The Ignored (32 page)

The salesmen were running out of the office, yelling at each other,
running around wildly. I knew that one of them had to have already called the
police and the fire department, and I honked my horn, pointing toward the road,
and Philipe nodded. He stuck his head out the window of his car. “Follow me!” he
yelled.

He sped out of the subdivision, down Chapman, and the rest of us
followed. Just past Tustin Avenue, a fleet of cop cars and fire engines passed
us, going in the opposite direction.

We got on the Costa Mesa Freeway, heading south.

We took the 55 to the 405 and did not stop until Philipe turned in at a
gas station in Mission Viejo. He had obviously been thinking while he’d been
driving, and he came back to each of our cars and told us to fill up. We were
going to go down to San Diego for a few days, he said, stay in a motel, lay low.
He still seemed shaken, frightened, and he told us to pay cash for the gas and
not just steal it—we couldn’t afford to leave a trail.

“You know San Diego,” Philipe told me. “You lead the way. Find us an
anonymous motel.”

We drove downstate, and I led the way to motel row. We picked the Hyatt,
one of the bigger and more impersonal places, and stole the keys off a maid’s
cart, taking rooms on one of the middle floors. After dumping our suitcases in
our respective rooms, we met in Philipe’s suite to watch the Los Angeles news on
cable.

There was no mention made of what had happened at Familyland.

We watched the five o’clock news, the five-thirty news, and the six
o’clock news, switching from channel to channel.

Nothing.

“Those fuckers,” Mary said. “They covered it up.”

“What happened to Buster?” Junior asked. It was the first time he’d
spoken since we’d left Familyland, and his voice was quiet and unnaturally
subdued.

“I don’t know,” Philipe admitted.

“You think he’s dead?”

Philipe nodded.

“Who but us would even notice or care that he’s gone?” James said.

We were silent after that, each of us thinking about Buster. I found
myself remembering how happy he’d been on that day we’d trashed Frederick’s of
Hollywood, how he’d said he felt so young being with us.

I felt like crying.

“Even if no one noticed that he was killed, the fact that Familyland
kicked everyone out and closed down is news in itself,” Philipe said. “Either
the company has enough clout to keep that out of the news… or someone else
does.”

“Who?” Steve asked.

He shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “But I have a bad feeling
about it.”

We spent the next day at the motel, monitoring newscasts, reading
papers.

The day after that, we went to Sea World.

Philipe got over his nervousness and paranoia extraordinarily quickly,
and by that second day it had disappeared without a trace, leaving no residue.
It was at his urging that we went to Sea World. He and the others treated it
like a normal day, a normal outing, enthusiastically reading the list of times
for the dolphin and killer whale shows when we arrived, rushing over to look at
the shark tank. I could not believe that they could so easily forget Buster,
that they could react so casually to his death, that they could carry on as if
nothing had happened, and it depressed the hell out of me. Buster’s passing
might not be noted by the world at large, but I’d at least expected it to have
some effect on his fellow Ignored. Were we all this expendable? Were all of our
lives this meaningless and inconsequential?

It was at Shamu’s show that I was finally compelled to mention it. We
were sitting in the front row of the grandstands, had just been soaked with
water after the killer whale had done a belly flop in the pool directly in front
of us, and the other terrorists were laughing uproariously. “This is great!”
Paul said. “I’m sure glad we came to San Diego.”

“We came here because we fucked up when we tried to blow up Familyland
and Buster was shot to death and the scary ass-fuckers who blew him away were
going to do the same thing to us. We’re not here on a fucking vacation!”

“What’s with you?” Philipe said. “Chill out.”

“Chill out? Two days ago, you made us blow up our damn houses because
you thought those suits were chasing us—”

“That was two days ago.”

“Now Buster’s dead and we’re here having a great time at fucking Sea
World!”

“It’s not as if he died in vain.”

“What?”

“He gave himself for the cause.”

