Halfway up the left wall, at the end of an aisle, he saw what must have been the front door. To his right there was another, smaller door, and he swung the beam of his flashlight towards it, moving cautiously, ears straining.
There was nothing to hear aside from whispers of the wind in the window above. The sign on the door read “Meditation and Maintenance.” It opened into something like a large panty, with cabinets on every wall and an overturned cot in the middle. An unbroken window looked out on the parking lot. All of the cabinets were left ajar and empty. White powder on the floor suggested flour, or medicine crushed under a boot. A blanket and a pillow had been tossed into a corner.
A smudge near the cot turned out to be blood. Not only did we break in and messed up the church, we also found someone sleeping on the cot in the back, made him bleed a bit on the floor and took him for a ride. No concealing the deeds here, he thought, kneeling beside the cot and noting the blood’s freshness. Why?
He packed the gun and went back to the car, deep in thought. Outside the back door, under the wall crouched a black cat, seeking shelter from the rain.
It meowed and disappeared in the darkness of the hallway, as Brome dialed the police and started off, towards the rain and the city.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Over spicy beef, and later over shots of “Stolichnaya,” I told Paul the real story, starting from the cylindrical UFO “PillBottle-1” and ending in the news program I’d watched about myself at the North Side gay bar. Eating Chinese for the second time that day was nice, in a nostalgic sort of way, but the beef had nothing on the mighty “Stoli.” By the time I was done with food, I had to wrestle with myself not to continue the tale into play-by-play log of Iris’s visit. The honorable “I” finally won that fight, limiting the would-be story to an exuberant mention of me being in love.
Paul, on the other hand, showed surprising resilience to the Russian Tears. I say surprising, because back in college Paul had always been the one unconscious in the photos. Unconscious and naked from the waist up. But now I was the one feeling like my overpriced sofa was a tree-legged stool on some brig in the middle of a storm, and Pauly, like a sea wolf boatswain, with rum instead of blood in his veins, kept refilling the glasses with a steady, despite the gale, hand. He did believe my story on the first try, though, so I don’t know.
“Argh, man,” he said when I summed my tale up with yet another shot. “He’s fucking right.” He probably didn’t say, “Argh.”
“What?”
“The doctor… pastor guy. They want us to blow the place up.”
“Et tu, Brute? But why?”
“Why? Who the hell needs a ‘why’ when you have spaceships!”
“OK… Why don’t they do it themselves, then?”
“It’s more fun that way? I don’t know. They’re aliens for Pete’s sake. Next time you see one, ask’em.”
It was still early, but his logic was already beginning to wear down on me.
“You though,” he went on. “Why aren’t you in your Winger halfway down to nowhere? What, you think after seeing what you’ve seen, they’re just going to let you sit there eating shit on national TV with someone about commercials? I mean, boys who can change shape tried to kill you and you’re still alive. Never mind if they really were angels.”
“At least one of those things got whacked in the process. Maybe they don’t want to mess with me anymore.”
Paul gazed at me incredulously. “Is that supposed to be logic or humor? Either way, I think you’ve had one too many.”
“What, now I have to take logic lessons from Mr. Spaceships?”
“The dudes were there to kill you! What the hell changed since?”
“I was a wanted man, a murderer on the run. Now the public knows I am innocent.”
“The public knows! What good is that? You think they’re going to organize a protest rally when your corpse washes up on North Avenue beach? Demand a thorough investigation? Start a riot? Even if your glorious public farted all at once in outrage — and really, you’d have to be a little bigger than Luke Whales the snob TV star for your average Joe down in Des Moines to put down his ham on rye and open his mouth, not to mention lifting his fat ass from the couch — a twenty says the shape-shifting guys wouldn’t smell a whiff of it. And you wouldn’t care by then anyway, cos you’d be dead.”
“The public knows,” he scoffed again. “You work on TV. You should be the last one to rely on public and their knowledge. Think it’ll be hard to make the public ‘know’ you slit your wrists, because that new girlfriend of yours broke your heart? Or better yet, make them ‘know’ she was a junkie and shot you, because you refused to give her a hundred for a fix.”
“I have a gun,” I said and showed him the gun.
“There!” he shouted gleefully, almost dropping the bottle. “She could use your gun! That prick Dwayne Robinson will have an aneurysm. ‘The Cursed Gun Gets Its Owner!’”
This discussion wasn’t going as planned. Paul poured me a comforting shot, and I tossed it down my throat.
“Why…” I started, but had to pause to scrunch my face, as a mighty shudder shook me. “Why am I still alive?”
He thought about it. He shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know, man. Maybe they’re coming up with the best story to give to the vigilant public. Although… I’m surprised it’s taking them as long as it is.”
At that moment the door bell rang. Thankfully, I was drunk. Had I not been, I am afraid I would have discharged the weapon I still grasped and hurt somebody. Instead, Paul and I froze in our seats, staring at each other. Not really a rigid “froze,” more like a frozen gelatin.
It rang again.
“Shit,” I said. “Jeffrey.”
“Who’s Jeffrey?” Paul whispered. He was soberer than I and probably more scared.
“The concierge.”
“That him at the door?”
“No. He always warns me on intercom when someone’s coming up.”
“Maybe someone from the building then?” Which sounded like a rational enough idea. Only somehow I didn’t think so.
“Probably,” I said buoyantly and lifted the pistol. I got up from the couch and, leaving my shoes behind for stealth purposes, crept in socks to the door.
The bell rang again, urgently this time.
I pressed the camera button. A panel slid away, revealing the display and the corridor immediately in front of my door. Leaning on the wall with my back and holding the gun up high, I peered at it from an angle.
There was a man outside. A human. Or at least he looks human, I reminded myself. He was dressed in black suit and tie and would have looked like a fed, only I’d never seen an unshaven and uncombed fed. His dishevelment relaxed me somewhat. It was hard to imagine a shape-shifter disguising himself as an unshaven federal agent.
“Yes?” I asked the microphone. The man outside was just about to ring the bell again. Hearing my voice from the speaker, he turned to the camera. The camera zoomed in. Square face. Bags under blue eyes. Wrinkles.
“Mr. Whales?”
“Yes.”
He pulled out his wallet and flipped it open. “Special Agent Brome, FBI.”