A Self Made Monster Page 8

  “Yeah, but by then I’d cooled off a bit, you know, and I thought, ‘Christ, what are you doing? The guy could have a gun!”’

  Jane shook her head, confused. “You said the man wants you dead.”

  “That’s what he told me.”

  “But he only took a swing at you.”

  “Yes.”

  “He was so big that if he hit you, he would have killed you?”

  “Oh yeah!” Jimmy’ excitement soared, and he struggled to remain calm and credible. “Before he swung at me, he said, ‘You’re next, pal. I swear to God, you’re next.’”

  Edward wanted to jump into the conversation, but he could not contradict Jimmy without seeming petulant.

  Edward tried to sound reasonable. “Do you think that the murderer thinks there’s some connection between you and the maintenance man?”

  Jimmy shrugged.

  “Maybe the guy has a list of people he wants to kill!” Jane blurted. “There’s got to be some connection between you and the maintenance man. And Lori too!”

  “If we knew the guy’s background, maybe we could find a link,” Edward suggested.

  “The poor guy,” Holly sighed. “He goes out for a walk and gets killed.”

  “And it could have been you!” Jane pointed at Edward. Edward waved his hand to dismiss the notion.

  “No, really. Maybe someone wants you dead,” Jane insisted.

  Billy Thomas had been listening carefully, and he offered his own theory: “It could have been a case of mistaken identity. Maybe the guy thought the maintenance dude was, you know, was you.”

  “I doubt it,” Edward said.

  “But the dude was wearing, he was wearing your coat. How tall was he?”

  “I don’t know. About average.”

  “About your height, right?”

  “A little taller, I think.”

  “But in the dark, with your jacket on, the murderer might think it was you. You said that you walked to 7-Eleven every night, and the guy, he was walking there at the same time you did.”

  “And in your jacket,” Jane added.

  “The theory is plausible,” Alex said cheerfully. He was amused that the students had figured out the cause of the maintenance man’s murder, but he was not worried. Murders demanded motives, and his motive was too absurd to be considered.

  “I still don’t think so,” Edward insisted. He was pleased to be the center of attention. He glanced at Jimmy, who fumed. “Nobody wants me dead. I don’t owe anyone money, I haven’t stolen anything, I’m not worth a lot of money, and I never carry anything valuable.”

  “No kidding,” Jimmy said.

  “Second, the maintenance guy really did owe people money. He told me that he needed overtime to pay off some debts. I think that whoever he owed money to got impatient.”

  “I heard that the guy’s wife divorced him because he gambled,” Holly said.

  “I heard the same thing,” Billy said. “But I also heard that he was spooling a married babe in town, a bona fide party ass.” He snapped his fingers. “Maybe that Lori was spooling the maintenance guy. The wife found out and she, she…” He ran his index finger across his throat.

  “That could be,” Holly agreed.

  “Or maybe he just took off with the babe,” Billy added.

  “That could be,” Jane said. “There’s no proof of a murder, is there? There’s no body, no blood, no nothing.”

  “I think the guy made it look like he got killed or kidnapped,” Edward said, “and he just decided to get lost. The cops said the same thing. One of them even said that they’d had trouble with the guy. He got drunk in town once in a while, and he’d have to call his wife to come get him. Maybe if he owed all kinds of money, and his wife was cheating on him anyway, the best thing for him would be to disappear.”

  The group nodded in agreement. Billy yawned and said he hoped the trip home would not take much longer. Alex said they were getting close.

  Jimmy had been listening, angry that his time in the spotlight was so brief. Now Holly and Jane chattered about their Business Administration exam; Edward and Billy talked about why Billy’s Camaro was running badly; Alex monitored the discussions and pretended to sleep.

  Jimmy took a deep breath to gather his nerve. “So when this guy comes after me, I’ll just tell him, ‘This is all a mistake, pal. I can’t be your next victim because there was no first victim. That guy just ran away from home.’”

  The group looked at Jimmy. His face was flush, and his eyes were hard with anger.

