Pariah

Karl stared up at his ceiling, noting a long crack that ran diagonally from one corner to the other, bisecting the expanse of whitewashed plaster. Just the mention of Miss June 1982 flooded impure thoughts into his head. No, no. Fight them. Fight the urge. But why bother? I’m doomed anyway, aren’t I?

Karl thought about those Left Behind books and the righ teous so-and-sos who’d created them, particularly the really creepy older one, Tim LaHaye, which sounded like LaVey, as in Anton LaVey- two sides of the same coin. When Karl had first come to New York he thought Anton LaVey seemed cool. He had the perfect look, that cue ball head and pointy beard. High Priest of the Church of Satan and the author of the Satanic Bible. Cool. But maybe not. But still, cooler than Tim LaHaye. That guy had helped Reagan into his governorship, then the presidency. He even looked like Reagan. Was that some kind of extroverted narcissism? Wasn’t that a sin? One reason Karl had turned his back on the church was that its loudest and most passionate proponents all seemed so corrupt, bullying, and insane. The clergy, the evangelists, the propagandists; none seemed all that holy.

Karl fingered his one tangible souvenir from Big Manfred, the one his old man had insisted he take before heading off to New Sodom: a Smith & Wesson Model 910S 9mm pistol. Karl had left it tucked away in its case since he’d arrived in New York, but now he held it in his hands. It felt alien, but it was the one thing he owned that his father had touched. Not a cross, a gun. Ellen was right. It would be pointless against those things outside. Karl ran his finger around the muzzle, sighed, then replaced the gun in its foam-lined case. Guns were not his bag.

If Eddie ever found out I had this… Karl let that thought die.

He got off the bed and returned the carry case to his underwear drawer, then stepped into the hall just as Mona was walking down the stairs from the roof, head bobbing as ever. Sunlight poured down the stairs through the open door and skylight, enshrouding her in a blinding white glow. He flushed and cast his head down.

“Need anything?” she asked, popping out an earbud.

“Uh, well jeez, I’m kinda embarrassed to say.”

“ ’Rhoid cream?”

“Huh?”

“Roof dude wants ’rhoid cream.”

Karl forced a laugh. “No, no. I want a Bible. Either the King James or the New Revised Standard Bible. Or anything, really, as long as it’s officially a Bible. I don’t want to put you out.” Mona jotted it down in her notepad but showed no reaction. “I want to brush up a little and see if I can make any sense of what’s going on out there.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I mean, maybe these are the End Times?” Karl inflected the statement as a question, hoping to engage Mona. “You know, like in the Bible? Like in the Book of Revelation?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Okay then,” Karl said, shrugging and smiling. “I guess that’s all for now.”

As Mona retreated down the steps Karl tried to make out Mona’s thumping music of the moment.

“Uh, Mona?” he shouted, to be heard over her tunes. She stopped at the foot of the stairs and looked up, removing the earpiece again. “Uh, Mona, I was just wondering what you’re listening to?”

“Ministry.”

“Oh. Uh, what song?”

“ ‘Jesus Built My Hotrod.’ ”

“Oh. Okay, thanks.”

She nodded and headed downstairs.

Karl was so confused.

“Are you still moping?” Ruth asked, incredulity marring any attempt on her part at a sympathetic tone. “My God, Abe, get over it.”

“ ‘Get over it,’ she says. Unbelievable. She accuses me of being derelict in my duty. She accuses me of being obsolete. Get over it. Maybe a younger man should take the crow’s nest. Maybe I’m not the one to watch for the lights in the tower window.”

“What tower window?”

“ ‘One, if by land, and two, if by sea; And I on the opposite shore will be…,’ ” Abe muttered.

“He’s rambling. I don’t know why I bother.”

Ruth shuffled out of the room, back to the bedroom. Good, Abe thought. Like I need a stoop-shouldered harridan eroding the last vestiges of my manhood. He sat by his post, a cup of coffee-neither hot nor iced, but room temperature-in his hand, staring out the window, awaiting Mona’s return, walkie-talkie tucked in his breast pocket. He’d be damned if he’d allow Ruth the satisfaction of catching him slacking off twice.

“ ‘Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead,” Abe recited, in schoolboy cadence, “In their night-encampment on the hill, Wrapped in silence so deep and still, That he could hear, like a sentinel’s tread, The watchful night-wind, as it went, Creeping along from tent to tent, And seeming to whisper, ‘All is well!’ Yeah, right. All is well, my ass. Gottenyu, what the hell kind of poetry would Longfellow have wrought from this paskudne situation?” Abe settled back and wondered if anyone anywhere was writing poetry about the current condition. If they were it was probably awful, like everything else in the last quarter century.

Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead.

Abe leaned forward and looked at the dead, or rather the undead. How long could they keep going? They ate when they could, but that was infrequent at best-happily. Were their reserves of energy infinite? That seemed so unlikely. Those things kept going and going, like that stupid battery bunny, none keeling over from depletion. You’d think, Abe thought, that eventually they’d just all collapse and the worst would be over. Sure there’d be a lot to clean up, but what a small price to pay. Then again, as Abe often mused, you’d think a lot of things in this life. You’d think death was the worst that could happen. You’d think the dead would stay dead. You’d think getting terribly ill or the cessation of your Social Security checks would be the worst that could happen in your dotage. You’d be wrong. But being wrong was the biggest part of life. Wrong choices and regrets; Abe was up to his tits in both.

“You cabbage heads have got it good, you know that?” Abe hollered out the window at the crowd below. “Not a care in the world, eh? You think anything any more? Probably not! How lucky is that, you lucky sons of bitches? You don’t even need TV any more! Look at this. It just hit me! This is the end of the evolutionary ladder, the perfect twenty-first century man! Not a thought in its head! Not a care in the world! Idle yet active, going no place, doing nothing, taking his sweet time, and vicious as hell if given the opportunity! Hey, Darwin, you cocksucker, congratulations!” Abe laughed, pounding his fist against the splintering slate windowsill, doing his old bones no favors at all.

At the other end of the apartment Ruth eased the bedroom door shut, muffling the splenetic ravings of her husband.

26

“You’re crazy,” Alan said, his voice rising in disbelief. “SNL was crap compared to SCTV.”

“It’s a matter of taste, not sanity, for God’s sake,” Ellen countered. This was stupid. How could Alan get so worked up over a TV show? A long-gone obscure sketch comedy show, at that.

“Or the lack thereof. Just because something’s more popular doesn’t mean it’s better. Often it’s just the opposite. Everyone says they like SNL better, but trust me, it wasn’t.”

“It was funnier to me, okay? Me. In my opinion. Opinion, Alan. O-P-I-N-I-O-N.”

“I just can’t see how an intelligent woman such as yourself could choose Saturday Night Live. Okay, it had some funny stuff, granted. I’m not saying it didn’t. But it was nowhere near the