What kind of strange stuff?
He had you there. Should you attempt to articulate it, the strange stuff would sound pretty innocuous. How could you explain why a doctored tarot card and the stupid word Bozo were distracting you from business and turning your Easter into Halloween? Belford, you say at last, do you think were trying to follow the show with the wrong libretto?
There is silence on the line. Then he asks, What exactly is a libretto?
Good grief! Get that man out of town before you marry him. What times your flight? When do you come back?
Planes at eleven. I get back late Sunday night. And honeykins, since youre available now, I wonder if youd be up for driving me to the airport? In my car, if you dont mind. Id kinda like to leave you with the Lincoln sos that when youre driving around looking for AndrE, hed be able to, you know, recognize the car. Are you aware-he chuckles in a sad, proud way-that sometimes the little rascal sits on my lap while I drive? I think he wants to steer.
When do you want to pick me up? you ask coldly. Anything, even this, is better than waiting around for the slut of the occult.
Nine-thirty.
Ill be ready at nine forty-five.
TEN-FORTY P.M.
On the way home from the airport, you ease the Lincoln up to eighty miles an hour. You arent in that much of a hurry, despite your acute curiosity about Q-Jos circumstance; it is only that you are certain Belford has never pushed the town car over fifty-five, and for some reason that irks you. How do you like it, baby? you ask the speeding vehicle, then blush all the way down to the gas pedal at the sexual innuendo in your remark.
On a whim, or maybe not, you take the Seneca Street exit and find yourself downtown. From there, its as natural as buying low and selling high to drive past Posner Lampard McEvoy and Jacobsen. You just want to see if the lights are on. Oh, my goodness, they are! Moreover, as the fates would have it, there is a parking space right across the street. You pull into it and kill the engine. You are so nervous your nipples are vibrating. But, hey, you have every right in the world to go upstairs and check out what is happening-and if no one is watching, to make an effort to cover some of your tracks.
Uh-oh. The entrance to the elevator lobby is blocked by what is called a street person. And he is armed with one of those high-tech weapons that were so popular after the last Gulf War. No, no, calm down, its not a mini-missile after all, its a telescope on a tripod.
One dollar, lady, you can see the man in the moon. Two dollars, you can look at Sirius.
Whys it more for Sirius?
Its farther away.
You cant argue with that. Well, a gander at the stars is better than a serenade on a squeeze box (a street person last week wanted fifty cents to play Strangers in the Night on a Jews harp), and if you humor him he might step aside and let you pass. His face is kindly, if a trifle hollow-eyed and dissipated: he is probably an astronomy professor who has lost his job in the crunch. You fork over two bucks, bend at the waist, and put one brown orb to the lens.
Where? I dont see… . Wait, I think Ive found it. You press your eye against the eyepiece until, like the row of stiff bristles on the leg of a psocid, your lash rakes and combs the optical glass. Theres a bright dot there. Is that it? Not much to look at.
The astronomy bum snorts, and then he hacks, spitting onto the sidewalk a glob of such substance that you hear it splat. Lady, theres eight-point-six light-years between it and us.
That doesnt sound so far. Is this a good telescope?
Shit, lady, thats trillions of miles. I said trillions. Even so, its pretty damn close. Its relatively close and relatively big. Brightest star in the sky.
Oh, come on. Who does this tramp think hes kidding? Ive seen a lot brighter ones. Without a telescope, too.
There comes a cackle, a snort, a cough, and a splat. You shudder, imagining something the consistency of pancake batter and the color of the life-forms in a bachelors refrigerator, but you keep your eye on the dancing point of yellow fire at the end of the tube. What you may have seen, missy, the vulgar fellow dares to correct you, was Venus or Mars or Jupiter. Theyre planets, for Christ Almightys sake. Sirius there is a star.
Okay, he may be right about that. You arent going to enter into a discussion with a marginal astronomer. By his aroma, you can tell he has moved nearer. Fact is, he says, Sirius is a binary star. Theres two of em. Sirius A, the Dog Star so-called, is the big sparkly one. But hes got a teenie-weenie buddy. Sirius B. The little ones a white dwarf. Thats a technical term, but I can understand how a person like you might think its poetic.
Can I see it? The little star? You really arent that interested, but you want to get your two dollars worth.
