Fifty Cents For Your Soul

by Denise Dietz

  If it ever landed! The plane had taken off two hours late ‑‑ engine trouble or some such bullshit. Stevie was always saying he should buy a private jet. “You can afford it, Beast,” she’d say, and she was right. His literary agent’s contract, the one he’d included in order to protect his film rights contract, had netted him a small fortune. And when he held an auction for S.B. Eisenberg’s Forever Asmodeus sequel, the bids had first tiptoed, then hurdled, then rocketed into Stephen King territory.

  Problem was, she refused to work on the new novel unless she could use her title, Birds Can’t Fly. A stupid title, it had something to do with Robin, whom she still considered her protagonist. Victor wanted Asmodeus II, but he didn’t have 100% control over Stevie anymore. Unless he took her to bed, he didn’t have any control at all. He knew she hated him and loved him, and he could have dealt with that, but she was jealous, her claws as sharp as her cat Eros, who continued to live at the cottage because S.B. Eisenberg continued to live there.

  She behaved at interviews, but privately she insisted on calling the first horror book Forever Robin. She also insisted that she’d written Forever Robin at the cottage and didn’t want to incur “bad luck” by changing her locale. He didn’t frequent the cottage all that often, and didn’t give a shit if she took root, but he’d recently learned that she answered phone calls with “This is Stevie Eisenberg, Victor’s fiancée.”

  They’d have to talk about that…after she revised the script.

  Stevie had a knack for script writing. She’d learned the computer program in less than an hour, and had finished the Forever Asmodeus screenplay in three weeks.

  And it was the best first draft Victor had ever seen.

  If she finished the revisions tonight, he could fly back to Houston at the crack of dawn, losing one day and one day only. No big deal; he’d canceled today’s shoot so that everybody could mourn the kid.

  Stevie could have faxed him the revisions, but he wanted to be with her. His presence had a Streetcar Named Desire effect. Raw sex. Raw power. Kim Hunter wending and strutting her way down the stairs so that Marlon Brando could fuck her senseless. Brilliant in the movie, it played pretty well inside the cottage too. At least it did when Beast, not Belle, directed the scene.

  He hated wasting the time it would take to satisfy Stevie’s voracious appetite (she hadn’t been kidding when she said she wouldn’t give up sex) and he loathed flying. But he couldn’t take a chance on something else going wrong!

  The tropical storm, the shocked electrician, Cat’s sprained back, the tainted food, the rattlesnake…and now this latest disaster.

  Why hadn’t the kid…Davy…waited a few weeks? Frannie could have walked him through his part. Victor could have used the James Dean bit, but dodged the revisions and bedroom aerobics.

  Frannie. Now there was one lucky break. He’d hired her because, in demon makeup, she looked like Lynn Beth. And because her audition and screen test had both been out-fucking-standing. He hadn’t intended to use her for all the demon scenes, but Lynn Beth couldn’t do them. Frannie could act up a storm and she never complained. And although it had escaped his notice at the first interview, she was beautiful. He liked her Mia haircut. He surmised that her light golden hair was natural, which meant…

  Which meant nothing. He didn’t screw around with his cast. He had enjoyed Bonnie, and knew she wanted a repeat performance, but once she had accepted a part in his movie, an encore was verboten. The extra in his first film had taught him a good lesson; it had taken months for his lacerated face and body to heal.

  Talk about a fatal attraction.

  His un-fatal attraction had been another lucky break. He’d met Dawn Sullivan years ago, at a cocktail party. She had been an aspiring actress, her greatest asset a luxurious mane of auburn hair that cascaded down her back to her butt. She had stalked him for a while, then given up. Little did he ‑‑ or she ‑‑ know that her daughter would one day star in Victor Madison’s most ambitious film!

  “Denzel” kept sneaking covert glances toward Victor’s first-class seat. The flight attendant’s Lion King eyes revealed an interest that was impossible to miss. But now Victor wasn’t interested. Because, if he played his cards right, everything would come up roses. Or, to be more precise, Rosen. Frannie Rosen.

