“Snadge says it sounds kick-ass,” the Breather said. “Snadge says thanks, Antichrist.”
“Tell Snadge the leg and I look forward to seeing him and his fungal fee sometime tonight,” said LaVache.
Lenore leaned as far as she could over toward LaVache. “Antichrist?” she said.
“What can I tell you?” said the Antichrist. “We can’t deny I look satanic. Heat, you want to clear a space on the wall for Cat?”
Heat got up slowly and began to move posters.
“Mother,” moaned Cat.
“The really sadistic aspect of this game,” the Breather whispered to Lenore, leaning over her so she had to lean way back and almost fell off her suitcase, “is that if someone else on the show says ‘Hi Bob’ before Cat has discharged his vodka-responsibility, Cat has to drink a whole ’nother bottle in another five minutes.”
“Does Cat know that?” Lenore asked, looking at Cat. Cat sat slumped on the floor, the back of his head resting and intermittently pounding weakly on the wall behind him, the bottle of vodka in his lap and a thin rope of spittle joining his lip and the lip of the bottle.
“I think at this point Cat knows what’s up in a sort of ganglial sense,” the Antichrist said, “although he’d have a hard time actually articulating the rule if you asked him to.”
“Mommy,” Cat squeaked faintly.
“You can do it, you great big enormous guy,” the Breather said, massaging Cat’s shoulders.
Ed McMahon came on the television screen. “Sell it, Ed!” yelled the Antichrist.
Heat put aside the corpse of the joint and sipped thoughtfully at a beer. He turned dense red eyes and looked at Lenore for so long that Lenore felt uncomfortable. Heat then looked at LaVache, who ignored him. Then back at Lenore. “Hey Antichrist,” he said. “You care if I ask your sister a question?”
“Be my guest,” the Antichrist said, alternately watching the screen and Cat’s attempts to finish the bottle, attempts that were at this point pretty pathetic, because there was just a little bit of vodka left, and Cat kept trying to get it in his mouth, but it kept somehow bouncing off, or at any rate not staying in, and sliding back inside the bottle and down the outside and onto the rug and his shirt.
Heat looked at Lenore as the Breather massaged his shoulders, now, from behind. “Lenore, how did the Antichrist lose his leg?”
“Well, now, hey, that’s not fair, because it’s not a question, because I’ve already answered it,” the Antichrist said. Lenore looked at him. His head rested on his shoulder. “I’ve already told you it was a dancing accident. I had such an unreasonably happy childhood that I simply danced, all the time, for joy, and one day the dancing just got to be too much, and I had an accident. Quod est demon stratum.”
Lenore laughed.
“Is that true?” Heat said to Lenore. “Are you going to back him up?”
“By all means,” Lenore said, not looking at LaVache, who was not looking at her.
LaVache turned to Heat. “And don’t you know disability etiquette? You don’t discuss a disability in the presence of a disabled person unless the disabled person brings up the disability. For all you know I could be reeling, from hurt, on the inside. How’d you like to do your own Calculus homework for a while?”
“Antichrist,” Heat said with an easy grin, “I hereby tender a sincere apology for my gaucheness, and also take the opportunity to point out that another joint seems to have expired, here.”
“Harumph,” the Antichrist said, sliding open his drawer. “Clint Wood and bonds to the rescue.”
“Five minutes is up, Antichrist,” said the Breather.
Cat’s chin was resting on his chest. One of his arms was incongruously outstretched, with a finger pointing at the stairs leading up to the social room’s bathroom.
“Has he done it?” asked LaVache.
The Breather held up the bottle. “The merest smidgeon left.”
“More than a smidgeon on his shirt, though, I see,” Heat said, lifting up Cat’s head to have a look at the dark field of vodka-soaked shirt on his chest.
The Antichrist rubbed the leg thoughtfully. “I say if Cat consents to suck on his shirt for the rest of the show, which is about five more minutes, he’ll have acquitted himself in his usual thoroughly admirable way.”
“Congratulations, big kitty,” the Breather said softly, tucking part of Cat’s shirt in Cat’s mouth, caressing a cheek under fluttering eyelids. “Still the undisputed prince of Hi Bob.”
“Did you come alone?” LaVache asked Lenore. “Did you come by plane, or by toy?”
“I came via the Company jet,” said Lenore.
The Antichrist’s eyebrows went up, so it looked like he had more hair.
Lenore continued, “I came with a friend, who’s also sort of my boss at Frequent and Vigorous.”
“Mr. Vigorous.” The Antichrist nodded his head. “The one Candy told me about.”
“What did Candy tell you, when?” asked Lenore.
The Antichrist looked away, drew a smile-face on the plastic of his leg with his pen, wiped it away with a moist finger. “That your boss was also your friend, so you were lucky. In July. Please don’t have a spasm; I sense Cat really not feeling well at all.”
“Is Candy the Mandible babe you blasted?” Heat asked the Antichrist with a grin.
Lenore looked at her brother with wide eyes. “You and Candy? Blasting?”
LaVache turned slowly and rested absolutely icy eyes on Heat. Heat’s clothes seemed suddenly to get roomier, as if he’d developed a slow leak. “Sorry,” he muttered. He closed his eyes.
The Antichrist looked at Lenore. “Heat knows not whereof he speaks, as I will no doubt be explaining at considerable length later. Heat, don’t you have some math you better do?”
“Shit,” Heat whispered. He sucked on the Antichrist’s joint.
Lenore stood up. “May I please ask a favor?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sure it’s an imposition, but Rick and I don’t get to check in at the motel till five, and it’s been a really long day, and also sort of a dirty one, what with travel….”
“I understand entirely,” the Antichrist said soothingly. The “Bob Newhart Show” credits came on. The Breather went to the television and changed the channel. LaVache beamed at Lenore. “There is a clean, neatly folded towel for you in the bathroom, a bathroom which you’ll be happy to know you can secure for a brief period with the hanger on the door, although in a crisis Cat may find himself forced to impose, and there is on the towel, for your personal use, a crisp new bar of soap.”
“What, is she going to take a shower?” the Breather asked from the television, where he was twidgeling the vertical-hold controls.
“If it’s OK,” said Lenore.
“Hubba-hubba,” said the Breather.
“Steady, big guy,” said the Antichrist. “Lenore’s traveling companion is, I understand, fanatically jealous.”
Lenore looked at her brother.
“Where is this Mr. Vigorous, anyway,” LaVache asked quietly, looking back down at the leg.
The phone rang. The Breather reached over and picked it up. “It’s Nervous Roy Keller for you, A.C.,” he said to LaVache.
The Antichrist’s eyes lit up. “May I please have the lymph node?” The Breather handed him the phone. Lenore, not sure if she should stay around to explain where Rick Vigorous was, stood awkwardly, hefting her suitcase, hurting for a shower. Heat lay curled up on the sofa, apparently alseep. The Breather quietly went over and removed the red eye of the burning nubbin of the joint from between Heat’s fingers. Cat lay crumpled against the wall under the window, his shirt in his mouth.