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ASSASSIN'S ANGEL
The Second book of THE HARLEQUIN MOON TRILOGY by K. J. Wolverton
1. Teen Queen was the one who first pulled his heart out and made him fear love.
2. The Stripper was ten years older and taught him sex-monkey love.
3. Gypsy was a beautiful dream he let slip through his hands.
4. The Wife had his child and wanted him to be what she wanted him to be.
5. Martina was all of the women in one, but could never believe love.
6. Dark Eyes is a sex-changed boy.
Through all of them Santiago waits for magic.
7. The magic Santiago waits for...Yokomi, The Oriental, a mystery of wisdom and the conclusion of his life.
For Santiago—Everything goes wrong and then ultimately everything goes right – Santiago’s first two books become international best sellers. He is miraculously cured of disease, and finds a large bank account can make him happy – buys a house in the hills above Santa Barbara, California, a Mercedes Benz and a three thousand dollar Armani linen suit. Santiago finds out having everything can be nothing too and starts the third book of his life.
Martina wants back in the picture. Santiago, says to her, “You know I already paid the price of admission to you more than once…I just don’t feel like seeing the movie again." He then discovers the truth of Dark Eyes.
Who does he wind up with – Dark Eyes, Martina or Yokomi?
at
the end? Santiago puts the note book away and picks up the thick manuscript that is almost complete.
Book
Two
It was Santiago McBoil’s 50th birthday when he arrived on a late evening in a mountain valley of Corsica. He rendezvoused with Neil Rowan, a Scottish friend who had been a war correspondent in Vietnam where by being in the wrong place at the wrong time, saved Santiago’s life more than twenty-five years before. They walked through the night while Santiago told his old friend the story of the Harlequin Moon, the chapters of his life after Vietnam. In the morning near the top of a hiking trail, they set in the sun drinking strong black coffee prepared by a Corsican shepherd. Santiago had just told Neil he had only a few months left to live. As the sun burned the dew off the alpine meadows and the heat began to raise, Martina, the 30 year-old granddaughter of the shepherd brought a herd of goats down from the high country. She talked with the two men. Twenty-four hours later, the three were seen boarding a plane bound for Paris.
Ten
Years later. Santiago, still alive, begins to write and illustrate his memoirs.
Santiago set at the table looking at the pistol. “Fuck it,” he mumbled and picked up the pen and scrawled in large letters, ONE-EYED SNAKE then continued writing the story that started it all.
I was in love. I was 18. She was 17. I called her Teen Baby. She was a small fat girl—the first girl ran her hot little hands inside my shirt and into my pants—the first girl who ever caressed my one-eyed-snake. I was in love at first touch.
She told me she loved me. Perfect. We were in love. We were serious in high school and our future was right in front of us. We were going to get married. I was going to get a job in the local lumber mill. We were going to buy a Corvair and then we were going to start having children. Maybe two, maybe three. Yes, real true love. Life was going to be perfect.
I should have known better, but what all do you know when you are eighteen and the one-eyed-snake is in charge? Nothing. Zero. Ziltch. Mountainous bullshit, that is what you know.
She suddenly got very interested in strange beliefs. She asked me if I really believed in God. I said maybe I did and maybe I didn’t. That wasn’t the right answer. Then she found other things that I couldn’t give the right answer. Funny because for nearly a year I had all the answers and then I didn’t. Then one day she told me an old friend was coming to town and she was going to go out with him --just because she wanted to know how he was doing, being that he was in the Marines.
“You understand don’t you?” She asked.
“Uh, yeah, I said.
I guess that was finally a right answer because it seemed to make her happy. It made me feel very unhappy and very weird. In fact what it made me feel was strange. A peculiar sensation came over me that I had never felt before. The sensation grew until it was a monster. The monster was called jealousy, but being I had never encountered it before I didn’t know what it was, so I just regarded the sensation as some sort of insecurity. She would not lie to me, would she? I mean she loved me. She said she loved me. I loved her. In a perfect world we had all that really mattered. But somehow, some way, my perfect world didn’t seem perfect anymore.
