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Another sip of chocolate milk. Now smoking, talking faster.

“So, this robot executive gets friendly with the new guy and they have lunch and all this shit, okay? But just when the guy isn’t expecting it, BOOM, he gets fucked up the ass. This thing is out to get him. His marriage. His health …”

Snapping fingers. Nodding. Grinning.

“It fucks him over. Breaks him down. The new guy doesn’t get it. Been doing everything right. But suddenly it’s like … no promotion, no big future. Like, ‘What’d I do wrong here, guys? I thought I was your fuckin’ guy.’ So, he tries to figure it out. Can’t. Flips out. Whatever. Marriage is wrecked. Health … thrashed. He’s taken away, demolished. And the robot executive tries to move on to the next company. But a cop stops him. That’s our Bruce Willis. Harrison Ford. Major battle. We think we’re talking a hundred-million-dollar picture. So whattya think?”

Alan roughed out notes and looked up. Tony puffed, listening, long fingers drumming.

“Well, one question.”

“Shoot.”

“Why is the robot doing this?”

“We don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“We don’t know.”

Tony’s assistant looked at Alan through square Roger McGuinn glasses. His skin was pearly and translucent and he appeared to be no more than twelve.

“We thought you might have some ideas,” said the assistant.

“Why is he doing it, Alan?” asked Tony, who was sitting on a staggering first-look deal at Columbia.

Now that Alan could see him up close, he figured
Tony could weigh no more than 120 pounds, though over six feet. The guy was renowned not only for stabbing people in the back but for removing the entire spine. He hired and fired writers at whim, was obsessed with fucking young actresses and though he had a tin ear, always personally rewrote scripts to get a shared credit. He had thirty films in development, and deals at every studio.

He took calls as they spoke. His other assistant, a mute girl who took notes, looked like a clinically depressed Eskimo. She wore clunky black Soviet shoes and fifty layers of clothes, none identifiable. Her name was Melissa because all girl assistants were named Melissa.

“Well … why is he doing it?” Alan had no clue.

Jordan had told him Tony’s production company,
Heavy Weight
, had a fix on the project and to just go in for a meet. But these guys were missing four-fifths of the picture. He was going to kill Jordan for putting him in this position but started moving ideas around; trying to make something.

Tony stared, eating Almond Roca. He wore tight black jeans and had serious chapped lips; a Buchenwald Dwight Yoakam.

“I mean, do you like it or is it derivative crap?”

“No. I think it’s interesting.” Alan thought it was borderline.

“So, why is the robot doing it? What does the robot want?” Tony had to know.

Alan stared at him. “Well … you know … maybe it’s what the guy who built the robot wants.”

No one said anything. The boney satyr was listening. Glances were exchanged. Then, Tony stared at Alan.

“Interesting.”

“Interesting,” repeated the translucent assistant.

Alan built. “Yeah, so … I mean, let’s say this guy who built it has a compelling reason …”

“Okay. Right …” Tony peered intently, deep voice shaking the room like one of those earthquake soundtracks.

“Maybe this is a company that hurt him. Took advantage of him. So, he builds this thing to get revenge.”

“Or … is it possible … maybe he just hates all businesses and wants to exact revenge in general? He’s a guy who got passed on, lost in the shuffle,” said the creamy-faced fetus. “A kind of everyman’s Willy Loman. He, in fact, is the robot, metaphorically. Just a thought.”

Tony looked at Alan. Alan shrugged.

“Maybe. I mean, it’s possible.”

The fetus withdrew a bit. Hurt. Storing resentment that would be inflicted at a later time on someone he outranked. Like his mom.

“Go on,” said Tony, crunching Almond Roca.

“Well, I’m talking off the top of my head here, Tony.” Tony gestured he understood with frantic air shapes. “But maybe an interesting twist is that the robot isn’t the bad guy at all. Maybe another guy in the company who knows he’s going to get passed over for a promotion realizes he needs help and leases this thing for a year or so. In fact, maybe there’s some strange business you can lease these robots from. Only maybe executives aren’t the only thing available. Maybe there are assistants, too.”

“Interesting,” said Tony.

Alan nodded, going along with it. “So, you know, these assistants could just quietly come into a big company. You hire them … but your motives—”

Tony interrupted, holding up a callused palm.

