Husk (15 page)

The limousine driver was as good as Duane's word, hopping to attention as I approached and holding the door open for me, asking me my destination. I gave him the address and lay down on the stretch seat. I had some new lines to go over before shooting started the next day, but since I no longer slept, I had plenty of time for memorization later. I just wanted to luxuriate in the immensely rare experience of being . . . content. We drove through the city at a leisurely pace. I had the driver switch off the interior light, and the beams of streetlights and passing cars cavorted around the walls and ceiling. I let myself enjoy their dance as we crossed the boundaries that separated the downtown from middle-class neighborhoods and made our way toward home.

“Hey, sir,” the driver said as we turned into my street. The frolicking lights on the ceiling had new shadings to their personalities, adding reds and blues to their manic tango. “Looks like something's up on your street.”

I sat up. At the end of the block, surrounding my house, a blazing array of lights lit up the neighborhood. Shadows flitted back and forth between them, beings with serious intentions.

“Drive past,” I ordered. “Just keep going. Don't speed.”

The four cars in front of my house had all their emergency lights on. As we idled by, a policeman marking the area with yellow tape gave us the once-over, then resumed his work. I could see heads bobbing in the windows as people made their way through my kitchen and dining room. I looked through the back window as the house drifted away, and saw a cop emerge from the front door with what looked like my old cat carrier in his hand.

Oh, you fuckers
, I thought.
Goddamn. Sofa.

“Trouble, sir?” the driver asked.

It's been a while, hasn't it?
my appetite warned me.
You're going to have to kill him now, to keep this quiet
.
Might as well do it, the jig is obviously well and truly up.

“Shut up,” I told myself.

“Fair enough, sir,” the driver said, unperturbed, a pro.

“Take me back downtown.”

“Any particular address?”

“Just drive.”

Back to Duane? Useless, a short-term solution. The game had changed. I needed new contestants if I wanted to keep playing. I thought out the field, looking for options. There was only one path open.

Fuck
.

I gave the driver an address, telling him to first head for the perimeter and drive around for a few hours, take the scenic route. And leave the divider down; I wanted to make sure he didn't make any calls in to his dispatcher. He was an old hand at this and nodded agreement, putting on a jazz station at my request and keeping silent the rest of the night. We drove the perimeter five times before daylight hit the streets and we re-entered the city.

Let's not put too fine a point on the question and just confront it head on: do zombies shit?

Short answer: yup.

Long answer: not pleasant.

As near as I've been able to determine, most of my autonomous functions have shut themselves down and now only operate voluntarily. I can manipulate the lungs to achieve a semblance of sound, I can blink, but these actions may only be achieved through conscious decision. I can propel my muscles to achieve movement, but they respond sluggishly, as if they have been kept in cold storage and have not thawed completely. My tongue, that most powerful rope of fibrous tissue, must be exercised regularly to remind itself of the positions and routines necessary for verbal communication lest the words become mushy and unintelligible, a dancer who has forgot his steps, a singer who's forgotten the tune. I cannot exert any influence over my liver to secrete amino acids or filter out impurities in my food. Were it still attached, I would be unable to regulate my heartbeat. I have no control over blood flow, or rather, the embalming fluid Rhodes replaced it with. My hair is static, which saves on hairdressing fees, but I must be careful when I brush, as I only have so many follicles left at my disposal, and the loss of each individual strand is another blow to my vanity.

Yet my brain keeps on truckin'. Better than before, as now, without having the impediment of being in charge of so many now-useless operations — without having to act as traffic cop to the highway that is my body, keeping the lanes clear, calling in reinforcements in case of accidents — my brain is free to better supervise those few still-active bodily activities. The electrical impulses that keep my muscles active are still operational, although the muscles must work harder to compensate for the lack of natural lubricant, resulting in a jerking motion as they grate against themselves. The point is, they still work, rusty but serviceable, despite all scientific evidence that suggests they should have atrophied long ago.

But it is my digestive system that concerns us now, and thanks to the process of interrupted eternal slumber it is now a supercharged dynamo of evolutionary perfection. My stomach is a roiling sulfuric acid bath, efficiently melting adipose tissue and vagabond sweetmeats into pulp and shoving the whole mess into the waiting tunnel of the intestines where it luges downward, various proteins and foodstuffs absorbing through the walls, until the final slurry reaches the anus and hammers at the gates until I trigger the release mechanism and plaster the sides of the porcelain bowl with waste. The first time it happened, an hour or so after Fisher, I barely made the toilet; thankfully, the clench/unclench apparatus of the sphincter is still under my control, and I have made it a habit to modulate my intake to synchronize my movements with natural breaks during the day, and to memorize the locations of all available toilets when I enter new surroundings.

