Warmed and Bound: A Velvet Anthology (16 page)

This gets Cari’s attention. “Wait, one
what
, now?”

“No,” Sam grumbles, “it doesn’t.”

With a rattle of her arm, a roll of black gaffer tape shimmies down from Joelle’s elbow into her hand. The tape screeches like a wounded alien as she whips it around Cari’s torso from above while holding her in a headlock. Cari squeals. 

Sam sees his chance and lunges for them, but in the ten feet and one second between chairs he takes a boot heel across his chin.

“I told you to stay there!” 

His fluttering eyes distorted through Cari’s spilled wine goblet, Sam picks himself up off the carpet and follows Joelle’s pointing finger back to his chair. He rubs his jaw and numbed lips, and spits a mouthful of blood tasting nothing like corn syrup into his palm. Nowhere to wipe it among the all-white décor. Resigned to sully his green shirt, he knows he’ll forever associate this memory with Christmas. Another crimson stain begins to set next to the neglected cabernet. 

After four tape passes, Cari can only flap her forearms like a T-rex. “Don’t worry, this stuff is great. No residue,” Joelle says. “Oughta be, for twenty bucks a roll. This part, though,” she binds Cari’s ankles, “is a community service.”

“Fuck. You,” Cari snarls. She wonders how much damage one of her own four-inch heels could do to an eye socket if given a chance and sobering reflexes.

“Allrighty. Let’s do this.” Joelle takes the woman’s flailing hand and grips its pinkie like she would an ATV throttle, thumb against the side for leverage. “Samuel. First question: what’s Cari’s middle name?” 

Sam’s brows raise in anticipation, then twist, and Joelle sees Cari’s pantomiming lips in her periphery, which she thwarts with an elbow to the temple.

“Ellen!” he blurts, impeded speech from his bitten tongue drawing looks from both women. “Jethuth, it’th Ellen, okay?”

Cari’s head sinks. Joelle fishes a driver’s license from the purse now on her lap and chuckles at Cari. “Says ‘Cari H.’
Helen
, I’m betting, right?” She licks her lips as she applies pressure. “Okay, here we go—”

“Wait! Dubuh or nothing!” Sam pleads. “Dubuh or nothing. C’mon.”

“Intriguing. Shoulda figured you might bargain.” Joelle opens her grip, then grasps both Cari’s pinkie and ring fingers. “Sure, why not. Because I know you don’t know any of this shit. Okay—for
two
fingers—question number two: what’s Cari’s favorite movie?”

“Oh, thath eathy.
Jerry Maguire
. Ith thtill in the pwayer upthtairs.” He’s a better negotiator than liar, but they’re complementary skills.

Joelle looks to Cari for confirmation, who feigns relief and nods quickly. “Bullshit. It’s gotta be
Pretty Woman
,” Joelle says, and Cari’s torrid howl wrenches Sam’s heart as her tendons snap.

From her pants pocket, Joelle slips what Sam figures to be his engagement ring back over Cari’s gnarled finger. Despite being oversized, there’s no way it will fit around the swollen flesh now, and her trembling makes it all the more futile, but Joelle persists.

“Oh God, no!” Cari thrashes in the chair like a shark, bound feet flailing. “No! Why are you—” She screams and throws her head back as the veins in Joelle’s neck tense repeatedly. 

Her tormentor’s hands come up bloody and accomplished, palms on display. One holds two severed fingers, the other a chrome guillotine cigar cutter identical to Sam’s.

Sam gags, coughing and sputtering some combination of fluids between his fingers and down the front of his Christmas shirt. 

Cari’s mutilated hand lies limp, blood flow pulsing in rhythm with each heartbeat. Her skirt is already spotted red, and the dripping armrest begins to flood the floor. Tears cascading, her head lolls side to side in shock on the edge of consciousness. Panicked breaths seething through her nose and grinding teeth. She thinks only of Gabrielle, light of her life, who’s probably asking the babysitter right about now if she can make popcorn, negotiating bedtime and their movie library.

Four bars of Miles Davis swing through the silence as Joelle stands dazed before her work. Then, “Damn. That was . . . way easier than I figured.”

Sam vaults from his chair and breaks for the kitchen. “I’m cawing an ambulanth.” Joelle jumps onto his back and stamps her foot behind his knee. They tumble to the floor, rolling until her knees pin his arms down, face to face. 

“And dialing with what?” She air-snips the cutter, its blades already sticky with platelets. “Also, you sound like Down’s Syndrome.” 

“She’th gonna fucking bweed to death!”

