his tortured journey across the room, but she was. While staring at the floor, she had caught fleeting shots of Bruce’s feet moving across the back of frame. She knew that Bruce had some kind of plan and that Wayne and Scout must remain diverted. She knew that it was up to her, that she must enter the conversation and enter it arrestingly. She raised her head and stared Scout in the eye.
‘It’s none of your fucking business.’
Scout and Wayne were certainly surprised. Brooke had shown little spirit up to this point, but now she was coming out punching. Her voice was hard and tough; it commanded the room. Bruce seized the opportunity and advanced a whole step.
Wayne glared at Brooke. ‘Now that is where you are wrong, Miss High and Mighty fuckin’ bald snatch Daniels. It is our business on account of the fact that you belong to us. You hear? You be fuckin’long to me ‘n’ my baby. Now, answer my baby’s question. Unless you think you’re too good to talk to her. In which case, you can talk to this.’
Wayne raised his machinepistol to his shoulder and pointed it at Brooke. Her POV was the gaping end of the barrel with Wayne ’s grinning face behind it, chin resting against the stock.
But beyond Wayne ’s head, in deep background, Bruce was still edging through the rear of frame.
Brooke knew she must keep Wayne ’s attention. Bravely she met his stare, fixing on to his eyes as they hovered above the blackhole snout of the gun.
Slowly he closed one eye in a cheerfully grotesque wink. He was taking aim.
Brooke attempted not to flinch, which was not an easy task. ‘All right, pervert, if you must know’ – it was terrifying to risk annoying him in this way, but she knew that above all she must keep the focus on herself until Bruce got to that desk – ‘I’ve had the wrinkles round my eyes and lips dealt with, some cellulite removed from my thighs, I have had breast implants and my navel has been remodelled.’
As she spoke Bruce opened the drawer. Wayne was never going to be more distracted than he was at that moment. It was Bruce’s best chance, and he took it.
He watched his own hand in closeup, pulling open the drawer. He watched the hand disappear inside.
The drawer was empty.
As Bruce frantically felt to the very back, there should have been a musical sting. Something harsh, like a scream, or, seeing as it was Bruce’s movie, perhaps something ironic, like a sit com ‘wah wah waaaah’ but discordant and sinister. There was no sting, however, because Bruce had stopped playing his desperate little movie game. His defeat was too real, too complete.
‘Oh, Bruuuuce.’ It was Wayne ’s voice, nasty and sarcastic. ‘Is this what you’re looking for?’
Wayne had not even bothered to turn round to face Bruce. All Bruce could see was the back of Wayne ’s head above the cushions and his hand protruding over the arm of the couch. From one finger of Wayne ’s hand hung a small pistol.
‘You see, Bruce, I can smell guns,’ Wayne said, still without bothering to turn round. ‘I smelt this one a while ago. I went over to fix me a drink and I thought, mmmm, what’s that smell? I like it. I do believe it’s a gun. And guess what? It was! Can you believe that?’
Bruce did not answer. Not for the first time that night, he was incapable of speech.
‘Also, I must confess that it is not uncommon for a man to keep his piece in the top drawer of his desk. For an Oscarwinning filmmaker, Bruce, you are not very original.’
Bruce shrank a little inside. For a moment there he’d been a fighter, he’d had a plan and a chance. Now he was a fool, casually outwitted and outmanoeuvred by the dregs of a small town truck stop.
It was six a.m. and Bruce’s appointment with nemesis was well under way. His old life was already over. Even if he survived his ordeal, nothing would ever be the same again.
Outside in Los Angeles, of course, and Americawide, like him or loathe him Bruce remained the lion of the hour. His Oscar triumph was still a top story on the morning news. Sadly, not
‘Sex and death in America today,’ said the reporters, as the ambulances squealed off into the dawn. ‘It could come straight out of a Bruce Delamitri picture.’ An observation which coincidentally segued very nicely into the preedited Oscars report.
‘I stand here on legs of fire,’ said Bruce.
‘Why’d the guy have to make such a vacuous speech?’ the news editors complained. ‘My God, if he’d said something about violence and censorship, would we have had
Chapter Eighteen
Wayne did not bother turning to Bruce even now. He was more interested in the conversation he’d been having. He put the little pistol he had taken from Bruce’s drawer on Scout’s lap, and strolled casually round the glass table to stand over Brooke. As he passed the severed head, it seemed again for a moment as if it might rotate on its gory plinth in order to follow Wayne ’s movements with its bulbous dead eyes. It didn’t.
‘You know something?’ Wayne said, standing over Brooke, leering at the curiously unnatural semicircular definition of the top of her breasts. ‘I’ve always wanted to know what faketits feel like. Well, I guess there ain’t a working man in the United States who hasn’t thought the same thing. Like, you know, are they hard? Soft? Can you feel that bag of stuff they put in? Do they move around?’
Wayne ’s right hand had been resting casually on the butt of the pistol stuck in his waistband. Now, he let go of the gun and blew on his fingers to warm them, clearly making ready for an inspection. Brooke did not look at him. She brought her knees up to her chest, clasped her arms round them with her shoulders hunched forward, and stared straight ahead, her chin on her knees.
‘Don’t you dare fucking touch me.’ Her voice was quiet and shaky; she was almost muttering.
‘Pardon me, ma’am,’ Wayne replied, ‘but I guess I didn’t hear you right.’
Wayne placed the barrel of one of his guns against Brooke’s forehead and with his free hand ready, fingers outstretched, he slowly bent forward, clearly intent on investigating inside the top of her dress.
Across the room Scout took up her gun. ‘ Wayne, you leave her bosoms alone, now. I don’t want you touching her bosoms none.’
It was a standoff, Wayne pointing a gun at Brooke, Scout pointing a gun at Wayne, Wayne ’s hand hovering above Brooke’s cleavage.
Wayne cracked first. ‘Jesus, there ain’t nothing more irritating than a jealous woman,’ he said, returning to his seat.
Brooke remained hunched up in her defensive position, breathing deeply. ‘Just hold on,’ she said to herself, ‘just keep it together.’
She knew that the numberone enemy of survival was panic. The moment one gave in to that oxygen- consuming, energysapping, adrenalinpumping surge of blind fear, one was done for. Only the day before, she reminded herself, she had been swimming off Malibu and had got caught in a rip. It had been a sucky one, and without warning Brooke had been pulled under, turned over, filled with water and dragged out to sea about twenty metres.
‘You nearly died then,’ Brooke told herself concentrating on her breathing. ‘Only yesterday you were as close to death as you are now, but you made it.’
It was true. Brooke had been in mortal danger, although it would not have been the rip which killed her. Rips don’t kill people. Panic does. The first instinct of the swimmer caught in a rip is to try to head back to shore. This is disastrous: no one can swim against the sea and the mildest undertow will defeat the strongest swimmer. But this suicidal instinct is strong and, although Brooke had been swimming in the Californian waters since girlhood and
