Ralph Kapansky held forth at his regular corner table by the jukebox, on his eighth coffee already, procrastinating, as usual, from writing filth. At his feet, Rimpoche dreamed—twitching—and stank to high heaven. On his left, Tribby Gordon had disheveled hair and uneven facial stubble. His jacket dribbled fluff out of flak holes, his sneakers had no shoelaces; several legal briefs were scattered on the table before him. Had he spent all night atop the pyramid blowing potent numbers while gooning at the stars? Or, more to the point of how he looked, had he gotten careless and tumbled off his perch at 3:00 A.M.?
Also enveloped in smoke wreaths at their table was Jeff Orbison, Suki Terrell’s ex, EAT ME’s lead mouth, and a gun freak into the bargain.
Off in a corner sat Nick Danger, his eyes lost in dark shadows cast by the Tyrolean brim: he was sucking something up through a straw, and clutched his battered suitcase to his lap.
The only other solitary person around was Diana’s old pal, Angel Guts. He glowered at the world from underneath the floppy brim of an old-fashioned cowboy hat.
Two shoved-together tables accommodated Nikita Smatterling and his entourage, including a saffron-robed bald-headed holy man with a spot on his forehead; the radio astrologer, Pancho Nordica; Nancy Ryan’s ex-Hanuman-nik lover, Randall Tucker; Sam Halaby, the metaphysician on his last reincarnation and hubby of Sarah (whose children by a former husband had just been kidnapped); Baldini Miller, the silent one, with his bandaged foot and his wife, Ipu; Ray Verboten, the valley’s biggest coke dealer and rising Miniver nemesis; and Roger Petrie, embezzler supreme, double agent, and dark horse in the Eloy Irribarren Land-Grab Derby.
At another table sat Bernard Laver, the Tennis Heaven pro. Skipper Nuzum and his wife, Natalie Gandolf, and the tattoo artist, Noelle Paxton, accompanied him. The craggy-faced but intriguing woman with them Joe had never seen before. She wore one-way dark glasses, gold hoop earrings, a black turtleneck jersey, a Guatemalan sash, black pants, and knee-high, high-heeled beige suede boots. In the old playground days, the boys would have said:
Hubba hubba
Ding ding
She’s got
Everything!
At a third table, Egon Braithwhite was bending Wilkerson Busbee’s ear, no doubt with ersatz Indonesian slang phrases. Abruptly, Joe flashed: Wilkerson Busbee? Wasn’t he supposed to be locked up in an Ohio jail? Wilkerson’s two-way taxi walkie-talkie crackled even as he violated the Nestlé’s boycott by washing down his lox and bagels with Pero.
Then Joe realized the rest of them were present also: Fluff Dimaggio and the entire Unfug family—Rama, Shanti, and Om. Bleary-eyed and doomed-looking, Fluff had a broken arm; Shanti and her angelic butterball daughter looked fresh, pert, and lively. Rama crouched off in corner shadows, an eight-millimeter camera stuck in front of his face like a pig snout, filming the scene.
The bald geezer in yellow must be him, Joe realized—Baba Ram Bang. And the hubba-hubba lady?—who else but Iréné Popapopcorn, the big-city journalist!
Somehow, they—and their statue?—had arrived.
Instinct suggested flight, if only on the grounds that Ray Verboten and one of his alleged henchpeople, Angel Guts, were on hand. Yet habit spurred Joe to enter the abuzz joint. Why he felt so equivocal, beyond his fear of Ray Verboten, was a puzzlement. Perhaps in his former life as loyal husband and trustworthy father, Joe had always been a spectator in the Prince of Whales, enjoying its messed-up denizens’ colorful woes from a secure haven Above It All. But now a change had occurred. And his revulsion for this crowd must stem from the fact that he had fallen among the heathen. Their hideous scars, banal emotional tribulations, and fatiguing little holocausts now had something in common with his own traumatic dilemmas. Rudely gone, though not forgotten, was that superiority complex he had wielded for so long. Screw the abyss: it was absolutely no fun bumping elbows with all the other gargoyles and fallen angels!
Egon Braithwhite called out: “Ho ming no cum chow ki!”
Annoyed, Joe nevertheless replied: “Hideyashima. He ho gum shur crap.”
“Moyo mookie! Pi shediyeshi!”
“What does all that mean?” Natalie Gandolf asked him as he passed her table.
“Beats me. He took a vow, remember?”
