Merlin of the Magnolias

by Gardner Landry

  Not wanting the energy level to drop, Dirk offered, “There’s more.” He showed her the little tin of caviar, and she exclaimed even more exuberantly, “Ikrá! From Caspian Sea! And Petrossian! It’s the best export marque!”

  Dirk handed the tin to Svetlana and brought out the toast points. Svetlana echoed the drinking ritual by spreading the roe from the other side of the world onto a tiny bread triangle and handing it to the captain. She did the same for herself, and they savored the delicacy together. Her eyes became a bit dreamy as she said, “I miss this.”

  Now it was Dirk who toasted Svetlana and motioned that they should down the remaining contents of their glasses. This was the first of several glasses and caviar-spackled toast points, and the conversation began to flow as freely as the vodka. When Svetlana was mildly intoxicated, she exclaimed, “How I would imagine life in Texas to be like this?!” This was Dirk’s cue. The mustache made successful contact with the Cupid’s Bow and then the remainder of the fetching young Russian’s lips. With his left hand cupping the small of Svetlana’s back, he reached his right hand for the dividing curtain snap and popped it open with fluid aplomb. Svetlana took quick notice but was already under the Czech-Texan’s spell as Kajerka pulled the curtain across the breadth of the passenger compartment. Merlin turned his head for a moment on hearing the curtain drawn but quickly refocused on piloting the Airmadillo through the thick night air.

  Just before leaving Dubai, Mickey McNaughton remembered he had a special board meeting to attend in Nice for a global society dedicated to raising awareness of environmental threats to the world’s oceans. Although he was on the board, he wasn’t exactly sure what the organization accomplished. With his Ivy League pedigree, he was an asset to the board nonetheless. At every meeting he stood and made a very confident, erudite comment and always asked the speaker a question that wowed the attendees, but learning what he termed the granular aspects of the society was below his radar screen, as he would say. One thing he did know was that there was always excellent food and drink in plentiful supply at the meetings, and if history proved any guide, there was usually a lone female marine biologist whose connubial situation was at least in flux. All this and the French Riviera in springtime made the stop for the meeting in Nice a complete no-brainer for him. After a day of pontificating, a night of excess, and a couple of days of R&R à la rivière, Mickey decided to head to Amsterdam for a few days before his flight back to Houston. He had always liked the city, and it had been a place of many pleasant surprises for him over the years. This itinerary extension found him traversing the bustling streets of the Dutch capital one cool, overcast day.

  His half-day hike took him through many of the city’s storied districts, including some of the more infamous quarters. As he strolled along the far side of the Geldersekade canal near the part of the Red Light District some now referred to as the Leather District, Mickey spotted a slight, intense-looking man emerge from the Umber Tulip Hotel. The man was wearing what seemed to be a rather tight-fitting black leather jumpsuit, kind of a onesie for an adult customer. His feet were shod with shiny black patent leather ankle-high boots. When Mickey got a good look at this individual’s face, he was astounded. The outfit was out of character, but the face was 100 percent Dûche—Tite Dûche, to be exact. On recognizing this little fish out of his home waters, Mickey immediately yelled in his direction across the wide canal even though he was not sure whether the jump-suited flaneur was quite within earshot.

  “Hey Tite! Tite Dûche!”

  When he heard the shoutout, the character in the leather onesie froze and looked around. Mickey piped up once again, “Hey, Tite! It’s me! Mickey! Mickey McNaughton!” The terrified leather-clad tourist went into action. He put on a dark-colored knit cap and a pair of wraparound reflective sunglasses. He also wrapped a Dutch orange scarf around his neck, covering his face from the nose downward. He then took off and ducked down a side street. At the same moment, a bus obscured Mickey’s view. When it had passed, Tite Dûche had vanished.

