Christian pauses, his eyes bobbing. “There’s a guy nicknamed Satan ?”
“No, that’s his real name.”
“Someone named their kid Satan ?”
“No, it is Satan. The Satan. You know, the devil. And you’re not going to believe this, but he’s a fairy.”
“A fairy?”
“You know, a tart, a full-flaming homosexual. And he was even coming onto me. Who’d of thought the Lord of Darkness would be the Queen of Darkness?”
Christian laughs. “Mortician, you’re the biggest weirdo in the world, guy.”
I barge in with a soft yell, halfway upset. “I’m trying to watch Battlestar Galactica.”
“You can’t watch that there tele-rubish. We gotta get the place ready for the bastard show tonight.”
“I can’t help you,” I say, pointing to my eyes. “I’m disabled.”
“So am I,” Christian giggle-says. “I’m quadriplegic.”
Mort explodes at Christian. “Why am I the only person who does anything around here? I’ve been out searching for a damn distortion pedal all day to replace the one that you broke last week, and you’re probably going to break this one again tonight, and you won’t even help me set up the stage!”
“The last time I helped you, all you did was bitch at my sloppiness. I’ll help if I don’t have to do orders.”
“Arr, ye glimey bastards! Get the bloody hell out if ye be lazy arses,” Mort whines, turning the television off. “I don’t want you getting in me way.”
Mortician hates laziness. Maybe it’s a Japanese stereotype, but I think he’s just sick of being around groo-heads all the time. I ignore him, because I have no choice but to be lazy.
“Fine with me,” Christian says, and we get up to leave.
“Be back before eight,” Mort hiss-spurts.
Christian seems happy to get out of work, but now I don’t get to watch Battlestar Galactica.
And the room turns into a huge churn-wheeling machine as I stand. Thunder-shrieking into the ground and around my face, buzzing — as if I am polluted with bees, my hair honey-eaten. The ground absorbs me as I grossly to the door, rushing billow-rollers inside my head knocking me off balance. This always happens when I stand up from a long sit.
John is still licking the glass at Mort as we pass the window. I would tell him to go away, but I’ve forgotten how to talk.
Scene 3
The Effects of Sillygo
They have put shaggy carpeting down on the sidewalks, so now I can walk barefoot up the way, gleaming at caterpillar-kaleidoscope, squishy the fibers between my toes. I cough and put some phlegm onto the shag, cold on my heel when I massage it between threads.
Christian does not take off his shoes. I don’t mean just at this particular time. I mean he never takes off his shoes. I’ve known him for seven years and not for a second did I ever catch him without something on his feet, whether it be socks, boots, animal skins, plastic bags, towels, bandages, or small boxes. I’m thinking he has some deformity on his feet that he refuses to show anyone, or maybe he just hates going without shoes like the skin is too sensitive for the ground, or maybe he feels naked with bare feet. Personally, I find shoes to be crude customers and try to wear them as seldom as possible. That’s why I’m glad there is carpeting on sidewalks now.
Christian has been drinking from a bottle of Fool’s Gold — a secondary brand of gold cinnamon schnapps — for the past five minutes. Actually, he has been drinking it every day for the past five years. It contains flakes of gold that dazzle-flutter through the liqueur if shaken, and they continue to dance in your stomach bag after you swallow them. I wonder if the gold flakes are bad for your digestive system.
I tell him: “I bet your entire stomach is gold-coated by now.”
He tells me: “You can bet your penis on that one.”
We head to Baja-Style Mexican Food Stand that is up in the tower shops — which are shops that are stacked and stacked and stacked on top of each other, like the autocars in the autocar junkyard. The shops all lofty and weaky, constructed by amateurs, ready to collapse at any day. Several ladders and splinter-rickety spiral stairs go from shop to shop to shop to shop.
We go up a ladder for three shops to a ledge, take another ladder through the floor of a sewing store, then through a wood shop, then through a small school for autistic children. The roof of the tower owns the food shops; one food shop being the Mexican burrito store that we always-always eat at. And it’s very surprising that the best Mexican food in the entire world is in Rippington, New Canada.
Up here, there’s a large cage with a female baboon inside, the baboon squawking and slapping at herself, eye-goobers sliming into her facial fur, sticking. We always eat where we can see the baboon, watching her sit there all miserable and squawking, slapping, rolling in my swirl-vision.
People keep female baboons at the tops of tall Rippington buildings to scare away scorpion flies. It all started last year, when a swarm of them migrated through the walm and took up residence in our sky.
Along with the prowler beast, a scorpion fly is one of the most dangerous species to come out of the walm. The scorpion fly looks half dragonfly and half scorpion, but is about two feet long. You’ll never find one by itself, only the mass, like a violent cloud in the distance. They feed off of whatever animal they can find, but humans are the most common meat besides bird. And, since they’re allergic to the ground, they live, sleep, and breed in the air.
A common warning in Rippington is: “Be cautious in high air.”
I’ve heard they are silent, stalking very furtively, sneaking up on you from above without your notice. Then they use their stinger in the back of your neck, and the poison is enough to paralyze you for a good three hours. During that time, the swarm devours you with limbs that resemble tridents made of corn-patterned bone. And they secrete digestive fluids from glands on their faces, to make your meat soft and easy. Nobody survives an attack from the swarm, unless in a large crowd with plenty of luck. They are too many to dodge or kill and they are too quick to run away from, but their victims are usually unaware of the scorpion flies and do not own time enough to react.
The only defense against them is a female baboon with nyminits, which are parasites that live within their female sex organs, and are fatal to the scorpion fly if ingested. Since the scorpion fly has no predators and is immune to almost every disease, the nyminits brought an unusual scare into its beady intellect. Now scorpion flies are too frightened to go within a mile radius of any female baboon.
Of course, they’ll eat the baboon’s husband if she isn’t nearby. And I bet the wife baboon thinks that this is funny sometimes, because if they get into a fight she can threaten to leave. Then the male baboon has to apologize immediately.
She says, “I’ll let the scorpion flies get you then.”
Into my God’s Eyes:
I see Christian and Leaf munching greasy burritos at a crispy table. Staring down from the pole which holds a tower shops flag — patchworked together from scraps of cloth. Slobbering and smacking sounds orchestrate their environment before a word is spoken.
The baboon squawks and slaps at herself.
Christian gorges into his burrito, squeezing green sauce into his throat, and some leftover gravy, washing it all down with Fool’s Gold.
“These are always Mr. T, guy,” Christian says with his mouth full. He always speaks with food in his mouth, and not just because he has lousy table manners, but because he thinks talking is much more fun when you can taste the words. “I wish they’d hire me as a fulltime burrito-eater.”