Tex and Molly in the Afterlife, page 15
Deep Herb, still in his lotus position, appeared to have frozen in place. Rainie Moss was twisting the hem of her batik jersey, nervously. Sara tightened the last screw and switched the Equity Lamp back on. It was fitted out with a new high-efficiency compact fluorescent bulb, which gave off a warm glow, like a table full of candles. Guillermo looked terrific in it.
"What action?" said Eben Creek. "Tell us specifically what you mean."
"Gladly," said Guillermo. "What I propose is, we break into the old Goddin base, and we stage an action right there on one of the runways. And we tell the TV stations in advance, so they can get some helicopters out there. We've got to start thinking big. We've got to think major media."
The Players looked at one another and back at Guillermo. The compact fluorescent bulb shone brighter as it warmed up: a feature of the technology. Pippa moved back a little, taking her usual place in the shadows.
"But what's it about?" Sara asked. "What are you trying to prove?"
"Just this: that the Gulf Atlantic Corporation has plans on the drawing board to completely reconfigure the biosystem of the Great North Woods. And that these plans are masquerading as a simple reforestation program. Planting trees—who could possibly have any objection to that?"
"Well?" said Ludi. "Who?"
Guillermo ignored her. "But these trees they're planting—they're not any native species. They're not any natural species. They're robot trees. Artificial life."
"Wow," said Deep Herb.
"Yeah, wow," said Ludi, sarcastically.
"How do you know this?" demanded Sara. "You said last time that you've got some kind of proof. Something on a computer disk. So where is it?"
Guillermo peered into the dim recesses of the loft until he located Pippa. He pointed at her, menacingly. "My cloak," he said. "The disk was in my cloak. And you took my cloak, with that damned bird wrapped up in it. What did you do with it?"
Pippa edged forward like the accused approaching the witness box. "Syzygy," she murmured.
"Syzygy Prague?" said Rainie. "You mean, the Kitchen Witch?"
"How is Syzygy?" asked Sara, brightening.
"She's got your cloak," Pippa said. "She took it because ... I guess there was something in it."
"Of course there was something in it," Guillermo said. "There was a computer disk in it. A valuable and sensitive computer disk."
"No—I mean," Pippa stammered, "there was an ... acorn."
"A what?"
Pippa nodded. Obviously, he had heard her. "It was really important, I guess."
Guillermo raised his arms to the heavens. He spoke beseechingly to someone there, mano-a-mano like: "Why? Why is it always this way with these people? Why?"
«Because» said Molly, «that was no ordinary acorn.»
"Well, that does it," said Guillermo. "I'm out of here. I'm out of this absurd Street Theater. Time is too short to keep pissing it away like this. Anyone who wants to get serious about saving the forest before it's too late, let's get together this weekend and we'll lay down some plans. Some serious plans."
Then he climbed down the ladder. Leaving Deep Herb, rocking in the unseen (but strongly felt) winds of prana to call after him: "What's such a big deal about a computer disk, anyway?''
But the only answer was the sound of Ludi's Volkswagen revving up. The gearbox ratcheted in a way that would have set your teeth on edge. Fortunately Molly, in her present configuration, was not encumbered by teeth.
«I can't believe it» she thought. «The low-life has taken her car.»
But that was, perhaps, the least of Ludi's problems.
EAT CUTE
"Want a ride?" called Deep Herb, rolling down the driver's-side window of the latest in a series of virtually indistinguishable small European cars with rusted-out undercarriages. A lesser, material-plane type of guy would have figured out by now why his cars kept falling apart on him. Not to mention why they only cost $200 in the first place.
"Where're you going?" Ludi called back. She stood disconsolately in the field sloping down to the ocean behind Eben's rented barn. The new growth of low-bush blueberries was purplish, their juvenile leaves tiny and delicate-looking. You kind of hated to step on them. A few hops away, a rabbit was hunched down among the foliage, waiting Ludi out.
Being helpless, Ludi thought, makes you feel at one with the natural world. You're out here without shelter, protected only by your wits. If the wind feels sharp or the sky looks like rain, it means something to you.
