Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates (73 page)

Switters realized then that he had
passed that way before. The Hallways of Always. Except now there were no
botanical tryptamine alkaloids churning in his belly. And so far, no pod things
boasting that they owned the business. There was, however, a faint glow in what
might be called the distance, a sort of end-of-the-tunnel luminosity, and it
was pulling him toward it. “No! I absolutely refuse to have some trendy
near-death experience,” he heard himself exclaim. “Serve me the real enchilada
or let me—”

“Heh!”

“Maestra? Is that you? Are you . . .
okay?”

There was no reply. He spiraled on
through the tunnel. Or, the tunnel spiraled on through him. Was he a toy boat
in the gutter, or was he the gutter—and where were the Art Girls? He drew closer
to the glow. Or, it drew closer to him. It was proving to be not a light as
such, but something more on the order of a pulsating membrane, feathery and
multicolored, with lots of greens and reds. The membrane had no alter image, no
counterpart, and he began to wonder if in that dichotomous void, there wasn’t a
singularity after all. Might this be the aura of the Ultimate? The medulla of
the mandala? The Immaculate Heart made visible? A hyperspatial hymen? He became
aware, then, of sound: not the music of the spheres, by any means, but a low,
crusty, constricted noise, scrumbling harshly out of the membrane, almost as
though it were clearing its throat.

Yes, that was it. Switters had the
distinct feeling, moving into that polychrome pulsar, that it was preparing to
speak to him; that, like the alleged prophets of old, he was about to hear the
actual voice of that which men call
God
. He was, as the figure of speech
would have it, all ears.

There was another spasm of hacking
rasps. Then—it spoke.

“Peeple of zee wurl, relax!”

Was what it said.

The glow sputtered out.

Nothingness replaced it.

And that was that.

Send in the clowns.

At that instant, or so it seemed,
Switters reentered the realm of ordinary consciousness. He knew it was the
realm of ordinary consciousness because it hurt like hell. And because he
sensed the presence of advertising.

Things did not come slowly into
focus. He opened his eyes and,
bingo,
he took everything in sharply and
at once: the pale yellow walls, the Chianti-colored curtains, the sleek chrome
table at bedside (in Italy, even hospital rooms had style); the Marlboro
cigarette billboard that dominated the view from the window; Pippi in a
brand-new, contemporary, lightweight habit, Domino wearing her old Syrian
chador, wearing her old marrow-melting smile, wearing her round cheeks and
vivacious air.

“Where am I?” he asked. Immediately,
he groaned and, unwisely, slapped his sore forehead. “Let me withdraw that
question,” he pleaded. He withdrew it because, within limits, he could guess
where he was and, more important, because the question was so pathetically
predictable. What a cliché.

“You’ve come back to life,” said
Domino. Her voice, even more than usual, was like a Red Cross doughnut wagon
purring into earshot after a disaster.

“To where?”

“To life.
La vie
.”

“Right. To life. To the ol’ bang and
whimper show. You, as well, Domino! You’re okay! Bless your heart! The bastard
didn’t . . . What happened?
Bonjour
, Pippi. I should say,
Sister
Pippi.” He indicated her garb. “Man, that was fast. How long was I out?”

“This is the tenth day.”

He sprang halfway up in bed, nearly
severing the IV tube. “
Ten days?!!
” He was flabbergasted.

Gently Domino eased him back down
onto the pillow. “Day before yesterday, you started mumbling in your sleep. The
day before that, you fluttered your eyelids and wiggled your toes. The doctors
were pretty sure you were going to come out of it. We’ve offered many, many
prayers.”

“But what. . . ?” He ran his hand
over his bandaged head. “I wasn’t shot, was I? It was the taboo.”

Domino smiled sympathetically. “You
fainted,” she said.

By Domino’s account, it happened
like this:

When the empty throne caused her to
pause at the gazebo entrance, she had been informed that the Holy Father’s
lunch had been unkind to him, and due to heartburn (“surely the breath of
Satan”), he would be unable to keep his appointment. The pontiff sent blessings
and regrets, and requested that she entrust “the paper of interest” to his
aides.

