The showrunner, p.21
The Showrunner, page 21
Stacey’s right hand closed around the knife handle in her purse. She lifted it out, keeping it below the desktop, and she tensed her leg and abdominal muscles, ready to spring. No fancy stunts were required — she wouldn’t have to vault over the desk or run around it. She’d hear what Ann had to say, hear what insulting pittance she’d offer Stacey to walk away from the show, from their production company, from everything she’d worked for her entire adult life — then she’d pounce. She’d whip out the knife, lean forward, pin Ann’s arms down with one hand, and hold the knife blade up to Ann’s neck with the other. Just like that, she’d be in the dominant position, able to force Ann upstairs and into the bathtub, where she’d make her swallow a bunch of her own pills and watch Stacey slit her wrists with her own kitchen knife. And die.
Why wasn’t Ann speaking? Should Stacey spring up now? She should. In five, four —
Ann said, “You know, it’s funny.”
Funny? There was nothing funny about this scene.
Ann said, “I had a whole speech prepared, in which I delineated my position, and explained why I’m doing what I’m doing, and how we came to be sitting here, about to walk down the path of no return.” She pushed her sleeves up to her elbows, and revealed a large, ugly, bleeding bruise on her left forearm.
Stacey gripped the knife handle tighter. “What happened to your arm?”
“Isn’t that something?” She leaned forward. There was madness in her eyes. “It hurts like hell. I think I might have cracked a bone when I did it. Or should I say — when you did it?”
Stacey started to sweat, in an un-Zenlike way. “What are you talking about?’
“Nothing. Because there’s no point in talking. Talk is overrated.”
What was Ann saying? What was she doing? Act now, Stacey’s ninja voice commanded, and she jumped up, knife in hand, and yelled a hyah! battle cry just as Ann lifted her hand and fired a handgun at her.
A blast of sound assaulted Stacey’s eardrums, a burst of sparks exploded in front of her eyes, and a slash of pain burned through her left arm — pain so searing that she cried out and collapsed onto the desk. She grabbed the bloody mess that was her left bicep with her right hand, and recoiled when her fingers slid over shredded skin to touch something raw and wet and yielding underneath. She opened her mouth to yell at Ann to stop, but all that came out was a whimper.
“Did I miss, goddamn it?” Ann stepped back from the desk, the handgun still raised and pointed in Stacey’s direction.
The crazy bitch was going to shoot her again. Stacey gathered up her strength and hurtled herself onto the floor milliseconds before the second shot hit a framed print on the wall behind the chair she’d been sitting in. She cried out when shards of glass fell and cut her where she lay tangled up in the chair legs, her back pressed against the desk apron. She pulled her arms and legs in close to her body, tried to make herself into a ball.
“Ann!” From outside the room, a woman’s voice wailed, awesomely loud, and awesomely anguished. “Ann! Don’t do it!” The voice was coming closer.
Stacey heard a click that might have been the sound of the gun being cocked. What was Ann waiting for? Stacey fixated on a pink, viscous blob of something the size of a ping pong ball sitting on the floor a foot away from her face. What was that? A piece of squashed cake? A chunk of her flesh?
Jenna yelled, “Hold on, I’m coming!” and ran into the room.
47
What with the proposal, and Christmas dinner, and the stoned sex at home afterward, and sleeping in the next day, and workouts and showers, and phone calls to Andrew’s sister and parents to announce the engagement, Jenna didn’t think too much about going over to Ann’s at three o’clock on the twenty-sixth. Not until one-thirty, when Andrew asked her what she wanted to do for the rest of the day and she told him she had to go pick up a gift Ann wanted to give her.
“That’s a little much, to ask you to come over during the holidays,” Andrew said.
“I won’t stay long. Though I think part of the reason she asked me is that she’s lonely and wants company. When she called last night, she told me she’d spent Christmas Day organizing her files. How sad is that?”
“Yeah, well, if the gift is one of her valuable personal possessions, don’t accept it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Those are the warning signs of impending suicide — when people put their affairs in order and give away objects of value.”
“Yeah, but —”
“Didn’t you say she’s been depressed lately?”
