Fifty Cents For Your Soul

by Denise Dietz

  Turning off the heat, I turned on the air, and a blast from the vents goosefleshed my legs. If it ain’t broken, I thought, don’t fix it. Except something was broken, and somewhere on my bedside table ‑‑ hidden by a copy of Forever Asmodeus, an empty Tsingtao bottle, a water glass, a lamp shaped like a gargantuan kidney bean, a radio-clock, and my discarded red macramé ‑‑ was the phone.

  I reached for the receiver, then hesitated. I could always call maintenance later. Victor had given everyone the day off, cast and crew, and I craved an encore.

  As I shed my towel and opened the bureau drawer, I felt a Moby Dick harpoon pierce my head. Christ, I’d never drink champagne again, not even at my wedding, assuming Victor wanted to marry me before…or after…he impregnated me.

  Men don’t marry the girls they sleep around with, Frannie.

  I’m not a girl, Mom, I’m a woman, especially after last night.

  I looked at the clock: 7:05. Victor might still be asleep, but he’d surprised me by appearing spontaneously and I wanted to return the favor.

  Donning shorts and a denim shirt, I slid my key-card into my shirt pocket, shut the door, and slanted a glance at a tray filled with covered dishes. I thought about scarfing down last night’s pecan pie, but instead navigated the hallway, clogged with room service trays and free copies of USA Today. Then I summoned the elevator.

  When Victor opened his door, I’d quote Mae West: “It’s not the men in my life that counts…it’s the life in my men.” Or, even better, Henry Miller: “Sex is one of the nine reasons for reincarnation…the other eight are unimportant.”

  Then, I’d fall into Victor’s arms.

  Or maybe I’d stand in the hallway and critique his performance.

  Except, there was nothing to critique.

  I heard the echo of Bonnie’s voice: It wasn’t a performance, Frannie. He was totally sincere.

  Bonnie. Oh, God. I had betrayed my best friend. But if I had it all to do over again, I wouldn’t change a thing. I couldn’t, even if I wanted to. One touch from Victor and I’d be lost, beyond hope.

  His door knob sported a Do Not Disturb placard. Two thirds of a placard. The other third was stuck between the door and the door frame. Which meant the door was open.

  Unless Victor had locked it from the inside by sliding the safety chain… “Oh, sweetie,” I whispered. “We won’t tell my mom you don’t dead-bolt your door.”

  Now, I had three options. One, knock. Two, shout his name. Three, hit the bed and show him how much I’d learned.

  Actually, there was a fourth option that made me giggle.

  “Room service,” I said, stepping into the suite and reaching for my shirt buttons.

  Silence.

  “Room service,” I said louder. “Hey, my darling, do you or do you not wish to be serviced?”

  Silence.

  Could Victor be in the shower? Or had he already left the room?

  Shit, maybe I should have called, first. Maybe he was a deep sleeper. Maybe he wore ear plugs.

  His travel companion, the Picasso sculpture that looked like a winged baboon, graced a gate-legged table. I remembered the first time I’d seen the Picasso, seen Victor. I had compared him to Clark Kent. How wrong can you get? Try Superman.

  Deep in thought, smiling inside and out, I opened the bedroom door, walked into the room, and reeled against the dresser.

  The room reeked; a sharp, coppery smell, as if I’d stuffed pennies up my nostrils. I couldn’t believe my eyes, and yet I felt as if images were being burned into my retinas. My stomach churned. Choking back the sour acid that rose in my throat, I hugged myself to keep from gagging, then gave the loudest scream in the history of the world.

  My second scream sounded like Jamie Lee Curtis.

  My third scream could have been assimilated into the soundtrack for Psycho ‑‑ the sequence where Jamie Lee’s mom gets stabbed with a knife.

  Chapter Fifty

  Blood is brown.

  Not red.

  At least, it isn’t bright red when it’s had seven-plus hours to coagulate.

  In the Rosen household, blood never has time to turn a rusty brown. Immediately, if not sooner, it’s soaked in white vinegar, club soda, and/or salt water.

  Which was probably why I kept telling the cops to soak Victor and Dawn’s blood-spattered bodies in white vinegar, club soda, and/or salt water.

  Instead, they summoned the hotel doctor, who gave me a sedative. Unfortunately, the doctor’s goodie bag didn’t contain a drug that would erase the nightmare trapped behind my eyes.

  While sedated, I overheard the medical examiner guesstimate the time of death…make that deaths…as midnight.

  The guesstimation had to be dead wrong. Victor had been with me ‑‑ not Dawn ‑‑ from 8 p.m. to 12 a.m. He wouldn’t have had time to exit my room, wait for one of the two rinky-dink elevators, ride it to the top floor, walk down the hall, enter his room, shed his clothes, and fuck Dawn, assuming Dawn had been fucked.

  No way! Unless he really was Superman.

  The cops had asked me some who-why-what’s-your-room-number questions. Now they said they’d talk to me again, after I felt better.

