Popcorn

by Ben Elton

  Bruce and Brooke braced themselves. Surely now the mayhem would begin. Wayne had moved to behind the couch where Scout was sitting. He had only to reach down into the cushions at her back to produce a machine-gun, and this appallingly provocative man would be dead. Scout herself need merely brush aside the cushion on her lap. Surely it was all over for Karl?

  “You talk big, Karl, but you’d never do it.” Bruce’s laugh was wooden as a daytime soap. “You always end up on the side of the underdog.”

  “Underdog? Those scum?” Karl replied.

  Bruce was now convinced that Karl had a death wish.

  “Like I would waste my tears on such syphilitic maggots? I would puke on their graves and those of their mothers, who no doubt were whores.”

  Shut up! Every fibre of Bruce’s being willed this loudmouthed oaf to shut up. Brooke, too, was desperately trying to reach somehow into his mind and stop this fool from digging all their graves with his violent language.

  How often had Brooke spoken in the past about auras and third eyes? While not actually holding a season ticket on the New Age Traveller bandwagon, she had always claimed to have a palpable connection with the mystic. She believed firmly that thought-transference was possible. She was getting a painful crash course in Old Age reality.

  Wayne’s voice was cold, although in comparison to his eyes it was positively balmy. “You think the Mall Murders are fucked-up white trash, Mr Brezner?”

  “He does not think that!” Bruce almost shouted.

  “You can’t just dismiss them.” was Brooke’s desperate plea.

  “Weird, scrawny little bitch?” Scout said to herself, a faraway look in her eyes. “That weird scrawny little bitch he drags around with him?”

  “Karl didn’t mean that!” Bruce forced himself to laugh again; it sounded like a razor-blade cutting through a tin can. “You should hear the way he talks about his wife.”

  Karl, oblivious of the terrible agenda swirling around him, was mystified by Bruce’s attitude.

  “Excuse me? What is this right now? Oprah? Are we having some kind of debate about these fucking filth? Of course they’re fucked-up white trash. What else would they be? I’d like to take that pair of pointless, gutless, no-brain, no-dick, asshole insults to the intelligence of a wet fart and—”

  “Karl! What do you want?” Bruce leapt to his feet. “I’m busy here. I have stuff to do and you are getting in my face.”

  He had not wanted to confront Karl quite so bluntly. If he acted too strangely, Wayne would know that Karl’s suspicions must inevitably be aroused. On the other hand, he had to shut Karl up and get him out before he talked them all to death.

  Karl studied Bruce for a moment, but decided not to rise to him. Karl was, after all, an agent and Bruce was his top client.

  “OK, Bruce, OK. You’re the artist. I just negotiate the obscene and disgusting amounts you get paid. Now, like I say, I think we have real trouble here. This is an important moral issue and we can’t be seen to duck it. We have to react to this thing responsibly. What we have to do is get out there immediately, say fuck you, and announce a sequel to Ordinary Americans.”

  “Everybody died at the end of Ordinary Americans,” Bruce replied.

  “Bruce, yours is not a pedantic audience. Look, you have to rise above this thing. Get out there today and work the chat shows. You did great on Coffee Time yesterday. Tell the world that these killers are not your responsibility and—”

  Wayne walked across the room and plucked Karl’s whisky glass from his hand. “OK Bruce. I’m sick of this guy now. We have things to talk about. Get rid of him.”

  Bruce jumped out of his seat in his eagerness. “Right, good, OK. Karl, I appreciate you coming round and I’m going to think over what you said, but right now I’m busy, OK, so…”

  Karl was astonished. He had known Bruce for years. They were friends. “You want me to go?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Because you have stuff to do with these people?”

  “Yes.”

  Karl looked from Wayne to Scout and made no attempt to conceal his distaste. He was very worried. These types were clearly no good. There was trouble here. He had no idea just how much trouble there was, or indeed what kind.

  “Look, Bruce” — Karl lowered his voice — “if you want something rough to mess around with, you should talk to me and I’ll get it for you. This kind of thing is dangerous. You’re going to end up blackmailed.”

