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He stared away and her hands moved gently on his back; a Ouija touch. The room was dark, coppered by candlelight. He felt things breaking inside, embarrassment pushing against his skin. He sat on her bed, gathered a sheet around himself; a shroud.

“… it’s not you,” he said. “It’s all this … blood. Death. Thinking of Erica. How helpless she was …”

Camille rubbed his shoulders and her strength relaxed him. She asked him if he wanted to try again and when he nodded, she held him down like a man would. He responded, without intellectual review, liking her control; the assertion of her movements.

He felt protected. Taken away.

“You be me,” she whispered, as she held his wrists more tightly, pressing him against the mattress.

As she made love to him, guiding him and directing his body, he tried to imagine how she looked doing this to her girlfriend, Lena. How their soft curves fit together; a perfect wrongness. How their lips and painted nails tenderly traced each other. How she would tell Lena she loved her; that she was in love with her. That they would always be together. That no one would come between them.

“Maybe I should go …” he thought, but didn’t say, instead allowing her mouth to search his neck and ears, telling him the things she wanted to do to him.

He’d been drawn to the sensual ambiguity at first; the forbidden Oz of her bisexuality. The safety of knowing she was in love with someone else. But as his body weakened, health losing shape and color, he couldn’t stand the confusion of roles. Couldn’t respond; perform.

He didn’t know if it was her, himself, or a numbing combination of both. But as he looked up at her beautiful face and lost himself in her warm breasts, her long, dark hair curtained him like a delicate cage. She whispered tender demands and he drifted into the nurturing urgency, trying not to.

She thrust down and he felt damp pubic hair sliding on his penis, back and forth. She leaned down and kissed him, tongue slow; hypnotic.

Her palms were warm on his and he closed eyes, trapped in a secret bay, imagining Lena as him. Hearing her sweet moans; her aquiescing struggle. Held down, as he was.

“… I wanna fuck you,” said Camille, in some ravaging spell, mouth tight with need.

But he was suddenly a spectator; in a thought, rather
than a place. Nothing happened, no matter what she did and though his breathing raced, his reaction was vacant. His muscles felt cut-out, afloat in a bottle of formaldehyde; dead specimens.

She looked down at his pale face, placed her cheek against his, whispered that it was all right. Everything in this room was safe. He was safe. He felt her sweet perspiration on him and pulled her closer, knowing he was losing her. Knowing he’d never had her. He suddenly thought she looked like his dead mother and smiled, then felt sick.

She blew out the candle and he plunged further into blackness, suddenly filled with terror. He clung to her, unable to form words, unable to tell her how nothing in his world seemed like his anymore. As if he’d been put in someone else’s circumstances and told nothing. As if his parents had pulled over to the side of the road, in some ominous little town, put him out and driven away forever. As if everything in his world had vanished and abandoned him.

He trembled in Camille’s strong arms; a frightened hand clutching a crucifix.

T
errified. Bones showing.

“I’m leaving the show … things are happening. I can’t concentrate on my writing.”

Voice shaking.

“Erica … her new husband was killed. She was maimed.”

A sick feeling.

“Am I going crazy? Am I the one doing this or is it someone at the network? Maybe someone on staff at the show? There are things going on. Corea is changing.
TV Guide
did this big article about how jinxed the show is …”

Hands knotted.

“Am I killing people myself? I mean …”

Not knowing what he meant.

“… things have happened … information only I know about in scripts I’ve written …”

Eyes shut.

“Something is happening …”

Weeping.

“Something is happening …”

A
lan picked at his veal piccata; a thirty-dollar scab.

The beautifully set circular table chattered and laughed and every now and then Jordan would reach under the starched cloth to feel his date’s panties. She was an actress named Joey who Jordan had just packaged into “Off the Curve,” an ABC pilot for midseason replacement, about a woman who had a genius I.Q. and ran a school for gifted girls with large breasts. Joey’s breasts seemed to suffer from clinical gigantism and Alan sensed she’d bring a lot to the show.

As she chewed her veal, her cleavage did a distracting Panama Canal from neck to dress and she giggled at everything Jordan said.

Alan had decided to come without a date.

