Deathgrip

by Brian Hodge

  He scowled in the darkness. “I’m serious.”

  “So am I.” And she was. He’d thought she was kidding, humoring a swollen ego, then realized sometimes people took the unexpected more readily when they were half asleep. News had an easier time slipping past their disbelief then. Just like drunks, ready to believe anything.

  She’d already accepted more oddities than anybody should rightfully expect to have to deal with. In retrospect, it was that afternoon in the hospital that had cemented them for better or worse. Holding her hand and corking that one-centimeter hole in her stomach. Laurel had gone through the stages right there in the hospital room: disbelief to dumbstruck amazement to wary unease to acceptance. The latter accompanied with a certain amount of heat. Admit it or not, everyone got off on the idea of a lover different from everyone else in the world.

  “However well-intentioned, it’s still show biz, Paul. You’ve had your taste of it, even before you came here.”

  “You’re right,” musing this over, the loss of KGRM, the lonely hollow where the station had been. All the stations, Lethal Rock Radio and its predecessors. “I do miss it. I mean, I’m out there, but I might as well be furniture.”

  She rubbed a cool hand up and down his inner thigh, smoothing the fine hairs down one way, scruffing them the other. “It’s a good feeling out there, under the lights, I won’t lie about that. I like an audience.” She kissed him, perhaps with pity for what he had lost. “So who’s grooming you for this? It can’t be Donny, I can’t see him being this farsighted.”

  “Gabe.” Staring up at the ceiling, still trying to fathom the sense of it all. “He seems to have taken an interest in me. Kind of taking over from Donny, since he’s been ignoring me.”

  “Gabe.” A dead echo, hard to read. “I think he’s jealous of my place in your life. I’ve gotten frostbite from him a few times.”

  “Naah, he’s okay with it, I really think he is. I wondered but … I don’t know.” Leave it there, he decided. How could he tell her that Gabe’s approval had been demonstrated in a strange way?

  Despite early cautions, their sex life hadn’t gone unnoticed. With such close quarters, he supposed it was unavoidable, someone would see something, hear something. Last week, one of the guys in the neighboring rooms that shared the same bathroom had cornered him on it, telling him it wasn’t right, wasn’t right at all. Okay, opinion duly noted, he was entitled to it, but like some fourth-grader, the guy had threatened to tattle. Irked, Paul had told him go ahead, take it to the top. The guy said he would, he’d see Gabe and do something about it.

  Now he was gone. Quietly. Efficiently. Empty room for rent.

  Perks like that set Paul to wondering: Just how much weight did he swing here? It was sobering. And at the same time intoxicating.

  Today, resident brain-deficients Dougie and Terry Durbin had come to his door. Industrial gloom from Ministry had been grinding loudly from his speakers, and they thought it their duty to inform him that that wasn’t proper music here.

  Perhaps he could make Dougie and Terry disappear too.

  “I can’t see myself as a preacher, though,” he finally said. A carnal nature at odds with an existence he persisted in seeing as a life of near-celibate denial. Even within marriage, a strict diet of missionary position only. “I just can’t.”

  “Little Richard became a preacher. Sort of.” She giggled into the pillow. “You couldn’t be any weirder.”

  Paul laughed, leaned into her. “Stylistically, he can get away with it. Black gospel tradition, all that.”

  “Oh come on. You’ve never heard of white-boy soul?”

  It was good for chuckles, but he ran it through the serious filters, as well. Deejay … evangelist? Not so fast. Public speaking, he could handle that, could remold himself into a creature of live theater as surely as he had mastered the faceless airwaves of radio — of this he was confident. Telling Laurel off the top of his head that his would be a different message: He wouldn’t condemn, he would beseech people to believe in themselves and a God who loved them despite their flaws, rather than a God who held a headsman’s axe, its fall dependent on the size of their offering check.

  “If you’re serious here, it won’t matter what you say. They’ll listen. They’ll listen to you. Because of these.” She cupped her hands around his own and squeezed. Snuggled herself so they rested eye to eye. “And if you go public with it? Your life will never be the same again.”

