The Salvation Shark, Chapter 50

Jesse

The sky is black. The lights in this little city are enough to wipe out the stars, but the news report said the snow was coming any minute. Kevin will make me shovel it tomorrow morning. I don’t know what I’m waiting for, just standing against the pole. I could catch a city bus across the street, it runs until midnight. I could ride to the end and see where it takes me. I could take it to the Greyhound station and ride as far as my funds permit.

I’ve got some money in my bank account that my mother set up, and I haven’t touched it in a while. I could set up wherever I go. A job and a new life and I would be free. There would be no Courtney, no Eva, no Pete, no Messiah, no knowledge of that the Devil is coming for me.

I run across the road to catch the next city bus when I see it pull up. The driver thanks me for my fare without looking. I fall into a seat near the middle across from the second door, and stare out the window. He is wearing dark sunglasses and has all the lights in the bus turned on. I wish I brought a book.

The bus is mostly empty. A couple kids from the college are pressed against each other in the sideways seats across the aisle from a pear-shaped woman also wearing dark sunglasses, waving her arms to accompany her animated conversation with the driver about the price of gloves. In the back by the heater is a bearded man with his hood up. He sits in empty doorways around town and asks for spare change. There are a lot of empty doorways in this city. I sit in the forward seats so he can't make eye-contact. The homeless here are desperate and cold, and no more invitation is needed to start hassling for money.

I don't want to be a Messiah. I want to be a normal guy with normal problems and normal feelings. I don't want the weight of the world heaped on my shoulders. How could a loving God do this to his own son? I want the world to forget I even exist, to get on with their lives. No more discussions about Heaven and Hell, no more talk of God and the Devil. Die, and be buried, and get on with it. Everyone should just live their lives and enjoy. Stop worrying about what comes after, and try to enjoy the brief moments we have here.

The driver pauses his conversation to bark, "Front and Main!"

I have nowhere to go. I was not wanted in this world. I am very much not a Messiah for the new millennium. I was born the by the accidental conception of a poor, coke-head mother who loved beer, drugs, and rock ‘n roll. There was a joke when I was born that my father was either her coke dealer or Stephen Tyler. It might have been both, but only the first was willing to admit it. He proposed to her, but they never married. Instead, she cleaned up her life, and he got busted for something never disclosed to me, and to the best of my knowledge, is still imprisoned in some Texas hell-hole. My mother tried to give me a good life, but sometimes I had to choose between clothes on my back, or food on the table.

The driver barks, "Front and North!" The drivers are equipped with microphones for the loudspeaker, but this driver only uses that when he is engaged in conversation with a passenger closer to the middle of the bus.

All the time, I had lingering hints of who and what I was. I would perform miracles, but had no control of them. If I was hungry, nothing happened. If someone else was hungry, I could give them food. If I tried to eat it, it turned to ashes in my moth. I had visions of the dead leaves blowing through the streets of a weakened Heaven, the sad faces of angels. I could free people from disease with a touch, and I was faced all through history by people that have made the same claim as me, and have been locked away and ridiculed.

I don’t have what it takes to be God.

"Front and Clinton!" barks the driver.

The college kids are talking about Becki Murphy. I pretend not to listen. “Did you hear what happened?” They notice I am not listening when I raise my eyebrows at the news. I hadn't heard she was dead. I don't care, I guess, but I can't help but care for a moment. They continue talking, giving me the occasional irritated glance. I thought someone told he she was sick, when did that change to a kidnapping? Whatever. Things like this happen every day, it’s not any more special when it happens to someone famous. I have a hard time believing there was an "army" of dead cops though. These college brats will repeat anything.

"Clinton and Oak!" barks the driver.

“Isn’t that sad? She had so much potential,” the girl says, like Becki Murphy was a relation of hers. The boy has a Black Flag tattoo, and I'm fairly certain he was never a member of Black Flag. I continue to stare out the window.

"Clinton and Mygat."

The boy pulls the yellow cord to request a stop.

"Clinton and Jarvis!" barks the driver and the college kids got off the bus.

I'm first alerted by the smell that the homeless guy has moved to the seat behind me. It's a pungent mix of grime, snot, and booze from a plastic bottle. I turn around sharply to make sure he's not about to stick a knife in me. I can feel his hot breath on my neck.

“She’s not dead, you know,” he whispers in my ear.

I pull away from him, looking disgusted. “What are you talking about?” I can't find the words for anything else.

“The little girl,” he says, spraying me with rancid spittle. “She’s alive. It’s all a lie, all a lie.”

I really want to get off the bus, but I don’t want to risk him following on the street. “That’s nice,” I say, thinking about the stop coming up. The walk isn't that long, but would be no fun in this cold with the jacket I'm wearing. I’ve got a couple bucks on me, if my phone wasn't dead I could call a cab. I would probably stand in a parking lot as long as it would take me to walk. I turn away and stare out the window again, but his head is still practically perched on my shoulder. “Excuse me,” I say indignantly, knowing it won't do much good.

“Are you afraid of her?” he asks. He is smiling broadly.He grabs my hand, and his eyes go blank. I haven’t shown him anything, but I can see that he knows me. The bus stops, and I wrench my hand away. He whispers, “Thank you,” and I run off the bus.

Inside, the heat was set at eighty degrees, but outside has dropped another ten while I was riding. I wish I was wearing long-johns. I'm at the bottom of a steep hill lined by neatly-rowed houses, the edge of the suburbs. I'm not even sure how to get back home without tracing the bus route that I don't think is remotely direct. I might actually be screwed.

