“And what type of explosive differentiates between the two?”
“No explosives, just simple radiation that will leave all structures intact and kill only the bad guys.”
“That is the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever heard. Like the fallout won’t kill thousands of innocent people?”
She pulled back from me, her blue eyes like two deadly lasers.
“You know what your problem is, Joe? You can’t see beyond that box of lies you and your colleagues have created.”
The waitress came over to take our dinner order. I ordered prime rib, medium rare, and Nancy ordered a steak, blood rare. I downed my glass of wine and once again excused myself to take another hit of coke.
It was suddenly all clear to me. New Mexico, deserts, atomic explosions, radioactive sand, tunnels burrowed deep inside mountains, mutant scavengers … A convention, my ass! More like a gathering of the severely deranged — a cult of lunatics with Nancy as the high priestess. And to think that I had been hoping for some normalcy after the nightmare with Maggie. How totally naïve to expect normal from a woman who was clearly batshit crazy.
I sat back down at the table and was somewhat relieved that Nancy had put away her notes and was cutting into her steak.
“I didn’t think you were ever coming back.” She put a piece of bloody steak into her mouth. I ordered another bottle of wine as I watched her eat and occasionally scribble some formula in the air with her fork.
“It’s not going to stay warm much longer, Joe.” She pointed to prime rib in front of me.
“That’s okay, I like my meat cold.”
The waitress filled our glasses from the new bottle. I took a large gulp and finally cut into the meat.
“I’m fairly certain that I can get all the materials I need to build the bomb. Of course, I’ll need a secure storage area.”
“Wouldn’t want any of that radioactive material to leak out, would we?”
She looked at me like my level of stupidity was astonishing. “I’m going to need financing. I already have a few backers. Would you like to contribute? A million or two would surely help.”
“I’m sorry, but most of my money is tied up in stocks and it wouldn’t be wise for me to sell right now.”
“That’s funny, I never heard you mention stocks.”
“That’s because you hate talking about such trivial things as money. It’s easier to take mine. When you think about it, we haven’t known each other very long. There are lots of things we don’t know about each other yet. By the way, can I please have my credit card back?”
She reached into her purse and took out the credit card, but as she went to hand it to me she suddenly paused. “Are you sure? I wanted to buy dinner tonight.”
I grabbed the card. “Now what type of gentleman would I be if I let a lady pay?”
I ordered an after-dinner drink, a Johnnie Walker Blue in a warm snifter. Nancy didn’t like scotch and scoffed at my suggestion that she order a cordial. She had taken out her pad and pen and was once again writing down bizarre formulas and equations. I swirled the scotch around in the glass and tried to concentrate on her exotic beauty instead of the mutant brain that seemed to be in full possession of her.
Chapter Fourteen
True to form, I took Nancy home and we ripped each other’s clothes off. We had crazy sex that went on forever on her cluttered bed. Crazy in the sense that every time I looked at her, she seemed to be calculating some theory in her head, occasionally letting out an unconvincing moan or groan. As for me, between all the coke and booze, I couldn’t go on any longer. After about a half hour that seemed like two hours, I rolled off her and apologized for not being able to finish. She didn’t seem to care, and to my total surprise, asked me for some cocaine.
“I didn’t think you used the stuff.”
“I usually don’t, but I’ve been looking at different stimuli that can enhance my staying power and allow me to have longer, more productive days.”
I handed her the vial and she sniffed up almost all the rest of the coke. I warned her to be careful, but she waved off my suggestion with a flick of her wrist. “If you plan on staying, please order a lot more.” She put on a robe and got up off the bed.
Her apartment was a total disaster. Books were piled precariously high and in no particular order. Never in my life did I imagine I could be buried in an avalanche of books. Newspapers, magazines, pamphlets, and discarded notes were everywhere. The place was dark and eerie, with cobwebs dangling from every corner. The only picture on the walls showed an atomic explosion with this inspirational phrase: DREAM BIG OR NOT AT ALL.
In the bathroom, I had to remove a stack of books piled on the toilet seat before using it. There were books in the shower and in the sink next to splotches of toothpaste and cosmetic products.
I made a call to my dealer, and in less than fifteen minutes he delivered four grams of coke. Before I even closed the door, she grabbed a bag from me, took two large hits, and placed the bag on her desk.
“Is there anything to drink?” I asked.
“Look in the refrigerator.”
I opened the door and all I found were cheap wine coolers that I would have been ashamed to serve to drunks living in cardboard boxes. “Don’t you have anything else?”
“No! Budget, remember?”
I called a local liquor store and had them deliver a case of quality wine. She finished the first bag of coke before the wine arrived. She didn’t say a word as she worked on her crazy theories. I poured her a glass of wine, and she drank it straight down like it was a glass of water. I cleared space on the couch and sat down across from her. “Are you just going to sit there and work on your theories all night?” She picked up a book titled Glamorous Girls of Hollywood and flung it at me.
