Nine Kinds of Naked (22 page)

 

 

 

 

The First Knot: A Gentle Breeze

 

A
CCORDING TO
the stipulations of the legend, for so long as the King of the Wood defends the Golden Bough from all wanderers, he retains ecstatic access to the elemental underworld. Seeing as how Clovis never encountered any would-be challengers to his position, this was not a difficult arrangement for him to maintain. Consequently, the years—albeit supremely meaningless in their concept—passed peacefully. Clovis learned how to navigate the trends of time, dropping himself into and out of linear time without the loss of centuries in between. (There is a trick to this, but regrettably, it is forbidden to reveal.) In any event, Clovis made a smart and spirited use of his transcendence of time.

The Oakmen, however, in a rare display of sobriety, distressed at length over the lack of a fresh challenger to the crown. They concluded that in the twenty-first century, where Clovis had succeeded in locking them, humanity had fallen so far into itself and so fortified its own delusions that nobody could even sense the presence of the faerie underworld, let alone see it.

“How does that work?” Clovis demanded, sitting up from a catnap in the meadow. “You call the faerie underworld a space outside of time, yet you subject it to the linear time of humanity? Why the heck can't someone from some other time find his way here? We're always just here now, right?” Clovis had spent the previous few decades (as such) studying.

The Oakmen conceded that he had a good point, and after a brief huddle, announced that although there was a perfectly reasonable explanation, it was forbidden to reveal.

Clovis snorted. “Well, you might as well just tell me then. I figured out about only speaking in the present tense pretty quickly, you might recall. No great mystery there.” In his relentless self-education, Clovis had grown arrogant with the Oakmen, whom he considered to be his captors. In fact, lately he had arrived at the conclusion that they were nothing more substantial than literalized aspects of the collective human imagination that had somehow trapped him within their chimerical realm.

The Oakmen ignored his impertinence. One of them responded by loudly proclaiming that it was time to eat honey, thereby setting off a chaos of activity, cheers, and bugle calls. Clovis sighed, having grown bored with their eternal
jubilation. An intoxication would have been a welcome diversion, but there was no way Clovis was ever touching that honey again. The last time he'd lost over a thousand years, which is not to say that Clovis had any idea how long he'd inhabited the timeless moment that is faerie. He only knew that these absurd gnomes had their own reasons for existing, and as far as Clovis could tell, that reason seemed to revolve around meddling in the affairs of humanity, creating conspiracies of improbability and chaoses of coincidence to harass the otherwise linear existence of mortals.

No, the Oakmen were not at all trustworthy, and overall they provided him with pretty thin company. They all looked the same, and their personalities were equally indistinct, with all of them coming across as uniformly ebullient. And they had no emotional investment in him whatsoever. They would just as soon celebrate his death and defeat as they would his victory and coronation. For that matter, they would just as soon celebrate a blade of grass. Nothing was worth less than anything else, and everything demanded a toast and a cheer. But no challenger was forthcoming in any event, and Clovis would have doubtless gone insane with loneliness and megalomania if not for the thrice-knotted strip of leather the prior king had given him.

The gnomes, sensing his loneliness, told Clovis that he might find some company if he untied a knot from the thrice-knotted strip of leather. Clovis knew better than to trust them, and he also knew that his predecessor had cautioned against untying any more knots not so much in warning as in temptation. But really, when all you have to lose is loneliness, taking
a chance isn't so courageous. He'd untied one of the knots after some time (such as it was) had passed, and was soon after pleased to find that there was one person in the twenty-first century who could more or less see and interact with him.

Watching the Oakmen's unbridling boisterousness, Clovis fingered his now twice-knotted strip of leather and reviewed his predicament. First, he was—most improbably—virtually immortal and outside of time, apparently a consequence of possessing the spectacularly vibrant mistletoe from the king oak. Second, he could drop into time by stabbing his sword at the ground and saying
whoa now
, although as far as he could discern both his and the Oakmen's presence went entirely unnoticed by mortals. Third, he could freeze the passage of time within time by doing this again, and unfreeze it by saying it again before removing the sword. And fourth, he could control exactly when he dropped into time by speaking only in the present tense when visiting.

To be true, Clovis did not figure out this last one on his own. Indeed, at the time, he had no studied concept of verb tenses at all, and in fact did not even know if it was true since he was unwilling to subject it to experiment and falsification. But he trusted the nymph who appeared to him in the reflection of the pool of a spring, whispering her advice seconds before a boar came crashing into the water to wallow.

“Look what a mess you've made of the spring, you stupid pig!” Clovis hollered, knowing that although the boars would threaten, they would never—or could never—touch him. Scowling at the boar, he nevertheless made a careful study of
verbs and their tenses the next time he dropped into time before speaking again.

Of course, this was no small task for a runaway serf with an archaic vocabulary. And because the gnomes had nothing else to do to amuse themselves for the duration of Clovis's extended grammar cramming, this had the unintentional consequence of creating an orgy of synchronicity in the New Orleans bookshop in which he happened to conduct his inquiry.

 

62
S
PECIAL
A
GENT
J. J. Speed shuddered, having just belted back another shot of tequila. “That's awful!” he roared, slamming the shot glass on the bar as he reached desperately for a wedge of lime. “Why don't you just serve me up some Lysol while you're at it?” He sucked on his lime, its tart confidence overwhelming the distilled toxicity of the low-grade liquor.

“Hey man.” The bartender shrugged, aggravated. “That's our most expensive bottle. Maybe you don't know tequila like you think you do.”

