The Cleanup
Page 9
But there was a cause, which transcended the egos of Coalition and Billy alike. There was the crowd, which had traveled from far and wide to express its collective outrage and love of the Earth.
And there was the music, which in many ways was the heaviest thing of all.
The music, at that moment, was absolute magic. He had the crowd under his spell, but it wasn't quite that simple. The music had him by the balls, as well: his voice and his fingers were slaves to the song. It forced him through an extra sing-along chorus that the crowd received with almost sexual ardor.
And that, of course, was when Max strode out onto the stage.
Max Fogel was the Grand Potentate of the Coalition. He was also the MC of its dog-and-pony show. He had a Karl Marx beard and a Karl Marx receding hairline to cover a brain that had stopped growing at roughly the same time that Karl Marx died. Billy often thought that Max would only achieve true happiness if someone slipped an 'R' strategically into his name.
Billy stood at center stage, with a microphone aimed at his Ovation and another one at his face. He was concluding the brief instrumental interlude that led to the songs finale. Max came up to within six inches of the vocal mike and said, in a voice that carried through the speakers, "Your time is up."
For a very long moment, time seemed to stand absolutely still.
And the air around the stage began to crackle.
Billy looked out into the sea of faces; and for the first time, he realized how completely they were hanging on his every move. He looked at Max, saw how easily he could slice the man into fatty strips of bacon. There was an incredible sense of power in the moment: the sense that the outcome of the entire event was squarely in his hands, as surely as the guitar that he continued to play.
I could devastate you, Billy thought, staring Max straight in the eye. Right now. Right in front of these people. Using nothing but your own swinish absence of tact. You'd be too embarrassed to show your face in front of these people again. It would be easy. It would be fun.
But then he looked back at the crowd; and beyond, at the cooling towers, barely visible through the haze hanging over the Susquehanna River. That was the issue. That was why they were gathered together: not to brand Max as a walking turd, not to point out the hypocrisies of the Movement, but to inspire hope and feeling of community among these people, so that there might someday be an end to all the terracidal madness, nuclear and otherwise.
And in that moment, Billy made his decision.
"Kids," he said, booming into the microphone. "I've just been informed that my time is up. There's just about a minute left in this song. I could stop right now, but I just want to ask you: would you like to hear the end of it?"
"YEAH!!!" came the thunderous response.
"All right!" Billy yelled. The crowd cheered. Max glared. Billy blew him a kiss. He didn't give a fuck whether Max was satisfied or not. The People had spoken, and it was to them that Billy spoke as he sang the last lines of the song:
"Don't give up!
We need you!
Don't give up!
We need you!"
Everybody but Max sang along.
So much for solidarity.
They gave Billy a standing ovation when he left the stage, but he could barely hear it. He was immersed in the Power.
And the knowledge that he had not abused it.
Faintly, very faintly, above the bedroom floor and the dream-crowd's roar, a pair of invisible hands were also applauding.
THIRTEEN
THE CLEANUP (PART 1)
Billy awoke to the sound of scuffling paper in the darkness of his room. He was up and on his feet in a flash, the cobwebs of dreamland trailing behind him. His hand shot out for the bedside lamp. There was fear in his belly and fire in his eyes as he stared at the sound and flicked on the light.
Bubba lolled his tongue stupidly, grinning, from the corner.
"Oh, Jesus," Billy muttered, letting out his own private grin of relief. In a minute, my heart will stop thudding, he assured himself. God, I thought it was one of those things . . .
The dream resurged: the flood of memories. For a moment, he was back on the stage, reliving the fine high rush of triumph . . .
. . . and then he was back in his room, surveying the ruin, looking at the way his life had not so much stacked up as fallen all over the place . . .
. . . and then he was staring at the digital clock. It read 2:35. He felt wide awake. There were several hours of darkness left before the rest of the world awoke.
You can do anything, said a voice in his head. Clean up your life, clean up the streets, clean up the whole goddam planet if you play your cards right.
