Waiting for the Galactic Bus (24 page)

Outdoor shot of a sleepy-eyed Paladin by a bullet-pocked wall, fondling his rifle. Several bodies lay at the foot of the wall.

TELEREPORTER
: “We understand that these people resisted interrogation.”

PALADIN
: “That is correct. I asked them if they knew where Char was, and they said they was Catholics and didn’t give a big rat’s (bleep), and I shot them as per the orders that I was given.”

TELEREPORTER
: “Do you usually have this difficulty with interrogation subjects?”

PALADIN
(stroking his rifle absently): “Sometimes, yes, sir. Like this morning someone said he knew where Char was gone to but we was already shooting him.”

TELEREPORTER
: “Did your superiors consider this hasty?”

PALADIN
(frowns in thought, takes a slip of paper from pocket and reads it): “We cannot be blamed for patriotism, but we are working to upgrade interrogation procedures.”

And back to Nancy Noncommit: “One thing is certain, Char is difficult to find, especially when you can’t get good help. Paladin search parties, ranging across Below Stairs, usually find themselves back at the Leader’s Palace. This is seen by Minister Drumm as the work of dissidents. Others suggest the use of a compass.”

So it went. Charity lounged in her tub, nibbled lox and admitted a select few neighbors from the building, like the past-life therapist from Venice, California, who volunteered to help her work through historical personalities allegedly seething in Charity’s subconscious.

“She says I could’ve once been Cleopatra,” she confided to Simnel over a hand of gin rummy, “but she says that’s a very hard life to work through.”

“Usually means there’s a waiting list.” Simnel laid down a deuce on the playing board across the white plateau of bubbles that encased Charity to the shoulders. “Cleo is very popular; never gets a moment’s rest. Why not try for Calpurnia?”

“Who?”

“Caesar’s wife. As advertised, above reproach.”

Charity picked up the deuce. “I don’t know. Liz Taylor was so great in the movie. Gin.”

“GIN?” Caught with a ruinous handful of points, Simnel forgot himself. “You larcenous wench, you
can’t
have gin this soon unless you’re cheating. And you shuffled.”

“Sure. Gin.”

“You’re not playing the game, mum.”

“It ain’t playing the game. It’s winning. Gin.”

“If I may say so, Miss Stovall, you never learned that Below Stairs.”

“No. I learned that being poor in Plattsville.”

The intercom phone buzzed softly. Charity yawned. “Get it downstairs, Simmy.”

Simnel withdrew to do his office; shortly thereafter the bathroom phone beeped again. “It’s Mr. Veigle again. About business, he says. Wants to come up. He lives here in the building, mum.”

“Oh... why not,” Charity decided, thoroughly bored. “It beats wrestling with Colorad, which I want you to tell him when he comes in that I have a headache.”

“Mr. Colorad won’t be back until this evening.”

“It’s a bad headache, it’ll last.”

When Simnel ushered in Eddie Veigle and added more bubble bath, Charity’s head in its red shower cap looked like a maraschino on whipped cream. Veigle struck her as somehow sinister; even in the hot bath he made her feel clammy cold. She greeted him with a noncommittal “Hi.”

“No.” The bulky visitor shook his brilliantined head. “Absolutely not. We build the image from the first. You’re a nice girl from Pottsville.”

“Plattsville.”

“Never mind. We’re creating a product. The word is ‘How do you do, Mr. Veigle?’ Your parents were poor but they taught you good manners.”

“They never taught me anything,” she contradicted truthfully. “They didn’t even care if I did my homework or not. Look, I’m doing you a favor just letting you in. How’d you find me, anyway?”

“I’m a businessman,” Veigle said flatly. “We always know more than the government. And I live here in the building. Word gets around.”

Eddie Veigle was moon-faced, bespectacled and deceptively benign, a fat man in a tasteful, perfectly tailored double-breasted gray suit. Next to Veigle, Ronald Reagan looked seedy. His nails were manicured, not one glossy black hair strayed out of place, not even the short gray ones around his ears. He smiled a great deal — just that, Charity discovered quickly, the smile could go bleak and cold as the moor around Dane’s castle even as he beamed at her.

“Not even the Paladins know where I am.”

“Bet your buns they didn’t; not till I got the scenario worked out.” Veigle drew a satin-upholstered stool close to the bath and rested his ample buttocks on it. “But they do now.”

“Huh?” Charity sat up so fast she had to scoop in extra bubbles for modesty. “SIM-MY!”

