The silence follows.
They walk past crowds of dressed up and dressed down people. Past brides to be and their friends wearing next to nothing. Past the ding ding dinging and the wheels…of…fortunes. Past the all the tables with players drinking. With some winning and most losing. Past all the dealers wearing black and red, raking in all the chips.
They stop in a casino restaurant with an ocean view of carpet, slot machines, tables and casino people. They order food, eat and hardly say anything. It is not a comfortable silence.
They leave and walk down wide corridors of shops displaying selected wares that they can’t possibly afford. Past glitzy entrances to glitzy shows they will not see.
They walk together but apart, only move closer when they walk past security to the elevators and Joe shows them his room key.
The silent argument continues as they prop themselves on the bed and he aims the remote at the TV.
“What do you want to watch?”
“I don’t care.”
He finds a sports channel and pretends to watch it. She picks up a magazine and pretends to read it.
“Well, I’m going down for a drink.”
“Fine.”
Joe summons an elevator and descends from his wife. He finds a nearby casino bar with the same sports channel he was watching in his room. He orders a beer that comes in a cold blue tin bottle and costs more than it should. He eats from a bowl of mixed nuts and pretzels put in front of him. Young attractive women sit next to him, talk to him for a while and then move on.
He moves to a nickel slot machine and feeds it a twenty. He makes minimum bets that mostly lose and then he feeds another twenty to it again. Forty dollars gone that took a lot of drywalling to make.
Cherries, cherries, cherries never come up for him.
Juliette tries to find something to watch but no distraction can take away the sting of Joe’s abandonment. She readies herself for bed so that when he returns she can pretend to be asleep.
She thinks of her mother, dead of a stroke at forty-one, leaving Juliette with only memories. Her mother’s voice rises out of memories, telling her to lay it at God’s feet.
She reaches for the nightstand bible and flips it open. She lands on John and sees the chapter title. The Multiplication of Loaves.
Memories.
She’s in a church with her mother. She’s eleven. Her waning attention catches snippets of a story about Yeshua feeding a multitude with a few loaves of bread and a couple of fish. She sees Father Francis at the pulpit.
She smells her mother’s soapy smell next to her. She feels the hardness of the wooden pews on her seat and back. She hears the scattered coughing and the creaking wood.
She hears a sermon.
How can this happen?
Loaves and fish multiplying themselves to feed thousands? Sorry, but this just doesn’t happen. It violates a law of nature that something can’t be made from nothing. And yet. And yet, my people, each Gospel claims that this very thing happened, with minor variations. So I ask again,
How can this happen?
By our laws such a thing is impossible. It is something we do not know. It is something we haven’t experienced. Not knowing it and not experiencing it, we are left with our faith that such a miracle happened. We believe that it happened because it was recorded in the memories of eyewitnesses and passed down to us in the Scriptures. Yeshua caused the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves. We don’t question it. We say Amen. Say it with me, people. Yeshua performed a miracle. We say?
But is this so far beyond our experiences and understanding of the workings of the ordinary world that we need faith to believe.
Or do we?
Let me throw out a riddle to you my faithful. A wee bit of a puzzle.
Father Francis rubs his hands together.
What can we throw away and have more to give but try to keep and end up with nothing?
What can we throw away and have more to give but try to keep and end up with nothing?
Anyone?
Love.
The answer is love. Say it with me, the answer is?
Love, indeed. It is such a powerful word. Consider a mother with a child that she loves with all her heart. With all she has. And then she has another and loves that child too. Does she then love her first child half as much?
No, she does not. She loves them both the same. Her time may be divided, but not her love. Love is in infinite supply. We cannot exhaust it by using it. But harden our hearts to try and keep it, my friends, and we find that we have none. As Christosians, we believe that God is love.
This is what Yeshua did. Here is the secret of his miracle. He made the natural law obey a different law. He made it obey the law of love.
So what do we take from this? What message do we take from this scripture reading written by John all those years ago?
It is this. When Yeshua calls us to show him our baskets, what will he find? Will he find a few crumbs of bread and some rotting fish? Or will he find abundant food…enough to feed the many?
What will he find?
Father Francis walks away and resumes his rituals behind the Altar.
Full.
Juliette says to her empty Las Pecado hotel room.
Yeshua will find my basket full.
Juliette feels peace. Feels her mother. She prays that God keep her and her husband in His love and heal the rift between them. If carrying Yeshua is what He’s asking of her. What Joe wants of her. Then she’ll do it, with love.
Juliette floats off to sleep and dreams of her baby again. Her mother is in this one.
She awakens when Joe enters the room and the hotel door closes behind him. She listens to him use the washroom, brush his teeth and undress. She feels his hand on her shoulder.
“Juliette?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry for being such an idiot. You’re right. I was getting carried away and forgetting about you. About us. I love you more than anything and you’re always right about these things. This whole thing sounds pretty risky if you think about it. If you don’t think this is right then we should cancel.”
