“Could be,” the stranger says, and removes the bandana from his face.
Winston takes a good look at the stranger, and does a double-take, then a triple-take. And suddenly there’s no longer any question in his mind about getting inside the car. He isn’t gay—has never found the male form even remotely attractive, especially his own—but the blond man is so breathtakingly beautiful Winston wants to hold the man’s face in his hands and kiss him. He wants to feel those lips and taste that breath. He looks like an angel, Winston thinks, opening the passenger door and sliding into the seat. As soon as he closes the door, a loud buzzing rises in the basement of his brain, like thousands of flies crawling over a rotting corpse. He turns to the man as the car pulls away from the curb. “Where are we going?”
“Just up the street and around the corner. For a little privacy.”
A chill dances along Winston’s spine at the mention of the word “privacy.” He feels an instant tightening in his groin. The man cruises two blocks east and pulls into the parking lot of an abandoned warehouse. He drives around back and stops in front of an empty loading dock. Winston can see shards of broken glass, several rusty needles, and a scattering of used condoms lying on the asphalt outside of the car. But he doesn’t care. Just like he doesn’t care about the insistent buzzing deep in his brain. All that matters now is the blond angel sitting next to him.
The man switches off the engine and turns to him. “Allow me to properly introduce myself.” He extends his right hand. “You can call me Bobby.”
Winston reaches over and takes his hand. The man’s skin feels smooth and pleasant, like warm butter. The tightening in the crotch of Winston’s slacks deepens to a dull throbbing.
“What I have to say to you, what I have to offer you won’t take long,” the stranger says. “But I need you to listen very carefully.”
Winston, adrift in a haze, slowly nods his head.
“My associates and I are well aware of your great wealth, Mr. Winston. But, as you know, there are other standards by which to measure one’s legacy.” He leans across the seat; close enough for Winston to feel the man’s breath wash over him. Winston’s already wide eyes widen some more. “Power. Control. Territory.
“There are other worlds than these. Many. You can rule one of them. Not just a company, not just a continent, but an entire world. And you can do it for an eternity.”
The buzzing sound has diminished inside of Winston’s head. Now he hears something else: the sound of distant waves crashing on a rocky shore. He likes the idea of ruling a world; who wouldn’t? It’s bullshit, of course, but it would be very nice. Excellent, in fact. He could see himself in a castle by the sea … listening to those crashing waves … a thousand people bowing down as he stands above them … hell, ten thousand! As the Beach Boys’ song says, wouldn’t it be nice.
“All we need from you is a particular item. It is in possession of a woman named Gwendolyn Peterson—”
“The Senator?”
“The very same. We can try to take it ourselves—in fact, we have tried—but the Tower is strong.”
“What tower?” Winston asks in a voice that sounds nothing like his own.
“The only one that matters.” The blond man reaches over and places a hand on Winston’s knee. Winston shudders in pleasure. He may be gay after all—at least in this man’s presence. “Gwendolyn Peterson has what we need to destroy the Tower. You must find it and bring it to us. Because of your enormous wealth and political connections, you are uniquely fitted for this task.”
“You’re insane.” The roar of the ocean swells inside Winston’s head.
“Close your eyes,” Bobby commands.
Winston is helpless not to obey. It’s like being hypnotized. He feels the kiss of a cool breeze upon his face and smells a tinge of salt in the air as soon as his eyes are shut. And then he can taste it on his tongue—the ocean! The sound of crashing waves grows louder, only now it’s not just inside his head; it’s everywhere. A bird cries out somewhere above him—a gull of some kind—and a chorus of birds answer it.
“Now open them.”
Gareth Winston opens his eyes and he’s no longer sitting in the green Chrysler behind an abandoned St. Louis warehouse. Instead, he’s sitting beside the blond man in a meadow of wind-swept grass. He stands up and looks down at a churning sea of emerald water. Hundreds of feet below, white-tipped waves crash upon an endless shoreline of jagged rock and sand. The sky above them is streaked with purple and yellow, and there are birds—hundreds of them!—floating on the wind. The sun rising over the watery horizon is a deep crimson.
This is real, he thinks. My God, this is real.
“What have you done to me?”
“Turn around, Mr. Winston.”
He does. Slowly. Like moving in a dream, but this is no dream.
The man points off to the west at a distant city that stretches as far as Winston’s eyes can see. The early morning sunlight glints off the windows of scores of tall buildings. A complex spiderweb of roadways and bridges weave their way amongst the shimmering metropolis. It’s too far away for Winston to determine the type of vehicles that are currently traveling those roads, but there are many of them. In the sky above the city, there’s nary a hint of smog or pollution.
“How big is it?” Winston asks in dazed awe.
“Bigger than New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles combined. And still growing. Surrounded by nearly fifty thousand acres of virgin woodland.”
Winston whistles appreciatively.
“There are another two dozen cities just like it scattered throughout the world I’m offering you.”
Winston points a finger at a long, dark scar of barren land a few miles directly in front of them. Tiny black figures, like busy ants in a child’s ant farm, scurry back and forth in staggered lines. “What’s that over there?”
“That,” the man says, a satisfied smile creeping across his face, “is your diamond mine.”
“Really?”
“Really.” For the first time since he stood up from the park bench there’s a glimmer of the old Gareth Winston. His eyes look greedy—and hungry.
“And over there,” his new friend continues, pointing to a sprawling castle sitting atop a hilltop overlooking the ocean, “is your home. One of many, I might add. For this residence alone, you employ—a rather kind way of wording it considering you tender none of them a salary—more than two hundred men and women from a nearby village. In exchange for their loyalty and labor, you might allow them to grow their own food tax-free.”
“Of course,” Gareth mutters. In spite of his amazement, his businessman’s brain is ticking over. “And possibly medical care. People who think loyalty can’t be bought are idiots. There’d have to be some sort of retirement benefits … at least for those close to me …”
Bobby laughs. The teeth that are momentarily exposed are not those of an angel; yellow and crooked, they are the teeth of a rat. “See? You’ve already begun to plan. Given your extraordinary mind, you should be quite the successful ruler. And as the years, the decades … the centuries! … roll by, you will become not a man but a god to those you rule over.”