Blood Lite

I Know Who You Ate Last Summer Nancy Holder

"That should be 'whom,'" Carla M. said, "and that's part of the problem. It's too convoluted and it puts the emotional throughline on the victim. And frankly, who gives a shit about her?"

"Whom. 'I Know Whom You Killed Last Summer'," Angelo read off the screen of Carla M.'s state-of-the-art flat-screen monitor in her cool North Hollywood bunga­low; bitch thought she was all that. Which she was.

"Wow, you're right. It sucks," Angelo said happily.

"It's all about the Big Picture," Carla M. rambled on. "How all your artistic choices flesh it out."

Flesh.

"It's so obvious," Angelo cooed.

On the couch, away from the action, Dwight rolled his eyes. All Angelo had talked about on the drive from their Spanish Revival mansion in the Hollywood Hills was how great his title was. How much he loved it. Now he was betraying it because Carla M. had dropped it back into the Bottomless Well of Artistic Choices.

"Big picture. You're a genius. You're better than Robert McKee." Angelo gazed at her like she had invented the space-time continuum and tossed back his black shoulder-length curls.

Dwight stared at Angelo's hair and ground his teeth. Last night, Dwight got told by Tawni, the hairdresser who came to their mansion to style them and give them blow jobs, that shoulder-length curls were just too eighties rock star. It was almost too late to even go for the bald look, but luckily....

So once Dwight was shaved like a fucking cue ball, in walked Angelo from somewhere he went alone and had not told Dwight. And then he proceeded to laugh at Dwight's head and get a curly perm like he was going to tape an infomercial for A Tribute to Dan Fogelberg.

And when it was all done, Tawni oohed and aahed and spouted some bullshit about Angelo's sharp profile and rugged chin line; and wondered aloud if maybe she had been hasty about the death of curly and long. And by the way, Dwight should lay off the Botox injections and hire a personal trainer to correct his body mass index. She lec­tured him about colonies, which were enemas.

So after she left, Dwight made an ultimatum: his ego, her life.

"We can't eat her. She's the best haircutter in Holly­wood," Angelo argued. "Plus, we gotta stay off the radar." Dwight pouted and stared at his reflection in the mir­ror. He looked like a young Uncle Fester from The Addams Family. He was going to have to buy a wig.

Plus, he was starving. Angelo was so caught up in his movie thing that they hadn't devoured a chick in forever.

Sweating in his black leather pants, Dwight crossed his legs, put his dusty boots on Carla M.'s Danish modern "find" (as opposed to a "couch"), and text-messaged with the president of their fan club. God, he was so hostile. It would be nice to go to a therapist, but shrinks were clever bastards: When did you stop eating your wife? Rule Number One of the Cannibal Code was No One Knows.

Besides, wives were for wimps. Dwight had never been married. It was just him and Angelo, not in a gay way, not even vaguely metro. When you were busy and famous, you had relationships with nobodies. And ate them, too.

Except now they were busy at the home of Ms. Some­body, who they had met in AA. Despite nearly losing her liver to booze, she was still a player. So Angelo played her. One minute they were listening to her war stories about Demon Tequila and the next, Angelo was informing her that he and Dwight wanted to be the next Rob Zombie, which was total news to Dwight.

And now they spent every single Saturday night at her trendy NoHo bungalow, working on Angelo's cre­ative genius piece-of-shit serial killer movie while she groped Mr. Curly Top. Which was the most insane, self-destructive thing they could possibly do, because, hello? Cannibals? What about "No One Knows"?

"Also, since the Echo Park Killer is still at large, it looks like you're rifling off the murders. It comes off cheesy," Professor M. continued.

"Carly-car," Angelo moped. "Then we've got nothing." He sighed and glanced over at Dwight with his patented "Maybe you're right, maybe we should just eat her" look.

He shifted around on the find/couch, squishy with sweat. He wished she had air-conditioning. Summers in LA could be brutal. All the chrome and glass; sometimes the freeways started to melt, no lie.

Rock stars like them couldn't be caught dead in shorts.

"Don't panic. This is the most exciting part of the creative process," Carla M. told the guy who was in the Songwriters Hall of Fame. "The artistic choices. There are so many."

"So little time," Angelo joshed. They put their heads together and chuckled. What goes hahaha—thud? A can­nibal cat laughing his head, off.

"You break it down, you build it up," Carla M. went on. And on.

