Late afternoon. Graveyard and Ambience hadn’t been out of bed all day but for periodic bathroom breaks and to snag the latest delivery from ExcessExpress, today’s indulgence consisting of one magnum of WalleyedMonks Champagne 1912 (Shipwrecked Edition); a baronial-size tin of Don’tAsk blue caviar especiale from the clean northern shores of the Spritzer Sea; and an executive platter of dragon-scale nachos topped with melted cave-aged auroch cheese, a generous shaving of the exceptionally rare white virgin trifola, and a healthy pinch of hand-coddled, lip-kissed epaulet red pepper flakes. What the hell. They were rich.
“Pleasant heat,” said Ambience. “A gentle, lingering burn.”
“Yes, and coupled with a deep, distinct note of briny dankness, the dish somehow, in spite of itself, manages to achieve a memorably piquant flavor profile. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“A fine, complex finish. So unexpected. And in a delivery no less.”
“You’re forgetting, my olive, the size of the check. We could have the entire Twelve Feasts of the Wandering Gourmand trekked to our door along with Chef Bandanna himself to personally oversee it, long as we got the proper bills to pay the man.”
“And have we got the bills,” said Ambience. She fluttered a fan of happy paper under Graveyard’s nose. “Smell it,” she said. “Smell the bacon.” She liked holding the money. She liked touching the money.
“Let’s just dump the rest of the caviar on top of this mess and be done with it,” said Graveyard, eyeing the sloppy remains of their Boardroom Refection.
“You’re not supposed to do that.”
“Do what?”
“Mix fish and cheese.”
“Says who?”
“I don’t know. The fish and cheese people.”
“Oh, really? Well, here is my considered culinary opinion.” He dumped the caviar. They dug in.
“Interesting combo,” said Graveyard, chewing thoughtfully.
“Ocean cheese berries on a scale chip,” said Ambience. “Loving it.”
They licked the goo off their fingers. They licked each other’s fingers. Then they found other places to lick. Then it was all limbs and lips.
“Who’da thunk?” said Ambience, pausing to suck the last fish egg out of Graveyard’s navel. “That a few little nachos could be so…so inspirational?”
“Well, these ain’t exactly your typical belly-bomb variety,” said Graveyard. “Shift your ass a little to the right.”
She did. “Mmmmm,” said Ambience. “Mmmmm.”
“What you said,” said Graveyard.
When they finally managed to pry themselves apart, Ambience found herself actually panting. And she hadn’t panted since, well—ever.
“That was cosmic,” said Graveyard.
“What the f?” she said. She looked pretty blown out. “Why haven’t we ever been told? Why hasn’t anyone ever been told? Our lives have been one huge fraudulent joke. It’s an inexcusable crime to have lived this long stumbling about in this much ignorance.”
“Trade secrets of the rich and famous. God forbid the great unwashed should learn to steal even a moment’s genuine satisfaction from the conditions of servitude prevailing on this planet. We might get ideas.”
“Any of that Walleye left?”
Graveyard leaned out of bed, lifted the magnum up off the floor, raised it into the declining light. “About an inch.”
“Gimme.”
She drained the bottle in one noisy gulp.
The sex dust temporarily settled, Ambience turned to Graveyard and said, “Forgot to tell you, I gave ButterRoll a fifty-dollar tip the other day.”
“Fifty? For what?”
“For nothing. I just felt like it.”
“He give you a free lighter?”
“Of course.”
“That must have cost him all of a dime.”
“C’mon, Grave, be nice. Who else was willing to carry us through our numerous financial embarrassments? He gave us credit when no one else would.”
“Always wondered what his problem was.”
“Remember the days of stale crackers and tasteless noodle soup? Remember those? He saved our starving asses often enough. Who can forget that famous devil’s-behind curry of his or whatever it was?”
“And those hard little green pellets of no recognizable food group.”
“You gobbled ’em up quick enough.”
“Never met a cuisine I didn’t like.”
“Grave, honey, why don’t you be a dear and wander out to the kitchen and get me what’s left of that box of Cherubim in the refrigerator?”
“More chocolate? How much of that stuff can you scarf down in a week?”
“Girl’s gotta get her ganache. And post-fuck is one of the most recommended times for your daily dose. All the finest sex-diet experts agree.”
“Next item on the agenda: a maid.”
“If we had a maid, we couldn’t run around naked anymore.”
“Who said she had to be dressed?”
“Go.”
“Save my place.” He got up out of bed and headed toward the door. She liked watching his bare ass ambling provocatively out of the room. Made her blood feel like champagne. At least for this moment, right now. In their new, resurrected life they rarely bothered much with clothes anymore. They were in an almost constant state of quiet combustion, and at home, total nudity just seemed so much more, well, handy.
As soon as Graveyard was safely gone, NippersPumpkinClaws crawled out from under the bed and hopped up on top of it. He crept up to Ambience. He rubbed against her thigh. He began to purr. He had a loud purrer.
“Been missing our little talks, haven’t you?” she said. She stroked his furry head. She stroked his neck, the underside of his chin. She’d been so busy lately, shopping, partying, and fucking, that her quiet times with the Nips had dwindled down to maybe once a week. In her B.C. (Before Cash) period, Ambience had conferred almost daily with her little buddy about various psychological aches and spiritual pains. By now Nippers knew all her secrets. He knew about the failed boyfriends, the fake girlfriends, the whole phony life. He knew about the cheating on the Numbers and Things final at Pantaloon University and the backpacking fiasco in South Agenda and the breakup by text with SafetyCap, which she had never really gotten over, and what she did after her father died. And no one knew that.
“Sorry,” she said. “Got nothing for you today.” Nippers looked at her, that green freakishly unblinking dead stare that said, “I see you. I see you all the way through.” Which was why the people she knew who hated cats hated cats. When they chose to look at you, there was nowhere to hide. Suddenly Nippers stiffened, eyes locked on the open doorway. In an instant he was off the bed and back under it.
