Planet Fever (2 page)

Actually, upon further thought, it is Miller, so the faster it gets over with, the better. They know how crappy their stuff is, so they are doing us a favor.

I drank down the first beer and grabbed the last one. This one was poured into the cleanest glass on-hand that didn’t smell bad. I drank it down, but with greater deliberation and patience, even though it was Miller. I guess I was a glutton for self-induced suffering.

THE BEER
was all gone and the rain had stopped.

With plenty of time to burn, I knew that something productive needed to happen. Two-and-a-half garbage bags of aluminum cans sat in the corner of the kitchen, so a visit to the recycling place would be something to do. Then I would get to writing that damn novel.

How had it come to this? What happened to that young, brash go-getter that was going to put the world in a wedgie and knew that he would be somebody, do something, and write that masterpiece of a novel that would mean something and make heads turn?

Life, that’s what.

And procrastination.

The kid that thought he was going to amount to something had concluded he was a fraud living in a cold farce of a world that didn’t really give a shit so neither would he.

Perpetual writer’s block and a steady regimen of booze will do that to a person.

I had no money left at all, so going out and cashing in the cans would at least get me through part of the day. I slung the bags over my shoulder and exited my place. I walked down the stairs and out to the back lot where my ’85 Toyota pick-up truck was parked. I tossed the bags in the back and got in. Because I had managed to lose the keys to the vehicle a little while back, I had to start the thing with a flat-head screwdriver. I had removed the steering wheel cover, causing the ignition plug to dangle off the steering wheel column. This ignition plug is a cylinder-like object that is attached umbilically to the column via a series of wires. When a flathead is pushed into the hole of the plug and turned—and with some pressure on the gas-pedal—the vehicle comes alive.

I put the driver in and turned.

The twelve-year-old machine started.

The truck sounded bad.

In fact, if you’ve ever been within earshot of a chain-smoking middle-aged woman who coughs like an old man, you’ve got an idea of what my truck sounded like. That also happens to be the sound of a clutch plate on the verge of doom.

I rammed it into first gear and drove away.

$6.85 WAS
the amount I received for my hollow aluminum. That is $6.85 more than I had prior to cashing them in. $6.85 was paid to me for doing nothing aside from drinking cans of beer and making sure the empty ones had a bag all to themselves.

Too bad $6.85 doesn’t cover very much with respect to monthly expenses.

The liquor store next to the recycling place caught my eye.

I went in and a few minutes later I came out with a pint of vodka and a scratch game lottery ticket. I dropped my very last quarter into Happy Jack’s cup.

Happy Jack—the bum who always opened the door for me whenever I entered and exited this particular store and bowed to me as though I were royalty.

Anyway, I hadn’t tested my luck in a while, due to the fact that this (the scratch game ticket) test always yielded the same results: losing. Today’s test of fate was called “Bonus Black Jack.” The odds of this particular game seemed pretty good: my three hands to the dealer’s one. This brief fake-casino stint went as such:

Hand 1: my first card—an ace. Second card—a five.

Hand 2: first card—queen. Second—six.

Hand 3: first card—a nine. Second—an eight.

Seventeen was my best hand. It was time for the dealer to show.

Dealer’s hand: his first card—an eight. Second—the mighty king.

The house won. I didn’t care because I figured I’d lose. With gambling—especially against a state-run operation—the odds are not in our favor (Bonus Black-Jack included). It’s how the loss is handed out which keeps we, the wretched masses, buying, scratching, and losing. The fact, like death, is that we will lose in a scratch game ticket deal called “existence” over the long haul.

Look, I know some day I will die; ‘tis the means and “the lead up” that keeps my curiosity level in life up, the “how will it happen?”wonderment….

How indeed.

As an aside: the most boring and frivolous means of death is suicide: the deathee-to-be has already a firm preview about when and how the expiration of being will transpire. No element of surprise with the suicide. It’s a forfeit rather than a loss—like purchasing a scratch game ticket and tossing the thing into the trash before checking what’s under the wax.

Hey—however few and far between, there do exist on this planet a few winners….

Like I said, I figured I would lose. I reckoned I’d deal with the loss in a manner I had dealt with every single loss in my life hitherto: by going back to my place and drinking the bottle of vodka.

I threw the losing ticket into the trash and felt a tap on my shoulder. A robust dose of patchouli rammed up my nostrils and my eyes watered up a bit as the beret-clad hippie girl who had doused herself in the stuff smiled, her deep brown eyes twinkling. I assumed the scrub next to her extending his grubby hand was her boyfriend.

