"ANGEL'S TONGUE PART 2: VENGEANCE STRUT" CONTINUED
Angelico grazes through intravision channel after intravsion channel, sitting in a large leather chair
like a monarch in his throne, like Captain Kirk on the bridge of the Enterprise, telepathically relaying
the news he has seized control of Latremouille. Through subtle language, physical and on-screen
graphic cues, he is able to decipher that the intravision communicators are aware that Canada's most
notorious living criminal is in their audience this morning. Teddy Angel is back.
Jabs comes up behind Angelico and tells him, "The camera is ready, sir."
Angelico swivels his chair one-eighty and faces an intravision camera.
"When you are prepared," Jabs says to his master, "all intravision channels and the grid in Canada
will be jammed to receive only you and your message to the people."
"I'm ready," Angelico says.
Jabs nods and Angelico rises from his chair.
"I am here this morning to send a statement to the government of this country on behalf of the
people, the citizens of this nation," Angelico says. "Consider this message notice your days are
numbered."
"Go ahead, Prime Minister Brody. Go ahead. Continue to provoke us. You are another in a long
succession of utterly failed leaders, unable to control the chaos. With your government mired in rot
and oppression how can you possibly call yourself a leader? Don't forget, the city of Vancouver
was not incinerated without reason. The reasons were sound - The financing of terrorists!
Uncontrolled organized criminal activity! A strategic base for international bomb detonation plots!
The trust has been breached for the last time. But I am forced to ask the vital question: How do
you breach trust when no such trust exists? You cannot. Do you hear that sound, Mr. Prime
Minister? It is marching, the people are marching in unison as one against the mighty oppressor, the
government of Canada. Soon the government will vanish, but mark my words Brody, the
government's legacy of hatred for us, the citizens, the government's legacy of turning a blind eye in
deference to our subjugation, to our degradation, will never, ever be forgotten."
A switch has been snapped into the "on" position within Angelico, he is ignited with an explosive
energy that fills the chamber and the bodies of everyone in it, an inspiration Hitlerian in its intensity.
Angelico's arms jolt and gesticulate and his frame twists wildly in sympathy to his oratory. Yet
Angelico's passion, while stirring, moving, is not a buoyant exaltation, not joyous, rather one fuelled
by fiery rage, by an anger and a disillusionment Angelico empathically shares with his vast,
underprivileged audience. In a time in the country's history when the populace is looking for hope
and a dream to believe in, when there is no one else, it is Angelico's electric arc they are drawn to -
because there exists only him. Angelico cries, "Revolution!" and the restless, bored citizens feel his
zealous fury within themselves and respond, "Why not?"
"Here is the dilemma that has been force-fed down our choking throats," Angelico howls. "We are
being cornered, provoked into a battle stance by a government that seems to think they are entitled
to our inheritance. Canada should be the shining leader of the world; every citizen should have
unbelievable wealth to his name considering the vast riches our country possesses. We deserve the
wealth like no other nation. Her wealth is our wealth. But we have discovered we can't move up,
the ladder has limited rungs. Why won't the government allow us to flourish, thrive and prosper?
Why a war on the people? When your home is being invaded and robbed the correctors are called,
am I right? Not in this country. So that leaves the courts for enforcing one's civil rights. Yet those
courts don't exist any more, they've been shut down, boarded up and condemned. The medieval
age is upon us again, a rubber stamp system of criminalizing articulate opposition and agitators like
myself, just for speaking our mind. No way of seeking redress and no participation in enjoying the
wealth of the country leaves two alternatives to finding a resolution to our dispute with the state: A)
do nothing and see it all slip away or B) gun powder...arms...A DECLARATION OF ALL OUT
WAR!!! The government of Canada - Leave us!"
Jabs watches and sees the reason Angelico enthrals his armies of followers so, he is witnessing a
possessed man who has summoned an energy pulse from the core of the sun; Jabs sees before him
the reason Angelico is their leader, their chairman, their President and C.E.O.
"The invasion is on: From the sky the invaders plunge into our sacred headspace, making illegal
incursions into our thinking that challenge our goodwill. Pillagers ransack and mine what remains of
our resources, they reach into our bank accounts and flush our life savings and our hope. Are we
dead? To the government, yes we are. We have been abandoned long ago. When the authorities
are confronted the correctors are called for protection. You were trusted and our trust, it was
raped! A peaceful man, Mr. Brody, does not mean a weak man. The locks were changed on us
once, we will not ever allow ourselves to be fooled again! The government takes everything from
us and comes back for more. A government gripped by a mutual psychosis, their brains locked, all
thinking the same frequency, unable to break free into liberated individual thought. You get more
than one of them into a room together and their way becomes the only way - the wrong way! 'Let
us think about this for a moment,' they refuse to ask themselves. 'Is this right? Is this fair? Is this
legal even? Will we have to pay for this somewhere down the line?' The answer is, 'Of course you
will.' And the time of reckoning is now! That time is now!
