The Nirvana Blues (54 page)

Joe shouted, “Murasaki Shikibu!”

Snidely, she droned, “Fuck you, Joey,” and hung up.

Unable to breathe, fumbling in his shirt pocket for a pill, Joe leaped to catch Tribby.

*   *   *

I
N THE
G
REEN
G
ORILLA
, slowly chugging southward, they soon reached the first impasse. A backhoe, a dump truck, and a Sno Cone Wagon had skidded into a large pit the backhoe had been digging. Present was the usual generator, coughing out rotten steam, providing electricity to run the usual bilge pump, which spewed every whichway a noisome underground liquid with the viscosity of oil and molasses. Joe veered onto a detour road without hitting anybody. A few seconds later their route was blocked by a Custer Electric Co-op cherry picker parked diagonally across the road while some geek in a fuchsia hardhat, suspended thirty feet above the world, futzed with a high-tension wire. Irritated backed-up cars honked deliriously, causing the geek to pause often in order to give them the finger.

Tribby moaned, “It's a quarter of six, man. I just gotta catch me a trout.”

“What can I say?—we're trapped.”

“Cut across that field.”

“How can I? It's fenced.”

“Forget the fence. If I don't catch a trout tonight, I swear to Christ I'll go off my rocker. I haven't relaxed in a month.”

“If I break the barbwire, they'll sue.”

“I'll defend you, gratis.”

Joe gunned the engine, spun the wheel, popped the clutch, and they jounced off the detour road, smashed through the fragile rusted strands, skidded along a soggy stretch of the lowland meadow, barged through one more wire barrier, and jounced onto Martyr's Lane. It led them back onto the North-South Highway, where immediately they slowed to a crawl behind a huge yellow truck spewing gravel and an enormous road-building machine laying down a hot mix. A small army of hardhatted ants puttered in the hot mix with rakes and hoes and other more industrial-looking implements. Blade lowered, a bulldozer trailed this snail-paced team gouging up the still-sizzling tar and gravel and tossing it in hot crunchy heaps onto the shoulder, causing much consternation among joggers.

Tribby said, “Pass 'em, god dammit.”

“It's not our turn. The girl is holding out her Stop flag, in case you didn't notice. There's also cars approaching from the other direction.”

“Forget the flag, forget the cars. Joe, if you got no guts in life, you'll never gather any blue chips.”

“They'll throw me in jail. And what's this crap anyway? You're the one trying to bail out the coke scam for peanuts.”

“I'll defend you. On the house. The coke deal is different. Right now we're talking about
trout.
Come on, goose it!”

Joe goosed it, swinging into the oncoming lane. The flag girl shrieked, an oncoming car veered onto the shoulder, and, as Tribby desultorily sucked on a cigarette, they rattled past the machinery, almost hit the southernmost flag girl, and swerved back into their lane.

“You see?” Tribby said. “It's easy.”

“I'm gonna have a heart attack!”

“Before you do, where's the extra flies?”

A hundred yards further along, at the single stoplight decorating the mouth of the plaza, another bottleneck had developed: the traffic light was broken. City police had not been notified early enough to avoid the seven-car collision that had promptly resulted. Now six cops, four wreckers, and the assorted drivers were trying to disentangle the mess.

Tribby wailed, “This town used to be a humane place! You could go from A to C by way of B!”

“We'll get there.” But Joe did not at all believe his own words.

While they waited, stewing in various juices, joggers trotted by, positively zooming. Heading north against the flow, Scott Harrison waved gaily, his eyes full of menacing double entendres. Head thrown back like a champion racehorse, he pranced into the distance with the superior gait of all joggers whizzing past automobiles locked in a traffic jam.

Jeff Orbison stumbled spastically into view. His face was crimson, his arms flailed, he winced at each step like a man with painful shin splints.

Next, tossing a V sign, Spumoni Tatarsky skated by. “Peace, brothers!” He pretended not to notice when Tribby snapped him a bird.

