Billy just stood there while Rubin and the punkette whooped in two-part harmony. He didn't know what to do. It had happened so fast.
But Rubin's hand was broken. That much was clear. It was swelling up like a purple balloon, and the fingers refused to unclench.
I did that, Billy's mind informed him. He staggered back, and the six-pack clinked against his heel. I can't believe that I just did that. .
Billy turned to grab the beer and met a pair of wide moon eyes. They pinned him for a moment, silencing his mind, forcing him to share in their open awe.
The baby was no longer crying. She was just staring at him, as if trying to determine what manner of life form he was. For the first time, Billy realized that the Power was for real: that he really was no longer an ordinary man.
"Omigod," he whispered.
. . . and then he was running, the shrieking meltdown of the happy nuclear family behind him receding as he ran and ran, toward Houston Street, away from what he'd done . . .
"Nice job, Crusher," the angel said, just as Billy rounded the corner. Billy screeched, nearly dropped his bag, and skidded to a halt. Christopher nodded, courtly.
"Oh, no!" Billy yelled.
"Oh, yes," the angel insisted.
A chain-link fence surrounded the lot on the corner of Houston and Elizabeth. Billy sagged against it, letting it support his weight. His legs didn't feel up to it at the moment. He blinked his eyes, hoping that Christopher would be gone when they reopened. No such luck.
"What do you want from me, anyway?" he groaned.
"Just a brief chat. About where you're heading."
"I'm heading home, man. That's the long and the short of it."
"In more ways than you know, my friend. But we still need to talk. Come on."
Wearily, Billy pulled himself away from the fence, and the two of them started walking toward the Bowery.
"You wanted to talk," Billy said, fishing a beer from the bag and twisting its head off. "So talk."
"Okay," the angel agreed. "Let's start with your little Killer Kowalski routine—"
"I didn't know what else to do! I mean, I didn't even know what I was doing!"
"I know. But now that you've got some idea of how strong you actually are, you're gonna want to put a bit more forethought in before you act. Not that I don't approve of how you handled Rowdy Rubin. Au contraire!"
"Jesus Christ, Christopher!" Billy shouted. The angel flinched. "I broke his goddam hand!"
"Be tough for him to beat up on the wife and kid for a while, though, won't it?"
"Well, uh . . ." Billy was forced to grin, despite himself. "I guess that's true."
"You know it is, Binky! And what's more, you could have killed him, which would have been really extreme. Or you could have hurt the woman when she attacked you. But you didn't.
"No, the only objection I've got to what you did is that you ran when it was over. You couldn't face what you'd done. And that's probably the most dangerous active flaw in your character."
"What do you mean?"
Christopher sighed. "You're a runner, Billy. You're a great guy—otherwise, you wouldn't be in this mess—but you're a runner through and through. You run from your weaknesses, and then use your strengths to convince yourself that you're not really running. But you are. And that shit has got to stop.
"You're responsible for your actions, and the consequences of those actions. Example: you stepped in to prevent the abuse of a woman and child. In the course of it, you hurt somebody who deserved to be hurt. Oh, woe is me!" The angel wrung his hands extravagantly.
Billy suppressed a wave of rage. Truth was truth, but he wasn't in the mood to be mocked. "Whatever happened to good old non-violence?"
"Perfectly viable option. A lot tougher than the old eye-for-an-eye, that's for sure; if you plan to adopt it, you're going to have to work on that temper of yours. If that's the row you want to hoe, more power to you.
"Just remember that Jesus didn't go into palpitations when he tossed the moneylenders out of the temple. And nobody pissed nor moaned in Heaven when David greased Goliath's skids. I'm not ruling out compassion—without it, you're lost—but you can't fight the Good Fight without honesty and courage.
"So your running days are over. They've got to be. Do I make myself clear?"
"Yeah," Billy said. He felt properly humbled. "It's just easier said than done, that's all."
"What isn't?"
