6/18-20/1998 g.g.Ashbrook
Ted Almond was lying out on his desk massaging his temples. He was trying to remember the name of that guy who would always wear a green suit in those old science fiction shows his father used to watch, when his secretary came in.
Wet silverware. Orange coat hangers. Glistening lungs like pearls on a string. small freeze dried tad pole love lockets, a dollar a dozen. Pimp master contraceptive belt buckles. Gelatin diving tackle. A grey walrus named Marduke. Climbing from post to post. The wrhythm of the wrocking chair. Dime pay phones. Coriander Cadillacs. Bring the post from the bed down stairs and carving it for thanksgiving dinner. Cucumber ensalada. A wedding ring made entirely of pressed shoe polish. The disappearing corset. Toast with cranberry sauce. Moth mint jelly. Crocheting your neighbor’s futures between episodes of Rock Monitor and another take on the famous and back by popular demand catch your fish jesus sermon, starring michael jordan as jesus, magic johnson as judas, OJ simpson as Paul, the nixon cabinet as the corinthians, and lilly tomline as gwendalin, mary magdalin’s younger sister.
Yes. Time sports all seasons here at the wet freezer club. Jellied pigs? Whole or half, whole with garlic and pimentos, that will be isle three across from exploding birthday presents. Your welcome. We’ve got wrist watch neck ties, inflatable bowling balls, but for diamonds, you will have to go across the hall. Sorry. And don’t let me ever see your face around here again.
A man sits down on a bench beside a large sculpture of a leaf. He looks at his watch, and looks around, and puts his shopping bag on the ground by his feet. He hears a person begin talking behind him, and he turns around to look. And he sees a man talking into a camera held by a young child. And this is what he hears: "Christmas malls around citizen season get pretty packed around here. High, my name is Walton, and I drive the tram car. I get to hit that button which say’s ‘Five cents or your money back,’ or ‘Catch um here or there, and we’ll buy you a second one free,’ and I get to make leaflets of the faces of shoplifters spray out into the crowds, which only last a few seconds before dissolving. My job is to find people who look like their in a hurry, and scoop them out of the crowd using long pincers, and put them in the back of the tram car and rush them to some part of the complex, and no one knows who decides where, not even me. Or if business is slow I can exchange small children between families, or separate loved ones."
Round mice were rolling like glass balls across the marble floor. Some of the floor tiles are cold and some are warm. The man watched as the mice congregated around their favorite temperature floor tiles, and sat around drinking warm rum, or cool cherry juice, and telling tails about the old days and singing songs to abandoned sneaker shoes, or nursing head ache laps lounging on couch lettuce. Some people can not see that the mice are stopping to chat, they perceive only an uninterrupted rolling by, rolling from one side of the room to the other without stopping. But you can see them if you try. If you do not possess it you can procure the access link to the offshoot in time where the mice reside for leisure. You can buy it at any of the information desks.
"I was staring at my lamp is what I was doing, and trying to get that knot out of my lower back." said Ted. She [the secretary that is,] helped him pry his hands from off face, and rolled him off the desk and onto the floor. "I think the bulb is out," He said. And she looked at him.
Seven years ago her uncle had bought her a pair of ear rings for her sixteenth birthday. And they were the darndest things. Whenever she would loose them, or one of them, which was more then usually, she would see them on TV. First it was on women who were on talk shows. Girls in sitcoms, but then she started seeing them on men, like on the chief of police at a Press Conference. Once in New Vermont she was passing an ocean side chatshka shop and saw a whole display wheel of post cards each with only a picture of one of those ear rings on it. At first she thought she was going crazy.
But then one night she was at a diner on Tenth and Pear, and she was with this one guy who had no lower lip, and even though he could barely talk he for some reason felt he could sing. And they were there for hours. He didn’t even pay any attention to her, aside from the occasional drooling quick splash side glance he would give her, he would just sing, and sing, and she couldn’t tell what. The man working the fryers in the back had no ears, and he would sing along but he only knew the first part of the theme song to "the facts of life," and they were just hitting a not bad harmony together when a man sitting at the counter, not twenty feet away, screamed out. As soon as he screamed about thirty women that looked exactly the same except with completely different hair styles ran into the diner and all shouted "What?" at the same time. The man was cursing, or he was trying. The one bite out of the hamburger he’d taken was falling out of his mouth. And sticking through his upper lip was one of those ear rings. As she looked closer she saw that it had a string attached to it. Then the string began to tighten and the man was pulled forward over the counter yelling at the top of his lungs. The head chef was standing with a long deep sea fishing pole back in the kitchen (which from her angle she could see). He reeled the man in through the long slot in the wall which the waitresses shout their orders through. The head chef then took off his human costume and stood an enormous bull. And he wrapped the man up in his tongue and swallowed him whole. Then he put his human suit back on and began daintily cutting hard boiled eggs. The women who had all come in had all sat down and began trading wigs. When the girl got her bill there was a small box along with it, and inside was, along with one of the dubious, a little thankyou note, and micro picture of the Eiffel Tower. She put her money for dinner down, paid for his too, all told it was eight dollars and a quarter and a nickel and three pennies. She got up to leave when he was in the middle of a solo outbreak of almost rhythmic moans, but he followed her out, leaving a thick trail as he went.