Almost as soon as the bus pulls away, a gold Lexus stops beside me. The automatic windows hum as they roll down. Is this how male prostitutes get picked up? I bend over and look through the window.

“I thought it was you!” Mephis Tyr says in a practiced cry. “Talk about coincidence!” I teeter between being creeped out and impressed that he is actually driving an expensive car. You can't drive a car like that living in the State Hospital. Maybe he killed a doctor. At this point, any kind of familiar face is welcome. “How’s it going?” I ask. Should I make it clear now that I'm not giving him anything but money in exchange for a ride home?

He laughs. “Well... I’m in a bit of a bind here, I took a wrong turn, and another, and got myself turned around, and some bad directions, and next thing I know, I’m here, and I don’t know where here is. Do you know where here is?”

I chuckle. “Yeah... I actually grew up around here. Where are you going?”

“Where were we the other day? Downtown? I need to go there.”

“Me too, can you give me a ride?" My mind formulates a strategy for serial killer avoidance.

He pats the leather seat. “Hop in.”

I get into the gold Lexus and pull the door closed.

“The seats have warmers,” he says. He is clearly mimicking the reaction of someone else. His inflection is wrong, like he isn't sure why a person would be excited. “The switch is on the floor next to the door.” I find it with my fingers and flip it on. “So what are you doing all the way out here?” he asks, putting the car in gear and pulling back onto the road.

“Just riding the bus,” I say absently. “Turn here. We’re not actually that far from the highway, just going the wrong way. Some nut-case started going on about Becki Murphy getting killed, and I needed to get away from him.”

He snorts. “I heard about that on the radio. What a joke! With her voice, she did the world a favor!”

“Turn here,” I say. “That girl couldn’t sing if her life depended on it. She wouldn’t even have a career if wasn’t for all that time in short shorts when she was fifteen. Turn here. They could have at least gotten someone to lip-sync over her, like Milli Vanilli.”

“The FBI roots out pedophilia everywhere but the record industry. Decline of the West, the New Roman Empire. Our society is becoming more decadent by the day. You can see it everywhere.” He looks at me with a gleam in his eyes. “You’ve got to love it.” This guy probably has some good weed.

“Sure. Turn here,” I say. “This a company car.”

His laugh is the closet to sincere I've heard from Tyr so far. "I'm not bringing my Ferrari onto these salty roads?" He laughs until he sees I don't understand the joke. "This is a nice car though. My work is almost done here. I can't wait to drive my car again.”

“I would love to be out of here,” I moan. “Right here, the highway.”

Tyr drives up the entrance ramp and in that practiced excitement, he says, “Oh! All right, I know where we are now. It’s a good thing I found you, or I would have been wandering all night long." He looks over at me, his dark eyes gleaming in the orange street light. “Why do you want to leave town?”

I shake my head. “Do you ever want to just go someplace that you don’t know and start over. You know, start a whole new life?”

“Never,” he says, and I’m not that surprised. “I make the best of my situations. I like my life.”

“Must be nice," I say, folding my hands in my lap. "I feel trapped.”

"Like a rat?"

“Tonight, I was thinking of just taking all my money and catching a Greyhound," I say. "I will ride it as far as I can, and starting a whole new life wherever it takes me.”

“What are you running from?”

“Something that keeps getting closer and closer.”

“I face my fears.”

Cliche. “If I tried to explain, you wouldn't understand.”

“Try.”

“Too much for me to bear. .” I shake my head. “I wish I didn’t have to worry about all this. Is your boss hiring?”

He laughs, sounding like he had done it hundreds of times before I got in the car so he could get it right. It still doesn’t sound authentic. “Employment is very limited,” he says. “You need a lot of special skills, and not everything is really on the... up and up.”

“At this point, I wouldn’t really care. Take this exit.” I drum my fingers on my knee. “I guess I can’t really explain it, you’d have to know my situation.” I laugh again. “I’m getting married, I think.”

He doesn't understand the joke. “Congratulations,” he cries, missing authenticity by a hair.

“I wouldn’t be so quick. You’ve never met her.”

“Then why marry her?”

“Turn right here. That’s a question I’ve asked myself so many times. I want to live a normal life, be like everyone else, and this is the only way I think I can.” I shake my head. “In the last week I met a great girl at a party and then proposed to a girl who's been breaking my heart since high school. I hate my life.”

“Because of your engagement situation?”

“Left here. My love triangle is the just the tip of the iceberg, really. I’ve got more shit going on than is fair.”

“Life isn’t fair.”

“The whole Universe isn’t fair.”

“Tell me about it,” he sighs, and for the first time, I hear emotion slip into his voice. “I do have one secret wish, one desire that’s never been fulfilled.”

“What’s that? Turn right here.”

“I haven’t been home in... longer than I remember. I haven’t seen the land of my birth for years. Sometimes, I get so close, but it’s always pulled from my grasp, and I’m left wanting. That is the most painful feeling you could imagine.”

“Where are you from?” I ask.

“It’s the most beautiful place you can imagine.”

“Your boss can’t get you in?”

“His clout goes only so far.”

“This is my paradise right here here.” The car pulls up to the curb. “Thanks for the ride,” I say, opening up the door. “Good luck in getting back there some day.”

“Thanks,” he says. “I’ll need it.”

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