“Sorry,” he said.
“Really?”
“No.”
She cleared her throat and warned him to be quiet with a look. “I also have a thing for symmetry. When I walked into this house after all these years…when dad was away in the oil fields or flying around the world selling stuff to the Chinese, I stayed here with Uncle Joe. This was my torture chamber.”
“Sorry.”
“Really?”
“You’re goddamn right. I really wish you had told me.”
“So you said. Okay, then. Anyway, I walked in here straight from the funeral parlor and headed straight to the toilet and what do I find but a little mouse is swimming in the fucking toilet bowl!”
“No shit?”
“No shit. Just this little mouse. Probably went in for the water and couldn’t get out. And you know what? I had this fantasy that this mouse somehow was Uncle Joe’s reincarnation or soul or something. I don’t know. It sounds pretty stupid now that I’m saying this out loud.”
“No, I can see why you’d think that. I mean, yeah, it doesn’t really make sense, but I’m sure it did at the time. You’d just come from arranging your…pedophile’s funeral.”
“Exactly. Thanks. I knew you’d understand.”
“Just give me half what you pay your regular therapist.”
She let out another throaty laugh and took another long drink from her glass. He thought she might be getting drunk but with elegant women it was so much harder to tell. He didn’t have much practice hearing the confessions of boozy starlets. When he knew Betsy, she didn’t drink at all. He hadn’t even driven a car when he knew her.
“What did you do about the mouse?”
“Hm?”
“The mouse in the toilet. Did he flush easy?”
“Well, now here’s the part where you see me for what I am. I watched him swimming around and around and around, his little pink feet paddling and paddling and paddling. I watched and I smiled because I thought, wouldn’t it be great symmetry if God had sent me this gift? God’s given me a lot of gifts. Why not this special one, just for me? Everything I do seems to be for everybody else, so why not this for me?”
He looked in her eyes. They were wet again but her face was perfectly smooth, uncracked stone. “What did you do with the mouse?”
“I waited for him to tire out. Eventually he did, I was standing over it for an hour or so, I’m not sure. Anyway, he drowned and when he drowned I was so stupidly happy. I can’t tell you.”
He nodded. “I understand.”
“Thanks. Even if you don’t mean it. I’ve been a spokesperson for PETA, you know!”
He couldn’t help himself. He began to giggle and first she looked angry and then that broke and she joined him. They laughed together a long time.
When the laughter died she added, “I pissed on him at the end, just for good measure, you know. It seemed so right at the time. Then to celebrate Joe being dead I walked out here to Joe’s bar and what do I find but another dead mouse. I look in every corner and there’s another fucking mousetrap filled with another dead mouse. I run around the house and they’re everywhere!”
“Jesus!”
“Yeah. It put things in perspective.”
“So you revised your reincarnation hypothesis?”
“I guess you could say that. I ran out here, found some paper and wrote out that letter to Joe. I cried all night. Then I went to that stupid fucking funeral and threw the letter in the grave and—“
“And the wind picked it up and delivered it to the world’s media.”
She nodded, the tears coming in long hot lines now, burning down her face, burning away her invulnerability and divinity.
“Shit,” he said.
“Tomorrow it will be everywhere. It’s probably already in China and when the sun comes over each horizon my private shame won’t be private anymore. It’s no doubt already all over the net. I haven’t checked whether it’s trending on Twitter yet. Can’t look.”
“People will understand.”
“I don’t want people to understand. I want them not to know!” She dug through her purse and found some tissues. She blew her nose loudly and when she looked at him again, her gaze was an accusation.
“Technically, I’m media, too, but not tonight.”
“What are you tonight?”
“I’m the guy who’s poured you too many drinks. Tomorrow…no. In a few days this will blow over. Britney will drown her kid or Paris will blow some politician in public and it won’t be long before the public will confuse heiresses and stars. They’ll screw it up and think your story really is about Paris Hilton or Lindsay Lohan.”
