"Yes."
A soul bank. Intriguing. “I take it that you would buy more than you sell."
"Initially, yes."
"And the going rate?"
"Five hundred dollars."
"Really?” Cullin's mental wheels spun wildly. He could think of nothing that would make the hardcore religious right go crazy faster. For someone not connected to a church to consider even messing with the soul....
What was he thinking? This was difficult. Having never seen the soul as an entity, he had a problem visualizing its ... use, at least for the buyer.
Beale put his fingertips together. “I think that within a year I shall be able to dispose of at least half a billion dollars."
"And the return?"
"I will legally own upward of two million souls."
If I were starving, Cullin considered, and I owned a thousand square miles of land on the Moon, I would still be starving. Beale's smile was mocking him. “I give up,” Cullin McSherry sputtered. “How do you make money back? What's the catch?"
"Why none, in buying them. But, should your worldview change, and you decide that you want your soul back.... Well, how do you think I got that car?"
* * * *
That night Cullin McSherry sat with a pristine notebook and a frosty bottle of Corona, listening to the Mozart Clarinet Concerto. What am I getting myself into? Nothing will convince a non-believer to take another look at religion faster than the fact that cold hard cash could be made off the intangibles. After all, isn't that what religion did—the largest, richest, least useful industry in history, making money off salvation, forgiveness, tithing, indulgences, crusades. Maybe this would serve to highlight....
Cullin snorted. He wasn't about to start fooling himself that he was on the side of the angels. It was a shuck, but he'd try, for his part, to make it an honest shuck.
The phone rang.
"Mr. McSherry? This is Erica Donat. From the meeting?” Her voice was soft, tentative and almost childlike.
"I remember. You wrinkled your nose at me.” It was supposed to be funny, but the joke fell flat.
"Mr. McSherry, can I see you, right now?"
They met at the Fox and Hounds. Erica was still wearing her gray jersey and black tights, and Cullin was amused to see the barman card her. She brought a glass of wine to his booth.
"Hi,” she said, sliding onto the seat opposite. “Thanks for meeting me."
"It's my pleasure,” Cullin said honestly. Terry came to mind, probably sitting in her trailer on the shores of Lake Como, composing a “Dear John” letter. If I can read her so well, he thought, why do I stay with her? Inertia, he realized. Inertia and lawyers. He returned his attention to Erica. She was not wearing her glasses, but she furrowed her brow seriously. “You sounded urgent."
"It is. I had dinner with Howard tonight. He told me what we would be selling."
Cullin nodded. “He told me over lunch."
Erica sat bolt upright. “Are you okay with it?"
"How old are you, Erica?"
She bristled. “What does that have to do with anything?"
"I'm just trying to establish a frame of reference: what you know, cultural context, how you approach all of this."
"Oh.” She subsided, then put both hands on the table. “I'm thirty-three. I have degrees in psychology, philosophy, and history."
"And you object to the buying and selling of souls?"
"No, I don't, and it bothers me that I don't.” She shook out her mass of light brown hair. “Can we talk about this?"
They talked over drinks, and during a long walk through the neighborhood, then back at her place. Later, in bed, they didn't say that much.
On Monday morning, both of them signed their contracts.
* * * *
Initially Cullin wanted Beale, who was almost supernaturally magnetic, to be his own spokesman. It had worked well for others, from Harland Sanders to Lee Iacocca, but Howard would have none of it. “I have far too much to do right now,” he said, but sweetened the refusal by adding, “Perhaps later, if the need arises.” So, Cullin—while he was crafting the pitch—went looking for smart actors. He found a bright, reasonable Texan by the name of Evan Tinker, whose drawl had been softened by twenty years in Hollywood. Tinker was an agnostic and thought that the irony involved in buying and selling souls was hilarious. Beale offered him a SAG contract with a generous back end, and Evan was aboard.
The day after Evan hired on, and four days after Terry had left for Italy, the “Dear John” letter arrived. It was a masterpiece of disinterested, legally neutral sympathy and, at the same time, a proper kick in the ass. She wanted out. Cullin decided to pass it on to Needleman, but first he showed it to Erica that night in bed. “How long did you stay with this woman?"
