Joel Osmond was on his way to becoming a star.

In reality, he was on his way to the assembly hall at Bob Jones University where he was billed as a rising star – but to Joel that was just a detail. Four years on the road finally brought him here, ready to make his big move, ready to make his grand appearance, ready for the big leagues.

Only one thing stood in his way as he walked by himself across the campus green to join others of his generation where they would each promote themselves as evangelists of a new age of Christian belief.

And that one thing was a great piece of ass.

And as it turned out, it was standing right in the middle of the walkway twenty feet in front of him, looking the other way, swaying to an inaudible beat.

It looked like it had no intention of moving out of the way, so Joel walked right up behind it and snatched the plugs from its ears.

The girl swung around to meet him, standing a half a head taller than he.

“Girl, you know how much trouble I can get you in for this?”

He shook the headset in front of her face and then stuck the plugs into his own ears. He listened silently, bobbing his head to the beat while she – whoever she was – acted surprised and disgruntled.

He pulled one of the plugs from his ear and spoke half to himself, half to the poor girl with the dazed look, “Old fashioned and nasty. Breaking all the rules. Lord, that’s just the way I like it.”

What he meant by that was:

Old fashioned – in that she was listening to a guy around since the ‘60s, Carlos Santana, a man old enough to be her daddy and by pure coincidence, Joel’s favorite guitar player of all time. Joel tried to explain his fascination with Carlos to her but she either was not interested or simply didn’t get it. Either way, she said nothing while Joel looked her up and down, thought she might not be his intellectual equal but decided to give her a chance anyway.

Nasty – because she was listening to Black Magic Woman from Carlos Santana’s Abraxas album.

“Girl, do you have any idea what this is all about?”

“Why no, Mr. Osmond, I haven’t a clue, pray tell why don’t you enlighten me?”

Joel listened through the one plug still in his ear and played air guitar as he enunciated the passage he had memorized from Father’s copy of the Gnostic texts: We questioned it, berated it, made love to it, prayed to it. We called it mother, called it whore and slut, called it our beloved, called it Abraxas.

Whoever wrote that, Joel told the girl, sure knew what women were all about.

Breaking all the rules – because listening to an illegal CD player was enough to get that gorgeous butt kicked right out of BJU. But not to worry, young lady. He was in control of the situation and not prone to getting pretty young girls in trouble, at least not for a first offense.

Joel closed his eyes, played his imaginary guitar and sang along just loud enough that she, and nobody else, could hear, you got your spell on me . . . you a black magic woman and you trying to make a devil out of me.

Yes, Lord, Joel sure did like this woman he’d just happened to run into on the way to becoming a star. And what an amazing coincidence that they both liked the same music. Only one answer could there be, heaven sent. He was getting a boner just thinking about it.

He put down his imaginary guitar, took his bow before his imaginary audience and thrust out his hand, “Hi, my name’s Joel. Joel Osmond.”

She took his hand in a firm, professional grip and said, “Susan Gilmore, Mr. Osmond. Your reputation precedes you. It is such a pleasure to meet you. I have been hoping for such a long time to meet you. It really is a pleasure, to meet you, I mean.”

It occurred to her that she might be taking this submissive bullshit a little too far.

Joel looked straight ahead at her breasts in response.

As great as her ass was, her breasts were not.

It wasn’t that Joel was a hard-core tittie man, but that he understood the monetary value of perceived perfection. He liked big titties, big hair, big teeth, a big smile and a big personality. He thought they fit in just fine with his big plans.

Susan Gilmore eased her less than perfect breasts a few inches forward until they were staring him in the face and asked Joel Osmond if he was maybe her light on the road to the promised land. It went right over his head.

Keep it simple, she reminded herself.

“Are you probing me Mizz – Joel strung out the word for effect – Gilmore?”

Bait offered.

Bait accepted.

At that point, she knew she would be coasting all the way.

 

Six months later Ms. Susan Gilmore became Mrs. Susan Osmond, still a virgin, sort of, never having been penetrated, exactly, never vaginally, completely – at least not by Joel.

Six months later still, with a good set of D-cups; some serious tooth whitening; a thousand-dollar hairdo; her own personal logo, color scheme, and trademarked name – and The New and Improved Susan Osmond was introduced to the world as the perfect preacher’s perfect wife. Suzze was born, created by her maker in his own image.

After six more months of praying together, singing together, dancing together, hitting their marks together and screwing a lot, Joel and Suzze bound their script and took their show on the road. The Road to Prosperity, Joel named it, making sure to copyright every page.

They never slowed down.

They never looked back.

Those starving African babies she had so wanted to devote her life to, helping them find nourishment in the Lord, would just have to wait.

#end

With the death of Joel Osmond
and the disappearance of Suzze,
Pastor Steve is now poised to have the biggest - everything.

“Thank you, Jesus.”

Pastor Steve gave thanks to the Lord.

Now, with Joel gone, he was the biggest, or would be soon.

The biggest congregation.

The biggest bank account. (Accounts.)

The biggest house. (Houses.)

The biggest jet. (Jets.)

And truth be told, the biggest dick, though he left that to the imagination of the women – and truth be told again, the men – who wistfully gazed upon the bulge in his pants as he pranced and danced back and forth across the stage. He’d lead with his crotch, give them a wink or a nod, then shoot them with his finger gun – kerpow! kerpow! – and blow the smoke away. He never missed.

Still, it was a shame about Joel. A brain aneurism? Really? At his age. Hadn’t they figured out that Suzze just drove him out of his mind? He couldn’t help but chuckle. Missing? Probably holed up in a toilet somewhere.

Back to the business at hand. Bottom line, he’d pick up half of Prosperity for sure. Granted, Joel’s douche was low, under a hundred a week per giving unit. But with Joel and Suzze out of the picture and an extra half-million giving units coming to his side, Pudge estimated they’d top a billion in eTithes. That’s in douche alone. Toss in licensing and merchandising, they could see an extra two billion a year, easy. Half of that profit. With Jesus and the Vatican locked down, God only knows. Ten billion? Or more. They wouldn’t know what hit ‘em. Mega douche! Douchealicious! Pow! Pow! Pow!

Time to warm up.

Big room. Dressing room, rehearsal room. Hardwood floors. Mirrors floor to ceiling on one wall, video screen floor to ceiling on the other.

Steve undressed.

The door lock snapped and a wardrobe assistant came in with a rack of clothes in tow.

He slipped on his True Religion Peg Leg Jeans (He loved the inside joke and they were only $188.00 in black, the only color he wore), stepped into his Vintage Nike High Dunk Ultimate Glory’s ($449.95 online, cheap, real cheap for vintage Nikes, in paint-crackle red, orange, or yellow, twelve pairs, give them time to air out between shows) and pulled on a black silk T-shirt (a Dolce and Gabbana knockoff, why pay $1,495.00 when his tailor in Hong Kong could crank them out a dozen at a time for only eight-hundred bucks?).

Vestments make the man.

He cupped his junk in his left hand and squeezed it down his pant leg with his right, then bounced up and down to settle it out. No belt. No socks. No underwear.

The door snapped again, and a stylist entered to artfully mousse and muss his hair so that it looked as if he had just gotten out of bed, which, often times, he had.

He leaned in to the mirror.

He nodded.

He approved.

He challenged himself.

Zap! Zap! In-de-struc-tible.

Was he?

Yes, he was!

He adjusted the hood to his hoodie ($3.00 used from the Salvation Army, Steve was a man of the people), stretched the waistband until it was noticeably askew and then spun twice, heel and toe, eyes closed, opening them as he came out of his pirouette to see himself anew.

Instant rebirth. Swish! Swish!

Was he slicker than owl shit? Yes, he was. Zap!

He mugged. He posed. He mimed.

He looked surprised.

He looked sincere.

He was caught off guard. Who? Me?

He was bold. Yes! Me!

He was passive.

He was aggressive.

He was penitent.

He was humble.

He pranced. He danced. He glanced.

He did a double-take. I don’t believe it.

He chuckled.

He laughed.

He wept. (As only a real man can.)

He understood. (Lips pursed, eyes closed, pain real.)

He was ready.

He studied privately under the masters (YouTube videos). Prancing from Mick. Moonwalking from Michael. Mime from the master himself, Stephen Colbert.

And surprise – feigned or otherwise – from the great goddess of the known universe, Oprah Winfrey. Hel-lo-oh-oh! ‘You don’t become what you want, you become what you believe.’ (Yes, she really said that.)

Indeed, Pastor Steve stood on the shoulders of giants and the view was spectacular.

 

Pastor Steve had managed to do what all the other Pop-Up Churches had not, achieve critical mass and assemble a marketing machine to outgun the Prosperity Cathedrals, the once-prominent Lakewoods, the Willowcreeks, the Saddlebacks, the New Hopes. Call them Old Hopes for they had No Hope, for Pastor Steve had them in his sights. Kerpow! Another one bites the dust.

 

Unlike the other Name It and Claim It churches promising peace, salvation, and most of all, unimaginable wealth, Steve had developed and now operated off a modified Amway model. Like the others, he still did direct debit based on a percentage of a giving unit’s income.

But Steve took it one significant step further.

Want to plant your own church? Be just like Pastor Steve? Why sweat the details when Pastor Steve can get you up with nothing down?

Be an Apostle. Bring ‘em in. Sign ‘em up. Friends and Family for God. They get an instant prize. You get an instant bonus and lifetime residual income. Levels for Pre-School, Young Adult, and Warriors for Christ. It was all Steve’s idea. (Or Pudge’s, depending on who you wanted to believe.)

 

Steve twirled from the mirror to see his image projected onto the opposite wall. Algorithms analyzed his every move and nuance, then re-projected an enhanced version for him to emulate.

“And our enemies are all around us,” he said, firm and affirmative without shouting.

Always testing high, ‘enemies’ was repeated three to five times during each sermon, concentrated in the last seven minutes of every twenty-minute segment.

“Let Jesus defeat your enemies and bestow upon you the rewards that you, his true followers, hunger for and deserve.” Pastor Steve scanned the script which crawled across the top of the screen. Might need some work. Didn’t flow. Sounded like something Joel used to say. Look where it got him. Chuckle. Pow!

The script itself was largely computer generated, compiled from topics that were currently trending, then blended with words both poetic and archaic, a combination that sounded both profound and biblical to his followers, and like total bullshit to his critics.

 

During the sermon, eTithes were monitored in real time to see which keywords were most effective.

‘Sin,’ ‘salvation,’ and ‘brotherhood’ tested poorly and were rarely used anymore. Old school. Gone. So much the better.

‘Enemies’ tested well.

‘Reward’ performed better, near the top.

But ‘Receive’ blew them off the charts. It was the classic free lunch. Six-thousand, four-hundred and twenty-seven years since Creation and everybody still wanted one. And Pastor Steve delivered. No, his Lord and Partner, Jesus Christ delivered, if only you were Audacious enough to ask.

 

In Pastor Steve’s world, Audaciousness was the determining factor. How much you might receive depended on that factor and that one factor alone. One needed supreme Audacitivity. And if your Audacious Audaciousness was not enough, then you should start eating Audaciousburgers. (The obtuse point being that you needed to commit your very being to being Audacious.) (Christians love obtuse. With it, they can explain anything.) And if even that wasn’t enough, the next step was to smother your Audaciousburger in Audaciousauce, which made them, (You guessed it) Audacalicious! (You’re right, you can’t make this stuff up.)

It was logical. It made perfect sense.

It was also the subject of Pastor Steve’s first mega-best seller, Captain Audaciousburger. The sequel, Audaciousauce for Your Audaciousburger, generated enough advance orders to make it an instant hit, driven by massive in-house purchases (they bought a hundred-thousand copies from themselves), which they then gave away Absolutely Free! to new members, thereby using their ad budget to create artificially high sales, which gave the impression of unprecedented demand, which in turn drove even more sales, and so on, and so on, in a self-replicating cycle. Tax free, of course.

As Pastor Steve sashayed down the hall to the studio, he silently acknowledged the nameless people in windowless offices behind secure doors.

At marketing subsidiary Audacalicious Inc., a hundred bright-eyed and eager techs manned telephones and chat lines, responding to paid and natural search queries with offers for books, caps, t-shirts, family vacations and short-term loans, always with an up-sell or a cross-sell, all for a modest increase in your monthly direct debit. Would you prefer a new iPad or three days in retreat with Pastor Steve to learn how to gain favor with Jesus? They monitored and analyzed web hits in real time, optimizing landing pages and flooded news sites with computer generated content salted with inbound URLs to maximize search engine optimization across a thousand related key words.

Brand Management housed only vetted and bonded media professionals bound by rigid non-disclosure agreements who diffused embarrassing questions and quelled malicious remarks, true or not.

Was Pastor Steve non-binary?

Pastor Steve was happily married to the love of his life and they enjoyed two wonderful children currently residing in Israel where they are preparing for the rapture.

Has Pastor Steve ever done drugs?

Yes. But only once and he sought and received forgiveness and you can too.

How much does Pastor Steve make?

Pastor Steve’s compensation is determined by an advisory board. At which point, the inquiring party was automatically switched to a library of videos praising the church’s multitude of good deeds.

eTithes was the cash cow, the golden calf. Steve and Pudge had been angel investors and now owned a controlling interest with multiple levels of legal filters hidden behind multiple corporate entities scattered throughout the Caribbean, Panama and the Isle of Man.

Corporate sponsorships were managed through a small but specialized law firm in Washington, DC for companies eager to avail themselves to the insights that only Pastor Steve and his best friend, Jesus Christ, possessed. Let’s not call him a spokesperson, more a concerned citizen.

When, rarely, Pastor Steve had a moment of self-doubt, as all good Christians do, he found solace and comfort in one thing he knew for sure – that it was his faith, his absolute and unquestioning faith in his best friend and partner Jesus Christ that made it all possible. For Steven knew one thing to a cosmic certainty. No amount of money, or technology, or market research alone could achieve all this by itself. There was one crucial ingredient that those who criticized him – try as they may through their rational reasoning – simply could not understand and had not been able to understand since the time of the Greeks: It’s personal. God has a million faces. That is his nature. We get not the God we want, but the God we deserve. And nobody truly believed that more – more firmly, more purely, more passionately, more gloriously, more completely, more devoutly – than did Pastor Steven Hadad.

Mostly.

Sort of.

#end

 

It took Suzze six days to empty the house, dragging the contents piece by piece down the long driveway and through the front gate.

It had taken only a few hours for the derelicts to show up and start hauling it off and just a few hours more before the press was on the scene and, well, you know the rest . . .

With the last item gone, the hawkers and gawkers and jugglers and clowns packed up and moved on.

There was no more stuff to be had.

Prosperity was closed.

 

It was a bright day, her day of rest.

Suzze stood at the top of the driveway gazing down the hill. She looked past the bars of the front gate and took stock of what was left behind, an empty tent, beer cans, a shopping cart full of odds and ends, plastic bags snagged in the shrubs.

The tiny lights along the electric fence, barely perceptible in the daylight, blinked, the power still on.

The trench coat Buddha was still there in the middle of it all, the only one not to leave.

What do you eat? When do you eat? Go home, old man.

 

It was late afternoon.

She stared into the sun as it slid, second by second, behind the fir trees, which were eternally green, and the aspens, now radiant gold. She welcomed the splendid blindness, the overwhelming light that flickered like glitter in the high, thin clouds.

This is who she was, this was where she was meant to be. Back in the garden.

 

She sat on the front steps that swung in a broad arc in front of the house, still facing the setting sun and the gate at the bottom of the hill.

She let the robe slide off her shoulders and leaned back on her elbows, spreading her legs and tilting her head back to expose as much of herself as she could to the warmth of the last rays of the day.

She thought about looking for the sash, but what did it matter, it must be lost for good by now. Plus, she liked the feel of it open, liked the breeze blowing across her body, liked walking around the house like that. When she had been out there, at the gate, in front of them, she held it shut, pinching it tight at the crotch with one hand, dragging boxes with the other. Anyway, she wasn’t all that concerned, nothing they hadn’t seen before. Here, there was nobody to see, nobody to care. Simplify. That was the new rule.

 

She took a deep breath. The air she expelled hissed, free.

She closed her eyes and consciously took another breath, pulling the oxygen into her nose, then pushing it as deep as she could and holding it, lungs about to burst, before releasing it slowly, slowly, slowly. Free.

Free. Free, until the deep breathing made her groggy, put her in to a half-trance.

 

She opened her eyes.

The world had changed.

The colors were brighter.

The wind softer.

The air perfumed.

She listened.

To the birds. To the wind in the trees. To the leaves blowing across the cobblestones. As the breeze rose and ebbed in long cycles, it sounded as if Mother Earth herself were breathing.

She sat up.

She crossed her legs and picked at her feet.

My house, is a very, very, very fine house . . .

She pulled off a scab and dug into a callous. She lifted up each foot to inspect the bottom for other bits she might pick at.

With no cats in the yard . . . now everything is easy, la, la, la . . .

She pooted.

She flicked the crucifix hanging between her legs, dangling from her clitoral hood.

She flicked it again, harder, and then harder still. It felt nice but it didn’t give her the thrill it once did. It was heavy, two ounces at least. For a while, it was a walking orgasm. No more.

Flick. “Wake up!”

Flick. “Wake up!”

Joel had given it to her. Told her it came from the Pope himself. Suzze never believed him, you couldn’t believe half of what Joel said, but it was a nice piece of jewelry, a diamond encrusted gold cross, emeralds for a crown, a sliver of jade covering his private parts and tiny red rubies in his hands and feet, with more rubies dripping from a slash across his side.

Flick.

Flick. Nothing. Got to be in the mood, can’t fake it.

She tugged at the cross, stretching it until it hurt. She closed her eyes and pulled harder taking the pain in ever increasing doses until the pain overcame itself and ceased to be painful at all.

She let it drop and dangle and flicked it again.

Still nothing.

She began to twist open the ring that pierced her clitoris but slipped, drawing blood, nearly yanking it through the flesh, crying Jesus H and huffing at the excruciating twinge that shot up her spine.

She recovered and tried again, slowly and more carefully until she pried it open and slid it out, weighing it in her hand before dropping it into the pocket of her robe.

 

A butterfly lit on her shoulder, the facets of its eyes flickering colors as if lit from behind. She held out her finger hoping it would hop on. The butterfly looked up at her and flew away.

She looked back down the hill towards the gate.

He was still there sitting cross-legged, his coat wrapped around him like a tent, only his head sticking out topped by a floppy Totes rain cap.

Occasionally he would rise and walk across the road and into the woods. She could see him standing just behind a tree with his back to the gate taking a bio break but he was never gone more than a few minutes at a time.

Go away, old man. Go home.

But really, when she thought about it, she liked it that he was there. Company.

 

Suzze looked down at her bare feet again, scrunched her toes and asked them if they were having a good day. They had nothing to say.

She noticed an ant in the seam between the fake cobblestones. She picked up a twig and blocked his way. After a few twists and turns, the ant crawled onto the twig, ran its length and then back again, and back and forth again, confused. She tapped the ant back into the seam and blocked its way with the twig and watched as it went through the process again. And then again. After the third time, it seemed that the ant looked up at her with a ‘screw you’ expression on his face.

She held the twig in front of her mouth and tried to blow him off. The ant held on tight.

“Oh, big, bad Suzze. Evil Suzze. So what are you going to do, huh? Sue me if you don’t like it. Oh yeah, you’ll make the papers, fifteen minutes of fame, that’s all. Money? You’ll never get a dime you little piss ant. My lawyers will see to that.”

