“It’s mine,” Lyle said.
The man put on glasses, scrutinized it. “Father—”
“Unknown,” Lyle said without hesitation. “He was a goddamned son of a bitch who left my mother when I was about to be born, and so she just as soon not have his name on that paper; but it’s me.”
Even so, Thomas Clarence—frowning at the young man’s language—said he’d have to verify the check with the “righteous Bud and Sis,” whom he called “on their private line, always in touch in case of urgency.” Obviously on familiar terms with them, he chuckled and said, “God bless you” several times, and added, off the telephone, to Lyle: “I like working for good folks, honorable folks, following their righteous instructions, never question.” He spoke into the telephone again: “Ummm, yes, of course, everything’s being handled right and according to your wise instructions.”
His smile told Lyle they had stood by the check. “They tell me you’re a follower of the Word, and their word is good enough for me,” said Mr. Thomas Clarence. “I don’t question the righteous,” he asserted. He proposed a bank account, in the Ministry’s name, of course, but for him to draw on. “That way—”
Too complicated. “I’ll take the cash,” Lyle said.
“Lots of money to carry around with you,” Mr. Clarence cautioned.
Lyle opted for the cash.
Thomas Clarence looked at him with steely eyes. “I would strongly suggest that you—”
With a wide smile, Lyle asked for the cash, please.
“Maybe now you’ll buy yourself a horse!” Mr. Clarence snapped.
As he walked out of the bank with a lot of cash and two money orders—for Sylvia and Clarita—Lyle told himself that when he found Sister Matilda—and he would, he would—he would explain why he took the tainted money. But what if what Brother Bud and Sister Sis had said about her absconding with funds was true?
Dodging behind a building and looking around to make sure nobody saw, he stuffed the bills into his Tony Lama boots.
8
The predicament of the Lord’s Cowboy.
Lyle was through, wondering, as always, whether he should bow.
No need to wonder about anything further because—
Brother Dan pounced onto the stage and landed with a loud thud!
He was a ferocious evangelist who had traveled all the way from Georgia for tonight’s healings, a star evangelist who had performed more cures and exorcisms than even he, himself, in his humility, remembered. A fierce man whose hair seemed to have been shaken about by a fierce wind, his stocky body agile, he screamed out his message in a flood of words:
“The Lord’s aimin’ massive wrath right now at evil souls wanderin’ the earth, but he’s givin’ members of this congregation a last chance to placate His ire, be granted a passport to Heaven! Give your hearts, give your bounty. Give!”
Out came new donations and letters carried in boxes by God’s Little Angels, cardboard wire crowns sprinkled with tinsel.
“These come from folks cravin’ salvation, freedom from pain, and they send all they have, and in return what do they get? A bushel of miracles!” Brother Dan thrust his hands up and shook his head at the wonder of God’s wrath and bounty.
Cries came up, echoing, “Grant us miracles.”
Brother Dan lowered his voice, seemed about to kneel, sprang up. “Pour out of your heart, pour out of your pockets. Be a soldier of the Lord, wage his war, donate your ammunition to fight the Old Devil. Give, give, give!”
“Praise God!” … “Lord protect us!” … “Grant us miracles and a passport to Heaven.”
They squirmed, they trembled, they grasped at the air, they cried, they laughed, they sprang into the aisles, they quivered and fainted and babbled in tongues, they danced, they howled, they reached for heaven, they sank crouching on the floor.
Brother Dan spread his hands, inviting. “Come forth to be purified of demons, to cast away ole Satan. That will be done not by my humble hands—I am but a lowly servant of the Lord—it will be done by Jesus, through these hands.” He scattered the invisible bounty in his hands. … “Come forth now and cleanse yourselves, be slain in the spirit of the Lord.” He stretched beneficent hands to those already making their way toward him.
Lyle watched the parade of the pained. What to think about God? How did He allow this suffering—and, then, allow it to be used, abused, this procession of the trembling, crawling, hobbling, screaming to be cured, to be struck on the forehead and healed—for how long? It was sad, it was frightening. He would leave this fraudulent circus he had performed in, right now!
