He’s talking about John F. Kennedy, Michael thought.
The Queen shuddered and said, “You’re a very morbid person.”
“He was a good king,” the Black Knight said.
“Yes, but we’ve all got to go sometime, you know.”
“Things would be different if he were still alive,” the Black Knight said. “He had a vision, that man, you could see it flashing in his eyes, you just knew he had a dream clenched tight in those hands of his. And when a man can dream that strong, it makes you want to join him, it makes you want to move right in and say, `Yes, Daddy, take me where you’re going, I’m with you, Daddy, let’s yell it out together.` There was no bullshit about that man. I loved him.”
Now he’s talking about Martin Luther King, Jr., Michael thought.
“You talk too much,” the Queen said, “and not about the right things. Also, I don’t like profanity. And if you want to know something, I’m beginning to find you enormously boring and a trifle sinister.”
This is Alice in Wonderland, Michael thought.
“Besides, I don’t trust masked men,” the Queen said. “Nobody does.”
Everything in this city is Alice in Wonderland, Michael thought.
“This isn’t a mask!” the Black Knight shouted.
“Then what is it?”
“My head is inside this black cage,” the Black Knight shouted. “My brain is in here, I think in here, I feel in here, it is not a goddamn mask!”
“You’re frightening me,” the Queen said. “Look, the fire’s going out.”
“The fire went out the day Arthur died,” the Black Knight whispered.
“Very good,” Kenny said, “very nice indeed. Let’s take a ten-minute break, and then I want to do the dragon scene, the H-bomb scene.”
“Oh, God, is that it?” the White Knight said.
“Sire?”
“Is the dragon supposed to be the H-bomb?”
“Yes, Sire, that is the metaphor,” Kenny said.
“I’m glad to know that. Because, actually, I was wondering why I was so afraid of a little dragon. I’m supposed to be an experienced knight, but I’m afraid of a little dragon. It didn’t make sense to me. Now that you tell me it’s the H-bomb …”
“That’s the metaphor, yes.”
“Well, that’s an enormous relief, I can tell you. Did you know it was the H-bomb, Jason?”
“Oh, sure,” the Black Knight said, and both men walked off the stage. The Pawn, looking somewhat bewildered, followed them. “Ten minutes, please,” Kenny called after them, and left the theater through the curtained doorway that led to the one-room schoolhouse.
Judy Jordan sat alone on the stage. Sat on a wooden plank stretched across several stacked cinder blocks. Head bent, studying her script.
Looking blonde and beautiful and serene and quite regal.
“I want her first,” Felix said, and stood up.
“No,” Michael said.
He said it quite softly.
Almost whispered it, in fact.
There was no reason for Felix to have obeyed him.
But he sat down at once.
Michael walked up the aisle to the front of the theater. He climbed the steps onto the stage. Judy was absorbed in the script, probably trying to dope out all its inherent metaphors and allegories. He walked directly to her.
“I’m looking for a good criminal lawyer,” he said.
Her head jerked up.
“Because I’ve been accused of murder,” he said.
She started to rise.
He put his hands on her shoulders and slammed her back down onto the makeshift plank and cinder-block seat, which was undoubtedly a metaphor for a medieval bench.
“Remember me?” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “Hello.”
She was playing a woman in a movie about the French Resistance. She was really a Nazi spy and he was the wounded American soldier who had fallen in love with her and been betrayed by her. It was now his painful duty to turn her over to the authorities. He had come to take her away. She still loved him. She was looking up at him wistfully, her blue eyes wide.
“How have you been?” she asked.
“Comme ci comme ça,” he said, in the French he had learned in Vietnam. “Et tu?”
“Not very good,” she said. “I saw it on television.”
“Oh. And what did you see, Miss Parrish?”
“My name is Judy Jordan,” she said.
“I know.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “That’s not what I thought would happen.”
“What did you think would happen?”
“Charlie said he was playing a joke on a friend of his.”
“By Charlie …”
“Charlie Nichols.”
“You call your father by his first name, do you?”
“My father?”
“Yes, Charlie. You call your father `Charlie?`”
“No, I call my father `Frank.`”
Michael looked at her.
“Isn’t it true that you call Charlie `Daddy`?” he asked.
“No, I call Charlie `Charlie.`”
“Look, Miss Jordan, I happen to know that Charlie Nichols is your goddamn father. So please don’t …”
“No, Frank Giordano is my goddamn father, which is where I got the name Jordan, from Giordano, and I really don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“I am talking about a photograph of you and Charlie Nichols …”
“Oh.”
“Yes, oh, inscribed `To My Dear Daddy, With Love,` and signed Judy Jordan, who is you, Miss Jordan, Miss Parrish, Miss Giordano, whoever the hell you are!”
Nodding, Judy said what sounded exactly like, “I remember Mama.”
“Good,” Michael said at once. “Who is she?”
“Who?” Judy said. “I Remember Mama is a play. I was Christine in a revival. Charlie was Papa.”
“What?”
“Yes. In the play. My father.”
“In a play?”
“Yes. I Remember Mama. And at the end of the run, I signed a photograph …”
“To My Dear Daddy …”
“Yes, With Love.”
“Referring to …”
“Yes, the characters in the play. Also, it was an inside joke, in that Charlie and I were sleeping together at the time.”
“I see.”
“Yes. Charlie was my first lover.”
“I see.”
“Yes. I was seventeen. I was a virgin at the time.”
“So he wasn’t your father.”
“No, that would have been incest. Also, my own father would have shot him dead if he’d found out.”
Michael wondered if her own father had now belatedly if messily shot Charlie dead. He also wondered if Judy even knew that Charlie was dead. He decided not to mention it. From seeing a lot of cop movies, he knew that this was an old cop trick. You did not mention that someone was dead. You waited for the suspect to trap himself by mentioning that the last time he’d seen So-and-So alive was Thursday, and then you yelled, “Ah-ha, how did you know he was dead?”
“I am really sorry,” Judy said. “When I saw on television that they’d accused you of murdering Arthur Crandall …”
“Oh, you saw that, did you?”