Fuck Buffalo. This is Shilo on last legs, like the old rebel in The Red Badge of Courage. Wasn’t it Shilo? A man needs a crutch and Audie Murphy to lean on, and when the maid stops and stares, he tells her through the ashes, “Yanks. Golldarnit. Three, four thousand of’um.” He wobbles and catches his breath. She crosses herself. “Musta been. We took it bad, Ma’am. Real bad.” She mumbles and beats a retreat.
You shouldn’t look in a mirror on acid or a hangover in middle age, because both make purple cheese sagging down the bones that used to be your face. The mirror teaches the hardest lesson, that you can’t win; it’s a stalemate if you’re young, a meltdown if you’re not. You can get stuck staring, asking, is this what happened to the kid? You revert to basics in the clutch. Reach for the toothbrush, squeeze the paste, stick it in there, stir the gravel, go ahead and drool if you want to. Now spit—reach deep for a gob, pull it up to the mint and let her roll. Now wet the face, cool the eyes and move to the shower—hold on, stand there till you wilt, turn it off and wonder what. Search for a towel. Go ahead and air dry, kind of, pull on some pants and a shirt and keep moving.
Heidi is gone. Kensho looks up from a book at the table and smiles. He isn’t so much younger. “Insight?”
“Neal Cassaday died here,” Kensho says.
“He was the best,” Tony says.
“The best of what?” Kensho asks.
“Don’t start, huh?” Tony heads out, because he needs out, away from the place and Kensho’s quiet truth. Neal Cassaday’s death here is a bond with history, a fame marker. Neal Cassaday died here so the drunks and druggies flock here for osmosis or immortality or something. Who the hell was Neal Cassaday? What makes him a cause for pilgrimage? Oh yeah, he got shit-ass drunk and overdosed on speed here, so croaking was a tribute to the Spirit of Excess, paradigm for the generations in whom anarchy survives. Maybe Kensho wants to die here, small death, big death, come what may. Tony ponders his own hope chest.
Neal Cassaday let go with original vengeance, a dharma bum among the first suburbs and malls, a knight errant seeking the holy overdose. But where now the quest, with convenience displacing nature and Everest suffering traffic?
We are headed the way of Stockwell Pond. He passes a sushi bar. Sushi bar? That’s where you can eat raw fish and call it experience. Eat it regular and be worldly. Eat it regular in Mexico and get cholera. Nature knows. Oh, but not here, this place is too good. A Northern Italian place and French cuisine prove the town Neal Cassaday died in is dying too, displaced by fabulous bistros with photos of Willie and Lefty, rock ’n roll so you can get down. You can be rough but chic, and the waiters will kiss your ass on a down beat with safe drinking water for a quarter million pesos, because the shits are unchic. Have you have heard that so’n so is in town collaborating on a screenplay already nominated for a big award? Isn’t he? Isn’t it?
All gone.
Neal died young, hard and fast, liquor and speed. Now we languish in discovery, swamped by the unchosen hoard, the weekend misfits, the artistically inclined. The rolling hills and scrub plateaus still begrudge their paltry resource to a tawny-skinned people born in a sweat, living and dying in one. And here come those from a different struggle to capture the meaning. From cities and suburbs they bring their burden of free time; into their inner hills they seek, starving in meager emulation of the peasantry.
But what does Anthony Drury pursue? Equilibrium between sleeps with a dash of bitters over? He doesn’t feel so good, which is better than the brink of death, unless it’s the brief recovery often preceding death. Stepping into a coffee hole he peers through the low light.
Filmfest Marylin on a barstool traps a cup in her hands and speaks through the steam. “But the dichotomy between political realism and Rivera’s Christ imagery is not …” She uses words like inextricable and plethora. Rhonda one seat over sips like a glass bird with a bubble ass, her beak dabbing the cup on each nod. She takes notes, applying her degrees in art history and drawing.
Tony can tell it isn’t yet noon, because everyone drinks coffee. He doesn’t know if it’s today or he’s slept through to tomorrow. He doesn’t feel so rested. And what happened last night? He laughs; how little the world slowed down without him. He could have croaked with nary a beat lost. This is a preview of the day he’ll disappear, when the world will turn as it always has. That’s what hangovers are good for, the humility.
