The 22 Murders of Madison May

by Max Barry

  “Is everything all right?”

  “I think . . .” she said. “Sorry, I just thought someone was watching me.”

  “A woman?” Yvonne said sharply.

  “No.” She glanced around. “It was probably nothing.”

  “I tell you what, Maddie, why don’t I take you out? We’ll do a little shopping at the Century City mall. Some drinks afterward, if you can stand to meet my friends.”

  “Oh,” she said, embarrassed. “You don’t need to do that.”

  “I should have suggested this in the first place. Forgive me. I’m still flustered from that reporter. Let me take care of you for the rest of the day.”

  “This is making me feel very pampered,” Maddie said.

  “That you should get used to,” Yvonne said.

  * * *

  —

  She caught an Uber to the mall, although it turned out to be so close, she could have walked. It was an enormous concrete structure with palm trees wedged onto one corner, which she stopped to photograph. Inside, it was very open and airy, not at all what she was used to, a little self-contained world where everything was the way it was because it was chosen.

  Yvonne was waiting for her in the dining terrace at the top of a set of escalators. She extended her arms and they kissed each other’s cheeks, like real L.A. socialites. “Thank you so much for coming,” Yvonne said, although Maddie was pretty sure Yvonne was the one doing her a favor. “Neil is apoplectic at the idea that the studio is trying to talk to you before we’ve finished negotiating. It will be over soon.”

  “No problem.”

  Yvonne smiled. “I love your attitude.” This was something Maddie could get used to: constant praise for meeting minimum behavioral standards. That had been happening a lot lately. “Would you like to see a movie?”

  They took in a screening of Calling All Martians, which was about a teenage girl detective who was also deaf, and was much better than Maddie expected. Afterward, Yvonne told her that the actor had been replaced three times before shooting, and that one of the dogs was afraid of boom microphones, creating two hundred thousand dollars’ worth of delays. It was a good way to see movies: with someone who could share their secrets.

  As the evening closed in, the dining terrace became ringed with a thousand yellow bulbs like fairy lights. A man in a white open-necked shirt called to Yvonne from a glass table beneath a wide green umbrella. This was the group of Yvonne’s friends, which seemed to be solely composed of producers aged under thirty. “Maddie’s new,” said Yvonne, introducing her. “If you want to know more, read Variety tomorrow.”

  This created a minor stir. She was given walnuts, which were a special promotion from a vegan eatery, and came with a silver tool for cracking them open. She was offered a daiquiri. This was pretty L.A., what she was doing right here. She had to grab a photo for Zar, her actor friend back home.

  The next hour or so, she fielded questions about her background, favorite movies, and inspirations, while listening to other people’s opinions on writers, directors, and where the industry would be once Disney owned everything. Eventually, her head buzzing from three daiquiris, she excused herself to find the restroom. On her return, she turned a corner and unexpectedly found herself face-to-face with the valet from the night before, the one with longish hair who’d been such a fan. She was startled, but he literally jumped back two steps. “Shit!” he said, then laughed. “Oh my God, I’m sorry. I did not expect to see you here. It’s Clay. From last night?”

  “Yes,” she said, guarded, because she wasn’t sure if this was a coincidence. “Of course.”

  “Are you here for a movie?” He gestured behind him, where there were indeed cinemas. He was a movie buff; he had said that before. He was so into film that he’d even known she was being cast in By the River Blue. She supposed it made sense that he hung out here.

  “I saw Calling All Martians.”

  “Hey, I want to apologize for last night. I was thinking it over and I feel like I maybe went a little crazy-stalker-fan on you.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “It’s okay. You can say it. I’ve been cringing at myself all day.”

  “It’s fine,” she said, and it was, pretty much. “Honestly, I was happy to have someone to share the moment with.”

  He grinned, showing dimples. “That is super, super-kind of you. You don’t know how much that means to me.” He glanced around. “Can I get you something? Do you want food?”

