Donald Westlake - Sacred Monster

The second scream dragged his eyes open. A blur of movement met him, a blur of sound blanketed his ears, and then voices became distinct, full of panic.

“She’s freaked!”

“It’s a bad trip!”

“Hold her, for Christ’s sake!”

And the girl’s voice, screaming, “Get away! Get away!”

Jack turned his wondering head and, along the line of windows, past the milling mob, he could see her, a skinny naked girl of fifteen or sixteen, ribs standing out below her breasts, face distorted, keeping a circle clear around herself by swinging a record jacket back and forth in wide swaths. She screamed and screamed, foam on her lips, and the people around her ducked and dodged, trying to reach her, trying to calm her, trying to get her under somebody’s control.

Jack watched, and then somebody made a lunge for the girl, knocking the record jacket out of her hand. Her scream got louder, more shrill, and she spun about, eluding all those groping arms, and ran straight ahead, full speed through the window.

Jack turned his head, his cheek against the cool glass, and watched her go, in a long arc, out away from the building, high over the sea and the cliff, the shattered glass flying with her, gleaming like diamonds in the sun, the girl a skinny, wild-haired white spider flailing through the air, her scream filling the sky and rolling like Juggernaut through Jack’s brain.

She fell so slowly, like a death in an arty Japanese movie, arcing out and down and out and down, the hard jewels of glass tumbling with her, and Jack watched her go, and saw the great bruised sea rise up for her, and he died. He breathed, he heard the sounds in the room, he saw the sunlight gleaming, he felt the glass warm against his cheek, but he died. The sea sucked the girl in, and he was dead.

Through the pandemonium of the room, Buddy shoved his way to Jack’s side, grabbing him roughly by the elbow, saying urgently in his ear, “Dad! Get your shit together, dammit! We gotta get outa here!”

“Wendy,” Jack whispered. His terror was so severe he couldn’t move. He whispered, “Did you see her? Wendy?”

Buddy grabbed Jack’s jaw in a tight and painful grip, turning Jack’s face up toward his own hot angry glare. “Listen to me, you fucking asshole,” Buddy said, low and fast, below the chaotic noises that had now overtaken the room behind him, but clear and ringing in Jack’s ears. “I still need you,” Buddy rasped, giving Jack’s jaw a hard shake. “You do not freak out on me. You do not get found in this house where some underage cunt offed herself. You get up on your feet and you walk with me out of this house. You do it now .”

“Buddy, Buddy,” Jack said, brimming with gratitude, his eyes filling with tears, “where would I be without my Buddy? You’re my oldest friend in all the world, do you know that?”

“Up, shit-for-brains,” Buddy ordered him, and released Jack’s jaw to grab his hand instead and twist his thumb painfully backward. “On your fucking feet .”

“ You’ll save me, Buddy,” Jack said, beginning to cry, struggling to rise from the couch, making it at last to the vertical, tottering there. “You’ll save me, Buddy Buddy. You always save me, you always do.”

“March,” Buddy told him, twisting his thumb.

“It was Wendy,” Jack whispered, shivering with dread, and the two old friends made their way out of that room and away from that party.

I’m so cold. I hurt all over. My thumb hurts, too, but that’s something else. My jaw hurts, too, but that’s something else. It’s just that I’m so cold. Since I died, I’m cold a lot.

“What?” I say. Michael O’Connor has said something, but I was too cold to hear him.

So he repeats it. “Why did you call that girl Wendy?”

Wendy? What have I been saying? Something must have gone wrong, my balance isn’t right, I’m not paying attention. This cannot be. I must be on guard, always on guard, and especially on guard with the media. Oh, my, yes. “Wendy?” I say, casually, lifting my head, thinking back. “That was the poor girl’s name, I suppose.”

“It was your first girl’s name, too,” he says.

Oh, damn you, Michael, you do have a memory between those ears, don’t you? I smile at him. “Lots of Wendys in this old world,” I say. “Anyway, it got covered up that we were there. Me and two other guys with... names.”

“I don’t remember anything about it,” O’Connor says.

“You wouldn’t,” I assure him. “When a property is as valuable as I am, a lot of very serious professional people see to it that nothing happens to lower that value. I am not a person anymore, you know, Michael, no, sir, not me. I am a property. A valuable property . A whole lot of people would be shit outa luck if anything happened to this property. So nothing does.”

“Well, some things do,” O’Connor suggests. “Some things did, anyway; you told me about them.”

“But not anymore.” I look around, at my domain. “I stay here now, mostly, since that time up at Big Sur. I make one picture a year now, that’s all. I don’t need to do any more; I don’t need the money. I just have to do the one to keep myself current, part of the scene . Grandstanders, now, that’s what I do. I don’t, you know, act anymore. I could if I wanted, I still could, but it’s hard, it’s too hard, and who needs it? They don’t pay their money to see me become somebody, not anymore. They pay to see me be me . An idealized them . I do clenched-jawline stuff a lot. I pick properties with speeches in them.” I glower at Michael O’Connor: “You don’t love me. You never loved me. You never loved anybody . You don’t know how to love.”

This speech seems to make O’Connor uncomfortable. He says, “But what about the talent? The gift?”

“Among my souvenirs.”

“Well... what do you do with the rest of your time?” he asks. “The nine or ten months a year when you’re not making a movie.”

“I stay home,” I say, smiling at the thought. “Right here. Anything I need, they bring me. I’m safe here.” I smile at Michael, from my safety.

The naked giggling girl ran across the patio, past the pool, around the edge of the rose garden, and off across the rolling lawn. The naked Jack pursued her, gasping, grinning, dropping to his knees from time to time, struggling up again, lumbering on, following that round and muscular behind.

The girl had been told to see to it that Jack got his exercise, so that’s what she was doing. When he got too close, she would dart away, laughing slightly, sticking her tongue out at him, wriggling a lot to encourage him. And when he would fall back, when he would seem to lose heart for the chase, she would slow, her looks would become seductive, her movements lewd, and slowly the light would come back into his eyes, his trembling limbs would firm themselves, and he would go on with the chase. Because, as they both knew, the other part of her instruction was that eventually he must catch her.

Out across the lawn she went. The distant high wall, which was topped by broken glass embedded in the cement, was barely visible through the surrounding layers of ornamental brush. Panting, grinning, eyes rolling, arms pumping, Jack followed, weaving from side to side, slowing, struggling, slowing, stopping, falling forward, landing on his face on the lush green lawn.

The girl ran on another few paces, her bright laughter rising toward the blue sky, but then she looked back and saw Jack lying there, face down, and she stopped, turned around, put her small fists on her lovely hips and considered the situation. A ruse? A temporary rest? But he wasn’t moving, not at all, so finally she raised her voice and shouted toward the house, “He fell down!”