Metal Angel (25 page)

He shrugged and reached for his trousers, tried not to let it show that he was shaking as he pulled them on. This was the kid who always led with his chin? And he had felt guilty sometimes because he never got around to teaching him how to defend himself? Jesus. This guy did not need anything an old cop could teach him. Good thing he had not actually tried to punch the sonuvabitch's lights out. He got his shirt and boots on, reached for his suitcase, opened it to throw his toothbrush in.

“You've gone bad, Volos,” he said bitterly to the cheap luggage.

“I came here to be bad, McCardle.”

“God forgive you.”

“God can go to hell.”

“He'll join you, then.” Texas snapped the suitcase shut again, swung it off the bed, and headed toward the door. Didn't look back.

Mikey couldn't sleep because of the pain in his head. Mommy and the roadie lady kept giving him mashed-up pills that were supposed to make the pain go away, but it didn't. He lay like he was asleep anyway, because he felt so tired. Gabe was asleep. Mommy was supposed to be asleep, but she had gotten up and was at the door listening to the shouting down the hall. Uncle Texas was shouting, which made Mikey feel as if he wanted to cry. Uncle Texas was nice, and nice people weren't supposed to yell like that. It was scary to hear the way he was shouting. But Mikey was too tired to cry.

Because Gabe was asleep and Mommy had her head out in the hallway, he knew neither of them could see the black angel seeping through the crack in the ceiling right above his crib. He knew it was an angel because it looked just like his friend Birdman except it was all black instead of pretty colors and it wasn't him. It didn't have any face, and Birdman always had a face and it was usually nice though it didn't always smile. Birdman was Mommy's boyfriend and Birdman liked Mikey and Gabe and they liked him. Once Birdman had let Mikey wear his headband with the silver ornaments. He made shadow shapes with his hands that weren't just animals but could have been almost anything. He told stories about the Sefiroth, who were the Princes of Heaven and Hell, and about the Grigori, who came down to teach the sons of Adam and daughters of Eve, and about how someday Chayyliel would swallow the world and seven Sefira of the Right Hand would put out the stars in the sky.

Mikey wished Birdman would come in and tell him stories to help him stop being sick. But Birdman was angry too. Mikey could hear the angriness in his voice. It was not loud, but he could hear it all the way down the hall.

The black angel seeped in and spread across the ceiling like a stain. He could see through it to the fly spots and things that lay behind it on the chalky paper or whatever it was. He could see through its wings too, and they were not feathery or nice at all. They were wings like a snake might have, all scales and skin. The angel hung there flat, the way a black-plastic garbage bag is flat on the road sometimes, and did not speak to him. Mikey considered the angel rude and wondered what it wanted. This was the third time he had seen it in two days. Mommy and the roadie lady and Gabe had all looked straight at it like they were not seeing anything. But maybe angels flattened against ceilings were an ordinary thing to them.

The black angel troubled him every time he saw it, but he always felt too tired to ask about it or say anything to it. Talking was a lot of trouble when you were just two and a half years old.

He wished if Birdman was going to be angry he would come do it at the black angel and maybe chase it away.

Partway down the hall, Texas met up with Angie Bradley, who was standing at her door. She had been listening to the ruckus, of course. Saw the suitcase. Knew the score.

“Texas, don't go,” she said without preamble.

“Got to, Ange. Just want to say good-bye.” He had headed toward her room on purpose. Would have knocked at her door if she had not been waiting for him. Felt his voice thicken in spite of all the Bogart movies he had watched in his life, and he had to take refuge in small talk. “How's Mikey?”

“He'll be okay. It's just a bug.” She brushed away the question, stepped outside and softly closed the door so the kids could sleep. “Texas, please. Give it a few hours. Go someplace, have a beer or something, come back and talk with Volos after you're both calmed down. You know he won't stay mad. He's lost without you.”

“He's got you.” Texas gave what she was saying some thought, then shook his head. “He's using junk. I can't take it.”

“He says it will not hurt him, he did not imagine himself to become addicted to things.”

