Jilly knew this must be an apparition only she could perceive, a flood of doves where none existed. She fisted her hands in her lap and chewed on her lower lip, and while her pounding heart provided the drumming not furnished by the soundless wings of the birds, she prayed for these feathered phantoms to pass, even though she feared what might come after them.
13
Phantasm soon gave way to reality, and the highway clarified out of the last seething shoals of doves gone now to boughs and belfries.
Gradually Jilly’s heart rate subsided from its frantic pace, but each slower beat seemed as hard struck as when her fear had been more tightly wound.
Moon behind them, wheel of stars turning overhead, they traveled in the hum of tires, in the whoosh-and-swish of passing cars, in the grind-and-grumble of behemoth trucks for a mile or two before Dylan’s voice added melody to the rhythm: ‘What’s your modus operandi? As a comedian.’
Her mouth was dry, her tongue thick, but she sounded normal when she spoke. ‘My material, I guess you mean. Human stupidity. I make fun of it as best I can. Stupidity, envy, betrayal, faithlessness, greed, self-importance, lust, vanity, hatred, senseless violence… There’s never a shortage of targets for a comedian.’ Listening to herself, she cringed at the difference between the inspirations he claimed for his art and those she acknowledged for her stage work. ‘But that’s how all comedians operate,’ she elaborated, dismayed by this impulse to justify herself, yet unable to repress it. ‘Comedy is dirty work, but someone has to do it.’
‘People need to laugh,’ he said inanely, reaching for this trite bit of reassurance as though he sensed what she’d been thinking.
‘I want to make them laugh till they cry,’ Jilly said, and at once wondered where that had come from. ‘I want to make them feel…’
‘Feel what?’
The word that she had almost spoken was so inappropriate, so out of phase with what everyone expected a comedian’s motivations to be, that she was confused and disturbed to hear it in the echo chamber of her mind. Pain. She’d almost said, I want to make them feel pain. She swallowed the word unspoken and grimaced as if it had a bitter taste.
‘Jilly?’
The dark charm of self-examination abruptly had less appeal than the threat-filled night from which they’d both taken a brief holiday and to which she preferred to return. Frowning at the highway, she said, ‘We’re headed east.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Why?’
‘Black Suburbans, explosions, gorillas in golf clothes,’ he reminded her.
‘But I was headed west before all this… all this excrement happened. I’ve got a three-night gig in Phoenix next week.’
In the backseat, Shepherd broke his silence: ‘Feces. Feculence. Defecation.’
‘You can’t go to Phoenix now,’ Dylan objected. ‘Not after all this, after your mirage—’
‘Hey, end of the world or not, I need the money. Besides, you don’t book a date, then back out at the last minute. Not if you want to work again.’
‘Movement. Stool. Droppings,’ said Shep.
‘Did you forget about your Cadillac?’ Dylan asked.
‘How could I forget? The bastards blew it up. My beautiful Coupe DeVille.’ She sighed. ‘Wasn’t it beautiful?’
‘A jewel,’ he agreed.
‘I loved those tastefully subdued tail fins.’
‘Elegant.’
‘Its howitzer-shell front bumper.’
‘Very howitzery.’
‘They put the name, Coupe DeVille, in gold script on the sides. That was such a sweet detail. Now it’s all blown up, burned, and stinking of one toasted Frankenstein. Who forgets such a thing?’
Shep said, ‘Manure. Ordure.’
Jilly asked, ‘What’s he doing now?’
‘A while ago,’ Dylan reminded her, ‘you told me I was crude. You suggested I find polite synonyms for a certain word that offended you. Shep accepted your challenge.’
‘Crap. Coprolite.’
‘But that was back before we left the motel,’ she said.
‘Shep’s sense of time isn’t like yours and mine. Past, present, and future aren’t easily differentiated for him, and sometimes he acts as if they’re all the same thing and happening simultaneously.’
‘Poopoo,’ said Shep. ‘Kaka.’
‘My point about the Caddy,’ Dylan continued, ‘is that when those thugs in polo shirts discover it doesn’t belong to Frankenstein, that it’s registered to one Jillian Jackson, then they’re going to come looking for you. They’ll want to know how he got your car, whether you gave it to him willingly.’