AVENUE OF THE GIANTS - CHAPTERS 10, 11

10

The tart cider-vinegar rot of fall hung heavy in the air around the apple orchards preceding Drakewood, one of the half-dozen towns in the thirty-five mile stretch of the Avenue of the Giants, Madrani being the largest at population 333. A sign out front somewhere in town said Your Low-Cal Locale. That was new. The statue of the giant logger still stood. Beau appreciated that whoever carved it long ago left it natural.

Liliana looked lacquered. So perfect, so pristine, shiny and unweathered. When she slowed down near the The God in the Tree Gifts for some deer crossing the road, she put a hand on Beau’s leg and began to caress.

He looked at her. He didn’t want to take her attention off the deer, but he looked at her. “You’ve got to be kidding. Don’t you know that’s why I ditched you at the market? ‘The market.’ Fuck! ‘Investment banker!’ I go my whole fucking life dreaming of situations like this, and now it’s two in one day and I can’t! Well, I can’t. On account I’m married. And I’m accountable.” Liliana had both hands on the wheel, she wasn’t crying, didn’t look mad. She wasn’t breaking down. This was good. They were leaving the Avenue now, coming up onto the highway. A half-dozen hippies banded together with eclectic clothes, cardboard signs and a dog on a piece of rope half-heartedly hitched under a streetlight at the onramp. Beau toned down his diatribe until he and Liliana had driven out of earshot. “So no monkey business. I mean, what is it with all this, anyway?”

“Beau, I want you to know that I hear you. And I promise to be a good girl. I guess I’ve been obsessing on you a little. It’s really not fair to you.”

“Hey, I appreciate that. I mean, I can really appreciate it. It kills me that those kids up in Carata at that party were all half my age. I think you’re obsessing on your own past more than you are on me, though. And I can relate to that. I was just at my high school reunion.”

“What did you mean when you said ‘Two in one day?’”

“What?”

“You said ‘Two in one day.’”

“Oh, I only meant, there was this—look, it’s nothing, never mind. I hate being someone who says never mind. But, really. It’s nothing. Forget it. Look, I haven’t eaten in hours, and I am really hungry. Why don’t you take the exit into Radley and we’ll swing by Bramford’s. Why you should obsess on aging is beyond me, though. I mean look at you.”

“Thank you, sir.” Liliana looked at Beau and smiled. “It doesn’t come easy.”

“I’m feeling my age today. Feeling it big-time. I’ll snap out if it. Gotta pull myself together here for the big Gothic Convention. At a castle no less. This ought to be a hoot.”

Reaching Radley, Beau saw the sign for the turn to Whale Harbor twenty miles out and thought of a friend of his way out there by Hawthorn with a great big spread of forest with creeks and hills and a bridge and a pond and trails and how the last time Beau saw him he said, “Sometimes I forget I have a forest back here.”

Liliana pulled into Bramford’s. They exited the car, the midnight blue Karmann Ghia convertible—cabroilet—this gorgeous brunette looking like a model half his age on his arm, which he himself held out, out of sheer force of habit, and the desire to be seen, at some level, with this bewitching creature in her skimpy little negligee, black and shimmering as the night through which they wandered. And though his own ensemble was stolen from the high school band room, Beau felt like James Bond. When James Bond was Sean Connery.

He tipped a nod to a scruffy-looking fellow who appeared to have recently taken leave of the Civil War, undoubtedly some long historical siege in any event. Then he realized, and thought, “Oh hey, that dude graduated only a couple years before me. I remember him from P.E. always acting like a total dick. I’ll bet he thinks he’s never seen me in his life. Why is he looking at me? I hope he’s not going to ask me for some money.”

“Hey Beau.”

“Hey, how’s it going?”

“You don’t know who I am, do you?”

“Sure I do. We used to have P.E. with Mr. Logan.”

“Logan. That prick. I hated Logan. He always made us run. This your wife?”

Beau hustled Liliana into Bramford’s, thankful that she hadn’t stopped to extend her hand for a slobbery kiss from the leering asshole.

“Sorry about that.”

“Not at all. I’m used to his sort.”

What sort was that? Beau wondered. Liliana grabbed a hand basket and Beau moved along with her while she shopped. What irked him, he realized, taking stock among the shelves, was the fact that his actual wife was quite beautiful, so it wasn’t the presence of beauty in his life which made him want to present the illusion of him and Liliana being a couple together, it was the face of the slightest threat of competition. On general principle, why should he have to suffer the slightest hint of anything unpleasant simply walking into the store? Part of him resented that this old high school P.E.-er, clearly having nothing to lose, actually had an advantage of sorts. Nothing to sue from him. Nothing to ruin, nothing to take away. But then, deep down, Beau also wondered how wide a chasm there really was in their economic status. Maybe all the guy really needed were some stolen clothes from the band room and a wacked-out broad with a car.

