Turbo Spin

Turbo Spin

             10/22/88-10/8/89, 12Kw,                by D.C., C.Z., C.H.

                              1.

How I spend my life:

        At 8:25 yesterday I had a panic attack and rushed into Bloomie's to buy

something.  I was temporarily deranged. A voice inside my head kept saying,

"Only five minutes before the stores shut.  Buy! Buy! Buy!".  Bloomie's was full

of sweating men buying women's underwear.  I finally recovered my senses and

ducked into a local bar.  After seven Guinnesses, I met an interesting woman in

a very short skirt.  I talked brilliantly and with consummate wit for an hour,

but then she said, "I have a boyfriend". I smiled, and she shrugged and said,

"He has a gun". 

   I left the bar and wandered up Fifth Avenue. I saw a great light up ahead in the sky. 

My God, SPACESHIP! But no, only shop windows. I went home and put a sign on my door, 

NO HAWKERS TRADERS OR PHILISTINES. Maybe it will work. The kid next door 

saw it and sneezed on me.  Now I am rife with childish infectious diseases.

     The phone rings. It's my ex-wife. She sounds hysterical--no doubt spooning

down a quart of peanut-brittle Häagen-Dazs. I can smell her moldy shower curtain

on the receiver. "I almost bought an aqua Porsche with yellow seats today", she

coos above the Ventura Freeway din. 

     "But they wouldn't accept food stamps. I met a college pal of yours in my 

breathing class at Glendale, and he invited me to his condo in Ojai for the 

weekend.  I want you to know I'm going". I hang up.  

     Palm fronds rattle behind my eyeballs. I'm an overturned semi on the rest-stop

of the highway of destiny. I bite into a whole tomato and stare at myself in the

mirror. I hear the heavy, thumping  gait in the corridor.

                              2.

     "What do YOU want now!", I snarl almost simultaneously with the knock on

the door. The guy leaning against the corridor as I open the door wears

sneakers, plaid pants that are too big and a lived-in blazer that's too small.

He is Ricardo, "the Professor" as they call him at the club. His white mane

is oiled down on his scalp. "The question is, Dave," he leers,  "what do YOU

want. Yessss! what do YOU want from life. I think I have an idea that should

interest you. May I come in",  he says as he is already plopping on the couch

and pulling a pint of apricot schnapps out of his vest pocket. 

   "Have you ever wondered where Elvis goes when he is not sighted around 

the country?"

   And the old creep starts yapping. His cheap boozy breath grinds my face like

the Santa Annas. "A stout man's heart breaks bad luck. 

Buen corazón quebranta mala ventura ¿Que no? And you and I

got what it takes, Davie". He looks up from his landfill of wisdom and coughs

something gritty on his knee. "It's Feynman's body". I chew the styrofoam cup

with my whiskeyed cough syrup. I know what he's up to even before his brain

damage gets to it. Damn! I know it better than Sterno knows blue. "We GOT to

get to that body, Davie, and it's not where you think it is. It's as good as

ours. We've lived dogs' lives, kid, but it's our turn to get off the

furniture".  My knees are twitching in synch with the roar of my migraine.

    Ricardo reaches inside his pants and scratches furiously. His eyes roll,

he coughs, and drops over on the floor. The machine-gun fire coming from the

VCR sounds like static. The room is getting ever hotter: the slimeball landlord

doesn't believe in thermostats. The grease stains on the kitchen ceiling are

beginning to spread. I pry the apricot schnapps from Ricardo's stiff fingers

and finish it off. I piss in the sink, then put on a pair of running shoes and

a raincoat. 

   Taking a deep breath, I stuff a couple more tomatoes in the left pocket. I pack 

my bicycle chain in a ziplock bag and throw it in the right one,  then empty a jar 

of mayo on Ricardo's grinning face and slam the door shut.

   Out of the oven and into the drizzle. Taxis are jamming the coda of their horn

motet. The cross-town train quickly brings me to the Port Authority bus station

and I buy a one-way ticket to New Paltz. When the bus comes, I sit towards the

back and fall asleep.

                                 3.

   Sure thing, Ricardo invades my dreams.  He and I are sitting on a park bench

somewhere in San Marino. The stench of his urine-soaked pants makes the

scateboarders whizzing by lose their balance. Somebody who looks like Pavarotti

is playing tennis with two blonde girls from the local high school. Ricardo

whispers in my ear, "YOU can be as famous as Feynman; ALL you need to do is to

find his body and .....". He starts to shake my body back and forth. 

   Now we are on a bus that looks like Dolly Parton's trailer. His left hand holds a 

paper bag filled with Sterno, which he chews furiously as he shouts at me. "FOOL!  

Don't you want to be immortal!  Look around you at all these assholes. You are 

trapped in their cage. Do you want to waste your life like them?".

     "I don't have a life to waste", I grumble.  An ectomorph lime-haired punk

rocker in the seat behind sneezes and and fixes his eyes on Ricardo. "What does

this coke-snorting psychopathic killing machine want?" I ask Ricardo. My life is

saved by the bus driver, who shouts out, "FRESNO!  REST STOP!!". 

       I am confused -- Fresno is in California.

       I get off the bus, dogged by Ricardo, who keeps on shouting. I scream

back, "How the hell did you find me?" He pukes on the floor of the bus depot,

intercalating words and purple vomit. "Yess.....Feynman's body waaaas.....taken

by David Lethserman .....who wanted to interface it to a Cray.....so he could

get them Nobel prizes and O-rings..." Ricardo wipes his face on my raincoat. 

"But I learned where Lesterman lives, it's RIGHT NEAR HERE!".  

    I wander into the restroom to clean Ricardo's puke off my new coat. Ricardo has 

both his arms around me.  A man dressed in leather pants comes out of one of the 

stalls and winks.  I don't bother to explain, and drop Ricardo's head into the nearest

toilet bowl.  He whips out a toothbrush and begins to brush his teeth.

                           4.

    I run back to the bus. I sit down next to an attractive woman.  She tells me

that she likes the purple patterns on my raincoat and asks where I got it.  She

has a firm but concerned expression and hands me a kleenex. I can feel the

tomatoes in my pocket have split. We both smile. She is about thirty five years

old, dressed like an insurance vice-president, with hypnotic gray-lace pantyhose

and a curious bow-tie thing on her blouse. Her raincoat is turquoise, her eyes

are cornflower blue, and her hair is RED. She's got to be Fergie's cuter sister.

I lose track of this cadaver bullshit. I breathe in her perfume, remember to

control my grin, and, "Going to Atlantic City?", I ask her eagerly.

  She laughs.  "We are in CALIFORNIA, Rip Van, didn't my brother Ricardo tell

you that? You have slept a LONG time, all the way across the country."  I begin

to moan softly and rock back and forth in my seat. This can't be happening. This

can't be happening.  I search through my pockets  for some Valium but can only

find the tomatoes.  I take a bite, gurgle and bray, jumping up in the bus. The

driver and one of the punk rockers pick me up and throw me off, into the streets

of Fresno.

   It is three in the morning, and a cocktail waitress bicycles up to me in the

mercury light of the parking lot. "Why, Rudi, where HAVE you been?" she purrs.

"My jacuzzi has been asking about you". I don't know what she's saying, but it

sounds better than a lot of things. I walk her and her bike to her apartment.

The "Jardin del Sueño Hermoso", it calls itself. The bright light from the

bottom of the pool lights her underchin. Eucalyptus leaves crush under our feet.

We go into her apartment and  she lights a candle as she kicks off her shoes.

In the dim candlelight, I can make out enormous canvas paintings of fried eggs

mounted high, near the ceiling. The rug smells of oranges. Her legs bring tears

to my eyes. "I'll bet you didn't know Dick Feynman is in town, did you, Rudi?"

she whispers.

                             5.

    Ensign Yordul was unusually woozy that night. It was that useless jubilee

party in the ceremonial hall of the space platform the day before. The console

had been acting up since 23:00qn. Sabotage or plain incompetence? The

subroutines for the Taj Mahal, Princeton, the Bermuda Triangle, as well as the

most popular channels like Elvis and Feynman were seriously corrupted and had

to be reimaged. The link to the "National Enquirer" was completely down.

