The drummer counted off, and they launched into a fairly competent version of "Pretty Vacant" by the Sex Pistols. I was surprised. Oh, it was weird alright, like when you say something backwards into a tape recorder, then play that backwards. But they had the guts of it nailed. And they were loud.
Allallo had his hands over his ears, and was shaking his head. I thought it was gonna be all over with, but he didn't do anything about it, just glowered over at the stage and poured another drink for somebody. It was getting busy, and I guess 'busy' won out over 'loud'.
Just as they hit the second "We're so pretty, oh so pretty..," a disheveled group of very wasted winged monkeys stumbled through the front door. They were bandaged, some of them limping, and all of them looked like they were going to have a good time, if it killed them, or anybody else that happened to get in their way.
My heart sank as I flashed on the vision of the horde of monkeys blanketing the horizon, diving into the cuisinart that I'd been handily rescued from. All the stuff I'd been trying to forget, had successfully buried most of the day, hit me full in the face when I saw them.
Allallo either read my mind or was a really good bartender. He put one hand out and squeezed my shoulder, and plopped down a beer in front of me with the other. It was too loud to say anything, so I tipped the beer in his direction and took a big swallow of it.
The band decided—I guess after seeing how crowded it was already—to just go ahead and start playing their set. It was amazing, if just in how unselfconsciously eclectic it was. They did "Crazy" a la Patsy Cline. They did "Hello Skinny" by the Residents. Then they played "Wouldn't It Be Nice" by the Beach Boys (complete with harmonies) followed by "Don't Worry Kyoko" (Lidelei sang the lead on that one, with a perfect Yoko impersonation that only caused me to be that much more in lust.)
We made eye contact a few times, and each time, she'd smile like maybe she forgave me. I wanted nothing more at that moment than to make up for my behavior earlier in the day. But this was not to be.
Right about the time I started speculating about whether or not Lidelei lived by herself, I spotted a long-haired, completely shit-faced, derelict-looking guy over in a dark corner. He was sitting by himself, not far from the table full of winged monkeys who were bouncing up and down, chugalugging, perched up on their chairs, hooting and beating their chests. I'd seen this behavior before many times, except for the wings, but I wasn't ready for this guy in the corner, with his beard hanging down into his pint, filthy dirty except for where tears had cleaned parts of his face—
It was Ralph.
I couldn't believe it. I was sure he was dead or at least captured. There had been no way out of there—well, few ways.
I pushed through the crowd and sat down next to him, just as the band, to wild applause and a strange sort of warbling the Ozians do when they like something, announced their first break.
"Ralph.." I said, "Ralph, hey. It's me." He looked up blearily, squinted at me.
"How the hell did you get out?" I asked him. "What about the rest of them? What about Tinman?"
Ralph pointed at me, still squinting, holding his index finger out shakily. "Lou. Neal? Je—Jeff..."
"Gene."
"Gene. YEAHH. Gene. OF LOS ANGELES!" He was yelling, and people started looking our way.
He quieted down. "Gene. Gene. Have some drinks, Gene." Ralph waved sloppily to the nearby waitress. "Hey, Eileen, bring somethin nice for me and my fren. Gene.
"Gene, Gene, the Laptop Man." He tipped his pint to me, spilled half of it, then drank.
I was nearly speechless. "Jesus, Ralph, what happened to you? I thought you told me you were clean and sober? And how exactly did you get out?"
"How did you get out? How did you ged out? Huh? How did you? I saw you and your skeleton girl. I fukin saw you. I saw you." His scowl turned into a chuckle, and he started singing, "I wanna liiive witha skeleton giiirrll...I could be happy... I..."
Then he was sobbing. He was all over the place, like he hadn't
aired out his true feelings, for anything, for years.
"I fukin walked out of there, that's how. I fukin walked out, and called me a cab. That's how.
"That fuck let me go."
Then Eileen showed up with two glasses, and a bottle of something vile-looking. I looked up at her like she was crazy. This guy was already so tanked that I was afraid to light a match near him. Eileen just shrugged her shoulders, and sauntered off. Ralph grabbed the bottle, opened it, and sloshed out two glasses worth. He shoved one at me, and lifted one into the air.
