Читать книгу Queen City and Other Dimensions - E.C. Wells - Страница 4

Maxfield Talbot, a burly man closer to seventy than sixty, sat on a beanbag watching natives beautiful black women glistening rainbows banana skirts dripping fruit flies naked beady-eyes behind shrubbery wearing Campbell’s tomato soup cans paying constant attention throw off cans where manhood stands Jesus naked whips snap where are you the Vatican everything out of order does it matter not really look at the mess you’ve created you need more self-control keep jumps shorter remember order by secret signs learn to read envision pay attention believe it you’re doing good yes believe it keep jumps short and simple try harder stop fucking with time did we switch points of view no they are all yours listen to yourself we are in the mind always in the mind listen LISTEN! AWAKE! Max awakens and mumbles, “Where was I there...where in hell is here where am I now?” Max wriggled out from under his bed while trying to remember yesterday, or if there actually was a yesterday.

The especially tall pine legs of Maxfield’s bed, made by one of his sister’s husbands to accommodate his “portly proportions,” heightening the bed to allow him to remain a robust figure without going on one of V’s torturous vegetarian diets. Max believed himself to be completely invisible while under his magical bed. And, maybe he was.

Maxfield’s hallucinations are inexplicable, if indeed they are hallucinations. However one might try, there are no words, not one single word, to capture a nano-fraction of his disjointed reality, or an essence of his drug-induced visions, if they are drug-induced——the inexplicable Maxfield Talbot.

* * *

Another time in the parlor of Shady Sanctum, Max’s niece, Victoria Aires, was having “another one” of her anxiety attacks.

When others disagreed with her, however slight, it added unbearably more anxiety to be anxious about. V’s mantra to escape and forget about that basket of deplorables, is to smoke a doobie. It doesn’t do a thing to cure deplorables, but it helps to see them in a better light as, more than likely, human; however, lamentable and pitiful.

The visions and ideas V conjured for America’s own good, in her efforts to save it, never came to fruition, since she was never quite sure what exactly needed saving. And nothing ever came to mind in that regard. V told herself that she had every reason to be anxious. She was diagnosed with something quite depressing——bipolar. V was prescribed enough drugs to put a person of lesser tolerance into a persistent vegetative state. But visions fade and melt. They disappear and stream towards their source. Time becomes entangled. Memories become taunting devils, impossible bullies who come from nothingness and disappear into nothingness; leaving a sadness and a desire to try to become acquainted with the subconscious, or at least to learn to listen to its advice. “After all, it is the home of my conscience, is it not”thought V.

V desired to be an ageless woman, a natural woman of grace and mystery. V was also a woman hellbent on leaving an indelible mark in history. Her anxieties had anxieties of their own. Each passing day became more insufferable. More psychotropics, Doctor. For V, anxiety has always been well-traveled, carefully surveyed and familiar territory.

“Who is that sitting at the kitchen table, Lil?”

“He looks a lot like a satyr.”

“Nonsense. You are suffering some kind of LSD flashback.”

“I never took LSD, V! That was you.”

“Are you sure?”

“I am. There is a satyr sitting at the kitchen table writing something in a spiral notebook. He looks pretty real to me.”

“I never doubted he was real, Lily. I have known several satyrs in my day.”

“You’re full of merde! Take your damn pills,” her dearest friend Lily advised.

“They give me dry-mouth,” V sighed.

“But they make you more…”

“What?”

Lily was reluctant to get it out, but she managed, “…normal.”

“What in hell is ‘normal,’ Lily?

“Sorry, just saying.”

“Please, try not to say ‘just saying’ to me. I am not one of your Facebook friends. How about you go see what he is writing. When a satyr takes notes it is a sign of something historical about to happen and we are somehow involved.”

“V, he just disappeared.”

“That’s a satyr for you.”

V, bright red hair, pale white skin, attractive without make-up, well-groomed, eccentric, writes with a fountain pen and only in green ink, claims to be thirty-five, even though she has enjoyed her thirty-fifth birthday for at least a decade, more or less. She is known for her fashionable hat collection to cover those bad hair days, to avoid the ravages of sunlight, or mainly because hats are simply fabulous. If you want to be a woman of mystery wear a hat, the bigger the better. If you are a black woman on Sunday morning wear a hat ornate with muted colors, pink, purple and lilac petals shimmering in the slightest breeze or the turn of a head. If you are the Queen of England wear the same thing. Cowgirls wear a hat. If you need to hide a hole in your head you wear a hat. For the love of haberdashers everywhere, wear a hat!