  Mickey thought about confirming the identity of the leather jumpsuit wearer by leaving a message for Tite Dûche at the front desk of the infamous hotel, but he wasn’t sure about darkening its doorway. Mickey had friends all over the world, and if someone saw him emerging from the Umber Tulip, they might get the wrong idea. Nevertheless, this nonencounter was strange enough to cause Mickey to stop and consider it on the sidewalk. As he looked at the scene and wondered what in the world the president of Bayou Boughs Country Club was doing there dressed the way he was, he thought, So that was weird, right? He walked past a bar featuring artisanal genever, turned back, and pushed open a narrow door to a dark shotgun barrel of a barroom.

  • Fourteen

  Merlin had just gone medieval on a family-size platter of enchiladas verdes, using knife and fork to draw and quarter them like so many prone, side-by-side condemned prisoners before dispatching them to their doom past the eager chomping gates of his maxilla and mandible. They were drenched in the classic green tomatillo sauce flecked with bits of cotija cheese and topped with a drizzle of squeeze bottle–dispensed sour cream. With most enchiladas verdes preparations, the chef squeezes on the sour cream in a zigzag pattern, but the kitchen staff at the club applied it in the signature galactic/hurricane whirl that made its first appearance atop the pancakes in his Magic Mountain breakfast extravaganza. Years before this late spring day, someone in the kitchen aware of the dish’s destination had decided to carry the theme beyond the early morning breaking of the fast.

  For the kitchen staff, seeing the whirl atop a dish automatically signaled two things: 1) this was an astoundingly large portion in a city known for the size of its servings, and 2) the recipient was none other than the Magic Man himself. Merlin had not considered that this gesture could have amounted to personal branding in the making—an inkling of the authenticity so many aspiring young professionals of Merlin’s age groped for in the foggy obscurity of indeterminate personal identity. He simply received the flourish as a homemade-style touch with a specific diner in mind. Others might have recognized the uniqueness of this gesture and story and perhaps started a clothing line featuring a galactic/hurricane whirl insignia, but not Merlin, who never considered the gyres so unusual as to be noteworthy.

  As he finished the remnants of the enchiladas verdes, Merlin looked up from the platter and turned to Shep, who had returned to his post at the far-right corner of the locker room bar a few feet away.

  “You doin’ alright Magic Man?” Shep offered with a dubious frown.

  Merlin’s eyes widened as he looked at Shep, and then he said in a loud whisper as Shep approached, “Shep, I’ve been flying the blimp!”

  “You mean the whole way?”

  “Not for takeoff and landing, but during the advertising route. Even at night a few times.”

  “And where’s the pilot?”

  “He’s in the passenger area. Supervising.”

  “He supervising on his own, or does he have some help?”

  “Miss Slahtskaya is new to the city, and Captain Kajerka says it is helpful for her if he points out areas of town as we traverse the urban, suburban, and exurban landscapes.”

  “Sounds like you got a lotta free rein while he’s ‘splainin’ her the sights.”

  “Well, it does seem that the captain’s confidence in me is increasing. He let me fly the whole advertising route last night.”

  “Sounds like the captain’s got his hands full.”

  “What? No! His hands are free to point out buildings and neighborhoods to Miss Slahtskaya while I fly!”

  “Oh,” said Shep credulously, “I see.”

  “Yes, the captain seems more and more at ease with me at the controls and when we exit the ship both he and Miss Slahtskaya even giggle at times. They seem to be quite content.”

  “I reckon they are, Magic Man, I reckon they are.”

  “Maybe I can salute you from the blimp over your house someday soon!”

&nb
sp; “Now, that would be something the neighborhood wouldn’t be expecting.”

  “I will call you and let you know when the Airmadillo is on its way to your area.”

  “Okay, my friend. Just be careful up there.”

  “I am, Shep. I am very focused in the ship.”

  Merlin looked at the big clock above the bar and realized it was time for him to return to his observatory to check readings on his instruments and comprehensive computer programs. Had there been a change in the energy field since he had begun to assist on the blimp’s night missions? He rose abruptly and looked again toward the patient and loyal Cajun.

  “Okay, Shep. I gotta go. There’s a lot going on back at the observatory.”

  “Okay, Magic Man, take on off. Now you’re a pilot, you gotta be places.”

  “Not a pilot, but I am flying!”