Maybe, if you squint real hard. Its to the lower right of the big one.
As you strain to pick out Sirius B, there is a pop and a flash, as if Sirius A has exploded-and the heavens and all that doth loom and lurk and leap and lie beneath them disappear.
When you regain consciousness, minutes later, you are flat on the sidewalk, your jeans and panties down around your ankles, the contents of your purse strewn about you like a dead pharaohettes favorite things.
ELEVEN P.M.
Everybody in town has a front-row seat at the first public showing of your twat: each and every hair countable, labial road map unfolded for consultation, clitoris a gleaming morsel awaiting cocktail fork or chopsticks. Yet, you are not blushing. You are beyond blush. You have fled that which blushes. It is the Worst Day of Your Life, Part II, and you have crossed the river and climbed a tree.
Gradually, however, for better or worse, you are winched back into your body. The pavement is frigid against your bare derriere, and the glare of a street lamp beats against your vision like a board. You sit up slowly. There is no spear of pain, nothing flops around as if broken. Tugging up underpants and pants, you rise to your feet. Buckling your belt, you look around you. To your surprise and relief, you are alone on the street. The shabby Sagan has vanished, and with him the assorted beggars and buskers who previously had populated the block, although in the distance you perceive a clump of shadowy figures from whose midst there floats the unmistakable refrain of Strangers in the Night being played on a Jews harp. You scoop up your possessions and fling them into your purse.
Ive been raped and robbed, you think, and I must notify the police. But not here. Not on the pay phone in the lobby, and most assuredly not upstairs in Posners disco. Looking over your shoulder all the while, you hurry across Sixth Avenue to the car. Once inside the Lincoln, doors locked, engine running, you begin to shake and sob. You also begin, as the shock wears off, to doubt that youve been raped. Your crotch is neither sore nor damp. The sting, the scent, of violation are nowhere upon you. Wary as a worm-yanking robin, lest any of the homeless sneak up on the car, you take inventory in your bag. The cash is still there, all forty dollars of it minus the two with which you purchased this latest affront. So-oh, joy!-is your Visa gold card. For that matter, so is the altered tarot card, which youd brought along to show to Belford in the event he proved receptive: he did not. The way things have been going, it would not have astonished you had that dumb card been the only item missing.
In a sense, you are greatly relieved, relieved to the point of saying Thank you, dear God to an entity whom you have long suspected of the most flagrant indulgence in insider trading. On the other hand, you feel shortchanged in some perverse fashion, as if you cannot even be properly raped and robbed. You massage the back of your neck, which has commenced to ache: the gutter Galileo must have taken you out with a rabbit punch. How appropriate at Easter. Since your various treasures are intact, the assault must have been motivated by a desire to humiliate you. Such crimes, vented against the haves by the have-nots, are on the rise, youve heard; prompted by envy, resentment, and vengeance movies. If only they knew how near you are to having not.
ELEVEN-FOURTEEN P.M.
You are traveling home by a curiously circuitous route, due to the fact that every time y
ou see in the distance a congregation of street people or a gang of threatening teenagers (black hair plus brown eyes equals threat, eh, Gwen?), you turn so that you wont have to drive past them. Perhaps you worry that should you spot the astronomer you could not resist swerving onto the sidewalk and sending him to the moon with the front end of the Lincoln. Or maybe you are afraid that a well-groomed woman alone behind the wheel of a luxury automobile will be perceived as an opportunity, and at a traffic signal or stop sign, lightning could strike twice. Affluence has its downside.
In any event, still shaking and sobbing a little, you are now on Second Avenue, a one-way artery running south; which is to say, you are heading away from Queen Anne Hill rather than toward it, a problem in navigation that will have to be corrected. As you slow to investigate the advisability of the next cross-street, a sudden surge of music smacks the car with a force that makes you jump. You swivel to see zigzags of festive neon and a marquee that reads, LIVE FRIDAY! BETTY SPAGHETTI&THE MEATBALLS. Ah-ha: the Werewolf Club. If only you had consented to go there tonight, maybe Q-Jo would have come home on time, and none of this would have happened. On the other hand, had Q-Jo better taste in music, the Werewolf would not have been an issue. For that matter, you could not agree on a movie, either. You had wanted to attend a Cary Grant double feature at a revival house, Q-Jo was excited about a transcendentalist porno film entitled Deep Thoreau. Good grief! Yours is a futile friendship-but you sure hope she has finally come home.
