“Lemme see if I can translate that into English. You want a cyclops, OE, side order of squeal—that’s link piggies not patties, slice of wheat singed and soaked in oleo, a midget of Florida sunshine, and a cup of ersatz ink, hold the moo juice.”
“Gracias, Darlene. You get an A.”
Their repartee made her bold. “Say, what’s this I hear about you and Diana?”
“Oh shit!” Joe threw up his hands.
“Sanjuro! Boca ku! My tai!”
Joe addressed his friend, the pornographer: “Do me a favor, Ralph, and make my nemesis over there shut up, would you? Tell him I got a headache.”
“Am I my brother’s keeper?”
Darlene bent to whisper in Joe’s ear. “I heard that her ex–old man caught you both stark-naked in a trailer home that belonged to Marlon Brando and took a shot at you with a twelve-gauge shotgun.”
Joe grimaced. “Geez, Darlene, news sure travels fast.”
“Well, frankly, I didn’t believe it.”
“Thank you for that, anyway.”
“Sure. I mean, after all, what would Marlon Brando be doing with a trailer in Chamisaville?”
“Bashi, bashi! No tickee no washee!”
“Did any of the pellets hit you?” Darlene asked. “I don’t see any visible wounds.”
“He’s sitting right over there. Why don’t you ask him yourself?”
“Who?”
“Angel Guts.”
“Who’s that?”
“Diana’s ex, for pete’s sake!”
“Ah-hah. The plot thickens.”
To Tribby, Joe said, “What did you say about the coke?”
“Never mind. It wasn’t important.”
“Who wants to buy it and for how much, dammit!”
“Well, I rapped with Natalie early this morning. She heard that I might be in a position to broker it.”
“And…?”
“Sheesh ka bob! Pogo!”
“And so she needs a load for the party Wednesday. Apparently something in Ray’s apparatus is temporarily jammed. A plane crashed near El Paso yesterday when he was in Cincinnati. So that puts you in the catbird seat.”
“For about how long?”
“I figure until they kill you.”
“Oh wonderful.”
“Once you sell it, though, the heat’s off.”
“For how much?”
“You’re not going to like this.”
“I didn’t ask if I was gonna like it.”
“Twelve thousand dollars.”
“That’s what I paid Peter! It’s pure stuff! It’s worth a hundred grand! I already told you her stupid husband offered me double that yesterday, plus a stockholder’s position in the Simian Foundation!”
“You also said you told him to go screw himself, and he wound up threatening your life, for free. Natalie’s acting independently of Skipper: it’s her own scam. ‘I’ll be doing Joe a favor to take it off his hands,’ she says. ‘And Skipper need never know.’ With it, apparently, you’re considered a dead man. Without it, at least you could breathe again.”
Stubbornly, Joe said, “I didn’t come this far to accept that kind of a ripoff.”
“Suit yourself. I’m merely the humble intermediary.”
“As per our plan we’ll dilute the goods ourselves, package it, pass it, and get rich.”
“I’ve been thinking about that ‘we.’” Tribby’s eyes became shifty and evaded Joe. “And I’ve come to a conclusion that the odds are against us.”
“Like for instance?”
“Shagatsu! Feen jon! Bu beri chop!”
“Like for instance I got a phone call at three A.M. this morning. A rasping voice threatened to castrate me with a rusty knife if I even touched the contents of your herbal tea box.”
“So you’re chickening out?”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“What would you call it, then?”
“I’d say I’m merely keeping you abreast of the alternatives.”
“What about you, Ralph?”
“Well … ahem. It occurs to me that just possibly the fun has gone out of this wild and woolly little caper.”
Joe said, “I don’t believe it. Everything’s falling apart. Nobody has any guts anymore.”
Tribby said, “Heidi told me you told her to flush the coke down the toilet, anyway.”
“My God! I never … When did she say that?”
“At three thirty A.M. when she banged on my door after her three A.M. phone call that threatened to kidnap Heather and drop her in the gorge.”
“Oh.”
“Gentlemen.” Spumoni Tatarsky plunked his slick briefcase onto the table. Leaning over Joe, he crowed, “Feast your eyes, dudes, I got the perfect Christmas gift for the little lady.”
“Holograms! Dichromates!” Tribby covered his eyes. “Fie and begone, Tatarsky. I already heard your spiel.”
“Christmas?” Ralph made a mocking, disgusted face.
