Killercon Page 9

  In the background, Thelonius Monk skittered down the keyboard. But Graham didn’t hear music; he heard the raging echo of nails hammering against a piece of sheet metal, then a screaming wrench as if a giant had ripped the sheet metal in half.

  My God!

  Graham found the clasp and opened it—Empty! He’d forgotten about dropping the pill on the drive back. He reached into his pocket, fumbling around until he located his bottle of nitro pills. Outside, an engine rumbled, and Graham looked through the window. The truck was backing down the driveway, into the street. Moments later it roared away.

  “Graham?”

  Graham slipped the bottle into his pocket and turned to Susan, who was standing in the doorway, holding a long-stemmed glass in each of her hands, frowning as she said, “My God, what’s wrong with you?”

  “Nuh, nothing,” he said, and took a step toward her.

  “You’re white as a ghost.”

  “I’m fine,” Graham said, forcing a smile to his lips, even though his heart still pounded violently against his chest. “Let’s have our drink.”

  “Gee, Graham, I don’t know if you should.”

  “You kiddin? That’s exactly what I need.”

  “Well, okay,” Susan said, as she handed him a glass.

  Graham lifted its salty rim to his lips, and took a good long drink. The Cuervo Gold felt wonderful sliding down his throat. It was just what he needed, and he savored it for a moment before taking Susan by the hand and leading her to the couch, where he took another drink and set his glass on the coffee table.

  “Sit here,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

  Graham went down the hallway to the bathroom, flipped on the light and looked into the mirror. Patches of his Nautica shirt were wet, but his color seemed to be okay. He lifted a light green towel off the wall. After patting the sweat off his face, he ran the towel across his neck and hung it back across the bar. He still felt queasy, nervous. Even though he knew better, he grabbed his nitro pills, opened the bottle and slipped a pill under his tongue, wincing at the bitterness of the dissolving pill. Common sense told him he was a fool, but just knowing he had taken it made him feel better. After one last look in the mirror, he loaded up his clasp and snapped it shut, and then left the bathroom.

  In his study, he gathered up a paper-clipped bundle of printed pages and headed back down the hallway, to the living room where Susan sat drinking her Margarita. Plopping down beside her, he picked up his glass, and laid his papers on the couch. Graham touched his tongue against the salty rim, and then finished off his drink in one long gulp. “Ah,” he said. “That’s better.”

  “You do look better,” Susan said, and then touched a cool hand against his forehead.

  Graham held his drink up, rattling the ice cubes around the glass. “Another?”

  “Why not?” Tilting her glass toward him, Susan said, “Cheers.” After polishing off her own drink, she took both their glasses, stood and walked to the kitchen.

  Graham felt much better. The tequila had really hit the spot. The alcohol spread out from his belly, warming his arms, his stomach and legs. The afterglow left in its wake was a much-welcome sensation, and Thelonius Monk’s dynamic, singular piano stylings had never sounded better.

  Susan appeared at his side. “Here you go,” she said, handing him a fresh glass as she sat beside him.

  “Muchas gracias.” He lifted the drink toward his mouth. Grains of salt fell onto his pants and he brushed them away. He took a sip of the tantalizing tequila and salt mixture, and then plucked a lime wedge floating alongside the ice cubes, stripped the pulp from its thick, green skin, chewed it and said, “Mmm.”

  Susan took a sip. She leaned into him. “This is nice,” she said, and then snuggled her cheek against Graham’s shoulder.

  Graham, smiling, picked up the last thirty pages of his unfinished manuscript, and started reading to her. He flipped a page, moments later, another. An acoustic guitar filled the room, a piano joined in, a drum and a bass. Every now and then Susan would nod her head. Sometimes she would smile. A couple of times she stopped him to ask about his character’s motivation. Once she disagreed with his explanation. He nodded and said he might have to rethink the passage.

  Once Graham had finished, he set the pages beside him on the couch.

  “Mm,” Susan said. “You’re a wonderful writer. But you know that.”

  Smiling, Graham took an ice cube from his depleted drink and popped it into his mouth, crunched it, and said, “Well, I’m glad you think so.”

