by Parke Godwin
“Yes, Your Honor. I urge the court to consider our verdict just beyond any question of mistrial. There was, in my time, much letting of blood over faith, and much injustice. As much in other countries, true, but with us there was something...”
Wycherley paused, choosing his images from the heart, words to describe the wordless root of instinct. “Other countries like France and Spain saw this bloodletting as a necessity of faith; in England it was seen as unjust and dangerous to men. We were ringed with enemies, Catholic and Protestant alike —”
“Not without reason,” Helm reminded him venomously.
“— and the rights we had won of our nobles were too hard come by, one by one. These others of this modern time never knew such a struggle. I could never forget. Counsel for Plaintiff said that we must live with the disparity between the laws of God and those of men; that above all other arguments did persuade my conscience. Those who conceived Master Speed’s constitution knew in their blood as well as their minds that these laws are and must remain separate, even a contradiction. They cannot clash without ill use to both or damage to men – and I am much amazed that an English ancient must repeat this lesson to those of a country bred from my blood and bone. If the American Defendant had known by what painful travail his civil laws came to exist, he would not so lightly have set them aside.
“Upon mine honor this is a true verdict. Heeding the law and trusting in God, the jury begs to be discharged.”
Master Wycherley bowed his head to Aurelius and rejoined the jury. There was silence as Marcus Aurelius regarded the Englishman. Helm broke the hiatus.
“A devout Englishman is a contradiction in terms, Master Wycherley. France would have preferred England’s belated altruism to the butchery my grandfather saw. Your Honor, on the basis of this shoddy verdict, Defense moves again for mistrial.”
“Motion denied,” the court ruled. “You will have to flay the issues in a separate case. Verdict being rendered, the jury is discharged and this court stands adjourned sine die. Master Wycherley, please conduct the jury home to Topside.”
“I suppose I needn’t pack after all,” Coyul observed with no enthusiasm as the jury dwindled in the distance. “Thank you, Josh.”
Marcus Aurelius joined them, no longer magisterial, waving Helm to make a fourth. “Neither of you is the most immaculate of counsels, but passionate you are.”
“And remain,” Helm said doggedly. “I will appeal. I cannot accept this verdict.”
“In light of the verdict, that right is implied,” Aurelius reminded him. “As for Master Wycherley —”
“Whom God must surely despise.”
“Or at least ponder,” Aurelius modified. “Even in my time the folk of that island were beyond comprehension, possibly as a result of their endless fogs. Coyul, I would imagine Mr. Speed has not so much saved you for our future as sentenced you to it.”
“Imperator, you put it irreducibly.”
“Then I’ll summon my clerk and be gone. Peace, gentlemen.” Aurelius’ invocation was as much suggestion as blessing. “Hail and farewell.”
Aurelius left them.
“I suppose you’re to be congratulated,” Helm said to Speed. “As our Roman colleague said; incomprehensible. You were seven eighths of sublimity, Speed.”
“I’ve let a great deal slip during this trial and must get back to it,” Coyul told them, “but may I offer you both a drink first?”
“Thank you, no.” Helm moved away from them, not toward Topside but out again to the Void. “There will be another time and another case.”
“In which, if possible, I’d like you both on my side,” Coyul called after him. “Well, I still have a job, Josh. Unfortunately, dealing with your lady goes with it. Coming?”
Like Helm, Speed was turned to the Void and the stars. “Tell her...”
“Yes?”
“Nothing. I supposed I loved her, but I always needed to define what I meant by love. I should just have put my arms around her. On the other hand, she was never quiet enough to invite the urge.”
“I heard most of your speeches from Cooper Union until the end,” Coyul said. “You never took an easy road to anything.”
“After Cooper Union, there weren’t any. Go along, Coyul. I’ll stay here for now.”
“The Void again? Even I can’t take this for too long.”
“There’s company of a kind,” Speed pointed out toward Peter Helm tensed to withstand a bald universe of mud, rock and fire his senses could not deny but his soul must. “He has to conquer this, Coyul. He has to make it care about him.” The rangy lawyer swiped a huge paw across his face to hide discomfort.
