Waiting for the Galactic Bus (30 page)

Charity was sick at the sight of him but more afraid for Woody than herself. These people could hurt him. She started falteringly to obey. Woody’s grip tightened on her arm.

“No way,” he said.

“Hey, Woody.” Roy strode to him, offering his hand. “Didn’t know you were here. When you get it?”

Woody ignored the hand. “I got you way back, Roy, just wouldn’t face it. Char’s going Topside.”

“You think so?” Roy smirked confidently. “Where’ve you been lately? I got those wimps in my pocket, boy. And the Prince. Shit, I ain’t seen that sucker since I got here. Nobody fucks with me, Woody.” He threw the fact to the room at large. “Nobody! You seen it on TV. Even Topside’s playing ball with me.”

Chewing on his burrito, Milt Kahane commented: “Hardball.”

Roy turned on him, dangerous. “You got something to say?”

“You heard me,” Milt said calmly. “And when you fan on your last strike, they’re gonna ram the bat up your ass.”

Roy looked Milt up and down with a grudging admiration: a badmouth but with guts and... somehow familiar. Maybe it was just the superior smile he’d writhed under all his life. In the lethal silence Leon muttered about Judgment and efficiency.

“Who are you?” Roy demanded. “You got a Jew look, boy.”

“Me? I’m practically Swedish.”

“I don’t think so.” Roy snapped his fingers. “This one to the camps.”

“You always were a fuck-up.” Woody stepped out in front of his friends. “Couldn’t get out of boot camp without doing bad time. I was Topside when they cut orders on you, Roy, and you are in deep shit already. So take a little advice from the heart. Back off. I mean it.”

Woody’s still determination stopped Roy for a second before he remembered who had the guns and the power. “That you talking? Old go-along-with-the-program Barnes? Forget it. Charity, let’s go.”

She shrank back from him, remembering her own horror-filled eyes looking up at a gun barrel. “I can’t.”

“Charity, I don’t wanta get personal in front of all these people, but you’re already my wife, if you know what I mean.”

Along with the fear, she felt disgust. “That’s not personal, just tacky.”

“Uh — excuse me, Leader Stride?” A small man with hunched shoulders and a potbelly edged forward from a huddle of his co-workers, hands still up. “If you don’t propose to facilitate any arrests, I’ve really extended my break and have to return back forthwith to my duty station.”

“What
is
this?” Roy’s frustration blew up in a vicious crack! of his whip. “You want trouble? You scumbags want arrests?” He whirled on Charity and Woody. “You think I’m shitting you? Okay. Drumm!”

Click! “Sir.”

“Every third one to the camps. I don’t care — man, woman or queer.” Crack! “I’ll show you suckers trouble —”

“Ow,
there
y’are luv!”

Her strident cheer barely diminished by a long troublesome search, Florence Bird shouldered and flounced her way through Paladin guards toward Roy — who went sallower than usual against his SS black at the sight of her. Florence by contrast was an animated Cezanne in a painfully bright flower-print dress with bits and ends that bobbled with the jiggling of her Junoesque proportions, topped off with precisely the wrong hat skewed at a precarious angle. She bore down on the speechless Leader with a bear hug and lipsticky kiss.

“Crikey, dear, been’avin a butcher’s all over Below Stairs for you. Try to get you on the phone, this little pouv” — a contemptuous thumb jerked at Drumm — “says you carn’t be disturbed. Not’arf short wiv me. Y’orta talk t’im about it.”

Roy’s mouth worked. His eyes tried to deny what they saw even as he realized that dictators like anyone else could be caught with their image down. His colorless complexion went even paler; to Essie Mendel, the whole picture was a contradiction in obscenities.

“You’ve got to have good coloring to wear black,” she whispered to Milt. “He looks like mayonnaise on my cocktail dress.”

Roy managed to escape from Florence’s possessive grip but found only part of his voice — a sort of squeak. “What the hell — are you crazy coming here?”

