Devil's Dance

by Daniel Depp

‘History repeats itself,’ said Spandau.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that. People fall back on what they know. We’re all doomed to keep playing the same roles over and over. We just change stages. That, my friend, is the human comedy.’

  ‘So you decided to break the connection.’

  ‘It’s not as simple as that. Nothing ever is with Jerry. Let me see if I can explain this.’ Tollund paused, considered what he was about to say, then plunged into it. ‘There was Jerry. Jerry Margashack, he’s a genius, no doubt about it. He’s got charisma, he’s bigger than life, you walk with Jerry and you’re walking through opera. La Bohème every minute of the day. It’s great, if you’re an actor, if you like artists, if you’re into bigger than life. You love him or you hate him right away. But if you love him, man, you’re hooked. Jerry could be like a drug. It’s amazing.

  ‘So you go racing through the woods with Jerry, you’re high – literally and figuratively, most of the time – on whatever drug he’s happy to share. Then, boom, there comes this fork in the road, and here there are the two Jerrys. You want to go on with Jerry, you go one road if you’re a man, and if you’re a woman you take the other one. You don’t get a choice. You can turn back but nobody ever does.

  ‘Jerry with guys and Jerry with women, oh man, these are entirely different worlds. Jerry with women … Jerry’s one of those guys who loves women, he needs women, but at the same time he resents the hell out of needing them. So Jerry with women, he sooner or later becomes a monster and things get ugly.

  ‘There was this girl …’

  Tollund stopped. He reached into a humidor, pulled out a cigar. Offered one to Spandau, who shook his head. Tollund took his time about lighting the cigar. Took several experimental puffs. When he was satisfied the cigar was going well, he sat back, stared out the window at the Zen garden, then said:

  ‘I’ve heard about you. That job you did for Anna Mayhew in France. You’re supposed to be a straight-shooter. Is that right?’

  ‘I like to think so.’

  ‘Then you’ll be a gentleman and keep what I’m about to tell you between ourselves, right?’

  ‘I can agree to that as long as it doesn’t interfere with my duty to my client.’

  ‘Which would be Jerry.’

  ‘That’s a good question, since Jerry isn’t the one hiring me. But, yeah, as far as I’m concerned my primary duty is to Jerry.’

  Tollund laughed. ‘I begin to sense that you are a complicated man.’

  ‘Not complicated,’ said Spandau. ‘Just middling confused like everybody else.’

  ‘I broke with Jerry not because of anything he did to me, but because of something he did to a friend of mine. A girl. No,’ said Tollund, ‘I know the conclusion you’re jumping to. She wasn’t a lover, Jerry didn’t steal some doll away from me – although he did a few times. We both did.’ Tollund smiled. ‘Actually I didn’t even know the girl that well. She was just this sweet, funny kid, from Kentucky. She had that southern twang in her voice. Cute as a bug’s ear, and sexy as hell in a kind of innocent way. Like everybody else she came out here to act, ended up as a production assistant on a few films. That’s how I met her. She had a brother who’d died, and I became a kind of substitute. Between films she’d help me out with stuff, I’d put her on the payroll until another film came along. She was just one of those people you liked having around. Hell, everybody liked having her around.

  ‘Jerry was here one day, he’d come over to talk about a part he had for me, we were going over the script. The girl – let’s call her Susie, which is not her name – had been out doing some errands for me. A grocery run. I heard her come in and then she popped up in the doorway here to let me know she was back, ask if I needed anything else. I introduced her to Jerry, the single act for which I may forever burn in hell. When she left Jerry turned to me and rolled his eyes and asked who she was. I told him and he asked if I was nailing her. I told him no, and to banish any thoughts of his own, she was a good kid and the town would eat her up soon enough without either of us rushing the process.

  ‘Jerry didn’t mention it again and we went back to work. A while later Jerry got up to go to the head. He was gone a while but I was concentrating on the script, I didn’t think about it. Then he came back and we worked for the rest of the afternoon and then he left. He didn’t say another word about her.

  ‘Everything is fine, she’s working around the house, running errands, whatever, for a few weeks. She’s her usual happy self, singing, humming. She was like that.

