by Pete Hautman
Carmen took a deep breath. The building smelled new. The smell of new paint and construction materials. That reassured her. She might be the first person ever to have peed in this particular toilet, and almost certainly the first woman. Deriving a modicum of personal power from that thought, Carmen stood up and dragged the skirt back down over her hips. She needed a cigarette.
She found Hyatt in the main room of the chapel, holding a canvas bag. He was standing at the head of the chapel on a low stage, silhouetted against a ceiling-to-floor stained-glass window. The design in the glass, illuminated by the full moon, looked like a pair of intertwined, multicolored snakes. Hyatt was muttering quietly to himself.
“What’s the matter?” she asked.
“I was hoping for a real, you know, altar,” Hyatt said. “A big stone altar.” The raised area at the head of the chapel was an expanse of wooden flooring, about twenty feet wide by ten feet deep and bare of furnishings. It looked like a stage. “I don’t see where we’re going to tie you up.”
“Maybe we should just skip that part.” Carmen sat down on one of the low, backless wooden benches that filled the rest of the chapel.
Hyatt said, “Ha-ha.” He set the bag on the floor and removed a camcorder.
Carmen lit a cigarette and watched.
“Where’s Chip?” she asked.
“He’s reconnoitering the perimeter. Keep him out of trouble for a while.”
“Oh.” She blew a lungful of smoke out through her nostrils. “Hy, I’ve been thinking.”
“This is no time to think, Carm. We’re in action mode here. What are we gonna do for an altar?”
“I was thinking we might want to, you know, change the plan a little.”
“Maybe we could use one of those benches. Spread a blanket over it or something. Are they bolted down?”
Carmen gave the bench in front of her a kick. It moved a few inches. “This one’s not,” she said.
“Bring it on up here.”
“Listen, Hy, I’m serious. I don’t really feel like doing this. I just don’t think it’ll work. I’ve been thinking. Even if we go ahead with the plan, who’s gonna believe us? Why would they believe anything we tell them?”
Hyatt hopped down, lifted one end of a bench onto the lip of the stage. “Carmen,” he said in his serious voice, “believe me, they’ll believe. They’ll believe because they’ll want to believe. Same reason they believe what politicians tell them.” He climbed back up and dragged the bench up after him. “They’ll believe for the same reason they believe that Nike shoes will make them better athletes, and that Coca-Cola tastes like a cigarette should. We’re talking something bigger than the truth here, Carm. We’re talking about a story that people want desperately to hear. They’ve been waiting for this one. We’re going to give them the story they’ve been waiting for, the one they’re all desperate to see in real life. Or on TV.” He positioned the bench in the exact center of the stage. “What do you think? Does this look like an altar?”
“It looks like a bench. We better change the plan, Hy. How about if we both escape?”
“Won’t work. Gotta have the visuals. Seeing is believing, and they want to see it. Pretty girl in distress, evil cults with super powers, violence … they want to see the big white dress with blood on it. They want to believe in immortality, and they want to see it fail. Why do you think vampires are so popular?”
“Vampires?”
“Sure. We’ve created the perfect real-life vampire story. We’ve got you, the pretty bride. We’ve got me, the brave hero. We’ve got the evil cult of blood drinking vampires. People want to be scared shitless. Why do you think people buy snuff films? The want love and death.”
“What d’you mean, love and death?”
“The idea of death. The symbol of death.” Hyatt rubbed his thumb against his fingers. “That’s why they pay the big money, Carm.”
“I don’t know, Hy. The more I think about it, I don’t think anybody’s gonna buy it.”
“Hey, Carm, gimme a break. What about Woodstock? You think anybody believed in Woodstock?”
“What? That concert?”
“What concert? It was a movie, Carm. You really think a million people sat in the mud to hear Sha-Na-Na? It was a concept, something some ad agency made up. Woodstock never happened, Carm. It’s all about image. We’re creating an icon here, Carm. Like the Beatles or the moon landing. Or when President Kennedy got shot. It’s all about creating an unforgettable image in people’s minds. Doesn’t have to make sense, it just has to stick. That’s where the money is. Once you’re an icon, they throw the stuff at you. Look at Michael Jordan. Look at Joey Buttafuco.”