Deep Herb said, "Yes or no?"
"Where are you going!" Ludi asked again, more insistently. You try hard to be polite; but sometimes—
"To work, man."
I'm not a man, Ludi felt like telling him. But then, in a way, Deep Herb wasn't either. It was like he had mellowed himself out into a state of genderlessness.
"At the pizza place?" she said.
"Right, man."
Without hesitation—though Dan Dan's Pizza Scene was down in Glassport, twenty miles from her apartment in Dublin—she said, "Okay. Thanks."
And thus she found herself not only left without a car but stranded in the excruciatingly picturesque village of Glassport—"Where the Mountains Meet the Bank," as Molly once quipped—surrounded by a hellish landscape of white clapboard B&B's, condominiums, balsam-scented souvenir shops, a regional credit-card center, a Smith & Hawken wannabe gardening boutique, a couple of underfunded public schools, and the editorial offices of the Glassport Herald ("Serving Right-Thinking Mainers Since Last November": ibid). And then, of course, there was Dan Dan's ("The Last Real Place in Town"); only Ludi seldom went in there because they always seemed to be playing the same tape of klezmer music; or maybe it was that all klezmer tapes sounded the same. In the end, of course, it came down to pounding the pavement, or making repeated calls to her own answering machine in hopes that Guillermo would pick up, or taking a table at the pizza place and waiting for a knight in shining armor to come to her rescue. In short: Dan Dan's or die.
Deep Herb greeted her just inside the door. He had pulled his hair back into a ponytail. "Kosher or non-kosher?" he professionally inquired.
"It's me, silly," said Ludi.
Deep Herb nodded. You must never let anything a customer says upset you. "Right this way," he said, conducting her to a table directly in front of a Magnaplanar speaker so large that it looked like a shoji screen. He handed her the nonkosher menu and said, "I'll take your order whenever you're ready. Meanwhile, enjoy the Brave Combo."
"Thanks for nothing," said Ludi. But Deep Herb seemed not to hear. Perhaps the music was too loud.
Well, it was a Real Place, at least. It had incomprehensible paintings by local artists, hanging plants that could have used a good photon supplement, and a panoramic vista of the police station. Ludi held out till the end of a song that seemed to have been spawned by a mating of rockabilly and Polish wedding favorites, then she picked up her menu and decamped for the bar. The service was less ethereal there. More important, you had an unrestricted view of Dan Dan's eagle feather tattoo. Thus you had a view of a goodly part of Dan Dan, considering where the tattoo was located. And Dan Dan, although weird and a little grungy, was tres cute.
"Hey," he greeted Ludi, as she slid onto a barstool. He stood behind the stainless steel counter, karate-chopping dough into servility. Probably he didn't remember Ludi's name. Who cared? She would not have remembered his if it wasn't painted on the window. It was his shoulders she was interested in.
"Dan Dan," she said, "could I ask you a question? I mean, sort of personal?"
He smiled a weird smile, crinkling his little moustache up. "Do it."
"Are you Jewish?" she said.
"No. Why?"
Ludi shrugged. "Could I have a glass of pinot grigio, please?"
When he fetched the wine over, he gave her a little wiggle of the eyebrows and said, "You going to be eating?''
"Who knows?" said Ludi, seizing the goblet.
Dan Dan backed off a respectful step. "Hey, cool," he said. He flexed his upper arms out of nervous habit.
It's amazing how exposed men's bodies are, Ludi considered. Look: the muscles are all right there, just below the skin. They bulge out against it. You can practically count the sinews. And that hair under their arms. Doesn't that seem sort of primitive? It's so odd, the way this whole animal thing works.
«I never thought of it quite that way» reflected Molly. «And you know, now I'm sorry I never really got to know Ludi any better. She's much more—»
"Yeah, really," muttered Dan Dan.
"What?" said Ludi.
He seemed puzzled to see her there, sitting alone. ' 'Oh, I just—I was just thinking, I guess. Another shot of the pinot?"