“Wait a minute. Do not judge me so quickly.” Spumoni’s thin fingers snapped open the locks and flipped up the lid, revealing a velvet-lined display case harboring monocle-sized glass discs on which three-dimensional images had been imprinted by means of a laser beam, in the process called holography. Attached to the rim into which each monocle had been set was a slender silver chain. 3-D images contained within the monocles were of Marilyn Monroe, Charlie Chaplin, a clown, a puppy, a rose, and an old-fashioned Colt dragoon pistol. Spumoni handled them with obscene familiarity, as if he intended to perform lewd tricks. He arranged them dangling from the open lid; they twirled, catching the sunlight, reflecting prismatic beams.
“This stuff is beautiful.” Lying flat on the nearby tabletop, lashed snugly in his deerskin cradleboard, Moonglow Winterwind started crying. When Darlene delivered Joe’s breakfast, her sharp elbow nudged Spumoni in the ribs. “The kid’s crying, Spumoni.”
“I’m selling—screw the kid. Listen, look at that image Joe—have you ever seen anything more beautiful?”
“It’s intriguing. How do you obtain that 3-D effect?”
“Are you actually interested? Or are you just bullshitting me?”
“Would I ask if I wasn’t interested?”
Spumoni craned his neck down to within inches of Joe’s face. “Everybody asks, even if they’re not interested. They ask by rote. But they really don’t give a damn. They think they’re being polite, but they never listen to my replies. They’re all enveloped in their personal ego trips. Nobody cares anymore about anyone else’s art. It’s this fucking capitalist system.”
“Hey!” Darlene shoveled three platters onto the Nikita Smatterling table. “The kid is crying.”
“The kid, the kid!” Spumoni looked momentarily infuriated. “I’m an artist, I’ve got genius in me, and all she can do is badger about the kid. What do I have to do, die to be appreciated?” He raised his wounded voice for the entire café to appreciate. “A little crying won’t hurt the brat. I’m selling these gentlemen here—my friends. They’re interested in my art! Now—hello again Joe, Ralph, Tribby. Listen, you guys are about to be rich. So if you don’t buy one for the little woman for Christmas, how about for her birthday? Or what about this beautiful Marilyn Monroe for the Fourth of July? Be the first kid on your block—”
“Ba rojo! Tojo! HoJo!”
“What is with that guy?” Spumoni asked. “A cleft palate?”
Tribby said, “These dichromates are nice, but, you know. I mean, how much are they?”
“It costs me twenty, twenty-five bucks to do one. Normally, I sell it for thirty and break even. I don’t make a nickel after I pay the guy who shoots them with the laser. But I’ll sell one to you for a quarter-yard because I want you to become acquainted with my art. If you do, I’m sure you’ll tell all your friends about me. I mean it—this is the creative wave of the future. The reason I’m poor is I’m way ahead of my time.”
A voice from another table said, “Take off those fuckin’ roller
skates.”
Spumoni cast a furtive glance at Angel Guts. “He’s jealous, Joe. He wishes he had thought of this. I already have the patent registered. And I got an investor in Denver who’s gonna put up five hundred thousand dollars to construct a mass-production lab. Buy now while you’re still alive.”
“Suji! Borokata waki!”
“Man, that guy gets on my nerves,” Spumoni admitted. “I mean, I don’t mind it if a dude does his own thing—what the hell. But that lingo, man, that’s too weird.”
Ralph said, “Hey, Spumoni, we’re eating breakfast.”
Tribby turned to Joe. “I haven’t been fishing in a month. I’d like to quit work early this afternoon. We could go out to the La Lomita highway and fish the Rio Puerco. It’s supposed to be good on dry flies again. What say?”
“Fishing? Tribby, you just told me Heidi got a three A.M. phone call. How can you think about fish?”
“Take the twelve Gs,” Tribby hissed, “and run. I’m sorry. But I think it’s the only way. I got a feeling Natalie’s fronting for Verboten, to save his face. But either way, somebody’s trying to avoid bloodshed.”
“For you guys, I could cut ten whole dollars off the price,” Spumoni insisted. “I could let you rob me for twenty dollars. If your conscience could take it, my pocketbook could take it.”
“The kid, Spumoni, come on!” Darlene’s eyes flashed as she pocketed a tip. “If you can’t keep him quiet, don’t bring him in here while I’m working. If I get fired, we’re dead.”
