While the Larks pondered this information, Janet Bunterman asked, "Do we really care about the scuzzy old Globe?"
Lucy snapped two fingers. "Cherry was visiting a friend at Rainbow Bend. A good friend who's been going through a rough time."
"Of course," Lila said. "Then she flew back to Florida to--"
"Rest and rehearse for the tour," said Lucy.
"Yes, rest and rehearse."
The Buntermans agreed it was a good story, but they were worried about the drummer. "He's a well-known heroin addict," Janet Bunterman said. "Maury says it would be death if somebody spotted him and Cherry hanging out together."
Lucy said, "You're talking about the dork from the Poon Pilots, right?"
"His name is Methane Drudge," her sister added.
Janet Bunterman nodded. "Maury says it'll murder advance ticket sales if Cherry's fans think she's on smack. Even a rumor would sink the tour, he says."
The sisters smiled. "Cherry's not 'hanging out' with Mr. Drudge," Lila said, "because Mr. Drudge is back at Rainbow Bend. They picked him up yesterday afternoon, passed out on the beach behind Kate Hudson's place."
Ned Bunterman said that was wonderful news. Janet Bunterman asked, "Then who did Cherry take on the plane with her to Miami?"
The Larks, who didn't engage in pointless speculation, advised the Buntermans to locate their reckless daughter as soon as possible and attach some serious security.
"Because there's only so much we can do at our end," Lucy said.
"That's right," said Lila. "We're only human."
Bang Abbott had never before flown private. It was fucking fantastic. He was on his third screwdriver by the time they were over New Mexico. He quietly snapped a picture of Cherry Pye, who was curled up with her eyes closed across the aisle. When she heard the shutter click, she came out of her seat and threw a punch at him.
"Easy, babe," Bang Abbott said, and hastily put the camera away.
"You do that again and we'll ditch your fat ass in West Texas. I'm not kiddin'."
"Sorry, okay?"
The photographer certainly didn't want to piss her off. This was the ticket of a lifetime, a one-on-one with a crashing starlet.
"They killed Princess Di, you know," Cherry said.
"Who did?"
"Your people. She was tryin' to get away when her limo wrecked in that tunnel." Cherry waved at the flight attendant. "Bring me a Jack on the rocks," she said, "and leave the bottle."
Bang Abbott said, "I'm not like those other guys."
"Really? You're not a 'stalkarazzo'? Ha!" She tapped three white pills from an envelope and swallowed them dry. "I 'member you now, dude. You're the one always asks me to smile pretty." She made a phony dumb-blonde face. "Just like that," she said.
"Look, Cherry--"
"It's Cherish, goddammit."
"Cherish. That's what I meant." Impossibly, Bang Abbott was losing his vodka buzz. The temperature gauge in the jet's cabin said sixty-eight degrees, but he was sweating like a constipated sumo wrestler. He hadn't foreseen such a coherent burst of hostility from Cherry. He had counted on her to be stoned senseless--why else would she have invited a tabloid shooter to join her on the flight?
As soon as she finished the first drink, Bang Abbott poured another one.
"What's your name again?" she asked.
"Claude."
"I had a cat named Claude. He ate a poison toad." Cherry Pye shrugged. "God called him home. That's what my mom said."
Suddenly the Gulfstream felt rather small to Bang Abbott. The thought of having to converse with this woman for three more hours was dispiriting. Bang Abbott had zero interest in the childhood memories, political views or life-guiding philosophies of the celebrities he pursued; the pictures were all that mattered. He wondered how long it would be until Cherry passed out, so he could try again with his camera.
But if she didn't nod off, what then?
"You look whipped," he said.
"Thanks. You look like Jake Gyllenhaal. Not."
Bang Abbott was lousy at small talk. He'd been spared during the drive from Rainbow Bend to the airport because Cherry had been nattering on the phone--his phone--the whole time.
He said, "I meant it when I said I was a fan."
"Yeah? Then what was the first single off my last CD?"
"'Runaway Tongue.'" Bang Abbott could have recited her entire discography, not because he liked her music but because it was smart business to pay attention. The value of his photographs rose and fell with Cherry Pye's fortunes as a recording artist.
