"Not a lot there," the narrator said, "but then this is a low-budget flick, done on pure spec. Next scene…"

Mitchell was looking at a square of what seemed to be half-inch plywood, the size of a newspaper folded once. Hands, the same hands as before, lifted the square from where it was leaning against the cement wall and turned it around.

"No marks on either side, right? Right."

The hands raised the sheet of wood. Again there was a close shot of the girl's breasts before the tan, grained surface of the wood appeared, filling the screen. The camera pulled back, unsteadily, and Mitchell was looking at the girl again from perhaps ten feet: the sheet of plywood resting upright on her lap, covering her from waist to shoulders, the upper end propped beneath her chin.

"Now what have we here?" the lazy tone said.

For a moment Mitchell wasn't sure what he was seeing.

"A reverse angle," the narrator said. "We're now looking past Cini from behind, over her shoulder, to see what she sees. And what is it?"

The camera began to zoom slowly toward a table fifteen feet away.

"Right. A gun."

The revolver was mounted in a vise that was clamped to the edge of the table.

"You recognize it?"

Mitchell recognized it.

"Let's see it from the side. There. A thirty-eight S and W. You ought to recognize it, sport. It's yours. The box of thirty-eights on the table? Yours. The piece of paper? That's your permit."

As Mitchell watched, an arm extended a sport coat into the frame and dropped it on the table.

"And the coat. I believe you wore that to our first home movie session. Ratty-looking goods, if you don't mind my saying. What I like about it is your name inside. Now then- "Hello, what is that tied to the trigger?"

The camera moved in to feature the revolver.

"Why it looks like a wire. Funny, it extends back someplace, so that if you pull on the wire it fires the piece. That's pretty clever, isn't it? You can shoot the gun without messing up any prints that're on it. We'll let you think about that a moment. Meanwhile, here's our little star again."

The girl's face, above the plywood sheet, showed an expression of fright and bewilderment.

"Looks like she's sticking her head out of a box, doesn't it? Honey, relax. You're gonna do the scene. Don't worry about it."

Mitchell could see it coming. He pays or they kill her. And this is the way they would do it.

So what do you tell them?

He was watching her face. The face he knew and could picture clearly when he wasn't with her; but now he almost didn't recognize her. The awful expression. He could see tears glistening on her cheeks. He didn't understand the plywood, what it was for. He sat in the darkness looking at the screen and didn't know what he was going to do.

"This setup took some doing," the narrator said. "To get the full effect. Back and a little off to the side. So you can see the gun as well as our star. Okay, suspense time is over."

The view was level with the revolver and the wire that extended out of the foreground. Mitchell didn't move. Past the barrel of the revolver Cini seemed to be looking directly at him.

"Ready," the narrator said, "aim… fire."

The wire jerked taut again and again and continued as the lazy voice said, "Bang, bang… bang, bang, bang," as the five splintered gouges appeared in the plywood sheet and as the girl's eyes and mouth stretched open and her head hit against the pipe and fell forward with the last lazy-sounding bang.

In a silence, hearing only the faint sound of the projector, Mitchell sat staring at the screen. He said to himself Unh-unh, come on. He said, People get killed in movies all the time, but they don't get killed. He had experienced the same reaction before in a movie, making something jump inside, believability stabbing him in the belly, and it had never ever been real any of those times. It couldn't be real because people didn't really honest-to-God shoot people in moving pictures.

The narrator said, "Hey, you still there?" He paused. "The thing about Cini that makes her a star, she not only lives her part she dies it. And if you don't believe me, watch."

The camera followed the plywood sheet as it was pulled aside and turned over.

"Note, the bullet holes go all the way through."

The camera returned to Cini. Mitchell looked and closed his eyes.

"Take my word, man, that's real blood, not catsup. Now watch this."

The hand pulled the girl's head up by her hair and laid it against the pipe. Her eyes, wide open, stared out from the screen and continued to stare into the hot light as the hand appeared again and seemed to press against her mouth. After a few moments the hand twisted to show a mirror held in the palm.

"Note, the mirror's clear. No breath to fog it up. Actually we didn't need the mirror," the narrator said. "Look at the eyes. Keep watching. They never blink, do they? That's because they don't see anything." There was the sound of the narrator clearing his throat.

"Now, what we want you to see, sport, is that you got your tit tightly in the wringer and there ain't any way at all to pull it out. No, because we have this package hidden away: the broad's body, your coat with the broad's blood on it, the thirty-eight with your prints on it, the permit, a few snaps of you and the broad on the beach, all in this package where nobody can find it. Not unless we tell them. Like we call the cops and we say, hey, you want to know where there's a dead broad and all? We tell them, hang up. Pretty soon there's about eighteen fucking police cars outside your house and the neighbors are looking out. What the fuck's going on? They read about it in the paper, Christ, imagine, he seemed like such a nice guy. Yeah? Some fucking nice guy. Takes the broad's clothes off and shoots her five times in the left tit. Probably raped her after. Fucking pervert. Should be electrocuted. What does he get? Life in S.M.P. Jackson. He's over there making our fucking license plates we got to put on our car for Christ sake." The narrator paused.

"Or, as I said. You pay us the hundred and five a year the rest of your life or until we say stop, we got enough. Listen to me, sport. No more fucking around. Ten grand tomorrow, ten grand a week from tomorrow, ten grand a week later. Thirty thou in good faith, giving you time to get it together. Then you plan ahead and come up with the balance in cash monthly payments. You got it? Tomorrow night you go out to Metro yourself, personally, with ten big ones. At exactly eleven-thirty you put it in locker two-fifty-eight and put the key in with it. If you hang around, or if you don't show, or if you pull any kind of shit at all, the cops get a phone call.

"Now sit there a while and relax, watch another movie. When it's over, come up and get the reel and the projector if you want. They're rented from Film Outlet, over on Larned. In your name."

Sitting alone in the darkness, Mitchell watched a cartoon cat chase three cartoon mice all over the house. He watched the cat get clobbered, flattened, blown up, set on fire and electrocuted and the dumb goddamned cat hardly ever got close to them. When it was over Mitchell walked across the street to his car. He wasn't sure for a while where he was going.