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Bungee jumping and race-car school didn't capture the same feeling. The risk was too arbitrary, accidental. I needed the personal touch of another human being going out of his or her way to kill me, not the capricious hand of fate.
Misty felt it, too. We talked about our boring jobs and our boring lives, about the strange void a dead serial killer tends to leave in your life after you kill him. Everyone else at the bar talked about their IRA accounts and their BMWs, but all we wanted to discuss was the best way to knock a murderer through a fiftieth-story plateglass window.
We'd imprinted on each other. The ancient test of survival had proved us a worthy match, if only we could recreate the circumstances. Some couples try to regain their senior year of high school or a magical summer in Paris; we went to Lowe's and looked at the chainsaws.
We finally tried to make love the only way we knew how. She rode atop me, rocking back and forth with the chainsaw held high. I knew we'd never hurt each other, though, and the neighbors banging on the wall to shut it off distracted us anyway.
But the chainsaw itself gave us an idea. Dressed all in black, we snuck out of the apartment complex with it and slinked several blocks down the street to another apartment building. We mounted the emergency stairwell— unwisely left open—and climbed to a random floor. Then we tiptoed to the end of the hall, fired up the chainsaw, and rang the doorbell.
When that ten-year-old boy answered the door, we almost wet ourselves laughing. The expression on a kid's face when faced with the rapture of dismembering doom is something one of those Renaissance painters should have captured to hang in the Louvre. I think his freckles actually fled to the back of his head, that's how pale he was.
Still convulsing from laughter, Misty stumbled forward and just barely nicked the kid's forehead with the chainsaw. It cracked open and his brains sprayed in an arc like a pink Mohawk.
"Oh, shit," she said, still compulsively giggling.
The chainsaw by now had cleaved his skull, and his father shuffled barefoot to the door just in time to see his son collapse to the ground. I'd like to say the look on his face was priceless, too, but all I saw clearly was his .357. Misty and I ran for opposite exits and managed to evade the bullets shattering the drywall around us. His son probably distracted him from having better aim.
We wiped down the chainsaw and tossed it in the Dumpster. Then, making peace with our twitching hearts, we slithered home through the shadows. We didn't talk much. We were both scared and a little guilty about what had happened.
When we got back into her apartment and crawled into bed, though, we tangled beneath the sheets and made love, happy to still be together for just this one night, happy to have survived.
I guess that's how we started creepy-crawling the city. That's what we call it when we sneak into buildings with a chainsaw and scare the shit out of someone. It's best in neighborhoods with a lot of Bush stickers: they tend to be gun owners, and there's nothing as invigorating as a pistol leveled at you by an angry Republican anxious to prove the Second Amendment works.
It's a strange kink, sure. We try not to kill anybody, but sometimes things get out of hand and we have to. There's something primal there, too. Something exciting.
Work isn't so bad anymore, especially since Mr. Wendell—poor, friendly, Christian-deacon Mr. Wendell— has been stalked from home to work at least twice by fiends the newspaper likes to call "Mr. and Mrs. Chainsaw."
Silly media. We're only dating.
One of these days, though, we might just tie the knot. The only question is whom we'll invite to the wedding.
And what we'll do to them.
High Kicks and Misdemeanors
Janet Berliner
For Russell Markert, founder of the Rockettes
Most things that happen in Vegas stay in Vegas because no one outside the city would believe them.
Typical of that is the truly tall tale of Willie and Legs Cleveland and the ostrich army. The story begins with two men killed under similar circumstances at Country Club Towers, a high-rise that Legs called home. One man, who lived in the apartment above Legs's, bled out in the elevator as the result of two deep gouges in his stomach. Legs, who discovered the body, noticed that he was wearing a "Say No to Yucca Mountain" T-shirt. Several days later, a handyman in Legs's employ was killed in the identical ma
Legs tried to point out the coincidence.
Instead of gratitude, they hauled him down to the station and badgered him to tell them what he knew about the dead men.
"You're not pi
When the cops let him go, warning him not to leave town, he felt fear at the pit of his gut. It was not something he'd experienced often. For a few days, he tried focusing on his search for new clients. As a self-styled talent scout with a penchant for long-legged chorines, thus his nickname "Legs," his search took him to Strip shows and stripper shows, to secondary casino acts and bordellos, but for once his heart wasn't in it.
In need of company and sound advice, he went Downtown to find the only person he trusted—his great-granduncle "Way-Out" Willie, so called because he played by his own rules. He was beholden to none and trusted nobody, with two exceptions—himself and his ostrich spirit guide. He took pride in his full-blooded Piute heritage, even though he hadn't set foot on Indian territory since, at the age of twelve, he'd left his family to seek his spirit guide.
Willie loved Las Vegas, mostly because it was a city where the culture of anonymity was God. He shared his i
Legs found Willie Downtown, playing in a small Texas hold 'em game. After a stint at the back of the Sports Book—Willie's office—he got the old man a complimentary corned beef sandwich from the deli, waited for him to be cashed out, and took him over to the Towers.
The day was November 16, 1999, which Willie swore was his one-hundred-and-fiftieth birthday. They sat on the balcony, looking at the Stratosphere and the Strip beyond while Willie chomped on his sandwich, washed it down with a bottle of dark beer, and listened to Legs.
"Nothing to worry about," Willie said. "You think?"
Willie belched his confirmation and cleaned his teeth with his nail. When he was done, he took his black book of debtors out of his pocket and tore it into shreds.
"What the hell are you doing?" Legs asked, watching the gathering heap of outstanding markers from God, Satan, and half of the population of Las Vegas.
Willie laughed. "Now you listen to me," he said. "You don't have to worry about anything." He pointed at the shuttle to Area 51's Groom Lake. The pair watched it circle and head toward the Janet Air Terminal. "What you need to know is that my time is done. They're coming to get me. Keep the fifty K you skimmed from me, give the money in my mattress to our people, and stay away from the Road to Rachel." He laughed at Legs's expression.