Woke Up Lonely A Novel - By Fiona Maazel Page 0,143

about Hitler’s parents? Stalin’s? Charles Manson’s mom tried to sell him for a pitcher of beer, but there was only so much you could get on record. So, Wayne was the plan. The Early Years.

Problem was, Wayne had a seizure. What the hell. A phony seizure to get him out of the compound but also out of Bruce’s reach. A second choice was the hooker, because those spikes pronged from her cheeks were just balls-out weird. And since he’d seen their simulacra on a girl at Crystal’s place, he figured here was a trend worth noting. So, free of his hood and left in the charge of guards not remotely interested in guarding him, Bruce was able to wander off and hunt his story down. Hunt and fail and return to the cell, if you could call it a cell, only to find the bars had straggled and everyone was gone.

No small wonder. He too heard the helicopters. The sirens and bullhorn. He was aware HRT intended to storm the place, and he’d seen enough on Waco to know what this meant for him if he did not get out. But he also knew he would not get another chance this good. Who’d want to buy video footage of his wife’s hinky bladder? Decisions, decisions. To stay in the house was suicide, and so, what, the documentarian is suicidal? That was what he was saying? He was rapacious and hypersensitive and bearing out the artist’s paradigm whenever he screwed someone over in the pursuit of his work, but suicidal? Bruce decided to make one more tour of the house, and if he came up short, he’d march right out the front door. Look, he’d settle for a guard. View from the bottom rung up. He’d settle for that! Please bring me a guard.

Down one hall and another, through the kitchen, back to the pantry, living room, office, another office, five more offices, and about to give up, when, apropos of a voice outside counting down—oh my God, they were counting down—his stomach sent up word it was time to find a bathroom. He began to run, opening doors, and nearly whacked in the head a guy crouched on the floor, sobbing. Bruce said in a commanding voice he didn’t know he had, “Stay here,” and got to the bathroom just in time.

For all that, it was slow going. The guy in the hall—his last best subject!—could leave. He rocked back and forth. Finally he ran out of the bathroom feeling vaguely nauseated for his efforts and looked at the spot where the man had been. Goddamn it. Only, the man had not actually left but retreated to a corner where he now sat upright, crying into his arms, which were folded across his legs, bent at the knee.

Bruce had worked with subjects in the field for years. He was not shy or awkward around strangers, even in the weirdest of circumstances. But this guy? He seemed unstoppable in the effluence of his grief, so that Bruce did not know what to say and was even a little afraid to say anything.

He tapped him on the shoulder. Nudged him in the leg. Said, “We need to get out of here, okay?”

Norman covered his ears. “Go away. Leave me alone. I want to die.”

Bruce took a step back. “Okay, buddy. Let’s get you out of here and then you can die. Sound good?” He wanted to stand him up so he could glean something of the man’s role. A guard? The janitor? Bruce reached for his elbow.

Norman shook him off and looked up. His face was all bloat and jowl. “I was crying,” he said.

“I can see that. But we’re on a bit of a deadline. Know what I’m saying? You can cry after.”

There was literature on the subject of how to deprogram a cult member, and much lore about a desperado named Black Lightning who went around kidnapping cultists for the purpose of deprogramming them, and about how this Black Lightning collapsed moral boundaries and made nominal the difference between free and captive thought, all of which material might have served Bruce well if he’d read any of it and not just printed a bibliography, which he barely skimmed, anyway.

Norman put on his glasses. “What’s the point?” he said. “They’re going to put me away for the rest of my life.”

The fireworks in Bruce’s heart were so boisterous, he could not believe this guy was not running for cover. The rest