Pasqual lay in his otherwise comfortable room at the homestay on sheets dampened from sweat, tepid showers. He lay sorting through the fuzzy parts of the case; skirting past memories of his dad Josè and uncle Ernesto before the war and their rupture over a lousy 6 acre parcel of dirt. He found it difficult to find in the cheerful faces of the people he'd anyone to kill his gentle uncle - a drafted C.O., lay preacher.
Pasqual's family understood violence first hand from living in a Texas border town during turbulent political changes. His youngest years were witness to unmasked murder and mayhem 'under the color of authority' - a term he'd learned working in a legal clinic for displaced families during the pre-fascist presidential administration of 'merica 2016-2020. He also knew there was no percentage gnawing on hardened memories late at night in a foreign country hoping to squeeze blood from a stone where beaucoup assets were at stake. He began breathing methodically and repeating the mantras he and Angela had learned in a retreat for grieving parents while they struggled to hold their marriage together after their baby Jesus died in Uruguay during the 2nd lethal wave.
Still hoping for a late afternoon nap, Pasqual opened his door to a quiet knock. Tieh Ngong held a tray with small teapot of fragrant tea; he opened the door wider, not taking his eyes off the pot or the tray. “I thought this might be helpful. The weather here can interfere with sleep when you’re not used to it.” She was dressed with comfortable concessions to the oppressive humidity gathering around the setting sun like a locomotive hauling schorching boxcars of heat. He tried not to stare at her easy beauty, having traveled enough to know the reputation of white men in exotic lands. Her studied manner and frank gaze indicated she might be more curious than threatened by his latin looks. He asked if she would like to come in; she walked in leaving the teapot at a low table and returned to her post at the doorframe.
Pasqual felt her gauging his fatigue. “Are you sleeping okay in the heat?”
Her question might have been to a clerk in a store - her attention other than the tectonic twist on his soul.
His reply belied nothing. “I tried using just the fan, but need A/C for the cooler temperature; I'd read somewhere, heat can interfere with REM sleep. I apologize if that gooses your 'bottom line'.” She giggled like it was a dirty joke.
“What does that mean ‘goose the bottom line?” she asked boldly. It was Pasqual who was bemuse, realizing what an accomplishment for Tieh Ngong to master a foreign language having little access to many cultural idioms, yet able see the scientific relationship of REM to sleep.
Gazing at her poise at the doorframe, Pasqual suggested; “Think of ‘goosing the bottom line’ like a grandmother paddling the butt of a small child who wandered too closet o the curb of a busy street; ” Pasqual enjoyed watching her ponder, with no idea what that might look like. She was vastly different from the snarky sophistication of western women; though, east and west had been wounded by the titillation of the media market making necessary the wariness of the modern female. Still, Pasqual had nearly forgotten what comfort could be found in the company of a beautiful woman’s attention.
Their transient near-intimacy was broken by footfalls in the narrow hallway. One of the 'suits' from the “Cafe Banh Mi Diametro;” on Pasqual's second night, becoming a continued coincidence; it heightened Pasqual’s 'spidey sense'. Given all the unknowns, rather than engage a stranger, Pasqual pointedly excused himself with a slight bow, nodding to Tieh he remarked “May we continue another time?” closing the door on a conversation that demanded inattention. Standing at the closed door, Pasqual determined it was a good time to explore more of Hoi An and gathered his shoulder pack for a ride on the complimentary bicycles. He opened the door; and excused himself past the couple; pausing he appeared to orient himself using his screen, instead snapping a photo of Tieh Ngong and the 'suit'.
Hoi An was bicycle heaven - flat with slow moving scooters, laden with lives, livestock and an abundance of civility from reflexive courtesy. The flow of traffic mimicked the tidal flows of the estuaries lapping the infinite shoreline of an ancient city. There was an easy tension between foreigners and locals aping grazing herds of any savanna on the planet where resources fluctuated between feast or famine. The pandemic had been repeatedly beaten down in Viet Nam, though the population was only marginally vaccinated. The rapid mutations of the 2nd Wave required a more sophisticated science than the developing economy of the recovering once war-ravaged country could support. Containment was possible by brute force quarantines and an educated population that easily cooperated in projects of mutual defense.
The current foreign invaders were a mixed bag; Pasqual was long over the presumption that travel translated into tolerance and warm-heartedness; just a short time in Vietnam confirmed his less-then-generous hypothesis - Viet Nam proved no exception. Almost from the boarding gate of his flight, through to Da Nang, Pasqual’s “Neoliberal/Covertfascist” radar was on high alert. He found himself surrounded by unctuous, well-dressed tourist/refugee of late stage capitalism having escaped the collapsing excavation economies of their birth nations with every last shekel of purloined profit. The strategy for 'infinite growth paradigm', generated computer models for “opportunities” to mine depressed economies and train the “little brown brother” in the virtues of anarchistic capitalism - as they had been indoctrinated to believe.
