Book Deal

by Les Standiford

  ***

  The next service, a Saturday, they arrived early, found seats in the vast center section of the Convocation Center, on eye level with the pulpit. These were the best seats, they’d decided, trial and error over the past several months. Sitting elsewhere, you could get the effect, sort of, but it was a lot like trying to watch a big-screen TV from the corner of a room.

  “It’s a waste of time getting here so early just to sit,” the tall man told his wife.

  “Did you have something better to do?” she asked him.

  “We got us traveling on our agenda. We could be at the airport, watching this on TV.”

  “We’ve got plenty of time,” she said. “Besides, what if it was the Reverend himself today?”

  He glanced at the stage. “It hasn’t been the Reverend himself for over a year now. Why would it be today?”

  “Just a feeling,” she shrugged. “All that’s going on.”

  She turned her gaze back to the stage, where dozens of people in black skirts and white blouses or black trousers and white shirts were bustling about, armloads of flowers here, little settees and couches there, all the cables, and the cameras, the lights coming up for testing and then dying away, and all the while the people filing into the vast hall, the hundreds turning into thousands. How many of them wanting the same thing, he wondered, that the Reverend himself would come to them on this day.

  All the bustling, and the wondering, and the filing in, and the waiting, and then, finally, the lights went down, and a hush descended upon the crowd, and he felt her hand on his arm, her grip growing unconsciously tight, almost painful in anticipation. She wishes he would come so bad, he thought, and it was a wistful feeling that grew in him as well as the lights got dimmer and the ghostly cone of light that illuminated the pulpit grew brighter.

  It was amazing, he had to admit, watching the light surrounding the pulpit grow milky and opaque, something swirling around in that beam as if creation itself were under way. Creation it was, of a certain kind, for what it must take to pull off the illusion was well beyond his reckoning.

  But still…but still…he thought.

  The swirl had become a sinuous twist of smoke, the crowd humming now, the smoke a vague shape, the shape a form, and the form finally revealed itself: the Reverend James Ray Willis standing there, or at least a version of him. Ten feet tall, maybe twelve, maybe more, hard to tell at this distance, his arms lifted in benediction, his smile promising everything good and everlasting. Once upon a time, the man himself had stood in that pulpit, he’d beckon the unwashed forward, lay on hands, heal the sick, soothe the sick at heart. But times had changed.

  “Hallelujah,” called the shimmering, holographic image to his flock.

  “Hallelujah,” the flock roared back, a sound that would rock them bigger than any cheer out of the football stadium at the college down-state.

  “Hallelujah,” his wife called along with them. And so did he, just a moment late, and all the while the man was thinking, still, wouldn’t it be better if it was the Reverend himself? Just once? The devil with all this, all this technology. Was that so much to ask?

  Chapter 2

  “…corporate chain saw killers,” the voice, dripping condemnation, boomed about Deal’s sleep-filled head. “Worldwide conspiracy of bankers and merchants…” The voice impossibly loud, a crackle and humming filling the pauses between the words.

  Deal found himself awake, groggy, his eyes blinking in the blinding, apocalyptic light of his television set. “…soul-rotting mire of materialism and excess…” the voice blasting, shaking the glass of the sliding glass doors in his den. A man’s face filled the camera’s lens, the jaw set, the lips a thin line, the eyes piercing, Paul Newman blue.

  Deal swung his legs over the edge of the couch, sat up, groped around for the remote control. He was beginning to put things together. He’d fallen asleep on the couch, had probably rolled over onto the remote. He found the thing wedged between the cushions, fumbled with the buttons until the volume mercifully decreased.

  The camera had pulled back to reveal more of the man who’d been speaking. Where Deal might have expected a shot of a spittle-spraying wild man pounding a podium before a mob, what he actually saw was a man seated on the sofa of an interview show set, carrying on conversation with a host who looked vaguely like Pat Boone. The man who’d been speaking was wearing a softly draped three-piece suit, wore his gray hair close-cropped but stylish, had one leg crossed casually atop the other. Deal checked his watch: 3:30 A.M. What channel, what kind of talk show had he found?

