A HANDSOME BLACK MAN WALKS INTO A BAR... (pt. 3)

             One day I’m just walkin’ the streets o’ Harlem, livin’, like I always done. Next thing, I’m walkin’ that tunnel o’ light like they say. I still don’t know how I died – if a car hit me or a block o’ cement fell on my head. But when I get to that light, I see this musta-been African at this little desk and he’s writin’ in some book I can’t read. He looks up at me, got these big round eyes narrowed to slits between sleepy-lookin’ eyelids, adjusts his spectacles and he says I gotta go before General Concensus. I ask him, who’s this General and what’s he got to do with me and what’s rank matter in the Beyond and a whole lot o’ other questions. But the African don’t say nothin’. Just waves me on. So I walk away – or maybe float, I dunno – and I start headin’ toward this cliff, which I don’t know how I know that’s where I’m supposed to go. But I do and go to the edge of this cliff overlookin’… Zion, I guess. I dunno, but it was this real Eden-like place just stretchin’ everywhere with the sun in a blue sky, no clouds, shinin’ down on everythin’. Then all the sudden I’m face-to-face with this… I don’t what it was. It was a person and they was black but… but that’s it. They go, “I am General Concensus.” But I don’t see the lips move ‘cause I can’t tell what they look like. Everythin’ kept movin’ and changin’. The nose was wide and flat, then, the next second, thin and turned up. Eyes went from brown to green to brown to blue. The build was a skinny girl’s then a fat man’s and everythin’ in between. Even the skin. It was always black, but sometime lighter and sometime darker. And the voice was never just one voice, but a whole bunch o’ voices bouncin’ through a metal hallway and whichever caught your ear first was luck. And each voice called me one name or another: “Everyman. Drunk. Intellectual. Philanderer. Rebel. Faggot. Pioneer. Uncle Tom.” It kept up ‘til this ghostly silence hit me like a batterin’ ram, like all the air got sucked out all at once. Then the General goes, “NOT BLACK ENOUGH!” Lifts his arms, turns into a giant bat, and flies right at my face. Next thing, I’m here, just as old and run down as you see, but stuck in a time I’d left behind long ago, waitin’ for the General Concensus to agree on me.

            Handsome sat looking at Tex. He had been spoken down to before; by teachers, coaches, employers, colleagues, doctors, lawyers, the police. But no one had succeeded in making Handsome feel as wholly ignorant as this old black cowboy. “There are so many things wrong with that story, I don’t know where to start!” he barked as he sprung to his feet. “And I’m not going to bother trying.”

            “Every word was bible truth,” Tex calmly asserted.

            “Okay. Enough.”

            “Boy, don’t you…”

            “And don’t call me, ‘Boy,’ old man!”

            “Did y’even get the moral o’ the story?”

            “What moral? There is no moral. It’s a story about nothing.”

            “It’s about your life, boy!”

            “Oh yeah? I thought it was about what happens when I die.”

            Handsome watched the old man’s face assume the reverberant calm at the center of a terrible hurricane. Tex’s eyes narrowed and the warmth seeped out of them instantaneously as he shook his head with the slow foreboding swing of a pendulum. “Think you’re so smart,” he intoned. “You’re pitiable, boy, lookin’ down at the ignorant field nigga.”

            Handsome pointed a finger at Tex. “I didn’t say that.”

            “Ya don’t got to!” Tex cried and slapped away Handsome’s hand. He clambered off his stool and stood on his thin rickety legs eyeball-to-eyeball with Handsome. The young man was back on his heels, ready for whatever the coot was about to try. “Ya think I just swallowed that monster outright? Ya wanna know what I said?”

            I said, “Ya expect me to believe y’all are dead and conversin’ with me?”

            “No,” said Mudbone, “but we tellin’ ya anyhow.”

            I gotta admit, now they had me real curious. “Y’all don’t want money. I call horse hockey on your story. So what ya tellin’ me for?”

            Simple stepped forward and said, “ ‘Cause you, son, are our ticket outta here.”

            “I am?”

            “You the future. The future judges the Negro of old. Every battle the Negro waged is one less you gotta fight. Every step he took toward Zion, that’s one less step you and your future gotta take.

            “But like all men, a black man’s got his agenda and it might not jibe with his brother’s. Ya know how folks are, self-interest and all. I challenge your ideas, I gotta go. Your generating see Pops and his teethy grinnin’, they see him coonin’ for the white man. No place for that in the future. And it don’t matter how easier he made it for you. Don’t matter if me and Mudbone tamped down the path for black folks to show the white man we real people ‘cause I’m queer and Mudbone’s a womanizin’, blasphemin’, whore-born junkie.”

            Mudbone said, “But I ain’t queer.”

            Simple continued, “History’s a story, son, and every story needs a storyteller. Else it’s just motes o’ dust carried by the wind forever. White folks got lots o’ storytellers so they got lot o’ history. How much we got? Our history’s all spoken, passed word-o’-mouth and all. And we lost it when our ancestors got stolen from home. The storytellers we got now wanna ignore some stories. Why ya think only white folks talk about Africans sellin’ their own to the slavers?”

            “Racism?” I guessed.

            “True. But why don’t black folks talk about it? Maybe it don’t agree with what our storytellers think our stories should be. But it’s part o’ our story. We are all a part o’ our story. And we need someone to tell our side of it.”

            “‘And one day,’” Tex finished, “‘you may need someone to tell yours.’”

            Handsome walked down the half-forgotten side street, away from the quaint old coffee shop, out to Center Avenue. He stood at the corner breathing deeply, trying to compose himself. The weird old codger had not just riled him. He had prompted Handsome to tap into a deep reservoir of hatred he was less than proud of. But Handsome was angrier with himself than at Tex. He was infuriated that he had even for a nanosecond entertained the notion that he was oblivious to the sacrifices made by African-Americans past for his benefit. He was educated and knew that those African-Americans had done much more with far less than he ever would. Handsome’s blood again began to churn with tectonic aggravation, when he heard the vague exclamation of a young male voice to his left.

