The Müller-Fokker Effect (18 page)

Nurse Harriet Saga scootched down in the chair, easing wind and her varicose legs. She was just too pooped to yell at him again. Instead she selected another piece of fudge and turned to the horoscope page:

The first hammer blow struck her in the neck. The other fifty-eight landed among the tight red curls of her hair, deep at the darker roots.

There was no place to hide, and he was sore afraid: which amongst them might not recognize him? But the
POWER
came upon him, guiding his eyes to the newspaper on the kitchen table. He moved a tooth-marked piece of fudge, leaving a bloody smear, and read the headline: ‘
BIBLELAND TO OPEN TODAY
. Bob’s Water, Calif. (UP)…’

He found Nurse’s purse in the foyer. In it there lay a big wad of earthly money and a pair of dark glasses. His eyes caught his eyes in the foyer mirror as he put them on. Those precious stones in the rims of the glasses—none too good for Him who Billikins was about to meet.

He told the cab driver he wanted Bibleland.

‘Is it far?’

‘Furder than I go, buddy. Ya hafta fly. Whatcha want, the airport?’

‘What do I…?’

‘Ya wanta fly or what?’

‘Yes. Yes…I want to fly.’

The cab picked up speed. It passed a giant picture of the Woman in Blue and White, ‘
LET ME SHOW YOU
,’ she said, ‘
HOW TO CATCH YOUR GINGERBREAD BOY.’

Dear Miss Birdsall:

If you knew a man who rented a fine home, fully equipped with air conditioning, wall-to-wall carpets and pastel fixtures, and one day this man just up and
BURNED DOWN
this lovely home, you’d certainly wonder why! Did he hate the landlord? Did he have some other place to live? If not, why on God’s earth did he do it?

If this man said he was just ‘tired of living here’ you’d call him a
fool.

Yet you have been thinking of taking the beautiful home God rents to you
FREE OF CHARGE
—your body—and
WRECKING IT
! Isn’t that a thousand times more foolish?

What you’re thinking of doing is a sin. It is wanton, pointless destruction. Not only is it
SIN
, but it is
THE ONE SIN THAT CAN NEVER BE FORGIVEN OR UNDONE
! It means the
ETERNAL LOSS
of your earthly home—the beautiful home God gave you.

You are troubled. The stresses of modern life, the daily ‘rat race’ and perhaps personal sorrows weigh heavily upon you. But it isn’t
SIN
you want. What you really want is a
change
. A reason to
GO ON LIVING.

WHY NOT COME OVER TO CHRIST?

‘I am the Resurrection and the Life.’

‘The wages of sin is death.’

Switch to Jesus Christ and see! Read your Bible. Pray, asking Jesus to forgive you for even thinking of this Sin. He will make your burden lighter, give you new power to zip through the old daily routine without a thought of despair. Millions have testified to this—it is
a fact!

So don’t burn the house down—light up your heart and invite Christ in.

God bless you,

Billy Koch

She crumpled the letter, then began ironing it flat again with her ringless left hand. What could Billy mean by that? ‘Sin that can never…’

She read it again. There was no mistake. It wasn’t a form letter, Could there be two Miss Birdsalls? No matter how she looked at it, Billy just wasn’t making sense.

Amy removed her glasses and began polishing them, a nerve-calming ritual of many years’ standing. As she held them up to the light, she noticed the rims. Dark plastic across the top, steel below—they looked so
medical
Like a face brace. How many times had she meant to change them for something sexier, say rhinestones or glowing plastic? Yet always she wound up with the same old thing: the dull, the cheap, the reasonable.

Weren’t all these years of chastity enough? It didn’t seem fair. What she had preserved so carefully all these years had diminished in value to everyone, even to her, until now it was like a ticket to a dance of long ago…yet Billy now asked her to go on with it, to save that faded ticket.. . Why? Why did he hate her so?

A fragment of memory from the always dim near past attached itself to the question. There was a street corner she’d just come out of. There was a service at the ballpark. The car. She’d come out of the ballpark looking for a taxi, walking, and the car.

The car turned the corner. She’d jumped back to avoid being killed. It was…Billy’s car? Yes, she could see him at the wheel, those cold blue eyes…and he
cursed
her, his curse mingling with the blare of that musical horn:

That satanic hate. Why?

Grover came out of the inner office and found Amy moving her nose down a column of names in the telephone book.

‘Here it is,’ she said. ‘Here it is: 46 Phenolphthalein Drive.’

‘Where are your glasses, Amy?’

Her naked face blushed. ‘I—broke them.’

‘Golly, you’d better get some new ones. Your eyes look terrible. All red and…’

‘I have that address you wanted/ She waved the phone book. ‘The Societé Anonyme des Transtévérins’.

‘Uh huh. Good. I’m perty sure
that
outfit is the
key
to all the others. It may be a chance to use our heads and really stamp out Cumminism all over the country! Tell you what. We’ll drive up there and keep an eye on them for awhile.’