I don't actually need to eat as much as I do. If the size of my deposits is an indication, my digestive tract removes very little from my food in the way of nutrition. But my brain demands food nevertheless, and all the rationalization about dietary necessities is an unproductive exercise when put up against the monstrous mass of my appetite. Rhodes, having looked at magnetic scans of my cerebrum, claims that while much of my brain works at peak efficiency, my hypothalamus is swollen, malfunctioning, likely resulting in a condition classified as hyperphagia, the incessant desire to eat without any feeling of satiation.

Who knew death could lead to an eating disorder?

s

The less said about pissing, the better.

When in trouble, when in doubt, don't just simply scream and shout.

Call your agent.

A piece of advice I had always followed, and saw no reason to ignore now.

The monstrous regiment of personal assistants proved no problem. Ordinarily Rowan would never see a client without an appointment that had been delayed until a later date at least twice, then canceled altogether in favor of a quick text. An unpredicted barge-in by a raging thespian was an event rarely heard of. Trained in the deadly art of client obfuscation, most assistants at Masters Talent were expert in diverting perturbed and aggressive clients from their appointed tasks, i.e., taking up Rowan's precious time with niggling whines on the state of dressing rooms, the unfairness of contracts, the brutality of directors, the ineffectualness of Rowan, and any other number of complaints that an agent was logically expected to attend to with all due haste but in actuality were simply placed on a
TBR
pile and ignored as the blatherings of a put-upon
auteur
. The agent's minions — if the agent had minions, of course; if the agent worked alone, she was likely a worthless ten-percenter, the poorly carved weasel at the top of an otherwise nicely crafted totem pole — the auxiliaries and subordinates formed a mythical labyrinth of brutally efficient impediments, thick walls constructed of
she's busy
and
she could pencil you in for sometime next month
and
oh what a shame you just missed her
. And actors were a notoriously flighty species; a few well-placed promises that Rowan would personally see to all these horrible problems was usually enough to placate even the most ill-tempered diva.

This was not the usual complaint.

Ordinarily, I would have been utterly lost in the maze of lickspittles and would eventually turn tail and flee to the nearest bar rather than hear another meaningless guarantee of Rowan's personal commitment to each and every one of my very very very important concerns. But I was in no mood for appeasement and flattery.

The first obstacle, a lowly subordinate stationed in the main lobby of the Masters building, posted behind an enormous half-circle of mahogany that sat between two banks of elevators. A charmingly demeaning
HI MY NAME IS TED MAY I HELP YOU
? name tag was affixed to the chest pocket of his short-sleeve dress-casual.
TED
was by default the first line of defense between the outside world and the entirety of the building's one paying inhabitant, the multinational conglomerate L.D. Inc., Masters Talent being only one of its hundreds of subsidiaries.
TED,
after determining that it was Rowan O'Shea of Masters Talent I was seeking and not Rowan O'Leary of Masters Tax Consultants, tried his best to reroute me with assurances as to Rowan's astonishingly busy schedule and it being a nigh impossibility that she could ever see me without a pre-approved meeting time. He blinded me with a grin of practiced insincerity that glinted off my ocular blemishes. Being in no mood to have my panic attack hijacked by a pretty-boy auxiliary with delusions of competence, I laid him low with a baring of my teeth and a guttural snarl straight from the breadbasket of Shiva, destroyer of worlds. He immediately rethought his vocational choice and allowed me passage to the elevators, where a wet cough of fury cleared the compartment of persons and permitted me to ascend to Rowan's fourteenth floor offices in solitary bliss.

Some last vestiges of commitment to the job must have remained in the far dark corners of
TED
's terrified wits; he had called ahead to have the second layer of Rowan's army of gofers meet me as the elevator doors slid open. This second test was a dark-eyed trio of albino short-maned harpies in steel blue business suits, their hair dyed black, lips shellacked with crimson, all sharp angles and vibrating
PDA
s.

“Can we help you, Mr. Funk?” number 1 asked me as the doors unsealed and the pressurized air guided me out.

“I need to see Rowan,” I said, my voice mild as Indian summer.