The foxy stranger laughed. “Oh my God!” Joe couldn’t quite pinpoint her accent: it sounded too guttural to be British. “That’s simply marvelous! Natalie, who is this ludicrous and wonderful man?—you must introduce us.”
Natalie said, “Joe Miniver, Iréné Papadraxis. Joe is the best garbage man in Chamisaville.”
“Superb!” She tipped her glasses down, glancing up over the rims so that Joe could see her green, heavily mascaraed eyes. “I don’t believe I’ve ever met a real garbage man.”
“Iréné’s a house guest,” Natalie explained. “I suppose you’ve already heard the wonderful story of her escape from the Clarion, Ohio, jail last night?”
“Nope, and I’m the only one in here who hasn’t, aren’t I?”
Iréné giggled. “I still can’t believe we’re here. It was a miracle! Skipper was absolutely unbelievable.”
Joe opened his mouth to ask what had happened, but Egon Braithwhite stood up and interrupted again. “He hishi patapopo!”
“Moishay! Dayan! Takayama!” To Natalie, Joe said, “I was talking to Tribby last night on his pyramid, and as far as he knew these guys were still in prison.”
“Tribby’s a horse’s ass. Skipper and Scott Harrison and Ray Verboten flew to Cincinnati yesterday and rented a helicopter. Ray has connections in Cincinnati.”
“Such ruffians!” Iréné shivered delightedly. “What ugly people!”
“Didn’t they get the job done?” Nikita Smatterling called triumphantly from the other table.
“Those hooligans broke my arm,” Fluff Dimaggio grumbled.
Shanti Unfug’s self-righteous Baltimore hillbilly voice said, “Well, if you hadn’t chained yourself to the Hanuman, they wouldn’t of had to.”
“If I hadn’t chained myself to it, Mr. Bull Connors there, that Clarion flatfoot, woulda lugged that marble monkey to the dump!”
“It’s not a ‘marble monkey,’” Nikita corrected. “It’s a sacred statue.”
Joe said: “So they rented a helicopter and a couple of thugs?”
“And a Lincoln Continental.” Iréné beamed excitedly.
“I liked the part with the smoke bombs,” Wilkerson Busbee said effusively.
Shanti Unfug added her two bits: “I thought we were goners when that machine gun started chattering. My little ol’ heart just about did a backflip.”
Joe said, “They broke you out of jail?”
Skipper smirked and twirled his moustache. “We put hooks on the four corners of the thing and carried it off.”
“I don’t follow.”
“It was a portable classroom they had rigged up as a jail. Ray and his boys donned black suits, crept in, and attached the cable. Then the copter swooped in, grabbed the whole shooting match, and carted it off to a soybean field where we had a plane and a smaller copter waiting.”
Joe said, “Sounds like a busy night.”
Skipper smirked nonchalantly. “Oh no, it was just another ordinary day in the life.”
Natalie addressed Joe, “So the unveiling takes place as planned—on Thursday. You’ll attend Wednesday’s bash, of course? And bring Heidi. Or Nancy. Or that little waitress—or bring all three, whatever gets you off. Joseph, you’re beginning to flaunt quite a reputation.”
At another table, Ray Verboten had overheard Natalie’s comment. Winking at Joe, he spoke to Natalie in a chillingly jocular voice: “A guy could strangle himself on such a reputation.”
The first time Joe had laid eyes on Ray, he had instinctively disliked, and feared, the pusher. Ray affected a semiwalrus, old-timer’s moustache. He had high cheekbones and pale blue eyes, always wore elaborately tooled cowboy boots, ribbon shirts, a fringed buckskin jacket, and a Resistol ten-gallon hat. His skin wa
s sallow and debauched, his eyes absolutely frigid, his voice cruelly mellifluous—the quintessential Aquarian hoodlum.
Egon Braithwhite must have been drunk, or on cutworm moths. “Noguchi! Kurosawa! Pijama! Pijama!”
Embarrassed and humiliated at being singled out by the jerk, Joe nevertheless felt compelled not to insult Egon by ignoring him: “Toyota murasaki shikibu!” Extending his hand to Iréné Papadraxis, he added, “I’m pleased to meet you. Thank God you all escaped from there alive.”
“The pleasure’s all mine, believe me. Maybe we’ll meet again at the party.” The hand that he gripped was covered with a bunch of smooth precious rocks resembling amber marbles set in baroque silver claws. Joe pinched her fingertips gracefully, and executed a charming bow.
