On the morning of the second day after Operation Diarrhea, Fox walked into the apartment carrying a cardboard box of the size and shape and variety that might well contain a computer or a printer. It did not. What it contained, according to Fox, were thousands of live cockroaches he'd just purchased at the local pet shop. It also contained a net bag that secured a large and hungry gecko lizard. The bag and lizard were secured by two strings emerging from the top of the box, which, when one was pulled, would release the lizard into the population of cockroaches. Fox described all this in great detail to his audience of myself and Clyde, who appeared to be turning a whiter shade of pale.
"This weapon," said Fox, "falls into the category of organic binary munitions. Binary munitions, as you may well know, are entities that are perfectly harmless in their self-contained states. When, however, the two entities are combined, an explosion or reaction of great force takes place. Are we clear on this?"
I was fairly clear and Clyde looked so clear she was about ready to pass out. Fox bummed a quick smoke from me and continued on blithely with his narrative.
"To be fair to the cockroaches," he said, "the duct tape across the bottom few inches of the box conceals three small holes through which an avenue of escape for them is available once the tape is removed. The string is pulled first, of course, releasing the gecko; then, when the tape is removed, our little insect friends should rather quickly begin pouring out of the three holes in prodigious numbers. Clyde, for obvious reasons, will not be involved directly in Operation Cockroach Bomb, but I'd like to ask you, Walter, to participate in the same diversionary capacity in which you performed so famously before, distracting the counter people from what's going on in the center ring."
"One for all and all for one," I said. "When do we start?"
"In about five minutes," said Fox.
As Fox, his box, and I trudged down the street toward Starbucks, I began to get my first mild feelings of foreboding about the wisdom of Operation Cockroach Bomb. Maybe it was just what anybody would feel going back to the scene of his crime after only a couple of days had passed. It wasn't even really a crime, I reflected. In a world full of jury- and witness-tampering, tampering with a few sugar and syrup containers in a gourmet coffee store was pretty low on the Richter scale. Nonetheless, I must have looked a bit nervous in the service because Fox hastened to reassure me as the two of us walked the final block.
"Just be cool about it, Walter," he said. "Just do what you did last time, talk to the counter people—"
"Baristas," I corrected.
"Baristas. And I'll take care of the rest. As soon as you see me getting up to leave, you get out of there, too. Staggering our departures ever so slightly, of course."
"Of course."
"Now there is one thing you should be aware of, Walter. Starbucks by this time has for sure connected the sabotage to the dumper with the tampering with their sugars and creamers and syrups and shit. By now, they'll probably have security guards and very possibly security cameras all over the place. All this may make our job difficult but not impossible. This may, however, be the last time we can safely do any work inside the store. Operation Elephant Dump Numbers One, Two and Three, you understand, do not require our entering the store."
"Thank God for Elephant Dumps One, Two, and Three," I said.
"If God is going to be involved, Operation Cockroach Bomb is where we could really use her help. This is high-stakes poker, Walter."
Whatever Fox thought it was, it was sounding more and more like a death wish to me. The people who ran Starbucks were not idiots. They didn't know who the culprits were and they didn't know why anyone would visit this kind of sophomoric mischief upon their establishment. But surely they had been alerted by now. Surely they would never let this sort of thing happen again.
"The stakes are too high," I said. "Maybe we should consider folding our hand."
"History demands," said Fox, as we came upon the coffee giant, "that we ride into the Valley of the Shadow of Death sporting a large erection and a box filled with cockroaches."
With those immortal words, Fox marched into Starbucks carrying the cardboard box, with me left trailing in his wake, following along like the Village idiot. I don't contend that there was any high-minded existential credo motivating Fox or Clyde. They made no demands of Starbucks. They did not care whether or not Starbucks used nonorganic creamer. Like their true motives for doing almost everything else, I think they went to war with Starbucks just for fun, just for the hell of it, just because somebody somewhere, perhaps a very long time ago, had told them they couldn't do it
Possibly because Fox had his hair pulled back in a ponytail and wore wire-rimmed John Denver glasses like some kind of technogeek, the new security guard at the door hardly gave him a second glance. Maybe the guard thought that a big computer box was too obvious for someone to be carrying who had his mind bent on creating havoc. There did not appear to be any security cameras installed yet, so Fox put in his order and put his box over in a far corner under an empty table. Moments later, after paying for his order, he returned to the table, sipping a latte and reading a magazine. I walked up to the counter, which was now manned by two men and two women, none of whom I'd seen before.
"I'll have a double espresso," I said.
"That's a doppio," said one of the women to the world in general.
"Right," I said. "I noticed this table over here is designed like a chessboard. Does anybody ever play chess here?"
The four baristas or whoever the hell they were did not beat each other to death answering my question. They continued to grind and pour and mix and serve their customers, one of whom was me. The woman who'd said "doppio" looked at me a bit quizzically, then took charity into her own hands and answered, "Not yet." This sounded like it might be my opening.