“Who knows? You could be a self-serving, ambitious prick, right?” He was unsealing another pink vacuum-sealed can of Almond Roca.
Vooosh.
“And any executive has the right to pick his own assistant …” Tony leaned forward, biting a piece of dry lip, making blood. “Keep going. I actually like this.”

Alan kept going.

“And this assistant makes sure that everything you want, you get. She’s programmed to get the competition in the office out of the way. She’s deadly when she needs to be. Sweet the rest of the time. Everybody loves her. But she’s a fucking robot. She’s your bodyguard. She sees to it that you rise to the top and when you do … she ‘quits’ and gets leased to another person who wants what you want.”

Tony was nodding. “And it’s all done confidentially so no one knows anyone else who has one. No one can bust anyone else, right?”

Alan took a sip of Evian. “It’s not an evil executive but maybe it works, Tony.”

“… everybody needs a good assistant
 …” Tony was seeing the poster.

“And you make it violent if you need it violent.”

“Absolutely! Like what you’re doing on ‘The Mercenary,’ which I fucking love, by the way.” Tony had made a fortune with films that had vapid carnality and tons of gratuitous blood. Overseas his pictures were huge and though critics despised him, as they did Alan, he could get the biggest talents around to work with him. One picture with Tony Moore, you were white hot. There was also the hermaphrodite rumor, which added bizarre appeal.

“You know, she like … tortures the asshole in the office that’s vying for her boss’s job. He goes flying out of a skyscraper window in Manhattan like it’s a suicide … but uh-uh …” Tony was trancing out, seeing it in his mind.

“… or maybe she expresses interest in going out with this guy who is trying to hurt her boss … but she takes him home and kills him,” said the assistant. “Could get an amazing scene of her seducing and torturing him … to protect her boss and his promotion.”

Tony was nodding. “That’s good, that’s good.”

The albino child was happy again, capillaries flushing.

Melissa, the mute, tilted her dark face up and spoke. Her expression was stiff; semiterrified, desperate to contribute. She spoke quietly, like those battered wives on “Oprah.”

“Tony, this may alter the tone, but … could the assistant be a man?”

Tony let the clutch out on his steamroller. “No.”

Alan watched Melissa nod and descend back into her shoulder cave, chin tucked. Taking notes. He figured she’d resurface after a few weeks of therapy.

Casper-the-friendly-slide-of-plankton gave a smug little smile. He obviously thought she was nothing to worry about. But Alan had seen unexpected reversals too many times to count the Eskimo out, just yet. In five years, she could be running a studio and Casper would be stuck in some nowhere-fast production company, trapped in his boy’s sample-size world of arrogant cruelty. And when he came to her to pitch a film project, she’d just politely pass over and over, and there would be balance in the universe, again.

Tony’s secretary buzzed. He picked up. Listened, guzzled the rest of his chocolate milk. Hung up. Burped a little.

“Got the set calling, pal. Gotta take this. Alan … go ahead and do it. It’s great. Bring me a story. I’m back from Brazil in two weeks. Fucking rainforest Indians are snagging a deal. I gotta go down and beat them up.”

“So, you like it the way I said?”

“Yeah.” Tony doodled. “Or whatever. Play with it. You know what to do. Maybe we do a whole other thing. Ditch the robot angle. Maybe do a really fucking evil like … female mercenary. Missiles for tits, whole bit.”

He smiled, trying to seem like a guy who had fun with things. But Alan sensed he was a guy who hated himself and had no close friends. A guy who didn’t know how to get close or be close. A guy who Alan could so easily imagine just staring at himself in the mirror and loathing the ugly, pointless reflection. Loathing it enough to just kill himself. And knowing deep down, no one would care except studio bookkeeping.

He was opening a can of Coke. “I don’t know. You’re getting me thinking here. Give me a call. We’ll figure this out. There’s a go picture in here somewhere. This is getting exciting.” His noodle fingers waved bye-bye and he got on the phone, wedging it into his shoulder.

As Alan left Tony’s office, within ten seconds Tony was screaming, telling someone at the other end he didn’t care what they thought or what they wanted or what they felt. He said he was going to rip their head off and piss down their throat.

