Sex and Violence in Hollywood (30 page)

By the time Adam lifted his hand to wave back, it was too late. They were gone. He got in the Lexus and headed home.

He wanted to go straight to the bookstore, find Alyssa. She was the only one who could get his mind off everything. But that might not be a good idea. Diz was right—everything Adam did from that point on would either strengthen or weaken his defense should he be accused of, or even tried for, murder. Anyone he encountered would be a potential witness if there was a trial. Especially Alyssa. He did not want to put her through that.

“What the hell am I thinking?” Adam shouted. His voice bounced off the interior surfaces of the Lexus and pounded back into his head. “Do I want to put me through that?”

TWENTY-NINE

Helicopters stirred the dirty air
over the city. Police, traffic reporters, air rescue units going to or from one of the summer wildfires that raged throughout California. Ground level, there was always a siren coming from one direction or another. Everywhere Adam looked in the stop-and-go freeway traffic surrounding the Lexus, mouths yammered silently into cellphones while eyes hid behind black lenses.

Rush hour was a few hours away, but it seemed there had been a wreck somewhere up ahead. Or maybe there was road construction. Cars drove a few yards, a few feet, stopped for a while, then moved forward, only to stop again in a few seconds.

“Look, I told you I wanted to help,” Carter said. “That means I’m involved, okay? You don’t have to protect me, Adam. That Diz guy, we really don’t know anything about him. You shouldn’t be hanging out with somebody like that by yourself.”

“Billy was there,” Adam said.

“Billy has his head up his foot. He’s a follower. I mean, he’s a cool guy, a big talent, a good friend, but...I keep waiting to hear he ate poison applesauce in some UFO suicide cult. What do you think he’s doing with Diz? He’s following. If you were in trouble, Billy would be as worthless as tits on the pope.”

“Yeah, I kept wishing you were there to protect me, Carter. Just in case.”

“Smartass.”

“You defended the hell out of Billy yesterday.”

“I was trying to make the best of a bad situation.”

“What are we going to do this weekend?”

“I don’t know. Got anything in mind?”

“No, but we’ve got to be seen. I’ve got to be seen. Know of any parties?”

“You hate parties.”

“I don’t have fun in mind.”

“Maybe the one at Monty’s is still going on.”

“Bite me.”

“We’ll find something. You gonna bring Dracula’s daughter?”

“I told you, she’s not like that.”

Carter shrugged. “I thought you wanted to see more of her.”

“I have been seeing more of her.”

“What, in the middle of the night?”

“Mostly.” Adam told him about being awakened naked by Alyssa’s dad and they laughed.

“They sound like pretty cool parents,” Carter said. “Hey, maybe they won’t mind that you killed your family and they’ll invite you to move in!”

When Adam didn’t laugh, Carter said no more for a while. They drove in silence—even the radio was off—with no destination in mind.

“I’m afraid to get her involved,” Adam said.

“Involved how?”

“You know, as a witness. If there’s a trial—”

“There won’t be if you do it right.”

“It’s a possibility.”

“Yeah, and it’s a possibility Henry Jaglom’ll make a movie people can watch without wanting to commit suicide. But it’s not likely. Remember what Diz said when we were at his place? He could vaporize that yacht and everybody in it. Unless there are witnesses, nobody will even know they blew up. It’ll look like they just...you know.” He made a raspberry noise. “Disappeared.”

“If we’re lucky.”

“No, it’s not luck. Diz and his family...there won’t be any middle schools named after them in the near future, but I think Diz knows what he’s doing.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

“So what do you doubt?”

“Everything else.”

The traffic finally began to move, picked up speed until they were cruising.

“Look!” Carter shouted, palms flat against the window beside him. He made them squeak on the way down. “Nothing.” He shouted, “My Gawd, there’s nothing! No wreck. Nobody broke down. Everybody just slowed to a stop for no reason. It’s a madhouse—a madhouse!” He fell back in his seat, jutted his chin like Heston and reached dramatically for the windshield. “Soylent Green is liberals, you damned dirty ape! Now somebody give me a Goddamned firearm!”