“Got a couple hours. I looked it up,” Joelle says, catching her breath. “Though that was probably for just one finger. And with help.”

“Then hold it up, at leatht, for god’th thake. Elevate it.”

“You hear that,
Carrie
,” Joelle joins in and climbs off of Sam. “Plug it up. Plug. It. Up!” she chants, invoking one of her favorite films 

Cari’s forearm raises and shudders as if trying to curl a weight, rivulets of blood streaming, before falling limp again. She draws a jagged breath between sobs, and a long note resembling
whyyyyy
bleats from her throat.

Joelle turns back to Sam as the base of an Emmy award fills her vision and shatters her nose.
Outstanding Made-for-Television Movie
. She stumbles into the piano with a cluster of discord. Shoulders heaving, Sam drops the statue and opens the display cabinet next to the fireplace. A stuffed Alaskan red fox proudly watches. 

Blood mushrooming from her exposed nasal cavity, eyes running black like a fourth-quarter linebacker, Joelle comes at him with a congested battle cry. He selects the Mossberg 12-gauge from the arsenal and pumps the action.
Welcome to the cutting-room floor, bitch
flashes in 12-point Courier on a page in his mind, too late to deliver it aloud. No time to shoulder the gun, he pops the safety and squeezes the trigger at waist level. Double-aught buckshot shreds Joelle’s mandible and ear, as bloodied feathers scatter from a wall-mounted pheasant. The girl glances off a bookshelf, misting the spines of dozens of screenplays arterial red, and slumps to the floor.

Gurgling and immobile in her waning moments, only her eyes follow him as he stands over her. Each judging the other.

Sam digs Cari’s phone out of her purse. Thumbs 9-1-1, then hesitates over the Send button. The screen times out. 

His so-called fiancée hasn’t blinked in ten minutes. Still bound to the chair, her flesh lifeless as those in his imaginary slideshow. Drained like a box of cabernet into a patch of carpet . . . smaller than his bearskin rug. . . . 

This could all go away,
he thinks.
Actresses disappear all the time. Like hookers. 

He ponders the difference, wondering how Cari could have agreed to play fiancée for an evening without feeling exploited. Despite Sam’s nonsexual reassurances, twelve hundred bucks opens a lot of doors, and all day he’d questioned how far she might take the role. Everyone knew she slept with one of the writers on that day-spa pilot. 

Who else knows she’s here tonight? 

Sam had contacted her directly, so no official trail exists. But for the first time he finds himself considering whether she had family. Kids. Or god forbid, a vengeful and resourceful man. 

The ex-girlfriend on his floor missing a third of her face was going to be the bigger problem. Sam plucks a Cohiba Cuban from the box on the shelf and settles wearily onto the corner of the piano bench, elbows on his knees. He noses the cigar on instinct, rolling it around and around with his thoughts. 

The fuck just happened? And Joelle? How’d she ever break in? 

He slams his eyes shut, tries to rub the night’s images out of them and some sense into them. Doesn’t even notice Coltrane has been blowing the same scratchy lick for who knows how long. 

Sam shakes his head, bites off the cigar cap, and pats his shirt pocket for a lighter, when the unmistakable action of the Mossburg ratchets in his ears. A spent shell hits the soiled carpet in front of him where Joelle is no longer. Raising his gaze to meet hers, he finds only a blurry mass of red and black and blond, the barrel at his nose commanding cross-eyed focus. Burnt gunpowder and cleaning oil. 

Feral, vindictive syllables erupt from what remains of Joelle’s mouth.

“I’m thorry,” Sam says, hands up and spitting out the cigar as his slideshow accelerates. Exit wounds. Skull fragments. Dental x-rays. “I— I thoud’ve been more thupportive. But how could I’ve known? I mean, the cointhidenth. . . .”

One eye rolls, the other blown-out red. Her moan produces a bubbling froth. She firms her grip on the shotgun.

“Okay! Anything you want. We could write and thoot your very own—”

The blast yanks the plug on his projector as his literal memories splatter and crack those captured in the framed photos behind him.

———

“Deb-bie,” he chanted into the phone as if rewarding an obedient puppy. “Debra. Debs.”

“Mister . . . Dawes?”

“C’mon, now, it’s Sammy. You know that.”

“Of course, darling. Just didn’t recognize the number.”

“Yeah, we moved offices again.” Sam propped his feet up on the slab of mahogany that so often barricaded him from those pitching awful story ideas. “Look, hey, need a favor.”

