by S. B. Caves
‘Let me ask each of you a question right now. Do you want to leave? Raise your hand. Go on, don’t be shy. If you want to go, then you will have my full pardon. So let’s have it. Raise your hand.’
Autumn looked down into her lap, her hands becoming heavy as granite. There wasn’t a force on this earth that could’ve made her raise one of them at that very moment in time. She thought about Mia and Wendy and clasped her hands tightly together, hoping to God neither of them would be foolish enough to take the bait.
‘None of you?’ His lip curled up. ‘Well that surprises me. Because I know full well that some of you are unhappy here. Some of you are dissatisfied with having a place to live, with being surrounded by people who would literally kill to protect you! Some of you even plot against me.’
Sweat sprouted on Autumn’s forehead and rolled down her face. Her back became moist and she could feel the cotton sticking to it. She bit the inside of her cheek and clasped her hands together tighter in an effort to mask the trembling in her arms. Wendy, you idiot! You’ve killed us with your stupid big mouth. How many times have I told you not to speak inside the house, that every room has an ear? You stupid, stupid girl. She closed her eyes and waited for him to call her name, to illustrate their betrayal.
‘If any of you do want to leave, perhaps you should consider something first. I am not holding you here against your will. Each of you is free to go as and when you see fit. But remember this. I have taken you in. You are my daughters. I have taught you love, and with that love there is discipline. I will not have anarchy. I will raise you all to be obedient and decent. Even if it kills me.’
He attempted to stand. Horace rushed to help. When at last he was on his feet, Daddy said, ‘My love is like a door that only swings one way. If you are with me, then I will give you the world, as I truly have done. If you are against me and against this house, then you know where that door is. But God help you if you decide to go through it.’
Horace assisted Daddy off the stage. Autumn was soaked with perspiration, her hair sticking to her hot face. She looked over at Wendy and shook her head. Wendy would not meet her eyes.
‘Okay, troopers,’ Joseph said once Daddy had left the hall. ‘We need to get you back in the swing of things. We have a lot of ground to cover before next week. We are expecting visitors and this place has fallen into a shambles while you’ve been resting in the lower deck.’ He never called it the basement, as though the very word were somehow too common to be part of his vocabulary. But in reality, he didn’t want them to hear the truth of their situation: that they had been shackled by their necks in a cellar and left to piss and shit and bleed all over themselves. ‘We need to clean this house until it is spotless, and then you could all use some time to get yourselves looking decent. We are going to be entertaining a lot of guests next week, and I want you all to sparkle.’
14
The silence that settled over Oakridge at night was not always perfect. The eerie stillness for which the neighbourhood was renowned was often perforated by the click of insects in the neatly preened lawns, the jagged screams of coyotes shuddering through the surrounding valleys. There were no sirens, though, no overexerted engines or squealing of tyres, no drunken arguments or pounding music. Even the volume of the rain seemed to dampen as it fell, careful not to disturb the precious calm, as though some treaty were in place. There was enough space between the mansions that any two neighbours might go weeks or even months without laying eyes on one another. Each property was a gated community: vastly expansive and wildly expensive, built for the elite. Beyond the double-glazed windows and the velvet curtains, the occupants of these fortresses created their own utopias. Behind the reinforced doors, one would observe more drug and alcohol abuse than in your average impoverished project building. This sordid open secret was something that the community of Oakridge understood and coveted.
Cindy Schilling understood the concept possibly better than anyone else in the neighbourhood. At the tender age of seventeen, she had left her home in rural Alabama with her parents’ blessing to pursue a career in Hollywood. She told them, quite matter-of-factly, that she was going to be a famous actress and more than likely a millionaire by the time she hit twenty-one. It wasn’t difficult to imagine. Having been a local pageant queen as a child and being the most beautiful teenage girl in her town, Cindy was set to take on the world. She knew that when she walked into a building, she was the most attractive person in it. She knew that when she talked to men, they melted. She knew that when she passed other women on the street, they regarded her with a sour mix of jealousy and resentment, and there was almost no other earthly pleasure that brought a smile to her face quite like it.
