“Oh my.”
“One thing else.”
“There’s more?”
“They had enough hardware scattered on the foot of Ephraim’s bed to commence World War Three. And Ray Verboten was busily loading it up with fresh cartridges.”
Tribby let out a long, thin whistle. “How do you like them apples? Gawd damn!”
“The audacity,” Ralph moaned. “The utter, nihilistic audacity of it all.”
“Capitalism,” Joe moralized self-righteously. “In its climax stage.”
“No communism, Joseph. I ain’t in the mood.”
“You’re never in the mood.”
“We still don’t know for sure if that’s exactly what they’re planning,” Ralph said. “And certainly we don’t know their timetable.”
“Why all this big charade of Ephraim going to the hospital in the first place?” Tribby asked.
“Who knows?” Joe dropped the glass bits into his front shirt pocket. “My guess is it was to throw people off the scent. It gives him an alibi—no? How could he be pirating Hanumans if he’s in the hospital with a bullet wound?”
“It’s fantastic.” Tribby shook his head in admiration. “How could two groups in the same town come up with the identical farfetched idea at the same time?”
“It beats the odds.” Ralph nodded sagely. “It sure as hell beats the odds.”
Joe said, “What’s to prevent us from cruising into Eloy’s field, say, tonight, and just hooking that unguarded U-Haul to a trailer hitch and driving away?”
“Somebody would spot us: this town’s too crowded. And we still couldn’t ferry it high enough into the hills. It has to be whisked away, real fast, and disposed of immediately, as if it were swallowed up by an act of God. Any slower process, and we’d never escort it through the commotion to a safe haven.”
Joe said, “What about the dope? Is that closed off completely?”
“Forget the dope. They’ve shut us down there. But this … this is just crazy enough to work. If we can arrive there first.”
Dispiritedly, Joe said, “So what’s the plan?”
“I’m not sure yet; it needs more thought. But here’s what I envision so far. Ralph rides with me. Naturally, between now and Thursday he’s made an extra set of keys, so that when we jump the helipad in our monkey suits, we don’t have to worry about getting airborne. After that, it’s fairly simple. We pop over to Eloy’s place and hover above the U-Haul. Ralph drops a hook, captures the brass ring, and off we go.”
“All those people will climb onto the U-Haul. They’ll pull you down out of the sky.”
“That’s where you come in.”
“When you hear us coming, you start a ruckus to divert everybody’s attention,” Ralph said.
“Oh come on!”
“I’m serious. You launch a free-for-all. Attack Nikita Smatterling. Tear off your clothes and kick over the cooking pots. Grab the old geezer, what’s his name?—Baba Ram Bang—and threaten to slit his throat with a butcher knife. We’ll leave that to you—the diversionary tactics.”
“If it seems too deliberate, they’ll know I’m implicated.”
“So don’t make it too deliberate.”
“How can I make a free-for-all look undeliberate in a convention of Peace-Love-Groovyniks?”
“You’ll think of a way.” Tribby dropped to the ground. “Come on, Ralph, I’ve seen all I need. Let’s split.” Headlights were swinging up Valverde Drive. “Here comes somebody.”
Tribby had discarded the broken flashlight on the copter’s floor. Ralph’s foot now dislodged it by mistake. Rimpoche howled when it landed on his head, and, acting reflexively, he sank his teeth into the nearest object, Joe’s leg.
Joe screamed, Tribby clapped a hand over Joe’s mouth, Ralph kicked Rimpoche, hissing “Ta gueule!” and the headlights of the approaching vehicle went off. In fact, the car screeched to a halt, backed up in a frantic whine of rubber, and peeled away in the other direction, still blacked out.
Pungent dust drifted across the helipad. Ralph said, “Now who do you suppose that was?”
The moon popped from behind a cloud, bathing all three conspirators in a spooky, aluminum-cruel luster.
The sky, apparently, was going to be their limit.
* * *
SLOWLY, JOE NEGOTIATED the maze until he arrived at Nancy Ryan’s ordinary little cardboard home. Bedeviled by moths, the porch light glimmered invitingly. Wearing that sexy blue terrycloth robe, Nancy stood in the open doorway.
Joe asked, “What are you doing up?”
