The 7 Little Steps

A work in raw progress.


Foreword:


In the 1980s we had to gather around a radio to enjoy music, not too unlike our oldest remembered ancestors. We all heard the same song together in the same moment in time - anywhere out there across the tawny, Los Angeles sound basin. That unique experience, endowed a communal affinity for its crackling hissing poetry, which now is gone with all the fleeting fury of the Santa Ana winds.

"It's the all nite record man --
There's a man you should know who puts on a show
Each nite at a radio station.
When you're going to bed he gets up instead
And he goes to his odd occupation.
Stay Up Stan the all nite record man.
Friend of every night owl music fan."

"All nite long he's at his post
To play the tunes you love the most
Stay Up Stan the all nite record man.
Send him a telegram name your favorite band
He'll play you anything Bach to Dixieland.
For every ten that criticize, a thousand others idolize
Stay Up Stan the all nite record man."

"Puts on a record out the music goes
Where it reaches no one ever knows
Someone alone in the hinterland
Maybe to a crowd at a roadside stand.
Gang at the tavern, tavern in the town
Get together, send the message down
Please play a song just for Auld Lang Syne
Something we can sing, like Sweet Adeline."

"Stan Stan, Stay Up Stan, the all nite record man."

-- Mayer / Robinson

Chapter 13: Knee-deep in roast beef & chocolate cake.

     In my dream, through the north window of the blue house, I saw a great fire, distant, rising above the trees in the direction of the State Capital some 120 miles off. It was my first remembered vision of the apocalypse. A vision of a distant past.  

The Dogstar Officer’s Club. Outskirts of Broadmoor City. A ramshackle, 20x20 foot bivouac with three screened walls and a low-slung roof propped atop a block wall like a cozy death fall trap. A patrol chopper was swarming a wide orbit to the south, its rotors buzzing close by at regular intervals. The occasional belch of our forward batteries boomed along the heights. Pot shots in the dark. The drunken lightning of the falling shells strobed eerily against the dark, distant sky. Odd, incoming rounds shrieked in the random vicinity, riving the mild stillness of the cool desert night.


The old Officer’s Club, which had once stood here, had been attacked in the last war. Some poor Wogie loaded a Jeep full to the brim with party favors, crashing through the wall, blowing the place to smithereens. When they rebuilt it years later, using the one surviving wall, they left the front of the Jeep protruding through it. Eventually, someone got the funny idea to repair the headlights, from which trickled two shallow, intersecting puddles of dim light. Over time, the battered driver’s side door made its way up onto the facade flanking the apparent entrance -- a kind of macabre pub sign. The white, six-pointed army star on the driver’s side door was artfully blended with a black sickle moon, and the neatly stenciled word: D O G S T A R.


No one really ever encountered the sign, except when going back there to take a piss on the wall. The so-called front door was never open, in fact, nor could it serve as the entrance, as they had built the bar around it. Save the bar tender, everyone always came and went from one of the two rear screen doors. I pulled one open. It squealed. All 6 of the soldiers inside turned and watched me enter the room with well-practiced suspicion. I immediately recognized Major Tyler’s signature, mussy blonde hair. It was clogged with orange dust. He looked me quickly up and down in a manner which suggested he was considering the idea of kicking my ass. From the radio set behind the bar, some old, scratchy ballroom number zig zagged neurotically through the room without a partner. -- Radio Wasteland. My only pal in the place. I took a stool directly below the watchful eye of the glowing tuner, and quietly ordered a beer.


I rolled a cigarette. Major Tyler drew up close on my right flank, placing both of his big, hairy hands down on the bar with poorly pretended nonchalance. He gazed up at the radio, offering innocuously that he’d “heard this fucking song a hundred times in the last 15 minutes.” He reeked of beer and sweat. “I like her voice though. It kinda makes my dick hard. Know what I mean?”


            I lit my cigarette and took a sip of beer. He turned his head toward me, offering a vaguely menacing stare. I pretended not to notice. “How’s your beer? Can we get you some nuts or something to go with it?”  Tara moved up unnoticed along his other side in a perfect pincer.


“He’s my guest, so everything’s jake,” she interjected.


“Fuck me,” he lamented. “…Willie and Joe. Look who it is, fellas,” he taunted. “Special Forces.”


One of his Company huddled in wearily. He smelled even worse than the Major. “Yeah. They’re special, alright” he slobbered. Tara reached across the front of the Major and swiped my splif. All in one, deft, unpunctuated gesture, she took a quick hit and offered him the next.


“At ease, Major?” she requested, holding it under his nose. He chuckled, glancing down on the little smoking torpedo, concerned it might sink the top-heavy juggernaut of him.


“I don’t do that shit,” he admonished.


“…Well, thanks for the beers all the same, Major,” she said, handing the joint back to me like a borrowed sidearm. I knocked my beer over when I reached to retrieve it.


“Shit!” I exclaimed, recovering the can as quickly as I could. Most of it ended up all over the bar. Some of it splashed onto his shirt as I recoiled the can. "Sorry, Major."


“…See what I mean?” he affirmed. “Fucking hop heads.”


“Get him a fresh one, will ya, B.J.?” Tara asked the bartender. “It was an accident. This artillery scrimmage is making everyone jumpy.”


“You kids go easy on the sauce now, Sergeant,” Major Tyler said. “You got a big job ahead of you I hear. -- Not a blow job, or hand job, or foot job. …Too bad I guess. That’d be right up your alley, Sergeant. Shit. You’d probably run out of room on your corset for medals.”

“Yeah. The -- Can’t-Keep-My-Legs-Crossed Cross,” The drunken Private joked. She squared up to him.

“…Watch yourself, Private,” She menaced placidly. 

“Sorry, Sir,” he sneered back, saluting her. Major Tyler placed one of his big hands on the Private’s chest and moved him effortlessly away like a broom closet door. He leered in close to Tara. 

“We’ll finish this up later, doll. …I got your number. It’s back there on the wall by the phone.”

I resisted the urge to stand. As much as it burned my ass, it wasn’t a good idea. I was only half-listening to the whole exchange in any case. -- I found it was easier that way to not  give a fuck about stupid shit of no consequence. Tune it out. Flip the dial. Lower the volume. They retreated outside beyond the screen. I heard them saying stupid, foul things. Laughing. Pissing. Breaking bottles. Though they were still very much present, at least they weren’t in the room, transparent though it was. It was growing late, and the artillery had seemingly ceased.

“You alright?”

“--Roll me one of those, will ya?” she said. I coaxed a fresh cigarette paper from the packet.

“Sorry about that.”

“What are you sorry about? It’s not your fault.”

“Nothing. Just sorry you have to deal with that.”

“Yeah. Well. He’s a fucking creampuff. He’ll have to do better than that if he wants to make this bitch heel.”

“Guess he’s still sore about drawing the long straw.” I sealed the deal of the cigarette with a wet wag of my tongue. Lit it. Took a drag and presented it to her.

“They were never going to let his hard-cock Company off leash. Let alone for something like this. Grunts.”

“What time did Baca say he’d meet us here?”

“He didn’t. HE just said, meet him here tonight.”

“How long do you think we’ll have to wait?”

“Why, you got something better to do?”

“No. I just don’t like waiting. Makes me twitchy.”

“Don’t sweat it, Cowgirl. Haven’t you ever been on a long bender before?”

“Yeah. Couple times.”

“Same thing. -- You wake up in a strange place with your panties in your mouth and a sore ass.”

“Thanks.”
"Don't mention it, fag."



‘Hailey’s Hayloft’ was a legendary machine. Painted on the Christmas ornament of her nose, in urban graffiti rendition, was the buxom caricature of a lascivious brunette squeezing strafes of bullets from her big tits – muzzle flashes bursting from the steely, smoking nipples. Her jaws angrily clamped a grateful sprig of alfalfa. A curly tuft of black pubes peeked from between the splayed zipper of her impossible Daisy Dukes, the teeth unfurling themselves seamlessly into a wide “V” of long, wagging bullet belts. Shells drizzled around her shiny spurs.  -- Property of one, Chet Shoemaker, naval aviator, adorable, First-Class. When he swaggered in low out of the clouds, his menacing engines zooming up in the bar mirror, I knew the ship was lost. 


“Hiya, Dollface,” he said. He had a voice like warm maple syrup, with an indelible suntan of about the same color.  --To hell with general quarters, Wes, just jump over the side. He looked like he spent a lot of time in the gym, and the mirror. I armed myself quickly with a long, brown cigarette, figuring the smoke might jamb his radar. He ignited it for me with a Zippo adorned with a topless mermaid before I could blink, extracting one of his own from out behind his ear. Pretty soon we were all enveloped in a blue haze of nicotine.

"Nice lighter, quick-draw" I said through my teeth.

 "Thanks. ...A man must never misplace his car keys any more than he must misplace his lighter."

  "Fuck's that mean?"

  "Don't know. Just made it up one blurry night and liked the sound of it. That good enough for ya?"

“Don’t go burning the place down now, boys, some of us actually have to drink here,” Tara goofed.


“Oh, I’ve slept in worse rummydum hostels than this,” he said.


“I’ll bet,” Tara mused.


“--Name’s, Chet,” he said, offering his hand to Tara. “Hope you don’t mind the smoke.”


“Only if I’m eating a big breakfast in bed or something,” she said, looking down at her hand being tied to the dock of his.


“Wes,” I announced. “This is Tara.” I reached across the scenic valley of her lower back. He shook my hand without trying to crush it.


“Pleasure to meet you two,” he said. “Buy you some beers?”


“We’re actually just meeting someone here, then we gotta get going,” I said.


 “You gotta get going,” Tara corrected. “You think I’m going camping with you and Baca, you’re nuts.”


“Round of cold ones here,” Chet ordered with a grand slam swirl of his finger. “Camping, huh?”


“This one’s off to see the wizard tonight,” Tara thumbed at me.


“Sounds like fun I guess. If you go in for that sort of thing,” Chet said.


“So what, are you some kind of heathen?” she asked.


“Hey. Don’t get me wrong,” he said, holding up his hands. “I mean, what do I know, right? I’m just a devout suds-man is all. -- Cheers,” he said, toasting us with a freshly-popped can of beer. “…not bad. …Not good. But not bad,” he critiqued.


“So first you insult our religion. Now you’re knocking our sauce. – Get a load of this guy, Wes,” she said, nudging my shoulder.


“Mystical vision is no substitute for a rock steady navigator, that’s all I’m saying,” he said.  “--Where I come from, we can’t afford to drink beer that fucks you so hard you’re saddle-sore in the morning.”


“So where might this magical place be that you come from, Chet?” Tara challenged.


“Little old place called Sawdust,” he said. Tara's barstool drifted faintly towards him as she recalibrated her long, leather-clad legs.


“You a pilot?”


“Aviator, Toots.”


"...That’s right. I forgot. Pilots have to know how to land, isn’t that the difference?” she teased.


“That supposed to be a wisecrack or something?”


“No. But you must admit, it’s kinda hard to over-shoot the Pacific Ocean.”


“Is that a fact?” he asked bemusedly. “You want to try it sometime? Maybe you can come show me how it’s done.”


“That’s what the army pilots are always saying, anyway. -- I was just wondering what the navy pilots say. I’ve never actually seen one.” He laughed and ordered another round, having already finished his beer.


“Aviator,” he corrected with an air of boredom, snapping his fingers quick and loudly to the beep and bop of Lester Young’s, I Got Rhythm. He looked like he suddenly wanted to dance.


“Didn’t mean anything by it,” Tara apologized. “Thanks for the beers.”


“You got it.. I gotta be going soon anyhow,” he said.


“...You always wear those sunglasses at night?” Tara baited.


“Always.”


Just then, the dusty, clip-ity-clop shadow of a man on a horseback lumbered up beyond the screen at the end of the bar, another, riderless horse tethered lazily behind.


“I think your ride’s here, Wes,” Tara said. The radio above us sang the score: "tonight the moon is high, the lamp is low." 


-- Just then, the power went out. The radio fell silent. "Oh! Fine time for the fucking band to take a break."

                                                                                     II


          A dozen Venetian dawns of strange, pulsing light. -- Another vision. My head hurt like before. The last one. I grunted. The old man wasn’t around. It had been raining hard. I could hear water spilling down the canyon walls. My back hurt. I sat up slowly. I was so tired. I held my head in my hand. Dozed. My head slipped from my hand. I jerked suddenly awake again. The shimmering coals of a long expended fire painted the walls in ruby red. A Wasteland igloo, fashioned of boulders and branches, heaped together like my confounded visions, looming over me precariously.


I reclined again, to the most comfortable posture I could assume on the cold, hard earth, resting my head on the pillow of my knapsack kit. The coals hissed at me.


It was a dark and stormy night. Fleeting faces at the rain-washed window panes. Things that go bump. There was no sign of the old man. I said that already. There was a storm blowing. I said that already too. HE knew there was to be a storm. Fully. HE conjured it, after all. Now he was away. The visions only, were to attend to me if and when I emerged from -- my inward journey. Had I emerged? I wasn’t sure. There was what looked to be a tea of some sort, steeping on the shattered hearthstone before me. It had a rusty saw blade on top of it, warm to the touch. I unlidded the potion and picked it up for a sniff. It was earthy and botanical. The taste was bitter and oily, but it tasted like the vaporous nectar of an alpine waterfall to my parched tongue. HE put it here, the cup, surrounded it with coals to keep it brewing while I was away, while I was -- in the other land.


It was so real. The dream. I knew her. I knew her completely – and yet, I didn’t know her. I thought I did. I pretended to. I loved her. I loved her beauty, it was more right to say. I loved her beauty and she grew inevitably to resent me for it. I was no different from the others who just wanted to fuck her, so they could carry that knowledge around in their spacious heads, mounting it, like a sparkling trophy high up on the soaring walls of their ego, to admire forever, like a map of the New World stuck prickly full of princely pins. Pins with ruby tips. Long pins. Sharp pins. Deadly pins.


The tea was having an odd effect, I thought, or perhaps imagined. All this gibberish. Afterbirth of this orphan vision. I knew her. Yeah I did. I knew her better than those gruff conquistadors she equated me with. She was the daughter of a wealthy craftsman, a nobleman with old blood going back to England. When she spotted me at the Meschianza, I was staring at my feet, perhaps someone else’s feet, perhaps a chandelier, or fancy mirror. No, that was wrong. The place. It’s not important. IT is, but it isn’t.

My aunt. She was a Witch. A real one. She had many strange, exotic and terrifying gifts. She would say things. Write things. Things which were foreign to her. Things which she after had no recollection of saying or writing. I remember her. She was good. A good person. A medicine woman. The first woman of her people ever to perform medicine. The daughter of a powerful Shaman. HE had disguised HER gender until HER 9th birthday. Then HE hosted a ceremony. Magically, HE transformed his only son into a female. It was the will of the gods, HE foretold, that a female should succeed him. To sell the charade, HE had castrated a young boy from an enemy village, presenting the severed genitalia to a swooning crowd of high priestesses and chieftains.


And so, the daughter was cursed by the gods, it was said. And though SHE was a powerful sorceress and healer whom held her father’s position many long years after his death, upon HER own demise, HER soul was not permitted to enter the afterlife. After many long centuries languoring in the confounded vapors of the neither lands, SHE was sent again into the living world to finally atone for the sins of her father. And this was my aunt. My aunt, the Witch. The one who knew about the other place. The place she had haunted for many long centuries. This is why she heard the voices.


Though I was related to her, it was somewhat removed. Really, she was my Great Aunt. There was no family gift of these special powers, or anything like that. The spirits and gods move as they will among the fleshy forest of the living. It’s not like inheriting blue eyes or blonde hair.


It was raining hard now. My tea was getting cold. The coals in the fireplace were withering. I pulled on a blue baja. It was old. One of a few possessions I allowed myself the luxury to prize.


I was hungry. The tea was making my stomach sour. I nibbled some honeysuckle tack from the pouch in my pocket.  I listened to the rain, trying to quiet my mind and block the visions, terrors and rambling memories. I longed for a moments peace. A respite from the effects. I took a series of long, slow breaths.


I knew I was going to have to go down into that canyon, over The Lomas. Into The Wasteland. I might not come back. Or worse, I might be tortured first. I knew I was going to look for the daughter of our King. I knew that. For certain. I knew little else. I couldn’t remember my name, or how I got to be in this strange place, but which was somehow familiar. I knew she had been kidnapped -- the daughter of our King. I knew the old man was helping me. I know he was my close, trusted ally in all of this, but I couldn’t remember his name, and his face was foggy.


I was lonely here, in this dank garita. It was utterly dark beyond the naked, gaping windows, yet I knew the landscape around me for miles, seeing it even in perfect darkness. The outlines of everything everywhere were weirdly luminous. Like X-ray vision. This was a strange drug indeed. To see the unseen inside your mind, with blackness only in your eyes. It was glorious. I was terribly lonely. This place, when I allowed it to, felt like a kind of spooky hell. I wasn’t sure of anything. I wasn’t sure if I was actually here. I wasn’t sure if I myself were but a shadowy vision, in someone else’s imagining, in someone else’s hell. My hands were trembling. 


I wanted to sleep. Perhaps when I woke, things would be clear. Who was I? An assassin? I have no memory of killing. There was a peculiar looking knife in my leather jacket, concealed discreetly within a pocket sewn especially for it. There were markings on the handle which looked alien. I knew it was there. I reached for it, feeling it. Yes. There it is. But how did I know it was there? How did I..?


There was an old wooden radio stacked on top of a disused ammunition crate. There was a bullet hole in it, but it still worked. I don’t know how I knew that. It didn’t feel like a good idea to switch it on, but I did anyway. Only static echoed off the hovering walls. I thumbed the dial through wave after wave of nothing. A crack. A pop. An occasional squeal like a distant whale calling from beyond the abyss. Nothing. Nothing.


Binoculars. Old, shitty ones, so fouled with dirt and grime they made for a better paperweight. I knew that somehow. And the daily log under them, which they kept from blowing away. I knew that too, and, that it was a record of the activities at Santana. I knew I didn’t like that it was kept this far forward. I had read it. I remember reading it. I remember saying they should keep it off the lines, in case they were overrun. I remember the bullet holes which pocked the walls and domed roof. Even though it blended well with the landscape, their Crackers knew where it was. Even way up here in these lofty windswept heights, a wayward bullet sometimes managed to find its lucky mark. They knew we kept regular watch on them from here, and from the old mining towers across the Broadmoor road to the west.


From these vantages, we could see well beyond their desperate outpost below, the derelict ruins of some bygone administration building. It had somehow survived, along with a rash of other truncated buildings nestled in the shoulder of the lower foothills below – The Lomas. A small party of the enemy had occupied it to watch, and on occasion, harass our main road. But it was too far forward for them to properly fortify. For that, they would have to move up across miles of the open, inhospitable Wasteland, observed at every step. There would be time and plenty to deploy ourselves in the heights, so they didn’t bother much with the position, using it only to launch small, infrequent raids of little consequence. We called it, Ratville.


Its improvised fortification was provisioned with difficulty, sparsely, and only under cover of night or fog. The intenerate garrison usually had to barter their minor munitions with the town of Santana, something of a ghetto which had sprouted in the shadows of its mischief. A handful of Villa Rancheros huddled around a well. Santana -- a name from the old world, which was thought to mean, Devil of the wind. In Autumn, there are still strong winds here, in fact, which cause the dirt to rise up in drunken funnels, waltzing around the Wasteland like frenzied demons.


I was here to observe, then to move forward of the lines, into Santana. Into the Wasteland. Beyond if necessary. I had seen nothing. Nothing I remembered, anyway. I remembered being here before my -- inward journey, spying on their positions, making notes. I couldn’t remember where my notebook was. I couldn’t remember what I had written in it, but I remembered the pencil pushing into my finger, denting it. I felt my finger. It was still pencil-sore. I wasn’t going nuts.


It started raining again. Even heavier this time. There was a lone peal of distant thunder. Rain pounded the roof. It began to drool from the sloppy lips of the ceiling. I could hear water rushing even harder down the canyon walls. I worried the earth would give way about the garita, and that I would be entombed in a mudslide. It had happened along other parts of the line.


I wanted the old man to return. He could tell me more about why I was haunting this old outpost, about what my visions meant, help me remember who I was. More than the old man, I longed for my senses to return. Again, I took several deep breaths, trying to clear my mind. I fixated on the terrific sound of the rain, like an earful of voluminous radio static. The clamor began to drown my troubled thoughts. Blessed rain.


Suddenly, a shadowy figure tumbled out of the black tempest and into the little room before me. I lurched in horror, drawing my knife, clicking it open.


“Get that fucking thing out of my face,” spoke her familiar voice.


“--Who are you?”


“It’s Tara,” she said, peeling back her black, waxy-looking hood to reveal her small, pale face. Her black hair bled with water. She tugged her jacket off and dried her face and hands with the bottom of her shirt, revealing her black bra. A white coyote tooth dangled about her neck. It was scrimshawed with a sicle moon. She passed her hands closely over the coals. She was shivering.


“Why don’t you put your jacket back on?”


“It’s wet. It’s raining you know.” I tossed her my leather jacket. She maneuvered herself into it. “Thanks.” She lit a crumpled cigarette. “I don’t suppose we have to worry about Crackers tonight.”


“No. I guess not.” I peered around at the windows.


“Smoke ‘em if ‘ya got ‘em! Right?” She produced a small field lantern from her kit, a makeshift affair cut from a red glass bottle. Her face suddenly flickered in its garnet glow. She let me look at it for a moment. “You don’t remember rolling this joint for me, do you?” she giggled.


“No.”


“Want some? It’s good shit.”


“No thanks.”

  "Awe, come on. This joint's a perfect 10. I can't decide which end to light and which to suck on."

  "I better not."


“You know something? I like you, Wes. I didn’t before. But if you’re going to let me smoke this whole joint all by myself, you’re okay in my book.” She scooted over close beside me, took hold of my hand, and put the joint between my fingers. “I insist.”


I took a tentative drag and handed it right back to her. It tasted good. She nudged my shoulder. “You smoke like a bitch.” I smiled and took another drag, then another. She took hold of my arm and draped it around her neck like a scarf. “Don’t get any ideas. I’m fucking cold.” We passed the joint back and forth until it was gone. The merciless floor of the garita began to feel somehow less merciless.


“How much of that shit did you drink, Wes?”


“What shit?”


“That much, huh? Well, shit. I guess you don’t remember our mission briefing, either, right? ”


“No.”


“--Fuck me.”


Cold, wet wind howled through the windows, but the rain had slackened. A coyote yelped somewhere just beyond the rocks. Tara shifted. “You know,” she mused, “a fucking mudslide might deepthroat this whole fucking hill in one, big fucking gulp. Down the hatch. ...It’s happened before, you know?”


“I remember that.”


“Oh. Great. Well, all is not completely ass-fucked after all then.”


“You seem pissed off or something,” I ventured.


“I’m not -- I’m just a sarcastic bitch. A bitch who falls ass-backwards without trying into really fucked-up shit all the time. But! On the bright side,” she demonstrated with a point of her finger, “I never get— …I always-- …I’m still here. …I mean, now that I’m high as fuck for the first time in like -- ever, I see that all is like totally cool. And scary as fuck. …What the fuck are we talking about? …Speaking of totally baked, what the fuck do you remember? The floor is yours, Eisenhower.”


“I don’t know. I think we have to find this girl. She’s lost. Kidnapped, actually.”


“Oh, Caroline, honey. You are so fucked.”


“Caroline. Princess Caroline.”


“Yes. …you’re really out of your fucking skull, aren’t you?”


“Yes.”


“It doesn’t matter. Look, it will all—mostly come back to you once that shit wears off. HE warned me this would happen to you. Once it wears off, you will see the path before you right under your feet. That’s what he said. Meantime, I’m supposed to make sure you don’t do a swan dive off the cliffs. So, it looks like I’m your babysitter for the next 48 hours or so.”


“48 hours?”


“That’s what HE said.”


“HE?”


“Baca. The old man. The wizard who made you that screwy cocktail. You don’t remember him?”


“I do, …but I don’t”


“…okay.”


“I mean, I knew him once, long ago. He’s a distant memory of someone I used to know. Understand?”


“Not really. But that’s okay. Look, just relax. Clear your mind. Q and A is over for the day, Soldier. You need to rest. You’ve been through a lot. Just put your head on my shoulder and close your eyes.”


Her shoulder was an oasis. It began to rain harder again. My eyes were sticky and swollen. My mouth was dry. My hands were still trembling. I started to shiver, but fought it off in case she would have any thought of giving my coat back.


“I guess maybe there’s a rare chance here somewhere,” she pondered quietly.


“Huh?”


“I mean, you don’t know me at all right now. It’s as if we’ve never met. This is the very first time that you’re meeting me –again. You know nothing of my past. It’s all just blank.”


“Yeah.”


“That’s a real mind fuck. You know? --My ass hurts from sitting on this damn floor.” She shifted, trying to get comfortable. “I’m going to tell you something now that I’m only able to tell you because you’re fucking sideways and have no memory.”


“Alright.”


“…you don’t love Caroline. The Princess. You think you do, but you don’t.”


“I do? I mean, I don’t?“


“You love me.”


“I love --you?”


“But I pretend I don’t know it. What’s worse, is that you don’t know.”


“Huh?”


“None of this really matters. What matters, is that we have to save her. It’s not going to be easy. Things are going to get ass-fucked fast once we snip that wire down the hill and slither into the Wasteland on our tits. I only fucking told you what I just told you because you’re going to need to know it. I don’t know why, or how, or when. I just know.”


“I’m tired. Confused. I think I just need to try to sleep -- even though I know I won’t be able to. I feel like I’m losing my mind.”


“Whatever. Just remember what I said. And don’t forget it."


“I don’t know what you’re saying. I’m not even really sure who you are. Who I am. Where I am.”


“I know, I know. Change of subject. Why don’t you tell me about your visions. Do you remember anything about that?”


“No. Not really.”


“Try. Clear your mind.” She stroked my hair. Just as I was lulled to a perfect state of serene calm by her slow caresses, a shrill screech of terror echoed in the basin below.


“What the--?!” 


“...Motherfuckers.”


“That was a woman,” I realized.


“What’s left of her.”


“What?”


“Ratville. That’s where that scream came from.”


“Oh yes. The whorehouse. I remember taking notes about it the other day. Yes yes yes. The whorehouse.”


“More of a concentration camp -- whores get paid. These girls are sex slaves for the soldiers. Military chattel. Revenue, more accurately.”


“Revenue?”


“In exchange for their -- service, they're allowed to rape those girls.”


“Rape?”


“Torture. Kill. Whatever sick-fuck mood strikes.”


“...I see.”


“Do you?”


“Well, no. I mean --that’s fucked up.”


“Yeah.”


“Where do they get these girls?”


“Santana, mostly.”


“The soldiers abduct them from Santana? That doesn’t make any sense. I mean, it’s their own town, isn't it?”


“They don’t have to abduct them. Most of them are sold. It’s quite the little cottage industry. Board of Directors, CEO, there’s even a corporate headquarters.”


“Really?”


“Really. And that’s where I'm supposed to take you, Major.”


“Major?”


"Well, it was Captain up until a few days ago.”

"Oh-”

"Do you know that you're an Intelligence officer?"

"No."

"Wow."

“I guess it will come back to me.”

“Okay look. Here's the crash course. I was one of those girls once. I managed to escape. Became a field soldier. A good one. There’s a lot of brass on this ass. I'm supposed to take you through the lines, you know, because you're like, just a desk jockey. We find her. Bust her out. Then phone up a ride.”

“Princess Caroline?”

“-- Only problem is, I really don’t want to go back there. I’m just sort of not in the mood, if you know what I mean. Plus, I don't exactly trust those brassy bastards. Maybe there is no extraction team waiting on the tarmac. Ya know?”


“So why’d you volunteer?”


“I wouldn’t volunteer to rescue that spoiled cunt. --Not for her sake, anyway. I’m doing this because I was ordered to do it. And, if she isn’t returned in one piece, her daddy will invade and many of my few remaining friends will die. I’m going along with this half-ass plan because it’s the only one you geniuses in the Intel department could come up with. You didn’t bother to ask my opinion, you know? At least I can tag along and make sure you don't totally fuck things up. And, I sort of know her from a past life. So there's that.”

"So all this was my idea?"

"Partly. But that’s enough history lesson for one night. I need to fucking sleep.” 

I suddenly remembered having spoken to Baca about my fears after the drugs had taken hold. We spoke of death. "Life," he said, "is like a small child learning to walk. Death is just stumbling and falling. When a child stumbles, they get right up again, rising in fresh wisdom, walking again, this time a bit further, this time with different eyes. The world looks different. It is illuminated. Death is just like that."

Then, I remembered the dream I had, following our talk. It is more right to say that I remember waking with a stark vision. Trying to smuggle a small child across the border to safety. Foes closing in from every side. The ghosts of dead slaves and slaughtered Indians. Then, a dark figure materialized before us. Black as coal. Blacker. He was their insidious captain, it seemed. The child stumbled and fell. 


My body was sore from the cramped, discomfort of our crude lodgings. She curled up into a ball and was silent for a long while. I thought maybe she had drifted to sleep, but then she suddenly spoke. “Tell me about your visions. What do you remember?”


            “A ramshackle building, a saloon, hunched in the middle of nowhere. A sea of prairie grass. Horses out front. Two horses. A Paint, and a Sorrel. Also, a motorcycle. Two motorcycles, near a phone booth. The parking lot is all dirt. Dusty. There’s a few big logs for curbs. A crooked screen door. It’s red. The screen is torn a little. There’s a light in the window. A rusty air conditioner on the roof. Inside is all wood. Creaky floors. Sort of diner booths. A lunch counter. Pool table. They sometimes tie people down on it and do things to them. Evil things. A cigarette machine. Jukebox.”


            “Who do you see inside?”


            “A very handsome man. I recognize him. He’s with a scruffy looking guy with a big belly. Unshaven. The opposite of the other guy.”


            “What are they doing?”


            “They’re talking with the motorcycle guys.”


            “Tell me about the motorcycle guys. What do they look like?”


            “Black leather coats with big collars and big sleeves. Spider tattoo. Black widow. On their hands. “


            “What are they saying?”


            “I don’t know. I can’t hear the words. Something about a necklace.”


            “What kind of necklace? Tell me about the necklace.”


            “Small. A Charm. Green eyes. Emeralds. A mask.”


            “What about the necklace, Wes? What are they saying about it?”


            “It’s lost. They are mad that it’s lost.”


            “Who is mad?”


            “The good-looking one.”


            “The ones who came on horses?”


            “Yes.”


            “Why are they mad?”


            “It’s valuable. They want it. The motorcycle men promised. They think they are keeping it from them, but really it’s lost.”


            “Where is it, Wes? Do you see it?”


            “It fell.”


            “Where did it fall?”


            “In a tunnel. They were taking her through a tunnel.”


            “Who were they taking through the tunnels?”


            “The Princess.”


            “The men on the horses were taking her through the tunnels?”


            “Yes.”


            “Where do the tunnels lead?”


            “Under the Saloon.”


            “Under the Saloon where they are meeting?”


            “Yes.”


            “What else do you see? Can you see Caroline? Where is she?’


            “No.”


            “Where did they take her, Wes?”


            “I don’t know.”


            “Concentrate, Wes. Search for her. Tell me what you see.”


            “I see a stage.”


            “She’s on a stage?”


            “I think so. I’m not sure.”


            “Tell me about the stage.”


            “I’m thirsty, Tara. I’m so thirsty.” She shuffled through her kit and gave me a sip from her canteen. The water was sweet and botanical. “Thank you. It's good.”


            “What about the stage? Is that where she is?”


            “I think so. I’m not sure.”


            “What else do you see?


            “A sofa.”


            “On the stage?”


            “Yes.”


            “Is anyone sitting on it?”


            “No.”


            “Do you see anyone at all?”


            “No.”


            “Okay, Wes. Just relax. Relax. Clear your mind. Is there anything else?”

              "A meeting. In a cemetery. -- Don't step on the graves!"

               "Who is meeting? What are they talking about out?"
 
               "I don't know. I can't hear them. I can only see their lips moving."

                "Focus. Try. Where is the cemetery?"

                 "I can't remember."
       
                  "Remember?"

                  "I can only remember that the others were walking on the plots, and that they didn't like that."

                   "They?"

                    "The dead."

                     "How do you know?"

                      "They told me."

                       "They spoke to you?"

                       "Not exactly. It was more that I just sensed their resentment. Or, rather experienced the feelings of it, as if it were my own. But it was a communication. Not a sense of empathy or something?"

              "Is there anything else?"

            “No. I want to go to sleep now, Tara. I’m so tired. Please let me sleep.”


            “Alright, Wes. Go to sleep.”


            “Did any of that make sense to you?”


            “Yes. A good deal of it. Now sleep.”

             "What's the big deal about the necklace?"

               "It's a talisman. A holy relic. Its power is potentially quite dangerous."

                "I thought you didn't believe in that sort of thing - the hocus pocus, intrinsic power of objects or whatever."

                 "What the fuck gave you that dumb idea? Anyway, it isn't my own beliefs which intend or empower the danger."

            The rain had stopped, the gusty winds slackened. Somewhere, a chorus of frogs began to chirp. I began to nod off.


            “Tara?” I murmured after a long while.


            “Wes?”


            “You awake?”


            “Half and half.”


            “…I know how you feel.” -- She told me to go to sleep.



           Provisional rank of Major. Major, Wes. I remembered that, the moment I awoke. Tara wasn’t still in the garita with me, but her kit was. The rain was just a mist now, but would not relent. It was a dim, heavy morning. I sat up and rolled a bone. I remembered where my grass was, and my papers, lighter, scrubbacco. It occurred to me that I had reached for them without thought. My memory was limping back. I tugged on my boots and staggered outside. I looked around for Tara. I didn’t see her. The lines were deserted. Something chirped and whistled close by my ear like a bumblebee. A rifle crack bounded in the hills below. I threw myself down into the mud. “Fuck me.” I finished my smoke against the rampart, then bobbled and hunched my way down the lines to the next garita, where I found Tara with one of our wily scouts.    

             “Morning, Sargent,” I cheerfully interjected. She flung full around, -- a twirling vision of tall darkness. Her long, straight hair shone like black steel. It was my first, real good look at her since my memory had been deleted. Her glowing eyes danced like blue flames. I slid a half step backwards. The radiance of her was astounding. I was dumbstruck.

            “Well, top of the afternoon, Major! We heard you up there almost getting your balls blown off just now. Taking a piss?” She was speaking fast. I tried to remember all of what she had just said. It took me a moment to replay the tape.

            “-- No. I was, rolling a bone.”

            “Yeah, well, watch your ass, okay? I’m supposed to be looking out for you, remember? I leave you alone for 3 minutes and you almost get aced by a Cracker who hasn't even had his coffee yet. “

            “I’m fine, Sargent. Not a scratch.”

            “Oh really? Yeah, because you’re bleeding.” She swiped a healthy finger full of blood from the top of my head like cake batter. My hair was wet with rain. I hadn’t felt the blood.

            “Oh, shit.”

            “Don’t panic, Cowgirl. It’s just a nick. And cut the Sargent crap. Just, Tara. Okay?”

            “Yeah. Okay.”

            “Our scout here just returned from his morning jog. Mikey? Tell the Major here what you just told me.”

            “Well, Major, they seem to have fallen back across the ravine sometime during the night.”

            “You do see that I’m bleeding, right?”

            “Yes, Major. I do. We think he’s just a loner though. He’s been harassing our lines since dawn. Keeping up a show. Making lots of noise, Major.”

            “Why would they do that?”

            “Don’t know, Major. The rain caused some floods overnight, and the ravine’s full of fresh water. It’s normally bone dry. Maybe they needed the water, Major.”

            “Maybe,” Tara said, kicking mud from her knee-high combat boots. “But with all that rain last night, all they would have needed was a bucket. Toxic, but they do have a filter down there.”

            “Yes, Sargent. That’s true,” Mikey said. “And we talked about that, but they do seem to have stopped at the ravine for some reason all the same. Our forward patrol came up pretty close on them just before dawn. A dozen or so men. No horses or vehicles in sight. They made camp under the ruins of the Old Bridge.”

            “Where it intersects the Coast Road,” Tara added.

            “Yes, Sargent. That’s right. We were wondering about that too.”

            “That’ll be all, Mikey. Head on down the line to the west wall and keep a watch. Report back to Major Tyler if you see anything funny. He'll ride out there just for the damn fun of it anyway.”

            “Yes, Sargent,” he said, then darted off down the hill.

            “Well. How you feeling, Major? Ready for some action?” I glanced in anonymous intervals down at her hips, and long, athletic legs. They were mercilessly clad in brown and black leather bondage with thin green cordage.

            “I feel okay, I guess. What did you have in mind?”

            “Well, for starters, let’s ace that Cracker that botched that pretty haircut of yours. Then, we’ll go do some window shopping around Ratville.”

            “Ratville?”

            “Yeah. Ratville. -- Boy-o-boy."

            “How do we ace the Cracker?”

            “Hope you brought some comfy shoes.”


            Her plan was simple. Fall back and flank his position from behind. The most difficult aspect was hiking all day through broken, muddy terrain choked with dense brush, cactus and the occasional rattlesnake. Killing him would be comparatively simple. We said nothing along the way, moving slowly and cautiously, or at the quickstep, as the ground allowed. His shots rang out intermittently  through the day. By late afternoon we reached the base of the hill on which he was nested, and had a rough idea of where he was. Reconnoitering the north slope as dusk began to fall, we came upon a dismembered bulldozer bucket. It was big, and so badly weathered it blended in with the landscape. It was dry inside. “We’ll wait here until first light,” Tara said. “It’ll be dark soon. We can’t go up that hill in the dark.” We crawled quietly into the rusty jaws and attempted to rest. The day seemed a jagged blur. My feet were waterlogged, throbbing and stinging with blisters. The temperature was dropping fast. We scooted closer together until our arms and legs were touching.

            “What’s the plan?” I asked, taking a measured sip of water.

            “We’ll split up. I’ll go up the east slope. You’ll take the north. If we set out at first light, we should be on his position as the sun breaks over the mountains. Maybe it will fuck with his aim.”

            “How will we find him? He’ll be dug in like a tick.”

            “Doubt it. Not much cover up there. Anyway, he’ll start opening fire on our lines again at first light. We’ll just follow the shots right to him, like we did today. I’ll try and get him with a grenade. You cover his retreat down the north side in case he bails.”

            “Simple enough.”

            “Good. Now close your mouth and open your ears. I’m going to get some sleep.  Wake me in 1 hour. Exactly 1 hour.”

            I was hoping we would talk some, hoping to recapture some more of all I had forgotten, but she was right. This was enemy territory now. A business trip. We took turns keeping watch. Nothing stirred all night but wayward coyotes.

We set out at first blush of day. It was cold. There was dew on everything. Birds were chattering. Stars were still quivering above in the pale. We split up as planned. I felt uneasy about splitting up. Paranoid. I was still feeling fuzzy from the drugs I had ingested days before. My memory was still murky. I would put something in my pocket, and moments later forget where it was. I worried I was in no shape to pull off an ambush behind enemy lines. I moved slowly, as silently as I could, pausing along the way, ducking for long moments to carefully look, and listen in all directions. Then, a familiar sense of predation. I began to move a bit quicker. All of me was enjoying the exercise. Even the biting blisters down deep in my boots.