Suddenly, a number of things became remarkably clear.
In particular, where to begin.
(2:50)
There were 187 empty bottles in his room. He counted them as he lined them up in front of the bathtub. At an estimated six-pack a day, that took him back to nearly five weeks' worth. Most of them his. It had been that long since he and Larry had given the place a cursory cleaning.
The kitchen floor was covered, but his room looked almost naked. It was amazing how much space they took up. If Larry wakes up and sees this, he'll go kablooee, Billy cautioned himself, then stopped.
Because Larry's door was open, and the patented Larry Roth "Snore From Hell" was nowhere in evidence. When in full foghorning bloom, you'd hear irate neighbors pounding on walls, doors, floors, and ceilings. It never woke up Larry. He made more noise than a twenty-car pileup.
The prognosis was simple: no snoree, no Larry. The Smiley-Face Slasher had frightened him off. Probably off boffing that receptionist, Billy mused, grinning. Nice piece of leverage, Lar'. Play on the ol' motherly instinct.
In a way, it was too bad. Larry's snore alone would probably be enough to scare the killer off, if he ever dragged his ass around again. Which I doubt he will, he added.
But I wish he would.
Billy opened a Rolling Rock (188, he noted absently) and sat down on the rim of the bathtub. He turned on the hot water and stuck his hand under the faucet until his skin turned red and the steam began to billow.
It doesn't hurt. He was amazed by how calmly he was taking it. I've never touched anything this hot for more than a second. I can feel it, but it doesn't hurt. He took a long swig of beer with his other hand, lips grinning around the mouth of the bottle. Look, Ma! No hands!
Then he steadily, painstakingly washed out all 188 bottles, one by one. Many of them were simple rinse jobs, but quite a few boasted some startling and tenacious lower-life forms that clung to the bottom like barnacles. A few pieces of green stuff that looked like rotting bacon. A few flat, black hash browns. And lots of flat little turquoise dots, like the ones you'd find on an old English muffin.
If I find something that looks like scrambled eggs, I'm in trouble, he mused, a little queasy. I'll have to do a picture, call it "Breakfast On Slimeworld." it'll make me an artist of international stature.
No such luck. Down the drain went his moldering fortune, in wave after colorful wave. He settled for the $9.40, his reward for cashing the empties in. They filled two Hefty bags. It took fifteen minutes.
(3:10)
Four more Hefty bags were filling up on the floor beside him: two for laundry, two for garbage. The laundry was winning, but not by much. It had been ages since BiIly'd seen the floor. It looked nice, if somewhat dirty.
Between the pockets and the floor, he came up with forty dollars. A lot of other missing things turned up as well. He deferred them to the next step, whipping through the task with cool efficiency.
It took another bag to hold the clothes. He put them on the bag, then lugged the garbage into the kitchen. When he came back into the bedroom, it looked almost palatial. Another fifteen minutes had gone by.
(3:25)
He thought about everything else that remained to be done, from tidying and alphabetizing his records and tapes to the dishes to the laundromat to ge
tting all of his papers in order. Etcetera. Etcetera.
(3:26)
He said, "Fuck it," and wished that all of it were already done.
It worked.
(3:30)
He began to recover from the shock.
"Jesus Christ." They were the first words to make it out of his throat. In less time than it would have taken to blink an eye—and far too fast for his eyes to have seen it—the place was clean. Completely clean. Even the cockroaches, living or dead, were gone.
The dishes were washed and dried and in their places. The stove—a nightmare, by anybody standards—was immaculate for the first time since its arrival on Stanton Street. The floors were mopped and waxed and shiny. The garbage bags were gone entirely.
All the laundry bags were gone, as well: the clothes clean and pressed and put away. Nine dollars and forty cents were neatly stacked on the floor space where the returnables had been. All his records and tapes and papers were filed: in alphabetical order, of course.
