The Annals

by Petronius Jablonski

  Note well: my annals are not a pipe organ in a pizzeria. Now send her home. It is only through the gate of solitude that the Reader can enter my enchanted kingdom.

  X:

  We Stay at an Inn, I Introduce my Seventh Sensation, Behold Pitiful Armadillos, Dream of a Great Orange Train, and Encounter a Vicious Meat Puppet

  Furious clouds tumbled across the sky like boulders down a mountain and smokestacks of lightning turned the buildings on the horizon into tombstones. I should have been looking forward to a peaceful night of indulgence but my trepidation only swelled as we approached the inn.

  “Are you sure this is it?” said Sandy.

  We expected a single level of twenty rooms marked by a neon NO VACANCY with at least three letters burned out. Instead we discovered brick rotundas flanking a glass dome and a sign bathed in golden lights. The brass front desk, reflecting a plush green carpet, gleamed like an emerald. Sandy tracked the scent of chlorine while I went to check in. The clerk who finally deigned to appear eyed my drenched condition with revulsion, as though I had purposely collided with each of the raindrops to provoke his aquaphobia. I waited for a proper, servile greeting but received none. “Yes, you may help me,” I said, laying my wet arms on the desk and shaking my head like Zeus after a bath. With a series of distinct movements, each separated from the next by a miniscule but perceivable hesitation, the insolent clerk produced a massive tome from beneath the desk and sifted through its onion-skinned pages. Perhaps he wanted his slicked back hair to convey refinement, to earmark him as a survivor from a better time. It dissented with a multitude of subversive ideas. He may have sought an intellectual bearing from his granny glasses. They disobliged, casting the sinister air of a deranged scientist or frenzied Wall Street investor. “You’ll be in the east tower, fifth floor,” he said, removing a key from one of many golden hooks behind him. “Has Mrs. Jablonski arrived yet?”

  I laughed until I wept. “Never say never. Madness can strike a man down when he least suspects it.”

  “They say the worst part is not knowing it’s already happened.”

  “Where is the pool?”

  “We have a deep one. We have a shallow one.”

  “Is the small one a Jacuzzi?”

  “You’re not afraid of deep water, are you?”

  I dropped the key and took a step forward. He tried to grin, making his thin lips disappear. “They’re around the corner. Enjoy your swim.”

  The poorly-lit dome consisted of concave bubbles. A stained glass rendering of a Georges Méliès sun filled the center. Dark clouds swirled above and fractures of lightning illuminated palm trees, ferns, and a Tiki bar. Sandy stood beside the hot tub with one sandal in her hand, dipping her foot and watching the fountain change from blue and green to red and yellow. I walked across two shuffleboard courts and stood beside her.

  “The water’s so warm.”

  “That loathsome creature manning the desk probably accounts for the modest rate.”

  “Why is he loathsome?”

  “Why is the Big Dipper shaped like a big dipper? Some things just are. We should wear pillowcases during any acts of fleshly union if we wish to remain anonymous.”

  “You think he’ll be watching?”

  “Or preserving it for posterity.”

  “With hidden cameras?”

  “Sadly, the days of commemorating erotic acts on fresco murals are behind us.” I walked to the pool and stopped a safe distance from the edge. Like a big hand silencing a scream, the insidious water stymied the lights, making the depth unknown.

  “Let’s dump our stuff in the room and go for a swim,” Sandy said, heading for the exit. I followed her, taking furtive glances at the black hole.

  The bouquet of a clean motel room, is it not similar to the illusory freshness of spring or the dawn of a new generation? How many prior occupants had rutted their night upon this stage, ordering room service before being heard from no more? Yet it seemed as though it had been prepared only for our enjoyment.

  Unlike the majority of artwork one is condemned to view when staying at an inn, the picture on the wall was neither abstract nor vile in any fashion. It depicted the shadowy image of a train, the first few cars of which headed down a track at night. Behind them only shapes could be discerned, as though the train took on form as it emerged, joining reality on the tenebrous track between Nothing and Something, a journey for which all things have a two-way ticket.

