Blow (7 page)

A riptide of terror overcame the artists as they realized that, yes, in fact, this had all been a ruse, and no one would be appreciating their art after all. They began to replay, hungrily, every comment they had received from every customer. They finally understood why they had all been so carefully thought out, expressed as though in a writing workshop, and perhaps tinged with a little jealousy. “These macaroons are sentimentally interesting. I feel like I’m consuming childhood as well as marzipan.” “Are these wreaths made of wagon wheels? Heavy, aren’t they. And wrought with meaning.” “I like that it’s a sundial
and
a wind vane, but what would it be if it weren’t either one?”

Only artists had been invited to the fair. Every customer had a booth of his or her own somewhere. Dear God, they had been selling to other artists!

Other artists didn’t count as true fans. They bought art out of professional obligation, or competitor research, or the raccoony obsession to own shiny things. Think about it. No one is impressed with the Girl Scout who has twelve rich fat uncles.

Suddenly a wave of nausea, worse even than knowing they were slaves of a ruthless dictator, crashed upon the crowd. They had not, in fact, helped the uncultured swine of the world better themselves with threaded candy-corn necklaces. The unwashed masses would stay unwashed, even though scented soaps and body scrubs took up an entire aisle. The churlish “left brain” types would go on with their usury, the clacking of the abacus their only music, the blood of artsy children their only wine.

Most of the crowd curled into the fetal position, rocking themselves and humming tunes by their favorite singer-songwriter before the prince could finish his announcement.

Giacomo, however, was already sneaking through the hedgerows of angsty creatives to find Chloe. As the prince trumpeted on about his elaborate trap, and the fact that the head of every artisans’ guild was here somewhere, and that everyone would be put to work on a project so ambitious it might stop the wind, all Giacomo could think was,
What do you suppose would make Chloe happy?

As the prince instructed the crowd that they’d be grouped in pairs and imprisoned in different wings of his castle in order to work on his project, Giacomo thought,
I know. Flowers.
She seemed to be into flowers, what with her dad and all. But then again, maybe she wouldn’t want flowers because she always had them. But maybe she couldn’t get enough flowers. What would Chloe say about all this? Chloe would have the answer. She seemed clever. And cute. Chloe was the cutest. . . . Maybe she’d like perfume. . . .

It just went on like that. Over and over about everything to do with Chloe. Like some penny rolling around a sink, his mind just kept coming back to how cute and clever and pretty she was. I don’t want to embarrass the guy, but I definitely heard the phrase “cutie patootie” under his breath more than once.

It was all too obvious by the time he found Chloe — and the sparklers above her made her eyes shine — that the penny of Giacomo’s mind had rolled around and around and finally fallen, fallen forever down the sinkhole. And what was that sinkhole? That sinkhole was lunacy.

Anyway, at the same time, Prince Kaiser was about to unveil his grand plan: “—.”

Okay fine, the sinkhole was also love. Are you happy? It’s not like we didn’t know that already. Their stars almost knocked the earth off its axis. Time-space had to reboot itself around the enchanted moment. They had so much chemistry, the pH balance of the ocean flipped, and all the leftover dinosaurs started feeling headachy. Let’s just move on.

The Prince Kaiser had taken them all hostage for one reason: he wanted them to make something so beautiful that it would give life to the lifeless. Essentially, the rich little snot was trying to put me out of work.

The idea was that if something, anything in this world — say, a painting, or a poem, or a really fancy egg holder — was actually more beautiful than any other place I could take you, well, it would uproot the whole soular system.

After all, everybody wants a far, far better place to go. What the prince wanted was something so mind-boggling marvelous, so unimaginably stunning, so good, so
very
good, that it would be the greatest place — only to be in front of it. Just gawking at it would mean glorious release from all suffering. Your soul would demand that you stay, instead of shuffling off to the great beyond.

You starting to get the picture? He wanted a towel set that could replace the hope of an afterlife. He wanted embroidered napkins that could become as gods! Bum, bum, BUM!

I
T WAS A
common misconception in Old Timey Europe, where smooches were all you needed to jump out of your grave, that I was kind of a chump. Laughable, I know, but it’s true.

Everybody assumed I was some ninety-pound wuss who’d get punked any time an old crone cooked up some chicken feet. Or a fisherman caught a talking trout. Or genies crossed their arms. People, please . . . who do you think smacked them upside the head and shoved them in a lamp in the first place?

For having more bodies to my credit than communism, you’d think I’d have more street cred. Right now I feel like all I get is sixth-graders drawing my name on their Trapper Keepers so their divorcing parents freak out and pay them some attention.

That’s not respect. That’s not even bad poetry. And another thing, rappers, you gotta stop calling yourselves “Killa MC.” You’re not fooling anybody when your manager’s looking for endorsement deals on soft-serve ice cream. If you’re on a major record label, the closest you come to killing people is the slow painful demise of your publicity team’s self-respect.

But me? I put down the Monkey King and Mickey Rooney’s sunny disposition. I dropped Atlantis, and I had mono at the time. I even got Rasputin, eventually. If that’s not gangsta, you haven’t been paying attention. You ever see a long-tailed antarctica hamster? You ever hear Pachelbel’s harmonica suite? You ever take the bullet train out of Newark, New Jersey? No, you haven’t. Extinct. Forgotten. Lost in appropriations committee. That’s me, baby. How do you like me now? I’d say, “If you don’t know, you better ask somebody,” but you’d need
Stargate
technology and a burning bush just to get high-enough clearance.

