Jessica Lange was allegory.
Lucy had explained it last Christmas as she’d struggled with a big rubber hand – Jessica Lange, that was, not Lucy. Lucy had never struggled with a rubber hand though sometimes looked like she might.
She’d said the hand was the deadening grip of Tinsel Town, threatening to crush Lange’s career before it had begun. The natives sacrificing her to King Kong were Hollywood executives. Jeff Bridges was her agent.
All the time that Lange struggled, seemingly terrified by a strangely off-screen ape, she was in fact seeing future acting prospects disappear.
The Postman Always Rings Twice represented the planes which killed Kong, freeing her to develop a life in showbusiness and to pick up Oscars galore. Oscars are the same size, relative to an actress, as she was to Kong. And that was how fate had it planned.
But if Lange had possessed any real sense of metaphor, she’d have climbed the World Trade Center, Oscar in hand, then sat on the roof, peeling bananas with her feet until a plane shot her.
Lucy had reckoned actors rarely understood allegory. Allegory was a directors’ thing.
Then she’d upheld her Christmas tradition of thrashing Danny at Buckaroo. As always, the donkey threw everything in the air the moment he’d removed the first object.
Then she’d thrashed him at Ker-plunk, the whole thing collapsing the moment he’d removed the first stick.
Impressed, she’d challenged him to go for the hat trick and place a straw on a dromedary to see if it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. He’d felt it best not to – and anyway hadn’t known anyone who owned a dromedary.
But right now the lack of camels didn’t seem important.
‘Let me go! Put me down!’ Again Danny struggled to break the straps; for the time being, too exasperated to be frightened. ‘I have other things to do. The girl – you remember her, the beautiful girl from the house – I have to help her. Right now.’
The monster strode on footfalls pounding Wheatley’s early morning backstreets, boy and trolley tucked newspaper-style beneath one arm. ‘Mr Meekly never like other girl. Other girl lock me in caves when me had never hurt her. Me glad she dead. You’re my Pretty Girl. Other girl smelled funny, like fruit bowl. New Pretty Girl smell nicer.’
Danny looked up at the monster, a horrible realization dawning. ‘Smells nicer?’
‘Pretty Girl’s smell led me from nasty tunnels. Pretty Girl save my life. Now me love Pretty Girl.’
‘Nice smell?’
‘Yes.’
‘You mean the Bonk?’
‘Bonk. Hurh hurh. Me and Pretty Girl be happy together. Bonk bonk.’
‘Look at me,’ ordered Danny, increasingly concerned at the way the conversation was heading.
A gruesome face leered down at him, semi-silhouetted against a rising sun. The creature’s head was a shapeless mass of pink fluffy fur, with ping pong ball eyes sticking out the front and pointing in opposite directions. Occasionally they’d revolve simultaneously, one clockwise, one anticlockwise, sending Danny seasick. Twin bolts protruded from where a neck was meant to be. Dick Dicksley had not been one for originality.
‘Do I look happy?’ asked Danny.
‘Yes.’
‘Am I smiling?’
‘Yes.’
‘Am I laughing?’ asked Danny.
‘Yes,’ it said.
‘No. I’m not.’
‘Yes. You are.’
‘No. I’m not. Look, this is a smile.’ Danny smiled. This is a frown.’ Danny frowned. ‘Spot the difference?’
‘No.’ Its attention returned to the street ahead. And when the monster laughed it resembled the unblocking of a drain.
‘Listen, for Godssake! I am not a girl, and I am not pretty. Now let me go!’
‘Pretty Girl too modest. Mr Meekly fix that.’ Not breaking stride, the monster uprooted a lamp post and offered it to Danny.
The boy scrutinized the twisted length of metal and concrete, wires dangling from its base. It was squashed in the middle where huge fingers dug into it. Danny’s eyes narrowed, projecting onto the object his contempt for his captor. ‘What’s this?’ he asked.
‘Flowers for Pretty Girl. See? No one give flowers to ugly girl. No one give flowers to boy. So Pretty Girl must be Pretty Girl.’
‘It’s a lamp-post.’
‘Lamp post flowers.’
‘You really are stupid aren’t you?’
‘Me do accounts real good.’
‘Yes. I’m sure you do.’
But then Danny saw where they were headed.
Osmosis Tower.
In Osmosis Park rose the Great Osmosis’ crowning glory; a two-thousand-foot-tall rubber office block. ‘Why use concrete when a satisfactory alternative can save millions?’ he’d asked the sandwich-eating Danny, one rainy, park-bench lunch break.
Construction progressed rapidly.
Osmosis had bought the super-strong rubber from a brilliant young scientist newly arrived in Wheatley and keen to make her mark. At the time, Danny hadn’t known who that might be but would later be able to guess. Who else would see rubber as a suitable building material?
Like Teena Rama, Osmosis had had charts.
He’d shown them to the council.
He’d told them the tower’s concept was that its flexibility would protect occupants during the devastating earthquake he’d claimed was coming.
