Terry Falcone cared about two things. One was money, the other was the man dying in the back seat of his customized Coupe Deville. Camille Falcone had astronomically high blood pressure, a hundred pounds too much fat, and a propensity for Olympian temper tantrums, one of which had set off a coronary attack and left him face down in a plate of Tony Roma's barbequed ribs.
Everyone in the joint yelled "dial 911!" But Terry wasn’t buying it; and after loading the old man into his car like a giant sandbag, he lit out of the restaurant’s parking lot like Mario Andretti. Alas, with traffic at a complete standstill, the road flanked by impermeable hedges and orange barricade drums, he was stuck with the old man wheezing and frothing like a sick elephant seal.
"What the hell's taking so long?" Croaked Papa Camille.
"Fucking roadwork." Terry shifted in his seat, turned to look at the old man who’d pissed himself; Terry could smell it. On top of all his other problems, Papa was a diabetic and his piss had a distinctly sweet, slightly fermented odor. Terry leaned on the horn, backed up, pulled forward trying to angle around the car in front of him but it was no use. There were hundreds, nay thousands of cars packed together like canned fish filling every inch of space, the other motorists faces’ reflecting boredom, frustration, but worst of all, resignation-- like cows in a slaughter chute.
"Move it, you fucks!" Terry leaned on his horn again, stuck his head out the window. A guy in the Mercedes gave him the finger and, turning around to return it, Terry noticed a distinct change in Papa Camille’s comportment. He was dead.
Terry gazed through the window at the faltering late winter light, at the sea of parked cars and the enormous ditch-- the reason the road had been closed to one lane-- above which dangled a length of PVC pipe big enough to pass a horse. Terry didn't understand it, didn't understand anything beyond his usual paranoia that God was out to get him. Workmen in orange vests, oblivious to his sorrow, tried to wave him ahead, but were no more significant than video game characters. He sat, staring at the ditch in the roadway, yawning back at him like an enormous mass grave.
Now the problem with something like this happening is, who to blame? Terry's brain worked like Mexican auto insurance laws: everything is somebody's fault. But the problem with modern life, no one took fucking responsibility for anything. Like the time he bit into a piece of gravel while eating his breakfast cereal, broke a crown right in half. He complained to the woman in the checkout line at the store, she said don't blame me-- talk to the manager. When he talked to the manager he said, don't blame me-- it's the cereal company’s fault. When he called the cereal company they said, don't blame us-- it's the outfit we get the grain from, etc, etc, etc until he wished he could firebomb the entire state of Michigan. The hell with that.
So when the traffic started moving along and he saw the girl, he didn't think any further. She held a sign on a pole in one hand, the other held a radio she was gabbing on with a crane driver, making kissy lips in her direction. She responded, flipping her hardhat-covered hair over her shoulder and casually reaching for a hair-brush jammed into the pocket of her dirty jeans. Terry followed her gaze. She was oblivious to both his pain and anger.
Well, she wouldn’t be oblivious to this.
A space opened up and he stomped on the gas, wheels spinning on wet asphalt, as the Caddy bolted on all eight cylinders. The girl assumed a defensive stance, held the sign in front of her like a shield, then, apparently re-thinking things-- and he couldn't fucking believe it-- vaulted out of the path of his oncoming car and onto the hood of an unsuspecting Ford. Terry stared open-mouthed watching her, panting, glaring like a hound having lost a treed cat.
He wanted, shit needed, to go back and try again, but he could already hear police sirens; and had a clear path to the main road. Speeding into the twilight with his dead Papa-- the face of the roadwork girl indelibly stamped on his brain-- he resolved that he would catch up to her; and she would regret the day she was ever born.
Max had come up with his scheme for the specific purpose of ruining his low-down, no-good brother-in-law, the one who made him take the job in the first place. He did not want to be a city planning official; and the fact that he had a wife and three kids he could not support did not enter into it. Max was meant for greater things. If his wife had to support the five of them on a teacher's salary while he spent his time dragging his ten inch Dobsonian telescope up local mountains, that was her problem. She had proposed to him, not the other way round.
Max Hodgson’s problem was that he was under-appreciated. He, who had been voted president of the San Mas Viejo Amateur Astronomer’s Club three years in a row, he who had single handedly invented the Haephastian mount, and nearly discovered Comet Hernandez/Injiko back in his college days, positively trussed at this point in life by abject mediocrity. There were some days, when after sitting all day, awash in the tedium and minutiae of things he cared not at all for, that he lacked the energy to go up the mountain at all.
Bob had a lot to answer for: this office, this window, this look-of-real-oak desk; and the fucking friendly conversation he made every morning.
"How's it going today, Max?" Bob, chipper as always-- and Max hated chipper, an attitude possessed only by those who didn't know any better. He also hated Nordstrom suits, red silk ties and butch haircuts no matter how trendy they were. He preferred the distracted scientist look and made no secret about it. His entire appearance, right down to his acrylic turtlenecks, was fashioned after Carl Sagan during his Cosmos period.
"Great," said Max meaning anything but, and hoping to get rid of Mr. Sunshine as quickly as possible.
"Terrific news huh? Carol's finally off the medication! After all these years." Bob's sister had battled depression for years, ever since she had married Max.
"I don't know what my wife's pharmaceutical inclinations have to do with anything," said Max.
"Well, it just seems like good news that's all. Things picking up at home a little since you started taking up some of the slack in the 'ol bank account?"
"Yeah, sure," said Max trying to hide a cardboard star-locator wheel under the blueprints for the Entrenchment Project. If his calculations were right, the comet he predicted would show up right in the curve of the scorpion's tail, and soon. Comet Max? Nah-- too ordinary. Comet Maximillian, even though his own name was really Maxwell. Maximillian, that was grand, that fit.
"And I hear they've re-thought Max Junior's diagnosis of autism? Hey, now that's some great news if I ever heard it. A couple hundred milligrams of Ritalin and the little guy will be back with all the other second graders!" Little Max had always been a problem. The school psychologist complained of excessive acting-out, whatever that meant.
"And Juanita? (One of the housekeepers had named their first child. His wife hadn't had time left on her maternity leave and a supernova had been discovered in the Orion constellation all that same week.) "Carol says she caught her going out of the house in a black jock strap, LA Lakers jersey and nothing else. Kids these days!"
Whenever it occurred to Max he couldn't loathe Bob any more, the guy proved him wrong. If the baboon possessed any intellectual scope or inclination at all he kept it well hidden. If anyone had harangued Galileo, Newton, or Kepler about depressed wives or hyperactive children, they would have produced scientifically exactly what Max had, which was squat. Max couldn't even be bothered to argue with his brother-in-law. He knew with his impeccably simian logic, the man would conclude something like, people should come before science.
This kind of Cro-Magnon reasoning had plagued humankind for millennia, and Max sighed, resigned to accepting the fact that it always would.
But personally, Max did not plan to labor under the yoke of mediocrity much longer. The Entrenchment Project had been underway for nearly a year now and when it blew it would blow big. Brother-in-law Bob would get fired, his replacement would bring on his own people, and--engineering degree or no-- Max Hodgson would once again be blessedly unemployed.
This cheered him somewhat. "Well, you know teenagers, Bob. They think with their hormones."
"Ain't it the truth," said Bob smiling-- he had a couple of teenagers of his own. He sashayed out, no doubt to harass some cubicle dweller down the hall.
Putting aside his star wheel, Max perused the plans. It had all started when Mrs. Ezra Greenway, one of the neighborhood's wealthiest, most influential, and dumbest residents had complained that there was too much run-off water coming into her yard, causing her roses to mold. She was a close personal friend of the mayor and supposed that many of her neighbors had the same problem. Their recently incorporated little burgh, appreciatively named for her, was in dire need of a drainage project all its own. And while Mrs. Greenway understood it would cause some minor, admittedly annoying traffic snarls in the short run, she was positively certain it would be good for the community in the long run. And it wasn't just her roses she was worried about. The entire community was desperately in need of beautification and of a vision beyond suburban sprawl. A drainage project would turn two hundred acres of marshland (on which wintered three varieties of endangered birds, and two varieties of nearly extinct turtle) into virgin lakefront real estate. And think of the jobs! Any community would be willing to endure a little inconvenience for the sake of employment! ( Though strictly speaking, road and construction workers were not the kind of people who lived in Lake Greenway). This didn’t change the fact that in Mrs. Ezra Greenway's mind, the Entrenchment Project was a fine and noble one.
But upon viewing a detailed topographical map of the area, Max had realized the enormous improbability of a drainage project doing any good at all. Studious at heart, bone, and marrow, he spent several evenings a week on the overtime clock studying the geography of the Lake Greenway area. Mrs. Greenway's house was located on a two-hundred year landslide zone, part of the globe's surface that had been sliding into the lake regularly since the last ice age, and upon which some cheeky bastard in the nineteen-forties had built houses, very expensive houses. The city could put any kind of pipes it wanted under the ground, above the ground or up its ass for that matter, and those houses would still begin to slide down the escarpment within ten years.
Mrs. Greenway didn’t realize it, but her moldy roses were the least of her problems.
Of course Max didn't tell Bob this, didn't tell anyone; just let Mrs. Greenway and the mayor ramrod the Entrenchment Project through the city council with Max's own stamp of approval emblazoned with all the malice and resentment of his twisted soul.
Terry woke up on the floor of the family crypt hungover, damp, and dirty. He was still thirty but felt fifty, still six-foot three inches of muscle, sinew, and Halstan cologne, but dwarfed by the gravitas of the stiffs surrounding him, and stifled by the smell of rotting organic debris.
He shook his head. remembering the party that had been; and though Italian families were not generally given to wakes, the vast amount of wine and the fact that his dope-dealing cousin had spiked the gravy with ecstasy had sent everyone into a sort of quasi-psychedelic frenzy of keening, culminating in a pilgrimage by everyone under eighty to the cemetery for a last farewell to the old man. Terry remembered dancing, feeling up his cousin Rosalie. Not much after that.
He got up slowly on all fours-- but not slowly enough-- and the blood rushed from his head as he fought back the urge to puke in the family burial chamber. He finally got to his feet, brushed the cigarette butts and soggy paper napkins from his tuxedo and wracked his brain trying to remember the obligations of the day. He waited awhile until he got steady on his feet, but was still unable to come up with a goddaman thing. His head was pounding and a creeping nausea overwhelmed his thinking. Finally something came to him.
Today he was going to kill that roadworks girl.
