by Paul Neilan
“You went there looking for Lompoc,” he said, already laying out a story. A confession for me to sign. “He was a regular.”
“I went there for a drink,” I said.
“And then you went to The Lonesome Palm, where you found him,” he said. “You were hunting him.”
“I ran into him at the bar,” I said. “Just a coincidence.”
“Just a coincidence,” he said, took a drink. “You’d been there before?”
“My first time,” I said.
“And what did you two talk about?” he said.
“The good old days,” I said.
He looked into his glass like there was a bug floating in it before taking another drink.
“You haven’t asked me how he died,” Sidowsky said.
“I figured you’d get to it eventually,” I said.
“They found him with his pants down and a belt around his neck,” he said. “Autoerotic asphyxiation.”
So Eddie Lompoc died with his dick in his hand. Gunslinger to the end. He was on his way to dirtbag Valhalla.
“Guess that makes it a closed casket,” I said. “From the waist down anyway.”
“That’s not all,” he said. “There was a cucumber up his ass.”
“Cucumber,” I said. “That doesn’t sound like Eddie.”
“Why not?” Sidowsky said.
“A Twinkie I’d believe,” I said. “Cucumber’s too healthy.”
“Laugh it up, Harrigan,” he said. “You’re one of the last people to see him before he died.”
“What’s it matter,” I said. “You said he killed himself.”
“Did I?” he said, looking into his drink again. “Lompoc’s the eighth autoerotic stiff we’ve picked up in the last six months.”
“Eighth?” I said. “I never heard of the other seven.”
“Yeah, well, He died jerking off doesn’t usually headline the obituary,” he said.
“They all have cucumbers?” I said.
“No, this is our first,” Sidowsky said. “We’ve got it in a freezer downtown marked Do Not Eat Me. I was found in a dead guy’s ass. I’m serious. This isn’t a joke! Put me down! Noooo!!! But lunchtime down there, you never know. Guys get hungry.”
“You here to check my grocery bill, Detective?” I said.
“I would if you fucking had one,” he said. “We’ve already turned over The Lonesome Palm. When’s the next open mic at Maxwells?”
“Tomorrow night,” I said.
“I’ll see you down there,” he said, draining his glass. “You can introduce me to the other suspects.”
“It’s got nothing to do with me,” I said.
“Keep telling yourself that, Harrigan,” Sidowsky said, setting his hat on his head. “Maybe one of us will believe it.”
* * *
It had nothing to do with me, but Eddie Lompoc had a line on fvrst chvrch mvlTverse. That was the last thing he told me. I dug in my coat pocket, found the pamphlet I’d gotten.
Are you ready to begin again?
Φ
Free the selves. Unveil the self.
fvrst chvrch mvlTverse
There is no I. There is no U.
All r welcome. All r 1.
6765 Franklin Avenue.
I didn’t owe Eddie Lompoc anything. I sat there staring at the pamphlet, trying to talk some sense into myself. It didn’t take. I went back outside, into the rain.
The building on 6765 Franklin was a three-story mansion set back from the street with turrets and spires whitewashed the color of bone, surrounded by thick bushes and trees. A tall fence ran all the way around to a service entrance in back where a sloped driveway curled off past a corner behind the gate, locked with a numbered keypad. I didn’t see any cameras. There were no screens.
The gate up front was wide open. I followed a stone footpath to the door. A bald guy in a sleek gray robe was waiting to greet me.
“Hello,” he said, waving with both hands as I approached. “Hello and welcome to fvrst chvrch mvlTverse. I would introduce myself, but there are no names here. There is no I. There is no U. Would you care for a tour of our sanctuary?”
I followed him inside, down a long hallway lined with portraits of Jesus, Buddha, Confucius, Vishnu, Zoroaster, a few other gurus. There were framed texts in Hebrew, Arabic, Egyptian, Sumerian, and other inscrutable scripts interspersed.
“As you may notice, all faith traditions are incorporated in fvrst chvrch mvlTverse, as well as those who have no faith traditions whatsoever. All r welcome. All r 1.”
