Shatterday

“Reverend Darkness,” she said, “it’s almost the top of the hour and we have to break now for the network news, but—”

“Brother Darkness,” he said, cutting her off.

She was nonplused for a moment. His voice. It had the deep, warm, musky timbre of secrets whispered in dark rooms. When he spoke she thought of a stick of butter, squeezed through a fist. “Yes, of course; I’m sorry. You’ve told me several times you’re not a minister. I’ll try to remember, Brother Darkness.” He nodded politely. She could not read his expression around the mask. He disturbed her fluid ease behind the mike. That didn’t happen very often. Seven years at this gig had made her almost unflappable. “What I was about to suggest, Brother Darkness, is that we break for the news and you come back for the second hour of the show. My next guest is Dr. Jacob Theiss, a very well-known psychiatrist who works with the Los Angeles police; he ‘II be coming on to talk about this epidemic of razorblade killings… and I think some of what you’ve been saying about evil in our times might be very interesting to have him comment on.”

“I’d be pleased to stay, Miss Ketchum.”

The way he said it made Theresa Ketchum almost regret she had suggested it. He made his acceptance sound as if they had entered into some kind of unholy alliance. But she signaled to Jerry, the engineer in the control room, and he turned up the network feed pot and the news rushed in with drums and trumpets and the voice of the sixty-thousand-dollar-a-year announcer from New York.

Now she was alone with Brother Darkness. The on-air studio in which they sat was a claustrophial box, fifteen by ten, with two windowed walls: one side looked into the control room; the other looked into the waiting room where Millie sat taking and screening phone calls from the general public. The studio seemed somehow smaller than usual, and throat-cloggingly filled with menace. And it had started out being such a lovely day.

She took off her earphones and racked them. She stood up, smoothing her skirt, and was suddenly aware of Brother Darkness looking at her not as a dispassionate “communicaster,” but as an attractive woman, thirty-four years old, body tanned and well toned from afternoons at the Beverly Hills Health Club, nose bobbed exquisitely by Dr. Parks, auburn hair coddled and cozened just so at Jon Peters’s parlor in the Valley. She had a momentary flash of regret at not having worn something bulky and concealing. The blouse was too sheer, the skirt too tight, the whole image too provocative. But she had dressed for after the broadcast, for the party CBS was hosting that night at the Bonaventure to promote its new midseason sitcom. The party at which she would use the sensual good looks, the tanned and well-toned body, the exquisite nose and brushfire hair to play some ingratiating politics; to move herself out of a seven-year rut on local talk radio and into a network job. Dressing with care this afternoon, before coming in to the station, she had given no thought to the effect on her guests; only to how she would present herself at the party. Attention where it mattered.

But Brother Michael Darkness was staring at her the way men stared at her in the Polo Lounge or in the meat-rack pickup bar of the Rangoon Racquet Club. And she wished she were wearing a kaftan, a fur-lined parka, a severe three-piece tweed pantsuit.

“Would you like a cup of coffee?” She heard her voice coming thickly and distantly. Not at all the liquid honey tone she used as the trademark of an aura! sex object when broadcasting.

“No thank you, Miss Ketchum. I’ll just sit here, if that’s all right.”

She nodded. “Yes, of course. That’ll be fine. I’ll go get Dr. Theiss and be right back. We have five minutes before we’re back on the air.” Arid she escaped into the corridor quickly, finding herself leaning against the sea- green wall breathing very deeply.

Over the station speakers in the hall the newscaster was headlining the Los Angeles razorblade slayings, commenting on the discovery that morning of an eleventh young woman, nude and with throat sliced open, in the bushes near the Silverlake off-ramp of the Hollywood Freeway. She heard the voice, but paid no attention.

She stepped into the waiting room beside the studio. Jake Theiss was leaning against the wall sipping coffee from a paper cup. The telephone switchboard was lit from one end to the other, all ten lines strobing with urgency. Millie looked up from the log and rolled her eyes. “Jesus, Tern, you’ve got a live one tonight. They’re crawling down the wires to talk to him.”