“Oh, so now we should be happy to sacrifice ourselves for ‘The Cause’.
We’re supposed to accept that as part of the cost of doing business. I thought
the whole point of all this was to free us up so that we would not be cogs in a
machine, just small parts of a large organization. I thought we were supposed to
be fighting for individual rights. Now we’re just supposed to submerge our
individuality in another group. Yours.” I met his eyes. “I, for one, do not want
to die. For anything. I want to live.” I paused dramatically. “Buster did too.”

“Buster’s gone,” Philipe said. “There’s nothing we can do to bring him
back.” He fixed his gaze on me. “Besides, why should we feel bad? Why should we
feel guilty? We were always there for him when he was alive. We were his
friends, his family, we provided a place where he belonged, and he knew it. He
was happy with us.”

I didn’t want to believe Philipe, but I did. God help me, I did. I tried
to tell myself that he understood the way I thought, that he was able to
manipulate me because he knew me so well, but I could not make myself believe
it. Philipe was right. Buster had been happier in the last year of his life than
he had ever been before, and it was all due to us.

Philipe looked at me calmly. “I think we need to kill a celebrity.”

I blinked, caught off guard. “What?”

“I’ve been thinking about it. As you said, we fucked up Family land. We
haven’t accomplished anywhere near what we set out to do as terrorists. But I
think killing a celebrity would get us a forum. We’d be able to take our case to
the public.”

“I don’t want to kill,” I said. “Anyone.”

“Yes, you do.”

“No, I don’t.” But, again, that secret something inside me agreed with
the reasoning of Philipe’s argument, thought it was a justified course of
action.

“I don’t either,” Tim said. “Why don’t we just find a female celebrity
and rape her?”

“Why don’t we kidnap a celebrity and hold him hostage?” Mary suggested.
“We’ll get a lot of publicity that way. And we won’t have to take a life.”

“We’ve all taken lives,” Philipe said in a cold, hard voice. “You all
seem to conveniently forget that. We’re not virgins here. None of us are.”

“But some of us have learned from our mistakes,” I said.

“What do you want to do, then? Nothing? Big change calls for big action—”

“What change? Who are we fooling here? You think killing someone famous
is going to change who or what we are? We’re Ignored. We’ll always be Ignored.
That’s the fact, jack, and you’d better get used to it.”

Around us, the crowd cheered wildly as Shamu jumped through a series of
fiery hoops.

“Celebrity,” Philipe said with disgust. “That’s the very concept we’re
fighting against. That’s the very core of our complaint. Why should some people
be more recognized than others? Why can’t everyone be noticed equally? The
ironic thing is that killing a celebrity
makes
you a celebrity in this
sick society. Mark David Chapman? We know that name because he killed John
Lennon. John Hinckley? He tried to kill Ronald Reagan and was obsessed with
Jodie Foster. James Earl Ray? Lee Harvey Oswald? Sirhan Sirhan? If we kill a
celebrity, someone big enough, we will strike a blow against the enemy camp, and
we’ll be known, we’ll be able to let people know we exist, we’re here.”

“If we’re caught,” Pete said quietly.

“What?”

“We’ll only have a forum if we’re caught. That’s the only way the media
will pay any attention to us. Otherwise, we’ll be just as unknown as ever. The
police probably get stacks of letters claiming to take credit for something like
this. Even if we sent a letter or made a phone call, it would just get lost in
the shuffle.”

It was obvious Philipe had not really considered that aspect, and it
threw him for a second, but he recovered almost immediately. “Then Mary’s right.
We should kidnap a celebrity. That way we could let the cops hear his voice,
know he’s alive.
Then
they’d pay attention to us. We’d threaten to kill
the celebrity unless our demands were met. That would get us some results.”

“We could videotape him, too,” I suggested. “Send the video to the
cops.”

Philipe turned to look at me, and a slow smile spread across his
features. “Good idea.” He grinned at me and I found myself grinning back, and
the old magic was there. Suddenly we were a team again.

The Shamu show ended, and after a sustained cheer, people started
leaving, getting up, gathering their purses and souvenir bags, streaming down
the bleacher steps, maneuvering around us. We stayed where we were.

“So where are we going to go?” Junior asked. “Hollywood? Beverly Hills?”

