Husk (22 page)

“Duane, please,” I said, rising. I walked around the desk and stood before him. He admirably controlled his instinct to bolt. “Duane, I don't blame you for being scared.”

“Scared? Gary, I'm—”

“Please call me Sheldon.”

“. . . Sheldon, I'm not scared, I'm mad. Well, I am scared, but still. You took off, and I never heard from you again. You abandoned the movie, you left us all hanging, then the director tells us you've come down with cancer or something and can't work anymore, we'll just shoot the rest without you. I try to call, no one knows where you are. Then, you're everywhere. Sure, you have excuses. I think, okay, he's going through some pretty heavy shit lately, can't blame him for flaking out a bit. But not one call? No email, nothing? It's been four months. And look.” He held out his hand, palm down, steady in the space between us. “No shit, I have not had one snort since you left. I'm clean, drug-wise. Put myself up in rehab and everything. Your whole ‘disease' thing, your breathing, the cancer, all the lies, put stuff in perspective for me, I thought. I cleaned up for you. I thought if you would call, I could come and help. I thought we, I don't know, connected or something. But nothing?”

I stood there, abashed and somewhat peckish. “I had no idea,” I managed to say. It took two times; I forgot to breathe the first time. “Duane, I'm. I'm sorry.”

Duane sniffed, shrugged, faux tough-guy cool. He seemed to shrink, becoming ensconced in the folds of his jacket, an innocent child clad in big boy clothes. It was adorable. “No biggie. Like I said, I get it, you had other things on your mind.”

“Still. I should have called. Honestly, it never. Occurred to me.”

“I was just worried, dude.”

We looked at each other, Duane's eyes abruptly waterlogged with tears. He took a step closer, shivering, and placed his hands on my shoulders. He pulled me into an embrace. He buried his face in my chest and let out a squawk of a sob as I warily put my hands on his back. My palms singed from the heat of him, bursting through the pores of the leather. I hugged him closer to me, smelling his bouquet, feeling the heat of his melancholy through my shirt. After a silent count of fifteen I gently pushed away, separating our bodies as my appetite commanded me to shove a letter opener into the dimple beneath his Adam's apple and siphon out the sap.

Duane's face was a mess of liquids. I grabbed a tissue from the desk and waited while he wiped himself off. “Sorry,” he murmured, taking another tissue and blowing the wetness from his nose. “Didn't plan that. Kind of got away from me.”

“No apology necessary.”

“By the way,” his nose crinkled, “you really smell.”

“I get that a lot.” We shared a smile. “Duane, can we start again?” In our brief clutch, beneath the hunger, I recollected the intimacy of friendship, the easy unity of companions. It had been a long time since I had felt that human. “I would . . . things are difficult now but. I would like us to be friends. I can't offer you more than that. But I think I need a friend.”

He smiled, still sniffling. “That'd be cool.”

“We wouldn't be dating, though.” I smiled, lips shut so as to not spoil the moment with an odious grin.

“That's fine.”

“Not in the traditional sense.”

“It's cool.”

“I . . .” How to phrase this? “I can't do anything. Sexual. There's nothing working down there anymore. And I can't do anything with you. Too risky.”

“Okay.”

“You should feel free to date other people.”

“Oh. Okay, if that's what you want.”

“It doesn't matter what I want. I don't want you to feel like. This is a commitment.”

“Uh-huh.”

“We can only be friends. When you think about it. We aren't even the same species anymore.”

“So, this would be . . . interracial?”

“No, intergenus. Not necrophilia, not exactly, but close.”

Duane thought it over. “I'm fine with that,” he said. He straightened his shoulders with resolve.

“You should think that over. You haven't even come out yet.”

“But I want to. I am planning to. I will.”

“But this is more dangerous, and not. Just for your career. I like you, a lot, but . . . when I look at you. All I see is lunch. I shouldn't even be alone with you now.”

“But you are,” he said. “And I'm not afraid.” He pulled me into another hug. “See? Nothing happening.”

“Trust me,” I said as I gently pushed him away. “Something is happening.” My stomach wailed for another lunch.

“You know,” he said, as if it had just occurred to him, “
Basement
has its premiere in a few weeks. Two Fridays from now.”

