Eureka Jones and the Case of the Menacing Grin
Time 2021-10-26 09:07:34Web Name: Eureka Jones and the Case of the Menacing Grin
WebSite: http://artificialspy.blogspot.com
ID:212804
Keywords:
and,the,Eureka,Jones,Menacing,Grin,Case,of,Description:
keywords: description:A serial fiction in which an artificial spy reports on his experiences in a world of hard-faced femmes fatales, dope androids, 3D vagabonds, tattered meat vandals, swaggering hallucinations, crumpled apparitions, bad attitudes, hollow conversations for no reason, blurry epitaphs, and love under fire.
When Iknocked on the door of Amy's sooty-bricked, semi-detached house, Iwas still laughing at what had just transpired, and was eager to tellher about it. Hurriedfootsteps inside, and the door swung open. Oh, hi! she greetedme. Istepped into the foyer. A funny thing happened to me on the wayhere tonight, I said. Ohreally? What happened? Iwas looking for your house, but somehow got lost in this network ofalleyways. So I stopped to get my bearings, and noticed a womanwashing dishes in the window of a basement apartment. There wassomething hypnotic about the way she handled the silverware, and Imust have been watching her for a good while before she startedscreaming at me to go away. So what did I do? I began jogging on thespot and yelled down to her, 'Sorry Ma'am, just catching my breathfor a moment!' Then I turned and jogged away. Can you believe it? Okay That is pretty weird ... She looked me quickly up anddown. Well, you got here Come on through to the back and meetthe other guests. Ifollowed her through a living room with yellow drapes and furniturethat struck me as having been designed for maximum discomfort. Myeyes, momentarily confused, quickly recoiled from a painting thatdominated one of the room's walls: an enormous portrait of a wizenedlady staring out at the viewer with an absurd sidelong grin, the facein radical foreground against a distant seascape, a truly screwed upresurrection of the Mona Lisa. We proceeded onward through adisorganized kitchen and out through a sliding glass door to a stonepatio where a mismatched group of six people sat in folding chairs,arranged in a semi-circle around a large table. Amid the smells ofmeat grilling on a futuristic barbecue they sipped out of plasticcups; they seemed reluctant to make eye contact or conversation withone another, or with me. Wantsome punch? my hostess asked while already ladling out some into acup, which she promptly thrust toward me. I beganto compile mental dossiers on my fellow guests as I was introduced toeach. First, there was Tina, a gaunt woman in her late fifties withbrightly dyed, reddish-orange curls, viridian eyeshadow, andlipstick applied beyond the bounds of her actual lips. Psychically, Isussed out her loneliness, alcoholism, weakness for abusive men. Thencame Raj, a young bespectacled south Asian man whose beige,office-ready clothing indicated an ascetic sense of duty and afacility with numbers and computers. Next, I was introduced toLynette: short, chubby, blond, thoroughly matronly in the carewornsense, the dark circles under her eyes like upper echoes of herbaby-ravaged breasts. She exuded internalized panic and a readinessto complain, to scold and to preach, and I concluded that her husbandhad not bedded her in many months, preferring to protect his frazzledmind from her exhortations by falling asleep on the couch, nightafter night, in front of the television. Fourth in line was athirtysomething man named Rick, clad in a denim jacket and jeans andsporting a head of heavily gelled, spiky dark hair. I could tell heconsidered himself a seducer, a rebel, the life of any party,chronically underappreciated for his supreme ability to innately knoweverything while doing nothing for anyone else. And here I waspresented with an unsettling before-and-after snapshot; for, seatedbeside Rick and next in the introductions, I met Rick twenty years inthe future, in the form of Doyle. Yes, Doyle was the inevitableoutcome of Rick, as time would surely transform him. Doyle was fat,balding, sheened in the sweat of desperately believing himself tostill be a Rick -- a belief which he no doubt preserved bybribing strippers with cocaine to accompany him to his hotel roomduring his eternal business travels. Finally, there was Kamiko, aJapanese woman in her early twenties, dressed in black, her facepainted in a vampiric palette of black on beyond-pale, which gave aceramic look to her round cheeks and forehead. All but this lastguest shook my hand eagerly as I was introduced, each with a strainedsmile that was the horizon of a dying world of which they werecitizens and unwitting architects. Kamiko merely said Hey...in a gloomy voice. She was the hardest for me to telepathicallyprobe, and I guessed she was either a performance artist or aconnoisseur of hallucinogens that were so obscure or so newlydeveloped that they could be legally procured. Perhaps she was both. BeforeI had a chance to sit down, Amy grabbed my arm. Not so fast! Comeover here, yes, stand right here where everyone can hear you. Now,Eureka, we have a little tradition here, which is that any newcomerto the group has to tell us something interesting about themselves.So, go ahead, don't be shy, tell us a little something interestingabout Eureka. We've all done it in the past; now it's your turn. Iseveryone going to share something interesting? I asked, mortified. No,like I said, we've all done it before, it's only newcomers who haveto do it. Well,that seems unfair, to be singled out just for being new, Iprotested. Whenyou bring newcomers of your own, then you can hear theirinteresting stories, or details, or whatever. Now, go ahead. Ithought furiously for a moment, reeling, hating their wretched eyes.But then I suddenly perceived a glorious opportunity in thisotherwise dismal predicament, and I began in a loud, oratorical tone: Myfather's hair that is, the hair he has now is, in fact, the hair of the film actor Michael Douglas. By