Waiting for the Galactic Bus (34 page)

They dropped into two empty seats at a vacant table. “Oh, Woody — where we’ve been and what we’ve seen. Can we live with it?”

Woody laced his fingers with hers, still delighted with the reality of her next to him. “It wasn’t your usual vacation. But what’s so bad, Char? I’ve seen heaven and you’ve seen hell, and they’re just what? Common sense, funny and horrible with a lot of bullshit thrown in, just like the six o’clock news.”

When the adrenaline rush of excitement passed, both of them slumped with exhaustion, still holding on to each other. “Tell you what I can’t do,” Charity allowed on sober reflection. “Can’t go back to the tabernacle.”

“Not hardly.”

That kind of faith was simply outworn. The revival-tent gyrations of Purdy Simco would rouse no more fervor in either of them than a storm-window commercial.

“Maybe we can be Unitarians.”

Charity knew little of the breed. “What do they believe in?”

“Can’t say for sure,” Woody admitted, “but I don’t think they want to kill anyone.”

“I’m for that.” Charity inhaled the ambrosial aroma of broiling burgers. “We got any money? I’m star —” She broke off mid-syllable at sight of the two familiar figures at the serving counter; this she had not figured on. “Woody, is that who it looks like?”

“Sure,” he confirmed, quite used to miracles now. “Just came along to say goodbye.”

Well, she had a new concept of normal now herself. Charity welcomed the sight of Milt Kahane, bouncing with more life than most live people she knew, charging down at their table laden with shakes and burgers, Essie Mendel in tow. “Hey, Char! Quite a show, huh?”

Charity blinked at him. “Can I ask a dumb question?”

Milt struck a chairman-of-the-board attitude. “I suppose you’re wondering why we’re here.”

“Just stopped off on our way Topside,” Essie twittered, opening her cheeseburger with the curiosity of an Egyptologist. “May my family never hear of this.”

“I’m giving trafe lessons.” Milt attacked his Big Mac with gusto. “You believe this woman has never been in McDonald’s or Burger King? Life in the fast-food lane, lover. Try the shake.”

Essie took an experimental bite and then sipped judicially at the vanilla shake. “The shake is nice. The burger kind of sticks in my throat. Maybe it’s guilt. Finish it, Char.”

Charity dove gratefully at the food. “What about your boyfriend in Accounting?”

“I wouldn’t cry,” Essie said primly. “Didn’t I wait long enough for him? In a hundred years he’ll still be going home to his mother. Which reminds me, Milton. I want to keep kosher when my parents come to visit, they’ll expect. And furniture, leave the selection to me. I saw a really beeiootiful cream leather in an Ultimate Rise ad, really classy, and Topside we wouldn’t have trouble keeping it clean, am I right? Speaking of clean, trust me, you wouldn’t go wrong letting me pick out a few nice clothes for you, Milton. God maybe can get away with ratty jeans, he’s eccentric, but you are still on the way up, and they don’t do anything for your character or your position as an angel.”

“What?” Charity choked on a mouthful. “Milt, you’re a what?”

“An archangel,” Essie announced with a death lock on Milt’s arm. “My fiance, the Right Hand of God.”

“Oh, hell.” Milt just looked embarrassed. “They commissioned me after Beirut. Ninety-day wonder. Big deal.”

“Anyway, people respect what they see.” Essie was not to be deterred. “And an archangel in skuzzy clothes, what will they think? I don’t keep a decent house? If you ask
me,
Milton, assimilation is one thing and plain sloppy is another. I wouldn’t say a word if you want to look like a nebbish day laborer, but —”

Through all of which, Milt’s tolerant smile grew slightly strained.’The next time I see something cute, please let it be a car.”

“Hey, Milt.” Charity noticed that both he and Essie were paling, losing natural tone like turning down the color on a TV set. “What’s happening to you?”

“Oh.” Essie jumped as if she’d spilled something on herself. “Milton, I think we have to go.”

“I guess. Semper fi, Barnes. See you both not too soon.” He rippled his trumpet valves. “Essie, let’s make a memorable exit for the underpriviledged Wasps of Plattsville.”

McDonald’s customers, never used to the extraordinary in any sense, were rocked to their roots by Milt’s piercing cavalry charge played triple forte as Essie bowed gracefully to the house.