  She didn’t know that he had fallen in love with her. She didn’t know that, staring through the lens of his camera, devising the perfect shot angles, he’d often felt intense heat course through his body. He, himself, hadn’t recognized his true feelings until he’d asked her to play a cheerleader. Now, thinking back, he realized he’d begun to crave Frannie when she questioned him about his Picasso sculpture. Then, her incredible audition. Christ, if Suzanne Burton hadn’t been there, he’d have joined Frannie and…

  After Asmodeus wrapped, he’d buy a house in Connecticut or an apartment in Manhattan. Maybe he’d buy a chunk of Utah from Redford. Or, if Frannie preferred, a goddamn mansion in goddamn Beverly Hills.

  He had never felt this way about a woman before, not even Cat. Frannie was Circe. She had a sensual aura and, with Frannie, he wouldn’t use condoms. If she got pregnant, so be it. He’d never wanted children before, but now he wanted a son, a miniature Victor Madison. He even had a name picked out. Orson Welles Madison.

  * * * * *

  Stevie Eisenberg stared at Birds Can’t Fly.

  The half-finished manuscript was two-hundred-and-sixty pages of pure, unadulterated crap. Almost as bad as the four-hundred-and-fifty pages she’d already shredded. Seven-hundred-and-eleven pages, one and a half reams of paper, thirteen months of her life ‑‑ gone!

  God, how she hated to give in to Victor. But when you’re right, you’re right. Right?

  And just for grins, why the fuck was she trying to kill her career again? Why did she stubbornly insist that Robin was the protagonist?

  “Robin isn’t the heroine,” she told Eros. “If any human is, it’s Daisy, Robin’s sister. Maybe I should call the damn book ‘Flowers Can’t Grow.’”

  Eros gave her arm a lick with his sandpaper tongue. Damn, she didn’t want the cat’s tongue. She wanted Victor’s tongue. Or else she’d never be able to write Birds Can’t Fly, or Flowers Can’t Grow, or even Asmodeus II.

  Stevie knew she was addicted to sex, the same way she had once been addicted to liquor and pot. Her own fingers provided a small amount of relief, but what she really needed was the tongue of the Beast. And soon, thank God, she’d get it.

  She had finished the Forever Asmodeus revisions (screenwriting was a piece of piss) but Victor didn’t know that. When he arrived, which should be any minute now, she’d be sitting in front of her computer, scowling at the screen.

  “I’ll tell him to inspire me,” she said, scratching the cat’s chin. “I’ll tell him to inspire me with his tongue.”

  As if on cue, she heard someone at the front door.

  Victor had hung a small mirror on the wall, near her computer desk, so that while writing Robin’s physical transformation, Stevie could see her own. Now, she studied her face. Her eyes were clear, her complexion unblemished (except for a few scars, thank-you gifts from her stepfather and book-model husband), and her just-washed hair curled below her shoulders. A few stray gray hairs had invaded the mink-brown strands ‑‑ what a bummer ‑‑ but a tweezers took care of that.

  Why didn’t Victor walk inside? She rarely, if ever, locked the door because the estate owner had a security guard who carefully checked the I.D. of anyone entering through the front gate.

  Limping over to the door, she cracked it open. A dark haired woman with pink-patched cheeks stood on the welcome mat. The mat had been shredded by Eros’ claws, and Stevie kept meaning to throw it into the trash can out back.

  As the woman said, “Open sesame,” Stevie recognized her.

  “Come in,” Stevie said, flinging open the door. “I’m expecting Victor any moment and I’m sure he’ll be happy to see you.”

  Like hell he will, she thought,
but merely said, “Would you like something to drink, honey? How about a Coke?”

  “A Tab would be nice, Miss…sorry, I can’t remember your name.”

  “Stevie. Stevie Eisenberg. Victor’s fiancée.”

