Upgunned

by David J. Schow

  This was her version of budding intimacy; now I was supposed to tell her a secret, too.

  Naked and randy, Spooky’s nerves were all very close to the surface; she orgasmed easily and often, and was in fact so limber that she almost could put her heels behind her ears. Sexually she was hungry and grabby, moist and vocal, and she knew how to perform oral like an adult—no hands. Her skin temperature seemed to be redlining when she came and she exuded the scent of her coconut moisturizer, which was actually quite pleasant.

  “I don’t usually do this,” she said, gulping air as though famished, pinpoints of sweat dappling her upper lip.

  “Call it animal attraction,” I said. It was better than saying “My last date was a corpse.”

  Every daquiri had made her more chatty about the secret underpinnings of Vengeance Is. We landed at a dark Asian restaurant called Rain near Eighty-second and Columbus and I had stuck mostly to bracingly cold Thai beer, just listening. The bar mixtress here made ’em strong, and Spooky was a fountain of information just waiting for an excuse to gush.

  Rain closed its doors not long after that.

  I padded naked around Spooky’s smallish room. She had picked the Hotel Beacon for reasons of budget, but it was smack on Broadway, strolling distance from the restaurant. Her accommodations were colorful and efficient. Not much of her work gear was here; it was just a temporary roost. No copies of the crew lists, for example—featuring names and contact info for a crowd of people, any one of whom might be Elias McCabe.

  But now all I had to do in order to legitimatize myself on set was defer to Spooky. I supposed it had been too ripe to hope that I would just drop in and collide with McCabe, and my new inlet, in the form of this compact, sturdy blonde, would obviously reward cultivation.

  Spooky was already snoring lightly.

  I treated myself to a stingingly hot needle shower that scoured my senses and left me warm and dopey. A nap would not hurt. She did not budge when I crawled in next to her. About two hours later, I awoke with a start and found her going down on me.

  Even more surprisingly, my penis was giving her every cooperation.

  She mounted me, her face shadowed in the semidarkness (the bathroom light was still on), and we slowly melded through a bout of that hypnotic, half-awake, sleepy sex that can totally divorce you from your senses. It can’t stop time, though, no matter how healthy it is. In four hours or so she was going to bound forth to report for duty and I wondered where she got the energy; I certainly had not spotted any speed in the bathroom or in the contents of her shoulder bag, although I did find most of the more popular prescription antidepressants—Lexapro (twenty milligrams, about three bucks per tablet), Wellbutrin, Cymbalta, no generics, all from different doctors.

  She even kissed me on the head when she took off in the morning, radiant with scented soap and light perfume. Rather, she kissed Jack Vickers, quaintly believing him to be asleep. Her speedy trust was depressing; it meant that nothing of value was left behind in her hotel room.

  I wondered if I might wind up slitting her throat, just to be thorough.

  That day I met the production videographer, a doughy, perpetually flop-sweated kid named Arly, who acted more harried than he was and lent every distracting task a bogus air of do-or-die dedication. He was next to useless. The unit photographer, somebody named Julian Hightower for whom I could find no contact information on the call sheets, was either playing hooky or out for the day. Arly described him as a clean-cut, blond-haired guy—“you know, a guy.” Like I said, next to useless.

  Hightower’s desk was locked—file that one for later investigation, when nobody was looking—and the detritus left in his corner of the office bespoke nothing about him, except that all of his gear seemed to be brand-new.

  But this guy was the photographer. Righ-to.

  Spooky had asked Tripp Bergin, though, and gotten the story that Hightower was from Chicago, off the books because of some union thing. The gloss-over was vague enough to suggest it had been invented.

  That was when I saw the baseball-type hat on Arly’s messy coat rack. Panavision. Same as worn by Char’s briefly glimpsed stalker.

  If Julian Hightower was Elias McCabe, why wasn’t he here?

  Answer: because he knows you’re here too, stupid.

  I should have just left Charlene Glades in a Dumpster. I had to lose control for that one little moment, and show off, and refuck my shot at Elias. God, maybe I was past my prime in this game.