  ‘Then one day she doesn’t show up. No call, nothing. This is not like her. We call her number, no answer. One day, two days, three days. We call around. Nobody has heard from her, seen her. A bad love affair. Maybe the city has just gotten to her, she’s back in the hills of Kentucky. It happens. Sometimes the place just sneaks up on you and that’s it, baby, something snaps and you get in the car and just keep driving. Happens all the time.

  ‘Until one night, after she’d been missing four or five days. She shows up here, alone. She looked like hell, man. I’m telling you, she was in this trauma, this look in her eyes like some frightened animal. Hair was greasy, she hadn’t bathed, face all puffy from crying. Shaking, falling apart but struggling to keep just under control, not to fly off in all directions. You want to see what crazy looks like, this is it, I remember thinking. This is what the anteroom to madness looks like.

  ‘I bring her in, sit her down, right there where you’re sitting. Offer her a drink, a Valium, whatever she needs. She says no, she doesn’t want anything, she just sits there. I ask what’s happened. She says she’s sorry, she apologizes over and over for coming here, for not showing up for work, for not calling, she’s sorry, she’s sorry. I tell her not to worry, that whatever happened she’s safe now, just tell me and maybe I can help. And then she tells me. She gets quiet, and then she explains the whole story in this weird monotone, as if she’d suddenly become someone else who knew the story.

  ‘Jerry of course had hit on her that day he was here. Made a fucking beeline into the kitchen where she was, wasted no time getting her phone number. Made a point of asking her not to mention it. He seemed like such a nice guy, she said. Was so funny and was so complimentary. He made her laugh right off the bat. That’s why she liked him.

  ‘So they go out a few times. And of course Jerry makes a pass. She’s used to this, grew up fending off guys back in Kentucky, it’s no big deal. She likes Jerry but she’s not in love. Yes, hard to believe, but even in California there are still beautiful women who will fuck only for love. They go out a few more times, Jerry is a little more persistent, but he stops when she says stop.

  ‘One night Jerry picks her up, says let’s go to this great Mexican restaurant in San Diego. It’s the best Mexican restaurant in the world, he says. You’ll love it.

  ‘They drive to San Diego and it is indeed a very nice restaurant. Jerry seems to know everybody there, they treat him like Prince Edward the Second. She’s impressed, it’s a great evening. Jerry is very sweet, very happy. This is our Jerry, all is fine until he starts drinking. And even then he can knock them back all night and nothing happens, he’s got this continual glow on. Other times it can be one or two drinks, he starts out happy as hell and then it’s like some black cloak descends on him. At that point you never know where things are going to go.

  ‘They were fine, she said, until they left the restaurant. He’d been drinking a lot but he didn’t seem drunk, seemed under control so she wasn’t so worried about him driving. Except he got quiet. Bad sign for our Jerry. If he’s not rattling on, be careful. They’re driving along and Jerry says, look, I’m tired, it’s a long drive, there’s this great hotel on the beach in La Jolla, why don’t we go there. No, she says, she has to be at work in the morning. Call in sick, says Jerry, I’ll get someone to cover for you, whatever. No, she says. I’ll treat you like a princess, he says. She repeated this several times when she told it to me. I’ll treat you like a princess, he sai
d.

  ‘No, thank you, I need to go home. He starts to argue. No, she says, I need to go home, please take me home. He drives for a bit longer and he’s quiet and then she sees that he’s crying. She can see the tears on his cheeks when the headlights pass. What’s wrong? she says. What’s the matter? She feels like she’s done something wrong, she’s hurt him somehow. Can we talk, he says. Can we please just stop and talk?

  ‘Jerry pulls off the road, pulls down toward the beach. Stops the car. She waits for him to talk, asks him again what’s wrong, has she done something. He doesn’t say anything for a while, then says, you’re so beautiful. He moves toward her and she pushes him away. Then he hits her and starts calling her names and that’s when it happens.’

  Tollund stopped. Spandau could see it wasn’t for dramatic effect this time. Tollund stared out the window and Spandau could see the muscles in his jaw and neck tighten and release, tighten and release. Tollund said:

  ‘I didn’t ask for details.’ He puffed on the cigar, ground it out angrily in the ashtray. ‘It gets better though.’ He stood up. ‘You want a cognac?’