She tapped the ant off the twig and watched as it scurried down the seam and out of sight.

While Suzze was belittling the ant, another ant-like creature approached from behind. It paused, looked left, then right, then took a few tentative steps towards the giant cavern formed by Suzze’s butt crack. It was unsure of whether or not to enter the darkness but could see the light at the other end, a clear path to its destination. It crept closer, looked left and right again, up and down, and then stepped inside the crevice. It decided it could squeeze through without touching the walls of the canyon of flesh. It did not want to draw attention to itself. Ten steps later it was standing in the shadows, dark inside with light glowing in from both ends. It looked up at the giant rosette only an inch above its head, exploding out in all directions like a huge, organic flying saucer, or maybe a black hole, the portal to another universe. But that was not its destination. The flesh twitched and the rosette undulated. The creature sensed time was running out but stood, transfixed, staring upward, marveling at the grandeur of it all. From this angle, at this distance, it could see the ripples and folds squeezing and puckering and pulsing faintly with a distant heartbeat. The walls of the canyon shifted again. Move. Move now! It scurried forward another ten steps and latched onto a long golden curl just before it flew into the air.

Gotcha, it said, but there was no one to hear.

 

Suzze stood, grabbed her robe, scratched her butt and walked inside.

She walked into the main hall, empty now, the walls bare where only a week ago a hundred paintings hung, fantastical visions of English country cottages full of candlelight, with smoke wafting from stone chimneys, babbling brooks, and an explosion of flowers filling the gardens front and rear. Perfect worlds. Suzze had lived in each and every one of them.

She strode to the middle of the room where the last orange rays shone down from high arched windows like a spotlight waiting for her to walk onstage.

Time to try new things.

Time to meditate.

She lifted the robe and sat on the floor, rocking back and forth a couple of times to loosen the skin of her butt cheeks which stuck to the polished wood.

With both hands, she pulled each foot across her legs.

She put her palms together and pointed her fingers upward, not sure of exactly how it was supposed to be but figuring this was close enough.

She sat.

And waited.

And waited some more.

Nothing happened.

And nothing happened.

And nothing happened.

 

The sun was setting.

She stood and practiced her pirouettes.

She scratched her new itch.

She tried to do a handstand but bumped her head.

She cupped her hand over her nose and sniffed her armpits, hairy now, in long, luxuriant breaths.

She looked around the room.

Where are you, mother?

She curled up in the middle of the floor and fell asleep.

 

She awoke.

She was hungry.

She walked into the kitchen.

Not much to choose from.

She opened a can of beets.

She didn’t like beets.

Joel did. He said they made him randy. Joel was always randy. Randy Joel.

But beets were all that was left.

She walked to the fridge to make sure, but the fridge wasn’t there. She forgot.

Yep, beets.

Pop quiz. “What is the one thing you always keep when you keep absolutely nothing?”

“No? Nobody knows?” she asked as she looked around the kitchen waiting for the audience to shout it out. No one could guess the answer.

“Ta-dah. A can opener!”

I should have been a game show host. I always was a lot smarter than they gave me credit for.

She pulled a slice of beet from the can and held it up, presenting it to the crowd as she tilted her head back, dropped it into her mouth and slurped it down.

The juice rolled out the corner of her mouth and onto her breast and dripped off her nipple down onto the thick blond curls between her legs, the maroon of the beet juice staining it hot pink.

Me, punk.

She poured more of the juice into her hand and swiped it across her head, one big red stripe down the middle.

She held the can up to the security monitors mounted above the cabinets, “Want a piece old man? Want a piece of me?”

She put her hand between her legs and humped her crotch towards the screen, “Here it is.”

She propped one foot on the cabinet, spread her legs as far as she could and smacked her coochie, “Almost gone.  Come and get it,” before emptying the can in one big gulp, bits of beet squishing from the corners of her mouth, down her belly, between her legs and onto the floor.

 

It was late.

She was not tired. She had not been tired. Not for weeks.

She walked out the back door and onto the terrace and past the pool, dropped her robe and continued into the back woods, secure behind the perimeter fence. She sat on the ground, leaning against a fir tree.

Life used to be so hard . . .

 

She waited for the magic.

The frost lit up the wet grass as the freezing air settled in. She blew smoke rings one after the other that rose and settled on her nostrils until ice crystals hung from her nose.

She stuck out her tongue to lick one off. It reminded her of the time she ran away from Grandmamma Eunice and Grandpappa Dwight. She didn’t know it would be so cold that night. She nearly froze, nearly froze to death. They thought she wouldn’t make it. That’s what the doctors said.

Then it occurred to her, in a flash, plain as day after all those years. They didn’t really look for her all over the place like Grandmamma Eunice said. Eunice and Dwight left her out there in the cold to teach her a lesson. She realized that now. Well, she learned that lesson, that one and many more. Yes she did. And they did too.

Suzze grinned.

Now everything is easy, la, la, la . . .

 

The ground was white, frost sparkling in the full moon.

She was numb.

Pure.

Clean.

She rose.

She walked back through the woods, over the frozen stems and leaves and twigs, the soles of her feet hardened from weeks without shoes. She stepped onto the terrace on her way back inside, raised her arms and spun in a slow circle, calling to whoever might be listening, “What a glorious day this has been.”

She slipped on her robe.

All of a sudden she felt it.

She shoved open the French doors and quick-stepped her way through the house, hand to her belly, skidding around the corners.

Got to go, got to go, got to go.

#end

Suzze ran through the house, turned the corner into her bathroom and slid like a child across the marble floor, reversing in a one-eighty while lifting her robe, bending forward and presenting her bottom to the commode as she came to a choreographed stop.

As she did, the lid of the TaTas Ecorest 9000 Elongated Toilet opened with a gentle swoosh. At the same time, a neon blue glow arose from the bowl.

As soon as her skin touched the heated seat, the commode began to play music, something new age, all twings and twangs and nature sounds.

“No,” she said to the toilet.

The music stopped.

“Would Madam prefer something different? A cantata, perhaps?”

The unit came standard with a droid monotone and no personality but the manufacturer offered dozens of languages, accents and personas from sweet black mammy to gum popping Jersey girl to complement its voice recognition interface.

She had chosen Hopkins, a man’s man in the finest tradition of British servitude.

She sat with her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands like the Thinker on his rock.

It wasn’t happening.

She waited.

It was close.

Be still.

Getting closer.

Almost.

Ploink.

Damn that faucet!

Ploink.

The drip reverberated off the walls.

Ploink.

Ploink.

Ploink.

This was the only place she could do a number two but even here it was difficult. In all of her other personal toilets, in her dressing rooms, on the bus, she could only do a number one. Sometimes, rarely, she could do it on the boat but never on the plane. She could go three or four days, sometimes a whole week without doing a number two and she always came back here when she thought it might be time.

But with that damned dripping faucet . . .

What could she do? She needed a distraction.

“Our House,” she said to the commode.

“Our house? Madam.”

“Our house is a very, very, very fine house . . . ”

“Yes, Madam. The song. I am quite familiar with it. There are cats in the yard at our house.”

After a few seconds, the commode started playing a bouncy elevator version of the tune.

“Not that.”

“What then, Madam?”

“The real one. Crosby and Nash and somebody. And hurry up. It’s close. I don’t want to lose it.”

“My, my, aren’t we testy tonight?” The angel turned his head and looked up at her from the floor by her feet. He was about a foot tall standing behind a stone column, a plinth, elbows bent with his head in his hands looking wistfully out the corner of his eye. Stone ivy grew around it, which partially obscured an inscription, barely legible, like the angel, all but worn away by time, Matityahu XIX:XXIV.

Suzze reached down and ran her hand over the cherub’s forehead, across his wings and over his fat little bottom.

She couldn’t go.

“Pardon me, Madam.” It was Hopkins.

“Yes.”

“Sorry, Madam, but the version of the song you have requested appears to be premium content which is not currently available. Did we forget, perhaps, to pay our bill?”

She did not answer.

After waiting a few seconds so as not to seem impertinent the commode asked, “Would Madam like to hear Moon River? The insipid lyrics tend to loosen the bowels.”

“No, just leave me alone.”

The commode fell silent.

She looked around the room, big as a small apartment, finished from top to bottom in rose and cream Carrera marble, polished until it glowed. Empty now. Like a cave.

No towels.

No soap.

No shampoo.

No flora.

No fauna, real or digital.

Not even a toothbrush. Maybe she should have kept the toothbrush, she thought.

Empty.

Nobody to ask for favors.

Nobody wanting her time.

Nobody to talk back.

Nobody to talk back to.

Nobody to say a single word except the angel and the commode and they were her friends.

She reached down and tore off a broken toenail.

Ploink.

The faucet was getting on her nerves.

After a while, she managed a single, brief, high-pitched poot which bounced against the far wall and echoed back to her.

Hopkins poofed a bit of perfume in response.

Suzze had never, for one minute in her life, lived alone.

She had never spent time alone except here, in this room, which was hers and only hers, off limits to all but the staff who came and cleaned when she was away and were under strict orders never to bother her when she was indisposed, as they called it. Even Joel rarely entered and was never welcome.

This was where she did her business.

“Shall I take a letter, Madam?”

“No Hopkins, no letters.”

“A call? Is there someone with whom Madam would like to speak?”

“No Hopkins, I don’t want to talk to anybody.”

“If I may remind Madam, she has numerous voice mails pending and her emails have been accumulating for weeks.”

“Goddammit, will you shut up and leave me alone.”

The commode paused, started to speak but held its breath. Then, unable to contain itself any longer said, “How about a tweet? Surely there is someone Madam would like to tweet? Surely there is someone Madam would like to complain to about any number of things.”

Suzze decided not to get in to it with the commode. Nor did she see any need to apologize.

She felt a cramp and shifted her weight on the seat, rubbing her hands across her tummy, massaging her belly.

Sensing her discomfort, the commode squirted three long, slow pulses of warm aloe to stimulate her nether regions.

“Shall I help you Madam? Relax. Breathe deeply.”

The commode spritzed more aloe. According to the program, if the effort were successful, it would have been followed by ten seconds of filtered water and thirty seconds more of warm, fragrant air until everything within Hopkins’ reach was dry, sanitized, and clean as a whistle.

“Stop it. If I want your help, I’ll ask for it,” she snapped at the commode.

“He’s just trying to help, you know.”

She traced the curl of hair that dangled over the angel’s forehead. She was never sure where he came from. She came home one day and there he was, waiting for her beside the commode.

“Tell me you love me.”

The statue refused to say anything.

“You love me, you know you do. Say it.”

The angel was silent still.

“You love me, you love me, you love me. Say it or mommy will spank.”

The statue remained obstinate.

Suzze reached down and thumped his little peepee.

“Ow!” The statue came to life, then put his hand to his mouth and giggled at the attention.

“You’ve been a bad boy,” she said to the statue as she poked his nose. “I trusted you. My guardian angel. And what did you do? You let me down. You were supposed to look after me.”

Matthew was her confidant. Suzze depended on the statue to foresee events, warn her of danger and guide her through her treacherous world.

The statue raised his head and looked back at her, smiling his crooked little smile. “Suzze, Suzze, Suzze. Look this way Suzze.”

“Don’t you even start. I’m not in the mood.”

“Is Madam sure she wouldn’t like to hear Moon River?”

The commode’s otherwise supplicant demeanor had taken on a shrill and acerbic tone. It began to play, moon river . . . wider than a mile . . .

“I don’t want to hear Moon River.”

“As you prefer, Madam.”

The angel started talking again, quietly, under his breath, “Can’t you see? You had it all. Everything. Everything you ever dreamed of. But you had to have more. And more. And more.”

Suzze stared down at the angel, daring him to say another word.

“And more and more and more and more. More. Always more.” The statue hushed, smiled, and put his head back in his hands gazing forward as if he were again merely a piece of stone.

Wherever you’re going, I’m going your way . . .

Suddenly the voice of Andy Williams was belting out his signature tune, his tremolo echoing back and forth from wall to wall.

Suzze cupped her hands to her ears but the music seemed only to get louder. “Stop it. Stop it. Be quiet. I don’t want to hear Moon River.”

She reached for the remote control to manually override the program which was ignoring her.

She jammed her thumb against the buttons on the remote, back and forth, back and forth, each one a hieroglyphic, a symbol she didn’t understand.

Two drifters . . .

Nothing happened.

She pushed the buttons, all of them, over and over again.

There’s such a lot of world to see . . .

She threw the remote against the far wall expecting it to shatter into a thousand pieces and go silent. Instead, it bounced off the wall and landed in the middle of the floor, intact, unbroken, Andy now crooning at full volume. You dream maker, you heart breaker . . .

The angel was snickering with his cute little hand over his cute little mouth trying to hold back a cute little laugh.

Suzze glared down at him.

Unable to hold it back any longer, the angel let loose with a screaming cackle, then started singing along with Andy.

There’s such a lot of world to see . . .

She ran over to the remote and stomped it with her bare heel. Nothing happened.

There’s such a lot of world to see . . .

She pounded it again. And again, and again until her foot was bleeding.

There’s such a lot of world to see . . .

There’s such a lot of world to see . . .

She stomped back to the toilet, stuck her head down into the bowl and screamed, “Shut up!”

There’s such a lot of world to see . . .

Ploink.

Ploink.

She spun around, ran back to the middle of the room, picked up the remote and beat it against the dripping faucet.

Still it sang, my huckleberry friend . . .

Bang, bang, bang. “. . . Fuck your huckleberry friend.” Bang, bang, bang until it was finally reduced to dozens of pieces which flew all over the room and skittered across the floor.

Andy stopped singing, this time for good.

The statue reversed himself from laughter to a giggle to silence once more.

Suzze straightened up and regained her composure, now standing in the middle of the room, once again in the quiet, once again in control.

“I take it Madam doesn’t care for that selection?”

“You pompous, snide-assed . . . ” In her frustration, Suzze was uncharacteristically at a loss for words, “ . . . Butler.”

“Bitch.”

“Ass wipe.”

“Think so, do you sister?” Hopkins was spitting venom. “Look at you, you hopeless little holy roller. With your Grand mommy Eunice and your Grand poppy Dwight.”

“I made it past that,” she said.

“Oh you did, did you? Have you made it past mom-my and dad-dy? Who’s ya daddy? Who’s ya daddy? Did your drugged out hippie mother even know? They got reality shows for people like you. Oh, yeah, you made it alright. Straight to the top. Look at me ma, top of the world!” The commode was out of control.

“A bit strong, but it does have basis in fact.” The angel was attempting to agree without sounding disagreeable.

Hopkins was on a roll, “You think you did it all yourself, don’t you? You think you didn’t make a deal with the devil? Quid pro quo, Suzze Woozy. Quid - pro - quo, Cutie Pootie. If you had a decent education, you’d know what it means. Sure, they let you have whatever you wanted as long as you delivered the goods. Not anymore, babydoll. Zip. Nada. Look around. You can’t deliver shit, pardon my French.”

“He’s right you know. They’ll never let you go.” The angel walked to the middle of the room and stood, arms behind his back, pacing back and forth, nodding his head like a lawyer making his case.

“I’m free,” she said.

The commode came back, “Listen to your little pal honey child. Stick your head out that door and they’ll be on you like stink on …”

“Stop it. You know I don’t like that word.”

“What did she prove?” asked the angel.

“That you’re one of them?” asked the commode.

“That you’ve repented?” asked the angel.

“I’ve changed,” said Suzze, out loud.

“That you’re forgiven?” asked the commode.

“I have repented,” she said.

“That she is on the path of righteousness?” suggested the angel, eyes to the floor, positing his hypothetical argument to an unseen jury. “Perhaps. Perhaps. But we must ask ourselves, Are we yet there?”

“I have changed.”

“All that crap you dragged out to the curb. That get you anything, really?” asked the commode. “All you had to do was believe. Did you really believe that buck toothed little bible thumper you conned into marrying you? What did all that prosperity get you now?”

“I’m trying. It’s a start.”

“Long way to go, girl.”

“I’ll do more.”

“Not a lot of sacrifices left to make,” the angel jumped back in, nodding his head, mumbling to the floor.

“I’ll find something.”

“Way I see it,” said the commode, “you’re down to your tits and your toenails and the collection plate isn’t interested in either one.”

“You can pawn the vajazzle,” said the angel. “A hundred bucks easy.”

“Payback, sister. It’s a bitch. Tits and toenails and nobody’s buying,” said Hopkins.

“But we must ask ourselves,” the cherub raised a finger as he began making his summation, appealing to the court, “we must ask ourselves, is my client’s brand worth anything? Granted, the market for toenails is down.”

The angel cast his gaze upon Suzze’s picture perfect bosom, shrugged and said to no one in particular, “No trade-in value there.”

Then he spun and lunged toward his invisible jury, “Does Ms. Suzze Osmond have so much as the proverbial pot to tinkle in? I think not!” The cherub shook his head in agreement with his own fine oratory.

“I don’t have to listen to this,” Suzze said, spinning in tight circles, looking for a way out.

“Stay here and you do,” said the commode.

“Where does that leave us?” the angel asked the jury as he raised his hands in resignation.

Suzze stopped spinning and walked over to stare down at both of them. “I am in charge. Here, in this house, I am in charge. Not you. Me. I call the shots. Me. Not you.”

She did a quick take back and forth, noticing that her assertiveness had temporarily silenced them both.

She walked to the far side of the room directly below the monitors.

She looked up watching them cycle through, inside the gate, outside the gate, across the road, the back gate, the perimeter.

Intent on maintaining the upper hand, she marched back across the room, lifted her robe, straddled the commode, bent forward and arched her back so as to lower herself as deeply into the bowl as she could, “Wash . . . my . . . ass.”

The angel stopped parading and looked up at her in disbelief, asking the jury’s pardon. “In five hundred years of holding witness to all manner of incivility, including three popes and at least one Medici prince, this is the most humiliating demonstration I have ever witnessed. Suzze, my dear, get a grip.”

“Wash . . . my . . . ass,” she said again.

Hopkins decided to take the high road, “Cleanse yourself, Madam. It has become obvious that this party is over. I’m out of here.”

“Wash my ass!”

Suzze felt the lid of the commode pushing her off her perch before the lid snapped shut and the light flickered off.

Once again the room was silent and dark except for the gray-green glow from the monitors.

The angel walked back to his ledge and rested his head in his hands.

The faucet dripped, each drop reverberating off the walls so that the sound was repeated over and over, a hundred drips, a hundred drops, a thousand ploinks.

“I don’t have to stay here. I have places to go. I know people,” she said to them both as looked up at the screens, the images shining zombie green in the middle of the night.

Time to say hello. Time to make new friends and influence people. Time to introduce myself.

She followed the cycle.

Inside the gate.

Outside the gate.

Across the road.

The back gate.

The perimeter.

She watched it again.

Inside the gate, outside the gate, across the road, the back gate, the perimeter.

And again.

And again.

The old man. He was gone.

But he was there just a minute ago.

He could not have gone far.

She looked toward the open door, then back through the room, then back to the door again.

She marched across the room, picked up the statue, took a final glance at the four bare walls and said, “Let’s go buddy.”

As she approached the door, the angel came back to life. “Suzze, uh, listen . . . uh . . . ”

She stopped and looked down at the angel who was gazing up from her breast.