            The first shot of the day came just before daybreak. A dull thump, then a crash, tumbling in the canyons beyond the ridge. I flinched. Stopped. Corrected my heading in its direction. Some minutes later, another rang out, followed shortly after by a tremendous explosion. A moment later, bits of gravel and smoldering earth rained down around me. Tara whistled the ‘All Clear.’ I remembered what it meant. It meant he was dead.


At the top of the ridge, we came upon his position together; nothing more than a crude berm of rocks and branches horded hastily around the lip of a small ditch. An improvised foxhole. Her grenade had landed directly behind him in the brittle bones of a decaying bush. It was still smoldering. By the looks of him, he was dead before he figured out he was about to die. It occurred to me that there was a thin sort of mercy about that. I felt sorry for the cocksucker all the same. The sort of sorry that sucker punches you, leaving you grouchy the rest of the day.   


            “Search him, fast. Then let’s get the fuck off this hill,” Tara said, huffing and puffing like she’d just charged up a steep hill and killed a Cracker with a grenade. I searched him thoroughly. His clothes were sopping with warm, slippery blood. There was nothing of importance on him. We took his rifle and ammunition, and hurried down the south slope into Ratville.


            Ratville. The ruins of an ancient school. We entered a central courtyard from the front, covering one another’s advance between heaps of mangled concrete and cremated furnishings. 

The ruin of the main complex was cast in the steep shadows of the eastern hills. Inside, it was still quite dim, everything bathed in an eerie, blue light. An otherworldly, submarine luminescence. We were tired, but the terror kept us alert like a full pot of black coffee; the terror that death lurked around the next corner, the terror of whom or what awaited inside the next room, the patient, dormant terror awakening under the shadow of your next footstep. Tara moved quickly, it seemed. It was her style. Quick and steady. By the numbers. She was stealthy, sure-footed, and moved like a hungry coyote through a midnight suburb lush with unwary toy breeds and plump cats.


            It didn’t take us long to clear the whole compound, and when we finished, we doubled back to search it. There was nothing noteworthy or especially valuable. They were bunking up in the men’s room on the east perimeter of the court yard, mattresses stuffed within the stalls where toilets used to be. The antique porcelain had long been carried off and upcycled. It made excellent shrapnel.


The lady’s room they apparently employed for other purposes. There was a chair tangled with rope and scraps of duct tape, a filthy, twin mattress with old blood stains on it slumped upright in the corner like a fatally wounded polar bear. Chain. Broken bottles. A human tooth. Faint, unpleasant odors.


            There weren’t any fortifications, earthworks or improvements. Only a handful of sentry posts in a few of the outer rooms, and one or two spots on the roof littered with telltale paraphernalia. This was no surprise. The place was utterly indefensible with all the hills surrounding it. It’s only merits were its proximity to our lines, and the main road. The rats of its namesake would scamper away whenever we bothered to patrol these ruins, which was infrequent. Their tarry grew bolder if we long neglected our patrols, which had been the case of late. Typically, there were 10 or 15 rats scurrying about, and typically it took a party of twice that many to send them away back across the Wasteland. It wasn’t so much like them to bugger off in the dark, in a rare and fearsome rainstorm. There was purpose behind it.


            At last, we circled back to the open corridor, a Roman villa sort of affair, with a busted water fountain scattered all around the sun streaked middle. Someone had perched a Mickey Mouse figurine on the top of the phallic, concrete spigot. He smiled and waved at me. There was a woman’s sneaker capsized in the Spanish tile basin. I sat down on the ground beside a perfectly good chair and took a sip from my canteen. I remembered. Never sit on a chair. Never pick up a Mickey Mouse doll. I took my jacket off. “Now what?” Tara shuffled off her kit and took off her jacket.  


            “I gotta go catch a boat.”


            “Huh?”


            “I gotta take a piss. …You never heard that one?”


            “No.”


            “That’s funny, because you told it to me.”


            “I did?”


            “Yeah.”


            “It’s stupid.”


            “Yeah it is. But hey, at least I don’t have to go wait for a train.” She walked around the other side of the fountain to where I mostly couldn’t see her.


            “…What color?”


            “What color what?”


            “Panties.”


            “My god. Is that all men think about?”


            “Well. I saw your black bra last night. I was just wondering. You know. Carpet and drapes.”  After a long moment, I saw her slowly-hoisted arm emerge from behind the fountain, a glorious pair of white thong panties draped from her fingertip like a parlay flag.


            “Oh. -- White.”


            “Oh la la! Exciting, right?”


            “Is that rhetorical?”


            She stood up and walked over to me, having already trussed her pants back up. She tossed the panties into my lap.


            “Thanks for the killer idea, Captain.”


            “What idea?”


            “My panties are the bomb, huh?”


            “They sure are pretty.”


            “To die for?”


            “Uh-huh.”


            “You want to pick them up and take a whiff so bad it's driving you insane, right?"
           
            "Is this how you usually pick up guys?"

             "...Make a hell of a booby trap, don't you think? Hey. Let’s change that to, booty trap!” She laughed and snorted. It was contagious.


            “You’re gonna rig a bomb to those?”


            “Mhm.”


            “Front towards enemy?" 

             "Good one."

           "I'm glad you’re on my side.”


            “I just can’t think where to put them. Any ideas?”


            “Hmm. Over near where they hitch their horses I guess. With any luck you’ll take out a couple of those too.”


            “I’m not that ruthless.”


            “So after we sabotage the joint with your unmentionables, what then?”


            “I’m not quite sure.  It’ll come to me.”


            “…well let me know if you get any ideas.”


            “I got one.”


            “What?”


            “Let’s eat. I’m hungry.” She broke out some trail mix and gave me some.


She paced up and down the corridor, munching peckish handfuls of granola, deep in thought. Her mood had impetuously shifted. I could feel it. She was tempestuous. I suddenly remembered that about her. 


            “You okay?” She seemed not to have heard me. But then, after a very long time –


            “You know, things are going to get ass-fucked out here fast. You know that, right?”


            “I guess.”


            “Straight up the ass.”


            “You scared?” She thought about the question for a moment.


            “Let me ask you something? Do you like the cock? It’s okay if you do. I won’t tell.”


            “Well, we’ll just have to be extra careful. Won’t we?”


            “Yeah. Only this brilliant plan of walking right up to the front door and ringing the bell... That’s not too fucking careful, is it?  It’s like ass-fucking ourselves, right?”


            “It could go that way.”


            “Is there any other way it could go? --The answer is, no. It’s a bad fucking plan.”


            “So what are your thoughts? What do you suggest?"


            “You fucking serious? You're asking me this shit now?"

             "Is that a problem?"

             "Yeah. Yeah it is, because you didn't have my back at the briefing. You didn't want my thoughts or suggestions. You just wanted a bodyguard because you haven't been in the chowder in so fucking long you wouldn't last ten minutes out here."

             "I don't remember the briefing. And I'm sorry. I'm sorry I didn't have your back, or consider your opinion. It was foolish of me. I apologize."

             "Drug-induced empathy. Great. Well, I guess I'll have to accept your apology."  

             “So what do you suggest? What are we gonna do? I mean, fuck the plan. We'll make a new one. Improvise,”

               "Look, Wes. I'm a field operative. I'm not used to operating with my handlers riding shotgun. I'm better alone. I work better alone. I like you. I do. As far as it goes. But I liked you better when you were just a code. A number. A cypher on a piece of paper I could set fire to. You're a smart guy, and you seem like you're an okay soldier. But I'm not a babysitter. I'm an assassin."

               "Well it seems you're a bit of both, for the moment. I'm a bit foggy here, so the roles are reversed for better or worse. Forget the plan, whatever it was. I can't remember it in any case. Let's just go with what we know. Start from where we are. The past and future are abstracts anyway. What are we working with right now? Tell me what you see. What you feel."          

            “…They were bluffing. She was here last night.”


            “Who?”


            “Caroline, you twat. They were holding her in that restroom. When those pimps back in Broadmoor didn’t meet their original terms, they panicked and pulled her out of here during the storm. They were worried we were going to raid this wretched gloryhole, which maybe we should have fucking done now that I see it. They chickened and ran.” 


            “What makes you think so?”


            “Jasmine.”


            “Come again?” She tossed a sprig of Jasmine onto my lap. A little, white wilted bloom. I picked it up and took a whiff as I looked down at her panties still in my lap.


            “That shit only grows in the royal garden. That’s the only place I’ve ever seen it around here. There, and on the floor of that shit hole over there that reeks of vomit and cum. We know they dragged her from her rooms through the back gardens. She must have plucked that off a bush and dropped it here as a sign. She’s not such a dumb cunt after all. “


            “Why do you hate her?”


            “Don’t derail my train here. -- They fell back to the ravine and stopped there. I guess because it was raining like a motherfucker. That’s the only shelter after Santana, under the Old Bridge. They probably had an express posted there, in which case, she’s already behind the wall. Inside the fucking city. A-Town.”


            “So what do we do?”


            “I don't know. Maybe hike on around to Santana, nose around, see what we can find out.”


            “Isn’t that dangerous?”


            “Of course. But maybe more dangerous not to. Anyway, they know me there. Nobody fucks with me. The Rats give them more trouble than I do. But watch your ass, and don’t trust anything about them. Got it? Don’t eat anything, don’t drink anything, don’t say anything. Don’t go out of my sight, even to use the bathroom. That clear? The drug lords run everything. Everyone's afraid of their own shadow. Real twitchy-ass place. Someone always getting popped. Great restaurant there though.”


            At that moment we heard a noise. Followed closely by another. We sat motionless, peering into one another’s eyes like utter darkness. Tara drew her sidearm in perfect silence, with practiced precision. But it was only a tumbleweed.

 As night fell, we settled into a quaint corner. It was fiercely cold, and a fire was out of the question. Tara had an old bottle of wine. "I was going to keep this for something special. For a bad injury or something. But it's heavy, and I think this is somehow best enjoyed now." She uncorked it. Took a sip. Another. Then passed it to me. We hadn't eaten much, were exhausted and dehydrated. The alcohol hit us quickly and hard.



We had nearly drunk the whole bottle. A rare jetcraft warbled overhead in the lower stratosphere. We both gawked up at the sky, but couldn’t see it anywhere. “Tell me something, Tara.”


“Anything, Wes.” She slurred. 


“You said before that you were, one of those girls.”


“A sex slave?”


“Well. How did you... I mean. What --”

“I lied.”

“You lied?”

“You sound so surprised. I’m not sure how to take that exactly. You have a thing for trauma or something?”

“What the fuck you mean, you lied?"

“Not a lie so much as clever marketing.” She shrugged and sipped her wine. “I gotta pee. Don’t you gotta pee too? What the fuck? I’ve never even seen you pee. Weird. You’re not a robot or something, right?” She stumbled off just around the corner. The gushing splash on the naked concrete echoed off the cold walls. A pool of piss blossomed from around the corner, assuming the meandering geography of a lake. A lake on a cozy and quiet war room map.  

“Why would you make something like that up, Tara?” I asked indignantly.

“You’re a guy. You wouldn’t understand.”

“Okay fine. So explain it,” I suggested.

“Can I pee first?”

“Okay,” I said. She belched, then farted. We laughed. “--You’re drunk.”

“No I’m not.”
 
She came back around the corner, clumsily kissing me on the head as she fell back beside me. “What were we talking about?"

  Going down hard and fast by the bow, straight to the bottom of this handsome bottle, Tara had me by the short scruff and wasn't letting go. Even at the price of her fingernails, hands, arms. I could tell by the way she drank with me, that she'd die with me just the same. I trusted her. Deeply. Even if it meant having to doubt my own self. Especially then. Even if she lied to me. I trusted even her lies.  
 
“Let me put it this way,” she mused, taking another sip of wine. “All great characters need a great story. And all great stories need a great character. Can’t have one without the other. They need each other. It’s essential. Like plants need water and sun. Together they are everything. Separately, they are nothing. It's elemental, you know? Anyway, people believe what they want to believe. Those beliefs fall into predictable patterns. A woman can't be strong, can't be a warrior unless it's all about revenge. It reinforces the beliefs about her essential weakness. A woman can't be strong because she's just strong. That's sacrilege.”

     Sleep. Weird Dreams. -- A storm of toxic tornadoes ravaging the broken cityscape. Huddles on a broken shore base like a herd of frightened beasts, waiting for battle to commence. The bomb goes off in the far distance. Insane bastards! The massive menace rises. Dark. Blue. White. Brown. A skyfull of ocean and steam. The shock arrives.  The remaining stocks of bombs are still used. Even now. Even after every inexorable terror they have wrought. The technology to manufacture more has long been lost. But enough remain to destroy the world all over again. The attack does not come. We head to the surplus depot. Heaping holocaust stocks of hats. Shoes. Shirts. We find what fits. Set out across the shattered world in search of anything un-terrible.

            A Highrise party. Stocks of vintage alcohol and cigarette brands arranged behind the bar. Artifacts of rare tequila. Scotch. Cordials. All standing like a cemetery of tombstones. Dwindling relics of civilization. Rape the planet, then smother and kill it. Somalia. Mutant pirates shall inherit the rotten earth.

     Electric on the ship not working. Taking on water. Drowning the circuitry. Red and white car from 1940 or 41. Pushed off the back. Floats for a while, then begins to sink.

     “What would happen if???”

     “Let’s not think about it.”

     Trapped in a room. I open the door to a hall with other doors. A syncopated sound of a machine. Someone is coming. Close the door and relock it. Open another to a bathroom. Lock myself in. There are windows, but they are too small. The first won’t open fully. I try the next. It’s high and small, but looks possibly big enough to crawl through. But it’s choked with screening too difficult to peel away in time. Someone is coming. Hurry. Hurry.

     Dutiful little man-boys in their submarines with their charts and binoculars. Deadly, dormant spores of humanity. Little black Tic-Tacs, hidden, floating, suspended in the vast subconsciousness of the sea. Lurking in the endless, moonless midnight of its sublime beauty like terrible memories. Compressed like diamonds in its tremendous pressures. Neatly uniformed, they patiently await. Perched at the controls in rigid shifts of red clocks. And maps. Electric maps. Glass maps. Crystalline, glowing abstracts of cities and secret ice passages. Glyphs. They chatter in fragmented code like a secret sewing circle of death. Hidden. Shadows of shadows. Waiting. Waiting for the trigger to incinerate the world.  

     1202 Alarm. Radar. Flicker-flash. Smoky-grey mist. Lunar obelisks. …Lilith.

     Floating in the dark sea all night, ducking under the waves as the search boats approach. Their searchlights beaming. Swooping. Blinding. Did they see my head? The bucket? I dive under the waves. Swimming. Fighting the trouncing tide. Slowly towards the thin line of islands on the intermittent horizon. Finally, I make it ashore late the following afternoon, after many grueling hours, exhausted, shivering. The feral children of the small pirate village gawking. “Hide me. Please.” They ask me if I am the man they are looking for. “No. My name is Lucienne.” But I look just like him, the man they are looking for. I tell them I am his brother. They take me to the pirates over at the pavilion. They are luxuriating lazily in the shade. Smoking opium and grass. I say I am the man’s brother. Tell them a story of our upbringing. Of our parents. They don’t seem to believe me or care. They sign me on. A triple death accord of pirates, sealed in spit, the blue water below the dock teaming with silver fish and fat sharks.

     She hasn’t been a good girlfriend to me. It had come as no surprise when she finally left. I looked at myself in the mirror. Took a walk. Wrote about it with my green jellybean pen at a standing-height cocktail table outside the reception hall. Bunch of circus freaks. A damn amusement park in there. Have to get away. Then, waiting to board a flight, first class. My skateboard with me. Security doesn’t like that. A mustachioed man scans it with some sort of gun. I can’t find my boarding pass. I left my messenger bag. Run back up the jetway to the terminal as the engines begin to churn and growl. “Hurry, Sir.” I find the bag, laying on the red, striped carpet. Massive concrete pillars, like an Egyptian temple. 1970's  LAX. Someone has stolen the contents. A manuscript. The taupe leather flap splayed open like a mortal wound. I collect the corpse of my empty bag. The big, silver thing will not wait. Shining like a mirror. Bristling with rivets. None of us have very much time. “Hurry, Sir.”

We were closer now to the sea than we would ever be once striking eastward for A-Town. "We'll lose 2 days, at least," Tara had said, but she wanted to make for the bridge at the ravine and follow it to the ocean, then double back. "They may have taken her by boat. Gotten her off the mainland. That's what I would do." It crossed my mind that Sawdust was also along the way. And also, Chet. There was something of a tinge of jealousy loitering about the consideration, but I was tired, and pretended I didn't feel it. It was easier not to feel things, the effects of the drugs still sloshing around my mushy skull. I followed the true and steady compass of Tara's ass, striding ahead of me. The pearly image of Chet's glorious cum all over it dashed in. I craved a cigarette.  

  We struck the coast as night fell, descending a long, steep road towards the bold serenade of the surf. Hollow shattered mansions clung to the cliff-side above us, watching us like the weird skulls of some fallen race of strange giants, their abandoned caves half- interred in long ages of earth. The moonless world was fading around us to black oblivion, the road beneath our aching feet no longer wholly discernable. We puller ourselves up into the ruins of the next address and set a lantern into a naked, concrete corner. The floor was paved with all sorts of junk, mudslides having frozen it all into place in a bizarre collage. A telephone. Clothing. Christmas decorations. I took a piss on the wall just beyond the dim pool of lantern light. Tara mounted the perilous pony of a gaping window sill, dangling her leg above the boisterous, invisible Pacific. She lit a cigarette. "I can almost see the cars," she said. "Headlights. Taillights. Red and white. Trailing the whole coast from the Baja to Monterey. Beautiful women on their way to dinner. Lovers. Murderers."

   

     "See anything out there?"

     "Nah."

     "Yeah. I was just wondering who used to live here."

     "Cigarettes never taste as good as you think they're gonna taste, you know? --some rich cocksuckers. This was primo real estate back in the day."

     "Not anymore."

     "...A purple bikini."

     "Huh?"

     "That's what I'd wear. If I had lived here. And flip flops. I'd just be drunk all day and lay in the sun." She hopped down off her little horse, squashed her cigarette and fetched the lantern "Come on. Let's sack out in here. I'm bush-whacked."

     

     I followed her into a large, half-round room surrounded with vacant steel casements like the frail spokes of some giant tiara from which all the jewels had been plucked. The lone furnishing of a little black piano bench cowered at out approach. We heaped our packs together against the wall, reclining against them shoulder-to-shoulder, and listened to the surf. There was a faint tremor. The building swayed under us like a hammock.

     "Feel that?"

     "Mhm."

     "The air is so clean here," she said, inhaling it like some expensive intoxicant. "You can almost breathe it." 

     "I guess the bar was over there by the piano."

     "No. There was no piano. Or bar. A bed. Big one. Round. Right here, where we're laying." Her hands hovered above the floor, fingers splayed, absorbing the warmth of some unseen fire.

     "A bedroom?"

     "The sheets were dark brown. Almost black. Like chocolate. Shiny. Silk. The bed lamps were big. Black. Like Roman amphorae. Gold fittings. Big black fabric shades, mirrored gold on the inside." She sat up, embracing her knees, staring up at what remained of the ceiling. "The ceiling was black. Inlayed with a galaxy of little white stars. LED lights. She had it custom made."

     "And white marble floors?" I asked, picking up a shard of it, turning it in my fingers like some prehistoric weapon."

     "No. The marble was put in much later. It was plush carpet. A most peculiar sort of crimson with a touch of mauve. She hated the marble. It was added after she died."

     "Her ghost, you mean?"

     "Yes."

     "Is she communicating with you now?"

     "No. She isn't here anymore. She's gone to black. But this room was her proper realm. Her Mount Olympus." She stood up slowly, turning to face the wall, taking three steps backward. "The walls were plush fabric. Sort of prune colored. Velvety. She loved soft things and dark colors." She put her hands into her pockets and drifted into the center of the room. "She died in this room. Murdered. --No. Suicide. But, it may as well have been murder."

     "Who was she?"

     "Well I just told you that, now didn't I?"

     "Sort of. Not really."

     "What are we if not our fondness and affinities? Our imaginations?"

     "I guess. She sounds lovely."

     "We're all lovely. We just don't realize it. Or can't. Or won't. And so we're all lovely, lonely creatures."

     "Who was she really though?"

     "Someone famous, which is the worst sort of lonely. A singer, I think. Very beautiful. But the saddest of eyes. Such pretty eyes that everyone always missed the sadness in them. But it was always right there in plain sight." She sat down again beside me and lit another cigarette. I could tell this one somehow tasted better.
     "There was this party one night." she continued. She was talking faster now, like a radio commercial. "There were lots of parties here. So many they hardly seemed parties at all. There were these two men on her bed. Talking. Laying there. One was her lover -- one of them anyhow. Not a favorite one, just an occasional one. The other, well, he was absolutely mad about her. They were very good friends. He was as close to her as anyone, which, sadly, still wasn't so very close. She just didn't like him in that way. She knew he was in love with her or whatever, he just wasn't her type, you know? Like a favorite piece of jewelry you love and keep, but which doesn't quite fit or suit you. So you never wear it. But you just keep trying it on, thinking maybe one day it will somehow suit you."
     "What were they talking about?"
     "I don't know. There was tension. Sexual tension. Probably something dull. The one who was occasionally fucking her was a dunce. A gorgeous idiot. The other was rather bright. He was bored while they waited in the slice of light from the hall. She returned with a silver tray of sandwiches. Tiny little toothpicks with olives impaled on them like little heads. She coiled herself exactly between the two men. A flouncy gold dress in the weird fashion of those times. The three of them lay there in the half-dark, nibbling sandwiches, drinking expensive alcohol. The big one, her lover that is, out of nowhere just pulled her legs apart and started strumming her like someone pretending they know how to play guitar. Thing is, she didn't so much as even flinch. It didn't feel especially good, and it wasn't turning her on. But nor did she protest. She was high and didn't care. --- You're getting a boner, aren't you?"
     "No I am not!"
     "Yes you are. It's okay. They both had boners too. Anyway, she made some sarcastic comment, which was over his head, her lover that is. He got upset about it. They argued. He left. So then it was just the two of them there alone on her bed. Her friend, you see. It was really incredibly awkward, considering what had just occurred. And then, he did the most unexpected thing. He brushed crumbs from his lips. Licked them. Then kissed her. Three times. Each time longer, and the last time, touching her face. His lips were incredibly soft. Full of patient curiosity. She was perfectly aroused."  

      

            Late the following afternoon, after sleeping in shifts, we set out onto the Wasteland, north towards the ravine. The sun was low in the western sky, which was foul and brown. The foothills were already cast in thickening shadows the color of dried blood. Tara had changed her mind about Santana. We would get much closer to A-Town if we managed to arrive there ahead of any rumors of our approach. Best to keep out of sight. There was an old school bus somewhere out there in the middle of nowhere. Foundered. Rusted. Broken. That’s where we were going. I admired many things about Tara. One of them, was her ability to change her mind half way into a bad plan. Even if it meant doubling back. 


The conspicuous yellow paint had been blasted away by long ages of autumn wind storms. What remained was a chameleon caravan. A fossilized tortoise shell, invisible to the best optics around, even the heavy duty antique shit. I nearly stubbed my toe on it myself before I realized I was standing right in front of it. But Tara knew right where it was, and took us right to it before the moon was too high and bright to travel safely. We hoisted ourselves inside,  reposing luxuriously upon the frail corpse of a vinyl sedan at the aft. It was the most comfortable thing either of us had experienced in days. Tara tugged off her boots.


            “You sure that’s a good idea?” I said softly.


            “Relax, Cowgirl,” She said aloud, slapping me hard on the back. “Ain’t no motherfuckers around here for miles. Shit. We may as well get naked and fuck real loud while we’re at it. ...The moon is so pretty tonight."


            “How’d you find this place? I mean, how the hell do you remember where it is.”


            “ ’Cause I’m a bad Bitch, that’s how. Hey. There's some great hooch under that floorboard.” There was a crate full of Mason jars filled with a pale green potion. I pulled one up and tossed it to her.


            “How many times you been here?”


            “I don’t know. Not much reason to come out here. It's hard to find. But I know exactly where it is. …I’ll never forget where it is. It’s --”

“What?

“I don’t know.” She was silent for a long spell. Pensive. She lit a candle. There were many candles, and puddles of dried wax. “This one time, we were patrolling the Backstreets, you know, a few blocks this side the Broadmoor Road. This troop of mudsuckers rides up on us. BMX’s squealing all around, exhaust so fucking thick you can taste the gasoline. A real good surprise ass-fucking. We’re all scrambling the fuck around. Trying to form up, find some cover, un-fuck ourselves. That’s when the first shot goes, ‘PoP!’ like a bottle of ice cold champagne with a raging hard-on. That first one got Benson. He fell down right in front of me like a pile of bricks. Fell so hard I hear his fucking arm snap. He was dead before he hit the ground."


            “I’m sorry.”

            “Then they killed two more. Kent, I think was his name. New kid. Can’t remember the other dude’s name. Joey, I think. So then, there were just 3 of us. Me and Jim -- poor bastard, we were squeezed into the shoulder of this dried up riverbed together like two turtles in one shell. Fuckers rode by us 100 times before they finally gave up. Woods managed to get away, but they caught up with him. Best to stay put if you find good cover. We got lucky. They tortured him for hours, trying to flush us out. We finally heard the shot as the sun was going down. So then, it’s just Jim and I. We called him J. You know. For short.” She giggled.

“…we were trying to make this little shelter. It was getting dark and it was windy and cold. Well. I guess he reached for the wrong fucking tree branch. Got bit by a spider. Little fucker too. No bigger than a fly. Got a headache. Started sweating. Acting funny. I did CPR for god knows how long. There were bruises on his fucking chest I hit him so many times. I think I busted some of his ribs. I was crying. Out of my mind. So. Then it was just me. Lost my whole fucking patrol. -- Fucking spider.”

            “That’s very sad. I’m sorry.” I put my hand on her shoulder and squeezed it. It was a strong, solid shoulder. She brushed away an errant tear like a spec of lint from a new pair of slacks.

            “Yeah. Well. That was the good part, I'm afraid. See, all these fucking coyotes came in like sharks. Fast. Vicious. They tore my boys all to pieces, while I sat there listening to them eat. You could hear them fighting over the flesh. Dozens of them. Frenzied. Their fur all fucking covered in blood. …A detachment of them started stalking me. Circling closer. I couldn’t shoot. Couldn’t risk giving away my position. I could only sit there and wait to die, or, run away and die. So I decided I would run away and die. I whittled myself a sharp fucking spear, throwing rocks at them to keep them off me while I carved it. Then, I started running east. Towards the sun. It seemed like the best direction. That was the longest night of my life, Wes. It was so dark. I wanted the sun to come up so bad. I was praying for it to come up. Begging for it to come up as I ran. I lost count of how many times I tripped and fell on my ass. I was covered in dirt and blood. Those devils followed me for miles, drawing closer as my strength gave out.”

            “Fuck.”

            “I figured that was that. You know? I couldn’t run any more. I crawled into a bush. Waited to die. But then, I fucking killed the first one that came at me with my spear. Stuck her good and hard in the neck as she lunged. The sound she made was otherworldly. Then, two more rushed in to defend her. Chewed the fuck out of my boot. Thrashing my foot all around. I thought for sure my ankle was broken it hurt so bad from all the thrashing. I clubbed her over the head. He went limp. The other one retreated. But there were more of them out there. I could hear them. They were close, and they weren’t giving up.“

“I knew if I stayed in that bush I was going to die, but I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t even stand up. My foot was numb. I started going into shock. I was confused. I looked up at the moon, trying to get my bearings. I remember thinking, the moon will be here with me as I die. SHE’s the one who will be looking down on me in my last moments. See, I have always sometimes wondered who would be there with me at the end. Would they be kind? Would they understand? Would they help me? Would it be a friend? An enemy?  My kin? A stranger? And here now was the answer. A pale-faced, silent angel, wise beyond ages, with a face of pure, blinding light. The silver doorway to heaven.

“’Oh, Mother Moon,” I said. “I shall miss you. I am glad it’s your face, after all. My heart is glad that it is your light that shines in my final darkness. You, that I bid goodbye. -- I love you. Watch over me.’”

“Then, I called out to the Coyotes. ‘Come, brothers and sisters. Come and eat me. Taste my blood. Eat my flesh. -- And may we dwell in the house of the Moon forever.’”

“And so, I tossed away my spear, resolved to surrender to my fate of awaiting fangs. But then, I heard my spear. It had struck something. Something solid. Hollow. Manmade. It struck this bus, which was but 10 feet from where I was cowering on the verge of death. I crawled in and barricaded the door. …You see? -- My prayers were answered, Wes.”

“My god,” I said, trying to think of something to ask or say. She pulled off her baja and pealed back her left sleeve to reveal a crescent moon tattoo.

“I’m a ghost, Wes. I’m not really here. I was eaten by coyotes, and they never found my body. And now, my spirit walks the earth in search of itself. That’s what this tattoo reminds me of when I look at it. “

“Baca told me you were a Witch.”

“That just come back to you right now?”

“Yeah.”

“...Do you think I’m a Witch?”

“No. …Maybe. --I don’t know. Are you?”

“...That’s the spear I made. Over there. In the corner.”

“Fuck me. Really?” I went over to and took it up gently, reverently. “It’s bigger than I imagined.” It was bonded neatly by leather and adorned with strange sigils and ornaments. A coyote tail. Coyote teeth. The tip was black and sooty. More staff than spear.

“Well, it didn’t look like that then. I kind of decorated it over time. Really, it’s a great weapon though. I’ve since killed lots of shit with it.”

“Like what?”

“Let’s change the subject. What I’m trying to tell you, is that this place is kind of sacred. A temple. Temple of the Moon. SHE saved my life. I offered her my dying prayer, and SHE answered it. SHE spared my life.”

“--The moon?”

“This is the only church I’ve ever understood. It’s the only spirituality I’ve ever known. If that makes me a Witch, then, I guess I’m a Witch. Baca doesn’t know the full story. He just knows something happened to me in the Wasteland, and that I came back a different sort of person.”

“I’m sure you don’t like to talk about it.” She shrugged.

"It happened. Anyway. You asked. Now you know.” A coyote yelped in the far away distance. We sat in silence.

Moonlight doused the floor. Cold desert air and the throb of crickets drifted in through the windows. Artillery stumbled in the far away distance.

“This is good.”

“Go easy on it. It’s very sneaky.”

It was potent and lit a cozy fire in my empty stomach. I took another whiff. It tickled the back of my neck.

“How long has this been in here?”

“It’s alcohol. It doesn’t spoil.”

“I know.”

“I brought it out here a few years ago I guess.”

“What for?”

“Religion.”

“Like witchy sort of stuff?”

“Yeah.”

“Like what?”

“I can’t really talk about it.”

By now, the jar had passed between us several times. I was getting warm and pealed off my shemagh.

“I feel kinda funny. What’s in this stuff anyway?

“I can’t talk about that either. You’re not even supposed to be drinking it. You wouldn’t if I told you.”

“What’s the big secret?”

“It’s part of a sacred rite.”

“Your coven?”

“Yes.”

“So this is where you convened?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, can’t you say anything about it?”

“I don’t suppose it matters much now. What do you want to know?”

“What the hell are we drinking?”

“An alchemy of this and that. It’s kind of like a fortified wine of sorts. Brandy, more or less, blended with other things.”

“Like?”’

“Herbs. Spices. Certain bodily fluids, harvested at full moon.”

“Oh.” She took a sip, passing the jar back to me. I drank.

“That doesn’t disgust you?”

“No.” I kicked off my boots. The fleece lining was damp with sweat. “It’s warming me up anyway, and tastes good, so --.”

“It does at that.”

“How many were in your coven?”

“30.”

“That’s a lot.”

“I suppose.”

“What did you do here? What, like orgies? Sacrifice? Weird incantations?”

“Yes. Among other things.”

“Really? What, or who did you sacrifice?”

“Nobody who’ll be much missed, or who didn’t first receive a fair trial.”

“How did – how were they killed?”

“The usual ways. They didn’t suffer, if that’s what you’re wondering. Some of them even managed to get laid first.”

“And the orgies?”

“What about them?”

“A religious ritual?”

“Yes.”

“How so?”

“Sex magic. Altered states. Transcending confines of lust and desire. Shedding of negative, repressive energies which corrupt the spirit. It’s also a way of channeling energies.”

“So like, 30 women all getting it on?”

“You’ll probably find all about it in your dreams soon enough. You’re drinking their orgasms. Their blood. Their urine.”

“You’re fucking with me.”

“It's all been safely distilled and purified with herbs, but no. I’m quite serious. This is a powerful place. Full of energy. The Taurus moon is nearly full tonight. Waning Gibbous. You’re drinking the essence of my sisters. They are certain to haunt your dreams. You’ll be tripping your balls off tonight, I’m sure." 

_{^{"And Caroline?"}}

"What about her?"

"I'm still not sure how she fits into all this. You never talk about it."

“She used to run a stash house out on the Wasteland. Not far from here. Half way between A-Town and Santiago. Ostensibly, a black base. Super low-key. But heavily guarded. Just in case anyone happened to accidentally stumble across it. Just a shack really. Her own private playhouse in the middle of fuck-ass nowhere. The Sunday Club. No no no. It really depended on who you asked – what the name of the club was. We just used to call it the Butt Hut. She was a serial rapist is what she was.”

“I thought only men did that.”

“Not so, my fine fiend. You've never done hard time in a female correctional facility, I take it?”

She accidentally knocked her jar off the little crate where it was perched, shattering it. Dangerous, wet glass was everywhere. “12AM. Guess that’s one sort of last call. The ass-fucking continues. What’s that? 2 and a half jars now?” She took another jar from the crate.

“Okay so give me the highlights.”

“I’ll have to give you the taillights. It was a long time ago. So, they had this brass stool in the middle of the joint. They cut a hole into the seat. Really it was a stolen relic they had very wickedly  desecrated. It was bolted to the floor over a brazier. The girls would shackle their bitchboys to it. Take turns pegging them. Hours. Days sometimes. They would boil all sorts of crazy hallucinogens under them. Aja, the girl who ran the place for her was in my coven. Drove this big fucking chopper. Used to bring the bitchboys in on it. Handcuffed to the big back seat. They’d be all beat to hell. Drugged. Their legs and ankles scorched from the tailpipes. No fight left in ‘em. Unless, of course, they were Katie’s type. That’s what she called herself at the Hut – Katie. She always wore a mask. Nobody but Aja knew who she really was when she was there in person.”

“What was her type?”

“Cherries. Tall. Blonde. Athletic. Macho. Type A. Guy’s who’d rather take a bullet to the head than a cock to the ass. She liked ‘em best with plenty of fight. She had a stockade built just for the Cherries. Had this modified horse bit thing made to keep their mouth open so she could spit roast ‘em. It was a pretty fucking wild scene. I mean, just image all this going on in the middle of the room while the rest of the girls sat at the bar drinking, playing darts, shooting pool and tequila like it was nothing. Just something innocuous on TV.”

“Jesus.”

“Anyway. She only liked the Cherries. Otherwise she wasn’t around much. She’d usually get tired of fucking them before they’d go soft. So the rest of the girls would take turns until they caved or just passed out.”

“Caved?”

“They’d promise to stop if he admitted he liked it. Begged for it like a whore – ‘I love your cock. Fuck me harder,’ shit like that. Sometimes they’d bring in two or three cherries at a time and make them fag-out on one another. That was always her favorite.”

“Jesus. You ever attend one of these classy parties yourself?”

“Once. When we knew she wouldn’t be there. By then I was quite afraid of her. Of the power she wielded. We all were. By then she was Chief Magistrate. Up to all sorts of wicked shit. But, there were a couple of girls there. Regular. Dykes who were tight with Aja. She wanted them to join our coven. I was against it, but Aja kept insisting. So I went down there to meet them.”

“What happened?”

“They had this guy chained up to the stool. Had him all dolled up in fishnets, garter belt, bra and makeup. The whole deal. They were riding him like a merry-go-round while we sat there shooting tequila. Kicking him in the nuts. Calling him names. They made him cum like 5 or 6 times. Made him eat it. They’d fuck him and the cum would just spill out from all the thrusting. When it was all over they branded his ass with a red hot iron in the shape of a little dick. Something they did to all the bitchboys. Pretty brutal. Burning flesh is the worst sort of smell. Like beer on hot coals or something. I felt bad for the guy, even though he was a Captain in the Regulars that had raped more women and girls than you could count. Caroline didn't give a fuck where they came from, but Aja curated them carefully. It was all on her conscience after all.”

“Did you take a turn fucking him?”

“ Yeah. Yes I did. I sort of had to. They were a real rough bunch those girls. Brutal. They asked me and I said yes. It was more a test than an invitation.”

“What was it like?”

“Rather absurd at first. But sort of invigorating eventually. They were slapping his ass. Pouring tequila all over him.”

“Were you aroused.”

“Yeah. I suppose I was.”

“Did you let the dykes join the coven?”

“For Aja’s sake, yes. But it proved a terrible mistake. One of them fell pretty hard for one of our sisters. Her girlfriend was insanely jealous. There was a knife fight in the bathroom. Her girlfriend was killed. Caroline swore out a warrant for our whole coven. Had us all arrested.”

“But you escaped.”

“Myself, and Aja. We weren’t there when they raided our temple.”

“Where were you?”

"Swimming. In a nearby pond. When we came back they were all gone. I never saw any of them again. " She had been turning her coyote tooth round and round in her fingers as she spoke.

"Where did you get that?"

"What?"

"The tooth around your neck. You always play with it when you're talking about something painful it seems."

"Am I?"

"It seems."

"Yes. Well. Anyway. After the brawl with the coyotes, I woke up in here all alone. Not sure how long I was out. Days maybe. I was terribly thirsty, and still badly wounded. The coyote I had knocked over the head was still lying outside in a heap. Dead, I thought. Really I had only broken her shoulder. She was still alive. Unable to retreat back into the night with her comrades, she just collapsed. So she had became my charge. Fate entrusting me with her care. I had a thought of putting her out of her misery, which was considerable, and which I very nearly effected. Almost. But my hands were stopped." 

She held out her hands, looking at them. Rubbing her fingers slowly together as if feeling some invisible scrap of velvet. "They rose to strike her. But, something within the poor creature seemed to - I don't know. I fashioned her a kind of crude splint. She wouldn't let me tend to her, so I just cut a piece of this green vinyl from one of these bench seats and draped it over her to keep her warm. Then I went looking for water. I could barely walk and didn't make it far. But I was sure there wasn't any water close by, so I stumbled back, saving what little strength I had. We were both so hungry and thirsty. I was sure we would die."

"What did you do?"

"The only thing I could do. Sing."

"Sing?"

"I guess it kept our spirits up or something. Took our minds off of suffering a little. Anyway, the early mornings were cold and misty, and everything was covered in dew. With tedious effort, I was able to collect a meager mouthful in the bottom of a bottle, before the merciless sun spirited it all away. It was scarcely enough, but even so, I shared half with Sky. That's what I named her on the second day. I promised her I would give her a name if she lived through the night. she had grown so weak she was no longer able or willing to rebuff my approach. She let me give her water. The morning after that, I gave her my share of the water also. I was able to truss up her wound. She understood that I was badly injured too, and there seemed a kind of comradery between us about it. That night I was able to move her inside the shelter and protection of the bus, away from the predators, which were always lurking about the temple with growing interest."

