CHAPTER 14

Jesus Saves

(October 4-5, 2014)

That night our love making was interwoven with whispered discussions about childhood fears and adult pleasures and past relationships gone sour and future hopes and dead dreams. We’d talk, make love, talk, make love, and talk some more. This continued until about three o’clock in the morning when Heather drifted off to sleep with her head snuggled between my neck and shoulder, her hands resting on my chest. I lay there and thought about everything that had happened in the past few days. I thought once again about all the lost opportunities in my life and realized that if I had brought Esthra home with me Friday night I might not have been there the next day to receive Heather’s call. Perhaps every lost opportunity was just a better opportunity gained, I mused. About a half hour later I fell asleep while listening to Heather’s gentle, rhythmic breathing.

After what seemed like only minutes, I awoke to the sound of pounding on the front door. Beams of dust-speckled sunlight streamed in through the window. I glanced at the digital alarm clock sitting on the night stand beside the bed. It was a little after eight a.m. Heather was still dead asleep, curled into a ball on the edge of the bed with all the blankets wrapped around her. How had that happened? For a moment I considered lying in bed until the pounding stopped, but I didn’t want the noise to wake Heather. I got out of the bed as quietly as possible, snatched my Levis up from the floor, and dashed out into the living room. I paused to shut the bedroom door behind me. As I walked toward the door I managed to wiggle into my Levis and button them up. Still the pounding continued.

“All right, all right,” I mumbled, “hold your fuckin’ horses.” I swung open the door to find myself staring into a pair of raging infernos within the eyes of Mr. Michael Aster.

At this point I experienced a strange moment of cognitive dissonance. It felt as if some creature from an alternate reality were intruding into the little pocket universe I had carved out here in Heather’s apartment. I would’ve been less surprised if a UFO had flown in from the hallway and burned a crop circle into the rug.

The first words out of Mike’s mouth were, “You fucked her, didn’t you?”

At first I wasn’t sure what he was talking about. Was he referring to Heather? Had he been peering into the bedroom from an opposite rooftop with a telescope? Did he want to congratulate me on my good fortune? Out of all of these questions the only coherent one I could formulate was, “How’d you find me here?”

He pushed me backwards into the apartment. “Shut up, you asshole. I heard about what you did to her in the bathroom!”

I held my hands in the air. “Hey, I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, man.”

“Don’t play stupid with me. Everybody knows it. Everybody who was at that party heard about what you did. The gossip spread around the house like wildfire in a couple of fuckin’ minutes. I was the last to know. I’m always the last to fuckin’ know!”

Thick, ropy veins were bulging out of his neck; the veins in his temples were pulsating like tiny blue wires in a short-circuiting computer. His head seemed to be on the verge of exploding. I knew there would be no reasoning with the man. I knew it even before his fist flew out of the fifth dimension and slammed into my jaw, sending me toppling backwards into a stack of cardboard boxes filled with who knows what—more of Heather’s garbage. I heard crashing and rattling and tinkling and knew that something fragile had broken; I hoped it was nothing inside of me.

A number of thoughts raced through my mind all at once as I tried to push myself up off the floor. The only person at that party who knew where Heather lived was Danny. Had he given Mike the address during some drugged-out stupor? Is that why he’d called the previous night, to warn me about Mike? First and foremost in my thoughts, however, was the idea that I really wouldn’t mind getting beat up for fucking somebody else’s girlfriend if only I had had the pleasure of fucking somebody else’s girlfriend. A great deal of pleasure in return for a great deal of pain is an acceptable equation in my book as long as the pleasure part isn’t left out of the deal. Imagine being punished for a sin you didn’t commit, but would have if only you’d been given the opportunity. What could be more frustrating than that?

I had risen to my hands and knees when I felt Mike’s boot slam into my ribcage. Bright bluish-purple splotches appeared in front of my eyes, darting about like weird airborne paramecium. I released an animalistic grunt and keeled over onto my side. Just as I thrust my hands in the air to ward off further attacks I heard the bedroom door open behind me.

“What the fuck?” Heather said in that most concise, Heather-like way of hers.

In my peripheral vision I could see that Heather had no way to protect herself. She was wearing her fluffy white bathrobe, nothing else. I tried to open my mouth to tell her to get out of here, but all the air had been knocked out of my body. I couldn’t speak.

“Who the hell is this?” Mike said, poking me in the face with the tip of his boot. “Is this your little girlfriend? Maybe she’d like to know who you were fucking Friday night, hm? Maybe she’d like to know about you and Esthra?” The second he uttered Esthra’s name he slammed his boot into my solar plexus. What little air I had left in my body now fled south for a perpetual vacation among the Antarctic ice floes.

“Don’t hurt him!” Heather shouted, her voice laced with panic. Hearing the sound of a woman pleading for my life was a pleasant sensation in some ways. I never thought a woman would care about me enough to do such a thing. If only you could edit out the life-threatening aspect of the situation, it would’ve been even more pleasant.

Mike backed away from me. For a second I thought that maybe Heather had somehow gotten through to him. “I’m not going to hurt him,” Mike said in an emotionless drone, “I’m going to kill him.” He pulled up his shirt and removed a .22 from his belt. I remember thinking, I wonder if that’s the gun his dad keeps by his bed.

