Now, for the first time, the words making love had finally lived up to their meaning.
Sleep came, finally, with the rising of the sun through her bedroom window. They did not dream; all their fantasies had been fulfilled. They remembered only that they were warm and happy and spent.
Together.
Where they seemed destined to remain . . .
"Dammit." The word hissed out of her, mournful and bitter. A tear had weaseled its way out of her left eye and trundled down her cheek. More were poised and waiting. Her makeup was about to die.
Mona hurried to the ladies room, praying to God that none of the photographers caught her on the way. The glass of gin and tonic sloshed in her hand, a few drops spilling over, drunken analogue to her tears. If anybody noticed, they kept it to themselves.
The damage to her makeup was minimal. The three minutes she spent repairing it also went toward restoring her composure. Deep breathing helped. So did the drink. So did the moderate rekindling of her anger.
So what happened to that much-vaunted idealism, Mr. Rowe? Rhetorical question, phrased for herself alone. What happened to the little Rainbow Warrior? You were the kid who got sent to the office every day: not for smoking or cutting class, but for standing up to the bullies in your peer group and the administration. You were the kid who quit school, got your diploma off a match pack, and sent copies to every teacher that ever jerked you around, with a note that read WHO NEEDS YOU? You were the young man who fought the nukes and the chemical dumps, threw benefit concerts, caused trouble for the Powers That Be in any little way you could.
What happened to the Caped Crusader? The Ralph Nader of rock 'n' roll? She smiled unpleasantly into the mirror, imagining him there. Well, let me tell you. He gave up. He crawled home with his stupid rock opera between his legs, took his phone off the hook, and opened the first of fifty thousand beers. He gave up, and he hasn't been heard from since. All we ever see anymore is his empty shell. I feel like the star of I Married a Zombie from Outer Space, and I hate it.
So good-bye, Billy Rowe. I hope you get your shit back together someday. Send a postcard if you do; I won't be around to see it in person.
"There," she said out loud, squaring off with her reflection. "Now if I can only whip up the guts to say that in real life."
It wouldn't happen tonight. That much was virtually certain. Superman would be curled up inside a bottle somewhere, assuaging himself, making up excuses for his spectacular vanishing balls. Tonight, it was best to get him out of her system as quickly as possible.
And she knew just the man to do it.
Out of the bathroom, back into the crowd. Moving back toward the semicircle that was, yes, still very much in existence. The last of her drink was a vague buffer against the clank of dwindling ice cubes. She stopped for a refill, letting the gin perform a similar buffering against her conscience.
Then onward, again, toward the center of the gathering.
Toward Dave Hart, who stopped in mid-sentence and turned to beam at her. There were less than five seconds between the moment he viewed her and the moment of impact. It gave him just enough time to pucker his lips.
Of course, he had no idea that she was about to slide her tongue between them.
Mona kissed him with deliberate and thoroughgoing abandon. It took a couple of beats for him to believe what was happening, but he recouped admirably. She could almost hear the fireworks going off inside his mind.
What she could hear came to her in SenSurround: delighted laughter and applause, the steady snik snik snik of auto-winders having a field day. The photographers and gossip-mongers had their scoop now. Everybody was happy. And she was just drunk and wickedly-pissed enough to join in their enjoyment.
Until the shouting erupted from the doorway.
"GET YOUR HANDS OFF ME, GODDAM IT! I'VE GOT A FUCKING INVITATION!" The voice sliced through the applause, the noise of the parts the kiss, with chain-saw subtlety. Mona pulled away from Dave abruptly, staring wide-eyed in the direction of the mounting conflict. She couldn't see over the heads of the crowd.
She didn't need to.
She knew who it was.
"Oh, God," she whispered. A block of ice appeared in the pit of her stomach; she felt suddenly dizzy and ill. The voice howled something else. It was drowned in the waves of excited babble.
"What is this shit?" Dave wanted to know. He'd automatically wrapped a protective arm around her shoulders.
"I dunno," one of the nearby photographers said. "Some drunk. Looks like they're tossing him out."