“Why don’t you look through that? When you’re sufficiently aroused, you can fuck me. But this time from behind, because I can’t let this moment of total clarity slip by. I can’t afford to have my concentration disturbed.”
“How romantic! And what a wonderful use of your valuable time.”
“Can I have some more coke?”
“No! You’re rude.”
“Why would you say that? I let you fuck me, and, according to my mathematical calculations, you’re not the greatest lover I’ve ever had.”
“Sorry, next time I’ll try harder.”
“What makes you think there will be a next time if you don’t give me more coke?”
I got up from the couch, turned her chair around, and shook her. “What the hell is wrong with you, Nancy? You’re working on a design to build an atomic bomb that you plan on selling. Don’t you realize the destructive nature of these weapons? They can kill millions of innocent people. It’s absolutely insane to think you can genetically program the bomb to kill only the bad guys.”
“I would never sell my bomb to anyone who might use it to kill civilians.”
“And why would anyone buy your bomb unless they planned on using it for nefarious purposes? It’s not something you place on the mantel of your fireplace, for God’s sake.”
“I could sell it to Israel. I’m Jewish. They’d probably give me a medal.”
“They don’t need your bomb — and if they find out a nut like you is building a bomb, they’ll most likely have Mossad pay you a visit. And it won’t be a friendly visit to pin a medal on you.”
She started to cry and went on a rampage, ripping every piece of paper she could get her hands on, throwing books across the room, and turning over her blackboard. I tried to take cover as she took an unabridged, hardcover edition of the Bible and slammed it down on my head.
“You heathen, you filthy disgusting heathen!” she screamed as she punched and kicked me. Finally, she stopped and looked at the framed picture of the atomic explosion. She took it down, slammed it against the desk, and sent glass flying across the room. She discarded it with a fling of her hand. “Satisfied, you son of a bitch?”
“How about a
few more hits to cheer you up?”
She grabbed another bag out of my hand. “Thanks.”
I couldn’t stay in her apartment a moment longer. The place was a disaster before she went crazy, but now it was too much for me to handle. Until recently it was difficult for me to associate a beautiful girl like Nancy with such filth and waste. The few windows in her place were completely covered in black drapes that I imagine she got from the wardrobe department at the studio. I guess she didn’t want anyone to see her bomb design and steal it.
Chapter Fifteen
At my insistence, we left her apartment and started walking back to my home in Studio City. The sun was coming up, and like a tidal wave it washed away the stench and odor of Nancy’s apartment. I carried the wine and she held onto the coke. She still wore her robe with nothing on underneath, and her tits were on show. I asked her to please cover herself up, and, true to form, she gave me a lecture on the biological function of women’s breasts and how our stuck-up, Judeo-Christian morals were responsible for more women getting raped in the United States than in any other civilized country in the world.
I told her to save it for the police when they picked her up for indecent exposure and found all that coke on her. She laughed and took another hit in the middle of the street then offered me some. I looked around, saw no one around, and took a couple of bumps. After all, I had to be on the same plane as this lunatic or else I might kill her.
“I saw one of your disgusting commercials for some oil company on TV; that company is responsible for killing all the wildlife off the coast of Alaska. How do you live with yourself? The way you distort the truth and paint a rosy picture of the cleanup, and with that music in the background? ‘What a Wonderful World.’ Really? For whom? You and the oil company? Not for the poor ducks and dolphins, that’s for sure.”
“It helps pay the bills and allows me to take you out to fancy restaurants.”
“Oh, please, what you spend on me is mere pittance compared to what you make. You act so self-righteous when passing judgment on me and my design for a bomb, yet you have no problem peddling products like tobacco that kill millions of people each year. At least if my bomb got into the wrong hands, the suffering would end immediately — but with your cancer-causing products that you so happily sell, the suffering goes on for years before the end comes.”
“I’m not forcing you to go out to dinner. If my job is so offensive to you, you could always say no.”
“And then who would you have to talk to at dinner?”
“I’m sure there must be another girl or two out there nearly as crazy and entertaining as you.”
“Really! Who looks like me and is so willing to spread her legs?”
“That’s your choice.”
“Like I have a choice? All through dinner you stared at my breasts like a hungry tiger.”
“Nancy, not that it’s any of my business, but how many men have you been with?”
“You’re right, it’s none of your business, but if I had to guess, around a hundred.”
“Holy shit! You’re only twenty-four.”
“Oh, don’t act so coy with me, Joe. You little guinea bastards are barely out of your mothers’ wombs before you’re trying to screw the first woman you can get your hands on. That’s why you Italians are such great lovers; you start so young.”
“I thought you said I wasn’t much of a lover?”
“True, just my luck, I end up with the reject of the bunch.”
“Very nice, Nancy.”
“Just telling it the way it is. Sorry, I haven’t mastered the art of lying quite as well as you. Next time we do it, I’ll try to moan a little more if that makes you happy.”
She sat with her robe totally undone on the only sidewalk in the residential area of Studio City. The sun was slowly rising over the one- and two-story homes; in the distance a sign for Universal Studio had become visible. I tried to tie her robe but she pushed my hands away.