   He'd been fixing things for too many years to believe the system had been

configured by intelligent life. Paradoxes had a way of sliding into

contradictions. Already that night, he had received an official reprimand from

the ponderous Commodore himself (who could not check his ears' rambunctious

wagging) for the disturbing images that started filling up several screens all

of a sudden: A livid tall guy in a purple-camouflage raincoat bellowing at a

mailbox in Fresno, and then getting delirious in Ruby's apartment. Her software

performed, but the damping do-loops obviously needed some rewriting, in view of

the giggly paroxysms they occasioned. After the human vectors calmed down at

last, they both snuggled to sleep, which Yordul programmed to last for 22

hours: he made sure their wakeup wouldn't fall in his shift, but in Ludroy's

instead. 

      Ludroy was up for performance review, so maybe he needed a little test

of crisis management skills there.

                                   6.

   The warm sun hit me as I was lying with my head on Ruby's stomach. I watched

a couple of scarlet tanagers fixing up their nest on the television antenna

outside for a while. It got interesting when they got hold of a tattered piece

of velcro. I nibbled her thigh and shuffled into the sweet morning. I sat in

the jacuzzi, turned on the bubbles and heard a couple of acts of "The Magic

Flute" in my mind. Ruby joined me wearing one of those Rio exopygous

bottoms, and we had grapes and cantaloupe. In the hot water, my body was gone

and I was pure spirit. I stared at the hibiscus bush for twenty minutes. A

gleaming jet plane flew overhead. Life was not bad for a while. Then, a few

feet behind me, the voice spoke.

   "Whaddaya MEAN you don't understand your GOD-DAMN detector's acceptance?"

The voice was unmistakably Feynman's. He was standing right there, glowering

at a quailing experimentalist. Ricardo was a few feet behind them gnawing on

a raw potato, and Elvis next to him drinking from a banquet-size can of beer.

But. But Feynman's feet, in his usual oxblood suede shoes were twice as big.

Ricardo's sister appeared from the greenery, and she too had big feet.

It wasn't normal. 

     I looked at Ruby, but she jumped out of the jacuzzi and, in the bouncy splendor 

of her tanga, ran into the house.

     "When I see your RESULTS, I expect them to MEAN something. WHY do you 

bother to show us all this if they mean NOTHING!", snarled Feynman, "you are 

taking up MY time, and HIS, and HIS, and HERS!"; he pointed at everyone except 

Ricardo who grinned triumphantly. Suddenly, the water felt clammy.

                                 7.

    In no time, we are flying over the Redlands. For a moment, the brown

cracked earth is overhead, then again beneath me. My jeans fuse with sweat to

the naugahide copilot's seat. The Cessna heaves and tosses like a mouse's head

in a cat's paw. Ricardo in the seat behind us is asleep--I can hear his

apneatic exhales. My left kidney is being mulched by a spastic gremlin. I

struggle to keep my horizontal bearings. "Relax," mutters Slutz, our pilot,

whose gaze remains transfixed on the peaks of the San Bernardinos, "You'll be

stiff as a corpse tomorrow morning unless you let yourself be part of the

plane." I feel like a doberman in a spin-dryer.

    San Jacinto looms ahead in the waning sunlight and I look around for

the long trail of aluminum jets on final to LAX. I count the screws on the

window mounting. The moon is rising in the east.  Out the pilot's side I see a

jet airliner scream just below us. "Are you SUPPOSED to be here?," I gasp.

Slutz only acknowledges with a peaceful smirk. I've gone numb below the

waist. The plane bears sharply down to the left as a great black hillside fills

the rattling windshield and the raking and slamming in the turbulence resumes.

My bladder lets go. Ricardo stirs. The fat lights of Palm Springs appear in the

red haze. "It's going to cost you, fuckhead," mutters Slutz.

    The landing fees are a problem. They don't take credit cards. I grab

Ricardo's wallet and find a few bandaids and a five-hundred dollar bill that

gets us half-way there. A short dark man in cowboy boots, puffing on a cigar by

his cadillac comes over and rescues us. "Call me Tom Pynchon", he smiles. "We

left Dick at the pool, but the King is kind of irritable today, so he came for

the ride". Ricardo goes into an obscure zoot pantomime with Elvis in the back

seat, while Tom asks me nerdy rocket questions. I'm staring at my revolting

jeans.  "Feynman would have known the answer", he sighs.

                                 8.

   Its really dark now, as David Letterman flashes his gap-toothed smile.

Maniacal music grinds in the night. The steadicam is dropping towards

our pool like a cinderblock as the frantic audience howls. "You thought

I'd have the Challenger astronauts on tonight, didn't you?" he teases his

retarded audience. "Well folks, we can do BETTER! Ladies and gentlemen,

dear hearts and special friends, we are about to present LIVE and ON CAMERA

the first example of a reanimated corpse ever seen on network TV!". The camera

focuses on Ricardo, who stares back at it.  Beer begins to gurgle out of his

mouth in an ever-widening stream.  I am somehow reminded of Nevada Falls in the

Yosemite Valley up north.  Ricardo screams something in Spanish at the videocam,

which jumps back, covered with purple foam. 

      Letterman continues, "As we see, ladies and gentlemen, the corpses have

not yet achieved their FULL MENTAL CAPACITY. Nevertheless, the process of

COMPUTER INTERFACING in order to create life out of INANIMATE MATTER has become

more than a pipedream of a few brilliant computer scientists.  Our studio team

has achieved the ULTIMATE scientific breakthrough, and,in honor of the occasion,

I was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics this year.  Unfortunately, the twits

keep calling me Leon, but this will get straightened out soon. So, nice folks,

we have with us tonight Mr. Pynchon , Mr. Feynman, and..." David watches Elvis

throw a towel over his head to undercut his triumph. The hell with him. "...and

their crackerjack O-ring associates!".

   The audience goes pentecostal. Ricardo nods his head modestly.  Letterman

perpetrates another grin, pauses for effect, then says, "And now, let us hear

a word from our sponsor, the Elvira computer company". The red light on the

videocam goes off, and Ricardo slowly sinks beneath the waves of the pool.

Great. Now we are entertainment material for night-shift janitors, insomniacs,

brain-damaged recluses, and sex-by-phone hostesses. Feynman lifts his foot out

of the water, and it is obvious that it is GROWING.

  The red light goes on again.  The blinding white camera lights are squeezing

us into the water, as a helicopter flies by.  Every time I wipe my hair off my

forehead there is an obnoxious flourish from the orchestra. I watch Pynchon's

growing foot, and he nods reassuringly.  A studio technician mutters something

about a bug in the program. A large, soft thing starts to surround my legs. It's

protoplasmic, like rotten cauliflower sitting at the bottom of a warm fridge

for months. I kick back at it, and it rolls around enough for me to see that it

is bound up in a pair of shoelaces that could pass for swamp roots. I quietly

backpaddle to the side of the pool and ease my battered body out.  Ricardo

reaches up and grabs my bolo tie.  I mutter something about grabbing another

Margarita, and he lets me go. The feet are growing, and Ricardo and the others

begin to look like little cherries in a foot-jello  pudding. They go on growing,

and I can see the outlines of an eyeball extruding itself from the toe of one.

     A clawed hand begins to bubble out from another. I count heads, and it looks

like there are fewer than a moment ago. I try to shout a warning, but

Letterman's booming voice hogs the airwaves with sound and nobody hears me.

"Silence is the wit of fools", I remember and shut up. Now the surface of the

pool itself becomes convex, and a long protoplasmic feeler ripples tentatively

in the air.

     I dash away and trip on the fat power cables of the sound system, seething

with buzzing kilovolts. As I'm passing out, I hear the audience "ooohhh" at the

pyrotechnics.

                                   9.

