The Nirvana Blues

by John Nichols

  Another person added, “How’s it going—better I hope?”

  A third healer offered, “Keep a stiff upper lip, Sasha. We’re with you, kid.”

  Then everybody opened their eyes at once. They smiled, nodded at each other, and commenced normal conversations. Nancy excused herself, heading off to fix some tea. Suspiciously, Joe assessed this conglomeration of cosmonauts, who came across very cool, very calm, very collected—infused with Inner Light and Infinite Understanding. Joe wondered if this sort of seance could actually hasten the recovery (or stall the demise) of a gangster monkey that shat on sand castles and shoved spoons up little girls’ noses.

  As if in answer to his idle conjecture, the telephone rang. Nancy said “Yes?,” listened for a second, then addressed the gathering: “Oh dear, he died.”

  They joined hands, exclaiming joyfully: “Our prayers are answered! He joins the others in the eternal happiness of heaven!”

  Into the phone Nancy said, “What? Oh gosh, I’m sorry.…” Again, she spoke. “I made a mistake everybody. I didn’t hear correctly. Sasha hasn’t died, he has revived.”

  Again they all sought each others’ hands. “Our prayers are answered! He joins the rest of us in the eternal happiness of life on earth!”

  Joe did a double take, scratched his head, and realized his bladder was about to explode. Bolting upright, he dashed into the bathroom, where a single carnation floated in the toilet bowl, and somebody, using soap, had drawn a gawky monkey on the medicine-cabinet mirror: it had a halo above its head.

  * * *

  HE WAS SPLASHING water in his eyes when Natalie Gandolf appeared in the doorway. Her hard, pretty face had a momentary spiritual softness.

  “Hello, Joe, how’s it going?”

  A warning bell rang in his head—bong! And a headache suddenly flared. Cautiously, he dabbled at his damp cheeks with the corner of a fluffy towel. “Can’t complain,” he replied warily. “I’m still alive.”

  “Though maybe not for long.”

  “Ho ho ho.”

  “Tribby called late last night. He said he’s not sure, but he thinks Heidi flushed the cocaine down the toilet. Or anyway, that’s what you told him. When I passed the news to Ray, he suggested the toilet rap was a ruse to make him call off his dogs so you two could then unload the stuff in secret.”

  “I only gave Tribby what Heidi told me on the telephone. Why don’t you call Heidi?”

  “Ray did.”

  “And?”

  “She said it was none of his business.”

  “I don’t have it,” Joe whimpered. He stared at his pathetic features in the mirror. “I don’t even have my original twelve thousand bucks. Apparently, I also don’t have a wife anymore. And I’ve lost my children into the bargain. If Ray Verboten wants to kill me, tell him he’s welcome to, I don’t care anymore.”

  “You should know the rumors are flying fast and furious. Somebody said you were casing the First State People’s Jug yesterday, with an eye toward robbing it. Others think you and whatshername, the waitress—Angel Guts’ ex—and Eloy Irribarren are sitting on the dope, with an eye toward marketing it later when the heat’s off.”

  “Natalie, I think the only way to resolve the impasse is for Ray to assassinate me, my kids, Heidi, Diana, and Eloy, and anybody else who has even a microscopic acquaintance with the affair.”

  “Of course, Tribby could be bullshitting me for the benefit of your interests.”

  “You better off Tribby, then, on general principles.”

  “My party is tonight,” Natalie threatened softly. “I really could use that stash, Joe. Ray’s in a bind ever since his plane crashed. I’ll tell you what: providing you don’t tell anyone, I’ll up my offer five thousand dollars, cash, if you can deliver it before five P.M. Nobody else has to know … strictly between us two.”

  “I don’t have it. I don’t even know if it still exists. And if it does exist, I don’t know where it’s hiding, Boy Scout’s honor. Heidi said yesterday the only way I could recover it was with a rubber suit and a snorkel.”

  “You mean a scuba suit?”

  “If you insist.”

  Her fingertips nuttered off his shoulder. “Will I see you this afternoon, Joe, before my party?”

  “I really can’t promise anything. Apparently I have very little say in the matter these days.”

  “I’ll tell Ray not to do anything rash. Not just yet, anyway.”

  “Thanks,” Joe mumbled to her back as she floated away.

