by Aidan Truhen
“Put it on the board—”
“There is not time for the board—”
“There is always time for the board that is how we know things have been done they go on the board and then they are crossed off the board and—”
“IT IS ON THE BOARD NOW, TEACHER PROCESS LADY WHO IS NO FUN—”
“Excellent I will take care of it—wait a particular dead guy or—”
“No no this is just housekeeping we will need a dead guy to be me I have just exploded Mr. Sharkey and also I feel the stirrings of a plan in my crime testes.”
“No.”
“No?”
“I say no to crime testes Price I am drawing a line. In fact I am actually drawing a line. Here—”
Doc writes a little column in black along one side of the HOMER board with no at the top and writes crime vagina and crime testes and then crime with square brackets and a variable n to mean any sexual or reproductive body part metaphorically invoked to indicate an instinctive reaction.
“Yeah Doc that’s fair okay okay but I feel a plan.”
“Good. Now re: exploding Sharkey—Calvanese will be unhappy—”
“I know yes there will be consequences but we will make nice later. But you see where—”
“I do, Jack.”
“We dump the dead guy and we let him be found as if we did not mean him to be found. Jack Price bled out and died. I am now BANJO TELEMARK—”
“O God—”
“No Doc it is genius do you not see the fog of crime the vistas of possibility the Kircheisen Art Fair the strategies and tactics of disguise the sheer brutal invitation to chaos Doc it is all there I AM BANJO AND HE IS ME AND WE ARE—”
“I will get you a dead guy.”
“Cool.”
“I wish to register my dismay.”
“Noted. Can you—can you make it look right?”
“Of course I can.”
Of course she can.
I am dating a woman who can.
Who can do anything.
Who will do anything.
Anything at all.
So that is all great but we are of course living in someone else’s house and at a certain point she was always going to come home.
* * *
—
“WHAT THE SHIT ARE YOU DOING HERE BITCH?”
Charlie says: “Oh fffudge.”
I am a little surprised by fffudge but okay.
“BITCH I WILL RIP OFF YOUR BITCH HEAD AND STICK IT IN YOUR SKINNY ASS! AND THEN I WILL FEED YOU TO MY FUCKING GOATS IN FUCKING PIECES AND THEN I WILL SELL THE GOATS TO FUCKING OLIGARCHS FOR TUSCAN-STYLE SHIN MEAT AND THEY WILL EAT YOU AND YOU WILL GO INTO THE SOIL SHAT OUT BY THE EXPLOITERS AND THE SLAVE OWNERS YOU FUCKING WHORE OF THE PATRIARCHY—”
The woman is tiny and skinny like that statue by Canova that is totally indecent they should not show it to the youth. She has black hair tied in a topknot and sprayed solid so that it looks like a Venetian chandelier resting on its back. I do not think she is pleased to see us but to be honest no one is these days and it is starting to drag on my bonhomie but even so—
“Um well hi I am Banjo may I know your—”
CLICKCLUNK
The gun is—honestly how does everyone have these things? They are like these cool bespoke firearm situations even Lucille had a gold-plated gigantagun one time before I threw it away and I—I just I guess I don’t really like the idea of having a signature gun it feels needy. Like I am the king of openhanded chaos I do not want that shit. But at the same time undeniably you cannot get openhanded chaos out and wave it at people to make them shut up and in my life right now everyone but everyone seems to do this.
The artisanal firearm right now being used as punctuation is called a Donnerbüchse, which is to say a thunder gun, and it is basically a weaponized recycler. It is a cone with bang bang at the back and an open mouth at the front and you put any old crap you happen to have in and then pull the trigger and all your chicken bones or nails fly out and rip pieces off whoever is in your way. Many people who are shot with one of these things who do not sustain fatal initial damage are killed by the very many fucked-up infections they contract in unexpected body parts because that is what happens when you get shot with a chicken carcass and a bag of nails. Another way of thinking about a Donnerbüchse is that it is a handheld unidirectional pipe bomb.