     "When I was strong enough to hunt, I managed a snake, a prairie dog, a small bird, a tarantula, cactus ears. I always shared half with Sky. She allowed me to pet her in a few days, and to tend to her wounds without bearing her teeth. Eventually, she made a full recovery, and ever after that was my closest companion. She never left my side. Not once in 12 years."

     "What happened to her?"
   
      "She died. Of old age, when her face and paws had turned the color of moonlight. Some years ago now."

       "You must miss her."

        "There aren't words for it. Anyway. This is hers. The tooth." 

      She bowed her head to remove the necklace and handed it to me. A long, pearly white incisor on a strand of leather, the hieroglyph of a crescent moon etched into the shiny enamel. I rolled its smoothness between my fingers.   

"It's beautiful."

"She's always close to me. I guess it makes sense that I touch it when I'm feeling anxious or whatever. She was my guide. I'm a little lost without her, I suppose."

     That night, I dreamt of undercover units, waiting in the desert. We flee. They chase. Need to ditch the drugs. Drive off a cliff, but don't crash. Just keep falling and falling. Past freeways, choked and pumping with traffic. Millions of cars flowing, pumping like red and white blood cells.

     Trainstop in the mountains. The small red wheels cannot be replaced, just scavenged and swapped. A big bungalow near the station. The embassy. The only substantial building for miles around.

     Writing in my logbook. A weird acquaintance comes to visit. A false friend. Q is watching. Must be back to work. Dominant female. Black leather chair with bright chrome. Her dark throne. I sit in it while she is out. She returns. Makes a face. I gather my things and scramble out of it. Go back to writing - a pair of pink panties peeks from the cram of journal pages. Q likes that. Momentarily envisions fucking me.

     The great chasm. City at the other side. An archer. Ring the black bell. The towering bridge floats across. Waiting in the gate house, close to the lofty edge, my arm about a massive, wood piling. The thirsty, slender river far below. Slowly crossing the desert waste to the other side on a floating tower bridge.


   _____________________


CHAPTER 5 - OF KILLING COWS and NAKED FLESH AWOKE

     The closet door slams shut by a deamon. I trace a crucifix on it and say a clear prayer. The paint peels. Missing dresses.

     Major Tyler’s battered, overheated caravan crunched to a dusty, skidding halt at the mouth of the canyon. He jammed the shifter into park and had his boot on the ground before the old Buick had even come to a stop. He stood for a moment behind the cover of the door. Looking. Listening. His squinted eyes shifting from scrubby hilltop to hilltop as the other 3 cars bounced in behind. Ochoa hopped out of his crumpled, diesel Mercedes with his shotgun and came forward. “What’s up?”


          “We walk from here. Turn the cars around. Stash ‘em down there,” Tyler said, indicating a shady grove of scattered, low slung oaks with a toss of his head. “Have Peterson and Owens fall back to that cliff we just passed. They can use those branches to sweep up our prints and tread marks.”


          “Roger that.” Ochoa said, jogging back to delegate the orders. They saddled up their gear. The late day sun was a blaze of blinding orange, but sinking fast beyond the steep looming hills of the canyon, which were already snuggling themselves up in a cold, grey blanket. It would soon be dusk.


          “How far you think, Major?” Ochoa asked.


          “20 minutes by the quickstep. – Okay boys. Let’s move. Stay on the shoulder.”


       They huffed it in two, silent columns along both shoulders of the road, making no sound but for their panting, the occasional clank of a canteen, and snap of a branch.  Just as their fast march had fallen into a rhythmic progress, it suddenly became entangled in a sparkling, jittery quilt of long, green laser beams. Major Tyler gave the signal to halt. “Okay boys. Put ‘em down slowly!” he shouted, placing his shotgun on the deck, his hands on the top of his head. The whiney squeals of a dirt bike muttered in the distance. Its growling skid and noxious sputters were quickly upon them, the black rider addressing them from the anonymous din of his helmet.  “WHO ARE YOU????”


         “We’ve come to see Rowdy. He’s expecting us,” Major Tyler shouted over the noise of the engine.


         “WHO ARE YOU?” repeated the rider.


         “I’m Tyler. This is my Company.”


          “What’s the watchword?” 


          “Tarantula.” The rider shut off the bike and dismounted. The lasers extinguished themselves.


          “I’m Molyneux,” the rider said, flicking up his black visor to reveal a pair of white, crazy eyes splayed within a pale, unsettling face. “You heard of me?”


           “Rowdy’s right hand man. Something like that.” Tyler said.


            “That’s right that’s right. So what the fuck you doing up here? I mean, you heard of me. So what the fuck you doing up here?”


            “You’re Rowdy’s man. You ought to know,” Tyler baited. Molyneux glared at him, his crusty mouth moving as if he were chewing on something small and unsavory. “Let’s move it, okay? I ain’t got all day. Rowdy’s gonna want to hear what I have to say, and I ain’t saying it to you. So--”




 They got to the mouth of the mine as the thin grey of evening smothered the last of the day. Beyond the crooked maw of its looming timbers throbbed an insatiable darkness. The roil of Uranus, like a late-night motorbike, a skyliner on climb-out, the whir of a deserted railway tunnel. “…After you,” Molyneaux sung. Major Tyler hunched his wary way inside, the rest of the company falling in behind. They slowly descended, shuffling their feet, fingering the moist, irregular stone of the walls, waiving their hands ahead in the vast nothingness. Strange, music bounded wearily from somewhere far below.


           “This is fucked. I can’t see a fucking thing."


           “Keep moving,” Molyneaux hissed from somewhere behind. Was he leading them towards the precipice of an invisible deathfall? A vertical shaft, 200 feet straight to the bottom? Fear clung to them like hundreds of tiny ants. Then, there emerged, like a tiny malefic planet, a flickering beacon of faint orange light. Just a dingy smog at first, quivering in the blackness. As they drew closer, and came around a bend, a small gaslight flickered mercifully behind a charred glass chimney -- a lantern, suspended from a peg impaled in the massive torso of a rough-hewn beam. Ancient scaffolding. Much farther on ahead, another beacon seemed as though it might soon materialize. And so they navigated their way, deeper into the subterranean universe, following the lazy procession of lanterns like tiny planets towards some unknown world.


           Rowdy waited for them, deep below in his bunker, reclined in the incongruous comfort of a weary club chair, sipping a cup of wine. “Welcome to Down Town,” he said as they filed into his humble court and assembled before his throne. There was a woman perched in the shadowy corner with a gun. Two men played cards at a tiny cocktail table. His bodyguard seemed not to notice them. 


            “You do alright down here for yourself. Not what I imagined,” Tyler observed.


             “I don’t imagine someone like you has much imagination,” Rowdy said.“--Let’s skip the crap. What the fuck you want?”


              “I got a deal for Ya,” Major Tyler said.


              “Which is what?”


              “We know you took her. We know you don’t still have her. But we know you took her.”


              “I’m getting bored,” Rowdy sighed.


               “Your men. The ones who took her. They have something of hers. A necklace.”


               “Blah blah blah.”


               “We want it back,” Tyler told him.


               “And you’re telling me this --because?”


               “If you give it to me, the freeways are yours.  We’ll repeal the ordinance.” The ordinance Major Tyler was referring to was an assurance of ownership for all properties and plunder repossessed from the Santiagos. Its legal guarantees, and especially its lucrative bonuses, encouraged the enterprising, expatriated dispossessed of the Wasteland to raid the pirates, stealing back from them what they had stolen from the trade routes. It thereby kept piracy somewhat in check. Its repeal would grant the Santiagos free reign of the open roads. Rowdy said nothing for several long moments, sitting in the pale, blue light, sipping his wine. 


            “ Have some wine,” he finally said, setting the bottle down on the small table before him. “Someone, get the Major a cup.” 

“Walk with me a bit, Major. …To kill requires nothing but the blind will to strike. The instinctive impulse to destroy. It’s rooted in the soil of fear. Rage. Ignorance. We are all our own worst enemies. Our own worst terror. The black hand of malevolence works its ways in everyone. We have only to lose our own slight sight of it in the afternoon shade of breezy complicity for it to clench its fist and strike; for it to manifest itself the serpent, with pretty patterned skin, fangs, fast poison. The paltry, psychological politics of homicide.”

The crunch of gravel underfoot. A lantern ahead. “Whoa!” Rowdy sprang back.

“Easy Major. There's no light down here. It's a dark house indeed. Not even the Moon shines here.”

Rowdy tuned the plasma flame higher, holding out the lantern. The walls of the shaft shimmered into spidery blue-green existence. Immediately before them, the promontory of a deep chasm. Rowdy aimed his beam into the void. At the bottom were skeletons. Rowdy sat down on the edge. His legs dangling over the side. “This is my father. Down there. Say hello, Dad..”

______________________                            III  


“You know who I am?” echoed a lazy voice. Caroline said nothing. She could see nothing beyond the hood drawn over her head. It stunk of mold. She was terrified to answer the voice, and terrified not to. This conundrum fought over her indecision like two wild beasts tugging savagely at opposite ends of a carcass. He began to sing. Softly. “I’m a Joker. I’m a smoker. I’m a midnight toker. I sure don’t want to hurt no one...”

“I don’t know, Sir” she murmured.

“My name is, Richmond. You heard of me?”

“No, Sir.” 

“Everyone calls me, Mister President. But I prefer, Richmond. --I hate fucking titles and ranks. How ‘bout you, Princess? You hate titles too? Judging by that shitty fucking hood on your pretty face, I’d say you’re starting to hate titles too, huh? Well, we’re just fucking stuck with ‘em, now, ain’t we? Just the way the world burns I guess. Of course, I ain’t complaining none. Titles do come with certain, distinct privileges, don’t they? Privileges. Know what I mean there, pretty Princess?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Call me, Richmond, okay? And cut the Sir crap, you rotten little tomato. I’ll be, Richmond. And you'll be, Caroline.” He began to sing again: “Was in the spring. And spring became the summer. Who’d have believed you’d come along.” His voice bounded off the walls of what sounded like a big warehouse of some kind. The bindings were digging into her wrists, weeping blood when she squirmed. “Know that song, Caroline?”

“No.”

“You and I, see, we’re going to be really good friends. I’ll bet you got a lot of nice friends, don’t you? In fact, I may yet know some of your friends. I’m sure I believe I do. Used to be my capital city too, you know. It’s nice to have friends, don’t you think? ‘Specially when you really got no one else to turn to. Know what I mean? Someone you can count on to have your back in a real tight pussy of a jamb. Oh, -- I’m so sorry. My language. I sometimes forget myself. I hope I didn’t fucking offend you. Such a dirty fucking word – pussy. Don’t you think? …Vagina! That’s much better. More proper-like. Wouldn’t you say? Awe shit. You ain’t gotta answer that. You got the right to remain silent. All that kinda shit. You don’t talk much anyway though, do you?”

“No.”

“Why is that, Princess Cherry Pie? How come you got nothing to say for such a busy little beaver? Huh?”

“—I’m sorry.”

“You believe in Karma, Cherry Pie?”

“I don’t know.”

“You ever heard of Karma?”

“No.”

“You rich, privileged cunts are all fucking stupid, ain’t you? How about irony? You heard of that?”

“Yes.”

“Same fucking thing. But look. I’m no judge – not a garbage man. I’m not here to sit in judgement of your sins, Cherry Pie. See, I believe a person can only judge their very own self. Right? Only you yourself are qualified to convict your own conscience. Only you yourself really know what the fuck you done, why the fuck you done it, how fucking guilty you are. I mean, no one can figure that shit out for you, any more than they can tell you what god or devil you ought to worship or fear, what flag you ought to salute, how long you should rot in prison before your debts are all square-like. Know what I’m talking about, Cherry Pie?”

“Yes.”

“Well, maybe you do, and maybe you don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about! See, that’s the real problem here, isn’t it? That’s how come we gotta have so many fucking courts, and churches, and lawyers, and -- executioners.” He stood up and walked over close to her, hovering over her like a sudden thundercloud, rumbling. “Because people prefer to leave that shit up to someone else. It’s too gross. Too ugly. Smells too bad. Nobody wants to haul their own garbage down to the dump twice a week. Smell it. See it. Dig the hole. Think about the centuries of poison in the soil. No. Let’s hire someone to truck that shit away between 10 and 2 while we’re off at work. We’ll just come home at 5 to nice, empty garbage cans. …And slowly, fill ‘em back up again with sins.”

He knelt down beside her, putting his mouth close to her hooded head. “See, Cherry Pie? What I’m getting at here is, I don’t believe you have the slightest cunt hair of an idea what the fuck I’m talking about. …But that’s only because someone else has been taking out your trash for you your whole, fluffy life. You got some lower person to do every fucking thing for you. Make your dinner. Polish your silverware. Wipe your tight little asshole. You ain’t never had no reason to judge yourself, ‘cause you make up all your own fucking rules. And even if you break any of ‘em, it don’t matter. ‘Cause then, you just change the fucking game in the middle innings to fit the broken rules. I mean, god ain't watching? Shit. That old timer climbed out the back window long ago and skipped town without paying his bill. Now, he's just some spook story you use to frighten us dumb kiddies on Halloween -- Ain’t that how it works way way up at the tippy top, Cherry Pie? Way up top on the whipped cream? …Shit. You may as well be god. Right? Am I making any sense here yet, Princess Cherry Pie?”

“I’ve done bad things. I know I have. That’s what you’re saying. Right?”

“We all done bad things in this brittle cum stain of a world. It’s just the way of it. Of course, nobody thinks they’re bad. Everybody thinks they’re just doing what’s necessary. What's normal. What’s required. -- What they’re fucking told to do. Quietly. In their sleep. By people like you. Like your kind. But nobody's above you. Nobody telling you what to do. What to believe. Who to hate. Who to fight. What’s truth. What’s a lie. -- Who to kill.”

“Are you going to kill me?

“Me? Heavens no. No no no no. I’m not going to kill you, Cherry Pie.  At least, I don't think so. I don’t get my hands dirty anymore, pumpkin.  -- Well, not usually. Not unless it’s necessary. Required. Not unless someone tells me to. See, we got the same kind of food chain thing happening over here on our side too. Bunch of rich folks calling all the shots. It’s all the same, really. Oh, now, of course, we tell ourselves we're different. Better. More civilized and shit. But really, we ain't. -- Makes you wonder what all this war nonsense is really all about, don’t it? I mean, what’s fucking the point? Right? Anyway, I don't follow orders. I give them. Same as you. I would just have to sign something, or make an offhand, plausibly deniable suggestion to someone on an elevator to have you gutted and hauled away with tomorrow's trash. But hen, I wouldn't be around to watch you piss yourself like one of those pretty little girls you sold into slavery.”

“Is that what this is about?”

“...Your little summer lawn mowing business. Your pussy racket. --It was your loverboy James who sold you out. Did you know that? It’s true. Dumb fuck that he is. As soon your people figure that out, they’ll string his ass up. Shit. He’s probably dead already. Unless he had sense enough to run. All he wanted was money, you know. That, and some necklace of yours that’s apparently missing. Emeralds? 2 big fat ones. You wouldn’t happen to know where that is I suppose?”

“I dropped it somewhere. They dragged me out of my house in the middle of the night. It broke. I don’t know where it fell.”

“Too bad. My men tell me they searched you pretty thorough-like. I do hope they didn’t molest you any more than necessary. If they did, I’ll be hearing about it. They had orders not to – well, to bring you back here unmolested like.”

“They didn’t.“

“Oh. Well. Thank heaven for that, right?”


                                                TUESDAY NIGHT CONTINUED


   Tara lit another candle and began to rummage through the exhausted leather pouches of her kit.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” I wondered.

“Relax, Cowgirl. It’s fine.” She unfurled a map within the dim pool of light shimmering on the floor before us.

“Here. Look,” she said. It was a well-made map. Old. “We’re here. The Ravine is here. The Old Bridge. It runs true along the Coast Road, for the most part. It’s normally dry, but probably still well flooded for the next few days.”

There were still storms clinging to the mountain tops to the east. The runoff was flooding the Ravine.

“It will take us half a day to reach A-Town – here,” she indicated with a small pencil. “These are The Heights, their forward position. It’s too wide for them to properly garrison, but we dare not approach it by day. We’ll track northeast, at a diagonal, this way, until we strike the Coast Road. There’s good cover here – an old scrap yard the nomads makeshifted into something of a shantytown. They call it, Penny Lane. It’s mostly abandoned these days. We should reach it by dawn, then lay low until nightfall. There’s a gap in their lines – here. We'll plan to reach it just before dawn, and should be able to slip through. If we get into any chowder, it should only be ankle-deep, bob and weave around it. Once we come to this point, we’ll be in the clear, so to speak. We’ll see.”

“Just the two of us?”

“Unless you got a detachment stashed up your ass or something.”

“I don’t know.”

“We’ll probably just run into some Crackers here and there, but if we’re smart about it, we can avoid their notice. We can’t afford to get into anything up to our asses, so we’re just going to have to tip toe and hope the puddles aren’t too deep.” 

I felt a slippery gulch begin to slide open down deep in my gut. I pursed my lips, and leaned in to study the map more intently.

“Don’t go getting all twitchy on me. I know my way around this old piece of paper. You just hang back behind me and enjoy the view,” she teased, folding up the map. “I’ll get us there. Don’t worry.”


The cold desert night began to seep up through the raw metal flooring and into my legs. I snitched myself up tighter and tried to clear my mind.

“Relax. Okay? It will all come back to you when you need it to.”

“What?”

“Your inner warrior.”

“I hope so.”

“Don’t be such a pussy.” She blew out the candle. “We’re safe here, Wes, so we’re already ahead of the game. This moment. Right here. That’s all there is – the only moment that exists. And this moment is safe. So just be cool.”

“I’m alright.”

“Bullshit. Your noodles are still baked from that homebrew shit Baca churned up in his caldron. I don’t blame you for being all jumpy. But cut the crap, okay? You’re with me, and I’m the best there is to be out here with.”

“I would feel better if I had my wits about me.”

“Yeah. Well. Sometimes wits can get you ass-fucked. You let me worry about the wits part.”

Her words were soothing. My fear abated. It seemed that she could smell it on me like a dirty shirt.

“Thanks, Tara.”

“Don’t mention it, fag.”

We leaned back against the battered knees of the sedan. I contemplated how to ask her the next question. She sensed my trepidation. “What?"

“What did you mean back there when you said that I didn’t love Caroline. That I loved you?”

“Oh. That.”

“Well?”

“Well, I’m afraid there’s no easy way to explain that which would make any sense to you, Wes.”

“So explain it in a way that doesn’t.”

“Okay. Well. --I can see things.”

“You mean like the future?”

“And the past. The sideways.”

“Like visions?”

“Exactly like visions.”

“Are you awake, or asleep for these visions?”

“Both.”

“Images? Sounds?”

“Sometimes. But it’s usually something closer to intuition, I guess.”

“Gut feelings?”

“Kind of. More knowledge than emotion though. But, sometimes I just feel things too. It’s hard to distinguish. I guess it’s both.” 

                We sat in silence for several minutes. A sudden breeze stirred in the branches above us, unleashing a startling volley of acorns which strafed the roof of the bus like bullets in a dogfight. 

            “So what did you see of me? Us?”

            “Nothing.”

            “Nothing?”

            “Nothing. That’s how I know. I can’t ever see things about – I can’t ever see things of people I’m close to. That’s how I know. About us.”

“Is that good, or bad?”

“Neither. It just is. Like a sign.”

“What do you see right now?

“Right now?”

“Yes.”

“Nothing. I mean, it doesn’t really work like that. Not usually, anyway. I mean, sometimes if I close my eyes and sort of try to tune in, I can pick up these sort of frequencies. Like a radio.”

“Can you try it now?”

“…Give me your hand.” She gathered up my hand and squeezed it. “Now close your eyes. Relax. Clear your mind.” She was silent and still. After what seemed like a long time, she seemed to nod off to sleep. I thought maybe she had forgotten all about our impromptu séance, had been overcome by exhaustion, and drifted off to sleep. Then, as if from within a dream, she murmured something unintelligible, more moan than word. Then, just like that, quite suddenly, she lifted her head, and was awake again. Sluggish, but perfectly lucid. She slumped back against the sedan with a weary sigh.

            “Hey.”

            “…Hey.”

            “So?”

            “I was a bird,” she said, as if laboring under the influence of some sedative. “Flying very high, and very fast. Miles about the earth. Racing over the clouds. Clouds of pure white, like new-fallen snow. An endless blanket in all directions. Racing over dunes of pure white. Cold. Very very cold. The sky above was the deepest, purest blue I have ever seen. Paradise. It seemed like heaven. Like the stories of heaven, in the old texts. It was like I was an angel. A ferocious angel, roaring like a comet to holy battle. To somewhere urgent and deadly. In desperation. Fear coursed in my veins like a potent poison. As if I had been bitten by a venomous serpent. I might not live. -- only, I wasn’t me. I was you. I saw all this through your eyes.”

            “My eyes?

            “I think so, yes.” She drew another, heavy sigh, seeming to retire from her trance-like reverie.  My hand slipped from her grasp.

            “What does it mean?

             “Fuck if I know, Cowgirl. Why don’t you tell me?”

            “Can you remember anything else? Anything at all?”

            “It doesn’t work like that. I see shit all the time and have no fucking clue.”

            “There must be something. Anything.”

            “I was very frightened. Terrified. And it was hard to breathe. I felt like I might suffocate. My toes and fingers were in a lot of pain. They were so cold.”

            “But these were all my experiences? You were experiencing all this as me?”

            “Yes. I think so. I could be wrong, but I think so.”

            “Is this my future you saw?”

            “No. I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

            “I don’t get it.”

            “Welcome to my world. Look. No offense, but that takes a lot out of me, you know, and my ass is pretty well-fucked for the day as it is. We need to get some rest. We’re going to need it.”

            “Yes. Sorry. You're right.”

            “Don’t be. I liked holding your hand. We’ll try again another time. Maybe I’ll see something more. For now, you take first watch. Wake me in an hour. Exactly 1 hour.”

            “Okay.”

            She climbed up onto the sedan with her face towards the seat and huddled herself up into a tight ball. Bits of tattered, brittle foam hemorrhaged from old, gaping wounds in the frail upholstery. A lizard was perched on one of the denuded springs, regarding her with a crooked gestures of wary curiosity. My eyes moved instinctively over her feminine form, tracing her luxuriously. 

            “Just kick back and enjoy the view.” Somehow, she knew I was checking her out. Somehow she knew lots about me. More than I knew about myself.

            “We’re in range here. -- Radio Wasteland. I’ve got a rig if you want to have a listen.”

               “Wow. Really? ...Okay.” She tumbled off the sedan and ascended to the front of the bus.

              “I can’t sleep anyway.”  We can’t so much get the RW up in Broadmoor. A lot of people think it’s bunk. She knelt down in the knee well where a driver’s seat once was bolted and plucked an air conditioning louver out of the dash. She reached her hand into the open socket and switched on a radio set which she had cleverly concealed behind the decaying instrument panel. A speaker crackled like tiny firecrackers, and suddenly, there was Cab Calloway hacking his way through a dense jungle overgrown with wild saxophones.

“He’s been playing weird shit lately.”

“Amazing. I can’t remember the last time I heard music.” 

“Yeah. Well. It was just a couple days ago.”

“Really? Seems like ages. Where does he get this shit?”

“Supposedly, he found a bunch of old LP’s in a library or school or something. No one knows where he broadcasts from. His signal’s weak as fuck. Who knows. He’s probably just some kid. Some nerdy, smart kid locked in an attic somewhere.” Count Basie’s One O’Clock Jump began bouncing around the bus.

“He’s clever, whoever he is.”

“-- Or she.”

“Or she.”

“They’ll find him eventually. Poor bastard.”

“He just plays music. Supposedly, he never says much of anything. So why the fuck do they care? Why are they hunting him? People like the music.  Let him play it. It's not hurting anyone.”

“I can see you’re getting all worked up about this. Should we switch it off?.”

“He’s a legend. Whoever he is. Famous.”

“And that, Cowgirl, is why they’re hunting him. And when they'll find him… Well. I pray they don’t,” she offered somberly.

“I like these old tunes.”

“The signal can’t even climb out of the valley. My guess is he’s got it rigged up to some kind of mechanical generator. Wind. Water. Something like that.”

“How did you rig up your receiver?”

“Solar cell. I gotta come out here once in a while to dust it off or the battery goes dead.”

“Where’d you learn to do all this shit?”

“-- I was making a bomb once. Out of an old radio. I had to take it all apart and wire it back up. That’s when I got hooked. I had a few spares. Junk really, but I got one of them to work after fiddling around with it for a few weeks. Sort of keeps my mind limber, you know. Electronics. It’s sort of my thing.”

“Like a hobby.”

“Yeah.”

From the distance bounded a bang. Tara lifted her head, listening intently. Something of a smile tried to form on her lips, a tentative gesture which seemed to understand the sound.

“What was that?” 

“...My panties.”

“Fuck me.”

“I’d say something trite or witty, but the truth is I hate killing. I hate that I’m good at it. --But I am. It’s a curse. A fucking curse. “

“I’m sorry.” We sat listening to, Bie Mis Dur Schoern.

“He does say things, by the way,” she said.

“Really?”

“Yes. Just not so much with his mouth. More with his songs. He plays them in a certain order. And if you put the titles together, it forms a kind of code. That’s the brilliance of it. That’s what makes it so hard to crack. No one tries to crack a code that they don’t recognize as a code in the first place. See? Like hiding something in plain sight.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Really.”

“Like what kind of messages does he send? Who’s he sending them to?”

“I thought it was a gag at first. Like he was doing it out of boredom. Just for kicks. I was listening one night. And somehow, I just started noticing that all the song titles were forming sentences. Random shit. Fragments. But it definitely had a pattern. Linguistic pattern. It was quite amusing and entertaining, actually. Whoever this guy is, he’s got a sense of humor.”

“You keep saying ‘he’. What about your idea that it might be a female?”

“Nah. It’s definitely a guy.”

“How do you know?”

“Because he talks about sex more than anything else.”

“So do you.”

“Good point. I'm a weird chick though, No no. I'm sure. It's a dude. He’s quite risqué’. Clever and naughty.”

“You like him.”

“Well sure. I mean, yeah. He’s interesting.”

“What kind of stuff does he say? I mean, the song titles.”

“I can’t think of anything offhand. I haven’t tuned in in a while. He just strings stuff together and it’s usually somehow sexual. Not always, but often. Often narrative somehow.“

“And you think he’s actually sending codes?”

“Yes. Stan - The All Nite Record Man. That’s what he calls himself. I mean, at least I think so.”

“Is that a song title?”

“Yeah. ‘Stay up Stan. The All Nite Record Man.’ I call him Stan anyway. Who the fuck knows.”

“So what are the codes do you think?”

“I think. I think. ...I think they’re troop dispositions. Numbers of soldiers. Tip offs. Watchwords. Warnings. All kinds of shit like that. I think he’s on our side.”

“Wow.”

“He uses different songs to designate their officers, political leaders. For instance, General Gutierez is, Leader of The Pack by the Shangralas. If he plays that, he’s talking about fat General Guts.”

“No shit?”

“Yeah. I have a code book. I’ve picked up some very useful intel from his station. But somehow, I can’t seem to convince anyone up the chain to put a more powerful receiver up on the hill. They think I'm bonkers.”

“A code book?”

“Yeah. It’s in my kit if you want to thumb through it. …I’ve tried to tell you about him many times, you know, but like everyone else, you never listen. So I’m honestly kind of amused that you suddenly now seem to find it so fascinating. ...I’m gonna lay back down and try and get some shut eye. Switch off the radio in a little bit. Don’t want to drain the battery."

"...I'm sorry that I was like that. That I didn't listen to you. I'll be better about it in the future."

“You always ignored me in the past. Why should the future be any different?”

“There is only one past. I can't change it. But there are many futures. It's just a matter of choosing the right ones.”

"That sounds like Baca. He tell you that?"

"As a matter of fact he did."

"Well thanks, Wes. It seems your time in the desert has done you some positive good. I wasn't sure whether it would."

"What's his story anyway? Baca?"

"It's a long one. But the short version is that he was a soldier. A medic, actually. In the last war. He deserted during the Battle of Lemon Hill. Got off the train in the middle of The Wastelend."

"He was at Lemon Hill?"

"He was. But don't ever ask him about it. Anyway, he was hiding out in a cave up in the mountains. The way he tells it, he had a vision. Saw some weird light out on The Wasteland one night. Went searching for it. Seduced him or something."

"What sort of light?"

"I don't know. He called it, The Slender Flame. Says he was drawn to it. Anyway, he became lost or something out there. Dying of thirst and hunger. Started scavenging for food. He ate some exotic cactus flower and started tripping his balls off. Had some lengthy conversation with some sort of goddess or something."

"Wow."

"Yes, well that's not even the weird part. On his way back to the cave, he came across this caravan of Feonian Priestesses on mules, returning from a pilgrimage. The least among them was this twelve year old girl. When they dismounted their mules, he threw himself at her feet in the dirt. They were all confused because she was just a poor peasant girl who had only recently been orphaned and taken in by the church. They told him to get up, and that he must be mad, but he said, ' I must yield myself to her holiness.' Years later, she became Silen, The Oracle of Feo."

"Fuck me. Is that true?"

"True blue. They recognized it as a sign and took him to their cloister in the mountains. Good thing too, because he surely would have died out there. When they first came upon him, he was down on all fours, grazing on leaves of grass like a cow. He kept hallucinating for the better part of a week. Apparently prophesizing about all sorts of things. When he finally came out of it, they indoctrinated him in the ways of their order. The ways of divination."

"So he's a priest?"

"Not really. More of a renegade missionary. He kept wandering out after more of the cactus flowers, which didn't sit too well with the clergy. Apparently, they didn't dig all the stuff he started foretelling, so they cast him out. And, after all, he was a man. So excommunication was probably inevitable, you know. He went back to the cave and has been there ever since. But, Silen has become his patron and sees to his welfare even though he's widely regarded a heretic."

"Wow."

"Such is the slippery slope of the church. A jealously-guarded red tape bureaucracy, like any other. There's no real divinity left in it. Always the case once the original, formic experience or holy vision has faded to yellow, brittle pages."

That night, I had the most vivid dreams I have ever had in my life. Their electric colors seemed to leap and arc off the fluttering pages of my mind. I wanted to tell Tara about them immediately, before the details began to fade. I looked around the bus for her, but didn't see her. The morning had broken cold and gray, beset with low-flung clouds crawling on their bellies. Their droplets clung to everything everywhere. The crisp freshness of the atmosphere was more potent brew than hot coffee. I inhaled deeply, embracing it in my chest for a long, grateful moment. The air was clean. Very clean. No foul dust. No foul odors. Tara was already about and stirring somewhere beyond the trailing curtains of mist. I heard her whistling. Then, a sharp clamor, a grind, a sputter. Her ghost finally materialized. It was driving the hulk of an old Chevrolet. She leaned across the seat, addressing me urgently through the rusty skeleton of the passenger door. “Get your shit. Get in.”

Up close, I noticed that the back of the vehicle was actually a Jeep. The front was an ancient De Luxe. Somehow, the two halves had been torched together. My lower legs were asleep, and wouldn’t fully respond. I gathered my gear and swooped into the big, rusty cranium of the cab. She stomped the gas pedal, loosed the clutch, and launched us into the murky morning, a hail of muddy gravel spewing in our wake. She was driving fast. Too fast, it seemed to me for the poor visibility. I took firm hold of the dashboard and makeshift bulkhead above me, bracing myself as best I could for our imminent collision with some boulder, oak tree, or steep embankment.

“Sorry. We need to boogie. Just hang on.“

“Where did you get this?”

“I keep it stashed nearby.”

“Well why didn’t you say so?”

“You usually can’t drive out here. They’ll see you. But this fog is a perfect. They can still hear us, though. So we need to haul ass."

"I had some crazy fucking dreams last night," I shouted above the frenzied commotion of our bumpy ride.

"You don't say. Tell me about it," she asked. 

"Well. It was really fucking strange. I don't know how to explain it. I was -- well, I was -- you."

She jammed on the brakes. We smearing to a slippery stop. The engine idled roughly.

"What do you mean, you were me?" She asked urgently, reaching over and taking my hand firmly into her own.

     Suddenly, all went black. I began to dream the same dream again. Only, this time, somewhere off in the distance, I recognized it to be a memory, not a dream. --Tara's memory, more specifically, which I had dreamed in exquisite detail the night before. Now, through the sharp needle of her firm grasp, she was replaying every thin groove of it for herself like a shiny, black, revolving record album, spinning around and around on the turntable of my mind. Slumped in a delirium of vague-consciousness across the passenger seat, I was powerless to resist her perfect perusal of my visions, thoughts and feelings. There was a helplessness about it. An indignation. A sense of violation. But I couldn't stop her. She flipped through my mind like a waiting room magazine:

...I retreated into the plush protection of the wingback chair, its tired leather sighing around me.

“Hang on, Doll,” Chet’s voice echoed in my headset. With a reach of his long, sexy arm, he took hold of a set of levers on the ceiling between us and pushed them forward. The growling engines began to roar. We plodded our way through the tumbling waves like someone shoving their impetuous way through a crowd. Exploding rainbows of sea spray pelted the windows, bleeding back in long, racing rivulets. The cockpit began shaking violently. My fingers clawed deeply into the brown leather flesh of the armrests. I turned and looked out through a silver pizza slice of a window, out at the awaiting clouds beyond. ' --Get it together, Tara.'

     Just as the violent earthquake of our acceleration seemed about to rattle all the rivets out of the windows, we took to the air with a slippery sag. I felt my stomach drop, as if leaping from a roof. The shaking ceased. We were flying. '--Holy shhhhit.'

     Chet’s giggle rattled in my ears. I had forgotten that he could hear my voice whenever I spoke. I adjusted my mouthpiece. We climbed fast, banking sharply away from the coast. I watched the whole Pacific Ocean slide off the earth and into the sky. I wasn’t sure if we were crashing or turning. I leaned forward, peeking around the wing of my chair in Chet’s direction. He was casually steering the plane with his left hand, his fingers dangling through the bottom of the red leather steering wheel like slacks along a clothesline. His other hand twisted and flicked its way through a bristling maze of switches, dials and blinking lights. I heard a whining noise behind us.                

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Flaps.”

“Are they supposed to sound like that?”

“Relax, Dollface,” he said with a face-full of pretty, white teeth. Below the shallow visor of his beige, herringbone beanie, little miniature versions of myself cowered in the mirrors of his aviator glasses. He spanked my thigh, firmly, as if it were the shoulder of a horse. I sat up in my seat as the lumbering craft bounced through a thin ceiling of puffy clouds. I watched the needle on the altimeter in front of me slide past 4,000FT. My mouth was dry. I could feel my heart pounding.

“How’s ‘bout some music,” he said, flicking a switch. In a moment, the cheerful clatter of Reggae began to throb in our ears. A hot beam of sunlight sliced through the windows above us and across the instrument panel. “Oh. Reggae. Guess he finally got tired of Jazz.” I attempted to rest my arm on the window ledge beside me but recoiled quickly, the sunbaked metal nearly searing it. The oppressive heat of the cockpit had at least been displaced by a chilly draft. My ears popped. Suddenly the music came in clearer. We listened to the song, the waves of the inky Pacific twinkling below us:


‘I'm not in a position to entertain you,

the way that you're accustomed to,

Can't take you out to fancy places,

Like other fellows that I know can do.

I'm only able to romance you,

& make you tingle with delight.

Financially, I'm a pauper,

but when it comes to lovin’ I'm alright.’

“I’m so thirsty,” I said. “How long until we get there?”

“Oh, it won’t be long. But there’s a sink in the back if you want some water. Beer back there too, but it ain't cold.”

“Really? Water is fine.”

“Use my cup. It’s the blue one.”

     I pealed my headset off and unstrapped myself from my seat, cautiously slipping down through a pill-shaped doorway, past the radio and navigator benches. The sound of the engines was deafening without the cushy muffle of my headset. A plaid, sandbag ashtray sat lopsided on the radio desk. A pair of dog tags jingled. Sure enough, there was a little sink, just beyond the next set of bulkheads, across from a pair of small bunks. I spotted Chet’s blue, aluminum cup and poured myself a drink from the tiny tap. It was warm and stale, but did the trick. A shaving mug peered out at me from behind the chicken wire incarceration of a small, medicine cabinet. I pondered the front inscription: 


‘When A Man

Is Tired of Pleasure,

He is Tired of Life.’


     A sable shaving brush popped from out the ceramic top like a wary prairie dog. There was a neon pink and yellow surfboard suspended from the ceiling. A black cat was sleeping on it. I peered further down the green ice cream cone of the fuselage, at a pair of .50 caliber machinegun blisters. Their perforated barrels pointed up at blue, gusty nothingness. The aft compartment beyond was filled with wooden crates. The crates were full of brown bottles packed in straw. In spite of the straw padding, they were rattling like a chandelier in a Storyville Cathouse.


            “You going to teach me how to surf?” I asked, maneuvering my way back into my seat.

            “Fur-Shuuur, Babe. But not on Hakama. Way too sharkey.”

            “Sharkey?”

            “Put your seatbelt on, My Dear. ---Too many sharks.”

            “You any good?”

            “I can hold my own.”

            “That’s a shit-ton of suds you're hauling back there.”

            “Beer run for Jackie. Her egg sandwiches will stop your goddamn heart.”

             My seat and body vibrated in synchronous cadence with the wobbly drone of the engines. It had a hypnotic, lulling effect which was beginning to sooth my jumpy nerves. And all this, was my very first time in an airplane. My first time flying. What if something goes wrong? What if we blow a gasket, lose a screw? I suppose it’s not quite the same as blowing a tire, or overheating your radiator down there on some dirt road. Not like you can just pull over and thumb a ride. Yet, apart from the occasional, obnoxious nudge of an air pocket, it was quite cozy up here. Chet was chewing a piece of gum in his grinning mouth with big, exaggerated chomps that made the stubbley muscles of his jaw throb like the cheeks of a great big beautiful fish fighting for air. The tattoo of a winged anchor was sinking beneath the blue linen waves of his shirt sleeve. He was certainly in his element away up here in the clouds.   

“Who’s the stowaway?”

“Oh, that’s Decemus. We call him, Dec.”

“He seems quite cozy back there.”

“Yeah. He sleeps all day, raises hell all night.”

“I wonder where he gets that from.” -- Chet laughed.

     Just as I was starting to feel a bit more at ease, Chet reached up and reigned in the engines. The plane slumped and lurched into a steep descent.

“What’s wrong?” I asked nervously.

“Nothing,” Chet said, pointing over the paint-chipped flare of the dashboard at a brown smudge on the horizon. “We’re here.”

     The bouncy boat ride of the landing was much like the takeoff, but for the rugged island suddenly in front of us. We zoomed and bounced our way into the harbor, which was surrounded by steep, jagged cliffs. Pretty houses perched on the promontories like stoic pelicans idly awaiting some unwary fish. I had never seen a pretty house before. Only broken, incinerated, battle-scarred ones. It had never occurred to me that any other sort existed, except in old books and such. Out on the main dock beyond our bow, a topless woman stepped nimbly up onto the high pedestal of a marine piling and performed a perfect dive into the sea. She swam towards us with a mooring line coiled around her shoulder. Chet flipped a series of switches. The engines popped, smoked and sputtered silent.

