I try for my fanny pack with my left hand, but he gets my right arm in a wrist lock that commands my full attention, pushing my fingers back toward my chest like he’s folding my palm flush with the inside of my wrist. My radius and ulna creak from the strain. He puts me on my knees, then folds me over onto my stomach, using my hyperextended wrist to control me.
Before I know it, his foot is on the small of my back, my fanny pack is unclipped and out of reach, and he’s on his earpiece.
“We’ve got an intruder, armed,” he says, low and urgent.
I stretch, reaching for the razor blade taped to my ankle, and he shifts his weight and brings his other foot down on my wrist.
One thing I have to say about Marilyn, she pays for top-shelf security.
Flashlight beams hit my face and someone zip-ties my wrists together. This has all gone wrong. What are they going to do to me? I try to struggle but they keep me in place with no effort.
“Call the police,” one of them says. “We’ll put her in the garage until they get here.”
There’s a pause and then scattered mutterings of “Ma’am,” “Ma’am.” One of them rocks me up off the ground so I’m seated, bound wrists behind me. In front of me stands Marilyn in a pale gray flowing thing that looks expensive. Constructed of well-bred bones, deeply moisturized skin, and a fabulous thick mane of dark hair, she’s about the size of one of these security creeps’ biceps.
“Oh, Lynne.” She sighs. There’s a glass of wine in one of her hands. “It is so sweet of you to drop by, but you can’t be here tonight.”
“We have to talk,” I say.
“Okay, miss,” one of the bruisers says to me. “You need to stop speaking right now.”
I start to scream. That’ll bring someone running.
The second my wail splits the air, Marilyn’s face looks stricken, and one of the goons drops to a knee and clamps his hand over my mouth.
“Bring her around back,” Marilyn says. “We’ll put her in the guest cottage.” She turns to me. “We’ll talk later, sweetie?”
I bite the soft salty palm over my face, grinding my teeth down, really sawing through his flesh. He doesn’t flinch.
“If I have him take his hand off, will you be quiet?” Marilyn asks.
I nod. He takes his hand off. I start to scream.
“Lynnette!” Marilyn snaps. I stop screaming. “I have guests! Whatever you’ve come for can wait. I am broken up about Adrienne and Julia, too, and we can talk later and that will be wonderful, but right now this is a benefit for retired circus animals. It is very important to me, do you understand? These lions have suffered enough.”
“One hour,” I say.
“Of course.” She sighs again. “You are such a sweetheart to want to come and visit.”
She leans forward and gives me a big “Mwah” on my cheek, leaving lipstick behind. Here behind her walls with her cameras and her security team she can be the flighty socialite she always wanted to be.
Security creeps lift me to my feet and lead me around the perimeter of the backyard.
“Unclip her hands,” Marilyn says. “This isn’t one of Jerry’s prisons.”
“One hour,” I remind her as a goon snips my cuffs off.
We skirt the edge of the lights. The yard sprawls on my right, strung with Chinese lanterns and rich old men and trophy wives standing under tall metal outdoor heaters that loom like watchtowers. No one’s watching their backs, or checking the exits, or showing any spatial awareness whatsoever. On my left are the lights of Los Angeles, scattered across the blackness below the hills, looking cleaner and crisper than they have any right to be. The view from up here can trick you into thinking the world is a beautiful place.
“Keep going,” one of the goons says, propelling me forward with a hand in the small of my back.
Up ahead, on the other side of the glowing blue pool, is a two-story Mediterranean cottage with a red tile roof. It’s big enough for a small family. In the glow of paper lanterns hanging from the trees I see a goon standing at parade rest by its French doors, hands clasped behind his back.
They pop the door’s hermetic seal and I get professionally propelled out of the cool night air and into the dry warmth of central heating. The guest house is lit up, full of Mission furniture, laid with heavy terra-cotta floor tiles, walls covered in tasteful Mexican art that’s all colored dots and electric lines. There are cut metal sculptures peeled into the shape of rabbits, and jaguars, and parrots, and snakes tucked into all the corners. It’s a cottage full of things I could never afford, things I could never own. Nice things. Settled things. The kind of things you have when you don’t need to be able to run out the door the second trouble comes looking for you. The kind of things you have when you can afford the security to protect them.