Without reason, to his mind’s eye the image appeared of the body of the girl in the forest. It wasn’t the sort of thing anyone would realize in passing.

Liliana asked a question about food, and Beau replied.

In another life he had worked there. Could still see the u-boats under the store in the stock room overloaded with freight in a rat maze of pallets. Still hear the wheels squeak, the shrink-wrap stretch. Smell the sour omnipresent stench of broken things never properly cleaned, the stink of bottles and cans, residue of sugar-drink, beer and backwash fermenting, garbage bags and shopping carts freshly filled with stink as soon as the old get emptied, like new sets of shark teeth always rolling in, the olfactory equivalent of the constant blaring machinery grind.

Looking in a glass case, he could easily see himself digging down to the bottom of a crisscrossed stack of sixers to get the whatever buried underneath, and just as easily saw the dead girl in the forest reflected in the glass as well. This latter reflected his own state of shock, he supposed. But that was as far as it went. All of the rest stayed buried, and the only tangible thing he could taste was the fear

(She was already dead—wasn’t she?)

(There was nothing he could do—right?)

that he felt for himself.

The problem was, he hadn’t actually needed to attack. It was like one of those times you read about where the thief sues the old couple for hitting him on the head with a frying pan, or for spreading out glass shavings on the top of the property wall.

Well, kind of.

When he narrowed it down, essentially Beau was betting on his first impression, his gut instinct, that he had seen a dead body, and at least one murderer; that if he did kill the one murderer, then the other would not be able to call the cops because of the girl. To some degree he was also betting on Chuck being every bit the idiot he seemed. Add to that the fact that Beau no longer lived in the area, and wasn’t even at his parents’ house, and what he was left with was a damned scary experience, deep sorrow for the loss of the youth matched by his own certainty he had done all that he could.

At the register the cashier, a woman who had graduated a year or two after Beau, rang up a couple of cans of smoked oysters, a loaf of sourdough and some locally-made Turkish delight for Liliana, Beau having grabbed for his separate purchase the bottle of red to bring and a pack of baked tofu to eat in the car.

On the way out of town Beau asked Liliana to swing by his old elementary school, not to stop, but to drive past, and when they did he could see the big yellow buses, swinging in their impossibly wide turns, poor old motors wheezing away, kids inside all noisy and wild. A small stand of oak separated one side of the playground from a lumber mill. That was the first place he worked when he graduated high school. Many was the lunch he took there in the oaks trying to wrap his mind around the fact that time had passed.

A few minutes and a few miles later, gassing up in Bargerville before getting back on the highway, Beau noticed casually scanning the people in town wandering under the lights and inside the windows of businesses still open some old friends of his waving at him down the street.

“This’ll only take a minute,” he told Liliana. She was wearing a watch—thin, silvery (a present from her then-husband?)—and didn’t check it, but instead said, “I’ll park and meet you down there,” as she pulled the majority of her black hair with both hands behind her neck and fixed it back with a small strip of leather and a long wooden pin.

          *          *          *

The lobby doors were open. A double-feature was playing in the theater: “Captain Blood” and “The Adventures of Robin Hood.” Beau’s friends, Blair and Darin, needlessly cajoled the gal behind the counter into letting him in for a few minutes free, but Beau broke down and bought his way in to the rest of the second feature for a buck to be a sport, Robin Hood already well into the revolt and speaking fluent treason.

Beau followed his friends upstairs, sat down in the back with them, and for not the first time, felt on seeing backs of heads and sides of faces of the seated people a calm deep kinship, and a sense of ghostliness to know that his time in the theater would end, that the theater would in his absence continue, new audiences view, fresh teeth always rolling in the jaws of the sleepless black-eyed beast. Everyone there would go home eventually, put head to pillow and rest, each dreaming of the only life that mind would ever know. The love Beau felt for home was the love he felt for life, and that was a biological condition he felt in infancy and learned to grow into as an adult.

Liliana appeared and sat next to him politely, yet with body language poised to go. Beau didn’t mind. Robin was just leaving the balcony, too.

11

Omar’s Cliffside Castle of Worms was all of those things and none. His real name was Gene Morrow, it was more of a hillside than a cliffside, more tower than castle, and the only reason he called it Worms was because he had been immersed in the Nibelungenlied at the time. His music was definitely out there for purchase, and if Omar didn’t rack sales as high as the A-listers commercially, he did at least have the respect of his peers as a master technician, and a good half-dozen accomplished guitarists in commercially successful groups acknowledged Omar as their well-paid instructor.

The castle, as it was for all practical purposes effectively so termed, would have by day appeared in glorious splendor suddenly around a breathtaking bend; as it was, even by night the lights provided quite a sight from that height, as did to Beau upon arrival the decidedly striking appearance of his host.

