Processed cheese, p.16
Processed Cheese, page 16
“Word to the wise. And by the way, meant to ask, but have you happened to notice lately anything strikingly peculiar about the contents of our goody bag?”
“No denominations below a hundred?”
“How much do you think we’ve spent already?”
“Couldn’t begin to say.”
“To the nearest thousand.”
“Well, there’s all the dinners and the clubs. The clothes, the jewelry, the shoes.”
“The alcohol. The drugs.”
“The TV. The car, of course. A couple of ridiculously overpriced guns. I don’t know. Fifty grand?”
“Hah. The car was more than that.”
“You’re kidding.”
“One does not cruise the highways and byways of our great nation in HomoDebonaire style and comfort without shelling out a modest ransom for the privilege. No, my estimate would be easily quadruple that.”
“Goes fast, doesn’t it?”
“Maybe for the ordinaries, but you forget, we’re exceptionals now. We live in the world of wonder. No matter how much we spend, our bag is always full.”
“How can you be so certain? You never really counted it to begin with.”
“This is an eyeball estimate.”
“Well, don’t obsess over it. If you question the power of the magic bag, all the money in it will disappear, and then everything you bought with the money will disappear, too.”
“And where did you come up with that fun fact?”
“It’s common knowledge.”
“Yeah? Among whom?”
“Mystics and investment bankers. We discussed this in my book club when we read Fairies and Finances. Unexpected gifts from leprechauns, old crones, and talking animals always come with these weird conditions no one seems able to keep.”
“What about manna from heaven?”
“There’s a separate chapter on that.”
“So they lose everything.”
“Naturally. Every copper, silver coin, and golden nugget. But ultimately, of course, they’re better off for it.”
“How come?”
“They’ve learned to be happy and humble without being burdened by all that vile wealth.”
“Yeah? Well I’ve got another hearthside homily for you.”
“What’s that?”
“Happiness can’t buy you money.”
That night, Ambience lying asleep in bed next to him, snoring, not snoring, whatever the hell she was doing, Graveyard, still awake at 4:47 in the a.m., stared up at the ceiling, watching the reflections of traffic passing nonsensically in reverse above him. Something about the confounding mysteries of light and physics he had absolutely no understanding of whatsoever. He couldn’t sleep. He didn’t know why. He tried to think of something he didn’t have that he wanted to buy. No dice. At the moment the Want tray was curiously empty. What to do? Well, a change of scenery might be nice. Unfortunately, Graveyard hated traveling. He hated riding for long periods in cars, buses, trains, and planes. He hated schedules and timetables. He hated hotel rooms. But he did like being in different places, though. He liked seeing stuff he hadn’t seen before. He liked buying stuff he hadn’t bought before, too. And he liked meeting odd people in odd clothes. He liked being surrounded by languages he didn’t understand. He guessed what he really wanted was to be an absurd tourist for a while.
“All in,” said Ambience, after he told her of his plan when they got up later in the p.m. of the following day. (Who but miserable keyboard zombies ever rolled out of the sack before noon?) “Which one?”
“Which one what?”
“Which country?”
“I don’t know. Someplace impossible. Colorful and far away and hideously expensive. With purple mountains and moldy museums, primo beaches and pretentious food and tiny taxis. Pastry and attitude. Gotta get me some.”
“Plenty of candidates to choose from.”
“And it’s gotta be old. Really old and antiquey. I want to walk around on tons of old dirt.”
“How about Quasiland? Remember? It’s where BackDoorSlider and FacetCut got married last year in that big haunted castle and no one worth less than ten mil was allowed on the invite list. In fact, double-digit millionaires were the rabble at that wedding.”
“Didn’t TwoForOne get arrested for donkey-punching the best man at the rehearsal dinner?”
“Yeah. And the happy bride had a herpes sore on her upper lip that her high-end makeup job couldn’t quite conceal, so no one wanted to kiss her. And afterward they had two receptions: one regular and then later one all nude for the numerous freaks in attendance.”
“Yeah, we saw that special together. The Funning in the Dungeon. Think they had that blowout in the winter, though. Probably too uncomfortably hot to go there now.”
“PortPenny?”
