Are Snakes Necessary?

by Brian De Palma

  “Filming,” the second AD replies. “A movie.”

  “Oh? What’s the title?” Rogers asks.

  “Vertigo.”

  “Didn’t Hitchcock…?”

  “Yes.” The AD is impatient. “This is the original French version,” he says gruffly.

  “I see,” Rogers says. “Is the tower closed?”

  “No, no. Just portions. You can use any of the other three lifts.” He gestures towards a small crowd across the way, near one of the tower’s other legs.

  “Thanks,” says Rogers, taking his wife’s arm and steering her past the film crew, towards the crowd of students and tourists lining up for the next elevator.

  CHAPTER 51

  All is racing and running on the plaza outside the Eiffel Tower. Even the pigeons seem hurried as they skitter on wrinkled feet in clucking pursuit of dirty crumbs.

  Fanny darts towards the tower. She is oblivious to Brock’s presence, and has no idea he’s following her as she crosses the plaza. She quickens her step.

  She is focused. It’s a bit of a trick to keep the anxiety and the excitement in balance. She rushes past the film unit and gets in line as the elevator in the right-hand leg of the tower returns from the top.

  Brock is six or seven tourists behind Fanny in line. Lester is in line too, bringing up the rear, eyeing the back of Brock’s head and wondering if he should wait for the next car up or chance riding in the same car together.

  Fanny fixes her hair. Tucks a little piece behind her ear and wonders if her lipstick is too much.

  The elevator door opens. A family with three school-age kids strolls out. Fanny is impatient. Slowly the line files into the car.

  Fanny, who was one of the first to enter, is standing in the back, planted in one corner, looking out at the magnificent view. She still doesn’t see Brock and Lester.

  Fanny’s elevator travels up the tower’s girders. Brock keeps his face turned to the view. Lester works his way through the crowded elevator and tries to get a closer look at him.

  Nick, having seen the senator head into the other elevator a minute earlier, followed along and now, as the doors open, watches Rogers and his wife, all smiles, walk across the observation platform.

  CHAPTER 52

  Fanny and her unseen companions, Brock and Lester, approach the top of the tower.

  It’s windy but bright. Connie and Lee are here, fully here, both of them, in this moment. Gone for the first time in as long as he can remember are the senator’s thoughts about policy issues, opposition research, war chests.

  Connie is so glad to be with her husband, so glad to be away from the reporters and the pressure and the questions, that she has even forgotten to think what the wind may do to her hair.

  The senator and his wife head for the east corner of the tower, where, Connie recalls, Rogers first told her he did not intend to live without her.

  What was I wearing on that sunny day? Connie wonders. She is surprised to find that she can’t remember.

  Rogers takes Connie’s hand and they walk to stand at the edge of the railing and behold the view.

  Rogers pulls Connie towards him. “Do you remember the last time we were here?”

  Connie is all smiles. “Lee, you’ve got to be kidding. Of course I do.”

  “Almost thirty years ago,” he says.

  “To the day. To the hour.”

  The words are just out of Connie’s nicely lipsticked lips when Fanny’s elevator arrives. The doors slide open. The passengers file out, slowly.

  CHAPTER 53

  Nick observes the strange entourage gathering on the observation deck. Lee and Connie are chest to chest, in fleshful embrace as Fanny walks out of the elevator. Rogers leans in and kisses Connie. Nick sees that Fanny is watching and has caught her man, kissing his wife. He sees the paralyzed, deer-in-headlights look on Fanny’s face.

  She blinks back tears—or is it rage? There is a point where viscera are so powerful that they compress an entire range of feelings—injury, grief, fury—into something that can be mistaken for madness. Nick sees this look on Fanny’s face as she watches Lee and Connie. Fanny is no doubt thinking, Hey! That should be me! Nick puts his camera to his eye and closes in on them.

  Through the lens, Nick sees a man in a tan suit and green tie move up behind Fanny. Barton Brock! The sinister creep who set Elizabeth’s and Fanny’s lives off course.