            He turned and saw three black teenaged boys huddled on the front stoop of a convenience store. They were ensconced in name-brand clothes two sizes too large. The diamonds piercing their ear lobes wrestled for the attention of strangers. Two of the boys wore baseball hats cocked at Dutch angles. The third boy sported a loose Afro replete with six differently colored picks. Handsome couldn’t understand what they were saying. It was a pidgin hodgepodge of English and slang he had never heard before. They spoke over one another, increasingly fast, increasingly loud, and increasingly garbled. Handsome shook his head, a grimace slapped across his face.

            Handsome silently mouthed to himself, niggers.

            And suddenly, realizing what he had just thought, Handsome froze. His immediate impulse was to turn and run back to the coffee shop, to speak to Tex, to tell the old cowboy that he understood now. But he didn’t. He didn’t want to turn around to find the coffee shop to have disappeared. 

A HANDSOME BLACK MAN WALKS INTO A BAR... (pt. 2)

            “Who this here?” asked Simple.

            “He’s our three. Who you think he is?”

            “Goin’ off the class of three you rope in, I thought he might be another fool don’t know Jim Crow from Jim Brown.”

            “Just shut up. He’ll do fine.”

            “Wait,” I said. “I ain’t familiar with pool with three people.”

            “Mudbone here didn’t bother tellin’ ya the game, huh?” Simple said.

            Mudbone said, “Ain’t my job to name the game.”

            “How long it been since you had any job?”

            “Last week and your momma pays well. How long for you?”

            Right about that time I started thinkin’ this might be some kinda hustle. But when I asked how much we was wagerin’, Mudbone said, “No money. We just playin’.”

            Well, that just ain’t right, I thought. How ya gonna play a game without stakes? But here’s the thing: Sure ‘nough soon as we started the game, I was havin’ fun. More fun than I ever had at dice or dominoes or cards or pool before. And not only was there no money changin’ hands, there was no rules. Ya shot ‘til ya missed, then the next brother shot. And Mudbone and Simple, they were some cutups. Simple started talkin’ ‘bout this girl he knew up in Harlem from back a ways and Mudbone starts castin’ aspersions.

            “The bitch got a triangle asshole,” he told Simple. “And you suck on her titties and glue come out!”

            Well, Simple wasn’t havin’ none o’ that. Told him right out, “I ain’t about to let my woman go slandered by some whore-bred bastard associatin’ with peanut-head reprobates and other assorted ne’er-do-well Negroes.”

            But  Mudbone came back at him, “Like you some prize, ya broke-ass Elmer’s imbibin’ muthafucka!”

            Now, I was havin’ fun, see. And even though I figured this was just Mudbone and Simple playin’ the dozens like they been for a mean spell, I didn’t wanna take a chance and let ‘em get all wrapped up in the back-and-forth and one o’ ‘em cross a line. ‘Cause ol’ as they was, those two looked the type who kept their fangs in their heads to the bitter end. So I said, “How long you two been here?”

            “Longer ‘an either o’ us care to remember,” said Simple.

            “Ya said your woman was up in Harlem,” I said. “That where ya from?”

            “Mmm. Not original. Lived on 125^th and Amsterdam for years. But I’m here now.”

            “How ‘bout you, Mudbone?” I asked him.

            “I was born in either Peoria, Illinois or Tupelo, Mississippi.”

            “Huh?”

            “Depends when you ask my father.”

            That struck me as off. Mudbone was ol’ himself so I figured his father wasn’t likely still livin’. So I ask him real delicate, “I ain’t tryin’ for insensitive, but I’d assume your father left the quick by now.”

            “No,” Mudbone said. “He’s alive.”

            “Mine too, though he gettin’ up there in years,” added Simple.

            That hit me like a switch on the backside and I started feelin’ like I did at the counter, like all the sudden I wasn’t me but the me I was was strange and off-puttin’. “How ol’ are ya two?” I asked ‘em.

            They looked at each other and this slier-than-a-fox smile come across their faces and Simple said, “Age don’t count for nuthin’ where we been and you goin’.” They both laughed like they was joshin’ me and just waitin’ to spring the trap.

            But the not-me feelin’ kept buildin’ up like a train engine people keep tossin’ coal in. This wasn’t no prank, I knew. That know ya have when ya sense somethin’ big comin’ ‘round the corner and ya can’t tell what it is, but it don’t matter ‘cause it’s so big and fearsome it could be Death himself and ya wouldn’t be surprised. “What y’all want with me?”

            That’s when Simple stepped forward. “Tex, boy,” he said, “we got no designs on you. I swear it. You gonna leave this place alive and you gonna live as long as you was gonna live if you never met us. But what you gotta understand…”

            “Muthafucka, we dead!” cried Mudbone.

            Simple turned to Mudbone and got loud. “Goddamn you! What do you think you’re doin’?”

            “Whatchu doin’, draggin’ it out and all? Kill the suspense already.”

            I put my hands up. “Whoa! Whoa! What do y’all mean, you’re dead?”           

            “Just that. We dead,” repeated Mudbone. “I ain’t smart ‘nough to dumb it down no more.”

            “You just shut your mouth,” Simple told his friend. Then he started walkin’ toward me. “S’true, son. We cast off the mortal coil some time ago. We been here since.”

            I started gettin’ angry and slammed my stick down on the table. “What’s the hustle?” I asked ‘em.

            “No hustle, boy,” Mudbone said.

            “Mmmhmm.”

            “Hand to God.”

            “Ya gotta do better than that,” I said.

            “What? Y’ain’t got room in ya for faith?”

            “I got faith in Jesus Christ – not two ol’ niggas with a ruse.”

            That’s when Simple put his hand to my face. SMACK!

            I was starin’ at him, holdin’ my face, nonplussed, when he said, “That, boy, is what we’re here for.”

            “That’s when he told me.”

            Handsome stared back at Tex with an incredulously furrowed brow. “Told you what?” he asked.

            “What happens to black folk when they die.”

A HANDSOME BLACK MAN WALKS INTO A BAR... (pt. 1)

            The coffee shop was hidden halfway down a side street off Center Avenue. A quaint anachronism amidst a concrete jungle of modernity, the coffee shop’s neon was dead and the canvas awning was frayed and sagged under its own weight. The Fifties hadn’t died. They’d merely retired to this unimposing dive tucked away within a future that had forgotten to decide their fate.

            Handsome, his stomach knotted in righteous hunger, noticed none of it as he marched through the door. He made straight for the counter, fell ass-first onto the closest empty stool and announced, “Shrimp basket and a Herschel’s.”

