Jericho (9 page)

The psychopath began this way: “My preparations for the
great transition are officially underway.” He was clean, but he looked as though he hadn’t shaved his face that morning and I noticed tiny grey hairs growing on his ears.

I stayed calm. That’s the best way to treat these people. “I’m not sure I understand the meaning of that,” I said in such a tone that neither provoked nor reassured him unreasonably.

“I’m blowing this dump.” At first I thought he meant he was leaving the restaurant. False hope. “Leaving this burg, getting out of town while the gettin is good, blowing the Org as they say in Scientology, retiring to my country residence.”

“He has this place up north,” Beth said.

“Where?” I asked him.

He answered looking at her, not me. “At an undisclosed location. You’ll find out when you see it through the windshield.” He sounded like he was going to make one of those disgusting little throat noises that I became familiar with later on.

“You’re going with him?” I was incredulous that she was running off with this loon. (Forgive my layperson’s language, but that’s what he is.)

Beth answered with her eyebrows and a bit-lip smile.

“What about finding your father?”

“I’ve decided I have to put that on hold until I figure out how to go about it in a way that makes more sense. Getting away for a while might help. We both need time to think, so we’re going together.”

I’m not sure I believed in such a simple answer.

Then she said: “You wanna come?”

I was boycotting eye contact with the patient but noticed that he stayed silent for once.

“What are the two of you going to do up there? How are you going to make a living? What are you planning to eat?”

He piped up. “I’ve got a place that’s all fitted out. It has everything we’d ever need.”

“Like a farm?”

“No.”
He raised his voice. “It’s more like a seed-place. A seed op.” He laughed at his cleverness, which only he saw. “It’s the seed of something that’s going to grow. I’ve planted an idea in the fertile ground.”

I couldn’t help myself. “What exactly are you talking about?”

He was quiet for a few seconds, thinking what to say. You could always tell when he was thinking because the process was so slow and laboured.

“I can’t give you any details,” he said. “Except that something important is going to rise up.” He used the conspiratorial tone of voice you often find in such individuals.

I suppose I must have been letting a small trace of impatience show, though I was trying not to do so.

“You know the Bible, right?” Oh God, he was going to quote the Bible. “‘And there shall be a new heaven and a new earth.’” Beth looked impassive but still interested. “‘And there shall be brought forth something something—and a New Jerusalem.’”

“Now you’re mixing the New Testament with the Old,” I said. He obviously knew nothing whatever about what he was talking about. A graduate of the Gideon theological seminary, that was my guess.

“Well, that’s the gist of it. But I say the gist ain’t enough. Mark my words: There shall be made to rise up upon the land a new Fertile Crescent kind of place, a fresh start, a new
hope. Screw New Jerusalem! There shall be a New Sodom and a New Gomorrah!” He paused to see our reaction. “That’s all I’m saying.”

But of course it wasn’t all he was saying. He charged on, going back into his madman routine, as though he thought a person like myself couldn’t tell the difference. Looking at Beth, though, I wasn’t sure that she knew where the disturbed individual left off and the bad actor began. But then I wasn’t certain just what she thought about anything at that moment. Did she have, as they say, real feelings for him? I find that hard to believe. I think perhaps she hadn’t been laid in a long while for whatever reason and was experiencing unsatisfied lustfulness towards him, momentarily—which was no reason for her to give up the life she had now and run off with him to I don’t know where. I could see what he was getting out of it, a warm body and a member of the audience. To find out about her I’d have to get her alone and engage her in a serious conversation.

I asked them when they were leaving.

“I’m getting ready to initiate the protocols right now.”

“What does that mean exactly?”

He didn’t like it when anyone asked him to translate.

“My plans are firming up,” he said.

I thought: What if she is entering erotic fantasies about him in a diary? I couldn’t stand it. I said to myself: When they have sex she probably lights scented candles and he spouts made-up Scripture at all the crucial moments. Good Lord. Maybe if I got to know him I would like him more? That definitely didn’t seem likely or desirable. Maybe if I could get to know her better I would have my lust nullified or diluted by what I learned? I’d probably discover she’s one
of those persons absolutely everybody likes every moment of their existence. (The unremitting tyranny of the cheerful.) Mostly I thought she might be in danger, physical or otherwise, and that I had a responsibility to her and also to my own sexual thoughts to ensure that nothing unpleasantly harmful happened to her. I should have asked myself by what right I had suddenly allowed such sisterly concern to influence my judgment.

The laying off of bets in Snaketown was like the laying on of hands in the Bible. Somebody always had a mitt out of his pocket for one reason or another and then somebody else got theirs out too, and the first guy ended getting appointed or anointed. (Ha! That’s not bad.) So it came to pass that the elders of Snaketown seemed to be calling to me, saying unto me to appoint and anoint this Beth as my acolyte slash intern slash moll. I could tell she was going warm and rigid for me. I could see how she looked at me when I didn’t use the words she was expecting. Of course, she’d probably never known anybody who really understands how to talk and make an art of it. She’d likely only met people who could talk about the weather and the price of grain. I mean she was straight: rural straight, and there’s no straighter. But instinct and the elders’ voices told me there was more to her than that.