“Leave your boots here. Along with anything else you don’t want to get wet.”

“We going for a swim or something?”

“Unless you can walk on water.” He removed his wristwatch and buckled it to the steering wheel.

     I followed him down below. The clumsy slosh of water reverberated eerily against the hull. I sat on the bottom bunk and started unlacing my boots. I watched as he casually, right in front of me, stripped down to his lovely, bare naked ass. I gawked in a stupor of grateful incredulity. It was the surprising, sunbaked color of the whole lovely rest of him. He sauntered over to the big fishbowl of the portside machinegun blister and bent over the gunwale. Yeah. He had a fine fucking ass. My hands began to imagine the feel of it.

“Ahoy, Sally!” He shouted down at the water.

“Chet!” answered the friendly woman's voice from somewhere below. He vanished over the side, disappearing in a splash.

“Come on, Tara!” he shouted. “There’s towels at the dock.” I unbuttoned my pants, peeking out a little square window. I didn’t see any sharks. 

      I hauled myself up a slippery wooden ladder. I was feeling self-conscious as I climbed up onto the dock in my soaking wet bra and panties, even in spite of the fact that I was somewhat overdressed. Sally stepped towards me with her salt and pepper crew cut. She was wearing only wet denim shorts and a mermaid necklace. Its garnet eyeball winked at me from between her naked breasts as she eagerly shook my hand. “I’m Sally. Chet’s told me all about you.” 

            “He has?”

            “Just kidding. First time on our Island, I’m sure.” She glanced me quickly up and down, playfully pulling my bra strap back like a slingshot, letting it snap back. “Let’s get you a towel, Mermaid.” The three of us strolled down the dock together. A young girl was hosing down the windshield of a trampy trawler just off our Starboard beam. Up ahead on the port side of the dock was a long, narrow wooden shack that seemed to have once been a railway caboose. It was now a bar, apparently, which was just opening for the day.

            “How’s that for an on-time arrival,” Chet remarked, parking his naked butt down on one of the barstools. A short woman with long, strawberry hair appeared from behind a small, swinging door with a porthole in it. She was trussing her hair up in a ponytail, clenching a yellow pencil between her teeth like a horse with a troublesome bit. The pink of her panties and nipples peeked through the thin cotton of her oversized chemise. 


“Son-of-a-bitch,” she said, squeezing the words out around the pencil.
             
“Kitchen open yet?” Chet said.


   “You know where it is,” the woman answered. “I gotta go replace a couple treads before someone breaks their ass. – Probably me.”


            “Tell you what. How's-about I fix the treads, and you fix us up with a round of sandwiches. -- Jackie. Sally. This is a friend of mine – Tara.”


            “You got yourself a deal, flyboy. --Nice to meet you, Tara. I’m Jackie.” She shook my hand.


            “Which one’s are giving you trouble?” Chet asked.


            “Down the back steps. You’ll see ‘em. I already have ‘em cut. All you gotta do is put ‘em in. -- but you still gotta pay for breakfast.”


            “Naturally,” Chet affirmed, leaping over the top of the bar and through the swinging door.


            “For god’s sake, put that thing away, man,” she shouted as he bounced down the steps to the pontoon dock below. “--You see weird shit on this island morning noon and night, but we can’t have penises running around without a leash,” she said.


            “I guess that would be bad.”


            “Chet's told you about this place, I assume,” Sally said, taking a seat on the blue glittering stool beside me.


            “No. --well, he told me you had good food.”


            “That figures,” Jackie said. I heard the whizzing of a drill down below. “It’s a lesbian penal colony.”


            “It is not!” Sally protested.


            “Is tutu,” Jackie said. “You take your eggs runny, or hard?” She asked me, turning around, reaching up on her tiptoes for a loaf of bread. The gesture presented me a view of her white, freckled butt, and rainbow-colored barcode tattoo on the nape of her neck.


            “Hard.”


            “Okay, technically, yes,” Sally explained. “But not really.” She pointed down the dock and out to sea. Towards the battle-torn mainland. Toward the motionless rise of distant black smoke.

             “That’s the prison. That hell, over there. That’s the joint. ...Right here? Where we’re sitting? This is the outside, honey. This is freedom. We're the folks who live on the hill. This is paradise. Back home. That's the ghetto.”


            “We’re just lucky they don’t bother with us much, that’s all” Jackie said dismally. “But it’s still a penal colony, any way you slice it. -- We’re not here by choice.”


            “Aren’t we though? You want to go back there?” Sally asked.


            “No. I’m just saying it’s not a free choice. That’s an important distinction.” Jackie put a pan onto the little old stove and ignited the burner.        


             “It’s an old debate,” Sally explained. “She’s a pain in the ass, but she makes a hell of a breakfast sandwich.”


            “I’ve heard of this place. I didn’t believe it though. I don’t believe half the shit they say. -- So, they sent you here because you’re lesbian?”


            “Yup,” Jackie said, dropping a pad of butter into the pan. In a moment, the sweet-smelling sizzle delighted the air. “You want a beer?” she asked, reaching up and flipping on a small radio that looked like it might be the disembodied front door of some miniature, gothic cathedral.


            “Um. Sure, I guess.”


            “She can fix some coffee if you’d rather,” Sally said.


            “Whatever you’re all going to have is fine.”


            “Beer it is,” Jackie said. Sally hopped over the counter and fished 4, tall brown bottles from a sloshy ice chest. There weren’t any labels on them.


            “Hope tall-ies are okay,” she said, prying the top off one and plunking it down in front of me as Jackie began cracking dirty, brown chicken eggs on the lip of the pan. “We killed all the shorties last night.”


     The sandwiches were everything Chet had cracked them up to be. Fresh onion, a sharp cheese, herbed relish, and a spicy, bison chorizo which made my nose run. All of it was locally produced on-island, and of the finest quality. I had never tasted food so fresh and flavorful, beer so delicious. I was woozy. It had been a long, good while since my last square one. Sally ran Chet's breakfast down the stairs. Jackie took a big bite of her sandwich, spraying off a steaming hot frying pan in the sink with her other hand. I watched the steam billowing around her. She seemed like some eerie angel, every assiduous, un-wasted gesture of her fully attuned to some never-ending series of worthy tasks. One hand doing this, the other doing that. As his coveted breakfast arrived, Chet shouted, "Halle-luau!" and set down his drill.

            “This is one hell-of-a sandwich,” I said. “Hope Chet didn’t put you to any trouble. You don’t look quite open yet.”

            “Nah. I take the butter out of the icebox soon as I hear old Hailey. It’s good and soft by the time his naked ass taxis up to my bar. Melts all at once in the pan when it's soft. That-a-way it don 't burn.”

             "I'm sure he has that effect on all the frails." Jackie laughed.

              "He's quite the Tarzan."

              "So who's Hailey?"

              "Some older broad who took a shine to him before he shipped out. School teacher or welder something. Depends who you ask."
          
              "So where's he from?"

               "Back east someplace - whatever's left of it. Not sure. You should ask him. He don't bite or nothing."

              “He always prance around naked like that?”

            “It’ll be pushing 115 degrees here in a couple hours. Just about everybody goes naked here. We’re all pals.”

            “--Listen. I left my dough back on the plane, but what do we owe you for breakfast?”

            “Awe, you’re sweet. No charge, Hon.”

            “Come on.”

            “No, really. He brings our beer in fresh once a month. Keeps all the bitches on this island drunk."

             "What's he take in trade?"

              "We keep his hangar ship shape. Hailey's Hayloft. Other side of the Island. Pretty neat-o. The Meatballs, -- if any happen to flock by, just think it's an old fishing wharf. Couple us girls take turns staying out that way. We actually catch most of our fish there, which keeps it all McCoy. So, he brings the beer, and all we gotta do is lay around naked and fish. -- That and mop up the occasional oil spill. Old Hailey's a bit of a squirter, don't you know. All in all, a pretty good deal."

               "Well it's damn good beer."

                "Why else you think we'd let a man on our island?"

                 "What about him?" I asked, indicating a handsome man in bright pink shorts up near the top of the dock. He was busily winding a long white sheet around the black, iron bollard of his shoulder.

                  "That's Chris. We call him, R-Man. He's gay."

                   "Why do they call him that?"

                   "...Because his favorite color is pink."

                   "No, I mean, R Man."

                   " Sorry. Bad joke. Because that's about all he ever says. -- Ask him how he's doing, he'll say, ' 'r man.' Ask him to man the guns, he'll say, ' 'r man .' " I followed Jackie's gesture up onto the roof, where I suddenly recognized that the chimney pipe was just a tin costume for the barrel of a 6-Inch Fifty.

                   "I guess you keep the real oven mitts in the breadbox, huh?"

                   "...I'm so sorry. I'm terrible with names. What did you say your name was again?" she asked in sudden arousal of keen interest.

                    "Tara."

                     "You know your peashooters, huh?" she asked. I pulled my wet hair up and spun around once quick on my stool, giving her a look at my infantry bars.

                      "I'll be dammed. Hang on-- you're not, Sergeant Tara Paige?"

                      "I suppose I am," I said.

                       "Fuck my tits. Will you do something for me, right fucking now?" she said, punching a button on the green brass cash register. The drawer spat open with a ding. She reached inside and produced a switchblade, which she stabbed into the bar beside my heavily sweating beer.

                        "Name it."

                         "Will you carve your initials or something into my bar?"
                     
                         "...Sure."

                          "I mean, it can be whatever. Doesn't have to be your name." I withdrew the knife from the wooden flesh of the bar, looking around for a blank spot.

                          "Oh, no. Not there. Back here. On the wall. By the radio's good. Just stand on the bar," she said in a fuss of excitement, clearing the runway for my approach. I put the knife in my teeth and mounted the bar like a basic training obstacle. I stepped down to the end with my dirty, bare feet, feeling like every boat in the harbor was watching me. There were a lot of boats. I leaned forward onto the back wall, bracing myself against it with my elbow. The well-exposed salient of my lily-white ass was now hoisted above the whole harbor like a flag. The shrill, bottle rocket of a catcall whistled from across the water. Over my shoulder, I saw a woman look at me from her fly bridge with binoculars.

                            "Right here okay?" I asked. Jackie was standing under me, eye-level with my wet undies.

                            "Perfect. Hey, but listen, keep that tattoo under your hair around here, okay? "

                             "Why? Seems pretty friendly to me."

                             "Yeah, but there's a pretty price on your head. Gossip. Spies. The enemy is listening. --That kinda shit."

                           I carved the word, TARA into the wall beside the radio, the yellow, wooden wounds deeply scarring the periwinkle paint. I felt bad about disfiguring the joint. It was pretty. But Jackie stood below me, supervising, her eyes absorbing the view of me with lascivious thirst. For a moment, my body imagined the feeling of her face, browsing all of its back boulevards. It seemed a pleasant drive.

                             "...Where the hell is Miller when you need her?"

                             "Who's Miller?" I asked.

                              "Our resident photographer. She always wears a blue bandana, and a German Shepard. Likes to take dirty pictures."

                               "Is this a dirty picture?"

                                "Oh, from where I'm standing it is."

     At sunset, swimming drunk and naked back to the plane with Chet, Tara saw a two-headed shark cruising far below her in the dark forests of tall kelp. Potentially, a very bad sign, but one she managed to shift out of her head with relative easy. For the moment, all she could predict of future events was that she was about to get fucked good and hard and long into the gathering night aboard a sloshy, flying waterbed. The telephone of apantomancy was off the cradle for tonight.  

.....

Field hospital hoedown. More or less The Watering Trough, but somewhat Galbraith Room, somewhat Gulfport Casino. Vaulted ceilings. Rustic. Beer signs on the wall. A square dance. Couples. Singles. Facing off across the hall. Colored lights flashing. Boots. Gingham barn dresses. White lace. We go to find something to eat. Tables spread with bewildering permutations of food and refreshment. I need to take a piss, but can’t find the can. I wander into the laboratory wing, finding a crude sort of latrine stall behind a shoulder-high swinging door. I extricate my penis and take crude, drunken aim. A woman approaches in a white lab coat and attempts to enter, feigning ignorance. Steals a peek. She apologizes for the misunderstanding. “You see, that’s out of order. Come with me.”

      She takes me down the hall to an oddly partitioned lab with a toilet at the back. I’m taking a leak behind the stall door. Several women of science in the heads-down 9-5 position as the breaking waves of my piss crash on the shore of the porcelain beach. A little radio crackles softly on top of the icebox. Through the door, one of them passes me a little plastic cup full of pretty, pink gelatin.  “Put some onto you penis. ..Just a little though.” I use too much. All of it. It tingles. My urethra stings. It makes me incredibly hard. -- Lying in a den in Bombay…

     Ancient schoolroom. Time out of joint. Schoolmates all grown. A drawer on the periphery full of colorful panties. A piercing compliment from somewhere behind me. Tara. Tyler is there. Huge. Kind. Handsome. A sort of reconciliation of all which may have been and never was. A celebration of all which fleeting was.

     W E N T O N. Name of a restaurant. The Ground Hyatt upstairs. Figuring it out from the furniture and bright window view behind the nude woman in the photo. Plugging in on the high table down in the lobby out front of the restaurant. Weird guests come and go. Strangely attired. Peeks of inappropriate flesh. Flash. Pics. Flesh flash flesh. Of course, hotels snort everything up as soon as you set foot on property. Data packets. Contacts. Messages. Cookies. Everything. They're idyllic fishing holes. The manager comes over making sugar-coated inquiries. “Try the curry. It’s lovely.”

 ......

                                                             4.

     I heard the faint popcorn of a distant skirmish bristling in the far foothills. My throat and mouth were parched. I cleared my throat. Tara tossed me her canteen. I took a sip. Then several more. Ella Fitzgerald’s voice was fluttering faintly. Radio Wasteland. My face felt like I had a very bad sunburn. I tasted blood in my mouth. Tara put her face close to mine, shouting. I could feel her breath on me, her words puffing through the air and into my open mouth. But she sounded like she was underwater. My head felt heavy. She jotted something down on a small scratchpad and handed it to me. It said: ‘Are you okay? We ran over a mine. Do you remember?’ I shrugged. She shook her head and stuffed the pencil into my hand. I began to write, trying to speak the words simultaneously. But my voice to me sounded just a din:

 ‘Remember car going fast. Then just woke up here.’ I tried to sit up. She pushed me back down. She held the canteen to my lips. I took a sip. Coughed. Then sleep carried me back away quickly again.  


     Penny Lane. So-called on account of all the rust. It was everywhere. So much that it stained all the soil of the long, bending escarpment which contained it like a long, sweeping arm. At one time in its life it had been a salvage depot. Then, the front lines shifted eastward closer to the foothills, and so it was hastily abandoned by the enemy. For a time, the nomadic tribes of the valley had settled it as kind of frontier town, fashioning the scraps of iron and timber and rubber and concrete into a ramshackle metropolis. A labyrinth of underground tunnels, steep and jagged trails, narrow rope bridges to nowhere, barricades, barbed wire.


     Though, quite suddenly, the tribespeople who had settled it, transforming the mountains of junk into a rough-hewn city had vanished. The sprawling ghost town they left behind was a wild meadow of fabled dangers. A place of notorious, whispered horrors. And so, the perfect place to hide. It was here, in the midst of this capsized civilization where Tara made her lair. Somewhere, out near the middle of this heaving sea of corrugated, jagged rust lay her secret, uncharted desert island. She alone knew how to navigate to it, through the shadowy, metal forest of shifting perils. She alone knew where the front door was. She alone knew where the keys were kept, under which non-leathal doormats. She alone knew where the infrared trip beams were trained. The sally ports. Tunnels.


     The innocuously, complete shamble of its exterior belied a quite remarkably lovely series of interior living spaces, highly refined, comfortable, well-crafted. I looked around. I knew she had made this place with her own two hands. All of it. Every casement. Every painted plane of smooth plaster. The furnishings were well curated. There was electricity. Air conditioning. Plumbing. A stove. A sofa. A radio. The rooms were very small, but well-designed and cozy. 2 Upstairs, 2 down, connected by a shoulder-width flight of steep stairs. 


   Up top, there were three small windows, huddled in the protective shoulders of camouflaging dormers. They afforded clear views to the south, east and west. She had carefully angled all the glass panes, and had chemically tinted them, such that they insulated the interior light, and diffused reflections. I remember her telling me how she conducted surveys of the outlying ground, making all the photometric calculations. The enemy would not ever see her lights at night, which were sparse in any case, and always red, like the iron intestines of a U-boat. My memory was coming back to me, and quite suddenly.


     I lay on the couch, gazing up at the blackness of night beyond the small skytlight, listening to the radio. It was a rambling garble tonight. An odd mix of midcentury commercials, crackly speeches – ‘smoke Camels, Duck-and-Cover, One Small Step.’ I wondered how Tara made any sense of it.


     She was downstairs, soaking in the tub. I recognized the sound of the water trickling inside the wall behind my head. I turned my head and hooted down the stairwell, the top stair of which I could almost reach with my hand. “Hey.”


     “Hey!” her celebratory voice echoed back from the void, AWASHIN IN THE SOUND OF SLISH SPLASH. “How you feeling?”


     “I guess we got blown up at the Crossroads, but I see I still have all my fingers and toes.” There were mines all over the Crossroads. I remembered that.


“Oh yeah. Don’t worry. I looked you over really-really good.”


“I’m sure you did.”


“Sounds like your memory’s back in town too.”


“Mostly, I think.”


“You had me worried. You feel dizzy or nauseas?”


“No.”


“Well take it slow. You got your bell rung good back there. You should see my truck.” 


                                    “Sorry.”


                                    “Yeah. Well.”


                                    “I don’t get this guy, Tara. -- Cigarette commercials. Old Jazz standards. The A-Bomb.”


                                    “Yeah. He’s really gabby tonight. Something’s up.” I heard the water stir below. Her footfall on the floor. “Toss your clothes down here. I’ll soak ‘em with mine.” I pealed off my clothes, wadded them up, and cast them down into the darkness. I wrapped a blanket around myself. She came up the stairs, and appeared in a dark cloak. The red wraith of her glided past me and sunk into her desk chair. It was a ridiculous, bloated thing with the appearance of having possibly once belonging to an obnoxious railroad tycoon. Winston Churchill’s words were pecking their tenacious way out of the wooden radio; words concerning the light and future of the world.


                                    “So. What does this mean? Churchill?”


                                    “I don’t know, but it makes me want a Scotch.”


                                    “I’ve never had Scotch.”


                                    “Me neither.”


                                    “I think this is the moon landing now.”


                                    “Yes. He plays this every quarter moon. Sort of a Lunar calendar.”


                                    “Why?”


                                    “Pretty useful info,” she insisted, swinging her bare feet up onto the desk. The pale skin of her strong calves throbbed in the eerie gambles of violet light from the small plasma lantern atop the radio. It had once been a railroad signal lantern. "...The first computer, they say, was made by the ancient Greeks. It ran on water. Know what it was for?"
                                    "No."

                                    "It was a celestial clock."


                                    “Is that new? That lamp? I don’t remember it.”


                                    “Yeah. Found it in a cellar not too far from here. The plasma socket was a perfect fit.” An old commercial came on for Admiral brand Radios. Tara picked up a pencil, poising it over a pad of paper like a fishing pole over a millpond. “When he plays this commercial, he’s talking about radio frequencies. “ There was then some goofy ad for Suntan lotion. Then, his zany voice broke in and announced the time – ‘8:05.’ She scribbled it down.


            “So we’re supposed to tune to 80.5 or something?”


            “No. It means they’ve been communicating on 805mhz.” She reached up and tuned the squelch knob of the transceiver under the cupboard. “I’ve been scanning it all night. Nothing.”


            “I’ve heard these commercials like 10 times tonight. Maybe they don’t mean shit.”


            “We’re just too far to pick up their handsets. I can hear the their digital. Faint. But they’re definitely using this channel. As for the commercials, it’s a broadcast loop. He changes it about every 6 hours or so. Usually on the high and low tide.”


            She came over to me with a medicine tin, knelt down beside me, and started blotting my face and neck with a cool, white gritty paste.


            “What’s that?”


            “Minerals. From the springs. It will help heal the skin.”


            “It stings.”


            “Yeah. Well. You’re pretty fucked up. You’ll be okay in a few days.”


            “A few days?!”


            “We need to get you better, Wes.”


            “I can manage.”


            “Maybe so. But no sense taking chances. Your body needs to heal a little.”


            “I suppose so. But what about Caroline?”


            “Look. We made it this far. We’re close. A night’s trek east through the pass and we’re inside the city. Let’s not overplay our hand just yet, okay? They’re not going to kill her. There’s no point in that. --Yet. Besides, if we shack up here for a couple days, Stay Up Stan here just might have some handy dandy news for us.” She dusted her fingers off over the top of the mini succulent garden she kept by the window, then amputated a cat’s ear sized piece of aloe for me. “Here. Dab this on your neck where it stings.”


            “I don’t get how all that gibber jabber shakes out.”


            “This Ford commercial? Before it was a jingle for aluminum foil. He’s talking about armored vehicles. The gasoline commercial up next is telling us that their mobile armor is low on fuel.”


            “How do you know? I mean, what you’re saying makes sense, I guess. But aren’t you connecting some pretty sketchy dots?”


            “No.”


            We heard the orbiting pulse of a recon drone. Tara was unconcerned. I peered up at the skylight.


            “Dowse the lights ya think?”


            “Nah.”


            I sat up. “Just in case?”


            “It’s a routine patrol. Relax. Anyway, their optics are for shit. Those dopey video gamers couldn’t find my lights by accident. And even if they felt like feeling me up, I got a jammer on the roof that’ll snag their dick in a zipper faster than a school night curfew.”


            “That fast, huh?” --She laughed.


            “If I turned it on right now, that fucking thing would drop like a wedding dress.”


            “Is everything sexual with you?”


            “Pretty fucking much.”



I slumped back down onto the sofa, feeling suddenly a bit woozy.


            “I’m so thirsty.”


            “…I’ll be right back,” she whispered, floating back down the stairs to fetch us some water. I was alone for the moment with the singing radio: ‘Oh, me. Oh, my. It’s Gonna Beeeee cloudy! C-L-O-U-D-YYY!!! -- Cloudy!’ -- That, was the weather report. Madcap, reverberating laughter. Delay echoes on too much overdrive.


I imagine the tickly sensation of some insect crawling up my ankle. I instinctively swat it away, killing it with a swift smack of the back of my hand. I look down and see two twiddling halves of a centipede, oozing their antifreeze all over the nice carpet. Fuckers are poisonous. Did I get stung? I scratch my ankle, though it’s not itchy. I was fast asleep before Tara returned with my glass of water.  

     Bicycling down through The Broadmoor with Stacy and Olive. Looking for the street. Looking for Wendy’s place.  Down somewhere near Raquel’s. Upstairs, there’s an afternoon dinner party. Her crazy Mom is twittering around. Fixing drinks. Prepping food. Tidying up. We spill ice. I’m not wearing a shirt. I go into the spare room where Wendy is trying to sleep, curled up facing the window, her back towards me as I enter. I lay down beside her, resting my head on her denim-clad ass like the sublime indulgence of a plush pillow, placing a restless hand inside the naked splay of her thighs. She shifts in feigned  protest. I fondle her. Casually and slow. My fingers tracing the middle seam of her dainty shorts. Tickling my upper lip with the tip of my tongue like some slow serpent.  

     Somehow, I’ve managed to get out of my pants, my cock inserted between her calves, slowly fucking her legs, slippery with precum.  My hand all over her stomach. My fingertips tracing and retracing her ribs, dipping in an out of her navel. Following the bone of her hip. She pretends sleep, but is breathing too hard. I can feel her heart. Her blood seething. I’m overwhelmed by the desire to make her come. Her Mother is still cleaning down the spiral steps below. She’s coming up the stairs. Tyler comes in and hands me my pants from the floor beside the bed. He waits for me to put them on, staring. I sit up, quickly trading the blanket for them. I tuck my cock between my thighs. He doesn’t see it as I hurriedly dress.

     I walk to the window. Down across the alleyway in the side yard of a little villa ranchero, there’s an attractive guy luxuriating in a cheap, battered lawn chair. Shirtless. Blue jeans. There’s another handsome guy perched adoringly on his knee. They’re sipping beers and sharing a cigarette. He reaches down and unzips the other’s blue jeans. His cock is long and hard. He starts giving him a handjob. A third guy emerges casually from the shadow of the doorway. Lights a cigarette. Watches. I call everyone to the window. “Look.” Soon they’re both naked. Their bodies are perfect. Their dicks so impressively large and beautiful. They look like some ancient Greek vase.

    Inside the villa ranchero, there’s a slow motion orgy. Familiar and unfamiliar guys sprawled around the living room coffee table, smoking spliffs laced with opium. Anxious limbs draped all over one another. Various stages of undress. The mood is serene and bright, but cloying. I step over some of them to say goodbye to Rene, trying careful not to squash them. A tattooed kid beneath me seizes me amorously by my ankles. He won’t let go. Grinning up at me. The girls are waiting down in the driveway with the dogs, ready to go. I break loose and try and catch up.

     We get separated in the Hydro Garden. There’s a farmer’s market going on. It’s crowded. Everywhere are people, colorful flowers, fruits, vegetables. I wander back beyond the gates. Down the hill, where I shouldn’t be. There are massive trucks. Huge. Big as ocean tankers. They unfurl their weird robotic armatures, davits and hoses. Lactating some nefarious liquid from the pregnant, plastic underbelly of their red, sloshy tanks. Chemical menace. Run! Nowhere to go. Men in bright orange suits and gas masks spray us with some yellow foam. “Don’t worry. It’s just soap. It will make you clean. It’s safe.” Frantic, I can’t find the others. I find my phone. Finally. But they find me before it boots up. “Where have you been? Let’s go.”            

     More disjointed dreams. Colorful. Vivid. I thought they had finally subsided. Bizarre conflations of past, future and present. I woke with a hardon. ...They’re selling the bayfront bungalow. She had told me matter-of-factly over the phone. Quickly. Just an aside. No time even to be disappointed. But there’s still the memory of her crossing and re-crossing her freckled legs on the patio as I discretely watch, chewing the tip of my pinky as I peek up her flouncy skirt. Still the fantasy of fucking her in the cold, dark sand. Upstairs in the loft. Her cries of pleasure bounding off the vaulted ceiling. Masturbating on the other end of the line. A couple of deviant pics. The slow, pathetic regret of – no no no. – Radio Wasteland. Again, reminding me. Again restoring me to the inexorable eternity of the present moment. Fucking shadow jock. Amazing. How does he do it? The Bunnymen. Figures.      

     She was in the next room, snoring faintly. I tuned the plasma flame up higher on the lamp and thumbed through her Radio Wasteland codebook. My dick still stubbornly hard. The entries were impossibly neat, meticulously written. Her penmanship was eerily perfect. 


Benny Goodman  - The Blues in My Flat - (Stan's House)
Benny Goodman  - The Blues in Your Flat (My House)

Glenn Miller - Ain't Cha Comin' Out?  (night attack)

Jimmy Dorsey  - Serenade to Nobody in Particular (misinformation / counter-intel)

Glenn Miller - At Sundown (dusk) 

Sidney Bechet - I Want You Tonight (tonight)

Bix Beiderbecke  - I Need Some Pettin' (horny)

Sidney Bechet - Shag (fuck)

Glenn Miller - Cinderella, Stay in My Arms  (dangerously delay)

 Joe Sullivan - I've Got a Crush on You ( ? )

 Duke Ellington - Hot and Bothered (horny)

 Pee Wee Russell - Taboo - (kink)

 King Oliver - You're Just My Type (informant)

 Glenn Miller - I Want My Share of Love (plunder)

 Johnny Dodds - Forty and Tight (milf)

 Louis Armstrong - Tight Like This (pussy)

 King Oliver and His Orchestra - I Must Have It

 Johnny Dodds - Too Tight (anal)

 Clarence Williams - You've Got the Right Key But the Wrong Keyhole (anal sex)

I put my hand on my cock as I continued reading.

 Louis Armstrong - He Likes It Slow

Don Redman - Hot and Anxious

 Bessie Smith - Need a Little Sugar in My Bowl

 Tommy Dorsey - The Big Dipper - (big cock)

 Bessie Smith - I'm Wild About That Thing

 Jelly Roll Morton - Climax Rag (cum rag)

 Louis Armstrong - Snowball (cum swap)

 Morton Seven - The Pearls (cum facial) 

 Billie Holiday - Me, Myself and I (masturbate)

 Alberta Hunter - Everybody Does It Now (mutual)

 Jimmy Lunceford - Cheatin' On Me

Peter Dawson - A Bachelor Gay (fag)

 Teddy Powell - Pussy in the Corner (hard to get)

Benny Goodman - Flat Foot Floogee (hooker)

John McCormack - Roses of Picardy (whores)

 Cab Calloway  - Tarzan of Harlem (Johns)

  Puttin' on The Ritz -          (Pimps)

Benny Goodman - Goodnight My Love - (signing off)

 Eddie Cole - Honey Hush (radio silence)

 Jimmy Dorsey - Listen to the Mocking Bird (enemy is listening)

 Ivie Anderson - It Don't Mean A Thing (ignore last / correction)

 Jimmie Noone  - I Know That You Know (Roger / understood / 10-4)

 Al Jolson - Waitin' for the Evening Mail (no report / waiting for mssg)

 Tommy Dorsey - Hold Tight (hold position / standby)

 Miff Mole - Hurricane (retreat fast!)

King Oliver - I'm Watching the Clock (delay / wait)
King Oliver and His Orchestra - Shake It and Break It (hurry up! / come quick)
Josephine Baker - Where'd You Get Those Eyes? (BOLO)

Coleman Hawkins - One Hour (1 hr)

Bennie Moten - Slow Motion (slow advance)

 Lionel Hampton  - When Lights Are Low (air raid / drones recon)

Billie Holiday - Blue Skies (all clear)

Lionel Hampton & His Orchestra - Ring Dem Bells (signal / siren)

Benny Goodman - Sing, Sing, Sing (interrogation / intel)

Alberta Hunter - Two Cigarettes in the Dark (night watch / guard)

Louis Armstrong - Lazy River (Ravine)
Lionel Hampton - Central Avenue Breakdown (Coast Road)
Louis Armstrong - Dear Old Southland (south)

King Oliver - West End Blues (west)

Mezz Mezzrow - Moon over Miami (full moon)

Cab Calloway & His Orchestra - A New Moon and an Old Serenade (new moon)

Ben Pollack - Mexicali Moon (half moon)

Loui Armstrong  - Ev'ntide (night)
Louis Armstrong - Sun Showers (day)

Bobby Hackett Orchestra - Sunrise Serenade (dawn)

Ronnie Magri - Stormy Weather (storm / bad weather)

Coleman Hawkins - Lost in a Fog (fog)

Bix Beiderbecke - Dusky Stevedore (labor force / worker)

Joe Sullivan - I Cover the Waterfront (Ravine patrol)

Maxine Sullivan - The Folks Who Live on the Hill (Aristocracy)

Art Tatum - Tea for Two (council of war)

Mezz Mezzrow - Lights Out (air raid / drones recon)

Artie Shaw - Non Stop Flight (aerial bomb run)

Jimmy Dorsey & His Orchestra - Pennies from Heaven (chaff / jam radar)

Artie Shaw - Back Bay Shuffle (end around / rear flank maneuver)

Benny Goodman - You Turned the Tables on Me (failed attack)
Bobby Hackett Orchestra / Claire Martin - I Surrender, Dear (surrender)
Mezz  (Mezzrow - There'll Be Some Changes Made (diversionary assault)
Bing Crosby - Dancing in the Dark (night assault / march)
Jimmy Dorsey & His Orchestra - Stompin' at the Savoy (fast march)
Louis Armstrong - Oriental Strut (slow march)
John McCormack - It's A Long Way To Tipperary (long march)
Sidney Bechet - In a Cafe on the Road to Calais (resting / stopping along march)
Morning After Blues (battle-weary)
Victor Young / Whispering Jack Smith - I'm Knee-Deep in Daisies (heavy casualties)
Harry Fay - How Ya Gonna Keep 'Em Down On The Farm? (distraction)
Henry "Red" Allen - Hush My Mouth (If I Ain't Goin' South (quiet retreat)
Henry "Red" Allen - Feeling Drowsy (army tired)

John McCormack - Keep The Home Fires Burning (searchlights)

Morton Seven - Cannon Ball Blues (field artillery)
Benny Goodman  - Ooooo-Oh Boom (heavy barrage)
Eddie Cole - Thunder (heavy guns / bombs)
Bix Beiderbecke & The Chicago Cornets - Mobile Blues (mobile artillery)
The Charioteers - Swing Low, Sweet Chariot (guided missile)
Nat King Cole - Caravan (column)

Bill Coleman - The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down (cavalry routed / retreat)

Morton Seven - Dead Man Blues (KIA / number of killed)
Tommy Dorsey - Black Eyes (number of wounded)
Henry "Red" Allen - Patrol Wagon Blues (number prisoners captured)

Louis Armstrong - St. James Infirmary (hospital)
Nat King Cole - There's No Anesthetic for Love (low medicine)
Jelly Roll Morton - Doctor Jazz (surgeon) \
Jimmy Dorsey  - The Love Bug Will Bite You (sick / disease - stay away)

 Louis Armstrong - Knockin' a Jug (low fuel / water)
Albertar Hunter - My Handy Man Ain't Handy No More (no mechanic)
Hot Lips Page - Gone With the Gin (fuel / fuel depot)
Nick Lucas - A Cup of Coffee, a Sandwich and You (low food)

Benny Goodman - Sweet Stranger (enemy spy)

 Nick Lucas - Singin' in the Rain (propaganda)

Charlie Barnet  - An Apple for the Teacher (bribe)

Clarence Williams - House Rent Blues (safe house)

Sidney Bechet - One O'Clock Jump ( 1am)

Hoagy Carmichael - After Twelve O'clock (midnight)
Jimmy Lunceford - Four or Five Times (4 -5am / 4 or 5 X's


Teddy Powell - Ridin' the Subways (railroad)

Bix Beiderbecke - Barnacle Bill, the Sailor  (Navy)
Al Jolson - Tell That to the Marines (Marines)
Don Redman - Jump Session (paratroops)

Bix Beiderbecke - Three Blind Mice (commando /special forces)

Artie Shaw - Deep in a Dream - (garrison / troops asleep)
The Boswell Sisters - Charlie Two-Step (divide forces in 2)
The Boswell Sisters - Trav'lin' All Alone (no escort)

 Alberta Hunter - I've Got a Mind to Ramble (enemy about to break)

Benny Goodman  - I'm Like a Fish Out of Water (vulnerable position)
Jimmy Dorsey - They Can't Take That Away from Me (fort / well fortified position)
Louis Armstrong & His Hot Seven - Keyhole Blues (locked / sealed off)
Al Jolson - I'm Sitting on Top of  the World (well-fortified on high ground)
Artie Shaw - A Room with a View - (watchtower)
Tommy Dorsey - Smoke Gets in Your Eyes (gas attack)

 Loui Armstrong And His Orchestra - Lyin' to Myself (bluffing)

Summertime - (Summer)
Winter Wonderland - (Winter)
The Autumn Wind (Fall)
Some Other Spring - (Spring)

Bing Crosby - June in January (Jan)
February Brings the Rain - (Feb)
Melancholy March - (March)
Les Allen - April in Paris (April)
Autumn to May - (May)
Memphis and June - (June)
Black Day in July - (July)
Time for August - (August)
Al Jolson - In Sweet September (Sept)
This October - (October)
November Spawned a Monster - (November)
December Will Be Magic Again - (December)


              "Can't sleep?" She had heard me flipping pages.

              "Sorry. Did I wake you?"

              "It's okay," she said, drifting in from out of the rusty gloom. "Most nights I can only sleep for a couple hours at a time anyway."

                The swirling menace of a drone approached again. I clung to the low flame of the plasma lamp like a pretty moth dancing nervously about a scolding porch light on a hot summer night, her journal perched atop the radio box like the narrow, tilted top of a pulpit. It came close, then, seemingly swam away altogether. Tentative relief. Then, suddenly, out of your calm certainty it was finally gone, growls it's way back into the foreground of your terrors.

             "Relax, bitch," she said, climbing up onto the stool by the window behind me. She began  grooming a small Bonsai, which was sprouted from a little ceramic pot atop a little bookcase. "I can hear your bones chattering from here. They can't see us."

             "I don't know how you stand it."

              "I barely hear it anymore."

              "I guess I'm just not used to this place. And it's right under their fucking noses."

               "Yep," she said, dunking the pot into a pan full of water. She was wearing just panties and a black baja with frog buttons. I was deliberately not gawking. I thumbed through the pages, but wasn't reading them anymore.

               "You have amazing legs, you know." She cocked her head in reflexive surprise like a shotgun, grinning at me, it seemed, from somewhere behind her hair.

                "Thanks," she said endearingly, returning promptly to her Bonsai. The drone was gone again. She began snipping little leaves, humming something gentle as the little tree drank. The room was murky, like a deep seabed. There was just enough blush of red light to crawl around, but your eyes grew accustomed to it, adapting, like some small, slithering creature in a remote crack or crevice. Tara had designed the angles of the room like the facets of a jewel to collect and direct the light such that none escaped its clever container. She could practically see in the dark, it seemed to me.

                 "How old is that thing?"

                  "It's not a thing. This is, Calafia. Queen Calafia, actually. She's a mighty tree. And she's about 9 years old or so."

                   "This really is a lovely place. I had forgotten. Or, rather, I'm having trouble remembering. Every conceivable comfort."

                    "Except wind chimes. I wish I could have wind chimes. Too conspicuous unfortunately. Makes me sad."

                   "What are all those books?" I asked.

                   "Whatever I can find."

                   "Have you read them all?"

                    "Mhm."

                   "What's your favorite?" She wiped her hands with a little cloth, then set them down on top of the case, drumming her fingers thoughtfully.

                    "Hmm... Favorite... -- Honestly?"

                    "You can lie if you want. I won't know the difference."

                    "Well, I forget everything that's down there." It was too dark to make out the titles. She switched on her little field lamp and passed its red bloom of light along the spinal columns. At last, she extracted one, handing it to me. I took it, bringing it close up to the plasma lamp. It was Robinson Crusoe. I handed it back.

                     "What's it about?"

                     "Read it and find out."

                     "You mean you're giving it to me?"

                     "Yeah."

                     "But it's your favorite."

                     "So, you can give it back to me when you're done. Just think how impressed I'll be in your choice of gifts."

                      "Thanks."

                       "You're welcome."

                      "You're an unusual sort of guy, aren't you?" she asked, making her way over to the sofa, reposing herself luxuriously upon it like a lizard sunning itself on a sunbaked stone.

                       "I guess so."

                        "I guess that's why I must like you."

                         "Must?"

                         "Is there any other sort?" I was quiet for a spell. Thinking. Feeling drawn to her. "You okay?"
                         "Yeah."

                          "Well, what's on your brainpan? I hear something sizzling."

                          "That pilot guy..."

                           "Chet?"

                           "Did you guys--"

                           "Fuck?"

                            "I was gonna say, 'do it.'"

                           "Well then I'm glad I interjected. Yes. We did."

                          "Do you like him?"

                          "Well that's a dumb question, isn't it?"

                          "So tell me about it."

                           "No I will not," she laughingly insisted.

                           "Why not?"

                           "It's personal, for one thing."

                            "Well, we're friends, aren't we?"

