‘Why’d you do that Playboy spread, Brooke?’ Wayne asked. ‘I mean, I ain’t saying it wasn’t beautiful, because it was, but hell, I wouldn’t never let Scout do a thing like that. I’d kill her first, and Hugh fuckin’ Hefner too.’

‘Oh, come on now, Wayne,’ said Scout coyly. ‘As if anyone would ever want to see me in Playboy magazine!’

She was clearly fishing for compliments. Bruce wondered about attempting to ingratiate himself by assuring her that she was certainly centrefold material. He was glad he didn’t.

‘Sure they would, honey,’ Wayne said. ‘Oh yes they would. Excepting I wouldn’t let you do it, on account of the fact that my rule is that if a man even looks at you with lust in his eyes, I have to kill him. So if you was to be in Playboy I’d have to kill just about half the men in the United States.’

‘You’re getting there anyway, honey!’ Wayne and Scout laughed at this.

Wayne turned to Bruce as if to explain some small private joke. ‘Scout’s exaggerating of course, Bruce. Why, I bet I haven’t killed more than forty or fifty people.’

Again an embarrassed moment, as Scout’s laughter died away into silence.

‘So why’d you do it, Brooke?’ Wayne returned to his theme. ‘I’d really like to know.’

Brooke could only stare. It would have taken a less astute judge of character than she to have failed to notice that Wayne was unpredictable. She had noticed the traces of bruising on Scout’s leg where Wayne ’s marauding hand had pulled away her thin cotton skirt a little. Brooke decided that the more desirable of two deeply undesirable choices was to say nothing. Scout spoke for her. She knew the answer; she had read it in a magazine.

‘Brooke did it, Wayne, because being an incontrol woman does not mean denying one’s sensuality. Isn’t that what you said, Brooke? I read that.’

Brooke nodded.

‘She didn’t do it for men, Wayne, no matter what you and your barroom pals might think,’ Scout scolded. ‘She did it for herself because she is proud of her body and proud to be beautiful and there is nothing wrong or dirty in celebrating that. In fact, it’s an assertive thing to do, a feminist thing to do.’

Scout finished her little speech and turned, smiling, to Brooke, clearly hoping to have won her approval.

‘That’s right, um… Scout, it’s all those things.’

Wayne got up and helped himself to another drink. ‘Well, I guess that makes me feel a whole lot better about jerking off in the john over it, Brooke. I must confess, I never realized I was doing such a fine and empowering thing.’

Scout looked as though she wanted to die with embarrassment. But before she could apologize to Brooke, Wayne pressed on. ‘I want to ask Brooke something now, Scout, and I don’t want you getting mad at me. OK?’

‘Well, it depends on what you ask her, Wayne.’

‘What I want to ask is how’d those girls in Playboy magazine get their hair the way they do? It always looks so damn perfect.’

Brooke managed to steady her voice. ‘Well… you know, I guess it’s just a question of styling really. They use a lot of mousse and they backlight it and sometimes they put in extensions…’

‘Brooke, I do not mean that kind of hair.’

Scout’s pale skin blushed a deep red. She could not believe what her boyfriend was asking – and them guests in someone else’s house and all.

‘ Wayne!’ She punched his ribs.

‘Well I want to know!’ Wayne protested. ‘Ain’t never going to get a better chance to find out. I mean we tried shaving yours, didn’t we, sugar, and you just ended up like some kind of damn Mohican with a rash!’

Mortified, Scout turned to Brooke. ‘I am truly sorry, Brooke I-’

Wayne was not going to drop it. This was clearly a subject that had always bothered him. ‘But in Playboy magazine those girls just have a little tuft, like that was all that ever grew. It don’t look shaved or nothing. These are adult women, not little girls, but all they got’s a tiny little tuft. How’d they do that?’

Strangely, the turn the conversation had taken was no less embarrassing for the terrifying circumstances under which it was being conducted.

Scout stared at the carpet, clearly wishing that she could crawl under it and hide. Brooke simply did not know where to look. She tried to stare straight at Wayne to show she wasn’t scared, but unfortunately she was and so she didn’t have the nerve. She couldn’t look at Bruce – she had nothing to say to him, even with her eyes. In the end she leant back on the huge couch and looked at the ceiling. Between the two of them, Scout and Brooke had the room covered from top to bottom.

‘I said, how’d they do it Brooke?’ Wayne repeated, his voice hardening.

‘Well, Wayne one has a stylist.’

This was one of the funniest things Wayne had ever heard. ‘A stylist! A pussy hair stylist! Now that would be one hell of an occupation! Yes sir, I guess I could get to like that kind of work!’

‘ Wayne that is enough!’ Scout was mortified.

But Wayne did not care. In his opinion he was mining a rich comic seam. ‘Oh, yes, sir! I’d work weekends and all the overtime the boss’d give me. I’d be saying, “Can I shampoo that for you madam? And how about I massage in a little conditioner?” I’d work hard and get me my own salon… There’d be a whole row of women sitting reading magazines with little hair driers on their-’

‘I am not listening to this any more!’ Scout grabbed two cushions, held them to her ears and began to scream. ‘Aaaaaaahhhh!’

‘Oh come on, honey,’ Wayne pleaded through Scout’s shouting and his tears of laughter. ‘You cannot deny that the notion of a snatch stylist is hillfuckin’larious. I mean, would they talk to their clients while they worked? Say, “How was your vacation, ma’m?” and…’

But the more Wayne talked the more Scout screamed, adding drumming feet to her efforts to block out his comic monologue. The mad cacophony was enough to jerk Bruce out of the lethargy of terror. He strode across the room and plucked an internal phone from its bracket on the wall.

‘What you doing, boss?’ Wayne enquired, still smiling at his own wit.

‘I’m calling my security guard. He’s in the lodge at the gate. If you leave now, he won’t hurt you but if you harm us, he’ll kill you.’

‘He’ll kill me? Well ho, fuckin’ ho.’

Wayne levelled his gun at Bruce. For a moment Bruce believed his hour had come.

‘Bang!’ said Wayne, who was still in a merry mood. ‘You give that guard a call, Bruce. Yes sir. If it makes you feel better, you give that of boy a call.’

Bruce punched the button on the intercom and awaited a response. Scout took the opportunity to apologize to Brooke. She was still mortified over Wayne ’s comments.

‘Brooke, I am so sorry that Wayne has gotten to prying into your personal stuff. He does not understand that a woman likes to keep her special private places special and private.’

Bruce punched the button on the wall again. He was getting no reply. Wayne looked up from the gun with which he was still playing.

‘He ain’t answering you, Mr Delamitri. Maybe he can’t hear you… Here, let’s see if we can’t get him a little closer to the phone.’

Wayne and Scout were sitting together on the couch. The holdall he had been carrying when he entered was on the floor between his feet. Wayne reached his hand down into the bag.

If Bruce had been shooting the scene, he would probably have started on a two shot of Wayne and Scout, then taken a closeup on Wayne ’s hand and panned down with it as it disappeared into the bag. Perhaps he would then have covered himself in the edit by picking up a reaction shot from Scout, who knew what was in the bag; then back to Wayne ’s hand as it emerged from the bag pulling a severed head by the hair.

But Bruce was not shooting the scene. He was in it and his heart nearly stopped. He had to clutch at the wall to keep from fainting.