“She always keeps her portable phone listed, for emergencies. The problem is figuring out which name she’s put it under. Sometimes she uses only her first initial, sometimes her nickname…” He began trying various options while Julius looked on trying to keep up. After twenty or so possible names failed to yield a match, David started to show his frustration.
“Not listed, huh?”
“I’ll find it.” David’s voice sounded almost convincing. “I just haven’t figured it out yet. It’s usually under something like C. Spano, Connie Spano, Spunky Spano…”
“Spunky?” Dad was obviously amused. “I like that one. Try Spunky.”
“Spunky was her college nickname.”
“Have you tried Levinson?”
David frowned. “Please. She didn’t take my name when we were married. Now that we’re separated she’s going to start calling herself Levinson? I’m sorry, but I don’t think so.”
Julius shrugged and looked away. So what if his ideas weren’t worth trying? What did he care? Eventually, David gave in.
“Oh all right, we’ll try Levinson.” Julius leaned over and watched the names zip past as avidly as if he were watching a roulette wheel. Abruptly, the names stopped and the machine beeped to signal a match.
“So what do I know?” the old man asked sarcastically.
A loud piercing scream made them glance up simultaneously. Headlights flashing and siren wailing, a police car was speeding down the wrong side of the road. Worse, it was leading a highwayful of traffic, hundreds of stressed-out drivers determined to get away from Washington.
“Oy, mein gott!” Julius pushed his glasses higher on his nose, bent closer to the wheel, and prepared for the inevitable.
As soon as David realized they were too close and moving too fast to avoid the oncoming traffic, he did the only sensible thing: he let loose a bloodcurdling scream. Julius jerked the car to the left, narrowly avoiding the lead car’s front bumper, then to the right just before they went head-on with a station wagon. A pair of sedans locked up their brakes, fishtailed into a collision, then bounced apart. Julius split the narrow gap between them, inches to spare on either side.
“Slow down!” David yelled, his face as white as the headlights bearing down on them.
Julius, leaning over the steering wheel, chewing on his lip, hardly touched the brakes. As car after car crashed around them, spinning like bowling pins, the Mario Andretti of the over-seventy set swooped between them skillfully and, from the looks of it, fearlessly. Two hundred yards from where the mayhem began, there was an off-ramp. With one long tire-squealing tug on the wheel, Julius pulled the car from the fast lane to the right shoulder and then up the ramp.
Adrenaline pumping, mouths open, knuckles gone bloodless white, the two of them stared straight ahead until Julius rolled the car to a gentle stop. Awed by what his father had just done, David turned and stared at him.
“Dad! Nice driving, man.” Without knowing why, he started laughing.
Julius was breathing pretty hard. He took out a handkerchief and wiped his forehead. “Yeah. Not bad, eh? I didn’t even scratch the paint job.” Then, although there was nothing funny, he too started chuckling. It was the nervous, triumphant laughter of two men who had just lived through what should have killed them.
For a few moments they forgot about getting to Washington and simply sat there in the car laughing their heads off, the vast, dark ship looming in the distance.
*
Jasmine didn’t know why she was about to walk out on stage, she just wanted to get it over with. The whole day had been a slow walk through a brightly lit nightmare. Even now, adjusting the straps on her silk bikini, she felt as if she were floating.
The advent of the giant ships had plunged the entire globe into a deep state of confusion. Some believed they were the black angels of the apocalypse, come to drown God’s green earth in flood, famine, and fire. Others anticipated a beatific ceremony announcing intergalactic harmony and cooperation. While many were scrambling desperately to escape the city, others, like the man who owned the shoe store at the base of Jasmine’s hill, were keeping to their regular schedules. All the rhythms of the workaday world, the infinite number of small routines which had seemed so real the day before, turned out to be no more solid than reflections on the surface of still water. The arrival of the ships dropped a large stone into the center of the pond, turning daily life into a rippling, distorted dream. Robbed of its rules, the world didn’t know how to behave.
