Dean Koontz - (1980)

by The Funhouse(Lit)

  "You haven't had anywhere near a hundred and eighty guys, for God's sake."

  "I'm not putting myself down," Liz said. "Honey, I revel in it. I love what I am. It's the only way to fly." aRichie was always so shy."

  "He's not so shy anymore," Liz said. She winked.

  Listen, it's been a ball teaching Richie what the : game is all about.

  He was so gangly and clumsy and naive! A real challenge. But he's coming along. He's coming along real nice. He has a real taste for corruption."

  , "And you're corrupting him?"

  : "ExactlY."

  Isn't that a bit melodramatic?"

  , "No. Because that's exactly what I'm doing. I'm corrupting Richie Atterbury, boy genius."

  , "Elizabeth Ann Duncan, sultry temptress, the b all-knowing wanton woman of exotic Royal City," Amy said sarcastically.

  :, Liz grinned. "That's me. You know, just three weeks ago, when I first started going out with him, Richie had never smoked grass? Can you O imagine? Now he's a regular pothead."

  That's the only reason you're dating him? Just so you can corrupt him?"

  "No," Liz said. "It's a hell of a lot of fun to open him up to new things, new experiences. But even if he already knew his way around, he'd be fun to be with. He's clever, witty. And he seems to know something interesting about almost everything. I've never dated a genius before. It's different." "Sounds like maybe this one will last a little longer than the others," Amy said.

  "No way," Liz said quickly. "I figure another month, six weeks at the outside.

  Then bye-bye, Richie. No matter how clever he is, I'll be bored with him by then. Besides, even if I wanted something permanent with someone, which I don't want, but even if for some weird reason I did, I wouldn't want anything permanent with anyone here in this jerkwater town. I don't want anyone holding me back when I'm ready to split for the west." "You're still planning on goingn "Hell, yes. I'll work in my father's office until the middle of December, build up a nest egg, and then knock off a couple of weeks before Christmas.

  After the holiday, I'll pack my clothes into my little yellow car, and I'll be off like a shot to the land of sun and opportunity." "California?"

  Y've decided on Vegas," Liz said.

  aLas Vegas?" "That's the only Vegas I know."

  "What will you do there?" "Sell it," Liz said, grinning again.

  "Sell what?"

  "Don't be dopey." "I'm not being dopey." "As dense as a post." "I don't understand. What are you going to sell?" "My ass." "Huh?" "I'm going to do some heavy hooking." "Hooking?"

  "Jesus!n Liz said. "Listen, kid, don't you realize how much money a high-priced call girl can make in Vegas? A six-figure income, that's how much."

  Amy stared at her in disbelief. "You're trying to make me believe that you're going to Vegas to be a whore?" "I'm not trying to make you believe anything," Liz said. "I'm merely telling you the facts, kid.

  Besides, I'm not going to be an ordinary whore. Whore is a low-class word. Whores are cheap. I'm going to be a personal escort, an intimate companion to a new gentleman every evening. Intimate companions are quite expensive, you know. And I'm going to be more expensive than most of them."

  "You aren't serious." "Of course I am. I've got a good personality, a damned nice face, long legs, a cute little butt, almost no waist at all, and these." She thrust her chest out, and her large, uptilted breasts strained against the thin T-shirt. "If I can learn not to spend every dime I make, and if I can find a few good investments, I'll be worth at least a million by the time I'm twenty-five."

  "You won't do it."

  "Yep." "You're putting me on."

  : "Nope. Listen, I'm a regular nympho. I know that. You know that.

  Practically everyone knows that. I can't keep my hands off the guys, and I like variety.

  So if I'm going to be screwing around every day of the week, I might as well get paid for it." Amy stared at her searchingly, and Liz met her eyes, and at last Amy said, "My God, you really mean it."

  "Why not?" aLiz, a prostitute's life isn't pleasant. It isn't fun and games.

  It's lonely and grim." "Who says?" "Well . . . everyone says." "Everyone is full of shit." "If you go away and do something like this . . .

  Liz, it'll be such a . . . such a tragedy. That's what it'll be.

  You'll be throwing your whole life away, ruining everything." "You sound like your mother," Liz said scornfully.

  "I don't, either." "Oh, yes you do," Liz said. "You sound exactly like her."

  Amy frowned. "I do?" "Smug, moralistic, self-righteous." "I'm just wor ried about you."

