The Years Best Science Fiction & Fantasy: 2009 Read online

  “Oh, please,” Franz said.

  But Lyle was looking only at her now. He was like a teenager, blind-sided by emotions he’d never felt before. She saw his fingers flex on the handle of the screwdriver. She placed her hand over his, and slowly pushed the weapon down.

  A moment later she was shoved aside by the first member of the extraction team.

  Two days later she came down to solitary with four guards as escort.

  “You know, you’re good,” Franz said. He lay on the bed with his jumpsuit half unzipped, revealing the bandages across his chest. The blade had missed the lung and the heart, tearing only muscle. He’d be fine in a few weeks. “I almost believed you myself. The oath part was genius.”

  “I meant it,” Alycia said. She went to the stainless steel sink and set down the plastic first-aid kit she’d brought.

  Franz said, “Come on, there’s no way you could keep him on GLS. It made him suicidal and homicidal.”

  “They’re not going to let me keep anyone on it—they’ve canceled the trial. I’ve got to turn in all my supplies soon. But Lyle’s coming off the drug now. He’s feeling less suicidal. In a few days he’ll be back to his old self, and he won’t feel any remorse at all. But he’ll be alive.”

  “How noble. All you had to do was betray the poor sap who loved you.”

  “Tell me about Kentucky,” she said. She opened the kit.

  Franz smiled, shook his head. “That was just some bullshit to get Lyle worked up.”

  “In a couple days you’ll be dying to talk about what happened.” She lifted the syringe, then inserted the needle into the cap of the vial.

  He blinked, and then he understood. “You can’t do that. I’ll call my lawyer.”

  “By the time you get out of solitary you won’t want a lawyer. In a few days, Franz, you’ll be thanking me for this.” She looked back at the guards. “Hold him down.”

  THE HISS OF ESCAPING AIR

  CHRISTOPHER GOLDEN

  Courtney Davis crossed Montana Avenue on strappy, five hundred dollar heels, her sheer dress cascading around her upper thighs with every swing of her hips. Enormous black sunglasses hid most of her face even as they drew attention to her identity, and her blond hair fell in shoulder-length waves that perfectly framed her features.

  The world knew her business—thanks to TMZ and the tabloids, they knew every detail of her divorce proceedings, and had seen her in positions not meant for public inspection—but they could not possibly know of her crime.

  A car honked at her and she fought the instinct to give the driver the finger, just in case someone should film her doing so. Then she remembered why she had chosen Santa Monica for this meeting in the first place—no paparazzi. Montana Avenue was trendy as hell, but the celebrities generally hung out elsewhere. The shops and boutiques and restaurants here were for the wives of wealthy men, the producers and studio heads and lawyers who raked in all the real Hollywood cash.

  In a few short years, Courtney had gone from waitress to actress to sexy screen star to celebrity, and then her manager had taken her up to a meeting at the home of James Massarsky, to discuss a part, and she’d become a Hollywood wife. In his thirty years in the industry, Massarsky had gone from mailroom to major talent agent to studio boss to independent producer. Part of his appeal, to Courtney, was that his initial rise mirrored her own. But James had been around longer, and in that time he’d earned his reputation as a bastard and as a brilliant businessman, picking up seven Oscars and three wives along the way. He was a man who got what he wanted, and after their first meeting, what he wanted was Courtney Davis.

  She hurried across the street, her heels clicking on the pavement. She hopped onto the sidewalk, pretending to be oblivious to the handful of people who shot her the “hey, isn’t that—” stare that so many of the semi-famous endured in L.A. People dined on outdoor patios, but she passed those by without looking inside, just as she did the little dress shop and the new Kismetix cosmetics store. The women she knew who shopped and lunched and lingered in Santa Monica were not her real friends, but other Hollywood wives—and she could ignore them if she wanted to.

  That was good. Courtney wasn’t in the mood to talk.

  You’re a fool, she told herself, as she avoided the water dripping from the edge of an awning. It had rained this morning, but the sky had turned perfectly blue afterward. The sun shone its warmth down upon her, and she shook her head with the moment of her epiphany.

