by Jeff Povey
“Wrap up warm, Mr. Mason, it’s a bitch of a night.” Cher twists out her cigarette as she passes James’s coat to him and then collects her own.
He suddenly looks very lost, very vulnerable. “Is this the end, Cher?”
“Of the Club, you mean?”
“Yeah. I live for these nights. But now it’s like some kind of mini Armageddon is taking place.”
Cher gives James a hopeless look as she helps him into his anorak. “I know.”
“I’ve got nowhere else to go, Cher.”
“None of us has.”
James leaves, shuffling off, head bowed. Cher goes to the bar to get some loose change for the cigarette machine, and I make my move on Burt. I give him a big grin and help him on with his coat, despite having only one active arm.
“That was a great story earlier, Burt. So funny. Had me in stitches. Thought I was going to give birth, I was laughing so hard.”
“Oh . . . uh, thanks. You liked it, then?”
“It killed me, really killed me.” I give a totally superficial laugh to help things along.
Burt nods, pleased. “You know, I did think there was some good material in there.”
Now that I’ve established this great buddy-buddy thing, I slip an arm around Burt’s shoulders. I notice Burt glance at my hand as I squeeze his bicep, but I am determined to ride this out. “Listen, Burt, I was hoping we could talk sometime. . . .”
Burt looks at me, seems a little suspicious. “Yeah?”
I look around and then lower my voice. “It’s about Tony.”
“Tony Curtis?”
“There’s something I think you should know. Only I can’t tell you here.”
“Why not?”
“I just can’t. I don’t, uh . . . I don’t have the evidence right now.”
“What evidence? What’s this about?” Burt’s nasally little voice is so close, it pings off my ear.
“Wait till I get proof. Are you in the phone book?”
Burt immediately shakes off my arm. “I’m not giving you my number, you little fag.”
I look hard at Burt. “It’s a matter of life and death.” I hold his gaze. “Your death.”
Burt’s features freeze over, and he looks like a badly chiseled statue. He starts to say something but stops. He looks completely bewildered.
I lean in closer to him, maintaining direct eye contact as I do. “It’s a personal thing, you understand. But Tony told me he really doesn’t like you, Burt. Not one little bit. Truth is, none of the Club do. It’s cuz you fit so many serial-killing agendas. They all want a piece of you. Anyway. Safe journey.”
I leave Burt openmouthed and wide-eyed. Like he’s just been electrocuted.
HOLDING, NOT FOLDING
I HAVE BEEN DESPERATE to hear news of Burt’s demise, but so far nothing has happened. I haven’t been able to sleep for two days now and badly need something to happen. It’s worse than waiting for Christmas.
I am at the zoo and speaking in hushed tones over the phone to Betty. Agent Wade had been following me, but I managed to give him the slip when I climbed out the back of a temporary latrine and disappeared down a RESTRICTED VEHICLES pathway. My arm is out of the sling, and I can move it a little more freely now.
“Has Tony found out who the killer is yet?”
“If he has, he’s not telling anyone.”
I really need to know more, and I push Betty. “Why’s he not telling anyone? The killer could strike at any moment.”
“He just told me to hold tight . . . that he’s got a plan.”
“What plan, though?”
Betty is getting a little tetchy with me, and I know I have to be careful not to overplay this. “I don’t know. As soon as I do, I’ll let you know. Okay?”
“Did he, uh . . . you know . . . mention Burt to you?”
“Burt? As in Burt Lancaster?”
“Yeah.”
“No.”
Dammit!
“Why? What’s the deal with Burt?”
“I dunno. The guy gives me the creeps. He’s got killer written all over him.”
“We all have, Douglas.”
Speak for yourself, Betty.
“Just calm down. You’re getting paranoid. Now come on, take some deep breaths, Douglas. One, two—breathe. . . . That’s right. One, two—are you feeling any better, Douglas? Come on, now—one, two. Breathe, Douglas, you sound like you’re hyperventilating.”