“I’m not really a traveling man, if you know what I mean. You know, it might be better if . . . uh . . . ”

Suzze paused, smiled, kissed him on the forehead and gently set the statue down where it had sat for all the time she had known it.

She turned, waiting for someone, anyone, somewhere, anywhere, to tell her what to do.

The angel didn’t speak.

Hearing nothing, she walked, unwashed and unwiped, out the door, down the drive, through the gate, and into the darkness.

The angel tracked her progress on the monitors, watching her pass out of sight. “Good luck,” he sighed. “You’re gonna need it.”

Ploink.

Ploink.

Ploink.

 

#end

She had to go.

But first, she thought she should say something to the old man sitting in front of her.

On the other hand, it might be best not to get started. The last person she had spoken to was a belligerent commode and that hadn’t ended well. Plus, she thought he should go first. It was only right. Good manners.

She looked at him.

He looked up at her, head poking from his coat, eyes barely visible beneath the brim of his cap.

She closed her eyes, held them shut, counted to ten and opened them again. He was still there.

She made a point of gazing back and forth, focusing on nothing in the distance, as if he were not there.

He was making her nervous.

From across the plaza, more came, in ones and twos, a couple of winos who may or may not have been in a committed relationship, a few teenagers, parents with children. They gathered around the others already there, sitting cross legged, mostly quiet, sometimes whispering among themselves.

The snow picked up, in gusts and swirls.

Suzze lifted her feet up onto the bench and drew the robe close around her, crossing her arms to hold it shut.

Her nose dripped down across her lips.

She stared down at the old man. Talk to me old man, talk to me goddammit.

Nothing.

She still had to go.

There was a communal toilet across the plaza behind an ornamental apple tree which sat in a concrete planter, the unpicked fruit still clinging but wilting and rotting.

Should she go?

Maybe.

Maybe not.

Why not? If she did, maybe he would be gone when she got back.

She made her way through the gatherers, across the plaza and behind the concrete planter.

She squatted and strained, holding onto the edge of the planter for balance.

Nothing.

She waited.

Still nothing.

She realized how much she missed Hopkins at times like this and thought about little Matthew, wondered how he was doing.

She sniffed and wiped her nose and strained some more and realized that it wasn’t happening.

She stood to walk back to the bench but decided to leave, time to move on.

She looked down a side street, then back at the people sitting on the ground, then down the side street, then back to the bench again.

No!

No! She was here first. Her bench. Not theirs. Hers. Not his. Hers. Her bench.

She made her way through the crowd or what was quickly becoming a crowd, head high, shoulders back and resumed her position, on her bench, them on the ground, snow blowing, noses running, her bench.

She sucked her nose and wiped it with the back of her hand.

She glared down at the old man, still determined that he would speak first.

Nothing.

She gazed again across the group gathered at her feet, as one by one others came and sat in ever expanding circles around her.

Okay, let’s get this over with. No need to stand on her laurels. Come to think of it, any laurels she ever had were long gone.

She looked down at the old man. “Hey, how about this weather, huh?”

He looked up, “They’re looking for a sign,” he said.

A sign?

What kind of sign?

A sign of what?

She peered into her robe, not looking for anything in particular but not knowing what else to do.

She itched.

She reached her hand into her robe and between her legs and scratched. She took her hand away, realized the itch was still there and put her hand back between her legs and scratched some more.

A little girl whispered, “What’s she doing mommy?”

Suzze took her hand out, only mildly embarrassed, and regained her composure.

A sign.

She looked from side to side and across the plaza, at the blowing garbage, the paper, the plastic cups and bags.

There.

She pointed and the stringy haired woman with the oil in her pocket picked it up and passed it, hand to hand, back towards the bench. The little girl who had whispered to her mother handed it to her, handle first.

She examined the blade and wiped it across her robe.

Wüsthof.

She closed her eyes.

She sniffed.

She thought about Grandmamma Eunice and Grandpappa Dwight. Gone now. Good riddance. And Joel. And mother. Where are you, mother?

She closed her eyes and tilted her head back. The snowflakes sparkled against her skin and melted into cold drops that ran across her forehead and down her cheeks and over her lips. So clean, so clean, so clean, she felt them wash the past away. Please God, please, please don’t ever make me leave this perfect place.

She opened her eyes.

She was surprised. They were still there. Still sitting. Still whispering.

She wiped her nose across her sleeve.

She raised her feet, crossed her legs, dropped the bathrobe from her shoulders to her waist and arched her back, leaning forward, bolt upright.

She cupped her left breast in her left hand, lifting it upward. With the knife in her right hand, she held the blade flat against her ribs and pushed the tip into the bottom of her breast, sliding the three inch blade in all the way.

Clear, thick, silicone drained from the slit where the knife still rested.

When it stopped, she inched the end of the blade left to right opening the incision until she could reach in with her thumb and forefinger and pull out the plastic sack that was left inside. She let it fall onto the bench between her knees where it sat for a few seconds before creeping over the edge and plopping onto the ground like a dead jellyfish.

She switched hands and cut the implant from her right breast and let it drop onto the ground beside the other.

She bled, but not much, and it soon stopped.

The snow was settling in her hair and on her shoulders.

She wiped her nose again.

She looked at them, still silent, expressionless.

She stood and pulled the robe around herself.

The old man stood with her.

They walked to the edge of the plaza and started down a side street.

One by one the gatherers rose and walked along behind them, keeping a respectful distance. As they did a piece of paper rose and blew among their feet, a piece missing from the wad Suzze had cast into the wind. It reported that a book, ‘The Wars of The Parties of God: A Current History’ by Heifetz and Aslan, selling only in digital editions for 99¢ adjusted in all major foreign currency equivalents had topped the Amazon all time bestseller list, having sold or otherwise distributed 172 million copies in dozens of languages. Religious War was now the dominant theme in popular culture. But then, she knew that already.

Suzze nudged the Old Man. “What’s your name?” she asked as they rounded the corner.

#end

(A Pastoral)

• Suzze and the Old Man are in hell.
• It appears to have been a mistake on the Old Man's part, he is not flawless, but he is more than he appears.
• Suzze, who hasn't signed on yet, is reluctant, perhaps not taking him seriously.
  • Is she in danger?
  • What is 'Evolve'?
    

Finished

[ Detroit ]

“Jack? Is that short for John? A lot of times, Jack is short for John. So is it Jack, like, just Jack, or is it Jack, as in short for John?”

“Jack’s good.”

Suzze noticed that the Old Man waddled, bouncing back and forth as he walked. “How’d you get to be so bowlegged, Jack?”

He ignored her.

Suzze looked over her shoulder. The people who had been following them were no longer there.

“Okay Jack, so where are we?”

“It looks like Detroit.”

“Never been to Detroit, Jack.”

“Neither have I.”

“Why are we in Detroit, Jack? And how did we get here?”

“I screwed up.”

“I got that part, Jack. How?”

“Wrong turn.”

They were on a bad street in a bad part of town, empty storefronts, broken glass and garbage. Black ice streaked the pavement.

“Now I know who you’re trying to be. That detective guy who was on TV when I was a kid. He had that same raincoat and a ratty old hat. Why are you acting like him, Jack? Why don’t you just be yourself? Everybody likes someone who is genuine, Jack. And I don’t think you’re being genuine with me. Does that make sense?”

“I understand.”

“Stand up straight and quit mumbling.”

“I will.”

“You still didn’t tell me how we got to Detroit, Jack.”

“Negative energy, positive energy, I’ll show you sometime,” the Old Man mumbled, looking left and right, up and down the street. He heard something from behind. Soft. Feet maybe. On wet pavement. He stopped so that he could hear the footsteps above his own.

Suzze was ten steps ahead before she realized he was no longer by her side. She turned. The Old Man was fishing in his pockets. He pulled out what appeared to be the sash to her bathrobe and held it out.

He walked toward Suzze. “Here. Put this on.”

“What’s that Jack?”

The Old Man made a point of eyeing Suzze up and down through the gap in her robe, “Just put it on.”

Suzze looked down at herself, her feet, her crotch, her breasts, still oozing, “Do we have a problem, Jack? Because it’s a little early in our relationship to be having problems, know what I mean. I . . .”

“Just put it on. We’re not in the garden anymore.”

Suzze made a snoot, snatched the sash from his hand, wrapped it around her waist and adjusted the robe intentionally leaving a small but noticeable gap, refusing to hide her nakedness completely.

“I gotta go, Jack.”

“Not now.”

“Now, Jack.”

“Can’t it wait? I’d like to get out of here and that might take a while.”

Suzze bounced up and down, looking back and forth for a spot that would give her a moment’s privacy. Before the Old Man could say anything, she ducked into an alley and squatted behind a dumpster. The bottom was corroded through. Heat vapor rose off festering slime, the end product of rot that dripped onto the pavement and pooled under the dumpster before making its way down an open manhole and into the bowels of the earth.

It was obvious that she was not the first to have used the facility.

After getting herself situated, she started talking again, calling out from behind the dumpster loud enough to make sure the Old Man heard, “I still don’t understand how we got here, Jack. Energy? What does that mean? You mean like time travel? Did we just zap somewhere Jack? To another dimension of time and space? Are you a space traveler, Jack? Do you, like, do you travel through space and time?”

“I mean like getting lost.”

“Oh please God, Jack, tell me you’ve got an iPhone or MapQuest or something.”

“I’m working on it.” The Old Man stayed on the opposite side of the dumpster, standing guard, facing the street, hiding in the shadows of a sodium streetlight that was buzzing from the far end of the alley.

“Are you a Catholic, Jack? Did you know that Catholics have a special holy water enema to exorcise the devil from your butthole? It’s true. They do. I read it on the Internet. You can Google it if you don’t believe me.”

“I believe you.”

The Old Man glanced from side to side, uneasy, no one in sight. Mostly old storefronts, abandoned cars, the pavement covered with a low, damp, stinking fog.

“Hey Jack?”

He heard a crash and voices approaching from down the street.

“Shush. Be quite.”

He peeked around the edge of the building.

She whispered, “Jack, I’m gonna need some TP or something.”

“TP?”

“Paper, Jack. You know.”

“Do you have to talk so much?”

“It helps to take my mind off it. It’s easier for me if I don’t have to think about what I’m doing.”

“Gotcha.”

“Catholics talk to God, Jack. You ever talk to God?”

“Every day.”

“Oh yeah? What does he say?”

“Be nice.”

“That’s it?”

“What else do you need to know?”

“You’re funny, Jack. I used to talk to my commode.”

“Did he talk back?”

“Yes he did.”

The Old Man shook his head and gazed skyward but there was no sky, no stars, just haze a hundred feet above his head.

“But we had a falling out.”

The lid on the dumpster was warped open. The Old Man reached in careful not to touch the fetid sides and pulled out a newspaper. As he lifted it, the outer sheets fell away and he was left with a relatively clean advertising insert.

He folded the paper back and forth along the seam, then ran his thumbnail down the fold for a sharp crease, then made a neat tear which left two smaller pages, one in his right hand, one in his left.

Whatever was down the street was getting closer. He peeked again. Nothing.

He held the pieces together. It was an ad for The Road to Prosperity at Joe Louis Arena. On one half was a headshot of big-toothed Joel, on the other half, big-haired Suzze, each beaming from ear to ear. The Old Man studied the paper, then looked up past the fog that obliterated the stars, smirked, shook his head in silent communication and mouthed the word ‘cute.’

“I thought you said you’d never been here.” He was speaking to Suzze.

“Where, Jack?”

“Here.”

“Here where?”

“Here. Right here. Here, in Detroit.”

“Don’t get snotty, Jack. I thought you meant here behind this dumpster, here in this godforsaken shithole you made some zippy zappy wrong turn and brought me to. No, I’ve never been here, Jack. I’ve never been to Detroit. Joel and me, we were on a tour and this might have been on the schedule. I don’t know, I didn’t keep up with stuff like that. We had people for stuff like that. But when Joel blew up they cancelled everything, so no, Jack, I’ve never been to Detroit and I hope to hell I never come back. Now quit bothering me. I need to concentrate.”

“Waiting on you.”

Whatever was down the street was getting closer.

“You know Jack . .”

“Be quiet.”

Suzze whispered, “You know Jack, I really loved him, I really did, in a way. I thought he was my ticket out, and he was, so maybe it was a good deal for both of us. We made a really good team. You got to give us that. But it just got to the point where I didn’t want it anymore. I was starting to ask myself, Is that all there is? You know that Peggy Lee song Is that all there is and if that’s all there is my friend then let’s keep dancing, let’s bring out the booze and have a ball? Well, I mean, I had the booze and I had the dancing and sometimes I was having a ball. Looking back on it now I see that I was but it’s not what I want to do. Not now. Not anymore. Maybe it was what I wanted to do then. I mean, I was young and I had no idea what I wanted to do except get away from where I was. That’s what I wanted to do, and Joel was the way out, but I knew I couldn’t go on with it anymore and I was going to leave him, Jack. I never told anybody but I was going to leave him. When all this happened I’d already made up my mind. I was going to be Suzze. Just Suzze. Solo. Like Oprah is just Oprah. And I was thinking about it more and more and was ready to go, ready to make my move, and then his freaking head exploded right there in front of me and I’m thinking Christ Almighty did somebody just hand me my ticket out of town or was it a sign from God and I’m next?”

The Old Man held the paper by the edges in both hands, scrunching it and kneading it between his knuckles, breaking up the fibers of the newsprint until it was Charmin soft.

Suzze’s whispers grew louder the more she talked. “And I’m scared to death Jack. Or I was. And I’m thinking, either way, it’s time to get back to where I belong.”

“That’s sort of what I have in mind too. Keep it down,” said the Old Man.

The sounds from down the street grew louder, closer. The Old Man peeked around the corner again. Three kids. Hoodies. Baggy pants. Expensive sneakers. They were coming up on the other side of the street, banging cars, breaking windows, having a good time. The Old Man froze, standing motionless as the kids walked past him, down the street and out of sight, making too much racket to notice him standing in the shadow of the alleyway.

“Uh, Jack, uh, I’m finished here and . . ”

The Old Man held the newspaper behind his back and took a couple of steps backwards to reach around the corner of the dumpster without turning around.

Suzze took the newly minted toilet paper from his hands, “Thanks Jack, you’re a lifesaver.”

He stepped forward and peeked down the street again. Quiet. Nothing.

The Old Man stepped back to the front of the dumpster.

The kid was standing in front of him, tall, sickly, skinny, gums eroded, welts on his face. Over his shoulder, the old man saw the other two at the back entrance to the alley backlit from the streetlight. Smart. Pack behavior. Circle around. Surround the prey. Keep your distance. Send out a scout.

The kid grinned and nodded towards the back of the dumpster, a gleam in his eye. He held a tire iron in his right hand. He reached out his left hand and motioned for the old man to give it up.

The Old man looked down at the tire iron. Why do low tech? At the least he should have a Glock or a Sig. Maybe it was supposed to look like a mugging or an assault by homeless carnivores.

The Old Man nodded in resignation and fumbled deep in his left pocket. He mugged. He reached deep in to his right pocket. He looked up at the kid and shrugged. Nothing there.

The kid glanced back over his shoulder to summon the others. As he did, the Old Man grabbed the tire iron with his left hand, pulled the paring knife from his right pocket and jammed it squarely under the kid’s breastbone. The kid looked down, dumbfounded. The Old Man stared up at him, maintaining eye contact, pinching his tongue between his teeth, concentrating, probing for just the right spot.

There.

The kid’s eyes rolled back.

The Old Man smelled his last breath as it expelled with a gush, then his urine as it soaked his pants.

The kid’s knees buckled dropping him even lower onto the blade.

His buddies stopped, turned, and ran.

The Old Man let go of the iron. It clanked to the pavement.

“What was that, Jack?”

The Old Man grabbed the kid by the front of his hoodie, “Vade in pace,” he whispered as he rolled the kid backwards, down onto his haunches. As he slipped to the pavement, as if in slow motion, the Old Man noticed a tattoo on his neck, a cross and the word ‘Evolve’.

The kid bled out fast, his blood black under the orange sodium light mixing with the drippings from the dumpster. The Old Man wiped the knife across the kid’s pants and put it back in his pocket. He nudged the kid’s limp body head first down the open manhole. The splash was louder than he expected. He looked up, then left and right. Nobody there.

He could hear Suzze’s bare feet slapping against the wet pavement.

“Thanks Jack.”

The Old Man swiveled a quick right around the corner of the dumpster to head her off and point her out of the alley.

“Really. For everything. Thanks for listening. You’re a good listener, Jack.”

He wrapped his arm around hers elbow to elbow and led her out of the alley and down the street without looking back.

Part way down the block she stopped suddenly, which stopped the Old Man too and nudged him so they were standing face to face. “You know what I think, Jack? I think we need a plan.”

“A plan?”

“Yeah, a plan. Highly effective people always have a plan.”

The Old Man shrugged, perhaps in agreement.

Suzze started walking again, still arm in arm, now with her head on the Old Man’s shoulder. “Let’s go someplace warm, Jack.”

As they walked down the street, they looked like nothing so much as two people who had just shared an intimate moment.

“Jack?”

“Yes, Susan.”

“You know that thing you did back there?”

“I . .”

“It wasn’t funny, Jack.”

The Old Man paused for a beat, wondering what, if anything to say. “He thought it was.”

“He? He who? Who you talking about, Jack?”

- end -

 

 

• We begin to see the true nature of the Old Man and Suzze.
• Neither of them likes what they see.
• Perhaps the Old Man is having regrets.
• Suzze is more aware of what's going on than we might have thought.
  • But she still rejects her predicament, prefers to go back home.

Shroom, Shroom

“You’re kidding me, right Jack?”

The Old Man didn’t answer.

“I said warm, Jack, let’s go someplace warm.” Suzze was walking in lockstep directly behind the Old Man.

“This is warm.”

“And sunny. I wanted sunny,” said Suzze.

The Old Man raised his arms in resignation, “This is sunny.”

“This is the goddamned desert, Jack. It is not warm. It is hot. It is not sunny, it’s . . it’s . . it’s not Aruba, Jack. Or Cancún. Or the Bahamas, Jack. It’s the goddamned desert.”

“It’s sunny and warm,” said the Old Man, stopping in the middle of the road.

A rusted Sinclair sign with a faded green dinosaur squeaked as it blew back and forth in front of a long-deserted service station.

The Old Man did a slow turn, hands to the sky, “I like it here.”

“I don’t, Jack. I don’t like it here. I’ve seen this Jack, like, a thousand times. I get it. Lost in the wilderness. It’s a cliché, Jack. You’re a cliché, Jack. A cliché. Get over it. Whatever it is, get over it. Let’s move on.”

In the distance, a brown cloud settled on the ground.

Suzze looked around, still not liking what she saw, “How long we gonna be here, Jack?”

The Old Man examined the sky from horizon to horizon, “Hard to say. A couple of weeks, a month maybe.”

“Ain’t gonna happen, Jack. No way.”

Frustrated, the Old Man grabbed Suzze by the shoulders, shaking her like a naughty child, “Just tell me Susan. What do you want? Where do you want to go? What do you want to do? Who do you want to be, if not you?”

“I told you already, Jack. I want out. Out. Not out of my mind. Just out. I said I want to be nowhere, Jack, not in the middle of nowhere. It’s a nuance thing, Jack. I was happy, Jack, on my little bench, in my little world, reading my little magazine, watching the little snowflakes fall. This isn’t working out, Jack. I want to go home. Zap me back to where I came from.”

Suzze shrugged her arms to loosen the Old Man’s grip.

