The Nirvana Blues (81 page)

But as he drew ahead, eyes prepared to feast, he gasped. In place of that blue-eyed, luscious-lipped face he had counted on for yet another decadent pop in his twisted guts was an apparition of polished bone surrounding blank black eyeholes, and the grinning jagged teeth of a sardonic skull.

“Oh no!”

Joe swerved across the median line, then frantically swung the wheel in the other direction as a horn-tooting pickup narrowly swept by him inches from a head-on collision.

And when he dared glance back via the rearview mirror, the shoulder of the road, curiously hazy in the bright, early morning light, was deserted.

“You're hallucinating, bro,” he told his trembling self. “It's time for a little shut-eye.”

But where now? Who would have this scatological wreck? A powerful, sweet, deathlike sexual numbness gripped his brain and his loins. And so, as if connected to an automatic homing device, he turned into the Perry Kahn Subdivision #4.

Bradley sat on the front stoop in his pajamas, mainlining malnutrition and brain damage from a bowl of Cocoa Puffs. He waved. Joe cranked a handle, banging open the door. Emerging from the bus like a parachute unfolding, he cantered lopsidedly toward the house. Bradley barely looked up as Joe sailed past, a giddy grin pinned to his puffed and rosy features.

Cute and cool in a lime-green shorty nightgown, Nancy rounded a corner as he danced tipsily into her home. But Joe hardly noticed her outfit. He swished by, barely aware of fingers fluttering off one shoulder. Down the short, narrow hallway he plunged, bouncing softly off cardboard walls—and hung a left at Sasha's room.

The hospital-bound monkey was no doubt occupied elsewhere in tawdry deviltries, buggering nurses. Joe left his feet, crumpling luxuriously toward the glistening Daring Debbie. Her prominent pneumatic bosom rose in prolific greeting: he sank between tanned latex thighs. Her arms enclosed him in erotic chub as he shoved his penis into the ample, foam-rubber vagina. Joe gasped gratefully, running his tongue over slick rubber cheeks as soft as angel-pussy. And pumped, slipping greedy hands beneath her to squeeze plump buttocks. A sexy
whoosh!
escaped her perfectly pouted mouth as he frenched her. Thighs rolled and bounced against his jagged hips in airy delight. Joe groaned, and whispered, “I love you,” as he repeatedly stabbed the carefully contoured recess between her legs. Oh how pornographically she joggled in his arms!

“I love you, I love you.…” he murmured as the semen reared from his balls with stallionesque enthusiasm. “I love you, god dammit,” he croaked in erotic rage. “I want us to marry and live together forever!”

Thus released, jism galloped through his shaft, ignoring emotional Stop signs along the way, and burst from the tip of his cock with a real
éclat!,
splashing wonderful gobs of frustrated goo every whichway, filling up in a wink her cavernous hole, and overflowing against her swollen, perfectly textured belly. “Oh thank you!” Joe cried, knocked for a loop by such ecstasy and relief.
“Oh my God you're wonderful!”

For long minutes afterward he ground his stomach against her slippery swells, and mooshed his tingle-happy skin against the gratifying wholeness of this abominably heavenly whore.

Until finally, as if coldcocked by a mallet, he blacked out.

6

THURSDAY

Shock comes—oh, oh!

Then follow laughing words—ha, ha!

 

 

 

Gently, but persistently, she shook his shoulder. Joe opened one eye, somewhat disappointed to be still alive. Sunlight glorified her bedroom. How had he arrived here?

“You walked,” Nancy said. “Of course, I helped you a little.”

“I walked in my sleep?” He remembered nothing: it was eerie.

“Let's just say I helped. Gosh, you look adorable when you sleep.” Her hand ruffled his hair; goosebumps sprung up on his neck. He could picture it; telepathically she had lifted him from Sasha's mattress. Like a sleeping pasha on a bewitched Persian carpet, he had floated out the door, down the hallway, and into this room. The carpet had tilted slightly, dumping him onto the bed. Then her psychic powers snapped back into her head like a carpenter's metal tape measure:
brrrrrrrrrrrap!

“What time is it?”

“Time to drive out for the Hanuman unveiling.”

“I don't wanna go. They'll stone me to death.”

“Don't be silly.”

“I need a bath. I stink.”

“Whatever you wish. Though I think you smell wonderful.”