The night she was supposed to meet the Marine, I was completely miserable. I picked up an old buddy and we drove around town. We did what was called Dragging the Gut. My buddy and I used to do that before I had a serious girlfriend. We would drive to the Tom Tom Drive Inn, which was on the north side of town, take a circle around it, check out who was in the cars or who we could see through the big plate glass windows.
If there were any of our friends we would stop and go through the ritual of what’s going on and then head for the south side of the town where we would circle Shakey’s Pizza Parlor and go through the same process with friends there.
That’s what we did in my small town in eastern Oregon. By the end of the night we had usually driven over a 100 miles. It was five miles between the two hangouts.
So on this particular night, I am not really interested in seeing any of my old friends. What I am really doing is checking out all the possibilities of where my true-love could be and having a snoop on her. But I don’t see her anywhere. All right? All night I don’t see her anywhere. Strange? If she is just talking to the guy why isn’t she in one of our favorite places, like The Tom Tom or Shakey’s? She’s not even at the Superior Cafe downtown. Nowhere in hell she is. Just at that point a horrible suspicion came over me. Her parents were gone. I had to find out. My buddy and I had been talking about her all night.
“Why don’t you just drive over to her house and see?” My friend insisted
I said that I had more trust in her than that. By 1 AM my trust ran out. I drove my 51 Chevy along the backstreets to Maple Street that came into the street my girl lived on—about a half a block away. I didn’t want to pass in front of her house just in case she should see me—then she would know I didn’t trust her. When I got to the corner I could see her house clearly and into the driveway and the garage behind. At the very back of the driveway was a strange car. I could make out from the color of the license plate it was from out-of-state.
My heart jumped into my throat and the feeling of icy hands ran down my spine. I could swear I heard the sound of ripping clothes—like sails being blown apart by high wind—I stopped the Chevy and backed up 30 feet from the intersection of street. I could see the side of her house and the strange car.
“What are you going to do?” my buddy asked.
“Wait,” I said.
So we both set there smoking Marlboros in silence. An hour went by. It seemed like a year. No lights in the house. No one came to the car. No movement anywhere. The streets had grown empty. Black morning was dead quiet.
“Let’s go home,” my buddy said.
“No,” I said. “We’ll wait another 30 minutes then I’ll go and see if anyone is at the house.”
“What do you mean,” he said.
“I’ll go fucking knock on the door,” I hollered.
“Oh man,” my buddy said.
The Marlboros began to taste like shit and my throat felt like it was on fire. The minutes dragged by as I continued to smoke and cough. My buddy set there pissed off because he had to witness me driving myself crazy.
“Come on man, it’s been an hour and 35 minutes—either go and see or let’s go home. I’m fucking tired man.” My buddy complained.
I was aware that the time limit was over but I couldn’t bring myself to facing what I might find. I was terrified.
“Come on,” man my buddy insisted.
“Fuck you,” I screamed then jumped out of the car and trotted to the front of her house. As I came to the porch I slowed to a very slow walk dropping my feet like I was deer hunting in the forest. When I came to the front door I actually heard the sound of a moaning female voice accompanied by something that sounded like a grunting pig.
My stomach turned to a burnt hole. I hesitated. My finger hovered at the door bell. I could still hear high moaning and oinking grunts. Her voice became more and more rapid like tapping a tight drum—the sound of a uh uh uh uh uh growing louder and louder in my ears. Suddenly the pig began to make a loud bellowing squeal. Then I heard his voice say, “ oh God, Oh God, Oh God…”
Somehow I knew they were not in there praying. My mind went very white, like the spark from a welding torch.
My finger came down onto the door bell. I heard her voice shriek and then there was a very low mumbling. After 30 seconds I heard the squeaking of floor boards as she came to the door.
“Who is it? “she asked.
“Me, Santiago,” I yelled.
She opened the door. Her blouse was buttoned but crooked. Her hair looked like it was brushed with an eggbeater.
“Santiago, I…,” she began.
“Thanks. Thanks a lot.” I turned away before she could see the tears in my eyes. I walked back to the Chevy like I had just got off a roller coaster. The streets wobbled under my feet.
When I got to the Chevy, I don’t know what snapped, but it did and I hauled off with my right hand and smashed my fist into the door window. Lucky for me it was safety class. The window cracked into 500 sections radiating out from the impact of my fist.
