Slick

by Daniel Price

  ________________

  Fifteen minutes later, I joined Miranda and the Metropia crew at the airstrip. David was staying behind with the students. I wasn’t. My work here was done. I’d had quite enough of the sisters.

  “Where were you?” asked Miranda.

  “Talking to Deb.”

  “Oh, boy. Did she rip you a new one?”

  “She wasn’t happy.”

  “You think she’ll sue?”

  “Nah.”

  I figured Deb would be hard-pressed to ever mention it again, for whatever reasons. Shame. Embarrassment. Melodramatic self-pity. Take your pick. She wouldn’t even tell her fellow coeds what she had learned. She’d think she was being noble in hiding the truth from them, in not killing their fun. She wouldn’t see the utter hypocrisy. She’d just hate me for trying to do the same thing.

  Whatever. I’ve learned not to take these things personally. It would be vain, ludicrous, and an all-around waste of time to treat her harsh opinion as some accurate reflection of who I was. Her final words to me—which she was no doubt proud of—had been shaped by a thousand of her own biases, neuroses, insecurities, generalities. She didn’t know me. Instead of facts, she just filled in the blanks with whatever she found lying around. All the salespeople who vexed her. All the men who tried to talk her out of her clothes. All the corporate bad guys she saw on TV. Snakes and snails and puppy-dog tails. There’s a mile of difference between truth and judgment, hon. Maybe she’d figure that out for her self someday. She was young. She had time to learn.

  2

  BITCH FIEND

  “So aren’t you going to ask about her?”

  That was Miranda, sitting next to me in the Tiki Bar at the Honolulu Airport. We were both waiting for flights to Los Angeles. Once there, she would hop her connecting plane to New York, and I would go home and go to bed. I looked forward to that.

  I gazed up at the mounted TV, waiting for the five o’clock news. I loved being out in public when my stories hit the air. Here I could listen to the reactions of everyone around me. I didn’t give a crap what they thought about the nudity or the monk seal. I just wanted to hear them say the word “Fairmont.” That would mean I got them. It was a wonderful thing to see my mojo at work. Sometime within the next thirty-five minutes I’d be hawking my product to everyone in this bar without saying a word.

  “Scott?”

  “I’m sorry. What?”

  “Aren’t you going to ask me how Gracie’s doing?”

  “Oh,” I replied innocently. “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because if she’s good, I might feel bad. And if she’s bad, I might feel bad about feeling good. That’s the thing about being raised by German Jews. I feel guilt at my own schadenfreude.”

  Miranda laughed. “Fine. But she asked me to get the dirt on you. To see how you’re doing.”

  “What are you going to tell her?”

  “I don’t know. If you had more than one mood or facial expression, I might be able to get a better reading.”

  “Well, you’re a reporter. Ask me questions.”

  “Sorry. No. I’ve had enough disinformation for one day.”

  “Fair enough.”

  It was 4:50. The Channel 9 news team had yet to plug my story once between the slices of Judge Judy. That wasn’t encouraging.

  “For the record,” Miranda added, “she’s good.”

  I knew that. And I was glad for Gracie. There was really no reason for me to stay angry. We had what we had. From the beginning we’d agreed to be the Anti-Couple. We weren’t going to meld into one freakish entity or follow any preconceived notions of how to exist. No Franklin Covey tenets. No magazine quizzes. No chicken soup for our souls. And most important, no theatrics. We knew that melodrama was the leading cause of death in all relationships. We were two individuals whose lives would not imitate art.

  That was the real pity. That she broke her oath. The tale of how she met and fell in love with her husband could have come straight from a beginner screenwriting class: a smarmy, syrupy pastiche of every Meg Ryan vehicle. Fortunately I was off-screen for most of it. The plot was eventually relayed to me by Miranda, who played the heroine’s blunt but supportive friend. She didn’t tell me what climactic stunt he had used to win Gracie’s heart. Rode a balloon to her office building. Dressed up in a bunny suit. Who knows? He got her. I got over it.

  “So is there someone else in your life?” Miranda asked.

  I checked my watch, then the TV. “Nope.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because nobody likes me.”