            The waitress behind the counter, a frumpy white woman with many strenuous years behind her and too many still ahead, topped a milkshake with a cherry and walked away. As famished as he was, Handsome was willing to exercise patience. He knew waiting tables was hard, thankless work and he was determined to give them the benefit of the doubt.

            After fifteen minutes in the nearly empty coffee shop, Handsome’s benefit of the doubt morphed into the undeniable fact that the wait staff – the white wait staff – was ignoring him.

            He had a hard time reconciling such pronounced unapologetic racism with the fact that he was its recipient. Here he was: Harvard law grad, magna cum laude, four months with the most prestigious law firm in Madsen, New Jersey. He was the first person in his family to graduate college and he would soon be the first to own his own home. His suit was clean, pressed and obviously expensive. Anyone should be able to take the most cursory look at him and find no reason to judge him to be anything other than an upwardly mobile contributor to the community.

            Save for one glaring trait.

            “They know ya not gonna tip,” said a voice with a pronounced twang. Handsome looked to his right and saw its source two seats down.

            He was a tall lithe black man with a checkered shirt and bolo tie underneath a fringed leather jacket. White tufts of hair at his temples and the back of his head sprung from underneath the bill of his Stetson. His head sat proudly atop his shoulders. Dignity ran through the folds of his grizzled features and bloomed from his gray handlebar mustache. “S’why they ain’t servin’ us,” he continued.

            “That’s stupid,” countered Handsome. “They don’t know that. I always tip at least twenty percent, even if the waitress doesn’t deserve it.”

            “But ya do see why they’d think so?”

            Handsome furrowed his brow suspiciously. “Look,” he said, “no offense, but you’re not one of those old Ruckus white-man-can-do-no-wrong brothers, are you?”

            The old cowboy shook his head as he moved the stool next to Handsome. “No. No, I ain’t that. But ya oughtn’t be so quick to cast a stone. Those boys just doin’ what they gotta to survive, ya know?”

            Now Handsome shook his head. “Abandoning and castigating your own race isn’t a matter of survival.”

            “Ya think the Romans threw every Christian to the lions? Don’ ya think some ‘em renounced and saved their skins?”

            Handsome sighed and wearily rubbed his eyes with heels of his palms.

            The cowboy slapped him playfully on the back. “Lord, this here’s got ya dander up but fierce, boy,” he said.

            “I can’t understand how you’re able to take it in stride like you are.”

            “Why’sat puzzlin’?”

            “Because it’s the twenty-first century. I’m not naïve enough to think racism should be dead by now. But this?” he asked in a raised voice, waving his arm around the circumference of the coffee shop. “This is like what you must’ve dealt with when you were my age.”

            “Oh, I dealt with much worse ‘an this here.”

            “Like what?”

            “Aaah, I ain’t gettin’ into it. Unpleasant memories and all, ya know?”

            Handsome nodded sheepishly. “Sure. Sorry.”

            “S’quite awright. What’s ya name, son?”

            “Handsome.” He extended his hand.

            The old cowboy clasped and shook it. “Tex.”

            Handsome couldn’t help but expel a single chortle. “C’mon! ‘Tex?’”

            “S’right.”

            “You from Texas?”
            “Small Knuckles, Arkansas.”

            “Then why are you called, ‘Tex?’”

            “Loooooong story. And not an interestin’ one.”

            Handsome paused and regarded Tex for a silent moment. He let out another sigh, more bemused than annoyed. “I’m sorry,” he started. “But you seem to have a lot to say for someone who doesn’t want to talk about himself.”

            Tex held up a single finger of correction. “Now, I ain’t shy. But y’all goin’ off two stories with no wisdom to impart. Ya want me to learn ya a thing?”

            “No disrespect, Tex, but I’m a graduate of Harvard Law and…”

            “What I got to teach ya,” Tex interrupted, “ya can’t learn in no college.”

            “Well, I don’t really have much need for street smarts. I’m employed with Chotchki & Casino and I’m…”

            “Ya wanna know what happens to black folk when they die?”

            Handsome stared back at Tex, gobsmacked, stunned by the temerity of the claim that such knowledge could be possessed. “What?” he spit out.

            “I’m gonna tell ya a story ‘bout myself. I was near ‘round your age, truck drivin’. I was haulin’ a load of hockey pucks up to Toronto. That’s in Canada…

            One afternoon I stopped at this diner a couple miles south o’ Akron. It looked real ol’ and at first I was thinkin’ it was goin’ wind up bein’ closed down. But I walked in the door and there was this waitress, genteel little dear from St. Louis, makin’ coffee, jukebox playin’, everything up and up and up.

            I sat down at the counter, just as unassumin’ as I’m sittin’ here, ordered some chicken. Few minutes later, she brought out this succulent breast, pipin’ hot and crispy and all, and I sank my teeth in and, like lightnin’ outta clear blue sky, I knew like I’d known my whole life, I didn’t like chicken. Never had.

            Now, I know that’s a nuthin’ thing, chicken. But after a life raised on chicken, never questionin’ it, to just know it all the sudden like? Strange. Like I didn’t know myself no more. It’s a scary feelin’ to not know yaself.

            I pushed the plate aside and I don’t know how long I was just starin’ at the counter, tryin’ to puzzle out what the meanin’ was. Then I felt this tap on my shoulder. I turned around and it’s this old black man, bent over and gnarled like an ol’ tree. “Say there, boy,” he said, “seein’s ya just ogglin’ the formica, you feel up to shootin’ some pool?”

            At this point I was beside myself. So I figured lemme just put my mind on sumptin’ else. And right at that point, gettin’ in a game sounded right about right.

            He lead me over to this ol’ ratty pool table at the back o’ the room where there’s his friend, jus’ as ol’, jus’ as black, but walkin’ upright more. “Name’s Tex,” I said.

            Ol’ gnarled tree said, “This here’s my friend Simple, and my name is Mudbone.”

DEATH OF LIFE (LitBits #5)

           A pulsar throbbed through the miasmic void, launched him past long dead orbs. He watched the cosmos furl into itself and cry to its birth. Sands fell skyward. Grains of stardust imploded. Wisps of the elements flagged into darkness. He passed a cradle wreathed in breath, ensconced in blue and green. He watched it die backward and careened onward to everything and nothing.  