Suspecting subterfuge, Domino
refused. She asked for a postponement. She’d come back later with her abbess,
she said. A small argument ensued. Eventually Scanlani took out his flip phone
and punched in a number. He said that she could enjoy the rare privilege of
speaking to the pope on the telephone. He said the pope would personally verify
that he wished the envelope turned over to an aide. “How will I know it’s
really him?” she had asked. Scanlani fired a short burst of Italian into the
mouthpiece. The lawyer listened, he nodded. “He’ll wave to you,” he said. “The
Holy Father will wave to you from his bathroom window. You will be able to see
him up there, on the phone, talking to you. What an honor.”

As Domino, confused, was considering
this, Scanlani held out the cell phone. “Go ahead. Speak to the Holy Father,”
he said, holding the phone to her head. It was then that Switters had gone
berserk.

“You broke a man’s arm. You yelled
something obscene. You bounded out of your chair. But as soon as your feet touched
the earth, you fainted.”

“It was Today Is Tomorrow. His curse.
Wham! Hit me like a poison hammer. All the way from the Amazon.”

“I’m sorry,” she said soothingly.
“You fainted.”

To keep himself from shouting, “Did
not! Did not!”, he gazed out the window at the Marlboro Man. There was a
fucking cowboy for you. Corporate puppet, believing he was free; brain full of
testosterone, heart full of loneliness, jeans full of hemorrhoids, lungs full
of tar.

“When you fell,” she said, “you hit
your head on the edge of one of those old broken columns. Ooh-la-la! It was
terrible. It sounded like a coconut cracking.” She turned to the freckled nun.
“Darling, we’ve been remiss. Would you please go alert the medical staff that
Mr. Switters has awakened.”

After Pippi left the room, Domino
said, “We’re here in Salvator Mundi because the Vatican hospital refused to
admit you. In fact, the Swiss Guard has a warrant for your arrest. Now, be
calm. That American, that Mr. Seward, promised he wouldn’t let them touch you. And
if he doesn’t stop them, I shall.”

The conviction with which she said
this made him grin. And when he grinned, his head hurt. “So, I tanked and split
my skull.”

“Yes, you did.” After a beat, she
added, “You also chipped another tooth. I must tell you, I will not stand at
the altar with you until you’ve spent some quality time with your dentist.”

He was startled. “At the altar,
Domino? The altar? Does this mean you’ve decided that I’m not too . . . after
all?”

“By no means,” she said. “You
definitely are too. . . .” She lowered her lashes. She stared at the floor.
When she smiled, it was as though a hurdy-gurdy ice cream truck, laden with
thirty-one flavors, had followed that doughnut wagon into the scorched
neighborhood. “But I think I might want to marry you anyway.”

Switters looked out of the window. To
the Marlboro Man, he said, winking, “Hear that? Rimbaud wasn’t kidding, pal. Of
course, it takes more than calluses and a cough to qualify as a fierce
invalid.”

A doctor arrived and shooed the women
out. Brandishing a penlight, he spent an inordinately long time staring into
what some have called Switters’s fierce, hypnotic green eyes. He warned his
patient that Italian immigration authorities were itching to get their hands on
him, but, for the time being, the hospital would not permit it. He inquired if
he was hungry, and Switters, licking his chops, commenced to recite the entire
menu of Da Fortunato al Pantheon. Later, an orderly brought a covered bowl.
Unlidded, it proved to contain a clear broth—but this being Italy, several
meaty tortellinis bobbed in it like fat boys at the beach.

Early the next morning, the testing
began, culminating in a 360-degree CAT scan. Considering what he’d experienced
during his coma, maybe it ought to have been a parrot scan. A poet scan. An
interlocutor scan. A guide-to-the-underworld scan. (Pronounce the Aztec word
and win a free week at the Gene Simmons Tongue Clinic.)

Throughout the day, as he was being
poked, probed, punctured, pricked, and positioned; even as he lay sweating in
the claustrophobic culvert of the CAT scanner, Switters had one primary
question on his mind. It wasn’t,
What’s going to happen to me next?
It
wasn’t,
Will I marry my nun and live happily ever after?
But, rather,
How
did I survive the curse?

