Chapter 19

Mon., Sept. 23, 2:26 p.m., 343 Octavia

Sunshine said she has no problems figuring out what to do with the countertops, the walls, the cabinets or even the blenders themselves, but when it came to the floor, she just stood there in utter stupidity.

“What do you mean you’ve forgotten how to use the mop?” Art asked earlier.

To his query, she replied, sobbing, “That’s just it, Artie. I don’t know. I know what a mop is and what it is supposed to do, but when my brain tried to put the two together, I just go blank.”

“It’s very simple,” Art said.

“I know it is,” Sunshine barked back. “I just…” she stopped.

It had pained Art to see Sunshine in this state, so he took the mop from her and mopped the floor himself, at which time Sunshine took care of the rest of the kitchen.

Now that the kitchen is nearly as clean as usual and Sunshine is no longer in a state of despair, Art wants to know just how somebody would lose the ability to use a mop.

“I think you might have had a stroke,” he says.

“Shut up.”

“No, I’m serious.”

“Artie, I did not have a stroke.”

“Well, in my estimation, it’s the only thing that can explain why you suddenly can’t remember how to operate a simple mop.”

Sunshine puts on her pouting face, a mug like a four year old being told that she can’t have the candy in the check out aisle. “No. I think it’s the ostrich.”

Arthur Cole believes that Sunshine has entered one of Rod Serling’s least remarkable episodes. “Do you think someone dosed you again?”

“I’ve been trying to tell you, for weeks now, that there is no drug involved here. Only an ostrich, and his name is Archibald.”

“Again with the freaking ostrich.”

“I don’t care if you believe me. For what it’s worth, Archibald thinks you should look into buying more hats.”

“Do you need me to call for some medical help?”

“Fuck off, Artie.”

“I’m just saying.”

“You’re just saying what?”

“That you’ve lost your mind.”

“Think what you want.”

“I just think you should reflect upon what you’re telling me and then address the issue that you’ve gone off the deep end.”

“But you see, there is no deep end, Artie. There’s reality, and then there’s everything else. It’s all relative. Yes, it’s a fact. You think I’m crazy because I have a friend…”

“An imaginary friend”

“…a real friend who also happens to be a talking ostrich. But what you don’t understand is that Archibald wouldn’t ever consider consorting with the likes of you because you’re just so damn boring.”

“I’m not boring,” Art bristles.

“On a global scale, you’re average. Face it. There’s nothing about you that sets you apart from the rest of humanity.”

“Oh, so what’s so special about you that this ostrich you claim to have befriended wants to hang out with you?”

A suddenly coy Sunshine considers Art’s question. “Well…”

“Yes?”

“I haven’t quite figured that out yet.”

“So there’s that.”

“So there’s that.”

Mon., Sept. 23, 2:35 p.m., The Old Absinthe House

When Maggie Flick stepped off of the Bourbon street sidewalk and into the Absinthe House, she hoped she would find a Brazilian Formula One race car driver named Ayrton Senna and the chicken-mascot-disguised Ingrid Bergman, but instead, the first and only person she sees at the bar is the man she believes to be the late Peter Tomarken. He immediately looks up from his beer.

Maggie is frozen momentarily. She can tell by the look on his face he has recognized her and she doesn’t know what to do. He smiles for a second and then stares back down at his beer, the smile erased completely.

Slowly, Maggie walks toward the man, knowing that, with every step, the smart thing would be to run out of the bar as fast as her legs can carry her, but there’s also the curiosity, needling at her brain, gnawing for what’s behind door number three.

Taking the seat next to the man, she motions for the bartender. “Abita Amber.”

The bartender nods, retreats and returns with her beer.

She begins talking without really thinking about the implications. “So, when I was in college,” Maggie says, “I had this addiction to the USA Network.”

The man just nods and continues staring at his beer.

“Well, it just so happened that, during the afternoon, they played a lot of game shows.”

The nodding stops.

“So I’m just checking, but are you who I think you are?”

The man continues staring at his beer for what feels to Maggie like an eternity, when, in fact, it is probably more like ten seconds. Without looking up, he says, “I’m supposed to say ‘If I had a dime for every time I heard that,’ but I think you know better.”

“So, on the record, so to speak, no, you are not.”

“Correct.”

“Your secret is safe with me. And, off the record, I know a couple of the people you live with.”

“Really?”

“Can’t say who, of course, but I’m sure you’ll figure it out soon enough.”

“Who are you?”

“Nobody special, really. My name’s Maggie and I happen to live across the street from you.”

“I saw you earlier.”

“I thought so.”

“My name’s Peter, um, I mean, Paul.”

“Nice to meet you, Paul.”

“So what’s this beer you’re drinking.”

“It’s local. Abita Amber. Really good stuff.”

“I think I’ll try some. Bartender?”

Sun., Sept. 22, 5:26 p.m., Somewhere over Ohio

Didier had a decent flight over the Atlantic, first class on Virgin Airways. Flying first class is something he would have never understood before he became a world class footballer. In his home country, the Ivory Coast, first class meant you didn’t have to kill your dinner yourself. Since he has become what he has become, however, Didier Drogba has begun to enjoy the perks of being a wealthy member of Western culture. For him, these days, first class traveling is something of an inalienable right. This is why his current situation, in the middle seat of a Boeing 737 leaves him feeling like he’s back home, young and poor, traveling in a bus to the schoolyard. Southwest Airlines sucks.

A few of his fellow travelers, after realizing he wasn’t from the states, warned him about what they referred to as the “cattle call.”

“What is this?” he asked.

“What letter does your boarding pass say?”

“C.”

“Back of the plane for you.”

It had been bad enough in New York. After getting through customs, he had to take a cab to Long Island where he would board his flight to Birmingham, Alabama, via Chicago. He found it ironic that his journey to what he originally thought was going to be England’s second city would take him through America’s second city.

When his agent told him he was going to Birmingham to get his knee fixed, Didier assumed he would be travelling Birmingham, England.

“This Birmingham is in Alabama, in the United States,” his agent said.

“I’ve never been to the states before.”

“This guy, Dr. James Andrews, is the best in the world. They have a lot of similar injuries to yours in American football, and all the best players go to this guy.”

“Are you sure?”

“In America, if an American footballer injures his ACL, the first thing they say is they’ll need to get an opinion from Dr. Andrews before having surgery.”

“Well, that’s America.”

“Unfortunately, your injury doesn’t occur nearly as often over here. They have a lot of artificial surfaces that cause the same problem you are experiencing.”

“Just tell me this is the best thing to do.”

“Yes, Didier. Plus, it might be nice to have some anonymity for a while. Very few people in the U.S. will have any idea who you are.”

The woman to his right, the one with the window seat, asks him what he does for a living.

“I’m a footballer,” he says.

“Do you play for the Cowboys?”

“No, I play for Chelsea, in London.”

“I didn’t know they played football in England.”

“Oh, yes. It’s tremendously popular.”

“Heh,” she says, eating one of her bite sized pretzels from the single serving pretzel wrapper distributed to the passengers shortly after takeoff. “You learn something new every day.”

Although cleaner than an African airliner and probably safer, the amount of legroom is uncomfortable for Didier, so much so, that he feels his bad knee throbbing under the brace. The stewardess rolls by with a cart. She asks the row what they want.

“I’d like a Coke,” the lady to his left says.

Didier realizes a little alcohol might make this trip a little more tolerable. “How about a gin and tonic?”

The man to his right waves the stewardess away, meaning his thirst has already been quenched.

“Five dollars,” she says.

This surprises him, as he cannot remember the last time he flew coach. “Oh, yes,” he says struggling to get to his wallet and then taking a moment to find the few American dollars he has stashed for his journey to the states. “Sorry.”

The stewardess doesn’t say anything, but instead just continues with her cart toward the front of the plane.

Normally not much of a drinker, Didier suddenly realizes that the painkillers he’s taking might have an exaggerated effect if he adds the alcohol. Fuck it. It’s been a hell of a few days.

Chapter 18

Monday, Sept. 23, 2:05 p.m., Place d’Armes Basement

The Hamsterfish, an accomplished instructor, is having limited results with these three new recruits. “No, no, no!” he bristles, beating his lesson-stick against the chalkboard, annoyed with the slow learning these new ones are exhibiting. “You need to realize that you’re no longer who you are, and that I am, in fact, a fish!” He is frustrated. “And a hamster!” he finishes, yelling as loud as his hamster throats will allow.

Peter Tomarken, the most intelligent of the three newcomers, as best the Hamsterfish can tell, raises his hand for a question.

“Yes, Paul Todorov,” the Hamsterfish acknowledges.

“I’ve been here long enough. Why, why with all of the classes?”

The Hamsterfish glares at Paul Todorov for a few seconds and then shoots back, “Because I say so.”

Mon., Sept. 23, 2:06 p.m., Kyoto Sushi Restaurant

Luigi didn’t even bother to take a shower. He just slipped on some shorts, a t-shirt, his Saints Crocs and drove his happy ass to Kyoto.

Upon sitting at the Sushi bar, he quickly jots the number 9 next to the words Fresh Salmon and pops it up atop the fish refrigerators in front of him.

The sushi chef grabs the sheet and looks at it quizzically. “You want nine pieces?” he asks.

“No, nine orders. Eighteen pieces. And lots of wasabi.”

Luigi’s hangovers occasionally leave him with a hankering for some raw fish, but today’s hunger is quite extraordinary. He has a mental image of what the plate will look like when it arrives, and even the eighteen orange and white striped slabs of flesh atop sticky white rice might not cure his sudden lust for fish.

Luigi scans the different species on display behind the window of the fish fridge. There are all the usual, tuna, yellowtail, octopus, some white fish, probably some cousin of red snapper, the usual cake of egg, but then there’s something else, something that catches his eye. It’s a slab of Toro, a chunk of the fatty belly of the prized bluefin tuna, a rarity to be found in a restaurant at this time of year. Luigi likens it to the soprasetta of the sea.

“Toro?” Luigi points at his quarry, a three year old saying the word “cookie.”

The sushi chef opens the drawer of the refrigeration compartment, roots through the assorted fish slabs until he gets to Luigi’s chosen delicacy and then shoots an angry look down at the other end of the bar, after which he fires off a bunch of harsh sounding words in Japanese at his apprentice. He turns back to Luigi. “I’m sorry, sir,” he says, “but this should have not been on display. This time of year, it is very difficult to get the Toro and it has already been reserved for another guest later today.”

I rush of disappointment flows through Luigi’s body. “Not even a morsel?” he pleads.

“Again, my apologies. Perhaps you’d like some lemonfish sashimi, on the house?”

Luigi shrugs. Although he feels cheated, it’s not Toro, but it will have to do.