"Hold me," Mona whimpered. She could feel the blood draining out of her face, and her knees were going weak. Dave looked down, and his own eyes widened in shock and concern.
"Jesus! Mona, are you alright?"
"I'm . . ." Am I going to faint? I don't know, I don't know, this isn't right, it isn't fair. "I'm . . ." she tried again.
"Oh, baby," he muttered tenderly, holding her tight and moving her slowly toward the back of the sushi bar. "C'mon. We're gonna get you a seat. You're gonna be okay. Let's go."
She let him lead her, dimly aware that the commotion had died down, hearing wisps and snatches of laughing voices, descriptions of the ratty-looking nutcase, how his ass had hit the pavement, how he'd staggered away with his mangy mutt still tied up outside.
Then she was crying, the sound mercifully drowning out all but Dave's sweet voice: a soothing flood of nonsense in her ears.
FIVE
PRAYER
Walking, walking, pulverized Adidas dragging his dead weight on their backs. Gray, rain-slick streets, drifting aimlessly past him like ocean fog. A half-moon, glaring baleful in the starless night sky, cold as the eye of a snake.
Billy Rowe, staring at the world through red and streaming eyes, a Vaseline-covered lens of pain that blurred and distorted his vision. Billy Rowe, a brown-bagged quartof Budweiser swinging back and forth between his lips and his side, putting him in tune with the constant spinning, spinning of the earth.
Billy Rowe, wandering alone through the last hour of the darkest night he'd ever known.
While the freak parade marched by.
On Seventh Street, between Second and Third Avenues, a drunken old sailor muscled his way toward Hell and the East River. Massive arms on a spindly body, salt-and-pepper crew cut standing bristle-stiff atop his leathery head, he swaggered and staggered blindly into the blackness while his lips muttered curses from his own private lexicon of hate. His mind was gone, and his body was dying, but his anger was a voodoo curse that propelled him, horribly, forward.
At Astor Place, where the last street peddlers were still hawking their clothes and records and junk for a spoonful of oblivion, the rotting flower child was dancing. She could have been forty, she could have been sixty: there was no way of knowing. She probably didn't know herself. Her eyes were as vacant as the parking lot to her left—too many hits of acid, too many broken dreams—but she swayed like an angel and she smiled like a saint while her little-girl voice went la la la to a fractured fairytale tune only she could hear. There were flowers in her matted hair. The petals were brown, and were sticking together.
Just off the corner of Bleecker and Broadway, a young-old man in piss-stained pants was dragging himself alone a cold brick wall. Blood flowed, copious, from a wound at his scalpline. Apparently, somebody'd taken a bottle to him, the cut was a jagged, semi-circular smile. He left behind a trail of bloodstains that Billy followed for three blocks before it veered off toward Houston Street and the coldwater harbor below.
There were more. There were more. Billy couldn't stop to count the private Hells that were passing him by. He was too immersed in his own. A gallon and a half of beer swished and swilled through his innards, filling him with acid bile. The world was spinning, and the cold sweat of vertigo ran sickly down his flesh.
In his mind, it was worse: a gibbering collage of haunting words and hideous pictures that ran together like lava and sputtering stone. When he closed his e
yes, the images burned themselves into his retinas, draping ghostlike transparencies over his open-eyed sight.
And the voices refused to leave him alone.
(hit the road, twit, this is a private affair)
Billy was on the corner of Bleecker and Thompson, moving deep into the heart of Greenwich Village. Tourists and trendies, punks and preppies, bums and bohemians flooded the streets. He couldn't bring himself to look them in the eyes. He was afraid of what they might see.
(guess he didn't see you as much of a threat)
"Oh, yes," he laughed painfully. 'I'm a scary guy, alrightee." He rocked back on his heels, drawing a speculative glance from the Oriental couple beside him at the curb. His eyes snapped shut . . .
. . . and his rain-spattered guitar was rolling over on its side, sloshing a slow-motion river of blood down onto a video monitor that erupted in smoke and whistling sparks, and on the screen was Mona's face, screaming as the black static enveloped her . . .
