The Chameleon Fallacy (Big Bamboo Book 2) (20 page)

After he picked up the clubs, he was driven back to the mansion, all the while trying to figure out a way to avoid bumping into Asia and Crispin, but when he arrived, there was nobody there. He stashed the bats in his room, and went for a look-see around the house. He found a pool table with a bar and a TV, so he turned on a ball game, shot some pool, and tried to do as much damage to Lundi’s bar stock as possible. Fortunately, Lundi’s drive had gravel on it, and he was able to douse the lights and kill the TV as he heard the wheels roll up and saw the shadows from the lights scamper up the wall. He hightailed it across the room and dived into a wardrobe. He held his breath as the lights flicked on. He heard two voices, one he recognized as Lundi’s.

“
Make sure he goes to The Bitches Brew. Elyssia knows what to do. Then bring him to the swamp. Just before midnight. Be there. Put him where he can see everything. Clearly. Do you understand?”

“
Oui. Bien sûr.
”

Monsoon relaxed as the lights were turned off again. They suddenly came back on. He heard Lundi again: “You been playing pool in here?”

“
No.”

“
The others?”

“
Je ne sais pas
.”

“
I will speak with them later. C’mon, let’s go.”

Monsoon could feel his heart pounding as the light went off again. He tried to listen for the car, but he could hear nothing in the confines of the wardrobe. He felt panicked in the tight dark space, but he forced himself to wait, until he was sure the coast was clear. He waited for fifteen minutes. It seemed like fifteen centuries. He was just about to climb out when a Buick came through the door and fucked up the pool table.

And that’s when the scenario went from the ridiculous to the sublime, passed through inconceivable, stopped for a piss at nonsensical, and slammed on the brakes at absurd. Monsoon was fairly certain that, when they had both gotten over the shock and suspicion of the encounter, Baby Joe would refrain from shooting him, just for old times’ sake. That was because he didn’t know Baby Joe was considering shooting him, just for old times’ sake.

“
I thought you were fucking dead,” Baby Joe said, by way of greeting.

“
Oh, no. Not me, man. I’m alive.”

Baby Joe punched him in the stomach, grabbed the back of his head, and stuck the barrel of the gun hard against his left nostril.

“
You won’t fucking be if you don’t tell me what you have done with Asia.”

“
I haven’t done anything with her, I swear, she’s here. She’s fine. I saw her sunbathing with that fat fruit, Crispin.”

“
So what have you got to do with Lundi?”

“
Who-di?”

Baby Joe pushed the gun barrel. Monsoon’s nose started to bleed at the corner.

“
C’mon, Monsoon. You seriously expect me to believe that you being here is just a fucking coincidence? I should shoot you for insulting my intelligence.”

“
Baby Joe, honest. If Lundi is the pale-lookin’ nigger with the shades, today is the first time I seen him. I swear. I come here with another dude. To play fuckin’ golf.”

Baby Joe stared hard at Monsoon. It was not a reassuring sight. He let go of Monsoon’s head and lowered the gun. He walked wearily over to the bar and grabbed a bottle and two glasses. Neither spoke as he poured.

“
Well, this is sure some bizarre motherfuckin’ shit, ain’t it?” Monsoon said, after he had fortified himself with a stiff blast of bourbon.

“
Damn straight. So you really don’t know what’s going on?”

“
Nope. Only that Lundi is expecting someone, and from the looks of things, it must be you. You gunnin’ for him, right?”

“
How come you know this?”

“
I was hiding in the closet. I heard him say somethin’—The Bitches Brew—and I’m pretty sure he wasn’t talkin’ about Miles Davis. And then something about a swamp at midnight.”

Joe finished his drink. He stood up and looked down at Monsoon. “So that’s it?”

“
Yeah.”

“
And you?”

“
Me? I’m outta here. First thing in the mornin’. Russia, would you believe?”

Baby Joe stared, his eyes blank and bleak. He looked so old and tired, so devoid of feeling, that it was even scarier than when he looked mean.

“
Wait,” Monsoon said. “Wait. You’re not gonna…?”

Baby Joe turned and walked away. “No. We’re done,” he said, and left.

Monsoon opened his eyes and drained his glass. He reached up and pressed the service light. One of the stewardesses managed to wrest herself from her fantasy of being backscuttled by George Clooney in the toilet, and came out from behind her curtain. Monsoon held up his glass without saying anything. It was too dark for him to see her give him the finger as she took it from him and went to refill it. She forced her pretty face into a smile as she handed it to him.

“
Do you believe in the hand of fate?” Monsoon said.

“
Not really,” she whispered. “Why?”

“
Because I think it just jammed its thumb up my ass.”

Chapter 7

Fanny refused to let herself scream, despite her revulsion. She wasn’t going to give the fat abomination the satisfaction. Nothing he could do to her could be worse than what he was already doing, so let him do his worst. He would not get the slightest sound out of her to gratify his sick, sadistic little mind. She was too disgusted to realize that he wasn’t actually hurting her.

Zalupa was at first surprised, and then enraged. He was ramming his misshapen manhood into her as hard he could but she did not make a whimper. He was bewildered. He began to slow down.

Fanny screamed at him over her shoulder, “Is that all you’ve got, you repulsive goatfucker? Maybe you should try your boyfriend’s ass.”

People had died for saying less than that to Khuy Zalupa, but Khuy Zalupa wasn’t paying attention. Something weird was happening to him. He wasn’t in pain. The anger and rage were draining out of him. The hate. It was no longer an act of brutal rape and violence. It was something else. Something incomprehensible. He let go of her hair and placed his huge hands on her shoulders, gently almost. He signaled Oleg to let go and back away.