“Ooh, Ms. O'Shea is
very
busy today,” number 2 admonished.

“I appreciate that. But this is an emergency.”

“If you'll just step this way,” number 3 purred, gently tugging at my sleeve and motioning down the hallway to the opposite side of the building, “we can take down your information.”

“Maybe we can help in her stead,” suggested 1 as she walked ahead, as if this thought just occurred to her.

“She has been mentoring us intimately,” said 2, following behind.

“Think of us as her eyes and ears,” recommended 3. “Whatever it is you believe she can do for you, we can do for you.”

“And vice versa,” 1 chimed in.

“You
really
should have called,” 2 clucked.

“You can't expect Ms. O'Shea to drop everything for you, now can you, Mr. Funk?” 3 asked as we reached the far doorway, unremarkable except for its unremarkableness. Not even a number graced its plain chalky laminate.

“But she's hearing good things about you from the set.” A key popped out of hiding.

“She likes what she's hearing, your ratings in the office have shot right up.” It entered the lock.

“She's lining up a lot of work for you.” A muffled clunk of tumblers falling into grooves.

“Whatever your concerns . . .” The lock turned over.

“. . . we're sure we can work them out . . .” The knob is grasped and rotated.

“. . . together.” The anonymous door swung wide, and an anonymous white room decorated with an anonymous white metal desk and four anonymous white folding metal chairs greeted us.

I turned. The triad faced me, blocking access to the hall, shoulders lined up, a bulkhead of pressed virgin wool and fearsomely plucked eyebrows.

“I am afraid that I can. Only speak to Rowan,” I said, panic threatening to overtake my standard submissiveness. “If you could all just. Step aside.”

No one moved.

“Please?” My last concession to polite formality. I let the deferential adverb hang for a few moments while I fancied I heard the stormtrooper stomp of
SWAT
teams pounding up the stairwell to arrest me. The threesome stared, unmoved by my insistence. My intestines roiled, and I reflexively took a gourmand's gaze over the stock, at the particularly juicy indentation at the base of the neck of number 2 as well as 3's well-toned leg meat and 1's zesty-looking earlobes.

I closed my eyes against the hunger and bellowed a quick explanation as to just how vitally important it was that I see Rowan right this instant.

I opened my eyes a crack. 3 had passed dead away. 2 was slumped against the wall, eyes blinking in tandem with her pulse, her hair bleached bone-white. 1 stood her ground, but this may have had more to do with her wearing flats where her mates wore heels. Her eyes had rolled back in her head, giving me a tasty glimpse of the bloody veinage that squirmed across the field of optic snow, and a fine strand of saliva wormed out her mouth and onto her front, darkening the blue of her blazer.

Victorious, I hurried back the way we came, toward the door made of clouded blocks of glass, labeled in unpretentious (yet simultaneously incredibly pretentious) simple black lettering:

MASTERS TALENT

I had only stepped through the portal twice before: once in my initial meeting with Rowan when I was still considered an up-and-comer with loads of pizzazz and gobs of chutzpah, and the second time at a holiday party for clients a few years back when I found myself in town, out of work, and just desperate enough to attempt to schmooze my way into a new job. It had worked, actually, as I had finagled my way into three months' work as Spartan Soldier #17 on
300
. For ninety days I wore body paint and sandals and screamed myself hoarse behind Gerard Butler, that most Scottish of Greek leaders. It was a production far more devoted to
CGI
than acting, and while the paycheck was fine, dandy even, I wasn't too upset that all the blurring action choreography and red-tint filters rendered me unrecognizable in the final print. Although you can make out my arm getting sliced clean off in the battle against the Immortals. Again, the sound effects technicians dubbed my scream, which hurt; I thought I had put forward quite an anguished roar that time.

I pushed against the glass and strode as erect as I could into the foyer and up to the crisply attired young woman set behind an intimidating oak desk. She spoke rapidly into her headset as I approached. Rowan was one of seven major agents at the firm (ancillary agents abounded in concentric circles of Hell outside the building); their individual doors were unlabeled, their hallways unmarked, and my memory as to which avenue she lurked down hazy. I reached forward and ripped the headset off the woman's skull, pulled her close before she had a chance to react, and whispered for her to point me to Rowan's door. She extended one trembling finger toward the third passageway behind her. I left her convulsing in her chair.

