THE JULIETTE SOCIETY 14 page

I raise my head to look around. I’m lying naked in the middle of a large stone platform raised no more than a foot from the ground. There is a ruby red silk robe with elaborate gold embroidery spread out underneath me like a sheet. And my arms are half in and half out of each arm of the robe. And stretching out from the platform in every direction, as far as the eye can see, are rows of empty bleachers.

I start to feel dizzy so I rest my head again look up at the sky and I feel like I’m flying, like I’m soaring through the atmosphere with the birds. I feel something catch in my throat, something like a feather. It tickles my throat and blocks it at the same time. I can’t breathe and I start to panic. I choke myself to try and dislodge it. Nothing comes out of my mouth, but whatever was there has gone now and I gasp for air, as if it’s the first breath I’ve ever taken. As if I’ve died and been reborn. With that gasp comes a searing pain that shoots across my throat, down into my chest and through my lungs, as if I’m breathing in fire.

And I think I hear Jack whisper, ‘You’ve arrived.’

I open my eyes to greet him.

I wait for my eyes to focus and realize it’s not Jack, but Bob who’s looming over me, his face clouded by shadow. It was Bob – Bob was the man in the mask. And I don’t know why but I’m not at all surprised.

I see him draw back his arm. And I feel a sharp sting on my cheek as he slaps me. My head shoots to the side as if it’s spring‑loaded.

He grabs my chin, turns it towards him and slaps my face again. Harder this time.

‘Wake up,’ he shouts. ‘Not time to die.’

I look at him and I only see his face for a split‑second before everything becomes blurry as the tears well up in my eyes.

He reaches for my wrists, not so he can stop me from striking him again, but to pull them down. Towards his neck.

He says, ‘Let’s switch. Choke me.’

His hands are on mine. My hands are on his neck.

He says, ‘Harder’.

And I squeeze.

He says it again.

‘Harder.’

My hard is evidently not hard enough.

He says it again and he’s shouting it now, over and over and over. Like a sports coach trying to make his athletes burn. And I’m incensed.

‘Harder.’

I’m acting without thinking.

‘Harder.’

I squeeze tighter.

‘Harder.’

His hands loosen their grip on mine and fall by his side. I keep applying the pressure.

‘Harder.’

It feels as if I’m turning a screw that’s already tight to the wall. But I want to give it one more twist, just to make sure, and it takes all my strength just to turn the screwdriver.

I see his face blush and redden.

I tighten my grip.

His lips are moving and no sound is coming out.

I’m bearing down on him with all my weight now, with strength I never knew I had, and his face is beet red. His eyes wide, the pupils dilated. His body absolutely still and rigid.

Then I catch sight of his mouth and it’s curled at the corners into this little smile that’s positively evil. Like he knows exactly what he’s doing to me. Or maybe it’s because he’s in excruciating pain. I can’t tell, because it’s almost impossible to differentiate between a grimace and a smile.

And I really hope it’s the former, because I get it now. I understand what this whole thing’s about. This sick little gathering. The power to hold life and death in their grasp. And this is how they get their kicks.

This is Bob’s kick.

Taking the ultimate risk.

I can feel his pulse weaken under my fingertips. I can see him slipping away. I can end this all now. He wouldn’t fight back. I can squeeze the life out of him. Right here, right now. I can take his life, the way he took it from those girls, how he took it from Anna. Because that’s what I figure has happened. I can even the score. I can stop this from happening again. No more victims.

And although he might enjoy it, the sick fuck, it wouldn’t be for long. By then it would be too late for second thoughts.

This is what he wants. He knows he can’t lose.

If I kill him, he dies safe in the knowledge that my life is over too.

If I kill him, it would be far too easy.

I can see the life ebb out of him. So I pull my hands away.

He doesn’t move. The color drains from his face.

The bastard’s dead. I know it. He’s fucking dead.

I scream his name – ‘Bob!’ – over and over. I slap his face. Pound on his chest.

I’m starting to panic. There’s no way I’m taking the rap for this.

I do it all again. Harder.

I’m about to give up when I see a flicker behind his eyeballs.

So I slap him. Once on each cheek.

He gasps for life, drawing air into his lungs. It’s accompanied by a hideous rasping sound.

I’m staring at him in desperation, dumbfounded. I want him to live. I need him to live. Not for his sake.

For mine.

It takes three or four goes and it looks as if he’s going to make it. He’s coming back from the brink now. He’s going to pull through.

I can see his lips moving but I can’t make out what he’s saying. His voice is barely a whisper. I move my head down level with his.

