The Neon Palm of Madame Melancon

by Will Clarke

I duck behind the counter and leave Emily to explain this away to our boy.

  She grabs Jo-Jo by the hand like it is no big deal that she is buck-naked here in the kitchen with his father, and she walks him back out of the room.

  “I can see you, Daddy!” Jo-Jo says in his raspy toddler voice.

  Emily then walks Jo-Jo to the potty, and now he’s in the playroom watching Thomas the Tank Engine. And even though he is glued to the TV now, once your kid walks in on you like that, the moment is more than gone, it has cringed away, maybe never to come back.

  28

  Tempest in a Coffee Pot

  Despite almost two cups of coffee this morning, I have to shake myself awake at stoplights. All I can think about is turning this car around, crawling back into bed, and pulling the covers over my head. It’s the sleepy undertow of depression mixed with an Ambien hangover.

  So I pull into PJ’s with the thought that perhaps another cup of coffee will flood my brain with enough serotonin and dopamine to keep me from curling up into a ball under my desk today.

  I walk into PJ’s, and the dark, warm smell of their coffee grabs me like an old friend. The café is singing with south Louisiana accents and glowing with screen-lit faces. All these people are, for this one caffeinated moment, happy.

  “Where you at?”

  “How’s ya mama and dem?”

  Everyone is asking after each other, and everyone is ordering “one of those Banana Fosters coffees with the whipped cream.” Moreover, no one seems to be in a wall-eyed panic about the murdered ocean. No one is sobbing about everything they lost in Katrina, the recession, or the Spill.

  Here among the grinding of roasting beans and the calling of names— “Andrew! Your double latte is ready! Jack Henry! Iced coffee! Duke! Large granita!”—everyone is distracted from the flood lines marking the sheetrock of their unlucky lives. I am not unique. We all turn to coffee in a crisis. It is as ever-present and reassuring as Jesus Himself when the world is falling apart. A cup of coffee can get you through anything, from hurricane relief centers and corporate layoffs to foxholes and funerals. This simple fact may explain why New Orleans has the best coffee in the world—it’s perhaps essential to surviving the perpetual disaster that is this city.

  So I sip my granita, and like magic, I feel galvanized against the inevitable doom that is waiting to carjack me outside those glass doors.

  I decide to stay for a while. To enjoy this respite. I sit here and smile at all these beautiful people while I play on my phone. I sit here and envy my Houston friends’ Facebook feeds.

  “You know Juan Valdez and the so-called ‘coffee break’ were created by the CIA,” an oddly familiar voice announces from behind.

  I turn around. It’s the Vonnegut impersonator. He’s sipping some foamy drink, and the froth has collected on his mustache.

  I turn back around and put my eyes back on my phone, holding it just inches from my face.

  “All part of the International Coffee Agreement of 1962,” he says. “The plan was to keep coffee prices artificially high so that the U.S. could keep the Commies out of South America.”

  I stare at my phone, wishing that I had headphones with me.

  “So drink up. Cup a day keeps the Commies away.” The Vonnegut impersonator takes the seat at the table next to me. He rustles his newspaper and harrumphs.

  I keep my eyes on my phone.

  He stands up and stands right before me. He puts his splayed hand on his belly.

  “Duke, if Einstein was right, if he’s the genius that we all think he is, then you might want to rethink this encounter. Maybe Madame Blavatsky sent me. Maybe you need to open your mind, not to magic, but to science.”

  “How do you know that name?” I ask.

  “Ah! I got your attention. Madame Blavatsky is still so misunderstood. Her biggest job was stopping World War III. Lots of trial and error, bringing certain people to power and delaying the rise of others, keeping others from even being born. You think things are bad now. You should have seen things before she came along.”

  “Why are you following me?” I want to shake this old man. I want to rattle his brain and make him spit out answers that make sense. “What do you want?”

  “Duke, the calico cat your mother chased out that night, she was named Schrödinger[1]. For Erwin Schrödinger. Cute name, right?”

  “How do you know about the cat?”

  “Indeed. How would I know any of this? The Bureau sent Schrödinger to let Helena know that her mission was over. When Schrödinger appears, you get to rest. You’ve earned your endpoint, and it’s time to pass the necklace on to the chosen one.”