SHE COMES FROM THE OCEAN (LitBits #4)

            She comes from the ocean. Where the water laps in lonesome rolls. Where beasts may sing you a lullaby. The air is rich and clean and silent. The ocean erodes the stone you wear. The earth drowns beneath your feet. You bob and lie with the heavens. Your bedding splits the waking world asunder. It leaves you content beyond the chasm. Where it’s cold and dark and there’s no one to hear. All that is good is nothing but yours.

            She comes from the ocean.

INVIDIO FAST (pt. 3)

           The Madsen Municipal Courthouse stood stoically atop Truburgh Hill, casting its sovereignty across the city like the shadow of a cloud. It’s Doric columns stood like clenched forearms that had punched their way out of the earth and broken through the planet’s dermis. The marble statues of gargoyles and gods exhaled authority and blew the air clear of pollution. The stone walks ambled down the hill with the alacrity of a valley’s brook. Finely carpentered benches nestled beneath the yews and acanthus ran along their sides. The walks lead to the two vast parking lots. They were empty, as were the parking lots save a solitary BMW.

            The orange moon loomed in the ink black sky over the city as Invidio spotted Olpian’s car. The judge had parked in an isolated corner under a canopy of hawthorn branches. Invidio slowly crossed the parking lot on his squat legs. As he neared Olpian’s car, he saw the judge sobbing into his open tremulous hands.

            Invidio knocked on the window. Olpian’s weathered tear-streaked face popped up to meet Invidio’s. The bearded little man smiled compassionately. “May I be of any assistance, good sir?”

            Olpian composed himself with a single sniffle. “No. Thank you,” he said and looked away.

            “You say that with utmost certainty?”

            Olpian nodded his head. “Yes.”

            “Might you possess the magnanimity to confide in yours truly the most trivial vagary as to your ailment? My pardons ad infinitum. But in excess of a fortnight nary a wink will Morpheus bestow if I must remain aloof.”

            Olpian blinked back more tears. He stared at nothing through the front windshield. Finally he replied, “It’s not my ailment.”

            “One for whom you love,” Invidio gently offered.

            Olpian nodded.

            “A child?”

            Olpian swallowed hard, and nodded.

            “Mayhaps I can be of benefit.”

            Olpian sniffled again. “You have some miracle drug I don’t know about?”

            Invidio smiled. “One might employ stranger monikers.”

            For the first time since Invidio had knocked on the window Olpian raised his head and met the little man’s gaze. His eyes narrowed angrily. “What?” he growled.

            Invidio saw Olpian’s face start to contort and straightened his posture, his palm over his heart. “Cruelties are anathema, sir. I speak sincerely.”

            Invidio jumped back as Olpian thrust open the car door. The jurist marched up and towered over the homuncular man. “I am the last person in this world you want to mark for this con and this is the worst time in the world for you to try it!”

            Invidio supplicated himself, his pants tearing as his knees hit the asphalt, and implored, “Not one thought is divorced further from my countenance and no material need change hands.”

            “Get away from my car before I kick the piss out of you!”

            Olpian turned back toward his car.

            Invidio yelped, “The only tithe be your dignity!”

            Olpian stopped and looked back over his shoulder. “My what?”

            “Your dignity and naught a scruple more. What patriarch worth his salt would not give as much for kith and kin?”

            Olpian regarded Invidio for a split second. “Get out of here,” he snapped and turned back to his car.

            “Sir!”

            “Leave! Now!”

            Olpian put one foot into his car.

            “Would you have a filicide on your soul?” Invidio shouted.

            Olpian stopped.

            Invidio watched the man’s face redden and his pupils dilate with rage. “Your retreat is tantamount to such. But all that is required to evade said calamity is your most rudimentary acquiescence.”

            Invidio stared into Olpian’s homicidal eyes. The desperate man was not moving. He was barely breathing.

            “Your Honor,” Invidio began, “I know of your vocation. I know of the accolades bequeathed in recognition of your mastery. I know your currency is facts and doubts – as is mine. As evidenced by your lachrymals, the sincerity of your sorrow is a fact. As evidenced by your admission, your beloved progeny’s infirmity is a fact. My possession of an effectual remedy you may doubt. That my stated price for such a remedy cannot possibly bring further infliction to the child or greater despondency to you and yours, however, is an inexorable fact. If the suffering of this child would evoke such lamentations, is it not a reasonable assumption that you would suffer any indignity to ensure the youngling’s revivification?”

            Olpian’s face remained hard, calcified by anger and fear. Invidio stared back at him through an interminable silence.

            A car engine turned over at the opposite end of the parking lot.

            Invidio saw Olpian blink.

            “Fine,” said Olpian. “Keep my dignity and save my girl.”

            Invidio smiled.

            “Now fuck off!” Olpian fell into the car and quickly sped away.

            It was four days after his encounter with Olpian. Invidio was enjoying his morning constitutional before leaving for work. He was almost surprised when he stumbled across the headline: OLPIAN CRACKS. Invidio read the story.

Following three days of increasingly erratic behavior, Judge Moses Olpian has resigned from his position as Superior Court Judge for the county and city of Madsen. Judge Olpian’s attorney gave no explanation for his client’s sudden breakdown. The sudden change in the honorable judge’s behavior began on the morning of Tuesday the 3^rd, when during a routine preliminary hearing, Judge Olpian, repeatedly and without prompting, confessed to a number of embarrassing sexual peccadilloes from his collegiate career, including an admission of a particularly scandalous experiment with homosexuality. The following day witnessed His Honor render a judgment, not in English, but in what he claimed to be the mating call of the West Indian sabre-toothed seahorse. Judge Olpian’s public collapse culminated yesterday when he was suddenly struck by an uncontrollable bout of diarrhea.

            Olpian’s breakdown, the story continued, coincided remarkably with the miraculous recovery of his seven-year old daughter from a lethal undiagnosed illness.

            Invidio Fast beamed as he read the story. It would be another two weeks before he would have to enter into a bargain with another powerful man. Two weeks before he would have to clean the camel suit himself. 

