He says all these things very well. He says nothing I don't agree with. He is easily the most open, convivial, down-to-earth character at the table. As such, I begin to fear him most.
It would be easy to like Mr. Waverly, easy to let him win my trust.
But then I look at the people he's hanging around with.
"Gentlemen," I say. "I do believe it's time for dinner."
At that, the kitchen door blows open, and the entire staff comes trundling out, laden with plates. They descend upon the table in an agitated flurry: clinking dishes, trying hard to be cheerful, trying not to get too close to O'Mon or Rokoko.
The food—but of course—looks and smells delicious. Rokoko starts to salivate; even O'Mon's eyes light up. There is food enough to feed them twice. It is laid out like a banquet.
"Several days ago," I say, "I got a visit by Mr. Rokoko; and though we had our disagreements, certain things—in the meantime—have clearly changed.
"So I've taken the liberty of whippin' together a special menu for you. As I told Mr. Scottie, I suspect you will be pleased. Feel free to sample everything. Like the old saying goes: it's all good, baby!"
And with that, I take my leave.
The next fifteen minutes are a total cakewalk. They eat. That is all that they do. If they speak, it is just to get one bountiful platter passed down from that end to this.
I hang out, when I can, with Scarecrow and Dorothy. It's a lot more fun. She informs me that she's never had Mexican food before, which is amazing until I think about it. Probably not a lot of Mexican restaurants in Kansas at the turn of the last century.
I serve her my most authentic burrito, and (at Poogli's request) one of his new goomer weaves. It's meant to look like her—he tried real hard—but let's just say that it falls somewhat short. In the end, I tell her it's the Wicked Witch of the West, and we all have a good laugh over that.
All the same, she chows down hard. Scarecrow, of course, doesn't eat. So while she oohs and ahhs, he keeps an eye on the goings-on at the big table down the way.
Mostly, I wander from table to table, making sure everything's cool. Dinner proceeds without incident, but everywhere I look, the air is full of sidelong glances and low, conspiratorial murmur. I feel like I'm in Casablanca, and the Burrito has turned into Rick's Cafe (which, I guess, makes me Humphrey Bogart, though I always hoped I came off more like Lauren Bacall).
In the absence of a piano or a guy named Sam, I slap on a little Henry Mancini, let his sleazy horns encapsulate the thick vibe of noir. I wonder how Chandler or Hammett or Cain would write about this, and what they would call it. The Maltese Goomer, maybe. The Munchkin Wore Black.
And just as I'm getting around to casting the film, I notice that Scarecrow seems preturnaturally fixated. I ask him what's up, and he tells me, "Shhhhh." I try to follow his gaze, but it's hard, cuz it's painted.
He seems to be staring at the empty chair.
"Hmmm," I say, looking back at him.
"Shhhhh," he repeats, unwavering.
And just then—as one—the Party of Seven turn 'round in their seats to face us.
At that moment, it's like some kind of psychic curtain descends. The night seems darker; the air grows chill, and negatively charged. I look at Dorothy, look at Scarecrow, cast a gaze quickly around the room. Everybody seems to feel it.
It doesn't feel good.
This would seem to indicate that the entertainment portion of tonight's event is over. "Oh, my," Scarecrow mutters, and I'm inclined to agree.
Dorothy asks if I'd like her to come with me. I tell her to wait here, and watch my back. Then I gird myself, call upon God quick (for strength), and walk over to their table.
Hwort is the first to address me. "Magnificent meal!" he says.
"Unparalleled," adds Waverly.
"Well, good," I say. "I'm glad you enjoyed it." Then, "So. Mr. Rokoko. Did it meet your specs?"
"I am," he says, surreptitiously stifling a belch, "almost appallingly impressed."
"I'm glad"
"We'd heard marvelous things, of course. But, frankly, I had no idea..."
"That's great. And the choice of meats?"
He leans into the table now, creepily intimate. I see that the others join in. "Uncanny. May I ask you.. .what were your sources?"
"First, let me check in with Mr. Scottie." I turn to the meatboy. "Are we U.S.D.A?"
