Mad Gods - Predatory Ethics: Book I (25 page)

TIME: FEBRUARY 7TH, 1963. DELPHI THEATRE, SAN FRANCISCO,
CALIFORNIA, U.S.A

Claude Major sat in the dark movie theatre, watching
the last few minutes of a film. Natalie Wood cried at Richard Beymer’s feet and
asked George Chakris how to use a gun on herself. Claude, here by himself,
preferred to enjoy the story without distraction. On other occasions, he
watched films with his various dates, but always ended up returning to get the full
impact of the story without having to explain the plot or to repeat bits that
his date hadn’t heard.

In terms of movie watching, it was a landmark year
for Claude, this month in particular. He’d been captivated by what would
eventually become classic films. He saw
Splendor
in the Grass
two weeks earlier and followed it with
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
. Both nearly moved him to tears, the latter
with unrelenting optimism — something he craved.

Just this past week, he had left the theatre full of
confidence and hope after seeing Fast Eddie’s rise and fall in the
Hustler
. Eddie’s perseverance despite
his problems appealed to Claude.

Now the credits began to scroll up the screen and
Claude knew the break from his unbearable life was over. He remained in his
seat until the musical score faded and the house lights cast the velvet seats
into the starkness of reality. In the dark, those seats were smooth to the
touch and folded you with their high backs like a blanket. In the harsh glow of
the lights, Claude struggled to ignore the tears, worn patches and stains, all
over the comforting velvet. He did not want to face the reality that this
refuge was anything less than perfect, so he kept his head down and avoided
everyone’s gaze.

He regularly saw films a second time, because he did
not want to share his belief and connection to the story with anyone. He was
very selfish in this, believing the inclusion of anyone else would interfere
with his appreciation and understanding of characters and their experiences.
For this reason, he spoke to no one about films. He preferred to keep his
viewing experience pure.

He thought about the story and the different elements
he had just seen. At the top of the steps, however, he could not avoid a boy
who, sitting up quickly, jostled him. Annoyed, Claude lashed out at him for
bringing him back to reality.

“Hey, watch where you’re going, good for nothing
little shit!” Claude continued on his way and barely noticed the joy on the
boy’s face.

“That was such a great re-interpretation.” He spoke
to no one in particular, but to himself. “Like
Romeo and Juliet
in our time.” The boy sat back down and smiled,
happy in the moment. Claude continued past the front door, ticket window and
out into the street.

The boy had not said anything to Claude, hadn’t even
noticed his rude reaction, and that made Claude envy him all the more. He was
completely transported by the film, which was something Claude strove for, to
the exclusion of all else. Many times he tried and came close but minutes later
it quickly faded.

If the boy had not bumped into Claude, he would not
have even noticed his existence. He had brown hair, wore jeans and a regular
shirt. He was beneath notice, but Claude would remember him for years to come,
even though he couldn’t recall how tall he was or any specific features. All he
remembered was his acceptance and complete enjoyment of the film.

Claude stopped thinking about his own failed
transport, returning to the reality of what lay ahead. It was unbearable,
because it paled to what was represented in movies. He wanted to watch life
unfold, to be onscreen. He did not like returning to a life with a mediocre
wife, mediocre kids and a mediocre house.

Some could say he was a fortunate man. His wife did
not mind his frequent escapes to the movie houses. She wished he would simply
enjoy it, instead of turning it into another reason to be stressed. Claude did
not say much of anything. He only did what most other Majors — his
father, his grandfather and ancestors well back to the old country — had
done. He went to work, paid the bills and did exactly as was told.

Inside the theatre, the boy still marveled at
West Side Story
, at times, talking out
loud. Kosta caught sight of the smile that creased Adam’s face. Only he cared
that he was smiling.

TIME: FEBRUARY 7TH, 1963. PHIL’S BAR, SAN FRANCISCO,
CALIFORNIA, U.S.A

Marshall Steinman had few vices. He worked hard and
managed to keep his bookstore, during a time when many others were going under.
He kept food on the table, a wife who did the store’s books and a daughter that
was keeping him with her mother. Marshall got together with Beth because he
wanted a family. He believed his urges would go away when he did the right
thing. They didn’t. That’s why he now drank.

