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“Ah, you’re on time.” Elizabeth closes her notebook with a small snap and places her pen neatly on top of it. She folds her arms to watch as Maxine leans against the door to close it, her face raised high.
“I always am,” she says as she makes her way over and takes a seat without being asked.
“You and I both know I don’t like being lied to.” She fixes her with a short stare before it drops. She watches her closely instead, taking in the details like she’s weighing her up. “It worries me, Maxine. I don’t like being worried.”
Maxine scowls, almost pouting. “Why? You never cared when it made me famous.”
“I made you famous,” Elizabeth assures her. “And I did care. It made you antsy. It distracted you. I can’t have my lead in prison for assault, Maxine.”
“They can’t get me for self defence.”
She looks through the top of her glasses, her eyebrows raised ever so slightly. “Are they self defence?”
Maxine doesn’t meet her eye. She shrugs. “Scary world out there for a girl.”
A hum. Elizabeth considers her again for a long, drawn out moment, her face still and immeasurable before she slides her notebook to the side, relieving her of her attention. “Don’t pout, Maxine. It makes you look like a child. I couldn’t care less what you do outside of my set, but the day they make their way onto it — the you delay filming with a black eye, or a trip to the hospital — is the last day you work for me. You’re good, doll, but there’s blonde girls on every corner.”
“Not like me there ain’t.”
One eyebrow climbs higher on her forehead. “You still think so?”
She nods. “Mhm. I know so. You need me.”
“Do I now?”
She leans forward on her knees. “You do. People only watch your stuff because of me.”
She doesn’t falter, leaning back comfortably in her chair. “I was doing quite well before you came along. Molly was quite the talent when she wanted to be.”
“And what happened to her?”
Her lips press thin, her eyes very nearly narrowed as she stares back at Maxine. She holds her gaze easily and Elizabeth leaves it between them like a test. “I don’t need you. I put up with you because I can see your talent. Any other dimwit in the industry might not see it, but I don’t care about your history and I don’t care about your habits. I care about the work you put out and you put out damn good work when you’re not beaten to a pulp in an alleyway.”
“That’s why I don’t let ‘em touch me.”
“One of them is going to talk one day, Maxine. Or you’re going to kill someone, and it’s going to be a hell of a lot of mess for something you could avoid by walking home the long way. Get a chauffeur. I pay you enough.”
She runs her tongue along the inside of her cheek, petulant. “I already killed someone. There’s a whole movie about it.”
“Not everyone is a cult leader with a bounty already on their head. You’re an actor now, not a hooker. It’s time you start to act like it.”
Her face turns tense around the edges before she can hide it, sweet instead. Alluring. “Would you bury a body for me, Liz?”
She looks her straight in the eye. “No.” Her notebook is opened again, tilted away from Maxine. “I’d advise you to keep that to yourself. You can go now. I’ll see you again on Monday.”
Neither of them bother with a goodbye as Maxine lets the door fall shut behind her.
The wood bites at her knuckles as she raps on the door. Little stipples of blood are left in their wake but it’s too dark to see properly and Maxine continues to bang until a shadow passes one of the windows. She uses the side of her fist instead, hammering harder. “Liz!”
“For fuck’s sake what?” Elizabeth barks once the door is open, Maxine’s fist in the air between them. She lets it fall back to her side and stands there in the evening, clothes smattered in something just as dark. The patches are bright across her face in contrast, strikingly red where they cover her freckles. “What did you do?”
“I’m your star, right, Lizzy?”
Her eyebrows draw together. “Why would you come to me?”
“You were closest.” She shrugs.
The door isn’t even fully open, each of them in halves to see around it. She scowls deeper. “How do you know where I live?”
“I didn’t come here to play twenty questions.”
“I don’t know why you came here at all, Maxine.”
She smiles, watery and wide. She almost looks like she’s trembling now that she isn’t trying to tear down the door, though Elizabeth doesn’t have the sympathy to feel for it. “I didn’t know where else to go.”
The door closes in her face and Maxine continues to stare at the wood in front of her, too stubborn to leave. There is rustling inside, something clinks and jingles, and then Elizabeth is stepping haphazardly into shoes in the doorway, otherwise still in her business clothes despite the hour. “Get off of my doorstep. You’re covered in blood.”
She corrals her backwards with her own body, walking down her porch steps as if she simply isn’t there and leading her down to her car, parked haphazardly in the middle of her lawn, headlights on. Maxine is cornered into the light of them and Elizabeth pulls a handkerchief out of her pocket like she’s cleaning up a child, tutting under her breath as she wipes harshly at her face. Maxine moves, flinching away from the rough treatment, and Elizabeth’s hand comes up to grab her by the jaw, holding her still as she continues to wipe at blood already half dried.
