Snake Oil - Waiting For The Galactic Bus - Snake Oil - Waiting for the Galactic Bus Part 17
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Snake Oil - Waiting for the Galactic Bus Part 17

"Yet," Roy corrected with the first overtones of authority.

"Well put, sir." Drumm motioned Roy first through the door. "I was not mistaken in you. You show genius."

The Whip & Jackboot: the glories of the display window alone convinced Roy that Drumm knew his taste to a T, his brightest fantasies. Within the window there were many metal-studded styles and a great deal of leather.

"I'll leave you here." Drumm searched the mall both ways with his perpetual air of secrecy. "Remember, you're being watched. I'll get word to the others and to you when it's safe to meet."

"Yeah, cool." Roy wanted to get off the sidewalk. The bathrobe didn't do anything for a man of destiny.

"The code word for the takeover is Case White. Leader, the pistol is cocked." The metaphor pleased Drumm. "You will pull the trigger. Auf Wiedersehen."

"Stay cool. No, wait a minute." Roy found he was thinking clearer and more confidently with each passing minute. Never mind the people on the sidewalk; they didn't seem to think a man in a bathrobe was ridiculous or even interesting. Looked like a bunch of stuck-up yuppies, didn't know their ass from a hole in the ground. "You said you know everybody that comes here." "Everyone," Drumm confirmed. "We make it our business to know. Not hard, a few favors here and there. Now and then for the right person an agreeable girl in the right motel. I mean - that is to say . . ."Drumm looked away, awkwardly conscious of a gaffe. "Excuse me, Leader, I - " "That's okay, just watch it. Pass an order to the troops." Click! "Immediately, Leader." "Find Charity Stovall for me. I don't give a shit who you put in what bed with his own mother even. Charity's my woman and I want her, understand? That's General Order numero uno, got it?"

"Sir." Click! "Until then, may I suggest A Son Gout, just down the mall? Adrian the sommelier personally extends his invitation."

"Adrian the what?"

"In charge of the girls." Click! "Until later, my Fuhr - my Leader." Drumm bustled away. He had very little military bearing and digging in his nose destroyed that.

Roy entered the Whip & Jackboot. Before him stretched rows of gleaming, studded jackets and matched uniforms, shelves of precisely arranged peaked caps like a squad on parade, racks of leather whips, whole tack sections of leather strapping. Midway down one row, a balding black man with bulging eyes and enormous white teeth fussed over an item on a rack. Seeing Roy, he shuffled forward with a servility that warmed the customer's heart.

"Mistuh Roy Stride, suh! Lan', it good to see you in a gent'man's shop where y'all belong."

Roy felt better already. He straightened up. The demeaning rag of a bathrobe took on regality. He liked a nigger who knew his place; didn't have anything against that kind at all. Tell them a Mandy and Rastus joke, they'd laugh hard as you did.

"Well, now, first we gone take you back to this li'l old booth, get you some trousers and shirt while Jacob measures you. Come 'long, Mistuh Roy."

The black man shuffled classically, using a great deal of graceful effort to cover very little distance. Hell, they all had rhythm.

"What's your name, boy?"

"Washington Moonlight Jones, suh." He revealed again the vast expanse of gossamer teeth. "Mama call me Moonlight 'cause that when Daddy done his bes' work among de neighborin' stills."

Roy swelled with pleasure and ventured a Rhett Butler grin of roguish but patrician understanding. "Moonlight, you black rascal, give me the best you got."

"Don' fret. We gone get you lookin' fine."

In a few moments Roy was in and out of the booth, the silly robe traded for shirt and trousers. There were several small holes in the shirtfront and faded stains around them, but he wouldn't have them on for that long.

Moonlight gestured like a majordomo. "Now, y'all come 'long with me in the back. We got Jacob. He trash but he do know what a mil'tary gent'man need for wear. Jacob? Gent'man need some outflttin' right now." Moonlight lowered his voice in confidence. "He try to Jew you on price, old Moonlight set him straight. Been took care of. Jacob?"

Moonlight thrust aside a curtain. "G'wan in, Mistuh Roy."

The dingy back room was rack-lined with uniforms in various stages of completion. At the end of a long table, tape measure draped about his oddly twisted neck, a bearded Jew of indeterminate age hunched over a thick book. Bespectacled and ringleted, the fringes of a prayer shawl splayed from beneath the hem of his shabby vest.

