Last God Standing

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Last God Standing Page 23

by Michael Boatman


  But he didn’t feel fine. Something was wrong. Something was… different. But he couldn’t quite put his finger on what. Something about Barbara’s face... And where was Herb? Then another, darker thought…

  “Where’s Yuri?”

  “Who’s Yuri?”

  He remembered a fight, Yuri standing over him, holding something, something so bright it hurt his brain to remember.

  Children.

  “What do you mean, ‘Who’s Yuri?’”

  Blank stares from Flaunt and Barbara.

  “Tall, good looking blonde guy?”

  More blank stares.

  “You said he had a nice package.”

  Flaunt was up in a jackrabbit flash. “Hey! Just what the hell do you mean by that, mister?”

  “It’s alright, Charles,” Barbara said. Then she pointed at her skull. “That’s the you-know-what talking.”

  Flaunt looked unconvinced. “I thought they took care of the ‘you-know-what’?”

  Barbara smiled and patted LC’s arm. “We’ll sort all this stuff out soon enough, dear. Mommy’s going to get you all squared away. Then everything will be just the way it should be.”

  “Well… look who is back.”

  The door to the hospital room swung open and a tall, dark brown man entered the room.

  “Hello, Sanjit,” Barbara said. “Sorry. Doctor Aziz.”

  “Hello, to all.”

  The doctor moved to stand at the side of LC’s bed. Barbara stepped away to give him space to sit on the edge of the bed. That was when LC got his first good look at his mother.

  “And how is my most famous patient doing this morning?”

  “Lando,” Barbara said. “This is Doctor Aziz. He’s the one who helped you. Remember?”

  Barbara was at least thirty pounds heavier than she should have been, her backside and thighs and breasts larger than LC would have believed possible. Her hair, just the day before, had been mostly dark brown with just a few strands of gray beginning to show at the temples. Now it was completely silver, and styled in a way she had always attributed to Republican congresswomen from Texas. Barbara had always hated those “helmet hair” styles, but now she was wearing one. And it was gray.

  The bright light flashing in his eyes brought him back.

  Light… too bright… burning… blinding…

  Children playing with the fires of Creation.

  Doctor Aziz clicked his penlight off and stuck it into the pocket of his lab coat.

  “Yes, he seems a little disoriented. But that’s to be expected after the type of procedure he’s undergone.”

  “Procedure?” LC said. “What kind of procedure?”

  Barbara sat on the edge of his bed and took one of his hands in hers.

  “Lando, dear… you nearly died yesterday. Well, I suppose technically you were dead. But Doctor Aziz brought you back.”

  Doctor Aziz stepped forward, his round, brown face all smiles. “It was touch and go there for a while. But I’m happy to report that the surgery was a complete success. We were able to remove most of the tumor.”

  “Tumor? I have…”

  “Had!”

  “I… had… a tumor?”

  “A slightly non-malignant but very bothersome brain tumor, yes. It was the cause of your terrible headaches…”

  No.

  “…and your colorful hallucinations.”

  Aziz chuckled. “You were very nearly lost to us, my friend. My wife told me, ‘Sanjit, if you let him die I will never speak to you again. He’s the Funniest Man in the world!’ So when your heart stopped beating yesterday morning I thought I would be spending the next ten months sleeping on the couch! But we did our very best and you came back to us. So now I expect you to make a full recovery.”

  Brain tumor?

  “The next few months will be very difficult,” Aziz said. “You will have to learn to walk again. During the six weeks of medically-induced coma, your muscles atrophied, but not as much as we might have expected. You should be fully ambulatory by early next year. I must say, you held up very well for someone who has spent the last two months flat on his back.”

  “A coma? But I don’t remember… can’t remember…”

  “This is normal, considering your brains have been jostled about a bit.”

  Aziz stepped next to Barbara and laid his hand on her left shoulder. “But you remember this pretty lady, don’t you?”

  LC nodded. Of course he remembered Barbara. But her hair… the laugh lines in her face… her weight gain…

  “And your hilarious stepfather? You remember him, don’t you?”

