The Klingon Opera

Murph found the kit at the back of the basement walk-in, in a plastic storage box stuffed to the gills with memories and other shit. Why he hadn’t disposed of the kit years ago, simply thrown it away, he couldn’t say. He was a pack rat. You never knew when you’d need something. He’d asked Rudy to help him, but the kid was on his computer and refused to get off. Murph got pissed and started into one of those lectures about allowances and certain teenagers who never lifted a finger to help around the house, but he kept his cool in light of the fact — the irony, hypocrisy even, that he was asking his son to participate — indirectly, in a major felony punishable by up to twenty years in the federal penitentiary.

Leave the kid to his conversational Klingon, Murph decided as he started to reorganize history, one box at a time. “Wedding Stuff” . . . “Misc. Photo” . . . “Xmas ’96” . . . “Income Tax” . . . “Marg’s Office.” In “Rudy” he found Baby’s Memory Book. It listed the stats of the boy’s birth: weight, 6 pounds 8 ounces; length, 20 inches; hair colour, none; eyes, yes; and on and on. Murph’s wife had even updated the book: first tooth, first steps, first haircut, first words. Sometime before First Day of School, Marg had petered out. She was good at that.

Twenty-five minutes into it, Murph reached “PM: Personal.” He peeled back the plastic lid and swept aside the packing of old Penthouse and raunchy letters from ex-girlfriends and found the kit still wrapped in a striped tea towel, the way he remembered it, the way it had always been. And once he had reinterred his past, all but the kit, a holographic shard revealing more of Murph than seemed possible, he returned to his study to finish the job. Muffled synthesized music trembled from Rudy’s room. He was working still on that damned opera. But such was adolescence, Murph supposed, all about obsession and the creation of tinkly epics never to be heard outside inner space. Besides, it kept Rudy off the streets, away from their wantonness and dangers. The kid, thank God, wouldn’t know Colt 45 from a Colt .45.

The product was spread out on the table. While it hadn’t exactly cost Murph his live savings — those were somewhat below zero, an ex-wife and a teenaged son would do that to you — it had substantially increased his debt load, the VU meter of his underamplified life. When he got together with his buddies for a drink or some herb, it always came back to that. What’s your debt load? How much of a burden are you? How big is your nut? It was the cost of living, in monthly instalments. Everybody had a plan. Moonie sold his truck but blew most of that in a Vegas chicken ranch. He came home, used the leftover money for a deposit on a new truck, and settled back into the faithful, forgiving arms of his debt load. Lloyd lucked out when his mother died. He got the family home, which he unwisely converted into a four-bedroom rancher in the valley, a nice little setup up for his girlfriend and her two brats. Now he’s amortized into oblivion. Dicky D did the best of all. He took out a second mortgage, then a third and was working on his banker to spring for the fourth. His plan was always the same: consolidate debt. But every time, the debt wound up consolidating him. Now Dicky hoped to die before he turned sixty-five, having no desire to endure sunset years of cat food suppers in a fixed-income flat.

Murph had already cut the coke into six smaller sections. He’d thought to weigh it, to make sure he’d got a whole kilo, although what would he do if it was light? It’s not like there was a complaints department he could go to. Things had changed, but not that much. Murph dabbed a bit of the product with his baby finger and stuck it into his mouth, swishing it around to test the bouquet, just like they did on cop shows. Real life cops never did that. Real life cops never knew if they were getting a finger full of up or down or potassium bromide or Draino. But Murph already knew that this was the real deal. He’d done a line with that kid with the limp, the wholesaler. Double U. Not that he’d really wanted to do a line, but he felt he should, to put the kid’s mind at ease. Murph was a fresh face in a business that didn’t like fresh faces, and an old fresh face at that. His brother had vouched for him — that helped — but it was possible he could have been a narc, a stupid, shitty narc, in the worst look-at-me-I’m-a-narc disguise any narc ever concocted, so he took a line for the cause. It was like he’d never left home. The taste (not sweet, not tart, nothing you could describe because there was nothing else you could accurately compare it to: almondy, barely, that’s the best he could do), the sugary burn in his sinuses, the up that came and went with a bang. Kaboom. He’d swore he’d never do it again, back when he’d given everything up and swore he’d never do anything again. But never is a long time, and defeat is often easier to swallow (or in this case inhale) than complete humiliation.

He hadn’t quite figured out what to do. His first thought was to process it, make crack. The wholesaler said that that would net him the biggest return; his brother concurred. He could move a point of crack for ten bucks, net five or six times his investment. The downside was that Murph had never made crack before, and he didn’t feel he had the wiggle room to fuck around with the product. Plus, he didn’t understand the market. Crack was after his time. Up he understood. He understood who used it and why. There was still a measure of respectability to it. Doctors did coke. Professional athletes. Bankers. Crack was something else, and crackheads moved in different (and, as far as Murph could make out, ever-diminishing) circles. It was the Kmart of the drug world, the bad name brand, the unwashed slut who went down on anyone and brought everyone down with her. He’d just cut it with soda and package it in Baggies. Simple. Understated. Hard to trace. A classic.