  "I know what I'm doing," Liz said. "Listen, when you're a high-priced call girl, you party all the time. What's so lonely and grim about that? It is fun and games. Especially in Vegas, where there's never a dull minute."

  Amy was stunned. She had never imagined that she would one day have a friend who was a prostitute. For a while they sat in silence, sipping their Cokes and listening to a Bob Seger number that was blasting out of the jukebox with the force of a jackhammer.

  When the music stopped, Liz said, "You know what would be great?" "What?"

  "If you came along with me to Vegas." "Me ?" "Sure. Why not?" aMy God," Amy said, shocked by the idea.

  "Listen, I know I'm a damned desirable little package," Liz said.

  "But I'm not one bit sexier than you are. You've got just what it takes to be a huge success in Vegas."

  Amy laughed with embarrassment.

  "You really do," Liz insisted.

  "Not me."

  "They'd be standing in line for a chance to get in your pants.

  Listen, kid, in that town you'd outdraw Liberace and Frank Sinatra combined." "Oh, Liz, I couldn't do that sort of thing. Not in a million years." "You did it with Jerry."

  "Not for money."

  Which is foolish." "Anyway, that was different. Jerry was my steady boyfriend."

  "What's so great about steady?" Liz demanded. "Did going steady mean anything to Jerry? He dumped you the second he heard you were knocked up.

  He wasn't considerate or sympathetic or loyal or anything else a steady is supposed to be. I guarantee you, none of the men you'd be escorting in Vegas would treat you that shabbily." "With my luck," Amy said, "my first client would turn out to be a homicidal maniac with a butcher knife." "No, no, no," Liz said. "Your clients would all come with seals of approval from hotel pit bosses and other casino executives.

  They'd send you only the high rollers--doctors, lawyers, famous entertainers, millionaire businessmen .

  . .You'd only take on the best people." "This may come as a surprise to you," Amy said, abut even a millionaire businessman can turn out to be a homicidal maniac with a butcher knife. It's rare. I'll grant you that. But it's not impossible." "sO you carry your own knife in your purse," Liz said. "If he starts acting creepy, you make the first cut." "You have an answer for everything, don't you?"

  "I'm just a girl from little old Royal City, Ohio," Liz said, abut I'm not a hick." "Well, I don't think I'll be going to Vegas with you at the end of the year," Amy said. "It's going to be a long, long time before I'm even ready to go on a nice, quiet, no-sex date. I've sworn off men for a while." "Bullshit," Liz said.

  "It's true." "You haue been a stick-in-the-mud so far this summer," Liz said.

  aBut that'll pass." "No. I mean it." "Last week you went to the doctor I recommended," Liz said smugly.

  "sO?" "sO you got a prescription for the pill. Would you get a prescription for the pill if you really intended to be a wallflower?" "You talked me into that," Amy said.

  "For your own good." "I wish I hadn't gone to that doctor. I won't be needing the pill or anything else until I'm out of college. I'm going to sit back, with my knees together, and be virginal." aLike hell you are," Liz said. "Two weeks from now, you'll be flat on your back, pinned under one stud or another. Two weeks at most. I know it. I know you backwards and forwards, up and down, inside and out. You know how it is
that I'm able to read you so clearly? It's because you're exactly like me.

  We're two of a kind. Peas in a pod. Oh, not on the surface, necessarily. But deep down, deep in your heart where it counts, you're exactly like me, honey.

  That's why we'd be great together in Vegas. We'd have a ball."

  Richie Atterbury walked up to the table. He was a tall, thin boy, not handsome but not unattractive, either. He had thick, dark hair, and he wore horn-rimmed glasses that made him look a little bit like Clark Kent. "Hi, Liz. Hi, Amy."

  Amy said, "Hello, Richie. That's a pretty shirt you're wearing." "You really think so?" he asked.

  aYes. I like it a lot."

  "Thanks," Richie said awkwardly. He looked at Liz with his big, lovesick, puppy eyes, and he said, "Ready for the movie?"

  Can't wait," Liz said. She stood up. To Amy, she said, "We're going to the drive-in. That's really fitting, too." She grinned wickedly.

  "Because Richie sure knows how to drive it in." Richie blushed.

  Liz laughed and said, "The only way I'm going to see much of this movie is if we set up a series of mirrors to reflect it onto the ceiling of the car."