  “Handsome fella, isn’t he?”

  The voice came out of the darkness at Deal’s side, stopping his breath. Deal spun about, saw the vague lump that was his neighbor, Vernon Driscoll, laid out nearly supine in the recliner there. His memory bank was kicking in now. They’d been watching the Miami Heat game, a telecast from the West Coast that hadn’t started until eleven. Deal was pretty sure he’d caught most of the first quarter, but after that, all seemed vague.

  He rubbed his face with his hands. “Who won?”

  Driscoll shifted his bulk in the recliner. “I’m not sure. It was either all the guys who used to be the Warriors now playing for the Heat, or maybe it was the other way around. You get sleepy, that kind of stuff’s hard to keep straight.”

  Deal tried to laugh. “Couple of die-hard fans we are.”

  Driscoll cranked the seatback of the recliner into an upright position. “Yeah, I woke up to old James Ray Willis there, I thought maybe we’d died and gone to hell after all. How come you had it on so loud?”

  Deal shook his head. “I must’ve rolled over on the remote.”

  They were silent then, Deal feeling his thoughts falling into order. Saturday night, really Sunday morning now. He would have to drop by one of his construction sites later, talk to an architect, but that wasn’t until noon. Plenty of time for a decent rest. Send Driscoll home, fall into the sack.

  Driscoll, however, had leaned forward, turned the volume up on the set again. Maybe he’d forgotten whose apartment he was in, Deal thought.

  “We’re moving toward the One World government,” James Ray Willis was saying. “…the demise of Communism, the rise of the Global Plantation.” The Pat Boone look-alike was nodding as Willis rattled off the phrases breezily.

  “And we all know what the plantation owners have in mind for the little man,” Willis said. He was staring meaningfully into the camera lens now. Applause erupted as the camera drew well back from the set to a high shot from the rafters. The set where Willis and his host chatted lay in a pool of light on the stage of an arena that could have housed the Heat game or a major convention. Hard to tell for certain, but the place seemed packed. When the cameras cut in for a reaction shot, the look of rapture on the wildly applauding audience was unmistakable.

  “Willis wants to be the new Father Coughlin,” Driscoll said. “Fascist pastor of the worldwide airwaves.”

  Deal glanced at the screen. “You watch this stuff?”

  Driscoll shrugged. “I saw a piece in one of the news magazines. Father Coughlin’s views were mild compared to this guy’s.”

  “…which is what the international media has set out to accomplish, my friends.” Willis was leaning forward, ignoring the host, peering intently into the camera as if at Deal and Driscoll. “Anyone who doesn’t wear Calvin Klein, live in a gated community, drive a Cadillac car, you watch the television long enough, you’ll start to feel like a failure. We know better, but it’s a difficult struggle. We need to readjust our conceptions of the truly decent life. We need to stand up and reclaim our lives and the promise of this country from the bond traders and their allies on Madison Avenue and in Washington…”

  Applause, applause. The pitch was mild but relentless, Willis’s voice soft, yet urgent, almost hypnotic in its rhythms, Deal thought. Or maybe it was just the hour. He pressed a button on the remote, and James Ray Willis imploded into
a brief dot of light.

  “I need to stand up and go to bed,” Deal said.

  Driscoll had not budged. “So many of these guys out there,” he said, staring dolefully at the darkened set as if Willis’s visage were still etched there. “I worry one of them’s going to take hold someday, lead us right back into the Stone Age.”

  “‘The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity…’” Deal said, quoting.

  “Excuse me?” Driscoll said, staring at him.

  “It’s from a poem I read in college,” Deal said. He was at the doorway of the den now. “Your guy’s a nutcase,” he pointed at the darkened set. “A nutcase in a good suit. You’re welcome to sleep in the chair, Driscoll, but I’m going to bed.”

  Driscoll sighed, heaved himself up from the recliner. “I wish I had your outlook on life, Deal. All the things that’ve happened to you, I’m surprised you can still sleep nights.”

