She felt haunted, but from the inside this time.
Her phone rang. A private number.
“Mitz,” a man said. Schlo. Her best work and her final job. He said, “I want you should see a picture tonight.”
In the dark windows across the street, Mitzi watched her shadow self drain her glass of wine and pour another from the bottle on the windowsill. “It’s after midnight.”
“It’s a midnight sneak preview,” he said.
Mitzi told him, “We’ll be late.” She watched the shadows afloat in all the dim squares as others lifted glasses and tipped them to their lips. They were her Fontaine drinking buddies.
“Not too late,” he said, “not for the scream part.” He was downstairs, waiting for her.
Mitzi looked, and in place of the usual ambulance outside the front doors there was a limousine idling at the curb.
They’d been driving around aimlessly. Foster and the actress, they’d been hiding behind the murk of the car’s heavily tinted windows, wondering how to buy food without getting recognized. The sun was setting. Maybe once it got fully dark.
A ways ahead a police cruiser was double-parked with an officer at the wheel. To avoid getting stuck behind it, or risk veering around it and drawing attention, Foster pulled to the curb. He shut off the engine and set the parking brake.
Blush asked to see the gun. Foster produced it from the pocket of his jacket, saying, “It’s not loaded.”
She reached across the front seat to take it, and he let her. She weighed it in her hand. “How’d you get this into Comic Con?”
Foster shrugged.
She leaned forward and lifted his phone off the dashboard. “If you got a gun in, it’s because someone wanted you to get a gun in. Somebody wanted you to kidnap me.” Her face deadpan, she mugged, “Probably my agent.”
Foster considered his own theory about Lucinda guiding him. As if his daughter were somehow guiding his mission.
Blush unplugged his phone from the cigarette lighter. She reached to get one of his costume gloves off the seat, asking, “You mind?”
He didn’t respond. He’d removed the heavy gloves the moment he’d climbed behind the wheel. They were spongy with sweat, as was the rest of his spandex costume.
Blush had long since peeled the damp executioner’s hood off her head and flung it into the backseat. Apparently, she took his silence as consent and fitted a glove over one of her hands. With the other she held the phone as if to take a selfie. With the gloved hand she lifted the gun and pressed the muzzle hard against her cheek. Doing so, she twisted her face away and squeezed her eyes shut so tight that tears sprang from them and tracked black trails of mascara down her cheeks. Her downturned lips parted as if she were sobbing. The phone snapped a picture.
That’s why she’d needed the glove. Cropped by the limits of a selfie, this would look like a man’s hand shoving a gun into her movie star face as she recoiled in terror. The security cameras at the convention had caught him wearing these gloves. The pictures would be sent from his phone. Him, the fugitive from gun charges.
The phone chimed as she sent the photo. “This one’s for the New York Times.”
Blush swiped to a new screen that showed the current level of crowdfunded contributions toward her million-dollar ransom. “Fuck,” she said, and not a happy fuck. Hers had clearly been an angry, disappointed fuck.
Foster pressed his case. “You played a babysitter who got stabbed.” Then, as nonchalant as possible, “Who overdubbed your scream?”
Her eyes narrowed, wary as if the question posed a threat. Her pretty face recovered its smug confidence. “I never use a scream double.”
He followed her gaze to the police car parked up the block. He took his phone back and sourced a file. The shrill voice of a terrified girl shrieked.
The sound froze them both for a moment. It seemed to echo and hang in the air of the parked car.
Her arms folded across her chest, Blush swallowed. Flatly, she said, “That was me.” Eyeing the police car, she slouched low.
Foster ventured, “It didn’t sound like you.”
“That’s my job,” she said. “I can sound like anyone.”
Foster said, “Get out.”
“It was my scream,” Blush said. She grabbed the phone before he could play the recording a second time.
Foster hit the car’s horn. It blared a long honk before he let up.
An old man on the sidewalk cupped his hand against her window and squinted to see inside. Crowds would attract the cops.
And Blush said, “Shit, okay. Okay?” She hid her face with her hands as more people peered into the car. “Maybe the scream wasn’t me, okay?”
That’s all Foster needed to hear.
The wine wasn’t Ambien. It wasn’t even Halcion, but it kept Mitzi in a nice holding pattern. The driver had doffed his cap as he opened the door of the limousine. Inside, Schlo had been waiting with chilled pinot gris and hot gossip. A stemmed glass of the former filled and waiting. Even as she stepped into the leather-padded interior and settled deep into the seats, she was reaching for the drink.
The car left the curb and glided along the empty nighttime streets with such a smoothness, such a liquid slide, that it seemed to her that the buildings and bus stops were moving while the limo sat in one place. As the producer pressed a button to close the partition between them and the driver, he asked, “You glad you’re not
