by Ray Garton
“No, I don’t want you to hit me again. I’ll wait a couple days.”
A pause between them. Adam’s mouth still hung open, fists dug fingernails into his wet palms.
“You keeping him happy?” Gwen asked.
“He’s too fuckin’ uptight to be happy, but I’m managing. Why, you wanna fuck him?”
Gwen ignored the remark.
“You do understand that if you fuck Adam, you could fuck everything. Right?”
“Don’t be an idiot,” Gwen said. “It wouldn’t make much difference if I did, and you know it. Oh, Rain, honey...are you jealous?” She grinned. “You’re not getting attached to him, are you?”
“Fuck, no!”
“He’ll probably be going away after this.”
“What if it doesn’t work?”
“It will if we do. If not...we’ll bum that bridge when we get to it.”
“Can I go shopping now?”
“Shopping for what?”
“Nunna your fuckin’ business.”
“As long as you get your money from me, it’s my business.”
“I don’t need your fuckin’ money! I just wanna get some clothes, a couple CDs.”
“Don’t shop for clothes alone. Look at this shit, it’s like a trailer park blew up in here. You dress like white trash, Rain, you’re in Beverly Hills now, for Chrissakes. We don’t want to offend any of these Hollywood fucks. When Michael’s gone, we’ll still be living here awhile, maybe as long as a year. For appearances. So stop walkin’ around like a trailer tramp before the fashion police beat the shit out of you with their mauve clubs.”
“Yeah, awright, jeez. Mauve clubs. Very funny.”
“Okay, okay,” Gwen said. The sound of the door opening. “Go shopping. But stay the fuck outta Wal-Mart! I mean, go to Rodeo Drive, we can afford it.”
The door closed and their muted voices grew more and more faint. Until the room was silent.
Adam’s bulging eyes stared at the strip of light glowing beneath the closet door. How could he have let all this happen? He was not that stupid, not that desperate for sex. Was he?
That explains why I’ve been getting so much, he thought. Alyssa’s the only one who’s not fucking me to death. Alyssa was different. He wanted to go to her, tell her everything. But it would get worse, he was sure, and he did not want her connected. She could not know a single detail about what he had decided, at that moment there in the closet, to do.
TWENTY-TWO
The sun shone somewhere behind the ugly layer of dirt in the sky. High in the distance, an airliner climbed steadily but slowly, as if its engines could not reach full power in such polluted air.
Adam and Carter were stretched out on lounge chairs in the shade near Carter’s pool. They stared silently through their sunglasses at the backyard. Birds chirped and sang loudly all around them.
It was almost four o’clock in the afternoon, hours after their visit to the hospital. After leaving Rain’s bedroom, Adam had been desperate to get out of his house. He had gone to Carter’s, surprised to find him swimming in the pool. He told Carter what had happened in Rain’s room, what he had overheard.
Carter had not reacted in more than a minute. Just stared out over the yard, watching the noisy birds. His silence made Adam nervous.
“Are you okay?” Carter asked. “What are you going to do?”
Adam did not take his eyes off the yard. He sat in a ball, arms folded over his bent knees, chin resting on his arm. He shrugged. “I just...I can’t believe Rain was supposed to fuck me...and Gwen wasn’t. Gwen started on me before Rain even got here. But I know what Rain meant now about their ‘original plan.’ They were going to get me to kill Dad. I mean, between Rain fucking my brains out, and Gwen fucking my brains out, and on top of that, Gwen getting beaten up by my dad...I think it would have worked. But they were stabbing each other in the back over me. I’m not worth that kinda shit!”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Adam. You’re worth nothing but shit.” After a moment of thought, Carter said, “Maybe Gwen was protecting herself.”
Carter’s remark was like a light coming on in a dark room. It made perfect sense. Adam turned and sat on the edge of the long chair, faced Carter.
“Yeah, she was probably afraid Rain was going to do exactly what Rain is going to do, if I don’t stop her,” he said.
Carter nodded. “And maybe she thought some hot sweet lovin’ would make you less likely to go along with Rain and kill her.” He shrugged. “And it worked. She’s been your biggest problem with this all along, right?”