. . . and the light changed, and he opened his eyes as they started to shoulder past him. He went with the flow, let it buffet him forward, suffering the eyes that kept turning and
(are you alright?)
checking him out. At the opposite curb, Billy paused for a moment, one hand snaking out to a No Parking sign for balance. Bleecker Street did a lopsided carousel spin
(i said move it, asshole!)
and he felt his center of gravity lurch horribly to the side as he slammed into a pretty young woman with spiky wristbands and Day-Glo hair, who . . .
. . . smiled at him sweetly, her hands clutching a five foot length of small intestine that lolled like a tongue from the great smiling gash across her abdomen, and the woman was Mona, it was Lisa, it was the dead girl framed in the white chalk line, it was every beautiful woman he had ever known, and she . . .
. . . called him an asshole and shoved him away. "I'm sorry" he muttered, stumbling west on Bleecker, the world
(dying I'm dying I'm)
spinning faster and faster, the bile in his stomach sloshing in sickening counter-motion. He felt the quart slip from his fingers, saw it bounce off the pavement and roll into the gutter behind a black Trans Am and . . .
. . . the squat form scurried deeper into the shadows beneath the car, its long naked tail whickering worm-like behind it as . . .
. . . Billy felt the first gag-reflex rock him from within. He stumbled over to a stoop, narrowly avoiding the seven-foot drop down the stairwell beside it, and . . .
. . . there were two more in the stairwell, scampering back into the dimness of the alleyway with their impossibly long front legs . . .
. . and he sat down with a thud, eyes focusing and unfocusing in time with the hideous rolling motion in his gut. He turned and saw the lights from Café Figaro on the corner. They seemed to beckon him as he . . .
. . . turned and watched them stop, inches from the all-consuming blackness at the end of the alley, stop and turn to face him, rearing up on misshapen haunches, chittering at him, calling him by name . . .
. . . and Billy jumped up, lurching forward as the spinning world turned his legs to rubber and his bowels to jelly. He grabbed a parking meter for support, mind reeling like a baby on a raft in a whirlpool while his voice droned on and on, saying, "This isn't happening, this isn't happening . . ."
Every light on the street had a radiant aura; beams of brilliance speared his eyes. He gagged again, mouth filling with hot saliva. He spat it out, furious and terrified, fighting desperately to control the mutiny within.
Café Figaro loomed before him, with its promise of cappuccino and a comfortable chair, safety and sanity; at the very least, a dignified place in which to throw up. It was the best option he had.
He took it.
Something cleared in Billy's head when he opened the door. Every sweat gland in his body seemed to let go at once, soaking his clothes while they purged him of his madness. The voices in his head gave way to the din of the crowd, the gentle flute and Spanish guitar in the corner. The dim light of the room seemed to emanate from the smoky air it graced, a soft and omnipresent neon glow.
He took a couple of unsteady steps inward, one hand feeling along the wrought-iron railing that extended in from the door. The hostess, a tawny woman with an English accent and a WE ARE THE WORLD T-shirt met him at the end of the railing, appraising him carefully before leading him to a seat. Billy nodded and looked, away; her guts weren't hanging out, but she wasn't smiling, either. And as he followed her past the hodgepodge of antique tables and throngs of Villagers, up the tiny flight of steps to the back of the café, it was clear that he still wasn't looking too good. Maybe worse.
Good idea, he thought. Set me next to the men's room, just in case. It pissed him off, but he couldn't argue with the logic.
"This all right?" she said. It wasn't really a question. The tiny marble two-person table was wedged into a cul-de-sac of booths at the very back of the room. He noted that she had specifically offered him the seat that faced the wall. The better to hide you in, my dear, he thought. It suited him just fine. He squeezed in, jostling the excruciatingly-hip couple behind him in the process, and began to casually peruse the wallpaper. It was a montage of French newspapers, thrown up and shellacked in a higgledy-piggledy fashion. Billy didn't speak French, was vaguely suspicious of people who did.