“Nancy, you are seriously testing your luck. Some housewife is going to look out her living-room window and see a totally naked woman sitting across from where her children play. She’s going to call the police and you are going to have a tough time explaining …”
“If you’re that frightened, just leave! God forbid if the sterling reputation of Joe Rossetti was soiled in any way.”
I lifted her head and looked into her eyes, glazed and glassy from the booze and coke, yet still penetrating. I felt guilty for mocking her dream. She had apparently put a lot of thought and effort into building this bomb. I took her hand. “Nancy, please, I don’t want anything to happen to you. Let’s get out of here, go back to my place, and you can scream and rant all you want.”
She tied her robe and took my hand. Finally, we made it back to my house and celebrated by listening to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. We dumped the remaining coke on the album cover. It made an impressive mountain of white powder but didn’t last long. Nancy did not practice self-control when it came to this stuff. Then again, who did? Thankfully, the “drugstore” was open 24/7, and I placed another order that was delivered promptly.
Nancy was in a much better mood after that, and, even though Floyd’s music didn’t exactly conjure up a desire to go out on the dance floor, she was nevertheless dancing naked around the house … Who was I to complain? After the album finished, she sat beside me, picked up the straw on the table, and took two more hits. She crossed her legs, picked up her glass of wine, and looked at me like a psychologist studying a sick and deranged patient.
“Feeling better?” I asked.
“Much! Sorry I was gloomy before. It’s not easy to give up something I’ve been working on so diligently for so long.”
“And sacrificing so much. At least now you’ll have enough money to buy better-quality liquor. How much did you actually save?”
“A few hundred.”
“A few hundred thousand?”
“No, silly, a few hundred dollars.”
It was hard, but I kept my mouth shut. Nancy made plenty of money — nothing like what I made — but plenty. She was well respected and exceptional at her job. I bent down and took two giant hits of the coke.
“Can I tell you a secret?”
“Of course.”
“Of all the men I have been with, and a few women, you are the only one I have seriously thought of introducing to my mother.”
“And why is that?”
“Because you are the only one I have seriously thought of marrying. Sure, you have your shortcomings, but you’re very handsome, rich, generous, protective, and fairly intelligent. And you’re Italian and Catholic.”
“And why would that matter?”
“Because statistics show that Italian Catholics are a lot less likely to get divorced. That doesn’t mean you wouldn’t be any less likely to cheat, but at the end of the night you will always come back home.”
“Interesting!”
“My father raped me for the first time when I was fourteen.”
“What?”
“He first raped me at fourteen and repeatedly thereafter until I left home at sixteen. And what was my mother doing while this was taking place? She was cooking dinner and watching The Dick Van Dyke Show on a black-and-white TV in the kitchen.”
“Did you tell her what was going on?”
“Of course! She said it was all in my imagination, and I should be ashamed to make such false accusations.”
“You’re kidding!”
“No, Joe, I’m not kidding. She also said I shouldn’t wear such provocative outfits; it was unbecoming for a young lady, and I was only asking for trouble.”
“And this is the woman you want to introduce me to?”
“She’s changed. She has dementia and doesn’t recognize anyone or remember anything.”
I felt Nancy falling back into her earlier gloomy mood, so I recommended she take a few more hits, which she quickly did. She then walked over to my record recollection and started
going through all my albums. “You have wonderful taste in music, Joe. I imagine it’s a great inspiration to you when you sit down and put together an advertising campaign, peddling a bunch of lies to the uneducated and gullible masses.”
“It certainly helps.” She put on a Frank Sinatra album.
“Dance with me, Joe.”
“First you need to put on some clothes; otherwise there’s going to be a huge bulge separating us, and after all the coke I don’t know if I’m up to the challenge.”
Nancy walked into my bedroom, opened the door to my closet, and put on another one of my Armani sport coats. It was naturally, again, way too big for her, but my God, she was hot.
“Are you trying to kill me?”
I spun her around and we danced cheek to cheek to Ol’ Blue Eyes, with an occasional dip.
“I haven’t paid my rent in two months. How many months can you usually go without being thrown out?”
“I think it’s three. You need to move out of there. The place is a dump. Do you even have air conditioning?”
“I used to have a window unit, but one night when I was working on my design for the bomb, I got so frustrated that I kicked it straight out the window. Thank God nobody was walking by.”
“They just finished building new condominiums about half a mile from here. They look really nice and in a safe, beautiful area. You should look at them.”
“And where would I get the down payment?”
“I’ll give you the down payment.”
“Well, if you’re going to do that, why don’t you just buy the place for me outright? Then I wouldn’t have to worry about any payments.”
“They’re going for eighty thousand dollars. Isn’t that asking a little much?”
“Isn’t that less than you make in a month?”
“Yeah, usually.”
“And it’s not like you have a family to support. You don’t even have a dog or a cat, and I know this house is paid for.”
“You make good money. I don’t understand for the life of me why you never have any.”
Targeted Demographics Page 8