She smiled. “I’m glad you’re here to pour me too many drinks. You were there for me at the beginning, so maybe you’re the only guy I can trust in the world.”
“We’re not all so bad.”
“You don’t think so? Let me tell you one more story. A couple years ago I dropped out. People thought I was in rehab, I disappeared so long. I got out of Hollywood and went to the one place in all of America where there’s not a news rag jerk off within a short plane flight. You know where I went?”
“Rural Texas?”
“Still too close to California.”
“Where?”
“Cincinnati.”
“Cincinnati?”
“I dyed my hair purple and blond, tied it in a ponytail and got some baggy Old Navy clothes. I even picked up a job working as some professor’s personal assistant.”
“You are shitting me.”
“Nope. I’d just done my third supermodel spy movie and then my writer-director-asshole husband started banging his assistant director.”
“That’s so Hollywood.”
“The assistant director was a guy so it was so West Hollywood.”
“I have no idea what that means but I’m sure it’s funny. What happened to your new life of obscurity among the mere mortals of Cincinnati?”
She drained her glass again. “God is capricious in His wrath, Marky. He sent me another dreamy asshole. I was looking for revenge so I hooked up with a guy in a bar. I called myself Suzy but he must have seen right through the disguise because…you’re going to love this shit.”
“What?”
“I took him home and made the one night stand mistake. I fell asleep before kicking the fucker out and he stole my brand new vacuum cleaner.”
“What?”
“What. Just as I said.”
“Who steals a vacuum cleaner?”
“Oh, it probably ended up on E-bay. Who steals a vacuum cleaner is a guy who knows it’s my vacuum cleaner. He knew who I was, fucked me and now he can brag about that plus he got a celebrity souvenir! People think it’s so easy, and a lot of it is. If I could eat like a normal person it might all be worth it but I can’t even do that and keep my job. And I’ve got all these people around me. The agent, the personal assistants, make up and their fucking assistants. I quit Cincinnati and went back to Burbank as quick as I could after the whole vacuum cleaner thing.
“Of course, I still don’t know who to trust. You can’t trust everyone when they’re all paid to be there. You should have seen them. They went into shock when I said I was flying back to Maine alone. I guess I should have kept the bodyguards so they could have thumped a few of those goddamn paparazzi at the funeral.”
“Now I’m sorry I didn’t punch out a few for you.”
“Thanks, Marky. You were always my shining knight.
“You made my nights shiny.”
She gave him a big toothy grin that was so defenseless he glimpsed who she had been when they were kids. “So I guess I’m a typical Hollyweird celebrity. It’s all about me! Me! Me!”
“Yeah. Way to hold up the brand.”
“So what about you? Where are you at?”
“I got ambitious too late. Now I’m playing catch-up. I don’t see how I can ever retire from a job I hate. When it comes down to it, I’m just another vult
ure like those twits at the cemetery.”
“You’re nothing like them.”
He shook his head, meaning to warn her off.
“You’re a journalist and a radio personality. You’re a celebrity, right?”
“Betty Jane. Asia. Whatever. Coming from you, that’s about the cruelest and most insensitive thing you could say.”
She looked down at the filthy rug and seemed to study it for some time.
“I wanted to form a band but got a lousy technical degree instead,” he said. “I fell into being a DJ and somehow ended up no farther than a mile from where I was born. Money and distance from where you’re born: That’s how all success is measured. There’s no end in sight to me going in at five in the morning to do a morning drive show for a place so small there’s no rush hour. When we were—when I was a kid — I was so sure I was better than this.”
She looked at him levelly. “Tell me what you want.”
“I want to live where there are palm trees and I don’t have to wait forever for a vacation so I can get somewhere where there’s a Starbucks. I want to live in a city big enough that I can wander around and see something different each time. I want to be able to go somewhere where I can pick up an Irish newspaper or a book that hasn’t been read by someone else first.”
