Freaky Deaky

It was weird. This morning Skip had caught the tail end of The Sack of Rome on cable TV and watched himself get killed as one of Attila the Hun's guys. He felt he looked like a biker in drag. On location near Almeria he was run over by chariots and hacked to death with those short Roman swords. Then had to lie in the sun among the dead and wounded talking Spanish to each other while the director and his star sat in an air-conditioned trailer drinking German beer and shooting the shit. After a couple of months they moved up to Madrid to a five-million-dollar set of the Roman forum. Here, Skip was killed several more times in close shots wearing different wigs and fake animal skins, having been spotted as a good dier. Twice in Almeria the star himself, Steve Walton playing the Centurion, Fidelus, had killed him. But when they picked Skip to die at his hands on the forum set, part of the big finish, Walton looked Skip up and down and said, "He's too short." Ray Heidtke, the director, said, "We're in Spain, Steve.

He's the biggest one we have." Skip, almost six foot, sized up Walton as he and the director argued, Walton was maybe six three but knock-kneed and had hips like a girl. Ray Heidtke said, "You sense this Hun coming at you from behind, but you wait. Time it just right.

You turn, nothing to it, and stick him as he's about to take your nuts off."

Fourteen times Skip, hiding behind a statue, jumped down from the pedestal about eight feet off the ground, landed in his Hun shoes, Christ, that were like bedroom slippers, and fell the first couple of times.

"Cut!" After that Skip had his moves down, but then Walton was never ready, the guy screaming, "He's coming too soon!" Ray Heidtke said to Skip, "Pause after you land. Give it a three count. A thousand and one, a thousand and two…"

Walton said, "You tell me it makes sense, I have to stand here while you teach this asshole his timing?" That was when Skip decided to kill the star. Stick him in the throat with the wooden sword and push him down the temple steps. Ray Heidtke said, "Here we go." Skip got up on the statue and when the A.D. yelled for action he jumped, paused, but only for a second instead of a three-count, ran at Steve Walton, raising the wooden sword to ram it into him, and the knock-kneed son of a bitch turned too fast, stumbled, lunged trying to stay on his feet and drove his wooden sword into Skip, into that tender area where the leg meets the groin. The puncture wound wasn't serious; it was the infection that kept Skip in the hospital ten days.

After, he tried to go back to work, but they wouldn't let him on the set.

That's what could happen to you associating with gee ks You could get hurt and fired or, in Harry Dean Stanton's case, get shot off a fence in Beverly Hills.

Right after Harry Dean's geek partner drove off at the end of the picture, going down a highway on his way to hell, Skip heard somebody downstairs. A minute later Robin was in the room. She came over to Skip on the couch, kissed him on the head and he thought to himself, Look out.

"You're moving," Robin said, stepping over to the TV to turn it off.

"Let's get your clothes and your dynamite."

He asked her how come.

On the phone a couple of times she'd mentioned this guy Mankowski, the suspended cop, and Skip didn't like the sound of him. What she told now, about Mankowski knowing he was here, he liked even less, saying to Robin, "I might just go back to L. A. You and Donnell could be cutting me out as it is, once I do the heavy work for you. I've an idea what you want, too. Find out where this Mankowski parks his car and wire it up."

"You'd do it, wouldn't you?" Robin said.

She hooked a leg over the flowery arm of the couch, started fooling with his ponytail, and once again Skip told himself to look out.

"We haven't been able to talk much," Robin said.

Skip knew that. He waited.

"Donnell wants to cut you out."

Skip knew that too. It stood to reason.

"He thinks he's calling the shots, so I play along.

You're going to be proud of me, the way I've worked it out."

Skip let her play with his ponytail.

"I have to call Donnell before we leave," Robin said.

"See if he'll do us a favor."

Skip kept quiet. Let her talk.

"We do need him. At least till Monday morning when the bank opens.

Donnell wants one million even, he likes all those oughts, as he says.

But our take has to be less than his because he's the brains. You believe it? I said fine, we'll go in for seven hundred thousand."

"That's a familiar number," Skip said.

"Our original idea. But if you have no objections let's go for the whole thing."

"Cut Donnell out."

"It wouldn't be hard, the way I see it work."

Skip began to relax, feeling a little better about his one-time old lady.

"Sweetheart, tell me how we get paid."

"Woody gives us a check."

Skip grinned at her.

"You're cuckoo, you know it?"

Robin was shaking her head and stroking her braid at the same time.