He shook his head. His eyes grew misty. Way back and down, he felt derisive sounds coming out of Flash and Cosmic Traveler, sitting like hecklers in the cheap seats of his mind. It was rare enough they agreed on anything. He felt wordless care and concern from Moonchild, nothing at all from Aquarius. Starshine was vaguely disapproving. He was probably afraid Mark was going to have fun. It wasn’t socially conscious.
She moistened her lips. “I know St. John is being awfully hard on you. I wish it didn’t have to be this way.”
He looked at her with eyes that felt as if they had no moisture in them, parched by each random breath of air. It was strange, considering how close he was to tears.
Would it do me any good to beg? he wondered.
Oh, please, the Traveler said.
She settled back on his pillow. Even in the eighties a man got to have a pillow. For a moment she half lay that way, one leg cocked, her hair hanging in her eyes and around her shoulders with just a little bit of perm kink still in it. He thought she’d never looked so beautiful. Not even when she was carrying Sprout and they were both breaking their necks to make believe that everything was going to work out.
She sighed again. “All my life I’ve had this feeling of shapelessness,” she began.
Mark’s mouth said, “Oh, baby, don’t talk that way, you’re beautiful,” before he could stop it. Flash and Traveler hooted and twirled noisemakers. Even Moonchild winced.
Kimberly ignored him. “It’s like I’ve always been searching for landmarks to define myself by: jocks, radicals.” A smile. “You.”
She smoothed her hair back and let her head drop toward one shoulder. “Does any of this make any sense?”
Mark made earnest noises. She smiled and shook her head.
“After we split I spent a few years in heavy therapy. I guess you knew about that, huh? Then one day I decided it was time to try something new, just completely different from anything I’d done before. I did the furthest-out thing I could think of: set out to become a by-God businesswoman, a real hard-charging lady entrepreneur. Entrepreneuse. Whatever. Is that strange, or what?”
She laughed. “And I did, Mark, I did it. I do it. Racquetball and power lunches. I even have a muscular male bimbo for a secretary, even if he is gay. You can’t imagine what this is costing me in lost time, aside from dear St. John’s astronomical fees.”
Mark looked away and felt selfish for reflexively thinking of what all this was costing him, and not at all in terms of money.
“Then I met Cornelius. He’s really a wonderful man. I’m sure you’d like him if you got to know him. Only you and he are … worlds apart.”
She poured them both more wine. “Domestic little creature, aren’t I? I’m starting to have the horrible suspicion that no matter how liberated I think I am, my gut notion’s Norman Rockwell. You know, all those Saturday Evening Post covers when we were kids—don’t make faces like that, I know it’s silly. But I want to capture that feel.”
She leaned toward him. He ached to stroke her hair. “Anything you want is fine. I want you to be happy.”
She smiled at him, sidelong. “You really mean that, don’t you? In spite of what’s going on.”
He wanted to say—well, everything. But the words tried to come so fast they jammed tight in his throat.
She brought her face close to his. Her mass of hair shadowed both their faces.
“Remember that guy I went with in high school? The big guy, blond, captain of the football team?”
Mark winced at long-remembered pain. “Yeah.”
She laughed softly. “About three weeks after he broke your nose, he broke mine.” She set the jelly glass down beside the futon and kissed him lightly on the lips.
“Funny how things turn out sometimes, huh?”
His lips were numb and stinging all at once, as if somebody had punched him in the mouth. She slipped her hand behind his head, drew his face to hers. Almost he hung back. Then their mouths touched again, and her tongue slid between his lips, teased across his teeth. He grabbed her like a drowning man and clung, with his hands, his lips, his soul.
In her sleep, in her room, Sprout cried out.
They were both on their feet at once. Mark just beat Kimberly through the door of his microscopic bedroom.
Lying on her own lumpy mattress, Sprout murmured to herself, hugged her Pooh-bear closer to herself, and rolled over and back deeper into sleep. Mark and Kimberly watched her for a moment, not speaking, barely breathing.