“Fuck you Flavia,” Charlie says which is not helpful.
“Charlie I will ask you to refrain from offering conflict resolution at this time and maybe just make nice.”
Charlie says: “Sorry I meant to say hi Flavia.”
The lady with the thunder gun is called Flavia.
“Fuck you Charlie what the fuck are you doing here?”
“I am here with Banjo he is making art.”
“Fuck Banjo and his art. The banjo is an instrument of oppression, a blackface parody.”
“In fact that is not accurate it was popularized in the U.S. largely by a blackface act but it owes its origin to a wholly non-European heritage and it is authentically—”
“Shut up you talkative asshole or I will blow your fat face out of the fucking roof of my house.”
“Yes ma’am wait fat?”
“Sure you don’t like me calling you fat face. That’s your fat-face problem whatever. Now Charlie take your friend and fuck off out of the Black House—”
“I think I’ll talk to—”
“You will not fucking talk to him Charlie or I will fuck you in the mouth with this and then I will pull the—”
A voice that can only be described as big says: “CHARLIE?!”
Flavia says: “Schafscheiße.”
Charlie says: “Eat me Flavia.”
A guy comes through the door of the Black House lounge area who is bigger than the voice. He’s even bigger than the Donnerbüchse.
Charlie flies across the room and lands on his chest like a limpet. Not like a sex limpet, like a little kid, like a BFF, and then they start howling like wolves and shouting.
“ARROOO!”
“ARRROOOOOO!”
“BARROOOOO!”
“ARROOOOO!!!”
“BARRRUUUUUUNOOOO!”
“CHARLEEEEEE!”
“BRUNO!”
“CHARLIE!”
“BRUNO!”
“CHARLIE!”
“BIG GUY! What are you DOING right now I heard you were all up in the Fascists’ face, man?”
“We are ECO-WARRIORS Charlie! We have found the religion of the living earth! We are the Class Army for Nature we are plugging polluters in the river like factories and chemical plants it is FANFUCKINGTASTIC. They vent shit and we catch them at it! But do we engage in snitching? NO OF COURSE NOT THE POLICE ARE THE DOGS OF THE CAPITALIST APPARAT! No! We plug the outflow with Z-Vat and we send their shit right up into their ass like a fucking fountain. The FOUNTAIN OF PLANETARY JUSTICE I am making shirts! SCREW YOU BOHEMIAN GROVE!”
“NO GODS NO MASTERS!”
“TINY SMALL!”
“BIG GUY!”
“TINY SMALL!”
“BRUNO!”
“CHARLIE!”
“LUCILLE!”
(Everyone looks at Lucille who just seems really pleased to be included.)
Charlie says: “Wait what is Z-Vat?”
Flavia says: “O for shit’s sake—”
Because Bruno is all over that question and he and Charlie—
—with an actual cannon pointed at them—
—they geek the fuck out.
I tell you love is strange but when you see it you know it is there and if Flavia cannot see that she is gonna be one unhappy lady.
“Z-Vat. Zuckerwattebombe!”
“Like…cotton candy bomb?”
/>
“Like from a fairground! But not for eating! For oil well problems after Deepwater Horizon. Rapid expanding foam-fiber cement. It makes a plug. A Swiss product very effective also clean. So then the shit backs up in their pipe and into their factory and they have a crisis and the authorities come and find out what they are doing and they go to jail. Obviously our action also is illegal but they do not know it is us.”
“They don’t?”
“Of course they imagine it is us but we do not give them proof huh? And they have much to do somehow they do not find time to investigate difficult question of who takes a direct action. There is absolutely a file. It is a priority file because we are repeat offenders. But at the same time it is not time critical. There are files that are time critical even if they are a lower priority. So it is completely natural and respectable that they cannot confirm their suspicion.”
