Bruce shrugged and he meant it. ‘Who gives a fuck what those parasites think?’
Just a few hours earlier he would have been obsessed with what they thought, but that was a few hours earlier. Things had changed. Changed for ever. Karl, of course, was still living in the old world.
Or at least he thought he was.
‘We give a fuck, Bruce,’ he said. ‘It’s the violence thing. It’s the big deal of the moment and it’s getting a little serious. These fucks are talking up Ordinary Americans like it was some kind of training manual for psychos. Newt Gingrich was on the Today Show this morning-’
‘All politicians are scum,’ Wayne interjected. ‘Ordinary Americans is a fuckin’ masterpiece.’
Again Karl ignored him. ‘He says you’re a pornographer and you shouldn’t get honoured for glamorizing murderers.’
Scout was bored. She didn’t like Karl and she didn’t care what Newt Gingrich thought. She had been having a much more interesting conversation before Karl arrived. She turned back to Brooke.
‘Brooke, will you put my hair up like you said you would?’
Rather nervously Brooke nodded and, taking her handbag, she crossed over to where Scout was sitting and started to do her hair. Karl was not a little surprised to be interrupted in this way by outofwork actors, but he let it go. That he should care if this little runt showed him disrespect. In his life she did not even exist.
‘I think the Republicans want to turn it into a midterm election issue. We need to make a plan.’
Again Scout barged in with her own agenda. ‘You know what I love? I love the way hair mousse comes out of the can. Like, how do they get it all in there?’
‘It expands, honey,’ said Wayne.
‘I know it expands, dummy. Because it’s bigger when it gets out. But I don’t know how it happens. It’s the same with cans of whipped cream. How do they do that? I mean cream is cream – you can’t crush it up.’
Karl looked at her, astonished. He hadn’t been ignored like this in twentyfive years.
‘Excuse me,’ he said, ‘did I become invisible? I’m talking here.’
Scout seemed suitably admonished. ‘Sorry,’ she said.
‘You are very far from welcome,’ Karl replied with ill grace, before turning back to Bruce. ‘They’re thinking about reclassifying for overeighteens. That’s half our box office gone at a stroke, to say nothing of actual bans, particularly in the South. In retrospect, I think the crucifixion scene was a mistake.’
‘Awesome scene, man,’ said Wayne.
Again Karl ignored the interruption. ‘It’s these fucking Mall Murderers, Bruce. Those two little punks are in danger of getting our picture pulled, Oscar or no Oscar. Do you know they just shot up a 711? Christ, what kind of pointless sickos are these people?’
Brooke and Bruce froze. Karl’s conversation had suddenly taken an unimaginably dangerous turn.
‘Well, you know,’ Brooke said casually, while teasing at Scout’s hair, ‘I mean, you have to try to be a little understanding, see things from their point of view.’
Karl was not an understanding type of person. ‘What, you mean the point of view of a socially inadequate jerkoff? Please.’
‘I really don’t think you can dismiss them that easily.’ Brooke was doing her best but it was a hopeless task.
‘Pardon me, miss, for appearing rude, but that I should give a fuck what you think. Wayne Hudson and that weird, scrawny little bitch he drags around with him are screwed up trailerpark whitetrash nobodies who have mashed potato instead of brains. The sooner they get burnt, fried, decapitated, castrated, lobotomized, liquidized and generally fucked over, the better. I would gladly take a mallet to the little fucking scumbags myself.’
Bruce and Brooke braced themselves. Surely now the mayhem would begin. Wayne had moved to behind the couch where Scout was sitting. He had only to reach down into the cushions at her back to produce a machinegun, and this appallingly provocative man would be dead. Scout herself need merely brush aside the cushion on her lap. Surely it was all over for Karl?
‘You talk big, Karl, but you’d never do it.’ Bruce’s laugh was wooden as a daytime soap. ‘You always end up on the side of the underdog.’
‘Underdog? Those scum?’ Karl replied.
Bruce was now convinced that Karl had a death wish.
‘Like I would waste my tears on such syphilitic maggots? I would puke on their graves and those of their mothers, who no doubt were whores.’
Shut up! Every fibre of Bruce’s being willed this loudmouthed oaf to shut up. Brooke, too, was desperately trying to reach somehow into his mind and stop this fool from digging all their graves with his violent language.
How often had Brooke spoken in the past about auras and third eyes? While not actually holding a season ticket on the New Age Traveller bandwagon, she had always claimed to have a palpable connection with the mystic. She believed firmly that thoughttransference was possible. She was getting a painful crash course in Old Age reality.
Wayne ’s voice was cold, although in comparison to his eyes it was positively balmy. ‘You think the Mall Murders are fuckedup white trash, Mr Brezner?’
‘He does not think that!’ Bruce almost shouted.
‘You can’t just dismiss them’ was Brooke’s desperate plea.
‘Weird, scrawny little bitch?’ Scout said to herself, a faraway look in her eyes. ‘That weird scrawny little bitch he drags around with him?’
‘Karl didn’t mean that!’ Bruce forced himself to laugh again; it sounded like a razorblade cutting through a tin can. ‘You should hear the way he talks about his wife.’
Karl, oblivious of the terrible agenda swirling around him, was mystified by Bruce’s attitude.
‘Excuse me? What is this right now? Oprah? Are we having some kind of debate about these fucking filth? Of course they’re fuckedup white trash. What else would they be? I’d like to take that pair of pointless, gutless, nobrain, nodick, asshole insults to the intelligence of a wet fart and-’
‘Karl! What do you want?’ Bruce leapt to his feet. ‘I’m busy here. I have stuff to do and you are getting in my face.’
He had not wanted to confront Karl quite so bluntly. If he acted too strangely, Wayne would know that Karl’s suspicions must inevitably be aroused. On the other hand, he had to shut Karl up and get him out before he talked them all to death.
Karl studied Bruce for a moment, but decided not to rise to him. Karl was, after all, an agent and Bruce was his top client.
‘OK, Bruce, OK. You’re the artist. I just negotiate the obscene and disgusting amounts you get paid. Now, like I say, I think we have real trouble here. This is an important moral issue and we can’t be seen to duck it. We have to react to this thing responsibly. What we have to do is get out there immediately, say fuck you, and announce a sequel to Ordinary Americans.’
‘Everybody died at the end of Ordinary Americans,’ Bruce replied.
‘Bruce, yours is not a pedantic audience. Look, you have to rise above this thing. Get out there today and work the chat shows. You did great on Coffee Time yesterday. Tell the world that these killers are not your responsibility and-’
Wayne walked across the room and plucked Karl’s whisky glass from his hand. ‘OK Bruce. I’m sick of this guy now. We have things to talk about. Get rid of him.’
Bruce jumped out of his seat in his eagerness. ‘Right, good, OK. Karl, I appreciate you coming round and I’m going to think over what you said, but right now I’m busy, OK, so…’
Karl was astonished. He had known Bruce for years. They were friends. ‘You want me to go?’
‘Yes, I do.’