The Scream (5 page)

"'Please-we must have your help
now
. The guillotine is hanging over our ministry.'" Jake couldn't resist a throat-slitting pantomime. Several unbelievers howled with delight "'Everything hinges on God using
you
to be a part of a million-dollar, ten-day miracle-or Liberty Christian Village, and our entire ministry, will be gone!

"'We must not lose one precious teenager! God has entrusted us with so many lives! Please help us. Send the largest possible gift you can
TODAY
!'"

"One has to wonder," he concluded, "what kind of massive assault ol' Satan was launching there, and how a million bucks would help; but, Pastor, I'm pleased to see that you survived."

Aunt Bea, the nice lady who'd addressed Jake in the first place, and the other hundred who'd flapped paws against him were unsurprisingly outraged, but there was another hundred or so who seemed to agree with him. The
CLAPPITYCLAPPITYCLAP
of their hands slapping was a source of enormous gratification to Jake as he continued.

"So there you have it, folks: if you disagree with these people, you're not just wrong. You're in league with the devil himself.

"Which brings us back to the word 'insulting.' I think that these pious idiots are the most insulting people I've ever met. They act as if they own morality. They act as if they own God.

"Well, let me tell you something, people. They
don't
. They don't own God, they don't own morality, and they don't own this country. At least not yet. But they will, if we don't start standing up for our rights.

"And I don't know about you, but I don't want to live in the kind of sexless, joyless, brain-dead theme park that they're trying to pawn off as God's will for America!"

That did it. Half the audience broke out in a flurry of ovations. Jake caught flickering glimpses of Moynihan through the craning crowd as the host moved swiftly toward the stage. Dick's face expressed a concentrated excitation, the confidence that he had a winner here, as the creeping theme music went
bah-dah dah dah-dahhhh
, insinuating itself into the dialogue and indicating an impending commercial break.

"OKAY, FOLKS! LET'S ALL JUST CALM DOWN HERE A MINUTE!" Dick's voice boomed through the speakers. He wasn't yelling-there was a lilt in his voice-but the nascent boom of his words plowed through the crowd noise like a strike through tenpins.

Jake panned his gaze back along the semicircular stage seating, locking eyes with Pastor Furniss. Furniss was smiling ever so slightly. Jake nodded. They were opponents of the most severe stripe-they were
adversaries
, with every conflict of flesh and will that the word implied-but they seemed to understand each other like chess players of the very top seed.

They both knew the game. Well enough to understand how very badly they needed each other.

Well enough to understand the next round was only just beginning.

"Oh, la-dies," Pete Stewart insisted through the copy of
Spin
magazine draped over his face. "Let's not get too comfortable, shall we? Break time's almost over, and there's still a half a show left to rehearse."

"Oh, certainly, Mr. Dedication," the Jacob Hamer Band's irascible bass player replied. His real name was Robert Epstein, but everyone called him Bob One. "If we find ourselves slipping," he muttered, "we'll just follow your sterling example." Bob Two, otherwise known as Robert Baker, tapped tedious polyrhythms on every available surface that wasn't his drums.

"Do as I say, not as I do," Pete insisted. "I
am
, after all, de Heap Big Boss Mon 'round heah-"

"Only until Jake gets back," Bob Two sighed, between paradiddles.

"-and I have big plans for Saturday. I think we should start the set with something special, maybe a nice musical salute to Jim and Tammy Bakker entitled 'She's So Big' . . ."

"Jake!" Bob Two rolled his eyes and called to the ceiling. "Hurry! Please!"

"It's no use," Pete replied. "You're all in me clutches now!" He cackled maniacally, the sound slightly muffled by the magazine.

Pete and his guitar lay sprawled upside-down across the sofa, legs hanging over the back. He wore black and white fuzzy bunny slippers and neon-bright mismatched socks. His baggy black ripstop pantlegs were crossed at the knees. His rainbow suspenders covered a black T-shirt that featured a smiling
Shicklegruber
and the words ADOLF HITLER'S WORLD TOUR 1939-45.

Pete Stewart had two heroes. One was Eddie Van Halen, whose technical virtuosity on the guitar and rampant good cheer onstage were the ongoing inspirations behind his own not inconsiderable style.

