Waiting for the Galactic Bus (18 page)

The screen blushed pink as the picture segued to the lush bathroom with its foaming Jacuzzi. “And it’s here,” the voice-over brayed enthusiastically, “that Char lives with her new love interest, Randy Colorad.”

“Hey. Who?”

“— her every wish fulfilled by her houseman, Simnel.”

Charity hugged her knees, wide-eyed. All too much, but
fun.
The camera cut to a beige kitchen where a mild, pudgy little man in livery busied himself twirling a bottle down into an ice bucket. “Wonder what heaven’s like.”

“Miss Stovall?”

Simnel hovered just behind her, holding a tray with champagne and several small but interesting plates of the stuff called “ordooves.” Charity flicked off the TV as he set the tray on the coffee table. “Mr. Colorad called earlier, mum. He should be here directly.”

There was a curious blob of something dark on one plate. “What’s this?”

“Caviar, mum.”

“Oh. Sure. Come to think of it, I ain’t had a bite since I got here. Dane said we don’t get hungry.”

“No, mum,” Simnel said pleasantly. “It’s one of the advantages. However, you may indulge if you care to. I also took the liberty of chilling an excellent year.” He poured the champagne into a tall, shallow glass. “Moet,’76. Shall I prepare the Jacuzzi?”

The champagne tingled delightfully in mouth and nose.
So that’s what it tastes like.
And Simnel looked like every butler she ever saw in old Fred Astaire movies. “Yes, indeedy. You may do that thing.” Charity flicked the television on again, unable to get enough of it. “Gol-lee.”

Simnel watched her with discreet amusement. “Jacob was right.”

Another gulp of Moet. “Say what?”

“This is your real religion.”

“I don’t want to go into that again.”

“Excuse me, mum. Merely by way of orientation. Your real religion is what you really want. I’ll ready your bath, mum.”

He sounded like a stuck-up Englishman or something. She ought to get rid of him and find a good nigger maid that knew how to keep her place.

The champagne made her tingle with well-being. She ordered Simnel to bring the ice bucket and caviar to the bathroom, then trailed upstairs to watch the Jacuzzi churn in readiness for her. Charity slithered out of the caftan and lowered herself bit by luxurious bit into the foaming bath.

“Oh, God, if I wasn’t already dead, I could DIE.”

The bathroom had its own thirty-inch screen with remote control. Charity swallowed more champagne to wash down the caviar — which she didn’t like all that much but it came with the place — and pressed the TV on switch.

There she was, herself, in salmon-pink lounge pajamas, sexy enough to ruin someone’s life, right there on TV.

“Oh, man, I look like red-hot Saturday night.”

She gulped more Moet and thrilled to her own image on the tube: half reclining on the white leather sofa, one knee drawn up, winsome with a blue teddy bear hugged to her breast.

“The trooly mahvelous thing about Char Stovall,” the narrator yelped, “is how she’s never forgotten her roots or the people that raised her.”

“But I’d sure love to,” Charity talked back. “Who the hell wants to remember Plattsville?”

She felt defiant, daring and just a little drunk.

“Here in this fabulous but secret five-million-dollah condo, Char Stovall works constantly to better the lot of the humble folk she comes from. A simple, poignant story, an American rags-to-riches tale of an orphan gel active in the little church in her hometown.”

Gorgeous color faded to grainy home-movie black and white with sepia hints of aging: Charity at ten with her adoptive parents, all waving at the camera and looking uncomfortable. Then a shot of Roy sitting with studied nonchalance on the hood of his car, rifle in hand. Woody playing with another local musician —

I really liked you, Woody Barnes, know that? You didn’t ask me to be anything but me and I could always sort of take my shoes off with you. One mistake, Woody. One. Am I still a nice girl?

She took larger gulps of champagne, guzzling it like her usual diet cola. Combined with the hot Jacuzzi, the effect relaxed her, made her quickly drunk and not a little maudlin. She wept incoherently over Woody, Roy, herself and the pathetic sight of ten-year-old Charity in a greasy potato-sack shift.

Then realized: “I never wore anything like that.”

“Yes, yew did, Char,” the narrator prompted. “It goes with the American Dream.”

Cut back to silken Char on her divan, cuddling her teddy bear, a close-up that caught all the honesty and wistfulness of her thoroughly American face. “Until I was ten,” the screen Char spoke to someone off camera, “I never had any clothes that weren’t hand-me-downs. So now I want to write my story as an inspiration for other people and to show that the American Dream is real. Somehow, any way I can, dead or not, I want to go back and help my people.”

“You kiss my ass,” Charity blurted, dropping her glass in the bath. “I ain’t never going back there, never! Damn dead town where there wasn’t anything to do but work and pray and pay and get kids.”

“Char is a
deeply
religious gel,” the voice-over nasaled. “She led the prowtest against the Planned Parenthood clinic ten miles from Plattsville.”

“Sure I did.” Charity found her glass, rinsed and refilled it. “And I wish I didn’t. My best friend got pregnant first time with a boy. What kind of lies you telling?”

“Why, Char,” the narrative voice protested, “the truths you’ve I always lived by.”

“That ain’t the way it was, no way.”

Not even close to truth. Bea got pregnant and scared, and the first thing her father did was beat hell out of her because Bea’s mother made him. Liars! Charity raged. You goddamn phonies, you weren’t thinking of Bea, just how it would look with the neighbors. So Bea married Roland, and when I saw her after, it was like more than the baby got taken out of her. She shouldn’tve had that baby, but there wasn’t any more clinic even if she could’ve gone. After all that protest and screaming we did, Roy and the Paladins bombed it in the name of White American motherhood or something. I think Roy did it to impress me.

