Popcorn (11 page)

SIXTEEN

B
ruce swung round and recoiled. In doing so he dug an elbow into Brooke’s stomach. She yelped in pain. Despite the terror of the situation she could not help but protest: “Be careful, for Christ’s sake.”

Bruce didn’t apologize — he was too surprised, too scared. He allowed himself a momentary crumb of hope. “Brooke, do you know this guy? Is this part of your joke thing?” But even as he said it, he knew that this was no joke.

“I do not know this man, Bruce.” Brooke’s voice betrayed her status as his partner in terror.

Neither she nor Bruce could think of anything more to say. The three of them just stared at each other. Wayne brought the gun down from his shoulder so that it hung casually from his hand, pointing towards the luxurious rug. He had a pistol stuck in the waistband of his jeans and another machine-gun slung across his back; he also had a huge hunting knife at his belt. So heavily armed was he that it would not have surprised a casual observer to be told that he had a hand grenade clamped between his buttocks, a bazooka lodged behind his ear and the nuclear button hidden in the holdall he carried in his non-gun hand.

Wayne took a step towards the couch and, leaning over, stared hard at Bruce. He put his face right into Bruce’s, drinking in every detail at extremely close quarters. Bruce held his ground, but he had never in his life felt so uncomfortable or so intimidated.

After what seemed like a whole minute (which it was), Wayne whistled slowly, as if unable to believe what he saw.

“I don’t believe this. I do not be-fuckin’—lieve this! Sheeee-IT!” Wayne exclaimed, shouting the final expletive as he turned away from Bruce in his wonderment. “I mean I knew it was the right house n’ all on account of the scripts and stuff in your bathroom, but I still can’t believe it…I am actually here, I am actually meeting Bruce Delamitri. Bruce Dela-fuckin’—mitri. The man! I am talking about the fuckin’ MAN here!”

He dropped the holdall and shook Bruce’s hand hard. Bruce was still sitting half on top of Brooke, so all three of them shook slightly with the force of it. “I can not tell you what a pleasure it is to meet you, sir. Scout!” Wayne shouted. “C’mon in here and say Hi. Oh yes, this is a real thrill, sir. This is awesome. Scout, get your dumb ass in here right now! Don’t make me come get you, now!”

Scout appeared nervously in the doorway. Her hair was tousled at the back from having just had sex, her cotton print dress gaped open a little at her breast from hurried dressing. Her bare toes were twitching again at the carpet, still unused as they were to such a luxurious sensation. There was a pistol at her hip, a huge pistol, a Magnum or something like that. It seemed to have been chosen deliberately to accentuate the smallness and birdlike, girlish quality of her body. Scout also carried a machine-gun, hanging from her hand as a little girl might hold a teddy bear. If she was trying to look like an innocent but sexy, childlike but womanly, vulnerable but dangerous, slightly imbalanced cutie pie, she was succeeding. If she wasn’t trying, she was a natural.

She stared at Brooke and Bruce with what seemed to be something approaching awe. It was almost as if she was more scared of them than they were of her. This was naturally not the case, but that was how it looked. Her big eyes were sad and troubled, and there was a hesitant, almost ingratiating, smile on her lips. She wanted them to like her. She raised a hand and nervously tried to arrange her hair.

“Hi!” She giggled nervously, embarrassedly even, as if she knew she’d been naughty but hoped they were pleased to see her anyway.

Bruce and Brooke could only stare.

“C’mon in, hon. Join the party.” Wayne was as brash and confident as Scout seemed reserved. She stayed where she was, rubbing one bare foot nervously against the opposite calf.

“We messed up your sheets some,” she said, “but you know, with modern detergents there shouldn’t be any problem.”

Wayne did not feel that this was the right note to strike. You do not introduce yourself to your new hosts by owning up to having just stained their sheets. “It don’t matter about no sheets, sugar. We can buy more sheets. This is Bruce Delamitri. You are looking at the man here.
The
man.”

Wayne gestured flamboyantly towards Bruce. He seemed to mean it friendly enough, but since the hand with which he gestured was holding a gun it was something of an alarming movement nevertheless.

