Fun and Games

32

Michelle Monaghan: Oh cool! This stopped the bullet, Harry.

Robert Downey, Jr.: No, not really.

—Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

OKAY, GOD, really, you can take me home now.

Hardie’s battered and broken and shot and burned and lacerated and cut and dizzy and sweating and bruised body lay in a glittering field of broken glass. There were no lights back here, but the moon was up, and the stars were out, and they provided a little bit of illumination. Hardie heard sirens off in the distance. Always coming. Never here. He supposed some of the Hunters’ Studio City neighbors had finally decided that all those popping noises weren’t firecrackers, and the screams weren’t screams of delight but rather terror, and they’d called 911.

He closed his eyes. Might as well try this again.

God, I’ve done it.

I managed to screw up one set of lives, but I’ve replaced it with another. You were nudging me in this direction the whole time, only I was too stubborn to see it. I get it, now, Lord. We’re done, you and I. Even-Steven. You can send me wherever you see fit. While it would be nice to see Nate Parish again, I realize that’s probably not in the cards. Not sure Nate would want to see me, anyway, considering everything that happened.

So I guess that leaves the Other Place, which… you know, I can’t say I don’t deserve. But even Hell would be a change-up from this purgatory of a life, so go ahead. Do your stuff. Banish me, embrace me, whatever. I’m done. This body is finally broken, forever and ever Amen.

Please tell me I’m done.

Anything.

Any kind of sign at all.

“Hello, Charlie,” a voice said.

Hardie forced his eyes open. His girl was there, his Topless killer beauty, his demon from the patio, standing on the top step, looking down at him, hideous smile on her face, and a coldness in her cut, bruised, and ruined eyes.

“Despite what you think, you’re not a hero,” she said. “All you’ve done is waste a lot of time and effort.”

Hardie coughed up blood.

“You’re not invincible,” she continued. “You’re just a man. You can be killed.”

“Yeah, I kn-know,” Hardie said. “Pull up a lawn chair and you can watch it happen, any minute now.”

The smile stayed frozen on her face, but Hardie could tell she didn’t quite understand the joke. Hardie didn’t either, to tell you the truth. It just seemed like something badass to say.

Behind her, back in the living room, there were assorted moans and cries. He heard someone call out man insistently, urgently. Someone else—or maybe the same dying man—pushed aside a table and knocked over a lamp, followed by a sharp hollow pop. The sound echoed out into the backyard. “Man,” someone cried again, “get us out of here.”

Hardie didn’t make the connection for another few seconds. Why would a guy dying of gunshot wounds sound so informal—Man, help me, I’m dying ova hee-uh. Yo, got a gunshot wound, bro. Then it clicked.

“Wait… your name is Mann?” Hardie asked. “Seriously?”

Mann didn’t reply. Instead she kicked the .38 out of his hand, then grabbed Hardie by the fabric of his stolen police shirt and started to drag his body across the broken glass and pavement, away from the broken sliding doors. The world moved sideways and started to shake. Mostly because he couldn’t contain the crazy, wheezing giggles that were escaping his chest.

“All this time I’ve been fighting the Mann?”

He broke into full-on laughter. He’d never heard anything funnier in his life, honest-to-fucking Christ. Wordlessly, she continued dragging his body, across the dry grass now, the smell of it mixing with the blood and the gunpowder in Hardie’s nostrils.

“You’re the M-Mann!” Hardie cried out, tears welling up in his eyes.

And then when he was at the edge of the pool, Mann nudged him over into the water. More concrete steps, meant to help someone adjust to the chilly water gradually. Hardie didn’t need to worry about that. He was mostly numb, anyway, except for the burning sensation in the places where the chlorine touched his open wounds.

Mann waded in next to him, put a foot on his chest, and pushed him under the water. His laughter was cut off in a messy gulp. Water swirled into his partially open mouth, his back slammed into the bottom of the pool.

“You can be killed,” she said, though she had no idea if Hardie could hear her. “You’re not immortal.”

Mann honestly couldn’t pinpoint her first mistake, where it had all started to unravel. She’d made split-second decisions like always. Had written her narratives like always. But this one had spiraled out of control early this morning, on the 101, when a spoiled bitch had shoved broken glass into her eye. She couldn’t even blame Hardie solely for this horrible abortion of a day.

But it would feel good to kill him, anyway.

Give her one last bit of accomplishment before…

… the next part of her career.

