The Neon Palm of Madame Melancon

by Will Clarke

  * * *

  “Why ain’t you doing it with the fire?” Gay André asks our server while we both wait on the patio for The Loup Garou to show.

  “This is Vieux Pontarlier.” The waiter pours the absinthe over a sugar cube resting on a silver spatula. “You don’t burn absinthe this fine.”

  “Well, I want mine on fire,” Gay André demands. “And so does junior over here.”

  “I’m fine with just the sugar cube,” I say.

  “You want it with the fire,” Gay André stage whispers. “That’s how they are supposed to do it.”

  “Actually Bohemian style isn’t the traditional pour,” the waiter says.

  “Just light it on fire and shut up,” Gay Andrè nudges me and rolls his eyes.

  “I don’t have any matches.” The waiter smiles.

  “Then take your broke ass and go get some.” Gay Andrè snaps his fingers at the waiter.

  “I’ll be right back.” The waiter leaves the half-poured cup of absinthe in front of me. Gay André grabs it from me and shoots it.

  “Gay, is that really how we treat people?” The Loup Garou appears from behind.

  “It is when they ain’t listening.” Gay André turns around and shakes The Loup Garou’s hand. “I told the boy five times I wanted absinthe and I want that shit on fire.”

  The Loup Garou takes a seat.

  “Who is this?” He looks me up and down. In this gaslight, The Loup Garou looks younger than he did at Café Du Monde.

  “We met the other night,” I say.

  “I’m a busy man,” The Loup Garou says. “Refresh my memory.”

  “He says he had coffee with you after Yankotronic,” Gay André says.

  “Duke Melançon,” I point to my face. “You told me you were Banksy.”

  “Relax, Dukey. I was just taking the piss, mate,” The Loup Garou chuckles. “Of course I know who you are.”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “Did you bring the necklace?” he asks.

  “Why do you want it?” I say.

  “We can’t do this without the necklace.” He shakes his head.

  The waiter walks up with three new glasses for pouring more absinthe.

  “Okay, I got a lighter from the bartender.” The waiter places the glasses on our table. He pours the green liquor over a sugar cube, and then lights it on fire. He drops the flaming sugar cube into the glass. He hands the smoldering glass to Gay Andrè and then he hands one to me.

  “Drink up,” The Loup Garou holds his drink and takes a thirsty sip. “Ah! ‘After the first glass, you see things as you wish they were. After the second, you see things as they are not. Finally, you see things as they really are, and that is the most horrible thing in the world.’ Or so Oscar Wilde said.”

  I drink the green liquor. It tastes like NyQuil: Bitter licorice with a sharp alcohol burn. The next sip, the absinthe is sweeter, less of a sting, more of a piece of candy, a Good & Plenty.

  “Duke, do you have any idea where your mother got your name?” The Loup Garou says.

  “Duke Ellington. Daddy was a fan.”

  “So that’s what Helena told you,” he says.

  “How do you know her?” I say. “Tell me how you know my mother.”

  “If you had brought the necklace.” He reveals his own gold coins hiding under the collar of his shirt. “I wouldn’t have to.”

  “Try me.”

  “You wouldn’t be able to handle it, mate. The brain can only take so much. Trust me.”

  “Yeah, I told your ass to bring the necklace.” Gay André purses his lips and bobs his head and then grabs my absinthe and guzzles it.

  I look at the little weasel and squint.

  “That’s quite enough, Gay,” Loup Garou takes another slow sip. “We still have time to get you where I need you to be. But first, I need you to understand that your mother and I have a job for you. A big one. And from here on out, if you want to see her again, you are going have to do precisely what she and I tell you to do.”

  “Look, I did what Mama wanted,” I say. “I took away the teleprompter. I quit my job. What else do you want from me?”

  “Oh, Duke, this is just the beginning,” Loup Garou holds up his glass to toast with me and then clinks glasses with Gay. “Christopher Shelley’s gaffe alone won’t change a goddamn thing. It’s only one point in a thousand points of light. There are so many other things that you have to change before that will mean anything to future generations.”

