“For real,” the drummer of the band, Lex, added, tossing back the last of his champagne. “If people knew your bar got this kind of action, you’d be jammed all the time.”
“Jam!” cried MacCleary. “Truth Machine jaaaaam! Aurelia . . . Reli . . . really . . . you gotta hire these guys.”
The singer stared hard at Devin and Reli in turn. “So, Bar Fraulein? What do you think of it? Your man says yeah.”
Reli shrugged. “Yeah, sure. Call me tomorrow and we’ll book a date. You handle all your own publicity.”
The band members grinned amongst themselves. “Cheers,” said the singer, and with that, they left.
MacCleary looked earnestly at all four of the Relis he was drunkenly seeing. “Beatrice broke my heart again, Reli. She left me for the last time. I don’t think she’ll come back.”
“Well, I’m sorry to hear that, Dev.”
“S’okay. She’ll be happier then. I’ll be happy now, before my old future happens.”
“Do you want some water or coffee or something, dude?”
“No! But, hey, if you want some champagne, there’s a nice . . . niiiiiice. . . . bottle of Comet Vintage Veuve Clicquot in the cooler.” MacCleary burped. “I told you I’d be right back. Right back from 1811!”
“Comet Vintage, huh? I probably shouldn’t open that, what with it being priceless and all.”
“Then save it . . . in case the band doesn’t get you enough business. But I think they will. And if they don’t, I’ll buy the place in gold!” He slapped the banquette victoriously to accentuate this point.
“You really give a damn about this place, huh? That’s very sweet of you.” Reli used the latter sentence several times a day at patrons, but this time she actually meant it.
“This place, this time, you. It’s your fault, you gave a damn about me first! Damn. And you’re hotter than all the whores this place ever had.”
“Well, that really is very sweet of you, Devin, thank you.” Reli laughed and shook her head.
“Hey . . . hey . . . I’m naked.”
“Yep.”
“You should get naked, too.”
Reli couldn’t have put it better herself. Locking the door, she shut off all the lights save the oil lamps, then walked back down the long bar to the booth, shedding garments like a snake sheds her skin.
Trooley returned to work, unperturbed by the anachronistic matches. Don’t say I didn’t warn you, Beatrice figured. She’d at least tried to save the bar.
A good-looking man in a white suit, shoulder-length blond hair, and a white Panama hat sat on the other side of Beatrice. He was reading a large stack of loose notes that appeared to be hieroglyphs.
“Do you mind if I ask what you’re reading?” she inquired.
“Well, the devil of it is, I’m not sure,” he replied. He had a British accent and an immaculately trimmed mustache. His blue eyes shone out from his suntanned face. “I’m just back from an expedition in Cairo for the university—I’m in the Egyptology department—and I can’t make heads or tails of it. It appears that the Egyptians had devised a way to combine acid with metal rods in small pots that may have served as electrical units . . . but I can’t quite make out from the hieroglyphs exactly how. It’s fascinating.”
“You mean they might have had electricity in the pyramids?”
“Indeed, as preposterous as it may seem. It’s a strange beast, electricity. Power, force . . .” He tilted his head toward hers. “Magnetism. Intriguing.”
“You’re the intriguing one,” Beatrice decided. “Tell me more.”
Trooley’s Tourist Tavern was rocking. Reli could barely keep up. Patrons were lined up three deep all along the bar. From the stage, Universal Truth Machine was singing a song about whiskey that people were flipping out over, dancing and whooping along under the fierce guitars. Behind the bar, Devin helped to sling drinks to the crowd. Every time he and Reli brushed past each other, they smiled.
One addition had been made to the decor of the bar. Near where Beatrice had always sat, on the back shelf facing the drinkers, was a fishbowl containing a single bright blue and purple crown-tail fighting fish. Reli and Devin had named it Beatrice. Underneath the bowl, a small sign told all the patrons whose eyes visited it: WELCOME BACK . . . WHENEVER.