V claims not to give a “rat’s ass” about what others think of her, but that is most certainly, in every respect, not true, fake news. If anything, she gives too much of the rat’s ass for what others think.

V owns a prodigious red stone Victorian mansion——a beautiful example of late nineteenth century architecture——that her father left to her after his “mysterious death.”

Her passion for going against the untangling evolution of time and fashion became part, but not parcel, of her persona. She had a good act. Most of her haute couturecame from yard sales and thrift stores. She knew how to create the eye-popping illusion of opulence with good taste.

V saw herself as a theatre person and all her friends would agree. Most thought of Victoria Aires as a drama queen, but the fear of her unexpected screeds of literary maleficence should anyone speak out of turn, or out of place, elevated the consciousness of her friends to an unexpected level of agreeability. Bipolar people leave little to the expectations of others.

V held a high opinion of herself as an artist. She knew she had a natural flair for directing. She daydreamed of having her own little theatre where she could show off her talents. Without quarrel, few would dispute what had become fact, that her talents and directing skills went far beyond the walls of theatre. V challenges herself to create and perform her own life with joie de vivre, a brava performance indeed, until she gets bored. And, when she is bored, V sharpens her directing skills on the lives of others; to the dissatisfaction of friends and foes alike. Distinguishing friend from foe needed a great deal of effort and appreciable skill. Once, V had a mercurial epiphany,“Perhaps I am a bit overbearing.”And then she forgot about it.

Once, Sir Geoffrey Hemphill pleaded, “Will you marry me, Miss Aires?” She replied with, “Oh, Sir Geoffrey, if I will I would have long ago.” V performed a spirited rendition of shy with a touch of coy and a whole lot of no. Poor Sir Geoffrey, looking spiffy in his white linen suit, pale blue shirt, dark blue with yellow diagonally-striped tie and vibrant yellow socks that poured into his brown and beige saddle shoes; dressed to the nines and all for V. “Poor Sir Geoffrey, wouldn’t it be easier to come out of the closet rather than getting married?”He attributed the question to the voice of his smart-ass conscience.

The mere thought of “coming out,” making himself visible, frightened Poor Sir Geoffrey beyond description. “A life in the closet isn’t living, but it’s safe,”he thought. V smartly rose and said as the actress she never was, “You are so cute.” Then she left the room at warp speed.

Feelings of shame, anger, sadness and self-hatred with suicidal tendencies are often exacerbated in the wake of unrequited love. “It’s not about love, kiddo, and you know it.”Poor Sir Geoffrey wouldn’t listen to his higher self. So, he felt himself doleful, witless, a man of little consequence as he sat dreaming he was still awake in the parlor with Maxfield, who had recently returned from safari in Africa, and so he borrowed Sir Geoffrey’s ear well into the night to relive it.

Cruelty would certainly be one of the many last things to enter V’s mind, but when people pose a question they ought to know exactly what it is they want to do with the answer. Do they want the truth, or do they want to postpone the inevitable by going on a long and arduous expedition through the maze of V’s rhetoric?Poor Sir Geoffrey.

V’s father, The Late Reverend Aires, once a man of the cloth, probably synthetic and made in China, became a radical disciple of an unknown Roman Catholic denomination whose teachings had absolutely nothing to do with Jesus nor the amelioration of Humanity; not too unlike so many of Jesus’s later-day followers waiting for the joy of a Theist America, sooner than later. Many a Christian is a Christian in name only——nothing new there; followers of the Anti-Christ as proven by their political aspirations, their hate and violence from consuming too much red meat, no doubt, contributed greatly to V’s appreciation for seeing a thing in its proper perspective. “Rose colored glasses are for the flock to view the Good Shepherd; not for the Good Shepherd to view the flock,” the Good Shepherd often told his Little Princess Victoria before sending her off to pass the collection plate. With the restrained smile of a sad, starving, disconsolate, but hopeful, orphan V created a short piece of theatre impeccably played. Those who looked into her watery crestfallen eyes, who sat and waited for the end of their world, dropped more cash into the collection plate than they could otherwise afford. The Little Princess had that effect on folks, which left many worshippers feeling guilty for their own poverty. The late Reverend had also gained considerable recognition from his missionary work which took him around the world converting to whatever, saving whomever, however, for a price. Jesus can be an expensive business. While still in her teens, the Little Princess had become a world-class traveler. When the Little Princess reached her forty-first birthday——thirty-fifth again and an another over-priced regenerating cream reason for supplemental anxiety——she made up her mind to leave for posterity a certain and indelible contribution, which now only left her to settle upon exactly what that contribution might be; further cause for anxiety.