Sat., Sept. 21, 13:42 GMT, Stamford Bridge, Fulham Road, London, England

The second half has been better for Didier Drogba, at least, up until now. He has scored three goals and Chelsea now lead 3-2 with only seconds left in the game, all of them coming off of his right boot. The third, which he just put past the outstretched arms of Manchester United’s goalkeeper, Edwin Van Der Sar, seems to have taken its toll on Didier’s leg. As he slid to hit his teammate’s cross into the net, one of his cleats got caught in the turf, and although the ball went in, at the same instance, he felt a snap in his knee, followed by a sharp pain.

Chelsea will be victorious today, but Didier Drogba has a sneaking suspicion the next game he plays won’t be anytime soon. His knee, he is certain, is wrecked.

Mon., Sept. 23, 2:07 p.m., 341 Octavia

When Arthur Cole answers the phone, he hears Sunshine on the other line weeping.

“I need help,” she says.

“What’s wrong?”

“I can’t fix it. It’s all messed up!”

Art stands up from his computer chair and turns off the monitor. He had been checking out a couple of Velvet Elvis knock off prints, but there hadn’t been anything online that had his Velvis fetish fully erect. “What’s all messed up, Sunshine?” he asks.

“My kitchen,” Sunshine bellows, her weeping becoming more pronounced.

His finger tugs at one of the curls over his left ear. “What?”

“My kitchen,” she continues, this time weeping almost uncontrollably. “Bad,” she says.

“Are you on fire?” he asks, carefully walking to the front room of his shotgun double, as if his footsteps would cause fire to leap from the floors.

“No!” Sunshine shouts.

Arthur’s hand, the one that had been twirling his curly hair, juts outward as if to ask a question. “So, what is the problem?”

“The mop!” Sunshine screams, before wailing loudly. She cries for a couple of seconds and then hangs up the phone.

Monday, Sept. 23, 2:08 p.m., Place d’Armes Hotel

Paul Todorov has finally had enough, enough of that abomination’s shit, that part hamster, part fish creature. He steams through the foyer and out the front door of the hotel. What about this is a proper afterlife?

A man with a mule promises a fabulous French Quarter tour. PT ignores the man and his mule. There is a corner café with coffee and pastries just right up the street. Fuck that. A man in his condition needs more that a little java and some sugar to fix the ailments he has acquired. Something stronger is necessary salve to help him ponder his confusion. A bar, one with lots of free-flowing booze will cleanse the dour exploits of the last few weeks, what with learning the way to be dead, a walking zombie, an ambling ghost tour the man with his mule would most certainly be able to squeeze more than a few bucks out to detail. He is the tour, and now he has a very strange name: Paul Todorov. So now his name is Paul. It worked will for Mr. McCartney, but he was a Beatle. PT isn’t sure he fancies himself as a Paul.

Nothing makes sense. Why in the hell would they want to bring him, of all people, back? Famous, yes, but in a very un-famous way. He was little more than a moderately successful game show host. How in the hell does that put him in the same class as the likes of a pair of Russian leaders, an international racing superstar or Ingrid Bergman, for God’s sake? He’s been asking himself these same questions since the day he found himself here, alive, but this time without his departed wife who happened to have the misfortune of going down with him in the plane, but who also didn’t manage to have the appropriate cache to qualify for whatever in the hell this existence is. None of it makes any sense.

Just then, out of the corner of his eye, he notices a woman in a window across the street, alternately looking directly at him and scribbling things in a notebook. The girl sees that he’s caught her watching him. She holds his stare for a moment, and then with a quick flick of her wrist, pulls the blinds closed.

Mon., Sept. 23, 2:09 p.m., 343 Octavia

It is clearly crisis hour in Sunshine’s kitchen. The mess is amazing. Oranges, pieces of orange, pulp and orange juice litter the entire room, floor to ceiling. Hardly any surface has not been sullied by some form of citrus. The walls above her countertop look like some kind of abstract artist’s tribute to Florida. Sunshine stands in the middle of this scene, holding her mop horizontally in both hands, staring at the business end of it in pure confusion.

“What in the hell happened in here?” Art asks.

“I was making screwdrivers.”

Art notices a few empty orange-splattered bottles of vodka on the counter. He also sees that there are six different blenders arrayed across the counter top. “That much I can see. But, um, Sunshine, pardon me for being obtuse, but you were making them in blenders, with the tops off. That doesn’t seem like the best way…”

“It’s for aeration,” Sunshine interrupts.

“Um, okay.” Arthur Cole deliberates momentarily, and then decides Sunshine should explain further.

“But that’s not the problem, Artie.”

Arthur Cole scratches his head, glances at Sunshine and then back to the row of blenders and vodka bottles. He decides to ask, against his better judgment, “Okay, Sunshine. So what exactly is the problem?”

She sobs, not uncontrollably, but with a sense of defeat.

“It’s okay, Sunshine. We can clean it up.”

“But Artie, I’ve forgotten how to use the mop!”

Mon., Sept. 23, 2:11 p.m., 626 St. Ann, #2A

Maggie Flick knows he saw her watching, and she also knows that this time, she got a really good look at his face. And if he is who she thinks he is, well, that would be a red herring indeed.

She closes her notebook, says a silent prayer and decides to go check in with her deceased friends. Hopefully, they’re over at the Absinthe House having an afternoon cocktail. The bird suit does seem like it would get quite warm, and September in New Orleans is no day at the North Pole.

After a quick check on the items in her purse, Maggie says goodbye to her goldfish and leaves the apartment.

Chapter 17

Late September, 2005

Tue., Sept. 27, 5:01 p.m., Place d’Armes Hotel

His right brain just wouldn’t shut up. That creative hemisphere had been on fire for the better part of a month, the days since the atrocious hurricane. Karl Cerullo’s right-sided neurons were firing like they hadn’t since he lived in Germany in the latter part of the nineteenth century, of this he was sure.

He had been avoiding this issue for, well, decades, apparently, but no more. The aftermath of the hurricane gave him hope; yes, he had succumbed to the bottle since sometime before men flew into outer space, and yes, he had eliminated the seventies from his memory as a result. And all of that was the fault, at least in some way, of one man, Nikolai Valentino, the bane of both Karl’s original and extended existences.

Since the storm had pretty much wiped out most modern conveniences, cell phones, hell, land lines, power for much of the city (although they had some very advanced generators to make sure that didn’t happen here at the hotel), taxis, drinkable water (the hotel has its own purification plant for just such an occasion), and last, but not least, entertainment. New Orleans is renowned around the world for being one of the few places where the entertainment carries on throughout the day, into evening and well past dawn. Fun crap to do is the one thing that has dampened Karl’s spirits, but at the same time, it has given him time to ponder the most important task in his life: getting rid of Nikolai Valentino. The right brain, bored from lack of entertainment, like a couch potato deprived of television, has suddenly come to life. Unfortunately, until now, it hadn’t produced any plausible plans for ridding Karl’s life of his appendix, the aforementioned Mr. Stalin, that is, until now. Now, maybe, just maybe, he might be able to free himself from the overbearing and, most importantly, boring tyranny of the great Valentino beast.

The plan has everything to do with linens, a particular brand of linens through which Nikolai, and via collective, the rest of the residents of the Place d’Armes draw their wealth. Valentino linens uses a particular and, it must be said, although it’s marketed as natural, completely synthetic fabric known as SynthaLester. This fabric holds the key to undermining Nikolai and removing his God-forsaken presence from the face of this planet, for the second time, although this time it will be once and for all.

The only real problem with the plan is that it requires someone with an acute fashion sense, something Karl Cerullo finds himself bereft. But he is confident, if he looks hard enough, he will find the right person, this fashion visionary, so that he can pull off his plan and rid the world of Josef Stalin forever.


Saturday, March 30, 1981

Sat., Mar. 30, 1981, 1:28 p.m., Audubon Zoo

“Sunshine, what do you want for dinner?”

“Fish.”

“Fish?”

“Something with fish in it.”

“Really?”

“A fish like substance.”


Monday, September 23 (and vicinity), 2007

Sat., Sept. 21, 12:20 GMT, Stamford Bridge, Fulham Road, London, England

Didier hadn’t scored an own goal, that being a goal in his own team’s net, in years, maybe even since before he moved from France to London. Having scored two own goals in a matter of fifteen minutes is something akin to lightning striking twice in the same spot, a feat that supposed to be statistically impossible.

His goalkeeper, Petr Cech, stands shaking his head at Didier, holding up his hands as if to say, “What is going on?”

Didier looks to the sideline. His manager has his face buried in his own pair of hands. In the corner of the field nearest the travelling fans, the Manchester United team are celebrating, their arms raised high in joy. The score is now two in their favor, a seemingly insurmountable obstacle for the men of Chelsea to overcome; such is the strength of their bitter rivals, the Red Devils from Manchester, that even this early in the game, a two goal deficit means near-certain doom. And everybody on the pitch has one man to thank for this, and his name is Didier Drogba.

What makes the two own goals so obscene is the fact that the only time Drogba is near enough his own goal to score against his own team, with Didier being a striker whose proliferation of goals into the opposing net is unmatched in all of English football, is when there is a corner kick or a similar set piece to defend. So far in this game, there have only been two of these, both ending in a similar result.

Didier is both dizzy and sick to his stomach with an empty, cramping sensation, almost like the onset of a particularly nasty food poisoning incident. In his peripheral vision, he senses the ire of his teammates, the same men with whom he has fought for the club on countless occasions; now their eyes glare accusingly, as if to say that, somehow, Didier had planned all along to thwart their attempt to win the championship by handing their closest rivals this match, and with it, the bounty of the three points in the league table. They sense a traitor in their midst, and although Didier is nothing of the sort, right now, there is little that he can do to dissuade his teammates from feeling that he is, in fact, in league with the enemy.

Just then, as he can feel like he might actually vomit, right there on the pitch, he feels an arm on his shoulder. It is the team captain, John Terry.

“Drogs,” Terry says in his ear, “get your head up. We’ve just been a bit snake bit is all, lad.”

Didier is still shaking his head, his senses numbed by the deafening silence of the home supporters and the shrill shrieks from the visiting fans.

“Come on, mate, let’s get on with it. It’s only a couple of goals. Hell, I bet you get the trick today. What’s a three goal night for a guy with your amazing brand of skill? It’s a walk in the park, if you ask me.”

This perks Didier up a touch. “Thanks, John,” he says, shaking hands with his captain.

“Don’t thank me, just show these manure bastards we’re the bosses of this pitch. Right mate?”