You will not survive the flesh, the human din seems to say. He fits in, short term, promising to ease up on the sauce in deference to mortality, but the pain and nasty view gain on him. Yet pain leads to resolve; tomorrow will be easier to bear, or he’ll hang himself. No pain tomorrow, guaranteed. What a relief. He anticipates a drink for medicinal benefit but not yet. Fuck no, not yet.
Walking past Rhonda and Marylin, he gives back the wry smile and shares his conclusion: “So?” They look puzzled. “So what?” He sounds like Cisco, laughing at his own nonsense. He wants to look tough too but doubts his own effectiveness. Who knows, maybe Cisco fakes machismo the same way, bluffing through the thunderous conditions of morning; maybe Tony Drury evolves in a cultural lineage. “Where’s Charles?”
Rhonda sips. Marylin says, “He wasn’t home.”
“Boy oh boy. What’ll we do now?” He doesn’t wait for an answer but moves down the bar to where the drivel is a hum, to where life blends more easily with the shabby decor. In a gray dawn he waits for something to go away, something to arrive, waits to know if a life can have a reward other than the one on his head. It’s worse than looking in a mirror; thoughts are harder to turn away from. They crowd in, as if a head is another small town swamped with discovery.
He hates progress as a moth hates flames—the Northern Italian place, the Sushi and Szechwan places are all right but will lead to covered garages, citizens banding together for more business, for more comfort, more security, more good will among men, more cars, 2.8 kids and a secure plot for forever. Hypnotherapists? The snake oil crystal magic show will precede franchise burgers; infestation and decay will require another exodus. But where to? The harpy whispers rancor for humanity and its behaviors. “Hey, it’s only a hangover,” he says, his own voice spurious, a soft close on a weak front end.
Tony Drury last left home on a day when the voice on the radio begged him to buy and wear a Z-98 T-shirt. Let’s get those Z-98 T-shirts spread around, get people out there with their Z-98 T-shirts. Wear your Z-98 T-shirt—it’s your ticket to our Z-98 year-end listener appreciation party. So come on! Then came a medley for the remedially insane. Did nobody hear it but him? The voice praised the golden sounds of our lives—Say you’ll never stop loving me, baby. I want to feel your love in my bomble, oh baby, love love, oh baby love … Millions listen by choice. Not Tony Drury; he got stuck like a man in a mirror who couldn’t believe it. Between golden sounds came a spot for a new drug to induce happiness on days of hormonal imbalance, a legal drug that most doctors prefer so women in the change can hit the pharmacy and change back to their ebullient and rightful selves.
The voice says don’t worry if you wet your pants or your period makes that pesky smell, not with new Sweet Caulk from Bristol Meyers. It’s scented now, Northern Pine Forest, Ambrosia Mist, Marshmallow Rocky Road. Need a douche? No problemo. We got one that smells like Saturday night in June. Remember prom night? So young, so beautiful, so promising. Yeah, this is like that. Teeth loose? Diarrhea, hemorrhoids, mucus overload, headache, dandruff, insomnia, tension, stress, pain? A sex kitten purred that even she got constipated sometimes. Tony Drury wanted to see her between a shit and a sweat. Listen to this! the voice says one day, explaining that AIDS isn’t only terminal, it can be valuable, if you factor remaining months as a function of t-cells and life insurance coverage and earn up to sixty cents on the dollar by cashing in now. Why not have fun and spend it?
Tony Drury wasn’t violent. Violent criminals make the headlines, but what about those with rational hatred and no evisceration in their hearts? Tony Drury didn’t
want to kill anyone. He only wanted them gone. The voice in his dashboard sang, Baby oh baby, rub my love, feel my lips … love … baby sweet lips baby oh, oh, oh … He could have turned it off. He shot it instead—.22 magnum, two shots, oh baby—plugged it full of lead until it cried, oh baghhch … That felt good, but the voice still sang in the next car over. An old lady drove it. She sped up. The voice at the airport listed the penalties for going now, for ignoring frequent-flyer, fourteen-day advance purchase. The voice was a woman’s. Her name was Darlene. He told her softly that he didn’t care. “One moment please.” She fetched Mrs. Campbell. Mrs. Campbell couldn’t understand why anyone would pay that price. Softly he urged them along, chop chop. Mrs. Campbell, only trying to be helpful, asked if he had a tragedy in the family.
