A Self Made Monster Read online

  Throughout the day, Jimmy tried to insinuate himself with Holly. Several attempts at conversation died in the Field Museum. Holly was especially annoyed when Jimmy attempted to speak with her as she gazed at the museum’s gem collection.

  He should have known better. Her eyes were large and motionless, her lips slightly parted, as she studied a diamond from Ghana. The diamond, flattered by the room’s precise lighting, sparkled inside the display case. He tried to look impressed by squinting and pursing his lips.

  She did not note his appreciation.

  “It’s…Yeah…!” He stared at the diamond. Why do women love diamonds so much? he wondered.

  Holly nodded, a line of irritation drawn onto her forehead.

  “And it’s pretty.”

  “Yes.”

  Jimmy wanted to add, “You’re just as pretty.” But just the thought of it made him feel ridiculous. “Pretty,” he repeated, tongue darting at the corner of his mouth.

  Edward Know It All appeared on the other side of Holly. He whispered something, she nodded, and Edward retreated to the rear of the room.

  “You’re blocking the view,” she whispered.

  “Uh?”

  “Jimmy, move. Edward has to get a clear shot.”

  He turned. Edward was standing against a wall. He frowned, then pointed his camcorder at Holly.

  “You can’t bring a camera in here,” Jimmy complained to nobody in particular. Then he saw an old white haired man. The old man smiled, pointing with his thumb to the employee badge on his lapel. He mouthed, “It’s O.K.” at Jimmy.

  Jimmy retreated and watched Edward attach the camera to a tripod. A moment later, Holly turned and smiled at the camera. Edward pushed a button on the camera, and the lens closed on Holly. The heft of Holly’s bust nicely filled her blue shirtdress, and Edward resisted the urge to make the portrait salacious.

  Edward stopped filming and talked to Holly. He controlled her as a star director controls an eager actress. She was attentive and even smiled. The smile suggested understanding, perhaps a shared secret. Others kept a polite distance. Edward’s camera gave him authority. He stood straight and gestured confidently.

  For a moment, Jimmy admired Edward’s savvy. Every girl, Jimmy mused, wants a camera’s admiration. But he forced aside the admiration so he could hate Edward. The hate shot past its target, and for a couple minutes he hated Holly too.

  “I think the filming went real well,” Edward said. “You seemed confident but not arrogant, like some narrators are.”

  “That’s cool.”

  Edward and Holly were resting on a bench in the museum lobby. Holly removed her black Nikes and lifted her left foot onto her right knee. She rubbed, and Edward imagined her rubbing his feet.

  “I have to edit some things, maybe even do some narration when we get back to campus.” Edward adapted a breezy posture, leaning casually on one elbow as Holly kept rubbing her feet. “The narration will take a while, so we can do it right at my place.”

  “Where do we film next?”

  “Probably outside the Blackstone Theater.”

  “No more filming today?”

  Edward could not interpret Holly’s tone. Was she relieved or disappointed?

  “We can’t film inside the art museum, but maybe we…”

  Holly pulled on her shoes and stood.

  “Where are…I mean, what do you want to do next?” His directorial power was collapsing.

  “I’m meeting Kelly and some other girls for lunch.” Holly waved to an approaching group of friends. “I think I’m blowing off the art museum.” She left with her friends. They argued about where to eat as they passed through the door.

  Edward hoped Holly would wave at him. She did not.

  More classmates approached the lobby. Edward could not be seen without his starlet. He hurried to the men’s room and hid in a stall for twenty minutes, repeatedly extending and collapsing his tripod.

  Thank coughing Christ, Alex thought. It was finally 4:30.

  His feet and shins ached, and he had wanted a cigarette all day. He had paid reasonable attention at the Field Museum. But the art museum was a muddle of paintings, white walls, and high ceilings. A Dali here, a Turner there, some Monet to end the day. Now, as fatigue settled on him, Alex could not remember the paintings’ composition or texture. They congealed into a scalding red that gave him a headache.

  Alex rubbed his temples, offered a weary smile as the students gathered in the lobby. He looked forward to tonight’s kill. He had only the roughest plan, but he did not care. With luck, the blood would share the virtue of a good wine: soothing, complex, inspiring.