Mon., Sept. 23, 1:22 p.m., 341 Octavia

The last couple of months or so have been rather fruitful for Arthur Cole in his velvet Elvis enterprise. Ever since Luigi showed him how he could successfully pull off a denial of service attack by first locating his bidding enemy and then cutting off his enemy’s ability to hit the internet at the crucial time, that time being the last couple of minutes before the closing of the auction, he has won the last ten velvet Elvis auctions that have come up on E-bay. His primary opponent, someone with the handle “IC9,” an obvious nod to Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle, Art realized early on in his battles with his faceless foe, has since moved his base of operations, after a couple of failed attempts to stay online and win the auctions, from the Ivory Coast in Africa to London, England. Luigi figured this was because IC9 had erroneously figured that the rather fragile internet infrastructure in Africa was causing him to drop connections and that London, with its modern telecommunications, would be a better location from which to bid for these precious velvet Elvis prints. The denial of service attacks, in fact, were more vicious and effective because of the improved infrastructure, and Art was now completely in control of the worldwide online velvet Elvis market.

Earlier tonight, he had won his tenth Velvis.

The first, he hung on his wall right next to the Budweiser clock. The second and third he used to decorate the walls of his relatively unadorned office. Four through nine sat in a pile in the corner of his office, eagerly awaiting number ten to join them.

Mon., Sept. 23, 1:24 p.m., 343 Octavia

“So, what you’re trying to say is, the only way to make a proper screwdriver is with a lot of oranges and a lot of blenders.”

“That is precisely what I am saying.”

Sunshine glances around her kitchen, a room now strewn with discarded orange pulp and peels covering ever surface available, even the top of the refrigerator, she notices, as a large peel is dangling from the door of the freezer compartment. There are little chunks of orange bits throughout Archibald’s feathers, also in her hair, she is sure. Little drops of screwdriver cling to the ceiling above the blenders, a few dropping to the floor or the aforementioned surfaces or the blenders themselves as gravity works its magic. “Again, why do we not use the blender covers?”

“Sunshine, it’s all about aeration. Without the proper amount of oxygen, the orange juice and vodka can’t connect in a way that is magical, in a manner that merges both the sucrose of the juice and the grains of the alcohol, a marriage that results in mixological utopia.”

“Well it makes quite a mess if you ask me.”

“Anything really worthwhile in life requires one to sully a bit, and fresh squeezed screwdrivers are no exception.”

Mon., Sept. 23, 1:53 p.m., 725 Constantinople

It’s a bit early in the day for Luigi to be up and about—he struggles to make sense of the characters on his computer’s monitor. They are, at once, random and somehow with a pattern, words, perhaps, or, better yet, entire paragraphs. The coming into focus of Luigi’s monitor happens, albeit slowly.

He and Ishtar, his partner in crime, literally, up in Louisville, KY, are to try today, upon some unsuspecting person or company—Luigi cares not, really, his head is pounding to the rhythm of the Vanilla Ice version of Pressure by Queen, and it would hurt his brain too much to remember… and remember it does, that the Vanilla Ice’s version is called Ice, Ice Baby, but, of course, the bass line is the exact same, to the exact same as the noises in his head, Freddie or Vanilla be damned. Da, da, da, da-da-da, da.

He must move Queen or Vanilla Ice away, as he and Ishtar have been working some stuff; today, they (Ishtar will do the actual heist. All of Luigi’s work was done ahead of time.) will liberate ten-thousand dollars from a Russian oil tycoon, and they’ll do it in a matter of nano-seconds. Just who this person is matters not to Luigi, just that his money is vulnerable and, as Ishtar had put it, ready for penetration like a virginal Catholic. And, Ishtar said, she’s a prostitute, and doesn’t even know it. Legs spread in a perfect V, just ready for the first occupation of flesh to help her lose her religion.

Such is the security, Ishtar said, of the aforementioned Russian billionaire’s virtual, soon to not be so virtual money.

“Fuck them if they don’t have an answer,” Ishtar had said.

What is an answer?

Then a thought occurs to Luigi. He needs a fish-like substance.

What?

It occurs to him again. Luigi needs a fish-like substance.

Hangovers can dilute a man’s sanity with the constant ebb and flow manner of a tide. Even though he realizes his hangover is controlling the voices in his head, he cannot make it go away. Luigi needs a fish-like substance.

Chapter 16

Tue., Sept. 27, 4:18 p.m., 341 Octavia

With the storm approaching in late August, Arthur Cole decided at the last minute that staying in New Orleans would probably be a bad idea, so he had hightailed it his uncle’s house, a man known as Big Al, in Baton Rouge, along with four other people he didn’t know previously. Whenever Big Al would take off to work, he left the five of them to sit around the living room and watch CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, or whomever was broadcasting the most depressing news that day. Their city was demolished, under water, its remaining inhabitants descending into mass stupidity. The other four people were Tom and Sally from Lakeview and Grant and Mindy from Arabi. Both couples were middle aged, with their three or four children between them scattered around the country at various colleges, all having left New Orleans, thankfully, just a week or so before the storm. Both couples were relatively sure after only a day or two that their houses had been completely inundated. Art was pretty sure his house was dry, but with reports of tornados during the storm and mass looting in its wake, nothing could be taken for granted.

Worst of all, anybody with a 504 area code cell phone was holding a useless piece of electronics, that is until the text messages started working a few days later. Tom, Sally, Grant and Mindy wanted desperately to get in touch with their kids to let them know they had escaped all right, but they couldn’t call out on their cell phones, and even calls from Big Al’s landline were useless, because the kids all had 504 phones. Thankfully, the modern science of email saved the day. But once they had contacted their kids, there was nothing else for Tom, Sally, Grant, Mindy and the mildly interested observer, Arthur Cole, could really do, except watch the news and shop for some new replacement clothes. Pretty much everybody had brought the equivalent of an overnight bag, thoroughly expecting to be home at the most two days after the storm made landfall. The flooding of the city made the prospect of returning rather difficult.

The heavy drinking kind of snuck up on everybody. It would start with somebody offering to go up to the store to pick up some margarita ingredients to “lift everyone’s spirits,” and eventually devolved to the whole group travelling daily to the store to buy just about anything and everything they could possibly find to make every concoction imaginable.

After a few days, a rule started. There would be no drinking before noon because, well, that was just too depressing. So the mornings would begin early enough, as nobody could really sleep with the uncertainty; the middle aged folks were usually up by seven and Art could only manage to keep himself in bed until eight or eight-thirty at the latest. Sally turned out to be a tremendous chef who kept everybody full and happy, particularly at breakfast. The hunger curves of everybody in the house waned so precipitously during the day that everybody pretty much fended for themselves food-wise after the morning meal. After breakfast, the clock watching began. It was an unwritten rule that if somebody was sitting in the living room watching CNN at 12:02 p.m. and didn’t realize noon had come and gone, it was incumbent upon the person who had noticed the passage of the magic hour to make the unencumbered person a drink.

Sure, it was possible to go outside, travel around Baton Rouge a bit, but only if you had packed for the day, as Baton Rouge had doubled its population overnight, making its already bad traffic situation something akin to spectators lining up for entrance to the Super Bowl. During the day, Baton Rouge had become a parking lot, so if you wanted to go anywhere, you would literally pack a cooler with food and beverages and not plan on being home until after sunset. Thankfully, the grocery and liquor store were just down the street, so no major intersections needed to be crossed. But a simple thing, like a trip to the movie theater just two miles away, could take as long as three hours, or in movie hours, it would take a movie and a half to get there. So, for the most part, the refugees at Big Al’s empty nest stayed put.

Sometime around the third week of their captivity, with the possibility that Hurricane Rita might also make landfall in New Orleans, things began to get a little more harried. Although Rita did make a turn west and eventually hit the Lake Charles area, the damage was done; nerves weren’t frayed, they were incinerated. Grant was the first to lose it. When the possibility of Rita hitting New Orleans was first announced, it was right after breakfast, and Grant went straight for the liquor cabinet.

“What about the noon rule?” a concerned Mindy asked her husband.

“It’s noon somewhere.”


Today, now that he has a home with a land line, Arthur thinks it would be the right thing to do to call Uncle Al and thank him for his hospitality, without which, he might have spent the last month or so holed up in a gymnasium somewhere, a prospect too terrifying to even consider. At Christmastime, Big Al will have an especially nice gift from his nephew under the tree.


Sat., Mar. 30, 1981, 1:02 p.m., Audubon Zoo, Lizard Exhibit

(eyes wide open): I like the way it licks itself.

(eyes normal size): Well, it’s supposed to do that. It’s a lizard.

(eyes wide open): Yeah, but daddy…

(eyes normal size): Yes?

(eyes wide open): It’s not supposed to be able to do that.

(eyes normal size): Do what?

(eyes wide open): Do that.

(eyes normal size): I’m not seeing what you’re seeing.

(eyes wide open): You have to use your per-priphferal vision.

(eyes normal size): Peripheral.

(eyes wide open): Yeah, that.

(eyes normal size): Okay, so what are you seeing?

(eyes wide open): It’s like a cartoon, you know, with one of those balloons.

(eyes normal size): Balloons?

(eyes wide open): Yeah. To tell you what they are saying.

(eyes normal size): I see. Like a sentence.

(eyes wide open): Or a thought, but yeah, daddy, like a sentence.

(eyes normal size): Like a sentence?

(eyes wide open): Yeah, daddy. It’s a like a comic book.

(eyes normal size): I didn’t think you like comic books.

(eyes wide open): Well I don’t, duh. But I know what they look like.

(eyes normal size): And…

(eyes wide open): And there’s one right there, one the side of that lizard.

(eyes normal size): I don’t see it.

(eyes wide open): Well it’s there. You’re probably too old.

(eyes normal size): Yes, you’re probably right, Sunshine.

(eyes wide open): Not that you’re old or anything, daddy.

(eyes normal size): That’s very sweet of you.

(eyes wide open): Well, I’m six, so I can say things like that.

(eyes normal size): Yes, you are.

(eyes wide open): But you’re probably too old to see what it says.

(eyes normal size): Well, I’m all ears.

(eyes wide open): What?

(eyes normal size): That means I’m listening to what you have to say.

(eyes wide open): Oh.

(eyes normal size): So?

(eyes wide open): Well…

(eyes normal size): Yes?

(eyes wide open): The sign on the side of the lizard, in the balloon…

(eyes normal size): Yes?

(eyes wide open): You’re going to think I’m a little girl.

(eyes normal size): Well, you are a little girl.

(eyes wide open): I am a little girl, but I’m not seeing little girl stuff, is all.

(eyes normal size): What do you mean?

(eyes wide open): I mean, I’m not making this up.

(eyes normal size): Of course you’re not.

(eyes wide open): Stop paternizing me.

(eyes normal size): Patronizing.

(eyes wide open): Right, patronizing.

(eyes normal size): Sorry.

(eyes wide open): It’s okay, because you’d have to be …patronizing me if you don’t see it, because, of course, you’re too old to see it. Not to say that you’re old or anything, daddy. Just, well I can see it, I guess because I’m a kid and all.

