Nine Kinds of Naked (25 page)

“There are no clocks in casinos,” Billy Pronto interrupted Diablo's wonderment. “This is to encourage gamblers to lose track of time, so they keep pushing their bad luck far beyond the point of reason. But you are no gambler. You are now, and among the wide-minded, there are no clocks because you understand that there is only one moment. You understand that the measurement of time walls you off from eternity, and the past and the future are the locks and the latches that prevent you from seeing the netherworld of nowever. Here and now, your soul is no longer lost. You feel your undivided unity, and you thereby possess a tremendous advantage.”

Diablo looked again at the roulette ball, studying the perfectly intricate reflections on its surface until he found himself gazing back at himself from the far side of a funhouse mirror. He looked deeper still into his reflection until he could see the roulette ball reflected in the reflection of his own eyes, ad infinitum, and before he knew it the ball was again whirling in its groove, and the roulette spindle was again turning, bells were jangling and people were shouting, and the croupier
called final wagers. Diablo raised his remaining three chips—$150—and listening to the echo of the bearing as its metallic purr pulsed a path about its perpetual groove, he caught the peek-a-boo of an impulse, which whispered within, around, and from nowhere at all,
number nine.

 

68
T
HE ODDS OF
hitting a single digit on a double-zero American roulette wheel are thirty-seven to one. Despite this, the house only pays thirty-five to one, hence Diablo was escorted away from his first roulette table with only $5,250 in winnings. This he took to a larger casino, placing all of it, again, on number nine. Minutes later, he was escorted out of the casino with $183,750 in winnings, which he simply added to the remaining stash of cash in the gas can.

“I am enlightened,” Diablo announced to Billy Pronto, after they'd been driving away from Atlantic City for quite some time in silence.

“That's either contradictory or self-evident,” came Billy Pronto's unhesitant reply.

Diablo tried to think of how an enlightened person might react. “What do you mean?” he intoned at last, a basso pro-fundo enormity of enunciation vibrating his words.

“
I am enlightened
,” Billy Pronto quoted him. “Your statement is grammatically possible but flamboyantly stupid. If by I you mean the sobriety of your ego, then you are simply incorrect, for you the ego are finite, and the enlightened mind is infinite. If, on the other hand, if by I you mean the divine impulse that animates your transitory incarnation, then big deal. That's obvious. The sun announces that it's bright? No
shit, sunshine.” Diablo was silent, and Billy Pronto chuckled. “
I'm hot
, says the fire.” He laughed some more. “
I'm wet
, says the water.” He laughed loud and long before concluding. “There is no value in such assertion.”

“Jeezus christ,” Diablo grumbled at the mockery, abandoning all his pretensions at enlightened serenity. “What the hell am I then?”

“You are lucky.”

“Lucky? You're joking.”

“Luck is the heckler of all reason, so yes, you can consider it a joke.”

Diablo tried to ignore him. “This is perfect nonsense.”

“Perfect nonsense.” Billy Pronto nodded. “Yes, that is exactly right. Well-spoken.”

Here I am, Diablo thought, driving away from two casinos that froze before my eyes. I think I'm alone, but I'm nevertheless bickering with a nattering apparition who is somehow facilitating all of this. Glancing over, he found Billy Pronto staring back at him. Smiling all the while, he swiped the side of his nose, pointed back at Diablo, and said simply, “Walk away.”

Diablo had an impulse to slug him, and he followed it, swerving the car in the process. Of course, he entirely missed connecting with anything, succeeding only in throwing his own shoulder painfully out of socket.

“That is unintelligent,” Billy Pronto advised. “You argue that I am your hallucination, yet you try to punch me. Even if I am not a hallucination, you cannot punch the impulse, my friend. The punch
is
the impulse.”

“Fuck off,” Diablo fumed.

“It is okay to follow an impulse,” Billy Pronto continued. “That is what this is all about, after all.”

“What does that mean?” Diablo demanded.

“Evolution, of course.”

“Evolution,” Diablo repeated. “Please stop talking in riddles and tell me what you are talking about.”