“Because now is the right time for you to be found.” Veigle inspected the shine on his nails. “Don’t worry, you’ll make a mint. Wait’ll you hear what I’ve worked out.”

Charity felt suddenly very afraid.

“What’s the matter, kid? You look like you just lost your last option.” Veigle leaned closer, solicitous but still oddly menacing. “The scenario’s a winner. First the book, then the movie. That’s why we ran the lifestyle segment on you.”

“That wasn’t me.” She needed to escape from him. The vague threat of him filled the whole bathroom. “That was mostly bullshit.”

“Look, baby, we’re not amateurs. We used the best actress we could find. We had to to get that boondock accent of yours. The dream is what they’ll buy.”

Charity felt herself trembling in the warm, sudsy water. If he called the Paladins, they’d be here any minute, the same ones that killed the little girl. “I can’t write any book. I wasn’t good in English.”

“Honey, it’s a package,” Veigle told her as if tutoring a backward child. “I got ten ghostwriters screaming for this assignment. Title alone can’t miss.
American Dream.”

They had the rags to riches, he explained; that was a natural, he loved it, but... getting a little, you know, tired. The package needed something else. Market studies showed greater impact when a spiritual element was included.

“That’s it A spiritual rags to riches.” Veigle’s oil and honey tones enriched with revelation. “Look at Colson after Watergate: found God in prison. How many sales? TV movie. Larry Flynt of
Hustler
magazine: up to his kishkas in a lawsuit, saw the light on a plane trip.
I
FOUND
GOD
AT
35,000
FEET
. The drunks and druggies who fell from the big time and fought their way back, always with a book and a movie coming out of it. Goodness is admirable,” that deep, insinuating voice told Charity, “but the fall-down is prime time. Jim and Tammy Bakker struggling to be brave on camera. Even the highbrows watched. They made jokes about it, but they watched. Drama, Char!”

Of the names he rattled off, Charity remembered only Reverend and Mrs. Bakker. She’d liked the PTL ministry on TV. He seemed like a nice man, but someone ought to teach his wife how to put on her makeup.

“Now do you get the picture?” Veigle urged. “This is high concept. Every one of those stories was a hit book or a boffo flick. Virtue is nice and sweet, but pain — the fall and redemption are the drama, the money in the bank. And you, doll face, are a mint. I want you to sign with me now.”

“Pardon, mum,” Simnel barely edged through the open door with a polite knock. “Mr. Colorad is home early after all.”

“Great. I really need that. Mr. Vague here —”

“Veigle, baby.”

“He says my story is the American dream.”

“American dreaming has a high sugar content,” Simnel observed, fussing with a shelf of towels. “Spiritual junk food.”

“Simnel, I love ya!” Veigle boomed. “Always good for a zinger.” The grin petrified as he turned back to Charity. “Now listen, kid —”

“I’m home, lover.” Randy Colorad bounded into the bathroom in candy-striped bikini briefs. “Hey, Eddie, what’s going down?” He stripped quickly and slithered into the tub. As always, the lighting went commercial bright to accommodate him.

Veigle groaned. “Christ, it’s Tennis Anyone. Don’t splash on the suit, okay?”

“Miss me?” Randy leered at Charity.

“No. I have a headache. Stay on your own side of the tub. I’m busy. Simnel” — a meaningful glance she hoped Veigle missed — “I’d like the kosher special for lunch and put a rush on it.”

“Kosher special. Very good, mum.” Simnel modestly eclipsed himself.

“Quit futzing around,” Veigle snapped. “I’m talking mega-bucks. Got the contract in my pocket.”

“I’m not sure about my future plans,” Charity hedged. “I may have to move real quick.”

“Char, when you sign with me and this deal goes down, you’ll have a pad like this for every day of the week. Listen to this story,” Veigle persuaded. “Nice American girl from a small town in the American heartland dies in the middle of her first boff, right? Damned with her lover, Roy Stride, a nobody from nowhere who rises to become a leader of his people Below Stairs.” Veigle’s organ tones began to sound like a coming attraction in Dolby. “Alone, terrified, she flees across the bleak landscape of damnation — lotsa special effects — one breathtaking escape after another. In color, score by Korngold.”

“Oh, shit,” breathed the mesmerized Randy. “That is wonderful.”

“Just wonderful? It’s fucking dynamite. And all the while... Are you getting this, Char?”