  ‘Yeah, thanks.’

  Tollund crossed the room to the bar. He poured two snifters of cognac. ‘I don’t normally drink this early in the day, but let’s make an exception, shall we?’ He brought them over and handed one to Spandau. He said:

  ‘She was a bit drunk herself, and Jerry had slapped her around a little. He seemed to realize what he’d done and said oh god oh god a few times and pulled away from her and huddled up on his side of the car and didn’t bother to stop her when she got out of the car and wandered up toward the highway. No purse, no money, no cell phone. Confused, in shock. She gets up to the highway and starts walking along. She hopes Jerry won’t follow her, she hopes he’ll just let her go, let her go on home.

  ‘She doesn’t know how far she walks along the highway. People stare but nobody stops. She’s not even sure if she wants them to, said she didn’t know what she would tell them. Finally somebody does stop, they pull over, tell her to get in. She does. It’s three or four white guys in a van, maybe college kids. So she gets in. At this point she’d do anything anybody tells her. And guess what?’

  ‘Jesus,’ said Spandau.

  Tollund drained about half his cognac. Coughed. Gathered himself.

  ‘By the time they’d had their fun they were already in Manhattan Beach. They pulled over and gently deposited her beneath an underpass on the 405 and drove away. She wandered into a 7-Eleven and borrowed a phone from the guy behind the counter to call a friend to come and pick her up.

  ‘Wouldn’t tell her friend what happened, wouldn’t tell a soul. Just wanted it to go away. But it wouldn’t, she kept reliving it over and over, and didn’t leave her apartment for three days, couldn’t bring herself to go outside, to see anyone. I offered to take her to a doctor, to contact the police, whatever she wanted. She said all she wanted was just to go away, to leave, to go away and never look back. She asked if I would help her. I said sure, anything, tell me where you want to go, I’ll contact your family, get you a plane ticket, a shrink, anything she wanted. She just wanted to get away, she said. Could I lend her just enough money to get away. So I did. I gave her all the cash I had, a few hundred in the house, and wrote her a check for ten grand. I said look, stay here for a while until you can think straight, until she had a plan. No, she said, she had to leave. She knew what she had to do. I tried to stop her. I think I grabbed her arm at one point, trying to get her to listen to reason, but she turned and began screaming at the top of her lungs. So I let her go. There was nothing I could do.

  ‘I went to see Jerry the next day. I was furious, I was going to tear his head off. I was ready to go to the cops, whatever, I wanted the bastard to suffer. But something told me to hear his side of it first.

  ‘So I got to see him and I tell him what happened and the son of a bitch starts laughing. I ask him what the fuck is so funny, and he says she laid close to the same rap on him that same evening, except it was me who tried to rape her but couldn’t get it up and sent her out into the streets, that I’d threatened her life and she had to get away. Then he asked me how much I’d given her. I said ten grand. He said he’d given her three and started cackling like a madman. He said he wondered how many times she’d pulled this that one day, and anyway thirteen thousand dollars was a good day’s wages for a Kentucky hillbilly.

  ‘I asked him if he’d believed her and he said shit no, not a word of it. He admitted going out with her a few times but she had all these wild tales, guys always abusing her and then her getting back at them in some tricky way. Some of the stories sounded pretty outlandish. He could see what she was like and anyway it was worth three grand for the remarkably detailed and entertaining story about how my shriveled old dick wouldn’t work.’

  A long beat while Spandau let it all sink in. ‘You ever hear from her again?’

  ‘Nope. Nobody has, as far as I know, and I’ve asked around.’

  ‘Anybody else come up with a tale like this? People who knew her?’

  ‘Nothing. But a couple of people did remember her telling stories about guys she’s gotten revenge on.’

  ‘She cash the check?’

  ‘First thing the next morning at my bank.’

  Spandau couldn’t find anything to say.

  ‘Welcome to Jerry’s World,’ said Tollund.

  Finally Spandau said:

  ‘So the million-dollar question is, which story do you believe?’

  Tollund thought.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I’ve gone over this a million times and I honestly don’t know.’

  ‘If it’s true, it’s a damned good reason somebody might want to hurt him.’