"The destroying of Vancouver and thereby downsizing crime's hold on the region was a beautiful
move - It was gorgeous! It was righteous! It was correct! You know, it was downright cool. It
was an important move that had to be taken. It had to be done. Shut down the criminal activity in
Canada's ghetto! But I am told by my sources within the beauracracy it was a move forced upon
the government of Canada by outside sources. The weak government of this country would not
even take that necessary and appropriate action unilaterally. Any government that allows the
encroachment of doom to get so unreasonably out of hand is a machine with burnt-out, stripped
gears that turn and spin wildly yet don't do anything but burn oil - our resources - needlessly without
useful movement in a just direction; the machine lurches and sputters and you have the chaos and
destruction we see today. The government has collapsed and the house of cards continues to
crumble. Brody, your government errs and it continues to err, decade after decade. We scream at
you from every direction, everywhere...how hard is that to understand? Had you come to the table
and made amends before this apocalypse we might have said, 'Perhaps we can work with this
government, do business with it.' Why the resistance to us? Now the clock ticks.
"You cannot negotiate with a government when your adjudicator is government, when your
opposing counsel is government, when your own counsel you trust to speak on your behalf is
government...why, they're all government agents! People of Canada, you're being taken for fools,
lambs, fifth graders, and the ridicule is on display in the streets and in the alley's of every town and
city across this nation. Trying to negotiate with this government is a sucker's play and we will only
lose. It is the machine we are fighting. Do not feed the machine. Starve it! When your fight is on
the streets, on the streets is where you must keep it! Your government didn't warn you because
your government doesn't want you to know the truth. It prefers a populace of sheep who blindly
obey, who willingly cooperate and conspire in their own slaughter. Why weren't we taught in the
schools? To the government we shout in unison, 'NO MORE!' CANADA AWAKE!'
"Do your part, Canada. Thank you for listening."
Angelico signals to Jabs that his speech is concluded. He drinks from a glass of ice water. All
present in his court applaud the performance. What a travesty to have imprisoned a man with a
mind as brilliant as Angelico's, thinks Jabs to himself. A stupid, stupid game of fools to have caged
this treasure of a human being. Most dangerous to have him as our primary asset, he must be
shielded and protected.
"A statement of great inspiration," Jabs says to Angelico.
"I have had all my life to prepare it," Angelico answers. With a smile he adds, "And three years in
here to practice. We must now wait for the Prime Minister's Office to call. I'm retiring to my
quarters. Jabs, contact me with any news."
The warden's office, a spacious room with its own adjacent toilet and shower and a pleasing view of
the grounds has been taken by Angelico as his operations centre, serving also as his sleeping
quarters. Angelico lies on a bunk, high, his mind racing on the adrenaline afterglow of his speech.
An obsessive perfectionist, he brutally critiques himself, completely unsatisfied with the
performance. He assures himself only he knows the potential of his ability, not the listeners and
viewers, who would not notice any difference if he delivered it again precisely to his liking.
Mayenburg appears at the door.
"What is it, Gene?" Angelico asks.
"Am I disturbing you? Should I come back?"
"No," Angelico says abruptly, agitated. He sits up. "What is it? Tell me."
"You want us to locate a woman?" Mayenburg asks.
"Did I mention that? Yes, I did didn't I?"
"Who is she?"
Releasing a sigh, Angelico rises and seats himself at his desk. He slides open a drawer to the left of
him and removes a chocolate bar. He unwraps the foil, snaps off a corner nugget and places it in
his mouth, savouring the flavour as it melts. Not having been allowed chocolate while incarcerated,
he had forgotten the wonderful, sweet taste. He replies, "Her name is Constance Black."
Mayenburg nods. "Oh," he says. "I know of her. She was a friend of a man who once worked for
us, Ganis Cramb. Mr. Cramb is no longer with Hammerstein."
Angelico taps his scalp. "She's a loudhead like me."
"Do you know her?"
"We talk."
Mayenburg adopts a slightly puzzled, unsure look. "Telepathically?"
