by Daniel Depp
‘There are wheels within wheels, girly girl. Still waters run deep. All prophets lack honor in their own homes.’
‘Who said that?’
‘I did, just now. See what I mean about depth.’
‘Codswallop,’ said Pookie. ‘You don’t wear your emotions on your sleeve, you carry them around on a sandwich sign. Oh, don’t look at me like that. It’s one of the reasons we all love you.’
Pookie smiled, put her arms behind her back, marched round the desk like the private-school girl she was to kiss Spandau softly but ever so chastely on the lips.
‘You will conveniently forget,’ she said over her shoulder as she walked to the door, ‘that ever happened.’
She paused in the doorway. Did a half turn, gave him a fierce look. Said,
‘And if you ever, ever, call me girly girl again, you die.’
She shuddered and closed the door behind her.
Spandau sat for a while in the quiet room. Pookie was right, as usual. He had no idea. When he walked in this morning he still didn’t know, didn’t have a clue. He’d been yo-yoing up and down all night but had convinced himself to leave by the time he opened the office door. Then suddenly all that changed. What changed it?
Spandau looked down at the pig on his desk staring mournfully up at him. It was probably the pig that did it, which made as much sense as anything. The pig looked so ridiculous sitting there that Spandau was overcome by a sense of kinship. Neither of us belong here, bub, but it is here somehow we have both ended up. Pigs had waddled foremost into his mind. Meg had called him a gentle swine in the restaurant, which had now led to him recalling a pig hunt long ago in the hills outside of Flagstaff. His uncle Jim had taken him, Spandau was ten maybe, and had strayed off to get lost and wander panicked on his own until Jim found him sitting on a rock and crying. Jim hugged him in relief then gave him a quick clip on the ear and told him that whenever you find yourself bewildered, you damn fool, don’t wander around like an idiot but sit down and wait until somebody finds you, most times they’ll be looking.
Spandau had to admit this was not much on which to base a life-altering decision. Unfortunately, however, it was just about all he had. Having admitted to himself that a more bewildered man probably never trod earth, it struck him that he ought to wait, to just sit down somewhere and wait for some thing, some body, to find him. Looking around the room – at the pig, at Julien’s card, thinking of Tina and Leo in their togas, Pookie’s kiss, Dee, Anna, a dead friend who knew Spandau better than he knew himself and had forced on Spandau a decision he was too cowardly to ever make – he began to suspect something already had.
In a few moments he heard phones ringing, the mail being delivered, people coming and going. There was a knock at the door, it opened, Tina stuck her head in, said, ‘Huntley in the conference room,’ and closed the door again. Spandau took a moment to survey his new kingdom. There were worse ways to be, alone was one of them. He took a deep breath. He’d climb down from his throne, pick up his lance and shield, and sally forth into the real world at last. But first, first before anything, he’d pick up the phone to tell Anna he was finally coming home.
EPILOGUE
… it absolutely must be fired by the end of Act Three.
It was an easy job, they said, down in Compton. The warehouse of some fucking camel jock, import export, full of fucking rugs and shit. It was a desktop PC, they were after the account books. Poor fucker’s wife was divorcing him, resourceful bitch, she wanted the accounts in case he was lying. Of course he was.
The lock was nothing, she’d furnished the code for the alarm. Inside, down the aisle, up the metal stairs at the far end to the office on the landing. A fucking cakewalk, he loved these. There had to be a coffee mug somewhere in the office. He was going to whack off into it.
Captain Midnight was almost to the bottom of the stairs when the lights went on.
Well shit.
‘Surprise, surprise.’
He looked up to see Malo on the landing outside the closed office door.
‘What the fuck are you playing at, you stupid coon,’ said Captain Midnight.
Malo shook his head, clicked his tongue. He pushed open the office door to let out the two mastiffs, who loped down the stairs.
‘Feets don’t fail me now,’ said Malo.
Malo watched the look of terror as Deets saw the dogs coming. Deets did like this Wile E. Coyote move, where his shoes literally spun for purchase on the slick concrete floor. Deets was halfway down the aisle to the outside door and thought he might make it when the dogs caught up with him, just about the way Malo had imagined it all these weeks.
Once they’d knocked Deets down there was no getting up. Big fucking dogs. Deets flopped around as they tore at him. He didn’t, for once, have the opportunity to shoot his mouth off.
This was a happy extra as far as Malo was concerned.
Malo sauntered down the stairs and over to where the dogs had him pinned in the middle of the floor. One had Deets’ entire knee in his mouth and the other was in the process of consuming his throat. Malo stood there for a while and watched. Then he said,
‘Woof woof, motherfucker,’ and went home.
“WET EYE” DIRECTOR DIES IN CAR CRASH
August 29 – Crescent City, California (AP) – Cinema legend Jerry Margashack, who both wrote and directed Wet Eye, an Oscar contender and one of last year’s most successful films, died early yesterday morning in an automobile crash just outside Crescent City.
The fatality occurred at 5.35 A.M. Tuesday on the Pacific Coast Highway ten miles north of the town. Authorities are not yet clear if the cause was accidental or suicide, and are awaiting further investigation into Margashack’s state of mind just prior to the crash.
According to Whitman Lowes, a logging truck driver who witnessed the accident, Margashack’s Jaguar XK8 was heading south in the opposite lane when it failed to take a sharp curve 150 feet above the shore.
Lowes stated that, as he passed the Jaguar, he saw Margashack slumped forward onto the steering wheel as if he were unconscious. But he also claims that Margashack’s hands were still in place on the wheel, indicating that Margashack may have been conscious and in control of the car.
Lowes commented that the Jaguar seemed to speed up as it approached the 45 mph curve and was going perhaps 75–80 mph when it struck the retaining barrier and plunged over the edge.
After a preliminary autopsy of Margashack’s body, county coroner Ken Alvarado said there appeared to be no evidence of alcohol or drugs, or that Margashack had succumbed to death by natural causes leading to the crash.
Alvarado said the body would be removed to Los Angeles, where a more detailed investigation would take place, though at present death by suicide has not been ruled out.
Alvarado noted that the director’s chest and arms were covered by scars from burns and lacerations that clearly existed on the body prior to the crash. Some of these were recent enough to remain unhealed, suggesting that Margashack may have had a long history of self-harm.
Margashack’s agent, Ann Michaels, declined to comment on her client’s recent state of mind, but said that, when the fatality occurred, he was on his way back to Los Angeles from Medford, Oregon, where he had gone to visit friends.