Touch (1987) (20 page)

The Romans used to take Christians, dip them in tar, and set them afire to light up the Colosseum. They threw them to lions, into boiling oil, crucified, decapitated, stoned, roasted alive, pressed them between boards, and tore them limb from limb. August had been fined two hundred dollars one time, put on probation another.

In a daydream he used to serialize when he was younger--and still imagined from time to time--August was Augustus, a Christian of ancient Rome. He lived in the catacombs at a time when all the Christians were scared to death of getting caught and thrown into the arena, except Augustus. He always carried one of those short swords beneath his toga and made a specialty of avenging martyred Christians. He killed gladiators who killed Christians. He killed the guy who imported the lions. He killed soldiers who raped Christian girls and sold them into slavery. In one of his favorite sequences, Augustus would slip into the villa of a wealthy Roman, free the slaves, and assassinate the master as he lounged in his atrium eating sweetmeats and hummingbirds: see the guy cowering, whimpering, begging for mercy, and drive his sword into the Roman's fat body. One day Augustus would be captured--after killing about twenty of them--and crucified atop one of the seven hills of Rome. He would take three days to die and people would come out from the city to marvel at this heroic martyr with the calm look on his handsome face. (August had always thought it would make a good movie, but could not decide who should play his part.)

He'd be playing himself on television this Saturday, featured on Howard Hart's "Hartline" as Juvenal's closest friend and adviser and . . . maybe suggest to Howard something like, "the Ralph Nader of the Church." ". . . And now I would like to introduce a man I consider the Ralph Nader of the Church, a man whom, no doubt, you have read about in the paper numerous times as the firebrand leader of Outrage, but who possesses, I found in talking to him backstage"--continues Howard Hart--"a cool demeanor and what you might call a razor-sharp analytical mind. I give you the man who has given us Juvenal, Mr. August Murray."

August didn't see why Hart had to have all those other people on: the kid and his mother, the psychiatrist, the priest--that was a lot of bullshit. Unless they were going to be there just in case.

But if he went on first, yes, they could easily keep talking for two hours. Then he could suggest he be brought back on with Juvenal next week, right, and save the standbys for some other time. Otherwise Hart wouldn't even need them.

August had enjoyed talking to Howard Hart on the phone--he had always respected the man--and was looking forward to the meeting and possible videotaping this afternoon. Hart had said they'd tape it unless he decided to go live for phone-in questions, audience participation. August hoped it would be live; there was less chance of getting edited, important words cut out. But he'd play it by ear. He wasn't worried about thinking on his feet, getting into a little give and take, with Hart playing devil's advocate to keep it lively. August was ready.

He'd have to give Bill Hill credit for coming up with the TV idea. It had surprised him at first, the man didn't appear to have the brains of a used car salesman. But by now August had analyzed Bill Hill and had a clear reading: a hanger-on type, one of those people who liked to be seen with celebrities and hang around the edge of the limelight. Fine, as long as he didn't get in the way.

Okay, things to do today, Friday, August 19:

Be at WQRD at 3:00 P.M. sharp.

Call Greg, get about twenty guys from the Gray Army lined up to be in the audience if the show was broadcast live tomorrow night. No armbands, no demonstrating; but with prepared questions in case Hart opened it up to the audience.

Try Juvenal again.

August dialed, sitting at his dad's desk in the print shop, and the snotty colored girl on the desk at Sacred Heart answered. She tried to disguise her accent, but August could tell it was her.

(Had Saint Augustine, before he was a saint, fooled around with colored girls in North Africa?)

"I called all day yesterday and he wasn't there." Like it was the girl's fault.

"And I kept telling you he wasn't, didn't I?"

"Where is he today?"

"He's on his vacation."

"On his vacation? What do you mean he's on his vacation?"

"I think I mean he went on a vacation. Isn't that what I said?"

"Where'd he go?"

"Up north somewhere."

"I don't believe you."

"I'll take a polygraph," the girl said, "and send you the results. He's not here, he picked up his suitcase and he's gone."

