“I’ll tell you what’s crazy: me, forever thinking one of my sons would have the simple common decency to… Why are you crying?”
“I’m not. I mean… I don’t… I don’t know!”
Herb jumped up like someone had just firebombed his petty cash account. “Missy, honey, can you leave us for just a minute?”
“But I can help! I can facilitate!”
“Man to man, honey. It’s a father-son thing.”
Missy nodded and tiptoed out of the kitchen. Then Herb reached out, grabbed my shoulders and pulled me into his arms.
“There, there, son,” he whispered, while pounding my back hard enough to induce coughing. “It’s OK, partner. Gonna be just fine. Here.”
Herb reached into a drawer and produced the inhaler I kept in the kitchen. I took a hit and felt the soothing coolness of albuterol loosen my airway.
“I’m OK.”
“Sit down.”
Herb sat on the other side of the kitchen table. “Alright. What’s up?”
“I don’t know. It’s just… I feel so stupid.”
Herb nodded. “I could use a good stiff drink. How ’bout you?”
“Please… No alcohol.”
“Who’s talkin’ about alcohol? I’m gonna make you one of Dad’s Blues Bustin’ Protein Shakes.”
While Herb worked the blender, I related the debacle with the Molokes, leaving out only the particulars concerning Dionysus and his enchanted wine. By the time I ended with Surabhi calling me from the airport, Herb set a tall glass on the table in front of me. It was filled with a thick green concoction that smelled strongly of garlic.
“There. That’ll grow hair on your nuts.”
“Agghhh. What is that?”
“Trust me. It gets better. Drink up.”
While I looked around for a place to dump the shake, Herb prepared one for himself.
“What you’ve got there is a loss of trust, son. It’s probably been festering inside Shaniqua’s mind for a while now. And with her old man pushing all her buttons, she probably doesn’t know her asscrack from a beaver’s burrow.”
“Usually it’s great between Surabhi and me. When we’re together, all the outside stuff, jobs, money… it all goes away.”
“I get it,” Herb said. “When you’re together it’s like you’re in a secret garden where nothing else matters, where the two of you can be who you truly are. You think your old dad doesn’t know that feeling? Wrong, son; I know it well.”
“Is that what you and Barbara felt for each other?”
“Oh no. Mom’s a castrating superbitch from Hell. Don’t get me wrong. I loved your mother. Man, I fell head over heels with her the moment we met. And the sex thing… that’s important, son, not all important but pretty damn close. But she was always an angry, punishing kind of woman. She kicked my ass all the way to the altar. It took me twenty-five years to understand that your mama wasn’t fighting me. She was fighting herself.”
“Who’s winning?”
“Your mother once told me her father never touched her. Never told her she was special, pretty, any of that jazz. Can you imagine? The son of a bitch. Thanks to his emotional neglect your mama’s a goddamned nightmare.”
“Pop, this is supposed to make me feel better.”
“Mom and I got straight with each other when I realized that her anger had nothing to do with me. I stopped using her self-loathing to punish myself for my own shortcomings. That’s when I stopped trying to take responsibility for her happiness. At that moment, we were both free.”
Herb slurped his shake thoughtfully.
“Of course it also cost us our marriage and placed us in the nightmare in which we coexist today. But I suppose that’s the price we pay for self-awareness.”
“What about us? Your children?”
Herb shrugged, and drained his cup in one gulp.
“Lemonade, son. The sweetest I ever made.”
“Thanks. I think.”
“You gotta let her in, son. But before you can be honest with her, you gotta get straight with you. After that, everything else’ll straighten out double quick. How’s that shake?”
My glass was empty – I’d drunk the whole thing.
“Wow. That was good.”
“Beautiful. Now how about that lawn?”
“I’m so proud of you guys!”
Missy Tang ran in and threw her arms around Herb’s shoulders. “You guys were so open and ‘in the moment!’ It was really adult and like… totally present! Oh, Lando, isn’t it exciting? Daddy’s almost as enlightened as I am!”
They rubbed noses, Eskimo style.
“Group hug!”
“No thanks… I’m good.”