“Yes, me. I’m dying. And you’re wasting my time.” She stepped back. She thought he had AIDS. His eyes rolled, and he grinned like a reaper in a windfall. He hoped he didn’t have AIDS. He didn’t think he had AIDS.
He walked to the gate behind a woman in orange pants and matching shirt with a glittering golf doodle, high heels, shoulder pads, bangles, earrings and enough lipstick to hint excellence in blow jobs. She looked like a hooker, but hookers don’t play golf for long. She nursed a king-size cola in a plastic cup and carried another for her king-size man who waited at the gate in orange shorts and shirt. He wondered if they had AIDS. He wondered how it would be, if you could get AIDS by playing golf but the hard core couldn’t stay off the links.
The husband drank his cola. She took his picture. They talked about blue tomorrow, or maybe taupe, her favorite. Tony Drury feared them. They were crazed and helpless as he was but represented a stronger demographic. They spread, heading south to fight the world’s remaining t-cells.
His head throbs at a noise in matching colors. He turns to it, and the voice says: This place is fabulous!
The effluent overflows.
I’m telling you it’s a man thing, second only to sex, but I have to tell you just what Harold told me, that some days he gets out there under that forty-year-old hood with his wrenches and his, you know, tools, and it’s just numero uno—Oh God! Just look at this pottery! And these blouses! Do you realize what these would cost at home? This is so fabulous!
God forgive them, they know not what they do. But what does he know? Echoing off the canyon walls and up from the deep ravine, they announce widowhood and split-level credentials. From the old country, ranch-style, with five dead husbands betwixt’em and still so little money, what with travel and hotels priced like country clubs, they pour themselves out. “Oh!” one says in a bold stride, casting her shadow over Bobby and Earl.
Bobby and Earl have shared a table and a solace for twenty years. Pioneers from a different reality, they knew what killed all the husbands and ran away to Mexico. Hey, what can you do? The question is on them. Bobby and Earl are Legionnaires, happily alone with their coffee, cigarettes, commiseration, a few drinks and refuge. “You were in the Marines!” the old woman squeals, reading their forearms. On Bobby’s the eagle holds up the earth and USMC. Earl has only the eagle and Semper Fi. Bobby laughs low. Earl shifts in his seat like it’s a machine gun bunker and the yellow peril just lifted the lid and announced, “My second husband was a marine!” She effuses good cheer. “What were you?”
“Very unhappy,” Bobby says. “Twenty-two years of it.” Earl giggles. She pulls up a seat and remembers the Marines through twenty years of her own. Bobby and Earl sit at inattention, stomachs out, chests in, butts dying, coffee cooling, time awasting.
“Now my youngest—my baby—oh my, he’s almost forty years old …” She rambles. Earl glances up. Bobby lights a new smoke.
Filmfest Marylin buzzes concepts like cost per thousand, demographic index, decision makers, disposable income. Rhonda never stops nodding and taking notes, even when her mouth kicks in like a thermostat sensing too little talk in the air. Mumbling a tune about flying to the moon or shooting a moon, she helps Marylin to new conviction: “Let’s go for it.” Marylin wants Rhonda’s help with the filmfest. Rhonda can be in charge of, you know, whatever. “There’s so much to do.” Tony wishes they would recruit the old bag harassing Earl and Bobby, and the three of them could go for it or drive off a cliff.
At least the caffeine kicks in by the bottom of the cup, so he can shuffle off to somewhere else. He gets up and gets out, but only past the door. Jorge the beggar scrapes scant grass from between the cobbles, teensy tiny blades who thought they could hide, thought they could avoid the inevitable. Jorge looks up drooling and mumbling like he understands something. Crossing to the shady side is a relief, until the dust and effort gain momentum.
A hill goes up and down to Benito Juarez, where egrets roost in the evenings and nobody is, except for another old man teaching a few boys his technique for avoiding the bull. Cape draped over his sword, he stands tall, chin on chest, and sweeps past the boy who charges behind the horns. “Olé!” The old man sounds like a distant crowd on each pass. Tony takes a bench behind the lesson, lays down and closes his eyes, hoping for sleep, hoping it isn’t true that the little crumbling arena will soon be replaced by basketball courts, hoping these boys will never wear Nikes or ape Michael Jordan or Shaq or Lord Charles or any of those great guys who make millions of dollars by repeatedly filling the hoop with the ball and clowning with cartoons or products, hoping he won’t wake until the bad stuff goes away.