An electric rhythm kicked from Rudy’s room. Boom-cha, boom-boom ba-cha. The Klingon Opera was going to be the first ever acid-rap musical. Boom-cha, boom-boom ba-cha. It told the story of Kahless the Unforgettable, patriarch of the Klingon Kingdom, who, through a set of complicated and contrived circumstances, is forced to choose between the two Essential Truths: Honour and Duty. The libretto was com-plete. Rudy had read it to Murph over the Christmas holidays. Upside: mercifully short. Downside: Murph woefully untutored in conversational Klingon. Now there was just the music. Boom-cha, boom-boom ba-cha. Murph liked that rhythm. It was animal. Angry, in a sexy way, like a good fight, or the way a good fight used to be, years ago, the kind of fight that just happened, where someone’d just look at you wrong and you’d fall together and kick the shit out each other for five minutes, then both collapse at the same time and walk away without even saying a word, like some anonymous perfect macho fuck, and the buzz stayed with you for days; sexy in a fantastic way, a more-gorgeous-than-life sexy, like a beer commercial or Penthouse spread. Sometimes Murph would crawl into his bed as the rhythm thumped from Rudy’s room, just crawl into bed with a couple of good mags and pull himself off and take himself home listening to that rhythm — it was that kind of sexy. Murph wondered what kind of effect the music had on Rudy. Did it awake the animal in him? Was there an animal in him?

Murph measured out fifty Baggies in ten-, fifteen- and fifty- dollar sizes only. It was more cumbersome that way, but he’d have a level of protection. If the cops caught him — not that they would, but if they did — he’d only ever be carrying enough for himself, they couldn’t ding him for dealing. In high school, when he’d really been a dealer and not just some guy trying to make ends meet, he found it hurtfully hypocritical that a society which so worshipped capitalism, and the entrepreneurial spirit so deeply abhorred the dealer. True, dealers didn’t pay taxes (neither did IBM) and contributed, in the most theoretical terms, to general human suffering (so did Dupont and Ford and just about every corporation you could name), but dealers also brought pleasure and gratification to many willing, wilful people. Back then, he’d managed to convince himself that he was on a crusade to turn on the world. Now, he didn’t give a shite about the big picture. All he wanted to do was get out of the hole and not, repeat not, go to jail. Murph had an itch to try another line, bolster his nerve. But he just kept weighing and cutting, weighing and cutting, weighing and cutting. This was strictly business and would remain so. He had work to do.

. . .

Wilson turned the corner at full trot and crashed into the cans, just like on TV, and it hurt like shit, like it never did on TV, and it wasn’t funny in the least, like it always was on TV. He dropped his Glock. Wilson got up right away because the adrenaline was rushing and because he was spiritually, emotionally, intellectually and physically shitting his pants and mainly — mainly — because he didn’t, under any circumstances, want to die. Wilson was his real name, but nobody used it. They called him by his street tag, which right now seemed so stupid and pointless, and worse, so utterly unproductive, that he thought of himself only in terms of Wilson. In TV shows — and don’t get Wilson wrong, he liked TV shows, he’s not blaming TV shows for anything — but in TV shows, no one ever got scared shitless. They were shot at, shot back, chased and were chased, they swore, they threatened, they fought, but no one ever got scared shitless. Afterwards, they might say they were scared, but in a really emotional way that real scared people, people like Wilson, never used. Wilson was scared shitless, and his entire body, his soul, was scared shitless, and he shook and could barely breathe, and if he’d had to talk, say something colourful for the cameras, he wouldn’t have been able to say a word. The problem? The problem was simple. There might not be any afterwards. You’re always guaranteed an afterwards in a TV show when the drug deal goes bad, if you’re the right guy, the good guy. Wilson didn’t necessarily have an afterwards, and he knew it.

He ran down the alley, his knees shaking with every step, his bad leg holding him back, and came, just like in the TV shows, to a wire mesh fence, maybe nine feet tall. When this happened on TV, Wilson always thought, how fucking convenient. Right in the middle of nowhere, for no fucking point, someone had stuck a fence. That’s not contrived, he’d say to Cherry sarcastically. Now here he was, unpleasantly contrived. He jumped and grabbed the top of the fence (whether the sharp unshielded points of metal at the top of the fence dug into his fingers, like they sometimes did on TV, he couldn’t tell) and pulled himself up almost whimpering, almost ready to cry like a baby. People never cried like that in the TV shows. Maybe the bad guys or the wimpy guys, the comic relief. But guys like Wilson, the good guys, the anti-heroes, they never cried like that. Maybe if you killed a guy’s partner or raped and murdered his wife he’d cry. But then it was such a deep, rooted, tearless, gushing, snot-effusing cry — wrathful almost, foreboding. Not like this. Not whimpering. But Wilson couldn’t help it. It went with that feeling he had, growing in half-lives inside him. He wanted his mother. Wilson wanted to be with her right now. He wanted to be four years old and wrapped in her big arms and warm and protected and fucking loved so absolutely that nothing else mattered. He’d felt that way sometimes with Cherry, in a little way, tucked up beside her, his whats pressed up against her big ass, the two of them in tight as one. Now he wanted to feel the comfort again, in a big way. And so he cried, not just because he was scared — he was, shitless — but also because it was comforting, made him feel that if he kept it up, maybe those big arms would reach down from above and pick him up and hold him until it was all over.