She felt her heart racing. “Keep the best ones on hold; I’ll try to get to them after I introduce Jake.”

Then she turned to Jake Theiss, who smiled at her, and it was as if someone had returned her stolen security blanket. He had been on the show a dozen times before, and they had even gone out several evenings. His mere presence reassured her.

“Theresa,” he said, stepping away from the wall and taking her hand, “you look a trifle whiplashed.”

She hugged him and kissed his cheek. “My God, Jake, have you been listening to him?”

The psychiatrist nodded slowly. “I have indeed. But it’s not so much what be says, as the way he says it. A little de Sade, a little Gilles de Rais, echoes of Proterius, a smidgeon of Cotton Mather and some direct quotes from the Evangelium Nicodemi, if memory serves well. All made contemporary by the addition of Jung, Freud, Adler and Werner Erhard’s look-out- for-number-one. Nothing particularly spectacular about it; most modern demonologists plunder the same bag. But your Brother Michael in there has a sense of the dramatic, and a voice to match, and a nasty way of bringing in current events that… well… I can’t say I’m looking forward to sharing a microphone with him.”

She drew a deep breath. “Jake, stop it! This flake does a good enough job scaring the hell out of me on his own. I mean, it’s like Exorcist time in there. When he starts talking about the return of the devils I swear to God I can feel the slimy things in that booth. And I never thought a kid’s Halloween mask could chill me, but each time he looks at me with those green eyes I feel every part of my body trying to run away and leave my head behind.”

Millie handed her a Kleenex from the box. “Your lip,” she said. Theresa took the tissue and blotted herself.

“Okay, don’t worry about it,” Jake said, setting down the empty coffee cup. “I’ll come on like the voice of rationality.”

She smiled wanly, feeling like a fool. This was hardly professional behavior.

They walked back into the on-air studio just as the news was ending. Theresa moved to the console and flipped the toggle switch on the intercom. “Jerry, let’s do the Southern California Buick Dealers, Pacific Telephone and Roto-Rooter. Is there a live tag on the Roto-Rooter commercial?”

The tinny voice of Jerry from the other side of the control room glass filled the booth. “Yeah. Ten seconds.”

He ran up the cartridges and for a moment, before she turned down the sound in the booth, the Buick announcer’s voice filled the air. When she turned back to her guests, Jake Theiss had already seated himself at the empty third mike, to the right of her swivel chair. She drew a deep breath and sat down. “Jake, this is Brother Michael Darkness; Brother Darkness, Dr. Jacob Theiss.” She watched them shake hands. She studied Jake’ s face closely, but if he reacted to the touch of Brother Michael’s hand, as she had reacted the first time he had touched her, the only time he had touched her, earlier that evening, the psychiatrist concealed the fact. Jake did not shiver. He smiled at Brother Michael and said, “I’ve been listening to the interview. Pretty strong medicine for a lay audience just around dinnertime, wouldn’t you say?”

Brother Michael’s face was impassive. “If you think I’m a fraud, Dr. Theiss, why not just come out with it. Mendacity is unappealing in someone who professes to being a man of science. Even such an alleged science as the study of the mind.”

Theresa’s heart beat faster. It was as though she had just received two separate and powerful electrical shocks, so close together they seemed one: outrage and fear at the antagonism of the man in black, which might lead in a moment to a thrown punch; and delight at the instant animus between Jake and the Brother, guaranteeing a controversial second hour for the show. She hated herself for feeling pleasure, but it was always this way when something terrible but promotable happened on the show.

“I didn’t know you also read minds, Brother Darkness,” Jake said, swallowing the affront. “If I wanted to call you a fraud, I’d certainly wait till we were on the air.”

Brother Michael’s tone softened. He knew he wasn’t going to get a fight. Not now, at any rate. “I’m pleased to know you recognize the apocryphal texts. Too few practitioners of what you call ‘the healing arts’ familiarize themselves with the black documents of antiquity.”