Perhaps it was psychosomatic, a
self-fulfilling prophecy, but he
had
felt a massive jolt when his foot
touched the ground. It was like being struck by lightning. Yet, it hadn’t
killed him. Today Is Tomorrow wasn’t the type to do things in a half-assed way,
and there was evidence that he didn’t make idle threats: consider poor Potney
Smithe. Was this the shaman’s first attempt at a joke? No, as Potney might have
put it, not bloody likely. Nevertheless, Switters had broken the taboo and
escaped retribution. Why? Why hadn’t he died?

That evening, he got an answer.

Domino was allowed to visit him
after dinner (risòtto con funghi and tiramisù). She gave him a big kiss. Then
she gave him a big envelope.

“What’s this? The prophecy?”

“No, no. The Vatican has the
prophecy. I ended up giving it to them, even though I never got to see the pope
at his bathroom window. What they will do with Fatima’s words, who can guess? I
advised Scanlani that we have an interesting interpretation. He said he’d get
back to me.” She smiled skeptically. “But they did reinstate us. Issued us new
habits.”

Switters started to say, “There could
be a slow-acting, skin-absorbed poison in the fabric”—but he caught himself.
Hadn’t he subjected her to quite enough paranoia? Besides, she was still
wearing a chador.

“The envelope is from your friend,
Bobby Case. Oh, I forgot to tell you that Masked Beauty is in Rome. She came a
week late. While she was attending to the visa problem in Damascus, she picked
up our mail at Toufic’s office. This was in our box. Yes, and Captain Case has
telephoned twice, as well. He’s very nice.
Très sympathique
.”

“Yeah,” Switters growled. “Case can
nice the damn birds out of the damn trees.” Was that a twinge of jealousy he
felt? He flipped over the envelope and recognized Bobby’s surprisingly fine
handwriting. “You say he called?”

“Perhaps it was forward of me, but I
took the liberty of phoning your grandmother the night of the . . . the
accident. She must have informed Captain Case because he called two days later.
He called again yesterday shortly before you came out of the coma. I had
brought your cell phone over from the hotel.”

Switters examined the postage stamps.
They were not Okinawan stamps. They were Peruvian stamps. They were stamps from
South-too-goddamn-vivid-America.

He delayed opening the envelope until
Domino had gone. An hour later, when the night nurse came in to take his
temperature and update his chart, he was still staring at its contents.

It contained a single photograph,
eight and a half by eleven. In the background of the picture, against a tangled
wall of tropical forest, stood a group of twenty or so Indians, nearly naked,
strangely painted. In the foreground was an object that he recognized almost
immediately as Sailor Boy’s old cage, made of wicker, shaped like a pyramid.
“Well, what do you know?” he mumbled, though it was hardly unusual that the
Kandakandero had kept the thing. Then, he noticed that the birdcage wasn’t
empty. There was something inside.

It was another pyramid.

A pyramid the size of a soccer ball.

A pyramid crowned with parrot
feathers.

A pyramid with a human face.

The accompanying note, on Hotel
Boquichicos stationery, was in Bobby’s incongruously elegant script.

I knew you wouldn’t believe it
unless you saw it—so take a good look. Take two looks and call me in the
morning.

Don’t worry, podner, I didn’t smack
him. It wasn’t necessary. They say a big snake got him. Forty-foot anaconda or
some unhappy shit like that.

It’s wild down here, ain’t it? Man!
No wonder you believed that curse. My guide is the new head shaman and he is
one radical dude. Says he knows you. I’m bringing him back to the States with
me, which ought to be a lark and a half. I’ll fill you in soon. Meanwhile, have
yourself a nice long walk. You’ve earned it.

In the photograph, the warriors were
all grinning in razzle-dazzle unison, like the cast of a minstrel show.

Switters borrowed the nurse’s
penlight and examined the head in the birdcage. It was also smiling. It looked
. . . relaxed.