Juliette reaches over her shoulder for Joe’s hand with her bed-warmed fingers.
“It’s okay, Joe, everything will be okay.”
She yawns.
“My mother told me.”
Joe climbs into bed with her. Before she slips off to sleep with Joe’s arm around her, she remembers something else her mother told her.
A prayer is a gentle breeze, the slightest of winds. It can never turn a tree but just might a leaf.
She goes back to sleep thinking of a baby room, baby cloths, baby smells, baby skin, bath splashes, diapers and breastfeeding.
Chapter 24:
The Magician
Now you see him.
He’s spread out on his couch. It is 2:00 am. His TV has switched to Big Bang radiation.
His TV’s electromagnets reverse polarizations, vibrate paper, pulsate audio waves, make tiny hair vibrations, convert into electrical signals, excite auditory nerves, that Andron senses as sound.
The sound is a steady hiss.
The light waves from his TV screen reflect off empty bottles, half-eaten meals, magazines, dirty blankets, bottle caps, and pieces of paper on a grimy carpet.
He should clean it up. Perhaps he will tomorrow.
He’s been saying that for weeks.
He should drag himself off the bed.
He’s been saying that for an hour.
He gets up. A mostly empty bottle of vodka goes down.
He hisses at it.
Hiss.
Something to deal with in the morning.
He stumbles up the stairs and nearly falls back down them. He’s glad they’re carpeted. He inhales carpet smell for a few minutes and then makes it the rest of the way.
His evenings have been ending like this for months.
Sa
fely in his bedroom, he closes the door.
In his sanctuary, where Cygnus’ prying electric eyes don’t reach, he is free to pass out into a dreamless sleep.
Only he doesn’t.
Instead, he drops on the floor.
And does push-ups.
One…two…three…four…
All the way to fifty.
He flips on his back and does crunches.
One…two…three…four…
All the way to fifty.
He rests for a minute.
And then rattles off two sets more.
Luggage packed with clothes and scavenged metal, stands in for dumbbells. He does curls, squats and lunges with dumbbell luggage. He does a handstand against the wall and does shoulder presses. He uses a chair for dips.
Then he does the whole thing again.
Times three.
He finishes his workout with a contraband protein bar. He’s sweating.
He’d do cardio. But it’s too noisy.
The workouts are half to fill the void left by the TACHY and half to increase his chances of survival.
He has been drinking for months. Drinking water.
Cygnus.
Sucker.
The ruse of being a drunk is his one advantage. He’s convinced that Cygnus has written him off.
It did not start off as a ruse.
After his last trip to Pecado, he should have checked himself in. The idea came to him when he was pouring himself yet another double rummy.
And wanted it too much.
So he poured it down the sink and was about to do the same with the rest of the bottle, with all the bottles, when he came up with his idea about head-faking Cygnus.
He switched to vodka because it is easier to replace with water.
He has a getaway backpack ready in his car. It has some clothes. Things for living on the street. And over fifty thousand US, he robbed from himself on his Pecado trips.
He’s missing two critical items. A passport and a car. He has a plan, a flimsy plan, to get both.
Tomorrow is the day.
Leave Day.
It comes down to kill or be killed. Eat or be eaten.
He’s going to to have to walk away from his life as he knows it. Away from his comfortable home with no mortgage. Away from his career. Away from his wealth and all but a few of his possessions. Away from his office and employees. Away from his family and friends.
Away.
Yeshua says to live, leave everything and follow me. Andron was doing that, except he was subbing in a killing for the last part.
And he knew where the ride went.
He would have to kill a baby because that’s where Cygnus would be at his weakest. So do you kill a baby, knowing the monster he might become?
You’re goddamned fucking right you do.
Especially when the baby has already murdered your friend, has fucked up your life, has extorted you and others, has things arranged so that he can reunite himself with his twisted past, where you are responsible for letting him into the world in the first place, where the person is preordained to be an evil tyrant, and an annoying twerp.
So yeah. Andron thinks he can pull the trigger.
He wasn’t going to just lie there and take it.
He’s going to have to go completely off-grid. The Shaman owns the Internet. If Andron is to have any chance against this digital god, there’s only one way for him to do it.
He has to go analog.
Now you don’t.
Fucker.
Chapter 25:
Leave Day
Andron is in the shower. The water is making steam. He’s done with scrubbing and shampooing. His back is turned to the spray and he’s enjoying a warm cleanse.
He wonders if hot showers represent some sort of planetary achievement. He supposes that a Shaman Chief could summon slaves to bring buckets of hot water. So it has to be more general than that, like hot showers for everyone. He realizes that his own planet isn’t quite there yet.
At least not for the bottom layer.
Andron needs to get down to that layer. To where you don’t get your own shower. To the analog one.
He’s out of the shower. He wipes steam off his mirror so he can see himself. He looks good in fog. Best foggy shape he’s been in in years.