He had followed her home two nights ago, learned all the particulars: what time she left work, where she lived. Some crummy apartment complex called Maison de Henri that looked like a prison block constructed of yellowing concrete, surrounded by battered chain-link. Hers was a second floor apartment on the east side of the building with a lock he’d had no trouble opening with an unbent paper clip.
Inside, it was obvious she hadn't lived away from home for very long. Graduated from high school-- her diploma displayed proudly on the living room wall, got a job at Burger King-- an employee of the month plaque from 2003 right next to it-- then gone to work full time for the state. In her bedroom he pawed through discarded jeans-- six pairs, discarded blouses--eight, various underclothes including thong underpants, and two well padded Wonderbras. No mystery where the money from her paycheck went. Guess Jeans were what, hundred twenty bucks a pair? And the blouses: all labels-- Calvin Klein, Pierre Cardin. No wonder she lived in a dump. It was the only way she could afford this wardrobe.
He picked up some thong panties, absent-mindedly giving them a sniff, and a disturbing thought occurred to him. What if she didn't come home after work? There was a reason she'd flung all these clothes around, probably in a hurry, late on her way out. Suppose she didn't return until two or three? Or at all? He wanted to do this tonight, had a business trip tomorrow and probably wouldn't have the energy afterwards. Fucking-A. But as his dear old granny used to say, he'd cross that bridge when and if he had to.
Dishes stacked high in the kitchen sink with days worth of hardened food, a half full glass of wine sat on the counter, dead gnats floating on the surface. There was a turd-filled cat box on dirty green linoleum next to the sticky-handled refrigerator which, upon examination, contained a rotten hunk of Swiss cheese, a jar of non-fat mayonnaise and a six-pack of Colt 45. Terry found some Old Crow in the cupboard and settled down to watch TV, keeping the volume low. Monty Python and the Holy Grail was on the Comedy Channel.
The Python movie had long since ended when he heard her in the hallway and as he switched it off, a man on the screen was selling washboard abs. Terry snatched his whisky glass deposited it on top of the mess in the sink, and slipped into the bedroom closet.
There was somebody with her, discussing whether he'd come in. Terry nearly chanted, “no no.” He wasn't sure he had the energy to go after two people, and though he was sure he could dispatch whoever she might drag home, the thought made him weary. It was a profound relief when they finally said goodnight.
She slammed the door, threw her bag down on the sofa, unzipped it extracting filthy work clothes, and tossed the orange vest over the back of a chair. The pants were caked with black dirt and so was the once blue shirt. She took her tan work boots out on the balcony, if you could call it that-- it was more of a two-foot square concrete slab outside the sliding glass door, banged them over the rail trying to dislodge the mud. Gave up finally without much success. When she wandered into the kitchen she saw the whisky glass, moistened and shiny, at the very same instant she felt the gun barrel in her ear.
To say Max Hodgson was pissed-off was an understatement. He was beyond pissed, beyond livid, beyond even furious. But he could do nothing except sit at the table and seethe. His astronomy club was off without him, on the top of Mt. Banyon viewing the closest conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in more than a decade and he was still at fucking work! He’d figured out a way to rig his archaic but functioning Olympus OM-1 to his telescope, and left ten messages in anticipation of exquisite shots on the answering machine of the photo editor of Sky and Telescope Magazine. (Who was, at that moment, seeking a restraining order against Max, convinced he was stalking him.)
Yet here were these pencil pushers, after a year and a half, voicing doubts about the Entrenchment Project.
"Commuters are objecting to continuing traffic delays," said Schuster, a frail, balding man in his early fifties whose desk, as community relations man on the project, was covered with hundred of letters, an increasing number of which cast aspersions on the sexual habits of his mother.
"And the budget committee has brought it to my attention that the project is, let's see," Brother-in-law Bob, chipper as always riffled the stack of papers in front of him "fifty-two percent over budget." This did not upset Bob much, most city projects went over budget, the result of contractors pitching ridiculously low bids. Still, this needed watching.
"And the time table bothers me," said Holoway, an affirmative action hire with a degree in theatre arts whose claim to fame was a non-speaking walk-on as a waiter on General Hospital.
"Let's see." He flipped some pages over a staple. "The project was scheduled for completion August 1999 and it's now, ah, October 2006."
All eyes were on Max whose impatience they misunderstood as evidence their concerns were trivial. He looked at his watch repeatedly. If he didn't get out soon, the conjunction would be over. "Look, look." He fussed with his pencil, nearly breaking it in half. "I've dealt with all your questions in this week's report which you’ll find on your desks Monday. I don't know how many of you have actually spoken with Mrs. Greenway, but the project is, in actual fact, going extremely well.
His colleagues eyeballed him incredulously. No one in their right mind could believe the Entrenchment Project was going “extremely well.”
“She has increased her endowment to the Arts Council by twenty-five thousand dollars." Max expected this to settle everything, and moved his chair to go.
But Julian Holoway wouldn’t look away. He had to commute every day via Lake Greenway.
"And to the library by thirty-thousand." Max tried to stare Holoway down, but the man wouldn’t budge.
"That's all great," said Holoway. "But I don't see what the Arts Council and the library have to do with the Entrenchment Project." He was no great thinker, but that didn't alter the fact that just the other day a roadworker had vaulted onto the hood of his car to avoid a commuter who'd snapped and tried to run her down.
"Holoway," said Max, pained. "How many roadwork’s projects have you been involved in?" Max glared at him, showed the whites of his eyes, big. If Holoway was going to question him, he'd hit him where he lived-- his professional insecurity and lack of previous job experience.
"This is my first," said Holoway.
"Well," Max rolled his eyes exaggeratedly for his comrades, seasoned veterans all, to see. "These kinds of timelines are not unheard of as I'm sure you'll come to appreciate."
"But I still don't see..."
"God look at the time. I'm sure you can all understand-- being family men." Again a stab at Holoway, a single, lonely homosexual. "Max Junior's starring in the school play tonight." Max Junior, who had taken to chewing large holes in his clothing, was no more capable of starring in the school play than he was of flying to Pluto, but no one at work but Bob knew that, and he wasn’t talking. "I've really got to go. You'll all have my reports Monday."
Max flew out the door, dropping a page of his copious notes on the way out. Holoway leaned over and, making grunting noises like an old man, picked it up. The page was covered with doodles of extra-terrestrial chicks with breasts the size of watermelons.
The girl said "Oh fuck," then walked ahead, objecting not at all. Terry hustled her over to a Pier One cane chair, tied her tight, wrists and feet. He'd doused the lights and she could not see him but as a vague silhouette backlit by the sodium vapor lamp shining through the kitchen window.
"My purse is in my backpack, there’s cash at the back of the jewelry box in the bedroom." Her voice was tentative, like she knew he wanted something else.
Terry emptied his pocket on the particle board coffee table, money-clip pinching a wad of hundreds. "I got money." He whispered in her ear, close enough for her to feel his breath.
She sighed. "Sex then."
"Got that too." He let the folder of his wallet drop, three beautiful women, and of course his cousin Rosalie.
His face was in shadow, the rest of him clad in black, the yellow light reflecting off the surface of his highly polished semi-automatic, the brightest thing in the room. He pointed it at her moistened forehead. "You think you never seen me before, huh?"
"Uh huh." She nodded up and down.
"You confused, right?"
She dry-throat whispered, warbled. "Yes."
"I can understand that. Standing in the street all day, not exactly a brainy person's job."
He could see it, her mind working like a hungry dog at a piece of gristle. "It will be a week ago Wednesday. Come on, think."
"I am. Give me a minute."
"Too long." He raised the weapon.
"Please!"
"You should have been in the Olympics, way you jumped up onto that car hood." He lowered the barrel to her chest.
Her heart pounded so loud she could barely hear her own voice. "You tried to run me over."
Terry raised the gun and fired half an inch high. "But I missed," he said.
She looked for blood, didn’t see any, then vomited on the carpet. When she’d spat her last and cleared her throat she pleaded. "What did I do to you?”
He laughed, shook his head at the absurdity of it all. “Think.”
“I don’t know! How could I know?” She spat on the carpet again. “I have this fucking job, it pays twelve dollars an hour. I stand where they tell me, do what they say." She raised her chin, trying to wipe it on the shoulder of her blouse.
Terry stared at a fixed point on the kitchen wall, eyes blank as a monitor lizard. "Ain't my fucking problem."
"You don't look like you have any problems." She indicated his money clip.
"Not compared to you."
More staring, more time, the refrigerator humming, ancient icemaker periodically clunking, strained cubes, like a constipated geriatric.
"You know how much I take home after taxes?" She cleared her throat.
Terry hadn't paid taxes since nineteen eighty-nine so he had no idea. "I don't give a fuck."
"Seven dollars an hour." She started to blubber.
"I have to go to the bathroom." Her voice was thick again.
"What?"
"The bathroom. I have to go to the bathroom."
Shit. If he shot her now, he could go home and go to bed, but he wasn’t ready. The evening was not going the way he'd planned. When he'd gotten up this morning he'd envisioned an whole night of sadism and terror, but suddenly he just didn’t seem to have the energy. He hadn’t felt the same about anything, not even mayhem, since losing Papa Camille.
“How come women always got to go to the bathroom?” Terry was from a family of women. Between his three sisters and his mother, it seemed like someone was always interrupting whatever to run off and have a pee.
“I don’t know about other women, but I drank three beers tonight,” said the girl.
Just shoot her and go, that was the easiest thing. But he wasn’t in an easy mood, so instead he sighed and shook his head, un-tucked his black silk shirt-tail to wipe a smudge from the barrel of his 9mm, and leaned back again.
“Please.”
“Why should I do anything for you?”
“I don’t understand why you’re even here. I don’t know what I did to you.”
“Kept me from getting my grandfather to the hospital.”
“How was that my fault?”
He shook his head. “Gotta be somebody’s fucking fault.”
She began to squirm back and forth. “Come on, I haven’t peed myself since I was five.”
Terry got up, swearing under his breath, un-tied her feet from the chair legs and yanked her up by the arm, propelling her ahead of him.
He opened the bathroom door. There was no window, just an overhead fan that roared like jumbo jet powering-up for takeoff. He closed the door behind them and leaned against the wall across from the toilet.
“You’re going to stay in here with me?” She was already tugging at her pants, not easy since her hands were still tied.
“Yeah.”
“Why?” Getting nowhere, frantically.
“Maybe it’s been a slow evening. I’m looking for entertainment.” He stuck the gun in the back of his belt, unsnapped her pants and pulled them, along with her panties, down around her ankles. She sat down and let loose.
