The Cutting Room (21 page)

Her brow wrinkled, as if she were about to take offense.

“I mean,” I said, “after you, you know, come in.”

The jumper had big buttons on the shoulders, like a child’s outfit. But it did not make Jeanine seem anything other than adult. Indeed, tonight she didn’t seem a mixture of the elderly and the adolescent. She was her own age, which, come to think of it, was not very far from my own.

“My horoscope didn’t predict this,” she whispered as I undid the buttons and then the straps.

“Jeez,” I said, teasing her. “Maybe that stuff isn’t true, then.”

She hit me a little, comically. Then, deadly serious, she nuzzled at my neck, kissed and bit my lips, and filled my mouth with her tongue.

The jumper fell to her feet, was kicked gently away. I pulled up the turtleneck beneath it, bunching it at her large breasts, and pulled her close. Jeanine did the rest of the work to remove it, and her mismatched underwear—black bra, white panties—made me feel more aroused, and newly close to her. She was so real.

“Forgive me,” I whispered, “if I don’t last too long.”

“Okay,” she whispered back, “I’ll try to come real fast.”

We laughed as much as we moaned. For all the talking we had done, all the movies we had discussed, all the spats we had had, we had never said these kinds of words before.

The first time, I did not, in fact, last long. But only the first time.

Not wanting to disturb anyone else, after many experiments, we found that the bed banged least with Jeanine on top, her back arched, her fingers curled in mine, her breasts shifting ever so slightly as she moved with excruciating slowness.

Afterward, we would have slept forever, had it not been for the sound of screams.

Jumping into my jeans, I rushed into the hallway. There I saw three disturbing sights, my eyes shifting from one to the other, like a crazy moving camera.

Alice stood on the second-floor landing, dressed in a nightgown, her head pitched back, her mouth wide open, shrieking like a banshee beckoning forces of revenge. In pajama bottoms, Claude lay in the center of the stairs, on his stomach, halfway down, his hand outstretched. Running out the front door was the hitman in the pin-striped suit, his face covered by the ski mask. And in his arms was little Orson, who moaned and murmured faintly, his mouth taped, his tied hands waving wildly above his head.

Panning swiftly to the right, I saw through Orson’s open door. Its shelves of toys and books were toppled, as if having been hastily searched. Panning back downstairs, I saw the masked man stepping over stuff in the front-door vestibule, which had also been ransacked. Then he was gone.

I glanced back at Jeanine, standing in my doorway, clutching a sheet around herself. Her own eyes, unmoving, were staring straight at me and filled with fear.

Gilda, the dog, barked. But there was only one human being who was conscious, not screaming, and wearing pants.

Taking a deep breath, I raced past the frozen form of Alice and darted down the stairs. Dancing around the prone—I hoped, still breathing—body of her husband, I flew out the door, left open by the masked man in his haste.

I figured it was about three
A.M.
The neighborhood was dark, except for a single streetlight on the quiet block. The only sound was Alice’s outraged-mother cry, which faded, and then ceased.

The man in the mask threw the boy on the backseat of a small black car, which had been parked in the Krippses’ driveway. He was about to open the driver’s door and get in.

Coming fast for him, my heart booming, I shouted, absurdly, “Hey!”

To my surprise, he turned. I had nothing more to say, of course. I just felt the same foolish, instinctive courage that overcame me whenever
Ambersons
was near. But tonight, was it to save the movie or the boy? I didn’t know.

Even more absurdly, I said, “Let’s go! Knock it off!”

I sounded like a neighbor scolding children fighting on my lawn. The man dismissed me with a turn back toward the door of the car.

He never made it. Sprinting to reach him, I grabbed at the left lapel of his three-piece suit and pulled.

The next second, I was blinded. The man had yanked one of those long, basement flashlights from the front seat and shone it in my eyes. Lost in a shock of white light, I felt his fist connecting with my gut.

I doubled over and hit the dirt, my second time down that day. When I looked up, the flashlight was off and, in the black, the man’s foot—wearing a polished yuppie wingtip—was coming for my face.

