by Paul Neuhaus
I cut him off. “Don’t ask me.”
“Don’t ask you?”
“Yeah. Don’t ask me. It’s too soon, and it’s inappropriate and I don’t think you’re gonna like my answer. Hell, maybe you should never ask me.”
His shoulders slumped, and he looked about as shut down as anyone I’d ever seen. I hadn’t meant to be harsh, but I also didn’t want any ambiguity. “Okay,” he said.
“I know we haven’t talked. Not really, but somewhere during all this, I made a decision by osmosis. It wasn’t something I sat down and did, it just happened. I decided that I’d wasted a lot of my life unnecessarily and that we’re both, like it or not, very different people now. I also realized that Greeks—and, yes, I’m stereotyping here--are overly passionate people. We lead with our chins. We take everything personally. Particularly Ancient Greeks. We’re all batshit crazy. Maybe because, when you take a hard look at the old stories, we had some really shitty role models. Zeus, Hera, Apollo, Aphrodite... You’ve never met a bigger crop of drama queens in your life. It’s part of my heritage and I guess I wanna sit with it for a while.”
He nodded again, this time with more surety. “You wanna get some lunch?”
“I wanna get some lunch, yeah.”
We left my room together to go get lunch.
As we walked away from the farmhouse to the main building, we passed Pegasus’ paddock. Not only was the horse at peace, some of Sebastian’s men were patiently helping a freshly-groomed Calesius acclimate himself to the modern world. When he saw me passing, the stable boy smiled and waved. I happily returned the gesture.
Once inside Neo-Olympian H.Q., El and I made a beeline for the chow hall. It was an off hour, so the place was nearly empty. There were only people around a single table. It was Squire and the bronies and they’d saved me a spot. As I sat down next to Sebastian, Petey, Ty and Chad all smiled and patted me on the back. Our host himself was smiling, but he didn’t get up. He had a bunch of paperwork in front of him and he stacked it and collated it, so he could put it aside. While he was doing that, I noticed a peculiar detail. One of the sheets of paper had several photos attached with paperclips. The photos were of a restaurant between Los Angeles and Vegas called the Parthenon. It’s a themed drive-in with a miniature version of Mount Olympus. I wouldn’t have thought anything of it if Medea hadn’t had pictures of the very same place hanging in her apartment. Part of my brain said, Well, that’s damn peculiar, but I didn’t make anything of it. For one thing, I’d only caught a fleeting glimpse before the paper was put away, and, for another, I didn’t want to get into it. If at all possible, I was going to stay out of the mysterious adventure business for as long as I could.
“There she is,” Squire said with a grin. “The lady of the hour.” Then he picked up a little bell and rang it. A line of men came out of the kitchen, each of them carrying a plate in each hand. On each plate was a different kind of hamburger. “You didn’t say what you were looking for in a burger, so I had the chef make one of every kind he could think of. You don’t have to eat all of them, of course.”
“Bullshit,” I said picking up a fork and knife and putting a cloth napkin over my right knee. “Get ‘em over here. I wanna knock ‘em out before nightfall.” Everyone laughed, and I ate at least a little bit of every damn hamburger they brought.
After I ate, and the conversation dwindled, I decided to wander outside and get some fresh air. I was grateful that none of the men decided to follow. I guess they figured I needed a little space. It was midday, the sun was high in the sky, but thanks to our altitude and proximity to the ocean, there was a chill in the air. I hugged myself and looked out over the little village. Over by Pegasus’ paddock, Calesius had stopped working. He was talking animatedly with Keri and Keri was laughing. Now that was interesting. I was happy to see Keri in good spirits, but I wondered what a guy fresh off the boat from ancient Greece could say that would be so entertaining to a modern girl with a lot on her mind. I was curious but not curious enough to interrupt their conversation. I sat down on the steps leading into the main building and drank in the air. After a moment, Keri saw me, said something to Cal (touching his arm in the process) and then she came over. “Can I sit down or are you having Pandora time?”
