And Paula, yeah, she was eating it up, telling him how excited she was about the project, and how the biggest challenge would be to fit all this amazing material into one book.
“I might have to make it into a trilogy,” she said, and Max suddenly had a vision of the great Hollywood trilogies. Star Wars, The Godfather, Shrek, Revenge of the Nerds.
Imagining billions of dollars in DVD sales, merchandising, box office receipts, imagining walking onstage to accept his Oscar, Max made another impulsive decision.
He said, “You wanna get a first-hand look at The… A.X. in action? What’re you doing tonight at, say, midnight?”
“I don’t have plans,” Paula said. “Why?”
“How’d you like to ride in a getaway car with The… A.X. and the rest of his crew?”
Yep, he told her all about the whole prison break, down to the last detail. Probably not a good idea to share this info with a woman he hardly knew – and, worse, a woman he’d just fucking dumped – but the escape was going to climax the greatest moment in his life, and he wanted his biographer there to witness it.
Later, heading back to his cell, Max was still pumped, thinking how lucky a thing it was to be Max Fisher, when he saw Sino. He’d probably just been released from the hole – he was in cuffs, being walked along by a guard. When Sino saw Max he stopped and the guard stopped with him. Sino gave Max the dead-eye glare, and his nostrils flared and his jaw shifted as he grinded his teeth. Max didn’t back down. He shot back with his own mean-ass look, feeling like he was in a Western, two hombres staring each other down before the big shootout.
Then, suddenly, Max smiled widely. He made his thumb and forefinger into the shape of a gun, pointed it at Sino, and bent his thumb, pulling the trigger.
Man, the look on the big lump of meat’s face was fucking priceless.
Paula went back to the motel, real disappointed. She wouldn’t be the next Mrs. Max Fisher – how would she ever get over it? She laughed, thinking, Was the guy for real or what? Sometimes she thought he was fucking with her, with all the weird accents, the tough talk, the outrageous stories. It had to be some kind of schtick, a put-on. She was always waiting for him to crack up and say, Got you good there, huh? But it had never happened. And now he claimed he was staging a prison break? Probably a delusion like the rest of it. But hey, if it happened, she was going to be there to chronicle it. A first-person account of her subject escaping from Attica? It would like Junger getting a chance to ride the boat into the perfect storm.
After she parked her car, she walked to the soda machine near the motel’s office and bought a Tab – had to watch the figure if she was going to attract maximum babe-age. She figured she’d find some girl-girl porn on TV, rub one out, then try to find some decent food for lunch, not an easy task in this shithole town. After the incident at the bar, she was trying to keep a low profile. For all she knew it was legal to shoot dykes up here. Jesus, up here you wouldn’t even know you were in New York. It was like a fucking red state.
As she headed back toward her room she stopped and did a double-take when she saw Lee Child walking toward her with another guy. What the hell was Lee Child doing up here? Was he on an author tour? Was the guy his media escort? Was there a mystery bookstore in Attica? Were there any bookstores in Attica? Were there any books in Attica? Hard to imagine that they even knew how to read up here.
Back in her straight days she’d had a big thing for Lee – who didn’t, right? – and now she was so flustered, so starstruck, she couldn’t even say hello or call out his name. She just watched with a dumb expression as he and the guy he was with went into their room.
She wondered: Why was he staying at this crummy motel? Wasn’t he loaded?
Then she had a thought that terrified her – was he up here to try to steal the story out from under her? She knew he was doing well these days, at the top of the Times list and all, but every writer was always on the lookout for the next big thing. Hell, Paula herself had gotten most of her ideas for books at the bar at one mystery convention or another. Piss-drunk authors would tell her their best ideas, then forget the conversations in the morning. Maybe Lee saw The… A. X as his next blockbuster, his big move into true crime. The more she thought about it, the more sense it made.
She marched over to room 16, started banging on the door.
If Sebastian thought riding in an airplane with Yanni had been a dreadful experience, and spending time with his family in Astoria had been painful, then riding in a car with him was a full-blown nightmare. Had the fellow heard that there’d been an invention – a true breakthrough – called deodorant? Lordy, the smell of the man! And he didn’t even have the decency to open the passenger-side window. He had all the controls on his side of the car, and he insisted on riding with the windows closed and no air conditioning. He mentioned something about allergies or whatnot, but Sebastian knew it was only to inflict maximum torture on him.
They passed a rest area and Sebastian had never been so excited to see a McDonald’s in his entire life. Naturally the mad Greek wouldn’t let them stop, though. He said something about “making good time” and “saving gas,” but Sebastian figured he was just being an ass.
They’d left at the crack of dawn and arrived in Attica at around noon. Oh, lucky them! Talk about a party town! Sebastian honestly didn’t know how his life had descended to this horrid state. A few weeks ago he’d been living it up on Santorini and now he was in a place that made those Western ghost towns you saw in the movies seem lively, being dragged around by the Greek from hell.
Their room wasn’t ready. That’s correct – room, singular. Yanni insisted on sharing a room, even sharing a king-size bed, so Sebastian couldn’t slip away.
“Oh, come on now, you can trust me,” Sebastian said as they stood at the front desk. The sarcasm couldn’t have been thicker.
“We sleep in same bed,” Yanni insisted, “and you wear handcuffs.”
The clerk heard this and with a concerned look said, “Uh, sir, this is a family motel.”
“ Please,” Sebastian said. “I’ll treat myself to a nice-looking chappie every once in a while like any good un, but I’d rather die than be a bottom for this cretin.”
“Cretan?” Yanni said, deeply insulted. “Yanni is not from Crete, my family live on Santorini nine hundred years.” Sebastian apologized for misremembering.
They waited in – where else? – the car until the room had been serviced. As soon as they got in, there was a hammering at the door. Sebastian answered it, saw a woman there, full figured, longish brown hair – attractive enough, but something about her made him think, lesbian.
She was saying, “Son of a bitch. You think you can steal The… A.X. from me, you fucking British bastard.”
Sebastian replied with an ultra polite, “Sorry, have we met?”
“Yeah, at last year’s ThrillerFest. I told you how much I loved Jack Fucking Reacher, remember?”
Going along he said, “Oh, of course, silly me. How could I forget?” He had, of course, no idea who she was, but he said, “I’d invite you in, my sweet, but alas, I’m otherwise occupied.”
Then Yanni was behind him, naturally, never more than Karelia spit away, and he asked angrily, “Who is this cunt?’
Sebastian said, “I say, old chap, steady on.”
The woman looked at the Greek and said, “What did you call me?”
Sebastian, if not always ready, was most definitely nearly always prepared, had taken some hooch from the Greek’s home, and said, “Now let’s all calm down. Come in, gell, have a drink, and dammit, we’ll thrash this out between us like civilized human beings.”
“Where you get booze in this shithole?” Yanni asked, and the woman asked, “The fuck is a gell?”
But they took it inside, neither of them the sort to turn down a drink.
Sebastian got the two plastic toothbrushing cups from the bathroom and produced a battered tin cup he still carried from his Chatwin days, he really believed he’d lived like ol’ Bruce. Then, with a flourish, out of the Gladstone bag came a bottle of scotch. Sebastian murmured, “Alas, we’re all out of ice, the maid has the day off.”