The Rainbow Horizon - A Tale of Goofy Chaos

by Karen S. Cole

  Chapter Seven

  ALL THE FACES You Was Leaven’,

  And I guess that’s jus’ your stylized pantyhose…

 

  UNCLE SAMENESS IS BALD – with an overtly Roman éclair nose.

  --Canthi Tell from the White Hair ‘n Beard?

  No, I can’t forget that evening…

  Or your face as you were leaving,

  But I guess that’s just the way the story goes…

  And in your eyes

  A certain smile,

  Your sorrow shows,

  Yes it sho—ows…

  I can’t live, if living is without yooouuuuu…

  I can’t give, I can’t give any-more…

  I CAN’T LIVE, IF LIVING IS WITHOUT YOOO-OUU-UUU

  I CAN’T GIVE, I CAN’T GIVE ANY-MOOOR-orrrrr…orrrrrrrrrr

  No, I can’t forget this evening;

  All those faces you were leaving…were they but one…just one………

  --another original American Standard

  Ode to Tidy, the Ohio kitty cat who saved the planet Earth

  “HE WAS SITTING outside the Laundromat on Guild Street when I first discovered him. He was hostile. He was vicious. He went for my throat! Nahhh…

  “Small money. I had change rattling around in my pocket. Made me sound spooky. Sometimes I figured, if a human bum was encountered, I would hand that bum my pocket change. But Right now it all went for laundry. I had just moved to Rama, one month ago. I had two loads in my dad's old Army duffel and was carrying it into the Late-Night when I tripped on one of those big thick gummy sidewalk cracks (must’ve been hallucinating I was back east, there aren't any of those out here) and fell forward, flat on my face. No, the clothes cushioned my fall. Phloomph! Ya got me!

  “It’s because I was day-dreaming about universal inherent justice for all, again, regardless of story, starting next Tuesday. I've never been known to get hurt doing that.

  “As I lay there, eating clothes, there was a series of miaows and, miraculously, a furry creation of love was poking my neck and gamboling all over my backside. Yum. My backside appreciated the thank-you.

  “It was strange, being in shocked pain from pitching over, startlement, and then instantly being greeted by a hairy furball of affection. I turned my face to the left and received a fluffy muff of side of cat for my troubles. He bit my nose.

  “I leaned on my hands and did a push-up, rising to my feet in one easy motion. Do not try this trick at home. The duffel had seriously cushioned my fall. I was looking down at the kitty. He twitched his tail and looked up at me. He winked.

  “Suddenly I was full of visions of cat death, of torturous mangling, of terrifying destruction of tails. The name Dave entered my mind. Perhaps he was telepathically wondering if this handsome cat had tripped me. What was Dave, anyway? And why?

  “I reached down to pet this elegant, sleek, greyish-white tabby monster from nowhere. He was pretty big, probably at least a year old. Likely he hailed from the bushes near the empty building lot behind the Late Night, where all the lint from the dryers made a soft, kitty-comfort-style home. Somebody must've lost him. Din’t have no collar. Neither did Rama’s last city-wide square dance. He looked spayed. I can always tell by the ears. No, really.

  “I went in and idiomatically began doing my laundry, accidentally letting the cat in as well. No one there but us spring chickens. He leapt into seat next to mine. Settled down into the cracked cheap plastic chair. I patted him and thought of Sara’s hair, how I couldn’t always feel anything under her hair when I stroked down unless I actually touched her neck, but the cat’s flank was immediate as I petted him. Scretched his years. He gave a monster YAWN, showing twin roles of Peter Pan pearliness with points, chomping it shut and falling promptly asleep, accordioning all his bulbous paws out crazily and horizontally first. Well, Lawrence-Welk!! I almost accidentally Lawrence of Arabia’d him when he turned around while I petted him. He had big bingo balls. Fluffy ones.

  “I sat there, in a pastelephant mood, ineloquent, gazing out the window, thinking of the phrase ‘a blow to my male ego’ and trying not to associate it with anything else that sounded similar, feeling scared that whoever came in would freak at my seated kitty. Who cares? I had someone nice to pet, landed gentry.

  “When the clothes were finished I gathered up the soap, any leftover change that I found in a machine, and the kitty. I put him in the closed back. He started meowing and wouldn't stop. “Meow” in the bag every five seconds. I timed it. I Thought, maybe he's stuck now, needing to jism. Or eat.

  “But when I got outside I opened the bag and let him have a peek. He thought that was swell and looked everywhere, craning his little fuzzy grey head and bugging out his globular, big, glassy green kitty eyes. People stopped to stare and I broke up laughing. He didn’t even care, and I met in taffy-pulling.