There’s something in the way that Betty pronounces my name that sends a tingle down my spine. The booth I’m in is plastered with calling cards and numbers of call girls and phone-in sex lines. I keep looking at the tawdry ads and imagining Betty as a dominatrix.
“Do you ever take your glasses off?”
“Pardon me?”
I realize what I’ve said and turn away from the sex ads, trying hard to focus. There’s so many things going on, I’m starting to feel like a boxer fighting an invisible opponent. The punches keep on coming, and I don’t know how or when to hit back.
“I, uh . . . I meant . . . when you do what you do . . . do you take your glasses off?”
“Uh . . . no . . . I wouldn’t be able to see a thing if I did. I wouldn’t even know which end of the blowtorch to light.” Betty laughs, but it is unconvincing. She is still finding me odd, and I wish I could start this whole conversation again. “Why, uh . . . why do you ask?”
“It’s just that sometimes I wear glasses when I . . . you know. . . . Not real ones, fake ones. Just for a change.”
“But you haven’t killed anyone in years.”
This conversation is leading nowhere fast. “It’s this horrendous block—it’s ruining my life, Betty.”
“Breathe, Douglas. One, two . . . in, out . . .”
I breathe for Betty’s sake and make myself completely dizzy. “It’s just been a really bad time for me. What with the killer and this other punk hounding me.”
“Oh, hey. About that guy who’s blackmailing you . . . I think I’ve got a plan.”
“You have?”
I decide to listen and maybe grunt a “yeah” or an “uh-huh” every now and then. It’s the only safe way for me to get through the conversation. “What you’ve got to do is find out where he’s hiding the photos.”
“Uh-huh.”
“My guess is it’s an if-anything-should-happen-to-me-then-these-pictures-get-sent-to-the-cops-and/or-the-press type of thing.”
“Yeah.”
“So what you’ve got to do, Douglas . . .” Cue another tingle. “What you’ve got to do is find out who would do that for him.”
“I see.” I can’t help myself as I look back at one card in particular that advertises a call girl service. The girl on the card is blond, well endowed, almost a Chesty Morgan, and devastatingly pretty. She is also only a sketch. Her name is Hanna, and she is willing to do “anything and everything, inclusive.” I think about taking the card down and giving it to Agent Wade. Then I figure he’s probably already got one.
“Now, have you any idea who that someone might be?”
I fall silent, not because I’m thinking, but because I’m not thinking. I don’t have anything to offer Betty. She waits a moment.
“Douglas? Are you still there?”
“Uh-huh . . .”
“Well?”
“Uh . . .”
“There must be someone.”
“Uh . . .”
“A friend, a girlfriend, maybe?”
Before I know it, I have taken down Hanna’s calling card and read aloud from it. “Her name’s Hanna and her number’s 555-SWEAT.”
I can hear Betty pause, surprised by my direct and incisive response.
“Uh . . . 555—what? Hang on, let me get a pen.”
I study the picture of Hanna and wonder if it is at all possible that she looks as good as this in real life.
And as I do, I see Agent Wade’s face peering in the phone booth. It shocks me rigid.
“Who are you phoni
ng, Dougie?”
“No one—” I immediately hang up.
“Douglas . . . ?” Agent Wade’s eyes drill into me.
I reluctantly bring up the picture of Hanna and show him, doing my best to look embarrassed. “You’re absolutely right. I do covet women.”
It takes another three days for me to shake Agent Wade long enough to manage to speak to Betty again, and we arrange to meet back in the café with the devastatingly pretty waitress and the yes-to-dogs policy. I’m not sure what I’m going to say, so I decide to go with the flow and see what happens. I can always fall back on the hyperventilating ploy if things don’t work out.
Betty studies Hanna’s calling card, looks at the drawing of the impossibly endowed and fantastically beautiful Hanna smiling hungrily back at her, whip in one hand, hammer-headed vibrator in the other. She seems concerned as she hands the card back to me.