  Chapter Eleven: Alter Egos

  Though Alex was a careless academic, he was a careful monster. He always used a checklist: gloves, knives, rope. Sometimes he scribbled ideas for red herrings, pieces of “evidence” that a killer might leave behind: a packet of cocaine (typically only baking soda, which suggested a drug deal gone sour); a page ripped from the Satanist Bible; a heavy metal CD; Zodiac paperbacks; paperbacks about true-life murders; matchbooks from out of town hotels; clipped newspaper stories of unsolved murders; travel brochures for the Caribbean; maps with circled towns; scribbled phone numbers of overseas hotels.

  Alex enjoyed the red herrings, but he knew that the motive of his acts ruined even preliminary investigation. Police ask, “Who wanted this person dead, and why?” Alex was usually not connected to the victim, and the purpose of Alex’s kills was never grasped. Edward Head would be an unusual case because the monster knew the victim. But Alex did not worry. His plan would be up to the challenge.

  For tonight’s kill, Alex chose another fun trick: a disguise. Alex had survived childhood with his disguises. When his schizophrenic episodes reached their peak, he was loath to come out of his closet, much less to face parents or friends. Sometimes he feared that strangers with cameras or knives lurked outside his door, so he came out of his room in a disguise. A pirate with hat, peg leg and sword. A baseball player. Frankenstein’s monster. He once went a month dressed as Nero, a sheet wrapped around his waist as he scraped away at a toy fiddle.

  Tonight, he used a full-length black rug from a “Hair Replacement” company and wiry fake black mustache. With his frumpy gray sports jacket, he fancied himself a struggling car salesman on the town.

  “My name is John Lowe,” he said to his reflection. “Come see me if you’re ever looking for a Chevy.” He put on tinted glasses and double-checked the jacket’s inner pockets for rubber gloves.

  Alex told the cabby to stop at Grand and Ontario. He planned to take a relaxing walk and enter any bar that looked promising. The unseasonably warm temperature, a humid 60 degrees, encouraged strollers. Couples walked hand in hand. Outside a bar, a woman in a dropwaist dress and boater held open the door for her drunken friend. The man was wiping at his leather pants and bitching about the rude bartender who would serve him no more alcohol.

  After walking east on Grand, Alex found a jazz bar. The music was good. A piano/bass/drums trio improvised on “Nardis.” Alex cased the room. Subdued swag lamps. Long oval bar. Tables along the right wall and in the back. Glossies of visiting acts decorated the entire room.

  Alex took a table against the right wall. He sipped gin and tonics.

  He waited.

  In his room, Edward reviewed the day’s taping. Holly was especially attractive on the mammoth steps of the Field Museum. From a distance, beside one of the fluted columns, she was just one many visitors. But the filming began, and her arm rose in a winning gesture that encompassed the sheer scale of the museum’s steps and entrance.

  The next shot was the lobby. Holly filled the viewfinder from the waist up. “Welcome to the Field Museum, named after one of Chicago’s most prominent families,” Holly said pleasantly. “The museum is world-famous. It captures the world’s history from prehistoric times to the present.”

  Edward was impressed. Holly needed little dialogue coaching. He simply wrote out her int
roductions, she went through them two or three times, and she was ready. The camera was her friend. Never a false start, never a pause, never a fumble. Inside the museum, she introduced the stuffed lions and beavers, eagles and bears. Then Taoist holy texts. Then a recreation of an ancient African village with huts and children.

  His favorite shot was filmed in the gem room. Holly stood before the impossibly well-polished display case, reverently describing a diamond discovered in Nigeria by a Peace Corps volunteer. “The Nigerian Triumph, as it’s called, features over two hundred individual cuts and an unequaled brilliance. Note how the spectrum radiates from the stone’s center when…”

  Holly ended her discussion, and the camera pulled away. In the distance, a short person stuck out his tongue.

  “You jackass!” Edward exclaimed.

  Jimmy Stubbs was sticking out his tongue and mouthing words that Edward could not decipher. Don’t get so mad, he told himself. Just cut him from the tape. But Edward despised the thought of Jimmy in the same room with Holly and him. The sneering creep violated the intimacy of director and actress.

