wasn’t my style, and it felt ridiculous the moment it left my mouth.
“What are you saying, Calvin? Did you beat up Manny? Did you beat up an old man?”
“He fucking deserved it.”
“You asshole.”
I tried playing a different hand. “Oh I see; me beating someone’s ass is only cool when you’re the one setting it up?”
She shook her head, muttered “asshole” again.
“Well what’s the big deal?” I said. “The guy’s a fucking pervert. Just flash him your tits and everything’ll be fine. He’ll think it’s his birthday.”
She stared at me as though I’d pissed her bed.
“You know what?” I stood. “Fuck this. I dumped Stephanie like you asked; my job is done. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to go home, take a much-needed shower, get shitfaced, and then actually consider waking up for work in the morning. Would that be alright?”
Part of that was true. The other part was hoping she’d ask me to stay. I was exhausted, and a night of serious fornication seemed daunting, but the offer was all I really wanted.
“Well I guess you better be on your way then,” she said. And there was no bait in her tone. Nothing I might be able to twist and lob back at her, starting the game. She’d made a flat statement. A goodbye and that was all. Actually, not even a goodbye. More of a: you can go now. It reminded of the first time we slept together, the cavalier way she’d spoken to me after while showering: “You can go…I’ll call you when I need you.”
“Yeah…see you around I guess,” I said, a pathetic attempt at dangling my own bait.
She turned her back on me and walked away without another word, as elusive a catch as ever.
I left with my tail between my legs.
28
My alarm jerked me from a dead sleep. I’d been dreaming. About what, I don’t know; everything broke apart the moment my eyes snapped open. The only thing that remained was a feeling of dread—liked I’d been drowning.
Pele was out cold at the foot of my bed. Only his ears twitched when I switched off the alarm and got up, the bastard. Take my mice and my milk, but spare me my 23 hours of sleep! I’m definitely coming back as a house cat in my next life. I figure the cleaning your butt with your tongue thing is a mere bagatelle when you consider the abundance of pros that existed.
A hot shower and many cups of coffee later and I began feeling as ready for work as I was ever going to be. I didn’t get hammered last night as I’d planned, but I did strap on a hearty buzz. The kind of buzz that gave you mere headaches and a dry mouth, eventually cured by aspirin and coffee and Gatorade and McDonald’s.
Shitfaced? You still treated it with all of the above, but you never won, only wounded the beast. Mere headaches were promoted to “Please stop fucking talking” aches. Dry mouth and bad breath was “Who shit in my mouth while I was sleeping?” mouth. And of course, all of their buddies—nausea, the sweats, the shits—were united in their promotion as “Never again.”
And yet you do.
(You mean YOU do.)
I didn’t last night.
(That’s true; you stopped. No easy task once you’ve got a buzz.)
Thank you.
(Why do you think?)
Why what?
(Why did you stop?)
I was tired. I couldn’t call out sick from work again.
(Admirable—although maybe there’s more to it than that.)
I don’t have time for your stupid puzzles wrapped in figurative language. I’m going to work.
29
Talk about fucking irony. I arrived at work to find my two clients had cancelled, but, saints be praised, someone else had booked in! Care to guess who that someone was? A week ago, I saw Angela’s name on my schedule and all but came. Now, an explanation for her name filled me with the urgency of a piss.
“Margaret?” I said, the moment I reached the front desk.
Her eyes stayed on the computer screen, fingers clacking away on the keyboard as she answered me. “Mmmm…?”
“My client—when did she schedule her appointment?” I asked.
“About an hour ago.”
“Did she say anything unusual?”
The clacking stopped; she looked up at me with only her eyes. “Unusual?”
“Yeah—did anything strike you as strange?”
She resumed clacking. “No—nothing strange. Two cancelled; she filled one of the spots. That okay?”
I don’t know.
30
“Calvin, your client’s here,” one of the aestheticians said to me while I was brooding in the break room.
“Thanks.” I steadied my breathing, put on a professional face, and headed up to the front of the spa.
She was there. She looked hot.
“Hi, Calvin—you ready for me?” Her tone was innocent and friendly.
“Sure am,” I managed without cracking the pro face. “Come on back.”
* * *
I shut the door behind us the instant we entered my room.
“You do happy endings, right?” she asked.
“What do you want?”
“A massage.”
“Bullshit. What do you want?”
“Oh, Calvin—is the honeymoon over already?”
“You’re not here for a fucking massage.”
“It wouldn’t be so unusual, would it? This is how we met.”
“Things are different now.”
“Because we’ve slept together?”
“You and your fucking games.”
She rolled her eyes. “Relax.”
