We spent the next day at the motel, monitoring newscasts, reading papers.
The day after that, we went to Sea World.
Philipe got over his nervousness and paranoia extraordinarily quickly, and by that second day it had disappeared without a trace, leaving no residue. It was at his urging that we went to Sea World. He and the others treated it like a normal day, a normal outing, enthusiastically reading the list of times for the dolphin and killer whale shows when we arrived, rushing over to look at the shark tank. I could not believe that they could so easily forget Buster, that they could react so casually to his death, that they could carry on as if nothing had happened, and it depressed the hell out of me. Buster’s passing might not be noted by the world at large, but I’d at least expected it to have some effect on his fellow Ignored. Were we all this expendable? Were all of our lives this meaningless and inconsequential?
It was at Shamu’s show that I was finally compelled to mention it. We were sitting in the front row of the grandstands, had just been soaked with water after the killer whale had done a belly flop in the pool directly in front of us, and the other terrorists were laughing uproariously. “This is great!” Paul said. “I’m sure glad we came to San Diego.”
“We came here because we fucked up when we tried to blow up Familyland and Buster was shot to death and the scary ass-fuckers who blew him away were going to do the same thing to us. We’re not here on a fucking vacation!”
“What’s with you?” Philipe said. “Chill out.”
“Chill out? Two days ago, you made us blow up our damn houses because you thought those suits were chasing us — ”
“That was two days ago.”
“Now Buster’s dead and we’re here having a great time at fucking Sea World!”
“It’s not as if he died in vain.”
“What?”
“He gave himself for the cause.”
“Oh, so now we should be happy to sacrifice ourselves for ‘The Cause’. We’re supposed to accept that as part of the cost of doing business. I thought the whole point of all this was to free us up so that we would not be cogs in a machine, just small parts of a large organization. I thought we were supposed to be fighting for individual rights. Now we’re just supposed to submerge our individuality in another group. Yours.” I met his eyes. “I, for one, do not want to die. For anything. I want to live.” I paused dramatically. “Buster did too.”
“Buster’s gone,” Philipe said. “There’s nothing we can do to bring him back.” He fixed his gaze on me. “Besides, why should we feel bad? Why should we feel guilty? We were always there for him when he was alive. We were his friends, his family, we provided a place where he belonged, and he knew it. He was happy with us.”
I didn’t want to believe Philipe, but I did. God help me, I did. I tried to tell myself that he understood the way I thought, that he was able to manipulate me because he knew me so well, but I could not make myself believe it. Philipe was right. Buster had been happier in the last year of his life than he had ever been before, and it was all due to us.
Philipe looked at me calmly. “I think we need to kill a celebrity.”
I blinked, caught off guard. “What?”
“I’ve been thinking about it. As you said, we fucked up Family land. We haven’t accomplished anywhere near what we set out to do as terrorists. But I think killing a celebrity would get us a forum. We’d be able to take our case to the public.”
“I don’t want to kill,” I said. “Anyone.”
“Yes, you do.”
“No, I don’t.” But, again, that secret something inside me agreed with the reasoning of Philipe’s argument, thought it was a justified course of action.
“I don’t either,” Tim said. “Why don’t we just find a female celebrity and rape her?”
“Why don’t we kidnap a celebrity and hold him hostage?” Mary suggested. “We’ll get a lot of publicity that way. And we won’t have to take a life.”
“We’ve all taken lives,” Philipe said in a cold, hard voice. “You all seem to conveniently forget that. We’re not virgins here. None of us are.”
“But some of us have learned from our mistakes,” I said.
“What do you want to do, then? Nothing? Big change calls for big action — ”
“What change? Who are we fooling here? You think killing someone famous is going to change who or what we are? We’re Ignored. We’ll always be Ignored. That’s the fact, jack, and you’d better get used to it.”
Around us, the crowd cheered wildly as Shamu jumped through a series of fiery hoops.
“Celebrity,” Philipe said with disgust. “That’s the very concept we’re fighting against. That’s the very core of our complaint. Why should some people be more recognized than others? Why can’t everyone be noticed equally? The ironic thing is that killing a celebrity makes you a celebrity in this sick society. Mark David Chapman? We know that name because he killed John Lennon. John Hinckley? He tried to kill Ronald Reagan and was obsessed with Jodie Foster. James Earl Ray? Lee Harvey Oswald? Sirhan Sirhan? If we kill a celebrity, someone big enough, we will strike a blow against the enemy camp, and we’ll be known, we’ll be able to let people know we exist, we’re here.”
“If we’re caught,” Pete said quietly.
“What?”
“We’ll only have a forum if we’re caught. That’s the only way the media will pay any attention to us. Otherwise, we’ll be just as unknown as ever. The police probably get stacks of letters claiming to take credit for something like this. Even if we sent a letter or made a phone call, it would just get lost in the shuffle.”
It was obvious Philipe had not really considered that aspect, and it threw him for a second, but he recovered almost immediately. “Then Mary’s right. We should kidnap a celebrity. That way we could let the cops hear his voice, know he’s alive. Then they’d pay attention to us. We’d threaten to kill the celebrity unless our demands were met. That would get us some results.”
“We could videotape him, too,” I suggested. “Send the video to the cops.”
Philipe turned to look at me, and a slow smile spread across his features. “Good idea.” He grinned at me and I found myself grinning back, and the old magic was there. Suddenly we were a team again.
The Shamu show ended, and after a sustained cheer, people started leaving, getting up, gathering their purses and souvenir bags, streaming down the bleacher steps, maneuvering around us. We stayed where we were.
“So where are we going to go?” Junior asked. “Hollywood? Beverly Hills?”
Philipe shook his head. “Those are for tourists. Celebrities only show up there when there’s a premiere or something, and that would be way too crowded and security would be way too tight. I’m thinking Palm Springs. They live there. They’ll be more accessible, more off their guard.”
“Sounds good,” I said.
Steve nodded. “Yeah. Let’s do it.”
Philipe looked around the group. “Are we all agreed?”
There was a chorus of “yesses” and “yeahs”, much nodding of heads.
“Tomorrow then,” he said. “Tomorrow we’ll pack our stuff and head out to Palm Springs.” He grinned. “We’re going to catch us a movie star.”
Twelve
Palm Springs.
It was exactly the way I’d imagined it would be.
Maybe a little hotter.
If Rodeo Drive had seemed shabbier than it was supposed to, Palm Springs more than lived up to its hype. The sun was bright, the sky free from smog or clouds, and everything seemed cleaner, clearer, sharper than it did in Los Angeles or Orange County. The streets here were wide, the buildings low and sleek and new, the people good-looking and well-heeled. The only concessions to the season were geometric Christmas tree shapes hung high on the streetlamp posts and occasionally frosted windows on some of the smaller stores. If it was not for those subdued reminders, I probably would have thought it was summer.