"Look Gylia, I really think it needs a new bulb. Look at it."
She looked at the lamp, and then down at him on the floor. "It’s all right." She said. "It was just a dream." And she reached out and turned it on.
"Ah, thank you."
"Don’t mention it,"
Escalators moving at a pace no less then incredible. The washer towers, and the open spaces, surround the discount pharmacies and top dollar bedroom apartments. Columns of clouds. Farmlands, and escalators moving around it all like zippers. Escalators moving across fields of corn, and all the way to the top floor of eight hundred story buildings. Escalators dividing the path of mountains. Some of the high speed escalators look like water. But it forms around you for the ride. Jumbled tents always surround the sides of the river like branching capillaries of escalators. Bodies would move across the land passing small bulges above ground. Barber shops, with a musical cloud tethered to the lamp post outside, opened up shop in the morning. This was the post card town that everyone studied, but where no one went. This was the ‘out of doors’ which through some windows could be seen, but which no entrance was known to. Was it under construction? Or was the hum and buzz and glimpse all a misunderstanding?
Emilia Partredge woke up at six a.m. from a dream about standing in front of a barber shop and watching the clouds twirl and chase eachother around the lamp post, having just come from a music debut of a chorus of rats, a reindeer brass band, and a pantomime theatrical performance by seagulls which, by the story or dream, took place in a free lance retirement home and maternity ward, uprisings and such. Much of the conflict was over closets and cameras, with everywhere the dancing chimera. But the dream dissolved from her clutch as she hopped first on one foot and then on the other, until she reached the bathroom. At which time, all she remembered of the dream was a big sweaty smelling cigar being rolled around in someone’s fingers, and she couldn’t even tell if that had anything to do with the dream or not.
The cold water brought out little pink dots, and she went leaning to close the window while the handle tilted ‘hot,’ and she sat on the toilet and watched the stream until steam arose. She shut off the water.
She stood by the window for a few: watching the families walk by with their children; watching the tram cars; the men of various shapes and sizes who polished the marble floors endlessly. She noticed that spot across the way, no one had claimed it yet. Who would be coming to town? Anything new? She checked her hope with caution and moved her eyes along. The cutlery store was closing for a few hours, just as the coffee-amphetamine-cotton candy and novelty sun-glass vender (occupying an island spot) was flipping signs and putting out their steaming sample cups. The 24 hour life. "Something warm?" the vender prattled. "Gentlemen, Ladies, Amphetamine for the children perhaps? Sour Sticks?" The parents usually ignored the venders, but the children would run to see what was up at the time for view, as was the case there. The vender slipped the children, a boy and a girl (not over ten), a sheet of pink stickers, and a note. Children of the mall would gather information from various venders, and janitors, and professional loiterers, and piece it together; and then, based on this jig-saw puzzle of hints and clues, write letters to the management strategically designed to pivot imperceptibly the directions of municipal decisions. The girl ran after a small dog with one of the stickers on an outstretched finger, and the boy read the note which she passed to him. "Collinger," it read, [who he knew to be the father of the girl that the son of the head of ‘fountain removal’ was dating] "had recently been seen stopping and acting nervous when passing the entrances of pet shops. And Willmison," [the boy who the girl working as switch board operator at ‘Carliny’s Rope and Ladder’ has a crush on,] "broke his leg trying to walk along the second story railing to impress Gribnit." [the daughter of the accountant for ‘Hamhats Shoe repair.’] "And three members of The Foundation’s Board of Trustees received silverish lemonade pitchers for the holidays from an unknown source." He burned the note in a standing ash tray by an array of mis placed tropical plants, and began to sort of spin around and snap his fingers. The stores rushed around him as he spun. Florescent lights pouring down on him. The rumble of the archetypal shopping mall fountain fizzed somewhere around a bend. She pulled the blind down and sat on the rim-side of the bath tub.
She dragged her fingers over the water, it was nice and warm. She started to take her robe off but stopped after one shoulder. The tiles on the wall in front of her were all white and perfectly spaced, with pristine grout. The cheerful designs on the shampoo bottles glared down at her from a pink wire holder. The light in the room was not harsh or bright, but because it was all flat and white and clean she could see quite well. And she just, it just welled up, and goosh, began to cry. She slid off the edge of the bath away from the water and thudded against the floor. With her back up against the side, she pulled her feet in and her knees up against so her legs all folded, and she armed her wrap around the legs and just cried.
