Zeitgeist (28 page)

“Well,” said Starlitz, “bring a whole shitload of pakalolo.”

PREPARING THE RITUAL REQUIRED THREE DAYS. TO demonstrate the gravity of the event the participants were required to fast, meditate, and ritually purge themselves. This requirement immediately weeded out half of Makoto’s staffers, people who had concluded from the get-go that it had to be another lame scam.

The remainder were made of more adventurous stuff, and after a three-day regimen of white rice, fish broth, and Kauai marijuana, they were primed for anything.

Starlitz led them on a dramatic seven-mile evening hike through the Waialua state park.

“Everyone gather round,” Starlitz finally announced. He was reading from a sheet of prepared phonetic Japanese. “As you can see, I was here earlier, blessing the site
and setting up these tiki torches. But—and this is absolutely critical—we must all unite to remove
all traces of the twentieth century
from this sacred ground! This place must become eternal and timeless, the way it was and will be, before and after science. That means
all physical traces:
not one cigarette butt, not a pull-tab from a can, no spiritual pollutants, nothing from any factory, no product of any machine. If you see the footprint of a modern shoe, erase it. We need purity. The natural, the unsullied. So get on your hands and knees. Gaze carefully at
every centimeter
. This is a kind of prayer.”

Starlitz retired to the fragrant shadows at the overgrown fringe of the clearing, where he eased his aching feet and had a cigarette.

Zeta watched the Japanese staff crawling enthusiastically through the damp undergrowth, sniffing and meticulously pinching up everything that resembled litter. “Dad, they look really, really stupid.”

“Wait till I make ’em cover themselves with mud.”

Zeta giggled.

“Honey, you promised not to laugh. If you have to laugh, you’re gonna have to go lock yourself in the rental car.”

“I’ll be okay, Dad. Can I have some more granola now?”

After some considerable time Starlitz returned to the meticulously groomed prayer site. “Now, I’m sure you’ve all been wondering—what about myself? Am
I
sufficiently pure for this ritual? Is my own heart pure? Is my own soul pure? Well, of course you are not pure! All those clothes you wear are twentieth-century products! They must be
destroyed
. Into the fire with them!”

“But what’ll we wear back to the house?”

“Be more trust,” Starlitz barked, ad-libbing. He returned to his prepared script. “You must cover yourselves completely with this sacred Waialua red earth. I can’t be responsible for the consequences if you leave any patch of skin exposed to the unearthly forces.”

When he returned again, the devotees were naked
and smeared with mud. It was rather pleasant mud, actually. The effect could feel quite soothing. Starlitz himself had donned a feather cloak, a bark-and-grass breechclout, and a towering Hawaiian tribal helmet, all from a local crafts store.

“The moment approaches,” he intoned. “You seem to be naked and pure now. But you’ve forgotten one thing. Do you know what that is?”

The Japanese muttered among themselves at some length. They were clueless.

“Your
contact lenses
! They are alien devices, and in your ignorance you are gazing through them at this very moment, while you cannot see them! I will now circulate among you to remove and store these contaminants.”

After half blinding the audience, Starlitz closed in on Makoto, with a tom-tom dragged from the underbrush. “Here you go, man. You’ve got a central shamanic role here. Start it up with the ritual drumming.”

Makoto blinked myopically and thumped experimentally at the taut leather skin. “Hey! This drum is a cheap piece of shit!”

“That is hand-cut wood, Makoto. Natural leather and blood for glue. You think New Guinea tribesmen are gonna tune a drum to middle C? That is a totally natural musical instrument, so of course it’s a piece of shit! Get after it, man, play the moment, play what you feel.”

Smoke gathered as the sun set, with tropical speed. A spectral oozing of dry ice began to curl along the ground. From her concealed position Zeta yanked long silent threads attached to various limbs and bushes. The outskirts of the clearing swiftly came alive with uncanny presences. The mud-smeared Japanese, reduced to the filthy, half-starved condition of the world’s last Stone Age tribe, were utterly petrified.

Starlitz adjusted his headdress and feather cape. Then he led Barbara, naked like everyone else, to her central wooden pedestal.

“I’m so scared,” she hissed.

“Sit here in lotus position. Be calm. Rise above.”

“But I’m naked! And I gained five kilos.”

“That’s Makoto playing, isn’t it? You’re giving Makoto his heart’s desire. Just be magic.”

Starlitz made his final arrangements. Then he clapped his hands. The drumming rose to a crescendo. “Good-bye, cruel world,” he said.