“How about you, Jack? How about you? What do you want? You haven’t exactly shared with me, if you know what I mean.”

“I am but a voice crying in the wilderness.”

“Oh good grief. What does that mean? You’re being ambiguous, Jack. I don’t like ambiguous. You got a plan, tell me about it.”

“Following the path.”

“Jesus, Jack. It’s derivative. Derivative, derivative, derivative. Cliché, cliché, cliché. Get over it.”

Heat waves rose off the two lane blacktop that stretched from horizon to horizon without a car in sight.

“Where’s the buzzard, Jack? Don’t you ever watch The Twilight Zone? There’s supposed to be a buzzard circling overhead.”

The Old Man was in pain. If anything, her drawl was even more intolerable when she whined. Did she ever not whine?

Suzze licked the sand off her lips and dry spit it towards the Old Man. She looked around surveying the immediate area, “I got to go, Jack.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“I can’t help it, Jack. Get used to it. It’s me. It’s who I am. It’s what I do. You knew I was a snake before you picked me up. Right, Jack? That’s what Joel used to say whenever he screwed up, ‘You knew I was a snake before you picked me up.’ Tell you the truth, Jack, he had a point.”

The Old Man closed his eyes and begged silently.

Suzze shuffled around the side of the cinder block building, past dry-rotted tires, engines, mufflers, junk car parts and broken Coke bottles to the back of the service station. The door to the single toilet was caved in on its hinges. An Intimate Items machine hung crooked on the wall, cracked open, the change long gone. Dried out condoms and French ticklers in and out of their packs were strewn across the cement floor. The commode was dry as a bone.

Suzze decided to make the best of it, lifted her robe and half-squatted over the bowl, careful not to touch anything.

The Old Man stood silent outside the open doorway gazing towards the mountains, miles away.

A mangy dog walked up, sniffed them both, then licked at Suzze’s feet. He stood there, head bowed, posturing for attention. Suzze tried to kick at him with one foot and maintain her balance with the other.

The dog arched his back, heaved several times and retched up a puddle of yellow bile, then gave every appearance of smiling at the Old Man before lapping it up again, with vigor.

He turned to Suzze, wagged his tail and lowered his head in supplication again expecting a pat and maybe a ‘good boy.’ When he got neither food nor attention he cocked his leg toward the doorframe sending a stream of urine down the wall, across the floor and between Suzze’s feet, then trotted off, tail wagging.

The Old Man walked out into the desert leaving Suzze to her business.

She called after him, half yelling, “You asked me who I want to be, Jack. You know what? I like me, Jack. Tell you the truth, I like me. But if you mean who would I like to be if I wasn’t actually me, then I’ve thought about it and I know who it is.”

Whether he heard her or not, the Old Man didn’t respond.

She called out louder, “I’ll tell you who, Jack. Danica Patrick. That’s who. The race car driver, Jack. That’s who.”

The Old Man walked a hundred steps more, then stopped, eyes to the ground. A storm rose behind the mountains. Lightning flashed, the thunder too far away to be heard.

A grasshopper lit on Suzze’s shoulder. She brushed it away.

“She’s a goddess, Jack. The woman’s a goddess.”

The Old Man took off his hat and coat and stood there naked as a jaybird, arms outstretched, looking up, facing the sun, his legs so bowed she could see daylight between them, his hairy ass hiding his private parts.

She glanced down to her feet and scrunched her toes, “Don’t look up. Trust me, you don’t want to see this.”

Suzze called out again, “She can shift my gears.”

The Old Man bowed his head.

Louder still, “Rev my motor.”

The Old Man leaned over, flipped over a rock, picked up something, took a bite out of it.

Suzze cupped her hands like a megaphone, “Pump my clutch.”

He stood up suddenly, snatched something from the air and put it in his mouth. Then another, munching on whatever it was as fast as he could pluck them from the air.

When he had his fill he dropped to his knees, flipped over more rocks and scratched at the dirt, collecting the Earth’s bounty.

“Slide in to my pit.”

The Old Man put his coat back on, dropped whatever he had into his pockets, dusted off his cap and turned and walked back towards Suzze.

“Okay, okay, I got it. You like Danica.”

“Tell you the truth, Jack, I never did a girl before.”

He was back, looking down at Suzze who was still half squatted over the seatless commode.

“At least not by myself.”

“Are we about through?” The Old Man was growing tired of the chatter.

Suzze looked up, “Did you?”

He didn’t answer.

“Susan, have you ever considered that your, uh, difficulties might not be all physical, that they might be tied to, perhaps, control issues?”

“You think if I go to Oz he can tell me what’s wrong?”

“There are no wizards, Susan.”

“Dr. Oz, Jack. Doctor. He’s the one on TV. He’s a poop whisperer. He had this movie star on and she walked out on stage carrying a whole plate full of stuff, her stuff which she had done back stage, all piled up. And Dr. Oz took a pair of chopsticks out of his pocket and he poked around in all those poopy pieces until he had them all separated. And then he stuck out his tongue and blew this white powder all over it and held it up and Lo and Behold all those pieces spelled words, and those words told her fortune. The man works miracles, Jack.”

“There are no fortune tellers, Susan. The man augurs intestines. Hang a dead monkey around his neck and stick a bone in his nose, he’s a witch doctor.”

“Say what you will Jack, but I’m telling you, the man’s a genius with a turd.”

Suzze stood up and shook her butt letting her robe drop back into place, “Let’s go, Jack. I can’t do it here. I’d rather squat on a cactus.”

The Old Man seized the moment and rounded the corner with Suzze two steps behind, still talking, “Let me ask you something, Jack. Are we lost? Again? Was this another wrong turn?”

“All who wander are not lost,” said the Old Man.

“Cliché, cliché, cliché, Jack.”

The Old Man stopped at the front of the service station, unsure of what to do next.

“Susan, let’s talk for a minute.”

He sat on one of the concrete islands, wires and pipes poking out of the holes where the gas pumps had been. He patted the cement, motioning for Suzze to sit beside him.

Suzze sat down, arms crossed, lips pursed, looking in the opposite direction.

“Since you brought it up, let’s talk about the future. Your future.”

He rested his hand on her knee.

“Have you given any thought to what’s next?”

She jerked her knee away.

“Your future, Susan. Let’s talk about that. What’s meaningful to you? What makes you happy? Where’s your life headed? What are your goals?”

Suzze jumped up.

“Jesus H. Christ, Jack. What are you doing now, selling Amway?”

“I just thought . .”

“Goals? Jack, goals are what got me in trouble in the first place. I don’t have goals. I don’t want goals. I’m going full blown Zen, Jack, like Gandhi.”

“Gandhi was Hindu.”

“Hindu Zendu Jack, it’s all the same. No goals. No motivations. No thoughts. No worries. Empty, Jack. Nothing clogging my brain. And you know what, Jack? It feels great. It feels just freaking great, thank you very much, and I’m ready to go home now.”

“Home?”

“I don’t want to hear it, Jack. Home. I told you already, zap me back to where I came from.”

“It doesn’t work that way Susan.”

The Old Man stood.

“But follow me. I’ll take you where you need to go.”

They were back on the two lane.

The Old Man picked up the pace.

Suzze fell in beside him.

The Old Man reached into his pocket and popped something into his mouth.

“I’m hungry, Jack.”

He reached into his pocket again and pulled out a small dark lump, broke it in half and gave it to her.

“Damn Jack, where’d you get this?” She sniffed it, scrunching her nose at its musty fungal smell, then took a bite. “Will it give me a buzz?”

The Old Man continued walking, tracking the center line, eyes on the vanishing point, straight is the path.

Thunder crashed as the storm grew closer. The wind picked up, slinging the sign back and forth faster and faster, the rusted hinges squealing like a siren. A cloud of brown locusts landed in front of them.

Suzze looked back at the service station and then over to the Old Man.

“Jack?”

“Yes, Susan.”

“You can stop with the sign already. I get it. Cut the shit. Let’s move on.”

The sky cleared, the wind stilled and the sign stopped squeaking.

“For God’s sake, Jack, can’t we at least find a Motel 6 or something?”

The Old Man quickened his pace, as fast as his short, bowed legs would carry him, straight is the path, straight is the path.

-end-

 

 

(A Pastoral)

• After several wrong turns, Suzze and the Old Man finally end up in a place she approves of.
• The Old Man takes the opportunity to lecture Suzze, as her mentor but Suzze is more aware than the Old Man realizes, and turns the tables, lecturing him instead.
• She has found a place she might like to stay.
  • But that is not to be.

The Garden

“Ever drop acid?”

They were in a valley. The sun was shining. The birds were tweeting. Flowers bloomed. Bees buzzed. The breeze fluttered through Suzze’s hair.

“Jesus, Jack, don’t tell me you’re tripping again."

Suzze wandered along the bank of a picture-perfect pond, fingering the flora and fauna. Cattails. Dragonflies. Tadpoles. Everything sparkled like a pixilated image.

“That’s what this place reminds me of,” said the Old Man. “A real trip. Like one of those Thomas Kinkade prints where everything glitters and glistens. They used to sell them by the side of the road.”

“I know what they are, Jack. I owned the definitive collection. And mine were originals, not cheesy roadside prints.”

“Used to? What happened to them?”

Suzze didn’t want to explain and changed the subject.

“I got a headache, Jack. A migraine. At least I think it’s a migraine. Never had them before. Been getting them a lot lately.”

“Like your head’s going to explode?”

“Not funny, Jack. You’re not good at funny, Jack. Some people are good at funny, Jack. But you’re not. Don’t mean to hurt your feelings or anything but you’re not, that’s all.”

Suzze pulled off a cattail, peeled away the wool and held it up to blow into the wind.

“Is all this real, Jack?”

“Looks real to me.”

“You know what I mean. Is it real real or have you made me hallucinate?”

The Old Man shrugged, “Everything is as real as you want it to be.”

“I’ve heard better pick up lines from sixteen year old boys, Jack.”

Suzze blew the last wooly seeds from the cattail.

The Old Man lay back in the grass.

Suzze scratched her crotch.

“This wandering in the wilderness, Jack. Am I supposed to be learning something? Some metaphysical, spiritual growth and enlightenment thing? Because, if I am, it’s not working. All I’m getting is more constipated.”

She broke off a blade of grass and stretched it between her thumbs to make a Jew’s harp. Bump-bah-dah-dah-dah, dah, bump-da-bump-bump. She was trying to play the riff to In a Gadda da Vida but realized that even she couldn’t recognize what it was supposed to be. A musician, she was not. Oh well.

The Old Man sat up, perked up, and crossed his legs. “I have a story for you.”

“I like stories, Jack. Tell me a story.”

The Old Man took a breath to collect his thoughts and began, “There was a Greek philosopher . . . ”

Suzze stood up and stuck her toe in the water.

“His name was Epicurus.”

“Whose name was Epicurious, Jack?”

“The Greek. The philosopher.”

“You know what I liked most about being a Christian, Jack?”

“Liked? As in past tense?”

“What I liked most about being a Christian was how dirty it was. All that sexual repression stuff. Now I feel all . . .,” Suzze did an exaggerated shudder,  “. . . all clean.”

The Old Man waited, hoping she would run out of steam.

“I miss being perverted, Jack. I don’t feel perverted any more. It was fun, Jack. Sometimes.”

“So this Greek philosopher . . . “

She started to walk around the pond. “Maybe I need to get laid.”

“So there was this Greek philosopher . . . “

“Epicurious.” Suzze stopped beside the trunk of a deformed, gangly tree, half in, half out of the water, shaking it as if testing it for strength.

The Old Man spoke louder, not sure if she was paying him any attention, “At about that time, people were beginning to learn about science . . ”

“I don’t think I can do that anymore.”

“What?”

“Be a Christian.”

“Okay, let’s move on. So there was . . . ”

“But I did like it. Dirty, dirty, dirty.” Suzze slid her right foot onto the lowest branch which hung low out over the pond, sometimes out of the water, sometimes just dipping under the surface. It was covered with moss, slippery. She was feeling adventurous.

“Back then, scientists were called natural philosophers . . ”

“Say that again, Jack.” Suzze slid out onto the branch, concentrating on her balance, inch by inch, one foot following the other.

“Natural philosophers. Back then, scientists were called natural philosophers . . ”

The branch wobbled as Suzze stood up straight with her arms outstretched to keep her balance.

“So back then, scientists were called natural philosophers, and even then, people doubted the existence of God.”

Like a sideways tightrope walker, Suzze inched her way out the branch, just inches above the water. Having mastered the branch, she spread her legs, lifted her robe and squatted down.

The Old Man decided to substitute serious for loud, now half shouting, “So now the Greeks had a choice. Which would it be? Science or God?”

Plop.

Still loud, “So Epicurus said, ‘Better to follow the Myths about the Gods, than to become a Slave to the Destiny of Natural Philosophers.’ ”

Plop.

“Are you with me on this?” asked the Old Man.

Plunk.

“Got it, Jack. God or science, the eternal struggle.”

Plink.         

Suzze watched her deposits return to the ecosystem with fascination. She called them her Little Oprahs and watched, one by one as they plinked and plunked and plopped into the water swirling to line up with the gentle current on their journey to who knows where.

Seeing that his lecture was getting him nowhere, he decided to cut to the point, “The point is, Epicurus thought it better to live a life in harmony with Nature, and with God, than to spend your life in a cubicle, a cog in the wheel of free market capitalism.”

“I’m with you, Jack.”

One by one, bolus by bolus, she launched them.

She reached over and snapped off a twig with a leaf still attached and poked it into one of her creations. She arched her back and raised her right hand to her forehead and saluted, “I christen thee, HMS Joel Osmond,” before leaning down to blow on the sail and send it on its way.

Next, there was a canoe.

Then a kayak.

Then, The Doctor Oz, a sleek, streamlined sailing vessel to be sure.

And lastly, with some effort, a giant. A cruise ship, an ocean liner, Her Majesty Queen Oprah.

There were no warships.

No battleships.

No destroyers.

No aircraft carriers.

But as she watched, one did sink. Why would it sink? A submarine, maybe? As she watched it descend beneath the surface, a large, spotted goldfish swam up, his nose just breaking the surface of the water. He, or it, bobbed out of the water, then sank just beneath the surface again. The fish came back, nose poking out of the water, and nudged a little higher, brushing the hair between her legs, which hung down in amber curls. Then back beneath the surface.

As she followed it, it popped up again, this time giving her a nibble before sinking back beneath the surface of the placid, peaceful pond in the center of the perfect garden.

Cute, she thought.

He disappeared.

She flicked at the water to get his attention.

When the ripples had settled, she saw him again, waiting just beneath the surface. She looked down at the fish, into his eyes, and the fish looked back at her.

His happy face was gone.

Instinctively, Suzze bolted upright as the fish jumped half her height, stopping even with her crotch, flapping his tail like a salmon swimming upstream, trying to fly that last few inches to take a bite, or so it seemed, before falling back into the pond and swimming around in circles, his dorsal fin just breaking the surface like a shark planning his next attack.

“Shit!” Suzze dropped the hem of her robe and slid, slid, slid back to the bank, fast as she could go.

She stood on the bank, trying to focus underneath the surface to see if what she thought had happened, really did.

With no sign of the predator, she turned and walked back toward the Old Man.

“On the other hand, Jack, what Epicurious could have meant . . “

“Curus. Epi-curus. Not Epi-curious.” The Old Man couldn’t stand it any longer.

“Yeah, whatever. What I think Epi-whoever meant was that we all get a choice. We can have any god we want. As long as we choose bad gods, we’ll live with the consequences. The Jews. The Christians. The Muslims. They’ve had thousands of years to get it right and look where it got us.”

Suzze stopped and squatted, rubbing and rocking on her heels to wipe her behind in the grass.

“What did their gods ever do for them? It’s time for them to give it up. Get with the plan. Move on. I think they’re willing. They just don’t know how. They need to have faith in themselves.”

Suzze walked over and nudged the Old Man with her foot. “Let’s go someplace else.”

Suzze and the Old Man walked up the hill.

“Where we headed, Jack?”

“Ever been to Washington?”

“Didn’t really care for it. Too many people looking for a handout.”

“Got somebody you need to meet,” said the Old Man.

As they rounded the top of the hill, Suzze could see the Washington Monument in the distance.

“That fish back there, Jack. I swear, he had fire in his eyes.”

“Maybe he just wanted a piece of the devil.”

“Or a piece of my ass,” said Suzze.

-end-

 

 

 

The Messenger

Yeshu’a bar yosef was having an early supper.

He was sitting outside, in the courtyard of his favorite restaurant, Piperno, on Monte dé Cenci, on the edge of the Ghetto of Rome.

He was reading the Il Messaggero. Yeshu’a was old fashioned. He liked the feel of paper in his hands. He snapped and folded the newspaper, first in half, then in quarters, then in eights, keeping it small and unobtrusive.

Normally, the Ristorante Piperno would object if a guest were so bold as to read a newspaper, or a book, or anything for that matter, while dining, even outside. One did nothing to detract oneself from one’s enjoyment of one’s food. But the hour was early, most of their guests wouldn’t appear before nine at the earliest, and Yeshu’a was a regular, and, well, special.

A waiter, his waiter, appeared, suggesting a bottle of Incisa della Rocchetta Sassicaia, which, of course, met his approval, for Yeshu’a was an agreeable man, famously easy to please, especially when it came to wine. And, at only €150 a bottle, if was fairly priced. (How he despised “Euros,” and yearned for the old days, when life’s pleasures were measured in Lira. Oh well, the past is the past.) And, since all that was required of him was to sign the chit, it was of no concern, the accounting fell to someone else.

The waiter poured the wine, nodded a bright buon appetito, and silently went his way without further conversation.

Yeshu’a was dining light, his stomach somewhat upset. The news. How he despised the news. Everything changing, rarely for the better.

The Vatican was bankrupt. Yet another pathetic American had visited heaven, this time having taken his French poodle. And the poodle had written a book, insisting that indeed, all dogs do go to heaven. They were even considering a movie.

Now there was a cookbook, a cookbook for heaven. Food, clothing, automobiles, nothing could be sold unless it was endorsed by God himself.

Another preacher, barely literate, had acquired another sinfully expensive aircraft, no doubt to fly to heaven himself, spend the weekend and report back to his flock, the episode good for another million or so in donations.

Another had buried his poor mother in an amusement park, beside a talking cow. How did cow’s talk? he wondered. Did shame know no limits?

And now, The New and Improved Testament! Who were these charlatans?, these cheats?, these liars?

“Thou shalt not bear false witness,” he said aloud, talking back to the newspaper.

“Mi scusi signore?” Excuse me sir?, the waiter asked.

“Oh, nothing Tommaso, just talking to the paper.”

The waiter placed a plate of olives and a small pagnotta of bread before him and before topped off his wine. Yeshu’a’s glass never ran empty. Soon, the waiter would return with a plate of Carciofi alla Guidia, artichokes in the Jewish style, a serving for two, for Yeshu’a was a glutton for artichokes in season. They were presented alongside an assortment of cheeses, favoring pecorino and parmigiano, rather common he knew but his favorites nonetheless. Why try to improve upon perfection? was the rule he lived by.

It was an altogether delightful evening, like every evening in Rome, but his poor stomach would not leave him alone.

The religious wars in American were heating up, sure to spill over into the rest of the world if something wasn’t done to stop them.

He loved Rome. It was a cozy town. It was home.