(eyes normal size): Well, you’ve piqued my curiosity. What is it that’s in this comic book balloon on the side of this lizard?

(eyes wide open, leaning in for a closer look): It’s kind of hard to read. All the letters are small and kind of smushed up together.

(eyes normal size):

(eyes wide open): It says Alexander Haig is not the President.

(eyes normal size, chuckling): Well, that’s right, Sunshine. He’s the Secretary of State. I didn’t know they had you studying politics at your age.

(eyes wide open): We don’t study politics, daddy.

(eyes normal size): You don’t?

(eyes wide open): Nope. But we’ve been working on subtraction and I’m starting to get the hang of it.

(eyes normal size): Oh. Well, does it say anything else?

(eyes wide open, leaning in again): It says… okay, here’s the whole message. I can see it now. It says President Reagan will get shot, and Alexander Haig is not the President.

(eyes squinting): That’s not a funny thing to joke about, Sunshine.

(eyes wide open): I’m just reading what’s on the lizard.

(eyes normal size): Well then I think we’ve seen enough of mister lizard here. Come along, Sunshine.

(eyes drooping): Wait, there’s another balloon.

(eyes aggravated): Sunshine…

(eyes wide open): Constitutionally, gentlemen, you have the president, the vice president and the secretary of state, in that order, and should the president decide he wants to transfer the helm to the vice president, he will do so. As of now, I am in control here, in the White House, pending the return of the vice president and in close touch with him. If something came up, I would check with him, of course.

(eyes normal size, blinking): What?

(eyes wide open): What?

(eyes squinting): What did you just say?

(eyes rolling): I said we can leave the lizard if you really want.

(eyes squinting, blinking faster): Who, what, Sunshine?

(eyes rolling): Come on, daddy, let’s go.

Chapter 15

Tue., Sept. 27, 12:52 p.m., The Bulldog

“I’m Arthur Cole,” the man says, returning with Sunshine’s much needed medicine and a new cold beer for himself.

“My name is Sunshine,” she says, smiling for the first time since she saw her house yesterday. “Thanks for the drink.”

“My pleasure,” Art says, running his newly unencumbered hand through his nest of curly brown locks. “So where are you staying?”

“Right around the corner. But I don’t know how much longer I’m going to be able to take it, though.” Sunshine rolls her hand over itself like a half of an illegal motion penalty. “Gwen’s a nice enough person and all, but she just, I don’t know, she just irks me.”

“I know people like that.”

“I guess I just have a low tolerance. But that doesn’t change the fact that if I have to stay there much longer, I will shoot myself in the temple.”

Art ponders for a second, realizing that he’s been hearing on the radio that the suicide rate for New Orleans residents is up by about five thousand percent since the storm, and it makes him nervous now when somebody even references the subject. Just then, he realizes he might be able to offer a solution. “I might have something for you, if you’re interested.”

“What’s that?” Sunshine replies, not able to hear him over the passing of a caravan of armored personnel carriers.

Art leans in closer, and says, more loudly over the din of the passing trucks, “I said, I might have a solution to your problem.”

“My Gwen problem?” she asks, nearly screaming to hear herself over the military might being flexed on Magazine street.

Arthur Cole holds up one finger and glances out to the street, the universal signal for, “let’s continue this conversation once the military occupation of our beloved street has come to an end.”

Sunshine nods, and starts in on her new drink, this time just sipping.

Art does the same with his beer bottle, marveling at the size of the vehicles traveling on a street that was originally designed to carry horse drawn carriages and streetcars. The column, with their booming diesel engines, shake everything, the tables, the chairs; Art thinks they’re even rattling his teeth a little. He grasps at one of his top front teeth to check, but everything seems to be firmly in place, dentally speaking.

For the void of the desolate city to be filled by these trucks serve to make the city feel even more lonely. Sunshine sips at her drink as she watches the last of the army vehicles go past. To the east, toward downtown they move; she can see them continue on their route up the curvature of Magazine street, a street, like most east-west streets in New Orleans, that follows the gentle crescent of the Mississippi river. The clamor from the trucks, now three blocks away, has been relegated to nothing more than a gentle hum.

Arthur, with his index finger still raised, turns to Sunshine and smiles. He lowers the finger. “Okay,” he says, “now that we can hear one another.”

“Yes, you were saying before we were so rudely interrupted.”

“Well, I might have a solution for your housing...”

Sunshine is waiting for Art to finish, but the words have stopped for the time being and Art’s jaw has dropped so his mouth is wide open, and his head drops slightly, so now his eyes look to be peering through the top of his skull to something behind her. Sunshine turns to see what it is that has made Art sort of turn off, like he is a robot and somebody just flipped a switch.

Coming up Magazine from the direction the Army trucks just disappeared is a man pulling a rickshaw. Now this, by itself is a bit odd, not to mention anachronistic, but what he’s carrying in his rickshaw, a person dressed like a big yellow bird.

Sunshine sets her drink down. “Is that Big Bird?” she asks Art quizzically.

Arthur Cole shakes himself from his dumbstruck reaction to the scene unfolding on the street in front of them. He squints. “No, I don’t think so.” he replies hesitantly.

“Well what is it, then?”

“Um, well…” Art clears his throat. Now that the rickshaw has come closer and is directly in front of the Bulldog, he has surmised the identity of the costume. “The passenger of that rickshaw is actually the San Diego Chicken.”

“The mascot?”

“Yes.” Arthur Cole peers into his beer as if to check to see if it has been dosed. The beer, looking like beer, invites itself back to his mouth.

Sunshine shakes her head. “What, on God’s green Earth is happening to this city?”

“We’re going to need a lot of shrinks.”

As the rickshaw pair pass and head west up Magazine, Sunshine sighs. “So what’s this you were trying to explain before the chicken people begun their parade?”

The orange glow of the dust haze is a particularly harsh light against her pale skin, making her look, to Art, as if she was wearing a face full of rouge. “I have an apartment. You can rent it.”

Sunshine is suddenly very excited. “An apartment? What kind? And how much?”

“It’s the other half of my shotgun. My current tenants are moving to Houston like everybody else. They’ll be out by Thursday.”

Sunshine’s mood glooms slightly. “Oh, I don’t know if I can handle Gwen until Thursday,” she says to nobody and particular. She tilts her head back as if to knock some marbles in her brain from the frontal to the occipital lobes; Sunshine can only think when the marbles are parked in the rear. “But I’m a big girl,” she finally says. “I should be able to handle a little unpleasantness. For God’s sake,” Sunshine says, pulling a cigarette out of her purse, “I quit smoking once. Talk about unpleasant.”

Tue., Sept. 27, 12:56 p.m., The Bulldog

A hiccup? Is that what it was?

Archibald had seen this happen to humans many times, but such a thing had never happened to him. It just wasn’t part of his kind’s makeup.

A hiccup?

As startling and unpredictable as it seemed, yes, Archibald is sure that is what just happened to him. His knowledge of human anatomy is second to none, considering his occupation, and this aforementioned knowledge tells him that a hiccup is caused by a spasm in the diaphragm. But does he even have a diaphragm? Archibald realizes he should have studied the physiology of the earth ostrich before he chose a form, but, well, he had been lazy, so he really has no idea if he shares this piece of biology with the human. But that’s what it was, he’s almost sure, a hiccup.

From his research, most of it, albeit, situational, he has observed human beings hiccupping often after drinking large quantities of his favorite human invention, alcohol, but in over one hundred years and calamitously huge episodes of alcohol consumption, Archibald has never experienced what he is sure he just experienced, the human hiccup.

He is, above all, a scientist. There has to be a logical explanation for the possible diaphragm spasm, assuming he has such an organ.

Wait! There it goes again. Another hiccup!

And there she is, the human woman, the one the human man refers to as “Sunshine.” He just glanced at her from the corner of his bird’s eye and then the hiccup struck, involuntary and jolting.

Archibald averts his eyes. This cannot be happening. This woman, as far as he can tell, is just as normal as any of the other random humans he’s come across in his years as lead scientist on his mission. He decides to use the only real weapon at his disposal, the scientific method, to see if it happens again. Archibald straightens his superbly long neck, faces the wall of the bar, and then, in a move similar to a camera pan in an Oscar winning movie, rotates his head towards this woman, this fiend.

Hiccup.

Fuck. What in the hell is going on here? Archibald again averts his eyes, this time staring at a crack in the sidewalk upon which he stands. Below him, a couple of worker ants are fighting over the dead carcass of a termite—your everyday scene here in this insect infested planet, one Archibald has even witnessed from a subterranean perspective, being and ostrich and all, and one with whom he’s seen enough to draw his own scientific conclusions. Insects, while dumber than humans, certainly seem to have a sense of purpose.

And this hiccupping seems to have a purpose all its own. He looks up again, but now the mysterious and all powerful woman, this “Sunshine,” has departed. Did she disappear? The other human, the man, is still at his table, staring at his beer with an absent minded, but prideful swagger; Archibald cannot explain it to himself, the look of this man, but it is both inherently prideful and self-conscious—but enough about this useless human. Where did the woman go, the one with the power to make him hiccup?

Just then, she reappears with a new drink. Archibald stares in her direction, but the hiccups have ceased.

“I like the way these cosmos make me feel like a feather in a thunderstorm,” she say to the man with the unfortunately curly set of locks. “Or, maybe I just like to get drunk,” she says, giggling at her own joke.

“Don’t we all,” the man says, saluting her in an airborne toast that is not met materially, but hoisted in the air by the woman, nevertheless. She takes a long sip from her drink.

Hiccup.

So that’s where she gets her power from, the fabulous human creation, alcohol. Archibald immediately realizes the importance of this moment. He must study this woman. She could possibly be the missing link for which he’s been searching for all these years.

Tue., Sept. 27, 3:02 p.m., Perdido Beach, FL, Suite 901, Sun Beach Condos

Having just spent the last two hours working on his tan in the cool confines of the Sun Beach pool, Luigi Lucriccio ambles into the kitchen, a beach towel around his waist, dragging the heels of sandals against the tile floor as if his feet might fly off the planet if he dared actually making a proper, full, off the ground step with his feet. This enforced vacation brought on by the hurricane has had Luigi work ever so carefully on his conservation of energy, as if any exertion might bring on thought, and thought, at times like these, can be very dangerous indeed. Xanax has been a good friend these last few weeks, nearly as good a friend has had been Jim and Jack, Beam and Daniels, respectively.

