17 |
the emperor’s game |
They raid the medicine cabinets, bandage up, and collect the guns.
Then they get the fuck out of there.
Little Gretchen is still in the special room when they ascend the elevator for the final time and look in on the children. All the grown-ups are gone. The special room is white and featureless, except for a desk and a chair and a cot.
It’s the very same room Mark met his father in, all those years ago.
Jollie tells her she is free, that people are coming to save her. The girl asks if she can come with them, and Jollie says no, because where they are going is not for children. It hurts Jollie to leave her, but they have to.
Gretchen watches them go, waving good-bye in the playroom.
They run through the woods and get to Mark’s stolen Ferrari Spider, thirty minutes before the police respond to an anonymous 911 call and arrive in force.
• • •
It’s almost six in the morning when Gretchen sits in the back of a squad car, in the cobblestone driveway of Darian Stanwell’s house. The children have all been awakened from a deep sleep and they are being organized by EMS workers, questioned by police and social workers. It’s like a carnival, Gretchen thinks. Like a pretty fairground full of blinking, tumbling lights and noise. Strange faces, all melting into one another, becoming one another. A million faces that are one face. A billion eyes, who are one set of eyes—the eyes that watch, the eyes that know.
And kids too.
All the kids, who never really spoke to her before tonight. Those were the rules. You never spoke to a special kid, because they were better than you. They learned things you did not.
The rest of them, they all belonged to the Monster Squad.
Gretchen shivers at the thought.
She wonders what will become of her. She is eleven years old and smarter than any child in Austin. She’s been shown the beauty of love and freedom. She’s been taught how to wear a mask in the darkest places. She’s been trained.
A man in a black coat who looks like a shadow comes over to her. Sees her face and seems to recognize it. He is not like these others.
“Honey,” he says, and his voice is gentle. “Can you tell me what happened here?”
She looks into his eyes, and they are blue and endless. He gets closer to her, and his face is carved out of the darkness. Into something almost loving. But not quite.
“Don’t worry, child. You are safe. Tell me what you know. About the man who did all this.”
• • •
The Austin Motel.
A legendary dive on Congress Avenue, next to the Continental Club.
You can see a dazzling slice of downtown from here, glimmering like diamond dust on concrete all the way to the Capitol building, and the old man on the front-desk night shift says so, cracking a few random remarks about city life and hippies and how this side of town is the best because everything is homespun and overdeveloped at the same time—like open-sandal free love and honky-tonk gloom rushing to meet some gaudy-chic clothing store. The old man is pretty damn eloquent in his description of this town, but Jollie won’t remember any of it a minute from now. She checks them in fast while the Mummy Twins hang back in the car, Mark and Andy like undead alterno-rockers decomposing under thick blood-stained bandages, waiting for their road manager to clear the motel digs for tonight’s tour stop. Mark jokes that it’s a good thing they’re not vampires—they’d have to travel with coffins. Jollie thinks it’s a lousy joke and says so, telling him to fuck off in the bargain.
Mark only rolls his eyes.
She really hates me now.
But she’s still wearing the ring.
His cheap piece of ten-cent plastic.
Maybe she didn’t notice it’s still there.
• • •
They have only one room at the Austin Motel, on the bottom floor. Room 150. The key is an old-fashioned thing—not a card with a magnetic stripe. Real old-school. She unlocks the door and takes a look at the digs. It’s a tiny room with only one king-size. She doesn’t like the idea of sharing a bed with Mark, but they have to stick together, in one place. They have to sleep with their backs to the wall. And the walls have ears, of course. Mark parks their car in the empty space, just outside the door, and he helps Andy inside. Then he gets the package and rolls it in. Thinks about doing something all secret agenty and cool, like hiding the bag in the ventilation shaft—No Country for Old Men stuff. But he just sighs and stashes it under the bed. True Romance will have to do. He’s too tired and beaten for anything else. His neck stitches feel weird, but they don’t hurt yet. He’s grateful for the pharmacy-grade dope. Feels like Dilaudid or high-grade morphine. They have plenty more, from Darian’s secret stash.
Darian.
He forces himself not to think about him.