  ‘True. But there are enough of those anyway.’

  ‘You won’t tell me her name, then?’

  ‘Nope,’ said Tollund. ‘And if I find you’ve been asking around, it would put you very high on my shit list. If it’s true, then she needs to be protected, and if it’s not true, then it’s dangerous for Jerry.’

  ‘Why tell me at all?’

  ‘Just to let you know what you’re in for. And because you hit me at a moment when I finally felt like telling it to somebody. Who knows? Maybe you’ll stumble across the truth and you can come back and put me out of my misery. Either way though somebody I trusted turns out to be a shit ass. This is never something that makes you happy.’

  ‘Gut feeling?’

  Tollund finished his brandy.

  ‘Oh, he did it, the miserable cocksucker. I can feel it. I’d just rather that I didn’t.’

  THIRTY

  Savan said,

  ‘This homo goes into a pet store, wants to buy a parrot, right?’

  ‘Why a parrot?’ asks Tavit.

  They were in the van, driving to a sushi place on Western to fuck up the Jap who owned it. The Jap was new and had ratted them out to the cops after they’d pressed him for insurance money. Atom wanted to make an example of him. Atom liked examples.

  ‘Shut the fuck up and don’t bust my balls,’ Savan said. ‘This is a faggot joke, something you can relate to. Anyway, the homo goes up to this one parrot, says, “Polly want a cracker?” and the parrot says, “Fuck that shit, I talk better than you do. Buy me and I’ll talk your fucking ears off. I’m cheap too, because I don’t have any claws. Look.” The homo looks closer and sees the parrot doesn’t have any fucking legs, he’s just wrapped around the branch by his dick.

  ‘The homo buys the parrot for like ten bucks – he’s a defective parrot, right? – and takes him home to his gay lover. “Oh looky looky,” he says to his gay pal, “I’ve just bought this adorable parrot.” But one thing leads to another and they start ass-fucking each other and the fag forgets to tell his lover that the parrot can talk.’

  ‘Is this going to be a long fucking joke?’ asks Tavit.

  ‘Why? All this talk about fags making you too excited?’

  ‘It fucking takes you forev
er.’

  ‘It takes me as long as I need, asswipe,’ Savan said, giving Tavit a sharp flick on the ear. Tavit yelped. Savan continued.

  ‘So the fag goes to work—’

  ‘Which fag?’ asks Tavit.

  ‘The fag who bought the parrot, moron. The fag goes to work, leaves his boyfriend at home—’

  ‘The boyfriend doesn’t work?’ said Tavit, looking for trouble.

  ‘He’s a fucking stay at home faggot, okay?’ said Savan. ‘When he gets home that evening, he walks in the door, the parrot waves him over and whispers, “I got something to tell you.”

  ‘Faggot goes over and the parrot says, “Not long after you left, there’s a knock at the door, and your boyfriend lets this other guy in.”

  ‘The fag is interested. He says, “Go on.” The parrot says, “Then they kiss.” The fag says, “And then?” And the parrot says, “Then your boyfriend unbuttons the guy’s pants.” “And?” says the fag. “Well, your friend pulls down the guy’s pants.” “And?” says the fag, getting excited. “And?” “Then your pal gets down on his knees …” “And?” says the fag, getting real excited, “And? And?” “And,” says the parrot, “I dunno what happened next, I popped a boner and I fell off my fucking perch.”’

  Savan cracked up. Tavit laughed in spite of himself. Araz said,

  ‘So we just slap him around a little, right?’

  ‘The guy fucking tried to rat us to the cops,’ Savan said. ‘For that you get fucked up. Atom said he wanted to make an example of him. Asshole thinks the police are going to do him some good. Fucking foreigners.’

  ‘We’re fucking foreigners,’ said Araz.

  ‘The hell we are,’ said Savan. ‘I was born here. Do I look like a fucking slope or a wetback to you?’

  ‘So how come Atom gave the instructions to you instead of me?’

  ‘How the hell do I know? You weren’t there, he told me instead.’

  ‘Fucking testing me,’ said Araz. ‘He’s mad about that fucking gambling debt.’

  ‘Don’t get all paranoid,’ said Savan. ‘You didn’t like the joke?’