    By and large, electricity is the ultimate path to spiritualization. But

I've never been anything but a brilliant afterthought in the nightmare of

futility. I open my eyes and reach for edge of the pool. My fingers feel

something sticky and lippy. A mass of blond hair and something gooey upon a

gleaming metal surface reflecting the strobe. I gasp, then see it's a bowl of

dip. The raga wafts into my ears.

   A pneumatic beauty reaches over to pat my hand as she turns and wiggles away

with her afghans. Pausing and turning to me, dropping her cleavage down like a

V1 on London, she whispers, "Its never been so good here since this guy got

up." With her eyes, she points at Ricardo, now clean and spiffy and prosperous

in a white linen suit, patting her on the fanny and nodding to me solemnly.

Feynman across the pool flashes an exuberant smile. He's floating on his back,

as a pulchritudinous nymph tends to him. But no, it can't be... they get out of

the pool and head for a cabana, she leading him by the hand: DONNA REED! I slip

in the water. I can't grasp my own ribs in the water that's foaming and

splashing about me...and the other woman that the old boozer drags off into

the garden...JAYNE MANSFIELD?

    I look into the water before me, roiling and heaving. The plane has come

apart. The approach to LAX must have been too low. Slutz, frantic at last, rises

waist-high out of the waters, but then slams down and I see the shark's fins

follow. I grab the wing. But where ARE my ribs? Then the water swallows me for

a moment, and I feel the burning again. My own feet big now, I'm impaled on an

oil-drilling platform off San Clemente island.

                                   10.

     The scuba divers rise slowly out of the greening water, pointing at me

and gesturing to each other.  Their leader has red hair flashing in the sun

and clinging sweetly on her curvy black wetsuit. She raises her face mask to

her forehead, and her clear eyes gleam brighter than the turquoise waters:

she is Ricardo's sister. Her mesmerizing legs don't abut in flippers--she,

like the others, doesn't need any. I can tell Elvis from the rhinestones on

his weight-belt, and Feynman from his bouncy, energetic splashing as he paddles

up the landing ramp. Thank God, Ricardo is missing. Swarms of cormorants take

their distance. They all come over to me, and "Welcome to the tribe!" they all

say warmly and playfully. The seaweed scent coming off Ricardo's sister's hair

is making me giddy.

   "Death is a fact of life", says Feynman, "and if you HAVEN'T figured it

out, space cadet, lemme tell you how it works. ALL sweeping generalizations

are wrong, but what's the use of rhetorical questions?"

   "Yeh," Elvis joins him, "wouldn't every lefty give his right arm to be

ambidexterous?". He looks triumphant.

   "We're real proud of our humility in this business", scoffs Tom, "but not

like back then". "Right", continues Feynman, "they don't resist nostalgia like

they used to". "We all Have to believe in free will", nods Bashevis,

"we have No choice". My eyes start popping.

   "Don't worry, nobody does anything about apathy", reassures me Tom, "so we

won't literally maxim you to dizzyness, in a manner of speaking". "Don't verb

your nouns," warns Ricardo's sister; "In fact, all we need here is patience,

and we need it RIGHT NOW!" She looks at me. "But you know....somehow... in the

past, the future used to be more immediate....I wonder if we've been jinxed".

    "It's real bad luck to be superstitious", adds Elvis, "but when it gets

like this I'm POSITIVE the paranoids are all out to get us". He slicks his wet

ducktail. "I'm gonna live forever... or die trying!", reassures me Tom. 

    "Why don't you explain things dammit!", I ask. They all look at each other,

shake their heads slowly, and Ricardo's sister sighs,"I guess we'll just have to

leave our procrastinations for tomorrow". And they dive away.

                                 11.

   The alarm clock is digital and starts beeping Ludroy's brains out till he

knocks over the lamp as he slams it off. Then he remembers the cheap wine and a

wave of hangover-migraine hits him in the head like a Volkswagen on a concrete

abutment. But he gets up. His feet miss the rug and touch the cold anodized

steel as Ingeltraut stirs. In the little kitchen, he watches out over the rusty

plain as the sun rises over a distant ridge. The sky is pink and the peaks look

like molten solder as he stares for a minute straight into the sun. For a moment

he's back in Yuba city, or maybe Bryce Canyon, on his centennial pilgrimage to

Caltech. But the stars are still plainly visible in the thin blue-tinted

atmosphere, and as he flips on the radio he hears the lobotomic DJ cheer on,

" Good Morning, Mars."

    Ingeltraut appears, and she's only got his tweed jacket on. As she reaches

for the coffee on the top shelf, her sculpted compact buttocks show and she

throws him her inviting smile. She also throws him a grapefruit. In a minute,

they are back in bed rolling and coupling like rabbits. Jesus, he's already 63

years old and he never had such great coupling on Earth or around it. The

morning is coffee, coupling, shower, mating, some TV, coupling -- the elk in

Montana couldn't have it better. HE wouldn't call this "disfavorable posting"!

He then goes out for a spin to the mall for cigarettes, his lucky lottery

ticket, and maybe some terrestrial newsbulletin like the Enquirer.

    In the Tabac shop on level 4, he spots a magazine. On its cover, CONTEMPO

has a great shot of RPF, vintage `72. He picks it up as he reruns some of that

old mental footage. The check--out girl remarks, "Great story... Do you think

he's really been seen again?"  He  snaps back to the present and fails to

finesse his reply, "Uh, er, I knew him..." The girl clams up and gives him a

glare.

        By 24:07, they're on board the Emily Dickinson and en route to M27,

Ludroy as the team's artist. He's half asleep while some pipsqueak punk

geologist from Neptunian Harvard is rambling on to his disciples about Martian

vulcanism. In the distance, the isolated craggy bluffs appear, and in seconds

they're overhead.

     The little Harvard intellecto rodent pontificates, "Definitely Feynman's

nose --- and look at that forehead." The others nod in pious agreement and the

photographer starts clicking away. "Perhaps the greatest observation in

history... what luck... back on Earth they'll be rewriting the Bible...".

To him it looks like Elvis, but these morons don't even know who he was.

    "What??" says the Harvardian snob.

    "Elvis," he says, "Yuh know, like Bach or Mozart..."

    "Oh," says the Harvard, and there follows a moment of concerned silence

and then his continuing commentary on the Feynman likeness. He wonders if it

went the same way for Veltman.

    After another round of quality time with Ingeltraut, he transmits the photos

from his PC to his Editor in the Tishman building via ethernet. Transit time to

earth is only 9 minutes in martian opposition, so he figures the 10,000 Belgian

Francs will appear in his account in about 20 minutes. Plenty of time for

another mating spin.

                                   12.

      The dance hall reminds me of the place I was sent as an adolescent, in

lieu of detention, to learn how to treat a woman. The wooden floor had some

trace of an ancient lacquer but for the most part was sanded to a natural

smooth surface still coveted in yacht racing. The place reeked of a

half-century of cigarette smoke, but the chandeliers were enormous, fixed at

a dizzying height and the photohistory on the wall drew my attention. Ever

since I first glimpsed at history, from the conquest of the Winnebago Indians

to the cutting of the ribbon at the groundbreaking of the Merchant Marine bank

of Central Wisconsin, laid out before me in the photochronology of past

presidents of the Menasha Elk's Club, I have been fascinated by these things.

But a crowd stands before me and this wall of revered leaders, and for the

moment I forgo getting into their story.

     The music is alive and the crowd is rhythmically engaged. Tommy Dorsey

snaps his fingers and cooly sweeps his gaze across the throng. I see Feynman

leaning against the wall, his right foot flat on the wall as he bangs a rhythm

with his palms. He's smiling at a pretty brunette who flirts and laughs. Donna

grabs my arm and leads me to the punch bowl, where she introduces me to some

austere, disengaged, and predictably well-put-together bankers. They are Swiss,

I realize, and have been dead for some 80 years. One of them knew Queen Victoria

well, "on a first name basis". "Vicky?" I jest, which only deepens their chill.

I remember that a banker's lot is eternal; step into the warren  of fiduciary

equity enhancement, and there is no release, not in death, nor in violence.

