“I think so,” she says, doubtfully.
“Well, this,” Koo tells her, “is exactly as bad as a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. In fact, worse. In fact, two pokes, two eyes, two sharp sticks.”
“Oh, it isn’t that bad,” she says, with a laugh, as though he’s joking.
Koo frowns. He will not do Burns and Allen with this nitwit. “Okay,” he says. “So it isn’t that bad.”
Abruptly Liz yanks herself to her feet, saying to Joyce, “He’s an insect. He’ll be squashed, that’s all, sooner or later. Don’t smile at him, he’s dead already.” And she strides from the room, closing the door hard behind her.
Joyce looks pained, like a punctilious hostess. “Don’t mind Liz. Really. She’s been...upset today.”
“You don’t know the half of it.”
“I’ll have to—” Joyce is edging, in tentative muddled movements, toward the door, drawn by Liz’ wake. “Things will be all right now,” she says, but her smile is panicky.
Will things be all right? One of these people is talking death, one is talking release, one is talking father-son, one is talking African tribes, and Count Dracula isn’t talking at all. And Koo is not at all as heartened as Joyce at the prospect of this seven-thirty television spectacular; it sounds more like a negotiating phase than a final step, and so far Koo doesn’t much like the way these people negotiate. Making a sudden decision, surprising himself, he says, “Wait.”
“Yes?”
Is this the right move? Who knows; it’s what he’s going to do. “I want you to take a message to Mark.”
“Mark?” She frowns at him, her manner more keen than usual. “Is this the same thing that Larry talked to him about?”
“That’s right. Why?”
“They had a fight about it. Mark and Larry.”
Koo can’t quite contain a sudden triumphant grin. So his instinct is right; Mark went too far with that father-son line, he scared himself. Mark is on the run now, Koo has the edge, and by God he’s determined to find some useful advantage in it. With all these crazy people on the loose around here negotiations with Washington are less useful to Koo than his own initiative; somehow, somehow, he has to get himself out of here. (Was his message received, in that last tape? Was it understood? Is the house being surrounded at this very moment? No, he can’t count on that either; wishing won’t make it so.) “You tell Mark,” he says, “that if he won’t answer my questions I’ll ask them of you.”
“Well, what are they? Why not just ask me to begin with?”
“Tell Mark,” Koo insists. “Then either he comes down or you do.”
She hesitates, then slowly nods: “All right. But I don’t want him to fight with me. I’ll ask him once.”
“That’s fine.”
She leaves, and Koo lies back on the studio couch, staring at the ceiling. Now that it’s too late, he’s no longer so absolutely sure he has the upper hand with Mark. That’s a brutal boy, after all; swift violent action is his specialty.
Although he’s still very weak, nervousness soon drives Koo up onto his feet. He treads slowly the length of the room, door to window, and then back, pausing at the door; with all this traffic in and out, would somebody have forgotten to lock that?
No. He tests it, and it’s still solidly sealed against him. And the next time it opens, will Mark be coming in? With balled fists and enraged eyes? The thought pushes Koo away from the door, and he moves shakily down the room again to the far end, to the window and all that heavy viscous weight of translucent water. With his back to the water, Koo stands with his hands in the pockets of the terrycloth robe, and waits.
One minute; two minutes; and the door swings open and Mark walks in.
Koo presses his back against the window glass, ashamed of his fear and hating his physical weakness, watching Mark push the door shut behind himself and advance into the room. And into Koo’s mind comes a scene from one of those early movies, Ghost to Ghost: Fleeing the villains, the character he played backs through a doorway, unaware it leads to a tiger’s cage containing a tiger. Shutting the door, inadvertently locking it, he turns, sees the tiger, and freezes. The emotions Koo portrayed in that long-ago scene he now feels, almost literally; he is locked in a cage with a tiger, with a ferocious beast.
The ferocious beast paces to the middle of the room, his expression a deeply sullen glare. “All right,” he says. “Get it over with.”
Koo’s mouth and throat are dry. He has trouble breathing, making sounds, forming words. Hoarse, he finally says, “Is it true?”
“Is what true? Say the words.”
Koo nods. He knows the answer now, but he understands he does have to say the words: “Are you my son?”
“Yes.” There’s nothing in the word but Mark’s usual flat bluntness.
“You mean it—you meant physically, actually.”
“Flesh of your flesh.” Mark’s lips writhe in loathing over his teeth as he says the words. “Bone of your bone.”
“I—” Koo shakes his head. “I don’t understand.” Could Lily have had another child after they’d separated? But there wouldn’t have been any reason to keep it secret.
“You paid five hundred dollars to have me killed,” Marks says, without particular emotional force. “My mother spent the money to have me born instead.”
“Five hundred...an abortion.”
Mark’s smile is terrifying, and so is his low voice: “Did somebody call my name?’
“Jesus,” Koo says, barely above a whisper. “I don’t—I’m sorry, I don’t—” He gestures helplessly with both hands, his weight sagging back against the window.
“You don’t remember?” Anger, mockery, hatred; Mark leans toward Koo, but doesn’t step closer. “I was worth five hundred dollars to you not to exist, and now you don’t even remember?”
“It’s been—I don’t know how—”
“You don’t know which!” Mark stares at him in a kind of triumphal horror. “You filthy monster, you don’t even know which of your little murders I am!”
Ahhh, God, that’s true. There were three over the years, all of them decades ago; all, in fact, in the right era to be this fellow standing here. How old is he; thirty, thirty-two? Grown from a hasty error, all the way up to this. “I’m sorry,” Koo says, fighting down a sudden tidal wave compulsion to shed tears. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry.” Mark becomes calmer as Koo’s agitation increases. “Sorry for what?”
“For everything. Everything.”
“Sorry you don’t know which one I am. Sorry you didn’t get what you paid for.”
“No! Jesus, I’m not—” But of course he is. Five hundred dollars thirty years ago to not be in this room with this savage? There’s no way Koo can keep his reaction to that idea out of his mind.
And apparently no way he can keep it off his face; Mark emits an angry bark of laughter, saying, “That’s right. If only my mother had obeyed orders, you wouldn’t have me to worry about, would you?”
“Is that—is that why I’m here? Is that why you picked me?”
Rage flares in Mark at the question. His hand, clawlike, shoots out as though to clutch Koo’s throat, but then merely stays in the air, trembling. “I didn’t pick you! They picked you.” With a hand-wave to indicate the others in the gang. “All I did was...” the enraged face permits again a suggestion of the terrifying smile, “hint a little.”
“You mean the others don’t know. Is that it? They don’t know?”