This conservation of energy principle, while a strong plan in theory, doesn’t necessarily work all the time. There are trips to the store that, while taken in a very slow and deliberate manner, still require some of those damned British thermal units to be burned somewhere in his body. And a man, even a fairly accomplished cook like Luigi, can only eat from his own kitchen so often; his trips to the Lambert’s Café in nearby Foley, Alabama, home of the world famous “throwed rolls,” where the waiters don’t bring your dinner rolls to the table, they actually throw them to you from across the room, the trips to Lambert’s have served as his sole source of human interaction these past few weeks, save the occasional conversation with another resident / visitor of the Sun Beach condos at the side of the pool.

“Nice day,” an old lady from Tennessee had once said, reading a Southern Interiors magazine, knowing full well Luigi’s hometown and completely missing the irony of the situation.

Truth is, Luigi doesn’t know one way or another whether his house had been flooded by the storm or not. His house is one of the few located at the edge of the flooding. Luigi could tell by using Google Maps that there was standing water at his house, that much was for sure. The depth was another thing altogether. His house at 4801 Loyola Street was near the edge of the flooding—in fact, six blocks away, St. Charles Avenue was completely dry. He knew this from both Google Maps and from radio reports. But his area was a little different. There was very little news emanating from areas of the city that had been under. Had there only been a foot or so of water, then Luigi had been spared. His house was built a century ago when the apparently smarter natives build homes on piers; Luigi figured his house is about two and a half feet above ground, hopefully high enough to escape the nasty, disease infested, stagnant water that had engulfed so much of his city.

Last week, while eating at Lambert’s, a very young girl in a neighboring booth turned around, stood on her bench, leaned over the back of it to ask Luigi a question. “Have you seen the Easter Bunny?” she asked.

“How old are you?” Luigi asked.

“I’m six,” she said, squinting her eyes with childhood authority.

“Is the Easter Bunny here?” Luigi replied playfully.

“I think he might be in the other room,” the girl said, pointing her finger towards the entrance to the kitchen.

“Over there?” Luigi asked, craning his neck to look behind him to where the kitchen was located.

“There are lots of people going to visit the Easter Bunny,” the girl said, nodding her head confidently. “He has eggs.”

Huevos, Luigi mused. Yes. The Easter Bunny has balls. “Where does he hide his eggs?” Luigi asked.

“Oh, he hides them everywhere. Between the sofa and the wall, sometimes even!” the excited girl replied. “Sometimes,” she whispered, “he even leaves them somewhere other than your house.”

Luigi decided to counter with temporal logistics. “But it’s not Easter,” he argued.

“Sometimes, Easter has to come early,” she replied.

Luigi was confused, but this was a childish conversation, so he went with it. “Where else would he hide them? In the yard?”

The girls eyes widened. “No, sometimes, when the weather gets bad, he has to hide them in a hotel room.”

Still confused, Luigi pressed on. “Why would he hide them in a hotel room?”

The girl, still profoundly interested in the conversation, stole a glance back behind her to her parents. She whispered even more quietly. “Because even though it’s not Easter,” the girl said, wrapping her hands around her mouth to make a kind of whisper bull horn, “there’s no where else to put them.”

Luigi slowly impaled one of his dumplings from his bowl of chicken and dumplings with his fork, securing it with the two leftmost tines and deposited in his mouth, a nod to nourishment, but not enough for him to not be able to continue his conversation, open-mouthed, etiquette be damned. “Why is there no where else to put them?” he asked, trying not to show his mouthful of food to the six year old conversationalist.

The girl looked at him with childish disdain. “Katrina flooded everything, silly, and the Easter Bunny doesn’t like to swim.”

Luigi nearly choked on his half-chewed dumpling. He realized he was seated next to a family in a similarly relocated situation. “I see,” he said, wiping away a tiny bit of juice off his lip from his near-choking experience. He collected himself quickly and replied, “That bunny is really smart.”

Her eyes widened again. “I know. That’s why I love him so much.”

He yanks at the bottle of Jack Daniels, pulls it close, grabs a glass from the cabinet, scoops a handful of ice from the freezer, and pours the bourbon almost to the top of the glass. He would have called this a game day drink, back when he was in college. He takes the bottle of Sprite from the refrigerator and tops of the beverage—just enough to tell himself he isn’t drinking the Jack straight, and stirs the drink with his index finger. When the ice stops spinning, he takes the cocktail glass and deposits its contents down his throat in one solid stream.

He realizes that the plan he’s been considering for a few years now is the only way, the only way to help the people, like the little girl and her family, to get back what was once theirs. The government has abandoned them, as it has abandoned everyone who once called New Orleans home. He knows he can fleece millions from the Federal treasury and, given a little time, make some of the people who have been so destroyed by this tragedy, at least partially whole again, with enough left over for himself for him to be able to live a fairly lofty existence, albeit in a foreign country, one without an extradition treaty with the United States. All he needs is a temporary job, for the initial infrastructure, and for Ishtar to say yes, which he most certainly will. For the girl in Lambert’s, he will do the dirty deed. All he needs is a little time and a whole lot of what’s gotten him this far.

He refills the glass with ice, Jack and a splash of Sprite and downs the concoction again. Rinse, repeat.

Chapter 14

Mon., Sept. 26, 11:38 a.m., 3801 Banks St. (front yard, sort of)

Sunshine, having finally pulled herself up from the mud, has finished crying, at least for the time being. She is still sobbing; it was a very powerful cry, but she’s mostly just sniffling to keep the newly formed snot in her nose from dripping out and onto her upper lip. A snot moustache would be intolerable under any conditions.

There stands what’s left of her house, her existence here in New Orleans. She will retreat with Gwen and try to figure out what to do next. Right now, with the corpse of her former residence slapping her in the face, she has no idea what to think or why she should even think it. In fact, the idea of thinking in general seems like the kind of thing that could render a person paralyzed, that person being Sunshine in particular. Thinking, as a concept or an notion or even a vague hypothesis, is dead, like in those gangster films. She wants thinking dead. She wants its family dead. She wants the cousins of thought to be sent to the bottom of the river with concrete sneakers and not to be found until the next generation of archaeologists come around, discover them, and end up believing that is what people wore for shoes.

Sunshine hopes Gwen keeps her liquor cabinet well-stocked and doesn’t mind sharing. And by sharing, she means with a funnel.

Tue., Sept. 27, 10:22 a.m., 1000 Valence

Deidre drags the luggage out of the back of Judge Mule’s black Land Rover, the luggage flopping to the street like dead horses, and into the foyer of the house. Her own home, located in Chalmette, is still unreachable and completely flooded over the roof like everyone else who lives in a one story ranch house in St. Bernard Parish.

The Judge has offered she and her husband a room at his house until her FEMA trailer becomes available, an offer she willingly and happily accepted, seeing as how Judge Mule’s house is in one of the few pockets of the city where electricity has been restored. Hell, the man even has his cable service, for God’s sake. It could be months, she’s sure, until the trailer will be able to be put in her front yard in Chalmette.

The judge isn’t a perfect man, she knows, but deep down, he’s a good man, a decent man, one who looks out for those he has under his wing. He’s her big bird today, and she’s never felt like she needed a nest more than now. When her husband arrives later this evening, she will have made them all a feast from the canned goods in the judge’s cabinets, the only food in the place that hasn’t spoiled over the month without electricity since they’ve been gone. They deserve it, those men. They’ve been through a lot and Deidre is a good woman, one who recognizes her place in her good men’s lives.

Tue., Sept. 27, 10:48 a.m., 341 Octavia

Arthur Cole is astounded to find out that he has both electricity and cable (not to mention the internet!) at his house. He is further astounded by that, through his cursory inspection of his property, absolutely no damage took place on the premises, not a broken window, a missing shutter, not even a missing roof tile. When one is living a clean life as apparently Arthur Cole has, one reaps the benefits! His home, his castle, after almost a month away, is exactly as he had left it, minus one terrible detail. The refrigerator.

The fact that he had the equivalent of an entire deer carcass worth of meat in his freezer was not lost on Art when he arrived at his house. Actually, it made its presence known the moment he walked through the door, a combination of the smell of a million dead rats combined with the proliferation of tiny fruit flies who seemed to have made Art’s house their home. What he had not counted on, however, was the ooze.

The ooze, for lack of a better explanation, is a primordial layer around where the suction section of the freezer and refrigerator doors meet the body of the appliance itself, a layer encrusted with thousands of dead insects, but, more importantly, a slimy substance not seen on this planet since the invention of the single celled organism. A sort of film seemed to be, slowly but surely, generating from inside the now refrozen center of his refrigeration appliance, pouring itself in minute drips down the refrigerator’s side and, in tiny pools, to the ceramic tile floors below. Since the electricity has probably only been on for a few days at maximum, Art’s convinced that the creatures inside the freezer’s cavity have conspired to create a life form of their own and are using the ooze as a medium with which they will soon exit the hive they infest and unleash themselves upon the outside world, that world being the world inhabited by Arthur Cole and his home. A collective intelligence is the only answer for whatever it is that is slowly releasing itself from Art’s fridge.

The stench, an odor with whom there can be no earth-borne allegiance, announces to Arthur that the doors of this large kitchen appliance are never to be opened again by a human being not wearing some kind of Mars rover radiation suit. The only solution is duct tape, a dolly and a trip to the curb. Any other action, he knows, would result in instant death. Just as FEMA has been advertising on the radio in their addictive slogan, “When in doubt, throw it out!” There has never been a more doubtful item in this world than Arthur Cole’s refrigerator.

Tue., Sept. 27, 11:40 a.m., Perdido Beach, FL, Suite 901, Sun Beach Condos

Having just extracted himself from bed, Luigi Lucriccio sits out on the ninth floor balcony of his rented beach condo, overlooking the white sand beach and rolling waves of the Gulf of Mexico. His “hurrication” has been rather peaceful, spending most of his time right here in his condo with its wireless internet access and spectacular view. He’s smoking a cigarette and browsing the web on his laptop, making is daily trip to nola.com to try and glean some news from the home front.

According to the internet, his city is finally opening back up. “New Orleans is open for business,” Mayor Ray Nagin is quoted as saying. Further down in the article is the list of zip codes. Apparently, they are allowing people back into the city, but only to certain areas. Parts of the city still remain flooded or otherwise uninhabitable. His zip code, 70115, is one of those that are now open.

He sighs. The moment has come. He can go back home and… well, do whatever it is that he does on a daily basis, which, quite frankly, isn’t much. Living on the dead dad’s money has been nice, to be sure, but it can get quite boring. Perdido has actually been a welcome change of pace, excepting the forced evacuation part. Welcome, but lonely too. Maybe, when he gets back, he’ll get a job. The storm has to be good for something, and Luigi is pretty sure that something is motivation.

He knows that when he gets back home, things will be different, though, that’s for sure. Luigi’s not sure if any of his friends are going to be returning to his home city, ever, a problem that has been gnawing at him since a few days after the shock of the breaches to the levees happened.

