In the panic room, her words broke and she swallowed them and went quiet for long stretches. From this point she spoke as if it didn’t matter whether or not Foster was listening.
“He told me that his father had died from the same allergy,” she said. And that Mr. Koestler had come to meet his son and escort his son to the next life. Likewise, dogs were present. Family dogs that had died when Lawton was barely walking, but they, too, had come to guide him and give him comfort.
In Foster’s mind flashed the mysterious girl in the security video, who seemed to be leading his Lucinda away to safety, but in all likelihood to her doom.
All this time the young Blush Gentry, that wannabe gemologist, she had held Lawton’s hand, even as it grew colder and his breathing grew fainter. She wanted to confess about the kiss, about eating peanuts before the kiss, and about Prince Charming rescuing Sleeping Beauty, but she couldn’t interrupt his talking about dogs she couldn’t see or a father who wasn’t there. His hand around hers hardened into a manacle, and he was too heavy to budge. She was a girl who knew how the wind in the trees all night could sound like someone coming to the rescue. And how, at the same time, it could sound like a mountain lion coming in for the kill.
Defeated by her own story, Blush said, “That’s why I allow alligators to tear me apart, naked.” And reached for her own glass of rum and Coke.
Mitzi reached for the gold cuff links set with rubies.
Schlo told her, “Not those. God forbid.” He said, “I want my son should have those.” He held a martini and sloshed it to indicate a pair set with green stones. “If you please, I’ll wear the malachite.”
The cuff links, as well as various tie tacks and tie bars, not to mention the extra studs to his tux shirt and the flower for his lapel, were displayed on a velvet-lined tray atop the bureau in his bedroom. As she reached for the malachite ones, Mitzi caught sight of herself in the bureau’s mirror.
With a finger pointed at the tray, Schlo said, “Not the Piaget, either. I’ll wear the Timex, just in case.”
There in the mirror was a woman in her late twenties, possibly thirty years old. Her blonde hair was growing a shade darker. Her round face had thinned, giving her wide cheekbones and accentuating her eyes. She was getting her looks back. Pregnancy would do that. She asked, “Do I look like a killer?”
In the mirror, Schlo shot her a look. “Don’t brood,” he said. “You who couldn’t kill a fly?” He tugged back the sleeve of his jacket and offered a hand.
She folded back the French cuff of his shirt and matched the holes. Slipped the cuff link into place and opened the toggle. She reached for the other cuff.
He looked at her as if gauging whether this was a story or a confession. And was this something he wanted to hear? He grinned. “Don’t make me laugh or I’ll sweat.” He shifted his bulky torso inside the tuxedo jacket.
She worked the second cuff link into place. This she could remember doing for her father on special nights like tonight. The Academy Awards ceremony, such a night. And one time she’d actually gone with him, her father, but not a second time. Never again. Not after everyone seated around them had risen and left the auditorium. Their neighbors had decamped to watch events from the lounge, on the television screens in the bar. And when the placeholders, those dressed-up aspiring actors had filled the empty seats, when even those camera-ready nobodies had stood awkwardly and slinked away, then Mitzi Ives had felt shame as only a child can suffer shame. She’d known the television cameras would never swing her way, not and risk revealing a small field of empty seats in the audience otherwise packed with Hollywood luminaries.
No, Mitzi had never again begged her father to take her. But his cuff links she’d done, and his bow tie she’d learned to tie. And tonight the same she was doing for Schlo.
The bedroom television showed the crowds currently outside the Dolby Theatre. The tiered seating that lined the red carpet, and the camera crews stationed at intervals to interview the arriving guests.
“Your father,” Schlo said, glowering at his reflection in the mirror, “him I could see as a killer.”
Mitzi flipped up the tabs on his shirt collar and looped the tie around his neck. She crossed the two ends under his chin and tried to balance the loops.
The scream movie had been nominated for Best Sound. Not nominated due to being something good, but nominated due to politics and how the industry needed to prove they hadn’t launched a horror flick that had already smashed dead with concrete almost three thousand teenagers if you combined the Imperial with what had happened in Detroit. Call it snow load or a tiny, one-city-block-sized earthquake, the reporters were reporting whatever the people who owned the news told them to report.
Not every screening had ended in disaster. Plenty of showings in other venues had been uneventful, but two was pattern enough to scare most people away from theaters.
Tonight, all of Tinseltown was turning out, conscripted as human guinea pigs. In one big act of faith, they’d watch the scream segment together, all the stars attired in their loaned designer finery and jewels. Just to prove to the world that moviegoing was safe.
Still, Schlo’s wife, she complained she had a backache just to stay home. And Schlo, he wasn’t wearing the ruby cuff links. Or the Piaget. His son, Schlo’s son, was downstairs, down in the basement, forbidden to attend tonight. Mort, a boy still in Cub Scouts, weeping his heart out.
With the bow tie Mitzi fussed. Getting the two loops balanced. Getting it tight so as
