What Would Satan Do? (32 page)

The gun held by the old man in the center of the line made one of these high-volume popping/snapping sounds.  It did not go “fwang,” “kerpow,” or even “freeeeowwwnnn.”  Instead, the sound of the shot was accompanied by an intense flash – almost an explosion, really – of light.  And instead of seeing, as they no doubt expected, a gunshot victim writhing and bleeding on the floor, the old men found themselves staring at a very tall, very beautiful individual with wings.  The wings heaved backward and forward, slowly and gently, in what looked like the wing equivalent of breathing.  Satan did the licking thing again.

“Hello,” he said, and took a step forward, nudging his human body back behind him gently with the sole of his sandaled foot.

The old man in the center, who’d let his gun hand fall, now raised it up again.

“Don’t bother,” said Satan.  He held up his free hand – the other was busy holding the ice cream cone to his lips – and wind started to blow.  The old men started glancing around, this way and that, trying to figure out where the wind was coming from.  The man in the center reached up to touch the top of his head, and let out a soft, surprised grunt.  The other men turned their heads at the sound, and saw streams of dust that appeared to be coming off of their leader’s melon.  After a second, it became clear that it wasn’t dust at all.  In fact, the man’s head appeared to be disintegrating, piece by tiny piece, and blowing away in the weird, hot breeze.

“Help me!”  A panicked look came over the man’s face.  The other men stepped away.

Satan watched and ate his ice cream.  His wings continued to beat slowly.

The disintegrating man stumbled backward, his head jerking right and left as he looked to his companions.  He grabbed the arm of the man next to him.  “Help m—” but then his head had disintegrated entirely.  His body continued to move, and his hand remained gripped on the other man’s arm.  The other man jumped and shook his arm as if he’d just spotted a spider, and the hand turned into dust. 

“This is tedious,” said Satan.  There was a soft pop, and the disintegrating man exploded in a cloud of dust.  The wind subsided. 

The men stood very still, their eyes and eyebrows making them look as if someone had gone man to man with cellophane tape, taping each pair up and open.

“I’m going to get another ice cream cone,” said Satan.  “Would any of you like one?”

The old men, unsure of what they’d just witnessed, continued to stare wide-eyed at the Dark Lord of the Underworld.  The man with the walker raised his hand. 

“Ooh, good!  Chocolate, vanilla, or swirl?” asked Satan.

“Are you … an angel?”

Satan’s smile faded.  His wings drooped a little.  “Wait, you don’t want an ice cream?”

The man shook his head.

“It’s soft serve,” said Satan with a tempting lilt to his voice and a little hand flourish in the direction of the machine.

“Um…”

“Listen, you know you want one.  Just give in.”  Satan stared expectantly and then nodded to himself.  “Be right back.”

The old men watched Satan scoot over to the soft serve machine, and then spent the next few moments looking back and forth and making bewildered faces at one another. 

Satan came back with two cones, one of which had frozen yogurt piled nearly a foot high.  “Here,” he said, handing the smaller one to the man with the walker.  “I got you a swirl.”

“Um, thank you?” said the man.

“Okay.  Now.”  Satan paused to bite the curlicue swirl off the top of his dessert.  When he spoke again, it was with the consonant-free, garbled speech of someone who is attempting to eat cold ice cream without using his teeth.  “I wan kno whooz in char.”

“What?” said an old guy who had a goatee.

Satan shook his head to try to get rid of the cold.  “Brr,” he said, smiling.  He rolled his shoulders, causing his wings to kind of rotate and flutter.  “I want to know who is in charge here.”

The men turned to look at each other, and then resumed their startled staring at the angel.

Satan stuck out his tongue and rotated the cone to slurp up the melty bits that might otherwise drip down onto his hand.  He smacked his lips.  “I guess it’s none of you then?”

One of the men pointed in the direction of the doors through which El Jefe had gone earlier. 

“Right,” said Satan.  “Lead the way.” 

The man who’d singled himself out by pointing now gestured to himself and looked around, apparently confused.  The Devil raised his archangel eyebrows sarcastically and nodded, clearing up any uncertainty the man had.  The man nodded, turned, and pushed his way through the doors.  Satan followed right behind him, marching with his head sideways as he worked on his ice cream treat.  A moment later, the rest of the men fell into step behind them.

