Vanity Fire

by John M. Daniel

  “And you believe that.”

  “Shut up, Guy.”

  “Stupid,” I said. “You’re being stupid.”

  “I said, shut up. You shut up.”

  We walked back to our deck chairs and sat down. “And what about me?” I asked.

  “I like you a lot, Guy Mallon, and I’m really grateful to you for bringing me here. But it’s time for you to go back to L.A. tomorrow with Lew Pomeroy. And you can forget all about me, and about Gracie and Roger, and just think about something else, okay? Think about Carol. Maybe you can find her and get her to come back to you. Whatever.”

  Roger came out on the deck and said, “Refreshments are in the house. I made us some treats. It’s getting too breezy out here on the deck. I’m afraid one of the treats might get blown away.” He grinned and Kitty gave him a little squeal. We followed him into the house.

  We sat in the kitchen-living room, our chairs drawn up to a steamer trunk which served as a coffee table. On the trunk were our refreshments: rum on the rocks for Roger and me and a plain Coke for Kitty, a paper plate with a few Vienna sausages and a sprinkling of Fritos, and a mirror face-up with four neat and generous lines of white powder. And a straw.

  “Well, you do know how to entertain,” I said. “You’re in the entertainment business, first class.”

  Kitty sat down on the steamer trunk and bent her head down over the mirror. Pinching one nostril, she deftly sucked a line of powder up into her brains. She looked up and gave Roger a full, adoring smile. “You have plenty more of this, I hope?”

  Roger grinned. “I have assets, babycakes. In fact right now your babycake ass sets on a gold mine.”

  Her eyes widened. She put her palms down on the surface of the trunk. “In here?”

  “Full,” he boasted. He reached forward and flipped the padlock affectionately. “But most of it’s being shipped out tomorrow. My associates are coming to pick it up.”

  “And pay you for it,” she said. “So you’ll have money to spring Gracie and—”

  “You got it, doll. Go ahead, do another line and pass Guy the mirror.”

  She did as she was told but I passed the mirror to Roger. “No, thanks,” I said.

  Roger took the straw and snorted up one of the lines, then put the mirror back on the trunk. “So, Guy. Like my spread? My digs?”

  “You own this place?” I asked.

  “It belongs to the business,” he said.

  “XXX-Tra Credits? Caslon Oldestyle?”

  “No, my new business. I’m only a part owner, but I get to live on the island for free.” He turned to Kitty and said, “With my girl here.”

  Kitty said, “And Gracie. Huh, Roger?”

  Roger nodded.

  “What’s the name of your new company, Roger?” I asked.

  Kitty said, “That’s none of your business. Right, Roger?”

  “I’m not worried about Guy telling anybody,” Roger said. His face was darker now. The whole room was darker. Twilight comes quickly to the jungle. Roger stood up and walked around the room, lighting kerosene lamps.

  I said, “I think I should be getting back to the resort. Before it’s too dark. So Roger, if you don’t mind, let’s go on over there. Kitty can grab her stuff and come back with you. I assume you want to do that, Kitty?”

  Roger sat back down, inhaled the other line of coke, stood up, and said, “Let’s take a walk. I want to show you something.”

  “Well—”

  “Don’t worry. I can handle the skiff in the dark. I do it all the time. I want you to see the sunset through the palms. It’s outrageous.”

  “Roger, I’m ready to leave now. This is making me—”

  “Aw Guy,” Kitty said. “Come on. Just a little walk, right, Roger?”

  Roger went over to the kitchen area of the room and opened a drawer. He pulled out a pistol. And something else, which he put in his pocket before I could see what it was.

  Kitty said, “Roger, honey, what are you doing?”

  For some reason I didn’t feel frightened. Just numb at the prospect that I might very well die in the jungle, soon, in the company of a couple of two-bit pornographers. And angry that I might never get to see Carol Murphy again. Angry.

  “Don’t worry, folks,” Roger laughed. “The gun’s not for people. I don’t kill people. I already told you that.”

