Benchley, Peter - Novel 07 (40 page)

 
          
 
"You can breathe," he said,
"but if you cough, might's well keep on bendin' and kiss your ass
goodbye." He shut the door and walked around the car and climbed in.

 
          
 
"He never sits up front, does he?"
Preston
asked as the awful thought occurred to him.

 
          
 
"You kiddin'? Up front's nigger
country."

 
          
 
Chuck started the car and pulled out from
behind the tumbledown gas station.

 
          
 
"You know what I feel like?" he said
as he accelerated toward the road up to Xanadu. ''
Mission
Impossible. "

 
          
 
"I hope you're right,"
Preston
said, his voice muffled by the covers.
"The good guys always win."

 
          
 
THE LIMOUSINE REACHED the top of the hill,
leveled out and came to a stop.

 
          
 
Chuck said, “You want to snort or cough, get
it over with. You got about two minutes." The car door slammed.

 
          
 
Soon, a rear door opened.
Preston
held his breath. He felt the limo's springs
sag. Mushy. That was the trouble with Cadillacs. He'd heard of people actually
getting seasick in the back of Cadillac limos. For a long ride, you want a
Mercedes or a Daimler.

 
          
 
Chuck's door opened, closed again, and the car
started and pulled away.

 
          
 
From the back seat, the sound of ice rattling
around in a bucket, cubes dropping into a glass.

 
          
 
A smooth ride on a flat road, like floating
over an oily sea.

 
          
 
Banner's voice: “I don't appreciate your
taking off like that."

 
          
 
Chuck: “Sorry, boss. I had a fever 'bout a
hundred and thirty. I was like in a fog the whole time."

           
 
“I thought maybe you'd gone off the deep
end."

 
          
 
“Me? No way."

 
          
 
“Well, call next time."

 
          
 
“Sure thing."

 
          
 
Silence. The limo braked, turaed, straightened
out and accelerated again.

 
          
 
“Big night," Chuck said. “All your
friends flyin' in."

 
          
 
"Awards . . . People give awards so
they’ll feel good. Makes them think they're doing something. I've only begun to
pay back what other people've done for me."

 
          
 
Getting the false modesty down pat.

 
          
 
Again the sound of ice cubes rattling.

 
          
 
"Still, must make you feel good."

 
          
 
"We do what we can. Chuck. Some people
more than others, that's all."

 
          
 
"Yeah, but if anybody deserves it, you
do."

 
          
 
What's he doing, baiting the man?

 
          
 
Two metallic snaps, like a briefcase being
opened, then papers being shuffled around.

 
          
 
Banner mumbling to himself. Memorizing his
speech.

 
          
 
Preston
picked up bits and pieces.

 
          
 
". . . on behalf of everybody who has
ever known the agony of addiction . . .

 
          
 
". . . if I cannot help my brother, I
cannot help myself . . .

 
          
 
". . . as my friend Liza says, life is a
cabaret, and I'm here to tell you, it's a lot more fun sober than stoned.
..."

 
          
 
The limo slowed, turned a couple of times,
stopped. "Where are the Certs? Don't tell me you forgot the goddam
Certs."

 
          
 
"In the thing there, boss, on your right.
Two packs."

 
          
 
Chuck's door opened, the car bounced, the door
closed again. Then the back door opened.

 
          
 
Chuck said, "You want I should pour you a
settler, bring it along?"

 
          
 
"Uh-uh. I'm tuned up fine.” Banner
paused. "But bring along the emergency kit, in case of . . ." He
laughed. "I guess that's why they call them emergencies!"

 
          
 
The door closed. Footsteps fading away on
pavement.

 
          
 
Preston
waited, counting to fifty. Other cars pulled in and parked. Voices jabbered.

 
          
 
He threw off the covers and slowly raised his
head above the dashboard and peered through the windshield.

 
          
 
The civic center looked like something
designed by one of Frank Lloyd Wright's less talented disciples. On drugs.
Donated to the town of
Promised Land
by one of the suddenly rich—perhaps one of those couples who hit it big
with a chain of hotels cutely named after the two of them, as in Sonny plus
Esther equals Sonesta. It had wings and fins and a few cupolas, and was lit up
like the spaceship in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The parking lot
encircled the monster, and people swarmed toward it like myriad black bugs.

 
          
 
Preston
lifted the floor mat on the driver's side and found the keys where Chuck had
stowed them. He got out of the car, walked around to the back and, checking to
make sure no one was watching, opened the trunk.

