Slippin' into Darkness

8:31 P.M.

Shutterbug’s brain was a dog run, and his worries were the dogs. They raced back and forth, chasing after answers. Getting tired, slowing down. Then running some more, too stupid to stop when they hit the same old walls. Amazing. Countless years of evolution, and all the human race had to show for it was a three pound mass of nerve tissue that thrived on processing misery.

Eventually, Shutterbug’s worries decreased. The threats against him seemed to grow weaker with each passing moment. Like the song said, time was on his side. Steve Austin had threatened him, and nothing had come of it. The anonymous telephone warning was becoming a distant memory. Maybe the call was just an outgrowth of someone else’s paranoia. Or maybe it was a joke. Maybe a competitor was trying to get under his skin. Maybe-

Shutterbug sighed. God, he needed some sleep. If only his worries would leave him alone for a while.

He closed his eyes. Pictured a dog, sleeping. Let sleeping dogs lie, he thought. And he slept.

The doorbell woke Shutterbug at 8:45 P.M. He rolled off the couch too fast and almost lost his balance. He headed into the entry hall, not even sure he wanted to answer the door. It had been a less-than-spectacular day. Perhaps he was due some good news. Publisher’s Clearing House with a big check or something.

The bell rang again just as he opened the door.

“Hiiiii, Marvisssss,” Shelly said, breathing each word as if she were Marilyn Monroe. “Did everything calm down around here? What happened last night, anyway?” She gasped. “God! What happened to your face?”

“Just some old friends having fun.” Shutterbug ran a hand over his scratched forehead. “We went on a little nature hike.”

“Suuuure,” she said. “Sorry I jammed, but they scared me.”

Shutterbug nodded. “I didn’t think we had anything on for tonight.”

“Well, if you want me to go…” She winked coyly, a trick she had mastered in front of Shutterbug’s camera. “But I don’t have anything else to do. I mean, I don’t want to stay at home, because my father’s drunk… again. And I know you said that you wanted to see me this weekend. But my boyfriend’s out with his buds. And I figured, well, maybe I could see you tonight, and then I could see Joey this weekend, and then Joey wouldn’t get mad at me. Because if Joey gets mad at me, I might not be able to see you at all this weekend.”

“We wouldn’t want that,” Shutterbug said.

“Shit no we wouldn’t.” Shelly smiled, entering the house, dropping her backpack on the floor. “You don’t know Joey.”

In the basement, Shutterbug set up his camera while Shelly rattled on with tales of her boyfriend, her latest escapades in school, and her semi-tragic home life. Her stories entered Shutterbug’s left ear and exited his right. He figured it wouldn’t be bad to do some work tonight. Get his mind off his problems, spend some time with a pretty young thing. Maybe he would do some coke with Shelly. They could unwind. Together. God knew he needed to relax.

No. Shutterbug didn’t feel right about Shelly. Something about the panic in her eyes when the toilet paper hit the window last night didn’t sit right with him. She’d been awfully quick to claim that she had nothing to do with it. He had to be careful. Business was business, and his business danced outside the bounds of the law’s idea of moral decency.

That was a laugh. What difference did it make if a girl was eighteen? Did that birthday automatically make her an adult? Christ, some of his fifteen-year-olds looked twenty; he had to do the old soft focus bit to make them look younger. And on the flip side, he had once picked up a fresh-faced fourteen-year-old drinking at a bar with a fake ID. The bartender hadn’t even checked it, but the kicker was that some college kid hadn’t checked it either. The kidlet had one annulled marriage under her belt, and that night she was out celebrating with hush money supplied by the preppie boy’s wealthy parents.

But justifications aside, there was only one reason Shutterbug operated outside the law-that’s where the money was. If the law said eighteen, an independent producer couldn’t make a dime with a room full of eighteen-year-olds. Not on a shoestring budget. But if the law said eighteen, and an enterprising indy found a sixteen-year-old, or a fifteen-year-old who was willing to do some really inventive things…

Dollar signs. Big green ones.