Impressed, the council pushed through immediate planning permission. They were the earthquake-proof tower’s first and only tenants; ‘In the interests of saving the council-tax payer money.’
‘Every penny counts,’ Osmosis had told Danny as they’d watched the councillors move in, his index finger tapping his bucket at a place approximating his nose.
But Danny had guessed the truth.
Osmosis Tower wobbled.
It wobbled alarmingly, in the slightest breeze, making the occupants spend their working days being sick from the windows. Wheatley’s vomiting councillors became a media attraction after winning the Turner Prize. Black-turtle-neck-sweatered BBC2 Post Modernists declared it a masterful satire, though no one knew what was being satirized.
Osmosis’ masterplan was ticking along. ‘Why should I want anyone’s dirty shoes polluting my tower?’ he’d asked Danny as construction neared completion. Danny had had no reply. The question had provided its own answer.
All along, the tower’s sole purpose had been to commemorate Osmosis, its earthquake and atom-bomb proof nature ensuring the building would stand long after the human race had gone. He even claimed it would survive the Big Crunch when the Universe would finally collapse under its own weight. At the end of everything, only Osmosis Tower would remain – Osmosis Tower and God.
Somehow the entrepreneur had decided his tower was eight-and-a-half inches taller than God – unless God had grown since Biblical times, and he doubted that very much, bearing in mind the decline of conventional Christianity.
The inclusion of office space had merely been a means to procure planning permission.
After a week, the council moved out.
Three months into Danny’s coma. Osmosis’ plans bore fruit. Not all the tower had been built of Dr Rama’s super-strong rubber. The exterior was of her super-weak rubber. After twelve weeks of lashing rain, the weak rubber eroded, revealing a core moulded in Osmosis’ image.
His monument was complete.
And no one could do a thing about it.
Now, murder in mind, the Horrible Mr Meekly carried his Pretty Girl toward the Big Ugly Man, crossing a road, overturning screeching braked cars. Sending stupid people scurrying in panic, he entered the Big Ugly Park where the Big Ugly Man waited.
Meekly knocked down a pair of gates, tossing them aside, then strode on. Thoom thoom thoom. Now he and his Pretty Girl were alone. Thoom thoom thoom. She was complaining. His Pretty Girls were always complaining. It didn’t matter. He would demonstrate his love for her then she would struggle no more.
But before that, he stopped, inches away from the Big Ugly Man, and gazed up at its heights.
The Big Ugly Man was even bigger than the stupid gun Meekly had just smashed at the stupid house. The Big Ugly Man didn’t move, pretending not to have seen him. Meekly roared at him. The Big Ugly Man didn’t move.
A sign had been affixed to the Big Ugly Man’s gigantic little toe. Lips moving as his finger followed the lettering. Meekly read two words; Osmosis Tower.
Again his gaze climbed the Big Ugly Man. He didn’t like Osmosis Tower. ‘Big Ugly Man get out of my way, or me kill.’
Tower ignored him.
Meekly leapt at him, attempting to demolish him in one go.
‘Unhff!’ He bounced off, landing on his backside in clipped grass some yards away. The impact had sent a tremor through Tower, culminating in a pranging wobble at his apex. Meekly was glad. Now Tower would have a headache.
Tower settled down. Meekly didn’t. He rose to his feet, glaring at the thing, snorting like a mad bull. Still holding tight the shouting Pretty Girl he tried again, this time with a long, pounding run up.
And the Human Tube Line launched himself into the air.
And the Human Tube Line bounced off the Big Ugly Man.
Scrambling to his feet, now roaring, wild-eyed, knowing nothing but his hatred for Tower, he tried tearing lumps from the thing, then tried kicking it, then tried wrestling it into submission with a series of Half Nelsons to the toes. And still the Big Ugly Man refused to surrender.
Finally, twelve cable-thick fingers dug into Tower’s shin, then six more; Meekly’s other hand was occupied holding his Pretty Girl.
And the Human Tube Line began his fateful ascent of Osmosis Tower.
Wheatley waterfront. Clancy Watts, thirty-two, sat on her penthouse apartment’s deep pile carpet and polished a selection of AK-47s. On the hi-fi, Tony Bennett crooned I Left My Heart In San Francisco.
Ping, the lift doors opened. Hardy, her butler, emerged holding a pewter tray before him. A small, gleaming object rested on it. ‘Madam, I’ve finished casting the silver bullet you requested.’ He placed the tray on the coffee table to her left. ‘Is it intended for anyone special?’
‘Just this guy.’ From the floor, to her right, she took a twelve by eight photo and handed it to him.
He studied it. ‘An odd-looking individual. Somewhat blank-faced.’
‘Hardy, you’re looking at the photo’s back.’
‘I always do. Madam. It somehow makes people seem more agreeable.’ He studied its front, not looking any more impressed. She could understand that. ‘And does this gentleman have a name?’ he asked.
‘Uh huh.’ She vigorously polished a trigger, where dirt always accumulated. ‘He’s called Danny Yates.’