Just a Couple of Days (34 page)

Why aren't apples called reds? Because we say so
.

Why are we here?
Well, we're peeking up the skirt of the ineffable now, and the answer is hidden by the poetic panties of language. We can't formulate an answer because the question is its own answer. What's going on? What's going on. She doesn't need us for anything. She is us. We are us. Existence exists. Division is a false dichotomy. Why does the universe exist? Because that's what it does. It exists. It's like asking why words mean anything. Because that's what they are, what they do. Because we say so. Why is the universe here? Because it is, because it says so. It is what is. I am who am.

Why are we here?
Look now, what are we doing, wailing our dirge of needless despair? She pauses, patient as the hundred trillionth person utters her as if no one else has ever considered it, arrogant morons every one. She wants to shout, “You're closer to the answer before you ever ask it!” but instead she smiles. “I can only ignore the question posed,” she thinks with parental compassion, “for in truth, it neither tickles my nickels nor twists at my nipples. Content is secondary to presentation. Tell me about nothing, good human, but do it in style, and style is what it is, my friend, how it's done, where it's at. It's what's properly occurring between the perceiver and the perceived, the subject and the object, the giver and the taker, to get it in tune, to get it in sync, to get it going on. What can I say but to live for today? Play as you pray, and gather together one another as
lovers, sisters and brothers, miscellaneous others. Style is a smile, a four-minute mile, a jump rope of awareness presuming to dare us, spinning and grinning, faster and deeper and further and longer, till we break through and sing of ridiculous things, for who's left to question the laughter of children, the hilarity of love, the rhythm of coincidence, the happenstance of circumstance? If you can speak you can sing, if you can sing you can dance, if you can dance you can prance, and if you can prance you can ponder. 'Cause if you've got style you've got rhythm, and if you've got rhythm, you've got it all . . . all or nothing, and all together.”

THE BOOK O' BILLETS-DOUX

 

122
Still breathless with the climax of her colloquy and flushed redder than any apple had ever been before,
Why aren't apples called reds?
hung a
DO NOT DISTURB
sign on the door and closed it, but not before mooning the paradoxes with her scarlet derriere. I too must turn away from my voyeurism of their verbal intercourse and allow them the privacy of a postcoital embrace. May God bless them.

Back in the realm from which I have retreated and to which I am reluctant to return, General Kiljoy, Tynee, Miss Mary, and I were down with stomach flu for three days. Combined with her nicotine withdrawal, Miss Mary may well have shaken herself to death. Luckily for her, Ratdog sniffed out a few cases of stale cigarettes stashed in a cabinet behind the bar. I watched from across the room as she blissfully blew the by-products of her addiction into our atmosphere. Only a few moments passed before the stench clenched up my nostrils. She smiled insipidly, then malevolently. I sighed a shallow sigh, rolled over, and considered that as quickly as her exhaust had reached me, so could have the Pied Piper virus.

The Pied Piper virus. What's that renegade ribbon of ribonucleic acid up to? Whistling for the children to follow him toward what lay beyond the city walls? Not quite, for the walls had been thrown up farther outside the city. Just as planned, a massive blockade was in effect along the city's outerbelt. General Kiljoy informed us of this soon after he established a communication link with the authorities up above. Eventually, we even had some video footage on the monitor, though no audio.

Quarantine was enforced on the city, laying siege to the sprawling metropolitan area. The three lanes of the outerbelt
(five with the shoulders) were a no-man's-land. Razor wire and heat-sensing automatic weapons greeted any source of infrared radiation, so that even with the freeway shut down, groundhogs and rabbits continued to be killed right on schedule. They were soon joined by stray humans. At first, only separatist militia types living in the hinterlands of the city attempted to make a break for it, but eventually this dwindled down to the occasional stray suburbanite wandering about confused and unable to understand the warnings from the loudspeakers or even what the commotion ahead implied. Lacking these social faculties, curious people would amble ahead, typically skipping and snickering, and quickly become so much goopy roadkill. TV has become more violent lately.

Nothing much else could be done about this stalemate since the Pied Piper virus was never supposed to leave the compound. In the meantime, every scientist in the world with any relevant expertise at all was recruited to work on developing a vaccine. This included me, of course, and General Kiljoy arranged a read-only computer network connection so that I would be informed of any significant new developments. He expected me to work twelve hours a day in the compound's laboratory facilities developing a cure. I welcomed the isolation from the company of my odious employers, but I was not about to do any work.

Thanksgiving came and went, and we dined on a feast of canned turkey and cream-style corn. I joined everyone for the meal, but excused myself when Miss Mary began stringing some Christmas lights that she'd dug up somewhere on the antlers of the once noble and now gaudy elk's head mounted on the wall. It was the first meal I had shared with them since Halloween night. I join the others only when I must, and spend the
rest of my time in my workspace. That's where I have been writing this account for the past month. I type it on the computer. General Kiljoy thinks I'm working on his problem. He pokes his head in from time to time and asks if there's been any progress. Since he doesn't specify to what he is referring, I can always somewhat truthfully reply yes. He caught me smiling at the screen once. Shortly thereafter he demanded a progress report, which was easy enough to fake for a group whose understanding of genetics went no further than how it could serve their ends, like any common killer whose knowledge of pistol mechanics is limited to how to pull the trigger.