“Nonsense,” Herb growled. “Get in here, ya big homo.”
“Well. Looks like the gangbang’s just warming up.”
Barbara was standing at the back door with a man I didn’t recognize.
“I guess we’re just in time.”
The tall stranger was Caucasian, tanned, with thick brown hair shoved back from a high forehead. He appeared to be in his mid to late fifties, the beginnings of middle-age sag creeping ’round his cheek and jaw. He was tall, his eyes an odd, whitish-blue. He had the hard look that clings to freshly paroled hustlers; like a cowboy cardsharp who’d recently lost the use of his thumbs.
And he was holding my mother’s left hand.
“What are you three doing here?” Barbara said. “Lando, I thought you were off to one of your Star Track parties.”
“I got bored.”
“Oh. That’s too bad,” Barbara sighed. “Well, don’t worry, sweetheart. You’ll have better luck next year.”
“Uhhh…Thanks?”
Barbara patted my shoulder, then turned and acknowledged Herb with a kind of smug appraisal. “Herbert.”
“Barbara-Jean.”
“And Misty… how are you this evening, dear?”
Missy flinched. “I’m not a whore!”
“Well, no one here called you a whore, dear,” Barbara said. “I certainly didn’t, nor would I ever dream of doing such a thing.”
“This morning you called me a festering little cooze–”
“No, Misty dear,” Barbara corrected. “I simply inquired as to your wellbeing… on this lovely evening that the Lord has sent.”
We might have been three people staring at a twoheaded dog giving birth to the cast of Will and Grace. Barbara stood taller, as if daring one of us to point out that under normal circumstances somebody would have been critically injured by now.
“What are you up to, Barbara-Jean?” Herb said. “Are you home-detoxing again?”
Barbara’s weird elation seemed to intensify. “I’d like you all to meet the Reverend Doctor Owen Holiday. Owen, this is our family friend, Misty and her boyfriend: my lawfully recognized estranged husband, Herb Cooper.”
Holiday strode across the kitchen and extended a big, leathery hand toward my father.
“Herb. I’ve enjoyed your commercials for years. It’s a pleasure to meet you face to face.”
Owen Holiday had a prosecutor’s voice. An actor’s voice.
“Pleased to make your acquaintance, Padre.”
“Man, I’m a little nervous, Herb. I used to watch you when I was stationed up at Great Lakes.”
“Navy man, huh?”
“I was base chaplain for nearly ten years before I resigned my commission. Sometimes we’d gather on Sunday nights after dinner and McLeish – that’s Bill McLeish. He was program manager for the Navy Motion Picture Service – well, McLeish would always show funny commercials or short films before the main feature. Yours always got the biggest laughs. The one where you wrestled that python in the hot tub was hilarious!”
I was still trying to put my finger on what it was about Holiday’s voice that bothered me when he turned and fixed me with his white-blue eyes.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Lando. Barb talks about you all the time.”
“Pleas
ure.”
The headache that had apparently rented studio space in my skull was hammering at the backs of my eyes. I wanted nothing more than to crawl back into bed and vanish beneath the covers.
“You OK, Lando?”
“Migraine,” I mumbled. I didn’t like Owen Holiday. But something about his aged Mormon cowpoke good looks and easy avuncularity told me he was going to try to win me over. “I get them sometimes.”
“I am truly sorry to hear that. I suffer from the occasional migraine myself. They really suck.”
Holiday offered a warmish smile. Up close he looked older than he’d first appeared; his mouth a thin line where his lips should have been. “I find a large black coffee usually backs the pain off enough to make life worth living again.”
Barbara laughed.
Holiday didn’t strike me as the jolly type. His flesh resembled some heretofore undiscovered species of flexible stone, his expressions geared more toward sadism than humor. His face would only crack jolly while its owner dropped depleted uranium on an Iraqi wedding party or napalmed an Indian reservation.
“Owen is the pastor at my church.”
Herb spat garlic shake out his nose. “The pastor at your what?”