  “That’s bullshit. You’re tall. You’re smart. You’re funny. And you’ve got that whole sexy ‘evil’ thing going on.”

  “Oh, is that back in vogue?”

  The young bartender refreshed my Diet Pepsi. I dropped a lemon wedge in the glass, then stirred it with a straw.

  “Whatever,” said Miranda. “Maybe I’ll fix you up with someone. I don’t know many eligible women. But apparently my husband does.”

  “Jim’s a prick.”

  “No kidding.”

  She took a long sip of her Mai Tai. “What’s wrong with me, Scott?”

  “Your taste in men.”

  “It’s that simple, huh?”

  “He’s beneath you and he knows it. I mean, he’s not that smart. Or interesting. And he chuckles at his own jokes. Nervously.”

  She laughed. “I know, I know. He just got me at a good young age, when I was still wet cement. Now I feel like I’m stuck with him. Even if we split up, I’ll always be carrying him around.”

  The credits were running on Judge Judy. Still no teaser.

  “I’m just tired of all the bullshit,” she continued. “And I don’t just mean his kind. Or even your kind. My job is just...fuck. I don’t know, Scott. I’m sick of the whole business.”

  Short of faking a seizure, there was nothing I could say or do to prevent her from elaborating.

  “There was this woman who died last week. Pika Kumari. She was eighty-four and blind as a bat, but she died just hours after finishing her three thousand eight hundred and twenty-eighth clay sculpture. They were all of Ganesha, the Indian god of fortune. She’d been working on them day in and day out for seventeen years. She was blinded in that 1984 Union Carbide accident in Bhopal. You know, the poison leak. You know how many people died in that thing?”

  “Three thousand eight hundred and twenty-eight,” I guessed.

  “Exactly. She stayed alive just long enough to finish her tribute to those victims. I cried when I found that out. I wrote this thousand-word piece on her. It wasn’t just an obituary, it was my tribute to her. Do you know how many newspapers ended up running it?”

  “Zero.”

  “Four. But they all whittled it down to a little nub before sticking it in the back, right below the pet obituaries.” She pushed away her drink. “Assholes. Too bad there weren’t any naked women involved.”

  I checked the TV yet again. Why weren’t they plugging my story, goddamn it? I gave them plenty of lead time.

  Miranda went on. “Human interest. What a bullshit term. Have people gotten so dumb that they need mass slaughter or full-frontal nudity to get their attention?”

  “There’s a book by Bruno Bettelheim. The Uses of Enchantment. Ever read it?”

  “No.”

  “It’s basically a hyper-Freudian analysis of all the classic fairy tales. Screwed-up stuff. He has a whole chapter on ‘Jack and the Beanstalk,’ how it’s basically an unconscious allegory about sexual awakening.”

  “You’re shitting me.”

  “No. For example, Jack’s mother makes him sell the cow because she doesn’t provide milk anymore. Are we talking about the cow or the mother? Aha. Then he buys some magic testicular beans, plants them in the fertile ground, and then overnight...” I rose a hand from my groin to the sky.

  She laughed. “That is such crap.”

  “That was my first reaction, too. But Bet
telheim goes on to make a good point. There have been thousands of fairy tales written over the course of history, but only a handful have survived to become classics. How did that happen? It wasn’t good marketing. There was never a GrimmCo pushing these things. They were simply the stories that stuck in the minds of kids. They grew up and passed them on to their own kids. Lather, rinse, repeat. Why do you think that happens?”

  Miranda rolled her eyes. “Because on a deeper human level, sex and violence sell.”

  “We didn’t create the need. We’re just filling it.”

  “Whatever happened to a need for the truth?”

  “Yeah, right. Out of the millions of people who love Big Macs, how many would want a list of all the industrial-strength chemicals that go into one? How many of them would jump at the chance to see their favorite burger get put together by some hygienically challenged teenager who probably fondled himself in the restroom without—”

  “All right. All right!” She held up her hands, repulsed. “Bastard.”

  “See, that’s the problem. You’re like a media fry cook. You can’t enjoy your own product because you see all the shit that goes into it.”