Normally, that would have had Adam laughing hard enough to swerve the car. But he wasn’t up to it. He kept his eyes on the road.

“Okay, let’s just go to the bookstore and see her,” Carter said, moving past the awkward moment. “You’re a couple, right? Then it would be weird if you didn’t go see her.”

Adam’s eyes stayed on the car ahead and he did not speak.

“Hey. Marlee Matlin. What the hell is wrong with you?”

Adam put up a good front for several seconds, until the first squeaks of the laugh came through. It exploded from his mouth. “ Marlee Matlin?”

In an exaggerated impersonation of the deaf actress, Carter said, “Whuh? Ah’m thowwy, Ah cahn hee yooo. Ah’m dayf.”

Adam laughed harder, barely got his words out. “Stop it. Can’t you see I’m trying to brood over here?” He could not stop laughing. He was incapable of not laughing.

Carter’s smile dropped off his face. “Adam?”

Clutching the steering wheel, Adam rocked in his seat, gasped for breath between bouts of coughing, hacking laughter. His face turned deeper shades of red.

“You okay, Adam?” He gripped Adam’s shoulder, tried to steady him. “You’re not okay, are you?”

The Lexus swerved to the left, into the next lane. Someone ahead of them honked, then someone behind. They honked for a long time.

“Shit, shit!” Carter grabbed the wheel and pulled the car back into its lane, steadied it. “Adam, for Christ’s sake, would you stop laugh—hey, slow down! It wasn’t that funny!”

Adam composed himself just enough to ease the car off the freeway. He had no idea which exit he had taken and was not sure where he was. Carter pointed to a 7-Eleven next to the freeway exit. Adam parked in two spaces and killed the engine. Melted into his seat with laughter, red cheeks wet with tears.

“Jesus Christ, Adam, what do you want me to do?”

He waved a hand at Carter. Don’t worry. Just give me a minute, okay?

“Are you having, um, I-I don’t know, some kind of, you know, breakdown?”

Shaking his head, Adam made a great effort to stop laughing. It happened very gradually. He spoke haltingly, words interrupted by dying laughter. “I was just thinking. About how many things. Could go wrong. So many things. But it’ll just take one. To put me on death row. And I’ll end up tied to that weird table. Waiting for the needle.”

“Listen to me,” Carter said. “If anything puts you on death row, it’s gonna be this shit.”

Adam wiped his face with his hands. His voice was shaky when he asked, “What do you mean?”

“I mean this, freaking out like that annoying chick in The Blair Witch Project. I’m telling you, Adam. You stay cool and calm, keep your head on, you’re gonna get through this without a bump. But you’ve gotta bottle up all this weird stuff. Laughing like a lunatic, puking on people’s shoes. That kind of shit makes people talk, Adam.”

Adam massaged his temples, sighed. “Okay. Yeah. You’re right.”

“Look, once this is all over, you wanna go crazy, go apeshit, hey, knock yourself out, have a party. But not now. If you want, I can get you some pills. Something to relax you. Devin’s got pounds of pills at home. I’ll grab some for you when we go back to the house. Maybe some Xanax.”

Adam rested his forehead on the steering wheel. “Why are you doing this, Carter?”

“Hey. I’m your best friend. And I know it’s what you want.”

“What I want,” Adam said. “You know what I want?” He sat up. “I want to be a little kid at Christmas again.”

Carter opened his door and got out. “I’m gonna go in for a Klondike Bar. You want me to see if they’ve got some little kid at Christmas again?”

“Smartass.” Adam got out and followed him into the 7-Eleven.