V is not quite the controlling, argumentative creature that some have mistakenly mis-thought. She can be of course, but it is not one of her full time personas. V learned the long and hard way, that it is no longer beneficial for her sense of wellbeing to make confrontational choices, or to take unnecessary chances. A new leaf? V is unquestionably smart, intuitive, often overreaching, overbearing and rarely knows what is good for her own good; however, she did turn over that godawful new-leaf metaphor with the help of psychotropics. V has an inexplicable desire for lasting fame which she disguises as, “leaving something for posterity.”

V is easily bored and she does not suffer fools willingly; as evidenced by those who have exited her life only to find themselves transformed into the walking wounded, limping back to their zombiehood. Before the medications, V was perceived as a bitch. That’s not to say she was or she wasn’t; it’s all a matter of degree and interpretation. Now, through the magic of chemistry, V could be more deliberate, thoughtful and carefully rehearsed before launching into anything that could be deemed the least bit provocative. V does gain a great deal of satisfaction from her supposition that by the time her victim realizes her villainy it is too unreasonably late for a counterattack.

V rarely goes out unless it is necessary, or there is the promise of fun, or she simply must get out for no apparent reason. Her switch to isolationism came after her realization that, on balance, the heavy side of the scales snores with sleeping people who have chosen their ignorance, their lies, their deceptive euphemisms born of prejudice, hypocrisy, and rampaging hatred. People, generally speaking, cannot be easily trusted, or trusted at all. No way. No how. No one. Except Lily, of course. WOW! Really?Maybe her darker moods were all just a passing cloud of negatively charged particles of self-consuming acridity.

Oftentimes, V sincerely thinks herself far too complicated for most mortals to grasp for more than twenty seconds, or so. There are moments in her days, sometimes entire days, when she believes herself a genius. Then, time persists and she finds herself in a Ground Hog Daysort of way. “There must be something better! Days should not be indistinguishable nor interchangeable with the day before, or the day before that,” V pouted in a world weary, muted outrage.

It should be pointed out that after V dropped out of community college she never stopped educating herself. V is one of Gertrude Stein’s biggest fans. All of Stein’s books fill the top shelf of her bedroom bookcase. Once that shelf was filled with Ayn Rand, but when Ayn Rand began to smell like bullshit and rotting fish, V tossed her Fascist greedy ass into dumpster-hell along with a copy of The Art of the Deal, for which she paid a quarter in a yard sale, to make room for Gertrude Stein. She credits Stein with teaching her the ever-interesting elements of subtext. How to read, basically. V has been using education in sublimity ever since to mystify with seemingly never-ending layers of indirection and subtext which she claims, “…should not be mistaken for ambiguity.” V told this to the man seated next to her at one of Minnie Beach’s dispiriting dinner parties. When the man barked in return, “I don’t get it!” V smugly accused, “That is because you are short of imagination! You must have exchanged it for a degree in who the fuck cares!” The following day V learned that the man who had been seated next to her was a Nobel Prize winning nano-scientist working on a government project in Colorado Springs. "So friggin’ what!"V remarked to herself when she learned of her ignorance.

V’s father died from an oversized hybrid Africanized honey bee attack. Strangely odd, since the killer bee is unable to survive as far north as Colorado. Maybe, its faulty navigation had something to do with global warming. In whatever case, V was left to pay the astronomical taxes on the mansion known as Shady Sanctum. Maxfield Talbot, her father’s step brother, helps out with his royalties from several books——An Entomological Study Of Washington DC, How To Think Like An Ant Before The Rapture, Don’t Kill Our Friends The Bedbugs,and For The Love Of Dung Beetles. His foray into the field of etymology produced his first book on that subject, Conversations With Insects, but he soon returned to his entomological roots due to a royalty dispute; one does not pay interviewees! There is also Max’s Social Security which helps to keep Shady Sanctum in the family. There is little left in the Talbot coffers after paying for all those pounds of illicit drugs, his traveling expenses before he learned to fold space, his latest trip to Haiti on bug business, and all those epicurean escapades in Morocco.