  “Well, you’re the one who puts it there!”

  “And you’re the one who serves it.”

  “Tell me, Scott. Was any of this conversation designed to cheer me up?”

  “I don’t think so. No.”

  She laughed again, then took a long sip of her cocktail. “You know, you think you’re such a bad-ass.”

  “I don’t think I’m a bad-ass at all. I actually think I’m quite a good-ass.”

  “Well, you’re an ass. Let’s just leave it at that.”

  Good enough. At the moment I was just ass-tired. The whole Keoki operation had taken a lot out of me, and not because of Deb’s little tongue-lashing. I was impervious to the scorn of others, but when it came to the media, I was a smitten little boy. If you asked anyone in the world to personify American culture, they’d probably describe the stereotypical supermodel: moody, shallow, vacuous, easy to make fun of, but shamefully hot. Face it, everybody wanted her attention. She didn’t have to respect us, she just had to let us touch her. Personally, I didn’t even care if she knew my name. I was a grand-scale Cyrano. I wooed her through others. But today I had sent her one hell of a note. I was dying to know what she thought of it.

  At the stroke of five, I got my answer.

  The most frustrating part of my job was that I had absolute control over every part of the story except the outcome. I thought my timing would be brilliant. I figured February 1 was a perfect day for mass nudity. And it would have been, if it weren’t for a fifteen-year-old girl named Annabelle Shane. She trumped me. The goddamn kid had an even better trick than mine.

  ________________

  This morning, as I led my army of coeds toward the beaches of Kaikua’ana, young Annabelle decided that today would be the last day of her life. She’d been thinking about death for a couple of weeks, we assume, but was waiting for February sweeps to begin. Like me, she knew her TV business. Like me, she had a carefully planned agenda.

  She was a wee little slip of a girl. Stick-thin, short, and surprisingly pale for a Tiger Woods-like crossbreed (Dad was black, Mom was Thai). But Annabelle knew she was pretty. She had sharp features, great skin, and her mother’s exotic eyes. She wasn’t happy with her chest, but whatever nature had cheated her of, science would provide. Annabelle had often told her friends that she was getting augmented as soon as she turned eighteen. After that, men would be her lapdogs. They’d conquer France if she asked them to.

  Today, she’d chosen to make herself sexy. Her mother’s mascara, that hot little spaghetti-strap number. She took an extra hour to style her short, raven hair. That was it. She was primed and ready.

  For the first time ever, she walked to school, trekking a mile and a half through Hollywood in high heels. No doubt she was feeling it by the time she got to Melrose Avenue High School, a sprawling three story complex just east of Fairfax. By then it was already 12:15. Miranda’s plane was just touching down on the Keoki airstrip when little Miss Shane primped herself up one last time and entered the crowded cafeteria. With an “odd intensity” (quoth witnesses), she joined her friends at their usual table. Hey, where have you been? Are you okay? Why you all dressed up?

  Annabelle smiled awkwardly and then retrieved a Sony camcorder. It was her father’s toy. Ever since those digital video numbers hit the market, the old-school VHS-C cameras had plummeted in price and size. This one was $299 at Circuit City and small enough to fit in a teenager’s crowded book bag. Annabelle placed the camera in Gina’s hands. What is this, Anna? What are you doing?

  “Just film me.”

  Those were Annabelle’s last words. She kissed Gina on the forehead, took her book bag, and crossed to where the basketball crowd sat. The Raiders were oft-discussed figures at school, and not just for their winning record. When the prying ears of adults were far out of range, the players went by a different name. This had been the student body’s best-kept secret until today.

  I can’t even begin to imagine the thoughts in Annabelle’s head as she pulled out a Glock 17 9mm pistol, a product I had personally helped position into action films and video games. The gun was her father’s other toy. His only weapon. She didn’t hesitate in firing it at the Melrose Raiders, otherwise known as the Bitch Fiends.

