Magnificent Vibration

by Rick Springfield

  I shake it off, grab my slippers, and walk out into the living room and confirm that the farm-critter noises are indeed being cranked out via L.V.’s ample nasal passages. Wow, he’s loud! Any minute I expect to hear neighbors banging on the ceiling, floor, and walls. Maybe these walls are thicker than I thought, although I always hear the guy next door’s bed bumping rhythmically against my living room wall and the Oh my gawds every time he scores, and he scores a lot, the lucky bastard.

  I stop in the doorway at the vision before me. Alice is already awake and on my computer, the blue-white glow of the screen lighting her fetchingly as she sits there, legs tucked under her. And, yes, she is still in my robe.

  It’s the very same computer I sometimes watch free Internet porn on as I spank Woody Woodsman into mild ecstasy to ease the pain of my loneliness and also get a good night’s sleep, such is the pathetic cliché I have become, post-divorce. Until now. There is nothing clichéd about this Three’s Company-with-a-twist I find myself in.

  “Good morning,” I whisper to Alice, though why I’m whispering I have no idea. If Livestock Boy on the couch isn’t waking himself up with his own high-decibel log-sawing, I sure as shit am not going to rouse him by whispering a soft greeting. But wake him I do. As Alice looks up, Lexington Vargas snorts, snuffles, sneezes, and gracelessly hauls himself up onto one elbow, blinking at me with sleep-suffused eyes.

  “Why are you yelling, man?” asks L.V in what I presume is his “morning voice.” It’s rough, congested, and extremely woolly-sounding.

  “Well, good morning to you, too, Sunshine,” I reply. I actually feel better than I’ve felt in years. Something seems to have come alive in me that has been comatose for a long, long time. A feeling I haven’t felt since I was a boy. I think it’s hope. And as weird as it seems, even as the words form in my head, I believe I am connected to these two strangers in a way that feels like family (and, so far, without all the flawed, dysfunctional crap that came with my own). L.V. grunts and rolls over, presumably to try to snore his way back into dreamland.

  There’s something unsettling about the way Alice is looking at me. I go cold. Did I leave some cheesy porn site up on deck for her to stumble on when she lit the computer up this morning? “Ham-Slam-a-Thon”? “Let’s Play Stain the Couch”? “ShavedGoat.com”? I open my mouth, poised to apologize profusely if this is indeed the case.

  “I’ve been scanning the passenger list for anything like ‘Mereek,’ ” she says. I breathe a relieved sigh that she didn’t ask me, “What the heck’s a dirt-pipe milkshake?” “I’ve tried spelling it all the ways I can think of,” Alice continues, “but there’s nothing even close to it there.”

  “On the passenger list?” I ask. I’m trying to catch up.

  “Right, there is no Mereek no matter how you spell it on the list of passengers that boarded the plane in Tokyo,” she answers. “Not as a first name or last. But I played around with the spelling and got a hit on Google—for M-E-R-I-K-H. It means ‘death.’ ”

  “Death?” I echo.

  “Death,” she reaffirms.

  “What are you saying . . . ?”

  “I’m not saying anything, I’m just telling you what I found.”

  “But you’re implying that he’s, what? Like the Angel of Death or something?”

  “I don’t know, Bobby. It all seems so crazy. But a lot of people did lose their lives last night. And there were some very peculiar moments with this guy that can’t be explained in any conventional way. Abnormal stuff to say the least.”

  I have to agree, although I had been thinking Merikh might be a cyborg from the future, not the Angel of Death, but maybe that’s just the twelve-year-old in me doing some wishful thinking. I parenthetically really like that Alice, the blazing apostle, called me “Bobby” just then. It sounded intimate, especially considering that we’re both in our jammies and in very close quarters. I begin to imagine us having risen early after a night of ardent and animated lovemaking: I’m brewing coffee while she reads me the morning news and says things like, “Oh, Bobby, let’s go out and get a dog today,” or “Why don’t we have breakfast on the pier?” And then I realize it’s just the old ADD kicking in once again, aided and abetted by the Woodman, and I need to damn well stay centered if we are to make heads or tails of this whole night. And of what may come. I suddenly remember my own copy of Magnificent Vibration and head toward my bedroom to retrieve it. I’m now finally itching to make a certain phone call.

