“I’m so sorry,” she said, wiping her cheeks. “I’m so sorry I lived and you died.”
“Amelia,” said Nobody. “You’re a beautiful person. You have a beautiful soul. Please live. For me.”
She stood up, shaking her head. She turned her gaze toward the moon. “I’ve been there, you know.”
“Where?”
“The moon.”
“Get out.”
“Three years ago. Rex Monday was building a missile base there, to hold the ultimate upper hand against the world. Father put together a space ship in a little under six hours once he figured out what was happening. I went up and tore the base apart. Mindo went along also.”
“You’re making this up,” said Richard, though why this was so hard to swallow he couldn’t say, having actually seen the space ship. But, still, the moon?
“I’ve been there,” she said. “And I’ve seen Earth, all at once, like a little shining Christmas ornament just beyond my grasp.”
“Wow.”
“It didn’t look so heavy,” she said. “And I thought, looking up at it, that I could actually save it.”
“You’ve done what you could,” said Richard. “You just had some bad guidance.”
“I’m sorry I hit you those times in the gym, Richard.”
“Eh,” he said. “Don’t sweat it. I’m tougher than I look.”
“Will you come with me?” she asked.
“Just did,” he said, grinning.
“You can help me learn to be normal,” she said.
“It’s best that I don’t,” he said.
“What about all that talk of wanting to help me just half a minute ago?” She frowned. “Was all that talk about for better or worse just talk?”
He shrugged. “Everything I say is just talk. But, I mean what I said about wanting to help you find a normal life. Step one: hop onto one of those rails of yours and get as far away from here as you can.”
“So, what? You have your way with me and now it’s good-bye forever?”
“Get out of here,” he said, waving his hand. He could no longer look her directly in the eyes. Then, he sighed. “It’s not good-by forever. There are just… just some things I need to do. Alone. I’ll find you. When it’s time.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
“Very well,” she said, leaning down to kiss his cheek. Then she sent a rail toward the moon, and rose along it, nude in the night sky.
Richard gathered up his clothes and began to dress. Not that it mattered, really, if he ever wore clothes again. He still didn’t exist. A girl who could fly might learn to walk among normal people, and a woman with a dead heart might learn to live like everyone else, but for him there was no ordinary world left for him to go back to. Now and forever, Richard Rogers was Nobody.
The next day, boats and planes began to arrive and dozens of workers descended on the mansion, beginning the repair work. Nobody slipped aboard one of the outbound planes and a few hours later found himself in Atlanta.
By now, he was starting to stink. He hadn’t showered since his encounter with Amelia, and the aromas that had been a pleasant reminder of their lovemaking immediately after her departure had now soured. He stole a cab ride with a pair of flight attendants and accompanied them to their hotel room. He engaged in a bit of voyeurism as he shared a shower with one of them.
“I sure am seeing a lot of naked women lately,” he said, making small talk as she toweled herself off afterward. He sat on the toilet and studied her body in minute detail. It was interesting, her posture, her movements. In the cab Tonya had been talkative, a little too perky for his taste, really, with a face that seemed permanently set to smile. But now she was “off,” her face sagging, her makeup washed away. In the cab she had seemed younger than he was, but now he was pretty certain she was at least ten years older. The lines on her face were deeper now that the make-up was gone, and her stomach had a bit of a middle-aged pooch to it. Her breasts sagged more than most women he’d been with, and her skin looked a little leathery. She looked as if she’d spent a little too much time in tanning beds.
Curious, how he found himself studying her flaws. He realized that he’d never spent so much time near a naked person whose guard was so completely down. She wasn’t trying to hide anything from him. She used the toilet, oblivious to the fact that he was sitting on it. He found himself sharing her body. He couldn’t feel her, but when he looked down it was her body he saw, her breasts and legs. The tinkle of water in the toilet was curiously arousing.
Perhaps, he thought, this would be how he spent his life. Instead of being a poltergeist, or a guardian angel, he could become a voyeur ghost, eternally seeking truth and beauty, jerking off when he found it.