Her computer keys clacked as she input this new contact data. “So how’d Fernando work out on that commercial a couple weeks ago? Was I right, or what?”

“He lathered up nicely, yes.”

“You know I’d be lying, Sammy, if I didn’t admit hoping you’re getting back down to making features soon. Don’t get me wrong, a day’s work’s a day’s work—and my folks do appreciate it—but most of them would prefer to get in a few weeks at a time, you know?” 

“Not to mention your twenty percent off both ends.”

“There’s that, sure,” Debra said, a grinning confession. “Hey, speaking of eighty-proof . . . you’re coming to our holiday shindig, right?”

“No way I’d miss a chance to drink back your billings in Red Label and Blue Ribbon. Count on it.”

“Should I put you down for a plus-one?”

Shouldering the receiver, Sam spun his chair and rifled through a file folder. “Well, that’s actually what I was calling about. . . .”

Debra removed her bifocals and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Ah, let me guess, she’s an actress.”

“No no, nothing like that. Well yeah, my, um . . . my fiancée is, but this isn’t about her so much. I’m needing someone for a thing Friday evening.”

“A thing.”

“A gig, yeah.”

She uncapped her pen and tore off the densely-inked sheet that topped her note pad. “Is this AFTRA or SAG?”

“Strictly non-union. It’s actually not going out anywhere, more of a performance piece. Just a couple-person audience for now.”

Debra clicked her tongue. “What exactly are you producing, here?”

He paused. “We’ve known each other a long time, right? I remember the year your agency opened its doors, I cast that entire TV movie exclusively through you—”

“Sammy, I get it. I’m keeping a kidney warm for you, babe. But tell me what I can do in the meantime.”

He takes a deep breath.
Here we go.
“Okay. This stalker chick, some old scorned flame, right? She shows up at my place one night—I’m talking off-her-meds batshit—while I’m wining and dining my lady by candlelight. . . .”

“My god, when did this happen?”

“Day after tomorrow, Deb.
She’s
the stalker. The role.”

“Now why in Jewish hell would anyone want—”

“Consider it a . . . I dunno, paid audition.”

Debra shut her office door and cupped the microphone of her headset, whispering. “I love ya, Sam, you know you’re my motherfucka, but that’s not what we do here, that fantasy fulfillment shit.” She paced in front of the window and its hazy view of Century City. “I think you’d better call a pro, if you know what I’m saying. I could . . . probably get you a number, if—”

“I need someone passionate, Debs. Fiery, frustrated—whatever. Someone eager to take that next dramatic leap into alternative theater.” 

“Oh is
that
what they’re calling it over in Chatsworth now?”

“This isn’t sexual. Don’t even care what she looks like. Surprise me. Gotta be able to improv, though. That’s key.”

“Why don’t you just call up a real-life ex? I’ve seen you with a starlet or two on your arm.”

“Right. They’re exes for a reason, Deb.” He ran his tongue over his teeth, eyeing his gallery of track-lit film posters and all the regrets they held. “Now surely you’ve got little pet projects, certain actors you shepherd and try to break in, right?”

“You said
audition
. So what’s the project?”

He cleared his throat. “We’re developing a reality series with a bait-and-switch. Middle of the season we introduce this scripted dramatic element—with actors—that the cast is unaware of.”

“I’ve seen this before.”

“Big screen, maybe, but not network. You go into a theater expecting and wanting to be manipulated. But if, say, you flipped on the news and saw your favorite
anchors
being hijacked at gunpoint. . . .”

“You figure it’s real.”

“Bingo. Might even plant some cameras around the house Friday, just in case. Don’t tell her that, though, I don’t want her playing to them. I’ll e-mail you what we’ve got by the end of the day.”

“Ooh-kay, Sammy,” she scoffed, shaking her head. “I’ll make some calls. And by the way,
mazel tov
on the engagement.”

——————————

Inside Out

by
Sean P Ferguson

Smoke ’em if you got ’em.

The words ring true, but there is no echo. State of the art sound-proofing makes sure of that, despite the studio’s cavernous loneliness. Stage lights still burn and the beacon red light of the live camera feed tells me to focus on stage left, camera three. The electricity of a television show still courses through the building’s veins, beaming my image out across America. Millions of viewers watch me light up at home, listening to the isolation of my insides sloshing to the floor. It alienates me. I feel hollow, if you’ll excuse the poor timing of such a statement.

I’m not mad. This is my predicament, and if I happen to make it out of here, spectacular, even better if I’m alive while doing so. However, my internal hose reel shows no signs of stopping, and the effort to shove it all back in just seems like too much work.