  Having no other true virtues, I reminded myself that patience was a good one. I lost most of the day in waiting but consoled myself with thoughts of the hunt. Skilled woodsmen knew the least breath of wind could expose your presence and blow your hide to creatures who could smell your anticipation. A twig snap, an eyeblink at the wrong time, and you were made. You had to be able to squat or statue up in a single position for hours, until your fingertips got numb and your feet froze and your legs fell into tingly sleep. You had to be able to consume the discomfort like snack food, and process it into resolve. The best snipers know this pain, and embrace it, because the kill is worth every sacrifice. After all, easy tasks can be done by anyone.

  All I had to do was be patient, and wait for that motherfucker to waltz right into my sight picture.

  That evening I got the use of Spooky Sellers again. She claimed not to have gotten laid for the better part of the year, and sexual stress was the worst thing to hoard, didn’t I think so? I said it was easy for work to take precedence and overwhelm other considerations. She said, yes, that was true, but most human beings were designed to have sex a lot, and if you didn’t, well, that was just like pulling a random wire out of your distributor and expecting your car to function. It just wasn’t optimal, she said.

  “I tried that post-relationship flameout thing,” she told me as we demolished a pretty good chophouse spread. “You know, where you just don’t, because you’re so full of resentment and don’t want to feel cheap? Where you convince yourself you’re waiting for something better? Well, there’s waiting and there’s negligence, if you ask me.”

  But wait—there was more.

  “I mean, these bitches, these fucking twenty-five-year-old cunts on set,” she said, her tone sharpening. “They all so goddamned predatory and act like they’re saving themselves for somebody in a cape and tights. Why? So they can pick his bones, like maggots. They think they’ve got a million years to dither and choose some rom-com idea of Mister Right, while they’re constantly scanning the room for something better.”

  Spooky was still obviously upset over her perceived rejection by Garrett Torres.

  “I mean, I don’t come on like a whore or anything. Do I?”

  “No,” I said. “You come on like a man, and I mean that as a compliment. You know what you want and you’re not afraid to ask for it.”

  “Damned straight, amigo.”

  In twenty-four hours I had become Spooky’s new best friend. She was no siren and she knew it, but she worked what she knew she had. A decade ahead of her avowed competition, she still worried that her years were nothing more than age. Fragile egos came under ceaseless assault by media images of what was desirable—Elias McCabe’s former specialty. Today’s centerfold or smoking hotness was tomorrow’s baggy breeder or burned-out bundle of neuroses, yesterday’s wastrel. Once you got Spooky’s clothes off, you were dealing not with transient hotness, but genuine fire. Like all of us, she too had been badly used in the past, but instead of whining about how the world had fucked her over, she bootstrapped up and got on with the business of being alive.

  “Whoo, you’re fun,” was how she summed it up. “You’re not going to go all gummy on me in five days, are you? Tell me you’re not.”

  “What do you mean?” I stroked her thigh absently. She craved the tactile.

  “End of the week.” She was glazed and cat-happy. “We’ve got to pull stakes, rally up, and go, lover. Arizona awaits. Period shoot, Western town, setups, showdowns, all the rest of the
movie.”

  I still had not gotten so much as a positive ID, phone number, or make on Elias McCabe.

  “Publicists, too?” I said. “The video guy, that Arly Whats-his-name, the dumpling that walked like a dork?”

  She snickered. She was the realization of Arly’s desperate late-night pud-pounding sessions, and the poor fool would never suspect it.

  “What about the photographer, High-britches—?”

  “Hightower.”

  “Does he go, too?”

  She focused on me. Bad omen. “That’s like the third time you’ve asked about him. What’s the deal?”

  I would not be able to sluice her off with “just curious”; that would no longer play. Really bad omen. I dissembled through a diversionary ramble about wondering how much of the crew had to relocate, but it was lame and she knew it.

  “Yeah. You want to know about craft services, too? C’mon, I’m not going to tell anybody. What’s your deal with Julian?”

  Well, I need to put him down like a sick animal, and I’ve just wasted another whole day without finding him. That was a no-play.