Graveyard was already talking before he entered the room. “What’s all this crap from this Flinders and Poach outfit?” he said, shuffling through a handful of mail. “Flinders and Poach. That don’t sound good. That sounds like lawyers.”
“They want to speak with you about some sort of legal issue.”
“I don’t have any legal issues. Do I want to open any of these and actually read them?”
“Probably not.”
“That’s what I thought.” He tossed the envelopes into the wastepaper basket next to the door.
“I’m betting that’s not a particularly good idea.”
“Got a better one?”
“Aren’t you even a tad curious to see what Filbert and Peaches want?”
“What do you think they want? What all lawyers want: money.”
“Then why not call ’em before they, uh, elevate their inquiries?”
“Bad idea.”
“Dealing with members of the legal profession is not necessarily always a negative.”
“If it’s anything truly important, they obviously know where to find me. And if they’re looking for dough, why, I am merely a down-on-his-luck seeker who’s got a couple hundred in the bank, a couple twenties in his pocket, and a head bursting with hope, okay? End of story.”
“Guess that’s my story, too.”
“Word to the wise. And by the way, meant to ask, but have you happened to notice lately anything strikingly peculiar about the contents of our goody bag?”
“No denominations below a hundred?”
“How much do you think we’ve spent already?”
“Couldn’t begin to say.”
“To the nearest thousand.”
“Well, there’s all the dinners and the clubs. The clothes, the jewelry, the shoes.”
“The alcohol. The drugs.”
“The TV. The car, of course. A couple of ridiculously overpriced guns. I don’t know. Fifty grand?”
“Hah. The car was more than that.”
“You’re kidding.”
“One does not cruise the highways and byways of our great nation in HomoDebonaire style and comfort without shelling out a modest ransom for the privilege. No, my estimate would be easily quadruple that.”
“Goes fast, doesn’t it?”
“Maybe for the ordinaries, but you forget, we’re exceptionals now. We live in the world of wonder. No matter how much we spend, our bag is always full.”
“How can you be so certain? You never really counted it to begin with.”
“This is an eyeball estimate.”
“Well, don’t obsess over it. If you question the power of the magic bag, all the money in it will disappear, and then everything you bought with the money will disappear, too.”
“And where did you come up with that fun fact?”
“It’s common knowledge.”
“Yeah? Among whom?”
“Mystics and investment bankers. We discussed this in my book club when we read Fairies and Finances. Unexpected gifts from leprechauns, old crones, and talking animals always come with these weird conditions no one seems able to keep.”
“What about manna from heaven?”
“There’s a separate chapter on that.”
“So they lose everything.”
“Naturally. Every copper, silver coin, and golden nugget. But ultimately, of course, they’re better off for it.”
“How come?”
“They’ve learned to be happy and humble without being burdened by all that vile wealth.”
“Yeah? Well I’ve got another hearthside homily for you.”
“What’s that?”
“Happiness can’t buy you money.”
That night, Ambience lying asleep in bed next to him, snoring, not snoring, whatever the hell she was doing, Graveyard, still awake at 4:47 in the a.m., stared up at the ceiling, watching the reflections of traffic passing nonsensically in reverse above him. Something about the confounding mysteries of light and physics he had absolutely no understanding of whatsoever. He couldn’t sleep. He didn’t know why. He tried to think of something he didn’t have that he wanted to buy. No dice. At the moment the Want tray was curiously empty. What to do? Well, a change of scenery might be nice. Unfortunately, Graveyard hated traveling. He hated riding for long periods in cars, buses, trains, and planes. He hated schedules and timetables. He hated hotel rooms. But he did like being in different places, though. He liked seeing stuff he hadn’t seen before. He liked buying stuff he hadn’t bought before, too. And he liked meeting odd people in odd clothes. He liked being surrounded by languages he didn’t understand. He guessed what he really wanted was to be an absurd tourist for a while.
“All in,” said Ambience, after he told her of his plan when they got up later in the p.m. of the following day. (Who but miserable keyboard zombies ever rolled out of the sack before noon?) “Which one?”
“Which one what?”
“Which country?”
“I don’t know. Someplace impossible. Colorful and far away and hideously expensive. With purple mountains and moldy museums, primo beaches and pretentious food and tiny taxis. Pastry and attitude. Gotta get me some.”
“Plenty of candidates to choose from.”
“And it’s gotta be old. Really old and antiquey. I want to walk around on tons of old dirt.”
“How about Quasiland? Remember? It’s where BackDoorSlider and FacetCut got married last year in that big haunted castle and no one worth less than ten mil was allowed on the invite list. In fact, double-digit millionaires were the rabble at that wedding.”
“Didn’t TwoForOne get arrested for donkey-punching the best man at the rehearsal dinner?”
“Yeah. And the happy bride had a herpes sore on her upper lip that her high-end makeup job couldn’t quite conceal, so no one wanted to kiss her. And afterward they had two receptions: one regular and then later one all nude for the numerous freaks in attendance.”
“Yeah, we saw that special together. The Funning in the Dungeon. Think they had that blowout in the winter, though. Probably too uncomfortably hot to go there now.”
“PortPenny?”
“Two words: Doldrum’s disease.”
“Waa!BooHoo?”
“Well, the capital’s supposed to be secure. For the moment, at least. Civil wars, though, they’re so dicey. Probably we should only consider visiting places where the locals aren’t tossing too many wild bullets at one another.”
“That narrows it down somewhat.”
“Temperate climate, contented populace, a minimum of loaded weaponry.”
“Bullionvilla,” said Ambience.
“Perfect.”
“It’s old.”
“It’s artsy-fartsy.”
“Its architecture looks edible.”
“It’s flush-friendly.”
“It’s safe.”
“Then in order to make this an official madcap getaway, I think we should probably leave, like, right now. Sky on outta here on a red-eye, get there in time for a fabulous continental breakfast at the fabulous Treasured Paw.”
“The one on that show we watched the other night? The oldest surviving restaurant in the world?”
“Our pearl.”
“Book it,” she said.