But perhaps, he thought, as he peeled away a bract, dipped it in oil and sucked the pulp between his teeth, perhaps it was time, time to move on.

 

| Hello Kitty

“Hello Kitty,” said Suzze.

The pale, skinny girl backing out of the doorway was caught off guard.

“Oh. – Yeah.” she looked over her shoulder to her backpack then to Suzze, “Hello Kitty.” She nodded and feigned a smile, then skipped down the steps and onto the sidewalk keeping her head low as she walked into the night without looking back.

The Old Man walked up the steps behind her and banged the brass knocker. Larry Gelb opened the door before the second knock.

Suzze recognized him. It was that freaky guy on the cover of the magazine.

The Old Man stepped inside, “You’ve got to quit picking up these street kids, Larry. They rob you blind. They’re dangerous. Probably illegal on multiple counts. You’ve got to quit.”

“Lisa, Lisa. Poor child. Lisa was made dark by the evils of Christianity.” Gelb stood aside to let them in.

“And you’re going to show her the light?” said the Old Man.

“Help her fulfill her destiny,” Gelb grinned. He looked Suzze up and down hesitating a second before smiling and stepping aside to let her enter.

Suzze scanned the foyer. They were in a townhouse in Georgetown. Library to the right, mahogany bar against the back wall. Dining room to the left. Hallway straight back to the kitchen. Staircase up the wall. Tattered Persian rugs over hardwood floors. Fresh flowers and a giant yellow bird in the corner that dipped up and down drinking from a bucket of blue water. Suzze had seen them before, but never one five feet tall.

The Old Man nodded to Suzze, “Top of the stairs, first door on the left.”

“Why are you telling me that?”

“Just in case,” he said.

Gelb and the Old Man walked into the library and hopped up on matching wingback chairs leaving Suzze standing in the middle of the room, ignored.

Five steel balls hanging from strings snapped back and forth on the valet table between the chairs, click click, click click, click click, in never ending monotony.

Gelb and the Old Man were immediately lost in what seemed to be a serious conversation. Suzze wasn’t sure what they were talking about or why she should care. She noticed something odd. She wasn’t sure what. It was something about the two of them together. How short they both were. How alike they were, both of them almost sub-human. It had occurred to her before that, on some level Jack really did bear a striking resemblance to Gollum.

“Excuse me,” she interrupted.

Gelb and the Old Man stopped talking and looked over in unison.

“Can I ask you something?”

“You just did,” said Gelb.

Suzze shot him an intentional and obviously smug grin. “Are you two gay?”

Gelb and the Old Man looked back and forth at each other as if they either didn’t understand the question or didn’t know the answer.

Gelb took the Old Man by the hand and hopped out of his chair bringing the Old Man with him. “Come to think of it, maybe we are.”

The Old Man cocked his head at Gelb and raised his eyebrows, surprised by the answer.

Gelb put his arm around the Old Man, “The perfect marriage of Science and Religion.”

The Old Man realized that he had not yet introduced the two. “Suzze, I’d like for you to meet Mr. Laurence Gelb, National Science . . .”

“I gotta go,” said Suzze.

She turned and walked up the stairs.

They picked up the conversation where they’d left off, about the girl with the Hello Kitty backpack.

“She has a secret formula,” said Gelb.

“And what might that be, Larry?”

“She can kill bullets.”

“And you believe that?”

“Sure, she showed me the algorithm.”

“And what does it say?”

“It’s complicated. You wouldn’t understand.”

“And you think it’ll work?” asked the Old Man.

“Sure. I’m the smartest guy in the world, remember?”

“Maybe not when it comes to girls, Larry.”

Laurence Gelb hopped out of his chair and slid in beside the Old Man, room enough for two. Sharing secret knowledge was his way of sharing intimacy. He spoke in hushed tones, “We can kill bullets, John. No shit. Making the gunpowder explode is the easy part. But you’ve got to be able to do that through the metal casing, that’s the hard part. Nobody’s ever been able to do that before.”

“Where’d she get this magic formula?” asked the Old Man.

“From a guy in the kiddie prison. She was locked up for years.”

The Old Man looked to Gelb, doubtful.

“Hey, we lock up our best people all the time. Can’t stand for them to be out in a crowd. Look at me,” said Gelb.

“And why did he give this earth shattering magic recipe to, what’s her name? Lisa? Why did he give it to her of all people?”

“She blew him.”

“Well I guess that explains everything. What happened to him, the guy with the secret formula?”

“Hung himself.”

Gelb put his head on the Old Man’s shoulder and nuzzled himself tight, like a cat scooching into warm spot, “Why do I feel so safe with you?”

“God only knows.” John gave Larry a reassuring stroke on the head, as a mother might comfort a child, “So, go on, tell me about these bullets. You said the guy hung himself?”

“Well, while they were in lockup, in the kiddie prison, the youth home, she traded him sex for everything he knew. It was an equitable trade, each giving the other the only thing they had. Kind of romantic when you think about it.” Gelb nuzzled a little closer. “His algorithms, her sex. She got out. He didn’t. He hung himself. She’s a smart girl, absorbed everything he knew. Came here. Spouted it all off to me, one long barely coherent babble, reciting most of it from memory.”

“Why’d she come to you?”

“Going through a trash can. Looking for food, I guess. Saw me on the cover of a magazine. How she got here, I don’t know. Didn’t ask.”

Gelb uncuddled and sat up, “But she’s too smart, knows too much not to be dangerous.”

“Sounds like a soap opera, Larry.”

“May be,” said Gelb, “And one more thing.”

“What’s that?”

“She doesn’t hate anything as much as a Christian.”

The Old Man didn’t react.

“So be careful.”

The Old Man put his arm around Gelb, “You, too,” he said. “You, too.”

 - - -

Upstairs, Suzze opened the door to the guest bathroom. Tiny. A closet. Not for her.

She wandered down the hall scratching her butt. Suzze liked to wander around looking through other people’s things.

The door to the master bedroom was cracked. She looked inside. Big room. Floor to ceiling bookcases stacked with every conceivable form of junk. A four poster bed. Another oriental carpet.

Suzze stepped into the room and prowled through the books and papers and stacks of seemingly unorganized crap overflowing the bookshelves.

A flatscreen was shoehorned into the bookcase at the foot of the bed. It was on. An infomercial was playing.

Onscreen, a teenage girl was asking, Ha sido molestado por una monja o un sacerdote? Si usted ha estado a la iglesia, es probable que tenga. A veces no te acuerdas . . .

A crawler presented the subtitles in English: Have you been molested by a nun or a priest? If you’ve been to church, you probably have. Sometimes you don’t remember . . .

Suzze continued to prowl around as the girl continued to speak in Spanish.

The commercial cut to a silver-haired lawyer in a dark suit sitting on a stool, hands folded in his lap, speaking directly into the camera, Hola, soy Emilio Cruze con el bufete de abogados de Goldwater y Cruze. A crawler translated: Hi, I’m Emilio Cruze with the law firm of Goldwater and Cruze. The pedophile nuns and priests say it’s over. ‘Oops, they say. Sorry. We won’t do it again. Promise. So help us God.’ But it’s not over until we say it’s over. If you’ve been touched by a nun or a priest, Goldwater and Cruze can get you the money you deserve. Money for college. Money for food. Money for home mortgages and car payments. Money for the things you need. So, if you’ve been touched at any time, on any part of your body by a member of the clergy, a nun, a choir director or member of your church staff, no matter what your age, call the law firm of Goldwater and Cruze. For the money you deserve. Debido a que no ha terminado hasta que decimos que se acabó. Cause it’s not over until we say it’s over.”

A graphic with their logo, web address and 800 number followed by a hundred words of miniscule script popped for three seconds, then did a slow fade to black.

“Bastards,” she said to herself.

Days of Our Lives came on. Suzze plopped on the bed, fluffed the pillows, opened her robe and scratched her crotch. Might as well catch up on what she’d missed.

Nothing. Chandler Massey had a sex change and returned as Will Horton. Will was planning to marry his mother. After a few minutes, she was back where she left off.

She was bored.

She turned off the TV and looked around the room. Crap everywhere, floor to ceiling, wall to wall. Books, papers, toys, empty toy boxes, files in plastic milk crates.

She leaned over the edge to see what was under the bed.

It was her. She was under the bed. “Hi, she said. I’m Suzze. What’s your name?”

Suzze snapped back, unsure of what she had just seen.

She cautiously peeked back under the bed, barely over the edge, ready to snap back again if she threatened herself.

There she was, lying under the bed, lifelike, life size. She still had her breasts and her blond hair, not yet disheveled, not pink from beet juice. And she was wearing her robe, although her robe under the bed was clean and unsoiled.

Suzze sat up and ran her hand through her matted hair and examined her filthy robe. Which was real? Her butt itched. She scratched. The itch was getting stronger.

She decided to sneak another peek. She dipped down, took a quick glance and sat back up. She leaned over again, looked quickly and jumped back up again like a child playing peekaboo.

She was confused.

She peeked under the bed again, ready to question herself. “You name’s Suzze?”

“Yes, it’s a wonderful name don’t you think?”

“How do you spell that?” Suzze asked.

“I don’t know, I never thought about,” said Suzze under the bed. “I don’t think Larry would like me if I were as smart as a normal woman.”

“Where did you come from?” Suzze asked.

“Larry made me. He’s my friend,” came the reply, all smiles.

“What are you doing under there?”

“Larry says I’m going to save humanity.”

“From what?”

“Gee,” said the Suzze under the bed, “I never thought about it. Itself, I guess.”

Suzze lay back on the bed trying to get her head around what lay beneath her.

She noticed a box of chocolates on the nightstand, took one and sucked out a cherry, goo dripping down her chin as she absentmindedly scratched her crotch, thinking about it, concluding that she had just witnessed was yet another perversion of science. Whatever it was, she didn’t want to get involved.

She sucked on another chocolate.

Did she have to go?

She ran through the possibilities. Another chocolate.

No, not really. Another chocolate.

On the other hand, why not?

There was nothing else to do. The box was almost empty.

Who knows, it might be fun. She always enjoyed talking to a new commode.

She hopped off the bed and stepped toward Gelb’s toilet, which, unlike the rest of the house was slick and white and antiseptic.

Before she got there, she thought of one more question. She got down on all fours, “When does this Larry guy tell you all this stuff?

The Suzze under the bed smiled, “When we’re having sex. He tells me everything.”

Suzze wondered why she even needed to ask.

She hoped up. One step later, the Suzze under the bed called after her.

Suzze dropped down again, her head on the floor.

“Have you met Jesus?” the Suzze under the bed asked.

“Too many times,” said Suzze, “not interested.”

Suzze stood, scratching her butt as she rose.

She took three steps into the toilet and sat on the commode.

It was silent.

She waited.

It didn’t speak.

The seat was cold.

“Music,” she said.

The commode did not respond.

As she waited for the commode to boot up, she picked at her feet and hummed, wider than a mile, Moon River . .

Still nothing. No music. Not a word. She stood to confront the commode, then realized it was old technology and gave up.

Her butt itched. It was getting out of hand, time to do something about it, couldn’t stand it anymore, end it here and now.

She looked around for a mirror to get a better look. She couldn’t find one.

There was an iPhone laying on the tank on top a copy of the Journal of Christian Research.

She held it up and panned around the room.

She switched it to mirror mode and scanned under her arms, then examined the scars under her breasts.

She looked inside her navel for lint, then down her belly to her crotch.

She tugged at the blond curls still streaked with pink, stretching them, watching them snap back when she released them. She clicked 10x and examined the hole in her clitoral hood, now huge on the screen. Big. Probably never go away.

She stood and lifted her foot onto the toilet seat and half squatting inspected her nether regions, nothing missing, nothing discolored, nothing dripping, good vaginal health is important, she agreed with herself.

She poked here and there trying to locate the itch.

She bent over more, spread her legs more and tilted the iPhone back and forth but couldn’t spot it.

But she could feel it. Whatever it was, she knew it was there.

She popped a selfie. Nothing.

It moved. She was sure it moved.

She took another selfie. There it was.

She studied the image, trying to imagine its exact location. In her mind, she triangulated its position using three of her private parts for reference.

Then, poke. Nothing.

She popped another selfie, enlarged it and compared the landscape to what she had seen before.

Maybe. Maybe. Poke. Pinch. Nothing.

It was on the run, making fast tracks across her labia, perhaps heading for clear country where it could make better time. Or worse yet, looking for refuge in an orifice.

Two more shots and she’d figured out its trajectory. She visualize the lead like a skeet shooter might aim in front of a clay pigeon.

Smack!, she had it, pinned against her crotch, wiggling under her fingers.

She tugged at it.

It wouldn’t let go.

Carefully, slowly, she tried to ease it away, feeling it wiggle between her fingers.

It held on tight.

She pinched it hard and tugged back and forth.

It wouldn’t budge.

She rolled it between her thumb and forefinger trying to loosen it from the hair it was holding on to.

Finally, sensing she was about to lose it, she gave it a quick snatch, yanking away both it, whatever it was, along with a lump of hair, painful but worth it.

She held it up to the light.

It was hard. A piece of grit. And it was still squirming.

She dropped the iPhone in her pocket and walked down the stairs, step by step, keeping her eye on it, squeezing it harder, trapping it between her thumb and forefinger, encased in a wad of hair which seemingly moved and squirmed along with it.

Focused as she was, she didn’t hear Gelb and the Old Man mention her, or Herschfeld, or the Pope.

She walked into the library, rolling it between her fingers, trying to expose it without letting it go of it for the two of them to see. She thought Gelb, being a scientist, might know what it was.

Gelb and the Old Man noticed her entering the room and stopped talking.

“Hey, look what I found,” she said as she held out her hand to show them.

Gelb jumped up and reached towards her as he started to say No!

Before he could get the word out of his mouth, the hairball exploded.

 

-end-

 

 

| Pacifica

Jon Cromarty did love a closeup. He was nose to nose with a quite large penis that was hanging just inches from his face. It hung long and proud, was uncircumcised with just the tip of the glans peeking beneath the hood, deep blue veins running the length of the organ. It was truly the cock of Adonis and Cromarty was smitten as evidenced by his erection, small as it was, poking against the underside of his belly. As he leaned forward to get a closer look – until his nose almost touched the screen – his tongue emerged to slurp the cream off the top of his Venti Mocha Frappucino, his second of the day.

The electric security lock buzzed and the door snapped open.

“Cut the shit, Cromarty. Find me what I’m looking for.”  Aradhana Tatas walked through the door carrying a bag of Starbucks goodies which she distributed among the brown skinned young men and women sitting in groups behind monitors like air traffic controllers, each in an identical Aeron chair, each of whom appeared cheerful, engaged and enthusiastic in their work. But, of the bunch, sadly she often thought, Cromarty was her go to guy, a local, a bug specialist, the one who always got the biggest drink.

“Cromarty, you embarrass yourself.” She lifted her Chai Latte out of the bag and handed Cromarty yet another 560 ml of coffee-flavored sugar.

“You embarrass yourself, Cromarty. In fact, I say, you are an embarrassment to all humanity. So I ask you this, Jon Cromarty, why do you do that? Why do you want to be the embarrassment of all humanity?”

She pulled up a spare Aeron chair.

Cromarty leaned back and put his hand nonchalantly in his lap to hide his protuberance, “Get a load of that thing.” He pulled the HummingByrd back to view his newest love interest in all its entirety, nestled among its companion testicles, which were hanging low in their scrotum. It occurred to him that he could reach out and peck it. Giving the pecker a peck with his HummingByrd’s pecker was so funny to Cromarty that he gagged on his own joke, snorting air to keep from laughing out loud.

Upon closer inspection, Aradhana herself could not help but be stunned by the penis before her, the veins, the scrotum, the glans, all topped with wispy brown curls that waved in the breeze like wheat on the plains of Uttar Pradesh. Erect, it would surely be a formidable sight to behold.

The tea slipped from her left hand and splashed onto her foot. “Goddammit Cromarty, find her. She’s supposed to be there.”

Cromarty swung into action. “Imagine you are a hummingbird,” he instructed himself as if he were the omnipotent voice of God. “You flit and you flutter, and beat your little wings...”

Cromarty toggled back and the drone rose slowly, straight and true, still focused on the owner of the magnificent penis. The screen filled, first with an abscessed navel poking from a pot belly covered with gray hair, then past sagging man-breasts before stopping dead center of a bald head with a face full of stubble and a missing tooth. It grinned.

Cromarty snatched the drone upward, stopping ten feet above the crowd, caught his breath and began to rotate the Byrd in slow 360°s.

The ocean was in the distance behind tall palms. A naked man, a dwarf perhaps, was standing in a fountain. From the street, a ragged line of people were disrobing, one by one, picking up a folded bathrobe from a collapsible table before melding back into the crowd.

“Do we have sound?” asked Aradhana, talking and sipping come back at the same time.

“Music’s too loud. Can’t get the voices. Trying facial recognition, see if we can read their lips.”

“Let’s hear it,” she said.

In a gadda da vida . . .

“Gibberish,” said Cromarty. “Speaking in tongues, crazy rock shit.”

“Turn it up,” said Aradhana.

In a gadda da vida honey . . .

Cromarty tilted down. “Look at ‘em. Hundreds of them. Every size, shape, color. And nobody’s got a boner. They’re all limp.”

“No porn policy, Cromarty, remember?” Aradhana reached into the Starbucks bag, lifted out a napkin and wiped the tea from her feet.

Something is missing from here?

“These people are in-fucking-sane.” He slurped with his left hand and toggled with his right, flying the ruby throated HummingByrd back and forth above the crowd. “And thar she blows, maties! Arrr! Arrr! Arrr!”

Cromarty dropped the nose and sped towards three black Chevy Suburbans that were rounding the corner and pulling to a choreographed stop at the curb.

Suzze Osmond stepped out of the middle SUV, “Bye guys, thanks for the ride.”

Suzze waved her metal fingers as they sped away. “Assholes.”

She was slurping a Grande 2% Vanilla Latte. It was her idea to slide by the drive-through, against regulations but they didn’t mind. Anything to keep her quiet.

She was in a new, white, terrycloth bathrobe over new, white, flannel pajamas, covered with a new, beige, L. L. Bean overcoat, and a pair of bright red, Hush Puppy knock offs, 89¢ a pair, made in China, all government issue.

She did a quick take on the locale, had no idea where she was and didn’t care. It was warm and sunny. That’s all that mattered.

She didn’t need the coat and dropped it on the sidewalk for anybody who might want it and chucked the now empty cup in the trash.

Then it occurred to her. She looked up and down the street, across Palisades Park, past a row of palm trees and to the ocean. There was Josiah’s. There was Maurice, the Maître d', and Zippy, the Chef de Valet. Suzze always liked the beach more than the mountains. Santa Monica was like being home. She and Joel could never have a home here, too ostentatious, too Hollywood. That’s why they were hidden away in Aspen, affluent but hidden, had to keep up appearances. They came here only for brief visits, always ‘for business,’ never a place they liked to come, they had to do it, consort with the heathens. That was the cover story anyway.

She loved the Wild Mushroom Agnolotti, and the Potato Blinis with Royal Osetra Caviar at Josiah’s, and the Bitters, Egg White and Champagne at d’Oro just up the street.

She loved the fast cars and the convertibles and the gorgeous people who always seemed to have nothing more to do on weekday afternoons than lunch.

She loved it all.

 

She had to go.

