Laugh Lines

by Ben Bova

Vince couldn’t think of any other objections. Slowly, reluctantly, he headed for the warehouse door. He had to step over one of Sizzle’s saber-long talons on the way.

  At the doorway, he turned and asked plaintively, “You sure you ain’t after my soul?”

  Sizzle smiled at him. “I’m not after your soul, Vince. You can depend on that.”

  The warehouse fire was the most spectacular anyone had seen in a long time, and the police were totally stymied about its cause. They questioned Vince at length, especially since he had forgotten to get rid of the gasoline and paint thinner in the back of the stolen station wagon. But they couldn’t pin a thing on him, not even car theft, once Louie had Big Balls Falcone explain the situation to the wagon’s unhappy owner.

  Vince’s position in the Family started to rise. Spectacularly.

  Arson became his specialty. Louie gave him tougher and tougher assignments and Vince would wander off a night later and the job would be done. Perfectly.

  He met Sizzle regularly, sometimes in abandoned buildings, sometimes in empty lots. The dragon remained invisible then, of course, and the occasional passerby got the impression that a sharply dressed young man was standing in the middle of a weedchoked, bottle-strewn empty lot, talking to thin air.

  More than once they could have heard him asking, “You really ain’t interested in my soul?”

  But only Vince could hear Sizzle’s amused reply, “No, Vince. I have no use for souls, yours or anyone else’s.”

  As the months went by, Vince’s rapid rise to Family stardom naturally attracted some antagonism from other young men attempting to get ahead in the organization. Antagonism sometimes led to animosity, threats, even attempts at violence.

  But strangely, wondrously, anyone who got angry at Vince disappeared. Without a trace, except once when a single charred shoe of Fats Lombardi was found in the middle of Tasker Street, between Twelfth and Thirteenth.

  Louie and the other elders of the Family nodded knowingly. Vince was not only ambitious and talented. He was smart. No bodies could be laid at his doorstep.

  From arson, Vince branched into loan sharking, which was still the heart of the Family’s operation. But he didn’t need Big Balls Falcone to terrify his customers into paying on time. Customers who didn’t pay found their cars turned into smoking wrecks. Right before their eyes, an automobile parked at the curb would burst into flame.

  “Gee, too bad,” Vince would say. “Next time it might be your house,” he’d hint darkly, seeming to wink at somebody who wasn’t there. At least, somebody no one else could see. Somebody very tall, from the angle of his head when he winked.

  The day came when Big Balls Falcone himself, understandably put out by the decline in his business, let it be known that he was coming after Vince. Big Balls disappeared in a cloud of smoke, literally.

  The years rolled by. Vince became quite prosperous. He was no longer the skinny, scared kid he had been when he had first met Sizzle. Now he dressed conservatively, with a carefully tailored vest buttoned neatly over his growing paunch, and lunched on steak and lobster tails with bankers and brokers.

  Although he moved out of the old neighborhood row house into a palatial ranch style single near Cherry Hill, over in Jersey, Vince still came back to the Epiphany Church every Sunday morning for Mass. He sponsored the church’s Little League baseball team and donated a free Toyota every year for the church’s annual raffle.

  He looked upon these charities, he often told his colleagues, as a form of insurance. He would lift his eyes at such moments. Those around him thought he was looking toward heaven. But Vince was really searching for Sizzle, who was usually not far away.

  “Really Vince,” the dragon told him, chuckling, “you still don’t trust me. After all these years. I don’t want your soul. Honestly I don’t.”

  Vince still attended church and poured money into charities.

  Finally Louie himself, old and frail, bequeathed the Family fortunes to Vince and then died peacefully in his steep, unassisted by members of his own or any other Family. Somewhat of a rarity in Family annals.

  Vince was now capo of the Family. He was not yet forty, sleek, hair still dark, heavier than he wanted to be, but in possession of his own personal tailor, his own barber, and more women than he had ever dreamed of having.

  His ascension to capo was challenged, of course, by some of Louie’s other lieutenants. But after the first few of them disappeared without a trace, the others quickly made their peace with Vince.