Ambience retrieved her phone from under the bed and called FurryFarm to book an open-ended boarding reservation for Nippers. Who knew how long they’d be gone? Graveyard put a pair of locks on the magic bag, heaved the bag onto his shoulder, and struggled out of the building and into the street, where he turned left and proceeded somewhat unsteadily down the block.
PlexiBerryPunch lived in a five-story walk-up on TarPaper Alley, right around the corner from AardvarkBailBonds, whose services he had, unfortunately, been forced to avail himself of on more than one disappointing occasion. The Alley was one of a dwindling number of “bad” areas, swarming with “suspicious” types of every age and gender who had fewer and fewer places to go. If you wished to do something illegal, buy something illegal, or merely observe something illegal in progress, this was your spot. PlexiBerryPunch could certainly afford to go upscale, hunker down in a better part of town, but he plain liked the noise, the color, the drama of the edgy life. He wouldn’t have moved if you paid him. An offer obviously contingent on how much, exactly, would be involved. Because his present address would be exceptionally painful to lose. There were just too many conveniences packed tightly together in tantalizing proximity: illicit substances of every variety easily available 24-7 just steps from his door; an endless parade of the more theatrical specimens of humanity you couldn’t be entertained by anywhere else; cat food for sale at the corner bodega at 2:00 in the a.m., even if you didn’t own a cat; and when your balls needed emptying, you simply grabbed the hand of the nearest curbside nymph, hauled her back to your digs, and screwed her until the screwing itch expired.
Graveyard knocked on a hard-used door with NO MENUS scrawled across it in phosphorescent lime.
“Yeah,” came a sullen voice from inside.
“It’s me, Graveyard. I just spoke to you on the phone.”
“Who?”
“Graveyard, you stupid brain-sizzled toad licker.”
Comical sound of too many locks to count being painstakingly unlocked.
“Took ya long enough,” said Graveyard when the heavy metal door finally creaked expressively open. PlexiBerryPunch stood before him, all sixty-five and one-half solid inches of him. He was wearing a monk’s habit and black tennis shoes. He looked like a husky child masquerading as a baby-faced adult member of some sort of bizarre underground religious order. He was also clutching a gun. Appeared to Graveyard’s trained eye to be a rare variation of an early twentieth century gent popper, the infamous CarteBlanche’s Iron Attaché.
“Whoa there, cowboy,” said Graveyard, hands up in mock surrender. “Just a harmless tenderfoot from back East.”
“That them?” Indicating with the barrel of the revolver the bag Graveyard had set down on the floor beside him.
“You mind?” Graveyard nodding at the still-leveled weapon.
“All apologies.” The CarteBlanche disappeared somewhere beneath the ratty clerical drapery. “Old habits.” From the dark period when he had fallen so hopelessly in love with raze that he rented a second apartment from which to deal the drug to customers both sweet and unsavory who responded best to persuaders in the higher calibers. In those rowdy days he famously favored the .56 CarpetKisser.
“Forget your meds today?”
“Get the fuck out of the hallway, you idiot.”
Graveyard did. He then watched, fascinated, as PlexiBerryPunch secured the fortress, fiddling with seemingly twice as many bolts and locks as he had to let Graveyard in.
“Indians about to attack?”
“The natives are always restless. So what have you got for me?”
“Just the high-end stuff. A few rarities, a few antiques. The guns I’d have trouble replacing should anything happen. Wouldn’t even consider asking anyone but you to stand watch over them.”
“I’m honored as fuck.”
“Well, now, look, if it’s too much trouble—”
“Just messing with you, Yard. Said I’d keep ’em, didn’t I? That’s my word. Know how valuable these shitsticks are to you. Goes without saying. They’ll be as safe as baby kittens with me.”
“I wish you hadn’t used that particular simile. I remember what happened to Twinkletoes.”
“Unfair. Not my fault. How was I supposed to know MemoryFoam was a wannabe magician? An uncommonly bad wannabe. You heard what happened to him, right? Got a vibrator stuck up his ass and refused to go to the emergency room. Whirring away for days in there. Thought he’d be okay once the battery wore out. He wasn’t. Lesson for us all, right?”
Graveyard heaved the sack back up into his arms. “Where do you want these?”
“Follow me.” They made their way through a narrow winding maze of handmade bookcases overflowing with thousands of esoteric volumes hard and soft, title after title even know-it-all literary types invariably failed to recognize. PlexiBerryPunch had dedicated his life to locating a solution to the “problem” of the universe. Which was good if you regarded the universe as a “problem.” He did.
“I’m afraid I’ve come to the conclusion,” he had once informed Graveyard, “that we are, in fact, quite alone.”
Graveyard looked around. They were seated at the time at the raucous center of the downtown AuditoriumGrille. “You mean, as in lonely in a crowd?”
“I mean, as in drifting aimlessly through eternal solitary night. How’s that for a vision? We are, unfortunately, finally and fatally, cosmically alone. At three in the morning we all know it’s true. There’s nothing else out there. Alien life forms, where are they? Billions and billions of stars, right? Billions and billions of planets. An infinity of possibilities in which to cook up other chances, and yet so far, nothing. Absolutely nothing. No riveting air show, no Great Lawn landing, not even the slightest radio peep. Nothing. Just deep deep-space silence.”
“Yes, but what about UFOs?”
“What about Santa Claus?”
“Folks have seen them.”
“They’ve seen Santa, too.”
“They’ve gotten gifts from him.”
“Still waiting for my puppy from Mama Martian. As yet, not even a measly chunk of comet coal. You want to know what’s out there, what’s really out there? I’ll tell you: a badass cosmos of rainbow-flavored fantasies. So unfortunately, I’m afraid that all this”—his dismissive gesture encompassed the entire Grille and beyond—“is definitely it.”
“If that’s true, seems like quite a ludicrous and terribly inefficient waste of space.”
