Just a Couple of Days (29 page)

It had been determined during my mass mediated daydream that Miss Mary would go pay her last respects to Tippy. Since I too had a dog, I was ordered to accompany her on this mission. That I should be trusted out of General Kiljoy's proximity initially surprised me, but then, given the situation, there really did not seem to be any possibility of me causing any trouble.

Tynee and General Kiljoy, for their part, were going to locate the emergency food rations. This was a bit of a problem, since they would first have to discover where these foodstuffs were actually stored. Captain Down
was
the administrator of this mostly automated compound, but naturally he could not be reached for comment.

So, ignoring the lessons of
Scooby-Doo
, we split up. But contrary to what might be expected, nothing bad happened. Nothing, that is, unless you count having to accompany Miss Mary on a bizarre funeral procession. She spoke not a word to me for most of our curt excursion. Of course, I was not terribly forthcoming in the dance of dialogue either, but I was only following her lead in this chitchat cha-cha. At least this way I could avoid stepping on her toes, not to mention having to twirl or dip her. Besides, she was the de facto leader of this expedition, and I was perfectly willing to defer to her direction. That was established when I crawled into the golf cart with her in the driver's seat. I didn't even know where we were going. She had the remote control. Still, as we approached the bank vault door that led to the garage after barely two minutes in the cart, I felt a little idiotic for not having suggested that we walk.

As I said, our short trip passed without talking but with much clearing of throats. As we neared the vault door, she interrupted the hum of the golf cart to inquire about this one thing we had in common.

“What pedigree is your dog, Doctor?” she asked, as if she were inquiring about his family, which I suppose she was.

“He's a mutt,” I answered simply and truthfully. “His mother was a tramp and his father was a drifter.” At least that's what I hoped. I had stopped in Roundtown, as a matter of fact, seven years ago to get some gas. A local hound whimpered at me just before I tossed the soggy remnants of a prepackaged submarine sandwich into the garbage, so I gave it to him. He was so grateful that he ran after my car when I left, and I watched him keep up with me through the rearview mirror for a few blocks before I decided to give him a lift. It didn't appear that he had an owner, and I liked him so much that I adopted him. Being a geneticist, I was especially pleased that he was a mutt. Mutts tend to be healthier and more energetic, like that big pumpkin at the Jamboree, a phenomenon called hybrid vitality, or, as I prefer, mutt gusto.

Miss Mary was not at all impressed with Meeko's lineage. It appeared that we had nothing in common after all. She let this be known with a barely audible “hmm,” and complete silence prevailed thereafter.

It is my opinion that in situations where conversation is strained, it's better not to say anything than to make one remark and then fall back into silence. That's like giving a waitress a nickel tip; it makes you look like a cheapskate. Better to give nothing than to be minimal. Talk is not cheap; it's the most valuable thing there is, but only when you share it. So go forth,
be generous in your conversation, and your tips, or others will spit on your words, and your food.

Food critics are fond of advising that a midafternoon visit to a restaurant gives a poor first impression, one that may have been much better during peak hours. The same may be true of people, such that meeting someone for the first time during the after-lunch slump doesn't bode well for favorable assessments. Having first met Miss Mary in like circumstances, I had remained open to the possibility that she was not so loathsome as I thought her to be. But she was. No more so than General Kiljoy or Tynee, I hasten to add, but aside from her
eau de smokestack
, it was somehow much more difficult for me to define the reason for my odium.

As I've tried to explain, she is fantastically fake, and on many levels. She is so fake that it seems like she is pretending to be an actress rehearsing for a role as an impostor. Under all her fabrications, however, there seems to be nothing but routine self-absorption driving her. And if the self is an illusion, which according to Blip is a matter of incontrovertible fact, then selfishness is a preoccupation with absolutely nothing. I don't mean to say here that she is fascinated with the concept of nothingness and the unmanifest potentiality it implies. Rather, she is obsessed with filling it with her own presence, which is quite like trying to fill a balloon that does not exist. Nothing stands in the path of the selfish, one might say.

