Smell the Dividend Tax Cuts

I SIGH. Thinking about Trey reminds me why I swore off introspection. Reflexively, I reach for the Code Warrior cup and try to drizzle out a drop or two. It is gone, really gone. And that makes me nervous. Man with the Golden Arm nervous.

Millie pushes the plate of vegan atrocities toward me. “Think you can eat a little bit more? Gotta get you healthy again.”

Energized by anxiety, I sit up. “Health, I’m so glad you mentioned that. I don’t like to talk about this, Millie, but if you must know, I’m on medication. For seizures. Both grand and petit mal. And I left my pills back where I was staying temporarily and I really, really need them.” I pray that Bamsie hasn’t cleared out my entire stash. Certainly the Baggies and bottles secreted in the empty Blue Bell cookies ’n cream container hidden in my freezer will still be safe.

“You want me to ride along with you to get them?”

“Actually, besides being out of gas, I probably shouldn’t be driving around in the little van.”

Millie’s eyes crinkle to signal that she is onto my naughtiness. “You let your safety sticker expire!”

I shrug, enjoying the momentary sensation of being the scrupulous sort of person who’d be bothered by an expired safety sticker as opposed to the type who hasn’t given a second thought to hurling a meat slicer from a moving vehicle into the path of oncoming cyclists.

“Don’t worry. I can take you. It’s on my route.”

I check the clock. Perfect. It’s time for the Platinum Longhorns’ monthly meeting, which means that the pertinent parts of Pee Heights will be deserted and my landlady, Bamsie Beiver, will not be on the premises. I have no idea what this “route” Millie is talking about consists of, but I don’t quibble. “Millie, that would be great!”

Once outside, however, my enthusiasm dims when I behold Millie’s means of conveyance.

“What is it?”

Millie beams with pride. “A tandem recumbent bike. Sanjeev designed it and we built it together.”

It is a Frankenstein creation welded together with parts cannibalized from other bikes and—judging from its weight—lead pipes and black hole antimatter. As we pedal down Twenty-fourth Street, Millie sits upright in back controlling brakes and steering. I’m in the reclining front seat, lying back far enough that I could be ready for that elusive pelvic exam. A lime green helmet squashes my head, my face is at the level of passing cars’ exhaust pipes, a bright red flag snaps jauntily on a whippy fishing pole thing high above my head, and a sticker on the back announces to the world that RECUMBENT BIKERS DO IT LYING DOWN!! It is not possible to be any dorkier. I occupy the molten hot core of all dorkdom.

Snazzy coeds in tiny, fashion-forward, organ-grinder-monkey jackets gape in pity at me, me, whom bRAVADO magazine had once christened “Fashionista Queen of Austin’s See and Be Seens.” Frat boys decorating for some spring bacchanal hoot, yell obscenities, and pantomime copulation. Millie gives a friendly wave in return. I try but cannot compact myself any further or slink any lower.

We cross Lamar, then over the bridge above Shoal Creek. A pack of happy mutts romps about in the leash-free zone of Pease Park below the bridge. Millie yells down to me, “Isn’t it great to be consuming calories instead of fossil fuel? To be out here, exposed to the elements, the wind whipping in our faces?”

Since the wind is currently whipping the stench of dog crap into my face, I don’t answer. As we chug past the park, then up the hill into Pee Heights, I am drenched in yearning for my paradise lost. I yearn for these pristine streets so blissfully devoid of human life. In Pee Heights the only faces one ever sees outside are brown and bent over leaf blowers. Oh, occasionally you’ll spot the odd walker or jogger, invariably female with a support group of other pedophiles marching toward the goal of seven percent total body fat. Male Pembies tend to get their sweating over with before dawn so they can shower, scram to the office, and start clocking the billables, churning the accounts, and clipping the coupons.

Human interaction in my old neighborhood is pretty much handled via the seasonal banner. Mother’s Day seems to be the current motif. Banners with tender daffodils bursting forth and mother cats licking kitties flap from the occasional rebel front porch where they haven’t been banned by interior designers. I love the banner interaction, so like e-mail with its unspoken message: I’m a friendly, welcoming people person. Just don’t ever actually show the hell up in the flesh and we’ll all be fine!

Here, amid the stately homes, the banners, the blessed Day After silence, I can breathe again. West Campus, with its hurly-burly of humanity, teeming masses clogging the sidewalks, students actually walking places, is Calcutta—oh, excuse me, Kolkata— in comparison.

