"Don't mind him. He's a pagan. He thought you were a witch doctor bringing his sacred vestment." The speaker was as old as the first man, but a very different type. Where the other appeared weary and disgruntled and had an air of impatiently waiting for life to be over, this one was leather-faced, outdoorsy looking, distinguished and well-groomed even in his hospital bed-gown. Despite his age, he had an aura of great vitality and his voice was the strong voice of one used to giving commands and being obeyed.
"Sorry to intrude on you-" Sammy searched his mind for some excuse that would make sense.
None was necessary. "I am always available to those who desire to make obeisance," the more communicative of the two old men announced in a way that was positive without being pompous. "The Lord never sleeps."
"He thinks he's God," the first oldster mumbled without turning around.
"I am God!" It was said without conceit.
"God is dead," the other replied in a bored tone that seemed to say this was an old argument and that the ground had been gone over many times. "Don't you read the papers? God is dead!"
"You are sadly misinformed, sirrah. God is not dead. I am God, and I should know. God is very much alive!"
"Actors!" The first old man spat the word at the wall. "Just no limit to an actor's conceit," he grumbled.
"I thought you looked familiar!" Llona snapped her fingers. "You're Jonathan Wisdom! I used to see all your pictures when I was a little girl."
"That is correct. During my time on Earth, I was known as the actor Jonathan Wisdom. That was before I re-ascended, of course."
"I was a real fan of yours," Llona confessed. "I never missed a movie you were in."
"Really?" Wisdom's chest and shoulders seemed to expand. "Did you see the last one?"
"In the, Beginning," Llona remembered. "Oh, yes. I saw it. It was wonderful."
"Grossed over ten million," Wisdom said modestly. "But more important, it marked my transcendence of earthly existence."
"He thinks because he played the Almighty in that biblical farce that he really became God," the other old man explained in a nasty tone of voice. "Actually, he decided to be God when the Republican party snubbed him."
"Philistines!" Wisdom snorted disdainfully.
"He started out wanting to be a Senator," his roommate cackled. "He had all the qualifications except one."
"Which one was that?" Llona wondered.
"He couldn't tap-dance."
"Insidious hoofers!" Wisdom frowned majestically. "They knew how to handle them back in vaudeville. Then they used them to open the show while the audience was finding their seats and getting settled. All they're good for. The United States Senate, indeed! Why, that toe-tapper doesn't even provide comic relief!"
"Sour grapes!" The other old man singsonged it like a child poking fun at another child. "Anyway,"- he continued to Llona and Sammy Spayed, "when they wouldn't let him be a Senator, he started chasing after the nomination for Governor. Only he wasn't enough of a Good Guy to nail it down."
"I was so!" Wisdom insisted hotly. "In my prime I shot it out and won showdowns with more Death Valley villains than that Birch-y buffoon ever did."
"But he got the nod and you didn't." It came out to the tune of "Ring-around-a-Rosy."
"I should have had my teeth capped," Wisdom reflected to himself. "I'll bet I could have scored a write-in in the primary if I had. With the right image-"
"You'd have had to go pretty far right to beat Rough-Rider Ronnie," the first old man reminded him.
"At my peak I foiled more Commie plots than he ever dreamed existed! And I wasn't any nicey-nice anti-Commie when those cameras started rolling, either. I didn't grin and crinkle up my baby-blues. I took them on with good old-fashioned righteous American anger. And off the set I never played footsie with the liberals the way he did. I was out campaigning for General Doug while that young pup was still licking the hand of the New Deal."
"They probably figured you couldn't get the women's vote," his roommate sniped.
"Ridiculous! I was a matinee idol when he was simpering his way through second leads. How many pictures did he play the Good Guy who didn't get the girl? In my pictures, I always got the girl! I would have had the women's vote in my hip pocket."
"I always thought it was a little bit crazy for an actor to go into politics," Sammy Spayed ruminated meekly.
"It is!" The taunting oldster cackled. "That's why he's here!"
"It is not!" Wisdom objected. "If that were the case, then how come Twinkletoes and that Late Show lemon aren't here too? Answer me that!"
"Not all the Filberts are in the nut-hatch. Plenty of them are running around loose."
"In the U.S. Senate?" Llona was shocked.
"Why not? And in higher places, too. Look at our for eign policy. Viet Nam's right out of a Grade D Hollywood screenplay. I'll deny it if you quote me, but I've always suspected that John Wayne had a hand in formulating that policy. And it's worldwide. Look at De Gaulle. There's a bad actor if I ever saw one."
"But he's not era- I mean mentally ill," Llona objected.
"Everything's comparative. A man starts blowing off H-bombs the way things are today, how are you going to define the line between psychosis and politics? Actually, of course, that line doesn't exist. If it did, either this place would be full of statesmen, or Wisdom there would be sitting in the White House."
"If it wasn't for Wall Street, I'd be sitting there right now," Wisdom said in a voice tinged with sadness.
"What did Wall Street have to do with it?" Llona wanted to know.
"Years ago, would-be President Wisdom there made a movie about the nineteen-twenties," the needier explained. "It ended with the stock-market crash and him taking a stockbrokers' swandive out of an eighteenth-story window. Wall Street took umbrage, and they never forgot. When he began sucking around and making public statements about how he had absolutely no presidential ambitions, they put the kibosh on him."
"If the Eisenhower faction could forgive Reagan for going to V.M.I, in that Brother Rat flick, I don't see why the money boys couldn't forgive my youthful indiscretion," Wisdom said plaintively.
"It broke his heart," the other old man said with relish. "Destroyed all his political ambitions. Something must have snapped inside him. That's when he decided that if he couldn't be Governor, or Senator, or President, he might as well be God. And he thinks he's been God ever since. Actors' conceit! It knows no limits."
"Actors' conceit has nothing to do with it." Wisdom withdrew from the argument into himself and became portentous again. "I am God. If you weren't such a heathen, you'd recognize Me."
"I'm not a heathen. I'm a realist. There's no security in God. Even if you were God, there's no security. The only thing that offers security is-"
"Yes?" Llona and Sammy Spayed spoke together.
"My security blanket!"
"Oh, Me. There he goes again. For My sake, don't start."
"I want my security blanket!" His voice rose to a high, ear-piercing whine. "Where is it? They promised they'd bring it! Where's my security blanket?"
"It's on the way," Llona remembered.
"And we'd better be on ours." Sammy Spayed remembered something else. "Of all the rooms to pick, why did we have to come in here? We'd better get out fast. I can't imagine how Hannah's kept him out of here this long."
"But how?" Llona asked anxiously. "We don't dare go out in the hall again."
"There must be another way out of here," Sammy hoped.
"I want my security blanket!"
"There's a sort of balcony right outside that window." Wisdom pointed. "You can get into the next room from there."
"Thanks." Sammy hustled Llona over to the window and helped her through it.
"Pax vobiscum." Wisdom gestured at Sammy's back as he climbed over the sill.