Twinkle, Twinkle, "Killer" Kane by William Peter Blatty

want you to hear my confession.”
    “I’m not a priest,” said Kane.
    “Hah! Also you’re not an orange. Colonel No-Face, who the hell are you? All this suspense is a pain in the ass.”
    “I am Colonel Hudson Kane.”
    “You are Gregory Peck, you idiot. Don’t let anyone talk you out of it. No one could ever talk me out of it. Not on your life. No, sir. I’d be glad to be Adolphe Menjou. Have I told you about my uncle? Played piano on a mountaintop, naked as a jaybird. Did it almost every morning, Hud, usually at sunrise.”
    “Yes, go on,” said Kane.
    “That’s all.”
    “That’s all?”
    “About my uncle, you mean?”
    “Yes.”
    “Hell, isn’t that enough? What more do you want? ”
    “Nothing at all. I merely wondered why you mentioned it.”
    “I mentioned it, you cluck, because Adolphe Menjou wouldn’t do that. And neither would Warren Beatty. I would love to be Warren Beatty.”
    “Well, I really don’t see why,” said Kane.
    “Of course you don’t see why! You’re Gregory Peck! ”
    “Yes, yes, I see.”
    “Don’t go putting me on, you patronizing snot. You’re not Gregory Peck at all. You’re an unfrocked priest. Incidentally, old padre, I’ve got some rather disquieting news for you.”
    “What? What news?”
    “I can prove there is a Foot. Would you like me to do it now or would you prefer to wire the Pope before I talk to United Press? Once that happens, Hud, I warn you, there won’t be frocks to go around. Better put yours on now so they’ll think you’re sincere.”
    “Let’s hear the proof.”
    “Put on the frock. I don’t want to see you hurt.”
    “I haven’t got a frock.”
    “Where the hell is it?” demanded Cutshaw. “Walking around at some witches’ sabbath?”
    “No.”
    “Hud—put on the frock.”
    “The proof.”
    “You crazy, stubborn kid, Hud. Don’t come sniveling to me later when you can’t get a job cleaning altars.” Cutshaw sat up. “Have you ever heard of ‘entropy’?”
    “I have.”
    “Say it’s a racehorse and I’ll maim you!”
    “It is related,” said Kane, “to a law of thermodynamics.”
    “Pretty slick there, Hud. Maybe too slick for your own damn good. Now where am I heading?” demanded Cutshaw.
    “I don’t know. You tell me.”
    “To where the universe is heading! To a final, final heat death! Know what that is? Well, I’ll tell you. I am Morris the Explainer. It’s a basic foos of physics, an irreversible, basic foos that one of these days, bye and bye, the whole damn party will be over. In about three billion years every particle of matter in the entire bloody universe will be totally disorganized. Random, totally random. And once the universe is random it’ll maintain a certain temperature, a certain constant temperature that never, never changes. And because it never changes the particles of matter in the universe can never hope to reorganize. The universe can’t build up again. Random, it’ll always stay random. Forever and ever and ever. Doesn’t that scare the living piss out of you, Hud? Hud, where’s your frock? Got a spare? Let me have it. I shouldn’t talk like this in front of me. I swear, it gives me the willies.”
    As Cutshaw spoke, he stared at the ground, like a man who is talking to himself.
    “Please continue,” said Colonel Kane.
    “Do you accept my foos of physics?”
    “Theories keep changing every year,” said Kane. “But this one seems immutable. At least, the physicists seem to think so.”
    “Does that mean ‘yes,’ you devious asp?”
    “Yes.”
    “You accept my basic foos?”
    “Yes, I accept it.”
    Cutshaw scowled, looking up. “Don’t say ‘it,’ you swine, say ‘ foos. ’ Say, ‘I accept your basic foos.’”
    Kane gripped a pencil under the desk and broke it in half. Then looked at his hands. “I accept your basic foos.”
    “Marvey keen! Now follow, Youngblood, follow. Follow very, very carefully.” Cutshaw’s speech became slow and measured.