The Bones (8 page)

"Do you guys ever watch porn?" Honey asks.

Stacy's "No" does not entirely cover Lloyd's "Yes," although it is uttered at a slightly louder volume. Lloyd's drunkenness
allows him to turn to his wife and say, "Remember the hotel in San Francisco . . . " But she won't even make eye contact,
pretending instead to focus on the watercolor of a Provencal landscape on the stippled wall.

Frank's had it with Honey's rambling, the conversation having detoured too far from the subject of himself. Not even bothering
with a segue, he turns to Lloyd and says, "I like the way a gun feels. Have you ever fired one?"

But Honey, who would ordinarily pull over to the shoulder and let the Frank Bones eighteen-wheeler roar past, is having none
of it tonight. She turns to Lloyd and says, "So are you going to write me a good part?"

"Excuse me?" Lloyd is having trouble following the conversation at this point. He glances at Stacy, who is trying to steal
a peek at Honey's feet, which are encased in a pair of simple black Manolo Blahnik stilettos.

"In the pilot you're doing with Frank."

"What pilot?" Lloyd trying to think through the Lafitte haze.

"My
Life and High Times,
babe," Frank reminds him.

"We haven't exactly . . . " Here Lloyd pauses to consider his words, not wanting to offend his host. "We're still talking
about it."

"I'm going to be the girlfriend," Honey says with a big smile, sticking out her chest, which Lloyd notices is not as impressive
as he'd fantasized. Not that it matters. He's been thinking about peeling the angora off for the last two hours.

"Yeah, babe. You're always the girlfriend," Frank asserts ambiguously. As Honey considers this, Frank turns to Lloyd. "Have
you ever fired a gun?" he repeats, reestablishing control of the conversation, confident he can still reel Lloyd in.

Stacy pours herself another glass of wine.

"Write down your home address," Honey purrs to Lloyd, in a tone that implies a house call from Dionysus himself if he complies.
"I want to send you a DVD of my movie." Lloyd hastily jots it down and hands it to her.

"Here's the new one. We're moving," he tells them.

"To?" This from Frank as he takes the scrap of paper from Honey and examines it.

"Brentwood," Stacy proudly says, thinking,
And you people are going to need a passport and
shots
to get into the neighborhood.

"Four twenty-one Carmeliiiiina, Frank says lubriciously, drawing out the vowel.

"You have to have us over," Honey tells Stacy.

"How could you discuss our sex life like that? We don't even know those people."

Lloyd is at the wheel of his Saab and driving slowly since there is some doubt in his mind as to his ability to pass a sobriety
test if he is pulled over. There was no chemistry between the couples at the dinner, and because she had not had a good time,
Stacy is intent on punishing Lloyd.

"Would you loosen up, please? I was trying to enjoy myself, which I have to tell you is not the easiest thing when Doris Day
is my date."

"That woman is disgusting!"

"Doris Day?",

"Ha ha, Lloyd. I expect better from you."

"Since when are you such a puritan? I thought she was pretty cool."

"Cool? You think
that
is cool? She's a professional slut. I want to take a shower when we get home."

"A golden shower?" Lloyd says as oleaginously as he can manage, attempting to leaven the moment with a joke both bad and tasteless.
Stacy does not fall to rise to the bait.

"You're disgusting, too," she says, arms folded in front of her, sculpted nails digging into cut biceps as she stares straight
ahead. "Were you ever really friends with that guy?"

Lloyd takes a moment, the answer rather painful to say out loud since Frank is a man of undeniable talent, and talent is the
one thing Lloyd genuinely respects. "No."

This seems to come as a great relief to Stacy, who takes time to breathe before unloading her next salvo. "And what was all
that talk about guns? You'd think a guy who's been arrested on a gun charge would be a little more discreet."

"He invited me to go shooting with him."

"You're not going."

Three days later, Lloyd holds a Tec-9 pistol in his hand with all the comfort he would have exhibited wielding a sea cucumber.
He and Frank are standing in the waiting area of the LAX Gun Club, a one-story stucco building on the outskirts of Los Angeles
International Airport, accompanied by the department-store mannequin Frank pilfered from the Dumpster behind Neiman Marcus.
Otto, wearing a T-shirt with a picture of Lenin on it, is taping them. The soft pop of muffled gunfire, no more threatening
than firecrackers, can be heard in the background.

