I must say, this moment is almost worth the years of abuse I have had to put up with. Why didn’t I think of this video thing before? The look on Ms. Human Resources’ face tells me I am most certainly getting my paid vacation days. And that the Right Whale will be appropriately chastised and could even be forced to abdicate his self-vaunted position as sovereign of shitty cinema. And I thought putting cameras in cell phones was a dumb idea when they first came up with it. What do I know?
On my way home in the amazing life-saving Kia, the amazing paid-vacation-giving cell phone chimes to alert me to an incoming message. I grab the superb invention and check it. There is no return or identifying number of any kind and the message simply says, “Trobhad gu Caledonia.” Is that even English? And what’s a “Trobhad”?
I look up to see that the cars twenty feet in front of me have stopped at a red light and I absolutely cannot brake in time. I had promised myself I’d never read or write texts while driving! Well, now I know why. But it’s a bit fucking late. The only opening I can see is between the two stationary vehicles at the crosswalk, so I steer wildly in that direction and careen through the gap with a half-inch to spare on either side. A truck, pulling out into the opposing intersection in perceived safety, screeches to a halt as I accelerate and whip the mighty Lamborghini in cheap Asiatic clothing around the front end of said truck, missing it by an easy half-millimeter or so, and roar to the other side, running two sets of red lights, thank you very much. Miraculously there is no police car nearby to monitor my lucky idiocy, only the blaring horns of fellow motorists eager to tell me what a butt-plug I am. I drive like a stunned mullet for a minute or two, trying to grasp the awful mess I have just avoided.
I say out loud, “Wow, Arthur, was that you?”
My cell phone, still clutched in a death-grip in my sweaty hand, remains silent.
“And what the hell does Trobhad gu Caledonia mean?” I add to no one in particular as I speed away, highly embarrassed, from the almost-tragic-accident scene. But there is obviously someone in particular listening because suddenly words appear on the “heads up” display across my windshield, which is strange because there is no “heads-up” display on this model Kia. Nor any model Kia, for that matter. The words read: NO, THAT WAS JUST YOUR DUMB LUCK, AND I DID NOT SEND THAT LAST MESSAGE. KEEP YOUR EYES ON THE ROAD, IDIOT.
Great, now God thinks I’m an idiot. And who sent the first message?
I drop the phone onto the seat beside me and swear anew never to drive and text again. Unless it’s Arthur. But he seems to have the means to bypass the technology anyway.
I’m still shaking from the near-possibly-fatal car crash, especially given that the front end of the great Kia appears to be constructed of tin foil.
Again, shit happens. Or in some cases, thankfully, doesn’t.
I swing by the Oakwood and pick up Alice and her overnight bag. She looks fresh and revitalized, but I thought she looked pretty great before too, with her red-rimmed eyes and bed hair. Am I falling in love? Does it happen this quickly? No, it’s probably just Woody messing with me.
She climbs into the car and without a word shows me her cell phone. The screen says “Trobhad gu Caledonia.”
“Is it from . . .” she doesn’t finish the sentence.
“No, I already asked. Arthur said it wasn’t from him/her,” I answer as if it’s an everyday occurrence, God directly responding to my petty questions. And I have a vague feeling that my life will never be the same after this inconceivable experience we three are involved in.
At this point I don’t know just how prophetic I am.
We speed on, working our way through the discombobulated traffic. The 101 is still closed in the aftermath of the plane crash and now it’s rush hour (whoever named it “rush” hour should be found and whipped). We maneuver our way around it all.
“What’s a Trobhad?” is the first thing out of Lexington Vargas’s mouth as we enter my now-crowded bachelor pad. Obviously he got the same message on his cell phone, too, although he never said he had a cell phone.
“Is it . . . ?”
“No, it’s not from Arthur,” I say anticipating that his question is the same one Alice had.
And her pale, delicate fingers are already working the keys on my computer looking for the phrase “Trobhad gu Caledonia” as I struggle to push away the image of myself, late at night on the very same laptop, searching for free porn to ease my heat. Honestly I can’t wait till I’m seventy and—as Willie Nelson says—I finally outlive my dick, such are the constant interruptions to my life that Woody causes. Focus Cotton, focus.