It was a short way to Phenolphthalein Drive. As they drove, Grover explained their objective.

‘I probably shouldn’t bring you along on this dangerous a mission, Amy. These are the Big Boys, and they play rough. By the way, in case anything should happen to me, I’ll give you the commonation to the safe. You know What We Have in the Safe.’

‘You mean the b…’

‘Right. You set it just like an alarm clock, and put it on all our records. It wouldn’t be much use my dying, if it meant they learned all about us.’

The Societé Anonyme des Transtévérins was, in fact, a Communist front organization masquerading as a Franco-Italian banking firm. But its operations were in another part of town. It had no connection whatever with the quiet brick building Amy and Grover now parked across from and began observing through binoculars (from under the shade of a willow): the headquarters of Transvestites Anonymous.

‘I can’t see anything,’ said Amy, ‘through my half the binoculars. Are they adjusted?’

‘Yes, they’re fine. It’s you and no glasses, Amy. You oughta get them fixed. How’d they come to get broke, anyways?’

I’m cold. Can’t we move the car into the sun?’

‘And have them spot us? Amy, this is a dangerous outfit! Their last name, “Transtėvėrins”, is an anagram of “invents arrest”! And that isn’t all!’

He explained that the director’s name was Julien Pė, whose last name, as Grover understood, meant
pi
, the probable secret symbol for the group. ‘pi,’ he said, ‘is a
circular
relation, see? Wheels within wheels.’

Amy was about to congratulate him on his discovery when Grover gasped. A vehicle was entering the deserted road.

‘Police car,’ he said. ‘Or their “police”. We’d better try and look natural.’

He took off his glasses. The myopia of their eye-beams blended. Then, for the first time in their many years of friendship, Grover drew her over and kissed her.

God bless you,

Billy Koch

Spot read the first paragraph three times. ‘The continuation of the human race’? He guessed that might mean killing yourself to make room for more—lightening the airplane of humanity by baling out.

The idea of suicide came often to him now, in the St Praetexta school library, under the great picture of Galahad. In the evening. ‘My strength is as the strength of ten…’ It scared him, what Billy said in the last part: Stick by it, no matter what. That meant not making his decision final until he was
sure…

If only there were someone to talk him out of it. ‘A preacher like me…’

Spot made his way to the front of the room and asked the librarian for anything by John Donny.

‘Who?’ The old ex-marine looked suspicious.

‘John Donny, the English poet…’

‘
Don Juan
, you mean. Oh no you don’t. Heard about that one, did ya? Dirty sex pome by “Lord” Byron. I guess you figured I wouldn’t know the difference, eh? You won’t get any meat-beating poetry past me, by Heaven I’

Spot showed him the letter and the name in it.

‘Donne? Preacher? No, I don’t think we have any—wait, I’ll have a look.’

While Spot waited, a classmate came out of the reserve room. ‘Man, have I been reading the real shit!’ he said. ‘They got it on reserve here, this book all about the nigger conspiracy.
One Marts Fight
. The guy that wrote it is in prison, but my military political science prof says not for long.’

‘Verne, do you…’

‘Do I what?’

‘Do you think suicide is wrong?’

‘Wes Davis says—he wrote this book—he says it all depends. For the inferior races, he says it’s the only honorable solution. Or for any
weak
person. But we’re strong !’

‘Yeah, I…thanks.’

The librarian came from the stacks with a thin volume.

‘I guess this is all right,’ he said, slapping it on the counter. ‘Looks to be about God and Samson and them. Take keer of it now—I don’t want to see any pecker tracks when you bring it back.’

‘Thank you, sir.’ Spot took the book to his room. It was
Biathanatos
, John Donne’s long justification for suicide.

The Billy android stood tall, even with his head bowed, a captain, at least, in the army of the Lord. The hymn finished and he raised his hands to heaven, or towards the roof of the auditorium.

‘Lord, I’m asking you to do something for some of our sick brethren. I’m asking you to heal them in mind and body and spirit, like you healed the sick in Jerusalem.’

The blind and halt had paid their fees and shuffled into line. Now the line moved forward under the direction of Crusade cops, as Billy spoke in soothing cadences, repeating again and again his instructions to the evidently slow-witted Deity:

‘Let the pahwr flow down, O Lord! Jesus, let the pahwr flow down! Through my right hand, Lord! Lord Jesus, let the pahwr down through my right…’

When he’d worked on the right hand enough he got the left going. The first candidates stumbled up the steps and stood blinking uncertainly in the glaring light.

Jerry sat with his real foot up on the console. He peeled a peanut, tossed it in the air and snapped it up. He put the shell back in the bag, then rummaged under shells for a whole one.

The door opened and a Crusade cop named Morgan put his head in. ‘Jerry, I got a guy out here says he wants to talk to somebody.’

‘What about?’

‘He says he’s pretty rich, and he looks like it. An old guy.’