Wilson slipped. What do you think of that, Cherry? The toe on his bad foot didn’t catch in the mesh and he slid two feet back to the ground. Pretty convenient, huh? He could have kept going, and he wanted to, he really did — he really didn’t want to die. But the gun was in the back of his head. It was so close he could smell it, he could taste it on his teeth, a steel popsicle. Colt Pocket Nine. (“How d’ya like my little dildo, mother-fucker? How ’bout I stick it right up your ass?”) Usually it wasn’t like this. It wasn’t this intimate. Usually it was anonymous. A shot in a bar. A drive-by. It happened like that because they were scared too, the shooters. Scared in a different way, but scared all the same. Wilson tried to look him in the eye — not move his head, mind you, but roll his eyes far enough to catch a piece in his peripherals. Homey’s got red hair. He didn’t know the kid’s name. Maybe he had once, but that was lost in the fog of fear and time. He knew his street tag, but what good was that? That was kid stuff, teenage bravado. This was something different. This was intimate. Man to man. He should at least know the fucking name. Homey’s got red hair. It was a stupid thing to think. Quite possibly the last stupid thing he would ever think.

Out of the filthy, starless sky, two enormous hands, beautiful hands, reached down to Wilson. At first the hands caressed him — he could still smell the soap on those hands, lavender soap, and a wisp of Pinesol — and then they lifted him, comforted him. And from deep inside his reptilian brain, the place, perhaps, where fear itself was born, a cry bored out like a tapeworm almost covering the sound of the gunshot.

“SoS!”

His accent was flawless. Perfect Klingon.

. . .

Murph called Starky to confirm the deal. They talked in code. Our friend has arrived from out of town, etc. It was stupid but had to be done. Starky was the perfect start. A doctor, discreet as all hell, who just liked some blow every now and again. His old score had gone up the river, literally, having retired inland to his private ranch. Business had been that good. Starky shot hoops with Murph, recreationally. They called him Doctor No, because he was always trying to nullify a good play with an after-the-fact penalty call: “Sorry, no, that was travelling”; “Sorry, no, that was goaltending.” No one really liked him, which made it even better. It was hard to sell to someone you really liked.

Starky was Murph’s anchor tenant. He wanted a lot of product to squirrel away. Starky hated dealing with dealers (Murph hated to think of himself in such reductionist terms, but there it was) and wanted one big score to minimize contact. The plan was that Murph would make several small deliveries over the course of two days, to reduce the risk to everyone concerned. That was Russell’s idea too. He’d been in the game since forever and never been dinged. That’s not so remarkable when you think about it. Like anything — traffic violations, shop-lifting, murder — the cops only caught the tip of iceberg, and in fact, when it came to the product, they really only seemed to care about nailing the crackheads, black kids, mostly, who hung out downtown. It wasn’t just racism at work, but, as Russell explained, it was a matter of self-preservation. First of all, the crackheads (Murph loved the term, it sounded so dumb, like something middle-aged women would say to make themselves sound cool) all carried guns. Every one of them. That made the cops nervous. Second, crackheads don’t give a shit about anybody but themselves or about anything but their next hit. They’d kill their best friend to help them fuel up again, so cops — cops were nothing. It was the nature of the beast, Russell said. That was something Murph understood. The focus. The single-minded purpose. The beast. The addiction.

Boom-cha, boom-boom ba-cha.

. . .

What precipitated the downfall Kahless the Unforgettable?

Some say it was hubris, an excessive reaching. Not content with unifying the Klingon peoples, he strove to lead them. Not content with leading them, he strove to rule them. Not content with rule, he strove to conquer. It was his discontent, his lack of respect for Order, that brought him down.

Others believe that agents of Morath were at work, sowing the seeds of revolt. The Empire was still in its infancy, and many local warlords and chieftains were ripe for rebellion. In this context, Kahless’s death could be viewed as a sacrifice, and ultimately, as the singular event that consolidated and confirmed the Klingon Empire. He needed to be dead, because only in death could he attain mythical stature. And that’s what the Klingon Empire needed more than anything, a mythology upon which it could hang its politics. The living could subjugate and contrive: only the dead could unify.