"I've been locked away for three years without communications access. They gave me nothing in
here. No grid, no nothing. How else would I talk to her? I don't care where she is, you find her."
"We find her for you, we approach her. Then what? Will she be receptive when we say it is you
who's looking for her?"
"I can't say."
"Then we'll be coy with her. Her boyfriend's a troublemaker. Neil Jaggard," Mayenburg tells
Angelico. "We'll have her tracked. What do you want done when we tag her?"
"Find out where she is. Who she's with. That's all I request."
Mayenburg leaves and Angelico concentrates his mind, finding the live psychic hot-wire, the one
that connects him to Connie Black. He plugs into it and sends her a beacon of thought-flow,
thinking, Connie, we haven't spoken in some time. I am free now. And I'm looking for you, I'm
seeking you. Tell me where you are, my love.
A wounded animal from the bottom he picked up on the dark side street of a Halifax slum, on the
absolute floor of society, lies beside Stephen Hill on the hotel bed holding the flame of a lighter
underneath a pipe loaded with a fresh hit of crystallized RV-17. She inhales and repeats and moans
and slumps onto the bed. Hill is watching a show about birds on the intravision nature feed. He
finds it soothing.
"What's on?" she asks. Hill says nothing so she looks at the IV screen. She feels into his mind.
"Oh, how could you?" she says, her voice slurred and vexatious. "You want to screw that beautiful
creature, that crane."
"It's a heron," Hill corrects. "Herons are not cranes."
"It's a crane. And you want to have sex with it."
"Why do you say these things to me?"
"You want to have sex with everything beautiful," she says slowly, effort required to release every
word. "Just 'cause it's beautiful doesn't mean you can have sex with it. You can't."
"Who says?"
"You just can't. It's a rule. No sex with animals. Bestiality. Ever heard of it?"
"Who the fuck said I can't have sex with a heron if I choose? Huh?"
"You wanna have sex with a bird?" Notes of hysteria rise in her voice. "Yeah, it's a pretty bird, but
it's a animal." Then she thinks about it and decides, "You can have sex with the heron if you want.
But you know what? It's dirty. It's dirty sex."
"Okay, it's dirty. It's fuckin' dirty as sin and shit. But if it's dirty I want, then what the fuck. I'll
have sex with the fuckin' pigs in the barn if I order it off the menu." Hell, I had sex with you, didn't
I, Hill thinks nastily, knowing better than to say it.
"And it's not fair to the crane, the bird can't reject your molestation."
Hill looks at the woman who said her name was Connie, sleepily struggling to slide her pants off her
legs, and wonders why he answers her when she talks that crazy shit. Why do I let her push my
buttons? Jesus Christ, Hill says to himself in shock. On her left inner thigh he sees a horrific
wound, a single puncture, the flesh at the opening black, surrounded by a target-like circle coloured
shades of purple.
Hill points to her leg. "How'd you get stabbed?"
"I didn't get stabbed," Connie says groggily, lids cloaking her tired, wasted eyes. "I got stung."
"By what?"
"A wasp?" She pauses to retrieve the memory. "No, it was a snake."
"A snake did that to you? That's no snake bite."
"No, not a snake, it was a dog, I got bit by a dog," Connie answers.
"Make up your mind. A snake or a dog?"
"It was a nice, lovely, friendly dog named Teddy who I thought was mine and loved me. Then he
bit me."
RV-17 addict, a shaking shell of who she was only a year and half earlier, everything Connie Black
had she carefully placed at the precipice and then destructively took her high-heeled hoof and
pushed sliding over the edge. Her money, her life, fell out from under her. Neil Jaggard left her,
unable to comprehend the fixation with Ted Angelico, a man she had never met, a criminal doing
life in prison for murder. "I love him," she had declared to Jaggard. "You love him? He's a killer!"
he replied, confounded. "We don't know for sure, we don't know the truth, do we?" she said in
return. "I realize now that everything good that has ever happened to me, all that I managed to
achieve, was because of him. Killer or not. I can't believe he's a killer. Everything. I owe him an
immense debt. How can I ignore what I owe? I just can't, Neil." Her lunacy was too much for
Jaggard. She took to Angelico like a fanatical born-again evangelical Christian might take to Jesus
Christ. She would pray to him in the morning and at bedtime. Any questions in her life she put to
Angelico and listened for his answers and guidance. When Neil made love to her it was Angelico
who she was fucking and who was fucking her, not him. But Neil couldn't compete, couldn't give
her what Angelico did, sexually or otherwise. Then Connie's connection to Angelico was suddenly
lost, he stopped talking to her, or couldn't, he faded away like some distant late night radio
broadcast from another continent or another planet. What have I done wrong? she cried out to
Angelico. Please tell me! Angelico's silence and her fear that the relationship with him might be
over caused her to plummet into despair. She had no job to return to. The war caused the bubble
to burst, who buys property in a battle zone? The real estate industry was wiped out in the region
overnight. Her possessions and home were cut loose and she cashed out and donated her savings to
Hammerstein Communications Inc. in the hope that such a sacrifice would bring him back to her.