  “I feel fine,” I said, sitting primly in my chair, staring at the winged baboon and trying not to puke. Just in case, I said, “Did you know that you can remove vomit stains, as well as blood stains, by soaking ‘em in white vinegar, club soda, and/or salt water?”

  The cops were shadowed by a homicide detective who looked like an armadillo. My mom would say he “walked like he had a load in his pants.” He kept making jokes, and he had mean, squinty eyes.

  “Someone help the movie star to her room,” he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “I’ll question her later.”

  He pronounced star “stah.”

  Chapter Fifty-one

  Still somewhat groggy, I showered for the second time, as if I could scrub away the memory of Dawn and Victor’s bloody bodies.

  Tears mingled with the water that pelted my face, until I had no tears left. In fact, I felt as if I had no face left.

  Stepping out of the shower, I roughly toweled my body until it looked madder-red.

  Someone knocked at my door.

  Dropping my towel, I scooped up my white terrycloth robe.

  The frenetic door-thumps continued.

  “Hold your horses,” I whispered, trying to knot my robe’s sash and turn the door knob at the same time.

  Finally, I managed to yank open the goddamn door.

  I fully expected to see the detective who looked like an armadillo, but Bonnie lowered her arm. Her lips quivered, her face scrunched, a sob caught in her throat, and her eyes welled up with tears.

  Staring at my face, Cat said, “You’ve heard about Victor.” It wasn’t a question, but I nodded. Then she said, “May we come in?”

  All I could do was nod again. At the same time, I saw that the bumper-car maids had removed last night’s room service tray.

  Bonnie hugged me. Her arms felt like iron bands as we stumbled inside.

  Cat trailed us. Her gaze swept the room, and I felt my face flush. Victor and I had “done it” everywhere; on the floor; in the chair; draped across the desk where tourists usually wrote postcards… Having a fab time, wish you were here. A damn dog couldn’t have marked its territory more thoroughly.

  Victor had cleansed me after every orgasm, so washcloths and hand towels garnished multiple surfaces. My red robe diffused the light from a standing lamp. Christ, the room probably smelled of what we Scouts had euphemistically called a man’s “come-uppance.”

  Releasing me, staring at the bedside table, Bonnie said, “When did you start drinking Tsingtao beer?”

  I slanted a glance at the bottle. “I drank champagne, Bon, not beer. Didn’t want to, but he insisted.”

  “Who insisted?”

  “Victor.”

  “When did he fuck you?”

  She placed a bet in the Frannie-Victor-consummation-footbal
l-pool, I thought, stupidly. My next impulse was to fudge a little and change Victor to someone else; John the bartender, or a Continental pilot, or Rex with the muscles (who wore a Murder By the Book T-shirt).

  “He visited…fucked me last night,” I finally replied, sticking to the truth. “What I don’t understand is how he could have been with me and her.”

  “Victor,” Cat said, “had an active libido.”

  “No, no, I meant at the same time.”

  “Victor’s death is all my fault!” Bonnie screamed, drowning out my at the same time.

  Cat patted Bonnie’s shoulder. “It’s not your fault,” she said.

  The phone rang. With a shaky hand, I picked up the receiver.

  A woman who identified herself as “Marva Hickler from KHOU-TV” asked for Sol Aarons.

  Shit, I thought, those loony-tunes at the front desk are still confusing my room with Sol’s.

  “He’s not here,” I told the loony-tune on the phone.

  As soon as I hung up, the phone rang again. This time, a chainsaw-voiced reporter from News 2-Houston wanted a Victor Madison quote. I knew she meant a we’ll-miss-him-so-much quote, but I said, “A Victor Madison quote? Okay. ‘We’re running out of time here.’”

  Then, pressing my thumb against the disconnect button, I slid the receiver underneath the Forever Asmodeus paperback.

  New tears coursed down Bonnie’s face. “I saw you in front of the elevators, Frannie, with Victor and…and Dawn. I was headed for my room to get a raincoat, and I heard what you said. Then he…Victor…found me inside the lounge. He said he had videos and champagne and wanted to come to my room. But I was his second choice. You said no, so I said no. He walked over to Jem’s table, grabbed Tenia by the arm, and dragged her out on the patio, where they could be alone. But I could see them through the glass and they were arguing and Tenia slapped him.”

  As Bonnie paused for breath, I said, “Cat’s right, Bon. It’s not your fault. How could it be?”

  “If I had let him come to my room ‑‑”

  “He came to my room.”

  “No, Frannie, he took Dawn to his room.”

  “She couldn’t have stayed very long, Bon. Victor showed up at my door around eight o’clock and ‑‑”

  “She stayed long enough to get herself killed,” Cat said.