Erica was talking to him again but still recovering from her husband’s murder and her own savaged body.
He’d visited her at her condo in Venice, two weeks after the attack and been shocked. She was doing legal work by fax from her living room, but couldn’t return to the office for fear of infection. Seventy percent of her body had been stitched back together and she’d nearly bled to death.

Full recovery would take months. Then would come the countless plastic surgeries to reshape, restore. To make a face from torn skin.

He’d cried when she answered the door and he saw the damage. On one side of her face, the laceration went straight across the long, perfect smile he used to love touching. Another seam was a swollen meridian which ran across one cheek, over the nose, onto the other cheek.

“I miss you,” she had told him, as angles of sun crept through shutters and warmed her monster’s face. There was springy thread all over her features and when she smiled, it pulled open healing skin.

“What exactly does People’s Choice Awards mean?” It was Jordan’s Sominex test rat, trying to make conversation.

Jordan stared at her a moment as the others at the table waited for his answer. He looked at Alan.

“It means … that …” he felt eyes like faces in bleachers. “It means that … the people choose it.”

“You mean … like as their favorite?” She’d gotten it and Jordan seemed relieved. He smiled, anxious to switch subjects.

“Right,” he said.

“I see.” She was feeling more a part of the evening and nodded, waiting for the insight to permanently cling to the tiny bulletin board in her head. The others at the
table, which was toward the front of the Hollywood Palladium, nodded politely, starting on dessert.

There were two others at Alan’s table who were involved with “The Mercenary.” Simon Buss had been nominated for his role as General Garris and the show’s cinematographer, Jimmy Orsatti, was also nominated for his work on the pilot. Alan was up as creator and executive producer/writer for best one-hour action drama series. Neither he nor the late Hector had been nominated for directing.

Corea hadn’t been nominated and it had infuriated him. He chose not to come and when Alan tried to coerce him for publicity reasons, Corea had told him to fuck himself and gone off on some dark, cathartic odyssey.

He’d disappeared, left no message. Not even with his ex-wife, who was now suing him for half his entire fortune. She’d agreed to keep mention of the marital rapes from the press in exchange for a fast settlement and the house in Lahaina.

Corea was now living at the studio, in his $250,000 motor home, although several stagehands swore they’d found him sleeping on “The Mercenary” set, as if it were home. As if it were all he needed; just his bed in the dingy little hotel room, at Blacks Hotel, where the character lived. No matter where he was, Alan was sure it would be Monday before he’d hear from him. When Corea went, he went over the horizon.

“Hey, man, how you doing?” Jordan was whispering into Alan’s ear; a tanned Yoda. He lassoed a protective arm around Alan’s shoulder. “Okay?”

Alan said he was okay and Jordan told him the People’s Choice nomination was a sure sign the show would
sweep the Emmys. Nothing else on the air could touch the adrenal Hiroshima of “The Mercenary”; its hypnotic menace. Its sheer artistic risk factor.

“Hey, pal, if Bart Simpson blew Cosby and swallowed, we’d still have it in the bag.”

Alan was staring off into space, feeling sick; weak.

Even with all the stuff Dr. Stu had given him to pump his energy, he had no appetite and couldn’t finish his food. He caught his curved reflection in the perfectly polished water pitcher. Even with the makeup they’d put on all the nominees at the fifty or so tables filling the auditorium, they couldn’t mask his hospice complexion.

He nodded at Jordan. Thought of Camille.

He’d called her and asked if she wanted to come. But she’d said she had to work that night. The slaughter at the fast food chicken place near Wilshire was a mess and she was going to be busy sponging up blood and Original Recipe and interviewing survivors for a full report.

The shooter had been a USC Film School major who’d been depressed over not getting an agent with his new ten-minute film,
Schmooze
, a clumsy satire about ambition. He’d been sent countless letters of disinterest from the top agencies who’d seen the effort on cassette and thought it sucked. In reaction, he’d weed-whacked fifteen people before pressing the AK-47 to his heart and hitting his OFF switch.