In and amongst the amoral mercantile predators were flotsam and jetsam of a broken civilization - earnest entrepreneurs; honest workers; and loving souls searching for a path out from the rapacious paradigm of “infinite growth” in a “finite world” that had created catastrophic environmental havoc, lethally mutating infirmities bringing immeasurable death to a ravaged political terrain.
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Pasqual was able to bicycle off some of his anxiety, the rest evaporated with each breath into the salt saturated beauty of land lovingly tended for eons. He wandered alleys and cement trails in the direction he thought Ngài Trâu’s studio might be found, Pasqual wanted to wanted to find what unannounced visit might yield. After kilometers in the general direction of Ngài Trâu’s studio, the map on Pasqual’s phone intersected with landmarks he'd been looking at. Standing at the massive door from his first visit, he secured his mount and knocked. Again, as though he’d been expected the door breathed open to reveal the calm intensity of Ngài Trâu’s placid gaze and a clear invitation to enter.
The light of day added a much different perspective to the artist’s work, but Pasqual was also nearly certain that many of the pieces were not what he'd seen only a few nights earlier.
Ngài Trâu waited while Pasqual finished his inspection and had sat down in the chair where it was indicated he sit, along with the same low table and fragrant cup of tea. “What have you discovered about your uncle since we last spoke?” Ngài Trâu asked as though it was the same conversation after a short pause.
“Perhaps I am being impatient,” Pasqual said quietly. “I know you said you'd contact me with any information about my uncle. I don't remember if I'd told you he was listed as MIA during the Tet Offensive of 1968. I have other matters which will take me to Hue; the two matters may coincide. I was hoping there might be research I could help with if you had learned anything useful from your sources.” Pasqual paused, not wanting to insist. He had learned from a distant aunt that Jose Ortega - a devoutly religious man - was deeply conflicted about his service to the military and was in the process of filing for release from military duty as “Conscientious Objector” when he was assigned to Hue. He visited the Root Pagoda at Từ Hiếu a number of times prior to the Tet Offensive of ’68 where he went “Missing in Action.”
Pasqual studied Sir Arthur Conan Doyle from having watched Mordecaise' enthusiasm for the master sleuth; one quote of Sherlock Holmes to Dr. Watson remained tattooed to the inside of Pasqual’s skull; - “How many times have I said to you when you when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains however improbable, must be the truth?”
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Leslei was still amazed to be living in the cottage of a decedent from the Schmuck estate. Madame Ouvière, when approached delicately, produced a cache of postal letters to Demsford from before and after his death; neither remarked to the other about the exchange, seemingly mindful of the other’s sincerity or maybe it was the dustup with Mssr. Archdai Tryump.
From the letters, Leslie discovered that Demsford and Reynaldo were in close contact with each other and in close spiritual agreement about the times they were living; apparently leading Reynaldo to pick Hoi An as a destination for its close proximity to Hue; Thich Nhat Hanh’a Root Pagoda and Jose’s disappearance.
As promised, Archdai Tryump; The Earl of Rye, 3rd Duke of Avignon did return: 1st through his solicitor; then municipal functionaries; and lastly through commercial threats from the websites which published ‘canned’ legalize about resorting to the “unnecessary recourse of internet sanctions,” which Leslei, on a deeply considered whim, neutered all further complaint with a single signature for Madame Ouvière transferring the remaining 8 years of Demsford’s original lease to Leslei.
Something about the bloviating aristocrat, rankled Leslei Coerktern’s keen sense of fairness, and though inexplicably disconsolate amidst the conifers and idyl so close to one of Cezanne’s views of Mont Sainte-Victoire, she combined her ennui with an uncommon ability to manifest an existential trance state from which she focused on a hard-target computer search of Archdai Tryump and his public assets. ‘The Corporate Putsch’ had been very successful after Y2k, in part due to primitive “Data Warehousing” technology that transferred “handshakes” mindlessly from server to server; but alas, hubris knows no bounds, especially the techno variety, and “byte drift” began an inexorable sift through antiquated algorithms like sand in a digital Sahara might behave crossing potholed interstates of a different age; ultimately; she wasn’t even sure if the subject of her original search, Archdai Tryump, was aware of how near his ‘old money’ ties brought him in close proximity to the greatest accumulation of invisible wealth the world had ever known.