  “I hope you’re right about the guy not getting killed,” Jimmy said. Actually, he did not care what had happened to the guy. “But there’s one little problem. Some guy with a ski mask stood in front of me and said he was going to kill me.” He tried not to stumble into melodrama, but he could not resist. “I’m going to keep searching for clues,” he declared, “and I’m going to keep looking for the killer. There is absolutely a killer. Guys in ski masks don’t hang around campus in the middle of the night, right after a maintenance man disappears, and after a student gets murdered. I want to believe he’s not after me, but I can’t afford to.”

  Jane and Holly stared with sympathy at Jimmy, and Billy nodded solemnly. Edward frowned.

  The silence was awkward. “I’ll help you look again,” Holly finally said.

  Jimmy snorted.

  “Really,” Holly assured. She felt sorry for Jimmy; he was small and powerless. She joined him in his seat. “We’ll go out tomorrow and look for some clues.”

  He tried to appear grateful by offering a lopsided grin.

  “If there are any clues,” Holly assured, “we’ll find them. We’ll keep looking, won’t we Edward?”

  Her question was a command, but Edward did not mind. He was encouraged that Holly was bossing him around. Perhaps her command was a way of disguising her affection for him.

  Jane and Billy volunteered to help too. Edward headed them off by lying: “I’ll call you after we get organized.”

  “What about you, Professor?” Holly asked. “Want to join our detective agency?”

  “Why, yes. Certainly.” Alex rubbed his eyes, pretending to be barely awake. “I’m happy to offer my own ideas, but as for getting physically involved…” He yawned. “You can’t get in the way of the police. If you’re not careful, you can destroy evidence.”

  Edward and Jimmy were arguing about the best way to conduct their investigation. Occasionally one of them asked Holly what she thought. “I don’t know,” was her answer. She finally got up and moved to the back of the bus to gather her suitcase. Edward and Jimmy kept arguing as she walked past, but their eyes followed her.

  So did Alex’s.

  Jimmy imagined ordering Holly to remove her clothes. She did, and Jimmy forced her to her hands and knees. “I always spool tarts doggy style the first time,” he explained. “Now bark.”

  Edward imagined being ravished in the middle of the night by nude Holly. She asked him to point his camcorder at the bed and remove his pajamas. Later, he hung the camera from his erect penis. She gave him a hosedown, and he in turn gave her a facial. They watched the playback between spools.

  Alex imagined sitting in an easy chair, with Holly sitting on his lap. She held an icepick. Together, they counted aloud: “One, two, three.” On three, Holly thrust the icepick into her neck, spraying Alex’s shirt and chest with her blood.

  Holly, meanwhile, engaged in no idle daydreams. She was busy planning.

  Edward turned on his television and put a new videocassette in the VCR. The movie was titled Love of the Immortals. The second “m” was missing. The title and credits were in florid red gothic script, and the first scene was a dungeon. A blonde maiden, her white nightgown ripped, was chained to the damp stone floor. She struggled to escape her bondage.

  The dungeon door opened, and a rectangle of light fell across the maiden. Her eyes widened and she gasped. Now a shadow fell across the woman.

  “I have arrived to he
lp you,” a voice announced. “You must put aside your fears.”

  “But you are my captor,” the maiden cried. “You dragged me from my warm bed and took me here by horse and carriage in the middle of the rainy night.”

  “So I did.”

  The camera panned across the dungeon to the man. He wore black pants, white shirt, and black vest. His black velvet cape dragged across the floor.

  “I shall free you from this dungeon. In fact, I shall free you from mortality.”

  “You shall?”

  The man knelt beside the woman. He grasped her chains and twisted them. The chains, which in a moment of bad editing were revealed to be plastic, broke into several small pieces. The dubbed sound of a beer can being popped open represented the popping of the chains.

  “You are now mine forever,” the man declared. He picked up the woman and carried her as a groom carries his bride across the threshold. He lay her on a straw mattress and paused to watch her bosom heave. Then, as she gazed transfixed at him, he removed his clothes.

  Edward was pleased. The maiden’s tits were deep dish all the way, and they bounced heartily as the man spooled her.

  The woman screamed her porno scream: a dub, it seemed, from a game show. But now the man surprised Edward. Rather than bite the maiden’s throat, he bit his own wrist and shoved it against the woman’s mouth.

  “You are immortal, my love! Immortal!”

  The woman howled. She already had canine teeth.