Philipe shook his head. “Those are for tourists. Celebrities only show
up there when there’s a premiere or something, and that would be way too crowded
and security would be way too tight. I’m thinking Palm Springs. They live there.
They’ll be more accessible, more off their guard.”

“Sounds good,” I said.

Steve nodded. “Yeah. Let’s do it.”

Philipe looked around the group. “Are we all agreed?”

There was a chorus of “yesses” and “yeahs”, much nodding of heads.

“Tomorrow then,” he said. “Tomorrow we’ll pack our stuff and head out to
Palm Springs.” He grinned. “We’re going to catch us a movie star.”

Palm Springs.

It was exactly the way I’d imagined it would be.

Maybe a little hotter.

If Rodeo Drive had seemed shabbier than it was supposed to, Palm Springs
more than lived up to its hype. The sun was bright, the sky free from smog or
clouds, and everything seemed cleaner, clearer, sharper than it did in Los
Angeles or Orange County. The streets here were wide, the buildings low and
sleek and new, the people good-looking and well-heeled. The only concessions to
the season were geometric Christmas tree shapes hung high on the streetlamp
posts and occasionally frosted windows on some of the smaller stores. If it was
not for those subdued reminders, I probably would have thought it was summer.

We were down to four cars now, and we cruised up and down the main
streets—Gene Autry Trail, Palm Canyon Drive—in a single line, looking for
a place to set up camp. We finally decided on a bland-looking Motel Six near the
freeway, far off the main drag, and we found rooms, dumped our boxes and
suitcases, and headed back into town for supplies.

We picked up food and rope and a video camera.

“So where are we going to find our celebrity?” I asked back at the
motel. “What are we going to do? Are we going to just look for houses with gates
and guardhouses and break in and peek through windows until we spot someone
famous?”

“Not a bad idea.” Philipe laughed. “But I thought we’d start by staking
out the local nightspots. We might be able to spot someone at a dance club or a
restaurant. Then we can follow them home and nab them.”

“What’ll we do then?” Tommy asked. “Bring them back here to the hotel?”

“Maybe,” Philipe said. He thought for a minute. “Or maybe we can find
someplace else to live.” He turned to Tim. “This afternoon, I want you and Paul
to see if you can find a model home or someplace that’s for rent or…
somewhere where we cart stay.”

“What’ll you do?”

“The rest of us’ll split up, walk around, hit boutiques and restaurants,
keep our ears and eyes open, see if we can’t figure out where the action’ll be
tonight. We may be able to cut down on trial and error just by doing a little
local research.”

We ate lunch at a Del Taco, then headed off in our different directions.
In our car were Philipe, myself, John, and Bill, and we parked near a series of
interconnected shops done up in a Southwestern motif. Next door was a library,
and Philipe told me to go there, look through local newspapers and magazines,
see if any public events involving celebrities were going on this week.

“Like what?” I asked.

“Golf matches, store openings… I don’t know. Anything. Just look
for famous names.”

The other three were going to split up and casually go through the
shops. We were to meet back at the car in an hour.

In the library, I went directly to the periodical reading section and
grabbed all of the copies of the three local newspapers for the past week. I
carried my cache to a study carol against the back wall of the library and
started quickly scanning headlines, reading ads, looking at pictures.

On the third page of the fourth paper, I saw a photo that made me stop.

It was a photo of a man. Joe Horth, according to the caption. The mayor
of Desert Palms.

And he was Ignored.

I don’t know how I knew it, but I did. There was something in the cast
of the features, some familiarity of expression, some essential lack of
charisma, that I instantly recognized, that translated even through the blurry
black dot pointillism of the newsprint. I continued to stare at the picture. I
had never seen a photograph of someone who was Ignored before, and I hadn’t
realized that it would appear so obvious.

I quickly read the accompanying article. I knew I should continue to dig
through the newspapers for celebrity news, but this was too important to put
off, and I tore out the page, folded it in half, and carrying it in my hand,
hurried out of the library.

I ran past the fronts of the adjacent shops, looking through the windows
until I saw Philipe. He was in a faux antique store, pretending to examine
Victorian greeting cards while obviously listening in on the conversation of two
trendily dressed young women.