Seeing Bruce recoil in terror, Scout hastened to reassure him. “Wayne’s a real big fan of your pictures, Mr Delamitri. He saw you on
Coffee Time USA
with Oliver and Dale yesterday, and he’s seen all your movies dozens of times…Me too, I like them for sure, but Wayne, he just loves them.”

“Hey, Scout, quit it. I’ll bet Mr Delamitri gets real tired of people telling him all that stuff.”

A glimmer of something which, if not hope, was at least a positive and coherent thought crossed Bruce’s mind. There was a great deal in Wayne and Scout’s behaviour that Bruce recognized, that he had dealt with before. They were basically acting like a couple of fans, Scout shuffling her bare feet and casting shy sidelong glances at Brooke, while Wayne stood with his head held high in a ‘Hey, I know you’re famous but you’re just a regular guy like me’ pose. Bruce had met these couples a thousand times. The girl is all embarrassed, while the guy struts up to you and says, “I guess you really hate being bothered,” and then proceeds to bother you. As if by ‘being bothered’ the guy means Bruce would hate to be bothered by schmucks and assholes, not by regular guys like himself. Bruce’s work had always attracted these chippy, arrogant male fans, the sort of person who asks for an autograph and then says, “You can have mine if you want,” adding with a sneer, “Except you wouldn’t want it, would you, because I’m not famous, I suppose.” As if Bruce had gone out and become a celebrity simply in order to score a cheap and easy point over a person who is clearly his equal if not a slightly better person than himself.

Oh yes, Bruce knew Wayne’s tone of arrogant approbation; he had found the same thing in his face many times. What he was not used to was finding it heavily armed and having broken into his house.

“Do you want money?” Bruce found a voice of sorts. “I have money, about two thousand dollars in cash, and there’s some jewellery…”

Wayne raised one booted foot on to the coffee table and leant his weight upon his knee, bending towards Bruce, his boot crushing the residue of the white powder that Brooke had placed upon it. It would have made a good close-up for one of Bruce’s ironic moments, symbolizing virile, honest mayhem kicking aside pretentious decadence.

“Mr Delamitri…May I call you Bruce?”

Bruce nodded. He hoped the nod was firm and dignified, politely showing that he was following events closely and considering his options. In fact he nodded like a toy dog on the rear shelf of a family saloon, a panicky movement which suggested that Wayne could call Bruce anus-breath if he wished, so long as Wayne refrained from killing him.

“Bruce, we don’t want no money. We got money, we got more money than we can spend, and we don’t spend nothing anyway because we steal all our stuff. We just came around to visit with you. Is that OK? If we visit with you? How about we all sit down? Maybe we could have us a drink? Would that be OK? I like bourbon and Scout here’ll take anything sweet.”

Wayne stepped back to the couch opposite the one on which Bruce and Brooke still sat, and collapsed casually on to it. Scout joined him, but with none of his showy confidence. She perched on the edge of the cushion, as if anxious to show that she did not wish to intrude or be the cause of any inconvenience. Bruce got up and went to his drinks cabinet, leaving Brooke alone on the couch. She had been half lying on it since being disturbed in mid-embrace, and she seized the opportunity to sit upright and adjust her clothing. Brooke, like Scout, was barefoot and Bruce had been on the point of liberating her bosom from her dress when they were interrupted. She put her shoes back on and did her best to cover herself up. A highly revealing evening dress is not the most comfortable garment in which to confront armed intruders.

There was an embarrassed pause. Nobody knew what to say. Socially the situation could not have been more difficult.

Scout turned to Brooke in an effort to make polite conversation. She felt, perhaps rightly, that though she was a guest, the burden of social responsibility lay at least partly with her. “You’re Brooke Daniels aren’t you?”

It was like two people forced into conversation in a doctor’s waiting-room. Brooke’s face twitched in a reply of sorts; she was clearly in no mood for small-talk.

“Yes, you are,” Scout continued. “I’d know you anytime from all the magazines you’ve been in…
Vogue
and
Esquire
and
Vanity Fair
…I love all that stuff, it’s so glamorous and nice…I’ve been in a magazine too…”

“Sure, Scout,
America’s Most Wanted
.” Wayne laughed and slapped Scout’s thigh.