  A Glock 17 is a powerful handgun, the weapon of choice for a number of law-enforcement agencies because of its ease of use and accuracy. In the hands of a hundred-pound neophyte shooter, however, it’s not the most precise instrument. Her first shot went through the cafeteria window, puncturing a dumpster. The second bullet missed Bryan Edison, the strapping co-captain of the basketball team, by a matter of inches before embedding itself into brick. The third round hit his teammate Gary Halperin in the right collarbone, shattering it. All three shots happened within three seconds. The Glock 17 is also known for its super-light trigger.

  From that moment on, accounts vary widely. Some students say Annabelle was icy calm in the chaos she caused. Others say she was crying and screaming. The only fact was that she kept shooting. At Bryan Edison. In retrospect, there’s no doubt that Bryan knew exactly what her mission was. While half the students ducked under tables, Bryan fled with the rest. And Annabelle followed.

  Expanded in 1992, the Melrose High cafeteria accommodated more than six hundred students. It was twenty times the size of the school’s basketball court. In the thirty seconds it took Bryan to make it to the doors, Annabelle fired twelve more rounds. Four of them hit walls. Seven hit bystanders. The final shot nailed Brian in the back of the head just as he reached the exit. He died before he hit the ground.

  The Glock 17 is so named because its standard clip holds seventeen bullets. Annabelle brought no backup ammo, and was obviously saving the last shot for herself. It pierced her troubled mind, into her left temple and out through the right.

  In the end, there were five dead students, including Bryan Edison and Annabelle. Four others were rushed to Cedars-Sinai with moderate to critical wounds. Out of all casualties, three were eventually confirmed as Bitch Fiends. The others had never even spoken to Annabelle. They only had the misfortune of standing near Bryan Edison.

  At 1:11 p.m. Pacific time, the first hints of trouble hit the AP wires. No names. No figures. Just shots fired and casualties reported. Local news teams had flooded the scene by 1:30. The story cracked wide open at three o’clock, when reporters around the nation first spoke the words “Bitch Fiend.” In New York, viewers heard it from their favorite evening newscast. In L.A., the kids coming home from more fortunate schools got their first glimpse of the tragedy. And at Keoki Atoll, right at that moment, I was cluelessly faxing every newsroom in the country with my super-hot announcement: naked young women protest beach resort.

  ________________

  “Damn.”

  That was Miranda, at the Tiki Bar, watching the news. By then the story
was hours old. It had already mushroomed into the heavens. I wasn’t sure if she was cursing at the tragedy of the situation or the fact that she was the last reporter in the United States to get wind of it.

  “Shit.”

  That was me, next to Miranda. I was cursing at the tragedy of the situation. I had worked damn hard on my VNR. I’d spent over half a million dollars of my client’s money. And thanks to one disturbed but media-savvy little girl, my Trojan horse became a big white elephant.

  ________________

  So what is a Bitch Fiend?

  To most of the reporters on the scene, it was simply the phrase that Annabelle had inscribed on the label of the controversial mini-tape. Some heard she’d include a tell-all suicide note. Others reported that there was allegedly a videotaped sex act involving Annabelle and one of the victims. Or two of the victims. Or one of the teachers. Who knew? The cops weren’t talking.

  But the title of the tape was quickly cracked by the minority of reporters who knew their hip-hop. “Bitch Fiend” was the name of a breakout song by Hunta, a young L.A. rapper whose platinum-selling debut album, Huntaway, had been released in 2000 through Mean World Records and distributed by Interscope.

  I’d never heard of the man myself, but then I wasn’t a rap aficionado. I only knew the marquee names, mostly through their controversies: Sean “Puffy” Combs (gun/assault/bribery charges), Eminem (gun/assault/homophobia), Snoop Dogg (gun/murder, acquitted), Ice Cube and Ice-T (anti-cop sentiments, movies), and Dr. Dre (various punching /slapping offenses).

  Welcome to the big list, Hunta. Hope you survive.

  The many news stations under the CBS/Viacom aegis were given quick access to Hunta’s music video for “Bitch Fiend,” courtesy of sister network MTV. Only a few stations played clips from the raunchy thing. Others broke the plot down to its bare essence: Hunta gets jiggy with bitch. Hunta secretly records bitch. Hunta shows videotape of bitch to all his homeys.