“Only from our antlike perspective. Check this out. Universe is infinite, right? And what if, as so many have speculated, all those nasty black holes the universe is apparently riddled with are simply portals to other universes that are equally infinite? So what we’re left with is an infinity of infinities. Which, of course, makes our universe about as common as a grain of sand in your eye at the beach. Like the man said, alter the scale and you alter the perception, right? Which leads us to one basic, inescapable truth: our planet and this whole living, breathing commotion and everything we see or don’t see, in the sky, the stars, the scary, pulsating darkness, is here just for us. Us alone. Other forms we can’t even begin to imagine inhabit their own separate and distinct universes. And no matter how much we might wish it otherwise, we’ll never see those creatures, we’ll never know them. We’re not meant to. Clash of realities, you know. Very messy. Very, shall we say, apocalyptic.”
“Am I supposed to be comforted or depressed?”
“Your choice.”
Punch’s bedroom was about the size of a pricegrabber cabin on a no-budget cruise line. Mattress on the floor, blank beige walls. No windows. The place reeked of male b.o. and a piney, indescribable incense from the distant past that took immediate hold of the back reaches of the sinus cavities, sending out sneezing signals that stopped just short of producing an actual sneeze. “In there,” Punch said, pointing to an open closet, its musty, overpacked contents spilling out into the room like stuffing from a split couch cushion. Graveyard set the bag down with a grunt, shoved it as best he could in the general direction of a rear corner. “You’re sure this—”
PlexiBerryPunch made a dismissive snorting sound. “You know the last time someone was in this shithole, let alone this room, let alone that closet?” From the floor of said closet he scooped up an armful of dirty laundry, draped the wrinkled T-shirts, the wadded briefs artfully over the bag. “There,” he said. “All safe and tidy. No one’s gonna mess with that stinky heap.”
“You’re a good guy, PlexiBerryPunch.” Graveyard patted him on the shoulder like someone insincerely attempting, and failing to be, insincerely affectionate.
They’d first met some fifteen years ago or so, when both found themselves putting in time at SweetDigits—adding files, deleting files, adding files, toting up apples to arrive at oranges, then repeating the whole soul-abrading process in reverse. What remained of Graveyard’s mind after six months of this merry-go-round was barely sufficient to successfully oversee the morning shoe-tying ritual. For PlexiBerryPunch the job hardly even qualified as a trifle. He could do it with one hand in his sleep. Or down his pants. And often did. He was some sort of incognito computer wiz, which enabled him now to only seek employment when he needed to, i.e., whenever the shekels ran low. He’d managed somehow, in his limited excursions into the wonderful world of wage slavery, to acquire a lucrative reputation as “the one consultant you must consult” whenever your computer stuff needed a “wash and rinse.” But actually, PlexiBerryPunch, for all his wallet-fattening abilities, hated work. He hated the concept of work. He hated the actuality of work. He hated the sentimentalization of work. He hated the word work. He believed his fellow citizens were sadly deluded on the subject, as they were, in his opinion, on most subjects. His quotable quote on the worship of work: “You can run, but you can’t hide.”
Back out in the slight clearing in the stacks PlexiBerryPunch persisted in calling his living room—two kitchen chairs, milk-carton table, plastic lamp, and a clear glass ashtray containing a half-eaten enchilada resting atop an impressive mound of filterless cigarette butts (naughty naughty PlexiBerry)—he sat Graveyard down and offered him a couple of hits of powdered ellipsis.
“Ambience’s favorite,” said Graveyard. “But really, I can’t. We’re leaving in a couple hours.”
“Yes, why?”
“Why what?”
“This ridiculous trip. I mean, really, in this day and age, why go anywhere at all? Who needs to? Just screen it. Click, click. There you are.”
“We want the tastes, too. The smells. We want to get down and dirty with all that suggestive foreignness.”
“Well, yes, the smells.” He was nose-vacuuming the ellipsis off a hard-used copy of MediumRare’s magisterial The Isness of Is. “Fun drug.” He cleared his nose. “Comes in all formats. Powder, pill, crystal, and liquid. Sure you don’t want a lick? It’ll X out the flight.”
“Tempting. But think I want to experience this one in all its aggravating glory. I haven’t been anywhere in years.”
“Suit yourself. But let me lay on you a fabulous parting gift for later. Just in case.” His hand rummaged around inside his robe, emerged displaying on his palm what looked like a couple of pellets of grayish navel lint.
“Where, exactly, you been stashing this shit?”
“Over the hills and far away. Where do you think? What a squeamish lad. I’m as clean as your very own toilet seat. Which, interestingly enough, modern science has proved definitely to be the most sanitary spot in anyone’s home.”
“What are they?”
“Those?” Bending over to inspect the fuzzy objects as though he had never encountered them before in his entire curiosity-driven life. “Oh, I suspect those to be first cousins of the most extraordinary kind to our dear friend candylane. And you know how that do.”
“Wish I didn’t.”
“Were you aware that ninety percent of the universe is composed of dark matter? Ninety percent. Do you know what dark matter is?”
“You’ve already told me this, not once but several times.”
“Good. I love repeating myself. Do you know what dark matter is?”
“I’m sure I don’t.”
“Neither does anybody else. So you realize, then, what that means. All but a minuscule fraction, a tiny sliver, really, of the known universe is absolutely unknown. Nada, nothing. A frightening void at the very center of our comprehension. Science, our cleanup batter, has struck out. Little of any real consequence is understood in even the meanest way. And it’s the bottom of the ninth and we’re losing. In a shutout. Mystery wins. Anything is possible.”
“Don’t have to tell me that.”
“The universe. Think about it.”
“No subject is ever further from my mind.”
“Well, that’s why you’re one of the special people.”
“What special people?”
“The ones trying to save the planet with their thoughts.”
“I’d hate to see what kind of world could be tossed together out of my used-up thoughts.”
“Don’t sell yourself short. How could your version of existence possibly be any worse than this squalid shithole we’re all trapped in?”
“And, of course, we can all be comforted by the certainty that when thoughts fail us there’s always the backup in the bag.”
“Not to worry. I have zero interest in breaking into your precious armory, staining all your little toys with my grubby fingerprints.”
“Never a doubt, Plexi.”
“I mean, I don’t even want to look in there. I could care less. Guns are icky.”
