The Cleanup

by John Skipp; Craig Spector

  Billy nodded mutely.

  "Then snap out of it, ace! I need to talk with you some." The angel winked conspiratorially and leaned back in his chair. For the first time, Billy noticed the dapperness of his dress: a loose but immaculately tailored suit of the finest linen Billy had ever seen. It almost hurt to look at it, made him feel as though he'd been dipped in slime.

  Billy was still staring when the waitress arrived at last. "Can I get you something?" she asked.

  Billy snapped to. "Umm . . . I'd like a cappuccino." He looked at the angel. "How 'bout you?"

  The angel smiled, hefting a brandy snifter filled with liquid gold as galleano. The waitress gave Billy a look remarkably like the hostess's before turning away. Billy stared after her, uncomprehending.

  "Uh . . . listen, Billy," the angel began. 'Do you have any idea what's happening here?"

  Billy slowly shook his head.

  "Would you like to maybe hazard a guess?"

  Billy shook his head again.

  "Aw, c'mon," the angel kvetched. "I bet you ten to one that you'll nail it in six tries or less. Like stealing candy from a baby, kid. You can't go wrong."

  Billy started to laugh. He couldn't help it.

  "Be a sport," the angel persisted.

  "I don't wanna," Billy wheedled, and they both laughed. "Nope, nope, nope . . . I don't wanna, because this is scaring the shit out of me. I've finally lost my mind, right? And none of this is really happening."

  The angel stared at him thoughtfully for a moment. "That your first guess?" he finally asked.

  Billy nodded.

  The angel shrugged. "You got five more to go."

  "Then I guess I'd . . . have to guess the same thing over again."

  "Well, that's very thoughtful of you. Throw the rest of 'em away, and I can walk home a weiner." The angel rolled his eyes in a why me? gesture to the heavens, paused to light a cigarette. "Okay, you are crazy, but that isn't the correct answer. You got four more to go. You can do it, big fella!"

  The angel drew deeply on his cigarette, blowing plumes of indescribably sweet smoke from his nostrils. Billy watched the smoke waft out, hanging luminously apart from the collective haze. The waitress returned with the cappuccino, and Billy noticed that the smoke seemed to cling to her somehow, leaving little tendrils trailing behind her like sargasso. She served him at arm's length. Cooties, he thought.

  Billy mumbled his thanks as she fled. It was lost in the general din. He scanned the customer-laden tables that surrounded him. They seemed real enough. He looked down at his cappuccino: hot milk and serious coffee, whipped cream and a tubular cinnamon stick. It seemed real enough. He took a tentative sip; it was hot enough to burn his tongue.

  But it didn't.

  "Okay," he said at last. "I'll grant that I'm really talking to you. So I'll have to conclude that you're some wiseass who wandered over to my table and started playing with my brain."

  "You mean like Hypno the Magnificent? 'Alla-kazani! You are a duck?'" The angel was clearly amused.

  "Well, how the hell would I know?" Billy was getting upset. "Maybe you wandered by, saw the weird dude in the corner, and decided to have a spot of fun." He sat back in his seat and picked up the cup. It was still hot. He blew on it delicately. "Maybe I was just hallucinating the whole thing."

  "That's a pretty half-assed theory, bub, and you know it."

  "It's the only rational explanation I can think of "The rational mind is a backseat driver. You know that too."

  "Yeah, well, maybe you just caught me on a bad day." He lifted the cup to his lips.

  "So let me ask you this," the angel persisted, smiling. "Did you hallucinate the rats?"

  Billy emptied half the cup right into his lap.

  "WAH!" he screamed, flying backwards in his chair. He slammed into the guy behind him, who slopped mochaccino all over the tablecloth and into his girlfriend's purse. They also screamed. Between the three of them, it was loud enough to turn every head in the room.

  "Such grace," the angel muttered. "Such economy of motion."

  Both the waitress and the hostess were on their way over now, along with a busboy and a rather large dude in kitchen whites. Billy was trying to apologize to the couple behind him. It wasn't going over. He was launching into his third round of, "Omigod, I'm so sorry—" when the hostess cut in.