Running out of time turns out to be the best time of all for the patrons of Trooley’s Tourist Tavern. History may be written by the winners, but it is just as intriguing for the bystanders. And no one may just stand idly by in . . . the Twilight Zone.
I BELIEVE I’LL
HAVE ANOTHER
Loren L. Coleman
The miracle of powered flight. What some once called the pinnacle of mankind’s mastery over his world. But between takeoff and landing, mankind’s world is about to change forever—leaving two hundred people hanging on the cusp of one man’s cynical faith. A man with a glimpse of God’s flight plan. Stow your tray tables. Seatbacks up. This plane is already descending . . . into the Twilight Zone.
When the Rapture came, it caught me on the afternoon shuttle between La Guardia and Dulles, Flight 1602, descending from thirty-five thousand feet at three hundred fifty miles per hour. I was enjoying my second Bloody Mary and a small bag of wasabi peanuts.
My first reaction was pretty routine. A startled, “Son of a bitch.”
My second: He’s effing early!
The whole thing crept up unawares on the entire plane. A small, distant, plaintive wail, barely able to be heard above the drone of the engines. Only in the last few seconds, as it suddenly rose in volume and clarity, did I recognize it as a single, pure note blown on the Golden Trumpet. It neither wavered nor worried. Gabriel hit it perfect (and with ten thousand years of practice, I would otherwise have been surprised). A solid ten. Nine-point-seven on the New York Times arts page.
The Trumpet. A sudden chorus of angels singing out in breath-stealing harmony. Then a clap of celestial thunder. If you’d never heard celestial thunder before that day, you probably thought that the sky had split open. Maybe you even wanted to look, but of course everyone was still blinded by the sudden flash of purest, whitest light that washed over the earth with the intensity of an Obama press conference.
Something like this happens, you expect a more physical reaction. The ground trembling. People getting knocked over by a mighty shock wave. At the very least you should worry that your drink has spilled (mine hadn’t). Part of the eerie Otherness, though, was the complete lack of any physical sensation. The 737 gave only a slight bump as the Rapture lightened its load by a mere thousand pounds.
Five people.
Dammit.
Don’t misunderstand me. I hadn’t expected to get “called home,” as they say. I still had things to do. Places to be. I wasn’t insulted, and quite honestly, if I had been among the chosen, I would have had some very choice words on the subject.
But among the Raptured five were half of the plane’s flight crew.
That I had not expected.
Besides some cursing among the first-class passengers and a scream from the flight attendant who had been inside the cockpit, the whole thing happened with little furor. There was a slight uproar from coach-class seating, though not as much as I would have expected. Yet. And one clear, distinct shout from far back near the plane’s tail section.
“Elvis has left the building!”
So I knew there was at least one demon on board. Or a Graceland nut. Either way, I marked that one down as trouble.
My eyes burned with the after-glare of celestial light. Bright purple spots swam in my vision. I had at least thirty seconds before the flight attendant stumbled back from the cockpit and caused a near panic, easily a minute before the undercover air marshal would pull his gun. So I closed my eyes, popped a few peanuts into my mouth, and felt around for the plastic cup resting on my tray table. Trust me. If there is a better complement to powered flight than vodka, tomato juice, and spicy nuts, God kept that one to Himself. Wasabi scrubbed away any afte
rtaste. Tomato juice salved the burn of the wasabi. And the vodka was Chopin—which was reason enough.
Unfortunately, there would not be enough time to really enjoy the last of my cocktail. With regret (and one final sip), I folded the tray table off to one side and handed the half-filled cup to my seatmate on the aisle. Nice lady. Expensive shoes. A regional manager for Halliburton (I just knew) and heading into D.C. for an affair with a married three-star at the Pentagon.
A business proposition in every sense of the term.
There were now as many Christ-our-kings and God-in-Heavens being shouted as curses. People were beginning to catch a clue. More voices shouted out as people began to notice that some of their traveling companions were missing.
“My husband? Where did he go?”
And, “That little girl, she just disappeared!”
“But I’m still a virgin!”
A part of me wanted to understand the thought process behind that one.