“Church, Herbert. It’s a big building with stained glass windows…”
Herb waved the rest away. “Sorry, Doc. Barb’s an old atheist. We both are. Religion is a crutch; I call it ‘the Great Separator’. It keeps people nice and stupid. Barb once said, ‘Organized religion is…’”
“Herbert, Owen doesn’t want to hear–”
“‘…the worst thing to come out of the human race since the first caveman stood up and took a crap’. Our shared skepticism is what brought us together, back in the mid-eighteen hundreds.”
Barbara’s right eye was fluttering; a warning that one of her signature thermonuclear wall crackers was imminent. For one crazy moment I thought she might reach for the Glock she carried in her Louis Vitton.
“Lots of people feel that way, Herb,” Holiday said. “Hell, with the way things are going in the world, who can blame them? Not much evidence for a caring supreme being when so much suffering goes unchallenged is there?”
“Nope. It’s like asking intelligent adults to pay their taxes and regulate their blood sugar while pledging allegiance to the Tooth Fairy.”
“Herbert… you’re insulting my guest.”
“That’s alright, Barb. I get the feeling Herb and I are cut from the same cloth despite our differences. Though I’ll admit I’ve never quite understood – when you calculate the odds that all of this could happen by accident…”
“‘Accident’ is a word people use to explain a universe that doesn’t give a shit.”
“Herbert!”
“Herb makes a valid point, Barbara,” Holiday said. “But I’ve never understood what atheists offer in place of Divine Will.”
Herb cracked open a litebeer and extended it toward Holiday.
“Heineken. I offer Heineken. You a drinkin’ man, Rev?”
“Owen and I will be doing some serious bible study in the dining room, Herbert,” Barbara said. “We’d appreciate a little privacy.”
“Bible study? Doc… five minutes alone with Barbara and Jesus would open a kosher whorehouse!”
Barbara took a long breath, exhaled it slowly. The muscles of her face twitched. Then…
Here it comes.
…she smiled. “I forgive you, Herbert.”
“You what?”
“Owen has been helping me understand the importance of forgiveness in maintaining a healthy emotional resume.”
“Doc, you sure you came to the right house?”
“Oh, I’m sure about that, Herb. And it’s not so much ‘Bible study’. I practice a stripped down approach to religious instruction that incorporates a mélange of contemporary spiritual modalities, re-evaluation of traditional belief systems and relevant scientific theory where appropriate. Even the most devout believers should stay open to plain old common sense.”
Barbara was nodding her head, her eyes darting back and forth between Herb and Holiday like a middle schoolgirl looking for a place to barge into an adult conversation.
“Owen has a PhD!”
“Well,” Herb said. “I guess we all have our crosses to bear. One of mine is a mild addiction to Viagra, so, if you’ll excuse us. Evenin’, Barbara-Jean. Padre.”
Herb and Missy Tang disappered down the stairs leading into the basement. Barbara and Holiday went into the dining room, my mother giggling as she shut the door behind them.
“I have got to get a life.”
I snatched a box of Mother Butter’s Pancake Mix out of the pantry, opened the refrigerator door and stared at the half empty gallon of milk where it sat on its shelf.
Drink that, you’ll spend the rest of the night on the toilet.
“Lactose intolerance,” I whispered to the clockwork universe. “Nice incarnation, Yahweh.”
I grabbed the Lactaid.
Alone. Dejected. I mixed my ingredients. My headache was back. I wondered if Surabhi was thinking about me, then chided myself for wondering. I stared into the thickening batter, hoping for glimpses of prophesy in its lumpy, whole grain goodness.
And I began to plan my escape.
CHAPTER XIII
ANGELS AND EXORCISMS
“Shall I CONFIRM YOUR RESERVATION, Lando?”
I’d found a fare that would deplete my savings but allow me to get to London by midnight the next day. The irony of the life into which I’d incarnated myself had never felt more pressing: I could have Reset myself to London or summoned an angel and demanded transport. But I’d sworn off any powers not directly involved with protecting the mortal continuum. The Covenant prohibited the mortal me from using those powers for personal benefit. Now that decision was biting me in the most mortal portion of my anatomy.