  “Thanks, but I’m with people.”

  He slapped his forehead. “Oh my God. Of course you are. I’m being stupid again. I’m going to let you get back to your life. I’m just killing time before my movie. I promise not to bother you again.”

  “Try the walnuts,” Maddie said. “They’re really good.” She took a step and he moved to let her pass.

  “I will!” he said, like this was an exciting idea. “Thanks!”

  She felt good about this interaction and returned to her group. They were discussing a movie she knew nothing about, because it hadn’t been made yet, but about which everyone already seemed to have firm opinions. A while later, she saw Clay make his way through the crowd and sit at a table by the glass barrier near the escalators. Over the next few minutes, whenever she glanced over, he was fooling about with the cracking tool, flipping it one way then the other, trying to insert walnuts in different ways. She found herself fascinated by how long he could take to figure it out.

  Finally she leaned into Yvonne. “Is it okay if I talk to someone for a minute?” She pointed to Clay.

  “Who’s that?”

  “Just a guy I met.”

  “A journalist?”

  “No,” Maddie said. “He’s a valet.”

  Yvonne stared at him. Clay, noticing, blinked and sat up straighter. “I mean . . .” said Yvonne, and the man beside her bellowed laughter.

  “Yvonne,” said the man. “This is crazy. You have to hear this.”

  “I just want to help him crack a walnut,” Maddie promised.

  Yvonne looked unconvinced, but the man was waiting and she gave Maddie a brief nod.

  Clay seemed to inflate as Maddie approached, his smile stretching, his eyes filling with delight and wonder. “Hey!” he said.

  “I can’t watch you do that any longer.” She took the cracking tool, folded it the right way, and handed it to him.

  “Oh my God.” He inserted a walnut and squeezed. The shell cracked.

  “Yay,” she said.

  “Now I feel bad. I’m not usually that stupid.”

  There was something about Clay, she decided. Something that felt familiar and lived-in. Impulsively, she pulled out the chair opposite and sat. His eyebrows shot up as if she’d launched them, like the ball in a ring-the-bell carnival game. “Do you mind? I know you have a movie soon.”

  “Fuck the movie,” Clay said. “I see a hundred movies a year. I’m not even exaggerating. A hundred, minimum. That’s how I saw your film. Saw the announcement, I mean. It’s not really, you know, my kind of movie. But I’ll watch anything.”

  “What’s your kind of movie?”

  “Anything with a good story. I hate it when they screw up the story. I don’t know if it’s just because I’ve seen a lot of movies, but I find it really clear how the story should go. When they get it wrong, that’s so annoying to me. Any movie they don’t screw up the story, I’m happy with.”

  “Maybe you should write your own.”

  He hesitated. “I do actually have an idea.”

  “Let’s hear it,” she said, feeling bold.

  He tugged nervously at his ear. “It’s stupid. You don’t want to hear it.”

  “It’s fine if it’s stupid,” she said, which was what she’d been taught at NYU: Before there is sharing, there must be trust. We leave judgment outside the room, people. “I still
want to hear it.”

  Clay took a breath. “Well . . . I mean . . . all right. You asked for it.” He wiped his hands on his pants. “So there’s this guy. And one night . . .” He paused, eyeing her. She nodded encouragingly. “He leaves work, which is a shitty little electronics store. And in the parking lot, there’s an old drunk dude. He grabs the guy and says, ‘Hey, kid, want to know a secret? I’m from another world.’ And he tries to give the guy something. He says it’s a token, but it’s really just a stone. Like a cold, worn-down old brick. So the guy takes it, mostly to, you know, humor the drunk dude, but the dude starts crying. He says he’s glad it’s over, because everything good gets left behind. Just craziness, right? So anyway, the next day, the guy wakes up and the furniture’s been moved around in his house and there are photos he doesn’t remember. He lives with his parents, but all of a sudden, his dad has a different job. And he’s like, ‘Dad, when did you get a new job?’ And his dad says, ‘I didn’t, I’ve had this job for years.’ ”

  “Ooh,” Maddie said.