whichI mean not only the hair, but the entire scalp, the living skin fromwhich the hair of Michael Douglas continues to grow atop my father'shead. Allow me to explain. Many years ago, after seeing the film TheStar Chamber, my father (a manof no small means) became much enamoured with the eagle-esque sweepof the young actor's coiffure. In vain, he tried to have itreproduced on his own head by the most skilled stylists he couldfind; but his congenital locks resisted the sought-after form, beingthemselves of a staunchly wavy inclination. So, armed with hisconsiderable wealth and even more considerable influence, heapproached the then relatively unknown actor with a bold proposition:an incredible sum of money and guaranteed fame in exchange for asurgical transplant of his scalp onto my father's head. He wouldensure that Mr. Douglas would have his own hair replaced with areasonable facsimile, taken from the head of a newly deceasedhomeless man. You may ask why my father did not himself take thehomeless hair, which would have saved him much expense and effort;but in asking such a question you would reveal your ignorance of myfather's tenacity, of how unstoppable he is when seized by an idéefixe. There was no alternative:he had to have the actual hair he had seen in the film.Mr. Douglas, who was struggling at the time to take his career to thenext level, was surprisingly receptive to the procedure, and, despitesome initial misgivings over what would happen should the surgeryfail (which my father quickly allayed by upping the offer), finallyagreed. A team of plastic surgeons were enlisted; they conferred,planned, and dreamed; there were arguments, tears of bothdisheartened frustration and joyful breakthrough. When the fatefulday arrived, they worked for six hours in the operating room to pulloff the feat. And behold, it was a success! Now, I can see by yourfaces that you find this difficult to believe, but I say to you:watch The Star Chamberand Romancing the Stone back-to-back!Watch them, and compare the hair or, I should say, hairs of Michael Douglas! You willnot fail to detect a subtle difference, a coarser quality to thosestrands cresting the head of the later Michael Douglas, attributableto their poorer upbringing. Yes, you will notice, if you pay closeattention, the faintest aura of a hobo's resignation when the lighthits the actor's head at certain angles. Go ahead, perform theexercise: it will prove most illuminating! Revealingsuch a hallowed family secret to this group of strangers had put mein a state of great passion, and I took a second to catch my breathbefore I turned to Amy and asked, Now, can I please sit down? Whyyes yes, please do ... she replied dreamily, perhaps a bitdazed. AsI sank into my chair, I was suffused with a beautiful sense ofwell-being, as though I now truly saw, for the first time, therightness of everything; and the universe opened before me as anentity perfectly arranged and unfolding exactly as it should. Thismust be what group therapy is like,I thought, this catharsis, this vulnerability, this openand innocent trust that the truth will always conquer the hardnessand fear in the damaged hearts of people. Amywas turning meat on the barbecue, smoke enshrouded, in agitatedsquiggles of movement, and her buttocks loomed, attacked, throttlingmy spirit, entering my skull to digest and usurp the very hemispherestherein. She went into the house and returned with paper plates andplastic forks, which she unceremoniously set down on the table, and ahinged wooden box, which she now held out before us in both hands, asthough it might contain gold, or frankincense, or myrrh. Themoment we've all been waiting for! her voice lilted teasingly.Slowly she lifted the lid to reveal a set of steak knives nestled intwo rows of plastic velveteen slots. The new line has arrivedfolks! Myfellow guests leaned forward to get a better look. Everybody takeone! Their eager fingers went squid-like toward the handles. Iwaited for the others before taking one of my own. It felt light anddelicate in my hand, as though hammered out of aluminum foil. Withstartling violence, Amy stabbed one of the steaks and lifted it fromthe grill, plopped it steaming on the bare tabletop, and halved it ina single, samurai gesture. Like hot butter, she cooed. Justlike goddamned hot butter! With a kind of defiant and brutalecstasy she proceeded to stab one steak after another, transferringeach by knife-point onto a paper plate which was then virtuallytossed in the direction of each of the guests in turn. Tryfor yourself! she commanded. Theybegan cutting into the meat. Doyle and Lynette nodded approvingly;Rick's eyebrows lifted in delighted surprise; I heard Tina murmurexcitedly, I'm gonna sell the shit out of these;even Raj and Kamiko, though more reserved than the others, werenonetheless visibly impressed -- whether by the knives or by Amy'spageantry, I could not tell. Theworkmanship speaks for itself, Amy continued, but, sadly, theseknives will not sell themselves. That's where youcome in. Your talent,yoursingle-mindedness, your hungerto make the sale, your refusalto take no for an answer. With each yourshe thrust the point of knife in her hand toward one of the guests.But all of you know that we face one major obstacle to oursuccess. Let me hear you: what is it? PREJUDICE!the others shouted in unison. That'sright. Those pesky little letters written on the blades of thesefinely crafted instruments, that tiny sentence that, through no faultof its own, tends to turn off the North American market, and deny usfrom getting the price we deserve for these awesome knives. Istole a quick glance at the blade before me: it read 'Made in China'. But,as we all know, there is a way. A way, not to fight prejudicedirectly, but to turn it back on itself, to use prejudiceagainst itself. Amy trailedoff, giving her audience a chance for reflection, to let hope grow,and for them to really get the hang of what she was about to saynext. Now, I know