  Edward grabbed the phone, called the operator. “Holly Dish,” he said before he could lose his nerve. She would be happy that the taping had gone well. Maybe she would like to see it right now, with some beer or wine.

  Ten rings. Fifteen. Twenty.

  “No one answers, sir. May I leave a message?”

  “No thanks,” Edward sighed.

  “How do you know that was for you?” asked Kate. She was annoyed at Holly, but silently admitted that nobody would be calling for her.

  “It’s Edward,” Holly answered from the bathroom. She brushed her hair violently. “I’m late already and I don’t have time to talk to him. I’ll see him tomorrow anyway.”

  She regarded her image in the mirror. Any mirror triggered the response, just as a physician’s rubber mallet triggers knee movement. Your thighs, she accused, are about to bloom again. You had potato chips two nights in a row, and then that pizza last week. And today at lunch, fried fish! Holly tried to examine her image objectively. Her tummy did not bulge, and her hips were firm. Her thighs looked a shade heavy.

  Those thighs are more than a shade heavy, Holly the Trainer told Holly the Hippo. Those thighs held extra poundage. For a girl only five feet five inches, two pounds on each thigh are too much. On Monday, you will get back to two miles on the track every night, and you will have only protein drinks for lunch. And forget about French fries for the next two months. Butter is bad too. You’re appearing in a film, and the camera puts twenty pounds on some people, especially women!

  Holly the Trainer continued the harangue for twenty minutes. And Holly the Hippo did not retreat. She stood in front of the mirror and took the criticism without self pity. Self pity usually led to a French fry binge and five pounds.

  Holly Dish had created her alter-ego out of necessity. From the age of twelve to seventeen, Holly was overweight. At age 14, when girlfriends were busy with makeup, jewelry, clothes, and boys, Holly was busy with food. A typical lunch was two Big Macs, large fries, and strawberry shake. Or a large pizza and quart of Coke.

  At age 15, when girlfriends were dating and immersed in puberty’s soap opera, Holly was hiding in her bedroom. She weighed 170 pounds and was humiliated. She once broke down into sobs and tears when the news carried a brief story about the beautiful and semi-literate actress Watusi Brite. She was six months pregnant but, as the correspondent noted, “as lovely and shapely as ever.”

  The crisis came when the kids on Holly’s school bus signed a petition. The petition demanded that Holly save the school football team by replacing the entire defensive line. At the bottom of the petition was a line drawing of Holly, French fries sticking out of her mouth, sitting on top of all the players of a rival team. She held the football in front of her mouth, as if she were about to eat it. The rivals were covered with bandages, bruises, and plaster casts. Stars and bubbles orbited their heads.

  And Holly’s character was naked.

  The kids on the bus were laughing, and Holly had sensed they were laughing at her. As she got on the bus, someone yelled, “Save our football team!” The petition, folded into a paper airplane, fell to her feet. Holly’s little sister Geri was laughing and ran past Holly, even though Holly yelled for her to wait. Geri, who weighed exactly half of what Holly weighed, was soon out of sight.

  Holly cried when she saw that even Geri signed the petition.

  One week after the petition incident, Holly joined a health club. She felt obscene in her gym shorts and tee shirt. You’re a hippo, Holly told herself, a hippo in a girl’s clothing. Eventually, Holly became friendly with one of the trainers whose name, ironically, was Holly. Holly the Trainer had once been overweight herself, and she confided that she too had been the butt of jokes.

  At the first sign of Holly the Hippo’s tears, Holly the Trainer showed no sympathy.

  “You’re in the wrong class if you want people to feel sorry for you!” The trainer had just led the class though a half hour of jumping jacks, pushups, and stretches. “Anytime you feel sorry for yourself, stand naked in front of the mirror for one minute. Then tell yourself that you’re worth more than French fries or cookies or ice cream or whatever. Tell yourself that you’re worth about twenty sit-ups!”

  “I can’t do five sit-ups!”

  “Not yet. But in two months, you’ll be doing fifty.”