Angie Bradley understood some things deeply and some things not at all. Drugs were one of the latter. She could have no idea how—how malignant they could be. But Texas did not feel he had to stay around and protect her from them or Volos or anything; she had that sheen of innocence to keep her safe. As for Volos—Texas swore to himself that he was gonna write Volos off. He was not going to care anymore.

“I still can't take it,” he said. “I just can't take what he's doing.”

She saw that he had reached a limit, and nodded. “Where will you go?”

“Back to L.A., I guess.” Smog city. High prices. Crowds. Stand in line for everything. “Get a job at the dry cleaner's again. Live at the Y. I don't know what else to do.” Damn his voice for choking up on him like that.

She said, “Texas, go home.”

What the hell was she talking about? “I don't have a home.”

“Sure you do. Go back to Wyoma.”

“She told me—” Why was she making him talk about Wyoma? “She said—” He couldn't manage it.

Angie helped him out. “She told you not to come back? Texas, to me that just means quit fooling around. She wanted to light a fire under you. She wanted you to get your butt back there right away.”

He stared at her.

She said quietly and with utter conviction, “Texas, she'll take you back. I know she will.”

Maybe once she would have, if he hadn't gone and let his pride get in the way. But it was too late now. He shook his head.

“She will! She'd be crazy not to, a sweet man like you. Texas, try. Please. What do you have to lose?”

“Nothing,” he admitted. Absolutely nothing anymore, not even his pride. It was all gone, heart, hope, soul. He felt empty as last year's cabbage crock. All used up.

“What's the worst she can do to you?”

“Get down the gun and shoot me.”

“Texas—”

“And right now I don't care if she does.”

“You'll do it?”

“Yes.” He tried not to let the idea catch hold of him too hard. Told himself it would be good just to see Mingo County, to see the hills again—real hills, not the fake Hollywood kind—and breathe homegrown air, and hear the whippoorwills calling. Told himself not to expect much more than that. “It would be a waste to head back west when I've made it this far east,” he said.

Angie looked as if she was going to laugh at him or pull his hat down over his eyes, which would not have surprised him. She did those things a lot. But then she did neither. Instead, she stood on her tiptoes and kissed him. “ 'Bye,” she said, before he could catch his breath. “You got money?”

He nodded, though in fact he didn't have much.

“Good luck.” She went back into her room. He watched the door click shut. Stood there awhile.

Looked back down the hallway. Volos was nowhere in sight. Probably went running to Mercy for a fix. Texas knew he should go find him, if only to try to collect some pay—

To hell with pay. He knew he couldn't face the kid again without coming apart one way or another.

He found the bus station easily enough, just followed his cop instincts to the worst part of town, and there it was. He didn't check his wallet till he got there and asked about fares. Just about enough in it to get him into West Virginia.

There was a retarded woman with scraggly gray hair begging near the stairs. Ticket in hand, Texas passed her, hesitated, then turned back and gave her his last dollar bill. That left him change for a phone call. And hell, he wasn't going to be wanting no hot dog for supper anyway. Bus fumes always made him feel half sick. He felt that way already.

It wasn't until close to midnight, braced in his bus seat with his chest feeling tight as a gnat's ass, looking out on darkness, knowing he was not going to get any sleep again, that he admitted it: The ache was in his heart as much as his gut. God, he needed comforting. Time was, he could have taken his pain to an angel, and the angel would have put his arms around him, and Texas would have hidden his hands under the feathery healing wings. But from what he had seen, that angel was gone. Gone like spit down a creek.

chapter fourteen

Close to midnight, and the concert showed no signs of ending; Volos was still cookin' worse than the cauldron in
Macbeth
. There he was onstage, Mr. Toil and Trouble himself, a hellbroth wearing black leathers and a horned guitar. Earplugs firmly in place, Mercedes watched Volos from the lighting platform and detested him more than ever before, loathed him because he was so good. For three hours Volos had performed with wings black as charcoal, with eyes that smoldered, giving renditions so hot they smoked. No love ballads tonight. It was all suicide tempo, all fury, all crotchthrob and clenched fist. The screaming women in the crowd loved it, but the band could barely keep up with him. Even from the distance Mercedes could see how the guitarists played with frantic fingers and pale faces, how the drummer kept banging out the beat but looked strained, scared. Poor clowns, exposed there onstage like on a rock at high tide, a lunatic singer in their spotlight and a moon-mad sea of people roaring at their feet. Mercedes himself felt not at all afraid, because he was perched well out of the reach of anyone in that capacity audience, but he could see how Volos had stormlashed the crowd until it frothed like a whirlpool in the bowl of the arena.