Feynman would later observe, "Money ain't real... it's a label, a shared

fiction, a symbol; you might as well be counting the hair follicles on your

dog...at least that's real. You zap them with UV and they fluoresce like a

thousand points of light. "

     Donna senses it isn't going well, and breaks us away to introduce me to

some of her old Hollywood friends. I enjoy a raucous conversation with William

Bendix.  Bogart is a bore: he says nothing , chain-smokes, and seems nervous,

like the cops or the IRS are just outside waiting for him. Bendix says he's

always like that, but Donna changes the subject. Hours pass, and I finally

realize it's been days, but the party is just  getting cranked up.

     Finally, I get to the wall with the history of the "Universe Club" as told

by the photos of its past Presidents. I always look for the first one, and then

compare to the present one. I like to see the evolution of the quality of

photoreproduction, the yellow tint of the old paper and the soft-focus of the

middle-era lens to the crisp cheapness of the mechanical modern-day finished

product. To me, this is real history, the rise and fall of the sensitive empire

as well as good taste, all sliding on the back of technology and fast-buck

obsessives. But these are all well done, soft-focused images, like they were

ultimately intended as theater posters for a Busby Berkeley cinema spectacle.

I can't find the picture of the first President of the Universe Club on this

wall. I manage to locate an early one, some "Sarajen I of Urm", whose eyes are

small and set back into the skull like a lizard's. His grin is oily, and I

flash-back to a line I once heard about painting any car for $99.95. They don't

seem to be in any manifest order.

       Further down the line appears a humble, wart-covered, monastic yet

fulfilled face of "Sid the Barber": this time I make out some dates:

"1356 -- 1389." The presidents of the Universe Club are important and merit

closer scrutiny, but I'm interrupted as a commotion breaks out near the punch

bowl. It involves Donna, a protective instinct for whom has been working its way

into my kidneys. Sid the Barber and Lenny the Plumber can wait,  I decide.

                                 13.

 The check-out counters of Aldi's and Safeway now sport a new tabloid headline:

"Feynman's face  Seen on Mars." Normally, most of these things are the day's

joke at the lunch table, until someone gets the subject back on to operating

systems, while others are gone for coffee. But this headline with Ludroy's

photoplay blows the collective pants off America, from the halls of the Dow

Jones Board to the roof of the M.I.T. dome, to the Hotel Jerome at Aspen, and

even President Quayle has to respond.

   "As you know, my friends and Americans, I know most of my staff on a first

name basis. I've enjoyed LUNCH with them, and I've also played golf with Mrs.

Kohl. So I know quite a bit about science. I have worked very closely with my

science colleagues, making sure that science is taken care of. And, uh...,

I always believed in the family and accurate ballistics so that we can have

precise precision. I'm here then to EXPLAIN to you that in

my entire political EXPER'ENCE, I've never come across such an uncalled-for

rumor. I've never suppressed any UFO investigation results EVER. NONE of our

satellites have received information on ANY face on Mars, including the ones

refitted for TELEMETRY  and ENCRYPTION at the restructured SDI-JPL campus.

As George used to say that fateful night that gave me the privilege to serve my

country, as, of course, I was supposed to always prepare for, uh..., ah

yes...., as he was watching the David Letterman show, "some day, Dan, you may

have to explain yourself to the crowds just like him, and they'll expect of you

even more. And ALWAYS brush the popcorn off your shirt". The president is

warming to the occasion. "My national science advisor here, Dr. Arcangello, uh,

Ricardo, uh, from the Washington Academy of Sciences will explain it all to you.

Ricardo?"

    Ricardo is shaking from a two day dry-spell. As he rises to the Presidential

podium, he shifts and nervously scrutinizes the audience. He squints into the

lights like a prospector in the Nevada sun. He scratches. He wheezes, rasps,

then forces out a textured baritone "testing..." into the microphone to the

consternation of a hundred eager journalists and news mavens. Then he backs

away, nearly losing his balance, and utters a hushed " I canna do it...", while

photostrobes blast away. Quayle is visibly perturbed and looks around

desperately for a cue. His face brightens up, and shoves his press secretary,

Ricky Timble Jr., up to the podium. "We'll have more to tell you, ah, later,

after we, er ah, review the facts...that's all..." and runs away off-stage

trailing a gaggle of secret service personnel. Ricardo, however, is now

energized: he runs to the podium and grabs one of the mikes off its stand,

nearly biting it, and screams:

    "Eet is TRUE!!! Eet is a FACT!! A TRUE FACT!!" The PA system distorts.

"Deeck and the others... they return from the dead!!!"

      A hush falls on the audience and not a pen can be heard scribbling on a

notepad. The TV camera cuts in close to the tears streaming down the grizzled

cheeks. "Eet is true... You remember he escaped from Los Alamos, deedent hee?"

Another painful pause. "Annn, hee got Johnny Big's wife right unner hees nose,

dinna hee?" A grey-haired Dan Rather drops his pencil and looks like Quayle.

"Annanother theeng...I have been to theese place of the dead....EEs GREAT!!!"

As he scratches, a burly giant wielding an Uzi grabs him from behind the neck,

nearly ripping out a tuft of tobacco--stained white hair and drags him off the

stage. But not early enough. The lobotomy team at the Bethesda Navy Hospital

will be working overtime tonight.

                                14.

    They replay the news conference twenty times on CBS, and continuously for

3 days on C-Span. On the one Martian channel it displaces the NFL play-off

between Tampa Bay and the Packers. Ludroy and Ingletraut watch it in silence

in bed. The Caltech student body cancels senior ditch day to hold a mass

discussion group.

    We hear it over the big-band sounds of Glenn Miller on a boom box someone

lends to Donna for the polio benefit she hosted in `38. Everyone's looking for

Dick, but he has disappeared...I figure he's up in his suite, demonstrating

bongo karma to  an interested girl radiating curiosity. Pynchon glares at me.

"You DIDN'T!?" he growls lividly. "I kept MY authorial cover for a whole

lifetime and it takes you A FEW DAMN YEARS to spill the beans!" The story of my

life. No place for my explanations.

   First I check out the pool. Only Jayne's head seems to float ethereally on

the surface of the water, and one of her Afghans nearly robs me of all future

plans of paternity. "I haven't seen him," she giggles. So I go search the grand

hotel. The place is empty and hushed, with everyone down in the dance hall.

    I round a corner into a cavern that looks like the hall of mirrors at

Versailles and there appear two tuxedoed guys: the one I recognize is the

Swiss banker who knew "Vicky." "Young man, we should like a word with you,"

he insists. I follow them into a Louis XIV study and sit down, as a Calvados

snifter is placed before me. They start to ply me and work me worse than

Maryland stockbrokers. After some unctuous word-jazz, they come to the point.

    "Her Majesty has received word of these strange developments," he becomes

serious. "Your friend, Dr. Feynman, is a very brilliant man. Of course we've

had brilliant men here before. Er, ah, Paul Dirac, now he was very brilliant,

and so too...ah..."; the other interjects "well, Bruno Giordano, quite

brilliant"....."and very well informed. And Zucchini somebody....".  "I would

even rank some of the composers as brilliant, and Herr Bach continues to write,

but I wouldn't say clever in this sense... would you Ziewi?" "No, perhaps clever

in some other way, and VERY much appreciated by all of us, ... and by her

majesty, but in a way not... er witty? is that the proper word? Not witty...not

like this new fellow..."

    "Quite, indeed, brilliant ones arrive, quite often here in fact, but...well

there's a difference..." He continues, "Yes, for the most part they arrive

here as tired old men..." The other spoke, " `burned out' I think is the term;

they just seek the restful and quiet solitude that this place has to offer..."

"This is, perhaps, the most restful place in all of existence. Ah, but this

Feynman... well, in fact, I think he said it himself when we first introduced

him to the milieu, down in the dance hall...ummm, how did he put it, Ziewi?"