  You could’ve met this guy anywhere. Burbank. Sherman Oaks. Hell, she could’ve arranged for her accomplice to meet her up in Santa Barbara at some roadside bar, like in an old-time mystery novel. Somewhere with a million times less chance that someone she knew would see her, and know she’d been here.

  When she had made arrangements for this meeting, she had been tempted to suggest drinks at the Ivy in Beverly Hills. She’d have felt at home there, with friends around her. But the Ivy was more than just a see and be seen sort of place. It was Paparazzi Central. Photos and videos would be inevitable, and she didn’t want that.

  Montana Avenue wasn’t much better, really. Her chances of being seen by someone, of word getting back to James, were high. But in the end, though she hoped to delay it as long as possible, she had decided it wouldn’t matter much if her soon-to-be ex-husband found out about today’s rendezvous. He would likely think what anyone seeing her in some clandestine coziness in a Santa Monica restaurant would think—that she was having an affair.

  If only it were that simple.

  At the corner, she turned off Montana onto a narrow side street, where trendy crumbled away like all Hollywood façades. She paused there, in the shade of a tree that grew up out of the sidewalk, and stared at the patio outside Lemongrass, the little bistro halfway down the block.

  There were other reasons for her wanting this meeting to take place somewhere familiar. Outside of her Los Angeles, the places she hung out, the trendy clubs and shopping districts and the studio lots, the rest of the world seemed brittle and unreal, the dry husk of an empty beehive, no more substantial than dust and cobwebs. Ever since the day she had arrived in L.A., shitbox car loaded up with all her earthly belongings, Wisconsin license plate revealing the almost absurd truth about her small town girl past and her sickeningly trite Hollywood dreams . . . ever since then, she had known that this place was what she had lived for. She needed to be a part of this world.

  Hollywood had a vibrant urgency that made it matter. The rest of the world was the façade. Whatever happened to her—celebrity, divorce, scandal—it only mattered here. Courtney Davis no longer believed she really existed outside this place.

  She understood the shallowness of this thinking, and had come to terms with it. The small town Wisconsin girl still lived inside of her. She tried to be a good person, to create a life full of love and kindness. But somehow that person co-existed with the all-night clubbing that had gone on before she married James Massarsky, and the bitterness that marriage had brought her.

  So, yes, perhaps James would learn more quickly than she would like about her meeting today. But Courtney wondered, now, if that had been her plan, sub-consciously, all along. Maybe she wanted James to find out, so that he would know who it was that had hurt him, and stolen from him.

  Lemongrass must have had live music out on the patio, for she heard sweet, gentle guitar rising on the light breeze, accompanied by a rich, warm voice. The song was unfamiliar to her, but the singer had an aching sadness in his tone, and it settled around her heart and made her linger a few seconds longer under the tree.

  “This is a little strange, don’t you think?” Courtney asked.

  Behind the wheel of the car, Don Peterson shrugged. “Nah. Guys like this, they think in ‘old Hollywood’ terms. Every one of them wishes they could have been Jack Warner and acts like the fucking Godfather. Massarsky is really the last of a dying breed, younger than the rest but with the same mindset. That’s why he’s an independent producer, now. There’s only
so long an agency or a studio is going to let themselves be run around by a guy whose life is a scorched-earth policy. That’s what boards of directors are for. So now Massarsky works for himself.”

  “Jesus, Don,” Courtney said. “That really makes me want to be in one of his movies. Thanks for the pep talk.”

  Her manager laughed. “Relax. This is the old Hollywood thing. The director wants you. The producers want you, even though they’re bitching because you won’t show your tits—”

  “You know—”

  He held up a hand even as he steered them in amongst the trees.

  “I know, Courtney. This is me, remember? No nudity. I get it, and I respect it. That’s your choice. Massarsky likes to meet people, look them in the eye and shake their hand. It’s an old school thing. Once you get his seal of approval—which Brad is one hundred percent sure you will—you’ll never have to deal with him directly again. This isn’t an audition. You’ll talk. He’ll try to impress you. You’ll be impressed, or pretend to be. And we’ll go. End of story. Don’t be nervous.”