  “Then—”

  “Bats,” Roger said. “They come out every evening. I’m trying to shoot ’em out of the sky. Little fuckers are hard to hit, but I’ve gotten a few. God, I hate bats. Come on. Let’s go.”

  After a few long seconds, I stood up and said, “Lead on, Macduff.”

  Kitty said, “Who’s Macduff?”

  Roger said, “You first.”

  So we went out of the house and down the steps. “It’s the path to the left,” Roger said, so that’s the way we went, me in front, with Roger behind me and Kitty bringing up the rear. “Be careful on the path,” Roger warned us. “You guys just have flip-flops on, and the path gets kind of rocky. I always wear tennis shoes on this island. Safer that way.”

  It was getting so dark it was hard to see the path before me, but I followed the corridor between the parted plants. Roger was right about the bats. They were darting and swooping through the darkening sky over our heads, silent and spooky, dozens of them, maybe hundreds. Then suddenly through the forest of palms and ferns I saw the light up ahead. A brilliant ball of blazing gold filling the sky and reflecting on a still sea, some two hundred yards in front of us through the dense silhouette of jungle.

  “Stop here,” Roger said. “Isn’t that something?”

  “God, it’s so beautiful,” Kitty said.

  Well, it was. A pyromaniac’s dream. I turned back and saw Kitty and Roger, their arms around each other’s waists, smiling into the sunset, their teeth glowing gold. They were about ten feet behind me on the path.

  “Yup,” I said. “Thanks for showing us that. Now I think it’s time—”

  “It’s time,” Roger said.

  “Huh?” I moved aside slightly, just enough to let the last of the sun’s light shine on Roger’s face. He was still smiling. Kitty was not. Roger was pointing his gun directly at my chest.

  “I told you I don’t kill people,” he said. “I want to keep it that way, so just do what I tell you, okay?”

  I kept my mouth shut.

  Roger brought the gun up and fired it into the air. The sound was immense. A bat flew off into the trees. “Shit,” Roger said. “Missed him. So like I said, do what I tell you, okay? Okay?”

  I held my tongue again. Roger fired again and missed another bat. My ears were ringing, my mind a Mixmaster.

  “Don’t make me ask you again,” Roger said. “I only have four shots left, and I’m not wasting them on bats.”

  Kitty said softly, “Do what he says, Guy. Do what he asks you to do.”

  I nodded.

  “Okay,” Roger said, his pistol once again pointed at my chest. “That’s better. Okay, Guy, I want you to go over and stand next to that palm tree. No, that one. That one. Face me. Right. Just stay there.” He reached into the pocket of his dirty guayabera and fished out a pair of handcuffs, which he gave to Kitty. “Cuff him to the tree,” he told her. “Hands behind the tree.”

  “But—”

  “Do it.”

  Kitty nodded and approached me. “Sorry, Guy,” she said. “Put your hands behind you. Either side of the tree. That’s right.”

  I felt the cuffs snap in place, biting my wrists like the jaws of a large dog. My arms were pinned and stretched behind me. My chest was cramping up. There was about six inches of chain between the two cuffs.

  “Atta girl,” Roger said. “Here you go, Kitty. Come here.”

  She walked back to where he was standing.

  “The key to the handcuffs. I’m giving it to you.” He placed it in her palm. “Now I want you to throw that key as far as you
can into the jungle. Do it. Do it now, Kitty. Now.”

  “But Roger, you said you don’t kill people. You said—”

  “I don’t. I’ll leave that to my business associates. They’ll be here early tomorrow afternoon. They’re good at killing people. It’s kind of an art form for them. If the bugs and the bats and the iguanas don’t eat him first.” He laughed long and loud, then suddenly stopped laughing altogether. “Throw away the key, Kitty.”

  “Why don’t you just shoot him?” Kitty cried. “It’ll be kinder.”

  “Throw away the key.”

  “He’s in pain, Roger. And he won’t have anything to eat or drink, and—”

  “He can eat bat shit,” Roger said. “Drink bat piss. Throw away the key.”

  “Oh fuck!” She wound up and pitched the key. It was too dark now for me to see where it went, but I could hear it whistle off and land softly somewhere in the universe far, far away. She turned to Roger and said, “If you won’t shoot him, let me.”