“Yes, I’ve noticed your chronic aversion.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t like ickiness. Of course, if while you’re away, the zombie apocalypse should happen to descend upon us, well…” Plexi shrugged his shoulders like a waiter signaling that the kitchen was out of the special.
For no discernible reason, Bullionvilla seemed, at this particular confluence, to be an aggravatingly difficult destination to arrive at by air. They would have to cross an ocean, a sea, a continent, a ludicrous number of time zones, a couple of unhinged countries no one ever wanted to fly over, and several unpredictable weather patterns pilots would just as soon avoid. Plus two layovers, in Macabreb and Orthodontia. And booking reservations at the last minute landed them (big surprise) peasant’s seats on the last flight of the day of that budgeteer’s fave, TurboBusAirways. Their motto: Take a Flying Fuck.
Ten minutes into the flight and Graveyard was already squirming around on his narrow, thinly cushioned, plastic-wrapped Passenger Support Device. “There’s more room in a coffin,” he said.
“Curious,” said Ambience, “how sometimes even money isn’t the insulation it’s cracked up to be.”
“It’s a goddamn outrage.”
They looked at each other and they laughed.
When they finally landed in Bullionvilla, some eight and a half indescribably excruciating hours later, the air smelled of adhesive bandages and oven cleanser. Everyone yammering away in some sort of vowelly jibber-jabber neither Graveyard nor Ambience could make any sense out of whatsoever. Everyone with at least one hand out, if not two. Graveyard dutifully crossed every palm thrust his way. Which led, naturally enough, to an available and suspiciously agreeable cabbie Graveyard was able to trade enough meaningful grunts and shrugs with to establish a useful business connection. The ride into Bullionvilla was like being trapped in an amateur stock car rally in which even the most casual principles of self-preservation had been gaily abandoned. They did manage to glimpse through half-open windows, when not frantically seeking firmer handholds inside the lurching cab, several go-to destinations scattered about the fabled city: the granite polyhedron where hunted lovers in olden times sought refuge from the usual bands of nonlovers armed with the usual sticks and stones; the dried-up reflecting pool from which Ancient Guy delivered his famous treatises on the ineluctability of the world, the warts, the welts; Cleft Towers major and minor; the Dangling Gate; Bitter Hall, bolted seat of government through half a dozen energetic wars, three failed insurrections, and a couple of herd-thinning contagions; the architectural wonder of Busybee Cathedral, sole surviving structure of the Great Fire, which had virtually consumed the town, leaving the massive walls of the sanctuary permanently scorched and hard-boiling the sacred egg in the Holy Kettle; and, finally, the giant rutabaga sculpture in the center of Diatribe Park, which, for reasons not entirely clear to anyone, respectful citizens touched and kissed as they went about their citizenly business.
“This place fairly reeks of history,” said Ambience.
Graveyard shot her a glance. “You don’t honestly expect me to respond to that comment, do you?”
When the careering taxi at last lurched to an abrupt stop before the imposing edifice of the Cowled Castle, Graveyard, grateful that he and Ambience were still physically intact, pressed upon the beaming driver a pocketful of colorful currency whose actual value he still had barely a clue about. The driver let out an involuntary shriek, quickly composed himself, snapped to attention, and presented Graveyard with a smart salute, then scurried around the cab, waving the bills in the air, and showering upon amused onlookers a series of exclamations requiring no translation.
“I think you might have overtipped,” Ambience said.
“Now that we’ve gotten the opening clichés out of the way…that’s another thing I hate about traveling. Our roles are all so rigidly preprogrammed.”
Mercifully free of the tiresome burdens of luggage, they strolled into the eye-popping lobby of the grand hotel. Back in the day a genuine castle with turrets, crenellations, and ramparts, home to generations of intimately related titled folk, dozens of national artistic treasures, wandering ghosts, and fascinating historical tales—some of them actually true—the site had been repurposed into a gleaming corporate representative of that ever-popular style: Gimcrack-a-Go-Go. Along the inner walls, banks of ringing, beeping slot machines, most of which were being worked with solemn vigor. The walls themselves were papered with reproductions of currencies from around the world. Overhead, darting multicolored lasers strobed in sync to the Nether Boys’ “Don’t Do That.” Even with dawn no doubt breaking outside, the level of activity inside this windowless, atmospherically controlled pleasure zone was more reminiscent of midday anywhere else. The place was packed. With a herd of bad clothes. All denim and pastels or some tasteless mix thereof. T-shirts over heavily tattooed arms. Sweatpants covering a multitude of dietary mistakes, or not. Leisure suits on both sexes. And hats, plenty of hats, mainly baseball caps advertising various manufacturers of farming equipment. The scene resembled a block party at a trailer park.
“Comforting to see,” said Graveyard, “the rest of the world just as cheesy and clueless as we are.”
“Even the well-heeled contingent,” said Ambience. “Must be a goof of some kind.”
“What’s going on?” Graveyard asked the desk clerk. He gestured toward the obnoxious stoogefest steadily unraveling behind him. The desk clerk looked just like the second hitman in The Last Girl. You know. The one with the lazy eye.
“Well, sir, you’re in luck. Just in time for our annual SlamminSlumminSoiree.” The desk clerk’s name tag read: MR. SERVOMOTOR.
“Yes, and that is?”
“I’m sorry, sir. I thought you’d stayed here before. You looked familiar.”
“First time.”
“Our busiest night, frankly. As you can see. We’re approaching capacity, and that rarely occurs.”
“Everyone seems to be rather shamelessly dressing down.”
“Part of the event, sir. Patrons, guests, and friends are all encouraged to arrive in costume, ready to indulge freely in—well, how shall I put it? Bottom-rung debauchery.”
Graveyard looked at Ambience. Ambience looked at Graveyard. “We are in luck,” said Graveyard.
“You wouldn’t even have to change your clothes,” said Mr. Servomotor.
“We don’t require a formal occasion,” said Ambience. “We enjoy going quote, slummin’, unquote every goddamn day.”
“As do several of our favorite guests,” said Mr. Servomotor.