  “I waved him through the air at Stu Telgoquinate and Betty Czamboni, and this hippie guy named ZORNOA wanted the cat. I think he was one to grab people, like Artie; he was a white and grey farmworker, sort of a rare person. He stopped me to talk as I was waiting to cross the street at the chirping light. Somehow the city had voted in plans for the installation of sounding mechanisms at major intersecretions in Rama, for the blind RETIRED wealthy Hmong hussians. They had installed just one of these so far.

  He stopped me to talk as I was waiting for the light to chirp. I promised Zorn a kitten if’n ah gots a litter, but I told him “it’s a male.” He said, give them pups to th’ skin-haids. They need Fur in their lives.

  I think I understand, now. People who look funny need to feel good.

  “At home, I dumped everything on the floor after I carefully put the soap back. Acquirance jumped out of the bag like a fox. Now I was “Lonesome No LONGER.”

  “So, I had this mewing furball, and he was real fun, and I gotta buy cat food, I figured. Except sometimes I put chicken or turkey in the blender, added an egg and made some. He was eatin’ like there's no tomorrow. That's right, there IS no tomorrow…thanks to Jay Leno. Does anybody here know how to solve the problem of bathroom hair? Lantern JAW does!!! Talk! Rat on may.

  “I put a bedpan in the toilet, filling it with kitty litter. Only bag of kitty litter I ever had to buy. AcQuirance is now civilized. Cats can squat. How exciting. No more Panbedders!!! I flushed for him, or course. Quail in the Bushes. Next I teach him THAT. It helps, ‘cuz we menfolk’s callus leave the toilet seat up.

  FOUND AN EXCUSE!!!

  “Saragina wanted that. She said to name him Roscoe. I told her Fine, Dan tried go back to being Lonesome Again. Did the Catholic Church ever tell you, all us human hominid-types are legitimate? That’s why yer standard Cat has but one name.

  “I told her he’s got fleas, but OK, and I’ll get the shots. Shots…

  “For the cat, I’ll get shots for the cat.”

  THERE WAS AN impromptu gathering one evening late in June at the Krakatoa. The featured topic: making some bucks. How dear is dough?

  “We could sell Home Brew, $35 the barrel, an’ test fer it were pure.”

  “Sure. We won’t put any MSG in’t, no sirree bobbers. Or any of does sulfites thingees.”

  “What’re sull-feets?”

  “Cheaper’n day rates. They’re ta keep th’ booze from fermentin’ any further. Otherwise it’d contain only LAHV yeast, an’ it’d almos’ be GOOD fer ya. It’n ya lahk bein’ a yeast host. Y’know, bread is th’ Host. Dis way, we’re assuring yeast maybe a significant afterlife, unless th’ sulfites totally wipe ‘em out.”

  “Do tell! Are ya sure the new stuff isn’t to kill any other potential living micro-organisms that’re still swimming around in your favorite brew? Maybe them soul-fates really knock ‘em cold.”

  “Nah. It’s to make them there groups what really take to carin’ ‘bout everyone's health so much, while desirin’ stonin’ people to death, with as-is booze, mebbe they don't care so much. You know, groups that wanta have screwball s
ex with their best friends and gramma while staying real safe an’ healthy. They’ll be bound, covenant-like, to kick up a fuss over stuff in the new near-beers an’ th’ keeno vino.”

  “Nah, them are yeast soul-mates, not suffragettes.”

  “Like, it ain’t natchral ta mess with good food like dat, dere. Put’n hell-fahr an’ brew’mstones in hit. Syulfer, ah say, syulfer-jetties, they threatinin’ hus with their hellfahr NOW! Hit’s hin all th’ grocery wahn ‘cept Manaschaw-wits Conquered Grapes—ta getcha ta buy frum dose Hebie stoners, mayun! Peripatetic! They’re gonna sell them guys’ wine for ‘em man! What for?”

  It does appear that kosher wine is the only kind left without sulfites in it…

  “It’s all to prove a major political point. Like, running Lyndon La Rouche for president sells Barbie dolls. Or something like, that women are occasionally anterior to men (or that men are always posterior than women) because they all run shorter on the Equator, gen’rally, an’ so they should all be poisoned to death, with sulfites, no less, an’ take us with ‘em. ‘Cuz they’re too cute for words. The point is to pickle ‘em. Get it?”

  “No, I jus’ don’ wanna. Not to-day. Tomorrow.”

  “At sunrise, or do ya wanna wait ‘til the A and Poo Feed Store opens up?”

  “It ain’t neber gonna open again, man. They found out they got bad wine in der. They done closed up shop for good. See ya later, alligator.”

  “In a while, caiman, I mean, with a smile, crocodile.”

  Did I ever tell you that I am personally, personally from the Isle of Langerhans?