“In other words, you still want what every kid in a small town dreams of?”
“Yeah. It would be nice to go somewhere where there aren’t a bunch of people who remember me as a kid so they talk to me like I’m still a kid. Maybe meet some people who will remember I don’t want to be called Marky anymore.”
She look chagrinned. “Marcus.”
“Thanks. I see you and I am really nostalgic, but the Funky Bunch obsession is way over. Even Marky Mark is Mr. Wahlberg now.”
“So, why not leave?”
“I got bills like everybody else.”
“No ties? I heard you married a nurse from around here.”
“Jodi. Married and divorced. Didn’t last. Now it’s about alimony until she remarries, hopefully to the guy she’s shacked up with right now. Until then, she continues to get a free ride on the Marcus bus.”
“Careful, you sound like my ex. How come it didn’t work out?” she asked.
“She kept comparing herself to you.”
She gasped. Finally, in a voice just above a whisper, she said, “That’s not fair.”
“You’re right. I’m sure that’s not all of it, but the point is, I can’t seem to get out of here. I’ll die here.” He was about to take another drink but found his glass empty and realized he didn’t have the energy to challenge gravity and get over to the bar for another.
“What would it take to start a new life? Where would you go exactly?”
He contemplated his empty glass for a long time, choosing his words carefully. “I don’t know exactly, but that would kind of be the point. I’d like to have enough money to pay everybody off, climb in my old beater and head out. All I know is west. Then I’d see where I end up. I want to lose myself in a city and see what I end up doing there. I’ve got skills. I’d find something eventually. I just want some time to myself and the chance to look around. I want to—”
“Start again. You want to start again. I get that. I can feel it. I tried it in Cincinnati before the cute guy with the big cock stole my vacuum cleaner.”
He winced.
“Oh, yeah, he was really cute and he was huge. I nicknamed his dick ‘Moby’ it was so big.”
His cheeks flushed red but he said nothing.
She pushed herself up from the chair and disappeared. In a moment she returned with her purse. She pulled out a checkbook, all business. “How much would it take?”
“A million dollars.”
“Let me rephrase, Marcus. What do you owe in debts? What does it cost to buy you out of wage slavery?”
“Serious?”
“As a disease in your lymph glands.”
“Maybe…I don’t know. Car payments…”
“You in an apartment?”
“Still.”
“Would $100,000 do it?”
“More than enough.”
She paused, as if making calculations in her head. When she wrote the check, her smile broadened. He noticed it was a Mont Blanc pen.
She folded the check and held it out. He didn’t hesitate a moment. He snatched it out of her hand and shoved the paper roughly into his shirt pocket. He knew he should be ashamed, but he felt nothing like shame. “Is this half what you pay your therapist?” he asked.
“Roughly, I suppose, but after all that’s happened today I think I’m done with therapy. I’m tired of telling the story of my rotten childhood over and over and now that’s all anyone will want to talk about. I won’t need a therapist. I’ll just need to escape, like you.”
“Where will you go?”
“Someplace far away. I doubt I’ll be coming back.”
“Then we’ll both finally escape. Thanks for coming back for me and getting me out.”
“Don’t thank me. I need to thank you.” She paused. “It’s late.”
Energized, he stood up and looked out the windows on the dark sea below. Beyond the Atlantic lay possibilities. Or he could drive west as far as the highway went. Then he could fly. Potential oozed over the horizons in every direction.
She stood and spun him around, holding him by the shoulders. “You know I hated this place. Every time my father left me with Uncle Joe, we did it—“
“He did it to you.”
“Right. Anyway, that’s what he was really all about, no matter what he looked like to the world. The uniform didn’t mean anything. Every time we were alone, Joe would tell me how much he loved me. Every time he said, ‘Wrong is a fluid concept, Betty Jane.’ Blood didn’t mean anything. He did it for so long I’m not even sure I remember the first time. He wore a mask for everybody. I think everybody wears a mask, don’t you think?”