I play introspective.

The fellow disguised as a member of the studio audience, the one that’s cut me open, for all of you to witness, he’s a childhood friend. We used to have sleepovers where we’d eat ice cream. We would watch scary movies on late night cable. He and I would sneak out and play tag with flashlights in the woods behind our houses.

I’m not assuming to know why my best pal from high school appeared like an arch nemesis to gut me. Doing so insults the heart and the drama of the story, removing all probabilities and leaves a big stinking gap for chance to slide right in and take over. If I were to assume the reasons behind my attack, I would lose what little control I have. It would mean that life simply happens and we’re all floating in its ether. Buoys trapped in a raging demolition derby played by oil tankers with madmen at the helm.

This is why I was stabbed, this is why he slid the knife from hip to hip, opening me up so the entire world could see what I’m made of; it gives me control.

I pull hard on the cigarette and wonder if I’ll see the smoke come out of my wound.

My comrade in adolescence had me over one night. We had pepperoni pizza until we were sick to our stomachs from the grease. Tommy took the pink circles of spiced meat and stuck them to his face. He pinched his voice and sucked in his cheeks, forming circles with his hands around his eyes. My friend’s round face had transformed into a geek with soda bottle glasses and delicious acne.

“I’m Tiffany Hartman!” he said.

I picked a piece of the meat from his face and popped it in my mouth while he squealed, “You horrid boy! You ate my gross pimple! I cherish each and every one of them. I’ve named them all while studying to be Mister Mortimer’s butt kisser.”

We howled like this until Tommy went upstairs and passed out, ignoring the tape his mom had gotten us about the superhero turtles with camp catchphrases and a wild obsession for skateboards. I was terrible at falling asleep. The harder I tried, the longer I stayed awake. I found the channel with all of the naked people. Watching them writhe around and sweat on each other, making ugly faces and uglier noises, it did something to me. I wanted to change the channel out of sheer embarrassment.

The wood paneling spoke to me, though. It shook every time the plumber with shag carpet for hair and hideous teeth thrust his hips. The view of the camera would change positions with the couple, and each time something like an errant arm or a curious pile of linen would block my first image of a woman’s nipple. It eventually got so bad I heard myself growl a little in my throat. 

That’s when Tommy’s mom finally laughed.

I smashed buttons on the remote to change the channel and hoped she had only just walked in, maybe I could pretend like I had been surfing through, looking for cartoons. Something age appropriate. Clothed.

“Put that back, it’s one of my favorites,” she whispered.

She grabbed the remote and sat on the other end of the couch, pushing buttons until she found the sunbather doing things to her pool boy. The lady in the yellow bikini pushed and pulled at her employee’s appendage with her mouth, reminding me of a magician with a long string of colored scarves. I could see the reflection of the movie in Tommy’s mom’s eyes. She started chewing on her lower lip and sliding her palms up and down her thighs with the grace of a dancer, the light airy touch of a secret.

“Can you change the channel, now?”

I didn’t quite mean it, but watching this with a woman that knew my mother by her first name made me sick, the weight of guilt and fear pulling on the insides of my stomach the way a small car would inside of a balloon. She pushed the round red button and the television went black. My best friend’s mother stood up, opened her robe and sat on my lap, facing me, reaching down and pulling away my sweatpants with one hand.

I was suddenly wet all over while she slowly did what the women in the movie did. She pulled me close, held me tight until I couldn’t run, I couldn’t move, I couldn’t breathe. Until I felt free. Every move she made was slow and soft like the bubbles in a bath, loving like a mother. And in the dark reflection of the television, over her shoulder, I saw Tommy watching us from between the railings of the stairs.

Matt Styles’ birthday was great, almost like a carnival. He had colored balloons, cotton candy, popcorn, pony rides, and a clown. The magician was the best part, though. I watched him do tricks and tell jokes while my fingers clung to the cement walkway that looped the pool. The big finale was incredible. Tommy’s mom shuddered on top of me, and I thought she’d pulled an innocent white rabbit out from between my legs.

And then I slept.

I woke up to a police officer standing over me in Tommy’s room. Without a word, he led me down the same stairs that Tommy watched me from earlier. I looked to see if I was still on the couch, if Tommy’s mom’s nipples were still in my mouth, but the officer ushered me outside. He wrapped me in a scratchy brown blanket and sat me on the curb. All kinds of people in suits and uniforms were on Tommy’s front lawn, in and out of his house.

And later that morning, I watched my best friend in the whole world be driven away in the backseat of a police car for what seemed like eternity.

