“No God-bombs, David. Sorry to disappoint you.”
And now, ladies and gentlemen, stand back as I prepare to practice art on this unsuspecting young prophet.
He turned to David and met David’s concerned gaze with a rueful little smile. “No God-bombs, David. Sorry to disappoint you.”
“Then what just happened?”
“I had a seizure. Everything just came down on me at once and I had a seizure. As a young man, I used to have one every three or four months. Petit mal. Took medication and they went away. When I started drinking heavily around the age of forty—well, thirty-five, and there was a little more involved than just booze, I guess—they came back. Not so petit by then, either. The seizures are the main reason I keep trying to go on the wagon. What you just saw was the first one in almost”—he paused, pretending to count back—“ eleven months. No booze or cocaine involved this time, either. Just plain old stress.”
He got rolling again. He didn’t want to look around now; if he did he would be looking to see how much of it David was buying, and the kid might pick up on that. It sounded crazy, paranoid, but Johnny knew it wasn’t. The kid was amazing and spooky . . . like an Old Testament prophet who has just come striding out of an Old Testament desert, skinburned by the sun and brainburned by God’s inside information.
Better to tuck his gaze away, keep it to himself, at least for the time being.