But her god had abandoned her. Connie Black will eternally wait for the return of Teddy Angel,
only he can save her now. She would take a knife and open the veins in her wrists and bleed
herself to the brink of death - send herself to heaven even - if she thought that would open the door
to him again. Her soul wracked and tortured, she cuts her own straw-hair with the jackknife she
keeps in her back pocket for protection, and she allows men to take her if it can allow her another
hit to blanket the pain from the withdrawal from the ultimate drug, the touch of Angelico. Even
with her body weathered from the ravages of her addictions, though, the drugs could not suppress
her incomparable looks. Connie's allure to men retains its potency, her beauty can still be seen in
the same way that a man may look at an elderly woman and see the remnants of the stunning
goddess she once was, once had been.
Connie had tried to run, renting an electrocar and making for the east coast, hoping to escape the
burning longing for Angelico. That was where Jaggard said goodbye. "Connie, I can't do this any
longer. I'm closing the gate," he had told her. "I've got to keep it locked for a while. For how long
I don't know. To protect myself. I'm sorry." Jaggard turned around and headed back to the west
coast to rejoin the resistance, and Connie drove and drove and drove, sometimes forgetting to eat
and sleep for days. "Do you know Teddy Angel?" she would ask every person she met along the
highway. "Do you know him? Do you know where he is?" "Oh yes, Ted Angelico," people would
answer. "He might be the country's only hope for the future," they would say. "But isn't he in jail?
Such a shame." Finally when there was no more road to travel, Connie Black was in Halifax.
"Did they shoot the dog?" Hill asks.
"No. It wasn't the dog's fault."
"It oughta be shot for doing that to you." Hill wonders how a dog could bite someone so viciously
and leave only one puncture hole. He decides she's lying, the wound isn't an animal bite, someone
must have stabbed her. Hell, she probably stabbed herself. Deceitful whore, he thinks. "You're
fulla shit," he says.
She whispers, "His name was Teddy." Connie rolls her long, slender, buttermilk body over onto her
side and Hill hears her faintly say, "Yes, Ted, I hear you, I've waited so long."
"What was that? What did you say?" Hill demands. But Connie is unconscious so she gives him no
reply.
"I'm taking you to the hospital. You gotta have that looked at." Hill shakes Connie's shoulder to
wake her. "Looks infected. Wake up, we're going to the hospital."
"I don't want to go," Connie moans, awake again.
"You could die. I don't want that hanging over me."
"Who cares. I want to die."
"Come on. Get your pants on, get dressed."
"I don't love you any more. Go sleep in the corner while I wait for my Teddy bear."
"Your Teddy bear ain't comin' to help you, baby. Be grateful I'm here for you. Come on, girl, get
dressed."
"All the men sit and drink while the girls dance, together or alone, dancing in the light of a thousand
suns going supernova all at once. Sometimes a man gathers up enough courage to get up and dance
with me. I know Teddy will dance with me again."
Crazy jive-talkin' bitch, Hill thinks. That's the RV-17 sassing me.
"Fuck me again, please do me," Connie begs. "You promised me."
"Not tonight." Not ever again, Hill had decided after their first encounter. In his younger days he
could screw almost anything with a cunt. Connie's attractive, he admits, that's why he gave her a
try. But unless it's a goddess under him he can't sustain it for the old whores anymore, so why fool
himself into expending the energy and effort. Little does Hill realize Connie's desire isn't speaking to
him, it is Angelico's magnetic pull she cannot resist.
Connie looks around, dazed, sick. Where am I? "I need Ted," she complains, pulling on her pants.
Not knowing what she's talking about, only wanting now to discard her, he humours her by saying,
"We can have the taxi stop for Ted on the way to the hospital. Okay?"
"Kay," Connie says, her voice pitched up and childlike. She dresses herself and Hill calls a cab.