Its blue-and-red light blinking feverishly, a wrecker in reverse crunched sickeningly into a healthy vehicle. Two cops started yelling at each other, a third cursed at the wrecker's driver, horns went bananas.

Tribby remarked, “It's six-fifteen. I don't believe this is happening to me.”

“Picturesque Chamisaville,” Joe crooned sarcastically, “situated high in the beautiful southern Rockies in the easygoing land of mañana, where three cultures exist in perfect harmony, trout streams abound, and the genteel hospitality of her denizens will make your vacation stay one of unbridled joy and relaxation.”

Ralph Kapansky sneaked up behind the driverside door: his “boo!” made Joe jump. “Is it true,” he mocked sympathetically, “that Heidi just flew off to Reno with Nikita Smatterling and the kids?”

“Hey, Ralph…”

“I'm sorry, old boy, really. If there's ever anything I can do.…”

Trailed by an anxious, lumbering Rimpoche, off he cavorted on tiptoes, his maroon-and-white jogging outfit shining like a Christmas bauble.

Ahead of them, the pompous guru himself, Nikita Smatterling, threaded through the jam leading Baba Ram Bang. In midroute they detoured around Nick Danger—his hat brim hid his eyes, his spidery arms hugged that battered suitcase as firmly as ever.

“What the hell is he guarding in that bag?” Joe asked petulantly.

“You're asking me?”

“He's never without that creepy suitcase.”

“Maybe there's a miniature dialysis machine inside.”

“Very funny. Listen, do you know anything about that sinister little gangster?”

“Absolutely nothing.”

“Have you ever even said hello to him?”

“Me? What kind of fool do you take me for!”

“One of these days,” Joe threatened quietly, “I'm gonna knock that secretive little son of a bitch on his ass and tear open that suitcase.”

“Maybe there's limbs inside,” Tribby mused. “Like from a baby or an unlucky girl friend he murdered.”

“Or a lifetime supply of Preparation H he won in a raffle.…”

Tribby said, “I hear Sasha's still in the emergency ward of Tim Eberhardt's Pampered Pets down in the capital.”

“You heard correctly. What's on the grapevine today about the incident? Are thirty people in saffron robes, wearing monkey masks, gonna hit the castle tonight at midnight, mug me with gats made out of weighted bananas, kidnap Michael, cut off his lips, penis, and big toes, and offer them to the Great Monkey Spirit, so that no whimsical deity out there will hassle the unveiling on Thursday?”

“I don't know about that. But of course people are upset. They think it's an omen.”

“Omens!”
Joe said scornfully. “An innocent kid, disturbed by family troubles, takes it out on an ugly monkey who's bugged him unmercifully for the past three years, and they want to make a federal case out of it.”

“I know. But you ought to hear Nikita Smatterling on the subject.”

“Nikita stuck a gun into the belly of Ephraim Bonatelli and pulled the trigger. Don't talk to me about his rights to piety.”

“Ephraim is only a human being.”

“Can they sue?”

“I doubt it. Damages for assaulted monkeys aren't exactly big-time settlements these days. Fish and Game, on the other hand, might hit you with a couple hundred dollars, plus court costs, for letting your kid poach out of season, and without a license.”

Joe felt like whining. “What happened all of a sudden? Three days ago I was on cloud nine. Life had never been better.”

“For what it's worth, you're beginning to get quite a reputation in this burg. This morning I heard you were out in a tent on Eloy's land shacked up with Nancy Ryan, Diana Clayman, and Heidi all at once. Must be nice work if you can get it.”

Joe buried his head in his arms. “You ‘heard.' This town. I love it. What else is going around?”