INVIDIO FAST (pt. 2)

            It was ninety-five degrees and the previous night’s rain was turning the day into an ungodly schvitz. The atmosphere waved and trailed above the street. Each car and big rig zooming past the chandelier outlet slapped Invidio with a noxious gust of hot exhaust. His fuzzy camel suit provided little protection and, in fact, threatened the onset of heat stroke. Invidio relied on licking the sweat from his lips for hydration. His boss, a swarthy man of indeterminate Eastern European extraction, fed his beloved malamute bottled Evian out the palm of his hand.

            “Mr. Cicadas,” Invidio started, his voice muffled by the layers of cotton ensconcing his head, “perchance would you be inclined to part with a single bottle of water? I am prepared to provide fair remuneration.”

            “No!” barked Cicadas in his unidentifiable accent. “Bottles for puppy. You use sink – later. Now you juggle.” With that Cicadas retired inside the store.

            For the past thirty minutes Invidio had been performing card tricks. Before that he had been making balloon animals. He was a certifiable mediocrity at both skills and his fat fuzzy camel hooves made both activities significantly more challenging. Now he was juggling – first baseballs, then bananas, then iPhones. He was careful with the various props. Cicadas had made it known that he would garnish Invidio’s wages if he were to drop the iPhones or lose the baseballs or eat the bananas. Invidio had once asked, “Mr. Cicadas, the bananas with which I entertain the goodly passers-by unfailingly wilt and over-ripen in the blistering forge of the sun. And as you know, said bananas are, alas, rendered useless for the following day’s merriment. For Sol Invictus is a fickle master and takes life as easily as he gifts it. Owing to such, might I have your permission to augment my daily repast with the fruit before they go the way of poor foolish Icarus’s wings?”

            “No!” Cicadas had barked. “You eat this,” and had slapped into Invidio’s beseeching hands two antacid tablets and a pushpin.

            The day was a largely uneventful one for Invidio. He took his spot outside the front door of the chandelier outlet at precisely nine-thirty and proceeded to pant and perspire inside his velutinous tomb. One car brimming with proud suburban ennui after another zoomed past him during the slower periods of traffic. During the periods of heavier volume cars would form a trundling parade of oblivious steel. Invidio waved at each of them. Most motorists never deigned to look at the pitiful little man in the suit. Invidio knew that if one was to meet his cartoonishly large eyes, that motorist would feel compelled to wave back. They would hate to let the pitiful little man’s torturous and ignominious work go to waste. But what an imposition, shaming innocent people going about their day into buying a chandelier. How else to afford this pitiful little man in the camel suit his dignity? No. Better to simply avoid eye contact.

Parents would deposit their ill-behaved children onto his back and, in accordance with Cicadas’s orders, Invidio would give them camel rides. The kids would whip him with their hands, pantomiming what they had seen on television, while their parents would pose to him the most earnest questions, like: “Is it hard for little people to shop for clothes?” Older children and young adults sauntered past and shouted their typical brand of encouragement: “Faster, Camel!” “Stop hogging all the water, Camel!” “Suck my dick, Camel!” “Fucking raghead!” Invidio took only scant comfort in the protection the camel suit provided from spit, sundries, and assorted solid projectiles. It was his responsibility on his day off to clean the remnants of whatever had been lobbed at him throughout the week. Invidio took every slight, intentional or otherwise, in stride. Everyone values their dignity, he thought. But some have to go in search of theirs.

            At five o’ clock, one hour before Invidio’s shift ended, a 1988 Grand National turned into the parking lot, nearly jumping the curb in the process, and broke with a screech just in front of Invidio. A simian-looking creature with tattoos running the length of his neck and an assortment of unorthodox piercings, was behind the wheel. The passenger-side door swung open and out stepped Cicadas’s daughter. She was sixteen-going-on-thirty and looked the part. From afar one could almost mistake her shorts for a bikini bottom and up close they looked primed to tear. Her tank top bore a striking resemblance to a loincloth and it amply displayed her fittingly ample breasts. Invidio could not help but notice the slightest penumbra of areola peeking out the top of the shirt yet again. Same nipple, different day. Invidio liked to refer to it as Kilroy – at least he would have had he known anyone with which to share the joke.

            Cicadas’s daughter closed the door and the car sped to the other end of the parking lot. As she approached Invidio, her legs visibly undulating like rubber bands, she lilted, “Hi, Invidio.”

            Invidio replied chivalrously, “Good afternoon, Miss Nuzzles.”

            Nuzzles stopped and expelled a single breathy chortle. “When are you going introduce me to your girlfriend?”

            Invidio blushed behind his mask. “Miss Nuzzles, the transparency of your jest bellies the formidability of your faculties. You know that, come six of the clock, I will retire to my domicile sans paramour.”

            Invidio watched Nuzzles start toward him, mischievously planting one long toned leg before the other with each accentuated sashay of her hips. “I don’t believe that,” she intoned. “I’ve seen you out of costume. You’re telling me the girls can’t see what a catch you are?”

            Invidio bowed his camel head and quietly said, “Tragically the entirety of the fairer sex does not share your talent for badinage or flattery.”

            “It’s only flattery if you’re lying.”

            Invidio tensed within his costume. “You are too kind, Miss Nuzzles.”

            Nuzzles gently laid her hands on his furry chest. “I like when you call me, ‘Miss Nuzzles.’”

            Invidio raised his head by an inch. “Do you?”

            Nuzzles bit her lower lip. “I like when you talk to me.”

            “Pray tell why, Miss Nuzzles.”

            “I like your big words. Even the ones I don’t know.”

            “It would be my privilege and honor to augment your vocabulary were you so inclined.”

            “You like talking to me?” Nuzzles asked through pursed lips.

            “I do.”

“Do you like when I talk to you?” she asked.

            Invidio looked into her eyes from behind his laughably simplistic visage of a camel. “Were I flanked by Venus, Ishtar and Scheherezade; I would think only of you, Nuzzles.”

            Nuzzles giggled, then whipped around her head to face the parking lot. She cried out, “Drew!”

            The Cro-Magnon from the Grand National marched up to them. He grabbed Nuzzles by the arm without stopping and continued toward the chandelier outlet, pulling the girl with him. “C’mon,” he said. “I want to play with your tits some more.”

            Invidio watched them disappear into the store. He had allowed the little harlot to manipulate him again. He knew he would fall for her game again. That was when Invidio reminded himself that, like many others, he had to fight for his pride. Unlike others, however, he was uniquely gifted for capturing his pride. He had mastered his talent long ago. He had used it many times and he would use it again that night.

