This day there is to be Van Gooo-gh.
FIVE TWENTY-SEVEN A.M.
After circling the bowling alley once, you park in the rear (that being the west side of the building), adjacent to the long, narrow, ground-level window in Twisters tipi.
Get a grip on yourself, AndrE. Be patient. You get to have some more fun, but itll take me a minute. The macaque is all aflutter, though whether in anticipation of another heist or because you are withholding his treats, you cannot know.
With an X -Acto knife, you trim a piece of heavy poster board until it forms a rectangle approximately fifteen inches by eleven. Then you go to work with a thick black crayon. You have had no formal art training, but your brother is a professional sculptor in San Francisco, and your mother had a talent for rendering in ink the mutilated unicorns and crumbling gravestones with which she often illustrated her poems, so your genes have provided you a facile touch with a sketch. Obviously, nothing is required here beyond the crudest approximation of the original, merely enough of a resemblance to inform the little thief what he is to snatch, yet you tax your memory-you have only seen the drawing once-to position the figures correctly; and once you have smeared the copy with fingertip and spit, you fancy that your cartoonish peasants possess some of the coarse dignity with which Van Gogh endowed his originals. Your appreciation may be enhanced by the light, or rather the lack of it: the sky is all huckleberry and nasturtium, the color of Gods linoleum, but it is not yet bright enough to permit clear vision.
Here we go, baby. Please hurry, okay? You lead AndrE to Twisters window, wag a Popsicle under his nose, and hand him the drawing. This is what Auntie Gwen wants. It wont fit in your cheek pouch, but you can do it. And, hey, Ill pay extra for a rush job. Express, okay? Go! Now! Go!
To be sure, Twisters window is shut and locked, but this monkey is supposed to be a master of the breakin, an animal criminal genius. You have every faith, yet it is strained when AndrE, after fiddling with the window for a while, lies down beside it and begins to whimper. Good grief!
FIVE THIRTY-EIGHT A.M.
You could smash the window glass with a tire iron or something. Your desire, however, is to have this look like an inside job. When Twister returns from the airport to find his precious drawing gone, he and the investigators will have scant choice but to blame Larry Diamond. Theyll straighten it out in a few days, so no harm will be done, and by then you should be well beyond easy reach.
That was the plan. Now, as desperation mounts, you look around for an object to heave through the pane. VoilA! Whats this in the weeds? A bowling ball! My, my; some low-class oaf with a marginal existence must have logged such a pitiful score that he threw his ball away in a fit of proletarian pique. You pick it up. Ick! Its filthy. And heavier than you had supposed. Its the first time in your life that you have ever handled one of these moons that orbit Milwaukee, and you suspect that merely lifting it has compromised your dignity and reduced your IQ. Straining to hold it away from your body, you walk toward the window.
Suddenly, however, as if he has been struck by an actual thought, the monkey springs to his feet and commences to shinny up a drainpipe. He is heading for the rooftop, perhaps in search of a ventilation shaft. Okay! Marvelous! This is more like it. You knew you could count on the simian scourge of the COte dAzur. You drop the bowling ball in disgust, massage your pained neck, and return to your car for the nerve-racking wait.
FIVE FORTY-FOUR A.M.
The time is five forty-four. Since you cannot conceive of there having been a prolonged farewell at Sea-Tac, it is reasonable to expect Twister within the next five or six minutes. To steady your emotional wobble and to prevent further gnashing of your bitten-down nails, you examine once more your packet of airline tickets-the fresh tickets that you acquired in the Sea-Tac exchange.
Seattle to New York. Good. The flight leaves in a couple of hours.
New York to Amsterdam. Excellent. If the Dutch industrialist was offering two million and change for the Van Gogh drawing, you certainly ought to be able to get half that from one of his fellow collectors. A little research. A little of your celebrated salesmanship. Bingo! You have allotted yourself a week. Then—
Amsterdam to Manila. Perfect. Grandma Mati will shelter you for as long as you might wish. Even if something has gone wrong and the authorities are after you, there is no extradition treaty between the United States and the Philippines. And once there, things could go very well, indeed. In her last letter, Grandma Mati wrote that there are a number of ambitious young politicians maneuvering to fill a power vacuum in the Filipino government. A young Filipina as well-educated, moneyed (your grandmother believes you are prosperous), sophisticated, and pretty as you (your unfortunate Anglo nose is a flaw they could persuade themselves to overlook) would be a catch, a definite boost to their political aspirations. You might very well, she wrote, become the new Imelda Marcos.
Personally, you would rather become the new Gwendolyn Mati, but, hey, the new Imelda Marcos has a prosperous ring.
FIVE-FIFTY A.M.
Jesus jumping Mary!
AndrE is back. You neither heard him approach nor saw where he came from-Twisters window remains closed and intact-but here he is, perched on the bumper that wraps around the bulbous Porsche like a licorice whip curved around an ostrich egg. At first, you fear he must have failed to gain entry, but when he bounds backward off the bumper and launches into his spastic victory dance, your heart soars.
But wait a minute. That prize he is waving above his head, as if it were a championship trophy at Wimbledon or something-its too small to be the Van Gogh drawing.
Too small. Too small. It is, in fact, not much larger than a tarot card.
AndrE! You stupid beast!
You jump out of the car. He surrenders his loot and reaches for his sugary reward. You brush aside his paw. What the …
It is a tarot card. One of the oversized ones that tarotmancers usually reserve for special occasions.
You turn it over. At this point, what else can you do. Somehow, you are not surprised that its the Fool.
What does surprise you is that something appears to be written on it, a message scrawled across the upper right corner, across the sovereign and paternalistic sun, across the innocent white rose, across the hermetic hobo bag in which are concealed, awaiting his recognition, all the things the Fool might require to facilitate his skip into the waters of the wild unknown.
In the weak dawn light, and with your weak vision, the message is difficult to read. Nevertheless, you squint and strain at it, for you can make out, to your supreme astonishment, that it is wrought in Q-Jo Huffingtons wispy script and with Q-Jo Huffingtons favorite silver ink.
When it comes into sharper focus, this is what it says:
See you in Timbuktu!
END
AUTHORS NOTE
Readers desiring more detailed and scholarly information about the Bozo-Dogon-Sirius connection should consult Le Renard Pale by Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen, Ethnoastronomy: The Newest Oldest Science by Verzig Dommer, African Worlds by Daryll Forde, and, especially, The Sirius Mystery by Robert K. G. Temple.
Exhaustive dental research has led me to conclude that George Washingtons false teeth were actually carved from hippopotamus, elephant, and walrus tusks. The teeth were attached to plates made of gold (upper) and ivory (lower) by wooden pegs the diameter of toothpicks, and it is probably those pegs that gave rise to the notion that Washington had wooden choppers. I feel compelled to report the facts in this matter, although personally I much prefer the apocryphal.
-T.R.
About the Author
TOM ROBBINS has been called a vital natural resource by The Oregonian, one of the wildest and most entertaining novelists in the world by the Financial Times of London, and the most dangerous writer in the world today by Fernanda Pivano of Italy’s Corriere della Sera. A Southerner by birth, Robbins has lived around Seattle since 1962.
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Tom Robbins, Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas
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