Calling the demons, paging the demons, inviting the demons, summoning them. Calling the demons, Lucifer’s demons, Lucifer’s sidekicks, Lucifer’s men:
In the name of the magician Moses, the magician Jesus and the magician Solomon, I call you forth.
Come incubus, come succubus, come Hell, come djin.
Here demons, here boys, darlin’ demons, demons dear.
I call on … Sordino. Sordino the Soundless. Sordino the Mute.
I call Sordino. Silent Sordino. Come, Sordino. Come to us now.
I offer you your sign. My finger’s at my lips.
(to Dick Gibson) Each demon has his own sign, like the hallmark on silver or the brand on a cow. This is Sordino’s:
I call Sordino, silent Sordino, pensive Sordino, taciturn one.
Come Sordino, come to us now.
Ncy cm jycm cym nc Ycn
Come sad, secret, silent fellow. Come to us, our melancholy baby.
(A pause. Then:) He’s here. Can you feel the pall? That’s Sordino’s doing. That’s Sordino. Pall’s his sign too. He’s with us in the studio. Can you sense the pall? He’s with us, all right. That’s him. (They each have something by which they’re recognized. This one has bad breath, that one breaks wind. One will appear as a naked child, another will stammer. One has loose teeth — they lie on his tongue or awash in his saliva — and another black and blue marks on his privates. The pall is Sordino’s.) Do you remember before the program when I told you I was expecting someone?
My God, what’s he doing? That’s rare. See. Look there — he’s materializing! In the corner. Sordino!
Take over Gibson’s voice, Sordino.
DICK GIBSON: There’s no one.
BEHR-BLEIBTREAU: That’s it, Sordino. You sound just like him. Was it you before too?
DICK GIBSON: There’s no one.
BEHR-BLEIBTREAU: Perfect, Sordino. Now. Take it all. Take the rest of it. There was a fire. His tapes were consumed. So it’s all gone, all but your mimicry of his sound. Now. Take that too. Pull even that out of his throat. Take it with you down to hell. Wonderful, Sordino. Be careful. He’ll struggle. Take his rattle, his groans, get his gasps. Take it all.
DICK GIBSON: (choking) Don’t … What—
BEHR-BLEIBTREAU: That’s it.
DICK GIBSON: (coughing now, sputtering) Please … You’re … I can’t … No … I can’t … breathe … He’s—
BEHR-BLEIBTREAU: Wonderful, Sordino.
DICK GIBSON — choking me!
[He tries to pull Behr-Bleibtreau’s hands off his throat, but the man has a stranglehold on him. With his teeth he tries to snap at Behr-Bleibtreau’s arms, but all he manages is to get a piece of Behr-Bleibtreau’s sweater in his mouth.]
BEHR-BLEIBTREAU: (giggling, then recovering himself) That’s it, Sordino. That’s the way.
DICK GIBSON: (strangling, gasping for breath) Please … I’m … [With both hands he tries to bend back one of Behr-Bleibtreau’s fingers.]
BEHR-BLEIBTREAU: Ow. Ouch. The pall. Sordino’s pall. The pull of the pall. You wouldn’t think a pall could hurt so much. Never mind, Sordino. Let the chips fall where they may.
DICK GIBSON: (hoarsely) Listen, you can’t …
[It is futile to struggle further. All Dick’s strength is gone; he has never felt such hands. He looks wildly at Jerry in the control booth, but the man is bent over his dials.]
(weakly) Help me. Jerry—
BEHR-BLEIBTREAU: Good, Sordino. Wonderful. You’re getting it.
DICK GIBSON: Oh God, somebody …
[His swivel chair is on casters, and in the struggle he has been turned violently about. As he renews his efforts to get away, he pushes forcefully against the floor with his foot and the chair swings around, temporarily upsetting Behr-Bleibtreau’s balance. One of Behr-Bleibtreau’s hands flies from Dick’s neck. Dick lunges forward and ducks his head; the other hand slips away. Out of the chair now, he runs around to the other side of the table. Standing behind Mel Son, he sees the gun in his lap. He reaches down for the gun — and misses; instead, he has grabbed Mel’s penis beneath the cloth of his trousers. At Dick’s touch Mel’s cock almost instantly hardens; he grabs Dick’s hand with both of his own and tries to keep it on his prick. Dick brings his other hand around and plucks the gun off Mel’s lap.]
BEHR-BLEIBTREAU: [Coming around to the side of the table where Dick is standing.]
Watch it, Sordino. Gently. He’s got a gun.
DICK GIBSON: [Holding the barrel in his hand, Dick reaches out and hammers at Behr-Bleibtreau’s throat with the butt of the revolver. He chops wildly at the man’s neck, smashing at his Adam’s apple. Behr-Bleibtreau falls across the table and Dick Gibson hits him repeatedly in the throat.]
There. There.
[Behr-Bleibtreau, his breath knocked out of him, holds his throat. Mel Son rises and looks at Dick; he still has his erection. Dick shrugs and aims the pistol at Mel’s cock. Mel leaves the studio, and Assemblyman Ash follows him. Behr-Bleibtreau lays writhing on the floor. The woman in the long fur coat and her companion come up and help Behr-Bleibtreau to rise. They leave the studio. Dick looks around and sees that Jack Patterson’s coed has already left. He had not seen her go. Neither had Jack; coming out of his stupor, he looks toward where she had been sitting. Dick hears the man fart. Seeing her gone, Jack leaves too. Pepper Steep’s sister is sound asleep. Dick Gibson looks at Bernie Perk and sees him wink at Pepper. Pepper smiles and Bernie pats her arm and they go out together. Dick understands; Bernie is in love with the bad breath that Dick has noticed on other occasions when Pepper has been on the program. It is something that happens in her stomach at about three o’clock in the morning. Jerry has put on the last commercial of the evening — a one-minute spot for a dusk-to-dawn drive-in theater north of the city. It is played this late because it is an appeal to lovers, automobile-trapped kissers and huggers, lovers with roommates at home, or parents waiting up — bleary yearners domestic in cars. They cruise the highway. Perhaps they don’t have the money for a hotel room, or perhaps they are not yet at that stage. They have nowhere to go. For the first time, Dick understands that it is precisely his audience the message directs itself to, and so the spot depresses him. Perhaps Bernie will take Pepper there. He sits back down at his table and waits until the commercial is finished.]
Then he talks till 5 A.M., rambling, filling in, not always aware of what he is saying, or even if the program is still on the air, but using his voice because he still has it, because it’s still his—uniquely inflected, Gibson-timbreed, a sum of private frequencies and personal resonances, as marked as his thumbs — because the show must go on and he must be on it. As he speaks, it occurs to him that Behr- Bleibtreau could never have taken it, that poor Dick Gibson had nothing to confess; like Behr-Bleibtreau, his own slate is clean, his character unmarked, his history uneventful. But he has had a close call.
“Well, ladies and gentlemen,” he says, “there is no astrology, there’s no black magic and no white, no ESP, no UFO’s. Mars is uninhabited. The dead are dead and buried. Meat won’t kill you and Krebiozen won’t cure you and we’ll all be out of the picture before the forests disappear or the water dries up. Your handwriting doesn’t indicate your character and there is no God. All there is—” He looks over at Pepper Steep’s sister asleep in her chair and wants to cry. He wishes he had something with which to cover her to keep her warm, something to put over her shoulders. Somehow Jack Patterson’s fart still hangs in the air—“are the strange displacements of the ordinary.”