“Geometry,” Billy Pronto replied. “Your life is a vortex, like your tornado. In a vortex, involution spirals inward, and evolution spirals outward.” He demonstrated this with his hands, involving a spiral with his right index finger and evolving a spiral with his left. Then he pointed at Diablo with his left hand, still evolving a spiral. “It is time to evolve.”

Diablo nodded. “As usual, you've succeeded in telling me next to nothing.”

“Involution,” Billy Pronto twirled his right index finger inward, “is when you identify with the world of illusion, separation, ego, the bottom of the funnel, so to speak. This is life, the fall into the finite, matter and distinction, where your perceptions are limited by your material existence. On the other hand,” he began twirling his left index finger outward, “evolution is when you see through the illusion, when you ascend out of the funnel and awaken to the world of undivided unity of which you are after all indistinct. Heed the call of the infinite, and your perceptions become unlimited.”

“That's how I'm winning all this money?”

Billy Pronto shrugged. “Luck is a force in the universe.”

“And this has happened before?”

“Actually, it's all that
ever
happens.”

“So why don't I remember it happening before?”

Billy Pronto shrugged. “You tell me. You evolve out of the toilet bowl only to involve back to the sewers after a few breaths of fresh air.” He paused. “You can't handle the truth.”

“What truth?”

“That you are not in control. That no matter what you pretend, you are only one accident away from utter extinction. That instead of the universe at large, you choose to settle securely into the ordinary, to immerse yourself in petty angers and social fictions of the most dreary and petulant variety. That you make a speck of yourself and permit your own symbols to hound you into unhappiness. That you abandon ecstasy, sacrifice the superlative, and trade the tremendous for the trivial. That you are actually far more intelligent than you believe.”

“Maybe evolution is too ruthless,” Diablo protested. “Did you ever think of that? Maybe the trouble with life is that its scale is much too vast. It cares nothing for the sufferings of individuals.”

“What can I say?” Billy Pronto shrugged. “Pain pushes life, and no body survives it. You can be ordinary and pretend to be in control, but you cannot be extraordinary without opening to the totality of life. So long as you retain a sense of self as separate from the universe, you cannot know the beauty of the universe. It simply implodes upon you with neither hesitation nor regret, and whether you participate in it or not, evolution goes where it needs to go.”

“Great,” Diablo replied. “Evolve or die.”

“No,” Billy Pronto corrected. “Evolve
and
die. You continue
to deny the skeleton in your closet. Death happens absolutely and regardless. It's just a better ride when you release any illusion of control.”

“Bubblegum spirituality,” Diablo mumbled.

“Take a look at yourself. You identify with a single, dying organism, but you cannot regard that reality. In the trembles of your terror tantrum, you close your consciousness, contract your heart, and imprison your impulse. Then, you think you are in control, that you rule the world, but in fact the only domain you master is that of your own illusions. I say expand your mind. Identify with the eternal universe instead of your rotting corpse.” He was silent a few moments. “Unless of course you prefer to be a zombie. Then by all means, tuck yourself safe and secure into the satin coffin of your consumer culture while your so-called leaders chant lullabies to nightmare. But that is not I. I am the impulse.”

“That's great for you, but where does that leave me? I mean, these illusions you keep offhandedly referring to are pretty stubborn from where I'm sitting. Unremittingly, unremorsefully
real
, even. You don't seem to understand that.”

Billy Pronto shrugged. “The most obstinate illusion is your own sense of individual identity, the order you impose on the impulses of your spirit. All other illusions cascade from that singular confusion.”

Diablo sighed impatiently. “You're still not addressing what to do about the situation. Maybe I am trapped in some Gnostic illusion. What then, Master Yoda? Are you just going to harangue me with earnest platitudes until the end of time?”

“Yes, actually.”

“And when's that going to happen?”

“Whenever you step out of that steaming pile of ego that passes for your consciousness and release control.”

Diablo was silent for a while, contemplating. “So I should just ditch myself, dig my own grave, and dissolve into nothing?”

