Chapter 8 Ed #2
The short story I'm writing is a horror. They're always horror – sometimes Gothic, sometimes contemporary – but horror is how my creative energy channels itself.
I don't pretend to understand the psychology behind why I'm drawn to writing in this particular genre, but at the end of the day I like the thrill and challenge of writing scary stuff, and the freedom horror gives my imagination.
There's no limits. I can think up the most strange and fantastical stuff and turn it into a story.
I don't sell them, even though Bess said she'd put them in the gallery if I published any of them.
I'm fairly certain the last thing people here on a seaside holiday would want to read is splatter fiction.
Not that all of them are bloody. A good horror can offer the threat of being bloody and terrify the pants off you without spilling a single drop.
So like Carlos, I'm here purely to satisfy my creativity. Except I'm not partial to destroying my work once it's complete.
Tonight, I'm writing a story about a library where patrons who check out a particular book start to disappear, leading to the discovery of a serial killer who uses the library as a hunting ground.
Hey – they say art resembles life. Or something.
Which is not an admission to me being a serial killer.
Only that my place of work is a great setting for a horror.
I've just got to the bit where the killer is stalking the librarian who's worked out the book connection and the door bangs open.
I jump.
Bess stands in the doorway with a bottle of wine in each hand.
I place a hand over my heart in a useless attempt to calm it from the combination of fright and acute relief.
There's a wild look to her. Her eyes are dangerously dark and her hair's dishevelled like she's been standing in a strong wind.
"God. So dramatic," says Elly. "I don't know whether to roll my eyes or wish I made more entrances like that."
As the relief leaves my system, it is quickly chased by anger at her thoughtlessness at not getting in touch with any of us, then worry when she doesn't so much as look at me but marches up to Jeanette and asks at an unnecessarily loud volume, "Red or white?"
"Are you okay?" I ask knowing very well that she is not. Every sign points to her being rattled. Bess is never rattled. Passionate? Yes. But rattled? No.
Eyes large, Jeanette takes a step back from Bess. "Ah. White? No, wait. Red. Yes, red. I think."
"Well, go on then. Hold out your mug," Bess says impatiently.
I stand to take the bottles off her. Her breath is quickened, but her hands are steady. "Go get your own mug," I say quietly. "I'll do this."
I fill up everyone's tin mugs, which were introduced after the first wine glass-meets-concrete-floor accident, and wait until Bess has taken a gulp before asking, "What's going on?"
Bess holds up a finger and downs one more mouthful, before saying, "Theodore Pinkerton."
Right now is not the time to say the phrase "I told you so", because it is spectacularly unnecessary and unhelpful. Also, it has every chance of inviting violence. Instead, I say, "I thought you said he was harmless."
"Turns out he's dangerous when he's desperate."
"What do you mean?" asks Lutek.
I pull up a chair for her to sit down on, but as soon as she does, she stands again. "I need to pace."
I return to my table to give her space. I don't want to. I want to pull her into my arms and stroke her hair and tell her everything will be okay, but that is the stuff of fantasy. All I can do is listen and offer advice that is hopefully helpful.
Also, see aforementioned possibility of violence.
She takes a deep breath. "So. The Odour, it would appear, is financially compromised."
"You're kidding," says Elly. "The man drips money. How could he possibly have none?"
"By speculating on the wrong investment, or something, like the greedy fucker he is. That's how."
Carlos, who has returned to his chair, but not replaced his clothes, says, "I once speculated on the saying 'As foot-melting as lava' not being a literal estimation of lava's heat-damaging potential. Turned out I was wrong."
"Okay, one," says Elly, "that is not a saying. And two: You have your feet."
"I have a pair of feet, dear girl. Who they used to belong to, I wasn't told."
Lutek laughs quietly and I use it as an opportunity to move things back to the matter at hand. "I take it he wants a higher return on his real estate investment?"
Bess points at me. "Got it in one."
"What does that mean?" asks Jeanette. "He's going to raise the rents?"
“He sure is. In one month.”
"He can't," says Lutek. "Can he? Not without your say so."
Bess laughs humourlessly into the struts supporting the roof. "I have no power here. He's the majority shareholder. If I fight him, he can do a forced shareholder buyout and then I lose the small toe hold I have."
"But," says Jeanette and doesn't bother to finish what can only be a terrible end to the sentence.
No one says anything for several seconds, each of us pondering the enormity of what this means.
Elly breaks the silence. "No! You are not going to let this happen, Bess. You could single-handedly put that man-boy over your knee and give him the spanking of a lifetime if you chose to." She adds, "Metaphorically," but I imagine Bess could do it literally, too.
"We'll all help," says Jeanette. "Not with the spanking. We'll find another patron."
Bess shakes her head. "We could try. But even if we do, The Odour refuses to be bought out. His daddy wouldn't approve, apparently."
"Ugh." Elly turns and throws a handful of glitter as hard as she can into the very near distance. "What a spineless knob stain."
"My workshop," says Lutek mournfully.
"My flat," says Elly with sudden alarm and looks at the baby monitor with knitted brows. “I can’t afford anything else in Port Derrum with room for me and Jacks.” Then she gasps and turns back to Bess. "What about our jobs?"