  There’s a loud hammering at the front door.

  “Oh, crap,” I say under my breath as I switch direction to answer the intrusive knocking because Lexington Vargas has started with the zoo noises again. Damn apartment living. I open the door with a bunch of ready explanations for the L.V. post-nasal-drip disturbances, but it’s not a complaining neighbor. It’s my friend Doug. He invites himself in and is immediately off and running.

  “Dude, I’ve been calling you all morning. Everything cool? Did you hear about the plane crash on the freeway? Un-fucking-believable. It’s a mess out there, I had to . . .” He stops as he takes in the company I’m keeping. His gaze comes off Alice, wearing a bathrobe and sitting comfortably on her knees at my computer, and lands back on me. His single raised eyebrow and crude smile immediately communicate that he is misreading the situation. “All right, bro!” he says with a smirk.

  “No, she’s a nun,” I blurt out extraneously. Doug’s smile only widens.

  “Hey, whatever dress-up you want to play is between you. Consenting adults and all.”

  I interrupt him.

  “No, I mean she’s really a nun. We’re just friends. This is Alice Young and the large lump on the couch is Lexington Vargas.”

  L.V., with his broad back to us, has been reawakened by Doug’s arrival. He waves a meaty hand from his prone position but makes no further movement.

  “Whoa, how did I miss him?” quips Doug.

  “This is Doug Donald,” I announce to the room as I motion to my invasive friend.

  “You had a slumber party and you didn’t invite your bestie?’ Doug continues, walking over to Alice and shaking her hand unnecessarily. He’s standing a bit too close for comfort and I can tell he’s making her uneasy, as he does most women, which is probably why we never get laid.

  “Did Bobby say your name is Duck Donald?” Alice asks.

  I laugh because I sometimes call him that. And Donald Duck.

  “Shut up, Cottonballs,” retorts Doug. Then to Alice, “Sorry for swearing, especially if you are really a nun, but honestly, I’m not buying it. Sorry.” This is turning into a bad sitcom right before my eyes.

  “We’re kind of in the middle of something right now Dougie. Can I take a rain check on this visit?”

  “Hey, man, my bad. Obviously everything’s cooking along nicely and I will hit you up on the morrow. Nice to meet you, ‘Dude on the couch.’ ” He motions to Lexington Vargas, then turns to Alice. “And you, my dear, are blistering. I only hope that robe is fireproof. No wonder Bobby wants to kick my ass outta here.” Jesus!

  Thankfully Doug walks himself to the door without any further prodding from me.

  “I’ll call you later, DD,” I say as we high-five out of habit like a couple of carefree teenagers when in fact we are a couple of stressed out middle-aged misfits. Doug turns at the door and gives me a knowing wink.

  “If the ‘Sister’ has a sister, I am SO in,” he whispers loud enough for all concerned to hear. He heads down a hallway already filling with the fragrances of breakfast being prepared in fifty isolated apartments as a bunch of divorced, contrite, and lonely guys get ready for a new day.

  Doug’s halfway to the elevator, as I’m closing the door, when he stops and turns. “Hey,” he says. “Is there a famous actor lives in this building?”

  “I don’t think so,” I answer, further shutting the door in hopes of ending the uncomfortable stream of dialog from my friend’s yap.

  “ ’Cause I just passed this guy stand
ing by the entrance to this place and he looked kind of familiar. At least I think he did. If he’s not an actor or a model, he should be.”

  “Yeah, I don’t think there’s any famous people in this building. It’s mostly lawyers and accountants on their way to their second and third marriages,” I toss out. The door is almost shut.

  “A black guy, with long hair and really pale green eyes. Fucking unbelievably great-looking, if I can say that without sounding like a fruitcake.” He just will not stop. But now he has my attention.

  “This guy—was he wearing a brown leather jacket?” I hear myself ask.

  “Yeah I think he was. Maybe. Dude, if I looked like he does, I’d need restraining orders against half the women of the world. Pretty wild. How come some guys look like that and the rest of us look like . . . us?” he sends this parting shot across my bow as he disappears around a corner, oblivious to the turmoil he has just ignited inside me.

