What more was there to say? The Gypsy Joker’s skin was so pale and he’d so little body hair that his abundant tattoos made him look like someone’s wedding china. She’d find handfuls of her hair ripped out. Her scalp ached. No matter how many times she’d sat him down and made him watch the video, he’d only managed to knock out one of her front teeth and give her a small anal fissure that bled like the bejeezus and took over a month to heal.
Jimmy grunted. The man in the video said, “Give me that hole” and slapped the woman’s ass.
Jimmy said, “Gimme that hole, bitch” and slapped Mitzi’s thigh.
They were, both of them, slick with sweat. And they’d been drinking wine so chances looked good. With each withdraw of his erection he lifted his center of gravity too high and threatened to topple. His was basically a three-point stance, like a milking stool, and any slip might force all of his weight against the fragile top of her spine.
Something popped inside her head, a popping sound, and blood flooded her mouth. But instead of her backbone, her nose had broken against the floor. Crushed sideways against the carpet, the cartilage had snapped with a crunch not unlike a dried crab claw.
A perfect sound effect wasted. Her mind, again, wandering, she wondered, If a nose was broken in the forest and no one was there to record it and dub it into a film, did the nose really break?
Foster let her assume the worst. He waved her into an elevator car and said, “Go up. Go down. Switch elevators. But if I catch you, you’re dead.” He reached inside his jacket and slid the pistol from its shoulder holster. Robb’s gun. It wasn’t loaded.
Security was still a joke here. Then as now, no guard manned the desk. The bank of security monitors showed empty hallways in grainy black and white. On one screen, he saw himself holding the gun, balding, his eyes bulbous behind the thick lenses of his glasses, one veined hand holding the gun. No one watched him. Only he watched.
Let the police come arrest him. The police wouldn’t come. This wasn’t that kind of world, not anymore. Maybe it never had been.
The gun was necessary to terrorize her. If this Lucinda feared him, she’d never phone him in the future. She’d never reappear just to say hello and chat about old times. He couldn’t beat his addiction to her. She had to be dead to him.
She looked at him, cocked her pretty head. Whether she was truly an excellent actor or she saw something ruthless in his face, she blinked back tears. She looked over his shoulder as if for help, then reached forward and pressed the button for a floor. Backed slowly against the rear of the car.
“Use your phone,” he warned her, “pull a fire alarm. But stay in one spot too long, and I’ll find you before the police do.”
Foster did what he should’ve done so long ago. Instead of giving chase he waited.
Her doors slid shut and the car began to rise according to the floor indicator. There in the lobby, a panel of stainless steel showed vertical rows of red lights, each marking the location of a different elevator. The car she’d boarded stopped on the seventeenth floor. Another light stopped on the same floor, then proceeded down a few floors. Clearly she’d switched cars to evade him.
The small red lights traced her path of escape, bobbing and weaving, bursting from an elevator on one side of the building to dash into another elevator and ride down or up further. Then, to switch cars once again.
What he did today would keep her running away from him for the rest of her life.
Foster’s guess was that she’d panic soon. She might call the police or her pimp, but she’d never linger in one place lest Foster find her. His gut was right. One elevator was plummeting, an express straight for a lobby escape.
Watching it fall, Foster remembered how he’d chased his daughter during her long-ago game. He’d catch sight of her only as she ducked squealing into a different car. He’d make a grab for her, but she’d be gone. It was fun, he’d thought. A game.
It never occurred to him to call security and ask them to seal the exits. How long had she been gone while he still ran panting and laughing to catch her? Like an idiot, he’d been calling her name, and chasing after a phantom.
Still holding the textbook, Foster positioned himself in front of the arriving car.
The doors slid aside and she lunged forward, almost colliding with him. Stopping short, she fell backward. Slid down to the carpeted floor. Curled herself into a defensive ball, sobbing, “Please, Dad!” Sobbing, “Don’t.”
Foster drew the pistol from inside his jacket and put the muzzle of it very gently against the top of her head. That wonderful dark hair. He said, “You’re not my kid. …And you’re no actor.” To seal the deal, to really make her despise him, he added, “You’re a whore. A two-bit, dirty, cock-sucking whore.”
She stopped crying and tilted her face up until the gun was aimed between her eyes. Any fear there had been replaced by fury. Whether or not he killed her, this Lucinda wanted to kill him. That was good. That was perfect.
From Oscarpocalypse Now by Blush Gentry (p. 45)
People, they loved Mitzi Ives. Loved her. Even after the FBI discovered that room packed full of money, people could still give her the benefit of the doubt. She lost her mother as a little baby. Her dad ran out during her teens, but Mitzi, she never went under. Maybe because her life was so hard, she turned out a survivor, you know?
Of course people started rumors. Anytime a woman, a single young woman