  WE (DON’T know who) should give Ralph Ellison, author of “Invisible Man,” a reward for becoming invisible, but…how do we find him? Do we find him to be peculiar, swarthy skinned…or do we locate him a wife? And in the Sci-Fi car commercial where the young Black man is also his older self, who is his wife – President Grover Cleveland (NOT a Muppet originally), a scrumptious pizza pie, or someone inconsequential who really isn’t being paid enough…no, not slavery, not again, just when the economy (in the 80’s) isn’t tanking yet?

  ON ANY SUNNY SUMMER DAY, you find folks brawling themselves around natural, wonderful and shiningly blue Shell Lake. Known for the corpses of ancient mollusks from the Precambrian Period, the lake feeds into the nearby Pacific Ocean; but it’s a meaningless trickle by the time it arrives therein.

  “I bet I could make a necklace out of three dozen of these li’l shells,” said Caza to Artie. “I could make ‘em in bunches and sell them. They'd be perfect for children. Need several lengths of strong cotton thread, not nylon, that’d cut their necks.”

  “Where’d you sell ‘em?

  “On the lawn at the library, or here at the park, or at the Grory Market out south of town. Shell necklaces, Indian-style, $4 a necklace. Absolutely clear profit cuz I can get some free three at from my sister. She supplies me thread to make my teddy bears."

  The above discussion eventually turned to the brilliant idea of opening a natural food cooperative somewhere in town. Artie was ravingly enthused, as he always wanted to really make good dough. Surely it was a grape idea, a honey of a notion.

  “Yeah,” Artie agreed. “We could like sell some of dat natural wine, der. And non-irradicard fruit, right? Grown without any dirt on it!

  “The only grocery store in dis town gets all stuck-up if they ketch ya wit yer hand in da grapes, anyall, an’ ah knows a kid lifted a candy bar once, an’ you know what-all is in dem candy bars? Yick? An’ they practically filleted that kid when they caught her. “Member Belna Ropsberg? She was cryin’, man, like they done her wrong. She din’t do nothin’!

  “Sure, let’s show ‘em, let’s have a hippie feed store for all da natural anymal peoples ta graze in, opening on only da weekends alone. Or da weekdays ‘n Sunday. So we kin be a collective an’ run on volunteers an’ make no-good pay ‘til we break even like any usual bizness in drag as somepin’ new, sheeee-it, you know wut ah means.”

  Lady Caza agreed, leaning back under the smilin’ sun, and thinking reflectively as she gazed into the azure silvern lake, what an energetic man of affairs Artie would surely turn into, if only they could take out that sizable of a bank loan. Neither of them had any worthwhile credit.

  “I can get my sister and brother-in-law to co-sign a bank loan with us, if they like met you, and agreed to a business plan you drew up for us.”

  “Day after tomorrow, kiddo. After we-all gets back from Harver Point, doin’ that boonies log-cuttin’, I’ll look inta ‘rangin’ thet, yee-eh.” Artie threw a flat rock into the lake, sunny-side up, and it went Splloosh “Yah sure, you betcha. No probellum.” He never did. What Artie does when no one is looking is the point.

  (I CAIN’T SHOW UP. I’M SENDIN’ THE USUAL PROXY. HERE’S THE TELEGRAPHED ENDING: MAIN CHARACTER GITS HISSELF HITCHED.)

  So do a bunchy others. Well, y’knew that, didn’t you?

  NOTES ON ONE Miguel Siega Del Shuba: retired middle-aged combiner, planter and Spanish teacher. Mostly Indio. A friend and mutual acquaintance of both Artie and Caza. Has threatened to kill Artie Blend, who allegedly owes him $487.96, paid to Blend by Shuba in 1990 on a phony real estate deal. No one knows why he trusted Artie with that small an amount of money. It’s said Shuba will kill on sight if cheated on. Artie “gen’rally” has twenty or thirty dollars in his pants, “That’s all.” But he could set something aside from his weekly paycheck.

  So anyway, Mr. Blend was scared because everyone in Rama, and some other equally inconspicuous rural places, knew where his favorite hangout is—the Krakatoa. “But comes ah sees Miguel ah’ll be ready fo’ him. Ah gots a trick up mah sleeve.” Artie tapped his forehead, a sound muffled more or less completely by his luxuriant head of thick blonde hair.

  “We’ve already had experience with that trick, ‘member, Artie?” griped his good old buddy Gabe with limited gusto. By size? “I still has a dent in my navel the size of your female skull. Have you got the $500? Maybe I could help you out.”

  Artie decided the only thing to do was to work as many jobs as the WWII people could get him. Workers of the World Ind., Inc. was more than willing to send the many-faceted Blendman out to building jobs, carpentry gigs, and remodeling townsites jobs. Artie thrived on the increased work and managed to put away half as many refilled four-dollar pitchers. On the weekends.

