by Paul Slatter
Rann managed to stand, and swung his right foot up and outwards in a spin—as he had thousands of times before in the gym—and caught the thug straight in the throat, putting him on his ass. Then he spun his left foot around and, feeling his balls squash in his jeans, brought his foot up into the remaining thug’s chest and sent him off his feet and into the wall, breaking the off-white plasterboard as he hit.
Turning, he looked out to Nina, still texting outside on the balcony and then to Archall Diamond, who’d managed to retrieve his gun and was training it on Rann.
“Keep up the Bruce Lee shit and you’se getting shot and killed,” he said.
And that’s when Rann blacked out.
Chapter Thirty
Chendrill pulled the Aston Martin up behind the rear of Dan’s new Ferrari, which he was too embarrassed to drive because it couldn’t accelerate as fast as a Tour de France cyclist and would only go over ninety kilometers an hour if he was on going down a hill.
Lifting the script from the passenger seat, he opened it up on the first page and began to read. There was a lead guy called Marshall, a leading girl called Candy and they had to get to the moon with a huge deflector to send a fleet of alien space ships towards the sun so as they would burn up in the sun’s rays. If they didn’t make it, the aliens would come to earth and eat all the insects and that in turn would kill the planet. And only Candy knows they’re coming because she can read minds and no one takes her seriously, except an astronaut who’s just lost his job with NASA because he has flat feet, and they steal a space ship in the hope that they can save the world.
Fuck me, what a load of nonsense, Chendrill thought, as he lay on top off the bed and got to the last page. Then he looked up to see Dan’s Mum, Tricia, standing there with no clothes on when he thought she was in the kitchen making him a cup of tea. He asked, “Where’s Dan?”
“Asleep,” Tricia answered and moved towards him, climbing inside the sheets. “Why don’t you turn off your phone so that man doesn’t interrupt us?”
“What if there’s an emergency?” Chendrill answered with a smile and turned the phone off and began unbuttoning his nicely ironed yellow Hawaiian. She said, “I know I shouldn’t say that. You know the way the man looks after you and Dan, giving you sports cars and stuff, but it’s like he senses when we’re making love and calls to interrupt.”
“Maybe he does,” Chendrill replied and thought it very well could be. He’d had an old girlfriend who did just that. He could be anywhere at any time and as soon as he was interested in another girl to any degree, she’d call. He said, “Some people are sensitive to that kind of thing.”
“You think he likes you in that way?”
“You can’t write it off,” Chendrill replied. “The man’s gay and I’m a heterosexual man and that’s what most gay guys like, or so they say—you know real men, not over the top flowery ones like Mazzi Hegan. It’s like expecting me to be attracted to some bull dyke because she’s a woman, but looks like a guy and wants to thump me out because I’ve got a dick. It’s the way the world turns.”
“And what about Dan?”
“Girls love Dan.”
“That’s not what I asked?”
“Sorry?”
“Who does Dan like?”
******
Dan lay on his bed with his trousers around his knees and listened to the muffled sounds of Chendrill gabbing on to his mother upstairs and waited for them to get it on so he could also, turning on his computer watching porn that doesn’t involve guys with big moustaches and knocking one out. Then after he was done he’d get the broom and start smashing it against the ceiling until they were done also. And so it went. Fifteen minutes after he’d banged the broom, they stopped. Thirty minutes after that, Chendrill was knocking on the door of Dan’s basement room, wanting to give him something, and, taking the chance of getting another black eye, he replied, “Come back when you’ve got some style.”
To which Chendrill said through the door, “Speak to me like that again and you’ll be wearing that broom stick you keep by the bed as a hat.”
Then he opened the door, which Dan thought was locked, and came uninvited in and heard Dan say, “How did you know about the broom?”
“There’s no other way you could wrap on the ceiling without getting out of bed, unless you wear your high heels or stand on a chair.”
