He didn’t stutter when he felt confident. He didn’t even look terribly threatening.
“Talk to me some more,” she said. “Come closer.”
Mickey Fitzwilliam laughed nervously, then patted down the sheets at the foot of the bed. He sat down, very stiff, very nervous.
“See, Roberto said this whole thing was really all for me in the end. The money. The tontine. All I needed was to cut the numbers a little.”
He snickered like a child and looked, briefly, proud of himself. “Well, a lot actually. Josh and Martin … that was pure improv. They came by my place bleating about how it was all going wrong … how scared they were. Pissed me off. Next day I just sent Josh a stack of letters demanding money and made it look like they came from Martin. Easiest thing in the world. Morons. They thought I was there to, like, mediate. You believe that? Then that idiot Tom Black calls me when he’s on the run.”
Another voice, high-pitched. Terrified.
“ ‘Scottie, Scottie, ya got to help me. Like you promised …’ ”
A dark, malevolent gleam flashed in his eyes.
“I hate dumb people. Told my old man afterwards. Know what the great Roberto Tonti said? That I got lucky. That I oughta shut up. He’d take care of it. See me right. Call that luck? Does anyone get that lucky?”
“I’d call it fate.”
He smiled. “Me too. This was meant to be, Maggie.”
He scanned the room as if he was looking at something he despised.
“Roberto gave me this theatre. My inheritance. Bullshit. He couldn’t make any money out of this dump. All these things … they were supposed to be his way of saying sorry. I’m not stupid. It was always about him. That scam was … his pièce de résistance. His big moment. Going out in a big blaze of glory. Look at me, Ma! Top of the world! All those years behind the camera. All those years watching actors get the applause. It ate him alive …”
“I saw that.”
“You did?”
“It was obvious. Tell me more.”
He inched a little closer and looked at her left leg, bare, half askew on the bed.
“I never touched a woman before. Not till today. When you were sleeping.”
Maggie Flavier gave him a stern look. “That’s not nice. Touching a woman when she doesn’t know.”
“I’m sorry. I just …” He shook his head. “I couldn’t stop looking at that movie after my dad gave it to me back when I was a kid. Vertigo. It was the first piece of work he did in America, you know. I watched it right away, to please him. Said it was his movie, too, in a way. Then I saw you and you lived in the same place. It was like …”
He ran his tongue over his lips as if they were dry. “I’d watch it every day. Twice, three times sometimes. Got it in French and Italian, too. I could sit here and tell you every second, read you every line.”
He gazed at her, frankly, greedily. “After a little while it was you I saw, not some dumb old actress no one’s ever heard of. You in that car. In that dress.” He blushed again, looked younger. “In bed, in that apartment. My apartment. Bought it with my own money. Robbed a bank in Reno. Self-made man. Wasn’t taking everything from Roberto. I got my dignity.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “That movie … it kind of got inside me.”
“They do sometimes.”
He edged closer still and, as she watched, gingerly put his hand on her knee, looking all the time, anxious for her approval. His fingers closed on her skin, squeezing, as if she were some kind of lab specimen.
“Not hard,” she told him. “That’s not nice.” She held up her arms, with the rope dangling from the wrists. “This isn’t nice.”
She leaned forward as if to kiss him. The rope was just short enough to stop her. She moved back into place with a sigh.
“A woman can’t make love tied to a bed. Not a good woman. That’s what hookers do. Dirty women. I don’t want to be a dirty woman. I won’t do that. Not for anyone.”
“I–I-I d-don’t want that, Maggie. I never wanted that. All that fuck-you-kill-you stuff. Jesus … All I wanted was to be with you. Like we should have been from the beginning. Now we’ve got the money, we can …”
His words drifted into the nothingness of acute embarrassment.
“We can what, Mickey? Tell me. Please.”
“We can be like normal people. A couple. We can live where we want. Paris, maybe. On a desert island. Or a farm in the country with a-a-animals …” He squeezed his eyes shut and blushed. “Kids maybe. All in good time. We don’t have to do it right now. I don’t expect that. I just … sometimes. Sheesh. Sometimes I’m not me.”
He took his hand off her knee, then mumbled, “We don’t even have to do it till after we’re married. I’d like that. It would be the right thing. In the circumstances.”
“In the circumstances …” she echoed, cursing herself for letting a little of her fury show, glad he didn’t notice. “I can’t kiss you if my hands are tied, Michael. Can I call you Michael? Is that OK?”
“If you like.”
He looked at her, mouth open, a little idiotic. Then he went back to the chair, scrabbled on the floor, came back with the knife, and sat next to her on the bed.
“The reason I never messed with girls is my old man told me. They screw with you. They fuck your head. They gobble up your whole life, until one day there’s nothing left.”
“Some girls. Not all.” She held out her hands. “It depends how you treat them.”
“Yeah.”
He reached over and sawed through the loop of rope on her left wrist, then her right.
“I didn’t tie them tight, you know. I didn’t want to hurt you. Not ever.”
“I realise that.”
She took his right hand, the one with the blade, slipped forward, angled her body against his, heard his breathing catch, turn short and excited.
“Are you going to hold a knife even when you kiss me, Michael?” she crooned.
“Oh …”
He looked at the thing, shamefaced, then released it. She heard it clatter on the floor, and then, before he could even look at her again, Maggie Flavier was on her feet, trying desperately to remember some of the things she’d learned in the few self-defence classes she’d taken a couple of years before.
But her mind was a blank, so she did what came naturally. She jerked back her arm and elbowed him so hard in the face that the blow sent something electric running up and down her funny bone, and she screamed.
Mickey Fitzwilliam crumpled, clutching at his nose. Blood leaked out between his fingers. He was moaning and whimpering like a child.
She didn’t wait. She ran to the door, jerked on the handle. The door didn’t budge. There was an old-fashioned key in the lock. In her mind’s eye she was already rushing outside, into the bright, safe world, screaming at the top of her lungs for all her life was worth.
The trouble was the key wouldn’t turn.
He was curled on the floor near the bed, snarling at her, a different Mickey again, the one who’d been there when she regained consciousness. The one who snatched her, stripped her, put her inside someone else’s old dress, dreaming, dreaming, dreaming.
He didn’t care that snot and blood were pouring down over his lips, dripping off his chin.