“I heard.” Once I'd made international headlines, Zed had rushed the film into post-production to capitalize on my notoriety. The buzz was not good; his limitations as a director were evident in every overly stylized frame. Consequently, people would come out not to see my work, but to see me. Predictions for opening weekend were over forty million (triple the budget), based entirely on my current prominence as suspected cannibal and grudging spokesman for the dearly departed.

My first taste of real honest-to-goodness celebrity, using my personal infamy to market an inferior product to the lowest common denominator of consumers.

I felt like Charlie Sheen.

Zed's people had been pestering Rowan for weeks to get me out on the carpet and do some publicity. I imagined the rows of photographers come to get a picture of the monster, hoping for a King Kong rampage because of the bright noises and flash bulbs. Maybe I'd snap and kill someone in camera view; that would sell a few million copies. “I was going to skip it. I don't think I'm up for the scrutiny yet.”

“Well, would you . . . want to go with me? If I asked?”

“What, as a couple?”

“Whatever makes you comfortable.”

I began to shake my head, then thought about Rowan's plans to make a spectacle out of me for her own amusement. At least with Duane I'd have someone in my corner. He cared about his celebrity, but his guilelessness ensured that he cared far more about me than he did his own image.

“All right,” I said finally. “We'll go. But don't tell Zed, we'll handle that.”

“Awesome.” Duane looked fit to jump out of his own skin with joy. “You won't regret this. It'll be terrific. Thanks, Sheldon.”

“Call me Shel.” He grinned and then ran out the door.

I ran a hand through my hair, stopping when I felt a few strands spring away. It wouldn't do to go on a date without a full head of hair, not if I could help it, anyway.

I called Iris into the room. “Do you have a suit?” I asked her. “Something dressy? Maybe a tuxedo?”

“I've worked with celebrities for two years,” she said, deadpan. “I have three tuxes.”

“Well, get it pressed and ready. In two weeks, we're doing the town.”

“You're the boss.”

“I am, aren't I?” Rubbing my hands together in excitement, I called for Rowan. And then for Rhodes, as the rubbing had loosened a fair amount of skin from my palms.

“We rolling? Good. So, what are you doing?”

“Just . . . making a sandwich here.”

“Sounds tasty.”

“. . . I guess.”

“What's the meat there?”

“This? Um . . .” Sofa hopped up to the countertop and sniffed at the spread of foodstuffs I had laid out before me. She snuffled around the plate of meat, her tongue darting in and out. I shoved her away, rudely, but better a lack of courtesy than let the cat nibble on Rhodes' zombiedibles. She sniffed in annoyance and curled up at the edge of the counter, watching us with derision. “You know what it is,” I said, looking past the camera.

“What?”

“It's. It's just meat. That's all it is.”

“I'm going to need you to elaborate a bit here, chum.”

“It's, it is a synthetic meat substitute.”

“I thought you couldn't eat regular food.”

“No, but this is. This is different.”

“So, it's human meat, is that what you're saying?”

“No, um. It is manufactured in a petri dish and. Grown larger in. An incubator.”

“Is there anything to the bread?”

“What do you mean?”

“Is it, I don't know, meat bread of some kind?”

“Meat bread? No, it's just plain Wonder Bread. No real nutritional value. It's basically paper. That might be how I can stand it.”

“And what's that you're putting on it?”

“Just. Um. Sauce.”

“Looks like ketchup?”

“Huh. Let's go with that. Sure.”

“Sheldon, I'm dying here, give me something.”

“I'm sorry, Clive, I'm just not. Comfortable with all this. We've been filming all day. Couldn't I just eat my supper alone?”

“Okay, fuck this. Cut! Rowan, I cannot work with this.” The camera spotlight blinked out of existence. I cautiously removed my goggles and moistened the dry orbs beneath with red-eye reduction agent as Rowan calmed Clive down with a few choice expletives. He stormed out of the house as technicians busied themselves with cables and duct tape, each of them keeping one wary eye on my movements. It had been like this all morning, a director masking his fear with utter umbrage at my every suggestion, and techies who didn't bother to disguise their dread at all. One grip wandered too close as he checked messages on his cell phone; as I was rather cantankerous as well (Rhode's meat substitute was nourishing but hardly the same thing as fresh kill), I threw my arms up and shambled toward him, screaming
Braaaiiinnnsss!
as blood-curdlingly as I could. He urinated on himself, soaking his Levi's, screaming bloody filth while he tripped over his legs and fell, taking a light tower down with him. All my submissive apologies to him and his union representative couldn't convince him to stay on set one minute longer.

