Death of a Blue Movie Star

Of the two-Nicole and Shelly-wasn't Nicole's the more tragic death? she wondered. Rune felt sorrier for her. Shelly, because she was smarter, more talented, an artist, was also the risk-taker. She could choose to walk right to the edge. Hell, she'd chosen to date Tommy. Nicole wouldn't appreciate the risks so much. She was sweet, and-despite her line of work-innocent. She'd do her nails, she'd fuck, she'd dream about opening the shoe store, dream about the advertising executive she could marry. She-

The smell.

Rune sensed it suddenly, though she understood in that instant that she had been aware of it for a long time, ever since she'd returned to the houseboat. It had a familiarity about it, but a scary one. Like the sweet-sick chemical scent that bothers you an instant before you remember it's the smell of a dentist's office.

Cleanser? No. Cologne? Maybe. Perfume.

Rune's thoughts began jumping, and she didn't like where they arrived.

Incense! Sandalwood.

The smell of Tommy Savorne's apartment.

She thought: Run, or get the tear gas?

Rune turned fast toward the front door.

But Tommy got there first, and leaned up against it. He was smiling when he locked the latch.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

She fought him.

Knees, elbows, palms… everything Rune remembered about self-defense from a tape she'd watched over and over again because the black-belt tae kwon do instructor was so cute.

But she didn't get anywhere.

Tommy was very drunk-she realized why Warren Hathaway had thought he was older and why he'd been so winded as she'd chased him from the Pink Pussycat theater. And she was able to dodge away from his groping hands.

She grabbed a pole lamp and hit him so hard it made the flesh on his arm shake. But even though it made him uncoordinated, the liquor also anesthetized him, and Tommy just grunted, knocked the pole aside, then swiped his forearm across her face. She went to the floor hard. She tried for the tear gas but he slung her bag across the room.

"Bitch." He grabbed her by the ponytail and pulled her over to a straight-back chair, then shoved her down into it and wound brown doorbell wire around her wrists and ankles.

"No!" she screamed. The wire dug into her flesh and hurt terribly.

He sat back on his heels, rocking slowly, and studied her. His hair was greasy. The tiny crevices and cracks in his fingers were stained dark red, like Chinese crackle pottery, his shirt was stained with sweat and his jeans were dark with black shapes that Rune knew were Nicole's blood.

He leered at her. "Was she good?"

"What do you want?"

"Was it worth it?"

"What are you talking about?"

"Making love to Shelly. You were her girlfriend, weren't you? You and Nicole both were." His eyes were unfocused. "She slept with Nicole-I've seen the movies. I could see in her face how much she liked it! Did she like it with you too? Didyou enjoy it?" Tommy squinted, then asked calmly, "Will you think about it while you die?"

"I didn't take Shelly away from you. I hardly knew her. I just-"

He opened his bag and took out a long knife. There were dark stains on the wooden handle. Something else was in his hand: a videocassette. He looked at Rune's TV set and VCR, started them both and, after three tries, slipped the tape in. A crackle, then a hum, and the screen became a fuzzy black-and-white.

He watched the set, almost incidentally, as he began mumbling, reciting a mantra. "Way I see it, pornography is art. What is art exactly? It's creation. The making of something where there was nothing before. And what does pornography show? Fucking. The act of creation." He tried to find the fast forward on her VCR but couldn't.

He turned back to her. "When I figured that out it was like a revelation. A religious experience. You write about fucking and it's not real. But with movies… you can't fake it. You are watching, like, the whole act of creation in. front of you. Fucking amazing."

"Oh, God, no." Rune, staring at the screen, began to cry. Watching:

Nicole, hanging from the rack.

Nicole, twisting, futilely, away from the swinging whip. "… but with film, it's so different. The artist can't lie. No way. I mean it's all right there. You've got the beginning of life right in front of you…"

Nicole, begging with her eyes, maybe screaming through the gag.

Nicole, crying tears that sloughed off her makeup in brown and black stripes across her face.

Nicole, closing her eyes, as Tommy walked forward with a knife.

"… also religious. In the beginning Godcreated… See, created. That's a fucking wild coincidence, wouldn't you say? God and the artist. And pornography brings it all together…" Nicole, dying.