"Four years."
She laughed. “You're easy."
"Said the philosopher-psychologist..."
She elbowed him in the ribs. “That's philosopher-psychologist-historian."
"...who went to bed on the first date."
She kissed him. “Sometimes I get it right."
After they had let the kiss lead them naturally through twenty minutes of fun, they lay in each others’ arms, perspiring happily, but a question came creeping to Cullin's mind. “Did Howard say anything about buying our souls?"
Erica wrinkled her forehead. “I asked about that. It's in the contract under Participation. No member of Beale LLC will be allowed to use the Soul Bank. He doesn't want our souls."
Cullin felt oddly offended. “Hmmm. I don't know whether that's good or bad."
Erica rolled over, supporting herself on her elbows, her small breasts resting on his arm. “Cullin, my family was Catholic. And, with a name like McSherry...."
"Black Irish,” he said. “Pennsylvania coalfield Protestants."
"Ahh. Well, the Catholic Church buys, sells, owns, uplifts, and condemns souls every day. What you get in return is a false sense of security and, if you're lucky, not molested by a priest. As far as I'm concerned, the soul is whatever an individual makes of it. If Joe Six-pack wants to sell his, he was already someone else's problem."
"Mmmmph."
"So, tomorrow we launch. Are you ready?"
* * * *
The first infomercial broke all across the domains of late night cable at one a.m, L.A. time, and had the production values of a theatrical trailer. It opened on a sur-cam traveling shot through the pearly gates and into a heaven populated with people enjoying themselves like families in the park. Picnics, barbecues, volleyball, dog Frisbee, an old Merry-Go-Round, pony rides, a brass band, and children splashing in streams, playing tag, and riding little miniature trains. It was a Sunday afternoon that went on forever—no wings, no harps, no hymns, no robes. No God on his throne, just happy people; as if God had created this endless park, then gone on to other work.
Then the camera pushed through a dark opening into a vision of Hell straight out of Dante or Dore, Bosch, or Borges. Sinners writhed, armies marched, fires burned, torture, unending agony, plague, pestilence, death, worms, monsters, serpents, flies, severed limbs, screaming and crying: an unending tour of suffering. Rising through the scene were two great dark trunks, like chimneys. The camera pulled back and changed focus to reveal that the trunks were legs—not of the Devil but of a man seated on a chair above the scene.
Wearing black pants and a paint-stained chambray shirt, Evan Tinker pushed back a wisp of his hair and smiled pleasantly. “If this is how you think of Hell, or of Heaven for that matter, this might not be for you. But then, this isn't real."
Evan stood, then reached down into Hell—which was now revealed to be nothing more than an intricate, static diorama—and picked up a winged devil. “These are just models. I paint them. It's my hobby."
Following Evan, as he strolled through the Heaven diorama, the camera pushed in on the painted devil as Evan set it down in the heaven display among the picnickers, where it now seemed to be accepting a cup of coffee from a housewife in a
gingham dress.
"These are the images of Heaven and Hell we know from antiquity, from art and literature. Do I see the afterlife this way? No, of course not. That's why I'm here to tell you about The Soul Bank."
Evan rolled on smoothly with his pitch, interspersing tidbits of cosmology and physics with a thoroughly respectful approach to the idea of storing and housing immortal souls—he almost made it sound like a funeral plan. While Howard Beale, Evan, Gerry Gold and Marvin Needleman watched from the den, Cullin, after the opening pitch, walked through to the phone bank that had been installed in Beale's commodious living room. And the phones were ringing. Cullin eased up behind Erica, who was observing critically.
"How's it going?"
"It's interesting. So far we've gotten a lot of curiosity, a bit of abuse, compliments on the pitch, and about forty sales."
"Really? Forty?"
"Uh-huh.” Erica nodded seriously. “As soon as we get back their signed contracts, we'll start clearing their checks."
"Wow."