We followed the geometric tiles in the floor, laid in a swirling pattern, and came into an atrium with vines creeping up the walls, unseen birds chirping. There was a fountain in the center with the same symbol I’d seen on the pamphlet—Φ—sculpted in bronze.
“This is phi, the twenty-first letter of the Greek alphabet,” he said. “Symbolizing the golden ratio, the soothing equanimity of pattern and proportion found throughout the verse. Though of course not in every verse. Of course, of course.”
“You don’t have any screens,” I said.
“Oh no,” he said. “No, no. The sanctuary is completely off Grid. This is a self-sustained facility, powered by our own recycling, which the Travelers pick up all over the city as part of their service. You may have seen them on the streets with their receptacles. Bottles, cans, paper, screens. We take whatever can be refashioned and reused, a necessary vocation which allows them to be free of influence or interference at the sanctuary. Ah, here they are now.”
They shuffled past, single file in their gray robes, their hoods down. They had bald heads, their faces blank like peeled potatoes. It took me a second to see that none of them had eyebrows.
“They’re on their way to the House of Un,” he said, whispering as they passed us. “The inner sanctum, where the self is purified of its many selves. The unbounding. The unbinding. The unbecoming.”
“They all live here?” I said.
“Oh no. No, no,” he said. “That was only a small number of our Travelers, here for the House of Un ceremony. The majority are housed on campus, at the old City College. A truly wonderful facility. No one stays in the sanctuary. It is solely a place of contemplation and reflection.”
He led me through an archway to an amphitheater full of empty seats with a drawn curtain up front.
“Sit anywhere you like,” he said. “The presentation is about to begin. It’s only a few minutes long. I’ll be back afterwards with refreshments and we can discuss any questions you may have.”
The lights darkened, pitch-black, as I sat down. I heard the curtain open before a shaft of light cut the dark, projecting onto a white billowing sail. A film reel turned behind me, from above.
On the sail a spinning galaxy resolved to the solar system, the planets orbiting. A bald head filled the center, overlapping the sun. He was smiling wide, like the man in the moon remembering everyone he’d drowned in the tides.
Who am I? Why am I here? What should I do? Where should I go? Who was I meant to be?
The voices came from beneath the seats all around me, plaintive and unseen, beseeching.
“You are a child of the mvlTverse,” the man in the moon said, a particle beam streaming around his head. “You were born of stardust. You carry this elemental essence in your very bones. You truly are an astral being, of celestial substance woven.”
The particle beam bent, split off and extended to the other planets in a web of light, rushing off past the boundaries in every direction.
“You have already been every self you will ever be,” the man in the moon said. “Sinner, saint, scientist, skeptic, savior, scourge. And you will be again. All of them are within you. All of them are without you. All of them, and none of them, are you.”
The void of space replaced the light. A comet tore past, cleaving the darkness.
“The modern measures cannot define you,” the man’s voice said. “Cannot contain you. Cannot hold. What do these metrics measure
when you have been everyone, and they you? Every beginning is a new beginning. Every phase is a transitional phase. Every step is a first step.”
Trailing the comet’s tail, Earth came back into focus. A clouded blue marble, suspended in the black.
“And here we find ourselves, at this fraught moment in fragmented time,” the man’s voice said. “And here we find our selves. And shed them, and reclaim them, and know them, and recall the self beneath.”
It helicoptered to a view of the city. The Hills, the Hollywood sign coming into focus in a vertiginous drop.
“The true face beneath the many faces,” the man’s voice said. “The true self beneath the many selves. Beneath the urges and expressions, the projections and extensions, the many screened interactions. Every start is a fresh start. Every church is a first church. Every…”
I slipped out while he was still talking. Made my way back to the atrium, through the opposite archway, where the Travelers had gone. I heard a low hum like an insect chorus, followed the sound to an open doorway looking in on a chamber with rounded walls. There were twenty of them, sitting cross-legged on the floor, their robes collapsed around them. The steady drone of vibration came from their closed mouths as one of them paced the floor and spoke softly above their heads.
