Complete Stories (102 page)

As soon as we’re in my apartment, I help Jerome slap some house-paint over his big mural. And when we go outside to check on things, everything is back to being its own right size. We’ve saved our universe.

To celebrate, we get some Olde Antwerpen forty-ouncers at the 7-11 and hop onto my bed, cuddling together at one end leaning against the wall. I’m kind of hoping Jerome will want to get it on, but right now he seems a little tired. Not too tired to check out my boobs though.

Just when it might start to get interesting, here comes Harna’s last gasp. I can’t see her anymore, but I can hear her voice, and so can Jerome.

“Have it your way,” intones the prissy universe-collector. “Keep your petty world. But the restoration must be in full. Before I leave for good, Hieronymus must go home.”

“Think I’ll stay here,” says Jerome, who’s holding a tit in one hand and a beer in the other.

“Back,” says Harna, and her presence disappears for good.

As she leaves, the living breathing man next to me turns into—oh hell—an art book.

“No way,” I sob. “I need him.” I quick say the Hail Mary three times, like the sisters taught me. But the Bosch book just sits there. I pour some of the microhomies onto it. Nothing doing. I squeeze red paint onto the book cover and stick a split Oreo cookie to it. Still no good. And then in desperation, I pray to my special protectors, the Powerpuff Girls. And the day’s last miracle begins.

The book twitches in my hands, throbs, splits in two, and the two copies move apart, making a, like, hyperdimensional man-hole.

And, yes, pushing his way out of the hole, here comes my Hieronymus Bosch, his hair flopping, his eyes sharp, his mouth thin with concentration.

He’s in my bed—and the dumb book is gone. Screw art history. Jerome will make even better paintings than before. And if that doesn’t work out, there’s reality TV.

You know anybody who can help with my show?

============

Written in April , 2004.

Interzone
, October 2005.

I’ve always been fascinated by artistic representations of the Virgin of Guadalupe—she’s usually drawn in the middle of a spiky oval halo. To me, that halo looks like an image you might find by zooming into the computer graphics fractal known as the Mandelbrot Set. Not that this image has much to do with the story.

The story was inspired, rather, by buying myself a good-quality microscope. On searching the web to find books about microscopy, I came across a delightful flying-saucer tract that I ordered: Trevor James Constable,
The Cosmic Pulse of Life: The Revolutionary Biological Power Behind UFOs
(Borderland Sciences, Garberville, CA, 1990). Constable jovially argues that our atmosphere is filled with all-but-invisible giant “aeroforms,” akin to jellyfish or protozoa. And, writes Constable, these home-grown “aliens” are what we’re seeing when we see when we see UFOs.

I came up with the hard science idea for the story’s conclusion while giving a lecture to my Advanced Computer Graphics class at San Jose State University. We were studying the mathematical projective transformation that is used to convert three-dimensional coordinates into locations upon a painter’s canvas or, for that matter, upon a computer-game’s view screen. It turns out that you can imagine forming the inverse of the projection transformation, and that if you were to let this inverse transformation act upon your body, then you could indeed find yourself striding across houses and mountains, with the fabled Point At Infinity only a few more steps away. I explained all this to my students at the time—they enjoyed the rap, although of course they thought I was a mad professor.

One final inspiration for the story was my continuing desire to write about the great master Hieronymus Bosch. Having already written a historical novel about a Flemish painter—
As Above, So Below: A Novel of Peter Bruegel
(Tor Books, New York, 2002), I’m tempted to write a tome about Bosch. “Guadalupe and Hieronymus Bosch” is a down payment on the dream.

By the way, Terry Bisson did me the favor of reading a draft of the story and making some good suggestions. After appearing in
Interzone
, the story also appeared in David Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer,
Year’s Best SF 11
(Eos, 2006).

“Yo, Jack,” said Tonel as they lugged two golf bags apiece toward the men’s locker room. It was sunset, the end of a long Saturday’s caddying, Jack’s last day of work this summer.

“I didn’t get a chance to tell you,” continued Tonel, shouldering open the door. “About who I saw sweatin’ in Ragland’s backyard this morning.” It was fresh and cool in the locker room. A nice break from the heavy, thick August air.

“In Ragland’s yard?” said Jack Vaughan, setting down the bags and wiping his brow. “I don’t know. His ninety-year-old mother?” Jack suspected a joke. Ragland was the master of the locker room, ensconced behind his counter. Tidily cleaned shoes and piles of fresh white towels sat on the white-painted shelves around him. Although the bare-skulled Ragland’s eyes were half-closed, it was likely that he was listening.