Omar’s shaven head shone whitely on his tall, lank frame, and the smile across his face promised a sharp tongue. Beau didn’t like him on sight.

Liliana parked on the upward sweeping curve of cobblestone. The second the car door shut, Beau felt uncomfortable, and Liliana hustling over for a hug didn’t help.

“Hello, dah-ling,” she said with a glow.

“I see you wore your flats,” said Omar.

“Just for you.”

It took Beau a moment to realize they were referring to the difficulty of walking on the cobblestone with high heels. He didn’t particularly like that he had been left to figure that one out, nor did he especially need to see Omar’s arm around Liliana’s waist, and a hand gripping her little negligee-clad hip.

Beau’s host extended his hand and gave a firm, practiced grip. “I’m Omar, thanks for coming. Come on in, and get something to drink.” He turned to Liliana. “How was the drive out? I see you’ve got the top down.”

“Oh, it was beautiful,” she said, still glowing.

“I love to see you drive with your top down,” he confessed, looking her right in the eye with a devilish twinkle.

“Oh, Omar!”

If Omar’s head had suddenly been bashed open on the cobblestone and shit loose a mess of brains, Beau would’ve burst out laughing.

Everything all around was supposed to look Medieval. The bulk of the main turreted tower had to be viewed from the side to properly appreciate (reminding Beau of his own burgeoning gut), but the turreted top stayed well in view. Gargoyles and stone flagging adorned the park-like outer area with turreted perimeter walls, and what looked like flambeaux set in sconces provided flickering light over wrought-iron hinges and gates.

“Sorry about all the turrets,” said Omar. “I think it’s a syndrome of mine. And I’d watch that front door if I were you,” he added as they approached the draw-bridge. “Around here it’s a real draw-back.”

Omar’s torturous puns caused groans from Beau deep within. He was unaware to what degree this registered on his face.

“I hope all of this atmosphere isn’t contributing to any sort of sense of disquietude you might be experiencing there, Beau.”

“Not me. I think it’s great. Really Medieval-ish.”

“Medieval-ish? Come on, Beau. How about Medievalicious? There you go. Medieval and delicious. I’m the Medieval, she’s the delicious. Take a look at this, Liliana.”

To Beau’s growing annoyance, she did as she was bid. Omar showed her the hand-cranked wooden winch, which, when wound, would wind the great chain and raise the bridge from the moat-like trench it spanned.

“Now then,” he said, “do you think you can help me get it up?”

It nauseated Beau to hear him giggle and her play into it by acting so blushingly exasperated. Only when she had made her demure “Shame, shame” eyes a good three separate times could they finally pass beneath the portcullis, and only then did Liliana take Beau’s elbow—quietly though. No “Oh, Beau!” for him.

“What’s the matter?” she said, sounding flat and disappointed. Omar wasn’t so far ahead that Beau could talk to Liliana freely. So he said nothing, merely shrugging and shaking his head to indicate he was fine and had no idea what she was talking about.

“Aren’t you having a good time?” She couldn’t take the hint, and wasn’t even lowering her voice. “Oh, don’t be jealous,” she went on. “He just likes to kid.”

A garden-like area through which they passed displayed stone fountains and potted plants. Here could be heard reggae music drifting in, and a low murmur of conversation.

Entering past two suits of armor on either side of the open doorway, Beau saw a sunken living room with a wet bar above. A slinky peroxide-blonde woman whose bony cheeks and brittle-looking sternum created a cadaverous impression in Beau’s mind languidly reclined among the colorful cushions of the seating along the rectangular circumference four steps down. Two suede bean bags by an orange and brown coffee table set designed to look like a mushroom forest, and an Afghan rug of primarily purple hue formed part of Beau’s initial impression as well. Now he saw someone sitting in the upper area on the other side of a potted plant, the large green waxy fronds of which at first obscured his view. Stepping inside, he saw a man whose hair dyed custard blonde contrasted with his Asian features. The music wasn’t loud enough and no one was moving to it. A second woman appeared from a hall and passed by Beau without acknowledging as she sank into the living room, shoulder blades gliding around under skin thin as cling-wrap.

“Help yourself to snacks at the buffet,” Omar called out, heading for the bar. “A glass of white?” he added, pointing to Liliana.

“That would be great, thanks.”

“Beau, what’ll you have?”

“I could do a beer.”

“Regal Lager?”

“Sure.” Regal Lager, Beau thought. Prrft.

“Try the soup. If you like it, I’ll send you home with a big container.”

“Omar owns Rasta Pasta, Beau,” Liliana informed him.

“You own Rasta Pasta? That’s weird, I’ve been friends with the owner, Gavin, for years.”

“Not very good friends, I guess. Gavin died last year. I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you. I just bought it a few months ago myself. Try the Marley Barley, Beau. And don’t forget to stir it up.”

The cadavers and the guy with the custard hair tittered.