  They waved goodbye. When Merlin was out of earshot, Shep said quietly, “You always been flyin’, Magic Man. You always been flyin’.”

  Merlin finished his homeward walk on the same upbeat note and didn’t stumble over a single protruding concrete dagger of contorted sidewalk—unstable gumbo soil and unruly oak roots the dual culprits for this unfortunate Houston phenomenon. Somehow, Houston’s no zoning policy seemed to have created an atmosphere that affected even the order of public sidewalks. Or was it the other way around? His mood began to shift as he entered the front gate of the compound and noticed some haphazard yellow streaks on his observatory. He wondered if there could be some kind of strange neotropical migratory songbird traversing Bayou Boughs whose calling card was defecating in large yellow blobs. As he got closer and the stains came into clear view, he saw bits of eggshell mixed with the yellow and sticky translucent accompanying goo. When he looked down, eggshells were scattered at the observatory’s base. In his exuberance to get to his enchilada brunch at the club, Merlin had not looked back at his home after shutting the door and beginning his single-minded march. It was probably for the best, as his temporary ignorance had afforded him a pleasant noontide of feasting and talking with Shep in comfortable surroundings. He now realized that his refuge had been willfully attacked. Who would want to mar such an iconic and visually compelling Bayou Boughs structure? Merlin had never imagined this kind of malice would intersect with his life, much less deface the castle, keep, home, and refuge of his cherished observatory.

  He backed away from the observatory toward the front gate of the property to take in the full view of the defacement. As he neared the gate, he heard someone call to him.

  “Merlin! Hey, Merlin! What’s going on?”

  He turned to see Lindley Acheson, who was once again on foot to the garden club with her wheeled basket of supplies in tow.

  “Lindley! I didn’t know you were there!”

  “That’s okay, you wouldn’t have seen me with your back to the street.”

  “That’s because of what someone did to the observatory while I was gone.”

  “Looks like it must have happened last night. The eggs are pretty stuck on there.”

  “I guess you’re right. I’m not accustomed to observing the observatory before I leave.”

  “This is a drag, Merlin. Why would anyone want to do this to your place?”

  “I don’t really know. I don’t.”

  “Well, I think I remember how to get that out.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, we had a bird’s nest smash into a wall last year in a high wind. The eggs weren’t as big, but they behaved the same way.”

  “Oh, okay.”

  “You need equal parts warm water and white vinegar in a spray bottle, and as crusted on as they look, you may need to scrub a bit on top of that.”

  “What about the spots up high?”

  “I have a portable power washer you can use. You can put vinegar in the reservoir and maybe scrub with a long-handled brush.”

  “Oh! That’s great, Lindley. Thank you!”

  “Sure. No big deal. I’ll bring them by in a little while.”

  “Thank you. Defacement of the observatory is something I have never contemplated and now that it has happened, I think I have a strange feeling.”

  “Well, get it cleaned up and maybe the feeling will go, too.”

  “Okay. Maybe. I will try.”

  Lindley started walking and stopped after a few steps to look back at Merlin, who had gone back to staring at the vandalism. She felt a strong wave of sadness pass through her for an instant and quickly turned to resume her walk as if to flee from it.

  Head down, Merlin proceeded back to the observatory, and on entering the cocoon of a top floor nest he called home, he was once again taken aback as he saw a flashing message on his computer monitor. He had coordinated his array of programs into a kind of large orchestrated meta-program that could synthesize, and perhaps even symphonize, all of the information into a unitary, integrated data feed—both graphical and narrative. He had considered calling it Argus Panoptes after the many-eyed god from Greek antiquity, but on learning Argus was killed by Hermes, he opted for his original choice, dubbing it the Agglomerator. The flashing message on the monitor read: “Event Horizon—Deep Summer.” He clicked on it and saw, amidst the cross hatches of ley lines and Druidic navigational arcs, a pulsing gyre that seemed to be tightening and brightening east of Houston near the Louisiana border.

