by Tom Robbins
“Alas. All I know is that if you could sit on it, I was interested in it.”
At least half the girls made it clear, largely through body language, that anything they sat on could be his for the asking. Yet, he did not ask. He was, in some oblique fashion, paying off a debt to Suzy, who, he kept reminding himself, was but three or four years their junior, and for whose sake he seemed to feel he owed more than a modicum of retribution. He lusted maniacally for the Art Girls, of course, and, in all frankness, might never have let remorse over Suzy stand in the way of getting to know them more intimately had not his sunrise visits from Dev been so carnally extracting.
It was spring. There was no mistaking it. The air had become like cotton candy, spun not from sugar but the sex glands of meadowlarks and dry white wine. In the Pike Place Market, green sprouts popped up between the cobblestones. When he ventured out of a morning, freshly if resentfully groomed, yet bearing Dev’s funky signature like a laundry mark on a shirt, Switters left his topcoat at home.
Pale sunlight warmed the “starship,” the “second-story window,” the “throne of enlightenment” from whose eminence he kept watch on the world. Because spring brought with it, as it does each year, quiet spasms of longing that may be interpreted as sad, he found himself thinking of the sad-faced little mercado down in Boquichicos, so woefully wanting in goods and goods-buyers compared to the overstuffed market in which he parked his “one-man tilt-a-whirl.” And because in the high stalls (including Dev’s), oranges, onions, potatoes, and so forth were stacked in pyramid piles, he was repeatedly reminded of the shaman of the Kandakandero. Was it around Today Is Tomorrow’s cranial apex that Sailor Boy’s plumage had come to rest? And what of Fer-de-lance? The boy was out of vivid South America, but vivid South America was not quite out of the boy.
Bereft of Art Girl yachting parties, Switters again had lots of time to think, and while he thought often of Suzy and what he might have done to protect their relationship, thought of the CIA and what he might have done to preserve his job, he focused his thinking on his South American affliction, specifically on the question raised by Bobby Case, to wit: What had he been shown by the witchman’s ayahuasca, his yopo, that was so privileged and precious that he’d be expected to pay for it by spending the rest of his life with his feet off the ground?
Was his predicament in any way a distant echo of Adam and Eve’s? Had he, with a chit supplied by a creepy trickster, bought lunch at the Tree of Knowledge Bar & Grill, where only the cosmic elite were supposed to eat? If so, what forbidden information, exactly, had he ingested? That every daisy, sparrow, and minnow on the planet had an identity just as strong as his own? That all flesh was slowed-down light and physical reality a weird dance of electrified nothingness? That at a certain level of consciousness, death ceased to become a relevant issue? As did time? Today is tomorrow? Okay. But hadn’t he known those things all along?
In Genesis 3:22, a peevish voice attributed to Yahweh said of Adam (caught with pip on his lip), “Behold, the man is become as one of us.” Us? More than one god, then? Goddesses, perhaps: a Ms. Yahweh? Was Yah’s collective pronoun meant to include his beaming lieutenant, Lucifer? Or, for that matter, the Serpent? How about the community of angels (an apolitical faction of which might already have been disposed toward neutrality)? Or might God possibly—and this was pretty far-fetched—have been referring to the bulbs? The coppery pods, the shiny, trash-talking siliques who had boasted that they were running the show? Ridiculous, maybe, but what were those damn bulbs? Were they intrinsic to the plants from which ayahuasca and yopo were derived, an example of an abiding botanical intelligence amplified and made comprehensible by an interfacing of vegetative alkaloids with human neurons? Were they, rather, projected manifestations of his own psyche, hallucinated totems from the collective unconscious? Or were they actual independent entities, a life-form residing, say, one physical dimension away from our own, reachable at a kind of supercharged Web site accessed through chemical rather than electronic means?
Well, whatever, he certainly hadn’t become “as one” of them, or “as one” of the witchman’s ilk, either. So, why was he being punished? Instructed? Initiated? Eighty-sixed, at any rate, from the garden of reason? The very terminology to which he was forced to resort in order to consider these issues was suspect, being at once alien and shopworn, the parlance having in recent decades been yanked from its arcane native contexts and incorporated into the vocabularies of popularizers, charlatans, and dilettantes. Ugh! Still, they were real issues, were they not, as challenging to science, which preferred to sweep them under the rug, as to Switters, who, for reasons personal and acute, lacked that timid luxury?