you've been through the drill before, and I knowsome of you are probably thinking, 'Oh, but Amy, it's such a pain inthe ass, it's too much work, why don't we just sell the darn thingsas is.' But that won't do, and that's why I have to emphasize theimportance of The Transformation -- over, and over, and over again.And since we have a newbie in our midst, I'm going to take theopportunity to go over The Transformation with you again tonight. Icall it a transformation, because that's exactly what it is. We aretransforming prejudice into a weapon against prejudice. And when wetransform prejudice into anti-prejudice, we transform low sales andlow earnings into high sales and high earnings. I hadn't noticedearlier the small table beside the barbecue on which stood a smallarray of bottles and a bag of cotton balls, toward which she nowstrode. Now, remember, The Transformation is easy. TheTransformation, in fact, has only two steps! So people, tell me: whatis the first step in The Transformation? DROPTHE BOMB ON CHINA! they shouted. Amywas pleased. Of course, we aren't reallygoing to drop the bomb on China... (here there was generallaughter; myself, aghast, excepted) but, with a little bit ofacetone-- she grabbed a cotton ball, stuck it in the neck of oneof the bottles, inverted the configuration, set down the bottle, andbegan to rub the dampened wad against the blade --we can at leastkick that scary word out of our path to wealth! She held up theknife. See? No more China! Gone! Obliterated! Now that's step one.Who can tell me step two? ONEHIT WONDERFUL! Oh,you guys catch on fast! That's right. But remember, this step takes alittle preparation. We know you need black nail polish-- she heldup a phial of the substance -- but in order to get the bestresults, you have to remove most of the bristles from the brush untilonly three or four remain. She unscrewed the lid, showed each ofus in turn, close up, how she had thinned the applicator brush to afine point; the smell of the stuff made me feel dizzy, unpleasantlyintoxicated. Then, with a very steady hand, we make a smallvertical stroke in the space on the blade between the word 'Made' andthe word 'in'. What does our knife say now? MADELIN!replied the jubilant chorus. ZoundsGerman, ja? sheasked in a profoundly hokey accent. JA!JA! JA! JA! ... Whilethey chanted this syllable, all sharing in the mirth of the occasion,Amy went into the house and returned with several boxes of knives,which she put on the table in front of us, along with cotton ballsand bottles of acetone and nail polish. Now,I want you all to practice The Transformation. I want you each to doat least three boxes of knives, right here, right now. Not only willyou get better and faster at The Transformation, but you'll walk awaywith some sale-ready merchandise! But,I ventured, that isn't even how you spell that name. There'ssupposed to be a letter 'e' at the end at least, if not also beforethe 'i'! Even in Germany, as far as I know. ButAmy was intractable. Ha! Youtry writing an 'e' that small with a nail polish brush! Anyways, mostpeople don't know as far as you know, as far as Iknow! It's just our brand name, it doesn't have to make sense, itjust has to suggest to the buyer the idea of quality, and get aroundthe negative attitudes people have about Chinese manufacturing, whichare obviously totally unjustified! Furious,I stood up from my chair and began walking backwards toward theyard's exit at the side of the house, solemnly pronouncing: Thoumermaid! You have enchanted the imaginations of these poor souls lostupon the sea of life, yet you don't even really ... exist! Amy waved her cheap little blade, shining with cruelty, above herhead while screaming insults at me to the effect that I'd never be asuccess story, that people like me were destined to be pennilesslosers, that I was a dodo bird in a world of tigers; I turned andran; and my last image of that hapless cabal was of Tina as sheshuddered and fell sideways in a kind of thunderstruck coma, her hairwaving across her face, its finest and most shocking orange filamentsgilded in pre-sunset light.No comments: Wednesday, 18 January 2012 Part Two: An Absence of Quirms I turned out the lights in my apartment. The window across the street softly glowed, framed almost exactly in the center of my own window. Sometimes there was movement, furtive shapes, indistinct and blurred as though jelly had been smeared across the pane. A gorilla's arm plunged a curved blade. A naked pair of legs winged into the pose of a gynecological patient. A limpid human skull floated up and sideways. Could I be sure I was seeing these things? I began to incant quietly to myself: I must train my perceptions into sharper focus ... more flesh and less fancy ... I must be sure ... my impressions must learn to 'pop' ... must pop like the veins in a body-builder's biceps ... like champagne corks on New Year's Eve ... rapid-fire like a Gatling gun annihilating tribesmen ... pop with the street justice of the proverbial cap in yo ass ... with the cold refreshing power of the prefixed -sicle and likewise like the suffixed soda ... like cherries behind the bushes at a Baptist youth picnic ... must become like the sonic landscape of AM Top 40 radio ... like daytime television psychology ... like fugitive tires on a stop-strip ... like eardrums on a transcontinental flight ... like dried corn in a lake of hot oil ... like the kappa in my own given name on the glottis of noble Archimedes as he ran naked through the streets of Syracuse upon exposing the goldsmith's grift in the case of the golden crown ... In response to this litany, as though my words really did bear supernal powers of evocation, the phantasmagoria shifted; this was no longer spying, but rather, scrying, the window my crystal ball; yet, the images were not of things to come, but of things that had already passed, scenes from my life replayed in dazzling colour and detail, framed in the window as though on a television screen ...
