Viewmaster

by Ferdinand Stowell

Word War III

  Finally, I was to discover what had happened to Porky. I was out front of Celestine’s house trying to talk myself out of making another run for some more elicit nectar when I saw a familiar truck pull up in front of the house. His eyes were bugging out of his head looking at me. He spoke first:

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m here looking for you,” I said.

  “Oh, yeah, right. I know you want her. You came down here to beat me to the punch, didn’t you?”

  “Don’t you start getting pissy with me after all the trouble you’ve caused. Where the hell have you been? So you broke your promise. That was fast. You fucker.”

  “Don’t call me a fucker. What are you talking about?”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake – you told your daughter I gave you the address. Asshole.”

  “You’re a jerk.”

  “NO, asshole. You’re the jerk. You’re the one abandoning his wife. You’re the one breaking your marriage vows, you know, like honor and obey in sickness and in health. You’re the one blabbing. You treat people like the doormat at a whore house.”

  “I’m good to people and I don’t love Pinky any less. There’s just more of me now. I have enough love for two women. I always wanted to be a big man and don’t tell me I’m already a big man to Pinky – Cripes – I mean I always wanted to live larger. If you knew what I’ve been through these last few days you’d…..” I interrupted Porky with my disgust.

  “Oh, please, that’s too pathetic. What you’ve been through?! What about what you’ve put everybody else through?! Look, you had a night of bliss with the woman. How come you can’t just savor that and let things be. You’re lucky.”

  “Lucky?! Oh, give me a break. Now I know what it’s like to be you.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “You know, to be a loser at love. To be miserable.”

  “Look, Porky…..” he didn’t miss the anger in my voice.

  “I’m empathizing!”

  “Yeah, well, that’s why I slept with Celestine last night, to empathize with you.”

  “You slept with her!? I’m telling Maria.”

  “No shit! Of course you’re going to tell Maria, you loose-lipped asshole, you tattle-tale piece of crap. You’re a cream puff with a bastard file baked into the filling and just for your information, your daughter told me to go fuck off. And you know what else? She told me to tell you to go fuck off. Fuck off, Porky.”

  With that the war of words was over and Porky’s fist went for my face; I ducked and got hit in the shoulder. I went at him with both arms and pushed him square on the chest; he stumbled back and then lost his balance, landing on his ass. I then wrestled him to the ground and straddled him, trying to prevent his arms from moving. His face had broken out in a mean sweat – God! We’d hardly even begun to fight, the wimp – and was turned in the direction his right arm was reaching towards. He was trying to grab a stick just out of reach; he wiggled a bit and grabbed it, instantly regretting his move, because what had looked like a stick was actually a piece of fresh dog shit. I jumped off him as soon as I saw the gooky mess on his hands, eech, the smell was disgusting.

  “There you go you piece of shit,” I said. “Takes one to know one, Porky.”

  Porky just laid there on the lawn wheezing and breathing hard. He was really red in the face and sweating something terrible. He started gasping.

  “Get my nitro. In the car. Glove compartment. Quick.”

  “Oh, my god, Porky? Oh, my God, are you dying?”

  “Just get me the nitro,” he said not very nicely through his clenched teeth. Then in a more pleasant tone – probably because he realized dying people aren’t in any position to get testy with their potential saviors – but still through clenched teeth, “Please.”

  I ran for his truck and reached in to get the nitro quickly but with enough time to notice what a pigsty it was. Gross, I thought. I rushed back to him and put two of the pills under his tongue. He tried to get up but I told him to stay where he is and I went to get some cold towels and something to clean and disinfect his shit-covered hand. I called for Celestine, who got the necessary supplies and followed me out to her front lawn.

  “Porky – oh my lord – how do you feel?”

  “Ok.”

  “We need to get you to the hospital,” she added.

  “NO!! No more hospitals, no more police. No more hospitals, no more police. No more hospitals, no more police,” he kept repeating ad nauseam, delirious and agitated, which alarmed us.

  “Ok! Ok! Porky, relax. We won’t take you to the hospital. Do you feel well enough to get up and go inside? Out of the sun?”

  “Yes.”

  We helped him to his feet and walked him into the living room where we placed him on the couch. Celestine cranked up the air-conditioning and we loosened his clothing. Once he had caught his breath, he started to speak.

