Part Three
Chapter 19
Leslei was high on the back of an elephant in the South of France ostensibly on her way to Kathmandu Nepal, in over her head and feeling it, more than knowing it. Lammele was right, allies could be easily found and enemies could not hide quickly enough. Pierre as ‘Master of Ceremonies’ needed more seasoning for what was being asked of him, though he was a quick study. Leslei had no game plan for the residual Alfa-Romeo-half-naked-parade still trailing the two without signs of splintering in sight. Leslei enjoyed the verve and keen potential brought to the equation after a 300 kilometer, 72 hour internship the revelers continued to spew love like glitter as they headed East out of St. Tropez led by an elephant pushing a top-hatted ringmaster and carrying a sequined impresaria.
John Lennon’s “Imagine” was blaring from some window echoing an appropriate reverb for the loving synchronicity of the half-naked parade. The Impresario in Leslei rose to the occasion zeroing in on a clothing-optional Prayer Seance celebrating the memory of Harry Houdini in the city of Monaco. Drawing on the synergy of a pilgrimage to Kathmandu through Sarajevo, accompanied by some of the most prominent members of the planet’s social register, such an event would be a perfect staging ground for trimming effete adipose from the troupe in preparation for the journey to Kathmandu and a great opportunity for raising funds for the Cirque du Lune’s relocation to Kathmandu. All that was left was to find a public relations expert capable of promulgating and monetizing such a seminal event in the history of mankind; plus Monaco was on the way to Sarajevo where Leslei meant to satisfy her curiosity about Archdai Tryump’s role in Demsford’s death.
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Relieved, though having no idea where he was or where he was headed, much less what he would do once he got there, Pasqual called the Duyên Dáng Homestay trying to tie up the loose ends that get tangled when one had been kidnapped.
Nữ Thần Ngon answered; Pasqual nearly swallowed his tongue when he heard her voice. “Where are you, why didn’t you call? We’ve been very worried.” Pasqual was unsure how to explain his predicament, and partially unsure about how concerned she might actually be.
“I was called away on urgent business; there was no reception. I apologize if it caused you any concern. I will be returning in a few days; I hope my room has not been taken.”
“We got full and had to move your things into another space. I hope that’s okay.” While Pasqual sensed she was genuinely concerned, he also heard the clamor for her attention in the background.
“Please, when my room opens back up, will you block it in for me for 1 month. I will pay the charges online once you’ve notified me. Thanks for your concern. I’ll see you soon.” He waited for her reply, hoping it would be a long one.
“That’ll be good; by the way, a large envelope arrived for you from the Hue. I hope you will be okay. See you soon.” With a click, Nữ Thần Ngon was gone, while Pasqual wondered who’d be sending him mail from Hue.
Feeling good about his resolution with Trâu Bet, Pasqual still felt isolated, alone and hungry for connection. It was no longer an assignment he understood, or one in which he enjoyed his normal comfortable competence. Neither Reynaldo, nor Tio Jose occupied his thinking, but Pasqual knew if he could get his arms around the outline of the rampaging creature, Abundunation, its power and force might include the possible salvation of the species - ‘pretty deep shit’ · he thought.
He felt like he was in free fall without regular contact with his homies, but felt strongly about the mission; he wondered how their diverse independent objectives could ever coalesce into a critical mass of uniform determination enough to sustain the vulnerable human life form before it withered and faded in favor of a hardier species.
Pasqual decided to check online to find the nearest production of “The Nutcracker,” and was surprised to find a production scheduled December 13-16 in Da Nang. The Face Race page reflected a great deal of interest and commentary for this production compared to the other 2 in Asia: one in Kathmandu, the other in Hiroshima.
He posted the “The Nutcracker” production for Da Nang on his Face Race page to see if there would be any response; he quickly found 3 likes: Angela Vigoda, Son Do, & Trâu Bet - he did not expect Son Do on the roster; he thought, ‘this scheme might just work; it’s responsive in real time; there’s no obvious trail between Son Do and myself without considerable indexing, which means until their objective becomes a clear target, there’s no scorecard except for the ones the ‘players’ themselves keep. He posted a generic wikipedia article on the history of the Từ Hiếu Pagoda on the Da Nang production page, then dialed Mordecaise with no idea of his time or circumstance, just wanting to reach out.
Pasqual could easily visualize the bearded grin aping loudly, “S’up; are we having fun or what?”Pasqual realized how much he missed his lumbering friend’s juvenile exuberance.
“Yeah, a real hoot; what about you? ‘talking to computers’ who are you kidding, or are you just bored? I told you not to mix vitamins with the Tinto Rojo.”
