The sky was too clear, the sun dazzling and mean, and the air wasn’t moving, and my hunger was panging. Nor was the scenery especially beautiful (two strip malls, an overpass, the compound’s interior, acre after acre of single-family homes, a grade school, a ballfield, a couple of playgrounds, the back of a theater, the side of a McDonald’s, the skyscraping arches of a farther McDonald’s), but the ramparts were the tallest structure for miles (the farther McDonald’s sign notwithstanding), and I’d never seen this part of the world from so high—my part of the world, the gridded space I daily traipsed (the compound’s cul-de-sacs notwithstanding); the angles that, from down on the ground, were insensible—and before we’d traveled much more than a block, I thought, “What’s the rush?” and set the box of Crunch down and lit up a Quill, and leaned, two-elbowed, on the eastern parapet.
Trip and Fondajane had already been walking a few steps ahead of me, deciding between themselves what we should eat and where and when we should eat it (“burgers in the brunch style”; production house screening room; as soon as “the Sunday day chef” could manage), and whether Fon should watch A Fistful of Fists with us or wait til after Trip had heard my notes and recut it (Fon wanted to see it, but Trip was reluctant to waste her “eyes’ freshness” on an undercooked edit; Fon asked if Burroughs had seen the film yet, Trip told her that no one had except for himself; Fon suggested that between the Archons and the rest of the staff, not to mention the other Yachts and Jonboat, Trip wasn’t bound to run out of fresh eyes too soon; Trip acknowledged that was so, but told her that her eyes were of a different caliber, a special “extra-smart, critic kind of caliber,” and the truth was he’d be nervous to let her see an unpolished Fistful; Fon assured him she’d be capable of viewing A Fistful as a work in progress, and said that, given the way he’d claimed to feel about her eyes—“Which, thank you, sweetie. It means a lot to hear you say that.”—she didn’t understand why he wouldn’t want notes from her; Trip said that of course he would love to hear her notes, but he hadn’t presumed she’d be interested in giving notes; “Presume away!” Fon said, and smacked his arm, “I’m here for you, always,” and the matter was settled), and once that had been decided, Fon called our lunch order in to the day chef, and it was during the call that I’d paused on the wallwalk to take in the view.
They must have gone half a block before coming back for me.
“Something wrong?” Fon said.
“Just enjoying the wallwalk.”
“You think I could get a smoke?” said Trip.
“Trip,” Fon said.
“I’ve had two this month.”
“Two?” Fon said.
“Maybe three,” Trip said. “Anyway, it’s my body, right?”
Fon shrugged, defeated, and I bummed a Quill to each of them.
We leaned on the parapet, Trip to one side of me, Fon to the other. They gave me a visual tour of the compound: down there was the production house, and next to it the cellar house, next to that the drinking house, and over here the Archons house, across from that the picnic house (I didn’t get to ask), and there was the trio of houses for guests, there the library house, and there the parlor games house, the nursing house, the office houses, the greenhouse house, the Russian/Turkish bathhouse house, the safe room houses, the undesignated houses, the fallout shelter entrances, the ramp that led down to the underground garage, the portions of the ramparts the resident staff (non-Archon) lived inside and beneath, the rooftop helipad, the roof atop which Burroughs believed should be constructed a backup helipad, the roof that was Burroughs’s second choice for the proposed backup helipad, and—we heard a virile purr, and the tour came to an end.
The Boatmobile was prowling north up Jason, less purring than roaring the closer it came, all bludgeony of fender and smirky of grille, its paint job so matte the reflection of the sun along its body was fuzzed, near-particulate—a milk stain on denim. As it turned right on Pellmore, the ramparts started parting, and before they’d appeared to have parted wide enough, the Boatmobile slipped through them, was gone.
My heart had sunk a little.
“What the hell?” Trip said.
Fon said she didn’t know.
“He didn’t even get to see Belt yet, though.”
“He’s probably just going for a drive,” Fon said. “Someone must have told him we’d be watching your film. I’m sure he’ll be back before we get finished— Say, Belt,” she said, and patted my hand. “Can you show me where you live?”
I knew that she didn’t care where I lived, but I raised the unpatted hand’s arm and pointed.
“The blue one?” she said.
I said, “Next to the blue one.”
“There’s a pickup in the driveway?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Ah,” she said. “Four bedrooms or three?”
“Just two,” I said.
“I wouldn’t have guessed,” she said. “It looks like three or four to me.”
“They’re pretty decent-size bedrooms.”
“They must be,” Fon said.
Then we dragged at our Quills awhile, looking at Wheelatine.
“So Jesus,” Triple-J said, breaking the silence. “Jesus, okay? He’s up on Golgotha. Nailed to the cross, right? Frying in the sun. Starts going, ‘Peter, Peter, my beloved disciple,’ and Peter, he’s down at the foot of the hill, and he’s like, ‘Yes, Lord. I’m here. What is it, Lord? What?’ and Jesus says, ‘Peter, my beloved disciple, come closer. Come here,’ and Peter says, ‘Yes, of course, Lord, I’m coming,’ and he heads for the cross, and one of the centurions, he just beats Peter’s ass, right? Beats his ass unconscious, throws him back down the hill.
“A couple minutes later, Peter comes to. He’s got blood in his eyes, his eyes are like lips, and the lips of his mouth are split in five places. Nasty concussion. Cuts with like dust and sand in them all over his body, but he sits up straight, and then he’s standing, and his hearing’s coming back, and he hears Jesus going, ‘Peter? Peter?’ And Peter says, ‘Yes, Lord,’ he says to Jesus, ‘Yes, Lord Jesus, I am here. I’ve been bruised but not beaten. I’m here for you, Lord.’ ‘Praise be to my Father, Peter is here for me,’ Jesus says. He says, ‘Peter, come here. Come, Peter. Come closer.’ ‘Yes, Lord,’ Peter says. ‘What is it, Lord?’ he says, and he approaches the cross, a little slower than last time, but the same centurion that beat him before beats him again, really fucks him up, right? like flattens his nose, knocks out some teeth, breaks one of his knees and, this time, once he rolls him down the hill, he follows him down, kinda kicks him up the road a little, until, for the second time, Peter’s unconscious. Borderline coma.