The other picks it up..." He said in a possibly rude manner, above the nice

music and all, well, he said `I AIN'T DEAD YET', ....."

       There is a long pause. Then, with humility, number one resumes,

"Well, her majesty and associates wish you to become a part of it, as it were...

We wish to make you an offer..." They make their case. After a pause they

inquire, "And so, are you interested in becoming a part of this elegant design?"

I grin, "Well, it all sounds interesting, but I gotta check it out with the new

Chairman of the Universe Club...."

     The two guys go pasty like drying tapioca pudding; their eyes hollow with

horror. They fumble to pick up the papers they've spread out on the desk and

whirr in agitated Schwyzerduetsch, their incomprehensible mantras ending in

"Quayle". As they bolt, I'm left alone in the dim light of the hall of mirrors

wondering what the hell is going on. And who is the new Chairman of the Universe

Club?

                                     15.

   You must have watched  freshmen fill their glasses with beer. That's how

commander Yodrul is typing code into the program now. Alarm lights blink on the

station; the emergency software team crews are woken up by their terminals

dropping on them from the ceiling, together with their amphetamine fix. Heads

will roll after this mess is dealt with. 

 "Sisyphus at your orders", mutters Yodrul, shaving 90 points off the Dow-Jones,

"fix-it, fix-it, bloody fix-it!... Backup records corrupted; hardware problems

all over the place; infinite do-loops swarming into the system....THIS HAS to be

what I got to be commander for". He raises the price of coka leaves  at the

Medellin exchange by 70%.  The Commodore moves in from the Koenigsberg situation

room like a spider. Too silent for him -- makes him fly off his chair.

"Ludroy got back at you, after all", the Commodore purses his lips to check

a smile.

"We haven't lost control".

"He is giving you a scare though. Doesn't look like an underachiever to me."

"You ARE aware of his execrable intellectual habits. His heart was not in our

project. All he did was throw abuse and didactic amulets to critics of his

shabby software".

"Anything not worth doing is not worth doing well, is it? If builders built

buildings the way you people build programs, the first woodpecker that came

along would destroy Seattle!"  Ear-flip, ear-flop.

"He had no respect for time. He didn't think about others."

"Probably because he wasn't out to get them. You should be kinder to your

forfeited friends."

"I never counted him among my friends."

"So tendentious...I suppose that's a way of doing business.... Still, friends

come and go, but enemies accummulate....."

"Commodore, I take my work seriously. We have a design".

"May we assume it has an undetected error?"

"There has NEVER been an undetected error in my code,  sir!"

"Are you feeling well? Perhaps you are trying too hard?"

"If it weren't for Feynman, we could have BEEN there. "

"I sure didn't wire Him!", smiles the Commodore shuffling out, ears aflip,

bent on reading up on Saskatchewan, the focus of his latest pet project.

   Yodrul steams and works. Commodores are not forever. For now, he's going to

reconfigure Stanford, Newport, Luxembourg, the President's shaky synapses, the

editorial staff of the Enquirer; and most importantly, the disturbing angel of

hyperactive insouciance who got himself ensconced in the controls of the

Universe Club.

    "You surely must be joking, Mr. Chairman", they google-eyed when, upon his

inauguration, he suggested to set up a sequence of "real neat snafu" crises for

Mr. Quayle and Dr. Fadeev, the new SSSR supreme soviet secretary, by way of a

"fun" intelligence test. He'd even worked out a demonstration computer virus

that permuted payroll numbers in Washington and Moscow and "protected budgets

against renormalization". Worse yet, when presented with his first Martian

teammates, he started pinching, manhandling, and otherwise "testing" them, to

"answer some questions he'd always had" about alternate life possibilities and

the limits of their intelligence. "Why don't you just tell me, you pesky little

teal runt, have YOU had any out of body experiences?".

  The chairman evidently knew more about quantum computers and how to break into

them than anyone on earth, alive or dead. He was out of control, and was even

beginning to breach security by talking to that unregenerate schizo, Ricardo!

But Yodrul could STILL write a mean code.

                           16.

    I gotta find the chairman. I get a ride in a 16-wheeler trailer out to

deliver paper in Chicago. The trucker is driving through the spruce forests

with his palsied girlfriend Sylvia huddled in the cab.  She whines about

how they both HATE Garfield cats stuck on car windows, and how they raid

parking lots and sledgehammer all windows with the dumb mascot peering

through them. A clump of trees whizzes by and looks like a giant rabbit. The

trucker has his knuckles tatooed with an acronym. When the green lights of

lower Wacker appear, he turns around with a grin and whacks her: "READ the

sign, right?", he giggles moronically.

     He lets me off by the sub-basement dock of the Wrigley Building.

I locate the Chairman, so I think, in the boiler room by the elevator shaft.

Asleep on a pile of oily burlap that came from Bombay around an Isberian

Brothers carpet, his grizzled stubbly face ends in a toothless jaw. He smells

like a rastafarian and is wheezing like Ricardo. I wake him up with a pitcher

of water.

    "Yepp" he finally concedes after some physical arguing, "I'm the guy

yurr lookin fur..." He rasps on, "Muh names' Twaite `Pappy' Finn... Ann I bin

in this job fur too long.."

  He chirps how he got here after a fatal barroom brawl in a North side saloon.

Done in by one Matt Moran, future uncle of a distinguished Chicago mobster

and collector of Irish bagpipes. He'd been the janitor of the 12th precinct

fire-hall for 20 years. Next day they make him Chairman of the Universe Club.

"Muh only job since iss bin takin good care of the babies, drunks and the

U. S. of A., deficit and all...well, hell, It ain'ty so easy... "

I notice the beat up desk in the corner and a stack of unread mail dating back

to 1899, as well as a bin full of unpaid bills and a few tons of ballots.

"Coarse, that new feller bin hepping me a bit o' late.."

   "What dyah MEAN", I scream.

   "Hee kin have the job if he wants -- he seems to like it". I drench the

stinker in hot coffee and he starts spilling the beans. About the

"reorganization", the "change of plans", the "buzzard project".

"Buzzard project?". "Oh, yess, you see, they feed therr yong wit'

re-gur-gi-ta-ted flesh. Get it?"  I finally lose it..."where the hell is DICK??"

"Try room number 137...".

     I run. I knock on the door of room number 137, and it opens to a meeting,

but the prissy swiss guy lets me in and I stand up against the wall...It feels

like a seminar at Caltech. A mental demolition derby. Seated around the room

are a throng of faces dressed in pompous uniforms. In a prominent ormolu chair

sits Queen Vicky herself, and she's halfway through a question that's got the

speaker, whose head I can't see because of the feathered hat of the Prince in

front of me, clearly excited. She pauses mid-sentence and the speaker cuts in.

I'd recognize the Brooklynese anywhere, and he starts illuminating the fat lady

with his vehement logic:

   "Hell no!!! It ain't got nuthin' to do with RELIGION... PEOPLE thought that

up, and any silly thing thought up by PEOPLE is gonna be as silly as PEOPLE

themselves...  Just because you haven't read about it in BOOKS, it doesn't MEAN

that it doesn't WORK."

     The Queen interrupts indignantly and drones on about some parable of

Plato and a man in a cave, but he cuts her off: "God-dammit, I don't have to

PROVE it's true `cause it IS true..." Glowing in this shower of attention, he

rants about quantum mechanics and virtual paths and world lines, and Jones

polynomials. His charged mental agility spins loose. He demonstrates by tying

knots and pulling them apart fast and smooth. His thoughts wander like a drunk

cat on a cornice. Then he stops on a drawn out "the end..", and he grins to

himself.

    There is deadly silence. The Queen fans herself and turns to a little

bulldog-faced guy dressed in a blue uniform who then pipes up: "So, Doktor,

this will allow all of us to simultaneously be, how did you put it...to be...

`regurgitated'... was that your word...??"

     "Yepp," says the speaker hitching up his pants, "you'll all be regurgitated

at once." They relax for a moment and then look around the room at one another;

a great sense of exhilaration sweeps the room... The Queen announces to the

gathering, "At last, dearest Albie, we can all be re-, re-, regurgitated!!!"

