The Holy Terror (15 page)

He immediately felt guilty about thinking such a thing. Maybe dressing up in a costume was a good way of coping. He remembered a house ad running in DC comics in the late seventies sometime. A Neal Adams drawn Superman surrounded by a dozen crippled children. And in his three decades of reading “joke books,” Tremulis fondly recalled The Doom Patrol, a group of people driven to mental instability by their deformities. His first “adult” dream, in fact, had been about Rita Farr, Elastic Girl, who could grow to a hundred feet and wore a red and white skirt and knee-high lavender boots.

He could not imagine what life would be like for so many home- or chair-ridden people if there weren’t any Batmans or Green Lanterns to help them forget their own personal nightmares.

The American Dream had turned towards the mirror. He made a quick grimace. Tremulis got a good view of the orange-and-yellow paisley heating pad he wore as a makeshift cape, the cord looped loosely around his neck.

Still looking into the mirror, the costumed man said, “I am The American Dream. I am also known as Evan Shustak, no middle initial.”

Tremulis did not know if the other man was directing the statement his way, or if it was a case of hearing a schizoid’s dialogue.

He moved around him to open the door. The Dream was examining his lower gums intensely. As Tremulis pushed the door open a crack, just missing a glimpse of Reve Towne’s coltish legs, another “Fuckin-A” drifted into the room, the noise as oppressive as a lunatic’s farts, and the American Dream put a hand on his shoulder.

“Wait,” he spoke in a whisper. “Our business is not finished here yet. Mike Surfer told me who you are.”

Before Tremulis could protest mistaken identity, the other went on.

“Hold on a second.” The American Dream grunted as he hiked up his outer sweatshirt. It read Hell’s Kitchen NYC in red on grey. Slashed across like a confession in lipstick. Stop me before I kill again. A college student had written that in 1946, before dismembering a six-year old. William Heirens and Suzanne Degnan, forever together.

Underneath, Shustak wore a navy blue t-shirt that read BLUEBERRY HILL, St. Louis. “It is important to make people think that you are from out of state,” he explained cryptically.

He’d remember that next time there was a Blue Light Special at K-Mart. The back of the shirt had come loose of Shustak’s waistband; the pale flesh exposed was as discolored and atrophied as a typical Chicago lifetime.

Frayed rope, splotched dark with possible blood and probable filth, was looped through the belthooks of The American Dream’s jeans. The rope was tied tight in a double knot around his waist, and Tremulis thought that the belt must chafe something terrible.

At either side of each belt hook, small plastic bags, those wonderful kitchen conveniences, swung like tiny pendulums. Each was filled with a myriad of pills and lozenges. Some empty, others bulging like a squirrel’s cheeks full of nuts.

Shustak straightened the clothing. “I suppose I can let you in on this,” he said.

He did a kind of goosestep, opened the door a crack. This time, Tremulis did see Reve Towne and his head danced.

“I can trust you, can’t I?”

“Yea, sure. That girl out there—”

“You’ll meet her. But... if you even THINK about telling someone …ESPECIALLY the dreaded Eighth Street Man. But of course you won’t be persuaded by that evil scum. You have more resolve than the average man on the street.”

“Gee, thanks.” Tremulis felt like he was being confronted by a man with a knife on a deserted street, asking him if he were a Cubs or a Sox fan.

“You’re Mike Surfer’s friend,” he repeated. “He vouches for you.”

Who the hell was the 8th Street Man. 8th Street was two blocks long, for chrissakes.

“I protect the city from itself and those who are normal. Remind me to take my Haldol in fifteen minutes. Do you prefer being called Victor or Vic, just tell me. Thinking about my archenemy has gotten me upset again.”

“Your arch—”

“The dreaded Eighth Street Man, of course. Sometimes, when the night is darkest and the neon infects you with vices, I believe that he is the one responsible for my very existence.” He touched his belt.

“My utility belt. The Batman always needed one, even when Frank Miller turned him into The Dark Knight years from now at the end of his career. He wore, will wear a bulletproof vest and throw batarangs sharp razors into wrists. That is what we have to expect in our future.” He nodded a quick coda to his revelation. His hands fumbled with one of the knots on his belt and finally he fingered a blood red tablet.