Ludi noted with surprise that her glass of wine had emptied itself. "Why not?" she said, pushing it toward Dan Dan. "Men are strange, don't you think?"
"Hey," said Dan Dan. "Life is strange. Pizza is strange. I get cops in here all the time, drinking coffee. I mean it's like, don't they know who I am or what?"
"Who are you?" said Ludi—realizing, even as she said it, that the answer would probably be disappointing. Things were that way.
"Beats me," Dan Dan admitted. "I guess I'm the owner of a fucking pizza joint."
Ludi smiled kindly at him. "Well, it's a good pizza joint."
«And she likes your tattoo» added Molly. Always trying to be helpful.
Dan Dan twitched his arms again. "Thanks," he said, abashedly.
At some point along here, between the first glass of wine and the third, the barstool next to the one on Ludi's right came to be occupied. No big deal; except that when Ludi finally got around to glancing over that way, she thought she recognized the guy—straight-looking, a year or two older than herself. She couldn't guess where she might have met him; but that's how it is in small-town life. You keep seeing these strangers over and over again, until after a while you're ready to be godmother to their children, whose names you probably know from hearing them yelled in the grocery store.
«No, he does look familiar» Molly agreed. But she couldn't place him either.
"Could I have a small Mex pizza?" the young man said to Dan Dan. He spoke in a loud, careful way, the way you might to someone who was just getting the hang of English.
"Our pizzas only come in medium and large," said Dan Dan. The newcomer seemed to annoy him.
"How can that be?" the young man said. "How can you have medium without small? Medium means in the middle."
"Ah," said Dan Dan. "I'll get that taken care of." He gave Ludi a look and headed over to beat some dough up.
"Nobody knows what words mean anymore," said the guy on the barstool.
It sounded like something your father would have said. After two or three full seconds, Ludi understood that the guy was speaking to her. She turned to look at him—to inspect him, the way Guillermo did: coolly and without emotional complications. Sort of a Mr. Spock way of looking.
And she saw right away that this guy was what Tex called a Young Fogy. He looked like a grad student on job-interview day, Ralph Laurened to within an inch of his credit limit. His medium brown hair (two tones darker than Ludi's) was cut and combed in a way that would have been breathtakingly cool if, say, Leonardo DiCaprio wore it. This guy, it made look like a poseur. Plus he wore glasses with no rims, which made his forehead look too large or his eyes too small or his nose too sharp—something in that general area. His lips were okay. Actually they were good. And the chin was much more human-looking than Guillermo's.
God, thought Ludi, is that what I'm doing? Comparing everyone to that asshole? Dan Dan's shoulders, this guy's chin, Deep Herb's testosterone level?
Feeling a little sick, she looked through the rimless glasses into her neighbor's bright eyes and she said: "What do you mean, anymore?"
He didn't miss a beat. "I mean we're living in a post-literate age. We're living in an age of zero cognition. People toss words around as though they were Nerf balls. You know, you can't break anything because there's nothing inside them anyway. Everything is context-sensitive. It's just an expression of the way you're feeling right now. It's an I statement. It's what it's like for me. The Gospel According to Oprah. One day at a time. That's what I mean by anymore."
Ludi thought, Oh dear, one of those. And she thought, His teeth are nice, too.
The guy was still staring at her with this same bizarre intensity. She stared back with at least two glasses of pinot grigio.
"I wouldn't be so sure," she said.
"About what?" he said.
"About what you're saying. This whole dumbing-down-of-America rap. I mean, there is such a thing as nonverbal literacy. There are more ways of communicating besides just with words. Look at the ways culture is disseminated nowadays."
"Sure," said the Y.F. "We're a happy global village full of couch roaches."
"Maybe. Partly. But also Net Heads. And garage rockers. And hand-held video producers. I mean, what makes verbal literacy so privileged?"
"Privileged?" said the Y.F. "You sound like an assistant professor of Victim Studies."
"No way. I'm fully tenured."
