Man of Wax (Man of Wax Trilogy)

by Robert Swartwood

  Frank said, “Find everything you need?”

  I started nodding but stopped. After setting the two bottles of water and pretzels down on the counter, I motioned at the cigarettes behind him. “Marlboro Reds too, please.”

  Frank turned, grabbed a pack, and placed it on the counter next to the rest of my stuff. Then he started punching numbers into the register. The electronic bell sounded again, this time a young kid, couldn’t be more than sixteen, strolling in with his cap reversed on his head and a chain hanging from his pants.

  “Anything else?” Frank asked, his hand already extended to take my money, and I thought: Is it really this easy?

  Then something else occurred to me.

  “Actually, yeah,” I said. “Do you have any maps?”

  9

  Not even ten minutes later, back on the highway, the phone vibrated in my pocket.

  By then I’d already smoked one of the Marlboros, was working on my second. I hadn’t smoked since Casey was born, agreeing with Jen that a new baby shouldn’t have to be exposed to secondhand smoke. I hadn’t even tried bargaining around the issue, asking if I could at least smoke outside, or when I was out on a job (which, I knew, I could have done without Jen ever finding out, but still didn’t). Now that I had a daughter my life had changed even more—I finally felt I had a purpose—and I intended to stay around as long as possible. Now, after all this time, I needed the cigarettes because otherwise I knew I’d lose it, and so far, the shakes hadn’t come back.

  “Yeah,” I said, propping the cell phone between my ear and shoulder, so I could keep one hand on the wheel, one hand on my cigarette. My window was down just a couple inches, where I tapped the ashes. “I did it. I got you your Snickers bar.”

  “I know, Ben. Remember, I see everything you see, I hear everything you hear. But you didn’t really follow the rules properly, now did you?”

  I glanced at the stuff on the passenger seat: the Snickers, the bag of pretzels, the two bottles of water, the pack of cigarettes, and the folding map of California.

  “What do you mean?”

  A pause on Simon’s end, a kind of sigh, then: “What’s the point of lifting something if you’re going to buy other items too? You were supposed to lift the candy bar. That was all. Lift it and walk right out.”

  “But you never said that. All you said was steal the Snickers. You never said I couldn’t buy anything else.”

  “Ah, I see. So you want to play semantics, do you, Ben? Well, okay. Then when I say I’m going to kill your daughter and make your wife watch, does that mean I’m not going to rape your daughter too?”

  “Jesus.” The cigarette was finished now, down to the filter, and I flicked it out the window. “She’s barely even four years old. A fucking baby. You ... you ...”

  “Yes, Ben? What am I? Go ahead—say it. But keep in mind what I told you before. You call me anything else but Simon and either Jennifer or Casey will lose a body part. A finger, an ear, a toe. Or maybe an eye.”

  The highway was curving all over. I was passing trees, mountains, even an occasional river.

  “You’ve already broken one of the rules. Probably the easiest rule of them all, which makes me doubt your ability to even continue. Then you went and pulled that shit at the gas station. Well, fine, I understand you don’t quite believe this is real. That’s why I’ll have something waiting for you when you arrive at your destination.”

  I swallowed, barely had a voice when I asked, “What is it?”

  “Can’t tell you that, Ben.”

  “Where am I going?”

  “Can’t tell you that either. Spoils the fun.”

  I grabbed the pack of cigarettes, stuck one in my mouth, punched the Dodge’s lighter and waited the few seconds for it to warm. Then I had the cigarette lit, took a very long pull, let it out. Closed my eyes briefly, tried to remain calm. I told myself I should have bought another pack of cigarettes back at the station, maybe even a carton.

  After several seconds when I did my best to calm down, I said, “Can I ... can I speak to them?”

  “Which one, Ben? I asked you before which one you loved more. Telling me which one you want to talk to now will answer that question, don’t you think?”

