Marsellus Wallace’s Dirty Laundry
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36
Could eternal damnation be preferable to a life of endless recurrence? Might such an infesting of oneself be damnation? Pulp Fiction’s most intriguing loose end – the foot massage which Tony Rocky Horror either did or didn’t give Mia – can perhaps be tied to the hellish torments of owning a time machine. Mia is adamant that her sum total of physical contact with Tony was a handshake at her wedding. She seems to be telling the truth. Yet there is something in her manner which suggests that at least at one time he hadn’t escaped her attention.
37
Perhaps this didn’t escape Marsellus’s attention. Perhaps he took a trip out of town – after asking Tony to entertain his wife, and laying bugs and lenses – and on his return found she’d been footloose. Previously he had written a note to self that if he sends himself back to a particular time that meant Mia had meandered. He now sends himself back to then. And shortly thereafter makes the calls for Tony to be thrown from a building. It appears Mia was wrong when she told Vincent that only Marsellus and Tony knew why. In fact only Marsellus knew.
38
Marsellus feels as flattened as if he was the one thrown from the building. At each necessity he has been turning back the dial, on each occasion feeling a little less real, until now he’s been reduced to using his time machine as a retroactive chastity belt. And he’s still racked by doubts. Was Mia’s night of hoofing a once-only madness or inveterate behaviour? He finds himself summoning from Amsterdam the finest dancer amongst his minions. The reason Buddy Holly wasn’t much of a waiter may have been that he was a Marsellus spy.