They had reached the corner of Bowery and Houston. The bums were everywhere. Billy knew that they couldn't see Christopher, but that was strangely okay: this was the one social circle in which talking to oneself wasn't only okay, but a primary qualification for membership.
The thought, as soon as it struck, dipped him headfirst into melancholy. He was painfully aware of how close he'd come to joining their shambling ranks: homeless, drunk, defeated. Contempt for their weakness, compassion for their lot: the two forces waged war within him. It was a conflict that he normally reserved for himself, and the realization of it flooded him again with that marvelous sense of detachment.
There but for the grace of God, he mused. There but for the grace of—
"You're thinking," Christopher interrupted. "That's good. Now let's see how well you think on your feet."
Billy looked up. One of the Bowery Boys was shuffling toward him. It was the infamous Fred Flintstone, in fact: those burly, slope-browed features were unmistakable. One grubby, broken-nailed paw was already outstretched. The whining entreaty was coming right up.
Billy didn't want to hear it. He didn't want to deal with it at all. Giving change to these guys was like a vote of affirmation: Yeah, it's good that you gave up on life, here's your next bottle, try not to piss it all into your pants when you're done, okay? He didn't want anything to do with it; avoidance had become his way of coping.
But Christopher's eyes were upon him, and Christopher's eyes missed nothing. Billy stopped in his tracks
(your running days are over)
and faced the bum, whose rheumy-red eyes said
(there but for the grace of)
nothing.
"Hey, buddy," Fred Flintstone began. "You gotta help me out."
Billy just looked at him.
The Power began to prickle at the air around him.
"C'mon, pallie," the bum persisted. "I need a bottle in the wors' way."
"I'm not your pallie," Billie said, the Power alive and warm within him. "But I know exactly what you need."
Terror flicked briefly in the derelict's eyes. His outstretched hand made a last-ditch attempt at retraction. Too late.
"And here it comes now," Billy said, taking hold of the hand with his own.
Healing Fred Flintstone took less than fifteen seconds. It was amazing to see how quickly and easily organs mended themselves when the Power was brought into play. Psychic pain was trickier; the only thing Billy had to fight it with was love. But he placed a warm fireball of light and hope at the core of the derelict's being, and hoped that that would be enough.
At the fifteenth second Billy looked up from his work. Christopher was smiling. Billy smiled back. The angel winked and vanished, leaving Billy to the burned-out husk that rose now, Lazaruslike, toward the land of the living.
Then Billy stood, still consumed by the Power of Light.
Yes, he said. I think it's time to go home.
It was easy, in that moment, to believe that the worst was over.
ELEVEN
RICKIE AND REX
"Say cheese, baby."
A muffled sob. A flash of blinding light, followed by the whirrr of tiny gears, pushing the little paper-and-chemical package through the slot. A keepsake.
Rickie sat back, admiring his handiwork. She was a great-lookin' chick, no two ways about it. Even in the dark, after they'd beat her face around a little, she still looked hot. He and Rex would be gone before the bruises really started to turn color; and besides, they had the pictures from when they'd fresh snagged her.
Nice face.
Her body was fantastic, too. Nice tone. Real clean. Big firm titties with tiny nipples. A tight little twat with an authentic blond bush. It was everything they could ask for in a woman, really. They were happy as pigs in shit.
This had to be their lucky night.
"Baby, you gonna love this," Rex was saying. He was glad that Rickie always finished fast, tonight more than usual. He couldn't wait to put his pork into this one. I guarantee, you ain't never had anything like it," he added, and began to unbuckle his pants.
It was the moment of truth, and he always looked forward to it. She'd pretty much stopped struggling since the last time he hit her—she was positively tame through Rickie's three-minute, four-inch performance—but that was entirely different. They always came alive again when he showed them what he had. It was, like, a unanimous thing.
Rex wasn't so hot to look at. Everything about him was big and ungainly: his twice-broken nose, his ears, his jaw.