  Flaunt nodded curtly, his bald head reflecting sunlight from the open window. Unfortunately, LC did remember Flaunt.

  “Where’s my father? Where’s Herb?”

  Barbara looked worriedly toward Aziz. But Aziz smiled encouragingly. LC’s gut filled up with dread.

  “Your father passed away, Lando.”

  “What?”

  “It’s been fifteen… no… my goodness it must be…”

  “Twenty years ago,” Flaunt said. “It was that goddamn ostrich shoot, Lando. You were there, remember? Sonofabitchin’ bird kicked him to death…”

  “Charles…”

  Herb… my father… dead?

  “But I don’t… I can’t…”

  “Think for a moment, Mister Cooper,” Aziz said. “Do you remember anything from before your coma? Before you came to the hospital?”

  LC closed his eyes, tried to cast his mind back, beyond the darkness, the emptiness that waited for him in the corners of his memory the way a faithful dog awaits its master.

  Back.

  “I remember someone shouting, my chest hurt… I remember smelling alcohol and someone talking about my heart rate…”

  “Very good! That was yesterday. What else do you remember?”

  Back.

  “Think back now.”

  “I remember…”

  We love you, Daddy!

  LC swallowed, trying to overcome the sudden lump that had formed in the back of his throat. The lump seemed to grow larger as the feeling in his gut intensified.

  “I… I remember…”

  …to thank every one of you for all your kind thoughts. This is way too much excitement for a simple little brain surgery…

  Hi Ho!

  We love you, LC!

  “I remember…”

  …where thousands of fans have gathered at the New Kingdom of Amun Medical Arts Center to offer late-night titan, LC Cooper their fond wishes and hopes for a speedy recovery…

  …my family and I appreciate all the cards and prayers…

  “I remember…”

  Daddy are you gonna die and go live with Grandpa Ptah?

  He had to stop, had to look away from the memories that played against his mind’s eye like home movies from someone else’s life. His throat was filling up with the bothersome lump, and his vision was swimming again.

  “My life… I remember my life…”

  The door to the room opened again and a woman, tall and too thin, with skin the color of caramel and short, black hair, stepped hesitantly into the room…

  “Is it… is he…?”

  …and before she could finish, three children piled through the door and onto his bed.

  “Daddy!”

  He couldn’t speak. He knew them. Their names were Haru, the Falcon, Son of Isis; Oheo, the Iroquois word for Beautiful; and Herbert-Hasani... it meant Handsome. They were his children. He could no more forget them than he could forget his own name.

  Lando Kalel Cooper.

  The woman stood tentatively at the door, watching while the people on the bed embraced and laughed and wept. He remembered her too. He tried one last time to clear the bothersome lump from his throat.

  “Hello, Danielle.”

  Danielle’s eyes grew misty as well. She stepped forward and took his hand in hers.

  “Hello, LC.”

  His family was
there, together, the way he remembered. His children. His wife. His mother. The memories were flooding back now, slowly but steadily. Life.

  This is my life.

  He was home.

  CHAPTER XXI

  REORIENTATION

  (LC) “I’ve been learning to walk again, which explains the cane. When I was a kid I used to fantasize about being one of those pimps, the guys who strut around Salt Lake City with those Jackal-headed walking sticks, which explains my new pimp stroll. Last night I got so carried away with it that I tried to talk my wife into dressing up like a hooker, which explains the two black eyes.”

  < Audience laughs >

  (LC) “You know you take a lot of things for granted when you have your health, silly things like flowers, friends… dry underwear…”

  (Peta) “Hi Hooooo!”

  (LC) “Yeah it’s good to be back. Don’t get me wrong… I could use another six months of silence and mental downtime, but what would that leave for the President?”

  (Peta) “Hi Hooooo!”

  (LC) “My bandleader: Peta Nocona, ladies and gentlemen. ‘The Commanche Camper’. Give him a hand.”

  (Peta) “Heigh ahhhh Hooo ahhh!”

  < Audience chants “Heigh–ahoooaahhh!” >

  (LC) “Peta… what in the hells are you doing?”