  “He owe you money or something?”

  I could have kissed her. In fact, I did. “No, actually, he owes me some photographs.” Beautiful save, that. The rest I needed to confect in a big smooth hurry. Open file on Elias McCabe; activate falsehood lobe of brain; hose the room with untruth; and hurry because hesitation will hitch your voice, and her alarms will sound even louder. It had to seem casual, not freighted.

  “He shot some fashion spreads, in Chicago, with an old acquaintance of mine—”

  Spooky ribbed me. “You mean like a girlfriend?”

  That was exactly the detour by which I’d hoped Spooky would be misdirected. Her flaw, from what I had observed, was rising too quickly to ready bait. Now I had to gild the story just so.

  “Sister of a buddy of mine. He’s getting married in October and he can’t find her.”

  “And you want to find her for your friend in time for the wedding,” she said. “That is so sweet, Jack. That is the biggest bullshit story I’ve heard this week, and I’ve dealt with some whoppers. Sis is your old paramour, right? And Julian did the nasty with her, something like that? He’s some kind of romantic rival, is that your biz?” She grabbed my penis to ensure veracity.

  “Yipes,” I said, then sighed. “Okay … busted.”

  “What are you going to do? Beat him up? Because you certainly don’t talk about him with the warm fuzzies. I notice shit like that.”

  “I just want to talk to him.”

  “Lie. You just want to punch his face in, all knightly. What did he do?”

  Let Spooky write the story in her own mind.

  “Got her pregnant and blew town; no forwarding.”

  “Wow.” She kept her grip and did the cat-stretch on the bed. “That is pathetic. What century is this, again? Oops, I’m pregnant; gee, how’d that happen? God, people. Fucking ordinary people. Oops, I’m pregnant, golly, there goes my whole life, bye-bye. I had my tubes tied as soon as I could; do you know how liberating that was? Half the states in the union, doctors won’t allow it until you’ve pooted out a couple of fetuses. That’s terrorism. We’ve got, what, how many billion extra people already? Make more! Because when you can keep people focused on breeding, make it attractive, give tax incentives for family, you can keep their minds off evolving, or making anything of themselves, except more selves.”

  “That’s quite a speech,” I said.

  “Oh, baby, don’t get me started,” she said. “I’ve had too many friends give up on their whole lives because they were obligated to be parents, and it was never a choice, but they spin-doctor it like crazy once they’re trapped. And they always come back at you with how wonderful it all is, how it’s the most important goddamned thing they’ve ever done. Yeah, for them, that’s true, because they’ll never know what they could have done. Then their little darling becomes a teenager, rejects you, rebels, wrecks your car, asks for money, and soon enough gets pregnant themselves, same program. Vicious cycle, never ends. None for me, thanks.”

  She grabbed a little too hard for punctuation. “There is no family. We’re all mutts, mating with other mutts.” Okay, so she had some mommy and daddy issues, who didn’t?

  She rolled, still with me in her grasp. “Let’s fuck over the churches of the world and have sex for pleasure.”

  “Isn’t that a sin?” I grinned.

  “Not in the First Book of Spooky. It’s a commandment.”

  The tactic worked, or would at least hold water for another day. Spooky would not mention me to Elias if she saw him first. If I saw him first, no foul. But if she wanted to sight-check connective data between me and him—not so good. She didn’t know it, but she was walking a tightrope, even as we were fornicating like crazed minks. Her own snoopiness could write the end of her life. I did not particularly want to kill her—at least, not right this minute—but that codicil had never blocked me before. She was too inquisitive to leave it alone. Sooner or later she would feel compelled to poke that snake on the hot rock. I wondered if I should grant her even another 24 hours leeway. Reckless.

  Spooky made it all academic, without intending to. When I reached for my cigarettes, she reached for her water bottle and one of her fine, lacquered fingernails skinned my damaged eye.

  * * *

  “You have experienced what we call corneal erosion,” said the good Dr. Blaine.