  Fanny tenses up. She is coiled like a snake and looks like she is about to strike, to confront Rogers, or worse.

  Nick watches Brock take this in and move, quietly, towards Fanny.

  Fanny, in turn, moves closer to Connie Rogers. It all happens in that funny slow-motion way events unfold in the heat of certain moments. Nick’s camera is still trained on Lee and Connie.

  Fanny comes into Rogers’ view as he, deep in his embrace, stares dreamily into the distance behind Connie’s shoulder. He looks aghast.

  Nick starts shooting. Snap. Snap.

  Rogers’ face is frozen with something like terror and genuine confusion. Obviously he is too surprised to summon his Everything-is-fine-Everything-is-under-control-Stand-back-everyone! senatorial command.

  Instead he drops his wife from his grasp. He makes a helpless flailing motion with his arms. His lover! He backs away. Fanny looks confused. What is the blank dead look in his eye?

  Fanny reaches one hand out towards him and exclaims, “Lee. It’s me. Fanny.”

  Hearing the voice, Mrs. Rogers turns. She’s used to Lee’s fans. But in Paris? Too funny!

  Brock is fast. He doesn’t waste a moment. He springs to action, a regular shot-put move, and shoves Fanny out of the way before Mrs. Rogers locates the voice. Fanny flies over the rail and off the side of the tower. Nick continues shooting in horror. Lester goes after Brock. He wrestles him to the ground. Rogers and his wife watch in a state of semi-shock and disbelief.

  Nick, crushed by the ending he has orchestrated, drops his camera to his side and looks over the railing at the dark shape that is Fanny on the plaza below.

  CHAPTER 54

  The news reports agree with the general consensus that the young girl might have been a stalker, and for the most part celebrate Barton Brock and his heroic reflexes. “Candidate’s aide deflects oncoming human projectile,” is how one paper puts it. “Protects candidate’s wife from harm.” Nick’s photographs document the event.

  Connie finds these reports bewildering. And mortifying.

  A stalker? This mixed-up girl with some sort of deranged interest in her husband? How could she ever have thought that Lee would be mixed up with this poor, lost girl?

  The events on the tower happened so quickly, Connie barely knew what hit her, or more accurately what Barton Brock kept from hitting her.

  There she was, in Lee’s arms, Paris and their life together, past and future, glittering before them, Connie reveling in the pure pleasure of having Lee all to herself. She couldn’t remember the last time they’d been together, alone and away from the stress of daily life and Lee’s work.

  But here they were, renewing their vows, standing together, bound by a whole history of children and shared experiences, happy, banal and disappointing, all of it. The awful illness, the jubilant re-elections, all of it mixed up together.

  And standing there, she felt they were triumphant over time, together. This, thought Connie, as she stood with the wind whipping past them, as she stood with Lee in the Paris air, this is what marriage is: a history that binds, that offers itself, despite the boredom, loneliness and even the despair that plagues us all, as a reservoir of strength and hope, a bulwark against the world.

  And then Brock—where did he even come from?—bursting out of nowhere and the girl flying over the edge and all the commotion that followed. Connie held tight to Lee’s hand as the police rushed her and the rest of the people on the platform downstairs for questioning. Connie had no answers. She’d seen nothing. Understood nothing, except that the moment she’d shared with her husband had
been shattered.

  She and Lee weren’t detained for long. He tucked her into the Mercedes and off they drove to the four-star dinner he’d booked as an anniversary surprise. Her heart was still racing halfway through the meal. She accepted the glass of champagne the waiter offered. Connie’s doctors probably wouldn’t mind if she had a sip or two, even with the Parkinson’s medicines, not on this occasion.

  After dinner, she and Lee went back to the hotel as planned and Lee drafted what Connie thinks a lovely letter expressing his regret over the loss of life and counseling all to march forward, to live life to the fullest and in harmony with our best American values.

  The next morning, amid the flurry of news coverage, the reaction of the staff is similar to the general reaction, with an element of pride blended in: Barton Brock, one of their own, kept frail Connie Rogers out of harm’s way. Too bad a life was lost in the process. But that videographer? A weird one, no? A stalker, they’re saying.

