Pandora's Closet Part 5

"Oh!" Dorothy cried. "Oh! I can hardly believe it's you!"

Bright blue eyes twinkled up at her. "Of course it's me, dear. But I would hardly have known you if it weren't for the shoes! You're not the same girl at all."

"I know," Dorothy said mournfully.

"Why is that, Dorothy? Is that because of Kansas?"

Dorothy's shoulders sagged. "I don't know. I think it's because of growing up-and growing dull."

"Dull? But you were so strong, so bright and clever!"

"I lost myself," Dorothy whispered.

The little woman tipped her golden head to one side. "You've come back to find yourself, then. And about time. What took you so long?"

"I didn't know I could come back," Dorothy said. "And I didn't think I should! I just-I was having such an awful day-"

"And you ran away?"

"Oh, no," Dorothy said. "I can't run away. I'm a grown-up now. Grown-ups don't run away." She looked around her at the vivid scenery. "And grown-ups don't believe in magic."

"You believe in magic!" the tiny woman said stoutly.

"Well, but-grown-ups in Kansas don't."

"Then I think," the little woman said, putting her hands on her hips, "that Kansas must be a terrible place."

Dorothy sighed. "It's not, really... it's just... oh, I wish I could stay right here and never leave!"

"Why can't you?"

"I have responsibilities. I've made promises."

Her companion only laughed. "Break them!" she said in her tinkling voice.

"I just-I don't think I can do that." Dorothy looked around her. All the little faces had disappeared, except for one brave one peeping over the hedge. But the colors were just as bright, the sweet breeze just as inviting, and there was a glimmer of gold in the distance, winding through emerald fields.

Her companion put a small, cool hand under her arm. "Come, Dorothy. Look!" She turned her around to face the s.h.i.+ning bubble. "Let me show you something."

She lifted her arm and waved at the bubble. The side of it opaqued, its iridescence fading until it turned as gray and hard as a television screen. And there, reflected or projected, Dorothy couldn't tell, was Kansas.

The vivid green gra.s.s on which the bubble sat, and the bright blue of the sky above it, made the farmhouse and the wheatfields and the dusty lane look painfully drab. As Dorothy watched, her mouth open in wonder, the view zoomed through the screen door and into the kitchen. And there, bent over the sink scrubbing potatoes, was...

"It's me!" Dorothy cried. "But that can't be!"

The tinkly laugh again. "Of course it can be, Dorothy dear! So little of you was there in the first place-just a sh.e.l.l, really, a shadow-that it cost you nothing to leave that much behind. The main part of you-the real part-is right here!"

Dorothy stared at her own dumpy figure moving about the kitchen. She saw the graying hair, the thickening ankles, the rounded shoulders. Past the barn, she saw the thin plume of dust raised by the tractor, and coming down the lane, a thicker stream of dust whirling behind the school bus. "Oh, no," she breathed. "Lin!"

She watched her daughter jump down from the bus, wave to her friends, and run across the yard. She could hear nothing, but still her nerves jolted as Lin slammed the screen door. She tossed her backpack into a corner and went to the refrigerator. Dorothy-the sh.e.l.l of Dorothy-turned from the sink with a potato in her hand, and her lips moved.

Lin didn't even look at her.

Dorothy watched in bewilderment as Lin took her sandwich from the fridge, turned her back on her mother, and ran lightly up the stairs to her room. A moment later, Phil came in and sat at the kitchen table with a newspaper in front of him. He didn't speak either.

The sh.e.l.l of Dorothy turned back to the sink.

The real Dorothy looked away. It was too painful to watch.

"You see, dear," her companion said in her ear, very softly, "there's enough of you there." She flicked her fingers, and the scene disappeared from the side of the bubble. In its restored s.h.i.+mmer, Dorothy saw herself, looking tall, and slim, and straight.

"Is that the way I really look?" she whispered.

"Of course you do! You're a lovely woman in the prime of your life!"

Dorothy touched her hair. It curled crisply around her chin and forehead. She smiled, and lines of wisdom and good humor curved around her mouth, brightened her eyes. "The prime of my life," she whispered.

"Precisely!" The little woman laughed again. "Just as it should be!"

