Evil Jester Digest, Volume 2

by Holly Newstein

  “In other words, don’t fuck with it,” I said, keeping my hands at my sides and noting the curious analogy.

  She laughed. “I’m just saying that you don’t want to get too rough and disarticulate that alignment.”

  “And a curious one it is,” I said, trying to sound erudite.

  I returned to her bed, the experiment unmolested; then retreated without further delay back to the warm and comfy left side of my brain, and forgot about the strange pincushion in the Tupperware bowl.

  On our very next date, we found ourselves back at her place (it was always her place, as I never dared take her to mine, a bleak, windowless two-room landfill occupied by three young and excessively hormonal lads, none of whom ever saw the entrance of a finishing school, let alone its alphabetized curriculum). This second time I was more venturesome, giving extended scrutiny to what was, save for those wall hangings and a few meager attempts at furniture, a skimpy lifestyle, even for a college student. And a quick peek inside her kitchen cabinets confirmed what I had already begun suspecting: that processed food had become, for her anyway, a thing of the past.

  I had also confirmed the absence of any mirrors, and was once again forced to ponder the impasses one must face when boycotting those reflective surfaces; although, in all fairness to Lisa, I should make clear that if any grooming misadventures had ever taken place then I was never aware of them. Her countenance was always flawless, her wardrobes impeccably worn, however dated they might have been. Granted, she was plain, and if mirrors had not been banished from her walls then I doubt she would have been bewitched by her own reflection, as Narcissus had been his. Rather, her buoyant innocence was her appeal, her beauty; and that selective naiveté that was surely intentional, a coquettish ruse to keep the rust off those girlish pretenses. Qualities no mirror could ever pretend to show.

  As previously mentioned, I do remember one incident in particular, late in our relationship: I had caught her bent over the kitchen counter in just her pajama bottoms, staring at her toaster of brushed stainless steel, her nose nearly touching that small appliance, and despite that intimate proximity I could still see the apprehension stitched throughout her posture. She was slowly and carefully swaying left to right, right to left, intently watching her carnival image, regarding it the same way a spear-toting aboriginal does a transistor radio.

  One thing that I found especially odd was a stark absence of plants. Since she was making such things her life’s endeavor, I expressed mild concern that she was not at least attempting to torture a baby philodendron—if not for her own gratification then for the gloating satisfaction of those who, like me, killed everything that photosynthesized, including plankton.

  Although I didn’t believe it for a second, she ashamedly admitted that her thumb was quite a few shades this side of green, always had been, but that she would nevertheless attempt another go, if only to appease my artificial concern. “Maybe some Dracaena sanderiana,” she pondered, “or a nice starter of Sansevieria trifurcate. Don‘t you just love that word, Sansevieria?”

  I agreed that it had a special ring to it, all the while remaining convinced that there was probably nothing Lisa Coventry couldn’t grow.

  One standout curiosity was a fifty-pound burlap sack, the kind used to transport coffee beans from, say, Caracas to Starbucks USA, as evidenced by the logo of some weary, mustached Venezuelan bean farmer pulling an even wearier donkey alongside, the caption reading “Arabica, El Capitán.” I mention this in detail only because I’d seen identical sacks hanging empty on the walls at Margie’s, so I assumed that’s where Lisa had gotten hers. She was an avid coffee drinker, and this sack, smoldering in a distant kitchen corner, appeared half full, so I’d naturally asked her if she ground her own beans.

  It was no surprise when she reached into the sack and pulled out a handful of seeds very similar to the one I’d seen in the Tupperware bowl.

  “You’re collecting peach pits,” I said, not the least bit incredulous, once again assuming that it was simply born entirely of her preoccupation with everything botanical.

  “Nectarine,” she amended, then giddily divulged to me her wish to one day take a truckload of these bags across country and retrace the steps of John Chapman (aka Johnny Appleseed); if not in actual measured stride, at least in devoted purpose.

