“I’ll have to put the phone down and talk to the nuns about it. I won’t hang up. I’ll just put it down and go and talk to them. Hold on. Don’t go away.”
As Aimee’s energy increased, her Heaven began brightening before her eyes. The gray of the sky was slowly transformed to a faltering azure. The dead bluebird beside the phone twitched a leg, flexed the claws of one foot, stirred, then sat up. It staggered groggily to its feet and attempted a hoarse whistle. Aimee walked purposefully to the surly crew of nuns, who were looking around at these sudden changes in some surprise. Best to hit them when they were off balance.
“I need you women to do something for me right now. I want you to quickly form a circle.” They looked at her as though she were mad, but her rekindled air of authority was enough to move them. To speed them along, she clapped her hands like an impatient gym teacher. “Come along, hurry up. Everyone link hands and concentrate. My sister Semple’s is returning with a very important visitor and we have to locate her and wind-walk her in.”
One of the nuns, a malcontent barracks-room lawyer of a girl who had started out in Doc Holliday’s whorehouse and had once been called Trixie, but had changed her name to Bernadette when she took her vows and donned the habit, seemed about to make some kind of protest. Bernadette was a potential leader of mutineers if Aimee had ever seen one, and Aimee quickly cut her off. “There’s no time for any discussion. Just do it, please.”
To Aimee’s relief, Bernadette shut her mouth and grumpily took hold of the hands of the nuns on either side of her. “Just stay like that. I’m going to tell Semple that we’re ready.”
As she hurried back to the gold telephone, a miraculous rainbow appeared above the mountains. The maidens on the headland stopped their carnal cavorting and stared at it in sheepish awe. Aimee picked up the phone. “Very well. We’re ready.”
She was actually daring to hope that things might really work out for the best.
***
Jim was in a padded cell. Had he said something about a wombentombed fetus? This was close. And not only was he in the padded cell, but his arms were pinned by a strait-jacket, and they kept turning the lights on and off for random irregular periods, presumably in some totalitarian attempt at full-scale psychological disorientation. The second time they tried it, Jim had furiously yelled at them, “Don’t try the KGB shit on me. It won’t work. I took too much acid way back when.”
And yet, during the periods of darkness, Jim could clearly see a single red glowing eye peering through the peephole in the door. Jim had assumed that he’d been tossed into this illusion of stained quilt walls and catatonic boredom because of Dr. Hypodermic’s fit of pique after Jim had announced he no longer feared him. That didn’t explain, however, why the red eye fixed him like a laser in the darkness.
***
“You didn’t tell me you were bringing a goat.”
Mr. Thomas’s expression became chilly and offended. “You have something against goats, madame?”
Although everyone was trying to pretend otherwise, the McPherson sisters’ reconciliation was decidedly odd. Semple, Jesus, and Mr. Thomas had materialized in a fairly conventional shimmer in the center of the circle of nuns. Jesus, who was quickly revealed to have both an act and agenda of his own, immediately bowed low to Aimee. “I know it’s you I have to thank for sending these good nuns to the rescue, Mother Superior.”
Aimee had looked a little flustered. “I’m not the Mother Superior, my Lord. I’m-”
“But you are infinitely superior. I can see that at first glance.”
In fact, it was the nuns who were exchanging glances, and, as Semple saw it, with good reason. Semple hadn’t often witnessed flattery that so bordered on toadying. Jesus had also managed to make some fairly drastic and theatrical transformations in himself during the period of the wind-walk. While Semple had come through still in her tired superheroine costume and Mr. Thomas, too, was exactly as he’d been when they’d left the tumor, Jesus had somehow replaced the Nikes, goggles, and purple toga with a dazzling white robe, complete with a gold tie belt and matching sandals, and a realistic bleeding heart on its breast. He’d even organized himself a garish multicolored halo, straight out of a Russian Orthodox icon. Semple considered this overdoing the accessories, but Jesus appeared to be in overdoing-it mode. Back lifeside, arrant fawners had buttered up Aimee with a lickspittle abandon, but they paled in comparison to the blarney job that Jesus was giving out. The faux messiah was laying it on with a trowel, and, worse than that, Aimee was lapping it up. In fact, she was so carried away by the Christcharm that she acted decidedly offhand with the other two arrivals. First she put Mr. Thomas’s nose out of joint by treating him like a mere domestic animal; then she’d moved on to Semple, looking her up and down and inquiring with a scathing edge, “What is it that you’re wearing, my dear? Isn’t it a bit extreme, even for you?”
Semple scowled and slowly surveyed Heaven. Despite the recent general upswing, the signs of decay were still very much in evidence. “Since I appear to have pulled your chestnuts out of the fire, sister dear, I’d really recommend being a little pleasant to me by way of gratitude.” She nodded in the direction of Jesus. “You have no idea what I’ve been through to bring him here.”
Aimee arched an eyebrow. “I may have more idea than you imagine.”
Semple shook her head. “No, dear. You may think you do, but believe me, you really don’t know even a fraction of it.” She gestured to Mr. Thomas. “And if you ever speak to him disrespectfully again, you’ll have me to reckon with. He has powerful literary credentials.”
Aimee stared at the goat and the goat stared right back at her. “She’s absolutely right. I have powerful literary credentials.”
Jesus quickly stepped in, seeking to gloss over the building sibling confrontation. “Come, now, girls, let’s not have a petty squabble. Not when the two of you have just been reunited.”
Both Aimee and Semple turned and, as one, looked daggers at him. “Let’s get one thing straight before we go any further. Whatever happens while you’re here, don’t ever try to get between us.”
“Our quarrels may be a lot of things, but they are never petty.”
The nuns glanced covertly from face to face as an embarrassed silence ensued. It might have gone on for a great deal longer had not Jesus proved that, in his determination to insinuate himself into Aimee’s Heaven, he’d assumed the emotional skin of a rhinoceros. He stepped up next to Aimee and took her by the arm. “If you’re not too tired from assisting us in the wind-walk, perhaps you’d like to give me the fifty-cent tour.”
Knowing him better, Semple would never have bought this act, but Aimee immediately melted. “Of course, my Lord, I’d be honored. The sooner you see what the problems are, the sooner we can get started putting them right.”
Jesus smiled. “I can’t wait to be working with you.”
Over Aimee’s head, he shot Semple a don’t screw-things-up warning, and then he and Aimee walked away along the terrace, trailing bemused nuns behind them. Both Semple and Mr. Thomas decided to forgo the grand tour and remained right where they were. The goat thoughtfully watched the others depart. “I don’t trust those nuns.”
Semple nodded in agreement. “The sight of Jesus has temporarily confused them, but if she doesn’t play this really carefully, they’ll be at her throat pretty damn soon. At least, that’s my reading of it.”
Mr. Thomas nodded. “I think your reading is right on the money, girl.”
Semple went to the edge of the terrace and looked out across the lake. “I never did like this place. In fact, I think I’ll head out to my own happy hunting ground.”
Mr. Thomas examined one of his hooves. “Might there be something to drink in your hunting ground? A liquid trifle to enhance the happiness?”