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Show 79 to the lot that day. She had stood with a small group behind a wire cyclone fence less than a hundred feet from the building. With a good view as the motorcycle police pulled up, sharply kicking their stands down and dismounting. And then the long, silver limousine convertible with that huge bald man sitting in the back seat behind the driver. He resembled an overstuffed pillow, with a head placed on it. She was not disappointed, he was a terribly imposing man. But did the devil consort with him? Was this the Antichrist, in flesh and blood? It was puzzling. For above all, he seemed a man. Perhaps it was the large wart on his cheek, to the side of the nostril-fully visible from where she was standing-that made him human to her. But this big pillow of a man was now sending a ship with missiles on it to Cuba. Troops were being called up. Robbie was afraid he would be drafted, in spite of his job deferment. She wondered about this huge man. In her mind she pictured him sitting at a big desk, scowling, his chin resting on his pudgy hands. In those hands he held her brother's fate. Her own fate. The fate of everyone she knew. It did not seem possible. But that grey ship on the screen-that was real. Undeniably real. It. was scary. Threatening. It was-beyond doubt-evil. Of sufficient size, or sufficient scope, to be an intstrument of the Antichrist. That week, she began to experience strange moments. Moments in which her whole being seemed suspended, held in a vacuum. It became a terrifying vacuum. A white numbness, with an aura of sharp fear surrounding it. It seemed, almost, as if it could explode. As if she, |