  She drew his hands to her mouth, kissed them, kissed every fingertip, pressed her lips to each palm. And he tried to think of the awesome responsibilities ahead, really tried, but she swept him closer and closer to the here and now. The future did not exist, all was Laurel, Laurel’s mouth, soft moist lips and her scent and her mounting breath, lips skimming fingers and thumbs and tip of her tongue tracing lifeline and loveline, oral palmistry.

  Taking control of his hands as if they were her own, pressing them to her body, running them over every curve, settling them onto each mound and into every crevice of heightened sensitivity. She began to writhe before his surrender, Laurel knows best, as his own stirrings grew maddening under the flesh, under the soul. Paul wanting her so very badly, yet not knowing quite how he wanted to take her.

  Laurel then breathing into his ear, four-octave voice slipping out of control as she moaned and murmured, pressing his hands spread wide to her ribs, “Let it into me, let it hurt me,” and he knew what she meant, this was no dirty pillowtalk of organs and manhood, this was something much deeper, and far more worrisome, “Let it hurt me and then take it away again, do it,” and he tried to tell her no, he couldn’t, just couldn’t, these were dangerous games—

  But he wanted it too, the raging erection gave it away, and he became omnipotence made flesh as he rolled atop her and rose onto his knees. Hadn’t they been headed for this moment ever since he’d opened his innermost secrets to her in the hospital? Hadn’t he known it would lead to this? She would want more than superficial paddlings, Laurel would want him inside where fibers meshed, where cells became sensation. And God help him, he wanted to crawl in there and make it happen.

  Her hands gripped him below as he slapped her cheek, moderately, yet laying it wide open to teeth and bone, and she gasped wetly, blood dewing the pillow before his other hand followed over, sealing the laceration in its wake, gone without scars, and he did it again, again, again. Digging deeper now, her hands stroking furiously, female and male, yin and yang, sickness and health, and his hands encircled her waist as he took something from deep inside himself and pushed and she cried out. Malignancy, something dreadful, massive and coiled inside her pelvic cradle, and he panted and flexed, gone, Laurel free and whole again.

  She wanted more, and he had it stored inside, oh yes, a cornucopia of ills and ails. Raising welts and lesions across the pristine fleshscape, watching them bubble by moonlight, trickling their infections to the sheets before he cast them away, only to be replaced by more. Such an incinerating ebb and flow between them, light years beyond genitalia, her hands feverishly bringing him to the edge and over, more fluids to mingle with her own, and he knew it all, the power and the majesty, and the ghastly shame. Nice girls don’t do this, nice boys don’t help them, but still, wasn’t this just the most unearthly ride, stirring it all up inside himself as he relieved that pressure building since his last misfire into Janet DeWitt, lifetimes ago. Letting somebody else take these foul parcels of genetics and biochemistry and wear them like rotten garments, if only for brief moments—

  And when she cried rapture to roof and sky, he collapsed atop her, no more, no more, this was just too bizarre. He trembled and focused on her beneath him — still breathing, count your blessings.

  Taking great comfort in the simple gift of her still being alive.

  At Donny Dawson Ministries, a funny thing happened on the way to hell: Legitimacy dropped into their lap like an early Christmas present. It became one of those hot topics of national dialogue that burned like a comet
from shore to shore.

  In early October, the Dawson camp was settling back into homebound routines after the recently ended tour. Paul still uneasy on this new turf, buoyed by recent developments with Laurel, their forays as brave strangers. Nobody recalled anything unusual during that Thursday night taping. People had been healed, people had wept for joy, business as usual.

  But it had been just as much the who as the what.

  The night’s service had been attended by a Boston-based entrepreneur named Clarence Hurstborn. More wealth than he could spend in ten lifetimes, within the top forty percent of the Forbes 500 list. Yet for all his millions, bone cancer had been on the march, steady as termites, turning his pelvis into rotten balsa wood, its malignant eyes on his spine. On his orders, two skeptical aides took him incognito to the October third service in Oklahoma City, last-ditch desperation by a doomed man.

