The old Asian's long, thin, drooping eyebrows furrowed. "You must know," he said. "Can't you even perceive it?" His long, wide palm rose smoothly like an ornate kite, his fingernails looking even stronger and sharper than his nurse's. They came to rest lightly on Gideon's vest.
Gideon was surprised by the man's gentle touch, and perfect placement. Although his white eyes were turned away, it was as if the diseased old man could see.
"You are not of the stomach-desecrators," the pale purple Asian said. "Although I can smell the meat you have eaten, you are not one of them."
"One of who?" Gideon said quickly, in panic. He looked pleadingly at the young woman, but her expression was as placid as an untroubled pond.
"The stomach is the center," said the old man, lightly rolling a button on Gideon's vest between his middle and fore fingernails. "It is the house of all life and death. The soul dwells there. Destroy the stomach, and you destroy all. It is the death of the Final Death."
There were those words again: "the Final Death." It was not where the old man was coming from. If he could be believed, or even comprehended, it was where he was going.
"We are the holy saviors of the stomach," continued the old man with a sickly, unseeing smile. "We travel the earth as the living dead, punishers of all those who embrace meat."
"Oh, God!" Gideon moaned. A cult, he thought. He had heard of these wild-eyed crazies who lived in the Catskill Mountains, but he had never encountered them.
"No God," the old man intoned. "Only the Final Death." He brought his visage directly in front of Gideon's face. "You had promise," he told the frightened man. "You could have been one of us."
The old man sighed leakily. "But the gweilo tiger must be punished. He must know the Final Death. He must become one with it."
He turned his head until his large, delicate left ear was pointing directly at the girl's mouth, his white eyes staring at Gideon. "Do you remember?" the old man asked her.
"Oh, yes," she said with a warm smile, and looked directly at Gregory Green Gideon. "I'm sorry," she told him pleasantly. "You're a nice man." Then she flicked her finger.
All at once, Gregory G. Gideon could hear the sea. He could feel the wind off the desert. And far in the distance, he could see his wife Dolly waving at him. She had never looked more beautiful.
Free of the fingernail in his throat, he stumbled away. His hands slapped the edge of the tureen, and he lurched over the edge. He caught himself just before his feet left the walkway.
Odd, he thought. Someone was whistling. It was an odd whistling. Tuneless. Prolonged. But that wasn't possible, because both strangers were still talking.
"The cutting of the lifeblood," the old man recited.
"The slitting of the throat," the girl answered.
"The release of the life-force," he continued.
"The slicing down the stomach," she replied.
"The destruction of the Holy House," he said.
"The stripping of the carcass," she said.
"The homage."
"The Final Death."
Gregory G. Gideon smiled. His mouth muscles could hardly sustain it, and his lips moved like weak rubber bands, but he smiled. He couldn't help it. The whistling was somehow relaxing. He felt every muscle in his being relax as it continued inexhaustibly. He had never felt anything like it before.
Gregory Green Gideon never knew it was the sound of his life's breath escaping through the paper-thin slice in his throat, before the blood erupted through.
All he knew was that suddenly the whistling was gone, and all his troubles were over. The swirl of scarlet he had been looking for was coursing down the side of the tureen and making a lovely ribbon of red in his Bran-licious Chunk Bar.
After they had skinned the meat from the raw bones, and drank of his blood, the purple-skinned Asian turned his sightless eyes in the direction of the wind. He sniffed the air. Revulsion twisted his corpse-like features.
"Missy," he asked, "what do your eyes see?"
The redhead looked down into a verdant valley, her green eyes narrowing to grow hateful as a cat's. Her lips were now too red.
"I see, Leader, a valley desecrated by a terrible place."
"What kind of a place?"
"It is a place of torment, of slaughter, where people wallow in outrage. Where men profit from unbridled inhumanity."
The old Asian nodded. "And what is the name of this unholy abode?"
"It proclaims itself 'Poulette Farms.' "
The old Asian addressed as "Leader" nodded. "It is there that we will begin," he said, his piglike nostrils dilating before the scent on the wind, his blank eyes unwinking as a serpent's gaze. "And if our ancestors are with us, it is there that the House of Sinanju will end."
Chapter 2
His name was Remo, and all he wanted was the popcorn.
"Butter?" asked the bored youth behind the counter.
"That's not butter," said Remo. No one paid any attention to him, since he was wearing black slacks and a black T-shirt. It was warm even at night now, so everybody was wearing T-shirts, jeans, and athletic shoes.
No one paid any attention to his deep-set dark eyes above pronounced cheekbones, or his unusually thick wrists either. Any white man in this neighborhood had better be pumping iron-for his own good.
Of course no one noticed that it was only his wrists which were "ripped"-as if Remo had been doing wrist curls eight hours a day for the last twenty years and no other exercise. Everybody in the theater lobby was an expert in the art of avoiding eye contact.
The bored youth returned to the streaked, cracked-glass counter, and plopped down a cup the size of a small snare drum filled to overflowing with yellow-white kernels, completely coated in a shiny liquid.
"Three dollars," the bored boy said in a bored voice.
The sickly odor of the stuff attacked Remo's nostrils, making him grimace. "No butter," he said.
The boy ignored him, until he realized that his outstretched hand was covered by neither bill nor coin. "Huh?"
"I said, no butter," Remo repeated.
The boy blinked. "Yes, you did."
"No, I didn't. What I said was, 'That's not butter.' "
The boy blinked again. "You said butter," he repeated stubbornly. " 'Butter' was in the sentence," Remo agreed, "but it was not used in the affirmative."