Armed with three hundred dollars and a portfolio of professional headshots and glossy glamour poses (taken by some guy at the mall who was doing a special one-day deal), Cindy managed to talk herself into a meeting almost as soon as her bus pulled up to the station. Starshine Cross was a prolific independent agency that operated out of an office in downtown LA. Cindy walked boldly into the reception and told the woman working the phones that she had an appointment.
‘Who with?’ the receptionist asked, unimpressed.
‘Oh gosh, I’m so embarrassed but I completely forgot his name.’
‘Did you really?’ The receptionist was already bored with the spiel, having heard a variation of the hustle a hundred times before: silly young girls with aspirations of making it big without knowing the first damn thing about the business. ‘Well, what’s your name? Let’s start there.’
‘Cindy Wilcox.’
The receptionist sighed as she went through the diary, resenting having to perform the charade. ‘There’s no Cindy Wilcox down for an appointment.’
‘Well there’s obviously been some mistake. I’ve got a twelve o’clock meeting with …’ She paused, drawing on her acting ability to feign memory loss. ‘Oh what was his name? Was it Michael?’
The receptionist neither confirmed nor denied, her face remaining impassive. While Cindy scrambled for another avenue, a man emerged from the elevator behind them and strolled through the reception. He wore shades, a blazer with a polo shirt beneath, and white slacks. The diamonds encrusted in the face of his watch threw rainbow light around the room. He pushed the shades up onto his head, his eyes rolling up and down over Cindy’s body. She smiled at him.
‘It might have been him,’ she told the receptionist, all the time maintaining eye contact with the man.
‘It might’ve been me what?’ he asked, smiling.
‘Daniel, this girl says she has an appointment, but she isn’t down on the list and doesn’t know who her meeting,’ behind Cindy’s back the receptionist made quotation marks with her fingers, ‘is with.’
The man looked at his watch. ‘Well I have about an hour before my next appointment. Perhaps you’d like to come through to my office?’
‘Yes, I’d like that,’ Cindy told him, turning to smile facetiously at the receptionist as she sauntered into the office with her catch.
They skimmed over the pleasantries and Cindy produced her portfolio, taking every opportunity to flash some flesh his way. He flicked through the photos within the plastic wallet, stopping every now and then to admire a certain pose.
‘So you’re looking for representation, is that it?’
‘Yes, very much so. I want to do movie work mainly, but I’m open to TV too.’
‘I see. Have you ever acted before, Cindy?’
‘I’ve been in some high-school plays, but nothing professional. You have to start somewhere, right?’
‘That’s right,’ he grinned. ‘But unfortunately we only take on experienced clients, actors with a body of work behind them. We sometimes represent unknowns, but that’s only on a referral basis.’
‘In that case, I’ll refer myself to you!’ She gave him her best lilting laugh, parading the perfect pearly-white teeth.
He laughed along with her, but it was altogether more reserved
now. Cindy persisted, the smile no longer touching her eyes. She launched into a rendition of Robert Duvall’s napalm speech from Apocalypse Now. Daniel interrupted her.
‘I think you’re good—’ he began, but it was Cindy’s turn to interrupt.
‘I bet you’ve never seen a woman do that scene, have you? I just wanted to show you my range, to let you know I can do it all.’
Ignoring her, he continued with his original train of thought. ‘I think you’re good. But you need to get real-life experience. You need to be going to auditions, getting some seasoning. You might not want to hear that now, but it sets you up for later down the road.’
She sighed. ‘Do you want me to suck your dick?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Do you want me to put your cock in my mouth? Will that help this awkward little transition?’ She stood up and began striding around his desk.
‘I think it’d probably be best if you left, actually.’