I hear him say:

‘Gena… which tie… which tie shall I wear.’

The twisted fuck. Still obsessed with appearances. If only Gena knew.

And I wonder if she does and just lets it lie. Is she just deluded and blind? Does she close her eyes to the indiscretions? Or doesn’t she see the signs? I can’t help but think Gena suspects and that’s the story of her corkscrew smile.

Bob’s coming round now, but I’m not about to sit here, cradle him in my arms, stroke his head and nurse him back to health. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to stick around to watch. I have to leave before he remembers where he is, who I am and what just happened.

This party’s already got way too old for me. I’ve seen enough and I know exactly when it’s time to go. So I walk out while he’s still lying there on that slab, still gurgling, half‑conscious and incoherent.

I don’t turn around.

I don’t look back.

I’m blessed to be alive.

It’s election night. I’m home alone watching the results come in live on TV. And when they cut to Bob DeVille, he’s already triumphant. He’s ahead by a clear margin, smashing his opponent, and he knows he’s going to take this election. He already knows he’s going to win and you can see it on his face.

Name me a politician that doesn’t get away with murder.

It’s almost a perk of the profession. And DeVille’s got it down to an art.

To me, he’s DeVille now. Not Bob. That just feels too familiar. A little too cosy for comfort. Now that I know what I know. It changes everything. Calling him Bob, that would be a bit like being on first‑name terms with the Hillside Strangler.

DeVille is standing at the podium flashing a victory sign and a Colgate grin with his arm around Gena’s waist as he prepares to make his victory speech. He looks so suave and so self‑satisfied. And he’s wearing a fucking cravat. I must be the only person watching this who knows why. He’s wearing it to hide his fuck bruises. To protect his dirty little secret.

Gena is pointing at random people in the crowd, doing that same thing with her mouth that Hillary Clinton does at campaign rallies. Gawping in surprise, incredulously, and frantically waving at random people in the crowd as if she’s just seen a long lost family member – and pretending that she knows them. Gena’s doing it because she’s convinced she’s one step closer to First Lady and she better start looking the part.

The DeVilles are performing for an exuberant crowd who have been bussed in from miles around to fill out the numbers and make it look as if the Senator‑in‑waiting has his finger on the pulse of an electorate giddy for change, when he’s probably just polled the lowest numbers in the history of the State.

And they’re putting on a good show. You’d never know that they were anything other than what they present themselves as. The all‑American couple. Loving, faithful and shining with good health.

When it cuts to a wide shot that shows the whole stage, I can see Jack standing there off to the side with the rest of DeVille’s team. Nothing could spoil this moment for me. Because I’m so proud of Jack, I really am.

Even though pride comes with a caveat because I know the real DeVille now, not the cardboard cut‑out politician on TV who says he wants to show people ‘the real me’. I know what he’s capable of. I know what he’s a part of.

I ask myself the same questions again. What is experience worth? And what does it cost?

This is what my experience is worth. I understand things now about sex and power and how they connect and interact that some people never get to discover during the course of their entire lives. And I’m still so young. But I’m also going to have to live with this my entire life. I can’t say that makes me happy. If I’m really honest, it makes me feel uncomfortable. Because I know that I’m only a step away from DeVille.

I could tell Jack what happened. I could blow the whole thing wide open if I wanted to. But we only have one life to live and I dream and fantasize like everybody else about the things that everybody wants: security, family, happiness, love. And I don’t know what the future holds, but I do know one thing that’s not in the future I see for myself. A whistleblower.

My instinct for survival is a lot stronger than my desire to save the world. So I could play the hero if I wanted to, but do I want to be known as that person for the rest of my life? Do I want to live with the consequences? Where would that leave Jack? What would it do to us?

By doing that I’d have to tell Jack everything. And I’m not ready to take that step yet. Some things should remain left unsaid. Secrets are best kept, not revealed. This one has to stay with me. At least for now. But I’ll reserve the right to change my mind at any time.

What would you do in my position?

Think about it. It’s not so easy, is it? There’s no simple solution or obvious exit plan.

This isn’t like one of those Hollywood movies where everything gets tied up neatly in the final reel. Where the bad guys get their comeuppance, the forces of chaos and evil are defeated, order is restored. And the hero or heroine gets to live another day and return to their regular lives. Their home, their wives, their children, their dog. And I really don’t need to tell you this, but real life isn’t like that. Hollywood endings only happen in the movies.