  Now he was even more frozen in his tracks than he had been a few minutes earlier when he realized the stains on his observatory were not exotic neo-tropical bird droppings but ordinary eggs from the grocery store. This time, however, his feeling was markedly different. It was one of awe, wonder, and amazement. It had worked. All these years of deep data dives and arrangement of inputs into an intelligible whole seemed to have yielded something which he had hoped for longer than he could remember: a reliable prediction. But what was it predicting? Merlin knew that it had to center on the negative energy gyre holding his home city in its relentless thrall, but what exactly was this event horizon intimating?

  • Fifteen

  Merlin veered and wheeled the Airmadillo down through the airspace just above the twinkling towers of the Texas Medical Center. He removed the marketing department’s thumb drive from the computer that controlled the giant high-definition video screen on the blimp’s outer skin and placed it in his shirt pocket. From his right trouser pocket, he produced a thumb drive of his own, as generic in appearance as the one he had just removed but containing files bearing slogans and graphics prompted by his interpretation of the Agglomerator’s increasingly alarming messages.

  He recognized that this nonapproved switching of drives was a transgressive act, and he had engaged in a mental wrestling match for days before this pivotal moment. He had finally arrived at the decision that the greater good of preparing citizens of his home city for a major energy vortex event justified his surreptitious temporary hijacking of Fandango Utilities’ airborne advertising and that of the clients who paid for their own products or services to appear on the giant screen in the sky. His strategy was to alternate the Fandango messaging with his own, thereby diminishing his chances of getting found out by Ms. Sukhova and the higher-ups of the company. He felt certain his days were numbered as a Fandango employee, but what he had not considered was that, since his messages had to do with the concept of energy, to the vast majority of casual observers, their language would not seem terribly out of the ordinary for a video screen on a blimp owned by a utility company. As Captain Kajerka continued pointing out the sights to Ms. Slahtskaya with great vigor behind the closed curtains separating the pilot’s seat from the passenger compartment, Merlin’s night flight now became a mission, and his concentration intensified accordingly.

  Mac Swearingen was working late because his wife was traveling in Europe with a group of women. He glanced through his Witlock Tower office window in the Texas Medical Center at the flickering lights in the skyscrapers of downtown Houston up Main Street northeast of the giant hospital complex. Out of the corner of his
eye, he registered something unusual in the night sky, something bright and big and arriving. He rose from his desk and went to the window. As he began to take in the view the intimation of light became a pronounced presence in the skies above the towers. The Fandango Utilities Blimp—aka The Airmadillo—was crossing just above his vantage point, and its giant color video screen lit up the night. The effect was so arresting that even steady Mac Swearingen was inspired to utter aloud one of his trademark oaths. “Well, I’ll be dipped,” he said and surprised himself with the genuine wonder with which he said the words.

  The blimp came into full view above him, and he read some of the text that scrolled along with the images. There was something about lowering power bills with Fandango’s Summer Chillaxation Program. He didn’t know what chillaxation meant and mused that it sounded like a medical condition. He then read a sentence that seemed even more puzzling: “People of Greater Houston! Prepare for a pivotal deep summer event horizon!” Dr. Swearingen once again let out an audible response: “What in the sam hill?” He let go of his befuddlement as quickly as he had after reading the message about chillaxation, figuring this cryptic-seeming phrase was something that all the young people must understand. As the blimp careened onward through the night, Dr. Swearingen gave a single, incredulous shake of his sun-burnished bald head and returned to his desk.

  After following the navigational computer’s GPS routing through the medical center, Merlin turned the blimp toward downtown, crossing airspace above an area that had become known as Midtown, with its concentration of condominia, mid-rise office buildings, and a variety of restaurants and bars. This part of town had a younger demographic and more pedestrian traffic than most other areas. The back of Merlin’s neck tingled as he imagined scores of young professionals looking to the sky to see the sobering Agglomerator-prompted messages foretelling an imminent event that would affect each of them viscerally and mentally—at least as long as they called Houston home. He thought he spotted a group of hipsters in front of the Continental Club pointing at the Airmadillo. Could the exuberant gesture by this group of young people mean that they understood what his outdoor sky-borne messages intimated? Merlin hoped so with all his being.