  We purchased two lemonades at the Tiki bar and billed them to the room. Three adolescent boys sat at a table covered with thousands of puzzle pieces. An ashtray and pack of cigarettes balanced precariously on one corner. The luminous fissures above erased their shadowy profiles, revealing faces animated by enthusiasm, or, more precisely, faces wracked with the edgy tenaciousness of dreamers setting out on a fool’s errand. The miserable lighting made their success inconceivable. Ignoring us, they worked with an intensity juveniles usually reserve for idleness. The one who eventually bothered to look up seemed to resent our very presence.

  “And what will this be a picture of?” I asked.

  “We don’t know,” he said. A neon polygraph line filled the sky, illuminating his defiant green eyes as they contemplated the fractal pattern on Sandy’s bikini. “The box it came in has no pictures.”

  “How many pieces?”

  “We don’t know that either,” another said, not bothering to raise his head, as though such questions placed us beyond the confines of sensible interaction.

  “Permit me to make a conjecture. You are anticipating a picture involving supermodels.”

  “We really don’t know what it is, mister.”

  “But surely its eventual form is not a matter of indifference to you? After hours of painstaking toil, will you not be disappointed if it turns out to be a basket of kittens or a group of shirtless firemen?”

  “Don’t you think they’ll be able to figure that out long before they’re finished?” said Sandy.

  “Why would you solve a puzzle if you already know what it looks like?” said one.

  “Why bother if you do not? What if the result disturbs you? Oftentimes a man is better off with the little pieces.”

  Sandy nudged me in the ribs. Another explosion shattered the sky. The first boy looked up, his eyes smoldering. I grinned, silently mocking his futile endeavor and savoring the sweet nectar of his failure long before he failed.

  (This beatific sensation, Schadenfreude before the fact, the pleasure derived from the expectation of another’s failure or misfortune, clearly deserves a name of its own. I hereby designate it the Seventh Petronius Sensation. Note: the occurrence of failure or misfortune must be probable. Mere fantasies of them are in a separate category to be disambiguated and titled when it will not interrupt the mellifluous cadence of my narrative.)

  We walked past the dead pool to the hot tub where the dancing waters bloomed like giant orchids in some primeval jungle. Sandy entered the bubbling cauldron and moaned. The hot water induced euphoria and I urinated instantly (this bliss, too, will be titled later). Resting my elbows on the ledge, I looked up at the concave barrier protecting us from the darkness above.

  “Is it safe to be swimming? When there’s lightning aren’t you supposed to stay out of the water?”

  “We should definitely avoid the big pool,” I said.

  “Why? What makes this one safer?”

  “Oliver’s Principle of Voltaic Minutia,” I said after a long but fecund pause. “If lightning must choose between a large body of water and a tiny one, it always selects the former.”

  Sandy rose, peeked her head about the fountain as though checking for predators, and walked through the waterfall. Cocking her head to the side, biting her lower lip, and playing with her bikini to reveal flashes of what I had implored her not to shave, she stood before me.

  “Do you have a principled objection to doing this in private? It cannot be instinctive. Our ancestors sought safe places when mating.”

&nbs
p; Her serene gaze nullified my apprehensions. The protean flowers bloomed behind the rise and fall of her shoulders and her wet hair slapped against my face. The water created the illusion of super-human strength as I effortlessly bounced her on my lap with a simple motion of my forearms, accelerating the flower eclipses.

  “Would you be quiet,” I said. “Do you want those ne’er-do-wells running over here to watch? The depth of your depravity is unfathomable.”

  We finished our drinks and watched the surface water scramble to avoid the melting flower drops from above. When we returned to the room we fell asleep moments after touching the bed. I awoke rested and buoyant, assured that my dreamless sojourn in the abyss had balanced all my humors. Sandy lay beside me with her arm across my chest, blowing in my ear. A cross between dolphin talk and a muffled vacuum cleaner, her snores were more endearing than annoying. I limboed out from under her arm and headed to the window, pleased at how well the curtains kept the prying sunlight at bay. I opened them ready to face the bright new … darkness?

