right
now
, stock it with cutlery, soaps, mops, candles, all that Smart & Final Iris crap, Trader Joeâs cheese, thrift-store bean bags, fifties dinette set, water bed, aquarium for the kid, wardrobe and lingerie, give her the old Bernie-bought Impala, the whole
schmear
. Do the impossible in just a few hours. Ensconce them in a super-clean utility apartment on Barrington somewhere and pay the rent a fucking year in advance. How much for the whole package? Ten grand? Twelve? That was shit. When itâs done, lay five K on her and disappear, like some saint. Let six months go by, then drop in to see whatâs what. What else could he do with her? More immediate. Clean her up. Get her to the doc for a little Private Door dusting, douching and delousing. Have her tested. If sheâs negative, go the whole Pygmalion hog: Dr. Lesâs magical mystery collagen tonic, creams and unguents and Retin A, plucking and waxingâshave the pussy and storm the blackheads. Shopping at Trashy Lingerie, gallery-hopping at Bergamot Station, Planet Hollywood with the kid. Get Tiffany into a private school. A fourth graderâs tuition at Crossroads was only eleven thou. Be fun having a kid out there in the world, one you never needed to see, who worshiped and was terrified of you, like some miniature Manchurian Candidate.
Donny passed her a business card. He said he could find her work cleaning houses. She plucked a book from her knapsack, a two-thousand-page tome called
The Book of Urantia
. âUrantia means Earth,â she said. âOur planetâs only one among many, you know.â Donny said he would hereby call her Ursula Major. She smiled and gave him the book, as a gift. He took it, forcing on her a hundred-dollar bill. The homeless woman got weepy and kissed his cheek. Tonight, theyâd stay in a Best Western instead of God knew where.
He read Katherineâs draft of
Teorema
in bed then scanned
The Book of Urantia
. He flipped through its elegant, tissue-thin pages until he found a passage to read aloud:
For almost one hundred and fifty million years after the Melchizedek bestowal of Michael, all went well in the universe of Nebadon, when trouble began to brew in system II of constellation 37. This trouble involved a misunderstanding by a Lanonandek Son, a System Sovereign, which had been adjudicated by the Constellation Fathers and approved by the Faithful of Days, the Paradise counselor to that constellation, but the protesting System Sovereign was not fully reconciled to the verdict
â¦.
The agent drifted off, rising like a kite toward interplanetary zones.
It was easy getting onto the Sony lot. At the Thalberg Building gate, security was focused on cars, not pedestrians. There was only one guard on duty. Just to be safe, the Dead Animal Guy waited for him to become embroiled in the usual drive-on snafu, then strode right in. Wasnât this the same studio someone drove a flaming truck into a few years back? Simon remembered that in the news; happened around the same time those guards were shot over at Universal. Bad week for showbiz. But maybe trespassing
wasnât
so easyâmaybe his furry netherworld shenanigans, veteran wayfarer that he was, had imbued him with a debonair invisibility. He imagined himself in a tux, the Dead Pet Societyâs mystic Double-Oh Seven.
Simon thought of looking up his sister, Rachel. According to Calliope, big sissy now worked for Perry Needham Howe, the guy raking millions off that syndicated cop show. Howe had offices somewhere on the lotâprobably even knew the
Blue Matrix
boys. At a certain level of moneymaking, everyone knew everyone.
He decided to head for safe ground: the company store. He bought a
Blue Matrix
sweatshirt and the cashier told him which stage to go toâasking a guard could have invited trouble. The sparkling backlot had a ritzy Deco theme. He passed a whole block of buildings with wharf-related façades, imaginary fish
now
, stock it with cutlery, soaps, mops, candles, all that Smart & Final Iris crap, Trader Joeâs cheese, thrift-store bean bags, fifties dinette set, water bed, aquarium for the kid, wardrobe and lingerie, give her the old Bernie-bought Impala, the whole
schmear
. Do the impossible in just a few hours. Ensconce them in a super-clean utility apartment on Barrington somewhere and pay the rent a fucking year in advance. How much for the whole package? Ten grand? Twelve? That was shit. When itâs done, lay five K on her and disappear, like some saint. Let six months go by, then drop in to see whatâs what. What else could he do with her? More immediate. Clean her up. Get her to the doc for a little Private Door dusting, douching and delousing. Have her tested. If sheâs negative, go the whole Pygmalion hog: Dr. Lesâs magical mystery collagen tonic, creams and unguents and Retin A, plucking and waxingâshave the pussy and storm the blackheads. Shopping at Trashy Lingerie, gallery-hopping at Bergamot Station, Planet Hollywood with the kid. Get Tiffany into a private school. A fourth graderâs tuition at Crossroads was only eleven thou. Be fun having a kid out there in the world, one you never needed to see, who worshiped and was terrified of you, like some miniature Manchurian Candidate.
Donny passed her a business card. He said he could find her work cleaning houses. She plucked a book from her knapsack, a two-thousand-page tome called
The Book of Urantia
. âUrantia means Earth,â she said. âOur planetâs only one among many, you know.â Donny said he would hereby call her Ursula Major. She smiled and gave him the book, as a gift. He took it, forcing on her a hundred-dollar bill. The homeless woman got weepy and kissed his cheek. Tonight, theyâd stay in a Best Western instead of God knew where.
He read Katherineâs draft of
Teorema
in bed then scanned
The Book of Urantia
. He flipped through its elegant, tissue-thin pages until he found a passage to read aloud:
For almost one hundred and fifty million years after the Melchizedek bestowal of Michael, all went well in the universe of Nebadon, when trouble began to brew in system II of constellation 37. This trouble involved a misunderstanding by a Lanonandek Son, a System Sovereign, which had been adjudicated by the Constellation Fathers and approved by the Faithful of Days, the Paradise counselor to that constellation, but the protesting System Sovereign was not fully reconciled to the verdict
â¦.
The agent drifted off, rising like a kite toward interplanetary zones.
It was easy getting onto the Sony lot. At the Thalberg Building gate, security was focused on cars, not pedestrians. There was only one guard on duty. Just to be safe, the Dead Animal Guy waited for him to become embroiled in the usual drive-on snafu, then strode right in. Wasnât this the same studio someone drove a flaming truck into a few years back? Simon remembered that in the news; happened around the same time those guards were shot over at Universal. Bad week for showbiz. But maybe trespassing
wasnât
so easyâmaybe his furry netherworld shenanigans, veteran wayfarer that he was, had imbued him with a debonair invisibility. He imagined himself in a tux, the Dead Pet Societyâs mystic Double-Oh Seven.
Simon thought of looking up his sister, Rachel. According to Calliope, big sissy now worked for Perry Needham Howe, the guy raking millions off that syndicated cop show. Howe had offices somewhere on the lotâprobably even knew the
Blue Matrix
boys. At a certain level of moneymaking, everyone knew everyone.
He decided to head for safe ground: the company store. He bought a
Blue Matrix
sweatshirt and the cashier told him which stage to go toâasking a guard could have invited trouble. The sparkling backlot had a ritzy Deco theme. He passed a whole block of buildings with wharf-related façades, imaginary fish
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