deep into Trey’s eyes, searching for some sign that Trey might not merely be acting. He rose up on his tiptoes and pulled the back of Trey’s head down to his own. Trey hesitated for a moment before finally giving in to the inevitable. Their lips met, both warm from the hurrying about and the bourbon/scotch cocktail. As they kissed, Jayson moved his head from side to side as he’d seen all the best romantic actresses do. It was a good kiss, Jayson thought. He hoped it would read as well on screen as it was playing out in his head. And it was long.
Too long.
Where was Tara’s entrance?
‘The worst thing that could happen right now,’ Trey said, pulling his face away from Jayson’s, ‘would be for Pamela to burst out of the house right now and shoot one of us.’
Jayson had to admit it was pretty good adlibbing on Trey’s part. He stole a glance to the side and saw no sign of the homicidal ‘Pamela.’ He didn’t know what to do. They needed the murder for the cliffhanger. At a loss for what to do next, he pulled Trey’s face back toward his own and resumed kissing. To step it up a notch for the audience, Jayson decided to use his tongue. He hoped it would clear the censors. His tongue finally found Trey’s and the two made their introductions. He was frenching, Jayson realized. Honest-to-God frenching.
‘Heya, fellas!!’
It was Tara, stumbling through the sliding glass door. Finally.
‘Sorry for the delay,’ she continued, off script. ‘But I had to get a refill. See?’ She held up the bottle of bourbon she’d brought outside to the camera to prove her accomplishment. ‘Now I guess I may as well get on to killin’ one of yas.’
Finally, she was back on script.
‘No! Don’t shoot!’ Jayson yelled, pulling himself closer to Trey. ‘You have a beef with both of us, but I happen to know that there’s only one bullet in that gun!’ Perhaps the script was a bit expository, but as Aaron Spelling told TV Guide, you should never overestimate the intelligence of your audience.
‘Well then, for one of you, it’s your lucky day!’ Tara yelled back. She leaned down slowly to put the bourbon bottle down on the deck, nearly losing her balance. ‘Whoopsie,’ she giggled before standing upright again and drawing aim at the two of them with the hose nozzle Jason had given her.
‘Prepare to meet your maker!’
WHHHHHHHHHHHHOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMPPPPHHH!
First came a blinding orange flash. Then the ground under their bodies bucked like a car hitting a speed bump at fifty miles an hour.
Jayson landed about ten feet from where he’d been standing. A bicycle tire pump with its plastic handle in flames came crashing down into the grass next to his head. His bicycle pump. From the garage.
‘JESUS FUCKING CHRIST WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?!’ Tara was screaming from somewhere at least fifty feet west of where he’d last seen her. All of the lights in the house had gone out, but luckily, Jayson noticed, someone had helpfully lit hundreds of little candles all across the backyard.
Jayson sat up, and looked around for Trey.
‘Trey?’ he called into the darkness. ‘You okay?’
‘I’m under the seesaw,’ came the response. ‘You okay?’
‘I don’t know. What happened?’
The back porch lights at the Wernermeiers’ clicked on, flooding both backyards. The hundreds of candles in Jayson’s yard weren’t candles at all but flaming debris, being systematically doused as they fell into the dewy, overgrown weeds–flaming debris that looked suspiciously like items from Toni’s garage/studio.
The garage/studio that–in the light from the Wernermeiers’ porch lamps–wasn’t a garage/studio at all anymore.
It was nothing.
It was an empty space, through which the trio could now see clear across the street to the moonlit lake. One by one lights up and down the backyards in both directions clicked on, like a synchronized strand of Christmas lights.
‘Are you okay?! Who’s hurt!? Oh God, Where are you two?!’ Terri Wernermeier was now running across the backyards, dressed in an oversized bra and baggy cotton panties. As soon as Tara spotted her mother racing toward them, she spun around like an Olympic discus thrower and hurled the bourbon bottle in a high arc clear over the backyard, landing two yards away in the Weimhardts’ pool.
Jayson kept staring at where the garage had been, trying to figure out where it had gone. From the looks of the floating pieces of fire still drifting down from the sky, it had gone, in some instances, down to the far end of Lac LaBelle Drive.
‘Jayson? Are you out there?’
The voice was soft. Calm. Jayson could barely hear it through the persistent ringing in his ears. It was Willie, leaning on his elbows on the sill of his bedroom window. He was neither frightened, nor confused. Willie couldn’t see the garage, or lack of garage, from his window. To him, it had just been a loud noise, some shaking, and his bedroom light and TV show shutting off.
He sounded simply curious. Intrigued.
‘Yeah, I’m here, buddy.’ Jayson said, waving up at him. ‘You okay?’
‘Yeah.’ Pause. ‘I need a snack.’
‘No snacks after six, pal,’ Jayson said.
Jayson picked himself up from the wet grass and made his way over to Teeter Totter where Terri was hugging both Trey and Tara.
‘You evil devil child,’ Terri hissed at Jayson. ‘Jesus hates you!’
‘Well, I’ve never been that fond of him either,’ Jayson replied, kneeling down and feeling around under their feet for the camera. He finally found it lodged next to the pile of garden gnomes that Toni had stolen from neighbors’ yards over the years. She felt they were offensive to midgets.
Jayson picked up the camera and held it to his ear. It was still whirring somewhere inside its casing. Thank God. It was all on tape: the kiss, Tara’s entrance, the explosion. Maybe Jesus did love him after all.
The network suits are gonna love this, Jayson thought to himself. He pressed the Off button and whispered ‘Cut!’
The following Sunday night, around 7:30, Toni’s chartreuse Maverick pulled into the driveway, paused for about twenty seconds to take in the scene, then continued to pull all the way up and park on the concrete slab where the garage had stood.
The little debris that was left after the powerful explosion had been cleared by Jayson, Willie, Trey, Tara, and Tom Wernermeier. The twins’ father had taken charge of the situation after his wife proved incapable of offering any help beyond hysterically screaming Bible verses at Jayson and Willie. It had taken Oconomowoc’s