  “You’d kill your friend, your friend Guy?”

  “He’s not a close friend, Roger,” she said. “It’s just, well it would be kinder to him to let me kill him now, rather than spend the night out here and then get, I don’t know, tortured or something, I don’t know, I just, oh Roger, let me shoot the poor little fucker. Please! Then we can go back to the house and do some more lines, have a party. Come on.”

  “You kill him, you bury him. First thing tomorrow morning.”

  “Okay.”

  Roger handed her the pistol and said, “Now be careful. Don’t waste any bullets. One shot is all you get.”

  There, in the darkening twilight, I saw my friend Kitty sighting at me down the barrel of Roger’s gun. Her hand shook. “I want you to remember I’m doing you a favor, Guy,” she said.

  Then she lowered the gun to her hip. “I’m not sure I can do it,” she said.

  Roger said, “Forget it then. Give me the gun.”

  “No. I’ll do it.” She brought the gun back up and sighted again. The gun was shivering like a leaf. “Give me a reason, Guy. Make me mad enough to kill you. I need for you to piss me off real bad.” There was just enough light for me to see her wink at me twice, first with one eye, then with the other. “Piss me off, God damn it!”

  Everything slowed way down, and I had time to recall that for as long as I could remember, everyone was always giving me orders. Carol Murphy telling me what to do. Fritz Marburger, telling me what to do. Roger Herndon, Commander Bob Worsham, Rosa Macdonald, all telling me what to do. Now here was Kitty Katz, this stripper, this cokehead, this false friend, telling me what to do. I was going to die doing what other people told me to do. Well, okay, that’s me all over. All over.

  “Kitty,” I said, “I can’t stop you from killing me but if you think you’re going to survive this adventure yourself, you are the dumbest, stupidest—”

  “Don’t call me stupid!”

  “—stupidest girl on the planet. You’re just a stupid stripper with a sense of humor and a good body, but all your brains are in your tits, and they’re starting to sag. You’re a coked-out dumbbell. A stupid, stupid.…” There was a word in my mind but I couldn’t force it to my mouth. “Stupid.”

  “Come on, Kitty,” Roger said. “Pull the damn trigger.”

  She did.

  She turned right around, took aim in a split second, and shot Roger in the right foot. The report echoed in the jungle and lived on in my ears.

  “Holy Jesus!” Roger shouted. “God damn it, Kitty, fuck!”

  “Right,” Kitty said. “Hold still, Roger.” And she shot him in the left ankle.

  Roger went down on his knees and howled. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he roared.

  “I know what I’m doing,” Kitty said. She walked over to me, kissed me on the lips, then walked behind the tree and fired the gun again. I felt the heat as the shot left the muzzle. It burned my hands, but my arms were suddenly free. I still had steel bracelets on both wrists, but the wrists weren’t attached to each other. My arms were cramped up but free. I took a deep breath, stepped away from the tree, and opened my eyes.

  It was dark now, but I could see Kitty standing over Roger’s crouched body. She lifted her foot and shoved him off balance, so that he lay whimpering on his side, clutching his wounds. “I have one more bullet left, Roger,” she said. “Any requests?”

  “You can shoot it up your ass, you stupid cunt!”

  Ah. The word my mouth does not have an easy time saying.

  “You shouldn’t have said that, Rog,” Kitty told him. “Nobody calls me stupid. Guy, take his shoes off. Take off your shirt, Roger.”

  “What?”

  Kitty pointed the gun at his temple. “You heard me. Take off your shirt and put your hands behind your back. Now. Do it now.”

  Roger did as he was told. Using her teeth and her fingers, Kitty ripped the guayabera up the back, giving her enough cloth to work with. She knotted Roger’s wrists together behind his back, while I removed his bloody tennis shoes and socks. Blood is sticky stuff. It smells, too, or maybe that was just the smell of Roger’s feet.

  Kitty and I stood up. “Thank you, Roger. Thanks for cooperating. I’ve never killed a man, and I’m glad I didn’t have to start tonight. So thanks for being so stupid. Guy, give me those shoes.”