“Bruno man—oh man—this is Banjo he’s good people he’s like a rock star of art man you’re gonna love this.”
“How come I don’t know you are coming to Bern?”
“I just figured you know we didn’t—I mean I kind of left—Flavia was—”
“You want to bust my balls?”
“Bruno—”
“CHARLIE YOU BUST MY BALLS?”
“Bruno we all know where your balls have been I got no intention of touching those hirsute fucking danglers get the fuck out of here.”
“There was a time Charlie when—”
“Yes there was Bruno yes indeed there was—”
“HAH! CHARLIE!”
“BRUNO!”
“CHARLIE!”
And that right there this time is for sure a sex limpet. There are sex limpet tongues and after a while someone starts reciting that Japanese poem about parting the wet grass.
“Charlie you stay the night? I—”
The Donnerbüchse goes off into the wall. I’m not sure what it’s loaded with but it smells like hell.
Everyone looks at everyone else for a while because it just smells so terrible.
“Get the fuck out Charlie,” Flavia says. “Leave my brother alone you are bad news for him.”
And actually once someone has pulled the actual trigger on a Donnerbüchse full of whatever the fuck that was you don’t want to sleep in their house anyway.
Charlie has to promise Bruno she will come see him to discuss the Fountain of Planetary Justice, which I assume they will do naked and which I will of course not allow for operational security reasons also because Flavia is a fucking nutjob with an eco cannon. I mean we don’t have to move out we could just kill her. Then we could kill Bruno although I’m sure Charlie would not like that and we could kill all the others but then what? When people came looking for them we’d have a whole thing and we can’t just murderize the whole of Bern that is not what we came for and people would talk in the wider community they would say it was uncouth.
Not that there isn’t a kind of gothic chic in a house full of dead anarchists but they’re incidental. There’s just no need for that and who knows when you might need a chemical plant enema’d or something and then you’ll be like O shit I know someone who wait no goddamn it I had Lucille hug them to death and burned their house down damn did I not update my contacts app that is SO DANG ANNOYING.
I get this all the time actually I had a birthday reminder two weeks ago for my friend Leo that I shot.
So fine we plug into the Demon money moneys and buy a house, which is not supposed to be possible at speed, but giant jet money in shell shapes speaks a special language and accommodations are made and by the time that is done, and we move ourselves out of the Black House, Doc has found a guy who looks like me.
I ask her where she found him and she says she just scraped Tinder and fed all of it into a bunch of software and bing. I ask her what his name was and she says she does not know.
He looks a lot like me. Little bit sadder and tired maybe but I guess that will happen when you show up to your date at her rental apartment and she anesthetizes your leg under the table and cuts your femoral artery open.
Guy died without ever knowing it was happening. Didn’t even finish his funny story but Doc says she knows the punch line and it isn’t that funny.
She tells it and Charlie says it’s pretty fucking funny but not so you’d fuck someone it’s not that funny but under other circumstances not so awful that you’d kill a guy for telling it and let him bleed out into an IKEA carpet. Saul—Saul is here now and has got a kind of an eager-beaver thing going on—Saul thinks it is not funny but he acknowledges as how you could think it was funny it’s not like he thinks its evil.
Saul carries the dead guy because: eager.
It’s halfway dark when Saul carries him to a freight yard and we set him up. The yard is big and the shadows are long. The trains are just paler shadows because there’s no passengers. The lights are the old kind, orange gold, or maybe they’re modern and the company just makes them that color because it’s the color those lights ought to be.
They’ll find the dead guy at the next station when he drops into the mail chute. He wasn’t married I guess that’s something but that doesn’t mean no one’s gonna be sad but they’ll never know what happened because he just vanished off the face of the earth. He up and decided to go backpacking in India and he got a job and now he’s settling down and he’s moved to somewhere and no one knows.
Make up whatever shit you like Charlie took care of it.
