by Miles Klee
THUNDERDAN
Getting your footage online here, Frank—it’s like a giant bird went to the bathroom on her. Think she’d be used to that.
Laughter.
LIGHTNING ROD
You know how every so often, a news story brings this, like, new word into the conversation? Who ever heard of the word “denature”?
THUNDERDAN
But you say—if I’m hearing you right—say she’s not owning up to that part.
FRANK VADER
Not at the moment. But if she’s half as smart as they say, she will.
LIGHTNING ROD
Uh, she kind of has to.
THUNDERDAN
Thanks, Frank. Keep surfing the airwaves out there, and we’ll check back with you later. Now’s your guyses’ chance out there to weigh in on the Statue Fiasco. Caller, you’re on the air. What’s your name?
ANTHONY
Anthony. I think I might know why that terrorist lady says she didn’t do the framework.
LIGHTNING ROD
(Impossible to tell if ironic) We’d love to know. We’re stumped.
THUNDERDAN
How do you know, Anthony? Are you with the … shhh … (whispered) government?
“Hail to the Chief” plays. Laughter.
ANTHONY
I know because my wife left me today.
LIGHTNING ROD
Hold that thought for one sec, Romeo—we got ads coming at ya!
FEMALE VOICE
(With plaintive piano underneath) The Van Vetchen procedure has saved millions of American lives, and yet many would not be protected in the unthinkable event of a wide-scale H12 outbreak. That’s why Congress and President Fullner have passed the National Healthy Bodies Act, making VV compulsory for all citizens over the age of five. Your body is a temple—let’s keep it that way. A friendly reminder brought to you by Endless Nutraceuticals, architects of a sustainable global village.
MALE VOICE
(With bouncy electronic music underneath) Hey, commuters. Do yourself and your community a favor when you finally get home: leave the lights off. In fact, always limit use of electric appliances—that way we can reduce stress on the Northeast power grid during its continued reconstruction. Fight for Light: Do It in the Dark.
THUNDERDAN
Folks, if you’re just joining us, our caller says his wife leaving him today gave him the insight to understand why French terrorist Azura Carcassone won’t reveal how she denatured the Statue of Liberty’s iron framework. I have that straight? Anthony?
ANTHONY
I’m sorry. Little shaken up, blurted it out. But it’s true.
LIGHTNING ROD
S’alright, buddy, your fellow men feel for ya. Now, why is it your wife walked out?
ANTHONY
She was calling every day to ask when I’d be home, since the commute takes so long, and I’d always say, I’m in traffic, I’m in traffic, and she got so fed up today she goes, “You don’t get home by eight and help me with dinner and the kids tonight, that’s the straw that breaks my back.” She says, “I know you stay out late to screw your receptionist.” I don’t even have a receptionist.
THUNDERDAN
You should, they’re hot.
Wolf whistle cue. Laughter.
ANTHONY
I go, “Baby, it’s the commute. You don’t know how bad it’s gotten! Everyone is this late getting home, every day.” Takes three hours to get to Ivyland, and that’s right outside the city! And since those couple suffocations on the trains, sure not riding those again.
LIGHTNING ROD
Amen. Ain’t that why our show goes till 10? Some guys have it even worse than you, you know.
ANTHONY
Only today I was even later than usual, so I didn’t have a prayer. Had to walk home partway cause of these psychos. Shot one of the guys I was riding with.
Four seconds dead air.
ANTHONY
These psycho gas-heads saw the ice cream truck and I guess thought it would be an easy score, only they didn’t stop us first, they just shot, and the guy who was sitting next to me, Sal, or Sam, I’d only just met him—he’s dead now. Shot through the windshield. Cop too, both dead. Guys jacked the truck. I just got out and walked the rest.
LIGHTNING ROD
Hallorax junkies shot at you in—in an ice cream truck.
ANTHONY
Oh yeah, I didn’t say? Cops drove some of us home in ice cream trucks. Was a fleet of them practically. Commandeered cause of the black-and-white shortage in the department, they said. Plus they could fit more people.
LIGHTNING ROD
So now our finest are riding around in ice cream trucks. Huh!
THUNDERDAN
Certainly not an ideal situation, Anthony … they were driving you back to Ivyland, is that right?
ANTHONY
Yeah. That’s the least they coulda done.
LIGHTNING ROD
Settle down, chief, sounds like they were doing you a favor.
ANTHONY
Nope. They were driving a bunch of us who got stuck on the Munchausen Bridge escape.
THUNDERDAN
Anthony, now you really lost me. I thought this was—well, rubbing salt in your wounds—this was about your wife?
ANTHONY
Yeah. Well it was the escape, cause it was never finished, I guess. Me and these other guys were out following the signs on the escape walkway, headed toward the Jersey side. I mean obviously. But it was a dead end. They never finished the … never even finished the emergency walkway part. So we walked back to the New York side and then the ice cream trucks were there to take us through the tunnel instead. The ones who survived.
