The memory never faded, but in time it got pushed aside by newer ones. Gradually Fortunato came to believe that nothing was going to happen to him. For those the virus didn't touch, life went on the way it always had.
He realized early on that he was going to have to make his own way. From listening to his mother complain about American women he came up with the idea of the prostitute as geisha; at age fourteen he brought home a stunning Puerto Rican girl from his high school for his mother to train. That had been the beginning.
He looked up and saw that night had fallen while he'd been walking aimlessly through Jokertown. The grays and pastels had turned to neon, street clothes to paisley and leopard prints. Just ahead of him demonstrators had blocked off the street with a flatbed truck. There were drums and amps and guitars up there and a couple of heavy-duty extension cords running in through the open door of the Chaos Club.
At the moment the stage was empty except for a woman with long red curly hair and an acoustic guitar. A banner behind her read S.N.C.C. Fortunato had no idea what the letters stood for. She had the audience singing along with some folk song or other. They all went through the chorus a couple of times without the guitar, and then she took a bow and they clapped and she got down off the back of the truck.
She wasn't beautiful in the way Lenore was; her nose was a little large, her skin was not that good. She was in the radical uniform of blue jeans and work shirt that didn't do anything for her. But she had an aura of energy he could see without even wanting to.
Women were Fortunato's weakness. He was like a deer in their headlights. Even as low as he felt he couldn't help but stop and look at her, and before he knew it she was standing next to him, shaking a coffee can with a few coins in the bottom.
"Hey, man, how about a donation?"
"Not today," Fortunato said. "I don't have a lot of politics.' "You're black, Nixon's president" and you don't have any politics? Brother, have I got news for you."
"Is all this about being black?" Fortunato didn't see another black face in the crowd.
"No, man, it's about jokers. Whoa, did I strike a nerve or something?" When Fortunato didn't answer she went on anyway. "You know how long the average life expectancy of a joker in 'Nam is? Less than two months. If you take the percentage of jokers in the U.S. population and divide it by the percentage of jokers in 'Nam, you know what you get? You get about a hundred times too many jokers over there. A hundred times, man!"
"Yeah" okay" so what do you want me to do about it?"
"Make a donation. We're going to get lawyers on this and stop it. It's the FBI, man. The FBI and SCARE. It's like McCarthy all over again. They've got lists of all the jokers and they're drafting them on purpose. If they can walk and hold a gun, they're not even getting a real physical" it's off to Saigon. It's genocide" pure and simple."
"Yeah, okay." He dug out a twenty and dropped it in the can.
"You know what I wish?" She hadn't even noticed the size of the bill. "I wish those fucking aces would do something about their own, you know? What would it take for Cyclone, or one of those other assholes" to wipe out those files? Nothing" man, nothing at all, but they're too busy getting headlines." She started to walk away and then she looked in the can. "Hey, thanks, man. You're okay. Listen, here's a flyer. If you want to do some more, call us."
"Sure," Fortunato said. "What's your name?"
"They call me C.C.," she said. "C. C. Ryder."
"Is it the same C. C. as up there?" He pointed to the S.N.C.C. banner.
C.C. shook her head. "You're funny, man" she said" and smiled once and faded into the crowd.
He folded up the flyer and stuck it in his pocket and turned off the Bowery. All the talk about jokers had left him feeling disconnected. Just down the street was a mirror-walled club called the Funhouse, owned by a guy named Desmond who had a trunk instead of a nose. He was one of Fortunato's customers, always wanting a geisha with finer skin or darker hair or a sweeter face than Fortunato could find for him. Fortunato could not stand the thought of seeing him just then.
On the side streets hardly anyone wore masks anymore" and eyes stared back defiantly at him from upside-down faces or heads the size of cantaloupes. Your new brothers and sisters" he told himself. For every ace there were ten of these, lurking in alleys while the lucky ones put on capes and talked their lame jargon and jetted around fighting each other. The aces had the headlines and the talk shows, and the freaks and cripples had Jokertown. Jokertown and the jungles of Vietnam, if C. C.'s story was right.
But the only place Fortunato wanted to be was back in Lenore's apartment, making love to her. And this time he would let go, and if it made him weak it wouldn't matter, and things would go back to the way they always had been.
Except that sooner or later the killer was going to move again. Vietnam was halfway around the world, but the killer was right here, maybe in this very block.
He stopped walking, looked up, and saw that his subconscious had brought him right to the alley where they told him they'd found Erika.
He thought about what C.C. had said. Using power to take care of your own.
When Lenore had jolted him out of his body he'd seen things he'd never seen before, swirls and patterns ou energy that he had no name for. If he could get out again he might see something the cops had missed.
A wino in a long, filthy overcoat started at him. It took Fortunato a second to realize the man had long, floppy, basset ears and a moist, black nose. Fortunato ignored him, shutting his eyes and trying to remember the feeling.
He might as well have been trying to think himself to the moon. He needed Lenore but he was afraid to bring her here. Could he do it at her place, then fly back here? Would he be able to keep it going that long? What would happen to his physical body if he did?
Too many questions. He called her from a pay phone and told her where to meet him.
"Do you have a gun?" he asked. "Yes. Ever since… you know."
"Bring it."
"Fortunato? Are you in trouble?"
"Not yet," he said.
By the time he got back to the alley with Lenore he'd drawn a crowd. They all wore Salvation Army leftovers: baggy pants, ripped and stained flannel shirts, jackets the color of dried grease. One short old woman looked like a wax museum statue that had started to melt. Off to her right was a teenaged boy, standing next to a rack of garbage cans, vibrating. When the vibrations got to a certain pitch the cans would bang together like a spastic cymbal section and the woman would turn on them in a fury and kick at them. The others were less obviously deformed: a man with suckers on the ends of his fingers, a girl whose features had been squared off with ridges of hardened skin.
Lenore held onto Fortunato's arm. "What now?" she whispered.
Fortunato kissed her. She tried to pull away when the audience of freaks started to snicker, but Fortunato was insistent, opening her lips with his tongue, moving his hands over the small of her back, and finally she began to breathe heavily and he felt the power stirring at the base of his spine. He moved his lips down Lenore's shoulder, her long fingernails digging into his neck, and then he raised his eyes until he was looking at the dog-man. He felt the power flow into his eyes and voice and said, quietly, "Go away."
The dog-man turned and walked out of the alley. One at a time he ordered the others away and then he said, "Now," and guided her hand into his trousers. "Do it to me, what you did before." He slid his hands up under her sweater and moved them slowly over her breasts. Her right hand closed over him and her left went around his waist, comforting him with the weight of her S amp;W. 32. He closed his eyes as the heat began to build, letting the brick wall behind him take his weight. In seconds he was ready to come, his astral body bobbling like a loosely held balloon.