A Pagan's Nightmare (4 page)

Larry shook his head as nonchalantly as if he were refusing an offer of gum. “Nah. Very little.”

“I see.” Another flashing tangent; they were coming too fast to keep up. “And didn’t you tell me last week that you recently
had a date with a young woman named Miranda?”

Larry toed my carpet, shifted in his chair. “A minor coincidence.”

I held the first chapter aloft and spoke in a raised and incredulous voice. “You wrote about a woman you’ve just gone out
with into your—”

“Twice.”

“You wrote her into the book
twice?”

“No, we’ve been out twice. Once to dinner and once to a movie.”

I eyed him closely, knowing how rarely Larry dated. “Dinner and a movie on the same day?”

Larry shifted again, ran a hand through his hair. “Yes.”

“Then that’s once, Larry. One solitary date. And you—”

“Okay then… once. But what do you think so far? Can you sell this?”

“Maybe. But I gotta read it all first. Did you also write your dog into the story?”

Larry winced, even recoiled in his chair. “Dillen? No way. I’d never embarrass my dog like that. Labradors don’t like being
in stories.”

I kept thumbing the manuscript, as if this would hide my excitement about its potential. Surely the secular crowd would embrace
it, although my wife, Angie—the devout Baptist who managed to drag me to church once a month—would likely object. I had not
sold a project in eight weeks, however, and this one at least held the possibility of a paycheck. Plus, there was that intangible
quality, the sheer gall Larry possessed to write this thing while living in the Bible Belt.

I tapped the title page. “You’re sure about this title?”

Larry leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. “It’s perfecto. Absolute Southern-fried perfection.”

“A Pagan’s Nightmare
is your idea of perfection?”

“It’s da bomb, Ned. Now just go sell it.”

“I’m gonna need to read more.”

He got up and left with a simple little wave. And again, down the hall, that laugh—that zany, out-of-kilter laugh. “Been to
Mickey D’s yet, Ned?”

All my clients were boring compared to Larry.

When I launched my literary agency in 1991 with a second mortgage on our home, my wife insisted that I not represent any projects
that might embarrass her in her church, where she co-led a women’s ministry called C-Squared. It had something to do with
spiritual growth, but I never asked for details.

On this night, at half past ten, she lay in bed with Larry’s first five chapters on her lap, two pillows behind her head,
and a glass of ginger ale on the nightstand. Angie was a youthful forty-four—she would say the same of me—and I’ll admit that
she looked hot in her lavender nightgown. But tonight was a Thursday and, well, Thursdays were not one of her preordained
nights. On Thursdays she read and fell asleep, mostly because she worked until eight at her office, editing articles for a
Baptist journal and an online webzine.

An hour earlier I’d brought home Chinese takeout, and we’d
shared sweet ‘n sour chicken over steamed rice. Mid-meal she’d asked why I sounded so enthusiastic about work.

I swallowed quickly and gushed, “My friend and client, Larry, has an interesting idea that I may pitch to some film people.”

“May I read a few pages?”

She asked so nicely, even cleaned up after we’d finished our meal. This was unusual, as Thursdays were one of my nights for
clean-up duty. I tried to stave off her curiosity. “Honey, it has a bit of a comic tone, and I know you prefer heart-tugging
dramas.”

It was the way she ran her fingernail across my back that convinced me to let her read. Well, that and the nightgown that
she usually wore only on Tuesdays.

So I handed her forty pages and jumped into the shower. I was thinking that—if I may mock the ad world here—Thursday was the
new Tuesday.

When I emerged from the steam of the bathroom in my red robe, Angie was slapping pages down on the bed in rapid succession.
She picked up the title page and, without taking her eyes off the paper, said, “Ned, I’m not sure what Larry means by this
title… and I’m about to start chapter three and have yet to find one redeeming quality. Not one.”

“Um, I need to floss my teeth.”

She was finishing that chapter when I came out of the bathroom with a mouthful of mint-flavored Listerine. I sloshed it for
five more seconds, went back into the bathroom to spit and rinse, then stood in the doorway in my best are-you-ready-for-me
pose. I even fluffed my chest hair.

I had been standing there for nearly a full minute when Angie glanced up from the page. “It’s Thursday, Ned.”

And she began chapter four.

