Wenske heard this and said, “They were better paid, but I’m better appreciated.”

“We all sure do appreciate you, Eddie,” Ort said. “I mean, fuck.”

Like the rest of us, Ort, Martine, and Danielle had been relieved of their phones and firearms, and now all we could do was wait. It was already past two in the morning, and everybody was exhausted. The big leather orgy-and-spanking pad was commodious enough to accommodate all of us, and while Wenske typed away and consulted Linda Seger—Wenske had asked for and Mason had given him a big jar of Ritilin—the rest of us lay down under some scratchy blankets Rover had tossed in the door for us and passed out.

I had another dream of incompetence.

§ § §

In the morning—or what our watches told us was morning, since we were not able to see it—nobody wanted to use the single toothbrush. So we cleaned our teeth with our fingers and some bottled water and Wenske’s tube of toothpaste.

I said, “My boyfriend Timothy Callahan was once in the Peace Corps, and this is how they brushed their teeth back then. They also used porta-potties like the one we’re using, which the president’s mother, Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, had gotten donated. American diplomats had modern bathrooms in the Asian and African capital cities, but each upcountry Peace Corps volunteer at least had his or her own porta-potty, which the Peace Corps paid staff came and emptied once a month.”

I could see Timmy rolling his eyes over this preposterous hokum, and I wondered how he was doing. I knew he would be very angry with me for not phoning him to tell him I was okay. Except I wasn’t okay, so there was that. I was briefly angry with him for being angry, but I had more reasonable targets for my being mad as hell, so I resolved to focus on them.

I hoped that we could all last until Hal Skutnik arrived. He at least had no actual blood on his hands that we knew of—though there were of course his famous temper tantrums and the fact that many people who worked for Hal at Hey Look Media considered him clinically insane.

Wenske had worked through the night. His only sign of fatigue was his slouching farther and farther down in his desk chair, a slight tremor in his right hand, and another in his voice. He drank a lot of water, making occasional trips to the porta-potty, and he popped Ritilin tablets every four hours.

At eight, the door opened, and Blanco shoved a tray of fruit and stale rolls in while Pablo covered him with a Glock nine. Then the door was pulled shut and we heard the bolt slide into place.

After breakfast, we took turns yet again at methodically combing the interior walls and ceiling of the studio for possible ways out. Though even if we found one it seemed as if it wouldn’t do us any good, for surely the building was now heavily guarded. In any case, we never found another exit.

While Wenske consulted Linda Seger and typed during the rest of the day, Delaney and I listened while Ort, Martine, and Danielle told us tales of HLM craziness and how they were determined to somehow shove Hal out of the picture so they could get on with their successful weed growing and wholesaling business. They considered it a public service they were performing that in any civilized country would earn them Chamber of Commerce citations and citizenship awards. This was in contrast to Hey Look Media, which Wenske had told them was a blight on the American cultural landscape. They believed him, even though they said they had tuned into that channel only one time, when Dark Smooches was on, and then only briefly.

Blanco brought us some take-out sandwiches for lunch, and through the afternoon we talked or daydreamed or worried while Wenske popped Ritilin and typed. At one point, Delaney said, “Do we really think they’re going to let us go when Hal Skutnik arrives? Don’t we know too much?”

Ort said, “Yeah, well, people know we were comin’ up here. At least I think so. I’m tryin’ to remember if I told anybody. Martine, did you tell anybody where we were goin’ last night? How about you, Danielle?”

“Honey, it was eleven o’clock. Who was I gonna tell?”

“Honey, we just jumped in the truck. Remember?”

“Well, shit.”

“Anyway,” Martine said, “we can tell Hal that everybody knows we came up here, and he sure as hell better let us go. That should work.”

Ort said, “Um, yeah. We could try that.”

We had Spaghetti-Os and Wonder Bread for dinner, along with a big bottle of Dr. Pepper.

Once in the evening we looked over and saw that Wenske had dozed off sitting up.

Delaney said, “Should we let him sleep? The poor bastard must have passed out from exhaustion.”

Wenske must have heard this at some level of semi-consciousness, for he was suddenly awake and slapping his own face, and guzzling water, and popping another Ritilin, and typing.

He was still typing at midnight when the rest of us called it a night—our second together—and spread out and curled up on the orgy pad.

§ § §

On Monday we spent a lot of time checking our watches. Hal Skutnik was expected at the lodge around four. Rover had said Hal was flying into Redding by chartered jet, and Rover would be meeting his beloved’s plane and driving him up to Mount Shasta.

At three fifty-five, Wenske looked up from his computer and said, “The end. Done.”

We applauded, and Delaney said, “Want a quick copy edit? Not that I know diddley about screenwriting.”

“Thanks, Paul, but it’s way too late for anything but keeping our fingers crossed that this script passes the Hey Look smell test.”

With that, Wenske got up, struggled on wobbly legs over to the spanking pad, lay down, and fell instantly asleep.

Four o’clock came and went with no Hal. At a quarter to five, though, we heard a vehicle approach outside, and within two minutes the door opened and Mason Hively walked in with two of the black-van thugs behind him brandishing automatic weapons.

Wenske was snoring up a storm, and it was Delaney who presented Hively with the laptop with the script on it. “It’s finished,” Delaney said. “Eddie thinks Hal will be quite pleased.”

“You all had better pray that Hal thinks it’s fabulous,” Hively said, and went out with his posse and locked us up again.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Just after seven, we heard the bolt slide back and within seconds the studio door burst open.

Hal Skutnik led the way, with Mason and Rover close behind, and then Blanco, Pablo, and the three van goons, all armed to the teeth. It looked like the moments leading up to the St. Valentine’s Day massacre. Skutnik was gotten up in some kind of safari suit, as if he was visiting the Australian outback, and his hair transplants emerged stiffly from his large head like the elements at the top of a cell phone tower. Wenske heard the commotion and was instantly awake and made his way shakily over to the rest of us.

“Hal, you asshole,” Martine said. “We’ve all been kidnapped by Rover and Mason, and you all are in such big trouble I can’t even begin to tell you.”

Danielle said, “You are gonna end up in Lompoc for the rest of your natural born days if I have anything to say about it, and I hope you like being some gang-banger’s bitch, ’cause your regular boyfriend Rover is gonna get the gas chamber, and all I can say is I’m gonna watch and I’m gonna clap my hands and sing praise Jesus the second Rover starts gagging and choking and swallowing his tongue.”

Skutnik looked momentarily discomfited, but an instant later he was beaming.

“Now, now, girls, don’t go all bitches-in-heat on me at this late date. It’s a little late in the game for yours truly to be getting all pussy-whipped, ha ha. Anyhow, you all are free to leave whenever you’re ready, because your job is done. Eddie, your script is totally brilliant. I knew you’d come through, and all you needed was a little incentive, a little carrot and stick.”