Security(39)

Brian’s lips meet Tessa’s very softly. Both Brian and Tessa remain very still. Only their facial expressions betray change, betray a sense of surprise. Very positive, pleasant surprise. It’s Tessa who moves first, but by nanoseconds. It’s hard to guess, unless one really watches. Unless one can’t look away—not even to such arresting images as Jules in a lacy white negligee, climbing into bed beside Justin, not even to Delores dropping her squeegee and ripping into her apron pocket for the gun—from Tessa’s arms wending around Brian’s neck so he’ll come closer, and their lips becoming not less soft, but less scared. “Not weird.” Tessa groans it, and Brian says, “Hmm--mm” with a downward vocal timbre that means he meant, No, not at all. He takes advantage of Tessa’s speaking mouth being open, and he presses it wider with his kiss. And Tessa makes fists in his motorcycle jacket. And her eyebrows rise, and her hips rise, and Brian’s hands find her hips like his hands are heat--seeking and her hips are hot.

The Killer picks up Delores’s dropped squeegee right as she takes out her revolver. He hits her wrist with the squeegee’s handle. Her shot sails far wide, to the window wall behind the bandstand. Cracks cobweb out from the bullet hole in the glass.

Brian sets Tessa’s ass on the railing. He touches all along the sides of her body like he wants to take it slow. Their mouths are not taking it slow. Tessa’s body isn’t, either. Tessa’s bare feet are pulling Brian tighter to her. He stops kissing her, with an evident struggle on his part, and his parts, and he says, in the second and a half he succeeds, “I love you. I—,” but Tessa says, “I know, shut up,” and renders him silent, or silent of recognizable linguistic phonemes, as Brian has dared now to put a hand under Tessa’s skirt, and his kiss--muffled ululations at this are almost as shameless as hers.

Delores drops her gun, and the Killer runs at her. Delores bends with astonishing speed for a hausfrau. She picks up the squeegee and jabs. The Killer grabs his stomach.

Tessa’s hand moves to Brian’s jeans. Brian’s hand moves to the front of his fly, where Tessa’s unzipping it. He puts both her hands back around his neck. She grins and says, “What’re we waiting for, exactly?”

Brian kisses her. “A bed.”

“Why?”

He nibbles at her neck, moving her shirt’s collar aside for better access. “I don’t know, shut up.”

Delores goes for the gun. The Killer catches her in a tackle as she grabs it. It skids across the ballroom, hops onto the dance floor, and spins to a stop at the base of the bandstand’s stairs. The Killer drags Delores by the hair, toward where he dropped his knife. Delores shrieks, reaches in her apron pocket, pulls out the shard of broken salad plate, and stabs it into the Killer’s hand. The Killer howls through his mask and drops Delores’s hair. Delores is up and running for the gun. The Killer is running after Delores.

The main elevator is passing the eighth floor. Brian is unbuttoning Tessa’s blouse. She is saying, “Slowest damn elevator in the world,” and Brian is smiling, minutely, before he sees a lacy white bra supporting a small breast. He turns serious, palming it. He nods and, all at once, lifts her off the railing so her bare feet are on the floor, pulls her black underwear around her bare ankles, and ducks under her skirt, the actions so quick, Tessa doesn’t have time to react, until she reacts by hollering at the glass ceiling and trying to make fists in the glass walls.

Camera 33

The Killer tackles Delores. She hits her head on the dance floor. She moans, facedown. She’s inches short of the gun. The Killer thrashes up Delores’s body, seizes the revolver, and flips its chamber open. He sprinkles the bullets and tosses the gun; it bounces once before landing in the storage room. The Killer pulls Delores’s scalp backward to beat her skull into the floor. But Delores rears like a bucking mare and throws an elbow into the side of the Killer’s head. The Killer rolls off her. Delores stands and runs for the kitchen, dizzy, her limp more pronounced.

Camera 12

The elevator is on the ninth floor. Tessa balances on one foot, ass on the railing. Her other foot has stepped from her underwear and hangs over Brian’s shoulder. Brian’s neck and head are cloaked in her skirt. Tessa says his name. His name rises in pitch. It’s as if Tessa is birthing him. One might prefer to think of the tableau as something ludicrous—like Tessa birthing Brian—rather than to admit the two of them are birthing something noble and lovely and sacred. Something that will last, so long as the two of them are not hacked to pieces tonight.

Camera 61

Jules and Justin decide to make love.





. . .





Jules and Justin are asleep.



Delores slaps the kitchen door open. She yanks a trash can over behind her. It’s large and gray and rubber and full of disposable accoutrements slick with cherry coulis. She runs for the walk--in refrigerator. The Killer slaps the kitchen door open, but he doesn’t see the trash can and goes flying over it, like Superman, his hands splayed out, and Delores is digging in her apron pocket for the secret elevator controller she has never used. She was told never to use it except in an extreme emergency. This qualifies as an extreme emergency. The Killer lands and skids through red--gobbed paper towels and chunks of waxed paper. Delores finds the controller and presses the button. The juice concentrate moves, too slowly. Delores shuts the door to the walk--in refrigerator and pulls on a shelf crammed with tubs of peppers and fresh fruit. She grits her teeth and makes a sound like a creature giving birth.