“I get it. ‘Stir It Up.’ That was a good one.”

At the buffet table Beau sidled up next to Liliana, muttering feigned interest in the sundry fare and slipping in with a half-whisper near her ear, “Wasn’t there supposed to be some sort of convention?”

Omar, overhearing, answered. “The Gothic Convention, yes, I’m glad you’re looking forward to that, Beau. But I have to let you in on a little secret: We’re waiting on someone to show. We did have a lot more people here earlier this afternoon, but it’s been one of those nights when pretty much everybody has to go. That’s why I’m so glad to see you, Beau. I know you’ll shoot some trap with me. Won’t you?” Omar handed Beau a Regal Lager. “Come on.”

*          *          *

He led them through a series of winding passageways which emerged at a large half-circle of balcony with a low stone wall. Here Liliana sat down, and Omar held up before Beau what looked like a clay trap, except instead of the DayGlo orange familiar to Beau, this one was bright green. “Check this out,” said Omar, turning down the balcony lights with a knob on a wall next to some molding.

“Whoa,” said Beau. “Glow-in-the-dark. I was wondering how we were going to shoot trap at night.”

“I get these from a company out-of-state. The rep there told me about this glow-in-the-dark feature they have available, all-natural, non-toxic. It’s bioluminescence. They’re not clay. These are actually mostly grass seed. So some of the bits that fall down in the gorge will do a lot of good, because we want to get as much root structure as we can down there to keep that hillside held up. But another little interesting feature to these traps is that slugs love them.”

“Slugs?”

“You know, banana slugs. I’ve got hiking trails going down to the bottom of the gorge, and I’ve seen dozens of slugs at a time in areas where there happen to be lots of trap bits. You know how slugs love dog kibble, right? We ought to perform a taste test for slugs. I say they choose these traps over kibble every time. But it gets even better: The bioluminescence stays in their skin for a while. In fact, if you look over the side of the balcony here, you’ll probably see some bright green glow-in-the-dark slugs right now.”

“Oh, here’s some,” Liliana said pointing down. It surprised Beau to see how comfortable Liliana seemed to feel sitting on the edge of oblivion. For Beau, leaning over the rock wall, barely waist-high, without the benefit of branches to catch one’s fall, brought on that crazy vertigo feeling where something really could go wrong and he might actually slip over and fall all the way down, unexpectedly hitting the bottom of the rocky gorge hundreds of feet below in the dark, perhaps impaling himself on the top of a tree. What a thing that would be, to feel the awful nothingness speed with screams that stop atop a tree shoved in the gut and ripped out the back, tearing the body in half like tofu on a shish kebob skewer. Beau saw them though. A handful of dots in the blackness, like green stars below.

Omar adjusted the trap machine in the trap house—a cover to the flinging device keeping the shooter from seeing in what direction the trap will be flung—to the automatic setting, stood ready with a single-barrel 12 gauge shotgun and fired off at the rapidly distancing disk successfully with a spectacular burst of glowing grass seed raining like a glittering green fireworks display and producing oohs and aahs from Liliana.

For a guy who was not fond of guns, Beau had to admit, at least it was quiet. He looked at Liliana, sitting there on the wall, in the moonlight looking like Snow White. She couldn’t help but see out of her peripheral vision that Beau was staring at her, but she seemed to make a determined point to never once take her eyes off Omar. After all that flirting, too. All the pushing herself upon him, all day.

Is that what this was? Of course. She was making him pay for having turned her down. He should have known better than to trust her. Only an immature person, an underdeveloped person, a real stunted asshole would fixate on a childhood pen pal in the first place. So naturally, when conflict with the fantasy inevitably occurs, she’s not going to be the mature one to handle anything like an adult. Naturally, she’s going to want to exact some selfish, petty revenge. So now what could have been an interesting evening was clearly going to have to be mired in this shit.

Beau shot and missed. The trap flew away high over the forest like a bright green UFO, gradually descending until it disappeared.

“Well,” said Omar, “I guess that makes me happier than the slick little prick on a pig. What do you say, Beau? Let me get you another beer and give you the tour.”

 

THE TOWER - CHAPTERS 16, 17, 18

16

                       It was eight o'clock. Pooro had been introduced to Natalia, a call girl at the frat boys’ swinging pad. They found out about her through Jordan's uncle. “On the house,” Royal told him, offering her up like a free pizza delivered. A free pizza in a mini-dress. “She's all yours for the night, champ.”

           “I was gonna say you can keep your mask on,” she said, “but I see now you've got it painted on.”

           Pregnant pause.

           “You're a quiet one. I can see I'm going to have to take matters in hand.”

           They were on the patio. Pooro had been enjoying the weather. Inside, everybody was watching the fight on a giant flat screen. Royal went back inside. Phil could see them all through a window, watching and reacting, looking like actors in a silent film.