“The roller skates, you hippie bum—take ’em off!”
“My roller skates happen to be a part of my personal art, Angel. They are an extension of my body. They don’t just come off, like that.”
“He sleeps with them on.” Darlene slid poached eggs and an egg-salad sandwich in front of Baba Ram Bang.
“Churi, churi! Moo goo gai pai!”
“Is that you I’m looking at, Miniver?” Angel Guts tipped forward, squinting through his menacingly opaque sunglasses.
Joe nodded and gulped. “Hi, how you doin’?”
“Why you shit-can mother-sucking skull-fuck!” Angel Guts rose unsteadily. Next, as if bouncer-propelled by the seat of his pants, he flew through the air, hitting Joe’s table going sixty. “My dichromates!” Spumoni cried. The table collapsed and flipped; glasses, plates, and silverware cascaded through the air. “I’ll beat your brains in, cocksucker!” His wild haymaker connected, instead, with Spumoni’s jaw. “Hey!” Nikita Smatterling wailed. “Boys!” Natalie Gandolf shouted. Rimpoche barked, then squealed in terror. Joe pivoted, and, like Tony Dorsett breaking yet another long one, he swiveled out of the enraged killer’s grasp, bumped into (and knocked over) Nikita Smatterling, and lunged for the exit. Yet for a split second, as in a nightmare where molasses instead of blood filled the veins and (fleeing from mortal danger) he could barely move his limbs, Joe was caught up in traffic. Almost everybody in the Prince of Whales had risen, either to go to the aid of, break up, or flee, and Joe found himself paddling frantically through bodies as if they were a school of obstinate and curious fish blocking his escape from a man-eating mako shark. Desperately, he pawed between Pancho Nordica and Bernard Laver. For an interminable instant his freedom was threatened by Ipu and Baldini Miller. But he managed to thrust them aside, and, with a final agonizing leap, he reached the door and kicked it open, tripping over the prostrate body of Mimi McAllister, who had been entering the café when Joe’s dramatic exit bowled her over. Joe squirted toward the fresh air of his salvation just as his attacker providentially skidded on a piece of the Hanuman prasad and did a pratfall: his bone-handled Bowie knife slashed through the air, its razor-sharp blade sliced a neat line down the back of Joe’s shirt and parted the cloth between his buttocks—yet it didn’t touch his skin! The deadly blade then missed Joe’s flying heels by millimeters, thudding into the wooden floor with a sickening crunch, embedded so deeply Angel Guts couldn’t wrench it free. Instead, the Polish Apache lay in furious frustration, his knife twanging back and forth, and Joe made good his escape.
“Boro shagatsi Minamata!”
* * *
SOMEHOW, JOE maneuvered the Green Gorilla back onto Ranchitos Road. Like a clever Indianapolis 500 racing driver weaving through an eighteen-car pileup on the first lap, he circumvented three construction sites and dexterously avoided the usual herd of joggers. Down the road a ways, Mimsy and Tuckums were back in form, charging his car as if they intended to piranhasize it in sixty seconds flat. But he arrived safely at the new land. Duke opened an eye a sixteenth of an inch, saying hello; the one-eyed rabbit, snuggled between the old cur’s paws, merely twitched its nose. Joe sat behind the wheel for a moment, calming down. A half-dozen turkeys surrounded the vehicle, huffing and thumping. Geese honked, a peacock screeched. Diana’s car was gone. Eloy Irribarren labored in the garden area, shoveling over the earth. The placid sky, harboring but a single indifferent cloud, belied Joe’s surreal morning.
Floating dreamily, cottonwood fluff took forever to touch the earth. A thin, patchwork layer of fuzzy whiteness covered the already-worked section of garden. Bits of whiteness, like poetic lint, clung to Eloy’s sweat-stained hat. He wore a spanking-clean blue workshirt, faded dungarees, cowboy boots. And although he didn’t dig fast, he sure worked steady. Instantly, Joe envied the old-timer his apparent tranquillity, his absorption with weather, trees, the garden, animals, tools. Eloy overturned a thick clod, and rested for a beat, staring at the hills; then he jabbed his spade into the ground again. The shovel blade was rounded from a million hours of use over the years. Handling it once, in the shed, Joe had never been so personally moved by a piece of cold equipment. The wood had been spliced, glued, and secured with tightly wrapped baling wire: the blade was thin, sharp, half worn away. The smooth handle smelled salty. Eloy’s hands were so tough he worked without gloves.
