“How many times can you watch the same scene?” Dave asked.
“You know what you sound like? You sound like a fuckin’ woman,” Eddie scowled. “Anyone ever tell you that?”
“Just you.”
“So maybe you should let it penetrate that thick skull of yours.”
Dave chose not to take the opportunity to return an obvious smutty riposte. Instead he slid off the futon and left the apartment, garnering nary a peep of protest from Mr. Tommasi. Fine. Let him indulge in his pathetic backslide. Then he’d come crawling back to Dave and maybe, just maybe Dave would have him back. Who was he kidding? Of course he’d allow him back in.
Out in the hall Dave pressed his face against the cool stucco and sighed. When had his life devolved into a same-sex soap opera? Were all the girls he’d banged throughout high school and college just a smoke screen? His attraction to them had felt real at the time, but then again, he never bonded emotionally with any of them. Real bonds had only been forged with male companions, especially Eddie. He let out a deep breath and walked up the flight of stairs to the roof. Dabney would be up there. Could he fake conviviality? It didn’t matter. Dabney wasn’t the type to natter on unless you expressly sought that kind of interaction. Let him sit with his pile of bricks and play “stone the zombie.” Dave took another deep breath and pushed open the door.
Though the sun was lost in a gauzy white haze, the light was intense to Dave, especially after having been indoors. He shielded his eyes and fished his Giants baseball cap out of his back pocket. Instead of lying belly down on his tarp, Dabney was seated at an aluminum folding card table doing something Dave couldn’t quite discern. A conversational opener presented itself—something to distract from his current romantic woe—so Dave, attempting to affect insouciance, strolled over and took it.
“Whatcha doing?” he asked as he approached. Dabney was hunched over and wearing thick magnifying glasses, something Dave had never witnessed before on the older man. He neared the table and saw many small parts, some loose, some still connected to plastic sprues. Dabney was building a model kit. How adorable. Wait a minute. Did Dave really think that? Was he being ironic or facetious or patronizing? No, it was adorable, this middle-aged man using a pair of eyebrow tweezers to delicately assemble parts from this, what was it, model airplane, maybe?
“Makin’ a North American P-51D Mustang. Good way to pass time, plus the glue gets you a little high.” Dabney looked up and smiled. “Just kidding. Takes more than a little glue for me. Speaking of which, you want a beer? You look like you could use one.”
“Uh, sure. Thanks.” Dave hadn’t even thought to ask Mona for suds. Stupid. Dabney handed him a bottle of Heineken and Dave held back the urge to weep with gratitude.
“All these little parts and pieces. Been a while since I put one of these together. My boys used to be wild for these things. They liked doing the hot rods and whatnot, but I prefer planes.” Dabney looked up at the sky, scanning for nothing. “I used to complain about the roar of jet planes, ’specially during TV shows. Used to have to turn the volume up to compete with them. Now I’d give my left nut for a plane to go zipping by up there. Even if it wasn’t meant for me, least it would be a sign of something going on out there. Some sign that maybe there were others. Before Mona showed, last sign we had of life was that crash, and that was snuffed out before it even made an impression. I asked Mona if she’s encountered any others on her errands and she said no. There’s gotta be others. Just maybe not around here.”
“How does she do it, is what I wonder.”
“Yeah, well that’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, ain’t it? How come those godless motherfuckers don’t eat her up like the rest of us mere mortals? Yeah.” Dabney finished off his beer, then tossed it over the edge of the roof, not even watching its trajectory. Out of sight it crashed, hopefully against the skull of one of the undead. Dabney snapped a tiny piece off the sprue and filed it smooth with a small wedge of sandpaper, his eyes on the instructions held in place by a small monophonic cassette player that warbled a well-worn tape of Ben Webster. “I’d like to see several squadrons of these strafing the bejeezus out of those assholes down there,” he said, holding the box art up for Dave to admire. “Imagine that? A bunch of these babies blasting the holy living hell out of those cannibal bastards? That’d be sweet.”