Behind the doors, the cozy restaurant décor gave way to a sterile, utilitarian hallway tiled pale green.  The group made its way silently – except for the occasional ice-cream slurping sound from the Devil – down some stairs and through a labyrinth of corridors until they came to an open doorway from which warm, yellow light streamed. 

“Here,” said the man who’d led them, half under his breath.

Satan looked back at the rest of the group, as if to confirm that this was the proper destination, and was met by several perfunctory nods.  He paused to bite a crunchy bit of the cone, and stepped inside.

The room was clearly some kind of antechamber.  There was a desk with a computer and a telephone, a couple of uncomfortable-looking chairs, and a tallish plastic tree.  More warm light streamed through a second doorway.  Satan bit off another piece of cake cone and peeked around the desk at the computer screen.

“Secretary’s out,” said a voice.  “Just come on in.”

Satan stood and peered around the edge of the doorway.  The next room was not unlike the one he was in, except there was no tree, and its computer-free desk was occupied.  Its occupant was a frail-looking skeleton of a man with translucent, liver-spotted skin and only a few wisps of snow white hair to cover his shiny dome.  He wore a dress shirt (and probably some pants, though this can’t be known for certain, since he was sitting), and his whole body quivered and trembled, making him look like he’d been awake for a week. 

The man looked up at Satan with eyes that seemed out of place – they were dark, piercing and alive.  He raised one knobby hand that seemed to have too much skin, and, with a quick jerk, motioned for the Devil to have a seat.  “Sit down, son,” said the man. 

“I want,” said Satan, popping the last bit of cone into his mouth, “to talk to you about your army.”

Chapter 40.
   
Dude, How Small Is Your Cat?

The little bell tinkled as Liam and Lola entered the guitar shop. 

“Maybe we should just go—”  Lola stopped at the sound of Raju yelling into a telephone. 

“You are talking too much!  Please explain me again, please, what the hell is going on.”  He stood behind the glass countertop, hunched over the counter, the phone pressed to his ear.  “Pinochle?  What?  I don’t understand.”  More listening.  “Ah, yes.  I am seeing this now.  But I don’t think that it’s good to dress like God.  No, no.  I don’t care.  It is bad karma.  Wery bad karma.”

Lola shot Liam an inquisitive look.  Liam shrugged and stomped off to the back room.

Raju continued his high-volume conversation.  “An army?  What you are talking about?  There is no army here.”  He waved at the racks of guitars with an affronted shake of his head.  “This does not make sense.”  He paused to listen.  “No, I don’t care.  You are wery stupid.  No, no.  This is not correct.  I am merely charming.  And you are wery tedious.”  Raju hung up abruptly, and pointed a dreamy look in Lola’s direction.  “What can I do you for?”

“Oh, I’m just waiting.  Thanks.”  She leaned over to pet an enormous cat who had slithered out from behind the counter.  “Oh, you’re a heavy one,” she said as she picked up the extra large feline.  She noticed that Raju was still staring at here.  “I love cats.”

“What a coincidence!  I love cats too.  That’s Roger and a Half,” said Raju.

“What?”

“Roger and a Half.”

Lola nodded as if she understood, but then stopped.  “Why—why did you guys name him—?”

“Roger and a Half?  Because he’s not quite as fat as two Rogers.”  He pointed behind her to another, skinnier cat perched on top of a stack of guitar cases.  “So, you like cats?  Do you have a cat?”

Lola fidgeted with a cell and then tilted it toward Raju to show him.  The photo showed what looked like a blurry hand holding a blurry flower.  Behind it, a few feet away in the frame, was a blurry gray cat. 

“Not a particularly good photo,” said Lola.  “But still.”  She smiled the affectionate smile of a pet owner who doesn’t yet have kids. 

Raju peered over her shoulder at the photo.  “I don’t see the cat.”

“He’s right there, to the side of the flower.”

“Oh, okay.  Holy shit, dude, how fucking small is your cat?”

Lola looked at the photo, then at Raju, and then at the photo again.  “No, it’s—”  She glanced at the stupid expression on Raju’s face, and snapped both her mouth and the phone shut.

“I think,” said Raju, “that your chakras might be kind of fucked up, but I might need to get a closer look at your root chakra to be sure.”

Lola smiled a sexy, disarming smile at Raju as she leaned over the counter, like she had something to tell him. 

“Raju...?” she said.

He smiled at her, dumbass that he was.