  Edward swore and stopped the tape. The vampire angle distracted him. He wanted to see a woman with deep-dish tits and high saddle get spooled without the outdated gothic rubbish: the stilted dialogue, the dungeon and candelabra, the brooding vampire as deadly seducer. Edward wanted direct, uncomplicated spooling.

  He again imagined himself in bed with Holly. The camcorder was pointed at them, and Edward directed his starlet.

  “Your left side is your best,” Edward reminded

  “Okay,” Holly nodded. “I’m ready.”

  “Action!”

  Chapter Fourteen: “Shmokes”

  On a Sunday afternoon, Jimmy sat in his room drinking a beer by his open window. A few leaves were sprouting on oaks. Across the street at another frat house, students tossed a Frisbee. Others sat on the porch drinking beer, gossiping, and enjoying the warming temperature.

  The semester was moving quickly. Already it was late March, and midterm exams started tomorrow. Jimmy was unprepared. He had spent much of his time scheming of ways to spool Holly Dish. The cause seemed hopeless for a while. She had spent one afternoon with him looking for clues to the campus murder, but she was bored. They tramped back and forth through snow, cursing the brief cold snap.

  Besides, Edward Know It All was there too, and he insisted that “the murder victim” was only a runaway husband. Edward then took a half-hour to explain his theory in withering detail. Jimmy admitted that Edward’s theory made sense. It seemed ridiculous that a murderer, if there was one, would confront Jimmy and David. The guy was probably a bored townie, wandering around campus to kill time.

  Jimmy opened a second beer, moved to the card table in the middle of his room, and forced himself to study for his Ancient History exam. The history exam would be bad enough, Jimmy knew, and the Calculus exam would be awful, too.

  And Resartus’s exam…Christ. For a few days after the Chicago trip, Resartus was coherent. Now he was back to his old ways: disorganized, obscure, and eccentric. He spewed nonsense such as “dichotomy of head and body,” “rhetoric of interpretation,” “Yeats’s‘ Spiritus Mundi,” “Joyce’s multi-level puns,” “Semiotics,” “Heidegerian phenomenology,” etc. Resartus often stopped in mid sentence and stared at the far wall, then burst into laughter.

  Jimmy had studied for two hours and was bored, so he was happy to hear the sudden blare of rock music in the living room. He slammed shut his book, grabbed another beer, and hurried down the stairs.

  Several students were sitting around drinking beer and smoking sod.

  “Party time, little dude,” said Robert Beck. “Have an hors d’oeuvre.” He gave Jimmy a joint.

  Jimmy took a long drag then went into the kitchen. Bill and Stan stood at the keg, serving guests cups of beer. They made sure the women were served first. A student named Carrie smote Stan, and he handed her the cup of beer with excessive courtesy, pinkie finger extended. When she accepted the cup, he bowed. She smiled and bowed back. Stan left Bob at the keg and escorted Carrie into the living room.

  Jimmy was next in line for a beer, but a woman cut ahead of him.

  “Nice manners,” he sneered.

  She ignored him.

  “We need a better quality of guests,” Jimmy complained to Bill.

  Bill laughed. “What’s bad about her? Did you see her tee tops?”

  “No.” Jimmy glanced into the living room, but he could not see the woman. The room already teemed with students.

  “I know. You’ve got eyes only for one special woman.” Bill winked, as if promising discretion.

  Jimmy grabbed his beer and waded past the people in the living room. Crowded rooms were dangerous for Jimmy because he often collided with elbows, cups, and cigarettes. He still had a scar on his scalp where someone had turned around and accidentally burned him with a cigarette.

  Kris Hesse, Holly’s roommate, was in a corner. She waved him over.

  “I’m surprised to see you here,” Kris shouted over the din.

  “I live here.”

  She belched and hiccuped at the same time and almost lost her balance. She leaned on Jimmy’s head to stay upright, as a drunk leans on the bar.

  “Stupid! I know you live here. But you’ve got that killer exam coming up in English.” She fished a cigarette from her shirt pocket. Jimmy watched closely, which was easy. Kris was tall, and Jimmy’s eye level matched Kris’s bust level. “Holly’s back in the dorm studying her whole wheat buns off for that exam. Says she’s got to get an A.”