  She glowed. “Just imagine the provinces a single grove could produce.”

  I was struck again with that nagging dread that I might have to very soon initiate a restraining order against this obsession-prone woman. She continued: “Did you know the peach is actually a member of the rose family? A peach is a stone fruit of the genus Prunus. It’s also called a drupe. Did you know a coconut is a drupe? Neat, huh?”

  I shrugged, thinking a drupe was something plants did when starved for water. “Can we go now?” I said. Dinner, the evening’s main attraction, was becoming less realized by the minute.

  She referred to P. persica-this, and Armeniaca vulgaris-that; about hybrids, cultivars, plumcots and peachcots and cherrycots…

  My hunger was reaching critical mass, and all I longed to hear was an overly ambitious waitress asking me if I wanted bacon and avocado on my cheeseburger. But Lisa continued unabated: “And that thing you refer to as the pit,” she said, “is called the endocarp. It’s also called the stone, and actually protects the seed located within. Did you know the Chinese make intricate carvings from the endocarps? Have for centuries, back to the Song dynasty. Don’t you just love that word, dynasty? Of course, most of the hybrid stones out there don’t lend well to carving as do the ones predating the 1940s. You see, to the Chinese the peach is a symbol of longevity. The fissures are magic, you know. Doorways into other realms.”

  “Say again?” This abrupt and unexpected shift from hard science to the mythic brought me back from the brink of incurious descent, a ledge whereupon I often teetered dangerously when in her company.

  “They knew about the fissures,” she said. “The Chinese. I believe their carvings grew from a more primitive ambition to unlock doorways. An old family secret. Yup, the first ones knew about the fissures.”

  I was then reminded of the seed in the Tupperware bowl; quite particularly those pins poking from it. When I started to ask, she hitched to a totally different rant: “Oh, did you know that the delicious Calimyrna fig has a symbiotic relationship with a wasp? This tiny insect actually pollinates its flowers!”

  A typical day in the life of Lisa Coventry.

  On that following Valentine’s Day, I was made aware of another of her predictions through the curiosity of others, as I witnessed a few students showing marked interest in a marble bench situated between the cafeteria and music building. Presented in her distinctive reversed style, this one actually rhymed: Rio 42 gets his due 10/2. And with this one, I didn’t have to jump on the information highway to search for clues, as the story of Samson Rio had saturated the media just weeks earlier.

  Samson Rio, or “Rio Forty-Two,” as the tabloid press liked to call him, was a serial killer of substantial ill repute, with bragging rights to the most vicious string of murders in California history. Forty-two women raped and killed, and in an extraordinarily short amount of time, with initial forensic estimates putting the reign of carnage at three months, start to finish.

  An often self-described “Latin Lover,” Samson Rio’s pedigree was no more south-of-the-border than Woody Allen’s, but it was a fun fact the media wasted no time in exploiting, as it tied in so well with his promiscuous bar-hopping lifestyle and choice of victims: beautiful Caucasian women of no set age group or hair color, their only shared commonality being that each have their own head, an attachment Samson Rio found burdensome, as he had removed each and every one, stockpiling them all in a rented storage unit in a San Diego suburb.

  Each head was found within its own monogrammed hat box, whereupon the lid of each of those containers bore a black checkmark next to any one of three available ratings: Good, Very Good, Awesume.

 
Rio was indeed a very troubled man, not to mention a bad speller.

  On October 2nd, while awaiting his arraignment in the San Diego County Jail, Samson Rio was found face-down in the communal shower, his throat deeply cut (so deeply, in fact, that many agreed a decapitation had been attempted). How Samson Rio found himself in general population was the most asked question, but in the end no one seemed too interested in finding out.

  To quote one late night talk-show host who commented upon that matter: “Justice is very much like ejaculation: it’s always welcome, premature or not.”

  Of course, this news had aged considerably by then, and I mention it in detail to show that there was no theme or premise to her predictions, only that they targeted events that significantly impacted the collective conscience, not so unlike those of her fellow soothsayers, either still living or long dead.