Then they walk out to the street and wait for the taxi to take them downtown to the emergency
ward.
like a monarch in his throne, like Captain Kirk on the bridge of the Enterprise, telepathically relaying
the news he has seized control of Latremouille. Through subtle language, physical and on-screen
graphic cues, he is able to decipher that the intravision communicators are aware that Canada's most
notorious living criminal is in their audience this morning. Teddy Angel is back.
Jabs comes up behind Angelico and tells him, "The camera is ready, sir."
Angelico swivels his chair one-eighty and faces an intravision camera.
"When you are prepared," Jabs says to his master, "all intravision channels and the grid in Canada
will be jammed to receive only you and your message to the people."
"I'm ready," Angelico says.
Jabs nods and Angelico rises from his chair.
"I am here this morning to send a statement to the government of this country on behalf of the
people, the citizens of this nation," Angelico says. "Consider this message notice your days are
numbered."
"Go ahead, Prime Minister Brody. Go ahead. Continue to provoke us. You are another in a long
succession of utterly failed leaders, unable to control the chaos. With your government mired in rot
and oppression how can you possibly call yourself a leader? Don't forget, the city of Vancouver
was not incinerated without reason. The reasons were sound - The financing of terrorists!
Uncontrolled organized criminal activity! A strategic base for international bomb detonation plots!
The trust has been breached for the last time. But I am forced to ask the vital question: How do
you breach trust when no such trust exists? You cannot. Do you hear that sound, Mr. Prime
Minister? It is marching, the people are marching in unison as one against the mighty oppressor, the
government of Canada. Soon the government will vanish, but mark my words Brody, the
government's legacy of hatred for us, the citizens, the government's legacy of turning a blind eye in
deference to our subjugation, to our degradation, will never, ever be forgotten."
A switch has been snapped into the "on" position within Angelico, he is ignited with an explosive
energy that fills the chamber and the bodies of everyone in it, an inspiration Hitlerian in its intensity.
Angelico's arms jolt and gesticulate and his frame twists wildly in sympathy to his oratory. Yet
Angelico's passion, while stirring, moving, is not a buoyant exaltation, not joyous, rather one fuelled
by fiery rage, by an anger and a disillusionment Angelico empathically shares with his vast,
underprivileged audience. In a time in the country's history when the populace is looking for hope
and a dream to believe in, when there is no one else, it is Angelico's electric arc they are drawn to -
because there exists only him. Angelico cries, "Revolution!" and the restless, bored citizens feel his
zealous fury within themselves and respond, "Why not?"
"Here is the dilemma that has been force-fed down our choking throats," Angelico howls. "We are
being cornered, provoked into a battle stance by a government that seems to think they are entitled
to our inheritance. Canada should be the shining leader of the world; every citizen should have
unbelievable wealth to his name considering the vast riches our country possesses. We deserve the
wealth like no other nation. Her wealth is our wealth. But we have discovered we can't move up,
the ladder has limited rungs. Why won't the government allow us to flourish, thrive and prosper?
Why a war on the people? When your home is being invaded and robbed the correctors are called,
am I right? Not in this country. So that leaves the courts for enforcing one's civil rights. Yet those
courts don't exist any more, they've been shut down, boarded up and condemned. The medieval
age is upon us again, a rubber stamp system of criminalizing articulate opposition and agitators like
myself, just for speaking our mind. No way of seeking redress and no participation in enjoying the
wealth of the country leaves two alternatives to finding a resolution to our dispute with the state: A)
do nothing and see it all slip away or B) gun powder...arms...A DECLARATION OF ALL OUT
WAR!!! The government of Canada - Leave us!"
Jabs watches and sees the reason Angelico enthrals his armies of followers so, he is witnessing a
possessed man who has summoned an energy pulse from the core of the sun; Jabs sees before him
the reason Angelico is their leader, their chairman, their President and C.E.O.
"The invasion is on: From the sky the invaders plunge into our sacred headspace, making illegal
incursions into our thinking that challenge our goodwill. Pillagers ransack and mine what remains of
our resources, they reach into our bank accounts and flush our life savings and our hope. Are we
dead? To the government, yes we are. We have been abandoned long ago. When the authorities
are confronted the correctors are called for protection. You were trusted and our trust, it was
raped! A peaceful man, Mr. Brody, does not mean a weak man. The locks were changed on us
once, we will not ever allow ourselves to be fooled again! The government takes everything from
us and comes back for more. A government gripped by a mutual psychosis, their brains locked, all
thinking the same frequency, unable to break free into liberated individual thought. You get more
than one of them into a room together and their way becomes the only way - the wrong way! 'Let
us think about this for a moment,' they refuse to ask themselves. 'Is this right? Is this fair? Is this
legal even? Will we have to pay for this somewhere down the line?' The answer is, 'Of course you
will.' And the time of reckoning is now! That time is now!
