Chapter Twenty-nine
The lovemaking was over.
This woman, Erica Thornton, the teller from Newport Beach with ambitions to act, had been an enthusiastic sex partner—very giving, as well as voracious (despite the drugs), and if he had been the sort of man who was really into sex, he might have been devastated knowing she would have to die.
Instead, those first postcoital moments were merely bittersweet.
The character Don Juan loved sex, but once the mechanics of the act were over, he—the actor—ceased being that character, the performance over. Much as his costar’s life would be.
Costar wasn’t right, though was it? She was more a day player, in movie parlance. His real costar was working behind the scenes, handling the stagecraft, though her time to come on stage drew near.
Funny, while he was playing Don Juan, he liked the sex, liked it well enough anyway, while the man behind the performance really only cared about the end result—how this video would further the plan and his career. Their career, his real costar and he….
In what some called the afterglow, the brunette lay limp on the bed, naked, satiated, almost as if she were already deceased, but for the gentle rising and lowering of the generous breasts.
His time on stage, on camera, was over.
He arose and left the room to take his place behind the camera. There would be no elaborate camera moves; this was strictly D.W. Griffith–level cinema, because the camera behind the two-way mirror needed to appear to have remained stationary.
All he had to do now was look through the viewfinder at the action—his voiceover would be dropped in, in post-production.
The most important part of shooting the video was to make sure he didn’t catch his sister when she came on stage, as his “stuntman” (stuntwoman? stuntperson?).
Off-camera, his sister entered with her usual swift grace, as nude as their day player but even more beautiful, supple, sleek, exquisite in her hairless beauty. She moved past her hidden cameraman, knife in hand held behind her back.
Camera trained on the brunette, his sister’s white skin soon entered frame, luminous in the soft light of the room, her pink nipples hard and erect as she moved toward the bed.
(His sister’s approach was Method, too—she lived her role, sense memory her thing.)
The day player’s mouth opened, but she did not show the shock of the others at this other naked (bald all over) woman entering the room. This one licked her bottom lip.
“Kinky,” she managed. “I’m … I’m liking this….”
She soon wouldn’t.
When his sister neared the bed and revealed and raised the knife, the woman’s face registered the requisite surprise.
Through the eyepiece, he and the camera were focused on the day player’s face, intrigued by the way this minor actress played the scene—startled at first, then giving in to resignation.
Interesting choice.
The blade arced down, the day player watching but not moving as its spear neared her neck. She, like the others, never even raised a hand in defense as the blade punctured, then slashed through flesh, blood spraying from the severed carotid artery.
Only then did the day player’s hands move to her wound, even as his sister brought the knife back and then in from a lower angle, piercing the woman’s abdomen so deep the blade might have poked out the other side.
Again and again, the blade penetrated the young woman, much as earlier he had with his dagger of flesh, his sister crying out in orgiastic fury with every thrust until, finally, the attacker moaned loudly and slumped into a ball on the floor, the day player splayed out before her, a roadmap of bloody wounds.
Now his sister, coming down from her homicidal high, lay quietly satiated. He liked that. There was a nice, artistic symmetry to it.
He had followed his sister’s descent with the camera, but that would be edited out for the video. Well, later, when all the Don Juan videos came out, in uncut director’s editions, the full sequence would at last be seen.
He helped her up and walked her to the bathroom. She was exhausted—it always reminded him of when James Brown had to be led offstage by his retinue, only he didn’t have a red velvet robe to wrap around his sister, much as she deserved one.
While she showered, he returned to the set with that familiar melancholy for when the play was over. The woman on the bed was just another inanimate object to him. Another prop. Gradually, however, during the cleanup process, the women did transcend that status.
His supplies readied beforehand, he knelt next to the body, even as the blood still dripped. Oddly, he enjoyed this part of the experience most of all—somehow, he felt more intimate with the women, after the camera had stopped rolling and his sister was off showering. Only then were he and each day player truly alone together … soft towels and gentle soap, and a woman more than just naked, opened up so he could see inside.
The blood was still wet, so it came off easily. Barely had to scrub. This one’s eyes were closed, her face peaceful despite the way her scene had ended, almost as if she were enjoying his soapy touch. As if any moment she might sit up and smile and thank him for being so careful and gentle….
“Feels good, doesn’t it?” he whispered to her.
Her head seemed to shift slightly on the pillow, in affirmation, as he leaned on the mattress, allowing him easier access to the wound in her neck. He cleaned the gash as best he could, and the area around it.
Her hair would be hardest to clean—no point in putting that off. Her dark tresses still felt soft and thick between his fingers as he used a wet towel to wipe them, taking care with each lock, as if fearful a rough touch might pull her hair and cause discomfort.