  “Celestine, I came down here to…”

  But Celestine cut him short and said:

  “Porky. You are a lovely man. We had a wonderful night together and you satisfied me completely. I want you to know that and know that I mean it. You are a man who satisfied me completely as a woman – your humor, your enthusiasm, your tenderness. If we had ten years together, I don’t think we could add anything else to what was left unsaid in that one night.

  “But I just want to…” Porky said but Celestine again cut him off.

  “No, listen to me. You have a wife who is suffering because of your crise de Coeur. You..” (Here Porky made more noises of protest). “No, let me finish. Your wife is a beautiful soul. I saw her for less than a minute but I know that about her. You are the only one who can alleviate her grief and you will return to her. If you respect me, you won’t say another word about this.”

  “It’s ok, for cripes sakes! What I’ve been trying to tell you is that I decided to go back to Pinky. But I just wanted you to know that you’re a lovely woman and that you expanded my heart.”

  “What a kind and generous way of putting it, Porky. Thank you so much,” she said as her eyes moistened.

  Peace descended on us and Porky was soon sound asleep in a guest bedroom. I continued helping Celestine prepare for the crowd coming over to barbecue that afternoon.

  Saying that we were all at peace is not entirely true; I had not had a drink since the night before and was fighting off the hang-over and the craving. The tasks at hand and an unhealthy number of cigarettes helped keep my focus away from booze.

  I still had my hangover when the guests, the same basic crowd as last night but with more women and children, began arriving and I guess it was obvious because a few people took the time to advise me on a means of retrieving the use of my brain, which had become as shuttered as a factory in the rust belt.

  “Drink three cups of strong coffee and then do fifty squat-thrusts,” someone said, which seemed a sure fire way of inducing heart attack.

  “Rebirth is the only thing that would perk me up right now,” I responded, “and with my luck I’d probably come back as an endangered species.”

  The following was sort of typical of all the brain-dead conversations I had with people at the barbecue:

  “Don’t eat that,” someone said, “a fly just landed on your plate.”

  “Where?” I asked

  “Right there. On your chili.”

  “I don’t see it.”

  “Next to that bean, where that mayonnaise is.”

  “Oh, yeah. It’s just sitting there.” I flicked my fingers at the fly but it didn’t move. “It’s not even afraid I’m going to kill it,” I said, as the fly rubbed its legs together.

  “Not only that, but I think it’s gloating.” He clenched his fist and brought it down hard in a fake-out just short of the fly, which didn’t budge.

  “That’s creepy,” I said. That fly should have moved.”

  “I know; it’s fearless. Kill
it before it starts breeding some master race of flies. Oh, look, it’s moved over to your meat”

  “I thought it was just stupid, but maybe you’re right. It actually knows that I’m not going to squash it while it’s humping my barbecue.”

  “Give me that, please,” Celestine, who’d be standing behind me, said, as she grabbed my plate and forced it upside-down into a trashcan. “Let’s get you a whole new one, all nice and pretty.”

  It was at that moment I saw HER again, that crazy B & B guest who I’d had crazy sex with. She waltzed – skipping, swirling, twirling – into the backyard and it hit me for the first time – Charlene (or Suzanne as she was still known to me at the time) was Celestine’s crazy daughter! It all made sense now, Celestine’s mood swings and the bizarre notes in her wastebasket. I felt sickened by what seemed like an act of incest, having slept with mother and daughter; now I knew how those agonists felt in those tragic Greek plays. And the calm day that I had been navigating with such difficulty, soon took a leap – skipping, swirling, twirling – into chaos, which had the effect on my heart and my sobriety of three cups of coffee and fifty squat-thrusts.

  Charlene was blowing kisses and flirting with the wind and the men but as soon as she heard her mother call out her name, she dashed into the house. Celestine ran into the house to find her but was back a few minutes later asking people if they’d seen her. Then she heard her name being called through the house from the front yard.

  “Celestine, get out here. Charlene’s home and she just drove away in your car – butt naked!” a late arrival to the barbecue said.

  “Oh, god help us,” I heard her say as she ran through the house, followed by most of the men at the barbecue. We were all assembled on the front lawn when who should drive by but Charlene. She made a few cowboy “yippee-yi-ee’s” as she continued down the street. “Yep, she’s naked alright,” someone said.

  The men began climbing into their cars.

