I turned on the television at the Hotel Napa looking for relief. The remote was like a pistol I pointed and punched at talking heads as they appeared. Channel after channel clicked by that way.
I got interested when I hit a news show where experts were talking for the millionth time about the Kennedy assassination. They said there was new evidence that Kennedy had been snuffed by Oswald, working with the CIA, the FBI, and the Mafia. Oswald’s picture as a young punk holding a rifle came up again and again. His wife, an old white-haired Russian-American lady, was talking about how he was in bed. Seems he couldn’t get enough. Used to drive her crazy.
Maybe that’s why he shot Kennedy. Jealousy, because old J.F.K. was getting it by the truck load.
Oswald had done it. He had gotten the world by the balls and twisted. He had caused a hundred million heartaches. He was invisible too, and then he picked up that Mannlicher-Carcano rifle and pulled the trigger and he was everywhere. The guy had to be one of the hundred most famous people of the twentieth century. If he could do it, so could I.
And then I saw it! I had the vision! It was me up there on the screen, talking with Ted Koppel. Amazing! When I clicked to the next channel, there I was on it, talking to somebody famous. No matter how fast I fired the control, there I was. In some of them I looked different — older, wearing different clothes — but it was my face on the screen. Everyone was looking at me, all over the world. Asking my opinion about things. All I really wanted was for them to say my name: Buddy Tate, and keep it in their minds, so when they saw me they’d really see me. I wouldn’t be some jerk who was invisible, I would be Buddy fucking Tate!
I punched that control until my fingers got tired, and on every channel found more pictures of me. Sure, I wondered a little about how I got there, but I take it when it comes.... If I was crazy, so what?
I got scared when I stopped seeing myself. Suddenly I was gone from the screen, and there was Thomas Flood talking down to people who were kneeling and praying and dropping their crutches. Telephone numbers flashed on the screen asking for pledges.
I hit the control. But on channel after channel, I was gone, faster than a commercial for dog food. Just a blip on the screen, and then gone. It hit me in the gut and I just kind of rolled around in front of the television in pain while Robin’s father talked about coming to San Francisco to clean house on witches and pornographers. I was sure he could see me rolling around in pain, but his eyes just looked right through me as if I wasn’t there. His face filled the whole screen, and his mouth was telling me what to do. I shut off the sound, but big letters crawled across the screen:
It is never too late to save a soul.
I wondered if I had one, and if I did, was there any hope for it? But hell, what’s a soul but another shuck that guys like Flood sold you? I didn’t need a soul, I needed a clean hit — right between this mother-fucker’s eyes. If I didn’t exist on his channel, then I swore he wouldn’t exist on any channel. I, Buddy Tate, claimed them all.
I watched, trying to chill out, as Flood fleeced the suckers. He was scary. The flying saucer people would surely grab him and take him up and away — just up and away — if I didn’t get to him first.
I thought about him torturing and messing with Robin and I felt how easy it would be to snuff him. I just had to get close enough, and she could help me get there. Then the whole world could tune in on our wedding...
I must have been hallucinating: what would we do, married? Couldn’t bring that in clear on my own screen. Static. Interference. Buy a house? Ride motorcycles together? Run from the law?
Maybe we’d even have a litter of replicas of ourselves we would have to beat so they’d be like Mom and Pop? Then there’d be a smelly old dog who’d find Robin’s bloody tampax on the floor and chew it. Bills. Taxes. No thanks.
But I wanted to imagine a future with Robin. I hoped that the two of us would be doing something to get in trouble. I hoped we’d fuck like big bunnies all the time. Then I stopped that line of thought. Hope was for losers. Hopers are dopers, I knew that.
There was only Flood in the way of my future. Popping him would be as easy as taking the K.Farouk .38 from my pocket and firing it at the television face. Flash! Bang! Phfft!
Got him right in the wallet.