The only reason she’d gone in to work was to pick up her paycheck. It was supposed to be a fifteen-minute stop on her way down to El Toro. But then she’d run into Mario. Fifty, expensively tailored, hair slicked straight back, a notorious name-dropper, he was the very picture of a middle-aged Mafioso wannabe. His club, the Seven Veils, was all he had in the world, and his reaction to the crisis was to insist that the show must go on. Many people over the years had accused him of being a vampire, draining the life out of his girls, sucking every nickel from their bodies before tossing them out for dead. When Jasmine came in for her paycheck, he begged, cajoled, and threatened until she agreed to perform that night. If her head had been clearer, she would have laughed in his face, told him where to shove it, and disappeared. But no one’s head was clear.
After all, what if the ships turned around and left? What if Steve decided a woman with a checkered past and a six-year-old son were more than he wanted to handle? Where else was she going to find a job that let her choose her hours and paid her so generously? She desperately wanted to believe Steve wasn’t going to let her down and was fairly certain he wouldn’t. But she and Dylan had had the rug pulled out from under them before, and Jasmine was nothing if not protective of her son.
Mario took full advantage of her history while trying to convince her to stay and work. He’d known Jasmine for a long time, knew all about her life before Dylan in her native Alabama. She’d started dancing in some podunk club in Nowheresville before being “discovered” and brought to Mobile. That’s where Mario had found her. One night after a show he bought, her a drink and listened sympathetically to her entire life story, then convinced her to head out west, where she could put her past behind her, start over, and make some very serious money.
The good thing about Mario was that he never tried to get her into bed. He maintained a professional relationship with Jasmine and respected her work ethic. She showed up on time, steered clear of the drugs most of the girls took, and never dated the customers. The bad thing about him was that he knew all the right buttons to push when he wanted something out of her. That’s exactly what he’d done when she walked in asking for her paycheck. He reminded her of the men she’d trusted, including the one who had left her with a child and no way to support herself. When he figured she was feeling vulnerable, he switched gears and threatened to fire her if she wouldn’t help him keep the club open, a pathetic tyrant desperate to keep control over his little fiefdom.
The thumping bass line of her song pulsed over the club’s sound system and the announcer’s taped voice boomed over the top: “Gentlemen, loosen your collars and get ready for something extremely hot. Put your hands together for the lovely… Sabrina!”
She burst through the curtain and into the blinding glare of the spotlight. Twirling gracefully on her high stiletto heels, she circled the stage until she arrived at the polished brass pole. Grasping it a finger at a time, she pressed her entire body against it, then broke away into another set of pirouettes, tossing away her see-through cape.
Suddenly, “Sabrina’s” tigress-in-heat expression disappeared. There was no one in the audience. The hundred chairs surrounding the stage were all empty. The only customers were a handful of men clustered around the big-screen TV at the far end of the room. All of them were regulars who had neither homes to defend nor families to rescue, guys who had wandered over to the Seven Veils for the same reason they always did: the company. Four or five of the other dancers sat with them at th
e bar watching the news.
Without a doubt, it was the worst moment of Jasmine’s career as a stripper. She suddenly felt very angry and very stupid. Standing there, nearly naked, in the blazing stage lights, she began to realize why she had really come to the club. She had wanted Mario to confirm all her suspicions about Steve, to remind her of all her failures with men, or more exactly, all the men who had failed her. After all, hadn’t he taken off, leaving her and Dylan when the spaceship appeared? But what really made her angry was that she had kept Dylan with her, exposing him to danger unnecessarily. It was time to drive like hell down to El Toro and see whether Steve was for real. She slipped out of her high heels and, unnoticed, walked back through the tacky foil curtains.
She came into the dressing room cussing mad. “I can’t believe I let that son of a dog talk me into this. I only came here to get my check. What was I thinking?” She collapsed into the chair in front of her dressing table, wiping off her stage makeup in disgust. At the next table, a washed-out girl of nineteen or twenty sat staring at her portable television set.
“Can you even believe this is going on? It is so totally cool.” She called herself Tiffany. She had a long, graceful body, enormous boobs, and armfuls of straight black hair pinned haphazardly atop her head. Lighting a fresh cigarette with the butt of another, she spoke in a slow, spacey voice. “I told you they were out there and you thought I was nuts.”
