Heathern Read online

  "Do you ever think about Kentucky?" I asked.

  "I'm not much for nostalgia." We sat there a few minutes more, wordless and slumped, at last eroding beneath our rain of events, this heaven-sent plague.

  "Will you stay here tonight anyway?" I asked. "To talk?"

  "I'll stay longer," he said. "You have questions?"

  "They must have given you some answers," I said.

  "Not the sort of answers anyone wants to hear. What questions do you mean?"

  "Is there an afterlife?" I asked.

  "What's the matter with the one you have?"

  "Say there is," I said. "Say there was a more perfect world beyond ours. Why would They keep this one, in that case?"

  "Why do you think?" he asked in return. I lay down; Lester remained seated.

  "Practice," I said. "They couldn't bear to part with the original. They kept it as an object lesson."

  He nodded, and looked away from me, pondering his own questions. "I can't help but disappoint him," he said. "When that happens, what'll he do to me?"

  "Depends on how disappointed he is," I said. "He's such a bastard. He'll hound me until I leave and hound you until you start, and it won't matter what happens in the process."

  "He'd be right in that," said Lester. "Perhaps it'll lessen the damage to go ahead and get things underway with him, then-"

  I shook my head. "Disappear before he has a chance to get you. It's not worth getting involved. You don't know what you'll do until he makes you do it, and then it's too late. Don't give him the chance."

  "It's a chance that must be followed through on," he said. "There's a purpose for what has to be done. I can't go anywhere, Joanna. I have to do as I'm told. I doubt I'll need to be at the company very long."

  "Then I won't leave until you do."

  "I know," he said. "Such a strange organization. The immediate circle he seems to rule over as if it were a family."

  "He does," I said. "He and Susie take turns doing the beating while the other looks on. They're no more dysfunctional than most, they're simply more adept at it."

  "Families have misunderstandings," he said. "After a while they stop seeing one another. Each member becomes no different from anyone else passed on the street." He stood; I stared at the ceiling as intently as I could, attempting to conjure up angels of my own.

  "Everyone goes blind after so long," I said. "That night Avi and I talked, he said anyone could become a Nazi once they stopped seeing their Jews."

  "Was it his child you had?" Lester asked. I couldn't see his face from where I lay. He stood near my dresser, and I knew he was examining the pair of booties I had hanging on the knob of the mirror's frame. "These weren't yours, were they? You'd have had them bronzed--

  "I knitted them," I said.

  "You had a baby?"

  "Once."

  "Recently?" he asked, walking over and sitting next to me, gazing down as if he might peer directly into my mind.

  "January," I said. "Things happen." As I shut my eyes he leaned closer, whispering:

  "Where's your baby?"

  "Where're your parents?"

  The effect was as desired; he said nothing else. After a second or so he walked over and switched off the room's light, returning to my bed and lying beside me, facing away. As we bundled in silence my eyes accepted the dark, and I saw in his silhouette his side's unnatural curve. Keeping my touch as light as a butterfly's, I landed fingertips onto his back, feeling hard rubber sheathed in satin, a tuft of lamb's wool at the root of his spine. When I began to cry again I pulled away from him. He clasped me as I rolled over. I remembered my father holding me as a child, and I, feeling so safe; I had never wanted to feel safe again, never before asked for protection-never believed I deserved it when so many others lived and died without imagining there could be such a thing.

  "I'm sorry, Joanna," he said. "It's difficult to tell what you want to talk about."

  "Feeling's mutual," I said, feeling my face become warmer and wetter. "You make me remember too much. I feel like I'm on overload, my head can't hold it all-"

  "It's impossible to remember too much," he said. "Everything should be remembered. So much is lost over time. Every moment should be honored for having existed, even the bad ones."

  "Every moment," I repeated, knowing I could never recall a thousandth of my own. "Why would They send a messiah if They don't even know what'll happen? Why would They risk it?"

  "They have hopes," he said, placing his head on the pillow next to mine, looking, in the dark, so tired.