I was about to push “Confirm” when Yuri’s face flashed across my mobile’s screen.
“I have news.”
“What’s up? I’m at work.”
Yuri laughed. “Not for much longer.”
“She’s not answering, Yuri.”
“Who?”
“Surabhi.”
“Aahhh women. Can’t live with ’em, can’t dismember the bodies and use ’em for fertilizer.”
Monday morning. I’d spent the rest of my weekend regretting the pancake binge and preparing for a gig. During the Moloke Massacre I’d promised to call Goldie Kiebler back and promptly forgotten all about her. She’d left me a message:
“Since you never called me back I should tell you to go shit in a lake. But my sonofabitch analyst tells me I have a thing for unattainable men thanks to my asshole father, so of course I’m also turned on by men who don’t return my calls. So… I’m hosting an Up and Comer Showdown next Wednesday night. We haven’t had you in for a while so you should come. You sonofabitch.”
I called Goldie back to apologize and thanked her for the shot. Then I spent the rest of the night staring at my computer screen. Apparently there wasn’t a joke or pithy observation to be had for love or the two hundred dollars Goldie paid her “Up and Comers”.
“What are you doing today?” Yuri said. “Please say you’re available for a lunch meeting with me and Jeff.”
“Who’s Jeff?”
“Jeff Corroder? Head of Dream Lever Productions? My boss for the last three years? I swear… you never listen.”
“Don’t start, Yuri.”
“I mean part of this whole BFF thing involves us keeping connected. You know, actually being friends? I’m just sayin’. So. Lunch? Jeff watched your gig at the Improv on YouTube. He thinks you’ve got potential.”
“Really?”
“I thought a little validation from On High might pep you up. Jeff’s into it. I pitched you as ‘The Bastard Gay Lovechild of George Carlin and Chris Rock: Quirky observational humor with a take no prisoners urban flava’. The perfect blend for a late night reality talk show host
.”
“I hate when you speak pitch lingo.”
“I know. So… you down with becoming a star?”
You’re telling me you’re as good as Chaplin? Cosby?
Here it was: the chance to prove Magnus wrong. I could silence my detractors without flash-frying a city to do it.
“Yes,” I said. “I’m down.”
I was helping an irate customer when the angel Moroni walked through the wall and pulled Cooper & Sons out of local time.
“Well!” Moroni boomed. “Gabriel said I was wrong but I bet him Donny Osmond’s temple garments you’d still be here!”
Moroni passed through my customer’s stilled form like the insufferable wraith he was. He had borrowed the body of a stout, white-skinned westerner with a bulbous nose and rampant rosacia. His hair was a dense silver wave atop his huge head. Whoever Moroni was wearing was wearing a sky blue T-shirt with the message, “Jesus Was a Mormon!” emblazoned in white cloud letters across the chest.
“It has been far too long, Lord – even as we Deathless enumerate the passing of time’s tedious tread – since last I lay eyes upon thy ineffable radiance.”
“Moroni… I’m busy.”
“Praise be to thee, oh industrious Father of Hosts! Oh Hosannah! Hosannah in the highest!”
“Moroni, please. Keep your Voice down.”
From the angels to the archangels, from the Seraphim to the Cherubim and all the Orders in between: the two most annoying individuals had found me within the space of two weeks.
“Hosannah! O Mighty One! Hail, Divine Fellow! Well met in all reverence and sobriety!”
Moroni talked. Once Joseph Smith’s subconscious tapped into the Eshuum and summoned forth a divine response it had been all Moroni could do to keep his ethereal trap shut long enough to manifest himself on Earth and spread the word via angelic visitation among Smith’s followers.
“I come on a mission of great urgency, Lord of Lords,” he rumbled. “Indeed, in matters pertaining to thy most devoted harbingers, things are rotten in the state of…”
“What’s wrong, Moroni?”
Moroni nodded, his borrowed jowls flapping.
“It’s the Archangel Gabriel, Lord! He has trespassed…”
“He has what?”
“Ahhh,” Moroni stammered. “Gabriel hath trodden... ahhhhhh…”
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