  “I saw the Times. Vonnegut showed it to me. Mandala will file bankruptcy.”

  “And then an even bigger oil company will buy them,” he says.

  “What was on that hard drive that you tried to give me at Café Du Monde? What was in the envelope?”

  “Everything we needed to keep 2017 from being a complete shit show. We’re going to have to come back to that, to repair the damage you’ve done,” he says. “But we will. Oh, how we will.”

  “What damage did I do? I didn’t do anything.”

  “That’s exactly the problem, mate. When I give you a mission, there is no time to hesitate. The seconds you wasted arguing with me blew the mission. The drones showed up and it was busted. You have to understand, Duke, when you refuse a mission like that there are grave consequences, apocalyptic really.”

  “Apocalyptic. Seriously?”

  “You have no idea. No idea what we are doing here. How cosmically important this all is. I told you to bring the necklace. This is impossible without it.” He leans into me. “Next time, do precisely what your mother or I ask of you.”

  “How do you know my mother?” I’m going to kill this guy. I am going to knock over the table, break off a wooden leg and beat the shit out of this guy. In an absinthe-induced rage, I am going to kill this limey bastard right here in front of all these sweet Canadians who are sitting next to us, bopping their heads to jazz, and sipping on their Pimm’s Cups.

  “We are what’s left of the Bureau of Humanity.”

  “I’ve never heard her mention you.”

  “You’ve rarely heard much of what the woman has ever said to you,” he says. “You broke her heart when you left. You do realize that.”

  “Where is she?”

  “She knew the cat would come for her one day, Duke.” Banksy says. “We all have an endpoint with the Bureau.”

  “Why do you and Vonnegut keeping talking about this Bureau?”

  “Because that’s who we work for. It’s who you should be working for if you give two shits about this planet,” he says. “But like I keep saying, none of this is going to make any sense without the bloody necklace.”

  “Explain to me why my mother would give this guy,” I point to Gay André, “a winning fucking lottery ticket.”

  Gay André is drunk and mute. He just wobbles, staring into his phone and drools.

  “He’s a terrible person.” I say. “Why would she do that?”

  “Those numbers were not meant for him. You were supposed to take his matchbook and give it to Jean Babineaux before her husband killed himself, but we couldn’t get you to cooperate so we had to go to plan B which was letting Gay keep the ticket and work with us to get you back on track.”

  “Are you saying Mark’s suicide was my fault?”

  “As a matter of speaking, yes. Yes, it was.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “You already have. When you refused to take the hard drive and do what I told you. Look, we will all be even more fucked if you don’t start listening and cooperating, mate. You think that what happened to that poor bloke was tragic, you haven’t seen tragic.” He sips his absinthe. “You have no idea what tragic looks like.”

  “That guy had problems before I met him.”

  “Is that what Gary told you? See, that was your first mistake, listening to that wanker.”

  “How do you know he said that to me?” I am unable to do anything other than keep breathing. “Did you tap my phone?”

  “Calm down, Duke.
Just relax and listen to me.”

  The world is spinning off its axis. I can feel it.

  “Okay, your mum and I—I guess the best way to describe what we do is, well—imagine we are air traffic controllers. Our job is setting certain people, like planes, on their way. We have millions of planes in the air, crisscrossing the globe. And try as we might there are still mid-air collisions. There are still crash landings. But even so, your mum and I keep most planes in the air and we get loads of people safely along. But most of our days are spent having to re-route lots of other planes through all sorts of fog and wind shear and ice, and we do a pretty good job of it. I’d say we get 99% of our timelines to their destinations. And we keep the world going in a fashion that is mostly livable. At times it can even be downright enjoyable if you can settle down long enough to pay attention to all the miracles.”