Still others take a more romantic perspective. Kahless abdicated for love. While there is no direct reference to this in the formal canon, there are hints throughout the literature. Among historians, it is one of the most vigorous areas of research, hypothesis and speculation.

Regardless, Kahless the Unforgettable found himself by the Cleft of HurghtaHghach, faced with a simple but impossible choice: on the one side Honour, on the other Duty. He had to jump, but which way, and why, ­he could not say.

Moonie was at the door. He came in without being asked and sat at the kitchen table, silently waiting for some coffee. He had a great idea, he said. A money-maker.

“This one’s a sure thing — hear me out.”

Then there was a big long build-up about how everybody, the lucky ones at least, got old someday, and what with the baby boom and all, more and more people would grow old each and every year. “The trick is, the question is, how can we profit from this demographic phenomenon?”

“If the answer has anything to do with sponge baths or enemas, count me out.”

“Let me put it to you another way, Murph. There’s four things everybody’s got to do, no matter how old they are, right? They got to breathe, they got to pay taxes, they got to shit, and they got to eat. Well, I can’t help ’em with the first three, but I got a great idea about the fourth.” Moonie paused for full dramatic effect. “Home cooked meals. Delivered right to the door.”

“Don’t they already do that?”

“Don’t who already do what?”

“Meals on Wheels. They cook dinner for old people, deliver it right to their doors. Dirt cheap, too.”

“I’m not talking soup and a sandwich here. I’m talking a real meal, meat and potatoes, gourmet stuff. But reasonably priced. You got to keep the price reasonable. That’s the whole key.”

Murph shut up and let his friend talk. He must have been getting restless again. Every four or five months Moonie’d lift himself out of his funk by getting excited about some new scheme or another. Last year it had been real estate, he’d even taken the test for his license; before that, it had been home cleaning products.

“The biggest problem, as far as I can see, is start-up money. We’d need a couple trucks, of course, and a professional kitchen. We could run a store front operation too, you know, retail the food to take-out customers up front, and move out the deliveries from the —”

Moonie was dead in the water. Murph had never noticed before, but now he saw it clearly. Moonie had given up, completely surrendered. Somewhere between high school and death he’d taken the wrong turn, and defeat had piled up like an eternal snow. The snow was up against the door, and Moonie couldn’t get out. That made Murph even more anxious to get to work. Addiction — addiction, he could understand. It was two notches up from defeat, so at least it was somewhere. Moonie was snowed under, he was frozen solid. His little schemes were just phantom limbs, invisibly twitching and jerking, the remnants of Moonie’s amputated ambition. He got stuck looking at the hole, the bad decisions and hard luck that had left him ever on the edge of financial ruin. That was the last thing you wanted to do. You could itemize the mistakes you made — the bad marriage, career choices — but that wouldn’t change a thing. You couldn’t look at the hole. You had to look for a way out. Murph, he had a plan. It had its risks, in fact risk was at the heart of it, but risk also gave it a tremendous upside. He’d maxed everything, every credit card, every overdraft, his mortgage — everything — to get himself as liquid as possible. It wasn’t much, $35 k and change, but with the right investment, the right product, he knew it could roll into something better. He wasn’t greedy. He needed $90 k to clear his debts and cover interest, and what with the product he had — it was good shit, real good shit — that was totally doable. And then? He’d be back at square one. It wasn’t great, but it was a hell of a lot better than where he was right now, too rich to walk away, too poor to file for protection.

He wasn’t complaining. Murph knew he had no one to blame but himself. First, there’d been the marriage. It started poorly, with Marg knocked up and all that, and ended badly, with Marg hiding in a woman’s shelter and the house breathing a sigh of relief. Another good love gone bad. Second — second he could sum up in two words: business machines. Faxes. Copiers. Computers. For a while there, you could say he was addicted to them, not in the key-lock way he’d been addicted to blow after high school, but addicted emotionally, like, say, the difference between lust and infatuation. Business machines weren’t really the objects of his addiction, but the subjects, the representation of promises never quite fulfilled. See, he’d dropped out of college, then hung around for a while before cleaning himself up (he did it for the baby, he did it for himself). And then business machines just sort of fell into his lap. They gave him prestige and a territory, but Murph quickly maxed out on both of those and slid into the Great Recession, where his returns diminished even further. By the time all the smart money was moving out of the corporal (hardware) and into the cerebral (software, dot-coms, IPOs), Murph had gone from being a player — a young guy going places in Eastern Standard Business Machines — to a blocker, an old guy who’d reached his limited potential and was now just standing in everyone’s way. And so he pushed harder, tying to move more product, and even started carrying other things, small stuff (staplers, postage meters, calculators) to push his margin, and in the process, found himself in hock up to his asshole. Which is precisely the moment Marg decided to walk, with neither a bang nor a whimper, just a handful of unsubstantiated accusations (even the counsellor at the sheltered conceded that) and an overriding need to hate her ex-husband for the rest of her natural life. Murph went liquid, bought her out of everything, and that was that.