The other was the utterly fictional Chris Knight, a character played by an actor named Val Kilmer in the 1985 comedy
Real Genius
. The film promptly died in the theaters and was resuscitated on video, at which point it became Pete's favorite torture device: he insisted that everyone he met watch it with him at least three times, whether they liked it or not. He even looked a little like Val Kilmer: blond, hunkish, with the same winsomely Aryan features that would have been arrogant were it not for the gleam of mischief in his eyes. Pete was a great guitarist and a great showman and was completely out of his mind.

"Oh, Jesse, dear," he said expansively, "whole life forms have evolved and become extinct waiting for you to fix your program. Entire species have gone the way of the wind. . . ."

No response was forthcoming from Jesse's corner. She sat listening to a developing waveform and staring out across the room to the phone table on the far side, near a well-worn Castro convertible that usually lay between her and the main stairs. They'd both been pushed unceremoniously back from their normal positions to free up floor space for more of the rampant techno-sprawl, which clashed against the rough-hewn expanse of the hunting lodge like chrome bumpers on a grizzly bear.

Yeesh
, Pete thought.
Better hurry, Jake
.

It was 10:30 A.M., which meant that, barring disaster, their fearless leader would soon be finished playing Joe Public Relations and Doing Lunch and Talking About Important Things, and Slim Jim would be flying his ass back to the mountain.

And not a moment too soon
, Pete thought.
Last rehearsal before Rock Aid, and we sound like a goddamned garage band
.

It was true. From a performance standpoint, the last few weeks had swung between half-assed and nothing at all. The band was increasingly uneasy about the growing perception of Jacob Hamer as a one-trick pony, a smart-assed pariah with a trendy cause. It had started out as a good thing, and they had willingly milked it for all it was worth. There was an old saying:
Even bad press is good press, so long as they get your name right
.

And it was true, at first.

The news crews ate it up, of course; especially the local ones. They played heavily on the visual contrast. It made for great TV: the lodge itself, a rustic, rambling turn-of-the-century structure with a spectacular view, peeking out on a southern slope of the Appalachian spine northeast of Harrisburg; the band, riding the crest of the Rock Aid wave, giving the area a claim to fame other than nuclear plant meltdowns.

As stories went, it had all the right elements: national media splash with a scenic local slant. It had good pull. It attracted a lot of attention.

Not all of it favorable
, he thought, as the wind shifted slightly and brought a faint trace of the protesters' insipid rally songs wafting up the drive. The lodge itself was not visible from the road and, except for the big stone-and-wrought-iron gate and the sign marked PRIVATE DRIVE, was just another fleeting bit of scenery on Rt. 443.

That is, up until the Moral Majoritroids got wind of it. Now it's practically a mountaintop fortress. A regular citadel of evil, heh heh heh
.

And
, he thought,
it's under siege
. . . .

That was only one of the irritating side effects of their big hit-fluke, and not the most worrisome at all.

Because worse still was the amount of time that it took Jake away from the band. Pete had been around long enough to know that it could be the critical difference between the #1 slot with a bullet and the cutout bins at K mart. It was clear in the boredom of Bob and Bob, who were beginning to lament having turned down an offer to play with The Del-Rays. It was clear in the lion-in-a-zoo restlessness of Hempstead, the sax player, who was even now roaming the grounds and waiting for them to get their parts together, and in Pete's own increasing reliance on Hawaiian bud, nose candy, and videos for jollies.

But nowhere was it clearer than in Jesse Malloy, who hadn't spoken a nontechnical word all afternoon. It was exceedingly clear that she'd made intimate friends with the end of her rope. There was no talking to her. There was no reaching her at all. She was lost inside her headphones and the sampled waveforms on the synthesizer's computer screen.

Her back was to the rest of them. It seemed broader than usual.
Oh, God
, he thought.
She's even gaining weight
. This was as un-Jesse-like as humanly possible. In the two years he'd known her, she'd never strayed from her picturesque borderline anorexia. It was as if she just
knew
that the next call in would be from
Rolling Stone
or
Playboy
, and they just
needed
her bold, tight little lines for the cover.
O Vanity!
he thought,
where is thy shame?