  “That makes no sense. You’re crazier than that Vonnegut fuck.” I feel myself balling up my fist to knock his crooked British teeth out of his head. “I just need you to tell me where my mother is.”

  “France,” he says.

  “France? Why the hell is she in France?”

  “Terrorists,” he says. “And fascists are spreading like the plague. She alone can’t stop the worst of it. That will be up to you.”

  “Why hasn’t she called us?” I ask.

  “Call you on your phone? Mate, it’s compromised.” The man who claims to be Banksy steeples his fingers. “The Great Unseen Hand can hear everything.”

  “When you say The Unseen Hand,” I hold up my phone, “You mean the NSA?”

  “No, no, no, no.” He shakes his head. “The NSA is a mere gnat, a distraction. The real menace is The Hand. Your phone is merely the device through which The Great Unseen Hand grips your face and holds you in its mesmerizing glow.” He points around the room at all the people playing on their phones, ignoring one another. “Exhibit A, B, C, D, E, F and G.”

  “You’re saying The Great Unseen Hand hacked my phone?”

  “The Hand is your phone. It’s everything. The frat boys who kidnapped you. The Bluetooth things in their ears.” He points to his own head. “It got into their brains through those devices. Those kids had no idea what they were doing or why—mere pawns in this chess game.”

  “You want me to believe that The Hand can remote control people through their phones?” I say.

  He gestures to Gay André who is now making gross faces at a porno he is playing loudly on his phone at the dinner table.

  “That’s disgusting.” I shake my head.

  “And yet, The Great Unseen Hand serves up whatever tweet, video or email that it needs to keep your face locked into its grip.”

  “People being addicted to their phones is not because of The Great Unseen Hand. That’s technology.”

  “Precisely, mate!” He holds up his absinthe in a mock toast. “Now you’re tracking. The Great Unseen Hand is inside every device. It’s reach is beyond just you and me, man and machine. Didn’t Vonnegut mention any of this to you?

  Maybe it’s the absinthe. Maybe it’s just rage. But I keep seeing myself bashing my chair over his head. I keep seeing this movie of myself doing this over and over, but I don’t, I don’t hit him. I just see this scene flutter over the scene that I am actually in. It’s like the world is happening in layers. The one that I am in and the one that could be or maybe should be happening.

  “If you are to be of any use, I need you to go back to your mum’s home. I need you to find all the lottery tickets and make sure you get them to the winners they belong to. Your mother was intent on bankrupting all the lotteries before she hit her endpoint.”

  “There are more winners like Gay André?”

  “Some of the winners are like him. Men and women whose ambitions need to be slaked before they reach a boiling point. Gay, for example, would have risen up within the Mafia and become so powerful that he would have ordered the assassination of a much-needed U.S. President.”

  “Are you saying that Gay André is going to kill the president?”

  “He would have, but not anymore. Gay André is a useful idiot. We are using him right now to distract The Hand from finding us. But people like him winning the lottery never ends well. Unquenchable appetites and an endless supply of cash is a deathly combination. Never ends well. Never does.”

  “And yet, you wanted me to give that ticket to Jean Babineaux?”

  “Oh, don’t get me wrong. Gay only has a winning ticket to keep a certain timeline in place until you wake up to your responsibilities. Unlike Gay André, most of the winners your mother has selected are like Jean Babineaux—good-hearted people who want to make the world a better place, who can manage their winnings because they aren’t in love with the money. They are inventors and creative people whose destinies need to be underwritten by these winnings. It’s enough money and enough good will and intelligence that it can totally change the course of the future. Trust me, people like Jean Babineaux, don’t underestimate what they can do if given the chance. Pay attention. You can fix this if you just pay attention.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Hope always is.” He laughs and then his face turns stormy and serious. “Now get out of here quickly before The Unseen Hand finds us.”

  Banksy throws over the table.

  The absinthe bottle and antique glasses go flying, tumbling almost in slow motion. The fairy-green liquid hangs in the air and then splashes on my face and stains my shirt. The glass crashes on the cobblestones as Gay André falls back in his chair. He scrambles to catch his precious phone, but it crashes into a million shards of black glass.