“It’s Scottish Gaelic. A language that peaked in the ninth to eleventh centuries,” says Alice.
“Can you translate it?” I ask. I’ve often used the English-to-Spanish translator on the spank-a-tron PC to talk to that cuckolding bastard Gabriel, my ex-gardener, who is no longer mowing my lawn but probably still mowing my ex-wife. Again, focus, Cotton, focus.
“I seriously doubt there’s an English-to-Scottish-Gaelic translator,” I venture.
“There’re translators for pretty much any language on the Internet. Latin, Zulu, Yupik, Khmer,” replies Alice.
Okay, I don’t need an English-to-Khmer translator, since I already know how to say “I’m diabetic” in that language, so I am fully good, I think to myself. Honestly, how fucking lame is my job? But how amazing have become its paid vacations!! [First-pumping action inserted here.]
I hear Alice tap, tap, tapping around on the keyboard, and we huddle in to see what she comes up with. Finally, after some false starts and links that take us to weight-loss programs and (blush) porn sites, we strike gold.
“It means ‘Come to Caledonia,’ ” she says at last.
“Where’s Caledonia?” Lexington Vargas speaks for us all.
Alice dives back into the computer and brings up the world-famous and highly informative, though often mistaken, Wikipedia.
Alice and I both exhale in wonder at what we see.
Caledonia, unless Wikipedia is lying to us, is an old Roman name (were the Romans everywhere, for crying out loud?) for Scotland.
Come to Scotland. The awesome Urquhart Castle on the banks of Loch Ness poster on the travel agent/magic bookstore’s window leaps into my brain in a sharp mental image. Come to Scotland.
I ask them if they saw the same poster I did in the travel agent/bookseller’s window last night. They don’t remember.
But it is another call to come to the land of ice, snow, and vast deposits of North Sea oil.
“So, are we all going to Scotland?” asks L.V., sounding almost childlike.
“How can we all go to Scotland? It’s on the other side of the world,” says Alice. “I don’t have that kind of money.”
Having, I imagine, just come off a vow of poverty, I would guess she wouldn’t be exactly rolling in assets. Apart from her stunning looks and burning body, that is. (Wooooodyyyy!!!)
“Wait, wait, let’s think here for a minute,” I say, trying to be rational in this very irrational situation.
“A lot of signs are pointing us toward making this trip to Scotland. And Inverness in particular,” I begin, with some degree of understatement. I look to the inheritance-worthy nun.
“You’ve already had emails from ‘Your faithful servants MacGyver, MacGyver, and MacGyver—about having to show up in person to claim some house and a bunch of fishing tackle or whatever, right?”
“But we don’t know who sent that last text to us. It could have been anybody. Totally unrelated.” Alice is unconvinced. And Arthur’s disavowed it.
“No one in my small circle of friends speaks Scottish Gaelic . . . or Old Roman. No return sender on the text, either. It seems to be from ‘somewhere else,’ though where that is I have no clue, which makes it part and parcel of this whole freaking freak show, wouldn’t you say?” I counter.
Lexington Vargas nods his assent. Alice is staring at the computer screen, both hands to her face. It’s as if
she was contemplating a trip to Pluto.
“I just don’t know,” she whispers. “How would we get there? It just seems so . . . impossible.”
“Haven’t we already gone a little north of ‘impossible’?” says Lexington Vargas with one of his brief, self-restrained moments of clarity and insight.
“How would we get there?” repeats Alice, almost whispering.
We all sit in silence, running all the probabilities through our collective minds. Could I really live the rest of my life in peace without seeing this thing through? I make a decision, grab my wallet, and whip out my MasterCard. I think I hear it whimper like a gutless weasel.
“Let’s max this baby out,” I say with the bravado of someone who is okay with taking on more mountainous debt than he can ever repay and being charged 21 percent interest for the privilege. My credit is totally screwed anyway, thanks to the divorce.
