William Lashner - Marked Man

She wore a bikini, blue with yellow flowers that matched her yellow hair. Long legs, high breasts, just a smattering of acne across her prominent cheekbones. There was a radiance to her, a youthful exuberance, and yet you could see in her the woman she would soon become. For an instant I wondered if maybe she was the missing Chantal, but then I did the calculation. Chantal would have been in her mid-thirties, this girl was all of fourteen. Still, she frolicked in the afternoon sun as if the pool and patio were her own backyard. Maybe they were. Maybe she was Theodore Purcell’s daughter.

I watched her perform a graceful jackknife into the water and thought about what I might end up doing to her comfortable life, and then I stopped thinking and took another long sip of my drink. For lack of something better to do, I opened the script.

Fade in.

It wasn’t very good, you could tell it right off, with its hackneyed title and too-cute dialogue that went nowhere, and it wasn’t long before I started fading out.

“Who is Chantal?”

I woke with a start when I heard the voice. It was the young girl, standing right next to my lounge chair, looking down at me. “Excuse me?” I said.

“Chantal. The name on your tattoo. Is she your mother? That’s the kind of tattoo that usually has ‘Mom’ on it.”

“It’s not my mother,” I said. “It’s just the name of a girl. I’m Victor.”

“I’m Bryce. Is she Chantal?” she said, pointing to Monica, who was asleep in the sun beside me. In the heat, and with a few of Lou’s piña coladas between us, the jet lag had taken us both down.

“No, her name’s Monica. She’s just a friend. We’re working together.”

“Do you make movies, too?”

“Hardly.”

“Then why is there a script open on your stomach?”

“Oh, this?” I sat up, put the script to the side. “Mr. Purcell gave it to me to read.”

“Uncle Theodore always has a new script he needs you to read. They’re all” – and here she roughed up her voice in an imitation – “brilliant, genius. Take a look and tell me what you think.”

“So he’s your uncle?”

“Friend uncle, not uncle uncle. I like your tattoo. The colors are still bright, and you don’t see too many hearts except on old men.”

“Thank you, I think.”

“Your friend Monica has a nice flower on her ankle. And I like the dove on her shoulder. I wanted to get a tattoo of a fish on my back, but my mom wouldn’t let me. She said I was too young.”

“Well, Bryce, I think that’s very sensible. A tattoo is easy to get and easy to regret.”

“But it was a nice fish, blue with yellow stripes. I saw it when I went scuba diving in Cabo San Lucas with Uncle Theodore.”

“Is your mother here?”

“She’s working inside,” said Bryce. “Her name’s Lena. She’s Uncle Theodore’s secretary. She’s worked for him from before I was born. Do you regret your tattoo?”

I thought about it for a moment. “I’m not sure,” I said.

“I won’t regret mine, it was a pretty fish.” She smiled at me brightly before spinning away and heading toward the hot tub. I watched as she turned on the jets and slipped into the bubbling water. She tossed back her head in the water as if the jets were giving her a deep-muscle massage.

“Who was that?” said Monica, groggily lifting herself onto her elbows and opening her eyes.

“That was Bryce,” I said.

“Who’s Bryce?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But there’s something about her that worries me.”

“How’s the script?”

“Awful.”

“Too bad. I have an idea for a movie.”

“Why shouldn’t you? Everyone else does.”

“It’s about a girl who goes missing.”

“Why am I not surprised?”

“And she reappears decades later. But here’s the thing: She’s the same age as when she disappeared. And she wears white robes, and she glows.”

“And then she saves the world.”

“How did you know?”

“Lucky guess. So why did she go missing?”

“I’m not sure yet. Aliens, maybe, but good aliens, not bad aliens.”

“That’s a relief.”

“Or maybe there was, like, a saint involved.”

“Or a clown.”

Just then I spied Theodore Purcell charging out of his house, followed by the nastily servile Reggie and just-plain-servile Lou. Theodore Purcell was chomping on his cigar, obviously upset, when he glanced at us, stopped for a moment, and then said something out of the side of his mouth. Lou nodded and hustled our way as Theodore shucked off his robe. He sported a Speedo of his own, stretched beneath a round, sagging belly. Purcell handed his robe to Reggie as he climbed into the tub with Bryce. I could hear Theodore Purcell’s guttural mumble followed by a squeal of laughter from the girl.

“You like quail?” said Lou, who had now appeared behind my chair.

“That’s not very politically correct of you, Lou.”

“I mean bird. Roasted. With pine nuts and pineapple.”

“Sounds delicious.”

“I make special for you and pretty lady friend, you stay for dinner.”

“Is that an invitation?”

“What you think, I run restaurant?”

“Will Mr. Purcell be there?”

“Oh, yes, just three of you. He say he want private dinner. Everyone gone. Staff go home. Just Lou to cook and clean like slave.”

“I suppose he has a story to tell.”

“Either that or he want to have hot hot sex with you.”

I looked over at Theodore Purcell in the hot tub. “Let’s hope it’s a story.”

“So you stay?”

In the hot tub, in a quiet moment, Theodore Purcell patted young Bryce on the neck. Bryce edged toward his touch. Reggie looked away.

“I wouldn’t miss it,” I said.

“What did you thinkof the script, kid?” said Theodore Purcell.

“Not much,” I said as I cut into my quail. “It didn’t grab me.”

He tilted his head as if I had insulted his mother.

“It reminded me of the way I used to run in Little League,” I said. “A lot of up-and-down without much forward movement.”

“How would you fix it, then, smart guy?”

“I’d hire a writer and tell him to start on page one.”

Theodore Purcell stared at me for a moment with a deep anger brewing in his eyes, and then, suddenly, he broke into laughter, loud and guttural. We were in a large room, big enough to hold a king’s banquet, but completely empty except for the small round table by the window where we were sitting. There was crisp linen on the table, the china was fine, and the cutlery was silver, but the table shuddered with each stroke of the knife, as if it were about to collapse under the weight of everything upon it.

Still, our skin was nicely crisped, the quail was gently roasted. Lou, in his tuxedo, was filling and refilling our wineglasses with something very old and very white. Quite charming, actually, with hints of peach and oak. No white zinfandel for Theodore Purcell. It was all so lovely it was almost possible to forget why we were there, which might have been the point of the whole exercise.

“Think you could make it in this town, kid?” Purcell said when his laughter subsided. “Think you could have a run at the producer’s table?”

“What’s so hard? Read a little Nietzsche, steal a little art, screw over your pals. Nothing to it.”

“Give it a try, punk, and see where you come out. L.A. can be a tough town if you’re from out of town. Even though everyone’s from out of town. I spent years trying to get my foot in the door. Was it hard? You bet. I was like you, kid. I didn’t have Harvard, I didn’t have a rich daddy. All I had was the eye of a hunter. And the determination to pay the price.”