“Turn here,” I yell to Millie. I put on giant, identity-hiding sunglasses that cover most of my face. As we approach Bamsie’s house, I strain my vision making certain that her Land Rover is not parked in the long driveway that circles back to the carriage house.

Once I ascertain that the driveway is empty, I bellow out, “Rudder left!” We turn sharply and are almost to the carriage house before I spy an IRS seizure notice posted on the front door.

Can’t have Millie seeing that.

“Wrong turn!” I reach behind my head, grab the handlebars, and jerk hard, causing the bike to run aground and chew through a wide swath of Bamsie’s xeriscaping.

“Blythe!” Millie screams as we come to a halt on the mauled greenery.

Hoping Millie will blame the petit mal thing for my eccentric behavior, I shudder spasmodically. “Sorry. We should go around the other way.” The way that doesn’t involve Millie spotting that seizure notice.

We circle back and end up hidden in a luxuriant patch of foliage. I am just about to dart into my hovel, when who should drive up to the front of the house but Bamsie Beiver.

Bamsie jumps out of the Land Rover and I am struck again by how much she looks like a very cute troll doll. Short and springy, Bamsie does everything she can to fight genetics by straightening her curly hair and wearing ridiculously high heels in order to look as much like her idol and best friend—tall, lean, blond Kippie Lee—as she can.

“Crescensio! Crescensio!” Bamsie shrieks for the gardener required to tend the xeriscape shrubbery whose main recommendation is that it requires no tending. Crescensio rushes over.

When it becomes clear that autopsies are going to be performed on every crushed leaf and blade, I ask Millie, “Do you know what would be just sososo ministerial of you?”

“What?” Millie answers.

“It would be just incredibly great if you would sort of scamper over to the little house and slither in the bathroom window that you break out with this rock. Then—”

Millie does not take the rock I try to hand her. “Why do I have to break into your house?”

“Okay, okay, I didn’t want to tell you this, but there’s really no choice. The IRS is after me because”—sticky, sticky, sticky; must call this one perfectly; fit the crime to the judge—“because of my anti-war activities.”

“No!”

Bingo. Not just a victim. A martyr. What liberal could resist?

“Yes. If you don’t believe me, go look on the front door. They’ve posted a seizure notice.”

“That’s horrible.”

“Well, certainly inconvenient,” I say debonairly. Not just a martyr. A martyr with style. “Only because of the”—I clench everything that will clench and grip my forehead—“seizures. So, if you could just…” I hand her the rock. “The bathroom window?”

“Why can’t I use the front door?”

“Well, you can except for her.” I point to Bamsie, who, fortunately, is still completely absorbed in berating the gardener. “The IRS has suborned all the rich neighbors. They’re on guard. Ready to turn me in. I can’t let them spot us.”

Good little liberal that she is, always up for a spot of class warfare, Comrade Millie’s lips quiver, then set into a firm storm-the-Bastille line. She narrows her eyes and asks, “What do you need?”

“Actually, if you could pretty much bring me the entire contents of the medicine cabinet?” Millie nods and steps away. I call after her, “And the freezer? With particular attention to any Russian potato elixirs you might find there? And, and, and the carton of cookies ’n cream. I am, literally, addicted to cookies ’n cream ice cream.”

Millie creeps away and my depleted cells cartwheel, form pyramids, and toss one another into the air for joy. Then all the joyous frolics cease. What noise, what crack of twig, rustle of pebble, alerts her, I do not know, but Bamsie whips around so swiftly I don’t have time to duck out of sight. She whips out her Nokia and punches in numbers. No doubt Agent Jenkins deputized every woman at Kippie Lee’s garden party. Everything now depends on Millie accomplishing the mission with shock-and-awe swiftness.

Unfortunately, a quick glance in her direction reveals that Millie is not up to the task. She stands outside the bathroom, tapping at the window with the big rock, unable to commit even the pettiest of misdemeanors. I calculate time needed to break and enter, loot cabinet and freezer, and wriggle back out before the agent shows up. Rank amateur that she is, Millie will never make it. Now that my cover is blown, there is no reason for me not to take over. I dash to her side, seize the rock, and am about to bash in the window when I hear the bang of a cheap, domestic car door being shut. Agent Jenkins piles out of the Ford Focus.

“I’m feeling a lot better,” I say, hauling Millie back to the bike. When she hesitates, I shove her onto the passenger seat up front.