  I said nothing. I took another pull. The road curved again, and I followed it, entering shadows which blessedly hid me from the glaring sun.

  Simon said, “Okay, I think I can arrange something. After all, you need proof that this is real, right? Not like the blood on the door back at the motel was real or anything.”

  “It wasn’t?”

  But Simon had already disconnected. I dropped the phone between my legs. The road curved, the shadows fell back, and the sun found me again. Just a simple game of peek-a-boo, something every parent is familiar with. I remembered playing it with Casey when she was just a year old, the smile on her face brightening every time I showed my face from behind the blanket. I’d have played that simple game with her for hours, but then again I would have done anything for her. My precious baby. My little princess. My only child who would constantly draw me into a debate on how Shrek 2 was twenty times better than the original, a little thing we had between us because Casey loved the Shrek movies (well, the first two) and we watched at least one of them once a month, if not more, just the two of us with a bowl of popcorn. I don’t know how it started between us, that never-ending debate, but I knew how much Casey loved arguing the point, how she was so much like Jen in that respect. And for that reason alone I maintained that I found the original Shrek the better movie, and would not be swayed no matter what kind of support Casey provided (the addition of characters like Puss-in-Boots and Fairy Godmother, the singing, how Shrek saved the day in the end), though internally I was always proud of her for never faltering.

  Five minutes passed and the phone vibrated. I didn’t even bother to glance at the screen when I answered.

  “Ba—Ba—Ben?”

  It wasn’t Simon’s voice.

  Time seemed to slow down once again and I whispered, “Jen? Jenny, is that you?”

  “Ben, oh my God.” She burst out sobbing, and even though she was God knows where I could see the tears in her eyes. “Tha—tha—they cut—they cut off—they cut off my—”

  She started crying out even louder then, and the sound fell away, until it was hardly even there at all. I started saying her name, again and again, asking if she was all right, if she was there, but there was only silence. Then, out of that silence, Simon spoke.

  “Satisfied?”

  “You,” I started to shout, but kept myself in check. I just closed my eyes, slammed my left hand against my forehead, ran it through my hair. Stay in control, I kept telling myself. Stay in control.

  “Go ahead, Ben. You deserve to call me something now. I’ll give you a free pass.”

  But I didn’t call him anything, though my mind was running through a continuous list of names. I kept hearing Jen’s voice. I kept seeing those tears.

  They cut off my—

  Cut off her what? Good fucking God, what did they cut off?

  “Now,” Simon said, in an almost chipper tone, “maybe you’ll start taking this more seriously. This is for real, Ben. Don’t doubt that for a second.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “To be one hundred percent honest,” Simon said, “I’m not really doing anything. I’m just the mediator. As far as everybody else is concerned I don’t even exist. You’re the main attraction. You’re the entertainment.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Do you spend much time on the Internet, Ben? Checking your email, looking up websites. Anything like that?”

  “I ... what does that have to do with anything?”

  “You’re addicted to porn, aren’t you? You sometimes spend hours on the computer looking at it. You’ve been addicted ever since you were in high school. When you got married you thought you’d stop but you didn’t, and you never once told your wife. Why couldn’t y
ou confide in her, Ben? Maybe she could have helped you stop. Who knows, maybe she would have wanted to watch it with you.”

  “How”—I swallowed, my throat suddenly dry—“how the fuck do you know all this?”

  “I can’t say I blame you. Going out to the bar, trying to pick up a woman, either she’s going to say yes or no. And even then there’s no guarantee you’ll get any pussy. But porn? Porn will never turn you down. Isn’t that right, Ben?”

  I said nothing, my hands squeezing the steering wheel.

  “Do you ever think about those girls on those websites? Not the ones that are posing in their skimpy lingerie, touching themselves and whatnot, but the other ones. You know, the ones with the cocks in their mouths and pussies. Even the ones with the cocks in their asses. You get off just seeing them being gangbanged, that look each of them gets on their faces when they get close to climax. Go ahead, Ben, tell me you don’t. Tell me that doesn’t make your dick go hard.”

