"Hey, Milt." Charity noticed that both he and Essie were paling, losing natural tone like turning down the color on a TV set. "What's happening to you?"
"Oh." Essie jumped as if she'd spilled something on herself. "Milton, I think we have to go."
"I guess. Semper fi, Barnes. See you both not too soon." He rippled his trumpet valves. "Essie, let's make a memorable exit for the underpriviledged Wasps of Plattsville."
McDonald's customers, never used to the extraordinary in any sense, were rocked to their roots by Milt's piercing cavalry charge played triple forte as Essie bowed gracefully to the house.
"I want to thank all the little people," she effused, blowing kisses. "The technicians, the grips, my aunts in Hadassah - "
"And for your sterling support of the Jewish Defense League." Milt took his bow. "Which helped us this year to blow up more Lebanese and Palestinians than ever before. Shalom havarim, and for our final impression of the evening, something in your own ballpark: a televangelist's bank account."
With a final wave to Woody and Char, they simply vanished.
One woman ran gibbering for the door, but that was extreme. Another customer said aloud it was probably just a publicity stunt for the new shopping mall on the Interstate. It was all done with mirrors, and they'd seen David Copperfield vanish the Statue of Liberty on TV. Just they didn't know Woody and Charity hung out with Jews, you know? They went back to eating.
"Know what I'll miss?" Charity mumbled through a mouthful. "I'll bet there's not one place in this whole damn town where you can get good Brie or smoked salmon, something you can really taste . . . Woody? What's wrong? You look - "
He was staring through the front window, the happiness washed out of his eyes. Charity turned to see what it was and went cold. The wraith framed in the restaurant window stared back at them, then passed out of sight.
Woody got up, tight and quiet. "Come on, Char."
She was suddenly afraid for both of them. "No. I don't want to see him. He's sick, Woody."
"He saw us." Woody picked up his trumpet case. "I don't want him hanging over our heads."
Like Damocles, Charity thought numbly, following Woody.
The night air was chill with the mist seeping along Main. Charity shivered. Woody took off his jacket and slipped it around her shoulders. They saw Roy a few doors down, leaning against the tabernacle window.
"Woody, I don't - "
He led her firmly on toward the desolate figure in the torn, fouled uniform, now a sardonic comment on the tragedy of Roy. From his attitude, face in his hands, Charity thought he was weeping, but no. When he raised his head, there was light enough from the streetlamp to know that those eyes would never weep again. They were the dry-scorched exhaustion after the last weeping of the world.
"I won," Roy told them. "They couldn't hold me. I can stay here if I want or go back if I want. The first sumbitch in the history of the world can go anywhere I want. I got it all." The swaggering tone softened with a note of pleading. "Come back with me, Charity."
Revolted, she didn't want to touch him, as much pity as she felt. "I can't, Roy."
"Shit you can't." Roy's eyes, dangerous and a little mad, slid to Woody. To Charity, they were the most frightening thing about him. "You got lucky. You caught me off guard in the club. Things'll be different when I go back."
"We can't go back," Woody told him quietly. "Char can't. She's alive."
Roy's crafty grin went colder. "I can take her."
"Why?" Charity blurted. "You don't want me. I saw what you want. I was there, I saw it on TV, again and again. You telling me how it would be, while a little girl got her head blown off."
"There's always blood at the beginning of a new order, got to be. Cleaning house."
"That baby was me, Roy."
He didn't understand. "You crazy? I was there; just a little Jew kid - "
"She was me. "The passion propelled her closer to Roy, and the clarity of the next thought surprised her. "Because if it wasn't, it wasn't anyone."
Roy pushed himself away from the window; the act seemed difficult for him. He wobbled as if both legs had gone to sleep. "Look, I ain't got much time." Even his voice sounded dry, coming from a long distance. "Have you seen it? Have you seen it all? The nothing." Roy stared beyond the fog. "Just space and balls of rock, out and out and on and on forever and nobody, nothing out there to make us mean anything . . . Stop. Please, stop."
They edged back from him. He was a dead man come back for something after his own funeral.
"Come on, Charity." Roy reached for her. "I don't belong here no more."
She knew he was right. Nowhere in life, nowhere real.
"All those voices," Roy whispered. "All those lousy fuckin books, they're in my head and they won't shut up. They make me know things - STOP!"
Charity yearned from her heart, "I wish to God I could help you, Roy. But I can't."
"Don't shit me with that God stuff!" The words came out half snarl, half despair. "I seen God and the Devil. Couple of wise-ass wimps, that's all. But they never showed me Jesus Christ. They knew they couldn't sell me a phony Jesus Christ."
"I saw him," Woody said. He felt a pity, too, but even that was running out. "You wouldn't buy him either. He looks like an Arab. Come on, Char."
Roy lurched toward them. If his coordination was poor, nothing diminished the danger of him. "You ain't taking Charity. I got it made back there, anything I want. What she gonna do with a dumb shit horn player can't make a dime?"
"She's going to live," Woody said. "That's more than you can cut."
"You gonna stop me?" Roy drew the small ceremonial dagger from his belt. Light glinted from the honed edge. His laughter was a fading echo. "What you gonna do, Barnes, kill me?"
Woody moved between Roy and Charity. Roy slashed suddenly with the knife. Woody grabbed for his wrist but the movement was too quick. Woody felt the hot sting of the blade across his upthrust palm. He blinked at it; the blade should have cut deep but there was no more than a scratch.
"Woody - " Charity saw what was happening before he did. Roy was fading, piece by piece like bits taken at random from a jigsaw puzzle, not so much disappearing as becoming less defined from the night around him. "Look at him . . ."
Woody saw now. Poised with the knife ready to come up, Roy was only half in the real world, his very image being washed away like sand from a shoreline.
"Kill you - " The knife swept up, but for all the fury behind it, the thrust was insubstantial as double-exposed film. Instinctively, Woody tensed for the shock but the knife and Roy's hand only passed through him, a faint shadow across his body. He felt nothing except revulsion, a wrongness. When he pushed at Roy he could barely feel the contact.
Woody swallowed hard, feeling sick. He backed away, holding Charity. "He's going. Walk away and don't look back."
Roy was fading to something like grainy old black-and-white film, screaming at them with a voice weirdly distant. "Charity, we can have it all. They promised me."
Pulled along by Woody, she started to cry. "Dear God, Woody, I feel so sorry for him."
Woody didn't slow. "Don't," he muttered. "He doesn't feel a thing."
"What you gonna do with him?" Roy wailed after them. "Live in shit like we always did. Nothing, that's what you got. That's what you are! You saw on TV. The people . . . all the people, the crowds. They fuckin loved me . . ."
They weren't that far but they could barely hear him now.
"Woody, I can't just - "
'Yes, you can. Keep going."