Number Nine: Chapter 1

NUMBER NINE: THE ADVENTURES OF JAKE JONES AND RUBY DAULTON

BY JACK RANDOM


Copyright Ray Miller 2007 All Rights Reserved




Chapter 1: HELTER SKELTER


FADE IN:

EXT. SAN FERNANDO VALLEY – ARIEL VIEW – DAY

Smog and traffic patterns.

The Beatles’ REVOLUTION 9 (White Album) is heard.

INSERT MONTAGE – SOCIAL INSANITY

Charles Manson, Rwanda, OJ Simpson, CNN war footage, demonstrations, traffic jams, crime scenes, sporting events, Enron, Martha Stewart, Bernie Madoff, animal cruelty, mad cow disease, southern California fires.

BACK TO SCENE

ZOOM to a woman in a red convertible speeding down a suburban street. This is RUBY DAULTON, 36, a wild woman, exotic dancer, edgy and sexy.

Fade REVOLUTION 9 to HELTER SKELTER (White Album).

When I get to the bottom I go back to the top of the slide
Where I stop and I turn and I go for a ride…

Ruby is intense, worried, with one eye on the rearview mirror. She turns suddenly as she glimpses a blue BMW rounding a corner in the mirror.



Ruby kept busy – picking up, wiping down, stacking dishes, emptying ashtrays, rearranging books, anything – to keep from sitting with the men in her living room. They were uninvited guests, a couple of boys from the office. The office was what they called Ruby’s place of employment. Customers called it Shotgun Slim’s – a stripper bar in the great San Fernando Valley, where the sun always shines, majestic palms sway in the wind and the air is a toxic mix of internal combustion soup.

It was Ruby’s birthday but the boys brought nothing but trouble. They sat side by side on the sofa in the living room of her small bungalow, laughing, ball adjusting and back slapping over a televised boxing match between an Italian and a black man. She was reminded of the one question that settled in her mind years ago and, like an unwanted relative, never left: What the fuck am I doing here?

It was a long way from the Land of Oz where Ruby first learned to dream. She knew how she had gotten here. What she did not know and could not have understood if she did was why she had chosen to stay. The old cliché: Habits die hard.

The boys were getting too high, too coked up, and too ass kicking buzzed on the combination of televised violence with gin and tonic. A fourth round technical knockout brought them to frenzy and let them down hard. They had little else to do but turn their rabid attentions to the birthday gal. They won their boxing bets but Ruby was the real loser. It gave them a sense of invincibility they had not earned and did not deserve.

As it happened, Ruby had a man. He was the owner of Shotgun Slim’s and these boys were supposed to be his friends and partners – brothers in the vocabulary of their sordid business. She knew what they were about. They would use their highs as an excuse for what they fully intended to do. No excuse would be good enough for Ruby: That she was a woman? That she was not physically strong enough to hold them off? Should she take a beating only to suffer the same consequences – only worse?

The truth is she did not like her boyfriend any more than she liked his friends. They were all scumbags – little piggy punks with drugs, money and guns. Unfortunately, Ruby had a need for what they offered and until now a high tolerance for bullshit.

“What the fuck am I doing here?” she asked aloud as they implored her with outstretched paws and sad sack grins to come to them.

“Get your ass in here, you sexy fucking bitch!”

They were both pawing their groins, laughing and clapping like wild boars circling a wounded ground hog.

Ruby took account and decided to stay cool. She left herself behind in the kitchen, along with the memories of who she once was: a dumb kid from Kansas, pretty and popular enough to finish third in the race for Homecoming Queen. Sexy Sadie. Protected from all harm, she hid herself in the closet of her mind, safe behind walls of mental concrete and layers of darkness. She walked out of herself and, like Norma Jean becoming Marilyn, she became Ruby Daulton, queen of the dance floor, star of the stage where the silver phallus is always front and center. She struck a pose that never failed to pique a man’s interest.

“Tony wouldn’t like this,” she purred. Tony was Antonio Menendez, her sometime man and their sometime boss.

“Tony ain’t gonna hear about it,” replied Little Billy. He was a large man with short hair, ruddy complexion, and bulging biceps. He was known at the office as “the muscle.” Ruby sensed that he hated the boss as much as she did but Tony was as clueless as a turkey in November.

