Silence and then a voice asks, “Mr. Ward?”
It’s the director’s voice.
“Mr. Ward?” it asks again.
“No! No! No!”
“We’ll be right up, Mr. Ward.”
The line goes dead.
Bursting into tears, I hurl the phone away from me. I run out of the bathroom but on the phone by the bed there’s no dial tone.
Chloe’s calling my name.
From where I’m standing the entire bathroom floor seems washed with blood, as if something within her had liquefied.
Blood keeps fanning out from between her legs and some of it looks sandy, granular. A thick ring of flesh slides across the floor as Chloe cries out in pain and she keeps crying as I hold her and then she bursts into a series of hysterical, exhausted sobs and I’m telling her everything will be okay, tears pouring from my eyes. Another long crooked rope of flesh falls out of her.
“Victor! Victor!” she screams madly, her skin yellowing, her screams turning liquid, her mouth opening and closing.
I press a towel against her vagina, trying to stem the bleeding, but the towel is drenched in a matter of seconds. She keeps making harsh panting sounds, then defecates loudly, arching her back, another piece of flesh lurching out of her, followed by another rush of blood that splashes onto the floor.
There is warm blood all over my hands and I’m yelling out, “Baby please it’s okay baby please it’s okay baby—”
Another explosion of blood pours from between her legs, sickeningly hot, her eyes bulging, another giant intake of breath, and I can actually hear the horrible sounds coming from inside her body. Another harsh, startling yell.
“Make it stop oh god make it stop,” she screams, begging me, and I’m sobbing, hysterical too.
Another chunk of flesh, white and milky, spews out. After the next flash of pain cuts through her she can’t even form words anymore. She’s finally relaxing, trying to smile at me, but she’s grimacing, her teeth stained with blood, the entire inside of her mouth coated violet, and she’s whispering things, one hand tightly clasping mine while the other pounds spastically against the tiled floor, and the bathroom reeks powerfully of her blood, and as I’m holding Chloe, her eyes fix on mine and I’m sobbing, “I’m sorry baby I’m so sorry baby,” and there is surprise in those eyes as she realizes how imminent her death actually is and I’m lapsing in and out of focus, disappearing, and she starts making animal noises and she’s sagging in my arms and then her eyes roll back and she dies and her face turns white very quickly and slackens and the world retires from me and I quit everything as water the color of lavender keeps streaming out of her.
I shut my eyes and clap my hands over my ears as the film crew rushes into the room.
3
We’re on a motorway. In a large van. We’re heading toward the airport. The driver is the best boy from the French film crew. I’m catatonic, lying on the floor of the van surrounded by camera equipment, the legs of my pants sticky with Chloe’s blood, and sometimes what’s outside the windows of the van is just blackness, and other times it’s a desert, maybe somewhere outside L.A., and other times it’s a matte screen, sometimes electric blue, sometimes blinding white. Sometimes the van stops, then revs up and starts accelerating. Sometimes technicians are shouting orders into walkie-talkies.
The director sits in the front passenger seat, going over call sheets. On the dashboard is an Uzi submachine gun.
There’s one interlude that plays itself out very quickly on the ride to the airport.
It starts with a warning call from the driver, who is glancing anxiously into the rearview mirror.
A black truck is following us on the motorway.
The first AD and the gaffer crouch down by the rear windows, both of them holding Uzis.
They take aim.
The black truck revs up and starts pounding down on us.
The air inside the van suddenly feels radioactive.
The van shudders violently as it’s hit by bullets.
Tiny rapid flashes of light exit the barrels of the Uzis the first AD and the gaffer are aiming at the black truck, which keeps racing defiantly toward us.
I try to balance myself as the van lurches forward.
The black truck’s windshield shatters, crumples.
The truck veers to the right and collides with several cars.
The black truck quietly careens off the motorway and overturns.
The van guns its engine, racing away.
Two seconds later a large fireball appears behind us.
I’m lying on the floor, panting, until the property master and a PA lift me up so that I’m facing the director.
Outside, it’s a desert again and I’m moaning.
The van swerves into another lane.
The director pulls a pistol from inside his jacket.
I just stare at it.
The only thing that wakes me is the director saying, “We know where Bobby Hughes is.”
And then I’m lunging for the gun, grabbing it, checking to see if it’s loaded, but the PA pulls me back and I’m told to calm down and the director takes the gun from my hands.
“Bobby Hughes is trying to kill you,” the director is saying.
The property master is securing a knife sheath around my calf. A large silver blade with a black handle is slipped into it. The Prada slacks I’m wearing are pulled down over the sheath.
The director is telling me they would like to see Bobby Hughes dead. I’m being asked if this is a “possibility.”
I’m nodding mindlessly. I keep moaning with anticipation.
And then we can smell the jet-fuel fumes everywhere and the driver brakes the van to a hard stop, tires screeching, jerking us all forward.
“He needs to be stopped, Victor,” the director says.
After the gun is slipped into my jacket I’m sliding out of the van and the crew is following me, cameras rolling, and we’re racing into the airport. Over the sound track: the noise of planes taking off.
