Waiting for the Galactic Bus (10 page)

Charity liked riding in Roy’s car the way the three of them always did: holding hands with Roy in the front seat, old Woody in the back talking softly to himself through the muted trumpet. The old car was like a house and they were the family, the realest she ever knew. Roy in his old field jacket and that black T-shirt with the skull and KILL’EM ALL. LET GOD SORT’EM OUT on the front — which she really didn’t believe in that, it was just Roy’s sense of humor. Beer cans rattling around on the floor and over the tire iron. Big sponge-rubber dice hanging inside the windshield and the two tiny baby dolls banging suggestively against each other.

So tonight they’d do it. That troubled her more than a little, but yes, she did love Roy. Especially tonight in the tabernacle, the way he made those folks dig down a little deeper for Jesus.

I wonder if Jesus will call tonight a sin. I couldn’t do it unless I loved Roy and was going to marry him, which we’ll do it as soon as we can afford to, and live our lives in Jesus anyway, so maybe He won’t mind if we are a little ahead of time.

“Night, Woody,” she said when they let him off at his house. She liked the way he leaned in through the window to kiss her on the cheek like family.

“Take care of yourself, Char. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t.”

Wouldn’t you, Woody? What did you mean by that? I know you like me, but you don’t know about tonight because Roy certainly wouldn’t talk about it. Good night, dear Woody. When you see me tomorrow I’ll be a whole different person —

“Quite,” promised Coyul from the back seat.

— married in the sight of God, kind of, but I’ll always think of you as family.

“Of course, the tasteful Mr. Stride has been bending Woody’s ear about it all week.” Coyul remarked.

“He’s on the intelligence team for the Paladins,” Barion noted, “usually disseminating more than he gathers, but then you have to realize, as the current phrase has it, where Mr. Stride is coming from. Drama is essential. He and Charity are true lovers silhouetted against the fiery backdrop of strife-torn Plattsville and the Cause. Like the motorcycle he couldn’t afford: one way to put some kind of power between his legs.”

After Woody’s door closed, Roy pulled Charity closer to his side for a long kiss. Charity felt the warmth and roughness of his cheek against hers and the slight thrill of knowing Roy was always a little dangerous. You never could tell what he’d do.

I said yes and I guess I meant it, she thought. Face it, I’m twenty and it has to be sometime, so might’s well be with somebody I love. Just I wish I knew if it is the right thing to do. I’m glad Roy didn’t let me put Jesus on the dash when I wanted to. He’d be looking at me now, maybe making me change my mind, maybe damning me to hell.

Just that I hate going to the tacky old White Rose, which everybody knows about it, but we can’t go to his house or mine, and the car’s okay for fooling around but too damn uncomfortable and cold for anything else... boy, when I set out to be bad, I am really a New York Saturday night.

Roy drove without haste, not wanting to seem like he was rushing her. Charity wished he’d hurry before she changed her mind.

“Until later,” Barion excused himself to Coyul. “I must see to Woody.”

“You always get the nice jobs.”

“Woody’s on my end. Never in the world or even in the fevered indulgences of Wilksey Booth has there been such a need for careful casting. Have a nice evening,”

“I just might,” Coyul predicted. “For Charity, an education. For Roy, enough rope.”

Charity stayed in the car while Roy got the room. Coyul drifted in after them like the night chill before they closed the door.

“Well, hey,” Roy bluffed to cover his awkwardness. “We finally got here. Let’s get comfortable.”

With elaborate casualness, he took off his jacket and hung it on the rack near the door, then took Charity’s coat. Charity made an instinctive female assessment of the room and sat tentatively on the bed, an acknowledgment of their purpose, though still tensed to fly.

There followed a strained interlude while Roy tried to hide his nervousness. Charity opted for demure silence to cover moral panic, spending much time in the bathroom and in finding the right music on the small FM radio. Finally Roy sat down on the war-worn bed beside her.

“Well,” he said by way of prelude, “I guess.”

Coyul tactfully removed to the unlit bathroom. Behind him, the lights went out. Murmurings, the rustle of sheets and blankets. Neither of them noticed the soft closing of the bathroom door.

Coyul knew to its core the essence of Charity Stovall, who had lived her twenty years in the lower echelons of Christian belief, a lurid topography with no middle ground. Her theology was banal but rendered in full color, a Caucasian
Green Pastures
at one end, smoke, fire, pain — the whole Faustian,
Exorcist
claptrap at the other.

Coyul conjured a soft, indirect light over the bathroom mirror, admiring his makeup and costume — impressive mustachios and spade beard, cruel, chiseled features. He added a fastidious pat of Givenchy to the gaunt cheeks and gave serious thought to his scenario, flashing an urgent message —

PRIORITY
,
WILKES
:
DROP
EVERYTHING
.

The classic figure of Booth took shape at Coyul’s side, cloak gathered and draped over one arm. “I love the beard, Prince. You are Lucifer, point-device! What’s to do?”

“I promised you a great part. I have one: a zinger, possibly the keystone in the vaulting arch of your career.”

Booth bowed with panache. “Your servant, sir.”

“A role with range and depth,” Coyul embellished. “Exquisite suffering, color, your own choice of music.”

“Steiner,” Booth opted eagerly. “No one scores drama like Max — if we can ask him of Topside.”

“It can be arranged.” Coyul admired his finished Luciferian effect in the mirror. It would scare them to death. It scared the hell out of
him.

“Our drama?”

“Damnation.”

Wilksey Booth’s eyes flashed like black diamonds. “Jesuit or Joycean? Something medieval?”

“Beyond that,” Coyul urged. “Beyond Dore, beyond De Mille. They’re Born Again. You may indulge.”

