Life During Wartime

unhappy. Mingolla asked how he had become involved with the families, and he replied, ‘It was somethin’ in the music they wanted… somethin’ they made me do.’ Mingolla assumed Jack had been forced to inject subliminals into his recordings, perhaps ones that would appeal to psychics; but the particulars didn’t interest him. If he were to try and root out every Sotomayor game, he would have time for little else.

Jack hummed, broke off, then rocked back and forth, smacking a hand against his thigh as if trying to recapture a rhythm. ‘Wish I had a billion dollars,’ he sang. ‘I’d buy myself…’ He made a fist, pressed it to his head. ‘I got a little of it,’ he said. ‘Little bit.’

‘Let’s hear ’er. Jack,’ said Gilbey.

Jack, a stressed look on his face, sang out again.

‘Wish I had a billion dollars, I’d buy myself an armory.
I’d deploy my men, get high and then I’d fuck with history.
I’d build a palace out of skulls, eat steak, screw beauty queens.
And every other week I’d go on nationwide TV,
and make a speech entitled “That’s What America Means To Me…”’

He faltered, appearing worried. ‘There’s more. I… I can’t get it.’

‘Take your time, man,’ said Mingolla.

After a minute, Jack sang some more.

‘Wish I had my own religion, I’d be a brand new kind of god.
I’d burn down all the churches and give Las Vegas to the poor…’

Again he faltered, and Mingolla boosted his good feeling, started him singing a third time, but singing a different song, softer, almost chanted.

‘Angel, angel, are you receiving,
won’t you try to answer me?
Has my signal grown weaker than moonlight,
does this transmission convey my grief?
We are lost in wars and silence,
dark November colors all our lives,
strangers pass by without speaking
of the important sadness in their eyes.
Many of us have taken refuge in religion or in lies,
But I know we can’t last much longer
without the truth that only you supply.

Angel, angel, it’s getting darker,
the wind is bringing shocks and flowers,
and black ice forms beneath my nails.
I never meant my heart to matter,
especially to a girl like you,
I swear I’ll fix all that I’ve broken
if you’ll only answer me.

Angel, angel, are you in Heaven,
or are you in prison, longing to be free,
huddled for warmth, afraid of breathing,
too weak to press the transmit key…’

‘There’s more,’ he said. ‘Lots more.’

‘Y’should write it down, man,’ said Gilbey, pretending to write with the point of his machete. ‘Get some paper, and write it down.’

‘Yeah, okay,’ said Jack, scratching his head, and then burst into tears.

Mingolla put far more effort into Gilbey. Once, thinking a sexual experience might enhance his work, he dug up a woman for him, primed her with horniness, and staked her out in one of the empty buildings, a room with depressions in carpets of gray dust that testified to the long-ago presence of chairs and tables. The woman was pudgy, worn-looking, and Gilbey said, She’s a fuckin’ beast, man. I dunno ’bout this.’

The woman smiled and jerked her hips in invitation.

‘Well,’ said Gilbey. ‘I guess she got okay tits.’

Mingolla left them alone, and when he returned he found them both asleep, Gilbey’s hand resting in proprietary fashion on her hip. He wasn’t sure anything had happened, but afterward Gilbey did seem more his old self.

That same evening they walked out behind the palace, a spot from which they could see the barricade: a long flimsy wall of planks nailed into a gapped barrier ten feet high, with two guardhouses of equally crude construction behind it. Like kid’s clubhouses. A dirt road led across a grassy meadow from the barricade toward green hills in the distance, and Mingolla imagined stealing a jeep, ramming through the wall, and heading up into those hills. It was a pleasant fantasy, but he knew Debora would never go along with it. And anyway, it was likely they’d be killed in the process.

Jack curled up in the dust, and Mingolla and Gilbey sat on the rear steps of the palace. Mingolla could make out riflemen pacing behind the barricade. Twilight had thickened to dusk, and a scatter of stars picked out the slate-colored sky. The windows of the buildings set away from the palace showed black and unreflective, rectangles of obsidian set into palely glowing stone; the breeze drifted scraps of cellophane along the asphalt, and a scrawny cat with scabs dotting its marmalade coat came prowling past and stopped to regard them with cold curiosity.

Gilbey had stumbled across a splintered baseball bat, one that had probably been used as a weapon, and he was turning it in his hands. ‘Be neat, y’know,’ he said.

‘What?’ Mingolla was watching the shadowy figures of the riflemen.

Gilbey was silent for such a long time that Mingolla wondered if he had lost his train of thought. Get up a game,’ he said at last. ‘Be neat to get up a game. Think we could.’

‘A baseball game?’

‘Yeah, we could get some guys.’ He stared at the bat, gave it a tentative swing.

The idea of Gilbey with his dulled reflexes playing baseball depressed Mingolla. He pictured the ratty blond hair sheared away, the grime washed from the cheeks, the expression firmed into one of sour indulgence. But it didn’t work. The old Gilbey was dead, and the new Gilbey was moribund.

‘We could, uh… we could…’ Gilbey waggled the bat. ‘What’s wrong with me, man? Somethin’s fucked-up wrong, ain’t it?’

‘How ya figure?’

‘With me… wrong with me. And you’re tryin’ to fix it.’

‘Yeah,’ said Mingolla. ‘Somethin’s wrong.’

‘Can ya fix it?’