The pedestal vanished.

There were cries of awestruck wonder. Barbara lifted her shapely arms, white hands unfolding like a pair of calla lilies. She was a trans-Pacific boddhisattva, floating on a cloud of fire.

The torches shot sparks and died. In the double gust of bright and dark Barbara sank gently to earth. Starlitz rushed forward at once, brandishing a second cape.

He wrapped her up and delivered her to the crowd.

“Was I magic?” she muttered.

“Don’t ask me. Ask your public.”

And her public wept. They believed in her, completely, every one.

THE PUBLIC WADED INTO THE WAIALUA TO WASH THEMSELVES free of red mud. Starlitz thoughtfully produced a dozen sets of shorts, T-shirts, and zoris. Trembling with hunger and amazement, the celebrants hiked a quarter mile downriver. A previously prepared set of taxis were waiting there, meters ticking and headlights blazing. The cars took the crowd back to the mansion grounds, where Starlitz had seen to it that a roaring, fully catered luau was already in progress. He knew they would welcome it. They were freaked, munchie-stricken, and starving.

Working alone by the hearty glow of two big magnum flashlights, Starlitz and Zeta put out the bonfires, gathered up all the doctored tiki torches, shoveled in the stage hole under the fake pedestal, removed every one of the ropes, strings, and hinges, smashed the large stage mirrors to bits with a ball peen hammer, shoved the whole mess of wreckage into a heavy-duty drawstring canvas bag, and threw it all into the bottom of a ravine. Then
they drove their hidden rental car to a cheap hotel room in Princeville, where they bought some Chinese takeout and a fifth of Kentucky bourbon.

Later, bloated with pale shrimp-fried rice and wontons, Zeta picked at the laces of her soaping shoes, in front of the silent, flickering cable TV. “Dad, why do you have to drink that whiskey stuff?”

“In Hawaii it’s cheaper than the gasoline.” Starlitz was tired.

“Is she really magic, Dad? She sure looked magic. She’s like a goddess.”

Starlitz looked at his child wearily, and stirred himself. Nobody else was going to be able to tell her the truth. He owed it to her. She was just a little kid. “Honey, we scammed them. It was a confidence trick. But in pop that is the legitimate method. As the great Eno declares in one of his many sacred works, pop music doesn’t work on any lame fine-arts model where inspired individual genius presents a masterpiece to an inert public. Pop is very popular. All important changes in the pop world are created by little scenes of people, blindly conspiring with their circumstances, to create something cool that they can’t understand.” He had a long chug of bourbon. “Eno said it, I believe it, and that oughta be good enough for us.”

“So Barbara can’t really fly, right?”

“Look, that doesn’t matter. Really. That’s just not the point.”

Zeta scowled. “I still don’t get it, Dad.”

“Then I’ll put it another way, okay? Those people are hippies! As long as they think that the cops and the priests don’t approve of it, they’ll believe anything! They’ll swallow any loony, irrational crap you want to hand them.”

Zeta tied the loose lace of her soaping shoe and climbed up on the hotel bed. “Well, let me try, Dad. I think
I
can float in midair.” She began energetically jumping up and down on the hotel bed.

“That’s a cheap bed, honey. Don’t do that.”

“Look at me, I’m soaping, Dad.” Zeta screeched along
the metal edge of the bedframe, poised on one foot. “Look, Dad, I’m moon-walking.”

“Give it a rest.”

“I’m not tired! Ha ha ha!” Zeta jumped up onto the headboard with a violent crash. “You can’t catch me, Dad!”

Starlitz scowled. “You heard me! Don’t make me come over there.”

Zeta flung herself like a dandelion seed to the top of the window frame. She slid along the top of the window, spun slowly across the ceiling, and fetched up light as a cobweb, in the corner of the ceiling. “Can’t catch me! You can’t come over! You can’t get me down! Look, Dad, I’m being impossible! Ha ha ha!”

“Zeta, you’re getting all worked up.”

“Look, I’m flying in midair! Ha ha ha!”

More in sorrow than anger Starlitz reached into his bag and produced a throwaway camera. “Zeta, come down from there! Don’t make me use this.”

Head inverted and pigtails dangling, Zeta began jumping up and down on the ceiling. Hard. Plaster cracked and fell like chunks of macaroni. Starlitz lifted the camera, aimed the lens. Light flashed. Zeta tumbled to the hotel floor with a shattering crash. She began shrieking in pain and rage, clutching her bruised knees and rolling back and forth histrionically.

