bent anachronism

I know I can't shake my head too hard. There's been no moon for a couple of nights. Getting used to the high beam flipper in the new hooptie. Waking up in a pool of lipstick tubes at the bottom of the boat told me I'd been in a real bumper. I scratch across the desert pavement on my knees. Jumping cactus smoldering and weeds. Foliage, then fire. A feathered witch pokes at the holey cholla bone with a stick. AAA on the way. Jan, wait for me.

"Wayne, my main enchufe at TRW, protege. You will learn the tricks of trade in charms and powders."

So you are the Chama. They said you were a topless Afro-American in her thirties.

"We will shapeshift and read coals together."

That one says you're hot. Boom! I like you.

"Father."

No...

Ashes and sand blew into ripples around the Chama and took her shadow in the ridges of its trunk. Crickets chattered. Wayne could see the spines. Then he could pull a rabbit out of a hat. Then he could manage his family. Then he could finish his work. Then he accepted two soft-centered suckers from the tow-truck driver. They drove over horned toads, out of the land painting, off MPS grounds. The road was not so black.

Canned Corned Beef and Cream Corn Casserole

Chama and Ilyn hid out in the dark cabin. After a while they started asking each other what time it was and then after a while longer they stopped answering. Chama explained later, "We felt that what happened had certainly been important, but we were nevertheless left dumbfounded. Then we began to chafe at the practice of assigning significance to events that were painful and therefore disturbing but really no more than blips of chance on a wheel. The filter wasn't working and a few of the flakes had already been carried away. We could hear commotion, heavy things dropping on pavement. The safest thesis statement? 'You just never know.' But also the most unsatisfactory. Then we decided we just had to break down and create meaning, like the opposite of breadcrumbs, tossing out floating disks on which to step across the Crack. Meaning was in our heads. That was what we were born and trained for: this was our moment to shine a light, as if, and leave nothing in our wake because there was nothing to leave. Everyone in fact paid us for that. Ilyn hurried and thought up some songs. I scarified and painted my chin. We found a canned corned beef and cream corn casserole in the freezer."

I Blow Life Out My Ass

http://www.history.rochester.edu

"Why do you come to me now Tom."
"I don't know, but it may be just your improbability. Sometimes I go where life is least likely to be, and tonight I saw your fire. I also snapped the axle on my hooptie driving over some unexploded ordinance. Someone else might feel lucky to be alive."
"Why do you turn from life Tom."
"It's trying to rub me out. It doesn't want me except as a host, and I do not accept that."
"Life is all you have."
"Life is cheap. It can't afford me. Life is a Bolshevic revolution. It wants to break me up into small, poorly-appointed apartments."
"Do you believe in the Shiv."
"I do not."
"Do you have health insurance?"
"Only if I take the shiv. And only for pharmashiv."
"Auto Club?"
"Yes."
"What does your shiv priest say."
"You are my shiv priest."
"I only do Volca and sing. I am strictly ceremonial."
"I want to stay and hear your song."
"I am in a bad mood Tom. Volca did not go well. I cannot sing now."
"Maybe you can refer me to a shiv priest who gives a shit."
"Tom. You are a leper. I care for no one else."
"One song, Chamatily."
"Then will you call AAA and accept life's plan?"
"I will accept your song Chamatily. Life covers me in boils. I blow life out my ass."
"Very well. I sing. You bleed and ooze. We die together. Then we see about a truck."

9. Time is a Liar

"AAA had to come and get you where? Was it...? Well then why were you bleeding?" Sylvia was standing in a robe in her kitchen. A stunted grapefruit dropped from the dying tree behind her on the other side of a sliding glass door. "If you'd like, I could... I just have to get dressed and I'll... OK. I'm glad you're fine then. Call when you get in."

She stared back into the kitchen from the living room couch then for a while. Her day had been intended to begin on that cool linoleum floor. With coffee. Maybe sliding open that door to let the cat out. The bright overhead light was still on in there. But she wasn't there. She'd picked up the telephone and listened into it and now she was out of commission. Her day had changed. Or, she guessed, it was never her day to begin with. The day itself seemed to be oblivious, the same slow spin of the planet. The same constant tumult forward or backward, depending on which way you faced. She could almost see herself gliding between the stove and the fridge. Probably what she'd be doing right then. Yawning into the back of her hand. Stooping with a tiny dish of egg yolk for Kitty. Then letting him out the back.

The living room was dark and intended for guests. It really didn't care how or how often it was used. It was set for a strobe of activity, and the blank spots didn't count. This felt like an unexpected layover in a haunted ballroom. The two hours you spend in a matinee, getting surprised every time you walk out and have to squint and figure out who you were again. Tom was the unexpected one. He could be counted on that way. He was a professional variable. In fact, he'd been next to her right there, a few times, on that couch. Realistically, the only reason he still wasn't there is that he got up and walked away. Maybe he was just going to the bathroom or out for a smoke. But he just never happened to ever think to sit down just there ever again. Or at least for a long time now. But let's not blame time, thought Sylvia, after another shot of Teacher's Highland Cream. Time is oblivious. It's Tom's fault.

Kitty sat at Sylvia's feet, cleaning egg from his whiskers.