The hostess departed, pausing to toss an admonitory glance to the waitress. It was all lost on Billy. He stared at the empty chair in front of him, and the depression came flooding back. The voices were gone, and that was terrific; 'he could close his eyes without a nightmare vision looming, and that was even better. But the empty chair was, in a way, much worse. It was real. He couldn't blink it away.
The room began to spin, just a little. The word no hissed through the clenched fist that he pressed to his lips. He hated himself for getting so wasted, for being so weak, for standing by helplessly while people either conquered or fell all around him.
And the blackness welled up like Texas oil.
And his hands came up to cup his face in an attitude of prayer.
"Oh, God," he whispered. "Oh, God. Oh, God. Please help me. I can't take it anymore. I'm dying, the world is dying, and nothing that I've done has made a fucking bit of difference."
Tears rolled down his fingers and settled in his palms.
"I've tried, and I've tried, and I love you so much, and I always believed that you were guiding me toward my highest possible self. But then I look at the mess that I've made of my life, and I think dear God, this can't be right.
"It can't be. It can't."
Billy let out a deep rasping sob, followed by a flurry of clipped and shallow breaths. Tears spilled over his wrists and traced veinwork down his arms.
"That's why I'm begging you: Lord, God, Creator of the Universe, whatever you want to be called. I've lost control of my life. I don't like what I'm doing . . . I don't even know what I'm doing anymore. I only want to do the right thing." He searched himself as the words poured out, knowing that he'd spoken the truth.
"But I can't do it alone, I can't stand to be alone anymore. If you're there . . . if you're listening please help me. I'm lost, and I need you to guide me back. I give myself up to you. I'm yours."
He listened to his words, and was immersed in the power, the abandonment, of the moment. It was surrender to a higher order, to something greater than the flesh and its demands.
Total surrender to the Infinite.
To the source of all light.
And darkness.
"I'm yours," he whispered, and the moment was more than enough. The room was still spinning, but that had become a joyous thing. He felt light and transcendent, a spirit cut loose from the mooring of self. I'm having a flashback!, yelled a voice in his mind. He dismissed it. This was heavier than acid. This was heavier than anything.
"I'm yours," he repeated with total conviction, not expecting an answer.
Not expecting a voice to say, "Billy, you wouldn'
t believe how long I've waited to hear those words."
SIX
CHRISTOPHER
The angel was beautiful, and more than beautiful; the word became ridiculous in context. All attempts at description became ridiculous. The angel was more than words could describe.
It was light given form. It was form in perfect proportion. It was kind of hard to tell, though, because the light was so intense: a gold so brilliant and unearthly to behold that Billy's saliva dried up in mid-swallow. Yet he stared at it—he couldn't help but stare at it—deeply enough to pick out the rainbow undercurrents playing across its core.
Its distinctly human core.
The angel's voice was sweeter than the New York Philharmonic's strings, more resonant than its brass and reeds together. It exuded a warmth that got under Billy's skin and went straight for the heart.
The angel was completely outside Billy's frame of reference.
And was sitting directly across from him nonetheless. "Wuh," Billy said. It was really just the sound of his jaw flopping open.
"I beg your pardon?" the angel's voice chimed.
"Uh, buh," Billy clarified. He couldn't move. He couldn't speak. He could only stare through basketball eyes, mouth agape and senselessly flapping.
The angel's laugh could turn coal into honey. It pealed for a moment like ethereal bells. Then the voice said, "I'm sorry. I'm blowing you away," and . . .
. . . a man was sitting across from him at the table. He was unusually handsome—his hair baby-blond and rippling over his collar, his eyes icy-blue and sharp as diamonds, his tanned features bold and impeccably cut—but aside from the faint golden glow he emitted, he could have been passed off as mere flesh and blood. If flesh could be so lucky.
"Is that better?" the angel asked. His voice was music and exceedingly pleasant, but gave every indication of being merely mortal.
The Cleanup Page 4