  "You said you could predict our futures," I said. "What are they?"

  "Unavoidable," he said, putting his arm across my shoul der. As he touched me I felt the fine hair rise from the nape of my neck. Why do the heathem rage? Why not? A siren outside sang through the night, the scream of an onrushing train. "You know why everyone has this?" he asked, tapping the shallow groove between my nose and upper lip.

  "I don't even know what it's called."

  "Before you were born you knew all there is," he told me. "You knew the beginning and the end. You knew why the dinosaurs died, why blue is blue. You knew why pain doesn't ennoble us and why we wouldn't be human without it. You knew what your life would hold." I touched my face, brushing his finger with my own. "When it was time for you to be born They pressed shut your lips, using an angel's thumb to make the print. The angels cried for having done it but knew it had to be done, you had to forget all you knew upon entering this world, because the one thing you'd have never known is how it feels, remembering it again."

  Though we could never be lovers, as I kissed him I knew that feeling lovers know in their first minutes together, a false commingling of fear and relief and the peace that comes upon believing again that the world can be wonderful even in its illness. Our kiss, unlike an angel's thumb, did not press our memories away. At nine Monday morning we reported to work.

  SIX

  On Monday afternoon we discussed our newest project. "Don't try to deny you didn't have your doubts," said Thatcher. "I'd hate to think you were just humoring me."

  "After Friday afternoon I never suspected anything would actually come of this," said Bernard. "I thought he'd race back to his flock and that'd be the last we heard of him."

  "Told you I made arrangements." Susie looked at her husband; shook her head as if he'd told her he'd accidentally mowed down her flower beds.

  "That shouldn't have changed things. By all rights he should've sprung up like a toadstool somewhere else. But perhaps hearing our words issuing from a different mouth decided the vote." Bernard turned to me, smiling with lips so perfectly curved, so remarkably still, that they might have been painted on his face.

  "She's learning," said Thatcher.

  "So if all's roses, what's the problem?" Susie asked, taking no shelter from the world behind sunglasses or newspaper this morning. Not even the residue of a smile showed on her face.

  "The problem is that from here out I'll be working from theory alone," said Bernard. "As I understand it, you want to spread Macaffrey's cult of personality more thickly upon the populace."

  "Without any public connection to us, just yet," said Thatcher. "We'll backchannel him, meantime, when we need him for company work."

  "But what's desired? You want the audience entertained with sermons, blessings, the occasional odd miracle? You want to see what ripples result from tossing him in the pond?"

  "Sounds good to start," said Thatcher. "You're acting like this is all something new to you, Bernard. You've just got to figure out the best way to sell a new product-"

  "Apples and oranges," said Bernard. The gray world curtained the room's great window; it rained, several hundred feet beneath us.

  "I don't get you-"

  "How do you sell a messiah, Thatcher?" Bernard asked.

  "Above cost," said Thatcher, laughing. "In the fastest way."

  "You'd use television to do that?"

  "How else?" Susie asked. "Weren't you refer
ring to some tests last week you could run?"

  "Tests, eventually. That's not the problem here. If the audience first sees Macaffrey on television, they won't see him."

  "Don't give me analysis bullshit, Bernard, that doesn't make sense," said Thatcher. "What are you trying to say?"

  "Explicate and deconstruct," Susie added.

  Bernard rested his chin in his hand as if the weight of his head had proved too great for his neck. "A car needs gas," he said. "A messiah needs belief. Nobody believes anything they see on television unless they've convinced themselves they could see it in real life. His followers would tune in every night, all twenty or thirty of them. Anyone else'll zap right past."

  "We can put any damn foolishness we want to on TV and people believe it-"

  "Apples and oranges," Bernard repeated. "When we put most things on television it's not to make them believe, it's to make what they're seeing their background. Assimilation is what you aim for with television. Shooting your image through the skull repeatedly that, eventually, enough of it sticks that it seems to have always been there. That won't work in the same way, this time."