  HEIRESS BEFRIENDS LOWLY GARBAGE MAN: “NATIONAL COMPASSION WEEK” PROCLAIMED!

  * * *

  EYES BLOODSHOT and swollen, wrapped in her ski jacket and huddled refugeelike in a corner of the tent, Diana yelped “Where have you been?” as she lunged for his embrace and held him tightly, head burrowed into his armpit, her body shuddering from heartfelt sobs.

  Joe said, “Listen, I’m sorry.…”

  Apologies. By the time all this ended, he would be so riddled with guilt that not even a life spent groveling on his belly, only the whites of his eyes showing, would constitute sufficient repentance. How could such a simpleton go so complexedly astray? How is it that a person he scarcely knew could cling so tightly? How bad (how sad) must be the national emotional state that endowed its citizens with such a hair-trigger on the pistol-shaped frame of their dependencies? The moment a shred of kindness or a blivet of semi-compassionate sex touched their crucified sensibilities (and expectations), they collapsed, becoming maudlin effigies of human beings, incapable of rational thought, let alone survival. What kind of society even allowed, let alone catered to, a Jack the Ripper like himself?

  “Stop me, lock me up, envelop me in chains, kill me quick, before I murder again!”

  Deaf angels inhabited heaven. He was on his own. Time to be a man, make a clean breast of it, tell the truth. He was too far gone to keep procrastinating. Salvation could only be earned by coming clean and taking his lumps, by facing Diana—without a blindfold or the crutch of a last cigarette—like a man.

  Joe opened his mouth, fully intending to break it off candidly, showering her with the bitter truth. Instead, he lied like a trooper.

  “I got nervous about the car,” he explained haltingly. “I couldn’t sleep. So I got dressed and walked into town. But then I couldn’t find the keys. I must have spent two hours tearing that damn vehicle apart. I felt like an FBI agent searching for subversive literature in the house of a suspected Weatherperson. I even crawled all around that parking lot on my hands and knees. But around three A.M. I finally threw in the towel. By then I was too tired to walk back here, so I limped over to Ralph’s office and crashed there for a few hours. This morning I returned to the hospital at daylight, and guess what?”

  “What…?” Ay, such a bedraggled, forsaken, forlorn, and much-too-tightly-clinging kitten!

  “In two minutes I found the keys. You know where?”

  “No.”

  “Lodged in a tire tread. The car must have rolled over them. Ain’t that a kicker?”

  “You can’t leave me like that, ever again. I mean, after last night, after that incredible loving, I woke up, I don’t know exactly when—probably around midnight—and you weren’t here. God, that was devastating!”

  “Wait a minute. Two days ago you were trying to brainwash me into a state of cynical detachment and sardonic objectivity re romance. You said you couldn’t stand sentimental bullshit. What happened?”

  “Things change. I fell in love.”

  They clung to each other silently for a half-hour, until Joe sprung a bad cramp in one thigh and twisted away from her, shrieking. She smiled as he thrashed painfully and cursed, pummeling the delinquent muscles. Wonderful highlights glistened on her cheeks. Even in pain, Joe was reminded that all of us, no matter what our physiognomy, have our moments of soul-rattling beauty. And he seemed defenseless against these moments. His firmest resolve could be melted by a smile, a provocative pose, or thoughtfully pursed lips. He could be ens
laved by a gesture, enraptured by a sentimental melody, hog-tied by the promise of tenderness.

  At heart, all he really wanted out of life was to be a lovable buffoon, liked by everybody, with an impeccable social conscience.

  Sooner or later, for the nation (for the world) to become a sane and humanistic place, a shattering and violent revolution would probably have to occur. Yet Joe doubted he had the courage to pick up a gun. In his revolutionary fantasies he saw himself as an invaluable arbiter, beloved and trusted by both sides, responsible for the crucial liaisons that ultimately forged a just and reasonable (and lasting) truce.

  In other fantasies he saw himself brutally drawn and quartered at the first bugle call to holocaust, disdainfully cut down and spat upon for being a lily-livered and ineffectual sissy on the barricades who nobody, on either side, could stomach: a Fraidy-Cat without the courage of his convictions.

