“Well thank you very much.” Elizabeth grinned, enjoying their combative banter. “But surely you’re not suggesting that constitutes an equal exchange.”
“Not at all,” Diablo admitted. “But we’re still talking. If you want to tell me something interesting, go for it. Just don’t throw money at me, fer cryin’ out loud.”
“Barter it is, then.” Elizabeth put away her wallet, determined to outjaw this wily windbag. “Remember Dolly the cloned sheep? The first mammal to be cloned?”
“Sure.” Diablo nodded.
“Well, do you know why she was named Dolly?” Very deliberately, Elizabeth straightened her shoulders, sprawling her chest forward. This did not go unnoticed by Diablo, and it had its intended effect. After Diablo answered no, Elizabeth continued. “They named her after Dolly Parton.” She paused again, then added, unnecessarily, “You know, the huge-breasted country singer. Dolly the sheep was cloned from genes taken from another sheep’s mammary glands, although the teats of the sheep were of no extraordinary size.” Elizabeth paused, just short of giving Diablo enough time to respond. “Of course, that should come as no real surprise, since human females are the only mammals to develop protruding breasts at all. And obviously, the word mammal itself derives from the Latin mammae for breast, which is itself an onomatopoeia of the. infant cry of ‘mama,’ which is a nearly universal expression in baby talk, an instinctive word, probably imitative of the sound made while the infant sucks on the breasts of the mother. Mum, mummy, mom, momma, mommy, amma, these are all variations of the one word that no child needs to be taught. Mama is baby talk for breast. The flesh was made word.” Elizabeth paused and grinned coy, drawing her hands down the slope of her bosom and across her waist as she cutely concluded, “Did’ja know that?”
Diablo saw her tactic very clearly—it would have been impossible to miss—but his intellectual understanding did nothing to diminish its corporeal impact. “Fascinating,” he proclaimed after nodding for quite a few moments. “I see that you, like myself, are skilled in the arts of conversation.”
“Not only that,” Elizabeth continued, encouraged by his reply, “but the word boob is shortened from booby, which itself comes from bubby, which is another one of our words invented by infants.” Elizabeth made a sucking sound. “Bub-bub-bubby,” she imitated. “That’s the muffled murmur of being smothered in warm breasts. Mama and booby, both baby talk for breasts.”
Diablo shook his head, ultimately unable to resist an adolescent snicker. “You inveigle me with your incantations.”
“Good. So do we have a deal then?”
“It’s a hell of a good trade,” Diablo replied, regaining his balance and extending his hand to seal the deal. “We should do business again.”
Elizabeth accepted his hand, pleased to have imbalanced him. She decided to finish him off with an accusation of attraction. “Now you’re just trying to pick me up,” she charged, still holding on to his hand. Elizabeth, obviously, had no fear of men. She often thought of them as mice and herself as the cat. She enjoyed toying with them and batting them about, utterly devoid of sympathy for their situation. She watched men gape helpless before her nearly every day as they ran laps to the ATM and back. She knew their nature, their desires, their passions, their fantasies. Her sex magic might be limited in the main stream, but it wasn’t entirely mightless.
Diablo raised his eyebrows momentarily, then smirked and tugged his hand away from hers. “While in no way diminishing the vehemence of your beauty, Ms . . . . ”
“Wildhack.”
“Ms. Wildhack.” Diablo bowed. “That’s an impressive name. While in no way diminishing the vehemence of your beauty, Ms. Wildhack, and despite your eminent precocity, I can assure you that I am entirely unwilling to risk a perception of myself as a lothario. Despite the mythologies of our mass media, a woman of your peppy youth has no business with a man of my bedraggled age. An attraction is a metaphysical force, existing for reasons far beyond the merely physical. If there is any attraction here, it is a spiritual beckoning, not a sexual imperative.”
Elizabeth was impressed and briefly wobbled by Diablo’s artful dodge. Any other middle-aged man would have been sitting in front of her, panting perfervidly. “Well spoken, Mister . . . ?”
Diablo bowed, exaggerating his gentleman’s genuflect. “Please allow me to introduce myself. You can call me Diablo.”
