Popcorn (16 page)

TWENTY-FIVE

B
ruce had scarcely had time to assimilate the catastrophic collapse of Brooke’s brave attempt at dividing the enemy when he was faced with a further and even greater nightmare.

Standing at the door were not only his nearly ex-wife, Farrah, but also his beautiful and beloved daughter, Velvet. Velvet was the apple of Bruce’s eye. This had not always been clear to Velvet, possibly because Bruce habitually wore shades. None the less, it was the case. Bruce loved Velvet very much. Also, deep down and in a strange way, he still loved her mother.

What a couple they had been.

Fifteen years earlier Bruce had scored his first directorial assignment and his first (and so far only) wife on the same day. The job was a used-car commercial, one of those sad, no-budget nasties, made purely for local TV, in which the owner of the business is himself the star of the ad.

“You want bargains? I’ve got bargains.
Crazy
bargains!”

At which point the script called for a jump cut so that the client/star could put on plastic novelty glasses, a comedy moustache and a day-glo green bowler hat with a spinning helicopter blade sticking out of the top.

“That’s right, you’d be crazy to miss ‘em. And I’m crazy to give ‘em, ha ha!”

The picture froze on the client/star’s amusing grin (his laughter soundtrack continued, but speeded up: hahahaheeheehee) and the address of the used-car lot appeared across the screen.

The one bonus for Bruce as he faced that gruesome morning’s work was that throughout his pitch the star was to be surrounded by a bevy of gorgeous babes in bikinis. The original script had stated that after the jump cut these babes would also suddenly be wearing crazy masks and hats. However, the constraints of the budget meant this idea had to be vetoed.

Farrah had been one of the babes, and Bruce would never forget the first time he saw her. She had arrived for the shoot on her own Harley, which roared throatily as she gunned the throttle preparatory to dismounting. All heads turned, of course, and she got off the bike as if she had just fucked it. If Bruce had been a cartoon character, his eyes would have been on foot-long stalks by this time, because Farrah had arrived already in costume and ready to work. Under her studded leather jacket she wore only a bikini and bike boots.

He was utterly smitten, and that very night Velvet was conceived.

Bruce and Farrah had had a good marriage, and a long one by Hollywood standards, supporting each other as they climbed their respective career ladders. Eventually, however, their pretensions and aspirations diverged. As Farrah got older and could no longer do bimbo parts, she started to put on intellectual airs, attending drama classes and pitching for ‘proper’ roles, something which Bruce found excruciatingly embarrassing. Likewise, as Bruce became more and more the doyen of hip culture his pose got tougher and sneerier (to the point where he had even considered a tattoo), which frankly turned Farrah’s stomach, knowing him as she did for the nerd he secretly was. Basically, the marriage eventually failed because she was genuine street pretending to be boulevard, and he was genuine boulevard pretending to be street. They ended up loathing the sight of each other.

But no matter how many times in recent years Bruce had wanted not to see his wife, they were all as nothing to how much he did not want to see her now. On this terrible morning when the psychopath ushered the rest of his sad, dysfunctional little family into their own private hell.

For a moment longer, though, Farrah and Velvet were to remain in ignorance of their danger. Wayne had concealed his gun and Scout had quickly enveloped hers in the folds of her dress before putting the ever-present cushion back on her lap. Was it possible that Wayne might be prepared to let these two new arrivals pass unmolested through the drama he had created? Bruce could scarcely bear to hope.

Even without the weaponry, the scene that greeted Farrah and Velvet as they paused momentarily in lounge doorway was disconcerting.

A gorgeous woman lay on the floor in a grubby, bloodied evening gown, her lip bleeding badly. A strange wild-looking creature was just rising from where she had clearly been sitting astride the prostrate woman. And the young man hovering behind them was the worst of the lot: cocky and sneering, he had nasty, violent-looking tattoos on his heavily muscled arms and what looked alarmingly like bloodstains on his vest and jeans.