  Yet he didn’t want to cause actual physical bodily damage in the upcoming conflagration. Although it might be argued that, on his own this past week, and without any assistance from the John Birch Society, the National Association of Manufacturers, or the American Nazi party, his sordid escapades had caused enough hurt to give him Ku Klux Kredentials for life.

  Joe blurted, “Diana, it’s no good.”

  “What’s no good?”

  “This. Us. You and me.”

  A mother bids her child farewell in front of the exterminating oven. Their fingers touch. Then, with a gunbutt, the mother is prodded through a metal gateway toward her doom: the child stares after her, stunned, bereft in a way impossible to imagine for anyone who did not experience the Holocaust. The camera pans in to a close-up of the child; her expression is beyond torment; her face is familiar.

  It is Diana.

  She said, “What do you mean?” Instantly, her cheeks flooded with salty water.

  “It’s stupid. It won’t work. I’m not tough enough or crass enough—oh hell, I dunno. How did I ever get myself into all this? I thought it would be easy. I thought everybody was out there, carelessly duking each other on a billion whims, having a ball. Instead, every time I knock on any door, the meek of the earth, crippled by dreams of warmth and kindness and security, open up.”

  “You can’t leave me.” She looked utterly terrified. “You’re the first time in—Jesus, six years?—that I trusted somebody to be decent. Last night, for the first time ever, I mustered the courage to accept real loving. You can’t just throw me away.”

  “But you said … but I didn’t…”

  “Look at what happened, Joe. Look at what happened.”

  “It didn’t mean that to me.”

  “I don’t care what it meant to you. You can’t just walk around being totally irresponsible for your actions. You have to answer to a conscience, you know. Moral imperatives are involved when you love somebody like we did last night.”

  “Oh, Christ … nobody understands.”

  “The way last night was is the way people make love to have a baby.”

  He could see it now: “The Bureau of Ciphers and Statistics announced yesterday, in Washington D.C., that, due to an enormous and unexplained rash of illegitimate babies in the American Southwest, that region has violated every government ZPG ordinance on the book and has been placed on natal probation for at least a year. A major factor in the sudden increase superseding all birth and fertility guidelines, Joseph P. Miniver, was arrested recently. A dozen thick rubber bands were wound tightly around his offending member, initiating a process somewhat akin to that used in dehorning cattle. After a week, due to restricted circulation, Mr. Miniver’s penis will atrophy and eventually dry up, painlessly dropping off. Commenting upon his punishment, Mr. Miniver said, ‘I deserve it, I really had it coming (no pun intended).’ Asked how he planned to carry on a sex life once the operation was completed, Mr. Miniver stated, ‘I’m not quite sure, but I know one thing: I’ve got nowhere to go but up.’”

  “I never said I loved you, Diana. For sure I don’t want another baby.”

  “The way you speak is irrevelant; your actions contradict everything you say.”

  “I’m sorry. But we just aren’t on the same wavelengths.”

  Life wasn’t melodramatic enough, however: now the gun appeared in her hand. Joe groaned, “Oh shit!”

  “You didn’t just say what you just said, did you? You can’t mean what you say you’re meaning, can you?”

  He performed another in a long and undistinguished line of hopeless gestures. “I can’t say I didn’t say what I said. I can’t pretend not to mean what I meant.”

  “I’ll kill you, then.”

  Joe was astonished by his lack of panic as he spoke. “What can I tell you? Please don’t kill me.”

  Then he heard a hollow thunderclap that seemed silent, like a noise from a dream: shock waves skidded through his body as if he had been struck a dull blow by a very heavy, yet somehow slow-moving, leaden fist. The tent instantly filled with smoke, through which, with utmost fascination, he perceived Diana’s astonished eyes suspended weightlessly in the ether, unattached to any facial features. He had no clear idea of what, exactly, had happened. What flashed into his head was the idea that somehow the tent had absorbed a volatile gas and popped like a balloon pricked by a needle. He heard his voice say “Hey!” although the word took forever to swim up through his body and escape the prison of his mouth. Diana’s eyes promptly swooped backward, and disappeared. In their stead arrived the tent’s ceiling, almost lost in pungent gunpowder smoke.

  In short, without any clear idea of how he had gotten there, Joe was lying on his back.