"The destroying of Vancouver and thereby downsizing crime's hold on the region was a beautiful
move - It was gorgeous! It was righteous! It was correct! You know, it was downright cool. It
was an important move that had to be taken. It had to be done. Shut down the criminal activity in
Canada's ghetto! But I am told by my sources within the beauracracy it was a move forced upon
the government of Canada by outside sources. The weak government of this country would not
even take that necessary and appropriate action unilaterally. Any government that allows the
encroachment of doom to get so unreasonably out of hand is a machine with burnt-out, stripped
gears that turn and spin wildly yet don't do anything but burn oil - our resources - needlessly without
useful movement in a just direction; the machine lurches and sputters and you have the chaos and
destruction we see today. The government has collapsed and the house of cards continues to
crumble. Brody, your government errs and it continues to err, decade after decade. We scream at
you from every direction, everywhere...how hard is that to understand? Had you come to the table
and made amends before this apocalypse we might have said, 'Perhaps we can work with this
government, do business with it.' Why the resistance to us? Now the clock ticks.
"You cannot negotiate with a government when your adjudicator is government, when your
opposing counsel is government, when your own counsel you trust to speak on your behalf is
government...why, they're all government agents! People of Canada, you're being taken for fools,
lambs, fifth graders, and the ridicule is on display in the streets and in the alley's of every town and
city across this nation. Trying to negotiate with this government is a sucker's play and we will only
lose. It is the machine we are fighting. Do not feed the machine. Starve it! When your fight is on
the streets, on the streets is where you must keep it! Your government didn't warn you because
your government doesn't want you to know the truth. It prefers a populace of sheep who blindly
obey, who willingly cooperate and conspire in their own slaughter. Why weren't we taught in the
schools? To the government we shout in unison, 'NO MORE!' CANADA AWAKE!'
"Do your part, Canada. Thank you for listening."
Angelico signals to Jabs that his speech is concluded. He drinks from a glass of ice water. All
present in his court applaud the performance. What a travesty to have imprisoned a man with a
mind as brilliant as Angelico's, thinks Jabs to himself. A stupid, stupid game of fools to have caged
this treasure of a human being. Most dangerous to have him as our primary asset, he must be
shielded and protected.
"A statement of great inspiration," Jabs says to Angelico.
"I have had all my life to prepare it," Angelico answers. With a smile he adds, "And three years in
here to practice. We must now wait for the Prime Minister's Office to call. I'm retiring to my
quarters. Jabs, contact me with any news."
The warden's office, a spacious room with its own adjacent toilet and shower and a pleasing view of
the grounds has been taken by Angelico as his operations centre, serving also as his sleeping
quarters. Angelico lies on a bunk, high, his mind racing on the adrenaline afterglow of his speech.
An obsessive perfectionist, he brutally critiques himself, completely unsatisfied with the
performance. He assures himself only he knows the potential of his ability, not the listeners and
viewers, who would not notice any difference if he delivered it again precisely to his liking.
Mayenburg appears at the door.
"What is it, Gene?" Angelico asks.
"Am I disturbing you? Should I come back?"
"No," Angelico says abruptly, agitated. He sits up. "What is it? Tell me."
"You want us to locate a woman?" Mayenburg asks.
"Did I mention that? Yes, I did didn't I?"
"Who is she?"
Releasing a sigh, Angelico rises and seats himself at his desk. He slides open a drawer to the left of
him and removes a chocolate bar. He unwraps the foil, snaps off a corner nugget and places it in
his mouth, savouring the flavour as it melts. Not having been allowed chocolate while incarcerated,
he had forgotten the wonderful, sweet taste. He replies, "Her name is Constance Black."
Mayenburg nods. "Oh," he says. "I know of her. She was a friend of a man who once worked for
us, Ganis Cramb. Mr. Cramb is no longer with Hammerstein."
Angelico taps his scalp. "She's a loudhead like me."
"Do you know her?"
"We talk."
Mayenburg adopts a slightly puzzled, unsure look. "Telepathically?"
