Leslie Glass - Burning Time

It was somebody he knew. Couldn’t be. He looked around. The few people who were here were now looking bored. People who came to movies like this didn’t want to see talking and walking. His hand was sticky. He had gotten dirty and was no longer excited. He began to feel irritated and angry. Something was making him feel powerfully uneasy. But what?

Somebody got up and left. That was the right idea. He shook his head, unnerved. That girl. That hair. The voice, now that he listened to it. How could it be? Under the leather jacket he put his limp dick back in his pants. Small and pitiful as a sparrow. Zipped up and went out into the California night. He couldn’t forget it.

He left the plant at five-thirty. It was still blisteringly hot in San Diego, even though the sun had begun its descent into the ocean. He rode over to the beach to watch the simmering red disc go down. He often went there after work. It cooled the panic. He liked to stand there for an hour or so, leaning against his Harley, with his leather jacket strapped over a six-pack of beer on the back. He knew from the way the girls studied him from the sides of their eyes that he still looked good having a couple of beers and watching them on the sand in their thong bathing suits. He hated them all.

He couldn’t believe it was her. Emma wouldn’t do that. She just wouldn’t. She was good. She wouldn’t do that. He thought he was wrong and just saw a resemblance. He wandered around thinking about it, how much he liked her, more than liked her. He hadn’t ever really liked anybody that way since. He remembered how perfect she was, really smart and nice. He had watched her carefully that whole year and knew she wasn’t just empty nice. She was really nice. Like all the way through. He knew she didn’t do anything bad like the rest of them. Wasn’t a liar. He loved her and saved her so she could go away to college. How could she betray him and turn out to be a whore?

“You’ve been by here twenty times. You want to buy a ticket?”

Troland turned around abruptly. “What?” He was back at the theater, didn’t know how he had gotten there, and was pacing back and forth in front of it without realizing what he was doing.

“You all right?” The kid behind the window frowned.

“What’re you looking at?” Troland snapped. He had a motorcycle chain over his shoulder.

The boy behind the window held up his hands in a conciliatory gesture. “Hey, what are you so ticked off about? Film doesn’t start for a half an hour, but it’s not full. You can go in any time.”

Troland looked through him. “I’ll wait for the beginning,” he said furiously. The guy was crazy. He wasn’t ticked off.

“Suit yourself.” He tried again when Troland didn’t move away. “You want to buy your ticket now?”

“You deaf or something? I said I’d wait for the beginning.” Troland looked at the teenager. His hair was combed straight back. He was wearing a white polo shirt and looked puzzled. Troland shot him between his puzzled eyes and watched him slump forward in his chair. No, better to stab him in the chest. Yes, that was better. The heart kept going for a while pumping the blood out so it drenched the white shirt and splattered the walls and counter. He walked away. He wasn’t mad.

He thought about it as the movie started. Maybe he was mad. Yeah, he felt a cold rage. Really cold. He sat by himself way at the back. It was in his stomach like a big rock he couldn’t digest. Cold and then hot.

Fuck you . How could anyone act in a movie like this? How could she? He watched it more intensely this time. It was her. Now it was more her. And more shocking, the guy was him . How could he do that to her?

He was appalled by the look on her face. She liked it. He hated her. Why was she letting him do that? This was no movie. She was really letting him do that. Him, Troland Grebs. That was him. He was confused. But they were in New York, and he was here in San Diego. He was aroused again, just as he had been the day before. No, he wouldn’t give in to it.

He looked at the people in front of him. No one could see him. He was in the back, the leather jacket on his lap. He was fascinated. He couldn’t look away from the screen. His dick was in his hand, both hands now. It disgusted him that she was doing that. How could she do that? The guy was sucking her off. It was gross. It was tremendous. Maybe he was biting her. But he couldn’t be hurting her. She wasn’t screaming. Too bad. She deserved it. He rubbed up and down on his soft moist skin. It wouldn’t be bad to shove it in there. The screen went blank.

Shit. What was going on now? What was that sound? It was a sound he knew. What was it? The screen was white for a long time. The tension grew and then he saw it was a silvery tattoo needle. When it touched the guy who looked like him, he came in his pants.

As soon as it was over, the thrill was instantly replaced by a feeling of intense shame. He had befouled himself. His pants were sticky and wet. What a horrible thing he did. For some minutes he scolded himself for losing control. Then he pulled his shirt out of his pants to hide the stain, and thought again. Wait a minute. This wasn’t his fault. He had nothing to do with this. He didn’t turn an angel into a whore. He didn’t make the movie. He didn’t have anything to feel bad about. She did it. She was the one who did this to him. She should be punished. She would be punished.

He sat there for a long time waiting for his heart to slow down. When the lights came on, he got up. His rage was enormous. Why did she do this to him? He walked out holding the jacket in front of him. The fingers of one hand unconsciously caressed the tattoo on his arm, then moved to the many scars crisscrossing his chest where his father had taught him what fire felt like.

I’ll teach you not to set fires. I’ll show you what you get for being bad . He held him down and burned Troland with a red-hot wire hanger so he could never take his shirt off in public again.

He hated the wet feeling in his pants, needed a drink. He unchained the bike and headed home.

9

“Do you know who this is?”

Ronnie, Emma’s agent of many years, leaned over excitedly as she pointed to the name on the cover of a script she had brought for Emma to read.

They were having breakfast at The New York Deli just around the corner from Ronnie’s office on Fifty-sixth Street and Sixth Avenue.

It was a big name. Emma took another bite of her eggs Benedict and grimaced. “Of course I do.”

“Well, this is it. This is how it happens. You do a nothing film, don’t have any expectations for it, somebody somewhere likes it. And suddenly you’re a star . I’ve seen it a million times.” Ronnie sighed. “It’s just never happened to me.”

Then she reached across the table and slapped Emma’s hand. “Are you crazy? We can’t eat that,” she said as if she had just noticed it.

Emma looked at the Canadian bacon smothered with Hollandaise sauce on her plate. “Why not?”

“It’s four-hundred-percent fat.” Ronnie raked a hand through her blunt-cut red hair. The hair curled around her ears for a second and then fell back in its perfect circle around her plump face.

Ronnie was a compulsive eater. She wrinkled her freckled nose at Emma’s plate with disgust and longing.

Emma shook her head. Ronnie used to refer to her as You. You do this job or that job. Now when she talked about Emma it was We or I. “We’ll think about this,” or “I don’t want to do that.”

“We have to be more careful,” she said now. “You can’t just eat anything you want. You can’t just do anything you want. We have to think about what it means for our career.”