Then he threw the script at him saying, “Here you go, movie star boy. Sebastian wants you to read this today, you’re meeting the director tomorrow at the office.”
“Can’t he come here?”
Fuck me, Chendrill thought, the kid was either already a prima donna or completely bone idle, and settling on the latter he said, “Sebastian said I’ve got to make sure you read it or he won’t sleep tonight.”
“I will.”
“Go on then, start.”
Then he heard Dan say, “Who do you think you are, my dad?”
“No—just read the fucking thing, will you. You’ll like it. It’s a piece of shit all about space men and aliens that are going to destroy the planet by eating all the insects.”
“What planet and what part of the solar system they from?”
It was a good question and one that wasn’t answered in the screenplay. From what Chendrill could remember, they just came from outer space and even if it had been mentioned somewhere and they’d made the name up, he’d have been none the wiser. He said, “I don’t know? Read it and find out.”
And picking it up, Dan did, and taking about three to four seconds a page, skimmed the whole thing front to back then threw it to the corner on the floor, laid back on the bed, placed his arms behind his head and said to Chendrill, “There you go—done! You can go back upstairs—mum’s waiting.”
Letting the ‘mum’s waiting’ go for now, Chendrill took a breath and said, “You’re supposed to read the fucking thing.”
“I just did. You saw me for fuck’s sake, and now you can tell them all back at the office you watched me go through it front to back without lying.”
And when he got back, he did just that and then heard Sebastian say, “Chuck, I’ve just heard on the hush-hush there’s a parachutist guy who’s going to fly in on the crowd at the fireworks tomorrow wearing a monkey suit.”
“I know—and it’s a squirrel suit. I was supposed to meet him the other night, but he didn’t show. Probably got caught in a vortex somewhere as he was flying in.”
“I’ve booked seats in the VIP box for everyone. Will you be able to be there?”
“Why don’t you sit on the beach with everyone else?” It’s what people did, the city would turn up every summer and sit on the beach for a week of international fireworks held in competition—unless you were stupid or rich enough to pay thousands to sit in an executive box, which Sebastian obviously had.
Chendrill asked, suddenly worried that he hadn’t asked Dan’s mother to go, “You asked Dan?”
“Yes—I sent him a text.”
“A text?”
“Yes, Chuck—it’s the way you talk to the youth of today.”
“What about his mother, you invite her?” and, true to form, Sebastian answered, “I wouldn’t dream of not asking her.”
Good, Chendrill thought, he’d go to see this guy fly in, tell everyone around him he was supposed to meet the guy—and would soon, even though Rasheed, who was supposed to introduce them, was dead. Then he’d sit next to Tricia and discreetly hold her hand and drink champagne all night while some corporate sponsor from some far-off land like China or Italy let off about a million dollars worth of gunpowder into the sky. It would’ve been nice, he thought, if he could still meet the guy in the squirrel suit before the show. Then he could invite him up to the executive box and steal some of the guy’s glory as he introduced him to them all—but sadly, the man who had taught himself to fly like a bird was, like Rasheed, also dead.
It was about seven in the morning when Chendrill got out of Dan’s mother’s bed, took a shower, and wa
lked down stairs to knock quietly on Dan’s door to get him up for this important meeting for which he was already on the verge of being late. Belinda was already outside with the limo and Chendrill wondered if this time he was going to be either trimming the hedge or doing the lawn in the vain hope Dan’s mother might see some future in the pair of them, and that she’d allow him to whisk her off to the Punjab to meet his family.
He said, “Dan—it’s time to get up.”
Nothing. Waiting, he knocked again.
“Dan!”
He tried again.
“Dan, get up, you need to go to work.” Then he waited.
Nothing. He tried again.
“Dan—superstar, get up—you’re working.”
And not wanting to waste anymore time, he opened the door with his shoulder. The script still lay in the corner in exactly the same spot Dan had thrown it the evening before. And all pissed off as he looked up from the pillow, Chendrill heard Dan mumble, “You ever heard of knocking,”
“I’ve been doing that for five minutes. You need to get up or you’ll be late.”