           “Have you ever seen ‘Spartacus?’” he said.

           Natalia shook her head. “That's a movie?”

           “Yes.”

           “Isn't that one of your fights they’re watching in there? Why aren’t you in there watching yourself?”

           Pooro scanned the writhing canopy of clouds.

           “Well, whatever they're paying you, it's not enough. When I was walking through in there I saw you punching some guy out. Let me see your hands.” She took his left hand and both of hers and ran her fingertips lightly over the skin in a concerned caress. From a purse she produced a moistened wipe to clear away a small amount of crusted knuckle blood, and in so doing the wind grabbed a loose twenty dollar bill and whipped it up fluttering in her face, which Pooro swiftly snagged before it could sail away and handed back to her.

           “Oh my god, that was so amazing!” she said. “Can you believe the way it just leapt up and stayed there? That was so weird! Oh yeah, I've got so much money, it's all flyin’ right out of my purse! Here, I'll show you something. See the owl on the corner of this dollar bill? You need a magnifying glass to really see it, but there’s a tiny little owl right...there.” Here she pointed to the upper right corner. Pooro leaned over and looked at the dollar closely. “It's an owl all right,” she said. “As for why they have to make it so small, that's because they know if people knew what they really did, like right up there in the tower, they wouldn't get to do it anymore.” Natalia was looking up, now. The low-lying clouds hid most of the tower from view. “I've been up there. At the very top. Goddam, that place is so scary. I'm never going back there again. Here, I'll show you something else. You take a twenty printed after 2001, like this; you hold it front-facing and upside-down, and fold the bottom half up evenly with the top, so the top half of the backside appears; and the left side midway at a 45° angle, and then the right side as well, so that you get this sort of fat, downward-pointing arrow.”

           She handed him the result.

           “A hooker friend of mine showed me that. She told me Nixfeld himself showed her. If you think about it, people don't enshrine bad things that happened to them. Especially not secretly. They enshrine things that they like. They enshrine things that they did.” She tossed the twenty back into her purse. “But you know, people like that, they live in a whole other world. I mean, they've got computers in cameras in the satellites floating around in space, and—oh!—I saw this one guy come in to talk to Nixfeld one time, and he was showing him this new thing they have. It's like you're seeing everything from outer space, and then it looks like you fall, really fast, right down on to anywhere you want on the planet! Just Earth, of course. But it’s like you're really doing it. And I mean they've got interactive war games that haven't even hit the street yet. But old Nixfeld sees all these things long before your average schmo ever gets a chance, that's for sure. So hey, are we going to bed together, or what?”

           By now the crowd inside looked ready to carry the flat screen away on their shoulders.

           Natalia had Pooro’s hand close to her face, in order to inspect as she gently cleaned it with the moistened wipe. This seemed a moment when she might sort of kiss it to make it better. Gently Pooro retracted his rough, scarred mitt.

           “That thumb gouged out a guy’s eye today,” he said.

           Just then the boisterous boys fell from the house with the men from the street in tow at the edges, who knew to slosh beer, tug shirts and slur at the very least when the spotlight fell on them, which frequently it did.

Five from the crowd clumped around the barbecue trying to figure out what to do to make it work, and remonstrating each other with the theater voices and theatrical conduct characteristic so far of their lives, while pretending with body language obliviousness to Pooro and Natalia nearby.

           There was messing with construction stuff, lifting bags of concrete mix, the red-cheeked draining of a cold can of beer followed by attempts to hold the most bags resulting in the subsequent spill—“You fuckin’ dumbass, we need every one of those bags for the pour!”

           Feigned nonchalance: “Shit man, don't sweat it, you got more than enough here for your pour. Shit man, you want the fuckin’ thing poured, I'll pour it for you, right now.”

           Sharp retort: “Goddam it, no fuckin’ way! Don't you even think about it. Think I'm lettin’ a rookie like you? You don’t even go near it.”

           “Fuck, man. Shit. What's the fuckin’ hold up on the barbecue?”

           Re-bar sword fights got out of hand as feigned fighting knowledge fluttered in the wind like loose cash.

           “Bruce Lee would kick Pooro’s ass.”

           “Fuck man, anybody with any kind of mixed martial arts training would kick his ass so fast. Anybody off the street, most places.”

           “No question about it, he definitely gets more than his fair share of luck. Has so far. I mean, but when you come right down to it, who has he really faced, you know?”

           Natalia sat on Pooro’s lap. “They’re only boys,” she said.

           To Pooro the fourteen fratties’ frantic theatrics dizzied. Staring straight ahead like the Lord of the Underworld seated at the center of the universe, he tracked each desperate act of petty insecurity and hostile hypocrisy displayed, tracked each to its infancy. Natalia had a nice mid-riff. “Stay Tuned Till You Drop,” one frattie called out to another heading back inside to catch some of a game. To this quoting of the prevalent slogan Natalia raised a triumphant finger in the air and proclaimed, “That one's mine, I came up with Stay Tuned Till You Drop in the middle of J. Ronald Nixfeld’s hot tub, in this bitchin’ little Viking ship! He was on speakerphone when I said it, and he obviously kept it, so now it's all over the place just because I came up with it that one time. I remember I got really high that night.”

