The Nirvana Blues (77 page)

“Come near us again and you're dead!” Heidi threatened. “I'll obtain an injunction! I'll have bodyguards from Women Against Rape!”

What next—boiling oil?
The cops!
She had called them, they must be on their way. Astonished, Joe found himself still clutching the tea box. Apparently, nothing except his spirit was broken. Frantically, then, he clawed free of the ladder.

“I love my children!” he sobbed.

“The police are coming!”

“Good-bye, Michael!” Joe wailed up at the blank apartment walls. “I love you, Heather! I'm sorry!” Would his son be catatonic from now until eternity, instantly transformed into an autistic zombie, forever captured in that sitting position, horrified eyes and mouth wide open, hands clapped over his ears to ward off the obscenity of his parents' final explosion?

Heather and Heidi disappeared: the door slammed: from here on in it was a whole new ball game.

*   *   *

F
ROM HIS FLOTATION
tank, Ralph said, “What's all the commotion, Miniver? Your sexual chickens coming home to roost, you lecherous rascal you?”

“What would you know about sexual chickens coming home to roost?” Ralph was supine in his Sensu-Casket beside a female body.

“C'mere,” the plump man said. “I need to talk to you.”

“It's all over, Ralph,” Joe whimpered. “Heidi lied to me about flushing the dope down the toilet. She tried to double-cross me. We had a fight. I almost killed her. We actually came to blows. Heather tried to kill me. Michael is up there struck dumb with shock. The cops are coming.”

The woman beside Ralph had a hefty bosom. A gold star glittered against her forehead. She wore tiny, black-rimmed goggles, such as competitive swimmers use. Her hands were protected from the brine by rubber gloves. Ralph balanced a mauve jar, into which a burning incense stick was stabbed, atop his watermelon-sized belly.

“Forget about the dope,” Ralph soothed pleasantly. He was obviously stoned. “Not to worry, old sport. The Hanuman caper will net ten times the score. I want you to meet Sahdreeni.”

“Sahdreeni?”

“It's a derivation of a Sanskrit dialect meaning ‘holy songbird,'” the chipper girl explained. “I changed it to that last year after my car accident.”

“Sahdreeni who?”

“Just Sahdreeni, that makes it pure.”

“Where are you from?” he droned lifelessly.

“I'm a citizen of the conscious universe. Everyplace is my home.”

“What was your name before you changed it?” Joe nattered stupidly, wishing to run, and yet held spellbound by this prosaic exchange.

“Laurie Feldencropper.”

“Her grandparents were Lithuanian cabinetmakers,” Ralph explained.

Joe said, “What do you do for a living?”

“I'm an astral cartographer.”

“I don't know what that is.”

“I make maps for people to follow when they travel.”

“You mean like Triple-A? How to get to Boston from Cundy's Harbor, Maine?”

Sahdreeni giggled. “No, silly. I help guide people who are into soul travel.”

“Ahhhh…” Joe nodded wisely. One ear twitched, listening for sirens.

Ralph said, “She's looking for a house to rent, if you hear of any good places cheap.”

“Listen, Ralph, excuse me but I gotta go. I'm right in the middle of having a sort of nervous breakdown.”

“We'll be out of the tank in about twenty minutes if you want to use it.”

“No thanks. I'll see you.…”

“At the party later on, bro. You're going, of course? Ray Verboten won't dare kick ass in front of all those aristocratic honkies.”

Joe's vision, as once again he aimed the decrepit bus out of the Castle's driveway, was so blurred from tears that he almost hit a tank truck entering the yard, and could barely read the logo on its rounded, rusty flanks:
VALLEY SEPTIC—YOUR SHIT MAKES US RICH
. In the front seat sat two men in those same rubber suits. The passenger wore a snorkel and a diving mask, and the driver was disguised in one of those ubiquitous and grotesque gorilla faces.

*   *   *

W
HEN HAD HE
last inserted something edible into his body? Suddenly ravenous, Joe decided to hit the Prince of Whales for a bite. If he ate something, maybe at least his body would survive. But then what—the Nuzums' party? He couldn't think. Now he was totally, hopelessly adrift. He squeezed the tea box in his crotch, between his thighs. What to do next? Pin it to his chest as a target for their high-powered rifle slugs? “I've lost the will to care anymore.” They'd be doing him a favor to end his blithering existence. Beyond all else he intently desired a respite from his own ridiculous drama.