“Thanks for coming in. Call us,” said the assistants,
shrugging off Tony’s annoyed mood, smiling like abused children as they walked Alan to the front door.

Alan said goodbye to the translucent boy and the terrified mute and drove home, deciding he didn’t want the coveted Tony Moore summer picture.

T
he police officers stood silent, staring up at the immense cross. Single droplets of blood, from her hands and feet, echoed on cathedral floor beside the weeping priest.

Stained glass branded divine colors on their skin and they walked slowly, observed by paintings and statuary that surrounded them. The younger officer got a ladder from the priest who’d called, and climbed. He moved past her feet, which were pinned, one on top of the other, to the huge wooden cross by a commando knife. He decided to leave it in until he could detach her palms, held by similar knives. She was naked and blood ran from her pierced palms to her armpits, then down her ribs. Saints stared from ceilings and walls; a wake, in oil.

Two other officers steadied the ladder and looked up as he continued climbing. He was to her upper body now
and they waited as he licked his lips and looked at her. Her head leaned to one side, left eye blackened, mouth leaking blood. Her face was klieged by the beams of holy light which softened the damage.

“Is she dead?” asked one, feeling the priest’s eyes, in some unbalanced trance, on him.

The young officer on the ladder moved closer to her face, trying to hear breathing, feeling revulsion; pity. Her eyes were shut, body motionless. He reached a hand to her throat, to feel for a pulse, and as his skin touched hers, she screamed, eyes jumping open.

He was shocked and almost fell, losing his balance, tipping the ladder. As he held tightly to the huge cross, with one hand, and the cathedral filled with her horrible anguish, she tried to speak. He got close to her mouth and she strained to tell him something.

“… just let us help you,” he said, gently, as three officers and two paramedics who’d arrived began to lower her from the cross. Their nerves glistened and they tried not to look at her naked body, slick with blood.

She struggled, in protective hysteria, limbs flailing, unable to stop screaming. The officers’ uniforms and hands were saturated with red, as they tried to calm her and the fresh blood made her skin slippery, like oil. As she wriggled, in howling pain, they lost firm grip and she fell to the floor, skull cracking. She screamed more loudly, writhing; a bloody brush, painting floor.

They finally got her into a waiting ambulance, toweled themselves of her blood. The priest began to mop the floor and brought a bucket of hot, soapy water to clean the cross and pews.

She died eight minutes later, two blocks from the
hospital, hands and feet wrapped in gauze. As the siren sheared through traffic and one of the paramedics gave her last rites, they tried to understand what she’d been struggling to describe.

Even though her tongue had been cut out, she wanted them to know the man who’d done this to her was on TV every week.

S
o … is Buddha actually here, or is there an opening act first or … what’s the deal?”

Shrine ducks paddled.

“Try to speak quietly.”

“Nice ducks. Are they meditating, too?”

Soothing, dauntless tones. “They say the animals that come here don’t fight.” She gestured; squirrels, bugs. Smiled to make her point. Led him to a bench that overlooked the Self-Realization Center. They sat, listening to lake ripple. She closed blue eyes, breathed.

“This is where David and I were married.”

Alan didn’t want to know.

“… the guru with the corporation? That David?”

“Thanks for meeting me here.” A tiny smile bloomed, letting him know she could handle being teased. Her eyes were still closed. “I love it here.”

“Yeah, it’s great … makes me want to eat dates and shave my head.”

It was an odd place; didn’t quite belong. A small meditation park, right off Sunset near Pacific Coast Highway, with hushed devotees in carotene-orange bodies. Ashes of Muktawhatsit were in an urn and visitors sat, staring at them.

“So, these ashes … do they speak or do impressions, or are they just ashes?”

“I asked you to come so we could talk, Alan.” Rising joy. “… something wonderful has happened.”

“David’s been declared insane?”

“I’m pregnant.”

A little Richard Lewis shrug. Words parachuting; escaping, playfully. “Well, we know it wasn’t me.”

She didn’t laugh. Just a well-centered glance; beatific nonreaction. Taking pity on his brittle humor. It was item one million on the dizzying list of what went wrong between them.

“I figured you’d hear on the grapevine …”

“I appreciate it.” He threw a rock at a duck.

“Alan … don’t do that. It’s not hurting you.”