SIXTEEN

Back at his apartment, Randal was planning a quiet night in. Cocktail in hand he examined his bookshelves, browsing through his collection of porno DVDs. He was reading the blurb of Raiders of the Lost Ass (Winner of the 2003 AVN Award for best group anal scene) when the phone went off. He checked the caller ID – Gibby. He had been putting off a call to Gibby all day after enduring a particularly difficult evening with Jacques. With a sigh he decided to get it over with now.

“Gibby, man,” Randal said, “What’s up?”

Across town Gibby was in the back of a taxi with the windows rolled down. Next to him Jacques was passed out cold, a long trail of drool hanging from his chin.

“Oh nothing, Randal.” Gibby said coldly. “I just managed to crawl out from underneath a three-hundred-pound naked Frenchman, but apart from that things are just dandy. What’s new with you?”

“Gibby, what the fuck are you talking about? Didn’t you have a meeting with Kenny tonight?”

“Oh sure. The meeting was over at Le Poisson Cru. You know it?”

“Nah.”

“It’s this hot-shit new French-Sushi fusion joint in Beverly Hills. Been getting all kind of rave reviews. I guess Kenny was trying to impress Jacques.”

“Was it any good?”

“I dunno. If paying a hundred and fifty bucks for two thin slices of raw yellowtail garnished with peppercorn sauce is your idea of good then sure, I guess it was. You seriously never been to that place? It was like eating in a fucking operating room – white on white. All that was missing was waiters in scrubs. I guess they were going for that whole ultra-minimalist thing, you know? Lindsay Lohan was having dinner with some chick at the table behind us.”

“Musta been her lawyer.”

“Maybe. But apart from the fact the place was pretentious as fuck, dinner went pretty good. In fact up until a certain point I’d say it went better than good. It went great. Kenny was putty in our fucking hands, Randal. I didn’t realize just how in awe of Jacques he is. He wasn’t kidding when he said that Dead Flowers was his favourite movie. He acted like a fucking pre-pubescent girl at a Justin Beiber concert.”

Randal took a slug of his drink, clanking the ice cubes together. “Who the fuck is Justin Bieber?”

“Ah, never mind. I forget, you don’t got teenage kids, do you?”

Randal looked at the DVD in his hand. Co-Ed Contortionists. “Not exactly,” he said.

“Yeah, well, all I’m sayin’ is that instead of the arrogant prick I’ve had to deal with on the phone the past few weeks, tonight I got to meet Kenny Azura the fan boy. Talk about cognitive dissonance! He was fawning over Jacques. Randal, I gotta tell you it was kinda pathetic.”

Sliding the DVD back, Randal plucked another from the shelf. It was still in the shrink-wrap. A hardcore zombie spoof called Dawn of the Spread. “And how about Jacques? Did he behave?”

“He was okay… once he got there. He showed up a half hour late, looking like he’d slept in his suit. But once we actually made it to the table he was fine. They got the full-on Jacques experience – he wouldn’t take his sunglasses off, and he sat there glaring at all of these Chainsaw bigwigs looking all Gallic and intellectual. Kenny was with this real hard-faced bitch. Sharon something-or-other?”

“Lindenbaum. She’s a tough lady. Smart as hell.”

“Uh-huh. Well, you know Jacques. He keeps making these obscure statements, a bunch of arty farty old shit really. He drops this one like about his art being an enormous cock that he wants to fuck infinity with or something, and old Sharon looked like she was gonna shit a brick. The best part was that Kenny was swallowing it all, hook line and sinker. He asks Jacques what the movie is about, and Jacques gives him some bullshit about how he wants to break down the third wall and make the audience complicit in his crimes… I mean, old Sharon looked like she wanted to call bullshit on all of this, but I got the distinct impression that everyone there was kinda scared to contradict Kenny.”

Randal was perusing the box of an all black porno flick called Screw The Right Thing. “Kenny’s the man right now. Nothing happens at Chainsaw without his say so, and everybody knows it. Until he fucks up… nobody can say shit to him.”