  The day he met Miguel Shuba in Rama, he decided to teetotal. Well, hardly any; he put somethin’ down and bought a beer. But he was meaning to start saving money, and possibly knock off boozing too. He knew his sperm cell count being alcohol-laden “is prob’ly wah ah cain’t make mah Caza prego,” and before life was over, Artie meant to make up for this. But after being born with mild Fetal Alcohold Syndrome from both of his parents, and having been a dead drunk off and on for 40+ years…was this even possible? Drunk is my life, he reckoned; but deep down inside, as boozy as his innards must be, he thought it came secondary “to mah Lady Caza, the Mexicana blue-green ocean breeze.”

  In three-and-a-half months, Artie had saved roughly $600. He told Gabe about it, in loving detail. Now all he needed was to contact Shuba by proxy and let him have this amazingly large sum, there. Of money.

  “With interest, man! Ah owes thet dagnabber patseh. He’ll be wun happah Span’sh dude if’n ah kicks him sixteh sawbucks. Wun fer ever yar he be ol’ bah now, he been patien’, he been waitin’ ta buy thet fahm fo’ six years naw.” To Gabe, six years seemed a long time for Shuba to never have bothered Artie.

  Caza asked her guy later, whilst he and she relaxed in peace on their phloomfy king-sized gold-threaded mattress pad, wrapped in a giant tie-dyed green and blue striped downy thick comforter, how close he and Shuba had come to the actual down painment on the farmlands, which were actually there, yep, well; there was a deep silence. Toes rippled merrily under covers, surreptitiously meeting and being debriefed.

  Artie stayed relatively motionless, staring at the ceiling. He had a moist and dewy beer bottle standing next to him, ma
king the rug wet. The light was low. Caza oft wondered: what’s the attraction in trying to poison his blonde, blue-eyed self, so skinny handsome, to death with alcohol? She thought he was misfield trying to join her, to die with her. O signature of sighs! After all, she was sickly, enfirmizo, probably would die in a while, quizas, si, acaso, tal vez, well before this “Shuba” was sesenta; but she was happy enough Artie didn't use las otras drogas. Others had. They hugged and kissed--mucho.

  “Th’ farmer sellin’ th’ property tol’ th’ rail-tor ta tek na less’n thray gran’ as a down. Tha’s a fab dail! Mos’ places takin’ ten ta fifty down. Ah thought ah’d get it from mah cuz’n an’ ah nevah got him in on th’ dail. He copped for Chicago, or somepin’. An….fergits.

  “Mah folks in Libbeh Montaner, don’ got cash ta bail me out either. They barely survivin’ the wintahs thar. So ah tooks Siega’s paltreh sum an’ tol’ him ah could swung a deal. Ah ended up backin’ out. Mah fault. Ah thought it would work as c’latt’ral fer a bank loan.

  “Ah wuz all washed up han’ wen’ on a bendah down th’ coast, holin’ up hin mo-tels. “Mem when we met?” Artie slurrily mooned unheard words lovingly at Caza. He held an unlimited respect for her. He still had a touch of hippie class, even when dead drunk. He never ever touched her funny or threatened her. He didn't even yell at her, either. He just groaned loudly when he got hungry and that got her up to fix them dinner at times. Other times they took long drives (WHUMPH!!!) in Artie’s old rusty bomber of a car, the Ford Tempest of 1965, a gas-eating green boat with excellent stammering and mag wheels. He rotated ‘em once a year. He forgot to, Caza noticed, last year. She had it done by her farmworker nephew Bizco.

  Shuba finally turned up, as bad pennies are wont to do, while he was passing along near Unionville area, close to Riverdale, where Archie and Reggie used to hang tough, trying to sell imported Japanese tractors for a local American outlet. A friend of Caza’s arranged a meeting at the Fantastic Café in Rama. “Eat for a change!” she ordered Artie, flashily leaving him there, skirts aswirling. She didn't want to witness any “bloodshed,” she told the Press. She was already dying enough. Why Chase rainbows AND rabid dogs?

  Artie was par-lexed, and decided that she wuz mad at ‘im “’bout somepin’”…shoot.

  Oh, he gulped, patiently awaiting his appointment with Destiny, being both nakedly afraid, and not at all scared. “Ventreblue! He fitfully exclaimed, harshly chanting to himself in untranslatable Musketerrian French. The payback dough was stuffed into his tye-dyed hairskirt pocket. Would Shuba shoot me, he cringingly thought, harshly cursing to himself in Ashkenazian Aramaic, proving again that death only comes once for men like Alexander Hamilton (but for men not like him…) as the dough was neither foxy nor in tens, and only once, up and down, back and forth, a million times already…where was he? But then, would Shuba ask questions be later in the unreachable no-smoking section? You don't know. If so, too bad. Artie had paid his life insurance monthly, and up-to-date, in case an evil destiny ruled.

