“Believe me, I’ve thought about it a lot. Too much. I already decided I need to leave all that stuff behind me. It’s too childish. I realize that now … really.”
I smiled. “That’s encouraging.” Maybe there was some hope for this girl.
“Sure is … now it’s time to get serious. My murals don’t seem to be doing the trick. People like you need to be shocked out of their comas.”
“Comas?”
“You don’t even know, do you? You’ve got the disease big time, with a capital ‘B.’ I can tell. All the usual symptoms are there. A complete inability to comprehend sarcasm’s at the top of the list. And it’s a long one, believe me. A real long one. I’ve been compiling it for months.”
I furrowed my brow and just stared at her. “Disease? I don’t have any dis … diseases… .” I could feel myself sweating again.
“Denial. That’s another symptom.” She started backing away, slowly. “I might burn the wallet. Who knows how it’s spread? I don’t believe anything the CDC says.”
“It’s not a disease,” I said. “That’s the wrong way of looking at it. It’s just a… .”
“God, I hope I never become like you,” she said. Her face had drained of color. “I bet you used to have it, didn’t you? Before the disease took it away? The ones with the most to lose seem to get hit the worst for some damn reason. Maybe it’s God’s sense of humor. Or lack of it?” She chuckled. “Wouldn’t it be funny if he had it too? Hell, maybe he’s always had it. That would explain so damn much.”
“I haven’t … lost anything. I’ve gained so much. We all have. My girlfriend and I, we… .”
“What you need is a condensed intravenous dose of Situationist Theory. Right through the top of the noggin.”
“Situ … situationist … ?”
“Guy Debord. Look him up, asshole.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Keep the faith, baby. A cure’s comin’ down the pike. And if not… .” She shrugged. “Well, we might just have to shit-can the whole kit-‘n-kaboodle and start all over again. Let the cockroaches take a shot at it. Hell, maybe they’ll do better. At least they haven’t lost their sense of humor. I’ll probably see you around, mister. Don’t eat any wooden snakes. Oh, and wipe my address from your memory banks, or I’m gonna have my boyfriend—all twelve of ’em—wait outside that lame ass, corporate-controlled, caffeine-peddling, hippie-infested hellpit of a bookstore of yours and beat the living crap out of you and your girlfriend on your way to the parking lot. You got that, four eyes? Oh, and thanks for the discount.” She slammed the door behind her.
I stood on the sidewalk for a moment, just staring at the crack in the window, until I heard The Ramones blaring once more into the night. I took two steps toward the porch, to make one last effort to force the girl to see reason.
Then the door opened, and I saw the mother peering out at me with a cell phone in her hand. I turned my back on her, and started walking away at a fast pace.
Everything the girl said swirled around in my brain. November, she had said. Wait until November. What was going to happen in November? What was so special that… .
The election. The Presidential election.
My God, what were they going to do, her and her boyfriends?
The Turner Diaries. The Anarchist Cookbook. The Big Brother Game.
It was all so clear. I had stumbled upon a vast conspiracy of disastrous proportions. The failure to report such a plot would be the same as being in league with the terrorists.
Who would I call first?
I reached into my inside jacket pocket and pulled out the cell phone Heather had recently bought me. She was concerned about the health effects of the phone, so insisted I only use it during emergencies.
This was definitely an emergency.
I dialed 411, and asked the operator for the number to the local FBI office. They needed to send someone over to her house and interrogate her right away, I thought. Even a simple visit might scare her and her co-conspirators away from this horrible scheme… .
The operator gave me the number and offered to connect me for an extra charge. I said yes.
When at last the woman at the FBI headquarters identified herself, when I opened my mouth to speak … nothing came out. She said, “Hello? Hello?” I hung up.
I suddenly felt dizzy.
I was back in the void, right there on the stage in Holy City Asylum, the set-up for a joke teetering precariously on the tip of my tongue. So close … and yet so far away… .
Why?
I grew angry all of a sudden. I yelled at the sky, nothing but unintelligible screams, then tossed the cell phone in a trash can and started walking away. Toward nowhere.
I hated myself and didn’t know why. Something the girl had said still echoed in my memory.
I bet you used to have it, didn’t you? Before the disease took it away? The ones with the most to lose seem to get hit the worst for some damn reason.
What was it? What was it that I used to have? What was it?
I shoved my hands deep into my jacket pockets, stared at the trash littering the sidewalk, and never looked up once, not even as the first fireworks of the evening began to shoot off into the cloudless night sky.
CHAPTER 34
Life Begins
(August 28, 2016)
Someone hacked into an anti-abortion group’s website and sent out emails to thousands of people that read, “Life Begins At Laughter.” Few of the anti-abortion crowd thought this was funny. In fact, they were very angry and immediately sent out follow-up emails explaining exactly why they didn’t think it was funny in language as stern and volatile as the fire and brimstone I used to read about as a child.
CHAPTER 35
Bang
(September 4, 2016)
The Secretary of Defense died today.
I saw it happen. Right there on live television in the middle of the Democratic Convention.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
And that was all.