I spotted the cameraman behind a couch, filming the whole event while keeping a respectful distance from my zone of terror.
Well, fuckadeedoo
, I thought.

Rowan stood beside me and together we watched the grip flee the house, making the sign of the cross over and over again: spectacles, testicles, wallet, watch. “Well, that was just great, Shel. Anyone else here you'd like to scare the shit out of?” Not waiting for an answer, she struck me across the face with the back of her hand. If it hurt her, she didn't show it, but my head hadn't snapped back under the blow. It hadn't even budged; she might as well have been bitch-slapping a fencepost. Dr. Rhodes popped into existence from wherever he had been observing and attended to my face. After some light probing of my cheek with his fingers, he pronounced my face undamaged.

“Rowan, I am. Sorry.” I pushed every word out heavily, trying to affix an indication of yawning regret to my voice. It just came out breathy and guttural, and I gave up the attempt. “This is a bad idea anyway.”

Rowan blew an errant hair from her face. “Clive, we're going to need a minute here. You stay, others, out.” The director called for coffee and smokes break and the techies ambled out, already convincing themselves that they were congenitally more courageous than their vamoosed workmate. I considered going after them, baring my teeth as I imagined their cries, and a spurt of saliva ejected out my mouth and onto the hardwood flooring. Rowan snapped her fingers under my nose, and I clamped my lips shut and took a seat at the kitchen table, the penitent soulless corpse.

Clive and Rowan observed me for a moment. “Shelley, I'm going to be perfectly candid with you,” the director began. He bent forward and placed his hands on his thighs, taking the position of the exhausted father. “You are by far the worst actor I have ever had to work with.” Rowan nodded. “Now, I am used to working with amateurs on reality television. I am, in point of fact, one of the best there is, not something I like to boast about, but precisely why I find myself today in this unenviable position. And I get it, this isn't reality television, this is a documentary. A documentary for
A&E
, but still, yeah, a documentary.

“But you . . . you're a nice guy.” Never had I heard the word
nice
sound so distasteful. “People want nice guys for friends. They do not want nice guys for appointment television viewing.
Nice
gets you the old crony demographic.
Nice
gets you
CBS
. You want
CBS
, Matlock?”

“I think,” Rowan said, “what Clive means is that you are forgetting the basic tenet of North American television, which is that life is nothing but a freak show. And you, my darling little
ATM
, are the biggest freak out there.”

“Huge,” Clive agreed. “An enormous freak on a landscape of wannabes. A medical oddity with realms of untapped potential.”

“We're talking T-shirts, Shel.”

“Action figures.”

“Recording contracts.”

“Clothing lines.”

“Celebrity feuds.”

“What's her name, that senator?”

“Kud.”

“Right, the cow, she says you are an aberration who crawled out of the bowels of Hell to infect us all. She wants you put down like a rabid dog; are you just going to take that?”

“Are you going to man up?”

“No, zombie up.”

“Better.”

“Your picture on lunchboxes, for the ironic hipster.”

“Attendance at awards ceremonies.”

“A line of frozen foods.”

“But you need to let us in.” Rowan pointed at the camera, alone on its tripod, its lens an open wound. “Let
them
in. Let them see the real you. The man inside the zombie, taking his new life day by day, struggling with his desire to consume human flesh.”

“The stuff of great drama,” Clive added. “Shakespearean in its scope, a regular Falstaff of the undead.”

“You want the world to sympathize,” Rowan said, her voice purring with sincerity, “fine and dandy—”

“—lemon candy—”

“—you've got their attention, but if you want to keep it, and we do, my darling monster, we have to make you an honored guest in their homes. We must throw you in their faces and demand their love.”

“No one liked King Kong at first.”

“That's right. People hated Godzilla, too.”

“Dracula had them screaming in their panties.”

“Freddy gave them nightmares.”

“Jason terrorized their fucking wits.”

“And now, Sheldon my dear, my fabulous monster, people adore them. These are books and websites and conventions dedicated to how much people love them. People need to work past the fright to get to the admiration, but they need the fright
first
to lube up their senses.”

“Now, I am going to call everyone back in,” Clive instructed, “before we start having to pay the unionized fuckers double-time-and-a-half, and you are going to answer my questions, and you are going to be charming, and gruesome, and gross, and misunderstood, and you are going to do this now.”