  "What seems to be the trouble?" she demanded.

  "I accidentally knocked into this gentleman and spilled his drink," Billy said. "I'm sorry."

  "He's a goddam loonie-tune!" yelled the man of the lost mochaccino. "He's been sitting there talking to himself since he got here!"

  "Is that a fact?" inquired the hostess.

  "Well, I, uh . . ." Billy glanced sharply over at his companion. The angel had been whistling nonchalantly throughout, but Billy had come to the sudden realization that nobody else could hear it. "I know that this is gonna sound a little weird, but . . ."

  The kitchen help was fidgeting in his skivvies. He looked like the kind of guy who liked to hit people. "You want I should throw him out?" he probed delicately.

  ". . . see, I'm an actor, and I'm rehearsing this part about a guy who hears voices. Plus, I got a little bit plastered tonight . . ."

  "You don't look drunk to me!" hollered Mr. Mochaccino. "You just look like an asshole!"

  ". . . and I sorta got carried away," Billy finished, but the man's words bit into him. He didn't feel drunk anymore. The room wasn't spinning. His speech wasn't even the tiniest bit slurred. "I'm sorry," he repeated, and the implications punched in further: he hadn't felt drunk since the whole weird conversation began.

  "Buy them drinks," the angel suggested.

  "Look," Billy said. "let me pay for that last drink and buy you each a new one, okay? I mean, that's the least I can do." He smiled apologetically.

  All eyes went from Billy to his long-suffering victims, who looked at each other for a long dull moment before shrugging and nodding their heads. The thug from the kitchen looked vaguely disappointed; everybody else was simply relieved.

  The waitress moved to the casualty table for a new round of orders. The rest of them wandered away. Billy lit a cigarette, hoping the motion looked savvy and cool, then turned hesitantly back to the angel.

  "Don't talk anymore," the angel said. "Seriously. Just keep all of your reactions in check. This is something that you re gonna have to get used to, so, you might as well start now. Okay?"

  Billy nodded.

  "Don't even do that," the angel insisted. "Close your eyes, if that helps. Pretend that you're thinking. You do it all the time." He grinned. Billy turned away and took a drag, blowing it up at the ceiling.

  "Great. Hold that pose. Now I'm just going to talk, and you're just going to listen. You'll have a lot of questions, but you'll just have to save 'em for later. I'm going to tell you some things that you'll need some time to think about before you can even get the questions right. So save it. 'Til the next time, you're all ears and no mouth. I mean it."

  Pause. Billy blew a perfect smoke ring. The angel smiled.

  "Terrific," said the angel. "Now listen up. My name is Christopher. You don't know me, but I know you very well. Now, sometimes you believe this, and sometimes you don't, but the fact of the matter is that you're a very special dude. And I do mean very special. In the scheme of things here on this ol' planet Earth, the extent of your potential purely boggles the mind." The angel leaned forward. "I should know. I've been assigned to you since the day that you zygoted into being."

  Billy giggled, still staring at the ceiling. The couple behind him turned warily.

  "I swear to God, Billy. You cut that out, or we'll both be riding in the rubber rodeo at Bellevue." Billy stopped, stifling another one, and turned to face the table. "Very good. May I continue? Don't answer that. Listen.

  "What we're talking here is self-actualization. You have spent your whole life developing your personal power and a system of values to govern it with. The music, the movements, the
schools, the jobs, the relationships, the tragedies, the drugs"—the angel waved his hands—"all of them were geared toward sculpting you into the man you were meant to be."

  He paused. Billy was staring very hard at the table.

  "There is, in fact, a man who you were meant to be. A particular man, with a particular job to do. A mission, as it were: the purpose for which you were born.

  "You know that. You've always known that.

  "And the time has come, Billy. To fulfill that purpose. To come of age."

  Billy's eyes were closed, and he was shaking. The cigarette sat unattended between his fingers, half an inch of ash at its tip. Christopher gently removed it and snubbed it in the ashtray. Billy's lips tightened into the thin line between a grimace and a smile.