   Feynman casts a glance at me, pale as a dead fish tacked on a tree, and I

see a twinkle in his eye.

                                   17.

    Back in the boiler room, I find Pappy Finn is dead. Now, I know when I say

"dead", there can be some confusion on the meaning. We're all dead at some

level, even when we're living, and conversely I've seen that the dead are often

alive, and some like Dick are more alive dead than most of the living. But

Pappy is spread out on his burlap sack like a carp on the Cuyahoga, and he is

clinically dead...double dead, since he was dead to start with. Dick appears in

the doorway and looks at the pile of wrinkled burlap and Pappy Finn, and frowns

"Looks like yuh got a problem there."

   And soon the room is full of people, chattering away about political sorts

of things like "will the `lay-backers' be able to get a majority in the

cocktail club, or can the `get-up-and-goers' consolidate their hold on the sauna

and raquetball courts? Some of them are nice--looking women but so ambitious

you wouldn't even consider pokin' em before you consult a lawyer.

   But for the most part, they remind me of Texas politicians, perhaps a notch

above royalty, but their heads still deep in the slop-bucket. Two guys in white

suits carry the body out on a stretcher, neatly covered in a white linen sheet,

and an old black cleaning woman comes in and nearly breaks her back lifting the

burlap sack into a  dumpster-trolley. I try to lean over to help her,

but in the process I spill the sherry of one of the drony well-dressed

she-managers on the front of her suit-skirt. She shrieks and launches into a

diatribe of costs, rights, and indignation. "Best if used by yesterday!", I

reassure her. After she storms out, an impish elder gentleman turns to me and

congratulates me for giving all of them ideas, and they all nod appreciatively.

I watch myself acting out the only character they 'd like. Then, a fidgety guy

says, "We would also value your views on whom to choose as the new

chairman of the Universe club... Dr. Feynman lost interest and wishes to

concentrate on his project...." "Yes," lights up the elder man, "whom should

we choose?"

     I look up at Dick with his amused expression. "Yourself?" suggests the

elder gentleman. Now this scares me because it reminds me that I'm not the man

I used to be, and I'm still not really sure I know what's going on here, so I

decide I better punt, even at the risk that I'm passing up the opportunity of

a lifetime -- or whatever. Though I do flash for a moment to the thought of my

picture hanging in the gallery of past chairmen of the Universe club, I almost

trip on a thought that George didn't live to relish: "How about Jay Danforth

Quayle?" . "But he is alive!". "He IS? Well..?"

                                18.

   "Basmati rice", says the Pakistani terrorist flashing his three gold teeth,

"a day without basmati rice, without biryani, is wasted like a blind dog under

a train". His bloodshot eyes light up as he fingers handfuls of rice into his

mouth. He smiles innocently. The train, spewing coal smoke and particulate

embers, crawls up the grade to the top of Mount Washington: one of the last

steam engines doing something constructive in the U.S. But there are lots of

them in his country. And with the money he'll make out of this gig, hell, he

may even be able to AFFORD one, if that's his pleasure. Plus, HEAPS of lottery

tickets.  The wind is howling at 75 mi/hr. New Hampshire isn't for the

squeamish. His Brazilian venture capital associate who introduced himself as

"Oswaldo Tiradentes" is clutching his briefcase and darting his eyes around,

anxious to fathom the plan cooked up by the flaky logistics officer who telexed

him his orders.

   Hannibal Bemquerer da Bahia, his World Bank contact, insisted there was no

alternative. He had to follow the slap-happy Paki, make sure he offs Quayle,

and then get rid of him. "BUT, you won't get sick like Jack Ruby, unless you

SCREW UP", reassured him Hannibal with a laugh, downing his batida do Maracuja

and fixing his eyes on the hibiscus plant, and Giselle sunning herself by the

ficus tree. They both knew it was madness.

   On the summit, they find their third teammate. He is hitting on some aryan

backpacker babes that have just concluded their wholesome climb and are glowing

with granola virtue. He says his name is Mark K., and is an ophthalmologist with

offices in Pasadena and Beverly Hills. He further says  he has a "background in

theoretical physics", has "been involved in the seminal quark paper of the half-

century with Dick", and has a collection of 34 garters he's caught from assorted

brides "at his friends' weddings". Oswaldo has lost his appetite. The Paki

smiles and wiggles his cheap PRC shoes. "Whaddayaknow,  I might even make it

to the David Letterman show", muses Mark. Neither of his teammates know what he

is talking about.

      His understanding of the plan is simplicity itself: Oswaldo arranges a

power golf-game at the Club Esportivo Brasileiro with President Dan and Arthur

Laffer to discuss Brazil's foreign debt. The prez, seeing his chance to get

involved in his administration, goes for it. Mark, posing as a golf instructor,

hits a secret service agent with a golf ball. As the secret service focus on

their own, the Paki demon mows Dan down with his souped-up, gasoline-engine

cart, and speeds off to the humongous 18-wheel trailer idling in the underpass;

the convoy, replete with a "wide load" signal truck, escapes at the dizzying

speed of 15 m.p.h. The perfect unobtrusive escape vehicle.

    Any furtiveness of the hard-hatted Paki is attributed to his illegal alien

status, and he is quickly handed over to immigration to be deported. Mark has

not been told that Oswaldo pacifies him at some point, but then again, the plan

is a flexible shell of modular inspirations. It's a slew of plans optimizing

their stability under deformations. Therefore, it's a winner. Or at least Bundy

thought so.

                                19.

     After some oily introductions, Ted Bundy steps up.  He's donning a Young

Republicans' button and he is wearing an Italian suit, replete with ultra-wide

pin stripes.  He's got a purple silk shirt, foam-green silk socks, and a yellow

tie.  He sits down at the council table, flashes his shaved head at the

audience, and folds his hands in front of him.  It is obvious that he is a

WINNER, a yuppoid Donald Trump of the harps.

      "Gentlemen, the problem with YOU all is that you do not think BIG!", he

begins.  "Now, when I was still shuffling around in my mortal coil, I did NOT

nosepick the trips of self-pity and despair that seem to occupy YOU reprobates;

hapless flakes; boring LOSERS!  YOU are a disgrace to the Afterliving!".

     The audience falls silent.  What could he mean?  Even Henry Ford, with his

ideas for Mass Production, had not been so daring. What is going to happen now?

I hear myself speaking up:my throat feels like hot oatmeal in a champagne glass.

     "What the hell are you babbling on about, skinhead?  The Florida crackers

did a good job of turning you into Orville Redenbacher's Gourmet Popping Corn,

OK?  I saw it! Your flesh popped better than a fifty-cent pistol when they threw

you the juice!  We cheered as your fluids squirted like the slime of an

over-ripe mango splatting on the sidewalk! And NOW you come to push your

low-rent methods of systems analysis and pessimization research to our

membership drive!"

    Bundy pays no attention. "Look, fellas, I was going PRETTY GOOD there for

awhile.  If I hadn't been tripped up by all those cheesy porn movies, I would

still be your NUMBER ONE enrollment director, no?  I even STOPPED SMOKING! Now,

I think that I can get you a 1000% increase in membership during the FIRST WEEK

of my campaign!" 

     And the Board begins to wonder, to speculate if there is something to it.

After all, the patterns are right. Substantial simplifications in regurgitation

accounting would also result. Salvador Dali raises his hand to make a motion. 

The chairman looks up. 

   "Well, hello Dali!"

   "Fish in the safe-deposit boxes!"

   But then Bundy squints, as the idea sinks. Sure! Salvador, baby, you saved

us! THAT's how it starts. The first wave get themselves safe-deposit boxes all

over major upscale banks. They deposit their neat raw groupers, catfish, squid.