While he hides the stash, Jollie stands outside, checking out the motel. It’s a crappy old place that’s been remodeled three times since it started falling apart in the mid-seventies, built at a weird angle off the side of a really busy street. The swimming pool still works, perched on a rise near the parking lot. Jollie wonders if they could have been a little more conspicuous about where they holed up, but then she flips her head and tells herself she doesn’t care. Tells herself they’re hiding in plain view. It doesn’t even matter now. METRO will find them, if that’s what they want. Mark smashed his magic phone and left the remains in a Dumpster six blocks away from the motel. Before that, they cleaned the operating room and didn’t touch anything else at Darian’s place. They even took Andy’s severed parts with them. But that doesn’t guarantee anything. At all.
It’s almost 6:30 and Congress Avenue is dead.
The neon lights of the Continental Club stutter and blink across the street. The air is cold and her bones feel it now.
It’s November 10.
• • •
Andy slips into a coma fast, his mind still hammered by the drugs.
Jollie watches over him for a few minutes, sitting at the edge of the bed, her back to Mark, trying to stay calm. She’s afraid of Mark now. She’s afraid of herself too, of what she will become around him. Mark just sits in a chair and stares at the ceiling. Finally, she says she wants to speak to him. Gets up and opens the door and walks out into the cool air. Mark gets up and follows her. She shuts the door and leaves Andy inside. The two of them face each other. And the first thing she says to Mark is this:
“I was thinking about the Emperor in Star Wars.”
• • •
“Which Star Wars?”
“All of them, I guess.”
“The Emperor isn’t in all of the movies, Jollie. Just four of the first six, really. You see him on video for about a minute in Empire, but he’s played by a different actor. At least that was before Lucas rewrote everything later.”
“Still playing your part, huh? Still the King Nerd Killer.”
“You brought it up, not me.”
“Yeah, I did.”
“Were you making a point?”
“Not about you. I really was thinking about the Emperor in Star Wars. Remember in Return of the Jedi? How he tricked Luke into fighting Darth Vader?”
“Yeah. The master manipulator.”
“I was thinking about how Luke went crazy in that scene. How he just let loose and poured his anger all over his own father. I always thought there was so much tragedy in that.”
“Do you think that was you back there, Jollie? Do you think you were Luke?”
“Wouldn’t that make you Vader?”
“Yeah. But I’d accept that, I guess.”
“I wouldn’t. I think maybe we were both Luke. And that bastard . . . that horrible, eloquent, terrifying man—”
“You were smarter than him, Jollie. He didn’t break you. You never gave in, not really. You stopped yourself, just like Luke did. You even threw away your weapon, just like Luke did.”
“But Andy . . . look what he did . . .”
“He did what he had to do.”
“I don’t think I could ever kill anyone. I’m not like you. And I’m not Luke Skywalker either.”
“Nobody is. And I’m glad you’re not like me.”
“I’m sorry, Mark. I’m so sorry for what I did to you.”
“Don’t cry.”
“I can’t help it. I need to cry. I need to feel something.”
“Jollie, we made it out of there. The three of us. We were meant to survive. I won’t let any of you get hurt again.”
“None of that makes us really safe. It doesn’t make me safe from you. It doesn’t make me safe from how I feel about all of this.”
“Then maybe that’s just the way it needs to be. At least for now. We can go our separate ways if you can’t stand the sight of me. I won’t say that I don’t care. But I’m cool with it, so long as I know you’re okay. So long as I know it’s really all over.”
“Isn’t it? Didn’t we kill the Emperor?”
“The bad guys always come back. They’re just played by different actors.”
“That’s real funny, Mark.”
“I didn’t mean to be an asshole.”
“No. It really was funny. I’m sorry I can’t laugh right now.”
“It’s hard for me to laugh too. My neck feels weird.”
“I’m so sorry . . .”
“I wish I could hold you, Jollie. I want that so badly.”
“Part of me wants it too. But another part of me . . . the biggest part of me . . . thinks something else.”
“Thinks I’m a monster.”
“No. Something else. I don’t know.”
“We’re all in strung-out shape, Jollie. Shock and horror are terrible things. I learned about it a long time ago. But you need to know—”
“What? That you’re not a monster? That you’re nothing like that evil manipulator back there? That’s bullshit, Mark, and you know it. You lied to me for years with blood on your hands.”
“I never would have hurt a child. I never would have done what he did.”
“Then what about Jackie?”
“I . . .”
“Did you really shoot him?”
“I . . .”
She closes her eyes and he says it, finally, crying.
“Yes, Jollie. I shot Jackie.”