Ring Game (27 page)

Flo closed the booklet and pushed away from the wall. The crowd around the miracle lady had shrunk considerably. The green-jacketed Amaranthines were herding groups to the tables. One of them, a beaming, fluff-haired young woman, approached Flo.

“My name is Pam! One Life!”

Flo nodded, looked down at the three feet of space that separated them, took a step back.

“Are you here by yourself?” Pam asked.

Flo shook her head, thinking of Crow. “I don’t know where my friend went,” she said.

“Well, I’m sure she’s here someplace. Would you like to join us?” She indicated one of the tables where a few seats remained empty.

“Maybe later,” Flo said, edging away. She wound her way through the tables toward the miracle lady, spotted a rift in the crowd, and slipped through. Her view was blocked by the platinum wig lady. Flo sidled around and finally got her first close-up look at Mrs. Veronica Frank.

Flo experienced a crushing, instantaneous disappointment. The woman looked perfectly ordinary—a smiling, attractive, healthy-looking woman of thirty. Except for her tulip dress and old-fashioned clip-on earrings, she showed no evidence of her former self, nothing to help Flo believe what she had seen.

“How old are you really?” Flo demanded, interrupting another woman’s question.

“I’m sixty-four, dear,” said Mrs. Frank.

Flo squinted at the woman’s smooth features and was reminded of those bodybuilding ads, before and after shots of scrawny little guys who supposedly gained forty pounds of solid muscle in six weeks. Flo didn’t believe those ads, and she didn’t believe this. This woman was a fake.

“You want to know what I think?” Flo asked.

Mrs. Frank blinked and smiled glassily.

“I think you’re full of shit,” Flo said.

She felt a pair of large hands grasp her upper arms. She heard a deep voice near her ear telling her to be cool. Be cool? Flo snapped her head back, hit something, heard an intake of breath, felt the grip on her arms tighten painfully.

“Be nice now,” said the voice.

Flo kicked, but only brushed her abductor’s legs. He dragged her backward through the door into the hallway. Tense with anger and the beginnings of panic, she kicked again, this time hitting his knee with the back of her heel. Suddenly she was free and falling, stumbling forward into the tile wall, hitting it with her shoulder as she twisted to see the man who had been holding her.

He wasn’t as tall as Bubby Roode had been, but his arms and chest were thicker, and he was just as black. He wore a rose-colored suit, a black silk shirt, a bolo tie with a huge hunk of turquoise at its clasp, and he was gripping his knee with both hands. She remembered watching him on the stage. She’d liked him then.

“Jus’ go easy now, sister,” he said, grinning through his pain.

Sister? Who was he calling “sister”? Flo could feel more adrenaline, gallons of it, squirting into her arteries.

The man spread his hands and gave her a pained smile. “Look, all’s I want is for you to take yourself on out of here, you understand? Nobody wants to hurt you. Just you go on out the door, and no harm done. You understand?”

Flo heard the man’s words, but they weren’t making sense. She felt the wall pushing against her back. She saw the man, pink-jacketed shoulders from here to there, five feet away. Her eyes were glued to him, the periphery of her vision obscured by dark bubbles. She tightened the muscles in her back and chest, trying to hold back the twin volcanoes of anger and panic. The man seemed to be growing larger and blacker. His grin became wider and intensely sinister, sharp white teeth protruding from blood-red gums. He wasn’t moving, but he wasn’t getting out of the way either. She dropped into a crouch and lowered her chin and felt a vibration from deep in her gut rise up through her lungs and throat and gush from her lips.

She screamed, and she leaped.

Seventeen years ago, back home in Burnt Corn, Alabama, Charles Luther Thickening’s mama had sent him out to the old shed at the back of their quarter acre to fetch a weed hoe. Young Charles, at that time nine and a half years old and better known as Cubbie, had not liked to go anywhere near that rickety old shed, for he believed that it was haunted or, if not haunted, then at the very least teeming with black widow spiders and copperheads and other malevolent and venomous beasts. Cubbie attempted to explain his position to his mother, but she was intent on getting her hands on that weed hoe, a fact that she made abundantly clear to her son. Being marginally more afraid of his mother than he was of venomous beasts, young Cubbie proceeded to the shed and, using a broken broom handle, pushed the door open.

