Virtual Light

Sure had the whole place lit up, though. He could hear the drumming of big generators as they drove down the incline.

“Jesus” Chevette Washington said.

Rydell pulled up by the blockhouse and powered his window down, glad it still worked. A man in a blaze-orange fleece jacket and a matching cap came out, carrying some kind of shotgun with a skeletal metal stock. “Private property” he said, looking at where the windshield should’ve been. “What happened to your windshield there, mister?”

“Deer” Chevette Washington said.

“Here to visit our friends, the Subletts?” Rydell said, hoping he could distract the guard before he’d notice the bullet holes or anything. “Expecting us, if you wa

“Can’t say you much look like Christians.”

Chevette Washington sort of leaned across Rydell and gave the guard this stare. “I don’t know about you, brother, but we’re Aryan Nazarene, out of Eugene. We wouldn’t want to even come in there, say you got any mud people, any kind of race-mixing. Race-traitors all over, these days.”

The guard looked at her. “You Nazarene, how come you ain’t skins?”

She touched the front of her crazy haircut, the short spikey part. “Next thing you’re go

He looked more than maybe just a little worried, now.

“Got us some sanctified nails in the back, here. Maybe that gives you some idea.”

Rydell saw the guard hesitate, swallow.

“Hey, good buddy” Rydell said, “you go

The man went back into the blockhouse.

“What’s that about nails?” RydeE asked.

“Something Ski

Dora, Sublett’s mother, drank Coke and Mexican vodka. Rydell had seen people drink that before, but never at room temperature. And the Coke was flat, because she bought it and the vodka in these big plastic supermarket bottles, and they looked as though they’d already lasted her a while. Rydell decided he didn’t feel like drinking anyway.

The living room of Dora’s trailer had a matching couch and reclining lounger. Dora lay back in the lounger with her feet up, for her circulation she said, Rydell and Chevette Washington sat side by side on the couch, which was more a loveseat, and Sublett sat on the floor, his knees drawn up almost under his chin. There was a lot of stuff on the walls, and on little ornamental shelves, but it was all very clean. Rydell figured that was because of Sublett’s allergies. There sure was a lot of it, though: plaques and pictures and figurines and things Rydell figured had to be those prayer hankies. There was a flat type of hologram of Rev. Fallon, looking as much like a possum as ever, but a possum that had gotten a tan and maybe had plastic surgery. There was a life-size head of J.D. Shapely that Rydell didn’t like because the eyes seemed to follow you. Most of the good stuff was sort of grouped around the television, which was big and shiny but the old kind from before they started to get real big and flat. It was on now, showing this black and white movie, but the sound was off.

“You’re sure you won’t have a drink, Mr. Rydell?”

“No ma’am, thank you” Rydell said.

“Joel doesn’t drink. He has allergies, YOU know.”

“Yes ma’am.” Rydell hadn’t ever known Sublett’s first name before.

Sublett was wearing brand-new white denim jeans, a white t-shirt, white cotton socks, and disposable white paper hospital slippers.

“He was always a sensitive boy, Mr. Rydell. I remember one time he sucked on the handle of this other boy’s Big Wheel. Well, his mouth like to turned inside-out.”

“Momma” Sublett said, “you know the doctor said you ought to get more sleep than you been getting.”

Mrs. Sublett sighed. “Yes, well, Joel, I know you young people want a chance to talk.” She peered at Chevette Washington. “That’s a shame about your hair, honey. You’re just as pretty as can be, though, and you know it’ll just grow in so nice. I tried to light the broiler on this gas range we had, down in Galveston, that was when Joel was just a baby, he was so sensitive, and that stove about blew up. I just had had this perm, dear and, well…”

Chevette Washington didn’t say anything.

“Momma” Sublett said, “now you know you’ve had your nice drink…”

Rydell watched Sublett lead the old woman off to bed.

“Jesus Christ” Chevette Washington said, “what’s wrong with his eyes?”

“Just light-sensitive” Rydell said.

“It’s spooky, is what it is.”

“He wouldn’t hurt a fly” Rydell said.

Sublett came back, looked at the picture on the tv, then sighed and shut it off. “You know I’m not supposed to leave the trailer, Berry?”

“How’s that?”

“It’s a condition of my apostasy. They say I might corrupt the congregation by contact.” He perched on the edge of the recliner so he wouldn’t have to actually recline in it.

“I thought you’d blown Fallon off when you came out to LA.”

Sublett looked embarrassed. “Well, she’s been sick, Berry, so when I came here I told ’em I was here to reconsider. Meditate on the box ’n’ all.” He wrung his long pale hands. “Then they caught me watching Videodrome. You ever see, uh, Deborah Harry, Rydell?” Sublett sighed and sort of quivered.

“How’d they catch you?”

“They’ve got it set up so they can monitor what you’re watching.”

“How come they’re out here anyway?”

Sublett ran his fingers back through his dry, straw-colored hair. “Hard to say, but I’d figure it’s got something to do with Reverend Fallon’s tax problems. Most of what he does, lately, it’s about that. Didn’t your job in San Francisco work out, Berry?”

“No” Rydell said, “it didn’t.”

“You want to tell me about it?” Rydell said he did.

“I think he shot through something to do with the damned heater, too” Rydell said. They were back in the RV, outside the perimeter.

“I like your friend” she said. “I do too.”

“No, I mean he really cares about what’s going to happen to you. He really does.”

“You take the bed” he said. “I’ll sleep up front.”

“There’s no windshield. You’ll freeze.”

“I’ll be okay.”

“Sleep back here. We did before. It’s okay.”

He woke in the dark and listened to the sound of her breathing, to the creak of stiff old leather from the jacket spread over her shoulder.

Sublett had listened to his story, nodding sometimes, asking a question here and there, his mirrored contacts reflecting tiny convex images of them sitting there on that loveseat. In the end he’d just whistled softly and said, “Berry, it sounds to me like you’re really in trouble now. Bad trouble.”

Really in trouble now.

Rydell slid his hand down, brushing one of hers by accident as he did it, and touched the bulge of his wallet in his back pocket. What money he had was in there, but Wellington Ma’s card was in there, too. Or what was left of it. The last time he’d looked, it had broken into three pieces.

“Big trouble” he said to the dark, and Chevette Washington lifted the edge of her jacket and sort of snuggled in closer, her breathing never changing, so he knew she was still asleep.

He lay there, thinking, and after a while he started to get this idea. About the craziest idea he’d ever had.

“That boyfriend of yours” he said to her, in the tiny kitchen of Sublett’s mother’s trailer, “that Lowell?”

“What about him?”

“Got a number we could reach him at?”

She poured milk on her cornflakes. It was the kind you mixed up from powder. Had that thin chalky look. The only kind Sublett’s mother had. Sublett was allergic to milk. “Why?”

“I think maybe I want to talk to him about something.”

“About what?”

“Something I think maybe he could help me with.”

“Lowell? Lowell’s not go

“Well” Rydell said, “why don’t you just let me talk to him.”