  * * * * *

  Briefly, Victor though about calling Stevie from LAX. He was now running three hours late. The plane had circled above the airport…and by God, he’d start shopping for a private jet as soon as he returned to Houston!

  On the other hand, if Stevie was working on script revisions, she shouldn’t be interrupted. She’d want to take a break the moment he set foot inside the door; what she called an “inspirational interlude.”

  Surprisingly, he didn’t want to “cheat” on Frannie. As Stevie would say, what a bummer.

  His driver had waited while the damn plane circled endlessly, and Victor had no luggage to claim. For once the freeway was unclogged by breakdowns, mud slides, and/or construction, so he reached his cottage in record time.

  Exiting the car, stretching his cramped muscles, he saw that Stevie had left the door wide open. How many times had he told her to keep the damn door shut and locked? A security guard watched over the front gate, but even security guards had to take a whizz every once in a while. And if somebody wanted to trespass badly enough, he or she could enter the estate by hiking through a wooded area behind the main house and cottage.

  “Damn it, Belle,” he said, entering the living room, “I’d turn you over my knee and paddle your butt, except you’d probably enjoy it.”

  Holy Christ! The living room. Mess would be an understatement.

  Cushions had been slashed. Pictures had been pitched or hurled to the floor, leaving a trail of broken glass everywhere. The three Pauls were okay. So was Ronnie Reagan, Madonna, and as far as Victor knew, all the other superstars…

  But in each and every photo, Victor Madison had been mutilated.

  Fear rendered him paralyzed. Then, aware that this was the reaction he sought from his audience (pounding heart, watery legs, raspy breath), he stepped into Stevie’s office.

  A tornado had hit!

  For starters, every file drawer had been emptied. In the midst of scattered papers and file folders, Victor spotted a manila envelope that stated ASMODEUS REVISIONS.

  Thank God.

  Swiftly, Victor checked the other rooms. They had all been thoroughly ransacked, and where the hell was Stevie?

  Outside, you idiot! She’s hiding. She ran to the main house for help. Where the fuck do you think she is? Do you think she stuck around while somebody turned the cottage into a fucking war zone?

  “Mr. Madison, come quick!”

  His driver. Alvin. Alvin was the epitome of cool, but Victor wasn’t surprised to hear an urgent fearfulness in Alvin’s voice.

  Stevie lay face down in the hollyhocks. If alive, she was snacking on garden dirt. Near her right hand was a claw-shredded welcome mat.

  Victor checked her neck pulse. Then he stood up and said, “Alvin, call 911. Use the car phone, not the phone in the cottage. The police might want to dust for prints.”

  “She’s dead?”

  “Very.”

  I shouldn’t touch anything, Victor thought, but the cops won’t mind if I retrieve a certain manila envelope and stick it inside my briefcase.

  He prayed the envelope contained film revisions, not book revisions.

  Fuck! Or as Stevie would have said, what a bummer.

  Now she’d never write her Forever Asmodeus sequel.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  It was five days after Davy’s suicide, and I had never felt less like playing a spider.

  Despite three aspirins and a Diet Pepsi, my latest hangover hung around. Thanks to S.B. Eisenberg’s broken neck, the press hung around too, optimistically waiting for the next Forever Asmodeus disaster, confident the film was cursed.

  Furthermore, Madison’s attitude toward me had changed.

  As the tech crew attached a harness and piano wires to my body, I remembered my tête-à-tête with Andre, following my Spa visit. I had said Peter Pan was a chauvinist who wanted Wendy to mend his shadow and mother the lost boys.

  Madison now treated me like Wendy.

  Except he called me Circe, and while I’m no mythological expert, I do watch Jeopardy. Circe changed men into swine. And some god ‑‑ Odysseus, I think ‑‑ make her change them back.

  Was Madison playing a boar or some goddamn god?

