White Light (Axoplasm Books) Page 16

  “But I thought Teeter ran this city. He said he built it twenty- five years ago.”

  The wall behind me snorted, “NO WAY.”

  “You talking about the guy with the big head?” an S-Curve put in. “Has a couple of temples?” I nodded and he grimaced in contempt. “Phaw! That’s just for old people. Still looking to see St. Penis and the pearly gates.” He started refilling the bowl of the bong. “Hell, I see God every time I get high. You can’t stay there is all. Once you’re all white you’re the same as their God. But you always come back somewhere.”

  “But what if you didn’t?” I said as S-Curve fired up the pipe. “What if you just stayed there. With the One.”

  The S-Curve I’d been talking to had turned into a ball of light again, and his twin took the bong hastily. “Ten seconds ain’t no different than forever,” he said quickly, before fitting his mouth to the bong. Just as he faded into a ball of light, the first S-Curve came back and finished off the bowl.

  “Stop hogging!” Speck shouted and lunged across the table to get the bong. A bumpy fart tore out of him and his chair creaked, “HOT LIPS.”

  Speck and the S-Curves started laughing like maniacs at that. I was having trouble absorbing it all. “Take a little walk?” I murmured to Kathy. She nodded and we stood up. I still had my book.

  “I think we’ll go out for some air,” I said.

  Speck was leaning over his work-table. “Whatever. Get some cigarettes. And a six-pack.”

  We went out, and the steps muttered, “IT FITS.”

  “Do you hear that?” I asked Kathy. “Do you hear the way everything talks all the time?”

  “NO DOUBT,” a garbage can put in. Kathy nodded. “Like those candy valentine hearts. They don’t make much sense.”

  It was evening again, and we walked in silence for a few minutes. The concrete was still warm from the heat of the day. It felt nice on my feet.

  Kathy came up to my shoulder and was wearing a loose dress made out of an Indian bedspread. She didn’t look like I had expected her to. She wasn’t deformed or anything, but she wasn’t beautiful either. Still, there was a nice roundness to her cheeks, and her eyes reminded me of my own. The greasy quality of her skin was somehow attractive to me. “SHE DOES,” the couch had promised.

  She felt me looking at her, and stared back with a little hostility. “What’s the matter,” she said. “Don’t I live up to your fantasies?”

  “HOT STUFF,” a lamp post chuckled nastily.

  I was embarrassed, at a loss for words. “I…I just didn’t know what you looked like. You look fine…just fine.” Awkwardly I put my arm around her. Her waist was slim and flexible.

  “What happened to the seagull?” I asked after a minute. “What happened after we split up?”

  “I flew to that harbor, you know?” I nodded and she went on. “There were all kinds of things there. Like monsters. They went in and out of the water a lot. There weren’t any other seagulls, and I started across the sea alone. It was curved.”

  I was starting to feel awkward with my arm around her. How well did I know her, really? I put both hands behind my back and paced along next to her while she talked, “MAMMA’S BOY,” a garbage can rattled at me, and I whacked it with the side of my foot.

  “The sky was funny,” Kathy was saying. “At first I could see way up Mount On when I looked back, but then I’d moved around the curve of the sea and there was only sky. But there was fire.”

  “You mean the sea was on fire?”

  “No, no. The sea was boiling, and the fire was in the sky. Looking into the sky was like looking down…down into a pit of fire?”

  We walked a few blocks from Speck’s. I saw what looked like a grocery store down one of the side streets, and took Kathy’s arm to steer her that way. Her voice was the same as ever, husky and a little tentative. She really wasn’t unattractive.

  “NEW LOVE,” a manhole cover opined as we walked over it.

  I raised my voice to drown it out. “Were there people there? In the fire?”

  “Yes. There were things moving in the fire and little screams. And…there were creatures bringing more people all the time. Big things that looked like you did in the graveyard when you scared me?”

  “Devils,” I said slowly.

  “Yes,” Kathy went on, “and there were machines bringing people there too…domed machines carrying three people at a time.”

