Lola’s Christ was a mangled-looking, life-size figure hanging by His hands and feet on the nastiest-looking cross C.C. had ever laid eyes on. It was incredibly realistic. The thing had to be six by four feet at the wingspan, with shiny red acrylic blood flowing down the forehead, hands, and feet. Sharpened thorns were jammed into His whitened forehead, and Christ’s eyes looked mournfully to the heavens, clearly in a lot of pain.
“What is that doing here?”
“Lola collects religious memorabilia,” Tina informed him as she closed and locked the door behind them. “She was going to be a nun.”
“But she became a stripper instead?”
Tina nodded. “Nuns don’t get paid very well.”
According to Tina, Lola deeply identified with Saint Anne of Glycerine, who had been the wife of a very wealthy eighteenth-century Catholic businessman, and mother to his seven children. One afternoon at Mass, Anne had been moved by a vision of Christ to strip off all her clothes before a monastery full of monks and, on the spot, take on a vow of paupership.
“Stripped naked like that, of course the monks thought she was a saint,” Tina solemnly told C.C.
“Of course.”
As she explained it, Lola connected spiritually to Saint Anne. While Anne stripped during Mass in exchange for paupership, Lola stripped at the Fuzzy on the half-hour in exchange for all the tips she could cram into her garter belt. Lola attributed her success to St. Anne and claimed she kept a vision of the saint in her mind’s eye every night during the floor show.
It seemed to make perfect sense to Tina.
Still rattled by the bloodied corpse in the hallway, it took C.C. a full twenty minutes stretched out on the living room sofa, two bourbons, and a dose of Tina’s special talents before he could get himself back together.
“Want to see the rest of the place?” Tina invited.
“Does it lead to your bedroom?”
From what he could see, Lola was a strange one. The apartment was completely covered in shrines to dead saints and especially to Lola’s favorite, the Virgin Mary. Two large ceramic figurines of the Holy Mother guarded not only Lola’s bedroom, from a table situated outside her door, but also protected the fridge. Both looked deeply saddened by the state of affairs in the bedroom and the kitchen, so, as Tina explained, Lola routinely left the two Mother Mary figurines tidbits of candy, cookies, and juice to cheer them up.
“It’s the Mother Mary’s fault we have roaches,” she told C.C.
It was 4 a.m. when C.C.’s head hit the pillow in Tina’s bedroom. The last thing he remembered was looking up at the gauzy canopy over her bed-all pink, of course. The whole room looked like the inside of the magic bottle on I Dream of Jeannie. Now that was a classic. What a show. He loved Jeannie and the inside of her bottle. Tina’s choice of decor was brilliant.
Genius, in fact. Why couldn’t Betty ever think up something like this…a bedroom just like the inside of Barbara Eden’s magic bottle?
21
St. Simons Island, Georgia
THE THIRD BATCH OF HAIRY MARGARITAS WAS KILLER STRONG. IT was time for Virginia to throw out the bait before her guests started getting sloppy-or sleepy.
“So what does Greenpeace think of the Commission’s plan to replenish the beaches and dredge up all that sediment off the ocean floor?” she asked.
Nothing like plunging right in.
“It’ll be the end of the sea turtles, you know. But then, Greenpeace isn’t involved with that type of issue, is it? You know, saving endangered species.” She hoped the lob would create a defensive stir.
It did.
“Well, ‘Peace’ normally attacks higher profile moves so that we can make an environmental difference and a statement worldwide. Two birds, one stone.” Ken spoke up first, emphasizing the abbreviated “Peace” to modestly convey his familiarity with the Peace higher-ups.
“It’s such a shame nobody’s acting on the turtles’ behalf. And after all the attention the spotted owl got.” Virginia clucked her tongue. “But then, the owls got a mention by the vice president, so they live. The turtles die. God knows what’s on the floor of the ocean outside those paper mills north of the Island. You know that’s exactly where they’ll get the sand to dump on the beaches.”
Warming to her subject, she lit another Salem Light off the last butt. “Greenpeace started with such a wonderful concept. But then it turned into sort of a celebrity house pet, snarfing up only the tastiest treats.” Pleased with her analogy, she saw that Renee, at least, was nodding in agreement.
“I guess the little guys like us get left out in the shuffle sometimes,” Virginia said sadly. “Maybe it doesn’t matter. I mean after all, it is just one link in the eco-chain.”
Ken bristled, and Virginia realized that nothing else she could have said would have reached so far under his skin. To suggest that Peace was all hype amounted to pure heresy to the four Peacers hunched around the blender under the spell of the hairy margaritas. They didn’t get asked out much and they didn’t want to argue with their hostess, let alone piss off the wieners again.
Virginia was banking on a watershed of discontent among the guerrillas-dissatisfaction with their distant leaders, who seemed more like Hollywood celebrities than comrades united in common goals.
After a moment, Ken said brazenly, “Well, you know the bigs at Peace don’t have to be in on every save we make.”
Virginia just looked at him over the rim of her glass, saying nothing, hoping he’d go the next step.
He did. He couldn’t stop himself.
“We’ve been misled by the Herald and the county commission!” he promptly decided. “Odds are they’re probably in league together…these things just don’t happen by coincidence. They’ve conspired…This is a conspiracy…I feel it.”
He was on a roll.
“If Virginia’s right, we’re obligated to take some sort of preemptive strike before it’s too late for the turtles. We can’t stand by and wait for this thing to make its way through all the Peace channels. That could take weeks, maybe even months. The time is now, the place is here, and the people are us.”
He was standing now. His words unleashed a grumbling among the guerrillas.
“It’s true. I’ve thought it for a long time but didn’t want to say anything. Peace has become too big, too sensational to care for the turtles,” Renee said. “They’ve gone Hollywood. They’ve turned into celebrities. When’s the last time they climbed a tree?”
“First the turtles, then what’s next?” Dottie wanted to know.
“We have to seize control!” Suz injected herself. “Not slogans and bumper stickers. I’m talking action!” She had margarita salt on her nose.
“Exactly!” Virginia trumpeted, trying not to look smug.
22
Atlanta, Georgia
AS VIRGINIA AND THE GUERRILLAS FEVERISHLY PENCILED PLANS on a yellow legal pad late into the night, two hundred miles to the north, Eugene waited.
In an oak-paneled office in Atlanta, Georgia, a lifetime away from the ocean lapping against the Island dunes, he waited.
Drinking scotch through the night and never leaving his desk-side phone, his cell phone burning in his hand as a backup, he waited.
The call came from a cell phone deep within the Georgia House.
A bottle sat on the floor by his desk, within arm’s reach of his chair, emptied sometime around three that morning. His office was dark when the phone rang; he still hadn’t pulled open the heavy drapes from the night before.