Kumbaya, Space Hippie

by Paul Neuhaus

  “I will go back. I will tell.”

  With that, I got up off of her, she crawled forward, came to her feet, limped a few steps and took to the air.

  Unfortunately, I didn’t follow my logic all the way to its, well, logical conclusion. If the Arae had only one purpose and was willing to die if she didn’t achieve it, why would she honor her promise to me? What did I expect her to do, go off, settle down and raise a little brood of baby Arae? I’d given her credit for having not only aspirations but a deep inner life. She did not have a deep inner life.

  North Hollywood is not my favorite part of Los Angeles. Every city in the country has its own version of NoHo. Lower middle class. Run down. A lot of fast food and gas stations. Nothing much to excite the senses.

  I stopped at one of those gas stations I mentioned, bought a Mountain Dew and asked the Pakistani gentleman behind the counter. “Babar” was the name on his badge. I tactfully didn’t bring up the elephant of the same name. “There’s a house somewhere nearby… Belonged to a famous actress— “

  “Honoria Hornblatt,” he said in thickly-accented English. “Left at the light. About half a mile and turn right on Mulrooney. 3546.” Instructions dispensed, he went back to reading his Pakistani newspaper.

  I followed Babar’s directions to the letter and had no trouble finding the place. Little wonder Babar knew about it. Honoria’s family were running a little museum out of the house. Four ninety-five to enter, but it being night and all, the museum was closed.

  I parked on the street and knocked on the front door. A small woman with a glass eye and frizzy gray hair answered. “Yes?” she said.

  “Listen,” I said. “I know this is going to sound weird, but I know—that is I knew—Gloria Mae.”

  She scoffed at me and made a comment based on my apparent age (which is probably early thirties). “How could that be possible?” she said. “Surely, Gloria Mae died around the time you were born.” She only had one good eye, but I’m certain she noticed my torn shirt and lacerated belly.

  I squirmed a bit. I didn’t know quite how Medusa had structured the Hornblatt College Fund. I changed tactics. “Is it true that the members of your family were educated by a rich benefactress?”

  “Yes. By Simone Geller and then, later, by the Simone Geller Foundation.” That all made perfect sense. There’d’ve been no reason for Medusa to let the Hornblatt’s know she was a mythological snake lady with the power to turn people to stone.

  “Ah, good. I wanted to ask you about that. I was— “

  She cut me off, one of her eyes focused on me intently while the other, the glass one, stared off aimlessly. “Why did you mention Gloria Mae?”

  “That is a very long story.” I had no intention of outing Medusa even though she was dead. It was an outlandish story and there was no way in hell this modern day Hornblatt would’ve believed me if I’d told her. “When was the last time you had direct contact with the Foundation?”

  The woman shifted her weight from one foot to the other and looked briefly back into her house. She didn’t especially want to be talking to me. “We rarely have direct contact with the Foundation. For years, it was letters; now it’s emails. The occasional phone call when there’s something to be sorted out.”

  “Has anyone ever visited here?”

  “Once in a coon’s age,” she replied. My mind was momentarily fixated on the term “coon’s age” and just what the hell it might mean, but I let it go.

  “How recently would you say?”

  The woman sighed. “Look,” she said. “Is there some point to this? I’ve got dinner and Dancing with the Stars is coming on.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Analise.”

  “Oh, that’s a nice name,” I said and meant it.

  “You’d think so, but high school was hell for me. Everyone pronounced it ‘anal lice’. They said I had butt bugs.”

  I tsked. “Kids are terrible human beings. My name is Dora and I’m asking all these questions for a good reason. Let me cut to the chase: When was the last time someone from the Foundation showed up in person, and did they leave anything?”

  Anal Lice thought for a moment and said, “There was a woman. She brought some papers to sign. I’m gonna say two thousand thirteen or two thousand fourteen. She brought a little trinket. She said it’d belonged to Honoria, so we added it to the museum.”

  I sighed gratefully. We were making some serious progress. “Ah, good. That’s exactly what I’m here for. Can I see that trinket?”