  He never married. But he enjoyed life to the full.

  “You’re getting awfully overweight, Vince,” Sizzle warned him one night, as they strolled together along the dark and empty waterfront where they had first met, “Shouldn’t you be worrying about the possibility of a heart attack?”

  “Naw,” said Vince. “I don’t get heart attacks, I give ‘em!” He laughed uproariously at his own joke.

  “You’re getting older, Vince. You’re not as cute as you once were, you know.”

  “I don’t hafta be cute, Sizzle. I got the power now. I can look and act any way I wanna act. Who’s gonna get in my way?”

  Sizzle nodded, a bit ruefully. But Vince paid no attention to her mood.

  “I can do anything I want! ” he shouted to the watching heavens. “I got th’ power and the rest of those dummies are scared to death of me. Scared to death!” He laughed and laughed.

  “But Vince,” Sizzle said, “I helped you to get that power. “

  “Sure, sure. But I got it now, an’ I don’t really need your help anymore. I can get anybody in th’ Family to do whatever I want!”

  Dragons don’t cry, of course, but the expression on Sizzle’s face would have melted the heart of anyone who saw it.

  “Listen,” Vince went on, in a slightly less bombastic tone, “I know you done a lot to help me, an’ I ain’t gonna forget that. You’ll still be part of my organization, Sizzle old girl. Don’t worry about that.”

  But the months spun along and lengthened into years, and Vince saw Sizzle less and less. He didn’t need to. And secretly, down inside him, he was glad that he didn’t have to.

  I don’t need her no more, and I never signed nuthin’ about givin’ away my soul or nuthin’. I’m free and clear!

  Dragons, of course, are telepathic.

  Vince’s big mistake came when he noticed that a gorgeous young redhead he was interested in seemed to have eyes only for a certain slicklooking young punk. Vince though about the problem mightily, and then decided to solve two problems with one stroke.

  He called the young punk to his presence, at the very same restaurant where Louie had given Vince his first big break.

  The punk looked scared. He had heard the Vince was after the redhead.

  “Listen kid,” Vince said gruffly, laying a heavily beringed hand on the kid’s thin shoulder. “You know the old clothing factory up on Twenty-eighth and Arch? “

  “Y . . . yessir,” said the punk, in a whisper that Vince could barely hear.

  “It’s a very flammable building, dontcha think?”

  The punk blinked, gulped, then nodded. “Yeah. It is. But . . . “

  “But what?”

  His voice was trembling, the kid said, “I heard that two three different guys tried beltin’ out that place. An’ they . . . they never came back!”

  “The place is still standin’, ain’t it?” Vince asked severely.

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, by tomorrow morning, either it ain’t standin’ or you ain’t standin’. Capisce?”

  The kid nodded and fairly raced out of the restaurant. Vince grinned. One way or the other, he had solved a problem, he thought.

  The old factory burned cheerfully for a day and a half before the Fire Department could get the blaze under control. Vince laughed and phoned his insurance broker.

  But that night, as he stepped from his limousine onto the driveway of his Cherry Hill home, he saw long coils of glittering scales wrapped halfwa
y around the house.

  Looking up, he saw Sizzle smiling at him.

  “Hello Vince. Long time no see.”

  “Oh, hi Sizzle ol’ girl. What’s new?” With his left hand, Vince impatiently waved his driver off. The man backed the limousine down the driveway and headed for the garage back in the city, goggle eyed that The Boss was talking to himself.

  “That was a real cute fellow you sent to knock off the factory two nights ago,” Sizzle said, her voice almost purring.

  “Him? He’s a punk.”

  “I thought he was really cute,”

  “So you were there, huh? I figured you was, after those other guys never came back.”

  “Oh Vince, you’re not cute anymore. You’re just soft and fat and ugly.”

  “You ain’t gonna win no beauty contests yourself, Sizzle. “

  He started for the front door, but Sizzle planted a huge taloned paw in his path. Vince had just enough time to look up, see the expression on her face, and scream.