“Well may y’arsk, dearie. Got tired of sitting on me Khyber in front of the goggle box all day, nuffin to do but watch me gentleman friend prance all over town.”

“Christ, will you cool it?” Roy hissed between clenched teeth. “This is Charity!”

“Not with
me,
luv,” Florence vowed with gale-force lung power.

“Christ, you dumb — it’s my fiancee. Charity Stovall.”

“Ow, lumme! A
course!
Where’s me’ead?” Forthright and unabashed, Florence strode to Charity, offering her hand. “Sorry, dear. Needn’t take on: just business with me and Roy. Cash and carry, hands across the sea and that. Florence Bird. Very pleased to make your acquaintance, I’m sure.”

“Oh, that’s all right.” Charity didn’t know what to say, nor did she trust herself to try. “I was just leaving.”

“There’s nice.” Florence beamed. “Lor, what’s on in the high street outside? Pushed this way’n’ that by bleedin hordes of telly men, and look at this hat what I bought just yesterday, all bashed in. Lot of right brutes, got no respect for a lady.”

“Telly?” Her meaning galvanized Roy Stride. “You mean television?”

“Don’t I just?” Ruffled, Florence inspected the damaged hat. “Weren’t for that nice Mr. Veigle, wouldn’t’ve got in here’tall.”

Drumm made a sound like a man dying under a curse. “Veigle...”

Roy cast about wildly. “Drumm, do something!”

Too late. Whatever blitzkrieg strategy sprang to Drumm’s mind, Eddie Veigle was already sweeping through the doors, the double-breasted, brusquely confident point for a flying squad of BSTV technicians, some shouldering cameras, others paying out cable for a makeshift monitor control, grips and makeup people in their wake, Nancy Noncommit bringing up the rear.

“Well, well, well,” Veigle purred. “Everybody’s here. Who’s minding the revolution? Char, the mystery star
and
Florence Bird.” Veigle couldn’t resist a chuckle of pleasure. “Perfecto. A fifty share. Even Topside won’t be watching anything else.”

“HOLD IT!” Drumm tried in vain to stem the stampede of technicians around him. The guards weren’t much help. Hoping for some more television exposure, they started straightening uniforms and hats. “You can’t do this, Veigle. This is an official government rescue.”

“My Polish grandmother had such a rescue,” Essie muttered. “One kiss from the magic mamzers, she turned into soap.”

“Oh, this is a class act,” Milt sighed. “History as drama: what do we get? Reruns.”

A camera focused on Drumm; a light meter flirted near his mustache. He was becoming spastic. “THE LEADER FORBIDS THIS!”

“How?” Veigle chortled from his monitor. “This is news, lovey. Ratings, I told you Char couldn’t move without me. You don’t want to work with Veigle? Okay, Veigle works without you. Cue Nancy.”

Freshly primped by her hovering makeup woman, Nancy Noncommit spiked herself beside Florence and turned to the camera with blank-eyed authority. “This is Nancy Noncommit at the Club Banal. The suspected other-woman scandal shadowing Roy Stride broke here a few minutes ago when, acting on an anonymous tip —”

With malicious emphasis, Veigle mouthed it to Drumm:
Me, Drumm-bum.

“— BSTV news broke the story in a deluge of disclosures. We found the Leader, his fiancee, Char Stovall, and the other woman, Florence Burns —”

“That’s Bird, y’little git.” Florence moved firmly into frame, nudging the smaller anchorwoman aside, flashing a toothy smile at the camera. “Florence Bird from Lambeth, and lor yes, we been together
ever
so long.”

In the backwash of the storm, Woody and Char stuck close together. “Char, who is this Veigle guy, anyway?”

Charity’s expression was not easily decipherable. “Whatever he is, he just hit the fan.”

    32   

Blossoms and thorns of
the media culture

Despite the media cyclone whirling about them, Roy and Drumm fought a brief, sibilant battle.

“Leader, you have to make a statement. The whole thing is out.”