That was the most obvious vice. He drank and kept
drinking as soon as the key turned in his front door. When he got home, he
started with his Chivas and paid little attention to his wife, but did whatever
his little girl wanted. The other he counted as a vice, but depending to whom
he spoke, it wasn’t considered as such in San Francisco.

Marshall craved mangina. Not outwardly, anyway. He
craved some men in his store, preferring the sensitive, literary types who
looked malnourished and in need of paternal nurturing. He never acted upon
those urges, he merely let his mind wander and never settle.

Most nights, he would drink at home since bars were
too expensive. He was a repressed faggot and alcoholic, not an idiot. A bottle,
bought at a corner store, cost a hell of a lot less than one purchased at a
local watering hole. Tonight was different. Beth had finally given up on trying
to bed him and decided to find happiness elsewhere. At other times, at moments
of exasperation, she did the same thing, but always returned when Marshall gave
her a hard tumble. During those romps he conjured up Oscar Wilde or Peter
O’Toole languishing beneath him.

This time, it was different. She hadn’t given him a
chance to persuade her to stay, but took his precious daughter and left. So,
Marshall took his wallet and went to the closest bar. He didn’t go far, planted
his rump on the stool farthest from the door and demanded his own bottle of
whiskey with a very loud fifty-dollar bill.

He watched the front door, fantasizing about a few of
the men who walked through it. He got up, and to the thoughts of grizzled lips,
rubbed a few out in the men’s room. He did this no more than three times that
night, and if he had actually mentioned it to any of his fantasy men he
would’ve bedded at least one of them.

Three-quarters of the way down the bottle, the door
opened and Marshall was unable to take his eyes off of the man who walked
through it. He walked with the military precision and trim grace that Marshall
admired in O’Toole’s
Lawrence of Arabia
.
He wasn’t the blond, sun-blessed brilliance of O’Toole, but had his own darker
tan that absorbed light.

Emboldened by the drink, and calmed by the repeated
depletion of his libido, Marshall reeled over and sat down next to him.
Marshall’s glance wavered from side to side, though he held onto the vision
before him as he introduced himself.

“Hey, I’m Marshall, who’re you?” It came out more
coherently than Marshall could’ve hoped.

“Hello. It’s Kosta. My name’s Kosta.” He smirked at
Marshall’s obvious infatuation and continued, “So, what are we drinking,
Marshall?”

“You’ll drink with me?” Marshall couldn’t believe
this. “Uh, we’re drinking whiskey. Chivas, ‘cause only the best touches my
lips. Heh, heh, heh…” Marshall began giggling like a little girl at the
unintentional innuendo.

“Chivas Regal. Ah, that’s the stuff then. Hey,
bartender, give us another glass here,” Kosta said as he caught a thrown
whiskey glass. “Thanks. Marshall, you’ve been drinking. What seems to be the
trouble, or are you celebrating?” Kosta poured out a portion of the bottle to
which Marshall was clinging and he nearly fell off his stool.

“I’m celebrating that my wife finally left me.” Once
again, Marshall made himself laugh.

“Ha, ha, to the peace that comes from silence,” Kosta
proffered and both threw back their glasses.

“What brings you to San Francisco, Kosta?” Marshall
asked.

“How do you know I don’t live here?” The question
surprised Kosta.

“I would’ve remembered you,” Marshall replied with
unmasked adoration.

“Oh, so you know everybody in San Francisco then?”
Kosta smiled at the poor fellow’s attempt to woo.

“Yes, in point of fact, I do. I know everybody in
this city. You can believe that.” At this point, Marshall would say anything to
keep this man’s attention.

“Everybody?” Kosta decided that it was worth trying something.
“Do you know a McGrath, first name starts with a B and sounds weird and old?”