Dave nodded, sipping his beer. It was warm, so Dave pretended he was in Europe. He’d read somewhere that Europeans drank their beer warm. Sounded weird, if given the choice, but he’d never know firsthand. Dave looked out at the horizon to the north and wished he’d traveled, seen the world, broadened his vistas. Too late now. He then looked south and gasped.
“Look over there,” he said, pointing.
In the distance a thick, black cloud churned skyward from below, its origin blocked by buildings. But somewhere, looked like maybe in the east forties, a fire blazed. Was that a sign of life elsewhere? Or maybe a gas line blew all by itself.
“Hold on a sec,” Dabney said, reaching over to switch the dial on his radio-cassette player. He then stopped, midgesture, and let out a derisive snort. “Idiot. I was going to say, let’s turn on the news. Pavlovian response, I suppose. You’d think after several months of this shit I’d know not to try. Then again, I got some sweet notes serenading. I’m building a model kit. I’m drinking a beer. It feels almost normal, ’cept for me living up on a roof. But even that feels kind of normal. It is normal, now. Amazing how the definition of what passes for normal is always changing. If normal means what’s most common, those zombies are normal and we’re not.”
Dave nodded, taking another swig of Heineken. Normal didn’t used to entail a physical relationship with Eddie—or at least not a sexual one. It had always been pretty physical. The only time in their past that had been sexual was when they’d fucked a couple of coeds in their dorm room. Dave shook his head, trying to dislodge the memory. He didn’t want to think about Eddie now.
Both men’s attention drifted southwards again as a loud thud, dulled by distance, was heard, followed by a ball of fire which shot into the sky, only to be absorbed by the black smoke. A succession of muffled explosions followed, each punctuated by thick clouds of melanoid brume. Easterly winds bent the plumes of smoke into choky question marks in the sky.
“What do you suppose it is?” Dave asked.
“I dunno. Looks to be pretty far east. Could be the old Con Ed steam plant, near the UN. Or did they tear that down? I can’t remember now. Could be a lot of things, though. And unless we send our girl Friday down there to check it out, we’ll never know. And frankly I don’t think that would be a very good use of her time.”
“No, I suppose not. Jesus, you think it will get up to us?”
“Don’t be simpleminded, son. I wouldn’t want to be in that vicinity, but we got us a few miles between here and there. Don’t sweat it. And think on the bright side, maybe it’s frying up a mess of zombies. Wouldn’t that be something?” Dabney held up the half-finished Mustang and mimed a few swoops, adding appropriate rat-a-tat-tat sound effects. “Not quite as cathartic as a good strafing, but it’ll have to do.”
Whatever was going on downtown it was dramatic. Volleys of muted concussions recurred with some regularity and a significant portion of the southern sky was smudged, the undersides of the dark clouds tinged orange from the blaze that raged out of sight below. The cloud of smoke and soot blew north and soon the sky directly above began to sicken. The charcoal gray began to leech pigment away, the already anemic sky turning greenish gray. The air smelled bad, a combination of charred solid matter and burning petrol.
“Something always gotta come along and rain on your parade,” Dabney muttered. He eyeballed the symmetrical rows of the new Brita Ultramax water purifiers arranged by the low dividing wall. If it did begin to rain, as it now threatened to, even those filters might not be sufficient to fully cleanse the tainted water. A heavy drop fell on his nose and he frowned, adding, “literally,” as
he restored the remaining parts of his model kit to the box. As more drops began to pelt the roof Dave bid him a quick adieu, and then fled into the stairwell. After a few moments Dabney took off his clothes and stowed them in his lean-to.
The water was cool and good enough for an impromptu shower. He stood in the center of the roof, head tilted back, letting the rain pummel his face, saturating his salt-and-pepper beard. He squeezed his facial hair, wringing out the excess wetness, letting the overflow cascade down his chest. Unlike the previous downpour, which had been so mirthful, such a communal affair, this time he stood alone. Maybe Dave had warned the others about the black cloud. Fine. Dabney didn’t mind a solitary soaking. Let them be afraid. Rain was nature’s way of purging poison from the clouds, putting out the fires below. Who was Dabney to question that? The rain seemed all right. It didn’t burn or even prickle his skin in any way that raised a red flag. He opened his eyes as a very unscientific litmus test. No, the water didn’t sting. Good enough for my eyes, he reasoned, good enough to drink. He removed the lids of the Brita dispensers.
