22   

The rewards of faith and
their avoidance

Streaking through limbo with Milt Kahane, Woody Barnes marveled at the black, bright, star-winking universe around him. “Man, you really get a different picture from up here.”

“Very impressive,” Milt agreed. “No view like it, although the Hudson Valley comes close. The whole thing is a helluva show, Barnes. Being alive, being at all. That’s what this gig is all about. Remember your trumpet voluntaries from practice?”

They shot through gaseous clouds, played tag with asteroid belts, hitched a short ride on Voyager 1 snail-pacing past the orbit of Pluto. The frail little contraption looked lonely but familiar to Woody. Milt hurried him on.

“It’ll get shmutz all over the costume. Come on, we’re late.” With the whoop of a raucous diver, Milt kicked off from Voyager and whizzed on, Woody close behind. “Everyone wants a reward, especially shmucks like Roy. What do you want?”

“Never thought much about it,” Woody reflected. “At least, not until they zapped Charity. Enough gigs to pay the rent, I guess. Chance to play with some good sidemen. Get married.”

“Like Charity?”

“No, she’s all hung up on Roy. I never said anything to her anyway.”

“Wouldn’t’ve done any good,” Milt was sure. “Love is a matter of when.”

A sudden, nearby nova turned the universe blinding white.

“Wheeee! Feel the breeze! You know the worst thing in the world, Woody? Getting what you thought you wanted. Never looks as good on you as in the store. Take that mother who fragged us in Beirut. He got zapped the same day and came Topside looking for Mohammed and Allah, the whole shmeer. The Boss really has trouble with Moslems, and this dipstick was a Shiite, sort of an Islamic Fundamentalist. They don’t even like other Moslems.”

But there were great fringe benefits. As Milt explained it, radical Moslems had an ancient but precise idea of heavenly reward for defenders of the faith.

“Houris: sort of super Arab hookers. These guys believe they get an eternal shtup with orgasms that last a thousand years. Sexual Valhalla.”

Woody considered the prospect. “Not only couldn’t I stand it — hell, I’d get bored.”

“That’s the point, but (a) you’re not dumb and (b) you’re not a fanatic. If these clowns had any smarts, they’d be raising poppies or selling rugs.”

Milt did a graceful loop and figure eight, waving his trumpet at eternity. “The Boss gives Dipstick his houri just to get rid of him. Not a real houri: actually she’d been a waitress in Newark who belly-danced on weekends. But sexy? You could get seasick watching her navel. So she goes in, she told me, and this turkey gets it on after a lot of bullshit about the infidels he scored, meaning you and me, and he cranks up on paradise.”

As Milt had it from the part-time houri, when paradise arrived as advertised, with no sign of cessation, the Shiite felt it was really worth dying for. Gibbering with faith and gratitude, he labored to redeem his spiritual green stamps. Ten minutes into his thousand years, he wondered if the Koran mentioned anything about a break now and then. After twenty minutes he was ready for Sundays off.

“What the hell, the Thousand-Year Reich only made the first twelve,” Milt observed. “So — half an hour and he throws in the towel. Totaled, sick at heart. In tears, yet. The dangers of literal belief: what’s eternal reward when there’s nothing left to want, right? So the Boss sits him down — believe me, he had to sit down — to find out what he really wanted to do. Which was all uphill, because I met this clown and he had the IQ of a Venetian blind; even Arabs had trouble getting through to him. That’s why they put him in that window alone and told him carefully who to waste and who not, hoping Dipstick would remember some of it.

“Anyway, the Boss finally gets out of him that he was a baker, a whiz on baklava. He gives him the last known address on Mohammed, and off goes the Lion of Islam to find the place — which turns out to be in Greenwich Village. So now he’s the patron spirit of a falafel hut on Macdougal Street, inspiring the best Middle Eastern desserts in town, happy as a clam. There we go! Hang a right, Barnes.”

Woody dove after Milt toward a tiny point of light from whence came a growing roar of human frenzy. “Must be Roy’s crowd whooping it up.”

Milt listened as they drew closer. “That’s them. Can’t use your mute this gig. Subtle is not in. These turkeys are all Venetian blinds.”

“Roy wasn’t too dumb, I guess. He was always reading.”

“Yeah?” When Milt turned to glance at Woody, he looked rather like Jake. “Who do you think I’ve been talking about? Arabs?”

They swooped toward the distant point of light that became a city, a street, a screaming crowd. A high balcony...