  Diana’s face hove into sight. Her lips moved, obviously speaking words, but he heard nothing. The violent ringing in his ears saw to that. Joe tried to read her lips. She repeated the same statement several times, to no avail. His ability to concentrate on her lips was hampered by a squall of mysterious hail-sized pellets that stung his forehead, nose, and cheeks. He recognized them as tears at almost the same moment he deciphered her lips:

  I didn’t mean to shoot you.

  Tongue-tied, he couldn’t reply. Yet his brain functioned superbly. Its clarity belied the maudlin nature of this uncomfortable misadventure. He had been shot by a distraught woman, probably by accident. Obviously, although she had known the gun was loaded, Diana had not meant to pull the trigger. His supine posture could be explained by the fact that a tiny lead projectile no larger than a third of a pinkie had entered his body somewhere—where?—at a high rate of speed, damaging certain crucial muscles, tissues, nerves, organs, and bones seriously enough to impede the natural functioning of his motor locutor. Joe wasn’t worried, though naturally, in passing, it occurred to him he might be dying. An unfortunate circumstance, given his youth. In fact, he hadn’t accomplished much of note during his thirty-eight years on earth. Looking on the bright side, though, his death would solve a lot of personal problems he’d managed to forge over the last five days. At best, he wouldn’t have to start a rumble among a lot of blotto monkey freaks while his maniac friends played Super Thief in a stolen helicopter.

  The cup is always half full, qué no? Joe laughed, although he could not hear himself doing so. In fact, how to tell if he was, in effect, laughing? Perhaps he simply had a desire to laugh, but, because the bullet had nailed him in the throat, or the chest, or the chin, he no longer possessed the physical equipment to realize such a desire.

  Out of curiosity, Joe tried to wiggle his toes. He succeeded, and exalted that feeling yet remained down there. If nothing else, he was not (apparently) slated to lose the use of his feet.

  Diana fled. Joe stayed absolutely still, unwilling to risk further physical experimentation. Any movement could aggravate his wound, causing intense pain, even death. After all, if the bullet was lodged against his aorta, any slight shift might dislodge the slug, allowing his life to geyser out of a wretchedly gaping wound.

  Or the lead might be embedded in his spine, one tenth of a millimeter away from paralyz
ing him for life.

  Joe’s brain commissioned a platoon of sensory soldiers to march outside the perimeters of their protected hamlet in the oblongata region, in search of the wound. They reconnoitered his arms uneventfully, and tiptoed through the yukky, swampy regions of his abdominal cavity without sighting any ruptures, foreign objects, or viscous fluids that had leaked from their proper tubes or holding tanks. Proceeding south with all due caution, they hacked through a thick jungle of thigh meat on the banks of the sciatic nerve, then probed kneecaps, calves, femurs, and ankles. At last, in the Antarctica of all flesh, where metabolism shone but a few hours every day, they sent a cable back to the oblongata region, claiming to have discovered nothing. So Joe ordered their retreat. In fact, he vacuumed them up swiftly, a precipitous move, granted, but one which may have avoided the anguish that could have been triggered had they double-checked his body on the return journey, accidentally discovering where he was wounded, and how badly.

  In due course, his ears stopped ringing. Actual sounds returned. The early morning chatter of magpies; a distant truck; the persnickety whine of a little machine somewhere doing a little job. Idly, Joe wondered: What’s going to happen? Where had Diana run to—to fetch Eloy? To call a cop? To send Heidi to the rescue?

  Probably she had just run away, terrified, leaving him there to die like a dirty dog, his sweet young blood staining the freshly overturned earth of land he would never own now, no matter what.

  Such a price he had paid for this greed to own a little piece of property!

  How to attract attention, calling for help? Joe could neither move nor speak. Of course, he had not absolutely proved his immobility. He simply feared that by budging he might dislodge something crucial, and be dead three steps out of the tent. Plus the mere thought of discovering where, and how badly, he was injured gave him the heebie-jeebies. And as for speech?—suppose that instead of words, only grotesque and horrifying gurgles emerged from the depths of his rent esophagus.…

  Left to him, then, were limited alternatives. Perhaps, by an extreme effort of will, he could float himself astrally over to the hospital. Or, lacking the intensity of belief to suddenly dominate a technique he’d actively pooh-poohed all his adult life, maybe he should tackle the problem at a lower level. Could he generate enough ESP to hail Nancy Ryan before he expired?