Free Swan Song by Robert McCammon Page B

and asked me to. Wasn’t fifteen minutes ago. So I put it back on. Don’t mean shit to me, one way or the other. Anyway, I don’t argue with no old perverts.”
    “Old perverts? What’re you talkin’ about, man?”
    “Your friend,” Willy said. “Guy must be seventy years old. Beard makes him look like Rip Van Winkle. Where do these perverts come from?”
    “You’re… crazy,” Emiliano whispered. Willy shrugged and returned to his reading.
    Outside, Cecily looked up as Emiliano ran into the street. He glanced back at her, shouted, “I ain’t stayin’ in there! No way! I quit!” and ran away along Forty-Second Street and into the gloom. Cecily crossed herself, rechecked the lock on the ticket booth’s door and prayed for dawn.
    In his seat in the front row, the man who liked movies dug a hand into his buttered popcorn and stuffed his mouth full. Before him were scenes of broken bodies being extracted from the rubble of a London building bombed by Irish terrorists. He cocked his head to one side, appreciating the sight of crushed bones and blood. The camera, blurred and unsteady, focused on the frantic face of a young woman as she cradled a dead child.
    The man who liked movies laughed as if he were watching a comedy. In the sound of that laughter was the shriek of napalm bombs, incendiary rockets and Tomahawk missiles; it echoed through the theater, and if other people had been sitting there each one would have squirmed with the memory of a private terror.
    And in the reflected light from the screen, the man’s face was undergoing a transformation. No longer did he look Swedish, or Brazilian, or have a gray Rip Van Winkle beard; his facial features were running together like the slow melting of a wax mask, the bones shifting beneath the skin. The features of a hundred faces rose and fell like suppurating sores. As the screen showed an autopsy in close-up progress, the man clapped his hands together with merry glee.
    Almost time! he thought. Almost time for the show to start!
    He’d been waiting a long time for the curtain to rise, had worn many skins and many faces, and the moment was soon, very soon. He’d watched the lurch toward destruction through many eyes, had smelled fire and smoke and blood in the air like intoxicating perfumes. The moment was soon, and the moment would belong to him.
    Oh, yes! Almost time for the show to start!
    He was a creature of patience, but now he could hardly keep himself from dancing. Maybe a little Watusi up the aisle would be in order, and then he’d slamdance that cockroach behind the candy counter. It was like waiting for a birthday party, and when the candles were lit he would rear his head back and roar loud enough to stagger God.
    Almost time! Almost time!
    But where would it start? he wondered. Who would push the first button? No matter; he could almost hear the fuse crackling and the flame drawing near. It was the music of the Golan Heights, of Beirut and Teheran, of Dublin and Warsaw, Johannesburg and Vietnam-only this time the music would end in a final, deafening crescendo.
    He stuffed popcorn into a mouth that opened greedily on his right cheek. Party down! he thought, and he giggled with a noise like grinding glass.
    Last night he’d stepped off a Trailways bus from Philadelphia and, strolling down Forty-Second Street, had seen that this film was playing. He took the opportunity to admire his performances in The Face of Death, Part Four whenever he could. Just in the background, of course, always part of the crowd, but he could always recognize himself. There was a good shot of him standing over a mass of corpses after the bombing of an Italian soccer stadium, looking suitably shocked; another brief glimpse showed him, wearing a different face, at an airport massacre in Paris.
    Lately he’d been on tour, riding the bus from city to city, seeing America. There were so many terrorist groups and armed firebrands in Europe that his influence was hardly needed,