Just then, on cue, it happens, a text message on his phone from one of his closest friends, Sunshine. “Are you in New Orleans?” it says.

Text messaging is a new concept for Luigi. For the last few years, he’s seen kids frantically typing at their telephones and he thought, what are these fools doing, and how are they so adept and typing words into a number pad with only, what, maybe twelve keys. Where do all the letters go? Messaging was, to him, only something for the foolish, the vapid, the trendy or the young, and Luigi is none of those things. He’d hit that age where gadgets were no longer cool to him, a fact that suited Luigi just fine.

Then the hurricane arrived and completely ruined the cellular system for anybody with a phone with a 504 area code. Suddenly, the only way to communicate with people was by text messaging, and it is that way still, nearly a month since the storm. Luigi has had no choice but to become a reluctant convert.

He slowly maneuvers through the keys to reply to Sunshine. “In Florida back soon,” is all the patience his fingers have.

Tue., Sept. 27, 12:04 p.m., 341 Octavia

Having finally dragged the offensive refrigerator out to the curb, Arthur Cole finds himself spent and desperately needing a drink. Unfortunately, there don’t seem to be any stores open and his Yugo doesn’t much like the Mississippi River bridge’s access ramps, far too steep, so shopping for some booze on the west bank is out of the question. He has enough canned goods for food; that’s not a problem. But the one bottle of wine he had in the house went bad in the heat after the storm, and there’s nothing else on hand, save a couple of Vicodin in the bathroom to relieve the stress of having to move that awful fridge. Worse, there is still a large swarm of fruit flies hovering in his kitchen, even the thought of which is making him queasy. No. The Yugo will have to venture forth.

He’d heard reports on the radio that business owners have been allowed in for over a week and he wonders if the term business owners applies to bar owners. It would make sense, seeing as how bars are businesses.

Unfortunately, this thought makes Arthur Cole think about giant, bar sized refrigerators, a thought that takes all of the pent up vomit from earlier and makes him spew right there on his living room floor.

No time for mopping. Now he really needs something to drink.

Tue., Sept. 27, 12:32 p.m., The Bulldog

As if heeding his desperate call, the chalkboard sign in front of The Bulldog announces it’s status as being OPEN. Art yanks his Yugo into a parking spot directly in front of the bar and almost forgets to take the keys out of the ignition as he bolts from the drivers seat. His haste further endangers his life. As he leaves the car, he is nearly flattened by one of the many National Guard Humvees patrolling the city streets.

Having narrowly escaped death, Arthur Cole needs a drink more now, today, than ever in his life.

Tue., Sept. 27, 12:41 p.m., The Bulldog

It’s a good thing Gwen lives around the corner from a bar. Otherwise, Sunshine might not have made it through another hour. Not that Gwen is a particularly nasty person, no. It’s more of a grating thing, and that woman’s shoes! Abhorrent. The Nike sandals were the last straw. When Gwen donned those, Sunshine had to leave. For her sanity’s sake, there was no other choice.

She saunters in through the open double doors of the Bulldog into a long, dimly lit room, full of dark woods. Once her eyes adjust, she can see on the left is a long bar made of a deep brown, almost mahogany wood, lined up with empty barstools. Behind the bar is a large mirror, maybe the size that awful Yugo she saw just outside the bar, in front of which sit maybe thirty different spigots of a variety of different beers, in front of which is a tall, bald, tattooed man with a six inch long pencil-thin goatee. She assumes he is the bartender.

“Cosmopolitan,” she says.

“We just opened today and we’re still washing the glassware. Do you mind if it’s in plastic?”

“I don’t care if it’s served in a hollowed out loaf of bread, so long as I can drink it.”

“Fair enough,” the bartender says and begins to mix the concoction.

Sunshine glances back outside, into the glare, squinting in the harshness of this uneartly post-Katrina dusty daylight, and sees a man at a table out front she hadn’t noticed when she walked in. Her thirst must have set her vision in the tunnel state. She decides that there are few things more depressing than a woman sitting by herself in a bar, so she grabs her drink and heads out to sit at the table adjacent this man and his bottle of beer.

The scene before them is something out of an Armageddon science fiction movie. The Yugo, to start with, doesn’t so much resemble a car as it does a box of metal with some wheels on it with a few pieces of glass thrown on for pastiche. But that doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the true strangeness around them; the sun is out, but it’s more of a diffuse blur through the red dust haze that shrouds the city. There is very little vehicular traffic on Magazine street, normally a very crowded thoroughfare. The few vehicles that do pass by are limited to National Guard Humvees, large open topped trucks loaded with household debris, the occasional bulldozer and the rare passenger vehicle. The limited traffic, interspaced by minutes, seems to move in slow motion. The police cars, in particular, rove through the street in front of them completely covered in the orange, Mars-like dust that has settled on every flat surface available, roofs, tree limbs, sidewalks, the top of the table where she is sitting, like pictures Sunshine had seen of Seattle after Mt. St. Helens erupted, but this time, instead of white ash, it is an orange red dust, and it is everywhere. Sunshine feels her eyes welling up with tears. Fighting back the onrush of emotions, she takes a long deep pull from her cocktail, followed by a deep breath and then, as if putting things into their proper perspective, a sigh.

The man at the table next to her says, “So, where is your house?”

“Was,” she replies.

“Oh. Sorry.”

“Mid City. Took on eight feet of water and then burned to the ground.”

The man squints his eyes. “At the same time? Is that even possible?”

“I think they happened in that order, not concurrently.”

“Well, I am really sorry to hear you lost your house.”

Sunshine takes only the second gulp from her cosmopolitan and finishes the drink. “I think I’m going to need another one of these.”

“Allow me,” the man says. “Considering you’ve lost everything I feel the least I can do is pony up for one drink. Is this a madras?” he asks, the ice clanking against the plastic.

“Cosmo,” she replies and reaches into her purse for a cigarette.

Chapter 13

Fri., Jun 22, 9:15 p.m., Dos Jefe’s

Lush Muffin has grown very tired of Art’s company. She desires male companionship and Art, as usual, is a poor substitute for the real thing. She fishes through her purse and captures her cell phone.

“Luigi,” she says hoarsely.

“I’m taking a shower,” Luigi replies, with the sound of a cascade of water in the background. “Nice to hear you’re still alive.”

“Ditto.”

“What’s up? I’ve got soap on my head and I’m afraid it will dry out my scalp if I don’t rinse it soon.”

Lush Muffin loves the fact that Luigi Lucriccio shaves his head. “Are you planning on heading out?”

Luigi coughs. “I don’t know. I feel brutally beaten, like I’ve been dragged behind a freight train over a street of shattered glass. It’s not pretty here right now. I’ve only been up for a few minutes.”

Lush Muffin cackles. “You’re worse than me!”

“And that’s saying something.”

She bristles. “Well, are you going to be a man about it and come find me or are you going to wallow in pathetic-ville?”

“Wallowing is not my forte. Let me sweat out some of last night in this shower here and I will call you when I’m out.”

“Okay, but hurry. I’m bored.”

Art hears the last sentence, grips his red snapper and downs the entire drink. He is, of course, better looking than Luigi, but just doesn’t seem to get any credit for anything he does or says. Arthur Cole feels like the most underrated man on the planet.


Wed., Jan 12, 2:53 a.m., Audubon Park Riverview

Having wandered down the street from the Monkey Hill Bar deliciously drunk, Elizabeth and Luigi hold hands, laughing at nothing in particular, at the fact that they’re laughing and there’s nothing either of them can do to stop it. They’ve made it all the way through the park, across the railroad tracks and up the hill which is, in fact, a natural bluff of high land at a point where the river’s curve is extreme and abrupt, that curve causing, after hundreds of years, the land on this particular stretch of the river to be higher than at most other points.

They sit down at the edge of the bluff over the river. Beneath their dangling pairs of feet is a rubber coated chain link fence, under which sit piles of crushed rock. This is to keep the river from eroding the base of the bluff. In the battle of man versus nature, this is a temporary victory for man.

Elizabeth squeezes with her left index finger and thumb a spot on her right elbow, for no apparent reason, holding her right arm up and eyeing her skin in the dim light of the urban evening.

“My arms are fat,” she says.

“What do you want to do when you grow up?” Luigi asks.

“I want to grow up to be the invisible woman,” Elizabeth replies. “That way, I can sneak into your house and fondle you when you least expect it,” she says, grabbing Luigi between the legs.

He smiles. “I think I’d like that.”

Elizabeth abruptly relinquishes her grip. “What about you, Luigi? What do you want to be when you get out of elementary school? A fireman?”

Luigi tosses his head back and sighs. “I don’t know. I think about what I’m doing with my life, which, admittedly, seems like less and less each day. Invisible sounds awfully nice, come to think of it. Then I just wouldn’t have to deal with all of this adulthood crap.”

“Crabby man!”

“Sorry,” Luigi chuckles. “It’s just that, well, I like you and I’d love to be able to just spend every day frolicking wherever, just hanging out, you know? No real pressures, no deadlines, no job, which, I’m surprised I still have one, given I’ve taken off the last ten days just to hang out with you.”

“Well, it has been fun.”

“You’ll get no disagreement from me.” Luigi reaches out and puts his arm around Elizabeth’s shoulders. “I just sit here and wonder what would have happened if you and I hadn’t met at Sunshine’s New Year’s Party.”

“You’d be asleep, going to work tomorrow,” Liz quips.

“Sleep. So overrated.” He pulls Liz close and they kiss, a sloppy, drunken mouthful, tongues roving in every possible direction.

Fri., Jun 22, 10:00 p.m., Dos Jefe’s

Luigi Lucriccio flings himself through the double doors of Dos Jefe’s as a gunslinger would enter a saloon, his unbuttoned velvet, tiger skin print vest flapping in the rush of wind created as the air conditioned inside air swooshes through the open doors and greets the stale, warm, humid summer evening. His bald head is reflecting a streetlight outside. As soon as he crosses the threshold, that reflection is erased, replaced by the multi-colored ambience of the neon lights directly above the doors.

Lush Muffin’s eyes become transfixed; he is cute, in a biker-turned-intellectual kind of way.

His reluctant smile meets her gaze. Luigi knows she’s gorgeous, and that in itself allows the smile to form automatically, but it’s tempered with the knowledge that she is also the devil, at least as far as his health and sleeping patterns are concerned.

Her straight strawberry blonde hair sits as a floppy helmet atop her head, the length of which drifts to where it barely dodges against her shoulders. She smiles in return, purposefully and without Luigi’s reluctance, her top lip retracting towards her nostrils to reveal her gum line above her upper row of teeth. When Lush Muffin smiles, it is always a genuine reaction, never forced, and Luigi is beginning to realize that he is becoming, in her eyes, the genuine article.