  She smiled. “I’m not nervous.”

  “You shouldn’t be.”

  “I am.”

  “I know.”

  Don drove up winding roads that took them into hills higher than Courtney had ever known existed in L.A. She’d taken Coldwater Canyon many times, but this was different. Commuters drove that road. Up here, it was all private, a world apart from the buzz of life in the city.

  A white wall sprang up to the right. In places she could see over it, down into valleys where massive, sprawling estates covered acres, with neighbors half a mile distant from each other. Soon they climbed a steep curve to find a gatehouse waiting at the top, complete with a uniformed guard, security cameras, and more fences. Don pulled up to the gatehouse as the guard leaned out.

  “Courtney Davis and Donald Peterson to see James Massarsky.”

  The guard checked a clipboard, nodded without saying a word, and reached into the gatehouse. The gates swung slowly open. Don thanked the guard and drove through, and then they were traveling along a much narrower, even more winding road. Tall hedges lined the sides. There were wooden fences, stone walls, even warnings about electrified gates.

  “Look at that,” Don said.

  He pointed to a small bit of exposed property on the left side of the road, where a trio of deer nibbled grass in amongst a few trees.

  “That’s so weird. What are they doing in here?” Courtney said, mostly to herself.

  “I’m sure they’re stocked, like fish in a private pond. The whole neighborhood is fenced in. The deer are just more pretty things to look at.”

  Courtney said nothing more until they pulled into the long driveway of Massarsky’s home, wondering how much of the man’s life was defined by acquiring pretty things to look at. Massarsky had built his legend on too much alcohol and too many women, a childish temper, and a savant’s eye for choosing film projects. But he had to have some serious smarts to have gotten to the top and surviving there for so long.

  The stone driveway ended in a circle, off of which there were several individual parking spaces, each separated by a thin strip of perfectly manicured grass. Two slots had cars already in them, each pristine and elegant. Don parked in the last available slot, and even as they got out of the car and turned toward the house, the front door opened and James Massarsky stepped out.

  Massarsky was fifty-six years old and moderately handsome in a tanned, relaxed, country club sort of way. His curly hair was thinning and he had a roundish belly that only added to his casual air. In a pale blue t-shirt and knee-length cargo shorts, all faded and rumpled, he didn’t look like a Hollywood mogul. Of course, she hadn’t met many, and none on his level.

  “Hello,” he said, smiling. “I saw you drive up. Sorry for the grubby look. I was out in the garden, checking on my tomatoes, and sort of lost track of time.”

  Courtney smiled. He grew tomatoes.

  “I’m James Massarsky,” he said, putting out his hand.

  “Don Peterson,” her manager said, shaking. “And this is Courtney Davis.”

  When he took her hand, James Massarsky gave her a paternal sort of smile. His grip was firm and welcoming.

  “Hell, I know who you are,” he said. “Thirty years in this business hasn’t broken me of my love of movies, yet. You were fantastic in that Scorsese picture, Courtney. What I want to know is if that performance came from you, or from Marty’s cameras and a great script.”

  Off guard, she gave him a small shrug. “I’ve wondered the same thing. But thanks, just in case.”

  Massarsky hadn’t let go of her hand, and now he looked at her oddly and squeezed a bit tighter. Then he laughed softly and looked at Don.

  “You’ve got quite an actress here,” he said, obviously having already forgotten Don’s name. “She’s gonna take you far. Why don’t we go in the den and we can talk about whether or not I’m going to be along for the ride.”

  “Sounds good,” Don said.

  Massarsky pointed them along a corridor and shut the door, which had been standing open. Wonderful breezes swept through the house and sunlight rushed in from the tall windows in every direction.

  “Marta!” the producer called toward the back of the house.

  “Yes, Mister?” a thickly accented woman’s voice replied.