He’d been right about the spider. A big, fat black widow had filled one corner of the doorway with her chaotic weaving. Cubbie could see her shiny black back up near the top of the torn cobweb. He used the broom handle to crush the widow and clear away the web, then peered carefully into the dim interior of the shed, looking for copperhead snakes, which were common in the area. He did not spot any copperheads, but he did see the weed hoe his mother wanted, propped up against the far wall of the shed, less than eight feet away. Cubbie considered simply running in, grabbing the hoe, and running out again, but being a cautious lad, he first gathered a handful of pebbles and hurled them into the shed, hoping to stir up or frighten away whatever other beasts might be lurking within.

The pebbles produced no apparent effect. No clouds of hornets or rabid skunks or armies of fire ants appeared. Cubbie began to feel resigned to his mission. He had been hoping that the shed would produce something so terrible that he could safely report back to his mother that her request was impossible to fulfill. Taking a deep breath, which he hoped would not be his last, he stepped into the shed and grabbed the hoe and immediately had his worst fears realized when an angry mother possum dropped from the rafters onto his head, all hisses and teeth and claws and horror.

Chuckles was reminded of that day.

The gold-jacketed woman with the incredible legs landed pretty much everywhere at once, but Chuckles mostly felt the sensation of sharp acrylic nails penetrating his scalp. For perhaps seven-eighths of one second, he was too stunned to defend himself. That was enough time for him to sustain several blows, rips, slashes, and a bite to the forehead. By the time the message reached his muscles to respond, the insane possum woman had sprung free and was running down the hall. Chuckles started after her, but was stopped by a sickening pain in his left leg. He looked down and saw one of her lime green shoes hanging there, slick with blood, its spike heel embedded in his inner thigh.

But from the hoop’s bewitching round,

Her very shoe has power to wound.

—Edward Moore

C
ROW SAID, “LOST THE
faith? What do you mean?”

“Precisely what I said,” said Rupert Chandra, folding his arms across his chest. “Hyatt Hilton was unable to believe. I am afraid that we failed him.”

“So you kicked him out, just like that?”

“Not at all. But when we discovered that Hyatt was only involved in the church for personal materialistic gain, we asked him to give up his leadership responsibilities. He has always been welcome to remain as one of the Faithful, should he choose to embrace our principles—as is required of any member of the church. Hyatt left of his own volition.”

Crow puzzled over that for a second, then understood. “You cut him out of the money.”

Rupe shrugged. “Money is of no importance,” he murmured.

Crow laughed.

Rupe picked up his cigar and relit it. He puffed several times, building up a good-sized cloud. “What did you say your name was?” he asked.

“Crow.”

“Yes. You don’t know me, Mr. Crow. I don’t know why I should care what you think, but in the unlikely event that you have an open mind, I tell you that I am motivated by two desires only. To live forever, and to show others how they can do so, too. Do you believe in science, Mr. Crow?”

Crow tipped his head a noncommittal five degrees.

“For the past two centuries, human beings have been successfully increasing their lifespans. If you had been born in 1800, you would likely have been dead by the age of forty-eight. If you had been born in 1900, you’d have died at age fifty-nine, on average. Tell me, Mr. Crow, how old are you? Forty?”

Crow frowned. “I’m thirty-six.”

“So you’ve lived half your life, according to the current mortality tables. You are middle-aged.”

Crow had never thought of himself as middle-aged before. He didn’t like it. “What’s your point?”

“You don’t like that, do you? The idea that your life is half over?”

“I prefer to think of it as half yet to live.”

Rupe grinned and sat back in his chair. “I’ve got some good news for you. In the first place, since you’ve already made it to thirty-six, your
statistical
lifespan expectation is somewhere around eighty-five. But it gets even better. By applying logarithms to the acceleration of human lifespans over the past two centuries, science tells us that you will probably make it to one hundred nine. Science has been increasing our statistically expected lifespan at an ever increasing rate. The discovery of antibiotics gave the average human being an extra eight years of life. The invention of the airbag increased it by twenty-seven minutes. The Heimlich maneuver gave us all another fourteen seconds of life—statistically and collectively speaking. Every time one individual lives longer, the average lifespan of the collective increases proportionately. Now let me ask you this, Mr. Crow. If science increases our expected lifespan by more than one year for every year that passes, what do you have?”