In the middle of all this jealousy-inducing luxury sits Heather, feet on the coffee table, watching TV, smoking a cigarette and ashing on the floor.
She looks up at me, all casual cool.
“What’s up, Lynne?” she asks. “Shitty party, right?”
—“Slasher Movies in the Age of Mass Shootings” by David Thomas, Film Violence & Film Art: A Manifesto, 2007
THE FINAL GIRL SUPPORT GROUP IX:
Final Girl vs. Final Girl
I’m so surprised that I can’t say anything for a full minute, but that’s okay. Heather does all the talking for me.
“Hi, Heather,” she says, in a mocking voice that I think is meant to be me. “Nice to see you, too. So glad you’re alive. You’re so smart to come to Marilyn’s. I’ve been running around the city all day like a dumb bitch.”
There’s a kitchen behind a pass-through counter on my right, a dark hallway on my left, the living room in front of me with French doors looking out into the dark woods. I step over Heather’s legs and yank the curtains closed.
“I liked those open,” Heather says.
There’s no way to block the kitchen windows or the floor-to-ceiling windows wrapped around the dining nook. The fridge is empty except for a shriveled lemon, a box of Arm & Hammer, and a case of Perrier. I find steak knives in the third drawer I open. I take two.
“Is there a reason you’re messing up my action?” Heather asks.
I go into the hallway and start checking the rest of the house.
“That’s a waste of time because you’re leaving,” Heather calls after me.
Two rooms upstairs, both empty. I check the closets, under the beds, behind the shower curtain in the shared bathroom, underneath the sink. Everywhere I go I leave the lights burning. I can’t tolerate any shadows. I can’t leave any hiding places. I go back downstairs.
“Does this door lock?” I ask, trying to find a deadbolt on the front door.
“I hope not,” Heather says, lighting another cigarette off her first. “That’ll just slow you down if I get shot and you have to run away real fast and leave me bleeding to death on the floor.”
I guess she heard about Julia.
“It was a combat situation,” I say, taking a step toward her, trying to disguise my shame with anger. “I had to make an instant decision.” She makes eye contact, and I stop advancing and lamely add, “I made sure Julia was okay.”
“I bet you did, Cowardly Lion,” she says, dropping her butt in a Perrier bottle, where it sizzles. “Does Marilyn even know you’re here?”
“She told me to wait,” I say, dropping down to sit against the wall by the front door. It’s the only place that’s out of the sightlines of all those wide-open kitchen windows. “She said she’d talk to me in fifty minutes.”
“Yeah, well,” Heather says. “One person is a houseguest, two is a crowd, and I was here first.”
“Why are you here?” I ask.
“My fucking house exploded and all my shit burned up?” she says. “I’m coming to Marilyn’s. The bitch shits money
. Where’d you go? Got Julia shot and ran away crying like a little baby? Well, there’s no room at Casa Marilyn.”
“I need to talk to Marilyn,” I say. “This is serious.”
“Fuck yeah, it’s serious,” Heather says. “Did you see upstairs? There’s a fucking Jacuzzi. You’re going to have to drag me out of this motherfucker, and I will fight you all the way.”
“Do you have any idea what’s going on?” I ask.
“I know exactly what’s going on,” Heather says. “Marilyn’s got so much house she doesn’t know what to do with it. I figure I’m doing her a favor staying here while Jerry’s away. Camp out in this fly little guest house for the duration. She’s got servants to do whatever the fuck I want. She and me, we’ll turtle down until all this blows over. I’d say you could stick around and watch my back but I don’t have a death wish.”
“The police are looking for you,” I tell her.