  “Karl, go,” Bruce replied. “Now.”

  Karl turned away. He could do no more. “OK. See you.”

  WAYNE: See you.

  Wide shot, taking in the whole room. Karl is walking towards the door. Wayne reaches down behind Scout and pulls out a gun.

  BRUCE: (Shouting)

  No!

  Almost simultaneously, before Karl even has time to realize that something is wrong, Wayne has shot him in the back. Karl begins to fall forward, dead. Two shot of Brooke standing over Scout, doing Scout’s hair. Brooke screams.

  SCOUT: Ow! You pulled my hair!

  BROOKE: I’m sorry.

  Wide shot. Everything is happening at once. Karl is still falling to the floor. Slow motion. An expulsion of blood and guts flies out from the front of the falling body as the bullet explodes through.

  Close-up. On the wall in front of Karl’s falling body, a framed print, a poster for Ordinary Americans. Karl’s lifeblood impacts upon the poster in a bloody splat. A buzzing sound is heard.

  Whip pan from bloodstain on the poster, across the wall to a close-up on the wall intercom, which is buzzing again.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Detectives Jay and Crawford stood on another sweeping drive outside another gorgeous colonnaded mansion. As before, all around them the false rainbows shimmered above the lawns.

  “You know, if your theory’s right,” Crawford said, “this door’s going to get opened with lead.”

  “Hey, you get paid, don’t you?” Jay replied, and he rang the bell again.

  Inside the house there was panic.

  Susan Schaefer had only recently arrived home, having spent the night with a new acquaintance whom she had met at the Oscars. But it was not this that had thrown the movie star into a frenzy of confusion. She was a forthright modern celebrity, and press revelations about her latest boyfriend held no fears for her. In fact, if anything she was rather proud of her exhausting private life. That was not the reason that the sound of the buzzer had created this agony of indecision in her.

  The problem was simply what to do with her breakfast.

  She had arrived home famished, and had instantly stuck six streaky rashers under the grill. When they were perfectly crispy, she put them on a plate, added maple syrup and some double choc ice cream from the freezer, and wolfed the lot. She had been on her way to the bathroom to puke it all up again when the buzzer buzzed.

  This was the reason for the panic. Every moment that the food remained in her stomach her traitorous gastric juices would be digesting it. She had to get to the toilet and hurl.

  But the buzzer kept buzzing.

  “Later. I’m busy,” she shouted into the intercom.

  “Police,” Jay shouted into the microphone.

  “Police?” A shaky voice asked.

  “That’s right, Ms Schaefer. We need you to come and speak to us.”

  Susan rushed down the stairs and flung open the door in an agony of haste. She could almost feel herself getting fatter as she faced the cops. Six rashers, about a barrel of maple syrup and two scoops of double choc! She had to get it out of her stomach! Already half of it must have attached itself to her hips.

  “Yeah?” She said, looking so panicky that the detectives believed immediately that they had scored a bullseye.

  Carefully they asked her the same questions they had asked Kurt.

  “Look, I’ve only been back half an hour,” she answered breathlessly, “and I have not seen any psychos.”

  But she was sweating, shaking
even. She was clearly not happy. Jay tried to keep her talking. He asked her where she had been, where she would be going later in the day. Had she checked her answering service?

  “A friend’s. The gym. Whadaya think? Of course I checked my messages.” All the time Susan could feel the fat caking on to her thighs, swinging from under her chin, piling up on her bottom. Eventually she could stand it no longer.

  “Look, just come in and search the fucking house!” she shouted.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” said Jay.

  Was it an ambush? Had this poor, terrified woman been coerced into luring two cops to their deaths? They had no choice but to risk it.

  Drawing their weapons they crept past Susan and entered the house. Without a word they split up and began their search. Both were on tenterhooks, listening for the slightest disturbance which would, they were sure, be the precursor of terrible violence.

  It wasn’t long before their worst suspicions were confirmed.

  “Ugh ugh honor aaarrrrghh!”