“Char Stovall, this is your faith. Brought to you by Slick Shave, the blade that starts your day —”

“And can damn well end it any ol’ time you get sick of the stupid game.” Charity switched off the set in disgust and reached for the white Princess phone.

“Simnel, that you? Listen, how do I get outside? I want to call a friend.”

“Sorry, mum. The entire phone system is out for the whole building. We have intercom but nothing outside.”

“Oh, fine.”

“And Mr. Colorad just arrived. He’ll be up in a minute.”

Was up already, smiling at her from the bathroom door. “Hi-i, gorgeous.”

Charity gazed with bleary appreciation at the muscular young man who stood before her stripping down to a pair of immaculate white briefs. “Hi,” she breathed. “I bet your underwear don’t even get dirty.”

“Not the kind I wear.” Randy Colorad winked from the mirror, lathering himself.

“Y’know, Jake’s right,” Charity mumbled, sinking to her chin in the whirlpool. “’S my religion. I want. Wanted all my life. That’s a main occupation back home. Right, right, right. First offender: think I’d get off with probation, but no-o-o. To hell with
you,
Stovall! And there’s Dane with all that fog and poetry and then Jake who jus’ sits around feeling sorry for hisself. What the hell’s he got to be sorry about?” She smiled foggily at Randy, her mood shifting softly. Talk about ruining somebody’s life; he looked like he might enjoy it. “You’re a real hunk, y’know that?”

“It’s easy with my Slick Shave.” Randy flashed thirty-two blinding teeth at her. “I’m smooth all the time.”

“C’mon in here and prove it. What the hell, I’m just what the man said. A simple down-home girl living the American Dream.”

“Love to.” Randy slipped out of his briefs and into the whirlpool. Charity snuggled up to him.

“Already been damned,” she murmured woozily, “and I got change coming.”

    19   

Money can’t buy happiness,
but why not be miserable in
comfort?

Charity opened her eyes to sunlight and strange sounds. Feeling delicious, she yawned and squirmed contentedly between the blue silk sheets. Hell could be a lot worse.

A series of grunts issued from an angle of the bedroom beyond her vision. She turned over to see Randy Colorad laboring with a Nautilus weight machine like a guillotine, muscles rippling, glistening with sweat.

“Twenty-three-
huh.
Twenty-four-
agh. Twenty-fi-i-ve-
URKK!”

“For God’s sake, you’ll rupture something!”

“When the going gets tough...” A last herculean effort. Randy lowered the weights and sat up, favoring Charity with a charming smile, no tooth uncapped. He sprang up, beautiful above the neck and all a girl could wish below. “Now for that morning shower that gives all-day protection.” Charity draped herself on one elbow, feeling sultry. “Hurry back.” Randy came out of the shower carrying a spray deodorant.

“Here.” He slipped under the sheets. “It’s strong enough for me but made for you.”

“So are you.” Charity attacked him joyfully.

The ensuing two hours demonstrated that she really ought to work out more herself. In the bookstore back home, voyeuristic peeks into
The Joy of Sex
(when nobody was looking) dazzled her with possibilities that seemed languorous only in theory. In practice they required a certain facility and a great deal of limberness. Silk sheets were great to dream about but always slidey when you needed four-wheel traction, and the damn water mattress made her almost seasick, zigging when it should zag. Nevertheless, her climaxes were symphonic. She never thought she was that kind of girl; now she knew there wasn’t any other.

In the brief respites between onslaughts, by way of critique Charity could wish now and then for the poetry that turned Dane’s passion tender (God, he could suffer!) and even once, in an athletic moment, for the pungent honesty of Jake. She closed her eyes over Randy’s shoulder and thought of him. That helped her get there, but it was Woody’s face she saw at the end. That was strange; she felt treacherous and terribly fallen. Anyway, Randy never said anything she hadn’t heard on TV before.

When she was gasping with surfeit and yearning seriously for a little rest, Randy bounced out of bed with the same energy that propelled him into it.

“Hey, kid.” The white smile flashed like a bathroom light at 4 A.M. “Gotta go to work. Got a shoot later.”

Charity picked up on that much from TV. “You in a movie?”

“No.” Randy flexed his shoulders and trotted into the bathroom. “Gotta shoot someone. But first-that all-day protection again with a man’s kind of soap.”

“You just took a shower.”

“Yeah, but then we screwed for a while.”

“Don’t talk dirty. All that washing’s not good for your skin.”

From the depths of the thundering shower: “I’m Beautiful People!”

“Yeah, but are you gonna itch.” Charity yawned. “Idiot.”

With the detachment of a definitely slaked thirst, she watched with decreasing interest as Randy trotted out of the bathroom in pale blue one-piece underwear, slipped into slacks and a Members Only jacket and placed his Foster Grants with the care of a coronation. Again the measured, roguish grin. “See you later.”

“Sure. It was real nice.”

“That’s what friends are for.” Another devilish grin and Randy was gone. Charity drowsed a while before plumping the pillows to sit up against. She touched the call button, only to find Simnel in the doorway.

“You rang, mum?”

“Breakfast would be nice. Not that I’m hungry but, you know, a change. Oh, how about the phone?”

“Still out, I’m afraid. They are working on it.”

“Honest to Pete, you’d think once a girl dies she wouldn’t have to hassle stuff like this.”

“No, mum. The upwardly mobile concept is a Christian notion. We have our problems.” The mild little butler withdrew.

“Even dead the phone company gets you.” Charity turned on the wall TV, quickly adjusting the volume as the fifty-inch screen roared to furious life across the bedroom.