“You are an idiot.”
“Are you going to help me or what?”
She scrubs harder at her cheek, bringing it up near as red as the blood itself. “You can’t act from a prison cell.” She grimaces at her own work, giving up. “I’m well used to cleaning up messes by now.”
Maxine watches her climb into the driver’s seat and grimace again at the blood on the steering wheel. She places her hands over it anyway with a curt nod to the passenger side.
“That’s my car,” she says, still standing in the glow of the headlights.
“And I’m driving it. Get in.”
She squints at her through the lights before giving up and rounding the hood. She folds her arms in the passenger seat, near pouting, and Elizabeth bites back a comment about the blood on her clothes and expression on her face. Instead, she ignores the damage to her lawn and listens to Maxine’s directions into the city.
The roads are blessedly quiet as they drive and they park quite illegally outside the gates of an abandoned building. There is a heap on the pavement a few feet ahead that Elizabeth doesn’t need to see any more clearly to make out.
She takes a deep breath, both hands still on the steering wheel. “Why were you out here?”
Maxine shrugs, still sulking. “It was the quickest way home.”
“It also goes past an active fucking drug den!” She tries not to raise her voice so late at night and fails marginally, gesticulating with her hands.
“You’ve never been in the trailers then.”
“Maxine.”
“I get it, okay? You don’t have to yell at me.”
“I think I do, actually.” She gestures vaguely with an entire arm this time, violent enough to rock the car slightly. “Maybe if I’d yelled at you more you wouldn’t have gone and done this.”
She stares at her entirely unfazed. She looks guiltless, almost angry. “You said you’d help. So help.”
The door slams behind Elizabeth more forcefully than it really should so late at night and Maxine follows after much more gracefully. She follows her several feet behind and only catches up once Elizabeth has been staring at the body for a long while.
She doesn’t look at her when she speaks, her eyes fixed on the mess of his face, her arms folded like he’s a wine stain in the carpet. “He doesn’t even have a weapon.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Didn’t you?”
“He scared me.” Her lip even wobbles, a tremble in her voice.
“You are an excellent actor, Maxine. But that’s just what it is. Don’t lie to me unless I pay you to.”
“He threatened me,” she says, a note of bitterness she can’t quite hide. She stares down at him like some sort of insect, crushed into the pavement. “I don’t like blackmail.”
Elizabeth hums. “You’re not winning this case. Did anyone hear you?”
“I don’t think so. Pigs’d be here by now if they did.”
“You’re probably right. No time like the present then.” She slides her bag from her shoulder and retrieves several thick black bags. “You can do the dirty work. These shoes aren’t worth the trouble.”
In the end, Elizabeth helps anyway, staining her hands and ruining her watch until they can get as much of the man into their bag as possible. It’s hard work and it takes longer than either of them would like before they can haul the body the last few feet towards the trunk of the car and hope he doesn’t leak. The ground is still smeared with blood in shapeless pools, already congealing in the cracks of the pavement. No one will call the cops around here, even if they did hear the gunshot. The police will find more than just this body and no one is stupid enough to risk it. Really, Maxine couldn’t have chosen a better area if she tried, and Elizabeth really does wonder if she tried. There’s so much blood. She must’ve emptied every round in her gun.
They drive far out of the city in total silence, the radio between them until Elizabeth turns it off. Maxine doesn’t pout anymore, but she doesn’t look at Elizabeth either.
“Are you mad at me?” she asks, sitting up a little straighter in her seat.
“I’m disappointed.” She glances briefly out of the corner of her eye, her attention back on the road before Maxine can pin it. “Do you have a good lawyer?”
“Yeah.” She shrugs, arms still folded. “I won’t need him though. Dead men don’t talk.”
Elizabeth almost makes the mistake of laughing, despite the tension in her face. She continues to purse her lips anyway. “They certainly don’t. There’s always better ways to shut them up though.”
“Not for long.”
She hums. “Maybe not.”
“So you’re not mad?”
“No.” She can’t afford to be, whether Maxine truly realises it or not. “I do wish you hadn’t though.”
Maxine doesn’t respond as they continue to drive further into the forest. She doesn’t even ask how Elizabeth knows how to get around the gates to drive along the dirt and cobble paths. It’s a bumpy ride, her car definitely not made for it, but she doesn’t complain about having to get it washed.
They find the deepest parking spot that they can and still drag the body out as far as they can manage. It’s graceless and hard and neither of them wanted their shoes to get so muddy as they do in the process.
“You work out or something?” Maxine asks as the bag catches on another root in the ground.
Elizabeth hauls her end up and over like she’d really rather be anywhere else. “No. It’s from carrying the horror industry on my back.”