  “I do.”

  Graham said, “At the end, old man Holcomb’s going to end up with a 44 Magnum barrel in his mouth. I’ve yet to decide whether he’s going to pull the trigger. Can’t seem to make up my mind.”

  “If he pulls the trigger, that’s going to be so depressing—not to mention very messy. But if he doesn’t pull the trigger, maybe it ends on an optimistic note that something positive can come out of the horrible mess the old man has found himself in. Maybe he can make up for what he’s done.”

  “Or,” Graham said. “I can end it right there, with Holcomb’s finger twitching on the trigger. Let the reader decide what he does or doesn’t do.”

  “I vote for positive and hopeful… redemption.”

  Graham laughed and looped an arm around Susan’s waist. “Of course you do,” he said.

  “Graham, I’m really glad to see you doing so much better. You know, for a while there you really had me worried.”

  “I had myself worried.” Graham, pausing for a moment, said, “I think I’m going to fly down to Horrorcon.”

  “Oh, really.”

  “Yep. And I have you to thank for it. The trip into town made me realize you were right. I haven’t been living at all. And look at this manuscript. I should’ve finished it a long time ago, but its languished. Old man Holcomb should probably shoot me.”

  Laughing, Susan rubbed a hand across her husband’s khaki shorts. “So, I gave you some good advice then. The trip into town has spurred you on to your own trip.”

  “I’ll say,” Graham said, thinking, If you only knew!

  “Want me to go with you?”

  Hell no!

  “I don’t think so. You’d just be bored, and I really would like to do a little bonding, catch up with some folks.” Folks like Scary Mary! “I’ll probably be busy most of the time I’m there.”

  “Well, if you’re sure you’re up to it.”

  “I’m sure about one thing.”

  “What?”

  Graham pulled Susan close. “This,” he said.

  Their lips touched and Susan opened her mouth. She sucked in his tongue, shuddering as a hand cupped her breast. Gasping, she leaned her head back, smiled and said, “Boy, you really do feel better!”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Seeing that girl’s face buried in her husband’s crotch had angered Carrie beyond belief. The snickering wafting out of the Z-car as she walked away hadn’t helped matters either. She had every intention of putting a symbolic boot up Bryan’s ass when she got him home. But then she looked around at all the destruction: the burning car, the broken bodies by the roadside, the agonized shrieks and that poor guy with his severed hand, and all of her anger melted away, until the only thing left was an overwhelming feeling of relief that he had made it through relatively unharmed. She endured a good measure of teasing at the hospital over Bree’s autographed breast, but that didn’t change the fact that she would find Bryan safe and sound when she arrived home. And for that, she was thankful. Because it could have been so much worse—if the Z-car had landed upside-down, it might well have been Bryan, Larry and Bree being carted off to the morgue instead of that family in the Toyota. Carrie loved her husband, and couldn’t imagine her life without him. So when he made his announcement, Carrie reacted with heartfelt enthusiasm.

  “They just contacted you out of the blue? That’s wonderful!”

  Pearl Jam played on the stereo as Bryan picked up t
he bottle of beer he’d been nursing, supplying Two And A Half Men with a hard rock soundtrack while the actors moved silently across the muted television screen. “Apparently Rich Chadwick read Blood Bath and liked it so much he wants me to send him something.”

  “It must be very gratifying having someone seek you out like that,” Carrie said while Bryan took a sip of beer, and flipped the Dominos box lying on the coffee table shut. She wore a beige shirt over a white push-up bra, shirttails knotted in front to expose her flat stomach. Cut-off jeans—short and tight—showed off her firm, round butt. Long, blonde hair, some patches still wet from the bath, cascaded down the front of her shirt, the partially unbuttoned garment giving Bryan a tantalizing view of her cleavage.

  “Yeah, it is, actually. It’s a good feeling knowing my name is getting out there and people are responding to my work. The nice thing about this is the length. Small press manuscripts have been known to top out somewhere around forty thousand words, sometimes fewer than that. That’s less than half the material in any of my published works. Which means—”

  “You get to write less and still get a book on the market. Less work, more money.” Carrie leaned back on the couch and snuggled a little closer to her husband, who smiled and put an arm around her shoulder.