“I give up.”

“You have eternity. According to our computers, that day is rapidly approaching. We believe that mankind will become statistically immortal in the year 2078.”

“Too late,” Crow said, “since according to your figures I’m dead at one-o-nine.”

“Not for the Amaranthines,” said Rupe. “Have you ever heard of telomeres? No? Every strand of DNA in one’s body is capped by a tiny strand of protein called a telomere. These telomeres act as the software that controls cell reproduction. As one grows older, one’s telomeres shorten and lose their ability to replace damaged cells. The body’s systems slowly break down. This is what we call the Death Program. We Amaranthines have extracted the Death Program from our bodies. We have learned to rejuvenate our telomeres through both lifestyle changes and highly focused mental exercises. Most important, we believe in what we are doing. You see, Mr. Crow, we are not here for
money
. We are here
forever
. The fact that Hyatt Hilton was primarily motivated by monetary forces was precisely the reason he lost his status as church elder. The ACO is a nonprofit organization. What modest funds we are able to raise go toward sharing our knowledge, and toward the construction of Stonecrop.”

“What is Stonecrop? Some sort of super telomere?”

“Stonecrop is our retreat for the coming millennium, a sanctuary for the Faithful.” The rhythm of Rupe’s voice changed. “One limestone brick at a time, high on the bluffs above the Mississippi River, Stonecrop grows. Like the mighty white oak, it sends roots deep into the earth, knowing it must stand for millennia. Like the pyramid of Cheops, it shrugs off wind and rain. Like the Garden of Eden, it offers peace and perfection. Stonecrop. One Dream, One Way, One Reality.”

Crow said, “You should put that in your annual report.”

Rupe drew on his cigar. “We did,” he said.

“You really believe this stuff, don’t you?”

Rupe spread his arms. “You say you used to know me at Ambrosia Foods. Three hundred pounds, borderline diabetes, three-pack-a-day cigarette habit. Look at me now. Of course I believe. If I didn’t believe I’d be dead. Believing is what got me here. Believing is what enabled me to access my cells, to destroy the Death Program. Tell me something, Mr. Crow, do you want to die?”

“I’ve had my moments,” said Crow.

“That’s the Death Program.” Rupe’s nostrils flared. “I can smell it on you. Beware your desires, Mr. Crow.”

Crow said, “So, then, since Hyatt is out of the church, does that mean he’s mortal now?”

“I suspect so. You know, Mr. Crow, it is not necessary to believe in something today in order to believe in it tomorrow. One need only wish for belief.”

A response stirred in Crow’s sinuses but was preempted by a sound from outside the office, a sound that began low, like the distant roar of traffic, and ended high as a dying cat’s final shriek of anguish and fury. Rupe stood up so quickly his thighs hit the front of his desk.

A prickling sensation rose from the back of Crow’s neck.

“What was that?” Rupe asked.

“I don’t know.” Crow walked to the door and opened it, and put his head cautiously out into the hall. He saw Flowrean Peeche rounding the corner, coming toward him with legs churning, bare feet slapping the tile floor, the whites of her eyes showing as she blew past. Crow expected something or someone to come flying after her—an army of ninjas, perhaps, or a pair of Doberman pinschers. Two seconds passed, but no one seemed to be chasing her.

Behind him, he heard Rupe say, “What was that?”

“That,” Crow replied, “was Flowrean Peeche.”

It was a law of nature: There would always be one troublemaker at every meeting, whether it was a simple Anti-Aging Clinic, or an actual Extraction Event. Last time it had been Hyatt, spreading his leaflets all over the parking lot. This time, it was a wild woman in a metallic gold faux-snakeskin jacket. Polly made a mental note to reward Chuckles for being so on top of it, for recognizing what was happening and ushering the woman out of the reception before she could do any serious damage.

Other than that, the clinic was going splendidly. Val Frankel had been completely convincing as the aged Mrs. Veronica Frank, and she was perfect playing the part of a thirty-year-old woman which, of course, she was. The Faithful were herding everyone to the tables, laying out the ACO program. If all went well, a solid 20 percent of the Pilgrims would sign up for the next Extraction Event series.