“He’s weird, but sweet,” Iréné told Natalie as Joe again voyaged toward Tribby and Ralph.
Nikita Smatterling raised one hand. “Joe. C’mere a sec, would you?”
Joe veered, smelling trouble. When your kid shoots a monkey in a valley overpopulated by Hanuman freaks, the writing is on the wall.
“You know everbody here, don’t you?”
“Just about.” Joe nodded as he spoke their names: “Pancho, Randall, Sam, Baldini, Ipu, Ray, Roger.” He had skipped the troll in the blond wrapping paper.
“And this is his holiness, Baba Ram Bang,” Nikita said. Joe could think of no reply except, “Pleased to meet you, I’m sure.” The guru remained mute, staring sleepily at a fly on his nose.
Nikita came right to the point. “I hear your boy Michael shot Nancy Ryan’s monkey Sasha yesterday.” Though stentorian, his voice was also extra-suave, proving that anything he said promoted the interests of peace and love, brother. Not to mention groovy. Joe, on the other hand, immediately wanted to punch the professional do-gooder in the jaw.
HIPPIE GARBAGE MAN GOES AMOK, ATTACKS FAMOUS GURU, THEN IS KILLED BY LIGHTNING BOLT FROM HEAVEN!
Kiddingly, Joe said, “I understand you were here in the café when the call came through.”
“Precisely. And we were just talking about that. We’re a bit perplexed. Not one of us can imagine why he would do such a thing. What do you think makes a child attack an innocent monkey?”
“I dunno. What is it that makes a disciple of peace and charity stick the snout of a loaded revolver into the stomach of a Mafia dwarf and pull the trigger?”
“Ah, touché, Joe.” But Nikita was one of those aggravating people whose aplomb could never be shaken. “You make your point.”
“What point?” Ipu Miller, a big, belligerent hippie, was not so easily neutralized. “The dwarf threatened a child. The monkey never did anything to anybody.”
“You say!” Joe flared, even as he wondered: How could I find myself engaged in this ridiculous and puerile repartee? “That monkey is a royal pain in the ass who torments everybody!”
Randall said, “Christ, Joe, you’re pathetic.”
Hoping to avoid fisticuffs, Nikita held up his hand. “Please, everybody, calm down. We’re not here to accuse each other. It’s plain to see, however, that Joe doesn’t know much about monkeys.”
“Monkeys, shmonkeys—I know a furry shitheel when I see one.”
“What a monkey is, and what he isn’t, is all in the eye of the beholder,” Nikita pontificated. “You know, of course, that Nancy is heartbroken. But she’s bearing up beautifully. Little Sashy is right now lying on a slab with three intravenous tubes in his body and an oxygen mask over his face.”
“Tu tu tootsie! Moshi!”
Back to his tormentor, Joe gave Egon the finger.
Ray Verboten said, “You know, man, you seem to be trespassing in a lot of areas where you aren’t exactly welcome.”
I deserve it, Joe thought. Of my own free will I walked into this Star Wars bar. Nevertheless, his dander was up. “My life is my own business,” he replied coolly. “So you just keep your cotton-picking fingers out of my slice of the pie.”
“My, my.” Ray smiled icily. “Is that a threat?”
Pancho Nordica had some good advice. “Friends, we shouldn’t hassle each other. Joe, please don’t be offended. I’ve talked with Nancy, and believe me, she has faith in you. She’s a beautiful and compassionate human being. Given that the unveiling of the Hanuman is imminent, we just don’t understand the omen, that’s all.”
“What omen? Michael ain’t religious. It happened for ordinary reasons. Heidi and I are on the outs. I’m seeing another lady. Michael got upset. All he could think to do was seek revenge on the pet of that other lady. I mean, he can’t shoot us, right?”
Roger Petrie said, “It’s not quite as simple as that. God has a strange way of choosing his messengers.”
“How do you know God is a him?”
“What?”
He had to open his big mouth! “Well, you said ‘him,’ referring to God. What makes you so sure God isn’t a woman?”
Baba Ram Bang squirmed, raised two fingers, and in thickly accented English murmured, “Coca-Cola.”
Ray Verboten adjusted his leather lapels. “You’re violating the rules, man. Don’t talk down God. You reek of lousy karma.”
“Does he do coke, too? Does God smoke marijuana?”
“Hey.” Ray petitioned others at the table, silently ordering up their instant support. “Somebody loan me a baseball glove, so I can play left field where all this flak is coming from.” And to Joe: “You got a very fat mouth, bro. Cuidado.”