Slouching, he crested at an even six feet, and he weighed in at 235. His black, curly hair was unkempt and greasy. The rest of him tended to follow suit.
But he had a porn-star pecker, and that was a fact: eleven inches long, wide as the fat end of a pool cue. He was proud of the response it got: taut bursts of woman-breath, widening eyes.
He wished that her eyes weren't already swelling shut.
He remembered that they were fantastic.
Meanwhile, Rickie had dropped the camera—an SX70 Sonar, real good for close-ups—and had picked up his knife. He was holding it to her throat, like he always did. Too hard. His pants were back around his waist, but he hadn't gotten around to hookin' 'em back up yet. He knew that he was just the warm-up act, and that the star was really antsy tonight. If it wasn't for Rex, he knew, I'd never get any pussy at all. It was something to keep in mind, no matter how much he hated it.
Rickie was scrawny and ratlike, almost completely the opposite of Rex: 108 pounds on a five-foot-seven frame, all coiled muscle and skinny bones. He had the same greasy curls and coloring, but that was where the resemblance ended. He was a whittled-down version, in every sense of the word . . . right down to his half-sized dick.
When Rex's pants hit the floor, and the girl began to moan, Rickie put a tiny little slice in her throat.
"If you make a sound, I'll kill you, bitch," he said. "If you try to get away, I'll kill you. You just lay there and take it, you hear me?" He was hissing now, every consonant sharp and deadly. "You just lay there and take it."
"Ain't a woman in the world can be quiet when I'm inside her, ace," Rex boasted. He knelt between her legs, hocked a large wad of spit into his hand, and lubed her up a little. "You know that by now."
Rickie knew. He tightened his grip on her hair when she squirmed, but he kept his mouth shut. He knew that Rex liked it when they made a lot of noise.
He also knew that he'd never get them to make that much noise.
Not unless he hurt them.
Very badly.
God, I hate you, Rickie thought. It applied to Rex, and to himself most of all, but it was intended for the woman and all of her kind. He hated the fact that he'd never made one cum, didn't even know how. He hated the fact that they only came to him when they wanted his money. He hated their beauty, their taste and their smell.
He hated the fact that they made him want them so badly.
Rex, on the other hand, didn't hate them at all. He loved them the way that he loved a good steak or a hot Trans Am. Rickie had heard Rex's motto a million times, forever linking the three in his mind:
Cars are for stealin', women are for fuckin', and steaks are for sizzlin' on the grill.
What could be simpler than that?
It was hotter than hell in the storage cellar, and it stunk like death and moldy cheese. That didn't seem to bother Rex. He leaned over the gorgeous blonde, slid his hands under her ass, and lifted her pelvis half a foot into the air. "You gonna love it, babe," he reiterated, and then painfully slipped her his first three inches.
She sucked her breath in sharply, whining, and started to cry.
Rickie put another tiny slice in her throat.
And then he did it again.
And then he did it again.
TWELVE
GUITAR DREAMS
In the dream . . .
His life's long corridor, stretching out again before him. Door after door after door, lining the walls to either side, inviting him to review the second-by-second-by-seconds of his life on Earth in segments designed with coherence in mind.
In the bed . . .
Billy Rowe, deeply asleep, motionless and silent but for the gentle susurration of his breath. Bubba, at the foot of the bed, deeply engrossed in dreams of his own. The sheets, wrestled aside by the heat and the unconscious vigor that the dreaming inspired.
In the room . . .
A solitary shape, floating just above the clutter.
Taking notes.
Buenos Aires, Argentina. 1967. On the occasion of his tenth birthday, Mom and Dad had stopped by the La Lucila music store and picked up a little something special. Already, his love of rock 'n' roll was firmly entrenched: Don Foley's older brother had clinched it by sending musical Care packages from the San Franciscan Summer of Love. Billy and Don were the only pre-teeners in the country who knew all the words to "Alice's Restaurant," could quote chapter and, verse on the early Grateful Dead.