"I've been locked away for three years without communications access. They gave me nothing in
here. No grid, no nothing. How else would I talk to her? I don't care where she is, you find her."
"We find her for you, we approach her. Then what? Will she be receptive when we say it is you
who's looking for her?"
"I can't say."
"Then we'll be coy with her. Her boyfriend's a troublemaker. Neil Jaggard," Mayenburg tells
Angelico. "We'll have her tracked. What do you want done when we tag her?"
"Find out where she is. Who she's with. That's all I request."
Mayenburg leaves and Angelico concentrates his mind, finding the live psychic hot-wire, the one
that connects him to Connie Black. He plugs into it and sends her a beacon of thought-flow,
thinking, Connie, we haven't spoken in some time. I am free now. And I'm looking for you, I'm
seeking you. Tell me where you are, my love.
A wounded animal from the bottom he picked up on the dark side street of a Halifax slum, on the
absolute floor of society, lies beside Stephen Hill on the hotel bed holding the flame of a lighter
underneath a pipe loaded with a fresh hit of crystallized RV-17. She inhales and repeats and moans
and slumps onto the bed. Hill is watching a show about birds on the intravision nature feed. He
finds it soothing.
"What's on?" she asks. Hill says nothing so she looks at the IV screen. She feels into his mind.
"Oh, how could you?" she says, her voice slurred and vexatious. "You want to screw that beautiful
creature, that crane."
"It's a heron," Hill corrects. "Herons are not cranes."
"It's a crane. And you want to have sex with it."
"Why do you say these things to me?"
"You want to have sex with everything beautiful," she says slowly, effort required to release every
word. "Just 'cause it's beautiful doesn't mean you can have sex with it. You can't."
"Who says?"
"You just can't. It's a rule. No sex with animals. Bestiality. Ever heard of it?"
"Who the fuck said I can't have sex with a heron if I choose? Huh?"
"You wanna have sex with a bird?" Notes of hysteria rise in her voice. "Yeah, it's a pretty bird, but
it's a animal." Then she thinks about it and decides, "You can have sex with the heron if you want.
But you know what? It's dirty. It's dirty sex."
"Okay, it's dirty. It's fuckin' dirty as sin and shit. But if it's dirty I want, then what the fuck. I'll
have sex with the fuckin' pigs in the barn if I order it off the menu." Hell, I had sex with you, didn't
I, Hill thinks nastily, knowing better than to say it.
"And it's not fair to the crane, the bird can't reject your molestation."
Hill looks at the woman who said her name was Connie, sleepily struggling to slide her pants off her
legs, and wonders why he answers her when she talks that crazy shit. Why do I let her push my
buttons? Jesus Christ, Hill says to himself in shock. On her left inner thigh he sees a horrific
wound, a single puncture, the flesh at the opening black, surrounded by a target-like circle coloured
shades of purple.
Hill points to her leg. "How'd you get stabbed?"
"I didn't get stabbed," Connie says groggily, lids cloaking her tired, wasted eyes. "I got stung."
"By what?"
"A wasp?" She pauses to retrieve the memory. "No, it was a snake."
"A snake did that to you? That's no snake bite."
"No, not a snake, it was a dog, I got bit by a dog," Connie answers.
"Make up your mind. A snake or a dog?"
"It was a nice, lovely, friendly dog named Teddy who I thought was mine and loved me. Then he
bit me."
RV-17 addict, a shaking shell of who she was only a year and half earlier, everything Connie Black
had she carefully placed at the precipice and then destructively took her high-heeled hoof and
pushed sliding over the edge. Her money, her life, fell out from under her. Neil Jaggard left her,
unable to comprehend the fixation with Ted Angelico, a man she had never met, a criminal doing
life in prison for murder. "I love him," she had declared to Jaggard. "You love him? He's a killer!"
he replied, confounded. "We don't know for sure, we don't know the truth, do we?" she said in
return. "I realize now that everything good that has ever happened to me, all that I managed to
achieve, was because of him. Killer or not. I can't believe he's a killer. Everything. I owe him an
immense debt. How can I ignore what I owe? I just can't, Neil." Her lunacy was too much for
Jaggard. She took to Angelico like a fanatical born-again evangelical Christian might take to Jesus
Christ. She would pray to him in the morning and at bedtime. Any questions in her life she put to
Angelico and listened for his answers and guidance. When Neil made love to her it was Angelico
who she was fucking and who was fucking her, not him. But Neil couldn't compete, couldn't give
her what Angelico did, sexually or otherwise. Then Connie's connection to Angelico was suddenly
lost, he stopped talking to her, or couldn't, he faded away like some distant late night radio
broadcast from another continent or another planet. What have I done wrong? she cried out to
Angelico. Please tell me! Angelico's silence and her fear that the relationship with him might be
over caused her to plummet into despair. She had no job to return to. The war caused the bubble
to burst, who buys property in a battle zone? The real estate industry was wiped out in the region
overnight. Her possessions and home were cut loose and she cashed out and donated her savings to
Hammerstein Communications Inc. in the hope that such a sacrifice would bring him back to her.
