“I don’t mean any disrespect for what you believe,” Nomad said, “but I’m not sure that idea’s been working out so well in the last few thousand years.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, but this is how it’s supposed to be. I mean…you’re supposed to find your missing half, and when you find it…if you find it…you’re not incomplete anymore.”
“So how come God doesn’t put a big neon sign over your soulmate’s head? How come He doesn’t tell you in that dream exactly where she is? Huh?” Nomad didn’t wait for an answer. “That’s kind of cruel, not to let you know something so important. Right?”
Thor heard an element of the music that he liked, and he listened to that for a moment with his head tilted to one side. The sun was radiant in his hair. Then he said, “God is not a nice guy. He’s a hard teacher, Johnny. He’s tough, nothing soft about Him. Oh yeah, He can show mercy. He’s all about mercy. But He’s all about teaching, too. He’s the hardest fucking teacher you could ever have. Sometimes you don’t want to hear it, so you turn your back. Sometimes the lessons are pushed right in your face, you can’t turn away. What we call cruel, maybe He calls…necessary, in some way we can’t wrap our minds around because we only know the right here, right now. How come He won’t put a sign over her head in that dream and say, ‘There she is, Saul, there’s your missing half, and go to this exact address and find her and then marry her like you did those four other women and go crazy in the middle of the night and fuck your soulmate up with drugs and bad shit because that’s who you are, Saul, and you would even screw up this thing if I was to let it happen.’”
Thor seemed to catch himself, to hear what he was saying as if some voice other than his had spoken it.
He blinked and looked at his own right hand, and curled the fingers up before his face as if trying to envision it holding something that was not there.
“So,” he said. “‘Here is your lesson, Saul. And it is that I will let you know that there was a person meant for you, you alone out of every other person in this world, but you’re so fucked up with yourself that you would destroy even your soulmate. She’s better off walking alone than with you, and I’m not going to help you find her, Saul. I’m going to let you know she’s there somewhere, and she’s getting tired of waiting, and maybe…maybe…if you do ever find her by that time maybe…maybe…you will have learned how to be a man, you brainless wasteful piece of flesh’.” Thor gave Nomad a startling, ferocious and terrifying grin. “Class dismissed.”
Nomad may have made a noise. A quiet murmur, a hiss of breath, whatever. At last, when Thor looked away from him, Nomad dropped his cigarette butt into the beer bottle.
“I guess I’d better go check in,” he said, and he got out from beneath the umbrella and stood up. “Jesus, it is hot out here.”
“The deal is,” Thor told him in a quieter voice, “I should’ve found somebody who wanted to help me drive the car.”
Nomad had no idea what that meant, so he waited patiently for the rest of it. God might not be a nice guy and He might not be so patient, but God hadn’t been given his first chance on stage by Thor Bronson, nor had Thor Bronson given God the names of some dudes he knew in Tucson who were looking for a solid lead vocalist/guitar player.
“Every woman I ever found,” Thor said, “wanted to ride in the car. Wanted to kick back and let the sugar daddy do it all. And driving that car…it gets mighty fucking hard. Mighty fucking lonely. Yeah, they wanted the money, the clothes, the parties, the drugs, the glamor.” That last word had come out like a drool of disgust. “But not one of ’em wanted to help me drive the car. Hey, maybe that’s why I had so many fucking wrecks.” When he looked up at Nomad he was now not so much a lion as a puppy begging for affection.
Nomad smiled. “Maybe.” He was thinking of one wreck in particular, the one with the blue Porsche Targa on the Pacific Coast Highway that had happened years before John Charles had met him, the one that broke both of Saul Brightman’s legs, shattered his jaw and injured his spine, ending his onstage gymnastics and his amazing and fabled leaps from the thundering speakers through walls of pyrotechnic flame. The doctors thought he’d be lucky if he ever again managed to hobble on crutches, but that long-haired Jew from Bayonne, New Jersey…he was one tough shtarker.
“The one who wants to help you drive the car,” Thor said. “Maybe she’s the soulmate, maybe not…but she’s definitely the keeper.” He reached out to rub his scarred kneecaps, which felt so much better in the heat of the sun. “Having a party after our gig. Fun to be had by all. Bring your condoms and your fucking youth.”
“We’re pulling out after we play,” Nomad replied. “Hitting the Casbah in San Diego tomorrow night.”
“Okay, yeah, I saw that on your website. Hey, how about checking out my site? And before you pull out, let’s exchange email addresses. Of course, I’m not up in your range anymore, fuckers like you getting eight hundred smacks for ninety minutes on an afternoon gig. Yeah, everybody knows about that, man, so don’t try to look dumb, and don’t shrug like a gutless motherfucker either. You’re either worth it or you’re not, and you’ve got to believe you’re worth it to be worth it. Anyway, you guys have been chosen by somebody up in the penthouse, some Jew momzer smoking a big Cuban and looking for his next meal ticket. So go and enjoy it and work like a sonofabitch and don’t fuck it up, and what is there left to say?”
“I guess that says it all.” But Nomad knew it didn’t. He knew he should say this is our last ride or we’re ending it after Austin or I’m going to hunker down for a while and figure out what to do next, but then Thor would’ve gotten up on his wiry legs and scarred knees and blasted him with Norse fire and the statement Don’t give me that, Johnny, because you know just like I do that the show must go on.
To which Nomad would’ve answered with a question: But does it have to go on and on and on and on?
Thor stood up. He and Nomad exchanged high-fives, bumped fists and shoulders and then, running out of affectations, they hugged each other.
“Think about me out there, kid,” Thor said.
How could it be otherwise? How could Nomad go onstage and not think about Thor Bronson and the long shadows of the road warriors who had gone before?
“Catch you later,” Nomad told him, and he walked toward the hospitality trailer. Before he got there, he looked back over his shoulder and saw Saul Brightman, the dutiful son of a great and loving father, sitting in his lawn chair again with his legs outstretched, like any middle-aged fan at an outdoor concert. Nomad saw him give a fist pump, at some part of the music that he thought particularly deserving.
Then Nomad turned his face away, and he went on.
NINETEEN.
“You guys ready for your intro?” asked the skull-faced clown in the red Stone Church 9 T-shirt, the sparkly green shorts, cowboy boots and black tophat. The curls of his orange fright-wig boiled out from under the hat. He wore a red nose with a blinking light powered by the battery pack at his waist.
“Ready,” Nomad said, speaking for them all.
The clown, whose handle at this gig was Eezy Duzit, headed out onto the stage through a corridor lined with black curtains. A chorus of whistles and a roar of anticipation went up from the audience, which Nomad hadn’t seen yet. The clown had said he estimated about eight or nine hundred people were out there, and more would be coming in from the ‘Midway’ as their show went on. There were no seats; the audience brought their own or stood up, and the front half of the place was a mosh pit where people danced or thrashed or fought as they pleased. However many there were, they sounded hungry.