  The Hornblatt scion glared at me with her one good eye. “Museum hours are ten to seven Monday through Friday.” She was shutting the door fast and, for the second time in a week, I jammed my foot in the door. For the second time in a week, I got my foot slammed. Same foot, too.

  Analise looked down at my foot, and said, “What the hell’re you doing?” Then I did something I really didn’t want to do, but I didn’t have any more time to dick around. I punched Analise right in the windpipe. The old lady went stumbling back, clutching at her throat and gasping for air. I entered the foyer and delivered another blow to the side of her head. The quick motion caused Analise’s brain to slosh into the side of her skull and she went out like a light. I drug her over and propped her up against the wall.

  “I am so sorry, Analise, but I’m on a deadline here.” I shut the front door behind me and looked around. To my right was the living room and, fortunately, that’s where the museum resided. It wasn’t much, really. Just some pin-boards with old photos and card tables loaded with ephemera. I flipped on the light and looked around. Next to some costumes and a gingham doll was a little clay figure about an inch and a half long. It was a stylized figure with his legs pressed together and his arms raised above his head. The hands held a ring and a long length of cord was woven through the ring creating a sort of necklace. I grabbed the item, threw the cord over my head and got the fuck out of there.

  When I got to the Pontiac, I didn’t stop to examine the hierophant. That would’ve been a bad idea since I’d just committed assault and battery and probably breaking and entering. Instead, I drove to nearby Glendale before taking a breather.

  Once I was safely nestled in a McDonald’s parking lot, I held the little clay figure in front of me, so I could see it. The workmanship was rough and there were no other details beyond what I already mentioned. If it’d been in a proper museum, the plaque would’ve read, “Generic Dude - Ancient Greece”. Since I’d spent many lifetimes talking to a jug, I didn’t feel weird at all addressing the token directly. “Hey… Anybody in there?”

  At first nothing happened, and I thought for a moment I might’ve cold-cocked an old lady for nothing. It wouldn’t have been the first time, but still, that shit is embarrassing. Finally, a sleepy voice answered. It was a man’s voice with a Peloponnesian accent just like Hope’s. It was even the voice of a young boy. “Who is it? Medusa, is that you? Where the hell’ve you been?”

  “No, it’s not Medusa,” I said. “Medusa’s dead. My name is Pandora.”

  “Pandora Pandora?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What happened to Medusa? Did you kill her?”

  That offended me probably more than it should have. “No, I didn’t kill her. I mean I liked her. Or I liked her as much as you can like someone who’s like Medusa.”

  There was a pause before the disembodied voice replied. “Well, at the very least I’m satisfied you knew Medusa. What’s going on? Where am I? What do you want?”

  “First things first: You are the one they call the hierophant, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. I mean that’s what other people call me. I don’t call myself that.”

  “What do you call yourself?”

  “I used to call myself ‘Stavros’, but we came to America and you don’t meet that many Stavroses here. I’ve been going by ‘Steve’. How long was I out of commission? Was it decades? Was it a century? Do we have flying cars?”

  “It was only abou
t five years, and, no, we don’t have flying cars.”

  “Fuck. When is someone gonna get on the stick and build a proper flying car?” He had a little boy’s voice, but he didn’t have Hope’s reticence with profanity.

  “You’re preaching to the choir, Steve, but I don’t wanna get too far off-topic. Is it true you can compel people to do things they don’t wanna do?”

  He sighed. “Yes, I am cursed with that particular skill. I can do it, but I don’t like doing it. It seems kind of ‘rape-y’. In a psychic sense.”

  “I understand that, but I really need you to do me a solid. I need you to convince a villain-type person to stop his… villainy.”

  Steve’s second sigh was much deeper than the first. “Pandora…”

  “Call me, ‘Dora’.”

  “Dora we just met. I don’t know you from Adam. Your idea of a villain-type person might be very different than mine. And yet you want me to go with you and put the telepathic whammy on him. Can you can understand why I might hesitate…?”

  “I can. Totally. Have you ever been used for nefarious purposes before?”

  “Did you ever see The Lone Ranger?”