Like shit? Or Iréné Papadraxis? Imitating Rocky Marciano, guilt landed a combination to his conscience that rocked Joe back on his heels. Wearing black hats and cowboy boots, walking grim-lipped through Chamisaville streets fingering six-guns in leather holsters tied against their thighs, they were eager to gun him down: Heidi, Diana, Iréné.

Joe said, “How come
you
don't hate me?”

“Hate isn't my thing.”

“What is?”

“Love.”

He
hated
her for that!

“Remind me,” Joe called from the bathtub a few minutes later, “to nominate the inventor of hot water for the Nobel Peace Prize, would you?” Then he slouched down: water sloshed over his aching skin. Cut adrift, he was now a man without a country. His right-hand knuckles had swelled to double their size. An image of Heidi, swathed in blood on her knees at the telephone, gave his heart an uncomfortable moment. Quickly, he blocked out the scene before it could trigger the specter of horror-struck Michael, hands clasping his ears. Heather's bite marks on his arm pulsed angrily: Joe kissed the spot, trying to make it better. The skin flinched from his poison lips.

Bozo appeared, growled halfheartedly, stuck his head into the toilet, and thirstily lapped up water. Lathering himself good, Joe tried to hum a few bars of a Willie Nelson song—but the sounds were croaks and desultory gurgles. When next he glanced up, Joe almost shit a brick. Resembling a war veteran in his pink eyepatch and plaster-cast arm, Sasha stood in the doorway, morosely regarding Joe. Where the vet had shaved him to remove BBs, gobs of fur were missing.

“Oh no,
the monkey's back!
”

From the kitchen she called, “Yes, isn't it wonderful? I fetched him last night.”

Sasha's malicious face lit up. He clicked his teeth at Joe, then about-faced and bent over, throwing a moon. A bright-orange carrot emerged from halfway up his rectum.

The Incredible Hulk versus Mighty Monsterito!—Joe hurled a wet sponge at the gross little creature. Sasha snagged it in midair with his good hand and proceeded to insolently devour it, tearing off large chunks with his yellow chiseling teeth. Then he burped and scampered off. Joe closed his eyes—
they deserved each other.

Nancy arrived, wearing only panties, and stood before the medicine-cabinet mirror putting on eye shadow and lipgloss. Joe enjoyed the tranquil domesticity of the scene until Nancy said: “Whoever she was sure gave you a good butchering last night.”

“Come again?”

“Your body looks like it really went through a sexual meat grinder.”

“Well, uh, you know, I mean…”

“How was the party?”

“What party?” Why couldn't he stop himself? When they broke through the line and came running at him full tilt, his linebacker's instinct was to rush forward and tackle them with lies.

“Come on, Joe. You know what party.”

“Oh,
that
party.”

“Well, how was it?”

“I dunno. Okay I guess.” He didn't want to remember. “Pretty boring, actually. You know, all the typical stuff: disco music, nude bathing, lots of dope, good eats, asinine conversation.”

“You seem to have done all right for yourself with whatshername.”

“Me? Hey, wait a minute. What business is it of yours what I did last night?”

“Nobody said it was my business.” Nancy smiled, obviously aware that she looked delectable. “I was just making idle conversation.”

“Idle my eye. You're trying to slip ice picks into my jugular. Talk about devious…” No oomph characterized his protests. They sallied lacklusterly, by rote.

“You must learn to trust people someday.” She squatted beside the tub, then leaned through the steam, making him heady by touching her lips lightly against his. “Only then can you begin to lead a gorgeous life. All that suspiciousness clouds the issues.”

“But everybody's out to get you. Nobody ever does anything without an ulterior motive.”

“If that's how you think, then you'll always be unhappy.”

“But I'll survive to a ripe old age!” he muttered as she sauntered off for the bedroom.

Her pretty head reappeared in the doorway: “We all live forever, Joe.”

*   *   *

B
EHIND THE WHEEL
of her VW Beetle, heading west for Eloy Irribarren's place, Joe glimpsed himself in the rearview mirror: he looked almost human again. Beside him, Nancy was downright foxy in a sunny skirt, low-cut peasant blouse, and moderately high-heeled sandals. A daisy he had plucked from her coffee table vase was tucked in her hair. Behind them, Bradley squirmed uncomfortably in the old-fashioned splendor of a short-sleeved white shirt, gray flannel shorts, and Buster Brown oxfords. His official expression for the day was an Imperial Scowl mixed with a Spoiled-Brat Pout and a Snot-Nosed Frown. You couldn't impress that kid with statues of simian hermaphrodites!

