by Del Howison
“You’re taller than Terry,” she says, “but you have his eyes.”
Dennie smiles. “Thanks.”
“… and his smile.”
He’s embarrassed. “Well … guess I’d better be going.” Dennie extends his right hand. “Been great meeting you, Mrs. DePompa.”
Margaret takes his hand, clasping it firmly. Her fingers are warm. “Don’t be in such a hurry,” she says softly.
* * *
After lovemaking, they talk quietly in Margaret’s bed, fitted together, flesh to flesh, her naked hip against his leg.
“Tell me about him,” says Dennie. “I need to know what Terry was really like.” He hesitates. “Was he … a good lover?”
“At first he was overwhelming. It was like making love to a panther. But that didn’t last. Everything had to be fresh for Terry, new and fresh. And that included sex. He was never satisfied for long with any one woman, and I was no exception. When he grew bored with our lovemaking, he substituted violence and pain for sex. That’s when I knew it was over.”
“But didn’t you love him? On TV … you seemed so broken up over his death.”
She smiles. “Quite an act, huh? I was just giving the public what they want.” She pauses. “Did I love Terry? Sure, at first, with that smile of his … those eyes.” She traces a slow finger along Dennie’s jaw. “You’re incredibly like him—the way he was in the beginning, four years ago.”
“Why did … I mean, I have to know. Why did he—”
“—kill himself? It was inevitable. Terry was an addictive thrill-seeker, always pushing closer and closer to the limit. When he made Hell Run, the film on bobsledding in Switzerland, he broke both ankles when the sled clipped a tree. In Madrid, he was gored by a bull with the horn barely missing a main artery. He’d never let them use a stand-in. Did all the stunts himself. Used to drive the producers crazy. Terry fractured his left shoulder on a dirt bike running a motocross at Indio. Then, just two months ago, his plane crash-landed in the San Bernardino mountains. It burned, but Terry got out in time.”
“You’re saying he had a death wish?”
“Damn right I am. No question about it. All of the other thrills finally wore off until only death itself remained. He had to taste it, savor it, experience it. The ultimate thrill. So he did.”
Her fingers ran erotically along Dennie’s naked spine. Her voice is soft. “Would you like to see where he died?”
“In Mexico—near the Gulf?”
“Yes. Just above San Felipe, his favorite hideout. Ratty little fishing village. No one ever goes there. When things got too stressed, he’d drive down there from L.A.” Her eyes burn into his. “I could take you … in Terry’s white Cadillac. It’s garaged in Beverly Hills. Would you like to go?”
“Oh, yes,” says Dennie. “Christ, yes!”
* * *
The flight from New York to Los Angeles is smooth. Perfect weather all the way. In Beverly Hills, the white Cadillac is serviced and made ready for the trip into Mexico. Dennie is hyper. For him, this is a dream come true; he can barely contain his excitement.
On the morning of their departure, Margaret appears in a trim white pantsuit, wearing a white straw bonnet to keep off the sun. (“I don’t tan, I burn.”)
She takes the wheel for the trip down 99 to Calexico. Jokes with the uniformed border guard who waves them through, then takes Dennie to what she terms “the only halfway-decent restaurant in Mexicali.”
He doesn’t like the noisy border town with its garish purple facades, peeling wooden storefronts, and dirt-blackened neon signs.
“Why are we stopping here?” he asks. “Why can’t we eat later, on the road?”
“I thought you’d want to talk to old man Montoya. At his coffin shop.”
Dennie brightens. “Where Terry worked when he was fourteen?”
“Right,” she says. “If the old bastard’s still alive, you can ask him about Terry.”
“Terrific!”
* * *
They order grilled sea bass with stewed pinto beans, which is served with a large basket of corn tortillas, topped off by two bottles of warm Mexican beer.
Next on the agenda: the coffin maker’s shop of Carlos Montoya.
The shop’s exterior is painted in funereal black in keeping with the owner’s trade.
Lettered on the door: COFFINS MADE TO ORDER
As they enter, Montoya steps forward to greet them. He is toothless, the color of worn leather, needing a shave and a new frame for his taped glasses. He wears ragged coveralls.