  By then, even patients genuinely confined to wheelchairs were allowed onto Donny’s stage, come one, come all. Stripped of the $3,500 suits that distinguished him in the boardroom, Clarence Hurstborn blended in perfectly, one more believer in the sad parade. After being rolled onstage by his two aides, Hurstborn walked off unassisted.

  The healing was a publicity agent’s dream.

  The legions of faith healers preying on the nation’s hopeful had always been eager to claim a thorough catalog of miracle cures. While claiming was simple, providing documented proof was more problematic. Countless cures could be readily dismissed as psychosomatic illnesses beaten by the power of the mind, or hysterically induced symptoms vanquished because they were never physically present. Others could be explained away as the results of traditional medical therapy concurrent with the faith healing. In other instances, disease might have gone into remission, saving itself for later.

  In the case of Clarence Hurstborn, some of the nation’s finest oncologists and orthopedic surgeons possessed reams of X-rays documenting gradual bone loss and degeneration of his pelvis. Unanimously agreeing that their wealthiest patient had a problem of tragic dimensions.

  Equally unanimous was their surprise when, back in Boston on the fourth of October, he walked in free of his wheelchair, and new X-rays showed a pelvis as strong and sturdy as that of an Olympic track star. Two sets of X-rays taken a mere thirty hours apart showed what appeared to be two entirely different men.

  There had been other cures of equal magnitude that Paul had brought about, with Donny taking the credit. But upon people leading quiet, unremarkable lives, their impact on the world minuscule when compared to that of Clarence Hurstborn. And if these humbler souls returned to their doctors devoid of the conditions that had plagued them, perhaps gloating, then their doctors may have been puzzled, even awed, but the newsworthiness of the events somehow managed to slip through the cracks. Faith healing was competition, pure hokum … and wasn’t supposed to work.

  But a Clarence Hurstborn was an altogether different matter. Wealth and power, high visibility, and above all, credibility. Plus the documentation amassed by doctors whose reputations were beyond reproach.

  Donny Dawson was publicly credited with performing a bona fide miracle healing. After years of puncturing the same tired fraudulent claims of an entire dubious industry, couched in terms that faith was needed to verify the cure, even skeptics couldn’t refute the evidence. And no one was going to publicly accuse Hurstborn of being a liar.

  His case broke the dam, and other patients and doctors began coming forward to corroborate his testimony with accounts of their own. The story was rushed into print in Time and Newsweek and The Wall Street Journal. 60 Minutes was first to secure a tape of the October third service, and isolated the segment in which Hurstborn and his wheelchair were converged upon by a gang of four. After which he rose for his first unassisted steps in more than a year. Over the next week, it became the most frequently aired newsreel in the nation. Geraldo Rivera immediately announced plans for a two-hour ABC prime-time special on faith healers, even securing Clarence Hurstborn’s cooperation in telling his own in-depth story.

  The Arm of the Apostle Hour skyrocketed in the ratings, full boosters on. Both A. C. Nielson and the ARB showed that it easily outdistanced all competitors past and present for the religious viewer. Jimmy Swaggart had been king of the hill in his prime, reaching two million in the United States. Dawson shot from around a half-million to more than five. No way around it, the man was a hot commodity.

  Inexplicably, what he was not was public. Which befuddled skeptics and hoax-mongers to no end, everyone expecting to see him turning up everywhere from magazine exclusives to the Tonight show. Or announcing sudden political intentions, a revival of the Moral Majority, get into office and lay a finger on the pulse of decent people the land over, to heal the nation of all its ills.

  Yet there wasn’t a word from him. Only some grainy film shot outdoors and in secret, from long distance. Donny puttering to his office in a golf cart. Donny sitting without motion or emotion beside a pen holding two Irish setters.

  The ministry did stage a staggeringly well-attended press conference, conducted by top assistant Gabriel Matthews. Pale and solemn, the quiet professional tightly pontificating upon Dawson Ministries’ commitment to world illness. And while all in attendance agreed that Gabriel Matthews was enlightening, he was no Man of Miracles.

  So where was Donny Dawson these days? Even the last two shows had been reruns. Gabe’s answer was short and direct and left no room for second-guessing: Donny was in fasting and prayer over their upcoming format change. In spiritual preparation for a bestowment of miracles such as the modern world had never seen. Believe it or not.

