Annihilate Me 2: Vol. 1 (16 page)

“A wild, unhinged woman,” Henri
said.
 

Audric
sat up in his seat.
 
“Then
I’m ready for her.
 
Sounds like my
kind of girl.”

“You might want to rethink that,”
Henri said.
 
“They call her the
loose cannon of Park Avenue.”

“Even better.
 
I have a loose cannon of my own in my
pants.
 
Maybe she can spark it to
life again.”

“What the hell is she wearing?”
Henri asked.

“Apparently, a dress I bought for
her,” Alex said.

“I can explain,” I said.

“Good luck explaining that,” Henri
said.
 
“She looks like a
marshmallow.
 
But maybe I’m being
too hard on her.
 
She’s amiable
enough.
 
In an odd way, I kind of
like her.
 
She’s not the brightest
candle in the menorah, but she’s a good person.
 
She just doesn’t know what the hell
she’s doing after inheriting all of Charles’ money.
 
So let her come—not that any of us
could ever stop her.”

When
Epifania
finally burst out of the crowd, she went straight to Alex, gave him a kiss on
each cheek, and repeated the gesture with me and then with Henri before stopping
and looking down at
Audric
.

“Who you?” she said.

“Who me?”

“Yeah—who you?”

“I’m
Audric
Dufort, Henri’s father,”
Audric
said with a
smoothness that bordered on flirtation.
 
“And now it’s your turn, young lady.
 
Who you?”

“I
Epifania
Zapopa
!
 
I
good friend with your son, and also with the Alex and the
Yennifer
.”

“Who is ‘
Yennifer
’?”

“That’s what
Epifania
calls me,
Audric
,” I said.
 
“It’s just a nickname.”
 
Before
Epifania
could try to figure that out and potentially dispute it, I asked her if I could
see her dress.

“Oh, no.
 
Not the dress.
 
Epifania
know
you gonna be mad.”

“I’m not mad,
Epifania
.
 
I’d just like to see it.”

She took a step back, put a hand on
her hip, and struck a pose.
 

“Well, there’s that,” Henri said.

All I could do was shake my head at
her.
 
The dress was not fitted
properly, and worse, it looked as if her breasts were about to rip through the
fabric and bare themselves to the world.
 
Despite how expensive that dress was, she
looked like a stripper to me.
 
If
there was a brass pole in this place, I wouldn’t have been surprised to find
her swinging around on it.
 

“Immaculata
tol
’
me to get
thees
one,”
Epifania
said.
 
“She always got my back, so I
do what she say.
 
How I look?”

“Ravishing,”
Audric
said.
 
“Like a pin-up girl.”

“You mean like a ‘paper doll’ or
something?”

“Doll just about does it for me,”
Audric
said.
 
He
patted his lap.
 
“How’d you like to
sit down right here and go for a ride?”

“
Père
,”
Henri said.
 
“I don’t think that
would be advisable or appropriate.
 
The press are here, after all.
 
And our guests.”

“Henri, what have I always told
you?
 
Fuck them.
 
Fuck society and what people think of you.
 
We’ve made this crowd money for dozens
of years, and because of that, they’ll overlook just about anything.
 
We’ve proved that together.
 
Plus, at this point, they know what I
know—I’m not quite there.
 
I
get it—I’m losing it.
 
It’s
not some secret to me or to them.
 
So, if
Epifania
wouldn’t mind obliging an old
man, I’d like to give her a lift, blow my horn, and have some fun.”

“You say it so sexy,”
Epifania
said.
 
“I blow your horn for you.”

“I bet you would, cupcake.”

“But me rump is too big.
 
It’s like a couple
peegs
.
 
Epifania
too
heavy for you.”

“Heavy?
 
Hell.
 
Why don’t you let me be the judge of
that?”

“I don’
wanna
crush your legs.
 
They look like the
toothpeeks
me Mama Guadalupe use to clean her teeth
with.”

“You won’t crush them.
 
And besides, even if you did, it’s not
as if they work, anyway.”
 
He patted
his lap again.
 
“Come on over and
let’s go for a ride, baby.”

“It does look like fun,”
Epifania
said.
 
“You know, tonight,
Epifania
see you whirling
around this joint without a care in the world.
 
And if I sit on your lap and make the
love to you while we go for our ride, it probably
peese
off a few of these uppity turds who can’t stand me.
 
So, you know, why not?
 
Epifania
game!”

“Oh, Jesus,” Henri said.

“
Epifania
,”
I said.
 
“Please don’t.”

“No,
Yennifer
.
 
I doing this.
 
Me new
Papi
is
about to take
Epifania
to
grande
heights of the scandal.
 
I been
sneered at all night by these
reech
motherfuckers, so
if they want to sneer at me for real, let’s give them a reason.
 
Epifania
down
with this!
 
Screw these uptight
honkies.
 
Epifania
and the
ol
’ man gonna make them think twice about who
really run this crowd.”

“Or who runs over them,”
Audric
said.
 
“Now, get that big fat ass of yours over here.”