“Something’s going on, and we need to follow it through,” I say decisively, though I’m actually not as convinced as I sound.
“Won’t we all need passports and visas and things?” Alice is resisting with some fair and honest questions.
“I still have my Mexican passport from when my family moved here in the ’nineties. I renew it just in case anything goes down in the States and I need to get out of Dodge,” says L.V.
“You came here legally?” I ask. Really, is there no end to my prejudice? Lexington Vargas again takes no issue with my ignorance, but he does smile.
“My father was a pretty famous guy,” is all he says.
“I have mine too,” answers Sister Alice. “We needed to be ready in case of missionary work. I think it’s still good.”
Mr. Gung-ho-let’s-all-go-to-Scotland-tomorrow is the only one without a passport.
“Okay, I guess I’ll have to get one,” I say meekly.
I hear Alice’s flying fingers again as she pulls up a government website. She is SLAMMIN’ on this thing. And I thought its main function was to help lonely guys get a restful night’s sleep.
“You can get one in five to seven days, according to the Department of State’s website,” says Alice.
I want to go sit in the Kia and ask Arthur if this is the right move or not. Pretty sure the “heads up” display no longer exists in my rent-a-car.
I pull out my cell and hit “redial” on the West Virginia number. It rings twice and a smarmy voice recording says, “Sorry, Charlie,” and disconnects. We are on our own again.
“Looks like we’re going to Scotland,” I announce like a dad to his kids on spring break.
God
“I’m spending way too much time with this planet,” thinks the OSB. “I shouldn’t be playing favorites.” But it is a magnificent piece of work, if the OSB does think so him/herself. “And then along they come pissing and pooping all over it, needlessly slaughtering its elegant and beautiful flora and fauna, again if I do say so myself.”
Mid-reverie, a sudden thousand-light-years-wide supernova (waaaay on the other side of the universe) catches the OSB’s attention, as thousands of inhabited planets are deep-fried with radiation in half a Plank-unit, killing all life forms.
“Shit . . . ,” says the OSB, “. . . happens,” then turns his/her attention back to the Beautiful Blue, Green/White Majest . . . “Earth.”
Horatio
The morning following my horrific discovery of all those mind-melting images of naked, hairy, unwashed men hiding under the bed of my wife’s lying, cheating Twitter page, I drive to work, angry and scared at the same time. There were so many guys—where do I start? Do I go around exacting physical revenge on them all like a true bad-ass and probably end up in the hospital myself with major breakages, lacerations, and contusions, or do I tell them how much they’ve all hurt and saddened me, like a little wussy-baby? Either way it’s a daunting prospect. I have no model for this, as far as how I ought to behave. But then I realize I actually do. I’m my mother, and my wife is my father if he had access to a Twitter page. And I am stunned by the unfortunate synchronicity of my life. Am I done with women now, the way my mother was finished with men after all my father’s crap? I don’t think so. I’m too young. And Woody is too needy. All I want to do right now is go home and curl up in the fetal position in a corner with Murray. But I have to face Ned the Head. I take the long, scenic route to work. I tell myself I’m doing this to figure out how best to address this frightful situation, but honestly I think I’m trying to avoid it altogether. Maybe he’ll call in sick.
Bobby
Alice and I stare from the car, our mouths open in shock. I have piloted the Kia through traffic so thick and tangled that from the air it must all look like an earthworm orgy. I’ve just had the world’s worst-ever photo taken so that for the next fifteen years my passport will show everyone that I am actually an eighty-five-year-old, inbred, fat-faced pig-fucker. Alice and Lexington Vargas both laughed out loud and unkindly when, disenchanted, I dropped it on the dashboard of the car after a hasty and embarrassed exit from the local Mail Boxes Etc. It sits there mocking the kind of mildly good-looking thirty-two-year-old I thought I was.
Now, as L.V. hauls his substantial frame out of the groaning Kia, it is his house we are staring at, thunderstruck. It’s in the hills of La Crescenta, and it’s a magnificent, beautifully groomed hacienda that would fit three or four of my little ex-houses inside it.