But her god had abandoned her. Connie Black will eternally wait for the return of Teddy Angel,
only he can save her now. She would take a knife and open the veins in her wrists and bleed
herself to the brink of death - send herself to heaven even - if she thought that would open the door
to him again. Her soul wracked and tortured, she cuts her own straw-hair with the jackknife she
keeps in her back pocket for protection, and she allows men to take her if it can allow her another
hit to blanket the pain from the withdrawal from the ultimate drug, the touch of Angelico. Even
with her body weathered from the ravages of her addictions, though, the drugs could not suppress
her incomparable looks. Connie's allure to men retains its potency, her beauty can still be seen in
the same way that a man may look at an elderly woman and see the remnants of the stunning
goddess she once was, once had been.
Connie had tried to run, renting an electrocar and making for the east coast, hoping to escape the
burning longing for Angelico. That was where Jaggard said goodbye. "Connie, I can't do this any
longer. I'm closing the gate," he had told her. "I've got to keep it locked for a while. For how long
I don't know. To protect myself. I'm sorry." Jaggard turned around and headed back to the west
coast to rejoin the resistance, and Connie drove and drove and drove, sometimes forgetting to eat
and sleep for days. "Do you know Teddy Angel?" she would ask every person she met along the
highway. "Do you know him? Do you know where he is?" "Oh yes, Ted Angelico," people would
answer. "He might be the country's only hope for the future," they would say. "But isn't he in jail?
Such a shame." Finally when there was no more road to travel, Connie Black was in Halifax.
"Did they shoot the dog?" Hill asks.
"No. It wasn't the dog's fault."
"It oughta be shot for doing that to you." Hill wonders how a dog could bite someone so viciously
and leave only one puncture hole. He decides she's lying, the wound isn't an animal bite, someone
must have stabbed her. Hell, she probably stabbed herself. Deceitful whore, he thinks. "You're
fulla shit," he says.
She whispers, "His name was Teddy." Connie rolls her long, slender, buttermilk body over onto her
side and Hill hears her faintly say, "Yes, Ted, I hear you, I've waited so long."
"What was that? What did you say?" Hill demands. But Connie is unconscious so she gives him no
reply.
"I'm taking you to the hospital. You gotta have that looked at." Hill shakes Connie's shoulder to
wake her. "Looks infected. Wake up, we're going to the hospital."
"I don't want to go," Connie moans, awake again.
"You could die. I don't want that hanging over me."
"Who cares. I want to die."
"Come on. Get your pants on, get dressed."
"I don't love you any more. Go sleep in the corner while I wait for my Teddy bear."
"Your Teddy bear ain't comin' to help you, baby. Be grateful I'm here for you. Come on, girl, get
dressed."
"All the men sit and drink while the girls dance, together or alone, dancing in the light of a thousand
suns going supernova all at once. Sometimes a man gathers up enough courage to get up and dance
with me. I know Teddy will dance with me again."
Crazy jive-talkin' bitch, Hill thinks. That's the RV-17 sassing me.
"Fuck me again, please do me," Connie begs. "You promised me."
"Not tonight." Not ever again, Hill had decided after their first encounter. In his younger days he
could screw almost anything with a cunt. Connie's attractive, he admits, that's why he gave her a
try. But unless it's a goddess under him he can't sustain it for the old whores anymore, so why fool
himself into expending the energy and effort. Little does Hill realize Connie's desire isn't speaking to
him, it is Angelico's magnetic pull she cannot resist.
Connie looks around, dazed, sick. Where am I? "I need Ted," she complains, pulling on her pants.
Not knowing what she's talking about, only wanting now to discard her, he humours her by saying,
"We can have the taxi stop for Ted on the way to the hospital. Okay?"
"Kay," Connie says, her voice pitched up and childlike. She dresses herself and Hill calls a cab.
Then they walk out to the street and wait for the taxi to take them downtown to the emergency
ward.
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