  “Too bad for her.”

  Kris grabbed his face and squeezed as if she were squeezing an infant’s.

  Suddenly Jimmy was gregarious. He stood grinning, spittle and whiskey dripping from his chin, and he marveled at the students. They were packed in the living room and kitchen, with barely room to turn around. They talked and drank, laughed and smoked, joked with one another and rubbed against one another. Jimmy wanted to join in the fun. His steps were unsteady and his foot caught a leg of the table; a bottle of vodka fell to the floor. Jimmy did not notice. He was too busy with his two drinks.

  Elbows, backs, chests and breasts were often in Jimmy’s face, but he did not mind. He even laughed about it. “Where are the short people around here?” he screamed. Several people laughed, and Jimmy laughed with them. Christ, he thought, I’m so fuckin’ funny.

  He tripped, and someone’s back stopped him from falling.

  “‘Scuse me,” he said to the back. He tried to gain his balance without spilling his drinks. He felt as if he was leaning face first against a wall with ice underfoot and his hands tied, and he could not stop the slow, face-scraping descent.

  The back turned and hands held Jimmy up. He was again face to bust with Kris Hesse.

  “I got you a drink but you were gone,” he yelled.

  Kris could barely hear him and bellowed through cupped hands. “Have you got any cigarettes?”

  “Upstairs!” He grabbed her hand and pulled her through the crowd.

  She stumbled behind him, laughing.

  Jimmy pretended that the door was locked. “I’ll have to kick it in!” Two kicks did nothing but hurt his foot, but he did not care.

  Jimmy’s cheer was contagious, and Kris took her turn. The door remained shut. They kicked the door in unison, and it finally gave way. The cigarettes were not in sight. “I’m dyin’ for a smoke,” Kris complained.

  Jimmy found a peeling cigar in the bottom of a drawer. Kris made a face.

  “I’m out of smokes,” Jimmy apologized. He pronounced
“smokes” as “shmokes.” “Somebody downstairs must have some.”

  “No, everybody’s totaled.”

  Jimmy opened his refrigerator and removed two beers. He tossed one to Kris. “Let’s chug these on the way to your dorm.”

  “What?”

  “You’ve got some smokes in your room, right?”

  She nodded.

  “Then let’s get ‘em!”

  He pulled her down the stairs and out the door. Jimmy insisted on holding Kris’s hand as they stumbled across campus. He did so in a joking manner, escorting her as if he were a Boy Scout, then jumping up and down as if he were a chimp. But the chimp was drunk. He fell in a mud puddle and rose laughing.

  Jimmy congratulated himself on his quick thinking. He planned on walking into Kris’s room with her hand in his. He imagined Holly looking up from her textbooks and turning red with envy. He even imagined the two women would get into a cat fight over Jimmy: slapping and clawing and tearing off one another’s clothes while Jimmy, nude except for a cigarette, cheered them on. “Don’t worry,” he would say, “the loser can sleep with me tomorrow night.”

  They burst into the room.

  Holly sat at her desk.

  Edward Head sat beside her.

  “What happened to you?” Holly asked Jimmy. She pointed at his muddy pants.

  “We’re here for my cigarettes,” Kris announced. She rifled through several desk drawers until she found a pack. She opened it, handed a cigarette to Jimmy.

  Jimmy was shocked to see Edward. Distracted, he lit the filter end of the cigarette, then cursed and flung the cigarette across the room into a wastepaper basket.

  “You dumb ass!” Kris yelled at Jimmy. She retrieved the cigarette and ground it out in an ashtray.

  “Sorry,” Jimmy mumbled.

  “Don’t start a fire!” Kris ordered. She gave Jimmy another cigarette.

  Edward stepped forward. “Allow me. We wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself.”

  Jimmy stood seething as Edward produced a lighter. The cigarette was bent and would not draw correctly. Jimmy sucked hard, but the lit end fell to the floor and burned the rug.

  Edward laughed. Jimmy stared down at the burn hole, then up at Edward. Now Holly and Kris laughed too. The laughter was self-perpetuating. Soon Holly was laughing so hard that tears rolled down her cheeks, and Edward was doubled over.