  (Peta) “While you were recuperating I decided to try a new catchphrase, LC – something that celebrates my indigenous heritage and the heritage of our founding fathers.”

  (LC) “That’s ridiculous.”

  (Peta) “Hey, you could drop dead any minute, so what the hell?”

  (LC) “Thanks. My loyal sidekick, ladies and gentlemen.”

  < Audience applauds >

  (Peta) “I say it’s time to inject some ‘Big Medicine’ into this show. Heigh aahh hoooaaa!”

  (LC) “Just don’t do a raindance. Then I really will die.”

  (Peta) “And one, two, one-two-three-and…”

  < Band plays tom toms/raindance music and rimshot. Audience laughs >

  (LC) “Oh Peta?”

  (Peta) “Yes, O Great Brown Bear Who Signs Tiny Paycheck?”

  (LC) “How do you say ‘you’re fired’ in Commanche?”

  (Peta) “You’re fired.”

  < Audience laughs and applauds >

  LC threw himself into his car and locked the doors a second before the crazy-haired woman plastered her face against his window. She hammered at the other side of the bulletproof glass with both fists.

  “I just want to talk! We can go to my place! No one has to know!”

  LC waved and smiled at the crazy woman. Behind her, three security guards were hustling toward his car, but these days he had to watch himself in public. With the increased scrutiny from the fans, and the moths, the papparazi, waiting for him to collapse on camera, he felt constantly pressured to manage his image.

  “You’re out of phase!” the crazy woman hissed. “You must be resynchronized! Come with me if you want to live!”

  The security wardens tackled her.

  “I’m a priestess! I have a cable show!”

  Hans, the big, blond Captain of Security for ACC Studios, mouthed an apology to LC over his shoulder. LC waved back: no problem. He was able to hold it all back until Hans hustled the crazy woman into the gatehouse. Then he laid his head against the driver’s headrest and squeezed his eyes shut.

  “Breathe.”

  He counted slowly, trying to slow his thundering heartbeat, remembering his physical therapy sessions.

  Panic attacks are perfectly normal, LC. People who’ve survived near death experiences sometimes suffer from a kind of post-traumatic stress disorder.

  He opened his eyes. For a moment he felt the terrible disorientation that had been whispering at the edges of his awareness since he’d checked out of the hospital, the feeling that he was standing at the lip of a precipice, one step away from plunging over that edge into an unfathomable darkness. He reached up to the sun visor over his head, flipped it down and checked his reflection in the small mirror. Other than the deep pits under his eyes, he looked normal.

  “This is wrong.”

  In the two months since “The Miraculous Return From The Great Beyond”, he had begun talking to himself. Sometimes, in his office or in the car, or while walking Domino at the dog park, he would quiz himself, hoping to uncover answers to the questions that plagued him. Sometimes he did it simply to hear another voice in his head, trying to counter a feeling of abandonment so intense that he often found himself near tears.

  “What the hell’s wrong with you, man? You’ve got three beautiful kids, the number one late night show on the planet, and a wife who…”

  Surabhi.

  “Stop it! Danielle loves you. She took you back didn’t she?”

  He was answered only by the howling silence.

  “You came back though, didn’t you? The bastards tried, but they blew it… big time, baby.”

  Who “the bastards” were, or why they were trying to kill him, remained a mystery. But he was certain that there were forces out there, forces aligned against him; maybe someone at the network, or some asshole he’d screwed over on his way to the top. He didn’t know who “they” were, but he knew they were gunning for him. Somehow, he had slipped through their nets, thrown the hounds off his scent. He had survived lackluster reviews for the last three seasons, ratings lulls that would have sunk other talk shows, and even that thing with the intern three years ago. That had been a real cobra in his blanket. It had taken every persuasive weapon he could muster to keep Danielle on board after the National Bee broke the story about the affair – plus sizable payoffs to all parties involved. But he’d moved on. Now he had beaten a brain tumor.

  But the silence was unbearable.

  The reassuring voice he remembered was gone, flushed away with the tumor. But how could he miss something that had never existed?

