The Broom Of The System Part 32

"I'm practically positive. The young lady who lives directly below Lenore and her roommate Ms. Mandible will be involuntarily out of her apartment for at least three months, guaranteed. Mrs. Tissaw will be predictably anxious to ensure occupancy and so rent payment for that period."

"How come you know for sure the little lady's gone for three months?"

"She works for Lenore's sister, Clarice, who now owns a chain of tanning parlors in the area. There was a horrible accident. The girl will be all right, but will require at least three months of hospitalization and continual Noxzema treatments."

"You mean ... ?"

"Yes. Tanning accident."

"Bad news."

"Yes. But at least an available apartment, cheap. And your a.s.signment with the firm cannot possibly last for more than three months, barring utter disaster."

"OK by me."

"Andrew, listen, may I ask a question?"

"Shoot."

"Will Mindy be coming out to join you? You have told her the developments-she does know where you're going to be, doesn't she? What exactly is the Mindy situation?"

"R.V., look and listen. It's like I told you, I just felt like I had to get out for a while. Breathe some temporarily Melinda-Sue-free air. She and I had a bit of a tiff before I drove up to school, I make no bones. But it's more'n that. To my mind there's just this temporary lack of wonderfulness about our whole relations.h.i.+p."

"So things are just temporarily up in the air."

"And no, I didn't exactly call her from school, I didn't tell her I'd run into y'all and was coming out here to do some work. But she'll be able to find out when she wants. I had to leave my car with Coach Zandagnio, who was my lacrosse coach, and sort of my mentor, at school, and I told him the whole story. And Melinda-Sue knows that if anybody knows where I would have gone from school, it's old Stenetore, 'cause she knew him too, he went to our wedding when she got out of school; he gave us a gravy boat."

"You played lacrosse at Amherst?"

"I was a lacrosse-playing fool."

"Always struck me as a staggeringly savage game."

"A truly and completely kick-a.s.s game. A game that kicks a.s.s."

"I see."

"Lenore darling, are you awake?"

"Fnoof."

"Girl can do some serious sleeping."

"May I be explicit, here, for a moment, w.a.n.g-Dang?"

"Draw and fire, R. V."

"I am pa.s.sionately, fiercely, and completely in love with Lenore. She is not quite as explicitly my fiancee as I may have inadvertently led you to believe in the f.l.a.n.g.e, but she is nevertheless mine. I have a bit of a jealousy problem, I'm told. My setting in motion the process of your possibly temporarily sharing a building with Lenore, actually, to be honest, my inviting you to come and temporarily enter our lives and work for Frequent and Vigorous, at all, was predicated on the understandable a.s.sumption that you were emotionally involved with and attached to Mindy Metalman, a woman who, just let me say in all candor, strikes me as the sort of woman an attachment to whom on, for example, my part would leave me completely uninterested in any and all of the world's other females. Do you get my drift?"

"Go on."

"Then the drift now becomes a tide, and I say that, in light of what I now know, given what seems to be at least a partial and temporary unattachment to your wife, Mindy, a past that includes an acquaintance with Lenore, under whatever circ.u.mstances, prior to my own, and at least clear verbal evidence of vigorous hormonal activity on your part, I feel I can be truly comfortable only in the context of an explicit recognition on your part of the fact that Lenore is mine, and thus out of bounds, that as I am to be regarded as a sort of brother, or uncle, whatever you will, so Lenore is to be regarded by you as a sort of sister, or aunt, with whom any sort of attempted romantic involvement is and would be entirely unthinkable."

"There."

"d.a.m.ned if you're not the most articulate little rooster I ever heard crow."

"I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a tiny bit hurt by the idea that I might do something like what you're afraid of to a Psi Phi brother, to an Amherst uncle. But to put your mind at rest ... your mind isn't quite at rest, here, is it?"

"It can be put so with utter ease, by you."

"OK, then let me just say, right here, that I give you my word of honor as an alumni of the single finest undergraduate inst.i.tution in the land that I will not harbor any but the most honorable of thoughts toward your woman."

"I'm all too aware that it's silly, but could you promise not to take her away?"

"R.V., I promise not to take her away."

"Thank you. Well there. That's out of the way."

"You all right? Your forehead's wet as h.e.l.l. You want to use my hankie?"

"No thank you. I have my own."

"Gentlemen, the captain asks that you please refasten your seat belts for landing."

"My ears are rumbling like mad."

"You wouldn't by any chance want to help me with my particular belt, here, ma'am, would you?"

"Ixnay-ilotpay."

"Fnoof."

"Lenore."

"Fnoof. What?"

"d.a.m.ned if you can't sleep up a storm, Lenore."

"What time is it?"

"We're apparently preparing to land."

"Boy am I tired."

"Sweet dreams?"

"I'm not sure. My mouth tastes like a barn. I would kill for a shower. "

"Have some gum."

"Want to try some Skoal?"

"Not for anything in the world."

"Lenore, my ears are in their own private h.e.l.l."

"Poor Rick. What can I do to help?"

"Perhaps a bit of a temple ma.s.sage ..."

"Let me just get my big old carca.s.s out of the way, here ..."

By the time Rick dropped Lenore and w.a.n.g-Dang Lang off near the Tissaws' it was almost four, and beginning to mist a little, so that even though it wasn't very cold Lenore could see her breath, and Lang's. Rick dashed off to attend to some affairs at Frequent and Vigorous, but promised, as he dropped them a few hundred yards from the oral surgeon's big gray house, to be back as soon as possible to take them both to dinner.