“I had a presentiment you’d be along. Isn’t that nice? In fact, I know you won’t believe this, but I reeled you in.”
Like a trout? They embraced, but Joe pulled away quickly. The corner of his mouth was sore—from her hook? Gingerly he touched it. “I can’t mess with you, Nancy. I’m all confused. I need to forgo sex for a while.”
“There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
“Ha ha.” Joe flopped onto the living-room couch, shucked his sneakers, tucked his hands between his thighs, and closed his eyes.
“Oh Joe,” she murmured, sniffing him, abruptly saddened. “If you keep this up, I’m afraid you’ll paralyze your kundalini.”
“Just let me sleep. I’m so tired.”
Lightly, her fingers fantasied across his forehead: maybe her lips flicked past an earlobe. And her breath fogged one cheek. Just before he went under, Joe mumbled, “I know why you’re doing all this. You wanted Heidi and me to break up, so that even if I sold the coke, we’d have no reason to buy the land, and the Simian Foundation could grab it for the Hanuman. How much are they paying you to ruin me?”
“Tais-toi, my sweet,” she cooed into his left ear. “Everything is going to be all right.”
Then he was gone, sinking down through layers of quilting azure moss until he settled languidly into thick webs that enveloped with a fatiguing softness. They could have pilfered his soul right then, and he wouldn’t have known the difference. Surly molecules joined together, forming a Nick Danger: he opened his suitcase … something shapeless and macabre croaked duskily. And monkey cupids wearing black eye-patches and smoking reefers paddled through the somnolent ozone, lips puckered lasciviously, whispering about Pre-Clears, kundalini, E-meters, and the SUGMAD.
5
WEDNESDAY
Nine at the top means:
He brings increase to no one.
Indeed, someone even strikes him.
He does not keep his heart constantly steady.
Misfortune.
A light blue humming nudged him calmly but firmly toward consciousness. Joe clung to sleep as if to a childhood security blanket, but no dice. Though the sound was relaxed and empathetic, it insisted he awaken and gulp in dawn air. An almost supernatural light infused the room. Like the strange indeterminate luster that often floods mountains shortly before dawn, a luminescent pre-auroral glow bewitched the air. All nature was counting to ten, silently, at that precise moment when the last nocturnal flake shakes hands with the first pre-solar spark.
Joe sat up, mystified, also a trifle frightened. An angel seated in a nearby armchair observed him benevolently. By no means your run-of-the-mill angel, this one was rather large, chunky, and bearded, obviously male and mighty macho. It leaned back against an enormous pair of burnished nacreous wings. A bright halo hovered saucerlike above its head. The halo never remained in the same place for more than a second, yet maintained a fairly stable position up there, given that it was the real thing and not attached by any rods, coat hangers, or other wirelike gizmos from some school’s fifth-grade Christmas pageant. The Bunyanesque creature had small but cheerful blue eyes, a nose borrowed from some over-the-hill, oft-tagged heavyweight pugilist, and plump, almost effeminate lips. Large rough hands were clasped in appropriate piety before the chest; and the beefy body was swaddled in yards of creamy linen, as per the great sixteenth-century Italian masters.
The angel said, “Hello.”
“Who are you?”
“That’s really not here nor there, Joe.” The voice, incongruous in light of the monster body, was higher than Joe’s, and contained a faint lisp.
“But why are you here?” Joe rubbed his eyes and plucked at the air in front of his face, seeking to rid himself of invisible webs tickling his nose.
“Well, quite frankly, Joe, you’re blowing it.”
“I need an angel to tell me that?”
“The authorities in charge thought an angel might make more of an impression.”
“For what it’s worth, I already got the message.”
As its blue eyes noncommittally roamed the room, the angel pursed its lips in an irritatingly prissy manner. “The question is, Joe, what are you up to? Why are you grappling through such a rash of puerile indignities toward some calamitous termination of a life that once held so much promise?”
“Look, I need your analysis like I need a hole in the head.”
Above it all, the angel smiled tolerantly. “Sometimes we all need a pal to lead us out of these predicaments, my friend.”
Anger was rising. “Listen, Mister, you’re wasting your time with me.”
