~ ~ ~



Foolishly, Zan convinced himself the bank forgot them. Now he imagines them all stranded in London, with nowhere to return. In the background on the television, the BBC reports that back home a bizarre new phenomenon has taken hold by which some segments of the public suggest the president is an impostor. They contend he was born in a secret african veldt and, as a newborn, smuggled into the country under the cover of a false birth certificate and false birth announcement in a hawaiian newspaper so that forty-seven years later he could seize the presidency. Some propose that this is God’s warning of the end of time.

For a while Zan half listens to a woman in South Dakota who’s interviewed about the pending Rapture and end of the world. What finally gets his full attention is her glee, which isn’t so much about going to heaven as it is about everyone who will be left behind; finally this woman will be superior to all the smart-alecks on television and those in their high stations who thought they were superior to her. The End Time constitutes its own kind of revolutionary politics. The woman counts down the hours until she’ll get to see the looks on the faces of the secular elite as she ascends and they’re below with the flames licking their feet. Among the crosses and pictures of Jesus is an image of the president as something not unlike a creature that Parker glues and paints at this moment; underneath the image is the word ANTICHRIST. “Is he a spaceman?” Sheba cries enthusiastically.

Of course Zan and Viv have told their son and daughter nothing about their financial problems and, as with the Talk, Zan suspects they don’t need to. He’s insisted to Parker that things are all right and feels certain the boy isn’t having it, has picked up on too many signs. Zan is meditating on a house lost to the bank and rats, being in a foreign country with two kids and credit cards that don’t work and a missing wife and no babysitter that he can’t afford anyway, when there comes a knock on the hotel room door, unheard at first over the clap of thunder outside. “Sheba,” he warns uselessly for the hundredth time in both their lives, “don’t answer without knowing who it is,” as she bolts for the door, for the hundredth time ignoring him. “Who is it?” Zan says, but when the girl stands in the open doorway transfixed and unanswering, he knows.


Загрузка...