  The road continued to curve. The sun continued to fight with the trees and mountains in an endless game of peek-a-boo.

  “You’re a man of wax, Ben.” There was something different about Simon’s voice, the unctuousness gone, now filled with what almost sounded like concern. “That’s okay, because I’m a man of wax too. Everybody is, even if they don’t want to admit it. They sit in front of the television for hours at a time, never moving their asses. Or they sit in front of their computer screens. None of them ever look away, no matter what they’re seeing, and do you know why? It’s because we can’t. The same reason cars get backed up when there’s an accident. We need to see that pain. We need to fulfill that desire in our hearts and souls. Right now, Ben, you’re simply playing a game to fill the desire in others’ hearts and souls. You’re giving them what they want, just like those countless girls with cum all over their faces were giving you what you wanted.”

  I was listening but at the same time I wasn’t. I was remembering all the nights I’d spent on the computer in my den, while Jen was fast asleep. I’d always done so well at cleaning up my tracks, of deleting files and the history. Never once did Jen suspect anything, just as never once did I try telling her what I really did late at night.

  “It’s nothing to be ashamed about. We all have our needs, our dark desires. We all have our fetishes we never want to tell anybody else about, not even our wives or girlfriends. It’s what makes us human, Ben, what sets us apart from the rest of the animals in the world.”

  “How ... how do you know all of this?”

  “It’s possible to know everything about anyone, if you have the proper resources. Your full name is Benjamin Jacob Anderson. You’re thirty-two years old. You were born into a poor family, your father a painter, your mother a dry cleaner. You went to high school in York, Pennsylvania. You got pretty good grades, graduated with a three-point-four. You ended up going to Penn State’s York campus for English, because you wanted to be a lawyer. But you were only there for two semesters. Though, actually, that’s not quite true, is it? You went one full semester, then only a few weeks into the second before dropping out. Something happened that made you question everything. What happened there? I already know, but I want you to tell me. Come on, Simon says tell me what happened.”

  I opened my mouth, started to speak, shut it. Just kept my attention on the road.

  “I understand it’s difficult for you,” Simon said. “Her name was Michelle Delaney. She was a sophomore. She was at the same party you went to, she and her boyfriend. I’ll at least give you that much. But tell me what her boyfriend did. Tell me what you did.”

  “There’s ... there’s no way you can know that. There’s no goddamn way.”

  “Keep telling yourself that, Ben. Keep telling yourself that none of this is real.”

  On his last couple words his voice had made a strange sound. I glanced at the phone, saw that it only had one bar left.

  “You’re cutting out.”

  “Am I? Well, I’m surprised it hasn’t happened yet. I should go now anyhow. Give you some time to think. Turn the phone off in the meantime. I don’t intend on talking to you for the next couple hours. Besides, all you have is driving ahead of you. Stop for gas when you need it, buy whatever you’d like, but remember: I see what you see, I hear what you hear, I know what you know. Use the map you bought at the gas station to get you where you need to be headed. Turn the phone back on when you start passing through Doyle.”

  The road was beginning to straighten out some. Ahead the endless stretch of trees of one of California’s many national forests rose in the distance.

  “Where am I going?”

  For some reason I didn’t expect Simon to answer me, but he said, “The Biggest Little City in the World: Reno, Nevada.”

  “And what”—I swallowed again, my throat still dry—“why am I going there?”

  Again, I didn’t expect him to answer. I expected him to give me some bullshit about how it wasn’t any of my business to know. But then, right before he disconnected, he told me, that grin once more palpable in his voice.

  “There’s a young woman there just dying to meet you.”

