Eyeheart Everything (15 page)

“Esmerelda’s English skills aren’t so good. I met her in the Caribbean during my recent vacation. We’ve become rather, well ... you can see.” Esmerelda cooed, and stroked Mr. Shark’s belly with her brown-grey finless tail.

He leaned closer to me and whispered, “I know what you’re probably thinking: she’s coarse. She’s vulgar. I deserve better. But you know, I feel this tremendous sense of relief, just to be in a simple straightforward relationship like this, with everything out in the open. Plus, she’s a great dancer and a fabulous cook! And I really think we have something that will last, which is what I’ve always wanted but could never find.” He patted her tail affectionately, and winced slightly as she nipped him. “And you know, if it doesn’t work out, I’ll dump her. She has no passport.” He winked, then winced again.

I was speechless. A pantalooned waiter brought me my usual treble mocha, but I waved it away.

“So you’re no longer a vegetarian, then?” I finally said.

“Ah,” he said, and sighed, “well, you know, I’m sorry things didn’t work out with your friend. I guess she told you all about my sudden departure. I was inexcusably rude. Please, if you get the chance, tell her I’m sorry. She’s a wonderful girl, I just ... I had a lot on my mind that night. I guess I had a bit too much to drink. As you can see, I’m on the wagon.” He dipped a fin in his glass of water and touched it to his enormous tongue. “Horrible stuff, really. Fish procreate in it. But it’s doing me a lot of good.”

Esmerelda came up for air at that point, whispered something foreign in Mr. Shark’s ear, and ran a raspy tongue along his left gill. She smiled at me, and winked. Mr. Shark blushed beet red.

“I won’t tell you what she just proposed, but I assure you it was a compliment. I think, ah ... I think we’ll be heading home for lunch now. Nice to see you, as always. We’ll meet again soon, I’m sure. Come along, darling.”

Mr. Shark waddled awkwardly to the shore with his new companion, and vanished into the ocean.

I went home and called Phil to get Ms. Oranges’ phone number, but he was out. So I put on a nice shirt, collected my bicycle and rode over to her apartment. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon when I arrived, locked my bike and climbed the steps to her door. I brought along some paper and a pen to leave a note, but when I rang the bell, she answered. This time she was wearing a little burlap slip and holding a screwdriver.

“Why hello!” she said. “I wasn’t sure if I’d see you again. C’mon in and help me change this lightbulb in the bedroom.”

I followed her. “Hi, I’m sorry I didn’t call ahead, I, um, lost your number.”

“Oh, don’t worry about it!” She took my pen and paper, scribbled down a number, tore off the sheet and folded it into my hand. “Don’t lose it again. Now, you’re a tall guy; why don’t you screw this in while I go fix us some juice?”

I changed the lightbulb easily enough, and returned to the kitchen. “I just saw my friend Mr. Shark,” I said. “I’m sorry to hear ... I mean, I was worried ... um, how did that all go?”

She tittered, and handed me a tall glass of orange juice. “Here, come sit down. Your friend is very nice, but I think he’s afraid of women. Poor thing.”

I laughed as we sat down together on her very narrow couch. “Afraid of women? I find that pretty hard to believe. Mr. Shark is nothing if not a lady-killer. In fact, I just sort of assumed that he ... um ...”

She frowned. “That he um? You say ‘um’ a lot.”

“Well, let’s just say I’m happy to see you intact.”

“Intact.”

“Well, I’m glad you weren’t devoured.”

“Hmph!” she humphed. “I’m not.”

I blushed. A moment later we both started laughing.

We sat there together for a minute, smiling, looking silently at one another. I swallowed a mouthful of saliva. She was one hell of a sack of oranges, even more so with the afternoon sun shining through the window, highlighting her stippled skin. She leaned closer.

“Are you hungry?” she asked.

“I’m famished.”

She gazed into my eyes searchingly. “Are you getting enough Vitamin C?”

“They say you can’t get too much.”

“They’re right,” she said, as she took my hand and squeezed it. “C’mon, let’s go look at that light bulb.”