  It all made sense. “Those were Guides,” I exclaimed. “They must work for Satan. That must have been Hell you saw up there…or down there…” I began waving my hands in the air to show her what I meant. “I think Cimön is sort of like a folded piece of paper. We started out on the side with Mount On, and now we’re on the other side. In between is Dreamland and at the fold is the sea. That fire you saw must have been Hell, off in space below the fold.”

  “I don’t really know what you’re talking about, Felix.” Her deep brown eyes looked up at me through a wing of hair. “Let me finish my story.”

  We had come to the grocery now, and I realized that I had no money. But I didn’t want to bring that up yet. I seated myself on the midnight-blue fender of a sleek ’52 Hudson Hornet. Kathy sat down next to me.

  It was night now. Yellow light spilled out of the grocery and onto the sidewalk. Inside were a couple of guys flirting with the girl behind the counter. I could hear music floating out of someone’s window. The air was still and warm, filled with faint smells of garbage and cars. I wished this evening would never end.

  “MOON CALF,” the car whispered. Kathy resumed her story.

  “I wanted to go back to the harbor…I wanted to see what lay across the sea. But there was fire and monsters in the sky and the sea was boiling as far as I could see. The water went up into the sky in big clouds of steam and then rained down. Useless heavy rain driving into the sea forever.” She glanced at me, then went on. “I decided to swim under the boiling part. I dove and swam all the way down to the bottom. I was flying through water…like a penguin. There was ice at the bottom, ice with colored lights in it, and I swam along the bottom until I couldn’t any longer. When I came up I was past the boiling part.”

  I was playing with her fingers while she talked. “Were there any fish in the sea?”

  “Not fish exactly. Little glowing things like jellyfish.”

  “Maybe the unborn souls,” I suggested. But she went on with her story, reciting it slowly.

  “It was windy, and I let the gale carry me towards the other shore. I don’t know how long that part took. I was confused, and seeing things.”

  “What things?”

  “Patterns…lines and colored dots. There were so many of them. Too many.” She paused, searching for words, then gave it up. “Anyway it got colder and the sea froze. The wind kept blowing and there was snow. It was hard to fly. Later the sky got clear and I was over a glacier. There was a big crack near the end.”

  “I think I saw you!” I exclaimed. “I was at the crevasse near the end of the glacier with Franx, and I saw a bird fly over.”

  “Will you let me finish, Felix? I flew to the end of the ice, and then I saw a huge plain with a row of cities. Cities and then a desert.”

  “But how did…”

  “I’m just coming to that.” She held both hands in the air before her, holding her vision. “I saw a clearing with big heaps and mounds. There were green lights landing, and I thought I saw birds. I started to land and there was a man pointing a stick at me. But it wasn’t a stick.”

  “You mean someone shot you?”

  She ran her hands slowly, wonderingly, over her face. “I – I think so. Something hit me and it was like in the hospital… the funny feeling and turning green. At first I thought I was in my coffin again. But I was too squeezed, and Daddy got me a big coffin, you know, all with pink taffeta…”

  I took one of her hands down from her face. “I remember, Kathy.”

  She pulled her hand back from me. “I didn’t want this body back!
When I crawled out from the garbage and realized…! wanted to die. But I can’t. We’re all stuck here forever, Felix, do you know that? S-Curve explained it to me. I don’t know what I’m going to do here forever. I don’t know what I’ll do!”

  “FLY ME,” suggested the car we were sitting on.

  No. 20

  Talking Cars

  The keys were in the ignition. “Let’s do,” I said to Kathy.

  “Do what.” We were sitting on a midnight-blue ’52 Hudson. It had a slit of a windshield – like a tank’s.

  “Let’s take this car. You heard it, it invited us to.” I patted the fender.

  “COME ON,” the car said, opening a door encouragingly.

  Kathy hesitated a minute, then nodded once. “All right,” she said. “Why not? I’ve only know those guys for a day anyway. But let me get some beer and cigarettes first.”

  “Groovy.” I stepped down into the driver’s seat and sank into the soft dusty cushions, setting my book down next to me. “One thing,” I said to the empty seats, “You’re going to have to start talking in sentences more than two words long. I’m not asking for rational social intercourse, mind you…just no more of these cute da-dah phrases.”

