by John Rechy
The Ten Commandments Suite! Mick almost leapt onto the stage. But it was Ward Elder's music now. What a comeback. The audience welcomed him back with screaming embraces. Ward's upper pectorals were not full enough, and so he posed carefully to conceal that, successfully—cheers grew.
Lapping waves of adulation swept Herbert Lichtenstein on stage. Herbert plunged into his routine, without displaying his body relaxed. To the strains of the music from Star Wars, he thrust his muscles for adoration by the eyes beyond the lights. He finished with a stunning double-biceps pose and emptied the stage of his magnificent presence, pulling with him a rampage of increased adulation.
HER-BERT! chanted the loyalists. HER-BERT! joined the sudden converts. LICHT-EN-STEIN, CHAMP-EE-ON! a new cry demanded.
Each syllable of the shouted, hated name was a bullet in Mick's heart. Lichtenstein's strategy had been cunning, never to allow a pause between poses, so that his massiveness disguised his middle's thickness. Passing Mick, the Gorilla smiled the smile of a killer.
Bo Sanders might have suffered by going next—too slender in proportion—except that he was young, exultant, handsome—his first time within reach of the highest ranks, and so he moved with the abandon allowed only by the knowledge that merely placing would be a victory—for now, this year. But the steady chanting pursuing him offstage proffered greater hopes.
In between the routines of the acknowledged gods, demigods posed, their ferocious exhibitions giving no hint of abdication.
“Harris! Chuck Harris!” the amplified voice announced.
The name—the remembered magic—brought shrieks. The memory mounted the platform. Harris's body looked even better than at the prejudging. The heavy applause continued—for the legend, for its survival. Harris moved into his routine. His muscles relaxed too soon before others tensed. The applause became automatic. Hearing the change, Harris dared to assume the pose he had made immortal—the pose captured in the classic photograph pinned on the walls of gyms the world over: a three-quarters front pose, every muscle at attention.
Murmurs, whispers slithered through the darkness, the applause became scattered—a noise.
Harris's body wavered, destroying the pose. He almost fell.
Boo! the word spat out of the cruel darkness.
Harris stopped posing.
Boo! Boo! Two more shots were aimed at the ghost.
Boo! Bool BOO!
Harris stood on the platform and stared at the angered darkness.
Oil and weary sweat seemed to melt his body. The lights came down on him like the blade of a guillotine.
Offstage, Mick faced Newman, who was staring at Chuck Harris rushing away from the shrieking enemy. There was a smile of triumph on Robert Newman's face!
“Mick Vale!” the electric voice announced.
The theme music from Exodus thrust Mick into the lightening darkness.
He stood almost relaxed on the platform, his body painted with oil and iodine and Sudden Tan. Mick did not move the bronzed flesh. A statue of perfection had been placed before the audience.
Silence collected awe.
Still Mick dared to drain even more stunned adulation—which he must whip into roars at the exact moment. One more second. One more! Another! And— …
Now!
In what seemed one movement, his right deltoid and biceps tensed into two enormous mounds of vascular muscle, the forearm rose, angled, the fingers clasped, his other arm shot out and up, the deep cut of his pectorals flowed into the shoulders, the lats on the right bunched to display density, and on the left created a sweeping arc proclaiming stunning width, his thighs parted to taper at the knees and release the fullness of cleft calves. Mick's face turned slowly up as if for ineffable inspiration.
The collected silence exploded.
Mick's body joined the flow of the music, which he heard above the roar as if it played only for him, for his body—and now perfect pose followed perfect pose before the eye of darkness, darkness which screamed his name.
Mick swirled, ordered every muscle into his original stance—and did not move until the lights came down.
Applause crashed on the golden statue.
Now the final—fatal and triumphant—round would occur. The six finalists would be announced. Then they would pose freely on the stage simultaneously, all together, for final comparison.
Herbert Lichtenstein! Bo Sanders! Ward Elder! Joe Jones!
Mick Vale! And a new name no one recognized. The new body leapt on stage, discarding Chuck Harris.