“What’ll you say to my wife?”
“God knows.” Coyul never sold himself short on charm, but the lady from Lexington frankly daunted him.
“What a coward I was,” Speed said suddenly. “I was never in love with her. That has nothing to do with a good marriage. She was a good wife. How much pain I gave the woman by not wanting to hurt her. That was an easy road I’ve regretted. Goodbye, Coyul.”
What else Joshua Speed thought was, as ever, lost in the shadows of that complex, private mind. He was already moving away toward the Void, gaining momentum to overtake his cosmic opposite. Coyul had wanted to offer both a place on his staff. As of now a legal staff would be a good idea.
From the indications, he’d need all the good lawyers he could find. Coyul let himself drift Topside slowly, in no hurry to resume the duties of a pro tern deity. He was tempted to give them what they wanted, a Hollywood kind of God. More of them envisioned H. B. Warner or Max von Sydow as Christ than would ever buy Yeshua. For himself, he lacked the ego and vindictiveness for any conventional god or demon. For job satisfaction or sense of accomplishment, forget it. The pay wasn’t worth the grief, except now and then for a Speed or a Wycherley.
As for Speed’s wife with her historically short fuse and imperious nature, perhaps Queen Victoria might take her up socially. He’d speak to Gladstone and Disraeli. The ladies could spend decades of afternoons over tea, politely disagreeing and serenely content. Both were opinionated, both had lost much sleep over Joshua Speed and both would have a great deal to say about the bell of dealing with the man.
19
No worm unturned
In his room at the Hilton, Lance woke alone and wondered where Sherry might have gone. He was hugely gratified to find all of himself. The Devil had done a neat job. He really couldn’t go on calling Coyul a devil when he’d helped get him and Sherry together again with nothing asked in return. Besides, when Lance explored his feelings, religious fervor seemed oddly absent. Letti was going to be very surprised when she saw the new Lance. He started to dress, then hesitated at the mirror, nudged by inspiration. Go for broke, the impulse told him. Live.
Lance imagined a dressing gown in rich blue brocaded silk and added a foulard like Coyul’s. The effect was dashing.
“I deserve it. This was a trial and a half.”
The trial! The verdict must be in. Lance willed the TV on to Cataton’s news. He must be top story. People wouldn’t be talking about anything else for months, maybe years.
“... was disclosed today as Reverend Arlen Strutley, in a tearful confession to his Topside Pock, admitted to ‘grievous moral transgressions.’”
Lance switched to BSTV. There he was, all over the rug like an exploded view of machinery, Letti still tearing at him. There was a particularly graphic close-up of his head being wrenched clear of his neck. Lance couldn’t feel nausea anymore, but the sensation came close. He switched back to TSTV.
There was a woman talking about Reverend Strutley, whom Letti had always revered. The woman was a very tough-looking type, the kind usually found Below Stairs at the Club Banal or other questionable places Lance had only heard about. She was responding to questions from an off-camera interviewer.
“Yes. I always wanted to write my life story. I only went into the life to support my political candidate. But this john
, honest, I didn’t know who he was for the longest time. He never wanted to get it on, just weird stuff. Smear me with whip cream and lick it off, stuff like that. Sometimes he threw in fresh fruit.”
“Hey, my trial,” Lance interrupted. “Where’s my trial?”
“What trial?” Nancy Noncommit put her head into shot to peer at Lance. “Oh, your trial, the poor man’s Jimmy Stewart. That’s yesterday’s news. Try Cataton. She’s big on rehash.”
Lance switched to TSTV and Cathy Cataton.
“... and that’s the morning news roundup. Recapping yesterday’s top story, Mrs. Letti Candor had a great deal of comment while dismembering her husband in the Hilton Hereafter, but nothing for broadcast.”
Another brief clip of Lance’s arm caroming off a wall, and the remains of his face. Lance looked away.
“... meanwhile the verdict is in on Candor’s trial. No score, no hits, runs or errors, definitely a tied game according to the jury. Coyul’s government appears in no immediate danger. Despite grumblings from the Fundamentalist coalition, moderate religious sources call the verdict a vote for sanity. You pays your money and you takes your choice. For TSTV, I’m Cathy Cataton.”