“I’m not takin’ any more shit from her, man. No more.” Both his voice and hand were shaking. “Right here and now I’m announcing Mike’s new policy. You touch her, you die. Simple as that.” He released the safety, then aimed the shaking gun at my head. I closed my eyes tight, waiting for the shot.

From somewhere in front of me I heard a familiar voice say, “Excuse me, we thought we’d drop by to—hey, what’s going on here?”

I opened my eyes in time to see Mike spin around and fire his gun at Brothers Lundberg and Fleetwood, both of whom were standing in the open doorway holding up little blue hardcover copies of the Book of Mormon. The firing gun thunderclapped throughout the room. Lundberg’s head snapped backward, his body toppled onto the carpet. Fleetwood’s jaw dropped as he watched his companion fall; his gaze darkened with anger; he spun toward Mike and threw the Book of Mormon through the air like a Frisbee. It slammed into Mike’s wrist, knocking the gun out of his hand. The look on Mike’s face was one of stunned disbelief. Before he could have time to recover I mustered up enough energy to rise to my feet and tackle Mike about the waist. Heather jumped on top of him too, as did Fleetwood. He was such a bundle of rage it took all three of us to pin him to the floor, but I knew we couldn’t hold him there forever.

“What do we do with him now?” I said.

“I don’t know,” Fleetwood said, “knock him unconscious?”

“With what?” I said.

“Who’s Esther?” Heather said.

“What?”

“You heard me!” Her lips had tightened into a thin white line. “Who’s this Esther?”

“I don’t think that’s very important right now!” Mike managed to get one of his hands free and almost punched me in the eye.

“I think it is. Is she pretty?”

“Will someone get his hand?” Fleetwood pinned the hand to the floor, but had to release the other one in order to do so. With this hand Mike tried to punch me in the jaw again. I barely swerved out of the way.

“I suppose you told her she was beautiful,” Heather said, “just like you told me last night.”

“I didn’t do anything with her. And her name’s Esthra, not Esther.”

“Ooooh, exotic. Sounds phony to me. Sounds like some kind of fucking stripper name.”

“Can you put a sock in it for just one second? We’ve got a bit of a problem here in case you haven’t noticed.” Mike’s fist whizzed past my skull once more.

Heather sighed, grabbed for the gun (which had landed near the leg of the sofa) and clubbed Mike over the head with the butt. His body immediately went limp and his head slammed against the carpet, bouncing once before lying still. We remained on top of him for a few seconds, just in case he emerged from unconsciousness like the implacable mad man in the last reel of all those slasher movies. He didn’t. We breathed a sigh of relief, then relaxed. The second we did so he shot up from the floor and tried to strangle me. Heather slammed the gun into his head again, this time drawing blood. He collapsed onto the carpet once more, then lay still. This time Fleetwood and Heather sat on him while I went to check on Lundberg.

I expected to see his head blown all over the wall, pieces of his skull scattered across the floor. Compared with this gruesome image Lundberg seemed fine. I could see no trace of blood, no wound at all. He was sprawled out on the floor like a straw-stuffed dummy, his mouth wide open, his eyelids pressed together, his consciousness lost in torpid slumber. Lying on his chest was his elephantine copy of the Book of Mormon. I did a double take when I spotted the bullet hole that had consumed the golden-colored “o” and “k” in the word “Book.” I slipped the tome out of his hands and peeled the pages apart, discovering the bullet flattened against page 779, the last page in the book, just barely forming a slight bulge in the metallic back cover. I flipped back to the title page and found the following note written in red ink:

Elliot,

Here is your own book. Please read it, think about it, and pray to know if it is true. Please call if you have any questions and we would love to help you understand the truth.

Late!

Brother Lundberg

375-4295

P.S.: Can we please keep that whole funny cigarette incident to ourselves?

I tucked the book under my arm, then lightly slapped him on the cheeks. “Hey, Lundberg,” I said, “wake up! Looks like there’s something to this God stuff after all.” When Lundberg’s eyes began to focus, I shoved the open book in his face and showed him the flattened bullet.

“Wh-what happened?” he mumbled.

“Well, either you’re blessed or god damn lucky or both.” Lundberg propped himself up on his elbows. “Uh … what time is it?” His eyes still weren’t quite focused.

I tilted my head to look at his watch. “8:22.”

“Oh good, we’re not late.”

“Late for what?”

“Why, for the lecture. Don’t you remember? Two weeks ago you told us to drop by this morning between 7:00 and 8:30 to deliver a second lecture to you and your wife Heather. Is she home?”

I couldn’t help but conclude that practical jokes actually served a utilitarian purpose in the grand scheme of things. “Yeah,” I said, “she’s sitting on your assailant right now.”

“Huh?”

“C’mon, I’ll explain everything inside. You can deliver your second lecture while we’re waiting for the cops.”

“What?” He began to panic. “You didn’t tell them about the cigarette did you?”

“No, no, that’ll remain our little secret.” I patted him on the back. “Let’s go, Brother. This is probably the most receptive Heather’s ever going to be to the Word of God.”

I helped Lundberg to his feet, wrapped my arm around his shoulders, and guided him into the apartment where a Mormon and a half-naked standup comedian sat on a comatose punk rocker to prevent him from murdering us.

Just another day in the life.