  “I don’t think this is a good idea,” Celestine said in a loud voice, trying to calm the sudden activity Charlene had whipped up. But the half-baked men would not be stayed. This was a call to adventure, literally in their own backyard, a call to a higher purpose – just such things men were made for and the lines from a hundred cowboy flicks filled the air – “This is men’s work,” “We’ll take care of this for you,” “We’ll head her off at the Conejo Grade,” etc. as they fondled their leathery necks in preparation for the chase.

  Porky and I remained with Celestine in the front yard. She looked tired and as though she would have liked to inhabit any other world but our own.

  “We should probably follow them, Celestine, if only to make sure nobody does anything stupid,” I said.

  “Too late for that,” she said. “Ok, let’s see if we can find them. Let’s stayed focused on the goal here – getting my daughter back into her dress and onto her medication. Anything else is a distraction. I’ll tell everybody here to man the phones and let me know if they come back to the house.”

  “Why don’t you take my car and I’ll take Porky’s truck,” I told her.

  “Ok, I’ll call Jimbo to see where they’re at. Give me your cell number and let’s keep in close contact on the road – I have a feeling we’re in for a ride.”

  Porky and I took off and after only a few minutes we got a call from Celestine telling us Charlene had been spotted driving toward the freeway on-ramp. We turned around and ran smack into a funeral procession. I had to stop short and we were both thrust forward toward the dash.

  “Jeeez, watch it. You’re driving too fast. Do you know how many times I’ve almost died in the last week? Four times. No, five times if you count the semi that almost bitch-slapped me into the breakdown lane yesterday.”

  “They say you have to die in order to live,” I said, as I watched the funeral mourners whiz by.

  “I think that’s for kitty-cats, not human beings.”

  “Or musicians, artists and actors, you know, to be immortalized and bump up the sales and residuals.”

  “I feel sick; like my soul is sick. I thought I had everything figured out. Now I’m all churned up inside. Everything’s a mess.” Porky stared vacantly out the window and said, “I wish I could find one thing that made sense to me right now; just something to grab a hold of.”

  “Could you get the plastic container in that bag?” I asked him, pointing with my nose to the bag at his feet. Can you take some out for me? This car chase is pumping up my metabolism. I’m hungry again,” I said and then followed with, “I’m drinking again,” but Porky didn’t hear my non-sequitur.

  “Is this Danish?” he asked. And then as he examined it more closely, he asked incredulously, “Is this homemade?”

  “Yeah, Celestine’s grandmother’s recipe. They’re mid-western Scandinavians.”

  Porky inhaled deeply of the Danish then took a bite.

  “Oh, my God,” he said. He closed his eyes with the bite of pastry resting in his stalled mouth. Then he began chewing very slowly, his eyes closed all the while.

  While Porky was in a carbohydrate trance, I continued watching the interminable funeral procession and as I edged up a bit closer to the intersection the cars kept streaming by, honking their horns because I had moved two inches towards them. One guy waved both middle fingers at us – this was without a doubt the rudest funeral procession I’d ever seen. The bleat of their horns sounded like the first volley in a war to end civilization. Why are funeral processions so sanctimonious and aggressive? They whip over surface roads with all the privileged heedlessness of Politburo members trying to get to the Kremlin before the Show Trial starts. Hey, funeral parties, lower the volume. I’ve got news for you, the guy’s dead, get over yourselves and start obeying the traffic regulations.

  I finally got past all those motorized buzzards following the dead guy and managed to catch up to our posse, which was monitoring Charlene on the freeway. We kept in close phone contact as we discussed various strategies.

  Now, the whole car chase I’m about to relate may sound outlandish. It’s exactly the sort of scenario that if I saw it play out in a movie, I’d shoot it through with a million holes – “The California Highway Patrol would never let her get that far down the coast without taking her out in a bloody hail of bullets”; “ There’s no way all those stoners could have gotten it together to chase her” – and throw my hands up in exasperation. But here in Southern California this is a ritual of community, a celebration of the wild violence of life every bit as fraught with danger and meaning as the running of the bulls at Pamplona. It is an act that symbolizes the transmutation of the soul as it the passes from one sacred state, driving, to another, incarceration – or maybe even death. These are the acts that define the Socal tribe united by only one thing –worship of the combustion engine.

  The California Highway Patrol is the priestly class of the state religion and must protect the integrity of its rituals. Police officers are the roadside equivalent of the referees in the NHL. Everybody – the fans, the players, the coaches, the refs – knows that all that swishing around on the ice is just an excuse, with only passing interest, to get a fight going. Sure, Los Angelenos tell themselves they have good reasons for constantly driving back and forth on the freeway, but if they were to be more honest about it, they’d have to admit they’re all just biding time till the next crash and burn.