The six began their free posing. They were exultant animals celebrating their might, asserting their power over each other and over all the other creatures in the jungle of muscular flesh. Herbert Lichtenstein awed with his sheer mass as muscles formed, re-formed from one magnificent display into another. The Black Sultan remained apart, adored in his imposed exile. The nameless body charged the stage with new energy. Mick Vale waited, his posing subdued for the first few seconds. Ward Elder made his bid; he pushed himself next to Lichtenstein, who annihilated him with a kneeling, back pose. Ward relocated himself next to Mick, still subdued until the moment of Ward's daring intrusion. In one flash Mick performed his awesome most muscular pose, and in that flash he discarded Ward. Bo Sanders performed for the audience—for future contests.
Now Mick began: He posed briefly next to each man, matching whatever pose each assumed, pushing each out easily. Now he stood next to Herbert Lichtenstein. Seeing Mick challenge him, Lichtenstein stretched his tall body, then allowed each muscle its full dazzling exhibition, tensing in a recurrent chain reaction, as if giant muscles were hopping along the limbs of his body.
The audience was on its feet. HER-BERT! HER-BERT! NUMBER ONE!
This is it! Mick knew. Mick exhaled, the wall of his stomach caving into a perfect vacuum, erasing his waist. Angrily, Lichtenstein tensed his left biceps into a balloon about to burst. Still holding his stomach in, Mick flexed his own considerable arm, then dropped it, with the other, fists planted on his sides, emphasizing the slender waist. Then he matched each of Lichtenstein's urgent poses and ended each with a frontal show of his full-ridged, narrow waist.
The screams shifted: MICK VALE! MICK VALE!
The round ended. Darkness. The decision.
Amber lights rose on six trophies and a vacant three-tiered platform.
Sixth Place! “Evan Harrington!” The new body had a name!
Evan Harrington was born, this moment, here, now, young, younger even than— …
Fifth Place! “Bo Sanders!”
… —who looked at the new—younger—man, and for only that moment lost what had seemed to be his permanent smile.
Fourth Place! “Joe Jones!”
Boos from the Black Sultan's fans indignant because of the low rating. “Rigged!” someone accused. “Fake!” “Rigged!” “White devils!” one voice screamed. “Rigged!”
The Black Sultan did not appear—his place behind his trophy left vacant.
The chant altered: “Bad loser! Bad loser!”
Third Place! “Ward Elder!”
Ward tried to appear enthusiastic as he rushed on stage to take his place on the tier just below the highest. The smile on his face did not match the rest of his set features. Finally surrendering to a ferocious glower, he looked up as if announcing his separation from a vagrant deity.
HER-BERT!
MICK VALE!
HER-BERT!
MICK VALE!
“Shit! With that word Herbert Lichtenstein announced his second place and Mick's victory.
“Mr. Universal: Mick Vale!”
Victory coursed through Mick's body, the way blood—forcing tissue to grow, muscles to become larger—the way it flowed when he lifted still another, a heavier, weight, and another, another, still heavier—fresh blood asserting life!
When neither Lichtenstein nor Elder did what tradition decreed they do, Evan Harrington bounded to the top tier and held Mick's champion-hand aloft.
�
��EVAN HARRINGTON!” the crowd welcomed a new contender.
Then Mick was alone on stage, enclosed by screams, applause. As always, but now more than ever before, his name, chanted in ecstasy, the thunder of adulation, seemed to come from a farther distance, beyond the audience, the auditorium, from outside, gathering from the very edge of the beach he loved, where he glowed every summer as he ran—one more summer, one less summer; the roar came from the jagged curve of the ocean, yes, and beyond, from the deepening blue of sky, beyond, from the dawn, the dusk, the twilight of evening, and the vast starless darkness of endless water, whose waves washed over him, consuming him, when on certain late nights he stood, alone, naked, challenging the tumult of the crashing darkness.
“… —President of the Federation of— …” the electric voice asserted.
Mick saw Robert Newman walking toward him to present him his check for $15,000. From behind Newman, a banned photographer flashed a bulb. The light smashed Mick's vision. It blurred into a circle that contained smeared figures. Within it, the form of Robert Newman approaching looked like the distorted spectral shadow projected against the wall of his private stage-gym that strange, monstrous night when Mick had felt an invisible cold, dark presence—the shadow of decay, more tragic for him because it demanded the surrender of his perfect body, a brutal, sacrificial death. The menacing outline advanced, advanced—closer! Mick flexed his huge muscles against the quivering figure approaching him.