They lock. They go. And they don't come back. By the time the bank officials

have caught on to the "stink of money", and by the time they've convinced

themselves it's not a Freudian psychosomatic metaphor they're smelling, it's

fish, the second wave is out. IG-Farben tabun nerve-gas specials start popping

at random locations: sports' bars, nautilus rooms, aldermanic meetings, liquor

stores on Friday evenings, airliners 2 minutes before docking at their gate,

the Lincoln tunnel, the commodities exchange. Pesticide for the chosen nobody

will choose again. Throw in some Panamanian flags here and there to throw the

rhinos off the scent, as it were. THEN Quayle goes. Noriega is flown into the

country, and blamed for the outrage. He is hanged in front of the Smithsonian.

But it doesn't stop, now, would it? It unfolds like tissue paper on stairs.

   "Whaddaya say now?", smirks Ted arrogantly.

                                 20.

     Obviously the plan needed advertising, so I headed down to Key West to

look up my old friend the director, Snuff. On the way, I ran into a pool buddy,

an aging Brit named Scrod.  Scrod wore glasses and had graying hair that

he parted down the middle whenever he found a comb. Scrod thought that the

Brits invented pool, and he was always rambling on about some classic that he

had just read. The best way to derail him was to beat him to the punch:

  "So, lad, where did Ernie live?"

  "On the street parallel to this.  Whitehead Street," I answered.  "Great

writer.  No sense of humor."

   Scrod chalked his cue-tip.  "What handicap will you give me?"

   I triangled the pool balls.  "Have you been playing very much?"

"None at all."

"You play very well.  Ten point in a hundred?"

"You flatter me."

"Fifteen?"

"That will be fine but you will beat me."

"Should we play for a stake?  You always wished to play for a stake."

"I think we'd better."

"All right.  I will give you eighteen points and we will play for a dollar

a point."

Scrod commenced to clear the pool table.  "What have you been reading?"

"Nothing,"  I said.  "I'm afraid I am very dull."

"No.  But you should read."

"What is there?"

"There is The Green Hills of Africa.  There is A Farewell to Arms."

"No, he didn't."

"What?"

"He didn't say a farewell to arms."

"Then you have been reading?"

"Yes, but nothing recent."

"I thought The Old Man and the Sea a very good story of acquivitiveness."

"I don't know about acquivitiveness."

"Poor boy.  We none of us know the soul.  Are you Croyant?"

"At night."

  It became Scrod's turn again and he pocketed three balls. "I had expected  to

become more devout as I grow older but somehow I haven't,"  he said.  "It's a

great pity."

"Would you like to live after death?"

"It would depend on the life.  This life is very pleasant. I would like to live

forever."

"I hope that you will live forever."

"Thank you."

Scrod pocketed the last ball.  He had won."You were very kind to play, tenente."

"It was a great pleasure."

"We will walk out together."

                                     21.

  We walk past a conch-and-macramé souvenir shop where the straw-hatted tourist

sheep pay their dues, and we see the boat. The boat is called EL CAPITAN, and

it is tearing  by at 40 knots. It's gleaming white on the turquoise waters.

A gold-toothed mongrel in lime shorts and matching cap is strapped on the marlin

seat. He is spraying bullets all over the place out of an AK-47. He seems happy.

Later, we'll find out the boat started out at the John Pennekamp Coral Reef

State Park, laden with sunburned snorkelers; tropical fish obsessives; and Mark,

Oswaldo and the Paki, who mumbles in happy tongues to himself.

    I catch the flash of Mark's smiling teeth and mirror shades in the bleaching

sun, as he takes aim at Scrod. The Paki beats him to it. Scrod twitches into

crimson lacework and thuds on the soft pine planks of the pier.

    "Hasta luego, amigo", he breathes, and I know he's more right than he does.

The planks soak. Oswaldo is sweating and taking snapshots of just about

everything, shaking like he's got the DT's. The body of a tourist girl shines

in the glare as she dives off the boat. Right before she hits the water, her

knees bent like an upside-down squatter's, gold chain around her left ankle,

I catch a glimpse of her face, and I know she's Ricardo's sister. And the

codger in the "Buzzards Have More Fun"-t-shirt, strapped on the starboard

recliner and taking it all in behind binoculars, looks like Pappy Finn's

double. It gets quiet as soon as they are gone. Nothing has happened to me.

Absolutely nothing. I'm actually hungry.

                                  22.

   ``Orange Juice and grits,'' I summon at the counter of a pink stucco diner

("No Wretched Shortcuts") next door to the Cocoa Lounge. I recall Gus' tales

of the astronaut-groupie escapades he and his aging confreres slid into there.

The fat woman returns with my breakfast. She's in tank-tops, flanked by jumbo

hoop earrings. Maybe she was one of the muses, and I think of asking her, but

she glares at me as if she read my mind. In an astro-turf voice, she wishes me

a nice day. My neck is stiff as frozen lumber from the ride in a semitrailer

with no heat. God, it can get cold here in the winter. The bacon is raw, but

you can't beat the lukewarm orange juice. The portly guys in the next table

frown as they splash mustard on their hash-browns. One of them mumbles

something about a beer float. They spiral in a circular disquisition on garlic

jello and dirt-biking.

  The roar of a mufflerless Camaro with handcuffs dangling from its rear-view-

mirror gets my eye. In it, I see Ted flashing his screwball grin and flagging

me. I bolt out the door, forgetting the check.

    ``I've cooked up a spectacle you can't miss...'' Ted smiles as he now does

70 down the Dixie Highway heading for Cape Canaveral.

    ``Yeah?'' I'm skeptical and wondering what I'm doing with this nut.

    ``Miami...'' he grins... ``all of it, delivered courtesy of the U.S.

government space program...''

    ``I don't follow''.

    ``The little Paki and a screwdriver are pokin' holes in the seals of a solid

fuel booster while you and I are cruising this lovely beach, and I got it set

to off the range officer...''

  ``Aw Jesus, you'll be lucky if you clear out a sugar plantation in Cuba....''

   Bundy's grin fades. He gives me a look of determined lunacy as the Camaro

swerves past a stand of sea-grape trees. We start to see the crowds parked to

watch the launch. We don't even have time to park before I hear, but don't see,

the muffled rumble of rocket engines. Then, above the heads, I see the

Enterprise and its cumbersome apparatus slowly ascending into a pure blue sky.

On board are a Senator from Texas and a female journalist, and two veterinarians

with a small payload of bovines, as well as a couple of epicene military

satellite experts. Something dark drops off the tail of the left booster and

falls into ocean amidst gasps of the tourists who think they might actually

now see more than they had expected. I replay that mesmerizing image in my

mind of a previous cold Florida morning launch...I see Feynman's face dimly

underlying it. The dark blob hits the ocean: could it be the Paki? I wait for

the inevitable explosion and rain of titanium alloy on the beach.

    But it goes off without a hitch --- no explosion.

   ``See,'' I say to Bundy, who's kicking a concrete parking block and chewing

his sleeve, ``you didn't even get a Cuban sugar plantation.''

                                 23.

  There is no doubt now that we are in the wrong country, and we spend some time

staring at the palm trees and trying to pick a less civilized place where we

can take lives at our own pace.  Bundy objects at first, but when we remind him

how it was that Florida was where he screwed up in the first place, he quiets

down and we head for the palm rows of the airport.

  "When is the first plane going south?", I ask the dark deb at the PanAm

counter. She is chomping excitedly on her lunch, a raw-hamburger-sprouts-and-

honey sandwich and banana chips.  Still, her blouse is translucently contoured,

and I bask in the graces of southern slow pacing.

   "Whatchall wann?"

    "I would like to go where beaches are hot and drinks are cold. 

I've had ENOUGH of tepid orange juice and imported sand. I don't want to hear

English spoken around me all the time!"

   "I know whatcha meeeeean.  How about we go down to Viña?"

   "Yeah, OK, but I gotta bring my friends along".  Bundy is right behind me,

making eyes at her, and she is warming up. The Paki is nowhere to be seen. 

So much the better.

   "Are your friends DEEECENT people?" she asks timidly, still looking at Ted.

