Scott Nicholson Library Vol 3 Page 32

  And what if I did run? Crystal needs me as much as Tim does. Christaroni with cheese sauce, I’m too young and dead for responsibility.

  “Okay,” Bone said. “I get it. I’ve been working for you the whole time and didn’t know it. You let me slip back because you knew I’d want more. Like any good pusher, you gave me the first hit for free.”

  “Then we have a deal?” the Judge said.

  “Hey, wait,” Royce said. “I thought you were my agent.”

  “We’re all on the same team here, Royce,” the Judge said. “Do you want to get typecast as a B-movie extra, or do you want Sunset Boulevard and red carpets?”

  “I want a sports car.”

  “You got it.”

  “And cigarettes.”

  “It’s in the job description.”

  “Hairdressers. I’ll need lots of hairdressers.”

  “All that will happen if you just concentrate on your art.”

  “I thought I was an actor.”

  “The art of acting. The craft of drama. Performing arts.”

  “Forget it,” Tim said. “You might as well be talking to a turtle about turtle wax.”

  Bone was glad to see Tim had returned to his usual sickly self. He’d probably be okay if she left him alone for awhile. After all, he’d been dead four years before she came along, so it wasn’t like she had anything to teach him.

  “I leave the fine print to you guys,” Bone said. “Right now, I’m anxious to get over there and get Dempsey’s movies out where they can do some good. I mean, do some harm.”

  “Excellent,” the Judge said. “But there’s another rule: you only get to go solid three times.”

  “Why?” Bone knew why, but she had to ask anyway.

  “The Rule of Three,” the Judge said. “In the meantime, Royce, why don’t you and Tim rehearse that scene from ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’?”

  As Royce began spouting lines, the Judge slipped up behind Bone and gave her the silver cross. “You might need this over there.”

  “Thanks for not ratting me out.”

  “‘Yet.’ I haven’t done it yet.”

  “You’re all heart.”

  The Judge, with his back to Tim and Royce, parted his robe just a bit to reveal a wedge of hard darkness. “I gave my heart away. Just like you did.”

  Bone gripped the cross and crawled toward the vault opening in the back of the mausoleum. She had a plan for dealing with the Judge, and it all started with Tan Banana & Movie Emporium.

  The emporium had a special on Milk Duds, and she’d need a lot of them.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “In Royce we trust,” Pettigrew said.

  Crystal’s Diet Sprite stopped halfway up the straw and the bit in her mouth nearly went out her nose. “Huh?”

  “This cheeseburger’s greasy,” he said, wiping his hand on the dashboard. He was driving her to work, since her Toyota needed a new timing chain and that was at least two paychecks away. Pettigrew would do the work, but she wanted to buy the part herself. With him putting on the pressure for a “committed relationship,” the last thing she needed was to owe him any more favors.

  “That’s not what you said.”

  Pettigrew glanced sideways at her. It was the “Women come up with the weirdest notions” look. Or maybe it was “Women. Shrug.”

  “I think you been watching too many bad movies,” he said.

  “Don’t be telling me what I do too much of. Probably, if anything, I’m doing too much of you.”

  “Fine.” He lay on the squeaky brakes, slowing in front of the Gas’n’Gulp & Orthopedic Supplies, which advertised scratch-off lottery tickets and discount cigarettes, as well as 30 percent off wooden legs. “We can fix that right now.”

  This section of Parson’s Ford—the side where she lived, where the old paper mill had spawned a collection of cinder-block businesses to serve the working class—had no sidewalks, a weedy railway bed, and the occasional aggressive stray pit bull. Her immediate response was to jump out and hoof the last two miles to the emporium, but then she’d be half an hour late and today she was opening the store. Fatback Bob was easy to please, but he didn’t like refunding late fees, and some people still hadn’t figured out how to work the drop slot in the door.

  “Keep driving,” she said.

  Pettigrew accelerated in a grumble of busted muffler. “You been acting weird lately.”

  As if I’ve ever acted any other way? You might be the aspiring actor, but I can read between the lines.

  There was only one way to go, and that was with the perfect and universal excuse. “I’m about to start my period.”