After a bit, when she was calmer, with her head still buried in her arm & knees, she sniffled and thought about pulling herself together, getting into the tub perhaps, before the water got cold. And she felt something brush up against her legs, which at first she took to be the fold of her robe fallen or something. But then it came again and again. And she looked up to find a bright orange cat standing there next to her. She sniffed twice and wiped her eyes. And the cat walked in a circle and sat down like a dog might, and it looked around the room, and began licking a paw. Then when the girl looked around the room she saw that there were at least a dozen more. Perched here or there. Pulling down towels and jumping up to the sink and lying draped over the rim of the bath.
Sitting there amid all the cats she realized she hadn’t brushed her teeth yet. So she stood up, fixed her robe, and went to the sink. When she opened the medicine cabinet to get her brush, of course he wasn’t there, she found the whole thing a mess; with dental floss spilling down from the shelves and the tooth paste tube emptied in a great pile. She sighed and put one or two bottles upright and grabbed a chocolate egg from a nest of shredded Band-Aids. She shook her head and looked around the room, just in time to see the last cat leave by the door. "What is going on?" she said. "Oh, just a little nothing, with a pinch of perhaps," said a voice from behind her. She jumped and turned, and was going to shout but was caught off guard by the yellow and blue and pink plaid bathrobe he had on. And the fisherman’s hat, and the two different golf shoes. "Dumb luck?" he said, speaking for the second time.
"What?" she said.
"Oh, I don’t know. You know you don’t keep clutter around to suit you, it suits… [his voice began to trail away] birds wearing suits? [And then he caught himself] You don’t have a suit to wear! Do you?"
She saw he was holding a small kaleidoscope which he then took a bite out of and something like blue honey poured out all over his robe and the floor. She said, "I’ll go and see what I have."
He walked along after her kicking her heels and talking with his mouth full. "Interesting that one looks to see what they have, as though they didn’t know, and yet would be surprised to find something they hadn’t seen before. But if you would know what was and wasn’t there, and didn’t expect to find something you hadn’t put there, then why go and look in the first place?"
"Because it’s easier then thinking about it. You let your eyes do it." She said.
"Ah. Yes." And he took out a dripping wet notebook on a string from around his neck and took out a rather large fountain pen and scribbled some notes, ink pouring off the page onto the floor where small cartoon figures would crystallize and then be dashing off to the kitchen.
She opened her closet, still not contented with her understanding of what was going on, and a huge elephant head came surging out at her. It trumpeted and then with its trunk tore her bathrobe from her and then disappeared into the closet shutting the doors behind it. She screamed and went to cover her body but found instead a black and light blue striped spaghetti strap evening gown. With the stripes not exactly strait or consistent, and a big picture of a spoon across her tummy, and the dress seemed to be laughing.
"Wow," he said, "that’s awful." And he leaned over five feet of space and kissed her on the cheek. It felt weird on her cheek right after so she wiped it with the back of her hand, and there was this oily red sauce on it. She looked at him, and he was quietly eating fried mozzarella sticks and dipping them in marinara and spilling it all over his feet and spurting cheese juice out of the sticks as he bit. And he smiled and then tossed the rest of them and the sauce in their basket across the room where they landed on her coffee table without spilling a drop or a stick.
"You ready?" he said, and held his hands toward the apartment door as if presenting something. Then the door opened, and in came the most robust horse Gloria had ever seen, but it had a small cat’s head, and business shoes on, and a peacock’s tail which was full and thick and twelve feet long held over the horse itself.
"I don’t know how to ride." She said. He took her by the hand and led her to the side of the house. He lifted the handle and opened the door, and she climbed inside. The horse was arranged somewhat like an airplane, the kind where there are two plush compartments and your heads stick out the top of the horse (or plane) so you can see where your going.
"Hit the ignition," he said, as it was she who got to sit in front. When she pulled the ignition knob the tail began to spin, cutting through the floor and the ceiling and sending the pieces of the building flitting away like paper in shame. The horse slowly moved forward, grinding up the apartment as it went. The tail seemed to be everywhere, the swirling colors covering the last of the familiar furniture, that damn desk lamp, the door ways into bathroom and bedroom. And then the cat head began to divide, and grew to a huge conglomerate, a mosaic of cat faces, with heads for eyes which she saw when it turned to wink at her. Then it shot out a tongue with claws that ripped through the space around the apartment. Then it jumped through and flew by rear propeller, soaring over the opened land in spirals, the giant tents, the tree birds and the apple mountains, and zipper rivers escalating over centipede trains, and…