“Just received this!” Sister Sis ran breathlessly sobbing to Brother Dan. “Special delivery!” She was carrying a jar. “Sent to us by saintly woman.”
Brother Bud put a reassuring hand on her quivering shoulders, took the fat glass from her, and ceremoniously handed it to Brother Dan.
“Doctors said it couldn’t be removed,” Sister Sis wept, “told the poor woman she would die in a month, and she—“She stopped, racked with sobs.
“It was during your pleadings with Jesus, Brother Dan,” Brother Bud managed to continue, “that the poor soul was able to shed it, just tore it out of her bosom. And here it is: The deadly tumor!”
Brother Bud held the jar up—up high like a trophy—before the congregation.
Gasps! Oohs! Ahs! “A miracle!” Wild applause!
Sister Sis squeezed out words, “She sent this to us in a humble jar as proof of God’s mercy, and she sent all her funds to help bring His miracles to others.”
Brother Dan inhaled, exhaled—loudly. He roared: “Praise God!”
Screams! Delirium!
An attendant took the jar from Brother Dan, who bowed in reverence. As the attendant passed Lyle, Lyle saw the dark mass inside it, bloody streaks of red creeping through a dark mass. The jelly beans he’d seen that first day when Brother Bud and Sister Sis had shushed the man and woman carrying them? Jelly beans squashed and put into a gluey liquid? Yes!—and the jar sent to him in the motel room as a reminder confirmed that.
His legs and feet were returning him to the stage, to expose, to—He stopped when he heard Brother Dan’s next words.
“—a ho-mo-sex-u-al”—Brother Dan masticated each syllable—“driven by lust for his own sex, cast into the pit of perdition, and staggering to find his way here, to be driven of his sins, his base desires, his unnatural longings.”
“Make me clean!” A young man, slender, knelt before the ferocious preacher.
“He has traveled for miles to be saved,” Sister Sis emphasized for the congregation that waited, spellbound now, enthralled by something more, something else, something strange and thrilling.
Brother Dan glared down at the kneeling boy. “—a child who has strayed into Satan’s perversions!” he screamed.
The boy held his hands pressed together under his chin, his face raised, his eyes closed, his lips slightly parted. “Cleanse me!”
Lyle recognized the boy. Raul from Rio Escondido.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
1
Crisis at Spago, and everyone is there.
Where the hell is she?”
“Who?”
Only when Rusty Blake asked her, Who? did Tarah Worth realize she had spoken her apprehension aloud. The rented limousine had minutes ago deposited them at the portals of Spago in Beverly Hills to replicate the scene in Return to the Valley of the Dolls, a replication that would challenge fiction and assure her the greatest role of all time. The pretty young woman behind the reservations booth had consulted her seating chart and had asked them to follow her, ushering them past the lush garden (oh, oh—Tarah’s pulse quickened with anxiety), until she remembered Lenora’s last-minute call: “Changed tactic—it’s too damn cold tonight for the garden, and those damn heaters heat up only a part of your ass. Tonight it’s inside, or else those doors will clang shut on you like a guillotine blade when the inside people announce they’re getting a chill from
the garden!—and keep this in mind, babe: Ya wanna show off your boobs; so you can’t afford a chill.”
The hostess was leading them too far—toward the hidden back rooms (“Doomsville,” said Lenora), and so Tarah prepared to speak rehearsed words: “This table will not do,” but she was glad she didn’t speak them, because she and Rusty were led to a kind table in the main dining room. That’s when Tarah, thrust into new waves of anxiety, asked, “Where the hell is she?”
“Who?”
“Liz Smith.”
“Uh, yeah, like she’s supposed to see how, like, great we look together, right?—just like in the ‘doll’ movie when we’d be, like, paired up.” He ran his fingers through his mane, giving his hair a more disheveled look.
“Hey! There’s Barbra and, like, What’s His Name,” Rusty drawled, careful not to lose his laid-back attitude—but he did, when he slid sideways and recovered with a jerk and even dreamier eyes.
Was he drunk? Coked up? Both! It had been difficult to tell in the car because he always babbled like that. Tarah had a feeling of desolation. If Barbra was here, then wouldn’t Liz be catering to her?
