by Todd Grimson
“I’m sorry. I always thought of us as friends, but you stuck that fork in my leg, and I thought, well, it was up to you. A lot of people make valuable connections like that. You’d be surprised. The business is much more irrational than most people know.”
“I had to pay my rent, so I did it. But you’ve looked at me, haven’t you, Lou?”
“Lisa, I just can’t lie to you today … I’m sorry. I’ve missed our talks. I didn’t treat you right.”
There was a brief pause, and then she said, “OK, tell me what’s wrong. I want to know. I’m interested. But why can’t you talk to Veronica?”
“Veronica’s outside with some Guatemalans she hired, painting a giant insect on the wall of our house.”
“What else is going on?” Lisa asked, cautiously.
“You heard about Jonathan and the figure in the gallery? Well, everything points to him, the forensics guys found equipment linking him to it, but Jonathan swears he didn’t do it … and I don’t think he’s capable of building something like that, to tell you the truth. But since then, he told me yesterday, he keeps having this dream that his right hand has been cut off and replaced with some kind of mutant hand grown in a greenhouse, he says he can see fifty or sixty of them, growing in pots, some black, some white, some incomplete or deformed … and the other night, oh this is so awful, this is the worst…”
“I’m listening, Lou. It’s all right.”
“Remember when we saw you in the restaurant? I felt terrible, because there you were, and here I was with Selwyn Popcorn, and I noticed you were with Jules Brandenberg, maybe you’ve got something going there, but I felt terrible. I don’t expect you to forgive me, but listen, it was one of those studio things; I had you down, and F.W. crossed off your name. He hired Alison Hand and there was nothing I could say, everybody’d know and I’d look bad—and anyway, it wouldn’t have done any good. Robert Hand’s daughter. Shit.
“So, driving home that night, pretty late—these bikers stopped me, it looked like this one guy’d been hit by a car … from a distance, these two guys looked pretty clean-cut, but up close, there was something weird … they just plain hijacked us, they took us to this old house in the Hollywood Hills, just a few minutes away but secluded, I think Tuesday Weld used to live there once, or Dennis Hopper …”
“What did they want?”
“They raped me, Lisa. It was just … beyond belief.” He was all choked up. When he spoke again, he said, “They were so strange, it was like it wasn’t personal, or like they were just so spaced out from drugs they weren’t even human. Their hands were so cold. But they used some lubricant, some Crisco or something, so I thought I could stand it, it wasn’t the most pain I’ve ever felt, it wasn’t like breaking your leg or a kidney stone … but the second one, this big blond guy, he put something up me, something hot, it burned me … it was like Tabasco sauce in your eyes, but this was up my ass….
“Since then,” Lou said, “I’ve been jumpy, but I’ve been trying to handle it. It was a degrading, horrible experience … but I think it was like a nightmare, and when a nightmare’s over, you can survive, you can forget. But Veronica … won’t talk to me, and she started doing this project. I didn’t see everything, I know they put their hands on her, and one of them emptied her purse and lipsticked her face, I mean all over, thick … J was the one who was really traumatized, and after they left, Veronica drove us home, but ever since then … she won’t talk about it.
“I’m going crazy, Lisa. How could these things be happening? Veronica’s out there … will you meet me, Lisa? I don’t mean to screw, I’m not that stupid, I just thought—can you hold a minute? I’ve got another call. It might be the doctor.”
Lisa waited about three seconds, then hung up. It was faintly vindicating to hear how well the spell had worked, but this was enough. She had to get Boro to stop.
Other messages of interest: Roy Hardway, again, saying, “I can understand your caution. But if you want to see me, just to talk, this is my unlisted number. 274-8081. Tell Javier your name, and he’ll get me, wherever I am.”
And also, in the middle of a couple of other calls from Lou: “Hi, this is Alison Hand. Look, I’ve heard about you, and I’d like to have a conversation. I’m at 939-4554. It might be worthwhile.”
Lisa wondered what she wanted. She automatically was ready to dislike her, because Alison was two or three years younger, and had connections, and of course had what should have been Lisa’s job. What could she possibly want? Lisa didn’t want to hear her voice.