“Two words: Doldrum’s disease.”
“Waa!BooHoo?”
“Well, the capital’s supposed to be secure. For the moment, at least. Civil wars, though, they’re so dicey. Probably we should only consider visiting places where the locals aren’t tossing too many wild bullets at one another.”
“That narrows it down somewhat.”
“Temperate climate, contented populace, a minimum of loaded weaponry.”
“Bullionvilla,” said Ambience.
“Perfect.”
“It’s old.”
“It’s artsy-fartsy.”
“Its architecture looks edible.”
“It’s flush-friendly.”
“It’s safe.”
“Then in order to make this an official madcap getaway, I think we should probably leave, like, right now. Sky on outta here on a red-eye, get there in time for a fabulous continental breakfast at the fabulous Treasured Paw.”
“The one on that show we watched the other night? The oldest surviving restaurant in the world?”
“Our pearl.”
“Book it,” she said.
Ambience retrieved her phone from under the bed and called FurryFarm to book an open-ended boarding reservation for Nippers. Who knew how long they’d be gone? Graveyard put a pair of locks on the magic bag, heaved the bag onto his shoulder, and struggled out of the building and into the street, where he turned left and proceeded somewhat unsteadily down the block.
PlexiBerryPunch lived in a five-story walk-up on TarPaper Alley, right around the corner from AardvarkBailBonds, whose services he had, unfortunately, been forced to avail himself of on more than one disappointing occasion. The Alley was one of a dwindling number of “bad” areas, swarming with “suspicious” types of every age and gender who had fewer and fewer places to go. If you wished to do something illegal, buy something illegal, or merely observe something illegal in progress, this was your spot. PlexiBerryPunch could certainly afford to go upscale, hunker down in a better part of town, but he plain liked the noise, the color, the drama of the edgy life. He wouldn’t have moved if you paid him. An offer obviously contingent on how much, exactly, would be involved. Because his present address would be exceptionally painful to lose. There were just too many conveniences packed tightly together in tantalizing proximity: illicit substances of every variety easily available 24-7 just steps from his door; an endless parade of the more theatrical specimens of humanity you couldn’t be entertained by anywhere else; cat food for sale at the corner bodega at 2:00 in the a.m., even if you didn’t own a cat; and when your balls needed emptying, you simply grabbed the hand of the nearest curbside nymph, hauled her back to your digs, and screwed her until the screwing itch expired.
Graveyard knocked on a hard-used door with NO MENUS scrawled across it in phosphorescent lime.
“Yeah,” came a sullen voice from inside.
“It’s me, Graveyard. I just spoke to you on the phone.”
“Who?”
“Graveyard, you stupid brain-sizzled toad licker.”
Comical sound of too many locks to count being painstakingly unlocked.
“Took ya long enough,” said Graveyard when the heavy metal door finally creaked expressively open. PlexiBerryPunch stood before him, all sixty-five and one-half solid inches of him. He was wearing a monk’s habit and black tennis shoes. He looked like a husky child masquerading as a baby-faced adult member of some sort of bizarre underground religious order. He was also clutching a gun. Appeared to Graveyard’s trained eye to be a rare variation of an early twentieth century gent popper, the infamous CarteBlanche’s Iron Attaché.
“Whoa there, cowboy,” said Graveyard, hands up in mock surrender. “Just a harmless tenderfoot from back East.”
“That them?” Indicating with the barrel of the revolver the bag Graveyard had set down on the floor beside him.
“You mind?” Graveyard nodding at the still-leveled weapon.
“All apologies.” The CarteBlanche disappeared somewhere beneath the ratty clerical drapery. “Old habits.” From the dark period when he had fallen so hopelessly in love with raze that he rented a second apartment from which to deal the drug to customers both sweet and unsavory who responded best to persuaders in the higher calibers. In those rowdy days he famously favored the .56 CarpetKisser.
“Forget your meds today?”
“Get the fuck out of the hallway, you idiot.”
Graveyard did. He then watched, fascinated, as PlexiBerryPunch secured the fortress, fiddling with seemingly twice as many bolts and locks as he had to let Graveyard in.
“Indians about to attack?”