Nikita gestured for reason. “Please. We only diminish each other with these niggling contretemps.”
“You’re a crackpot.” Ipu Miller sniffed angrily. “I bet you sicced that kid on Sasha to sabotage the unveiling this week.”
“Hoyo! Babaru! Samurai!”
Out the side of his mouth, Joe snapped: “Ti ti mobushi! Hi pee jo!” To Ipu, he said, “My kid didn’t attack your statue. He shot a filthy little monkey with a masturbation complex!”
Everybody at the table booed. Ipu turned crimson: “He tried to murder the spirit of the Hanuman.”
“Wait a minute, friends.” Probing into his knitted purse, Nikita located two pears. Using a restaurant knife, he quickly sectioned them into many pieces. “We will all eat of this fruit and establish harmony again.”
Joe wasn’t that hungry. “No thanks. I hate pears.” Spinning to leave, he almost bowled over Rama Unfug: the cinematographer was peering through the lens of his Bolex, grinding it out. “What is he doing?” Joe whined angrily at Nikita. “Filming this whole charade?”
Nikita pushed the fruit at him: “It’s prasad.”
“Prasad, de Sade—I don’t like pears. Thanks anyway.”
Ray Verboten held up one hand. “Hey man, you’re incredibly ignorant. Prasad is blessed food. You don’t just refuse it.”
Pancho elucidated: “It’s been left all night under the Hanuman’s U-Haul. In that way it’s been sanctified.”
“Eat,” Rama urged. “I want a picture of this for the record.”
To Ray, Joe said, “What are you all of a sudden, religious?”
Ipu screeched, “You’re crazy, Joe!”
“I’m crazy? You people are sitting here, seriously suggesting that because my kid plugs this odious monkey an Indian statue blows its vibes? And the biggest drug pusher in the county starts laying a God trip on me?”
Baldini banged his fist on the table, bouncing plates, knives, forks, and glasses, and broke his silence vow. “Get him out of here! He’s corrupting the prasad!”
At the same time Ray Verboten yelled, “Your pot is calling my kettle black?”
Rama said, “Back up a little, Joe. I can’t get everybody in.”
Joe pleaded for reason. “Look, I’m hungry, I need to order breakfast.”
“First you should eat of the prasad.…”
Egon added his two bits: “Yukio! Papadoshi! Mikimaus!”
Baba Ram Bang sneezed as Randall called after Joe, “Maybe we’ll sue!”
“So sue, already, you bunch of banana-gobblin
g hypocrites!”
Iréné Papadraxis howled gleefully: “I’m going to put him in my book! He’s priceless!”
Oh me oh my, Joe whimpered silently. Whatever could have induced me to dig such a deep and gloomy grave this early in the day?
BODY OF CHAMISAVILLE HERETIC DISCOVERED AT DUMP! APE SIGN CARVED INTO BELLY! MANGLED CORPSE OF HERETIC’S SON LOCATED IN ABANDONED WELL! RELIGIOUS PERVERTS SUSPECTED!
Ralph was in his usual form. “Will you welcome, please, Joe M. Casanova, assman, monkey-baiter, and all-around hell-raiser supreme.” Desultorily, Rimpoche growled at Joe, then cast a baleful glance at his master for approval.
“That’s not funny, Ralph.” Joe sank into a chair. “Your sense of humor is out to lunch.”
“I only call ’em as I see ’em.”
“Well, get a new pair of glasses, shmuck.”
Tribby hated arguments not initiated by himself. “Please, no hostility. My analyst expressly forbids it.”
“Analysts,” Joe scoffed mournfully. “Fuck psychiatry.”
“He’s superior.” Ralph gestured to Tribby. “He just told Ray Verboten to shove it, and it’s all the rest of us who are crazy.”
“I couldn’t help it. Who do those arrogant cosmic cookies think they are?”
“You blew our cover,” Tribby accused.
“What cover?”
“Well, for starters it might interest you to know that up until a minute ago I actually had a buyer for that coke.”
“What coke?”
“Yours, dummy!”
“Kee fashima! Hara kiri.”
Tribby asked, “What is it with you and Egon, Joe? What language is that?”
Joe said, “Hi, Darlene. Lissen, babe, gimme a usual, would you?”
“A usual?”
“Yeah, you know. A fried egg, over easy, single piece of wheat toast, couple of link sausage, a small orange juice, cup of Sanka, black, no cream.”