Shutterbug adjusted the lights while Shelly stripped. She jawed about her boyfriend and the things they did together. “He gave me these books on acting,” she said. “He knows I want to be an actress and…” She slipped off her jeans. Flat belly, cleft between her legs so enticing because her legs were young and slim. The soft tangle of blonde pubic hair, a nest for an old lecher’s head. “…Marlon Brando. And Montgomery Clift. He was pretty crazy. But I guess I like the one about Marilyn the best. She was so…” Hot. Shutterbug licked his lips. Shelly undid her blouse, button by button. She wore no bra, and her breasts were full and the cool basement air caressed her nipples and they hardened and gooseflesh rose on her puckered aureoles and she reached for her costume. She stretched, turning, and Shutterbug marveled at her slicing ribs and flat belly, and his eyes were once again trapped by the generous swell of her sweet little. “…method actors. It really makes sense to me. I want to be…” April Destino’s cheerleader sweater filled her hands, and she slipped it over her head. It was a little loose on her. It didn’t hug her breasts the way it had once hugged April’s, but it looked good. And, besides, styles were looser these days.

April…Jesus, no. Shelly lay on the bed stretching, staring through the fake window at the beach mural on the basement wall as if she had never noticed it before. “Where is this beach, anyway?” she asked. “I mean, I know you said it was in Hawaii, but where?”

“Maui.”

“Oh, yes. Maui,” Shelly said, trying to sound as if she spent her vacations at Kapalua Bay when the truth was that she generally summered in Moab, Utah, cleaning rooms in the cheap motel owned by a lecherous uncle who had popped her cherry when she was thirteen. “And what am I doing here?”

“Just a solo tonight. You know the routine. First you look at yourself in the mirror, then you take off the sweater and play with your nipples, and then you open the dresser drawer and take out the-”

Her laughter cut him off. “Geez, you haven’t been listening to me at all.”

“Sure I was.”

She raised her eyebrows so wickedly that he couldn’t help but feel guilty. “You’re a liar, Marvis. But I’ll allow you that simple failing, because you’re my most wonderful director.”

Shutterbug wondered what movie she had stolen that line from. He certainly didn’t have a snappy comeback, so he tried to get things back on track. “Okay, now if you just step over to the mirror.”

“No. Not until you explain my motivation.”

“What?”

“That’s the method. Brando, Clift, Monroe. Jesus! I thought you knew something about the movies!”

Shutterbug sighed. “C’mon, Shelly. This is just a little silly.”

It was the wrong thing to say. She pouted.

“Okay,” he said. “Maybe I was a little too harsh.”

“Marvis…I can’t make it real for you unless you make it real for me.”

He smiled, but he was thinking that it was time to find a new girl.

“Make it real for me, Marvis,” she said.

“Okay.” He hesitated. “You’re a young girl…very innocent. You’re in Hawaii. You see a guy you like and you can’t stop thinking about him. So you go back to your hotel room, and your parents aren’t around, and you-”

“Flick my clit.” She shook her head. “That’s all this is to you, isn’t it? Little Shelly flicking her clit. And then you’ll want me to go at it with that kinky stuff you keep in the drawer.” She turned away. “I thought you could do better than that, Marvis.”

“Okay,” he said, surprised to find that the conversation was actually making him feel inadequate. “Give me a second chance, Shelly. Maybe we can work on this together. Maybe we can create a character.”

“That would be great!” Shelly’s face lit up, but the light faded fairly quickly. “Now, who am I?”

“Like I said, you’re a girl on vacation-”

“And?”

“And you see this guy-”

“C’mon, Marvis. If I’m on vacation, and if I’m in Hawaii, what am I doing wearing a cheerleading sweater?”

Marvis had to admit that it was a good question. “Okay…you’re not on vacation. You’re in Hawaii for the national cheerleader championships.”

“I am? That’s great!”

“Yes it is. And even better than that, your cheerleading squad just won the championship!”

Shelly shook her pompoms.

“But there’s bad news, too.” Shutterbug wrinkled his brow. “When you get back to your room, you get a phone call. It’s your boyfriend’s mother. You find out that he was just killed in a drag race.”

“Ohmygod!”

“And you’re very sad. But you miss him. So you get in bed and-”

“And I think about how much I miss him while I flick my clit!”

“Sure!”

“And that isn’t as good as he was, so then I have to do the other stuff, because I miss him really bad!”

Shutterbug smiled expansively, thinking bimbo sapiens, right here before my lens, live and in living color.

“This is great,” Shelly said. “This is wonderful!”

“Okay, let’s get to it.”

Shelly looked a little worried. “Before we get started, can I go upstairs for a minute? Just to be alone and think. Just for a minute. That way I can get into character.”

Shutterbug kept the smile on his face, but only by the greatest force of effort.

“Sure, Shelly, sure.”

More than a few minutes passed. Shutterbug waited like a bump on a log. His equipment was ready to roll, and he didn’t have anything else to fiddle with.