You knock her out, you chew her up, Dwight thought.

CannibalDwight2CCatsPrezie:SHOUTOUT

2 JACKIE ON HER BDAY! CCatsPrezie2CannibalDwight:

OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! U remembered!

Then a new text message came in. Not from CCatsPrezie but from someone named Unregistered. What the heck; they had to be cool if they had his number. Dwight read it.

I NO WHO U 8 LAST SUMMER

Dwight nearly fell off the couch. Instead, he gasped as his phone clattered onto Carla M.'s state-of-the-now retro turquoise linoleum floor.

"Dwight?" Angelo asked, swiveling around on Carla M.'s desk chair. "Zup?"

The people with hair were both staring at him. Dwight bent down—his black leather pants needed to be let out a tad—grabbed up his phone, and very carefully did not look at the faceplate again.

"Wow. Sorry, dozed off, it's so fucking unbearably hot in here," he said.

Angelo gave him a look. Dwight wanted to return it. Dwight wanted to tell him to meet him in Carla M.'s bathroom, with her vintage Serenity Prayer plaque on the wall and a pair of Praying Hands from some little town in Tuscany called Nostromo or something like that. He wanted to tell Angelo they were either in big trouble or Angelo was a douche bag for sending him a tasteless prac­tical joke.

However, he and Angelo had not survived decades of living as rock star cannibals without becoming very, very good at covering their tracks. You eat a couple little run­aways or an insecure, unreliable backup singer, that's one thing. You accidentally devour the wife of the guy who runs your new label, that's quite another.

Yeah, and you gobble up Alice, the one girl in all the world who your partner loves....

He knew he was panicking. His mind was zooming all over the inside of his skull like a pinball. Feigning a semi-apologetic, mostly not-giving-a-shit look, he slipped the phone into his wretchedly tight leather pants and shrugged. "We should go."

"Dwight" Angelo said tiredly. "Dude, we're working here. Well, at least Carla and I are working."

Dwight's heart thundered. He didn't want to work here. His stomach was a bowlful of acid.NO

Dwight hadn't peed in his tight black leather trousers yet, but he was about to vomit all over them.

"Angelo, we have to go now," he blurted, and there went the expert covering of their tracks. He was too scared. He had to get out of there before he had a panic attack. "We really, really do."

"Maybe your blood sugar's low," Angelo said. "Maybe you need something to eat." He waggled his brows. From where she sat, Carla M. couldn't see the smirk on Angelo's face; and for all her highly touted writer's powers of obser­vation, she didn't even know there was a joke, much less that it was at her expense.

"It's not funny," he insisted. "I, uh, have a sudden emer­gency."

"Okay. Jesus." Angelo rolled his eyes at Carla M. "Musicians."

"Hey, at least you guys never go on strike," she replied, and they both chuckled.

Dwight was doing no chuckling. He didn't wait for Angelo to finish elbowing Carla M.'s boobs while he dug out the keys. He was out the door and down the walkway by the time Angelo caught up to him.

"What the fuck is your problem?" Angelo demanded. "We were closing in on a title!"

Dwight kept walking. Angelo beeped open the Jag and Dwight slid in, black leather on black leather. Angelo stomped around to the driver's side and despite everything, every single motherfucking thing, Dwight enjoyed seeing Angelo being pissed off by him.

"Okay, here it is," Dwight said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his iPhone. He handed it to Angelo, who glanced down at it while he started the car. Baby purred. Angelo stared.

Then he said, "I know who you ate last summer?"

"I think that should be 'whom,'" Dwight said snarkily, which was stupid but he didn't care. He was shaking. "I have to throw up."

Angelo pulled over and Dwight leaned his head out of the air-conditioning and into the overheated, smoggy night. Because they were rock stars, they had to pull over a lot. Their limo drivers were all trained to take it to the curb ASAP if they got the word.

But there was nothing to throw up. Dwight's dry heaves made him dizzy, but that was about it. Sighing and wiping his forehead, he slumped back into his seat and rolled up the window. The air-conditioning made his nipples hard. Angelo resumed driving. He wasn't going anywhere near their Spanish Revival mansion up in the Hollywood Hills.

"Someone's watching us. Someone knows," Dwight said.

Angelo took his eyes off the road, not a good idea when you are going ninety-five. Worse when you are going a hundred and seven. They were rock stars. They had to speed.