It was late last summer, in the park near the high school a few blocks from my home, and the Dope Androids were, as usual, having another hard-luck day. I had positioned myself in one of my regular spots, a bench near the one the Androids frequented, my Whisper2000 listening device (marketed as a hearing aid, but easily adapted to espionage) trained on their conversation, sunglasses and low-tilted captain's hat shielding my face, bag of stale bread in hand to round out my disguise as one of those dislocated souls who find solace in the company of pigeons and sparrows and the occasional screeching gull who showed up to bully the other birds, under a slate-coloured sky now and then breathing down gusts cooler than the static air, the leaves pointing downward, the birds low-flying: omens of rain within the next hour or so. For about six weeks I had been following with a kind of sadistic glee the misadventures of this small band of would-be gangbangers. There were five of them, ranging in age from fifteen to seventeen. Not once did I feel as though I was neglecting my civic duty in not reporting them to the police, since they never, so far as I witnessed, managed to successfully commit a crime. The few times they thought they had secured some product to sell, it turned out to be fake; their one attempt at obtaining guns had likewise met with failure when Raze, who was supposed to meet their contact, had been obliged instead to attend his grandmother's eightieth birthday celebration; they'd tried their hand at pimping, but none of the local working girls feared them or seriously believed they could offer any kind of protection -- in short, they were the laughingstock of the neighbourhood underworld. And yet, despite reveling in their profound lunkheadedness, I also felt a degree of tenderness toward them. I could sense how poignantly they wanted the guts-and-glory dream they had forged out of the raw materials provided by the music they listened to and the movies they watched: a vision in which their actions were legitimized precisely by their criminality and their run-of-the-mill, middle-class teen yearnings were stylized into a heightened reality. This is bullshit yo. Kid Coriander, the alpha of the group, was giving one of his motivational lectures. Tall and lanky, stooped, with thin patches of whisker randomly scattered over his mulish face, and dressed in the same uniform of baggy jeans, bomber jacket, and skewed baseball cap as his cohorts, his was a figure that immediately commanded disrespect. We gotta get something goin' on for real, know what I'm sayin'? Like phony credit cards, or identity theft, or some shit. We gotta start using our muthafuckin' brains yo. Amused at the boldness of the speculation that any of this crew might have the technical insight, let alone the attention span, to even consider attempting such complicated rackets, I was eagerly awaiting the continuation of Kid Coriander's brainstorm when a mysterious signal, picked up through some electrical defect in my Whisper2000, intervened. Exploding like novas in the midst of radio-static nebulae came these puzzling fart noises, exaggerated and obviously oral imitations of the real thing, punctuated by childish laughter. Then, a low and serious voice, I am the dark cloud of vengeance! Feel the wrath of my wonderful gas! More laughter, followed by an especially loud and prolonged lip-fart. And on it went. I tossed the remainder of the breadcrumbs to the frenzied birds, bag and all, and launched myself to my feet. Half-running, I went here and there, rotating through various compass points in order to triangulate the signal -- since I recognized, as only a professional such as myself could, how imperative it was that I discover as quickly as possible the origin of this transmission so fortuitously intercepted. I found myself on a street running perpendicular to the one that bordered the east side of the park. The signal was getting clearer. I could now hear the faintest aspirants and bubbles of saliva in the bursts of false-flatulence, and I knew I was nearing my goal. Here the houses were better kept than most in the neighbourhood real family homes, not the ramshackle rooming-houses that dominated the nearby streets, where all day long divorced men in grease mottled shirts drank fortified wine together and complained about the government. Rain began to fall, fat cold drops, sobering, oppressive; the farts took on an exhausted, almost melancholy tone, and I worried that my unknown broadcaster would quit on me before I had tracked him down. But no, here was the place, it had to be this house, with the yellow tricycle on the front porch and the door-mounted wooden placard with the inscription burned into it: God Bless Our Home. I rang the bell. A boy of about twelve years old answered and regarded me wordlessly with a shy, faintly guilty expression. I know what you've been up to, I said in a conspiratorial voice, and then pointed to my right earphone while performing my best imitation fart. The boy's eyes widened. Don't worry, I added quickly, sensing his panic, I just want to know how you're doing it. The boy took a moment to size up the situation before warily answering. My brother got this microphone for his birthday. You put the radio on a certain station, one with no music or anything, and you can hear yourself. Coming out of the radio, I mean. We were just fooling around on it. We didn't know anyone could hear. Do you think he'd be willing to sell it? I'll give him twenty dollars. And to show him I was in earnest I took out my wallet