What the hell, he figured. Put those filters to the test.
Karl had forgotten how reader unfriendly the Bible was, no matter which version—although he vaguely remembered the Good News Bible being dumbed down quite a bit. Awkward and often impenetrable phrasing. Contradictory accounts of the same events. Clearly it was the message and not the messenger. No wonder his mind had often wandered during church and Manfred’s sermonizing. The language was nearly impermeable. After browsing through the earlier sections, he skipped to Revelation, figuring this most germane.
Karl had forgotten—or maybe blocked—the particulars, but the imagery came flooding back: God and His four demon monsters covered with eyes sitting by His throne, the monsters incessantly repeating, “Holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God, the Almighty, who was and who is and who is to come!” The first creature like a lion, the second like a calf, the third had a face like a man, and the fourth was like an eagle—four creatures, each of them with six wings and loads of watchful eyes. Surrounding God’s throne were twenty-four other thrones, occupied by twenty-four elders dressed in white garments, with crowns of gold on their heads. God’s throne emitted constant lightning and thunder. Like the ultimate booming system.
It sounded more like a rave than Heaven.
And God, evidently, had the appearance of jasper and sardius, a forgotten detail that sent Karl scurrying to his dictionary, which explained that jasper was, “an opaque form of quartz; red or yellow or brown or dark green in color; used for ornamentation or as a gemstone,” and that sardius was, “a deep orange-red variety of chalcedony,” which he also needed to look up, only to discover that chalcedony was, “a translucent to transparent milky or grayish quartz with distinctive microscopic crystals arranged in slender fibers in parallel bands,” which frankly didn’t help at all. It wasn’t very comforting to picture the Almighty made of stone, perched on His throne, with catchphrase-spewing monster lapdogs for company. How Jim Henson hadn’t adapted this was a mystery; it would have made a perfect vehicle for the Muppets.
Some of Revelation rang true, or at least true-ish. The things outside had been raised from the dead. But Karl couldn’t recall witnessing any procession before a large, white throne, nor did he see those not written in the Book of Life being cast down into a flaming lake of sulfur. And while the zombies were horrible—indeed biblical in their horror—Revelation was so specific about the plagues to befall mankind that omitting them didn’t jibe.
Angels with giant sickles killing thousands.
Marks on everyone’s foreheads, some put there by an angel, others put there by the beast.
Locusts flying out of Hell, each with a human face and wearing a miniature crown and breastplate, bearing the hair of women, the teeth of lions, and the stingers of scorpions.
Millions of angels riding horses with the heads of lions.
Hailstones and plagues.
Okay, so maybe there’d been a plague.
Reading this stuff was giving Karl the sweats. He felt like he’d submitted himself to regression therapy to recall repressed memories. When he got to the part about dogs not being allowed into Heaven he remembered Chessie, their retriever, and frowned that she wouldn’t be there. Dogs got lumped in with sorcerers, the sexually immoral, murderers, idolaters, and everyone “who loves and practices falsehood.” Was God afraid those doggies would pee on him because he looked like a statue? What good were those multi-eyed monstrosities if not to keep God’s throne free of visiting pooches? Karl didn’t like that.
Karl did like that the devil’s new army was called Gog and Magog. That was kind of cool, but a bit beside the point—although Karl considered referring to the things outside as Gog and Magog from now on, to spruce up conversation. It seemed better than “those fuckin’ zombies.” In Karl’s opinion, the apostle John, who’d penned this book, might not have been the most reliable witness. He might, in fact, have been a raving lunatic. This was just one man’s account, which by current standards seemed like fairly sloppy reportage. How about corroboration? How about three sources? But then again, who knew? What was supposed to be metaphor and what was literal? What was parable and what was prophecy? Karl’s head throbbed. As he popped a couple of Tylenols he noticed faint concussions in the distance.