  “Rulez? Vince Rulez is gone now, in his Saab, havin’ left town in a hurry. They say he made a lady…Prego sauce,” which incensed Artie until him jiggered it out. Pregnant, he dreamed about his Caza, but she was too dying.

  (D’Artagnan, crushed by this terrible news, remain silent and motionless, while all the demons of rage and jealousy howled in his heart.) Remember that. It's the worst thing that oft happed to him, according to what Artie read. He thought a book where a lady was all cut up and tossed away at the end was disgusto…

  Artemis’s Humble Editor’s Note: from this point on unto further instruction, leave the typos ALONE. On the other hand, if you spot any, remain unawares. They flavor m’book. Or, when summon else types this, read in Spanish and eat Algonquin, plus Cherokee, Chippewa, Maya, Aztec, Delaware…early Spic ‘n Span. Hey, I hafta translate, and m’beer is gettin’ cold. Ah earned Spanish in hah school. I’m from the Trail of Tears tribes of th’ Nation, and y’know, sow’s Gabe. Me, Gabe, Gabe, me. Notice it’s like this throughout our book? We’re all secretly Injuns. Ever’body. White, black, brown, freckles, invisible, KKK, Irish, Joes, Jills, kitties, dogs, the FBI, Russians, Martians, you, me, and Bobby McGee. Oh Mayan! I got Gabe drinking, he’s mah new drinkin’ buddy, nobody kin stop us! Oh, mah pumpkin head. “Ouchies.”

  A small, burly, anticlimactically and balding, yet middling but not terribly handsome arrival was the earthen form taken in seconds by Shuba. Though not in any manner of believable approach that Artie could see. Not handsome, in fact ugly, very, soaked in sweating, badly dressed and hirsute, get to the Point where it was sticking up around his nonexistent shirt collar, to match his untucked white t-shirt, on the Latino, ah, male. Shuba, the. He had shadows bluer underside of beard stubble, eerily appearing middle-Eastern, Arabian descent perhaps, snorting really, as in a shattered blue glass window, steee-reaked with black dots of rain, all on the outside. He took that one look at Artie Blend, comfortably ensconsed in a window seat at a grindingly retroactive (told you this was all about Retro, didn’t I?) black-dotted pink fiberglass table for four. Joyfully reading from "The Farmers Almanac" for weather forecasts of the current year. Artie looked up, simple and innocent. Yet, that look mimicked on his face, a comedian's most nightmare darkling grimace, Shuba began to run weirdly berserk amuck in the dusky, musty ristorante.

  Soundlessly, sans one Spanish word (you’re aware which one, right?) Miguel de las Siegas Del Shuba (there HAD Been More to It, once, but that was several LONG centuries ago) began to make choking motions! Bloating his face brilliant Will Scarlett red-as-beets and pulling roughly, basely and scroungily at his up-to-the minute, currently fashionable shirt-clothes. This was done as though he were drowning, strangling, or poisoned. Or being fired.

  Mr. Artie perked up, beginning to be intrigued. Or irritated. Or awakened. But not much better than that. He’d had four to eight beers that morning, dependant on how ya counts th’ 32 oz. bottles, and he was getting preeeeeety sleepy. What kinda joke was this? Too much reg’lar coooffffeee? Alumininuminuminuminum from pop cans—PHENYLKETONURICS!!!—‘stead of botulism from tins? Myutupill kinds of the same joke?

  Whhhhhhhhhaaaaaaat-ttever. Shuba suddenly did whole forward body pitches, swinging insanely, but gorgeously, from side to side, moving every bit as if grieving the imminent death of his entire beloved family.

  Perhaps he was, in a way. Or, one single hard-driving dude whose head hurt. Mucho Well. Perhaps he was, in a way. Artie, his raise one eyebrow whistling "Dixie" in hopes for increased green-glass bottle returns (I’ll explain later) in appearance, seemingly, recollected AND recalled darned old Mr. Spock (don’ chu DARE use the name Daktari!) from You Know Trekville. An’ all the Trekvillager Yeah. What WAS Meester SPOCK!! SPOCK!! SPOCK!! Delivery—what was his first name, anyhoo? Right? WHAA-AAT?

  Straight-faced Peiping piebald humor. I just don’t get it.

  Did he even have one, “Bones?” HAH? Of course. On the outside!

  Miguel clutched his shirt from near the top; it was a cotton T underneath, and he had what is popularly known as a bull neck. Tough-lookin’ dude, if you like them. Wildly staring at Artie with giant saucer-sized popeyes, he wore an almost obscenity, weirdly inappropriate harrowing look for man about to BE SEATED AT A quiet CAFÉ. On the inside, yet. Too much cloud-cover outside. Positive?

  TIME FOR THE UNSPEAKABLE OBSCENITY!!!!! YVHV! ‘Member? Hits in the Bibles, all ‘bout the secret name a God, which isn’t really Dog.