“You require the services of Carlos Montoya? A loved one to bury, perhaps?”
“We came to ask you about a boy who once worked here,” says Dennie.
“Ah!” The old man chuckles, a dry, rasping sound. “You wish me to speak of Antonio. Many others have come here to ask of him. My fee is fixed. If you pay, I talk.”
Margaret hands him money, and he leads them to the rear of the musty shop, past coffins of all sizes, many unfinished. Uncut boards, smelling of sawdust, lean against the walls.
In his dark office Montoya gestures them toward a pair of cane-bottom chairs, seating himself behind a desk cluttered with hammers and saws.
“The world knew him as Terry,” says the old man, beginning a speech he has obviously delivered many times, “but I knew him as Antonio. He came to me as a boy of fourteen, eager to learn the trade of a coffin maker.”
Montoya opens a desk drawer, removes a photo, and hands it to Dennie. In the photo, Terry DePompa is lying in a coffin, posing as a corpse, eyes closed, hands folded across his chest.
Montoya continues: “I gave him shelter, an honest wage, and shared my knowledge with him. Antonio was quick to learn. I taught him many things.”
Margaret cuts in: “You taught him, all right. To lie and swear and steal. He told me all about you—about your cheating ways and your filth and your foul women.” She gestures toward a standing coffin. “You’ll soon be in one of these yourself, and when you are, who will come to your funeral, eh? Ask yourself that, old man.”
And she herds Dennie from the shop.
Back in the car, the boy is silent. He looks stunned and shaken.
“Well, what did you expect?” asks Margaret.
“I thought … that he … would be different.”
“Different? He’s a corrupt old fool. Terry despised him.”
Silence. Then Dennie asks: “How long will it take us to reach San Felipe?”
“Four or five hours,” she replies. “It’s at the edge of the Gulf where the highway dead-ends. We should make it before dark.”
With Margaret again at the wheel, threading their way slowly through streets jammed with overloaded fruit and vegetable trucks, bicycles, ancient taxicabs, and sweat-crowded buses, they finally clear the border town and roll onto the long stretch of open highway leading to the Gulf.
Out of Mexicali, they pass the high green arch of the Funeraria Santa Elenaz with its irregular rows of pink-and-blue gravestones. As the sun descends in heated slowness down the western sky the Mexican scenery is spectacular. Rolling hills thrust up like vast brown fists, separated by wide plateaus and dry lakes. Endless sand dunes and spike cactus line the highway to either side. A dead cat lies sprawled on the road shoulder.
A sudden sharp report. Like a gunshot. The white Cad swerves as Margaret fights the wheel, braking to a stop on the gravel verge. “We just blew a tire,” she says.
“I thought all the tires were checked before we left.”
“Yep, and they were perfect. Obviously we hit something on the road.”
They get out with the doors automatically locking behind them. A long sliver of blue bottle glass has penetrated the side wall of a rear tire. Margaret turns to get the keys for the trunk. “Damn!”
“What’s wrong?”
“All the doors are locked, and I left the keys in the ignition.” She sighs. “But it’s okay. I keep a spare set taped inside the front fender.”
/> Crouching, she fumbles for the extra keys, using them to open the driver’s door, then retaping them back inside the fender. “In case we ever lock ourselves out again.”
She removes a jack and a tire iron from the trunk. “You any good at changing tires?”
Dennie shrugs. “Dunno. I’ve never had to.”
“I’ll do it. No big deal.”
She jacks up the car, removes the damaged tire, and puts on the spare. Checks her watch. “Close, but I think we can still make it before dark.”
Hurriedly, she tosses the jack and tire iron into the rear seat. “And away we go,” she says, gunning back onto the highway.
* * *
Hours pass as the sun dips lower in the sky. Ahead of them, a jagged rise of black mountains lends a luna texture to the land: raw, alien, hostile.
The Cad is now moving along the winding mountain road above San Felipe.
“There’s a long straight about a mile ahead,” she tells Dennie. “That’s where he sailed off into the blue, at the end of the straight.”