and opened it toward him. Uh ... I don't think our mom and dad would like that ... Of course. What was I thinking? I totally understand. It was a birthday present. But listen: is there any way I could at least see it? I might want to get one myself. I guess that would be okay. He turned toward the interior of the house and yelled. Hey Kyle, come here for a minute! There's a guy here who wants to see your microphone! The brother, who was perhaps two or three years younger, appeared in the door's opening, holding a red plastic tube with an enormous green foam globe at one end. I leaned closer -- I just need to read the make and model ... -- and then I had snatched the microphone out of his little hand, jumped clear of the front steps, a cry of Hey! from the older brother and a tearful wail from the younger rising behind me; then hurling myself through cold meshes of rain, rounding this corner, then that, making a headlong, mazy escape back to my apartment, exhilarated at the success of this latest mission. What a find! I knew it wouldn't have sufficed to merely buy an identical microphone, since there could have been deviations in the transmission settings, even from the same manufacturer, and especially in such a cheaply made product. In order to confidently build my remote listening device, a bug that I knew would work with the technology I already had, I needed this one. Children are resilient, I assured myself. They'll be over it in no time.
The scene in the window began to ripple-dissolve, accompanied by sweeps of long phantom fingers on ethereal harp strings to complete the effect, as though the image of myself I saw in the window was now entering a dream, morphing into another scene from last summer . . .
Pierre and I had been up all night drinking gin and tonic in his tiny basement apartment and watching a twenty-four hour marathon of our favourite TV show, Criminal Spirit, in which a team of FBI paranormal investigators tracked down and brought to justice the ghosts of serial killers who had died before being caught and who continued to torment the living, usually the families of their victims, from the afterlife. There have been three manifestations in the past week, whereas before that, the unsub was only appearing on the fifteenth of each month, observed Agent Spears, the trigger-happy vamp of the team. He's escalating, Boyko, the black suited agent-in-chief, intoned in a voice as solemn as a shallow grave. Chalmers, do a full numerological and astrological rundown on this calendar month, including the year, as well as lunar and Mercury positions during the manifestations, cross-indexed against the time and place of the original crimes. You got it, Chief. Fingers already rapid-fire clickety-clack on computer keyboard. I'm not seeing anything with regard to the moon or Mercury, boss. However, there is ... At this point our beloved program was eclipsed by hissing snow. Fuck! breathed Pierre. We tried other channels, but they were all down. I checked the connections at the back of the television set everything appeared to be in order. It's that old fuck upstairs, I bet, Pierre concluded. I knew I shouldn't have asked him if I could splice off of his cable. I should've just done it and kept my mouth shut. Well, I said, lifting a corner of the towel that served as a curtain for the apartment's one small window and squinting in hard sunshine it looks like a nice day out there. We could sit outside. Fine. Grab the booze. I'll tell you one thing, though: that old man upstairs better hope he doesn't run into me! I have no quirms, ('quirms' = one of my favourite of Pierre's accidental neologisms, an exact synonym for 'qualms'), no quirms at all about making him wish he'd never messed with this faggot! We climbed the stairs, legs drunk-heavy, and emerged into a bright summer day. There in the driveway, gleaming like a giant poisonous insect, sat a red van with the logo of the cable company emblazoned on its side panel. Its driver, wearing a collared T-shirt of the same colour and bearing the same insignia as the van, was returning a yellow ladder to its spot on the vehicle's roof rack. Hey mister man! Pierre shouted, approaching the tech. Who called you here? The tech silently continued what he was doing. Oh, so that's it, eh? You're just going to ignore me? You like to do that, I suppose, block people's driveways and then ignore them? I'm here to fix a problem, that's all. Ohhhh, I see. You've got a problem to fix. I've got a problem too. You want to hear about it? ... Yeah, I've got a real problem alright. I'm sitting watching my very very favouritest TV show, trying to enjoy the last years of my life, and then some corporate asshole shows up and cuts the cable! I guess poor people like me don't deserve to watch TV. Oh no. We can't have that. What do you think? Well? That's right, ignore me, you fucking ... puppet! Pierre was now standing with his face less than six inches from the tech's, swaying in alcoholic storm winds. You're lucky I'm wearing this uniform, the tech replied coolly. Ah, I'm lucky am I? Let me tell you something, my friend. I'm sixty-four years old, I'm bald, I'm ugly, I'm gay, I live on a pension ... do you think I give a flying fuck about your threats? I don't have anything to lose! Look, said the tech. If you want cable, you have to pay for it. Oh, come on, changing tack, now plaintive and forlorn, have a heart, buddy. Have a heart. You know how much I suffer? Just last week I was walking along, minding my own business, when two humongous hairy balls filled the entire street! Ah ha ha