But Billy's favorite, far and away, was Jimi Hendrix. So he very nearly soiled his jeans when the wrapping paper unraveled to reveal his little something special. It was a sunburst Fender Stratocaster copy—the very one he'd ogled every day on his way home from school.
It was just like Jimi's.
And it was his!
So when the rest of the presents had been dispensed with, some 120 grueling seconds later, Billy hustled up the spiral staircase to his sister Becky's room, where the stereo was kept. A straight gray guitar cord had also been provided. He plugged into the jack, turned on the stereo amp, and laid his fingers on the strings for the very first time.
The guitar was wired for 220 volts. The amp was wired for 110. Even with the squat gray transformer between the amp and the wall, the guitar and the amp were not adjusted to each other.
When Billy touched the strings, every hair on his body stood on end. Painful electricity burned through his central nervous system, leaving no nerve ending untouched. He tried to let go of the strings. He couldn't. He was fused to the instrument.
And it was going to kill him.
His whole body was twitching when Becky finally raced over to the wall socket and unplugged the amp. The voltage had not been enough to kill him, but it had scrambled his own internal electronics to the point that he went in something like synesthesia: tasting colors, smelling sounds, his senses running together in nightmare psychedelicide.
The family expected Billy's guitar-playing career to end right there.
They were wrong.
It was the night of guitar dreams, electric and wild: a lifetime measured in half-steps and whole tones, progressions both major and minor. In his dream, he raced down the years of practice and performance without end at the speed of an Eddie Van Halen solo. There were so many parties, so many jams, so many nights alone in the throes of rapturous composition. It was impossible to stop and relive them all.
It was enough just to taste the feeling.
And the feeling was freedom, the feeling was flight, the world a constantly-shifting wall of sound that he was free to soar over on wings of song. To be the melody: that was the thing. To rewrite yourself as the spirit moved you. Improvising. Transmogrifying. Plastic. Explosive. A butterfly razorblade hootenanny howl of every passion and emotion in the human repertoire.
A moment raced toward him. A moment to remember. In the cathedral of his life, it was a sacred event. He paused before it, entered it.
Remembered . . .
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. 1980. Twenty-three years old. A dark, cloud-smothe
red sky cast its pallor on the thousands who had gathered here today. But it could do nothing to dampen their spirits.
It was March 28: the first-year anniversary of the accident at Three Mile Island. In response, a number of local anti-nuclearites had formed the March 28th Coalition. It was sponsoring the festival of music and messages, the expression of solidarity, the media event. People had come from as far as Alaska to inform Met Ed and the GPU that their asses were in the populist sling.
A number of Big Names had cruised in for the performance: Pete Seeger, Dick Gregory, Linda Ronstadt, Stephen Stills.
But for these five minutes, on the early cusp of noon, the stage belonged to Billy Rowe.
The name of the song was "We Are Going To Win." It was an anthem for the '80s, and without a doubt the most optimistic song he'd ever written. It had been written on New Year's Day, to usher in a decade that he hoped would make the '60's look like a pre-game warmup for evolutionary change.
The crowd was almost enough to make him believe it. They were more than warm, more than enthusiastic. Ninety-nine percent of them had never heard the song before, but eighty-five percent of them were singing along at the chorus. He had toyed with the idea of bringing along a backup singer, but it was obvious now that he'd made the right decision. He had all the beautiful voices he needed. What drove him to doubt was the Coalition itself, the most dogmatic, petty batch of neo-leftist glory-hogs he'd ever chanced to meet. Coming together with them had been his first real experience with the calcified dregs of The Movement, per se. For all their much-vaunted love of The People, they were as closed-in and cliquish as the fucking Masonic Order; and when it came to imagination, he'd seen more of it in the ads that read: DRAW BLINKY, MAKE BIG$$$!!!
Billy didn't much care for the March 28th Coalition.
They didn't much care for him, either.
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