Murph made his way back up the stairs. Moonie hadn’t gone anywhere fast, and now time was getting tight. Murph’d promised to meet Starky at four-thirty. That left him less than an hour to finish scaling and packaging and get his ass to the mall uptown. Boom-cha, boom-boom ba-cha. The damned opera. Murphy knocked but got no reply, then knocked again, then just walked in. Rudy grunted some abuse and tried to cover the computer screen with one hand as the other scrambled for the delete. Murph had seen enough to get the gist. A Klingon woman, naked save for her helmet, sprawled on a rock as a Klingon warrior, hung and hard, prepared to ravish her.

“Are you just going to sit in your room all day?”

“I’m working on my opera.”

“Well, I could use a little help around the house. It’s a pigsty. Maybe you could mow the lawn or —”

“Don’t I get any privacy?”

“We’re not talking about privacy —”

“You didn’t even knock.”

Murph shut up. He could see where this was going. Nowhere.

“Look. I just need a little help around here, that’s all. I’m not going to bark orders at you all day long. I’d just appreciate a little help.”

Murph backed out of the room, shutting the door as he left.

Rudy uttered some words in Klingon (Vav qatlh ghaj SoH lonta’ jIH) and went back to work.

. . .

Cherry had just put Baby down. Baby was a good sleeper, a sound sleeper. You could put her to bed at seven, sing her a little song or two, stroke her head, and she’d go down like a garage door. She’d stay down too. Twelve hours, no problem. The other mothers talked. Their kids would be up four or five times a night, crying and nursing and needing their little nappies done. But not Baby. Shut her eyes and that was it. She was down. Just like her father.

Cherry made herself a sandwich from the steak that was left over in the fridge. There was a little wine left too, so she finished that off. She tried not to think of the pipe in the bedroom. It was right there in the dresser, bottom left-hand drawer. She’d always thought of finding a better hiding spot, but when she got right down to it, she couldn’t be bothered. If they were going to get you, they were going to get you. It was easier to keep it in the same spot. That way she wouldn’t forget where she’d put it, which could be tricky. She watched a show or two on TV, then phoned her mother. They talked about Baby. “Are you sure she’s getting enough to eat?” her mother asked. She always asked the same question. After that, she went back into Baby’s room and just looked at her, just watched her sleep for five or six minutes. Baby was so precious when she slept. Cherry went to the crib. She stroked Baby’s cheek. If only they stayed babies forever. If she could give her daughter one thing, it would be that: babyhood, forever. Cherry went into the bedroom and got her pipe. She only had a couple of rocks left and smoked them both. Then she was up for hours. It was two or three in the morning when she finally fell asleep. She had the strangest dream. She was some kind of princess, standing on the crest of a hill. A sea of warriors approached from behind, screaming and waving their swords. Princess Cherry pitched herself into the darkness but woke before she hit the ground. It was morning already, and Baby was crying. Baby was crying and Wilson wasn’t home.

. . .

Russell had one piece of advice: don’t think you’re better than it. The it he’d left open. He could have been talking about the product, which made sense. You had to respect the product — Murph learned that the hard way, years ago — because the product was the undisputed heavyweight champion. Lots of guys figured that the product could never beat them, that they were on top of it. They were the first to go down.

Russell might also have been talking about the game itself, and again, while it wasn’t earth-shattering advice, it was a welcome reminder. Don’t ever underestimate the cops; don’t trust anyone, not your supplier, not your client, not your best friend, not your kid, not your dog; and, most important, keep your big mouth shut. Chances are you wouldn’t go down, but if you didn’t respect the game — if you thought you were too smart or too fast or too lucky or too much above it all — you were inviting trouble. Then again, Russell might have been talking about the customers, which was bang on too. Whether it was cocaine or copiers, you had to have a healthy respect for the enemy. It was a buyers’ market (outside of love and sex, Murph figured everything was a buyers’ market), and you had to work for every sale. Of course, there was one more possibility Murph barely considered. Maybe it was everything. The house, the kid, the failures, the small success, the debt, life — everything. Don’t think you’re better than it. That was the kind of thing Russell would say.

Murph brushed the soft powder from his chest. He’d been in such a hurry to leave the house, he’d spilled half a kilo down the front of his shirt and pants and onto the black tile floor. He didn’t have time to change. He grabbed his coat. It was an expensive mess, but he’d have to deal with it when he got back. The irony was that Starky was late. And not just late, Murph was sitting on his thumbs in the mall for an hour and a half. He had a coffee, then a latte, then a bowl of soup, then another coffee. He finished with pie. Lemon meringue pie, just like Mom used to make.