Adam nodded slowly while an absurd image formed in his head: standing naked and rigid in posture and penis on a giant gameboard, being moved here and there by two giant, lovely, feminine hands.
“I wonder what she’d do if she found out,” Carter said.
“If who found out what?”
“If Rain found out you were doing her mom.”
Adam laughed. “That’s a great idea! Oh, shit, that could turn into a catfight. Wouldn’t that be cool? I’ll have to get out the video camera. It’d be so wonderful if they killed each other. Oh, Jesus, I wish I could get them all to kill each other.”
“Might not be such a good idea to start trouble at home. Maybe you should get your ass outta there, get a place of your own.”
Adam nodded. “That’s not a bad idea.” He thought about it awhile. “Under normal circumstances, that’s probably what I’d do. But I think I’m gonna stay there for a while and kill all of them.”
Carter flinched, watched him carefully for a moment.
“You’ll have to help me,” Adam said. “You said you would.”
Carter cleared his throat. “Yeah. I did, didn’t I?”
“Unless you were just in it for the blow jobs.”
“I wouldn’t get my dick anywhere near Rain now.”
Adam left the chair and walked around it slowly. “I may have to.”
“Could you? After this?”
“Oh, yeah, I could. Easily. She likes me to hit her during sex. Beat her.” A grin opened slowly on his face. “I think I could make her pretty Goddamned happy, if she’d give me another chance.”
Carter shook his head rapidly, waving his hands in the air. “No, no, no, Adam, if you’re gonna kill her later, beating her up now is just gonna make trouble for you. That’s the kinda thing that’ll make you look a lot more suspicious afterward.”
“You think?”
“I know, you lumbering bumblefuck!” Carter stood, a towel slung around his neck and hanging from his shoulders. “How do you wanna do it?”
“I’d like to put them in one of those giant, flat, square things they used in Superman 2. Send Dad, Gwen, and Rain hurtling through space together for all eternity. But I wouldn’t know where to start looking for one of those things, would you? So we’re going to call your friend.”
“What friend?”
“Billy Rivers. The guy with the exploding throat.” Adam stopped, faced him. “By the way, you were swimming earlier. You haven’t been in that pool since before eighth grade.”
“Well, I’m kinda self-conscious about, y’know, taking my shirt off when other people’re around, that’s why. You know me. But since we haven’t been able to get back to the gym, I figured I’d get some exercise on my own.”
“That’s good, Carter. I’m glad.”
They went upstairs to Carter’s studio to make the call. When he got an answering machine, Carter did not leave a message, just hung up. “I’m sure he’s home. He never answers the phone. Let’s go to his place.”
Billy Rivers lived in the San Fernando Valley, in North Hollywood. On the way there, Adam said, “From now on, I think we should be very, very careful.”
“Careful about what?”
“Everything. Don’t do anything that might get you noticed. You know, don’t be loud or obnoxious, or anything. People remember stuff like that. We don’t want to be remembered.”
“Yeah, right.�
�� After nearly a minute of frowning through the windshield, Carter asked, “Um, why is it exactly that we don’t want to be remembered?”
“Once this is over, I’ll be the only one left, they’ll have to suspect me. For a while, anyway, but I’ll have alibis. Theoretically. I don’t know what they’ll be yet. Anyway, if I’m charged, there’ll be a trial. The prosecution’s gonna be looking for witnesses to testify against me. So we never know when we’re being witnessed by a potential witness.”
“A trial, huh?” Carter sounded concerned.
Adam took a look at his friend, saw the worry in his face. “Don’t worry, Carter. No matter what happens to me, you’ll be fine. If I end up in the O.J. chair, you won’t be involved.”
“I wasn’t worried about that,” Carter said. “I guess I didn’t...” He was silent awhile. “I guess I didn’t stop to think about it until now. A trial never occurred to me.”
“It’s good to think about it, but don’t get attached to the idea. It’s not gonna happen, if I can help it.”
Billy Rivers lived in an apartment complex that looked like an old, run-down motel. It might have been at one time. It was called Waving Palms Estates. The palms were too short and squat to wave, even if they had a reason, and nowhere in sight could Adam find anything that might be called an “estate.”