“Are you sure you’ve got the right person, Douglas?”
“Absolutely. You see, the guy who’s blackmailing me is very depraved. He, uh . . . he goes to a lot of strip joints. And also a lot of prostitutes. So my guess is he has become friendly with this Hanna.”
Betty sips her cappuccino and then very quickly dabs at her top lip with a napkin when she sees me about to wipe her with my own napkin. She pushes the cappuccino away.
“When I rang the number you gave me, they told me to go to a certain motel room and wait. So I did. About five minutes later two Mexican-looking guys walked in, pointed a gun at me, and then took my purse.”
I truly don’t know what to say and feel a little flustered.
“So you didn’t get to see Hanna, then?”
“I don’t think Hanna exists, Douglas.”
“But she’s got a card . . . that card there. I found it in my, uh . . . I mean, it fell out of the blackmailer’s pocket. She must exist. How else would she be able to do a drawing of herself?”
“Douglas, listen to me . . .” Betty is very calm, very rational, and it is only after about a minute that I realize her hand is touching mine. “Listen a moment . . .” I look up and see Betty’s near crystal blue eyes. They hypnotize me. “Forget Hanna. That was you being desperate, okay? You were just clinging to something, anything.”
“She does exist, Betty. There was probably just some huge misunderstanding at the motel you went to.”
Betty tries to talk over me. “We need another plan.”
“Maybe I should call her up. Maybe they thought you were from the vice squad or something. Maybe if I went to meet her, it would be different.”
Betty withdraws her hand. I make a grab to get it back, but she is too quick, and I knock the salt cellar over instead. I immediately grab a handful and toss it over my right shoulder.
“For luck.”
Then I toss more salt over my left shoulder because I don’t know which shoulder is meant to be lucky. I then do them both again, just in case. I’m not sure the customers at the table behind ours are too impressed, and I can guess from the look on her face that Betty isn’t, either. I lick my fingers, tasting the salt.
“So . . . how much did they take?”
“Pardon me?”
“These Mexicans, the muggers . . . how much did they take?”
I already have my wallet out, and I have a desire to give Betty all I own in recompense; she can even have my apartment—or at least she could have if I weren’t renting.
“Don’t be silly, Douglas.”
“No, Betty. I insist. How much did they take?”
“I honestly couldn’t tell you.”
“A hundred? Two hundred?”
“Douglas . . .”
“Five hundred?”
“As if I’d have that much in my purse. . . .”
I fish out all the cash in my wallet. I try to press it into Betty’s hand. “There’s what? Maybe three fifty there. You take it . . . have it all. . . .”
Betty tries to push the money back into my hands, but I close my fists into balls, tight balls that she could open only if she smashed my knuckles with a hammer.
“I don’t want this, Douglas.”
Before she can give the money back to me, I quickly snatch my hands away and shove them under the table, fists still in tight balls. “That mugging was my fault. I mean, my God, you could have been killed.”
“I wasn’t, though.”
“But they could have . . . you know . . . raped you . . . or forced you into porn movies. Or even sold you into the white slave trade. Because they do that, you know? These people, they’re real opportunists. They drug you, tie you up, and when you wake you find you’re suddenly in Africa and guys with bones through their noses are bidding for you.”
Betty laughs. She obviously thinks I’m being funny, that I’m making a joke out of something that in truth I happen to find pretty alarming.
“They wouldn’t have gotten much for me. I’d be strictly bargain basement.”
I stop, amazed that Betty could think so little of herself. I look at her, take in her pulled-back hair, the simple but effective rubber band that holds her ponytail in place, the huge glasses that cover half her face. I see her snow white skin, her dimples, and even though her lips are on the thin side, I know that with the right lipstick or even a massive injection of collagen, they would look eminently kissable. I see the money I tried to give her lying on the table between us. I lift one of my bunched fists from under the table and nudge the money toward her.
“I’d pay through the nose for you.” Our eyes meet.