2
The crew direct me to a men’s room on the first concourse and I’m running toward the door, slamming against it with my shoulder, and the door flies open and I stumble inside. The men’s room has already been lit, but not for the scene Bobby was expecting.
Bobby’s standing at a sink, inspecting his face in a mirror.
I’m screaming as I run toward him at full sprint, my fist raised, the gun in it.
Bobby turns, sees me, sees the crew following me, and his face seizes with shock and he screams, enraged, “You fucks!” and raising his voice even higher, yells again. “You total fucks!”
He pulls out a gun that I knock out of his hand and it slides across the tiled floor under a sink, and Bobby’s ducking instinctively as I throw myself forward into him, grabbing at his face, screaming.
He reaches out and pulls my head back and slams into me so hard I’m lifted off the ground and thrown against a tiled wall and then I’m sliding to the floor, coughing.
Bobby staggers back, then reaches out and grabs the lower part of my face.
I suddenly raise an arm, slamming my hand into his mouth, and he reels backward, turning a corner, skidding.
I lurch forward and slam him into a wall. I push the gun into his face, screaming, “I’m going to kill you!”
He swipes at the gun.
I pull the trigger—a bullet opens up a giant hole in the tiled wall behind him. I fire again—four, five, six times, until the gun is empty and the wall is blown apart.
Bobby stops cowering, looks up, first at the empty gun I’m holding and then at my face.
“Fuck you!” he screams, rocketing forward.
He grabs my collar, then clumsily attempts to get me into a head-lock. I shove the hand that’s holding the gun under his chin, pushing him away. He moves his head back, my hand slipping off. I try again, this time with the other hand and harder, and my fist connects with his chin. When Bobby lets go he tears my shir
t open and he lunges forward again, grabbing my shoulders and bringing my face up to his.
“You … are … dead,” he says, his voice low and hoarse.
It’s like we’re dancing, colliding with each other before we crash into a wall, almost knocking over the cameraman.
We keep hugging each other until Bobby maneuvers around and smashes my face against a wall-length mirror, once, twice, my head impacting against it until the mirror cracks and I fall to my knees, something warm spreading across my face.
Bobby staggers away, looking for his gun.
I lurch up, blinking blood out of my eyes.
A gaffer tosses me a clip to reload with.
I catch it and then slam Bobby back against a stall door. I duck as his fist comes flying toward me, Bobby leaping on me like we’re in a mosh pit, his face completely tensed up, and he’s slapping at me madly, out of control.
He slams my head against a urinal and then grabs my scalp and shoves my head down as he brings his knee up into it, my forehead connecting, my neck snapping violently.
Bobby pulls me back and starts dragging me across the tiled floor to where his gun rests, now next to the trash can.
“Get it—get his gun,” I’m screaming at the crew as Bobby keeps hauling me across the floor.
Desperately, I grab for a stall door handle, hanging on to it.
Bobby grunts, reaches down and grabs the waistband of the Prada slacks I’m wearing and pulls me up until I’m standing with him and then both of us are tumbling backward.
I land on top of him, then roll over, get on one knee and stand up, then run into a stall, slamming and locking the door so I can slip the new clip into the gun but Bobby tears the door off its hinges and throws me out, hurling me against a sink, my hand trying to block the force of impact, and then I’m smashing into the mirror above the sink, shattering it, the clip slipping from my gun.
I shove away from him but Bobby’s scratching at my face now and I’m lashing out blindly. Again we both fall, sprawling, the gun knocked out of my hand, skidding along the icy floor, and when I spot Bobby’s gun under the sink I reach out but his boot is suddenly on my hand, crushing it, and a giant bolt of pain causes me to become more alert.
Then another boot is on my head, grinding into my temple, and I flip over and grab Bobby’s foot, twisting until he loses his balance and slips, falling on his back.
Staggering to my feet, I regain my footing and reach for his gun.
I point the barrel where he’s lying on the floor but Bobby kicks out a leg, knocking the gun from my hand.
He lunges up and knocks me back, slamming into my side, and I’m not prepared for the ferocity of Bobby’s fist connecting with the side of my head and there’s a cracking sound and as he lurches toward me he grabs my throat with both hands, pushing me to the floor.
He’s straddling me, shutting off my windpipe, and I’m making choking sounds, both of Bobby’s hands clamping my throat even tighter.
And he’s grinning, his teeth stained red with blood. I shove one hand under his chin, trying to push him off. With one hand crushing my neck, he easily reaches over and grabs his gun.
I’m kicking out, unable to move, my hands pounding the tiled floor. Bobby holds the gun at chest level, riding me, the barrel tilted toward my face.
I try to scream, lashing my head back and forth.
He pulls the trigger.
I close my eyes.
Nothing.
He pulls it again.
Nothing. For a second we’re both still.
And then I spring up yelling and I hit Bobby hard, knocking him backward.
He goes sprawling, blood jetting from his nostrils. I’m sitting on the floor, looking around madly for my gun and the new clip.
I spot them under the sink, a few feet away.
I start crawling toward them.
Standing, turning in a circle, Bobby reaches into his jacket for a new clip and quickly reloads.
I reach under the sink and slip in the clip, tensing up, closing my eyes.