  Clay nodded. “So the guy is really confused. And he figures out that the crazy old drunk dude wasn’t crazy after all. The weird stone, the token, it moves you somewhere. To a new world. The guy tries to get home, but he can’t do it. Everything he tries only moves him somewhere else, to another world he doesn’t recognize. And . . . well, he starts to go a little crazy. He can’t talk to anyone, no one believes him—no one even remembers the same things as he does. Finally he’s literally thinking of killing himself. It gets that bad. But he goes to the movies—just walks in to whatever’s playing—and ten minutes in, on-screen comes this actress. And, just like that, he falls in love.”

  “Oh!” Maddie said. She hadn’t seen that coming.

  “Suddenly he gets it. She’s the reason for all of this. For everything that happened. It’s a cosmic plan to bring them together.”

  “He just knows this?”

  Clay nodded. “Did you feel something like that when you decided to go into acting? Some things, you just feel. You can’t explain it.”

  She wasn’t sure she’d ever had a moment like that. She had doubted herself every step of the way. “This movie is more romantic than I expected.”

  “Wow. I’m so happy to hear you say that. Because then there’s a complication. The old drunk dude at the beginning, he has friends. And the friends want the token back.”

  “Aha,” Maddie said.

  “The guy has to keep jumping to new worlds to get away. But when he does, the actress isn’t an actress anymore. She’s a totally different person. The guy is heartbroken, because he lost her. But he vows to keep moving until he finds her again. No matter how long it takes.”

  She waited. “And does he?”

  Clay smiled awkwardly. “I don’t know. The ending isn’t done.”

  “It’s good, Clay.”

  He waved her away, embarrassed. “You don’t have to be nice.”

  “I like the people chasing him. Who are they?”

  “The bad guys,” Clay said. “They want to keep the guy and the girl apart. I’m so happy you like it, Madison. I’m super-open to feedback. Is there anything I could improve?”

  “Nope,” she said, because she had hung around artists long enough to know that didn’t always go well.

  “One thing. No matter how small.”

  She hesitated. “He first sees her on-screen, is that right?” Clay nodded. “He falls in love just based on that?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “I mean, as a performer, he’s only seen her play a character. He doesn’t actually know what she’s like.”

  Clay shook his head. “No, he can tell.”

  There was an awkward silence. “Oh, okay.”

  He laughed. “I don’t want to be defensive. It’s just . . . even when you’re performing, that’s you, right? You’re expressing a part of yourself. So it’s always fundamentally real.”

  Fair, she supposed. “I guess so.”

  He grinned. “I can’t even believe we’re having this conversation. I feel like I can tell you anything.” He glanced around. “I want to show you something.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  He dug into his pants pocket. She felt that strange sense of familiarity return, as if he reminded her of someone, but this time with a twist. He was about to produce something terrible. A knife. The thought came out of nowhere, but felt so real that she put a hand on the arms of her chair to push herself back.

  Clay placed a small black bag onto the table. The material was thin and worn. A bag for cheap jewelry. Inside, something bulged.

  She looked at him. “What is it?”

  “Take a look.”

  She wasn’t sure about this. It was just a jewelry bag. On a table. Outside a vegan eatery named Matty Eats. But she didn’t want to touch it.

  “Here.” He loosened the bag’s thread and lifted it by its rear corners. Out slid a gray stone. It was the size of an old flip phone, run through with dark lines. Lighter around the edges, and smooth, as if worn down over time. It made her think of chalk, like a material you might use to make something else.

  She looked at him.

  “You can touch it if you want,” he said.

  “What is it?”

  “What do you think?”

  She didn’t know. A stone. A weird stone.

  “It’s the token,” Clay said.

  She was confused. “From your movie?”