Tall things are taller than shorter things. That’s what tall means. I am taller in my mind than a mental dwarf, but a physical dwarf is also taller than me. However, a building is also shorter than a dwarf’s mental mind, is the difference. If there are ten apples in a basket and I hit you in the face with a dwarf, how many baskets are left? To put it another way, the world is composed of like energy man, and it’s all like flowing, and love makes it go around, so relax and have sex with me. No, here, smoke this first, then relax, then have sex with me. I mean ... to put it another way, this is a stickup. I have a gun. Please do not step on the silent alarm. Please put all of the bananas in a disposable plastic bag. No I do not want a reusable hemp bag. I want a disposable plastic bag. I am a criminal, a bad person. Now please, the grapefruit and all of the oranges. And the organic Swiss chard. Hurry! Okay, now everybody lie face down on the floor. I’m sorry if it’s gross — it’s your organic food co-op, you should vacuum more often or scrape it or something. Now, I want you to say Ommmmm three hundred times. I’ll leave my astral projection here to keep guard on you people while my corporeal form collapses into the getaway rickshaw outside, so no funny stuff. No clever remarks. No witty, insightful comments. I want to see no hand-puppetry, no mime, no silly facial expression or impersonations of well-known figures. No cartooning! I hear one knock-knock joke out of you and I’ll blow you to smithereens. Do you understand? If you understand, signify your consent to these legally binding conditions by remaining perfectly still and saying Ommmmmm. Very good. Now I want you all to know that because you have signalled your consent, this is no longer a robbery but a voluntary transaction, so the police can’t help you. Don’t even try to call them. Okay? Bye. Or to put it another way: if you were a mountain and I was a tunnel, and my feelings for your were flatbed cargo cars loaded with construction materials, and on the other side of you our future together was a large clear-cut area of federal forest, and the feelings you have for me were the three black helicopters hovering over the locomotive threateningly, and my heart was a weasel and your soul was a colony of bacteria and the cargo cars of my feelings collided with the helicopters of your feelings inside of my tunnel through your mountain, and together all of this emotion spilled out onto the clearcut of our future and exploded in a fireball of love, and my heart and your soul were both engulfed in flame, still I think I would rather have that then what I have now, where your heart is like a thoroughly modern Pitney Bowes office postal meter that can only be refilled with love by calling a toll-free 800 number and exchanging mysterious codes with a computer voice on the other side, and I feel like a care package that’s poorly wrapped inside an envelope that’s too thick for your auto-feed slot, and all I want is to feel your hard kiss and your rollers whisking me into the OUT basket, but I am too fat and instead I sit in the bottom of the IN basket and none of the Kelly Girls have enough initiative to even spit on me and apply stamps, and anyway I don’t want their stamps I only want the beautiful, crisp cancellation that only you can give. That’s approximately how I feel. Since you asked. And if you think I’m sick or fat or weird or I don’t make much sense or I’m harassing you, sexually, and making the workplace inappropriate for cogitation, well, I’m sorry, but I am what I am and what I am is, is what I’m trying to say is, is this: I ... quote L-word unquote ... you. That’s what I’m trying to say.

Now I have invented the cellular remote control. I, the great MECHANICO, have freed home entertainment system owners from the geographic boundaries that once fettered them.

I have perfected the edible murder weapon, the self-upholstering chair, and the recursive noodle that drove famine from Italy. I have walked on water with my poly-fiber aquawalkassins. I have isolated the DNA strand that determines golf skill.

My mighty semiparallel superconducting number cruncher has reduced the digits of ε to a powder too fine to probe even with my astounding Scanning Tunneling Wiggling Stapling Proton Pneumatiscope. I, the great MECHANICO, have done all this.

To say that my enemies and detractors cower when my name is mentioned would be, perhaps, an understatement. To state that beautiful and surprisingly intelligent women’s hearts explode with passion as I pass would be, perhaps, an exaggeration — and yet, my CPR skills are well-practiced. To suggest that mine is the most brilliant mind that ever made a home within a man would be uncharacteristically immodest; but obversely, to argue with the conclusions of the Oregon Center for Advanced Cognitive Appreciation, MENSA’s National Star Search program, and the other-worldly advice of the President’s outer space liaison, that would be foolhardy. And I am no hardy fool.

