“Imagine that,” he said, surveying the damage. “Those birds, when they get bored of just flying, they try some fancy stuff. Probably taking turns, flying low, dropping their payload, whistling all the way. Nothing better to do than play all day, making fun of us busy humans, shitting on our shiny cars, letting us know who’s really alive.” He chuckled, and I decided not to cue him in on the actual cause. “Must be nice,” he murmured. “Must be nice.”
THE BOOK O’ BILLETS-DOUX
Sweetlick: Do you believe everything happens for a reason?
Rosehips: Of course! Every result has its antecedents.
Sweetlick: Pardon me. What I meant to say was, do you believe everything happens for a larger purpose?
Rosehips: No. But I believe everything happens.
Sweetlick: But if there’s no larger purpose, what meaning is there in existence?
Rosehips: To assume that everything happens for some larger purpose is to justify tragedy. Don’t mistake the result for the purpose.
Sweetlick: Well-spoken. Nevertheless, it is a comforting way to think.
Rosehips: Only as comfortable as hiding your head under the covers and refusing to accept the double dare of free will. You’ll suffocate eventually.
Sweetlick: But I’m warm.
Rosehips: True enough. Yank those covers back and it will be mighty chilly, no doubt about it, but Brr! and Mmm! and Ohh! and Oop! Drop your chains and fly the coop. Ow! and Ha! and Oof! and Wow! Find your path to peace somehow.
29 Reluctant to climb into the passenger seat with Blip on the slippery brink of mania, and bewildered as to how that had come to be a possibility in the first place, I offered to drive.
“No can do,” he shook his head. “You should be careful even saying that. You’ll disrupt the natural flow of events. What if you drove and a truck sideswiped us and I was killed in the passenger seat? You’d never forgive yourself, obsessing over what would have happened if you’d been there instead. Don’t fuck around with fate, man. Think about the people who walk away from seventy-mile-an-hour crashes just because of the way they happened to be sitting or the angle of the collision, or any infinite combination of variables. Life is a high-stakes poker game, and cheaters aren’t treated kindly. The dealer can’t disrupt the natural order of the cards once the shuffling is done. Predetermined elements of the game are sitting right there in the pile, waiting to be brought to bear. Someone loses a game after a misdeal? Look out.”
“So now you believe in fate?”
“Dependent on current circumstances, of course. But yeah, your destiny, our destiny, humankind’s destiny, it follows necessarily given present premises. Conclusions must agree with their premises. Seems pretty simple to me.”
“Who’s to say that me driving isn’t the natural flow of events?”
“Clearly, it isn’t. I naturally walked to the driver’s side, and you naturally walked to the passenger’s side, without even thinking about it. Probably this conversation is disrupting the dance of chance. Things take care of themselves as long as you trust and don’t try to control too much. Things will happen. Things tend to occur. Why resist what’s inevitable? That’s like swimming against the current, salmon notwithstanding. Go with the flow, you know? Glide with the glow, man. It’s easier.”
I went with the flow, or glided with the glow, or whatever, and hence what I am about to relate happened as it should have happened.
30 “The word in the joint,” Blip began as he started his car, “is that they’re shipping us to the big house.”
“The big house?”
“State pen, you know.”
“Right.” I had hardly spoken when Blip floored the gas pedal, turfing the lawn he was parked on and leaping the curb back into the parking lot. He flicked his wipers on and brushed the three tickets off his windshield.
“I hate these things!” he yelled over the noise of his struts clanking in protest as we crashed over three consecutive speed bumps, leading me to once again question the wisdom of letting him drive. “So,” he continued as he pulled onto the road, “Manny Malarkey says it’s because they’re screening us for these experiments.”
“Manny Malarkey?”
“Yeah, a guy I met in the slammer. Turns out we’re kindred spirits. He’s the trucker who got nine months for blowing up that billboard.”
“You met the guy who blew up the billboard?”