Yet by the time he parked on the plaza, Joe had sucked a last few drops of stubborn resistance from the pool of his ramshackle survival instincts: he took the box of cartridges from the glove compartment, and, after fitting six bullets into Diana's gun, queasily returned the pistol to his pocket. Then, cradling his cocaine football in the crook of one arm, Joe crossed the relatively deserted plaza to the relatively empty café.

Relatively
being a relative term, of course. As soon as he walked through the door, almost heady from anticipating a cup of hot coffee, Joe realized that the only other person there besides Darlene was Diana.

At a corner table by the jukebox she sat, death warmed over. Bedraggled, scraggled, and lovelorn, she nursed a cup of caffeine as if it was the only thing between her and a messy suicide.

What to do—nonchalantly plunk himself elsewhere, ignoring her? No way. Their eyes met: immediately, she looked down and away. Joe inhaled deeply, shuddered, wiped a tear from his eye, approached her table, and, laying a tentatively proprietory hand on an empty chairback, he asked, “May I?”

“May you what?”

“Sit down here. I'm very tired.”

“It's a free country.”

“I won't if you don't want me to.”

“I can't stop you, can I?”

“Listen, if you don't want to talk, I can understand.”

“Oh yeah?” Her eyes flashed fire. “Then you'd be the first man I ever met who could understand anything beyond the parameters of his own cock.”

“Look, I'm sorry. I came over because I figured it would be pretty insulting if I didn't.” He wanted to add:
Please, Diana, don't hurt me, I feel so fragile. I'm tired of being at war. I'm scared stiff. I don't want to molest you. I'm so confused. I need somebody right at this crucial moment in my deteriorating existence.

She was sublimely hostile: “Well, now you know.”

“What?”

“That it's more insulting that you did.”

“Hey, Diana—”

“Hay is for horses, straw is cheaper, you can get grass free.”

Joe said “Glurg,” shrugged miserably, and placed his coke box on the table before him. Light-headed, ears buzzing, he swallowed hard: “I'm sorry.”

“Take your sorrow and shove it.”

“I … but … isn't there any way…?”
Please,
Diana, lighten up, tender at least a partial forgiveness. He needed to touch her, be held, make a connection, feel some kind of—
any
kind of—love.

“Look, Joe. You already got what you want from me, so why not split? Go find another dummy with big tits and a tight cunt. Christ, I hate men.”

“It's not so bleeding easy being a man.” Joe coughed painfully, fighting tears. How could he deal with her? How could he convince her of his humanity? The urge arose to say “I love you, I want to marry you.” Anything to win even a brief respite.

“‘Bleeding,'” she mimicked scornfully. “What is this, National British Day in the southern Rockies?”

“Oh Diana,” he pleaded. “Gimme a break. I know I did wrong, but I'm so confused. I'm blowing everything. I've lost the thread. I came over because I wanted to apologize for this morning, honest. I mean, life is tough enough without—”

“You're not kidding it's tough enough. I'll tell you one thing, though. You're the last male macho son of a bitch that ever gets inside my pants for free. And I'm not kidding. The next motherfucker that pulls a sexual double cross on me, there won't be blanks in the gun I'm carrying.”

Joe sagged. No use … no use! If only he had a time machine and could rewind his life back to yesterday. Or back to last Saturday night, for that matter. An awful queasiness shook his foundations. He couldn't bear being hated. Yet how could he prove to her, in twenty-five words or less, that he was actually a decent fellow? Show her his throbbing fist that ached from smashing Heidi? Explain the bite marks on his forearm?

Dully, he said, “Did it ever occur to you, Diana, that the reason you're always getting beat up is maybe your personal actions with other people aren't exactly above reproach? I mean, you talk about playing games, you're not exactly the straightest shooter I ever met.”

“The gun had blanks in it, idiot, in case you didn't notice.”

How could she completely miss the point? “I didn't mean that. I meant you really pull some pretty complex shit yourself when it comes to relating with men.”

“Don't give me a lecture. I think I actually like better the guys who slug me than the assholes who lecture me on how I'm supposed to be.”

“Maybe you should listen to their lectures sometime.”

“What for? Everybody wants me to be like
they
want me to be, not like I am. I'm never supposed to have my own personality. I'm just supposed to be this cute little extension of their personalities. Well, I've had it. Never again.”