Starky rushed in with an air of urgency and sat down without apology. They chatted for a few minutes, small talk about people they knew. Basketball. Then Murph took the book out of his briefcase — Gray’s Anatomy, a nice touch. He’d burrowed a hole in the pages, making a safe little nest for the coke. Starky looked it over once, than quickly handed it back.

“Look, Sticks”— Stark always called Murph Sticks, he had his own nickname for everyone — “Look, Sticks, I don’t want it.”

“What?”

“I changed my mind. There’s just too much heat right now. My wife”— here the doctor lowered his voice — “my wife’s not acting herself these days. I think she’s fucking around. Can you believe that? Fifteen years of . . .” Starky searched for but could not find the right words to describe his marriage.

“It’s going like mad, Starks. I can’t guarantee I’ll have anything left by the end of the week.”

“I can’t take the chance. You know, I caught her going through my office yesterday. She’s looking for something she can hold over my head —”

“Cost, Starker. I’ll give it to you at cost, because you’re a friend. I want to move it, that’s all. I’m trying to make room for new inventory.”

Starky stood up. No. Sorry.

“Tuesday night, Sticks. Shoot some hoops, okay? You gonna be there, Sticks? You gonna shoot some hoops?”

. . .

Rudy liked Duke. They’d gone to a Duke game once, maybe five years ago, back when Murph was still clinging to the diminishing dream of his son one day playing pro hoops. Rudy had the time of his life. Murph took the kid to the locker room afterwards (he was friends with a friend of the trainer), and all the guys had come over and said hello and signed a hat for him. Rudy wore that Duke hat every day for two years, until it was finally nothing but a band of tattered cloth and plastic, stapled together.

Maybe he’d get Rudy a Duke hat. Notre Dame was on sale. He asked for the sale price on the Duke hat. The store owner said no. He’d got a deal on the Notre Dame hats. The Duke hats were cost plus as it was. He couldn’t give Murph a break. He’d like to, but he couldn’t.

Murph cut through the park on the way back to his car. He’d still wanted to get something for Rudy, something for Rudy to remember. They hadn’t had many memories lately. He thought of Baby’s First Book and all the things it missed and all the things he’d never know about his son. His first kiss. His first orgasm. His first screw. His first disappointment. His first betrayal. His first bad trip. His first crime. His first good love gone bad. Everything. It.

Murph passed a couple of teenagers, lurking in the shadows by the monkey bars. He could tell one was holding, he knew the look, he’d worn the look himself; maybe he was wearing it now.

“OH vam QaQ shit?” the one kid asked.

The young dealer closed his eyes and nodded emphatically. “HIja’, ioD, vam shit ‘oH QaQ . . .”

. . .

The Klingon concept of Honour is tremendously complex. Unlike contemporary Western culture, which renders every complicated idea into an abstraction (honour, love, valour, truth, peace), Klingons leave nothing up to interpretation. Their Code of Honour, the paq vo’ quv, runs some twenty-five thousand pages and is constantly being expanded and reinterpreted by the Klingon High Council. In fact, like Earth’s Eskimos, who have some fifty words to cover every nuance and grade of the concept snow, Klingons have some eight hundred and sixty degrees (counting changes in inflection and dialect quirks) of honour. There is the honour of a warrior in his first battle (“quv lak”), which varies greatly from the honour of a warrior in his last battle (“quV LuZ”). There is the honour a Klingon woman shows her living mate (for example, “qUUv lOn,” although this can vary depending on the mate’s standing within in the community), which should not be confused with the honour she shows her deceased mate (which, again, varies greatly depending on the manner in which her mate died). Surprisingly too, for such a essentially conservative culture, there is the honour of a divorced woman, which ranges from the lowest order, “quvV tU,” for the woman who quietly acquiesces as her mate takes another lover, to “quv tulG,” reserved only for those great women who kill their mates in a highly choreographed and physically demanding divorce ritual. This honour code is a highly fluid system, with built-in safeguards that allow it to adapt to changing cultural demands. Only one kind of honour has remained consistent throughout the ages: “QuV SoS,” the honour of a child for its mother.

The concept of duty is less entrenched in the Klingon system, having been introduced only at the end of the second millennium. Still, the pac vo’ kA includes more than four hundred entries, delineating what amounts to a state-sanctioned caste system. A careful reading of the pac vo’qua (High Counsellors specializing in this branch of Code must be logicians of the highest order) clearly delineates the duty any one individual within the Klingon Empire bears to any other individual. In fact, over time, as the Klingon culture has become more entrenched and therefore, by necessity, more hierarchical and more political, Duty, in practical, pragmatic terms, has risen to the level of, and in some senses supersedes, Honour. Honour still holds the greatest symbolic power for Klingons, but it is Duty that, as the counsellors like to say, gets the job done.