Even as he thought the words, Jesse tore the headphones from her ears and slammed them against the rack that held her video monitor.

"
Dammit!
" she muttered, and the profile she displayed was pale and distracted. Pete smiled winningly.

"Are we having a problem?"

She shot him a glacially cold glance then stormed out of her seat and up the stairs without another syllable. The sound of her door slamming carried all the way down the hall and into Pete's face. It wasn't a general I-want-you-to-be-aloneness; it was a bulletin, aimed right at his head. He could almost see the little picture of himself inside the circle with the slash. NO PETE-ING ZONE.

What did I do this time?
he wondered. His relationship with Jesse was a long and convoluted one, full of more than enough ups and downs to go with the ins and outs. It could be anything. It could be his criticism of her string samples in the last song. It could be her period. It could be the fact that he was ten or so behind in the Oral Sex Sweepstakes, according to estimates taken in March. Or maybe all three.

Of course, it's always possible that she might have an actual good reason
, he realized.
Maybe I did something I didn't even know I did
. The amount of dope he was smoking these days, it wouldn't surprise him if he were to wake up one morning naked on a straw mat on top of a mountain, with a beard long enough to braid around his lotus-positioned toes.

"This does not look good," Pete said aloud. He flashed a glance at Bob and Bob, finding corroboration there.
Hey, stupid, I wouldn't leave my lover looking that miserable while I lie around with a magazine on my head
.

"Well," Bob One sighed, "what are you waiting for?"

This qualified as incentive. He made a gymnastic leap from prone to upright, put his guitar down, and shrugged.

"Guess we'll be breaking a little longer, after all."

"Get a load of
those
assholes." Yke jabbed his thumb at the tinted glass of the window on the driver's side. They were stuck at the light for the moment; there was nothing to do but watch. Across the median strip, on the west side of Broadway and Sixty-sixth, some fifty protesters were shouting and waving signs out front of Tower Records. It was a sight that he was getting used to.

Jake groaned. Jerry moaned. Yke laughed and took a swig off his Amstel Light. His feet were resting on the limousine bar, all 6'4" of him luxuriously sprawled. Jerry Crane Productions was footing the bill for their afternoon wheels, as well as the postdebacle lunch uptown. Yke loved limos, and they were twice the fun when somebody else was forking over the green.

"So they're really camping out in front of your place?" Jerry asked from his place on the passenger side.

"Every day and night," Jake replied wearily. "From seven A.M. to midnight, without fail. Furniss's got his kiddies whipped up into a tizzy, so we can count on anywhere from a dozen to a hundred of 'em outside the gate at any given time."

"Have you thought about calling the cops?"

"Yeah . . ." Jake let the word drag out lackadaisically, donning a wistful little grin. "But, see, it's rained every day for the last week, too. . . ."

Jerry laughed. Yke wasn't really paying attention. He was reading the signs on the picket line and checking for cute young feminine asses. The cute asses were few, but the signs were many. He took another swig and then proceeded to read them aloud.

"'Jesus Saves! Rock Enslaves!'" he asserted. "'Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll Will Damn Your Own Immortal Soul!'" He turned to his fellow passengers and improvised a nifty one on the spot. "Knock Rock! Knock Rock! Jesus Never Had a Cock!"

"The man's insane." Jake laughed. Jerry groaned and rolled his eyes, as though that were the end of it. Not true. Yke was inspired now. His feet swung off the bar and hit the floor, the rest of his body in close pursuit. He had opened the sun roof and stood, poking out through the hole, before the others could so much as grab his legs.

"KNOCK ROCK! KNOCK ROCK! JESUS NEVER HAD A COCK!" Yke screamed at the top of his considerable lungs, hand cupped around his mouth to project the sound straight at the protesters' heads. Several of them turned and gaped.

"FUCK YOU PEOPLE! EAT MY SOCK!" Yke elaborated, flipping them the bird with either hand.

The light turned green. The limo started to roll. So did a small handful of the faithful, who broke away from the mob and started to follow the limo up the opposite side of the street. Evidently they had recognized him. The weed of crime bears bitter fruit.