Jim negotiated his way between the pizza boxes and other assorted trash as if he were stepping through a minefield. As he approached, Ricky didn’t take his attention away from his picture but sucked on the scrawniest of joints and said, ‘Hi there, Jim. Glad to see you. You finished early today, didn’t you?’
‘Had some more trouble at college,’ Jim told him. ‘If you ask me, something very stupendous this way comes, and it won’t be long in coming.’
‘Well, I agree with you there, man. There’s something in the air, all right. But I’m not so sure about stupendous. More like cata-fuckin’-strophic.’
He jabbed his brushes at the canvas.
‘Take a look at this, man,’ he said. ‘Just take a look and tell me if you know who that is.’
In Ricky’s freshly finished painting, The Storyteller was no longer the pale, watery, almost seraphic figure that he had been trying so hard not to paint before. Now it was dark, and shadowy, in an undulating cloak, just like the shadowy presence that Jim had almost run down in the smog, and which had appeared like a coil of black smoke on his balcony.
It had begun to appear more distinctly in his nightmare, sitting in his car with its eyes glittering deep inside its hood and its gray-gloved hand resting on the steering wheel. But now he could see clearly what it was – or who it was.
‘Jesus Christ, Ricky,’ Jim told him. ‘That’s amazing.’
‘Amazin’? You think so? I think it’s the scariest fuckin’ thing I ever painted in the whole of my life – especially considerin’ I was tryin’ to paint this merry old fat guy.’
The shadowy figure’s head was no longer covered by a hood. It was large, and gray-skinned, and bony, with an overhanging forehead and pronounced cheekbones and a lantern jaw. Its eyes glittered as they had in Jim’s nightmare, but now they looked triumphant, rather than sly.
He was smiling, gray-lipped, but not in the knowing way that Simon Silence smiled. He was smiling at his own superiority.
Without knowing why, Jim felt exhilarated. Here was the power to end all powers. Here at last was a presence who was strong enough to take command of a world which was falling to pieces all around us.
He stood in front of the painting and slowly reached out to touch it with his left hand. The eyes were mesmerizing. They promised him everything. Glory, success, wealth, and rampant destruction. The fire to end all fires.
Yes, he knew who this was. There was no mistaking him. Out of his tangled black hair, two curved horns protruded – the unmistakable horns of the beast.
NINE
Nadine said, ‘What does it mean, Jim? Is it the Devil? How can Ricky start to paint a cheery old storyteller and end up by painting Satan?’
Jim still couldn’t take his eyes away. The portrait gave him a feeling of huge empowerment that he had never felt before in his life. What had Joe Chang called it? Strempf. Jim recalled his words: ‘Nobody stand in our way. Nobody. They dreaded us, is why. They dreaded us!’
Eventually, he patted Ricky’s shoulder and said, ‘Listen, Ricky, you shouldn’t worry about it. It’s a brilliant work of art, and you’ve painted it for a reason, even if you don’t know what that reason is.’
‘What are you saying to me, man? I didn’t paint this. Well, I didn’t mean to paint it, which is pretty much the same thing, ain’t it?’
‘Oh, you painted it all right. It was just that your talent got taken over by a force which wanted you to create a portrait of the Lord and Master.’
‘The Lord and Master?’ queried Nadine, blowing out a long stream of smoke. ‘That’s goddamn Satan we’re looking at there. He sure ain’t my Lord and Master.’
‘I know,’ said Jim. ‘But that’s how the spiritual force that influenced Ricky to paint him would have thought of him.’
Jim took two or three steps back, although he still couldn’t take his eyes away from the portrait’s triumphant eyes. I am here. You can see me now. You can recognize me for who I am.
Jim said, ‘This kind of thing happens all the time in the spirit world. Not usually so dramatic as this, I’ll grant you. But spirits can’t pick up pencils and write messages, so they guide people’s hands on Ouija boards. How many times have you seen that happen? Spirits can’t speak, so they talk to their relatives through mediums. Spirits can’t throw things, or hurt anybody, so they possess people and get them to do it for them.
