“Someone who can make a hell of a lot of trouble for you in a very short period of time if you don’t cooperate.”
Sherry went to the bar and opened the small drawer behind it. She removed from the drawer a.38 revolver. She turned to Philpott and said, “I’m gonna let ‘em in.” She turned to the door. “I have a gun. The second you do something I don’t like, I start shooting, understand?”
“Yes.”
She unlocked the door and pulled it open. She saw two black figures on the other side of the screen door. She turned on the porch light, but they remained two black figures. They wore black shirts and black pants and shoes and looked like twins. One had blond hair, the other dark. They had very serious, stern, but nondescript faces.
When she pushed the screen door open, they came inside.
They were tall and bland. They turned to Sherry and the blond said, “Where is he?”
The brunette glanced at Sherry’s gun.
“Under that blanket over there,” she said.
They went to the lump on the floor and Blondie pulled back the blanket. They stared down at the corpse.
The dark-haired man turned to Sherry. “What happened?”
She shrugged. “We woke up and found him that way. It looks like an overdose. We don’t even know who he is or what he’s doing here. He came with a friend of a friend early this morning.”
They spent a few more seconds looking down at the corpse, whispered briefly to each other, then turned to her again.
“Mind if we take some of these blankets?” one of them said.
“No, go ahead, take ‘em.”
She and Philpott stood back while the two men wrapped the body up in blankets. One stood at each end and carried the wrapped-up body to the door. One opened the door and they carried the body out of the trailer. The blond man leaned back into the door and said, “We were never here. You never met him. This never happened.”
The screen door slammed shut. Awhile later, an engine started and a vehicle pulled away from the trailer.
Sherry rushed to the door and closed it, saying, “What the hell was that?”
“Who was that guy?” Philpott said.
“I don’t know.” She put the gun back in the drawer, then started pacing the living room again. “Where’s Andy, dammit?”
“Um… care to, uh, pick up where we left off?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, hon, but that kinda blew the mood for me, you know? Mysterious men who come and cart off a dead body? There’s something creepy about that.”
“Yeah. Well… you want me to wait here for Andy with you?”
“Yeah, please don’t leave me here all by myself, Philpott. I don’t want to wait for him alone.”
“Okay, then, we’ll wait together.”
In unit five, Regent smiled.
They were all the same, these women. No matter what they said at first, no matter how opposed they claimed to be to the idea, once that camera was on them, they always ended up playing to it – they loved the attention, the focus on them, just them.
Regent and Garner had spent the last two hours taking turns shooting Heather and fucking her, and she had put on a memorable performance. All that crying and wailing, all that wincing and sobbing – it had been endless, and it had been wonderful, some of the best footage he’d gotten in awhile.
Garner was in the shower. Regent wiped the sticky perspiration from his body with a towel as Heather sat on the edge of the bed, naked. She seemed deflated, empty somehow. She stared at nothing, her mouth open, her eyes a little wider than they should be.
There was a spot of blood on the bed. Regent figured that had probably come from the anal sex. She’d screamed when he’d entered her anus, and her screaming had made him harder.
“You were incredible,” Regent said. “Really. I mean it. My members are going to love you.”
She did not look at him or respond. She stood very slowly, then limped around the room collecting her clothes. She put them on the bed and slowly, clumsily began to dress.
“You want something to drink?” he said.
Still, she said nothing as she put on her panties, then stepped into her skirt and pulled it up her legs, buttoned it, then pulled her shirt over her head. She wobbled as she stepped into her shoes, then bent down to pick up her purse. When she stood up, her back was to him. She stood there, facing the wall, for several long seconds as he watched her.
“You okay?” he said with a smile.
“Where’s my money?” she said, voice cracking.
“Sure, I’ll get your money. No need to rush off, though. Let’s have a drink. I’d like to talk to you about possibly doing this again. I really think you’re going to take off on the site.”
Heather turned around slowly until she stood facing him. Her face looked longer, somehow – as if it had been stretched. She seemed paler than before. Her hair was all over the place and her eyes were puffy. She looked exactly like what she was – a woman who’d just had a whole lot of great sex.
“I want my money now,” she said.
“Oh. All right. Hang on, I’ll be right back.” He went into his bedroom, to a cashbox on his dresser. He got the money and went back into the studio. He held out the money and Heather snatched it from his hand.
She reached around and stuffed the money into her purse. Then she turned and headed for the door.
Regent grabbed her arm and said, “Wait, I thought we could – “
Something broke in her then, and she jerked her arm out of his grasp and turned to him with wide eyes and lips pulled back tight over her teeth, and she screamed at him, “Don’t you touch me!” She started crying then, and it was a powerful cry that moved through her whole body and made her bend over as if she had cramps. Her sobs turned into coughs, and then she began to gag, then heave.
“No,” Regent said, “not on the carpet, not on the – “
She vomited on the carpet.
“Oh, shit,” he said. “You stupid bitch, you just puked on my carpet! I can’t believe you. You – you actually vomited on my carpet!” He looked at her as he pointed at the mess on the floor. “What, is this, is this something you do, you just barf on people’s carpets when you’re in their houses? Huh?”
She stood up straight and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Then she left the studio.
Regent shouted, “You stupid cunt! Get the hell out of here before I make you lick it up!”
She went to the door and opened it, went down the steps.
Regent stood in the doorway and watched her as she got into her car and started the engine. Then he closed the screen door, then the door, locked it.
“Where’d she go?” Garner said as he came up the hall with a towel around his waist. He used another to scrub his hair.
“The stupid bitch vomited on my carpet.”
“Oh, is that what that puddle is back there?”
“Clean it up for me, will ya?” Regent said.
“What? Whoa, that’s not in my job description. I’m strictly a camera man and a spare dick when needed. I’m not cleaning it up.”
Regent sighed. “I’ll have to, then. How disgusting. What a disgusting woman she was.”
“Yeah, but she’s gonna look amazing online,” Garner said.
“I’m gonna clean that shit up in the studio, then let’s go out and grab a beer, huh? We can check out the girls at the Mt. Shasta Gentlemen’s Club, okay? Jeez, how long’s it been since we’ve been out there?”
“A long time. Sounds good to me. Happy vomit-cleaning.”
Kendra could not sleep. She lay on Aunt Rose’s couch with the television on, the volume low. She always slept on the couch when Mommy went out to dance. Well, she usually slept. Mommy had a key to Aunt Rose’s front door, and when she got off work, she came to Aunt Rose’s house and unlocked the door, came inside and woke Kendra and took her home, all without waking up anyone else in the house. But tonight, Kendra simply could not sleep.