"I used to be quite a prodigy myself," I said, engaging as many of the personnel as possible or at least partially engaging them. "When I was seven years old, I played the world grand master Samuel Reschevsky in Houston, Texas."
"No kidding," said the guy on the far right with the closest view of Fox. He didn't sound very excited about my childhood accomplishments but at least it was a human response.
"No kidding," I said, moving closer to the guy and partially blocking his field of vision. "Reschevsky played fifty people simultaneously around a huge table and he beat all of them. I happened to be the youngest of the bunch by far, and as a result I got my picture on the front page of the Houston Chronicle."
"Whoopee!" said the guy as he handed me my doppio.
"It was quite a thrill for a seven-year-old, I can tell you. Of course, it's been mostly downhill from there. One interesting thing, however, was what Samuel Reschevsky said to my father after the match. He told my dad he was sorry to have to beat his son, but he had to be very careful when he played seven-year-olds. If, by chance, he were to lose, it would be headlines. His career would be over."
"Then maybe he could come here and play at Starbucks," said the woman who'd earlier taken my order. She had such a positive tone that I could only hope she was being facetious. At least, I thought, she'd been listening.
"That might be a little difficult for him," I said. "He's been dead for thirty-five years."
"Stranger things have happened," said the other female barista. "Right here at Starbucks."
I didn't like the way she was looking at me. It was making me nervous. It was as if she knew me from somewhere but couldn't be sure. I did not dare glance in Fox's direction. Technically, I told myself, I had done nothing wrong. Whatever craziness Fox or Clyde had been up to, all I had done was tell boring stories to busy people. There was, I dimly remembered, a name for that. It was called, in legal parlance, accomplice to the crime. The woman was still looking at me as if she knew what I was thinking.
The next thing I knew I saw a ponytail heading out the front door and I knew Fox had completed the necessary steps and was getting the hell out of there. I paused for a moment or t
wo and then turned and started to walk out of there myself. It was at just about that time that the security guard grabbed me by the shoulder. I froze physically, but my mind was running a hundred miles an hour. That's the way it happens, I thought. The main perpetrator gets away and they always catch the accomplice. Then they try to squeeze him for the identities of his cohorts. Would I rat on Fox and Clyde? It was an open question. Was I, at this very moment, sorry I'd ever met them? That was an open question, too. The only thing that didn't appear open to me was the way to get out of there. This was it, I thought bitterly. Fox was long gone and the security guard was now turning me around and firmly directing me back into the store. He let go of me then and at last he spoke.
"Hey, buddy," he said. "You forgot to pick up your doppio."
By the time I got back to the apartment, Fox and Clyde were already in high spirits, some of which were contained in three bottles of champagne that Clyde had procured. The celebratory mood was infectious and soon I'd forgotten all about what I'd perceived to be my close shave with Starbucks security. Fox, I noticed, had already positioned a tiny red flag on the flowchart for Operation Cockroach Bomb. Now he proceeded to provide us with a blow-by-blow account of the final stages of the operation. Clyde was squirming in her seat and looking pale again and swigging large amounts of champagne directly from the bottle, but Fox pranced along obliviously.
"When I got the box situated under a table in a corner, I pulled one of the strings, effectively removing the net bag from the box. This action, of course, released the gecko among the thousands of cockroaches and suddenly the whole box began to vibrate like—"
"A vibrator?" suggested Clyde.
"Yes. Vibrated like a vibrator. An organic binary reaction was definitely taking place. I reached down as surreptitiously as possible and pulled the duct tape off the bottom of the box, exposing the three small holes that provided escape routes for the dear little cockroaches. I wished I could have stayed longer to watch the show but, of course, I couldn't. All I can tell you is that they poured out of those holes almost with the incredible force of being shot out of a fire hose. It was a proud moment in my somewhat checkered life and it was a thing of beauty to watch. Unfortunately, I'm a very busy man and I had to get on to my next project."
"Which is?" I asked.
"Operation Elephant Dump, Numbers One, Two, and Three."
"Good!" said Clyde enthusiastically. "Finally something I can get in to."
twenty-eight
Elephants live a long time and they have long trunks and even longer memories. But even an elephant can't know the future. All he can do is try not to be haunted by his memories. Thus it was that Operation Elephant Dump Numbers One, Two, and Three took a little more time and planning than the array of other puerile pranks performed against our mutual enemy that was Starbucks. The three phases of the Elephant Dump operation would prove to be some of the most ingenious and effective of the entire campaign, but they would also require Fox's being out of the apartment a great deal, rounding up the appropriate supplies and equipment. This was not, entirely in itself, a bad thing. It gave Clyde and myself a chance to explore the possibilities of a career in petty crime together, as well as lending the pretty fair illusion at times that the two of us were keeping house together. That illusion was shattered periodically, however, by Fox's coming in during the early hours of the dawn, usually drunk or stoned or both, and nattering on about his progress regarding Operation Elephant Dump, Numbers One, Two, and Three. But there were lots of times when, for lengthy and very pleasant periods, Clyde and I were alone together. Maybe "alone together" is not the best way to phrase it, for it was better than that. True, we had yet to be sexually intimate with each other.