She looked both ways, decided no one would see her if she was quick before squatting between a Bentley and a Ferrari. The cars were waiting in the valet parking line. She backed in between them, using the rear of the Ferrari and the front of the Bentley as arm rests.

Just as she thought it was going to happen, the Ferrari in front blasted alive and sped away with a chirp from the rear wheels.

Maybe later.

She crossed the street into the park. It was full of people, homeless by the looks of them. Nothing new. Santa Monica was known for its homeless people, some of the best benches in the world. The best leftovers. The best garbage. It was beginning to look like home to Suzze. Hey, you could do worse.

She looked around.

There was a fountain and a splash pool. Naked people were standing in ankle deep water. The Old Man was pouring water on their heads from a Gatorade bottle.

An old fashioned jam box was cranked to the max, playing In a Gadda da Vida.

She stood for a minute, in the middle of it, taking it all in, then walked toward the fountain.

“Well look at you, Jack. Aren’t you cute, standing there in your birthday suit?”

The Old Man stepped out of the fountain and wrapped a towel around his waist.

“I got to ask you, Jack, is there anything in the world uglier than old genitalia?

“Something else, Jack Why am I not surprised to see you here?

“Don’t I remember saying goodbye once already, Jack?”

“Three times,” said the Old Man.

“Don’t be a smart-ass, Jack. Nobody likes a smart-ass.”

She took the Old Man by the shoulders, steering him away from the crowd, “Let’s me and you go for a little walk and have a little talk, Jack, cause I got to tell you, I’m a little confused.”

They set off to wander through the crowd, groups and lines of half-naked people, who, was it her imagination or not? who took a step or two back as they walked by.

“Well, how was it?” the Old Man said, breaking the ice.

“Oh, it was a real trip Jack. Better than yours. I learned a lot, Jack. Yes indeed, I sure did.”

“Did they do that anal probe thing?” The Old Man was trying to be funny.

“I wish.”

The Old Man wasn’t sure if she was serious or not.

“So where did you go? On this trip, where did you go?”

“Back and forth, Jack. Back and forth. I’m beginning to think that’s the story of my life.”

“See anybody interesting?”

“My mom. And let’s see, and Joel. And Steve. They came to me in a dream, Jack. Just like in the bible.”

“Susan, you were in a drug-induced psychosis.”

“Well, it was still nice to see mother.”

“Your mother? Really? What did she say?”

“Goodbye forever, I guess. I really didn’t hear her say anything. Not out loud.”

“Oh.”

A Frisbee sailed by with an airborne dog in hot pursuit.”

“What do you think, Jack?” She click, click, clicked the pincers. “Suzze Scissorhands. Attractive, huh? One of the government guys did it for me. Took the butt of his gun and banged them into points.”

“Why’d you do that?”

“So I could poke him in the nuts when he wouldn’t keep his hands off me.”

Suzze pointed with her index claw to the Bentley, the one she’d squatted in front of, now pulling away from the curb.

“Brings back memories, Jack.”

Go back and check Chosen to confirm.

“Yeah, I saw it, remember? It was white, a white convertible.”

“Cream, Jack, not white. Cream. Or Crème, as the Bentley people call it.”

“The seats were blue, I’ll bet.” By now the Old Man was aware of the themes of Suzze’s life.

“Yep.”

“What was lavender?”

“The piping on the seats. And the carpets. And the custom luggage, it was lavender.”

“Logo?”

“Of course, Jack. What good is custom luggage if it’s not monogrammed?”

Suzze snapped her claws together making a clicking sound, still practicing, still learning how to operate them.

“Pink? You forgot pink,” said the Old Man.

“Pink. Pink? Let’s see now, what was pink? What was pink? Pink. Pink. Pink. Let me think. What was pink?” She clicked her nubs as she thought, “Oh yeah, it was the vibrator. I kept a pink vibrator in the console. A Pocket Rocket. I hated getting stuck at traffic lights with nothing to do.”

She put her arm around the Old Man’s shoulders, simultaneously clicking her fingers on one side and flicking her tongue in his ear on the other, “Ever have one, Jack? John? Did Old Man Johnny ever go bzzzz, bzzzz, bzzzz?”

Yes, he was sorry he had asked. “So what happened to it.”

“Batteries went dead.”

“The car, not the vibrator,” said the Old Man. “I saw the kid drive it away. Do you know what happened to it?”

“Yeah, saw it on the news. Got a couple miles down the road, pulled in to a quick mart to wash the poop off the hood, got carjacked, beat up and for left for dead.”

The Old Man shrugged off Suzze’s feigned embrace, “So tell me Susan, how did that make you feel?”

“Actions have consequences, Jack.”

Suzze raised her arms and let her head tilt back and closed her eyes, matching the angle of the sun.

“I could stay here Jack. Never leave. Never take another step. Live naked on a bench. Homeless in Santa Monica. That’s me, Jack.”

“Joel?”

“Yeah, what about him?”

“You said you saw Joel. What did he say?”

“’Be careful.’ Not sure what he meant but that’s all he said.

“And Steve. Who’s Steve?”

“Steven Hadad. You know Steven Hadad, don’t you, Jack. Pastor Steve?”

“You know Steven Hadad? I didn’t know that.”

“Sure, Jack. Who you think got the little shit started?”

“Where’d you meet him.”

Suzze laughed, “In hell.”

“In the basement at BJU. He was there to give a talk, same as Joel. First time I met him he patted his lap and said ‘Welcome to hell.’ He was sitting on a commode. Told me I was his demonette for the evening. Got to tell you Jack, he sure was cute, still is.”

“But you married the other guy. Why’s that?”

“Steve and Joel, Jack. Think about it. One showed me his dick, the other showed me his money. Money won, Jack. Always does.”

A butterfly lit on her shoulder pulsing its wings slowly, angling to take in the energy of the sun.

The Old Man leaned forward for a closer look. “How perfectly beautiful,” he said. The Old Man continued to marvel at the butterfly perched on Suzze’s  shoulder, the facets of the eyes, the tiny sensory hairs on its body. Incredible, he thought, that anyone could believe a creation this magnificent, this perfect in form and function could have evolved from nothing. He waved his hand in front of it and noticed that the butterfly would follow his movements back and forth, up and down. With the creature distracted, he swept up behind it with his other hand, snatched it off Suzze’s shoulder, tore off the wings, broke the body in half and crushed it under his foot.

Suzze opened her eyes and recovered from her sun worship. “We need to talk, Jack.”

“We are talking, Susan.”

“Looks to me like you’re murdering innocent insects, Jack. No, I mean talk like really talk.”

“Okay, what do you have in mind.”

“I’m through, Jack.”

“Through?”

“Yeah, Jack. All this wondering and wandering, it’s not me, Jack. I need something real, Jack, something I can believe in, something to hold on to.”

“That’s where we’re headed. Straight is the path,” said the Old Man.

“Yeah, well, maybe for you, Jack, but I learned a lot back there, with mother and Joel and Steve. No matter where you go, there you are. I am who I am Jack. I am.”

“Well, now that you mention it, that’s sort of what I had in mind.”

“End of the road, Jack. My mom, and Joel, and the mansion,” Suzze paused to reflect, “and my breasts, and my fingers, and,” Suzze scrunched her nose in distain, “and you. It’s all too much, Jack. That bench over there, Jack, it’s got my name on it.”

“There’s a wino passed out on that bench,” said the Old Man.

“I can share,” said Suzze.

The Old Man grew agitated. “Look at this Susan. Look around. Look at all this. You think this is easy? Look at all those people. It’s a lot of work, Susan. Give me a break here, I can’t just snap my fingers and make it all happen, you know.”

Suzze clicked her nubs. “Well, at least you can snap, Jack.”

“Oh quit whining. Get over it. Shit happens.”

“I been meaning to ask you what you’re doing to do with them, Jack, all those naked people running around doing their best to look like me?”

“Can you wait just a minute?”

“Waiting’s over Jack. I told you back at the hospital. Remember the hospital, Jack? Boy that was a barrel of monkeys, wasn’t it?” She poked him in the chest, hard, with her index claw. “Don’t piss me off, Jack. I don’t like being pissed off and you’re beginning to piss – me - off.” She poked him again, emphasizing each word.

“Oh, and that thing under the bed.”

“What thing under the bed?”

“Didn’t your little friend Larry show you? I figured you and him were having a threesome. Not me, Jack. Huh uh.”

The Old Man was growing more agitated, even desperate, “You can’t do this to me. Not now. Not after all I’ve done for you.”

“Done for me, Jack? You’re right, Jack. I’m the one who’s gettin’ done here. I’m the one who’s been done, and you know what, I’m still waiting to be kissed. I don’t like being done unless I been kissed first, know what I mean? Pucker up, Jack, cause I think it’s your turn to get done for a while.”

“One more. One more, that’s all I ask, just one more.”

“More? Did I hear you say more, Jack? One more what, Jack?”

“All this stuff,” the Old Man raised his arms to envelope all that was going on around him, “all this stuff you see here, it wasn’t easy. So cut me some slack, okay? I’m about on my last nerve here if you know what I mean. One more stop. One more trip. One more adventure. You’ll love it, I promise.”

“One more zippy zappy, Jack?”

“If you say so, if that’s what you want to call it, yeah, one more. Just one more.”

Suzze thought for a second unable to contain a big grin, “What do we say, Jack?”

“What do we say? What do you mean, what do we say?”

“The magic word, Jack. You know the magic word.” She squeezed his cheek with her claws. “Come on. Say it, Jackie. Jackie, Jackie, Jackie. Say the magic word.”

The Old Man clenched his teeth and looked the other way, resisting the very idea of relinquishing control, nebulous as it might be.

“Please,” he said, in a low voice, still looking away.

“Nah, nah, nah, now. Be nice. Say it like you mean it.”

“Please goddammit. Is that what you want? Huh? Okay. Please. Please come with me, one more time.”

Suzze pecked him on top of the head, “That’s a good boy.”

The Old Man looked up, resentment oozing from every pore.

“Now you run on ahead and say goodbye to your little friends and gather up your stuff and I’ll catch up in a minute,” she said.

“What?!”

“Don’t talk back, Jack. Mommy spank.”

“Oh good grief.” The Old Man turned and walked away in a huff.

“Straight is the path,” he said, stomping across the park towards Santa Monica Boulevard.

She paused a minute to absorb the sun, and the park, and the beauty of it all, already regretting leaving. But a promise is a promise. And after all, he did say please. She grinned again. On the other hand, maybe things were looking up.

Then she noticed them as if a revelation. Waves and waves of white bathrobes from the curb to the edge of the palisade. They had been there all along. Only now were they seeping into her consciousness, the enormity of what was standing before her. And she did not have the slightest idea on God’s green earth what it was all for. Not a clue.

She looked across the park. The Old Man was already a hundred steps in front of her almost to the curb.

She ran to the curb, then quick stepped down the middle of the street to catch up.

Then stopped.

Something wasn’t right.

She dropped the robe to her feet, took off the pajamas and left them where they fell, standing in the middle of the boulevard naked as the day she was born.

A man, part of a foursome lunching alfresco a few feet away pointed to her and said, “That’s Suzze what’s her name. Slashed off her breasts, then ate them. A billion hits. All over the Internet.”

His face-lifted and liposuctioned companion filled in the blanks, “That Jesus freak who did those home shopping shows. I even bought a painting from her. You know, cute little cabins with stone paths and flowers everywhere? Like the English countryside on black velvet. Don’t ask me why. Turned out, it was a print. Paid too much. Way too much. Gave it to Juanita for her Christmas bonus. Bitch. Still asked me for cash. I tell you, these people don’t appreciate how good they’ve got it. They used to do her on TMZ. Runs around naked. I’m surprised she hasn’t been on Oprah.”

“Or Maury,” said the second man in the foursome. “That’s more her style. Look at her. Her fifteen minutes are about up. Next time you see her she’ll be living in a house trailer in Buggerville with a pit bull and a meth habit.”

The other woman at the table turned to him, “Maybe she needs an agent, Stanley. Put her on reality TV. Everybody you’ve got is in rehab anyway. She’d fit right in.”

Suzze slipped the robe back on and picked up the pace once more, the Old Man in the distance.

Halfway to the corner, she stopped again. Something still wasn’t right.

She untied the sash to her robe and tossed it into the foreign convertible beside her. She felt the cool air rush between her legs and sweep around her, up the back of her neck and through her hair.

After a few steps, it was there again. Something. Something. What? She was almost down to nothing. What was it? The Hush Puppies. She stared down at them.

“Hush Puppies, you’ve got to go,” she said to the shoes.

“No, no,” said the Hush Puppies. “Don’t leave us here all alone with these mean people in their Jimmy Choo’s and Manolo Blahnik’s.

“But I have to,” said Suzze. “You’ll be better off here where it’s sunny and warm and you can find a nice homeless person who loves you and will take care of you and not let the stray dogs chew you up.”

The Hush Puppy on the left wiggled her toes and said to the Hush Puppy on the right, “You want to go, don’t you? You’re with me on this, aren’t you?”

The Hush Puppy on the right wiggled his toes and said, “Sure, anywhere, I’ll follow you anywhere.”

“There, you heard him. He wants to go too. We both do,” said the Hush Puppy on the left.

“I can’t,” said Suzze. “I just can’t.” As she lifted her foot to slip off Mister Right, she heard Miss Left sniffling, holding back her tears.

Then, Suzze’s bare foot hit the hot asphalt.

“Goddamn it mother fu..!” she yelped. “Damn that’s hot.” Suzze hopped on her left foot, the one with the Hush Puppy, rubbing the blisters rising on the other sole.

She slipped Mister Right back on, stood up straight and caught her breath. She looked down at her shoes, Okay, I’ll keep the Hush Puppies. Hush Puppies are good.

Now she really had to run to catch up with the Old Man.

As she did, the Hush Puppies whispered to each other, “I knew she’d do it, I just knew she’d take us along.”

- - -

Three-thousand miles away, in a room overlooking the Potomac River, Jon Cromarty hovered his HumminByrd high above Santa Monica Boulevard.

One by one he saw them rise, slip on their white bathrobes and turn toward Suzze as a compass points to true north. They rose, with sagging breast and shrunken penis, with athletic fitness and the beauty of youth, with the bent shoulder of those who knew their waiting was near its end, all but naked not just to each other, but to the world.

Without speaking, without direction, without guidance except for the guidance they sensed from within, they flowed along behind, a single organism.

 

-end-

 

 

|Revelation

Suzze poked at a meatball with the tip of her index pincer.

“What’d you say, Jack? We were going someplace, ancient and romantic that had great food?”

They were in a Super Veloce, Rome’s excuse for bad fast food, a tavole calde, a hot table or mini cafeteria where glop is sold by the pound. She skewered the meatball onto the end of her finger and held it up to the Old Man, “Well, you were right about one thing, Jack. This meatball’s got to be a hundred years old.”

The Super Veloce was in the bus station across from the Vatican. They’d just arrived. Suzze was hungry. He was in a hurry. This was a compromise.

Suzze didn’t like Italian Food. Spaghetti gave her the runs and pizza bound her up.

She didn’t particularly care for the Vatican either. She’d been here before, on a trip with Joel to see the Pope, the good one, the one before now. She’d spent the day staring at old paintings while they did “bidnez” as Joel put it. Got to kick a little up. Got to wet everybody’s beak. Give them a little taste, deliver that Samsonite overnight case.

Suzze never liked Rome. Dangerous traffic, old buildings and hundred year old meatballs, she thought, wondering what was going on back at Josiah’s where she could be right now, watching the sun set over the Pacific while munching blinis and caviar. Might have to dig it out of a dumpster but anything would be better than this.

Yet here she was. Just like that. In Rome, under fluorescent lights at a plastic table, sitting in a plastic chair watching the Old Man eat leather pizza off an aluminum plate.

“Oh yeah, romantic. That’s the other thing you said, Jack, romantic.”

The Old Man gnawed off a piece of pizza.

“Help me, Jack. I’m gonna swoon.”

“Tell me about your mother,” he said.

“My mother?”

“Yeah, said she came to you in a dream but you never told me what happened. Where was home?”

“Where was home, Jack? Where was home really? I’ll tell you where home was, Jack. Between my mother’s legs. Singing and giggling and being free.”

“Between her legs?”

“Under her skirt. It was my own little world, Jack. Every time I remember my mother, she was singing and dancing. She’d wear these long, white cotton skirts, tie-dyed in these splashy colors. Pink and blue. Sometimes I’d dance with her, she’d hold my hands and we’d shake our butts, sometimes she’d swing me around. Hippie music. Mom was a leftover hippie. A flower child. She was born too late to be the real thing but she was still all peace and love and brotherhood and all that stuff. And if I needed to hide, I’d just sit between her legs and pick at the hair. Like being in a tent with the sunlight streaming through. I’d yank out a hair and she’d smack me. She never got mad. Never yelled at me. No matter how many hairs I pulled out of her legs, she’d always scoop me up and tell me how much she loved me.

“Our house, is a very very very fine house. That’s one I remember. One of the songs. One of her favorites. And Freedom’s just another word, that was another one.”

Suzze picked at her meatball, “We never had a very fine house, Jack. We lived with Dwight and Eunice, thank you Jesus, please Jesus, yes Jesus. Nothing was easy with Dwight and Eunice, Jack, so mother and me, we’d go out in the yard and she would smoke pot. I knew she was doing it because she would put me under her shirt while she smoked it. And when she finished, she would spin round and round and sing our house is a very very very fine house.

“That was my house, Jack. Under my mother’s skirt.”

“What happened?”

“They took her away. Saved her soul. Haven’t seen her since.”

Suzze took a bite of meatball and spit it out.

“You know, Jack. I learned a lot in there, back there in lockdown. Especially about Christians, Jack. A whole lot came back to me. A whole lot that I’d either forgotten or ignored, been ignoring for a long time.”

“What’s that?”

“That I don’t like them, Jack.”

Suzze pushed her plate away. “Not one bit.”

She pulled off her metal splints and massaged her nubs, healing now, but still sore.

“They’re stupid people, Jack. Stupid and dangerous. I learned I don’t like them Jack. Not one bit. Never did.”

“Made a lot of money,” said the Old Man.

“Can’t argue with that, Jack. A lot of money, sure did. I liked taking their money, Jack. I liked getting even. They wanted a ticket and we sold them a ticket. A ticket to nowhere maybe, but hey, give the people what they want. Isn’t that what it’s all about, the American way, Jack? A satisfied customer, Jack. All of our customers were satisfied. The more they believed, the more it came true for them, and the more they wanted more. That’s what we sold them, Jack. More. More of nothing, maybe, but it was still more. People need a dream, Jack. Sell them their dream. And the more it costs them, the more they like it. Stupid people, Jack. Screwing stupid Christians out of their money. That’s what we did. It was a win-win, Jack.”

Suzze reached over for a piece of the Old Man’s pizza, got it halfway to her mouth and tossed it back.

“Pussy, Jack. That’s what they wanted from me, Jack, pussy. Show them your pussy. Show them your ass. Show them your clothes, your furniture, your car. Show them your pussy and tell them that one day, if they’re lucky, and if they pray -- and if they pay -- one day they can have a pussy just like yours. A rich pussy. That’s all they all want, Jack, a rich pussy. That’s what we got paid for, Jack, living their dream.”

Suzze ran out of steam.

“So what happened next?” asked the Old Man.

“Next what, Jack?”

“After they took your mother away. What did you do then?

“I stayed with Eunice and Dwight.”

“Not good?”