Miss Mary is an empty character in this adventure, yes, for she is an empty person. Of course, everyone is ultimately empty, but not everyone is so dreadfully insistent in denying it. The best among us delight in the paradox and do their best to
soften the foolish phantasm of the ego. The worst among us are so terrified by such emptiness that they invite spooks from other dimensions to take up residence within them. They then go to work proving to all of us nobodies that they are somebody after all, suppressing the heavenly hecklers who hurl cream pies of sweet Truth their way. This is a fair characterization of General Kiljoy and Tynee, who surely have demons in their cockpits, but I'm confident that there is only a foolhardy nothing in Miss Mary's driver's seat. That nothing, however, has a fake ID that says otherwise.

 

101
The day being Halloween, Christmas was right around the corner for Miss Mary, and she hummed a few bars of “Silent Night” as she coasted the golf cart to a halt and studied the homing beacon on her remote control. We were in the passage in which we had first entered the compound, with the vault door in front of us.

“Tippy should be just ahead,” she said. “In the parking garage.” It did not appear, however, that we could go any farther, for the vault door was closed. As we stepped out of the airtight bubble, I was struck by the utter noiselessness of the hallway, which only earlier that day had wafted with wails of the Pied Piper's presence. Now it was so quiet I could hear my own circulatory system roaring in my ears. Having forgotten about the rebounding acoustics in those halls, I gawkily asked about the door, and as I spoke, the air all around mimicked my words and shouted them back at me almost before the utterance had left my mouth.

“SSHHH!” The air, prompted by Miss Mary, responded. She was fiddling with her remote in an effort to open the vault door, but with no success. Frustrated, she approached the door and found it ajar, which explained why it was not opening electronically. That seemed odd to me, and I began to voice a reservation against proceeding but the air again shushed me so hard I felt a shower of reverberating spittle all around my head. Apathetic anyway, I acquiesced and trailed Miss Mary through the door of the vault portal. She had scarcely crossed the threshold, however, when some rogue pulled the fire alarm in hell, and a resounding shriek that would make a veteran firefighter turn tail and run with his hose between his legs filled the mouth of the garage. The source of this howl from Hades was Miss Mary herself, wailing like it was the latest trend out of Paris. Her scream so rattled me that even after I realized she was behind all the racket, it still didn't seem entirely out of the range of possibilities that we were in fact standing in the orifice of a gigantic, screaming orangutan.

After Miss Mary retreated to the golf cart and began smoking like she was trying to fumigate a hornet's nest, I peered into the garage myself. Miss Mary's super-loudmouthed screak was triggered by the sight of the body formerly occupied by Volt the Waiter, Chef, Chauffeur, and Dog Sitter. He was now Volt the Nothing. Volt was dead, as dead as Charles Dickens. More specifically, Volt was shattered. The multitalented and multilingual gopher agent was now multipieced, and as naked as a statue of antiquity. He had a physique to match, complete with limbs and other extremities that had broken or chipped off through the centuries. It also appeared that he had been bound
with his own removed clothes, such that when he was caught unawares by the termination of the experiment and subsequent disinfection of the compound, his cryogenically frozen body toppled like large pieces of ice will when suddenly deprived of any animation and consequent center of gravity.

This took me quite by surprise. Reacting to the potential emotional trauma, I'm certain, grim-grin promptly grabbed my jawbone and had every intention of flinging rude guffaws out of my grinning gullet if I hadn't acted quickly and pretended for Miss Mary's, as well as my own, benefit that I was seized with the dry heaves. Retching was a reasonable reaction, to be sure, but the scene really wasn't as gruesome as it sounds. True enough, Volt the Nothing was in pieces (Agent Orange and the dogs, incidentally, were nowhere to be seen), but it wasn't a bloody mess. He was still frozen solid, so there was very little actual blood. Besides, it just didn't seem real, since, like most things that day, I had no category in which to place any of it. The sight was so ludicrous that I could only imagine he was a wax dummy that had toppled over.