Bobby fires. A bullet splinters another mirror above me.
He fires again, missing, the bullet thudding into the wall behind me. Tile explodes next to my face as he keeps firing.
I roll over onto my side, aiming at him.
“No!” he cries, falling to the floor, crouching down.
I pull the trigger, screaming while firing.
Nothing.
Bobby’s gun is jammed, not firing, and I realize, too late, that somehow the safety on mine got switched on.
He’s running at me.
Fumbling, I drop the gun and, still on my back, pull my pant leg up.
Bobby tosses his gun away and shouts out, scrambling toward where I’m lying on the floor.
I pull the knife up out of its sheath.
Bobby sees the knife before he falls on me, and tries to turn away. I bury the blade in his shoulder to the hilt. He screams, rolling over.
I yank the knife out, weeping, and when I plunge it into his throat Bobby’s expression turns surprised and his face tightens up.
Bobby pushes himself away, making hissing noises, a thick stream of blood squirting out of the wound in his throat, which gets bigger, gaping, as he staggers back.
His knees buckle and he keeps trying to close the wound with his hands, but he can’t breathe.
I start inching toward a gun, my hand reaching out until it lands on the smooth, cold metal.
Wincing, I struggle into a sitting position.
The crew keeps filming, moving in as Bobby bleeds to death.
Swooning with pain, I stagger up and aim the gun at his head.
“Ith too laye,” he gasps, blood pumping out of his throat in arcs as he manages to grin. “Ith too laye.”
I check the safety.
And when I fire at close range it knocks me back, hard. I stagger toward the exit. I look back and where Bobby’s head was there is now just a slanted pile of bone and brain and tissue.
The director is helping me into the production office that has been set up in a first-class lounge, because he wants to show me something on the video console. The crew is high-fiving one another, preparing to clean up.
I wince when the director grabs my arm.
“Don’t worry, nothing’s broken,” the director says, excited. “You’re just badly bruised.”
1
I’m sitting on a couch by a bank of windows while the crew’s doctor wraps my fingers with bandages, applies alcohol to disinfect various wounds, and I’m whispering “Everyone’s dead” to myself and a video monitor has been wheeled over to where I’m sitting and the director takes a seat next to me.
“Everyone’s dead,” I say again, in a monotone. “I think Jamie Fields is dead.”
“Don’t rush to conclusions.” The director brushes me off, peering at another console.
“She was wrapped in plastic and dying,”
I murmur. “But her death wasn’t in vain,” the director says.
“Oh?” I’m asking.
“She tipped you off,” the director explains. “She saved lives. She saved an airliner.”
As if to remind me, the director hands me the printout I took from the computer in the house in the 8th or the 16th.
WINGS. NOV 15. BAND ON THE RUN. 1985. 511.
“Victor,” the director says. “Watch this. It’s rough and certain elements have to be edited out, but just watch.”
He pulls the console closer and black-and-white video images, hastily shot with handheld cameras, flash across the monitor, but I’m zoning out on the month I grew a goatee after reading an article about them in Young Guy magazine, the afternoon I debated for hours the best angle a new designer beret should be tilted on my head, the various bodies I rejected because the girl didn’t have any tits, she wasn’t “toned” enough, she wasn’t “hard” enough, was “too old” or not “famous” enough, how I waved hi to a model who kept calling my name from across First Avenue and all
the CDs you bought because movie stars in VIP rooms late at night told you that the bands were cool. “You were never taught what shame means, Victor,” said a girl I didn’t think was hot enough to lay but who I otherwise thought was pretty nice. “Like I care,” I told her before I walked into a Gap. I’m vaguely aware that my entire body has fallen asleep.
On the video monitor, soldiers storm a plane.
“Who are … they?” I ask, vaguely gesturing.
“French commandos along with the occasional CIA agent,” the director says blithely.
“Oh,” I say in a soft voice.
Delta and Crater find what they think is a bomb in the first-class cabin and begin to dismantle it.
but it’s not really a bomb, it’s a decoy, the agents are on the wrong plane, there’s a bomb on a plane but not this one, what they found isn’t really a bomb because this is the movie and those are actors and the real bomb is on a different plane
The extras playing passengers are streaming out of the plane and they’re congratulating the commandos and shaking hands with Delta and Crater, and paparazzi have arrived at the gate, snapping photos of these men who saved the plane. And when I notice Bertrand Ripleis playing one of the commandos in the background of a shot I start breathing harder.
“No,” I’m saying, realizing something. “No, no, this is wrong.”
“What?” the director asks, distracted. “What do you mean? What’s wrong?”
Bertrand Ripleis is smiling, looking straight into the camera, almost as if he knows I’m watching this. He’s anticipating my surprise and the moans that start emanating from within me.
I know who you are and I know what you’re doing
“The bomb isn’t on that plane,” I’m saying.
I glance down at the WINGS printout, crumpled in my hands.
BAND ON THE RUN
1985
511
“It’s a song … ,” I’m saying.
“What do you mean?” the director asks.
“It’s a song,” I’m saying. “It’s not a flight.”
“What’s a song?”
“The song,” I’m saying. “It’s a song called ‘1985.’”
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