Читать книгу Sunshine on an Open Tomb - Tim Kinsella - Страница 16

I do my best to invest both breath and brain to my greatest capacity each day.

But how do people possibly do it—cope with such proximity—the breath right there next to the heart, the eye and ear right alongside the mind?

If best friends are conspirators that agree to ignore the fundamental embarrassment of the innumerable humbling tasks at the root of identity, then O’Malley and The Greek were my best friends: guys you meet and know immediately they’re OK, saggy faces with sad eyes, constantly chuckling in small coughs.

O’Malley had an ape’s lumbering breath and purposeful blink.

The Greek too, sometimes you catch him suffering to concentrate, quiet, his eyes scanning like a tired monkey.

And everyone else were all policemen far as we could tell, few deputized, but all patrolling the boundaries of each other’s acceptable behavior.

O’Malley and The Greek and me felt like fingers, how fingers, each independent, come together to collaborate.

And we were always playing games.

We played games together that same way that people help hold an alligator’s mouth open to feed it a pill.

I put O’Malley and The Greek up in a nice condo in my building: a common brick building with bushes at its bottom same rusty brown as the brick.

The small concrete balconies all have rusty furniture with cushions that remain dark and wet too long after rain.

A flag hanging from one balcony pledges the whole building’s allegiance.

The big tree at the front door, same four stories as the building, is rumored to be planted on the ashes of the groundkeeper’s last lover.

And I include O’Malley and The Greek’s groceries along with my own.

It simplified things for me to get them a car, a cheap thing, used.

And what fun would it be for me if they didn’t have cable?

I sign their tabs and though, personally, I find it liberating to not have Help, I can’t ask my friends to forego.

The groundskeepers never can keep up with the corpses, so O’Malley and The Greek shovel up any that fall into my parking spot.

Pops’s best friend growing up was the son of Family friends, The DMs.

The DMs made their fortune on the salty southwest coast of The Caspian Sea, once home to half the world’s known oil.

And by the dawn of The 20th Century they’d secured their position smack dab in the bull’s eye of global oil.

But when The Red Revolution happened, the oligarchs over there all had their assets seized, so many of them moved here to The Homelan and befriended our own aristocracy, who were all just smitten by all the exotic titles.

And these exiled aristocrats made tremendous intel operatives: Business provided a simple cover, and the chips on their shoulders made for the ultimate motive.

Pops’s best friend’s uncle, GDM, came over here in ’38, much later than most of these oligarch expats.

He had to first complete his doctoral dissertation on the economic influence of The Homelan in Latin America.

GDM got a job at a home-furnishing company that secretly specialized in blocking Axis Powers access to oil.

And by the mid-’s40s he worked for William F Bukkles’s family in Panama.

You know Bukkles: SkullnBones, National Review, selfprofessed CIA.

Thru The ’50s GDM worked at CVOVT.

CVOVT’s mission was to guarantee continuity, management, and stability of policy in 24 South American oil companies.

It obtained exclusive exploration rights and leased nearly half the land in Cuba, millions of acres.

And of course, working with Castro meant dealing with his intermediaries in The Homelan: The Mob.

GDM settled in Dallas, home to his country’s large expat population, and he quickly became active in the community.

He joined The TX Crusade for Freedom, which also included the mayor, whose brother was the Deputy Director of The CIA under whichever Dullis Bro was director at that time.

DH Brrrd, owner of The TX School Book Depository, was also a member.

And GDM also served on the board of The Council on World Affairs, along with that most-renowned filmmaker and 32nd-degree Freemason Z’puda.

Z’puda worked with GDM’s wife in the garment industry.

Grandfather cofounded another group, The National Strategy Information Center.

And all these groups had one thing in common: they all hated King Arthur.

Wall Street hated him for his tax laws that favored The Barbarians; the steel companies hated him after he pulled defense department contracts and ordered his brother to investigate price fixing.

But TX hated him most of all.

The Geneva Accords permitted The Homelan to place 685 military advisers in southern Vietnam.

Eisenhower covertly sent several thousand.

And King Arthur upped this to 16,000, some of them even participating in combat operations.

But by ’63 King Arthur’s trepidation became the biggest obstacle to The Homelan’s full involvement.

And his intention to withdraw meant a lot of money lost for these TX men.

GDM criss-crossed the globe sniffing out business leads in natural resources.

And everywhere he went, CIA covert operations happened at the same time.

He married his first wife in ’42 when she was only 18, and though they had one daughter, the marriage ended in eight months, with just enough time for him to kick her in the abdomen and hit her on the head with a hammer.

He claimed she was jealous of his dog.

In ’48 he married a woman named Fifi, but again the marriage lasted less than a year, ending when she attacked him with a knife.

He hit her so hard, Fifi needed facial reconstruction surgery.

His third marriage, to a woman named Didi, lasted five years, but he did try to run her over once.

They had two children, both of whom died of cystic fibrosis.

In ’59 he married his last wife.

They didn’t divorce until ’73.

GDM’s brother—Pops’s best friend’s dad—worked at Time magazine.

And that guy’s son—GDM’s nephew—was Pops’s roommate at prep school.

And then Pops and GDM’s nephew served as pilots in The Navy together.

Pops was in his wedding.

And though Pops endlessly gasconaded about his bounteous acquaintances, many of whom he’s never actually been close to, he never uttered a peep about this friendship with GDM’s nephew.

In ’67 GDM’s nephew died of an apparent heart attack at only 43 years old.

Pops was a pallbearer.