“Maybe we could talk just for a minute.” Utilizing a large ham hand, the angel flicked an ash flake off the tip of its nose. The hand seemed weightless, detached from the arm. Yet it also reminded Joe of a well-dressed athlete’s hand, manicured and powerful, used to throwing touchdown passes and slipping inside size 38C brassieres. All it lacked was a Super Bowl ring. Figuring maybe he ought to pay a little more attention, Joe straightened up.
“I really don’t want to discuss it,” he said. “I’m a fool, and I know it, so what more do you want?”
“More to the point, Joe, is what do you want?”
“Sleep wouldn’t hurt. I’m very tired.”
“Ha ha. I was referring, of course, to what you might desire over the long climb.”
“Haul.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“The expression is ‘over the long haul.’”
“Ah, I see. Well, Joe, they told me you might be a trifle recalcitrant, but I’ll admit I didn’t expect to find you quite this cynical and acerbic.”
Joe yawned, mumbling a halfhearted “excuse me.”
“But what do you want to do with your life? Certainly you have no wish to rupture all the bonds of loving it took so many years to solidify?”
“Hey, wait a second, man. Where are you coming from? What do you know about the pressures I’m up against? You want to save me, go talk to the Nikita Smatterlings and the Spumoni Tatarskys, and the Pentagon warmongers, and the pederasts and the purveyors of porn who’ve corrupted me with their movies and their magazines and their sexy advertisements ever since I hit puberty—don’t lay it all on me! Go flog William Westmoreland and Richard Nixon, and … and John D. Rockefeller and all his legatees. Go—”
Hands up, the angel patted the air soothingly. “Whoa, Joe, please. Calm yourself. No need to start spouting Tinkertoy Marxism. Nobody’s on trial here.”
Were all angels capitalists? Joe said, “What is this then, an interview for sainthood?”
The angel had weird skin. It kept changing hues, one minute almost flesh-colored, the next minute mother-of-pearl. But what most irritated Joe was the apparition’s insistence on coming on a little too debonair. The toga, for example, was a trifle too custom, more St. Laurent or Givenchy rather than from the tailor shops of God.
“I’m merely here to give you a prod, Joe. I’d like to draw out the sensible, compassionate, and loving instincts you possess. I’m here to guard the aspects of your personality conducive to creativity.”
That did it—talk about pompous! Joe lunged.
He had expected his fist to rocket straight through some kind of foggy material, knocking over the armchair as he landed spread-eagled against the floor, an object of ridicule, while the angel circulated above, going “tsk, tsk.” Instead, his fist collided with something heartily tactile, and the fight was on.
It ended almost immediately, however. For such an apparently muscle-bound character, the angel turned out to be an astonishing jellyfish. It cried “Eek!,” gurgled when Joe’s fist crunched against the Adam’s apple, and flopped out of the armchair with surprising ease when Joe grabbed handfuls of toga material and yanked. Joe landed atop the angel, his limbs momentarily trapped in great folds of linen and enormous rattling feathers. Then he got in a nice little right-left-right combination as the angel shrieked, “Oh dear, stop it, please!” Blinded by fury, Joe filled his fists with feathers and jerked, tore at the hulky scaredy-cat’s beard, boxed its ears, and in return received only a mild-mannered pittypat knee in the groin. Then light, as if from a flashbulb, burst into the room. An elegant whoosh followed. Thunder rattled the windows, causing monkey paintings to dance off the walls. And with that, the angel split. Leaving Joe behind, in the center of the room, his hands full of plumes, while hundreds of other feathers zigzagged about in the air, pulling a riff the opposite of autumn leaves by slowly rising up against the ceiling. Over there, next to the wall heater, Nancy Ryan demanded to know, “What’s going on here?”
Stupidly, Joe shook his head, unable to speak. Icy sweat shrunk his testicles: his life wasn’t worth a dime. For what could be worse, in the great lexicon of all lexicons, than mugging an angel as if it were some common atheistic thug? Ray Verboten would look good compared to the vengeance that feathered lug had at its command. Floods! Pillars of salt! Plagues of locusts!
He had hit bottom, all right, and there had been no bounce.
The only consolation was that now he had nowhere to go but up.
“Up?”
Joe shuddered.