‘In this case, a spirit obviously wanted to create a portrait of Satan, for one reason or another, and it used Ricky’s artistic ability to paint it.’
‘Just like I was fuckin’ hijacked,’ Ricky complained, taking out a Zippo lighter and relighting his joint.
‘If you like, yes. You were hijacked.’
‘But what’s the point of it?’ asked Nadine.
Jim looked at Satan, with all of the little children gathered around him, telling them stories. He didn’t fully understand the point of this portrait himself, but he was beginning to get an inkling of what was happening. A faint, faraway feeling like the feeling that came over him when he bit into one of Simon Silence’s apples. Seagulls screaming, and the ocean washing on the shore, and the endless piping of a steam calliope.
‘How about a cup of chamomile tea?’ asked Nadine.
‘No, thanks, Nadine. Like I said, I have a whole lot of homework to catch up on.’
‘I’m supposed to hand this painting over to the library by Friday,’ said Ricky. ‘What the hell am I going to tell them? I can’t show up with this, can I?’
‘Can’t you paint another one, from scratch? Maybe if you paint another one, it’ll turn out the way you originally intended it.’
Ricky puffed out his cheeks. ‘I don’t know, Jim. Does anything in this fuckin’ life ever turn out the way you originally intended it?’
‘Silence!’ screamed the red parakeet. ‘Silence!’
Jim went up to his apartment and let himself in. Tibbles was sitting up close to the sliding window that gave out on to the balcony, with his nose against the glass, but when Jim came into the living room he turned his head around as if he had been caught doing something he shouldn’t. Jim approached the window and saw the Siamese Queen from next door curled up seductively on one of the plastic armchairs outside.
‘Forget it, Tibs,’ he told him. ‘That lady is pure one hundred per cent pedigree. Way out of your league. And her owner never lets her out when she’s on heat.’
Tibbles didn’t turn back to look at the object of his desire. Instead, he continued to stare at Jim with his eyes wide, almost as if he didn’t recognize him.
‘You want something to eat, fatso?’ Jim asked him. ‘What’s it to be today? Shrimp or chicken?’
Still Tibbles stared at him, and now his mottled gray fur began to rise, and his lip curled back, baring his teeth.
‘I’m asking you a question here, Tibs. What’s it to be? Or if you’re not hungry, just say so, although I can’t believe that for a moment. You’re always hungry!’
Tibbles hissed, and began to sidle across the living room sideways, his head low and his back arched, and his claws sticking out so that they snagged on the carpet.
‘What the hell is the matter with you, Tibs?’ Jim demanded. He took a step toward him but Tibbles hissed even more viciously, and backed right up against the wall.
‘Are you sick or something? What? Let me take a look at you.’
He knelt down in front of Tibbles to pick him up, but without any warning Tibbles spat and cackled at him and jumped straight into his face, biting and scratching at him in a blizzard of claws and gray fur. Jim lost his balance and toppled over backward, but Tibbles kept on ripping at his cheeks, and even seemed to be trying to claw out his eyes.
‘Get off, Tibs! Get the hell off me!’
He felt Tibbles tear his right earlobe, and the sudden wetness of blood sliding down the side of his neck, into his collar. But then he managed to lever up his left elbow to shield his face, and with his right hand seize a handful of loose skin between Tibble
s’ shoulder blades. He swung Tibbles sharply to the right, and then flung him all the way across the room so that he hit the air-conditioning unit with a thump and a reverberating clang.
He climbed to his feet. Tibbles was lying on his side, his eyes open, clearly not dead, but with a look of intense resentment on his face.
Jim hunkered down beside him and tried to stroke him, but Tibbles hissed at him again, and batted at him with his left paw.
‘Tibs, what’s wrong with you, dude? I’ve never seen you act so crazy.’
He tried again to stroke Tibbles, partly to calm him down and partly to make sure that none of his bones were broken. But Tibbles managed to roll himself sideways on to his feet, and shake himself, and then limp into the kitchen for a drink of water.
Jim wondered if he ought to take him to the Laurel Pet Hospital. Even if no bones were broken, he might have suffered some internal injury. And besides, why had he attacked Jim in such a frenzy? Maybe he had eaten or drunk something that had affected his brain – not that he was a very bright cat to begin with. Maybe he had developed a brain tumor.