THIRTY

There was no one
to fill in at the bookstore that afternoon, so Alyssa had to work. Adam and Carter hung around, talked, browsed. They listened to The Don and Mike Show on the radio, and Alyssa made them iced tea. It was a slow day, and what few customers came—potential witnesses, Adam thought—did not stay long. A girl entered the store about forty minutes after Adam and Carter arrived. Alyssa introduced her as her best friend, Brett.

Short, straight, blonde hair framed her round face. A small silver ring pierced her right eyebrow. They were thin, black, arched eyebrows above a face that looked as if it had never smiled, not even once, yet there was a natural prettiness to it. Roughly the same height as Alyssa, but more muscular and tan in her black shorts and red sleeveless top.

Brett listened silently for a while as Adam and Alyssa and Carter talked. When Adam made reference to something he had written, she asked, “You write?” Adam said he did, but had nothing published yet but a couple poems in journals nobody ever heard of. She smiled then, a small, guarded smile, and said, “That’s cool.” It was not much, but it was clear to Adam from the look on Alyssa’s face that he had received high praise from her friend. Brett asked Carter what he did. When he told her, she said, “That’s disgusting.”

Carter gave Adam a look that asked, What’d I do?

Sunny arrived about twenty minutes later and took over for Alyssa. The four of them left in the Lexus and decided to go to a movie. All but Brett wanted to see the new horror movie directed by John Carpenter. Brett was outnumbered.

“You probably like to look at pictures of dead people, huh? Car wrecks. Burn victims.”

“Why would you think that?” Carter asked.

“Well, that’s the kind of stuff you make, right? Violently damaged body parts?”

“Yeah, but I don’t use pictures of dead people.”

“Then what do you use for models? Real body parts?”

They arrived at the theater early and took popcorn and soft drinks into the auditorium, looked for seats. Adam and Carter sat between Alyssa and Brett.

“You think I’m some kind of a serial killer because I make prosthetics and masks?”

“Is that what you call it?” Brett said, eyes looking straight ahead.

“Yes, that’s what I call it. What we call it! I mean, it’s a whole industry, you know.”

“Assembly line violence.”

“You’re one of those anti-violence people, huh?”

She laughed. “You say that like being ‘anti-violence’ is a bad thing.”

“Depends on exactly what kind of violence you’re anti, you know?”

“No, I don’t. What kind of violence do you think is acceptable?”

“None! Violence is bad, all real violence is bad, okay?”

Another laugh. “How can you say that and do what you do?”

“I don’t use real body parts, nobody gets hurt. They’ve got laws against stuff like that, you know. I make fake body parts, fake wounds, and masks. I mean, if you’ve gone all this time thinking the blood and gore you see in movies is real, then I—”

“Sounds like I hit a nerve,” Brett said. She was not looking at him anymore, but up at the dead movie screen.

Carter frowned. “Not a nerve, exactly. It’s just...something I hear a lot.”

“What? That there’s something wrong with you because of the things you make?”

“Yeah, that’s the one.”

Brett sighed, squirmed in her seat. “You know, I really don’t want to see this movie.”

“Oh, relax, would you?” Alyssa leaned forward to look over at Brett. “At least try to enjoy yourself.”

“Not a movie lover?” Carter asked.

“I just despise horror movies. The pornography of violence. I think they’re sick.”

“Oh, okay. So you think I’m sick.”

She turned to him. “I didn’t say that.”

Carter put his lips together to say, But that’s what you meant, isn’t it?

“You’re awfully sensitive, Carter,” she said. “You should work on that.”

They engaged in the obligatory exchange to determine their families’ positions on the Hollywood food chain. Brett’s parents were animal wranglers. Her dad specialized in cattle, horses, and camels, while her mom handled insects, spiders and reptiles. Her older sister recently started working with dogs and cats.

Carter’s face brightened. “Hey, that’s cool!”

“You think so? How would you like it if your dad smelled like the entire custodial staff of the Los Angeles Zoo? All the time? And my mom...she plays with bugs for a living.”

He laughed. “Is that why you decided not to go into the family business?”