Lou called again now, and she let the machine take it; he said, “I’m sorry, but that was Edgar, and it took a while. Are you still home? If you want to call me back, I’m in the study.” He gave the number, in case she’d forgotten.
Instead of calling Lou, she had an inspiration, considered it for a long time—changing her clothes, making a fresh pitcher of iced tea— and then, at about four o’clock, the sun outside at its brightest, she called the Beverly Hills number: 274-8081.
When Roy came onto the line, his voice was confident and friendly, obviously delighted that she’d apparently changed her mind.
A little nervously, she began, “I was thinking about you, and since you’ve been wanting to spend some time together, I thought maybe, well, let’s see if there’s really any chemistry…. There’s someone I’m scared of that I have to see. I don’t want to go alone.”
“What is it, a drug deal?”
“No, but he’s done a favor for me … and I don’t trust him, he’s unpredictable. I need to tell him OK, I’m satisfied, you can stop.”
“I don’t quite understand,” he said, “but then, I suppose I don’t have to.”
“Do you have a gun?”
“You’re serious, aren’t you?”
TWENTY-ONE
Roy Hardway came by at seven-fifteen. When he buzzed her on the intercom, Lisa said she’d be right down. It had crossed her mind that if she let him come up into her apartment, he’d try to fuck her before they went anywhere else.
She had gone to a bank machine and taken out several hundred dollars. For Roy’s sake, she’d put on some makeup, red lipstick, and gold retro-Madonna-style cruciform earrings. A short print dress, bare legs, the studded black leather jacket.
“Hey, Roy.” She came around and got into his gleaming white Jaguar sedan.
“You look great,” he said. “Where we headed?”
God, he was handsome. He was tanned, and his face had little scrunching lines that gave him the look of more character than any actor could possibly have, especially one who seemed to be some kind of nympho. He showed her the shoulder holster under his charcoal corduroy jacket.
“A thirty-eight,” he said, “just like the cops. With hollow-point shells. I’ve been shooting since I was a kid.”
“Where’d you grow up?”
“You don’t know my standard bio? That’s OK. North Dakota. Just outside of Fargo. My dad was a drunken bastard, the only good times we had together were out hunting, too early in the morning for him to have drunk himself mean.”
“If I was going to direct you, would you give me a bad time?”
He smiled. “Because you’re a woman, or because you’re young and don’t know anything? Listen, I’d just do my job. If you had your shit together, we’d get along fine. If you fucked up, you wouldn’t be able to blame it on me. I’d do the best I could. If you were a woman and an asshole, and I realized this early on, I’d give back the money and walk away. Why? Is that what you want to do?”
“Yeah.”
The sun wasn’t going down yet, but it was at such an angle that it made things look jaded and bright. Concrete. Suspended wires. Telephone poles. Electric blue, carmine red automobiles. A man and a woman, holding hands, waiting to cross the busy street.
Roy Hardway displayed no fear. He drove well, and Lisa relaxed. She told him about the trip to Seattle. She told him about herself, some version that to a man like him might make sense.
<
br /> “What’s the exact story on this fellow we’re going to see?” Roy asked after a while, when they were starting to near the vicinity.
“This will sound unreal, but he put a spell on a guy for me. I want to have him turn it off. And Boro’s doing other shit … like he drew on me, with a pen, my own pen, and it won’t come off, it’s like a tattoo.”
“Why did you want to put a spell on someone?”
“He double-crossed me. Isn’t that enough?”
“It could be, yeah. What should I do up here?”
“Turn left.”
As the Jaguar came to a halt, then pulled a little off the driveway onto the shiny greener-than-green Astroturf lawn, Roy looked around and smiled at what he saw. The choppers were parked down past the house—which Lisa had not yet been in. They knocked on that door first, but nobody answered.
“He’s probably in the greenhouse,” Lisa said, and so they headed back there.
The door to the greenhouse was open. Sure enough, Boro and his followers were down at the other end, where the spell had been cast. It was as if they were waiting for them. Expecting them.
Lisa suddenly was afraid, it went through her like a splash of cold electric water, and she no longer felt as good about Roy Hardway, his easy confidence and manner as he walked in seemed no protection if Boro decided to be difficult or mean.