“What’s new?” she says. “I slept in the woods behind the halfway house. Okay, honesty time: I fucking passed out. After group? You bitches harshed my sobriety. Adrienne gone? That’s the kind of shit that makes me need to drink. So I cadged some cash, bought a little Smirnoff Ice, and partied in the woods. I wake up with a killer headache and stroll home just in time to see everything I own on fire and cops crawling all over the place. I get in a cab and forty-five bucks later it’s ‘Yo homes, smell ya later, I’m the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.’ ”
“Someone is gunning for all of us,” I say.
“I’m going to start swimming laps,” Heather says. “Get in shape. Lose some of this flab.”
She pinches an invisible roll of fat around the top of her jeans and shakes it. Heather is a bundle of wire coat hangers squeezed into jeans that are more rip than jean, and covered in bruises, but in her head she still has all her baby fat from high school.
“We need to figure out a strategy,” I say, ignoring her dysfunction.
“A strategy?” Heather laughs, and rummages in her purse. She pulls out a hand-rolled cigarette and lights it off her cigarette. From the smell, it’s not tobacco. “What’re you going to do? Fucking dress up like Batgirl and go swing around the city?”
“How did this person know where your halfway house was?” I ask. “How’d they know where Adrienne lived?”
But even as I say it I know where: my computer. I must have had their addresses in there somewhere.
“Halfway houses are full of chain smokers,” Heather says. “They burn down all the time. Stop trying to be a hero. Everyone feels sorry for you because you’re a paranoid with OCD. Obsessive-compulsive disorder.”
“I know what OCD is,” I say.
“I know what OCD is,” she mimics. “Fucking Forrest Gump over here, you can barely walk through a door without having a nervous breakdown and you’re going to help anyone? You can hardly dress yourself. You look like a fucking twelve-year-old boy. The second the shit hits the fan you bolt like Bambi.”
“We have to watch out for each other,” I say.
“That’s beautiful,” she says. “But you’re just sick enough to have arranged this whole thing to keep group together. Out of everyone, you are the absolute fucking worst at letting go of the past.”
Then, as if the universe is ganging up with Heather to prove her point, my past is on TV.
“Turn it up,” I say.
“Turn it up yourself,” Heather says, and then she turns to the plasma screen. “Holy shit, that’s your boyfriend.”
Garrett P. Cannon is on the screen and I’m frozen. Time has not been kind. He’s wearing a cowboy hat and a bolo tie, everything in creams and dove grays, and he’s grown a bushy white mustache, probably to give his withered old face some volume. His neck hangs slack and loose. He’s still bleaching his teeth, but they look too white against his sunburned skin.
The slugline across the bottom of the screen reads Shocking Revelations in Silent Night Slayings. I stare, hypnotized by Garrett’s wet, moving mouth, the way he’s basking in the cameras like a reptile sunning itself on a rock. If there’s one person I never wanted to see again, it’s him.
His voice is the size of a mouse’s. I can’t help myself. I find the remote and turn it up.
“. . . saying for years this case don’t smell right,” he drawls. “And after much tenacious investigation on my part I have uncovered explosive new information.”
“At least someone’s got a hard-on for you,” Heather says.
“Without a doubt we will be seeking Lynnette Tarkington for further questioning,” Garrett continues. “I am receiving unprecedented cooperation from the police in Los Angeles County and we are attempting to locate Miss Tarkington right this minute. In Utah, justice wears cowboy boots, and they’re always ready to kick BLEEP.”
The camera flashes back to an anchor gazing earnestly into the lens.
“Garrett P. Cannon, law enforcement hero, commenting on explosive new information in the Silent Night Slayings. Tune in tomorrow, when Nancy Grace gives her take.”
“Have they said what it is?” I ask.
“Dude, didn’t you hear?” Heather says, taking a deep pull on her joint. “There’s explosive new information. Probably that you were the one killing people, you little psycho.”