‘Oh shit, did I misread you? You didn’t come across as a fag.’
‘I’m not gay.’ He stood up and opened the door for her. ‘You need to leave. Now.’
She laughed and snatched up her bag and folder. ‘You’d better take a good long look at me, because a year from now, you’ll be crying into your Wheaties wondering why you let the opportunity pass.’
Ignoring the taunt, Daniel said, ‘Try one of the smaller agencies. I wish you the best of luck.’
‘Faggot.’
Cindy chose not to take Daniel’s advice. She began floating around bars, oozing past doormen with suggestive promises. She went to parties, got introduced to cocaine and quickly forgot about acting. There was a far easier way to reach her end goal, once she figured out what her actual ambition was. To be famous was really only a by-product of her one true need – to be rich. And in a town like Hollywood, she didn’t need to work to be rich; she just had to fuck someone who was and latch onto him.
By the time she was eighteen, she was savvy enough to understand that the young rich guys were not to be counted on. Sure they gave her plenty of blow and packed more pills than a pharmacist, but they were emotionally detached. They liked to party and fuck, but once that was over, they sent her packing with cab fare in her sweaty palms. There were never any follow-up dinners, or even acknowledgement upon re-encountering her at the hot spots. It took a whole year for her to figure out that partying for the sake of partying was getting her nowhere fast. She was living day to day, stealing from the men who took her home and retreating to a cheap, roach-infested condo on the Eastside.
The day her trajectory changed, she was in the back of a cab on her way over to the Roxy to try her luck with a young guitarist who’d been doing the rounds. Rumour was he was on the verge of signing a gigantic deal with Sony, and Cindy wanted in. The cab passed an auditorium with limousines parked out front and a gaggle of elderly men dressed in tuxedos filing inside. Instinct took over before her brain had quite figured out what she was doing, and Cindy told the cabbie to stop the car before throwing some notes at him.
Getting out of that cab was the best decision she would ever make. Because inside the auditorium was a man named Glenn Schilling, who, in her charming teenage naivety, Cindy didn’t recognise. Truth be told, it was only much later, when the romance was in full swing, that she fully grasped the magnitude of her catch.
She married Glenn seven months later in a private ceremony in Puerto Rico. As they sipped champagne at the reception, she leaned in and said, honestly and earnestly, ‘Marrying you has made all my dreams come true.’ What she failed to tell him was that not only had the marriage made her aim of becoming wildly rich a reality, but that she had managed to do it over a year ahead of schedule.
Now Cindy sat in her calfskin chair by the window smoking a cigarette. She was drooping from the Valium and tequila and had been staring at the sky hoping to see lightning. Every now and then, the clouds would flash and fracture. She liked it when a storm raged, because she wanted a catastrophe. These days her only fantasies were of some world-changing event, the polar caps finally melting, or an earthquake that would rip the continents in half. She wanted the world to turn upside down and for everyone to be fucked: misery and death for all.
But as she waited for that one perfect boom of thunder, something peculiar happened. Beyond the numbing warmth of her stupor, a low twinge of déjà vu registered. She saw a blue car drive past that she was sure she had only seen a few minutes before. It was difficult trusting her mind with anything these days, but she was fairly certain about this. When the car drove past a third time, the tyres creeping along the tarmac, Cindy fought her way to her feet and walked to the other window at the opposite end of the master bedroom. The house tilted and jerked around her, but she ignored it, pulling back the curtain an inch and peering out into the rain-slicked road. The car rolled to a stop a few yards down and the headlights died. Cindy watched the vehicle for a minute, waiting for the driver to get out. When a few more minutes had dragged along, she pressed her palm against the window. ‘Something weird is going on out there,’ she mumbled. ‘A car … just parked across the street down there … drove by … drove by a few times before. I think someone is watching us.’
She waited for a response, and when she received none, she stumbled around to locate Glenn before realising that he was up in his thinking room. She looked out of the window at the car again.