  Deal led the way down the hallway without reply, paused at the doorway to Isabel’s room. He glanced in at his daughter’s sleeping form, sensed Driscoll looking over his shoulder at the five-year-old with the Mickey Mouse PJs and a hammerlock on a teddy bear. Deal turned to him, clapped his arm about the ex-cop’s shoulder, led him on to the front door.

  “I’ve got plenty of things to worry about, Vernon.”

  Driscoll nodded. Deal opened the door, admitting a draft of cool January air. The breeze was out of the north, the sky clear, suggesting a fast-moving front on the way through. High fifties right now, he guessed, maybe seventy tomorrow. Perfect Florida winter. If the weather held through the week, he’d have all his crews back on the job after two weeks of rain.

  Driscoll was ambling across the breezeway toward his own apartment when he suddenly stopped, holding a finger straight up as if he’d remembered something suddenly. He turned to Deal. “I read a book once myself,” He squinted one eye, thought, then brought his finger down to point at Deal. “‘He who cannot remember the past is condemned to repeat it.’ How’s that grab you?”

  “Good night, Vernon,” Deal said. He was willing himself back to sleep even before he’d closed the door.

  ***

  Deal had to circle the block twice before he saw a spot open up, a panel truck with a caterer’s logo pulling away from a meter on the opposite side of the street. Sunday afternoon on a downtown Gables side street, he would never have expected this problem. Any other time, he’d have given up, come back to Arch’s store another day. But he’d spotted Janice’s car, angle-parked in her characteristic spot in front of the shuttered bus station around the corner. He’d circle a dozen times, whatever it took.

  He glanced ahead, saw a line of oncoming traffic stymied by a red light down at Camino de la Vaca, checked his mirror, saw a clear lane behind. He hit the accelerator hard enough to jolt him back in the seat, felt a little sheepish at the squeal of the Hog’s tires.

  He swung the car into the entrance to the municipal parking lot (full, he’d been through there twice already as well), then reversed quickly, the tires yelping again as he bounced through the gutter and came back out, headed in the opposite direction. He glanced in his mirror again, saw that the light had turned green, saw the traffic muscling toward him.

  He hit the accelerator more carefully this time, quickly guided the Hog ahead, into the open spot nose-first, finishing even with the meter, his wheels flush with the curb, all of it in one unbroken swing. Not bad for a vehicle this size and weight, he thought, allowing himself a smile as he switched off the ignition.

  The Hog, which had started off life as a Cadillac sedan, had long ago been modified by its original owner into a gentleman’s El Camino, half its roof cut away, its rear seat and trunk transformed into a pickup bed. Deal, who’d picked it up years back, in lieu of payment for a job, had threatened to get rid of the thing a hundred times, once had even seen it go full-fathom five all the way to the bottom of Biscayne Bay. How it had been resurrected from that watery grave was another story. But the fact was, he was still driving the beast, and he’d come to develop a grudging affection for it, as if it were some old, ungainly dog that just wouldn’t go away.

  All that history with a car, he thought with a self-deprecating snort. Had he still been there to say it, his old man would have told him sentiment was the sort of thing that, added to a dollar, might get him a cup of coffee down the street at Doc Dammer’s. His old man, Deal thought. Philosopher to the end. What would he have to say about his son’s present moonstruck state?

  Make it a buck and a half, Pops, he thought, and roused himself from behind the wheel. He was intending to get out, hurry across the street, when he realized that a car had stopped beside him, so close he couldn’t get his door open.

  “You are a very bad man!” he heard as the passenger window of the car glided down. There was an angry dark-haired woman at the wheel of the car. Cream-colored jacket, a flash of slender arm, tasteful gold, manicured nails. She’d have been a knockout except for the scowl on her face.

  He noticed that she had one hand on the wheel, the other digging into an expensive-looking leather bag on the seat beside her. Horns were sounding from the cars backed up in her wake.

  Christ on a crutch, Deal thought, already envisioning the headlines. “DRIVER STEALS PARKING SPOT, PERISHES IN HAIL OF FIRE.” It might make Monday’s Miami Herald, if it had been a slow weekend in paradise.

  He was considering his options—try for his passenger door, dive onto the floorboards—when she continued.

  “I’m going to write your license down,” she cried, whipping a sizable notepad out of her case. “I will report you!”