“You’re just being kind.”
“No, I’m not. I’m being honest.”
Betty blushes, but somehow or other she continues to hold my gaze. She nudges the money back toward me. “You don’t have to say that.”
“But I do. You’d be worth every cent. Honestly, Betty, I’m being honest.” I push the money back toward her.
“Please don’t say any more, Douglas.”
“Why not?”
“I just . . . please, just don’t.”
I can feel the magic aura we have been experiencing crumbling away. Fast. I find myself picking up the money and slipping it back into my wallet. I realize to my shame that what I thought was $350 amounts to only $38.
Betty gives a vague, empty smile and then lowers her eyes. She looks suddenly vulnerable, and I notice flecks of gray coming through her roots. I make a mental note to send her an anonymous bottle of hair dye.
“I can’t get involved with anyone, Douglas.” She is still looking down when she says this. I try to stop looking at her roots but can’t. “I’m a spider.”
This throws me a little, finally breaking my obsession with her hair. “I’m sorry, but did you just say you’re a spider?”
Betty gives an almost imperceptible nod. “A black widow.”
I lower my head, lean forward, try to get a better look at Betty’s face. My chin almost touches the tablecloth in my efforts. “That’s no way to talk about yourself.” I offer a playful smile.
“Black widow spiders kill their partners after mating with them.” Her eyes meet mine, and my playful smile sticks fast, turning into a thin grimace.
I know all about Betty and the six or so men she has killed, but I never once imagined it was because she believed herself to be a rather large arachnid. I thought she burned off genitalia by way of a warped mother fixation.
“I can’t seem to help myself . . . I have to kill them, I just have to.” Betty looks suddenly vulnerable; her face creases, and her eyes seem much more sunken and tired looking than before. Her words are slow and painful. “As I told the Club, I have sex—mostly with men who aren’t successful with women, you know, ugly men, outcasts, social misfits, men that constantly leave the wrong impression wherever they go.” I know exactly the type of guy she means, and I hate them as much as Betty does. “And then, as I lie there, watching them drift off to sleep, all I can think is, Why did I let this happen? Why did I let this ugly man, this leather-faced monstrosity, do this to me
? Why couldn’t it have been a film star or a rock singer, or even just someone remotely desirable?” As I listen, I catch sight of my reflection in the window behind Betty’s head and thank the good Lord He didn’t turn me into one of these horrors. “All I ever attract is the bottom of the barrel, the dregs, the waste of spaces.”
I try to get a few of what I think are key things established here.
“I don’t know if this means anything to you, Betty, but I think you’re better than that. A lot better. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that we would make a particularly handsome couple.” I ease back into my chair and let Betty see my best pouting, brooding James Dean look. “I know I shouldn’t say this, but we’re a heckuva match.”
Betty gives a painfully slow shake of the head. “Try telling my mother that. Jesus . . . you should have heard her. All my life she goes on and on about how I’m nothing, less than nothing. That I’d better not get any fancy ideas about myself. That I’d better just accept that I didn’t inherit any of her good looks, or her charisma . . . that I was just no good, no good whatsoever. A piece of plain white trash. That’s what she used to call me. Or white bread . . . that’s the one I hated the most. White bread. I still don’t know what she meant, but it hurt all the same. She used to call me that every single day of my life. Until Tony kicked her to death.”
Betty finally looks up, and I have to raise my head abruptly, barely remembering that I had practically been resting my chin on the table. My neck aches a little, and I rotate it, hoping to make it click back into place.
“So please . . . don’t, uh . . . don’t try and turn this into something, Douglas.”
“But Betty . . .” I only just manage to stop myself from saying, “Can’t you see how lucky you just got?”
“I’d better go. I’ll think some more about your blackmailer.”
“But—”
Betty gets up, smiles at me—a thin smile, but one that tries to assume a warmness. I catch a scent of her undeniably strong doggy smell and decide to send her some perfume along with the hair dye.