  Pettigrew rolled his eyes as if that was another thing that would be off limits for a while.

  She decided to drop the “Royce” bit, because she wondered if she was starting to get paranoid. When she’d gone through the depression, Miss McMarkus and the Pickett County Behavioral Healthcare counselors had probed her for suicidal or delusional thinking. It took her a while to figure out what they were doing, mostly because she checked out a couple of diagnostic manuals from the public library and did a little research. One thing that jumped out from the case studies was that once they slid you into a file folder under a certain label, you were stuck there forever.

  So “situational depression” had been the best choice—it not only allowed the counselors to feel helpful, but it also had a satisfying conclusion upon which they could all agree.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m stressed about this Halloween party. It’s at Cindy Summerhill’s house.”

  “Summerhill? The county commissioner’s daughter?”

  “And head cheerleader and senior class president and Morehead scholar and the first girl in our class to reach a C cup. And she has the biggest house in town. Indoor pool, game room, movie theater. Party Central.”

  “Why in the world do you wanna do that?”

  “It’s McMack Truck’s idea. Wants to make sure I’m playing well with others.”

  That’s something Pettigrew understood. He was dyslexic, and school had been one long torture chamber. He’d taken his C average and diploma and never looked back. Well, he looked back, but not without a glower.

  Pettigrew geared down as they entered the main business strip. He’d already gotten a ticket for the busted muffler and if he got a bad rep, the cops would stop calling him for accident response. Just another way the poor got owned by the Man, he liked to say. But he liked to say it a little too much. Dempsey didn’t have that kind of inferiority complex.

  Oops. There you go again. Quit comparing them, darn it.

  “Well, you’re coming to the party with me, ain’t you?” she asked.

  “Ain’t been invited.”

  “Hello. I just invited you.”

  “I don’t know.”

  She put her hand on his thigh and gave a playful squeeze. “Come on. It’ll be fun. You’re not 20 yet. It’s not too creepy to hang out with high school kids.

  “Not as creepy as that Dempsey dude. Saw him last night with a bunch of 14-year-old Goth wannabees.”

  She sat up against the seatbelt. “Where?”

  “Standing outside the Cineplex. Had enough eyeliner and leather to build a black cow.”

  “Was there a guy with them? Older guy, kind of wavy hair, in a T-shirt?” She wanted to add “dreamy eyes,” but Pettigrew would have no idea what that meant. And she was afraid to say “Royce,” because Pettigrew might fall into brainwash mode.

  “Nah. Looked like Dempsey was passing out tickets.”

  The Cineplex only had two theaters. Currently, the twin bill featured a Russell Crowe shoot-’em-up and a humorous remake of “Night of the Living Dead.” Since the zombie movie had been cleaned up to PG-13 and starred some wise-cracking kid who’d cut his teeth in cereal commercials, she’d had no interest in seeing it. But if Dempsey was pushing it on the Gothling crowd, maybe it contained some sort of secret message, too.

  “Did he say anythi
ng about Hollywood connections when he talked to you?” she asked.

  “Only the usual. He knew some agent somewhere. Name-dropping without the name.” He gave her another sideways glance. “You sure talk about him a lot.”

  “You gotta admit, we don’t get his kind in Parson’s Ford very often.”

  “Right. Maybe you can go to the Halloween party with him.”

  “I only meant—”

  “Maybe you can go as the mummy, since you’re so wrapped up in him.”

  For Pettigrew, that was almost funny. But she didn’t want him to get suspicious, not when hell was threatening to crawl out of the Orifice. One more complication and she might as well check in for some more outpatient therapy. She gripped his gear-shifting hand and squeezed with what she hoped was affection. His fingers were greasy.

  “You don’t have to play jealous, honey. You’re the only man for me.”

  He looked away from the crowded boulevard and grinned at her. He had a speck of mustard on his lip and his teeth were crooked. And Dempsey’s teeth were—

  “What?” he said, face frozen in an idiot stare.

  “Watch your driving, that car has Florida plates.”