And yet somehow,
somehow,
princelings like Dimple Pimple used to walk around Old Timey Europe thinking they could publicly fire me. I think it’s because I like to wear khakis, I really do. But I’ll tell you something: I have a dream, a dream that someday a man will be judged by the number of galaxies he’s snuffed out of existence, rather than the number of holiday costumes he’s made for his bunny.

That’s what I was stewing on, as I zipped back and forth to the fair. (A hurricane in the Indian Ocean, a marriage in Russia, a really annoying phoenix that just couldn’t make up its mind.) As the prince wrapped up his speech, he unveiled the name of the life-giving creation, whatever form it might take. I forget what exactly, but he said something to the effect of: “And it shall be totally Most High, for it shall be called the Objet d’Awesome!” (Exclamation mandatory.) Sadly enough, I think it kinda made sense. If it ever got made, it would be certifiably awesome. Maybe even “Awesome!”

As soon as he said the name “Objet d’Awesome!” a dozen drums hammered on the exclamation point, the sparkling stars overhead converged into a climactic glow, and everyone gasped at the biggest surprise of the night.

Let me explain. The stage management had been orchestrated to cast the most dynamic light on Dimple Pimple. So the darkest shadows were directly behind the stage wall. That’s why Brutessa could stand behind him onstage, using the residual shine from the prince’s spotlight to make shadow puppets on the stage wall, and not be noticed by the crowd. She had two cudgels for hands, so all she could make was the moon falling on a baby octopus.

It’s also why Giacomo and Chloe snuck behind the wall to have their conversation.

A lot of people wouldn’t call it a conversation per se. There was some miming, some sign language, a little “me Jane, you Tarzan,” a lot of unnecessary touching of the other one’s arm, that sort of thing.

Giacomo presented the one orange gerber daisy he’d found. Chloe touched her heart with one hand as she took it. Then she put it up to her nose, though she knew full well that daisies don’t smell like anything. Then she looked up with the flower still at her nose. You know what I’m talking about. That demure look girls do. Innocent and vampy at the same time. Posed and spontaneous. Not exactly a look that could kill, but it could definitely maim. It’s how Cortés conquistadored the Aztecs. He just sent his smoldering mistress into the jungle, doing that look from behind a folding fan. A whole civilization, teased, tamed, and twitterpated.

Giacomo barely survived the look. And after that, they mostly just stood together, with moony expressions, enjoying the company. In terms of nonverbal, they were chatting like squirrels in springtime. In terms of verbal, they just said each other’s name in baby talk over and over. Chloe started it, by calling Giacomo “Co-Co,” which, coming from those puckered lips, with that little French accent as if she was flicking the words with the tip of her tongue, and the freckles right on the pucker’s edge . . .

Too much.

Giacomo responded with his own pet name, “Clo-Clo.” He actually said that. Clo-Clo. This before they exchanged a single coherent sentence. Chloe crept up and nuzzled under Co-Co’s chin. And Co-Co ran his finger down Clo-Clo’s nape. And they both shivered together and said “Co-Co” and “Clo-Clo” a hundred more times.

They were tooth-achingly cute. Like those pictures of kittens exploring an empty carton of French fries. I once took a shot of Mr. Bunnersworth licking a lettuce magnet on my fridge. I had to delete it. It was so sweet, I almost got adult-onset diabetes.

You probably know what was coming. The two lovers stood behind the stage wall snuggling. Brutessa had discovered she could also make a shadow puppet of a cheese wheel rolling up a staircase.

Then the prince christened his ambition the Objet d’Awesome! And the logical thing would have been for everyone to cut up laughing at the absurd name. But instead the drums roared, like a knell for all things good and holy. The dwarves lowered the star lamps and lit up the entire glade. The prince had his arms out and his head back, as he basked in the radiant overflow. Except now after the stage had been backlit, everybody could see Co-Co and Clo-Clo back there touching their noses together.

The prince expected adulation. Instead, he got a synchronized “Baroo?” He blinked, then looked up. The crowd stared past him, so he whipped around to see Brutessa two knuckles deep after a booger. But even more interesting was a ten-foot-tall projection of a young couple, casting its shadow on the backdrop of the stage. He was holding her in his arms. She was looking up and nuzzling into his neck. A picture of love that stole the show.

Pierre and Babbo immediately recognized the silhouettes and shouted in unison, “Ah jeez, that’s exactly what I told you NOT to do!”

T
HIS IS THE
part where things got crazy. The prince was so angry at being upstaged that he started shrieking a bunch of stuff in German. The land pirates didn’t understand German, but they knew shrieking really well, so they charged into the crowd, beating everybody up. People scattered. The Hand-Painting Society couldn’t decide whether to run into the woods or stay with their custom T-shirts and tablecloths. They ended up sprinting circles around their booth, making gobbling sounds, with shirts flapping behind them like tail feathers.

The pirates pillaged every peck of pickled peppers at the fair. Clouds of cotton candy, handmade paper, and loose straw stuffing billowed into the night air as the dwarves pounded everything in sight. At first they employed an overhand smash technique with their clubs, then they ran around for a while biting and spitting, and after that they grabbed the wooden beams of the booths and lifted them into the air like a caber toss. By that point they were just breaking stuff for all the funny sounds it makes. Only Babbo and Pierre were spared from the indiscriminate drubbings. Even land pirates decorate the mantels in their hovels — they loved fake flower marble vases as much as anybody.