“We do not ask, we do not grasp,” she said, walking in between their billowing robes. “We simply recall. Recall the energies expended, the selves scattered, unto others, unto ourselves.”
Her words slithered up the rounded walls, came back around in a whisper gallery, the steady buzz underneath. A Traveler passed me pushing a mail cart. There was something in the way his head bobbed and weaved, like he was ducking imaginary punches. The last time I saw him he had eyebrows. They were running down his face.
“CMB Roach,” I said, and his back stiffened.
He turned to me, his mouth hanging open.
“Excuse me! Excuse me!” The guy who’d given the tour came hurrying towards us. “There you are. I looked for you after the presentation concluded but, oh.”
He looked at CMB Roach.
“I should have mentioned,” he said, waving with both hands again. “We discourage engagement with the Travelers. Interaction can affect their unbonding process.”
“They take a vow of silence?” I said, as the color rose on CMB Roach’s cheek.
“It’s a vow of nonexpression,” he said. “The fleeting urges and unbidden emotions, we allow them to pass, as relics of the still-binded selves. This is also why we remove our eyebrows. To aid in the unexpressing.”
“You’ve still got yours,” I said.
“I haven’t taken the vow yet,” he said. “Or I couldn’t be talking to you like this. Of course, of course. We each have our part to play in this verse. In every verse.”
“No expression and nobody has a name,” I said, watching CMB Roach as he stared at the floor. “How do you keep track of everyone?”
“That is not our way,” he said. “There are many paths in the mvlTverse. Concentric, intersecting, interstitial. We may suggest a track, but Travelers move at their own pace, in their own directions, irrespective of name, face, or place. There is no I. There is no U.”
CMB Roach pushed his mail cart away.
I watched him go, Eddie Lompoc’s angle disappearing down the hall.
monday
When I was ten years old I spent the night over at a friend’s house and his mother cooked some kind of jambalaya gumbo for dinner that made my insides churn,” Clyde Faraday said, his voice monotone. “But I was polite and had manners, so I ate everything she gave me. I woke up in the middle of the night and my stomach was killing me. I knew something terrible was about to happen. I ran to the bathroom, doubled over in the dark. Their toilet had a padded vinyl hemorrhoids seat and the covering was cracked and peeling with exposed patches of foam all over it like a ragged, mangy animal. It didn’t seem sanitary and I didn’t want to sit on it, but I was running out of time. I tried to prop myself above the bowl and hold steady like a gymnast on the rings, but my little arms were very weak and I kept falling over. The jambalaya gumbo went everywhere.”
Clyde’s hands were limp in his lap. He was looking right through me.
“I cleaned it up as best I could, trying to keep quiet so no one would hear me, but I was sick and my stomach hurt and I just wanted to go back to bed and forget the whole thing,” Clyde said. “Unfortunately their bathroom was carpeted, which is really the worst idea anybody’s ever had and makes me think his mother almost deserved the mess she woke up to the next morning. I tried to blame it on their cat, but they were unconvinced. I had to call my mom to come get me, and the ten minutes it took for her to drive over as I sat quietly in the kitchen with my ex-friend and his mother staring at me in silence and disgrace remain to this day the longest ten minutes of my life.”
I watched the accordion valve compress above him, the beep of his heart monitor setting an unsteady cadence in the quiet room.
Clyde blinked his eyes, focused on the small screen muted in the corner of the room playing the same old game show. Wheel of Fortune.
“Look!” Clyde said, suddenly animated. “Look at that fucker. If it’s a woman contestant he always takes her by the hand as he walks her over to solve the final puzzle. If her husband or boyfriend is in the audience he’ll ask his permission first, but only if the guy’s black. Fucking sexist and racist at the same time, but I can’t figure out against who.”
He turned away, disgusted, saw me sitting there.
“Harrigan,” Clyde said. “When did you get here?”
“Just now,” I said.
“I say anything?” he said, uncertain.