“We didn't even have a chance to get started before you jumped all over me. You're projecting onto me all these traits you
think
I'm gonna have. So you wind up killing it before it even has a chance to catch a second wind. How do you know I'm gonna be like everybody else? You make me like everybody else by treating me that way before I'm even halfway able to
start
to show you who
I
am.”

“I know,” she said sullenly. “But I'm a professional at reading the writing on the wall. You got to learn how to do that, in advance. If you wait around until some jerk actually proves he's like everybody else, it's too late. ‘Too late' meaning the son of a bitch is already squirting inside you, trying to wreck your freedom and cripple your body by making you pregnant so he can leave you the name of a good abortionist and then take a powder.”

“Not everybody's like that.”

“Do you want to marry me, Joe?”

Fighting an urge to say yes, Joe stared at the tea box.

“I thought so. Do you want to have a child with me?”

Words struggled to escape his throat. If only he could release them, accepting her offer, casting his lot with this strangled woman in order to begin again. But suppose it went haywire? He would never be able to rub out the sight of Michael's terrified countenance barely an hour ago.

“So there you go, Joe. Now shuttup and get off my case. I can't believe that only yesterday I actually thought you were a human being.”

That jarred a raw nerve. As if somehow all this sturm and drang were
his
fault. As if he, Joe Miniver, a cross from birth between Adolf Eichmann and Charley Starkweather, with a little Fatty Arbuckle thrown in for good measure, had apprenticed under Jack the Ripper and the Boston Strangler in order to become the human Jaws of Chamisaville. Joe stiffened. He knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that at heart he was a good person who had always tried to do right by everybody. For so long he had struggled to forge a decent marriage, be an understanding and loving daddy. Then of a sudden, inspired by totally altruistic motives, he had stumbled out of his league, fallen among sophisticated gangsters, and lost his bearings. Not a true criminal bone existed in his simplistic body, yet somehow he had floundered into a corner where he resembled the reincarnation of a Kiplingesque cobra in an English colonial garden—it wasn't fair! Diana had no right to accuse him of dastardly motivations! Especially after intimately catering, for so long, to the sadistic ministrations of an unholy creep like Angel Guts!

He wanted to hit the supercilious little cocktease. He actually wanted to grab a saltcellar and clock her one atop the noggin. Or stab her in the shoulder with a fork. Where did they come from, these aggravating cripples? The cocaine tea box pulsed naughtily between his tightly clenched fists. Heidi's bloody face focused, but he quashed
that
vision immediately. And shut his eyes, attempting to regain control.
Stand up, say good-bye, walk off,
the voice of reason continued.
Pull her own gun, blast away, and cackle as she croaks,
the voice of vengeance and stupidity urged. Joe chose a middle road, remaining inert, forging a blank mind, becoming a useless blob.

They stalled. Joe fiddled with a knife. Quietly, Diana drew nonsensical patterns on the shiny table with a finger dipped in her cold coffee. Tears streamed down her cheeks, dropped off her chin, splashed onto the table. Joe's voice cracked as he finally broke the silence:

“Diana, I hate talking like this. I don't want to anymore. It's too cruel.”

She didn't speak.

“Look. I don't understand you, I'll admit. I don't know what you've been through. I'm sorry I offended you so badly. Believe me, I didn't want to. I just can't seem to function correctly in this snakepit. Maybe I was married for too long.”

“But you hadda get into my pants, didn't you? That's all anybody ever wants. Just once I'd like a relationship the driving force of which wasn't somebody's manic desire to nail my cunt.”

Joe remained mute. What could he say—that he hadn't wanted to screw? That he wasn't guilty of the yearning she blamed him for? But why did that have to be so
wrong?
Or, at least, why did sex have to evolve into something unutterably complex and riddled with contradictions, making it impossible to enjoy? All the psychologists wrote books on how beautiful it could be. Erica Jong had had a ball balling. The
Playboy
adviser guided people through innumerable excursions of kinky delights. Swinging swinglers extolled the phallic and cloacal virtues of orgies galore and communal S and M. Even the lesbians and the male homosexuals were united in joyous radical revolutions to win their hornball rights. But Joe Miniver, nudnik supreme, not only couldn't get off in a strange babe, but after five days on the liberated hustings he had managed to co-opt every coherent sexual, spiritual, and political bone in his blatantly immature body!