“Why do girls wear those?”
“What?” Relieved, like the weight of the world was off her.
Terry, though he’d performed just about every sexual act possible with women (and a couple of men), while staring at the milky-stained crotch of the roadworker’s black thong panties, and listening to the sound of her impressive stream, realized he’d never really watched a woman pee before. He found it strangely erotic, wondered if it would be the same if her hands weren’t tied behind her back.
“Those butt floss panties. Don’t look comfortable.”
“They aren’t, but when you’re wearing tight clothes you don’t get a line.”
“What line?”
“Turn around,” said the girl.
“What, why?” Terry eschewed Levis but black denim seemed right in this neighborhood.
He turned a little.
“You’re wearing Jockeys, bikini cut.”
“You can see the lines?”
“Just barely, but then your pants aren’t all that tight.” She was trying to look as dignified and cool as possible, which wasn’t easy sitting on the toilet. “Girls wear tighter pants.”
She was going green again. “I think I’m going to throw up again.”
“I’m making you nervous?” He was getting off on the control thing; that was a big part of it, he knew.
The roadworker cocked her head. “You a pervert?”
“I never realized it until now, but yeah.”
“Untie my hands,” she said.
“No.”
“I’ve got to wipe myself.”
He leaned back against the wall, put one foot against it. She couldn’t go anywhere, there was only one door to the outside and he was between her and it, twice her size, probably twice as fast, so he could untie her. Instead, he grabbed a palmful of toilet paper, reached down and dried her off. She let her legs stay apart when he let the back of his hand rest for just a second against her.
“You going to let me up now?”
He stood, stared a little longer, watched the sweat trickle down her left temple, then let himself slide onto his haunches, leg extended for balance. They were eye to eye. “You know, I’m not an unreasonable person. What’s your name?’
“Ashley.”
“You born when, nineteen eighty-five?” She had hair in her mouth; he hooked it, put it behind her ear.
“Eighty-four, why?” She said.
“Million fucking Ashley’s from that year. What are you, Italian? You don’t look like a fucking Ashley.” She had olive skin, distinct features.
“Jewish.”
“What are Jew parents going around naming their kids Ashley for? Fucking waspy name.”
“Ask them.”
“Remember earlier you said you were confused?” Terry reached out as if to touch her, then pulled back, laced his fingers together.
“We could have this conversation better if you’d let me up,” she said.
“Better this way.”
“Why?”
“Better for me, I mean.”
He looked in her eyes, forgot what he was talking about for a second. “But that’s not what I want to talk about now. See, Papa always told me I don’t think, that’s my problem, so now I’m thinking. If you don’t deserve killing, who does?” He said.
“I don’t know.” It felt like she’d been sitting on the toilet, talking to this guy forever. Like the easiest thing would be to just fold up and fall in.
“Do me a favor and think about it.” Terry plopped onto the floor, wrists resting on his bent knees.
She shook her head. “I’ve only worked out there for three months. Nobody ever works the Entrenchment Project longer than three months.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I told you they don’t explain things to us, they just say show up here at seven in the morning, or whatever. Long as they sign the paychecks I don’t ask questions.”
“What about that guy you were with tonight?”
“Same thing, only he’s been on about a month and a half. He hates it, just sits there all day waiting for instructions that don’t come.”
“You like that guy?”
“I did, but he’s all hands.”
“Guys are like that.” Terry rubbed the stubble on his chin. “But you work for who, the city, the state?”
“The city. Better benefits.”
He stood. “Planning offices, huh, downtown?”
“I guess. The return address on my check’s there.” She nodded toward the coffee table in the living room
“Huh,” said Terry, gears meshing in his head at last. Then he looked at Ashley like a guest he’d neglected to invite in out of the cold. “Uncomfortable?”
“You try sitting on the john with your hands tied behind your back getting pawed by a stranger, see how comfortable you are.”
He reached behind her, released the knot in the white nylon rope.
She followed as he walked down the hall, and he wondered for a second if she’d pick up a plunger, lamp or something, hit him in the head. But he knew even though he had it coming, she wasn‘t the type.
Near the front door, he stopped, wanting to say something, not to apologize exactly, but… something.
"If I were you I'd change this lock”
The girl was utterly bewildered, legs cramping at the sudden renewed blood flow with standing.
“What?”
“The lock. It’s a shitty lock.”
“Huh?.”
“Seriously, a monkey with a twig could get in here." Then as quickly as he'd slipped in, Terry Falcone was gone.
The screen saver on Max Hodgson's computer monitor was Mr. Spock, but instead of the “live long and prosper” thing, he was flipping the bird. Up and down, up and down he gestured, against a background of receding stars. The rest of the room was dark except for the fluorescent light directly overhead, switched on only just then by Mickey the computer hacker. Terry was no good at computers, did not have the patience to learn their intolerably literal language and was highly suspicious of any machine that could "think" since seeing “The Terminator” years ago.
Mickey on the other hand, was having a wonderful time. Too wonderful and acted like he'd forgotten why they were in the City Planning Offices at all. He'd hacked his way into two PC's already, the director's and somebody called Holoway's and while the first yielded nothing about the Greenway Entrenchment Project, the second contained the name Max Hodgson with the words "bullshit, liar, fiend,” followed by several question marks and exclamation points.
"Some people got no fucking imagination," said Mickey as he un-taped a shred of paper from the underside of the desk.
"What are you talking about?" Terry, still entranced by Mr. Spock.
"Under the fucking desk. It's like hiding the key to the front door under the welcome mat." Mickey, lean and stealthy in is youth, was blimped-out now from rich food and an outright disdain for physical exertion. He’d been a first class burglar once upon a time, and was an unqualified expert in hiding places for front door keys. They were, in descending order, under the mat, in the potted plant, in the rain gutter drainage pipe-- unless you lived in Seattle, inside the car bumper, on a nail in the backyard shed, under a paint can in the backyard shed, on the two-by-four over the paint can in the back yard shed, on a nail in the doghouse, in the neighbor's shed, or on top of the gas meter behind the rhododendrons. He unfolded a paper the size of a business card. "Freedom," it says.
There were hundreds of files, most having nothing to do with roadworks or city planning. There were fifteen articles, submitted and subsequently rejected by magazines with names like Observer and Astronomical Digest. There was a long dissertation on the miraculous properties of something called the Hapheastean Mount and a diatribe over the naming of a comet, accusing the Pope and the University of Arizona Board of Regents of a conspiracy. Mostly, Terry could not make head or tails of any of it, but realized well enough they’d ventured into the mind of a nut. "What about the goddamned roadworks?" He said.
"Maybe this," said Mickey as he pulled up a file called "Buffoonery."
Everything was there, from the geological survey to the environmental impact report. There were loads of correspondences from a Mrs. Ezra Greenway along with records of contractors replaced and employees fired. There were inter-office memos regarding cost overrides and responses full of doublespeak and scientific gobbledygook. Mickey stared at the pile of printout. "Heh heh."
"Whaddaya mean, heh, heh?" It was late; Terry had lost whatever sense of humor he had. He had hit the security guard downstairs hard, but not hard enough to keep him down forever.
"Heh, heh." Mickey said again.
"Stop with the fucking heh, heh, will you? I wanna get out of here."
"He's blinded them with science."
"Like the song?" Said Terry.
"No, moron. The song is like the practice, which came first. He's working with a bunch of politicians and pencil pushers here. He floods them with so much paperwork they can't take the time to understand. Then, by the time they shove it back to him asking for clarification, he's buried them in five times more paperwork detailing new specifications for the project, which they can’t understand either. It's an endless loop, a snake swallowing its tail kind of thing. But as far as I can tell, basically..."
"Basically what?" Terry was losing patience, fast. Not a commodity he was long on in the first place.
“Holy shit.”
“What?!” Said Terry.
"Basically this Hodgson guy has had those workers plant, dig up, and replant the same section of PVC pipe for a year and a half." Mickey sat back shaking his head. It was too bad about Papa Camille but this was still fucking great.
"Son of a bitch," said Terry Falcone, “fucking son-of-a mutherfuckin’ bitch.”
Max could not understand why the photo editor of Sky and Telescope Magazine would want to meet him at the Entrenchment Project, of all places, the last one he wanted to be. But his puffed-up ego precluded suspicion, and the man said he lived near there so it was a common geographical reference point. And there was a nice little coffee house across the street where they could view Max’s photos together. He said he was sorry for not returning his thirteen phone calls, but his kids were always goofing with the answering machine.
He didn't look at all like Max expected, but then people almost never did. He expected scientists to look dignified and buttoned down like Niels Bohr, maybe disheveled like Albert Einstein, but they invariably ended up looking like over-aged hamburger flippers who got dressed in the dark.
So he supposed it was reasonable enough that the photo editor for the biggest popular astronomy magazine in the country looked like a manicured goon from a Martin Scorsese movie.
The man greeted him with a warm handshake, almost too warm, nearly breaking his little finger, and suggested they take a walk before the photo viewing. He said he had set up his Hapheastean mount just adjacent to the Entrenchment, and had two of Saturn's moons in the view-finder. He was interested, he said, in Max's photographic methods, always needed background information on his contributors. Max was elated, more than happy to go as he tucked his manila envelope securely under his arm. There would be plenty of time to look later.
But by the time they reached the edge of the trench, the place where the telescope was supposed to be, he was alone. The streetlights reflected off the bog and the trees, uprooted and grounded like cast off, mangled skeletons. For a moment, Max couldn’t remember the location of the path back. Perhaps he had misunderstood the man, or they'd unknowingly diverged at the fork by the road. He was turning to backtrack, when he heard the roar of a bulldozer engine.
Terry thought about his grandfather: the feel of his big, safe hand holding his when he was a little boy, the way he kept sweets hidden in his pockets, the way he understood Terry’s shame when his cousin Rosalie beat him up. (Until he was nineteen or twenty anyway, when Papa told him it had to stop.) He thought about the old man's laughter, his great jowls wobbling as he wolfed down his food or gently patted at spilled drops of vino rosa as they ran down his neck. He thought of all those things he would never see or feel again.
So in a sense, knocking Max Hodgson into the Greenway trench was the easiest thing he had ever done; and watching the man roar and scream as he slammed the great yellow machine into gear and covered him with enough dirt to bury an elephant, the most enjoyable. He filled the whole trench in for good measure, then drove over it with a roller, the keys of which had been left stuck in the sun visor, (the most common of all vehicular key-stashing sites.)