  I handed them to her.

  “Ewww,” she said. “Gross.” She threw one shoe as far as she could into the jungle on one side of the path, then threw the other far off into the other side. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  “Wait,” Roger cried. “You can’t just leave me here!”

  “Some people will be around early tomorrow afternoon,” I reminded him. “They’ll take care of you. Meanwhile, eat bat shit.”

  ***

  “God, can you believe he called me stupid?” Kitty said when we got back to the house. The lamps were turned up high and the house was cheerful and bright. “Roger, of all people, calling me stupid?”

  “I called you stupid, too,” I said. “I’m sorry about that.”

  “I didn’t mind you calling me that,” she said. “You’re a lot smarter than I am. But Roger’s dumb as shit.”

  “Okay,” I said, “we’d better get going. Got your tote bag?”

  “It’s out on the deck. Just a minute, I got one more thing to take care of. One bullet left.”

  She carried the pistol to the steamer trunk in the center of the room and blew the lock off. Then she threw the empty gun on the couch and opened the trunk. “God,” she said. “God.”

  “Kitty, let’s go.”

  “Go get my tote bag,” she said.

  “No way. Close the trunk and let’s get out of here.”

  “But Guy—”

  “No.”

  “I’m not going to snort it, I swear. We’re going to sell it, right? Make enough to bail Gracie out?”

  “Forget it.”

  “But—”

  “Who’s going to bail you out of the jail in Honduras? Roger?”

  “How about one toot for the road, then?”

  “We don’t have time.”

  She glared at me, then slammed the trunk shut. She walked to the kitchen table and picked up a kerosene lamp. She threw it across the room at another lamp, and the two lamps hit the floor together and became a flaming pool.

  “Okay,” she said. “We’re outa here. I hope you can figure out how to drive an outboard motor in the dark.”

  “Me? What about you?”

  “Me? Don’t be silly. I’m just a stupid stripper, remember?” She picked up the one remaining lamp and led us out the door, across the deck, grabbing her tote along the way, down the stairs, and through the jungle to Roger’s dock.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Trial and error, by the light of a kerosene lamp.

  It took me half an hour to find the switch, pull the cord a million times, find the throttl
e, kill the engine, do it again, kill it again, do it again, then figure out the difference between backwards and forwards, right and left. But eventually I got the hang of it and we chugged out into the open channel, headed for the big island of Morgania.

  The luck didn’t last. First our lamp blew out, then I steered us out of the channel and into shallow water. I ran us onto a sand bar and killed the engine.

  We sat there a few minutes, slapping at mosquitoes, until Kitty said, “Okay, smarty. What do we do now?”

  “We get out of the boat and shove off into the channel. Come on.”

  “What about sharks?”

  “There aren’t any sharks in these waters.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I don’t.”

  We climbed out of the boat, and without our weight the boat lifted free of the sand bar and started to float away from us. I had to dive in and swim after it. Luckily the water was shallow enough for me to stand up and drag the boat back to where Kitty was waiting.

  We crawled back into the skiff and I got to work yanking on the cord. I got us going again and we were back in the open channel, putt-putting nicely along without any idea where the channel would bend again and leave us running aground.

  “Guy, look!”

  I turned and looked back at Polly’s Key, now about a hundred yards behind us. Flames were rising from a fire in the middle of the island, licking up and turning the sky above dark orange. The night got suddenly silent.

  “Uh-oh.”

  “Well, it can’t be helped,” Kitty said. “And nobody knows we were out there. We’ll get Oliver to take us to the airport first thing tomorrow morning and we’ll be long gone before—”

  “Kitty, that’s not why I said uh-oh.”

  “What.”

  “Fuck,” I said. “We’re out of gas.”

  “Holy shit!” she cried. “What a flake!”

  “How was I supposed to know—”

  “Not you. Roger. He was always running out of gas. Okay, so now what?”

  “I have no idea,” I admitted. “We’re drifting with a current of some kind, but I have no idea where it’s taking us.”