Joe waved: Eloy doffed his hat. The falling cottonwood fluff made the man resemble a sentimental figurine in an old-fashioned paperweight. Smitten by an intense yearning for the peace of mind guiding Eloy through his constructive days, Joe gulped. The ancient codger didn’t have much, but he had dignity. Already I’ve blown it, Joe thought. “My chance for an honorable life,” he explained out loud.
Before approaching Eloy, Joe checked in at the tent. Diana had left a note—or, rather, a poem that (needless to say) caused yet another lurch in his arrhythmical style:
Even after you left
This morning
I could feel your presence curled up like a cat around me.
I opened the flaps, and
Although it was 70 degrees out,
It was snowing:
White cotton …
… so soft …
… with Mercy.
You carve an ache in my heart.
I am afraid.
Please don’t be cruel
And I won’t hide from you.
Diana
“What about me?” Joe groaned petulantly. “Did it ever occur to you that I might want to hide from you?”
Then he wondered: Is everybody so lonely and paranoid that even a shmuck like me—because he stops short of outright murder—looks good? In his hand he held the verse as if it were a lost and hungry kitten, a literary waiflet, a ragamuffin Keane poem: a teardrop stained its painted prose. The moral being driven home, in spades, was that Nobody Is As They First Seem. Also that: Sooner, Rather Than Later, People Turn Out To Be Mordantly Human. All the unattainable cinematic glamor, that for years had catalyzed his yearnings, was nothing if not a royal Saturday Night Ripoff. Even so, as he folded the poem and slipped it into his wallet, Joe flashed briefly on Iréné Papadraxis in the Prince of Whales Café. Now there was a professional human being among all the amateurs crowding this town. A New York literary gun moll with a Greek moniker by way of Hungary, and maybe even a thirty-eight-inch chest? Jeepers, creepers! Nobody like that—not in those kinky boots, shiny black pants, and silky tight jersey—could be just another sniveler o
n the brink. In the middle of the party tomorrow night, she would catch his eye with a faint nod, and he would follow her upstairs and along a thickly carpeted hallway, to a luxurious guest bedroom. “One moment, Joseph.…” She slipped into the bathroom, and a short spell later reappeared wearing an ermine-chromed see-through silk lounging robe, and silver high-heeled slippers. “A trip around the world,” she murmured, “is not—contrary to popular belief—a vacation.” Joe swooned toward her crash course in aphrodisiacal shenanigans.
There you go again, Heidi complained. “Aphrodisiacal shenanigans.” What the hell does that mean?
“It means never having to say you’re sorry,” Joe replied, and headed for Eloy Irribarren.
Leaning on his shovel, the old man looked very picturesque. He grinned toothlessly and shook Joe’s hand. His wrinkled and sunburned face reeked of a sly good humor. “Did you get cold in the tent last night with your wife?”
“No, the weather was nice. But she isn’t my wife, just a friend.”
“Everybody these days has ‘friends.’” He wagged his right hand, floppy at the wrist, back and forth. “I got married at eighteen, widowed at eighty-three, and that was it. What’s the matter, your wife doesn’t like this land?”
“Oh, no, she likes it fine.”
“But you had a fight?”
“I guess that’s accurate.”
“These days, everybody fights.” Lazily, they stared across the back field. A pair of killdeer fussed noisily near the shallow ditch traversing the field. In a minute, Joe figured, one of us will squat, select a twig, and start scratching pictures in the dirt. Or perhaps they’d pick up a clod of earth and crush it while gazing soulfully eastward.
Instead, Eloy continued his analysis of modern society. “It used to be that everybody knew whose children belonged to who. Nowadays, if you know whose kid belongs to who they give you a medal and send you to the university.”
“Oh, it isn’t that bad. I know my kids belong to me.”
Eloy shrugged and thrust in his shovel blade. “In the old days, people had respect for each other.” The dirt was chock-full of bright pink worms. Eloy slashed the clod apart, vivisecting a dozen squirmers. Such careless brutality toward members of the slug kingdom made Joe flinch. How typical of the gap between generations, that Eloy could excoriate today’s loose morals while nonchalantly butchering worms, even as Joe, a flagrant example of modern immorality, grew queasy over the heartless dismemberment of fishbait.