  The flight home is uneventful. In the days that follow, except for a few very bad dreams, Connie thinks little about any of what she and Lee refer to, when necessary, only as “the tower.”

  The work in Rogers’ headquarters hums on until November 8, when Rogers, by a notable margin, handily wins Pennsylvania’s senatorial election.

  “Another term, another adventure,” he tells Brock after his democratic rival’s concession speech. “You look tired, Brock. Take some time off. We have a lot of work ahead.”

  CHAPTER 55

  Nick Sculley sorts out his own recent history in the Paris hotel room that once sheltered Fanny. What would he like to tell her now? God. He can’t think of a thing. It’s all so awful.

  “Sorry, kid.” That’s pretty much the extent of what he’d say if he could. How lame is that. Sorry, kid.

  But what else could you say to a bright young girl who threw it all away for junk love with someone who didn’t deserve her? Lee Rogers. What a joke. What a bad joke on voters and everyone else. Nick can’t even enjoy the good fortune the cataclysm of events has delivered to him.

  He told Manny he knew Fanny, explained how she had confided in him when he found her drunk on the Paris Métro.

  “You knew that girl? Did you take any pictures of her before the tower? A dozen publishers want her story!”

  Nick could barely respond. Great. Yes, he could write about her. And he’d finally get a publisher to publish his pictures. That book might sell. But Fanny was his friend. Her blood still stains the sidewalk outside the Eiffel Tower tourist station. And Brock is on his way to doing who knows what for that creep senator with the high-voltage smile and no apparent principles.

  “No way,” Nick told Manny.

  He leans on the rail of his Paris balcony, slightly soils the sleeve of his starched white shirt on the railing, and tries to make sense of things.

  CHAPTER 56

  Betty and Ben, nicely depleted from their first day in paradise, retreat to their bungalow. It is white white white. Bougainvillea blooms astoundingly in blinding pink and orange against the side of the little one-story building.

  It all seems perfect. And that’s deliberate. Betty has been careful to follow to the letter the instructions she received over the cell phone, the one she threw in the river.

  Lord how strange this is! thinks Betty, almost forgetting how desperate she is. She replays in her mind the instructions she’s received: “Your first night there, put on some romantic music. Do this at seven forty-five.”

  Betty checks the clock, then plugs her iPhone into the portable speaker system—hotel or bungalow rooms everywhere, even Cat Island, come with them—and presses play. Soft, sensuous music fills the room. Jobim.

  Betty tells Ben to get undressed and lie down, face down, under the sheet in the bedroom. She’s booked a special massage for the two of them, and the masseuse is on her way. He’ll get his first and then they’ll swap.

  She’s thinking: Oh, he’ll get his, all right.

  Special massage? I can go for that, Ben thinks as he puts his head on his forearm and waits.

  The recorded voice had instructed Betty to drop Ben’s room key in the trashcan in the ladies room beside the lobby. This is just what Betty does after she leaves the bungalow, then heads to the hotel bar at the other end of the main building.

  She still finds herself wondering if the whole thing is for real. The email, the cell phone—those were real. But will a total stranger actually fly to the Bahamas, dig through the trash in the ladies room, find the key, take it to Bungalow 412, and…and… It’s hard to believe. Hard to know if she even really, seriously wants it to be true. No, that’s not right: she wants it. She really does.

  Meanwhile, even if the whole thing is a big fat farce, it’s kind of fun. The sea air is pleasant; the hotel and the beaches are pretty. Betty goes to the hotel bar and orders herself a drink. She lifts the glass and toasts herself. “Here’s to the end of Ben and his cheating heart,” she says to herself as she inhales the drink in one big gulp. Then she orders another. She checks her watch. It’s 8:09.

  “Oh my goodness,” she says to the bartender, “how much do I owe you? I have to run. It’s after eight.”

  “Going to the show?” the bartender asks, meaning the duo in the piano bar covering Broadway classics; they go on at 8:15 and 10:15.

  “Uh-huh.” That should burn the time nicely into his mind.