  Sizzle’s forked tongue licked her lips as the smoke cleared.

  “Delicious,” she said. “Just the right amount of fat on him. And the poor boy thought I was after his soul!”

  Introduction to “The Angel’s Gift”

  Everybody from Goethe to the highschool kid next door has written a story about a deal with the devil: you know, a tale in which a man sells his soul in exchange for worldy wealth and power. Sometimes the story ends happily, as in Stephen Vincent Benét’s “The Devil and Daniel Webster.” More often it’s a tragedy, such as “Faust.”

  Here’s a story about a man making a deal with an angel. He has to give up all his wordly wealth and power in order to save his soul. I believe that this story explains the seemingly inexplicable fall of a former President of the United States.

  Sort of.

  The Angel’s Gift

  He stood at his bedroom window, gazing happily out at the well-kept grounds and manicured park beyond them. The evening was warm and lovely. Dinner with the guests from overseas had been perfect; the deal was going smoothly, and he would get all the credit for it. As well as the benefits.

  He was at the top of the world now, master of it all, king of the hill. The old dark days of fear and failure were behind him now. Everything was going his way at last. He loved it.

  His wife swept into the bedroom, just slightly tipsy from the champagne.

  Beaming at him, she said, “You were magnificent this evening, darling.”

  He turned from the window, surprised beyond words. Praise from her was so rare that he treasured it, savored it like expensive wine, just as he had always felt a special glow within his breast on those extraordinary occasions when his mother had vouchsafed him a kind word.

  “Uh . . . thank you,” he said.

  “Magnificent, darling,” she repeated. “I am so proud of you!”

  His face went red with embarrassed happiness.

  “And these people are so much nicer than those Latin types,” she added.

  “You . . . you know, you were . . . you are . . . the most beautiful woman in this city,” he stammered. He meant it. In her gown of gold lame and with her hair coiffed that way, she looked positively regal. His heart filled with joy.

  She kissed him lightly on the cheek, whispering into his ear, “I shall be waiting for you in my boudoir, my prince.”

  The breath gushed out of him. She pirouetted daintily, then waltzed to the door that connected to her own bedroom. Opening the door, she turned back toward him and blew him a kiss.

  As she closed the door behind her, he took a deep, sighing, shuddering breath. Brimming with excited expectation, he went directly to his closet, unbuttoning his tuxedo jacket as he strode purposefully across the thickly carpeted floor.

  He yanked open the closet door. A man was standing there, directly under the light set into the ceiling.

  “Wha . . . ?”

  Smiling, the man made a slight bow. “Please do not be alarmed, sir. And don’t bother to call your security guards. They won’t hear you.”

  Still fumbling with his jacket buttons, he stumbled back from the closet door, a thousand wild thoughts racing through his mind. An assassin. A kidnapper. A newspaper columnist!

  The stranger stepped as far as the closet door. “May I enter your room, sir? Am I to take your silence for assent? In that case, thank you very much.”

  The stranger was tall but quite slender. He was perfectly tailored in a sky-blue Brooks Brothers three-piece suit. He had the youthful, innocent, golden-curled look of a European terrorist. His smile revealed perfect, dazzling teeth. Yet his eyes seemed infinitely sad, as though filled with knowledge of all human failings. Those icy blue eyes pierced right through the man in the tuxedo.

  “Wh . . . what do you want? Who are you?”

  “I’m terribly sorry to intrude this way. I realize it must be a considerable shock to you. But you’re always so busy. It’s difficult to fit an appointment into your schedule.” His voice was a sweet, mild tenor, but the accent was strange. East coast, surely. Harvard, no doubt.

  “How did you get in here? My security . . . “

  The stranger gave a slightly guilty grin and hiked one thumb ceilingward. “You might say I came in through the roof.”

  “The roof? Impossible!”

  “Not for me. You see, I am an angel.”

  “An . . . angel?”

  With a self-assured nod, the stranger replied, “Yes. One of the Heavenly Host. Your very own guardian angel, to be precise.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “You don’t believe in angels?” The stranger cocked a golden eyebrow at him. “Come now. I can see into your soul. You do believe.”

