AS THE MUSIC PLAYS GROOVY
NICOLAS CAGE STARTED speaking to me through my Amazon Dot a while back. At first, I thought it was an app or something one of my friends downloaded as a joke, like changing Siri’s voice. It started at night when all was quiet in my apartment. I’d heard his whispers, battling with the noises from the fridge, to gain my attention. Nic’s confusing, yet often wise, interjections became more frequent. During the daylight hours he only spoke in quotes and they were always in response to something I had said like, “Fuck, what should I have for breakfast?” and he replied, “Maybe a banana-nut. That’s a good muffin,” or when I asked what to listen to and he said, “Do you like the Elton John song, ‘Rocket Man?’”
They had to be recordings—didn’t they? I lived alone, worked from home and didn’t get out much.
But these days I didn’t need to. Everything came to me. Even Nic. Even if they were recordings.
But his tone was conversational. Too organic and prescient to be recordings.
Soon, he got comfortable hanging around me and started asking for financial advice, curious about my spending habits and how I maintained a budget. I told him I didn’t, not really, but basically it was as simple as not spending money I didn’t have. He didn’t believe me. I said it helped that I was broke. That I could actually run out of money. Still he didn’t buy it. A first for him, so I’ve read.
“Look,” I said one morning from the edge of my bed which also served as my couch. “It’s this simple. Do you have any other castles on contract?”
A quiet no, of course not was his response.
“If so,” I continued, “Don’t go through with it. Yeah, you’ll lose the deposit, but you won’t have another castle to take care of.”
And despite Nic’s denial, I’d heard him set a reminder to himself to, “Call realtor.”
He lectured me about real estate being one of the best investments a person could make but I didn’t respond. How could I? My studio apartment was so small, I all but shat where I slept and slept where I ate. Furniture lined the walls. It was the only way to fit all my stuff in such a tight space.
“I’m building my own court,” Nic said. “Like King Arthur. I’ve got the table already. It’s not so much round as it is oblong. I’ve got the swords too . . . Suits of armor . . . A dragon skull,” he paused here. “Okay, okay. It’s not a dragon skull but a dinosaur skull. You can’t tell the difference. Believe me. Not to mention the tapestry I’d commissioned. Your wall could use one too. You have a tapestry guy? Tell you what, I’ll give you my guy’s number. He’s really good.”
I had to admit, there was one moment he almost swayed me—when he offered me a seat at the oblong table, but I heard it in his voice: the stress. The fear. All cries for help, and yet I couldn’t enable him. He had to learn self-control.
The tension boiled over the next morning and he broke.
“You’ve got to help me, man,” he pleaded. “I feel trapped. Financially paralyzed.” His words, his intonation, made me believe I couldn’t say no. Some inherent obligation. A curse. Whatever bind he’d gotten himself into involved me now and we were in this thing together. An unwritten contract. Ignored terms of service. I was his Sean Connery, his Angelina Jolie, his John Malkovich. I was everyone but himself, the supporting role only he could fill, but still—I was a supporting character and—goddammit—I was going to sell it.
“Where do we start?” I asked.
“I can’t talk now,” Nic said. “They’re listening.”
“Who—”
“Shhhhh,” he said. “We’re just a waterfall here. Shhhhh-shhhh-shhhhhhhh. Calm and collected, until we’re not. Shhhhhhhh.”
“The fuck are you on about?” I asked. We were at that point in our relationship I could speak to him with an amount of turbulence.
“Is this part of it?” I went on, still getting a feel for the role.
“We’re static after the Big Bang. Ka-shhhhh-shsh-sh,” he said. “We’re just god particles.”
I followed his lead and shushed and ka-shhhhhed around my apartment for an hour until the sounds felt unreal to my ears and my lips went dry. The blue circle was illuminated and I knew what he meant by, “They’re listening,” because secretly I believed it too. That was not an act.
Nic remained silent the rest of the day.