                            "Of course we are. What's that got to do with it?"

                            "Isn't that the sort of thing friends talk about? I mean, I don't expect people who aren't my friends to share that sort of thing."

                              "Point taken. ...what do you want to know?"

                              "Well, I had a dream. I was trying to tell you about it before we ran over that mine." She sat up.

                              "Go on."
                            
                             "Well. It was about you and him." She sighed.

                              "So then you know the whole fucking story," she said angrily. She sat up and drew herself up into a ball of fire.
           
                              "I guess I do."
 
                               "So then why the fuck did you ask me?"
                                               
                                "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to--."
                              
              She gusted out of the room, leaving me poignantly alone with the lamp, and the radio. I switched it on. It was The Smiths, How Soon Is Now? The waves were coming in much clearer here, closer to A-Town. Not crackly and warbling like they had been back at the bus. I wanted to go downstairs to her, to apologize, talk it out, set it right. She was feeling violated. I understood, or at least related. Empathized. The drugs I had taken, which Baca had given me days before, had left a powerful residue. At times, I could make things out in the dark, things I shouldn't have been able to perceive. I would wake in pitch darkness. See a luminous, hallucinogenic silhouette of a book on a table. Reach for it. Pick it up. -- Fuck me.

                At the same time, a connection had been established between Tara and I, between her psychic enchants, and my altered state of mind. Somehow, somewhere our wires became twisted together. A circuit had been formed. Electricity was flowing. We were sharing visions, dreams, intuition. There was a beautiful glow, an aura to it, but the amps it drew were putting a strain on us both. The wires were getting cooked. Beginning to smoke. We loved one another, I think. There was an attraction. Some ineffable affinity which resisted definition. But as our intimacy, our comradery flourished, -- it's not the voltage which kills your heart in the end, but the current. I left her alone. 

               I went to the window, to the Bonsai on the bookcase. I sat down on her stool, taking her in, looking out her window, her view. The murky zig zag of the street below was only just discernable. Nothing stirred. No sign of life. There was no moon. I imagined what life here was like for her. So much solitude. It seemed like it would be terrifyingly lonely, but I saw no evidence of loneliness about the room. Only warmth, comfort, luxury. Outside, just beyond these walls, the world was a living breathing hell. Death, destruction, decay. But here, inside Tara's house, shone a beam of invisible light which melted all of that away, and the future seemed open and wide. If there was life, and hope of it anywhere left in the world, it was surely here. It was surely her. A frog began to croak somewhere down in the dim beyond. How peculiar.

               What were we looking for? What would we find? Was this bewitched, psychedelic quest really about rescuing a white shimmering princess? Here, with the radio on, at the wild edge of a darkling half-world, I began to doubt it. Here, in this hidden, empty space, I feared the colorful sway of something more dissonant. 

I could feel her downstairs, thinking about Chet. A small part of the memory I had not seen before:

             We shared a banana in the dark, and the tepid sweetness of a big, heavy coconut. I thought of how he had taken hold of my hand on the dock on our way back to the plane. The muddled palpitation of the tide against the hull seemed to insinuate itself into our conversation, though I couldn't quite recall what few words we had exchanged, or even what they were concerning. The ocean rocked the flying boat like a cradle. Somewhere between the sound and motion, I drifted on a current of half consciousness. Drunk with sex and beer.
            The bunk was the most comfortable thing I had experienced in many months. There was a sensation of slow submergence into its comfort. My arms folded across my ribcage. My cold tits pointed up at the pyromancy of the stars, smoldering far beyond the small curl of the window above me. My leg splayed open. My pussy delightfully sore. My left foot and calve perched on the cold, soothing steel of the starboard bulkhead, the simmering heat of my body dissipating through it into the ocean. My belly caked with his dried ejaculate. Running my fingertips endless over it like the shed skin of a little reptile dissolving on the hot dunes of my abdomen. Moonlit clouds, drifting on the lofty tide above. Sparse. Dim. Slow. The nearly full moon had foundered beyond the high bluffs of the island, leaving just the dissipating exhaust of its silver smog.
             Suddenly, I was quite awake again, Chet snoring faintly beside me. The thought of another beer crossed my mind, but the fuselage was dark, unfamiliar, and undulating on the fitful swells. I was certain I would fall, or, step on the cat or some other unlucky thing.  
              Then, finally, sleep. Strange dreams. A dead shark floating. White belly towards the sky. Mouth agape. Replacement screws for the patrol boat up in dry dock. Orange paint. They're too small. Different shape. Won't cavitate correctly.
               Childhood school friends waiting in the car. After poison coffee cakes, tasteless and odorless, shopping for perfect presents at the greeting card store. A shooting star through the moon roof. Returning again, lesbians keeping the shop.

          Now, she seemed to be speaking to me from the quiet gloom below. "You are the magic, Wes. You make it manifest through truth, and pure energy. There is no arcane knowledge required. No secret book of spells. No idols or signs. All is inscribed within the pages of your own, deepest, most grounded self. The answers are within, not without.

______

Poor Dex. Taken to the stash house. It was called, The Butt Hut. The Sunday Club. The Pole. The Bee’s nest. The Fish Net. The Gas Station. The San Francisco Club. Had so many names.

Sometimes, on the road to freedom, you take a turn too wide, veer off, tumble over.

"Shayde! Fuck you!” I pointed. “I love you!” I turned and walked away. End of 10^th. Drives away. Smile as a tear rolls down. Waterwheel. Silver daisy, handmade of sculpted metal. I throw it at her through the car window. A black stone. Leather jacket for sale as the top of the stairs. Frank.

Frank switched on the radio, adjusting the volume to low. Static. He was in a real fix. But no one would find him up here at Old Miller’s Outpost. At least, no one would bother to look. Sweat clung to the aquiline beak of his nose and plummeted from the ledges of his weary face. “God,” he mumbled. “I trust in you.” The melancholy whistle of the wounded troop train howled from the far below. He could just make it out, crawling along the tawny floor of the Wasteland like a little centipede. The radio battery soon extinguished its depleted energy and fell silent.

     The shallow cave was a mercifully-cool 97 degrees, according to the little brass thermometer. The last of the afternoon sun shimmered in shrinking puddles at the powdery threshold, trickling over hot, white boulders, onto which he draped his wringing wet army shirt and vest. The withering rear was heaped and littered with disused cargo, utensils and instruments. Field glasses, charts, an old lantern. In the last war, the cave had been a hideout for raiding parties waylaying the rail line far below. Now it was all but forgotten. The advancing enemy wasn’t likely to have retained any notation of its position on their contemporary charts, and it would only be visible to their scanners and optics after they had advanced beyond it by half a league or more. They would be looking far above, in any case, much higher up on the ridge for gun emplacements.

     The Engineering Corps had ordered a brief halt in the swift retreat to mend the most serious wounds of the injured locomotive, attempting to improve its dwindling speed. It was then that Franklin had taken the decision to desert, concealing himself among the hastily off-loaded dead, who were beginning to bloat and stink. The vultures were fast to arrive, even before the last of the dead had been carried off the cars. Laying among their fallen ranks for nearly an hour before the train limped onwards towards the pruney dusk, and for some time after, he was relieved to finally take his leave of their ghastly feast, the sights and sounds of which clung to his memory in a relentless squall of torment.

     The decision to desert was an easy one. It was only a matter of hours before the train would be overtaken by the advancing enemy, and better to feign death now and slip away into the hills than to greet it veritably down the line on the dusty wastes. But, by nightfall, there was surprisingly still no sign of the lead columns. Franklin wondered whether they had broken pursuit. The moon would be full tonight. Surely he would spot their rising dust on the wide open Wasteland.

     An altar of skulls horned with candles and hemorrhaging brittle wax, watched him vacantly. As night fell, he lit one, illuminating the heavily-sooted ceiling and weirdly graffitied walls. Some of the signs and symbols dated before the apocalypse. The gusty winds piped a deafening and melancholy music from the choir of crags and scarps which beset the cave. It would be bitterly cold by moontide, but he dared not risk a fire. In any case, he could scarcely keep the candle lit in the fierce wind. There was no fuel for the lantern to be found, but he managed to insert the candle inside it to stabilize the flame and conserve his matches. Though far too windy for drones, a lonely, flickering candle seemed daring enough.

     The wind picked up as the night darkened. He put his shirt and vest back on, the sun and wind having dried them through. A rat scurried behind the stacks of old crates. His stomach groaned. The cave was growing colder. Franklin made a weak tea of what few sticks and crumbs he could grub together among the plundered provision crates. Its preparation busied his hands and mind, its meager warmth, a small but welcome comfort.

     The moonlit pallor of The Wasteland below was the colorless skin of the dead. Nothing stirred upon its vast emptiness. There seemed no stars above in the cloudless sky. There was only the still and ghostly blaze of the moon and shrill stammer of the wind. He dozed, intermittently, in restless turns, haunted by images of the earlier afternoon, startled by the mirage of sound and voices beyond the wind. The rustling of sagebrush. Coyotes. Wolves. His watch had stopped working days ago, but he reckoned time near well enough by position of the moon. It was directly overhead. Midnight. Give or take. 15 blessed minutes of something resembling sleep.

     Back in the city. Apartment 3-O. Below, outside the crusty black of the old, iron casements, beyond the frosty haze of the glass, the splayed geometries of an abandoned airbase. A pack of coyotes trots across their stubbled, concrete sprawl. Jumping, lunging at the open maw of the windows. The violent, blood-slimy collisions shatter the glass. “Get Togo out of here!” It was the first of Franklin’s visions. The one who would come to be called, Baca.

     The moon rose late, swollen and orange the next evening. And then, on the third night, the diaphanous white mist of a light appeared far away below on the wide waste. Faint. Furtive. A weird and startling apparition, wavering in and out of sight like a furtive star drowning beneath the spreading stain of twilight. Franklin took up the glasses, training them on the dark vicinity of the dubious phenomenon, finally finding the tiny flake of light, slow pulsing. Distinct. The wind screeched. Someone was down there. He took a fix on the position.

     By morning, he was weak from hunger, having exhausted all of his meager rations. And so, with still no sign of the advancing enemy, he determined to set out towards the location of the weird light. Where there was light, there was life. Perhaps a friend. Water. Food.       
 

     He had taken excellent reckoning of the position relative to a small chink in the withered line of shallow hills smeared along the far horizon, and would follow its bearing half a league beyond a copse of trees, unique in its size and situation on the otherwise barren expanse. It would be difficult to miss or mistake once descended from the lofty vantage of the cave. What the cave lacked in stores of food and water, it offered amply in surplus of military issue clothing. Though all of it vintage, from the last war, nearly all of it was perfectly serviceable, the desert climate preserving it perfectly well. Crates full of unissued boots, jackets, hats, helmets. All variety and accessory of attire. He outfitted himself head to toe in desert fatigues, and set down toward The Wasteland.

     By midday, he had reached the vicinity of the weird light, or so he reckoned. He slowed the pace of his hike, stopping altogether at frequent intervals to surveille the terrain for any sign of man. But there were only thorny blooms of cactus, withered stream beds littered with stones and broken branches; eerie tumults of broken earth sculpted by raging waters long receded, their fury written in the ground like the angry words of some long forgotten language. As the sun slipped past its zenith in the peaked sky, he worried he might not make it back to the cave before nightfall, supposing he might be caught on The Wasteland, exposed to all its darkling terrors. He pushed the thought away.   

     As he walked on towards the chink, each agonizing step another yet farther from the relative shelter of the cave, he began to imagine a sound. Like the tapping of a drum. A strange, regular rhythm with the melancholy cadence of a dirge, keeping pace with his own weary march over the unforgiving earth. Suddenly, he became certain the sound was not the product of his depleted mind. He stopped walking. The shuffle of his footfall having ceased, the frightening sound came in clearer. It was metallic. Surely a person, repeatedly rapping on some weird thing. Overcome with terror, he scurried under the cover of a shallow embankment overgrown with a canopy of large brushes. Was he being taunted? Was the sound some warning? He waited. Motionless. Bewitched by the mystery of the source. The distance and direction were difficult to fix. – Tap. Tap. Tap. He drew his sidearm.          

       The sun listing ever closer to the mountainside, he steeled himself and crept from the cover of the bushes and towards the sound. Stalking ever closer, until it seemed he must be directly upon it, he could still not discover the ominous origin. His terror near complete, at last the sound revealed itself. After all, it was a disused canteen which had been lynched to the broken appendage of a long dead Cottonwood tree, and which the wind was batting against the trunk. At once relieved and dismayed, he cautiously dismantled the cruel contraption, discovering it less than half full of stale water. It wasn't a booby trap, unless the water was poisoned. 

     As it had swayed and twisted in the wind, its silvery disk had reflected the moonlight.  This then was the mystery of the strange light he had seen the previous night. Searching the area, there seemed no other sign of man. No other equipment. No litter. No prints or tracks. Nothing. Nothing to account for the damned canteen.    

.....

Apyvah’s Chief Lietenant, “Nuke” Newcomb was crazy. To search the serenity of his warm brown eyes and flouncy blonde hair, you’d not find a psychotic kller. You’d have to look elsewhere. The sweet-smelling, gooey croquembouche of bodies perhaps, dusted with lime like powdered sugar. A killer he was, and possibly the craziest. His conscious was fully liberated from the tyranny of guilt. He was no patriot. No sociopath. Just a well practiced butcher. In this world, the threat of death means nothing because it’s all around you. They would follow route 13 to the Morris Street Bridge. Strange rain. A massive black tornado. To the north, the armies were approaching the borderlands of the Forbidden Empire, massing their artillery on the Panorama Valley. Drones searching their positions.

Their crack units and its campaign of terror were designed to persuade the poor, indigenous Montagnards of the righteousness of their cause. Back on the Broadmoor, the good citizens behind the wall knew less than nothing of their methods. They were the selfless brave, fighting the good fight. But really, it was a carnival of horror out there, and they were the top-hatted ring masters.

The sun was just set. We sat on the fevered street. Its scintillating heat signature swallowing us whole. Out here on the perimeter we would find him. He would find us.

Their countryside inquisitions would have extracted possible clues. Mouthless teeth and handless fingers. There was little doubt the Princess had been taken to A-Town. And so, Newcomb was here, inside the city, having so far avoided detection.

All the operations, like Black Cat, were planned Monday thru Friday, 9 – 5. In air conditioned offices. Cuff links. Neckties. Pencil sharpeners. Calculators. Here there was no blood. Scarcely coffee was spilled. Everybody went home at night. Returned in the morning. States are not moral agents. They are perilous, self-perpetual systems. Homicide machines. 

“But I have taken the wreckage. Day of the Dead.”

Plane crash. P Gas. Mountains…

Glow sticks. EL wire. I dreamt of Holly. Didn’t look like her. She was plain looking. With another guy. We were all in uniform. On a mission. She seemed indifferent. Perhaps not remembering. Finally, she acknowledged the memory. I hugged her. Told her I was certain I would never see her again. Her green eyes were lovely. Her hair was golden and beautiful. Curlier this time. I told her I was sorry for being such a jerk. She said she was never sure if I loved her and just couldn’t deal with the mystery once she got sick. It felt so good to hold her.

Underground rooms of the old train tunnels. Trapped. Searching for clues. We cling to what we can.

We gotta get outta here. They’re coming. Get your shit. Tape recorder. Records. Logs. Code books. What you can carry. Destroy the rest. …searchlight in the fog.

Separated. Imprisoned in the mountain temple cloister. Bells. Taking nude photos. Line of women waiting to suck cock. Listening at the cell wall. Hearing them moan.

Chinese launderess. Litany of razor wire. Secret room where deals are done. The sickly trombone of a siren, like the bray of some massive hound in pursuit. Abandoned jam of decaying automobiles. Impatient, backward confusion of weird corridors. Up the black ladder.

The great calamity of Man. Senseless crime without end. Stringless story. No discernable plot.

Female mechanic working on a truck in a garage. Trying to get it started. Having trouble. Her name is Jess. She’s short and slight with straight brown hair. A Lesbian. We flirt. I tell her she has her father’s eyes. We go back to her apartment and cuddle – which she’s okay with. We flirt. I tell her she has her father’s eyes, and, does she want to go down to the local bodega to pick up some tomatoes for a sandwich? Yes. We go. But I can’t find my shoes. So I’m barefoot when I get out of the car, and when the city comes under attack. I can see a high rise fire across the river. Buildings exploding. We put into the nearest underground parking garage.

Looking back on dirty magazines. The casino crypt is down the hall. The big fix is in. When the big chips fall, kneel and pray before the door. Wheel in the ghosts of the old, and the poor. Park them between the casket and the bed. Outside, the rain is falling, but its music is dead. – Vegas bus stop.

“Tara? I want out. All the way out. You know? Like, gone. Everything is the future now. It’s all there is. Can I do that? Is it possible? Is there a way out?”

“You mean, disappear?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

     Valiant, black prince. The thing was warm, like a live rabbit. Great artists they were. Of necessary evil. It’s 5:09, Pumpkin. Set the six gentlemen to work. Poor Captain Jack and General Candy. The same ghost. Lost in the same desert.

Glass, glass, desert of glass.

Looking. Looking. Looking.

Bright the horns, until sirens

in the moment of perfection.

A procession of ghosts, river of dead.

53 seconds... 1000 years of regret.

New and most cruel bomb,

dropped.

     When things broke down, they broke down hard and fast. Many fled for the supposed safety of the mountains, like frenzied rats scurrying up the sheets, masts and rigging of a foundering ship. But from those vantages near the timberline, all that was offered was a better view of the world destroying itself. The false-fire galaxies and constellations of the city lights replaced by a universe of real fire light. Endless orchards of black rising smoke. Sirens. Screams. Gunshots. The witches, in high places, from their white marble temples, from the supple leather comforts of their luxurious, wheeled thrones, had conjured hell on earth. Moving their toy legions around on their voodoo alters, like whiney, spoiled children with plastic sacks of grocery store army men. Veritable, Daumier caricatures, crankily swatting at board game tokens, and with them, making the real world beyond as false and vain as their own, condemning it all to the same, useless ruin. A kind of reverse Ouija.

     Only the shrewd and vicious and cunning survived, clinging to the rocky heights, or deepest chasms; only the ones clever enough to hide from the beast which had been unleashed. Among them, the profits of old who preserved the epic prologues of Armageddon. Among them, the great one - Jason. The seer. Huddled in his tent in the rocky clouds. ‘A lucky rodent, clung to a lucky scrap of debris, drifting on a lucky ribbon of tide, like Nemo or Crusoe.’

     “You know the scriptures.”

     “I’ve studied them. Yes.”

     “So you believe them? - Jason?”

     “That he was real? -- Yes. Of course, he was.”

     “But you don’t believe the stories of his divine powers, do you? That he predicted the end of the world in a series of random dreams and visions? I mean, those quatrains are just gibberish.”

     “Of course I do. And how is it that you do not? You who have yourself known the mercy and power and augury of dreams and visions. The beleaguered broadcasts of heaven. Of the universe. Piercing but feebly through the blizzard of static swirling about the real and waking world. – You know, there was a time when television was nothing more than radio with the added novelty of pictures, Wes. Carried on the same warbling radio waves through the smoggy air. Beaming, vibrating, radiating across the hinterland, to every roadside tavern. Every town. To outer space even. All of them, just somebody’s weird dreams. Fragmented narratives. All those signals are still crawling their way across the universe, like some tiny insect across an endless desert. What of those dreams and visions, Wes? What of those vibrations? Are they so tiny and feeble as not to be believed? Discarded? Forgotten? Just gibberish?”

     “I suppose not.”

     “It was hailed as miracle, you know? – television. Overtaking even the sterling glory of the cinema; their gilded, ornate cathedrals falling in time to rapid ruin. Television reduced them all to ruined abbeys. Where folks had once gone to the movies 4 or 5 times a week, soon their velvety seats were all abandoned. Television had rendered them dark, abandoned crypts. But its black magic was co-opted. Honed. Perfected. Weaponized. The miracle – the dream becoming nightmare. ‘Where once there were 13 channels, soon there were thousands. Where once there were thousands of towers, soon there were 13.’ “

     “More scripture?”

    “Mhm. …In the early days of television, a test pattern was seen on the screen more often than programming. ‘Where once there was a television in every person’s living room, soon every living person was a living television room, which they carried with them to every place they lived and worked and traveled. The borderlines of reality and fantasy presided and patrolled by black witches. But like all power brandished by man, it proved an unwieldy force which they could not long contain. The false pharaohs fell prey to their own dark deceits. They had crafted their Egypt of green paper rather than of gold. Of black glass rather than of white stone. And so, it burned and shattered about them. And so, the tomb raiders which came after, found only sand and ash. And so, much more was lost to oblivion than a hundred-thousand libraries of Alexandria.' ”   

.........

    I pass a black woman in fine, pale yellow robes of embroidered lace. She is walking a horse. Says she’s a Queen. It seems a dubious claim. She seems crazy. “Majesty.” I bow steeply, kneeling before her. She plucks an impromptu flower from the other side of the road and places it behind my right ear. Bees and butterflies hover magically about the fresh fragrance. Humbly, I withdraw with backward, deferent steps. “Who is 40?”

     Lampyridae  lay at anchor close on the leeward side of the island. Her captain wore a leather vest which was said to have been cursed, hexed by the black mischief of 89 tormented souls. A sort of weird armor feared by his foes as much as himself.

     Sailors racked in the buff. Warm whispering porthole. Tug at the ear of the sheet. 

            The immaculate crease of the ocean horizon portended nothing but sprawling desolation. Throbbing swells unfurled their deep blue banners astride our swooning way. Days before, an epic storm had blown through from the south, and the captain had kept closer to the coast than would otherwise be prudent. So far, there was no sign of pirates. The seas were still too high. The storm had confined them to their lurid landings. The precious cargo was for now secure. She was even allowed the parole of the open deck under casual guard. There was nowhere for her to go from here but Chapman Island.

                “quelle heure est-il?” the Captain inquired.

               “onze-heures,” answered Chavigny.

                “Time for a beer. –and one for the Princess too.”

                 She was alone, sitting in the corner by herself. A beer was brought up to the Captain, and one for the Princess, which she quietly refused. “I don’t drink beer.”

                  “Drink up, Princess,” urged the Captain, “that might be the last yummy tit you get to suck on for a good long while.” She sunk back into the solitude of her knees. “ – suit yourself.” The Captain swallowed half his bottle in one courageous gulp and swaggered back to the quarterdeck. He kept himself nearly drunk most of the day as a standard practice, much to the disapproval of the ship’s surgeon. By his own reckoning, it kept him steady in his nerve and surefooted on the bounding deck.

                Armed Frigate RMS Easy (formerly RMS Island Thoughts) was widely feared in these waters. It was a reputation which had been dearly purchased in blood. Vishnu seemed an unlikely Captain, his feminine flowing locks, perpetual toothy smile, and soft, breathy inflection were seemlier of a choir instructor than a lethal gunboat commander. He shunned customary trappings of office, and had never actually been seen in uniform by any of his devout crew. Like the rest of them, he preferred the practical simplicity of drawstring undershorts and jingling dog tags. Like the lot of them, his long tenure in the sea service had stained his skin the color of mahogany. He cared well for his men, commanding their respect above all things.

                RMS Easy was their home. Their world.  Their mother. Her speed was classified, but was thought to top 70 knots. Her horizontal solar sail array was a unique design, channeling all the deadly fury of the sun down below into her twin hybrid plasma powerplants and magazines. Their taught white ceiling, a mosaic of trampoline-like bioelectric canvas sails deflected what radiation it could not absorb, and shaded the crew from the ravages of the sun by day. By night, their residual charge cast them in a throbbing, blue-green luminescence, affecting them with the weird appearance of ghosts. In battle, or gales, their triangles were retractable, like curtains, into the steel bones of the skeleton which they enfleshed.  They were irreplaceable, the secrets of their manufacture having long been lost. Easy had lost 3 of her original compliment of 64. They were her manna, her very life. The Engineers had concocted improvised methods of repair, using the remnants of the 3 which had been knocked out of commission for parts, patches and grafts. The general mechanical principles were well understood. If all else failed, Easy could run on saline plasma, and even wind. She was the pride of the Royal Navy, and Captain Vishnu kept her at all times in perfect deadly readiness, whatever his outwardly comportment belied.

                By noon, Captain Vishnu moved from beer to rum. A dram per hour with a sticky wedge of hydroponic lime. The Race, which lay ahead, and which was some 70 nautical miles wide between the Islands of White and Chapman would be rougher than normal with the storm having passed, but The Captain would not retract the array. He meant to make full speed across The Race, risking damage if necessary, to avoid entanglements. He would make use of every minute of sunlight to keep Easy’s batteries at full charge should the weather turn again, or battle present itself. Chapman was but a spec on the charts, a disembodied scrap of beach some 40nm off shore. Scarcely a pile of rocks at full tide. Its ancient lighthouse now served as a max security safe house, a black site with no official designation. The approaches were mined, should any vessel manage to skulk beneath its batteries.

                The infamous warden was a man named Moorhead. There were rumors of torture. Depravity. Horror. The black fang of its spire punctured the horizon at dusk. Its signal beacon had long been extinguished. It would be easy to miss in the dark, but The Captain wasn’t taking any chances. He would land at night, put off his cargo and be on his way. Moorhead would meet them at the head of the dock, by the old windmill. Clap her in irons. Sign for the delivery. By morning, The Race would be plying with pirates. Captain Vishnu wouldn’t tarry in these waters. Would not risk the suspicion of a Royal warship calling at so peculiar a port. Once installed in the remote exile of Castle Moorhead, the Princess Caroline would be far beyond the grasp of rescue. Moorhead looks at The Princess, rolling a lock of her hair in his fingers. He shakes The Captain's hand. "I know what motivates me," he says, "and it ain't money."

     The round stone shaft of the room seethed like a seashell. A breathy, endless exhale. She feared that in time it might drive her mad. The blue fury of her eyes had dimmed. “This is it then,” she murmured, her weary words drowned in the ceaseless thunder of the waves which bounded in the cold hollow above like the loom of a wicked storm which never fully arrives or departs.

     A narrow stair uncoiled itself around her, ascending to a small, steel door encrusted with centuries of rust like the elbow of some old dog. A dim, grey light seeped into the room from the narrow cinque of a window, and from which randomly ejaculated small injections of seawater. It spewed sloppily down the steps in small, fledgling waterfalls. The only furnishings, a sparsely bedded bunk, the makeshift table of an old red fuel drum. A rickety stool. There was a narrow well for a lavatory. Through it, her only dim view of the ocean, flowing far below, confined within a cave. There was something of a dock, and a battered dinghy. It seemed a cruel sort of diorama.       

     A triple death accord of pirates, sealed in spit. The blue water below the dock teaming with silver fish. Fat sharks. The ferryman forgot something. Forgot to pay his dock fare. Lithely, he hops back onto the bustling dock.

-----

Words. Words. Feedback. Smoke. Bad TV like cheap masturbation. Like too much vodka –

“Where are you?! Where are you?! Answer me, motherfucker!”

Culture is a 60” plasma at sea.

“You gonna get married?”

Five martinis, like a slow sunrise. Double vision jazz trio in the tinkling glass with spindly legs and steely fingers. Dean, in an instant dead. Instant. Film. Take a picture. Picture. Let’s make a picture. I nearly bought a cheap pen, and a crap notebook in a shop with a long line. Time to leave the room. Change the reel. Change the real. Reload the camera. Film is glorious death. I open the door. There she is, poised to knock. Weird angel.

Waxing. Bounding. Glowing. Etched fine crystal filled with fucking foam. Careful pages, like fading flesh. Bound in the clutches of rings like little ribs – my drink is done.

“Wendy?”

“Yes, Lisa?”

The blinking justice of jazz. The sweaty dizziness of flanged-up youth. Cassette tape teeth like leather-studded collars. “Get on. Come on, you long-haired faggot.”

Close the door.

Romantic love is a perfume ad. A quick tease flash of Sarah's pussy in a crowded restaurant. 260 years. 49 Sleepy Drive. Haunted. Moving gargoyles on CCTV. I taunt them in a distorted voice, the tape of my words tangled in the broken machine of my mouth. Vengefully, they point to the log-less fireplace, igniting it. Black blanket of death.

COMs should not be left open at night. Their weird frequencies find their way into your dreams.

Sometimes, silence is the most profound response we may articulate.

Seaside cliffs. “The danger frightens you, but it’s the beauty which grabs you and thrashes you to your core, leaving your heart racing like your woman just left you.” Everything he said was at least half profound. Half sculpted into a fine work of art. Like a statue, half man, half raw unformed stone. Every moment a transformation of creation. …Down By The Seaside.

Mafia takeover. Assassinations. Escort through ambush. Alley. Walking dark streets. Heels clicking. Killers in the waiting shadows around the corner. “You’re not an ambitious man, except when it comes to power. The city is yours for the taking, Boss. All you have to do is reach out your hand and close it in your fist.”

A séance book. Masks. History. Proper offerings. Sex magic.

Seductive music. Black robes. Sigil of Saturn, on slow film. Shimmering too slow. Like water in a brass bowl.

A big bear. Run.

              Villa Alegre -- "A-Town." Speaksleazy District. The Jungle Room Telephone Club. Patrons in cozy banquettes pick up phones, and are randomly connected to other patrons in the club. All the handsets are numbered. You can call other receivers directly, dial up specific fetishes from a menu, be dropped into a randomly tapped wire anywhere across the club, or, for a higher price, across the city. There’s even a line outside the club to the street, a pink and silver payphone with graffiti all over it. Picking it up, the horny window shoppers can listen in on the conversations taking place inside. Telephone clubs are all the rage these days. They range from exclusive high end joints, to back alley dives. The Jungle Room is somewhere near the top of the heap.


               Most telephone clubs have some sort of gimmick or theme, The Jungle Room is a tropical, Film Noir cabaret. The interior is dark, dramatically lit, like the frightening face of an early, silver screen monster. The entertainments are zany. In the middle of one of its spacious rooms, a wall like a movie backdrop. Exterior on one side, interior on the other, united by a window with curtains and opposite awning. A garden hose, light socket, artificial grass, carpet, little green electric fireflies – inside, one twinkles in a mason jar beside a magnifying glass. The guests repose themselves in sun loungers, rock gently on a porch swing, doze in a hammock, dangle their feet from a treehouse. Inside, they huddle around a spacious banquette in the kitchen. -- Phones absolutely everywhere. A phone in the laundry room (complete with vibrating washer and dryer massage chairs), and in the bathroom down the hall.  Down the basement, there's a window diorama, a mushroom cloud done up in fluorescent paint. A red phone. A cache of red Campbell's soup cans. Mm-m Good. A 'Bert the Turtle' poster. 


             The dinner theater stage, only sometimes used for house productions, is a fully interactive vignette. The occasional, impromptu performance is a fan favorite. There’s a phone by the back stage door, one in the backdrop alley outside, one in the box office. All 5 of the diminutive café tables sprinkled around the foot of the stage come equipped with vintage candlestick phones which double as table lamps -- little jade glass shades, brass fairies, red satin table clothes like evening gowns, embroidered Chinese dragon motifs.


                Overhead, hanging from the open rafters, is an old DC-3 accessible by dainty catwalk. All is bathed in a pair of slow roving searchlights, and adorned with big puffs of cotton batting for clouds. Of course, all the radio headsets in the cockpit are fully functioning, the stewardess telephones too, the control tower / DJ booth. Down below, the black dancefloor is inlayed with twinkling LEDs, the bird’s eye panorama of quilted city lights, old Los Angeles. Dangling bouquets of fiberoptics mimic in miniature the realism of fireworks, planes approaching LAX, stars, traffic lights, a blinking radio tower in the hills. From the cockpit, and passenger windows, it looks just like you’re flying over 1940's Los Angeles.


              There’s a drive-in theater around the back, a dozen vintage cars parked in 2 rows, an interactive speaker on a pole beside each. A mural of a big movie screen is cleverly painted on the side of the building. There’s a projection booth above the concession stand. You can go up there and project whatever you want. A jukebox style library of selections, classic horror, porn, sci-fi. You can also project a live feed of yourself. It’s a popular vignette.


              Tara picked up the pink handset. I heard laughter rattling in the perforated earpiece. She dropped a Jungle Room token into the slot. Dialed. Spoke into the receiver: “Laverne? It’s Patty. Maxine’s running late.” Hung up. “Follow me.” I followed her down along the front of the building, a tall, barren wall. We turned the corner and moved along the back of the building. It seemed to go on forever. At last we came to a service ladder, loosely ribbed with a safety cage. We pulled ourselves up to the roof. It felt warm and sticky. We crossed its lonely, dark desert to a stairwell tower on the other side. 

               I looked out across the city as we waited. A glimmering marquee. Amy was playing The Cassandra down the street. The image of a snowy Sunday night insinuated itself. Restless bodies brushing under the sheets. "You horny?" Can't sleep. Foiling around. She sings, "your eyes exactly the same shade of brown. A drop of wine. A bird flying high."

            The stairtower door finally opened. A sliver of red light beamed. I heard a somber mariachi ballad trying to come up the stairs, but a large man got there first. He stepped out into the red sliver to greet us with dirty blonde dreadlocks, wild, grey eyes, and a large pair of arms tattooed in striking resemblance of coy fish. His eyes were saucers. He seemed like he might be high on some kind of peculiar drug.


                “Hello, Blum. This is—“


                “I know who he is. You can’t come in. And you can’t stay up here. Sky’s full of boomerangs. They’re watching the whole quarter, all along the river, from Cactus Hill to the Stadium.”


                 “Where’s Lorma? Can you tell her I’m here.” Lorma was the attractive, transsexual owner. I wasn't sure how I knew that exactly.


                   “Too dangerous. They’re watching everybody. Especially the big time club operators. Anyway, she knows you’re here. Go back down the way you came. Keep walking east. 5 blocks. There’s a second floor flat to let. Here’s the key. Number 8. You can stay up there, but it’s supposed to be empty. Best if it stays looking that way. There’s a Crawler in the garage below. It belongs to The Santiagos - so, don't fuck with it or something might go BOOM!.”

                  “Thanks, Blum.”

                    "Don't thank me. Just do the dishes if you cook. But I wouldn't cook. It's supposed to be empty."

 He went back inside and closed the door. I heard it lock. We retreated back down the ladder and walked quickly down the alley. It was dark, but for the intermittent, purple stain of a plasma streetlamp. Laughter echoed from the next block, but we saw no one.


                    Finding the address, we ascended the rickety staircase to a high landing. It was small and perceptibly unstable. Its white paint had mostly all peeled away. Its nails were coming loose. Tara was having trouble getting the key to work the bolt. I wanted off the landing quickly for fear it would give way. It swayed vaguely under our feet as Tara wrestled with the door. At last, we scurried inside.


                    There was a kitchen sink, refrigerator and stove to our left, a bed to the right. The only other room contained a toilet and shower, just barely. In the middle of the room was a wooden crate with a candle and ashtray on it. I counted one cigarette butt. In the fridge were 2 gallon jugs of water and a lemon. There was a late model boom box next to the sink. Tara pried herself out of her gear and switched it on: "The Green Menace. Capitalism. Shhh---" She went into the bathroom to pee.
        
         "Now what?" I interjected.
        
         "We wait."
        
         "For?"
        
         "The Santiagos."
         
          "Okay."

           "They'll be along. They know we're here by now."

            "So how do we link up?"

            "When they're ready, they'll show." I heard the toilet flush. The shower came on. "Get yourself cleaned up. There's some clean street swag in the cupboard."

         I found an old leather jacket and tee shirt more or less my size, and wrangled out of my field dress to splash down in the sink. It was the first bath I could remember taking. As I was dowsing my face, Tara emerged from the shower. She was completely nude and completely indifferent about it. "Shower's open. Please go use it before you stop up the sink." A galaxy of water beads bristled on her skin like a billion silver stars.

         "What are we getting all suped-up for exactly?"

         "The Jungle Room."

         "You heard what that Blum said - and he's half nuts! So you must be all nuts."

         "I could use a drink. We both could. It's a big city, Wes. Anyway, that's where Newcomb will be, I'm sure. He's a bit of a perv --but then, all the great revolutionaries are, right? We'll go in the side door."

         We set out back towards The Jungle Room, freshly bathed and dressed in civilian swag. Around the side was something of a cellar door, above which was spraypainted the words, "Vive' La Masturbation!" A man was slouched on a stool at the throat of the stairs. He looked up incuriously, and vaguely motioned us down.
      
         "What'd you come here for?" Blum murmured in the cold, dim light of a parchment lantern. He had us all clasped up inside the cozy scallop of a cedar shoji, away from the pry of unwanted eyes. The dripping icicles of a koto melted in the warm sun of a flute. Then, the music became sullen, a breathy, bamboo lament. Imperial Japan. 

          "We're here to see Newcomb." Tara said.

           "He's not here," Blum droned from beyond the swirls of some foggy narcosis.

           "Where is he?"

            I wasn't sure whether he had heard her question. His gaze wandered as if fixated upon the warp and woof of a sporadic mosquito. A geisha girl in purple satin, and with a black heart where her lips ought to be appeared from behind the stoic array of paper screens. She served us hot sake in little cups, then departed in slow rewind. Blum took to his feet. "On the house," he said, departing through a different screen, sliding it closed behind him. "Don't stay too long," cautioned his wide, withering shadow.

         We were suddenly alone together in the cold, omniscient light of the Japanese igloo. For the first time, in a long time, our respective attentions were focused acutely on one another only, and, also within the stark intimacy of this absurd place. The serenity of it was like a wilderness of new fallen snow. I could almost hear the breathy broil of the flakes falling - a memory I know not how I possess. I shoved the terrors of that realization hard away, like an obnoxious little brother.

            The pallor of her was milkier than I remembered. I could perceive her so vividly in this bubble of light. I had only before looked at her, mostly in dim, shadowy places. Dismal glooms. Our faces coagulated with grime. Fear in our fingers. -- Here, the frequencies of her beauty came in bright and clean. Her face shone like the moon descending the black mirror of the sea, her hair vibrating about it. Oh, Britannia! Britannia rules the waves, and, 'Herr Hitler is using up his fighter force at a very high rate.' -- The tinkling chandelier of a particular number of perfectly-formed ice cubes, Waterford lowball, old Scotch. The odious smolder of a fine Cigar, trailing tiny little ashes like snowflakes, drifting their way to the black and red Persian carpet like bombs. The apocalypse awaits within the microphone.    
  
        Of course, we usually were alone together. But not like this exactly. Not even like her house. Maybe it was the ordinary, civilian swag. Maybe it was that we were showered, and that we were in a seemingly civilized place, sipping exotic spirits from tailor-made vessels. Who knows? But the desire for her came on quick, and strong, like five drams of warm sake in a row. I thought of the snow again, briefly. Swallowed some more of the sake. There was something erotic about the flavor, the diminutive cups, the ritualism.  

         A lonely flute sang like some softly weeping girl. Then, the brave tambour of a massive drum. The frantic, violent rattle of sticks.

         "It's hot in here," Tara announced, pulling her tee shirt over hear head and tossing it defiantly aside.

         "What are you doing?"

           "Well, you're not ever going to make the first move, and the room's already paid for."
I didn't answer. My pulse throbbed. She scooted beside me. "Don't you like me?"

           "Of course I do," I said, sinking faintly closer to her on the banquette.

           "So fucking kiss me already. -- GET OUT OF MY HEAD! Those are my thoughts!"

