The Broom of the System (38 page)

“Lenore I swear to God you will just not believe it,” said Candy.

“What the heck is going on here?” Lenore said, looking around. “Are we having sewer trouble?”

“Not exactly, come on, it’s Vlad the Impaler,” Candy said, starting to try to pull Lenore toward the stairs, up which the black cables from the vans ran and disappeared from sight. Candy was wearing that violet dress.

“Hey, ho, and hello,” Lang said to Candy. He hefted the suitcases.

“Hi,” said Candy, barely looking at Lang. “Lenore, come on. You’ll flip and die!”

“What can Vlad the Impaler have to do with vans and letters and cables?”

“Mrs. Tissaw heard him say things, God knows what, really, and she just freaked
out.”
One of the shoulder straps of the violet dress had slipped off Candy’s shoulder. Lang hefted the suitcases again. “She’s getting him on television. Well, religious television, on cable. But still, television.”

“Television?”

“Vlad the Impaler?” said Wang-Dang Lang.

“My bird,” Lenore said. “Who is now troublingly and also obscenely able to talk.” She turned to Candy. “Who gave permission for him to get put on television?”

“Mrs. Tissaw says it’s in lieu of the bill for the chewed wall and the guano-damage to the floor, which she knows you can’t pay because she talked to Prietht at the board and Prietht very helpfully told her you’re broke ...” Candy stopped and looked up the staircase. There was noise from the third floor. Lots of it. “But look,” she said, “come on, they’re going to make him a star, they say. They say
literally.
”

“Literally? A star? Of what?”

“Come on. ”

Lenore let herself be pulled. Lang followed her and Candy up the stairs with the suitcases, watching their bottoms.

“Friends, as subscribing members of the Reverend Hart Lee Syke’s Partners With God Club you can expect the entry of the Almighty into your own personal life in twenty-four hours or less,” Vlad the Impaler was saying, staring blankly into a lavishly unfamiliar little unsmeared mirror perimetered with tiny light bulbs. Lenore’s own personal room was full of television cameras and towering metal lamps, and bright-white light. The room was cruising at about a hundred degrees. Thick black cables, and panels with colored lights winking on and off, and sunglasses were everywhere. The brown velvet chair, the uneven-legged desk chair, the bed, and all the black corduroy cushions on the windowsills were occupied by people holding various sorts of electronic equipment, or thick sheaves of paper, and all smoking, and all tapping cigarette ashes onto the floor. Vlad the Impaler was in his cage, his enormous feet hooked over the arms of a tiny director’s chair, licking tentatively at the hot surface of his lit-up mirror. A truly enormous gray box of a television camera, with a little red light on top, was trained on him. Pushed back onto Vlad’s spiky pink mohawk Lenore thought she could see a tiny pair of sunglasses. Vlad the Impaler’s old smeared mirror, on its chain of Frequent and Vigorous paper clips, was gone.

“Holy shit,” said Lenore.

“You wouldn’t believe what’s been happening,” said Candy.

“One hell of a dress, there, ma‘am,” Lang said to Candy. “A. S. Lang, here.”

“Perfect!
Perfect!”
came shouts from a huge man with a white leather body suit, and an enormous beehive of sculptured black hair, and several chins. Red sequins on the chest of his body suit formed the letters P.W.G.

“Love it! Love that bird!” the man was yelling.

“Cut!” yelled somebody else, from the middle of the mob near the windows. The windows were smeared with steam, from breath.

“Twist my major limbs if that’s not Hart Lee Sykes himself,” Wang-Dang Lang said, staring at the man in white leather.

“Who?” said Lenore.

“It is, that’s Hart Lee Sykes,” said Candy. She got close to Lenore’s ear to make herself heard. “He’s this truly enormous wheel at CBN, the Christian Broadcasting Network? He used to host this show called ‘Real People and Animals of Profound Religious Significance,’ a sort of religious spin-off of ‘Real People.’ But now he hosts this incredibly successful show on cable called ‘The Partners With God Club.’ ”

“He’s A-OK,” Lang said to Lenore, setting down the suitcases amid a litter of Styrofoam cups and candy wrappers and butts. “My Daddy watches his show all the time. My Daddy thinks Hart Lee’s the spiritual balls.”

“Who are you?” Candy said to Lang.

“This is Andrew Sealander Lang,” said Lenore, “a friend of Rick’s and now a very temporary F and V employee. I’m supposed to get Mrs. Tissaw to rent him Misty’s room while she’s in the hospital.”