“Hey wait!”
“Wait what?” The telereporter glared out of the screen at Lance.
“Is that all?”
“What do you want, bugles?”
“What kind of verdict is that?”
“They tied on you, dipstick. No fine, no damages. And the Prince did okay by you, right? Last time I saw you, you were leftover meatloaf. You want neat endings, catch Bambi.”
“Aw... poop.” Lance turned off the set, disgruntled. Like a great movie with the ending cut off. A trial like his, a martyr like him, there ought to be a bang of an ending. Nobody gave a damn.
“Sherry, where are you?” he pleaded to the walls. “What arc they doing to us?”
The phone rang. Lance lunged for it, “Sherry? Where did you go? Why aren’t you here? Sherry...?”
The brief, chill silence over the line suggested someone other than Sherry.
“Lay-once? This is your wife.”
He was definitely not ready for this. “Oh. Letti. Yes. Uh, what do you want?”
“What do you mean what do I want?” Letti screeched loud enough to damage hearing. “I am your wahf.”
Lance held the phone away from his ear. “Well, you sure didn’t act like it yesterday.”
“Well, shoot,” A prim snigger. “Y’know me when I get mad. Anyhow I heard how that old Coyul put you together good as new.”
“Not quite,” said Lance.
Instantly, Letti was all wifely concern. “Oh, Lance, honey, I didn’t hurt you for real, did I? I declare sometimes I don’t know mah own strength.”
“No, but Coyul said” – Lance searched for the Prince’s exact phrase – “he said I may have lost something in translation.”
“Well, what in hell does that mean?”
“I’m not sure.”
“I guess you’ll be coming home now.”
Boy, where do you get that? Something in Letti’s smug assurance triggered a new connection in Lance – or perhaps shunted over something conveniently deleted by Coyul.
“House looks real nice, except I ain’t fixed upstairs yet this morning. Lance, you there? Lance, I am talking to you. I want you to come on home.”
“I was heading that way,” Lance told her.
Basking in the Jacuzzi and at peace with the cosmos, Purji indolently inclined her head at the knock on the open door.
“Good morning, Scheher – ye gods!”
Typical of her kind, shock tended to turn her blue before composure rebalanced. Purji went dark blue at the vision framed in the bathroom entrance. Small shiverings of static electricity played over the frothing bath.
Scheherazade Ginsberg lounged against the door in stovepipe jeans, biker’s cap perched on her close-cropped head, the multi-zippered black leather jacket hung with more chain than Marley’s ghost. The filter Camel clenched between her front teeth waggled in macho punctuation when she spoke.
“Hello, gorgeous. Just wanted to thank you personally for getting me together, you know?”
Purji detected a predatory purr in the honeyed tones, a quality she was at a loss to interpret immediately. “Your ensemble, dear is this another political statement?”
“I mean the moon has changed.” Scheherazade advanced on little cats’ feet like the fog, with erotic intent. “And here I am, lover: a daughter of Lesbos.” Scheherazade ran a purposeful finger through the moisture glistening on Purji’s perfect left breast. “Think of us as sisters with fringe benefits.”
“Darling, hand me the tow-mmf” Purji was handed the towel with a fringe benefit, Scheherazade pounced, tilting Purji’s head back and kissing her in a decidedly intrusive manner. Surprised, Purji lost concentration and lapsed into her native light form, Scheherazade found herself tonguing a sunburst. Purji instantly reformed, all apology and solicitation while the daughter of Lesbos coped with temporary blindness. “Jesus, take it easy, will you?”
“Oh dear, I am sorry. Just that you surprised me.”
“I’m fucking blind!”
“Should have warned you. A hazard of our kind —”
“Well, watch it, okay? I have trouble enough with self-image anyway.” The lesbic fingers groped forward in a Grail quest. “Where are you?”
“Here, child. So awfully sorry.”
“This does not help my insecurities.” Scheherazade knuckled her eyes against a universe of dancing lights. “Don’t go butch. That’s my part.”
“Poor Sherry.”
“Think you never got cruised before.”
The term was alien to Purji, “Cruised?”