Maxfield has made it his life’s work to study arthropods which led to his earning a rather widespread reputation from his knowledge of the practical implementation of gene splicing. His lectures on the ins-and-outs of entomology were a hit on the university circuit. Any knowledge of his surreptitious experiments in insect husbandry——though not quite the Doctor Mengele of the insect world——were nonetheless restricted to a select few peers. One of them was Doctor Fleischmann, an old Queen City University chum who now lived on an obscure island in the Coral Sea.

Doctor Fleischmann was released from prison after five years for not living up to his oath as a doctor of medicine, which caused the death of a wildly popular pop singer which, in turn, made Fleischmann a wildly unpopular pariah. So, he sequestered himself on a small island east of New Caledonia and northeast of Australia known as Sphincter Island. While working for the late pop star Fleischmann bought the island with cold hard cash. That was before he murdered his cash cow; the King of Pop.

The last time Max saw Fleischmann they spent their time together reminiscing about the old days. They entertained themselves having a bit of fun for auld lang syne. Manipulating DNA was always great fun. So, Maxfield and Fleischmann went to work manipulating the DNA of a New Caledonian scorpion with the DNA of an African cockroach. The result was a super-sized cockroach with an unnerving sized scorpion stinger like a rat’s tail. The thrill of creation! The ecstasy and the rapture from ejaculating without touching yourself was overwhelming. Work was good. Then it happened, the Murphy’s Law, the thing they never anticipated; their creation quickly duplicated itself and the duplication began to duplicate and so forth, exponentially. Their little monsters would soon be problematic.

The morning after their venerable accomplishment, Max awoke to observe several cockpions crawling up the windowpane. He imagined they were looking for a chink in the window. In a blink of his eye, the cockpions paired-up and began dancing the tango, the dangerous kind, razor-sharp angles, quick turns around the surface of the glass and all the while their stingers stood ready, but for what, or whom? “It’s time to boogie,” Max said out loud to no one but himself.

The short history of the big building on the island is that it was home to hundreds of terminally ill patients from around the world; a place to rest and wait. When whispers and rumors of Doctor Sphincter’s experimentations with body parts, especially fresh organs removed from his patients, both dead and alive, for his clandestine work to create a super-subspecies of Man, it all came to a complete halt when the authorities discovered his true vocation; he was then murdered on the spot by subhumans with brooms and pitchforks. The sanatorium was closed permanently. The Island of Doctor Sphincter was abandoned sometime in the 1950s and remained so until Doctor Fleischmann took-up residence in the early 2000s. Serving as doctor to the biggest rock star in the world paid unnecessarily well.

“Thank you Maxfield, you’ve been a good friend.”

“You doknow what will happen sooner than later?”

“I do. There is nowhere else for me to go. I am a pariah, you know.”

“I do,” mumbled Max. "Big time."

Doctor Fleischmann and Max walked in silence to the edge of the cliff on the far side of the island. They hugged one last goodbye before Max jumped from the cliff and disappeared into somewhere in the future, leaving only sparks of light that were soon extinguished by the ocean below. Maxfield reappeared under his bed. “Boy-o- boy, I’m getting pretty good at this!” Max, as he occasionally does, gleeked.

Sphincter Island was no longer habitable by humankind, nor mammals of any kind; only the pariah was left behind, tucked away from society. The huge cockpions were discovered to be cannibals that survived solely by eating one another. After every meal, they were always ferociously hungry, the cockpions split like giant amoebas infesting the island. Doctor Fleischmann knew that he could no longer endure his unique predicament. He could not live with himself for the rest of his life——which he knew would be a short one. “For Pete’s sake! I really liked his music, his dancing——”He then chose the largest cockpion from those slowly circling him, he picked it up and held it in the palm of his hand,“This is for you, Mikey.”Fleischmann waited until he felt the devil’s sting. As he lay dying, his last spoken words were, “This is it, isn’t it?” And then he was cockpion food.

Max is rarely invited to speak at universities, nor take all-expense paid trips to study bugs as he once did. When he briefly taught entomology at Queen City University his students referred to him as “A giant in his field,” then they giggled and he would humbly thank them. It took Max two years after his fleeting stint at QCU to become conscious of what they meant.

His short tenure in academia came to an abrupt end in a university men’s room. Max and three of his students were caught smoking marijuana; pre-legalization. He was conducting an experiment into the nature of memory loss. Who the devil knows why academics are so damn incredulous!? Maxfield seemed insane to some, to others he was simply an old hippy drug addict, but to a brave few, Professor Doctor Maxfield Talbot PhD was a master and guide into the creative powers hidden within the vast unending universe of the Self——the magical, mystical place of creation. Some thought Professor Talbot, TheMaster. However, Theor not, Master or not, following him was a trip down a rabbit’s hole––something to ponder before jumping in.