“McGrath. Who’s he, your boyfriend? That bald fuck?”
Marshall was instantly jealous that this man might be unavailable. Not that he
would do anything about it, but he could not bear to think of him with anyone
else.

“You don’t really know him, do you?” Kosta could not
believe this; it was too much like a desperate plotline in a story.

“Balzeer McGrath, yes. He’s a bald guy, wears black
all the time, tattoos on his wrists. Likes to think he’s some warlock or
something. Comes into my bookstore and I’ve sold him rare books on occasion,
but he loves Batman comics.”

“Yeah, that’s him, I guess. Where is this bookstore?”
Kosta could not believe his luck.

“I’m not telling you. You look like some cop. What do
you want that freak for? What’s he done?”

“No, you’ve got me all wrong, Marshall. I’m no cop,
I’m just an old friend, and no, he’s not my boyfriend.” He poured two more
drinks and hoped that this moonstruck drunk would continue telling what he
knew.

“Hey, I’m onto you, ya faggot! You think you can
drink my whiskey and get in my pants? Ya lousy queer!” Marshall took a swing at
Kosta who sidestepped away, letting him fall to the floor.

“I’m sorry you feel that way, friend. I’ll leave now.
I’m sorry to have bothered you.” Kosta quickly threw a ten-dollar bill on the
counter and left before Marshall could pick himself up off of the floor.

TIME: FEBRUARY 8TH, 1963. HAIGHT & ASHBURY STREET, SAN
FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, U.S.A

Brian Pepper was walking home, a cigarette in his
hand and a song in his heart. All was just fine in the world. He passed a
magazine stand and decided to pick up yet another copy of his magazine. He
thought of it as “his,” because a lead story in that week’s
Time Magazine
, with East Germany’s
Ulbricht on the cover, was his.

For years, he’d been submitting articles and made a
tidy living doing it. He’d also been rejected by
Time
for as long as he could remember. To be honest, for the life
of him, he did not know why they finally chose this particular article.

It was Brian, firing off the wayward thought —
showing movies in airplanes would divert the passengers’ attention from the
flying process. Less than a week later, a plane was taken over and hijacked, a
term Brian had used in that article.

He leaned against the wall of a building and re-read
the entire story. His words, printed on magazine stock, took on a relevance
they hadn’t conveyed on typewritten sheets. At home, they were merely ramblings
he put on paper and sent to a number of addresses. He was overjoyed to be able
to work at a craft he was also a big fan of.

Walking away from the newsstand, with an armful of
magazines, he saw a dusty Chevy cab round the corner. For no conscious reason,
he crossed the street to sit on a bench, opened one of the magazines and stared
across the street. The Chevy was an older model, from sometime around the
middle of the last decade, probably ‘58, but other than that, was not notable.

A man stepped out of the car, went to its trunk and
removed a heavy sack. It looked like it weighed more than he did, but he hefted
it over his shoulder and walked around a corner and into a dark alley. He came
back a few seconds later, without the sack. He wore tan clothes, which looked
like they belonged in a desert or a safari, and he walked with an authoritarian
gait that Brian associated with some visiting British officers he met during
his time in the Canadian army. He didn’t posses the arrogance Brian remembered
his movement was just precise and fluid.

He got back into the car and was about to drive away
when an old woman stood in his way. She hadn’t been there seconds before and
her presence startled Brian, but the man’s reaction was even more startling.
The lumbering Chevy screeched forward, slammed into and threw the old woman
over the top of its hood until she rolled off the other end of the trunk. Brian
sat there, mouth agape, trying to decide if he should report the accident
before, or after, he wrote about it.

He watched the car screech to a halt at the end of
the block and screech into reverse to repeat the same process backwards. The
old woman was gone and Brian’s head snapped from left to right trying to find
her. He was sure she fell in a heap where she’d been struck. All pretense of
reading the magazines was gone. They lay at his feet as he watched the scene
with rapt attention. He saw her again, but this time she ran to the passenger
side of the Chevy with a speed that made Brian question his vision. He couldn’t
follow her blurred movements, but caught glimpses of her reaching past the door
to the man inside.