  “Well, a little more money. They only run off about five hundred copies, and I have to split that with the publisher. So they won’t bring in as much as one of my mass market novels, but a couple or three of those a year combined with what I get from Harrow House might keep us off the bread line.”

  “Oh, Bryan,” Carrie said.

  She brushed a hand across his leg, and for the second time that day thought about how hard she had been pressuring him to take a job—any job, even if it meant driving a forklift in some grimy warehouse. Even if going there everyday made him miserable. She had not considered his feelings, had not taken into account what he wanted out of life. Before the accident, her father had worked, her mother, too. Neither would have approved of their little girl going off to be the main bread winner while her husband sat around the house all day, even if he was—quote—working on a manuscript. Work, to Carrie’s mother, had been labor performed eight to ten hours a day at a location you didn’t necessarily want to be. ‘That’s why they call it work.’ And as much as Carrie wanted to think she was not her mother, that she had risen above her somewhat archaic value system, she realized that was not the case. Carrie had inherited the house she grew up in, had received a tidy settlement from the insurance company. She made a comfortable living at a stimulating and rewarding profession, and woke up every morning looking forward to the challenges it presented her. She had supported herself before she met Bryan, and it didn’t matter to her what his current income level was. Not really. It mattered to her mother, who had somehow managed to reach up from the grave and inflict her outdated moral beliefs on Carrie.

  She needed to tell Bryan she’d had a change in heart, to apologize, maybe.

  She was about to do that when the doorbell rang.

  Bryan relinquished his grip on Carrie, stood up and carried his beer with him down the hallway. The front door opened, and somebody said, “Dude!” Moments later, Larry followed Bryan into the living room. He had changed clothes, and now wore a light yellow t-shirt and a pair of jeans. His stonewashed denim jacket, unbuttoned, revealed a line of gray palm trees that stretched across the front of his shirt.

  While Bryan stood by the sofa, Larry sat down in a brown leather armchair across from Carrie. “How’s it going, Earnhardt?” she said,

  “Ha! Earnhardt’s dead. I’m still kickin’.”

  Carrie laughed. “Barely.”

  “How about a beer, Larry?”

  “You the man!” To Carrie, he said, “Look, about today. I take full responsibility for everything. Bryan wanted to come home and run across town to that—”

  “Chill out, Dude. I’ve already told her—everything.”

  “Everything?”

  Bryan nodded.

  “Everything, everything?”

  Laughing, Bryan said, “The whole caboodle, Dude.”

  “Good, ‘cause I still hadn’t figured out a way around that autograph.”

  Bryan turned and headed for the kitchen, eyes rolling as Carrie’s voice trailed off behind him, “Speaking of my husband’s number one fan… ”

  In the kitchen, Bryan dumped his empty bottle into a brown plastic trash receptacle, and walked to the fridge, opened it and drew two more Miller Lites from the nearly full twelve pack. Setting one on the counter, he opened the other and tossed the bottle cap into the garbage. Then he switched the bottles and repeated the process.

  Everything seemed to be going good, maybe too good. Carrie hadn’t come through the door raising hell. On the contrary, she had arrived home smiling, concerned about his well-being. Before he knew it they were making love, and now she was all pumped up about his offer from Hell Bent. He was just about to spring Horrorcon on her when Larry showed up.

  Bryan smiled, shook his head, and said, “Lucky I stopped him before he got too far into his lie.”

  I’d better get back in there!

  “I couldn’t believe it,” Larry was saying when Bryan walked into the room. “She just lifted up her shirt like it was the most natural thing in the world, and said ‘sign this!’ I was expecting her to pull out a book or something.” Larry snickered, looked up at Bryan and laughed. “I couldn’t believe he actually signed it.”

  “Oh, right you couldn’t.” On his way to the couch, Bryan said, “For a minute there I thought you were gonna sign it for me.”

  “Best wishes!” Larry said, like it was the funniest thing anybody had ever said.