“And a friend of you fine ladies, now, too, I hope,” said Lang. “I—”

“Inside out! A camel! The bird has been touched by Auden!” shrieked Vlad the Impaler. A sound-man yelped and tore off his headphones.

“No, no, no!” screamed Hart Lee Sykes, stamping a pointy-toed cowboy boot on the wooden floor. “The next line is ‘All contributing subscriptions are tax-deductible.’ Cindy honey ... where’s Cindy?” Hart Lee Sykes spotted Candy by the door with Lenore and Lang and made his way over as all heads turned toward them. Lenore began to edge toward the door. Sykes towered over all of them, even Lang. To Candy he said, “Cindy honey, you’ve simply got to make the miraculous little incarnation behave. Now if you‘ll—”

“Reverend Sykes, this is finally Lenore Beadsman, who owns Vlad,” Candy said, preempting Lenore’s flight with an iron hand at the small of her back.

The Reverend stopped, turned to Lenore, seemed almost to be getting ready to bow. “Miss Beadsman, at ever so long last. The owner, to the extent that any single man can be called the owner, of this animal—dare I say animal?—touched by the Lord and guided by His hand to His humble servant, me.” Sykes’s voice had risen from whisper to shout. A murmer went through the room from the people looking through scripts and checking equipment.

“Jesus knew the sex was great!” squawked Vlad the Impaler.

“A pleasure to meet you, and a sincere expression of the profoundest gratitude for allowing us into your home and into the presence of an animal of vital theological importance,” Sykes was saying to Lenore, ignoring Lang’s outstretched hand. “Our friend Mrs. Tilsit has told me all about you and your profound relationship with your profound pet.”

“Tissaw,” said Candy Mandible.

“Tissaw.” Sykes smiled. “A bird through which the voice of the Lord has been personally heard by me to cry out for exposure to the American people, through the medium of, again, to my profound and humble honor, me.”

“Hmmm,” Lenore said.

“Lenore, Lenore,” twittered Vlad the Impaler. “Make me come. I need space, as a person. Let’s get rid of this disgusting unprofessional mirror. You will be a star in the electronic firmament of American evangelical theology! Like
Charlotte’s Web!”

“Boy, he’s gotten even worse,” Lenore said to Candy.

“Worse?” cried Hart Lee Sykes. “Worse? The lady jests with us all, friends. Miss surely you are aware that your feathered companion has been touched by the hand of the Lord Himself.”

“Probably bit it, then,” muttered Lenore.

“Mmm-hmmm,” the crowd of technicians was rumbling at Sykes.

“... that he represents a theological development of the very highest order, a manifestation of the earthly intervention and influence of the Almighty comparable in significance to the weeping fir tree of Yrzc, Poland, and the cruciform tar-pit formations of Sierra Leone! Worse, she jests!”

The crowd of technicians laughed.

“Hart Lee, sweetheart,” crooned Vlad the Impaler.

“You live here too?” Lang whispered to Candy.

“Sshh,” Candy hissed. Lang grinned and put his finger to his lips, nodding.

“Mrs. Tissaw told you to put Vlad the Impaler on religious television?” Lenore was saying to Reverend Sykes. Vlad the Impaler was going to the bathroom on his little director’s chair.

“My little friend, the directive to afford this creature exposure to an American populace crying out for divine direction and reaffir mation came from a source far, far higher than Mrs. Tyson, or you, or I!” cried Sykes, standing on tiptoe in his pointed boots.

Lenore stared at Sykes. “Not my father.”

“Exactly, young Miss. The
Father
of us all!” Sykes looked around him. “I am the recipient of the mandate which all true humble servants of the Lord pray for, all their miserable lives. Thank you. Thank you.” Sykes made motions toward trying to kiss Lenore’s hand.

“It’s
Tissaw,”
Candy said wearily. Sykes gave her the fish-eye.

“Andrew Sealander Lang, here, padre,” Lang said to Sykes, taking the Reverend’s pudgy hand from Lenore’s and shaking it. “One of Ms. Beadsman’s closest friends and a deep admirer of her bird, and of your show, sir.”

The Reverend shook Lang’s hand without looking at him. He stared into Lenore’s eyes. Lenore could smell his breath. “Miss Beadsman, you are in a position to aid us in delivering to the American people and to the world the Lord’s true contemporary message, through His chosen feathered vehicle.”