Kimberly disengaged, went and sat on the futon. Mark practically melted beside her, reaching for her. She was tense, unyielding.
“I’m sorry,” she said without looking at him. “It won’t work. Don’t you see? I’ve tried this. I can’t go back.”
“But we can be together. I’d do anything for you—for Sprout. We can be, like, a family again.”
She glanced at him over her shoulder. Her eyes gleamed with tears. “Oh, Mark. It can’t be. You’re too much the free spirit.”
“What’s wrong with freedom?”
“Responsibility took its place.”
“But I can be what you want! I’ll do anything for you. I can help give you shape, if that’s what you need.”
Smiling sadly, she shook her head. She stood up, faced him, took his face in her hands. “Oh, Mark,” she said, and kissed him lightly but chastely on the lips, “I do love you. But really, it’s all you can do to get up feet-first in the morning.”
She was gone. Mark lurched to his feet, but her Reeboks were already doing a muted Ginger Baker number down the stairs. He hung there in the door frame, heart pounding. He could feel it especially in the scrotum; his belly and inner thighs ached and trembled with frustrated tension.
He had almost forgotten what the blue balls felt like.
This shit, JJ Flash said, has got to stop.
“Dr. Pretorius, what do you mean by appearing in my court like this?”
“You mean this, your honor?” He gestured at his right leg. The immaculately tailored trousers ended at the knee. The limb below was black and green and warted like a frog’s. Yellow pus oozed from a dozen lesions. Judge Conover’s nose wrinkled at the smell.
“This is my wild card. It makes me a joker—except the condition is spreading upward by degrees, and when it reaches my torso, it will kill me. So I suppose it also qualifies as a Black Queen, albeit slow.”
“It’s disgusting. Do you intend to make mockery of this court?”
“I intend to display only what exists, your honor. Be it the physical disfigurement of a joker or the emotional and mental disfigurement of bigots who would condemn people for having drawn a wild card.”
“I am tempted to find you in contempt.”
“You can’t make it stick,” he said affably. “Jokers may not be enjoined from public display of their traits, unless these conflict with indecent-exposure laws. That’s state and federal law; would you like citations?”
Her cheeks pinched her nose. “No. I know the law.”
He turned to Kimberly, who sat in the box as if she’d just been carved from a block of ice.
“Mrs. Gooding, you’ve been to court before to get custody of Sprout. What happened the first time?”
Anger flared in her eyes. He let himself show a slight smile.
“You know perfectly well what happened,” she said crisply.
“Please tell the court anyway.” He let her see him glance toward the press-packed courtroom. He and Mark had awakened to headlines screaming TRIPS CUSTODY CASE LAWYER EQUATES ACES, DRUG LORDS and ACE POWERS KILL, ATTORNEY SAYS. He wanted her and Latham to know he intended to share the joy.
There was also an article that said President Bush, after specifically pledging not to do so during his campaign, was considering calling for a revival of the old Ace Registration Acts. Didn’t have anything to do with this, of course. Just another sign of the times.
She folded her hands before her. “I was under an enormous amount of stres
s at the time. There was our daughter’s condition, and marriage to Mark was not precisely easy on me.”
Touché, he thought, not that it’ll do you any good.
“So what happened?”
“I broke down on the stand.”
“Went to pieces is more like it, wouldn’t you say?”
Her mouth tightened to a razor cut. “I was ill at the time. I’m not ashamed of that, why should I be? I’ve had treatment.”
“Indeed. And how else have circumstances changed from that time?”
“Well—” She glanced at Mark, who as usual was gazing at her like a blond basset pup. “My life has become much more stable. I’ve found a career, and a marvelous husband.”
“So you would say that you can offer a far more stable home environment to Sprout than you could before?”
She looked at him, surprised and wary. “Why, yes.”
He expected Latham to object right then, on GPs, just to break the rhythm of questioning even or maybe especially if he didn’t know where it was headed. You aren’t infallible after all, are you, motherfucker?
“So you are saying that now you are a suitable parent because you’re richer? What you’re saying, then, is that rich people make better parents than poor ones?”