A director has one major fuckup, that director is finished. That did not mean death. Oh no. Mann had heard stories about another director—code name Stanley—who’d botched a production in London once, and rumor had it that they kept Stanley locked away somewhere in a secret prison, toiling away in the darkness, concocting narratives, gaming out possible futures endlessly, relentlessly. Good directors were assets, too valuable to be squandered. They’d keep you working. Working until your body and mind finally gave out.

Still, it was better than the alternative.

It was some kind of life.

Maybe she’d even impress them by killing Hardie. Prove to them that she was still valuable, that, yes, this assignment spiraled out of control but she was still one of the best death directors around. The very thought gave her a strange exhilaration. Some hope was better than no hope. She pushed down on Hardie’s chest with renewed strength.

Die, you stubborn bastard.

Aren’t you going to fight back?

What’s the point? Drowning’s not a bad way to die, so I’ve heard. After you stop fighting it, that is, and let it all happen. Once the air runs out, you faint. You start seeing crystal formations and hearing high-pitched tones and the crystal formations turn into a tunnel and then everybody starts telling you it’s okay, you’re going to be okay.

You are wrong. Drowning is an incredibly painful way to die. Your head is soon going to feel like it’s going to explode. Your body will go into violent convulsions. So, fight back. There’s still more to do.

No, there isn’t. It’s over. I’m done.

You’re being drowned by the woman who threatened to kill your family. What do you think she’s going to do the moment you’re dead? She knows the address. She’ll track them down. She’ll hurt them, just to hurt you after your death.

No.

She knows you know this, too. She’s hoping it makes drowning all the more painful.

NO

So, fight back. Fight back with everything you’ve got.

I’ve got nothing.

Fight!

I told you, I’ve got nothing.

Then what’s that in your hand?

Mann felt him wriggling down there, but she thought it was the start of death spasms. Earlier in her career she’d assisted on a job on the beaches of the Black Sea, a “drowning by misadventure” job, and she’d had to help hold the subject under. She knew the stages; she knew when someone was truly gone.

So she was surprised when an arm shot up out of the water and slapped her on the wrist. Like she was a schoolgirl being chided.

Mann was about to say—

You’re going to have to work a lot harder than that, Charles Hardie—when she looked down and saw that he’d cuffed her.

The other cuff around his own wrist.

Then he jerked his arm, and she tumbled forward, splashing into the pool. She coughed up water. Tried to regain her footing. Slipped on the bottom. Tried to steady herself, maintain balance, but her arm was rudely jerked forward again. And again. Suddenly she realized what Hardie was doing. He was pulling himself along the bottom of the pool, one-handed, fingertips digging into the rough cement at the bottom…

Dragging her to the deep end of the pool.

If the stubborn bastard made it out that far and was able to drag her body out there—and then he passed out and drowned—she was done. Game over. He was too heavy. Dead weight, cuffed to her wrist, and she’d have no way of breaking through to the surface.

“No!” she screamed and finally maintained her footing. This tug-of-water had to be won here, where the water was only four feet deep, where she could still draw air into her lungs. She was stronger. She knew that. But he had sheer mass on his side. And stubbornness, the likes of which she’d never encountered before.

Mann pulled and dug her feet into the cement and pulled and wondered why he hadn’t drowned yet and pulled and, seriously, what was keeping this stubborn son of a bitch alive, jerking at her, even when he had to know this was completely and utterly hopeless?

As she finally won and reached the edge of the pool, pulling herself out and steadying herself on the metal railing, Hardie’s head broke the surface. He gasped and sucked in air, choked, coughed, and sucked in more air. His eyes rolled around in his head. He choked again.

Hardie concentrated on forcing water out of his lungs as she dragged him back onto the grass. He could hear sirens closer now. Something cold and hard pressed against his temple. A gun. The .38. Held by Mann, who was dripping wet and shaking with rage. He looked up as she fired and—

CLICK

Nothing. A dry fire. He’d emptied the gun. Used the last few bullets on her employees, apparently, who were still moaning and writhing in the Hunters’ living room. Hardie wasn’t Dirty Harry. He hadn’t been counting shots and didn’t have a line prepared where he would ask his girl here if she thought he’d fired five or six shots, that it was difficult to tell in all the confusion. Though it would have been funny if he had.

Mann dropped the gun, let out a sad shriek, and then did something that startled Hardie. She began to laugh. She lay down next to him on the ground and laughed her ass off.

As they lay there, handcuffed to each other, the police burst in.