Ring Game

by Pete Hautman

  “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. But until it happens, the checkbook stays closed.”

  “But if I tell you where to be, and when, and if you use the story, then there would be some money, right?”

  “If there’s a story.”

  “There will be. How much?”

  “That would depend. If it got picked up by any of the national shows—they start bidding, the sky’s the limit.”

  Hyatt had liked that. “Okay, but I need some kind of guarantee.”

  That had been a tough one. How could he contract for an exclusive on a story that hadn’t happened yet and which, from the sounds of it, was going to involve some criminal activities? After mulling it over for a few seconds, Drew had an idea.

  “How would you like to become one of our freelance reporters?” he asked.

  Hy placed his hand reverently upon his breast. “Me?”

  “Sure. That way it would be your story for sure. We write up a contract, and you’re locked in. Anything you bring us, you get a piece of the pie.”

  Hyatt had bought it. He’d signed the standard contract and left the Hard Camera offices with a smile on his face.

  Drew was smiling, too. The risk was all on Hyatt. If the story ever happened—which it probably wouldn’t—Drew could see it going much bigger than the local market. He could see it going all the way to the top. Jenny Jones. Geraldo Rivera. Dateline.

  He could even see it as a Movie of the Week.

  5

  One God, One Way, One Life.

  —First Maxim of the Amaranthine Church

  POLYHYMNIA DESIMONE, FIRST ELDRESS of the Amaranthine Church of the One, watched the long white thread depending from Rupert Chandra’s slim ass. When Rupe moved from one side of the small stage to the other, the thread wafted behind him. When he stopped, it hung straight down, ending in a small bit of fluff. The thread originated from within the left hip pocket of his powder-blue linen trousers—from the lining, perhaps. She wondered whether anyone in the audience could see it.

  Not likely. Rupe was in fine form. The Pilgrims were seeing what he wanted them to see.

  Polly sat with her long legs crossed on one of two director’s chairs set eight feet back from the edge of the stage, a pink-lipsticked smile fixed on her face. The spotlight in the floor behind her illuminated her platinum wig, producing a halolike effect. She wore a sleeveless, white silk brocade sheathe dress with a stand-up collar fastened at her throat by a ruby-studded brooch in the shape of a double helix. When she stood, the skirt would end six inches above her knees. Rupe called it her “dragon angel” outfit.

  Rupe prowled the lip of the stage, his arms writhing, hands grasping, pulling ideas from the air, rubbing them into his chest, words welling up and pouring from his mouth. A Pakistani lilt elevated the end of each thought, making room for the next. The microphone clipped to the pocket of his electric blue silk shirt transmitted his words throughout the building. Even the restrooms had piped-in sound. That was the secret to a successful Extraction Event: Fill their minds with ideas. Never give them time to have their own.

  Rupe was saying, “Energy is everywhere. I take it from here, and here”—he clawed the air and slapped his hand to his chest—“and where others see thin air I see life energy, there for the taking, the manifestation of the idea of life which you already have in you, my friends, for by the simple act of accepting your destiny you have begun a process that will regenerate your telomeres, strengthen your mind, and empower every cell in your body like the athlete who causes his own muscle cells to divide and increase in number, a process which only a few years ago scientists insisted was an impossibility but which has now been proven beyond the penumbra of a shadow of a doubt, my friends, for as the bodybuilder’s muscles grow so will your telomeres grow and there is no stopping you now for you have taken the first and most difficult step and you are on your way and together, together we will live to see humanity spread to the stars and beyond and already you can feel your cells responding as I feel with each and every one of you, my friends, for today is the end of your long journey toward death as you take your first steps outside the festering murk of the Death Program and into the clear, clean thought of life, for you have seen the Death Program from the outside and you know it for the ugly little thing it is, and now is the beginning of your true life, not your pseudolife, because for millions of years life on this planet evolved through the mechanism of pseudolife also known as death which was created by the mindless forces of evolution, my friends and, like the dinosaurs who ruled the earth for forty million years, it has had its day, for we are the RE-evolution, the evolution of the self-aware—” Rupe closed his mouth, snapping off the chain of words.