  “CAN DO,” the car said. I sighed.

  Kathy came out with a whole case of beer bottles, corked and unlabelled. Speck must have given her money. “For what?” an ugly part of my mind wanted to know.

  “Do you think that’s really beer?” I asked as she opened the other door and set the case on the back seat.

  “NAPALM BALM,” the car said, and Kathy got in with a laugh. She looked happy.

  The car started up with no trouble and pulled off down the street. No one ran out to stop us – for all I knew the car didn’t have an owner. Franx had said something about talking cars just before he died. I wondered if he’d recorporated, and in what form.

  The heavy warm air beat in through my open window. I realized the car was content to drive itself, and let go of the steering wheel, “ZERO COOL,” it remarked.

  I reached back and got two beers. They were cold, and the taste was not off, like the whiskey’s had been. Maybe they brewed their own in Cimön.

  “It’s good to be moving again,” Kathy said. “I don’t ever want to stop. Just now, standing there…”

  “I know,” I said, thinking of the people waving to Bob Teeter. “It’s like the only thing worse than death is eternal life.”

  “Oh, don’t say that.” She leaned her face into the wind. “Anything’s better than nothing.”

  We were on a main thoroughfare now, and lights were streaming past. There were plenty of parked cars, but not too many were driving. A sudden doubt crossed my mind. “Do you need gas?” I asked the car.

  “I GOT A TOMBSTONE HAND AND A GRAVEYARD MIND,” the car said in a unique burst of loquaciousness, “I’M JUST TWENTY-ONE AND I DON’T MIND DYIN’.” Only later would I realize what this meant. But I assumed there was enough gas. I flicked on the radio. The dial glowed for a minute, warming up. I wondered what would be on.

  There were no numbers on the dial, but when Kathy twisted the right-hand knob, a pointer moved back and forth in the little rectangular window. Suddenly there was a crackle and the sound came on.

  A saxophone playing in short bursts. It stopped and a man with a faint Boston accent recited a haiku: “Useless, useless. Heavy rain driving into the sea.” More saxophone, more haiku. After awhile a piano took over, and the reader launched into a longer piece, ending with the line: “I wish I was free of that slaving meat-wheel and safe in Heaven dead.” He gave an embarrassed chuckle.

  Kathy had slouched down in her seat. She’d lit a cigarette and her face was slightly turned away from me. She reached out, jiggled the radio knob, and the first haiku came back again. “Useless, useless. Heavy rain driving into the sea.” She sighed and the saxophone segued out into a jumble of loosely strung guitars.

  “What is that, Kathy?”

  “What I wanted to hear.” She was still staring into the beating night air. “Speck’s car has a radio like this. Everything is on all the time.”

  A different man’s voice was talking over the randomly plucked strings. His voice had a ranting, confident quality. It was hard to make out what he was saying. Lots of dates, numbers. “I knew I should have worn more paisley.”

  “That’s Neal,” Kathy said. “There’s not much of him on.”

  “I still don’t…”

  “It’s a record of Cassady and Kerouac doing a jazz reading. My big brother gave it to me in high school and I used to listen to it a lot. It’s how I got interested in Kerouac in the first place.”

  The first voice, Kerouac, was on again, talking about death, about the Void, about enlightenment and bald artists with black berets hanging reality on iron fences in Washington Square. He had a strange little chuckle he’d slip in here and there. Kathy’s lips moved with the words. I began to feel jealous.

  “I guess you’d like to find him and sit at his feet,” I said.

  “It’s a thought,” she said, flicking her cigarette out the window. “Either that or find a way to get back to Earth.” Then she relented and smiled at me. “You want to hear something else?”

  “Sure. What else is on?”

  “Anything you want. Just twist the knob and it’ll stop on whatever you have in mind.”

  I turned the knob through a babble of possibilities, not quite sure what I really did want to hear. Somehow I ended up with the Led Zep doing “Whole Lotta Love.” The exaggeratedly heavy beat seemed like just the thing for cruising Truckee. I threw my empty beer-bottle out the window and opened another.