  Or perhaps a car chase on the freeway is merely a natural progression of the usual driver behavior.

  The reactions a naked, driving Charlene elicited from the other freeway commuters ran the usual gamut of male animal exuberance to surprise to shame and disgust. I need hardly add that she would suffer nasty sunburns all over the less frequently exposed parts of her anatomy. Once our pace picked up and people started realizing what exactly was happening, the by-drivers started interacting with us, letting loose wild shouts of joy and terror. They looked the way people do when they are in the presence of something bigge
r than themselves, something transcendent that they long to be a part of.

  Charlene wasn’t really speeding at first, rather she scooted along at a fast clip, driving pretty well for someone off their medication. The roundup party tried a classic move. One car got in front of her, then two others took either side; this way they hoped to gently nudge her into the breakdown lane, which they did but trouble was, as soon as they got her off to the shoulder, she backed up and just tore out into the freeway again, narrowly missing one of those cute retro roadsters that had put fun back on the road in the 1980’s. They also tried the pincher military formation that worked so well for Frederick the Great. But what worked brilliantly on the 18th century killing fields of Europe didn’t translate so well to the 21st century asphalt of California. Her assailants should have done a better job of boxing her in, but that’s not something you necessarily think of in the moment. Only with hindsight do your realize how badly you were performing; the adrenalin and the beer buzz only gives lie.

  It wasn’t until we were down to the Thousand Oaks area that the CHP showed up in force. Five squad cars began easing our cars over to the breakdown lanes but Charlene managed to elude them and she exited the freeway headed straight for an enormous shopping mall. Celestine had spoken with one of the cops, explaining the situation and thereby getting an escort toward the shopping mall where Charlene had just been spotted. Porky and I accompanied Celestine into the mall.

  As we entered the mall with the police, Celestine asked to speak privately with one of the security guards. She wove her arm around his, clasped his hand with hers and leaned into him in a bid for intimacy that caught Porky’s attention. One remaining fillip of longing led him to follow in their wake like a heart-sick puppy until a wave of Celestine’s hand stayed him. The guard got a message that Charlene was now in Lacy Casuals, a women’s clothing store and that mall security and the police were securing that part of the mall. We ran over there to find the store manager talking to Charlene.

  “Now hun, don’t you worry,” the manager gushed. “I waited on the ‘Runaway Bride’ and that television star who was later convicted of stabbing his wife. I know how to handle this.” She immediately took control.

  “Monica, Jason – I want the doors closed and locked. No reporters until we’re ready. The two wage slaves drew down the garage doors to seal the store off from the rest of the mall. They gave each other looks that said, ‘This is so weird.’ They had acted just in time, as a large crowd was gathering, pressing itself against the store windows.

  “What’s her name,” the manager asked as she literally rolled up her Nehru jacket sleeves.

  “Charlene,” I told her and didn’t know what else to say. Celestine introduced herself as her mother.

  “Oh, that’s cute. Charlene and Celestine; we’re one half of a girl group. Celestine, hun, you look worn out. Why don’t you go sit over there in the break room and I’ll take care of this next phase of the journey. Jason get her some refreshments, please.” She then called out to get Charlene’s attention, “Charlene.”

  “That’s it hun, scoot over here.” She reached into a drawer behind the sales counter and pulled out several large sheets of tissue as she walked to the rear of the store. “My name is Marci Novak and have I got something cute for you to slip into,” she said to Charlene who was now trailing right behind her. “Now, I’m going to set you right over here in one of our dressing rooms,” she said as she crinkled her nose, smiled. And then she added, after a head to toe survey of Charlene’s nudity, “Hun, you’ve been busy,” She winked and drew aside a pastel, fruit printed curtain and placed the tissue on a bench inside. She touched Charlene lightly on the nape of her neck and with her right hand led her by the elbow to the bench.

  “Now I just want you to relax and let little old me do all the hard work, Ok?” Charlene nodded yes.

  Marci sprang into action, dragging along her two salespeople and two assistants and they went rapidly through the merchandise with a ‘pick and pull, pick and pull’ maneuver that was flawless in its execution.

  “Well, Charlene, what do you think?” There was no response.

  “Charlene?” Not a sound.