“Late for what?”
“Meeting this director.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know why.”
Putting his head back on the pillow, Dan closed his eyes and, dismissing him, said, “Tell him I’m not interested.”
“You tell him you’re not interested.”
Then Dan opened his eyes again and this time even more pissy said, “Look, I’m tired alright so just lay off.”
“I don’t care,” Chendrill said, wanting to just leave him where he lay and be done with this kid who wasn’t his but who he had to act like a father to, and then carried on, “It’s not my problem if you’ve been up all night wanking when you should have been reading that script and getting an early night because you had to meet this guy. So get up.”
Dan sat himself up and looked Chendrill straight in the eye and said, “Tell ’em you’ll be in it instead, it’ll give you something else to do instead of hanging around here all day and sticking your dick in my mother.”
And that was it.
******
No one was more surprised than Belinda when the door opened to the back of his limo and Dan arrived on the plush leather back seat with a thump, on time—wearing the pajamas his mother had gotten for Christmas six years ago that he still liked to wear because they were nice and soft, even if they were a bit tight and the buttons had popped off.
Belinda looked to Chendrill and wondered if he was wearing his pajamas also and said, “Hello Sir, I am happy Mr. Dan is on time this morning. They are very happy this morning when I arrive for this.”
Belinda watched as Chendrill opened the front passenger seat door and sat down. He said, “Stick the child locks on so the little prick can’t escape. He’s tired.”
They arrived an half hour later. Not having moved from the position he’d landed in on the rear seat, Dan sat up, stared at Chendrill, rubbed his face, then said, “There’s no need to be so rough.”
“There’s no need to be so rude,” Chendrill replied, and heard Dan say as he got out the car and began to walk across the road without a word to Belinda, “I had every intention of coming in, you know.”
When, tomorrow? Chendrill thought, as he thanked Belinda with a nod and tapped the roof top as he began to follow the new international sensation across the road and through the doors to Slave’s offices.
They hit the lift together and rode it to the first floor without a word and saw that the whole crowd was there in the reception when the doors opened. Putting down Fluffy, Sebastian looked to Dan, and, seeing he was all pissed off and still in his pajamas, understood that getting the kid there hadn’t been without incident. He walked straight to Chendrill, reached out, shook his hand, and said, “As always Chuck, you never let me down.”
And with that, Chendrill knew all was forgiven for the black eye. He said to Sebastian, “Does this mean my plate’s getting glued back together?”
And without letting go of Chendrill’s hand, Sebastian replied, “You can rest assured Chuck, your plate will never be broken.” Then he looked to Dan in his pajamas and said, “Stay young for as long as you can Daniel, but if you act like a baby, then you’ll be dealing with Chuck.”
Right on cue, Patrick took over the room. Although the closest he’d ever been to a movie in his life was the cinema, with his hands held high he still said to everyone, “Guys this is going to be easy—we’re going to make history.”
And he wasn’t wrong.
******
Rupert Mikes was nervous as hell as he rode in the back of Belinda’s limo and wondered where the dribble on the back seat had come from. He hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before, worrying about his film, and was as happy as he was sad. First he’d gotten a call from the studio executive who’d told him they’d passed the movie over to Slave for a fee, and then one from his agent in L.A., who he hated, telling him that after four years of hard work the picture was being financed at last. He was happy for all this, but like all things in this world that fall from the tree of luck, he was also sad that the people now doing his film had, as far he could see, only made commercials. But what could he do? Leaning forward and looking for a glimmer of reassurance, he said to Belinda, “You work for these guys, do you?”
Belinda looked into the rear-view mirror and, happy he was being acknowledged as a human being, smiled at the man who was finding it hard to sit down and relax in the back.
“Yes sir, I have contract, sir.”
“They’re good then, are they? They’re good, yes?”
