by Alan Osi
“Of course. Would you mind rolling?”
“Never do, my man, never do,” she said, and reached for my Buddha, in which I kept my Buddha. “Did I ever tell you how much I love this little statue?”
“Love it or the goodies kept inside?” I asked. But, in truth, I loved it too. It was about a foot tall, of the classical laughing variety. I felt something special in it, as if it had a life-force of its very own. Namaste, little Buddha.
“Got any tunes?” Hailey asked. So I put on the latest album by the Argonauts.
Quiet descended while she rolled. I liked to think such activities could be art, in and of themselves, deserving all the attention that could be spared. Ordinary moments such as these could be beautiful, if we got out of the way and tried not to fill them with useless prattle. Hailey tended to feel the same; at least, she often chose not to speak when silence bloomed. She held her lips partly open, her face perfect concentration, and she swayed to the music as her fingers gently danced. I framed the picture in my mind—lovely. Shame she wouldn’t let me take it. I knew better than to ask.
“All done,” she said. “Did you ever copy me this album, by the way?”
“I forgot.” I took the newborn joint she handed me and did the ritual inspection. “Gorgeous work, as usual.”
She said, “Thanks,” and lit it.
We sat, mostly not speaking, just listening and smoking. In five minutes or so, Perce buzzed up to my apartment.
“‘Tis I,” he said, “Yon noble son.” While unsure if I approved of that greeting, I buzzed him up anyway.
“Percival?” Hailey asked.
“Of course. Shame he didn’t come on time.” The joint was just about down to its last few puffs.
“Is what it is.”
Percival opened the door. His posture reminded me of wilted basil, his clothing lacked its usual snap. Stress lines etched the skin around his eyes, which, incongruously, burned with more than their usual fire. He swiveled his head before walking in, mentally sweeping the room, as if he expected to find other than his two favorite stoner geniuses waiting on him to explain why he called us here.
Once again, I framed the photograph in my mind—another keeper. Such a shame I couldn’t capture it as well.
“‘Tis I, yon noble son?’” I quoted back to him.
He smiled. “I needed you to be sure it was me.”
“Yes,” said Hailey, “that did have a kind of you-ness.”
I said, “Are you being impersonated?”
Percival flopped down on the couch next to me, with a huge exhale. “Don’t know what to expect these days. For example, I might have expected my two bestest friends to wait for me.” He referred to the joint.
“There’s a little left,” I said.
“I made the call on that,” Hailey added. “My bad. But, you were pretty late. I figured you’d show in time to get more than dregs.”
She handed him the roach, and he took it. “Yeah, I know,” Percival said. “No one to blame, but myself, I guess. Woe is me.” He toked. “It’s good to see you guys.”
“But not unusual?” I said.
“You have no idea the kind of stuffed-shirt I’ve been forced to associate with. A little cool goes a long way.”
“Good thing it’s here in abundance.”
“Amen.”
Hailey said, “So, why are we here?”
Percival blew out smoke, put the roach out, and then pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. “Because some very serious developments developed, and big choices must be made.”
“Is this about those guys outside your place?”
“Actually, no. Not directly. But, they play a part. Listen, and I’ll tell you a story…”
And what a story it was. He proceeded to explain that yesterday, he went to Wally Beaver’s apartment building, wrongly assuming the same people who waiting outside of his apartment tried to find him through Wally. At Wally’s, he noticed a man outside of the place, a man who turned out to be a reporter. They started talking.
There, things got interesting. The mystery of why we couldn’t measure out doses of moondust by gram finally got solved. The stuff proved to be… mystic? I’m not sure there was a word for it. It was utterly unclassifiable. Which meant it couldn’t be made illegal, we could never go to jail for selling it. This was good news.
Percival also began the process, using Wally Beaver as an alias, of becoming a primary source in the reporter’s article. I felt ambivalent about that, at best. Fame, after all, attracted slings and arrows of all kinds.
And the last of Perce’s bombshells: The reporter wanted to meet us, and in exchange for this, would get the people after Percival off his back. And of course by extension Hailey’s back, and my back, too. For a meeting, and a meeting only. Everything after that was negotiable.
Quite the developments.
54. HAILEY
My love affair with sweet Maria Juanita sure paid off at times like these, I’ll tell you.
“Are you for real?” I asked at the end of Perce’s story.
“Have I ever been fake?” he responded.
“So you’re going public with this?” Mark said, disapproval dripping.
I shook my head. Our man P. should have known this wouldn’t be Mark’s thing. How many times had he told us that proverb about the arrogant monkey who gets shot by arrows? There was more than a little risk, he’d tell it now. I was pretty sure if I heard it one more time, my ovaries would start bleeding.
Percival feared the proverb, too. He said, “Mark, I know where you’re going. Yes, the monkey would have stayed alive if it hadn’t gloated. I get it. That’s exactly why I gave the reporter Wally Beaver’s name. If we want, then we can disappear. Stop selling moondust right now, go back to being lowly creative types. I went to the reporter in the first place ‘cause I was being stalked; once he takes care of that, all we have to do is meet him once and tell him to fuck off. Then we’re square, and we can get out. Is that what you want?”