Then his eyes cleared on the smiling face of Robert Newman. Newman presented him the check and clasped his hand tightly with both of his.
From the deep darkness, the audience shouted. “Mick Vale, you're the greatest, Mick Vale, you're the greatest! You're the greatest! You're the greatest!”
Newman dropped Mick's hand—which was cold, cold—and turned to face the cheering crowd.
Lost Angels: 9
“The fireworks of God,” Orin repeated. He still faced the hot darkness through the parted drapes of the motel room.
Instantly, Jesse flung his long booted legs off the bed. He stood next to Orin as if to whirl him around. “How much money did the old woman leave?” his voice asked.
Silence was disturbed only by the humming of the air-conditioner and the scratching of wind outside.
Lisa crouched when she saw Jesse's hand rise ready to fall on Orin's shoulder, to force him to face him and his question. There was no hint of what Orin's reaction would be; his face had remained averting them, scrutinizing whatever he saw within the world of darkness outside the window.
Jesse's hand did not connect with Orin's shoulder. Poised over it for seconds, it fell to his side. His own expression changing to one of surprise or bewilderment, Jesse retreated from Orin.
Because he had seen what Lisa saw now? Releasing the drapes—sealing the motel room and the three of them within it—Orin turned away from the window. His face was streaked with long tears. Or perspiration. He sighed. “ ‘Yes, Sister Woman will give us proof —that's what the old woman kept saying.” He trembled as if seized by a hot chill.
Lisa sat up. That woman on television was real!—and Orin believed her! Throughout these magical days with him and Jesse—and eager to abandon the screaming echoes and twisted shadows of her past—Lisa had moved as if through the radiance of a colored dream in this dreamy city of bright colors. Now—increasingly distanced from past shadows—the props of the dream were transferring into an emergent sharp reality, held in abeyance, jostled now by Orin's words. It was she who studied Orin carefully now.
“When God threw the angels out of heaven, I wonder who wept more, him or them?” Orin was looking at Jesse and Lisa, as if expecting an answer from them. “Always wondered. I know the angels cried a lot because they were lost, and that's not a good feeling…. God, see, he was trapped. He couldn't relent, once the fireworks started—nothing could stop them; that's fate.”
His cadenced words—that rhythm—they lulled Lisa away from her earlier turbulent thoughts. It was so easy to surrender to Orin's sighed words, to become a part of his present, full of abandoned mystery. That allowed her—and Jesse—to leave behind their own pasts, hidden sorrows and horror; becoming a part of Orin as if in a dream in which they drove and played what seemed at times like games.
But— …
But into that dream and those games—reality yanked again forcefully at Lisa, seesawing—three powerful figures were encroaching, figures still not real: the dead woman, Sister Woman, the man in the park—if he was there! Without those three presences, or kept unreal, their—hers, Jesse's, Orin's—drifting throughout the city on daily excursions had seemed endless, wonderfully endless. If those figures shaped, as darkly as they hinted, the games might collide with reality, become rehearsals for that collision.
Sweating. Orin was sweating, though he seldom did—not even, sometimes, in the glare of heat; Jesse saw Orin's streaked face and could not look at it beyond that glimpse. Sweating, he insisted. He parted the drapes, looking out, trying to see what it was that Orin had discovered out there that evoked his strange words. Twisted darkness—and swirls of dusty wind blowing about the indigo Cadillac parked in its space. That's all Jesse saw.
Orin's breathing broke—as if he had trapped a sob before it could form. Relenting, the wind exhaled long soft sighs.
That's what Orin had heard, what Lisa heard now, she knew, the sound of angels weeping. And it wasn't sweat on his face. Tears, like those he had shed that night when they were naked in bed. She touched Pearl; the doll and this room extended the safe dream.