Thrilled by the strange implications of such questions and at the same moment embarrassed by them, he examined them repeatedly but sheepishly, like a forensic scientist sorting a collection of crime-scene lingerie. These private musings occurred mainly in public—on sun-smeared corners, in shadowed archways, or beneath the great cartoonish market clock—where the murmuring of unsuspecting throngs washed over him, and Florida grapefruit and Arizona melons, like the popped orbs of Buick-sized frogs, watched him without blinking.
It was in one of those places, toying with one of those riddles, that he was approached, too abruptly for his liking, by a blue-chinned, dagger-nosed young man with an excess of glower behind his spectacles and an excess of wrinkle in his suit.
If the fellow was Mayflower’s Joe, coming out of the cold, something pretty serious must be up. At second glance, though, Switters would have bet this sulky slubberdegullion couldn’t tail the Statue of Liberty. He was no Joe. The company still had standards. Of course, he might be a master of disguise. Lower lip like that could be a nice touch, provided he didn’t trip over it.
“You Switters?”
“Who wants to know, pal?”
“I’m here to drive you to your grandmother’s.”
“Don’t believe I rang for a car. My chauffeur’s name is Abdulla, he’s been known to patronize a dry cleaner, he calls me Mr. Switters, and unless I have him confused with the gardener, this is not his day off.”
The man bristled, but any thought he might have had to rummage in his repertoire of rude retorts was dispelled by a look from Switters, hypnotic and fierce. Out of a jacket pocket unraveling at its seams, he drew a card that identified him as a paralegal at a downtown law firm that Switters remembered Maestra having mentioned once or twice in connection with her will.
“Guess there’s some bad news,” he said. “I’m parked around the corner on Pine.”
In Maestra’s foyer Switters was greeted by a doctor and a lawyer. Does it get any worse than that? Assuming that no decent person would allow a land developer in their home, only the presence of a cop and a priest was required (the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse) to complete this roll call of damnation.
The physician was courteous and kind. He explained that Maestra had suffered a mild stroke, particularly mild when one considered her age, from which there were indications she would fully recover. There was no evidence of paralysis, although her speech was noticeably slurred. She was lightly sedated, and a nurse had been engaged to watch over her for the next seventy-two hours. Until she regained normal speech, she wished to see no one. “Switters would try to take advantage of my vocal impediment to win his first argument with me in thirty years.” The doctor quoted her with a chuckle, gave Switters his phone number, and left the house.
It was now the lawyer’s turn. She, too, was polite, though with her it seemed more a matter of professionalism than compassion. Uncommonly tall, she was as black of skin as many of her colleagues were of heart, and there was a trace of tradewind in her accent. “Barbados,” she’d later explain. Her dignity, magnified by her height, might have been daunting to a man less reckless than he. In any case, since Ms. Foxweather had a couple of bombs to drop, her altitude was entirely appropriate.
“I don’t suppose you’ve ever been apprised of your grandmother’s i
ndictment?” Foxweather inquired, opening the hatch and letting a big one fall. “No, I thought as much. Well, she was charged in January with computer trespass. Intrusion with mischievous intent. And it was mischief, I should stress. There was no evidence of larceny or social activism, per se. Nevertheless, it’s a serious charge at an inopportune time since the government is attempting to clamp down in these cases before they get out of hand. The feds aim to send a message.”
Whether in disbelief (though he shouldn’t have been overly surprised), dismay, or a kind of admiration that was not far from delight, Switters just kept shaking his head. Foxweather couldn’t be faulted for imagining that it was palsy that had landed him in his chair.
“Because of your grandmother’s age, prison was never really a possibility and because, as far as can be proven, she didn’t capitalize financially on her intrusions, there was. . . . Well, intentionally or unintentionally, she did bring down at least one computer network and destroy a fair amount of intellectual property, and while I did my best, the fine was steep. It was levied this morning, and I have to say, I’m convinced the judgment is what caused her stroke.”