  "Liz, you're terrible," Amy said.

  "Do you think I'm terrible?" Liz asked Richie.

  "I think you're terrific," Richie said, daring to put an arm around her waist.

  He still seemed somewhat bashful, even if Liz had made him more than passingly familiar with sex and drugs.

  Liz looked at Amy. "See? He thinks I'm terrific, and he was the class genius, so what do you know about it?" Amy smiled in spite of herself.

  "Listen," Liz said, "when you're ready to start living again, when you're sick and tired of playing Sister Purity, give me a call. I'll line someone up for you. We'll double-date." Amy watched Liz and Richie as they walked outside and got into the yellow Celica. Liz drove. She pulled away from the curb with a torturous squeal of tires that made everyone in The Dive look toward the front windows.

  After Amy left The Dive at twenty minutes till seven, she didn't go straight home. She walked aimlessly for more than an hour, not really window-shopping in the stores she passed, not really noticing the houses she passed, not really enjoying the clean spring evening, just walking and thinking about the future.

  When she got home at eight o'clock, her father was in his workshop.

  Her mother was sitting at the kit,chen table, leafing through a magazine, listening to a radio call-in program, and sucking on vodka and orange juice.

  "If you didn't have dinner at work," Mama said, "there's some cold roast beef in the refrigerator." "Thank you," Amy said, abut I'm not hungry. I ate a big lunch." 1-15

  : "Suit yourself," Mama said. She turned up the volume on the radio.

  Amy interpreted that as a sign of dismissal. She went upstairs.

  She spent an hour with Joey, playing fivehundred rummy, his favorite card game. The boy didn't seem himself. He hadn't been the old, effervescent Joey since Mama had made him get rid of his monster models and posters. Amy worked hard at making him laugh, and he did laugh, but his good humor seemed like a facade to her. He was tense underneath, and she hated to see him that way, but she couldn't figure out how to reach him and cheer him up.

  Later, in her room, she stood nude again in front of the full-length mirror.

  She appraised her body with a critical eye, trying to decide if she did, indeed, measure up to Liz. Her legs were long and quite well shaped. Her thighs were taut, the muscle tone in her whole body was very good. Her bottom was round and sort of perky, very firm. Her belly was not just flat but slightly concave. Her breasts weren't as large as Liz's, but they weren't small by any definition, and they were extremely well shaped, up-thrust, with large, dark nipples.

  It was definitely a body well designed for sex, for easily attracting and satisfying a man. The body of a courtesan? The body of, as Liz put it, an intimate companion? The legs and hips and buttocks and breasts of a whore? Was that what she had been born for? To sell herself? Was a future as a prostitute unavoidable? Was it some how her destiny to spend thousands of sweaty nights clutching total strangers in hotel rooms?

  Liz said she saw corruption in Amy's eyes. Mama said the same thing.

  To Mama, that corruption was a monstrous, evil thing that must be suppressed at all costs, but to Liz, it was nothing to be afraid of, something to be embraced.

  There couldn't be two people more different than Liz and Mama, yet they agreed on what was to be seen in Amy's eyes.

  Now Amy stared at her reflection in the mirror, peered into the windows of her soul, but although she looked very hard, she wasn't able to see anything more than the characterless surfaces of two dark and rather pretty eyes, she couldn't see either the rot of Hell or the grace of Heaven.

  She was lonely, frustrated, and terribly, terribly confused. She wanted to understand herself. More than anything she wanted to find the right role for herself in the world, so that for the first time in her life she would not feel tense and hopelessly out of place.

  If her hope of going to college and her dream of becoming an artist were unrealistic, then she didn't want to spend years struggling for what she was not meant to have. Her life had been too much of a struggle already.

  She touched her breasts, and her nipples sprang up at once, stiff, proud, as large as the tips of her little fingers. Yes, this was a bad thing, a sinful thing, just as Mama said, yet it felt so good, so sweet.

  If she could be sure that God would listen to her, she would get down on her knees and ask Him for a sign, an irrefutably holy sign that would tell her, once and for all, whether she was a good person or a bad person.

  But she didn't think God would listen to her after what she'd done to the baby.

  Mama said she was bad, that Something lurked inside of her, that she had let go of the reins that had been holding that Something back.

  Mama said she had the potential to be evil. And a mother should know that kind of thing about a daughter.