“Stress-Tab,” he explained, dry swallowing the pill. Tremulis figured that this sort of thing—dry swallowing—would be exactly what, was expected of the proper crime fighter. In a monthly comic book, The American Dream would be forced to never shit or piss except between issues.

“Iron supplement,” Shustak further explained.Tremulis entertained the thought that he was being treated like The American Dream’s ward. Meanwhile…at Stately Marclinn House! He might have been surprised to know that The American Dream once had an imaginary partner named Blind Justice.

“Tonight I have to stay on my guard. Szasz keeps trying to get me to sit down so that he might teach me Zen meditation, but I find my own discipline to be more decisive. I will never question the man’s beliefs, but Chicago is a world away from the Far East. From Indiana, even.

“Besides, the pain and I are old friends.”

“What are you trying to tell me?” Tremulis tried to keep his voiceeven.

“I want you to help me find the Painkiller.”

“See, Mike Surfer likes to read detective books,” The American Dream said to Tremulis as they walked from the bathroom. “I get around, listen on the earie, and find out things he can’t. He has water on the brain, you know.”

“I know.” Tremulis said, scanning the room for the woman he had seen. There was Mike Surfer, he came wheeling up to them, with Tremulis thinking the shunt in his neck bobbed up and down hike those plastic birds perched on water glasses. He realized that he knew nothing about relationships and making friends, maybe if he had introduced himself to Mike’s friends back there.

And he was standing like a dumbshit while the black man wheeled across the room, his plastic plug moving furiously as the cords in his neck knotted from the strain.

“Glad you make it, Vic!” His hand unsteady, the finger shaking as he covered the shunt in order to speak. “I be upstairs longer than I planned, when I come down Colin said you was in the baffroom.”

Tremulis thought the guy had been crying.

“Came across one of Reggie Given’s Lucky Lotto Numbers books,” Surfer continued, maybe anticipating Tremulis’s question. “He up n’ left before that first guy got hisself kilt. More l think about it, more I think he maybe met up with the Pain man. I got to looking at some old cop books, reading ‘bout that guy Steve Carehia make me feel good.” His voice took on an gurgling sound towards the end, but still he smiled a gap-toothed smile.

Tremulis wondered if his friend had been drinking, he’d already seemed to have forgotten the friend he had been worrying over. Maybe he’d taken some medication.

“Say, did Evan here introduce you to Reve?”

“I was just going to now, Mike.” With both himself and Surfer to compare the man to, Tremulis realized how young Evan Shustak was. Looking at him, he tried to guess where he kept the ski mask.

“She be the only female here tonight, what with Gramma visitin’ her fambly and Cat Townsend back in Ohio this week.” Surfer’s lips were getting gummed up around the corners. “There she is now, back by the radio.”

He looked over to where Reve Towne was putting a cassette into a humungous ghetto blaster—or “boom box,” if you have in some cute part of the country where the inner city is unheard of—and he tried to look calm. Dumbly enough, his first thoughts were that she might go out with him because he was friends with Mike and this American Dream character.

Keeping with the “Surf City” theme, the song that came on was by Jan & Dean.

“Let’s race all the way, to Deadman’s Curve...”

Tremulis found himself humming, getting into it. The American Dream saw the Reve was still wearing her jacket.

“Where are my manners?” He said in as emotional a tone as Tremulis had yet to hear. “I should have helped you with your coat,” he said, walking towards her. Tremulis stood back until Surfer made a waving motion with his hand. “Go on, boy.”

The American Dream moved the arm that was held by the shoulder immobilizer. “Reve Towne, Victor Trem—”

“Tremble. Vic Tremble,” he interrupted. The American Dream seemed to go for it. He accepted her jacket and moved off towards the front desk, cape askew.

“Nice to meet you,” Reve said. Tremulis faltered, the moment was lost. Typical for him.

