The Weakening of the Frog

I fell asleep at this desk when it was dark and I woke up and it was dark again, which is always a strange feeling. It’s like when you’re in a car in the parking lot and the car next to you moves, but for a moment, you think it’s you and it shouldn’t be happening and your heart mule-kicks in your chest. I’m edgy and jumpy, it’s like I’m forever at that moment when you think you left your keys in the car. That’s me, patting my pockets and looking worried for the rest of my life. I need to calm down. I put on the Flying Burrito Brothers’ Gilded Palace of Sin and close my eyes and let the fragile beauty of the Par-sons/Hillman harmonies wash over me.

I think it’s Thursday. There are several newspapers on the desk and the least yellow one is Wednesday, so maybe it’s Wednesday, or maybe there’s no today’s paper yet.

I look around, but no one’s here. I could call Hank Crow, but he’s probably sleeping. There’s very little noise from outside. Papers flip-flop their way down the street. I think about calling the Time Lady, but I don’t know if she exists anymore.

I turn off my CD, and turn on the radio and it’s Larry Mantle’s Air Talk on Pasadena NPR and they’re talking with some scientist about the weakening of the frog.

I think, Weakening of the Frog? I put on some coffee and the scientist is talking about how these kids in Minnesota were on some field trip back in 1995 and they were supposed to be learning about the swamp, or some shit, but things took an ugly turn. Seems these kids slogging around in their knee-high swamp boots keep coming on these deformed frogs. The scientist, she says these frogs were missing back legs, had one leg on the left and three on the right. This is circus shit, this is grotesques and horror-show frogs, and she’s saying this is bigger and badder than it sounds, though I’m thinking it sounds pretty bad as it is.

Larry Mantle says, “How many did they find that were in this state?”

She says, “Half—over half of the frogs in Minnesota—had some severe deformity.”

Maggot Arm Joe comes down the stairs and sits down behind the desk with me. He looks like he’s about to say something, but I shush him and point to the radio.

The scientist says, “And reports started coming in from the Philippines, from Australia, from all over the world, that they were finding severely deformed and mutated frogs. This has become a global catastrophe that we need to study.”

“Any idea on what’s causing this?” Larry Mantle says.

“There are theories—the most troubling is that it’s caused by us—by what we’ve done to the environment.”

Maggot Arm Joe shakes his head.

The scientist says, “The implications are troubling, to say the least. Frogs are what we call an indicator species.”

“Which means that this could just be the beginning of something?”

“Exactly,” she says. “These deformed frogs could be an environmental canary in a coal mine. We could be looking at us in a hundred years.”

“But there could be other causes?” Larry Mantle says.

“Yes,” she says. “This could be the end of the world as we know it—or it could be something else entirely. This is why it’s imperative that we study this.”

And Larry Mantle says they need to go to Steve Julian and check out the traffic, but that they’ll be right back to talk to their guest in the studio about the implications of the genetic mutations of frogs.

Maggot Arm Joe and I go out and smoke a cigarette on the porch. Across the street there’s a homeless guy I don’t know poking in a Dumpster. One of the bike cops comes by and harasses him, tells him, I guess, that it’s illegal to steal somebody else’s garbage. This guy Gordo is selling dime bags of pot across the street at the Mark James Hotel. Gordo’s up from Mexico and without papers, so he doesn’t make a big show of himself. He and Scooter are hovering out of the range of the security lights.

You sit on this stoop long enough and you see so many of the quiet horrors of the world and it all just seems so very big and it leans on you and you feel like you can’t move under the weight of all of it.

Tony Vic and Willie What’s His Name juke by and Tony Vic says, “Nick, my man, you got the delivery?”

“I did,” I say.

Tony Vic opens his trench coat and points to the inner pocket. He says, “Phone cards, gentlemen?”

“No thanks,” I say.

“I got Pakistan. I got India. Russia.”

“Don’t need them,” I say.

Maggot Arm Joe says, “You got Chad?”

Tony Vic stops walking and Willie What’s His Name stops behind him. Tony says, “Chad, Chad” and starts flicking through those little credit cards. He looks up after a minute. “You’re playing with me.”

Maggot Arm Joe says, “I am.”

Tony Vic shakes his head and turns to Willie and says, “No such place as fucking Chad—the man’s playing.” He walks away muttering to Willie What’s His Name, who still has that big cast on what’s left of his wrist and now has to smoke his Swisher Sweets with the other hand.

We watch them walk away for a moment. Across the street, the cop is still giving a hard time to the homeless guy. The night gets quiet and we stare blankly at the empty Blue Line stop in front of us. In the darkness, a train pulls up, and all the people inside look so tired and otherworldly—in that specific way people look on public buses and trains at night. That sad, lonely-faced weariness that seems to glow out of us all under the fluorescent light. Maggot Arm Joe says, “Could be the end of the world.” He puts out his cigarette.

“Or something else entirely,” I say.

Down the street, I see Scooter buy a bag of pot from Gordo and I realize I need to get in touch with Tara before she finds out about that movie from someone else.