Cullin looked over the phone answerers. They'd all been trained in how to handle the obvious situations. Every call was recorded and everything questionable would be reviewed by Needleman's legal beagles. The phone answerers, all actors, were making $25 an hour with benefits, each doing three six-hour shifts a week. They were eager, enthusiastic, not to mention good looking.
"Any of those guys made a pass at you yet?” Cullin whispered.
"Yes, and not just the guys.” She bounced her hip against his. Just then, one of the phone people put up his hand. “What?"
"I've got someone on the phone who claims to be Cardinal Roger Mahoney. He wants to talk to Mr. Beale."
Cullin went back to the den and told Howard, who laughed. “My, my. Things do move fast when you get their attention."
* * * *
Within thirty-six hours the Soul Bank was big news. They made Fox, CNN, MSNBC, even the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric. They were Number Two on Countdown with Keith Olbermann. By the time they received their first downloadable signed contract for a soul, they had received more than six thousand calls, and Erica had doubled the size of the phone bank. By the end of the first week all of the TV and radio preachers were railing against them, and half of the cable stations, under pressure, had pulled their ads, though they had been promptly picked up by the Cartoon Network and Spike. Everyone from Matt Lauer to Brian Williams was clamoring to interview Howard Beale, but Evan Tinker, who was serving as Howard's public persona, was steadfastly refusing all requests. After speaking twice with Howard, Cardinal Roger Mahoney announced that he considered the entire business of a soul bank to be an elaborate hoax, a Byzantine joke masquerading as a sociological experiment. Besides, the Cardinal stated with comforting certainty, you couldn't really sell your soul.
"Is the Cardinal right?” Erica asked over dinner one night at the Good Earth. “Is the soul nontransferable?"
Evan Tinker laughed. “I thought you were a Catholic."
"Not since I grew a brain,” Erica snapped. “And I'm not talking about my soul. The customers—can you part a person from his soul?"
"If you believe the Bible, it used to be done all the time,” said Evan's girlfriend, Sheila. She was a stunning blond actress, exactly the type that Evan favored; smart, sharp, the kind that would eventually find Evan's soft, kind center and cut it out with a spoon. But it was early days yet. She and Evan were still Hollywood happy. Cullin sighed and squeezed Erica's hand under the table. She rewarded him with her characteristically knitted brow.
"Yeah,” Cullin said, again grateful that both he and Erica were ineligible for the Soul Bank. He put both elbows on the table. “The soul...."
"Yeah?” asked Sheila.
"First you have to determine whether it exists. Is there any way to do that?"
Evan deferred to Erica. “You're the historian. Is there historical evidence for the soul?"
"As a concept, as a literary and religious focus, it seems in most cultures to be a given. And if it is real, an actuality, a finite thing...."
"Well, anything real can be disposed of. But can it be destroyed?” Evan asked. “Cullin?"
"Okay. Let us say, for the sake of argument, that the soul is real, a part of every human being. And let us suppose that it lies in the Isles of Langerhans, or the Circle of Willis, or some other strange part of the body that you only hear about on Grey's Anatomy or House. And it's an organ that a complete human being needs to function in society. If you cut it out you get a sociopath or a serial killer or a retard. If you cut it out, the person becomes subfunctional. Now, on your driver's license you have a pink dot. That means that you're an organ donor...."
"I don't,” said Sheila.
"Well, you should,” Cullin continued smoothly. “Cut out a kidney, someone else has your kidney, and you're missing one. Or, after death; heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, corneas...."
"Wouldn't it be freaky if the soul was in your appendix?” Evan said. “Happily, I still have mine."
"Me too."
Only Sheila didn't. Erica gave Cullin a significant look as he steered the conversation back on message. “So, if we posit that the soul does exist in the body, and people are not having it surgically removed, how are we buying it?"
"If it's not a pure-and-simple scam,” said Sheila, “it has to be a supernatural agency. Like, when you agree to sell it, and you sign the contract, and you cash the check, something happens."
"A volitional trigger."
"Have you talked to anyone who's sold his soul?” Sheila asked. “Did they feel any different?"
"I have,” Erica replied. “Several. They say they don't notice any difference, that nothing's changed, but I don't know how they were before."