Our forward-cabin flight attendant was not about to give me the time. The cockpit door slammed back hard as she put her entire weight behind it. (All right, maybe one hundred ten pounds, but those doors are light.) Her little cap sat on the side of her head, wrenched around and held in place by a few bobby pins. I had found it rather charming during boarding. Now it was just sad.
“The pilot,” she shouted. “Both pilots! They’re gone!”
Which left only the navigator to attempt any landing. Not an unreasonable situation. But her outburst wasn’t exactly helpful, damaging what little calm had remained aboard the plane.
“What?” seemed to be the overall response. Followed closely by at least a half-dozen shouts of “How?”
Coming in third, but still placing, was a man at the back of first class who asked, “Was there a bomb?”
And that took care of any remaining fragmentary restraint. Especially from the air marshal who leapt out of his front-aisle seat (the one across from my contract-hustling Halliburton neighbor), digging a Glock 9mm out of his shoulder holster.
Brandishing a gun inside an airplane at over thirty thousand feet is never a good idea. Especially when your first words aren’t “I’m an air marshal,” or “This is all under control.” Or, even better: “The safety is on and I’m not going to put my finger near the trigger while on this pressurized aircraft.”
First, it encourages anyone else with a gun to reach for their weapon as well. I had high hopes and better than average odds that this was an unlikely possibility. Second was the very real chance of an accidental discharge. That direction lay madness, panic, and the very unpleasant thought that I would never get back to my Bloody Mary. Maybe it seems to you that my priorities weren’t quite straight, but then, Hey! I’d just missed the Rapture train. Allow me to take what simple pleasures were left.
Besides. Chopin!
I’m certain the next few minutes looked more impressive than they actually were. I mean, it helps when you have at least a feeling for the ultimate set of actuarial tables. But just as quickly as the atmosphere on the plane seemed to be deteriorating, I was moving. Having left my drink in (hopefully) good hands, I met the flight attendant near the head of the first-class aisle, stuck out a foot, and tripped her forward into the arms of the senator who had been riding at the back of first class. This was the guy who had asked about the bomb, so I didn’t feel bad when a flailing hand raked two bloody furrows down the side of his face. So long as it kept him busy for a moment.
That left the air marshal. I didn’t know he was about to cause a rapid and violent depressurization event, but the smell of sulfur in the air suggested that it was possible. And his wild-eyed stare made it seem more so. Not less. Which was the only thing that made me reach for the gun, clamping a hand down over the back end. The air marshal spasmed, and the Glock’s hammer fell down (hard!) on the fold of skin between my thumb and forefinger. Yeah, the guy had cocked it back while pulling the gun free.
The bright spot of pain and more than a little anger lent me enough strength to wrench the gun from his grasp. I stiff-armed it back into his face, and he went crashing down to the floor. Stunned, but hardly out for the count. It gave me time to eject the clip and toss it to the senator who was untangling himself from the stewardess, while I traded the pistol to the would-be Halliburton whore for my cocktail.
Standing at the front of the cabin, I felt fourteen pairs of eyes slowly focus on me. Some in surprise. At least two pairs in mild anger. And the dazed air marshal with something akin to smoldering rage. A ten-year-old girl riding next to her mother stared at me with her mouth forming a perfect little “O” of amazement. Suddenly, I had become the center of attention in the middle of a terrifyingly stressful moment. I wondered if that had been a rather stupid choice to make.
From the back of the plane, I felt a strong wave of anger surge forward. And then I was sure.
“If we can all calm down,” I said, “I think I can help get us through this.”
The senator, holding the flight attendant in one arm, stared down at the pistol clip in his other hand. “We’re going to be all right,” he said with all the conviction of a campaign pledge. And he heard the lie in his own voice, I knew.
The little girl curled over next to her mother. Peeked back. “Is that true?” she asked in a very small voice.
