by Parke Godwin
“I feel like I got sold.”
Helm shot him a look of veiled venom. “Please answer the question as put to you. Do you repent?”
“Why?” Lance burst out suddenly, full of anguish. Helm took a moment to realize the why was not an insolence to him but a plea to Joshua Speed. “Why, sir? Why did you do this to me?”
“The witness will answer the question!” Helm demanded.
Lance ignored him, eyes riveted to Speed. “You were my hero. I can’t understand why you’re against me. What have I done?”
“Mr. Helm is examining,” Speed reminded him. “I can’t answer while you’re his witness.”
“Witness will answer,” Aurelius ruled, then added an afterthought. “Unless he chooses not to where answer might be prejudicial to his case. Refresh me, Mr. Speed. Does not your Constitution include such an amendment?”
“It does, Your Honor,” Speed responded from his chair with an encouraging smile for Lance. “Number five.”
“That’s right,” Lance remembered. “The Fifth Amendment. No, I decline to answer under my rights – and I would like to be excused.”
“Call the Hilton, leave a message,” Cataton ordered Benny, “I want an interview with Candor.” She remembered the ploy Nancy used to get at Ginsberg first, and that time was ripe to do unto others.
Below, Peter Helm exhibited his meager equivalent of apoplexy, a slight but definite reddening about ten-to-two eyebrows, “You little viper” – under his breath at Lance – “you utter turncoat, what are you doing?”
“I’d like to be excused,” Lance requested of the court with dignity. To Helm, with more determination than the lawyer would have guessed in him: “I don’t know just what it is I do repent, sir.”
“What?”
“I mean, didn’t you say this was the House of God? If it is, I can pray here and I can find answers, and I sure as green apples can be confused here without God minding or the roof coming down. I am confused, and I wish you’d let me go home.”
17
Christian reconstruction
CANDOR TAKES FIFTH!
FLAT END TO HIGH DRAMATICS
IN CANDOR TRIAL
“I’m Cathy Cataton for Topside News, here’s what’s happening. Trial judge Marcus Aurelius ordered a change of venue for summations in the Candor trial, saying: ‘I’m tired of the circus and so is the jury.’ Summations will be heard in the Void. Lance Candor, whose relationship with Scheherazade Ginsberg was dramatically revealed by Ms. Ginsberg herself yesterday, has not rejoined his wife but is still in residence – some say in hiding – at the Hilton Hereafter...”
“Candor!” Helm snapped like a distempered dog at the phone in his hand. “What in hell do you mean you’ve agreed to a press conference? The trial’s not done just because they’re not hunting your skin anymore. Your skin and any other facet of your negligible existence are the least of what is at stake here.”
Helm listened with scant patience to the usually indecisive voice at the other end into which a new and growing stubbornness had crept. Candor was not seeing the light.
“Candor, listen to me. Until this trial is done, you’ll be seen with no woman but your wife.” Helm had met Letti and knew what he asked. “You will not see that Ginsberg woman, not even by telephone, do you understand? Candor? Do you hear me...?”
Lance heard him. Lance made answer. Helm lowered the phone to its cradle, stunned by the advent of a turned worm.
“He told me to go what myself?”
JUDAS TO COYUL, URGENT: MRS. SPEED DEPARTED FOR TOPSIDE. DELAYED AS LONG AS WE COULD. INFORM SPEED. ADVISE.
COYUL TO JUDAS: GO AFTER HER, JAKE, SEND SOMEONE TO SLOW HER UP. TAKE HER SHOPPING WASHINGTON. SHE NEVER COULD RESIST A SALE AT GARFINKEL’S.
The decoy should be handsome, courtly and outrageously charismatic. For one hasty moment, Coyul thought of Wilksey Booth – but no.
COYUL TO JUDAS: COULD YESHUA GIVE HER A VISION IN LAFAYETTE PARK?
JUDAS TO COYUL: YESHUA DOESN’T DO VISIONS AND SHAME ON YOU, BUT JACK BARRYMORE INTERESTED. WOULD LOVE TO APPEAR AS JESUS.
Coyul relaxed a little at the godsend of Barrymore. No one distrusted women more than Jack, but none could charm them more thoroughly.