“Dissolve into
everything
,” Billy Pronto corrected. “And don't dig your own grave. Dig your own
groove.
And sure, why not ditch yourself? You're a drag and you're no fun. You already know this. So yeah, abandon your paranoid persona and start dancing. Release your impulse from the slavery of others' expectations. People only sanction the spontaneity of others because it emphasizes their own lack of spirit, but they know not what they do. The spontaneity of the spirit is far more trustworthy than the deliberations of the intellect.” He evolved his left index finger. “On the one hand, you enact your own deepest purity, while on the other,” he involved his right index finger, “you enact others' expectations, and expectations are preconceptions, invasions of the past into the present. Permit no preconception to pollute your point of view, that's what I say.”

Diablo groaned at the alliteration. “And then what?”

“Trust your intuition. Intuition is the prompting of the universal mind, and there is nothing remarkable about this when you realize that your mind is of the world, and vice versa. As it turns out, you are nothing but a localized concentration of nonlocal consciousness. Realize this undivided unity, and your movement through this world is vastly facilitated. Every circumstance enhances you.”

Diablo chuckled and shook his head. “I don't know, man. How do I know what you're saying is even plausible?”

“There is only one moment.”

“So?”

“So every event is a perpetuation of the same single event.”

“Okay, well, that's a debatable proposition.”

“It is not a debatable proposition. Do you understand that life is at the cutting edge of Creation, the most far-flung, far-out fringe of the Big Bang's shock wave?” Just as Billy finished his question, and as if in emphasis, a Powerball lottery billboard they were passing detonated in a deafening blast of dynamite. Diablo swerved and swore the holy fuck, but Billy Pronto did not even pause. “You who surf the horizon of existence itself,” he continued. “You fool yourself into thinking that you are a phenomenon distinct from the event itself. But you are confused—”

“What the fuck was that?” Diablo interrupted, watching the conflagration in the rearview mirror. “Did you see that? Did you make that happen?”

“Listen,” Billy insisted. “You are merely the latest expression of the evolution of the universe pushing up against new frontiers of self-discovery. The impulse propels you, whether you are aware of it or not.”

Diablo slapped the steering wheel. “Goddamnit, man! What in the name of fuck just happened with that billboard?”

“Synchronicity, of course,” Billy replied simply, and Diablo fell silent, blinking at the receding inferno in his rearview mirror, hurling away from it as if he were indeed surfing the most far-flung fringe of the Big Bang's shock wave.

“All right,” Diablo sighed after the fire disappeared around a bend. “So what about free will?”

“This
is
free will. Free will is the cutting edge of Creation, don't you see? The word spontaneity derives from the Latin
sponte
, meaning ‘of one's free will.' Spontaneity is the impulse, the purest expression of freedom, and the impulse wants to do whatever it wants to do. But you are afraid of what others think, others who are just as afraid of what you think, and so you pussyfoot along the perimeter of the free-will zone, wilting like a wallflower. I say, let the universal mind of which you are merely an expression guide you through life.”

“Synchronicity,” Diablo repeated.

Billy Pronto nodded. “Synchronicity is the natural connecting energy of the universe, the mechanism of evolution, space and time linked by subjective meaning, and it is ultimately what it feels like to remember the future. The voice of synchronicity is your own buried impulse,
Sainte Chronicité
, as the French call it, and your buried impulse is your bliss, and the more you follow your bliss, the more you assist the evolution of your species and the peaceful unfurling of the universe. Besides, you actually can't escape your free will. Those who smother their spirit suffocate the very force that animates their existence. Perish the boredom, as far as life cares. Choose it or lose it. Speak up or shut up.”

“Okay,” Diablo sassed. “Any more bumper stickers?”

“Just this: If you're not inspired, you are expired.”

 

69
“T
HE EVOLUTION
is on,” Diana greeted Elizabeth Wildhack years later as she entered the dressing room at Red's Cabaret, brandishing a crumpled piece of paper. “It starts tonight.”