“Mister Diablo. I’ll look for you again, Mister Diablo. And maybe I’ll bring my friend. She’d love to hear your golden-mean shtick.”
“Shtick, is it?” Diablo repeated.
“Yes entirely.” Elizabeth turned to go. “Thank you for the pipe.”
“Thanks for the conversation,” Diablo called out, and Elizabeth waved the pipe as she departed. Stimulated by the entire encounter, she fought the urge to glance back, striving to suppress her own evidence of attraction, metaphysical or not. She failed, and snuck a backward glance after twenty seconds, fully expecting to catch Diablo ogling her still. She was disappointed to discover him already boisterously engaged with another customer.
71 “FUCKING JOHN LENNON,” Special Agent J. J. Speed once announced to a street musician crooning his cover of “Imagine” as he sauntered past along the sidewalk. “Who the fuck told him he could sing? Imagine all the idiots. Hey! Imagine all the preachy hippie goddamn commie propaganda!”
If the musician heard him, Special Agent J. J. Speed certainly didn’t notice, for he was oblivious to everything but his own magnificent problems as he charged into a convenience store to commandeer a few toothpicks. He might have gone his way uninterrupted if the clerk hadn’t had a tinny boom box broadcasting John Lennon singing “Imagine” into his stupefied face.
“Can I help you find something, man?” the clerk inquired after several moments.
Special Agent J. J. Speed snapped to, and since it no longer seemed reasonable to just seize a few toothpicks and leave, he invented an excuse for his abrupt entrance. “Pepsi,” he pronounced, though he had no thirst for that burpy black swill. The clerk pointed to the coolers, and Special Agent J. J. Speed grabbed a sixteen-ounce bottle, paid for it, snagged a half-dozen toothpicks, and split.
Back on the sidewalk, he happened to glance at the label and notice that Pepsi was having some kind of thousand-dollar giveaway contest. Investigating the label more closely, he discerned that it had to do with whatever was printed on the inside of the bottle cap, so he cracked it open. Holding the cap up, examining it as if it were some rare gem, he dropped the bottle and tossed the cap asudden aside when the only word that found him was:
IMAGINE.
72 “CHERRY SHIT,” Elizabeth declared a week after her initial encounter with Diablo, taking up a position directly in front of his table of seashell pipes.
Diablo looked up from the magazine he was reading and squinted with facetious annoyance. “What is the meaning of this unprovoked assertion?” he demanded.
“Cherry shit,” Elizabeth repeated.
“I’m sorry,” Diablo said, revealing recognition despite his best efforts. (After all, who can fail to remember someone with a backward number nine tattooed on her forehead?) “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask for clarification.”
“You said last week that you were a professional chewfat and could say something interesting about anything. Well, I’m challenging you. Consider this the chewfat challenge.”
Diablo grinned and parried her query, lifting his magazine. “I was just reading here that scientists have extrapolated echoes of the Big Bang from cosmic background radiation. It sounds like a hum, deep like from a bass instrument, rather like the Om mantra of Kali giving birth to the cosmos, I would guess.”
Elizabeth shook her head. “Cherry shit,” she repeated. “I want you to tell me something interesting about the phrase ‘cherry shit.’”
“It’s strange that people tend to capitalize the words Big Bang, isn’t it?” Diablo continued unabated. “It’s not capitalized in the dictionary. I looke
d it up. It’s just another adjective-noun formation, like barf bag. No one capitalizes barf bag. People sometimes capitalize Golden Mean, too. Makes it seem like Big Bang and Golden Mean are proper nouns, like names for God, don’t you think?”
“The challenge,” Elizabeth ignored him, “is to say something interesting about something someone else suggests.” She paused. “Cherry shit isn’t capitalized either, so you can rule out that it’s a name for God.”
“Right.” Diablo nodded. “Can I ask where this cherry shit notion comes from?”
“If you can tell me something interesting about it.”’