It had been a long day for both of them.

EVEN AFTER ZETA HAD FALLEN INTO A TWITCHING sleep, Starlitz found himself jet-lagged and detached from all comfort. The room smelled funny. Why was he drunk now, in some shitty hotel, stinking of smoke and bone weary, in the middle of Paradise? He could feel heartburn gas from bad moo goo gai pan. Maybe it was a clogged artery. A hot little corroded wire of visceral weariness there. A small but lethal promise of future coronary misbehavior. He was exhausted, he’d had too many cigs.

Maybe this had nothing to do with anything in
Hawaii. Something had gone wrong with him. With the room; with the town; with the island; with the planet, with the universe. There was a very bad vibe loose somewhere. There was no escaping it; he could feel it rolling in from some stinking rim of the cosmos. He could smell it. The neon sun sinks in a sharp chlorine smell of junk. The vacant rooms and rubble and the chemical gardens … the cold blue pool … eyes upturned to last cold bubbles, lipstick like iced grease … Bad needle jones …

Starlitz reached for the phone and dialed.

“Shtoh vy khoteti
?”

“Viktor? It’s Lekhi Starlits.”

“Are you in Cyprus?”

“No. I’m in Hawaii.”

“Hawaii? TV police thriller? Dark-haired man, many car chases, villains, handguns?”

“Yeah, no, maybe. About the band, Viktor.”

“Can you get me a green card?”

“Viktor, has something happened to the band?”

“Oh. Yeah.” Viktor smacked his lips. “One of them died.”

“Yeah, you told me that. The French One.”

“Who, her? No, now the
Italian
One’s dead.”

“You’re kidding. The Italian One’s dead?”

“Facedown in a hotel pool. Drugs, swimming … the usual.”

“Where is the band now? Where is Ozbey?”

“Mehmet Ozbey is in Istanbul. He’s training a new Italian One. His Albanian Muslim emigré Italian One.”

Starlitz groaned. “Is your uncle around? Put him on the line.”

“What are you, drunk? You sound drunk! My uncle’s still dead, Lekhi. He was in a Belgrade air base on the first night of NATO strikes. Remember?”

“He’s not dead.”

“Even if Pulat Romanevich was
alive
you couldn’t talk to him. NATO is blowing up all the power plants and telephones, in a corrupt assault against a sovereign socialist nation.”

“Forget about it. Air strikes always look better on paper than they do when you blow up real phones.”

“Even if my uncle was alive, and the Yugoslav phones were working, my uncle wouldn’t talk to you, because my uncle would be heroically engaged in defending the democratically elected president of a Slavic nation, Slobodan Milosevic.”

“Tell it to Zhirinovsky, kid. How many missions have the Yugo Air Force been flying against NATO? I’ve been a little out of touch.”

“Not very many,” Viktor admitted.

“Then our flying ace is probably not very dead,” said Starlitz.

Zeta sat up in bed. “Who is that, Dad? Is it my mom?”

“No.”

Zeta sniffled sulkily. Her face looked drawn and wan. “I want to talk to my mom.”

“Last I heard of Vanna, she was in Cyprus. I’m calling Cyprus now.”

“Is it about the band?”

“Yup.”

“Is G-7 gonna die, Dad?”

“No, no, the band does great. It’s just the girls that are gonna die.”

“You have to save them, Dad.”

“Why should I do that?”

“I don’t know why. But you have to, Dad. You just have to save them.”

STARLITZ WENT BACK TO THE MANSION TO CADGE SOME money from Makoto. Makoto wasn’t taking visitors. Instead, Starlitz was corralled by a staffer, who followed his orders and took Starlitz and Zeta to meet Barbara.

Barbara was lounging in the garden in a McDonough plyboo lawn-chair. She was overseeing the staffers as they languidly ripped up the mutant rosebushes.

“What a nice little girl,” Barbara said, looking down at Zeta in her logoed tank top and pedal pushers.

“Mahalo,
” Zeta said. “Can I have some of that coconut milk? It smells great!”

Barbara languidly beckoned another staffer and had her take Zeta to the kitchen.

“Makoto’s laying down some studio tracks today,” Barbara told him. “He’s not seeing anybody. Especially you.”

“Makoto’s not all freaked out or anything, is he?”

“No … but we never did get our contact lenses sorted properly.”

Starlitz said nothing.

“Am I cursed now?” Barbara said. “Makoto said I was supernatural. Did I go too far? Am I doomed now?”