  “The Bureau?” I say.

  “Of Humanity. Look, you don’t believe me. I get it,” Vonnegut says. “It’s like when I showed Winston Churchill the iPhone and tried to explain to him that this small computer wasn’t some satanic black mirror.”

  “What is so commonplace now was so impossible back then. You know, son, what cracks me up about your generation is everybody’s still so in love with Einstein. You kids put him in all those computer ads and inspirational posters on Pinterest. His face is synonymous with the best that human beings can be, and yet someone as smart as you can’t even see the fruits of Einstein’s labors, even when one of those fruits is standing right in your face reading Slaughterhouse-Five.”

  “I’ve got to go,” I say.

  “What’s the name of the family of bears?” He grabs my arm. “From the children’s books that you read to your boys?”

  “Are you spying on me?” I shake him off. “What the fuck?”

  “The family of bears, Duke. What’s their name?” He stands in front of me, blocking me from leaving.

  “You were in my house. How do you know we have those books? You were in my house.”

  “Stay with me.” He holds his finger up in the air like a candle. “How do you spell the name of those bears, Duke?”

  “B-e-r-e-n-s-t-e-i-n.” I find myself spelling out the name. “Why were you in my house?”

  “Google them.” He points to my iPhone. “Do an image search. You will see what I am talking about.”

  I feel punched in the nose.

  “Hurry up. You don’t have all day, Duke. We are all disappearing second by second, heartbeat by heartbeat,” he says. “It’s time to wake up and get to work.”

  I Google “Berenstein Bears,” and it pulls up these books with massively misspelled titles. Every image says Berenstain.

  Every single one.

  “That misspelling is the glitch,” Vonnegut smiles. “Your time stream is being rewritten. Certain memories won’t line up with the present anymore. Others you will forget altogether.”

  “How did you do that?” I say. “What are you doing to me?”

  “Simply trying to prove to you that the reality to which you cling is not the reality you happen to be enjoying at this present moment.” He wipes the froth from his mustache. “Like the Berenstain Bears, the Mandela Effect[2]is all around you, my boy. The robots are coming, and you’re still not willing to listen.” Vonnegut takes a long drag off his latte. “I am now having to resort to stunts to convince you of something that should be quite obvious: Mandala is destroying the earth, and you are helping them. Your mother wants you to stop this. If you continue down this path, it will not end well for any of us. Your mother and I can only change things so much. We need you. She needs you.”

  The Vonnegut impersonator folds up his New York Times and drops it on my table. He turns and walks away.

  “Wake up, you moron! The planet is dying as we speak. Whatever made you think that money was worth this? You can’t breathe it you know! ” He walks out the door of the coffee shop.

  I glare at him through the windows. He avoids looking at me and chats up some pretty lady in a velour tracksuit. She laughs and gives him a wad of bills from her purse. I look back down at the newspaper and re-read the headline:

  I pick up The Times. It’s dated three months into
the future: September 3, 2010.

  My heart spasms. I drop the paper onto the floor and run outside to find the Vonnegut impersonator.

  He’s nowhere to be found.

  I put my head between my knees. I try to inhale but can’t. I feel like a goldfish who’s been plucked from his bowl and dropped to the ground. My eyes bulge, and I struggle to get oxygen into my lungs.

  I need air.

  I need answers.

  I run back inside to grab the paper, but it’s not there.

  “You. Ha-ha-happen.” I try to ask the barista guy sweeping the floor. “To. To. See.”

  I finally catch my breath and exhale. My diaphragm starts working again.

  “You okay?” The barista asks.

  “The paper? Where is it?” I say.

  “Paper?” He stares at me.

  “The New York Times.” I point to the floor. “It was right there.”

  “Sorry.” He shakes his head. “Somebody must have picked it up.”

  * * *

  I am coming undone.