"We got Berettas, Colts, Smith & Wessons, too." This litany of firepower from the clerk, a young guy with a wispy goatee and
an American-flag button on the lapel of his nylon jacket next to another one reading KILL, 'EM ALL. LET GOD SORT IT OUT.

"I like the Tec-9 myself," Frank says. "Good trigger action."

"Which one you want?" The clerk's getting a little impatient, trying to get back to
Soldier of Fortune,
the only magazine in America where you can hire a killer in the classifieds.

"Take the Tec-9," Frank advises. Lloyd, having no basis for comparison, is silent. He notices Otto pointing the lens at him
and worries that if anyone ever sees this tape, Lloyd will look unmacho to the point of feminity.

"He'll take the Tec-9." Frank, helping out.

"Rockin' choice," the clerk says, happy to close the deal. Then looks at his watch, grabs a microphone, flips a switch, purring
in a suddenly smooth baritone, "The range will now close for the next half hour. Please return all rental guns. Clear the
range, please." To Frank, in nonbroadcast tones: "You got half an hour, dude."

Lloyd looks through the Plexiglas wall separating the waiting area from the gun range and sees a young, denim-wearing couple,
two middle-aged guys with beer guts, an Asian housewife, and a black guy in a security-guard uniform start to pack up their
firearms.

Frank and Lloyd, trailed by Otto, step into the range. There are fourteen booths, all now empty. Frank is holding the mannequin,
a business-suit-clad male he has christened Stu, short for Stunt President. He turns to Lloyd and issues what is a conversation-stopper
to the nonobsessive: "Are you interested in the Kennedy assassination?"

"Sure," Lloyd responds, in the identical tone Frank often uses when talking to Honey.
Why didn't someone shoot Oliver Stone?

Frank is now walking into the range with Stu under his arm, looking around for a place to set him down.

"The Zapruder film is my screen saver," he tells Lloyd.

Lloyd takes that information, holds it at arm's length, hard light glinting off the serrated edge of the concept. The Zapruder
film as a screen saver? Perverse beyond measure, yet brilliant. Lloyd's screen saver is a photograph of Yosemite National
Park. In a moment of insight clear as a cold vodka shot, he realizes how trite and hackneyed his own choice is, how utterly
boring and predictable, just the screen saver a middleaged guy whose wife fixated on kitchen countertops would be pleased
with. He might as well have a litter of kittens or a sailboat flickering on his computer screen.

The Zapruder film as a screen saver reveals a mind inured to the ordinary psychological pain protracted exposure to grotesque
violence normally induces, not to mention the pain caused by repeatedly witnessing the morbid public suffering of national
icons. But it struck Lloyd as something challenging, exciting, provocative, very shock-the-monkey; in short, something a true
artist would do. He makes a mental note to develop a purer worldview of his own. And to lose the Yosemite picture when he
gets home.

"Every time I boot up, Kennedy's head explodes," Frank casually offers, placing Stu the Stunt President twenty feet away from
the booths, his back to Lloyd. Frank carefully arranges the mannequin's right arm so it appears to be waving. Now, walking
toward the booths: "I want to put Stu in a Cadillac to get the full effect, but the service door of this place isn't big enough."
Lloyd wonders why Jackie's not figuring into the fantasy, but then Frank says, "I'd use a Jackie mannequin, too, but it's
no good if she's not crawling around the car."

"I can see how that wouldn't work for you," Lloyd assures him.

"Okay, first of all, bullet number one nails Kennedy as the motorcade is passing a forest of trees, which completely eliminates
Oswald's ability to hit him from the Book Depository unless he's got X-ray vision, ladies and gentlemen. The third shot knocks
Kennedy backwards and blows out the right side of his head, completely ruining his hair and throwing him back in his seat,
which, if you're a rational person, tells you it came from the front. Oswald, remember, was behind him. Zapruder himself testified
shots came from behind him on the grassy knoll, but, hey, he was only there right when it was fuckin' happening. What does
he know?"