Dorothy looked down at the red shoes. She wiggled her toes to make them sparkle in the suns.h.i.+ne. "The prime of my life," she repeated. "Just as it should be."

She looked into the bubble again, but Kansas was gone.

She giggled, and then she laughed. She slipped off the shoes, and her bare toes sank into the soft gra.s.s. She hesitated only a moment, and then she picked up the shoes and turned toward the river.

One by one, first the left and then the right, she threw the shoes into the blue water.

They splashed, and floated for a moment, turning and dipping in the current. Then, glittering like rubies in the soft sunlight, they sank, and disappeared.

LOINCLOTH.

by Kevin J. Anderson and Rebecca Moesta.

All alone in the props warehouse on the back lot of Duro Studios, he made his case to s.h.i.+rley in his mind, rehas.h.i.+ng the argument they had had the night before. This time, though, he was bold and articulate, and he easily convinced her.

Walter Groves opened another one of the big crates and tore out the packing straw mixed with Styrofoam peanuts. "Not exciting enough for you, huh? You don't feel fireworks? I'm too sedate-not a man's man? Think about it, s.h.i.+rley. Women say they want nice guys, the shy and sensitive type, men who are sweet and remember birthdays and anniversaries. Isn't that what you told me you needed-someone just like me? You've always despised hypocrites. But what do you do? You fall for a bad boy, someone with tattoos and a heavy smoking habit, someone who can't keep a job for more than a month, someone like that last jerk you dated, who treated you rough and left you out in the cold.

"But I loved you. I treated you with respect, drove you to visit your grandmother in the hospital, and fixed your computer when the hard drive crashed. I got out of bed when you called at three in the morning and came to your apartment just to hold you because you had a nightmare and couldn't sleep. I gave you flowers, dinners by candlelight, and love notes-not to mention the best six months of my life. 'Someday, you'll regret it. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but soon' "-he pictured himself as Bogart in Casablanca -"you'll realize what you threw away. But I won't be waiting. I'm a good man, and I deserve a wonderful woman who values me for who I am, who appreciates my dedication, and wants a nice, normal life. Go ahead. Have your shallow, exciting fling with Mr. James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause. I'll find someone sincere who wants Jimmy Stewart in It's a Wonderful Life."

Scattering straw and packing material, he pulled a long plastic elephant tusk out of the prop box. The faux ivory was sharp at one end and painted with "native symbols." He glanced at the label on the box: JUNGO'S REVENGE. After marking the name of the film on his clipboard, he listed the stored items beneath the t.i.tle. He sighed.

If only he could have come up with just the right answers last night, maybe s.h.i.+rley wouldn't have dumped him. If only he could have been tough like Mel Gibson in Braveheart, confident like Clark Gable in Gone with the Wind, or romantic like Dermot Mulroney in The Wedding Date. Instead, he had squirmed, speechless with shock, his lower lip trembling as if he were Stan Laurel caught in an embarra.s.sing failure. Walter had made no heartfelt appeals or snappy comebacks; those would have been as much fiction as a script for any Duro Studios production.

s.h.i.+rley had grabbed her stuff-along with some of his, though he hadn't had the presence of mind to mention it-and stormed out of the apartment.

Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct. That's who she reminded him of.

The large black walkie-talkie at his hip crackled, and even through the static of the poor-quality unit, he heard the lovely musical speech of Desiree Drea. Her voice never failed to make his heart skip a beat, then go back and skip it all over again. "Walter? Mr. Carmichael wants to know how you're coming with the props. He needs me to type up the inventory."

"I... um... I-" He looked down at the box, searching for words, and seized upon the letters stenciled to the crate. "I'm just now up to Jungo's Revenge. I've finished about half of the work."

As Desiree responded, he could hear the producer's voice bellowing in the background. "Jungo! It's all worthless c.r.a.p. Trash it."

The secretary softened the message as she relayed it. "Mr. Carmichael suggests that it's of no value, so please put it in the Dumpster."

"And tell him he d.a.m.n well better stay until he finishes," the voice in the background growled. "We need that building tomorrow to start shooting Horror in the Prop Warehouse."