------------------------------------------
Late September, 2005
-----------------------------------------

Tue., Sept. 27, 2005, 9:50 a.m., Jefferson/Orleans Parish Border, River Road National Guard Checkpoint

The not-so-curious thing about the checkpoint is they are stopping people in crappy cars and letting those in more fashionable vehicles pass through undeterred. Unfortunately for Arthur Cole, his car is in the former category. His 1988 Yugo GVX might be the crappiest car ever built, and he likes it that way. He enjoys the fact that he can keep the thing running and that other people despise his automobile. It suits him just fine. Except for today. Today, he gets to find out if the false credentials his buddy emailed him are good enough to get him into the city, as it is still closed to the general public since the Hurricane.

“State your business,” the unsmiling National Guard trooper with his very large M-16 says. The man is much taller than the Yugo and has to sort of crouch down, bending over his gun in order to look Art in the face.

Arthur Cole takes his credentials from a manila folder in the passenger seat (seat is a liberal term for it, seeing as how it’s more a mess of coils than a proper seat, the upholstery having long since disintegrated) and hands the document to the soldier.

After a cursory glance, the trooper hands him the paper back. He surveys the car once again and says, “I wouldn’t go anywhere off the beaten path in this thing. You’re not going to make it very far if you do and there are no garages to get your car fixed.”

“Thank you, sir,” Art nods and drives his Yugo into the comparative squalor that is the recently flooded Parish of Orleans.

Mon., Sept. 26, 9:58 a.m., Jefferson/Orleans Parish Border, Airline Highway National Guard Checkpoint

Sunshine smiles at the boys with the big guns. She waves. They wave back, not even gesturing for her to stop so they can check her fake credentials she downloaded from a friend. Her red Mazda Miata has its top up for now, unfortunate, because had it been down, she might have attracted even more attention from the boys, maybe even a phone number or two. That probably could be helpful, seeing as how her house is probably difficult to get to, at best, especially in her Miata. Gwen, who stayed throughout the storm, promised they would be able to get there in her Jeep. The only thing that means is Sunshine will have to put up with Gwen, an unpleasant but necessary requirement, given the fact that Sunshine’s second story apartment’s neighborhood was under eight feet of water and there is a certainty that a good deal of debris still litters Banks Street.

Sunshine has no illusions about staying at her own house; there’s not liable to be power or water for months. But she’d sure like to get some of her things out. Things seem to mean more to her these days than they did before August 29th.

Not that Gwen doesn’t have a good heart, she just annoys Sunshine to no end. Thanks to Gwen, however, she’s got a place to crash tonight. Tomorrow will be decision day, whether to head back to Texas to her parents’ house with her tail between her legs yet again, or to hopefully find another friend with which she can room until her place becomes livable again. So far, she’s had no luck. The friends she’s been able to contact (cell phone service is still quite sketchy and the primary mode of communication has been through text messaging) haven’t come back to the city yet. At present, Gwen is her only option.


Mon., Sept. 26, 11:30 a.m., 3801 Banks St. (front yard, sort of)

Sunshine has never cried so much in her entire life, going back, she thinks, until her first memories, sometime around age three. She is kneeling in the mud, her mud caked hands gripping at her platinum blonde hair, streaking Sunshine’s normally tonsorially perfect coif with chunks of wet dirt and clumps of dead grass. Her white sundress is smeared around the knees and ankles with the wet, probably toxic soil. The wail of her voice can only be described as that of a panicked howler monkey moments before its death.

Gwen stands impassively by her side, smoking a cigarette and staring at the charred front columns—what is left of Sunshine’s house. With her unencumbered hand, Gwen gently strokes Sunshine’s head, being careful to avoid the soiled parts, of course, and whispers, “Shhhh. It will be all right.” Gwen takes a deep pull from her cigarette knowing that there is nothing right about what she sees.

Everything behind the cement columns in front of the house seems to have collapsed into a two foot high layer of black nothing. Usually, when one sees a picture of a burnt house, there are some things one can recognize, maybe the corner of a picture frame or trophy or something, but it appears that anything metallic was completely melted and, from what Gwen can tell, the metallic objects are melted into black amorphous blobs, looking something akin to giant robot turds, atop a completely incinerated, square, house sized sandbox of black ash.

Mon, Sept. 19, 12:14 p.m., Atop the Ruined Roof of the Superdome

Archibald is upset.

The most exciting time of his life, surfing Hurricane Katrina at the mouth of the Mississippi River, has been followed by three week period of boredom. With a capital B.

He’s drinking a screwdriver. Archibald refuses to think about the fact that he had to run all the way to Baton Rouge to steal oranges from the supermarket to make the orange juice for his drink. Or the fact that drink ice is currently NOT AVAILABLE in this city, what with the lapse of electricity and its cohort, lack of refrigeration. No. He chooses not to think about that, for he can see the Entergy crews busily repairing the city’s electrical infrastructure and therefore restoring drink ice to his now quiet little Bourg. The warm screwdriver will soon be a thing of the past.

And the experiment survived. Okay, that’s not necessarily a good thing, but it’s not a bad one either. The fact that his regeneration machine operates without the need for public works was as necessary today as the day they started. And, as bored as he has become with his experiment, he doesn’t relish a new assignment, fraught with learning the language of a new species and especially finding what it is they like to drink that brings them pleasure. For all Archibald knows, a new assignment’s drink of choice could be sand, and, well, since he’s been an ostrich on this planet for nearly one hundred years, Archibald has had his fill of sand.

He decides, for boredom’s sake, to make a mental list of the things that he loves and hates about this planet that has been his home for so very long.

He loves:
Scotch
Orange juice
Anything with alcohol that can be mixed with orange juice
Surfing
Nipples

He hates:
Mimes
Cameras (they steal your soul)

After composing his mental list, Archibald decides that, on balance, this planet isn’t really that terrible, not perfect, but not the worst spot on the map. He just needs something, something that will make him feel alive, a task, an errand, a complicated web of lies and deceit, anything, to motivate him thorough the next day and the next.

Chapter 12

Fri., Jun 22, 8:36 p.m., Dos Jefe’s

Now that both Art and Lush Muffin are on their third Red Snapper, Art figures this is a good time to casually place his hand on Lush Muffin’s exposed knee. She doesn’t seem to notice. Art makes a mental note to use this method to make inroads later on this evening.

“Art?”

“Yes, Lush Muffin.”

“Are you sure you wouldn’t shave your head, you know, just to see what it would look like?”

“Couldn’t I just put a stocking on it or something?”

“Well, yes, I’m sure you could, but it wouldn’t be the same.”

“It would allow me to see what it would look like.”

Lush Muffin furls her brow. “I suppose it would, but it’s not the same.”

“How?”

“It’s just not.”

“Is that woman logic?”
“Kind of.” Lush Muffin knocks back the last of her latest red snapper and slides the empty glass to the edge of the bar. The trained Jackson knows this means Arthur Cole is buying her another one of these.

Art empties his glass and places his glass adjacent to hers.

“I think people who try new things, well, to me, that means they’re not scared.”

“Now all of a sudden I am a pussy because I just don’t feel like shaving my head?”

“Well,” Lush Muffin says, smirking, “I doesn’t mean you’re not a pussy.”

Art lifts his hand off her knee and grabs his crotch. “This is one hundred percent man sausage, that I can guarantee.”

“Vulgar,” she hisses.

“Sorry, but you’re challenging my manhood over here, an affront that, I believe, demands vulgarity in response.”

Jackson brings them their red snapper refills.

“You’re scared.”

“I’m not scared of anything. I simply don’t want to shave my head.”

“Believe what you want,” she says, smiling, slowly sipping her cocktail, her eyes glancing over the rim of the glass at Art’s frustrated face, his jawbone throbbing outward as he clinches his teeth.

“You are a real pain in the ass.”

“I know, but I’m beautiful and I can get away with it.”


Fri., Jun 22, 8:42 p.m., Dos Jefe’s

“Hey Karl,” Sunshine says, an empty glass of Chartreuse and a full Cosmo in front of her.

“Yes?”

Sunshine extends her arm towards the group of law enforcement types, “Do you see that guy over there, the kind of burly one with the tattoo of a school bus on his forearm?”

Karl Cerullo cranes his neck backward. “Sure, I see him.”

“I’m going to marry him.”

Karl chuckles. “The one with the faint moustache? Sunshine, you hate men with facial hair.”

“He will have shaved that off by the time we get married.”

“I see.”

“We’re going to live in Dallas.”

“Again, I didn’t think you liked anything about Texas.”

“Well, it is like a whole other country and we’ve proven recently that I’m rather xenophobic, but I’ll be a fugitive when we get married.”

“A fugitive, married to some kind of lawman, in Texas.”

“Dallas.”

“Right.” Karl Cerullo absent-mindedly twists the hair on his beard at the jaw line. “Well, so you should probably go meet this future husband of yours, I mean, if you want your Texan dream to come true, it might be a good first step.”

“No need.”

“No need to meet your husband? Is this some kind of immaculate nuptial?”

“He will come looking for me when the time is right, and then we’ll play musical orgasms for the rest of our lives.”


Sat, Jun 23, 1:56 a.m., Abidjan, Cote d’Ivorie, Home of Didier Drogba

Asleep, Didier is dreaming of a faraway place, a city in America. He is constantly aware of this city because of a person who is forever unsuccessfully trying to outbid him on e-bay. New Orleans, a place he has never been, is haunting him this evening.

In the dream, Didier is walking through a pile of huge leaves, dead banana leaves, he’s pretty sure. The aforementioned leaves are lying in a shallow pile on the side of a street. High above, a blimp circles slowly and he can hear the hum of the blimp’s engines. There is a man in the blimp who has a public address system. “Have you all seen the rock, paper, scissors party? It’s on the radio,” he broadcasts in English from his circling blimp.

Up ahead, standing on the street, is a creature, human-sized, with the head of a hamster and the body of a Lake Victoria perch. The creature is beckoning Didier forward with his fin, curling it like a person would curl his index finger.

Didier walks straight ahead towards the hamster-fish, all the while the hamster-fish is walking backwards until the fish creature has turned a corner. Didier rounds the corner and sees, there on a billboard in front of him, a giant picture of Roman Abramovich, the owner of Didier’s football club and beneath the picture, written in his native French, is the phrase, “Soyez célèbre, soyez important, vivez pour toujours!” Be famous, be important, live forever!


Fri., Jun 22, 8:58 p.m., 725 Constantinople

Luigi Lucriccio bolts sitting straight up from his dream, covered with sweat. This nightmare had been just as bad as most he has had in recent days. He looks over at the clock and realizes it’s nearly nine p.m. and he has been sleeping since just after noon, after his cocaine finally ran out.