Diablo considered for a moment, hoping some association would reveal itself. Nothing emerged except a hesitant guess at some kind of cherry juice enema. He would stall for time. “First of all,” he began, “let me clarify something: I believe I indicated that I can tell you something about just about anything. Consequently, I’m in the clear here in a strict sense. If I fail to tell you something interesting about some random thing—and I’m in no way admitting failure here—that does not mean my boast was baloney. Second, you could just as well ask me to tell you something interesting about an upside-down circle. The only interesting thing I can say is that it’s perfect nonsense.”
“Well, that’s a place to start, isn’t it?” Elizabeth replied. “I mean, is an upside-down circle more nonsensical than an inside-out circle? There are directions you can take that.”
“That’s true,” Diablo granted. “There are directions I can take that. Is an upside-down circle or an inside-out circle a more apt metaphor for the paradox of person and spirit?”
“No,” Elizabeth interrupted again. “Now you’re just trying to change the subject.”
“Well this cherry shit business is really rather distasteful, don’t you think?” Diablo leaned back and kicked his foot up on the table, suddenly relaxed. “Cherry shit, huh? I guess we could look at maraschino cherries, right? In a jar of maraschino cherries, up to seven percent of the cherries can contain rot before the manufacturer is in violation of the law. Of course, rot is different than shit, but both are forms of filth, though not really of the same order since I’d rather step in a pile of rot than a pile of shit.”
“Uck,” Elizabeth interjected, interested in spite of cherry rot’s only tangential relation to cherry shit. “Is that true?”
“Oh yeah.” Diablo nodded. “I used to work for the FDA. And rot’s not even the worst of it. Up to five percent of the cherries can contain maggots before the manufacturer is in violation of the law. I always found that one interesting: seven percent for rot in general, but five percent for maggots specifically. Maggots are fly larvae, of course, and flies are known to be very fond of shit, but as to the question of cherry shit in and of itself, maggots are actually of a lower order of filth than shit, since I’d rather step in a pile of shit than a pile of maggots. I’ve overshot my mark, it seems. If only we were talking about cocoa shit. There can be up to ten milligrams of shit per pound of cocoa beans before the manufacturer is in violation of the law. Although, to be fair, ten milligrams of shit isn’t all that much, about the weight of a tenth of a penny, a mere sliver of shit really, but I’d say a fart vapor is too much shit to put in my mouth. Anyway, we regulate the shit in cornmeal, cloves, ginger, sesame seeds, you name it, but I don’t think we have any regulations for mammalian excreta in cherries. That’s the technical term for shit, by the way. But,” Diablo sat up, “back to maraschino cherries, we could also look at the red dye #2 that gives maraschino cherries their fire-engine red color. Red dye #2 is carcinogenic. In fact, it’s illegal to use red dye #2 in all foodstuffs except maraschino cherries. The maraschino cherry industry successfully lobbied for an exemption here, arguing that no one eats more than one maraschino cherry at a time. Have you ever eaten more than one maraschino cherry at a time?” Diablo nodded along with Elizabeth. “Of course you have. It’s not such an uncommon thing. I once ate a whole jar when I was a kid, for chrissakes. The industry’s argument is that the risk is negligible, but I prefer to think that when it comes to risking cancer, it’s sort of like risking a fart vapor in my mouth, you know what I’m saying? Any risk is too much. I suppose I’m something of a radical in that regard. But back to your cherry shit question, we can say that cancer is pretty shitty, and deliberately selling cancer just so the cherries look pretty is a shitty thing to do. Maybe cherry cancer is closer to cherry shit than cherry rot or cherry maggots, I don’t know. Is any of this interesting to you?”
“Disgusting, actually.”
“Well,” Diablo put up his hands, “you did introduce the topic.”
“These are all really FDA regulations?”
“Yep. Go to a university library and look up the Food Defect Action Levels, or probably you could just look it up online. Excrement, rot, maggots, mold, insect fragments, fly eggs, rodent hair, dirt, grit, it’s all there. I wish it weren’t true, but I helped to put the guide together years back.” Diablo paused. Elizabeth was about to redirect the conversation to something less scatological, but he launched into a new hypothesis before she had a chance to formulate a subject toward which to change. “Cherry pop,” Diablo said emphatically. “Maybe that’s what you’re looking for? Pop is one letter away from poop, which of course is synonymous with shit. And then there is the cherry pop centipede, right? Are you familiar with this creature?” Elizabeth shook her head, amazed that he had still more to say on the topic. “It’s this centipede that craps a cyanide poison that smells like cherry pop. If you catch one and shake it up in your palm, it craps itself in self-defense. Basically, when something scares the shit out of it, the poison it craps smells just like cherry pop.” Diablo grinned triumphantly. “How about that? There’s your cherry shit right there.”