Frank goes on in this vein for another few minutes as Otto roils tape. While Frank talks, he takes a joint from his pocket
and lights it, drawing deeply and then using it as a baton while he conducts a symphony of conspiracy and paranoia: the New
Orleans mob states a Sicilian brass theme, which joins a Latin melody being played by the anti-Castro Cubans, leading into
the dissonant crescendo of Oswald-was-a-patsy and there was a second gunman back in Dealey Plaza. Finally, the resolution:
the Warren Commission is all lies but the American public is too docile to know or care. Fade-out. Bow. Applause. "Having
grown up in Texas, you understand, this is all very near and dear to me."

It's an impressive rant not without a certain internal logic, but Lloyd is snapped out of his role as passive listener by
the loud bang of a gunshot. Frank is shooting Stu. He squeezes off three rounds in rapid succession, all hitting the dummy
in the back. The sudden spasm of violence is shocking to Lloyd, but then, he thinks,
What did I expect? I'm in a gun range.

Then Frank says, "Let's see you shoot."

Lloyd looks down at the Tec-9 in his hand, which suddenly feels heavy. Frank senses in Lloyd an ingrained sociocultural antipathy
toward firearms.

"Babe, have you ever fired a gun?"

"A popgun."

"But never a real one?"

"I shot a BB gun at Camp Mackinack."

"What was that, a bunch of Jewish kids in a tepee? My parents didn't send me to camp. They wanted to abuse me twelve months
a year. Okay, grip, point, shoot." Frank demonstrates, pulling the trigger again and sending another bullet into Stu, who
takes it stoically.

"Remind me why we're doing this."

"I'm working on a bit about the assassination, and for me to be able to connect the dots between all the elements, I act everything
out. You know . . . get a sense of how the players felt. One day I'm Kennedy, another day I'm Jackie; then I'm Governor Connally
. . ."

Lloyd is aware he's being handed a key to Frank's inner world, a pass that will potentially provide a glimpse into what he
is at that moment thinking of as the hidden poo poo platter of Frank's thought process.
I'm accessing the hidden poo poo platter with its selection of savory . . .
and then catches himself. Hidden poo poo platter is a ridiculous image, he's realizing.
Never, never say that aloud or no one will ever take you seriously,
Lloyd admonishes himself as he reenters the exchange.

"And today you're . . . ?"

"Babe, are you paying attention? I'm the second gunman. We're standing on the grassy knoll."

Lloyd looks around the tacky environs of the LAX Gun Club. Through the Plexiglas he can see the clerk still reading
Soldier of Fortune.
Empty shells lie at their feet. Otto's camera seems close.

"Okay."

"Don't patronize me, babe."

"I'm not." The man very thin-skinned for someone who dishes it out the way he does. Lloyd is too busy revering Frank at this
juncture to remotely consider patronizing him, but Frank, never able to see into anyone else for more than a moment, does
not read the subtle signs.

"So why do you want me to shoot again?"

"Do you need your husband's permission?"

Lloyd can't abide having Frank think of him in a less than masculine light. So while he recognizes the emotion he is feeling,
the youthful suffering the atavistic school-yard taunt calls forth, he can't control his response.

Violence must ensue.

Now.

Picking up the gun, Lloyd aims at Stu, closes his eyes, and squeezes the trigger. The bullet hits the back of the range, wide
of the Stunt President by the wingspan of a pterodactyl.

"Lloyd, if you ever want to kill yourself, stick your head in the oven because I don't think a gun would work for you. Wanna
try again?"

Lloyd's feeling his stomach dropping millimeter by millimeter as Frank looks at him. There's judging going on, Lloyd knows,
and he is not looking good to the panel. They're holding up scores: 2, 2, 1. And the final judge holds his panel aloft:
Fag.

Lloyd blinks, swallows. His mouth is dry. Aims the gun once more and squeezes another shot off with the same lame result.

"Here. Watch," Frank orders. Raising the gun, he aims, shoots, and Stu takes one in the back of the head. Turns to Otto, leans
into the lens. "I killed the Stunt President." Otto as serene as a day at the beach behind that lens. In a final fusillade,
Frank empties the remainder of the bullets in his gun, causing the mannequin's skull to shatter and his body to vibrate for
a few moments before collapsing onto its polymer chest, where his torso rocks gently from side to side for a couple of moments
before settling into the eternal stillness of mannequin death. Lloyd notices a disembodied plastic nose pointing to the celling.

"If Stu had been riding in the limo that day, the entire course of history might have been different," Frank's theorizing.
"You see Stu's hair?"