“What Tinto Rojo, all they drink up here is Mezcal, y es la bomba. What about you - getting sidelined by amateurs; that’s not the Vato I trained! Tell me about the Renoir · It was supposed to be in Montevideo 6 weeks ago?
“Funny you ask, I just got an email - the ship with the container it was in, got embargoed 4 weeks ago in Sao Paolo on a quarantine beef that only just lifted today; Besides it’s not like I been standing around pickin’ my nose. What’s next?”
“You know we kept Tito here in Mexico, he may be useful yet. Seems he had the clearest channel to little prince, Archdai Tryump who’s apparently under some rock in Bosnia Herzegovina ready to flip on Faik Besos who’s doing ‘speedballs’ in Frisco’s Tenderloin; Oh! how the ‘mighty’ have fallen.”
Pasqual was grinning ear to ear, “keep me posted about what you hear from Tito, Leslei’s got a sense he’s more than Besos’s ‘butt buddy, and she’s too savvy to act on a grudge.” Pasqual waited for his friend’s tobacco stained voice.
“Have you seen any rise in local spending? Nobody’s gonna come out and say ‘my account’s up by 3.14%, but there’s gotta be some smiling faces out there - I know I’ve seen some, even here in the backwaters of Monte Alban.”
“I’ve been on ice for a couple a days, but yeah I’ll keep my eyes open. What about this talking to computers shit? You were there, does anything else explain how Sra Abejas could be channeling encrypted machine code? And know someone could be drawing a bead on you as we speak.
“Fuck ‘em; near as I can tell, what’s left of the 3 Cheeses are still chasing ‘The Schmucks do the Nut’ theory, but with Besos wiping amped-smack off his lips and nostrils, and Lisbeth Phelps still in a snit about being outed as the Black Hand, the “invincible” are looking pretty vincible. Marksburgh’s puerile ego believes all he’s gotta do is twist a dial and the plebeians will fall into lockstep. It’s Curzewel we got to watch, (and Reiman, if you’re listening, ya’ rat bastard, and we all know you are, I gotta tell ya’ ‘cause Carina wants you to know, the ‘singularity thing’ you been waitin’ back-asswards - it’s been and gone · As far back as 1976, an early Apple distributor, John Harris opined about the significance of computers to our species, ‘they are anywhere on the spectrum of importance between the invention of the wheel, and a change of life form from carbon-based to silicon-based. (Ya’ moron, you’re trying to shut the barn door and the horse be gone, don’t believe me, ask Artificial Intelligence yourself if you got the cajones.)”
“Geeze Mordecaise, have you been drinking?”
“When have I not, and if I have, what’s it to ya’? I heard you were on the sauce yourself ya’ little shit.”
Wishing it was a jigger of Gusano Rojo instead of a handset, Pasqual made like a toast to his friend, “Here’s to ‘en vino veritas’ and ‘an ounce of prevention is worth a gallon of cure’. So what the fuck comes next? (‘and if you are listening Reiman Curzewel you bent fuck - get a life.)”
The magic of Mordecaise the operative lit up at that moment in the call, “I figure like a good permaculture model we start tracking pockets of ‘Abundunation’ and augment what’s working and eliminate what ain’t - the old saw ‘Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative. Don’t mess around with Mr. In-Between.’ I’m thinking of opening an online newspaper - ’The Abundunation Gazette,’ publishing it through Craigslist.org, a ‘Backpage’, does ‘Economic Revolution’ melange with the main emphasis on classified ads - especially the theatrical variety. It would be very retro which always sells - ’The more things change, the more they remain the same.’ - old french proverb.
How are you doing kid? The rat fuckers are 2 for 3; they got you and Leslei, took a run at Angela and missed; you gotta be feeling the heat. What should we do with Tito? Do you think he can be turned? He’d be a great asset with what he knows about the cheeses’ operational procedures and his insights about who might be turned and who’s gonna hate to the end.”
Pasqual responded, “You’re closer to him; do you have any confidence in his soul, or is he just another sad fuck who wandered down a wrong alley? Is he an emotional cipher preying on low hanging fruit? I hate to say it, but we really need the zealots; hiring unemployed mercenaries from the DEA wars like Tito, or from the middle eastern culture wars will saddle us with an armed and trained 5th column rendering us more vulnerable than we already are, which is very.” ..
The line went dead.
Pasqual found himself staring into a blank handset with a great pounding at the front entrance to the building. Trâu Bet materialized with a vice like grip at his elbow dragging him through a labyrinth of rooms and hallways Pasqual hadn’t yet explored. They descended stairs and entered tunnels for many meters until they reached an earthen outcropping covered by vines. Trâu Bet pulled a saffron robe from hooks on the sandstone wall and wrapped Pasqual as an acolyte in seconds. When they emerged beyond the vines there was a monk on a running scooter waiting for Pasqual to climb on and ride; he glanced back as Trâu Bet was enveloped by the vines they’d just emerged from.