Predictably, she was tickled that he knew the title of the song.
"Wanna hear the new album? I got it right here." She fished an iPod out of an alligator carry bag, but the battery was dead. "Shit," she muttered, and hurled the device across the cabin.
Bang Abbott said, "I've got all your stuff, Cherish. Even the Telluride tape."
"Oh-my-God." She giggled and covered her mouth.
A couple of years earlier, during another self-inflicted lull in her career, Cherry Pye had made a sex tape and paid a publicist who specialized in such projects to spread it around the Internet. Bang Abbott, who considered himself a connoisseur of homemade pornography, purchased the DVD for seventy-seven dollars, which he wrote off on his tax return as professional research. To his disappointment, the sex scenes turned out to be even more tedious and unimaginative than Paris Hilton's. Cherry had chosen as her partner a hirsute Argentinian soccer goalie who grimaced with each thrust while Cherry stared with glazed eyes at the ceiling. Occasionally she would writhe halfheartedly and gasp in the manner of a rheumatic terrier. All this took place in nineteen minutes on a white alpaca rug beside a cheesy gas fireplace at a Colorado ski resort.
"It was way hot," Bang Abbott lied.
"Thanks, round dude."
"Was that guy on the tape your boyfriend?"
Cherry laughed. "My what?"
Bang Abbott perceived that she was warming to him. He fixed her another drink and said, "Can I ask you something? Were you staying at the Stefano the other night?"
"The one on South Beach? Yeah, I guess."
"You remember if there was a problem? Because somebody called in an OD."
Cherry said, "You got any cigarettes?"
"And I rushed over there, you know, to see if it was you," Bang Abbott said, "but there was some other blonde on a stretcher. They were putting her in an ambulance."
"Then it wasn't me," said Cherry with a trace of impatience. She asked the cabin attendant for a smoke but was informed that the charter company didn't stock cigarettes on their airplanes, even the Gulfstreams.
"Well, that totally sucks," said Cherry.
"But later I ran into Lev," Bang Abbott went on. "He said your mom fired him, by the way--"
"Yeah, she can be such an ice bitch."
"Anyhow, Lev told me it was, like, a body double. That girl on the stretcher," said Bang Abbott. "He made it sound like she's on the payroll, just to keep us faked out."
Cherry Pye seemed curious. "Who got faked out? You mean the maggot mob?"
"All us shooters."
"Right, the maggot mob. That's what we call you guys."
Bang Abbott hadn't heard that one before. He wasn't even slightly offended.
Cherry acted like her pills were kicking in. She sat back and said, "I'm gonna miss Lev. He rocked my world."
"But was he bullshitting me, or not? About the fake?" Bang Abbott couldn't let it slide. He was aching to know how many times he'd been played for a sucker.
Cherry put a hand on his arm and said, "Claude, I honestly don't know what the fuck you're talkin' about." She set down her drink and snatched a handful of beer nuts from a crystal dish. "Dude, I thought you'd be way more fun than this. Take off those farty old shoes."
Bang Abbott did what he was told. His travel companion looked as if she was ready for a nap, and in his mind he'd already composed the money shot: Cherry slack-jawed and snoring, the half-empty bottle
of Jack Daniel's propped between her legs.
She eyed the flat-screen monitor mounted on the wall by the galley. "Hey, we can put on some porn."
"Why don't you try and get some rest?" the photographer suggested.
"Claude, I got a question. When's the last time you got laid? And tell the truth."
Bang Abbott felt his cheeks redden. "You mean where I didn't pay for it?" He tried to make it sound like a joke.
To his astonishment, Cherry Pye peeled out of her jeans and straddled him on the seat.
"Oh, you'll pay for this, too," she growled in his ear. "Nuthin good is ever free."
6
The man called Skink told Ann DeLusia she was a good sport.
He said, "I'll drop you at Alabama Jack's. There's a guy named Jim on a blue Harley, he'll take you back to the mainland. I'd be grateful if you didn't contact the authorities for a day or so."
"Let me think about that."
"Nearest hospital is Homestead."
"I feel okay," Ann said.