Since I was not as offended at the situation, and because I was eager to hang out with someone I didn't despise, namely Meeko, it was agreed that I would check around and inside the limousine. If they were inside the hermetically sealed limo, she pointed out, they may have been protected from disinfection. Miss Mary was relieved when I agreed to investigate after she ordered me to. In retrospect, it was exceedingly foolish of both of us, as General Kiljoy would holler at us later. The door to the garage should not have been open, and was evidence of foul play. Even though the garage and Volt the Nothing were thereby
disinfected as well, a viable virus might have existed inside the armored limousine. Admittedly brainless, but the ownership of a dog encourages a certain whimsy of mind.

Besides, Miss Mary was in charge. I was just following orders.

 

102
In any modern family or secret military compound, a sure sign of who holds the power is who holds the remote control. I was the only one without a remote control in this compound. General Kiljoy, Tynee, and Miss Mary were forever pushing buttons and altering the immediate environment this way and that, but I was not permitted to take part in these antics. Hence, I was particularly pleased when Miss Mary gave me her remote control and showed me which buttons to press to open the door of the limousine.

I did as she said. To my tremendous delight, Meeko, followed by Ratdog, came bounding over to the door as it opened. I quickly crawled inside and closed the door behind me. The dogs, blissfully oblivious as usual to the human crises that were occurring around them, bounded gaily around my feet as if I were juggling milk bones.

After calming them down and noting with some degree of surprise that Agent Orange was not inside the cabin nor up front nor outside, I realized that I was not only in possession of a remote control, but also privacy. Privacy means not being seen through someone else's eyes, and thus not being subject to their judgment or censure. While Meeko and Ratdog certainly had eyes, I wouldn't feel embarrassed undressing in front of them. I might feel silly, but that wouldn't be due to any action on their part. I'd feel silly or embarrassed because I'd imagine them to
care what my state of attire is. But if their uninhibited and sometimes licentious behavior around fire hydrants and each other is any indication, they wouldn't look twice even if I performed a striptease, unless perhaps the performance included some wet rawhide I might fling them to chew on.

But my mind wanders down bizarre alleys, as it's been apt to do these past few months. Privacy was relevant to me here not on account of any sudden desire to buff my birthday suit, but rather because I was in possession of a remote control, a spiffy remote control with a built-in cellular phone. So, I did what any high school clod looking for a good time would do. I called Blip.

For whatever reason, I feel compelled to distance myself from any sexual connotations in the previous statement. Obviously, I wasn't looking for a good time. I was trying to find out how the holy hell he and his chums managed to escape. Let the record show that I have never been one to get (or give) dating tips on bathroom walls.
That's
bizarre.

The number, as I expected, reached Blip's voice mail. Because the greeting was precisely what it usually was, I was left rather puzzled.

“Hi, this is Blip. Please leave a message and I'll get back to you. Until then, be advised that all polar bears are left-handed, so if you ever find yourself in the Arctic or in the wrong place at the zoo, watch your right side.”

Puzzling indeed. He'd had this same message for three years now, though he'd never been able to answer my question if there was a similar rule for grizzlies, a curiosity that had recently reemerged in my mind due to the pelts covering the floor in the observation lounge and elevator. I left a message, rather disconcerted that I had gotten my hopes up for naught.

“This is Flake.” I spoke into the phone, suddenly on the spot and not knowing what to say. “Just calling to see what's going on.”

 

103
After tugging Meeko and Ratdog away from sniffing at Volt the Nothing, we exited the garage to find Miss Mary suffocating contentedly in a bubble of her own smoke. Seeing Ratdog trotting through the vault door, she popped the bubble by opening the door of the golf cart and met her precious in a reunion embrace that would put a lump in the throat of a macho giraffe. As a dog owner, I was especially moved, and I scratched Meeko behind his ears. He thumped his tail, barked once, growled, whined, then fell silent, bewildered by the acoustics. The aural situation was better once inside the golf cart, and Meeko scrambled and whined with excitement while Ratdog yipped, and we humans and dogs merrily made our way back to the observation lounge like old friends on a New England sleigh ride. Miss Mary was so overjoyed, in fact, that not only did she forget to smoke, but she also never asked for her remote control back.