“Who?”
“Never mind. Look, this is some pretty advanced psychological thinking. I don’t want to bore you. You don’t have to understand it, you just have to trust me.”
“Suppose I don’t.”
“It’s a little late now.”
“Suppose I say ‘Forget it!’ Then what do we do?”
“That would be a huge mistake.”
“I just don’t get it.”
“You don’t have to get it. C’mere, lay down on the bench. I want to see how it looks.”
Carmen threw her cigarette on the floor and ground it out. “Hy, I’ve got something to tell you.”
“Uh-huh. Come on, Carm. Lay down here a sec.” He picked up the camcorder. “I want to do some visualization, find my angles.”
Carmen climbed up onto the stage and sat on the bench. “Listen to me, Hy.”
Hyatt aimed the camera at her. Moonlight filtered through the stained glass turned him purple and green with a glowing red eye. “Lay down, Carm. Let’s see what you look like laying down.”
“Hy, I’m pregnant.”
Hyatt lowered the camcorder. His face performed a rapid sequence of multicolored expressions, from stunned to joyful to fearful to calculating to witless. He said, after settling into slack-jawed stasis, “You mean, like, with a baby?”
“I hope so. Jesus, Hy, what do you think? I’m pregnant with a dog?”
Hyatt shook his head, slowly. “I think that’s great, Carm. Really great.”
“You think so?” Carmen felt something proud and maternal swelling her breasts.
“They’ll eat it up, Carm.” His mouth widened into a smile. “I should’ve thought of it myself.”
44
Insured by Smith & Wesson—Policy # 357
—T-shirt collection of Charles Bouchet
THE PERIMETER LOOKED SECURE.
Chip slowly approached the sprawling, single-story stone house, slapping mosquitoes and slipping in the muck. Benjy and his crew hadn’t had time to finish the landscaping—the area around the house was crisscrossed by muddy ruts left behind by the builders’ trucks. Chip’s mud-caked boots weighed about five pounds each. The house was dark. It might have been unoccupied. But they were in there. Chip could sense their presence. He had a sixth sense about such things. As Security Chief, such perceptiveness came in handy. The fact that Polly’s Range Rover was parked out front only served as additional proof. Chip moved through the muck, lifting his feet slowly to minimize the sucking sound, and moved in closer.
All the money they’d spent on the place, they could’ve come up with a more strategic design. Could’ve built it higher, giving them a better view of the surrounding landscape. If it was him, he’d’ve at least built a lookout tower into the place, or an electronic perimeter. As Security Chief, Chip had recommended the electronic perimeter but Rupe and Benjy had overruled him saying that the deer and rabbits would be setting it off every night and, besides, Rupe had said, the entire compound was going to be surrounded by a twelve-foot-high stone wall.
Chip set his face in a grim smile. He’d have built the house up on the rise, not down here in this shallow depression. He began to circle the house, peering into each window. Too many low windows. If they turned a light on, anybody could look right inside. But with the lights out, there wasn
’t much to see.
Just as he was having that thought, a light came on—one of the windows ahead of him—spilling out of the house, a faint rectangle of light settling on the muddy landscape. Chip froze. He must have known that was going to happen, his extra sense talking to him. He stole closer to the lit-up window, keeping his back to the wall, his heart beating rapidly. This was the real thing. Nothing he liked better than this kind of surveillance, watching subjects who were totally unaware. Maybe it would be Polly, naked. He’d never seen her without clothes. He reached the window, saw it was covered on the inside with a miniblind. Chip liked miniblinds. You could always find a crack. The bottom vanes of this one weren’t quite closed. He looked in upon a bedroom. The bed was rumpled, someone in it. Rupe, with bandages over his eyes and on his chin, mouth hanging open. He seemed to be snoring.
