F Paul Wilson - Novel 03 (29 page)

           
 
Yet try as he might he could feel no
animosity. She was
happy.
He couldn't
remember seeing her so radiant. His only regret was that he wasn't the source
of that inner light. Part of him wanted to label her as crazy, deranged,
psychotic, but then he'd have to find another explanation for the changes
upstairs . . . and the cures.

           
 
"You think she's responsible," he
said, stepping past her to stare down at the prone, waxy figure. She looked so
much neater, so much more . . . attractive with her hair fixed and her nails
trimmed.

           
 
"I
know
she is."

           
 
Dan's gaze roamed past the flickering candles
to the flower-stuffed vases that rimmed the far side and clustered at the head
and foot of the makeshift bier.

           
 
"You've done a wonderful job with her.
You've turned a coal room into a grotto. It's like a shrine. But how do you
keep sneaking off with all these flowers? Aren't you afraid one of these trips
somebody in the church is going to catch you and ask you what you're up
to?"

           
 
"One of what trips? I haven't borrowed
any flowers from the church since she arrived."

           
 
Dan turned back to the flowers—mums,
daffodils, gardenias, gladiolus, their stalks were straight and tall, their
blossoms full and unwrinkled—then looked at Carrie again.

           
 
"But these are . . ."

           
 
“The same ones I brought down the first
day." Her smile was blinding. "Isn't it wonderful?"

           
 
Dan continued to stare into those bright,
wide, guileless eyes, looking for some hint of deception, but he found none.

           
 
Suddenly he wished for a chair. His knees felt
rubbery. He needed to sit down.

           
 
"My God, Carrie."

           
 
"No," she said. "Just His
Mother."

           
 
That wasn't what he needed to hear. Things
like this didn't happen in the real world, at least not in Dan's real world.
God stayed in his heaven and watched his creations make the best of things down
here while priests like Dan acted as go-betweens. There was no part in the
script for His Mother—especially not in the subceller of a
Lower East Side
church.

           
 
"Is it her, Carrie? Can it really be
her!"

           
 
"Yes," she said, nodding, beaming,
unhindered by the vaguest trace of doubt. "It's her. Can't you feel
it?"

           
 
The only thing Dan could feel right now was an
uneasy chill seeping into his soul.

           
 
"What have we done, Carrie? What have we
done?”

           
AIDS
CURES LINKED TO VIRGIN MARY

           
 
A prayer vigil outside
St. Joseph
's Roman Catholic Church on the
Lower East Side
last night attracted over two thousand
people. Many of those attending proclaimed the recent well-publicized AIDS
cures as miracles related to the sightings of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the
area during the past month. When asked about the connection, Fr. Daniel
Fitzpatrick, associate pastor of
St. Joseph
's, responded, "The Church has not
verified the figure that has been sighted as actually representing the Virgin
Mary, and certainly there is no established link between the figure and the
AIDS cures. Therefore I would strongly caution anyone with AIDS from abandoning
their current therapy and coming down here looking for a miracle cure. You
might just find the opposite."

           
 
THE DAILY NEWS

           
CDC
to Begin Epidemiological Study On
Lower
East
Side

           
 
(
Atlanta
, AP) The Center for Disease Control has
announced it will begin a limited epidemiological study of the five cases of
AIDS reported cured of the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Spokesman for the
Center . . .

           
 
THE
NEW
YORK TIMES

           
Paraiso

           
 
"Are these all the clippings?"
Arthur Crenshaw asked as he reread the
Times
article for the third time.

           
 
"The latest batch," Emilio said.

           
 
Arthur slipped the rest of the clippings back
into the manila envelope but held on to the
Times
and
Daily News
pieces. For a
moment he stared through the glass at the Pacific, glistening in the early
afternoon sun, then glanced to his right where Charlie lay.

           
 
He'd turned the great room into a miniature
medical facility: a state-of-the-art AIDS clinic with round-the-clock nursing,
a medical consultant with an international reputation in infectious diseases,
and a patient census of one.

           
 
All to no avail.

           
 
Charlie was fading fast. He'd received maximum
doses of the standard AIDS medications, including triple therapy, and had even
undergone a course of a new and promising drug that was still in the
experimental stages. Nothing worked. Apparently he'd picked up a particularly
virulent strain of the virus and had ignored the symptoms in the early stages.
Only scant vestiges of Charlie's immune system had remained by the time he'd
started treatment. On his last visit, Dr. Lamberson would not commit to how
much time he thought Charlie had, but he said the prognosis was very grave
indeed. Ordinarily Lamberson would laugh at the thought of a house call, but
with what Arthur was paying him, he came when called. He'd just brought Charlie
through a severe bout of
pneumocystis
pneumonia
and said another would certainly kill him.