  He took a two-handed grip on the wheel. “This Dempsey guy may be a big deal to grade-school kids, but I thought you had a lick of sense.”

  “It’s strictly business,” she said. “He might put Parson’s Ford on the map. And he might put you in a movie.”

  “I already told you, I ain’t interested.”

  Pettigrew pulled up in front of the store. To her surprise, the “Closed” sign had been turned around and several customers were inside.

  “Fatback Bob must have opened early,” she said.

  “I hope this means you still have a job.”

  “Don’t worry.” She reached up and wiped the mustard from his lip, then gave him a quick kiss. He had onion breath from the cheeseburger.

  “Hey,” he said, grabbing her arm as she tried to slide out of the truck. “That was no kiss goodbye.”

  “It was a kiss ‘I’ll see you later.’ I don’t have time for goodbye.”

  He yanked her back inside and mashed lips, slipping a little tongue. She could taste not only the onions but the pickle, too. “See ya at eight,’ he said.

  Crystal entered the store, glancing with apprehension at the walls. No s. Good.

  Half a dozen teenagers stood at the counter, including a couple she recognized from high school. Fatback Bob was ringing up the register while counting out a stack of VHS tapes. The tapes were piled all around the counter and a makeshift cardboard display held another hundred or so.

  “Crystal,” said Fatback Bob, jovial from the cash transactions. “Just in time. We’re swamped.”

  One of the customers pushed by her on the way out the door, and she recognized the box cover. The Bloodening, one of Dempsey’s armchair masterpieces.

  “What’s up?” Crystal said as she eased behind the counter.

  “All these horror movies your friend brought,” Fatback Bob said. “The kids are eating them like popcorn.”

  Ned Riley and Yvette Guiterrez, seniors at Pickett High, were next in line, and they’d selected the complete Dempsey oeuvre. It looked like Dempsey had not only brought duplicate copies of the original tapes, he’d added a few more titles to the mix: The Hearkening, The Oozening, and The Unevening.

  “Date night, huh?” Crystal said to Ned and Yvette. They stared past her so intently that Crystal turned to see if a portal had appeared on the storefront glass. But the glass showed nothing but the reflection of the store’s interior.

  “Nineteen forty-seven,” Bob told them. “Want candy with that?”

  “Royce,” Yvette said. Ned shoved a twenty across the counter.

  “How many of these have you rented?” Crystal said.

  “Halloween,” Ned said.

  “We got that,” Fatback Bob said. “The one with Jamie Lee Curtis and the guy in the hockey mask?”

  “Halloween,” Ned repeated, taking the tapes and shambling toward the door. Yvette followed in his wake as if pulled by sluggish magnetism.

  “I didn’t know anyone still had a working VHS player,” Crystal said.

  “Purists.” Fatback Bob shrugged. “Sort of like music lovers who still listen to vinyl records.”

  The next kids in line didn’t have the vacant-eyed stares of Ned and Yvette, so Crystal assumed they were new to Dempsey’s work. “So,” she said to the greasy-haired kid in the Green Day T-shirt. “How’d you hear about The Darkening?”

  “Snake told me it was awesome,” he replied. “Like, three and half thumbs up.”

  The kid could use a few anatomy lessons, but he didn’t lack for enthusiasm. Crystal pulled her copy out of her purse. “I watched it last night.”

  “Really? How many thumbs you give it?”

  “A thumbnail, maybe.”

  “Hey,” butted in Fatback Bob. “Everything in the store is an instant classic, a modern epic, a sweeping tale of romance and adventure. Not a dog in the house.”

  Crystal knew there were a couple of Pauly Shore vehicles in inventory, and anything with Seth Rogen qualified as brain-cell suicide in her opinion, but it was Fatback Bob’s signature on the bottom of her check, so she wasn’t going to argue.

  “Seven ninety-five,” she said. “Due back in three days.”

  “Halloween,” said the hollow-eyed girl behind him in line.

  “We got that in Aisle Nine,” Fatback Bob said.

  “Halloween,” the girl repeated.

  “Halloween is tomorrow,” said Green Day Kid.

  “Royce,” she said.