“I don't know if God cried!” Jesse crushed the drapes shut. The questions that had rushed his mind just moments earlier—how much money did the old woman leave?—hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands?—where is the money?—in a bank, in cash? in the trunk of the Cadillac!—and wouldn't a crazy old blind dying woman keep her money in cash?—all these questions, deliberations, which had receded as he glimpsed Orin's wet face, pushed forth again now that the moisture—sweat!—had evaporated. That beautiful, alluring Cadillac out there; what if it got stolen and the money was there?
“What did you ask me earlier, Jesse?” Orin spoke in his ordinary voice.
Strategy! Jesse had to form a plan. But what for and why? “I forgot,” Jesse postponed any commitment. Because only this was certain—and it recurred at sudden moments in Jesse's awareness: Orin could simply drive away. One morning they'd look out and the Cadillac would be gone—unless it would turn out to be Orin who would wake up one morning and find it gone.
Head tilted, Orin was facing him closely.
Jesse panicked. He sat down wearily. Could he … leave … Orin? And Lisa—if she wouldn't come with him?
“I think God cried,” Lisa said. “Otherwise— … Can God be evil, Orin?” Her hand reached absently to touch Pearl on the bed. She discarded all the earlier questions, shoving their reality away.
“Not God—Satan. But maybe Satan's just the other side of God—the mean part. The other one is always sad.” Orin shook his head. “I don't know—depends.”
And that's what he wants to find out from Sister Woman? —only that? Jesse wondered.
Pearl next to her, Lisa curled in her bed. So tired, tired, tired. She heard the sighing of the wind, like the weeping of angels. Her eyes closed. Her voice was drowsy as she began to fall into exhausted sleep. “Maybe this is where God threw those angry angels, right here … into this very city. Maybe they never even fell from heaven, Orin,” she said groggily. Her words purled into the rhythm of sleep. “Maybe there never was a God to even care enough to fling them out. And they just … imagined … that … once … there was … heaven.”
Orin turned off the lights.
Jesse undressed to his shorts. He was so exhausted he began to fall asleep immediately, but he jarred himself awake, anticipating the familiar pressure of Orin's body on the other side of the bed. Sleep pulled powerfully. Out of the asserting heaviness of conquering drowsiness, Jesse heard a muffled answer to the questi
on he had asked earlier—and it didn't surprise him, the way … Orin … had … of answering … so much later.
“Million. Million dollars. More, Jesse.”
Did he ever come to bed during the night? Or did he sleep there on the chair, where he sat now fully dressed—Orin—looking at them? Jesse sat up startled. “What you say, Orin?” he responded groggily to the voice he had heard before dark sleep inundated him last night.
“Didn't say anything,” Orin said.
“Must've dreamt you said something,” Jesse mumbled. He got up and went to the bathroom.
Lisa jerked against the sunlight bunching at the window. She tried to push away heavy sleep. Pearl rolled over, facing up, eyes fluttering. “I wish you'd been born dead!” Lisa yelled in a deep, deep voice at the doll. “You made me ugly. Look, look!” She buried her hands in her own hair. “Ugly—and that's why they always leave me, over and over—so mean, mean!” Aware of the enraged voice—it wasn't hers!—she sat up and saw that Orin was standing over her, his hand soothing her shoulder. “She said I stole her beauty; I was pretty only because I stole her beauty.” She looked at Orin with pleading eyes. The nightmare she had wakened from clung.
“But you didn't, Lisa,” Orin said as softly as he was touching her.
“No?” Lisa asked. The nightmare faded.
“No,” Orin asserted.
“Awful nightmare,” Lisa said.
“Morning,” Orin restarted the day. Removing his touch now, he smiled the almost bashful smile of a boy waking up for the first time in the same bedroom with a pretty girl.
Jesse came out of the bathroom. Orin looked too fresh not to have slept in bed. Just got up early again, Jesse insisted.
Yawning, stretching, Lisa took her turn in the bathroom. This time, she took her clothes with her, to dress there. It was as if all of yesterday, that long, long day, that longer night—the dark park, the twisted shadows, the confused tension when the movie heroines she loved seemed to be fighting her, Orin's strange story—it was as if none of that had occurred. None! She felt refreshed by that feeling—and the resurrecting water on her body as she showered. Looking fresh, pretty, prettier each day, she returned to the bedroom. “Hi!”