This was after the man had taken the people on the hijacked bus to a wide clearing near the ocean, arranged them in a circle around a bonfire of their luggage, and berated them with wild profanity for forty-five minutes. The one named Jackie had gotten the worst of it--Skink had tied him to a tree while Ann and the bus driver stood off in the shadows, listening and sharing a beer. Evidently Jackie had recruited some itinerant crackheads with machetes to shear twenty wild acres of red mangroves, an illegal enterprise designed to provide a premium view of the Atlantic from the future town houses that Jackie and his investors planned to erect. It was Ann's impression that the investors themselves were not enamored of Jackie, though for other reasons.
"How did you know they were coming?" she asked Skink.
"It was all over the bulletin boards at Ocean Reef. I stopped by one night to return some cutlery."
"And how'd you know their bus would stop for me?"
He grinned. "Because a meteor would stop for you, dear Annie."
This was after she'd changed back into her vacation clothes and Skink had fastened the checkered flag around his bare waist like a kilt. He'd returned her purse and her cell phone, and treated her abrasions from the car crash with antibiotic cream he'd found in a first-aid kit on the bus. Afterward he had taken her to see the grave of a panther that had been hit by a beer truck many years ago, or so he'd said. It was there, in a stand of old buttonwoods, that he'd sat beside her with a penlight and read aloud Baudelaire's "The Remorse of the Dead." She had expected the man to make a grab for her boobs, at least, but nothing happened. He said he'd once been the governor of Florida, and she said she was the empress of Japan.
"I need to clear the record," he said. "I sunk your rental car on purpose, so no one would see it and come looking for you."
"That sounds like a lot of work."
"Jim will tell the hospital he found you stumbling along the road."
"No problem. I can do dazed and disoriented," Ann said.
This was later, on the way to Alabama Jack's. As the bus was climbing the Card Sound Bridge, Skink's fake eye fell out and rolled down the aisle. Ann found it under the wet bar and handed it back to him. He made her promise to download Gram Parsons when she got home, and she told him to check out the new Farrelly brothers flick. He declared there was no hope for the Jackie Sebagos of the world and said it was a waste of energy, trying to make cretins like that come to Jesus. Ann DeLusia asked if he was going back to the bonfire at the construction site, and he said of course.
"What're you going to do to that guy?"
"Nothing his medical plan won't cover."
"Have you been to jail before?"
"Don't be ridiculous," he said. "But I see your point. I'm not getting any younger."
"Ever killed anyone?"
"Yes, I have."
"Me, too," said Ann.
He reacted as if he believed her. "It's damned unpleasant, isn't it?" he said.
"The worst." She had twice told him she was an actress, but he'd obviously forgotten. "Guns are too noisy. I usually use an ice pick," she said matter-of-factly.
Skink didn't seem to hear her. The bus had stopped at the tollbooth, and from there Ann could see the sign at Alabama Jack's. Skink re-inserted his glass eye while the driver waited for change.
"You need some money?" Skink whispered to Ann.
She thought he was the most unusual homeless person she'd ever encountered, not that she'd met many. "No, I'm good," she said, patting her handbag. "Is my phone in here?"
When the bus pulled into the empty parking lot of the bar, Skink pointed out the blue motorcycle. Standing nearby was a broad-shouldered figure wearing a helmet with an opaque face shield. "That's Jim," Skink said. "When you get to the mainland, he'll give you a piece of paper with a phone number. Put it in a safe place, Annie."
She laughed. "Is this your weird way of asking me out?"
He pecked her on the forehead and said, "Thirty years ago I would've chewed your panties off by now. Gently, of course, with candles in the foreground."
"Scented candles?"
"Use that number if you ever get in trouble. The one Jim gives you."
"Are you serious?" Ann said. "I'm callin' the cops on you, mister!"
"Sure you are," said Skink. He smacked her on the butt as she stepped off the bus.
