Island of the Sequined Love Nun Read Free Page B

the nurse.
    "Don't even think about it, pretty boy. I just wanted to make sure I had your attention."
    "The gun pretty much did it, Mary Jean," Tucker groaned. Fuck it, he was a dead man anyway.
    "Don't you speak to me. Just listen. This is going to disappear. You are going to disappear. You're getting out of here tomorrow and then you're going to a cabin I have up in the Rockies. You won't go home, you won't speak to any reporters, you won't say doodly squat. My lawyers will handle the legal aspects and keep you out of jail, but you will never surface again. When this blows over, you can go on with your pathetic life. But with a new name. And if you ever set foot in the state of Texas or come within a hundred yards of anyone involved in my company, I will personally shoot you dead. Do you understand?"
    "Can I still fly?"
    Mary Jean laughed and lowered the gun. "Sweetie, to a Texas way a thinkin' the only way you coulda screwed up worse is if you'd thronged a kid down a well after fessing up to being on the grassy knoll stompin' yellow roses in between shootin' the President. You ain't gonna fly, drive, walk, crawl, or spit if I have anything to say about it." She put the gun in her purse and went into the tiny bathroom to check her makeup. A quick primping and she headed for the door. "I'll send up some flowers. Y'all heal up now, honey."
    She wasn't going to kill him after all. Maybe he could win her back. "Mary Jean, I think I had a spiritual experience."
    "I don't want to hear about any of your degenerate activities."
    "No, a real spiritual experience. Like a-what do you call it?-an epiphany?"
    "Son, you don't know it, but you're as close to seeing the Lord as you've ever been in your life. Now you hush before I send you to perdition."
    She put on her best beatific smile and left the room radiating the power of positive thinking.
    Tucker pulled the covers over his head and reached for the flask Jake had left. Perdition, huh? She made it sound bad. Must be in Oklahoma.

5 – Our Lady of the Fishnet
    Stockings
    The High Priestess of the Shark People ate Chee-tos and watched afternoon talk shows over the satellite feed. She sat in a wicker emperor's chair. A red patent leather pump dangled from one toe. Red lipstick, red nails, a big red bow in her hair. But for a pair of silk seamed stockings, she was naked.
    On the screen: Meadow Malackovitch, in a neck brace, sobbed on her lawyer's shoulder-a snapshot of the pilot who had traumatized her was inset in the upper-right-hand corner. The host, a failed weatherman who now made seven figures mining trailer parks for atrocities, was reading the dubious resume of Tucker Case. Shots of the pink jet, before and after. Stock footage of Mary Jean on an airfield tarmac, followed by Case in a leather jacket.
    The High Priestess touched herself lightly, leaving a faint orange stripe of Chee-to spoor on her pubes (she was a natural blonde), then keyed the intercom that connected her to the Sorcerer.
    "What?" came the man's voice, weary but awake. It was 2:00 A.M. The Sorcerer had been working all night.
    "I think we've found our pilot," she said.
    6 – Who's Flying This Life?
    At the last minute Mary Jean changed her mind about sending Tucker Case to her cabin in the mountains. "Put him in a motel room outside of town and don't let him out until I say so."
    In two weeks Tucker had seen only the nurse who came in to change his bandages and the guard. Actually, the guard was a tackle, second-string defense from SMU, six-foot-six, two hundred and seventy pounds of earnest Christian naivete named Dusty Lemon.
    Tucker was lying on the bed watching television. Dusty sat hunched over the wood-grain Formica table reading Scripture.
    Tucker said, "Dusty, why don't you go get us a six-pack and a pizza?"
    Dusty didn't look up. Tuck could see the shine of his scalp through his crew cut. A thick Texas drawl: "No, sir. I don't drink and Mrs. Jean said that you wasn't to have no alcohol."
    "It's not