Dennie sits rigid, excited, wanting and not wanting to see the spot where Terry died.
They enter the straight. Dennie is silent, tensed, waiting.
“Here’s where it happened,” says Margaret, stopping the car a few yards short of the tight U-curve. “This is where he went over the edge.”
They stand at the lip of the cliff, looking down. “It’s a long drop,” says Dennie, shivering at the mental image.
“With lots of sharp boulders at the bottom,” says Margaret. “When he hit, the gas tank split and his car burned.” “Was he dead when he hit bottom?”
“We’ll never know.”
They get back in the car and motor on to San Felipe.
The white Cadillac, now gray with dust, reaches the small fishing village—a scatter of rude shacks along a short main street (unpaved), boasting a half-dozen paint-blistered storefronts. The village is nearly deserted. A few local residents lounge in shadowed doorways, staring out at the strangers.
The sun is almost down along the horizon. A dozen small fishing boats ply the red-gold sunset waters, bobbing like corks, their nets out for the evening’s catch.
“It’s getting dark,” says Dennie. “Is there a motel here?”
“One. Just one. But I’m sure they have a vacancy. First, I need a drink.”
They leave the locked car, walking to the village cantina located at the end of the street in a weathered two-story building. A rusted Coca-Cola sign is tacked to the front door.
Inside a drift of guitar music reaches them from a cob-webbed ceiling speaker. Three young fishermen are hunched over cards in a far corner of the room. The air is hot and musty, retaining the heat of the day, smelling of sour beer and strong Mexican tobacco.
The owner, a stout little red-faced man in a stained apron, takes their order. Over two Carta Blancas and a plate of stale pretzels, they talk.
“I don’t see why Terry would ever come to a dumb place like San Felipe,” says Dennie, sipping his beer; it’s sour, but cold. “There’s nothing here.”
“That is exactly what he wanted to find—nothing,” says Margaret. “Terry came here to get away from the spotlight.”
“It’s a hellhole,” says Dennie.
“Gotta pee,” declares Margaret. “Hold the fort.”
As she passes the table where the three young Mexicans are playing cards one of them reaches out to grab her leg. She stops, says something in soft Spanish. The fisherman laughs, lets her go.
Five minutes later she’s back with Dennie.
“What was that all about?”
She grins. “Just a friendly pass.”
“He had his hand on your leg.”
“Yeah, that was nice. He has soft hands.”
“You liked it?”
“I didn’t mind.”
Dennie stares at her.
She smiles. A cat’s smile.
* * *
The motel mattress is thin and lumpy. Coil springs jab sharply into Dennie’s back as he sleepily shifts position. He opens his eyes, reaching out to touch Margaret. She’s not there. He’s alone in the bed. It’s 3:00 A.M. by his watch. He gets up to check the bathroom.
Empty. Where is she? Where could she have gone at this time of night in a place like San Felipe?
Dennie slips into a pair of pants, pulls a sweater over his pajama top, and leaves the motel. He pads barefoot through the milky sand. The waters of the Gulf lap softly against the beach, and a gull cries out in the night like a lost child.
Then: rough male voices. Laughter. Margaret’s laughter. Coming from a nearby tarpaper shack, its lighted window a pale yellow square in the darkness.
Dennie reaches the shack, peering through the glass. Christ! Margaret is inside, in bed with the three fishermen from the cantina. Naked. They are all naked.
She looks up as Dennie appears at the door. Glares. “Go away! Get the hell away!”
The three Mexicans grin at him. One has a gold tooth.
Dennie takes a step toward the bed. “God, but you’re rotten.”
Her mouth twists in anger. Her eyes are afire. “I said, get the hell away!”
Dennie looks agonized. “Why are you doing this to me?”
“To you?” snaps Margaret, scorn in her tone. “That’s a laugh. Don’t you get it? You walk like him, wear his clothes, even try to make love like him. But it’s all a joke. You’re not real. You don’t exist. You’re just a reflected image from a broken mirror.”
Her words cut and stab at him. Dennie reels back under her verbal assault, swings around, and stumbles from the shack.