Terry visited the old man at the family crypt the next morning, told him he'd avenged his death, imagined him reaching out through the marble and gold plate, ruffling his hair like a thousand times before. Then he took out the broom from the caretaker's shed, swept the leaves, the trash, and the caterpillars away from the entrance, got into his Caddy and headed for home.
On the way, he drove by The Project, closed with yellow police tape and surrounded by multiple city investigation vans and police cars, though none obstructed traffic. Then something caught his eye, a lone worker standing on the island of the boulevard unsure of herself, with nothing to do. She recognized him and bolted out into traffic.
He stopped just short of running over her, got out of the car and in fleeing, she tripped, landed on her hands when she hit the pavement. Terry reached down and lifted her to her feet. "You gotta be more careful, running out into traffic like that," he said brushing her off. "Not worth it for seven dollars an hour." She looked his way like a rabbit unscathed, having been dropped by a hawk.
Terry walked back to his car-- shiny-clean, smelling of spanking new leather upholstery. He ignored the honking drivers, the distracted police, and the purposeless hardhats wandering around with nothing to do. The handle of the Caddy felt cool and solid. As he drove off he saw the roadworker girl in his rearview mirror, watching him and he waved. She lifted her hand mechanically, as if to wave back.
C. Catherine O'Sullivan
Thursday, June 5, 2008
"B" Girl
He stumbles out of the bar onto the main drag. Well, not stumbles really, staggers, then swans a little. It's all a joke, the way he plays it on everybody in the whole world. Bumping into dopes trying to get away with stuff he's so familiar with he sees it in his sleep. How they stand the monotony is a total fucking mystery; their lives, not crackling with electricity and drama twenty-four seven. Not even close to his.
A hell of a day it's been. He got drunk hours ago, but then he can go forever. Way he sees it, he's smarter drunk than most people are sober. Years of practice and dedication, liver like a Kraft Cheese processing plant turning out the same stuff every day and with such monotony, it thinks that's all there is to run on. It's not even surprised anymore. An occasional tightening of a screw here, stripped bolt replaced there. It adjusts, keeps going like an engine throwing oil every which way.
After drunk comes belligerent, like always until something shifts. When they ignore him, it makes him mean. Or not mean exactly, more like a kid with ADD. Any attention is better than nothing.
On the street, sun too bright. Too fucking bright. What time is it, he wonders. If he started at 12, then... 2? Is it 2? And already back on the street. There's a lady looking for the same kind of Talavera soup bowls she got down here last time. Man, he'd like to fuck her. Tight ass, all that money, all that cashmere sweater, but thinks she's too good for the likes of him. He'd show her who's too good, who the fucking jefe is. Funny word, jefe. Mexican's a good language for drunks. Wait, where'd Cashmere Sweater go? Lost in the crowd. She'd know she'd been fucked when he was done with her. For days she'd know. Might even think of telling someone how it all went down, which is why he's not going near it. Some women, they figure out what being fucked actually means and they don't much like it.
Whores are better, lots. No emotion. He bangs 'em, pushes 'em around a little because, goddamn, he's so drunk he can barely feel a thing. Whores? He gives 'em an extra twenty, they forget about it. Oh, he doesn't want to hurt anyone, not like some sick asshole. He just wants to feel something, anything. Is that too much to ask?
And damned if he's not at the threshold of another bar. Senor Frogs. He hates the fucking place, but any port in a storm.
The bartender gives him that look, that greasy Mexican look saying he's a pinche drunk gringo or worse, maybe that same pinche gringo that was in here a few weeks back. On the one hand, he could refuse to serve him, though they hardly ever do that. When he's drunk they know he throws the dinero around. Makes everyone happy. Later? Who cares about later. Anything could happen later.
Sitting down he flexes a little, elbows leaning into a puddle on the bartop. Shoulders wide, face square and handsome. Some weird fucking twist of fate there. Person like him should look like hell warmed over. Must be a painting somewhere, aging like hell in his place.
A girl down the bar likes it. Can't take her eyes off him, but then she's drunk too. Maybe as drunk as he is. Or, and this is a real possibility, faking it. Too young and pretty to be anything but a "B" girl, the kind that hang around dishing out hope like squares of chocolate brownies on a plate from an old lady in the supermarket. But he's drunk so he keeps going. Buying drinks all 'round, conjuring a party like a magician conjuring doves and flowers from thin air.
Mojo working, and drunk or sober it's a formidable mojo. Another thing he can't figure and secretly, though he never tells anybody, he wonders what kind of twisted joke the gods are playing, wonders when the punch line's finally coming around.
"You like me?" She's shoved her way through the crowd massed at the rumor of the Gringo buying drinks. The girl's words, half statement half request, ring in his ear and the spandex shorts crawling up her ass, clutching her pussy like saran wrap, brush against his thigh. For rent or for free, either way he's game, and after three more shots of tequilla, he's getting nothing else but bored. Wanting more, wanting something besides. She's got eyes the size of saucers, lips born for cocksucking, hair too big but soft; and he thinks of his fingers tangled, the way it will feel, the way it smells afterwards. Hairspray, mousse, whatever dimestore perfume migrates through the sweat up strands from her neck. What is she? Twenty, twenty-one tops. He's forty-something and hitting this. Costs money? Who cares? Not him. He can't remember the last time he actually gave a fuck. That's what he tells himself. He gives a fuck, he's got something to lose; and nobody can take anything from him.
It's what he's telling everyone, but the group's shrinking as his words run together like epoxy, getting worse all the time. He pretends it's them that are stupid, deaf, maybe both. Somewhere down deep, he knows it's not true.
The bartender nods his way, like "way to go Gringo." Or it could be at her, and that alerts him a little, like a fly bite on a place he can't reach. He ignores it.
Sun again, too bright, making it impossible to see and he staggers into a day tripper, who calls him a drunken asshole.
He thinks about those days at home, when it wasn't like this. The way the sun took the edge off, searing him to his very soul, reducing him to something not unlike a person. In the sun, working in the yard, on the big property, moving; action unstoppable, and they all figured he was busy, too terribly important; it's why he never stopped to talk. Nobody imagined the truth. Nobody imagined much of anything, which kept him going all those years.
But deal with tomorrow's problems tomorrow. Her arm's locked in his and though she pretends he's in the lead, these are streets he doesn't recognize and people he's never seen before. In the hotel room she says she wants a hundred.
"For a blow job?" Shit, he could have gotten a crack whore for twenty. Skank factor would be higher, pimply ass, pasty drug-worn face. That and if they're jonesing bad they do a shitty job. Lots of work with a crack whore, too much goading, hands renting an anonymous head until it starts to gag and balk. What the hell, they're fucking crack whores after all. Used to much rougher treatment than anything he dishes out. And once he's come, he can go out drinking some more. Enough time will have passed he can just about manage it, usually. That's how he rolls.
"Not just," only it comes out "yust," along with a crack pipe. Glass tube brown and well used. He's up for it; it'll stall the stupor, put some snap back into things. Out the slats of disheveled mini-blinds he can see the sun lower in the sky, thinks about where it's going, whether he'll miss it or just catch it when it comes round again. He puts the pipe to his mouth, sucks as she holds a flame from a cheap plastic Bic. Tastes like cheap shit.
She got her mouth on him. Up and down, his hands clamped around bangled ears and his head lolls back not in ecstacy exactly, but lost, just plain lost, staggering towards a rainbow colored someplace, someplace cool and blind that goes on forever into the night. He finishes and brings her up to nuzzle her neck, tonguing the bangle hanging from her ear. He's just worked the hook off, tasting metal, feeling the coolness of it on his tongue when she pulls away and leaves him. He opens his eyes and she's going through his pockets. Has her hand on his last two-hundred.
It looks like three of them, come crashing through the door, though it could be six or twelve. They let him get his pants and undershirt back on, but nothing else. The wooden cross he bought earlier on the street isn't worth stealing, just more Mexican shit, and he's left it on as a hedge. Like God is a radio station van that, miraculously and against all odds, finally might recognize his bumper sticker.
It's hard to walk, handcuffed and drunk. Almost impossible cuffed behind his back, and even the cops twig after less than a block, that cuffed that way he won't be able to work the automated teller machine.
But something is bothering him, something like earlier at the bar when he met the pretty girl. He can't get hold of it but it's there, alright. Was he at this same ATM today, or the last time he was here? 'Cause if it's this time, he's maxed out.
"Pinche pendejo," one cop mutters. He's run his card through three times, the machine refusing to fork over a nickel.
And the gravity of it hits like a cast iron skillet upside the head. Unless the whore's going to share the three hundred she's already got, they'll be pissed off, maybe put him in jail just for spite.
The girl shows, rubbing her jaw. Men so drunk take a long time to come. Hell, maybe she actually earned the three hundred. That's what she's thinking. She curses him in Spanish for her lost earring and it comes to him that someday, some random x-ray is going to find a hundred of the fucking things, swallowed for no other reason than a monkey's in the zoo. He likes the feel of it going down.
She takes off the earring she's still got, shrugging her shoulders in something half pity, half resignation. "No preocupe. I take care of them. They turn you loose when they get off work."
"You think?"
"Porque no?"
"You live like this every day?" She's putting on lipsick now, admiring herself in a compact mirror, then pulling up her tube top. Little black cuffs high on her arms though whether they're attached to the rest of the shirt, who knows. Very sexy.
"Can't afford it every day."
She rolls her eyes and walks off. Spiked heels missing every crack in the cobbles like she's walked this same path a hundred times. When they've all gone, he laughs 'till he feels like puking, which would be bad, sitting next to it, smelling it for hours until the cops come back. If they remember.
Mexico. Fucking Mexico. He loves it mostly except for nights like this. He hears the roar of the ocean below, hurling itself against shallow cement dumped fifty years back by exhausted constructionistas overdue for siesta. The he's up and stretching, dragging the iron bench towards the seawall. As he pukes onto the rocks below, he closes one eye and can see it in the light of the mercury vapor lamp, a single cheapshit bangle earring, glittering like a beer tab, bye and bye, washed away and gone.
A hell of a day it's been. He got drunk hours ago, but then he can go forever. Way he sees it, he's smarter drunk than most people are sober. Years of practice and dedication, liver like a Kraft Cheese processing plant turning out the same stuff every day and with such monotony, it thinks that's all there is to run on. It's not even surprised anymore. An occasional tightening of a screw here, stripped bolt replaced there. It adjusts, keeps going like an engine throwing oil every which way.