  “Let me check in on her,” Monica the assistant offered. She drew the curtain aside just enough to peek in. “She’s asleep, “ she whispered. Marci pushed her aside and tried waking the still naked and now totally knocked out Charlene.

  “Oh, man,” I whined, “this makes everything more complicated. How are we going to get her dressed now?”

  “Oh, it’ll be a cinch. Just between you and me, my mother was a raging alcoholic. I got so I could dress and undress her faster than my dress-me-up Bimbo doll. Hah!” Marci laughed inappropriately. “Sometimes I’d dress her up in the most outlandish outfits. She used to get so confused when she woke up. I love getting passive/aggressive, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, it’s highly under-appreciated.”

  “Here,” she said, as she grabbed Charlene under the armpit, “grab her legs and let’s lay her out in the corridor.” We did that and then she began assembling an outfit – brown, frilly panties, a sensible light butterscotch pantsuit with a sepia floral blouse – on the floor next to her.

  “Shouldn’t she have a bra?” I asked.

  “No, we want her in something professional but slightly suggestive when she greets the press. Just let me take care of it, hun.” Having put me down, she began giving orders again.

  “Ok, let’s lift her again and put her on top of the clothes and then I want you to push her feet into her body so that her legs buckle at the knees. That’s it, all the way up. Good. Now put her feet through the panties and then draw up the waist band,” as she was telling me all this she was meanwhile working miracles with Charlene’s arms and new blouse. “Right. Now just slide the feet into the pants and down the pant legs until her legs are flat on the floor.” The feet were getting caught in the pant legs. “You’re doing fine, hun, just bunch up the material until you find the feet again and slide it up the legs with the panties. That’s right.” In the past, if a young woman with a name-tag called me ‘hun’ I would have gotten nasty. Are the people who say ‘Hun’ a lot not aware of its negative historical associations? But I was now hanging on the word every time it left her mouth.

  “Now what?” I asked.

  “A hat,” Marci answered.

  “I mean what are we going to do with her now?”

  “First things first, hun. A hat.”

  “I saw a cute little lime green one when I came in,” I said.

  “I know just which one, you’re right it’d be perfect.” When I came back with it and a sky blue scarf, she gave me a sly look and said. “Hun, you’ve got talent.” I was about to tell her I’m not gay but then thought I’d just let it go.

  We got Charlene dressed faster than I thought was humanly possible. She revived as suddenly as she had dropped into a stupor and I saw how right Marci had been to insist on a hat and no bra as we stood on either side of Charlene, facing the crowd on the other side of the store’s windows.

  People were smiling, laughing, pointing. And then I saw Porky and a policeman pushing their way through the crowd. Two other policemen were pushing the crowd back with the usual mild threats and strained requests. Television cameras bobbed above the people as they pushed their way forward in the wake of the law.

  The other two salespeople at the clothing store, their arms carrying bags full of the other articles of clothing they had picked out for Charlene, were by now thrilled to be there and treated us like a celebrity’s entourage as we readied for contact with the media. Marci said one word, “Now,” and Monica and Jason decoupled the catches of the security doors and rolled them up to rest invisibly in the ceiling.

  In our desperation to keep Charlene clothed, out of jail and out of the range of television cameras, we had ended up buying her over six hundred dollars of new clothing – the fact that we were paying retail was
eating me up inside but later the store reimbursed us because of the huge bump in sales they experienced afterwards.

  Marci offered me a job and gave me her phone number and the mall got gobs of free publicity and saw it’s attendance numbers soar for the rest of the month. The clothing store cleverly exploited the incident in their advertising: “Clothes so irresistible, even a nudist can’t stay naked for long.” or “Does your birthday suit need to be taken in? Well take it in to Lacy Casuals right now!” Marci wanted to feature Charlene in the store’s advertising, but Celestine would have nothing of it and when Marci heard in detail the breadth of Charlene’s psychological problems, she quietly withdrew the offer.

  We made the national papers under headings like “Go-Diva!” “Godiva Getaway”, “Naked Lunch Break”, “Nudist In Search of Colony Considers Shopping Mall”, and from the New York Times, “Mall Life: ‘Oh, my Godiva, she’s like, Naked, totally!”

  Unfortunately, the mainstream media have drastically cut back their budgets for serious investigative journalism, therefore, for three full days we were the cynosure of their starry world. We consist primarily of carbon motes and for a couple of crazy, rather glorious days, Celestine and Charlene were the stirrers of stardust.

  Chapter XX: Shopping Mauled