He staggers down the beach, tears clouding his vision. He’s numb, directionless, running blindly toward the center of the village. The area is tomb-quiet, dark as spilled ink, with the moon hidden in a clouded sky.
Now Dennie pauses, blinking up at a dusty facade ringed by broken, time-blackened marquee bulbs that long ago spelled out a name: CINEMA JIMINEZ.
Dennie listens. Sounds echo faintly from within the ancient movie house. Someone—or something—lives in the time-haunted interior.
Peeling a loose board from the door, Dennie pushes his way inside, drawn to the sounds. The main auditorium is a shamble of broken seats, discarded trash, and buckled cement.
But the screen is alive:
Dennie gasps as Terry DePompa’s head fills the screen. The actor’s eyes blaze down at Dennie. Then the mouth gapes wide in a flow of manic laughter. Insane, cacophonous laughter.
Dennie claps both hands to his ears, squeezing his eyes shut against the frightful apparition. When he opens them, seconds later, the cracked, dust-hazed screen is blank and silent.
As if pursued by demons, Dennie runs from the theater, thrusting himself along the main street. He enters a wooden graveyard filled with the decaying corpses of abandoned fishing boats, beached like dead whales, their ruptured hulls black and flaking from wind and sun.
Dennie stumbles forward, falling weakly against the side of La Ordina. The boat’s interior is gutted, with a rusted engine housing, like a surreal coffin, buried within the rotted hull.
Dennie blinks, staring downward—and now there is an actual coffin inside the hull. Fourteen-year-old Terry DePompa lies inside, eyes closed, hands folded across his chest—exactly as he appeared in the photo at Montoya’s shop.
Then … a change. The body of the actor slowly ripple-dissolves into the corpse of the adult DePompa, with half of his face tom away and broken bones protruding obscenely from his charred, crushed body.
Frozen in shock, Dennie continues to stare downward—but the horror has not ended. The corpse-figure changes once again, and it is now Dennie himself who lies in the dank coffin, his body broken and charred.
“Oh, God!” the boy cries out in agony, wheeling away from the boats to stagger up the beach—back to the shack of the three fishermen.
He bolts inside, grabs Margaret by one arm, and drags her, naked and screaming, alon
g the sand to the parked Cadillac.
“I know what you want now,” he sobs, “what you brought me down here for. Well, I’m going to give it to you. I’m going to play your sick little game to the end.”
He retrieves the spare set of car keys from the fender well, yanks open the passenger door, and pushes Margaret inside. Firing the engine, he roars out of the village onto the mountain highway in a cloud of dust and gravel.
“You’re crazy!” shouts Margaret. “Stop the car. Let me out!”
“No, this time I’m in charge.”
The Cadillac rapidly gains speed, high beams slicing the dark, unraveling the road ahead. The speed is now far too great for Margaret to risk jumping from the passenger seat.
Dennie powers around the serpentine turns, finally reaching the long straight leading to the final curve. He floors the gas pedal—and the car leaps forward … 70 … 80 … 90 … 100 …
“You want it, and you’ll get it.” Dennie shouts.
“Want what?” Margaret’s voice is frenzied. “What?”
“You want to die. You want to share Terry’s death, experience it for yourself, share the horror of it, the thrill of it—to end your jaded, empty existence. That’s why you brought me here, for this!”
They are now almost to the end of the straight, with the white Cadillac bulleting the road, a ghost-rocket heading for destruction.
Margaret twists around to snatch up the tire iron from the backseat, lunging forward to slam it against Dennie’s skull. As he slumps sideways, his foot slips from the gas pedal. She jams her foot hard down on the brake, gripping the wheel for control.
The car whips madly across the road as its speed drops to 80 … 70 … 60 … slower, slower. With the U-curve rushing at them, Margaret claws open the passenger door and jumps.
The rolling impact stuns her; road gravel lacerates her bare skin, but she survives, staggering to her feet, bleeding from a dozen cuts. Numbly, she watches the still-moving Cadillac reach the end of the straight and dip over the edge of the cliff road, tumbling down to explode on the rocks below.