“Holy shit.” Jenna grabbed her keys, ran outside, and jumped into her car to drive over to Ann’s house early. It would be just like Ann to invite her over at three o’clock so that Jenna could discover her body after she’d overdosed on pills or hung herself. What a rad Christmas bonus that would be.
The drive from Loz Feliz to Ann’s place in the Hills should have taken twenty minutes, but the traffic was bad, the streets clogged with holiday shoppers or tourists, who knew what, and Ann’s phone was turned off no matter how many times Jenna called. It was 2:12 when she rolled up to Ann’s address and through the open gate, and if she thought she was anxious when she pulled up to the house at last, that was nothing compared to how she felt when she heard a gunshot. From inside the house. When Ann had said she didn’t have a gun.
“Ann!” she yelled. She opened the unlocked front door and stepped over a pair of riding boots in the foyer. A second shot sounded from the back of the house. Christ, she was too late to stop Ann from making a huge mess of herself. “Ann! Don’t do it!” she screamed, and ran through the kitchen, past a tall white cake on the counter. “Hold on, I’m coming!”
She ran into the den and saw an overturned chair, shattered glass on the carpet, a framed picture on the wall with a bullet hole in it, a heap of blood-stained clothing on the floor, and Ann — leaning against a built-in bookcase. She was breathing heavily, apparently unhurt, and she held a smoking gun in her hand. An actual gun with actual smoke coming out of it.
“Are you all right?” Jenna said, and Ann yelled, “Stacey tried to kill me, she attacked me with that baseball bat” — she pointed to an aluminum bat in a corner — “and I had to shoot her to defend myself. I had to!” Or she said something like that. Jenna didn’t hear her that well because Stacey yelled too: “Don’t listen to her, Jenna, she’s insane! She shot me twice. I didn’t even touch her! Stop her, before she fires again. Please!”
Jenna looked from Stacey — who was inside the blood-stained clothing on the floor, her face cut, her arm wounded, her eyes red — to Ann, who stared blindly ahead, the gun clutched to her chest.
“Look at me, Jenna,” Ann said. “Look at me! Everything Stacey says is a lie. I’m the only person you can trust. She’s the bad guy here. You know that.”
Jenna didn’t hesitate; the crazed expression on Ann’s face looked exactly like Meryl Streep’s in The Manchurian Candidate. She tightened her core muscles and pitched her voice low. “Why don’t you give me the gun, Ann? Let’s put it away and talk this over.”
48
Stacey hurt everywhere, and she was covered in blood, and her teeth were chattering, but she couldn’t give in and pass out, not yet. Jenna’s miraculous appearance might have stayed Ann’s hand for a minute or two, but she didn’t seem to realize how deranged Ann was, how capable of killing them both.
Stacey gritted her teeth and pulled herself up to a kneeling position on the floor, then, shakily, to standing. No, leaning. On the desk.
Jenna was trying to talk Ann into giving up the gun, playing the scene like she was the hostage-negotiator hero on a cop show. “We can work this out,” she said. “I know we can. You’re too smart to go around shooting people. Give me the gun and I’ll put it away somewhere safe.” All she lacked was a bulletproof vest marked POLICE or FBI.
“Don’t come any closer,” Ann said. She squinted at Stacey, raised the gun, and pointed it at her.
Stacey ducked. “Take it away from her, Jenna. Take it!”
At last, Jenna snapped into self-defence mode and executed the drill taught at the martial arts studio: she hit Ann’s gun-holding wrist with her right forearm, grabbed the snout of the gun with her left hand, flipped it, and aimed it back at Ann. “Done!” she said. She turned to Stacey — what’d she want, applause? — and made the mistake of taking her eyes off her opponent.
“Get back!” Stacey said, but Ann had already lunged forward and reached for the gun. Jenna and Ann grappled with it, their hands clasped together. They grunted and twisted until the gun fired right into Ann’s torso.
Stacey flinched, as if she’d been hit.
Ann’s body jerked backward and hit the bookcase. Her head lolled, her eyes went blank, and she fell sideways, with a crash, to the floor, like a punching bag dropped from a height. Like a big, heavy-duty punching bag. Like she was dead.