  “Madison, I’ve seen you as a TV weather girl. A salesgirl. A real estate agent. You’re a student a lot. But not successful, not like here. I’ve seen you in dozens of worlds, and the first time, you were in a movie called By the River Blue. You were the little sister. Clara. That’s how I know you’ll be perfect in that role. I’ve already seen you in it.”

  She stared at him. “What are you talking about?”

  “I wasn’t going to tell you. But it’s true, Madison. The token works.”

  “You’re saying . . .” She had this wrong; she must. “You’re the guy?”

  He nodded.

  She looked at the gray stone lying between them. It was a rock. A rock.

  But she had considered going into real estate. She liked houses. Weather girl? There had been a casting call in her second year, which she’d missed because she was busy with Trent. But she might have gone. Might have gotten the job, if things had been different.

  “I don’t know much about you here,” Clay said. “I haven’t been here very long. I can’t even tell you who the president is. But I can tell you about your other lives.”

  She heard a burst of laughter from Yvonne’s table. Maddie could stand and walk over there. Tell Yvonne about the crazy guy with the idea for a movie that wasn’t really a movie.

  “What happens in By the River Blue?” she asked, because no one had that script. Even she had been allowed to see only her own scenes.

  He hesitated. “It might not be the same. Whenever I move, there are changes. But in the one I saw, your first scene is at the table for a family lunch. You argue with your mom. Later you talk about boys. Fooling around with boys. Then, right at the end, after the funeral, you have a pillow fight with your sisters. An amazing pillow fight. You jump on the bed. Your hair is . . . everywhere.”

  How could he know this? He should not know this.

  And his face. She couldn’t see deceit anywhere. Either he was an amazing actor or he believed what he was saying.

  “I’ve messed this up, haven’t I?” Clay said. “I shouldn’t have told you so soon.” He sat back and ran a hand through his hair. “I forgot how crazy it sounds. Argh.”

  She could stand up and leave. He was half expecting it; she could see it in his face.

  Some things, you just feel, he’d said. You can’t explain it.

  She could feel this. Whatever it
was, it wasn’t a lie.

  “Tell me, then,” she said, “about my other lives.”

  16

  Felicity left her rental car in the bowels of the Century City mall and rode the escalator. With one hand she held on to the strap of her bag, which felt like it wanted to slip from her shoulder and reveal her secret to the world: that she had a gun. The doors parted. She wound her way among shoppers to an information kiosk. There she looked for the store whose name was visible in the background of one of Maddie’s pictures: matty eats. According to the screen, it was part of the second-floor dining terrace, on the other side of the mall.

  She moved on. With every step she felt lighter—or, looser, maybe, like parts of her were fraying away. Her career, her relationship with Gavin, her ability to order a frozen yogurt: Those would not be options after she walked up to a man with no history of violence and shot him dead in front of a crowd of onlookers. Those might be paths for other Felicitys, in other places. But not her.

  Two lives, she thought. I’ll end two lives today.

  At the top of the escalator, wide green umbrellas crested into view, shading wicker furniture and thin tables, just like she’d seen in the picture. She scanned the crowd and it was funny, she practically walked right into them, because she was searching the terrace and they were the closest table, ten feet from the escalators, Maddie with her elbows on the table, leaning forward, as if she couldn’t get enough of what Clay was saying.

  Fuck, she thought. Fuck—

  “Pardon me!” said a woman, the final syllable like a gunshot. Felicity had stopped like an idiot, blocking traffic. People on a wicker bench turned to see what the problem was.

  She turned on her heel and walked away. Maddie had been about to look up; Clay had been about to turn; one then the other; and she wasn’t ready; she wasn’t. She walked around the corner and put her back to a wall. She felt like she might throw up. She closed her eyes and tried to breathe.

  He’s there.

  Do what you came to do.

  There was a crowd. She might hit someone by accident. The only way to do this would be to walk right up to their table and shoot Clay at point-blank range, without even taking the gun out of her bag.