* * *
“JAVA HANUMANA GYANA guna sagara, jaya kapis tihun loka ujagara.”
Come again?
Afraid of where he was, terrified of where he may have been transported during the night, Joe hesitantly opened one eye, blinked, and then remained very still, playing possum lest they realize he was alive and light into him, flails glistening.
But this was no congregation of gods—Norse over here in bone-and-copper helmets, Saxon over there in fur loincloths and silver gauntlets—but instead a grouping of perfectly normal human beings, most of whom Joe knew, gathered in some kind of rite not of immediate national (that is Amurrikan) origin.…
The healing of Sasha, by Jove!
Dawn: Joe stretched open his eyes. About two dozen of them had gathered while he slept. Nikita Smatterling and his kid, Siddhartha, Randall Tucker, Spumoni Tatarsky and Moonglow Winterwind, Pancho Nordica, Crazy Albert, Baba Ram Bang, Baldini and Ipu Miller, Ray Verboten, Natalie Gandolf, Suki Terrell, Jeff Orbison, Nancy Ryan (and Bradley), and several other folks, adorned in turbans and little gold slippers, whom Joe did not immediately recognize. Some sat in yoga positions on the floor, softly chanting. Others occupied ordinary chairs, their heads thrust backward, singing in a lilting monotone. Only Bradley and Siddartha had open eyes staring at the idol in the middle of the rug: A stuffed monkey smothered in Crazy Albert’s fluffy dyed carnations.
Not a real stuffed monkey, but a toy, rather, a scruffy brown-and white doll with big furry ears and mocking popeyes. Like a whacky little gunslinger from the Amazon, it gripped dual plastic bananas. Gaily colored ribbons decorated its throat and tummy. One ribbon supported a button, a relic from bygone decades: “Make Love, Not War.”
“Yuga sahasra jojana parabhanu, lilyo tahi madhura phala janu.”
The instant Joe’s scrutiny alighted on Nancy, she opened her eyes. Although in midrefrain, she smiled, and, without causing a disturbance, rose, circled outside the healers, and settled on the couch beside Joe.
“What are they saying?” he whispered.
“We just said, ‘When you were young, you leapt high and swallowed the sun, thinking it to be a sweet fruit.’”
“Ah-hah.”
Her cheeks glowed. She seemed imperially clean, infused with generous
tranquillity. Their hands touched. Dawn light settled against her dark hair like a transparent silk prayer against polished ebony. Her throat was as smooth as the surface of a white stone molded for centuries by flowing water.
“Apana teja samharo apai, tinon loka hanka te kanpai.”
“Meaning—?” Joe prodded.
“‘You are self-radiant. The three worlds tremble at your thunderous roar.’”
Until the recitation ended, Joe kept his eyes on Nancy’s face: it had grown uncannily pretty, flushed with the innocent power of a believer in a Way To Be. Her bright, sentimental conviction had him enthralled. He fantasized living together for the rest of their lives, Nancy captured always in this immediate mood, forever charged with this spiritual radiance that seemed almost unbearably simple and good. God, her beauty was dazzling! It stirred eerie mellifluous longings. In her resided possibilities of ecstasy. They would live surrounded by lighthearted weather and easygoing folks with modulated voices, bare feet, white clothes, and genteel manners. And no brash hang-ups stemming from ambition, alcohol, materialism.
“‘Oh Lord, make my heart your abode.’”
Silence. Everybody joined hands. Peace poured into the room like water filling a clean porcelain bathtub. Spellbound, Joe barely dared breathe. All windows were closed, allowing light in, but keeping the silence from leaking out. As it grew, the pressure of it increased. With every passing second the silence became more portentous, until Joe thought he could bear it no longer.
They held hands, concentrating on the funny flower-laden doll. Their silence became so overwhelming, that Joe suddenly thought he must risk eternal damnation by breaking it with some idiotic remark. They had sucked the noise out of an electric wall clock, they had engulfed the noisy colors of Nikita Smatterling’s fluorescent monkeys, they had even digested the turbulence of dust dancing in dawn’s first sunbeam, which landed—where else?—squarely upon the dime-store Hanuman lathered in flora.
But just as Joe believed he must utter a sound to salvage sanity, somebody said, “Hello, Sasha.”