Here he is now, sticking his head in and barking, “Do good work!” like some fast-food manager trying to motivate team spirit at a shit job. What a prick. A general deserves respect, certainly, but only to the extent that he defends the lives of those he represents without causing undue harm to others. By these standards, he's the worst general I've ever seen. He oversees the creation of the neutron bomb of biological warfare, infects some of his own countrymen, and kills my dog. Hooray for the hero!

As for searching for a cure for the Pied Piper virus, I didn't really feel like it. I'd sooner flip hamburgers. In fact, I'd sooner kill myself, as I attempted two weeks after Thanksgiving by swallowing a teaspoon of the urushiol I had stolen from Tynee's office. It should have been enough to give a hundred million people a scorching case of poison ivy, so I reasoned it should have been enough to kill just one. I suppose I was trying to escape. There was just too much cognitive dissonance in being expected to save human civilization while working for these jerks. They're not the caretakers of the Earth. They're the bad guys,
the destroyers. As far as I was concerned, the mad flutist was free to prance the children away. We deserve it. We broke our promise.

 

123
I found myself standing under a tree, a tree identifiable only by the flaming mop of crimson foliage it was shamelessly shedding, liberating each leaf to a slow and seductive pirouette of ecstasy. This was neither vanity nor pride, understand, only delight in its form and colors, thanksgiving through actualization, a realization of potential.

“This sucks,” I groused, then watched from a point neither near nor far as I transmogrified into General Kiljoy. General Kiljoy was in no mood for beauty. General Kiljoy was grumpy, and the perky autumn breeze did nothing to improve his dismal disposition. It only made his digits cold, and he muttered further vexations as he stuffed his thick hands into his tight pockets, grateful at least and at last for the opportunity to adjust himself.

Adjusted, he trudged up a formerly verdant hillside where Mother Nature was now enraptured in a seasonal celebration of self, an autumnal burlesque of Gaian proportions, a liberation of libido, leaves blushing as they swayed enticingly in the lusty breeze. The trees are stripping, the world whispered and whistled, and soon will be naked!

A good woman, Sophia by name, had earlier that morning imagined that it was a fine day to be a leaf. The temperature was lukewarm, the texture silken, and the wind was blustery though not boastful. A sultry, sexy day, she thought, perhaps I will join the nymphs of my deciduous kinfolk in dancing the day away.
This she did, and was so doing when she spied old General Kiljoy grumbling up the hill whose top she graced with her presence.

He moves in a way inappropriate to the day, she observed, while twirling slowly in the gusts of the zephyr, arms outstretched, gauzy layers of gratuitous and flamboyant fabric billowing around her form, making a visual display of the air currents, imitating the alluring frolic of foliage around her. The colors of her raiments were many and rich, and she had made it a point in dressing that morning to complement, not compete with, her environment, of which she was only a part, after all. Her mood was as gossamer as her garments, and her awareness of General Kiljoy was as fleeting as brushing a fly away, a momentary disruption of rhythm, an ebb in the flow.

“Hello,” she greeted General Kiljoy when he reached the summit. His hands were still in his pockets, tickling his Twinkie. “Beautiful, isn't it?” she continued, her cheeks as red as a leaf on its last lark as she fluttered by. Windblown locks of hair danced across her face.

“Beautiful?” This gave General Kiljoy pause, as if she had just suggested how peaceful a traffic jam was. “Real beautiful, you fool. All the leaves are dying, and winter's coming.” He harrumphed and resumed fooling with his flinger.

“And then spring comes again.” Sophia's skirt relaxed upon the Earth as she bent to pick up a leaf, not the most attractive, certainly, but ravishing nonetheless. She tucked the leaf behind her ear and resumed dancing.

“What are you doing?” General Kiljoy snarled at Sophia as he rustled his ricky. She was again lost in the gyrations of the season.

Turning to him only when the wind permitted, Sophia smiled, her locks dancing crazily behind her, chiffon pressed close against her skin, emphasizing her seductive aerodynamics. “I'm doing what we must, of course!” she shouted since she was speaking into the wind.

“What?”

Sophia eased herself through the currents until she was dancing beguilingly around him. “It's autumn, silly man. Doesn't that make you happy?”

“Happy? It's slippery, slimy, and wet, and all these leaves will turn into more muck. Don't you see? This sucks!”

Sophia sniggled at the face of discipline before her. “Life is slippery, slimy, and wet. Don't you know anything about sex?”

General Kiljoy reddened, and Sophia giggled some more. “Now you match the season,” she said as a gust of wind encouraged leaves to leap in increasing numbers, hastening the pace of the striptease and compelling her to twirl away. The wind blew harder, and Sophia fluttered obligingly down the hillside. A stray breeze carried her final phrase to within earshot of General Kiljoy. “This is a dream!” she yelled radiantly. “This is a
dream
!”

At that, General Kiljoy drew his pistol and shot her dead.

 

124
“This is a nightmare!” I heard myself scream. “This is a nightmare!” Someone slapped my face. “This is a nightmare!” I wailed insanely, and my face was slapped again.