ha ha! Pierre's eyes, swollen green orbs as lacking in empathy as goat's eyes, seemed to roll in opposite directions. They almost crushed poor little me! Ah ha ha ha! The tech took an awkward step backwards, but came up against the side of the van, trapped. They belonged to a cop! A tall blond cop who looked like a Nazi! I'm telling you, I was sooo turned on! Believe you me, I wanted to climb that mountain and rock that tree, my friend! Ok, ok, that's enough now, the tech blurted out. Oh, am I making you uncomfortable? Am I inconveniencing you? Let me show you something, my friend! Pierre turned and went back down to his apartment; the tech must not have finished the job yet, since he did not take this opportunity to get into his van and flee, but instead began writing something on a clipboard. A moment later, Pierre returned, his arms piled with laundry, which he began to strew across the front lawn. You see? I have to pay for cable now, so I can't afford to dry my clothes! I have to spread them out on the grass like this to dry. Are you happy now? No money for the dryer, all because I have to pay for cable. Are you happy?
The vision melted away; my soft laughter trailed off, turned sour in my throat. The window across the street was dark. How long had I been standing here, transfixed? Was I happy? I fell back from the window, writhed on the floor gnashing my teeth, fearful that I would spend the rest of my life alone -- my senses befuddled by my arcane fascinations, my social skills stunted by years of secret ritual, like some hoary wizard in a tower that history forgot, discovering too late that his magical treasure bears a hidden curse. Pale in the light from the street, swollen to blimplike dimensions, the clown stood over me, the fatal pawn gloating over the fallen king in a surprise checkmate.1 comment: Friday, 30 December 2011 Part One: In Which Eureka Jones Contemplates a Life of Danger This could have been any day of the week, beginning, as it did, like all my days. I awoke resenting the fact that any effort whatsoever, even that of simply forming a thought, was necessary for me to so much as move a finger. This has always felt to me like some kind of personal insult, this thing called effort -- a design flaw in the fabric of reality at the very least, since it is totally superfluous. For I can easily picture a world in which my desires are gratified quickly and efficiently, without any resistance or obstacle, internal or external, standing in the way. The sensation of gravity pulling against me as I struggled to arise from underneath my bedclothes in order to relieve my bladder was merely another instance of the continuous and apparently mindless persecution leveled by the cosmos against me, an innocent man, innocent enough anyways. And I imagined as I lay there indecisively, tempted to urinate right where I was, those countless others who were at that moment springing with enthusiasm from their beds, eyes aglow in anticipation of the day's wonderful prospects, gliding through life as though it were made especially for them. Which nearly reduced me to tears. As I have mentioned, none of this was remarkable. I finally got to my feet and shambled the brief distance across the cold floor of my bachelor apartment to the bathroom, giving my clown punching bag a decently half-hearted wallop as I passed (one of my few showpieces, this overgrown inflatable plastic bowling pin with its pouch of sand in the bottom for ballast, ensuring that no matter how hard one hit it, the jovially sinister circus face returned to an upright position asking for more). My urine was nearly brown blood? -- and in the mirror I saw that the puffy crescents under my eyes had virtually turned into hemorrhoids. Still, I looked young for my age, in that way that grown up, responsible women find non-threatening and sexually null. Oh, you're cute... female acquaintances have said sometimes, responding to some angling remark of mine, this observation invariably voiced in a similar pity-laced tone to that reserved for abandoned puppies staring out of cages in Humane Society advertisements. Drug addicted teenage girls seeking to rebel against their drunken single mothers by hooking up with older men might see in me a certain allure, and there were certainly enough of them in this neighbourhood. I scrutinized my face more closely. No, I'd probably have to be more dangerous looking for that. As I probed an unfamiliar bump on the area of gum above my left upper bicuspid with my right index finger while still inspecting myself in the mirror, wondering about cancer and remembering that the word was derived from the Greek for 'crab', due to the multi-legged look of the blood supply network a tumor manufactures around itself, another word began to recur in my mind. Dangerous. Dangerous. Maybe what I needed was more danger in my life? Too bad the universe had invented me a coward to the core. I quickly condemned this idea of inviting extra peril into my existence to the same fate as the brownish-yellow liquid in the yet unflushed toilet, where now my mother's face stared mermaid-like up at me from the murky depths. That's right, Eureka, she said, her voice bittersweet as a fairytale. Only fools rush in where angels fear to tread ... Discretion is, after all, the better part of valour ... Play safe ... You're built to be an intellectual, a thinker, not a doer, not a man of action ... Thanks Mom, I replied, shrugging and feeling a wave of childish embarrassment. For a moment I almost forgot myself. With grim resignation, I flushed the toilet.