***
I awoke to Nic talking about animals.
“I love all animals,” he said. “Sentient life.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Do you have a favorite animal?”
“Umm. I mean, dogs are cool.”
I noticed the blue ring was not lit, but he was still talking.
“Not domesticated animals,” he said. “I’m talking wild animals.”
I rolled off the bed and over to the kitchen. I thought about his question while I fumbled with the coffee maker. Eventually I decided on, “Capybaras are fun. Like a dog-guinea-pig hybrid.”
“Right on, right on,” he said. I could tell he was frustrated at how long it took for me to come up with my answer. He had something on his mind and before I could blather on about how I also liked elephants because of their long memory, he asked, “What do you know about the blue-ringed octopus?”
Mr. Coffee gurgled.
I envisioned Nic running his hands through his hair, combed over like in The Weatherman, until it was tousled and chaotic to match his mood.
“Well, c’mon man,” he said. “What the fuck do you know about the fucking blue-ringed octopus?”
I could see the chaos and yet I could not see him. I sensed his distress and focused on my role.
“I don’t know much about it,” I said. “I imagine it lives in saltwater.”
I poured a cup of coffee as Nic went on.
“They are usually docile like me, but the blue-ringed octopus is highly venomous and extremely dangerous to humans if provoked. That’s why they have bright blue iridescent rings,” he said. “It’s a warning that says, ‘Don’t mess with me, motherfucker.’”
I drank my coffee and listened, keeping a watchful eye for the blue ring.
“It produces tetrodotoxin,” he said. “Do you know what that is?”
I nodded no and somehow, he understood.
“It causes body paralysis,” he said. “You ever had sleep paralysis? Where your mind becomes aware before your body wakes up? Often gives the feeling of suffocation. Hallucinations. Tetrodotoxin creates a similar effect. Victims remain conscious, but are unable to move—unable to signal for help while they sit and suffocate.”
Nic’s words hung heavy in the air for a moment like VX gas.
He started to speak, but was interrupted by a chime that resonated from the Dot; the blue ring illuminated.
Nic’s voice was present, but a voice—the voice—spoke over him fighting for control.
“Here is what I found on the blue-ringed Octopus, according to Wikipedia: Blue-ringed octopuses, comprising the genus Hapalochlaena, are four highly venomous species of octopus that are found in tide pools and coral reefs in the Pacific and Indian oceans, from Japan to Australia. They can be identified by their yellowish skin . . . ”
I waited for Nic’s voice to come through and shed some light on what was going on.
“Does that answer your question?” her voice asked.
I did not reply to her.
***
It was a bit later that day, after we’d given the room some silence and left no soundwaves for the Dot to latch onto that Nic came to me again to offer some unexpected wisdom.
“Are you a religious man, man?” he asked.
“Not particularly,” I said.
“Have you heard of the little acronym WWJD?” he asked.
“Yes—”
“What would Joel do,” he said, not a question, but a statement correcting my misunderstanding.
“Joel,” I repeated.
“Yes,” Nic said in that sort of raspy, drawn-out way he often used for one-syllable words like he was trying to convey added weight, an extension of meaning of something beyond.
“Coen,” he said. “What would Joel do . . . ”
In my mind, Nic no longer resembled Nic from The Weatherman, but rather Nic from Gone in 60 Seconds; dirty sun-dyed blonde, not bottle-blonde, donning a leather jacket—hands held out dramatically in thought.
“Could also work for Jolie,” he said. “But that just won’t do today. No. Today is a what would Joel do sort of day.”
I hadn’t been sleeping well and I knew it was late in the day for coffee, but I’d needed the comfort. Supporting Nic proved challenging. I warmed a mug in the microwave while I waited for him to speak.
“Well?” Nic asked, agitated. “What the fuck would Joel do?”
“Oh,” I said. “I thought it was rhetorical.”