"When'd he pick it up?"

"I have no idea," the girl said. "There's a little three-by-five card here says, 'Juvie on vacation. Gone up north. Back eight twenty-six.' Now what else can I tell you?" She blinked at the sound of August hanging up his receiver and added, under her breath, "Motherfucker."

It was annoying, agonizing, frustrating . . . infuriating--he'd get the right word--to try to do something intrinsically meaningful and have a bunch of mindless . . . pretentious people always in the way . . .

Thinking this as he went to the front door of the shop, opened it, and picked up the Friday morning Free Press.

Thinking, he had to get Juvenal away from everybody, under wraps, so he could prepare him, condition him, get him in the right frame of mind . . . as he brought the paper back to the desk, glanced at the front page, turned it and saw, jumping out at him from , Juvenal and the girl, the girl, grinning at each other like two little kids above the headline:

Says the Woman in Juvie's Life: "He's Really a Neat Guy . . ." By Kathy Worthington Free Press staff writer

"Isn't he cute?" said Lynn. "I could eat him up." Don't be surprised at anything you read these days. Neither Lynn nor Juvenal is the least bit bashful on the subject of love and their intention to marry "once we have time to talk about it and make plans." Charlie Juvenal Lawson is the former Franciscan brother who, day by day, gains more national notoriety as mystic faith healer and the world's only known stigmatic. Or is it stigmatist? "Either is accepted," said Juvie.

"Oh, God--" August groaned. And missed what Kathy wrote about Juvie's boyish charm belying his ability to empathize, a gift that appeared to border on extrasensory perception. August missed it as his eyes dropped like a stone to:

"Lynn Faulkner, who makes her home in fashionable Somerset Park, digs cranberry crushed velvet, chrome and Waylon Jennings, was a career-minded pop-record promoter, until she met Juvie. "He's really a neat guy," said Lynn, "kind, considerate . . ."

"Noooooooooooooo!" August shrieked. "God! What are you doing to me!"

He crushed the section of the newspaper together, squeezing, squeezing with all his strength to compress it into a ball, a limp rag of paper. Then stopped and sat absolutely still, staring at the venetian blinds on the front window, hearing the faint sound of morning traffic. He began to open the ball of paper, flattening it on the desk, trying to smooth out the creases, looking for again and the picture . . .

There.

Lynn Faulkner . . . fashionable Somerset Park. What did she do to him?

Put something in his coffee, some kind of drug.

Paraded naked in front of him.

Enticed him, lured him, appealed to his libido . . . ambushed him! Assaulted his purity! Seduced him! Dragged him down to her depths!

"God, please help me," August prayed, not in a toga now, not with one of those short Roman swords either. No, with something way better than a sword right in the desk drawer. His dad's .38 caliber Smith and Wesson Commando.

Chapter
22

TWENTY-TWO FIFTY-SEVEN GOLFVIEW. There it was, Faulkner, the fourth name; upstairs. August rang. There was no response.

No one on the street or the walks leading up to the cluster of apartment buildings. Everybody away or at work or in out of the sun. He walked around to the back--or the front of the building, whichever it was--where two cement-slab patios and two balconies above looked out on the golf course and two people way off on another fairway. One balcony stripped, empty, the people obviously away. So it wasn't hers.

The other balcony was hers, with the porch furniture, August reasoned, because he knew the colored girl had lied to him. Juvenal wasn't away on vacation, he was being seduced by the little blond cunt who wasn't answering her doorbell and was up there right now "maneuvering, manipulating, contaminating him with her body, shoving it in his face"--lines for a pamphlet--"draining his will, which was innocent, unsuspecting, and tragic ally, treacherously"--check The Word Finder-- "weakened or sapped by the determined thrusting of her sex at him." Or, "the relentless thrusting."

It would never occur to August that he was sometimes dumb-lucky, that he made the right move for the wrong reason. Half right, anyway. Yes, it was Lynn's apartment. But no, there was nobody home.