Camille said Alan could call after he got home but not after midnight because Lena worked early and needed sleep. Much as he and Camille chemically sparked, she was in love with somebody else who, as luck would have it, was a woman. Maybe it was a good time to back away from relationships anyway. His faltering body
was beginning to frighten and humiliate him. He couldn’t make love. Could barely keep up with Camille.

But he missed her. Missed Erica. Missed Eddy. His mother. His little sister. John Lennon. Himself.

The table was cleared, the lights came down, and Alan endured the canned show. The hosts were a beloved sitcom mom, who was rumored to have beaten her children, and a young frenetic comic with annoying lips. The hours dredged by with formaldehyde banter, witless punch lines. When Alan’s name was finally called, he felt stunned by the previous two hours of festive horse tranquilizer, straightened his bow tie, stood on shaky legs.

All he remembered seeing was Jordan’s eerie smile and a grinning, tuxedo corridor as he trotted up to grab the award. There were murmurs of shock at how bad he looked. But he took the camera head-on and nodded for effect, staring at the award in his frail hand.

“… well, I guess this just goes to show you that good taste will always out,” he deadpanned and the place cracked up. He smiled but anyone who looked closely could see a man bleeding to death.

He thanked everyone he could think of. His mom, his dad, Eddy, Andy, Jordan. Corea, who he said deserved this as much as he did, though it felt strange to admit it was possible.

Then, he stared out at the hot lights, the swamp of power beyond. He gripped the podium tightly, lips dry, legs shaking. The place went silent, hundreds of expectant smiles in glittery gowns and designer wire-rims, waiting. The director saw Alan’s dislocated trance and had the band poised to go instantly into “The Mercenary’s” percussive theme and get Alan off stage.

He wanted to tell them all how terrified he was of what had happened to his life. How he wished he could stay in this big, safe room for the rest of his life with all these people who thought he was so great, where he couldn’t be hurt. Where his ravaged life could become no worse.

But he didn’t say anything; too weak. He just kept staring, feeling lights pressing in, eyes crawling all over him. As they all watched, wishing they could be him, Alan collapsed, like he’d been shot.

V
oices.

Faraway. Things in his arms, his nose. His eyes wouldn’t open. He tried to imagine the room. Filled with floral arrangements. A TV bracketed high, watching over him. A roommate with a sheet pulled over the face.

Sirens.

Fresh wounds; incoming. Maybe a gang shooting. A baby abandoned, hungry for food, touch. A light plane crash. He saw flesh, frightened eyes. Heard moans of anguish.

He wanted to open eyes, see the place they’d brought him to. He remembered the awards, the big round tables, the room filled with desperate smiles. Jordan eating. The music and the television cameras … the sequin prattle on stage … then, nothing.

Just sirens and whispers. Eyelids that pressed the back of his head hard against the pillow. Eyelids that locked him into a dark theater, in his skull. A place without EXITs, made of mildewed cinderblock, filled with a rotting stench. The torn screen showed movies with appalling close-ups. Ravaged victims. Black-and-white traffic-school footage of hideous things on roads. Then, it would quickly change to color. Dwell on deformity and helplessness, in perfect chroma-keys.

He tried to get out of the theater, running up the aisle into a bricked doorway. The projectionist’s windows, gunned out bright light and Alan looked up, screaming for help. A face came to one of the yellow squares and stared down at him and grinned, shoulders shaking with sick laughter. Alan couldn’t see the face, then as it turned slightly to see him better, the light hit it and he realized it was his own, staring down at him, hatefully. It gradually turned up the tortured soundtrack, as Alan begged for a way out.

The screen filled with bloated corpses, crippled bodies. Children with missing arms and legs, shrieking for their mothers in languages that didn’t exist. Barek moving through dense jungle, turning toward the camera and staring at Alan. Smiling, releasing a mouth of blood which drenched his shirt and chin.

The projectionist turned up the volume until Alan felt he was crouching, hands over ears, screaming. The projectionist watched him, an exact duplicate of himself and the grin fell. Now there was loathing and anger. The theater shook from the deafening soundtrack of pain and Alan began to claw at the cinderblock, trying to get out.
The vibration was grabbing the walls and they began to wobble. Alan looked up, seeing the ceiling and walls collapsing in on him.