  Every time he touched me, I wanted to scream “Hands off!” But directing is a hands-on transaction. He’d mold me into an Asmodeus pretzel, or tap my shoulder to get my attention, and I’d feel that strange, unauthorized, electrical current surge through my body. It made me yearn to rub against him like a hungry cat, and he could have rooted me stupid (as my Aussie friend Gordon would say) but he didn’t even try. When I told him to stop calling me Circe, he called me “Peg” ‑‑ after the pound bitch in Disney’s Lady and the Tramp; the mutt with the Veronica Lake bang over her eye.

  Evidently, he himself didn’t care for Peg, so he switched to “little Frannie.” He said my name as if he coated a doughnut with powdered sugar, and I felt like singing: Little Orphan Frannneee.

  Which probably would have sounded a lot better than he’s a tramp (woof, woof, arf), but I love him --

  “Frannie, is the harness too tight?”

  “Huh?” I stared at Bob, head technician, who bore a striking resemblance to Santa Claus. Bob had once told me that his name spelled backwards was Bob, ho-ho-ho.

  “The harness, Frannie. How does it feel?”

  “Okay, I guess.”

  Actually, the harness felt tight. But that was okay; I wanted tight.

  Bob had rigged the harness and piano wires so that I could comfortably (ho-ho-ho) flip over on my back…like a turtle. Starting at the top of the staircase, another tech would go down the steps with me. As I slid away from him, all I had to do was move my arms and legs. The tech would “marionette” me, Bob would supervise, and the speed of my descent would be directed by Madison.

  The crew had christened me “Itsy Bitsy Spider.”

  I wished I could itsy-bitsy-spider myself up a water spout, rather than down the stairs. I had been told, by Bob, that my rig was “as seaworthy as the Titanic, ho-ho-ho.” Which, in tech-speak, meant “Chill out, don’t worry, you’ll be fine.”

  We tried a run-through. Even from an upside-down perspective, Madison looked disgruntled. He lit a cigarette and if he’d been a dragon, the fire from his silver lighter would have flashed from his nostrils.

  The problem was my harness. Through the eye of the camera it looked like the rotten blotch on a pear, and Madison said, “Take a break, little Frannie.”

  You betcha. I was more than happy to shed the breath-stealing harness and retreat. Slaying dragons didn’t coincide with my mood.

  The house, our set, was a two-story that reminded me of my own house ‑‑ except, of course, there was no plastic on the furniture. The upstairs included a master bedroom, Robin’s bedroom, and a nursery for Daisy, Robin’s sister. Briefly, I thought about a short nap inside the master bedroom, but the smell of coffee beckoned.

  Entering the kitchen, I saw Lynn Beth. Since we weren’t playing The Demon, she wore a nightie, white with tiny purple flowers, similar to the gown Nana had sported in my spider dream. I wore a duplicate nightie.

  Seated at the table, Lynn Beth had propped a paperback against an empty mug. Miniature Buddy Holly glasses adorned the bridge of her nose, and she reminded me of someone. An old classmate? A Bayside High School pyramid cheerleader? My cousin Mark? Lynn Beth looked up, took her glasses off, and the fleeting image faded.

  “Hi, Frannie,” she said, placing her glasses next to her book.

  “What are you reading, kiddo?”

  “Misery’s Return by Paul Sheldon,” she said, then blushed. “It’s a romance.”

  “Wow,” I said, pouring myself a cup of coffee that looked more like mud. “I devoured all the Misery b
ooks, couldn’t put them down. Paul Sheldon’s responsible for my C in geometry.”

  “Really, Frannie? Mommy says they’re crap.”

  “Where is your mother, sweetie? I haven’t seen her.”

  Not since the Black Mass!

  “She flew to L.A. My brother’s in trouble.”

  “I didn’t know you had a brother.”

  “He’s actually my step-brother. When Mommy married my dad, he already had a son. His first wife died. Mommy adored my brother…my step-brother, I mean, but then her marriage started coming apart and I think she got pregnant with me so she could hold on to my dad.”