When finally he finished, he regarded the day player—she looked as though she had just stepped from a shower. The only remaining red spots were the open wounds, but nothing was to be done about that.
For some reason he thought of the old man.
He hated the old son of a bitch—dead or not. Their mother fleeing his abuse, the nighttime visits to brother and sister … then the evil bastard had to go fall over dead before they were of maturity enough to do something about him.
Daddy, in dying, had done them one big favor—with the old man gone, and when they were of legal age, they had sold the farm, the proceeds allowing them to move to LA and leave the heartless heartland behind.
Ironic—the old man had made it possible for them to come to the fame capital of the world, where he and his sister at last could be somebodies. Where they would be rich and famous and powerful.
It had taken longer to “make it” than they hoped, and they were taking what some might consider an unconventional path … but they weren’t helpless anymore.
Screw you, you old bastard!
Funny that the only way to be somebody in this town was to pretend to be somebody else. But that’s show biz!
When their day player was ready for her final curtain call—No small roles, only small actors!—he went off in search of his sister. She was gone from the shower, towel hung up, mirror fogged.
He found her in his bedroom, the black womb room, already in bed, covers tight at her neck.
“You all right, Sis?”
“Yes …”
Her voice was tiny, childlike, as when she would ask him to comfort her after the old man was done.
“… but I’d be better if you held me.”
“Let me get my shower first,” he said. “I just finished with the day player. Feel kinda dirty.”
“Go get clean,” his sister said.
He was in and out of the shower in five minutes; he lingered to watch the blood from their victim rinse down the drain, like in Psycho. That Hitchcock was good.
As he toweled off, his thoughts turned to the only woman he ever loved. The only woman he ever really wanted, in the … you know way.
But he knew better than to put his thing in his own sister. That would be sick and dirty and no shower could wash it off. His old man never understood such a simple basic moral rule, but he did.
Naked, he crawled in bed next to her. She was on her side, back to him. She, too, was nude. Hairless as a grape. He spooned her, his arm draped across her. She was so warm it was like standing in front of the space heater back on the farm.
Snuggling him, she made a sound a lot like purring.
“That’s better,” she said. “I love you.”
In the darkness, feeling her against him, he said, “I love you too, Sis.”
Her hand reached back and touched him, worked him. His hand slipped around and found the warm moist place and they comforted each other.
The lovemaking was over.
When the team finally broke up Sunday night, everybody running on fumes, Harrow had been surprised to hear himself ask Anna over to his place. And astonished to hear her say yes.
It was a casual evening, delivery pizza and a Dodgers game on ESPN. They watched on the sofa, with her curled up next to him. She seemed so small, so young with her dark hair ponytailed back, almost elfin in T-shirt and jeans and bare feet.
When he fell asleep during the game, she elbowed him. Laughter had followed, and kissing and fondling and then they were in the bedroom and the lovemaking had been slow at first, amazingly so considering how long it had been for him, and then frantic at the conclusion, and now she was asleep and he was at the window, looking out into the abstraction of Los Angeles by night.
He felt empty and guilty and generally like shit.
“Are you all right?”
He jumped at her voice. Hadn’t heard her get out of bed, much less come up behind him.
Looking nicely rumpled, Anna smiled. “Did I just make the heroic Harrow jump? … Or are you … hey, are you …?”
Crying?
She didn’t say it.
He just nodded.
She kissed the tears away and said, “I understand.”
“I shouldn’t have done this tonight. … I’m sorry….”
“Damnit, don’t you apologize. This was what you needed, and what I needed. Understand? And whether we never do it again, or if we wind up together for the next twenty years, it doesn’t matter. Nothing can take tonight away from us, and it doesn’t take a goddamn thing away from all your other nights, when you were married.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Quit apologizing. Damn! Come back to bed.”
She led him there and he lay on his back and she cuddled him.
Her voice was soft, soothing. But there was still something cop in it.
“You had a marriage that worked,” she said. “I had a marriage that went south. But what we have in common is, we don’t have anybody now.”
“That’s true,” he said.
“So quit being such a big baby.”
That made him laugh, and he was kissing her when a cell phone vibrated nearby.
“Yours or mine?” she asked.
“Mine,” Harrow said, reaching across her to pluck the dancing thing off the nightstand. Caller ID box read: CARMEN GARCIA. He glanced at the clock: 2:38 A.M. in blood red LED.
Warmth had filled this room seconds ago; now Harrow felt a chill.
No way this was good news.
And when Amari’s phone jumped in vibration, too, he knew his suspicion had been validated.