The late Missus Reverend Aires died while giving birth to V, so naturally she had fulfilled any debt to that which posterity could possibly hold claim. V’s mother is remembered by V’s great uncles and aunts as a ferocious force of nature with a fun wit. The late Missus Aires was clearly demented, or possessed. She loved acting in little theatres around Queen City until, while playing Ophelia in Hamlet——the devil knows what got into her——she broke-out into song and danced the cooch across the stage. What a memorable farewell performance! She gave birth to V nine months later and died, but not until every last drop of her spirit found its way into her newborn, Victoria. Whenever conversations turn to family history, especially involving the late Missus Aires, amazingly, no one recalls a thing. When relatives turn their memories to Maxfield, they cannot remember his ever looking younger than he appeared to them now. Fifty year old memories and yet Maxfield has always appeared close to seventy. They chalk it up to the tricks of memory.

Gert Aires-Birdsall, V’s father’s sister, along with her husband Charlie, established a retreat near Lake Titicaca in Peru for clairvoyants, spiritualists, astral projectionists, space and time folders and intergalactic surfers who ride gravitational waves through spacetime just for the hell of it.

Puerto Nostradamus, highly praised in several esoteric journals, enjoyed a fashionable reputation as the favored watering hole for celebrated Internationalists and the usual perennial variety nouveau riche. The glossy brochure made Puerto Nostradamus appear an attractive destination for those who would or could develop their latent psychic abilities. “Hidden potentials that lay sleeping within the initiate are carefully nurtured at Puerto Nostradamus,” was written at the top of the brochure.

Their brochure was filled with sepia-toned photographs of well known psychics, including Shirley MacLaine and Nancy Reagan. There were quotes endorsing Gert’s and Charlie’s hospitality. Madonna said, “A miraculous experience,” and New Jersey Governor Crispy Crapp bragged about having lost one-hundred pounds, “I lost 100 pounds.” (The Governor regained every ounce and then some in less than two months.) There were pictures of natives rowing across Lake Titicaca, guests riding on several domesticated llamas and a visiting dignitary helping Charlie hold down an alpaca while Gert was busy sheering it. Another photo was of Gert all alone in the garden tending to her coffee plants while a rather dark and dirty-looking family rested beneath a cacao tree in the background to the left of Gert’s bonnet. All this was beguiling, yet V had serious doubts about that sort of thing which, consequently, kept her from visiting Aunt Gertrude. Although, she did recommend Puerto Nostradamus to a good many of her ex-friends. It sounded devilish even without having any idea where it was, what it was, or anything about it. The very name of Puerto Nostradamus conjured something other than a place for spiritual enlightenment.

Then there is Cousin Harriet, Maxfield’s younger sister, who found the word “Aunt” much too matronly for her taste and, therefore, insisted she be called “Cousin” Harriet. Cousin Harriet disappeared before the courts waived her privilege to enjoy the company of three husbands while two of them were still alive. As a result, the four of them took flight from Queen City International Airport for Gotham City from where they booked passage on a Norwegian freighter and haven’t been heard from since. Cousin Harriet, in her own small and special way, achieved a certain amount of local, however infamous, notoriety.

“Why shouldn’t I enjoy a bit of recognition?” V asked her dearest friend and companion Lily Nettles.

“What have you done for it?”

“You’re being provocative, dear heart.” V had already arrived at an acerbic edge by the time she got to “dear heart.” She hated questions that led to self-incrimination. “Sometimes you beg the question, Lily. No one gives a shit about me. I have nothing. I am nobody. Just a buttload of unfulfilled dreams.”

“Boo-hoo. Give me a break! You’re being silly and you don’t believe a single word of it. By this time tomorrow today’s anxiety will have morphed into your usual arrogance of genius.”

“I would not have used the words ‘arrogance’ and ‘usual’ in the same sentence,” V pouted.

“People love you, Sweetie. You host the Ladies’ Grecian Culture Study Group once a month, Friends of Erotic Artifacts bimonthly, and you’re a Capitol Hill fixture, a celebrity. You are the woman around whom the world revolves.”

“Really? Do you really think so?”

“There might be a few who wouldn’t agree with the revolving world stuff.”