I saw the man who did it. They showed his photograph on the news. I recognized him. He was Miss Malone’s boyfriend.
Shaved head. Tattoos. Military patches.
It was him, no doubt about it.
They shot the skinhead down the moment the third bullet entered the Secretary’s head. The assassin is dead now.
Fox News has reported minute details about his background (they’ve been doing it all day, in fact), but they haven’t mentioned Miss Malone at all.
Heather and I were watching the news coverage of the Convention when it happened. Bang. Bang. Bang.
Neither of us could believe it. It was so sudden.
During a commercial break I finally told her about my encounter with the man in the bookstore. I mentioned Miss Malone, but only briefly. I said nothing about following the girl to her home.
“Do you think I should call somebody?” I said. “What if this girl’s involved somehow?”
She hugged me tightly, there on our new sofa. She thought about it for a moment.
“I would say yes,” she said after a while, “if it was something serious.”
“But … the Secretary of Defense is dead.”
Heather looked up at me, confused.
“So? There’ll be another one. Isn’t there always another one?”
“I guess I hadn’t thought about it that way.”
“Why bother thinking about it at all? Just sit here with me. Hold me, and be still.”
CHAPTER 36
Spiral Jetty
(September 22, 2016)
Someone, late at night, recreated Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty out of Top Ramen in the middle of Dodger Stadium.
CHAPTER 37
Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?
(October 2, 2016)
Heather said something strange the other day, just as I was leaving for work.
She said, “Why did the chicken cross the road?”
I said,
“I don’t know.”
Her brow wrinkled. She began snapping her fingers in the air. “God, almost had it.”
“Had what?”
She sighed. Her shoulders slumped. “I don’t know, but it seemed real important a moment ago.”
“Well, maybe it’ll come back to you later on, hon.” I slipped on my coat, kissed her on the cheek, then went outside to deal with the world. Just as I did every day.
But for some reason, unlike the countless days that had preceded it, my mind was now wracked with frustration. Heather’s question went round and round and round in my head. Why had the chicken crossed the road? Whose chicken was it? What was it doing by the side of the road?
Why did I care?
CHAPTER 38
Blue Kool-Aid
(October 2, 2016)
Someone filled the L.A. River with blue Kool-Aid.
CHAPTER 39
Scrapbook
(October 3, 2016)
From time to time I would think about Miss Malone. She made herself known to me not through her presence but through her absence, like the ripples that appear in the ocean in the wake of a submarine sailing just beneath the surface. Strange stories continued to crop up in the local newspaper, and now I knew their source. I continued to cut them out, behind Heather’s back, and secretly taped them into my scrapbook (along with photographs I would take from time to time of the various murals I’d spot around town, the ones I suspected of being Miss Malone’s handiwork). Of course, not one of the newspapers ever indicated that these stories were connected in any way. Perhaps they weren’t.
CHAPTER 40
A Ten-foot-high Teddy Bear
(October 7, 2016)
Mr. Little, the manager, tore into me again near the beginning of my shift. He said I’d been slacking off more and more lately. He said my head had been in the clouds for the past couple of days. He said this in front of the whole store. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Bill snickering into his collar. Mr. Little asked me if I wanted to lose my job.
“No,” I said.
“Can you afford to lose your job?”
“No,” I said. I tried to be calm. I knew Mr. Little had some self-esteem problems. I tried to take that into account. He was 5'3" and his name was Mr. Little. I felt sad for him. It must’ve been a strange sight for the customers: this bald little man in a suit and tie pointing his finger up at me as I towered over him nodding docilely.
“Do you have more important things to think about than your duties here?” he said.
“No,” I said.
“Well, you’re certainly thinking about something, and I know it’s not your job. Maybe you’d like to share it with the rest of us, hm? I’m sure we’d all like to hear the existential quandaries you’re contemplating on company time, Greeley.”
“Okay,” I said.
Mr. Little planted his hands on his hips, gestured for me to proceed.
“Why did the chicken cross the road?” I said.
Everybody in the store burst out laughing. Mr. Little quickly turned bright red. I could see him shrinking into himself. He began to bluster, then at last managed to choke out the words: “Get back to work, Greeley, and do your job from now on!”
I nodded. I was confused.
Why was everybody laughing?
Later I was in the stockroom unpacking a shipment of the new E.L. James novel (not the same one as before, a new one, also about bondage) when Bill came up behind me and slapped me on the back.
“Hey, that was great how you embarrassed The Midget like that. I didn’t know you were so good with a comeback.” He snapped his fingers three times in row.
I smiled. “Oh, thank you.” I wasn’t sure what he was talking about.
“Man, I wouldn’t have the balls to say something like that. I can’t risk losing this job. I’m saving up money for college. You think I want to stay here all my life? I want to open a business someday, maybe a bookstore of my own. Then I’ll have my own employees to push around. Yeah.”
At that moment Little stuck his head into the room and said, “Greeley! I’d like to see you in my office. Now.”