But with Clyde, and occasionally, the peripatetic Fox, living in a virtual slumber party at my apartment, it seemed to me that the three of us had never been closer. Because it was war, and also for sheer convenience, we had decided to quite literally go to the mattresses. Clyde and I each slept on our own mattress side by side on the floor and Fox slept on the other side of Clyde in his sleeping bag. When Fox was out wandering the night, Clyde and I managed to pursue a good bit of drinking, laughing, cuddling, and some of the nicest pillow talk in my life. The fact that we had not yet technically made love bothered me a bit, but it was more than compensated for by how close Clyde and I were growing to each other. We shared our dreams, our toothpaste, our drinks, and sometimes even our mattresses. Given time, I knew we would make it.
So that's what we were doing. Living together in a very exciting, romantic, bohemian, revolutionary, ridiculous style. Clyde was smoking, having fun, looking beautiful with that twinkling haze of mischief forever in her eyes. I was typing, editing, making notes to myself, all those things that authors routinely do, and it didn't seem to be bothering Clyde anymore. Maybe she had finally resigned herself to the fact that I was going to write the book and that there was nothing anybody, including myself, could do about it. Fox was my lone voice of encouragement. When he wasn't busy filling up the flowchart with little red flags, he would often ask me what page I was on. I would say, for instance, page 187, and he would say "Good. Good. Keep at it." I don't think he ever once looked at any of the words I was writing. Maybe he thought that words were not really all that important. I believe he thought that a man of words is a straw man, a man who spends words like dollars and doesn't really have anything to show for it, not even peace of mind. Maybe he thought that words were pathetic little creatures, cockroaches without legs, particles of sand swirling on an empty beach, until taken together they come to represent vital, shining, immortal things like moments, dreams, and madness.
And how was Starbucks coping with this peculiar onslaught of craziness? Well, Starbucks was Starbucks and nothing seemed to faze it or give it pause or slow its cheerful, inexorable, cancerlike growth. Clyde and I, at her instigation, of course, even went in and had a nice cup of cappuccino together one morning. Clyde always liked to live dangerously and I learned that I liked to be around people who liked to live dangerously. It was, in fact, a pretty good cup of cappuccino. There were no signs of cockroaches, Clyde was relieved to find. There were no video cameras in position. There were still no chess pieces on the board. No players, either, but lots of customers. Phone lines and faxes, I was sure, had already been rerouted and several security guards could be seen loitering about the place, looking fairly bored. It's hard to stop a thing like Starbucks and I don't even know why anybody in their right mind would want to try. It could have been my imagination, or possibly I'm attributing human qualities to dull, corporate entities, but the Starbucks store itself seemed almost stoic in the face of our pesky campaign of persistent harassment. I didn't mention it to Clyde. She would have thought I was crazy. She would have said I was feeling sorry for Starbucks. I might, indeed, have been crazy, but I certainly wasn't feeling sorry for Starbucks. I have too great a capacity for feeling sorry for myself to ever feel sorry for anyone else. Every author who fancies himself worthy of the gutter indulges in this self-pitying tissue of horseshit from time to time.
Because of the time constraints, and because I don't want to kill too many trees in America, I have arbitrarily decided to condense Operation Elephant Dump, Numbers One, Two, and Three into one rather abbreviated chapter. My editor, Steve Samet, later complained bitterly about this, insisting that each elephant dump was unique and essential and should therefore be properly framed in its own individual chapter. I wouldn't hear of it, of course. The novel had to be reined in somewhere, I maintained. Otherwise, it might become as wild, orgiastic, and out of control as some of the characters who lived and breathed, loved foolishly, and did many famous and impractical things between the sheets we've come to call pages. ("Personally, I'd never read this shit," I told Samet. "It's bad enough I have to write it."
"At least," he said, "you don't have to edit it."
"Don't get me wrong," I continued. "The only reason I denigrate my own work is because it shadows life too fa
ithfully. If The Great Armenian Novel sucks, it's simply because life does."
"I agree," said Samet. "Why do you think I live with three cats and wear a bow tie?")
Anyway, enough about little people and their silly jobs. An army of authors, editors, agents, publishers, copy editors, lawyers, publicists, and critics would never have the madness and courage required to wage battle with the one-eyed giant. Well, maybe certain authors would have tried such a stunt but they're all dead, most of them choosing to die in gutters, arranging for pauper's graves in which to be buried, hoping for the immortality that eludes us all in life. But Fox and Clyde were characters in every sense of the word, characters with character. They leaped off the page with a reckless life force right up the asshole of America.
Fox walked into the apartment late one night while Clyde was holding both my hands and searching my eyes for something I don't think she ever found. Fox's pockets were making little clinking sounds like many tiny Lilliputians toasting a damned fine effort by Jonathan Swift. Fox extracted a number of small bottles, each filled with a clear liquid. He proceeded to commandeer from under the kitchen sink a spray bottle that I'd forgotten I had, empty the contents, and pour each of the little bottles into the larger receptacle.
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