The way this story ends is more like that long tracking shot that leads to the end of Godard’s À Bout de Souffle where Jean‑Paul Belmondo’s character, a petty criminal called Michel, is resigned to his fate, after his American girlfriend, who’s played by Jean Seberg, has just told him that she doesn’t love him and she’s informed on him to the cops. And she does it just to get his attention. She does it out of spite.

Being a gangster in a gangster movie, and aware of that fact and smarter than most, Michel already knows where all this is going to end up. And we know too.

Remember what I said?

Plot subservient to character.

So Michel, he’s been shot in the back and he’s stumbling down the street, stumbling towards oblivion. He makes it to the crossroads and then he falls. And this is really it, the end he envisioned for himself. But more banal, because he looks more like the victim of a minor traffic accident than a dangerous criminal shot down in a hail of gunfire by law enforcement.

The last words to come out of his mouth before he succumbs to his fatality: ‘Makes me want to puke’. That’s his sardonic parting shot to a world that never loved him and he never loved back. That’s his ‘Rosebud’ moment. But rather than leaving some grand revelation as he makes his final exit, his words are misheard, misconstrued, reinterpreted – we never find out which – as, ‘You make me want to puke’. A rejoinder, not to the world but to the woman he loved, who betrayed him – his Achilles heel, the femme fatale standing over him as he’s making a travesty of his big death scene.

But when this is relayed to Jean Seberg, her command of French which, up to this point in the movie, seems to have been estimable for a young American girl, suddenly fails her. She doesn’t understand the French word– dégueulasse – and has to ask what it means.

And that’s where the movie ends.

She’s left not only realizing the enormity of the events she’s set into motion through an act of casual self‑regard, but also faced with the prospect of laboring under a misapprehension for the rest of her life.

That he died hating her guts.

If only all movies could end that way. If only all movies could end like life.

Unresolved.

Because, beginning from the day we are born… no, before that, beginning from the moment we are conceived, our lives are nothing if not a series of loose ends. Romantic, sexual, professional, familial, and probably a few others besides. And it takes every iota of our being to stop from getting tangled up in them.

Some people spend their lives obsessed by the loose ends, the what‑ifs, could‑have‑beens and what‑will‑happens.

But not me.

Technically, at this precise moment, I’m a loose end. And DeVille knows that. He could get rid of me if he so desired. He has the power. He could just click his fingers and make me disappear. Like Anna. He could pay someone to do away with me, and cover it up the way I figure he did with Daisy and those other girls. And he’d never have to suffer the consequences, never have to pay the price. He’d carry on flashing that Colgate grin on TV and no one would be any the wiser.

But he won’t lay a finger on me, I’m pretty certain of that. And I’m not about to spend the rest of my days looking over my shoulder, watching and waiting for that person to arrive. I’m not afraid. I’m sure DeVille’s assessed the risks and decided that I’m a loose end he can afford to live with.

Why do you think I’m so sure?

Well, you know what they say.

Knowledge is power.

DeVille made a promise to Jack. He said if they won the election, he’d give Jack a role in his administration. Jack has no reason to think that obligation won’t be met. I intend to see DeVille follows through. And I’m sure he will, because DeVille needs smart guys like Jack on his team to make him look good.

And who am I to deny Jack that opportunity? Who am I to put the brakes on his ambition?

Anyway, it’s not me DeVille has to fear.

It’s Jack.

How he’d react if he found out.

This is how these things work. You need to know that. No one has any incentive to go public. It’s not in anybody’s vested interest.

That’s the true nature of power. The occult nature of power.

It’s hidden. And it remains hidden.

So the Juliette Society, it just carries on.

Girls like Anna will continue to disappear. Or turn up dead.

And some poor sap like Bundy gets to take the rap. Because he’s disposable and doesn’t know enough about the bigger picture to take anybody else down with him. Ultimately, Bundy’s one link in the chain that can easily be replaced. There will always be girls who are willing to pander and guys who are eager to assist. It’s always been that way and it will always be that way.

We’re tied together now – Jack, DeVille and me. Like the Mexican standoff in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly . An eternal triangle. We’re standing within a stone circle, diametrically opposed. It’s a game of looks now, watching and waiting to see who makes the first move. All I know is, I have no intention of ending up in an unmarked grave. And mutually assured destruction benefits nobody.

Or it’s like the end of The Italian Job , where the gold is at the front of the bus, the people are all in the back and the vehicle is balanced on a precipice. One wrong move and the whole shebang will tip over the edge.

That’s what this is.

Checkmate.

And this is what I’m taking away from this whole little adventure.

Sex is the great equalizer.

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 870