That pulled Latham’s string. He actually jumped to his feet and raised his voice when he objected.
Conower was pounding her gavel to restore order. She was going to sustain, no doubt about it. But he’d seen the flicker in her eyes. He’d gotten the point home. Punched her liberal-guilt button with his customary sledgehammer subtlety.
Christ, I hate myself sometimes.
After lunch break Pretorius asked, “Have you ever used illegal drugs, Mrs. Gooding?”
“Yes.” She was forthright, meeting his eyes, not trying to evade an allegation she knew he could prove. “A long, long time ago. It was in the wind.” A half smile. “We weren’t as wise back then.”
Nicely done. “And did you ever try LSD-25?”
A pause, then, “Yes.”
“Did you use it frequently?”
“That depends on your definition.”
“I’ll trust your judgment, Mrs. Gooding.”
She dropped her eyes. “It was the sixties. It was the thing to do. We were experimenting, trying to liberate our consciousness as well as our bodies.”
“And did you ever stop to consider the genetic damage such experimentation might be doing?” He let it ring: “Did you not consider the welfare of your future children, Mrs. Gooding?”
The courtroom blew up again.
After Conower called recess Mark was waiting for Pretorius, kind of hopping up and down without leaving his horrible chair, ergonomically designed to conform perfectly to the mass man but to fit no individual. He looked as if his ears were made of iron and had been stuck in a microwave.
“What was all that bullshit about?” he hissed at Pretorius. “Acid isn’t a proven teratogen. Not like, like alcohol.”
“Alcohol isn’t the issue. They haven’t gotten around to reprohibiting it yet, at least not in time for the morning editions. Latham wants to make an issue of drugs. So we’ll give him drugs good and hard.”
For a moment Mark could only sputter in outrage. “Wuh-what about the truth?” he finally managed to get out.
“Truth.” Pretorius laughed, a low, sour sound. “You’re in a court of law, son. Truth is not the issue here.”
He sighed and sat. “Never believe that the days of trial by combat are over. Trials are still duels. It’s just that the champions wised up and rewrote the rules. Now we fight with writs and precedents instead of maces, and instead of risking our own lives, all we risk is our clients’ money. Or lives or freedom.”
He rested both hands on the gargoyle-head knob of his cane. “You don’t like what I’m doing. Son, I don’t either. But I take my role as your champion seriously. If I have to wallow in shit to win your case for you, that’s what I do.
“These are witch-hunt times. You want to challenge that essential fact; hell, so do I. But if that’s all I do, you lose your daughter. That’s why they call it the system, Mark. Because like it or not, it’s the way things work. Defy it too openly, it grinds you up and spits you out.”
Mark and Kimberly had a date for that night, Friday. She didn’t keep it. He wasn’t surprised. He didn’t even blame her. He felt dirtied by the way Pretorius had treated her, ashamed.
What was worst in his own mind was that he hadn’t stopped him.
Saturday the guilty depression got to be too much. Mark closed the Wellness Center early. There was something he had to do. A matter of voices in his head.
The small man stood with one red Adidas on the roof parapet, looking at the stop-and-go Third World traffic of Jokertown a dozen stories below. He wore a red jogging suit over an orange T-shirt. His face was narrow, foxlike, with a sharp prominent nose and a sardonic bend to the eyebrows. Russet hair blew like flames in the stinking breeze.
He held a hand out before him. A jet of flame spurted from the forefinger tip. It became a ball, jumped from one finger to the next. He rolled the hand palm up. The flame swelled to baseball size, settled in the palm. For a moment it burned there, pallid in the sunlight, while he stared at it, as if fascinated. Then with a roar it shot into the high haze on a gusher of fire that seemed to spring from his palm.
He watched the flame dissipate. Then he drew a deep breath, let it sigh out through a lopsided grin.
“About fucking time,” he said, and stepped into space.
He let himself fall about fifteen feet, far enough to see a startled face flash by in a window. Then he straightened his body and put his arms out before him like a swimmer in a racing dive and took off flying. No point freaking the citizenry too much. The poor schmucks in J-town had enough on their plates already.