But it wasn’t Barbra.
It was Sharon.
Tarah considered snatching one of those gleaming knives and killing herself—no, Sharon. Of course, Liz Smith would want to talk to Sharon. …
It wasn’t Sharon!
Tarah lowered the top of her Versace dress—last year’s; would anyone notice that?
Glenn Close!
No, no! Please not Julia! No!
As the sommelier appeared to make his suggestions as arranged by Lenora, there was a buzz at the entrance, unusual at Spago’s. That kind of excitement would be aroused by only two people in the universe, Tarah knew, and one, Jacqueline Susann, was dead. So it had to be—
Liz Smith!
Catch her attention quick!
Rusty Blake beat her to it. As the imposing woman in an impeccable gray suit neared, he stood up and said, “Uh, hey, Liz, I didn’t, like, recognize you at first, you look, like, different—kinda like it isn’t you, ya know?—but, hey, wow—whatever!—you look, like, great—I think!” He sat down, seeming to float away somewhere.
There was a terrifying buzz about the famous restaurant, muffled laughter—and a sob, hers, Tarah Worth’s—oh, the embarrassment of it, to have this stupid bit actor talk that way to the great Liz, who stood frozen glaring at him, and then—oh, God, please no—shifting the accusing glare to her. Tarah rose, thought she said, “Excuse me, please,” and made her dignified way to the exit. To hell with dignified—she ran.
“Isn’t that—?” Mrs. Renquist, sitting in the chilly garden asked as Tarah Worth fled past them. She asked that to herself, not to Mr. Renquist.
Mr. Renquist nevertheless answered. “It is, yeah, that fuckin’ bitch—”
“Hmmmm,” pondered Mrs. Renquist, soothing her brow.
2
Reverberations out of the horror at Spago.
Liz Smith
Los Angeles.—A horrifying incident occurred last night at celebrity-studded Spago’s. Fading “star” Tarah Worth and her rowdy drunk companion created a commotion that involved this columnist. Upon seeing me, Rusty Blake blabbed incoherently at me, causing Tarah to leave him to attendants to usher him out into the street as he asserted loudly that he was not a “fag.” Hmmm. I had not known till now that Tarah Worth was what is known vulgarly as a fag hag.
In her bedroom, Tarah woke up with a scream. She had dreamt that Liz had written a column about last night’s debacle at Spago. Thank God she hadn’t stayed to experience the hideous aftermath that must have occurred. She’d stay in bed, not be tempted to read what Liz had actually written in her column. She would—
The phone rang aggressively, and so it must be Lenora enraged, gloating, laughing (only she could do all that at the same time) at the debacle. Tarah answered in a weak voice, as if she was ill, very ill—and, of course, she was.
“Did you read—?”
“No—ummm—not feeling well—uh—what time—?”
“Someone at Spago last night pretended to be Liz Smith and almost got away with it until Rusty spotted the woman as a fake and blew her cover. Sweetheart, and your exit! Wow! Terrific loyalty to the real Liz, and that’s what we’re calling it in a P.R. release. Great publicity!”
Saved!—and in Liz’s favor. Tarah would have wept with joy and gratitude except that now Lenora was barking:
“They’re trying to create a new meaning for ‘dolls,’ and what the writers have come up with is that that’s how they refer to aging stars like Helen Lawson—‘old dolls.’ Ciao, sweetie. Congrats on your performance at Spago. Think up another gimmick, okay?—a real smasher! Remember: Something that’s in the script. I think they’re working on a kidnap angle.”
Tarah’s mind had snagged on the creature’s reference to aging actresses as “old dolls.” She was caught in crosscurrents, one moment saved, the other damned. She would accept this other challenge—hadn’t she survived last night’s? She’d come up with a terrific reference to “dolls,” and it wouldn’t be about aging actresses. … Now what had Lenora said about a kidnapping?
3
In which the Lord works His mysterious ways.