She grabbed his whole ear with her left hand, yanking his head down and forcing him to lean over.  Then she grabbed his arm and twisted it up, behind his back, and dragged him out from behind the counter. 

“Uncle!” he said.  “Uncle, uncle you witch!!”

She ignored this and walked Raju over to a wall.  As they walked toward the wall, Lola did not slow down.  Instead, she sped up, apparently on a collision course. 

Raju’s head hit the wall with a nasty thud.

“Ow!” he said.  “What the shit?”

But Lola wasn’t done.  She tweaked Raju’s arm and dragged him backward from the door.

“Ready?” she said.

“Uncle!  Damnit you crazy witch!  I said ‘Uncle!’  Did you not hear me?  You must release me already!  Uncle! Uncle! Uncle!”  Lola, however, was apparently unfamiliar with the unwritten rules of Uncle.  The thieving whore.

“I know that ‘root chakra’ means ‘vagina,’” she gave his arm an extra little bit of torque. 

Liam came out of the back room with a black backpack on one shoulder.  Lola let Raju go, a slightly guilty expression on her face.  Raju sprang out of her arms, propelled, presumably, by the force of his arm springing back to a less improbable position.  He rolled his neck and shook his arms out, like a boxer approaching the fighting ring, and then moved to stand behind Liam.

“Witch,” he said.

“Get your hands off me,” said Liam. 

“Okay,” said Raju.  “Oh, Festus called.  Said he’s over at some church.  And there’s military vehicles and guys with gas masks.”

Liam and Lola exchanged glances.  They spoke in unison.  “What?”

“Festus – that was Festus on the phone when you came in.”

“You talked to him?” said Lola.

“Well, yeah, you know?  He called.  I answered the phone.  We talked.  Pretty normal stuff, really.”

“When?” asked Liam.

“Just now.”

“
That’s
who you were talking to just now?” asked Lola.

“What did he say?” asked Liam, he swung his backpack up and set it on the counter with a clunk.

“Vell…”

“Enough with the accent, already.”

Raju cleared his throat.  “Well,” he said, “I think he was kind of excited.  He said, ‘Hello’, and then—”

“Where is he?” asked Liam.

“Oh, holy shit!  That’s a gun!  Why do you have a gun?  What else do you keep in that backpack?”  Raju reached for the front flap and tried to peer inside.  Liam slapped his hand. 

“Focus, Raju.”  The gun made clicky gun noises as Liam held it up and checked it.  He put it back in his bag and slung it over his shoulder.  “Where did Festus say he was?”

“At a church.  Or some kind of stadium.  It was a little bit confusing.”

Liam and Lola exchanged glances.  “The TV preacher,” said Lola.

“What’s his name?” asked Liam.  “Camdon?”

“Got me.”

“Okay.  That’s where I’m headed.”

“Liam, wait,” said Lola.  “We need to call Boehner and let him—”

“You do that,” said Liam.  And he left.

Chapter 41.
          
What Would Festus Do?

Festus had made his call – hadn’t got Liam of course, but he had tried.  And that was the best he could do.  Now, he was on his own.  Alone.  In this giant friggin’ church filled with madmen paramilitary cowboys.  And real military dudes.  And that guy from TV.  And lots of gas masks.  It sucked.

Festus sighed and slowly spun around, taking in his surroundings.  Clothes, props, desk, telephone – what to do?  What he wanted to do was just to leave; to get the hell out of here.  But he didn’t think he had much of a shot at getting out of the church, let alone past all the soldiers surrounding the building.  He figured he should probably stay put, and wait for the cavalry to arrive.  But – he thumbed through the costumes, lifting the sleeve of a coarse brown cassock, rubbing the fabric between his fingers – he had zero confidence that his message would actually get from Raju to Liam. 

He lifted the sleeve of the cassock and looked closer at it.  It was made of a rough material, its edges worn and frayed.  Jesus would have worn something like this, he thought.  He stopped, and let the sleeve fall from his hand.  Festus now knew exactly what he should do – what he
had
to do.  He tore the cassock off its hanger, and put it on.

Back in the auditorium, Cadmon had gone, replaced by a man and woman decked out in shiny silver, tassels, and topaz.  The man had a guitar, and the couple stood in front of a microphone, swaying with the stilted, awkward rhythm of two white people who – culturally and politically – were as far from the streets of Motown as it is possible to be.  They sang a duet with disturbing overtones about the woman being married to the Lord.