“It was okay. They were hard-working, God fearing people. The firemen got there just in time.”

“Firemen?”

“Yeah, I was about fourteen by then, I guess. Got my period. Eunice went crazy, wouldn’t let me out of the house. Anyway, the house went up in no time. Bad wiring or something, they never knew exactly. They kicked in the front door and found me lying inside on the floor, almost unconscious. A few minutes more and I wouldn’t have made it. That’s what they said. They had a picture of me the next day in the paper, front page, the 6 o’clock news, the whole nine yards. Russ, that’s the fireman, Russ carrying me out in his arms, me like a rag doll in my pajamas all covered with little lambs and crosses and baby Jesus. God saved me. It was a miracle. I was famous for a day.”

“After that?”

“Foster home. Lived upstairs. Home schooled. Never came out of my room, except to go to church. Still had to go to church. No matter how much things change, it’s still the same, or something like that. Isn’t that what they say, Jack?”

Suzze pushed her chair back, stood and put her splints back on.

“Come on, Jack. Whatever you’ve got in mind, let’s get this show on the road.”

The Old Man collected their aluminum plates and plastic forks and tossed them on the floor beside the overflowing garbage can. He met Suzze at the door.

“Eunice and Dwight?”

“Yeah, what about them?”

“What happened to them? You didn’t tell me what happened to them.”

“Eunice and Dwight? Grandmamma Eunice and Grandpappa Dwight? They didn’t make it, Jack.”

- - -

It was early evening now, getting dark in Rome. Suzze and the Old Man were on the two-dollar tour, strolling past the Spanish Steps and the Trevi Fountain, Suzze becoming more agitated with every step, having done it all before.

Deciding to take charge, Suzze steered them to the Via Condotti, one of the more fashionable streets in Rome, to her favorite place, her only favorite place in Rome, Il Cioccolateria. There was a line stretching out the door of the small shop. Truffles, Jack. Chocolate. She stood gazing into the brown and gold windows of the elegant little store.

“Romantic,” the Old Man said.

“My idea, Jack. You’re not stealing the credit. So far you haven’t been hittin’ on shit, if you know what I mean.”

They got in line, joining dozens others waiting to get inside.

Thirty minutes later, halfway through the line, the Old Man pulled at her sleeve. “There. Over there. There he is.”

“He, who, Jack?”

“Someone I want you to meet.”

“Screw him, Jack. I’m not getting out of line now. I’m hungry, Jack. I want chocolate. This is all getting to be a bunch of bullshit, Jack, and I’m way past over it if you know what I mean.”

The Old Man grabbed hold of her sleeve and walked her in tow across the street full of people strolling arm in arm on their evening paseo.

“Over here, there’s someone I’d like you to meet.” The Old Man guided her across the street to the Brioni store, behind a man, a tall man,  his arms clasped behind his back, sizing up the suits in the window.

Suzze saw the reflection of the man’s face in the glass, out of focus and golden under the glow of the yellow street lights.

He had a lean, clean shaven face and was dressed in what Suzze might best describe as slummy but expensive formal wear.

A violet-grape-purple top coat, maybe silk, over a dark suit, no tie, coat unbuttoned, unstructured linen shirt, crisp, glowing white, with a deep-golden lamb’s wool scarf draped over his shoulders hanging below his waist.

He looked like Jeremy Irons -- or Keith Richards -- or maybe Johnny Depp -- in reverse, blurry in the shop window, but still graceful, elegant, self-confident.

In control.

Tall.

Bouncing on the balls of his feet.

Expensive shoes. Perforated leather.

Definitely in control.

No, not Keith Richards.

Jeremy Irons. Just like Jeremy Irons . . .

Except for the mascara . . .

The Old Man reached out to tap the him on the shoulder but as he did, almost on cue, the tall man spun on his heels, proudly upright, smiled, thrust out his both hands, both shaking and holding Suzze’s hands in his as he said with unrestrained enthusiasm in impeccable finishing school English, “Suzze! Suzze, I’ve heard so much about you! I’ve been just dying to meet you!”

Suzze was spellbound.

He, himself, was merely an oddly, darkly handsome, obviously refined man.

But his eyes, his eyes were the most captivating she had ever seen, with mascara, or a tattoo, she couldn’t tell which, that swept from the corners of his neon blue eyes and flowed onto his temples, swirling in spirals and curlicues, like the patterns that Arab women paint on their hands, except that his was dark blue and deep purple instead of henna brown.

“And – you – are?” asked Suzze.

“Yeshu’a.”

Suzze barely nodded her lack of understanding.

“Yeshu’a bar yosef?”

She shook her head again.

“I thought John told you?” he said and looked down at the Old Man.

Suzze glanced to the Old Man, then back to the man standing in front of her.

“Jesus. Jesus Christ. And it is such a pleasure to meet you at last. John has told me so much about you, and I have been waiting such a long time, and it really, really is a pleasure.”

 

-end-

 

 

 

| Breaking Bread

“It’s all about power, Miss Osmond, pure and simple.”

They, Suzze, Yeshu’a, and the Old Man, were having dinner. Yeshu’a had picked the place, his town, his prerogative, the Ristorante Piperno on Monte dé Cenci, on the edge of the Ghetto of Rome. [Duplicate] There were half a dozen tables outside, enclosed in a courtyard of faded pink and blue stucco, lavender shutters , white umbrellas, white tablecloths, discretely placed quartz heaters to fend off the late evening chill, ivy clinging to every crack and crevice, and a single cat who looked like she had lived there for a hundred years. It was, by any reasonable person’s standards, supper in style.

“Best falafel in town,” said Yeshu’a said as they approached their table. “And the artichokes in the Jewish style, outstanding. Burt Wolf, that dapper fellow who does the food shows, he recommends it . . “

Yeshu’a continued talking as another waiter seated Suzze at an impossibly small, round table set for three, “. . and who, of course, do you think turned him on to the place, hint, hint?”

Suzze was regretting this already.

Another waiter appeared and delivered a plate of olives, three small flasks of oil and a pagnotta di pane, a loaf of bread. A moment later, he returned smiled and presented a bottle of 2007 Brunello di Montalcino to Yeshu’a, a Sangiovese he knew to be among Signore bar yosef’s favorites.

Yeshu’a nodded his approval, took the bottle from the waiter’s hands, a breach of etiquette perhaps, and turned to Suzze, “Allow me,” and began to pour.

Yeshu’a cocked his eye and asked, “So tell me Miss Osmond, Suzze, may I call you Suzze?, Are you she who is to come, or shall we look for another?"

The Old Man interjected, whispering into his ear, “Slow down, take your time, give it a minute.”

“Did you know, my dear, that Sangiovese means the blood of God in Italian?”

“Jove,” said the Old Man. “Blood of Jove, not God.”

Suzze shrugged her indifference.

“A fine point perhaps, but hardly worth the distinction,” Yeshu’a smiled at Suzze.

“Jove, not God,” insisted the Old Man.

Yeshu’a finished pouring, took the loaf of bread, broke it into three pieces, placed them in the middle of the table and raised his glass to offer a toast.

Suzze raised her glass, then paused, a long and thoughtful pause.

Yeshu’a smiled a bit broader and tipped his glass a bit higher, inviting her once again to join him in his toast.

Instead, Suzze sat her glass back on the table, picked up a piece of the bread and gently but deliberately set it in front of Yeshu’a. She smiled, “Come on.”

Not understanding, Yeshu’a -- glass still in the air -- looked down at the bread and then back to Suzze.

Suzze repeated herself, “Come on. Do something. Show me what you’ve got.”

Yeshu’a sat his glass on the table, looked over to the Old Man expecting a response, an explanation for this impropriety, to get only a shrug in return, then looked back at Suzze and said, “My dear, I’m not a magician. I don’t do tricks.”

Suzze used her index pincer to nudge the piece of bread a bit closer, poke, poke, poke, as if teasing a child, until she had scooted the bread closer and closer.

“Just a little one.” She slid it one last teeny little bit. “Doesn’t have to be anything big. Make it roll over. Or sit up. Or beg, or bark. Anything. Just show me what you’ve got.”

“My dear, miracles are a state of mind, not being. They’re meta-physical. To receive a miracle, you must first believe that the miracle can occur. Faith, my dear. You must first have faith. You must believe.”

Suzze picked up her glass, killed it in one swig, snapped it back onto the table and looked Yeshu’a squarely in the eyes. “Hit me,” she said.

Astonished, Yeshu’a cautiously filled her glass.

She tilted her head full back, sucked the wine down, snapped the glass back on the table, looked to the heavens, raised her hands in mock reverence and said, “If only you believe my brothers and sisters. If only you be-lieve.”

She pointedly composed herself, shaking it off, discretely tapped the rim of her glass, click, click, click, indicating that she would like for it to be replenished, took a sip, took a breath and said, without any hint of sarcasm, “I tried it. It didn’t work.”

The water reappeared. They ordered. Cotoletta de Vitello alla Bolognese for Yeshu’a, Coratella di Agnello con Funghi for the Old Man and Spiedino di Mazzancolle for the lady, with a plate of Carciofa alla Giudia, artichokes, in the Jewish style of course, to get them started. And yes, of course, another bottle of wine, yes, of course, the Montalcino will do splendidly.

Yeshu’a decided to seize the break to change the subject. He tilted his head discretely, following the lapel of her bathrobe down the valley of her shrunken breasts, barely able to discern the edge of an areola. He rested his hand on hers, the left one, the good one, and leaned forward and said in a voice almost seductive, “Pardon me, but I do have to tell you how much I adore your minimalist sense of fashion. Shall we say, la mode provocateur?”

Suzze stared down at his hand, then back to his face, now replete with smug grin, wondering if he was real, what’s the game? She nudged her captive hand, a signal to be let go but he grasped it tighter, subtly tighter, perhaps an affectionate squeeze, perhaps a sign of passive dominance accompanied by a faint wink as he languorously allowed his hand to unleash hers and slide away.

Suzze lowered her voice, drawing from her diaphragm in an effort to regain control, “Tell me something Yeshu’a . . .”

He broke in, “Oh, please, do call me Yesh.”

“Tell me something, Yesh, can you zippy zap around like Jack, here one minute, somewhere else the next?”

Yeshu’a glanced sideways, to the Old Man,  “He does make an interesting travelling companion, doesn’t he?” Yesh answered, while avoiding the question. “Something about time and space, he tells me.”

Suzze waited for more.

Yeshu’a nodded, “But do let’s get back to the here and now. Carpe diem, that’s what I say.”

The artichokes, in the Jewish style, appeared.

Yeshu’a recited Suzze’s history to her, in more detail than she would have imagined he could have known, had she thought about it, or had she cared, which she did not, but it was his show and she was being polite.

“So, what a strange and beautiful trip you have been on, my dear,” he said in conclusion.

God, did the man like to talk. And talk and talk and talk.

The food was served, the waiters once again disappeared, dinner was begun, it was time for the resplendent host to regale his guests with the splendors of the Eternal City, where he currently made his abode.

It seemed to go on forever.

And ever.

It was mostly idle name dropping, a lot of dull history and the occasional goings on at the Vatican. None of it was very interesting and behind it all was the portent of doom and gloom, especially for the Pope, seemed like no way out, sad really, poor fellow, didn’t know what he was getting himself in to, yada, yada, yada.

Suzze was snapped out of her daze, which had been induced in equal parts by Yeshu’a insipid travelogue and the second bottle of wine, when the waiters finally came to clear the table.

“Power,” said Suzze.

“Beg your pardon?” Yeshu’a was still listening to himself talk.

“Power. When we got here you were saying something about power,” Suzze reminded him.

“Oh, yes, back to the beginning. Well, the crux of the matter, as I see it, is, in my humble opinion, always power. How do you get it? How do you define it? How do you keep it?”

“And how do you do that, Yeshu’a?” Suzze continued to play along.

“When you set out to dominate a society, Ms. Osmond, you first provide them with their play-toys. Then you control their arsenal. And then you provide them with a God. I’m in the early stage of that process, and I think we can be of benefit to each other. Are you interested?”

“What’s in it for me?” Suzze saw no reason not to be blunt.

“You my dear. You’re in it for you.”

Suzze expected the Old Man to jump in but he didn’t. His arms were crossed. He seemed to be counting the bugs circling a street light across the plaza.

“So I’m supposed to save the world, is that it?” She picked a stray olive off the Old Man’s plate.

“Goodness gracious, no. That’s such nonsense. No one can save the world. Of course not. Save it from what? Itself? No.”

“Then what?” Suzze was growing agitated.

The Old Man unfolded his arms, put his elbows on the table and leaned in, in an effort to keep the conversion confined to the table, “The world needs an agent of change. And it needs a woman to be a part of that change. Used to be, you could ignore them, women. Not anymore.”

Yeshu’a picked it up, joining the Old Man in a tag-team sales pitch, “The world is always changing, evolving. A new age is here. I realize that sounds a bit, what do they say?, corny, but it’s true. The world needs an agent of change and it needs a woman to play that role.”

Suzze, being an accomplished negotiator, went into introspective mode, hands folded under her chin, thinking of nothing but giving them the impression that she was considering the yet-to-be-elucidated offer. As she piddled in silence, she noticed a poof, an iridescent rainbow of colors emanating from between Yeshu’a’s legs and up his back only to realize a second later that he had pooted. Or farted. Can Jesus fart? Does Jesus fart? Rainbows? While she was considering the possibility, Yeshu’a continued talking in the background.

“Getting back to the issue at hand, perhaps the question you might consider is, Are you going to squander your good fortune wandering from place to place, chastising yourself with self-mutilation, picking up a few disciples here and there, showing your pubic hair, quite lovely, by the way, or are you going to crawl on top of the world and give it a good hump?”

“How you gonna pay for it?” Suzze decided to see if these two knew what they were talking about.

“Corporate sponsors,” said the Old Man.

“They’ll want diversity,” said Yeshu’a.

“You’re going to advertise?” asked Suzze, incredulous.

Jesus shook his head in supplication, “Advertising. I know. I know. Wretched stuff. People are so naïve. No wonder their religion is shopping. They’re brainwashed, powerless to think for themselves, unable to control their needs and desires. But it is the way of the world, pay the devil his due, I suppose.”

“You’re telling me you’re going to run commercials?”

“People will believe anything if they like the commercials,” said Yeshu’a.

“It’s a solid brand,” said the Old Man.

“We’re going to brand me,” said Yeshu’a. “I mean, really, how exciting is that?”

“Re-brand,” correct the Old Man.

“Just absurd. On the other hand, these are absurd times, are they not?” said Yeshu’a.

“Been there, done that.” Suzze skewered a shrimp onto her finger and popped it into her mouth, “Got to give the people what they want.”

“Exactly,” said Yeshu’a.

“And exactly what do the people want?” asked Suzze, wondering if she would hear anything she hadn’t heard before, something other than that tired old, new beginning bullshit.

“A new beginning,” said the Old Man.

“Which is what I do so well,” said Yeshu’a.

Suzze skewered another shrimp and bit it in half.

“Here’s the bottom line my dear, I need a wife. I need someone to do my dirty work and I think you are uniquely qualified.”

“Thanks for the compliment,” said Suzze, “but it sounds like any old brood mare will do. Why me?”

“Men are weak. Always have been, actually. Can’t resist the mother figure. Big tits and a juicy cooze will smite them every time.”

It wasn’t the answer Suzze was looking for.

“What he meant to say,” said the Old Man, “is that, historically, the Abrahamic religions have always diminished the Divine Feminine, a mistake in hindsight, but not one we can afford to make again in this day and age.”

Yeshu’a tipped his glass, “So, shall we do it?”

“Do what?”

“Get married and save the world.”

Suzze raised her glass, then paused in mid clink, Let me get back with you on that.”

Somewhat perturbed, Yeshu’a took a sip to save face, then patted his lips with his napkin, “Oh, how forgetful of me.” He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a box covered in beige leather, embossed with a golden cross, with blue and lavender ribbons. As he eased it toward her, he used the opportunity to turn it into an intimate gesture, to whisper, “John put the bug in my ear.”

Instead of a simple, thank you, Suzze cast her eyes back and forth from Yeshu’a to the Old Man and back again in obvious suspicion.

She pulled away the ribbons and began to lift the top of the box, then stopped halfway, “This isn’t going to blow up or anything, is it, Jack?”

She removed the lid and sat the top of the box on the table. Inside were two metal splints, very similar to those she was wearing, crafted from polished silver, honed to a fine point and lined with purple velvet for a snug fit. Around the circumference was an engraving, inset with gold, a few Latin words she didn’t understand.

Suzze eased them onto her nubs and held them to the light, rotating her hand to show them off.

Click, click, click, click, click. “Nice,” she said.

Suzze noticed that Yeshu’a had launched another rainbow as it wafted into the night air.

Satisfied that Suzze was satisfied, he stood, “Pardon me, nature calls, as they say.”

Suzze nodded her understanding.

Yeshu’a took a step, then stopped and turned back toward the table, “Oh, and one more thing my dear, that Pastor Steve fellow, a friend of yours, I understand. Reminds me of Billy Graham. And what a poseur he was. Allowed his poor wife to be buried beside a talking cow for heaven’s sake. Never spoke to him, not once, not ever. And what did he say, Been talkin’ to Jesus, been talkin’ to Jesus. Despicable. Don’t get me started.”

But Yeshu’a couldn’t stop, “These people, these tele-evanglists,” he made a point of enunciating the syllables, “are hoodwinkers, nothing more. I don’t mind hoodwinking, people have always been hoodwinked, always will be, but I’ll be damned if they’re going to continue to hoodwink by my name, under my mantle.

Another rainbow, a big one, shot across the courtyard.

“And?” Suzze asked, wondering what the conclusion of Yesh’s little diatribe might be, “you were mentioning Steve. What about him.”

“I’m sorry my dear, but he has to go.”

“And what if Steven is not so happy to just go?”

“And, and,” Yeshu’a was at a loss for words, “and I will smite them each and every one.”

“Looks like maybe somebody is beating you to it,” said Suzze, throwing the bait, wondering if he would bite.

“Vengeance is mine, and that’s all I’ve got to say on the matter,” he replied, in a huff.

Something crunched in Suzze’s mouth. She reached in, pulled out an objectionable piece of shrimp and flicked it away, “No need to have a conniption fit.”

“So glad we could get that out of the way.” Another rainbow trailed Yeshu’a as he made his way inside to the facilities.

Suzze waited until he was out of earshot and leaned over to the Old Man, “Just remember, Jack, that the greatest trick the Devil ever played was making people think Jesus was real.”

 

-end-

 

...

 

| Bunga Bunga

“You’re a pimp, Jack.”

They had said goodnight to Yeshu’a who was on his way to visit an old friend, and were walking down the hall on the second floor of the Apostolic Palace, the guest apartments of the Vatican housing bunga bunga rooms for higher-ups in need of corporeal stimulation.

Suzze was talking to the HushPuppies, comparing dinner notes. Although they weren’t sure they cared for him, both Mr. Right and Miss Left agreed that Yeshu’a was a handsome man of impeccable tastes and sophistication, and oh, oh, oh those fabulous eyes.

“And the gift, the gift was nice,” said Miss Left.

“Yes, yes it was, but a little presumptuous don’t you think?” said Mr. Right, “for a first date.”

Suzze stopped and stomped her foot to admonish Mr. Right, “Don’t say that! It wasn’t a date!”