A woman that smelled of cats and old chewing gum came and put me in her car. She sat with me and my parents when the news cameras came. They used words like monster, rape, victim, and tragedy. Watching myself talk about my best friend on television was weird at first. I wished he was there with me. It eventually became a game, a script as the telling and retelling of the story became larger, more than it ever was. Old news.

And then, a couple days later a news crew from New York came and asked the same questions. The cat lady looked prettier then. She used words like litigation, said victim a lot louder than before. She was almost passionate. After the interview, she stood at the end of the driveway crying. I’d seen the bun of her hair bobbing up and down in the lap of the sound guy from the news crew in her car. The woman wanted to go back to New York with him as he disappeared in the shadows of the van. It was probably the cat smell.

I went back to school. All of the guys worshiped me, let me cut in the lunch line. They would pat me on the back and call me hero. When the girls were in groups, they treated me like I had a disease, but when they had me all to themselves, they wanted me like I had the cure. That’s when cutting class started. That’s when I’d started showing whichever girl I was with that day her own magic trick. I’d promise that it was special, that this was my body, broken for her, for the forgiveness of all her transgressions.

My parents spent the rest of their lives on the phone. When I wasn’t in school or in the company of a girl, I was telling my story to someone who would later palm a wad of cash to my parents. I overheard my mother say that it would help pay for my therapy. After the reporter left my father asked when I’d started going to therapy.

“He isn’t; get real.” That’s what my mother said.

I could feel my body root for my father. It started in my toenails and worked its way up the slender digits of my feet. The electricity was warm and binding, like velvet, like my best friend’s mother. It was almost too much to bear without crying. My vindication would come when Dad found the error of his ways. It was one thing to bask in the love of camera lights, but to be making money off the destruction that I had caused would be too much.

And I really wasn’t too far removed, either. No one at school was more popular. I had successfully made my way through all the girls at my school and even some of the staff. I’d moved into the pants of schoolgirls in neighboring towns as the nicknames started creating a wake of whispers behind me. Agents with ponytails called the house about movies of the week featuring my father’s son and the woman who died because of him. At some point he would put a stop to all this. A chair would fly, he would scoop me up and kick out the front door screaming that enough was enough.

But instead he said, “Okay good, I really want that television we were talking about.”

A few months later a movie premiering on the cable network for women by women was viewed on the television paid for by my sold rights. Mom seemed to enjoy it, but my dad had to reassure her that even though the movie said I conspired with Tommy, it wouldn’t ruin the possibility of future projects.

“If anything, it sells the drama,” he said.

In college, my girlfriend said she hadn’t heard about me, and I instantly loved her. She made me feel safe and needed. Her hair was the color of dried wheat but smelled like pressed flowers scattered over clean sheets, beautiful and airy but not overly fruity, just simply perfect. She was perfect, and she laughed in song. And the sex video she sold to the internet porn company paid for both of our tuition, with my face in a nice night-vision-green on the cover.

At graduation a woman walked up to me wearing a pantsuit, greeting me with, “Mongrel.”

She said that despite her better judgment, followed by her pleas of absolution, she had been sent by her employer to escort me to Hollywood. A reality show circuit had my name all over it, perhaps a Christmas album, and as I drifted off into obscurity, a satellite radio show. In the meantime I could work the talk shows, pepper in an autobiography and really finish off the life my parents had made for me. 

Which brings me here, America. As you all know, the reality show had a successful run. My drug rehab farce carried it a year beyond its life expectancy, and then the celebrity reality shows, the dancing, the weight loss, the season when I was center square on a game show revamp. This interview here was to mark the twentieth anniversary of that night I watched television with my best friend’s mother. 

I wash my hands in the bile pumping out, the blood that’s been spilled, my organs on display. My eyes find the stage lights while the strike team bursts into the studio looking for my killer, my reunited best friend. One of the officers throws up as another screams for a paramedic. I feel myself fall, wooden floorboards waking the numbness in my knees. 

“Jesus Christ, where’s that medic?” he yells. “Hold on, man.”

This is the blood, shed for you.

I find his face through the tears welling up in my eyes.

Please, forgive my sins. 

“It’s all right, son,” his hand says as it grips my shoulder.

And it all fades.

The clapping is what I hear next. The lights come back and an assistant comes and unhooks the props from my abdomen. The officer that was gripping my shoulder is wiping sweat from his eyebrow and asking an intern if he thought he should ask for another take. The director calls for the union-mandated lunch break and people pat me on the back for a job well done.

——————————