‘Maybe we should have George check it out,’ she said through heavy lips, forgetting immediately that Glenn was not there to hear her. ‘Could be something … don’t you think?’
15
The heavyset clerk at the convenience store assured Francine that Triple Xplosion was not only the most brutal caffeinated drink that the store sold, but that she probably wouldn’t find anything better that was actually legal. ‘Trust me, you drink this, you ain’t sleeping for two days. People on crack have a better night’s sleep.’ Francine bought a six-pack.
Staking out Schilling’s place was boring work, but the clerk hadn’t been lying. One can of that junk set her nerve endings alight, made the act of staring at the mansion somehow bearable. She had seen the curtain twitch in the upstairs window a couple of times, but with the rain blurring the windscreen it was difficult to get a clear view through her binoculars.
Her lingering doubts snuck up on her during the dull stretches, and she had bitten her thumbs raw contemplating it all. Why couldn’t Will have at least considered the possibility that Lena was telling the truth? Was it really that difficult to believe? If it was, why couldn’t Francine herself acknowledge it? The more she turned the conundrum over, analysing it from every perspective, the more convinced she became. The fact that Lena’s story about Schilling was so far-fetched and obscure somehow only made it more plausible.
Having someone in her corner would’ve made this so much easier. Even if she could have got Will to admit that there was a possibility, no matter how long the odds were, it would’ve been enough for her.
The first twenty-four hours passed uneventfully. Every hour or so, Francine saw a silhouette flutter by the curtains. The shape was definitely female: Schilling’s wife or a maid. She’d identified the house from the picture she’d seen in Forbes and had her assumption confirmed when she drove by the grounds and saw the initials GS embossed in the gates. Now all she had to do was sit tight until Saturday, when he left for his show.
She’d wanted to be close to the house, to get a feel for it, and hopefully to catch a glimpse of the icon himself. She assumed that would make what she had planned easier to do, rather than turning up and going in cold. But when she finally saw him leaving the mansion and pottering around to the garage, she was flooded with doubt. Schilling was just a brittle old man who in any other surroundings could’ve been on his way to the post office or the supermarket for a loaf of bread. Yet still the sight of him made her heart beat in her throat and drew the moisture out of her lips. Yes, he might appear frail and a far cry from the maverick who slid up and down the
stage every Saturday, but he was evil. She had to remember that.
On her third visit to the gas station, the manager approached her to ask why she kept using the bathroom, glancing suspiciously between her and her car parked out front. She rattled off an excuse, but it didn’t sound convincing. It was only when she saw herself in the mirror that she realised why the manager was growing increasingly concerned. The lack of sleep, coupled with the shitty diet, had taken its toll. Clusters of red spots flared on her cheekbones. The circles around her eyes were so dark that she looked like a victim of domestic abuse. In only a few short days, the weight had melted from her frame and her head suddenly seemed too large for her spindly neck. The clerks out front probably thought she was a meth addict.
She cleaned herself up beneath the unforgiving bathroom lights and hurried back to Schilling’s, keeping a watchful eye out for any other places that she might be able to use as a rest stop now that she’d exhausted the gas station.
She turned the engine off, unwrapped a candy bar and fixed her attention on the windows. When it turned midnight, she jotted down Day 3. No Sign in the diary she’d packed. In two days’ time, Glenn Schilling would be making his way over to the TV studio to film Saturday Night Splendour. And then what? The plan had all seemed so streamlined in her mind: wait for Schilling to leave his mansion, then scale the wall, somehow break in without setting off the security system, and rummage around until she found something that linked back to Autumn.
She knew that if she lingered on the uncertainties, she would just talk herself out of it. Because the more she thought about what she planned to attempt, the more ludicrous it seemed. What if she did somehow manage to break in? And what if, in this perfect scenario, she was able to go through the whole damn place with a fine-tooth comb and still find nothing? Where would she go from there?