“He’s done hundreds of them, actually. It’s his hobby when he’s driving rigs across the country. But these experiments, see, I think I heard them. Manny tells me there’s a subbasement under the jailhouse that’s used as an isolation tank. Anyway, I swear I heard noises coming through some of the air ducts.”
“Did he hear them too?”
“No, but he’s half deaf from when his last billboard job exploded before he was clear. That’s how they caught him. He was knocked unconscious by the blast. Stupid cops think it was an isolated incident though.” Blip laughed. “They don’t even know he’s done it all over the country.”
“So what were the noises?”
“No idea. That’s what was strange. I couldn’t tell if it was horrified screaming or hilarious laughter. What I think is that they’re torturing prisoners down there, Flake. That’s what the screaming is. And the guards are laughing at them; they think it’s funny.”
“Then why did you want to stay there?” I tried to speak to his sense of self-preservation. “What if you were tortured?”
“I want to find out what’s going on.” Blip scratched his chin thoughtfully. “But that would really piss me off, though.”
“What’s that?”
“Getting tortured. Getting tortured would really piss me off.” I nodded at the truism. Getting tortured would really piss me off, too.
31 “So what about Sophia?” I ventured out of nowhere after we’d driven in silence through a couple of blocks in the highend residential zone near campus where most of the university administrators lived. He was quiet for a time after I said this, gazing out the window, and I was vain enough to think I might have actually gotten through to him. We slowed to a stop at Gentry Avenue, a steady stream of fast-moving cars leaving me nervous that Blip would pull out in front of one at any moment. Eventually a man in a primered El Camino slowed to a stop and motioned us in front of him. Blip turned right and gave the man a genial wave.
“See that, Flake? That’s a beautiful human.” My question was apparently forgotten, and I decided not to press the issue. “You’ll run into them every so often, you know? He knows that there are real people inside these cars. He sympathizes with a stranger’s aggravation. A Good Samaritan.”
Blip accelerated as a traffic light up ahead turned yellow. It turned red while he was under it. “Oh no!” Blip glanced in his rearview mirror. “He got caught at the light. He would have made it through if he didn’t let me in. He gave up his destiny, his spot at the light, for a complete stranger. That’s the kind of person who would give his life for another if the situation demanded it.”
“So he interfered with the dance of chance, as you call it?” I interrupted his discourse on saintly drivers to point out his apparent contradiction. “He shouldn’t have broken the flow of traffic. He missed the light, but he might also avoid an accident, or get into an accident that he would not have otherwise.” Blip fell silent again and furrowed his brow. As the next light turned yellow, he slowed to a stop.
“Whoa!” Blip slapped my knee while looking joyfully in the rearview mirror. “There he is, Flake! Our boy made it through in the long run! See? He let me in and didn’t lose any time anyway. He knew he wouldn’t get where he’s going any faster. Destiny comes around despite our efforts. That’s a beautiful human. Beautiful! Wow! We could use more of them on this planet.”
I turned around in my seat to have another look at this roadway angel. There he was, Blip’s karmic bookie, the frontiersman of fate, sitting idly in his car and picking his nose.
32 Blip’s unbridled glee with th
e nose-picking hero of the highways tapped out its enthusiasm all over the steering wheel. My mind occupied with matters presumably more important than the existence of free will in human destiny, I pursued the debate no further.
“Did you know poison ivy is one of the most potent toxins on Earth?” The events in Tynee’s office earlier that day were still tickling my curiosity. “One ounce of the extracted toxin could give everyone on Earth a rash.”
