Norman Partridge - The Man With the Barbed-Wire Fists

I stood in the lobby of the Cal-Neva, staring at the stuffed bobcat on the big granite fireplace, wondering if the big cat’s last memory was sticking his nose somewhere that it didn’t belong.

I wandered over to the main desk. An old man was trying to weasel a couple of comp rooms out of the desk clerk. The old man’s young squeeze was busily tapping her toe. The trouble threw me off. I didn’t want to deal with a surly clerk.

“Mr. Cassady?” A young woman stepped behind the desk. “Tom Cassady?”

“Yes,” I smiled, playing it simple.

“I just want to say… ” She blushed. “I think it was great what you did to that ass on television. I’ve been waiting for something like that to happen since the first time I saw him.”

I kept the smile. “I just thought it was the right thing to do.”

She nodded. “Well, it’s great to have you as a guest. If you need anything, my name’s Cheryl. You just ask for me.”

I explained that I was picking up the tab for some relatives who were staying at the hotel. They were registered under my name, and I’d forgotten their room number. One fumbling description of terminal absent-mindedness later, I had a key. Obviously, Cheryl hadn’t run into my brother during the two weeks he had been registered. I began to wonder if he was really staying at the Cal- Neva, or if he had indeed stayed at my cabin, as he had claimed.

I detoured past the bar — a round room paneled with rich wood. Mirrors above reflected the room’s harsh artificial glow and a stained glass dome high in the ceiling filtered the early afternoon sunshine, so that the bar was a strange mixture of hard and soft light. I heard a high-pitched Richard Widmark laugh rise over a chorus of clinking glasses. Saw the blushing cocktail waitress a second before I spotted the man in the hammerhead-colored suit circling her, his hard little eyes trained on her ample breasts, a long-neck beer bottle with a well-peeled label clutched in his right hand.

I turned on my heel and didn’t stop moving until I hit the elevator button.

I was about to slip the key into the lock when the door to Room 602 swung open.

She was wearing a white robe and holding an ice bucket. A smile almost crossed her face, but she spotted my nose before it could take.

“How did you figure it?” she asked.

“It wasn’t hard. The Cal-Neva seems a bit toney for our friend. And the bills he rang up at Soule Domaine and Bobby’s Uptown were pretty extravagant for a guy who seems to subsist on hamburgers and cheap beer when he’s practicing his home invasion skills. It looked to me like he’d had some serious help with the wine list. Just domestic, or did someone named Gabrielle lend her expertise?”

My sister took a step backwards. “You’re still a smartass.” She turned away. “Gabrielle didn’t work out, if you want to know. Just like the smart little Frenchman didn’t work out with mom. I mean, after a while all that quick wit shit just wears one down, y’know?” She shook her head, and a strand of dusky blond hair fell over her eyes, confident eyes that betrayed not one ounce of surprise. “I guess that was one thing you got right about me in your weighty tome. No one ever quite lives up to my expectations. I outgrow people. I outgrow habits. I move on to other things.” She slipped a slim tie from a lampshade, curled it between her fingers as if it were an exotic snake. “I like to push the envelope.”

I followed her into the room and slammed the door. “I think you’ve got some explaining to do.”

Jo laughed. “Me?” She pointed at a copy of Killer Cassady which lay open on the nightstand. “ I’ve got some explaining to do?”

I wasn’t going to let her pull me off course. “I want my movie contract. And the script. I want my credit card.” I sucked a deep breath. “I’ve made some money lately. Sure. I’m not ashamed of it. I’ll pick up the credit card tab. We’ll call it square. You and Mr. Wrong Turn won’t have to worry about wasting any time in court.” Jo looked at me, Dad’s lips twisting on her pretty face, Dad’s eyes hard and unamused beneath her carefully plucked brows. “Did you really think you could get away with it, Tommy? Did you really just think I’d let it be?”

“You’d better,” I said.

She laughed at that. Her laughter was just like Dad’s, a hissing bray that branded me the most pathetically stupid thing on two legs. “I’ll tell you how it’s going to be,” Jo said. “Because we had it all set up, Tom and me. That’s his name, too, you know.”

I let it go. Best to let her get everything out of her system.

“I was the one who hooked the producer,” Jo said. “I met the guy at a party in San Francisco — he’s gay, but discreetly so. Anyway, I convinced him to remake Wrong Turn with my half-brother in the lead. I’d play the hitchhiker, because that would really push the envelope. A little taste of incest couldn’t hurt the box office. He thought that was real sweet.”

“And then my book was published.”

She nodded. “Right. And suddenly my little incest angle was very five-minutes-ago?” She ran a rough finger along my nose. “Maybe the producer thinks your nose is cuter than my Tom’s.” She reached for the phone. “But you’re going to change his mind; aren’t you, Tommy?”

I stared at the phone, at my sister. Jo’s pouting lips twisted into that signature grin that always spelled trouble in Dad’s films, the same expression my half-brother had worn when he rose from my living room couch with a copy of Killer Cassady in his hands.

I hated that look, even when I saw it in a mirror.

“Do you know the number, Tommy?” My name hung there in the quiet room, dripping with sarcasm. “Or do you need me to dial it for you?” I didn’t move, and Jo lifted the handset. “And you thought you were so smart. Thought you’d come up here and set what’s left of your family straight, buy them off for the price of a couple dinners.” It was dark in the room, but her eyes were shining laser-bright.

“Hey now… let’s think about this,” she said suddenly, replacing the handset. “Did you ever think of becoming a producer, Tommy? Just how much money did you make from that book, anyway?”

Jo’s eyes burned with confidence. She was trying to cut me down to nothing. My hands were shaking. I smelled my own sweat.

And then my world went black and white. I entered the world of Wrong Turn. I entered Dad’s world. I was in some cheap whore’s apartment, and I was beginning to understand that a complete idiot had outsmarted me once again. Jo’s eyes were slicing me to ribbons while her laughter marked me a sucker.

And then Jo wasn’t laughing anymore. My fingers locked around the phone. The cord bit into her neck, and I tugged on the phone like a fisherman playing a big one on a whispering reel. A tight smile bloomed on my lips as I tried to cut off my father’s hissing laughter. The phone was hard and reassuring in my hands and I couldn’t wait for the cord to do its work because then I was going to smash the whole thing against my sister’s face, my father’s smile.

Her eyes weren’t shining now. They were almost empty, nearly colorless. And she wasn’t laughing anymore. She couldn’t laugh; she couldn’t even scream.

And then the door to Room 602 swung open.

There — live, in living color — stood my father.

Even in that moment I knew the man was my half-bother. The hammerhead-colored suit told me that. But it was startling to see his face twisted just like Dad’s had been during the climax of Wrong Turn , a mask of violent desperation. And I froze up seeing him so close. He wasn’t a man in black & white on a television screen, but a man with a face red from alcohol and hurt and hate and pride, a man with knuckles the color of spoiled meat.