“It was the five mibracc,” said Tonel. “Doin’ Ragland’s yard work. Isn’t that right, Ragland? What’s the dealio? How you get to slave-driving them Republicans? I need to know.” Tonel lived right next door to Ragland. The two weren’t particularly fond of each other.

“Don’t be mouthin’ on my business, yellow dog,” said Ragland. Though he cleaned the shoes of popinjays, he insisted on his dignity.

A burst of talk echoed from the little back room beyond Ragland’s station. Just like every other morning or afternoon, the mibracc—he caddies’ nickname for “men in the back room at the country club”—were in there, safe from women, out of the daylight, playing cards and drinking the bourbon they stored in their lockers.

“Those bagworts do chores?” said Jack. “No way, Tonel.”

“I seen it,” insisted Tonel. “Mr. Atlee was draggin’ a plow with Mr. Early steerin’ it. Mr. Gupta was down on his knees pullin’ up weeds, and Mr. Inkle and Mr. Cuthbert was carryin’ trash out to the alley. Ole Ragland sittin’ on the back porch with his shotgun across his knees. Did your Meemaw put conjure on them, Ragland?”

“You want me to snapify your ass?” said Ragland. Though gray and worn, Ragland was, in his own way, an imposing man.

Tonel made a series of mystic passes, hoodoo signs, and rap gestures in Ragland’s direction.

“I’ll ask the men myself,” said Jack, caught up by Tonel’s rebellious spirit.

The two boys stepped into the back room, a plain space with a tile floor and shiny green paint on the windowless concrete walls. The five old men sat in battered wooden captain’s chairs around a table from the club’s lounge. Oily Mr. Atlee was dealing out cards to spindly white-haired Mr. Early, to bald-as-a-doorknob Mr. Inkle, to Mr. Cuthbert with his alarming false teeth, and to Mr. Gupta, the only nonwhite member of the Killeville Country Club.

“Hi, guys,” said Jack.

There was no response. The mibracc studied their cards, sipping at their glasses of bourbon and water, their every little gesture saying, “Leave us alone.” Mr. Inkle stubbed out a cigarette and lit a fresh one.

“Listen up,” said Tonel in a louder tone. “I gotta axe you gentlemen somethin’. Was you bustin’ sod for Ragland today? My friend here don’t believe me.”

Still no answer. The mibracc were so fully withdrawn into their clubby little thing that you could just as well try talking to your TV. Or to five spiteful children.

“Scoop,” grunted Mr. Cuthbert, standing up with his glass in hand. Mr. Gupta handed him his empty glass as well. With the slightest grunt of nonrecognition, Mr. Cuthbert sidled past Tonel and Jack, moving a little oddly, as if his knees were double-jointed. His oversized plastic teeth glinted in the fluorescent light. Mr. Cuthbert pressed his thumb to his locker’s pad, opened the door, and dipped the two glasses down into his golf bag. Jack could smell the bourbon, a holiday smell.

The mibracc’s golf bags held no clubs. They were lined with glass, with tall golf bag–sized glass beakers, or carboys. Big glass jars holding gallons of premium bourbon. It was a new gimmick, strictly hush-hush; nobody but Ragland and the caddies knew. Mr. Atlee, a former druggist, had obtained the carboys, and Mr. Early, a former distiller’s rep, had arranged for a man to come one night with an oak cask on a dolly to replenish the bags. The mibracc were loving it.

Mr. Cuthbert shuffled back past Tonel toward the card table, the liquid swirling in his two glasses. The boy fell into step behind the old man, draping his hand onto the mibracc’s shoulder. Mr. Cuthbert paid him no mind. Jack joined the procession, putting his hand on Tonel’s shoulder and trucking along in his friend’s wake. Tonel was humming the chorus of the new video by Ruggy Qaeda, the part with the zombies machine-gunning the yoga class.

After Mr. Cuthbert dropped into his chair and picked up his cards, Jack and Tonel circled the room two, three, four times, with Tonel finally bursting into song. Never did the mibracc give them a second glance. Odd as it seemed, the liquid in the glasses still hadn’t settled down; it was moving around as if someone were stirring it.

Around then Ragland came out from behind his counter, wielding a wet, rolled-up towel. Silly as it sounded, being snapped by the old locker room attendant was a serious threat. Ragland was the ascended Kung-Fu master of the towel snap. He could put a bruise on your neck that would last six weeks. Laughing and whooping, Tonel and Jack ran outside.