Evan rubbed his chin. “Did you get a sense of anything common or similar?"
After a long moment, Erica said, “They were all a bit creepy. Or maybe I'm just losing my taste for the work."
On the way home they walked arm in arm along Ventura Boulevard in the twilight. Erica, who was not much of a talker, was even more silent than usual. “You okay?"
"Mmmm."
"Our contracts only hold us for the first six weeks,” Cullin said. “With a renewal option, of course. Are you thinking about quitting?"
"Thinking about it. You?"
Honestly no, but as Cullin had never learned to be totally forthcoming with women, he said, “I've considered it. Two Gs a week with benefits and bonuses is hard to let go. Hey, we still have three weeks until the renewal. Let's see what happens."
* * * *
What happened was a series of subpoenas and a lawsuit for fraud against Howard Beale LLC, its chairmen, and officers. And, of course, the entire orientation of the trial turned out to be upside down and inside out, as if it had been scripted by a suicidal Lewis Carroll on strong drink. The suit was brought against Howard by a coalition of atheist and agnostic groups, secular Jews, and the California Chamber of Commerce. Announcing for the defense and backing up Beale was an alliance of Catholics, Evangelicals, and Mormons who deplored the very idea that Beale would buy souls, but maintained that such commerce was theoretically possible because the soul did exist. The word that everyone was focused on, of course, was fraud.
"Will we have to testify?” was the question that the phone answerers kept asking Erica.
"I don't know. It depends on how far each side wants to push the publicity,” Erica tended to reply with increasing crossness. Cullin had noticed that these days she seemed to be riding the edge of a razor blade that was honing sharper as they approached the time to renew their contracts. Cullin was pretty certain that he would sign on again, as certain as he was that Erica wouldn't.
The press was calling the whole fiasco the Cable TV Scopes Monkey Trial. Both sides had lawyered up heavily, but among the staffers of Beale LLC the feeling was that Howard Beale was the Ace in the Hole. He was frighteningly articulate, cheerful, and confident. As Marvin Needleman admitted in a rare moment of can
dor, “They think that Howard's the Devil, but I think that Hell is just one of Howard's subsidiary companies. Alongside Howard, the Devil is about as convincing as Dr. Phil."
Cullin was relieved that Erica didn't hear that, and he thought about it a lot. There was a moment when hyperbole became visionary, revealing the world in a way that made you want to throw up.
* * * *
The trial began on a Monday. On Tuesday all of the original staffers renewed their contracts for six months excepting Erica who, citing personal reasons, decided to bow out. She'd already trained up one of her phone girls—a flip, funny, adulterous housewife named Dale Denny—and Howard threw Erica a going-away party, which Erica could not refuse attending. Howard was kindness itself, and gave Erica a generous severance check, which he called a plank-owner bonus. Cullin looked up the term later and found that it referred to sailors who commission a ship, and are supposed to receive a deck plank if the ship is ever broken up.
But the S.S. Beale sailed smoothly through the opening phase of the trial. Various positions were staked out, expert and inexpert witnesses were announced, and lawyers thundered forth majestic statements worthy of both God and Hollywood. The press ate it up.
Cullin divided his time between the courtroom and the studio, where he, Gerry Gold, and Evan crafted up-to-the-minute topical commercials and fed them to the nets. The opening of the trial had been the catalyst that had spread The Soul Bank far and wide across the channels, becoming the hottest commercial property since the Geico Cavemen. In court, Cullin sat at the back and watched the show, particularly the beatifically smiling Howard Beale who stationed himself in the first row and conferred with Needleman and his army of Law Dogs.
At night Cullin returned to an empty house. Erica had decamped on the night of the going-away party, leaving not so much as a note. That made twice in two months that women had walked out on Cullin McSherry, and he decided to stay single, if not celibate. But he'd miss that goofy little hippie chick.
The oddsmakers were giving five to three on Beale winning the suit, when Erica suddenly showed up on Larry King.
She was wearing a loose red silk dress that Cullin had never seen before, but the masses of light brown hair and the Clark Kent glasses were unmistakable. She even wrinkled her nose once, then touched it self-consciously.
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