As you are wheeling onto the side street, you notice a throng in the middle of the block. Immediately, you brake and shift into reverse, considering a retreat back onto Second. But, no, that wont be necessary. You can make out that the people are dressed in trendy leathers and are lined up, more or less, before a velvet rope. You ease forward. Neither marquee nor neon here. A discreet brass plaque identifies the place as Club Woman Ray. The Marcel Duchamp robot, a fuming cigarette in its rubberized lips, is admitting would-be guests only after careful scrutiny of their bearing and attire. The dorky, the insolvent, and the overanxious are summarily rejected. You like that. Its like the eighties. Nowadays, most clubs and restaurants are so financially strapped they practically pull in patrons by their collars. Marcel-how, you wonder, did they program him to be so discriminating?-opens the door to admit a couple in matching outfits of pink snakeskin. For a fleeting moment, you see all the way to the stage. There, in Filipino guerrilla garb, squats your father with his bongo drums, as you have seen him squat a thousand times. Before the heavy steel door can swing shut, you catch a few familiar lines.
With gaunt teddy bear won
at loves cheat-o carnival
tucked under my tendrilous
armpit,
I climb into the pickup truck
with Death,
lured by his hypnotic kitchie-koo,
by the everlasting licorice
of his lollipops.
Right. You remember. That one was called All-Day Sucker. She wrote it just before she threw herself off the Aurora Bridge. You linger to catch another glimpse of your dad, but a stretch limo pulls up behind you and blasts its horn. You drive away.
ELEVEN TWENTY-TWO P.M.
Should you choose, in your moment of parental reverie, you could motor to Queen Anne by way of the Aurora Bridge, ascending the hill from the north, but it is the long way home, and besides, you are not really certain the bridge is where your mother took her life. The truth is, you dont know what method she used to liquidate her mortal assets. What you do recall, and recall vividly, is that in the June of your twelfth year, your mom, emulating her poetic idol, Sylvia somebody, turned the oven on and stuck her head in it. Unfortunately or fortunately, as the case might be, she was guilty of an embarrassing oversight. Your family had an electric stove.
Instead of gassing herself into sweet oblivion, all she did was get unbearably hot and set her hair on fire. An awful odor filled the flat. When you crawled out of bed to see what the smell was about, she was kneeling in the middle of the kitchen, smoking like a smudge pot, while your father emptied a jug of red wine on her head. That was your last sight of her. She was overnight in the hospital for treatment of scalp burns, and the next morning you and your brother were dispatched to Oakland to spend the rest of the summer with Grandma Mati. Sometime in August, your mother was successful at suicide. They decided to spare little Squeak the details.
ELEVEN THIRTY-FIVE P.M.
You park the Lincoln outside your own building. If Belford thinks for one minute that youre going to comb Queen Anne for that goddamned monkey, hes lost his mind. Even had you not been brutally attacked, you wouldnt look for AndrE. Not tonight, at any rate. Tomorrow is another day.
Before going inside, you steal an impulsive peek at Sirius. Sirius A. Sirius B is invisible to the naked eye. If, indeed, there is any such thing as Sirius B. The guy could have been leading you on. Psst, little girl, wanna come up and see my white dwarf? You will have to ask the Huff about it. Q-Jo told you once that all of the heavy elements in the universe, including those in the human body, were created by the terrible death throes of iron in the stars. This knowledge made her feel a kinship, she said, with the most distant galaxies. All it did for you was remind you that you hadnt taken your vitamins.
Well, looking up at Sirius (which is bright, all right) isnt helping your sore neck any. You climb the stairs and bang on Q-Jos door. No response. You scoot down the hall and check the messages on your machine. There is only one, and it is from Belford, calling from the airport to tell you he misses you already. Belfords an unmitigated dweeb, you think, but in a way you miss him, too. You desperately need somebody to talk to.