  Behind them, they could hear Susan Schaefer croaking and gasping in agony. The psychos were killing her for allowing them in. It sounded as if she was already in her final death throes. Both officers rushed back through the house the way they had come. There was a small door leading off the hall: it was clear that the noise came from there.

  “LAPD!” shouted Crawford, and assumed the firing position as Jay tore open the door.

  There on her knees before them, head in the toilet, fingers down her throat, was the female star of Ordinary Americans.

  “What’s the matter with you guys?” she shouted. “Can’t a girl finish off her breakfast in peace?”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  The buzzer was still buzzing. Karl lay dead on the floor.

  “Answer it.” Wayne walked calmly around the couch and sat down beside Scout.

  Bruce protested that it was bound to be Farrah, his wife. He said that Wayne could do with him what he wished but that he had no intention of inviting anyone else in so that Wayne could murder them.

  Wayne shrugged. “So tell her to go away. But make it good. If she comes back with the cops, we all cross Jordan together.”

  The buzzer rang again. Bruce tried to focus his thoughts. What excuse could he use to send Farrah away? It was difficult to concentrate; his mind was still ringing with the sound of the shot that had killed Karl. The insistent noise of the door buzzer seemed to magnify the memory, as if the shot was still being fired and Karl was still dying.

  Bruce looked down at the body of his murdered friend.

  “Why?” he asked Wayne. “We could have got him out.”

  “Why? Why?” Wayne’s emotional barometer swung once again from casual indifference to blind fury. “Because he called my best girl a weird, scrawny little bitch, Bruce. That’s fucking why. What the fuck would you have done? What would Mr Chop Chop have done?”

  Mr Chop Chop? Who was Mr Chop Chop? Bruce remembered his other life, the one that was now definitely over. He remembered Mr Chop Chop. How could he forget him? Mr Chop Chop’s image was emblazoned on a million T-shirts and lunch-boxes.

  What would Mr Chop Chop have done?

  “Mr Chop Chop is a fictitious character that I invented. So he wouldn’t do anything, because he doesn’t exist, you insane bastard!”

  It was not bravery that led Bruce to abuse Wayne, but fear and loathing. He was in a state of shock.

  The door buzzer sounded again, this time even louder and longer. Wayne looked hard at Bruce. He did not like Bruce’s attitude; he felt patronized.

  “I know that Mr Chop Chop is a fictitious character, Bruce. That don’t mean he don’t exist, now, does it? You gonna tell me Mickey Mouse don’t exist? Huh? Fictitious characters got a life inside’a the fiction and what I’m asking you is, what, inside of his personal fiction, would Mr Chop Chop do to any fucker who fucked with his baby and called her names? Now you know as well as I do that Mr Chop Chop would chop chop that fucker good, which is what I did. Now stop working yourself up into ten types of asshole and answer the fucking buzzer.”

  Again Bruce struggled to overcome his panic. He had to stay calm. Christ, how could he? He took the phone from the wall and, mastering his shaking voice, attempted to send his nearly ex-wife away.

  He told her she was early. That he couldn’t see her. That he had a woman with him. “I’m partying here, Goddamnit. I just won an Oscar.”

  If Canute thought he had problems, he never tried to turn back a Beverly Hills spouse intent on discussing alimony.

  Bruce put down the phone, the life draining from his face. “She’s coming up. She has a key.”

  Wayne shrugged, indifferent once again. He wasn’t much bothered either way. He got up and began to drag Karl’s corpse towards the door.

  “Well, I guess I’d better move ol’ Karl, then. You don’t want to be having no discussion about who gets the wedding presents and the CDs over a dead body.”

  “I’ll get her to leave,” Bruce shouted. “Tell me you’ll let her go, tell me you won’t kill her.”

  Wayne paused at the door. He was holding Karl’s corpse under the arms. The dead face of the ex-agent was staring straight up Wayne’s nose.

  “Maybe. Long as she don’t call us no names. Now I’ll just take of shit-for-brains here down into the kitchen, huh? Jes’ tidy him away, so to speak. Scout, you’re in charge.” He departed, taking the corpse with him.