“Not a word,” I said.
“This medicine,” he said, nodding up at the machines. “So tell me kid, what did I miss?”
“Not too much,” I said. “Eddie Lompoc died.”
“Eddie Lompoc?” Clyde said. “What happened? I know it wasn’t chin cancer.”
“They found him with his pants down and a belt around his neck,” I said. “He had a cucumber up his ass.”
“I don’t believe it,” he said.
“Which part?” I said.
Clyde Faraday looked at me.
“You listen to me, Harrigan. And you listen good,” he said. “I knew Eddie Lompoc. I knew him better than most. And whatever else you’ve got to say about the man, Eddie Lompoc was no fruit fucker.”
“He wasn’t,” I said. “Cucumber’s a vegetable.”
“No shit,” Clyde said. “Then that was Eddie Lompoc.”
And it was.
“What’s on your mind, kid?” he said.
There was Charlie Horse. Stan Volga and Anna. The Parallax Liberation Faction and Mirror Mirror. Eddie Lompoc and fvrst chvrch mvlTverse. A roulette ball rolling over too many numbers, stuck in a never-ending groove.
“I got picked up on Assessment,” I said.
Clyde’s face dropped. He chewed his bottom lip.
“Assessment?” he said. “You?”
I nodded. He shook his head.
“There’s only one way to beat a bum Score, kid,” Clyde said, looking up at the machines hissing over him. “Only one way.”
His eyes unfocused, the light fading. I sat there for a while before they closed.
* * *
I got word from Evie that they were putting Eddie Lompoc in the ground. I headed down Santa Monica until I saw the cemetery gate, Hollywood Forever spelled out in a wrought iron arc, rust creeping up the letters like ivy. I followed the winding flagstone path through the palm trees, their fronds like fireworks exploded halfway to the sky. Through the upright poplars, spun tight like cyclones and playing it close.
Grass grew wild in the gaps between slabs, names and dates eroded like they’d been etched in sand. The newer graves farther in had headstones lit with the lenticular lithography that was popular before the screens took over, images flickering like phantoms as I passed.
Three peacocks crossed
the path ahead of me, blue bodies bobbing, their feathers hidden. A gardener in mismatched green chased after them, a spade over his shoulder.
“Ya! Ya!” he shouted, like he was herding them.
Two other peacocks trailed him, low to the ground like raptors in pursuit.
Farther along I saw a guy watching a headstone where a lady in thick makeup and a leopard-print body suit stood smiling in front of a showroom Ferrari. The image shifted and her heel was up on the bumper, hand on her hip, her smile gone wider and deranged. The guy had his arm wrapped around the smooth trunk of a palm, holding on. From his vantage the lady was caught between both poses, leg jittering up and down on the bumper, smile stretching, leopard spots shifting dizzily. He turned to me with tears in his eyes.
“They shave the trees,” he said hoarsely, looking to the drooping fronds above him as the lady stood half transmogrified, trapped in perpetual oscillation.
I kept going.
It was over before I found it, a single umbrella beside the grave.
“If I end up in a place like this just fucking kill me,” Evie Faraday said, offering me space under her umbrella.
“Some turnout,” I said. “None of the old gang showed.”
“We are the old gang, Harrigan,” Evie said. “This is it.”
“I figured Lorentz would stop by at least,” I said.
“Lorentz is a trafficker,” she said. “He’s in it for himself. Nobody else. Always has been.”
I looked down at the plaque laid unevenly in the soggy ground.
Eddie Lompoc. Et Fenestrae Clausae.
“No,” Evie said. “The line for a pickle in the ass is down to you and me, Harrigan.”
“It was a cucumber,” I said.
“Depends how long he had it up there,” she said.
Rain pelted the umbrella above us.
“I wonder what they did with it,” she said.
“The cucumber?” I said.
“Pickle,” she said.
“It’s in a freezer downtown,” I said. “Marked Do Not Eat Me. I was found in a dead guy’s ass. I’m serious. This isn’t a joke! Put me down! Noooo!!!”