  Vonnegut’s magic tricks are making me question everything. I feel certain that’s the point, but I know what I just saw can’t be real. I know what I know. Which is, the future can’t be predicted. That illusions are engineered, and an illusionist can trick even the most discerning mind. Anybody who’s watched David Blaine or David Copperfield in Vegas can testify to this. And yet I am starting to crack. I am starting to believe that Vonnegut, and therefore my mother, knows the future. That magic, as La La keeps saying, is afoot. But what is Vonnegut’s angle? What is his con? Why does he insist on fucking with me like this? If he had anything to do with my mother’s disappearance why would he be provoking me?

  So I head out of PJs, and I try to walk off this existential angst. I try to count my blessings. I try to make sense of what I just saw. I try not to walk into a bar. I try to get my head straight, even though I know that a lot of this anxiety is just how I am hardwired. I’ve been this way since I was a kid. I’ve always felt too much, thought too much, worried too much. So I try to remind myself why I left the shadows of this fucking town for the daylight of Houston’s Energy Corridor. By the time I reach Louisiana Avenue, the sidewalk sign flashes a neon palm, and I stop on the corner and wait.

  There is music coming down the street. I peek around the corner and see a crowd of people marching, carrying a giant photo of a young black man. I recognize his face immediately. He was one of the oil rig workers killed on the Sub-Ocean Brightside. He’s got a kind face with a bright smile. He’s wearing a pink Polo shirt like Kanye. He’s got diamonds in both ears. He was surely his mama’s pride and joy—her baby—her everything.

  This crowd coming down the street is this poor guy’s second line. This is his funeral march, not to be mistaken for the fake second lines that social clubs like to do to impress tourists. No, this is a real second line, and therefore there are real trumpets, real clarinets, real cries to God.

  The young man’s mother is walking just behind the casket. She is dressed in all purple with an elaborate veil. She is trying. God, she is trying. She puts one foot in front of the other. She holds her umbrella and wobbles on purple high heels. She tries to dance her baby home, but she can’t. She just can’t. She falls in the middle of the street and lies on the ground. Her sisters pick her up. They carry her, her feet dragging, almost struggling to go the other way. Her left shoe flies off, and a young girl goes running after it. The sweet child comes running behind this poor mother, chasing her with the lost shoe.

  This parade isn’t just another second line in the Fat City. This is life. You can either fall down in the street or keep going. There are two choices here, but only one outcome. It doesn’t matter if the sun is shining or the ocean is dying. Everything ends, everyone dies. Bottomline: we will all lose the most important people in our lives, and they will lose us. This collapsing second line, this sidewalk full of gawking tourists, this tragic one-shoed mother, makes me realize how inevitable this all is.

  This is it.

  This putting one foot in front of the other is all there is. Everything else is just a mirage to keep us from seeing the graves that lie before all of us. We are all going to die, just like my mother probably has, and there’s nothing we can do about. At some point, we are all going to wander out into the night chasing a calico cat and never come back.

  I shut my eyes and try to see if I can still remember Mama’s face I have a hard time remembering what my Mama’s eyes look like. Were they blue or green? I can’t see them. Instead of feeling sad or angry that my memory of her is fading, I just feel numb. I guess forgetting is both a beautiful and a terrible thing. I guess it’s a mercy that the initial pain of losing someone fades; that its hot grip relaxes over time, that the grief recedes as surely as the surf, just as hope returns with its warm and gentle currents that move us into tomorrow, but the boats that we float on are rafts made of rag and bone. Our good fortune rides on the pain of the past, and it seems to be inevitable that we forget that, that we slowly lose the realization that others’ sacrifices hastened our futures. After people die, the hole in our heart eventually closes. Even though it feels like it won’t, like it shouldn’t ever, it does.

  We forget the dead bodies rotting next to the Superdome, the poor folks drowning in their attics during Katrina, and eventually, we will forget about the oil rig workers of the Sub-Ocean Brightside. We will even forget that we wrecked the ocean so that we could one day drive that BMW we always dreamed about. None of this forgetting comes from forgiveness or even healing. It comes from time. Time’s rhythm washes away the moments and the pain. After all, to live constantly with the reality that our world is built on the backs of the less fortunate and the deaths of those who loved us most is an impossible awareness to hold, especially when we are filling up our Escalade with extra-premium gasoline so we can all drive down to the Quarter for yet another bachelor party which is exactly what Gary is doing when he calls me.