            "Sorry. I can't exactly help it. I just pick them up. Like a radio st-

             "Yeah. I know! Stop it anyway."

 

“Fairy Princess. Pixie Fairy Lady. Mhm. Sure.”


“So cruel you can be. …What then?”


“OH--BABY! OH, BABY!” She mocked in sarcastic throws of feigned orgasm. I was embarrassed.


“I am so depleted,” I hissed like a wounded tire. “Exhausted. You know?” She recoiled. I fell back onto the banquette. Surrender. Stared at the sickly ceiling. Mouth agape. Dry. Hauling breaths over my lip like so many yards of stout, prickly rope.


“I’m sorry,” she said. “But fuck you. Snap out of it -- really, asshole.” Her words were faded memory. I blinked. Hauled up another breath. “You tell me, Wes; you tell me? What are we doing out here???  --The truth is, I don’t have a clue. I’m following you. And there is no princess. She’s something you dreamed up in the psychedelic slumber of your mind. A weird, sticky molecule just taking its time to dissolve.”


“I--I know. …I think I always knew. We're just chasing ghosts out here.”

     “That’s exactly what we’re supposed to be doing. Chasing the light. Listening for an old, familiar song, swimming like a shiny little fish beneath the cold waves of static.” She shifted herself towards me, poising herself like a venomous question mark. The horny truth tumbled terrifically by. Rain began to tick at the window glass like a scolding hot car engine. Our lips were inextricably entangled in a kiss like the stark surprise of summer lightning. Somewhere was waiting thunder.
       
             "They're my thoughts too. -- our thoughts. It's not my fault if they crawl out the window together at night in search of delicious mischief." Tara giggled.

              "-- Say? You want to go get married?"

               "Huh?"

                "Yeah. The next vignette over. It's a chapel. It's pretty fucking cool actually. Come check it out."

     The chapel was a ruin of shattered, gaping stone and broken adobe, busted timbers, charred and smoldering. Highly refined visual theater, the effect lighting concealed somewhere imperceptibly. The façade was actually the reconstructed relic architecture of what had once been a real Spanish mission, salvaged and piecemealed together like the Elgin Marbles, the warehouse wall behind it painted with a massive, persuasive mural of a Western desert sunset. Broken arrows, swords, firelocks littered the ground with convincing casualties of Native American warriors, Friars, Mexican infantry. We moved inside, Tara stroking the massive door, her fingers tracing the sensual grain. “Can you imagine what it must have been like?”

                “What?”

                “When the world was still unsettled. People just clinging to the wilderness.”

     A fast flash of Wendy on the porch at the top of the steps. The wind in her hair like a red sail. 

......
 
     Her name was, Lorma. But she also like to be called, Set – a silent cacophony of sheer black nylon, perfume, dissonant throbs. “The booze and drugs. That’s why they all come here. – why are you here?” She asked with unsurprising masculine inflection.


“I don’t know,” spilled from my lips. I traced the disquieting, jagged silhouette of his spikey boots and cowering tube dress.


“It’s not why I run this place. That’s just the hypocrisy of it. I do it ‘cuz I dig it.”


“Well, it’s a nice place.”


“Yes,” he agreed, perching himself on the precipice of a pink leather chair, crossing his well-rehearsed legs. “Wine?”


“Yeah.”


“I know Tara. She sucks a mean cock. Did you know?”


“I didn’t know that.”


“Surprising,” he said, pouring me out a glass. “What about you?” Brassy Jazz fell drunkenly down the stairs, caught in stout, quick-thinking arms of the house music bounding from below.


“I’m not sure how to answer that.”


“Perhaps I can be of some assistance,” he said. Bright flickering projections danced on the dusky lavender walls. Women masturbating. Bangle bracelets. Nail polish. Immaculate lipstick.


“This is quite a club.”


“Thanks,” he said with an air of sudden boredom. He plucked a joint out from behind the skew his short black bob, igniting it with ladylike artistry. Glow. Pleasant aroma. He took two big drags. Closed his winged eyes. Smiled like someone had just breathed a hot dirty joke into his sparkly ear. “…life’s what you make it, sailor boy.”


“-- Champagne and marijuana.”


“What’s your stance on religion?” The question caught me off-guard. He passed me the joint.


“Me???” I inhaled. Contemplating. He refilled my glass, patiently awaiting my answer.


“It’s essentially a sexual question, isn’t it?”


“-- Is it?”


“Well, of course. Creation. Birth. Death…”


“Flesh. Spirit.”


“Exactly.” I glanced up under the flashy skirt of the chandelier on the ceiling. Projections of pink pussy shimmered in the crystals, exploding into tiny little rainbows. A paint brush. Tickling the labia.
 

“Women. Such fleshy things, aren’t they?” He mused, greedily retrieving the joint. “I prefer their company to that of men, you know. Present company excepted,” he added carefully.
 

“They’re rather God-like, aren’t they?” He smiled. Nodded. Poured himself another glass. “Orgasm. Kind of heavenly…”
 

“Ah, yes. The white light. The afterlife” he mused, finishing the joint, carefully adoring the familiar music below with worshipful, dancing movements of his head and shoulders. He tilted forward, like some carnival ride coming to its ultimate, joyous halt, extinguishing the delicious little cinder in the pristine lavishness of an expensive Japanese ashtray. I was suddenly wasted. White fingernails like ocean pearls undulated over my head, thrashing in the pink surf of gorgeous vagina. Black hair. Black like the wings of a stately raven. Black silk, blooming with nipples. I poured another glass. Where was all this going? Was I forgetting how to wonder? Forgetting how to ask the questions. Jazz dripped from the ceiling like percolating coffee. I suddenly had to badly pee. A gong sounded. A rare moment of silence. The music had suddenly stopped. All of it, all at once, in every room. Weird.
 

Set was wasted too. Wrecked, in fact. Or at least appeared to be, head slumped toward the floor. I got up to find a bathroom without any apparent notice. I brought my glass and killer buzz with me, stepping through the crowd to the big, drippy beats of a vibrant soundtrack. When I would return, I would see him in a different sort of sexy light.
 

Above the toilet was a vintage Andrew Blake porn movie poster. Odd beats rattled in the ceiling speaker. Crude bathroom graffiti.
 

When I returned, he was gone. I was at once disappointed and relieved. Sinking back down into the plush luxury of my former banquette, I was the perfect sort of alone. The squint of pussy and expensive sunglasses above me. My penis dutifully stirred between my legs like a suddenly remembered bed partner. Some club. Awesome booze and drugs.
 

Set returned in his prickly boots like a spider in sinister roller-skates.
 

“Let’s talk about enlightenment. And revolution. Shalln’t we?” He said, parachuting back down into his pink chair.
 

“You’re a loose cannon, aren’t you?”
 

“Don’t fuck with an artillery commander,” he said, slapping a ten-dollar bill onto the little table, a heavy leather striptease reflected in the semen-colored glass. "How's that for apropos?! - Ha!"
 

“What’s this?”
 

“Inflation, Sweetie. It’s a fake. Looks real enough in the dark though - just like me. We’ve been flooding the tills with them all around town for months. Hit ‘em where it hurts, baby.”

  When I was going down -- I mean, like, in a brawl for the bottom of a handsome bottle, Tara had me always by the short scruff and wasn't ever letting go. Even at the price of her fingernails, hands, arms. I could tell by the way she drank with me, that she'd die with me just the same. I trusted her. Period. Even if it meant having to doubt my own self. Especially then.  But she wasn't here this time, and I was very fucked up.       

          
....                                                             

  
The plan - Link up with The Santiagos. Arm them to the teeth. Convince them they can unseat the regime. But really, at best, it's a stunt. Someone in the dusty war room libraries had become inspired by an obscure battle plan known as Tet.  


           Posing as salvagers, we delivered the last of the ammunition. Was oppressively hot. The biting sting of the merciless sun searing our dripping, filthy flesh. Meandering through The Warehouse District, our caravan was unmolested. Everyone was inside, in the dank shadows. We didn’t stop, just slowed at certain, compatriot doorways and dumpsters, dropping the paint cans discretely from our motorcade. Our spotters closely monitored our roving panorama from an array of micro cams concealed in the headlights, taillights and tires, calling the plays in real time from their hawk’s nest in the beyond of the brown hills. We saw no boomerangs, but floated in a bubble of interference static in case any warbled by. As the morning rumbled on, the sky grew murky. Murkier than normal. The atmosphere was peculiar, and somehow ominous. We didn't much notice it at first. At least, no one mentioned it until just before the call came in -- "Why is everything fucking orange?" 


          The phone on the center console twinkled and made a whirling sound. Panic gushed into the car. All the walkies crackled in eerie unison “Abort!” The caravan fractured, peeling off in divergent directions. It was Blum calling, from a vintage booth inside the Jungle Room. I don’t know how, but I saw him plain as day before Tara picked up the phone. I heard his voice in the muffled quiet of the cab. It was grave and succinct. 


         “Someone set a fire. Spreading fast. Find a rest stop.” – ‘Click.’


        Tara switched on the FM and dialed up Radio Wasteland – Calloway’s, Wake Up and Live. - High alert.


          “Get this fucker off the street.” We hooked a corner around a big, decrepit satellite dish, pale, stained and grey, slumped like a disembodied moon crater. 


       We swerved into a vacant, crackled parking lot scruffy with weeds, and pulled up under the saggy awning of a boarded-up building. The doors were chained and padlocked, but our driver gave them a good hard shove with our front bumper as we squealed to a stop, bursting their weary seams. As the Crawler doors rolled opened, we were greeted by the acrid, clinging menace of smoke. We tumbled out of the Crawler and slithered into the building with all our gear. The air inside was stale, but cool.


      We skulked across the big, dusty room. It was full of upturned tables and chairs, like a battlefield strewn with mangled dead. We huddled defensively at the far corner. Tara unfurled a map and looked at her watch, jotting down the time on its corner. 2:35PM.

Nothing sacred about this spot,
These crackled blacktop plots,
Like the phantom longitudes of an outer planet.
Except that, in my smiley youth, as I kick a can, I visited once before.  

Not, with a dying dog beside me, panting,
But with a swollen pocket of dark denim dreams.
And now, at the foreign side,
strewn with soggy mattresses and rusty tubs and shattered milk cribs --
The grave of an unsaid Hello 
Demarked of barbed wire and imported beer cans. 

And back across behind me, like a baby picture,
The blue ball of Earth, Ramshackle Lion’s den --
Browbeaten fraternity with its flat-tired spaghetti lorry
And single chair where rain sits
And amorous stare of broken benches
before the padlocked door,
beneath the crippled awning. 

And here, in this No-Man’s Land of departed parking spaces
I forgive my trespasses 
And head for home,
Pocketing a pair of stones.


           By 5PM things were royally ass-fucked. The lush lichen of black, sticky skulls and rotting garbage clinging to the ghastly corners and crevasses. Swirling symphonies of fat flies. A familiar, twisted form materializing itself into a severed leg dressed in half a trouser and shoe. The clinging, gagging stench indelible and vivid as all the preternatural hues and jagged gestures of the inexorable graffiti which mocked our panicked retreat. We assail the shattered femur of a toppled high rise, its denuded foundation impaled in the broken escarpment of a gaping fault line. Our brittle fingers and toes quiver under the full weight of our bodies and gear. Half way up, a clowder of feral cats hurdles up from underneath us, hissing, swatting, growling. Tara kicks their leader in its fanged face. It tumbles back into the hellish abyss, screaming like a mimi.

           At blessed last, we haul ourselves up onto the upper plateau behind the frowning facades of a gloomy bazar. Filthy merchants hawk their dingy wares, eyes ablaze with the menacing vacancy of madness, toothless, mumbling the unknown noises of some, spooky language. They paw at us ungainly, limping, staggering stumbling as we flee. In the distance, the crackled cusp of a polluted reservoir feeding the monolith of a public fountain, oozing with reeking, iridescent water. A crowd is gathered about it, filling a hodgepodge of vessels -- a riot helmet, flower pot, plastic detergent jug. Their wobbly, chattering throng pays us no mind, too busy fretting over its sludgy refreshment.

         We pass animals in the gated courtyard. A pig on a short leash, suckling her piglet. A patrol pulls up at the red light. For fun, the black-uniformed guy in the back of the Jeep sights his plasma rifle at her head and shoots her dead between the eyes. Blood. Screams. The light turns. The Jeep pulls away. 

         We step onto a makeshift bridge spanning a spillway. It makes a sound like the squealing mechanics an ironing board. We hesitate. Venture slowly further in delicate pairs. It begins to shiver like a frightened dog. The floor below is 25 feet. There's an exploded television cabinet down there, its shattered cranium blooming with the colorful innards and electronic gore of integrated circuitry. 

        The fire was spreading fast through the southern fringes of the city, leaping sporadically like a plague of demonic frogs. The flames were fanned by heavy, whipping winds choked with hot, grey smoke. Bright cinders blazed by like terrible, orange meteors. Many landed on roofs or parched grass, instantly igniting them. There was no water, and no brigade to pump it. The city just burned.  The sky began to glow a murky orange as the sun struggled through the swirling, galaxies of drifting smoke and embers, and soon itself became ignited in a storm of fire. Newcomb, our guide, and de facto leader of The Santanas, led our frantic, uncertain way. He had been in the lead car of the caravan with his dog, Togo, and I was only now just seeing the legendary duo for the first time through stinging, teary eyes. He had stowed his trademark sheepskin coat in his pack. It was too hot. We were all wheezing, choking and hacking, drenched in muddy sweat. We stopped, saturating our bandanas with our canteens, tying them around our mouths and noses like wild west bandits. It was all we could do to breathe. I fumbled a fat pair of goggles out of my kit and strapped them on. It didn't seem to help.   

           Mundi and his men would be close behind, and beyond them, the tidal wave of fire. There wasn't long to stop. Newcomb poured water on his face, washing away the slime of dust and soot. He studied the sky, water dripping from the curls of his blonde hair. He glanced nervously in all directions, searching. Searching. "There!" he said, thrusting his finger at an old brick building. "Move!"

            We followed him two-by-two along a rocky berm of railroad tracks flanked by barbed wire. Into the building we scrambled just as the hurtling deluge of flames drowned the world about us at 50 miles per hour. It were as if a deep lake of fire had burst its damn and swallowed the earth like Noah's flood. The tide of fire was 30 feet high, at least. I saw it racing in over my shoulder just as the door was shut up. The glass in the windows exploded as it collided with the building, which seemed to sigh as it was engulfed. The wooden casements burst into flames. I heard screaming. We searched for cover. A cellar. A bathroom. Anything inflammable. But, just like that, it was over, at least in this quarter of the city. The masonry building withstood. Newcomb kicked open the still burning door. It collapsed in a heap of white smoke like a gut-shot gunslinger, seemed to go out, then re-ignited itself. In the field beyond the tracks and wire, which moments ago was waist-high with golden prairie grass, and which was suddenly now a black, smoking desolation, sprinted a scorched and smoldering fox, its singed withers trailing smoke like a stunt plane. We had survived, -- by the hair of our asses.


 The grey Monolith of Mirador stood like a misplaced monument on the brown, sprawling plains of Silverado. It had once been the bearing wall of some great building. A flight of stairs still clung to it desperation. They could still be precariously ascended some forty flights, and, through a handful of its gaping thresholds, a few crumbling crusts of floor remained, twisted, rusty reinforcement bars bristling from their narrow fringes. The Santanas employed it as a watchtower, posting sentries to surveil the Coast Road, signaling the beacon at Sawdust in case of any advance. It could be seen and signaled to from the ridgeline to our west. Some of Newcomb's men favored waiting until dark, but Newcomb thought it better to make use of the commotion and chaos of the fire. We would set out at once.
_______________________

         Tina was driving. She was insane. All over the road. There was a big suitcase in the back containing the murdered body of some woman. Someone's mother. Tina's mother. She wasn't sure. She wasn't sure where to dump it. She wasn't sure how or where to dispose of us, the witnesses. I massage her from my seat behind her, my fingers caressing her neck and clavicles like 10 little lovers. She sighed. Nodded. Kept the car on the road. "That feels amazing. -- But I'm still going to have to kill you," she said flatly. Her mad thoughts arced into my mind like powerful electric jolts. I was kissing her naked thighs and stomach as Ian held a knife to her throat. With his other hand, he was clumsily squeezing her tits and pawing at her ass in a frenzy. The pleasure terrified her.

        Ian looked at me. "Keep rubbing her shoulders, mate. Only thing that keeps her calm."

        Moments before, our Raiders had sprung the two of them from the dormitories at the old power station where they had been holding them, Ian leading the way in a careening flash of black top coat, green trousers, and tiny yellow tee shirt. The shirt belong to Tina, his former lover. It was too small and would not cover his muscular stomach, or the jagged spider tattoo incorporated about his belly button. They tumbled from the compound chased by the guards. Fortunately, they did not shoot. Ian and Tina were too valuable to risk killing.

        Ian was a brilliant physicist, as Tina had been, at one point. They were holding them prisoner, compelling them to help jump start the reactors by way of sleep deprivation, starvation, torture, hallucinogenic drugs, sexual abuse, electricity. Tina had finally snapped. She was lost. Forever condemned to the horrific hell of some schizophrenic, infantile-like mania. The red lights of the crumbling cooling towers winked at us as we tore away, one of the Raiders behind the wheel - not Tina, as she believed. There was no suitcase. No body. No weird murder scene.

      "We've got-a get the other side of them hills to the harbor, mate," Ian shouted to the driver. "It's our only chance." The guards were close behind.

     "Ghosts! Demons!" Tina shouted. "--lurking in my shadow. They've been there my whole life. Even as a baby. But I see them now! I SEE YOU NOW, FUCKERS! I'm not fucking scared of you! You don't scare me anymore!" Tina screamed, some of the words distorted and tattered, like someone trying to shout in midst of a nightmare which muffles all the words like a pillow. She made the sign of the crucifix with her fingers and spat on them three times. There was an energy about her hands just them, like a strong, magnetic force. She could feel it, and I could feel it through her. It was real. Shimmering like distant heatwaves from a smoldering highway. No one else saw or felt it but her and I.


 _____________________

 Dex. Poor Dex. Abducted away to a "Stash House." Gang-raped for days. Beaten. Fed to dogs in The Stadium.
_________________________                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       


               As a Pirate DJ, Stan was naturally a music aficionado, and was himself musically inclined. He knew how to play guitar, and a bit of violin, but strings, bows and rosin and such were hard to come by. He had once taught himself the clarinet, becoming pretty handy with it until the reed split. No matter how hard he tried, he could never find a replacement, and nothing he tried would mend it, or serve as a suitable substitute. Eventually, he gave up, deciding to dismantle it for parts, mounting the black horn to an old wooden desk drawer box. He shaved down one of the desk legs to form a fret board, along which he strung a piece of wire. It sounded like an old slide guitar after a good bit of tinkering. But he missed the woodwinds.


             If the mood struck, he could still use his hands. He became well-practiced with them. Manipulating his lips and face, cupping and contorting his hands, he could make himself sound like a trombone, a saxophone, a muted coronet. He would session jam, sitting in with Charlie Ventura, Don Redman, Tommy Dorsey. In time, he preferred the intonations of a pink plastic cup. On it was illustrated the racist caricature of a laughing, negro slave wearing a dilapidated top hat and unkempt beard. With the cup, he could manipulate and control the sounds coming from his mouth with far greater fineness, creating marvelously life-like sonic illusions. Then, one day he discovered an unusual, fluted cocktail glass, short, ornate with fine etchings. The bottom was solid, heavy and bulbous, fitting perfectly into the palm of his hand. The aperture at the top was the perfect diameter to fit his talented mouth. When he played it, leaning in close to the microphone, tapping his foot along to the music, the high quality glass resonated with an eerie vibrance of realism. His listeners would hear a trumpet, having no earthly idea they were listening to a lowball tumbler.


             He was always on the lookout for real instruments, of course, but also for any scrap of this or that which might be fashioned into an improvised instrument or mouth music accessory. He was far likelier to encounter the later, not only because musical instruments were illegal, but also because they were scarce. Their prohibition drove a black market demand which made them rare and expensive. There were ways of getting them, mainly in the mountain towns where authorities didn’t bother too much with enforcement. In A-Town, however, getting caught with a musical instrument was punishable by death. Live music performances were underground affairs, risky and dangerous. The penalty even for attending a concert was indefinite incarceration. People vanished behind bars all the time for even petty offenses, though breaking the music law was considered quite serious.


             The aluminum shade of an old work light, a coffee can, an old jug. Whatever he could find. Many bits of junk made it back to his radio station with him. Most ended up in the scrap heaps after scrutiny and experimentation, but some found their way to his radio bench, a 72” long by 24” deep plywood counter with a short “L” return. He sat on a revolving, rusty stool with a wooden seat, the perforated silver cucumber of a microphone in front of him. Along the “L” return, 2 turntables. Under the desk, over the desk, behind the desk – Vinyl LP’s. Thousands. There was room and to spare in the trailer, but he kept the whole collection crumpled up with himself inside his secret DJ booth, behind the false back, at the rear of the trailer. If anyone ever bothered to get out a measuring tape, of course, it wouldn’t be a secret for long. Yet, at a glance, the old rig looked just like the other two. Three old galleons of the once buzzing superhighways, in the dry docks now, the auto graveyard. And, if need be, he could haul the whole thing away, move it somewhere else to safety. Meanwhile, no one really notices a few extra antennas on an old big rig, surrounded by avalanches of junk, with a mean looking fence around the whole empanada.  

.....

     Mafia family swimming pool orgies. Independently, the Bosses, Capos and Lieutenants all liked to swap wives and mistresses behind closed doors, vainly supposing it was all kept secret from their own wives. Their own wives would never do such things. A few of the wives eventually thought to turn this hypocrisy on its head. One afternoon, after too much sun and booze, Francine proposed getting fucked in the pool by two of her husband’s goons, in front of him, while he watched. It made him insane with jealousy, and he flew into a rage. But not until much later. He had them both whacked. Eventually. For different reasons, ostensibly. But not before playing along. Not before letting her do it. Because, in truth, it was something he had wanted to see. His dick was immediately hard. He gave the order. “You heard the lady. Give her what she wants.”

     "That Francine was quite the wild one in her day!" And now, in her early 50’s, nothing much had changed, except 22 years of stifling marriage, all the inglorious and dispassionate sexual complacency of holy matrimony. “You, know,” Nicky joked, “she used to go with your father -- way back when.” Yvonne lights a cigarette. 

     “I’ll bet that was hard! – Where are you going??? …With you!” The patio erupts with obscenely drunken laughter.

     They took turns eating her pussy and sucking her nipples as she lay on the pool float. Her overweight husband tugging at his little pecker under the water as he watched. Her dark winged eyes. The sparkle of her diamonds, the twinkling blue water. Hard muscles. Strong arms. Big dicks. Coming hard before any of them, his milky sperm exhaling into the cold, alien atmosphere like cigarette smoke.

     There was a wet bar, and a huge flat boulder at the deep end for a diving board, skirted underneath by a little waterfall. They set her down upon it, simultaneously penetrating all of her orifices in every conceivable position. She was a perfect, sustained frenzy of quivering orgasm, coming for hours. Her screams tumbling down the steep, wooded hillside beyond the little green fence. Their echoes bounding in the empty valley of his memory, as he sits with his cold coffee. As her high heels click on the kitchen floor, as she leaves for brunch with a friend, as he rummages through her purse and hamper, as he sniffs her black panties, cloying with expensive perfume and the ghost of her tingling cunt.

     It didn’t bother him until much later. After their next few fights, which were common in any case, and always, one way or another, concerning their sexless marriage. They were rarely intimate but more than once a month, and seemingly just for the sake of it not being perfectly never.   

River Hill Tower. Yvonne’s apartment for the weekend. 7N. Big. Open, White. Sparsely and smartly furnished. Big, unwatched TV to the right. Couch to the left. Superfluous pairs of sliding glass doors at the rear, the balcony overlooking the ancient rocket pads. There’s a guitar and small amplifier lounging in the shag carpet off to the left as the heavy door slams. Plastic, weirdly shaped picks. Fender. Marbled brown, like sunglasses, A square one with a hole in the middle.

     I have poorly-curated clothes enough only for a couple of days. Smashed into a canvas and leather satchel. A railway timetable. I can’t miss my Sunday night train. Her husband is out. It’s just her, and her friend, who mostly keeps to the other room. May as well not even be there.

     She’s scantily clad. Unbuttoned jean shorts. Splayed zipper. A pale blue scarf bunted through the belt loops. No bra. No top. Some silky open Asian thing, draped from her shoulders. I sit in the corner of the couch with my first cocktail. She’s laying far below on the floor at a diagonal, her feet perched on the cushion beside me, ankles crossed, her pink glitter painted toes fondling one another seductively. Her lost eyes oozing with lust. She’s scandal.

    She rakes her fingernails slow and loosely up an down the golden brown valley of her torso. They sneak into her panties between my inattention. I feel myself crashing like a wave. I reach down and fondle her tits. – Giant Steps are what you take, walking on The Moon.

     Later, when her man comes home, I shake is hand, firmly but not too. My head bobbing with vague deference. It’s not a ploy. I really don’t care about the danger. “Nice to meet you.” He grunts. Stumbles off to piss and crash. She whispers, “Nicely done.“

     I collect my things and head off for my train. A massive, black wolf approaches too closely as I pack to leave. His curiosity feels vaguely dangerous. I stroke his chest with the back of my hand, forcing him out of my space, my eyes and other hand attending to their task. He can sense my fear, but I am no threat.         

Violence and doubletalk. Disco in Rhyme.

Driving through West Harbour District with Yvonne.

     “If only we’d had more time. Just half a night more.”

We get to the mob boss hideout - Chez Rondelet. A great wigwam of a building with the conspicuous appearance of some inactive flying saucer stranded on the shore cove. Abandoned. Out of gas. A goon on the phone near the big fish tank, shouting. "We got the sonofabitch! Let’s go!” They speed off in a boat, involuntarily dissolved on the horizon.  

     Her pink hair. The desire to kiss her. But the moment is long gone. Yesterday. A half century ago. What's the difference? 

Pass the envelope, bulging with big, crisp bills, an obscene blackmail photo protruding from their perfect, fragrant leaves.  

Now that he’s just a ceremonial figurehead, the President always goes around with a gun. Paranoid.

They wheel in the carved wood coffin. A Trojan horse. Full of guns. The Don is not really dead.

The cover story is fake. The photo is fake. Just some lowly PA that happened to look the part. But no one questioned it.

            The state ran the pussy racket. The state ran everything worth running, and a good deal not worth running. The distribution was privatized, of course, controlled by the Mafia, but it was essentially a government bureau if you followed the money. The whole rank thing was headquartered in a warehouse on the outskirts of the industrial district - a foul smelling, crusty scab of a landscape malignant with whimpering pumpjacks and fearsome flare stacks like indefatigable birthday candles. We approached the big, beige building through an open gate bristling with razor wire. It had no windows and was covered with graffiti. There was just one, lone door in the whole big, flat façade. It was unlocked. We passed through it into a vacuous room aligned with tedious formations of unoccupied sales desk. A haggard young woman with mussy hair seemingly presided over the whole fleet from behind her relic typewriter. She was unsuccessfully preoccupied with trying to replace the ribbon and didn't pay us much attention. There was a bruise under her eye, and she seemed to be bouncing her weary way along some kind of nervous dope ride. The salesmen were all out selling. There was an order-taker stuffed back in the corner with a phone pressed to his hear. He was saying some something quietly into the phone and writing on a pink pad.
          
           Behind the loopy secretary was an office. The door was open. There was a frumpy sort of man sitting in one of the 2 guest chairs, smoking a cigarette. As we moved closer, the man sitting on the other side of the desk from him came into view. He was reclined with his hands folded behind his head. He looked comfortable, and bored. He was staring at us, but didn't stand up.

My next realization was that both of them were instantly dead, strewn across their office furnishings like dirty laundry. She had killed them quickly and deftly with a pistol equipped with a silencer of her own sinister design. The secretary was so out of it she hadn't noticed, and just kept on fidgeting with the typewriter. I even thought I heard her giggle. If I was afraid at barging into this place, now I was perfectly terrified. 

Tara locked up the murder scene door from the inside and then walked over to the secretary.

"What's your name, honey?"

"West."

"Well, listen West. Those men asked me to tell you they're in a very important meeting, and that they're not to be disturbed under any circumstances. They told me very bad things would happen if anyone knocked on that door. If I were you, I would make sure nobody knocked on that door."

"Yeah okay."

"Oh. And, they asked me to check on your special guest. You know. Just to make sure she's alright."

"Uh huh."

"Would you mind pointing the way?"

"Through that door."    

Tara looked at me incredulously. We made our way to the door.

"That was fuckin' easy."

Inside was a vast, gray warehouse. To our right was a chain link enclosure roughly the size and proportions of a small house. The top was also enclosed, so that nobody could climb in or out. Inside was a small desk and chairs, a sink and toilet, and an aisles of bunk beds. The chain link door was locked. A CB radio crackled on the desk. It was set to Channel 6. 

"Well. I take it she was here."

"Now what?"

I followed her through the warehouse. In front of a pair of massive garage doors was a rusty, armored rambler. Beside it, in front of the other door, was an empty space spotted with oil. We scrambled up a dainty set of catwalk stairs that led to the roof. The late day sun smoldered low in the dingy sky. Tara peered down over the knee wall. A fresh pair of tire tracks slithered under the garage door, making their way down the Hawk Road, past heaps of mangled rubble and twisted telephone lines toward the hollow hills.

"Looks like we just missed her, the slippery cunt." Tara slumped down against the knee wall. 

"How come you hate her?"

"Not now, okay? Ask me again sometime when we're not sitting on the roof of the biggest meat market in A-Town, with a couple of bodies stuffed in the boardroom."

"Yeah. Sure."

"That rambler downstairs. Assuming it has gas and keys in it, we can drive it out into the hills. Maybe pick up some intel from the scanner before the realize it's gone."

"Kinda risky though, isn't it? I mean. Wouldn't it be safer to keep a lower profile?"

"Hard to say. It's the fastest way out of here though, and wherever she is, she isn't here. Come on. Saddle up." She hopped to her feet and disappeared through the door before I had time to offer any further comment on the matter. That's how it was with her when she made up her mind to do a thing. -- Woosh.

Random bits of garble washed up on the shore of our radio as I drove, the signals shaded by a cheerless maze of monoliths, blackened brick building, sagging bungalows, shattered gas stations. Tara navigated beside me, but really it was a simple matter of due east toward the coyote colored hills. She was trying to hack the scanner, but so far it was just an inharmonious chorus of coded chirps and weird whistles. The wind was whipping up and rocked the rambler. Swirls of orange dust crackled against the windows and armor. We saw nobody. Then, a Mexican girl with sunglasses and squiggly tattoos. Then nobody.

"So how come you hate her?" She put her head back against the seat and sighed.

"Her father is old. Weak. Probably not long for this wonderful world. She'll ascend to his thrown when he dies, but she's already more or less installed herself upon it. She's been working at her whole life, and is already more powerful than he is."

"You were friends?"

"We were."

"What happened?"

"If you'd let me tell the story..."

"Sorry."

"We were classmates at the academy. My father was a garrison commander who had somewhat distinguished himself, so our family was somewhat well off, compared with most anyway. That's how I was able to go there. Being from a trusted military family, I was placed as her roommate in the dorms."

"What was she like?"

"She was a little fuckin' brat. But so was I. Guess that's why we got along so well. We got into lots of trouble, and got away with murder because the rules didn't apply to us. Not to a princess and her entourage. She learned her craft very early. Before long, she was a mafia don in a miniskirt. And I was her chief lieutenant. It was a pretty impressive enterprise for a couple of school girls. Children can be quite naturally ruthless, unless they're taught otherwise. There was no discipline for us. The faculty were too terrified of us. Fearful of our families. Of what might happen to them if they crossed us. So we learned how to exploit their fear. It was our first important curriculum. That's what school taught us. How it prepared us for the world."

"Like, what kind of stuff did you do that was so bad?"

"Blackmail. Extortion. Cheeweed. Drugs. Prostitution. All sorts of twisted shit. We practically ran the whole academy from the girl's bathroom."

"So what happened?"

"She was fucking her history teacher. He ended it with her when his wife found out, but she wasn't down with that. So she threatened him. But he had powerful connections of his own. Close family ties to the Santanas. Trade relations were rather sticky in those days. This one night, during a warehouse raid, it 'slipped out' that Caroline was messing with this guy and, as intended, it got back to her father. Politically, he couldn't do anything about it, but he pulled her out of the academy and put her under house arrest. I lost touch with her for a long time after that, but she continued to work her black magic at court. After a while, she managed to install herself as a magistrate. Started going after the cults. Arresting them as heretics. A lot of them were funneled to the sex trade for profit. A lot of them were bunked up in those beds back there before being hawked off."

"--And you knew some of them. Which is why you hate her."

"My whole coven. All my fair sisters. All but me."

A brief sprinkle of rain made a muddy mess of the dusty windshield. 

"-- Hey. Put in here. I know the owner. We can get some grub and clean this diarrhea off the window. It's the last stop before we hit the foothills."

            She hauled open a pair of lumbering, well-rusted doors. The emblazoned red eyes of a furious dragon seemed to glare at me from the darkness within - the electrified menace of Chinese neon, which, somehow I could read and understand, but couldn't quite recall the translation for. We stepped to the bar. The very few patrons did not regard us. Tara ordered sake. It arrived promptly in a hot carafe. An old, familiar tune growled from somewhere above. Radio Wasteland. -- Ah, yes. Psychedelic Elephant. That's what the neon sign said.

"I like this song."

"There's no such thing as a song, really. They're all just evolving movements of the same symphony. Variations of a theme. Themes of a variation."

The sake was unexpectedly refreshing of a gritty and scorching September afternoon, even though it was musty and half spoiled, and began to give me a headache the more drams of it I drank. We'd stashed the rambler out back somewhat out of sight. Two women in broad brimmed bush hats entered from a different door and didn't look at us. Rangers. Tara sat down on a stool and urged me down upon the one beside it. They took a table near the corner.

"What up?"

"Ignore them."

"Alright."

"What were we talking about?"

"Caroline. Your coven."

A trooper came in with a heavy tac pack, searching with mild urgency for a place to plug in. Tara traced his every, fidgety move until he finally jacked in and settled down.

"Lots of law here."

"Yep. Central Bureau is right across the street."  

"So why the hell'd we tether up here?"

"If you wish to hide a thing, hide it in plain sight." 

The crowd was growing thicker. Becoming a bit of a throng. The vibrations were changing.

She ordered us food, barking at the bartender in some guttural language I half understood. Directly above us was a crowded gallows of stemware and mugs. Also, a dome camera. I quickly averted my gaze, and took another musty sip of sake. 

"How are the tacos?" Asked the bartender.

"Fucking delicious." Tara said. The bartender chuckled. "Good, right?"

"Spicy as fuck, but yes."

"Spicy is an illusion. Your brain is tricking your mouth into thinking it's burning so you'll spit it out."

"Really?"

"Yes. It's a neurochemical reaction."

"Well it's a very convincing magic show." 

A pretty man swaggers by like a strange electron. He's wearing sandals with pink painted toenails. His eyes dart briefly askance. The mustachioed proprietor approaches and squeezes my hand affectionately as he passes. "You look deep in thought. I like it." There's a girl with a skeleton key tattooed on the nape of her neck with one eye on the proprietor, a hand near her half empty glass. Tara moves the glass with her mind, causing quite a commotion. In the ensuing uproar of confusion, Tara snatches up the girl's expensive com, simply plucking it up off the bar. We drove the rest of the afternoon towards the mountains.

  

Chapter XVII: KNEE-DEEP IN ROAST BEEF & CHOCOLATE CAKE

Tower 17, at the western extreme of the city limits, where the wall bore its back to the steep mountains, was a kind of disfigured pagoda, washed aground in a sea of desolation. Beyond its station outside the wall, the ground was far too steep and severe to muster a force of any consequence, while, within the wall, between the tower an A-Town, stretched an open expanse of virtual desert, parched river beds, faults, wastes strewn with scrub and boulders. It was widely regarded as unnecessary to defend, so the garrison amounted to a woman with a radio and a telescope, COMtech Sargent Missy Clark. The tower itself measured 18’ x 18’ square, and was 72’ tall at its japed peak. The uppermost floor commanded pristine views in every direction. The roof featured a crow’s nest fashioned of a splayed oil drum impaled on a telephone pole, which, along with a webbed array of guy wires, also served as the radio antenna mast and ground planes. At the tip was a green signal beacon lamp from which blinked a constant series of codes. The quarters below were crudely equipped with haphazard awnings, casements, a boom and pulley, a zip line – a precarious patchwork of planks and salvaged scrap, and which swayed somewhat, we would come to find, in even a moderate breeze. When the power failed, which was frequent, transmissions relayed via battery-powered laser light. But reports were infrequent as nothing even happened out here. Tonight, as she did every night, Missy reclined in her cot in the corner, a small candle flickering above her head on the window sill, reading the latest dispatches. The purple glow of her chipboard the only other light in the room. Tara quickly locked onto the signal and hacked in:

                                                                “HELLO.”

                                                                                                “WHO IS THIS?”

                                                                “ENEMY DRONE ON RADAR. APPROACHING YOUR SECTOR.

                                                                REQUEST VISUAL CONFIRM.”

It wasn’t long before Missy scaled her way up into the crow’s nest. Tara hit her with a tranq round. She slumped over the gunwale of the nest, nearly tumbling out. By the time she came to, she found herself back in her quarters, bound to the root of the telephone pole in the center of the room with elegant shibari knots – a specialty of Tara’s. We had already searched the whole tower, discovering very little of interest or use.

                “How do you know I didn’t radio before I went up?” Missy asked wearily.

                “Because I un-grounded it before I messaged you.”

                “Why am I tied up like this?” She was naked, and harnessed tightly at the hips and through the crotch, her wrists trussed behind her on the other side of the pole.

After hauling her down off the roof, Tara tugged off her jacket, rifling through it – “Come on, Wes, help me get her clothes off.”

“Why?”

“Because! Alright?” The question had perturbed her. We each knelt down and began unlacing her boots, I the right, Tara the left. The laces were stubbornly knotted and took some time and patience to undo.

“Bitch must sleep with these things on.” Tara kept peering over at me as we worked. I could feel her glances. I wasn’t sure what we were doing exactly. I was hungry, exhausted and probably somewhat delirious. I was too tired to argue. I didn’t care that Tara wanted to undress this unconscious woman, or had insisted on my help to do it, though, part of me was curious to find out.

“When I was about 12,” Tara began to explain, “there was this boy who lived down the street from us. My little sister and I basically lived alone. My mom worked all day. My dad was always away. This kid, I guess he was about 10 or so, we were sort of friends. This one day, I invited him into the house for a snack. I was curious about boys, you know. I mean, I already knew men were assholes. This boy, though, he was kind of different. Diminutive. Innocent. Naïve. But he had sharp instincts, which surprised me. I knew he was suspicious and even a little scared. Totally uncertain of what was happening to him and why his heart was racing. He was so shy and sensitive. The kids in our neighborhood picked on him sometimes. But inside he was resilient and tough. I guess that’s why I liked him. They were so cruel to him, but never managed to break his spirit.”

We pried off her boots and Tara removed her pants.