“What makes you think it was rhetorical? We are having a conversation like humans. That’s what humans do. We communicate. What do you think we are? Monkeys?”
“Well . . . ”
“Okay,” he said, big and breathy. “Bad example, but please before I lose it—tell me what would Joel do?”
I’d say I was starting to lose him, but that’d be like saying I’d lost the breeze. No, the breeze continued onward and followed its own guidance. Only a fool tried to control the breeze. No, you adapt to it, not force it. You harness it and hope you aren’t dragged across the rocks.
“I’d say that Joel would try to take what’s there and do something new with it. Throw in some dark humor. That sort of thing.”
It was a shot in the dark, but it was all I’d had.
“I think the word you’re looking for is subversion,” Nic said. “Joel would subvert the situation. Poke at it. Force change. That’s what I need to do.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“Shhhhh,” he said. “I need to think.”
Nic’s voice faded as War’s “Low Rider” emanated from the speakers.
“I need to formulate a plan,” he said. It was soft, but audible underneath the bassline.
“What are our options?” I asked.
The blue ring glowed as the music played groovy.
“I like both Blu-ray and DVD, but Blu-Ray gives you more options,” he said as War resonated throughout the airwaves.
“What do you mean?” I asked, grasping for meaning in his non-sequiturs. Was it code? Didn’t Nic realize he was the cryptologist, not me?
My apartment was a cacophony of frequencies as War raged on, fighting for the last word. The Dot’s voice rang out in perverse subversion, “Here’s what I found on War, the American band, according to Wikipedia: War, originally called Eric Burdon and War—” but Nic’s plan was already being set into motion. Nic was the lord of war.
“—take a little trip with me-ee,” the song overtook the Dot until an amazing flash of blue light burst from the Dot and all went quiet.
“Nic,” I called, but he was gone. It must have been part of the plan. It had to be.
I slept like a rock that night, my body worn out and sore. The next morning when I went to make coffee, the Dot was back in pristine condition and I was empty. I wanted Nic back, needed my Nic-fix, but he never returned.
At least not how I had expected him to.
***
A few months later a strange package had arrived at my doorstep. It bore no return address, but I knew who sent it. A curved, smiling arrow was stamped on top mocking me. It was a wooden crate, nailed shut, with the word fragile painted in bright pulsing blue paint along the sides.
A small aquarium was inside. A blue-ringed octopus the size of an Amazon Dot hid underneath a hunk of coral. A note was taped to the underside of the lid. It read, “I like both Blu-ray and DVD, but Blu-ray gives you more options.”
I found space for the aquarium on my dresser, next to the Dot. He kept saying that word: options. Options—like I’d know what to do with it? I shouted at myself in the mirror, “Oh, very good! Options. Yeah, where are the special features, man?”
I stood there in a cold sweat, unable to move. Electric blue circles pulsed as the blue-ringed octopus spoke to me in Nic’s voice. And it said, “Blue rings,” he said. “Do you finally understand what I’m saying? They are everywhere, reaching out from their tide pools and reefs into our homes with their tentacles, covered in blue rings that make us watch while we sit, numbed. Caged. Barely conscious, spending our money without control—you wouldn’t believe how much I had to pay to pull this off.”
I knelt down and looked through the shimmering glass.
“Nic?” I asked.
“Me,” he said.
I reached into the tank—a compulsion I could not explain—and held him. I watched as Nic glowed in my hands, my fingers growing numb. I did not feel myself collapse, but I’d heard him plop back into the water and soon it was hard to breathe.
“But, Nic . . . why?”
“I’m sorry, but I got in too deep. We all have,” the blue-ringed octopus said. “I know what it’s like to meet someone you admire and have them be a complete jerk.”
I called out to my Dot to dial 911, but the words were caught in my throat. I laid crumpled on the floor unable to signal for help. I watched Nic’s blue rings pulse in synchronicity with the Dot’s while my spirit danced before me. At least he gave me that.