The dream is hazy in memory, but it had something to do with him becoming some kind of half rodent, half fish-like creature and he was painting a giant mural with text in French, after which a huge, dreadlocked black man approached to come see his work.

This is exactly the reason he doesn’t like to go out with Lush Muffin. God only knows what kinds of chemicals they ingested last night, but he does know that the eight-ball helped him make it to Camellia Grill for a nine a.m., ahem, dinner. He’s pretty sure he was no longer with Lush Muffin, but remembers something about the San Diego Chicken. No, that can’t be right. Was there a costume party? Everything is vague, as it is most nights he hits the town with her.

He does remember making out with Muffin in one of those photo booth stalls at F & M’s, but that was around ten, before the F & M’s crowd, known for their late till sunrise schedule, had even arrived. That was after the cheese fries, an early dinner of sorts, and before they had scored the giant rock of Columbia’s finest. There was a cab to D.B.A. on Frenchman, during which they were doing lines on a mirror in front of the driver, or in back of the driver, as logistics would have it, but definitely well within view from his rear view mirror.

He can’t shake the image of eating at Camellia Grill with a chicken. A woman, yes, but a chicken. Cluck. A costume, to be sure, but still. How did all of that come about, and how did the chicken eat without removing her head piece?

There’s a definite gap between arrival at D.B.A. and Camellia Grill. There were shots, he does remember, but doesn’t remember exactly what was consumed. Lush Muffin wore a red sundress. She was, as always, rubbing her concave belly in an effort to keep it where it was, the opposite of convex. She smelled nice, he remembers, a combination of floral shampoo and booze, an odor he could still ascertain even after the large quantities of excess cocaine in his nostrils.

Getting out of bed is necessary, he realizes. Getting out of the house, while seeming to be a daunting task, is also required. He does not need to keep living like this.

When Elizabeth was hit by the bus in January, Luigi made a vow never to let himself fall in love with anyone. Loss is far too painful. Self medication, the only answer, must be moderated, he is sure, but for now, he needs the numbness, the absence of feeling, the ritualistic cleansing of his heart, so broken in so very many pieces. Lush Muffin, with her own pathetic self medicated tendencies, provides the perfect companion on his quest to quell the memories of Liz. With her, he can be both medicated and connected. With Lush Muffin, he has found a counterpoint.

The vomit will spill from his lips momentarily, after which, he will rinse and continue.

In a year or so, he will be wealthy beyond his dreams, so now is the perfect time to not reflect and just live. Venezuela is where he will begin anew.

Chapter 11

Fri., Jun 22, 8:15 p.m.. Dos Jefe’s

Karl Cerullo sits at the bar, absentmindedly stirring his vodka with a cocktail straw. He has been careful to keep his face pointed ahead of himself, questioning whether he has done something, in one of his many stupors, to one of the six law enforcement types currently sitting at a round table a few yards behind him. The conscious decision to do so has left Karl at odds with his usual motis operandi; his favorite game is people watching, and in this case, the only person he can watch is the reflection of himself in the mirror behind the bar. Right now, his face is currently half-hidden by a bottle of Glenfiddich, although Karl isn’t really sure what age of Scotch the bottle contains, considering he’s really only a fan of vodka and has no use for anything other.

His cigarette pack sits next to his drink, the cellophane partially ripped near the top of the box. An imperfection, it must be removed. Karl does so, crumples it into a ball, wraps it in his flimsy, damp bar napkin, and places it in his ashtray next to a lone cigarette butt. Some of the spent ashes cling to the wet napkin.

In the background, the jukebox is playing a Patsy Kline song, one he can’t recall the name of, but one he has heard a number of times, nevertheless. It’s melancholy, perfectly fitting his mood at the moment. If he had his choice, of course, he wouldn’t ever have to deal with Nikolai Valentino. But it is not his choice, and as long as he can keep his contact with the man as limited as possible, life can be manageable.

He is startled when Sunshine grabs his shoulder. “I saw your ostrich,” she says.

Lush Muffin and Arthur Cole are taking their seats to Sunshine’s right having not yet acknowledged Karl.

“You met Archibald, already?” I surprised Karl Cerullo asks.

“Karl, somebody dosed our drinks. It’s the only explanation.”

“Nobody did anything of the kind to me,” he replies.

“Tomorrow, you will feel very silly for all of the things you told me.”

“So you don’t believe you saw an ostrich?”

“Silly man.”

Karl Cerullo snickers, a smirk creeping up the right side of his mouth. “Archibald is nothing if not insistent. Believe me, he’s real.”

Sunshine nods sarcastically. “Whatever you say, Karl, whatever you say.”

Karl shrugs. “Believe what you want.”

“I will, dear.” She turns to Jackson who seems to never leave the bar himself. “Cosmo, honey?”

“Art, Muffin?” Jackson asks the two accordingly.

Arthur Cole puts his finger to his temple. “Red snapper. Goodbye cruel world.”

“Oh, that’s such a good idea. Two, please, large if you would, Jackson?”

“It’s going to be one of those nights.” Jackson mutters sarcastically before retreating to do his business.

Sunshine turns to Art who is directly to her right. “Potty time. Will you watch my phone?”

Arthur Cole glances at Sunshine’s pink contraption she has placed in front of her on the bar. “Will it bite?”

“Very funny. I’ve got to go talk to a man about a horse,” she says before trotting away.


Fri., Jun 22, 8:19 p.m.. Dos Jefe’s

Having done her business, Sunshine stands up from the toilet and straightens her dress with the inside of her palms. She pulls the door of the stall toward her, exits and heads to the sink. Hand washing, at least in this bar, is possible. They tend to keep the bathroom rather tidy. She leans down, turns on the cold faucet, squirts a little soap from the dispenser into her left hand, shares the soap with her right, rubs them together and places both hands under faucet and into the onrushing water. She scrubs them several times until all of the soap has been extricated. Happy with the cleanliness of her hands, she looks up into the mirror.

“You again,” she says to Archibald, who stands directly behind her.

“I am truly sorry if I startled you earlier,” he says, again tipping his top hat.

“Well, you know, it’s not very polite to sneak up on somebody, especially when they’re in the ladies’ room. I mean, even if you are a hallucination, it’s still rude.”

“Of that I am well aware. However, I thought it would be appropriate to speak with you alone, considering.”

“How very avian of you,” she replies, turning around from the mirror. She takes her right index finger and pokes him. She can feel that he has feathers and is, in fact, real. “Usually hallucinations don’t…”

“I assure you, Sunshine, I am not a hallucination. I am as real as you.”

“Oh, brother!”

“Do I remind you of a sibling?” he asks.

“It’s just a saying,” she says, not sure how to expound.

“Well, once again, my name is Archibald,” he says, holding out his claw.

“Well, I guess it is a pleasure to meet you,” Sunshine replies, shaking his claw tentatively with her still pointed index finder. “Do you mind if I ask what you’re doing here?”

“Just making friends,” he says, “so I’m not so bored all the time.”

Sunshine, furls her brow. “Making friends?”

“You know, for fun,” he says, shaking his head in a playful way.

“So you’re just here to make fun of me?”

“Not at all! No. I just want to play. Play, play, play, play, play, play, play.”

Sunshine grins. “Play?”

“I love to play. But, for now, time for me to go. This room is about to get a visitor.” With that, Archibald presses a button on the top hat and disappears.

A few seconds later, Lush Muffin enters the bathroom. “Hey, honky,” she says to Sunshine.

Sunshine stands, slack jawed, her eyes looking at a point on the wall past Lush Muffin.

“You look like you’ve found out Charles Manson is your baby daddy.”

Sunshine closes her eyes and shakes her head slowly. She lifts her chin diagonally toward the ceiling and says, “Nope. Just another day at the office.” She brushes past Lush Muffin, through the door and out of the bathroom.


Fri., Jun 22, 8:21 p.m., Dos Jefe’s

“Okay, Karl, I believe you,” Sunshine says, taking a large gulp out of her cosmopolitan.

“I take it you met Archibald?”

“Twice. The second time was just now, in the ladies’.”

“I hate it when he does that.”

“So just what is it that he wants from me, anyway?”

Karl Cerullo shrugs. “These aliens are a strange bunch.”

“Did you just say aliens, in the plural?”

Karl nods. “There are a couple of other, even stranger ones around, but they tend to keep to themselves. Archibald is the only one is, oh, how shall I say this…” Karl Cerullo rub his beard with the knuckle of his right index finger. “I’d say he’s more social than the other two, for lack of a better term.”

“Social.”

“Yes.”

Sunshine dumps back the rest of her drink, after which she extends her arm out with the martini glass in hand in Jackson’s direction. The bartender retrieves the glass from her hand and goes to prepare another.

“You shouldn’t worry, really, Sunshine. He’s quite harmless. Actually, in my opinion, anyway, he has a great sense of humor, albeit odd.”

“So I just made friends with a humorous ostrich who is harmless.”

“With the exception of the occasional practical joke.”

Sunshine raises her eyebrows, cocking her head as if to ask for more information.

“Well, that and he can get a bit messy.”

“Messy?”

“And I’d keep the liquor in the house to a minimum. He’s particularly fond of Scotch, but also has an affinity for vodka. Trust me, I know. And he can drink pretty much limitlessly, although I can say that I’ve seen him actually get drunk a couple of times. Those times are particularly messy.”

Jackson returns with Sunshine’s drink. “Thanks, Holmes,” she says and then turns back to Karl. “What I’m sensing here is a bit of anarchy. Would that be far off the mark?”

“I think you hit the bulls eye.”

“And he wants me, as you so delicately put it, to be his playmate?”

“Those were his words, actually.”

Sunshine tries to fish a cigarette out of her purse. Today’s purse happens to be a rather large leather messenger’s bag, filled with a plethora of hairbrushes, lipsticks, chapsticks, balms, lotions, a wallet, pens, a bottle of Advil, birth control pills, and an assortment of other things one would normally find in a desk drawer, not necessarily a purse, a stapler, a roll of masking tape, some trapezoidal erasers and a tape measure. This being said, it takes Sunshine a good half a minute to locate the cigarettes, a fact that is making her more and more hyperactive, her hand lunging through the purse like a python in a pillowcase. At the point she finally retrieves the cigarette, she has become so flustered she lets out an audible grunt, points her unlit cigarette in Jackson’s direction and yells, “Damn it, Jackson! Get me Chartreuse!”

Fri., Jun 22, 8:24 p.m., Dos Jefe’s

“Lush Muffin, did she just yell Chartreuse?”

“Um, I believe you heard correctly.” Arthur Cole believes Sunshine is Pandora, and Pandora has packed for a gambling trip to the Philippines and left the zipper to her suitcase slightly ajar. “I believe the captain has just turned on the fasten your seatbelts sign.”

“Turbulence is scary.”

“Turbulence is child’s play.”