“Did you make my previous clients cancel?” I asked.
“What? How the hell would I do that?”
“I don’t know—how do you do any of the shit you do?”
“Should I be concerned about this paranoia? We’re not going to start discussing JFK are we?”
“Yeah—have your fun…”
“Oh relax, Cal—”
“Stop telling me to relax!”
Angela winced and grimaced as if hearing a mic screech in a reverberant room. “Not sure you should be yelling like that in a place like this,” she said.
“Stop playing fucking games then.”
She nodded almost apologetically. “You’re right—I know this isn’t easy.”
“Do you? I’m sorry, you see up until now I thought all you did was point a finger and say go. I had no idea you’d gotten those pretty little hands dirty before.”
She looked annoyed now. “You don’t know shit, Calvin.”
“Whoop! Look out! Another hint from her mysterious past.” I put a theatrical hand to my chin. “I wonder though; was it genuine? Or was it strategically placed to keep me intrigued? Hmmm...”
“Are you having fun?”
“Tell me what you meant about having to do it.”
She sighed. “Back to that again.�
��
“I never left it.”
“Not now,” she said.
“Why not? We’ve got an hour to kill.”
“I’d rather have a massage.”
“I’m not massaging you.”
“Fine.” She took a padded envelope from her bag and tossed it on the massage table.
“What’s that?”
She didn’t answer, only gestured towards it.
I picked up the envelope and opened it. Inside were plane tickets and folded papers. I read the tickets. “What’s this? What’s in San Francisco?”
“Your next assignment.”
“You’re making me do more?”
She ignored my question, kept talking about the job. “We had a special-request project on phobias. The client wants a more distinct emphasis on the subject’s feeling of dread before they die.”
“Dread?”
“In simplest terms, this client gets off on watching people who are truly terrified.”
“You’re telling me past subjects weren’t truly terrified?”
“Well, they were in pain, and they were in fear of dying, but they weren’t terrified to the core—their deepest fears hadn’t been exploited. That’s what this client wants.”
“I’m not following.”
“What are you afraid of, Calvin? What truly terrifies you?”
“You think I’m gonna tell you?”
She smiled. “Fair enough. The subject we have in custody out west is afraid of sharks. Great white sharks to be exact. Apparently she was traumatized by the film Jaws. Claims she won't even go into a swimming pool.”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” I said. “How did you find this girl? How did you get all this information?”
“One of my field operatives found her.”
“So one of your employees just started going up to random women on the street and asking them if they were afraid of sharks?”
She chuckled softly. “No—it didn't have to be sharks. It could have been snakes or spiders or heights…”
“So who’s the girl?” I asked. “Another hooker?”
“No. She works at a Barnes and Noble, in the section of the store where they sell music and film. That's how the subject of Jaws came up. The operative overheard a conversation she was having with a customer about the film.”
“You can't just snatch up anyone, can you?” I said. “I mean, this girl isn't a prostitute; her disappearance won’t be written off as an occupational hazard.”
She pursed her lips. “Give me a little credit please. We checked her background. No living relatives. She recently moved to San Francisco from the Midwest. A loner, so to speak. It's almost too perfect.”
“Do you have any idea how incredibly fucked up that sounded?”
She ignored me, continued with: “As I said, the girl’s in custody as we speak. She's on a boat docked in the Bay area. The address is in your itinerary.” She flipped her chin towards the folded papers in my hand. I looked down at them. “One of my employees has a wealth of knowledge about boats and sharks. He’ll be on board with you.”
I looked up from the papers. “If you’ve got others going then why do you need me?”
She ignored me again, kept going with her instructions. “Be sure that the girl gets a good look at the shark before you toss her overboard. It's no good if you just throw her in and she gets chomped right away. We need to milk the anticipation. That’s the most crucial part of the project: filming the dread of someone coming face-to-face with their darkest fear moments before they die.”
“Jesus Christ…”
“You’ll be fine.”
I looked at her with both venom and wonder. “I will, huh? What about you? How did you cope when you had to do it?”
She sighed again, but shocked me when she said, “We’ll talk when you get back.”
I stayed firm. “You won’t tell me shit when I get back.”
She tried to caress my face but I pulled away.
“If you cared about me at all, you’d destroy that tape and let me go,” I said. “I’m your fucking prisoner and you know it. Don’t pretend like it’s anything else.”
She looked at the floor for a beat, then raised her head and kissed me on the cheek.
Did I make a dent? Did I make a fucking dent!?
She left.
PART SEVEN
Fishing, Anyone?
31
I needed time off work. Good news was that I had a week’s vacation I hadn’t used yet. Bad news was that I was an independent contractor at the spa; I didn’t get paid if I didn’t work. That and I was using my vacation time to feed a girl to a shark.