“Ah! A moment, if I may.” The handsome actor assessed his image in the bathroom mirror. “God, I am magnificent! Perhaps in the future a surprise appearance on
Dynasty?”

“Wilksey, we are gentlemen. The shlock is for the customers.”

“A passing thought, no more. Watch!”

“Oh, Wilksey — that’s good.” Coyul observed with admiration as Booth’s fine head became something foul, green and misshapen, medieval in its darkest concepts but with an obvious debt to George Lucas. Charity Stovall would — oh, it was to quiver!

“Remember me, Prince,” the green thing rasped, “when thy sublime brothers find thee. Also that my name appears over the title and in larger type.”

Woody had a cup of coffee in the kitchen with his uncle before going up to bed. Still not terribly late, but there was nothing to do in the morning except wait at the unemployment office for a job that wouldn’t be there, wait for his union relief check and maybe clean up the yard.

Climbing the squeaky stairs, he thought on Charity, Roy and himself with some sadness. Since the Corps, he had more of his shit together, enough to get sour knowing he’d never make it back to that uptown club in New York unless he had the price of a bus and a drink; that Roy would never make it anywhere, just go on boring the shit out of everyone about the coming racial wars. And Charity? Hell, she’d never see anything until she woke up twenty years from now, still in Plattsville, making dinner for the same Roy but with a beer belly and four kids mean as their daddy.

He shouldn’t take Char to the goddamned White Rose. Everybody driving by knows who’s inside just from the cars. Am I feeling sorry for her or just wishing it was me instead of Roy? Me that don’t even know where I’m going myself.

“A long way, Barnes.”

He couldn’t tell if he’d heard an actual voice or his own thoughts, but it sounded like Milt Kahane. Woody opened the door to his room, threw the down vest where his old easy chair would be, snapped on the lights and felt his heart stop.

Milt Kahane lounged on his bed — beefy, vital and sardonic, crisp black curly hair, wearing the same wild Hawaiian shirt he had on the night they made it to the jazz club. “Hey, Woody.”

When Woody’s heart jump-started up, he backed against the undeniable reality of the door. “Milt?”

“Uncle Milty, live and in person. More or less.” Milt grinned expectantly. “Dummy, you can’t say hello?”

“Uh... hi, Milt.”

“Semper fi, Barnes.”

The groan of his unoiled clock was conspicuous by its absence, the second hand petrified just short of 2. “Milt, is this really happening? Aren’t you... you know?” Then, in panic: “God, am I? All I had was a burger and —”

“Relax, it’s not the big one.” Milt laughed, swinging his legs off the bed. “Got us a gig, that’s all. See your vest?”

The garment was an impossible still life where Woody had thrown it, one edge caught mid-crumple, the rest still defying gravity over the chair.

“That’s — interesting.”

“Boss calls that trick time out of joint. Lets me prove my point without a lot of
Topper
dialogue.”

Woody swallowed hard. “Yeah, well, I definitely believe it.”

“Just like the Corps, Woodrow: the Boss is looking for a couple of good men on brass who can also bullshit a little in a good cause.” Milt raised his horn and spurted a clean run up to high C.

“Haven’t lost your lip, Milt.”

“Never.” As usual, Milt Kahane looked like he was thinking something funny and sad at the same time. “Why do you hang out with that putz Stride?”

“Roy? I dunno,” Woody hedged, hands in his pockets. “We grew up together. He’s kind of crazy, but —”

“But he loves his mother, yeah, I know. Personally I’d like to give him a briss from the neck down, but the Boss works in mysterious ways.”

“What you got against Roy? You don’t even know him.”

“I’ve known that shmuck for two thousand years,” Milt said. “And you just follow him around. A natural follower, Barnes. You were following me the day that Shiite mother fragged us. Our fire team got him a few minutes later. Man, was he surprised to see me! Don’t ask.” Milt Kahane chuckled. “Tell you about him sometime. Roy Stride in a polka-dot headdress.”

Milt rose, tucking the trumpet under one arm. “Time to ship out, Barnes. Travel and adventure! The Boss wants to brief us.”

“The Boss?” Woody hesitated, still trying to get a handle on all this. “You mean —”

“Numero Uno,” Milt corroborated with a bright smile. “But most of the clowns Topside don’t know it. He keeps a very low profile. I said
relax,
Barnes. This is no shit detail. He’s a cool guy, very laid-back. Doesn’t come on or anything like that.”

The walls of Woody’s room began to blur, fade, darkening to the midnight blue of infinity.

“First time I saw him,” Milt remembered, “I thought he was some shlub from California.”

    10   

The woman taken in adultery,
and other set pieces

Roy was very still beside her. Charity thought he might be asleep. They had to go home soon. Late she could explain; all night was pretty obvious.

When Charity sorted out her feelings as a retired virgin, they resolved to disappointment. Nothing specific; she couldn’t make any kind of comparison because she wasn’t that kind of girl. All the same, this was what all the shouting was about? Her expectations had come mostly from a little petting in Roy’s car, mostly from the movies and TV. Reverend Falwell was right: certain things just shouldn’t be brought right into your living room where you might have company or children. Movies went even further, soft lights and softer music with the man and woman photographed from the shoulders up, and you knew what they were doing and that they enjoyed it. Transports of joy — that was the phrase she heard somewhere, except she wasn’t transported at all, just stayed there.

Roy seemed to have some kind of trouble, she couldn’t tell what, but he acted embarrassed even after the lights were out. The whole thing was over in a hurry, just when she was beginning to relax and enjoy it. Afterward he asked if it was special for her. She said yes.