“What the fuck are you doing?” my buddy screamed at me as I got into the driver’s seat, started the engine and peeled out turning the corner. I wound the old six cylinder up so many RPM’s that it nearly exploded before I jammed it into second gear. Then third gear. I drove the old car 80 miles an hour through town and back to my buddy’s house. I screeched to a stop at his driveway and yelled, ”get out.” My buddy was completely white.
“Santiago, come on man, stop this shit. You’re going to kill yourself,” he pleaded.
“Get the fuck out of my life.” I tried to smash him in the face, but he jumped out and slammed the door before I could deliver the punch. I was yelling something, and he was yelling something at me as I peeled out nearly blowing the engine again. I was going back to her house. I was going to do something. I didn’t know what, but it was something terrible.
As I approached her house, I saw that strange car back out of her driveway. I decided to ram the car, but before I could get to it, the car was going too fast to catch. I could see a female figure sitting in the passenger seat.
I followed the car as best I could as he went through the middle of downtown. I was just getting up on the rear end of the car when I decided I would kill them both.
I drove alongside of them and was just about to crash their car and force it into a shop window.
Suddenly he slammed on the brakes and I shot past.
My eyes flicked down at the speedometer and I saw the needle was at 85. I jammed on my brakes and looked into the rear view mirror. I saw his car turn onto the street that ran to the east of town.
By the time I turned onto their trail the taillights of his car were way up in front of me and getting smaller. He had a bigger engine than my old rattletrap and he was scared shitless and was breaking more traffic laws than me. I could barely see the red lights when the car turned onto another street heading north. It was the street of my girlfriend’s best friend, and I knew where she lived.
By the time I got to the house I saw my girl running to the front door of her friend’s house and the guy in the car was burning rubber as he sped away. I roared up on his rear end as he slowly pulled away.
There was no way I could keep up with his car until I saw that he was headed back into town on the Burns Highway. I knew a shortcut that knocked off several blocks so I cut onto it and just as I came to the Burns Highway the guy was coming into my trap.
As he crossed the intersection ignoring the red light I swung into his side and was planning on battering him into a concrete underpass he was rapidly approaching.
Suddenly he veered off into the lot of a used car agency.
Without thinking I wheeled my car in behind him, nearly rolling the old Chevy as I slammed into the curb and bounced into the parking space right behind this fucker.
He had driven into a dead-end. Cars were blocking all of the exits except for the way he had come in. He screeched to a stop nearly slamming into one of the used cars. I stomped on the brakes and slide right in behind him.
We jumped out of our cars at the same time.
He had on a Marine dress-green suit and jumped to face me as I ran up to him. He had a beer bottle in his right hand holding it by the neck. He smashed it into the edge of his open door that left a jagged broken neck in his hand.
I stopped in my tracks and looked at it for a couple of seconds.
Then I said, “okay so you’ve got a fucking weapon man – well fuck you—I’m going to kill you anyway.”
I was totally insane and I knew even if he cut my eyes out I would smash his head to pulp into the asphalt. I looked into his eyes and all I could see or feel was hatred and bloodlust. He was going to die even if I was going to die. I didn’t care and nothing would stop me. What was in mind communicated to the Marine.
As I took a step toward him to bring about our mutual destiny, he said, “Wait, this isn’t a good place to fight…”
Of all the things he could have said, he somehow managed to say the right combination of words to slip past the confusion of my insane mind.
“Oh yeah, it’s not a good place to fight…,” I said. I was blocked in my own steps. “…yeah, this is not a good place to fight.”
He said, “I know a better place to fight.”
“Oh yeah, let’s fight there,” I said. I was in a trance, a place to fight, a place to fight, ran through my mind like a Buddhist mantra. “OK—where is it?”
“Just follow me and we’ll go there,” he said.
So we both got into our cars. I had to back up first so he could get out. It didn’t occur to me that he could run away again, but he backed up and then he drove very slowly down the street as I followed. All I could think of was that he was going to die very soon. There was nothing else in my mind.
When we came to the center of town there was an all-night gas station and he swung into it and stopped. I leapt out of my car and before he could move I reached through his window and had him by his neck.
“Wait, wait,” The guy screamed as I started dragging him out the window.