  We were in the Lenox Hill emergency room; average triage wait, three hours. They had added a special treatment room for opthamology in 2003. The waiting room was full of cops and EMTs. This time of night, half the incoming patients were gunshot wounds or misdemeanor fallout, and half were heart attacks, so any nonlife-threatening distress got to wait. I dosed myself with my stolen Alcaine from my kit to neutralize the hideous hangnail sensation caused by my eyelid prying up my corneal flap. I had only just gotten around to deluding myself that my eye was at least partially healed, good enough to ignore for minutes at a time, and now it felt as bad as it had when I had rammed it on Elias’s enlarger. Fortunately Spooky did not quiz me on the drops; she accepted that I had suffered some kind of setback in an ongoing condition.

  After an hour I had been installed on a waiting bed in a curtained semiprivate ward, to wait while the gunshot wounds got plugged and sutured, while the cardiac patients fell to one side or the other of their internal equation. The other people in my ward, also waiting, and waiting, were less dramatic than the TV-style action that echoed dimly from down the corridor.

  Spooky herself had become an action heroine. No delays and no confusion. She had bundled me into her car, delivered me, and walked me through the sign-in, which was good because I could not see a damned thing. She approached the triage nurse with just the right combination of urgency and understanding; she was, after all, well-versed in PR.

  Plus, she got to go through my wallet.

  I could not remember if anything incriminating was in there. My gear and my other identities were still stored at the Lucerne Hotel. But I had my key card. If she took it … if they anesthetized me … if she went there … that’s all she wrote. She had been an angel and all I could think about was the need to punch her ticket, however reluctantly. You can’t leave a trail, especially a trail of people who can talk about you, form memories, and therefore opinions. She had begun as a trifle, a vector on Elias, but with every moment she became more involved. Dammit. I was almost certain I could have kept her out of it. Now she was spoor.

  Now she was babysitting me.

  “Corneal erosion,” as described by Dr. Blaine, means that all my nice, new regenerated ocular tissue had slid off the surface of my eye like cheese off a pizza slice. Particulate irritants, stress, temperature, blinking too much, almost anything could cause such a setback. I was half-blind again, and in no condition to execute a search and destroy on Elias.

  Spooky thought it had been her fault; sexing too vigorously. So I had to calm her
down with more lies.

  Blaine had that paterfamilias look of the very best, most trustworthy TV doctors: Brisk white hair with lingering refugees of gray, big durable build, slight hunch from overwork, expensive spectacles, spotless smock, silk tie yanked to half-mast. He smelled like fresh laundry.

  He checked my eye under ultraviolet light, then let Spooky take a peek. “It’s sticking up like a slice of pie,” she said. “It’s glowing.”

  I thought she said “growing,” like meteor-jelly from a blob movie.

  It was back to the torture chair, back to the ice packs and the meds, back to waiting for my eyeball to catch up with my schedule. Plus now I had Spooky to hold in abeyance. Back to one.

  Bad news is always good news for somebody else.

  PART TEN

  JULIAN

  In the right light, she iridesced. Not from some misty-brained romanticist notion outmoded by a century or two, but literally, eye-catchingly. She was patined in rainbow colors. Her surface was cool and smooth to the touch, not polished like the carapace of an insect, but alive with the tactile reality of human flesh. She was the kind of sight your brain insists must be an illusion, then marvels at how the trick might have been achieved, then staggers at the knowledge that there is no trick.

  Her flesh was translucent and hyperreceptive. Trace a design on it and it manifested in deep organic red or venous blue, an instant dermagraphic that lasted for about a day. Any touch must be accepted, though; invited and permitted. Punch her and you’d never leave a bruise or scar. Hell, you’d never land the blow. She was quicker.

  Her hands and feet were webbed. Bat wings of radiant membrane connected her wrists to her ankles. Not delicate or ephemeral but durable, resilient, practical. She stood about five foot eleven barefoot, a technical albino with silver-violet eyes and no pigment to protect her from the sun. Because of the sensitive nature of her retinae, she had to wear special UV glasses for anything daytime-oriented. I held them up to a light and they were as dense as welder’s shades. You could watch a solar eclipse through them with no harm.