  “The new one? The one where Johnny Depp’s got a bird on his head?”

  “The very one. Somebody had to greenlight that turkey. Enter the hierophant.”

  “Yikes.”

  “I know, right?”

  “Okay, okay. I see why you’re a little gun-shy, but I’m not asking you to get involved in anything anywhere near that heinous. Long story short, Prometheus got loose from his rock. Apparently, the whole bird-eating-his-liver-thing-forever-and-ever thing really soured his disposition. He has a real grudge against Mankind and the modern world. He changed the whole planet back the way it was in the old days. He also let all the Evils out of my jug.”

  “‘Jug’? I thought it was a box.”

  “Everybody thinks that. Anyway, I don’t think Prometheus is done yet. I think that was just the opening act for something way, way worse.”

  “Where is Prometheus now?”

  “Probably at church headquarters in Hollywood?” I replied.

  “Church headquarters? What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “When he got here in the fifties, Prometheus started his own church.”

  “Which one?”

  “The Church of Reciprocity?”

  “The guys with the haircuts?”

  “Right. The guys with the haircuts.”

  Steve made a shivering sound. “Those looneys give me the heebie-jeebies.”

  “Me too.”

  “So, what? You wanna take me in to see Prometheus and hypnotize him into laying off the dastardly deeds?”

  “That is exactly what I wanna do.”

  “Mmm,” replied the hierophant. “I’ll think about it.”

  “You’ll think about it? I don’t wanna be rude here, but we’re on Prometheus time. He may do something especially nasty before you’ve even made up your mind.”

  “But you don’t know for sure. I mean, he didn’t monologue you and tell you his plans, did he?”

  “Well, no, but— “

  “So, he may do something especially nasty in twenty minutes or never. Technically, I’ve got all the time in the world.”

  “I’m not sure I agree with your math there.”

  “Okay, but I’m not wrong necessarily.”

  “Not necessarily, but— “

  “This isn’t something I like to go into lightly. Not since Johnny Depp with the bird on his head.”

  “I understand, but— “

  “So, give me a little room, Dora.”

  I scowled. “How much time do you think you’ll need?”

  “What kind of question is that? Do you give yourself a deadline when you have to make up your mind?”

  “No, but it’s a question of priority. I might hem and haw when I’m deciding on Pizza Rolls versus Hot Pockets, but I don’t have the same problem when I’m trying to decide whether I should save the world.”

  “Pish. Don’t give me that.”

  I’d been keeping my temper in check until then, but he had finally lit the fuse. “Did you just say ‘pish’ to me?” Right then, somebody leaned down next to the driver’s side window and gave me a questioning look. No doubt they were wondering why a grown woman was talking to her own necklace. I kept my eyes on Steve and flipped the bird to the looky loo. I even pressed my hand against the glass for emphasis.

  His tone when he answered had the auditory equivalent of an eye roll. “I’m sorry. Is ‘pish’ a no-no word?”

  I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. Pissing him off to the point where he wouldn’t talk to me would’ve been counterproductive. The truth was, if I could sweet-talk him into doing what I needed him to do, I was fully prepared never to speak to him again. One crockery-bound entity was all I needed in my life. “Okay, okay, okay. I know this is coming out of left field for you, and I understand why you wouldn’t be as invested in it as I am. You just woke up, and you have no idea what’s been going on. I don’t see a way of impressing on you just how serious this situation is. That in mind: Is there any way we can negotiate?”

  “Negotiate?”

  “Yeah. Kind of a you-scratch-my-back-I’ll-scratch-your-back thing.”

  “Sex?”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake. No, not sex. I thought you might want something more tangible. Something a little more ‘you specific’.”

  “What if I want sex?”

  “Do you want sex?”

  “No, not really. I’m not even sure how something like that’d work.”

  I exhaled sharply. The line of conversation was especially creepy given the age the sound of his voice implied. (I’d say no more than twelve.) The guy was really getting on my nerves. “Are you saying there’s nothing I can help you with?”