The attorney finally took a seat—Switters was getting a crick in his neck—and cut to the nougat. Maestra, even should she completely recover and suffer no further blockages, was going to require care. She threatened to cane-whip the tightwad who might try to move her into an efficiency apartment and gun down like a landfill rat the Nazi who would plant her in a nursing home (Switters and Foxweather exchanged glances that indicated they both knew the old lady wasn’t joking), and home care was not inexpensive. The Magnolia manse was costly to keep up. Taxes were in arrears. There was a six-figure fine to pay. And, of course, legal fees. When all was said and done, Maestra, who’d donated generously over the years to some rather kooky causes, was staring into the hungry eyeholes of the lean white dog of bankruptcy.
“Now, I’ve agreed to accept her old cabin up at Snoqualmie Pass in exchange for my services. So that helps some. Ahem. Aside from this house, however, your granny has only one asset of any great value.”
“The Matisse.”
“Precisely. And it would fetch more than enough at auction to see her through. But she says she’s promised it to you upon her demise and, therefore, doesn’t feel she has the moral right to sell it.”
Switters wheeled himself to the living room door and looked in. There it hung above the mantel, in all of its sprawling, life-affirming effrontery. How could anything so flat be so rotund, anything so still be so antic, anything so meaty be so spiritually contemplative, anything so deliberately misshapen be so gratifying? Upon patterned cushions that might have been honked, zig by zag, out of Ornette Coleman’s horn, the odalisque exposed her flesh to a society that had grown frightened again of flesh. Without fear, inhibition, egotism, monetary motive, or, for that matter, prurience or desire, she loomed, she spread—as if she were both metropolitan skyline and wilderness plain: woman as city, woman as prairie, woman as the whole wide world. And yet, the longer he looked, the more removed she became from womanliness and worldliness, for in essence, she was but a song sung in color, a magnificently useless expanse of liberated paint. Owing nothing to society, expecting nothing, the painting bumped against the brain like a cloud against an oil derrick. It had the innocence and brute force of a dream.
Switters turned to Ms. Foxweather. “Matisse must not have had any damn heat in his studio. Woman went blue on him.”
“Oh, but that’s the way—”
“Sell it!” he snapped. “I never liked it anyhow.”
You can lie to God but not to the Devil?
For at least two reasons, Switters had been planning to move into the mountain cabin as soon as the snow melted. First, he was ready for a sabbatical from the Pike Place Market, which, with the advent of warm weather, was becoming almost South American in its vividity; and second, if Maestra was staring the pale dog in its ciphers, Switters was already under its paws. With his unemployment benefits about to expire and his unsold condo facing foreclosure, he’d been steeling himself to approach Maestra for a loan. Now . . .
A lawyer’s going to be weekending in my sylvan cabin whilst, in the glow of my beloved Matisse, some ruthless corporate raider will be plotting the hostile takeover of a pharmaceutical firm noted for the manufacture of mood-elevating laxatives. Along with appropriate details and his concern about his grandmother, Switters e-mailed the preceding to Bobby Case. When Bobby failed to respond right away, Switters figured he must be off flying a hazardous recon mission over North Korea (for, presumably, that’s what his new assignment entailed) or else up to his knees in Okinawan pussy (Bad Bob was ecstatic to be in Asia again, boy howdy!).
In about twelve hours, however, the e-bell rang. Damn! Why do those yellow-bellied fates always gang up on the elderly? How is she?
In the mind and the body, where it counts, Maestra’s doing remarkably well, Switters answered, although, for the moment, her voice is unsettlingly reminiscent of her dear departed parrot. Financially, Sailor Boy may be the better off of the two. I had no idea. Turns out she’s been donating large sums of cash to organizations whose names and objectives are not well known.
Probably CIA fronts, every one of them, Bobby tapped. But that Matisse, which a drifter like you never deserved in the first place, ought to bring in millions.
Yes, millions. If it doesn’t set off an alarm. Not only is its authenticity likely to be challenged, there’s a possibility it could be stolen property. Maestra’s first husband acquired it under somewhat foggy circumstances. In any event, I’m living by the temporary graces of Mr. Plastic and in dire need of gainful employment. I have to keep Maestra out of the nursing home, should it come to that, keep her in her own house with her wicked computers. Also, I’ve decided to go back and confront Today Is Tomorrow in the autumn. One year should just about suffice for two-inch enlightenment. Wouldn’t want to overdo it. Wear out my welcome in Nirvana.