“There’s always a few out to get me. It is always best to know who they are. Who are they?”

“How would I know, V?

“Exactly. Maybe I should forget about it.”

“Forget about what, V?”

“Posterity. Maybe I should forget about posterity and say fuck it!”

“That’s the spirit. Fuck it!” Lily had finally found something with which to agree as she offered up her empty teacup for refilling. By coincidental happenstance the cup and the subject were dropped.

Pudgy Penny and Piggy Peter came barging through the bird’s eye maple double doors that entered into the parlor. These custom-made doors were adorned with naked smiling cherubs bearing shields and swords, anchors intertwined with hexagons and rhombi, roses and ribbons of leaves, and most ornate is the three-foot tall dancing Dionysos that splits in two whenever the doors are slid open. Shady Sanctum was, after all, the residency of the late Reverend Kirby Victor Aires. The late reverend knew the worth——just short of pompous——of a pious atmosphere.

The twins Penny and Peter were a last minute gift to Uncle Max from Cousin Harriet the night she decided to fly the coop, as it were, with her three husbands——Jacques, Sean and Bonito. The twins were twelve years old when Cousin Harriet gave them to Max nearly ten years ago, and they haven’t grown a day since. No one is really sure from where they originally came. One day Harriet just showed up with them and said she had found them. “I found them. Here. They’re yours.” And, though the twins were not identical, they were similar. Pudgy was noticeably fatter than her brother Piggy whose pumpkin-red Buster Brown was cut not quite so butchly as Pudgy’s.

The twins returned early that morning from Haiti together with their Uncle Max who folded spacetime in order to spend five weeks with a mulatto family to study dark migratory short-horned locusts. The twins entered the parlor wearing an assortment of beads, trinkets, and oh my god are those human teeth?

“Auntie Vickie!”

“What now, Peter?”

"Is there any way of getting in the basement, if say Penny and me was locked out ‘cause somebody went and bolted the door from inside or something like that so there’s no way to get down there if say somebody wanted to so what would you say to that?”

“Yeah, what do you say, Auntie?” Pudgy Penny asked with unremarkable indifference.

“I would say don’t call me Auntie,” V twisted a venomous smile and added, “Coal slide, I imagine.”

“So did we,” grinned Pudgy Penny, looking like a jack-o-lantern stuck atop four and one half feet of coagulated gelatin. “What else,” continued the irritatingly impatient Pudgy Penny, “would you say?”

“I would say that’s it, kiddos,” answered V.

“We’re not kiddos!” Piggy Peter shouted.

“Of course not,” V snickered.

All the while, Lily sat and watched quietly. She would not look directly——as a blackbird flies——at the children. Lily made it a point to keep her glances as short as possible for fear of frightening the twins with her brutal thoughts; of which she was certain the twins could read.

“Can we have it?” Pudgy Penny asked while fingering her beads and human teeth. “It’s dark. It’s damp. It’s dirty. It’s moldy. It’s smelly.”

“It’s just perfect,” chimed Piggy Peter. “Will you give it to us?”

“Oh, my,” sighed Lily, sotto voce, from behind her hand covering her mouth and nose.

“Hello, Auntie Lily.”

“Hello, children…” then begrudgingly added, using five or six syllables to squeeze it out, “…welcome home.”

“We’re not children!” Piggy Peter corrected.

“Well, you’re home anyway. How wonderful.” If there were ever sarcasm in Lily’s tone, this was it; and that was as far as Lily’s interest could take her. She thought better of asking them how their trip had been; she didn’t want them in her head. Lily did not much care for anything about anything having a single thing to do with the children. To her, the twins were a mutant virus; one of life’s calamities——like floods, famine, pestilence and death.

“Well, are you going to give it to us or what!?”

“What?” V asked.

“The basement! Weren’t you listening?” Pudgy Penny took an annoying air that smacked of condescension diluted with a lethal amount of exasperation.

“Nobody uses it anyway,” added Piggy Peter, no less gelatinous than his sister, peered through two narrow slits beneath the red bangs of his slithery hair. “Since Uncle Kirby went over and out and all those goof balls who used to meet down there took a hike, its been abandoned.” Piggy Peter said with great care to imply a sense of solemnity by not disturbing the seldom talked about memories of V’s father, whose interest in matters theologically paranormal took him and his small circle of illuminati to the basement where he kept a most impressive library of old and rare books. There was a worktable where he wrote his psalm books; publishing and selling them himself. (There were metal folding chairs leaning against the far wall.) Much of Kirby’s personal income had come from the sale of sacred relics. The genesis of those sacred relics remain a mystery, as does the nature of their sanctity.