“Once everyone’s all tacky’d up,” said Graveyard, “then what do they do?”
“Well, where to begin? There are countless buffets of every type of fast food imaginable, hours of reality TV on screens conveniently situated throughout the hotel, and a multilane regulation-size bowling alley specially constructed in our basement for your ten-pin enjoyment. Also, those so inclined are encouraged to hook up with one another on whatever passing whim prevails. No guilt. No regrets. Just good clean fun, you know. Tonight at midnight we hold our annual Overdrafts, Pork Rinds, and Final Notice Lottery. First prize: a HowlinWell toaster oven. Second prize: a case of Blitzo beer. Third: a package of Sunshine & Clover hot dogs. All proceeds, of course, to charity.”
“What charity?” said Graveyard.
“I’m not at liberty to reveal that particular information.”
“Nice gig.” Graveyard glanced at Ambience. Her face was stone.
“And, of course, there’s always gambling.”
“Of course, goes without saying, right? Well, let’s check in. Don’t want to waste a minute of that precious party time.”
Again, due to their last-minute booking attempts, Graveyard and Ambience had been unable to secure the coveted Nabob’s Roost (Graveyard’s choice) and were forced to settle, on a much lower floor, for the slightly less luxe suites 253, 255, 257, and 259.
“And how will you be paying, sir?” said Mr. Servomotor.
Stashed on Graveyard’s person was the ten thousand dollars in currency he and Ambience had been permitted to bring into the country, plus several well-loaded chip-and-PIN HappyWanderer travel cards he had picked up at OmniBank on his way back from Plexi’s. He decided he wanted to impress this clown. “Cash,” he said.
“How novel,” said the clerk. “Haven’t seen any of that stuff in days. You forget people actually carry it around in their pockets.”
Their rooms offered the expected ooh-aah visual, especially considering the price point required for the satisfaction. They were spacious. The frescoed walls so tall you might have been able to insert another full story between floor and ceiling. They were aggressively opulent, the question “Guess how much I cost?” invisibly affixed to every table, chair, bed, and whirlpool bath, a plebe’s fantasy of financial royalty. The furniture, upon closer examination, seemed to have been purchased wholesale from one of those discount marts catering to the kitsch-loving rich. The whole look, in fact, reminiscent of a movie set designed to wow the locals. Between suites 253 and 255, in a narrow potted-plant corridor, was an actual sunken marble pool of fairly good size for your private use only.
“Now, that’s what I would call decadent,” said Graveyard.
“I love it,” said Ambience.
“Me, too,” said Graveyard.
They decided to save the water fun for later and, for now, before heading out to join their fellow elites on a spree, lie down for a moment and rest on one of these soft, soft, criminally soft beds. When they awoke late in the afternoon of that impossibly long day, the western sun was busy working its way through every available crack and crevice in blinds and curtains.
“Oh, my God,” said Graveyard. He took a squint at the Elaboration on his wrist. “We missed the masked paupers’ picnic.”
“There’ll probably be some overflow. Events like that have a habit of not ending cleanly.”
“Plenty of time, though, to load up on tickets for the lottery.”
“Didn’t we already win the lottery?”
“Listen, my tangerine, you can’t win too many lotteries.”
They got dressed and went downstairs to the Cowled Castle’s massively hyped three-star eatery, the Velvet Oubliette. They had the sautéed checkerfin loony on a wilted bed of crushed lolly nuts accompanied by seasoned melody sticks, meh. Washed that overpriced presumption down with a couple of bottles of undistinguished white. And decided to make the day an all-out cultural assault.
The Museum of Big Art was conveniently located, as the snide desk clerk haughtily informed them, a mere five short “walking” blocks from the hotel. “As opposed to what?” said Graveyard, “Driving blocks?” So they went. They saw everything they were supposed to see. They saw The Stoning of the Heterodox; Emperor LinenInABunch Receives Tribute from a Delegation of the Vanquished Twig People; Mother, Child, Apple, Dog; After Fortune’s Fall, the Binding of the Wounds; Pail #29; and the impressively monumental View of Ditherydoo in Midwinter Storm from the StandandSee Bridge.
“Jeeps,” said Ambience. “You couldn’t even begin to imagine its size from a reproduction in a book.”
“And so bright,” said Graveyard.
There was an entire separate room reserved for The Collocation of the Mist. The triptych covered three walls. A chattering, sharp-elbowed crowd of masterpiece consumers was busy clicking pics of each section with their ubiquitous cell phones.
“The paint’s laid on so thick,” said Ambience, “it looks like frosting. You want to lick every panel.”
“And so bright,” said Graveyard. He strolled through the rest of the museum behind the protection of his exclusive KMA sunglasses.
“But you’re missing all this astonishing color,” said Ambience.
“It still gets through,” he said. “It still astonishes.”
After absorbing the recommended dosage of cultural nutrients, they managed to book a lunch table at that nearby mega-go-to celeb hangout, the Quacking Duck. Nothing much to brag about there. Chef WindsorKnot was, unfortunately, out of town.
Which, despite the disappointing meal, somehow put them in the mood for an extended session of energetic water fun back at the hotel. They splashed around for an hour or so in their shamelessly private pool like a couple of horny porpoises. And then they fucked each other. And each other fucked them.
Then they took a nap.
When they woke, it was dark: a.m. or p.m.? They didn’t know. They didn’t care. They were rich. Time to drop some coin.
The Million Kisses Lifestyle and Casino was easily accessed from the Cowled Castle via an abrasively lit connecting tunnel lined with life-size photographs of notorious gamblers past and present, among them: TrickleDown, LintBrush, HogTheTrough, and RidingTheTrail, the guy who broke the bank twice at the Nugget Emporium (he was now banned for life) and manipulated Birches&Elms stock in an elaborate pump-and-dump scheme to get his wife a coveted position on the board of trustees ($250,000 fine, three years’ probation).