  Deal stared speechless as she scrawled furiously at the pad. She gave him a last angry glance, then sped off.

  He fell back in his seat, waited for the rest of the traffic to clear. He supposed it was heartening, encountering a loony who actually intended to employ some imaginary system to vent her rage. But then, she’d had a noticeable accent. Maybe she was just new to South Florida. Give her a week or two, she’d be carrying antitank missiles in her purse.

  He got out then, about to cross the street, then started when he heard the blast of a horn. He turned, found a late-model Cadillac inching toward him, one with all its parts intact. There was a round-faced matron at the wheel, an apparition from his childhood in straw hat, white gloves, and neck scarf, the woman actually waving him on across the street. Deal stared at her, uncertain, noted the guy in the seat next to her, a ramrod type in a three-piece woolen suit and high sidewall haircut staring out at him impassively.

  They looked like a pair out of Grant Wood, he was thinking, like maybe they’d turned a corner in Des Moines a second ago, suddenly found themselves in a fancy automobile somewhere else…then the woman tapped the horn and waved again, and he hurried on across the street. From the crazed to the serene in one parking job, he thought, acknowledging the couple with a wave.

  He came up onto the opposite sidewalk and hesitated outside Arch’s shop, checking his reflection in one of the display windows—a sign there, an author coming to read from his work—Deal wondering suddenly if he looked too spiffed up. White shirt, pressed jeans, wool sports coat, and his ancient lizard boots. Nothing fancy, really, but for Deal it was tantamount to dinner dress. He’d had his meeting with a client earlier—a home he was building in Gables Estates—and had been on his way from the site back to the fourplex on the edge of Little Havana when he spotted Janice’s car and decided to stop. Now he found himself worrying she’d think he’d dressed up for her.

  Crazy. Guy with gray showing in his hair fussing like a schoolboy. It was his wife in there, damn it. He smoothed his hair against the cool January breeze, had another unsettling thought. The way the sun blanked out the windows, she could be standing inside there looking out at him, he’d never know. Jesus! He turned away, made his way for the door like a man exuding purpose. He’d say he’d been looking at the author’s books stacked up th
ere. If he could only remember what they were.

  He yanked on the door handle once, twice, checked his watch and then the door sign—they couldn’t be closed at 2:30, could they, even on a Sunday…then stopped, cursing his stupidity. How many times had he been here, anyway? He took a breath, pushed, felt the door give easily in, heard the familiar tinkle of the old-fashioned bell that announced visitors to Arch’s House of Books.

  He blinked, adjusting his eyes to the dim light as the door swept shut behind him. He inhaled the familiar perfume of bindery glue, slick cover stock, dust, the many marriages of paper and wood. It was a reassuring smell, one he associated with knowledge and reason and culture, of course, but more important, with peace. No matter what was wrong with the momentary world, he could walk into Arch’s, start wandering the rooms, in a couple of minutes he’d start to relax. It’s all happened before, Deal, the jammed shelves seemed to whisper to him. The worst and more. And we’re still here. Bearing witness. Read all about it.

  Such thoughts had always managed to comfort him, sure. But now there was something new in the mix. Janice. Working in Arch’s store, if you could believe it.

  Or presumably she was. No one behind the front counter, no trace of her perfume in the woody air, no one at all in the anteroom, for that matter. Though that wasn’t really surprising. The store was a rabbit warren of interconnected rooms, each of which had had former lives: travel offices, barbershop, five and dime. Their fortunes had declined, along with the general atrophying of most downtown shops, but from the moment Arch had left teaching and opened the first serious bookstore in the Gables, his traffic had risen steadily, astonishing nearly everyone, especially his bankers, and far overwhelming his original space.

  A furrier next door goes belly up, no problem. Arch assumes the lease, blasts a passage in the adjoining wall and, voilà, instant children’s books section. Law offices upstairs flee to Broward, where there’s a more moneyed class of criminal, Arch drills a hole in the ceiling, installs a spiral staircase that winds up to the new rare books annex, presided over by Uncle Els, retired attorney and dedicated bibliophile.