Samantha Stevens, you got nothin' on me, he mused, beginning to giggle, visions of a twitchy-nosed Elizabeth Montgomery dancing in his head. It was too weird. He spun around and around in the center of his room, laughter mounting into hysteria, simultaneously boggling at and accepting how easily all physical law had been superseded. The old Firesign Theatre line came back to him: everything you know is wrong. In the context of the moment, truer words had never been spoken.
Then he glanced at his desk, and the hilarity stopped. The twirling stopped.
His heart nearly stopped.
There was a neat stack of papers on his desk. He knew what it was, even before he got close enough to read the first page. "I gave you away, three years ago," he muttered, barely able to whip up the wind. The pages didn't react, one way or the other. They just stayed where they were.
On the desk.
Before him.
There was a tattered leather chair in front of the desk. Billy eased himself into it. He was shaking. He couldn't help it. He was frightened. He couldn't help that, either. The light in the room was beginning to shimmy, and he felt himself slipping back . . .
. . . to that summer in '77, just before the nervous breakdown, on his friend Jeffrey's porch, on acid, while the jam session blasted inside and the world blasted out all around him and the only thing he could do was pour out his soul onto page after page after page . . .
It was the poem. The I'm-ready-to-die poem. The dear-God-please-explain-what-going-on-because-I-can't-stand-to-live-anymore poem that he'd written on the eve of the madness that had nearly destroyed him. In its own strange way, it was the last time he'd prayed . . .
. . . before the night in Café Figaro.
When Christopher had come.
"You were looking for clues?" Billy asked himself rhetorically. His voice was high and quavering.
He started to read.
God is a fool
Of the worst sort
Twisted labyrinth maker
Weaver of the fabric
In which we are
So hopelessly entangled
I think
"God, can't we stop dancing
Even for a second?
Whirling like fools for
Your clownish entertainment?"
But no
We are of the fabric
We have no choice
So we dance
Fools all
Propelled by God/Great Bozo's
Heaving breath . . .
"You realize, of course," Christopher said from behind him, "that them's fightin' words."
"WAH!" Billy yelled, jumping a foot out of his chair.
"The place is lookin' good. You might wanna take up housekeeping as a second career."
"Don't sneak up on me like that!" Billy took a couple of deep breaths to steady himself. "Man, don't they believe in knocking where you come from?"
"No doors, no windows. You get out of the knack of needing privacy. If you know God's always watching, what's the sense in pretending you're ever alone?"
"Christopher, you bring me solace when skies are gray. I always hoped that angels were just like you."
The angel smiled. "Think you might wanna be one when you grow up?"
"Nice job, if you can get it."
"You're executive material, kid. Take it from me.
"Yeah, well, great. So what do you want from me, anyway? To what do I owe the extreme pleasure?"
"You found the poem."
Pause. From Billy, a nervous swallow.
"You put it there, didn't you?"
"Who, me?" The angel feigned alarum.
"It's important, isn't it?"
"You tell me."
Christopher just stood there with a cunning little smirk. The more Billy stared at it, the more inscrutable it became.
"Yeah, okay," Billy sighed. "It's important. You bastard."
"So keep reading. Don't mind me. I'm just gonna doodle in my notebook for a while."
"You do that," Billy growled, lighting a cigarette with jittering fingers. The ashtray, for once, was empty and visible. It reminded him, again, of just how absolutely everything had changed.
Then he turned back to the poem, all seventeen handwritten pages of it, and allowed it to pull him back. Into the madness.
(3:55)
Why? That was the question at the bottom of those seventeen screaming pages: a big, fat, pain-wracked metaphysical why. It read like a poem, but in fact it was a hysterical letter to God the Father, asking: why is the sky blue, Daddy? Why do people have to die? Why do I have to eat my vegetables? Why? Why? WHY?
No other question can make you crazy quite so thoroughly, quite so easily. It made short work of the twenty-year-old Billy Rowe. He'd been completely unable to accept the answer, the only real answer there was.