This is the subtext of Kahless’s dilemma. It is a question less of choosing between two abstract and equal concepts (and all abstractions, like all men, are created equal) than of selecting the course for one’s life, or rather, the course for one’s legacy. To the left, Kahless faces quv, the sacred tradition of his peoples that gives meaning to ka. To the right lies ka, the profane system through which quv is sustained. One is eternal and decadent, the other perverse and sustaining. But Kahless, as the legends tell us, chose neither left nor right. He dove into the middle of the abyss. He is falling still and shall continue to fall without end. That is his legacy. In the shadow of his greatness, that is his tragedy.

. . .

Moonie was still talking about food. At first Murph had thought the talking was cathartic. But now it seemed the opposite, whatever that was.

“The drivers themselves should be chefs, that’s part of the key, I think. Who wants to see some pimple-face snot delivering a wet bag of food? That’s what most of those other fast places do, have pimple-faced snots deliver the food. It’s always cold. The bag is always wet.”

“Uh huh.”

“But our drivers will be professionals. They’ll be professional drivers and professional chefs. We’ll even get those chefs’ costumes and little white hats. In fact, maybe we can save ourselves a bundle and just buy the outfits. That way, we don’t have to pay real chefs. We can just hire drivers who look like chefs. But professional drivers. And no snotty-faced kids. I hate that, when they come to the door with cold food.”

“And the bag all wet?”

“Exactly. I hate that.”

Murph had picked up Moonie on the way back from the mall. Quite frankly, Moonie had been getting on his nerves lately. But also, quite frankly, Murph didn’t want to be alone. In the back of his mind he half thought that he could unload some of the product on Moonie. But who was he kidding? Even if Moonie took it he’d have to take it on credit, and in that case, he might as well just give it away.

“Maybe we could hire girls. Seventeen, eighteen. That’d be even cheaper. And instead of chef suits, they could wear those little French maid outfits.”

“French maids?”

“Yeah.”

“And not chefs?”

“Yeah.”

“Isn’t that somewhat incongruous?”

“Yeah. Exactly. It’s funny.”

A moment of silence. Murph figured Moonie was mentally undressing one of his French maids.

“You ever made a stupid decision, Moonie, fucked up real bad? You know, gotten yourself into something that looked simple enough on the outside, but once you’re inside, you found yourself . . .”

Moonie waited for him to finish.

“Found myself?”

“Stuck.”

“Stuck?”

“Stuck.”

Moonie tuned the radio on. Coltrane checked in from 1956.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Murph shook his head.

“Jesus, man. You need a holiday. You and Rudy, go someplace nice. Get yourselves a plane ticket, and go someplace nice.”

. . .

Baseball. Crackers. Pearl. Lady. Bush. Candy. Da Bomba knew every word. Hotcakes. Raw. Scotty. Scramble. He even had his own words, he’d teach them to his bitches. Glo. Like “glow” but no “w.” Glo was candy. Or jizz. That was rock. Glamour Pussy, that was a girl who’d go down on you for some jizz, not to be confused with a smoker, a chick who’d suck you off for some jizz. He called a pipe a bracket, no one knew why, that’s just the word he used and he liked it. He called customers gooks, he called suppliers fairies, he called his posse his bitches. They didn’t like it, but what could they do? Da Bomba had a word for everything. He told his bitches how he’d fixed that gook with his dildo, the gook what owed him the grass (which is what Da Bomba called money), and how the gook had shit himself and cried like a baby, and his bitches laughed until they almost shit themselves. Da Bomba, he was one crazy mother-fucker. He was all fucked up. He was only sixteen, and already the police were afraid of him. Shit, his own momma was scared of that crazy red-haired motherfucker Da Bomba. And that night when Da Bomba got home, he cried. He cried and he cried and he cried. His momma came into his room and held him in her big warm arms. She just held while he cried and cried and cried. He didn’t want to die. He didn’t want to die and go to hell. She was the only one who knew how scared he was. Da Bomba, that crazy motherfucker, he was scared shitless.

. . .

Murph knew the drill. He’d seen the cherries flashing a quarter mile back. He almost crapped himself. He nudged the wrinkled Barnes and Noble bag closer to Moonie, not entirely sure that, if push came to shove, he wouldn’t let Moonie take the fall. He checked his speed, but he was in the limit. It crossed his mind that maybe Dr. No had ratted him out. Maybe the whole thing had been a setup. Maybe Starky was wearing a wire and recorded their conversation. It’s possible he was already in deep with the cops and rolled over to protect his own ass. He was just that kind of self-centred son-of-a-bitch.

“What’s the matter, officer? Was I going too fast?” Murph unconsciously wiped his shirt as he spoke. The officer didn’t respond. He asked Murph for his driver’s license and registration. The cop took the papers back to the hog and called them in. Murph slid the bag forward and tried to kick it under the seat. He was careful. Cops were always on the lookout for suspicious movement. For a moment, Murph thought of flooring it. He could easily put a quarter mile between the cop and himself, then ditch the book out the window. It was a question of the lesser of two evils.