“I want to thank all the little people,” she effused, blowing kisses. “The technicians, the grips, my aunts in Hadassah —”

“And for your sterling support of the Jewish Defense League.” Milt took his bow. “Which helped us this year to blow up more Lebanese and Palestinians than ever before.
Shalom havarim,
and for our final impression of the evening, something in your own ballpark: a televangelist’s bank account.”

With a final wave to Woody and Char, they simply vanished.

One woman ran gibbering for the door, but that was extreme. Another customer said aloud it was probably just a publicity stunt for the new shopping mall on the Interstate. It was all done with mirrors, and they’d seen David Copperfield vanish the Statue of Liberty on TV. Just they didn’t know Woody and Charity hung out with Jews, you know? They went back to eating.

“Know what I’ll miss?” Charity mumbled through a mouthful. “I’ll bet there’s not one place in this whole damn town where you can get good Brie or smoked salmon, something you can really taste... Woody? What’s wrong? You look —”

He was staring through the front window, the happiness washed out of his eyes. Charity turned to see what it was and went cold. The wraith framed in the restaurant window stared back at them, then passed out of sight.

Woody got up, tight and quiet. “Come on, Char.”

She was suddenly afraid for both of them. “No. I don’t want to see him. He’s
sick,
Woody.”

“He saw us.” Woody picked up his trumpet case. “I don’t want him hanging over our heads.”

Like Damocles,
Charity thought numbly, following Woody.

The night air was chill with the mist seeping along Main. Charity shivered. Woody took off his jacket and slipped it around her shoulders. They saw Roy a few doors down, leaning against the tabernacle window.

“Woody, I don’t —”

He led her firmly on toward the desolate figure in the torn, fouled uniform, now a sardonic comment on the tragedy of Roy. From his attitude, face in his hands, Charity thought he was weeping, but no. When he raised his head, there was light enough from the streetlamp to know that those eyes would never weep again. They were the dry-scorched exhaustion after the last weeping of the world.

“I won,” Roy told them. “They couldn’t hold me. I can stay here if I want or go back if I want. The first sumbitch in the history of the
world
can go anywhere I want. I got it all.” The swaggering tone softened with a note of pleading. “Come back with me, Charity.”

Revolted, she didn’t want to touch him, as much pity as she felt. “I can’t, Roy.”

“Shit you can’t.” Roy’s eyes, dangerous and a little mad, slid to Woody. To Charity, they were the most frightening thing about him. “You got lucky. You caught me off guard in the club. Things’ll be different when I go back.”

“We can’t go back,” Woody told him quietly. “Char can’t. She’s alive.”

Roy’s crafty grin went colder. “I can take her.”

“Why?” Charity blurted. “You don’t want me. I
saw
what you want. I was there, I saw it on TV, again and again. You telling me how it would be, while a little girl got her head blown off.”

“There’s always blood at the beginning of a new order, got to be. Cleaning house.”

“That baby was me, Roy.”

He didn’t understand. “You crazy? I was there; just a little Jew kid —”

“She was me.”
The passion propelled her closer to Roy, and the clarity of the next thought surprised her. “Because if it wasn’t, it wasn’t anyone.”

Roy pushed himself away from the window; the act seemed difficult for him. He wobbled as if both legs had gone to sleep. “Look, I ain’t got much time.” Even his voice sounded dry, coming from a long distance. “Have you seen it? Have you seen it all? The
nothing.”
Roy stared beyond the fog. “Just space and balls of rock, out and out and on and on forever and nobody, nothing out there to make us mean anything... Stop. Please, stop.”

They edged back from him. He was a dead man come back for something after his own funeral.

“Come on, Charity.” Roy reached for her. “I don’t belong here no more.”

She knew he was right. Nowhere in life, nowhere real.

“All those voices,” Roy whispered. “All those lousy fuckin books, they’re in my
head
and they won’t shut up. They make me know things — STOP!”

Charity yearned from her heart, “I wish to God I could help you, Roy. But I can’t.”

“Don’t shit me with that God stuff!” The words came out half snarl, half despair. “I seen God and the Devil. Couple of wise-ass wimps, that’s all. But they never showed me Jesus Christ. They knew they couldn’t sell me a phony Jesus Christ.”

