CHAPTER 7
The Royal Oaks Inn was a fake Elizabethan pub with artificial thatch and a plastic door-knocker. It faced directly onto the parade route. Above the door, a brightly-coloured sign proclaiming the best draught in the state swung lightly in the breeze.
Parade watchers crowded the entrance. We had to squeeze past the crowd into the pub’s hallway, then into the pub itself. The ceiling, separated by expansive parallel cross-beams, hung low, barely over our heads. Che-Maria watched the parade out of the window. Robert moved to the bar and ordered two beers.
“The letter said 1:00 or 2:00, hey Jon?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“What time is it?”
“12:30.”
I hadn’t bothered to tell Robert and Che-Maria some of Martha’s bigger secrets, like how the Bible was revised by the Holy Ghost to paint Lucifer as the Evil One. The idea had been to convince people that meaning was formed in opposition. For example, day is defined against night, male against female, politicians against Sunday School teachers. Each half of the pair represented a thing, an entity, a meaning. The revised Bible painted Lucifer as the source of Earth’s chaos, even though everyone in Heaven knew chaos had been there all along. People were beginning to figure that out, too. At the end of the last century people were beginning to understand that meaning was produced in the space between the binary, and not in either of the binary’s elements.
Like I said earlier, that’s why the angels first began appearing on Earth: to straighten out the mess and restore order to meaning.
Another of Martha’s secrets was the Holy Ghost’s and Gabriel’s plan to disguise Richard Nixon as the Second Coming. When that failed, they manipulated the karma of Ronald Reagan, a plan which had considerably more luck, even though Rompin’ Ronnie failed to trigger the nuclear Armageddon they had hoped would blow the Earth out of existence altogether.
Che-Maria motioned for me to come join her by the window.
“Look at that man across the street, Jon,” she said. “Do you recognize him?”
The man was tall with long hair. He wore mirrored sunglasses, a white t-shirt, and khaki shorts. It only took me a second.
“That’s Yossarian,” I said, stunned.
“I thought so,” said Che-Maria. “We must be careful.”
She waved to Robert, who had engrossed himself in the Jays-Angels game. He left the game grudgingly, pulling himself slowly from his bar stool to join us at the window.
“Yossarian is on the street,” Che-Maria said. “Look.”
Robert gave two quick shoulder checks, scanning the pub.
“Nuts!” he said. “That letter’s probably a trap. We gotta split.” He shoved me towards the door as he grabbed Che-Maria’s hand and began to lead us back onto the street, but Che-Maria pulled us back.
“Upstairs,” she said, pointing towards a stairway at the back of the room. “Go upstairs and wait for me.”
I took three steps towards the stairs before I realized Robert had not followed. He had stopped to argue with her. I reached out, grabbed him by the arm, and pulled him up the stairs with me.
The stairs led to a hallway, and the hallway led to a platform that overlooked the street. I could see Yossarian hiding behind his sunglasses, whispering every couple minutes into a walkie-talkie. Robert leaned over the railing, grumbling. He glanced up and down the parade route before quickly jumping back and staring at me.
“They’re all here,” he said. “All those hippie dips. They’re all over the place. We’ve been banished to Hippie Hell!”
Looking over the railing, I saw what he said was true. There was Sid and Morrison, Yvette and Joni, Ringo and Yossarian. They were all here, spread strategically up and down the parade route at twenty yard intervals, each with a walkie-talkie and sunglasses, the people of Pipsquin surrounding them, encompassing them, oblivious to their imminent danger. I looked about for Martha, but I couldn’t see her.
Che-Maria appeared behind us. She had a man with her. She was holding his hand, pulling him into the sunlight on the balcony. He was wearing a trenchcoat over a three-piece suit. He had short, slick hair, and in his mouth the chomped butt of a cigar.
“Robert, Jon, I want to introduce a friend,” she said.
Robert stared at the man suspiciously. Che-Maria turned slowly from her husband to me. I reached out my hand.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m Jon.”
The man nodded. Robert finally introduced himself.
“Nasty scar on your hand there,” he said. “How did you manage that?”
“Cut myself shaving,” the man said, smiling.
“Seriously?” Robert asked, before Che-Maria spanked him.
“Don’t you know who this is?” she asked.
“No.”
“This is Jesus Christ.”
“Oh,” said Robert, turning to face the Prince of Peace, blushing. “Sorry to hear about your dad.”
Jesus smiled at him. “He’s not dead,” he said.
“No?”
“No.”
“Oh,” said Robert. “Well, that’s good then.”
I glanced across the street to see if Yossarian was still in his place, and he wasn’t.