He says something out loud, not loud enough for Cygnus to hear mind you, but with enough conviction to make an impression on himself.
He says.
Death to the Shaman.
Bathroom mirror conviction is cheap. He knows that. By the end of the day it won’t be so easy. He knows that too.
It’s Leave Day.
He goes through his morning ritual, careful not to change the routine. Right down to adding water to his coffee from a vodka bottle. He says goodbye to his home in his mind. To every room but one.
He puts in a morning at the office.
It goes by too quickly. He pays close attention to the people he works with. Actually, they work for him but he never thought of it that way. And he’s about to stab them in the back by leaving, when they’re still grieving Nathan.
He wishes he could tell them. He wishes he could have a farewell party for them. He’d leave them generous parting bonuses and tell them…and tell them how much they mean to him.
His eyes water at these thoughts.
And other thoughts too.
He thinks of his parents who are still alive. He has a sister, a niece and nephew. He can’t say anything to them either. To do so would endanger their lives.
He reaches for the tissue box he keeps for clients. Checks the tape covering his computer camera. Makes sure it’s secure. And then wipes his tears away.
He’s certain that he’ll bring shame to everyone by tomorrow when the papers come out and say Lawyer on the lam, wanted for murder.
Cygnus.
Cygnus is why he can’t tell anyone anything. Except the one person he needs for his plan to work.
And he’s meeting him for lunch.
“You look like shit.”
“I look like shit? You look like shit that’s been run over by a garbage truck that a dog felt sorry for and took a shit on again.”
They smile. Andron sits down across from Dylan. They don’t shake hands. That would be for friends that hadn’t known each other since high school.
He picked the restaurant carefully. It’s been on their circuit for months. It’s loud, busy and they don’t have security cameras. He left his cell phone in his car. He’s been doing that for months. He doubts that Cygnus tunes into his channel much anyway. If he did it would probably be for the reality TV candy associated with watching someone try to keep it together while he drinks himself to death.
Sucker.
“Looks like they’ve got some new talent.”
Dylan turns to look at a waitress wiggling by with a carafe of coffee.
Andron flattens a note in front of Dylan.
Act normal. Shut off your cell phone. I’m not kidding.
Dylan stares at the note.
“Maybe I’ll hang up my jacket and get a closer look.”
He winks at Andron and walks over to hang up his corduroy jacket on a coat rack a few tables away.
“I thought that would be better than turning it off. What’s going on, bud?”
“Yeah, that’s better. My phone is bugged and I suspect yours is as well.”
“My phone? What the fuck did I do?”
“Believe me, Dylan. Believe me, Dylan. It has nothing to do with you, it’s me.”
“Fucking NSS, eh? I thought you were cleared of that?”
“Well, yeah. It’s them but it’s way worse….”
Tammy interrupts. She’s the new one. She wears a truck stop waitress uniform and a giant smile.
Hi, I’m Tammy and I’ll be your waitress today. The soup is tomato bacon. Our special today is a roast beef sandwich, which comes with your choice of soup, fries or salad for nine ninety-nine. Do either of you
want something to drink?
“Just water for me, thanks.”
“Me, too.”
Tammy walks away.
“So I need to ask a huge favor, Dylan.”
“Yeshua, bud, what?”
“I need to…”
Tammy is filling their glasses with water.
So do you know what you might like to order? Or do you need more time with the menu?
“Naw, I think we’re ready.”
“I think I’ll have the Denver with fries and I changed my mind ‘cause I’ll take a coffee with that.”
“Times two.”
Okay, I’ll be right back with your coffees. Do want cream with those?
“Just black for me.”
“Cream. Thanks.”
Tammy writes down the order in her yellow notepad, smiles and leaves.
“What favor, bud?”
“Okay, they’re still keeping close tabs on me with all this cloak and dagger shit. But I think I know who was behind the attack but I have to slip this noose they have on me and get away first.”
“Yeshua, Andi, who is it?”
Tammy is back pouring coffee. They smile at her. She leaves a small bucket of coffee creamer. Dylan opens one, adds it to the thick black liquid and reaches for the sugar. Andron is already drinking his black. Cowboys are tough, but are no match for lawyers when it comes to coffee.
“I can’t tell you and the less you know the better. There’s more. The money in the settlement may have been dirty.”
Dylan is staring at Andron. He’s not smiling.
“And now that kid’s dead. You don’t think?”
Andron nods.
“Yeshua.”
Tammy is back with their food.
They both work on their Denvers. They’re loud chewers. Andron is taken back to high school cafeteria days.
“And you’re not tied into any of it. But listen, Dylan, like I said, I’ve got a plan to flush these guys out.”
Andron is chewing and speaking at the same time.
“What about the cops?”
Dylan is chewing, too.
“I wish it were that simple. But I don’t know who’s all involved. Just that they have a long reach. Like I said, Dylan, I need to ask a huge favor…”
So how are the first bites tasting?
The Cygnus Virus Page 14