There were worse ways to pass time, he supposed.
He read in the paper the next morning that the Israelis and Palestinians had formed a joint security alliance to defend themselves against a common enemy. The UN investigation was still under way, and it was cautioned it would be months, possibly years before any conclusions were reached. Less cautious commentators were throwing out theories as diverse as meteor strikes and alien invasions. Now governments of the world were opening lines of communication with one another, sharing information, and watching the skies.
He assumed this was Dr. Know’s spin on things, and it wasn’t a bad one. He wondered if Amelia had seen the same story, and if it made her feel any better.
Later that day, in the supermarket, he saw in the Weekly World Star that Rail Blade and the Thrill had been discovered to be aliens. Their photos had been airbrushed to reveal their antennas, and their ears had a definite sinister slant to them.
He wondered if that was also the work of Dr. Know.
The following months, he discovered that airbrushing was a more common practice than he realized. He’d decided to haunt famous supermodels. All proved to be disappointments. For a little while, he had stalked Charity, the cute lead singer for the Famous Five. She stayed cute even when the cameras weren’t around. She had an interesting love life, sleeping with two members of her band and her publicist, and she was fun to listen to as she talked. And she talked all the time, more even than Paco had. She talked over breakfast, with whomever she woke up with. She talked in the shower on a cell phone. She continued the conversation on the toilet, often switching between conversations with multiple callers, and texting ten other people at the same time. Then she would talk with a dozen people at once at lunch, then spend all afternoon talking with members of her band, and then spend all night talking with strangers at a club, until she finally was dragged back to the bed of whoever she was sleeping with that night, where, of course, she talked in her sleep. A week of this was enough, and Nobody moved on.
After months of wandering in and out of the lives of the famous and not-so-famous, he found himself at the Pulpit, Chicago’s most famous comedy club, one he’d always dreamed of playing back in his amateur days. Now, he got to sit in the audience and listen to a string of great comedians while he swiped cigarettes and stole drinks. Eventually, the last comedian left the stage and the bar closed. There were only a handful of people remaining in the joint. He looked around for an attractive woman, and found one quickly. She was a redhead, very nicely put together. He had a sneaking feeling that he recognized her, maybe from the week he’d spent hanging around with Heff. He followed her out. She was a bit tipsy and was hanging on the arm of a middle-aged man, who led her to a shiny new convertible.
He watched them as they drove off. He’d changed his mind. Following around beautiful women was beginning to lose its charm. He kicked at a piece of gravel in the parking lot, sending it skipping off across the pavement. What to do, what to do?
He turned around and went back into the club. He felt funny.
Chapter Nineteen
Is This Thing on?
Long ago, the Pulpit had actually been a church, a smallish one. For decades the old building had stood as the congregation gr
ew. Eventually they’d built a gleaming new church in the suburbs, and the little church at the dead end of the street had been abandoned, put up for sale for years before the present owner had turned it into a bar. Much of the original stained glass and woodwork had been preserved, though the pews had been replaced with tables, and a bar ran the length of one wall.
The man who stepped before the microphone was dressed in an expensive silk suit. He wore a fedora, and sported gold and diamonds on his fingers, his wrists, and his tiepin. His shoes were Italian leather. Everything revealed him to be a man of success, wealth, and good, if a bit flamboyant, taste.
The bar before him was nearly empty. The lights were off on the stage, the candles on the tables extinguished, the chairs turned upside down on the tabletops. Far across the room, two men sat. He knew their names. They were Tony and Jake. Tony was the barkeeper, Jake was his friend. It wasn’t unusual for them to hang around the empty bar and watch the little television that hung over it, chatting into the wee hours of the night.
The man on the stage took the microphone in his hands.
“Hi,” he said. “I’m Richard Rogers, but my friends call me Nobody.”
He started to wander around the stage, trailing the mike cord. “There’s kind of a funny story behind that. It involves a time machine and a condom that didn’t break.”