“
Père
,”
Henri said.

“Oh, Henri, just let me live for
God’s sake.
 
Is that too much to
ask?
 
I didn’t think so.
 
Epifania
, come
here.”

“You got it,
Papi
.
 
Let’s steamroll over them.
 
Just don’ let anyone pull
Epifania’s
hair.
 
You never know what happen when they pull the hair.”

“Why would they pull your hair?”

“Because they hate me.”

“Do you care?”

“
Epifania
worth the five hundred million.
 
She
only care if the hair pulling hurt.”

“Five hundred million?
 
Well screw them.
 
They won’t dare to touch you.
 
Have a seat.”

Epifania
did, sitting sideways on
Audric’s
lap with
her legs curling over the side of the chair’s armrest.
 
If
Audric
felt
her weight, he didn’t show it.
 
If
anything, he looked excited by her presence, so much so that when she put her
arm around his narrow shoulders and kissed him on the cheek, he glowed with
appreciation.

“Let’s go,” he said.

And off they went.

For a moment, the three of us just
stood there as
Audric
put his wheelchair into motion,
and the two of them motored away from us.
 
And as they sped forward with
Epifania’s
legs
kicking out in rhythms of delight, the photographer from the
Post
came
out from the crowd and took their photograph.

“Drive me home,
Papi
!”
I heard her say.
 
“Drive
Epifania
to the Mars and to the Uranus and to the back
again!”

People turned and looked affronted
as they stepped out of the way as
Audric
roared past
them.

“This is humiliating,” Henri said
to us.
 
“But what can I do?
 
Deny him of this?
 
He’s right—I shouldn’t give a
damn.
 
But I have to admit that I
do.
 
Sometimes, he’s there, as he
was just a moment ago, but most times he isn’t.
 
It’s unpredictable.”

“It shouldn’t last long,” I
said.
 
“She’s no lightweight.
 
He’ll tire of it soon.”

But not soon enough.

When he and
Epifania
were about thirty feet away from us, the chair seemed to catch, stop, and jerk
in an odd kind of hiccup.
 
Epifania
lurched forward with such force, I thought for
certain that she was going to be thrown out of
Audric’s
lap.
 
But she wasn’t.
 
Instead, she giggled and said, “No,
no—don’ end the ride yet,
Papi
!”
 
And then, with unexpected force,
Epifania
rocked back against
Audric’s
chest as a smart clap of smoke popped from the back of the chair.
 
Suddenly, the wheelchair roared to life
and shot forward, toward one of the large French windows that overlooked Fifth
Avenue forty-seven stories below.

“Aye
yai
yai
!” I heard
Epifania
scream.

“Your ass has crushed the
controls!”
Audric
said.
 

Immediately, Alex and I darted
forward in an effort to help them.
 
Henri followed, pleading for someone to stop the chair—or to at
least overturn it.
 
“For God’s sake,
somebody do something!” he shouted.

But nobody did.

Henri’s entertaining space was a
good sixty feet long, but
Audric
already was past the
halfway mark.
 
And with
Epifania’s
ass resting hard on the controls, he wasn’t
strong enough to stop the chair from racing toward the grand window that loomed
before them.

“
Papi
!”
Epifania
screamed.

“Stop them!” Alex shouted.
 
“Somebody grab hold of the
wheelchair.
 
Turn it over, for God’s
sake.”

But the crowd—which had seen
Audric
race past them all evening—merely looked on as
if this were some kind of joke.
 
Perhaps they thought that this was just another one of
Audric’s
stunts, because some frowned as he and
Epifania
soared past them, while others looked on with
tolerant, thin-lipped smiles.

But this was nothing to smile
about.
 
This was dire.

Before Alex or I could reach them,
the wheelchair slammed against the bottom of the window.
 
Epifania
was
knocked hard to the floor, but
Audric
was catapulted
like a rag doll through the glass and into the open air, into which he
disappeared, but not before leaving behind a fleeting bellow of fear that faded
so quickly, it was haunting.

People started to scream.
 
Strong gusts of warm air rushed into the
room.
 
Beneath our feet, glass broke
and shattered as Alex and I hurried toward the window.
 
And then, for some reason, it seemed as
if lightning was going off all around me.

In stunned silence, Alex and I
looked out the window, which the wheelchair kept banging against as if its
motor knew no better.
 
We looked
down into the night, but it was so dark and we were up so high that we couldn’t
see anything.
 
But we knew that the
worst had happened.
 
I turned and
saw someone help
Epifania
to her feet.
 
She was gasping, breathless, and even
she had no words for what had just happened.
 
She was in shock.

Audric
Dufort had just plunged over five hundred feet to his death.
 

In sadness and in horror, I looked
around for Henri, but instead came face-to-face with the photographer from the
Post
,
who was just behind me—and whose camera was the source of what I’d
initially thought was lightning.
 
With a fervor that hinged on hunger, he was taking photographs of all of
us.
 
And he had recorded the last moments
of
Audric
Dufort’s
life for
the world to see.