  “Go home, idiot. Go see the kids, hug Danielle. Maybe get Martika to babysit and go check out that new Thai place on Michigan Avenue.”

  “Sun’s Eye Boulevard,” the face in the mirror said. “The Thai place is on Sun’s Eye.”

  “No, man. It’s on Michigan Avenue, right around the corner from Herb’s downtown location.”

  “Michigan Avenue is in Chicago,” his reflection said. “You live in the Angels. And Cooper Automotive went out of business.”

  “The Angels,” LC said. “Of course. I live in ’Pyi ’nte niaggeloc.”

  It was the word he’d learned in school, spoken in the tongue he’d spoken all his life. But why did it sound so strange to him now? He punched the car into Drive and pulled out of his parking space. He voice-activated the music function through the car’s artificial sentience interface. The latest electronic mantra filtered through the cabin, the ringing beat of the riq; the gentle twang of the oud; the shuttered breath of the nay: music sometimes kept the terrible silence at bay.

  The thump on his window startled him.

  “You alright, LC?”

  It was old Chenzira Nkuku, the security warden responsible for the studio’s main entrance.

  LC lowered his window. “Yeah, Chet. Just meditating before I head home.”

  “Sorry to startle you, LC. When I saw you sittin’ here…”

  “Thanks, Chet.”

  “You know… I’m such a big fan of the show…”

  “Thank you.”

  “Oh, no problem, LC. Blessings of the Gods to ya.”

  “And to you. Ahhh Chet?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “I’m just a little fuzzy at the moment. Could you tell me… what street is that?”

  The old security warden turned and scowled at the busy street just beyond the main gate. Then he turned back, a wary smile on his face. “Why… that’s Makatawi Boulevard!”

  “Maka…?”

  “Makatawi Boulevard. You know, after the chief.”

  “The ahhh… the chief?”

  “The Seminole chief? Maka
tawi-Mishikaka?”

  Chet chuckled and wagged his forefinger. “You forgetting your history, LC? Ol’ Maka united the Tribes against the Colonials. Everybody remembers ol’ Chief Big Chest.”

  And suddenly, LC did remember the story of MakatawiMishikaka, known to the rest of the world as Black Hawk, who, working in tandem with allies from the Indo-Egyptian Empire, had successfully repelled the first European Federation war parties in 1499. His actions led to the Federation’s recognition of the United Territories of Anowarkowa and her diverse peoples as a sovereign nation. After centuries of lucrative trade with the Europeans, the mostly friendly nations of the African continent and the recognition of shared ancestry with the Pacific Rim nations and indeed with much of Asia, the countries of the North, Central and South Anorwarkowan partitions all looked to Black Hawk as the one of their most revered Founding Fathers.

  “Say,” Chet Nkuku said warily, his eyes scanning the interior of LC’s car. “You’re not doin’ one of your comedy bits are you? You got a camera hidden inside here somewhere? You guys pullin’ ol’ Chenzira’s nose?”

  LC smiled, despite the cold unease unfolding in the pit of his stomach. There was something wrong with Chet. No… that wasn’t quite right. It was something about the way the old warden spoke.

  “See you tomorrow, Chet.”

  “That’s a good one,” Chet chuckled. “‘What street is this?’ LC, you’re a damn panic!”

  LC voice keyed the BMW’s autonav function.

  “Home.”

  As the BMW took control and pulled smoothly onto Makatawi Boulevard, LC focused on controlling the panic.

  “Call Philip Chapman,” he said to the car’s computer. “Urgent.”

  LC had become confused by the name he saw on the street sign that hung over the Makatawi entrance to Akhet Cormorant-Charvaka Studios. To his eye, the sign was printed in a foreign language, the same language that Chet Nkuku was speaking; the language that adorned all the street signs and storefront windows and fast food restaurant marquees he passed along his route home. It was the language LC had been speaking in but not thinking in since waking up in the hospital.

  It was Coptic, the universal language of the Indo-Egyptian Empire. It was LC’s first language; the first language of his friends, his family and of nearly everyone he knew. But since waking up from his coma he’d been thinking, dreaming, in a different language.

 

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