  10

  From where I’d entered Six Rivers National Park near Willow Creek, to where I finally started seeing signs for Doyle, California, roughly six hours passed. I took 299 all the way to Redding, the first true solid sign of modern Americana in the past couple hours. I stopped for gas and then took a long piss in the bathroom, having downed both bottles of water. I stocked up on snacks while I was inside, more pretzels and soda and even some beef jerky. I also bought a Snickers bar, if not to spite Simon, then to at least make amends for the one I’d lifted and then eaten. The wrapper—the only evidence of my crime—lay in the trash out by the pumps, along with the pretzel bag and the empty pack of smokes. At the counter, I thought long and hard, and asked the girl for a carton.

  Outside, I paused by the payphones. I considered calling Marshall again. Just what I would tell him I still wasn’t sure—Simon saying I hear what you hear kept reverberating in my head—but I wanted to tell him something. Maybe have him stop by the house, just in case, though I knew that would be a waste of time. Hadn’t I heard Jen’s voice? Hadn’t I heard her screaming?

  They cut off my—

  Yes, Jen? Yes, my darling? Just what the fuck did they cut off?

  Besides the obvious, I wished she’d never gotten that much out, because in the last six hours all I’d been doing was filling in the blank. While I’d originally thought there wouldn’t be that many possibilities, I quickly realized that wasn’t true. Seems that when you’re under extreme pressure and stress, your mind will think up anything.

  Then again, I wasn’t being quite truthful with myself. There was something else I’d been thinking a lot about, too, a girl I hadn’t really known in college but a girl who’d haunted me ever since. Michelle Delaney. Son of a bitch, how the hell did Simon know about her? The only person I’d ever told was Jen; even my parents, when they asked why I had dropped out of school, were given some bullshit response that it just wasn’t for me.

  Another annoying revelation that had dawned on me in the past few hours was I’d been kidding myself before, back in room six of the Paradise Motel, waiting to open up that bathroom door. I’d called it a nightmare and said I’d never had anything like that before, but it was a lie. Nightmares came to me every so often, most times while I was asleep, other times while I was awake. A nightmare so clear and precise it was as if I were reliving the scene again and again. I’d see her there, I’d see Michelle Delaney, and I’d be forced to watch no matter how hard I wanted to wake up. It seemed, just like in real life, I had no control over the matter.

  Two hours later, now on I-395, I turned on the phone. Doyle was just another mile or so away.

  For some reason I expected Simon to call in a minute or two of having turned the phone on, but he didn’t. Instead it was in another ten minutes, as I was entering the Doyle State Wildlife Area, that the phone st
arted vibrating.

  He said, “Having fun yet?” I didn’t answer, just waited, and it took him a few beats to say, “Oh come on, Ben, don’t be like that. We’re friends.”

  “We are not friends.”

  “Fine then. We’re acquaintances. Does that sound better?”

  It was close to seven o’clock in the evening. The light had already been retreating for an hour now, the sky darkening. I’d never driven so long before in my life. Both my legs were starting to cramp; my neck was starting to hurt. I’d done only one road trip with my parents when I was younger—we’d gone down to Orlando, after my parents had scraped enough extra money over the years to do something nice for my birthday—but then I’d been in the backseat, simply a passenger, and had slept or read comic books most of the way.

  “Ben, it won’t do you any good to not talk to me. After all, I am Simon, and what I say goes.”

  “What do you want now?”

  “Now? Now I just want to talk. I figure since you’ve been driving so long you might be feeling lonely.”

  I didn’t say anything and just continued driving, gripping the wheel tightly with my left hand as I kept the phone glued to my ear with my right.

  Simon said, “So, Ben, I’ve been wondering something. I want to know why, after having such ambitions to become a lawyer, you instead went back and worked with your father as a painter. Quite a different field of work arguing cases in front of a judge and jury as opposed to mixing paints because the owners don’t exactly like the tint of the beige from the can, isn’t it?”

  “People are going to realize we’re gone, you know. I might not be a lawyer, but Jen certainly is, and her firm’s probably wondering right now why she didn’t show. The same with Casey’s preschool.”