"Tell him I'll do what needs to be done," Walter said, then clicked off the walkie-talkie, though he would gladly have chatted with Desiree for hours. He didn't have anything better to do that evening than work, anyway. He was very conscientious and would finish the job.

Chris Carmichael-producer of low-budget knock-off movies. The Jungo ape-man series, a bad Tarzan knock-off, had skated just a little too close to Tarzan's copyright line. The threatened legal action had caused the films to flop, even though they went direct to video. Walter had seen one of them and thought that the movies were bad enough to have flopped all on their own, without any legal difficulties to help them along. If anything, the publicity had boosted the sales.

He pulled out the other plastic elephant tusk, then some ugly looking tribal masks, three rubber cobras, and a giant plastic insect as big as his palm that was labeled DEADLY TSETSE FLY. Walter shook his head. He had to agree about the worthlessness of these props. There wouldn't be any collector interested in even giving them shelf s.p.a.ce. If there had been enough fans to generate a few collectors, the Jungo franchise might never have disappeared.

Near the bottom of the crate he found a rattle, a shrunken head, and another tribal mask, but these props were far superior to the others. They looked handmade, with real wood and bone. The shrunken head had an odd leathery feel that made him wonder if it was real. He shuddered as he took it out of the crate.

It seemed unlikely that Chris Carmichael, a tight-wad with utter contempt for his audiences as well as his employees, would spend money on the genuine articles to use as props. Maybe a prop master had purchased them online or found them in a junk bin somewhere. Beneath the last of the witch doctor items, at the very bottom of the crate, he found a sc.r.a.p of cloth that made him smile as he pulled it out and brushed off the bits of straw that clung to it.

A leopard-skin loincloth, the only garment Jungo the Ape Man had ever worn in the films-all the better to show off his well-developed physique, of course. Walter tried to remember. According to the story, Jungo had killed a leopard with his bare hands when he was only five years old and had made the loincloth out of its pelt. Apparently, the loincloth had grown along with the boy. Maybe the leopard had been part Spandex... Jungo was probably the type of man s.h.i.+rley would have fallen for-wild, tanned, brawny, and barely capable of stringing together three-word sentences. Walter groaned at the thought.

Now Desiree was another story entirely. Even on the big studio lot, they often crossed paths. He saw her in the commissary at lunch almost daily-because he timed his lunch hour to match hers. She was strikingly beautiful with her reddish-gold hair, her large blue eyes, her delicate chin, and when she smiled directly at him, as she had done three times now, it made him feel as if someone in the special effects shop had created the most spectacular sunrise ever.

But Walter still hadn't gotten up the nerve to ask if he could sit and eat with her. He was a n.o.body who did odd jobs around the lot for the various producers. Some of them were nice, and some of them were... like Chris Carmichael. The man was Dabney Coleman in 9 to 5, or Bill Murray before his transformation in Scrooged. Carmichael had put in a requisition, and Walter had pulled the card: One man needed to clear prop warehouse. It was really a job for four men and four days, but Carmichael always slashed his budgets to leave more money in his own expense account. Carmichael didn't even know who Walter Groves was.

But Desiree did. That was all that mattered.

He gazed at the leopard-skin loincloth, hearing s.h.i.+rley's words ring in his head. "You aren't a man's man. You don't let yourself go wild." He sniffed, trying to picture himself in the role she seemed to want him to play. What if Desiree felt the same way? What if all women thought they wanted a nice man but were only attracted to bad boys?

He picked up the witch doctor's rattle and gave it a playful shake, then put it down by the mask and the shrunken head. Even though she had hurt him, he wasn't the type either to put a curse on s.h.i.+rley, or to transform himself for her into a muscular hunk of beefcake like Jungo. He would have needed an awfully large special effects budget to pull that off. Walter held up the leopard-skin loincloth to his waist and considered the fas.h.i.+on statement it would make. It looked ridiculous-even more so in contrast with his work pants and his conservative window-pane plaid s.h.i.+rt.

"If I wore this, what would Desiree think?" Would it convince her that he was a wild man, or would she just think him pale-skinned and scrawny? All alone in the prop warehouse, he had no particular need to hurry up. Carmichael, who never noticed anyone's hard work, had already said that the props were junk.