Turning at the last second, I felt the impact solely in my bare shoulder. The shoe’s sharp tip sunk in like a spike and turned me sharply to the side. But the shoe lingered there long enough for me to grab it, hold it, and—my fingers digging in—remove it.

I brought the shoe up like a tennis racket, a topspin backhand whipped into the masked man’s face. He swiveled, once, grunting, as if insulted. Then, my arm still extended, he quickly grabbed my hand, which held the shoe, and pulled me forward.

My arm bent, I went dancing into him. There we stayed, my naked torso locked against his pin-striped chest, my elbow at his belt, like a kinky tango team. His breath blew pot and garlic on my face. With one hand, he pulled my hair back. Then, slowly, his grip of my wrist increased until I felt the bones about to break. At the same time, he pressed upon my bare foot with the shoe he still had on.

Such simple movements can cause such pain: pressing and pulling, bending and turning. He did not have a weapon and he did not need one. I dropped the other shoe, a joke I did not get until later.

“Hey . . . ,” I whispered weakly now, “knock it off.”

His foot lifting, his hand relaxing, he pushed me away, as if disgusted. I stumbled back, then fell upon the unmowed lawn. I heard a door slam, a boy moan, and an ignition turn.

But it was not just courage that possessed me at these strange times; it was energy. In a second, I was on my feet again and running beside the car as it took off.

A running board would have been nice, but I had something better: the boy. Through the window, Orson’s terrified eyes locked onto mine. Then, raising his small, tied-up hands, he unrolled the back window just enough for me to push my fingers in and grab.

The car peeled out, and I held on to the window and so on to the car, my feet skidding on and off the door. Scrambling ingeniously, the boy then jimmied the lock. The door swung open and tipped to the side, with me on it.

The car careened around a corner, and the door tilted again toward closed. As it did, I tried to push my feet inside, onto the backseat floor, and so get in.

But like an angry dad, the masked man slapped at Orson from the front seat. The boy skittered away from him. Then, his own fingers near mine, the masked man pulled the window to shut the back door.

I yanked my feet out, just in time. My fingers came loose from the glass. I went into free-fall, as if pushed from a plane, onto another neighbor’s lawn.

I heard the screeching wheels of the car as it disappeared into the night. Then, all I heard were suburb sounds: barking dogs, crickets, and someone else’s car alarm.

“You must have been followed,” Jeanine said in a worried whisper.

“Well, it might have been me,” I said, “or it might have been you.”

“Me?”

“That bodyguard at the rally saw you with me, didn’t he? And the ‘blind’ guy had already found
me
.”

“I won’t take the blame for this.”

“Nobody’s blaming you—but you could at least say I was right about Webby.”

It was our first fight—and on such an unpleasant topic. It wasn’t the most auspicious way to end our first night together, huddled as we were in the Krippses’ kitchen, Jeanine in a borrowed blanket, me with bandages now practically filling my face. And it wasn’t helped by Jeanine’s implication that I was responsible, nor by the fact that I essentially—secretly—agreed.

I had not wanted the Kripps to call the cops, of course. But how could I have stopped them? The unconscious Claude needed emergency care, though he had just bumped his head on the stairs while trying to save his son, and had a mild concussion. Alice, on the other hand, was still hysterical, and tranquilized, she now slept, though fitfully, on the living room couch.

When they came, the cops found me noncommittal, but Jeanine wanted to tell them everything. I had to practically beg her not to, and, in the end, she made no mention of
The Magnificent Ambersons
, Webby Slicone, Erendira, Ben Williams, Gus Ziegler, Alan Gilbert, or anybody else. I could see that she hated me for convincing her or, more exactly, herself for agreeing. Maybe she felt that, immediately after sex, she had started knuckling under; what a love affair
this
was going to be!

“Well, at least let me tell the Kripps,” she said. “It
is
their child, for God’s sake.”

“Please,” I answered, “it’s not a good idea.”

“You know, Roy,” she nearly spit at me now, “screw Orson Welles, and screw you.”

I took her abuse. I couldn’t tell Jeanine everything, either. I couldn’t tell her that I wanted to handle this, that I felt I was the only one who could. Or that I really wanted to retrieve the boy, and not
Ambersons
. No actor, after all, had ever looked at me like that through a car window.