T
HE PLAQUE ON HIS OFFICE DOOR READ
: “In appreciation for fifteen years of leading us to the big time. The staff at Fence-Straddler AM Radio thanks DJ Ned Neutral
for helping to bring America together.”

Sporting his favorite yellow Hawaiian shirt, Ned sat down in his booth and checked the weather monitor. He saw that Hurricane
Gretchen continued to track toward Tampa and Orlando, though she was still some three hundred miles out in the Gulf. He wondered
how he would conduct his show without his producer, who had strangely left in the middle of Monday’s broadcast. So had the
station’s secretary, a former rock ‘n’ roll groupie who wore lots of black. Ned passed their absences off as a summer virus,
perhaps food poisoning. He’d tried to call them both but could only get answering machines.

Ten minutes before his show began, Ned made a pot of coffee—the first time he had made the coffee himself in months. He took
his mug and two packets of Splenda into his broadcast booth and decided he would do his show without a producer. A veteran
of the airwaves, he could handle this alone.

DJ Ned was truly neutral, having voted for Reagan, then Dukakis, then Bush Sr., then Clinton for a second term, then Dubya,
then Kerry. A caller had suggested that Ned change his handle to DJ Ned Flip-Flop, but he had gotten used to Neutral.

When the clock struck 11:00 a.m., Ned was aghast to see that all five lights on his phone were dim. He sipped his coffee and
wondered if he was in for a slow day. Then, just as he was tearing open his second packet of Splenda, three of the five lights
lit at once.

Ned set his mug on his desk and pressed line 1. “Morning, caller. Welcome to Fence-Straddler AM.”

“Ned, Bill.”

“Bill, Ned.”

“Hi, Ned.”

“Hello, Bill.”

“Ned, I’m a factual, to-the-point, meat ‘n potatoes, formal-on-Sundays kind of guy.”

“You don’t say…”

“And I have the hurricane solution…. We nuke ‘em.”

“Nuke the hurricanes?”

“That’s right. We all know there are nuclear warheads in underground silos all over the country. Rumors abound that seven
of them are buried behind condos in Ft. Lauderdale, and we all know that God helps those who help themselves.”

Ned paused. “Haven’t heard either of those rumors, Bill.”

“Well, back to my point. We nuke ‘em. It’s the only way.”

“Just shoot a warhead right into the storm….”

“That’s right. God wants us to maximize the benefit of our technology.”

“But what if the hurricane eats the warhead, just sucks it down below the eye-wall, and the missile explodes a mile under
the sea instead of above the surface?”

A pause on the line. “Hadn’t thought of that, Ned.”

“We must consider all possibilities, Bill.”

“Well, I have my official Prophetic Decoder calculator handy. Can you give me a sec?”

“Why not? It’s just valuable airtime.” Ned paused, then whistled the first line of the
Mission Impossible
theme song. “Got your calculations yet, Bill?”

“How wide is the eye? And what is the speed of the hurricane?”

“Let’s say the eye is forty miles wide, and the winds are 160 miles per hour… a Category 5.”

Ned could hear calculator buttons being pushed in rapid succession. “Just one more sec, Ned.”

Ned tapped his fingers on his desk. “No rush at all, Bill. Shall I put on some background music, perhaps some Sinatra?”

“The missing variable is the temperature of the Atlantic.”

“Of course.”

“But I can estimate. Here, I almost have the prophetic calculation. If the warhead were to plunge beneath the surface before
detonation occurred, and the eye was forty miles wide and the hurricane’s maximum sustained winds were 160 miles per hour,
then the result would be—”

“Bill?”

“Yes?”

“The result would be that the little tropical fishies would somersault all the way to the Mediterranean. Next caller…
please!”

Ned pressed line 2. “Who’s my second caller?”

“Ned, this is Estella, from Tampa. I just left a breakfast meeting of Presbyterians for a Safer Coastline.”

DJ Ned frowned into his mic. “That would be, um… the PFSC?”

“That’s right. And at our meeting we were discussing these awful hurricanes and how the richest and godliest country on earth
should be able to find a solution. So we’re forming a lobby group to encourage Boeing to manufacture huge fans, like giant
propellers, to be built along the coast, from Tampa down to Miami and all the way up to St. Augustine. These fans, hundreds
of them, could be turned on all at once to blow the hurricanes back out to sea.”