Before he could change his mind and think sensibly, Walter unb.u.t.toned his s.h.i.+rt and peeled it off. Taking a deep breath, he slipped off his shoes and trousers and tied on the loincloth. He surveyed the effect, looking critically at his skinny chest, thin arms, white skin, and the leopard-skin loincloth. He cast a skeptical glance at the witch doctor mask. "Exactly how did I expect this to bring out the wild man in me?"

Then something happened.

His heart began to pound like drumbeats in his ears. His skin grew hot and his blood hotter. He felt dizzy and then very, very sure of himself. The worries and confusion of his life seemed to float away like soap bubbles on the wind. His attention focused down to a single pinp.r.i.c.k. Everything was so clear, so simple. He had worried too much, thought too much, suppressed all of his natural desires. He drew a deep breath, kept inhaling until his chest swelled. Then on impulse, he pounded on his proudly expanded chest. It felt good and right.

He didn't have to worry about the prop inventory or about s.h.i.+rley. She had made a bad choice, and she was gone. He no longer needed to think of her. Outside the sun was bright. He was a man, and Desiree was a woman. Everything else was extraneous, a distraction. He was a hunter, and he knew his quarry. A real man relied on his instincts to tell him what to do.

He let out a warbling call, broadcasting a defiant challenge to anyone who might get in his way. Barefoot, he sprinted like a cheetah out of the prop warehouse and onto the lot. He had seen where Desiree worked. He knew where to find Chris Carmichael's trailer. His vision tunneled down to that one focus.

He streaked past the people working on various films. Someone made a cat-call, but most of the crews ignored him. Employees at Duro Studios were accustomed to seeing axe-murderers, Martians, barbarians, and monsters of all kinds.

Chris Carmichael's headquarters were in a dingy, gray-walled trailer on the far end of the east lot. The success of a producer's films earned him clout in the studios, and Carmichael 's track record had earned him this un.o.btrusive trailer and one secretary.

Desiree.

Walter yanked open the door and leaped in. He hadn't decided what to say or do next, but an ape-man took matters one step at a time. He reacted to situations, without planning in excruciating detail beforehand. Instead of startling Desiree at her keyboard and the producer on the phone, he blundered into a shocking scene that would have made his hackles rise if he'd had any. Carmichael stood with both hands planted on his desk, crouched like a predator ready to spring. Desiree s.h.i.+elded herself on the other side of the desk, trying to keep it, with its empty coffee mugs, framed pictures, and jumbled stacks of scripts, between herself and Carmichael.

He leered at her, moved to the left, and she s.h.i.+fted in the other direction. She was flushed and nervous. "Please, Mr. Carmichael. I'm not that kind of girl."

"Of course you are," he said. "If you didn't want to break into pictures, why would you work in a place like this? I can make you an extra in my next feature, Horror in the Prop Warehouse. Ten-second screen time minimum, but there's a price. You have to give me something." Now he circled to the right and she moved in the opposite direction.

"Please, don't do this. I don't want to file a complaint, but I'll call Security if I have to."

"You do that, and you'll never work in this town again."

Before she could reply, Walter let out a b.e.s.t.i.a.l roar. He wasn't sure exactly what happened. Seeing red, he acted on instinct and charged forward. He grabbed the producer by the back of his clean white collar, yanked him away from the desk, and spun him around. As he spluttered, Walter the ape-man landed a powerful roundhouse punch on his chin and knocked him backward into the chair he reserved for visiting actors.

Startled, Desiree gasped, but Walter was already on the move. He bounded over the desk, slipped an arm around her waist, and crashed through the screen of the trailer's open window, carrying his woman with him. The rest was a blur.

When he could think straight again-after the witch doctor's spell, or whatever it was wore off-he found himself on the rooftop of one of the back lot sets, sitting next to Desiree, his lips pressed against hers. With a start, he drew back. Her hair was rumpled, her cheeks flushed, and she wore an expression of surprise and amus.e.m.e.nt. "That was a bit unorthodox, Walter," she said, "but you were amazing. You saved me when I needed it most."