  "When you surrendered to the Creator," the angel continued, "you opened yourself to the power of the universe. I know that sounds like cosmic crapola, but it happens to be the truth. You just brought me actively into your life; and in so doing, tripped open all your hidden doorways of potential.

  "What you're going to find," the angel continued, "is this: as of this moment, you can do anything. And nothing can stop you. Nothing."

  A solitary tear tracked down Billy's right cheek. The nails of his left hand dug into his palm.

  "God's truth," the angel said.

  Billy's eyes were still closed, and he had trouble unclenching his teeth. "This is bullshit," he said very quietly, to himself. "This is a psychotic episode."

  "Sorry."

  "A wish-fulfillment fantasy."

  "Your destiny."

  "Bullshit."

  "No. Truth."

  Billy felt the couple behind him turn again, and disregarded it. If he was really this crazy, their Opinions no longer mattered. "Listen," he hissed, his eyes snapping open.

  And staring at an empty chair.

  Billy's breath sucked in sharply. He half-stood before he remembered himself, cast his gaze wildly around the room. The guy behind him muttered something, and Billy shot him a withering glance before sitting back down in acute disorientation.

  "Hey, asshole!" his favorite fellow customer growled. "You gonna—"

  "Did I knock something over?" Billy asked. His voice sounded like a steel cable snapping. He whirled to face them. They visibly flinched. He could feel the terror pouring off of them. "Am I disturbing you? You want crazy, I'll show you crazy. I'll eat your goddam brains if you don't back off. Right now. Like that."

  Billy snapped his fingers. The man's features went blank. He found himself staring deeply into the man's eyes, heard his own voice speaking softly over the hum in his ears.

  "We're fine now," he heard his voice saying. "I'll be leaving in a minute. Relax. Enjoy."

  The man nodded stupidly, then turned back to his girlfriend, who looked like she'd just swallowed a ball-peen hammer. Billy nodded at her politely, then returned his gaze to the empty chair.

  And the items in the center of the table.

  There were two sheets of heavy-bond notebook paper stacked neatly before him, elegantly lettered in a luminous gold script. On top of them was a crisp twenty-dollar bill that had never seen the inside of a pocket.

  He took them, very slowly, in his hands.

  The twenty-dollar bill was newly dated. Everything was right, from Jackson's wicked pompadour to the tiniest curlicue. He laid it back down on the table gently, and began to read the note.

  Dear hotshot,

  Might be a good idea to bid adieu, at this point, before the giggle buggy gets here. Until we meet again there are just a few more things that I wanted to say.

  The door has been opened, as it were, and there's no going back. Your life will never be the same. I can't answer all your questions now because you're not ready yet and you wouldn't believe me anyway. But trust me. I'm here to guide you. Always have been. Always will be. You are never alone.

  As for your mission:

  It's very simple. You have the gift. Learn to use it. Use it wisely. You have the power to clean up your life, clean up the streets, clean up the whole damned planet if you play your cards right.

  Billy flipped to the next page. His heart was pounding.

  Like I said: you can do anything, and nothing can stop you. That's the straight poop. No limits. No limits at all. You've been charged with an enormous power, and an enormous responsibility. You have been chosen because you are capable of using it wisely. And you will.

  But the proof is in the pudding, my friend, and I suggest that you taste it promptly. There are no more excuses, no more reasons for waiting. Just the work to be done.

  Just the work to be done.

  Ball's in your court, ace. Take care, and be aware. I'll be keeping in touch.

  Christopher

  And that was the end of the note.

  Billy stared at the pages for a long elastic moment, then folded them neatly and stuck them in his back pocket. He picked up the twenty, held it parallel with the tabletop. It didn't even flop.

  Great, he thought, laying the bill back down on the table. That should take care of it. Then he rose, feeling not the slightest bit dizzy, and walked out of Café Figaro.

  That was when he remembered Bubba.

  "Omigod." He pictured his poor squirmy sidekick, abandoned in front of the fucking hotsy-totsy too-good-for-Billy Rowe sushi bar on Avenue A. If some junkie hadn't gotten to him yet, Bubba was probably being served up as beef teriyaki for the gods of rock 'n' roll by now.