Mark didn’t answer right away. But, we knew what he was thinking; we thought it too. Moondust took care of every financial need. It’d put us square on easy street, to tell the truth.
Percival continued, “But, if we want to keep on, keeping on, we really can’t pretend we can go back to how it used to be. We’ve taken the quiet approach as far as it would go, being humble little monkeys won’t work anymore. It’s too big. Word’s getting out.”
I couldn’t stop the monkey parable from running through my brain. A king and his entourage go monkey hunting for some reason. The king shoots at this one monkey. But, it dodges the arrow. The monkey’s all high on adrenaline, and he goes, “Oh yeah! Eat it, king! I’m the greatest monkey, ever! You can’t hit me! You suck!” So the king tells his men that they will not go home until the arrogant monkey’s dead. They shoot a billion arrows, and kill the monkey. The king gives a monologue about how if the monkey had just shut up, it’d still be alive. But, talking shit got it killed. So the smart monkey turned out to be pretty dumb, although remarkable in that it could talk.
“Your contention is that we can’t keep this quiet,” said Mark.
“Not anymore, although we did our best. I’m sure the guy who invented sliced bread had the same problem.”
“Guy?” I said.
“Or gal. The thing is, the question’s academic now. This is a war-room meeting. And, I’d like to state for the record, my fellow generals jumped the gun and left me dry. But, not high.” He shook his head in mock frustration. “Fucking stoners. You can’t trust them for shit.”
“Action, not whining,” said Mark. “Pick a piece and go to town.”
Perce did just that, reaching first into the Buddha for his enlightened treasure.
During the moment’s respite, I did some calculating. “So, it’s legal forever, the cat’s going to be well out of the bag, whenever—with or without us. This guy writes his article, and… people apparently want in enough to stalk Percival.”
“They don’t know how to make it,” said Mark.
“Yeah. We do, and there’s no way to tell how many other people do. Check that; I know from the reporter there’s at least one other guy.”
My worry rose. He asked the question with a gesture, and so I took the pipe from him. In my exhale, I said, “One other dude’s not much cover. When it goes public, what’s to stop mob-type figures or corporate strong-men from making a point to find out from whoever knows how to make it?”
“Exactly,” Perce said. “We’re in deep. There’s no point getting out now, unless we leave the city and change our names. ‘Cause when the word gets out, every psycho in every borough looking to make a fast buck’s gonna be looking for us. Either of you ready to leave the city?”
A fate worse than death.
“Okay,” Mark said. “So what do we do?”
This was the moment Percival urged us toward, the conversation’s climax. I could feel it in the air, I read it in the look on his face. He had a plan. I admired his style.
“You can’t fight a wave,” he said. “But you can ride it.”
That was exactly the kind of cryptic statement Mark loved: The guy ate it up, nodding. I, however, needed things to make actual sense.
“Care to be a bit more specific?”
“We go public. We throw an epic party. We give everyone exactly what they want before they know they want it.”
Percival continued, giving us the outline of his plan—which we later refined. If it didn’t kill us, moondust would make us.
When your back’s against the wall? Swing for the fences.
Ride or die.
Rock and roll.
Etc.
55. JUSTINE
Although it was Sunday, I couldn’t face work right now. I needed to call in sick from work, until I could convince myself whatever I’d experienced on that strange drug—moondust—wasn’t real. Just a hallucination caused by some drug a bum gave me.
I left a voice message because I was not okay. My head hurt. I couldn’t imagine speaking to anyone today or tomorrow.
So I sat, watching the morning light invade my floor. Newsletters I created during my tenure at Action, Now! flitted through my mind. War-zones and droughts. Starving distended bellies.
What sense could it make?
Clinging to a belief in God all this time had been terribly naïve. Perhaps moondust simply freed me. By providing such a well rendered hallucination, it made religion’s poor lies much less convincing.
Maxwell hadn’t called so far today.
Max. What would I tell him? How could we be together, after what happened to us, to me?
My dad… he’d been a religious man. Christmas Mass, one of my first memories: the car-ride there. We sang carols, all three of us. Our sloppy voices and joy.
I felt hungry. I guess I hadn’t eaten in a while.
So I got up and went to my typical Manhattan fridge—we all worked too much and lived a lot. We went to the farmer’s market when we could. I had two eggs of indeterminate age, a half-empty carton of milk, the ends of a loaf of bread, some ageless Chinese leftovers, and kale.
I checked the cabinet for a stash I kept for food emergencies like this. The box of flapjack mix and bottle of syrup were still there.
It was strange because it was like there was a pane of glass between me and my emotions, clouding the images of my memory. I could see the kitchen of my youth, before my dad’s death, where pancakes were a ritual. But, it didn’t look the same.
I turned on the television while I ate. But, I couldn’t manage to pay attention. After I ate, I put my unwashed plate in the sink—on top of the unwashed pan and next to the bowl—and flopped on the couch. An afternoon movie started, Meet the Hendersons; I fell asleep, like a weight pulled me down.