Before Kirby Victor Aires met and married V’s mother and before he became the renegade high priest of his own theologically incorrect, surreptitious cult——The Brotherhood of Solar Agnation——Brother Kirby had decoded ancient and forbidden books in one of the sub-basements beneath the Vatican Palace. Brother Kirby was the pet of the Cardinals. He was considered Cardinal material by the Pope, until Brother Kirby had an epiphany.

Things don’t always work out the way we imagine they should, as proven by Brother Kirby who instigated a heated argument with His Holiness over the existence of God vis-a-vie the ability of the individual to become their own God. “I am God!” he shouted at the Pope.

“You are a fucking idiot!” Arshmann shouted back, but not in his usual shriveling old man voice. It was certainly not the Pope’s voice that boomed with ungodly hatred from deep within the pit of Hell; or maybe there are many pits in Hell. Like Dante, perhaps. Surely, it wasn’t the voice of God, unless, this God was unique to Arshmann himself; which only goes to reinforce Kirby’s point.

The encounter ended with the Pope on the floor holding a burning candle in his clenched fist and Brother Kirby holding a brass candlestick over the skull of His Holiness.

“I curse and excommunicate you!” proclaimed Pope Arshmann. “Big fucking deal,” said the former Roman Catholic Brother.

The following day Kirby was escorted off the sacred Vatican grounds by an attachment of Swiss Guards. Never again would he acknowledge the infallibility of the Pope; that self-important German Nazi, the bitter ideologue who had memorized the party lines. Moreover, he was stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid!Brother Kirby was out the door and on the street. Soon afterward, Brother Kirby started his own anti-Catholic Brotherhood of Solar Agnation with the book he walked off with from the Vatican’s immense storehouse of misappropriated loot, and the largest known collection of the world’s treasures. The late Reverend hid the book in the back of his trousers. As the Swiss Guards escorted him off Vatican property, one of the guards observed, “That man has the squarest ass I’ve ever seen.”

“Well? Will you give the basement to us?” asked Pudgy Penny in a demanding sort of tone.

“If the two of you want it take it. You’re driving me crazy!”

“You’re already crazy, Auntie Vickie,” chimed the twins in unison.

“Come, Drusilla,” said Piggy to Pudgy.

“I will, O Zeus, my brother,” swooned a pensive Pudgy to Piggy.

Then they were gone, down the hall and well out of earshot by the time V finished refilling Lily’s replacement teacup; a black mug imprinted with I’VE BEEN TO THE ZOO in gold lettering.

“You gave away the basement?” Lily sounded perplexed, puzzled and careworn.

“Only for a week or two, Lil. Then they will trade it in for something else. The attic maybe. By the way, Zeus I know, but I seem to have forgotten who Drusilla was?”

“Caligula’s sister.”

“Yes, of course,” said a weary V, rolling her eyes while pouring herself another cup of Earl Grey from her Dresden china teapot cracked here and cracked there and covered with the tea cozy Lily crocheted the time she came down with a foot infection; a reaction to a bite or sting from a source unknown. To this day Lily still suspects it was from one of the spiders that were given sanctuary in the house ever since V had declared that any attempt at killing them was verboten. Or, it may have been one of the black centipedes that are occasionally seen scurrying across the parlor floor, racing between the legs of V and Lily as the “little fuckers”headed to their den hidden somewhere within the walls.

"They could be poisonous! I better Google," Lily told herself.

“Which reminds me,” continued V, “next Saturday is our FEA field trip, is it not?”

“It is,” Lily confirmed, remembering something. “That is, unless Carlotta Bean forgets to take her meds and pulls another one of her stunts.”

“I don’t think so, Lily. Her last one was less than two weeks ago and, knowing her, she wouldn’t chance another scene quite so soon; especially after taking in that new boarder. She’s a stickler for making a good first impression, particularly for new conquests, after that she doesn’t give a rat’s ass. Le Bean certainly made a mess of things; insulting Mercy Pence’s buffet before dropping her emerald ring into the punch bowl, polluting the poor thing’s Georgian Ambrosia punch with the heavy scent and bile taste of Gardenia Bold. Made by some French faggot, according to Carlotta. Anyway, as she fished about in the peach-colored brine, its tide rose midway to her elbows before she nearly drowned herself in shock from seeing the disturbingly distorted faces of everyone there. As you know, all that cleaning-up after her vile tantrum left me exhausted. And poor raving Billy Butts! Will he never learn to shut the fuck up long enough to take a breath? I guess it was her attempt to strangle him with her peach-tinted hands that brought the evening’s festivities to an abrupt conclusion.” V paused to sip tea while waiting for the right words.