Jim watched him for a while through the kitchen doorway, although Tibbles kept turning around and looking at him as if to make sure that he wasn’t coming too close. Tibbles didn’t appear to be hurt, or in pain, so Jim thought: I’ll just keep him under observation for a while. Pet care doesn’t come cheap, after all. Even having your cat put down costs an arm and a leg these days. I could save myself a whole lot of money by digging a hole in the back yard and burying the stupid moggy alive.
He looked across and suddenly saw his face in the mirror in the hallway, as if it were somebody else standing there. Did I just think that? Was that me?
He slowly approached the mirror and stared at his face. It looked like him. Tousled mid-brown hair, light brown eyes. The same stern frown that his mother always put on, when she was pretending to be angrier than she really was.
Jim? Was that you? Did you think that? Did you really think of burying Tibbles alive? Not only that – you pictured it, didn’t you, in your mind’s eye, tossing the dirt down on to him by the shovelful, and Tibbles shaking himself and panicking and trying to scrabble his way out of the hole?
The face in the mirror looked like him, but there was a quality in his eyes that wasn’t quite him. A mischievous glint, a hint of cruelty, as if he would actually find it quite entertaining to bury Tibbles in the back yard. And pat the dirt down afterward – pat, pat, pat. And then bend down, with one hand mockingly cupped to his ear, as if he were listening for one last pleading mewl from under the ground.
He went back across the living room, opened the balcony door, and stepped outside. It was hot out here now, and he found it difficult to breathe. He grasped the balcony rail and looked down into the yard, where Santana had been digging up gopher holes. Santana wasn’t there now, but he had left his long-handled shovel leaning up against the fence.
You see? It wouldn’t be that difficult, would it? Santana’s dug most of the hole for you already.
Are you nuts? What the hell are you thinking about? What do you think would happen to you if you did that? You think that nobody would see you doing it? You’d be arrested for cruelty to animals and you’d probably lose your job.
My job? Teaching English to morons who can’t even speak Gibberish? Who cares? And anyhow, how long will it be before it’s all over, and it’s the end for all of us, and the only job that anybody will have to do is serving the Lord and Master?
Jim closed his eyes. Calm, he told himself. You’re losing it. Give yourself a break, for Christ’s sake. You discover a girl’s body nailed to the ceiling of your classroom, and then you find out that it was the daughter you never knew you had. Anybody would be shaken up by something like that, especially since you’ve seen a second body, nailed to the cypress tree. And the face of Satan, smiling at you.
Calm. Om, or whatever.
After ten minutes or so, he went back inside and took a bottle of Fat Tire out of the fridge. There was no sign of Tibbles anywhere.
‘Tibbles?’ he coaxed him. ‘Tibs? Do you think you and I could be friends again now?’
Wherever Tibbles was hiding himself, he stayed there. Under the bed in the spare room, probably, or behind the dishwasher.
He was on his way back to the balcony when his doorbell rang. When he went to answer it he saw blonde hair and pink ribbons through the hammered-glass porthole.
‘Summer!’ he said, opening the door for her.
Summer was wearing a tight pink T-shirt, a tiny pair of white cotton safari shorts, and pink wedge-heeled sandals that were so high that she was teetering two inches taller than Jim. She was chewing bubblegum and flapping a sheet of paper as if the two actions were somehow coordinated. Flap, chew, flap, chew.
‘Jimmy, I could really use your help.’
‘OK, Summer. Help what with?’
‘Is it OK if I come in?’
‘Sure, yes. Come on in.’
‘I’m not interrupting anything?’ she said, peering into the kitchen.
‘No, you’re not interrupting anything. What do you want?’
‘It’s just that I’m applying for a job at Shine, you know the beauty parlor on Melrose? And they want me to write them a rezzamay or whatever it’s called.’
Jim led the way into the living room. Summer followed him, still chewing and flapping her sheet of paper.
‘So you want me to write a resumé for you? Is that it?’