I woke up late afternoon, to the rain smell. Raindrops bedazzled the windowpanes. My door buzzer rang.
I tricked myself into being ready for what came next by pretending that I wondered who that could be? But, I knew exactly who was at the door.
56. MAXWELL
The steps up to Justine’s apartment seemed to have multiplied. And yet, as much as they seemed to stretch on forever, I was up them too fast. Could I really do this? We hadn’t been dating that long at all, when I thought about it. But, there had been a deep and very real bond. We’d both known it and spoken about it. I’d thought maybe she was “the one.” That thought had definitely crossed my mind.
Could I really… end it this way?
But I’d been down this road before. She wasn’t taking my calls.
What’s the cutoff, I wondered, for one party not taking the other’s calls while still being in a “relationship?” How long before it signified the end and not just a really bad fight or something? Two days? A month? I supposed it was a case by case thing.
And even if there had been some rulebook for the usual situations, didn’t moondust, in fact, put us in uncharted territory? With that in the equation—well, moondust erased equations.
If she hadn’t taken it, everything would be fine now.
I was so angry with her for that. How stupid do you have to be to take some fucking random drug? And it had proven very dangerous, as any idiot would have known it would.
And, yes, I had thought she might be the woman I’d eventually marry. I’d loved her compassion, her intelligence, her humor. But, talk about lack of judgment. Could I really trust anyone who’d made such a poor decision as to use that substance?
No. I could not. Fundamentally.
It was over. I knew this: I guess I just needed reaffirmation. She wasn’t the one, evident by that really bad choice. Instead of dealing with it like an adult, she was punishing me for her choice by ignoring my frequent calls and texts, giving me the cold shoulder in the most severe way.
And since it was over, this was something I had to do.
It was time to go in. I couldn’t hang out on her doorstep, forever. Life was going on all around me. So I opened her building’s front door and pushed myself in, and in so doing, lit a powder-keg inside my chest.
57. JUSTINE
He walked in, without knocking, knowing I would have unlocked the door. He dressed smartly, as usual. But, tension tightened his eyes. On the kitchen table, next to where I now sat, a dollop of syrup must have fallen from my breakfast plate and lay in a puddle. I didn’t want Maxwell to be here. But, he was, staring at me in a silence as the air turned into meringue.
“What,” he eventually said, “No ‘hello?’”
“How are you, Max?” I asked, still pretending to read the magazine I’d positioned next to the syrup.
“More to the point, how are you?”
“Surviving.”
“You haven’t answered my calls.” He crossed the room and sat in the chair across from me. “And you won’t even look at me.”
I made eye contact, held it. Perhaps, I’d be lucky, and this visit wouldn’t last long.
“Does this mean we’re over?” he asked, into the silence. Then he said, “Say something.”
What could I say? I wanted to say ten different things and each of their opposites. So I answered, “Sometimes, words aren’t enough to explain.”
“Bullshit,” he said and stood up. He stalked his way to the window and then turned around. “That’s total bullshit. But, it tells me what I need to know. You’re saying we’re done.”
“You said that. Don’t put words in my mouth.”
“Yeah, and you’re not saying anything. How else does that translate?”
“Well, your opinion is the only one that counts anyway.”
“Bullshit. Passive aggressive bullshit.”
“Why are you even here?”
“I wan
t to understand.”
“You have no interest in understanding. That’s the whole problem.”
“Yeah, right. I’m your problem.” A jaggedness poked from his eyes.
“What do you want from me, right now?” I asked. “Can’t you understand how…?” But, what could I say? Everything sounded lame, even in my own ears.
“No, you’re right. I can’t understand.” He reached into his pocket, pulled something out, and put it on the table in front of me. “But I want you to tell me.”
It was his digital recorder. I stared at it for a moment, my mind strangely blank.
“What?”
“I want you to tell me how it was. The moondust.”
I blinked. My hand flew out, made a small, but painful thud as it hit the recorder, which flew through suspended time to bounce off of the wall, where a button or something flew off before it clattered to the floor.
Maxwell yelled, “Bitch!” I watched him crouch down to examine the damage, ice growing in my intestines.
“Get out,” I said.
“No,” he said.
“What do you mean, no?”
“You owe me.”
“I owe you? Get out now. I will call the police.” I walked into my bedroom, and closed the door. I lay on top of the covers and listened to nuclear silence, barely breathing until I heard the footsteps, the sound of the front door opening, and the sound of it closing.
58. WILLIAM
It was a clear night, and from the heavens, all the Gods shone down on our village. Poppa and Mauy had gone hunting. They brought home a deer. I helped them hang the skins—after the healer said all the prayers and thanked the animal—so we could turn the hide into things like clothing and bowstrings.
I was still at least two summers away from being a woman. Momma said so, anyway. Today, she suffered a headache and now lay in bed, not sleeping, with her hand over her eyes.
Poppa went into the hut and fixed her with a little bit of magic the medicine man taught him a long time ago.