LIGHTNING ROD
Survived? (Laughter) Traffic that bad, Anthony?
THUNDERDAN
(Laughter) Who is the “we” we keep hearing about?
ANTHONY
The survivors. Of the Munchausen bridge collapse.
LIGHTNING ROD
Tony, the Munchausen bridge didn’t collapse.
ANTHONY
Sure it did.
THUNDERDAN
We would’ve reported …
ANTHONY
You mean you haven’t?
LIGHTNING ROD
Tony, I love a good crank call as much as … but our affiliates and spon—
High-pitched bleep.
THUNDERDAN & LIGHTNING ROD
FCC.
LIGHTNING ROD
We’re with you, guy, but you gotta watch the language. Now, this is a pretty tasteless joke, you can admit.
ANTHONY
Rod. I saw the Munchausen upper level cave in. I saw it.
THUNDERDAN
(Sotto voce) Caller …
ANTHONY
People got crushed.
LIGHTNING ROD
Jesus.
Whispering, something about “the screener.”
ANTHONY
Crushed when the Munchausen “denatured.” It went all bendy. That’s why that French lady won’t fess up. Because something else is doing it, did it to the Munchausen and the statue. Maybe they built it wrong in the first place, or it just got old. Maybe something got in the air—I saw this white smoke all around, only it didn’t move like smoke. Maybe it’ll happen to a lot of other buildings and bridges—what was the story with that big bridge in Michigan a couple years back? And some of us’ll walk to the dead ends of escapes and get picked up by cops in ice cream trucks trying to evacuate the place, and on the way home gas-heads’ll kill two guys in our truck and hijack it, and by the time we walk up the front steps our wife’ll be gone already and the kids’ll want to know if we could have macaroni and cheese for dinner and we’ll look in the pantry and see our wife, God, this woman I love, she even took the last box of mac and cheese.
A click. Six seconds dead air.
THUNDERDAN
That’s what we in the business call “dead air.”
Five seconds dead air.
>
LIGHTNING ROD
You know who makes a great mac and cheese.
THUNDERDAN
Your wife!
LIGHTNING ROD
Yeah, you knew.
DH /// KELVIN, NORTH CAROLINA ///
LAST SUMMER
For whatever reason, chest-deep in a bathwater ocean, “Dr.” Leviticus Van Vetchen is screaming with joy.
“It’s alive!” he screams, and I’m ringing hard enough to be equally revved minus the exact circumstances of why.
“It’s alive!” I scream.
He pulls what’s alive from the water, cupping it like communion. I stumble closer through the surf and freak when a fish grazes my leg.
“A sea dollar,” I sing admiringly when I finally see.
“A sand dollar,” Lev corrects, turning it over. “An alive sand dollar.”
To my revulsion, the sand dollar has actual moving parts on the underside, wiggling hairs arranged in a star. The amount of Belltruvin in my system plus plain old revulsion makes me barf hard.
“Can I keep it?” I hear as a wave tosses my barf right back. One and only time he’s asked my permission. I spit and look again. The sand dollar’s hairs are churning frantically. “I’ll keep it alive.”
“This, what you’re doing right now,” I murmur, spitting, “is I think killing it.”
“Nonsense,” says Lev, who stabs a hole in it with his lucky scalpel. He threads a bit of seaweed through for a leash, ties it off and drags the little guy up the beach like some reluctant toy dog as wave after wave chops me down.
*
Hold on. Giving you the wrong impression. Lev’s dad, Brutus Van Vetchen, is a respected medical mind, inventor of the operation that bears his name. Leviticus inherited a fairly great brain from the man and zilch from his mom, who died of ignored appendicitis in some Hare Krishna offshoot commune whose pamphlets regular Krishnas wouldn’t wipe their asses with.
“Here,” Lev was telling me a few months ago, poking a dirty mechanic laid out on the silver table in the back of our truck. The business of stripping cars continues undisturbed in the garage outside, screams of metal cutting metal. “Just got to cut in and do the injection. Easy.”
“O. So what’s this guy actually want?” I pat the dude’s ample belly and something inside adjusts with a groan.
“Doesn’t matter what this guy wanted; I’m training you to assist me in something a little more complicated and lucrative than cut-rate coz surgery. If an Adderade drip would help you pay attention, say so.”
“VV.”
“VV.”
“You can do that?”
“If ably assisted. Like I said, surprisingly easy.”
“Why so expensive, then?”
“That’s the thing. When my daddy was first working things out, he lost all these volunteers. Tried different anesthetics, but these guys weren’t waking up. The surgery worked, aside from the fact that no one lived through it.”
As the machinery outside fades down, you can hear our guy snoring lightly.
“And out of nowhere one day, Daddy says, these three guys walk into his office, real genteel assholes in matching suits, even, say they’re with Endless, and they give him a tank with their weirdo insignia on it. Hooked up to a mask. All they say is he should call when he’s ready for more.”
“Hallaxor?”