"To Gene. Gene, Gene, the Dancing Machine." And downed the contents.
Against my better judgement, I downed a hit of the amber stuff in the glass. It wasn't half bad.
"What 'fuck' let you go?" I asked.
"That fuck. That fuck bitch shit... Tha fuhh... with the Towers, that fuck. The ones... you saw the smoke, man. Up underneath em are dishes. Giant sattelite dishes. But they still—they're still workin, man...You seen the clouds?"
I guess concentrating on telling me the story sobered him up a little—because now he started making a little more sense, but not much more.
"Now he runs the goddam show. We were trying to suck in animates. Mickies, like in your laptop. Thought we could harness some new amazing power source. Maybe build a living computer. Anyway, that didn work, huh?"
I didn't have the slightest idea what he was talking about. I asked him to clarify. About a year went by where he waved off the question, searched his pockets for cigarettes, then finally succeeded in lighting one. I asked him again.
"All that dish bullshit. Didn't do fuck all to pull in animates. Ozma must have known it. Let us play with our toys." He blew out some smoke. "But she must not have been able to see across the desert. Cause we called something—awful—from out across the wasteland, from who knows where.
"It came through the satellite dishes.
"The Hollow.
"We called it."
Then he sat back and sucked in some smoke.
I sat back and sucked down some of my drink. And as I drank, starting to develop a taste for the stuff, something really obvious dawned on me.
"Ralph, when you say, 'that fuck', do you mean The Hollow Man?"
"Bingo, my friend, DING DING DING DING DING! That little lame ass, MUTHERFUKIN JERK!"
Now the monkeys were looking over, and they didn't know Ralph, and drunk off his ass or not, he took the hint. They were ready to kick the shit out of anyone that looked at them funny. He tipped his glass at them and smiled, real big. "Gentlemen..." And he downed another glass. I joined him.
I was starting to feel almost as nice as Ralph. No, on second thought, I don't think I've ever seen anyone standing up who'd had as much to drink as Ralph. But I was getting there.
"Who are you, Ralph? What are you doing here?"
He stared me down, crosseyed. "Who do you think I am, bud? Who do you think I was standing right behind you when that big jerk was peeing on the tree? Huh? Nice laptop, Laptop Man."
"Nice what? You were almost making sense for a minute there."
"I'm C.I.A., get it? Intelligence. I'm the Boogie Man. BOOOO!"
Laptop. C.I.A. Mickey. Artificial Intelligence. It was starting to make sense—not much, but some. My own altered state of consciousness wasn't helping things.
"Jesus, Ralph, you were following me? I mean, my laptop? Why didn't you just take it? Why go through all the trouble of chasing me around?"
"If nothing happened, I'm was supposed to help you get where you were going, you being a U.S. citizen after all, then split. If, on the other hand, something extraordinary occurred, like it did, I was supposed to snatch that thing in the interest of your U.S. security. I was getting around to it, but we kinda got sidetracked for awhile, didn't we?" He clanked our glasses together, and drank some more.
"You were just gonna take it?" I asked him. "What if I didn't want to give it to you? You'd beat me up? Kill me?"
He made a fac
e at me, as if injured. "Persuade you. However I could."
"What about now? Why don't you try to grab it now?"
This made Ralph laugh. "Do you know how many people are trying to grab that thing? At least three in this room right now. They wouldn't try it here, but my suggestion to you is to get through Oz-ma's Gate just as soon as she opens it up again. If she does.
"I don't want it anymore. What am I gonna do with it? Give it to that FUCK? Get it out of here. You get out of here, Gene. This is a really bad time to be here. Really bad time. I hate my fucking stupid life."
He started crying again. Talk about an emotional roller-coaster. Then he stopped all at once, like he turned a switch, and looked me in the eye. "I don't know what I'm doing anymore. I'm everybody's friend, I'm everybody's enemy, I'm a big fat professional LIAR LIAR LIAR."