He looked out over the empty tables and listened to the silence that greeted his opening material.
“Oh,” he said. “Guess you’ve heard it.”
He pushed his hat back. He took out a cigarette and placed the tip in the corner of his mouth. “But that’s OK. That’s OK. I’ve got all kinds of material. I mean to tell you, I’ve seen some crazy shit in my time. I’ve slept in the Lincoln Bedroom. I’ve traveled all over the world. I was there when Jerusalem bit the dust. I mean, the stuff I could tell you about, it would make your head explode.”
He paused to light his cigarette. “Oh, yeah. Yeah. I’ve seen that. I’ve seen heads explode.”
Across the room, Jake chuckled at something Tony said.
Encouraged, Nobody pressed on. “So, the long and short of it is, I’m invisible. I mean, really, no one can see me. And this has its advantages. Like, you see my watch? It’s a Rolex. You know what it cost me? Nothing! ’Cause I’m fucking invisible, man!”
He sat the mike back into its stand. He was starting to feel warmed up.
“This tie. You know how much they wanted for this tie? Six hundred dollars! I mean, come on! I saw this thing in a shop downtown and I thought, ‘Hey, snazzy!’ Then I saw the price! Yow! I mean, what kind of idiot drops six hundred bucks on a tie? Not me, baby! ’Cause I’m fucking invisible!”
“Heh,” he said, smoothing his tie back down. “Yeah. And you guys. Come on, guys, tell me what you’d do if you were invisible. Come on, admit it. You’d use your newfound ability to look at naked chicks. Yeah. Yeah, I’ve done that.”
Tony and Jake continued to chat. They were watching some beer commercial that prominently featured women in bathing suits.
“Those women in that commercial. I’ve seen ’em naked. Probably. They all sort of run together after a while. I mean, I’ve hung out at the freakin’ Playboy mansion. I’ve seen my share of pussy. Seen ’em and smelled ’em. I just shove my nose into any crotch that catches my fancy and take a big whiff. That’s the invisible life, dudes!”
He loosened his tie. He felt like he was buzzing. He had no script; he had nothing practiced. He didn’t need it now. He just talked and people thought he was funny. And if he got into trouble, there was always a silly walk.
“And women, good God, women say the raunchiest things when men aren’t around. I swear, you ever turn invisible, go hang out in a women’s restroom for an hour. You’ll hear shit that’ll make your hair fall out. When men aren’t around, women are just downright crude. I heard these two girls once, they were riding in a car, and this one was talking about her boyfriend’s penis. I’m not kidding. A twenty-minute drive, and the whole way she keeps describing this penis, talking about what kind of veins it has, talking about, I swear, what kind of moods it has. I mean, come on! Men could never carry on a conversation for twenty minutes about the physical attributes of their girlfriends. They need, what, three words, tops,”—he lowered his voice and swaggered into his he-man stance—“Hooters. Big ones.”
He chuckled deeply, doing his macho man slow laugh.
He straightened up, wiping his brow. He took a long drag off his cigarette, then blew a perfect smoke ring. How come he could only do this when no one was watching?
He looked at Jake and Tony, shaking their heads about something on TV. He felt some of the energy drain from him. He tapped the mike with his finger.
“This thing on?”
It wasn’t.
He looked at his watch. Four in the morning. Time to wrap this up.
“Fuck you all for coming,” he said. “I’m here all week. I’m Nobody.”
He flicked his cigarette into the huge potted tree at the edge of the stage. He dropped down from the stage and made his way over to the bar. While Tony and Jake watched the television, he snagged a bottle of tequila and a shot glass.
He did a shot, then took a suck of a bar lime. He shuddered as it took hold.
“You believe this?” said Jake, pointing at the television.
It was Rail Blade he was pointing at. Rail Blade was on TV. Nobody perked up. Had it been a year already? Was she back to destroy the imperfect world?