The cop returned to the car. Murph thought he looked funny in his little costume, his puffy motorcycle pants and high boots, the white plastic ovum that covered his head, the empty shades meant to convey dispassion, to strike fear into the heart. This was make believe for children. It was not how police should dress in this day and age.

The cop handed Murph his papers.

“Thank you, Mr. Murphy. You have a nice day, y’hear.”

. . .

Peter Murphy returned home. Peter Murphy parked the car. Peter Murphy did not know what to do next. Dr. Starky had knocked the wind out of Peter Murphy’s sails. The cop had taken the wind out of Peter Murphy’s sails. Rudolph Murphy stood on the steps waiting for Peter Murphy to come up to the house.

“Hello, Father,” Rudolph Murphy said. His tone was unusually expressive.

“Finished your opera, then?” Peter Murphy asked, shifting the Barnes and Noble bag from one hand to the other.

“No, Father. In fact, I scrapped the opera altogether. The libretto was forced, the overture likewise. Parts of the first movement are salvageable, I think. But the rest is gack.”

“Perhaps you’re being too hard on yourself, son,” Peter Murphy said. He thought that maybe he could have been more supportive. Peter Murphy patted his son on the head, then entered his house. Peter Murphy was tired. Frank Montgomery had said as much when Peter Murphy dropped him off minutes earlier.

Rudolph Murphy smiled. It wasn’t enough to write about Klingons, he thought. The highest good, the greatest glory lay in becoming Klingon. Right now his father would be passing through the kitchen. He’d notice the counters were cleaned and uncluttered. Jars and boxes had been put away in the pantry like his father had asked he didn’t know how many times. Those crumbs that seemed to breed like Tribbles by the toaster. Eradicated. Swept into the sink abyss. Rudolph Murphy was enlightened. He felt, for the first time, that he understood the nature of the Kahless dilemma.

Now, his father, Peter Murphy, would be ascending the stairs. Towels and clean shirts were removed carefully, properly folded and hung. Next he’d come to the bedroom. Rudolph Murphy had deliberately left the door open. It was a sign of welcome, a sign of submission, not the dispirited surrender of the broken, but the humble submission of the strong. An exercise in Duty. Rudolph’s bed was neatly made, his father would see that now, and the sea of dirty clothes was packed away in the proper receptacle. Books and CDs neatly stacked, arranged alphabetically by genre; carpet, precisely vacuumed. One could eat off that floor. He wondered if his father would understand. All this time, Rudolph had tried to approach things from the outside. A dispassionate observer, shielding his weakness through the pretence of art. But now he understood.

It had come to him as he laboured over the ending. He wanted to understand Kahless the Unforgettable, he wanted to uncover the wisdom where others found only folly. And that’s when it struck like a blow from Gowran’s ’etlh: Duty and Honour were not exclusive. Kahless had chosen to merge the two, had chosen to accept the uncertainty of the void over the certainty, and servitude, of Essential Truth. At that point, Rudolph Murphy understood: he must jump too. He must pitch himself into the darkness, openly, happily, joyously. That was the essence of Klingon — quv’ka, united as one.

Quv lIj vav — honour thy father, that was it. Honour and Duty, perfectly expressed.

By now his father would have moved through his own bedroom and found it respectfully cleaned, bed made, shoes lined up neatly, clothes hung neatly, respectfully. The floor vacuumed spotless. It was funny; Rudolph Murphy had discovered an unexpected joy in carrying out these menial duties, slipping seamlessly from life as object (someone who is done for) to life as subject (someone who does) — quv’ka instantly internalized. He felt strong.

And now his father would be moving into the den, plants watered, magazines unscattered and alphabetically arranged, videos likewise, tile floor carefully swept and scrubbed (his father, Peter Murphy, seemed to be growing more careless these days). It was spotless now, one could eat off that floor.

Rudolph Murphy wasn’t sure what he’d expected, but Peter Murphy’s reaction was a complete and unanticipated delight. It started low, so low that Rudolph Murphy wasn’t sure it was a sound at all. It could have been the earth shifting or the sound of the sun as it inched across the sky. But then it grew louder, a bass, constricted howl that rose now like a powerful wind. It was his father calling to him in the language of a warrior, an unspoken and unspeakable recognition. The sound wrapped around Rudolph Murphy, it lifted him up and held him, comforting him. The sound was so beautiful it was almost harrowing. Rudolph Murphy could imagine the tears of joy raining down his father’s, Peter Murphy’s, face, standing in his room, cleansed, as it were, the floor, swept clean, even the walls scrubbed. Rudolph Murphy thought of the tears, the powerful tears, and imagined that if those tears could speak they’d say: Today my son is a man. No, better than a man. Today, my son is Klingon.