"Dwight, if this is a misguided cry for attention .. ." Dwight wanted to choke him. Goddammit, sometimeshe had just had it up to here with Angelo's condescension and his cooler-than-thou bullshit. Okay, okay, Angelo had been Angelo Leone back in Upper Mayonnaise, Iowa; and Dwight Jones had been the son of a man who had beat his wife to death, and was going to come after his kid next.

And Angelo was the one with the trust fund, who got him the hell out of there (without graduating from high school) and rented a mansion close to where the Grateful Dead lived; and bought them equipment and lessons and all the clothes.

But Dwight was the one who found out that living human flesh tasted better than any other delicacy on the planet. And Dwight was the one who had nearly devoured Angelo on not one but three separate occasions, and then relented and let him live. And of course self-absorbed, arrogant, stupid Angelo didn't have a clue, not a clue, that he had come so close to death at the hand—make that teeth—of Dwight "the Loser" Jones.

"Let's go to Maria Begsley's house and score some blow."

"Maria's in AA now," Dwight reminded him.

They had joined Alcoholics Anonymous as a meta­phor, so they could stop eating people—okay, women—but Dwight had never wanted to—join, or stop. Raw human flesh was all he could eat anymore, and all he wanted to eat. Then Angelo had become addicted to making con­nections through their AA meetings, so they had to keep going.

Maybe that anonymity shit worked back in Sheboygan, but in Hollywood, if you were getting your act together, you wanted everyone to know it. You went to a party, you strutted around saying things like, "No alcohol for me tonight, thank you. I'll just have an Evian and some St. John's Wort. I am in the program. I am a friend of Bill W."

"Is this for the movie?" Dwight asked. "Like, you sent me the message to see how I would react?"

Angelo flashed him a look. "Dwight, please, would I do anything so idiotic?"

Yeah, actually, you would, Dwight thought. And he also thought about that brain disease that Hawaiians or whoever got, kurukuru, from practicing cannibalism. It came from eating people's brains. There were parasites. It couldn't be Hawaiians. It happened in the 1960s. Okay, maybe it could be Hawaiians. Hawaiian hippies or some­thing. Some Hawaiian hippies ate roadkill.

Kurukuru tossed you into the Well of Bad Judgment. Maybe Angelo had it.

"Did you text me?" Dwight asked. And before Angelo could flash him another "how dareth you question moi" look, he said, "Just tell me."

Angelo swerved around a slow-moving vintage Cor­vette and nearly took out a guy on a motorcycle. Guy looked like a Hells Angel. Flipped Angelo off.

"Who might know?" Angelo asked. "Hey, you didn't, like, tell your sponsor about us, did you?"

"Are you insane?" Dwight snapped. Then a horrible sus­picion dawned on him. "You didn't tell Bob V., did you?"

Bob V. had been Angelo's AA sponsor. Who Dwight had managed to kill in a fire. That should be 'whom.'

"Jesus, Dwight, give me some credit," Angelo said, but there was a catch in his voice. A guilty little catch.

He did. Dwight knew it as sure as he knew the words to "The Star-Spangled Banner," which they had sung last Saturday at Angels Stadium.

Angelo had told his sponsor that they were cannibals. Sponsors were these guys who took you through your Twelve Steps and overstepped your boundaries. Tried to become your new best friend.

"Anyway, he's dead," Angelo went on.

The Jag hurtled through an orange light and zoomed past the fountain in Echo Park. The fountain was on, spewing colored water the city really could not afford; but when you lived in Echo Park, you needed a little lift.

The drug dealers hanging around the fountain turned and stared in astonishment as Angelo zoomed back. Big hats, bling, sweatshirts, .357s. They glowered at the Jag, which was stupid because dudes in Jags could be custom­ers. But a serial killer was after their bitches and sistahs, so long faces were probably more appropriate than signs that read buy your shit here.

Angelo made a choking sound. Then he threw back his head and started laughing as he cranked the wheel and started circling the fountain.

"Okay, truth time. But you already know I sent you that message as a test," Angelo said. "Because I thought you told Carla M."

Dwight stared at him. Horror and relief washed through him like wave upon wave of pastel dancing waters. It was a joke! A horrible example of terrible judgment, and so unbelievably mean and cruel, and God, he was pissed, and—

"What? he said to Angelo. "Why would I do that?"