“The natives are always restless. So what have you got for me?”
“Just the high-end stuff. A few rarities, a few antiques. The guns I’d have trouble replacing should anything happen. Wouldn’t even consider asking anyone but you to stand watch over them.”
“I’m honored as fuck.”
“Well, now, look, if it’s too much trouble—”
“Just messing with you, Yard. Said I’d keep ’em, didn’t I? That’s my word. Know how valuable these shitsticks are to you. Goes without saying. They’ll be as safe as baby kittens with me.”
“I wish you hadn’t used that particular simile. I remember what happened to Twinkletoes.”
“Unfair. Not my fault. How was I supposed to know MemoryFoam was a wannabe magician? An uncommonly bad wannabe. You heard what happened to him, right? Got a vibrator stuck up his ass and refused to go to the emergency room. Whirring away for days in there. Thought he’d be okay once the battery wore out. He wasn’t. Lesson for us all, right?”
Graveyard heaved the sack back up into his arms. “Where do you want these?”
“Follow me.” They made their way through a narrow winding maze of handmade bookcases overflowing with thousands of esoteric volumes hard and soft, title after title even know-it-all literary types invariably failed to recognize. PlexiBerryPunch had dedicated his life to locating a solution to the “problem” of the universe. Which was good if you regarded the universe as a “problem.” He did.
“I’m afraid I’ve come to the conclusion,” he had once informed Graveyard, “that we are, in fact, quite alone.”
Graveyard looked around. They were seated at the time at the raucous center of the downtown AuditoriumGrille. “You mean, as in lonely in a crowd?”
“I mean, as in drifting aimlessly through eternal solitary night. How’s that for a vision? We are, unfortunately, finally and fatally, cosmically alone. At three in the morning we all know it’s true. There’s nothing else out there. Alien life forms, where are they? Billions and billions of stars, right? Billions and billions of planets. An infinity of possibilities in which to cook up other chances, and yet so far, nothing. Absolutely nothing. No riveting air show, no Great Lawn landing, not even the slightest radio peep. Nothing. Just deep deep-space silence.”
“Yes, but what about UFOs?”
“What about Santa Claus?”
“Folks have seen them.”
“They’ve seen Santa, too.”
“They’ve gotten gifts from him.”
“Still waiting for my puppy from Mama Martian. As yet, not even a measly chunk of comet coal. You want to know what’s out there, what’s really out there? I’ll tell you: a badass cosmos of rainbow-flavored fantasies. So unfortunately, I’m afraid that all this”—his dismissive gesture encompassed the entire Grille and beyond—“is definitely it.”
“If that’s true, seems like quite a ludicrous and terribly inefficient waste of space.”
“Only from our antlike perspective. Check this out. Universe is infinite, right? And what if, as so many have speculated, all those nasty black holes the universe is apparently riddled with are simply portals to other universes that are equally infinite? So what we’re left with is an infinity of infinities. Which, of course, makes our universe about as common as a grain of sand in your eye at the beach. Like the man said, alter the scale and you alter the perception, right? Which leads us to one basic, inescapable truth: our planet and this whole living, breathing commotion and everything we see or don’t see, in the sky, the stars, the scary, pulsating darkness, is here just for us. Us alone. Other forms we can’t even begin to imagine inhabit their own separate and distinct universes. And no matter how much we might wish it otherwise, we’ll never see those creatures, we’ll never know them. We’re not meant to. Clash of realities, you know. Very messy. Very, shall we say, apocalyptic.”
“Am I supposed to be comforted or depressed?”
“Your choice.”
Punch’s bedroom was about the size of a pricegrabber cabin on a no-budget cruise line. Mattress on the floor, blank beige walls. No windows. The place reeked of male b.o. and a piney, indescribable incense from the distant past that took immediate hold of the back reaches of the sinus cavities, sending out sneezing signals that stopped just short of producing an actual sneeze. “In there,” Punch said, pointing to an open closet, its musty, overpacked contents spilling out into the room like stuffing from a split couch cushion. Graveyard set the bag down with a grunt, shoved it as best he could in the general direction of a rear corner. “You’re sure this—”
PlexiBerryPunch made a dismissive snorting sound. “You know the last time someone was in this shithole, let alone this room, let alone that closet?” From the floor of said closet he scooped up an armful of dirty laundry, draped the wrinkled T-shirts, the wadded briefs artfully over the bag. “There,” he said. “All safe and tidy. No one’s gonna mess with that stinky heap.”