           This invited derision.

           “You did not,” one of them sneered with a twisted little shit-eating grin. His name was Jeremy. He had been playing swords with the re-bar. But in approaching Natalia with disrespect and scorn he entered the Pooro vector. And the result was swift. One moment, he was pointing the length of re-bar at Natalia and using it to punctuate his assertion assuming the bearing of an archduke with a riding crop. The next moment, the metal was in Pooro’s hand, and he was no longer seated beneath Natalia, but standing over Jeremy, who crumpled backward with the re-bar wrested from his grip.

           “I'm sorry! I'm sorry!” he cried.

           “Right on!” Natalia exulted. “See there? You better watch what you say to me!”

           Pooro tossed the re-bar clanging toward the pile and helped Jeremy to his feet.

           Amid the mild uproar of Jeremy returning to the land of the living, Jordan took a call on his cell phone with a hand over an ear, and when the call was over, and he had conferred with Royal, Jordan told Pooro that he just got off the phone with his uncle, who sounded in bad shape.

           “He’s on the strip,” said Jordan, “but he can't find his car. He wants us to go pick him up. So, you think we could get some backup from you? Just in case?”

           “Your uncle?” one of the fratties wondered. “Isn't he a cop?”

           “Yes, he is.”

          17

           

                      Whoever he was, he had been behind them in the cave all along. And because the sloping hillside concavity was hardly bigger than the space beneath the end of a bridge, he must have been crouching on the other side of one of the boulders back there in hiding, Phil realized, even with his hands in the air facing a gun being waved at him.

           All his years in Humbaba and never anything of the sort.

           “Just let us go. You don't want murder on your hands over a grow-op.”

           “Well, that's not really your call. You were talking before about power. Ironic. By the way, voters’ opinions absolutely get purchased in the same way that demand for unnecessary products gets artificially created by TV images. No doubt about it. Talk about your scary fuckin’ shit. Well, anyway”—the guy with the gun never had left the ladder, and the wind was beginning to blow sand in—“I’m gonna have to lock you in while I go make a call.”

           “You mean like, get a consensus from a partner or partners on what to do?”

           “Something like that, and if you give me any trouble I guess that’ll answer the question right there.”

           Phil didn't argue. The gun guy headed back up. After the hatch dropped came the hellish grinding sound of large rocks being rolled over the cover on top. Through the closed hatch came the muffled yelling from the guy that the rocks were only a precaution.

           All the plants were immature. Phil, reminded of the line from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, “Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink,” consoled himself comforting Consuelo.

           “I don't think he's going to do anything. If he was going to shoot us, he already would have. I won't let him hurt you. Don't worry.”

           It didn't make much sense to say such a thing. But then, it had all been so surreal. So surreal it was unreal. This had to account for Phil not feeling anywhere near as fearful as he should have. He couldn't quite tell if Consuelo was quietly calm or quietly in shock.

           “I see he's got an exhaust pipe here that must lead up through the rock outside. Should be nothing visible coming out. Nobody the wiser. I bet he has some sort of grating over the end of the pipe to keep mice out and whatever else.”

           “How do you know so much?”

           The point-blank directness of the question almost rankled Phil—a fact he found endearing. So she really was a human being, and not a dream after all.

           “In Humbaba, you find out through osmosis. When you grew up there, you realize, a lot of people gravitated there in the 60s and 70s looking to leave the bad ways of the old worlds they left behind. They were the builders of a new land. You might even say they stole the land from the establishment and sent the establishment of a trail of tears. But for me it's all normal, the iconoclastic, the inclusive, the far out and right on. I love mind-bending mood rings and giant forests lost in fog. Perhaps I romanticize it. But doesn't that also say something about the power of the place? As far as pot goes, and it goes far, it isn't for everyone, but it's not for no one, either. It’s sacrament to people all over the world, and has been for thousands of years. I’m not going to let this situation now affect my view of all of that. For those who think globally and act locally, what the establishment harms, the counterculture heals.

           “Humbaba is a land of forests, mountains and Civil Rights. There is magic in the rivers, and the spirit of equality flows through the air. The land is steeped in rock n’ roll. I know. I’ve felt it. It's tattooed and tie-dyed with generations of Hippies, the Bohemian, the rural, the unconventional. Humbaba is the Shire. And the land is steeped in ESP, steeped in UFOs, just jam-packed with groovy funky black light festival scenes, all things counterculture, all green and growing and fresh and new and I can't wait to go back, if it means seeing it with you.”