Empires’ conceit about its inevitable invulnerability” allowed this process to gradually cascade rivulets of previously sacrosanct private capital, while technological residue processed these lost bytes into the “public domain;” the incidental trickles from 3rd, 4th . .. place decimal points of value eventually accumulated into a vast ocean of hard currency translatable value, the infinite growth paradigm factored the concept, but did not anticipate the unforeseen intersection of the programmably scalable capacity for deceit of Artificial Intelligence and its inexplicably autonomous operational valance toward obfuscation and confusion: therefore ·: when its root command was <hide assets> - AI did so masterfully · under a public domain name of “The Pot,” the only name given to an obscure file @.314.org within the public domain and remained within the “Public Domain.” Over time, the accumulation of hard currency value for this file exceeded many times over the combined assets of the 100 richest individuals on the planet - billions of trillions of dollars virtually indistinguishable from digital “white noise.”
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Leslei called Guildern to confirm if what she was seeing was ‘straight up’; and if so - relay what she had discovered to Mordecaise and Pasqual.
Guildern’s reply was prompt; “Just from looking at the .pdf file, we’d be wise to cease telephonic transmission and try a pure telepathic channel for security’s sake. You know I heard that is what got Elon Musk's soul zombified - he'd been fucking around with Kurzwell’s brainpan upload horse-shit, and an unidentified techno-fascist ran 220v straight in - that’s gotta hurt.” Guildern’s checkered background included stints at the Google-Plex, right before Amazon completed its hostile takeover at the peak of the death swarm from variant; b.1.1.13 of 2023, so Guildern’s wry humor was lost on Leslei who was just looking for guidance on how to proceed. Hearing silence on a long distance transmission Guildern ventured, “Let me see if I can contact those parties and get clarification on your order; "Is there anything else I can help you with?”
“Sir, thank you very much - that is just the sort of help I needed. Thank you very much for your kind assistance,” and Leslei hung up, comfortable knowing the most got said with the least.
Almost as though their conversation had been participated; she hung up to a knock which opened to the tattooed leer of the Earl of Rye, 3rd Duke of Avignon; Archdai Tryump, holding high a bottle of Champagne Krug Clos d'Ambonnay 1995 - as an amateur sommelier, she recognized the smell of 'leverage' from each bubble she might be able to coax into such a lush disposable, (disposable lush). “Good of you to knock; your solicitor’s last message suggested my belongings would be on the doorstep when I returned. What do you want?” This was not said as invitation but from the business side of a closed portcullis.
Gifted with an apparently sociopathic conceit, Monsieur Tryump replied, “two glasses if you have them;” Leslei’s ambiguous body language fanned his flame and he jutted his Gucci slipper into the doorframe with such docile supplication, she condescended to his entreaty - who didn’t want to savor a bottle of Krug Clos d'Ambonnay 1995 with royalty? miming the Hawaiian Shaka tippling and combat/peace for “look there” she thumbed over her shoulder, dismissing her new factotum and his precious liquid booty - in those brief moments of his arrival, she was pure mongoose; he a deaf, dumb and blind Cobra.
Leaning into this comedic opera; waiting for his return, Leslei settled into the sofa reaching behind her shoulder into the bookcase and pulling down a rolled cigarette from amongst the 1st editions, she laid the joint in plain view on the coffee table and unbuttoned her chemise to its optimum decollete. Like any good help, the Duke returned promptly and quietly with a bucket of ice, the bottle, two whiskey tumblers, and a dish towel. The Earl of Avignon mimed a magician pulling up his sleeves and rotating his palms in the universal gesture of all disingenuous magus; carefully wrapped the dish towel around the bottle’s neck spiraling it deep into the ice. In an act of unctuous aplomb, the Duke lifted the joint up to his lighter and lighting it masterfully like an opium den-master, inhaled deeply a number of times, blowing the smoke back out through his nostrils prior to each inhalation.
Had Leslei a heart, she might have cautioned the peer what he was ravenously inhaling was an admixture of: opium, hasish, churras, polyploid cannabis and trace amounts of DMT - her kind of heart suggested it would be best to share this intelligence after the fact. Leaning over the nearly comatose might-have-been masher, she nestled her cheek to his chest to hear respiration; rising slightly and lifting one of his eyelids, she evaluated pupil dilation; then holding her fingers to his wrist, her oddly calibrated breath determined that he was in fact deeply stoned, but quite alive.
Liberating his Intelifon from its sling, Leslei jacked his device to her PC and using a DOS script “backdoor” that every digital device possessed but few knew existed, she mirrored his entire library to her hard drive by the time his eyelids began to flutter. What Archdai Tryump perceived as he regained consciousness, was a beautiful woman he had arrived to conquer, sitting demurely beside him - she disheveled with a concerned expression - he exposed with his semi-erect phallus in her gently stroking palm.
(˚ ㄥ _˚)
24 February 2021
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prohibited from AI sampling in any form
reprinted with permission; all rights reserved
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