The flying monkeys looked over again, and Ralph put one hand up to either ear and wiggled his fingers at them. "LIAR LIAR, PANTS ARE ON FIRE!!!" he shouted at them. Then he started singing the Wicked Witch theme music from "The Wizard of Oz."
I didn't want to turn around. I heard several chairs shuffling, and prepared for the worst. I could see their shadows come up behind us, smell alcoholic hot breath close behind my head. Ralph was grinning at them like an idiot.
I turned around, and saw one of the ugliest faces I'd ever seen, even on a monkey, about an inch from my face. That whole nose-to-nose thing.
"You're bothering us," the ugly monkey face said.
"Look," I said, "My friend is really, really drunk and he doesn't mean anything by it, really..."
"So?" He picked me up by my shirt, my really nice Gigantor shirt, ripping it, and held me out in the air in front of him. I heard a bottle breaking against something.
"ALRIGHT," came a loud voice from behind me. I was promptly dropped back into my seat, right on my tailbone. It hurt. Allallo was standing there with something that looked remarkably like a baseball bat. "Inky, why don't you take your friends out of here until you can learn to behave yourself a little better? What's wrong with you guys? Huh?"
The monkeys looked suddenly like a bunch of schoolkids who'd been caught smoking in the lavatory.
"Go on, now."
While the hushed crowd made way for them, with heads hung low they filed out of the front door.
Then Allallo looked at Ralph and me. "Haven't you had enough now, Ralph?"
"You don't have enough."
Then he spoke to me. "Why don't you fetch Mikio, and get this guy some food in him, then into a nice bed somewhere? I hate it when he gets like this. I shouldn't have allowed it—but it's hard to say 'no' to Ralph."
I found Mikio, who was a little bummmed about missing the rest of the show, but assured me that he could come get the equipment tomorrow, and would help me get Ralph out of there, not to mention run interference with respect to anyone who might want to make a grab at my backpack.
Ralph protested a little bit, but with some coaxing we got him up, and out the front door.
I was getting that sick feeling in my stomach—the one that happens when you have too much alcohol in you and not enough food— so a couple of tacos, goomer or otherwise, sounded really good. And since I hadn't checked in with Aurora for awhile, The Burrito sounded like the place to take Ralph. Then, also, perhaps I could convince her to let him crash at her place, or maybe the restaurant, or something...
Also, it was the only restaurant I knew about.
We got Ralph out into the cool night air, and it felt good after the stuffy bar. He could walk, but looked a little rubbery, so we stood on either side of him as we walked, just in case.
I looked around at the soft glow on everything in the quiet night, like green colored lights on snow, and heard the faint sounds of hooves clacking, wheels rolling over cobblestones. The placid scene was all the more unreal when I remembered the black terror approaching the city.
What would this place look like and sound like tomorrow night?
I said as much to Mikio, who reaffirmed his belief in the mysterious and powerful natures of Ozma and Glinda.
I hoped those "inscrutable" matriarchs knew what the hell they were doing.
We got up to the street the Burrito was on in no time; the air seemed to have had a good effect on Ralph, who started to walk okay on his own, and in fact started walking so fast that Mikio and I could barely keep up. We had no trouble with anyone—we barely saw anyone. Evidently the prescence of Mikio and Ralph, drunk or not, was enough to deter any would-be computer-snatchers.
We rounded the corner, and even though I'd been witnessing marvels at every turn for the past few day, I wasn't ready for what came next.
There was a lion sprawled in front of the restaurant, placidly plopped down in front of the door like a sphinx, guarding it, with a line of people behind him, some of them petting him like a house-cat. He was purring—a loud, languid sound—and he never took his eyes off the front door. A tiger was pacing up and down in front of the crowd, like it was agitated about something. Soon enough I saw what it was.
There was this—thing—standing out in the middle of the street. It looked like some kind of rubber latex monster out of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers—ten feet tall with a head covered with eyes—except that it was real, and incredibly menacing.
Mikio looked geniunely disturbed. "This is definitely not right," he said, looking over the crowd in the street, "—something wack going on here."