‘I’ve never been no use at all at writing, Jimmy. I can’t even write my own name without spelling it wrong. I was hoping that maybe you could do it for me, you being an English teacher and all.’
‘I know English, Summer, but I don’t know anything about polishing nails, or plucking eyebrows, or waxing.’
‘Yes, but that’s the point. Neither do I, unless it’s been done to me by somebody else. But I have to sound as if I do. You can do that for me, can’t you?’
Jim turned around and looked at her. She may be ditzy, he thought, but she does have a really great body, doesn’t she? And she smells wonderful, like fresh peaches. And she’s very pretty, in a blonde, bouncy way, if you had a penchant for cocktail waitresses and pole dancers and Playboy centerfolds.
‘OK, maybe I can help you out,’ he told her. ‘Not for nothing, though. I will expect something in return.’
Summer stopped chewing and flapping her sheet of paper. ‘Come on, Jimmy, you know I’m flat busted. Otherwise I wouldn’t be looking so hard for a job.’
‘You don’t have to pay me in money. There are plenty of other forms of recompense, aren’t there?’
Summer frowned and said, ‘I could bake you a Key Lime Pie.’
He came up close to her and gently tugged the sheet of paper out of her hand. ‘There must be something else you have to offer.’
‘Jimmy?’ she said, batting her eyelashes. ‘You don’t mean what I think you mean, do you?’
‘Why not, Summer? We’re good friends, aren’t we? What could be more natural?’
‘You tell me. The first time we tried to get together, you had a problem with Mr Floppy, and the last time I suggested it, you said you had the bellyache. Not exactly flattering, for a girl who’s trying her darnedest to show a guy how much she likes him.’
‘Maybe I’ve changed my mind,’ said Jim.
‘Oh, come on, Jimmy. This isn’t the moment.’
‘So you say.’
‘I do, Jimmy. I have to hand in my rezzamay by six p.m. otherwise I’ll lose my chance of getting the job.’
Jim raised both hands and pushed her backward, toward the couch. She tried to retaliate, but he pushed her again, harder, and this time she lost her balance on her high wedge-heeled sandals and toppled over on to the cushions.
‘What are you doing, Jimmy?’
‘I’m collecting my resumé-writing fee, in advance,’ he told her. With that, he clambered on top of her, on to the couch, so that he was kneeling astride her, and he sta
rted to wrestle with the golden buckle of her little white safari shorts.
‘Jimmy!’ she squealed, and pummeled him furiously with both fists.
It was then that he slapped her face, very hard. Immediately, her left cheek flared up scarlet and she stared at him in shock.
‘You hit me! Jesus, Jimmy, you hit me!’
‘Too right I hit you!’ he barked back at her. ‘And I’ll hit you again if you don’t shut the fuck up! You want me to write your stupid resumé? This is what it’s going to cost you, OK? You don’t get anything in this world for nothing, sweetheart! Not even a job at some dumb beauty salon!’
‘Jimmy – what’s wrong with you? Jimmy – get off me, will you?’
Summer twisted and struggled, but Jim forced her down on to the couch with his left hand, while he wrestled off her safari shorts with his right. She was wearing only a tiny white lace thong underneath, and he pulled that off along with her shorts. He pried her knees apart so that her bare waxed vulva opened up, like two moist petals.
He unfastened his own belt buckle, and wrenched his chinos down below his knees. His penis was so hard he felt almost as if it might break off. He took hold of it in one hand and pushed it up inside Summer as hard and as deep as he could.
Immediately, she stopped struggling. Jim pushed again, and again, but she did nothing to resist him, and nothing to respond to him, either. She just lay there, completely inert. He pushed once more, and then he stopped pushing.
They looked at each other, nose to nose.
‘Well, carry on,’ said Summer. ‘You’ve got what you wanted. Enjoy.’
Jim said, ‘What the hell is the matter with you? You’ve been prick-teasing me for months.’
‘What I was offering you was free, Jimmy. It didn’t come with a price tag.’
They continued to stare into each other’s eyes for a very long time. Jim gradually became aware of how red Summer’s cheek was, where he had slapped her. She would be lucky not to have a black eye by the morning.
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