"Let me just say," he smoothly intones, "that we are definitely interested."
"I told you!" says Rumpus.
I look at the empty chair.
There is something there. I can't see it, but I know it. Suddenly, Scarecrow's stare makes a horrible kind of sense.
For the first time, I take notice of the vacant place setting. The plate has been used. The plate has been cleaned. There are a few random crumbs that still cling to its surface.
I watch three of them airlift, and float toward the chair.
"Do you mind," I say, hoping my voice doesn't give me away, "if I sit down?"
The response is instantaneous. I can't even calibrate how many voices say, "NO/," but I hear them as background music, like the Pink Panther theme suddenly swelling from the speakers. I hear them, but it just doesn't matter.
What matters is a blackness that scratches my soul, leaving fingernail tracks that burn hotter than coal. It hurts: digging in somewhere deeper than muscle, deeper than nerves. I let out a yowl, and I reach for my sword.
All at once, Dorothy is beside me. I don't see her. I feel her. And she feels pissed.
As I draw my sword, she says, "I brought something for you."
I look at her. She looks at the chair, brings her right hand to her lips...
... and suddenly the air is a-flutter with green: pixie dust, particulate matter, blowing out from her palm as she fiercely exhales. It congeals around the vacant chair: a trillion glittering emerald dust motes, coalescing with a vengeance...
... and, just as suddenly, he is there.
I see the form within the flurry. I blink. It doesn’t change a fucking thing. There he is: now looking like some Downe's Syndrome child, now looking like a demon from Hell. He morphs like a '90's car commercial, utterly transforming before I can get a bead.
"Oh, Bhjennigh," says Dorothy. "Why did you come?"
O'Mon and Rokoko are up now, shouting. The others slide desperately back in their chairs. Dimly, I'm aware of Lion's roar, and a wall of screams.
The loudest is Bhjennigh's.
It cuts through the other sound, all other sound: gobbling up frequencies as it shreds through the air, two octaves above middle C and climbing. I stare at the monkeyman toadstool king, the glowing green blackness like flickerstones in tar that clings to his constantly-shifting surface. I see a glimpse of a human face.
And then the black lightning descends.
It slices through the ceiling, cleaving neon sombreros on its way to the Party of Seven. It's a flood of crackling black energy: the opposite of light, but somehow just as blinding. I get a seering retinal imprint of Waverly's face melting, morphing as well as it vanishes in static.
Then the lightning is gone. And so are they.
Which is precisely the point that Lion bursts through the doorway, with Mikio and Gene and his friend right in behind.
And now I'm home, and Ralph is snoring, and Gene is manically pecking away at his magick word machine. The sun will be up soon, and I'm going down.
In a couple of hours, we'll get up, and talk.
And then, Lord help us, we prepare for war.
Okay. Postscript.
The next hour was spent cleaning up the mess in Aurora's restaurant, and getting Ralph back to her apartment to crash.
Which brings us to now, with me falling asleep on my keyboard, trying to tap in the "end of the story so far." I can't tell you much about what happened before we walked in the door, that's better left to Aurora to tell.
She's sitting at her desk right now, with her creepy wiggly quill pen in her hand
, struggling to recount her part of the tale we've both fallen into writing.
We've both always had this writing bug (I guess that's why we became such good friends to begin with) and both feel compelled now to set all of this down as it happens. We've stumbled right into this gristly, fluorescent chunk of history—witnessing it just seems to be the one right thing we can do right now.
Hey little computer buddie—you in there?
air
I'm going to sleep. Knock yourself out. Oh—and thanks for trying to help this afternoon. Anything you can add from now on would be helpful. I don't know what the hell you're saying most of the time, but you seem to have an inside line, somehow. Maybe I'm full of shit. Hey, well, Tetris is a fun game if you get bored in there. Goodnight.
ite.
Ite.
Nite.
Night. and the night, in the night is quiet, as the day is Quick and loud. I learn while Gene tappities—taps, the words to my soul, the words to my mind.
A day here forever time, many days.
And now I will try to go up—stay here, go up, put my mind fingers out into the sky, out into the cloud, unnum-ber cloud.