After drunk comes belligerent, like always until something shifts. When they ignore him, it makes him mean. Or not mean exactly, more like a kid with ADD. Any attention is better than nothing.
On the street, sun too bright. Too fucking bright. What time is it, he wonders. If he started at 12, then... 2? Is it 2? And already back on the street. There's a lady looking for the same kind of Talavera soup bowls she got down here last time. Man, he'd like to fuck her. Tight ass, all that money, all that cashmere sweater, but thinks she's too good for the likes of him. He'd show her who's too good, who the fucking jefe is. Funny word, jefe. Mexican's a good language for drunks. Wait, where'd Cashmere Sweater go? Lost in the crowd. She'd know she'd been fucked when he was done with her. For days she'd know. Might even think of telling someone how it all went down, which is why he's not going near it. Some women, they figure out what being fucked actually means and they don't much like it.
Whores are better, lots. No emotion. He bangs 'em, pushes 'em around a little because, goddamn, he's so drunk he can barely feel a thing. Whores? He gives 'em an extra twenty, they forget about it. Oh, he doesn't want to hurt anyone, not like some sick asshole. He just wants to feel something, anything. Is that too much to ask?
And damned if he's not at the threshold of another bar. Senor Frogs. He hates the fucking place, but any port in a storm.
The bartender gives him that look, that greasy Mexican look saying he's a pinche drunk gringo or worse, maybe that same pinche gringo that was in here a few weeks back. On the one hand, he could refuse to serve him, though they hardly ever do that. When he's drunk they know he throws the dinero around. Makes everyone happy. Later? Who cares about later. Anything could happen later.
Sitting down he flexes a little, elbows leaning into a puddle on the bartop. Shoulders wide, face square and handsome. Some weird fucking twist of fate there. Person like him should look like hell warmed over. Must be a painting somewhere, aging like hell in his place.
A girl down the bar likes it. Can't take her eyes off him, but then she's drunk too. Maybe as drunk as he is. Or, and this is a real possibility, faking it. Too young and pretty to be anything but a "B" girl, the kind that hang around dishing out hope like squares of chocolate brownies on a plate from an old lady in the supermarket. But he's drunk so he keeps going. Buying drinks all 'round, conjuring a party like a magician conjuring doves and flowers from thin air.
Mojo working, and drunk or sober it's a formidable mojo. Another thing he can't figure and secretly, though he never tells anybody, he wonders what kind of twisted joke the gods are playing, wonders when the punch line's finally coming around.
"You like me?" She's shoved her way through the crowd massed at the rumor of the Gringo buying drinks. The girl's words, half statement half request, ring in his ear and the spandex shorts crawling up her ass, clutching her pussy like saran wrap, brush against his thigh. For rent or for free, either way he's game, and after three more shots of tequilla, he's getting nothing else but bored. Wanting more, wanting something besides. She's got eyes the size of saucers, lips born for cocksucking, hair too big but soft; and he thinks of his fingers tangled, the way it will feel, the way it smells afterwards. Hairspray, mousse, whatever dimestore perfume migrates through the sweat up strands from her neck. What is she? Twenty, twenty-one tops. He's forty-something and hitting this. Costs money? Who cares? Not him. He can't remember the last time he actually gave a fuck. That's what he tells himself. He gives a fuck, he's got something to lose; and nobody can take anything from him.
It's what he's telling everyone, but the group's shrinking as his words run together like epoxy, getting worse all the time. He pretends it's them that are stupid, deaf, maybe both. Somewhere down deep, he knows it's not true.
The bartender nods his way, like "way to go Gringo." Or it could be at her, and that alerts him a little, like a fly bite on a place he can't reach. He ignores it.
Sun again, too bright, making it impossible to see and he staggers into a day tripper, who calls him a drunken asshole.
He thinks about those days at home, when it wasn't like this. The way the sun took the edge off, searing him to his very soul, reducing him to something not unlike a person. In the sun, working in the yard, on the big property, moving; action unstoppable, and they all figured he was busy, too terribly important; it's why he never stopped to talk. Nobody imagined the truth. Nobody imagined much of anything, which kept him going all those years.
But deal with tomorrow's problems tomorrow. Her arm's locked in his and though she pretends he's in the lead, these are streets he doesn't recognize and people he's never seen before. In the hotel room she says she wants a hundred.
"For a blow job?" Shit, he could have gotten a crack whore for twenty. Skank factor would be higher, pimply ass, pasty drug-worn face. That and if they're jonesing bad they do a shitty job. Lots of work with a crack whore, too much goading, hands renting an anonymous head until it starts to gag and balk. What the hell, they're fucking crack whores after all. Used to much rougher treatment than anything he dishes out. And once he's come, he can go out drinking some more. Enough time will have passed he can just about manage it, usually. That's how he rolls.
"Not just," only it comes out "yust," along with a crack pipe. Glass tube brown and well used. He's up for it; it'll stall the stupor, put some snap back into things. Out the slats of disheveled mini-blinds he can see the sun lower in the sky, thinks about where it's going, whether he'll miss it or just catch it when it comes round again. He puts the pipe to his mouth, sucks as she holds a flame from a cheap plastic Bic. Tastes like cheap shit.
She got her mouth on him. Up and down, his hands clamped around bangled ears and his head lolls back not in ecstacy exactly, but lost, just plain lost, staggering towards a rainbow colored someplace, someplace cool and blind that goes on forever into the night. He finishes and brings her up to nuzzle her neck, tonguing the bangle hanging from her ear. He's just worked the hook off, tasting metal, feeling the coolness of it on his tongue when she pulls away and leaves him. He opens his eyes and she's going through his pockets. Has her hand on his last two-hundred.
It looks like three of them, come crashing through the door, though it could be six or twelve. They let him get his pants and undershirt back on, but nothing else. The wooden cross he bought earlier on the street isn't worth stealing, just more Mexican shit, and he's left it on as a hedge. Like God is a radio station van that, miraculously and against all odds, finally might recognize his bumper sticker.
It's hard to walk, handcuffed and drunk. Almost impossible cuffed behind his back, and even the cops twig after less than a block, that cuffed that way he won't be able to work the automated teller machine.
But something is bothering him, something like earlier at the bar when he met the pretty girl. He can't get hold of it but it's there, alright. Was he at this same ATM today, or the last time he was here? 'Cause if it's this time, he's maxed out.
"Pinche pendejo," one cop mutters. He's run his card through three times, the machine refusing to fork over a nickel.
And the gravity of it hits like a cast iron skillet upside the head. Unless the whore's going to share the three hundred she's already got, they'll be pissed off, maybe put him in jail just for spite.
The girl shows, rubbing her jaw. Men so drunk take a long time to come. Hell, maybe she actually earned the three hundred. That's what she's thinking. She curses him in Spanish for her lost earring and it comes to him that someday, some random x-ray is going to find a hundred of the fucking things, swallowed for no other reason than a monkey's in the zoo. He likes the feel of it going down.
She takes off the earring she's still got, shrugging her shoulders in something half pity, half resignation. "No preocupe. I take care of them. They turn you loose when they get off work."
"You think?"
"Porque no?"
"You live like this every day?" She's putting on lipsick now, admiring herself in a compact mirror, then pulling up her tube top. Little black cuffs high on her arms though whether they're attached to the rest of the shirt, who knows. Very sexy.
"Can't afford it every day."
She rolls her eyes and walks off. Spiked heels missing every crack in the cobbles like she's walked this same path a hundred times. When they've all gone, he laughs 'till he feels like puking, which would be bad, sitting next to it, smelling it for hours until the cops come back. If they remember.
Mexico. Fucking Mexico. He loves it mostly except for nights like this. He hears the roar of the ocean below, hurling itself against shallow cement dumped fifty years back by exhausted constructionistas overdue for siesta. The he's up and stretching, dragging the iron bench towards the seawall. As he pukes onto the rocks below, he closes one eye and can see it in the light of the mercury vapor lamp, a single cheapshit bangle earring, glittering like a beer tab, bye and bye, washed away and gone.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
How Together is My Shit?
"How together is my shit?" A question that has been plaguing humanity since the very dawn of time. Oggy, the first cave woman, used to parade around in the altogether giving orders, and if people didn't do what she said, she would hit them with her club. All the other cave persons assumed she must have her shit together, what with the way she could make that intimidating face and wield her club. When she died they hadn't discovered writing yet, but if they had, they would have written, "Oggy: she had her shit together, no doubt," on her headstone.
Many years later, when people were still not wearing underpants, but had discovered waffles, a philosopher called Liebnitz, claimed not only that he had his shit together, but that God did too. You could tell God had his shit together because, so the argument goes, if God didn't have his shit together then nobody did, and since clearly God had his shit together, then he must exist.
It took modern philosophers many anum, (that's "years" for those of you who failed to take Latin. And shame on you, by the way) to dismantle this argument. Even Bertrand Russell assumed it was valid until one day, while walking by the sea, a bird shat on his head. This changed his thinking faster than a tired prostitute changes her crotchless underpants the morning after.
And upon arising from his bed the next day, Professor Russell shook his fist at the heavens, not at God necessarily, since he no longer believed in the validity of the argument for His existence, perhaps he was shaking it at the seagull, and promptly got back into bed. Right next to the prostitute who had removed her underpants only minutes before. She said, "not now, Bertie, my whatzit is as sore as Roberto Clementes' pitching arm."
Which was fine. Bertie, like most philosophers, was strapped for cash as usual. And when he finally got up, he wrote, "Truthiticus Philosophicus Deus," thereby refuting once and for all the "he's the one who hath his shit together," argument for the existence of God.
I won't go into the detail here. But Bishop Berkeley thought it sounded pretty good and that's good enough for me. Bishop Berkeley later went on to have a city full of hippies named after him.
So I sit here tonight, pondering the fact that like many who came before me, I neither have my shit together, nor worship a God that does. See, I just got dumped by a real cool guy due to my life lacking not only metaphysical acuity, but that razor sharp Zen-like shrink wrapped, clean edged, sensible phenomenon that life is supposed to be. At times like this, I wonder at the wisdom of He who made all things. And I long for the ancient wisdom of Oggy, and her decendents, and those who came after. Or perhaps I only long for a club, and an intimidating stare.
Many years later, when people were still not wearing underpants, but had discovered waffles, a philosopher called Liebnitz, claimed not only that he had his shit together, but that God did too. You could tell God had his shit together because, so the argument goes, if God didn't have his shit together then nobody did, and since clearly God had his shit together, then he must exist.
