"I can't tell you."
"Knock off the crap."
"Look, do you want to do something tonight, or do you want to sit there alone and listen to them fight?"
He had a point. "Okay," I said. "What's the plan?"
"You just meet me at my house in fifteen minutes. I'll drive. We have to be there by eight." He laughed. "You're gonna love this. It's gonna blow you away."
My curiosity was stimulated and he knew it. "What is it?"
"You'll see. And make sure you bring some bucks. It cost twenty dollars last night, but the guy who took me said it's sometimes more." He laughed again. "See you."
I hung up the phone and slipped on my shoes. I pulled a shirt from the pile next to my bed, grabbed the pickup keys from the dresser, and carefully opened my bedroom door. They were still arguing, their screaming now more furious, their words more overwrought. They were in the living room, and I crept down the hall into the kitchen and snuck out the side door.
Outside it was still hot. The dry desert heat had not dissipated with nightfall, and Phoenix was not blessed with a breeze. Above me, the sky was clear and I could see billions of stars. There was no moon.
I pulled up in front of Jimmy's house five minutes later. He was already outside, sitting on the hood of his Jeep, waiting. He walked toward me as I hopped out of the pickup, his boots clicking loudly on the asphalt driveway, and there was something in his expression I didn't like. "All right," I said. "What're we doing?"
"We're going to a snuff show," he said.
I stared at him, not sure I was hearing right. "What did you say?"
"I didn't want to tell you until we were there, but then I thought it would be better to prepare you for it."
"A snuff movie? One of those movies that show someone actually getting killed?"
"Not a movie," Jimmy said. "I didn't say snuff movie. I said snuff show. This is a live show."
My mouth felt suddenly dry. "You're bullshitting me." "I'm serious. I saw it. I was there last night." "It has to be fake," I said. "It can't be real."
"It's real."
"I know a guy who saw one of those movies, and he said it was real cheap and amateurish. He said you could tell it was fake. I mean, if legitimate movies have a tough time showing realistic deaths, these guys with no budgets at all must be really bad at it."
"It's not a movie," Jimmy said. "And it's real."
I looked at the expression on his face, and there was no horror or revulsion in it. There was only an open interest and what appeared to be a look of excited anticipation. Jimmy was not stupid, and I realized that if he thought the show was real, it probably was real. I thought suddenly how little I really knew my best friend.
"Come on," he said, motioning toward his Jeep. "It's getting late. Let's go."
I shook my head. "I don't think I want to go."
"Yes, you do," he said. "Come on."
And I followed him to the Jeep.
We drove in silence. I looked out at the empty streets of Phoenix as we drove toward the outskirts of the city. I really didn't want to see this. But I remembered the time when Jimmy and I were both eight and we had seen an even younger boy hit by a brakeless Buick. The car had slammed into the boy's tricycle, and the kid had been carried halfway down the street, his head smashed into the vehicle's grille. I had thrown up then, as had Jimmy, and I had had nightmares for months. But in school, on my papers, I had drawn endless variations of the accident, and I realized that I was both attracted to and repelled by the incident.
Despite my conscious objections, I had a similar perverse interest in seeing the snuff show.
I was repulsed by the very thought of it, but I wanted to see it.
The buildings of the city became more run down and spaced farther apart. The fast food franchises were replaced by neon-lit massage parlors and bars. We traveled through one stretch of road which was still desert, though it was technically within the city limits.
Jimmy pulled into a crowded parking lot in front of a low pink building. A string of white Christmas lights hung in an inverted arc over the warped wooden door, and a faded mural on the side of the building had a picture of an eight-ball and a pool cue. The building was flanked on both sides by vacant lots in which tumbleweeds and cacti grew in abundance. Jimmy looked at me. "You have your wallet?"
"In my front pocket," I said. "I'm taking no chances."
We got out of the Jeep and walked across the gravel parking lot to the door of the building. Jimmy pulled open the door and walked in.
A table was situated right next to the entrance. On the table was a metal cashbox and two stacks of papers, each weighted down with chunks of rock. A fat, bearded man who looked like Charlie Daniels nodded at us from behind the table. "Thirty-five," he said.
Jimmy pulled two twenties from his pocket, and the man gave him a five. "Sign the release," the man said.
I paid my money, then looked over the form the man gave me. It was a pseudo-legal document which stated that I knew exactly what was occurring there tonight and that I was directly involved in the actions. I didn't know if such a document would hold up in court, but I understood that the people in charge were trying to intimidate the viewers from talking about what they'd seen. I signed on the line at the bottom.
The man glanced over the form. "Address and driver's license," he said, handing it back to me.
I felt suddenly afraid, intimidated myself, but I filled out the information anyway. I followed Jimmy down a short, dark hallway.
We went into a large, crowded room. In the center of the room, a woman was tied naked to a chair. Her mouth was gagged, but her eyes looked wildly around, as if searching for some means of escape. There were large bruises and welts on her white skin. Standing around the woman in a rough semicircle, quiet and shuffling, were thirty or forty people, mostly men, some women. Next to the chair, on a table, was a pistol, two knives, a screwdriver, a hammer, a hacksaw, and a length of wire.
Jimmy and I stood silently with the rest of the crowd. I felt suddenly sick to my stomach. I could see from the bound woman's frantic eyes that she was scared to death. She was about to be killed. And all of the people standing impassively around her had paid money to watch her die.
I stared at my shoes, looked around the unfurnished room, counted the cracks in the plaster ceiling—anything to keep from looking into the haunted eyes of the doomed woman. Once I glanced toward her, and I saw her squirming crazily, trying to release herself from her bonds, but the ropes were tight and the gag was securely in place. I looked quickly away.
Finally, a man came in and began setting up a videotape camera. He brought with him two sets of lights, which he placed at right angles to the woman. The room, which had been warm, grew even warmer with the lights, and the still air was heavy with human sweat. I was not sure I'd be able to stay for this.
And then the cameraman took off the woman's gag and she started screaming. Her voice was high, raw, filled with utter terror, and her screams came in short staccato bursts. The cameraman began filming. I put my hands over my ears. The people around me watched dully, their faces unreadable.
A man wearing a woman's stocking over his head came into the room and walked up to the woman. He pawed her naked body, touching her everywhere. She struggled so hard to get away from him that the chair tipped over. He calmly righted it and continued with his exploration of her body.
The whole thing lasted little more than half an hour. The stockinged man used the hacksaw to cut off big toes and fingers. He used the wire to tie breasts. The smell of sweat in the enclosed room was soon overpowered by the stronger smell of blood and death.
The man used both knives.
She was already unconscious from the hammer blows when he shot her in the head.