So they exited into the bright, loud world of high-stakes professional gambling. The floor was teeming. The teemees wound up to the glittering edge of delirium. Pheromones were bouncing around off the walls like invisible Ping-Pong balls. Graveyard checked his Elaboration: 4:32. In the a.m. He assumed the don’t-look-at-me-I’m-looking-at-you sort of face he imagined upper-level execs preferred to adopt while touring any of the plentiful lower orders.
“You know where I’m headed?” said Ambience.
“Try not to blow your whole wad in the first ten minutes.”
“I’ll wear a condom. What the fuck are you talking about? I wasn’t aware we were on a budget.”
“Just thinking of our total pleasure enhancement.”
“I’ll get off the way I want to get off, if it’s okay with you.”
“Fine.”
“And if you’re gonna helicopter-parent me, let’s just pack up our marbles and go home.”
“All right, all right. Do what you want.”
“I will, thank you very much.”
And off she walked. No backward glance. Farro and fiddleheads, he said to himself. Don’t let the vibe step on our luck.
The Million Kisses Lifestyle and Casino offered all the usual slots, cards, wheels, and dice other casinos came fully equipped with but had added to the mix its own unique spin on going bust in endlessly entertaining variations. The pocket laundering took place in an amphitheater-size annex attached to the casino’s east wing. Above the entrance a sign in firehouse-red neon script: A STOLEN KISS. Beneath the high domed radiant ceiling one could place a bet on anything from heads or tails and rock, paper, scissors to “traffic fatalities in latest twenty-four-hour period on the (pick your pike)” and the insanely popular Russian roulette. There were squibs, of course, and red-dye-splattered heads everywhere. Don’t Like What You See? Devise Your Own Game At Our Customer Service Counter and Wet Bar. Where there was a rather lengthy line.
Graveyard’s attention was immediately transfixed, as was everyone’s upon first entering A Stolen Kiss, by a twenty-one-foot-high glass column into which a nimble attendant, perched on an adjoining ladder, delicately placed a single feather and let it drop. How many seconds until said feather touched bottom? Place your bets now. Graveyard passed. The feather descended and it descended and descended. Action too slack? Try our nearby staghhorn-beetle jousting tournaments and turtle obstacle runs.
She was standing alone over by the End of the World booth. In a crush of interesting faces, hers seemed at once the most interesting, the most dramatically lit, singled out for his, and only his, particular close attention. For an embarrassing number of minutes it was all that he could see. Even as her striking features did keep going in and out of focus. And her bearing. Indelible. Straight as a drill sergeant’s. Such confidence, such pride.
She actually reminded him of someone of whom he was reminded too often. Her name was Aquatint. They’d met his junior year at Porcupine U. He was living in a crusty dive with five other confused punk wannabes.
He was standing at the sink one night washing a plate, mind busy exploring off-worlds, when suddenly out of nowhere this body materialized right next to him. A living human body. It was Aquatint. They’d been playing eye pong on and off since she’d moved in a couple of months ago.
“Whoa!” he said, trying to act as if he wasn’t startled.
“What’s up?” she said. Her eyes appeared to be as cooked as his.
He didn’t know what to say. “Nothing,” he said. “Nothing much.”
“Think you’re about done with that one,” she said. Dry as vermouth. She pointed.
He looked down. One hand held a plate. One hand held a sponge. The sponge was going round and round on the plate. Then it stopped. “Need the sink?” he said.
“I’m good.” Her eyes were going round and round, too. She was smirking at him just like FanFeed in her famous scene in the Planchette Award–winning House of Ballyhoo.
“I like a clean plate.”
“So do I,” she said. “It’s sexier that way.” She stepped closer. She touched him. Then he could feel her hand moving around down there in the fire zone. He was wearing sweatpants, commando-style.
“Watch out,” he said.
“I do,” she said.
“Keep rubbing that spot, you know what’ll happen?”
“Tell me.”
“The genie’ll appear and grant your every wish.”
She started rubbing harder.
The match fizzled out after about seven months or so. Neither of them knew why.
Maybe this casino girl could spark him up again. Maybe she couldn’t. But what the hell.
She appeared to be studying the betting instructions posted in a tasteful font on the overhead menu board. She appeared to be amused by what she read. GUESS THE CORRECT TIME AND DATE OF THE WORLD’S END AND WIN—EVERYTHING! Then suddenly Graveyard found himself standing right beside her with no memory of having crossed the intervening space. He was certain he’d seen her before. He didn’t know where. He didn’t know when. He pretended to peruse the colorful signage. After a suitably studied pause, he produced a phony chuckle and said, “Wonder who dreamed this scheme up?”
She turned to inspect this bold stranger. Did she like what she saw? Who knew? “Somebody, I suppose, very smart and very evil.”
“Because what’s the point, anyway? I mean, look at the odds. Bet a dollar, win a million. So you get lucky. You pull in a hundred million or two or three or a billion, even, or why not a trillion? What difference does it make? You’re rich, fantastically wealthy, but what, exactly, are you gonna do with that big pile of worthless paper? Where you gonna go, what’re you gonna buy? It’s over, the world and you. Final call for everyone. Making the last wager a horrible, terrifying joke.”
“You’re quite the talky boy, aren’t you?”
“Just curious. The world’s a curious place. It seems to demand comment.”
“Well, I have a comment, too.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes, everything’s over and done with, true, but know what? You won. You collected the last bet. Ahead of everyone else. At the very very end you and only you actually won. Maybe all it’s really about is being the final winner.”
“Strange goal.”
“Know people much?”
Graveyard found himself looking over this intriguing woman with what he hoped was not too much of a scientific leer. For a moment her face seemed to have become detached from its person and was actually floating in space before him like the shimmering mask of a genie conjured up to grant a wish he didn’t even know he had. Or not. Visions of his marriage went fleetingly through his head. Everything was beginning to acquire a vaguely disorienting sense of unreality.
“How about you?” he said. “Throw away any ducats yet?”
“I was waiting for one of these venues to speak to me, but frankly, everything in this ludicrous arcade seems pretty silly. And actually, gambling itself’s not even the best part. It’s the faces. I like to look at the faces.”
“Yeah? Spied anybody interesting yet?”