Somewhere in the yard a guy blows an actual whistle and the train starts to move. Cold metal wheels on cold metal rails.
I watch Jack Price go out of the freight yard into the world and then we go home and cross him off the HOMER board.
* * *
—
Detail is important is what I’m saying. Detail is everything, which is why Banjo Telemark is seen to drive himself across the Swiss border on a Maltese passport and the vehicle he is driving is ancient and has some scratches and a bunch of tour stickers all over the rear. It is that avocado color beloved of the makers of porcelain bathroom furniture in the latter part of the twentieth century and it probably gets worse petrol mileage than an actual oil fire but it is also undeniably an original 1966 Citroën DS21. The Basel border guards get the misty look of men seeing childhood drive by slowly with some kind of a countercultural asshole at the wheel and they do not know whether to give me a hard time or salute but in the end I am so damn friendly they cannot help but smile and wave me through.
Plus also behind me there is a minibus driven by a sharp-faced woman in a business suit and she is a medical person of obvious impatience and it pleases them to make her wait a little while they show the DS some love.
Charlie went to actual Malta for this passport. She did deep Charlie things there. It is a good passport. It is a whole life. You could fall into it for hours.
Through Basel and down to Delémont where Banjo stops off to take in a canvas by the noted Gérard Bregnard. With a little help from Charlie, Banjo’s invitation to the Kircheisen Art Fair has finally caught up with him and by happy coincidence he is even in Europe. Of course he would be delighted to come. He is thrilled by Kircheisen, by its conceptual weight. He considers it to have extraordinary artistic gravity. He is dying just DYING to meet Hans Eiger and understand his unique Kunstgeist be very careful how you say that.
I am Banjo Telemark. I am an Ambiguitionist that is to say a maker and vendor of bespoke bewilderment. My atelier is the world and in my atelier nothing is solid and every truth you think you know is also a lie.
I am Banjo Telemark.
Let me show you my art.
* * *
—
murder on the railway is the best Swiss tabloid headline ever. There is an outrage against the Federal peace and also too there is misuse of infrastructure and offending both of those things togethe
r is like stealing the crown jewels, which please note the Swiss do not have because that would be some feudal bullshit and they do not approve.
Although one time they stole the ducal hat of Burgundy.
Yeah ducal hat yes. Yes the Swiss and yes stole I know I know it is off-brand it is not my fault history is filled with this shit.
murder on the railway tentatively identifies the dead guy as Jacob Morgenstern Price an international hoodlum and professional murder artiste formerly a dealer in really excellent bespoke artisanal cocaine—
“Thank you Charlie—”
“One day boss we will raise the stallion up once more—”
“That sounds dirty—”
“It was dirty boss it was a dirty dirty bad pony and you could ride it all night without getting a sore crime—”
“Charlie—”
“Crime buttock—”
“I am blind now, blind in my brain parts. Silence while I read our clippings—excellent bespoke artisanal cocaine but more recently the kingpin of transcontinental death squad the Seven Demons who reputedly keeps a man in a cage on his executive jet—shit did anyone feed Sean?”
“Yes boss we have a service.”
“How do we—no do not tell me. Good fine good. Oh wait oh shit—”
Because there in the opposing column is Agent Hannah explaining how she came to lose track of the felon and she has two very purple eyes and gosh she is very pissed. She has also opened a case file on the Seven Demons and she is all over that shit. Well she is welcome to be all over that shit because our money is ghost money and when Charlie got hold of the financial software she straightaway created a boojumajizzle called a fractal self-replicating iterative shell net, which is basically a little tiny robot brain which runs around the world creating empty companies tangentially linked to one another and to unavoidably real objects like the jet but also to random crimes and natural disasters. The boojumajizzle then runs incremental amounts of money around and around the system so that it looks like a real thing and entire law enforcement agencies could waste decades untangling it because it is like a headphone cord the moment you leave it alone for ten seconds it turns into a hair ball again.