COYUL TO JUDAS: PERFECT. SHE’LL LOVE HIM. OWE YOU ONE. ALL BEST XXX
Coyul painfully missed life Below Stairs, where he only had to stage-manage mad insisted on suffering, at least until the novelty wore off. Post life there was so easy and sane...
Meanwhile, the star of destiny once more, Lance Candor was discovering that heroes dated as quickly as magazines. His hotel room awash with reporters and cameras, the questions barraged him too rapidly for reply, none about his religious convictions. They were far more interested in his glittering present than his pristine past.
“You said you felt dirty. You mean about Ginsberg?”
“How long have you been living together?”
“When will Miss Ginsberg get here?”
“It’s Ms.,” Lance struggled, “She thinks Miss is sexist.”
“Do you plan to get a divorce?”
“Is your wife divorcing you?”
“Have you read The Hero’s Lady?”
“You plan to write the story of your own life?”
Lance hadn’t and didn’t, but the notion attracted.
“How do you feel about your wife’s book?”
“Well, honestly,” Lance floundered, “I’m trying to find out just how I feel.”
“Does Scheherazade plan to write her own life story?”
“Which life?” Scheherazade blazed from the corridor into the center of the room and all attention. “We’re too busy living this one.”
“Sherry!” Lance waved desperately like a sinking swimmer sighting rescue. “Am I glad to see you! Where’ve you been?”
“Sorry, lover.” Scheherazade took his arm as predatory cameras surrounded them. “Went out to check my computer horoscope and got hung up at the head shop.”
Flashbulbs popped, microphones prodded them. Scheherazade wrapped herself around Lance in a photogenic clinch.
“Hold it. Give us another? Great.”
“Are we ready?” Cataton checked her people. “Ready remote? Just let the tape roll, Benny, we’re going for vérité. Okay... we’re live.”
Live and exclusive, Cataton reflected with the satisfaction of malice. She had leaked a phony rumor to BSTV that Candor would be at home this morning, reconciling with Letti.
“Right on.” Scheherazade flopped into an easy chair, crossing her legs. The view was startling given the brevity of her skirt and dislike of underwear. She lit a joint – “Anyone want a toke?” – and passed it to an appreciative reporter.
“What are your plans?” Cataton pressed her. “Will you and Lance marry?”
“You never know with a Scorpio.” Scheherazade traded the joint to Cataton for a filtered Camel, firing it from a kitchen match struck on her low-heeled shoe. Lance was shocked.
“Sherry, what’s this? You don’t smoke. Cigarettes are carcinogenic.”
“What ain’t, lover?” She dragged deep and favored Cathy Cataton with the purposeful appraisal David might have reserved for Bathsheba. “I’m indicated for a major change, like the Wolf Man in full moon. A whole new phase.”
“Move in closer, Lance. Lean over her in the chair.”
Lance dutifully bent over his lady. “Well, look, I wanted to say something about the trial —”
“Will you write your life story?” Cataton plied Scheherazade.
“I’ve always wanted to. Even got a great title. Life on the Firing Range.”
“I think that’s firing line. Terrific. Is it real love between you and Lance?”
“To the max!” the scarlet woman informed the cameras.
“How do you feel about public reaction to your relationship with a married man?”
“Hey, man, we’re not responsible for their hangups.” The cigarette between Scheherazade’s teeth bobbed with every syl
lable. “Lance and I respect each other. Like, we didn’t have oral sex until the second night.”
Letti saw it all on a closed-circuit monitor in the Hilton lobby.
In the cool atrium, fountains splashed and sparkled, ferns waved gently in an ersatz breeze, and an ethereal young woman played Chopin on the lobby grand. The Hilton was not where Letti usually gathered with her ladies, but today she hoped she might accidentally encounter Lance amid the psychological security of her friends. He would be embarrassed, Letti wounded but a lady as always, and she would allow him home to “see” about their differences.
She and her friends drank tea and lamented the abrupt drop in Letti’s book sales and the cancellation of her Ever After commercial. Letti drank cup after cup, but no sign of Lance and none of the other ladies showed any inclination beyond tea. Should she order a cocktail, hoping they’d follow suit? No. He would give them the pleasure of seeing her take the first, they’d talk behind her back.
