That night, Livy was supposed to do a full evening\u2019s erotica\u2014art, treadmill, striptease and chat\u2014with Karen and a photographer. I figured it was time for the coup de grace\u2014I arranged for Lance to show up in costume.
\n\u201cI was wondering when you were going to call,\u201d he said when I called him. \u201cYou can\u2019t wait so long between appearances\u2014if he gets too desperate, you can\u2019t tell what might happen.\u201d
\n\u201c\u2019He?\u2019\u2014Who\u2019s \u2018he\u2019, Lance? The Pale Guy?\u201d
\n\u201cYeah, you don\u2019t know what he might\u2014\u201c
\n\u201cLance, he\u2019s a character we made up. I can tell exactly what might happen, because I write the story.\u201d
\n\u201cSure, sure,\u201d Lance mumbled. \u201cBut he won\u2019t like it. Anyway, the fans won\u2019t like it.\u201d
\n\u201cThe fans?\u201d
\n\u201cYeah, I have my fans,\u201d he answered, in a tone that dared me to be surprised by this.
\n\u201cWhere do you get in touch with your fans?\u201d I asked, trying to figure out how this was possible.
\n\u201cI took the name \u2018PaleGuy@hotmail.com\u2019\u2014you should see all the mail I get.\u201d
\nBe calm, I told myself. Pretend he\u2019s your ten-year old. Think of something to say that doesn\u2019t start with \u2018You ignoramus.\u2019
\n\u201cLance, let\u2019s try to focus here. You have fans of the Pale Guy writing you at hotmail\u2014is that correct?\u201d
\n\u201cSure. They think he\u2019s really cool, and I really got to understand his motivation and stuff, talking to them.\u201d
\nMy lower lip was going to bleed if I bit it any harder.
\n\u201cLance, what if\u2014just for argument\u2019s sake\u2014the police decided to take our little game seriously? Like tomorrow night, for example, when you\u2019re supposed to appear in front of a writer and photographer from a national magazine. You have to give your real email address to hotmail, don\u2019t you?\u201d
\n\u201cOh come on\u2014I\u2019m not an imbecile,\u201d he said, unpersuasively confronting the foremost question in my mind. \u201cI use my friend\u2019s old free email\u2014he died in a store fire last year. They can\u2019t trace it to me.\u201d
\nI gulped hard and moved on. I mean, this is the 21st Century\u2014Andy Warhol is old hat already, conventional wisdom\u2014why shouldn\u2019t the Pale Guy have a fan club?
\n\u201cLance, you don\u2019t have any other email addresses, do you?\u201d I was still a little freaked about the email I\u2019d gotten from \u2018the real\u2019 Pale Guy\u2014it couldn\u2019t be Lance, could it?
\n\u201cNo. Just mine and his,\u201d he mumbled, absently enough that I believed him. Lance was beyond weird, but, despite his size, there was nothing really threatening about him. I couldn\u2019t imagine him writing those notes.
\nSo we started preparing for the nights extravaganza. We would have a decent audience\u2014Livy had told the regulars she had a photo shoot that night, so they\u2019d go online for that\u2014and we\u2019d have a national magazine witness to the dangerous stalker who was menacing the plucky Webcam artist.
\nLance and I painstakingly worked out the mechanics of his appearance. I had rigged up a harness on the flat roof of the house, that would allow him to lower himself down onto the deck behind Livy, and then raise himself back up to the roof again. Once on the roof, he\u2019d work his way across to the spare bedroom, get into his policeman\u2019s uniform and go outside to take the police report. It was\u2014literally\u2014too neat to be true.
\nThat night, we\u2019re all in the living room\u2014me working the cameras, Karen and the photographer coaching Livy through the shoot\u2014and the Pale Guy suddenly hovers down onto the deck in the background. I kept one eye on the chat groups and the posts exploded when Lance showed up.
\nKaren saw it too. She was asking Livy questions and taking answers from her and the chat group, and she saw the first couple of Pale Guy sightings and swiveled around in her chair, looking to the deck.
\n\u201cWho the hell is that?\u201d she exclaimed. Just like in the script.
\nLance moved, moved his shoulders and his arms, pulsing, as though trying to grab at Livy through the glass. Then he glided across the deck.
\nI\u2019d suggested it to him originally just because he\u2019d insisted on some motivation, something to work on as an actor. But he actually got it down, and it was positively bizarre to watch. He glided as though his feet never touched the ground. I could hear the harness scraping slightly on the roof above, but no one else seemed to notice.
\nLivy and Karen stepped back from the windows, toward the kitchen. Karen looked more frightened than Livy. This was going just according to plan.
\nAnd then the stupid photographer decided to get heroic. I\u2019d seen that he was enjoying his work, shooting Livy. He\u2019d been flirting all day, and she\u2019d been flirting back\u2014that\u2019s one way to make sure you get good photos: seduce the photographer. Livy couldn\u2019t help but seduce every man she met anyway\u2014this was just one more. But now he decided the scene needed a pointless act of heroism, to impress the girl.
\nBefore Lance could get back in position to hover up to the roof again, the photog barged through the doorway and tried to tackle him. Visions of doom raced through my head in that one split-second as the photographer hurtled toward my monster.
\n Lance shocked me by sidestepping lightly\u2014the photog went hurtling right past him. Then Lance lifted him bodily off the deck and deposited him upside down in a tall planter we\u2019d intended to put a tree in someday. While Karen was calling 911 and I was thanking God, the Pale Guy hovered back up onto the roof and disappeared.
\nKaren turned around and saw Lance\u2019s feet flying up above the deck windows and yelped, \u201cWhere is he going?\u201d
\n\u201cI\u2019ll check the roof\u2014you stay here and protect her,\u201d I yelled and ran for the guest bedroom.
\nLance was inside, gasping for breath and clutching his chest. \u201cYou didn\u2019t tell me about that!\u201d
\n\u201cI didn\u2019t know about that! He\u2019s a freelance\u2014he\u2019s on his own. We\u2019ve got to get you out of here!\u201d
\n\u201cYou mean I don\u2019t get to be the policeman?\u201d Lance complained, between wheezes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
That night, Livy was supposed to do a full evening\u2019s erotica\u2014art, treadmill, striptease and chat\u2014with Karen and a photographer. I figured it was time for the coup de grace\u2014I arranged for Lance to show up in costume. \u201cI was wondering …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":104,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-288","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=288"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/288\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":289,"href":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/288\/revisions\/289"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}