  Why V (the Spanish “b”)—Why Be HIV-positive?

  In 1980, AIDS began to become a major health concern. Around 1984, that’s when the wild rumors and false info about this “new” disease really began to circulate. The author of this book found out that AIDS might be a phony disease, just late stage syphilis really, but nobody knows anything about this for sure.

  Some men live alone, do not have sex, and never tell. These are seen as easy to exploit, and thus so are “their” women. God! What if something else has som
ething in mind, something to do with worms and diseases standard?

  Several odd emotions were distorting his bearded brown face. For example, his vaudevillian deep-socketed tormented eyes, bloodshot, thick with wormlike protuberances (is the Vlad villain the Glad villain? Really? Is Vlad Teepees very happy, or WHAT?!? Huh.), mysteriously were rolled high enough to see only the rhomboid whites; his fashionably thick-lipped, Mr. Big-Lips slivering crimson mouth dropped, weirdly, blackly open. Almost you could see the tonsils. His teeth were remarkably straight, for a cerebral palsy victim’s Latter-Day advocate. That's something we all should be doing, right now. Those were probably all edible animals. So, keep reading. We can leave this whole scene out of the picture. Movie!

  You could be out there, enjoying the beautiful weather.

  Stereotypically, mind-blowing, and in one lambasting seersucker second (in fact, this whole scenario is very, very repetitious), using both his unmitigated hairy hands (which obviously belong to something like Moroni, jes?) he ripped his entire needless, disposable and irrefutable shirtfront off, nothing new and post-superhero life here (which one was Batman, Rudolf Hess?) here, clearly indicating that he was sincerely overheated doncha think? Buttons went instantly pop-flying, everywhere, dozens. More than were on his shirt. In huge rains of multi-colored buttons to either side. Dozens, dozens, and dozens. Virginal and obviously boring men's dress shirt front, with gaposis in the front, unironed and unironic, and in his non-supremacist haste he was also ripping through the underlying normal, ordinary white T-shirt, but it had something on it, rendering it obliviated and manufactured by YOU message obscure, apocryphal, and entirely unreadable.

  This malignantly comic-book and artistically typical act revealed a tie-free, hairy expanse (weeeeeell, there were a few nextmost the nipples and in-between some moles) of moderately brown, thickly well-muscled and pocked with an intricate pattern interlay of evenly spaced brown-and-white MOLECULES, sweaty chest. With several dozens of blindingly golden, cheap, flashy herringbone chains gratuitiously dancing madly upon it, like garden elves and fairies never do. And each of those chains dangled a golden hollow or filled Mogen-David instead of the usual and expectable cross, cowboy alchemy symbol, or what-have-they. I’m gettin’ TARRED, FEATHERED, AND thin as a rail from typing. Soo…

  Zillions and zillions of handfuls of gold, which vastly bedazzled Artie’s blue-green eyes, layered in layers upon zillions of thousands of Stars of David, danced insanely about like Yankee Doodle snowflakes that clinked. Exactly 1998 of them. Sure.

  There were at least $300 or less worth of these fine, thin, y completely falsified or plated gold chains, coming in several designer styles and vastly differing lengths, swishy leak clattering against their sturdy, smoothly hairfree, pronouncedly normal-looking chest (see me clambering through this barbed-wire fence? Source of idea).

  It was however blathering hot and sweaty and made an overdescribably coffeesque background, mocha, Swiss chocolate (through the molecules) –but, what for? Gold chains, what else…

  Himself the Drunk remained seated. This was all indeed very strange.

  Dramatically reaching deeply into his recessive left jacket pocket, Miguel de laws Sieges Del Shuba pulled out the biggest, longest, bluntest, weirdest MF Bowie knife Artie had occasioned to so much as set pink-rimmed aquamarine eyes upon. “Least a twelve-inch blade, probably thirteen, curved in an odd way but not really, with a carved wooden hilt that was wrapped in black leather strips, and with monumentally huge finger grips. A hunter's dream blade, not too violently perverted-looking but a realistic facsimile, yep. The modren dagger-o-type. It’d work. But, what for?

  This silver object was (they analyzed the blood on the alters) a Maxam Five-Hundred Bowie, with a heavily serrated thin cutting edge, forged out of 100% stainless steel, that glowed in the dark, and having a fascinatingly long and deep blood groove. Artie had always wanted one, for fishing purposes. It was quite shiny, very scary, and looked ABSOLUTELY razor-shaped.

  How depressing can you get? Would you believe, Shuba beltingly swung (AGAIN???) into a distorted tenor-range version of “Hold Me?” It sudden came to Artie that he'd never ever-ever once seed Miguel with a girlfriend. However, he had seen him walking a dog, once. Once! An Irish setter, that.