“Coupla dead ringers for StandardShipping over by Guess the Chameleon’s Color.”
“I can’t get enough face.”
She looked at him. He looked at her. They both laughed.
Graveyard kept looking around for a guy lurking nearby. Her ring finger was empty, but still, where was the guy? There’s always a guy. “I thought the feather was kinda amusing,” he said.
She gave him a look. “Lost a hundred on that foolishness last time I was here. Who knew a single feather could move so quickly?”
“One I saw certainly seemed to be taking its own sweet time reaching the bottom.”
“It was probably on drugs.”
At the sound of an amplified but discreet chime, a rather sizable mob of eager players began to gather around the well-manicured pen of OinkyDoink, the Pig with a Mind of Its Own. The clever porcine predicted the outcomes of sporting events, horse races, political elections, show-business awards ceremonies, and other contests with an accuracy rate well above that of chance. Today’s issue: which slop bucket does OinkyDoink prefer, the gold, the silver, or the lead?
“So,” said Graveyard, “what’s your favorite metal? You most definitely look like a gold girl to me.”
“Lead,” she said. “Go with the lead. Watch, it’ll turn to gold. Trust me.”
“Your call.” He produced from his pocket a crumpled ball of banknotes, which he slapped down on the square marked PB. A bell rang, the gate slammed open, and, once released, OinkyDoink made a frantic dash in one undeviating line straight to the dull gray bucket into which he inserted his bristly snout and began gobbling heartily away to the accompaniment of various snorting, sucking sounds meant to convey, no doubt, much piggy contentment.
She let out a yelp, jumped up and down a couple of times, then gave Graveyard a tight hug from which he received, he was absolutely certain, a distinct current. He collected his winnings, passed a handful of them over to her.
“But I didn’t put anything down.”
“Other than the winning tip.”
“Just lucky, I guess. My world-famous luck.” She paused to check the empty space around her. “Curious, too, my standard accompaniment of escorts seems to be somehow missing in action. They usually surround me with coolers in establishments like this.”
“You know, I don’t even know your name.”
“LemonChiffon,” she said. She smiled. “My parents. I know.”
“Best damn name I’ve heard all day.”
“Thank you.” The hand she extended was so small, so delicate, that he was more than a bit startled by the unexpected force of its grip.
“Graveyard,” he said. “Don’t hold it against me.”
They strolled for a while through this raucous celebration of human greed, entertained by the sights, the pleasure, the pain, the getting, the spending, the triumphant cashing out, the desolate tapping out. They sampled a few venues. At “?” Graveyard put down an even grand. He stuck his hand in a box. He felt around inside. “A sanding block?” he said. Wrong. It was a dried-up sponge. Goodbye, one thousand bucks.
And surprise, LemonChiffon had been born in BetterDoRight, a smudge of a town just over the BlueCorduroy Mountains (really, just big hills) from Randomburg. She lost her cherry in the parking lot of the Mess O’ Stuff Mall. She went to Tip O’ The Wedge four years after Graveyard had graduated. On junior prom night, underage, she’d even downed a half dozen or so DustyBoys at his father’s bar. Now here they were, some four thousand miles from “the sweetest spot God’s got,” meeting for the first time.
“Back home we’d still be strangers,” Graveyard said.
“My mom always used to say sometimes you have to travel halfway round the world to find the way to your own backyard.”
“Well, what are mothers famous for, if not choking us with verbal chicken soup?”
“I believed her. I still believe her.”
“See your house from here yet?”
“I wouldn’t want to see my house. Don’t expect to be dropping by there for a very very long time.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s complicated. One of the tons of excuses why I’m here with ShrinkWrap. Or not here as the case may be.”
She had come as a couple. She was probably going home a single. She didn’t know where he was. Last she saw of him he was screaming at a cab driver for scratching the crafted deerskin of his NeoBandoleerTravelingCase. Thankfully he had left their duplex Sweetheart’s Suite paid up through the week.
“Comfy digs. What’s he do?”
“He’s an entrepreneur.”
“In what?”
“Entrepreneuring. It seemed so godawful boring I never bothered to ask.”
“And, I suppose, very serious about the work.”
“He was a very serious d-bag.”
“Wicked combo.”
“I haven’t cried yet. Weird. I don’t know why.”
“Listen,” said Graveyard, “let’s blow this kiddie karnival and top off the morning with—it is morning, isn’t it?”
“Something like it.”
“We’ll greet the dawn with a round of real grown-up gambling.”
“Like a-pair-of-jacks-or-better-to-open type of gambling?”
“No stranger to the tables, I see.”
“I’ve messed around some.”
“I’ll bet you have.”
“Ex-ex-boyfriend. He belonged to this club, like a secret society, I guess. He’d go every weekend, different place every time. Sometimes I went with him. So boring, if you ask me, watching play you’ve got no stake in. But I watched. Picked up a few tricks.”
“I suspect you may know more than a few.”
“I make my way.”
“Gotta say,” he said. He was giving her the full-body scan. “Those are the tightest damn jeans I’ve ever seen.”
“Touch them.”
His hand hesitated.
“Go ahead.”
He reached out. What he felt was skin.
“Yeah,” she said. “It’s painted on.”
“Impressive piece of work.”
“His parting ‘gift’ to me. He had an artist sent up to the room with a spray gun.”
“Must cut down on wardrobe costs.”
“Sexy, fashionable, frugal. The perfect garment.”
“Let’s steer this exercise in high style right on over to the poker room. How can I ever go wrong accompanied by the perfect garment?”
On the way they paused for a moment at a nearby blackjack table. In five straight hands Graveyard dropped five large.
“Bluepoints and truffle oil,” he said. “Guess I should’ve rubbed the pants first to activate the luck.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time.”
“Well, let’s not grieve over a momentary setback. Onward.”
“You seem so surprisingly free and loose with your tender.”
“I retain a full team of creative accountants.”
“If you wouldn’t mind my asking, where, exactly, do you get your money from?”
He turned to look at her. “I pluck it out of thin air,” he said.