  Polly let her breath out. She had a habit of inhaling when Rupe launched one of his megasentences, then trying to hold it until the sentence ended. Usually, she couldn’t do it.

  After three seconds of silence, Rupe began to speak again, more slowly. “Think about it. Think for yourself. Today, for the first time, we have the awareness, the knowledge, the intelligence to move evolution forward, to cause the very cells of our bodies to experience constant rebirth through telomere technology, channeling the powers of the mind, teaching ourselves to step out of the Death Program and to think for ourselves, to cast off the chains of the Death Program and take your time for I say to you again and again and again and again that we … have … all … the … time … in … the … world. We do not have to die anymore, my friends. Death is the old program. We are on the new program of cellular regeneration. We are the next step in the evolution of humanity, the first step beyond the boundaries of our former lifespans. We don’t have to wait ten thousand generations to evolve. We see the opportunity to live. And we take it.”

  God, he was good. Polly could talk for an hour at a time if necessary, but Rupe could keep it up for two or three times that long. He just kept getting better. Never repeated himself, never faltered. The only imperfect part of him at that moment was that goddamn thread. It was all she could do to keep from jumping up and pulling it off him. Polly forced her eyes to the side. She looked past Rupe’s thread-ridden ass and out at the room full of Pilgrims. They had twenty-seven today, two hundred fifty dollars a head for the one-day Extraction. She knew nearly all of them from previous Extraction Events. Greta Hoffmann, her pink rinse lighting up the front row, had been attending Extraction Events for two years. Greta, one of the forty-four Faithful who made up the ACO’s core membership, could always be relied upon to slip a little something extra, a contribution to her “Life Account,” into Rupe’s pocket. Five hundred dollars was her usual offering. Sitting beside her, a young couple named Williston held hands and followed Rupe’s movements across the stage, necks stretched forward, mouths open, looking like a pair of baby robins waiting for a dose of predigested worm. This was Bruce and Janice Williston’s second Event. They had yet to embrace the Life Account concept, but Polly judged them to be ripe to enter the ranks of the Faithful.

  There were only two new faces in the room—a bearded grad student type and a fearful-looking woman in her late fifties. The woman looked like a potential immortal. Polly wasn’t so sure about the grad student, but the fact that he’d paid his two-fifty to be there was a good sign. The fact that this Extraction Event had attracted only two new faces concerned her greatly. Without a continual influx of new members, the church’s energy would sag in time. Work on Stonecrop would come to a halt.

  Polly was counting on next week’s Anti-Aging Clinic to bring in a new wave of Pilgrims. They had beefed up their print advertising for the clinic, running ads in New Age Health, the Star Tribune, the Pioneer Press, and Senior Times. Calls had been coming in all week. Polly was hoping for a full house.

  Rupe would be winding down soon, and it would be her turn to speak the language of life. She decided to come down hard on the membership challenge: To grow is to live. To live is to grow. As she was formulating her opening, she saw the door at the back of th
e hall open. Hyatt Hilton poked his head into the room. He grinned at her, making sure she saw him, then disappeared. Polly’s smile wavered. She stood abruptly and left the stage through the curtained wing, followed by a concerned glance from Rupe.

  Polly found her Head of Security, Charles “Chuckles’” Thickening, slouched in a chair in the dressing room playing with his GameBoy. The handheld video game looked tiny in his meaty brown hands. He glanced up briefly, flashed his gold canine tooth, then returned his attention to his game. Chuckles’s face was the color of sooty brick, with mobile, purplish lips and large, expressive eyes. He had a closely cropped head with a double helix shaved into each temple, one gold earring, and a thick gold chain draped across his fifty-three-inch chest. A crude tattoo depicting a grinning skull adorned his left forearm.

  “Why aren’t you on the door?” Polly demanded.

  Chuckles’s thick fingers massaged the GameBoy, producing a series of beeps. “Me, I’m on break. It quiet in here.” The dressing room was the only room in the building that did not have Rupe’s discourse piped in. “Chip, he’s up front,” Chuckles added.