Amazing. Shelly Desmond the method actress. Getting into character seemed to take a lot longer than the trips to the bathroom that usually interrupted shooting, and sometimes those trips seemed equal in length to Ben Hur or The Ten Commandments.

But what could he do? Shelly would be pissed if he went upstairs and knocked on the bathroom door. And Shutterbug knew there was nothing worse than a pissed-off fifteen-year-old erotica diva. Especially one who had discovered the method.

He knew that, but right now he didn’t much care. He had taken enough shit for one day.

Enough was enough.

Shutterbug quietly mounted the stairs, a talent he had developed early in life because his father was a stickler for quiet. He passed the kitchen and entered the hallway. The bathroom was the first door on the left.

The door was open. The light was off.

Shutterbug stopped cold. He glanced over his shoulder at the front door and saw that Shelly’s backpack wasn’t there.

The little bitch had run out on him. But why? And without her pants? Wearing only a sweater? It didn’t make sense.

Twin terrors struck simultaneously. Shutterbug froze, remembering the warning on the phone, remembering Steve Austin’s warning.

And he had thought that he was in the clear. Just because a few hours had ticked off on the clock. Amazing. How could he be so-

A squealing whisper sounded further down the hallway. It was a sound that Shutterbug recognized.

The sound of the closet door in his bedroom sliding over a worn track.

Shutterbug was moving before he could think. There was only room enough for one word in his head, and that word was money.

He stepped into the bedroom. Shelly was there on the floor, zipping her backpack, just as he had expected. She tried a coy little smile, as if nothing was wrong, and then she saw his wild eyes and her face went slack.

His hands closed on April’s sweater and he jerked Shelly to her feet and she seemed so small to him.

He threw her onto the bed and watched her bounce.

“You’ve been stealing from me. Shelly.”

“No,” she said. “No! I just wanted some coke before we got started, but I was afraid to ask- “

“Okay.” He took hold of her jaw and pulled her face close to his. “I don’t see any powder on your nose, Shelly.” He laughed, pushed her back on the bed, straddled her and sloppily licked her nose. “Don’t taste anything, either.”

He was off of her in a flash. He snatched up her backpack and slammed it onto the bed with such force that her buck knife-a present from Joey-shattered a bottle of perfume.

“Don’t hurt me,” she said.

Tears spilled from her eyes. The zipper moaned as Shutterbug unzipped her backpack. He saw a flash of green. Six fifties were jammed inside along with her makeup and lipstick, each bill soaked with Liz Taylor’s signature perfume. “I’m surprised,” Shutterbug said. “And disappointed-Liz isn’t a method actress, Shell.”

“I didn’t mean-”

“At least you’re not greedy. Shell. Of course, if you’d been greedy, I guess I would have noticed. And I was beginning to worry about all those trips to the bathroom. I thought you had a little infection or something.”

She tried to smile, but it didn’t take. “It was my boyfriend. I know I talk too much…I told Joey about the money, and how you showed it to me when we did the coke. Well…he made me take it. He said he’d hurt me if I didn’t.”

Shutterbug grinned. Shelly crying on his bed in April’s big sweater. He watched her naked legs draw together, watched her shrink into a ball as she tried to hide.

Reflex. What a wonderful thing. As if she could really survive by rolling up like a sow bug. Shutterbug chuckled. The whole response was just another failure of human evolution.

“Let’s try a different scenario,” he said, doubting she knew what the word meant. “Let’s forget about Hawaii. Let’s make this bed our set.”

“Stop, Marvis. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

“Only you have to use your imagination. Shelly. See, you’re a nice girl named April Destino. You’re a very popular cheerleader. And you’ve been drinking nasty bad spiked punch all night long, and you’re drunk. And then some big strapping manly lads invite you into a very quiet room.”

“You’re scaring me.”

“Good,” Shutterbug said. “That’s in character. And here’s our setting-not a bedroom, but a basement. And it’s not now, it’s 1976. And you’re not lying on a bed-picture, if you will, a pool table with green felt. And-”

“Marvis, stop! I’m sorry! It won’t happen ag-” He made to slap her, and her complaints died in her throat.

Everyone was watching. All those teendreams mounted on Shutterbug’s bedroom wall. Each pair of eyes burning holes in his back.

His hand shook in midair, balled into a fist.

“And this isn’t a fist,” he said softly, staring at his bulging knuckles. “It’s an eight ball.”