  “My church doesn’t go in for that sort of thing,” he said, trying to pull himself together.

  “No matter. You do believe. And you do well to believe, because it is all true. Angels, devils, the entire system. It is as real and true as this fine house you live in.” The angel heaved a small sight. “You know, back in medieval times people had a much firmer grasp on the realities of life. Today . . . ” He shook his head.

  Eyes narrowing craftily, the man asked, “If you’re an angel, where are your wings? Your halo? You don’t look anything like a real angel.”

  “Oh.” The angel seemed genuinely alarmed. “Does that bother you? I thought it would be easier on your nervous system to see me in a form that you’re accustomed to dealing with every day. But if you want . . . “

  The room was flooded with a blinding golden light. Heavenly voices sang. The stranger stood before the man robed in radiance, huge white wings outspread, filling the room.

  The man sank to his knees and buried his face in his hands. “Have mercy on me! Have mercy on me!”

  He felt strong yet gentle hands pull him tenderly to his feet. The angel was back in his Brooks Brothers suit. The searing light and ethereal chorus were gone.

  “It is not in my power to show you either mercy or justice,” he said, his sweetly youthful face utterly grave. “Only the Creator can dispense such things.”

  “But why . . . who . . . how . . . ” he babbled.

  Calming him, the angel explained, “My duty as your guardian angel is to protect your soul from damnation. But you must cooperate, you know. I cannot force you to be saved.”

  “My soul is in danger?”

  “In danger?” The angel rolled his eyes heavenward. “You’ve just about handed it over to the enemy, gift-wrapped. Most of the millionaires you dined with tonight have a better chance to attain salvation than you have, at the moment. And you know how difficult it is for a rich man.”

  The man tottered to the wingback chair next to his king-sized bed and sank into it. He pulled the handkerchief from his breast pocket and mopped his sweaty face.

  The angel knelt beside him and looked up into his face pleadingly. “I don’t want to frighten you into a premature heart seizure, but your soul really is in great peril.”

 
“But I haven’t done anything wrong! I’m not a crook. I haven’t killed anyone or stolen anything. I’ve been faithful to my wife.”

  The angel gave him a skeptical smile.

  “Well . . . ” He wiped perspiration from his upper lip. “Nothing serious. I’ve always honored my mother and father.”

  Gently, the angel asked, “You’ve never told a lie?”

  “Uh, well . . . nothing big enough to . . . “

  “You’ve never cheated anyone?”

  “Um.”

  “What about that actor’s wife in California? And the money you accepted to swing certain deals. And all the promises you’ve broken?”

  “You mean things like that—they count?”

  “Everything counts,” the angel said firmly. “Don’t you realize that the enemy has your soul almost in his very hands?”

  “No. I never thought—”

  “All those deals you’ve made. All the corners you’ve cut.” The angel suddenly shot him a piercing glance. “You haven’t signed any documents in blood, have you?”

  “No!” His heart twitched. “Certainly not!”

  “Well, that’s something, at least.”

  “I’ll behave,” he promised. “I’ll be good. I’ll be a model of virtue.”

  “Not enough,” the angel said, shaking his golden locks. “Not nearly enough. Things have gone much too far.”

  His eyes widened with fear. He wanted to argue, to refute, to debate the point with his guardian angel, but the words simply would not force their way through his constricted throat.

  “No, it is not enough merely to promise to reform,” the angel repeated. “Much stronger action is needed.”

  “Such as . . . what?”

  The angel got to his feet, paced across the room a few steps, then turned back to face him. His youthful visage brightened. “Why not? If they can make a deal for a soul, why can’t we?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Hush!” The angel seemed to be listening to another voice, one that the man could not hear. Finally the angel nodded and smiled. “Yes. I see. Thank you.”

  “What?”

  Turning back to the man, the angel said, “I’ve just been empowered to make you an offer for your soul. If you accept the terms, your salvation is assured.”