“But your seizure medication?”

“Another time!”

Blasting out of Bamsie’s driveway, we catch the agent unawares and roar right past him.

“More coal,” I yell to Millie. “Pedal faster.”

“This isn’t safe. You’re going too fast!”

In the bike’s rearview mirror, I watch the agent’s small car increase in size as it gains on us.

“Ramming speed.” My heart banging against my rib cage, I stand on the pedals and pump for all I am worth. The agent continues to gain on us. I have nothing left to give. My lungs are on fire and my legs have turned to wood. It is hopeless. Then an instance of divine intervention: A hill, a long, steep hill, appears. Gravity, what a marvel it is. The heavy bike shoots down the hill like a luge sled at Innsbruck.

“Brakes, Blythe! Use the brakes!”

Still the agent bears down. The road dead-ends straight ahead.

“Hang on.”

“Blythe! Turn! Turn, you—!” Millie’s first-ever verbalization of truly vile cursing ends with a tooth-loosening scream as I pilot us straight into the curb designed to prevent wheeled access to the park.

Ooomph.

And we have liftoff.

I cannot imagine that the landing does any more for Millie’s spine than it does for mine. The Hummeresque tank of a bike, however, doesn’t miss a beat, and we tear overland, plowing though the park like a runaway locomotive. I glance behind to see the agent in his car, marooned on the far side of the curb, and I thank God for Sanjeev’s Industrial Revolution–quality construction.

“The creek!” Millie screams.

I spin back around to find Shoal Creek looming dead ahead and grip the hand brakes until tendons pop. The wheels stop turning, but the bike, now a cast-iron toboggan hurtling downhill, only picks up speed. My admiration for Sanjeev dims.

“Lean,” I order, and Millie, a perfect little luger, heaves to the left just enough to tip us onto the trail, shooting a dramatic rooster-tail spray of rocks and rubble into the creek below. The brakes grab and hold the instant we are on flat ground and no longer need them to avert death.

“Well, that was invigorating.”

Millie slowly faces me. If we had been in a cartoon, pinwheels and symbols from the top of the keyboard would have been flying out of her mouth. Since she is a well-brought-up Southern girl and Christian to boot, she gasps eloquently, squeezes her eyes shut, and shakes her head. Hoping to put this unfortunate incident behind us, I pedal on.

A second later, we are in the leash-free zone of Dog Crap Lane. Happy pooches, the usual Animal Defense League rescue assortment—knobby greyhound, three-legged black Lab, black-tongued chow, misunderstood pit bull, several genetic experiments gone horribly awry—romp about. The jolly band catches one glimpse of the Dorkocycle and merges instantaneously into a murderous, slavering pack. Millie’s terror-whitened face is at eye level with the blood-crazed curs’ fangs.

Female owners shout frenzied high-pitched commands at the killer canines. “No, Xena! Bad girl!” “Martina! Billie Jean! Get back here!”

The dogs hear only high-pitched frenzy and interpret their mistresses’ commands to mean Death to the invaders! Yes! By my insane and pointless shrieking you know that I am as alarmed and outraged as you are! Kill the terrifying two-headed, four-legged, red-tailed invader! Kill! Kill! And kill again!

I put on a massive burst of speed and leave the ravening pack in a spatter of their own doggy doo. The instant we are out of reach of the pit bull’s orca array of teeth, Millie loosens her death grip on the side handles, snakes one hand up, clamps on the brakes, and brings us to a shrieking stop. She jumps up, trembling with something that I pray is not fury. My prayers go unanswered.

“You are crazy. You are a lunatic. You have been lying to me. Lying about everything. I didn’t want to believe all that stuff Juniper has been saying about you—”

“Juniper! I can answer every charge. Juniper is clearly—”

“Shut up.”

I do simply from the novelty of hearing such an order hurled from Millie’s soft, pink lips.

“I didn’t want to believe that you have really changed so much. That you really are a bad person—”

“‘Bad person’? What about casting the first stone?”

“Shut. Up. If you say one more word, I’m leaving you here.”

I glance around. “Here” turns out to be the end of the trail in so many ways. The rocky path comes to an abrupt halt at the foot of a rubble-strewn incline. A wisp of smoke draws my eye up to the wooded area above. Through a screen of brush and scrubby trees, I make out the orange patches of a nylon tent, the silver flash of a shopping cart, the slink of a dog tethered to a rope settling itself onto bare ground. Only gradually do several figures camouflaged by whiskers and dirt emerge. I can barely make out the hill phantoms as they shift around, poking at the thin fire, eating from a can, sleeping beneath a compost heap of old blankets.