She didn’t need to wait very long before, “Nope, not so soon as Saturday, Lily. She keeps her new boarder in the Paisley Room; the room that nice fellow papered for her. You know, the one you always liked with the mysterious eyebrows you thought Arabesque. I detected his eyebrows were carefully plucked and that he didn’t align the paisleys quite right. Carlotta has always been quite practical in utilizing her inamoratos. I wonder whatever happened to him? Billy Butts certainly couldn’t restrain his lust, but I think Mister Arabesque was all one way about that sort of thing. With him——the inamorato——when the time came to choose, the choice came down to Carlotta with all her prurient interests and a seemingly endless amount of money, or Billy with matching interests, but less money, Carlotta won, if not hands-down, certainly by a nose.

“Anyway, this newest boarder had been a tourist guide in Athens. Apparently, he has all the attributes which make for success: tall, tan, piercing black eyes, wide infectious smile, perfectly even white teeth, and not an original thought in his lovely head. He doesn’t speak a lick of English, but Carlotta said he is willing to help her learn Greek in exchange for room and board, and whatever else. Although, the idea of teaching one without a lick of English by one without a lick of Greek does sound intriguing.” Sometimes, V’s breezy, affected manner can get so protracted one would need a surveyor’s level to measure its boundaries. This is one of those times. For someone whose life is riddled with untaken opportunities, V always held tightly to hope. “I keep feeling I am here for something. Something good. Something better. Something. But what?”

V was an avid collector of objets d’artand, unless eclecticism is a specialty uniquely to itself, V had no especial field of interest other than her splendid collection of erotic artifacts that she had gathered at one time or another, one place or another. “Something from just about every period in art history——nay, Human history,” V assured doubters in what must have been a case of inflated exaggeration, a little white lie with shades of gray. “I do not lie——I hyperbolate!”Easy to mistake the difference.

“The Queen City Art Museum refused my donation. For free! For fucking free! No interest in the history of sex toys dating back to the Roman Empire, maybe one or two of them were up an Emperor’s ass. Imagine that? Back before that cult of one-godders brought down the Roman Empire. Shows what they knew.”

“Who knew? The Romans or the one-godders?” Lily asked with no real interest.

“I don’t remember.”

“Get out the bong and take a few good tokes, V. You’ll feel better in no time.”

“Suppose I do not want to feel better?”

“Hmm. I think there’s some kind of existential thing going on here, V.”

As regards the subject of Art, V’s only requisite was that she be “moved" by it and would continue being moved long after she brought her precious piece of Art home; provided the price was right. What more should one ask of Art?

V holds strong opinions, not only about Art, but pretty much about everything. She is careful about what she puts into her brain. For example: V reads only books considered intellectual, some of which she had no idea what she was reading, but she knew that one day the wisdom contained in those books would surface with clarity, engendering a positive shift in her point of view. She could not say how she knew she knew, though she knew with unwavering certitude that she simply knew, period. Ergo, damn the empirical. Full speed ahead!

“A matter of maturation and saturation, Lily.”

“Really?”

“I don’t know. Who wants reality anymore anyway? Do you really want what’s outside that window——needs cleaning by the way. Do you really want what is out there?” V asked with all sincerity. By the by, the next day V might extoll, with all the same sincerity again, an opposing point of view.

“It sucks, V, but you can’t remain inside forever.”

Easygoing Lily prefers listening while leaving V to do pretty much all the talking. Lily did not want to interrupt and spoil the elation V enjoys from hearing the sound of her own whisky voice.

Lily shares many of V’s qualities, although Lily is more relaxed, more confident, and not bipolar. Lily does suffer a fear of death, but only for short durations and they are always from the same source; just before her entrance——stage right, left, or upstage——when she’s certain that she has forgotten every one of her lines, when she wants to run, when her heart gets stuck in her throat; yet, she goes on without missing a beat, without dropping a word; reborn onstage and with an audience.

The long list of characters that Lily had performed, were all prequel to her arrival in Queen City. Since then, little of note.