  That marble bench, by the way, went up and missing almost as quickly as had the table at Margie’s, within just a few days of its emerging memo’s discovery. It was quickly replaced with another bench built of robust aspen, as if changing to a softer medium would discourage further mischief. I was later told it had been polished down and reconstructed, then transferred to the faculty lounge as a pair of au courant end tables.

  Later that evening, as we were exchanging Valentine cards, I nonchalantly mentioned to Lisa that I had earlier happened by that marble conversation piece. She nodded her understanding and said, “He was a bad seed.” After careful deliberation I went ahead and asked if that was her personal opinion or professional one. She smiled, then said, “Did you know that if you bounce a ball inside a moving train, it will fall back to you, and not three or four rows down.”

  She appeared legitimately taken with this dilemma, and I explained to her the simple physics behind such trickery.

  “So,” she asked, a demure smile betraying her ignorance, “if you and I were to jump into the air this very second, the rotating planet beneath us wouldn’t advance one inch before our feet returned to the ground?”

  “Now you’re catching on,” I said.

  “Fascinating!” she said, then immediately turned sullen and took my hand. “Will you be sad if this train ever stops?”

  I told her that I would rather be sad than relieved; that it was never a good idea to take the train that far.

  Although she didn’t say as much, her eyes agreed.

  Our last night together came less than a week later. We skipped Margie’s and hit a popular Irish pub for drinks.

  Although she would have an occasional beer or two, Lisa avoided alcohol in excess, I had supposed, for the same reasons most young females do: to maintain levels of self-respect and those most important reputations; a course less endeavored, if not downright avoided, by their sexual counterparts. At least that is the alleged justification for such restraint. However, that night over more than a few gin cocktails, our conversations turned to religion, as they often get around to doing in relationships. When I inquired about her faith-based affiliations, she didn’t claim any mild or devout conviction to any Western or even Eastern creed, only saying this: “Have you ever seen a god trip and fall on a flagstone pathway?”

  I admitted, somewhat regretfully, that I’d yet to entertain such a vision.

  She leaned in, as if magnetically pulled by my growing bewilderment. “Well, I imagine it looks pretty much the same as when a mortal person does it. It’s just funnier when you know it’s a god.”

  “And how would I know that?” I asked.

  “By the way they take your name in vain when cracking their knee!” she said, slapping her own.

  “Oh,” I said, somewhat relieved, “you were making a joke.”

  “Was I?” she said, swaying to the beat of the gin. “Look, maybe all I’m trying to say is that people should consider looking peripherally for their gods instead of straight upwards. You’re not as likely to find them falling from the sky in fiery chariots as you are them squeezing sideways between fence rails or over the tops of low garden walls.”

  When one pluralizes a lower-case god, then insinuates that those divine beings might be walking among us as common folk, I start getting a little nervous, as it flies in the face of my monotheistic upbringing. Well, flutters in the face, is more like it, as I‘m not solidly sold on that concept. At least, I hadn’t been then. But I didn’t reveal my cynicism.

  I held up my drink. “A toast, to the Holy Father, Holy Mother-and may the authorities finally question them about their parenting skills.”

  She just stared at me; a startled sort of expression, one made more serious by the booze, I was sure. Then she said, “Makes you wonder if deific children are ever forced into creating imaginary friends.”

  I played along, offering that, yes, I supposed they probably were—but that those imaginary friends would most likely be far more substantive, more corporeal than those created from a finite mind, at least outwardly; that, given the unrefined skills of those juveniles, there would probably just be sawdust inside.

  “Or,” she giggled, “those gears and flashing lights like inside those robots from the old Twilight shows!”

  I toasted again. “To gears and lights, and robots who meet with tragic ends.”

  She twirled her ice. “Did you ever have imaginary playmates while growing up?”

  I pretended to think about it. “No,” I finally said. “I didn’t have to. I always had an abundance of real flesh-and-blood friends, not to mention two older brothers.”