Jenna stood over Ann, the gun still in her hand, panting, for maybe five seconds. Then she dropped the gun on the floor, turned to face Stacey, her face shocked, her eyes enormous, and cried, “Omigod, omigod, omigod! What happened?!”
Two alternate scenarios unfurled on fast-forward in Stacey’s mind. In one, the police, summoned by neighbours, who’d heard the gunfire, ran into the room minutes later and found Jenna bent over Ann’s body, her fingerprints on the murder weapon. Cut to Jenna being led out of the house in handcuffs and taken to the police station, where she was charged with involuntary manslaughter. Cut again, to a court scene, where Stacey testified on Jenna’s behalf, the kill shot was deemed an act of self-defence, and the charges were dropped, but too late: Jenna’s career was finished. Her boyfriend kicked her out, her agent and manager dropped her.
Four months later, a scary-skinny, lank-haired, and strung-out Jenna comes to Stacey — whose dark motives are never discovered, who by then reigns over The Benjamins as the sole showrunner, and has moved into a palatial house/love nest with gentle, steadfast Cooper. Jenna, who has nothing, begs Stacey, who has everything, for a job, any job; she’ll answer phones if she has to, get coffee, make photocopies.
And in the second scenario?
Stacey said, “Is she dead?”
Jenna sob-talked: “I didn’t mean to shoot her. She grabbed the gun and squeezed my trigger finger. I was trying to stop her from shooting you! From killing us both!”
The smell of freshly excreted shit reached Stacey’s nostrils, mingled with the scents of blood and smoke that already hung in the air. Someone — Ann — had shit her pants.
“Is she for sure dead?” Stacey pressed her thighs against the desk to steady herself. “Check. See if she has a pulse.”
Jenna stopped making sobbing noises, but didn’t move. “I can’t.”
“Yes, you can. Bend over and feel her jugular vein. I’d do it, but I have to hold on to my arm.”
Jenna looked at Stacey’s right hand where it gripped her bloody left arm, and looked away.
“You can do it, Jenna.”
She took a deep breath and leaned over Ann’s body. “There’s so much blood.”
“Place two fingers under her chin.”
After a minute, Jenna said, “There’s no pulse.”
“Good. I mean, okay. Now we know.” And what a relief to hear that the wicked witch was not only dead, but by someone else’s hand.
Jenna turned her back on Ann and pointed at Stacey’s forehead. “You’re bleeding.”
That would explain why everything Stacey saw was tinged with red. “It’s not serious, is it? The top of my head’s not sliced off? My brain matter’s not exposed?”
“What? No.” Jenna leaned in for a closer look. “I think it’s just a big cut. Right below your hairline.”
“A flesh wound. But I need a tourniquet for my arm. Can you find me something?”
Jenna unwrapped the scarf from around her neck, stepped over to Stacey’s side of the desk, and wrapped and tied it around her upper arm.
“Tighter,” Stacey said, though the pressure on the wound made her feel nauseated. “Thank you.” She swallowed some bile and took a step away from the desk. Put one foot in front of the other, that’s what she had to do. “Now let’s call 911 and get some cops and paramedics over here so we can tell them that Ann went crazy and fired at me, you tried to take the gun away from her, and she took it back and shot herself.”
Stacey looked through the blood dotted on her eyelashes at Jenna, tried to will her into understanding, and hoped she wouldn’t regret saving Jenna from the doomed future that lay ahead if the truth were told. Though how could Stacey not try to prevent further tragedy, when Jenna had not only saved her life, but saved her from taking Ann’s? “Did you hear me? Ann took back the gun and committed suicide, right in front of us.”
“She shot herself?” Jenna said. She seemed a little calmer.
“It’s horrible and tragic and upsetting, and it’s what happened.”
Jenna stood silent for a moment, her face unreadable, then said, “Yes. It was horrible.” And she started to cry, soundlessly this time. Tears spilled down her cheeks.
Stacey said, “Where’s your phone? Find it and call 911. And act distraught: you require help urgently. One woman has been shot dead, and another’s injured.”
“My phone’s in my bag. By the door. I’ll go get it.” Jenna ran out of the room, and seconds later, Stacey heard her make the 911 call from down the hall.