  We were driving along the road next to the Dump now. The green lights falling down into it were clear against the starless night sky. A figure tottered out into the street ahead of us. A hitchhiker. I thought of the way Vince had run a man down, and braced myself. But our car stopped, snapped on the dome light and opened a back door.

  “You don’t have to get in,” I called to the figure in a futile effort to maintain some control over the flow of events.

  “Felix?” the ragged man answered, “Is that you?” He stuck his head in and looked me over. It was a man with tufty black hair and sunken cheeks. There was something insect-like about the mouth. His lips were parted and thin teeth showed. His ears stuck out like dish antennae, and his dark black eyes held no expression I could make out. He was wearing a ragged black suit that looked fifty years old, and a white shirt with no necktie.

  “I’m afraid I don’t recognize you,” I said. A blistering staircase of guitar notes poured out of the radio.

  “He looks like Franz Kafka,” Kathy observed, turning down the volume.

  The man got in the back seat and smiled past me at Kathy. His smile was horrible. He was talking rapidly in a high voice. “Gregor Samsa, really…though in a reversed sense. I was a giant beetle before my unfortunate metamorphosis.” He rushed at his suit with rapid Oliver Hardy twitches, his fingers flying in every direction. Suddenly I got the picture.

  “You’re Franx!” I exclaimed. “You got recorporated at the Truckee dump!”

  He gave a bug-like twitch of his lips and flared his nostrils. “I don’t know how you humans stand it Felix. All this soft flesh.” He plucked at his emaciated cheeks. “Marshmallow bodies with toothpick bones. I really must get back to the Praha section of the Dump and undo this grotesque transformation.”

  He spotted the beer, opened one and drained it with wet, sucking gurgles. Before I could say anything he was talking again. “I was right, Felix, wasn’t I, when I said I’d get my head bashed in. I read the page. I knew the future. This must be your friend Kathy?”

  She nodded. “Felix told me a little about you…”

  “And a great deal more about himself, I’m sure,” Franx added. “But he didn’t tell you about Ellie, did he?” A moist, clicking snicker.

  “Franx, will you cut it out? If it upsets you to be around me, I’d be more than happy
to let you out. As a matter of fact I’ve hardly had time to tell Kathy anything.”

  “I see you’ve still got your book,” he said, leaning into the front seat. “Tried to read it lately?”

  I hadn’t actually. Not since I’d passed out on that hot sidewalk. I hadn’t even showed it to Kathy yet. She picked it up, let it fall open and squinted at a page. “It’s all smeared,” she said. “Is it…”

  I pulled it from her hands and looked for myself. The page ended in a blur, just like before. Suddenly I realized that I hadn’t done any speed-ups since…since leaving Ellie’s house on the edge of Truckee. I tried to rattle off alef-null La’s then, but my touch was gone.

  The car made a sharp turn onto a dirt road leading between two of the Dump’s mountains of garbage. “That’s a no-no,” Franx said to me sharply. “Turn around.”

  “He’s not driving,” Kathy explained. “It’s a talking car.”

  Franx grunted in fear and yanked at the door handle. It came off in his hand. The road was rutty and twisted, but the car was going faster than ever. It pitched like a boat at sea; the headlights played crazily over the mounds of junk. An icebox. A mattress with the springs sticking out. Rotten zucchinis.

  I pushed down on the brake pedal. It sank to the floor as if there were nothing behind it. The steering wheel spun as emptily as a wheel of fortune. The radio clicked off then, and in the sudden silence the car said, “GOD KNOWS.” Franx began screaming.

  I turned in my seat and grabbed him by the shoulders. “Tell me what you know,” I said, shaking him.

  “I forgot,” he babbled. “I didn’t want to remember. So you caught me, you and your tumbril, just like the book said. I couldn’t face it, and now it’s really happening. Oh no! I don’t want to leave Cimön! I don’t want to go!”

  His eyes were glazing over, and white balls of spit had gathered at the corners of his mouth. I shook him again, gently. “Co where, Franx?”

  He spoke slowly, painfully. “Into the light. Over the edge and into the light. I didn’t tell you the truth…about why I was sad.”