“Gas of the gods. Keeps operating prices high. Plus it scrambles your brain’s limbic system for life if you’re among the allergic 2% of males, not that they admit it. Read a case where the kid lost. The ability. To laugh.”
“How’d they make it?”
“Think he asked? This was a miracle dropped in his lap. Ordered a million cases and kept his mouth shut.”
“Wish we had a tank. Mystical.”
“Lucky for you, we’ll need it for our new operation. A lot.”
“Don’t have that kind of money. Or a hookup.”
“Won’t need money.”
“D’you say only guys can be allergic?”
There’s a grunt. We watch the fat mechanic wake up and absently grope his legs.
“Where the fuck are my calf implants?” he goes.
*
“Funny,” I tell Lev the day before. It’s spring in Ivyland, and Lev’s living room is puddles of water and sun, and a bunch of those furry caterpillars are hauling themselves from surface to surface. “I remember this dumbshit Henri Jackson I think?”
“Henri,” Lev repeats, glassed over and ready to ramble.
“From high school. Said so many poor people died cause they couldn’t get VV.”
“Shit’s unethical, scare you into getting something can backfire that bad. Hundred times more people growing up half brain-dead and hormonally insane cause of the gas than dying cause of H12. God. Or you never got VV, and someone offers you gas at a party: shit, son, you can turn into the walking dead overnight. Speech fucked, and forget higher language processing. Circulatory system a shambles. Emotionally unbalanced.”
When the lights go out, we each ask if the other paid utilities. Lev tries his pirate juice-sucker in the basement, flipping the switch peevishly a dozen times. No dice: not a rolling blackout. Blotted sirens in the distance confirm—it’s citywide. We swallow some pills and head out to the corner, where we find Jack gnawing on Motherclucker Wings in his squad car, which is covered in caterpillar silk, meaning he’d sat there all day. Looting reports seep out of his transmitter.
“Jackalope,” Lev says, knocking on the roof. “What’s all this then?”
“Look up,” Jack says, snapping the transmitter off with a sauced finger.
If the bright new street sign isn’t a prank, Clark Ave. has been renamed “Bladderade Boulevard.” As in, the Adderade flavor that helps old folks with urine flow and control.
“Someone’s taking a territorial piss,” Lev says.
“And the locals would rather starve, given their history with that someone,” Jack says, opening a wet nap and wiping his chin. “Add the caterpillar invasion and fuck. Don’t know why we even try this law-and-order thing anymore. Let a dump be a dump.”
The distant sounds of shouting and breaking glass are like a TV heard through cheap walls. As we walk around to see which other streets have been changed, I wonder: when was the last time someone told me anything? Estronale Avenue. Belltruvin Lane is getting tear-gassed by a phalanx of beefy contract riot cops, who cheer and chest-bump each other when a can actually hits a civilian. Sure beats a Middle East war zone, boy. Hallaxor Heath is already empty, its trees stripped by caterpillars. Shreds of protest signs wheeling in the breeze past compliant brick row houses, building blocks that a kid outgrew, organized for neglect.
“I’m not sure they know what a heath is,” Lev remarks. “I’m not sure I know.” He concentrates. We float on. Things that happen here don’t matter.
We stop in Sipwell’s. I finish my Belltruvin and get really ringing, rejoice at the return of color. My line of piss glows in the destroyed bathroom stall, flecked with these piercing neon sparks. It’s heavenly. Sighing never felt so good. A crack cuts across the wall above the toilet, a small Φ engraved farther up. Maybe supposed to be an ass, because nearby someone’s written “Greeks ♥ Sodomy,” and below that, “The South done fell again,” and below that, “to get sodomized by Greeks.”
What strikes me as so funny is that nothing’s funny at all, and I take a moment to collapse with painful gasps of laughter that are themselves the funniest things and over too soon.
Back at the darkened bar, ThunderDan and Lightning Rod are on the air, roasting a stuttery caller alive, and Lev bobs sharply, swatting away candles as Patrick the bartender attempts to set them up. I nod a what’s-up to Leo Clafter, the only other guy around. He’s drinking Puff Adderade and grimaces at the bottle after each sip, flicking caterpillars that show up on the bar. Speaking of people messed up by gas. Even having Lenny around half your life is better than being that guy.
In walks the bald bouncer-loo
king Belltruvin Fairy, picking me out right away.
“Slow day,” I say, taking out my expired driver’s license so he can stick it in the slot of his chunky black handheld for a photo record. Lev says they use the info to spike your health insurance premiums with “suicidal tendencies,” but I don’t have insurance, so win-win.
“We got you on file,” the Belltruvin Fairy smiles, “forget it.” He tosses me a sample bottle. “You’re lucky,” he says. “Here last night, some joker tried to steal the whole bag.” Patting a duffle, the rest of his supply rattling inside. “Had to break the kid’s nose.” He heads for the bathroom, punching his open palm nostalgically.
“Sorry, Lev, don’t like it any more than you,” Patrick is saying.