  I reach down to help him up, but he won’t take my hand.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine.” Gay André sits there on the floor, rubbing the back of his head.

  And before I can ask Bansky what the hell is wrong with him, he’s gone.

  38

  June 10, 2010

  The oil from the disaster has affected over 1,300 miles of U.S. coastline

  Daddy’s downstairs in the kitchen smoking weed with Uncle Father while La La and Yanko cook everyone grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup for dinner. And while the smell of browned butter and melted American cheese pulls at me, the mystery of Gay André’s winning lottery numbers keeps me in front of these books. My mother’s voice is ringing in my ears: “Give matchbook to fishwife.”

  The fishwife is surely Jean Babineaux. Those winning lottery numbers were intended for her, and now Gay André is driving around in a Maserati while her husband is in a grave. But how did Mama rig those numbers to win like that? How is she doing all of this? As hard as I am on Stevo, Yanko, and La La for falling for all this bullshit, Mama’s ability to pull off these magic tricks is pretty astonishing.

  The one book: Dracula on the shelf. She ran away on the eve of St. George’s Day. There’s something about this book that she wanted me to see. So I pull Dracula down again and open it. I thumb through the pages. I open the book and shake it, and out falls a Garfield bookmark exclaiming how reading is better than lasagna. I pick up the bookmark off the floor and examine it. On the back is Mama’s handwriting:

  I fold the bookmark in half to put it in my pocket, and head out to buy Jean’s lottery ticket.

  * * *

  The order in which ping-pong balls pop out of a pneumatic tube is all that’s standing between me and a $344 million payday. At least, that’s what I hope. I am actually entertaining the idea that I have bought a ticket with the exact number that Mega Millions will spit out tonight, and if I am indeed holding these numbers, then I finally have evidence that Mama is who she has always said she was, that she can indeed do the impossible and that I should also do the impossible in return: give my $344 million tickets to Jean Babineaux.

  So I hold this peach square of paper in my hand while Stevo and La La sit too close to me on the couch in the parlor. The Mega Millions announcer walks in front of the rumbling lottery ball machine, w
aving his hands in front of it like a magician. He calls the numbers out as they appear on screen:

  “50. And then: 04, 01. Then: 31, 60, 78, 29!”

  “We won!” La La pounces onto the couch and jumps up and down, clapping her hands. “We won!”

  “We didn’t win anything,” I say. “Those numbers belong to Jean.”

  “We are not giving $344 million to some shrimper’s wife!” La La looks like she might hit me. She jumps off the couch and her bare feet make a soft thud on the hardwoods.

  “Duke, show her the letters,” Stevo says. “Tell her what they say!”

  I can’t answer him. My words are not working. I can’t get over the fact that this square of paper is worth $344 million and that Mama either predicted this or rigged this to happen. Either way, Mama has just exhibited a level of omnipotence that is jaw-dropping.

  “Do you realize what we could do with that money, Duke?” La La says.

  “These numbers are Jean’s,” I say. “That’s what Mama wanted.”

  “Why is she doing this to us?” La La throws her hands up.

  “Calm down. This one’s for you.” Stevo takes Mama’s copy of Dracula from his satchel. He opens it to page 42. And scribbled on that page in Mama’s handwriting…

  La La takes the book from Stevo and stares at the inscription. “These are my numbers?”

  “There’s a book for each one of us,” Stevo points upstairs to Mama’s bedroom. “Actually, every book in the library has a set of numbers.”

  “Who else are the other books for?” I ask.

  “I don’t recognize the names. She wrote addresses in some. Phone numbers in others.” Stevo says.

  La La hugs Bram Stoker’s novel close to her chest. “Okay. We can do that.”

  “What should we do with them?” I ask.

  “Give them to the people Mama intended them for. She was very clear about this,” La La says.