           He hadn't meant to say that last. Consuelo took a moment to consider her words. It was a good idea. They were two hostages holding hands in a grow room.

           “You have a strong sense of place,” she said. “I don't. I do have a strong sense of family. I don't know if it's fair to say that for you your place is your family, but I know that my family is my place.”

           “And hey, I absolutely respect that. But maybe you could stay with me for a few days. I could drive you there and back.”

           “That does sound like fun.”

           “Granted, it's out of the comfort zone. If I hadn't gotten out of my own—”

           “You wouldn't be trapped at gunpoint?”

           He had wanted to take her gently in his arms and hold her. She did have a point there.

           “Just so you know, if it looks like he's gone seriously mental and thinks shooting us is the smart thing to do, make sure you stay behind me.”

           “But then if he shoots, wouldn't I get a hit, too?”

           “Okay then, as soon as the hatch starts to open, you go to the corner and get down under a table. I'll do the same over there. He won't shoot his plants. He'll have to climb down. Then I'll shove a table up at him from underneath, overpower him, and get the gun away.”

           “But not if it seems like he's going to let us go.”

                      “Well, of course. I guess we'll have to play it by ear,” Phil conceded, “but if he seems suspicious, like he's trying to lull us into close proximity so he can pop us off more easily, we go under the tables, you at the far corner, me here, and I forced him to the floor and rush him. He'll be paralyzed long enough for me to get the jump on him when he sees his plants go flying.”

           “I think you're right. I feel better.”

           “Good. Besides, he doesn't want to hurt us. He’s only a guy trying to get by. I think the fact that he's gone to such elaborate measures way out here shows he really doesn't want any trouble. I've never once grown pot in my life or sold any to anyone ever, but for so many people I know, and don't know, with the economic incentive to be able to pay bills and buy food, when it's so easy to do, just let the natural plant grow, it would practically be criminal to not grow, really. It’s not like prescription drugs. Which have people taking eighty-five a day till the legally prescribed drugs kill. But that’s the thing. It’s about money. The system wants slaves drinking booze and popping pills because the system makes money off those things. So they say lies about a natural plant which helps and heals, because they’re afraid of what they see as a slave-base majority funneling them less coin, picking them less cotton. Maybe even splitting the whole program, you know?”

           “What time is it?”

           “Good question. Nine o'clock. Dang and dammit.”

           “Why, what?”

           “I'm supposed to be at some place not far from the hotel right now. It's why I'm down here—Vegas-ish, I mean, not down here in the hole.”

           “Oh, that's right. I'm sorry.”

           “Thanks. Well, I'll have to show up late. Emergencies happen. This one sure did. And in a good way,” he added, holding her close.

           “What's that over there?” Consuelo said.

           Phil took a look. “Hey, it's a Walkman.” It lay with a pair of headphones on a corner at the end of a table, largely concealed behind the plants. He looked inside and found The Velvet Underground, which they listened to sitting on the floor, cuddled close, backs to the wall, with the headphones between them and the volume all the way up. During the song “Beginning to See the Light,” Phil noticed that the lines “Some people work very hard / But still they never see the light” ended twenty-one seconds into the sixth song, putting at the moment which he happened to glance down at the digital counter what looked for the second that he happened to see it like a strange display of the day’s date.

          18

                      Roman guards chased him past a pyramid. On the other side of the street, a giant genie glowed.  
                      Officer Leslie Lash stumbled in sandals and tunic, the tiny tunic and simple sandals of a serving boy of ancient Rome, for these were the clothes with which he was provided when friends of J. Ronald Nixfeld escorted him down the tower outside, and on the street, with no ID, no money, and heavily hallucinating. He stumbled past changing lights coloring synchronized water fountain displays, meridian palm trees under-lit, giant objectified forms of women hanging for all to see. Cranked-up competing electronic sounds and piped-in music aided crowd control.

                      He ripped a burp that raped the air, a funny monkey explosion, and as infinitesimal intestinal particles beyond number spun, the red, riotous disorder of pulp in his mind glimmered with a fetid sheen like as though some malformed Hippie somewhere hocked a loog near a loping priest that leered, a gibbering hideousness that meandered cascading venomous curses with homicidal eyes blazing and shooting murderous looks, careening, disquieting as rangy degenerates, those slack-jawed, simian burlesques of human form in whose cold and clammy clumps seeping vaporous bewilderment of blasphemous assemblages might half-suppress scheming glee nourished in moonbeams with all the spidery mummery of archaic erudition in brazen tumult. He burped again, and as cars honked, vomited.

           Endless lines of taillights drifted to the techno beat in spinning electronic candy synthesizer shine. Distracting buildings, distracting billboards—signs with numbers, signs with women, signs with arrows flashed.