On the television screen, between static interruptions, a pair of newscasters with serious expressions were reading the news. “This next story comes from the ‘It Could Only Happen in California’ file. Hundreds of UFO fanatics have congregated on the rooftops of several skyscrapers in downtown Los Angeles. Soon after the craft parked at ten A.M. yesterday, with its center positioned directly above the old First Interstate Building, sign-toting individuals made their way to the rooftops, apparently to welcome the ship’s occupants. Gordie Compton is live and on the scene in the Nose for News CamCopter.”
The screen cut to an unsteady helicopter shot, its powerful search beam like a shaft of lightning in the night sky, swooping over the crown of the LA skyline, the First Interstate Building. Crowded onto the helipad atop the building were fifty or sixty people. When the light hit them, they went mad, shouting and waving hand-painted signs. Some held up signs like “TAKE ME!!” and “EXPERIMENT ON ME.”
“Oh, signs, I forgot,” Tiffany remembered. “Look at the one I made.” She reached into a shopping bag and took out the side of a cardboard box. In loopy, girlish letters were the words “WE COME IN PEACE” and a crayon drawing of a space alien.
Jasmine gripped Tiffany’s arms. “Don’t even dare!” she hissed. “Girl, listen to me. You’re not thinking about joining those idiots, are you?”
Tiffany rolled her eyes and blew smoke at the ceiling. “I’m going over there as soon as I’m off work,” she admitted. “Wanna come?”
“Look at me.” Jasmine took hold of Tiffany’s chin and lifted it until they were eye to eye. Like most of the dancers who worked there, Tiffany was a mental and emotional basket case. She had a drug habit plus an addiction to abusive men. As soon as they’d met, Jas had taken the girl under her wing. “Tiffany, I don’t want you going up there,” Jasmine continued. “Promise me you won’t.” A pair of puppy dog eyes looked back until Jasmine snapped, “Promise me!”
“Oh, all right, I promise.” Tiffany pouted, tossing the cardboard sign over her shoulder and onto the floor.
“Thank you. Look, I’m going out of town for a while, and I need you to stay out of trouble until I get back.”
Jasmine checked her watch. Steve was probably starting to wonder where she was. She didn’t want to leave Tiffany, but she had to get on the road. She had changed into her street clothes when Mario barged into the dressing room, heading for his office. He pulled the door open and stared into the room.
“What the hell is this kid doing in my office?” he bellowed. “And why is there a damn dog in here?” Dylan was inside watching a video on Mario’s set. Jasmine pushed past Mario and gathered her son up in her arms.
“How many times I gotta tell you damn broads, no kids at the club!”
“You try finding a baby-sitter today,” Jasmine shot back, grabbing her bag with her free hand and heading toward the exit.
“Whoa! Stop right there, young lady. Where do you think you’re going? You promised me you were gonna work today. You leave, you’re fired.”
Jasmine paused for a moment at the door, glancing back for a last look around. “Nice working with you, Mario.”
*
The mood in the pilots’ locker room at El Toro was serious, pensive. Captain Steven Hiller strolled in and noticed most of the men were sitting by themselves, or huddled in quiet, brooding conversations. Turning a corner, he found his squad in a very different mood. The men of the Twenty-Third Tactical Air Wing were relaxing in groups, talking, flipping through magazines, kidding around. “The Black Knights,” the squad’s official nickname, was emblazoned on lockers, Tshirts, and jackets. There were even a couple of tattoos.
Steve’s flight partner and best friend, Jimmy Franklin, was kicked back with his feet up on a locker door, arms behind his head, listening to a portable radio. Without turning around, he knew Steve had come in. The two of them had spent so much time training and watching each others’ backs, both in the air and on the ground, they automatically knew where the other one was.
“Where the hell you been, Captain?,” Jimmy called out. “Wait, don’t tell me. Traffic was a bitch, right?”