Before Cherry Pye got hold of him, Bang Abbott's most memorable sexual experience had occurred the night after he'd won the Pulitzer Prize. The newspaper threw a party at a popular St. Petersburg sports bar, where a clerk named Naomi from classifieds led Bang Abbott to the ladies' room and screwed him silly while balancing upright in an unlocked stall. The lusty clerk wasn't particularly petite, and Bang Abbott was not (even in his younger days) especially limber. As a result, he snapped the anterior cruciate ligaments in both knees at the instant of climax, sending him and Naomi crashing to the tile. In the emergency room she had barely acknowledged him, and then rudely refused to accept his phone calls after she returned to work the following month. Before he could win her back, Bang Abbott had become sidetracked by ugly rumors about his prizewinning shark-attack photograph. The rumors happened to be true, which complicated Bang Abbott's defense. By the time he was off the crutches and packing for California, he'd lost interest in Naomi. Later he heard that she'd dropped twenty pounds and married a Saab dealer.
"Was that your first mile-high?" Cherry asked.
Bang Abbott nodded as he fumbled to belt his pants. He was in a peculiar daze. According to his watch, the entire act had taken only four minutes, yet he felt like he'd been floating for days on a tantric cloud. Cherry yelled for the flight attendant, who had discreetly retreated to the galley, and demanded a bucket of ice.
"That was incredible," Bang Abbott said.
"You bet." Cherry poured each of them another drink. "How 'bout a Percocet?"
"Not right now." Bang Abbott was already worried about his level of alertness. Cherry had more or less pounded his senses numb.
She pulled on her jeans and said, "I'm totally tuckered, Claude. You wore me out."
"Have a nap," he said.
"Only if you swear not to take my picture."
"On my mother's grave."
She reached for his crotch, her small hand burrowing like a hamster. "I mean it, Claude, don't be an asshole. Not if you ever want to make love with me again."
Bang Abbott said, "I promise, Cherish."
As soon as she began to snore, he uncapped a Nikon and popped off a dozen frames. Then he unbuttoned her blouse and took a few more shots, for the European tabs. The flight attendant, who was fixing coffee for the pilots, frowned disapprovingly but said nothing. When Bang Abbott pretended to snap her picture, she blushed and turned away.
The jet hit some rough air and he hastily put the camera away, in case the bumps awoke Cherry. He tried to doze off but he couldn't stop thinking about the astounding thing that had happened to him, and wondering why. Bang Abbott couldn't recal
l one other shooter who'd actually been balled by the celebrity he was chasing. Occasionally you heard about the deliberate flash of a nipple or a playful peek up-skirt, but he knew of no paparazzo who'd received so much as a tug job from a star. The social chasm between parasite and host was considered impassable.
Even if he'd been an A-list liposuctionist or a hotshot movie producer, Bang Abbott knew, it would not have improved the astronomical odds of him receiving a high-altitude quickie from a frisky blonde. He was well aware of his prevailing unattractiveness--the weight issue, his negligent laundry habits, his cursory attention to basic grooming and hygiene. He was in many ways a pig, and Cherry Pye's seduction of him defied explanation, even given her wild reputation.
The mystery nagged at Bang Abbott for the remainder of the flight, and he was forced to conclude that Cherry had been more wasted than he'd thought when she'd attached herself to his lap. By the time they landed at Tamiami she'd be sobering up, and he anticipated a cranky awakening and a brusque good-bye. So what? he thought. At least I got some killer photos.
But when the Gulfstream touched down, he was surprised to see Cherry wearing a smile. "Hey, big round dude," she said sleepily. "Can I see your phone?"
Happily Bang Abbott handed over his BlackBerry. Either she didn't remember what had occurred earlier, or she was down with it.
The jet was still taxiing as Bang Abbott squeezed into the lavatory, took a marathon piss and adjusted his Dodgers cap. What he saw in the mirror reinforced the extreme implausibility of the situation. It was beyond astounding that the rumpled, gamy-looking lump staring back at him had gotten vigorously humped at 35,000 feet by a major female recording artist. Bang Abbott felt recklessly exhilarated. Now anything seemed possible.
Cherry was still talking on his phone when they got off the plane. A stretch Lincoln with smoked windows sat idling on the tarmac. The driver loaded their bags and Cherry climbed into the backseat, pulling the door shut behind her. Bang Abbott hustled around to the other side of the limo, but it screeched away just as he reached for the door handle.