Pauly Werner’s sister waited for resolution in a dream. She would neither resolve nor age, because dreams stay perfect when reality goes south. Pauly and Tony didn’t so much part ways over Stockwell Pond, they only came to the fork in the road. Tony moved away. Pauly got sent to a special school for the gifted criminally insane. They both still loved what boys loved, the body parts of women and cars. Or at least proximity and potential, because they were still too young for contact, and they were broke. Pauly survived puberty with black stones for eyes and black boots with two-inch heels for puddle stomping. He greased his black hair and winged it back with a few strands dangling over his chalky face that roosted, thick and round, on his shapeless body. He cut the sleeves off his shirts and hung a gold chain on his neck with a little steel skull resting on his little chest.
Pauly made you laugh, he was so hungry for respect. Tony liked Pauly, had grown up and run down the road with him, so Pauly’s new manhood was a novelty, no money down, something he could afford at last. They met again a year after Stockwell Pond at one of the first shopping malls in the world. Pauly hung out, cool and aloof. He says, “Come on over tonight. We got some beer and something you’ll want to see.” They were thirteen, except for Pauly, who flunked first and third, but that was in Catholic school where he got held down. Pauly and Joe Cobb and Randy Hay waited for Tony in Pauly’s garage with two six-packs, a heavy dose of rebellion back then.
They drank quickly, after two beers staggering and slurring nonsense. Then they got naked. Pauly insisted, because he’d gone to such trouble to get four magazines on nudist camps with pictures of whole families naked, little girls too, pussies and everything. Pauly says in a little while they would see who got the biggest hard-on. Tony got goose bumps, drank more beer and got dizzy. Pauly says it was unbelievable now that he got to fuck his sister any time he wanted to. Well, not anytime, but she let him do it twice already and he was pretty sure he could do it again. Pauly’s sister was the most beautiful girl anybody had ever seen, with real tits, and at fourteen she was everything. All the guys used the Vickie Werner standard in stories about pussies and tits. The high school guys wanted her. Tony thought Pauly envied her. Tony thought Pauly wanted the high school guys wanting him. Pauly never called his sister Vickie. He called her Sweet Thing, with an air of propriety.
Tony got hard-ons at thirteen, but he couldn’t get one in Pauly Werner’s garage. He drank more beer to see if that would help, but it didn’t. He walked home and sneaked inside and felt the next day that life had changed; he’d been drunk. He saw Vickie Werner that day. Sh
e batted her eyes and smiled sweet enough to make him wonder if maybe she needed more than just brother Pauly. Maybe she wanted to fuck him too, once or twice anyway. He twitched and smiled back until she closed the gap. Up next to him she asked, “Do you think it’s important for somebody to read the classics?”
He says, “No.” The bell rang. She stood there. He walked away. The scene singes his memory for the loss it represents. Yet other scenes ease the loss, like the one years later, when Pauly was the first of the guys to strike paydirt, to make enough money to buy a new car and get his own place, and he never busted a sweat or went illegal. He opened a porno shop, ditched the hair grease and gold chain and left the sleeves on his shirts. Pauly got hip, a former greaseball in tune to changing times with a porno shop for the Age of Aquarius. He was rich, and Tony knew him back in the black and white smut book days with a few six-packs and hard-ons in the garage.
“Oh, I got it all,” Pauly says, confidant at last. “Rubber dicks, electric pussies. I got a head you can plug into your cigarette lighter and it’ll suck you off. It’s a cow milking device, is what it is. Oh, but they love it. Get a blow job any time. Don’t even have to get married.”
Pauly had parties in the Tupperware format. They started on a New Year’s Eve and soon went to once a month, fifty bucks a head, good on your purchase and all you can drink. “Black tie, I tell ’em. They didn’t like that at first, but you know what? They wear it, show up all stiff and formal. And they don’t fight. Let ’em come in T-shirt and dungarees now, they’ll be like cats and dogs in no time. They won’t fight in their best shirt though. Especially if they got a deposit on it.”
Tony Drury hadn’t seen Pauly Werner since but heard he made it big in 900-number porno telephone, playing the female himself in the early days, talking guys through blow jobs, ream outs, pain, tenderness, blood, shit, come, anything a guy could want, five bucks a minute, oh, he was the best. And to think: Lonnie Millman worried that Pauly would blab directions to Stockwell Pond.
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