“Bruce, your old lady’s here,” the man said.

Farrah raised a questioning eyebrow and stuck a piece of gum in her mouth. She didn’t much care for such dismissive familiarity, particularly from so obvious a piece of rough trade, but it took more than a couple of tats and a bit of attitude to throw her.

“What the hell’s going on here?” she said, striding into the room. “Some kind of disgusting orgy?”

Velvet was equally unimpressed. “Oh Daddy, this is so-o-o gross. I mean, you have really lost it. What’re you into now, drugs or something?”

Velvet was alarmingly self-assertive for a fourteen-year-old, although to be fair, as a product of the Beverly Hills private schooling system she was no more cocksure than the majority of her contemporaries.

Bruce could scarcely speak. He was still trying to adjust to his daughter’s horrifyingly unexpected arrival. “It’s just a…a rehearsal, precious.”

Velvet’s face expressed some doubt. In fact, it expressed complete and utter contempt for such an absurd excuse.

“Oh yeah?” she laughed. “What are you rehearsing, a remake of
1 Spit on Your Grave
?”

Brooke picked herself up off the floor, dabbing at her bleeding mouth and coughing from the blood she had swallowed.

Farrah eyed her with naked hostility. “Listen, sweetie, if this is some kind of S & M thing and he’s been beating up on you, you make your claim out of his share of our property, not mine.”

Brooke did not reply. There was nothing to say.

Suddenly, without really thinking about what he was doing, Bruce grabbed Velvet and pushed her back towards the door.

“Get out, Velvet. Right now, get out.”

He didn’t care if he was acting suspiciously. He just wanted his daughter to run.

“Please, Daddy, don’t try and order me around. It’s embarrassing. I’m a grown-up woman now. I’ve made an exercise video.”

This was true.
Teen Workout with Velvet Delamitri
had been something of a success, partly because as many sad old men as teenage girls had bought it.

Thus rebuffed, Bruce turned on Farrah. “What the hell did you bring her here for? Send her away now. Get her out. She has no business being here.”

“No business?” Farrah sneered. “Well thank you, Bruce, you’ve just proved my point. I brought
our daughter
here to remind you that she and I are
two
and you are
one
, and that fact will have to be amply reflected in the final settlement.”

Bruce could scarcely contain himself. The woman was talking about money. They were all about to die and she was talking about money! Farrah might be unaware of her predicament but, hell’s tits, what was wrong with the woman?

For the umpteenth time since the nightmare had begun, he tried to calm himself. “Look, Farrah, you’ll get a fair settlement, I swear. You can have whatever you want, just you and Velvet leave—”

Huuuurgh, glob. Wayne spat. It was a big spit. He cleared his throat loudly, grollied up hard and gobbed the lot into a vase. It was a spit which announced that he was still there, and still in charge.

Bruce understood. Wayne did not like what Bruce had said. Offering Farrah whatever she wanted in settlement was bound to sound strange, and Bruce’s job was to be normal. That was the only way his daughter was getting out of that house in one piece. But how? How to be normal? Bruce could no longer remember what normal was.

Velvet could, though, and this wasn’t it. What is more, whatever it was, she didn’t like it. “Daddy, who are these people? Are they your friends? Can’t they go now?”

Wayne strolled across the room and eyed Velvet up and down. Velvet, as most of her contemporaries did, wore the sexy teen version of conservative grown-up clothes. Today it was a smart, tight little two-piece woollen suit in pink — tiny mini-skirt and figure-hugging little jacket — white tights, high heels, lots of make-up. A scrummy little bundle all trussed up in pastels. Cute and clean and shiny as a ripe cherry. Wayne whistled appreciatively through his teeth.

“Mm mm, I’ll bet you’re proud of this one, Bruce.”

Velvet set her jaw against his leering stare, but she was acting more confident than she felt.