I was asked by certain Los Angelean interests to invent a plot-sucking gun, that might extract the basic premise of a book or manuscript from a distant vantage point. Although I had already conceived such a device, I sensed that these men would use my gifts to gain ill-gottenly, and I dismissed them. The great MECHANICO has lots of offers coming in; his agent screens heavily.

Dusk: it weighs on the soul of the great MECHANICO. He reaches into the vast folds of his cranium to pluck a suitably maudlin metaphor. In dusk, he decides, the papadum of the MECHANICO soul drowns beneath the ghee of mortal expectation.

No; something occidental would be more appropriate. In dusk, the MECHANICO soul is suffused in the pitch of societal responsibility, and blackened.

No, that’s not it either. MECHANICO knows, the subtlety of language is the most elusive butterfly the collector of nuance might ever hope to ... to ... oh damn. Damn damn damn. Never mind. Enough poetry. Dusk is ended. MECHANICO has more important knots to loosen.

Today is a great day — MECHANICO releases to the public his Quantum Ossification Engine (which temporarily fossilizes a fleeing miscreant or would-be attacker), his Stereolithographic Convection Oven (which carves meat and poultry while baking, following laws of proportion and division laid down in Renaissance times), and, perhaps most importantly, the Anti-Arthritic Mitten.

However, at the press conference, he is assailed with questions. Does the Quantum Ossifier violate the Geneva Convention? Does the Stereolithographic Oven pose a threat to children? Are the mittens available in other colors?

MECHANICO heaves a sigh. No, no, no to all your questions. You are bestowed a great gift, the fruit of my genius, the offspring of my labors. How can you question the goodness of these things? What more do you want?

The onslaught continues:

— MECHANICO, is there truth to the rumor?

— No truth to the rumor, no.

— Are allegations concerning this and that false?

— Yes, decidedly.

— Can you either confirm or deny at this time?

— No.

— What is your connection with the secret government project?

— MECHANICO cannot answer, it’s a secret.

— If a murderer chokes to death on the edible murder weapon, what is your moral reaction?

— MECHANICO considers this cosmic justice.

— MECHANICO, are you a homosexual pederastic necrophile?

— No.

— Are you perhaps a deviant masochistic cophargist?

— No.

— A pot-abusing philanderer?

— No. What is the point of these questions?

— MECHANICO, does the world truly require a cellular remote control?

— The marketplace will decide this, not I.

— MECHANICO, what do you say to those who hark back to a simpler era?

— I encourage this harking. I ... MECHANICO believes that harking is a perfectly natural and healthy human behavior, and nothing to be ashamed about. However, it is well known that excessive, constant harking can leave one blinded to the possibilities of the future. The desire to hark can be moderated through daily exercise, frequent showers, and regular doses of scientific determinism. MECHANICO would be glad to suggest study materials that might —

— MECHANICO, you are missing the point. Technological advancement has been its own primary justification since the age of the Greeks. Today we are inundated with strange new inventions, some of obvious import, some of dubious merit, and many that clearly serve only destructive ends. Scientists frequently lend their scientific power to anyone who will fund their research. In this way they not only perpetuate the socioeconomic class system of which they frequently predict the extinction (due to the imminence of free electricity, plentiful food, an end to all disease, et cetera), but in many cases allow profiteers to restrict the usefulness of breakthroughs that could potentially benefit all of humankind. Meanwhile the ever-quickening pace of social change brought on by new technology produces a widely-recognized alienation and uncertainty about the future, even in the very young. Shouldn’t scientists and inventors begin to take responsibility for the unpredictable waves of change that they launch across the world? Isn’t it the merest ethical duty of a scientist, before allowing an invention or a technology or a technique to be used by others, to secure some guarantee that A: their work will not be used in the creation or refinement of weapons of death and destruction, and B: that the social necessity of their work will not be used to profit at the expense of the poor and/or truly needy?