It took modern philosophers many anum, (that's "years" for those of you who failed to take Latin. And shame on you, by the way) to dismantle this argument. Even Bertrand Russell assumed it was valid until one day, while walking by the sea, a bird shat on his head. This changed his thinking faster than a tired prostitute changes her crotchless underpants the morning after.
And upon arising from his bed the next day, Professor Russell shook his fist at the heavens, not at God necessarily, since he no longer believed in the validity of the argument for His existence, perhaps he was shaking it at the seagull, and promptly got back into bed. Right next to the prostitute who had removed her underpants only minutes before. She said, "not now, Bertie, my whatzit is as sore as Roberto Clementes' pitching arm."
Which was fine. Bertie, like most philosophers, was strapped for cash as usual. And when he finally got up, he wrote, "Truthiticus Philosophicus Deus," thereby refuting once and for all the "he's the one who hath his shit together," argument for the existence of God.
I won't go into the detail here. But Bishop Berkeley thought it sounded pretty good and that's good enough for me. Bishop Berkeley later went on to have a city full of hippies named after him.
So I sit here tonight, pondering the fact that like many who came before me, I neither have my shit together, nor worship a God that does. See, I just got dumped by a real cool guy due to my life lacking not only metaphysical acuity, but that razor sharp Zen-like shrink wrapped, clean edged, sensible phenomenon that life is supposed to be. At times like this, I wonder at the wisdom of He who made all things. And I long for the ancient wisdom of Oggy, and her decendents, and those who came after. Or perhaps I only long for a club, and an intimidating stare.
Monday, December 10, 2007
About a Fish
I got this fish. A goldfish. Originally, it was slated as food for a turtle but after watching the turtle eat one, I couldn't take anymore and put the goldfish in a tank. The turtle soon died, not of starvation; I fed it turtle food, but of a respiratory infection.
Do you realize how hard it is to tell that a turtle is sick? I mean, they're all in their shell. They stick their necks and scrawny little legs out once in awhile, but they drop a little weight, who notices? The poor little bastard. He was alive at the moment I took him from his turtle habitat, and dead by the time I got him to the vet 2 miles away. There was no question of resuscitation. I have never, in my entire life, heard of anyone resuscitating a turtle.
But back to the fish. Ten years later and I still have the goddamn fish. I can hardly fucking believe it. One of them, he's just regular: torpedo shaped, cloudy eyes like any elderly thing. Sometimes, he's got bruises on the top of his head because he gets over enthusiastic at feeding time and bangs his head on the top of the aquarium. Other than that he's a pretty normal fish.
It's the other one who is the problem. He is about 4 inches long and looks like he swallowed a golf ball. You would think this was something a person might see developing over time, but that's not what happened. One day I just looked into the tank and said, "wow fish. It looks like you swallowed a golf ball." Since then, the golf ball has not only remained, but gotten bigger. Now it looks like the fish has swallowed, hmm... maybe a squash ball.
It's horrible. He's all distended. His scales won't stretch far enough to cover his bulk. His anal slit is way distended. If I was going to make up a creature for a monster movie, the only thing I would do differently is make it clay colored. This fish is a marval of survival, and to be honest, there are some days he's almost too much for me. Some days I can't stand to look at him.
But he eats. He swims, although not to the top of the tank. He waits until the food sinks down. And he persistently refuses to go belly up. Sometimes I catch him with my hand. He's, like, easier to catch than a dirt clod, and rub his sides and his belly. I don't know whether it feels good to him or bad. It is very hard to tell what a goldfish is feeling.
Anyway, the other day I couldn't stand it anymore. I just thought to myself, "this fish has got to be in horrible discomfort. He's already lived longer than, like, 99% of the fish in the universe, so maybe I should do him a favor and put him out of his misery." Oh, I'm sure there was a little of wanting to put him out of my misery. I have enough to worry about besides some horrible, mal-shaped fish.
But how to do it? I don't like violence, and I distain pain ever more. I didn't want the poor fish to suffer. I just wanted to help him along to the next world. I could have taken him outside and hit him on the head with a brick, but how is a person supposed to do something like that to a fish she's held in her hand and whose belly she's rubbed? No, hitting it in the head with a brick was impossible. I thought about suffocating it. Hold it out of the water for awhile, but I've seen that kind of shit before, and fish can hold on gasping for breath forever, all the while their gills and blood vessels straining against the oxygen and other diabolical gases brutalizing their breathing apparati like there's no tomorrow. No, holding him out of the water was an impossibility.
But... but... Owing to my rash of bad luck, I've in my possession more pain pills than the pope's had hot lunches, and an idea began to germinate. What if I mashed up a percoset, mixed it in a bucket with water and put the fish in it. Wouldn't it simply breath the narcotic and die? That seemed like a pretty painless method of execution. Don't you think?
I created said mixture, grabbing said fish. Have I mentioned that he's easier to catch than a dirt clod? You would be too if you were only 4 inches long, yet had a belly the size of a tennis ball. I placed him gently in the bucket, put the bucket in the shadows so it would be nice and peaceful, and went away for three hours.
And when I came back, the fish was as alive as ever. Swimming around. All mellowed out and happy. His tank mate however, looked exceptionally depressed. Dorsal fin collapsed, head lowered. Clearly pining for old basketball belly.
There is nothing sadder than a pining goldfish. If anyone can look at a pining goldfish and not have an emotional reaction, then I'm sorry, there's just something wrong with them.
I scooped up old zeppelin belly, which was, like, about a hundred times easier than picking up a dirt clod, and put him back in the tank. I try not to look at him much. He swims, he eats. He does not go belly up. What is a gal to do?
Do you realize how hard it is to tell that a turtle is sick? I mean, they're all in their shell. They stick their necks and scrawny little legs out once in awhile, but they drop a little weight, who notices? The poor little bastard. He was alive at the moment I took him from his turtle habitat, and dead by the time I got him to the vet 2 miles away. There was no question of resuscitation. I have never, in my entire life, heard of anyone resuscitating a turtle.
But back to the fish. Ten years later and I still have the goddamn fish. I can hardly fucking believe it. One of them, he's just regular: torpedo shaped, cloudy eyes like any elderly thing. Sometimes, he's got bruises on the top of his head because he gets over enthusiastic at feeding time and bangs his head on the top of the aquarium. Other than that he's a pretty normal fish.
It's the other one who is the problem. He is about 4 inches long and looks like he swallowed a golf ball. You would think this was something a person might see developing over time, but that's not what happened. One day I just looked into the tank and said, "wow fish. It looks like you swallowed a golf ball." Since then, the golf ball has not only remained, but gotten bigger. Now it looks like the fish has swallowed, hmm... maybe a squash ball.
It's horrible. He's all distended. His scales won't stretch far enough to cover his bulk. His anal slit is way distended. If I was going to make up a creature for a monster movie, the only thing I would do differently is make it clay colored. This fish is a marval of survival, and to be honest, there are some days he's almost too much for me. Some days I can't stand to look at him.
But he eats. He swims, although not to the top of the tank. He waits until the food sinks down. And he persistently refuses to go belly up. Sometimes I catch him with my hand. He's, like, easier to catch than a dirt clod, and rub his sides and his belly. I don't know whether it feels good to him or bad. It is very hard to tell what a goldfish is feeling.
Anyway, the other day I couldn't stand it anymore. I just thought to myself, "this fish has got to be in horrible discomfort. He's already lived longer than, like, 99% of the fish in the universe, so maybe I should do him a favor and put him out of his misery." Oh, I'm sure there was a little of wanting to put him out of my misery. I have enough to worry about besides some horrible, mal-shaped fish.
But how to do it? I don't like violence, and I distain pain ever more. I didn't want the poor fish to suffer. I just wanted to help him along to the next world. I could have taken him outside and hit him on the head with a brick, but how is a person supposed to do something like that to a fish she's held in her hand and whose belly she's rubbed? No, hitting it in the head with a brick was impossible. I thought about suffocating it. Hold it out of the water for awhile, but I've seen that kind of shit before, and fish can hold on gasping for breath forever, all the while their gills and blood vessels straining against the oxygen and other diabolical gases brutalizing their breathing apparati like there's no tomorrow. No, holding him out of the water was an impossibility.
But... but... Owing to my rash of bad luck, I've in my possession more pain pills than the pope's had hot lunches, and an idea began to germinate. What if I mashed up a percoset, mixed it in a bucket with water and put the fish in it. Wouldn't it simply breath the narcotic and die? That seemed like a pretty painless method of execution. Don't you think?
I created said mixture, grabbing said fish. Have I mentioned that he's easier to catch than a dirt clod? You would be too if you were only 4 inches long, yet had a belly the size of a tennis ball. I placed him gently in the bucket, put the bucket in the shadows so it would be nice and peaceful, and went away for three hours.
And when I came back, the fish was as alive as ever. Swimming around. All mellowed out and happy. His tank mate however, looked exceptionally depressed. Dorsal fin collapsed, head lowered. Clearly pining for old basketball belly.
There is nothing sadder than a pining goldfish. If anyone can look at a pining goldfish and not have an emotional reaction, then I'm sorry, there's just something wrong with them.
I scooped up old zeppelin belly, which was, like, about a hundred times easier than picking up a dirt clod, and put him back in the tank. I try not to look at him much. He swims, he eats. He does not go belly up. What is a gal to do?
Saturday, November 24, 2007
Curved Space and Electromagnetism
I come in one driveway, the soon to be ex comes in the other. One of his headlights is out and I tell him so. He's into brightly colored geometric patterned polyester shirts these days, for 2 reasons. One, he's not living with me anymore and he can, and 2, he doesn't have to iron them. I believe somewhere in his consciousness, there's a whole London Mod thing going on. His stepfather was a hipster type. Engaland swings like a pendulum do. I've seen this side of him before, like a beat down herpes virus that can only muster the chutzpah to break out every ten years or so. It will visit more frequently now.
This kid, ours, whatever, he's around somewhere. I can't hear him but I know. I saw him slink in, dreading the whole family dinner thing. Oh, he'd hate it much more if it didn't happen. Certain things are just supposed to happen. The laundry gets done, the refrigerator is filled, the electricity flows through the wires, lighting bulbs, powering computers. And Thanksgiving dinner appears on Thanksgiving. Even if he doesn't feel like eating it, it must appear. It's the way the universe works. It's curved space and electromagnetism.