32
The plane ride was bearable. I slept most of the way thanks to a few plastic glasses of cheap scotch and a recent Nicholas Cage film. I had recalled seeing San Francisco portrayed in films as a city with a ton of steep hills and such, and can now say that those films were unfortunately accurate; the cheap scotch threatened reappearance all over the back of the cab driver’s head if we didn’t get there soon. Fortunately, we did.
“This is it?” I asked, squinting out the window towards the vast boating dock.
“This is the address you gave me,” he said.
I paid, grabbed my bag, and began wandering around the dock. It was noon and hot. The sun was getting me from above and reflecting off the water from below. I was squinting and pulling at my collar the whole time I wandered.
“G’day, mate.”
I turned and found myself eye to chin with one of the biggest fuckers I’d ever seen. He was deeply tanned and heavily muscled, a body attained through a lifetime of manual labor as opposed to useless beach muscles made in the gym, though I’d wager the big bugger was no stranger to hoisting iron. Oh, and in case the “G’day, mate” didn’t clue you in, he was also Australian.
“You’re Calvin then?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
We shook hands. His grip was strong and rough.
“Call me Gene,” he said. “Ever been on a boat before?”
“Couple of times.”
“Right. I’ll be the captain and the one locating the sharks; Andrew will be the one filming. Follow me.”
He led me to the end of the dock where I was introduced to both the boat and to Andrew. The boat was like Gene—huge. Andrew was the polar opposite. The guy was a twig. He had greasy black hair and wore thick horn rims. He had a look about him that was rat-like, sleazy. If he were wearing a trench coat instead of shorts and a tee, I’d have taken his picture and posted it to Wikipedia, labeling it “sex-offender.”
“So he’s filming…” I said, pointing at Andrew but talking to Gene. “You’re driving the boat and finding the sharks…” I splayed my hands. “And I’m…?”
Gene looked at Andrew. They exchanged funny looks. Gene looked back at me. “You’re doing the deed, mate.”
33
Once we’d sailed a good distance from the dock, I was introduced to the girl.
“So what ya think?” Gene asked.
The girl was bound and gagged to a chair below deck. Her hair was brown and matted, eyes brown and swollen from crying. Tee shirt and shorts, no shoes. Despite the circumstances, I could tell she was neither beautiful nor ugly. A plain Jane.
What had Angela said? From the Midwest? No family or friends? Almost too perfect? Plain only added to that “too perfect” pile. People who are plain aren’t missed, even when they’re alive.
(Starting to think like her now, are you?)
No. NO.
I immediately turned away from the girl. Likely sensing my apprehension, the girl began pleading through her gag—incoherent moaning and sobbing, but obvious pleading.
“I reckon she likes ya, mate!” Gene laughed with a pat on the back that pitched me forward.
I kept my back to the girl and said nothing.
“Right,” Gene began, “you two keep an eye on the sheila. I’m going above to get the chum-line started.”
> “Got it,” Andrew said, head down, fiddling with something on his camera.
Gene climbed the short wooden ladder and was gone, his heavy footsteps thumping the ceiling as he went about his business above deck.
I stole a quick glance at the girl again. Her head was down, hanging, defeated for the moment. I was grateful.
(Why? Make your job easier to have a defeated subject? No struggle? Can’t blame you. Stephanie was a fucking pit bull wasn’t she?)
Shut up. PLEASE Shut up.
(Make me shut up. Stop watching the fucking movie before it’s too late. Do something NOW.)
I looked at Andrew. “This ever bother you?”
He kept fiddling with his camera as he responded to me. “Does what bother me?”
“This. What we’re doing. This kind of work.”
“Nah.”
I snorted. “You always this cavalier about filming murder?”
He lifted his head slightly, looking up at me with mostly eyes, horn rims on the tip of his nose. We locked eyes for a tick, then he dropped his attention back to his camera and said, “It’s either us or them.”
What the hell is wrong with these people?
(You mean you people.)
I’m different and you know it.
(Actions speak louder than words, superstar.)
I headed above deck to see what Gene was doing.
34
I joined Gene above deck. He was busy ladling large spoonfuls of chum (fish guts) overboard from a large white bucket.
“It’s called chum,” he said with a smile after seeing my nose wrinkle from the smell.
“Yeah,” I said, “I’ve heard of it.”
He continued ladling as he spoke. “A little on the nose to us, but it’s a sheila’s shaved fanny to whites.”
Guy would give Manny a run in the charm department.
Hair of the Bitch - A Twisted Suspense Thriller Page 11