  I bumped the glass with my forehead, hoping to fix the sun the way one might reprimand a reluctant appliance with a few good taps. Certain that sleep would parry all threats of capture, I worried about the stupefied mess I might be in when it came time to leave: characterized by the hideous sum of grogginess, irritability, and despair.

  I was a voyeur when it came to sleep, never having experienced much but painfully mindful that others did it effortlessly and with considerable pleasure all the time. I leaned against the headboard enthralled and watched the ecstatic look on Sandy’s face. Like any voyeur, I was envious, even bitter. Unlike other voyeurs, I experienced no vicarious pleasure.

  With dashed hopes of fleeing this unique anguish, I picked up the phone. My mother was quite the night owl and I had not checked on Zeus since the afternoon. It rang at least fifty times while I found an interesting documentary on the television. The show began with a group of armadillos in the desert.

  “I was in the bathroom, Petronius.”

  “I was concerned. Tell me of Zeus.”

  Initially the armadillos huddled together, but as the sun molested them they waddled away, with the exception of a green one who curled up in a ball.

  “Zeus is fine. Where are you?”

  “How were his walks?”

  “He doesn’t need walks. He runs around in the yard.”

  “Mother, after each meal he needs a counterclockwise walk around the block followed by a vigorous belly-rub. These are not luxuries.”

  A gold armadillo took off at a good pace, kicking up sand as it raced up and over the mounds like a tank. The narrator indicated that it headed north. A blue one headed in the opposite direction, taking the utmost care with each step.

  “He needs a walk so that he may check his pee mail,” I said.

  “His what?”

  “When a dog urinates on a tree or hydrant it is like posting a personal ad: Handsome male Shi Tzu seeks female for sniffing, maybe more. An original theory of mine is that this is also a means of creative expression. Zeus is probably the canine equivalent of Li Bai. By withholding walks you are not only removing him from society, you are censoring him.”

  An armadillo with a crystal shell headed east, neither slow nor fast. A white one began heading west but soon trudged north, unaware or unconcerned by its rudderless bearings.

  “Okay, we’ll start tomorrow. Now when are you coming home?”

  “Followed by belly-rubs? A morning belly-rub is to Zeus what a Bloody Mary is to a man. The fate of the entire day is contingent upon it. It is the hinge of the door through which —”

  “Okay, okay. Did you train him to bark at Mr. Burzinski? Today in the backyard he —”

  “Train him? The native genius of the Shi Tzu senses a heart of darkness and responds accordingly. If that statist oaf so much as speaks to either of you, remind him of my high esteem for the second amendment, not that I need the government’s permission.”

  The camera zoomed in to show the lot of the white armadillo. Its underside looked like burnt scrambled eggs. Three huge vultures landed and began ripping chunks of meat from the sun-scorched belly.

  “And there is no need to train a Shi Tzu. One learns from its Buddha-nature. They were bred by Tibetan Buddhists, you know.”

  “Hieronymus trained him to bark whenever he sings Figaro. It’s the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “How much were you drinking while pregnant with him? That was when Quaaludes were widely prescribed, wasn’t it?”

  “He says that dog is too smart not to know any tricks.”

  A little head and four legs stuck out from under a green shell like five lumps of coal. Two vultures landed.

  “Intelligence is an intrinsic good, not something to be utilized for tricks. Barking in response to a yodeling idiot, for instance. The dignity, the nobility of the wise Shi Tzu is derogated by such shenanigans.”

  A vulture landed on the blue armadillo and flapped its wings for balance. The monstrous bird let out a hideous screech and the poor creature twisted up its head to behold its fate.

  “Now what’s this place you’re going to? Hieronymus wanted to know.”

  “The Point of Percipience. It is not completely unlike the Cadillac Ranch. I will call tomorrow. Remember, counterclockwise walks, then belly-rubs, and no more tricks.”