“Well, I got the distinct impression that quite a few people at the table were getting a little freaked out by Jacques. But Kenny was just eating it up. I mean he’d push here and there, but we basically got the deal we wanted – complete artistic control, full support of the studio, a free hand when it came to casting. He didn’t even ask to see the script, which is fucking great because there isn’t one. All we gotta do is sign on the dotted line, and we’re golden. I was just about to hustle Jacques outta there when everything went to shit.”

“Howdja mean?”

“It was fuckin’ Jacques. When was the last time you saw him, anyway?”

Randal laughed dryly. “It was at the motel… around eight, I guess? He was all cracked out. Fuckin’ asshole was blasting that Stones track, Fool To Cry, so fucking loud. Every time it finished, he’d start it up again. Ranting on and on about how it’s the most beautiful song ever recorded. He was hitting that crackpipe like a maniac. Kept offering it to me too, the fucking asshole. I told him I had to leave, right? I mean, I’m in recovery Gibby; I can’t be around that kind of shit any more. He was being a real dick about it too, goading me, you know? Calling me a pussy, a fucking hypocrite. He’s going through the back of the LA Weekly calling up whores, trying to get them to come over. But he sounded so crazy on the phone, even the whores were avoiding him. I mean it was getting real messed up there, and if I had to hear that fucking song one more time I was gonna lose it. So I split, left him to it.”

“Yeah, well looks like he stayed up all night. Maybe it was a good thing he kept the shades on, ‘cos who the fuck knows what his eyes looked like. But anyway, right as the meeting is wrapping up he goes to take a leak. I’m sat there making small talk with Kenny and his cronies. Five minutes later he’s still not back. Kenny’s going on and on about some fucking yacht he’s got in the fuckin’ Virgin Islands or some shit. Ten minutes pass. I mean, the check has come and gone, Kenny’s signed for it and all of that, and everybody’s waiting for Jacques to come back so we can get the fuck out of there. Now they’re all giving me funny looks. So what can I do? I gotta go and check it out. You’ve never been to this place before, huh?”

“Nah. I hate those fucking pretentious Beverly Hills places.”

“Well, the bathrooms in there are fucking massive. Like, cavernous. Their gimmick is that they tiled the floor with thousands of silver dollars. They’re like set into the floor or something, so it just looks like a sea of silver when you go in, and when you look closely you realize that they made the floor out of fucking money. Place looks empty, right? No sign of Jacques. I call for him. Nuthin. I’m just about to leave when I hear this noise coming out of one of the stalls. Like a whimpering. Sounded like a dog that just got kicked or something. So I walk over to check it out. I’m like, Jacques? Jacques is that you? And I hear it again. I give the door a little push and it swings open. Okay, get this. In the stall, like, cowering up on the fucking toilet, there’s Jacques. He’s completely fucking naked, and he’s crying. I mean literally sobbing. His clothes are in a pile by the toilet. And as soon as I opened the door the smell just hits me. I see something, you know, I don’t wanna look too close, but it looks like Jacques smeared shit all over himself. He’s got this brown stuff caked all over his legs, right? So I’m like, Jacques? The fuck is going on, man? Then he looks at me. His fucking eyes, Randal. When I saw his eyes that’s when I knew something serious had gone down. He wasn’t there no more. Jacques had gone insane, Randal. He’d flipped his lid.”

By now, Randal had lost interest in the DVD’s. “Jesus. What was going on?”

“That’s what I asked! I’m, like, Jacques? What’s going on, buddy? I ain’t kidding you, the motherfucker leapt at me. Fucking sprang out of there like a jack-in-the-box and landed right on top of me. Tackled me! The smell was overpowering. I mean, just think about that! I got all of Chainsaw Pictures’ top brass upstairs waiting for us to get back, and I’m lying on the floor of the john with my naked, shit-stained client lying on top of me. Not a good look.”

Randal started laughing. He was just about to ask Gibby what the hell had provoked this, when Gibby cut him off. “You’d better hold that thought, Randal. We’re pulling up at the hotel. I’ll call you back in a minute, okay?”

Randal hung up the phone, and smiled to himself. He walked into the kitchen and poured the last of the whisky into his tumbler. He decided to call Pink Dot to have some more delivered before Gibby called back and tied up the line again.