Donald Westlake - Sacred Monster

“Hard to say, exactly,” O’Connor answers, tapping his pen against the notebook.

“Less than an hour?”

“Oh, sure,” O’Connor says. “No problem.”

“Good,” Hoskins says. “All in all, one prefers not to use the suppositories.”

As Hoskins begins taking bottles and boxes from the bag, studying them, fiddling with them, O’Connor says, “Hoskins, do you have to keep readjusting him all the time like this?”

“Oh, no, sir,” Hoskins assures him. “Usually we let him set his own pace, you know. It’s only if he’s actually filming, or such. But today, of course, is rather different.”

“I see.” O’Connor nods, then says, “Hoskins, do you mind my asking? What do you think of Jack Pine?”

“Think of him, sir?” Hoskins ponders that question, then says, “One doesn’t normally think about one’s employer. It’s not quite seemly. Still, I would say he’s rather easier than most to get along with.”

“Particularly when he’s like this,” O’Connor suggests.

“Too true,” Hoskins agrees. “Nevertheless, he is rather a sweet person at heart.” Frowning at the sweet person, Hoskins says, “Our next adjustment is a two-stager. Do you mind my being here in the interval?”

“You mean, while I’m questioning him?”

“Well, yes, sir, or whatever you do.”

“Is that necessary?” O’Connor asks. He seems jealous of his privileged privacy with the actor.

“You could perhaps do the second part yourself, sir, if you wouldn’t object,” Hoskins suggests.

“No objection,” O’Connor says promptly. “What do I do?”

“You have a watch?”

“Sure,” O’Connor says, extending his left wrist, showing the Timex strapped there.

“Good.”

Hoskins places the tray bearing the glass of water next to O’Connor’s chair. He transfers three red capsules from a bottle out of the doctor’s bag to his palm and then to the tray, next to the water. “When I give you the sign,” he says, “look at your watch, and in exactly three minutes from that time, give him these three capsules. Make sure he takes them all and washes them down with all the water. We don’t want him going nova on us.”

“No, you’re right,” O’Connor says. Feeling something like awe, he looks at his watch and at the three capsules lying on the silver tray.

From the doctor’s bag, Hoskins takes a plastic tube with a ball at the end of it. There seems to be something inside the tube, which Hoskins inserts into Pine’s left nostril. Then he slowly squeezes the ball, counting aloud: “One. Two. Three. Four. Five .” Removing the tube from his employer’s nose, he turns and says to O’Connor, “Counting from now .”

O’Connor looks closely at his watch. He’s very aware of his responsibility.

Hoskins puts the tube away, puts the other boxes and bottles away, and closes the doctor’s bag. Then he gets to his feet, dusts off the knees of his trousers, picks up the doctor’s bag, and says to O’Connor, “Remember, sir. Three minutes.”

“I remember,” O’Connor says.

Pine suddenly speaks, without altering his posture or expression or changing in any other way. In a deep sepulchral voice he says, “Frankly, Scarlett, I don’t give a flying fuck.”

“Ah, yes,” Hoskins says, nodding in satisfaction. “The Gone with the Wind remake. We just recently completed that.”

“I know,” O’Connor says. “He told me.”

“More of it may surface,” Hoskins says, “but it should taper off quite soon.”

In that same deep sepulchral voice, still without shifting position or changing facial expression, the actor intones, “You want something from me, and you want it badly enough to show a lot of tit in those velvets.”

“Well,” Hoskins says, “until the next crisis.” And he leaves, heading back to the house again, carrying the doctor’s bag with him.

O’Connor, mindful of the three-minute deadline, looks at his watch.

“What time is it?”

Startled, O’Connor looks past his watch at the actor, and finds the man looking back at him, calm and relaxed and apparently in perfectly ordinary shape. O’Connor says, “Mr. Pine? Are you all right?”

“Of course, I’m all right,” Pine answers, his manner now surly, even snappish. “Who the hell are you?” he demands. “You better scram before I call Security.”

“I’m Michael O’Connor. We’ve been talking here.”

Pine’s face goes blank. In that deep sepulchral voice again, he says, “Rhett. Rhett Butler. And I don’t take shit from any man.”

Exasperated, trying to find some way to get Pine back on track, O’Connor says, “Did Dori Lunsford get the beach house? After the divorce?”

The actor frowns at him, uncomprehending, and slowly that expressive face changes, lightens up, becomes cheerful and welcoming again. “The interviewer!” Pine says, delighted to see him. “Where you been, Michael?”

O’Connor, becoming wise in the ways of Jack Pine’s mind, says, “Took a walk around, looked at the property.”

“Nice here, isn’t it?” Pine smiles around at his land, and O’Connor notices how he manages never to look directly at the swimming pool. Still smiling, the actor says, “No, it was Lorraine who got the beach house, finally, after a long fight. Dori would have gotten this place, only we didn’t actually have to get divorced.”

“You didn’t?”

“No.” The actor smiles broadly in remembered pleasure. “It was a real pleasant surprise. I got an annulment, not a divorce. Turns out, prenuptial consummations don’t count.”

“So this has been your home ever since.”

Pine looks around, looks left, looks right, smiles in comfortable ownership, never looks directly at the pool. “Yeah,” he says dreamily. “There’s no place like home.”

A heavenly chorus sings; hallelujah. Jack floats down the wide staircase, a dust mote among the dust motes, his fingertips gliding down the polished oak balustrade, his feet never touching the stairs. Shafts of sunlight bend around him, creating a personal monogrammed rainbow just for Jack Pine. Imagine!

Partway down the stairs, Jack meets sullen, grumpy old Buddy coming up, in loafers and chinos and a beautiful beige cashmere sweater that just eats up all the sun. “ Hi, Buddy,” Jack sings, pirouetting on the stairs, the chorus turning his words into madrigals, the dust motes writing the music on the staffs of sunshafts. “Just get in, Buddy Buddy?”

“Looks that way,” grumbles Buddy, not in tune with the music or the day at all, and he stumps on up the stairs, barely even glancing in Jack’s direction.

Why can’t Buddy be happy? Jack is happy. Jack floats down a step or two, then stops to consider a sudden kind of revelation. Wafting about, gazing upward at Buddy’s bent receding back, Jack says, “Buddy? Isn’t that my sweater?”

“It was,” Buddy says, without pausing or looking back. As Jack watches, with tiny tendrils of distress creeping about his heart, Buddy pounds on up to the top of the stairs and disappears down the wide white hall.

“Sir?”

It is Hoskins’s voice, taking a solo above the chorus. Jack floats around to face down-flight, and there stands Hoskins, all in black, at the bottom step, his hand upon the newel post.

“Ah, Hoskins,” Jack breathes, grateful for the distraction that made him forget...

...something.

“Dr. Ovoid’s here, sir,” Hoskins announces.

Elation lifts Jack even farther into the air, inches and inches above the mundane wooden steps. “Goody!” he cries.

Hoskins lifts a surprisingly expressive hand from the newel post and gestures gracefully with it, as he says, “I put him in the east parlor.”