Maxine snorts slightly when she laughs and she meets Elizabeth’s raised eyebrow with a sense of mirth that feels incredibly out of place in the dark and cold with a dead man between them. “You’re funny sometimes. When you’re not starin’ everyone down.”
“Rather a lot of people think it’s mutually exclusive for a woman in my position.”
“Well they’re wrong. Maybe they’d all like you more if you were funny.”
“They like me plenty.”
She grins even as she refocuses on the body they’re hauling. “They’re scared of you.”
“Maybe they should be more scared of you.”
She shrugs, looking up to grin wider. “Maybe.”
They leave him in the most secluded spot they can find, deep off of any of the paths. It’s not the most fool proof, but it keeps him out of their tracks should anyone find him. There’s bears around here, people aren’t supposed to leave the paths.
“There,” Elizabeth says as she dusts her hands of woodland debris. She places them on her hips before she can remember the blood on them. “The animals should get him now.”
Maxine smiles at her, eyes and teeth glinting in the dark. “You sure you’ve never done this before?”
She pouts, a tilt of her head as she continues to look at the heap of a man on the ground. “You write enough crime dramas,” she says as she turns to lead them back toward the car.
“That’s where you got your break?”
“Only as a guest writer. People are gagging for them. Slap two detectives with sexual tension and a new corpse to ogle each week and the views pour in.” She steps carefully back over another tree root. “My first solo project was a cheap slasher, but it got my foot in the door.”
“Well I’m glad it did,” Maxine tells her as they continue to walk, sounding awfully genuine.
The moon is high and bright when they reach the car again and Elizabeth lets the radio play quietly on the drive back to her house. Maxine hums along happily, her arm stretched out over the door to feel the bite of the wind. The streetlights strobe them in warm pockets as they make it back into the city, lighting up the blood and grime along her arms. She turns back to Elizabeth and the way her hands are stained too, her face serious beside her as she turns them smoothly through the silent roads. It reminds her strangely of their first project together. Their hands stained in blood together, even if it was fake at the time. A prophecy of sorts.
“Are you ever going to tell me what he knew?”
“Who says he knew anythin’?”
“He wouldn’t be bear food if he was lying about his dirt.”
“Maybe one day,” she says instead of answering, her attention on something suddenly important outside of the window.
“Suit yourself.”
“There’s plenty you don’t tell me.”
“And I’d like to keep it that way.”
The drive feels much longer now that the deed is done, the thrill fading into a vague sense of dread — if not remorse. Elizabeth parks the car nicely beside her own, instead of making the divots in her lawn even worse, and she rounds the hood to open the passenger door for her. Maxine takes her hand like a gentleman, smiling.
She closes the door behind her too, before walking over to inspect her lawn in the shy light of the moon. “You can stay here tonight. We’ll clean up when there’s some light to see by. No one should come by before then.”
“We?”
“You.”
Maxine grins before she turns on her toe, heading towards the front door before Elizabeth can escort her. She digs a box of cigarettes out of her pocket on the porch and Elizabeth doesn’t follow.
“No smoking in the house,” she tells her from several feet away, still looking over the grass. “It lingers terribly.”
She drops to the floor instead, legs too long for the short steps as she settles herself on the edge. Her lighter flickers as she holds it to the end between her lips, lighting up the little flecks of blood that cling stubbornly to the creases of her face. The smoke is vague in the sky as she tucks her lighter back into her pocket, exhaling.
Elizabeth gives up on seeing in the dark to make her way over and sit down beside her, the steps barely wide enough for two. Wordlessly, she holds a hand out and Maxine passes her cigarette over without question. She watches her take a long drag from it, shapes hazy in the dark, her own lipstick smudged around the filter.
“You remember when you said you’d never help me?”
“That isn’t what I said.”
“You said you’d never bury a body for me.”
“We didn’t bury him.”
“You’re bein’ mean on purpose.” The cigarette glows dimly between Elizabeth’s fingers. She doesn’t ask for it back. “You need me, don’t you, Lizzy?”
She takes another drag and holds it for a long time, her eyes straight ahead into the nothingness of night. “I hate it when you call me that.”
She grins. “I’ve gotten quite attached to it now.”
“Well unattach yourself. Call me that on set and you’re fired on the spot.” She holds the cigarette back out to her half smoked.
“But I’m your star.” She watches her profile as she inhales. Elizabeth looks at her entirely humorlessly. She blows the smoke away from them. “Tell me I’m your star, Liz.”
Her eyebrows twitch up, just the barest degree, and her lips press thin. She leans backwards on her hands and hopes that the blood is dry enough not to mark her porch too. “You’re my star, Maxine.” Her face turns a note more serious then. “And you’re going to scrub my door spotless before you’re allowed inside.”
Maxine taps the ash from her cigarette, laughing.