On a whim, you go back down the hall and let yourself into Q-Jos place. Nothing has changed. She has not been home. The cards are still spread on the table, her appointment book is still lying open on the rickety old chiffonier. Hey! The appointment book! Good thinking, Gwendolyn. Alas, the lone entry for Friday after the noon session with the garden buff is a hastily scribbled reminder: Call L.D. Thats the extent of it. Call, obviously, Larry Diamond. But no uckingfay number, excuse your Pig Latin. You take a chance and look him up in the directory. Naturally, hes not listed. Posner might possibly have Diamonds number, and Posner is a night owl, but you are feeling just too vulnerable to ring him up. Before you speak with Posner again, you have got to recalcify your shell.
You sit down at the cherrywood table where, by the low-wattage shine of a tasseled lamp, you, first slowly, absentmindedly, then with rapid purpose, turn over the tarot cards. It is reassuring to find that no other card has been tampered with, although it makes the mystery of the Nommo card seem all the more befuddling. You rummage through the disarray of your purse and retrieve the card in question to return it to the deck. Let somebody else deal with it. Youve got enough on your mind without pondering web-footed star girls. As the card slides through your fingers, however, you feel an electrical fizz in your nerves-and for no logical reason you get up and take another look at Q-Jos appointment book.
There it is, lying on the page like a jellyfish on a beach: imperceptible until you are about to step on it, but then, oh my, how it looms. Friday morning, nine-thirty, Larry Diamond, Thunder House, 783-0190.
ELEVEN FIFTY-FIVE P.M.
What will you say when he answers? Wouldnt it be wise to disguise your voice? Can you ask for Q-Jo Huffington without quaking or squeaking? An hour ago, you were assaulted on the street, why arent you in bed? In the shower? At your doctors? On the phone to the police? You are shaking again as you touch 7, touch 8, touch 3… .
Theres a hole in Gods ether where all the ringing goes. One burble after another passes through your brain on its way to the nirvana of noise, where it will either join eternitys choir or reincarnate as, say, the sizzle of a patty or the mew of a cub. One more ring. Youll give it one more ring, and then youre hanging up. Okay, one for good measure and thats all. The last ring is interrupted between the bur and the ble. There is a second or two of canned silence, so
easy to distinguish from good old-fashioned farm-fresh organic silence. Then, holding your breath, you hear these recorded words:
Youre wasting your time calling here. Unless, of course, youve gotten your hands on the appropriate libretto.
Aside from the shock of its content, two things strike you about the message: One, while the man is speaking, there are huge rumbling and crashing noises in the background. Two, his is the voice from your dream.
SIX A.M.
Once, in a spasm of sappiness, you asked Q-Jo if she thought your dreams would ever come true. You arent talking about dreams, she corrected you, youre referring to your pathetic bourgeoisie ambitions. Dreams dont come true. Dreams are true.
You thought about that as you tossed and rolled-sleepless, dreamless-through the night, but there were so many thoughts playing bumper cars in your brain that you hadnt more than a few seconds to spend with any particular one before it was rear-ended or broadsided by a different thought-that then took its brief turn leading the pack. You tried to stay focused on the market, on your chances for survival if there wasnt a major rebound on Monday, but there were simply too many other cars careening and caroming in your cerebral motordrome. For example, even though a squeamish examination of your vagina convinced you that you had escaped sexual molestation during your downtown ordeal, you could not help but worry if you should not be tested for AIDS. With the disease rampant these days, a test might be prudent, and only moderately embarrassing. Certainly less embarrassing than taking your pants-down story to the police. And speaking of the police, maybe you should… . No, no, Q-Jo would be home in the morning, just forget about her, the oracular hussy. Yet, you could not forget about her for very long. Thrice during the awful night, you got up to give her a call, and following the third unsuccessful attempt, you redialed Larry Diamonds number, as well. You were almost relieved when you got the same pompous message as before, but it set you to thinking about your libretto dream. And about that dumb word, Bozo. Apparently, Diamond had been Q-Jos Friday morning tarot client, in addition to hiring her to look at his Timbuktu souvenirs on Friday afternoon, so it was probably him, Diamond, youd bet a hundred shares of Microsoft on it, who had messed with the Huffs Star card. To what end? She must have permitted him. To what end? Assisted him. To what end? Tossing on the pillow, you felt a pain in your neck, a welcome pain because it ka-whammed the Diamond car against the rail of the arena, allowing yet another thought-ooga-ooga, blink-blink-to scoot triumphant out of traffic.