Letti suffered. Then, salt in all the wounds, he was there on the lobby TV monitor. In Letti’s hearing, Chopin drowned in a growing thunder of war drums. No breeze cooled the flush of shame from her cheek. She saw – and her friends saw – that harlot Jezebel who grabbed Lance by his nasty old thang and led him off by it. Letti believed in marriage if not in sex. Why should he go off with that little tramp when she had made him the nicest home on their block and the only one with matched porcelain dogs by the fireplace?
With growing wrath, she observed that the brazen hussy didn’t have any underwear, bad as that woman who lived with the Devil. Now Lance put his arms around the Unclean and kissed her —
“Oh my land!” Bernice gasped. “She’s puttin’ her old tongue in his mouth. Right on teevee.”
“LAY-ANCE!”
Not murder in Letti’s eye but judgment. She rocketed toward the nearest elevator with her loyal Bacchantes close behind just as Nancy Noncommit impacted on the outer lobby revolving doors with a crew behind her.
Closed-circuit monitors recorded the ladies’ interlude in the elevator, dialogue jumbled but eloquent; saw them eject from the car in full cry, Letti in the lead and her pack baying her on. She reached Lance’s door like a storm front. The door was open, saving her the brief delay of breaking it down. Her maddened glare fell on her husband in full embrace with the Woman of Gomorrah. The cordon of reporters and cameramen were no deterrent to the flying wedge of outraged decency. Lance barely had time to identify the doom descending on him like a dive bomber.
“Letti. For God’s sake —”
Until now, Letti’s passage had been closed-circuit only. Now she was live on TSTV and, a moment later, on BSTV as Nancy Noncommit reached the room bare seconds behind her. To a delighted post-life audience, the hero’s lady telecast her most enduring comment on a love to last beyond death.
“YOU LI’L SHITASS!”
She raked her formidable nails down Lance’s face and kneed him accurately in the balls. Lance crumpled while Cataton glowed at the vérité of it all. She didn’t even mind that Noncommit had made the show in time.
“Grab a view, Nancy.”
The cameras feasted on a classic visual repast. While Letti’s large and robust friend Bernice fell on Scheherazade and shared in her dismemberment. Letti kicked and clawed at the fallen Lance. More impassioned than systematic, she began with his face as he writhed on the floor. Spittle flying from her lips, she juicily gouged out his eyes and broke his jaw.
“DIRTY, NASTY —”
Working downward, she called on two friends who could find no working space on Scheherazade, to assist in breaking and detaching Lance’s arms. He shrieked at each violent subtraction. “Letti, you’re killing me —”
“Wish I could, you —”
Armless, soon to be legless, Lance could only moan as thirty nails ripped through his skin and abdominal wall as if rummaging a deep carton, sure that what they desired would be at the bottom.
“SUNVABETCH!”
“Get this,” Noncommit purred to her cameramen. “Get the blood.”
“Beautiful,” Benny chortled to Cataton. “And this new tape, you don’t have to worry about light.”
Lance resembled the Scarecrow of Oz after the number done on him by the flying monkeys. “Letti,” he croaked feebly, “I’ve raised my consciousness. Can we talk about this?”
“SHIT.”
Unravaged area on Lance was now difficult to find. One helpful matron battered his teeth out with the base of a heavy lamp. When Lance’s shattered ribs punctured a lung, a geyser of blood rose, spectacular as Old Faithful under the furious pounding of Letti Candor. A nearsighted woman commenced his decapitation with her nail clippers. Slow-going and not effective on bone, a problem solved by smashing the vertebrae with the lamp base and then wrenching in concerted effort until Lance’s head came loose.
They swarmed over the two culprits like ants over dropped picnic food until, at last, apparently nothing remained unbroken or in its original place. Then Letti’s red-lit eye fell on the root of her suffering; that nasty white worm he was always trying to stick in her. Her claws came down in the manner of an earth shovel, bit in and ripped.
Vengeance.
Letti wiped her red hands on the rug because there was blood enough on Lance’s nice shirt and so hard to wash out. Mania dimmed; she became aware of the cameras.
“Bernice, gimme my hat, please.”
She set the chapeau at her usual prim angle, recovered and donned her white gloves as she spoke for posterity. “All I can say is my mommy and daddy would never stand for this, My dirty —”
Letti faltered, quivering. She meant to say “daddy.” What had escaped her, though Freudian as hell, was hardly a slip. With a Comanche yell of restimulated mayhem, Letti hurled herself again upon the residue of her husband. There must be something left to break,
“YOU HAW-MONGER!”