  The worst of the Part was Shuba’s undeniably New York Jewish accent. Totally Semitic. Dripping with New York nasality. Conspicuously like Gabe’s but worse.

  “KILL ME!!! RIP it open! They used to! My heart is HERS!! She’s YOURS!!! It doesn't matter! My life is CRUSHED!! Who cares about me? I am ZILCH!! YOU are the divine Evolvement!!!! Japan says so!! They LISTEN!!

  “Plunge it in past the hilt and all the way up to your elbow!! No further!! It's not rubber! Strictly for LAUGHS!! Tear me to mercifully insignificant SHREDS! People were FOOLS!!! POUR every smelly, rancid DROP of, ah rotten putrid sell-out cowardly stinking anti-heretical (and obviously clotting inside) grizzled BLOOD from out of me! Sacrifice this subhuman LIFE of this meaningless, toe-jammy, worthless bum, forever and verdant, and consecrate it, slowly (that word again) to the Blessed TUBER Birdie Quetzalcoatl! Like we USED to! Death is Current! Columbus never stopped US!!! Never!

  (This is slightly crucial) “I’M A MAYAN!!!!! A Mayan! Do it to it! Worthless me, I don’t help her! She loves YOUR! My life is FEUDAL!!! And while you’re at it, MOVE IT AROUND AND AROUND AND AROUND A LOT!!!

  “NOWWWWW!” Here, the camera takes a highly libertinous wrench and goes behind the most peculiar Miguel Shuba, who may not even be the least little bitty-bit real, his being a drunken delirium fantasy presentation of bi-color-or-so Artie’s, but nevertheless who apparently is brownly and presently crouched down on one knee (you always knew it was so we could have teams), in the perfect descending Colson “Mammy” positioning, his blue-jacketed arms outspread and grabbily slurping up six feet of swallowed air --with his untucked, sloppy cotton shirt playfully blowing in the BREEZE entering from the dusty restaurant’s back, behind-the-counter door. Clearly the de-riguer look for the new fall season. And from Our ideal location situated behind him, we…

  Artie coughed. But wait-- Miguel has something further to add. Naturally, it's Divisional. But not very diversional.

  “SLASH CITY! Make me into a raw stripped STEAK, medium-well done!!! I am NOT the magnificent and sacred HOME that is the ETERNAL rain FOREST!! With the spotted Karen owls in it instead!! Cut ME down, Rather! What’s ME? I drink too many Cokes and beers mixed with piña coladas on alternate Fat Tuesdays! I am PURELY INULTIMENTE, GRATIS, YO ME TENGO SOLO LA CULPA DE!!! YOU CAN GET AWAY WITH IT!!!

  “END this practically insignificant, twisted, soporific FAILURE’S mockery of your holy, sacred, unpolluted, untwisted avec-mi-homo’s LIFE!!! Wash me unto death with my whole heart’s RAGING BLOOD (or something) and RESTORE TO ME MY ETERNALLY, INFERNALLY LYNX-EYED BASTARD’S MISBEGOTTEN SOUL! Because they sue from the BEYOND!!! Not yours!!!

  “I don’t NEED money to go on living! CUT OUT MY HEART AND GIVE IT TO HER!!!

  “WRAP THE BOX!!! It’s FOOD! I don’t NEED money to go on living! What’s a money economy FOR? MAKE ME INTO AN OVERDONE HUMAN MEATLOAF! I await an earthquake that does not arrive! It will be TOTAL ECTROPY!!!” Here, for no discernible rhyme, Shuba threw his head back and ahhh’d, kind of like Stevie Wonder, but I wouldn’t suggest running out and killing him, no. And a very nice brave disAbled guy, nobody famous, I useta work for (they’re ALL brave, ‘cuz they are STUCK, get it? Good.) And soon after riotously chocked sorta like a drowning brown Santa. “SCHNELLLL, already! Nguyen!!! South Nam Viet.

  I served eight months of Hell forever, this’s the thanks I git akin.

  “PLEEEEEEEEEASE!!!

  He was nothin’ but dead serious, too soon me to be over. Oh, NO.

  (Not again. Kin Hell forgive me, or Heaven take an alkie? I like…tankards. If they serves beer in Heaven, where ah’m goin’ ah think, ah need salt. They say if you don’t take salt in peanuts when you drank, you dry up an’ blow away. Bar peanuts, that is the P
eanut, the thing I live off of…no, Shuba, knife is not peanuts!)