He looked away and she grabbed his chin to make him look into her eyes. “This little village just about fucking killed me. I hated that everyone knew everyone and nothing ever changed. Everything was awful about this place…except you. We watched videos and later we went to the drive-in and we made out and your kisses were always sweet and you were always so gentle.”
“I guess I always thought if I didn’t treat you like fine china you’d break…or I’d wake up from the dream.” And I wish I’d told you how much I loved you then, he thought.
She held him tightly and he ached. It reminded him of the truth he would never tell. It wasn’t his ex-wife who compared herself to the nymph and movie star Asia Minor. It was he who made all the comparisons and had always found his ex-wife wanting. Now he felt her warmth, her breasts pressed to him, reminding him why he would never—could never—be as happy as he was as a teenager. Or could he?
“You,” she whispered, “were the best thing about my childhood.” He turned his head to taste her full red lips again, too late. Instead, she kissed his cheek with a chaste smack that reminded him of kissing the bride at someone else’s wedding. Her kiss, so warm and soft, the sort of kiss he fell into in dreams, now felt like a sharp rebuke.
They broke apart abruptly. He couldn’t wait to leave. Their reunion—which he had dreamed of, anticipated so long—now embarrassed him. “I better go.”
“Okay,” she said. She looked away.
“I’ve got to be on the air in another couple hours.”
“Of course. Thanks for coming to see me. I love that you came to see me”
“Yes,” he said, patting his chest shirt pocket through his sports jacket. “It’s been…very profitable. The circle is complete and all that.”
She laughed. “Well worth it,” she said. He made his way to the door awkwardly. “It’s funny,” she said. “I complained about how I was paying all the people around me and the first chance I get, I turn you into someone else I write a check to.”
He looked ashen and grasped at the doorknob. When he look
ed in her face though, he saw that she hadn’t meant it unkindly. “I guess it’s different when you’re helping out a friend. Uh, Ms. Minor. Have a great escape.”
“You, too.”
She watched him shamble out to the porch and down the hill. “Bye,” she whispered and turned back to the bar and the view of the Atlantic.
He found his car but decided he shouldn’t drive. Instead he sat on the hood and looked back up the hill at the dead cop’s house. There were so many things he wished he had known when he was seventeen. He patted his shirt pocket again, checking to make sure it was there in a superstitious motion.
Marcus pulled out the bent check, smelling it as if it might be scented like a love letter. He opened the check and his jaw dropped. She had made it out to him for the sum of $1,000,000. The bottom of the check read, “For therapeutic services.”
He sat frozen for a long time, shaking his head and smiling. He folded the check neatly and put it in his wallet for safekeeping. Then he dug into his shirt pocket again and pulled out the small digital voice recorder. After a moment’s hesitation, he put the device under his left rear tire and when he pulled away from the curb he made sure he crushed it twice. “Coulda made two million out of that recording,” he said to himself in the rear view mirror, “but how much does one guy need to start fresh…and let an ex-girlfriend escape?”
He laughed all the way down the hill and out of sight.
If Marcus had been looking in the rearview mirror, he might have seen the bloom of flame that shot through the living room in the house at the top of the hill.
Asia Minor, silver screen idol to millions of B-movie fans and object of lust to many more, walked down the steep stairs to the dark beach below. At first, she thought she would rig a Molotov cocktail to throw into the middle of the living room but reconsidered. Odds were better than even that she would set herself on fire, as well. She had always feared dying in a fire, so she wasn’t about to attempt anything fancy.
However, Uncle Joe’s well-stocked bar yielded several bottles of Jack Daniels and some high proof scotch so she threw them to the floor and tossed a flaming matchbook in the open door as she walked out the back. She didn’t look back as the fire spread and climbed and clawed through the house. Instead, she kept moving, leaving a trail of her clothes.
The Dangerous Kind & Other Stories Page 5