“Made a pass at.” The chastened Ginsberg opened her eyes warily. still a light show, but with discernible shapes beginning to materialize. “There you are.”
“Cruised.” Purji tasted the word. “Like the coastal waters off an erotic beachhead. English is a marvelous language. Nothing like it on Keljia.”
“No sisters up there.”
“Perhaps, but they lack your mise-en-scène. You look medieval. All that steel.”
“I can take it off.” The obliging Ms. Ginsberg whipped out of the jacket. Wellington boots and jeans followed. “In the Jacuzzi, what do you say? Sex is fabulous in a hot bath.” In fifteen seconds, she was naked as an insult, slithering into the foam, undulating herself against Purji like Rhode island coming on to Texas in hopes of merger. “I always wanted to make it with a god.”
“I know.” Purji held the girl tenderly like a child to be burped. “They all do.”
“Mm. I love you. Jesus, what boobs.”
“Ow! Sherry, are you making love or stampeding cattle?”
“Don’t put me down,” Scheherazade murmured, salivating between the legendary Keljian mammaries. “Sometimes I get off too quick.”
“The way you’re made. Creatures of the moment.”
“But what a moment.”
“Like the male bee,” Purji reflected philosophically. “The instant of joy inextricable from that of death. Maeterlinck knew you so well...”
For Letti Candor, the bottom had dropped out of recognizable existence. The Hero’s Lady had vanished from respectable coffee tables as the bison from the plains. In her vestigial fantasies of the fallen Reverend Strutley, he now wore a suggestive leer, the horns of a goat and reminded her of Daddy. Now her wayward husband stood in the doorway, thumbs hooked in the hip pockets of tie-dyed jeans, black sweatshirt white blazoned SEX HAS NO CALORIES, and didn’t even look sorry for what he done.
Letti presented what instinct prompted as appropriate: the constant wife, forgiving but still hurt and aloof. No verity unbetrayed, but Letti would be a lady as always and rise above it.
“Lance, ah want to talk to you.”
“Yeah. Well.” He brushed in past her. “Talk to me upstairs.”
Letti jumped to conclusion as swiftly as to
violence. “You’re always thinking of that. I ain’t talking about sex now.”
“Neither am I. You’re not even warm.” Lance vanished up the stairs.
A more intuitive woman might have heard a warning signal. She followed Lance to his bedroom and hovered in the doorway, worrying at the lacquer on her nails. She wanted him back, of course. Any other resolution defied imagination. She wanted him to repent and suffer a little – no, a lot – for the embarrassment he caused her with that tacky tramp who would have given him AIDS or something back home, and serve him right.
Lance gazed around the room at every overdone item: the unwrinkled coverlet, the comb and brush set in mother-of-pearl, the cufflink box, the cologne bottle in arrangement that defied disorder. The polished oxfords aligned on dress parade. The shirts on hangars precisely three inches apart.
“I don’t need any of this,” he said.
“Any of what, Lance?”
“This.”
“This what?”
“This stuff. This place.”
“You know what I think,” Letti flustered. “I think that tacky old Devil put you together with something left out.”
“Yes,” Lance nodded in solemn agreement, continuing his inventory of Hell House. “And I’ll tell you what he left out, Letti. He left out that baby blue coverlet and the baby pink one on your bed, which I didn’t get to visit all that much. And the his-and-hers towels in the bathroom, also in pink and blue —”
“That’s how it is,” Letti protested out of conviction. “Pink for a girl —”
“I know, I know. Do you know how much I hate pink and blue?”
“You never said.”
“I was always saying, Letti. You never listened. As a receiver of information, you had an OUT OF ORDER sign hung on you at birth. And moving right along, he left out that stupid lace canopy over your bed. And the fluffy-soft mats in the bathroom. And the rose-scented air fresheners when we don’t even breathe anymore. And guess what? He left out the picture window in the living room that never framed any picture worth looking at. And the genuine full-grain leather hassock that you never let me put my feet on. And that awful painting of the kid with the big eyes and huge tears, like he lived inside an onion. And those goddamned porcelain mutts by the fireplace you never let me light —”