“Now, Letti,” Bernice interjected a ladylike note of restraint, “don’t get yourself upset. You’ll spoil your makeup.”
Cataton stubbed her Camel in an ashtray. “Let’s blow, Benny. Don’t bother to edit. We’ll run it all again on the six o’clock.”
“Sure,” Nancy Noncommit suggested, “Right after the Latter Day Saints family togetherness spot. Thanks for the bum steer, sweets.”
“Do thou unto me, thou shalt be done twice,” said Cataton with a demure smile.
“I’ve covered hard news all my life,” Nancy challenged, “Who’d you fuck to get here?”
“Nobody, dear. I was a nun. They wasted me in Central America. I was as politically inconvenient as that poor fish on the floor.” Cataton blew her rival a kiss and sailed out the door. “Look it up.”
“Hell, let’s wrap,” Nancy decided. “And watch the gear. Those two are still spraying blood.”
The fourth estate and Letti’s entourage departed, leaving the carnage for the maid to clean up. They left behind the hollow, tremulous silence that follows a hurricane. The severed head of Scheherazade Ginsberg opened its remaining eye. Lance was not in her limited field of vision.
“Lance? Don’t worry,” she encouraged out of the ruin of her larynx. “To be revolutionary is to suffer.”
Somewhere someone mumbled wetly.
“What, baby?”
Lance found enunciation difficult with no teeth. “I don’ know ’bout you, but I’m ’ginning to get pissed off.”
Coyul and Purji sympathized with the experience of their cons over the violence they’d viewed in large-screen color. They agreed to skip the six o’clock news recap.
“Poor children,” Purji sighed, “they’re bound to be disoriented. They’ll be days getting it all together again. Took me hours myself.”
A surprise to Coyul; she hadn’t mentioned being dismembered by the Keljians.
“And very rude they were, too,” Purji recalled darkly. “They’re still ages away from anything like sense or mercy.”
“They certainly could use a Jesus. Shorten the process.”
>
“Meanwhile,” Purji dissolved from the couch and reappeared at the salon door. “Shall we, dear? The babies need changing.”
Monsieur Canard, manager of the Hilton Hereafter, was all fluttering hands and Gallic apology while his pessimistic concierge Marcel could only gape at the red devastation left in Letti’s fearsome wake.
“Vitement, Marcel.” A snap of M. Canard’s manicured fingers. “Remove the leftovers. Prince, Madame, one is appalled. We can assure you this has never, mais jamais, happened before, nor will it again. Marcel, the entire cleaning staff.”
“No, no, Pas de tout, “Coyul insisted. “We will not trouble your staff, Madame and I would rather manage by ourselves. Merci bien.”
The management apologized yet again for the breech of decorum, and one could expect better security in the future. A squad of young Jesuits, perhaps, or former Vatican guards, preferably body builders. M. Canard and the concierge bowed out of the ruined chamber.
Purji winced at the carnage. There was blood everywhere, on the Ché Guevara poster and the one in pastels declaring WAR IS NOT HEALTHY FOR CHILDREN OR OTHER LIVING THINGS. The furniture was sodden and the poor unspeakable.
“Like a jigsaw puzzle in a hurricane,” Purji mewed. “Where on earth do we start?”
“You take Ms. Ginsberg, I will attempt the martyred Lance.”
Purji lifted the head of Scheherazade. “Can you hear me, child? I know this is traumatic but it happens more often than you’d think.”
“Just... get me straight,” the head husked bloodily.
Purji’s apprehensions were well founded. Even in post life, carbon-based humans were difficult to reassemble. Ego and libido were involved. Flesh-locked imagination tended to fantasy, Under the guiding hand of Coyul, Lance labored, groggy but game.
“Here we go. A place for everything and everything in its place, Lance? Lance, you’re not getting the hang of this at all. Concentrate.”
Lance tried. Reassembled only from the chest up, he convulsed through a steely-eyed approximation of Clint Eastwood but with Cyrano’s proboscis.
“Keep trying, boy. Purji? Do you have a rather large lower colon over there?”