“So I just said, ‘come on. Let’s go in here.’ And I led him into my mother’s bathroom. It was nice. Big and white and clean and shiny. It had a large, frosty window which faced the southeast and always caught the afternoon sun. It was the brightest room in our house, and the quietest.”

She pulled Missy’s panties off and threw them at me. “Damn, Girl. Razors must be hard to come by out here,” she said, mussing Missy’s thick pubes with her fingertips. “Thank goodness there’s not many gentleman callers out here either though, right? Don’t you hate that, Wes? I mean, you’re a guy.”

“I guess.”

“You guess? Come on, Wes! It’s like Abraham Lincoln down there. Go on. Feel it.”

“Tara, what are we doing?”

  “You know. I saw some good hooch in her cabinet. Let’s have a drink. We’ll stay the night. Have some fun.”

“Alright. Alright, fine.”

“Put the radio on while you’re at it.”

--  Love My Way.

“Interesting.”

“Huh?”

“My boyfriend’s feeling a bit morose tonight.”

“So now I’m your boyfriend?”

“Haven’t you been paying attention?”

“…I follow where my mind goes.”  

--  I Want Candy.

We sat there at the naked woman’s feet, drinking, her head slumped, jaw glistening with drool.

“Anyways. So, then we climbed into the bathtub. They’re sort of like coffins, you know, in a way. Especially without water in them. Or, maybe it’s the other way ‘round. At the time, though, it didn’t feel that way. Or maybe it did. Who knows. I was on one side. He was on the other, sitting on the edge of the basin. We were eating crackers, and I just pulled off my shirt. Letting him stare at me.” She took a swig of booze. Then another, pursing her lips as her body absorbed the warmth. “You should fuck her.”

“How’s that now?”

“She’ll be out cold for at least another hour.”

“You’re serious.”

“Unless you prefer to wait until she’s awake. She’ll put up a fight, but maybe you’d prefer that. I don’t know that much about your proclivities.”

“You’re screwing with me.”

“Am I?”

“I hope so.”

 --  Love Action.

“I’m most likely going to kill her. She is an enemy combatant, you know. I know I’d want to get fucked before I died, wouldn’t you?”

“Maybe. Yeah. I guess so. I don’t think we ought to be deciding that for her though, you know.”

  --The Killing Moon.

“It was just an idea. Be kind of hard to hack your way through that dense jungle anyway I guess. Forget I mentioned it.” She clanked my glass against hers. “She’s a sexy little thing though, ain’t she?” Tara finished undressing her and began to tie her up. “This rope is perfectly awful. Forgive me, Sweetheart.” She trussed her up quickly, deftly, with all the artistry of some grandmother knitting a quilt.

  -- Desperate But Not Serious.

“Where’d you learn to do that?”

“Shibari. From Aja. My knots are just okay. You should see Aja’s.” Soon Missy’s naked body was enmeshed in a web of switchbacks and braids, the ropes poignantly constricting her breasts, squeezing them greedily like the greasy palms of some desperate lover. Swollen. Flush.

  -- Don’t Talk To Me About Love.

 “You must admit, the rope makes her look even hotter. It’s a lovely garment, if you know how to tailor it.”

“That it is.” Jane’s Addiction droned in the background. The booze was nearly gone. We hadn’t eaten anything much in the last 2 days and we were both pretty wasted.

“Beautiful tits.”

“Yes.”

“Prettier than mine.”

“If you say so.”

“Go on. Touch them.”

“Yours, or hers?”

“Whichever.”

 --  I want to Be Adored.

The crude and flimsy room was growing cold. Tara stoked a fire in the old oil drum fireplace in the corner. The warble of an owl echoed on the mountainside above us.

______

     A plume of thin black smoke sprouted from the distant horizon, beyond the broken shards of the skyline. The telltale demise of a downed drone. We ambled our way across the parched and brittle highlands in an armored Salamander along Route 13 towards Massacretown, leaving the unsettling scene of Tower 17 behind. Neither of us spoke for many miles, hypnotized by the warble of the wind, and the whirl of the tires below us on the ragged asphalt. The distant skyline slumped below the horizon as the road settled into the Lowlands. There were no habitations in this part of the country. This was fallout zone. There was no traffic on the roads. All the checkpoints long since abandoned. All approaches from the east remained unwatched.

     I stopped for a piss. The pavement was searing hot and blinding white. A Hawk flung in low, screeching, bearing a small snake in its talons. Lifeless. Dangling. Like a black shoelace. I unsaddled a jerrycan from the rear and topped off our tank. It would be some seven hours before we would reach the city limits. Then, to pick up the railhead at Orchard Station. And from there, straight into A-Town.

     We passed a pair of towering dead Oaks. Their petrified branches bleached bright white in the blazing sun. The bones of a dozen dead Cattle huddled about the trunk as if luxuriating in the respite of some former shade. On and on the empty miles plied along. And still we said nothing. Nothing of Tower 17.

     Of Course, she had to die, as we came upon Remington Station, and the old ruin of its outpost along the Frisco Road. There was never any question about the necessity of that. Nor even any doubt. There hadn’t been any hesitation. She was, after all, the enemy. This was, after all, a war. And in war, the enemy must be killed. There is no room or place on the bus for peace. No consideration of clemency. Not that any of this had made it any easier. It never sat well. -- Killing. At least not for me.

    Tara had a talent for it. She had said so herself. A sort of detachment or indifference from the moral entanglements which ensnare one’s conscience. We had 326 more miles to tread. Already the incident was far behind her. It’s not that she enjoyed killing. It’s just there was no hesitation in it for her. I knew all this already and there was nothing astonishing in it. We were soldiers, on a battlefield. It’s not something one ruminates about. It’s a duty better not contemplated, but rather obeyed.

     At Webster Creek, we came upon a dead dog. A bad omen. On the other side were the mass graves, beyond the trees, beyond the slough, beyond the brown and brittle fields. Kingsfield. A league and a half to our east. She looked at me and smiled. Neither of us mentioned it, though it was on both of our minds. The war, it seemed, was older than our memory. Its hallowed grounds, its genocides and atrocities, cast such cold, dark shadows, that what had occurred at Tower 17 seemed a trifle. Yet, my uneasiness was nothing to do with any of this. It was, rather, having encountered an aspect of my companion which was unanticipated, foreign, troubling. She fully sensed my upset and was put off by it.  

“How did you do it?” I asked plainly.

“Do what?”

“Off her.”

“How?”

“Yes.”

“However I did it is however I did it. It was quick. Painless,” she said. “She was going to die either way. I should have done it while she was coming. That's how I'd want to go out. The French even used to call it that, I think -- The Little Death. Does it make it more wrong that we did what we did?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know.”

“Are you angry with me?”

“No.”

“Disgusted?”

“No.”

“Do you feel that way about yourself?”

“I don’t know. Look, let’s drop it anyway. It’s done.”

“Yeah okay. We’re good though, right?”

“Yeah. We’re good.”

“Are we?” She insisted to know.

“Yes!” I demanded.

“Okay. Because we did get carried away back there. Both of us. And part of us enjoyed it – especially the carried away bits. And you can think it was evil, or whatever you want. And maybe it was. But that doesn’t change how we felt about it at the time.”

“Look. Drop it. Okay?”

“I am dropping it. This is me dropping it. This is how I drop it. How do you drop it, Wes? By bottling up all your anger for a special occasion?”

“I’m not the one who started taking her pants off, Tara. You know? Or who tied her up. Or who suggested we get drunk.”

“I’m not the one who got a hardon, or who stuck it up her ass.”

“So it was both our fault. Fair enough.”

“Fault? Is that what this conversation is about? You really want to get into that messy arithmetic?”

“Maybe.”

“Oh. Really? You know how many people I’ve killed out here since this war began? You want to venture a guess? I have medals for some of them. Shiny ones. A couple of them have precious stones in them. They say shit like, Valor and Bravery on them. They don’t say murder, or – or massacre, or atrocity. But that’s exactly what it is. That’s all it is. Is any of that my fucking fault, Wes? Did I start this goddamn war? I got sins. Lots of them. We all do. It’s a long-ass line, and we’re all standing in it together. Some of us are just ahead of others. Some of us are just holding someone else’s spot. War is a sin, Wes. All of it.”

“I know.”

“We’ve learned some things about one another, and, maybe we both come away from this with different feelings. Maybe things are different now. I don’t know. Think what you want about yourself. The Apocalypse was before I was even born. If I’m vicious, it’s original sin. Sue me.”

 I turned and looked out the window on a strange, lunar-like landscape. We zoomed past a herd of 2 dozen goats walking along the shoulder of the road. A broken sign with only the letters ‘T’ and ‘E’ remaining. I wasn’t sure how she was feeling. The signal of her was faint. Perhaps I was simply overwhelmed with too much anxiety, shame and confusion to receive it. I wasn’t sure where things stood between Tara and I at this point. Perhaps I hadn’t really ever deeply considered the question, and was only just now beginning to. This wasn’t the sort of first sexual encounter between us I would have anticipated. Who was this person beside me really? Who was I? What had really happened back there at Tower 17? Somehow, it had begun long before yesterday, in a bathtub, and, on a horse trail under the shade of a great Eucalyptus tree. Somehow, our story was really the story of some other people who had come long before us. Somehow, we were divorced from that story, as much as they had been divorced from theirs. All is fucked when your creators don’t love one another, and love is a dark mystery.

Another dead dog aside the road like a blown tire carcass. There was death again. Indifferent. An upturned reveal of unlucky cards. There was a terror seeping into me. Slowly. Trickling through basement cracks. Elvis’ Blue Hawaii warbled into the cab. I wanted a drink.

Another 100 miles on, the sun riding low in the bright western sky, we came up upon an overturned rig. It had been hauling a cargo of luxury caskets which had tumbled through the thin skin of the trailer in the accident, spilling all over place. We needed a piss, and to top off our thirsty tank. It seemed an opportune place to pull off, though, perusing the scene there was nothing of use or interest to be discovered, save the macabre curiosity of the skeleton of the driver, still belted behind the wheel. Tara seated herself on the lacquered hump of a cherry coffin as I gassed up the Salamander. I looked at my watch.

“We should make the train station right on schedule.” Tara said nothing, but I could feel her wrestling with the uncertain expression of something profound. It felt sentimental. Amorous. Desperate. Somehow, it annoyed me that she couldn’t, or wouldn’t bring herself to articulate it. Inside the cabin, I could hear Ray Charles singing about Georgia. “Too bad this guy wasn’t hauling a load of whiskey.”

“Funny how these underworld contraptions are sort of like disembodied doors, you know? Never really thought of them that way,” Tara pondered, knocking thrice on the lid. “Hello, it’s me” she sang, giggling.  

“You hungry?”

“Not super. Not quite yet.”

     The denuded, wooden gates of Fort Xanadu passed by us. A herd of inanimate bulldozers grazing motionless on broken earth beyond the lone rampart. Fort Xanadu. Last stop on the mountain road east. Beyond it, only Tower 17. And beyond that – nothing.

     My knee and foot, which had been poised on the pedal for so long, nagged with discomfort. I switched to autopilot and stretched my legs. It was 3pm. We were running dead on schedule so far. The thought that, by this time tomorrow, we would be in the heart of A-Town was a terrifying one. And while our mission plan had unfolded with near perfection to this point, the odds were getting longer, the tactics more theoretical, the stakes ever higher. There was a very high probability we would both be dead within the next 48 hours. Surely, it seemed, we would be captured before finding our way to the facility where the Princess was being held. Or rather, where we believed she was being held. It would be heavily guarded, watched, rife with incalculable dangers. Having attired ourselves in the uniforms of the enemy would get us only so far. How deep down the rabbit hole, how far into the city, into the government complex, there was no way of knowing.

     With impossible luck, we would find her. Extricating her seemed purely preposterous. Our plan was to split up. It would increase our odds of at least one of us succeeding. The idea of disbanding our team at the precise moment when we would need one another the very most seemed a dire proposition. Our spies had forged our biometrics. So long as the security protocols had not been updated, we would theoretically get into the building. Operation Black Cat was largely a matter of improvisation from this point on. The timing of the arrival of our delegates, there to discuss terms of her parole, was the critical piece on which everything hinged. They would be holding her somewhere near The Hotel Jefferson, where they would be lodged during negotiations. A precondition of the parley was direct confirmation of her welfare.  We tried not dwell on the sprawling uncertainties. The answers would all come apace as we sped toward them.    

     And so, as the miles passed, we worked it out together, silently. If not in conversation, in contemplation. Salamander 5. Racing westward. Toward the sinking sun.

     She maintained that I had no right to judge her. I could feel her thinking it. And yet, I alone was uniquely qualified to do so.    

     She’s a soldier. A killer. The experience of war opens a deep, primordial door, and unlocks the homicidal madness confined behind it.  I slowly began to recognize that what bothered me about Tower 17 was less to do with her, and more to do with me. How it made me feel about myself. The vicariousness of it. The way Tara had engineered and manipulated my arousal like an experiment. The way that, once again, I felt like a pawn on her gameboard. Everything calculated for cause and effect. It was the science of it which was the most unsettling aspect.

     She had encouraged and orchestrated my arousal, the poor, tied up woman just another pawn. Looking back on it, the whole thing freaked me out. It had created a moment of crisis. I had felt myself at ground zero of a swirling moral predicament. I knew that on some level Tara loved me. Surely. -- Wes. -- You know?  Which was part of her predicament. She was testing me, in that grotesque moment. Testing the bounds of me. Testing the bounds of the entire male sexual identity. Viewing it through the lens of – ‘…let’s see what this naked woman does to this guy that I love. Let’s see how far this can go.’ It was a form of psychic refraction. Like sunlight through a prism. She was getting off on it, to an unknown extent. Yes. And it was, in large part, a way of engaging me sexually in a way which seemed safe and comfortable to her, and, which didn’t necessarily directly involve her. And that had been the appeal.

     Tara had seen a lot of fucked up shit in her time. Tower 17 wasn’t beyond her comfort zone by any means. I didn’t know much about her past, about her proclivities, apart from what she had shared. The bondage was not a shocking surprise. In fact, it was finally beginning to make sense. Sexual engagement without risk. Without the entanglements of reciprocation. The girl was tied up. Like a doll. A plaything. A centerfold in a 2 dimensional magazine. This way, Tara wasn’t going to make any mistakes. Wasn’t going to do something I didn’t like. I could reject the tied up girl. But not Tara. That was a large part of it.

     But, it was a voyeuristic thing too. Getting off on my arousal. Getting off on pushing my buttons. Getting off on me watching her finger fuck the woman’s pussy. Gawking at the ungainly, canvas billow of my erection. Inhaling the fragrance from her glistening finger, then pressing it to my lips. It was all very wickedly scientific of her. “Do you like that? Does she smell good? Is it yummy? How does it compare with others you’ve known?” It had all been so methodical and calculating, as if she were filing away all this data about me. Though, in the moment, I hadn’t fully understood or comprehended that this is what was going on in her mind. I was most confused and terrified. And, as she kept pushing it, farther and farther, the less I comprehended. Tara had wanted to see how far she could push it before I became totally unbridled.

     What troubled me in all this was the nagging sense that I loved her, in a deep and profoundly romantic way. Of course, I was inevitably aroused. It was chemical. Pheromones. Millions of years of biology. And then there was the music, and that Tara had been careful to get us drunk, and the fact that Tara was encouraging all my worst and basest instincts to assist her in raping this unconscious woman. I was very hurt by it. Hurt that this was somehow her preference for our intimacy. It felt like a betrayal. I questioned the quality and genuine metal of her true feelings for me in that moment. They were painful questions. It was all so very confusing. Then, there was a lower part of me which wanted to fuck this girl with her. My flesh was screaming for it. Of course, it was wrong.Comparatively speaking, killing her was felonious. Rape seemed a misdemeanor. All but for the theoretical absolution of war, and all which it absolves.

     The philosophical question was something much deeper, and represented a line I dared not cross. But Tara had pushed me to cross it, and was not in the least surprised when I did. Nor was she hurt by it. All Tara had wanted was to find where that line was for me. I wouldn’t take her finger into my mouth, and she dared not force it. Instead, she tasted it herself. “Suck her nipples with me,” she said, pulling me down with her by the coarse, woolen lapel of my field jacket. I didn’t resist. As we kissed and sucked and licked her together, Tara’s arm slithered itself down the front of her pants. She began to masturbate, running her fingers through my hair with her other hand. “Do you like her tits?” I was shivering, as if from extreme cold. She took my hand and placed it on my cock. “It’s okay.”

     The unconscious woman, still deep in sedation, was nonetheless responsive to sexual stimulation and began to sigh and shift in dreamy fits. Her pussy was wet. We explored its lavish secrets together, caressing one another’s hand and fingers as much if not more, Tara’s hand atop of mine, mine atop of hers at turns, tracing all the shadowy secrets of touch.   

     Tara took my hand, bringing it to herself anxiously, squeezing her breast with it firmly,  contorting in pleasure like a cat stretching itself in the midday sun. She seized hold of my cock, squeezing it so violently and firmly I lurched in exquisite pain. We kissed. Deeply. Furiously.  

     At some point, both of us unraveled and became lost in it. Tara anointing our enjoined faces with the nectar of her frenzied fingers like frantic war paint, probing and penetrating our kisses with them. I had been ransacking Tara’s blouse and bra, which had all but come undone. My hand carved its lazy way to the balmy between of her legs. I squeezed the humid parcel of her cunt like the whippy half of a magnificent orange. She winced, and seized hesitant hold of my wrist, replacing my hand to its former place on her chest as I kissed her ear and neck. That wasn’t part of her experiment. At least not yet. Not now.

     The tranquilized woman between us began to stir, though still less than half aware. Physically, the vague perceptions of her body were responding favorably to our stimulations. She moaned, twisting herself together with us, participating on a mysterious, primordial plane. Tara encouraged me to fuck her. She wanted to watch. I could sense it. The psychic connections between us had grown much more intense in this moment. The signals were strong and clear. The imagery of a blue pickup truck parked beneath a tree at sunset suddenly electrified itself in my mind like a back-alley beer light coming on. Blue sky. White clouds pregnant with late day shadows. Sunday. Country road 240. Clearly, this was a memory. Tara’s memory. I sensed that she was in the back of the pickup with someone, engaged in some formative sex act. But she blocked it from me. A locked door I couldn’t open. But I could see the shadows escaping from under it along the floor. I could hear them fucking on the other side. I wasn’t supposed to have seen the blue truck.

     Then, I realized it wasn’t Tara’s memory. It belonged to the tied-up woman. Tara had used her sorcery to conjure it from her, and was projecting it back to her, rewinding the tape of it, over and over. Playing it like a porno. Tara’s purpose became obvious to me. She was using the woman’s own sexual memories to stimulate and arouse her, enticing her desire. And now she was splicing it seamlessly together with our wicked debauchery. And I was now to be the demigod – half ether, half flesh. Incubus. She would incorporate everything, reliving it in the back of the blue pickup truck. I sensed now that Tara had tuned me into the frequency of the woman’s fantasies with deliberate intent. Tempting me with their vivid, alluring imagery. It seemed a cruel trick, but I was beyond redemption. “Eat her pussy, Wes,” she beckoned from somewhere beyond, “and I’ll show you more.”

     I sensed that Tara had wanted to delve deeper herself into the shadowy world of this Woman’s sexual secrets. The prospect of their discovery was highly arousing to her – because it was highly arousing to me. And that’s how she cracked the code of me. That’s where I crossed the line. I descended upon the woman like a winged vampire from the brittle, sweet-smelling pages of some gothic horror, thrusting her legs apart, smothering myself in the flesh-frenzy of her delicious pussy. A quenching of desperate, bestial thirst. Tara slowly scooted aside, grinning with ghoulish delight. As I devoured her, my cock growing painfully hard between the weight of my body and the hardness of the floor, I became aware of a song playing on the radio of the blue pickup truck, drifting through the little rear cab window. Fall In Love – Phantogram.

_____        

Great shimmering bubbles of translucent flame crowned in black soot, rising in a hot bloom like and animation of movie cells the unseen artist forgot to stain. 

All newcomers were detained for 40 days. Confined in solitary. Quarantined. It was S.O.P. She had escaped her cell the first night. In the morning, there was just her lavender bandana on the stone floor. A brief search discovered her sitting casually just around the corner from her cell. Nobody could figure out how she had escaped. She wouldn't say. 

This old, single story house sat on a wide plain ringed by low foothills, but situated near enough to them to shadow the low-powered transmission. I could hear my brother. Just a garble. Bits and pieces. Wes. 17. I thought to climb up one of the old pillars in the back. The trellis. Covered in grape vines. And from there, of course, up onto the wood shingled roof, the shingles old, cracked, loose, some charred from ages of fire. Maybe, if I adjusted the antenna, I could bring him in clearer. I looked with my binoculars through the little bedroom window, out across the plains, peering into the swollen glaze of the unfocused distance, where the brittle eggshell of a lone house stood. Dim. Empty. Forgotten.

You can make an image, but the image makes you.

Gnashe. Goddess of Music. Throwing up black. Creation. Tumbling down the long temple stairs. She dies, and is reborn to climb back up again. From the top, she can see the future past.

The long, old park road. The buildings long gone. Reclaimed by the forest.

A feast. Large gathering of friends and neighbors. The ritual centerpiece, a large, edible white wax candle in the shape of an erect penis is prepared and brought from the kitchen.

Fumbling with my heavy, awkward gear and helmet. Mouth and earpiece not working. The last transports depart and disperse. I am left behind on the base as the artillery attack commences, scrambling, panicked to find cover. Run. Run. Sirens as the shells fall.

Terrible white storm cut through the south of the city, raising the Mayor's Manse. Flinging trees.

Explosion at the munitions factory. Shack at the top of the island.

Panic. A near riot at the border, incited by some song on the radio. I get across. Stray cats and dogs roam the streets. I stop into a diner with Dean. They give us menus, but they're out of just about everything. Order a coffee. Dean sniffs the cream. It's spoiled. They ask us to leave. I leave 3 dimes on the counter. There's an antique shop next door. I go inside and begin to cry as I browse. Dean heads to the library building across the way and sits on the big stone steps. Every death is an apocalypse.
___________________

He crumples up the page, slowly, sanctimoniously. He lobs it at her. It bounces off her boobs and tumbles to the floor. Somehow, it's seen as an assault. Security swoop down upon him like black vultures, prying him from the room with grossly efficient aggression. They confiscate his credentials. Far below, the lights of the city list beyond the escalator. Outside, below in the streets, they toss him to the gangsters, who chomp him in their hairy, bracelet-ed clutches, whisking him down into the abyss of night. "Come on, Buddy! Let's go git us a drank!"

_________________________   
         

Breakfast at Henry’s Diner before the morning work shift. There’s been something of a shakeup lately. Rumors. Leaks. A new sheriff in town. Positions terminated. The new boss – well, nobody likes her. She’s very gregarious. Too gregarious. Too smiley. But she’d not one of us old beat cops. She’s here to clean house. She paints a happy picture of comradery every Monday morning, but it somehow seizes you by you lapels.


           A business man crashes in through the double set of glass diner doors. He’s manhandling an attractive woman, lashing her about by the collar of her black coat. The commotion knocks the handset of the payphone out of its cradle. It’s swinging like a lifeless body from a gallows.


          “What are you doing to her?!” The waitress demands. “Let her go!”


           “This??? This is a prostitute. Call a cop. Her and her little friend just picked my pockets!” Someone goes to phone the police. “What’s your problem anyway?” He shouts into her vacant eyes thick with mascara, jerking her violently. “You got Daddy issues? Did he skip town when you were 4? Or maybe he just ignored you. Only loved your little brother. That your story? Huh?” She says nothing.


           Coming off the subway into the plaza we shuffle wearily up the stairs like early morning high schoolers. At the top of the stinking stairs, a homeless Priestess offers an upside-down skull, begging for alms, a few coins rattling in the bottom. The silk-suited man in front of me looks down at her as we pass. “Sorry. All I have are hundreds today,” he says to her. His friend laughs. “I say that to her every day.” She says nothing, seeing them perish in her mind’s eye. Plummeting in a heavenly hell of fire. Their glittering world reduced to a darkness of dust like a roving, moonless midnight. Their remains will never be found.


          Will my key ring fit the lock? Will it unlock the turnstile? The guards watching from their tollbooths as the workers funnel past in mindless, stumbling throngs like zombies, the tumbling, crunching clatter of the stiles like an endless winding of broken music boxes which will never play. Inside, all these agents will be busy all day, keeping endless tabs on Villa Alegreans in long, listless shifts. Everyone. Everywhere. Each citizen has a dossier. There are so many files. So many drawers. So many cabinets. So many basements. So much information that everyone is practicably anonymous. Unless they are not. Unless their file ends up on the wrong desk. The classified threat of a potential dissident, exhibiting any number of certain, theoretical predictors. 


          Better be with the program, else your file find its way up to MS Division. They’ll tidy things up nicely in a plastic drop cloth. Naked and struggling. Not that the Public Attorney or Gazette will bother with bona-fide inquiries. No. The truth will drive away unseen in the blackness of a trunk, carried by its armpits and ankles to the furnaces. Its administrative clerk will punch the stamp – COMPLETE.


           I hold my hand under the sensor. A beam or green light licks my ring. I make it through the turnstiles. The sedative I swallowed keeps my nerves in check. The body sensors detect nothing unusual. Ahead on the plaza, the drone of workers spills off in all directions. Above on the amphitheater stairs, a sprawling scene of a macabre xylophone fashioned of orderly skulls. The old Holy Men, with their wrinkled, leather faces, toothless, muttering, rapping on them with bones, making a hollow music like some primitive Polynesian war rhapsody. The stumbling rhythms somehow in sync with the chaotic commute of the pedestrian crowd. A chorus of grisly jack-o-lanterns.


______________


           The drowned ghosts of three dead children. Two boys. A girl. Royals. Princes. A Princess. The baths they were drowned within are now a sacred temple. The Oracle of Feo. The old palace had been largely destroyed in the great quake, but its baths had survived almost unscathed. The damage was minimal, but for a few small cracks at the bottom, and through which weird, subterranean gasses escaped like an endless, glistening broil of champagne bubbles. The young virgin priests would wade naked into the waters with offerings of lavender and rosemary, receiving visions from Feo’s ghost. She would appear to them in her flowing white gowns, tangled in the chains which had held her to the bottom, her black hair wavering like seaweed. “Asssssk…”


              “Where is Princess?”


               “…Here before you.”


               “Where is The Princess Caroline?”


               “Nowhere.”


           Outside, the officials impatiently await the auguries. They are growing suspicious. The King wants to bring in his own mystics to consult the oracle. But the Feonian clergy won’t permit it. They are a power cult, and the King will not risk an insurrection. But there are rumors of his threats, and it is whispered that royal agents are already investigating the sect for homosexual crimes. If their divinations do not soon yield actionable answers, there may be formal inquiries, and the high priests are growing concerned. Again the King’s envoy has arrived with offerings of mountain water and herbs. Again it departs with only riddles. 

 ___________________

 

Waning Gibbous. Dawn. Sunday. Clad in cozy robes. Sticky fingers. Anointed hair. Simmering in slow departing darkness. The girls luxuriate themselves about the musky room like haphazard, silken throw pillows. In the center, the trilithon altar enshrining the obtrusive relic of a black, stone phallus. Sticks of slow smoldering lavender impaled in the shiny tip. The witches are convened. Sipping hot pungent tea. Powerful aphrodisiacs loom in the slippery atmosphere. Ephedrine and ethaline. Touching themselves. Passing the ritual stone, smooth and slender dildo sculpted long ago by the sea. Taking turns inserting it. The witches are convened. The room hums powerfully. There is nothing nastier than witch sex. 


Giggling. Moaning. Laughing. They coagulate in groups of two and threes, their prickly, silken limbs entangled in loose, patient knots of pleasure. Watching the carnal carousel of the pleasure revolving around the room. Giggling. Moaning. They drink from the same, heavy crystal flute. It seems somehow to replenish itself with the dry and bitter pomegranate wine. Their lips, and chins and breasts are sticky with the candy of its crusty syrup.


Grey dawn lurches mournfully beyond the heavy equipment. The W3. The Trilithon. They squirt onto the touch screen, their ejaculate falling like sudden heavy rain onto the sensitive electronics. The screen flickers with frenetic fury, glorious terrible interference. Random digits and letters explode across the monitor, like a field of wild flowers growing in fast forward. Weird, dark entries. All to be loosely translated and interpreted later in a separate ritual. Now is for dancing, and laughing. Now is for fucking, and for coming as hard as you fucking can - else the ritual may fail. WC knows all about it. They even have a file on it, code named, Druid Lane. But the file is closed. No body seriously believe in astral projection, sex magic, or divination anymore.                        

   Heaps of darkness. Like haystacks. Glimmering like mounds of shattered bones. Welcome, Hell. Sticky, brilliant Hell. The scent so sickly sweet. 'If you've never seen that town, boy it's a pity.' Things I've done for kicks. Never you mind. I'm going down to Liverpool to suck myself off with a foggy champagne glass. 
 _________________


     His Holiness is not allowed to address the audience. His marble podium is set aside. His seat is set aside. He appears pathetically dejected. As he laments the affront, he touches my shoulder and sniffs the torn knees of my dirty blue jeans - inhaling everything from Friday's fried chicken and blueberry syrup to Solstice champagne and anal mucus.   

     Strange. You sing the right song but maybe you don't know why. Cruising haunted back streets, trying to remember why.  Their names so bright and lonely, escape you now outside. Its alright, you threadbare queen, walking your bike uphill in the rain. Look at me once. Don't be afraid. I know you know the song I'm singing. It's the right one, but maybe we don't know why. Kiss me now, the chance won't come again, and laughing Camelot will drown in dreams forgot, overgrown with boulevards and waking wonders naught.

Imprisoned.          


Sulfurous Pluto. Nude-yellow stasis glow, licking the pekid walls. Not feeling this place. At all. Thirsty. Dry and brittle. Grit under its aching nails. Thirsty. Aching. Tired.


Mars. Virgin ice. Dank orange dirt. Sapphire air. Where is your acrid dawn like the steel of a heavy hammer? Where is your deep-wounding scythe so bloody sharp? Where is your golden wheat and rye, trickling down as endless deadly snowflakes? Beeping. Beeping. Beeping in meaningless chromium chirps through the black vault of heaven. Like the chattering teeth of a mad typewriter in the perfect dark. The unintelligible shiver of words, stumbling from the radio boxes below, their mere, naked telemetry. A bottle in the pacific. Bobbing. Its thin and desperate message long drowned and macerated. To arms. To arms.


Blue Uranus, we mourn thy pyre. Apollo hath landed on the moon, like a fiery demon, perched as a ferocious vulture. Bringer of dark gifts worse than cruel and lonely shivering death.    

.....

          Western Control wasn't much more than a dim, narrow labyrinth of stark, white walls, reeking of fresh paint. It was a new facility, still in midst of its grand opening, as it were. Odd name placards. The Chief's office was all done up like an ultra-swank, wild west saloon. Intricate, carved wood relief sculptures of beavers, buffalo, moose and elk. Surveillance and systems monitors in ornate, gilded frames. Parquet floors spread with bear skins. A man was hunched over an antique roll top desk, seemingly mesmerized by the colorful flow of data streams and fluttering imagery. I touched my ring to the sensor and the heavy glass doors parted with a breathy gasp. The air inside was crisp. I stepped in. The man, and the guard beyond in the corridor paid me no mind in midst of all the commotion. Up above, was a bag of golf clubs entombed in a glass sarcophagus. A placard indicated they had once belonged to Madame President Reynolds, final Commander-In-Chief of the United States of America. There was a small shard of glass mounted within an illuminated shadowbox beside it, accident debris from the notorious crash of Air Force One which had claimed her life in the great coup. A red and black satin chandelier tinkled on the ceiling. A small tremor.

             "Where's the Chief?" I asked?

              "Back there," answered the man at the desk. He pointed to an oak paneled door without taking his eyes off the monitors.

                 Inside were the personal lodgings of The Chief of Western Control. He was standing in the nude, being measured for a new suit. Shifty. Hungover. There had apparently been some sort of wild orgy the night before. The room beyond was cluttered with haphazard heaps of slumbering party guests, polished shoes, black trousers, bloated gowns. Expensive stemware stained with ruby rings like evaporated blood. Half-eaten food. It stank like stale cigarettes and booze. A spry seamstress approached with a bolt of lime colored fabric for his consideration. In the long, gravel drive beyond the opulent entrapments of the foyer awaited his limousine.

               "I'm Seymour," he said, with a vaguely effeminate inflection. "I'm the new Chief. Care for a cigarette?"

              "No thanks."

             "Oh, go on. Have one. They're real."

             "You're the man runs the whole government now, right?"

              "Men don't run governments. Governments run men."

                "And so now it's come to this." He was drunk and didn't catch the insult.

                 "We began pre-fueling our missiles. So they began fueling theirs. People started phoning in their goodbyes. So many calls the lines went down. Or maybe it was a kill switch. Protocol. Maybe an EMP sleeper. Nobody really knows or much cares now. What's the difference? Anyway, the new custodians of doom were simply handed the keys to the whole, great big black box. All of the old lessons retired with the old custodians, who had become old, withered men who didn’t care anymore whether the world should be buried together with their fragile bones. Like the dead pharos, buried with their all living servants. Whole families. Gold. Food. Wine." 

                  "Well that's profound."

                   "That surprises you."

                   "Yes."

                    "I like you. You're honest. Not many of those types in this town."

                     "I'm so glad." He chuckled.
   
                     "There you go again."
___________

They gave her a "T" Pill and came back 45 minutes later. She wouldn't talk. So they gave her another and smacked her around. 

       "What are you doing here?
       "99 for Stan."
       "Who?"
        "I call him Stan. Shadow Jock. Beams a bunch of noise and nonsense."
        "The Coyote."
       "Who?"
       "That's what he calls himself. On the back channels anyway."
       "Oh."
       "What you want with him?"
       "I want to suck his fat cock."
       "Do you now?"
       "Yep."
       "What else?"
       "I want it in my ass."
       "That's not what I mean. Why are you surveilling him?"
       "We're looking for Caroline. Maybe he can help."
       "Ah."
       "How I don't know. But he seems to know things."
       "He does at that. You know where he is?"
       "No. I thought he was here."
       "Why's that?"
       "He's on this band."
       "You ever seen him?"
       "No."
       "You ever talk to him?"
       "No."
       "You know anything about him you're not telling me?"
       "He's sexy. And funny. And smart. He seems to know things."
       "You said that already."
       "Yes."
       "You know why he's on this band?"
       "No."
       "Because he's using our rig."
       "Oh."
      "He raided one of our forward stations. Killed the signalman. took everything in the shack. Antennas, radials, generator, transceiver, code books, everything."
       "Oh."
        "You sound surprised,"
        "I am."
        "Why?"
        "He doesn't seem the type."
         "What type?"
        "A killer."
        "We're all that type."
        "I suppose."
        "You're disappointed in him."
        "Yes. Well, no. Depends how he did it, I suppose."
        "The usual way."
        "What way is that?"
        "Gassed him out of the shack with a smoker and slit his throat while he was choking."
        "Professional."
        "Yes. Someone trained him how to do that."
        "He was a soldier maybe."
        "Maybe. That all you know about him?"
         "Yes."
         "That bounty hunter you're with. He know anything about The Coyote?"
         "No."
         "Well, we'll soon find out for sure."

___________________

     Seymour wants to rape me. It becomes frighteningly evident as he begins circling slowly like a mindless, grinning shark. I glance around, searching for some salvation as the terrifying realization begins to billow like blood. There's nothing. No escape. No Tara. Only marble, and columns, and indifferent men with guns, poised with ready compulsion. He moves in for a nibble, stoking the nape of my neck with the back of his hand. I wince. He giggles like someone just told him a dumb joke. He continues to circle, the tingly taste of fear now on his tongue.

              "Where did you say you plucked this one?" He quizzes the Station Police.

               "Garden Station. He was up in the offices."

               "Uh-huh."

               "He was trying all the doors in legal. Some hot bitch was with him. They came in on the train together. We're still going over the security footage."

                "Uh-huh. And where's she?"

                 "We're still looking. We'll find her." The other officer says they've already got her.

                  "Alright you can go," he dismissed with an absurd brush of his fat, hairy fingers glittering with gold and gems. "I'll get to the bottom of this," he hissed as the Station Police withdrew. He retreated to a credenza and began fixing himself a drink. "Search him."

                    Two of his security entourage moved in and began to yank at my clothes. I could feel my blood pumping in my neck. Throbbing. I hoped that no one would slit my throat.

_____________

When we finally got around to fucking, it was somehow like a waterfall. A river. Rocks. Gravity. Beautiful to behold. Birth and death all broiled into one. Never twice the same phenomenon. Always constantly a different natural wonder.

.....

There was a thought that he had left. It was a sullen, unwelcome consideration. A rising torment about it. And so, she untied it. Carefully. Like an old, stubborn knot. And once undone, she drank from the freedom as cool water, bidding him return with the remarkable idea of her grey eyes and sunlit shoulders. She was delighted to see him reappear into the broad, hot light of day. Delighted with herself and her power. 'Never forget it,' she thought to herself - "It's my jam." She sensed his latent devotion. His loyal heart. And really, that's the only true remnant of magic remaining in this broken world. She saw him. Saw herself giving him 3 books. Or was it two? The sensations were clear if not the imagery. Details of the future are always variable.   

Radio Wasteland. -- Don't You Forget About Me.

In the end, the people we are doomed by fate to love are just the broken parts of our own worst or best selves.

                                      A rush and a push and the land is ours.
                                      -- So phone me, phone me, phone me.

We layed together, swaddled in sweaty sheets, sharing a delicious cigarette. In the morning, we would meet the Secretary, The Ambassador, The Chief of Staff. There were two schools of thought. The first, was that terror, i.e., war, was a necessary instrument of governance. You needed it to control everything. Resources. People. Ideals. Without it, everything gets out of hand - out of their hands. And the second, was that nothing could be controlled. That all was chaos. That terror was just an instrument of extortion. We took our complimentary iodine tablets and drifted off to sleep.


Downstairs in the lobby we shook hands, surrounded by ancient oil portraits by Peale and Reynolds. “Thank you, Mr. Secretary.”


“Don’t refer to me that way in public. Call me, Teacher, if you must call me anything,” he said. They had been waiting for a breakout. Concentrating all their firepower on a single point of our lines. They were certain it would come any day now, but they were growing impatient. We departed the massive marble lobby. In the distance, the fierce artillery brawl. 


What little was left of the decaying world was being dismembered and badly butchered by these dour old men in tweed jackets and bow ties. They gnawed the scarce, rotting rest of it from its withering bones like jackals, washing down the unsavory scraps with brandy and cigars.


The effects of the drugs Baca had administered were finally fading. Or were they? What’s more, or maybe even because of this lingering uncertainty, my dim faith in humanity was sinking. Refusing to rise again above the barren horizon of reality, like the northern sun which clings eternally to dismal twilight. I was losing my way. My dreams wouldn’t come anymore. I was dead inside. As dead as the land. As dead as the sea. At last, perhaps, I was remembering my old self once again. That familiar person I so longed for back in that dank garita, so many months and horrors ago. Only now, there was context. Perspective. The perspective of having forgotten who I was for a time, and what to felt like to be that person. The Hotel Jefferson was perhaps the worst sort of place for such a disconcerting epiphany. 