73 IT WAS UNDENIABLE. Diablo had told Elizabeth something interesting about cherry shit. And now, he was holding her to her end of the bargain.
“You promised,” he insisted. “You said you’d tell me where this cherry shit notion came from if I told you something interesting about it.”
Elizabeth had never told anyone the origin of cherry shit. This had more to do with the fact that she rarely thought about it than that she found it necessarily embarrassing. Actually, she rarely thought of most of the first eighteen years of her life, or at least, anything past the age of eight, right around the time that her classmates began to tease her. Churchgoers might wonder at the solace and comforts of her family life, but life wasn’t much better in that sphere. Whereas Georgeann found the exponential growth of her stepdaughter’s breasts to be shamefully inappropriate (an assessment she did not hesitate to point out), Dave simply couldn’t reconcile the fact that his daughter was turning into a sexpot. Her hips, after all, though typically overshadowed by her breasts, were busy flashing their own set of curves, and Dave had noticed. However, instead of simply noting this fact with paternal pride and moving on, Dave creeped himself out on his own mortification, and so had to repress the realization. For Elizabeth, this translated into an aloof and distant attitude toward her from there on out.
Anyway, Elizabeth decided to stall the story. “It’s a long story,” she said.
Diablo shrugged, idly arranging some of the seashell pipes in front of him on the table. “That depends on how long you stall.”
“I’m not stalling,” Elizabeth protested. “Let me tell you over lunch.”
“Lunch?” Diablo laughed. “Are you trying to pick me up? Because I gotta tell ya, sister, the aroma’s not all that amorous around here, what with all this talk of maggots and shit.”
“Pick you up?” Elizabeth retorted, defensive. “You’re like twice my age.”
“That’s true.” Diablo nodded, patting his belly. “But I am in decent shape, although I’m also a fortysomething paraphernalia pusher. Ultimately, I’m not much of a catch. My celibacy seems certain.” Diablo shrugged. “But I fear I’ve enchanted you with clever conversation, and I cannot risk your attraction.”
“Whateve
r.” Elizabeth blushed in spite of herself. “I hate to disappoint you, but I am not attracted to you.”
“Of course you are. Why else would you be acting so awkward? Or are you always this clumsy? Perhaps you can hide your presence in this world behind social illusions, but your spiritual presence is perfectly apparent to the open of eyes and the wide of mind.”
“So what if I am—which I’m not.” Elizabeth gazed directly at him. “What are you afraid of?”
Diablo shook his head. “Although I’m deeply flattered, I think I’ll have to pass on lunch.”
Elizabeth stared at Diablo for a long moment, smirking. “You’re chicken,” she concluded at last.
“No.” Diablo shook his head. “Not really. The problem, as a matter of fact, is that you are an untrustworthy person.”
“Untrustworthy? How?”
“Cherry crap,” Diablo insisted. “What about it already? You said you’d say. Now you’re trying to renegotiate your promise. Out with it. Come on,” he gestured, “let’s hear it.”
“I can’t believe you’re still on that.”
“Why would you introduce such a topic into polite conversation, that’s what I want to know. Cherry crap.” He pronounced it slowly, shaking his head. “Such an indelibly offensive concept. Where did you come up with that, and why?”
Elizabeth shook her head. “Fine. There’s no story to tell, really. I actually don’t know what it means. Those were my mother’s last words. She died giving birth to me in the middle of a tornado, and apparently, that was her final comment on life.” She shrugged. “That’s about all I can say about it.”
“No story to tell!” Diablo bellowed a laugh. “Goddamn, sister. That sounds like a story if ever there was one!” He squinted at her for a long moment. “You’re an Aries, I suppose? April 1?”
Elizabeth was stunned. “How the heck did you know that?”
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