After a few indeterminate hours of drinking coffee and watching the people at the streetcar stop below my window fidget and turtle their chins into their collars against the wind-blasted snow (I am these days between assigments), I finally ran out of cigarettes. I had tried to smoke more slowly than usual, realizing in advance my dwindling supply, since I hate cold weather even more than hot; I had endeavoured to relish, like a wine connoisseur at a tasting does the drop in the bottom of his glass, each drag, each wisp; and failing to extend my stores sufficiently by this method, had resorted to emptying the tobacco from the butts in the ashtray into rolling papers, my fingertips turning an ominous black; and having smoked all of these, had rolled the butts of the rolled butts; and had even gotten stoned on some weed I had lying around, vainly hoping this might alleviate my cravings, yet they only intensified; now, after all of these stratagems to put off the inevitable hour it had come, as, all along, I knew in my heart that it would. It scarcely seemed possible that a universe supposedly built out of laws that could be apprehended by rational mental processes could play such perverse tricks on me. Groaning, I put on some pants, bundled myself in my winter gear, and set off for Kalim's Super Bargain Zone -- about a two and a half block journey through the frozen wastes. Indeed, I could have simply crossed the street to the Three Star Convenience, but there I would have had to pay an exorbitant sum, falsely inflated by federal and provincial taxes. For less than the price of three packs of twenty-five at the Three Star I could obtain a whole carton of two hundred from Kalim, since he imported them (illegally) from a nearby Native reservation, where they produced their own (tax-exempt) cigarettes. Nor was there any cost or eco-conscience wasted on unnecessary packaging. At Kalim's, a whole carton came as a unit, sold in a single resealable plastic bag. Sure, sometimes the filters fell off, and the flavour was mysteriously inconsistent, making one wonder what exactly was in them besides tobacco; but the point is, there was tobacco in them. At any rate, chatting with Kalim usually afforded a pleasant diversion from my anxious routine of nothing-doing. It was by now mid-afternoon, and the street was full of people going here and there, their faces set in masks of blithe confidence or else urgent seriousness that they had obviously copied from the expressions of screen actors, in order to convince themselves, where their life-coaches, spiritual advisors, and self-hypnosis recordings had fallen short, that their lives had some kind of importance. I had just begun the final block of my trek when I noticed a woman who had emerged from the door of a shop walking ahead of me. It hurt me to watch her. She looked a few years younger than me, and was wearing a short, tight-fitting, white winter jacket and even tighter sky-blue stretch pants that did a marvelous job of showcasing her superb physique. She stopped at a crosswalk and I continued past her. Suddenly, wanting to see if her anterior regions matched those I'd already been voraciously studying, but not wanting to crane my neck around to gawk, in case she happened to be looking, I found myself pantomiming an improvised mini-drama in which I was unsure of what direction I should be going, giving me an excuse to pause and survey my surroundings. But she had already begun crossing the street, and her face remained a mystery. As I reflected on the pointlessness of my behaviour, I filled with hot self-contempt. Why hadn't I done something bolder? Why hadn't I simply walked up to her and introduced myself, asked a question, cracked a joke of some kind, begun raving like I was in the throes of the Pentecost -- anything besides this pretense that had no chance of leading anywhere? I had nothing to lose, even if she'd told me to drop dead. What was this gulf that so often separated my first impulse, acted upon before I even knew what was happening, from the kind of gambit that had at least a molecule of hope attached to it? Just as I was grinding my brain in an attempt to analyze and solve this terrible enigma once and for all, a grizzled old man in gray, shabby clothes tossed himself down in the middle of the road and began thrashing around in the brown slush, loudly singing Heartbreak Hotel as a chorus of horns arose from the stalled traffic.