“Not if we shut them up good and quick.”

“We can’t arrest everybody. It’s bad press.”

“We’re getting that now or maybe you din’t notice.”

“The scenario.”

“What?”

“The scenario. I wrote it out. We talked about it as a contingency plan.”

Roy found it difficult to think fast at bay. “Oh. Yeah, I remember.”

“And you must weep, my Leader. For the camera.”

“No.” Roy was adamant. “I can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

Roy fidgeted; Drumm pried at the bedrock of deep beliefs where his icons were enshrined. “Ain’t what a man would do.”

Drumm’s little eyes blinked behind their thick lenses. “Why do you think all this is news in the first place? Because you have transgressed? Rather that they recognize it. Not a real man Below Stairs who won’t identify with you. Not a woman who won’t sympathize: he’s human, he’s like us. They will know you for a man of large appetites as powerful men always are.”

Still not convinced: “But why do I have to cry?”

“Because, my Leader, with the macho comes the marshmallow. The emotional response of people conditioned to believe anything they see on television as truth. The camera giveth and the camera taketh away. They will believe your repentance: the good man strayed but anguished for the pain he’s caused. A man gone wrong, but a man throughout.”

Roy began to like the image. “Yeah...”

“Leader, you’ll be more popular than ever, Topside as well as here. Not a dry eye in the cosmos. You heard the Jew Veigle: no one will be watching anything else. We can deal with him anytime; meanwhile we must turn this to our advantage.”

“But I can’t
cry.”

“It’s simple. Pull the short hair in your nose, right... there. If that doesn’t work, we have glycerin.”

Roy surrendered to the imperatives of destiny. “Ah, shit. Let’s do it.”

Nancy Noncommit turned to the monitor. “That’s it on the Bird.”

“Okay, where’s Char?” Veigle took center stage, an impresario committed to producing a miracle whatever the cost. “Hey, Stovall! You’re on.”

“No, she’s not. Leave her alone,” Woody fended him off. “Get away from her. She doesn’t want to talk to anybody.”

True: Charity struggled with every appearance of distress. “I — I can’t talk now, honest.” She collapsed in a chair at Leon’s table. “Now, now...”

“Okay, cue the Leader.” Veigle spun around, pointing at Roy. Drumm nudged the reluctant subject forward.

“From the left side only,” Drumm ordered the cameramen. “Cameras three-quarter angle from the left
only.
Your best angle, sir.”

Thrust into the glaring lights, nose hair tortured into yeoman service, a tearful Roy Stride went on camera — incoherent with shame for a watching cosmos, struggling with the demands of honor. Nancy Noncommit pushed the hand mike close to his face. Hushed, expectant silence.

“I can’t — I don’t know how to say this,” Roy choked. Suddenly he turned away, hands to his face. At the monitor, Veigle talked into his headset.

“Close-up. Get the sweat and tears. I want his
pores.”

One more furtive yank at the nose hair filled the monitor with Roy’s moral agony. “What I did — I can’t undo. I just wish —” He stopped, swallowed hard, then went on. “I can only ask the forgiveness of the good people who — who believe in me.”

Once into his role, Roy was surprisingly good. Even Essie was stirred. “It’s sad, Milt. Look at that big English
bummerkeh
and tell me who’s really to blame.”

“Essie, you make me wish I were alive again. I could be sick all over you.”

“What are you talking? Look at Char.”

Under Woody’s soothing hands, Charity’s shoulders heaved tragically; from the hollow of her cradling arms came the strangled sound of deep emotion.

“But I — I won’t hide anything from my people,” Roy went on valiantly. “I only wish to God I could undo what I’ve done.” He faltered on the verge of fresh tears, then got it out in a ragged rush. “And that I can earn the forgiveness of the fine, good woman I asked to be my wife.”

Roy’s face filled the monitor — agonized, streaked with tears. “My office is new. I was — under a lot, a great deal of strain. Charity — honest to God, Charity —”