           
 
Charlie was sleeping now. His hospital bed had
been wheeled closer to the glass wall so he could read in the sunlight, and
he'd dozed off after a few pages. He had no strength, no stamina, and the
pounds were melting from his frame like butter. And he was so
pale.
Arthur had begun insisting on
colored sheets so that he could look at his son without feeling he was being
absorbed into the mattress.

           
 
Charlie, Charlie, Arthur thought as he stared
at his son. If only you'd listened! Dear boy, you never meant to hurt anyone.
You don't deserve this. Please don't die, not until I can work up the courage
to tell you I understand, that for a while I . . . I was like you. Almost like
you.

           
 
It had been back in the sixties, in the
hedonistic dens behind the Victorian facades of Haight Ashbury. Arthur had been
looking for himself, trying anything—drugs, and sex. All kinds of sex. For a
year he had lived in a commune where group sex was a nightly ritual. Every
combination was tried—men and women together, women with women, and . . . men
with men. He had tried it for a while, even enjoyed it for a while, but as time
went on, he realized it wasn't for him.

           
 
Been
there, done that,
as the expression went.

           
 
But he'd never considered it as a lifestyle.
Yet the memories haunted him. What if someone from those days stepped forward
with stories of young Artie Crenshaw having sex with other men?

           
 
Many a night the possibility dragged him
sweating and gasping from his sleep.

           
 
Not fair. Those days were long past. An
aberration. He'd repented, and he was sure he'd been forgiven. He wanted
Charlie to be forgiven as well. But would learning about his father's past lighten
Charlie's burden?

           
 
Arthur didn't know. If only he
knew.

           
 
So much he didn't know. Especially about AIDS.
Arthur had begun his own research, learning all he could—more than he wished to
know—about HIV, ARC, CD4, p24, AZT, TP-5, and all the rest of the alphabet soup
that was such an integral part of the AIDS canon. He hired a clipping service
to comb the world's newspapers, magazines, and medical journals for anything
that pertained to AIDS. The flow of information was staggering, mind-numbing.
What he could not comprehend he brought to Dr. Lamberson's attention.

           
 
The phone rang. Emilio answered it, said a few
harsh words, then hung up.

           
 
"Who was it?" Arthur said without
looking around.

           
 
"That
puta
reporter again. She wants an interview with Charlie."

           
 
Arthur closed his eyes. Gloria Weskerna from
the
Star.
It still baffled him how
she'd got his home number.

           
 
Somehow she'd picked up word that Senator
Crenshaw's son was sick. Something was wrong with the son of a potential
presidential candidate. What could it be? She and others of her tribe had
started sniffing around like stray dogs in a garbage dump, hunting for anything
ripe and juicy. Emilio had tightened security, carefully screening the nurses,
setting up a round-the-clock guard at the front gate, and spiriting Dr.
Lamberson and the nurses in and out in the black-glassed limousine.

           
 
"Change the phone number, Emilio,"
he said without looking around.

           
 
"Yes,
Senador.
If you wish, I can change this reporter's mind about hounding you."

           
 
Arthur turned to face his security man.
"Really? How would you do that?"

           
 
"She might have a serious accident—a bad
fall, perhaps, after which her home could burn and her car could be stolen. She
would have so many other things on her mind that she would not have time to
bother you."

           
 
Emilio said it so casually, as if planning a
shopping list for the supermarket. Not a glimmer of amusement lightened his
Latin features. Arthur knew he was not being put on. Emilio's sense of humor
was about as active as Charlie's immune system.

           
 
Arthur trusted Emilio implicitly, but
sometimes he was very frightening.

           
 
"I don't think so, Emilio. We'll just
continue to stonewall. Our position will remain aloof: We admit nothing, we
deny nothing. Implicit in our silence is the stance that these rags are not
worthy of serious attention. That's the only way to keep the lid on
things."

           
 
"As you wish,
Senador."

           
Arthur realized he could keep the
lid on Charlie's illness only so long as he stayed alive. If he died . . . he
reminded himself with a pang that it wasn't really an
if
—it was a
when . . .
and
soon.

           
When Charlie died, the shit would
hit the fan. He might be able to dissuade the medical examiner from doing an
autopsy, but the death certificate was another matter. He could not expect Dr.
Lamberson to jeopardize his reputation, his medical license, and his entire
career by falsifying a legal document.

           
 
He winced as he imagined the headlines.

           
SENATOR CRENSHAW'S SON DIES OF
AIDS!!

           
 
That would be damaging, but he could weather
it. He could not be held accountable for his son's actions. In fact, he could
turn it around and blame Charlie's death on the moral bankruptcy of modern
America
.
America
was on the road to ruin, and who better to
turn it around and lead it from the darkness into the light than a man who had
been so grievously wounded by the nation's moral turpitude?