“Dude!” is all I can say as he walks around to my window.
“Oh, yeah,” he answers, as if my reaction isn’t the first of its kind that he’s encountered. He leans against the hood of the Kia, and I think there will be a Lexington Vargas–sized ass-dent in the bodywork when he is done telling the story he looks like he’s about to tell.
“That’s a pretty cool house,” I tell him unnecessarily.
“My dad left it to me,” is his explanation.
“Wow, what did your father do?” asks Alice through the window opening.
“He was a doctor. UCLA recruited him from the hospital he was working at in Mexico City and brought us all here because he’d invented a new heart surgery technique and they wanted him to teach it to their doctors,” answers L.V. who has just received a very large upgrade in my judgmental and easily-impressed-by-money mind.
“Then what are you doing groundskeeping at a high school?” I don’t think that’s an offensive question. I check. No, he doesn’t look offended, but he has shown himself to be pretty resilient to my sometimes-rash, clueless-white-boy assumptions based on his ethnicity.
“I was the ‘bad’ kid of all my brothers. I ditched school and then had some trouble with the cops. Messed with drugs and stuff, y’know,” he answers, and although he’s read to us about this life from his copy of Magnificent Vibration, I don’t really know, but I nod my head like I do.
“My father gave me this place in his will and set up a trust fund that only takes care of the upkeep of the house and grounds. I can’t touch the money for anything else, and I can’t sell the house or raid the trust until I’m sixty-five. He made it so I have to work. He thought it would be good for me and teach me to be self-sufficient. He covered all the bases. Tough and from the Old Country, but whip-smart.” He finishes his story and stands, leaving as I suspected, an ass-dent in the paper-thin bodywork of the rent-a-Kia.
“I’ll catch you guys later,” he says, waving casually, and walks up the impressive pepper-tree-lined driveway.
The decision to spend the week or so it will take me to get my passport in our separate digs and do some heavy contemplating and evaluating on our own was not an easy one to reach. We have become intensely and deeply connected, dependent and protective of one another in the short time we’ve been together. It’s amazing to me. Other than to Josie, I’ve never felt this connected to anyone. Arthur has been noticeably silent, so we are just moving ahead based on our own best guesses. The round-trip tickets to Scotland have already been purchased via my whining bitch of a MasterCard, so I wouldn’t really call them paid for, but we are boo
ked and committed to this very odd trip. We’re all wondering, “Why Scotland?” but I am secretly as excited as a Loch-Ness-Monster-obsessed twelve-year-old boy to be getting this close to the Magical Mystery Lake. We both watch as Lexington Vargas unlocks the front door and enters his spec-freaking-tacular house.
“I hope the one you’re inheriting in Inverness looks like this,” I joke to Alice.
“I don’t think the Spanish ever made it that far north,” she says with a tired smile. I fire up the Kia-hamster.
With misgivings I drop her off at the Oakwood. I tell her I’ll miss her. She kisses me on the cheek. I blush. She gets out and is gone.
Now for the difficult part of the day. I begrudgingly turn the reluctant auto toward my ex-house and my ex-wife. The good news is, I will see Murray, if only briefly, and tonight I’ll get to sleep in my own bed—the one that Alice has recently vacated. Pretty sure I won’t be washing the sheets. It smells like her. I already checked.
I sit parked outside my little ex-house for a while. Damn, it looks even smaller after seeing the Spanish castle Lexington Vargas lives in. And I don’t even live in this one anymore. I stay in the car ’til Murray senses my presence (how do they do that?) and stands up at the living room window, smiling. As I walk toward the old homestead, he jumps down and runs to where I know he is waiting behind the front door. I ring the doorbell to my own house as a visitor for the first time. It’s a strange, disorienting feeling. Murray barks. I hear a muffled but definitely male voice yell, “Shut up, Murray.” How dare some dude talk to my boy like that? This is already not going well. Charlotte finally cracks the door and Murray shoves his nose through it to get to me.
“Hey Mur-mur.” I choose to say hello to my dog first because he is the only faithful one in the entire building.
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