“That if they call your bluff when the two weeks are over, you’ll sign.”
“I might.”
“Fuck you, Weiler.”
“I love you too, Donovan. Talk to you in fourteen days.”
Click.
I was dead quiet during most of our ride up into the hills and, for the first time since we began this routine, Jim Trimble seemed off balance. He didn’t know what to make of my sullenness or how to react to my silence. It reminded me that in spite of his big ideas and his prowess with guns, he was just a goofy kid who thought the world outside Brixton was what he saw when he surfed the net or what he’d read in the pages of my books-the poor dumb schmuck. He’d seen less of the world than Patty Duke:
I took off the safety, swung the little automatic around, and put the entire clip into the trunk of a tree about thirty feet away from me. If ever there were such things as angry bullets, I’d just pumped them into that pine. I tossed the gun down in disgust as Jim ran over to the tree.
“Holy shit, Kip! Come over here and look at this. Check this out!” he said, poking his index finger in and out of the tight grouping of holes in the flesh of the tree. “It’s not like one bullet’s on top of the next, but it’s pretty damned good. Hell, you’ve never shot like that. What got into you?”
“Anger and self-loathing must do wonders for my shooting.”
He tilted his head, staring up at me like a confused puppy. “What happened to piss you off so bad?”
I’d told him previously about my conversation with Meg and about my asking for a new book contract. Jim had been totally with me-a real shocker-and thought my risking all that money was further vindication of his choosing me as the focus of his hero worship. Christ, you should have seen him. In the blink of an eye, my standing up to Stan took a backseat to my taking on the big bad world of New York publishing.
“They turned me down.”
“Who did?” he asked, still kneeling by the tree.
“Haskell Brown, the editor at Travers Legacy. They want my old books, but it looks like a new book’s out of the question.”
“He’s crazy. How could he not want a new book from you?”
Jim wasn’t putting me on either. He was utterly sincere and seemed bewildered and hurt about it. It was kind of sweet, really, to have him hurt on my behalf. Because I had managed to alienate everyone from my past who might have taken up my cause, it had been a long time since anyone felt connected to me in this way.
“It wasn’t all bad news, Jim,” I said, placing a consoling hand on his shoulder. “Brown’s boss was actually willing to give me a new book deal, but he wasn’t willing to risk losing his editor over me. I can’t blame him for that.”
“I guess not,” he said, but didn’t mean it. “So did you cave?”
“Not yet. I told my agent to tell them I needed two weeks to think it over, but I guess I’ll take the deal in the end.”
“Two weeks?”
“That’s if they don’t just call Meg tomorrow and tell the pair of us to go fuck ourselves.”
The kid’s face broke into a broad, goofy smile. “Cheer up, Kip.”
“What the fuck for?”
“Two reasons.”
“Enlighten me.”
He stood and raised his right index finger. “One: I think you’re ready for the chapel.”
“That’s a reason to run like hell, Jim, not to cheer up.”
“You’ll be fine.”
“We’ll see about that. What’s the second reason? And, please God, I hope it’s better than the first.”
“Took seven days to create the world. Just think of how many things can change in twice that time. Things will turn out all right. You’ll see.”
Thirteen
This time, we had only a cold wind to keep us company. When we got out of his pickup, I was distracted by the woeful groaning of the desolate hangars and by the creaks and shrill whines of the huts. Their complaints were like the laments of humpback whales. Jim seemed not to take notice. His flashlight cut careless holes in the blackness as we dragged the generator out of its storage spot. When it sputtered to life, the generator killed the mournful romance of the night.
Before we entered the hangar, Jim took me by the bicep. “Listen, this isn’t like up in the woods. This is serious. Pay real careful attention to what I’m doing and the way I do it. You’ll have to do it exactly like this or you can’t come back.”
“I understand,” I said.
That wasn’t enough for Jim. “I’m not kidding, Kip. The last time was a one-time-only thing. There aren’t second chances. Inside here, the rules always apply.”
“I get it, Jim. I do.”
He nodded with confidence, but he looked worried. This meant more to him than I realized. He couldn’t have known how important it was to me because I didn’t discuss, except in the most vague terms, what it was I was writing about. I couldn’t, not yet, maybe not ever. Haskell Brown wasn’t the only potential obstacle blocking my way. If I couldn’t get back inside the chapel, Terry McGuinn and I were fucked. Both of us would be remanded to the purgatory we’d only escaped from a month ago. Even I knew there were no words I could say that would reassure Jim. I had to perform.
We walked down the same lighted path the St. Pauli Girl and I had come down the night of my first visit. And I was once again struck by the incongruity of the white blockhouse in the midst of the huge hangar, and of the elaborate wooden door set against the concrete.
“What’s with that door?” I asked.
“We scavenged it and the pews from the base chapel.”
I had my answer. That’s how this place got its name.
“Everything in here,” Jim continued, “except the generator was scavenged from the base. Even the mattresses and white paint. There’s all sorts of basements and tunnels and things underground here that people on the base either didn’t know about or forgot about. You’ll see, but first things first. Wait here a minute.”
Once he stepped out of the light, it didn’t take long for him to be completely swallowed up by the darkness. I followed the sound of his footsteps scraping grit between the floor and the soles of his boots. I heard him clambering up a metal staircase and in less than a minute, come quickly back down.
“Here,” he said, coming into the light, holding out a white T-shirt so large it was like a shroud. “Put this on.”
“Why so big?”
“It’s going to be covering a lot of stuff,” he said.
I did as he asked. Only after I got it on did I notice Jim had removed his jacket and was wearing the T-shirt he had worn the last time. It was covered in way more red crosses than I had realized. And there was something else. Tucked in his left arm, against his ribs, Jim held a helmet that looked like it was designed by a hockey-playing gladiator. What I assumed was the face mask was a curved piece of padded steel with only a tiny slit for an eyehole.
He said, “You’ll wear this once or a few times at most, but either way it takes some getting used to.”