She smiled demurely. “I’m starting to.”

Veigle’s voice softened with pathos. “All the while, Roy searches for his high school sweetheart. Pain nothing, wounds nothing, triumph dust and ashes without her. Without...”

“Without the world in his arms,” Randy offered, totally caught up in the magic.

Veigle grudged Randy something like admiration. “That’s good. You ought to write jacket copy. The world in his arms.” He savored the words, rising, uplifted by the pure helium of his vision. “A best-seller book, a miniseries. A forty share on BSTV.”

“I don’t
wanta
get rescued or anything!” Charity wailed.

“Say what?” Veigle blinked, brought back to a world not in anyone’s arms. “You’re kidding.”

“I don’t wanta get saved or shot on film or any other way, which it’s very easy to do around here even dead. As for Roy and the one time —
once
in the tacky old White Rose Motel — I had more fun playing gin with Simmy. Now will you please get out of here so’s I can get dressed?”

“You’re not thinking positively.” Veigle took a folded contract out of an inner pocket.

“I am thinking of getting out of here and I am not signing any stupid contract.”

“Yes, you are.” Veigle speared her attention on one pudgy forefinger. It was very white, white as the rest of his skin, bloodless pale. Everyone was dead here, but under his manicure and hair comb, Veigle
looked
it. “Listen, you are nobody until I make you somebody, you understand? You don’t do a thing without me. Nobody’ll look at you twice without packaging. You’re his sweetheart, his true love —”

“The hell I am!”

“Listen to him, Char.” Randy wriggled closer under the water. “He knows the business.”

“I’m sick of the business and everybody trying to give it to me,” Charity raged in a spray of water and bubbles. She found Randy’s rump by Braille and applied a foot to it. “Get out of here, you horny seal!”

“But I want to hear the end of the story,” Randy pleaded. “It’s gripping.”

Veigle’s voice dropped to a husky whisper. “I was just coming to it. The two of you, success hollow without true love, Lazarus at the feast, and then finding each other at last. I see the shot already: both of you on an empty, lonely street late at night. You turn and see him a block away. He turns. Slowly you recognize each other. You move toward each other, faster and faster. Close on him, close on you as the music rises up in the kind of triumph only Korngold can write — the soundtrack alone will go platinum. Two American kids who went all the way down and up again. Underdogs who stumbled, but even after death came from behind to win.”

“Oh, shit, Eddie, that’s —” Words threatened to fail Randy Colorad. “That’s more than good. It’s
profound.”

“And about as real as you are,” Charity seethed, near violence herself. “Lordy, would I love a little real. Even a roach in the kitchen.”

“No, you wouldn’t.” Veigle shook his head, sure of himself. “You never did. The world is made up of losers like you who just go on losing. How much did you ever pay for a look at one more? You wanted the prime-time glitz like the rest of the grunions. You begged for it with your snotty little nose pressed up against the screen. Don’t kid yourself: without me, without the buildup, you’re not even a thirty-second spot on late night.”

“I don’t
want
 
—”

“Who cares what you want, you little twat?
We’re going to make money out of you!
It’s inevitable, so relax and enjoy it.”

At this tense juncture, Drumm shouldered through the bathroom door followed by an armed Paladin big enough to have been manufactured by the GM truck division, Simnel hovering in their wake. Charity’s heart sank. Her goose was cooked. Furthermore, she was running out of bubbles.

“At last, Miss Stovall!” Drumm flourished. “My respects and my regrets for your trouble. If these people have harmed you —”

“Sorry, mum,” Simnel apologized. “They forced their way in.”

“Can we talk without the gun?” Charity appealed. “How’d you get past security?”

“We persuaded’em, ma’am.” The lumbering guard ogled the receding froth over Charity’s bosom. “My name’s Roy, too. Roy Earl Holub from Yazoo City, Mississippi, and I’m pleased to make your acquaintance. I’d do anything for the Leader.”

“If you’ll dress, Miss Stovall, we’ll escort you to —”

“Hold it, Drumm,” Veigle butted in, waving his contract. “She signs with me first. Favor for favor.”

“Roy Earl.” Drumm motioned to the guard. “Some persuasion for Mr. Veigle.”

The rifle trained on Eddie Veigle. He went, if possible, even paler, wilting down onto the stool. “Now, that’s not fair. Who tipped you she was here?”

“Fair is what right-thinking Americans say it is,” Drumm snapped. “Miss Stovall will have no need of your services.”