After further silence, Charlotte said, “No, it wasn’t a man. It was a thing. Mean. Ugly inside. A cold thing.” A shudder wracked her, causing her next words to issue tremolo: “I kissed it and said ‘I love you’ to it, but it was just a thing.”
The upscale garden-apartment complex encompasses a score or more of large buildings housing ten or twelve apartments each. It sprawls over parklike grounds shaded by a small forest of trees.
The streets within the complex are serpentine. Residents are provided with community carports, redwood structures with only a back wall and roof, eight or ten stalls in each. Bougainvillea climbs the columns that support each roof, lending a note of grace, although at night the vivid blossoms are bleached of most of their color by the detergent-blue light of mercury-vapor security lamps.
Throughout the development are uncovered parking areas where the white curbs are stenciled with black letters: VISITOR PARKING ONLY.
In a deep cul-de-sac, he finds a visitors’ zone that provides him with a perfect place to spend the night. None of the six spaces is occupied, and the last is flanked on one side by a five-foot-high oleander hedge. When he backs the car into the slot, tight against the hedge, the oleander conceals the damage along the driver’s side.
An acacia tree has been allowed to encroach upon the nearest street lamp. Its leafy limbs block most of the light. The Buick stands largely in darkness.
The police are not likely to cruise the complex more than once or twice between now and dawn. And when they do, they will not be checking license plates but scanning the grounds for indications of burglary or other crimes in progress.
He switches off the headlights and the engine, gathers up what remains of his store of candy, and gets out of the car, shaking off the bits of gummy, tempered glass that cling to him.
Rain is no longer falling.
The air is cool and clean.
The night keeps its own counsel, silent but for the tick and plop of still-dripping trees.
He gets into the back seat and softly closes the door. It is not a comfortable bed. But he has known worse. He settles into the fetal position, curled around candy bars instead of an umbilicus, blanketed only by the roomy raincoat.
As he waits for sleep to overtake him, he thinks again of his daughters and their betrayal.
Inevitably, he wonders if they prefer their other father to him, the false to the real. This is a dreadful possibility to be forced to explore. If it is true, it means that those he loves the most are not victims, as he is, but are active participants in the Byzantine plot against him.
Their false father is probably lenient with them. Allows them to eat what they want. Lets them go to bed as late as they please.
All children are anarchists by nature. They need rules and standards of behavior, or they grow up to be wild and antisocial.
When he kills the hateful false father and retakes control of his family, he will establish rules for everything and will strictly enforce them. Misbehavior will be instantly punished. Pain is one of life’s greatest teachers, and he is an expert in the application of pain. Order will be restored within the Stillwater household, and his children will commit no act without first soberly reflecting upon the rules that govern them.
Initially, of course, they will hate him for being so stern and uncompromising. They will not understand that he is acting in their best interests.
However, each tear that his punishments wring from them will be sweet to him. Each cry of pain will be a gladdening music. He will be unrelenting with them because he knows that in time they will realize he imposes guidance upon them only because he cares so profoundly about them. They will love him for his stern fatherly concern. They will adore him for providing the discipline which they need—and secretly desire—but which it is their very nature to resist.
Paige also will need to be disciplined. He knows about women’s needs. He remembers a film with Kim Basinger in which sex and a craving for discipline were shown to be inextricably entwined. He anticipates Paige’s instructions with particular pleasure.
Since the day that his career, family, and memories were stolen from him—which might be a year or ten years ago, for all he knows—he has lived primarily through the movies. The adventures he has experienced and the poignant lessons he has learned in countless darkened theaters seem as real to him as the car seat on which he now lies and the chocolate dissolving on his tongue. He remembers making love to Sharon Stone, to Glenn Close, from both of whom he learned the potential for sexual mania and treachery inherent in all women. He remembers the exuberant fun of sex with Goldie Hawn, the rapture of Michelle Pfeiffer, the exciting sweaty urgency of Ellen Barkin when he incorrectly suspected her of being a murderess but pinned her to the wall of his apartment and penetrated her anyway. John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Gregory Peck, and so many other men have taken him under their wings and have taught him courage and determination. He knows that death is a mystery of infinite complication because he has learned so many conflicting lessons about it: Tim Robbins has shown him that the afterlife is only an illusion, while Patrick Swayze has shown him that the afterlife is a joyous place as real as anywhere and that those you love (like Demi Moore) will see you there when they eventually pass from this world, yet Freddy Krueger has shown him that the afterlife is a gruesome nightmare from which you can return for gleeful vengeance. When Debra Winger died of cancer, leaving Shirley MacLaine bereft, he had been inconsolable, but only a few days later he had seen her, alive again, younger and more beautiful than ever, reincarnated in a new life where she enjoyed a new destiny with Richard Gere. Paul Newman has often shared with him bits of wisdom about death, life, pool, poker, love, and honor; therefore, he considers this man one of his most important mentors. Likewise, Wilford Brimley, Gene Hackman, burly old Edward Asner, Robert Redford, Jessica Tandy. Often he absorbs quite contradictory lessons from such friends, but he has heard some of these people say that all beliefs are of equal value and that there is no one truth, so he is comfortable with the contradictions by which he lives.
He learned the most secret of all truths not in a public theater or on a pay-per-view movie service in a hotel room. Instead, that moment of stunning insight had come in the private media chamber of one of the men it was his duty to kill.
His target had been a United States Senator. A requirement of the termination was that it be made to look like a suicide.
He had to enter the Senator’s residence on a night when the man was known to be alone. He was provided with a key so there would be no signs of forced entry.
After gaining access to the house, he found the Senator in the eight-seat home media room, which featured THX Sound and a theater-quality projection system capable of displaying television, videotape, or laserdisc images on a five-by-six-foot screen. It was a plush, windowless space. There was even an antique Coke machine which, he learned later, dispensed the soft drink in classic ten-ounce glass bottles, plus a candy-vending machine stocked with Milk Duds, Jujubes, Raisinettes, and other favorite movie-house snacks.
Because of the music in the film, he found it easy to creep up behind the Senator and overpower him with a chloroform-soaked rag, which he pulled out of a plastic bag a second before putting it to use. He carried the politician upstairs to the ornate master bath, undressed him, and gently conveyed him into a Roman tub filled with hot water, periodically employing the chloroform to assure continued unconsciousness. With a razor blade, he made a deep, clean incision across the Senator’s right wrist (since the politician was a southpaw and most likely to use his left hand to make his first cut), and let that arm drop into the water, which was quickly discolored by the arterial gush. Before dropping the razor blade in the water, he made a few feeble attempts to slash the left wrist, never scoring deeply, because the Senator wouldn’t have been able to grip the blade firmly in his right hand after cutting the tendons and ligaments along with the artery in that wrist.