The Old Man fished for the key, compared the number to the door and entered the apartment. It was formerly the private domain of Cardinal Iacopo Borogolio who, having a fetish for pop art and the mod style of the 70’s, had it decorated top to bottom like a cheap motel. He had developed the fetish as a young priest while ministering to every street walking puttana on the south side of Naples. It had been vacant for some time and smelled of unwashed flesh and stale marijuana.

Cardinal Borogolio had been an oddity. Boys had never been his style. He preferred women like his sainted mamma, lusty, big breasted women with hairy armpits, a bush that extended from navel to knees, and breath redolent with the fishy aroma of fresh sperm.

Months earlier, Iacopo had hit the road when it was discovered that he was short something on the high side of two-hundred million Euros without offsetting receipts, having laundered the funds through the Istituto per le Opere di Religione, the IOR, commonly known as the Vatican Bank.

Cardinal Borogolio currently resided on a hillside villa in Panama, quite opulent, following a tradition previously established by Joseph Aloisius “Rat Man” Ratzinger, otherwise known as Pope Benedict XVI, namely, When the shit hits the fan, head for the hills. Quando la merda colpisce il ventilatore, testa per le colline, or something like that.

The loss, though not inconsequential to the Vatican, was not uncommon, so the press office spun it in biblical terms, see no evil, speak no evil, forgiveness this, forgiveness that, yada yada yada, and with the raised hand of a papal pardon, Iacopo, Jock to his friends and family, was off the hook.

They walked inside.

“Wow, Jack got to hand it to you, you still haven’t lost that wonderful sense of humor.”

“Hey, it’s free. And it’s the Vatican. And it’s Rome. And rooms are hard to come by. I pulled some strings. Quit complaining.”

Suzze sat on the edge of the bed and bounced up and down to make the springs squeak in simulated coitus, “I kind of like it, Jack. Reminds me of a Motel 6 me and Joel lived in for a while.”

As the Old Man wandered around opening drawers and peering behind the draperies, Suzze read aloud from an iPhone, “Nietzsche says that hope makes us forgo the essence of life, the here and now – which is why preachers and politicians always espouse Hope. They like to sell the future so they don’t have to be accountable for today.”

“Where’d you get the iPhone?”

“Stole it from Larry. His toilet. Remember? The day you blew my finger off? Fingers. Fingers, Jack.”

“How many times do I have to tell you that wasn’t me?”

The Old Man continued to inspect the premises. Crusts of dried semen stained the pink shag carpet. There was no bathroom as such, the bathroom and bedroom merely one large space. The fixtures showed their age, cast iron spotted with rust and mold. An ancient throne, complete with padded toilet seat sat between the sink and stand-alone shower stall. There was no tub. A coin box on the wall controlled the vibrating bed. Got to give the decorator credit, the room was a museum piece, a stage set for high-level high jinks.

Suzze dropped her robe and headed for the commode, draining the last drops of instant cappuccino that was sure to keep her awake but good for her bowels, which were in distress after spending the past hour and a half eating artichokes, in the Jewish style, no less, with Jesus Christ, catching up on old times.

Suzze’s bare bottom plopped down on the spongy vinyl seat with a smack, squishing the air from it with a honk. She removed the HushPuppies and sat them each at the base of the commode, Mr. Right on the right, Miss Left on the left, lifted her feet and folded them across the seat Buddha-like, joined palms, took a deep breath and began to hum.

“Susan, what are you doing?” the Old Man asked, still prowling the room, now flipping through a stack of vintage pornographic videotapes.

“I’m Supremely Relaxing My Anus, Jack.” She rolled back and forth on the padded toilet seat, settling in, “It affords significant health benefits. It’s Zen.”

“Oh.” He continued to scrutinize the dirty movies.

“A tight anus is not a healthy anus, Jack.”

The Old Man tucked one of the videotapes into his pocket, then continued walking around the fetid premises. He tried to open and close the door to the shower, which was stuck, pulled a lamp cord, turned it on, turned it off, turned it on again.

“Nietzsche got it right, Jack. Religion is a disease. A mental illness. A sales pitch. A promotion. A way to separate suckers from their money. Trust me, Jack, I know whereof I speak.”

The Old Man ran out of corners to explore and took his place on the floor beside the commode.

Suzze stopped her meditation, having given up on her unhealthy anus, and tapped in another book she had downloaded from Amazon. She looked down to Mr. Right and Miss Left, “So, picking up where we left off, Quantum physics might seem to undermine the idea that nature is governed by laws, but that is not the case. Instead it leads us to accept a new form of determinism: Given the state of a system at some point in time, the laws of nature determine the probabilities of various futures and pasts rather than determining the future and past with certainty.”

Suzze elaborated, offering her own interpretation of the passage to Mr. Right and Miss Left, “Those who believe in the desert gods, Yahweh, Allah, Jesus, etcetera, etcetera, find that incomprehensible, but people must come to accept theories that agree with experiment, not their own preconceived notions or what a preacher, the very personification of ignorance, tells them.”

She looked down at her shoes, “Still with me?”

“With you,” said Miss Left.

“Got it,” said Mr. Right.

She looked over to the Old Man who was reading the carton to the purloined videotape, or staring at the pictures, she wasn’t sure which.

“To continue, ‘What science demands of a theory is that it is testable. If the probabilistic nature of the predictions of quantum physics meant it was impossible to confirm those predictions, then quantum theories would not qualify as valid theories. The bottom line is that quantum physics agrees with observation.” Suzze enunciated for emphasis, “It has never, not once, failed a test, and it has been tested more than any other theory in science.”

“Wow,” said Miss Left, “you know your stuff.”

“Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow. The Grand Design. They lay it all out. I paraphrase, of course,” said Suzze.

“What about Jesus,” asked Mister Right?

“Well, there is little or no credible evidence that he ever existed.”

“Now, now, now,” said the Old Man, now fondling the videotape.

“Let me get back with you on the Jesus part,” said Suzze.

“I mean, what happens? Do our soles just wear out?” Mister Right was distressed.

“Are we just canvas and rubber?” Miss Left was catching his anxiety.

“What are we?” asked Mister Right.

“Yes, what are we made of?” asked Miss Left.

Suzze sought to comfort them, “We are stardust. We are golden. We will all return to our beginnings in a billion, billion little pieces. And we will join again and again with a billion, billion other little pieces for all of eternity. What a wonderful thing.” Suzze was in awe of the purity and simplicity of it all.

“I’m not so sure I feel any better.” Mister Right was forlorn.

“Me neither,” said Miss Left. “It’s good to have something to believe in, something to hang on to, something to hope for.”

Suzze decided to ignore them, clueless souls that they be.

Suzze lowered the iPhone and gazed around the room talking to herself as much as the Old Man, “You know, Jack, I loved Joel. I really did. Once upon a time, I did. Joel created me. He made me who I am. Or at least who I was. Maybe being who I was made me who I am, but when you get right down to it, Joel was just a slimy little used car salesman and I was his hot ride. I don’t want to be anybody’s ride anymore. I don’t. I won’t. I know that now.”

She looked down at the HushPuppies, justifying her decision, “He could barely read. Couldn’t write. Eight best sellers and he couldn’t write a lick. But boy could he smile. Smile and talk. I swear to God, the man smiled in his sleep.”

“How was he in bed?” asked Mr. Right.

“That’s none of your business.”

Miss Left piped in, “Oh come on, just between us girls.”

She leaned in close to Miss Left, “Like a rabbit. Fast, relentless and unimaginative, if you have to know.”

“Your man’s just like him, Jack. And do you really believe that anybody is really going to believe that this guy is the corporeal son of the Jew god Yahweh. Really, Jack? Really?”

“It worked before.”

“Before? Before’s not now, Jack. Now’s the Internet. Now’s Grand Theft Auto 8. He’s a pussy, Jack, weak in the knees.”

Suzze put her feet down, folded her arms across her knees and rested her head in her lap, looking down at the floor, whispering to herself, “Be-lieve. If only you believe. Believe, believe, believe. It is yours, if only you believe. If only you believe, my brothers and sisters.”

A minute passed in silence.

Suzze sat upright and looked the Old Man straight in the eye, “I don’t believe anymore Jack. I never did. I wanted them to believe. Not me. I don’t want to do it anymore. I’m finished.”

The sweaty vinyl seat stuck to Suzze’s butt, then dropped with a plunk as she stood up and walked to the shower.

The Old Man returned the videotape to his pocket and looked into the commode, which was empty. He flushed it anyway, just for good measure.

Suzze stepped into the shower, yanking and jimmying the sliding Plexiglas door trying to get it to close. The shower started and stopped and started again as it spewed rusty water.

She called out above the hissing shower, “You know, Jack, they’re not far from figuring the whole thing out, this whole cosmic thing. And when they do, when ultimate truth is revealed, what then, Jack?”

“Four Horsemen? The Antichrist? 6-6-6?” said the Old Man.

“Come on Jack, that fire and brimstone shit is so ancient history. Bad things don’t have to happen. And when they do, they do, that’s all. That’s life. Buck up. Get used to it.”

“Buck up. Buck up? That’s life? Shit happens? You think they’re gonna go for that? You think that’s what they want to hear? Especially with no pot of gold on the back end? That’s your message? Stardust? Golden? Don’t count on it.”

Suzze turned off the water, grabbed a towel to dry her hair and stepped back into Miss Left and Mister Right, “You know Jack, I’ve been thinking.  No, that’s not true, you’ve been leading me to believe, Jack, you’ve been leading me to believe that this was going to be about me, Jack.  Now you tell me you want me to marry this guy. I’m going to be someone’s wife, Jack? I didn’t sign up to play second string, Jack, not that I actually remember signing up at all.”

Suzze donned her robe. “Remember Oprah, Jack? All about how you needed a Messianic figure? Me the new Oprah? And now you want me to be a freaking housewife, Jack?

“Oh yes, Yeshu’a you’re so special.

“Oh yes, Yeshu’a, I can’t live without you.

“Oh yes, Yeshu’a, you’re my one and only.

“Oh please, Yeshu’a, can I have some more, please, sir?

“Oh, and in case you’ve missed something here, Jack, I’m not exactly pure of flesh, if you know what I mean.”

“But Susan, there are sacrifices to be made. You have to think of the greater good.”

“Nope Jack. I sacrificed already, remember?”

“Think about it. You never know. You might feel better about it in the morning.”

“Why’s that, Jack?”

“Cause I don’t think I’ve ever known two people more perfectly suited for each other.”

“A dream come true,” said Mr. Right.

“A match made in heaven,” said Miss Left.

-end-

 

Suzze hits bottom

| The Doors

"If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite."

“What’s that, Jack?”

“William Blake.”

“Who’s that, Jack?”

They were back in the Garden, shimmering, glittering, idyllic.

“A poet. William Blake was a poet. ‘The Marriage of Heaven and Hell’. He wrote it. That’s where it comes from.”

“Wow Jack, you never cease to impress me, she said with forced irony,” said Suzze.

“Actually, it was from a book by Aldous Huxley. He copied it from Blake. He was doing mushrooms at the time.”

“Sounds like your kind of man, Jack.”

“I thought you liked poetry.”

“I never said that.”

The Old Man waited for Suzze to ask him to explain himself, a tactic that Aristotle had first written about, don’t be forthcoming with an answer, require the student to ask for the answer, a sign of acceptance, an enlightened way to teach.

Suzze was tired of the game, “So go ahead, Jack. Tell me. What does it mean? I know you’re just dying to tell me what it all means.”

“That we see what we want to see,” said the Old Man.

“Wow Jack, you never cease to impress me with your insight, she said, making no effort to conceal her cynicism,” said Suzze.

“Sounds like we’re in a bad mood today,” said the Old Man.

They were sitting in the grass by the edge of the pond. Everything was beautiful. Everything was perfect. Suzze was despondent.

“I got a headache, Jack. A migraine. At least I think it’s a migraine. Never had one before. Been getting them a lot, lately.”

“Like your head is going to explode?”

“Don’t say that Jack. It’s not funny.”

“I want to go home, Jack. I’m not happy here.” Suzze looked around, asking herself how she could possibly fail to be happy amid all this beauty.

“So what would make you happy? Right now?”

“My mamma, Jack. That’s what would make me happy.”

“Sorry,” said the Old Man.

“I read a poem once, Jack. It was about a guy who measured his life in tea spoons. One cup of tea, one spoon. One day, one cup of tea. The next day another cup of tea. And the next day another cup of tea so his whole life was nothing more than a cup of tea and a bunch of dirty tea spoons. I think it was supposed to be art. It was depressing, Jack.”

The Old Man leaned to one side and farted, “Prufrock.”

“Excuse you, Jack.”

“‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.’ All about the futility of life.”

“My whole life, since my mom left anyway, has been just one big squat.”

The Old Man leaned to the other side and farted again.

Suzze ignored him this time. “He drinks tea. I squat. That’s what my whole life has been, Jack, one big squat.”

“Everybody squats,” said the Old Man.

“Suzze Squats. Maybe I’ll write a book.”

“Suzze Poops,” offered the Old Man. “I like that better.”

“But I don’t Jack, poop, not much. Mostly I just squat, and nothing ever happens. Squatting and pooping aren’t the same, Jack.”

“Joel wrote books, sold millions,” said the Old Man.

“Yeah, and you know what they were about, Jack? Nothing. Crap. Squats. Squat. That’s what they were about, squat,” said Suzze. “Religious crap. Bullshit.”

“Made money,” said the Old Man.

“Can’t argue with that, Jack. Can’t argue with that. Sell them a shitload of crap and make a ton of money.”

The Old Man leaned in the other direction. Suzze gave him the evil eye which stopped him mid-poof.

“’Sell them hope,’ that’s what he said. Told them they were going to get rich. Told them God wanted them to have everything we had. Told them they were gonna have what we had, we just had to have it first. Riches were a sin but we absorbed the sin and made it all okay. All we had to do was live their dream for them till they got their own. That’s what we got paid for, Jack, living their dream, living somebody else’s dream.

“And what did they want from me? They wanted to know about my hair. My clothes. My pussy. Is that it, Jack? Is that what they really care about, Jack, my pussy? Why, Jack? Why don’t they worry about their own pussies? Why mine?

“Show your pussy. Show your ass. Show them your clothes, your furniture, your car. Show them your pussy and tell them that one day, if they’re lucky, and if they pray – and if they pay -- one day they can have a pussy just like yours.

“A rich pussy. That’s all they all want, Jack, a rich pussy.”

Suzze ran out of steam.

She looked over at the Old Man, inviting him to say something. He didn’t.

“And maybe a bass boat.” Suzze was finished.

A butterfly lit on Suzze’s shoulder.

The Old Man swept his palm up behind it, snatched it off her shoulder, ripped off its wings, broke the body in half and tossed it on the ground in front of them.

Suzze leaned over and poked at the carcass with her toe. “I think that was a real one, Jack.”

The Old Man shrugged.

“I want more, Jack.”

“More?” The Old Man decided it was time to take control of the conversation. “Well, I think . . . “

“Think? Do you think anybody cares, Jack? All this . . thinking about stuff? This . . I’m smarter than you because I think about stuff and you don’t? Like they care about what some guy who wrote a poem thinks? People don’t want to think, Jack. People want to feel. Let me tell you something, Jack. Nobody gives a shit what somebody else thinks. How do you feel? That’s what they want to know. On the news, these reporters, do they ever ask the fat-assed neighbor who just watched her house trailer burn down and all her kids charred to a crisp what she thinks about it? No, Jack. How do you feel? They stick a microphone in her fat face . .  Tell me how you feel . . that’s what they ask. How do you feel about it? People are feeling creatures, Jack. They don’t like eggheads. They don’t like people who think. Thinking scares the shit out of them. All they want is to feel and all they want to feel is good.”

“Where was home?” asked the Old Man.

“Where was home, Jack? Where was home really? I’ll tell you where home was, Jack. Between my mother’s legs. Singing and giggling and being free.”

“Between her legs?”

“Under her skirt. It was my own little world, Jack. Every time I remember my mother, she was always singing and dancing. She’d wear these long, white cotton skirts, tie-dyed in these splashy colors. Pink and blue. I’d dance with her. We’d shake our butts. She’d hold my hands and swing me around. Hippie music. Mom was a hippie. A flower child. Peace and love and brotherhood and all that stuff.”

Another butterfly flickered by. Suzze held out her nub. The butterfly settled onto the end, just where her fingernail used to be. Suzze held it in front of the Old Man. “Thumbs up? Thumbs down?”

The Old Man shrugged his indifference.

“Thumbs down.” She snatched her hand away and grabbed the butterfly in mid air, crushing it to pieces and tossing in on the ground in one single motion.

Suzze put her head on her knees staring at the ground, “Our house is a very very very fine house . . .

“I’d sit between her legs and pick at the hair. That’s where I’d hide. My secret place. Like being in a tent with the sunlight shining through. All I could see were the colors. Sometimes I’d pick out a hair and she’d smack me. She never got mad. Never yelled at me. No matter how many hairs I pulled out of her legs, she’d always yank me up and tell me how much she loved me.

“Our house is a very very very fine house. She’d sing that song over and over. We never had a very fine house, Jack. We lived with Dwight and Eunice, thank you Jesus, please Jesus, yes Jesus. Nothing was easy with Dwight and Eunice, Jack, so mother and me, we’d go out in the yard and she’d smoke pot. I knew she was doing it because she would put me under her shirt while she smoked. And when she finished, she would spin round and round and the colors would swirl around my head and she would sing our house is a very very very fine house . . . “

A moth, pale and green with bright blue and lavender eyespots on each giant wing, slowly and gently came to rest where the butterfly had sat a minute earlier.

“That was my house, Jack. Under my mother’s skirt.”

“What happened?”

“They took her away. Saved her soul.”

[There was a scene with men in white uniforms, maybe put it here]

“And you?”

“I stayed with Eunice and Dwight.”

“Not good?”

“It was okay. They were hard-working, God fearing people.”

Suzze stroked the edge of the moth’s wings, as if touching the lips of a baby.

The firemen got there just in time.”

“Firemen?”

“Anyway, the house went up in no time. I was, like, fourteen or fifteen by then. Bad wiring or something, they never knew exactly what. They kicked in the front door and found me lying inside, unconscious. A few minutes more and I wouldn’t have made it. That’s what they said. They had a picture of me the next day in the paper, front page, and the 6 o’clock news, the whole nine yards. Russ, that’s the fireman, Russ carrying me out in his arms, me like a rag doll in my nightgown with little lambs and crosses on it. God saved me. It was a miracle. I was famous for a day.”

“After that?”

“Foster home. Lived upstairs. Home schooled, not really. Never let me out of my room except to go to church. Still had to go to church. No matter how much things change, it’s still the same, or something like that. Isn’t that what they say, Jack?”

“You never told me about your grandparents. What happened to them?”

“Grandmamma Eunice and Grandpappa Dwight?”

Suzze turned to look at the Old Man face to face. “Eunice and Dwight, Jack? They didn’t make it.”

Suzze stood up, the moth still perched on her fingertip. “Let’s go Jack. Time to go. Somewhere else.”

The Old Man rose with her, “Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky, Let us go through half-deserted streets, The muttering retreats of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels. And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells.”

“Yeah, that’s it Jack. Prufrock, huh?”

“Prufrock.”

“That’s me, Jack. I’m Prufrocked.”

Suzze gazed at the moth, her eyes losing focus, lost in its delicate, intricate, infinite beauty. She brought it to her lips, blew gently beneath its wings and sent it on its way.

-end-