"Super," said Lenore.

"Straight up," said Lang.

The reason Rick had to drop Lenore and Lang off near, rather than at, the Tissaws' was that the street all around the house was totally clogged with cars, and especially vans. A lot of the vans were white, with the ornate letters P.W.G. on the sides, in red. Lenore had never seen the street so crowded.

"I've just never seen the street so crowded," Lenore said.

"Don't suppose all these folks are here to try to sublet Misty Schwartz's room, do you?" said Lang.

"Not a chance."

"Must be a really b.i.t.c.hing party going on around here, then," said Lang.

"On a Tuesday afternoon?"

"My kind of neighborhood."

As they went up the walk, Lenore saw that the Tissaws' front door was propped partly open by a network of thick black cables that led out from the backs of two of the white P.W.G. vans-vans parked halfway onto the gra.s.s of the Tissaws' lawn-and disappeared into the house. Lenore all of a sudden heard what was unmistakably Candy Mandible shout something from her third-story window, a window that looked strangely lit up, right now, and actually had a bit of a tiny rainbow-doughnut around it in the cool wet air, and then from the front porch Lenore heard Candy running down the stairs of the house to meet them at the door.

"Lenore I swear to G.o.d you will just not believe it," said Candy.

"What the heck is going on here?" Lenore said, looking around. "Are we having sewer trouble?"

"Not exactly, come on, it's Vlad the Impaler," Candy said, starting to try to pull Lenore toward the stairs, up which the black cables from the vans ran and disappeared from sight. Candy was wearing that violet dress.

"Hey, ho, and h.e.l.lo," Lang said to Candy. He hefted the suitcases.

"Hi," said Candy, barely looking at Lang. "Lenore, come on. You'll flip and die!"

"What can Vlad the Impaler have to do with vans and letters and cables?"

"Mrs. Tissaw heard him say things, G.o.d knows what, really, and she just freaked out." out." One of the shoulder straps of the violet dress had slipped off Candy's shoulder. Lang hefted the suitcases again. "She's getting him on television. Well, religious television, on cable. But still, television." One of the shoulder straps of the violet dress had slipped off Candy's shoulder. Lang hefted the suitcases again. "She's getting him on television. Well, religious television, on cable. But still, television."

"Television?"

"Vlad the Impaler?" said w.a.n.g-Dang Lang.

"My bird," Lenore said. "Who is now troublingly and also obscenely able to talk." She turned to Candy. "Who gave permission for him to get put on television?"

"Mrs. Tissaw says it's in lieu of the bill for the chewed wall and the guano-damage to the floor, which she knows you can't pay because she talked to Prietht at the board and Prietht very helpfully told her you're broke ..." Candy stopped and looked up the staircase. There was noise from the third floor. Lots of it. "But look," she said, "come on, they're going to make him a star, they say. They say literally. literally. " "

"Literally? A star? Of what?"

"Come on. "

Lenore let herself be pulled. Lang followed her and Candy up the stairs with the suitcases, watching their bottoms.

"Friends, as subscribing members of the Reverend Hart Lee Syke's Partners With G.o.d Club you can expect the entry of the Almighty into your own personal life in twenty-four hours or less," Vlad the Impaler was saying, staring blankly into a lavishly unfamiliar little unsmeared mirror perimetered with tiny light bulbs. Lenore's own personal room was full of television cameras and towering metal lamps, and bright-white light. The room was cruising at about a hundred degrees. Thick black cables, and panels with colored lights winking on and off, and sungla.s.ses were everywhere. The brown velvet chair, the uneven-legged desk chair, the bed, and all the black corduroy cus.h.i.+ons on the windowsills were occupied by people holding various sorts of electronic equipment, or thick sheaves of paper, and all smoking, and all tapping cigarette ashes onto the floor. Vlad the Impaler was in his cage, his enormous feet hooked over the arms of a tiny director's chair, licking tentatively at the hot surface of his lit-up mirror. A truly enormous gray box of a television camera, with a little red light on top, was trained on him. Pushed back onto Vlad's spiky pink mohawk Lenore thought she could see a tiny pair of sungla.s.ses. Vlad the Impaler's old smeared mirror, on its chain of Frequent and Vigorous paper clips, was gone.

"Holy s.h.i.+t," said Lenore.

"You wouldn't believe what's been happening," said Candy.

"One h.e.l.l of a dress, there, ma'am," Lang said to Candy. "A. S. Lang, here."

"Perfect! Perfect!" Perfect!" came shouts from a huge man with a white leather body suit, and an enormous beehive of sculptured black hair, and several chins. Red sequins on the chest of his body suit formed the letters P.W.G. came shouts from a huge man with a white leather body suit, and an enormous beehive of sculptured black hair, and several chins. Red sequins on the chest of his body suit formed the letters P.W.G.

"Love it! Love that bird!" the man was yelling.

"Cut!" yelled somebody else, from the middle of the mob near the windows. The windows were smeared with steam, from breath.

"Twist my major limbs if that's not Hart Lee Sykes himself," w.a.n.g-Dang Lang said, staring at the man in white leather.

"Who?" said Lenore.

"It is, that's Hart Lee Sykes," said Candy. She got close to Lenore's ear to make herself heard. "He's this truly enormous wheel at CBN, the Christian Broadcasting Network? He used to host this show called 'Real People and Animals of Profound Religious Significance,' a sort of religious spin-off of 'Real People.' But now he hosts this incredibly successful show on cable called 'The Partners With G.o.d Club.' "