But I begin to question his presense. Maybe it was yesterday I saw him. Of course, he may have crawled under the carpet in his bedroom. He may have disappeared into a space behind the wall, like the little girl in that old episode of The Twilight Zone. One minute she's laying all comfy in her bed, the next she's been sucked through the bedroom wall and into another dimension.
So I figure I'll go get the mail and think it over. The geometric polyester shirt and its inhabitant have headed to the kitchen with a bottle of 11 dollar wine. He won't even miss me.
In the old days, I never forgot to bring in the mail. These days it happens all the time, primarily because there are bills to contemplate paying. Not that I actually have to pay them, though that's coming; it's contemplating paying them I can't cope with. The soon to be ex has been doing it for so many years I may have forgotten how. I think I can write a check, stick it in an envelope and put a stamp on it. I sort of believe that one day I'll be able to go out and earn the money to back up the check that goes in the envelope with the stamp stuck to it. Someday I might even be able to understand automatic withdrawals.
Anyway, the problem with being an efficient, competitive guy is that mere mortals routinely defer to your superior ability and before you know it, you wind up doing everything. No wonder the marriage blew apart.
Then again, it could have been some universal force. Something like curved space or electromagnetism.
But the point isn't the mail itself, it's what's in the mail, which is a report card. It's not so hot all around, but the stand out is the "C-minus" in European History. C-minus you see, is the new "D." I don't know what calling it a C-minus instead of a D is supposed to do exactly, except reinforce the idea that the kid's not below average. The Lake Woebegone Effect. I don't think it's at all like electromagnetism, but there it is.
"I thought you were doing better in this class!" Me, huffing and puffing. "A "C" is like a B-minus, but a C-minus is a "D." "You got a "D!" You've never gotten a "D" before.
"I did bring it up!" He protests. "He hasn't read the notebook yet!"
I have a feeling the notebook was probably actually due about 2 weeks before he handed it in. "Did he have time to read it?"
"How should I know?"
"You know," I say. "In the real world, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If Dad has work due, then he has to have it in on time or it can be fucking Einstein and it won't matter."
"I know! I'll bring it up."
He doesn't know. He just says that. Teenagers know everything.
"You got a "B" in Graphic design!" (N.B. remember, a B is now a C-plus.)
"I'm never going to do well in that class. I try my hardest."
"Fair enough. But European History... do you even breathe when you go into that classroom. Because if you breathed, you could do better that a "D."
"C-minus"
"Whatever the fuck!"
The next morning, he's all nice. For a minute, he's lulled me into complacency. Maybe he feels bad because he's slacked off too much. Maybe his conscience is bothering him for fobbing me off a million times and not doing his work.
"Did you ever cash that 50 dollar check?" He's talking about the one from his birthday, a month ago. I haven't."
"No."
"Will you?"
I'm cleaning the pool. See, in a week I'm going to lose my right arm to surgery. It will be back after awhile, but I'll be off line for six to 10 weeks. I've got to do all the physical work now that I can. And the fucking Desert Broom has clogged the pool filter. Again. "Yes."
After I finish dismantling the pool, I head out to the Circle K. Okay, the machine charges a 2 dollar service fee, but it's convenient. That's why it's called a convenience store. When I get back, I give the kid, mine, whatever, his 50 bucks.
"How about allowance?"
Well, it's after Friday, so I guess he's owed that too. Even though I had to remind him to bring the recycling bins in, twice. I lay another 20 on him. "Don't spend it on drugs," I say.
"I won't." He's convincing too. But then it doesn't take much. Anything but that "fuck you" attitude makes me roll onto my back and pee myself with joy.
How I long for the days of Lego and Dinosans.
This kid, ours, whatever, he's around somewhere. I can't hear him but I know. I saw him slink in, dreading the whole family dinner thing. Oh, he'd hate it much more if it didn't happen. Certain things are just supposed to happen. The laundry gets done, the refrigerator is filled, the electricity flows through the wires, lighting bulbs, powering computers. And Thanksgiving dinner appears on Thanksgiving. Even if he doesn't feel like eating it, it must appear. It's the way the universe works. It's curved space and electromagnetism.
But I begin to question his presense. Maybe it was yesterday I saw him. Of course, he may have crawled under the carpet in his bedroom. He may have disappeared into a space behind the wall, like the little girl in that old episode of The Twilight Zone. One minute she's laying all comfy in her bed, the next she's been sucked through the bedroom wall and into another dimension.
So I figure I'll go get the mail and think it over. The geometric polyester shirt and its inhabitant have headed to the kitchen with a bottle of 11 dollar wine. He won't even miss me.
In the old days, I never forgot to bring in the mail. These days it happens all the time, primarily because there are bills to contemplate paying. Not that I actually have to pay them, though that's coming; it's contemplating paying them I can't cope with. The soon to be ex has been doing it for so many years I may have forgotten how. I think I can write a check, stick it in an envelope and put a stamp on it. I sort of believe that one day I'll be able to go out and earn the money to back up the check that goes in the envelope with the stamp stuck to it. Someday I might even be able to understand automatic withdrawals.
Anyway, the problem with being an efficient, competitive guy is that mere mortals routinely defer to your superior ability and before you know it, you wind up doing everything. No wonder the marriage blew apart.
Then again, it could have been some universal force. Something like curved space or electromagnetism.
But the point isn't the mail itself, it's what's in the mail, which is a report card. It's not so hot all around, but the stand out is the "C-minus" in European History. C-minus you see, is the new "D." I don't know what calling it a C-minus instead of a D is supposed to do exactly, except reinforce the idea that the kid's not below average. The Lake Woebegone Effect. I don't think it's at all like electromagnetism, but there it is.
"I thought you were doing better in this class!" Me, huffing and puffing. "A "C" is like a B-minus, but a C-minus is a "D." "You got a "D!" You've never gotten a "D" before.
"I did bring it up!" He protests. "He hasn't read the notebook yet!"
I have a feeling the notebook was probably actually due about 2 weeks before he handed it in. "Did he have time to read it?"
"How should I know?"
"You know," I say. "In the real world, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If Dad has work due, then he has to have it in on time or it can be fucking Einstein and it won't matter."
"I know! I'll bring it up."
He doesn't know. He just says that. Teenagers know everything.
"You got a "B" in Graphic design!" (N.B. remember, a B is now a C-plus.)
"I'm never going to do well in that class. I try my hardest."
"Fair enough. But European History... do you even breathe when you go into that classroom. Because if you breathed, you could do better that a "D."
"C-minus"
"Whatever the fuck!"
The next morning, he's all nice. For a minute, he's lulled me into complacency. Maybe he feels bad because he's slacked off too much. Maybe his conscience is bothering him for fobbing me off a million times and not doing his work.
"Did you ever cash that 50 dollar check?" He's talking about the one from his birthday, a month ago. I haven't."
"No."
"Will you?"
I'm cleaning the pool. See, in a week I'm going to lose my right arm to surgery. It will be back after awhile, but I'll be off line for six to 10 weeks. I've got to do all the physical work now that I can. And the fucking Desert Broom has clogged the pool filter. Again. "Yes."
After I finish dismantling the pool, I head out to the Circle K. Okay, the machine charges a 2 dollar service fee, but it's convenient. That's why it's called a convenience store. When I get back, I give the kid, mine, whatever, his 50 bucks.
"How about allowance?"
Well, it's after Friday, so I guess he's owed that too. Even though I had to remind him to bring the recycling bins in, twice. I lay another 20 on him. "Don't spend it on drugs," I say.
"I won't." He's convincing too. But then it doesn't take much. Anything but that "fuck you" attitude makes me roll onto my back and pee myself with joy.
How I long for the days of Lego and Dinosans.
Monday, November 19, 2007
Zenny
The Buddhists say you can't step into the same river twice. Some of them, those Zenny ones who think they're really clever, say you can't even step into the same river once, since by the time you get the other foot in, it's already a different river. Zen Buddhists? They're mostly mean. They get off on fucking with peoples' heads. You wanna meet a nice Buddhist, you gotta go to the Mahayanas.
In any case, the Zennies are confusing the water in the river with the river bed.
Metaphysically speaking, I only know what it is like to be a rock in the river. Water rushing by, changing and re-shaping me and everything around me without giving two shits as to whether we want to be rearranged or not.
Last night, a friend in LA sent me to his website, asked me to listen to a tune. It took me awhile. He's got a MAC, I've got a PC and everyone knows what kind of trouble that causes. But finally I found a format that would work and listened to the tune. I recognized it; it made me cry. But I had no idea what it was.
He said it was a melody I'd written 25 years ago. Man, I hate time. It is the most goddamn powerful force every spawned by physics. The egghead crowd-- you know the ones- they get their pithy articles published in the New Yorker, are forever saying droll shit like, "time is what keeps everything from happening at once." Oh, how clever. Ooooh, let me wrap my mind around that one.
Later last night, I woke up and remembered the first verse to that 25 year old song. "Winds that say your name. Colors that don't ever change. I stare at the night. Wishing you could somehow make it right. But Venus it don't rise any more. And I sit back and wonder what I ever came here for. To the Milky Way."
Kind of cute. Kind of sweet, right?
And it reminds me of that old joke. Guy number one says to guy number 2, "Where'd you go to school at?" Guy number 2 says, "Wherever I went, they taught me never to end a sentence with a preposition." Guy number one says, "Okay, where'd you go to school at, asshole?"
I think about love sometimes. About youth and the things that go with it. I think about laying on a diving board at 2 AM, looking at the stars not wondering so much, why is there something rather than nothing, but, "why isn't there more?" Why was it, I wondered, that there had to be millions of light years between stars, blinding me with deep purples and blacks, when they could all be closer together, illuminating the night sky like a never ending fireworks show?"
The answer of course is, they can't. Not and keep the rest of the shit from flying off into nowhere or imploding like a suicidal poet.
In any case, the Zennies are confusing the water in the river with the river bed.
Metaphysically speaking, I only know what it is like to be a rock in the river. Water rushing by, changing and re-shaping me and everything around me without giving two shits as to whether we want to be rearranged or not.
Last night, a friend in LA sent me to his website, asked me to listen to a tune. It took me awhile. He's got a MAC, I've got a PC and everyone knows what kind of trouble that causes. But finally I found a format that would work and listened to the tune. I recognized it; it made me cry. But I had no idea what it was.
He said it was a melody I'd written 25 years ago. Man, I hate time. It is the most goddamn powerful force every spawned by physics. The egghead crowd-- you know the ones- they get their pithy articles published in the New Yorker, are forever saying droll shit like, "time is what keeps everything from happening at once." Oh, how clever. Ooooh, let me wrap my mind around that one.