“Maybe you don't know shit from Shinola, how ‘bout that?” Special Agent J. J. Speed raised his voice, belligerent. “I lived in Mexico for years, you purveyor of putrid,” he paused, searching for a drunken alliteration, “perfume,” he finished, imperfectly. “And let me tell you something. I've had so-called tequila that would kick your teeth in with the spur of its boot, set your boogers on fire, and make your hair fall out and grow back curly. The piss you pour is ten times worse. Man, I know
tequileros
that'd blow your fucking head off if they caught you mopping the floor with this acrid pukewater anywhere outside of Margaritaville. You don't need salt and lime with
real
tequila. Salt and lime take the edge off the bitterness, which only happens in the first place by distilling from underripe agaves boosted with cane sugar and high-fructose goddamn corn syrup.” Special Agent J. J. Speed shook his head in disgust. “You can lick it, slam it, and suck it all you want, but
real
tequila is like liquid sunshine, hombre. It goes down like water in the desert, blasts your eyes wide open, and when you do go to sleep, a succubus sucks you off all night long. No
whisky dick there, you know what I'm saying.” Special Agent J. J. Speed slapped his palm on the bar. “
That's
tequila. Let me have another.”

“You want me to pour you some more piss?”

“Pukewater,” Special Agent J. J. Speed clarified, tapping his empty shot glass on the bar. “Yes please.”

The bartender dutifully filled the glass and immediately walked away, leaving Special Agent J. J. Speed alone with his pukewater regrets. He'd been deep undercover for over four months, penetrating a cult of Laughing Jim devotees. He was convinced he was on the right track, locating the leaders of this social unrest, but this morning all twenty-seven of them had set sail for the Great White Spot itself, convinced they would ascend to the stars if they reached the eye of the storm. Their proof for this was a widely circulated high-resolution satellite photo they'd downloaded off the Internet, which upon magnification clearly showed a flying saucer, a Day-Glo orange flying saucer, levitating directly in the center of Laughing Jim. To Special Agent J. J. Speed, the Day-Glo orange flying saucer looked exactly like a Day-Glo orange Frisbee, but he went along with what they were saying anyway. He assumed they were testing him, a rite of hazing before they'd reveal their secret plans. He'd even stuck it out through the last week, videotaping a vapid explanation of his departure along with everyone else, but early this morning, after they set sail and were sharing a last breakfast of yogurt with muesli and bananas, Special Agent J. J. Speed finally had to admit to himself that he had infiltrated a suicidal band of New Age crackpots. He grabbed a life preserver and jumped ship when they were
a half mile out, and then had to throw his banana at them and swim to get away, so desperate were the faithful to retrieve their fallen brother.

And now here he was watching the news broadcasting a segment of their suicide video that included a shot of himself, smiling in compassioned condescension at the unsaved who would surely judge his ascendance. “Goddamn lunatics.” Special Agent J. J. Speed shook his head and tossed back his ninth shot of tequila. He sucked unsoothed on his wedge of lime.

“Hey,” the bartender interrupted his ruminations. Special Agent J. J. Speed looked up, unintentionally grinning through his rind of lime. He was greeted immediately with a splash of ice-cold water in his face, so shocking cold and wet that it stumbled him entirely off his barstool.

Spun-out and sputtering, Special Agent J. J. Speed spit out the lime rind. “What the fuck?” He grunted, slurring and wiping his face on his sleeve and looking up.

“Bingo!” The bartender shouted down at him, tossing another glass of ice water on him.

“What the fuck, man?” Special Agent J. J. Speed yelled drunkenly, sitting up.

“Bingo!” The bartender splashed him with water again.

Gasping from the shock, Special Agent J. J. Speed squinted his eyes, desperate to understand what was happening. He could only repeat, a shiver quivering his voice, “What the fuck?”

“Take responsibility for your own choices,” the bartender instructed him severely. “You choose your reactions, and your life is no one's fault but your own.” The bartender then touched
the side of his nose, pointed down at him, and said, “Walk away.”

That did it. Special Agent J. J. Speed wasn't about to be told to walk away by anybody, goddamnit, least of all some over-sober bartender. He reached for the 9 mm German Luger holstered in his lumbar and pushed himself off the floor. “What the fuck did you say?” He pointed his pistol at the bartender.

The bartender did not appear visibly alarmed. “I said walk away, brother.”

“I'm not your fucking brother!” Special Agent J. J. Speed screamed drunkenly, gesturing wildly with his pistol.

The bartender ceased polishing the glass he was holding and set it on the bar. Leaning forward, his casual gaze penetrated Special Agent J. J. Speed's glassy eyes. “Yes you fucking are,” he said, calm and cool. “And you'd better start acting like it.”

 

63
S
PECIAL
A
GENT
J. J. Speed sat miserably on a curb, drunk and dejected, spinning on too much tequila, resolved only to staying put. He had fled the bar with neither apology nor thank you, and now he was rubbing the pit in the center of his chest and wondering if the hippie chick he'd boned once in Mexico was right about him. She'd told him, point-blank and matter of fact, that he didn't have a heart chakra. When he asked what the hell a chakra was, she replied that the heart chakra is the seat of love, compassion, and creativity, and also of courage, since that is what all of the above require, and a coward cannot give himself to love or visionary passions. “But don't worry,” she said. “Cowardly lions usually find their hearts.
You just have to lose the notion that you need to control life.” Enraged, Special Agent J. J. Speed pulled on a shirt and kicked her out. Over the years, he had overcome his pathological mortification at the concave feature on his chest, and her woo woo comment had brought it all back. He'd been afraid to take his shirt off ever since.

Now he was tremendously confused, and it was all that bingo bartender's fault. He was waiting for Wilhelmina, his cat. Wilhelmina would make him feel better. She would purr and nuzzle his hair, climbing up on his shoulders like she always did. Wilhelmina would help him get on with his job and forget all about that bartender.