In his own un-secret heart: Steady, boy. You’ve got to think this out. Nothing impossible about it, no reason to settle for a stalemate; just a little time to think it out. Galardo said the Black Chapter would accept a token submission, let me return the Seal, and that would be that. But I mustn’t count on that as a datum; he lied to me about the Serpentists. Token submission sounds right; they go in big for symbolism. Maybe because they’re so stone-broke, like the Japs. Drinking a cup of tea, they gussie it all up until it’s a religion; that’s the way you squeeze nourishment out of poverty-Skip the Japs. Think. He lied to me about the Serpentists. The big thing to remember is, I have the Chapter Seal and they need it back, or think they do. All you need’s a little time to think things through, place where he won’t dare jump you and grab the Seal. And this is it. “Joe. Sam, Mike, Tony, Ben, whoever you are. Hit me again.” Joe—Sam, Mike, Tony, Ben?—tilts the amber bottle quietly; the liquid’s level rises and crowns the little glass with a convex meniscus. He turns off the stream with an easy roll of the wrist. The suntan line of neon tubing at the bar back twinkles off the curve of surface tension, the placid whiskey, the frothy beer. At 9:05.
To his left: “So Finkelstein finally meets Goldberg in the garment center and he grabs him like this by the lapel, and he yells, ‘You louse, you rat, you no-good, what’s this about you running around with my wife? I ought to—I ought to—say, you call this a button-hole?'”
Restrained and apprehensive laughter; Catholic, Protestant, Jew (choice of one), what’s the difference I always say.
Did they have a Jewish Question still, or was all smoothed and troweled and interfaithed and brotherhoodooed—
Wait. Your formulation implies that they’re in the future, and you have no proof of that. Think straighter; you don’t know where they are, or when they are, or who they are. You do know that you
walked into Big Maggie’s resonance chamber to change the target, experimental indium for old reliable zinc
and
“Bartender,” in a controlled and formal voice. Shot of Red Top and a beer at 9:09, the hand vibrating with remembrance of a dirty-green el Greco sky which might be Brookhaven’s heavens a million years either way from now, or one second sideways, or (bow to Method and formally exhaust the possibilities) a hallucination. The Seal snatched from the greenlit rock altar could be a blank washer, a wheel from a toy truck, or the screw top from a jar of shaving cream but for the fact that it wasn’t. It was the Seal.
So: they began seeping through after that. The Chapter wanted it back. The Serpentists wanted it, period. Galardo had started by bargaining and wound up by threatening, but how could you do anything but laugh at his best offer, a rusty five-pound spur gear with a worn keyway and three teeth missing? His threats were richer than his bribes; they culminated with The Century of Flame. “Faith, father, it doesn’t scare me at all, at all; sure, no man could stand it.” Subjective-objective (How you used to sling them around!), and Master Newton’s billiard-table similes dissolve into sense impressions of pointer readings as you learn your trade, but Galardo had scared hell out of you, or into you, with The Century of Flame.
But you had the Seal of the Chapter and you had time to think, while on the screen above the bar:
VIDEO
Long shot down steep, cobble-stoned French village street. Pi-erre darts out of alley in middle distance, looks wildly around, and runs toward camera, pistol in hand. Annette and Paul appear from same alley and dash after him.
Cut to Cu of Pierre’s face; beard stubble and sweat.
Cut to long shot; Pierre aims and fires; Paul grabs his left shoulder and falls.
AUDIO
Paul: Stop, you fool!
Pierre: A fool, am I?
Annette: Darling!
Cut to Paul.
two-shot, Annette and Paul: Don’t mind me. Take my
gun—after him. He’s a mad dog, I tell you!