  Polly snatched the GameBoy, her pink nails raising parallel weals on Chuckles’s wrist. “You don’t take breaks when we’re on.”

  Chuckles rubbed his wrist and kept his eyes on the GameBoy. “Chip, he can handle it.”

  “If Chip could handle it, I wouldn’t have hired you. Hyatt Hilton is in the building.”

  Chuckles sat up. “Again?”

  “I just saw him in the auditorium. Find him. And before you put him back in the dumpster, find out how he got in, and what he’s doing here.”

  Chuckles pushed up off the chair and trotted down the hall toward the front of the building, his thick torso gaining speed.

  “And cover up that tattoo!” she shouted after him. Polly tossed the GameBoy on the long dressing table. She took a cigarette from the pack she’d stashed above the mirror and lit it. Puffing angrily, she paced the room. What was Hy doing? The last time he’d tried to disrupt a meeting, Chuckles and Chip had tossed him in a dumpster. Apparently, he hadn’t got the hint.

  What did he hope to gain by making trouble for the church?

  Maybe Rupe was right. Maybe they should’ve paid Hy off when they’d expelled him. Given him enough to live on for a year or two. Severance pay. She could understand how Hy might feel bitter, but it wasn’t as if he’d given them any choice. Well, hell, it was too late now. If Hy wanted a fight, then that’s what he’d get.

  Polly sucked her cigarette with renewed fury, producing a glowing ash two inches long. The sudden influx of superheated nicotine produced the sensation that her wig had come alive. She ground the butt into the floor and kicked it under the table. Rupe would be freaking. He could talk for a long time, but he was nearing his limit, and he didn’t like being on stage alone. Chuckles could handle Hy. She had to focus and keep the show going. To grow is to live, to live is to grow. That would be her theme for the next half hour. She checked her reflection in the mirror. Not bad, she thought, for thirty-eight.

  Polly DeSimone had worked as a model—mostly runway work—back in the eighties. She had been valued for her regular, instantly forgettable features and her ability to change outfits in seconds. She still looked good, and she planned to keep it that way. Aging and death were disgusting, small-minded concepts. It was remarkable, really, that she and Rupe were among the first to have discovered the key to cellular regeneration. It was right and fitting that they should be rewarded for bringing this knowledge to others, even though—she had no illusions here—many of the Pilgrims would never develop the mental powers to regenerate their telomeres and bring about the cellular rebirth necessary for them to achieve true physical immortality.

  Polly stepped back from the mirror and turned her body this way and that, checking for loose threads.

  Thirty-eight years old, and she didn’t look a day over twenty-five.

  As soon as Rupe saw Polly return to the stage he segued into his finish. “I love you,” he said to the audience, spreading his arms wide. “How can I not? I’ll know you for a thousand years. I’ll know you forever.” He paused for ten full seconds, the longest period of silence since he had taken the stage two hours earlier. Midway through the moment of silence, spontaneous tears welled from his soulful Pakistani eyes, streamed down his cheeks. His arms began to shake. The thread on his ass quivered. He screamed, “I can feel your cells!”

  That was Polly’s cue. Rupe’s knees were shaking so hard they could see it from the back of the hall. Polly jumped up and wrapped her arms around him. She helped him to his chair. As he sat down, she pulled the thread loose from his back pocket and let it fall to the stage. Polly turned to the enraptured audience.

  “Why is this man crying?” she asked quietly, layering a measure of anger over her voice. The faces in the audience underwent a communal cringe, as though they had been found guilty. Polly darted her eyes from one anchor point to another, as though accusing each individual Pilgrim, though in fact she was looking at no one in particular. “I’ll tell you why he’s crying,” she said. “He is crying because he knows that there is one person in this room who does not believe.” Long pause. “One person who does not wish to see the future.” She put a hand on Rupe’s shaking shoulder. “This man, this good and generous man is crying because he knows that despite everything he has done, one of you will die!” She shot out a finger, pointing at Bruce Williston. He gasped and squeezed his wife’s hand so hard she let out a yelp. Polly stepped to the lip of the stage, holding him with her accusatory finger, then releasing him, scanning the audience with her long pink nail, searching for betrayal like a dowser with a witching wand, finally letting her arm fall to her side and turning her back to the audience. She smiled at Rupe, who continued to produce a river of tears. It was amazing how that man could cry.