“Poison ivy is an evil plant,” Blip replied. “Mephistophelian. Sophia doesn’t agree with me. She claims that since humans are the only animals that are allergic to poison ivy, and since it doesn’t grow in the deep forest, only along roadsides and in clearings and suburban backyards and such, that it’s Mother Nature’s way of discouraging us from areas that need to recover from the ravages of our oafishness. I say poison ivy is like shopping. If you scratch it, oh man does it feel good, it’s immensely satisfying, but as soon as you stop you want to scratch it again more than ever. Same with buying things. You can never satisfy it. Poison ivy is pure greed, lust, covetousness. Sophia acquiesced a bit when we had Dandy. It took me years to clear all the poison ivy from the areas we tend. Demonic plant. Scratching it is better than sex. Nothing should be better than sex.”
“How does Sophia feel about you getting arrested?” I awkwardly tried to introduce the topic once again. Blip, however, continued his speculations unencumbered.
“One ounce? That’s it? Wow. That’s weird . . .” His voice trailed off, and his eyes grew wide then instantly squinted. I had been watching him, and when I followed his eyes it was immediately apparent why he was so astounded. I hadn’t noticed entering the freeway, but there we were in a steady flow of thirty-mile-per-hour after-work traffic, rolling toward Graffiti Bridge. So much had happened that I’d completely forgotten to tell him that JUST A COUPLE OF DAYS had received a reply. The message was simple. It read: NOW!
For a few moments it seemed that Blip’s already excited state was about to erupt into a full-blown manic attack. But instead of screaming and raving, as I expected, he released the enormity of his elation with a simple snicker, like the muffled hiccup of a massive earthquake.
“No time but the present, old friend,” he pronounced as we passed underneath, gently tapping the gas pedal. “That’s the writing on the wall. Time is now.” He gave the horn a couple of happy honks. “Now or never.”
33 Surprisingly, traffic was not particularly snarled around and under the bridge, as was typically the case. A short way beyond it, however, we slowed into a traffic jam.
“Why can’t everyone just go the same speed?” Blip whined. “Didn’t they just see the bridge? Now! Live in the now, the perpetual present. Dig the day. Can you imagine? If we could just get in sync, get in tune, man, if we could harmonize, hear the same rhythm, there’d be peace on Earth, and no traffic jams.”
“Where are we going?” I asked, again mystified as to how I happened to agree to come along in the first place. I’m now certain it was a decision made by an imp who took possession of my will at the crucial moment of judgment.
“Look at that.” Blip ignored me and pointed to a bumper sticker on the car in front of us. It read: CAUTION! THIS CAR MAY BE SUDDENLY EMPTY WHEN RAPTURE COMES! “Pride is one of the deadly sins!” Blip called through his windshield to the person in front of him. “Look at her, sucking down that Coke, waiting for rapture.”
“Blip, where are we going?”
“The freeway.”
“We’re already on the freeway.”
“Yes, the freeway is a big place, one of the closest conceptions of eternity we have, don’t you think?” He flashed a vast grin at me as we passed the accident scene that was the source of the backup. “Don’t look!” he commanded, grabbing my knee to pull my attention away. “That’s the whole problem, don’t you see? All it takes is one coward afraid of his own mortality to throw everyone off balance. You have to live in the now.”
Just past the accident, traffic loosened and quickened almost immediately, and Blip responded by veering into the left lane and opening up the engine all the way. Within seconds, the speedometer was pushing past eighty miles per hour.
“Going a little fast, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” he agreed, yelling over the increasing wind and engine noise. “Of course, the stars offer a better example of eternity, but we don’t see too much of them anymore, what with city lights and TV and all.”
“Blip! Slow down!” The needle looked peculiar so far to the right on the speedometer.
“What would you rather do, spend eternity gazing at the stars or driving on the freeway?”
I bellowed a scream as we flew past a semi, the drag of the eighteen-wheeler making our car feel airborne.
“All right, all right.” He removed his foot from the accelerator and friction quickly brought us back below 100. “Take it easy. You don’t have to scream, for God’s sake. I’ll set the cruise control. Imagine being a truck driver though. That’s an eternity on the freeway.” He locked the speed at 90, which felt slow compared to the 110 we’d been doing only moments before.