Maybe I could admit that to myself now, but not to a woman who might get the wrong ideas. That I was actually a decent man, for instance. Who knows what she would do with that kind of information? Like really love me, I mean.

“Look,” I said, “just let me handle this.”

“Okay, babe. Handle away.”

Jeanine pointed to the living room, as if to say,
Start there
. I saw Claude seated on the couch near his sleeping wife, fondly holding the little action figure his son had left behind.

I approached him, very carefully, almost on tiptoes. His father feelings were more foreign to me than Catalan in Spain. I did not want to say the wrong thing.

“Claude?”

Slowly, he looked up. His face was even fuller now from being so swollen. All life had drained from his eyes, which seemed cried out, though I had not even heard him whimper. He managed a raspy, “Yes?”

“What did the cops say, when they left?”

“That they’d be in touch.”

I nodded sadly. Then, choosing my words cautiously, not wanting to tip my hand, I told him, “Is there anything I can do to—”

But before I could continue, the phone rang.

I heard Jeanine cry out in the kitchen. I jumped myself. Claude took a deep breath, and his eyes blinked several times, as if awakening. But before he could rise or even speak, I said quickly, “I’ll get it.”

Before it rang a third time, I walked swiftly to the kitchen, then snapped up the receiver from the wall. As I suspected, a voice on the other end said, “Give me what you have, and I’ll give you back the kid.”

Then the line went dead.

Though my face was pale, I tried not to betray an emotion as I replaced the phone. To the very expectant Jeanine and to Claude, who had just anxiously entered, I said, “Wrong number.”

Claude’s face fell, and then he seemed to sink into a chair. He absently fingered another cigar from his pocket, but then just chewed it, unlit.

I took the opportunity to quietly complete my question.

“Is there anything I”—I cut Jeanine off, before she could speak—“
we
can do?”

With stiff upper lip, Claude shook his head.

“Just help me take care of Alice, if you don’t mind,” he said. “I’ll have to carry on, until we know something. There’s, you know, work to do.”

Jeanine nodded, already making for the living room to sit beside Claude’s wife. With her gone, I tentatively placed a consoling hand on the bigger man’s arm.

“Don’t be such a hero,” I said. “You can shift some of the load. That’s what friends are for.”

Claude managed a touched and gratified smile. Then I dared to suggest what I had wanted to all along, though the reasons for it now had changed completely.

“Why don’t you let me keep your meeting with Webby? You’re really not up to it, are you?”

Claude looked at me, and tears twinkled in his eyes. Even more moved by my compassion, he slowly nodded yes.

I can love you good

Better than JFK could.

I promise I can sing

Better than Warren Har . . . ding.

I’ll tell you the truth.

I’ll be yours forever.

So enter the booth,

And pull my lever.

Love’s an election.

Make your selection.

And may the best man win.

Hey! Hey! Hey!

May the best man win!

The next day, in his waiting room, I had no choice but to listen to the DreamDates’ old songs. Webby had them piped into his Back Bay office, one after another, from all of their albums, and there had been more than I had ever imagined.

Adding to this aural insult were visual ones: framed pictures of Webby with his new (third) wife, a trophy blonde of forty, and Madonna-like paintings of the late June Faber, with her famous frizzy hair hidden beneath a scarf, staring skyward. There were also photos of Webby greeting Reagan, Nixon, Helms, and Goldwater, and stars like Schwarzenegger, Willis, Costner, and, of course, Ben Williams.

There were no photos of Stu Drayton.

I had anticipated a hassle, and I got one. The officious young receptionist—“Pull the switch!” button on heart, straw boater on head—got pugnacious when I told him that, “I’m filling in for the Kripps.”

He responded, as if this were objectively false. “No, you’re not.”

“You don’t understand, they’ve had a family tragedy. Haven’t you—” I was about to say “read the papers?” but I remembered that the case, like other kidnappings, was being kept hush-hush.

“I don’t care,” he said simply.

“Well, that’s not very compassionate. I thought that your campaign cared about people.”

The young man was about to be equally snide, but then he stopped. Politics did not allow for irony, lest someone think one insensitive.