“I just had eighteen hours of Pandora time. Plus, they gave me so much hamburger I think I’m gonna be sick. Distract me for a minute.”
The girl smiled and sat down next to me. I give her credit: She got right to it. “You’re not gonna get back together with my dad, are you?”
I raised an eyebrow. “He and I haven’t talked about it. In fact, we’ve barely talked at all. How did you arrive at your theory?”
“After you hang out with somebody for a while you get to where you can read their rhythms. I think I might be there with you, but I could be wrong. You want my two cents? About my dad, I mean?”
“I do, actually.”
“I don’t think you should get back together with him.”
“Yeah? Why do you say that?”
“Because he’s an idiot man-child,” she replied. I laughed, but she went on. “No, I’m being serious. I don’t know what it was like between you guys before Addie came into the picture, but I think the whole drunken pregnancy thing was a real signal. I know Addie supposedly tricked my dad—maybe she even used some kind of Grecian voodoo on him—but I still can’t help feeling the drunkenness and the navigation of his penis into her vagina was at least partly his fault. And things haven’t changed much. God bless him, but he’s rudderless. He doesn’t mean for things to go wrong, but his basic nature demands they do. Character equals destiny.” Then she stopped and considered. “Is that a saying or did I just make that up?”
I grinned at her. “I think the idea started with Heraclitus. A philosopher. Greek. I’ll give you partial credit, though.”
“Okay, cool.” She thought for a minute. “Where was I going with this?”
“You were giving your dad a big thumbs down.”
Keri laughed. “No, I wasn’t. I love my dad. I think he’s awesome. But I don’t think you and he should rekindle your thing. Look at him. Look at the brony thing. I know I’m supposed to be tolerant and accepting in this day and age, but I still can’t help feeling that, if a grown man dresses as a cartoon pony and goes to public places to hang out with other grown men dressed as ponies, that man is somehow broken. Is that a terrible thing to say?”
“Maybe. Maybe it’s us. Maybe we’re the dicks. But, yeah, bronies give me the willies.”
“How accurate was that movie 300?”
She was talking about the flick where three hundred Spartans protect Greece from a whole army of Persians. I made the so-so sign in the air. “They got a lot of stuff right, actually.”
The teenager grinned. “Can you imagine any of those buff, testosterone-y motherfuckers dressed up like ‘Sparkle-star’ or ‘Glitter-gal’?”
“You’re saying there’s been a sea change in masculine behavior?”
“Maybe for the better?” she replied with a mock devil’s advocate tone. We both said, “Nah” together.
After that we looked out over the ocean for a good while. Finally, Keri said, “After we get back to civilization, will you still be my friend?”
“Fucking-A,” I replied.
I have a confession to make: When I got back to civilization, I didn’t go see Jack. I promised him I would, but I had no idea what I was gonna say to him—and it had nothing to do with his head wound. If I didn’t want Elijah, why would I would Elijah two point oh? It’s not that they were the same person. Sure, they looked a lot alike but the idea that identical twins have identical personalities is false. When I’d know him, Jack had always been quieter, more introspective. Cautious. I guess that sounds good on the face of it, but I always got the feeling the younger of the Wiener twins was carrying around a heavy load. That he was at war with himself. Maybe the foul ball had knocked that out of him, but I wasn’t especially curious to find out.
<
br /> I guess what I’m saying is, I didn’t want to look at anyone as a potential romantic partner and I was pretty much done with all things Wiener.
Note my use of the capital W there. I wasn’t about to move to the Isle of Lesbos, but I also wasn’t interested in either my old flame or his brother.
If you wanna think any of that makes me a bad person, go ahead.
One thing I neglected to mention: When I got back to the trailer, there was a little bit of mail. There was also a flier stuck in the groove between the door and the trailer proper. When I got inside, I put Hope down on the desk and I looked at it. It was printed on canary yellow paper. It was an ad for the Church of Reciprocity, a well-financed cult with a litigious streak a mile wide. You’ve heard of them, I’m sure, but in Los Angeles they were ubiquitous. I got the stupid fliers at least twice a month.
