sweater?”
Marvis had to admit that it was a good question. “Okay…you’re not on vacation. You’re in Hawaii for the national cheerleader championships.”
“I am? That’s great!”
“Yes it is. And even better than that, your cheerleading squad just won the championship!”
Shelly shook her pompoms.
“But there’s bad news, too.” Shutterbug wrinkled his brow. “When you get back to your room, you get a phone call. It’s your boyfriend’s mother. You find out that he was just killed in a drag race.”
“Ohmygod!”
“And you’re very sad. But you miss him. So you get in bed and-”
“And I think about how much I miss him while I flick my clit!”
“Sure!”
“And that isn’t as good as he was, so then I have to do the other stuff, because I miss him really bad!”
Shutterbug smiled expansively, thinking bimbo sapiens, right here before my lens, live and in living color.
“This is great,” Shelly said. “This is wonderful!”
“Okay, let’s get to it.”
Shelly looked a little worried. “Before we get started, can I go upstairs for a minute? Just to be alone and think. Just for a minute. That way I can get into character.”
Shutterbug kept the smile on his face, but only by the greatest force of effort.
“Sure, Shelly, sure.”
More than a few minutes passed. Shutterbug waited like a bump on a log. His equipment was ready to roll, and he didn’t have anything else to fiddle with.
Amazing. Shelly Desmond the method actress. Getting into character seemed to take a lot longer than the trips to the bathroom that usually interrupted shooting, and sometimes those trips seemed equal in length to Ben Hur or The Ten Commandments.
But what could he do? Shelly would be pissed if he went upstairs and knocked on the bathroom door. And Shutterbug knew there was nothing worse than a pissed-off fifteen-year-old erotica diva. Especially one who had discovered the method.
He knew that, but right now he didn’t much care. He had taken enough shit for one day.
Enough was enough.
Shutterbug quietly mounted the stairs, a talent he had developed early in life because his father was a stickler for quiet. He passed the kitchen and entered the hallway. The bathroom was the first door on the left.
The door was open. The light was off.
Shutterbug stopped cold. He glanced over his shoulder at the front door and saw that Shelly’s backpack wasn’t there.
The little bitch had run out on him. But why? And without her pants? Wearing only a sweater? It didn’t make sense.
Twin terrors struck simultaneously. Shutterbug froze, remembering the warning on the phone, remembering Steve Austin’s warning.
And he had thought that he was in the clear. Just because a few hours had ticked off on the clock. Amazing. How could he be so-
A squealing whisper sounded further down the hallway. It was a sound that Shutterbug recognized.
The sound of the closet door in his bedroom sliding over a worn track.
Shutterbug was moving before he could think. There was only room enough for one word in his head, and that word was money.
He stepped into the bedroom. Shelly was there on the floor, zipping her backpack, just as he had expected. She tried a coy little smile, as if nothing was wrong, and then she saw his wild eyes and her face went slack.
His hands closed on April’s sweater and he jerked Shelly to her feet and she seemed so small to him.
He threw her onto the bed and watched her bounce.
“You’ve been stealing from me. Shelly.”
“No,” she said. “No! I just wanted some coke before we got started, but I was afraid to ask- “
“Okay.” He took hold of her jaw and pulled her face close to his. “I don’t see any powder on your nose, Shelly.” He laughed, pushed her back on the bed, straddled her and sloppily licked her nose. “Don’t taste anything, either.”
He was off of her in a flash. He snatched up her backpack and slammed it onto the bed with such force that her buck knife-a present from Joey-shattered a bottle of perfume.
“Don’t hurt me,” she said.
Tears spilled from her eyes. The zipper moaned as Shutterbug unzipped her backpack. He saw a flash of green. Six fifties were jammed inside along with her makeup and lipstick, each bill soaked with Liz Taylor’s signature perfume. “I’m surprised,” Shutterbug said. “And disappointed-Liz isn’t a method actress, Shell.”
“I didn’t mean-”
“At least you’re not greedy. Shell. Of course, if you’d been greedy, I guess I would have noticed. And I was beginning to worry about all those trips to the bathroom. I thought you had a little infection or something.”
She tried to smile, but it didn’t take. “It was my boyfriend. I know I talk too much…I told Joey about the money, and how you showed it to me when we did the coke. Well…he made me take it. He said he’d hurt me if I didn’t.”
Shutterbug grinned. Shelly crying on his bed in April’s big sweater. He watched her naked legs draw together, watched her shrink into a ball as she tried to hide.
Reflex. What a wonderful thing. As if she could really survive by rolling up like a sow bug. Shutterbug chuckled. The whole response was just another failure of human evolution.
“Let’s try a different scenario,” he said, doubting she knew what the word meant. “Let’s forget about Hawaii. Let’s make this bed our set.”
“Stop, Marvis. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”
“Only you have to use your imagination. Shelly. See, you’re a nice girl named April Destino. You’re a very popular cheerleader. And you’ve been drinking nasty bad spiked punch all night long, and you’re drunk. And then some big strapping manly lads invite you into a very quiet room.”
“You’re scaring me.”
“Good,” Shutterbug said. “That’s in character. And here’s our setting-not a bedroom, but a basement. And it’s not now, it’s 1976. And you’re not lying on a bed-picture, if you will, a pool table with green felt. And-”
“Marvis, stop! I’m sorry! It won’t happen ag-” He made to slap her, and her complaints died in her throat.
Everyone was watching. All those teendreams mounted on Shutterbug’s bedroom wall. Each pair of eyes burning holes in his back.
His hand shook in midair, balled into a fist.
“And this isn’t a fist,” he said softly, staring at his bulging knuckles. “It’s an eight ball.”
9:42 P.M.
Steve sat at a table in a waterfront bar, sipping a beer, waiting for some food. He was completely anonymous now-he had changed out of uniform in a service station restroom. Dressed in a white T-shirt, jeans,