“Alright then,” she said. “What do you boys want?”

Little Billy grabbed his balls. “Hey, babe, you know what I want!”

He used a remote to pick up some music on the television. They had prepared something special: a mix from The Beatles’ White Album, beginning with Birthday.

They say it’s your birthday …

Ruby waited as long as she could before beginning the slow, lingering movements known as the tease. She had decided to play along and as long as she played the boys would be content. They liked to watch. They liked the anticipation almost as much as what followed. Maybe more.

Yes we’re going to a party party …

She removed her shoes and was beginning to remove her shirt when the music shifted to Sexy Sadie. Ruby loved Sexy Sadie. It meant more to her than they could ever imagine. She began to move to the rhythm inside. She closed her eyes and began to dance – not the cheap, over-rehearsed dance of the stripper but the dance of the muses in ancient mythology. She danced and the muses wept. She closed her eyes and thought of Dorothy and Kansas and the wizard who was not a wizard and ruby-red shoes on a yellow brick road. She spun and danced and she imagined fields of golden grass, waves of amber grace, green hills covered with wild flowers and poppies – glistening white poppies from here to the end of time. She closed her eyes, tapped her heels, and flew away on the wings of angelic beings.

Sexy Sadie, how did you know?
The world was waiting just for you …

When she awakened with a jolt, everything had changed. Sexy Sadie had given way to a blaring Happiness is A Warm Gun. The transition was sudden and disturbing. It was an omen as surely as a crow in the morning or crossing the path of a black cat under a full moon.

“This is wrong,” she said.

The boys were not convinced. To them it was written in the stars. It was manifest. It was destiny. As far as they were concerned, happiness was a warm gun and a sexy woman to help it along.

“Dance, baby! Take it off!”

Ruby turned to the windows at the front of her little bungalow and thought she saw the glimpse of a shadow.

“Antonio’s here,” she said.

“Bullshit, baby, he’s tied up.”

I need a fix ‘cause I’m going down …

Ruby danced on but it was not the dance of the swans. It was back to the old routine. It was the familiar dance of a stripper on a long and lonely night when men too tired, too drunk, too high and too excited to think pawed the stage and clamored for more. The smell of sweat and spent ejaculations stifled the air and choked away any beauty and grace in the dancer’s performance. It was nasty and dirty and as phony as the smile on a real estate broker’s face.

The boys were not quite content with the pace of Ruby’s tease. They rushed the improvised stage of her living room, ripped the clothes from her body, and forced her to her knees as Ruby kicked, scratched and fought but refused to scream. She would not give them that satisfaction. She would face the demons as she always had. She would be strong – quietly defiant.

A crash at the door, felt more than heard, interrupted them at the height of their excitement. It was Antonio. He was the picture of a jealous man who was tipped off by someone with a personal interest.

Happiness is a warm gun. Bang-bang, shoot-shoot …

Ruby somehow managed to grab her clothes and move to the back of the room. The boys, holding their pants, were trying to explain how it was all Ruby’s fault. She was a tease. He knew that. She had the power and she used it. She seduced them. They were men like any other men. What could they do?

Little Billy saw the rage in Tony’s eyes and knew their words were a waste. It was the rage of a man betrayed by those he had considered his friends, his partners and his brothers. They rambled on if only to buy time and to let the rage gradually disperse. Maybe they could get out with their lives.

“She’ll get hers,” mumbled Antonio. It was all Ruby needed to hear.

Little Billy went for his gun first. It was a futile gesture and he knew it, the desperate last act of a dead man. Antonio brought the wrath of jealousy and betrayal, the hammer of vengeance down upon their heads. He emptied two handguns, reloaded, and made a point of blowing their faces off.

Ruby escaped. She dashed out the back, ran around the corner, past Antonio’s blue BMW, jumped in her convertible and drove away just as Tony emerged, splattered in blood and looking for his ultimate revenge.

The television survived and played on.

Helter skelter helter skelter …
Will you won’t you want me to make you
I’m coming down fast but don’t let me break you …

Helter skelter helter skelter …
Tell me tell me tell me the answer
You may be a lover but you ain’t no dancer …

Look out, helter skelter helter skelter …
Look out!