“Change?” he asked.

“No, man. My last bit of change went to three places—the cup of Happy Jack, that garbage can and in this sack.” I held up my vodka purchase.

The two of them laughed a playful kind of giggle.

“No, brother. Would you like to change?” he said.

He was offering me something: a pamphlet.

I took it, thanked him and they rambled off but the damn patchouli scent lingered.

The pamphlet had the looks of one of those cheap religious-type tracts, with a picture of some very serene, airbrushed-looking hippie pointing at me. The figure wore mirrored aviator shades and had what looked like the Milky Way galaxy emblazoned in the background, as though he were floating in space. Above him were the words (written in spacey font) “Trust me!” and below “A to Z, ALWAYS. I’ll keep you posted.” I chucked the nonsense into the trash next to my lottery ticket and got in my truck.

IN THE
truck, heading back to my place, I turned on the radio. The tape player no longer worked after I had driven my machete into the mouth of the bastard. I dialed the knob to the local public radio station. The National Inane U.S. Radio Report Show was playing. A vaudevillian voice, accompanied by circus-like music cracked through the one decent speaker:

“Ladies and Gentlebuttholes—now for this first week of May 1997 … allow the madness to proceed … Froward Moroni presents his Weekly End Jack-up Statement!”

Moroni’s voice had the cadence and style akin to those old “Movie-Tone” news film narrators:

“
Flash: Phos Atomos Paradosi, the Big Cheese of the New (and Improved) Interstellar Syndicate has just cut a deal and now his outfit owns most shares of interest in the Milky-Way galaxy … Flash: Most Enemy Reality Authors and Reality Engineers have been tracked to planet Earth and are currently being rounded up, with one of the last lead Reality Author’s being interrogated in an undisclosed location…. Flash: Random sightings of third-eyes atop the foreheads of certain individuals have been reported by various members of the weird populace, the problem is being looked into by LSD-tripping rubes of the Intelligentsia…. Flash: The Experimental drug ‘Fractalyn’ is currently under testing and when approved, will revolutionize not only the way you think but what you think…. Flash: The Originator of All Realities has gone into hiding. Big Cheese Phos Atomos Paradosi has publicly stated: ‘For a being that created it all, that’s a pretty cowardly move. Maybe it’s time you pass the reigns to someone else, like me’…. Flash: A scientific study has proven that all non-scientists are wrong about everything…. Flash: The Royal Commission on Global Bravery has predicted that within the next 15 years, the entire planet will be fully brave and the date will change to be perpetually 1984…. Flash: The entire universe (and everything therein) has doubled in size overnight, the problem is attempting to be corrected…. Flash: the end of this story is being changed as we speak…. And that’s it for now—I am Froward Moroni and you’ve been listening to my Weekly End Jack-up Statement.
”

The circus music faded out and I turned the radio off. Same shit every week.

THE NEXT
day I woke up at 9:30 A.M. and it was already hot. I didn’t feel like waking up, but I couldn’t fall back asleep. Memory from the night prior was hazy, at best. The deficit was reinforced by the fact that next to me lightly snored a blonde female, clad only in her underwear.

Damn. Another one of those “day after the blackout” moments.

I rolled out of bed and went to the kitchen to get some water to help remove the coat of fur that had grown on my tongue from the drunken night before. My memory wasn’t even a blur—it was an utter lack of anything resembling memory.

On the table by the kitchen stood a 1.5 liter bottle of Mescal.

That explained a lot.

Only a film of fluid—the equivalent of one decent-sized shot glass full—was left at the bottom. I turned on the water, put my mouth under the nozzle, then splashed cold all over my face. I cupped some in my hands and splashed it over my hair, slicking it back.

An incessant radio buzzing permeated my head, followed by a static-ridden signal frequency. A newscaster-type voice intermittently crackled through the static. My own “thoughts” accompanied, or superimposed themselves with the static-garble. Then another voice, this one calm and assertive, crackled in: “I’ll meet you at the mountain,” it said.

What the hell? I wondered.

I walked to the bathroom, looked in the mirror, splashed some more cold water on my face, took a piss, and walked back out to the bottle of Mescal.

“Eh, screw it.” I grabbed the bottle and polished off what was left.

The shot went down really hard, like the clog in a toilet on the verge of needing a plunger rescue. The burn writhed its way down my pipes. My thoughts scattered like dust mites and I attempted to collect them one spec at a time, trying to string together whatever pieces of memory I could before my unfamiliar houseguest woke up.