  When Holly Dish turned 18, she weighed 120 pounds. Three years of diet and exercise had transformed her. She could do one hundred sit-ups and one hundred pushups. She ran three miles daily. The boys liked her and the girls respected her. Her regime naturally rendered her athletic: she could have modeled for those swimwear magazines such as Clingy Tops and Bottoms, and Sunned American Buns. When she went running in her tee and slims, she gave boys a hormone high.

  Holly went away to college, and she retained her two personalities, the Trainer and the Hippo, as motivation. She also took the petition, which she had kept taped to her dresser mirror for three years. Once at college, Holly realized she could reinvent herself. She was not fat Holly. She was Holly Dish, a campus spool drool.

  Holly soon decided that the best part of college was the social life. She liked talking with people, and people liked talking with her. She discovered a gift of gab, and her advisor recommended public relations.

  “Why public relations?”

  “You’re good around people, and your best grades are in speech. Frankly, your grades aren’t so hot otherwise.” He paused, reconsidered his words. “And you’re an attractive and vibrant young woman. You have confidence, and confidence is what pub. rel. is all about.”

  “I was thinking of publishing.”

  “You’ve taken only a freshman English course, and you got a C minus. That won’t do at all.”

  “I don’t want to write.” Holly was by now an expert actress, adept at manipulation. She offered her sheepish grin. “I was thinking of being an agent, of representing authors in their deals and stuff.”

  “I see.”

  “I know my grades need to be better, but I do want to get into publishing because I want to live in New York.”

  “Why New York?”

  “It’s supposed to be…” Holly cocked her head. “Cosmopolitan. Glamorous.”

  “Why not?” Her advisor shrugged. “Perhaps publishing will be your niche. You’ll have to take more English courses. Both literature and writing.”

  Holly nodded firmly. “I’m prepared for that.”

  The bartender refilled Sandy’s glass. Sandy put the glass to her mouth, savoring the barley and malt, and finished half the beer in two gulps. With another two gulps, the glass was empty.

  The customers applauded as the jazz trio finished “Star Eyes”. She giggled into her empty glass, imagining that the applause was for her. Sandy imagined the bartender addressing the crowd: A round of applause and a round of drinks for the lady. She’s put down four straight beers and is not yet weav
ing in her seat.

  Sandy put down her glass, waited for another refill. She searched through her purse for a smoke. No luck. She tapped the shoulder of the man sitting to her left.

  “I’m sorry to bother you, but could I steal a cigarette from you?” Sandy hoped “sorry” and “steal” did not come out as “shorry” and “shteal.”

  The man kept her back to Sandy. “I don’t smoke.”

  “Oh.” Sandy looked over the man’s shoulder. The man’s companion raised her plucked brows at Sandy. The brows were as sharp as a saber.

  Sandy turned to her right. “Say, could I borrow a…” The stool was empty. The man sitting next to her had smoked those stinking Kools, she remembered. But she was now agreeable to any cigarette.

  Alex had been sitting by the wall, not ten feet behind Sandy. He had watched for a half hour. She was apparently alone, which surprised him. Though the light made it difficult to be sure, she seemed attractive. Her orange hair and red dress were catchy. When she failed to bum a cigarette from anyone, he took the chance.

  “Here,” Alex offered. “Have one of mine.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You need another beer too. Bartender?” He gestured for two more drinks.

  “No thanks,” Sandy said. “I can buy my own.”

  “I’m sure you can. But it’s my pleasure.” His smile seemed genuine. Many smiles, Sandy thought, were disguised smirks. “If you like, you can buy my drink. If not, that’s fine too.

  Sandy did not know if she liked the man, but at least he did not seem to be a creep. These days, that was a terrific start. He was dressed sanely: no idiotic gold chains or piercings, and his smile widened into an easy grin.

  “My name is John Lowe,” the man said. “Come see me if you’re ever looking for a Chevy.”

  “Really? I do need a new car.” It was true. Her car had 138,000 miles. “Can you get me a good deal, Mr…” She had forgotten his name.

  “John Lowe.”

  “Sorry. Sandy Chandler.”

  “It’s all right. I forget people’s names all the time.” He laughed. “I forget all kinds of things all the time.” His second laugh was a snort.