  "Eye the tube any day of the week," said Susie. "New faces show every hour. Hundreds megatime it once they get their minute, why shouldn't he if that's what's wanted?" Looking to her husband, she lowered her voice, speaking to him as if they sat beneath moonlight. "If he's a wash, cut losses all the sooner."

  Bernard gnawed the end of his thumb, drawing from the cuticle a red droplet resembling a ladybug at rest. "Let's talk image equivalency," he said. "People appear on television. For a while someone might tune in specifically to see them. Then a fresh distraction appears on a different channel. Nobody knows what keeps people watching particular things. A democracy of images is impossible to deliberately subvert."

  "We need the right sales pitch, Bernard-" said Thatcher.

  "You're not pushing detergent. You want this fool to show up one night after the news, claiming to be God. You might as well put him on Telepsychic-"

  "Negativity's showing," said Susie.

  "Realism's showing. This necessitates serious real-world preparation, and even then, every time he appears on television a certain symbolic worth will be lost unless we exercise complete control over surrounding programming."

  "Hell, we could do that," said Thatcher. "What if he got on and performed some miracle?"

  Bernard shook his head, glancing at me holding back his laughter. "The only miracle Macaffrey seems able to perform is convincing otherwise sensible people that he's anything other than a sociopath. So what if he could work miracles? He could make the moon dance in the sky and no one would believe it unless they saw it for themselves. No one would. You know why? They'd be inside, watching it on television."

  "Can anything be done?" Susie asked. "I say dispose."

  "If you want this done right it'll be a longterm project," said Bernard. "Longterm projects take a long time. Face it."

  "So how do you propose we do this?" Thatcher asked.

  "News of this ilk is most effectively transmitted only by word of mouth," said Bernard. "The old-fashioned way. Not to say we can't push buttons later on. Stooges can be hired and trained to pass the disinformation we want passed, as you know. Computer networks can be used after the introductory period. We can't televise before attaining saturation. Once we can rest assured that he's finally seeable, he'll be heard as well." Bernard stood up to stretch, having freed himself of confining ideas. "I hate to admit it, but the timing is perfect for this tomfoolery. Our premillennial fields possess fertile ground."

  "What's the timeline?" asked Susie.

  "Two years, at least," said Bernard. "Unless interest flags before then."

  For over two years Thatcher had lived with the awareness that when he wanted, he received. "Two years," he repeated. "It can't take that long-"

  "It will," said Bernard. "Of course, we haven't fully examined the premise that Macaffrey has, in the first place, anything to say."

  "We'll burn that bridge when we come to it," said Thatcher. "Where is he right now?"

  "Gus is babysitting him in my office. I left the television on to keep them calm. They seemed to hit it off, which I find inconceivable. Dealing with Macaffrey's like dealing with an idiot savant, but then I suppose Gus has had so much practice with Jake-"

  "I say disinvest," said Susie.

  "That's what you've said all along, darlin'-" Thatcher began.

  "Keelhaul," she said. "Let the sharks have him."

  "Got to do some R and D first," said Thatcher. "I'm optimistic. He'll probably come in handy meanwhile. I got a few things in mind. Go to it, Bernard. I trust you." Susie seemed considerably more troubled by Thatcher's verbal cuddling of Bernard than she ever did of her husband's physical assaults upon me; her jealousy was always professional, and I doubted that she took me seriously enough to worry. Rarely was I jealous of Susie; then, essentially, because he admitted to hearing her when she spoke.

  "Let's go see how our boy's doing, Joanna." Bernard rose to follow.

  Thatcher motioned for him to retake his seat. "Fill Susie in on what we were talking about while we're gone," he said.

  "There's something needs doing you're avoiding?" she asked. "Afraid you'll get your hands messy?"

  "Darlin', there's such a thing as being too cynical. Come on down to your office when you're finished, Bernard. Call first."