Fanny tensed. She didn’t know what was going on, but she readied herself. She was going to jerk herself out from under him and fly at him with everything she had. He was going to kill her anyway. Maybe she could take his eyes before the other one got her. But then something started to happen. She found she couldn’t move. Or wouldn’t move. Suddenly, she didn’t want to. The sharpness of her first orgasm took her by surprise. It had such an edge to it that it was almost nasty. The second one was more mellow, but more profound. And then the wave began, a great ceaseless fluttering of her vaginal walls, and a throbbing in her pelvic floor, and she felt a scream welling up in the back of her throat that she was powerless to prevent. She felt as if a great balloon full of warm ambergris was expanding in her womb, filling to bursting point.

Zalupa briefly pulled out, in amazement and mild alarm, to see if there was anything wrong with his meat. When Fanny squirmed in annoyance, he meekly slipped it back in, and recommenced pounding. He was overwhelmed. It was bewildering but beautiful. Painless. The rending agony was gone. Not even discomfort—only pleasure. Intense pleasure such as he had never known, or never known existed. She was wrapped around his dick like a warm bath full of honey, caressing and cajoling him. As he was about to blow, he saw Fanny begin to tremble as if she had contracted a sudden case of Saint Vitus Dance, and goosebumps stood out over her entire body, and the small downy hairs at the cleft of her buttocks and the nape of her neck rose up like tiny flowers.

When Fanny let out a scream like a wounded jaguar, Zalupa almost jumped out of his skin. His eyes flew wide open. He lost control altogether, and experienced the purest, most powerful, most searing, and first-ever pleasurable ejaculation of his life. Simultaneously the bubble of hot ambrosia in Fanny’s womb exploded, bursting asunder and causing her to have an orgasm of such power that “le petit mort” claimed her, and she was momentarily lost to the world.

She woke up a few seconds later to a sensation of such profound satisfaction and contentment that she wasn’t sure if she was really awake. It was a few seconds before she recognized Khuy Zalupa staring anxiously down at her. He smiled when he saw her open her eyes. His eyes held an expression that had been alien to them until that moment. They stared at each other, and something passed between them, some unspoken communication that beamed itself like starlight between their dilated pupils. They both realized what had happened at precisely the same moment.

“
Oh,
fuck
!” they said in unison.

***

Crispin wanted to close his eyes. Crispin wanted to scream, to faint, to run away, to do all or any of the things that people do when they are terrified beyond endurance. But he could not move. He was not bound or restrained in any fashion. He was paralyzed. He could see clearly, and hear perfectly, and, worst of all, feel everything that was happening, but he was immobile. He could not even blink, and tears involuntarily filled his eyes and rolled down his fat cheeks. He knew that Asia was next to him. He could see her out of the corner of his eye, but he could not turn his head to look at her.

It was a petrifying nightmare from which he could not awake, a Hieronymus Bosch vision of eternal torture and damnation. Crispin could feel his heart pounding in his chest at twice its normal rate, and for the first time in his life he wished that it would stop and deliver him forever from the dreadful scene. The heat was intense. The night was hot and oppressive under low gravid clouds, and the fires burned with an eerie blue flame. What seemed like a million white candles guttered and flickered in the still humidity. Hideous and grotesque masks and idols leered from recesses in the stones and from the branches of the trees, and bloody bones and feathers festooned the branches and hung suspended from the Spanish moss. Crispin was soaked with sweat, and felt it roll in cold rivulets down his sides and the small of his back. He ached in every bone of his body but was helpless to alleviate his suffering.

And everywhere before his wild eyes the people cavorted and contorted, lithe muscular sweating bodies, others immensely corpulent, some as emaciated as cadavers, old and young, black, white, brown, and yellow, café au lait, all painted with arcane designs in garish colors, groaning and thrusting and groping and striving, committing unspeakable acts of filth and depravity. Drinking blood and urine, swallowing semen, eating excrement, chewing raw bones, howling and grunting like beasts. And over everything was the drums, repetitive, insistent, exhorting, driving the people beyond the edge of sanity into the joyous and savage abyss.

Du DOOM, du dum, du DOOM, du dum, du DOOM, over and over again, hypnotic, irresistible, driving from fervent brains all thoughts of anything except desire and satiation.

Lord Lundi loomed into Crispin’s view. Naked, he was an apparition to chill the stoutest heart. His erect penis, thin and sickly white, was like an unearthed root. His pale reptilian skin was painted, his body divided, one half blood red the other half green. On his head was a top hat, likewise daubed, except in reverse. And round his neck lay a coiled, hissing serpent, also red and green. In one hand he held the severed tail of some animal, and in his right a chain. To the chain was attached an enormous goat. Its satanic eyes glowed in the firelight, staring at Crispin with humanlike understanding, insane, ravening—as if they hungered for his soul.

Lord Lundi suddenly gave an unearthly screech and leapt into the air. As he came down he struck Crispin viciously across the face with the animal tail. The hair stung his fixed and opened eyes. An angry welt was raised on his soft, pudgy cheek. Lundi held up his hand and shouted, “
Twe
.
Manje
.”

The drums were instantly silenced. The people fell to quietness. They disentangled themselves and gathered around Lord Lundi and his victims, some walking, some crawling, some slithering on their bellies. A deathly quiet fell over the swamp. Lundi’s voice was loud and resonant, echoing from the mist and reverberating over the still waters of the bayou. He pointed at Crispin.