  Shouldn't she?

  Shouldn't she?

  Before he went to bed, Joey counted the money in his bank again.

  During the past month he had added two dollars and ninety-fiv e cents to the contents of the jar, and now he had exactly thirty-two dollars.

  He wondered if he would have to bribe someone at the carnival to let him run away with them when they left town. He figured he would need twenty dollars as a minimum bankroll, which would keep him in grub until he started earning money as a carny, sweeping up after the elephants and doing whatever else a ten-year-old boy could find to do on a midway. So that left only twelve bucks that he could spare for a bribe.

  Would that be enough?

  He decided to ask his father for two dollars to go to the Sunday matinee at the Rialto theater. But he wouldn't actually spend the money on the movies. He would go over to Tommy Culp's house and play tomorrow afternoon, pretend that he'd seen the movies when his father asked about them, and add the two bucks to his escape fund.

  He returned the bank to the desk.

  When he said his prayers before going to bed, he asked God to please keep Mama from getting pissed and coming into his room again.

  The next day, Sunday, Amy called Liz.

  "Hello," Liz said.

  "This is Sister Purity," Amy said.

  "Oh, hello, Sister." "I've decided to leave the nunnery." "Hallelujah!"

  "It's cold and drafty here in the nunnery." "Not to mention boring," Liz said.

  '7What have you got for me that I won't find boring" "How about Buzz Klemmet?"

  "I don't know him," Amy said.

  "He's eighteen, soon nineteen I think. He was in the class ahead of ours--" "Ah, an older man!" "Bbut he dropped out of school in eleventh grade. He works at the Arco station on the corner of Main and Broadway." "You sure know how to pick them," Amy said sarcastically.

  "He may not sound like much," Liz said, abut wait till you see him.

  He's a hunk."

  "A hunk
of what?" "Pretty muscle." "Can he speak?" "Just well enough." "Can he tie his own shoelaces?" "I'm not sure," Liz said. "But he usually wears loafers, so you won't have to worry about that." "I hope you know what you're doing." "Trust me," Liz said. "You'll love him.

  What night should I set it up for?" "Doesn't matter," Amy said. "I work days."

  "Tomorrow night?" "Fine." "We'll double," Liz said. "Me and Richie, you and Buzz." "Where do you want to go?" "How about my place? We'll play some records, watch a movie on my folks' videocassette machine, roll a few joints. I got some bitchin' grass that'll mellow us out real fast."

  '7What about your parents?" Amy asked.

  "They're leaving on a two-week vacation today. New Orleans. I'll have the house all to myself."

  "They trust you alone there for two weeks?" "They trust me not to burn the place to the ground," Liz said.

  "And that's really all they care about. Listen, kid, I'm glad you finally came to your senses. I was afraid the summer was going to be a bummer. We'll sure raise hell now that you're back in the swing of things." "I'm not sure I want to get back in the swing of things, at least not all the way, if you know what I mean. I want to have some fun. I want to date. But I don't think I'm going to screw around anymore. Not until college is behind me." "Sure, sure," Liz said.

  "I mean it." "Take it at your own pace, honey. Anyway, we'll sure have some fun with my old man and old lady out of town." "And the county fair is next week," Amy said.

  "Hey, yeah! I really get off on smoking some good dope and then hopping on those thrill rides." "I suspect you would." "And did you ever get high and then go through the funhouse, with all those fake monsters jumping out at you?"

  "Never did," Amy said.

  "It's hilarious."

  "I'll look forward to it," Amy said.

  JANET MIDDLEMEIR WAS a safety engineer for the I county. Her job was to make certain that all public buildings--courthouses, firehouses, libraries, schools, sheriff's substations, government-subsidized sports arenas and stadiums, and so forth-- were at all times clean, well lighted, and safe for both visitors and workers. She was responsible for the inspection of the structural integrity of those buildings as well as for the condition and suitability of all machinery and all major nonmechanical equipment within their walls. Janet was young, only a few years out of college, only two years on the job, and she was still as dedicated to her work as she had been when she had first started, her duties seemed almost holy to her, and the words "public trustn still held some meaning for her, even if they didn't mean much to some of the people with whom she worked in the county and state bureaucracies. She had not yet been a public employee long enough to be tainted by the inevitable corrupting influences that were attendant to any government program. She cred.