He watched her small breasts move beneath her t-shirt as she pointed towards the pool tables. Reve’s wore her hair in a page boy style again popular in fashion magazines. A plastic teal headband cutting smoothly through her equally smooth and shiny black hair made Tremulis think of nighttime river banks in a picture postcard. He couldn’t think of anything to compare her ass to that a hundred guys probably hadn’t done before. Nelson Aigren would have called it fatal. Elmore Leonard would have simply said that it was a nice can. Victor Tremulis was too busy sweating.

He saw the front of her reflected in a wall mirror by the Three Fates.

On her white t-shirt, he saw the green and white visage of The Joker. (1989 would be The Batman’s fiftieth birthday, and Jack Nicholson would be playing the crime fighter’s archenemy in the movie; the green-haired, pasty-faced psycho was a hot commodity now. Still, Tremulis wondered if she wore the shirt to please The American Dream.)

To Joker’s grinning faced angled on the left side of the shirt, with Reve’s breast, making the widow’s peak of the villain’s hair more pronounced. The right side of the shirt was filled with multi-colored Ha-ha’s. The Joker’s eyes were wriggling with red veins. Reve Towne’s eyes were brown and serene and Tremulis thought that she might be wearing soft contact lenses.

She changed tapes. From the beach to the bistro. Frank Sinatra sang about that summer wind, and how it kept on rollin’ in. Black hair in that page boy cut, several strands escaping the headband to fall across a creased forehead. The cassette must have been one of those “Best of 19—s” because The Rivieras’ were going on about being out there having fun, in that warm California sun.

(well, I’m going out west where I belong)

Reve would look beautiful on Oak Street Beach, no doubt. But she looked just as radiant here, and for no reason he could fathom, Tremulis was hearing flashbulbs popping in slow motion. She wore no lipstick, no polish defiled her long nails.

Across the room, O’Neil was keeping the beat by banging the stumps of his arms on the sofa covers. Mike Surfer was at the front desk with Nutman, cleaning out his shunt.

(where the days are short and the nights are long, and they walk, and I walk)

Reve again, pronounced Ree-vay, Tremulis reminded himself. At the very least, don’t fuck up her name. Long, tapered legs sculpted from Cityscapes stone washed jeans. Beautiful legs on the beach, deeply tanned, he knew they would be. As her face and left arm would be. Pale now, but he knew she would be tanned the first week in May. He didn’t think her right arm would tan well. His triangular scar, the one provided by his babysitter, never became more than a whiter shade of pale in the summer months.

He felt himself getting excited now, staring not at her dancer’s breasts, but at the atrophied, withered thing dangling from her right shoulder. The thing that should have been her right arm, the muscle and flesh so shriveled like something left too long in a microwave oven. The greater tuberosity and trochlea head jutting from the graying skin like icecaps in dead tundra.

Tremulis was fascinated at how her equally atrophied forearm curved upwards, her hand nothing more than a talon. The forearm spasmed in five second intervals, sweeping upward to touch her collarbone. It was as if she was hesitantly trying to erase The Joker’s face. And Tremulis loved her for it. She looked up at him then, and he hoped he wasn’t blushing. Outside, the Loop had become Chill City, the wind digging into the city’s spine and finding a home for the night. The streets were clearing out, except for the hustlers and the dope dealers. Inside the Marclinn: They were out there having fun in that warm California sun

Feeling that he had accomplished something by at least making conversation, Tremulis went over to talk to Mike Surfer. Their talk was awkward: Mike seemed to be hurting and Tremulis could not stop thinking about Reve, especially since he fantasized that she had a deformity. Eventually, Surfer said he was going to rest over by the spider plants. Tremulis felt ashamed of his own inability to relax.

The American Dream and Reve had walked over to the pool table to watch Etch and Karl playing a game of cutthroat. The Marclinn’s resident chronicler stroked his peppered beard, his right eyebrow angling upward as the redhead put the nine ball in the right corner pocket.

Tremulis moved closer. The smell of Reve’s skin had him virtually hyperventilating. Her hair was his night; eyes twin globes of tranquility that calmed him, preventing him from running to the bathroom. When she spoke, he averted his gaze to a hanging plant. Then back to her face. All that face.