“You’re a good guy, PlexiBerryPunch.” Graveyard patted him on the shoulder like someone insincerely attempting, and failing to be, insincerely affectionate.
They’d first met some fifteen years ago or so, when both found themselves putting in time at SweetDigits—adding files, deleting files, adding files, toting up apples to arrive at oranges, then repeating the whole soul-abrading process in reverse. What remained of Graveyard’s mind after six months of this merry-go-round was barely sufficient to successfully oversee the morning shoe-tying ritual. For PlexiBerryPunch the job hardly even qualified as a trifle. He could do it with one hand in his sleep. Or down his pants. And often did. He was some sort of incognito computer wiz, which enabled him now to only seek employment when he needed to, i.e., whenever the shekels ran low. He’d managed somehow, in his limited excursions into the wonderful world of wage slavery, to acquire a lucrative reputation as “the one consultant you must consult” whenever your computer stuff needed a “wash and rinse.” But actually, PlexiBerryPunch, for all his wallet-fattening abilities, hated work. He hated the concept of work. He hated the actuality of work. He hated the sentimentalization of work. He hated the word work. He believed his fellow citizens were sadly deluded on the subject, as they were, in his opinion, on most subjects. His quotable quote on the worship of work: “You can run, but you can’t hide.”
Back out in the slight clearing in the stacks PlexiBerryPunch persisted in calling his living room—two kitchen chairs, milk-carton table, plastic lamp, and a clear glass ashtray containing a half-eaten enchilada resting atop an impressive mound of filterless cigarette butts (naughty naughty PlexiBerry)—he sat Graveyard down and offered him a couple of hits of powdered ellipsis.
“Ambience’s favorite,” said Graveyard. “But really, I can’t. We’re leaving in a couple hours.”
“Yes, why?”
“Why what?”
“This ridiculous trip. I mean, really, in this day and age, why go anywhere at all? Who needs to? Just screen it. Click, click. There you are.”
“We want the tastes, too. The smells. We want to get down and dirty with all that suggestive foreignness.”
“Well, yes, the smells.” He was nose-vacuuming the ellipsis off a hard-used copy of MediumRare’s magisterial The Isness of Is. “Fun drug.” He cleared his nose. “Comes in all formats. Powder, pill, crystal, and liquid. Sure you don’t want a lick? It’ll X out the flight.”
“Tempting. But think I want to experience this one in all its aggravating glory. I haven’t been anywhere in years.”
“Suit yourself. But let me lay on you a fabulous parting gift for later. Just in case.” His hand rummaged around inside his robe, emerged displaying on his palm what looked like a couple of pellets of grayish navel lint.
“Where, exactly, you been stashing this shit?”
“Over the hills and far away. Where do you think? What a squeamish lad. I’m as clean as your very own toilet seat. Which, interestingly enough, modern science has proved definitely to be the most sanitary spot in anyone’s home.”
“What are they?”
“Those?” Bending over to inspect the fuzzy objects as though he had never encountered them before in his entire curiosity-driven life. “Oh, I suspect those to be first cousins of the most extraordinary kind to our dear friend candylane. And you know how that do.”
“Wish I didn’t.”
“Were you aware that ninety percent of the universe is composed of dark matter? Ninety percent. Do you know what dark matter is?”
“You’ve already told me this, not once but several times.”
“Good. I love repeating myself. Do you know what dark matter is?”
“I’m sure I don’t.”
“Neither does anybody else. So you realize, then, what that means. All but a minuscule fraction, a tiny sliver, really, of the known universe is absolutely unknown. Nada, nothing. A frightening void at the very center of our comprehension. Science, our cleanup batter, has struck out. Little of any real consequence is understood in even the meanest way. And it’s the bottom of the ninth and we’re losing. In a shutout. Mystery wins. Anything is possible.”
