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He sleeps now. Rice with the curry from the Thai wagon. Asks where the girl has gone. Tell him Fontaine has heard from her but does not know where she is or why. The pistol on the shelf. Reluctant to touch it (cold, heavy, smelling of oil, the dark blue finish worn to silver-gray down the sides of its muzzle, around the fluted segments of the cylinder. (‘SMITH & WESSON.’ Thomasson.) Tonight he spoke again of Shapely.
How they did him like that, Scooter, that’s just some sorry shit. Same shit all over. Always some of ’em, anyway, makes you wonder how these damn religions last so long or what started it in the first place. Could be he’ll be that himself one day, crazy fuckers out killing people for him, or they’ll say it’s for him. Used to be these Crucified Jesus people, they wouldn’t talk at all except Ofl Mondays, and that was the day they’d go and dig OflC spadeful of dirt out of their grave, Scooter. Every 258 little while they’d get one of them thought he’d got the spirit in him and they’d just do it, do it with these special chrome nails they all carried, leather neck-pouch, see, it had to be unborn lambskin. Hell, you’d have to say they were crazier than the ones got him, Scooter. Put ’em all away, finally. Weren’t any left at all, after about 1998. ‘Inner Tube, honey,’ Mrs. Sublett said, ‘Talitha Morrow, Todd Probert, Gary Underwood. 1996.’ She was leaning back in the recliner with a damp washcloth folded across her forehead. It was the same color blue as her slippers, and they were terrycloth, too. ‘I never saw that,’ Chevette said, flipping through the pages of a magazine all about Reverend Fallon. There was this has-been actress, Gudrun Weaver, and she was up there hugging Fallon on a stage somewhere. If he’d turned around, Chevette thought, his nose would’ve barely come up to her breastbone. Looked like he’d had some kind of pink wax injected, all under his skin; had the creepiest-looking hair she’d ever seen, like a really short wig but it sort of looked like it might get up and walk off by itself. ‘All about television,’ Mrs. Sublett said, ‘so naturally it’s of special significance to the Church.’ ‘What’s it about?’ ‘Talitha Morrow is this newswoman, and Todd Probert is a bank robber. But he’s a good bank robber, because he only needs the money to pay for a heart-transplant for his wife. Carrie Lee. Remember her? In a mature role, honey. More like a cameo. Well, Gary Underwood is Talitha’s ex, but he’s still got it for her, bad. In fact he’s got-whatcha callit?-erotomania, like it’s all he ever thinks about and, honey, it’s turned pure evil. First he’s sending her these chopped up Barbie dolls; sends her a dead white rahhit, then all this fancy underwear with hlood on it. . .’ z6o 34 Punching out of paradise Chevette let the old lady talk. She could just sort of tune her out, the way she used to do with her own mother, sometimes. She wondered what it was Rydell and Sublett were so worked up about. Up to something; whispering in the kitchen. She watched a fly buzz around the stuff on Mrs. Sublett’s shelves. It looked slow, like maybe the air-conditioning was too much for it. She wondered if maybe she wasn’t starting to fall for Rydell. Maybe it was just that he’d showered and shaved and put on clean clothes from his stupid-looking suitcase. The clothes were exactly the same as the ones he’d been wearing before. Maybe he never wore anything else. But she had to admit he had a cute butt in those jeans. Sublett’s mother said he looked like a young Tommy Lee Jones. Who was Tommy Lee Jones? Or maybe it was because she had the idea somehow he was going to do something mean to Lowell. She’d thought she was still in love with Lowell, or something anyway, but now she didn’t think so, not at all. If Lowell just hadn’t started doing dancer. She’d thought about how that Loveless had got when she’d dumped all that dancer in his Coke. She’d asked Rydell if that was enough to have killed him, and Rydell had said no. Said it was enough to keep him stone crazy for a while, and when he got back together, he was going to be hurting. Then she’d asked Rydell why Loveless had done that, banging his gun into his crotch that way. Rydell had sort of scratched his head and said he wasn’t sure, but he thought it had something to do with what it did to your nervous system. Said he’d heard it induced priapism, for one thing. She’d asked him what that was. Well, he’d said, it’s when the man is, like, overstimulated. She didn’t know about that, but it had given Lowell these total brickbat boners that just didn’t want to go away. And that would’ve been just fine, or anyway okay, except he got all mean with it, too, SO she’d wind up all sore and then he’d he badmouthing her in front of these people he hung out with, like Codes. Anyway, she 2.61 wasn’t going to waste any time worrying about what Rydell might have in mind for Lowell, no way. What she did worry about was Skinner, whether he was okay, whether he was being taken care of. She was kind of scared to try phoning Fontaine now; every time Rydell made a call out, she worried it might get traced back or something. And it made her sad to think about her bike. She was sure somebody would’ve gotten it by now. She kind of hated to admit it, but that was starting to make her nearly as sad as Sammy getting killed that way. And Rydell had said he thought maybe Nigel had gotten shot, too. ‘And then,’ Sublett’s mother was saying, ‘Gary Underwood goes through this window. And he falls on one of those fences? Kind with spikes on top.’ ‘Hey, Mom,’ Sublett said, ‘you’re bending Chevette’s ear.’ ‘Just telling her about Inner Tube,’ Mrs. Sublett said, from under the washcloth. ‘1996,’ Sublett said. ‘Well, Rydell and I, we need her for something.’ Sublett gestured for her to follow him back into the kitchen. ‘I don’t think it’s a real good idea for her to go outside, Berry,’ he said to Rydell. ‘Not in the daytime.’ Rydell was sitting at the little plastic table where she’d had breakfast. ‘Well, you can’t go, Sublett, because of your apostasy. And I don’t want to be in there by myself, not with my head stuck in one of those eyephone things. His parents could walk in. He might listen.’ ‘Can’t you just call them on the regular phone, Berry?’ Sublett sounded unhappy. ‘No.’ Rydell said, ‘I can’t. They just don’t like that. He says they’ll at least talk to me if I call them on an eyephone rig.’ ‘What’s the problem?’ Chevette said. ‘Sublett’s got a friend here who’s got a pair of eyephones.’ z6z ‘Buddy,’ Sublett said. ‘Your buddy?’ she asked. ‘Name’s Buddy,’ Sublett said, ‘but that VR, eyephones ‘n’ stuff, it’s against Church law. It’s been revealed to Reverend Fallon that virtual reality’s a medium of Satan, ’cause you don’t watch enough tv after you start doing it…~ ‘You don’t believe that,’ Rydell said. ‘Neither does Buddy,’ Sublett said, ‘but his daddy’ll whip his head around if he finds that VR stuff he’s got under the bed.’ ‘Just call him up,’ Rydell said, ‘tell him what I told you. Two hundred dollars cash, plus the time and charges.’ ‘People’ll see her,’ Sublett said, his shy silver gaze bouncing in Chevette’s direction, then back to Rydell. ‘What do you mean, “see” me?’ ‘Well, it’s your haircut,’ Sublett said. ‘It’s too unusual for ’em, I can tell you that.’