  Polly raised her hands above her head, then spun around, breasts thrust out, chin up, lips pouted, legs apart.

  She said, “Look at me.” She did a pirouette, all the way around, inviting them to see her as a woman. “How old am I?” she asked. “Come on, don’t be shy. Talk to me. How old am I?”

  Greta Hoffman, who knew the routine, raised her hand.

  “Twenty-five,” she said.

  “Why, thank you,” said Polly, bestowing the full luminosity of her smile on the elderly woman. “Any other guesses?”

  One of the newcomers, the grad student-type, called out, “Thirty-six.”

  With tremendous effort, Polly forced her smile to widen. “Oh dear,” she said. “Okay, one more.” She pointed at Bruce Williston. “What do you think?”

  Williston licked his lips. “Twenty-six?” he asked. Like most of the Pilgrims in the room, the Willistons had seen this act before. They knew what to say.

  Polly laughed. “Much better. Thank you.”

  Greta, who loved to play this game, asked, “How old are you?”

  Polly said, “I am sixty-one years old.”

  The Pilgrims began to clap. Polly beamed, drinking in the applause. She forgot about Hyatt Hilton. She forgot about the thread on Rupe’s ass. She even forgot, for the moment, her true age.

  6

  Let other people have their problems.

  —Crow’s rules

  “WHAT’S WRONG WITH AXEL?” Crow asked.

  “Ax? Nothing wrong with him a two-by-four upside the head wouldn’t cure.”

  “He’s hardly said a word to me all afternoon. Keeps giving me that evil eye.”

  Joe Crow and Sam O’Gara were sitting on Sam’s small porch, looking down the hill through the trees toward the dock, where Axel Speeter was cleaning the three walleyes he’d landed that afternoon. Sam’s hounds, Chester and Festus, were sleeping at the foot of the steps, emitting occasional snorts and grumbles, occasionally joined by a hollow, bonking sound from a nearby birch tree from which Sam had suspended about twenty steel hubcaps by wires. Every time the breeze picked up, the hubcaps clanked against one another.
Sam called them his wind chimes.

  “Yeah, well he’s got a bone up his butt, and he thinks you put ’er there, son.” Sam fished a Pall Mall from the pocket of his plaid flannel shirt. The sun was sinking into the treetops, but it was still warm, in the eighties. The heat never seemed to bother Sam. He wore flannel all summer long.

  “Me? What did I do? I haven’t even seen Axel since last summer, at the fair.”

  Sam ignited a wooden match by flicking it with his thumbnail, sucked the flame onto the tip of his cigarette. “According to Ax, that’s when you put in the bone.”

  Crow stood and faced his father. He had known him for nearly two decades, ever since Sam had reentered his life at his high school graduation, claiming to be his old man. Even now Crow had a hard time imagining his mother taking on this wizened old coot’s seed, though she had confirmed, somewhat reluctantly, the truth of Sam’s claim to parentage. Still, at times, he doubted it. Other times, he felt as if he was looking into a time-warped mirror, seeing himself in another thirty or forty years—three inches shorter, features obscured by massive wrinkling, and not giving a shit about much of anything. Whatever the facts surrounding Crow’s ancestry, the two had become friends.

  Crow looked back down through the trees. Axel had finished filleting the walleyes and was sitting motionless at the end of the dock, staring across the water at the last shards of sunlight. For a few seconds, Crow felt himself wrapped in silence. No sound, no movement, no sensation. Then a breeze crossed his neck and the hubcaps began to bong mournfully, and a twisting cloud of blue tobacco smoke floated into view.

  Crow said, “You want to tell me what the hell’s going on here, Sam?”

  Sam grinned through the veil of smoke, his weathered face crinkling in a hundred places. “Son, one thing you got to learn about Ax, you can’t take him too serious. He’s spent half his life mad at me, and we’re still fishing outta the same boat.”