Waiting for the Galactic Bus (22 page)

Blazing in the light, the two trumpets lifted in a stirring voluntary. One broke off while the other slid up into a high-flirting riff —

— that bolted Charity straight up in bed. The face she’d recognized for one moment under that silly blond wig was unmistakable. The music was like
Star Wars,
but only one guy in the whole world blew a horn that way.

Cut to a close-up on the angel.

“WOODY!”

He peered out of the screen, surprised and delighted. “Char! Hey, this is a real kick, ain’t it?”

“I didn’t know you were dead, Woody.”

“Came as a complete shock to me, too.”

“What’s the wig for?” Charity wondered. “Not like you at all.”

“These people dig blonds. They’re Aryans or something.”

“Woody, we’re Aryans.”

“No fooling?” Woody considered it. “Didn’t get us much, did it?”

“Not much.” Charity chilled with the memory of Roy’s blood raids that brought him to that balcony. “Don’t let on you see me, okay?”

“Okay.” Woody peered into the bedroom. “Great place you got there.”

Charity hiked the sheet higher around her cleavage, grateful that Randy Colorad was out. He wanted to make love all the time. That was okay at first, but lately she’d taken to watching television over his shoulder because even the commercials were more interesting. Him and his exercise machine and his twenty-four-hour freshness soap. Nothing was fresh about Randy; even his sweat was boring. She’d always thought someone glamorous like that —

No. She
never
thought, that was the problem. In her whole dumb-ass life she never thought for one minute. About anything, goddamnit, pardon her lang — no, the hell with that. Don’t pardon anything. Dumb-ass. Had to
see
what Roy was before she caught on. Had to die to realize what she’d missed in Woody Barnes.

“I’m sorry you’re dead, but it’s nice to have friends around. I mean — oh, damn, Woody, I miss you.”

“I miss you too,” he confessed. “Only hung around the Tabernacle because you were there. Too late now, I guess.”

“I wish it wasn’t,” she yearned.

“I never had anything to give you. And you were always for Roy.”

“That’s over.” The finality of the sound surprised Charity.

“Well, look at him now,” Woody glanced out of shot. “He’s got it all now.”

Yeah, Roy and me, we got it all. Our real religion, like Jake said. I guess he should know.
“One thing you can do real good here is learn, Woody. When you get Topside again, you tell them I’ve seen the pits, and they were smart to make you an angel. You’re a good person. I mean the best.” Charity’s eyes smarted with sudden tears. “I just wish to hell —”

“Hey!” Woody’s bewigged head jerked aside at something offscreen. Behind him, the crowd noise had changed to something shocked and then dangerous, a huge gasp, then a roar for blood. “Char, they shot him. Somebody shot Roy.”

As Charity gaped at the screen, the live event cut to a news anchorwoman with the blankest expression since Mount Rushmore.

“Good afternoon, I’m Nancy Noncommit — here’s what’s happening. An as yet unidentified gunman has wounded Leader Roy Stride in the middle of his apotheosis. No details yet, we’ll have that story live — after this.”

CUT
TO
FEMININE
-
HYGIENE
COMMERCIAL
. (Music: poignant violins. The honey-haired young woman with the heart-shaped face presses a letter to her breast.)

SOFT
,
INTIMATE
FEMININE
VOICE
-
OVER
: “There are days when nothing should interfere with feeling like a woman —”

“STICK IT, BEAVER!” Charity shot from the bed, grabbing for the channel switch. All the channels were the same commercial.

Cut back to the balcony. Roy’s face, dull with shock, looking straight at her in huge close-up.

“Charity,” he croaked. “They shot me.”

— and pull back to reveal him holding his bloody sleeve. “Don’t worry, it’s just a flesh wound.” Roy winced and staggered — kind of actorish, Charity felt. “I’ll take care of it myself. We’re gonna get married. You and me, just like I promised. Listen to these people. Did you see? I’m the Leader! And you’re... you’re going to be...”

She didn’t know what to say, just wanted to hide. “Mrs. Leader?”

“Where are you?” Roy strained. “You’re gonna share all this with me. Where the hell are you?”

Charity panicked and blanked. “I don’t know the address.” With a sick rush of fear, she saw again her child self aged with that horrible knowledge in the split second before her head splattered open like a broken egg.
And I don’t want you to know it. Talk about a good time for a commercial
 
—

— and cut with blessed serendipity to a well-groomed, smiling young Japanese spokesman: “Three-point-nine financing, five hundred cash back on the new Wasabe XL with underpaid Japanese engineering. You only
thought
you won World War II.”

Charity dove for the remote switch and turned the set off. “What’s the use of being dead? It’s just like being alive, only worse.”

“Mum?” Simnel waited, polite and impassive, in the bedroom entrance. “A Mr. Veigle called. An agent, apparently lives here in the building. Naturally I told him he had a wrong number. I’m not sure he believed me.”

Charity was in no mood for this. “Make him believe you. Who’s this Vague anyway?”

“Veigle, mum. A very powerful agent. They say he gets ten percent of the Prince. I’m sure that’s a bit strong.”

Charity turned away, wrapping the sheet around her. She felt cold. “I don’t want to see anyone, Simmy. Anyone! Understand?”

    24   

Romanticism as theology: Is
there hope for the
spiritual drunk?

Gorgeous; the million-dollar wound that looked spectacular and didn’t hurt much. Roy surveyed the dramatic stain spreading over his shirt sleeve between shoulder and elbow. The whole thing was a beautiful movie, better than Bronson or Eastwood, and Charity saw it.

“Drumm, will it show on color TV?”