  Bernard's quarters were at the far end of our floor. Creeping through a lacing of halls, attempting to keep up with Thatcher, I let my eyes pass over the hundreds of photos attached to the walls, each holding the image of a Dryco product. I wondered to myself if the shot of Lester might be larger, for ideology's sake if for no other. When we spoke our sound bled into the building's breath, droning all around us as we wandered its lungs.

  "You have a cat's smile," I said, seeing his grin swell so that I believed his face might burst. "Where's the canary?"

  "Trying to swallow the cat, seems to me," he said. "We'll get into it momentarily, hon. Macaffrey can help us out a lot sooner than they think, that's for sure-"

  "How?" I asked, almost running to keep up with his long stride.

  "Ears," he said, shaking his head, glancing at the walls. "Can't tell you how pleased I am you and Macaffrey get along so well."

  "That's big of you," I said. "I get along with anyone I can talk with."

  "Talk? Looked like Siamese twins when you two came in this morning. Messiahs have a great need for affection, I guess."

  "Thatcher, he's-"

  "You must feel like a dinosaur," he added, with unsurprising tact. "Nothing wrong with robbing the cradle long as you're not the one has to change the diapers."

  Unexpected chords transposed the melody of his song. Curious to discover how he might deal with the situation as he seemed to perceive it, I refrained from explaining the nature of my relationship with Lester, not that he had any right to know of it in the first place.

  "I'm glad you're taking this so well," I said. "I thought you might be upset."

  "Oh, hon, it's only business. We all play the whore sometime." Before I could comment on that remark he added: "How'd Bernard convince you to do it?"

  "Bernard has nothing to do with this," I said. "I told you Lester came back here-"

  "Oh," he said, looked at me, and smiled. "So it was your idea after all. That's a good sign. I knew my influence'd wear off on you eventually. That's real good."

  You get nowhere participating in a conversation with a ventriloquist who perceives you only as a new dummy; I said nothing more. Lester and Gus stood beside the desk in Bernard's office, their backs turned toward the door. Gus circled around before we entered. The commercial playing on TV was one of Dryco's; the spot commanded the viewer to enjoy life. One inspiration after another onscreened as the narrator sang: pink children romped with golden dogs, Christmas lights of a dozen colors outlined the gables of a Victorian house, oreads and naiads lounged on skislope and surfside, barely hidden b
eneath particolored shreds of quilt; innumerable scenes of a perfect world's perfect people flashed by, scenes that to my eye could have been filmed perhaps on Mars, but never on Earth, not any longer.

  "Who knows?" Thatcher asked.

  "None but God." By this ritual Gus signaled that he'd deafened the room's ears and blinded its eyes. The windowpanes rattled as they vibrated within their frames, shaken by the air conditioner's wind, assuring that none without could eavesdrop by discerning the tones with which our voices caused the glass to waver. Thatcher, collapsing into the leather chair, lifted his feet onto the desk, knocking the photo of Bernard's wife against the drawing of their son. I sat next to Lester, on the sofa, took his hand and squeezed it.

  "What have they done to you?" I asked.

  "Bored me to death," he said. "Till we came in here, anyway. Gus and I get along pretty good."

  "How's it hanging, Macaffrey?" asked Thatcher. "You need anything, just ask Joanna. She'll see to your every need. I guess you figured that out already-"

  "Call me Lester."

  "Nothing like a first-name basis. Lester, I got something I want you to take a look at. See if you can pick up anything from it."

  "What do you want picked?"

  "Anything in bloom," said Thatcher. "Here you go, bud. Looks like a list, doesn't it?" Lester studied the note for a minute after Thatcher passed it over to him. "Can you see who wrote it?"

  "Of course not," said Lester. "Does this have anything to do with the employee who was murdered?"

  I knew no more showed in my face than I noticed showing in Gus's; Thatcher tried to give the impression of one lobotomized, but his eyes held the most disconcerting blend of desire and fear, the look of a molester listening for unexpected interruptions, and finding himself knifed by his victim. He looked to me, as if wishing to see my confession; he saw nothing. "It does," he said. "Somebody's in something bad and I'd like to help 'em out before they get in over their head."