Roy sneered: a real one, all right. "Work hours, Ikey. You praying to Moses on company time?"

The tailor gave Roy an unhurried inspection before closing his book. Somehow, under that gaze, Roy recalled the factory worker he bad-mouthed in a bar once, a man who stood much bigger than he sat. Roy had the same second-thought prudence then as now. Jacob exuded an undefinable force that belied the humble appearance. In a dark alley, he might be dangerous. Though his head canted at an unnatural angle, his gaze was pitilessly direct.

"Not prayer, no. Thinking on the nature of belief. Like the Talmud, a preoccupation of mine." Jacob clapped his hands briskly and rubbed them together; the image of quiet strength vanished. "But business is business. It's good you come by my shop. Something in a uniform, yes?"

Jacob undraped his measure and subjected Roy to professional scrutiny, tugging at one ringlet. "It wouldn't need to be made special. From looking alone, I can suit you from stock."

He puttered about Roy, measuring fore and aft, up and down, noting the results on a greasy slip of paper. When he stooped to gauge an outseam, Roy saw the livid rope scar that ringed his neck.

"The shwartzer says I must always measure. Pehl Who has been a tailor so long? Go give advice but leave to me clothes. So: didn't I say? A perfect size forty all around. Wait, I will bring it all for approval." Jacob vanished into another dark recess and shortly reappeared with an armload of boxes. "You will try them on and say I know my business?"

Dressed before the full-length mirror, Roy palpitated: what approval was needed for sheer magnificence? Black the uniform, stern black and cut in SS style with silver buttons, even a death's-head ornament on the peaked cap. Flared riding breeches fitted perfectly into high, polished boots perfect for striding over a conquered city. Too much, oh, Jesus, too much. In the mirror the magic uniform converted his whole image to strength and dominance. With a sense of ritual, he centered the cap on his head, tried a rakish angle, straightened it again and patted the heavy Luger at his hip.

"Gotta hand it to you, Jacob."

"Only wait." A protesting hand. "Something is missing, I think."

"Hey, what?" How could perfection lack?

"Maybe a swagger stick like the Englishers? No, they are not a generous people. How long before they gave back Jerusalem? Who needs the English? We will keep it good and German. Moonlight! Bring to me, bitte, the Gauleiter Special."

Prom the remote front of the shop: "Comin' fas' I can." Followed by a considerable hiatus.

"Which means, we can hope, sometime before evening prayers." Jacob lifted his eyes to Jehovah. "Meanwhile we will settle on the price."

"Don' you fret Mistuh Roy with no bill, you trash." Moonlight hovered, stern, between the parted curtains. "All took care of by the Paladins. Here you is, suh: just what y'all need."

Now, truly, perfection was improved. The black whip coiled in Roy's hand with the lead-weighted feel of authority. He cracked it once; the sound was music. All right, you motherfuckers, come on.

Jacob beamed approval. "You should wield it in good health. Maybe on the Arabs."

With what he meant to be a superior smile, Roy nodded curtly and stalked out of the shop, cracking the whip. When the front door slammed, Moonlight and Jacob went through profound metamorphosis. Moonlight stood much more erect, chuckling as the whole cast of his features shifted.

"It's impossible to insult them or overplay, Jake. New York, Harvard or the boonies: a nerd is a nerd, world without end, amen."

"Yours to shuffle, mine to cringe and fawn." Jake divested himself of the grizzled wig and spectacles to reveal youthful black hair. The gabardine, vest and prayer shawl added to his discards. He slithered quickly into a work shirt and corduroy trousers. "Honor thy stereotypes, the authors of thy thinking, for without them, thou wouldst have to see."

"You dig El Shmucko with that whip?"

"He's a fish," Jake said with cold contempt. "And he's going to get everything he always wanted."

"What's his bag?" Moonlight wondered.

"Power. The Prince is going to give him all he ever longed for."

"He must be pretty rotten."

"No more than most; just hungrier. The world shut him out. Never turn your back on a small man," Jake said with conviction. "We're a dangerous breed. Catch you later. Got a call on my cab."

16 - Problems of the whore/madonna syndrome (Aryans at half-mast)

Mirrored dramatically in A Son Gout's polished window, Roy let his own image ravish him. From cap to boots and whip, he had never felt so tuned to his inner essence. He felt secure and strong, a man with an identity and a destiny at last, seduced as Narcissus.