"Because you like her. You want to get into her pants."

"Dude, you have kurukuru," Dwight said. Then he hit rewind. "And don't try to push this thing onto me. Jesus, you told Bob V. What the hell were you thinking?"

Angelo looked unrepentant. "I wanted to get better. You don't get better if you're not rigorously honest. He was my sponsor. We did the Fifth Step at Malibu: Confessed to God, ourselves, and another human being the exact nature of our wrongs."

"Get better? At what? Dying by lethal injection?" Dwight shouted.

"Bob V. is dead," Angelo reminded him. "Having a sponsor is like going to confession. They can't tell any­body jack."

"Priests can go to the police if it will solve a murder case," Dwight bellowed. "We just saw that on CSI."

"Stop freaking out. I was raised Catholic," Angelo said with a toss of his brand-new curls. "You're wrong."

The Jag was still circling the fountain. The localz were standing up, watching, fishing in their sweatshirts, prob­ably for unregistered weapons. Angelo gazed thoughtfully at them.

"I want something," he said. "Meth or I don't know what." He giggled. "Blow. It's the other white meat."

And it was then, and only then, that Dwight realized that Angelo was already higher than a kite. He must have toked up or tanked up or shot up sometime during their creative Big Picture evening of Artistic Choices.

That was allowable. Dwight had shot up, too. In fact, he was probably higher than Angelo right now, because of the adrenaline racing through his body. He could feel his mind beginning to carom again, zinga-linging danger­ously out of control.

"I was worried you might tell Carla M. to impress her," Angelo said again. "You know you want her. And not just for dinner."

And suddenly Dwight saw the real Big Picture: Tell­ing. I Know Who Ate You Last Summer. Forget perms and screenwriters with tasty parts; Angelo was going to start one-upping him with the truth. He was going to break Rule Number One with the gusto of the parasitically infected. Already had, in fact.

"You bastard!" he shouted at Angelo. Then who knew what possessed him, but he made a fist and slammed it against Angelo's temple. To his even greater surprise, Angelo's head slammed against the driver's side window, and the car roared straight for the fountain.

"Shit!" Angelo yelled. "What the hell did you do that for?"

I did it because you always humiliate me. I did it because you ate my girlfriend. I did it because if I don't do it to you, you're gonna do it to me.

Dwight saw red. He saw blood. He grabbed the wheel with his left hand and dug in the glove compartment with his right. Got out their .357 Magnum and whammed it against Angelo's head as hard as he possibly could.

Angelo slumped. His foot slid off the gas pedal. Dwight turned the wheel and they orbited the fountain like a ride at Disneyland.

The gangbangers looked on in amazement. Bling gleamed in the moonlight. Teeth, too. It was not every night boyz in the hood watched two guys in a Jag making like Lindsay Lohan.

Finally the car screamed sideways and stopped. The tires were smoking. Angelo was still unconscious.

Dwight got out of the car, stomped around to the driv­er's side, opened the door, unbuckled Angelo, and dragged him out.

"Hey!" he shouted at the desperado homeboys. "Hey, this dude killed that girl Maria!" He dug into the pocket of his tight leather pants and pulled out her ugly rhinestone LA County Fair necklace. He'd almost forgotten he'd ripped it off her neck after he'd bashed her head in with that very same .357 last Tuesday. And Ana-somebody-nobody, three weeks before that.

"Check it out!" He shook the necklace at them. M-A-R-I-A. Stringy. Addicts so often were. "I found this on him! He killed her!"

Faces black and brown looked at one another. Mut­tered. Someone purple-black and six-four started walking toward the car.

And bald. He was bald! "Yeah! Bring it on! Payback!" Dwight flung down the necklace; it landed in the big gash in Angelo's head where the blood was pooling. Oh God, were those his brains? Eaten away by kurukuru?

Dwight stepped over him, piled into the car, and blasted out of there. Drove like a crazy man. A crazy man with a big secret that he had told no one, not even Angelo. No One Knows. He called Carla M.

"Hey," she said drowsily. She must be in bed. Ka-zoing! Dwight got hard.

"Yeah, hi. Angelo said he forgot something at your house. Okay if I come and get it for him?"

"Oh? Sure," she said. "What is it?"

"His emotional throughline," he replied. Then he hung up.

Laugh, cry? Plow the car into that oncoming retaining wall?

So many artistic choices, so little—

time.