Were I in normal circumstances, I would have swallowed nervously, smoothed my hair, thrown back my shoulders, and feigned confidence through a brisk knocking of knuckles against the door. Being in an extremity of agitation, I bulldozed my way in, wrenching the doorknob loose.

“Sheldon,” Rowan said, rising from behind her desk. “Please come in, have a seat. It's been far too long.”

Give it to Rowan, the woman was unflappable.

I tossed the doorknob to the ground. “Sorry about that.”

She shrugged, as if such destruction was a daily occurrence. Maybe it was; actors get pretty emotional at times.

Rowan walked around her desk and leaned against its front, crossing her legs at the ankles. She was only a touch over five feet tall, I loomed over her, but the immensity of her ego always made her clients feel like they were three-foot first graders being lectured to by a stern parent. The severity of her hairstyle helped, her locks pulled back in a tight ponytail, stretching her facial skin to deny her age. Her tales of negotiation theatrics with Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep put her at possibly in her mid-fifties, but her translucent skin was so expertly textured by loving complexion professionals she could pass for a harsh thirtyish. Her scent, however, put her at fifty minimum; I could smell the doses of mild botulism that filled the aged trenches in her forehead.

She motioned to the swivel-back, and I took a seat. The leather was as soft as butterscotch pudding, and I fought the urge to sink back into luxuriousness and let dried hide of cow erase my worries. I forced myself to sit erect — not easy as the leather pulled at my lower half like a desperate lover.

“Well, you've made it past the armaments and invaded my castle, Sheldon, kudos all around.” She flicked a stainless steel cigarette case opened and offered me a coffin nail. I waved them away, and she shrugged and lit one for herself. Smoking was another power play in her arsenal, a subtle nod to her ability to control fire itself. She inhaled a cloud, blew it out contemplatively. “Not many have had the balls to deal with so many impediments, Shel. I should fire the lot of them—”

“I wouldn't be too hard on them,” I said over her speech. Now that I was in the inner sanctum, I felt absurdly guilty for the way I dispatched them. “They were . . . slightly unprepared. For the nature of my problem.”

“—but first let's get to why you're here. Shouldn't you be, I don't know, at work or something? Isn't there a film set I busted my ass to get you an audition for expecting you? I assume that whatever is in danger of sabotaging your career is frightfully important, it
always
is, but rarely” she pointed at the knob, lying against the deep burgundy of the carpet and staining it with oil “do my clients take it out not only on my staff but on my furniture. I'll bill you for that of course — you're hardly Russell Crowe.” She crossed her arms and stared at me. “So, what is so important that it couldn't wait to even take off your makeup? And good job on that, bee tee double-you, real horrorshow. I must remember to send the makeup artists a congratulatory muffin basket.”

“Well—”

“Is it that ass of a director?” Rowan lapsed into her usual patter pattern, a flood of information targeted to overwhelm neural pathways and render listeners confused yet hopeful about their employment future. “I do realize that he is a complete and utter buttfuck, but you, I have on good authority, are doing marvelous work. Much better than I ever gave you credit for, frankly.”

“No, it's not that—”

“Good, because I'll tell you something, and I was planning to surprise you with this, but your dailies have been making the rounds (thanks in no small part to yours truly) and there is some real serious interest brewing around you.”

“That's great, but—”

“Heavy, heavy hitters, Sheldon. We're talking upper tier stratosphere here.”

“Rowan, I—”

“Ask me who.”

“I don't have time for—”

“Rhymes with Beter Backson.”

That stopped me. “Peter Jackson?” Rowan nodded, a smile barely creasing the limits of her Botox. “Peter Jackson wants me?”

“Well, no, not
exactly
, but he is producing a little sci-fi piece out of New Zealand, and the director has put out feelers for someone just your type to play the leader of the Martian resistance. It's a nine-eleven allegory, something bullshitty like that, but it's a part that'll get you really noticed. He likes your lurching gait, as he puts it.”

I shook my head, my neck bones grinding in protest. “That . . . that sounds really great, but I have. A bigger problem here.”

“Good actors, too. The script's drawing real attention, we're talking A-plus talent.”

“I am in—”

“Willem Dafoe's handlers have leaked his interest in the main human lead, but hey, he's Dafoe, so—”

“
I am in trouble here!
” Rowan bent further back against the desk as I yelled, holding on to the edges to remain standing. How she didn't die from fright spoke to some deep sociopathic stain on her character.