Later last night, I woke up and remembered the first verse to that 25 year old song. "Winds that say your name. Colors that don't ever change. I stare at the night. Wishing you could somehow make it right. But Venus it don't rise any more. And I sit back and wonder what I ever came here for. To the Milky Way."
Kind of cute. Kind of sweet, right?
And it reminds me of that old joke. Guy number one says to guy number 2, "Where'd you go to school at?" Guy number 2 says, "Wherever I went, they taught me never to end a sentence with a preposition." Guy number one says, "Okay, where'd you go to school at, asshole?"
I think about love sometimes. About youth and the things that go with it. I think about laying on a diving board at 2 AM, looking at the stars not wondering so much, why is there something rather than nothing, but, "why isn't there more?" Why was it, I wondered, that there had to be millions of light years between stars, blinding me with deep purples and blacks, when they could all be closer together, illuminating the night sky like a never ending fireworks show?"
The answer of course is, they can't. Not and keep the rest of the shit from flying off into nowhere or imploding like a suicidal poet.
Monday, November 5, 2007
Halloween Night
So this kid, mine, whatever, he's sitting on the loveseat like an ugly girl waiting to be picked up for a date. Says he's going trick or treating, only he doesn't have a bag and as the silver pick up truck pulls up on the side street-- it never comes in the driveway-- he tells me it doesn't matter as he dashes out the door. Part of me supposes he's going to get a bag somewhere else, but given that he doesn't have a costume, the bigger part of me knows it's bullshit. That he's not going trick or treating at all. He's going somewhere with the guys in the silver pickup truck. The brand new one. The driver's parents bought it for his 16th birthday, on account of being blind, deaf, and dumb, to who their own kid actually is.
Which is the neighborhood dope dealer. I've been soft peddling it in my head, but there it is. This little wanker, he avoids my eyes when I look at him. This kid, mine, whatever, he sidled up to the passenger window of this truck yesterday, maybe the day before as well, like a snake crawling up the backyard wall. If I'm cool and flat enough, the wanker, the one with the silver pickup truck, will like me, thinks this kid. And that's all he really wants of course. Same thing every teenage kid wants, to be liked. To fly under the radar 24 7 and still be noticed for something ineffable yet at the same time solid.
This, of course, is impossible. But this kid, mine, whatever, he doesn't know that yet. And this night, Halloween, he gets into the truck with no hesitation. No sidling required at all.
Seven, 8, 9. Late by my estimation on a school night, but what do I know? Ten, 11, long past the time the sweet goblins and ghosts have been tucked into their beds. But this kid, mine, whatever, is nowhere to be seen. At least not if "nowhere" means our house. He's definately not to be seen anywhere around this particular nowhere. I ring the cellphone and after 4 or 5 rings, no one picks up. The next time I call it goes straight through to voice mail. Same the next time, and the next time. I leave a text message. Says, "Call me." Nothing. This kid, mine, whatever, he has checked out.
I worry. The last time this happened, he got his father evicted from his apartment. Long story, but believe me when I tell you, it has something to do with the wanker in the silver pickup truck. I don't know if he had the silver pickup truck back then. Probaby, his parents bought it for him as a reward for getting my husband thrown out of his apartment. "Aren't you clever, little no-eye-contact-wanker." "Here, have a pickup truck and while we're at it, let us light that bongload for you. The fact that you exist, sure enough, is proof positive of our parenting skills."
"Here, maybe you can run yourself over with this shiny new pickup truck. And while you're at it, go ahead and run over this kid, her's, whatever. The one that sidles up the side by the passenger window like a cobra stoned on Mexican dirtweed from Guadalajara."
Parenting has very low standards these days.
Me, I'm trying to keep cool. Reading a page turner by Greg Iles, a capable enough page turner writer I guess, but no sense of humor at all. How do such people survive day to day, that's what I'm wondering. Don't they know that what they're writing is trite? That all the death and rape and sadism has been done a million times before? So what if they come up with a new way to kill people. Death is boring. So fucking boring. Death is the most boring thing ever. There's so much of it around. Mud is more interesting. Dirt, dust, laundry is more interesting than death. I could feel more stimulation watching motes change trajectory when my eyes blink, than I do hearing about more death.
I ring the cell phone again. It's 11:35. This kid, mine, whatever, answers all chirpy-like. Hi Mom, what's going on, having a smashing game of pingpong and drinking Mountain Dew spiked with cough syrup, thank you very much.
Course by now, I've left several nasty messages along the lines of, "this turning off your cellphone doesn't work at all. If you don't call me back in 15 minutes, you're losing it." The 15 minutes has long since passed. He's already lost it.
"Do you know what time it is?" I say.
"It's Halloween!" he says.
"On a school night! You still have to get up in the morning at the regular time."
"Okay, I'll be right home."
Minutes later, a truck pulls up in the driveway. I want to pull down my boxers and moon all the little bastards, but of course that will only get them all worked up and they'll never go away. Eventually, after much gay banter, no doubt along the lines of, "you're so busted, dude," the truck drives away. This kid, mine whatever however, is nowhere to be seen.
Close to midnight and I want to go to bed. He's sitting in the gravel on the driveway, and when he hears the door open, gets up.
"You been smoking pot?" He's got no candy. Not a Snickers, not a Butterfinger. Not a candybar to be seen.
"Yeah."
"What the fuck? You said you were going trick or treating. It's nearly fucking midnight!" He's slinked in, is pouring apple juice from the pitcher, cap pulled low over his brow. "Who were you with?"
"Perry." Perry the wanker. Perry the Pear. Perry the punk with the sway and the dough. The cut-off kid and I don't give a fuck. Not anymore than I give a fuck for scabies or a persistant case of ringworm.
This kid, mine, whatever, he says he's sorry. Comes over and hugs me. He never does that. I can count the number of times he's hugged me on one foot, even if I'd blown 4 of my toes off with a pistol, I could still do it.
I figure he must be on acid or something.
Greg Iles is waiting in the bedroom, with his flat dead prose and his hundred ways of killing somebody. He ain't much, but he's all I got.
Which is the neighborhood dope dealer. I've been soft peddling it in my head, but there it is. This little wanker, he avoids my eyes when I look at him. This kid, mine, whatever, he sidled up to the passenger window of this truck yesterday, maybe the day before as well, like a snake crawling up the backyard wall. If I'm cool and flat enough, the wanker, the one with the silver pickup truck, will like me, thinks this kid. And that's all he really wants of course. Same thing every teenage kid wants, to be liked. To fly under the radar 24 7 and still be noticed for something ineffable yet at the same time solid.
This, of course, is impossible. But this kid, mine, whatever, he doesn't know that yet. And this night, Halloween, he gets into the truck with no hesitation. No sidling required at all.
Seven, 8, 9. Late by my estimation on a school night, but what do I know? Ten, 11, long past the time the sweet goblins and ghosts have been tucked into their beds. But this kid, mine, whatever, is nowhere to be seen. At least not if "nowhere" means our house. He's definately not to be seen anywhere around this particular nowhere. I ring the cellphone and after 4 or 5 rings, no one picks up. The next time I call it goes straight through to voice mail. Same the next time, and the next time. I leave a text message. Says, "Call me." Nothing. This kid, mine, whatever, he has checked out.
I worry. The last time this happened, he got his father evicted from his apartment. Long story, but believe me when I tell you, it has something to do with the wanker in the silver pickup truck. I don't know if he had the silver pickup truck back then. Probaby, his parents bought it for him as a reward for getting my husband thrown out of his apartment. "Aren't you clever, little no-eye-contact-wanker." "Here, have a pickup truck and while we're at it, let us light that bongload for you. The fact that you exist, sure enough, is proof positive of our parenting skills."
"Here, maybe you can run yourself over with this shiny new pickup truck. And while you're at it, go ahead and run over this kid, her's, whatever. The one that sidles up the side by the passenger window like a cobra stoned on Mexican dirtweed from Guadalajara."
Parenting has very low standards these days.
Me, I'm trying to keep cool. Reading a page turner by Greg Iles, a capable enough page turner writer I guess, but no sense of humor at all. How do such people survive day to day, that's what I'm wondering. Don't they know that what they're writing is trite? That all the death and rape and sadism has been done a million times before? So what if they come up with a new way to kill people. Death is boring. So fucking boring. Death is the most boring thing ever. There's so much of it around. Mud is more interesting. Dirt, dust, laundry is more interesting than death. I could feel more stimulation watching motes change trajectory when my eyes blink, than I do hearing about more death.
I ring the cell phone again. It's 11:35. This kid, mine, whatever, answers all chirpy-like. Hi Mom, what's going on, having a smashing game of pingpong and drinking Mountain Dew spiked with cough syrup, thank you very much.
Course by now, I've left several nasty messages along the lines of, "this turning off your cellphone doesn't work at all. If you don't call me back in 15 minutes, you're losing it." The 15 minutes has long since passed. He's already lost it.
"Do you know what time it is?" I say.
"It's Halloween!" he says.
"On a school night! You still have to get up in the morning at the regular time."
"Okay, I'll be right home."
Minutes later, a truck pulls up in the driveway. I want to pull down my boxers and moon all the little bastards, but of course that will only get them all worked up and they'll never go away. Eventually, after much gay banter, no doubt along the lines of, "you're so busted, dude," the truck drives away. This kid, mine whatever however, is nowhere to be seen.
Close to midnight and I want to go to bed. He's sitting in the gravel on the driveway, and when he hears the door open, gets up.
"You been smoking pot?" He's got no candy. Not a Snickers, not a Butterfinger. Not a candybar to be seen.
"Yeah."
"What the fuck? You said you were going trick or treating. It's nearly fucking midnight!" He's slinked in, is pouring apple juice from the pitcher, cap pulled low over his brow. "Who were you with?"
"Perry." Perry the wanker. Perry the Pear. Perry the punk with the sway and the dough. The cut-off kid and I don't give a fuck. Not anymore than I give a fuck for scabies or a persistant case of ringworm.
This kid, mine, whatever, he says he's sorry. Comes over and hugs me. He never does that. I can count the number of times he's hugged me on one foot, even if I'd blown 4 of my toes off with a pistol, I could still do it.
I figure he must be on acid or something.
Greg Iles is waiting in the bedroom, with his flat dead prose and his hundred ways of killing somebody. He ain't much, but he's all I got.
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