  Bryan handed Larry a beer and looked down at Carrie, who was laughing behind the hand she had pressed across her mouth. “What?” he said. “What was I supposed to write, Kenney was here?”

  “Kilroy!” Larry called out, his trailing laughter dying when Carrie and Bryan cast a puzzled look at each other.

  Carrie, who had finally stopped snickering, said, “It just seemed like an odd thing to inscribe on somebody’s… body part.”

  Bryan wanted to say ‘Oh yeah? She didn’t think it was so odd.’ What he did say was, “I’ll try to come up with something better next time.”

  “I hate to tell you this, but if there is a next time, you might find yourself missing a body part.”

  Bryan grinned. His face turned red and he began to blush.

  Carrie shook her head and patted the cushion next to her. “Why don’t you sit down next to your wife while you still have one?”

  Bryan smiled. “Good idea,” he said. Then he sat down, tilted his beer toward Larry and offered up a toast: “To the luckiest fuckers in Charlotte.”

  “No kidding,” Larry said, and all three lifted their beers, Carrie sipping from a near-empty bottle while Bryan and Larry gulped mouthfuls. Larry pulled a thin plastic baggy out of his jacket and tossed it onto the coffee table, and drew one of four thinly-rolled cigarettes out. “After what we’ve been through today, I’d say we deserve to celebrate a little.”

  Carrie looked up at her husband.

  Larry, apparently seeking her approval, said, “Carrie?”

  “Oh, what the hell,” she said. “We do have reason to celebrate. You two chuckleheads made it home in one piece, and Bryan sold a novel today.”

  “No shit? Well, good for you, Dude.”

  “I didn’t actually sell it… yet.”

  “They’ll buy it,” Carrie said, then to Larry, “They solicited a manuscript. Asked him to send one to them.”

  “Sounds sold to me.”

  Bryan shrugged his shoulders. “Yeah, actually, it does,” he said, then, “And it’s a pretty damn good one.”

  “Hell,” Larry said. “I’d like to read it.” He pulled a Bic lighter from his jacket, flicked it and a flame appeared. He touched it to the joint, took a long drag and held the smoke in, his face turning red as he passed the joint to Carrie
. Smoke drifted out of his mouth as he spoke up, “You’re just doing all kinds of business today, aren’t you?”

  Carrie took a turn on the joint, pressing her lips together as if trying to keep the smoke inside. Her face turned red, then her cheeks puffed out. She coughed and smoke rushed from her mouth.

  “Good, huh?” Larry said.

  Carrie coughed a couple more times before muttering, “Wow.”

  Bryan took the joint, clamped his lips around it and took a drag. He held it for a minute, and then slowly let the smoke out. “We need an ashtray,” he said.

  “Use this,” Carrie said, and then sat her Miller Lite bottle on the table in front of him. Bryan flicked ashes into the bottle, and they passed the joint back and forth.

  Carrie said, “What’s this business he’s talking about?”

  Bryan hadn’t the slightest idea. He looked at Larry and opened his mouth, even though he had no idea of what he was about to say. Larry saved the day by cutting him off: “Bryan’s going to help me make a commercial. He’s gonna write it and I’m going to direct. I’ve hired this guy I know from channel four to shoot the film.”

  “You’re going to direct a commercial.”

  “Hell yeah,” Larry said. “Nothing to it: a handful of girls, a car or two, add soapsuds and bikinis. Next thing you know you got a commercial.”

  Bryan kept his mouth shut, because he had no idea where Larry was headed with this.

  “How about you? You want to be in it?”

  “Me?” Carrie said. “I don’t think so.”

  “You can if you want.”

  Carrie looked up at her husband.

  He raised his eyebrows and gave his shoulders a shrug, handed her the joint and looked away.

  “How much is all this going to cost?” she asked Larry.

  “That’s the beauty of it. It’s not going to cost me anything. Comes straight off the top of my business expenses. Pay Bryan, and you if you want to be in it—my sister and her husband are. She’s gonna drive up in a car and he’s going to give her some change. Hell, I’m going to pay myself a few thousand to direct. The higher I jack up the cost, the less tax I have to pay.”