Scout looked at Velvet too, but she did not appreciate what she saw. It was strange, she thought, how rich girls had that way of looking that was just so clean and fresh and
undamaged
. Scout knew that Wayne would just love to dirty up that little girl’s life. He wouldn’t do it, of course, because she’d kill him if he did and he knew it. All the same, she didn’t like him leering that way, and she didn’t think much of Velvet.

“It’s just like you said, precious.” Wayne was still staring at the girl. “We’re friends of your of man’s. I’m Wayne, this is Scout and the bitch with the fat lip is Brooke Daniels.”

“Brooke Daniels?” Velvet was now convinced that she’d caught her father in the middle of some disgusting post-Oscar debauch. She was half relieved and half horrified, relieved to discover that the situation was not more sinister, horrified because it was so disgusting. Overhearing one’s parents having sex is enough to traumatize some kids, so walking in on one of their orgies was a tough call, even for a diamond-hard Hollywood brat like Velvet.

She made an ugly face. “Oh Daddy,
Playboy
bunnies? Pur-lease! That is so-o-o trashy and also just totally nineteen eighties.”

“I was never a bunny, I was a centrefold. What’s more, I’m an actress,” Brooke said quietly.

Bruce had to try again to make Farrah leave, whatever the risk of arousing Wayne’s anger. The alternative was to let Velvet prattle on, and Bruce knew it would not be long before she made dangerously obvious her distaste for the company she found herself in. Karl had been killed for showing disrespect, and when it came to showing disrespect tough New York agents were not in the same class as cocky little Hollywood princesses.

“Farrah,” Bruce barked, pointing his finger at her, “I’m busy! Get the girl out. Now!”

Farrah wasn’t going anywhere. It was clear to her that Bruce was worried, even flustered. This suited her; she’d rarely ever seen him anything other than calm and in control. His current mood was likely to bring forth further financial concessions in her favour. She held Velvet to her.

“Bruce, you are speaking about your own daughter. Trying to throw her out of what was her home. You disgust me. You’d rather be with sluts and street trash than—”

“Excuse me.” It was Scout who interrupted her.

Bruce froze, fully expecting his little family to be instantly cut down in a hail of vengeful bullets. But Scout was happy to ignore the insult. She was in a curious mood.

“Mrs Delamitri? Can I ask you something now?”

“No, you may not,” Farrah replied, with enough haughty disdain to cool a chili pepper, haughty disdain which was entirely lost on Scout, who pressed on regardless.

“Is it true you got so puke drunk one time that you miscarried? That you retched up so hard you done lost your baby?”

For a moment, even Farrah was lost for words. Her battle with the bottle had been long and public. She was naturally aware of the numerous disgusting myths that circulated about her, but she had never been so rudely confronted with one before.

“
What
did you say?”

“Well, that’s what I read in the
National Enquirer
,” Scout protested.

“Well, I heard a better one than that,” said Wayne. “I heard Mrs Delamitri here got stopped in her car one time by the cops, and they asked her to blow in the bag and she offered to blow the cops instead. And she did! Ain’t that right, Farrah?” Wayne had recounted this anecdote often before, but it still made him laugh.

“I don’t know about no cops and unhygienic acts,” Scout said primly, “but it sure did say she got puke drunk and lost her child.”

“And that Velvet here had her first blow-job when she was seven,” Wayne added.

Velvet had read the article in question. “It said
nose
job! And it wasn’t true!”

Farrah turned on Bruce in fury. “What is going on here, Bruce? Is this some kind of pathetic tactic? Are you trying to scare me or something? Because it won’t work.”

“No, Daddy, it won’t,” said Velvet, standing beside her mother in fiscal solidarity. “Mommy and I want this house, plus the New York apartment. Otherwise it’s trial by talk show. I’ll tell Oprah you used erection creams—”

“Mommy! Don’t be gross.”

Wayne roared with laughter and poured himself another drink. This was better than he could ever have hoped.