The two stopped at a small copse of young teak trees long enough for the monk to shave Pasqual’s head and place a pair of Ray Bans on Pasqual’s conspicuous face; the two then rode for hours, well past dark and then into a small pagoda adjacent to a wide body of water with the echoes of fowl and the smell of saltwater; they were given bowls of rice and pallets to sleep on. Pasqual found a single text message on his otherwise blank screen that read ‘see you tomorrow night, LD.’
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Guildern woke up feeling peek-id early in the morning. When he took a pull of water from the glass on the night stand, he gagged spraying spit over the bedsheets unable to swallow anything down his sandpaper throat. He pulled the thermometer from the drawer and waved the just-arrived Angela from the doorway miming to close it behind her. They both had been down the rabbit hole, and knew the drill. He could feel the sweat forming on his brow while the damp clammy palm of death pressed his shoulder blades deep into the sheets. It was nothing but dumb luck that Angela had been scouting venues in Patagonia for the past two weeks; having only just arrived that morning in time to hear Guildern spewing water onto their bed sheets. Flinging all the windows open upstairs and down, she blocked the front door open with a table baring entrance saturating her hands, forearms and face in the antiseptic lotion then, semi-hysterically texted her sickened love.
Montevideo had acclimated to bifurcated perennial mask wearing for over a decade while demarcation between quarantines was more something of a blurred partition, like the antiseptic lotion in every doorway with intermittent sidewalk mists randomly decontaminating pedestrians. There had been many peaks and valleys to the waves of death that had washed over South America and the world for the past 2 decades. The virus would be beaten back for a time until a mutation circumvented the increasingly shallow medical response to an ecologically savaged planet. Rather than more fresh foods and nutrient rich local farms, corporations spent their development and advertising revenue on chemically engineered foodstuffs, taste-tested on Bonobos because of their human like taste buds.
Guildern pulled the thermometer out of his mouth at the beep and shivered under the sheets despite his 38.333° fever. Like the sound of an auto collision, there was nothing after the beep that bode well for Guildern’s happiness - what to do next was all that remained.
The full lettered text from Angela meant she was at the laptop at the bar, so he replied in the only logical way possible, “darlng lve, plse wipe that keybrd bfor u go further, ’n take a room @ the lodge next door - NOW”
Guildern ignored all incoming texts for the next half hour while he gagged down salmon slivers from their tiny refrigerator and yanked his bug-bag ‘dead man’ papers into a pile with his ‘will’ and ‘power of attorney’ at the top of the stack; shoving the lot into his lambskin portfolio then pounding 1,200 mg of crushed ascorbic acid mixed in a snifter of Hennessy XO down his sandpapered gullet - ‘if you gotta go, ya’ may as well be comfortable’, he thought settling back into his contaminated sheets, in his contaminated room, in his contaminated bistro . .. ··· peering into the handset that was about to become his life raft for a shooting-the-rapids ride of a possibly very, very short existence. ‘Where’s my charger?’ he thought trying to focus on Angela’s text.
“Darling, block that negative shit you’re entertaining now - I see you through your mind’s eye; NO, you ain’t gonna die · I forbid it. Your vaccine’s only 18 months old, and likely destroying whatever bug you’re fighting, yes? I understand it’s scary, I’m scared with you and there with you my love · breathe, and breathe some more. Aren’t you glad you quit smoking when I ordered you to 4 years ago? ‘at’s a joke, lover - laugh · i command you, and your immune system will thank you.”
Guildern pulled the thermometer from his mouth and fell into the sheets prone with concern - 38.833°, a +1°F rise in less than a half hour. ‘Lean into this’ he thought with rapidly fading clarity, texting Roja downstairs, “get mask, plse come to dorway - my room · alone.” Nobody at the Croc except Angela and Guildern knew the irony of Roja’s actual identity opening for Venceramos Brigade, for Dr. Roja Guevara was in fact Che Guevara’s great granddaughter. She had graduated med school the same year as the 1st outbreak, and after half a decade battling daily death, she decided on a hiatus as far away from medicine as she could get. After a one night tryst with Rojito at a punk nightclub in Cuenca Ecuador, Roja convinced herself she could disappear into the alternative music universe as easily as any other.
∞ (˚ ㄥ _˚) I
jts 7/9/2024
http://ExtinctionChronicles.blogspot.com
http://JosephTStevens.blogspot.com
http://stoanartst.blogspot.com
prohibited from AI sampling in any form
reprinted with permission; all rights reserved
