Jack O'Connell - The Skin Palace

Sylvia doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about.

“Is there any chance,” she asks, “you could tell me where I could find Mr. Propp himself?”

He erupts with laughter. His knee hits the coffee table and tea sloshes out of his cup. Then just as quickly he brings himself under control, seemingly embarrassed by the outburst. He closes his eyes and works his mouth to calm himself, then he says, “I don’t know what has gotten into me today. I’ve been terribly rude to a lovely guest. My mother, she would spin in her grave if she could see.”

Sylvia sits silently and waits for the explanation and when Quevedo realizes that she’s not going to speak, he goes through another small session of throat clearing, then says, “The truth is, Sylvia, there is no chance I could possibly direct you to Terrence Propp.”

“Is he dead?” she asks.

“I have no idea.”

There’s another round of silence until she says, “Maybe I should go,” and this prompts the old man to stand up with a little difficulty.

“Please, I realize this is frustrating, but it’s simply because you’re not familiar with the history. I truly do not know whether Terrence Propp is among the living or the dead. And believe me, no matter what the zealots say to you, they don’t know either. Don’t be taken in, Sylvia.”

He tilts forward a bit, reaches around to his back pants pocket, pulls out a linen handkerchief and begins to mop up the spilt tea.

“Maybe you could give me the name of one of those people,” Sylvia says. “Someone who could tell me more about Mr. Propp.”

All Mr. Quevedo’s attention seems to be taken up with drying the table.

“Are you sure you want to do this, Sylvia?” He sounds distracted, almost cranky. She wants to say Hey, Mister, you’re the one who dragged me into this store and started the conversation.

“Perhaps,” he says, “you should sleep on it. You could call me tomorrow.”

She says, “You could be with Mr. Derry tomorrow.”

“I’m not going anywhere, my dear. I’m here for the duration.”

“How about that name, Mr. Quevedo?”

He stands there, blank faced, seeming to stare at her with those gauzy, creamy eyes. Then he does a little, stiff march to the front door and opens it, indicating that she should go. She follows him to the door, stops in the entryway and says, “Well, anyway, thank you for the tea.”

He nods, clicks his heels together and says, “Rory Gaston. You can find him at Der Geheime Garten. A little café just a few blocks from here. Der Garten, to the regulars.”

Then he leans forward and plants a dry, withered-feeling kiss on her right cheek, takes her elbow and ushers her out onto the sidewalk. Sylvia turns to thank him, but he’s already closed the door.

Sylvia looks up and down Waldstein, then walks back down to Jack Derry’s and stares in the window. She doesn’t know what she expects to see. It’s still deserted and there’s still no trace that yesterday she stood at the plywood counter, surrounded by hundreds of dusty piles of hocked and traded camera equipment, and talked with Mr. Derry and walked back out again with her dreamed-about Aquinas. There’s no sign that the store was ever anything but deserted. That it didn’t fall to vacancy ten years ago rather than last night.

She glances to her left and sees a greasy-looking guy in army fatigues leaning against the stop sign and staring at her, making noises with his mouth that she can’t hear. As soon as their eyes meet, he starts making these horrible, exaggerated kissing sounds and he jams his hands into his coat pockets and goes into a bizarre Elvis impersonation, swinging his hips in a slow circle as if trying to keep a Hula Hoop aloft.

She turns away from Jack Derry’s and starts to head for Voegelin Avenue. A pack of five or six Zone kids run past her in full bohemian colore — leather trench coats, bandanna’d skulls, earrings that hang to the neck. They’re all carrying something in their arms and Sylvia can’t see what it is until one of them trips and sprawls into the middle of the road and gets to his knees, his chest covered with running, yellow yolk, and he starts yelling, “My fucking eggs.” He gets up, starts to wipe at his chest with his hands, gives up the effort as futile and continues on after his friends.

Sylvia comes around the corner of Voegelin and onto Watson and immediately sees where the artists were headed. She’s stopped by a huge crowd that’s taken over the entire street. Traffic can’t pass and a line of cars is starting to form and lean on their horns. The noise of the crowd seems to increase as she starts to wade through it and then there’s an awful squeal, that piercing high-pitched whine of feedback that a radio or amplifier will sometimes make. The crowd flinches in unison as the whine dies and then a rolling, familiar voice shouts, “I’m sorry, people. Very sorry. Is it working, Raymond? Can they hear me?”

She’s half a block away from the heart of the action but she can see the crowd’s center is in front of Herzog’s Erotic Palace, known locally as the Skin Palace, a baroque and expansive X-rated movie house that’s also the oldest theater in Quinsigamond. More an architectural miracle than a building, it’s a five-story Moderne temple and just the sight of it makes all the shoebox mall cineplexes even more heinous.

Sylvia squeezes through bodies until she’s directly opposite Herzog’s. She spots a mailbox and hoists herself up on it in time to see Reverend Garland Boetell being elevated onto the roof of an old white Cadillac that has the words Chariot of Virtue emblazoned on its side in glitter paint. Boetell’s got a microphone of some kind gripped in both his hands and as he blows across its head, the street fills with the sound of a moist wind. The Chariot of Virtue has been pulled up onto the sidewalk and it’s surrounded by what must be the Reverend’s inner core, about a dozen men and women led by the Brazilian teen aide-de-camp Fernando, all of them dressed in what look like heavy robes, kind of like monk’s robes, with cowl hoods hanging down the back and loose, rope-like belts. This crew is walking in slow circles around the car, carrying placards with messages like Whores of Babylon, Your Time Has Come and Save the Children From This Filth and Carnal Sinners Reside Within.

In front of the entrance to Herzog’s is a line of the Palace’s resident muscle, beefy steroid cases all decked out in logo’d spandex jackets and cowboy boots. They’ve formed a well-pumped barricade in front of the door by standing shoulder to shoulder. They’ve got their folded hands clasped in front of their groins, secret-service style. And they’re looking none too happy. It’s clear they’d like to put a quick and definitive stop to this spectacle, but they must have orders from the boss to simply hold the front line until the lawyers decide how to play things.

Boetell seems thrilled by the presence of the bouncers. He’s a pro at this kind of media event and it’s always more effective to rail against human flesh, no matter how restrained, than inanimate brick and mortar.

“Look at them before us,” the Reverend bellows into the microphone, “guarding the gates to hell itself. Boys,” he addresses the bouncers directly, “when you stand before the Almighty on your personal judgment day and the Lord asks you how you spent your days on the earth, what, in the name of mercy, are you going to tell him? What kind of answer will you give to the face of your one and only savior? Will you say, Sweet Jesus, I served in the legion of the antichrist? Will you say, Dear Lord A’mighty, I ushered the misguided into the cushioned seats of damnation? Fall on your knees here and now, sinners, and offer up prayer with Reverend Boetell that we might buy back your immortal souls from the demon.”