Now, nearly eight years later, a whole new batch of why questions had arrived: Why do men go around murdering women? Why am I being tailed by angels and demons? Why is any of this happening at all?
Billy could accept the answer now.
Because. He whispered the word in his mind. Because that's just the way it is.
And it was such a relief to acknowledge it, to embrace the penultimate truth of it. Because that's just the way it is. So simple that it sounded like it said exactly nothing, when it was actually saying everything that needed to be said.
"So I have the Power," he said out loud. "And my time has come."
"That's correct," Christopher chirped from behind him. "You still had a couple of guesses left from the other night, you know. So . . . you win!"
Billy laughed. He'd almost forgotten that Christopher was hanging out. "So what's the Grand Prize?" he inquired, tidying the stack of paper on his desk.
"My never-ending respect."
"Oh, terrific!" Billy sneered, beginning to turn. "Couldn't afford a lifetime supply of Snickers bars, I gath—" He stopped.
The room was empty.
" . . . er," Billy concluded, blinking. Then he noticed the notebook, suspended roughly three feet above the floor. A silver pen was moving across one open page. It seemed to be doing it all by itself.
"Cut that out!" Billy yelled.
"Oh! Sorry." Christopher reappeared, the notebook and pen in his hands. "Just trying to be inconspicuous."
"Well, don't. Things are weird enough as it is." The cigarette he'd lit had smoldered to death in the ashtray. Billy lit another. "So, now what?"
"I'm not the one to ask, big fella. Ask yourself. Are you done for the night?"
"Not exactly, no. What, did you plan to hang around and watch?"
"You got a problem with that?"
"Matter o' fact, I do," Billy said. Christopher looked wounded. "Aw, Snookums. Don't get me wrong. You're delightful company. It's just that there's stuff I have to work out by myself."
"Absolutely true." Christopher pocketed his writing utensils and stood. "You're starting to relax now, aren't you?"
Billy grinned sheepishly. "Y
eah. I am."
"You'll be fine. Just get yourself on center and in focus. You're off to a terrific start."
"Thank you."
"My pleasure. So I'll see ya later, huh?"
"You bet. Take care—uh, wait?"
"What?"
"I . . . I gotta ask you something." Billy could feel himself hunching into an I-know-this-is-stupid posture, couldn't help himself.
"Shoot."
"Is God male, female, both, or neither?"
"Yes."
Billy laughed. "That's what I thought. Thanks!"
"No problem." Christopher grinned, saluted. "Later!"
"'Bye!"
It was just like saying good-bye to any other friend, except that this one didn't have to use the stairs. Christopher vanished without so much as a poof!, heading off toward God knows where.
Wonder if I could do that? Billy mused. He thought about materializing in Mona's bed, on top of her. Would she ever be surprised. The thought was so appealing that he almost considered giving it a try.
Then a picture formed in his mind's eye; and in it, Mona was not alone when he popped into the room . . .
"Shit." Dave's face sucked all the joy out of the fantasy. The happy phone call from earlier danced back into his brain with golf shoes. He grimaced against the vision, the sounds, the sensations. It didn't stop them from coming, but it gave him something to do.
She dumped you, man, said a voice in his head. It sounded petty. He listened to it anyway. It was loud. You're inconveniencing her, and she loves you so much that she's left you to go crazy on your own. Lotta fucking compassion. Great girl. You bet.
A slightly less bitter voice spoke up. That's ridiculous, it said. If she didn't love me, she wouldn't have put up with my decay for so long. She just can't believe that she's having to deal with this at the most happening time of her life.
If you weren't such a shmuck, said an old, tired voice, you'd get yourself a total overhaul. Look at you! Look at your—
Billy smiled. The click from inner to outer was loud and clear.
"You're old tapes," he informed his conscious mind. "You're talking like nothing has changed. You're telling me the room's a mess when I cleaned it up an hour ago. CATCH UP!"