Boro smiled, with his dentures, and said to Lisa, “You read my mind. Thank you. It’s a nice gesture for you to bring me someone. I appreciate the gift.” He nodded, his dreadlocks bobbing, and he leaned forward to take a hit off a long wooden pipe. He still wore Lisa’s beads around his neck.
“Your name is Boro?” Roy stepped forward, staring at the zombies who lingered around, staring blankly, like delinquents on a corner skipping school. Dum-dum boys. They did not blink, and there was nothing in their eyes.
Lisa saw, off to her right, beyond some of the meat-eating plants, a pile of what looked like soft, pale, imperfectly formed human hands. The fingers occasionally quivered and moved, slowly, contracting slightly toward a phantom fist, then flexing back out. Behind her she sensed some faint movement; she turned and saw that two of the zombies had been outside and followed them in.
“Yeah, I’m Boro; who are you? Superboy, that’s what you look like to me.”
“Why did you give me the tattoo?” Lisa asked, rather plaintively, at this point just thinking of the pierced heart upon her buttock.
“Don’t you like it? I thought you would.”
“I didn’t ask you to do it, and I wish you’d take it off. And I have some money to pay you. I’m satisfied with what you’ve done to Lou.”
“I’ve barely started. And to take off the heart, somebody would have to rip off half your ass. My boys here, they’d like that, they like it raw. I go for deep-fried, but everybody knows what they like best. Dirty Harry, you see that movie? I’m talking to you, man.”
Boro seemed to have a contentious attitude toward Roy, who was so much taller, a big white man with a gun who’d played cops. It was still unclear to Lisa whether bringing him along had been a good idea or not. The atmosphere was menacing, but Roy had the gun; what if she’d come here all alone?
“What are you?” asked Roy, as if Boro offended him, taking an attitude.
“I’m a soul eater,” Boro said. He attended once more to his pipe, then, without exhaling, conspicuously nodded to the zombies to his left, at which signal every single one of them began to slowly walk forward—and from behind (Lisa looked) the other two were coming. She could smell Boro, some other, deep earthy cavelike odor, and the flowers’ sickly perfume.
“Roy,” she said, bringing his attention to the ones at their rear, and Roy saw them, clenched his jaw, and reached into his jacket to come out with the gun, clicking something on it, choosing to point it at Boro, who continued smiling, a hot light dancing in his dark eyes.
“Shoot me, motherfucker.”
The zombies quickened, Roy narrowed his eyes, and then—boom, deafeningly, he fired the gun. The impact of the shot knocked Boro over backward, but then he got back up, springing to his bare feet, laughing in a snarling way, there was a hole in the front of his shirt but no blood, he made an effort and then spat the spent bullet out into the palm of his hand.
“You missed,” he said as Roy shot again, and the zombies suddenly all moved very swiftly, they ignored Lisa and overwhelmed Roy. He struggled, firing thunderous rounds at nothing until the gun was empty, some glass shattering, Lisa let out an involuntary shriek as they rode him to the ground. Biting him, one of them sticking a knife right into Roy’s neck from the side, sawing, digging deep, his hand and the knife overflowing red, the blood leaping out and then, after this initial spurt, just flowing steadily…. Lisa saw Boro smile at her, and she turned and ran. At the doorway of the greenhouse she looked back and saw one zombie disengage and rise, as if he was going to follow her—the rest were busy on Roy, who seemed to be still alive, crying out horribly. They were cutting off his head.
Boro was coming after her, saying, “Thank you for bringing me this sacrifice. Don’t run. Stop for just a second; then you can go.”
Lisa paused, wide-eyed, looking all around to make sure there wasn’t a trap, some zombie lurking too near. Boro reached down and then walked toward her, jingling Roy’s car keys, holding them so she could see.
“I saw somebody who looked sort of like you in a movie once,” he said. “How would you like me to turn you into an animal? You could be a strong, sleek leopard. I was with Simon Bolivar, the great man, when he executed seven hundred prisoners. That’s the way it goes. Here,” he said, and threw Roy’s car keys at her. She caught them and realized she was crying, a feminine response to carnage, one which she despised.