  But the instructions were very specific; establish an airtight alibi. Airtight. Okay, thinks Betty. She picks up her drink, paper umbrella and all, and carries it over to a table where a nicely dressed middle-aged man is sitting with his young lady friend.

  And then she falls over their table, spilling her drink all over the older man’s lap.

  “You old coot,” she shouts. “Look at you. And look what you made me do!”

  The man looks startled.

  Betty lifts a water glass off the table and tosses its contents in the man’s face.

  Two waiters rush up and start mopping up the table and the man, who asks that they please remove Betty from his sight. Politely, one of the waiters takes her arm and leads her to the door.

  “Forgive me,” Betty whispers in the waiter’s ear, “I’m a little tipsy and I didn’t like the look of that fellow. Too old to be carrying on with a young woman, don’t you think? It’s okay, I’m out of here. Nearly 8:15 isn’t it? Yes sir! Thanks for the escort.”

  Betty thinks she is a very good actress.

  The waiter thinks, Whatever they’re paying me here, it’s not enough.

  Inside Bungalow 412, Ben opens his eyes when he hears the bedroom door open. He feels the light breeze from the ceiling fan on his bare skin, feels the old ache in his balls.

  He hears the masseuse approaching. Peeking to one side, he sees a tall woman with short dark hair in a light white sheath dress.

  “Close your eyes,” the woman says without turning around.

  Eyes closed, Ben hears the masseuse moving around. From the sound of it, she’s going through her handbag, probably for oils or whatever.

  He thinks of Lynette. He loves the way she makes him feel. She knows just how to touch him.

  “Hello,” says the masseuse, “I have something very special for you.” Her voice is low and smoky-sounding.

  Ben smiles. “What would you like me to do?”

  “Just relax. We’ll start with your back. Must be sore after the long flight, no?”

  Ben is confused. The masseuse sounds sexy. She has a familiar—naughty—intonation. But he can’t tell what is going on. Sexed-up visions of Lynette drift into his mind. Maybe he has imagined erotic connotations that aren’t here.

  He enjoys the feel of flesh on his shoulder. The masseuse has wet her fingertips with sweet-smelling oil and it is warm and transporting as it sinks into his skin.

  The masseuse presses her hands down the surface of his back. The oil melts around her fingers. Ben is conscious of a vague stirring in his loins.

  He listens as she reaches with o
ne hand for what he assumes is more oil, mmmm, smells like…what is that? Flowers? Citrus…?

  A volt of electric heat burns through Ben’s left lung. His head lurches upward. “What the fuck?” he’s about to yell but the current searing through his neck chokes the words before they get anywhere near his mouth, which fast fills with the hot iron taste of burnt blood.

  Elizabeth wrestles the blade out and drives it into Ben’s dark heart, again and again, four times.

  Hard work too. The body is a lot stronger than you’d think.

  Elizabeth leans back to avoid the blood gush, then takes off her dress, uses it to wipe the handle of the knife, steps into the shower, dries quickly and, exchanging her stained dress for a clean one she has in her bag, Elizabeth dresses quickly and lets herself out the bungalow.

  “Goodbye, Ben, pig,” she says, on her way out the door.

  Carefully following instructions, Betty returns to the corridor outside Bungalow 412 after Elizabeth has finished her business inside.

  She has called in an order for wine and cheese from room service. The delivery man is approaching as Betty heads down the long path towards the bungalow. And then, quite deliberately, Betty crashes straight into the waiter and knocks a bottle off his cart. “I’m so sorry I’m late. I didn’t want to disappoint my husband.” She acts, and in fact is, flustered.

  “That’s all right, madam,” says the waiter. “It’s pretty dark out here. Is this your bungalow? I have room service for you.”

  “Absolutely,” she says. “Let’s see if my husband wants anything else.”

  Betty is agitated and has to try several times to get her card key in the slot. She’s not sure what she’ll find inside the bungalow. What if everything went wrong? What if everything went exactly as planned? Betty is genuinely unsure which is worse. Her heart thumps under her dress.