The phone rang. Shannon? Should she even answer? Let him think she didn’t make it home. It rang three times more. No, she’d better answer it, but if it was him, she’d hang up as soon as he started talking.
Picking up the phone, she said “Hello?” in a voice affected to sound bored.
“Umm, Veronica?” Not Shannon. “This is Benny.”
Oh, for Christ’s sake, this she needed about now. “Do you know what time it is?”
“I’m sorry to call, I was just about to give up. I was only going to let it ring seven times.”
“It’s about two in the morning.”
“I didn’t wake you up, did I? You got the phone right away.” She groaned, and he spoke again quickly. “I’m sorry to bother you, but I have to talk to someone about Hobie. I’m very concerned about him. This isn’t about me, okay?”
“I’m not sure I should be—”
“I think you already know what I’m talking about. Don’t you? Unless you’re in denial.”
In denial. She considered hanging up.
“He’s changed. He’s like a different person. He’s living in a solipsistic world of his own, indifferent to the rest of humanity.”
Solipsistic? Hoo boy. Well, it was true Hobie had been acting distracted lately, but it seemed to her he did that every so often. In her presence, he talked in an odd way, as if expressing his thoughts not to her, but to himself.
“He’s just that way, Benny,” she said.
“No no no, no!” Benny’s voice cracked. “It’s not him. It’s that drug he’s on, it’s transforming him.”
“What drug?”
“You mean you actually don’t know? He’s on that worm drug.”
“Worm?”
“Yes, worm, also known as Verum Deus by the Satanist cult that created it. The mind-shattering drug that causes acute disorientation and moral confusion. It’s a very dangerous fad.”
Moral confusion? “That doesn’t sound like Hobie.”
“I wouldn’t have thought so either. He used to be the kind of person who had too much respect for his body to pollute it, but something drew him to this. I’m surprised he hasn’t mentioned it to you. Are you sure he hasn’t?”
“Yes, I’m sure he hasn’t said anything about a drug.”
“And he doesn’t even seem any different to you?” This sounded like a contemptuous accusation.
“To be frank, I think Hobie might be behaving differently toward you for personal reasons.”
“Just what are you implying?”
“Look, Benny, it’s two in the morning, I worked all day and I have my own problems to deal with. Besides, I need to keep this phone clear. I’m expecting a call.” A lie, though Shannon might call, or the cops might if he’d had a car accident.
Benny said, “I’m sorry if I sound angry. I’m dealing with a lot of anger right now because of things that have happened between Hobie and myself, of which I gather you’re aware—”
“Really, I have to go now. I’ll talk to you about this later, okay?”
“Will you really? Do you even care?”
“Yes, I’ll talk to you later.”
Benny sighed. “All right then,” he said, all pissy, and with that, he hung up.
Good grief. She hung up the phone, grabbed the remote, turned on the TV. She punched the remote, ran through a number of channels showing stuff that looked really uninteresting. So many channels, so much shit. A logo appeared on the screen, Trumpet His Word! with the “t” in the form of a stylized cross, followed by “with your host…” There we go, fucking Dr. Trumpeter Landfrey again. Is he ever not on?
The phone rang again. Jesus fuck! It had better not be Benny calling back or she’d rip him a new asshole. He’d like that, probably. And if it was Shannon, she’d just hang up.
“Veronica, dear, you weren’t sleeping, were you?” Great, it was Hobie. He and Benny were the only people who called her Veronica except for doctors and job interviewers and the like.
“No, no such luck.”
“I’m just so up about the marathon. How do you think it’s going?”
“It’s a really good turnout. The attendees act like they’re having fun.” Not that she could say the same about herself.
“You know, honestly, the entire event is so much about my own desire to be a filmmaker, about the different directions I’m pulled in.” Uh oh, here we go again, the continuing story of Hobie and his dream to be a great auteur-type horror movie director. “…on the one hand, I adore the raucous humor and iconoclastic spirit of the Bongoville fare, especially the films directed by Marty the Martian himself but, far more deeply than that I’m drawn to the dark aesthetic of Scalabrino and the other Italian ’70s masters whose films really laid the groundwork for the extreme horror that’s emerging today. Though none of the current generation, anywhere in the world, have come close to surpassing Scalabrino, in my view. That the two of them, Marty and Sab, worked together for a time has always fascinated me, though it’s unsurprising that they finally became estranged.”
Marty the Martian? Whatever. “You should write a book about it, Hobie,” she said. In fact, he used to have a horror movie fanzine titled Corpses Dreaming or something like that. There had only been a couple issues, almost everything in them written by Hobie himself, and much of it about himself, so Shannon had said. She didn’t care in any case. As Hobie knew, but here he was subjecting her to this boring shit at fucking two a.m.
“Oh, but what I really long to do is to make films, not to discuss them. I realize it so much now, that it’s what I’ve always aimed for, almost unconsciously, because it seemed so out of my reach. To be the master of the spectacle. That is, I want to get to the real essence of film, of the horror cinema. The experience of it. The group aspect and the individual aspect. Widespread disaster and personal danger. But I’ve always been so misdirected. Always preparing to live, rather than being in the moment, you know? It’s like what Kafka said, all his life had been a hesitation before birth. Well, no more!”
Yeah, right. She changed the subject. “Say, not to be a bummer but I should tell you, they showed one of the movies on your schedule on local TV tonight.”
“Oh, I know! Did you see that?! It’s the US release cut, butchered a second time for television. Truly a travesty and desecration of one of Scalabrino’s greatest works. Fortunately, what we’re showing is the director’s version, not Scream but 7 Masks.”
“Director’s cut, huh?”
“Oh, so much more than that!” He laughed. “It’s a personal testament to the ages!”
Maybe Benny was right, he was acting pretty weird. “Are you okay, Hobie?”
“Okay, you ask?” He chortled for a long minute. It sounded almost like choking.
“You’ve been acting like you’re awfully…” She considered what word to use. “Enthusiastic.”
“I’m altogether delirious over the marathon! Wait ’til you see what special events I have planned!”
“Oh, say, I wanted to ask. Did you really mean to have the admission fee be the same on Saturday and Sunday as tonight? That’s what the sign by the ticket booth says.”
“Yes, I want to encourage people to go for the full experience of the schedule as I’ve arranged it.” Okay, that hardly made sense, but it was his party. Though she’d be the one to have to argue with people about it.
“Another thing… that bunch of wacko Christians was still hanging around outside protesting your posters when I left tonight, and Channel 9 had a truck out there earlier, filming those hanged scarecrows you put up over the entrance.”