“We better split,” I said, starting towards the door. “The hippies are on the move.”
“No, that’s OK,” Jesus said. “They work for me.”
“For you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, what about Martha?” Robert asked.
“In good time, my friend,” Jesus said, waving him off. “First, we need to meet up with Lucifer. Come.”
We descended back through the door and down the staircase into the bar. Yossarian’s band was spread about the room, but they took no notice of us, and we ignored them. Jesus, still holding Che-Maria’s hand, led us through a doorway into the kitchen and finally down another set of stairs to the wine cellar — a small, dark, musky, room lined with bottles of fermenting grape juice.
When we were all there, Jesus pulled a cigarette lighter from his pocket and lit the half dozen candles that were spread about the room.
“This doesn’t involve any chanting, does it?” Robert asked, blowing into his hands. “Any hocus-pocus?”
“No,” said Jesus. “Just sit still. You’ll see.”
We sat quiet for half-an-hour, waiting. And waiting. I was beginning to think about how drafty the room was when I realized that within this enclosed basement there existed a definite cross-breeze, and it was picking up. The light from the candles bounced violently off the walls.
I looked at Jesus, but his eyes were closed. A figure was materializing in the corner, the way Martha had done in my bedroom closet, but it wasn’t her. The wind died down. The figure was complete. Lucifer?
If this is Lucifer, I thought, he needs to hire a public relations firm because people have totally the wrong impression. He looked more like the librarian of my junior high school than the Lord of Darkness, though my experiences with librarians had sometimes led me to suspect them to be of a sinister nature.
Well groomed and young, he smiled broadly at everyone.
“How can I help you, Lord of Hosts?” he addressed Jesus. “I came as soon as I got your Urgent Message. What’s up?”
Jesus coughed.
“The Holy Ghost and Gabriel have concocted a plot to take over the universe,” he said. “It’s a conspiracy that is well along.”
“I know,” said Lucifer. “I’m well-informed. I have spies.”
“As I am aware,” said Jesus. “But because you are so well-informed, you also know that I have been away for the past half-century on a fact-finding mission to another dimension. I have only heard of these events recently, and, upon finding of them, I have fled the Cosmic City. It now seems that I, too, may be in danger.”
“Ah,” said Lucifer. “I know not seems. Indeed, you are in danger. And you have come to me for help? How strange.”
“Not so,” said Jesus. “My present a
ction is far less strange than you imagine, for you see, God is not dead as you think. He is alive and imprisoned. I have come to you so that you may help us free him.”
At this point, a puzzled look came across Lucifer’s face and he began pacing the room. “Not dead,” he said. “Not dead. Could my intelligence be so misinformed?”
“I swear to you Lucifer, it is true,” said Jesus. “He has been imprisoned for three hundred years. At first, he announced he was going on sabbatical for a couple of centuries. This is where I thought he was when I left on my journey. This is where he is supposed to have died. Now I realize the whole event has been staged; that everything resulted from the will of the Holy Ghost and Gabriel to dominate. They want to create a new order and place themselves at the head of it.”
“Sacred Blood!” exclaimed Lucifer. “If God’s still alive, then there’s hope yet!”
“My thoughts exactly,” said Jesus. The two men stared at each other and nodded some tacit agreement.
I wanted to ask about Martha, but the conversation between the two deities had left me terribly confused. Not so Robert.
“Hey!” he said. “What gives? What about Martha? What about us?”
This outburst startled Jesus, who had apparently forgotten we were there. He smacked his forehead, reached into the pocket of his overcoat, and pulled out a piece of paper which he handed to me.
Dear Jon,
My Lord has come for me, and I must follow. He has assured me you will be taken care of. You must trust him. I have another mission which takes me away from you. The matter is grave and the business urgent. Still, I have not forgotten you and hope to see you soon.
I meant to tell you before I left that you are only as ill as you perceive yourself to be. The power to control your destiny is within. You must take hold of this power and use it to your advantage.
If you have received this letter, you are well on the way to that realization yourself. You’re a special person, Jon. I love you.
(signed) Martha XXX
Attached to the letter was this poem:
decentred love
I still want to hold your hand
make love to/with you on an empty beach
watch you slowly undress and step
into a bubblebath and
I want you to want these things too
to speak what you feel with what you feel
is your voice I will listen
do not be afraid of my/our love and fecundal religion
“I forget where I first heard this,” Martha had written underneath, “but it has always stuck with me.”
I folded the letter and put it in my pocket. Jesus glanced about the room.
“We have little time,” he said. “We must go to Heaven immediately.”
Lucifer nodded. There was a flash of light, and we were there.