“Here” is a hobo camp and I am one crucial conversation away from being abandoned to its tender mercies. I shut my mouth.

“I didn’t want to believe what Juniper has been saying. That you cheated her and Sergio, Olga, and Doug out of their wages. That you are a drug abuser. That you left half a dozen women unconscious at your last party. That you put Crisco in the pâté.”

“This all sounds so much worse than it actually—”

Millie silences me with one finger pointed up to an avenging God. “Blythe Young, you are not the person I once knew.”

Well, duh.

“What happened? What happened to the person I used to know?”

As the bums above press their lips to forties of Colt 45, I fish for an answer but only come up with “Life.”

“Life happens to all of us if we’re lucky enough. It’s what you do with it that counts. The choices you make.”

“Yeah, but for some of us the choice of having housemates, of sharing a bathroom, of eating Boca Burgers”—the full range of Seneca House horrors presents itself—“in our midthirties is just not a viable option.”

“There are worse things. Like lying, cheating, drugging—”

“Unless you have been dragged through the mud in a divorce court, you will never know what things a person has to do just to survive.” Not that I ever made it to divorce court. Peggy’s cursed prenup foreclosed even that option, but this is not the time for such technicalities.

“When does a person ever ‘have’ to drug people?”

“Could I just say, Millie, that however you’ve managed to maintain all your ethical proprieties, however you’ve been able to remain a moral colossus in a world where most of the breaks are handed out at birth, whatever accommodations you’ve made, they simply are not in my repertoire.”

“I am no ‘moral colossus.’”

“Maybe not. Maybe you just had normal, caring parents who sheltered you and provided for you instead of an MIA mother who threw you to the wolves.”

“I guess you think that makes you a victim of circumstance.”

“And you think I’m not?”

“I believe that God always gives us a way to act on our free will.”

“Free will? That’s an expensive illusion. Jesus, Millie, wake up and smell the dividend tax cuts. The game is so rigged in favor of the rich that any ‘cheating’ the rest of us do doesn’t come close to evening up the odds.”

Millie shakes her head in a sad, love-the-sinner, hate-the-sin sort of way that creeps me out.

“What do you want me to say?”

“I don’t know. You’re so different now. It would help to know why.”

“What’s the point?”

“To see if you’re redeemable.”

“Redeemable? That is unbelievably insulting. You should be worried about redeeming Tree-Tree Dix and his whole family. Or those rich bitches in Pemberton Heights who stop payment on checks I need to live on. Or…what are you doing?”

Millie is turning the bike around.

The smell of unwashed bodies, Sterno, and despair wafts down. No matter how Tough Love she pretends to be, I am certain Millie will never abandon me. Certain. Millie thrusts her foot down on the pedal and starts the contraption rolling.

Millie is leaving.

Leaving me here on Dog Crap Lane. It is a such a nightmare moment, so much the worst thing I can imagine, that I can’t make myself believe it is happening. Suddenly all the hoboes lurking in the hill above coalesce into an army of depraved lechers ready to pounce upon me. They stare down with hungry eyes. I try to move, to run after Millie, but, just as in a horrible dream, I remain frozen.

One of the bums calls down in a malt-liquor-slurred voice, “Hey! Miss Millie! Where are you going?”

“I’ll be back later, Curtis!” Millie yells back at the bum. “Alone!”

I unfreeze and run after the bike disappearing from view. Fortunately, the trail is a rutted mess. I catch Millie easily and make her stop. “You weren’t going to leave me there? Were you?”

The preferred answer would have been a mischievous laugh at this naughty prank. Instead, Millie pierces me with a damning glance and I settle for hopping back onto the front seat. Before she can protest, the hellhounds of Dog Crap Lane set upon us, and our attention turns to protecting major arteries and favorite limbs.

At the intersection of Lamar and Twenty-fourth, we wait for the light to change. I almost ask Millie outright if I can stay a few more days. In the end I decide not to risk it. I’ll just have to leech on to her for as long as she will tolerate it. The rule at Seneca House is that guests can stay as long as a resident wants them to stay. The light changes and we huff up the long, steep hill at Twenty-fourth.

It is a lot harder going back up than it was coming down. And a whole lot less fun.