  The image flooded him with panic. "You PUTZ!" he screamed at himself, clutching his hair by the handful. "Oh, Bubba. Oh, man. I can't believe I did that to you! I wish you were here—"

  Behind him, someone barked.

  It had begun.

  PART TWO

  BECOMING THE MAN

  "Some folks is broke,

  An' some folks is rich.

  Some sit an' joke,

  An' some sit an' bitch.

  Some say they know,

  An' some only wish..."

  Billy Rowe

  Twisted Toward Life

  SEVEN

  RAT DREAMS

  When Billy and Bubba got home, the rat-thing in the bathtub was gone. The broken quart was still there, of course—nightmares don't clean up after other people's messes—but the shower was off, and the monster was gone.

  If it was ever actually here at all, Billy added, but he was too tired and bewildered to argue with himself. Too much had happened, too much of which made no sense at all. He would sort it out in the morning. If ever.

  Bubba, for his part, did an exhaustive snoofling check of the premises. They got the waggle-tailed seal of approval: no monsters here. Billy peeled off his clothes, tossed them to the floor, and crawled into .bed. Bubba joined him, cuddling close.

  But even now, with the lights off and the sheet pulled up, Billy's mind mulled over the question: Why me?

  And even now, as sleep began to seep in through his pores, his life was unfolding before him like a yawning cathedral that, in dreaming, he would wander.

  From room to room to room . . .

  Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 1960. Three months shy of three years old. In the pinstripes of light permitted by the venetian blinds, Billy could make out the details of the room: the light blue walls, the cheerful pictures, the bars and brightly-colored plastic playthings defining the parameters of his crib.

  He didn't know the meaning of the word fever. The concept of one-hundred-and-eight degrees meant nothing to him. And death was not in his vocabulary.

  Nonetheless, the first two were part of him now, and the third was not far away. In the hour since the family'd left him to his nap, seven extra degrees of heat had welled up from within, drenching his pj's in sweat, making a fuzzy muddle of his perception. He was too wasted to do anything but whimper: a tiny sound, louder from outside than in.

  Until the monsters started pouring down the walls.

  Billy's little eyes widened in terror, and his already-short breath hitched in his
mucusoid chest. The monsters were aware of it: gleefully so. They chittered and stared at him as they descended from the ceiling, misshapen mouths grinning and baring their teeth.

  There were thousands of them. They enveloped the walls in a semi-transparent, hallucinogenic swarm, poured off onto the floor and began to race toward him: eyes blacker than the darkness of the room, legs pounding in soundless stampede-formation.

  Nobody needed to tell him that the rat-things were evil: no fairy tales, no Bible, no cartoon. Every speck of his being burned and gleamed with the ancestral memory.

  When the first of the horrors reached his crib, Billy let out the first real scream of his life.

  Then came the thundering of footsteps, the roar of frightened voices. Light flooded in through the suddenly-opened door. Mommy was there, and Daddy. They were shouting to each other as they raced across the sea of monsters. Billy could see them dimly through the bars and the creatures that clung to them. He held out his arms, still screaming.

  Daddy's hand lay flat against his forehead, jerked away. Daddy yelled something, yelled something else. Mommy ran from the room. The rat-things yammered and spat, tongues flicking . . .

  . . . and then Billy was flying, Daddy's arms wrapped tightly around him, the two of them moving out through the doorway and into the hail. More thunder was booming from the water-room. It echoed madly in his head as they rocketed toward it . . .

  . . . and still the rats flowed down the walls in torrents, shrieking their rage, piling up to Daddy's knees. Daddy ignored them, plowed through them, fingers busily unfastening the pressure cooker that Billy's pajamas had become. . . .

  . . . and then the thunder was all, the ricochet/roar of the bathtub's filling, the godlike booming of his parents' voices as the last of his clothes were torn from his body and he was plunged into the icy, fever-shattering water.

  One of the monsters jumped in after him. He screamed . . .

  . . . and it screamed . . .

  "No, no, no," Billy's subconscious droned, aloud, as his sleeping body thrashed in the sheets.