  Great. The Royce Heads are flying on auto pilot. Something’s going down on Halloween for sure. But how can I save the world when I have a party to attend?

  “What’s this Royce thing everybody’s talking about?” Fatback Bob said.

  Crystal pointed to the actor credits on the back of the box. “Royce Dean. He’s a character actor.”

  “What’s the character?”

  “Melted taffy on a popsicle stick,” said the hollow-eyed girl, who was too young to be making lewd comments. “Yummalicious.”

  “Eye candy,” Crystal translated.

  “Oh,” Fatback Bob said, as if not understanding that men could be eye candy, too. His office walls, the parts not covered with peeper-cam monitors, featured posters of Farrah Fawcett, Raquelle Welch, Faye Dunaway, and other old-school beauties. “Whatever moves product,” he said with acceptance. “Next.”

  The hollow-eyed girl laid her selections on the counter. Crystal recognized her now. Lacey Summerhill, Cindy’s freshman sister. She was decked in a Baby Phat blouse, and the stone studs in her ears looked like real diamonds. She had enough booty to pay for Crystal’s entire two years of community college.

  Crystal eyed the cover of The Bloodening, which featured a silver butcher knife dripping red against a black background. Dempsey’s presentation lacked subtlety, but it seemed to be effective.

  “Aren’t you too young for this?” Crystal asked her.

  “It’s unrated,” Fatback Bob said in a surly voice. “She’s street legal.”

  Yeah, and I’ll bet you’d love to get her in the suntan booth. Ten years for kiddie porn. How’s that for legal, you corpulent creep?

  “Royce,” Lacey said.

  “Whoever this guy is, he’s gonna be big,” Fatback Bob said.

  “You don’t know the half of it,” Crystal said. Swiping Lacey’s debit card, she said, “Due back in three days.”

  “Halloween,” she said, walking out the door, carrying the VHS tape before her as if it were a sacred text.

  “We got that,” Fatback Bob shouted after her, but she was already in the street and unleashed on Parson’s Ford, where a truckload of low-budget, high-risk movies were circulating.

  Crystal sighed. Halloween.

  Chapter Twenty

  “You ever ridden in a stretch limo?”

  “Yeah, la
st year’s prom with Willard Mayfield,” Cindy Summerhill said. “Lame-o-rama with a gag-a-maggot.”

  “This ride will be all yours,” Dempsey said. “Tinted windows, plush leather seats, a minibar—you do drink, don’t you?”

  Cindy rolled her eyes, a maneuver Dempsey was certain she’d spent the thirteenth year of her life practicing in the mirror. If she’d had seven more brain cells to go along with the two or three she had exhibited when he “accidentally” bumped into her in Old Navy, she might have made a decent actress. For real. She had the other tools, including an endearing gullibility.

  “Like, Long Island iced tea is the bomb,” she said.

  “No, non, nyet,” Dempsey said. “Nobody drinks that in Hollywood. You want something light, a gin spritzer or a Chardonnay. Something that gleams in the glass.”

  Cindy nodded, wide-eyed. He could have told her they drank imported elephant urine and she would have ordered a case on the spot. He put his arm around her and guided her to the aisle containing the more risqué clothes. “You have much to learn.”

  Her fingers trembled as if she could hardly wait to snatch her cell out of her purse and text all her friends. Cindy Summerhill was going to be the next Reese Witherspoon.

  The Old Navy in the Parson’s Ford Mall smelled just like the Old Navy in Santa Monica—flame retardants, floor cleansers, and perfume named after celebrities who wouldn’t dash the stuff on elephant urine, much less be caught dead wearing it.

  “And the malls in California,” Dempsey said. “You could fit all of Parson’s Ford inside them and still have room left over for a Rock’n’Roll Café.”

  “We have to drive to Charlotte to have any fun,” Cindy said. “I mean, look at this place.”

  “You deserve better,” Dempsey said.

  “So, when does shooting start?”

  “Easy, mademoiselle. These things take some planning. First we’ll need a script—”

  “I have this cool idea. There’s this girl who is on the phone and somebody’s outside her house and she begs for help but then the line goes dead—”