There wasn’t much wiggle room in the question. Not really. So I swirled the last of my Bloody Mary in its cup, drained it, and allowed myself one last second of Zen-like tranquility as the smooth blend worked its own form of magic. I felt a warm flush spread out through my chest. Considered the very real problem of an aircraft caught in slow descent with no real pilots left aboard, a demon flying coach, and about two hundred people upon whom He had just turned His back.
Were we going to be all right?
“Probably not,” I said. “But that shouldn’t stop us from trying.”
There were things that needed to be done, and (from the expectant looks of my captive audience) things that likely needed to be said as well. But since it is impossible to hold an audience captive for long with only an empty cocktail glass—especially one made from plastic, give me a heavy glass tumbler and I’ll give it a shot—I decided it was the better idea to get straight to work.
“There’s a demon in coach,” I said, moving up the aisle. I stepped over the air marshal, who sat up behind me, and handed my empty cup to the flight attendant. “I need salt, or sugar. Lots of it.”
“You’re insane,” the air marshal said. He held his hand to a bloody nose. “And you’re under arrest.”
If only. “Don’t mix them,” I warned her, “but get me all you have of one or the other.”
Whether she was humoring the guy who had just taken—and thrown aside—a gun, or believed I was speaking in metaphor, at least she was calm enough now to not incite more panic. She smoothed down her flight dress. Tried to adjust her cap, and then pulled it free and tossed it aside.
While she hurried to the forward galley, I knelt next to the little girl who shrank away from me. Her mother covered her with a protective arm. “Can you do me a favor? I need you to be strong, and tell me if you see or hear anything strange.” One green eye, peeking through a crook in her mom’s elbow, blinked slowly. She nodded and I nodded back. “And I need a few strands of hair.”
“Get away from her,” her mother warned. She had gray at her temples and a strong brow over fierce green eyes. A natural, confident woman. The best (and the worst) kind.
Fortunately, I had somehow drafted a Washington politician to my side. The senator leaned over, pinched a few strands of stray golden hair from the little girl’s head, and gave a quick yank. She yelped and the mom glared, but that was as far as it went.
The flight attendant returned with a dry coffee cup filled with an inch of white powder. Dipping a finger into the substance, I tested it on my tongue. Artificial sweetener. Well, it would have to do.
I crouched at the curtain that protected first class from coach. It had alway
s amazed me, that power of suggestion. Twenty square feet of fabric, and so far as most people were concerned, their world ended at the first thread. Out of sight, out of mind, as the saying goes. Thou shalt not pass and get thee gone. (Under the curtain’s hem, I saw a reddish-golden light glow bright and hard. There were a few shouts of despair from coach.) I hoped those rules still applied. Belief might be the last weapon we had left to us.
The senator hunkered down next to me, watching as I carefully set the young girl’s hair on the floor and then crossed it with a small, continuous line of sweetener. The powder weighed down the hair, which suddenly curled and waved as if it were something alive.
“You know what you are doing?” the senator asked.
Not exactly, though I didn’t see any reason to worry him with that. I had instinct and a little inside information to go on. Not much more. From both ends of the powdery line I drew a small arc back to the walls on either side of the curtained opening. One side was a wall to the forward lavatory. Solid enough. The other wasn’t much more than a plastic cubicle wall. Worth a moment’s delay. Maybe.
“Are you with . . . them?”
Hard to say which them he was referring to. Like most Americans, I’d like to believe that my elected representatives are on the side of truth, justice, and God. Experience, of course, has taught us to be wary.
Then again, I had thought well enough of him at the time to toss him the Glock’s clip. So—I decided—play the odds.
“I’m in insurance.”
And I gave him the look.
It caused him to lean back. Just a touch. “I’m covered,” the senator said.
I considered that. I didn’t have the man under any policy I’d written, not for one side or the other. So he obviously didn’t know what to believe. Five minutes ago, I’d have given him a coin flip at best. Now?
Grimacing, I shook my head. “No. Not for this.”
“It happened, then?” There was a sound from the back cabin, like the flap of enormous wings. He leaned back. Shook his head. “This is real? It seems like there are still a lot of people here.”
More Stories from the Twilight Zone Page 23