GO BUTCHER YOUR JUDAS SELF

AND HANG THE MEAT ON A TREE
.

YOU SAY HOW CAN SOMEONE YOU LOVE

TURN INTO AN ENEMY?

I'LL TELL YOU HOW
.

IT HAPPENED THE DAY

YOU BETRAYED ME
.

Volos seemed to be trying to inflict permanent hearing loss. The sound was turned up past the point of distortion, so that those below the speakers did not so much hear music as feel it assaulting them, like rough sex, spanking their ears, shaking their viscera, coming at them with whips and chains.

GO CARVE OUT YOUR JUDAS HEART

AND EAT IT LIKE IODINE CANDY

THEN LOOK IN THE MIRROR

WITH A JUDAS TEAR

AND TELL ME WHAT YOU SEE.

WHEN DID IT ALL

COME APART? THE DAY

YOU BETRAYED ME
.

Engulfing as the music was, still it was almost drowned in the sound of screams—ecstasy or pain? Not that there was really much difference. Nevertheless, Mercedes glanced down—then he stared. This was truly interesting. He had never seen masses of people actually injuring one another before, and it was better than watching a snuff movie—he did not have to wonder how much of this carnage was faked, because all of it was indisputably real. Every one of the groundlings seemed to have gone berserk, pushing toward the stage, and those people crushed against the rails and shrieking, yes, they were being hurt. The ones with the white, upturned faces, though, he could not tell whether they were fainting or dead. Some of them were lifted off their feet, floating in the crowd like fish bellies on a flood, but others were sinking, perhaps would be trampled. Fascinated, Mercedes watched a hefty man disappear from sight, gone under the maelstrom.

He felt a touch on his arm. “Boss?”

“Keep it on white,” Mercedes told the lighting man without looking at him. Tonight had been simple. Volos had stayed in black wings, black clothes. Mercedes had run a classy show in black and white. It was easy.

“I—Boss …”

The man was not concerned with lighting. He looked as pale as the fish bellies down below. Mercedes congratulated himself that he was a creative artist, not one of these snivelers who actually had to care about things. He barked at the man, “So what do you expect me to do about it?”

“I—I don't know. Get on the horn or something …”

Nobody was doing anything about it. Volos sang on—he probably did not even know what was happening out beyond the stage lights. The security people had apparently scaled down their priorities from “crowd management” to “staying alive.” Mercedes did not see them trying to fish the fainters out of the audience. He did not see them at all. If that paragon among assholes, Texas, had been there, he would probably want them to stop the concert, he would probably be riding in on a white horse about now, firing silver bullets into the air. But Texas was gone, and Mercedes was glad. And the show blazed on.

Volos, onstage with his black wings and his burning passion and all his fatal charisma, swung into “Before I Die”—

Goddamn him, he wouldn't die. Ever. Because there were people down there willing to die for him. Look at them. A girl, her face near his feet, squeezed against the stage rails so hard that all the air was pressed out of her, she couldn't even squeak, her ribs were caving in, and old Donne was right about the euphemism he used for sex, the look on her face was just the same, blank-eyed and beatific, as she either came or expired, Mercedes didn't know or much care which—and in that moment truth screwed him, pointed and hard, and this was what truth said: People would never do that for him.

Nobody was ever going to sob and faint and risk being trampled for him. Nobody was going to scream when he smiled. Nobody was going to remember him and keep him alive forever. Nobody was going to worship at his altar or lie down for him and die. Never. There on his perch he stood, seeing it all happen for Volos, and it was never going to happen for him. He knew that now. Because there was something in Volos that he, Mercedes, just didn't have.