Beside Bradley, Sasha was methodically eating a small bouquet of daisies Nancy had fitted with a rubber band to his good wrist. For the occasion, she and Bradley had crayoned a rainbow and words like
peace
and
love
on his cast.

Heading west off the plaza, they entered a caravan of VWs, ancient bread trucks, renovated hearses, and old pickups driven by millionaires from Big Sur and Closter, New Jersey. Some had little toy monkeys attached to their radio and CB aerials. One bumper sticker said, “Monkeys, monkeys, rah rah rah!” Peace symbols, ecology flags, and antinuke slogans decorated their windows. Every dilapidated pickup bed harbored a dozen healthy, sunburned kids in colorful hippie regalia.

Joe could not help remarking yet again on the land flanking their route: not three years ago it had still been a semivast pasture and sagebrush expanse. But now a thousand cleverly obtuse little castles populated by artists, dope pushers, grade-school teachers, pipe smokers, and retired airforce colonels plundered the mauve plain. People splashed in pools, hopped around outdoor tennis courts, mowed lawns that resembled putting greens.

“This must have been a lovely valley,” Joe said, surprised by his ability to summon outrage. A sense of loss, concerning something he had never known, nailed him in the heart. Sasha farted.

“It's still beautiful, Joe. It's all in the eye of the beholder. You're the one who makes or breaks any landscape, no one else.”

Despite himself, defensive juices began percolating. After all, whatever could he hope to accomplish with this woman, in this cavalcade of American escapists, heading off to stuff his stomach and worship at the feet of a stone idol sculpted in the image of King Kong? That curiosity decreed he see for himself seemed but a feeble justification. Only a weak and malleable man would even passively support a ritual he knew ahead of time he'd find insulting to any semi-attuned intelligence. How could a person once pretending to hold a rabid scorn for every spiritual Mickey Mouse milking the American psyche for dollar-plunder and -power actually wind up complacently supporting this whole hokey operation by showing up in person to gawk, talk, nosh, and who knew what else? He was so tired of narcissism—theirs, his own.

Then all of a sudden he remembered.
Oh no!
Today was the day Tribby and Ralph battled Ephraim Bonatelli for supremacy of the Chamisaville skies! In his name, in honor of Eloy's land, they were going to grab the Hanuman! How had he managed to push
that
from his rapidly mushifying mind?

The answer, of course, was “What mind?” That limp lump of cerebral muck encased by a rusted tin-can cranium balanced awkwardly like a rotting Halloween pumpkin atop the shoulders of the cowardly jellyfish contraption he had the nerve to call his “body”?

Brake the car, Joe, pull over, get out, and run away! And in his head Joe did brake; he banged open his door, leapt out, and scrambled off, leaving Bradley and Nancy horrified … yet also secretly enamored of his courage, his refusal to cop out.

No sheep blood in the veins of this revolutionary, by gum!

In real life, Bradley said, “Mom, Sasha stepped on a frog—make him stop it.” And Joe accelerated, giving up, carrying them ever closer to a signal event in the Chamisa Valley's spiritual history. He hadn't the guts to run; he'd lost the willpower to arbitrate his own destiny. He could almost feel his soul as it squeezed out his left ear, said “Ta-ta,” and evaporated into thin air. He was so full of fatal flaws they hummed inside his body like a rickety old refrigerator. Somewhere along the way, demons had robbed him of a selfhood that might have had noble intentions. And all that remained was a feeble and lackluster stubbornness that said, “Well, at least I won't foment that riot they asked me to launch.…”

Oh jeepers creepers, what sort of demeaning catharsis lay in store for them all?

When their motorcade quit pavement for Upper Ranchitos Road, Joe's heart quickened. Dust enveloped them; he couldn't breathe. Fumbling in his shirt pocket for a pill, he realized they were all in the bus glove compartment … right beside the Alupent inhaler.

“Maybe you're being set up for a cure,” Nancy said cheerfully.

“Meaning?”

“The Hanuman has powers.”

“That'll be the day.”

“If only you were open, Joe. Your life would be so much easier.”