Norman Partridge - The Man With the Barbed-Wire Fists

Eyes closed, I tried to picture it as it had happened — the director whispering instructions in my ear, the bright lights, the camera drinking it all in, the old actor lying on a phony deathbed. But I couldn’t hold the images in my head. The pounding pistons crushed them, and I was left with a single vision.

All I could see was the dead vintner lying on the stone floor, a trickle of dark wine staining his withered grin. A dead grin, but a grin unsatisfied.

All I could hear was Layla’s mocking laughter.

I was the toast of the town for a little while. Parties. Meetings. Dinners. Then a new picture came out, and it was someone else’s turn.

For the first time I saw the nasty hook hidden in the game. Every morning I picked up the newspaper and flipped to the movie section. And every morning my sense of security shrank a little more, in direct proportion to the size of the movie ad. First my photo disappeared. Then the director’s name vanished, followed by the names of the supporting actors. Finally, my name went. All that was left was the name of the picture, along with a note that it was IN COLOR and the theatre was AIR-CONDITIONED.

Pretty soon I was the second half of a double-bill.

One morning I ran into Layla at a coffee shop. She looked up from the paper and said, “You’re not here at all.”

“It’s over,” I said.

“No,” she said. “It’s time to start again.”

She was smiling, but her words hit me with the finality of a curse.

The columnist lived in one of those suicidal houses that teeter on the side of a steep hill. Places like that are all sparkling glass and architectural majesty on a sunny day, but they invariably surrender to melancholy and jump to their deaths when gloomy storms blow hard off the Pacific and mud-slide season begins.

Normally, such a breathtaking combination of design and location would have left me with a fullblown case of vertigo, but the fog was in pretty solid on the night of my visit. I was brave enough, and drunk enough, to play with the weirder possibilities of the stage with which the columnist’s overpaid architect had provided me, because I was intent on giving the self-important scribbler the thrill of her life.

And giving Layla a bit of the knife.

The scribbler was actually nervous. It was almost as if she’d never done anything like this before, and I knew that wasn’t the case. I couldn’t figure out why she was jittery, until I got close to the window and glimpsed my reflection.

As per Layla’s instructions, I’d dressed for the part — engineer boots, jeans, tight white T-shirt, red windbreaker. I had to laugh. I really did look like a teenager.

“Normally, there’s a wonderful view of the city lights,” the columnist said.

We weren’t far apart. I let out a sigh, just heavy enough so that my breath tickled her bare shoulder. I didn’t touch her, but I got a little closer and held her gaze. Then, as soon as she opened her mouth to speak, I said, “I guess that works both ways.”

She smiled, but I knew she didn’t have idea one.

I worked up an embarrassed grin. “The view, I mean. We can’t see the city. The city can’t see us.”

She laughed, sipped her drink, and started looking for a place to set the glass. Slowly, I moved behind her. I brushed the back of her hand, took the glass. She didn’t care where it went. I knew that, because I could see her face reflected in the window, and her eyes were like a couple of glowing coals.

“Someone might see us,” she said. “There’s a house below this one, closer than you might think — ”

My hands went to her hips and I pulled her to me.

She did a slow, easy grind against my jeans.

End of discussion.

The fabric of her dress was so damn light, like it wasn’t there at all. I let my hands drift beneath it. My fingers traveled her thighs, her smooth, nyloned flesh. My tongue darted over her neck, and I tore away what I found under her dress.

She planted her hands against the window, pressing so hard that I was sure the glass would shatter. Slashed wrists hanging through a gaping hole, me wiping down everything for fingerprints and sweating — I could picture the whole awful scene.

But it didn’t happen that way. Her eyes were closed now. And she certainly wasn’t worried about the neighbors.

I watched her reflection. I watched the fog.

And there was Layla. Her generous breasts pressed against the other side of the window, and her hands covered the same spots that the columnist’s covered, but Layla’s fingers were longer, slimmer. She held the hem of her black dress between white teeth.

Layla in the fog. Hips moving hungrily, sex glistening.

I couldn’t hold back any longer. With one hand, I pulled the columnist against me and held her still. The fingers of my other hand coiled in her hair.

She screamed.

It wasn’t a scream of pleasure. Her legs gave way, and I heard the awful sound of her rings scrapping glass as she fell forward. With one hand holding her hips and the fingers of my other hand tangled in her hair, I kept her from pitching through the window.

Outside, nothing remained of Layla but a swirl of fog.

The columnist’s reflection was suddenly gaunt and terrified. “Someone saw us,” she said. “Someone’s out there — ”

“No,” I said. “It was just the fog. The wind picked up. It was swirling.”

She dropped to her knees and turned toward me. “No. It was a person… a woman… and she was watching us. God, if she had a camera — ”

She left the rest unsaid.

She left me the perfect opportunity.

“If she had a camera, I’d like a couple of prints,” I said. “That would show people around this town that I’m determined about my work.”

The columnist looked at me for a long time.

I didn’t say any more, just held my little grin, and she got the message.

She decided that it was her turn to make me happy.

We stayed in front of the window. She made me feel so good that I wanted to close my eyes, but I resisted the temptation. Instead, I watched the fog.

And, just for spite, I made damn sure the fog was watching me.

My name appeared in four straight columns, much to the studio’s delight. I guess I don’t need to tell you that I got the part.

It’s the picture that most people remember. I even wore the red windbreaker — the same one that I wore to the scribbler’s house — and most people remember that, too.

There’s a scene in that picture where a guy calls me a chicken. I get all broken up about it, and we go for a little chickie run. Stolen cars and a big cliff by the ocean. The same doe-eyed starlet that I’d taken to the premiere of my first picture sends us on our way, looking like daddy’s most frightening wet-dream in a tight cashmere sweater.

I live. The guy who called me a chicken doesn’t. I get the girl, too.

Kind of like my night with the woman in the glass house.

See, we had our own little game of chicken, Layla and me. That’s what the whole scene with the columnist was really about. Layla was taunting me, just waiting for the woman to crack so she could get inside her. She wanted nothing more than to be inside the scribbler’s head when I went into action. That’s how badly she wanted another piece of me. But I’d learned my lesson at the winery, and I didn’t give her a chance to do anything this time — you might say that I jumped at just the right moment. Layla might as well have sailed over a cliff in an old Ford, just like my rival in the movie.