He realized quickly that this was old footage. They were watching some tabloid TV show about the sinister alien origins of Rail Blade and the Thrill.
“What’s to believe?” said Tony.
“That they’re aliens. I mean, come on, look at this woman. She’s not no damn alien.”
“Jake, she has steel spikes shooting out of her ankles. There’s a clue.”
“I dunno,” said Jake. “I mean, spikes or no, you gotta admit she’s one hot babe.”
“Did her,” said Nobody.
“I just think she’s spooky,” said Tony. “She weirds me out.”
“Brother, you don’t know the half of it,” said Nobody, doing another shot. He wiped his mouth, then stuck in another cigarette.
“How ’bout her sister?” said Jake.
“Who? The Thrill? She’s pretty hot I guess.”
“Had her,” said Nobody, lighting his cigarette with his diamond studded gold lighter.
“But,” said Tony, “I hear she’s got some kind of mind control. I mean, you know I don’t like women who mess with my head.”
“Oh brother, preach it!” said Nobody. “Amen.”
“I saw them once,” said Jake.
“Get out.”
“Really. I was in D.C. for the dome celebration. There was some kind of attack by this huge baby doll—don’t look at me like that, it was a damn ten-story baby doll with a gun for a head—and everyone was panicking when all of a sudden the Thrill flew over our heads and yelled, ‘Stay calm! Keep down!’” Jake looked dreamily into the distance as he spoke of her.
“So what did you do?” asked Tony.
“I stayed calm. I kept down. But it didn’t feel like mind control. It was just something that seemed like really good advice. Still does.”
“Huh,” said Tony. He glanced down to the end of the bar. His eyes locked where Nobody was sitting.
“What?” said Jake.
Tony walked toward Nobody. “How’d this bottle of tequila get down here?”
Nobody grabbed at the bottle as Tony took it, his fingers passing though as if it were made of smoke.
“Excuse me,” Nobody said. “I’m not done.”
“Maybe you got mice,” said Jake, chuckling.
“Damn big mice,” said Tony.
Nobody leaned back in his stool and blew a perfect smoke ring. He blew a lot of perfect smoke rings these days.
As Jake and Tony returned their gaze to the television, Nobody ventured behind the bar once more
for the tequila. Behind the booze was a large mirror, and he revealed his face as he took the bottle into his grasp.
He studied himself, in this $300 fedora, with his gold tie clasp. He didn’t look bad, he thought. He needed a haircut, sure. But living on the road had been good to him. He’d aged well over the months, his face growing a little tanner, a little more rugged. He looked like a mature, seasoned man of the world. If only his eyes weren’t so bloodshot and wet.
“Yeah,” he said. “Kind of a funny story.”
Nobody swirled the ice in his margarita with the wedge of lime. He scooped the lime across the rim of the glass, gathering up salt, then licked it. He contemplated the lime, with its withered brownish edges. Why did bar limes always look like they’d been cut two weeks before?
By now, the bar was completely empty. The barkeep and his friend had turned off the television and gone home. It was five-thirty in the morning, and Nobody had sampled a little of everything in the bar. Sadly, the bar didn’t have a jukebox.
“Strike up the steel guitar, boys,” said Nobody, his voice slurred. “I’ve lost my woman, my house, my car, my job, everything that used to be me has gone and died. All I’ve got left is booze and cheap thrills. I’m living in a goddamn country song.”
He stared down at the margarita. “OK. So maybe the margarita is more a Jimmy Buffet thing. Gotta have the right props.”
He rose drunkenly from the stool and crept his way behind the bar, looking for a bottle of whiskey.
“Whiskey river, take my lime,” he sang softly. “It’s done turned all brown and dry…”
He returned to his stool with the whiskey. He tilted the bottle up, filling his mouth, then spat out the contents. “Whoa, let’s not do that again,” he giggled.
Behind him, he heard footsteps.
He looked over his shoulder. There was a man standing in the shadows, looking at him.
Modern Magic Page 228