  “Hey, sorry for the noise. Some douche at the pump next to me is blaring his music!” Gary shouts into the phone. “My cousin is getting married next week, and we’re actually still out. Come meet us.”

  “It’s nine a.m., Gary.”

  “I’m taking a personal day. You know family is important. You know that, and I got to see this little shit off in style. You know what I mean? Show him what he’s gonna be missing once that girl of his has his balls in her purse. So you gotta cover for me if Shelley calls.”

  “Are you drunk?”

  “Shhh,” he says. “I’m sick of that English prick. Why don’t you just come meet us? We’re headed to Pat O’s.”

  “I’m not meeting you at Pat O’s.”

  “Hey, while I got you on the phone,” he says, “did you ever call Constanze back? She keeps blowing up my phone, and I am just trying to take a day off.”

  “You called me from your cousin’s bachelor party to remind me to call Constanze?”

  “No, I called you to meet us at Pat O’s, shithead? Blow off some steam. Just trying to be a good boss. I’m a good boss.”

  “I’m driving into work, Gary. I’ve got to go.”

  “Don’t you fucking hang up on me, you little shit. Who do you think you are?”

  “Promise me you’re not driving,” I say.

  “Not at this exact moment… Hey, one more freaking thing. You call Constanze back? Bitch won’t stop calling me.”

  “I’ll call her when I hang up. I gotta go, Gary.”

  “Alright, fuck you then.” He hangs up.

  I walk back to my car at PJ’s parking lot. I get in and drive into work, relieved that I won’t have to see Gary today in the office. Things are always worse when he’s around, and right now, I can’t deal with worse.

  * * *

  Schrödinger's cat is a paradoxical thought experiment created by the Austrian physicist Edwin Schrödinger to explain Verschränkung (entanglement). The thought experiment goes like this: Depending on how you are testing a
photon (as a wave or as a particle), it is both until you decide. Schrödinger uses a cat inside a box to illustrate this principle. Schrödinger claims that his cat is simultaneously alive and dead until you decide if you are testing for a wave or a particle. This is quantum superposition at work here. Can’t explain this kind of mind-bending science in a mere footnote. But it is real. It is not magic or superstition. It, like gravity, is part of the laws that govern a universe full of wonder and boredom, light and dark matter. Which I guess is magical. Perhaps we should have paid more attention in high school physics. ↵

  In 2011, Fiona Broome coined this term to describe why she and many people claim that Nelson Mandela’s heartbreaking death occurred in a South African prison in the 1980s. However, in most people’s current reality, Nelson Mandela died in 2013. Ms. Broome claims that these confabulations can be explained by the existence of parallel universes. A supposed example of the Mandela Effect is the large number of people on the internet reporting that they remember the Berenstein Bears with a different spelling. ↵

  29

  We All Got a Boss

  May 27, 2010

  This past week at Mandala has been intense. Gary has been pretty much M.I.A., and I can’t seem to do anything right. Particularly when dealing with those asshats at CNN. Couple that with Constanze Bellingham’s completely delusional ideas on how to manage the External Affairs team. She told me I should be getting Christopher Shelley on the cover of Vanity Fair. She wants Annie Lebovitz to shoot him in some heroic fashion. She wants Christopher Hitchens, who happens to be friends with Christopher Shelley, to write the piece. She wants to know why I haven’t made this happen.

  I’m a lawyer, I tell her. External Affairs lawyers do not get people on magazine covers. Also, why the hell would she think a Vanity Fair cover, of all magazine covers, would be a good idea right now? This is a terrible idea, I told her. Terrible. And she blew up at me, and told me that, at a time of crisis we all have to pitch in and do things that aren’t in our job descriptions. So to end the call, I am forced to lie to her. I told her I would call Vanity Fair. I will email Christopher Hitchens and Annie Lebovitz myself. My lies shut her up. She says a Vanity Fair cover will make Christopher Shelley so happy. That perhaps we can do the shoot on his yacht. Seriously, his yacht. Anyway, I’ve had enough of these people for the day. So I get Constanze Bellingham off my back, I log off for the day, and drive to The House of the Neon Palm to deal with problems that are actually crazier than this.