  Some did. Some couched their skepticism in quiet snorts of laughter, behold the rationalists, keeping their heads while all about, others were willingly losing theirs.

  Regardless, it made great copy. The press ate it up. And Donny Dawson became the most unseen, unheard, reclusive superstar since the self-imposed exile of Greta Garbo.

  But that was what truly fueled the mystique of legend.

  A weeknight, October’s decline and fall, Paul deduced that much, as weekends were more crowded in the middle of the city. Weeknight, without obligations back at the compound. If he had any, surely someone would have told him. Gabe. Gabe would let him know. Gabe kept on top of everything, no worries…

  Leaving him free to walk the streets wherever his feet had whim and will. Breezy autumn night under a starry velvet sky, dry as disinterred bones. No rain lately, he realized, and the winds bore dust.

  Paul had driven up an hour ago, the area surrounding the city university, younger in spirit than the rest. Walking concrete paths he’d covered many times before with Laurel, everything new again, in all the wrong ways, tilted and off-center, familiar sights and sounds and smells made unfamiliar by going them solo. Here was slippage.

  Down the stairs to Bran Central Station, his the only footfalls slapping gently from the stairwell off the street. The same soft squeal of a door that needed oiling, now a banshee wail, and he was inside. Standing just past the doorway, checking the scene with eyes sunken into darkened hollows, hair tousled and flecked with airborne grit. The clientele at one-quarter capacity, piss-poor turnout for the folk duo at the other end, male and female, guitar and mandolin. Hands flashing, and how could they stand it, he wondered, nimble fingers on tight strings, pickpickpicking, like scraping raw nerves.

  He found a seat, table for none, and let the place fill his head. It could be no worse than what was already there.

  Limbo of the confused, lost in the smoke hovering above a table near the stage. Clouds, would that he could fly there, wings of an angel, or a devil trying really hard, overachieving.

  “Where’s the girl you’re always with?”

  Paul snapped to, found a waitress beside him, Don’t DO that, and he blinked. College for sure, sophomore, maybe junior, in boots and a vest pinned with Greenpeace buttons, have you hugged your whale today?

  “What?” he said.

  �
��That blonde, she’s so pretty, you’re always in here together.” Then the waitress rolled her head back. “I really stuck my foot in it, didn’t I, I’m sorry.” Maybe she was only now getting a good look at him.

  “It’s okay.” Paul’s finger traced doodles in moisture, the wipedown after the table’s previous tenants. “She found out she had an ulcer.”

  He ordered cappuccino steamed with Frangelica liqueur, maybe it would settle warmly and help mellow him out inside, and the waitress told him to tell his friend she hoped she got better soon. Paul said he would, thanks, and promptly forgot about it.

  Laurel would be fine, always be fine, so long as he was around, a live-in health insurance policy. No premiums, but then the benefit payoffs were a bit screwy, as well.

  Smut letters in dirty magazines, always a laugh, sexual exploits of Olympian stature, and every bit as fanciful as tales of the ancient mountain gods. Here’s how I fucked my way through a chorus line. Dream on. Paul supposed he could write in too, guaranteed they would never have heard of anything like what was going on in his bedroom these nights.

  What had happened to his life, anyway? Really. Everything had made more sense when he hadn’t been quite this good at the ebb and flow. Breakdown and buildup of this bag of meat and bones everyone walked around in.

  The coffee came, and he nursed it listlessly, feeling it scalding his tongue and not caring. The sensation never lasted long. Only the cramps did, and how they held onto him tonight.

  Hanging over his mug, watching his sweat plink to the tabletop. Making a pattern of droplets, perhaps he could read his future. And there it was, clear as lightning: More of the same. People on all sides, taking, taking, taking. Draining his soul one sip at a time, breaking his body down by individual slivers. Never satisfied, like vampires who didn’t give a shit if it was night or day, there they would be, lined up, give me health, make me whole, and the worst of it, these pathetic wrecks with their sob stories didn’t even know it was him they were lining up for.