           Giant TVs pulled cars in, flashing cars speeding and competing for position—electronic liquid cash spattered in the night—lights fountaining, lights flowering, the omnipresent pulsating thrum of fresh flowing money pumping away in the night.

           It was nine o'clock now. He had managed to call his nephew, only barely. A young black woman very kindly helped him make the call at all, and that after she finally managed to discern the last name of the nephew, which did turn out to be listed. She had initiated contact asking if everything was all right when she saw him staggering around in a parking garage just off the strip. What began as a curious and bemused attempt on her part to help him nonetheless markedly deteriorated as trying to help him time dragged on; and it was only with a momentary flash of consciousness on his part and sundry imprecations and promises to pay her for the use of her cell phone that the call finally got through. The call itself had at least been quick. At the frat boy's behest, Lash managed to relay from the woman the cross streets of the corner the garage was on. But five minutes of hanging around waiting for the ride to show up and dish out some theoretical twenty bucks proved plenty for, and she went on about her business leaving a trail of dismissive remarks as she cleaned her cell phone on her sleeve. Not long after that, Lash forgot he even made the call. He wandered back down and out of the garage wide-eyed watching various parts of the walls roll up and down like party favors.

           Everywhere he looked, people were transformed. Transformed into monsters. Monsters all over. What happened was you became infected. Some hostile outside agent changed you. When you become a monster, you suffer. Leslie Lash didn't want to suffer. He wanted the monsters to suffer, not him.

           And he had suffered.

           In the tower, Lash had wandered into the forbidden room of J. Ronald Nixfeld, filled with a nightmarish heap of old bags and plates and cobwebs, and spills and stacks of junk and crap and crud, and this place was not a product of Lash’s hallucinations—although he was definitely hallucinating at that point—that was how he found the room. No special lock, it was right down the hall, and everybody ordinarily knew to leave it alone. No hallucination, this was the place where J. Ronald Nixfeld actually slept. When he slept at all—if he didn't pass out somewhere else. Someone must have seen Lash go back there. Still on all fours. Someone must have told. Because J. Ronald Nixfeld himself found Lash with a coat hanger, a shoe, and a torn magazine in hand looking guiltier than the dirtiest sinner. And J. Ronald Nixfeld cast the cop out, but not before having one of his undead lackeys remove his own little tunic-and-sandals party outfit and put it on Leslie Lash.

                      It may have been that two casino employees dressed as Roman guards had tried to keep the off-duty officer, evidently worse for wear, from stumbling in the street. At this point Lash was trying to remember where he had parked his car, and what kind of car it was, and what a car was, and that he had one, and what his name was, and somewhat by chance and somewhat through dim flashes of recollection came round again to the parking garage, loaded with cars, at the corner of which he made the call about which he forgot.

           What's On Your TV? Your Life Is Our Business. Your Thinking Is A Waste of Our Time.

           There were street people in the garage kicking around old computer parts, a host of machinery rooted from a dumpster.

           Life Ends, Not Us. Do What You Want On Your Own Time Next Life.

           One busted machinery chunk had a bunch of wires sticking out like sprouts on an old potato, and the street people played soccer with it, and took turns at bat with a busted 2 x 4.

           It's Out Of Your Hands. Just How Special Do You Think You Are? We Print Money, Meat.

           The five of them turned and saw the one of him.

           First from a distance: “Hey, look, miniskirts are back.”

           Then up close: “Nice fuckin’ dress.”

           “I'm bare-assed,” Lash said.

           “You're embarrassed? You should be, boy. Holy shit motherfucker, look at you.”

           “I think he said he's bare-assed.”

           “I’m bare-assed.”

                      “Right there! Did you hear that? Bare-assed.”          

           “Fuck yeah I heard that. Well why the hell don't you get you on some underwear, boy? Motherfucker walkin’ ‘round bare-assed in a miniskirt.”

           “Yo. Yo yo yo, I know who that is. Oh yeah. I know you. You're that cop.”

           “What the fuck you say?”

           “Yo, he's a cop.”

           “Straight up?”

           “Absofuckinlutely.”

           “How do you know he's a cop?”

           “Yo, you a cop? Shit, my boy’s out of it. Look at this motherfucker. You a cop? Er, excuse me sir, are you an officer of the law?”

           “As a matter of fact, he is.”

           Looking behind them, the street people recognized Pooro. Standing well behind him were the frat boys.

           The street people had all seen him do some pretty nasty shit. Like the time he had a guy in a bear hug from behind with his arms pinioned, and whipped him up and down on the ground bodily like a big sack of flour that needed splitting open. When they realized—and they realized immediately—that Pooro wanted them not to fuck with the cop, and wanted them instead to fuck off, all five kindly obliged.

           “Yo bro, you win.” Backing off, they all returned to computer parts soccer. “We cool? Don't kill me." Bowing to Pooro's majesty and might with requests for mercy.

           “Please don't kill me?”

 STAY
         TUNED