“Look, I’m afraid I just don’t understand what you’re talking about,” said Lenore. “There’s a pretty troubling explanation for Vlad’s talking, I’m afraid, that shouldn‘t—”

“The only even remotely problematic problem is that the Lord is moving in such very mysterious ways through your pet that the miraculous little thing isn’t saying quite what requires to be said, quite as quickly as he might, given the extreme expense involved in delivering the message of the Lord these days,”said the Reverend. “The bird in its secular aspect seems to be so understandably caught up in the ecstasy of the Lord’s verbal presence within him that he goes far beyond what actually needs and is proper to be said, given the import of the mission.”

“Little fucker sounds pretty healthy to me,” said Vlad the Impaler, crunching a sunflower seed.

“A case in point,” the Reverend said solemnly to Lenore. “What you find yourself in a position to do is to help the bird deliver the message intended and required. His next line in the relevant initial message is, ‘All contributing subscriptions are tax-deductible.’ ” The Reverend’s smile reached almost to his ears. “If you could simply use your privileged position to reemphasize to the bird the vital importance of his mission, and prompt him to deliver the lines he’s directed by our Father through me to deliver, and also perhaps get him to stop biting the makeup-man ...” Sykes gestured toward a pale man with a bandaged hand.

“I still don’t get it,” said Lenore.

“May I, Reverend?” Candy said, trying to ignore something Lang was whispering into her ear.

“By all means.” Sykes folded his arms and tapped a pointed boot on the floor. The director looked at his watch.

“What apparently happened was that Mrs. Tissaw was in here dusting,” Candy said, “two days ago, the day you went right from the switchboard to Clarice’s and then I guess to Rick‘s, ’cause you sure weren’t around, and I was out too, because Nick Allied and I finally ...”

“Ahem,” said the Reverend.

“Anyway,” Candy said, “Mrs. Tissaw was in here, and she heard the little ... the bird, and he I guess was saying religious stuff ...”

“Of the profoundest importance,” Sykes added.

“... and she just had a complete spasm, from excitement, and she called ‘Real People,’ to try to get them to come have a look at him, because he’d supposedly been squawking something about ‘Real People’ ...”

“Well Candy you know how come he was saying that,” Lenore said.

“We all know tonight,” said Sykes, nodding solemnly. Affirmation-noise swelled from the cigarette smoke above the technicians’ heads.

Candy rolled her eyes. “And I guess ‘Real People’ figured he wasn’t their cup of tea, weird-mixture-of-Biblical-and-obscene-stuff-wise, but the guy in charge told the guy on the phone to tell her to call CBN ...”

“Which is of course me,” Sykes said.

“And she did, and they flew somebody out here from the Reverend’s office,” Candy said. “And this was yesterday, when you were obviously totally out of town, and your Dad’s office said your brother didn’t have a phone, and that you were unreachable.”

“LaVache and his stupid lymph node,” muttered Lenore.

“But anyway the guy came and had a look, and I guess Vlad was just in incredible form, that day.”

“As was of course meant from the beginning to be,” said the Reverend.

“And but anyway the guy from ‘Partners With God Club’ saw him, and I guess just did a spiritual back-flip, and spasmed his way over to the phone, with Mrs. Tissaw like wringing her hands for joy beside him ...”

“No need to embellish, Cindy,” said Sykes, looking with annoyance over at Wang-Dang Lang, who was at the cage, poking at Vlad the Impaler through the bars with a section of Styrofoam cup, while Vlad eyed him beadily.

“And first the guy tried to call me, at work, to get me to try to call you, at Mrs. Tissaw’s surprisingly considerate suggestion, but I guess they never could get through, because the phone-situation at F and V is still really biting the big wazoo ...”

“Ahem,” said Sykes.

“But obviously if you were phoneless I wouldn’t have been able to reach you anyway, but anyway they tried, and then the guy of course called ‘Partners With God Club’ headquarters, and more or less told Father Sykes the story, and I guess they all decided old Vlad was much hotter stuff than just for ’Real Religious People’ or whatever, and the Reverend hightailed it up here from Atlanta ... ”

“And the rest you can of course glean from what you see and feel here tonight,” said Sykes. “So then, if you’ll simply indicate to the bird its appointed lines, we can—”

“So it looks like Mrs. Tissaw is who I ought to talk to,” Lenore said. “Because if she thinks she can just put a drugged bird on television, without even—”