He flew north, toward the park, thinking Mark’s really put his foot in it this time. At least the poor fool hadn’t quite had the nuts to make a clean break with the past. Didn’t have a cold enough core to pour out his remaining vials of powder and see his other selves swirl away down the drain.
Thank God. It was chafing enough, the half-life he and the others led, like spectators at the back of an old and cavernous movie house where the film kept breaking. He hated that he only existed on sufferance, only knew his own body, his own flesh, the feel of flight and the wind in his hair, in sixty-minute increments. For a man as full of life as he, that was hell.
Hell was a cold place, for him. The life that roared inside him, he expressed as flame.
A helicopter vaulted off a building top to his left. He angled toward it. When he was a thousand yards away, he kicked in some flame, went streaking for it like a SAM. He threw himself into a corkscrew, drawing a spiral of orange fire into which the chopper flew.
It was a traffic chopper. The crew knew him; the announcer grinned and waved while his assistant pointed a live-action minicam at him.
JJ Flash, superstar. He grinned and waved. The pilot’s face was as white as a brother’s ever gets. He obviously hadn’t run into Jumpin’ Jack before.
That was fine, too. Flash had a certain amount of mean in him, that needed some harmless outlet.
… About then he realized where he was heading. He smiled again, wolfishly. His subconscious knew what it was doing.
Kimberly Ann Cordayne Meadows Gooding looked up from her magazine. A man was floating outside the glass corner of her penthouse, tapping with one finger. She gasped. Her hand reached up to twitch her indigo robe a little more closed over the sheer lilac negligee.
He made urgent gestures for her to open the window. She bit her lip, shook her head.
“It doesn’t open,” she said.
“Fuck,” his mouth said soundlessly. He pushed away about six feet, rolled out his hand palm up, as if introducing his next guest on late-night TV. Orange fire jetted out and splashed against the window.
Kimberly recoiled. Almost she screamed. Almost.
&n
bsp; The window wavered, melted in a rough oval. A breath of warm diesel-perfumed wind washed in. The man in red stepped through.
“Sorry about the window,” he said. “I’ll pay for it. I had to talk to you.”
“My husband’s a rich man,” she said. Her voice caught, like a hand running over silk.
“I’m JJ Flash.”
“I know who you are. I’ve seen you on Peregrine’s Perch.”
Without asking, he dropped onto a merciless white chair. “Yeah. And you’ve seen those pictures your fuck lawyer flashed around. Some poor teenybopper pan-fried by a psycho in a town I’ve never even been to.”
She glanced at the window. The wind was blowing her hair. “Maybe Mr. Latham’s the one you should be visiting.”
“No. You’re the one I want. Why are you jacking Mark Meadows around?”
She leapt up. “How dare you speak to me like that!”
He laughed. “Can the indignation, babe. All your life … as long as you’ve known him, it’s been the same. You tantalize and glide away. He’s a putz in a lot of ways, but he deserves better.”
He tipped his head sideways and looked more like a fox than ever. “Or are you just setting the boy up?”
For a moment her eyebrows formed fine arches of fury above eyes that had gone meltwater pale. Then she stood and spun, walked a few steps away. He watched the way her full buttocks moved the heavy cloth of the robe.
“He must tell you a lot about himself,” she said tartly.
A grin came across Flash’s face. He held up crossed fingers. “We’re like this.” The grin hardened, set. “Answer the question, babe.”
She stood by the melt-edged hole. “Do you think it’s easy for me?”
“From where I sit,” he said, “it looks like the easiest thing in the world.”
“I love Mark. Really,” she said in a clotted voice. “He is the kindest man I’ve ever known.”
“Or the biggest schmuck. Because you equate kind with weak, don’t you?” He was on his feet now, in her face.
Weeping, she started to spin away. He caught her by the shoulder and made her face him. Small flames danced around his fist.
Wild Cards VIII: One-Eyed Jacks Page 23