“What’s going on, Blip?”
“Relax. Haven’t you always wanted to go this fast?”
“Just slow it down to eighty, how about that?”
“Where are all the cops when you need ’em, eh?”
“What?”
“You may as well get comfortable, because I’m not stopping until I see some sirens.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Prison, Flake.” He looked at me, his expression humorless. “One way or another I’m getting back in there.”
I did not think to mention again that it was actually a jail.
34 The paranoid, hyperaware, self-conscious reaction that typically accompanies the presence of a police cruiser on the highway was noticeably absent as we sighted one ahead. “Ah! There’s one!” Blip shouted and immediately floored the accelerator. Soon we were doing well over 100 again. I glimpsed the officer’s startled face as we roared past and must confess a feeling of roguish delight. I chuckled involuntarily, and Blip looked at me in fraternal approval.
I often lived vicariously through Blip’s antics. Regardless of anything else, I had begun to enjoy myself, gliding with the glow, as it were. I felt like a couple of ex-cons on the lam. “Fuckin’ cops,” Blip muttered facetiously as the siren wailed behind us. He reduced his speed as the officer gave chase. By the time we were doing fifty we were moving intolerably slowly.
“What do you want me to tell Sophia?” I asked, sighing in resignation. Blip was silent again as he pulled onto the berm.
“Well,” he began, after we had come to a stop. “Tell her I said to remember the hounds of hell, and how everything turned out all right in the end. Tell her I promise that everything will turn out all right, and that I know what I’m doing.”
“The hounds of hell?”
“She’ll know what I mean. And don’t try to get me released again, at least for a few days.”
“What are you doing anyway?”
“I’m being a conscious tool of the universe, of course.”
“Because some delinquent had the gumption to reply to you on the bridge?”
“You’ve never understood such things, Flake.” He sniffed at the air. “Do you smell that?”
I sniffed. “I smell nothing.”
“It’s change.” He inhaled deeply, elaborating with his right hand. “You can definitely smell it. Change is in the wind, my friend, like the fart of a flower child.”
“What?”
He waved me off. “Never mind.”
“What about your car?”
“Who cares? Do what you want with this heap. I think I blew the engine.” Blip looked behind him and saw the police officer approaching. He pulled a twenty-dollar bill out of his wallet. “But I’ll bet you a twenty I can talk my way out of this.”
35 Blip rolled down his window and smiled pleasantly at the officer, whose nametag read
APPLEBEE. “Good afternoon,” he said as he extended his license and registration toward her.
“Can I see your license and registration please?”
“It’s right here.” He gestured his hand toward her again.
“Oh.” She was taken off guard by Blip’s preparedness.
“You’re welcome,” Blip replied cordially, without being prompted by rote gratitude. “The reason I was going so fast,” he continued, again not giving her a chance to ask, “is that I’ve recently been fired from my job. I have an interview for another job, and I didn’t want to be late.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Officer Applebee held up a yellow card he had handed her along with his papers. “What’s this?”
“It’s a Get Out of Jail Free Card,” Blip grinned and explained the obvious. “You know, from Monopoly. Community Chest.” He succeeded in amusing her.
“Well, you’re not going to jail, but speed limits are for safety, and you were way over the speed limit.”
“How fast was I going?”
“My radar wasn’t on when you passed me, but I was going seventy, and you flew by me out of nowhere. Given that, I’m estimating at least eighty-five.”
“I’m real sorry, Officer, it’s just that I heard Warden Hoosegow is a real stickler about punctuality.”
“You have an interview with Hoosegow?” she asked with sudden camaraderie.
“Yeah. I lost my job at the university. I did some homework, and it turns out corrections is a growth industry. We already imprison more of our citizens per capita than any other country in the world, and that’s going to double in the next decade. So, there’s high demand and job security, not to mention a decent salary, and they kick in for dental.”
Just a Couple of Days Page 7