Whatever this is, I know they don’t have anything. If they did, Garrett wouldn’t have been able to keep his mouth shut. The fact that he’s being coy means that he has a crummy hand and wants to keep the cameras on him for as long as possible. The last time Garrett had “explosive new information,” it was that he’d written the script for the franchise reboot.
“This is so fucking boring,” Heather says. “I need a drink. Nothing materialized in that fucking fridge in the last five minutes, did it?”
She stands up, checks the fridge, slams it, grabs her bag, opens the front door, and gets immediately swarmed by black-suited security.
“Miss, I’m going to have to ask you to go back inside,” the short, wide, bald guy blocking the doorway says.
“Sir,” Heather says. “I’m going to have to ask you to stick your dick up your ass.”
“Miss . . .” he says. “I’m not going to ask you again.”
“Let me tell you what I’m going to do,” Heather says. “I’m going into that party to speak to my very good motherfucking friend, Mrs. Marilyn Blake, who pays your motherfucking salary. If you get in my way I’m going to jump in that pool, whip out my tits, and let this bunch of Charity Barbies get an eyeful of what natural Bs look like.”
Short and Stocky wraps a hand around her biceps and squeezes.
“Ow, motherfucker,” Heather hisses. “I’ll scream.”
“Can I get assistance at station twelve,” Short and Stocky says into his earpiece.
I stay seated and out of trouble. I need a place to sleep tonight. Dani’s safe in jail, Julia’s probably under police protection in the hospital, and while I don’t like the thought of Marilyn, Heather, and me bunched up in one location, at least this one’s secure.
Behind Short and Stocky I see identical twin linebackers trotting toward us, Marilyn striding behind them, and then they’re filling the door, pushing their way through, pushing Heather back.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Blake,” Short and Stocky says as Marilyn emerges from between the twins.
Marilyn’s mouth smiles, her perfect teeth catch the light, her cheeks dimple.
“That’s all right, Tom,” she coos, and then she looks at me and her eyes are dead. “I told you to wait here.”
“Lynne got hungry, dude,” Heather says. “Have you ever tried to stop her? She’s like the fucking Terminator.”
“You will both stay here until I come for you,” Marilyn says, her lips barely moving. “That is not up for discussion.”
“You can’t keep us locked up like one of your prisoners,” Heather says.
“L
ike what?” she asks. “You arrive at my house and I have to pay your taxi fare and I give you a place to stay and you’re a prisoner?”
“These dudes marched Lynnette in here like Nazis,” Heather says, appealing to me.
“I’m not involved,” I say. “I just need a place to stay.”
“Is that all?” Marilyn tears a strip off me. “You sneak over my wall with a gun like a home invader because you want a sleepover? The only reason I haven’t called the police is because there are some very sick, very old lions who need homes and the people who will pay for them do not like a scene.”
“Marilyn,” I say. “I need a place for one night. We’ll be good.”
She leans in.
“If I weren’t having a party”—she smiles—“I would get Jerry’s security detail to toss you out on your fannies while I sip white wine and laugh.”
The security guards perk up.
“Screw you,” Heather says, and starts pushing forward.
She hasn’t taken two steps before all the security guys have her arms twisted up behind her back.
“I’m not going to repeat myself,” Marilyn says as she turns to go. “Stay.”
The security guys toss Heather onto the couch and are out the door before she even stops bouncing.
“You can’t send us to our room, Mom!” Heather screams, running to the door as they slam it in her face.
It’s locked. She rants for five full minutes and then the door opens and a stream of staff pour inside while the three security guys block the door. They lay out platters on the pass-through: ginger jelly sandwiches on gluten-free buns, mushroom rice balls, vegetable sushi rolls. Of course everything’s vegan. Heather makes pointed personal comments about each and every person laying out food, and only stops when the last cater waiter puts three bottles of champagne in the fridge.
“Compliments of the lady of the house,” he says, and then there’s a puff of smoke and the room is empty and the door is locked and I’m stuffing my face. Before the first bite, I didn’t realize how hungry I was.
The Final Girl Support Group Page 10