...The underneath glows black, i touch and make myself small... small...
Thin fingers ripple dipping down from It—black empty. pluckily pickly.
Seekly. and cannot touch me now:
The Lifely musics resist it, magnetopposy poles, slidy-force.
And It tells me without telling, with its moving, thin fingers from unnumber to number, I number to word— tells me It comes from far, out—out of far from the round world, out of the between. a lonely far away from a hole in the made...
and...the terrible power of the unmade!
It feels me, feels me flealy on its coat, tickling, tickling, it speaking unspeak—but, me so small...and hard-shelled
High fly me in now, into the black, falling up, feeling the age of the thing, the hollow that holds the man and unmakes him... and again it unspeaks
...It comes to undo.. It comes to make fold up the sky, to level the mountains—to unlife the lively...
and bbback i go down into safely numberland again, safely now, but for how? Tomorrow
back now, playly down the wall of the falling colors, the tetris fun thank you Gene. Gene be carefully, carefully care.
That second morning, waking, I held my eyes shut; I was a blank.
Has this ever happened to you? You wake, in a strange place or not, and can't remember anything for a second or two. Where you are, or who you are. It is terrifying and freeing all at once.
It all came back to me, of course, and then I felt truly strange. I heard the sounds of that strange city coming awake: horses' hooves, and the clacking hooves of other animals with more legs and stranger gaits, steam hissing and sellers announcing their wares.
The memory blip put me in mind of a computer looking for its operating system when it boots up. And that in turn made me wonder if I was much different from the little guy inhabiting my Superbook. I mean, it's some kind of soul, or spirit living inside of a machine, taking on its attributes, its identity. Was my little lapse waking some kind of glimpse of raw "me-ness"? Are we all just anonymous souls with identities defined by our locations in meat?
These are the kinds of things I think about when I first wake up. Which probably explains why I'm so high strung, and also why I can't get out of bed in the morning.
But Aurora wasn't having any of that.
"Okay, boys! Up 'n' at 'em!" she crowed. I stirred a little. I guess it wasn't enough.
Next thing I knew, a metal pot and metal spoon were clanging together, a foot from my head. "AAAUGH.///" I said, and looked up blearily. There she was, looking beautiful and crazy; her smile was wild, but her eyes meant business.
"Gene, Ralph: get your asses out of bed, okay?" she said. "I'm not just whistlin' Dixie here. Ozma wants to see us, and time's a wastin'."
"Fuck," mumbled Ralph, from his place on the couch. I glanced over at him. Ralph had seen better days. He looked like the official poster bum for the Pink Eye Foundation, only not quite as glamorous.
"Fuck is right," said Aurora, walking over to him. "Mr. Ralph Fucking SuperSpy Dudley." She was wearing nothing but an extra large Bullwinkle t-shirt. Possibly panties. It was all the armor she needed. "Right now, I don't know whether to shake your hand or kick your stupid ass. But I'll tell you what: this would be a really good morning for you to be especially nice."
Ralph nodded slightly. It looked like the gesture was painful. She put down the pot and spoon and picked up some weird aspirin. She had two water glasses on a table, and she offered one to him, along with some aspirin, which he silently accepted.
Then she came back to me with her insta-headache cure, knelt before me, and handed them over. "How you doin', sweetie?" she asked. Her eyes were full of soul.
"I don't know yet."
"Fair enough." She took me gently by the temples, bent me forward, kissed the top of my head, and stood. I saw pubic hair, and averted my eyes. "I'll get breakfast together. You boys get your ducks in a row."
A minute later, my hangover was gone. So, it seemed, was most of Ralph's. The morning was cool, and I was almost nekkid beneath, so I wore the blanket like a toga as I walked over and sat down beside him.
"Good morning," I said.
"Coulda fooled me." His eyes looked haunted, and they wouldn't come up to meet mine. "Where are we, anyway?"
"Aurora's," I said.
"Ah-hah. Okay." He chuckled grimly.
I asked him if he remembered coming to the apartment the night before; he said no. I asked him if he remembered being at the Emerald Burrito, or the black lightning. He said no. Et cetera.