Now you’re talking, son! I’ll get back to you if I have any bright ideas. Meanwhile, give the old hacker my affection and admiration.
The very next day, Bobby was on-line with an intriguing proposal.
If you’re able and willing to travel, You Know Who has got a speck of work for an ex-operative with your particular experience. April 30. Hotel Gül. Antalya, Turkey. Sit in the lobby and look innocuous—can you manage that?—until you hear somebody say, “Fuck the Dallas Cowboys.” Pay: low. Risk: high. But you won’t turn it down because the thrills are practically unlimited, and I know you’re aching to get back in the game.
Was he? Aching (from the Old High German ach!, an exclamation of pain) to get back in the game (from the Indo-European base gwhemb, “to leap merrily,” as in gambol)? Certainly, he had always looked upon his activities, official and unofficial, in the geo-political arena as a game: a combination of rugby, chess, and liar’s poker, with a little Russian roulette mixed in for good measure. While there were no conclusive victories to be had in that game beyond simple survival, a player scored whenever his acts of subversion thwarted or even delayed the coalescing of power in any single camp. In a sense, one won by making it difficult for others to win or, at least, to grow fat on the fruits of their triumph.
Six months in a wheelchair, however, had altered his overview slightly if significantly. When one was living two inches off the ground, one remained close enough to the earth to experience its tug, share its rhythms, recognize it as home, and not go floating off into some ethereal ozone where one behaved as if one’s physical body was excess baggage and one’s brain a weather balloon. On the other hand, one had just enough loft so that one glided above the frantic strivings and petty discontents that preoccupied the earthbound, circumnavigating those dreary miasmas that threatened to bleach their hearts a single shade of gray. In short, one could be keenly interested in worldly matters yet remain serenely detached from their outcome.
Switters, if the truth be told, was as enthusiastic about geopoliti
cal monkey-wrenching as he’d ever been, but now, two inches removed, was no more attached to the end results than he’d been to the outcome of the rain-gutter boat races against the Art Girls. (Were he inclined—and he decidedly was not—he probably could have drawn several parallels between his passage through life and the careening of his unlikely little boats through the market’s littery channels.) In fact, he’d reached the conclusion that the inertia of the masses and the corruption of their manipulators had become so ingrained, so immense, that nothing short of a literal miracle could effect a happy ending to humanity’s planetary occupancy, let alone the kind of game in which he played upon that slanted field. And yet, it was a game absolutely worth playing. For its own sake. For the wahoo that was in it. For the chance that it would enlarge one’s soul.
So, perhaps he wasn’t exactly aching to resume play, but he mustn’t have been averse to it, for he wasted no time in twisting Mr. Plastic’s arm until the card blubbered like a cornered snitch, surrendering a one-way ticket to Istanbul for Switters and a heavy silver bracelet in a Northwest Indian raven motif for Maestra. In one of the market’s dimmer cul-de-sacs, he enjoyed a furtive farewell straddle from a drawers-down Dev, while yards away at her deserted stall, consumers edged across the narrow line of civilized restraint that separated shopping from looting, cleaning out the first of the season’s Mexican strawberries. Switters reimbursed her from his undernourished wallet in order to keep her brothers from slapping her around. Then, he was off to meet, for the very first time, the archangel—
“Audubon Poe.” The flannel-shirted, Mariners-capped man who spoke the name had been standing on the Pike Street curb poring over a bus schedule all the while that Switters was sliding into a taxi, folding his chair, and dragging it in beside him. He was a youngish, nerdy yet nimble Caucasian, not unlike Hector Sumac of Lima, Peru. As the cabbie signaled to pull into traffic, the stranger had suddenly thrust his face in the taxi window, uttered Poe’s name, frowned one of those obligatorily disapproving frowns that is actually a smile with its pants on backward, and shook his head. “You know he’s an arms runner,” he said, making it sound more like a piece of hot gossip than an accusation or a warning. And just as quickly he was gone.