“Yes!” His mouth screwed up as if the words spilling from it tasted as nasty as they sounded. “He was the only one standing in my way.”
“That doesn’t make it his fault. It doesn’t give you the right to torment him.” I took a slow, steady breath and tried to calm down. I had to try cool logic. I didn’t have much else. Why hadn’t I stayed with Angie? “He just happened to be filling in while you were sick, and the audience liked him.”
“It was my show!” he shouted. “Mine!” He charged over and jabbed his finger inches from my face. “I came up with the concept. I made it what it is today. They had no right to take it away from me.”
“No, they didn’t,” I said, trying not to show my nerves. He was starting to lose it, and that scared the hell out of me. “They behaved very badly. You have every right to be angry.”
“That’s right.”
“But you shouldn’t have poisoned Randy.”
He was scowling at something only he could see. “They took my show away. They gave it to him.”
He wasn’t addressing my questions, just sticking to his own twisted reasoning. He was talking to himself now, devolving. That was never a good thing. I had to get out of here.
Without warning, I screamed as loud as I could.
“Shut up!” Gerald slapped his hand over my mouth. “I like you! I don’t want to hurt you. I-I saved you! You would’ve been poisoned, too. You have to stop screaming.”
“No,” I mumbled behind his hand. I tried to scream again, but the sound was completely muffled.
“I saved your life!” he shouted. “You can’t betray me now!”
This was probably not a good time to point out that my life wouldn’t have had to be saved if he hadn’t put poison in Randolph’s makeup. “You tipped over those stage flats on top of me. And you put that snake in Randy’s dressing room.”
My stomach lurched again at the memory.
“I didn’t do it to you,” he muttered angrily. He began to babble, insisting that he didn’t want to kill Randolph, exactly. He just wanted him off the show so Tom and Walter would give him another chance. It was his show, not theirs.
“Now I’ve got my chance,” he said, his voice growing more manic. “Randy’s still sick. They’ll make him go back to the hospital and I’ll take over.”
“You know tonight’s the last show,” I said cautiously.
“Be quiet!” he shouted. “I can’t think.” He shook his head and rolled his shoulders as though he were working out the kinks in his neck muscles. Was he loosening up and getting ready to attack me?
I tried to flatter him. “You really fooled us all with your Garth disguise. How did you learn to do that?”
He smiled vaguely, as though he were remembering the past. “I was an actor.”
“I’ll bet you were really good.”
He preened a little, which was better than his rage-induced craziness. “In Cleveland theater circles, I was known as the master of disguise.”
“I can see why.”
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said, his tone reasonable. “I have to figure out what to do.”
“Nobody will even bat an eye if you walk out of here and leave the studio. I won’t tell a soul.”
He looked at me, paced a few feet back and forth, then stopped and looked at me again. “No. I can’t trust you. You’ll tell your boyfriend. Women always tell. You ruined everything.”
He stepped closer, then closer still, until his face was right up next to mine. “You. Ruined. Everything.”
All of a sudden he grabbed me by the throat. I couldn’t breathe. I slapped at his arms but he wouldn’t let me go.
His lips were thin with rage and his hands tightened around my throat. “I didn’t want to hurt you but you wouldn’t shut up. Why don’t women ever shut up?”
So it was my fault, I thought, as I tried to get my legs to work. I kicked at his shins, but he didn’t react. He was in some other world. But here in this world, I was about to pass out.
I had a sudden vivid image of my self-defense class, of Alex coming at me, reaching for my throat, trying to teach me how to fight back. Over and over again. What had I done? How had I reacted to her? She’d come at me again and again until I got it right.
But that was fake. This was real. Real was harder. Oh, hell. It took every ounce of will I had left in my head to relax my shoulders and go completely limp.
I must have shaken him, because he gasped and pulled his hands away. But just as quickly, he slapped my face. “Wake up!”
First he’s trying to kill me and then he’s slapping me to bring me around? He was insane, for sure. Had I angered him by pretending to lose consciousness? Fine. That worked for me.