Ralph walked up to within five feet of the monster guy. He yelled at it, with a bemused look on his drunken face. "Skeerak! How's it hangin," ol' buddy?"
The thing let out a slow growl from somewhere within the front of its pants.
"Good," Ralph said, "nice to see you too."
Then we all skirted around it, towards the Emerald Burrito.
Slowly, checking out the scene, we moved towards the front door, hoping that our extenuating circumstances would absolve us from standing in the line. Maybe Aurora had a guess list, too. When we got to within maybe twenty feet of the door, a sound like the sky tearing in half ripped down out of the atmosphere.
All eyes shot up, and people in the crowd started screaming, some of them ran.
From out of the northeast, a jagged line of blackness, something like a photo negative of a lightning bolt, snaked out across the heavens. It scrambled like a brittle hand searching for something in the dark, then lurched down onto and straight through the roof of the Burrito. "Oh my god..." Mikio said, staring with his mouth open. The lion was up in a flash, pawing the door open. And responding to some caveman fight-or-flight instinct, we all jumped through the door with him.
War Journal Entry # 3
Ricks Burrito Explodes
As the moon rises over the Emerald Burrito, there's a line around the block. Business has been good—almost bad, it's so good—and we are racing to keep pace with the flow. Of course, we're all aware of the blackness surging toward us; it's the talk of the town by this point. But people gotta eat, and it strikes me that we're gonna need all our strength if this cloud is as black as it seems.
It's right about this time that this guy in a corporate shmoozo suit comes swaggering up to the front of the line. He's an Earthling, and he's handsome in the way I most despise: white teeth and inch-deep tan, Ken-doll sincerity and a predator's charm. He's even got the fucking corporate young-turk ponytail (an artifact that trickled down sickly from Hollywood's Miami Vice phase to the hills and plains, so that now even accountants from Nome or Botswana sport them to prove that they're "edgy" and "cool").
"Hey," he says, smooth as laxative, at the door. He profers his hand. "You must be Aurora Jones."
"Do I hafta?" I say, and he looks at me funny.
"Uh-hah," he throws out. It's like an imitation laugh. "Well, hey! It's a pleasure to meet you. I'm C. Scott Rung, from Meaty Meat. But you can call me Scottie."
"Okay," I say. I still haven't shaken his hand. I'm thinking Meaty Meat. Oh, jesus christ, and hating him all the more.
> At the front of the line, this nice winkie couple is eyeballing him sideways. They look like they've travelled quite a ways off the farm to find out what all this musical mexican hubbub is about. I smile at them, turn back to "Scottie"
In the background, "Mack the Knife" is playing (I try to include some standards).
"Damn," he sez. "I'm just so sorry about Alphonse" It is a moment calculated to yank my strings, perhaps bond us together in meaningful closeness. "He was really one hell of a guy."
"Indeed," I say.
"But, hey. Life goes on."
"You might have noticed," I point out, "that there is a line."
"Oh, well, yeah," he sez, but his eyes roll back, like a shark going into a coma. It's clear that he doesn't like to deviate from the script; there's, like, this sine-wave emergency broadcast network boooooooo emanating from the depths of his head.
"The thing is," he continues, "that I've got some very important people who would like to have dinner here tonight. People who I think you will—under the circumstances—really want to meet."
Hmmmm, I'm thinking, looking at this smarmy guy, and sorta transposing Rokoko over him: like a color transparency in an antique health class slide show, describing the geography of organs over bones. Meanwhile, a young munchkin couple leaves, and I usher the Winkies inside.
"So you want to make a reservation?" I say.
The line moves up. More people stare at Scottie.
"Exactly!" he enthuses. "That would be perfect. Say, maybe an hour from now?" He looks at his watch, though I can't imagine why; every watch I've ever seen in Oz tells time like Milli Vanilli sang a cappela.
"How big is your party?" I ask him.
"Party of seven," he says. Clearly, he'd intended to say it all along, had pre-prepared the words in order. I find myself wondering if he's the one corporate robot that actually made it into Oz. That might explain his watch working.
The Emerald Burrito of Oz Page 12