  “Umm… No, not that I can think of. You know, not every mythological character has a mythological problem. I’m not Sleeping Beauty over here, waiting for true love’s first kiss. My life is pretty run of the mill. Every so often, some joker comes along wanting me to dupe a poor schmuck into gods know what, but, other than that, I keep it on the DL.”

  “Help me out... What would you do if you were me?”

  The hierophant laughed. “Nice try. You know, there is one thing I could do if I were me (which I am) …”

  “Which is what?”

  “I could put the whammy on you to make you stop pestering me.”

  “You don’t have to have someone suggesting whammies to you.”

  “No. I’m not a genie. I’m not working the whole Aladdin thing.”

  “I have a suggestion…”

  “I’ll die if I don’t hear it immediately.”

  I ignored the sarcasm. “We’re in Glendale right now. Prometheus is probably in Hollywood. Why don’t you think about it on the way over there and you can tell me your decision in the parking lot of the Church of Reciprocity.”

  “No need. I’ve made up my mind.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I don’t wanna do it.”

  “What? Why not? Did you not hear me with the changing the world and the releasing the Evils and the potential for bigger disasters still to come?”

  “I heard you. And all that sounds bad. I don’t wanna do it because of you.”

  “Because of me?”

  “Yeah, you’re way too eager. If I’ve learned one thing in this life, it’s that eager people are usually up to something.”

  I put my forehead down on the steering wheel and tried not to cry out of sheer frustration. Then a notion hit me. “You said you didn’t have any mythological problems, but how would you characterize your centuries living inside a tiny clay figurine?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean has it been lonely? Have you ever longed for real companionship? The touch of another creature like yourself?”

  “Why? Do you have another creature like myself?”

  “I might just
.”

  “And you’re willing to pimp her out just to get what you want. What is wrong with you?”

  That was a totally fair question. He was right. I might’ve gone too far to get a resolution. Hope was my friend; she wasn’t a bargaining chip. “You got me there,” I said. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  “I was just fucking with you,” he said, mirth (and maybe a little lust) in his tone. “What’ve got? We are talking a broad here, right? I only go in for broads. Is she cute?”

  “She’s adorable,” I said with a hard swallow. I was right back to pimping in the blink of an eye. “If you help me out here, I’ll introduce you to my girlfriend. No promises, though.”

  “No promises necessary. I am what they call ‘a playa’.”

  “Uh huh.” I put the Firebird in reverse and backed out of the parking space. “Just get ready to whammy, playa.”

  I had dropped Steve so that he hung down between my breasts. As I pointed us toward Hollywood, I had just one more question. “What do I need to do? Just point you at the target and say, ‘sic ‘em!’”

  “No, you gotta say three Hail Marys and count backward from ten. In Latin.”

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, Steve, but you’re a dick.”

  “It’s been remarked,” he said.

  The trip wasn’t a long one. I wove in from Glendale until I passed Universal Studios and merged onto Cahuenga. From there it was a straight shot past the Hollywood Bowl and into the town proper. I don’t wanna burst any balloons here, but the town proper is kind of a shithole. There’s only one true film studio in Hollywood now (Paramount) and the famous Boulevard is seedy. When we got to there, I took a left at the light and headed for the famous “cathedral” slash recruitment center. I found a metered spot in front of the building and parked. I had a thought. “Hope—the girl I’m going to introduce you to—can sense other mythological figures nearby. Can you do that?”

  “No, but I can totally sense Uranus.”

  “Good one,” I said, not meaning it even a little bit.

  The lower floor of the Church of Reciprocity building was open on three sides and active twenty-four hours a day. Inside that open-air lobby were well-dressed, smiling drones with weird haircuts. They were there to talk folks in off the street and give them an Eval. An Eval involved being hooked up to a little machine with grippy bulbs like the kind that’re attached to blood pressure cuffs. On the front of the thing, there’s a little meter that’s supposed to tell you… something. I don’t have a working knowledge of your finer sham religions, so forgive me. Beyond the lobby were huge oak doors leading to the building’s inner chambers. Only the faithful were allowed inside, so that presented a momentary problem. Fortunately, the Boulevard was, like I say, a seedy place.