Ned rubbed his beard, gripped his microphone. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Not at all. And for aesthetic purposes, the fans could be painted in beachy colors, say a pastel peach, like the new line
of cookware at Bed, Bath and the Eternal Beyond.”

The Eternal Beyond?
Ned rolled his eyes. “Estella?”

“Yes?”

“That is without doubt the dumbest idea I’ve heard in my fifteen years of hosting this program. No, wait, it ranks second
only to Bill’s.”

“Regardless of your opinion, Ned, the PFSC must put pressure on Boeing.”

“And how might you go about that, Estella?”

“We’ll boycott.”

“Who’ll boycott? You and your cohorts?”

“The fortunate ones. Now, what about helping us lobby for those fans?”

Now in the early stages of panic, Ned wiped the sweat from his forehead and wondered just how sick his coworkers really were.
He was good friends with his producer—they had boated together on many a sunny weekend—though he held no particular affection
for his gothic-dressing secretary. Still, Ned knew that even she had loved ones.
“Fans,
Estella?”

A long pause was all Estella could manage at first. Then, “The PFSC must do all we can to protect Florida from nature.”

“Sorry, but I think you’re just plain looney.” DJ Ned cut Estella off as a weather update scrolled across his monitor. He
immediately thought of his listeners. “Listen up, folks. Hurricane Gretchen has made a turn eastward, which is bad news for
us. Its forward motion is now twelve miles per hour, with maximum sustained winds at one-thirty. Yes, you heard right, one-hundred
thirty mile-per-hour winds.”

To Ned’s dismay, zealot winds seemed even stronger than tropical winds, and his palms were now sweatier than his forehead.
He grabbed a paper towel from his desk drawer and dabbed himself. Yet he could not dab fast enough, so persistent was his
sweat.

Finally he tossed the soaked paper towel into his wastebasket, took a deep breath, and addressed his audience. “Crackhead,
if you and your trailer-park buddies are still around and haven’t been accosted by Estella and her minions, you should be
making plans to evacuate the trailer park within forty-eight hours. That goes for anyone in low-lying areas.”

While a commercial played, Ned stood at his desk and scratched his head.
I thought PFSC stood for Pink Floyd Song Connoisseur.

Lanny sped down a hazy interstate toward Augusta, Georgia. The time was 5:50 p.m., and the windshield of his sage green Xterra
was
by now coated with smashed moths and unfortunate flies. Lanny had tried Miranda’s cell phone and her sister’s home number
a dozen times each, all to no avail.

“Just stay calm,” he muttered to himself. “No one has spotted you yet, and there is surely some explanation for all this.”

He whipped off of the interstate at the next exit, made a left, and pulled into the neighborhood and then the driveway of
Miranda’s sister, Carla. Carla’s red Toyota Camry sat in plain sight, and mail protruded from the metal mailbox on the front
porch. He knocked but found no one home. He ran around back but found it vacant.

Like a movie trailer on fast forward, Lanny saw his day pass before his eyes—the BP station and the golden crosses, the billboard
and the school, the strange greeting from Detour Airlines, the radio broadcasting his name. And now his girlfriend missing.
Maybe even her sister as well.

He felt safest in his truck, so he climbed in and backed out of the driveway.
Which way? Where to now?

His mind scrambled to make sense of it all. He did not remember merging back onto the interstate, but minutes later he found
himself circling Augusta, going nowhere and avoiding human contact. He drove with his chin on the steering wheel, staring
straight ahead, refusing to look at other vehicles or even glance at a billboard.

By 6:30 p.m., the temperature had not dropped a degree, and Lanny was on his third loop around Augusta. He drove in the slow
lane, and soon he reached for his cell and hit speed dial for the thirty-fifth time.

Miranda still did not answer.

He tried his golf and poker buddies again.

0 for 5.

Lanny’s nature was to avoid trouble, and he wondered if trouble was running ahead of him toward Florida, if whole legions
of zealots sought his capture. Perhaps he should spend the night in his truck. He slowed his speed to fifty miles per hour
and pulled down both sun visors. He refused to turn on his radio.

He kept circling Augusta, thinking of Miranda and their fourth
date, when they had walked barefoot on a golf course at sunset, hand-in-hand and hinting about the future. Peaceful green
fairways were where Lanny had always found solace, his space to think.