“If it doesn’t, we can touch it up.”

They were momentarily alone just inside the balcony doors, guards three deep in the hall, the crowd screaming outside as the assassin was torn like an unclean thing from their seething mass by Paladin guards and dragged up the marble steps to his doom.

“You bring that sumbitch here,” Roy seethed. “I want him to see me to my face.”

Click! “Instantly, Leader.”

He felt like the next thing to — no, he
was
God now, at least here. The Devil didn’t seem interested — Roy couldn’t figure that at all — but the rest sure loved him all right. They’d follow him.

He’d find Charity, tuck Florence away for rainy days... he had the whole thing knocked. Even Topside got out of his way. Damn if one of those angels didn’t look like... No. No way. Woody was alive. A live nothing back in Plattsville.

Roy gazed at Wembley’s picture in the space where his would hang in nobler majesty. Secretly he wished the portrait could be bare-chested, but that wouldn’t be dignified. Respectability warred with inclination and won. But still... maybe a sword and lots of fur like Conan.

Drumm entered, followed by three guards and a shabbily dressed prisoner, whom they sent sprawling at Roy’s feet.

“Get up, motherfucker. I want to get a good look at you.”

Roy realized he should have kept the man on the floor. Middle-aged and schoolteacherish, he wasn’t tall but seemed so because of a determined dignity.

“What are you?” Roy wondered. “Besides a lousy shot. You look like some kind of college perfessor.”

“I was a teacher, yes,” the prisoner admitted. “May I have my glasses back?”

Drumm laughed unpleasantly. “Old man, you won’t be around long enough to need them. Name?”

“Ernst Stabler.” There was a trace of High German in the accent.

“I remember him, Leader Stride,” Drumm explained. “Stabler: fled Germany when Hitler came to power. Under suspicion as a Communist in the U.S. during the fifties. An enemy.”

“I was a political writer.” Stabler tried to focus his deficient sight on Roy, one eye already closing from a well-aimed blow. There was another bruise on his chin. His clothes were badly torn.

“You got guts, old man,” Roy said with thin admiration. “Just stupid. You’re gonna apologize. Say you’re sorry for shooting at me.”

“I am sorry,” Stabler admitted easily. “Sorrier than you think. More than that, I was totally wrong.”

“How about that?” Roy smirked to Drumm. “Even the losers are with us.”

Stabler managed to stand like a granite statue even bleeding and handcuffed. “You misunderstand. The bullet only dignified you.”

“Hey look, scumbag, I got things to do and people to see. Roaches like you I just spray, you got it?”

“The image is apt,” Stabler said with his quiet academic precision. “In the fifties I wrote that fascism was a propensity of the schizoid German mind. Not so. It is universal as influenza and as tenacious. When healthy resistance wears down, you will appear. For a time, Mr. Stride. Because it is not only the power you need but the cosmic drama. Ask your resident dramatist, Drumm. That truly was the romantic German part of it. But even the Germans realized, if only subconsciously, that their own mythology ends in defeat and loss.
Gotterammerung
.”

A snap of Roy’s fingers and his Luger was fetched from the desk by an obedient guard. Roy leveled the weapon at Stabler. “You gonna tell me in straight talk, old man.” Stabler didn’t flinch. “You will come to it in time, as I did. As Hitler did. Until then, every wise decision will be nullified by two of sheer stupidity and indulgence. It must be so, and you know why it must be so.”

“You —” The son of a bitch made him so mad, Roy began to shake. He yanked back the pistol slide and pointed the weapon again. “You got five seconds to live. Talk
straight.”

It was unnerving; Stabler didn’t even blink. “You even have the wrong symbol, Mr. Stride. Your sign is not the fist of power, it is Florence Bird.”

Aiming the pistol between those steady, knowing eyes that stripped him naked, Roy had a red-sick moment of recognition.
This
was his real enemy, not the Jews or blacks or any of the easily visible targets the Paladins held up to the mob outside. This one here. The ones who knew and had the power to describe him; who made him a white nigger, only one step up from the black ones and no different at all when it came to money or getting fired first. The ones who got to be officers, got the best jobs and the best cars and women; who never had to work for power but always got it somehow. Not only the inferiors would go but these motherfuckers, too. Before anyone else. Now. Because of the answer in his hand.
You don’t look down on me.

But they did.

Roy fired. Stabler’s head snapped back, spraying blood and flesh. The rest of him went down like a pile of rags. Drumm stepped over the mess, unconcerned.

“Get rid of that,” he ordered.

When the guards were gone with the remnant of Stabler, Drumm adjusted his toupee and reassured Roy. “Don’t worry, my Leader. The rug is washable.”

“How’d he know about Florence?”

“I don’t know, sir, but —”

“If he knows, who else does, huh? She’s my private business.” Roy turned on Drumm, shaking with rage and the exhilaration of a new kind of power. Blooded and blood drawn. He’d never felt anything like it, not even in good sex.

“And now possibly the business of others,” Drumm reflected prudently. “Especially after you marry Miss Stovall.”

Roy dropped the Luger on his desk. “You got Florence hid good?”

“Trust me, Leader. But we must be prepared. If respectability is the daughter of morality, her jealous sister is blackmail.”

Roy understood. More than respectability’s sister, blackmail was her shadow, especially now. He really needed Florence tonight, but that would be asking for it. Where the hell was Charity? The high-rise district wasn’t all that big they couldn’t find her.

House to house if they had to.

“We must be prepared,” Drumm cautioned. “A scenario, orchestrated circumstances. We must make the disclosure work for us. That will be my personal operation. Trust me.”