These are a new batch I just got in, Kalim said as he set the cigarettes on the counter. As usual, the carton had been placed inside an additional opaque plastic bag, the bag that actually held the cigarettes being transparent and its contents therefore easily spotted by the authorities. I'm told they don't taste so much like recycled phone books and moose shit. Thanks. I looked around at the imitation designer watches, the bins of beige panties and bras, the bongs and weed pipes, the clip-on hair extensions. You know Kalim, I've had this thought pinging in my head all day ... like sonar or something ... that maybe I need more danger in my life. You know, that I need to take more risks. Well man, you're smoking these Indian cigarettes, which I'd say puts you in the risk-taking category. That's living dangerously, bro. It occurred to me again, as it had so often in the past, that despite the fact that Kalim did his best to talk streetwise and had a gorgeous wife (she sometimes worked the store in his stead), he was obviously a homosexual. This was especially apparent when Pierre happened to be there. Pierre was an elderly neighbourhood faggot (his preferred label) with whom I sometimes drank, mainly because he had a seemingly endless supply of booze, money, bitchy wisecracks, hilariously fractured idioms, business schemes that skirted the law, and bizarre anecdotes from his days as a hustler and male go-go dancer during the twilight of the disco era. Moreover, his drunken antics and practical jokes were the stuff of legend in these parts. Oddly, although Pierre was openly and even exaggeratedly gay, he was also expressly homophobic, mocking anyone he considered a Nelly, as if only he were allowed this distinction. I hate fags ... I'm only attracted to straight dudes, he often proclaimed, strolling or rather, half-staggering along the sidewalk on his way to the liquour store for the second or third time that day in his long black coat and shapeless, wide-brimmed black hat, looking like some kind of cross between a badly shaved rabbi and an undertaker in the Old West. How's Pierre? Kalim asked. In poor health, as usual, I replied, my voice sounding to me as though it came from someone else. He's such a lovely man, you know? Really, he's a great guy. Tell him I say hi when you see him.
When I arrived back at my apartment I dispatched three cigarettes in a row to a blissful, fiery demise. Then I rolled a joint, smoked that, another cigarette, thought for a moment I was going into cardiac arrest -- No, Eureka, you're just high, I reminded myself in a soft voice thought of masturbating but then decided that first I should do something I could consider productive, using the anticipated reward of an orgasm or two to motivate myself. So I began writing an experimental science fiction novel. At a loss for a protagonist's name, I used my own. I had written for about half an hour before I gave the project up as dreadfully misguided:
The men do not know one another's names. The Little Commander's face, deformed by countless scars into that of a shrunken head transmitting bad juju to any who might gaze upon it, leers pitilessly toward the man codenamed Hedgehog, bending the drizzle-chilly twilight to its menacing contours, spittle flying from the tight, barking lips. Ah, I see. You think you can get by on your looks alone, eh? Yeah, I can see that now. I've seen your type all my life. Know what I call guys like you? No sir. Abalones, that's what! Pretty shells filled with slime. Put some iron in your balls, soldier! But Hedgehog, head angled downward from the pistol-whipping The Little Commander has just dealt him across the jaw, only intensifies his blubbering protest. I just don't like dark places ... closed in places ... I can't help it ... Please oh please don't make me go in there, sir! The line of dripping noses, chinstraps, helmet rims, and rifle butts of the others at attention remains unaltered by the scene. It would take a direct order from a superior, or a surprise attack by the enemy, for the men to show any sign of life. Before them, the mouth of the abandoned railway tunnel is growing indistinguishable from the night. The Little Commander resumes his briefing. We suspect this tunnel connects to an underground complex...
* * * *
Alphabet, what's your position? Follow my voice. Come to my voice ... as you would come to own your mother in distress... Blindness reaching towards blindness. Form a chain. Here's my hand. Come to my voice. What happened to our lights? Our batteries had at least four days' charge. Maybe the enemy is using harmonic disruptors to screw up our gear? I can't see a damn thing! Doesn't anyone have any emergency flares left? Where is The Little Commander? Become one with the darkness... The voices, the footsteps, are getting fainter. Eureka Jones, codename Alphabet, holds his breath, letting the rest of the group melt away into unseen voids. Silence brings relief. Relying on touch alone, he flips over the limp body of The Little Commander and begins rummaging through the dead man's pack for supplies. Ahead, in the darkness. Something glowing, a pale green mass undulating toward him. Could it be the ghost of the Little Commander, come already for revenge? Eureka approaches the specter, his proton-carbine at the ready, safety decidedly switched to the OFF position. What the...? His brain, still reeling from the atrocity he has committed the murder of his superior, his desertion from his platoon struggles to piece together the weird spectacle. My God, he breathes. It's some kind of giant phosphorescent larva... And he cannot shake the feeling that the worm is communicating to him, using some form of telepathy. Foreign images, not of his mind's own making, begin to flood his consciousness. Down, down, his soul plunges into night.
The clown regarded me, smiling amiably. I punched it. The smile returned, wobbling back and forth in diminishing arcs before coming to a complete stop. In the lighted window of the second floor apartment across the street, a silhouetted figure crept from right to left, hunched over like a cartoon villain. I enjoy spying. That's it.
At last, I had something worthwhile to do.
1 comment: HomeSubscribe to:Posts (Atom)Blog Archive 2011(1) December(1) 2012(1) January(1) 2013(1) April(1)Part Three: Pigeons of a FeatherAbout MeJason BenoitView my complete profileFollowers
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