"I mean, I'm not as wild as you might think.  I just graduated from a Catholic

girls' school on Malta." I pretend that I am looking at her nametag, which

rises and falls livelily as she breathes. What kind of a name is Jojo, I wonder.

   "Malta? Aha! Strait Street.  Hagiar Qim.  The GUT! I think we UNDERSTAND

each other, hon!" Ted starts smirking.  Maybe this will work.  We all get

tickets to Santiago.  Viña del Mar, here we come!

                                  24.

   Smoking a stinking cigar and brandishing a grenade and an Uzi, the Paki

bounces down the plane aisle. "You DON'T think we'll get OUT of this do you?"

he yells. "A job is a job, and we'll stay in the US if it kills us all!",

he leers triumphantly at the stewardess holding his note. "MIAMI, hon, MIAMI

I say!!!!", and he grabs her from behind, stroking his Uzi down her curves.

"Nice perfume, hon", he tries to reassure her, "like auntie's sweet chutney!".

   Bundy's nostrils are dilating with excitement. "WHERE in the hell WERE YOU!",

he screams, terrorized. Alarmed passengers are beginning to recognize him from

his tabloid pictures. We are someplace over Venezuela. Out the left side, I can

see the Orinoco, and I start thinking about piranha. The Paki slips me a grenade

and pushes me towards the cockpit. There is no use arguing, with a grenade in my

hand, that I REALLY am not part of this hijacking, that I BARELY know the Paki,

that it's all a MISTAKE. I shuffle to the pilot's cabin.

      The pilot has trouble understanding the Paki. He raves on about the Club

Esportivo Brasileiro and Boca Raton and intercalates phrases like "a job to do"

and "I just DON'T know what fell off the shuttle, you see!". I try to slow him

down a bit by passing him Pisco Sours.  After about seven, the stuff takes

effect and he heads for the can.  I slam the door and brace it shut with a set

of crutches I steal from the nun in first class. He starts screaming things in

Urdu at me, but I make no effort to understand. Hospitality only goes so far.

   Then the grenade goes off.  I get a last glimpse of the Paki as he sails out

of a giant hole in the side of the plane, drifting slowly down to the Orinoco

and its hungry unprincipled fish.  The Maltese chick starts nibbling my ear.

   "Oooooh, you were so BRAVE!" she giggles.  "How about we barricade ourselves

in the tele-conferencing room and jiggle up some endorphins?"

   Ted looks aghast. "What about ME??" he stutters.

   "What ABOUT you, skinhead? I got some priority conferencing to do."

Ted plops down next to the nun and starts whispering in her ear.  She looks

at him intently, and then nods.  The Maltese blossom is already on her way to

the room looking back at me. This might even be better than the inflight movie.

                                   25.

   But the plane gets the wobblies. Parts of the Paki have jammed the left

engine, and we start descending.  The pilot looks out the window and starts

puking into an airsick bag.  I have a feeling of deja-vu. I can't bring myself

to play Slutz, but it is no time for the squeamish. I grab the controls and

switch on the radio.  Tango music fills the air, but it will have to wait. And

I sure DON'T want to run into Elvis again.

   It is my first emergency landing on water, but I do just fine. Jojo stands by

the door helping everybody into the rubber rafts. I think all too many

passengers get to cling around her waist and legs on their slide down the chute.

The last passenger on the raft is an sweaty, obese hispanic matron in stiletto

heels. They escape Jojo's attention, who's been calling to me to grab the

emergency radio and join her, and they go through the boat like a straw in a

warm sundae. The boat all but explodes, loses its balance, and the famished

cocodrilos get a rambunctious filling snack. Organic matter recycles on this

planet, again and again, I remember my biology teacher rhapsodizing. I brace

Jojo up the ramp, but I see to my disgust that Bundy is still in the plane. We

drift towards a mangrove jungle. Bundy's lost his teeth and his spitting out

bloody chicklets distresses the Maltese Nymph, who used to go shopping in Zurich

on weekends, during the school season. There was a village of corrugated steel

shacks I saw about five seconds before we hit the water, but it's behind dense

vegetation, and Jojo's leg looks bruised (not to mention her skirt, which is

just barely hanging on her now like a Bermuda sea-onion).

    I about consider leaving her alone with Bundy. So I take good old Ted out

and lead him up to the nifty port engine. ``Hey, what's this?'', I ask. He turns

to the engine, and I slam his face down into the brown Paki-paste that's got

the consistency and temperature of a Chicago-style-deep-dish pizza. I kick him

in the groin a few times, then hold him by the neck up against the hull of the

plane; then I give him a nice, balanced lecture on ethics with a warning about

his prospects in the hereafter and some episodic physical non-abstractions to

keep his intellect engaged. I show him my teeth. Once more in the nuts, and

then I fling him face down in the sand, and stomp him in. It feels neat.

   I hack my way through the vegies with a sharp airplane blade piece -- must be

from some engine turbine. The birds call and the flowers smell, and the light

filters down the mist of the forest canopy like mana. I feel like floating in

the air. Then I hear the children of the village, who see me and are startled.

Their mothers come to gather them, and a few old men appear. I face a group who

speak something that doesn't sound like Portugese or Spanish. I figure it's

Indian. They start to chatter away, and then they point to one of the huts.

They lead me to the door. A beautiful Chicano woman comes to the door, wearing

just a jumbo T-shirt with "Bewitching Matamoros" stenciled on it, and only a

few pounds of gold jewelry, and nervously inquires as to who it is. In the dark

of the room, I see a shadow of a thin man in tank-tops wearing two gold

disco-chains and cradling an Uzi. The woman seems to buy my story, and she lets

me in with an unexpected broad smile. ``It's alright, Adolfo, we've got a

pilgrim,'' she calls to the thin man.

                                   26.

   I drink the soda she hands me, and stroke my stubble as I look at her perfect

neck. I'm immediately transported to Altadena, years ago, to the yellow light of

a Sunday afternoon.

    I had just come back from Ricardo's, and was reading the paper under the

avocado tree. I had brought a case of Lapfroaigh -- eighteen bottles of sublime

single malt-- in the trunk of my car. I never understood why, but my wife

insisted that I empty the contents of each and every bottle down the sink, or

else. I said I would, and got on with the dismal task.  I withdrew the cork from

the first bottle, and poured the contents down the sink, with the exception of

one glass, which I drank.  I then withdrew the cork from the second bottle, and

did likewise with it, with the exception of one glass, which I drank.  I then

withdrew the cork from the third bottle and poured the whisky down the sink

which I drank.  I pulled the cork from the fourth bottle down the sink and

poured the bottle down the glass, which I drunk.  I pulled the bottle from the

cork of the next and drank one sink out of it, and threw the rest down the

glass.  I pulled the sink out of the next glass and poured the cork down the

bottle.  Then I corked the sink with the glass, bottled the drink and drank the

pour.  When I had everything emptied, I steadied the house with one hand,

counted the glasses, corks, bottles, and sinks with the other, which were

twenty-nine, and,  as the houses came by, I counted them again, and finally I

had all the houses in one bottle, which I drank.

      I'm not under the affluence of incohol as some tinkle peep I am.  I'm

not half as thunk as the neighbors drink.  I fool so feelish, I don't know why

but Sunday, who is me, and the drinker I stand here, the longer I get.

   I hear the raga yet again. OF COURSE I know it's Rancho Santa Elena and they

are stewing my brain. Overwrite. Pack the disk. You know?, I see it ALL out of

this depth. It never was learning come to nothing. Feynman got it right again.

It isn't just matter that recycles after all. It's information that does this

sort of thing best. And why don't I leave the next do-loop for someone else.

  I wake up dead as the alarm clock rings. My brain is gone. So what. What do I

care. I think of watermelon in February. I turn the TV news on: drizzle, budget

crunch, Santeria, import quotas, Quayle -- I know all that. I turn Mr. Coffee

on and go to shave. My, I like my socks. A look in the mirror, a warm greeting

to Mr. Ricardo next door, and I'm off to the excellent Fifth Avenue and the

office, man's destiny. Great, huh?

                            THE END