light. The Buick stands largely in darkness.
The police are not likely to cruise the complex more than once or twice between now and dawn. And when they do, they will not be checking license plates but scanning the grounds for indications of burglary or other crimes in progress.
He switches off the headlights and the engine, gathers up what remains of his store of candy, and gets out of the car, shaking off the bits of gummy, tempered glass that cling to him.
Rain is no longer falling.
The air is cool and clean.
The night keeps its own counsel, silent but for the tick and plop of still-dripping trees.
He gets into the back seat and softly closes the door. It is not a comfortable bed. But he has known worse. He settles into the fetal position, curled around candy bars instead of an umbilicus, blanketed only by the roomy raincoat.
As he waits for sleep to overtake him, he thinks again of his daughters and their betrayal.
Inevitably, he wonders if they prefer their other father to him, the false to the real. This is a dreadful possibility to be forced to explore. If it is true, it means that those he loves the most are not victims, as he is, but are active participants in the Byzantine plot against him.
Their false father is probably lenient with them. Allows them to eat what they want. Lets them go to bed as late as they please.
All children are anarchists by nature. They need rules and standards of behavior, or they grow up to be wild and antisocial.
When he kills the hateful false father and retakes control of his family, he will establish rules for everything and will strictly enforce them. Misbehavior will be instantly punished. Pain is one of life’s greatest teachers, and he is an expert in the application of pain. Order will be restored within the Stillwater household, and his children will commit no act without first soberly reflecting upon the rules that govern them.
Initially, of course, they will hate him for being so stern and uncompromising. They will not understand that he is acting in their best interests.
However, each tear that his punishments wring from them will be sweet to him. Each cry of pain will be a gladdening music. He will be unrelenting with them because he knows that in time they will realize he imposes guidance upon them only because he cares so profoundly about them. They will love him for his stern fatherly concern. They will adore him for providing the discipline which they need—and secretly desire—but which it is their very nature to resist.
Paige also will need to be disciplined. He knows about women’s needs. He remembers a film with Kim Basinger in which sex and a craving for discipline were shown to be inextricably entwined. He anticipates Paige’s instructions with particular pleasure.
Since the day that his career, family, and memories were stolen from him—which might be a year or ten years ago, for all he knows—he has lived primarily through the movies. The adventures he has experienced and the poignant lessons he has learned in countless darkened theaters seem as real to him as the car seat on which he now lies and the chocolate dissolving on his tongue. He remembers making love to Sharon Stone, to Glenn Close, from both of whom he learned the potential for sexual mania and treachery inherent in all women. He remembers the exuberant fun of sex with Goldie Hawn, the rapture of Michelle Pfeiffer, the exciting sweaty urgency of Ellen Barkin when he incorrectly suspected her of being a murderess but pinned her to the wall of his apartment and penetrated her anyway. John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Gregory Peck, and so many other men have taken him under their wings and have taught him courage and determination. He knows that death is a mystery of infinite complication because he has learned so many conflicting lessons about it: Tim Robbins has shown him that the afterlife is only an illusion, while Patrick Swayze has shown him that the afterlife is a joyous place as real as anywhere and that those you love (like Demi Moore) will see you there when they eventually pass from this world, yet Freddy Krueger has shown him that the afterlife is a gruesome nightmare from which you can return for gleeful vengeance. When Debra Winger died of cancer, leaving Shirley MacLaine bereft, he had been inconsolable, but only a few days later he had seen her, alive again, younger and more beautiful than ever, reincarnated in a new life where she enjoyed a new destiny with Richard Gere. Paul Newman has often shared with him bits of wisdom about death, life, pool, poker, love, and honor; therefore, he considers this man one of his most important mentors. Likewise, Wilford Brimley, Gene Hackman, burly old Edward Asner, Robert Redford, Jessica Tandy. Often he absorbs quite contradictory lessons from such friends, but he has heard some of these people say that all beliefs are of equal value and that there is no one truth, so he is comfortable with the contradictions by which he lives.
He learned the most secret of all truths not in a public theater or on a pay-per-view movie service in a hotel room. Instead, that moment of stunning insight had come in the private media chamber of one of the men it was his duty to kill.
His target had been a United States Senator. A requirement of the termination was that it be made to look like a suicide.
He had to enter the Senator’s residence on a night when the man was known to be alone. He was provided with a key so there would be no signs of forced entry.
After gaining access to the house, he found the Senator in the eight-seat home media room, which featured THX Sound and a theater-quality projection system capable of displaying television, videotape, or laserdisc images on a five-by-six-foot screen. It was a plush, windowless space. There was even an antique Coke machine which, he learned later, dispensed the soft drink in classic ten-ounce glass bottles, plus a candy-vending machine stocked with Milk Duds, Jujubes, Raisinettes, and other favorite movie-house snacks.
Because of the music in the film, he found it easy to creep up behind the Senator and overpower him with a chloroform-soaked rag, which he pulled out of a plastic bag a second before putting it to use. He carried the politician upstairs to the ornate master bath, undressed him, and gently conveyed him into a Roman tub filled with hot water, periodically employing the chloroform to assure continued unconsciousness. With a razor blade, he made a deep, clean incision across the Senator’s right wrist (since the politician was a southpaw and most likely to use his left hand to make his first cut), and let that arm drop into the water, which was quickly discolored by the arterial gush. Before dropping the razor blade in the water, he made a few feeble attempts to slash the left wrist, never scoring deeply, because the Senator wouldn’t have been able to grip the blade firmly in his right hand after cutting the tendons and ligaments along with the artery in that wrist.
Sitting on the edge of the tub, administering chloroform every time the politician groaned and seemed about to wake, he gratefully shared the sacred ceremony of death. When he was the only living man in the room, he thanked the departed for the precious opportunity to share that most intimate of experiences.
Ordinarily, he would have left the house then, but what he had witnessed on the movie screen drew him back to the media room on the first floor. He had seen pornography before, in adult theaters in many cities, and from those experiences he had learned all of the possible sexual positions and techniques. But the pornography on that home screen was different from everything he’d seen previously, for it involved chains, handcuffs, leather straps, metal-studded belts, as well as a wide variety of other instruments of punishment and restraint. Incredibly, the beautiful women on the screen seemed to be excited by brutality. The more cruelly they were treated, the more willingly they gave themselves to orgasmic pleasure; in fact, they frequently begged to be dealt with even more harshly, ravished more sadistically.
He settled into the seat from which he had removed the Senator. He stared with fascination at the screen, absorbing, learning.
When that videotape reached a conclusion, a quick search turned up an open walk-in vault—usually cleverly concealed behind the wall paneling—that contained a collection of similar material. There was an even more stunning trove of tapes depicting children involved in carnal acts with adults. Daughters with fathers. Mothers with sons. Sisters with brothers, sisters with sisters. He sat for hours, until almost dawn, transfixed.
Absorbing.
Learning, learning.
To have become a United States Senator, an exalted leader, the dead man in the bathtub must have been extremely wise. Therefore, his personal film library would, of course, contain diverse material of a transcendent nature, reflecting his singular intellectual and moral insights, embodying philosophies far too complex to be within the grasp of the average film-goer at a public theater. How very fortunate to have discovered the politician lounging in the media room rather than preparing a snack in the kitchen or reading a book in bed. Otherwise, this opportunity