He felt something the size of a soda can collide with the back of his head and heard a male voice scream, “Fuck your mother, you humpbacked dune coon!”

INVIDIO FAST (pt. 1)

            A car sped by and vomited a wave of rainwater out the gutter. Invidio Fast caught the wave in his back and braced himself against the impact. The diminutive man shivered within the cold, wet cocoon his clothes had been reduced to. Only the tops of his scuffed wingtips remained dry under the umbrella provided by his orbicular belly. He fought to keep his neck from bowing under the dampened weight of his thick mesh of beard. The precipitation mingled with the dank urban air and Invidio bristled at the sting inside his wide spherical nose.

            The city of Madsen, New Jersey was uniquely antagonistic that night. There was not only the splash-by from the passing car and the ceaseless rain. In the process of buying his subway pass the vending machine had eaten Invidio’s first five dollars. He was forced to break a sawbuck for the second ticket and fill his pocket with the resultant change, which was mostly comprised of dimes. On the subway Invidio had found himself sandwiched between a panhandling hippie emanating a funk of patchouli and cloves and a morbidly obese woman badly in need of a decongestant. He had been forced to endure a few moments of agony after his desperate squirming had caused him to sit on his testicles. Upon exiting the subway he had been beset by a six-year old boy who expected the dwarfish Invidio Fast to grant him a wish. Upon calmly explaining to the disagreeable cherub that he was not in fact a magical being of slight stature, the boy’s mother, a scowling harpy of an insufferable temperament, ordered him to humor the boy. Invidio promptly blessed the boy with a long life free of injustice or indignity. As he continued toward his destination, his trouser pocket full of dimes, Invidio had taken comfort in the knowledge that his wish would not come true.

            He now stood before a gargantuan brownstone. It was architecturally authoritative and its accompanying masonry stood as a bulwark against any who would dare to interrupt the inviolable sanctity of the happy homes within. Invidio blinked away the drops of water falling through his bushy eyebrows. He stood at the foot of a marble planter, peeped between the twin yews standing guard and through the window beyond. The kitchen was florid and sumptuously autumnal in flavor, equally capable of entertaining a gathering of the hoi polloi or preparing a simple meal for an intimate family. Invidio saw the man in the kitchen ladle piping broth into a bowl, retrieve a spoon from a drawer and exit the room.

            Invidio Fast had first encountered the name Moses Olpian one morning two weeks previous. He had been sitting at his simple reconditioned desk reading the latest news stories from his favorite sites, the mouse in one hand and his fault-riddled mug of coffee in the other. An attempted escape from the nearby McKeever Correctional Facility had resulted in the death of two prisoners and the recapture of Babyface Paskind. Convicted on six counts of mass poaching and sentenced to no less than eighteen years, Babyface’s lawyer was quoted in the Associated Press piece:

Mr. Paskind’s attempted egress was a direct result of a cruel and unusual punishment handed down by Judge Olpian. In no other court would a judge find my client’s punishment to be commensurate with his crime. And anyone who is the least bit familiar with Judge Olpian’s years on the bench is well aware of His Honor’s draconian tendencies.

            Invidio’s curiosity had been piqued. He googled the name and had soon found a photo of Moses Olpian. The photo depicted a man seemingly forged from bronze. His lightly salted hair cast a metallic glow. The sheen from his Rolex cast flair into the lens of the camera. His suit was immaculately tailored and revealed a man of fifty-six fit enough for one thirty years his junior. It was his face, however, that had caught Invidio’s imagination. Olpian’s cheekbones stood in relief amidst the tanned skin of his chiseled face. His blue-gray eyes revealed a razor-sharp constitution. His jaw line was transplanted from the bust of an antiquarian statesman. Invidio had looked upon the face of a man who could spin the world against its axis. His subsequent research had borne out Invidio’s initial impression. Moses Olpian’s many years on the bench had made him a local celebrity across the tri-state area and a source of legendary hyperbole throughout the entire legal profession. His encyclopedic acumen was well documented and it had flawlessly ensured that not one of his imaginatively punitive sentences would be overturned on appeal. He had been called before the Bar Association on two separate occasions for alleged abuses of his judicial authority and had twice walked away not only free of censure but smelling of roses. Death threats were not uncommon and he had survived one previous attempt on his. But Olpian was known not just for his iron-fisted enforcement of the law but for his ceaseless adherence to its spirit as well. Overzealous prosecutors who did not wish to see their cases thrown out proceeded cautiously in his courtroom. Olpian crushed assaults on the liberties of even the most unapologetic defendants with extreme prejudice. He was known to reduce lesser prosecutors to tears and had once sent a young assistant district attorney fiending for a high-profile conviction running from the courtroom. Moses Olpian was a respected and feared paragon of judicial sovereignty.

            Invidio Fast, his eyes cutting through the statical downpour, shadowed the paragon outside his home as he made his way from the window of the kitchen to the window of the den. He saw the robust warmth of the room vibrating with pine, green and gold. The floor-to-ceiling bookcases stentorianly lined the back wall. The shelves were full of years of rhetoric. It was almost uncannily similar to what he had pictured. In the center of the room stood a hospital bed affixed to a score of tanks and machines. In the bed slept a seven-year old girl with a porcelain face covered by an oxygen mask. He watched Olpian gingerly close the door to the den and sit beside the hospital bed. He watched Olpian set the bowl of broth on a hospital tray before the girl.  Invidio watched him take the little girl’s hand, bow his head, and plant on it the slightest feathery kiss. Through the rushing sheets of rain Invidio Fast saw Moses Olpian raise his head as a single tear escaped the jurist’s eye. The honeycomb glow from inside poured through the panes of glass. Invidio’s whiskers stretched into an upside-down arch. His smile peaked through the hair. The diminutive man turned and started down the street, secure in the knowledge that in twenty-four hours he would be standing a little taller.

BULBOUS MAGNANIMITY

           Alone among the conquering sovereigns who have tread the path of human history, Bulbous Magnanimity is doubtlessly the most pointless and entertaining. His motivations remain shrouded in secrecy, as do large portions of his biography. His ambitions always dwarfed his abilities, and historians continue to pontificate on what our world would be had any of his pointlessly grandiose dreams been brought to fruition.