"What have I done?" Walter glanced down at the loincloth, flexed his sore knuckles, and knew with absolute certainty that he would soon die from embarra.s.sment. He was sitting half-naked on a roof at work and had just made a complete fool of himself in front of a woman he had a genuine crush on. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry!" He scuttled backward, stood to look for a ladder or stairs, and quickly found an exit. "I didn't mean to hurt you. Mr. Carmichael's going to get me fired, for sure."

"Who, Chris? He has no clue who you are," she said. "Anyway, I'm going to hand in my own resignation. I've had enough of that man."

"I... I need to put something decent on. I can't understand what got into me." He felt his cheeks burning. His legs wobbled, and his knees threatened to knock together. Some ape-man!

Before Desiree could say anything more, he bolted, cringing at the thought that someone else might see him this way-that Desiree had seen him. He was sure Jungo never had days like this.

By the time he got home, Walter was consumed with guilt. He felt fl.u.s.tered, exposed, and too embarra.s.sed for words. He couldn't believe what he had done, prancing around the lot in nothing more than a loincloth, cras.h.i.+ng into the producer's trailer offices. He had punched out Chris Carmichael! Then, after jumping through a window with Desiree, he had somehow whisked her off to a rooftop and kissed her! He was the very definition of the word "mortified." To make matters worse, Walter had gotten dressed again, called in a friend to finish clearing out the warehouse, then slunk off the lot, taking Jungo's loincloth with him. He could justify this, since Carmichael had made it clear that the props could be thrown into a dumpster.

He sat miserably in his empty apartment-without s.h.i.+rley-and wondered how he could possibly make it up to Desiree. He didn't much care about Chris Carmichael. The man was a cad, but Walter himself had stolen a kiss from Desiree, practically ravished her! Considering the power the loincloth had worked on him, he could easily have gotten carried away. In the process of saving Desiree, he had proved that he was no better than that jerk of a producer.

And Walter had just left her stranded there, on the roof of the movie set. No, no, that wasn't Walter Groves. That wasn't who he really was. Though he wanted nothing more than to crawl under a rock, he knew what he had to do for the sake of honor. He had to go find Desiree and beg her forgiveness.

For a long time he stood in the shower under a pounding stream of hot water, rehearsing what to say until he knew he couldn't put it off any longer. Every moment he avoided her was another moment she could think terrible things about him. He dried his hair, dabbed on some aftershave, and put on his best dress slacks, a clean s.h.i.+rt, and a striped blue necktie. This was going to be a formal apology, and he wanted to look his best. Pulling on his nicest, though rarely worn, sport jacket, he rolled up Jungo's loincloth and stuffed it into the pocket. Though it didn't make any sense, he would try to tell Desiree what had happened, explain how the magic had changed him somehow into a wild man, someone he wouldn't normally be.

After dialing information, then searching on the Internet, he tracked down a local street address for D. Drea. He knew it had to be her. Gathering his resolve, he marched out to go face her. He didn't need the crutch of a loincloth or some imaginary witch doctor's spells to give him courage to do the right thing. He would do this himself.

On the way to her apartment, he didn't let himself think, forcing himself onward before the shame could make him turn back. He had to be like Michael Douglas in Romancing the Stone, not Rick Moranis in Little Shop of Horrors. Nothing should disrupt the apology. Leaving his cell phone in the car, he walked to the door of her apartment, raised his hand to knock, then hesitated. He wasn't thinking clearly. He really should have brought flowers and a card. Why not go to a store now, buy them, and then come back?

He heard shouts coming from the other side of the door, followed by a scream-Desiree's scream!

He froze in terror. What should he do? Desiree was in trouble. Maybe he should run back outside, get his cell phone and call 911. He could bring the police here, or, better yet, pound on her neighbors' doors and find someone who was big and strong. She screamed again, and Walter knew there could be only one solution. He tried the k.n.o.b, found the door unlocked, and barged in. He found Chris Carmichael already there, reeking of cheap cologne and bourbon.

"Leave me alone," Desiree said. She held a lamp in one hand, brandis.h.i.+ng it like a club.

Carmichael let out an evil chuckle. "Now that you no longer work for me, we can have any sort of relations.h.i.+p I want. There are no ethical problems."