 
          
 
Preston
froze. Jesus! He's dead!

 
          
 
Twist was curled into a fetal ball, eyes
closed, mouth slack. There must have been a leak in the exhaust manifold that
poured carbon monoxide up into the trunk compartment.

 
          
 
Twist snored.

 
          
 
Preston
exhaled and reached into the trunk and shook Twist's shoulder. Twist opened his
eyes.

 
          
 
“Your threads is mussed,” Twist said.
"All I'm gonna pass for is a bag lady." He climbed out of the trunk,
stretched and stared at the civic center. “Damn thing looks like it's got a
disease."

 
          
 
They didn't bother to hide on their way across
the parking lot. They were just another pair of penitent rummies come to
worship the saint of sobriety. They passed a phalanx of rented limousines and,
at the curb beside the building, the Banner bus.

 
          
 
A television crew had set up at the main
entrance, and a reporter was interviewing names.
Preston
and Twist hugged the wall out of the pool
of light cast by the TV floods, and as they hurried by they heard some
marcelled bird in a full-length sable orating about her higher power.

 
          
 
“Where's he gonna be?" Twist said when
they were again in the safety of shadows.

 
          
 
“Chuck says there's a stage. If there's a
stage, there's a backstage. And if there's a backstage, there's a stage door
... I dearly hope."

 
          
 
It was an unmarked metal door in the back of
the building. Unlocked.

 
          
 
They walked down a lima-bean-green hallway lit
by fluorescent panels overhead that gave the place the warmth of a morgue.
There were doors on either side of the hall—dressing rooms, probably. They
climbed a circular steel staircase at the end of the hallway.

 
          
 
The second story was the size of a bam but
tightly packed with ropes, pulleys, backdrops and suspended sandbags.

 
          
 
A bald man in a windbreaker sat before a
complex lightboard, smoking a cigar and doing the crossword in a paper.

 
          
 
"Help you?” he said.

 
          
 
Preston
pulled his wallet out of his jacket, flipped it open, waved it at the man,
snapped it closed and said officiously, "Stone Banner."

 
          
 
"Over there." The man pointed to a
dark patch of the bam. "Behind those curtains."

 
          
 
"Right."

 
          
 
"You wouldn't know a four-letter word for
a small case."

 
          
 
"Etui,"
Preston
said over his shoulder, and he spelled it.

 
          
 
"Hey, much obliged."

 
          
 
As they walked on tiptoe to the dark comer,
they , could hear the rustling and murmuring of a thousand bodies, softened by
three or four layers of thick curtains.

 
          
 
They pulled back the first curtain and stood
between the layers, out of sight of the lighting man.

 
          
 
They heard Banner walking back and forth,
reciting his lines. His footsteps came very close, stopped and turned, then
receded.

 
          
 
Preston
gripped the edges of the remaining curtains and peeked around them. Banner was
walking away, across the wing of the stage toward Chuck, who sat at a small
wooden table. Beyond,
Preston
could see the stage, unadorned except for a
podium and microphone, and a sliver of the audience.

 
          
 
He wondered where Priscilla was sitting, how
she would react when the fun began.

 
          
 
This is for you . . . so you don't flee
forever to the misty isles of unreality.

 
          
 
Banner was looking down at his script,
gesturing with one hand, so
Preston
dared shake the curtains to get Chuck's attention.

 
          
 
Chuck looked up, saw
Preston
.

 
          
 
Preston
made an "okay" sign at Chuck, then pointed at Banner.

 
          
 
Try it. Try it now. Let's see what happens.

 
          
 
Chuck raised his eyebrows: You kidding?

 
          
 
Preston
nodded, made a fist. Do it.

 
          
 
Chuck shrugged and reached into his jacket and
pulled out a pewter flask. He put it on the table.

 
          
 
"Boss?" He pointed at the flask.
"You sure?"

 
          
 
Banner shook his head. "The hell you
think I want? Make a horse's ass of myself?"

 
          
 
"Only try in' to help. You lookin' kinda
ragged."

 
          
 
"I need your help, I'll ask for it. Just
keep your mouth shut."

 
          
 
Damn.
Preston
let the curtain fall as Banner turned back
his way. It would be better all around if
Preston
and Twist never had to make an appearance.
They were there as a fail-safe. Twist looked like an escapee from
Boys
Town
. Banner would never believe him. This is
insane. We 're all going to jail.