Now was her chance. Her purse was on the rug, lying on its side. She picked it up with her good hand. Where was the knife she’d threatened Ann with? There — on the floor, five feet away, pushed halfway under a chair. She took two shaky steps over, bent down, picked up the knife, and dropped it into her purse. In the time that remained before the police arrived, she could get herself into the kitchen and place the knife on the counter beside the cake. She could and she would, and then she’d lie down, just for a minute, and close her eyes and rest, and be ready to face the police when they came. She’d be ready to back up Jenna’s story, and to become her partner-in-crime forever.
49
One minute Jenna had ripped the gun from Ann’s grip — way to go, Jenna! — and the next a shot had been fired, and Ann was dead, crumpled on the floor, her limbs twisted, her eyes open. Blood was seeping out of her body and onto her clothes and the rug and the floor, and the smell of a monster shit filled the air.
Holy fucking shit. Ann was dead, and Jenna had somehow pulled the trigger that fired the bullet that killed her. But not on purpose — Ann had squeezed her hand, and made her fire. This was all Ann’s fault. Christ, Jenna had come over to stop Ann from killing herself, hadn’t she?
Fuck fuck fuck. What if she took the fall for this? What if Stacey told the police Jenna had pulled the trigger and Jenna was convicted of murder and had to go to prison for years and years? Her life would be over. She’d get fat, and wear orange coveralls, and have to do disgusting manual labour like cleaning toilets, and her hair would be cut off, and she’d get beaten up and worse by big butch lesbians, and why oh why couldn’t she go back in time and have a do-over? No, that was stupid, she couldn’t. She had to deal with the now. And her best option was to act confused, like she didn’t know what she’d done.
Jenna let the gun fall from her hand onto the floor. “Omigod, omigod, omigod! What happened?!” Had she overdone it with the panicky inflection? No, she’d got it just right, with a gradual build.
Stacey said, “Is she dead?”
Sweet Jesus, what if Ann weren’t dead? Would that be better or worse? Jenna didn’t even know. “I didn’t mean to shoot her. She grabbed the gun and squeezed my trigger finger. I was trying to stop her from shooting you! From killing us both!”
Stacey stayed calm and told Jenna to feel for a pulse on Ann’s neck, which of course she knew how to do. She’d seen people do it on TV a thousand times. She avoided looking at Ann’s face as she touched the loose folds of skin on her neck and pressed against the place where the jugular vein ought to be. Nothing. She checked her own pulse to make sure she had the right spot, to remember what a live person’s heartbeat felt like, and rechecked Ann’s. “There’s no pulse,” she said, and Stacey said okay, now we know.
Stacey had a big gash on her forehead — it was a mess of tangled hair and blood — and streams of blood tracked down her face from it, through her eyebrows, down her eyelids. “You’re bleeding,” Jenna said.
Stacey made a joke — a joke! with Ann lying there, all dead and stinky and dead — about her brain being exposed, and said it was just a flesh wound, but asked for something to use as a tourniquet for her left arm, which looked bad, worse than the cut on her head. Jenna didn’t want to get too close to it but she thought she saw a flash of exposed bone inside the torn, oozing flesh.
When she’d taken off her scarf — not one of her better ones, luckily — and tied it around the bloody wound, Stacey told her to call 911 and tell them to send responders right away, because Ann had shot Stacey, then herself.
But Ann hadn’t shot herself.
Stacey said, “Did you hear me? Ann took back the gun and committed suicide, right in front of us.”
Jenna said, “She shot herself?” The thing was, Ann sort of had fired the shot, with all the grabbing for the gun. And she might even have intended to kill herself after she killed Stacey. She probably had. Definitely had. It wasn’t like she had much reason to live anymore, with the blindness, and her marriage breakup, and her career over. And hadn’t Andrew speculated that Ann was suicidal just that afternoon?
Stacey said, “It’s horrible and tragic and upsetting, and it’s what happened.”
It was like the sun had come out from behind some storm clouds and shone a golden light on the path out of this nightmare, and Stacey was the person who’d made the sun shine. Smart, quick-thinking, shot up, bleeding Stacey.