It took quite a lot of slow, patient work. I remember sitting in the White Spot telling her about getting back to the true ancient roots of Civ as it first came down from the mountain, you might say. I was pretty wired that night, and of course all that coffee, one after another, didn’t even me out. I think I must have been in top racing form. When I
told her I was leaving town her eyes went wide like she was completely surprised. Finally, over the next couple days, we got to the point where she was quitting her job to come with me. This made me happy, of course. It’s better to take the supplies you need with you cause you don’t know if you’ll be able to live off the land. But it put the spook into me too. I guess I was conflicted but maybe not.

I told him I’d never done anything like this before and he told me not to worry. I felt more excited than scared, at least until it was over. I couldn’t figure out what he was feeling. He was calm but incredibly focused. Me, I couldn’t stop talking, or I’m sure that’s the way it sounded. I noticed he was wearing gloves inside the car. He told me not to touch anything.

We drove along in silence for a few minutes.

“Nobody’s ever robbed one before.”

I didn’t understand what he meant by that.

“Nobody’s ever stuck up a video store. Have you ever seen a news report about a video store being hit?”

I admitted that I hadn’t, but then I didn’t read the papers or watch much television. Still, I thought there was a reason why what he said was true. “Maybe it’s because they don’t get robbed?”

“Exactly.”

He was squinting through the windshield, negotiating late evening traffic but not doing it like a pro exactly.

“Maybe that’s because there’s not very much money at a video store?”

He seemed to take this remark as a challenge. “Nonsense!” he said. “On a Friday night, are you kidding? You’ve seen
how busy that place gets. And they don’t take credit cards. So they’ve got to start out with a pretty good float and by about now I bet they’ve done their peak weekend business. So I’m not stupid, right? Right now there’ll be the maximum of cash in the register and the woman there gets so stoned at night she won’t be able to identify us if she tried, which she won’t. It’s a target-rich environment. Now’s the moment to strike.”

Just then the light changed at the intersection and the engine stalled. I think it was probably Bishop’s fault and not the engine’s. He looked like he was going to flood it. I wanted to take over the wheel and show him a trick I’d learned driving Mr. Steenrod’s coaches. You can’t go stalling a funeral procession, tying up traffic. But of course I kept my mouth shut except to say, “I didn’t know you drove. How long have you had this car?”

“About half an hour,” he said.

We pulled up in the lane behind Cult Video. He rehearsed our roles again. I’d go in first and act like a customer and browse and see how many people were in the store. If I didn’t come out again in fifteen minutes, it meant the coast was pretty clear. I’d keep browsing and he’d swing in. I’d block anybody new from coming in while he stuck the place up. He’d run out with the money. I’d give it a minute or two and then, in the confusion, we’d take off together.

The manager was dressed all in black except for her fuchsia hair, which was the texture of cotton candy. She was wearing what I was pretty sure I recognized as mortuary makeup. There was a TV blaring up on a high shelf in one corner, like in a beverage room. A radio blared too. The place itself seemed to be half dead. Only one other potential
customer, who was all studded leather between his shaved head and his Nazi-booted toes. Across both cheeks and the bridge of his nose he had painted a broad red stripe. His chains rattled a bit every time he moved. The manager wasn’t paying any attention to either of us. I started browsing, beginning on the wall closest to the exit, in the upper left corner, with the A’s.

Alfie!, Algiers, Alice Cooper The Nightmare Returns, All That Jazz, Amadeus, Amazon Women of the Moon, American Graffiti, American Ninja, An American in Paris, An American Werewolf in London …

I silently read off the titles while watching both the street and the counter. Not an easy thing to do if you don’t want to look shifty while you’re doing it. Bishop had warned me about looking shifty (his word).

And God Created Woman, Andy Warhol’s Dracula, Angels Over Broadway, Anne of Green Gables, Anne of Green Gables The Sequel, Annie Hall, Annie Oakley, Apocalypse Now, Attack of the 50-Foot Woman, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, Attack of the Swamp Creature…

I thought to myself: Why am I doing this? I don’t own a TV.

Au Revoir les Enfants, Away All Boats, Baby Boomers, Baby Doll, Baby Love, Back Street, Back to School, Back to the Future II, The Bad and the Beautiful, Bad Company, Bad Dreams, Band Aid, The Band Reunion…

Why does he need me along in the first place?

Batman, The Bat People, Batteries Not Included, Battle of Britain, Battle of the Bulge, Battle of Russia, Battlestar Galactica, Battle of the Network Stars, Bear Island, The Bear Must Die, The Beast Within, The Beastmaster, Beatlemania, The Beatles Live, Beauty and the Beast…

Where the devil was he?

Bedroom Eyes, Beetlejuice, Ben, Benji, The Benny Hill Show Vol. 4, Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, The Best of Yoko Ono Volume One, Beyond Erotica, Beyond Obsession, Beyond the Limit, Beyond Therapy, The Bible, Big Business, The Big Chill, The Big Country, The Big Easy, The Big Event, The Big Fix, The Big Heat, The Big Sleep, Big Trouble, Big Trouble in Little China…

The guy in leather looked like he was about to leave when suddenly something caught his eye and he swung back to look some more. He was way over in the R’s and S’s.

Bikini Beach, Billy Crystal Live, Billy Jack, Billy Joel, Billy Liar, Black Belt, The Black Hole, The Black Orchid, Black Sabbath, Blackmail, Blackout, Blacula, Blame It on Rio, Blind Date, Blind Rage, Blithe Spirit, The Blob, Blonde Venus, Blood Money, Blood on the Sun, Blood Simple, Bloodlust, Bloodrage, Bloodsport, Bloody Wednesday, Blow-Up, Blowout…