“The beach was full of the women I adore, the women of the variety shows on the street where I lived when I first came to Rome, San Giovanni, and they’d show films but afterwards there were the live variety acts and it was the women I waited for, the beautiful fat women with their naked thighs and their breasts flushed and moist and swelling out of their clothes, promising unseen nipples — I could only imagine how sweet — and I found them today beside the lake, these very women, the corpulent chorines of San Giovanni, and I arranged them on the shore, and the sea was saturated red, and then the wave came and my flesh and my bones dissolved even as the flesh and the bones of these women dissolved and we howled together in pain, the women of my past and I, and that felt very familiar: the way it feels to make a movie.”
Then the fat women begin to speak, one after the other, and Hatcher undoes his lapel mike and wanders off the set into the fetid dark behind the cameras. A tight gaggle of dozens of raggedy bodies, barely visible in the darkness, shuttle out of his way, murmuring softly “Good evening” and “Now the weather” and “A new Wal-Mart opened today.” These are the TV news anchors who never got out of local stations, a new group of them each night, Hatcher suspects. They are always huddling nearby, sweating heavily, hair mussed, clothes tattered, unprepared. Hatcher has learned to ignore them.
He thinks how there is always time here for all the news in depth — at last there’s time — and how that’s hell, as one of the fat women drones on about the mistreatment of the working classes, and another recounts her dream of Fellini riding her on her hands and knees and lashing her bare butt with a horse whip, and another simply screams for her sixty seconds, and the others come on one by one, and as Hatcher stands here in the dark, he finds he can quiet his mind a bit, let Anne go. He will see her when the broadcast is done and his torment can continue then, but for now he has the news.
Though tonight there’s less of it than he expected. When the time comes for the big follow-up story about a possible new Harrowing, Hatcher has to move on to other news while the remote crew tries to find his investigative reporter, Carl Crispin, who’s dealing, of course, with torments of his own. Crispin was sent to the center of the city, to the intersection where tradition has it the first Harrowing began, the place where Jesus arrived to begin harvesting the elders of the Old Testament to take them to Heaven. Back then, it was a dusty rural crossroads. Now, it is the corner of Peachtree Way and Lucky Street.
Finally, there are no more stories and Beelzebub is chortling softly in Hatcher’s earpiece, and they begin the nightly “Lessen the Pain” feature. Tonight’s advice, in a grainy black-and-white film clip: when the noontime sulfur and fire storm rains down, just duck and cover, slide under a piece of furniture, or throw yourself into a ditch and curl up and cover your head with your hands.
The piece ends and Beelzebub is breathing heavily in Hatcher’s ear. “Guess what I’m wearing,” he whispers.
But Hatcher knows his tricks. He keeps his face Cronkitedly calm and fatherly. The end of the show always is a test of wills. He stares into the camera, placid, waiting.
“Oh, you’re so good,” Beelzebub says. “So here’s your boy.”
Crispin’s face suddenly surrounds Hatcher’s on the monitors. It is a gaunt and pasty face. Crispin’s eyes are swollen nearly shut from crying and tears are streaming down his cheeks.
“And now,” Hatcher says, “reporting live from the corner of Peachtree Way and Lucky Street, Carl Crispin. Carl?”
Carl jerks at the sound of Hatcher’s voice and snaps his hand-held microphone upwards, slamming it into his mouth. He tips his head forward for a moment, taking the microphone away, and then he lifts his face and spits out half a dozen broken teeth.
“Carl,” Hatcher says. “Are you all right?”
“What the fuck are you talking about, Hatcher,” Carl says. “We’re in fucking Hell.”
“That’s right, Carl. And we’re doing the news. You’re standing in the spot where…”
“This fucking spot,” Carl says. “Do you know how many Peachtrees there are in Hell, Hatcher? I was most recently at the corner of Peachtree Trace and Lucky Court. Before that Peachtree Trail and Lucky Boulevard, or maybe that was Lucky Street also. And even those seemed relatively distinguishable. There are seven Peachtree intersections along Lucky Street itself, including Peachtree Street Avenue Lane and Peachtree Avenue Lane Street and Peachtree Street Street Avenue. I tried to hurry but I couldn’t move my legs to run.” Carl starts to sob.
“Carl. It’s okay. You’re there now. Carl.”
Carl shakes his head hard and wipes his face with his wrist, dragging the buttons of his suit coat sleeve through his eyes. “Well, shit. I’ve done that again,” he says. “I may not be able to see the camera for a while, Hatcher.” And indeed, Carl is looking off camera to the right now, turning almost entirely into profile.
“That’s all right, Carl.” Hatcher picks up the sheaf of blank paper from the desk and holds on tight, trying to fight a twitching that wants to start in his hands.
Off mike, the voice of the cameraman calls to Carl, who turns toward the sound, blinking. He is more or less in place now and Hatcher takes a deep breath. He mellows his voice into his best top-of-the-news tone.
“All right, Carl. On our last broadcast you reported on the rumors of a new Harrowing. Certain veterans of the last one were seeing the same signs…”
“I lied about all that, Hatcher,” Carl says.
Hatcher’s throat knots up tight.
“You know I’m a compulsive liar,” Carl says.
Beelzebub is chortling again, still softly.
Hatcher sees his own face in the center four screens. It is the face of a man he does not know but has seen around a few times. It’s a sad face, he thinks. Sad in the furrowed brow and the tremblingly inverted smile.
Hatcher wedges into the street in front of Broadcast Central. Grand Peachtree Parkway. Teeming with denizens at this hour, whatever that hour is, the air filled with a loud roar of voices and cries. He looks off to the sun hanging behind the sawtooth mountains on the horizon beyond the city. The illusion of the sun, of course. Or a time-fractured view of it. The eye of Satan. Whatever it is. It’s been hanging there a long while. He’s done several cycles of Evening News—he can’t think how many, exactly — without its moving. However long that would suggest. Days, by the reckoning of his earthly life. However long ago that life was. His brain is trying to cope, now that he doesn’t have the broadcast for a focus. Three bearded men stinking of motor oil and sardines, arms linked, shouting wordlessly at each other, barrel into him and he nearly falls — Hatcher doesn’t want to fall — the crowd always surges onto you if you fall — so he tries at least to throw himself a little backward and thumps hard into the stone archway of Broadcast Central, but he keeps his feet, and he tries to fight off a fuckthisfuckthisfuckthis run in his head. Satan relishes that. Worse things always follow. Not yet, Old Man, Hatcher says in his head. Not yet. I’m not going there. Hatcher straightens and focuses on the upcoming interview. He can ask about the sun. He steps into the swift roiling current of the crowd and floats on toward his apartment. He can ask why he’s here.
His alley is tight this time, barely wider than his shoulders, and the unidentifiable crunching and sliming beneath his feet would be worse than usual if he was aware of it, but he isn’t. He is still turning questions over in his mind for Satan, and he goes up the iron circular staircase and down the outside corridor full of wailing and panting and the squealing of bed-springs and the shattering of glass.