  I close the paper-thin, highly breachable apartment door and lean against it to catch the breath that seems to have escaped me all of a sudden. I decide not to say anything yet to Alice. I think I should tell L.V.

  I walk back into the living room full of apologies for Doug and the extremely large and obnoxious footprint he’s just left in our fragile ecosystem, but Lexington Vargas is already playing a prelude to his Sinus Symphony in E flat, and Alice is back on the spank-a-tron computer. Apparently they are more resilient than I’d given them credit for.

  “I’m just going to check my email,” says Alice.

  “Nuns have email?” I ask, one ear trained for any odd noises that might suggest we’re in peril from the extremely attractive Angel of Death, Merikh, who seems to have found us again despite our best evasive efforts.

  “We nuns live in the twenty-first century just like you do, y’know,” she replies.

  “I just . . . I don’t know, I have this vision of a stony convent in the middle of the French countryside where you all make wine and grow your own food and the only guy you ever see is a photo of the pope on the mother superior’s bedroom wall.” I obviously haven’t updated this view since the late 1400s.

  Alice smiles indulgently.

  I raise my voice so she can hear me over the mighty and sonorous Lexington Vargas.

  “I’m going to place that call! I think it’s time.”

  Alice doesn’t respond.

  I walk over to where L.V.’s open book is lying on the coffee table. “You’ve got mail!” I hear the AOL guy say, with the same slightly thrilled tone he’s been using for over twenty years now. How can he still be that excited about email?

  “Oh, my Lord!” Alice exclaims She sounds amazingly like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music when she talks like that. Another piping-hot point in her favor. “What?” I ask as I open Fred Flintstone’s flip-phone.

  “I just inherited a house,” is the unexpected answer. She stands suddenly, pushing the chair away as her (my) robe falls open just a fraction and seems to confirm that she really isn’t wearing anything underneath. Woody makes a mental note never to wash that robe again.

  I close the phone. Is she purposely trying to distract me?

  “I just got an email from a law firm in . . . In-ver-ness,” she carefully pronounces the name of a city that, to me, is very familiar. “My father was from Scotland and I guess he had a brother back there, although he never talked about his family to us.”

  An image of the poster on the travel agent’s window from last night’s fruitless search for the bookstore flashes into my mind—“Come to Scotland!”

  “Really?” I say.

  “Take a look,” she says, and I lean down as close to her as I dare to read what’s on the spank-a-tron:

  Dear Miss Young,

  It is our regrettable duty to inform you that your uncle, Mr. Ronan Young, passed away on the 14th of January of this year, leaving no immediate descendants. We have been trying to contact you to apprise you of the fact that you are the beneficiary, being his sole living relative, of the property and effects from Mr. Young’s estate. There is a house as well as a small bank account and a fishing boat with various accouterments that remain to be claimed once proof of identity is confirmed. By Scottish law, any beneficiary must present himself or herself in person to claim their inheritance. Please contact us at our offices here in Inverness so that we may proceed with the arrangements for the execution and completion of the disbursement of the aforementioned Mr. Young’s estate.

  We look forward to hearing from you.

  I remain

  Yours sincerely

  Clive McGivney

  of

  McGivney, McGivney, and McGivney Law Offices 41 Church Street, Inverness, Highlands, Scotland, IV1 1EH

  “I know Inverness,” I say. “It’s near Loch Ness.”

  “How do you know that?” asks Alice.

  “Long story. Started when I was a kid.”

  Alice glances at the email again and notices that her robe is showing more Alice than she intended. She closes it, but shows no overt modesty in the action. She is a quirky girl for sure. And her skin looked flawless, what I could see of it, and believe me, I was trying really hard not to look.

  “You have to go there,” I continue excitedly. “You know, to present physical proof that you’re you, so you can claim your inheritance. This isn’t something you can settle over the Internet.”

  “What? I’m not going to Scotland right now. I’m trying to figure out my life. As well as understand what last night was all about.”

  “Well . . . maybe this could be part of it,” I suggest.

  “How could this be part of it?”

  I am stumped for damn sure. No idea how this could have anything to do with whatever it is we’re experiencing but . . . Scotland?? Land of the superb and possibly real Loch Ness Monster? C’mon! says twelve-year-old Horatio.