  A circle of vultures created a halo around the angry sun. When the crystal-shelled armadillo stopped and tucked its head and legs into a ball, they descended. After encountering initial resistance, their resolve appeared to fade. But this impression arose from an underestimation of their patience. They were stepping back to let the wrath of the sun work its black magic. Their cunning soon proved fruitful.

  The steadfast gold armadillo plowed through the sand, periodically pausing to rest. The cowardly vultures swung low, preparing to reap the harvest of exhaustion. It adjourned and resumed the desperate voyage no less than ten times before collapsing.

  “What manner of brutal spectacle is this?” I said, heading to the bathroom, disappointed that even PBS would resort to such tactics to entice viewers. Not that I blanched from the sight: only a dunce could be blind to the crimson tint of Nature’s teeth and claws. The much-ballyhooed natural world is an abattoir, yet minions of simpletons revere it as some kindly, doting matron.

  When I returned the show appeared to be winding down. Trails lead up to four little suits of armor, none of which had traveled very far despite their considerable efforts. As the camera revealed more of the desert, no significant distance separated the progress of the gold armadillo and the green one that had never left the starting position. The wind smoothed out the footprints and soon erased the shells. The camera flew across the desert, over the endless saffron mounds and the countless journeys they concealed.

  Taunted by the stingy god of sleep, I decided to return to the hot tub, its proximity to the Tiki bar not ancillary to my plan: this deity is not impervious to incentives. Cringing from my cold swimsuit and deliberately stepping from daisy to daisy on the plush carpet, I headed to the elevator, relishing the generic aroma of the motel’s corridor: associated with joyous festivities no less than the taste of Champagne.

  The insolent clerk had abandoned his post. I envisioned him performing some gruesome experiment in a dimly lit chamber hidden within a maze of recesses behind the desk. In the dome, the painted face of the sun looked down as though weary. Only the outlines of palm trees and ferns were visible, misted by an eerie glow emanating from the seltzer water of the hot tub. The pulsating orchids were no longer in bloom and the meager light in the pool had been vanquished, leaving a huge hole in the jungle. Despairing at the sight of the closed bar, I realized I would have to enter the kingdom of sleep as an honest man rather than storming the gate.

  Embers hovered in the air not far from me and I took cover behind a fern. As my eyes adapted to the darkness, three men with long silver hair and beards materialized around a table, frantically sorting somet
hing on its surface.

  “Enough of this stupid puzzle,” one said. “The pieces don’t fit and the picture looks like nothing. Enough of it already,” he cried, sweeping his hands across whatever mocked his efforts. His comrades flinched but made no attempt to restrain him. He stood, shook his fists at the indifferent sun, and dove into the black hole. Curiously, he made no splash.

  Not wishing to share the dome with such eccentrics, I wandered through the empty lobby and into the warm moisture of the protracted night. My car faced away from the building in the last row of parking spaces. Across the street, trees with branches wriggling like sea anemones veiled the forbidding shadows of monstrous buildings, a reminder of our proximity to a large city. When I sat on the curb, my car became a train with no foreseeable end. I leaned on the grass and propped myself up with my elbows, disclosing the chrome wrapped around one of the taillights. “There is the caboose,” I said. “There is the silver caboose on the end of the great orange train that is as long as forever.”

  My eyelids fought valiantly against the stealth force of gravity, their first dozen skirmishes ending in blurry stalemates, their eventual defeat not marked by any formal terms of surrender. A zebra-striped bar fell and a bell clanged and the ground bounced me like a child on his father’s knee and a whistle screamed and the waxy light of a shooting star preceded an orange blur. Free from the intrusive and dubious measurement of clocks, the train — its gaseous appearance a function of its speed, its luminosity inexplicable — whizzed past for hours or days or weeks or none of these. Floating distressingly close and suspended from the ground by the vibrations, I stretched every muscle to reach the sea anemones but the milky tubes pulled away each time my fingers approached.

  As the train decelerated, cars with a silky consistency appeared. “After” a void of what the officious calibrations of a clock would have decreed to be a very, very, very long time, the silver bullet caboose arrived. A bright light within illuminated two thin vertical windows on the back. The pink slits vanished and the concrete received me.