A stern judge, Brother Dan stood rigid before Raul. The preacher’s eyes were closed in preparation to stare down the enormity of evil. He raised his right hand over the head of the kneeling boy. Silence in the giant hall. Brother Dan jumped, high. Landing with a loud thud that shook the floor, he shouted, “Do you renounce Satan and all his evil?”
“Yes!”
“Do you beg the Lord to purge you of your vile perversions?” He stomped about the boy.
“Yes!”
“Will you never again yearn for the forbidden, the unnatural, the sick, the depraved?” He tap-danced about the stage.
“Yes, yes!”
“What?”
“I mean, no, no! Never again!”
“Rise!” Brother Dan spread his hands out, palms up. “Rise, I exhort you, be lifted by the power of the Lamb.”
Raul rose, his eyes darting away, seeking something, someone.
Two burly attendants stood behind him, to catch his spirit-slain body.
Brother Dan made slashing motions. “In the name of the Lord Jesus, I cast you out of this body, Satan! In the name of the Lord, I order you back into your infernal hell. Begone, Satan!” His hand, flattened, smacked against the boy’s forehead. Guards prepared to catch the limp body. “You are now slain in the spirit of—What the hell do you want?” Brother Dan stared at Lyle, who had marched right up to him.
“Lyle!” Raul said exultantly.
Lyle bent toward the boy’s face, held it in his hands, and kissed him on the lips.
4
God’s mysterious ways extend.
Lyle straightened up—he had had to bend to kiss the shorter boy.
Raul remained standing on tiptoes, with his eyes closed, expecting another kiss. Lyle nudged him out of his revery. Raul opened his eyes and blinked. “You’re real.”
As the congregation buzzed with baffled consternation, Sister Sis and Brother Bud flung themselves before the television camera that insisted on remaining on the tall young man and the shorter one even after the long kiss. Desperate, Sister Sis held up her tambourine to block a camera, only to realize that another camera was recording the scene. Brother Dan stood paralyzed in the middle of the stage, hair like flames under the hot light. He glowered in bafflement, then leafed urgently through his Bible, stabbing at it with a finger as if to find the passage that would guide him as to what to do next.
Brother Bud shoved a band of God’s Little Angels onto the stage to divert the cameras and the congregation. “Go out and sing loud, angels!” he demanded.
Lyle rushed Raul away, to a corner way off the stage.
“Now what the hell are you doing here?”
“I ran away. I’d heard you were on this show with these creeps—”
>
“You came looking for me?” Lyle was pleased that the boy would trek so far to see him, but he was also baffled—had the kid contrived all this? “You were acting when you were out there?”
“I’m not sure,” Raul said. “Maybe, maybe not. We’ll just have to figure it out, huh? … Wow, Lyle, you sure can dance and sing! Wow!” He became defiant. “Even if I was acting, so what? They’re all acting. So are you.”
What could he say? That was true. “Now what do you intend to do?”
“Call my aunt first and tell her I’m here.”
“She doesn’t know?”
“Naw, I didn’t tell her. I just took the bus, yesterday. I guess I should go back, huh?—before she gets all pissed and calls the cops to arrest me.”
Lyle could see it all, the cops grabbing his friend, taking him to a home, calling the mean aunt. He took off one of his boots. “Look—here’s enough money to get you back.” He brought out the hidden bills.
“Weird place to keep your money, Lyle,” Raul said, then added: “I can’t take your money, no way.”
“I’d take it,” one of the little angel girls who had rushed off stage to peer at them said, “and I’d promise whatever he wants you to promise.”
“So would I,” a boy angel agreed. “Then I’d do whatever I wanted with it.”
“Shush!” Lyle said to them. “Okay?” he coaxed Raul.
“Okay, if that’s what you think I should do.”
“Yes. Promise?”
“I promise. … Lyle, since I know you can’t be what I’d like you to be, I wish—weird—I wish you were much older than me, and then, you know, you could be my father.” Then he ran away. When he was sure he was out of sight, he moistened his lips where Lyle had kissed him.
“Listen, Lord’s Cowboy, why the hell did you do that out there?” Fierce, her wig askew, Sister Sis had found Lyle; Brother Bud was rushing to catch up.