Karl’s apartment was in the rear of the building so he didn’t bother looking out the window—his “view” solely that of the building across the alley. He hurried upstairs to find Dabney on the roof, nude in the rain, the sky above a miserable hue. Dabney didn’t seem to notice Karl’s presence; his head was thrown back, his eyes clenched shut. Was he humming or just mumbling to himself? Another dull thud erupted and Karl looked south, divining the direction of the noise. The sky there was blackened, flame licking up from below. As if in a trance, Karl made his way to the southernmost building. On the corner he stood on its fascia and stared at the distant conflagration, his stomach churning. He steadied himself, gripping a metal pipe.
“Oh my God,” he said in a hushed tone, remembering a passage from Chapter 9:
The fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star from the sky which had fallen to the earth. The key to the pit of the abyss was given to him. He opened the pit of the abyss, and smoke went up out of the pit, like the smoke from a burning furnace. The sun and the air were darkened because of the smoke from the pit.
Maybe the mutant locusts would be coming after all.
27
This is unusual, Alan thought, paintbrush in hand, midstroke on the full-size canvas. Across the room reclined Mona—fully dressed—on a vintage velvet chaise; yet here he was painting while being tormented by a very insistent erection.
Mona’s pose wasn’t particularly sexy and her expression was vapid and mildly sullen as usual, her eyes lightly closed. In her lap was the Hello Kitty backpack, which she held like a real kitty. She remained perfectly still, which was a great plus for a model, except for her head, which almost imperceptibly nodded in time with her bromidic tunes.
So why was he hard?
She wore her usual longish black cargo shorts, Doc Martens, tank top. Nothing racy. Was it her expanse of exposed belly flesh? Her stomach was a smooth, unblemished plane of slightly convex skin, her navel a delicate vertical pit. It was pleasing to the eye, no doubt.
Mona’s right leg dangled off the edge of the chaise and the left was bent at the knee, the foot resting on the cushion. And there it was: betwixt the top of her boots and the hem of her shorts. It was her calves. What a bizarre time to pick up a fetish, but there they were, round and firm and strong. Calves. Alan had noticed calves in the past, but usually in conjunction with high heels and the way calves really looked full and lush above a pair of pumps, but other than that they’d held no fascination for him before. Breasts, yes. Ass, definitely. But calves? And Mona wasn’t wearing pumps. But now that he’d noticed them—especially the left one, which bulged from the bend of her knee a
nd the pressure from her foot resting on the cushion—he couldn’t take his eyes off them.
Alan took a swig from a can of lukewarm Fresca, burped, and got back to work. He’d blocked in the figure and was tightening up the areas of flesh, the clothing indicated as black negative space. He considered whether or not to add detail like the creases and folds in the material, but opted to keep the treatment more graphic. He focused on her face, drawing his eyes away from that luscious drumstick. Instead he studied her lips, always pursed in a slight moue. Highlights of early-afternoon sunlight coruscated on them and periodically her tongue would poke out to keep them moist. Focus on the work. Alan swirled his brush against the palette, mixing a pink subtle and sensuous enough for those lips.
As he daubed on small touches of roseate-hued pigment he felt a light touch on his shoulder and flinched, causing the brush to skate across the surface of the canvas, marring the work he’d done.
“Jesus!” he barked, spinning on his heel to see who’d caused this accident.
Ellen was there, looking guilty, her eyes cast down. She bit her lower lip, her expression conciliatory—until she noticed the bulge in Alan’s pants. Then her expression hardened almost as much as the business in Alan’s drawers.
“You asshole,” she hissed.
“What?” he asked. “What? I’m the one who should be mad. You just made me . . .” Once again his words trailed off as Ellen looked up and locked eyes with him. He feebly gestured at the canvas, a Francis Bacon-like diagonal streak across the painted Mona’s face. “I mean,” he sputtered, and then his face assumed Ellen’s previous expression of guilty conciliation.
Pariah Page 19