There was a small courtyard in the center of the U-shaped building. No pool or playground, just weeds standing in the cracks of an expanse of old concrete, some fossilized dog feces here and there.
A man sat outside a ground-level corner apartment in the back. His chair appeared to be of the lawn variety—the kind with a folding aluminum frame and faded strips of worn, ratty nylon stretched across the seat and back—although it was impossible to see enough of the chair to tell. The man wore a pair of horn-rimmed glasses, small purple shorts, and house slippers. His enormous belly and two sour-milk-skinned breasts, inverted triangles of flesh that sagged at opposite angles, staunchly obeyed the laws of gravity. A ballgame played on a small radio perched on the window ledge behind him.
“Looks like somebody sculpted that guy outta Crisco,” Carter whispered.
“Ignore him. Don’t even look at him.”
But the man looked at them. He reached up and lowered his glasses on his nose. Worked his toothless gums as he peered over the top of the frames at Adam and Carter.
The man called out, something unintelligible. It had the same sound as globs of cold Cream of Wheat hitting a hard, flat surface. It hardly sounded like English. Adam and Carter hurried up the stairs. They were halfway up when the man called again, this time louder and somewhat clearer.
“Hey, you boyth! Who ya here for?” If rubber could talk, it would have the same voice. The man stared up at them, arms arest on the sizeable roll of fat that went around the middle of his body, like a large girdle of cream cheese going bad.
Carter and Adam stopped halfway up the stairs and looked down at the man. Standing, his morbidly fat belly threatened to crush his bony, knobby-kneed legs.
“What did you say?” Carter said.
“Are you deaf? I thaid, who ya here for?”
Carter pointed up at the second door and said, “Billy Rivers, apartment 202.”
The man nodded, waved. “I’m Floyd. The manager.”
They started up the stairs again.
“He’s the manager?” Carter muttered.
“You think he even owns a shirt?” Adam whispered.
“I’ve only been here a few times, but always at night. I’ve never seen the guy before. I’d remember him.”
All the apartments along that side had sliding glass doors. A dark blue curtain hung on the inside of Billy’s. Carter knocked on the glass.
“That party we went to wasn’t here, was it?” Adam asked.
“No, that was his parents’ house. He still lived with them back then. His dad’s a hack musician. Scores low-budget, straight-to-video action movies. His mom works in kiddie cartoon shows at Fox.” He knocked again, a little harder.
“Why does he live in this place?”
The curtain pulled aside and a young man in his late twenties looked out. His eyes and mouth turned downward sadly on the outsides. He held a cordless phone to his left ear. Half his mouth smiled when he saw Carter, and he opened the door.
“C’mon in,” Billy said, his hand over the phone’s mouthpiece. “Just give me a sec, okay?” He turned, disappeared into the bathroom and closed the door.
The apartment was dark and thick with the smells of stale cigarette butts and marijuana. For a change, the air was worse inside than outside. Carter left the glass door open to air the place out a little.
The apartment was too cluttered and cramped for furniture. Adam noticed what the room was cluttered with and gasped. Wall shelves held every kind of face imaginable. Bloody human body parts were lined up on the floor. Prosthetics covered the tabletops, even in the tiny kitchenette. Adam turned around slowly, marveling at Billy’s work.
“This is incredible,” he said. “No offense. Carter, but he’s even better than you. That’s saying a lot, too.”
“‘Course he’s better than me. He’s a genius.”
“And he’s not working professionally?”
“No,” Carter whispered. “That’s a long story. He got his first job on some monster movie, but something happened. Nobody’s sure what, but it really hurt him, I guess, changed him. I don’t know if it’s true, but I heard his parents pulled some strings to get him dropped from the job. They don’t like what he does. They think it’s too ugly. Beneath them, or something. But it’s what Billy lives for. He moved out, disappeared for almost a year. By the time anybody saw him again, he’d found this place, and he...wasn’t the same.”
“You didn’t perform an immediate intervention? This place is not a place to live. Won’t his parents help him out?”