He smirked appreciatively. "To answer your question, though. What makes verbal literacy so privileged is that it's what separates us from the rest of the natural world."
"Oh, right. And you can see how great the results of that have been. Look—if you think about it, words aren't really a medium of truth. Truth is something you know in your heart. Words operate somewhere else—they only affect your brain. They're a medium of like, data. So they've got no intrinsic valence, either good or bad. You can use them to make the Gettysburg Address or you can use them for propaganda and hate-mongering."
"Which is precisely where knowledge and reason come in."
"Right. And that's exactly the problem. Because if it weren't for reason, you'd never be able to convince people that the things they feel in their hearts—things they know by common sense—are really untrue. You'd never be able to tell them that there's no magic in the world. Or life has no meaning. Or machines are no different from us. Or poor people have brought their suffering on themselves. Or the end of nature is a nonissue. But with words and reason and knowledge, whatever that means, you can do all those things. And more."
She sat on her stool feeling light-headed, almost breathless. The Young Fogy watched her in bemusement. Finally he gave her a rueful sort of smile.
"Hey, sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to punch your buttons. I was just blowing off steam, really."
Ludi exhaled. "Me too, I guess. I've had kind of a weird day."
"Tell me about it."
He ruffled his hair away from his eyes. He looked more warm-blooded now.
"Hard day at the office?" Ludi asked him.
"You don't know the half of it." He shook his head, and everything seemed to come loose: the hair, the lips, the weird intensity. "I truly believe my boss might be the Antichrist."
"Aren't all bosses the Antichrist?"
"I don't know. I've only had one of them. And I mean, I like the guy. But he's capable of the most unimaginable acts of corporate lunacy."
Ludi looked down at her current glass of wine and reflected upon this. Most of what she knew about corporate lunacy was from reading Dilbert. She wanted to sympathize. But you take one look at the guy, and you have to think it's probably his own damned fault. Really: do they draft people into these jobs, or what?
"Why don't you quit?" she asked him.
"Why quit?" he said. "They offered me 76 thousand dollars a year right out of graduate school. I've got my own tissue culture lab. I spend most of the day outside, doing field studies. So my boss is Hitler. Big deal, you know?"
Ludi inspected him all over again. She found nothing overtly abnormal about him. Still, it was probably best to keep a safe distance, in case he turned out to be an alien from the Planet of Decent Health Care.
"You look familiar," he told her.
"Yeah?" said Ludi, cautiously. Maybe he was a stalker. Maybe he worked for the credit-card company. "I guess we might have friends in common. Who do you know?"
He frowned at her. Like it was her that was weird.
"One medium Mex," said Dan Dan—heavy emphasis on the qualifier—sliding a hot pizza not quite directly in front of the alien: a little off in Ludi's direction, in case she might be angling for free food or something. He winked offhandedly at her.
"Thanks," said the guy. And sure enough, he asked Ludi, "Would you like to help me with this? It's a bit larger than I was expecting."
"Yeah," she said, "that's why they don't call them small."
But he was off that, now. He didn't seem to have any idea what she was talking about. Dan Dan dropped off an extra plate and the guy glooped a molten slice onto it.
"I've never tried this kind," said Ludi, who suddenly felt very hungry.
"Me neither," said the guy. "Actually I've never been here before."
"Never been to Dan Dan's?"
He didn't answer; just forked a piece of the steaming Mex into his mouth. So he couldn't work at the credit-card place, Ludi figured. That was just around the corner, and the lunch crowd from there was what kept Dan Dan open through the long stretch between tourist seasons.
The guy said, "Well, it's not exactly New York style, is it?"
"This ain't exactly New York," said Dan Dan, who heard everything.
"Well, I give up," Ludi told the guy on the next-to-next barstool. The spicy pizza, on top of the wine, on top of Guillermo, made her feel reckless and slightly misandrous. "My name's Ludi. I work in a bookstore. Occasionally."
"You work in a bookstore?"
She shrugged; she saw the irony. "Only in the summer. So: who are you?"