Bulbous Magnanimity was born at 12:47 am on June 19^th, 57 B.C., then crawled back in and refused to come out. Two months later he was born again, this time accidentally as his mother was attempting to pass a kidney stone. His parents returned him to the womb once Bulbous refused to acknowledge them beyond giving them the finger. He was born for the third and final time on January 1^st and immediately declared his intention to secede from the Union.

            His father was Pulcher Magnanimity, an accomplished aedile and runway model who came from good chicken stock and enjoyed nothing more than composing verse in airport restrooms. By all accounts he was a warm and generous man who doted on his son and often read to him from lists of decommissioned naval vessels. His mother, Caribou However, had little time for him. Heiress to a wheelbarrow full of nickels Caribou devoted her entire life to the creation of an unpronounceable language that could not be written by human hand. Bulbous would posthumously publish her life’s work: The Complete Guide to a Language You Don’t Deserve to Know – fourteen hundred blank pages. Michiko Kakutani would call it, “a dazzling new pinnacle of linguistic invention.”

            At the age of eight Bulbous’s life was set in a startling new direction. An enigmatic X-Ray technician claiming to be a forward for the San Antonio Spurs told Bulbous that he was the cosmically conceived offspring of the eternal souls of Robespierre and the Kyoto Accord. According to contemporary reports Bulbous nodded quietly, made himself a cup of tea, played some Madden, read Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time, revolutionized gastric bypass surgery, discovered cheese, swallowed a bug, took a deep breath, counted to ten, then to six, said, “Very well,” and walked out of the house.

            Bulbous would not be seen for another seventeen years, but rumors of his goings-on continued to circulate. Migrant workers in Bakersfield, California reported seeing Bulbous hitching a ride in a clown car while a laundromat in Sarasota, Florida claimed to have seen him inquiring into the whereabouts of a suspicious-looking Quaker with a hard-on. Crackheads said that he was raising an army in the East, Mormons said that his senses of sight and touch had been reversed, and Nancy Pelosi claimed to have sired a child by him – a manticore that she subsequently killed when it proved unable to carry a tune.

            In 1894 Bulbous re-emerged in Buenos Aires and immediately announced to the world his intention to run for Emperor of Everything. It is commonly believed that Bulbous’s thinking was that, since the office did not exist, he would run unopposed and win by a landslide. But just one month before the election, the Republicans nominated Calvin Julius Horsefinder, president and CEO of Multinational Conglomerate Incorporated Clownshoes. Bulbous, however, was prepared to fight dirty to ensure victory and resorted to inundating Horsefinder with prank phone calls, putting pineapples in his underwear, making fun of his furniture, and pelting him with Chinamen. The dual nails in Horsefinder’s coffin were Bulbous’s impenetrable defense against his critics – responding to their questions and criticisms with the phrase, “Oh no you di’in’t!” – and the smear campaign he launched against Horsefinder. This campaign consisted of blanketing media outlets with commercials and print ads insinuating that Horsefinder had participated in one scandalous activity or another, such as: “Guess what CJ did on MLK?” or “Guess what customs found inside CJ on his way back from Amsterdam?” The two-pronged attack of the Guess What Campaign and the Oh No You Di’in’t Policy destroyed Horsefinder’s career and six months after the election he was found dead inside an ashtray factory, having strangled himself with his bare hands.

            As the newly elected Emperor of Everything Bulbous Magnanimity was determined to put his best foot forward. He started by declaring war on the Aurora Borealis, but the offensive proved to be a debacle as Bulbous was never able to come within striking distance. He tried to start a war with the Harvard School of Business, but they refused to show up. He then turned to domestic issues, cutting taxes on the incontinent and constructing the first transcontinental tree house. He then returned to war and challenged Saudi Arabia to a staring contest. But when a dog barked and broke his concentration, Bulbous decided that he had had enough. So began The Great Purge of 1973. Bulbous and his followers, which consisted of a diminutive Welshman named Duncan and the anthropomorphic personification of Spina Bifida, would travel from village to dell screaming at passersby in German until they went away. Bulbous then redoubled his efforts and declared war on the Dead Sea. Believing the sea to have too depressing a name, he laid siege to the lake and demanded that it change its name. It refused and Bulbous attempted to burn the Dead Sea to the ground. When that did not work, he rounded up five hundred wolves and ordered them to huff and puff until the lake blew down. When that did not work, Bulbous drained the Dead Sea, deposited it into a series of differently colored mason jars and refused to free it until it complied with his demands. These demands now included not being so salty. Abnormal buoyancy, Bulbous claimed, was the work of the Devil. The Dead Sea held firm and, while its current location is unknown, it is believed to still reside in its segmented glass prison.

            The Dead Sea disaster proved to be the nadir of Bulbous’s reign and he quickly returned to domestic affairs. In an effort to combat inflation he replaced all printed and minted currency with live badgers. In response to the badgers running amok – and to reduce unemployment – Bulbous started an imperial program of wild animal handlers. Then the handlers began to run amok. In response Bulbous got them all drunk and allowed the badgers to have their way with them. He had plans to reinvent calculus and then turn it into a musical, but the lure of military conquest beckoned once again. This time Bulbous declared war on war and proceeded to engage anyone who fought anyone anywhere over anything. Then, just for good measure, Bulbous declared war on the past and announced that he had won retroactively.

            On the Ides of March in 2096, Bulbous broke into a Home Depot in Cleveland, Ohio, announced that he was stepping down from the throne, and walked out. He then walked back in, announced that he needed to buy some drywall, went to the appropriate aisle, took the drywall up to the counter, waited for someone to ring up his purchase, realized no one was coming after three hours, and walked out again – this time for good and, once again, without the drywall. Bulbous Magnanimity; the first, last and only Emperor of Everything; was never seen again.

            No historian has ever posited a satisfactory theory as to why Bulbous would inexplicably abdicate. Some believe that his manticore-child by Nancy Pelosi had returned from the grave to challenge him to a duel and Bulbous felt obligated to accept the challenge. Others have asserted that he left to roadie for the Mars Volta or that he decided to start his long-gestating Airborne Afrikaner League. Regardless of his unknown fate Bulbous Magnanimity has proven to be the most inconsequential and amusing despot in human history. He was, by turns, intelligent and unintelligible; frightening and frighteningly funny; necessary and superfluous; loved and begrudgingly tolerated. His legacy is practically non-existent, yet we cannot stop talking about him.