Bess pauses before answering. "I'm pretty sure the café can survive higher rent. I'll just have to cut some of the weekend staff to protect wages. I’m not sure about the rest of it."
"My art therapy classes," says Jeanette. “We’ve got stroke recovery patients and rehabilitating offenders in there, among others. Do you know how proud they are to have their work in the gallery? How much it supports their mental health?”
“I know,” says Bess gently.
Everything in me sinks. My heart, my stomach. While this awful turn of events has no direct impact on me, the indirect effects are almost as brutal. Watching my friends have to navigate this threat. Losing them if they can't see a way through and aren't able to afford staying in Port Derrum.
Losing Bess. Oh God. I can’t imagine a life – an every day – without her in it.
Surely it won't come to that. "Could you...find somewhere else?"
"Where?" says Bess. "Commercial rents in this town are incredibly scarce. And even if we do find one, the rent is unlikely to be cheaper than what The Odour wants."
I try again. "What about a different location than the high street? An empty warehouse down at the port?"
"No foot traffic," says Elly. "There's nothing else down there except for boat stuff and ugly industrial sheds, so people would have to go out of their way to find us."
"And," says Lutek. "There's also the cost of setting up a commercial kitchen, even if it could lure people."
"Could you, I don't know, start a collective?” I ask. “Get everyone to chip in to raise enough money to buy him out at a price even his daddy would approve of?"
Bess looks at me sharply, like I've hit on something worth considering.
"It's a nice idea, Ed, but we're artists." Jeanette titters like that explains everything. Which it does.
"Besides, what would a building that size sell for?" asks Elly. "Like, two million? More? It's got the flats above as well."
"And my workshop," adds Lutek.
We descend into silence again. Whatever the amount, it's far too large a sum to contemplate taking on.
Jeanette knots her fingers together and twists them. Little bits of dried clay fall to the floor like dandruff.
Elly collapses into a chair and puts her head in her hands.
Carlos takes a noisy slurp of wine.
"Bess," says Lutek. "What do we do?"
Every head turns to look at her.
Someone lesser might crumple under the pressure of this kind of expectation. The expectation of not only leadership, but heroism. For Bess to be the magical deus ex machina who will rescue the seemingly impossible situation.
What does Bess do? She returns every single one of those looks, person by person like the queen she is. "I'm going to be honest with you. I don't know what the solution is, but I am going to do whatever it takes to make sure we do not lose what we have. I mean it. Whatever it takes."
"Like...murder him 'whatever it takes'?" asks Elly.
"I know a man," says Carlos.
"No you don't," says Elly.
"Sleeper agent. Goes by the name of Zoltar. Pay him the appropriate amount and he takes appropriate action."
Elly snorts. "By telling your fortune?"
"Carlos, my love," says Jeanette. "You're thinking of the automaton outside the pharmacy."
Carlos looks at the ceiling for a couple of seconds.
"Ah, yes. So I am. Uncanny likeness to a chap I knew in the field.
His turban could hide all manner of lethal weaponry.
Grenades, the odd bazooka. The bigger the mess, the better, according to Zoltar.
I prefer a hat pin to the eyeball myself.
Quiet, quick, effective. You could give that a go. "
"What's a hat pin?" asks Lutek.
"Carlos," Bess braces her hands on the back of her chair and leans over it.
"I am not including murder him in 'whatever it takes'.
I admit I was very tempted to help him discover his inability to fly from the gallery roof this evening, but that might be going a little too far.
Even for me." She straightens. "I will not let him have that power over our community, to effectively gut it due to his financial idiocy. "
Jeanette nods furiously. "Not on your watch, sister."
"Indeed. No fucking way on my fucking watch.
" She pauses. "Somehow." Then downs her drink and fills her mug again, which is no doubt a calling to the muse and which I understand.
On occasion, I've found solutions at the bottom of a bottle too.
They didn't tend to be very good ones, but it got the party started.
Nothing immediately comes to mind, however, and we return to our creative endeavours to either seek escape from having to deal with the Pinkerton situation or inspiration for how to resolve it.
After an hour, Elly says, "Hey everyone. How would I look with surgically-implanted glitter on my tongue?" She opens her mouth and grins. Her tongue is coated in hundreds of tiny, multi-coloured sparkles.
I can't help but burst out laughing and Lutek sprays his mouthful of wine back into his mug.
"I like it," says Jeanette. "You should go for it."
Bess stabs her canvas with her paint brush. “Nothing. I haven’t come up with a single bloody idea.”
"You’ve been busy though." Elly leans over her mug and extends her tongue into it.
"Are you going to drink that afterwards?" asks Lutek.
Elly shrugs and retracts her tongue. "Probably."
Bess sighs. “I haven’t completely wasted my time, I suppose.” She turns her canvas around for us all to see. “The campaign logo’s done.”
Her painting is of a woman in army fatigues and bright pink lipstick. She holds what, from a distance, looks like a matching-pink gun across her chest, but on closer inspection, the 'gun' is constructed from three words.
Whatever it takes.
I almost feel sorry for Theodore Pinkerton.