“Yes, it is good. Very good contract, two owners—one rides bicycle and the other drive. I park car, you see, he cannot parallel park it on the road.”
Taking it all in, Rupert sat there, closed his eyes, and shaking his head asked, “You saying they can’t drive?”
“No sir, they drive, yes, very good, but cannot park.”
Fuck me, he thought, and sat back in the seat and let out a deep breath—fuck me, fuck me. I’m in the hands of Canadians and if they don’t even know how to drive properly, what the fuck’s going to happen with my film? Then he said, “What about this other guy, this Patrick fellow? You know him?” And as he said it, a bus passed the car on the inside and stopped just in front of Belinda’s limo with Patrick’s face beaming his beautiful smile right back at them. Belinda said, “This is him sir, very nice man, sir.”
He was a very nice man. He’d tipped him big time after Belinda dropped him at the airport and made him feel like a million dollars all the way there with his compliments. Belinda carried on, “He is very big movie producer and also agent.”
“And realtor?” Rupert Mikes asked as the knot in his stomach grew twice the size that it was when he’d stepped out the shower only an hour earlier.
“Yes sir, he sells houses also.”
Oh my God, oh my god, oh my God, Rupert thought as Belinda pulled away again, passing Patrick’s pearly whites as he did.
That’s it, he thought as Belinda took a right off the main drag into Yaletown and cruised slowly along the old wood-framed warehouse buildings converted into high-end shops and offices and pulled up out front of Slave Media. He was just going to go in and take the bull by the horns and get his film made. That’s what he did—he got films made. He hadn’t pulled out of the car park at UCLA with a degree in movie making and the students’ favorite award for his film about the blind window cleaner and his best friend with no hands for nothing. He’d bring in a crew from L.A., kick some ass up here, and show these fuckers how it’s done. He’d done it before in Jordan with the Arabs when he made I’m a Christian so Stick Me on the Cross, which had almost made it to Sundance and he’d do it again with these Canucks.
Without a word of thanks, Rupert Mikes was out the door of Belinda’s limo, through the lobby, up the elevator, and straight into Slave’s reception without barely taking a breath. With the briefest of ‘hello’s’
he had Sebastian, Dan, Patrick, Buffy, and Chendrill lined up in the boardroom where he began to deliver his call to arms saying, “First I want you to know how much I love the work you do here at Slave. It’s just fantastic and I appreciate your support for my film, which I know without a doubt is going to take the science fiction genre and turn it on its head. Forget Scott’s Alien or even Cameron’s Aliens—which was equally good—what I’m going to bring to you is something completely special and unique in its field. And starting with you Dan, whom I’d like to say firstly is doing sensational work taking everyone by storm in L.A. with his BlueBoy campaign and will continue to do so with When the Shadows Form. So getting right to it, I want you to tell me exactly how you feel about the script and if the elements within its subtext are right for you and your career right now.”
And wondering if the man was ever going to stop, Dan stared at him with his feet up on a chair, still in his pajamas, and said, “Sorry, you’re talking to me?”
Rupert Mikes nodded, took a deep breath, staying with it and still smiling, and said, “Yes, and I want you to be completely honest and open about how you feel about the script. You see, I find honesty is the best policy when it comes to making a movie, as we all know, it’s not just me here who’s going to be bringing this creation into existence—as I have brought many others to life—it’s all of us, everyone, from the guy who’s driving us in the mornings to the guy who’s cleaning up the shit at the end of the night. We are all making this film together and once everyone’s on board, I know then we’re going to have a fantastic movie and something we can all be proud of. So Dan, right now, tell me what you think.”
And nodding his appreciation to the man’s openness, Dan answered, “Yeah sure—it’s a complete and utter crock of shit.”
Rupert Mikes stood there for a moment, not sure if he’d heard Dan right, then realizing he had. Looking at this male model sitting in his teddy bear pajama bottoms and top that didn’t fit, he said, “I’m not joking here, have you actually read it?”