  “Can we get some drinks in the den, please?” Massarsky said. He turned to his guests. “Want a soda? Juice? Something harder?”

  “Juice would be great,” Courtney said.

  Don nodded. “For me, too.”

  Massarsky smiled. “Marta, three of those pomegranate juices, okay? We’ll be back in the den. Don’t forget the ice!” He glanced at them again. “You’ve gotta have the ice. Makes it sweeter, somehow.”

  Pomegranate juice. Courtney said nothing. Massarsky hadn’t even asked if they liked pomegranate juice. She’d had it in martinis before, but never on its own, and knew it had a sharpness to it. It wouldn’t have been her first choice, but there was no arguing with James Massarsky. He was the sort of man who was used to deciding what other people would like to drink.

  The rest of the house—what she could see of it as they passed through—was bright and airy, a true Hollywood palace of the sort that she had only ever seen in movies or on television or in magazine layouts. But as they made their way back into the den, they passed into dark corners of the man’s home, a kind of living museum of Massarsky’s history in the industry. Bookshelves were lined with leather-bound volumes of the scripts of every movie he had ever had a hand in, with no distinction between the classics and the crap. Photographs on the walls in the same hall showed Massarsky with a who’s-who of Hollywood royalty, some in their prime, but many more recent. Jack Nicholson, Meryl Streep, Jodie Foster, Will Smith, Steven Spielberg, and Clint Eastwood. There were photos with four American presidents and a handful of sports stars as well. Some of the photographs had clearly been cropped to remove non-famous faces. In several, the arms or hands of those who’d been removed still remained in the pictures. Courtney assumed that the attractive blondes who recurred in several of the photos were Massarsky’s ex-wives.

  The den itself was darkest of all. The blinds were open, but the room seemed to swallow sunlight. The brown leather furniture and rich wood of the shelves and tables and the mantelpiece over the fireplace embraced them all. As Don and Massarsky took seats on creaking leather, Courtney wandered a bit, examining some of the odd knick-knacks that sat on shelves along with more bound scripts and a lot of books that looked unread, spines unbroken.

  “Go ahead and look around,” Massarsky said, though she’d already begun. “There are all sorts of odd mementoes in this house. I’m a collector. I’ve acquired hundreds of bits of Hollywood history over the years, not to mention the folklore of the industry.”

  “Folklore?” Courtney asked.

  Massarsky laughed. “You don’t want to hear this.”

  She smiled. “I do.”


  “Some of it’s gruesome stuff, some sensational in that old Hollywood gossip rag kind of way. You know, the costume Lauren Bacall was wearing the first time she and Bogart made love. It was on the set of To Have or Have Not. That sort of thing.”

  Courtney liked that he had said made love instead of had sex, or something even cruder. Massarsky was an old-fashioned sort of man, befitting his age, the sort who might be a barbarian in the presence of other men, but still knew how to act the gentleman.

  She cocked her head curiously and picked up a small glass cube. Inside, three yellowed nuggets rattled. She turned toward him.

  “Are these—?”

  “Teeth? Yes. Bobby DeNiro had them knocked out during the filming of Raging Bull. I bought them from Jim Feehan, the old-time boxer who trained DeNiro for that film. They’re the real thing.”

  Don, who’d been keeping his mouth shut until now, probably wanting her to establish a rapport with Massarsky, couldn’t stay quiet any longer.

  “How can you be sure?” the manager asked.

  Massarsky might have been offended, but he smiled. “I asked DeNiro.”

  “He didn’t mind that you had them?” Courtney asked, amazed.

  Massarsky spread out on the chair, relaxing, king of his castle. “Far from it. You want to know the truth? A lot of these things have legends around them, like they’ve got some kind of Hollywood magic. In the late seventies, I knew guys who claimed that in the Golden Age, there were real muses in this town, captured or brought to life or summoned, I don’t know. But I’m talking real muses, like in Greek mythology. Writers and directors and studio bosses worshipped these women, and they got genius in return.”

  Courtney and Don both stared at him, unsure what to say.