“Take a ride in the Jaguar,” he said, smiling at his joke. “It’s too bad for you it’s just a machine, not the real one. I own you” he called in a louder voice as she turned and fled.
She didn’t scream, she made an exclamation, she could hardly breathe. She reached the Jaguar and opened the driver’s-side door— then she did scream. There was a shrunken head on the seat. She knocked it out of the car, hating to touch it, then she got in, started the motor, and drove away as darkness fell. Frantic, speeding, talking to herself oh no oh god oh shit, it probably helped to hear her own voice, she was trembling, her leg was shaking so badly she could hardly keep her foot down on the gas.
Colored lights. Circles, rectangles, stars, and lines. Lozenge shapes. Gleams of shiny reflective steel. Keep driving. Try not to speed too much. You don’t want to be stopped by the cops. Oh god. God.
TWENTY-TWO
The drive back home took long enough that Lisa became cold. It coldly occurred to her that even if she wiped her fingerprints and ditched Roy Hardway’s car, once his body was found in a citrus grove or something, or if he simply disappeared off the face of the earth, she’d be linked to him by his phone records. She had faith in her ability to lie, she’d told lies and gotten away with them since she was a child—even so, she thought she’d do better later on, after some time had passed…. She parked the Jaguar a few blocks from her building, wiping down any surface she might have touched, on second thought leaving the car idling, in neutral, windows rolled down, a Frank Sinatra cassette playing in the deck. Someone would have to steal it, you couldn’t miss it, kids taking it for a joyride at the very least.
She walked home quickly and threw clothes and whatever else seemed of use into her suitcase and flight bag, the two scripts from Jules—on her way out, just as she was leaving, the TV came on, spontaneously, and it looked like Boro, there in the greenhouse—she went out the door, lugged the bags to her car, and drove away.
She drove to Code’s, leaving the suitcase locked in her trunk, taking her flight bag up with her in the elevator, using her key, intending to change clothes and make some calls. She was dead certain that, back in her apartment, there was now a trapdoor leading down to a new, strange room.
As she cam
e up she heard music getting louder and louder. When she pulled open the elevator cage, she realized that Code had a number of guests, there was a spillover into parts of this floor seldom inhabited.
“Welcome, earthling,” Zed greeted her, and she acknowledged his greeting, making a note to herself that Jules wanted some Stairway to Heaven, Jesus, she saw Code at the mixer, smoking a cigarette, in the NO FUN T-shirt, looking like he’d been up for days, with dirty hair, next to a black guy—it was the rapper Huckleberry. Sterling Music was doing something with the synthesizer, the first she’d seen of him for a long time, wearing his typical goggles, like a Martian. Vladimir I was playing a bass guitar while a drum program slammed out the complicated beat. Alvin Sender came up to her and said, “Didn’t you get my call?” She shook her head. “You’ve got something on your dress,” he said, and it was blood. There were other people here, people she didn’t know, she excused herself from Sender and tried to get into the bathroom, on the way she saw a person who from her figure must have been Joey, her Daryl-Hannah-to-be face still evidently not quite healed, concealed by a black rubber bondage hood, as the music surged, Lisa was next in line … the drum program started again, they were going to do this song over and over, Lisa heard a familiar voice on a sample saying, “Do it harder”—she didn’t know where he’d got it, when he’d taped it, but Code was using a sample of Lisa’s voice, that motherfucker—she got into the bathroom and saw in the mirror that she was messier than she’d known. She had her bag, so she changed her dress and rubbed water over a crusty patch of dried blood in her hair. She’d have to put the stained dress in a Dumpster somewhere.
There was a phone booth on the other side of some big crates. A biracial couple were kissing, oblivious, she had to shove against the girl to get by. It wasn’t a pay phone in the phone booth, there was a long cord but Code thought the phone booth was cute, it had an ambiance, usually the phone was in his bed. Lisa called Track, at two-thirty in the morning New York time. He was still awake and she told him, “I’m in big trouble. This guy’s got a spell on me, he says he owns me, and tonight I saw him kill somebody.”