  “I think I need to make a call,” I finally say. “Wake Lexington—he should be in on this, too.”

  “Not yet,” is all Alice says.

  “Yes, yet,” I answer. “I need to see if we can glean any more clues from whoever is on the other end of this number.”

  I motion to L.V.

  “Wake him up.” I open the phone, I open the book, and I start dialing.

  God

  “Tsk, tsk,” clucks the Omnipotent Supreme Being, as more not-so-good news filters back from The Beautiful Blu . . . from “Earth.” The one-hundred-million-ton, continental-United-States-sized heap of pelagic plastic-and-chemical sludge, known as the Pacific Trash Vortex or the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, that is currently adrift in the Pacific Ocean has begun to turn more toxic due to the combination of harmful ingredients and increased ocean temperatures to the degree that it is killing all of the animal life that ingests it. Fish and birds that feed in the thousands-of-miles-wide collection of human detritus are dying irreplaceably at an alarming rate. How is Earth supposed to clean herself when these humans keep dumping more and more of their garbage into her oceans? Why don’t they get it? Their planet will die if all seven billion of them don’t stop using her as their personal toilet, flushing every man-made poison and all their biological refuse into her fragile, living system.

  Dumb-asses!

  Horatio

  “Horatio? I’m selling the house.”

  Mom has met me at the front door as I return from the hunt. I’ve been out on safari, exploring the wilds in search of the extremely rare and highly endangered American Job.

  Like a couple in a bad marriage, my mother and I have been drifting apart and doing nothing to rectify it, so this thing about the house is not a completely unforeseen event.

  “Okay,” I say.

  “I’m moving into a condominium in Sherman Oaks.” It’s clear she doesn’t plan on having me join her.

  “What’ll I do with all my stuff?” I sound like a lost, loser of a kid all of a sudden.

  “I expect you could throw half of it out and wouldn’t miss it. All those silly plastic mo
nster figurines (figurines?), and you don’t even wear most of the clothes in your closet. The furniture is mine, but I need a fresh start so I’m going to have a garage sale and sell everything.” She seems to have been thinking this through for some time now. I’m starting to feel a little blindsided the more she talks at me, even though she’s hinted at this sort of me-less future before.

  “You’ll have to find yourself an apartment somewhere. And get a job.”

  “What about Josie’s ashes?” I ask. They still sit on the dining room table where I first set them down, over a month ago.

  “I don’t want those. That’s not my daughter in that box,” she answers.

  “I’ll take them,” I say, and I realize, apart from the two outfits I always wear, some underwear, socks, and a few toiletry items, the only thing of meaning and value I will take from my twenty years in this house is that black plastic box. All that’s left of my sister’s earthly form.

  I am given twenty-eight days to get my shit together and vacate the premises.

  And miracles of miracles, three months later I get a job delivering pizza and my financial security is assured. Except that I don’t have a car. And I still don’t have a license. And I haven’t told Ernie’s Pizza that I don’t have a car or a license.

  Mother has caved and let me sleep on the couch in her new condo after the sale of the house and the expiration of my mandatory twenty-eight-day “get-your-own-apartment” time limit. But now that I have a job and am flush with cash, I’m instructed to get the hell out and find my own damn place. So I have the damn job, now to find the damn place. And the damn car and the damn driver’s license. I settle for a damn motor scooter. I skip the damn license for now and figure I’ll get it when I’m damn ready. I have to borrow money from my mother to get the apartment thing going, but I suspect she’s only too happy to lend it to me and to finally see the last of my heathen, nihilistic, licentious male Cotton backside as I exit her life forever.

  I move into a closet masquerading as an apartment in Burbank and begin to hit the nine-to-five (although in reality it’s more like eight a.m. to midnight) delivering pizza for the renowned Ernie’s Pizza Di Napoli. Who knew “Ernie” was Italian? And from Napoli, no less. Because he sounds like he’s from Redondo Beach. I begin my illustrious career as a courier of the heart attack-inducing halos of white flour, cheese, monkey-meat and tomato paste from Ernie’s of Napoli, via SoCal.