“You mean aside from that three
A.M.
phone call?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I suppose you should know the latest on the Cobey Dallas–Roger Petrie–Skipper Nuzum axis. Now that the Hanuman is in town, there's all kinds of jockeying going down. More people are in cahoots than meet even the most practiced eye. Yesterday, as you know, Skipper was just about to nail Cobey, double-cross Roger, and initiate you into the fraternity of the Golden Apes. Like I said, he even asked me to draw up some papers. Today, I learn I'm supposed to forget it. Maybe you poisoned the well by telling him to shove it. Then in almost the same breath, I hear on the grapevine that Scott Harrison withdrew his suit against Eloy. And Cobey and Roger appear involved in some kind of fancy footwork to cover their bets you so arrogantly flung into Cobey's face during your tête-à-tête. Something big is in the air. Curious alliances are going down. Everybody is scrambling. It smells, all of a sudden, as if there's a lot more money in the kitty than just the bucks riding on our dope scam. But I have no idea what it is: nor can I figure out how they're gonna get Eloy's land. Or even, suddenly, if anybody truly wants it anymore.”

“So what else is happening?” Joe said dispiritedly, utterly confused by the opaque innuendos of everybody's pending shenanigans.

“Oh, you know, all the usual lewd and crude and juicy. Re you, it's Joe the Satyr, Joe the Sadist, Joe the Stud, Joe the Chauvinist Pig, Joe the Et Cetera.”

“What happened, Tribby? One minute I was sitting pretty. The next minute…”

“That must mean you weren't sitting so pretty to begin with.”

“I guess so. All my life, all my married life, anyway, I lusted for other women, other adventures, other things. But I kept it in control. I figured I could handle it. I assumed it would always be there, one of those minor ordeals you got to suffer all your days just for being born human. But I never felt really threatened by it.”

Tribby lit up another cigarette, and glowered at a young woman, wearing a black Lone Ranger mask, rounding the corner. She looked ravishing in a hot-pink muscle shirt, silver shorts, and powder-blue sneakers. He gawked as she jogged past two real-estate offices, an art gallery, and J. C. Penney's approaching them. In her hand she carried a small bouquet of plastic violets.

“I dunno what to say, Joe. We all got our devils.”

At the last moment, drawing up to them, the female jogger veered, tossed the violets through the passengerside window, and sprinted away like a streak of greased lightning.

The no-fade violets bypassed Tribby, landing in Joe's lap. “Don't touch them, it's a bomb!” Tribby shrieked, but Joe knew better. Immediately, his eye had caught a note affixed to the bouquet, and he had read its words:

If this had been a bomb, you

would be in heaven right now.

Think about it.

Joe handed the note to Tribby—the lawyer read it and frowned. Then he crumpled it into a small wad, dropped it out the window, and said, “Forget it. You were saying?”

“I wanted to ask: What about you? I mean, you and Rachel, your lives together. Are you loyal? Do you cheat on each other? Is sex a big deal? What do you want from your life? What are your ambitions? What do you hope it all adds up to? What—”

“Stop.”

Joe stopped, immediately embarrassed. He had rarely asked intimate questions of his male friends. Curious all his life about how other couples loved each other, Joe had rarely had the guts to quiz a pal on his love life. Mostly, he had joked about getting laid and had seldom delved into love. Often he envied the way women could bare their souls to each other. Men seemed hopelessly alone, and sadly vulnerable in ways that women, up to their eyeballs in the diabolical machinations of men, wouldn't care to understand.

Joe had always feared that if he started probing intimate levels with another man, a homosexual confrontation (accusation, proposition) might develop.

Talk about straight jackets!

“Just answer one of those questions, then,” Joe said warily. “Any one.”

“Well, about life, I dunno. I want to make some money, finish our house. We'll have kids, I suppose. We've both cheated on each other, but we survive. Sex is sort of a big deal but it's funny.”

“‘Funny'?”

“I can't figure it out exactly. We fuck a lot and it's usually semidramatic. But I often feel I'm, like, pretending. You know? Acting. Like if it were really left up to me, maybe I'd be happy screwing once a month in the missionary position for the rest of my life. Occasionally all the hoopla gets me down.”

“Huh.” Joe was growing increasingly articulate as the days went by.