Weird vibes from Room 511. Trashed. Clothes. Lingerie. Overturned furniture. Champagne bottles. A murder scene. The assassins had been hookers. The television studios are right downstairs. It’s all housed in the same complex. If you’re not careful, you can accidentally walk right across a live set on your to the legislative chambers. It’s happened before.

In the wide windowed round room of power with the aging Presidents and their sons. A bed in the middle. The eldest asks me if non-believers will go to heaven. I answer that there are no non-believers – the Great Creator has given us all belief. Only, some have misplaced the gift because their spirit is sick. I tell him, there are many gods, but they are all one. They do not understand. Then, we try to discuss terrorism and violence. I try to explain that terror cannot be quelled with its own evil. They do not understand.

The old General’s mansion in disrepair. No funding to keep it up. They don’t even give tours anymore, but dignitaries and military officials still have access. Guided tours, such as ours. There’s once nice hall remaining where they still have banquets and fundraisers. It had all been built by slaves and ought to be torn down, some say. I can feel their painful fingers radiating from the mosaic tile floor under our feet. Let is stand, I think, juxtaposed to the slave quarters, so we can all see the shame.

Walking heavy bags of food and drink back to the salon. Some of the wives getting their hair and nails done. Some Army general is with us. They don’t allow visitors to roam the streets without an escort. I feel myself to be in need of a haircut. Don’t trust this place. Don’t know the stylists. They seem lazy. Inattentive. Treat the customers like shit. I see why it’s popular. Some of them are listening to headphones while waiting for their lunch to arrive. They don’t look up as we enter. Music laws don’t quite apply within the Capital. They look they other way at little earbuds and certain, approved forms of ambient reception lobby music.   

Taking an outdoor shower. Rinsing it out. People vaguely watching as I bathe. Some sort of outdoor concert. Musicians mulling about. The cream of the crop tells me I will show the guys some good fingerwork. They are skeptical. I’m ashamed at not having played in so long.    

_____

I was greeted by pulled-down sheets, and the love I wanted. 

     The pernicious pleasantries of breakfast champagne. Someone ought to say Grace, I imagined. “Let us pray.” – I mean, fuck. The whole napkin-wrapped uncorking ceremony – hard, shapely bottle sweating, glistening. Gripping the shaft. Coaxing the round, supple cork to rise under building, explosive pressure. Edging it out, inside your tight fist, as slowly as you possibly can. Sensing the pressure. The lady whisper. Swallowing the bittersweet froth. Sticky. Seething. Savoring the glow. The lip-stained ritual of champagne is the second-most lascivious libation. I wanted to fuck the waitress as she poured me a glass, her thumb in the dripping punt.  

     The rest was uninteresting. Smiling niceties. Phones fucking everywhere. Flowers. Fresh fucking coffee. No signs of the apocalypse here. Lots of wide, far-away eyes, but no strong and sun kissed shoulders. Colorful flags fluttering, but no nation. – Fuck these people. The Ministers were all celebrities here. A woman snaps our picture at the next table. Discretely whispers something across her pretty little breakfast to the woman opposite, her eyes carefully hidden behind a big pair of expensive sunglasses. Her legs crossed tightly. Her foot and ankle convulsing ceaselessly with unconscious, nervous energy. The champagne finally begins to take hold. Holy mercy. The hotel was getting crowded. The vibrations were getting nasty. I was overcome by a fierce and sudden compulsion to flee. My champagne was quickly gone. The waitress refilled my glass.   

     Finally, a lesbian with some sense of style enters. Government officials were exempt from the homosexual laws. She stops. Turns around. Leaves again, all in one unpunctuated motion. Surely a bad omen. That’s what Hotel Jefferson was. One great big bad gold and marble omen. 

...

There would be no time to return to our opulent lodgings upstairs. The Hotel Jefferson had eyes and ears everywhere. Our belongings would have to remain, strewn across the furniture and floor and silken sheets like the excruciating memory of our love. Our precious gear and kits. We wouldn’t need them now. It was off to the Aerodrome in an official motorcade. There to a gas-drooling plane bound for the high away alter of the black sky – black like the listless eyes of an ancient oil portrait, Southern Planter, Statesman. Long dead. Long reigning. Long-worshiped Baron of Hell.  


Suddenly, I remembered something Baca had said as I drank his potion: “You must trust your dreams. However dismal. However brief or small or absurd. You must untangle them from their bonds of doubt, and unmask them from their surreal disguise. Beneath these entrapments is their truth. Your truth.”
______________________



Things were right thin, Mate. Chairs out of place. Treacherous contraptions. Kicks just getting harder to find. Outpost Alpha. Kill the fan and lights. Rig for red.


The lamp outside has been repaired, exhaling its tawny fog. “Crack a blind. Let’s have a look.” 12:58AM, Thurs., Dec 22. South Gate secure. All quiet and still. No Moon. Clear. Cold. Damp chill on the air. Green beacon on. Outbuilding bulb on. Eerily still. Dead silent. No vehicles stirring – above or below. Nothing from the buzz box, not even static. Strangely desolate. No passers-by. No dog barking. Fucking weird.


Finally – a wink of a taillight beyond the battered branches and strewn streets – WOOSH! A sign of some life down on 11th. Now still again. One of the small garrison stirs below. Coughs. The Captain takes a last slug of fizz from the big green bottle and sets it empty on his desk beside his log book. The swollen light stains its pages the color of bloodstained water. He takes up his pen. Turns a page. Creases it into submission. Writes. Now stands. Turns. Steps into the window again. Peeks once more through the armoured blinds, folding his arms. He drums his fingers on the deep sill beside the vacant gun mount.


     “This window glass needs cleaned,” he realized aloud. “Spotty. …Like this position. Spotty.”


      “Aye, Skipper. First light,” affirmed the watch chief.


      “Both sides.”


      “Aye, Skipper.”


     He said nothing for many more minutes, just standing, scanning the night. He had a mind to crack the upper transoms a hair, just to hear the distance all the better. But the room was already quite chilly. Interlacing his fingers, he slouched to one elbow, his gaze uninterrupted.


       “It’s time we synched things up a bit around here,” he mused. “…cut out the deadwood. Mow the weeds.”


      “Aye, Skipper.”


      “Repair those malfunctioning locks. Replace those busted pickets. Reinforce the skirt.”


      “Aye, Skipper. All noted, Skipper.”


      “Soon as practicable.”


      “Aye-Aye.”


       All was quiet again for another long spell.


      “Haven’t heard a gunshot once yet tonight. Not one. “


      “Aye, Skipper. I noticed that too.”


The Captain then cracked the upper dormer. The chill of the night slowly seeped in. All that more was to be heard was the endless exhale of evening.


      “They’re out there though,” he continued. “They’re out there. …Who’s hungry? I could use a biscuit.” One was brought up to him from the galley below on a small dish. He took a bite, twiddling away the small crumbs. “Some coffee too, please.” A cup was brought up to him, just as he liked it at this weary hour – cold, black and heavily diluted with water until it was the color and flavor of tea. The buzz box crackled – the throb of a drone in the slow approaching distance. It skirted somewhere overhead, then plodded away south.


      “Diminishing, Skipper,” reported the watch chief, twisting the green-glowing pinky toe. The Captain shook his head in quiet disagreement. In a moment, the buzz intensified, lingering faintly, poised on the edge of uncertainty.


       “Leave the squelch alone, Chief.”


       “Aye, Skipper.”



        The buzzing grew louder until they could all hear the actual drone itself, gurgling swiftly overhead. Then, it retreated, setting out on a wide patrol to the west. The Captain looked at his watch and jotted down the time. 1:57AM. He tossed the little pencil aside and nibbled his biscuit. Took a small sip of coffee. Listened. After many long moments, the buzz, which was now only a vague rumor, slowly began to throb louder. 



        “I’ll be damned, Skipper. But it’s clear as a bell out there tonight,” said the Watch Chief. The Captain noted the time in his log. 2:02AM.



         “He’s shifted a bit west.” Remarked the Captain, scribbling some quick arithmetic. “34th Street,” he said. “Maybe as far as 49th. 22nd Avenue. …That’s 80 square blocks. 100 maybe.” The sound returned. The Captain again noted the time. 2:07AM. “…A kid will just about climb anything, you know. Crawl under anything. Leap from anything. I know I sure did when I had the legs and breath and back for it. Gotta get this blouse buttoned up tighter, Gentlemen.”



        “Yes, Skipper.”



        “First light, Gentlemen.”



        “Aye-Aye, Skipper. First light.”



        The sound returned. Again, The Captain looked at his watch and noted the time. “Four, - five minute intervals,” he observed. “Down blinds.”



        “Down blinds. Aye, Skipper.” The blinds were shut.



         The Captain switched on the monitor. “Need to relocate this reflector. Here,” he said, tapping the screen with the end of his pencil. Channel 3. Way too bright.”



        “Noted, Skipper.”



         “I want to re-do this whole array. 2 perimeters. 1 outer, 1 inner. Channel 4 here is useless. All I can see are roofs, powerlines and trees. …and clear those god damn cobwebs away from the lenses.”



          “Noted, Skipper.”



          The drone returned, but The Captain seemed to ignore it. “THIS, is Western Control, Gentleman. Not that pussy palace back behind the wall. …Install that top wire we talked about. Both gates.”



         “Noted, Skipper.”



         “I’m turning in,” The Captain announced, dousing the monitor and hanging up his cap. “Crack the blinds.”



          “Blinds cracked. Aye, Skipper.” It was late, and there, at last was something of a Moon. A thin, soggy sickle of fleshy light, dangling over the dangerous east.



          “We need to update our maps and frequencies. Get the radio back on it’s feet. Fill that pothole outside the sally port. Find a home for those 2 new spots that came in this morning. Get that generator hooked back up the wheel.”



          “All noted, Skipper.”



     “That’s all for now, Lads,” The Captain said, descending the narrow companionway. “Chief – you’ve got the bridge.”

 ____________

 

Touchdown. 15 minutes.

"How'd it go out there?" bellowed one of the naked ramp rats.

"We socked it right in there!"

The rats scurry around, strapping up more bombs and rockets. Refilling the tanks. Probing for bullet holes and making patched. Little metal bandages. Time enough for a jog to the can for a piss. A wank. A shot of crap coffee. Or maybe a beer with a smoke and your feet up, toes tapping to the sloshy jingle of Charlie Ventura’s, ‘ I Don’t Know Why I Love You Like I Do.’ You hand gripping the sweaty neck of the bottle like your groggy cock. Cigarette dangling from your lips. Smoke stinging your squinty eyes. All the while, your rotors stewing. Radio Wasteland.


        “There’s something somewhat about this jingle, isn’t there?”


        “Kill the engines. Let’s sit awhile and just listen. Know what I mean?”


        “Sure, Cap’n.”


        Then. Finally. Blessed silence, but for the radio tunes, which, only somehow accentuated it.


        “I need to rest my fuckin’ ears.”


         “Debating another beer. That one went down like a drone.”


          “Better not. May have to saddle right back up. …That call box working?” He picked up the handset and gave it a listen.


           “Roger that,” hanging it back up.


            Captain re-lit his cig. Gulps the last dribble. Looks up at the stars.


            “We make the meaning. Know what I mean? …But in the end, it’s all meaningless. It’s made-up malarkey either way. See?” He takes an accidental slug of his empty beer. Set the bottle down on the railing. Buries his hands in the fleshy, brown pockets of his flight jacket, wobbling about in his big flight boots in a shadowy shrug. Tommy Dorsey says he’s getting sentimental about you.

             "It's a beauty. There's a natural beauty to it all, you know."


             A disparate smudge of pale clouds drifts out to sea above us, the stars glittering through them like the beaded, scrawny veils of a bellydancer.


             “Don’t be that way.”
 

            “Huh?”
 

            “The name of this number. I couldn’t remember it.
 

            “Oh. Yeah.”
 

            “Don’t be that way. That could be code for…”
 

             “Search me.”
 

             He retreated to the shadows for a piss. Thinking. “…hard to get. Prude,” he said, shaking piss from his dick. “Which is to say, coy. Modest. …which is to say, …reserved.”
 

             “Meaning what?”
 

              “Meaning, disinterested. …which is to say, -- vulnerable! Yes! Vulnerable! …The guy in that lyric is going to fuck that girl either way.”
 

               The Way You Look Tonight, came on.
 

              “Next number,” he continued, “may indicate a position. A location. A target.” A drone zoomed in but passed straight over. Finally, the awaited tune began to play. “S’ Wonderful” – Artie Shaw squeaked through the box. “ ‘S’ is the clue!”
 

              “So what’s that, south?”
 

               “Probably south. That’s the first came to my mind too. So what’s south?”
 

              In a while, King Porter Stomp came on.
 

              “The King!” 

____________
     She was only just 20 feet away. On the opposite side of the checkpoint. The wrong side. But that was all settled now. When she noticed him through the patches and quilts of chain link and razor wire, she was frantic with emotion. She couldn't call to him. Guards on the wall. Agents everywhere. She moved parallel to the wall, desperate to attract his attention, raising her arms to preen her hair. Smiling.

     He wouldn't look at her. Even in the smooth bright sunlight of the dying afternoon. But he saw her, if only slightly, haunting the around-the-corner of his eye. He sensed enough of her to know they were both aware of one another, and that would have to do.

    Appalled, she tried harder still, demanding he look her in the eyes one last time with a loud SMASH! of her foot, hard-kicked to the kettle drum of an old trashcan beside the wall. Everyone started, turning nervously to look. Everyone but Wes, who just grinned, and took a long tug of his joint, acknowledging the explosive clatter only thus.

     It was his sacred goodbye. His own. Cruel, but heartfelt and original. Full of every confidence she would understand its inevitable poetry. He wouldn't look at her, however desperately he wanted to. Not through the border fence, through dangerous wire. Her radio signal was fading. He could still make out the song through the rising tides of static. But it would soon slip below the waves.

     For a time, in the dark days ahead, he would try to raise her on the old channels. But there was only ever static. He saw her twice more, in dreams.




            
"How are your hands?"
"Like someone's been putting their cigarettes out in them."
Raqui removed her amulet and put it around his neck. A sacred gesture. Mig took hold of his hair, yanking it as if it were the expensive cloth underpinning some ostentatiously appointed table.
"FUCK!" he wrenched in anguish.
"You've got to relax, Dude," J.J, scolded.
"We're stuck here," Mig murmured, trying to believe the peculiar words.
"We'll get you out of here, Mig," Raqui pledged. But there was a somber resonance of doubt in their tambour.
 "I can't skate. Look at me. I can't. So where my gonna go, Raqui? Huh? How my gonna get there? What? You gonna tow me in a shopping cart? Huh? No, we're stuck here!"
"For now maybe! Yeah. We're stuck here, but we're safe here," J.J. barked.
"--For now."
"We got you this fucking far, didn't we?!"
And then, nobody spoke. The room was filled only with the sounds of their still labored breathing. Outside, in the distance loomed the ragged squawks of a PA: ' the penalty for aiding or abetting wanted criminals is death. Report suspicious activity to your precinct captain. Be on the lookout.'

"Thanks for this," Mig finally whispered, clutching at the amulet with his bloody, contorted hand.
Raqui held a joint to his lips. He smoked. "...I'm sorry."
"...It's working already," Raqui smirked.   


________________

There was a switchblade fight on the overpass. Chokehold. A few deep slashes. Police were soon on us. We walked quickly down under the spillway below. E was bleeding all over me and leaving a nice neat trail for the pigs to follow. He put his arm around me as a spotlight painted us in a broad white stroke. I pried his hand off me and flung it away. "You stupid or something? They'll think we're fags and toss us away for life."

     We sat down on the wall of the spillway, our feet dangling above the darkness. The cops were on us in moments. "Don't move. You're under arrest."

"What charge?"

"Proof. That's what."

"Proof of what?"

"Let's go. Get up!" His grip felt like the bite of a dog. I slipped and tumbled over the side of the spillway. I can't say how far I fell, but the landing hit me like a truck. I grunted. Three spot lights found me immediately. "Don't move!" I tried but couldn't.

"You gonna read me my rights?"

"You have the right to remain silent. Should you choose to say anything -- "

"I ain't saying anything." They dragged E back up the embankment to the street and tossed him into the back of a cop car. I was finally able to sit up. A couple of cops were doubling back over the overpass, making their way around the other side where the embankment was shallower and afforded better access into the spillway. There was a sewer pipe just behind me. I scurried into it before the cops above me could open fire.

The dove -- the sanctity of life, and the ascension of eternal hope. Redemption.

What are the 4 stations of love? Perhaps there are more. 12? 24? The numerology seems important.

The way is blocked. By the poor, by the segregated, the persecuted. On the other side is the ruin of a toxic scrapyard. Radioactive city salvage.

It is my turn to sing. Sad karaoke. A song I don't know called, Cucu, by an unfamiliar artist. It's all being recorded on VHS. An old, magnetic data format. Someone's old home movies being carelessly recorded over. Lost, forever. I'm suddenly very angry at the projectionists in the DJ booth.

Leaving Westchester Key. Packing. Frantically. Trashing things. Cramming the rest into anything which will serve ass a container. Everything shrinking. Reducing rapidly. Diminishing to hollow walls. Like a collapsing star. A gut-sinking sense of ending. It begins to feel more like a strange hotel room than an apartment. One I need to vacate by 11am. A Christmas tree. Cheap and fragile ornaments. Other things which must remain behind. Like Tumbler-Snapper A-Bomb props. Morbid mid-century mannequins. Lock them up. Leave them behind in the furnace of the past. Time to go. We mustn't remain.

She is there. In the midst. Like a vision. Being held and kissed in a familiar but unrecognizable room. A seismic jolt of the heart, its long dormant but now lethal fault lines suddenly slipping. It's cities collapse and ignite. But, in the end, it's just a bold headline. An Extra edition of the endless news cycle, chucked into a litter bin along the evening platform. All the frantic and futile gestures of life go on and on. Traffic lights go green, then yellow, then red, and to green again.

A 5-year-old boy in a crackerjack blouse is struck down by a Model-A fresh off the assembly line. They clear his little corpse off the street. The blockage cleared like hair from a drain, the traffic resumes. For now, it is automobiles which are the ceaseless product of this novel facet of industry. But soon, the billowing factories will manufacture death. Their greying lilac-scented foreman and clerks cloaked in dark tweed. Tanks. Shells. Gas. Ghastly heaps of boys. First, they will arm the would-be enemies. Then the allies. All the money is green. All the blood is red.

I had seen the great forest of towers, forged of iron and stone. Crawled beneath their deep shadows with the vacant-faced throngs. Its roar had once been so seductive. Like the smile of a strange girl. The clatter of Jazz under her heels. Endless fortune cookie ribbons of misleading signals ticking from the prophetic dome of her feathered cloche. And then, suddenly, just as you close the deal to finish unrolling her from her knee socks -- Black Tuesday. If you bring your ear to the prickly crustacean of its musty streets, you can still hear the echo of The Crash.

In the end, we simply shed our lives, a too-thickly muss of photos falling from a refrigerator door. The weak bond of the thin magnet broken by the tremor of a midnight snack. A breeze through the sink window. Some slight and common jostle. The photos twirling down to the black linoleum. Scattering and floating, face-down. Their date-stamped backs upended.

           There comes a point somewhere near the end of every night. When the dawn is still only just yet unborn. Where time and space, where future and past, where life and death, and all things melt as fragile crystals on the warm windshield of a frozen January 9. Within this fragile space, beyond the Pains of Desire and tardy relinquishments of release, while the sweat still glistens even as it begins to dry, that we are for a moment transcendent and enlightened and fulfilled. From the hard fought vantage of this narrow place we may see and know all things if we have but eyes wide enough. Wes was exhausted. This weary body ached to the bones. Every sinewsome new peculiar anguish to torment his dwindling thoughts. Sleep would not come this night. He would remain awake riding the wave, sliding with it, along it, upon it, within it. Letting it carry him to the place of its pleasure. His quest was over. He felt quite certain. Anathema ineffable. And though the things which it sought remained unattained, its purpose was passed, had passed years ago, fallen from the tree of time like leaves. His face sctatched with the claws of time, his hands brittle and quivering. All of these years on Penny Lane waiting for Tara to return, knowing she would never and would not. He had kept her place ever as she had left it, keeping it like a lonely lighthouse. And though the war had long since ended, it raged ever on within him, here in the darkness. At long last he understood, here in the Twilight of everything. He reclined forever, an endless dying star, the cold dim light about him just a hazy fog hovering about the endless sprawling dark.

Sawdust Amphibious Air Station –  One of the Ramp Rats spots the big fat Hayloft coming in, a weird sickly-colored rainbow sundowner staining the dwindling dusk. AA rocket exhaust. She’s coming in hot under the radar, 100 knots, 40 feet off the deck –30, --20, --10. Hard landing in choppy seas. A galley cabinet comes unbuttoned and vomits mess kits all over the cabin. The engines growl above. The Rats swim out with toe lines and beaching gear. One of them slices open his knee while attaching the tire to the tail. The guy up on the Starboard wing shouts back at him, “That your blood, Mac?  Better get back in before the sharks eat you.” It’s too far of a swim. The flight officers scully over to intercept him, hauling him up by his armpits into their rubber dinghy as grey fins circle. It’s a bad cut. There’s bloody bilge sloshing all over everyone’s boondockers.

“Better go have that looked at,” Chet says. He fishes his mermaid cigarette case from the inside pocket his flight jacket, un-lidding it one-handedly. “Smoke?” The naked man shakes bloody seawater from his hand and plucks a long, brown cigarette from under the metal tongue. “Go on. Take two.”

 “Thanks, Captain.”

“Don’t mention it,” he says, producing a flaming Zippo.

Chet strolls over to the radio shack, the ankles of his baggy trousers bleeding water behind him. The CO keeps a bottle in his locker over the radio bench, a dynamite crate screwed to the wall. Always the first stop before post patrol debrief. “Mind if I help myself, Al?”

“Go right ahead, Captain,” Al says, pulling one of his headset earphones off his ear.”

“What’s the score?”

“Still pretty quiet since that big storm blew through.”

“Yeah, we didn’t see shit all day. Not even pirates.”

“Simmons kicked in this morning.”

“Jesus. Crazy Wabbit? What happened?”

“Starting the engines. Wasn’t paying attention I guess. Walked into the prop. Took his head clean off.”

“God damn it.”

“Never seen so much blood in my life.”

“No wonder there were so many sharks out there tonight.”

Both notorious and mythic, Sawdust Amphibious Air Station was a small but highly enterprising village jangling in the deep pocket of the surrounding hills like a dull little wheat penny. It was a crucial base, fabled, yet secret and difficult to spot or recognize from the air. Its situation on the coast featured a narrow inlet flanked by high promontories and treacherous bluffs. The sea ramp was well camouflaged, as were the hangars. The main gate was a short ride down the Eucalyptus tunnel of a well-canopied Jeep trail, which slithered its way along the bottom of a steep, khaki canyon. Beyond the gatehouse, there were only a dozen or so small buildings. A quirky conglomerate of shacks, outbuildings and bunkhouses strewn about a deep hollow. Everything they needed was here. All the tools of the trade. There was a motor pool, a saloon, a barber, an officer’s club, outdoor showers, an armory, mess hall, stables and blacksmith, a telephone, radar station, even a brewery with fulltime brew master. The excellent ales he produced from his 3 tanks were widely traded for all manner of goods and services, should anything ever be in wanting which Sawdust could not provide for itself. Porn, for instance.  

Many of the furnishings and equipment had been salvaged off of old Naval vessels – such as the big brass general announcement speaker fixed to the wall over Chet’s head -- Radio Wasteland, ‘Careless Love.’ The radar station up at the top of the hill was fitted out with a periscope taken from a submarine. The optics were very sharp and afforded an excellent view out to sea.  

The three-quarter moon was high in the sky, its pale light filtering down through the dark canopy. Chet stood in the open barn door and pitched his head up to find it. His sunglasses slid off the top of his head, but he managed to catch them behind his back before they hit the ground. He wanted another drink and a smoke as Artie Shaw’s ‘Yesterdays’ wobbled out of the radio and began stumbling around. The night was still and balmy, and unusually quiet. No patrol choppers, only crickets, Jazz and the occasional crackle from the green glowing long wave transceiver.

“Say, Al? Mind if I use your terminal? Don’t feel like walking over to Operations in these wet boondockers.”

“Go right ahead. I was just about to go get some more coffee anyway.”

“Thanks.” Chet poured another drink and bellied up the glowing keys of the Sytech. He logged in, filing a quick post-flight report. Fuck it. He’d polish it up in the morning. He plugged in his COM and began uploading his patrol data, sipping his drink, blowing thick onion rings of smoke. He was off duty once the report was filed. 6 hours. He would sack out, if he knew what was good for him, but Chet wasn’t one to obey rules of time. In fact, he very frequently and very deliberately blurred the shit out of them., as Benny Goodman’s, ‘Bugle Call Rag’ came blaring through the brass PA. Chet was tapping his foot and snapping his fingers. He was all gassed up. Sleep would be hours away.

His report filed, Chet stepped out onto the brick patio, gazing up at the apparently unremarkable sky, the impending canopy of the trees much blacker. Once he sees the sky for what it is, it makes him want to shout out, cry out, in beautiful, ruckus confusion, like a wartime big band, and listen forever for the AWOL echo. A shooting star, but he can’t be sure, beyond the sandy footprint of a frail cloud. All of it, the color of newly issued denim.

‘How do you communicate what it real? Communicate something real? Convey reality? Words upon a page? Sentences? Paragraphs? Chapters? Everything must have a fucking order to it. Don’t it be the truth?’

‘The god damn fucking sound of New Orleans. The Sugarfoot Stomp. Larry Clinton. I prefer King Oliver to this bipitty-bop, This is more Marlon Brando’s type-cast version of Louisiana. And nobody wants to drink there. An old Pall-Mall cigarette ad comes cleverly across the radio. The truth is, there’s always some part of one’s self experiencing discomfort, that is uncomfortable; whether it be your sockless shoes, your ill-fitting pants and skimpy belt, the too-tailored fit of your jacket sleeves which won’t quite reach the throttles together with your arms, the dry and frigid upper atmosphere, the steamy lower levels, ears popping between. Where do we fit? Where do we belong? Riding the clouds? Riding the waves? And now, Lester Young, as Al finally returns with his coffee. Chet’s good and stoned, having finished the whole bottle.

“You still awake, Captain?”

“Me, myself, and I.”

“It’s 2:30, Captain. Why not get some shut eye?”

“Okay. I get the picture.”

“Take my cot, Captain. It’s just up the ladder there.”

“The universe is constantly remaking itself, you know? And that’s why death is necessary. Creation requires destruction. And that’s why destruction is fucking creation. And that’s why it is not to be lamented!” Chet dripped the last few drops of the bottle into his glass. He contemplated opening yet another still. “These are not profound thoughts, Al,” he said. “These are just mere thoughts. Subtle. Slightly poetic, perhaps. I miss my dead friend, Al. My departed brothers and sisters who will not return to me. To their sweethearts. And, while this of love I do not distain, in my heart is worshiped silence. Silence which longs for rile ruckus of music. The music of their laughter.”

“Hey. Hey. Come on now, Chet. It’s late, Man. Sack time.”

Chet hauls himself up into the loft, collapsing into the canvas cradle of the cot, gawking up at the sagging rafters of the ceiling with one bleary eye, regarding there an old license plate. New Mexico. Land of Enchantment. 1945. 16-572.    

Beautiful maleficent alcohol. 

I had dreamt of a rattlesnake. Coiled. Rattling. An omen, I think. An automotive factory boss. A gaunt, bright-eyed ghoul. Cruel. Shrewd. Then, some strange oddity of a mechanical contraption. Navigation computing device. Two enameled half spheres. One large, one smaller atop the larger and set on a rotating spindle. Strange markings upon them of blue and red jagged lines, glyphs, symbols. Their alignments indicative and predictive of some important direction or celestial state of affairs. I tap the upper sphere like a bell hop bell. It bobbles slowly and spins. The Underhaul, it's called. It summons old forgotten dreams.

At the top of the trail. At the bottom of consciousness. A sanctuary. A cabin, high in a Vermont woods, where wood is stacked high and deep, and cremated like dead. Evening clothes stained with the scent of red fires and maidens untold. 

Hayloft had been up all night too. Down the shop for a quick Duco-job. Her bullet holes penciled and clipped. Board plates welded to the wounds like bandages. Portside propeller throwing oil. A new compliment of quarter-tonners and tin fish.

My stomach was turbulent. I was dreading the nauseous ordeal of the bumpy jeep trail. I was still drunk.

Cloudless sky. We hitch a ride in a Blitz Buggy down to Intelligence for preflight briefing. No weather. A few chalky notes on the formation. The Girl in Blue, Hayloft and Devil Deuce will fly sectors A, B and C respectively. Off to the sea ramp. The sea was mirror still. The rising sun looked at itself. Liftoff! Nash, the Navigator crackles something we can't make out. Some complaint or other about his bent calipers. 

The hazy sea and sky wore the same garment of faded chambray, a thin white stitch of clouds along the ragged hem. We were 20 minutes ahead of plan. Assigned ceiling too choppy. Throttle up higher on the trail.

The cold air at altitude was a fistful of aspirin. The half-a-biscuit I had eaten had pasted me up fine. I was feeling mostly better. My eyes sharp again, scanning the blue haze below, the simmering sunlight back beyond the rudder. No wakes. Just a lonesome forever of open water. So it was, the whole, long patrol. All 14 hours of it. 

As dusk drifted in, we throttled back to begin our steep descent into Half Moon Bay. The weary engines yawned. We slipped under a thin blanket of clouds. My ears popped. Nudging our way through rough air over the brackish brown of the river delta, desolate marshland, oozing like a crusty scab. Telltale signs of civilization.     

Half Moon Bay. Time enough for a few Tallies. A hooker. A tattoo given by a Philippino boy with a carpentry nail dipped in ink. At least I had had my T-shot. A dagger on one forearm, a porpoise on the other. I was so stoned I had forgotten having gotten them. 

_______

His name was Houge Hunfried. To his men, he was The Hun. He ran a small, special Ops crack unit which had been deep into the lines so long that things were fuzzy. Tall. Black hair. Imposing. At one time very handsome, now, in his mid-50's, his face was weathered and worn from long ages of punishing exposure to battle and bitter elements.

The bed was wet. "Oh, yeah. Sorry. Had company last night. I want a bedmate. I just don't want all the heady bullshit that follows, and which turns bedmates into roommates."

Our party was in the bombed-out bedroom. Changing. Cleaning up for supper. The journey was nearly over. Tara and the old warrior had grown closer over the miles. She sat on the desk, a black leather jacket and blue crinoline petticoat. He was crouched before her on the floor like a big black boulder, lacing up his boots, a plain view up her skirt. "A lot of things may happen next," he said, placing his big hand on her ankle. It slowly tracked higher.

     "That," I pronounced, "is definitely not one of them." I seized him by his thick, hairy wrist, pulling him half way to his feet. His skullcap and glasses came undone in the minor tussle. Calmly, he resituated himself.

     "There are only two people in this room responsible for that." he said quietly.

I looked at Tara, beginning to want to say something, but no words would come to me. I wondered whether any would come to her.

Don't worry. It's all wrong. 

PART II: We Regret To Inform You…


     I dreamed of poisonous water. The poisons we put on the land which wash with the rains into the oceans, which rise to the skies and fall again to the land. I don’t remember the specifics. There was just a sense that the end was impending. People had developed coughs. I remember the phone call with Danny. A broken beer glass. He had said Jim’s films don’t exist anymore. In the dream, Ray gave me his final, unfinished manuscript when we met in Paris together near the empty stage. There wouldn’t be any more shows. It was clearly to do with fucking alcohol. Weird that I spoke to him once on the phone. Danny, that is.    


     The inviting softness of my black velvet heart. The uninterrupted exhale of the wind. Respiration of The Wasteland. Some bug warps in and out of the darkness before my face. I think of the car accident. The cursed piece of headlight or windshield glass which Ginger plucked off the Paso Robles road and deposited into her purse as the Sheriff shoed them away. How she later got sick and died. I think of the desert prince. The old wizard. The warrior. The hermit. The knight. How he looked at his watch and warned him not to drive. I think of the costume party that night back on The Broadmoor. Glowing red eyes. The Hooded Man. Maybe there’s a weird connection. Maybe there’s not. Weird that I spoke to him, and know him, Baca that is,


     I can see Orion through the naked oculus. One star in particular. Beetlejuice, in the armpit. Quite brilliant. Shimmering reddish-orange. In just these few moments, the whole constellation has shifted beyond the brim of the oculus. “Of course, if you’re going to get involved in the occult you should fucking beware,” they had sarcastically affirmed back at headquarters. The ancient observatories of the Pre-Columbian sort, those igloo-like stone capsules. That’s what this place reminds me of. Sitting here in the dark, I appreciate why and how those things were built. How the concept of the observatory must have evolved from sitting in some dark, primitive dwelling, and which, in some respect, might have been open to the sky for the exhaust of smoke or whatnot. How the occupants pondered with naked wonder the slipperiness of the starts after the fire was exhausted. How the slice of morning sunlight drifted across the room in the morning, wobbling about with the seasons. It was in some such way that the concept must have been born.

Blindly, I fumble for the little black device. The little granola bar of a digital recorder. The buttons are a blur. I mash them from memory, hoping I don't start deleting the files. It's been so long. How many files are there? How long has it been?

Somefuckinghow, I select the exact file I'm searching for. October 2AM. My black velvet heart. The inviting softness of my black velvet heart. I don't know what it means but, it's something you just want to touch. Pet. Fondle. What's the word? Explore? Admire? Beneath your fingers. I guess maybe Part II should begin with Baca. We should come to know him better. In his tower. His secret plac where he practices his magic. It should be a splendorous place. Wow. There's a bug flying around. I thought it was like a cold breeze. A ghost. Stupid bug! Is it a stupid bug? Maybe it's not. Maybe it's a messenger I almost dumbly killed. Big bug og a messenger, whatever it is.

Baca. Baca the shaman. Self archetype embodying idealized self. When I think about shamanism and what I aspire to, he's a vehicle. We won't make him fit into this mold. But the idea occurs to me. In some ways, Wes is kind of like the Ego. You know? Baca is the idealized self. Tar is kind of like the Divine Feminine, you know? Three different aspects of self. That's for the audience to decide. I'm listening to the Moon. The sound. It's frequencies translated to sound. It's playing up in my office. It soulds like a desert wind. Hollow. Uninterrupted exhale. You know. It sounds like the Wasteland. Like Baca's cave - before he became Baca. When he was still known to himself as Franklin. And, that's where the story finally begins. I feel like there should be a car accident involved. You know? The James Dean story. I think you should tell it. I think there should be someone named, Ginger. Ginger who picks up a piece of shatter glass from the windshield or headlight. Puts it into her purse as the police shoe the kids away back to their car. The mangled flying saucer being hoisted up onto the wrecker. She later dies if malignant cancer. Maybe there's a connection Maybe not. The car, Little Bastard was supposed to be cursed. ( I laugh). Alec Gunnies. Obi Wan Kenobi. There's some connection there. Circling back to Baca. The hermit. The Wizard. The Hooded Man. How he was dressed like a Jawa that night. Impossibly tall. Red beady LED eyes which he had superglued onto his dark sunglasses. How it freaked us the fuck out when this wraith appeared in the dark, Halloween threshold that long ago Orange 70's night. That dusty cocaine soiree. I digress, because the tape has stopped. Or, the digital file or whatever. Fuck you. ...the observatory. Griffith Park. Rebel Without A Cause, you know. That scene with Plato, where the universe explodes. "Looks at me, I'm a crab!" Stars. Stars. The Zodiac.

4 AM Sunday. Not the file I was looking for, but let's go with it for now. At long last, Coyote has appeared in my dreamscape. Probably because I was speaking about coyotes last night on the radio. It was like, I was in this weird hotel. A small building. Similar to the old 500 Broome Street address. I was having to pack. Move. And, once again, everything was in shambles. Bits of tattered paper all over the carpet. Little nails that had fallen out of the furniture which had been moved, rearranged, dismantled. I was having to pack a suitcase. Move things across the street to a car. An old, burgundy Mercedes. A school. Like Panorama. But part of it was this prison. But it was like a -- but it was empty. These jail cells. There were 2 entrances. I was moving all my stuff by hand across the street. So many possessions. All these tee shirts and shit. And I had to lock it all up because there were these shitty kids all around. Gawking. (Gunshots, I think). The prison had become a Zoo, somehow. The there appeared in the middle of this sort of viewing pen, the Coyote. It seemed it had the ability to change shape, because at one point it had been a fox. One of the kids climbed into the pen and tried to get the Coyote or whatever. Then ensued a chaotic frenzy. A riot. One kid took some food. The kids began to run around in a frantic, delinquent mob. I got mad. Some of them broke into my lockers and began stealing my shit. I jumped in, grabbing one of them by the hair, screaming at him, "THIS IS MY SHIT YOU'RE FUCKING WITH!" It was then that one of them shot me, I think. I remember locking the place up. It was like --- before all this I mean, I remembered the place, only it was different. The cells, the pens were for people, all of which were empty. I had these flowers, which I was going to go and take a photo of myself with these flowers through the bars. Some artsy type thing. Dried flower arrangement. I don't know. Different colors. It was this small jail cell for people like, it had 2 doors. One at the front. One around the side. I left one open. The one at the front. I locked the side, which then enabled this alarm. A silent alarm that went off. Realizing what I had done, I ran around the front to try and lock it, but it was too late. I think Ken was there. He made a call. Explained it was a false alarm. And then there was something to do with work. I was at this computer terminal. My boss called me and there was this -- review of all my case files. What their value was. Profits and loss. What seemed an unfair level of scrutiny. A sense of comparison with my fellow agents. I was to be made an example of. Strange. Anyway. Coyote has appeared. Trickster. I breathe deep. End recording.

I need the other ones pertaining to Baca. His dwelling place is described in detail. The events of that night. The drugs I had taken. Their preparation. His council. The astrological parts. The ceremony. All of it. It was here in this little black granola bar. On the other side of this little red LED. Little red eye. Like a Jawa. A Hooded man, squinting from one, red eye. Tiny, piercing beam. So many files. I will search again tomorrow. I am too tired, and I've only just begun to examine them. It was a church. Capsized in mud. Almost completely sunken into the earth. The cathedral ceiling was -- well, you could reach up and touch it. In places, you had to duck to keep from hitting your head. And the Zodiac. The Planets. The Houses. The Signs. All of it was etched into the plaster. The files. It's all in the files. But now sleep. Just even a little sleep before the sun hits.  Fuck. Then there's all that shit still to tell about the white station wagon. The mystery of the wallet. The fake ID. That Mexican joint on North Beckley. 13 dollars. All that shit. You know, the ghosts in the sprocket holes. Pincushion distortion. Parallax. Waltzing lampposts. Rain gauges. "DODSON! WE'VE GOT DODSON HERE!!! ...You see? Nobody gives a shit." The limo passes. Nobody waves. They just stand and stare, like cardboard cutouts. As if nothing is there. As if nobody's been shot.

"We are just passing through history. This? This, is history." They've got top men working on it right now.
              
Keys. Lots of keys. Jangling on a shadowy hip in the wet ferns high above the LA Basin, twinkling like a -- anyway, all those keys. Well. There are many locks somewhere to which they belong. Many locks. Many secrets. That was some diorama. That big, dark room full of people. That was some film, huh?

What year was it again, that Disney won all those 7 little Oscars?