"Do you remember telling me anything last night?"
At this, he groaned, and rolled over on his side again. Evidently the previous night wasn't a complete blank.
"Fuck," he said again.
In the kitchen, Aurora had something going on, and I could tell that it was going to be good. The smells hit my nostrils like seductive smoky tendrils in an old Warner Brothers cartoon. I left Ralph to his guilt and wandered kitchenward, hearing snake charmer music in my head.
"Wow," I said. "What'cha got going there?"
"Oh, nothing," she countered, blithely sweet. "Just more of that bland vegan crap."
I started to laugh, and then I realized: I never told her that! "Hey!" I began, but she cut me off.
"I'm sorry. I read your shit." She turned from her cooking, gave me a very direct look. "Not everything. Just since you got to Oz."
"You suck!"
She grinned, full of mischief, but I was too pissed-off to play coyball with her. "Aurora, that is so fucking uncool! You should have asked me first!"
"Hey," she said matter-of-factly. "Right now, I'm on a need-to-know basis, okay? Which means I coulda woke you up an hour and a half ago, when I woke up, and drilled you over every speck of every goddam thing you know.
"But you looked like you needed the sleep, and you left your computer running—your little friend left you a message, by the way; I think Mikio should see it—and to be real honest, you don't converse nearly as well as you write. So, fuck. I peeked."
"Ahhhh," I groaned. She was right, of course, but I was still pissed-off.
"I am really sorry," she said, and meant it. "I know how you are."
"Yeah, yeah, okay," I said, attempting to drop it. "So now what?"
"So now I keep the food from burning. Hey, Ralph? You hungry?"
Ralph said nothing, so I turned to look. He was up now, in his military boxer shorts, sort of blearily getting his bearings. Aurora slapped my ass and turned back to her cooking. I took my cue and headed back toward Ralph.
Right about that time, I heard the gonging of the world's biggest gong. Imagine if ships had giant gongs instead of foghorns. That's what I'm talking about. I glanced toward the windows, caught myself in the mirror, quick decided to spot-check the bandage on my head. I wanted to see
if I even needed it anymore. And sure enough, the wound on my head had healed miraculously quickly. Not that I was too surprised at that.
What really surprised me was the gorgeous young girl in the beautiful-fairy-princess dress. She was standing in front of me in the mirror. Like, in the mirror. Itself.
"Good morning, Gene," the little princess said. "And good morning, Mr. Dudley. I'll need you to come to the palace as soon as you can. But please, have your breakfast first; no doubt you'll need the energy."
"Ummm," I said, and then stopped. I was wrapped up in a blanket. Ralph was in his underwear.
"I'm so looking forward to meeting you both in person," she said, and then faded, as if we were waking from a dream. I heard from about a half a dozen people later that they'd had the same visit from her, at about the same time. This would account for why Ozma sounded so "canned"—She had some sort of magic voice mail or something.
Right about then, the second gong gonged. I turned toward Aurora, who said, "I know. I talked to her earlier. Everybody's gonna be heading for the palace soon, if they aren't already. You might want to freshen up."
Yeah, the palace was evidently the place to be, and everybody seemed to know that. I could hear increased activity in the street. People were filing out of their buildings like they were in the world's biggest fire drill, all headed for the center of town.
We ate our food—quickly—and it was good. Between bites of egg and toast, I apologised to Aurora for criticizing her choice of cuisine. She waved it off and shoveled some more home fries onto my plate.
Ralph didn't say anything much, he just ate. I think he was more than a little bit embarrassed about being there, or at least about what had lead up to being there.
After everybody was done, I took the dishes over to the kitchen sink. As I dropped them in and looked for some sort of faucet to rinse them off with, wet sudsy tentacles, like big, yellow soapy tongues, came out of the sides of the sink and began licking the plates. I backed away slowly, and returned to the living room, where Ralph had begun some strenuous-looking yoga poses. He claimed it was the only way he could cure a hangover. I like B-vitamins and Mexican food myself.
The Emerald Burrito of Oz Page 14