Bill almost jumped out of his pants. When Little had disappeared Bill patted me on the shoulder. “Good luck,” he said and continued unpacking the E.L. James novels for me.
I entered Little’s office. He was sitting behind his desk with his hands folded in front of him. I noticed he had a lot of hangnails. His fingernails were bitten to the quick. He told me to close the door. I did so.
He just stared at me for a few seconds, then said, “Do you think you’re funny?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Do you think you’re funny?”
I stared at him silently. I had already answered the question.
“Well, maybe you’ll think this is funny.” He picked up a black felt-tip marker and scrawled two words on a blank sheet of typing paper. He held up the sheet of paper for me to read, his pinkies sticking out primly.
“What does that say?” he said.
“‘You’re fired,’” I read.
“Do you think that’s funny?”
“No.”
“It doesn’t feel good to be made fun of, does it?”
I shrugged. “I wouldn’t know.”
His face began to redden again. “Aren’t you going to get angry?”
“Why?”
“Because I’m firing you!”
“Well, what can I do about it?”
“Nothing! That’s exactly the point, isn’t it?”
“The point of what?”
He crumpled the paper into a ball and tossed it toward the trashcan. It missed and landed on the floor. He shot up from his chair and said, “Get out of here! Now!”
I nodded.
I left.
I had about two hours to kill before I went home, so I just wandered around for a while, sometimes stopping to peer through the store windows and look at all the pretty things I couldn’t buy.
I’ve got a few hundred dollars in the bank, I told myself as I stared at a giant teddy bear in a toy store. It was ten feet high. Why would anyone want a ten-foot-high teddy bear? I thought, then realized I was getting off-track. Focus, focus. The money I’ve got in the bank will last me a few weeks at least. By then you’ll have found a new job. Heather doesn’t have to know. Why worry her? She worries too much already. God, it used to be so much easier just walking onto a stage and talking. A ten-foot-high teddy bear. What the fuck?
I wandered around in a daze for the next hour or so, then caught a bus for home. I wandered around the block twice before I entered the apartment building.
“Just in time for the debates,” Heather said as I came in the door. She was sitting on the sofa, hugging a throw pillow to her chest. “Too bad you had to work late last night. You missed the next President mopping up the floor with that idiot. Who’s Audrey?”
“Audrey? What’re you talking about?”
“Some girl called. Said she met you at a club. She was going through these phone numbers she’d written on the backs of old receipts and wondered what you were up to now. That’s what she said. Oh, yes, and she said she thought you were hilarious.”
I remembered the girl. I’d met her at Prospero’s several years earlier, right after one of my best performances. My fellow comedians assured me my monologue had been a masterpiece, divinely inspired stream-of-consciousness. Audrey had been a sexy teenage groupie flashing doe-eyes at me all during my set. She’d had a mean-looking, monstrous golem of a boyfriend, but he hadn’t been paying much attention to her that evening. With just a little sweet talk I probably could’ve convinced her to come back home with me. As with Esthra, however, I barely even tried. Why? Who knows? I recalled getting her phone number, but I’d lost it long ago. Around the time that everything changed.
“What … what did you tell her?” I said.
“I said you were at work. Then she asked me who I was, and I told her. I told her to fuck off, tha
t’s what I told her.”
“Oh, Heather. There was no need to do that.”
“Did you fuck this girl?”
“No … I-I think I know who she is. She came up to me after one of my gigs.” Sweat began to pour down my cheeks. My head hurt. I felt a migraine coming on. “I don’t even remember giving her my phone number. I must have, though. I mean, she probably asked for it.”
“I’m sure she did.”
“I can’t imagine being brave enough to just give it to her.”
“Did you kiss her?”
“No.”
“Did she kiss you?”
“We never kissed each other.”
“Well, what did you do? It must’ve been something special. Why call you after all this time? Everyone knows you’re not … hilarious anymore.” Sweat was pouring down Heather’s brow too. “Neither am I. Neither is Danny. Neither is… .”
“We didn’t do anything. We hugged each other.”
“What? She let you hug her, but she didn’t let you kiss her? C’mon.”
“I wasn’t trying to kiss her.”
“But would you have, if she’d let you?”
I sat down beside her and closed my eyes. I knew she was just being playful, in her own way, but I wasn’t in the mood.
CHAPTER 41
Fetus
(October 8, 2016)
Someone left a giant ceramic red fetus on the roof of an abortion clinic in San Francisco with a sloppily printed note hanging around its neck that read: “A major university has just released the results of a five-year-long scientific study; the scientists involved have come to the conclusion that the deterioration of the ozone is due not to the burning of fossil fuels, but to the methane in cow farts.” It was as if Miss Malone were plugged into my mind … but not my mind now. My mind then.
CHAPTER 42
Memories of the Future
(October 8, 2016)
Hearing Heather utter Audrey’s name made me feel so odd; it’s hard to describe in words. I felt sad. As if someone had died. That single name, those six letters, made me feel nostalgic for something I had never experienced before. Memories of a past I could barely remember. Memories of a future I would never experience… .
Until the Last Dog Dies Page 24