This one was different, though.
This one was advertising a “Conclave of Universal Consciousness” to be held at—are you ready?—the Parthenon Restaurant between Vegas and L.A. I stuck it to the little cork board behind my desk and stared at it for a long time.
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DORA WEIR RETURNS IN KUMBAYA, SPACE HIPPIE
Copyright © 2018 by Paul Neuhaus
All rights reserved.
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Kumbaya, Space Hippie
“You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.”—Mark Twain
Prologue
Odysseus’ adventure amongst the lotus-eaters occurred early in his journey from Troy to Ithaca. It happened before the great hero met the cyclops, or evaded the sirens, or sailed between Scylla and Charybdis, or spent seven years in erotic thrall to the witch Circe. Thus, the story is not as widely told.
The lotus-eaters—or lotophagi as they are also known—lived on an island isolated from the main trade routes. This island grew the lotus plant in abundance, and the fruit of that plant was the cornerstone of the lotophagi diet. The fruit contained a powerful narcotic, and the island’s residents spent much of their time in a lethargy so deep it affected both the body and mind. Indeed, the lotophagi inhabited the world of dreams more than in the workaday realm of common folk.
When Odysseus and his men anchored at the island to gather provisions, the lotophagi greeted them and offered them sustenance. But it was not entirely kindness that drove them. Like religious zealots, they were eager to spread the influence of the lotus plant. They believed that Man, under the influence of their sacred fruit, was a more docile creature incapable of making war upon his neighbor. The bitter toll of the Trojan conflict bolstered their philosophy. Odysseus and his men accepted the hospitality of the islanders, unaware it would cost them many days.
After a week, clever Odysseus awoke from a hazy dream of revelry and good fellowship. His head ached, and he could not recall his experiences of the preceding days. Knowing the fruit had distracted him from his purpose, he crawled off into the underbrush to vomit as many times as his weakened body would allow. When he left ruined Troy, he had but one aim: to return to his wife and his son in Ithaca. He knew he would never achieve that aim while under the spell of the lotus. Worse, he knew that, in time, he would stop caring.
As quietly as he could, Odysseus returned to the village. In the common area he’d just abandoned, he found his men; the crew of his ship. Without them, he knew he could not complete his journey home. But that was not the only thing driving him. These men were also his comrades. He knew them, and he knew their families. He would not abandon them to oblivion.
The great strategist withdrew a brand from the still-burning fire. Then, one at a time, he applied the cruel heat to his sailors, marking them on their extremities. Each man cried out and cursed their leader, but each man also became instantly sober. In time, Odysseus and his full cohort, tip-toed out of the village, leaving the lotophagi to their dreams. Once they were aboard ship and raising anchor, Eurylochus, a sometimes-insolent member of the crew said to Odysseus, “Why couldn’t you leave me there? For the first time since I left Greece, I knew true happiness.”
The captain glowered at the boy. His head hurt, and his empty stomach had just begun aching. “Yes, but you were a fucking waste case. Now shut up and make me a sandwich.”
1
Dora
I was drunk. I was very, very drunk. Sound wove in and out of my head in ribbons and my balance was off. I was laughing, and I forgot why. Donatella Padovano was looking at me in a way I couldn’t define. Was she judging me? Probably. Was she having a good time? No. But I was too far gone. I wasn’t in touch with my empathy. If I dug deep enough, I’m sure I could’ve found it, but that would’ve required a swim down to where my better angels were pickling themselves. I decided it wasn’t worth the effort.
“Come on, come on, come on,” I heard myself saying. I was pulling her along, not by her hand, but by her fingertips. She didn’t want to come, and she resisted my tugging. “You have to see this. It’s amazing.”