  True. I had never felt sleazier in my life. Victor had apparently gone from Dawn to me, or from me to Dawn. Unless…

  “She was drunk,” I said. “Maybe she followed him to his room and passed out. He made her comfortable, came to me, and she was still there when he ‑‑”

  “No,” Bonnie said. “After his fight with Tenia, he headed toward me again. He looked angry, confused, and I was about to tell him I’d changed my mind when Dawn intercepted him. He kept walking. She clung to him like a vine, and I was glad Lynn Beth had decided to go back to Cat’s room. Then he stopped short and said, ‘Okay, I don’t want to ride the elevator alone, and after all those trash bins I probably owe you a good fuck.’ Just like that. Right in front of everybody. Dawn didn’t care. She looked like she’d won the lottery.”

  “What did he mean by trash bins?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But Dawn still could have passed out, Bon.”

  “I don’t think so, Frannie. She’d sobered up. No slurred words. And except for when she clung to Victor, she walked perfectly straight.”

  “Then he must have left her alone when they reached his room. Why are you shaking your head?”

  “Cat and I met for breakfast. That’s when we heard about the murders. The news spread faster than a brush fire. According to the coffee shop waitress, Victor called room service twice. He ordered food at eleven-thirty ‑‑”

  “That’s impossible. He didn’t leave here until ‑‑”

  “‑‑ and nine-forty-five.”

  “No way, Bon. Room service had the time wrong, just like the desk thinking my room is Sol’s room. This hotel hires idiots.”

  “Room service couldn’t be wrong twice,” Cat said.

  I felt the room whirl. Bed, dresser, desk, chair, everything looked like those pinwheels that change colors as they spin faster.

  Thank you, God, I thought. If I fainted then regained consciousness, Victor would be knocking on my door, and I’d say come in, and he’d join me in bed, and we’d talk about the baby I’d have at the Academy Awards ceremony, and he’d kiss me…

  Except, he hadn’t kissed me. He’d spurted his seed four (or five) times, and we’d pretzeled ourselves into every position imaginable, and when I moaned he’d told me I was good, very good, but he’d never kissed me, not once. Even when we’d finished ‑‑ and just for grins, why wasn’t I sore from four (or five) penetrations? ‑‑ all he said was thank-you-Frannie.

  Yes, oh yes, that’s what I couldn’t remember, what a relief. His voice had sounded exactly like the voice at Rick’s duplex, the night I played Marianne. Victor was the man in black, the man who’d walked me inside, the man who’d stayed with me while the hands on the shipshape clock spun round and round. Only I’d been dead drunk, not awake ‑‑ not awakened. He had said Thank you Frannie, thank you Marianne. Then he had encored with the video, when I wasn’t drunk, when I was receptive, when I could

  (good, Frannie, very good!)

  give as good as I got.

  “Frannie, are you planning to faint?”

  “No, Cat,” I fibbed. “If only the room would stop spinning. Holy shit! Room spinning. Tenia put something in my drink.”

  “What do you mean? When?”

  “Last night. At the bar. Obviously, it wasn’t poison.”

  “Frannie, I think you’d better lie down. Bonnie, help me!”

  Cat and Bonnie wound their arms around my waist as I began to sag, and I had deja vu all over again. The Black Mass. Tenia had given me whatever she’d given Dawn at the Black Mass…

  An aphrodisiac.

  Chapter Fifty-two

  I didn’t faint.

  Partly because I knew Victor wouldn’t appear, once I’d regained consciousness. Partly because I knew that, if he did appear, he’d look like roadkill. Or even worse, something out of a Stephen King novel.

  Lynn Beth, mildly sedated, was with Sol. Cat wanted to get back to her, but first, she said, we’d make a list. Because, she said, there had to be a logical explanation. Bottom line: Victor Madison couldn’t be in two places at the same time!

  “Yes, he could.” Staring at the kidney-shaped lamp, I spilled the beans; told Cat and Bonnie about the high school gym and the night I played Marianne.

  “I don’t remember much about that night,” I said, “but I do remember Jem saying that Madison was in Houston, booking his flight to L.A.”

  “Frannie,” Cat said, “you were crazed with grief. Suppose, just for argument’s sake, that you imagined Victor’s arms around you? Suppose Victor changed his mind, hit the bar, saw you leave with Jem, and followed you home?”

  “I can suppose the first premise, Cat. But why would Victor mess around with someone who was falling-down drunk? He can…could have any woman he wants…wanted…with the snap of a finger. Oh, God, Bon. I’m sorry.”

  “That’s okay, Frannie. I feel numb.”

  “Me, too. Disconnected. Like the phone.”

  “List,” Cat said, retrieving a hotel pad and pen, then sinking to the floor and sitting cross-legged. “Forget the gym and duplex, for now. Let’s concentrate on last night.”

  Bonnie and I followed suit, and I felt like a Scout again, minus the campfire.

  “First,” Cat said, staring at my face, “are you absolutely positive Victor showed up around eight?”

  “Yes. But since room service seems to keep such good records, we can always check it out. He arrived shortly after I called them.”

  Cat scribbled on the pad. “Bonnie, what time did he leave the lounge with Dawn?”

  “I’m not sure. But the steak house reservations were for eight and the crew was gearing u
p to depart. I felt crummy, sorry I turned Victor down, so I went to my room.”