“Or,” Rowan said, lighting a cigarette for emphasis, “I will make one phone call to the
CDC
and this all ends with you in pieces, your brain in a jar and the rest of you in a series of test tubes and beakers, segmented and sent to laboratories around the world. They are just praying you'll fuck this up so that they can dip their filthy little grant-grubbing science fingers into your guts and pull at whatever they find. So do us all a favor: give the people what they want and monster the fuck up.”

I thought about this. I told Clive to turn the camera on, and took the cigarette from Rowan's fingers.

“You rolling?” I asked. The blinking red light above the lens answered me. “Monster up,” I muttered, half-ashamed at myself, half-hoping Rowan would defecate in her delicates at the upcoming show. I stuck the cigarette between my lips and took a drag, deep, deeper than humanly possible, and kept going. I thought about what Rowan said while the smoke coiled itself over and through the moldering remnants of my lungs, so recently reinforced with experimental latex glue. I switched my stare between the two of them as the camera rolled, going from Rowan to Clive and back again until he was sweating with fear. I gave him a slight nod to make sure he was watching and lifted my shirt off over my head, giving the camera a full view of Rhode's complex network of zippers crisscrossing my torso. Selecting a tab near my left nipple, I pulled down and across, careful not to get the teeth snagged, letting the skin fall away against the countertop with a lovely squelching sound until my restored ribcage was fully open to the air. Beneath them, my lungs pressed up against the bone and formed resin, swollen with the force of my inhalation.

“Ready?” I was careful to not let any exhaust leak back up through my teeth. Clive choked out a reply, muffled by his rising gorge.

Smiling at Rowan, I took one further breath inward to stoke the embers on the smoke, the lungflesh beginning to protrude out through the gaps between the ribs like a water balloon heedlessly squeezed to bursting between the fingers of an excited child. I took the cigarette from my lips and, watching Clive focus on its movement, slowly prodded the glowing end through the ribs and against the membrane of my breath sacs, listening to the sizzle of the meat, a hot grill frying up fresh liver and onions for hungry customers. Fumes rose from the branding until finally the tissue gave way and the cigarette broke through. The smoke I had been holding back for fully five minutes flowed forth, filling the air around my head. I flicked the cigarette away and zipped open another slit, just beneath my navel. I reached inside and took a hold of my lungs from the bottom, squeezing out every last vapor, the force generating a steam-kettle whistling as the smoke rushed out.

“Is that what you want?” I asked. “Does this satisfy you?” I looked at Rowan and snarled. She lit another cigarette and blew smoke in my face.

“Get going,” she said to Clive. “You're not paid by the hour, so move.”

Clive stuck his head out the door and yelled an end to smoke break. As the techies drifted back in, the cameraman hoisted his rig onto his shoulder and aimed the lens at me.

“Now,” Clive hissed. “Just zip up, and we'll begin again.”

I shook my head, and pulled open two more zippers, watching several technicians blanch. “I'm going
au natural
. Deal with it.”

Clive looked to Rowan, who shrugged,
what the hell, he's the talent
. “All right, from the top. What are you eating?”

I heaved a theatrical sigh and looked into the camera's eye. “This?” I asked as I prepared my sandwich again. I spread my lips wide, the grin severing my face. “Well, I have what you could call a. Strange diet. My body wants live flesh, but. We've managed to fool it with. A synthetic meat grown from human stem cells.”

“Like, from embryos?”

I twisted the grin into a malicious leer. “Oh, could be, yes. I didn't ask. Could be. Something to think about, isn't it? All those embryos. Yummy. But for all intents and purposes, this is. Human meat, grown in an incubator. And delivered fresh to my plate. I'm seasoning it with a plasma substitute commonly. Used in emergency surgeries.” I held the completed sandwich up for inspection; a thick liquid red oozed out the sides as I compressed the layers together with my fingers. “You know,” I said as if the thought had just occurred to me, “I hear they're doing this with pork and chicken, too. Synthesizing the meat in test tubes. Soon, we might all be eating like this.” I cracked my jaw wide and took a bite, taking over half the sandwich in my mouth at once. I groaned with exaggerated pleasure. “Boy, that is finger lickin' good,” I said, winking at the cameraman. Behind him, Clive called a cut as a key grip vomited until he cried.