Jerry suddenly felt a restless presence at his side and looked at a nervously smiling John Fortune who had joined him in his vantage spot in the wings.
“Hey, you look great in make-up,” Jerry cracked, trying to break the tension a little for the clearly agitated kid.
“Thanks a load,” John Fortune said with heavy teenage sarcasm. He took a deep breath. “I’m not so sure about this television stuff. What if I say something stupid?”
“Then you’ll join the ranks of everyone else who’s ever been on TV,” Jerry said. He punched the kid in the shoulder in a comradely manner. “Be cool. You wanted to be an ace.”
“Yeah,” John Fortune agreed. “It’s so much better than the alternative.”
“The point is,” Jerry said, “when you’re a star, you have to take the sour with the sweet.”
Of course, Jerry thought, I’m so utterly anonymous that I constantly change my face and I call myself Mr. Nobody. Who am I to preach to the kid? But then—nobody ever said that you have to live what you preach.
“But I’m not a star,” John Fortune muttered.
Jerry suddenly knew what to say. “You’re not a star now, kid, but after you go out on that stage, you’ll come back one!”
John Fortune suddenly smiled. “You think so?”
“I know so,” Jerry said, thinking, Thank God for “Forty-Second Street.”
Sudden applause welled up from the audience.
“Cue,” whispered one of the back-stage flunkies, making a shooing motion in John Fortune’s direction.
“You’ve got the genes, you’ve got the talent,” Jerry said. “Go knock ‘em dead.”
John Fortune nodded silent thanks and stepped out onto the stage, a fixed grin plastered on his face. The Living Gods had already appeared, presenting a colorful background chorus as the kid made his way onto the set. Jerry could see Siegfried and Ralph, with, yes, a pair of leashed tigers, waiting for their entrance cue in the other wing.
Better the kid than me, Jerry thought, remembering with little fondness his pitiful career as the shape-changing comedian known as the Projectionist. Still, there was no sense dwelling on his own past. He smiled as he realized that the long-running drama he’d been a peripheral participant in over the last sixteen years was finally coming to an end. And a happy end at that. John Fortune wouldn’t need a bodyguard any more. He’d cheated the odds and won a well-deserved chance at life. Sure, “ace” wasn’t the safest occupation, but Jerry didn’t know any that went around with a coterie of bodyguards. Even Peregrine wouldn’t make him do that. With her son having cleared the biggest hurdle in his life she was sure to back off and give him some room to breathe.
“You Creighton?”
Jerry turned. His eyes went wide in surprise as he recognized the speaker. “Billy Ray?”
Ray glanced at his companion, a smoking babe in a leather jumpsuit with a body like a young Sophia Loren and a frown on her handsome face. Ray’s expression suddenly matched hers.
“Do I know you?” Ray asked.
“Uh. No. No, I don’t think so,” Jerry said. Too many faces, too many identities, he thought. It was getting difficult to keep straight who and what each of his many guises was supposed to know.
Of course, he and Ray had crossed paths before, when Jerry had been wearing another face. The last time... the last time had been during the Battle for the Rox, when he and Ray had been part of a government team sent in to smash Bloat’s joker rebellion. It was a long story without a good ending, and he didn’t care to dwell on it.
Ray was still frowning. “You look familiar.”
“I got that type of face,” Jerry said in his best Alan Ladd imitation. “I recognized you, of course. Who wouldn’t?”
“Oh, well.” Ray’s frown vanished. He glanced at his partner, visibly preening. Her frown deepened a fraction.
“How’d you know me?” Jerry asked before Ray had too much of a chance to think about his previous reply.
Ray gestured over his shoulder. “Guy back there told me you’re the kid’s bodyguard.”
Jerry nodded. “That’s right.”
“This is Angel,” Ray said, indicating his partner. She looked at Jerry sourly as he glanced at her. He decided not to voice any of the half dozen or so puns on her name that had immediately popped up in his brain.
“She’s new,” Ray added, as if that explained everything.
“What’s the government want with the boy?” Jerry asked.
“Well—“Angel began.
“You see—“ Ray said.
And suddenly all Hell broke out on the stage.
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
New York City: Tomlin International Airport
When you return home after a sixteen-year absence and no one is there to greet you and there is no place for you to go, have you really come home after all?
The question ran through Fortunato’s mind in an endlessly repetitive loop like a not very difficult koan as he and Downs flew across the Pacific. There was little else to occupy him. He watched a thread of drool gather at the corner of Downs’ mouth as the reporter slept soundly in the first class seat next to him. Watching spittle drip down Downs’ chin was preferable, he soon discovered, to watching the movies available on the individual screens set into each of the admittedly comfortable seats.
The technological advances that Fortunato had missed out on while at the monastery were amazing, but unfortunately could do nothing about the quality of the movies they delivered. He watched about twenty minutes as some idiot named Jim Carrey cavorted like a fool as he played an ace with God-like powers. The best thing he could use his abilities for were turning his piece of crap car into a high-powered sports job and add a few inches to the circumference of his girlfriend’s already quite suitable breasts.
It would have been laughable if it wasn’t so unhysterically bathetic.
Downs awoke right before they landed in LA for the transcontinental leg of their seemingly unending journey. Unfortunately, his company proved little better than Jim Carrey’s.
The hours finally caught up with Fortunato and he fell asleep before they crossed the Midwest. He dreamed he was an ace again. All the women he’d once known—Caroline, Veronica, Peregrine, and many of the rest—paraded before him. He used his powers to increase their breast size to mammoth proportions. They all thanked him profusely before they left him alone and feeling utterly isolated. He awoke sweating as they landed at Tomlin International.
“Welcome home, Fortunato,” Downs said with a grin as the plane taxied to the gate.
But Fortunato felt nothing, nothing but empty.
Las Vegas: The Mirage Auditorium
A hideous staccato roar shattered the air like a hammer striking multiple metallic gongs in precise rhythmic succession. The Angel had no idea what caused the awful sound. She looked out on the stage horrified as one of the Living Gods floating above the stage crashed bleeding on Kitty O’Leary’s desk. The blonde anchorwoman sat frozen in her chair with a stunned expression on her face as the Living God writhed and bled all over her.
Siegfried and Ralph, accompanied by a pair of leashed tigers, had just been introduced to the audience. They stopped before O’Leary’s desk. Their cats roared in sudden fear, added to the growing commotion.