A white face peered out of the window in the clubhouse’s terrace door. The door swung open and a plain, slightly lumpish girl in a white apron appeared. Gretchen Karst.

“I’m pregnant, Jack,” said Gretchen, her sarcastic, pimply face unreadable. “Marry me tonight. Take me off to college with you tomorrow.”

“How do you know it’s me?” protested Jack. “I’m not the only—I mean even Tonel said he—”

“Tonel is a horn worm. All I gave him was a hand job. And it didn’t take very long. Jack, there’s a justice of the peace out on Route 501. Ronnie Blevins. He works at Rash Decisions Tattoo. I found him online. Since it’s Saturday, they’re open till midnight. I’m off work right now, you know. I started early today.”

“Stop it, Gretchen. You and me—it’s not—”

“I’m serious,” said Gretchen, although there was in fact a good chance that she was scamming him. Gretchen had a twisted mind. “You’re my best chance, Jack,” she continued. “Marry me and take me with you. I’m smart. I like sex. And I’m carrying your son.”

“Uh—”

Just then someone shouted for Gretchen from the corner of the clubhouse building. It was Gretchen’s dad, standing at the edge of the parking lot. He’d trimmed his flattop to high-tolerance precision and he was wearing his shiny silver jogging suit. All set for the weekly meeting at the Day Six Synod’s tabernacle.

Gretchen could talk about the Day Six Synod for hours. It was a tiny splinter religion based on the revelation that Armageddon, the last battle, was coming one-seventh sooner than the Seventh Day Adventists had thought. We were already in the end times, in fact, with the last act about to be ushered in by manifestations of Shekinah Glory, this being the special supernatural energy that God—and Satan—use to manifest themselves. The pillar of fire that led the Israelites to the promised land, the burning bush that spake to Moses—these had been Shekinah Glory. The Day Six Synod taught that our Armageddon’s Shekinah Glory would take the form of evil UFOs pitted against winged angels.

Karl Karst’s jogging suit was silver to remind him of the Shekinah Glory. The Day Six Synod meetings featured impressively high-end computer graphics representing the Glory in its good and evil forms. Though Mr. Karst was but a county school-bus mechanic, some of the core founders of the Day Six Synod were crackpot computer hackers.

“Shake a leg or we’ll be late,” shouted Mr. Karst. “Hi, Jack and Tonel. Wait till you see who I’ve got with me, Gretchen!”

“I’ll deal with you later,” said Gretchen to Jack with a slight smile. Surely she’d only been teasing him about the pregnancy. She made the cell phone gesture with her thumb and pinky. “We’ll coordinate.”

“Okay,” said Jack, walking with her toward her father. “I’m visualizing hole six.” Hole six of the KCC golf course was the popular place for the club’s young workers to party. It was well away from the road, on a hillock surrounded on three sides by kudzu-choked woods.

Right now, Jack figured to eat dinner at Tonel’s. He didn’t want to go to his own house at all. Because this morning on the way to the Killeville Country Club, he’d doubled back home, having forgotten his sunglasses, and through the kitchen window he’d seen his Mom kissing the Reverend Doug Langhorne.

It wasn’t all that surprising that Doug Langhorne would make a play for the tidy, crisp widow Jessie Vaughan, she of the cute figure, tailored suits, and bright lipstick. Jessie was the secretary for the shabby-genteel St. Anselm’s Episcopal Church on a once-grand boulevard in downtown Killeville, right around the corner from the black neighborhood where Tonel lived, not that any black people came to St. Anselm’s. Jessie’s salary was so meager that Reverend Langhorne let Jessie and Jack live with him in the rectory, a timeworn Victorian manse right next to the church.

Doug Langhorne’s wife and children shared the rectory as well. Lenore Langhorne was a kind, timid soul, nearsighted, overweight and ineffectual, a not-so-secret drinker of cooking sherry, and the mother of four demanding unattractive children dubbed with eminent Killeville surnames. Banks, Price, Sydnor, and Rainey Langhorne.

Setting down his bicycle and stepping up onto his home’s porch this morning, Jack had seen his mother in a lip lock with Doug Langhorne. And then Mom had seen Jack seeing her. And then, to make it truly stomach-churning, Jack had seen Lenore and her children in the shadows of the dining room, witnessing the kiss as well. The couple broke their clinch; Jack walked in and took his sunglasses; Lenore let out a convulsive sob; Doug cleared his throat and said, “We have to talk.”