“They do. He takes their money, but I heard he hasn’t spoken to them since he left their house. He saves money by living here, so he can afford to make those.” He nodded at the faces on the shelves.
“Does he sell them?” Adam whispered.
“Once in a while, to fans. But always for a lot less than they’re worth.” Carter shook his head, frustrated. “If he won’t work in the movies, he should at least make a living off these things. They’d sell at sci-fi conventions like crack in Inglewood. He could take orders, do custom work.” Carter shrugged. “Nobody knows why he doesn’t. But we all think it’s because of whatever happened on his first job.”
“Hell, I may buy a couple myself, just to have on the shelf. We’ve got to get this guy out of here, Carter. Get him some work.”
“Don’t say anything to him about...anything, okay? He won’t talk about it, and it’ll just upset him. I’m serious, maybe you should just let me do the talking, okay?”
Adam nodded as Billy came out of the bathroom.
“Sorry, Carter,” Billy said. “How ya doin’, man?”
“Good, Billy. You remember my friend, Adam, don’t you?”
Billy swept back some of his long, thin, brown hair, which fell past his shoulders. His scalp was visible on top, where the hair was thinning fast. “Uh...sorry, ’fraid I don’t. But nice to meetcha, Adam. Any frienda Carter’s. You guys want somethin’ t’drink?” He was about six feet tall, but his shoulders hunched and his head drooped. He was so thin, his chest appeared to be collapsing.
“I don’t think we’ll be sticking around, Billy,” Adam said, glancing at Carter.
“Yeah, Billy, we need you to help us find somebody. Remember a party you threw at your parents’ house about two years ago?
Billy frowned as he reached behind him to scratch his back. His body stiffened suddenly. Mouth dropped open, eyes squeezed tightly shut.
“Billy?” Carter said.
Billy dropped to the floor on his back and began to convulse.
“Oh, Jesus!” Adam said.
The convulsions stopped. Something moved under the tank top. Unde
r Billy’s skin. In his belly.
“Oh, Jesus!” Adam shouted.
Billy’s flat belly exploded. Viscous blood and globs of organs were thrown up through the holes in the tank top, and splattered all over Billy.
Adam’s jaw hurt because his mouth was open so far, but he did not feel it. He was too preoccupied with the tears in the fabric of his sanity. His horror became panic, and he ran from the apartment crying, “Oh, Jesus! Oh, God! Oh, Jesus! Oh, God!” Halfway down the stairs, he heard laughter coming from Billy’s apartment.
“Fanfuckingtastic, man!” Carter shouted.
Below, Floyd eyed Adam on the stairs. Leaning on the rail, trying to catch his breath and slow down his heart, Adam stared back. Floyd lowered his glasses and shouted something that sounded like a spitball hitting a chalkboard. Adam ignored him and went back up the stairs.
“Hey, you okay?” Carter asked, stepping out of the apartment.
Adam was angry. Embarrassed, too, but mostly angry.
“That was something new!” Carter said with enthusiasm. “His exploding stomach!”
Adam’s voice was low and even, but unpleasant. “You know what’s going to explode, Carter? Me, that’s what, I’m going to explode if we don’t just do what we came here to do and leave. Okay?”
“He does that kinda thing all the time,” Carter said apologetically. “Tries new stuff on his friends, you know? I’m sorry if you—”
“Let’s just do it, okay?” Adam said, and went back into the apartment.
TWENTY-THREE
"Don’t piss off any truck drivers,” Carter said as Adam drove them into the desert outside of Los Angeles.
“Why?” Adam asked.
“Didn’t you see Duel, man? You wanna end up like Dennis Weaver?”
“Carter, nobody wants to end up like Dennis Weaver.”
Laughter in the backseat. Billy said, “You guys’re funny.”
Back in his apartment. Billy had told them it would be a very bad idea to go see his friend, Diz, on their own. “For one thing,” he had said, “it’s almost impossible t’find the place. And they don’t like, um, strangers showin’ up, y’know, unannounced.” Adam had suggested they call ahead, but Billy said they would get only a voicemail system.