“It’s a magazine! Isn’t it Brooke?…Brooke? It’s a magazine, isn’t it?
America’s Most Wanted
is a magazine, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it’s a magazine.” Brooke’s throat was so dry she was surprised that the words came out.

“Of course it’s a magazine, and I was in it and you said I looked cute, Wayne.”

“You always look cute, honey. Don’t need no magazine to prove that.”

Bruce brought Wayne his bourbon. He had agonized over how much to pour. A lot? A little? Would Wayne be a violent drunk or a mellow one? If shitfaced, would Wayne start singing ‘Danny Boy’ and collapse, weeping, on Bruce’s shoulder, swearing they would be buddies for ever? Or would he puke up on his boots and spray the room with bullets? Bruce had eventually opted for rather a short measure, which he had attempted to pad out with ice. Wayne knocked it back in one, but to Bruce’s relief did not immediately ask for another.

“Hear what I said, Bruce? I said Scout here’s cute enough for any damn magazine, and I’m right, ain’t I?”

Bruce didn’t answer, preferring to make another attempt to establish Wayne’s agenda. “Look…if you don’t want cash, I have a customized Lamborghini parked right outside and—”

“Bruce, I don’t want your damn car.” Wayne’s voice was calm but suddenly sinister. He addressed his reply to the ice in the bottom of his glass. “Matter of fact, I got a car.”

“I see.”

“An American fuckin’ car. Made in the motor city US-fuckin”— A, out of sweat and American steel’ — Wayne’s voice began to rise — “not some fuckin’ wop, faggot, greaseball-built pile of tin shit for queers! A Lamborghini! Bruce, I am surprised at you. When you drive a foreign car you are driving over American jobs.”

Bruce was silent. It did not seem the right time to discuss the relative merits of free trade and protectionism. He gave Scout her drink, thankful to have a diversion, even such a small one.

“This
is crème de menthe
,” he said. “It’s sweet.”

“I love cocktails.”

Bruce returned to the drinks cabinet and collected two small bourbons for himself and Brooke. He sat down beside her on the couch, sipping at his; she did not touch hers.

Again an uncomfortable silence descended. Having so completely misfired with his last attempt, Bruce was reluctant to have another go at establishing what these lunatics wanted. Brooke had nothing to contribute either. It fell once more to Wayne and Scout to keep the nervous, desultory conversation going.

“Why’d you do that
Playboy
spread, Brooke?” Wayne asked. “I mean, I ain’t saying it wasn’t beautiful, because it was, but hell, I wouldn’t never let Scout do a thing like that. I’d kill her first, and Hugh fuckin’ Hefner too.”

“Oh, come on now, Wayne,” said Scout coyly. “As if anyone would ever want to see me in
Playboy
magazine!”

She was clearly fishing for compliments. Bruce wondered about attempting to ingratiate himself by assuring her that she was certainly centrefold material. He was glad he didn’t.

“Sure they would, honey,” Wayne said. “Oh yes they would. Excepting I wouldn’t let you do it, on account of the fact that my rule is that if a man even looks at you with lust in his eyes, I have to kill him. So if you was to be in
Playboy
I’d have to kill just about half the men in the United States.”

“You’re getting there anyway, honey!” Wayne and Scout laughed at this.

Wayne turned to Bruce as if to explain some small private joke. “Scout’s exaggerating of course, Bruce. Why, I bet I haven’t killed more than forty or fifty people.”

Again an embarrassed moment, as Scout’s laughter died away into silence.

“So why’d you do it, Brooke?” Wayne returned to his theme. “I’d really like to know.”

Brooke could only stare. It would have taken a less astute judge of character than she to have failed to notice that Wayne was unpredictable. She had noticed the traces of bruising on Scout’s leg where Wayne’s marauding hand had pulled away her thin cotton skirt a little. Brooke decided that the more desirable of two deeply undesirable choices was to say nothing. Scout spoke for her. She knew the answer; she had read it in a magazine.