“I saw him,” Woody said. He felt a pity, too, but even that was running out. “You wouldn’t buy him either. He looks like an Arab. Come on, Char.”

Roy lurched toward them. If his coordination was poor, nothing diminished the danger of him. “You ain’t taking Charity. I got it made back there, anything I want. What she gonna do with a dumb shit horn player can’t make a dime?”

“She’s going to live,” Woody said. “That’s more than you can cut.”

“You gonna stop me?” Roy drew the small ceremonial dagger from his belt. Light glinted from the honed edge. His laughter was a fading echo. “What you gonna do, Barnes, kill me?”

Woody moved between Roy and Charity. Roy slashed suddenly with the knife. Woody grabbed for his wrist but the movement was too quick. Woody felt the hot sting of the blade across his upthrust palm. He blinked at it; the blade should have cut deep but there was no more than a scratch.

“Woody —” Charity saw what was happening before he did. Roy was fading, piece by piece like bits taken at random from a jigsaw puzzle, not so much disappearing as becoming less defined from the night around him. “Look at him...”

Woody saw now. Poised with the knife ready to come up, Roy was only half in the real world, his very image being washed away like sand from a shoreline.

“Kill
you —” The knife swept up, but for all the fury behind it, the thrust was insubstantial as double-exposed film. Instinctively, Woody tensed for the shock but the knife and Roy’s hand only passed through him, a faint shadow across his body. He felt nothing except revulsion, a
wrongness.
When he pushed at Roy he could barely feel the contact.

Woody swallowed hard, feeling sick. He backed away, holding Charity. “He’s going. Walk away and don’t look back.”

Roy was fading to something like grainy old black-and-white film, screaming at them with a voice weirdly distant. “Charity, we can have it all. They
promised
me.”

Pulled along by Woody, she started to cry. “Dear God, Woody, I feel so sorry for him.”

Woody didn’t slow. “Don’t,” he muttered. “He doesn’t feel a thing.”

“What you gonna do with him?” Roy wailed after them. “Live in shit like we always did. Nothing, that’s what you got. That’s what you are! You saw on TV. The people... all the people, the crowds.
They fuckin loved me...”

They weren’t that far but they could barely hear him now.

“Woody, I can’t just
 
—”

’Yes, you can. Keep going.”

“Come back, Charity —”

“No.” Charity pulled away from Woody’s grip. “I know what’s in his head. I
know.
It’s beautiful and horrible and
 
—”

“I’ve seen it, too,” Woody said. “And we can get up in the morning and live with it all day for the rest of our lives. He can’t. That’s the difference, Char. That was always the difference. Forget it.”

No, she couldn’t just walk on, walk away, but twisted around to see Roy because he hurt so. She prayed for him, the only kind of prayer she could believe in now:
Simmy, take care of him. The light’s too bright and the truth is too cruel.

Charity searched the sidewalk up and down the street on both sides. She thought she saw something move, but it was only a shadow in the thin fog wisping between her and the streetlight.

Roy felt marvelous, renewed power surging through him. Drunk with his own charisma, he didn’t notice he wasn’t breathing at all, didn’t need to. His uniform was crisp and new as the day he swaggered out of the Whip & Jackboot. No voices but his own echoed in his head, and the adoration of the crowds. No other truth had ever disturbed that perfect balance. He remembered only the balcony, the reaching arms and hoarse voices raised to him
 
—
needing, loving, validating him. Making him God.

He was the Man now, Topside no problem, the Devil a fat little faggot. One day that little shit would get dumped on his ass, and when he looked around to see what hit him, there’d be Roy Stride in his chair.

His boots rang on the deserted sidewalk in cadence with the cleansing, conquering thought. He didn’t hear the car round the corner behind him and purr silently to the curb.

“Leader Stride?” The cabby snaked out of the driver’s seat and came around to open the passenger door. “Cab?”

“You got it.” Sure of his destiny, Roy touched the whip to his cap. An image flickered in his memory wiped clean of everything else. The driver’s face was familiar. He reminded Roy of some actor. “Don’t I know you?”

“Sure you do.” Judas lifted the money bag from his own breast and dropped it around Roy’s neck. “We’re practically blood brothers.”

The small bag of silver coins was surprisingly heavy and would not come off.

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