Barry let her give him a drink. Barry let her put a hand on his neck. Barry removed his own hands from his lap in case there was something she wanted to get to. She did.
He did not resist. He wondered if there was a little room around, some private place.
“Nobody comes in here,” said the woman. He could smell her perfume, a foul cheap nostril-wrenching odor. However, when it came with an absolutely bare body, a beautiful body, a full body, a body waiting for him, Barry Glidden couldn't care less about the welfare of his nostrils.
A moment later, a roller-coaster would have been private enough for Barry Glidden.
Just before his moment of glory, Barry Glidden felt a shoe heel in his back.
“Barry. Where's Rubin? I'm looking for Rubin.”
“In a moment, Beatrice,” said her lawyer. “Just a moment.”
“I don't have a moment,” said Beatrice.
“Just one. Just one.”
“Do you have to do that in here?”
“Yes. Oh, yes. I have to do it and I'm doing it.”
“Well, where's Rubin? I want Rubin. Do you hear? I want Rubin. You two stop that.”
Barry didn't want to stop. If a gun were pointed at his head at this moment he would have wondered if he could finish before he was dead.
He heard Beatrice doing something at the bar, and then with an earthquake size shock he felt the splash of a pail of cold water on his back.
“C'mon upstairs,” said Beatrice. “We have work to do.”
“Rubin says she's very forceful,” said the woman.
“Yeah,” said Barry. Sometimes a thousand condo units wasn't worth the price of working for the Dolomos.
In the large south meeting room where the Dolomos often planned strategy with franchise owners, Beatrice seemed almost happy.
Barry blotted himself with paper towels.
“I want the truth now. On a scale of one to ten, what are our chances of winning an appeal?”
“We can still cop a plea on the charges of mail fraud.”
“I didn't ask for that.”
“No chance.”
“Then,” said Beatrice Dolomo, “we are going to start playing dirty.”
“What are alligators in pools and threats to the President? Playing clean?”
“I mean we're going to play hardball, Barry.”
“They put people in gas chambers for that sort of hardball, Beatrice. Why not cut your losses and run? You'll still have plenty of money, especially if you sell this estate you won't be needing. Considering the appreciation of your money— if you sell the estate you'll come out of jail set for life. No more cult business, just beautiful peaceful wealthy retirement.”
“For the two to three years we would have left to live, Barry? No deal. I didn't crawl up from a stinking attic dragging Rubin with me because I am a quitter. You think Rubin is some great genius? He was just another hack science-fiction writer. He believed Poweressence. He was trying to help people when it began. Do you realize that? He actually believed people could cure headaches by finding the moment in their lives they couldn't let go of. I had to stop him from treating cancer patients before they sued us into penury. No, Mr. Glidden, I am not copping a plea.”
“Then what are you going to do?”
“Escalate.”
“You already tried to kill one columnist and have threatened the President. Where do you go from there?”
“If you don't make good on your threats, no one will believe you,” said Beatrice. Today she wore purple lipstick with purple eyeshadow. She wore a white peasant blouse embroidered with flowers. She looked like a middle-age woman who had lost her own clothes and was borrowing those of a twelve-year-old daughter.
It was obvious to Barry why Beatrice always seemed to dress so inappropriately. There was no one brave enough to tell her she did not look good.
Beatrice glanced at her watch.
“We can't wait forever,” she said. She went to the door and screamed out into the hallway.
“Get Rubin. We're tired of looking for Rubin.”
“He's writing the founder's day speech for the faithful,” came a man's voice. It was one of her bodyguards.
“Use last year's. Tell him to use last year's,” yelled back Mrs. Dolomo.
“He says he can't. It's a new speech about the persecution of the righteous.”
“Persecute his duff up here to the south meeting room,” screamed Mrs. Dolomo, and then she returned to the table where Barry Glidden was desperately figuring out ways to sever relations with this client. He knew what was coming.
“Barry, we're going to make the President pay for this. We are going to make America pay for this. That guilty verdict was kangaroo justice inflicted upon us from the very top. All my life, I have respected the top too much. Well, Barry, I'm not taking it anymore. The President goes. Off with the top.”
“Mrs. Dolomo, as an officer of the court, I am not allowed to hear this without reporting you. I am a lawyer, I have taken an oath. So I would suggest you keep whatever plans you have to yourself. Leave me out.”
“You're in, Barry,” said Mrs. Dolomo.
“I'm not good at these things. I'm just a lawyer.”
“You'll learn. Rubin!”
“He's coming, Mrs. Dolomo,” came the bodyguard's voice.
Someone was shuffling down the hall. It was Rubin. He came into the room with a cigarette dangling from his mouth at just the right angle to make his eyes water. He had not shaved for two days and he wore a bathrobe. From the bathrobe came a light tinkling, the sound of plastic rubbing together. It was Rubin's pills. He put them on the table, his hands shaking.
“Do you want to hear the message to the enlightened? It's truly beautiful,” said Rubin.
“No,” said Beatrice.
“Not really,” said Barry.
“It's about religious persecution. I think it's the best thing I have ever written.”
“We have business, Rubin,” said Beatrice.
“It's especially meaningful in the light of our convictions, and appeals. The franchises will like it.”
“No,” said Beatrice.
“Legally I shouldn't be here,” said Barry. “I wish you luck in what you're going to do.”
“Enlightened ones,” Rubin began to read as he put a hand on Barry Glidden's shoulder, seating him back down. “Times of trial are nothing new. Each of us has faced them in daily life. They are but small obstacles in the path of enlightenment, only pebbles under the feet if you are going somewhere, but boulders if you are not. Your faith has made you free. Never let your new strength fail before some minor tribulation. Know that all blocks are only temporary and that you are the children of the good forces of all being. You will prevail. Let power be in you.”
Rubin rubbed a tear from his left eye with his bathrobe sleeve.
“You done?” asked Beatrice.
Rubin nodded, swallowing hard. He was deeply moved.
“Very nice, Rubin, and I will be sending you both my bill. I have to go now,” said Barry.
“We haven't planned on how we are going to get the President yet,” said Beatrice. “Sit down, Rubin, the President is not taking us seriously. What shall we do about it?”
“I don't know how we can get an alligator into the White House. We're going to have to do something else. What did you think of the speech? Do you think it was better than the Larkin king saying good-bye to the Dromoid mercenaries who had come to love him?”
“It's wonderful, Rubin.”