Dona didn’t care about the automated fortune teller booth. She wasn’t American, so she wasn’t as enticed by the fact the fortune teller robot wasn’t a gypsy but rather a plastic, light-up Richard Nixon. (Hell, she wasn’t even alive when Nixon resigned.)
The beautiful Italian dug in her heels and pulled back at me. “No. I don’t want to do that. I want to sit down. I want to talk to you. I told you I wanted to go someplace quiet, so we could hear each other. This place is not quiet.”
She was right about that. It was Saturday night and Tricky Dick’s in Long Beach was bumping. Johnny Cash played over the P.A., and the thick crowd filled the space with half-intelligible murmurings. I let go of Dona’s fingers and she fell on her ass. That’s what she gets for pulling in the opposite direction. She gave me a look of pure venom and tramped back to our booth without comment. Whatever. I wanted a fortune and a fortune I would have. As I dug in my pockets for a quarter, I saw Todd, the barkeep and owner giving me the stink-eye. He hadn’t missed Dona’s fall. As if his disapproving glare wasn’t enough, he added a shame-shame-shame gesture, rubbing one pointer finger over the other. I gave him a dismissive wave and dropped a coin into the machine. The last time I’d been to the bar and indulged in Nixon’s prognostications, I’d gotten an uber-specific reading that’d curled my toes. I was hoping for the same thing again. Instead, I got a dose of judgement. The little white card read, “You’re becoming a burden to yourself and others.” I had to read it twice to grasp its gist. It made me angry. “Oh, yeah?” I said to the plastic former president. “You’re not exactly a role model yourself, Milhous.” I slammed the glass with the butt of my palm and the machine rocked back and forth.
This time, Todd gave a high-pitched whistle. He got my attention as well as the attention of every patron in a twenty-foot radius. “Yo, Dora! I’m trying to run a laid-back place here. Hands off the decor.”
I nodded to him, raising both of my hands and waving them in front of me in a gesture of, “Alright, alright. My bad, my bad.” I turned and wove through the crowd back to the booth Dona and I’d staked out when we’d arrived. Dona was sitting there with her arms folded across her ample breasts. “What?” I said, off her furrowed brow and narrowed eyes.
“I’m going to have a bruise on my bottom,” Padovano said.
I grinned at her and burped. “Do you need me to kiss it and make it better?”
She shook her head. “No, I don’t trust you right now. You’re drunk and you’re acting mean and crazy. I think you might bite my heinie.”
That struck me funny. Even as I laughed, I took a sip of beer and the l
aughter made bubbles in the mug. That struck me even funnier, so I made more bubbles with my mouth. Soon, I had a good head of foam. “You do have a savory ass,” I said, over the rim of my beverage container.
“I don’t want to talk about savory asses,” she replied, unfolding her arms and putting her hands on the table. “That’s not why I invited you to go out.”
“You invited me to go out? I thought I invited you to go out.”
“No, you’re not inviting anyone out, remember? You’re not leaving your house. You’re not using your telephone. You’re smoking the weed.”
For some reason I flipped her a salute. “That’s true. I am smoking the weed. The ‘kind bud’, that’s what they call it. Do you know why they call it that?”
She sighed. “Why?”
“I’m asking. I have no idea.”
Dona did something smart then. She slid her hands across the table and removed my hands from my mug. She not only held onto them, she dug her nails in just enough to hold my attention. “Here is a reminder,” she said. “I asked you to come out. I asked you to find a quiet place where we could talk. I told you we were going to talk, and that we were not going to party. You said you understood. When I picked you up, you’d already been drinking. When I asked you where we should go, you directed me here. This place is not only not quiet, it is the opposite of quiet. I tried to talk to you. More than once. You kept ordering more and more alcohol. You kept changing the subject. Do you know that what you’re doing is very disrespectful to me? If I say I want to go out with you and I want to talk to you, you should honor my request and not do something else. Something that is harmful to you and mean to me.”