  He RAISED (and from BIRTH!) the awful Knife…is this Poker? Pogram? What (slur) TV Pogram is this? Ah heard a pogrom from Goneschlaw, they say he survived twelve concentration camps in th’ Holocaust. Or somepin’. He was shipped roun’ to five different countries, and they killed hunnerds of his Polish relatives, makin’ ‘em slaves ‘til they died o’ starvation, bestiality, cigs, beau’ful naked hovers, and wildly varying Nazis. Beatin’ ‘em to death, rumor is Goneschlaw beat one o’ them Nazis back up to death…….dude said he offed Bob’s mother, his father, ‘n raped his two sisters. He stood there unable to cry, like when my Mom…lady…

  …mwah mom shot Dad to death in Montana, y’see. She used a two-barrel shotgun and blew him through the jaw, next I knew mwah dad din’t have no hair. Red-neck at last, he spiraled down jerkin’ to the floor, bouncin’ along as I turned away. Bob ‘scaped hiss elf to America and settled in Rama in the late ‘40s. Townies say He couldn’t cry anymore, smoked cigars ‘til he lost his lower jaw, cuz the Nazis and Ruskies made sure Bob was the loneliest man on Earth. LONELY!!! I fled the backwoods soon I had money saved, age a 14 I hit th’ Greyhound Bus. It bounced, while I sat, unable to see through the lack of tears, blurry mind…no more cigs.

  Nobody left to hug, ain’t we lucky? Luckier, mah family wuz violent losers too…smokers, drankers…ain’t I a coward, tremblin’ here, lettin’ Shuba push me? “Hey, Miguel, I love Caza, is this cuz I wanna keep a lady with may all m’life? Is it cuz you used to lover her too, is she seein’ you when she goes there?”

  SSSSLLAAMMM!!! The deafening echoes cryptically reverberated throughout, especially in everything solid within, the café, like a massive stone door slammed shut in an underground Malarkey, moving the glass door several millimeters on its hinges. Inside Artie’s drunken head (which was alcohol-drenched and placed past his normally available leg pain), the cheerless cotton wads fuzzily registered an intemperate’s surprise disgust. Artie wanted a beer, not blood. There could be HIV one, two, or three in that blood!!!

  Miguel had slammed the giant knife down, blade and hilt flat parallel, on the speckly pink table’s black Formica edge, jarring an already extant crack. His fiercely trembling, patchy, ropy with blue veins, sweaty as said, stubby-fingered open brown-pink paw still hovered like grey drifting cold clouds over the hideous blade, shakily, but he resolutely forced his ruddy hand down, balling it first into a hairy fist, onto the dirty parquet floor.

  No, it was butternut, not parquet, and fairly classy, like the knife. But older. Much wider and wiser than Artie, whose head nodded arch spittoons. He hid a choice smile, of someone normal who usurped what was going on. It was the usual case of the white guy who thinks he’s typical, and the not-white guy who spins like an auto-turbine and stands motionless in front of the camera.

  Camera two moves to behind Artemis. He’s speechless, and starting to shake, possibly with quelled laughter, or otherwise. The sunlight glints wonderfully on his massive Crown-of-Everlasting-Glory, yet still stringy-with-life yellow hair, and also reflects nearly blindingly off the huge, silver-coated, bulky and serrated giant knife. It was BIG, like they claim you like, those khaki-clad white men. You know, in them thar catalogues. In the pictures. In the cottages. Sitting on deck chairs. Good for killing elephants. I felt so inspired by those lying on the beach…but they remind me of those dead Viet Cong…Dame Gretchly says she was one, before she fled th’ Red Chinese, came over to Hawaii and this humble, mysteriously beautiful place in Washington State and the Pacific Northwest…cain’t hide in America…I din’t escape Montany, they returns to perpetually ha’unt me…

  WHY IS EVERYONE ON THIS PLANET MY G-DAMNED ENEMY?

  Eerily racist, hate-ridden “white” chanting filled Artie’s blonde mind; fevered, drenched with sweat and pulling a fast one through the beginnings of Delerium Tremens from not drinking enough: the only good nigger is a dead n-word, the only good gook is a dead red crook, the only good woman is mah dying Caza -- the only good hero is a dead sandwich…..I’m in bad-ass alkie withdrawal!

  Artie’s hairy mouth, which was beginning to drop and hang bottomless open, cautiously began to form carefully enunciated, drunkenly spoken, coolly weighed and well-proportioned English words in talk:

  “Ah gots yoo th’ money, uh, m’maya, but ah gotcha six hunnerds. Ah’m more than willin’ ta pay inter-est. But ah wants ta keep muh Caza, if’n thet’s whut yer implyin’ it thet’s whose yer efter. Summun else in on dis wit yoooo?” Artie squinted at Miguel, with wide-open uncertainty. Did this guy wanna get Artie in trouble, jailed, broken, hurt like a little girl and dead?

  You may draw your favorite picture here,

  But I’ll warn you, it will have adverse

  Effects upon the resale value of yer copy of

  This p’culiar long book. Yes, an ebook joke -

  Due to large unexpected white spaces.