TOUGH CUSTOMERS

            It was quarter to two as I made my way down the Hillfield stretch of Bourbon Drive. I only had fifteen minutes to get to the old Jaundice house on Elder. Sure, I coulda been there at noon. Coulda been there earlier. But I don’t cha-cha. Never had the shoes for it, I guess. Me? I gotta draw ‘em out, make ‘em feel the squeeze. Then they’re primed to pop as I feed ‘em that spoonful of ugly.

            I was slicin’ the cheese thin, for sure. But as I turned onto Acacia, I had to take a moment, had to dig that crazy jazz blowin’ down the street. Thick-top johnnies and their dopey broads arm-in-arm, rugrats in tow, sportin’ their pearly whites and gigglin’ like a hopped-up clown car. They can’t even tell the nancy at the soda fountain from the huckster jonesin’ for a pound of flesh.

            But I can spot the swine among the pearls. I turned onto Elder and watched the houses zip by, spotted the blood in the mortar between the bricks, heard the birds sing Greek chorus. I know what’s brewin’ under those roofs. Trouble’s what it is, double bubble and all. You don’t have to go lookin’ for it neither. It’ll find you and but quick. I found it that day. I had it sussed out from the jump. I pulled into the Jaundice drive and got out of the van. I didn’t know the particulars knockin’ on that front door, but I could spot a hotbed of grift from five towns over.

            The door swung open and there she was. “Eva Jaundice?” I asked.

            “Yes.”

            I took a last drag, dropped the butt and snuffed it out with my heel. “Hunts Bomark.” I crossed the threshold and shut the door behind me. “You say you’re having some trouble?”

            She eyed me sidewise for a second before the synapses sparked to life. “Oh yeah! C’mon. I’ll show you.”

            She waddled out of the foyer and I followed. She was all muumuus and diabetes. She looked familiar to me. I think I saw her in a movie once. She was engulfed in flames and someone was screaming, oh God the humanity. “She was no looker, that was for sure. You wouldn’t bat an eye if you saw her on safari, coolin’ in a mudhole.”

            Jaundice stopped and looked back at me. “Excuse me?”

             “Never mind, Crumb Cake,” I said.

            “ ‘Crumb cake?’ ”

            “That’s right. Say, you want to show me the problem, or you want to make a friend?”

            Her bovine eyes went sidewise again before she walked on. Guess she had some cud in the wreck room. I followed her in there. We stopped by the davenport, a ratty number soaked through with sundaes and dashed dreams. She pointed at the TV set and said, “The picture’s fuzzy and the cable channels don’t come in at all.”

            I eyed the tube, all thirty-three inches of it. I could beat that. “Fuzzy, huh?” I said.

            She took a beat and said, “Yeah. Fuzzy.”

            I walked over to the set. I was ready for anything. Loose wires, a smokin’ husk, a Chinaman with a slingshot. Anything. The fat old bat wasn’t droppin’ guano on my head. I knelt down at the back and scoped it out. Nada. I peeped the back of the cable box. Again, bupkis. “How long’s this been goin’ on?” I asked.

            “About a week now.”

            I looked up at Jaundice, gave her a glance sidewise – see how she likes it.

            Her mug waxed befuddled. “Maybe ten days,” she added.

            “And you’re just comin’ forward now.” I stood up, crossed my arms. “I’d seen this a hundred times. Maybe a thousand. After a while you go numb. One case starts to fade into another and pretty soon all you got is a big pile of nasty cruddin’ up your head.”

            “What do you mean?” Jaundice piped in.

            “Wasn’t talkin’ to you, Soft Serve,” I piped back. I dropped my arms and faced the broad head on. “Want to know what I think?”

            “Yes.”

            I started toward her, slowly, windin’ her spring real tight. “I think you saw an opportunity and you took it. You thought, Hey, maybe it’s a bad wire or there’s a glitch with the server. Could be any number of things. What do I know? But why don’t I let this sit on the sly for a while? Make it look worse for the wear. Maybe I’ll get a sucker for a serviceman and this bird can wet her beak a little.”

            “What are you talking about?” she cut in.

            I kept the boot on her neck, “Then after a week – maybe ten days – you call up the company. And they send me around. You feed me this song and dance, and I say, ‘So sorry for the inconvenience, m’lady. Allow me to spot you free cable for a month.’ So you say, ‘Thank you, kind sir. Let me repay you. But I don’t have much in the way of money.’ And then what, Cream Cheese? I introduce you to the beast with two backs, start combin’ your hair? Then you’re paintin’ my fingernails and feedin’ me lines. You get an idea, real spontaneous-like. How we can always be together and never worry about anything again. And I go along for the ride because I’m the sap who fell for your tune. Next thing I know, I’m nappin’ on a railroad track and you’re in Cabo with the president of the company.”

            “Are you crazy?”

            “Like a fox! Who do you think you’re dealin’ with here, Mayonnaise? I had you made the moment you opened the door. ”

            She was yappin’ at my heels as I b-lined for the exit. “Hey! Who the hell do you think you –”

            I spun around and put my finger in her face. “Now see here, Waffles! You’re not pullin’ the wool over my eyes. These eyes are trained and they got your number. I’ve seen your type before. You run roughshod over the straight and narrow, wave your stink under all the clean noses, ‘til they end up bangin’ their heads against the walls of the booby hatch. But I’ll tell ya what I’m gonna do: I’m gonna let this one slide. I’m gonna give you all the rope you need to hang yourself. Then I’ll slip in and kick the stool out from under your feet.”

            I opened the door, crossed back over the threshold, and lit a butt. I took a drag, blew out the smoke and looked back at the crooked broad with the dopey look. “Arrividerci, Stir Fry.”

            I got in the van and amscrayed. I didn’t have time to savor a minor victory. I had to get over to Lakebush, see about some shark’s hinky modem, a lawyer named Clams Casino. He’d be a tough customer.

            The brass at the office was gonna ride me over the Jaundice broad. They were tough customers too. In the end, they’re all tough customers. But when you live by a code, that’s who you gotta sell to.