David Wallace - Broom of the System

“And the rest you can of course glean from what you see and feel here tonight,” said Sykes. “So then, if you’ll simply indicate to the bird its appointed lines, we can—”

“So it looks like Mrs. Tissaw is who I ought to talk to,” Lenore said. “Because if she thinks she can just put a drugged bird on television, without even—”

“Drugged with the intoxicating overdue message of the very Lord Himself!” Sykes cried. Lang suddenly yelled as Vlad latched onto his finger. The sound-man rushed over to get him loose.

“So where is Mrs. Tissaw, is the big question,” said Lenore. “Maybe I could grab a quick shower, and then she and I could just sit down, and—”

“Mrs. Tissaw is out shopping,” Sykes beamed.

“Father Sykes’s agent gave her a really disturbing amount of money, as like an advance,” said Candy.

“We sow to reap, here in America,” Sykes said, drawing the loudest affirmation yet from the technicians.

“She’s out buying clothes, and girdles, and getting her hair tinted,” Candy said. “She’s getting ready to take Vlad the Impaler down to Atlanta with the Father.”

“She’s going to what?”

“The bird will be the first cohost in the history of the ‘Partners With God Club’!” Sykes cried, pointing a finger at the ceiling. Lang, who was back by Candy with a Kleenex around his finger, looked up to see what Sykes was pointing at.

“Sow to reap!” shrieked Vlad the Impaler.

“Mrs. Tissaw says she gets the bird temporarily in return for the chewed wall, and damage from Vlad pooping on the floor, which she says is more damage than you can pay for,” said Candy. “So she says she’ll temporarily just take Vlad instead. Her husband’s backing her up, just to get her out of town for a while, I think.”

“The bird belongs to the ages, now,” the Reverend said quietly.

“Not legally, though, if you guys want to have things get unpleasant,” Candy said, putting her arm around Lenore, who continued to edge toward the door.

“Of course, Mrs. Simpson needn’t come at all, if you wish as would be only natural to accompany the chosen vehicle yourself into the new epoch it’s made possible,” Sykes said to Lenore.

“Does this mean I don’t get the apartment?” said Lang.

“Bathroom,” Lenore squeaked faintly in Candy’s ear.

“All contributing subscriptions are deductible! Like this!” said Vlad the Impaler.

“At last!” Sykes cried. He flew to the cage.

“Action!” yelled the director.

“Lay your sleeping head, my deductible love!”

“Miss Beaksman, hear the mandate!” thundered Sykes. The camera zoomed in, filling everything.

The hallway was cool and empty, after her room. Lenore wedged the bathroom door shut with the toe of a sneaker. She looked at the painted parrots on the shower curtain.

“You say one word, and there’s going to be lunging like nobody’s ever seen.”

“So you’re upset, then.”

“I think I’m too tired to be upset. I don’t know why I’m so tired.”

“Like your brother.”

“Which brother? The one who’s flapped all the time, or the anorexic one who we’ve had to watch go around the bend for years and now just disappears and is maybe dead for all I know? I just want to sleep. Just put your arm… like that. Thank you.”

“I thought you said the thing with John was that he was so reluctant to be in any way involved with anything’s death that he usually refused to eat, since every eating entails a death. That’s not anorexia.”

“It is, sort of, if you think about it.”

“And that he had a horizontal proof of the indisputability of the proposition that one should never kill, for whatever reason.”

“A diagonal proof.”

“Diagonal proof.”

“I guess.”

“He… want it published, maybe?”

“I doubt he ever wrote it down, since that would involve paper, and so trees, et cetera.”

“Quite a fellow. A certain nobility.”

“I don’t really even know him. He’s like this stranger who drops in from Auschwitz every Christmas. He’s also lately been very weirdly religious. He told me he wants to write this book arguing that Christianity is the universe’s way of punishing itself, that what Christianity is, really, is the offer of an irresistible reward in exchange for an unperformable service.”

“Obvious problems involved in actually writing the thing, of course.”

“I think I’m even more worried about John than I am about Lenore.”

“I certainly know one particular feathered animal I wouldn’t mind him eating.”

“That’s not even a tiny bit funny, Rick.”

“I’m sorry. To be honest, though, I think it will be good for you, to have the bird out of your hair, so to speak, until this nursing-home and thin-brother business gets cleared up.”

“Poor Vlad the Impaler. All he ever wanted was a mirror and some food and a dish to go to the bathroom in.”

“A dish he used with distressing infrequency, remember.”

“I just can’t believe Mrs. Tissaw was saying he’d done thousands of dollars of damage to the room. That’s just a lie. She was standing there lying to me.”

“She’s clearly in some sort of religious ecstasy. People in religious ecstasies put live snakes in their mouths. Mate with the eyesockets of rotting skulls. Smear themselves with dung. Bird-damage delusions are small potatoes.”

“I’ve never had a shower feel any better than that shower did.”

“You must have been in there quite a while, for them to have time to spirit the bird away before you returned.”

“No one spirited anyone away. They just had him down in a van. And actually I guess that was sort of good, because it at least in a way took the decision out of my hands, right then. So I didn’t have to make any split-second decisions with those white-hot TV lights on me, which would have been spasm city.”

“But you laid down the law that it’s just for a month.”

“Candy and I squeaked faintly that it’s just for thirty shows as they all peeled away in their dumb vans, with the antennas. I told Mrs. Tissaw that if it’s more than a month without my permission I’ll take legal action. But I don’t think she was too impressed.”

“We will take action, if necessary. We can use that man F and V has on retainer. God knows he owes us some sort of work for his fee. Or I’ll get us one on our own, and pay for it. The bird is after all legally mine, remember.”

“What do you mean? You gave him to me for Christmas. I said that was the best Christmas present I’d ever gotten, remember?”

“And plus you hate Vlad the Impaler. You make that clear all the time.”

“I’ll admit I regret buying him for you. But, legally speaking, I have the receipt from Fuss ‘n’ Feathers pet shop. And, more to the point, as you may recall, on the relevant Christmas I did give you what you asked for, while you did not give me what I asked for. Had there been some sort of emotionally fulfilling Christmas exchange, that would have been one thing. As it was, it was one-sided. I never received my gift. Thus in some emotional dash legal deep sense the bird remains technically mine.”

“You said you liked the beret I gave you.”

“But it’s not what I asked for.”

“Look, we’ve been through this. I told you I just won’t do that stuff. If you cared in any non-creepy way, you’d only want to do what I want to do. And I don’t want to be tied up, and I’m sure not going to hit your bottom with any paddles. It’s just sick.”

“You don’t understand. Any possible sickness is obviated by the motivation behind it, as tried—”