  “I didn’t,“ she said, her eyes suddenly wide and glacial, as if something frigid had settled behind them. Then she warmed considerably and threw her arms around me. “Until you, that is.” Then she kissed me and told me my lips tasted of the darkest shade of amaryllis and sounded far brighter than the reddest framboise.

  In reflection, I’m convinced that she had slipped the proverbial tongue and that the alcohol was to blame, for it wasn’t either her reputation or dignity she so much wished to maintain with a sober head as it was her identity.

  Later that evening, in the glow of a dozen candles and the bouquet of lavender incense, the tip of her index finger danced across my chest, and I was sure she could feel the pounding of my heart; that her neighbors could feel it.

  “What is it?” I asked, literally terrified.

  “Ssshhhh,” she whispered. “Patience is truly a virtue.”

  She vanished the very next day, never to be heard from again. She was last seen leaving the library late that afternoon, her image caught on surveillance tape. Library records indicated that she’d checked out Wetland Plants: Biology and Ecology, and Freaks and Marvels of Plant Life. Neither was ever found. Although there was speculation that she’d simply run away, the more accepted theory was that she’d met with foul play, probably by the likes of someone as devious as Samson Rio. This theory, mostly embraced by law enforcement, was never officially declared, as fear it might create undue anxiety, especially on campus; especially in the wake of the gruesome California murders.

  I was of course a suspect, and remain so to this day, at least in the eyes of a few detectives who never believed my alibi, even as my two roommates swore we’d been up all that day and half the night shooting tequila during a Three Stooges movie marathon (their obsession, not mine).

  During the first days of the investigation I only lied once to the authorities, telling them that I had only one item inside Lisa’s apartment, but that I needed it as soon as possible as it was a crucial science project. When they asked why it was being conducted at her place instead of my own, I explained that a primary ingredient was lacking at my windowless apartment: sunlight. Having earlier been there to question me, they knew this to be true, and thereby let me retrieve it.

  And to this very day that experiment sits inside my own refrigerator, in the same Tupperware bowl. I’ve never so much as touched that seed, or its most curious protuberances.

  After that, I went into a kind of emotional hibernation, coming out only to eat, which I did li
ttle of, especially staying clear of certain fruits; and study, which I did a lot of. I moved out from my basement quarters not long after Lisa’s disappearance, having found a studio apartment within walking distance of the campus. I kept mostly to myself, retreating into an almost monkish devotion to school work. Time spent on the computer was for research only, and the viewing of television (although I was never a compulsive viewer to begin with) was a recreation I rarely, if ever, indulged. I had, in fact, left the only television I owned with my two grateful roommates, so any later glimpses of such things came inadvertently.

  Eventually, four years passed by; a few of them slow-moving in a kind of dream haze, the rest dragging by like a crippled dog pulling itself across a long, cold patch of unkempt asphalt.

  Then, six nights ago, I became sick. It started out earlier that day as a dull ache in my lower right abdomen, and by dinnertime had become a persistent pain I could no longer ignore. Having no medical insurance, I drove myself to the local fire house and had the paramedics check me out. An old friend of mine had once worked at that station, and I was thankful that he was still there and working that evening; thankful not for his expertise in emergency medicine, as he wasn’t able to help me in that respect, but because his was suddenly a familiar face in a world where so many things had slowly lost their identity, their color.

  The three paramedics who looked me over all agreed that my condition didn’t appear life-threatening, but that I should without delay get my ass over to St. Mary’s Catholic Hospital, as it was not only the closest but wouldn’t let a silly little thing like lack of health insurance get in the way of treatment.

  I followed their advice and found upon entering the emergency room an attendance of the sick that seemed somewhat alarming for a late Tuesday evening. There was a lot of sniffling, coughing, expectorating… Sobbing. And everyone was masked, to include the staff.

  Well, I’d told myself, it was, after all, flu season.