Chip crouched low and moved to the other side of the window to see the room from the other angle. The bedroom door was open. No Polly. Probably woke up and went to use the bathroom. Where would the bathroom be? Or should he wait here, wait for her to return? Wait. Wait for her to step into the bedroom, naked. That would be strategic.
“See anything?”
Chip experienced a moment—it may have been as long as two seconds—when he thought that the voice had come from inside his head. Then his sixth sense kicked in, and he turned to see Polly DeSimone, wearing a very short nightie and rubber boots, pointing a large handgun at his belly. Chip’s mind seized. He felt his body straighten and stand at attention. This was not strategic. In fact, it was decidedly unstrategic.
Chip stood very still in the moonlight, waiting for her to tell him what to do.
Hyatt made an adjustment to the drapery and stepped back. Not bad. Now that they were covered with fabric, the four benches, two stacked on top of two, actually looked like an altar.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“It looks like a buffet table,” Carmen said. She was sitting near the back of the chapel, a ghostly pale blur in the half-light.
“You getting hungry? We’ve got a whole box of Snickers bars in the limo.”
“I just want to go home, Hy.”
Hyatt laughed. “Quit kidding around, Carm. Where’d that tubing go? Is it in the bag?”
Carmen said, “I told you, Hy, I’m not gonna do it.”
“Sure you are.” Hyatt opened the canvas bag and pulled out a flat plastic bag containing the phlebotomy tubing setup Carmen had stolen from the emergency room at Our Lady of Mercy hospital. He looked at his watch. “I wonder what’s keeping Chip?”
“Probably got lost.”
“Well I’m not gonna wait for him. If I have to, I’ll videotape it myself.”
“You don’t know how to run a camera.”
“What’s to know? Everybody with a kid has one of the things. You ever see America’s Funniest Home Videos? Come on up here, Carm.” He waved the phlebotomy setup. “I can run the camera, but you’ve got to show me how this thing plugs in.”
“I’m not gonna do it, Hy. I told you, I’m pregnant.”
“Carm, don’t give me a hard time here. Don’t you want to be on TV?”
Carmen stood up. “Forget it, Hy. I want you to take me home now.”
It felt good to make a stand, Carmen thought. Let him know where things were at. And really, it was the first time. Before, she’d made demands, thrown a few tantrums, wheedled and cajoled and got him to do what she wanted. But she’d never before stood right up to him and said no, I don’t want to, I won’t, you can’t make me. She’d be tough, like Sophie. She would walk right out to the limo and sit in it and not budge until they drove her home.
Picking her way through the half-dark of the chapel, she heard him behind her, calling her name. Carmen ignored the voice. If he wanted to say something to her he could talk to her on the way home. She felt the weight sloughing off her, the burden of the wedding, of Hyatt’s plan to get them on TV, the whole mass of worry that had been building up in her for the past few months. She was at the door, stepping out into full moonlight when she felt his hand gripping her shoulder.
“Carm …” His voice had gotten louder.
“Let go of me, Hy,” she said. She turned to face him. His face was shadowed; she could see only a faint Cheshire cat grin where the moonlight struck his teeth.
“Come on, Carm.” He tried to pull her back into the chapel. Carmen swung at his arm, knocking it away. That was when he slapped her.
It was not a hard slap, just a little cuff on the cheek, but it surprised her. What surprised her more was her instant response. She swung her sharp fist high and hard and hit him perfectly on the tip of his pointed nose. Hyatt squeaked and staggered back, clapping a hand to his face.
“Jesus, Carm, what are you doing?” He looked at his hand. “I’m bleeding.”
Carmen had backed away and was standing near the limo now. “I want to go home.”
“Carm, I—Jesus, I’m bleeding all over my goddamn tux—Carm, you don’t understand. It’s not an option. I’ve put too much into this deal. It’s my big score. My window of opportunity. Yours, too.”
“How about if you stay here and I go.”
