JON SURGAL
401
bother him. Heimlich's wife had her head on his chest and her hands were
moving slowly up and down the back of his shirt and Elton John was
singing goodbye to the Yellow Brick Road and Michael Kinsella who had
left the magazine to write for Saturday Night Live was saying something
in a loud voice about Franco.
" ... every time you turned on the news," Kinsella was saying. "The
whole time he was dying.
Ceneralisimo Francisco Franco is still alive.
So now
we're gonna have Chevy go on Weekend Update and he picks up a bul–
letin and he says
Ceneralisimo Frmtcisco Franco is still dead."
Mick found himself laughing.
Heimlich's wife lifted her head off his chest, saying "What."
"Funny," he told her.
The immunity was working. He was suffused with the triumphant
thing his immunity had become. He felt the power swelling up in him and
his whole body relaxed to make room for it. He melted effortlessly against
Heimlich's wife. Nothing could really touch him now. He would walk
among the aillicted, embrace their rotting flesh, drink of their sacred and
polluted rivers, kiss their lepers, heal their hypochondriacs. They would take
him for a great saint. He would fool them all. None of it could touch him.
When the music stopped, Tony DeKoven was explaining the differ–
ence between New York and Los Angeles. "In New York," he said, "they'll
stab you with a knife to get your money.
In
L.A.
they'll stab you with a
fork because God told them to."
Heimlich's wife put her hand on Mick's chest as if to reserve it and
turned to put on a cut from an old Stones album and that was when he
saw Adriana.
She was standing across the room wi th a group of men, and she was
watching him. She was drunk, he could tell from her smile. She was drunk
and she was watching him with a big mindless smile on her face. Mick
stared back at her. He gave his blood time to react. It did not jump, though.
The immunity was still working in him.
Heimlich's wife caught him staring, and she followed his eyes just in
time to see Adriana pull the hem of her skirt up to her waist and then drop
it back down. She was wearing nothing underneath the skirt.
"I think she's trying to tell you something," Heimlich's wife said.
"Wait. Let me guess. Were you supposed to bring her panties with you?"
Adriana began walking toward them and Jagger was mocking from the
stereo, the victim turned tormentor picking at his scabs,
you know where
you'regoin' but I don't like the places you been,
and then Adriana was standing
in front of him wi th her head cocked to one side as if wai ting to make sure
he remembered her name and Mick looked quickly at Heimlich's wife, but
she only smiled and shook her head and looked away.