Steve dropped his bag in front of his locker and moved into the group of leathernecks. “I bet you guys have been sitting on your butts all day waiting for me to get here, right?” Steve asked facetiously, knowing the group would have spent the day running through one emergency drill after another. The marines responded by pelting Steve with half a dozen towels. Grinning, Steve strolled back to his own locker. Jimmy got up and followed him.
“This is some real serious shit, Stevie. Mucho serious. They’ve recalled everybody on the base, and we spent the whole day on yellow alert.”
Steve opened his locker and saw the mail had been delivered, stuffed through the vent. He flipped through the stack until he came to a legal-sized envelope with the blue NASA insignia printed on one corner. He picked it out of the pile like a negative out of developing fluid and tossed the others aside. He stared at it for a moment before handing it to Jimmy.
“You open it for me. I can’t.”
“You’re turning into a real wuss, you know that?”
If Steven Hiller was the most talented and hardworking pilot on the base, Jimmy Franklin was the most fearless. Nothing scared him, and he’d prove it to you any time you liked. He tore the letter open and read it aloud so only Steve could hear.
“It says here, ‘Dear Captain Hiller, Marine Corps blah blah blah. We regret to inform you that despite your excellent record of service…’” Jimmy’s voice trailed off. He knew the news would knock the wind out of his pal. “Listen, buddy boy, I’ve told you this before. It don’t matter that you’ve learned to fly everything from an Apache to a Harrier to a dang hang glider. If you want to fly the space shuttle, you’re gonna have to learn to kiss a little ass.”
That was the third time they’d turned him down. Disgusted, Steve reached into his locker and ripped down a glossy photo of the space shuttle Columbia landing at Edwards AFB. Hanging right beside it was a snapshot he’d taken of Jasmine.
Jimmy made it his job to cheer Steve up. “Let me explain my personal technique. The first thing is to get the right ass-kissing height. When I see a general coming, I get down on one knee, see? This puts me at a perfect level with the ass that needs kissing.”
Steve felt like he’d just swallowed a dagger, but he tried to look amused. As he stuffed his jacket into his locker, something fell out of the pocket and on to the floor. Before Steve could grab it, Jimmy snatched it up. It was a small jewelry box, which Jimmy immediately opened
. Inside there was a beautiful diamond engagement ring. The sparkling white stone was set in a gold band shaped like a dolphin jumping out of the water.
For the first time in many weeks, Jimmy was rendered speechless.
“Jasmine has this thing for dolphins,” Steve told him, a little embarrassed.
“This is a… is this a wedding ring?” Jimmy asked, still on his knees.
“Engagement.” Steve heard an edge of accusation in his friend’s voice. They’d talked many times about Steve’s goal of flying the shuttle into space, and every time they did, Jimmy gave him the same advice: dump the stripper.
“I thought you were going to break it off, man,” Jimmy growled.
Just then, some guys from another flight team walked by. They saw Jimmy down on one knee, holding out an engagement ring to Captain Hiller. A couple of them did a double take. Realizing how queer it must look, Jimmy and Steve jumped away from one another in a panic. Steve snatched the box back and put it away.
“Steve, listen to me. Them boys at NASA are real careful about their public image. They want everything to be wholesome, all-American apple pie. You’ve already made one mistake: being born black. If you go ahead and marry a stripper, you will never ever in a million years get to fly that shuttle. And you know I’m right.”
Steve knew it was all true. As soon as Jasmine signed in at the guardhouse as his overnight guest, his hopes of flying the shuttle would probably die forever. He pressed his head against the row of lockers, the metal cool against his forehead.
*
The powerful klieg lights that would normally have been shining on the White House were blacked out for security reasons. A pair of tanks and a platoon of rifle-bearing Marines were posted at the front gates on brightly lit Pennsylvania Avenue. Hundreds of Washingtonians were there with them. Along with the reporters, and those who were simply too nervous to sleep, were small groups holding candlelit prayer vigils. A bunch of militant pacifists paraded back and forth holding signs with slogans such as “DON’T PROVOKE!” and “VIOLENCE BEGETS VIOLENCE.” The police, uniformed and plainclothes, were everywhere.
Complete Independence Day Omnibus, The Page 11