Hyatt seemed to consider that. “I don’t know … do you know how to get there from here? Do you know where the police station is? Do you even know how to get to Prescott?”
“Chip can drive me.”
Hyatt shook his head. “I wouldn’t count on Chip. He should’ve been back here by now. Look, let’s go back inside and talk about it.”
Carmen hesitated.
“Come on, Carm. Let’s put our heads together. We can figure something out. You don’t want to be the victim, we’ll do something else. Come on.”
Carmen felt the tension in her shoulders ease. She had won. She walked toward Hy. When he reached out a hand to her, she took it.
The blow came as a complete and utter shock to Carmen, as if the air had exploded under her chin. She heard a sound like the crack of a bat. Her head snapped back, the stars wheeled, the full moon doubled. She hit the ground flat on her back, driving the air from her lungs. As she lay there with her mouth open, waiting for her collapsed lungs to start working again, watching Hy hopping around and cursing, holding his right hand, all she could think was that she had forgotten what it felt like to get hit, and it had only been, like, a year. She’d forgotten how much it hurt.
Chip was able to tie himself to the kitchen chair with little difficulty. He knew all the knots. He tied each of his legs to the chair legs, and he bound his hands with a locking slipknot, which he pulled tight with his teeth. It was very efficient.
He could tell from the expression on Polly’s face that she was impressed.
“How long do you think that will hold you?” she asked.
“I could get out,” Chip said. “I could get out in five minutes.” He was proud of both the fact that he had tied himself up so neatly, and the fact that he could escape. But he wished he’d held on to his Smith. Not that she’d given him much choice. It sat on the kitchen counter now, on the other side of the stove.
Polly placed her revolver, a seven-inch Ruger that Chip himself had taught her to shoot, beside Chip’s Smith & Wesson. “Would you like some tea?” She turned on one of the stove burners.
“How did you detect me? Infrared motion detectors?”
Polly laughed. She filled a teakettle from the tap and placed it on the burner. “I just happened to be up,” she said. “I looked out and saw you. You know what I thought? I thought maybe you were Hyatt Hilton.” She laughed again. “Isn’t that funny?”
Chip did not think that was funny. It was a very unfunny situation altogether. Polly was dressed in a silky nightie—more of a nightshirt, really—and nothing else. She had left her rubber boots by the door. Her legs were extremely naked. Chip had never seen Polly without stockings. He could see little squiggly veins on her thighs and behind her knees, and a painful-looking corn on her little toe. Her hair was short, thin, and close to he
r head. The fact that Polly wore wigs was no secret, but he had never before seen her without one.
The most startling difference between this Polly and the Polly he knew was the color of her face—bright pink—so pink and puffy he could almost feel the heat coming off it.
He’d thought at first she was furious, red with anger, but she didn’t seem to be angry at all. Then he remembered the reason she and Rupe were here. The big lie. The plastic surgery. The pink face must be from that.
Polly took a mug from the cupboard and set it beside the stove. It was one of the official ACO mugs with the double helix printed on one side and a stylized picture of Rupe and Polly on the other. “Would you like a cup of tea?”
Chip shook his head.
“Are you going to tell me what you’re doing here?”
Chip clamped his teeth together and lowered his eyes to Polly’s knees. Even with the veins she looked good for a woman of her age. She moved closer to him. Her hand settled on his head and rubbed gently, the short, stiff hairs holding her palm away from his scalp. She smelled like soap, but with a sourness behind it.
“Do the girls ever rub your head for luck, Chip?” She moved around behind him. He felt something soft, a breast, briefly touch the back of his head.
“What girls?” Chip’s shorts were getting crowded. He squirmed, shifting his hips to a new position.
“All the girls. What are you doing here, Chip?”
“I came to tell you something,” he ventured.
“Oh?” Her fingernails were touching the sides of his head, stroking his temples.
“Came to warn you.”
“Warn us about what?”
“Um. People.”
“What people, Chip?” She moved back in front of him, crouched to bring her glowing pink face down to his level.
“What happened to your face?” he asked.