To find it out he took two metal chairs from the downstairs patio, piled one on top of the other, tested them, climbed up, caught the toe of his goddamn sandal in a chair rung, fell with the chairs and hit his forehead on the cement; climbed up again, reached the balcony railing, and pulled himself over--not wasting any time now--wanting to punch a hole in the glass door with his gun butt, Christ, and shattered the whole pane, hunching his shoulders at the sound, but it was done; he slid the door open and rushed through the apartment to the bedroom, revolver ready, like he was raiding a whorehouse.

Shit.

He stood there looking around.

August had never been in a girl's apartment before. It was quiet. He felt strange. He wondered what was in here, if she had sexual objects, picturing a garter belt and a black vibrator. He began opening drawers. He looked at her panties. He looked at a box of Tampons and read the directions. He looked at bras that were so flimsy he could hold them up and see light through the cups. He found a little enema behind the bathroom door; good, she was constipated. There were jars and tubes in the bathroom bearing names like Elancyl and Ethera, which August believed were applied, somehow, to female reproductive organs, but he didn't find a garter belt or a vibrator. He went out to the front room and looked at Waylon Jennings, studying the giant face, having no idea who it was. August wanted to do something to that face. Mess it up, throw something on it. But what? His hand came up and rested on the row of pens and Magic Markers in his shirt pocket.

"There's more about Elvis," Lynn said. Then, after a few minutes, she said, "Oh, my God."

Juvie opened his eyes--"What's the matter?"--and raised his head from the towel, seeing a glare of sky and sand and the high dunes of Sleeping Bear way off where the beach curved out into Lake Michigan . . . and Lynn in the yellow bikini sitting cross-legged on a towel. She was looking down at the newspaper on her lap, the Chicago Tribune, holding one temple of her sunglasses so they wouldn't slip off.

"Something terrible happened to Waylon."

"What?"

"Poor guy. He was picked up on a dope charge. Coke. I guess possession."

"Oh." Juvie lowered his head and closed his eyes again.

"Yeah, possession," Lynn said. "One gram, that's all. They arrested him in Nashville."

"Is that a lot, a gram?"

"Hardly more than a small party, depending who your friends are. He could get fifteen years and a fifteen-thousand-dollar fine. God, one gram."

"Do you use it?"

"I have, but I wouldn't go out of my way for it. It's okay," Lynn said. "But listen, you know what I'd like to do? I mean when we have time. Go down to Luckenback, Texas."

"Okay." Juvie's eyes remained closed. He wore red swimming trunks and a glaze of suntan lotion.

"You know where I mean?"

"In the song," Juvie said. "What's there?"

"Nothing, really."

"Then what do you want to go for?"

"It's got one fireplug, one store, two houses, a shade tree, and a lot of cold beer, and you know what? Everybody's going there to see it on account of Waylon's song . . . to get back to the basics of life. If it was spring we could go down for Mud Dauber Day. It's an annual event; people go down there and drink beer and wait for the first mud dauber wasps to show up. But you know what? I like 'If You See Me Getting Smaller' better than 'Luckenback, Texas.' "

"I like 'Lucille'. . . in a bar in Toledo," Juvie said. "The place I'd like to see is Nashville."

"You ain't ever been to Nashville?" Lynn would get more down-home at the mention of it. "I'll tell you what. We go Interstate 65 to Nashville, turn right, head over to Texas and pick up 35 south to Austin and it's eighty miles to Luckenback."

"You've been there?"

"Uh-unh, but I know the way."

They ate smoked chub they bought on the dock in Leland where the fishing boats came in . . . went for a thrill ride in a dune scooter, a trip across the Sahara on the shores of Lake Michigan . . . returned to the motel and made love in the afternoon and slept in each other's arms, it was so good.

Look at it now, calmly, Lynn thought. Why should it end?

She read their horoscopes in Town & Country and felt encouraged; read his first, Aquarius, aloud, beginning with, " 'Saturn has put you through the mill the last couple of years . . . ' "