‘Sex and death in America today,’ said the reporters, as the ambulances squealed off into the dawn. ‘It could come straight out of a Bruce Delamitri picture.’ An observation which coincidentally segued very nicely into the preedited Oscars report.

‘I stand here on legs of fire,’ said Bruce.

‘Why’d the guy have to make such a vacuous speech?’ the news editors complained. ‘My God, if he’d said something about violence and censorship, would we have had him this morning!’

Chapter Eighteen

Wayne did not bother turning to Bruce even now. He was more interested in the conversation he’d been having. He put the little pistol he had taken from Bruce’s drawer on Scout’s lap, and strolled casually round the glass table to stand over Brooke. As he passed the severed head, it seemed again for a moment as if it might rotate on its gory plinth in order to follow Wayne ’s movements with its bulbous dead eyes. It didn’t.

‘You know something?’ Wayne said, standing over Brooke, leering at the curiously unnatural semicircular definition of the top of her breasts. ‘I’ve always wanted to know what faketits feel like. Well, I guess there ain’t a working man in the United States who hasn’t thought the same thing. Like, you know, are they hard? Soft? Can you feel that bag of stuff they put in? Do they move around?’

Wayne ’s right hand had been resting casually on the butt of the pistol stuck in his waistband. Now, he let go of the gun and blew on his fingers to warm them, clearly making ready for an inspection. Brooke did not look at him. She brought her knees up to her chest, clasped her arms round them with her shoulders hunched forward, and stared straight ahead, her chin on her knees.

‘Don’t you dare fucking touch me.’ Her voice was quiet and shaky; she was almost muttering.

‘Pardon me, ma’am,’ Wayne replied, ‘but I guess I didn’t hear you right.’

Wayne placed the barrel of one of his guns against Brooke’s forehead and with his free hand ready, fingers outstretched, he slowly bent forward, clearly intent on investigating inside the top of her dress.

Across the room Scout took up her gun. ‘ Wayne, you leave her bosoms alone, now. I don’t want you touching her bosoms none.’

It was a standoff, Wayne pointing a gun at Brooke, Scout pointing a gun at Wayne, Wayne ’s hand hovering above Brooke’s cleavage.

Wayne cracked first. ‘Jesus, there ain’t nothing more irritating than a jealous woman,’ he said, returning to his seat.

Brooke remained hunched up in her defensive position, breathing deeply. ‘Just hold on,’ she said to herself, ‘just keep it together.’

She knew that the numberone enemy of survival was panic. The moment one gave in to that oxygen-consuming, energysapping, adrenalinpumping surge of blind fear, one was done for. Only the day before, she reminded herself, she had been swimming off Malibu and had got caught in a rip. It had been a sucky one, and without warning Brooke had been pulled under, turned over, filled with water and dragged out to sea about twenty metres.

‘You nearly died then,’ Brooke told herself concentrating on her breathing. ‘Only yesterday you were as close to death as you are now, but you made it.’

It was true. Brooke had been in mortal danger, although it would not have been the rip which killed her. Rips don’t kill people. Panic does. The first instinct of the swimmer caught in a rip is to try to head back to shore. This is disastrous: no one can swim against the sea and the mildest undertow will defeat the strongest swimmer. But this suicidal instinct is strong and, although Brooke had been swimming in the Californian waters since girlhood and should have known better, she succumbed momentarily to the desperate desire to get back to beach by the shortest route possible.

Even at the first stroke, as she raised her arm over her shoulder and thrust her fingers into the foam, she could feel her panic rising. She was a very strong swimmer, but her efforts got her nowhere and within seconds she was exhausted. It happens that quickly. A couple of mouthfuls of salt water, a few flailing strokes and suddenly the toughest mind becomes clouded with despair. It is at this point that swimmers either pull themselves together or drown. Brooke had pulled herself together.

She knew the rules. Never head into your trouble. Head out of it, sideways along the shore, or, if necessary, right out to sea. Rips are always relatively confined and once the swimmer is out of them, no matter how far from shore they may be by this time, they have the opportunity to recover their energies, consider their position and calmly make their way to safety. Brooke, like any decent swimmer, was capable of keeping herself afloat for hours and yet panic could have killed her in two minutes.

That was the lesson she reminded herself of now. Rips don’t kill people (breath), panic does (breath).

In his own way Bruce had drawn the same conclusion. By pretending to be in a movie, he had so far avoided being consumed and defeated by the horror of his surroundings. He had avoided panic. Just.

‘What’s this guy’s weakness?’ he said to himself, no longer in a movie, but in a script conference, reading over Wayne’s character breakdown, which had been prepared for him on Popcorn’s headed notepaper. ‘Why does he kill?’

‘He kills irrationally,’ Bruce answered himself.

Inside his head, Bruce leapt to his feet, the cool, decisive producer, waving the studio memo about triumphantly.

‘Here’s how it is, right? The guy’s stock in trade is murdering strangers, right? Well then, surely safety lies in forming some kind of relationship with him. Maybe these guys don’t kill people they know.’

All this had been running through Bruce’s head while Wayne was attempting to investigate Brooke’s breasts. In the hiatus that followed the silicone standoff, Bruce made his pitch.

‘I’d like to ask you something if that’s OK, Wayne. May I ask you something?’

‘I would be honoured, sir.’ Wayne appeared genuinely pleased.

‘Well, I guess I’m interested in what it’s like to kill someone.’

‘You want to kill someone? Hell, man, do it, it’s easy. Kill Brooke.’ Wayne took his pistol from his belt and opened the chamber. He removed all but one of the bullets from the drum and offered the weapon to Bruce. Bruce hesitated. One bullet. Could he achieve anything with that?

Wayne read his thoughts. ‘Take it, man. You don’t have to kill Brooke. You could kill me, or Scout here – ‘cepting, of course, if you did vengeance would be not be a long time acomin’.’

‘I don’t want to kill anyone, Wayne. I just wanted to know what it’s like.’

Wayne put the gun back in his belt and thought for a moment. This was a tough one. He’d never really thought about it before. It was like asking what’s it like to eat or to make love, it was just stuff you did.

‘You might as well ask what it’s like to make a movie, Bruce. It depends. On the circumstances, on the victim. I can tell you what it ain’t like. It ain’t like you show it. For one thing, there ain’t no music playing.’

‘No. I imagine not.’

Despite the terror of the situation Bruce felt slightly annoyed at this. People were always pointing out to him that in real life nobody died to a sexy backing track. Like they were saying something really original and astute. It was one of the Moral Majority’s favourite points. They always took particular exception to the rock soundtracks Bruce assembled to accompany the mayhem he depicted. They said it was manipulative. Well of course it was. Bruce put fuck music behind his love scenes too and nobody minded that.

‘I’ll tell you another thing,’ said Wayne. ‘It ain’t witty.’

Witty? It seemed a strange word for a truckstop hick like Wayne to use.

‘Like in Ordinary Americans, when the two guys put the little shortorder cook’s hand in the foodprocessor. You remember that scene?’