  Scout looked up at Brooke. “I’m sorry I shouted at you, Brooke.” She was contrite. “I didn’t mean nothing, it’s just you pulled my hair.”

  Brooke knew she had only minutes in which to attempt to complete the task she had begun when Wayne had last exited from the room. Scout’s attitude, at least, was encouraging. She seemed to care what Brooke thought of her, which was the best start Brooke could hope for. She knelt down beside Scout.

  “Scout, listen to me. This can’t go on. Sooner rather than later you’re going to get caught, and the more trouble you cause the worse it’s going to be.”

  Scout’s stare found its familiar focus on the cushion in her lap underneath which she held her gun.

  “We know we’re in trouble, Brooke. Big trouble. But Wayne’s got a plan.”

  “What plan can he possibly have?”

  “I dunno, Brooke, but he’s got one. “I got me a plan, hon,” he says, “and everything is gonna be just fine.” That’s what he said. He has a plan for our salvation.”

  Brooke had no time to be gentle. “His plan is to get you both killed, that’s what his plan is, and that’s how it’s going to happen. The cops will come, Wayne’ll fight and you’ll both be shot to ribbons. Us too.”

  “He’s got a plan.”

  “To get you killed.”

  “Well, if that’s his plan, then it’s OK with me. We’ll go out together, in a hail of blood, love and glory.”

  Brooke’s mind raced. She had only minutes — maybe less — to connect. What could she say? Where was Scout vulnerable?

  “Love and glory,” Scout repeated. “Me ‘n’ Wayne gonna get that tattooed on us one day. It’s our motto.”

  Brooke plunged. “And you do love him, don’t you, Scout? You love him very much.”

  She had connected. This was a subject about which Scout could talk for hours.

  “I love him more than my life, Brooke. If I could pull down a star from the sky and give it him I would. If I had a diamond the size of a TV I’d lay it at his feet. I got feelings bigger than the ocean, Brooke, deeper than the grave.”

  It was now or never. “Wayne needs help, Scout. If you love him, you won’t let him die. If you love him, you have to let us be your friends, Scout, let us be his friends.”

  Brooke took Scout’s free hand. Scout stiffened a little but allowed herself to be held.

  “Will you help us to be his friends?”

  “If they take him, they’ll put him in the chair,” Scout whispered. “They’ll melt his eyeballs. That’s what the chair does t’ya. I read i
t.” A tear began to steal its way down her cheek.

  “But it doesn’t have to be that way,” said Brooke, gently squeezing the small hand she held. “Maybe if we bring him in peacefully they’ll put him in a hospital. They’ll try to find out why he gets so angry. Bruce is a big man in this state, Scout. He can help.”

  Bruce was transfixed. Could Brooke pull it off? There could be only moments left to do it in. She was close, very close. Ask her for the gun! He wanted to scream it. Every sinew of his body was taut like a dog on a straining leash. Just reach under the cushion and grab the gun.

  Scout raised her head to look at Brooke, her eyes as big as fists. “You know what I think, Brooke?”

  “What’s that, Scout, honey?”

  “I think you think I’m dumb.” She seemed to say it more in sorrow than anger, as if she desperately wished it was not so.

  Brooke hurried to reassure her. “No! No, it’s not true. I don’t think you’re dumb, Scout. I like you, I think you’re smart and you’ve got to be smart now. You don’t want, to die and you don’t want us to die either. Above all, you don’t want Wayne to die. One day you’re gonna to lay diamonds at his feet. Give me the gun, Scout.”

  Scout sighed. It was almost wistful, almost as if she was day-dreaming. “You want me to give you my gun?”

  “It’s best for us all, Scout, including Wayne.”

  Bruce realized he was holding his breath. He’d been holding it for quite some time. He tried to let it out slowly so as not to make a sound. If he intruded on the moment it could be disastrous. Scout was still day-dreaming into Brooke’s face.

  “If I give it to you, will you be my friend?”

  “I said I would be, didn’t I, Scout?” Brooke replied. “And I keep my word. Give me the gun.”