“Wait for what, you motherfucker?” I screamed back
“I need gas to get where we’re going to fight,” he croaked.
Once again he had the words in exactly the right order.
My mind flashed a signal that it was a perfectly reasonable thing to wait for, so I dropped my hands from his throat and got back in my car with smoke coming out of my ears. I watched the service station attendant pump two bucks worth of gas into the guy’s car. The guy handed the dollar bills out the window and started his engine and then screeched out of the gas station.
The bastard was trying to escape again. I laid rubber as I wheeled out of the station never taking my foot off the floorboard. I speed-shifted through the gears and was right on his ass within three blocks.
All at once the son-of-a-bitch slammed on his brakes and turned a sharp left and began to broad-slide. He came to a dead stop right in front of the police station. I jammed on my brakes and was out of the car even before the smoke of burning rubber had lifted from the street.
This time I was prepared. I picked up at 12 inch crescent wrench that was always under my seat. I ran to the guy as he was getting out of his car and caught him by the left arm. He jerked loose and turned to face me
“Look man, I didn’t even know that she had a boyfriend—man I just came home on leave from the Marines—and I didn’t mean to cause any problems man. I’m sorry—I didn’t know…”
I looked at him with hatred and heard his words. Somehow I understood I was about to kill the wrong person, I couldn’t stop myself. He was going to die. Someone had to die. I didn’t care who died, including me.
I was just about to swing the wrench when there was a loud thunder boom and a cloudburst crashed down like I had never seen in my life.
I dropped the wrench as if I had come out of a nightmare. I looked down on the ground at the crescent wrench. Enormous pellets of water were exploding on the pavement. My eyes drifted to his feet. I slowly raised my eyes until I was looking directly in his eyes.
I couldn’t say a thing. I just started crying, feeling the tears mixed with the rain that run down my cheeks. The guy just stood there looking back at me.
Then the police station door opened and two cops walked out looking at us suspiciously. “Is everything okay here?” One of them asked.
I didn’t know what the cop meant.
The guy, not taking his eyes from my eyes said, “Yeah sure, everything is okay.”
I could feel the clear cold wind and the rain on my face as I stood in front of the Marine.
The rain washed away the madness, but not the pain—the awful pain that I thought would never stop.
I heard the Marine’s voice, “Look, man, I’m sorry. I didn’t know she had a boyfriend. I mean I wouldn’t have screwed her if I knew that ...”
It was an old story, one that Santiago had never told to his closest friends. Now in his sixtieth year he began unfolding the riddles of love and death.
Hell, someone had to show me how fickle life is—why be pissed off at anybody and why be disappointed that I am no different than anyone else? That’s what I get for living long enough to find out what it means to be human. Fuck the sentiment. Life is infinitely layered and the observable universe doesn’t give a shit about anybody or anything. Stars are born and stars die. It’s all just mechanical. My mind is spinning. The voices I keep hearing bug me. What is there to say?
I am going through a male menopausal depression. For years, I have felt the psycho-drama like a clown jumping out of a burning circus car. What the hell does it matter? Everything is funny if you wait long enough, depending on what you see in a predicament. A burning car filled with clowns is always funny. Maybe at one point in My Lai, Vietnam, March 16, 1968 it was funny too, but I didn’t feel it. Still there might have been a few among the mass madness of that day who walked away laughing.
It all comes back to who you are and what has happened to you if you stayed alive. For me it is not the war that keeps circling my mind, it is the women. I keep wondering why all the women I have loved left me for one reason or the other.
The other night, one of those damn broken sleepless nights, I counted my heartbreaks over the last forty years. Jesus, six. Six fucking broken hearts is just too damn much. As much as it appears I am feeling sorry for myself, I am just a man who sees what is obvious. I am a disaster.
But why feel sorry for myself? No reason. I was innocently walking down the street and the world blew up around me, tearing off my clothes and covered me in gore. Once the dust and doom settled, I discovered even though I was naked and stained; I didn’t have a scratch on me. Am I not blessed? Fuck knows. My luck is just the random unthinking election of the universe. Bullets, bad lovers and other errant death messengers have missed me every time.
If I had only known what she was going to do. Who am I talking about this time? It is Martina. I tried to fall in love with Dark Eyes only to get Martina out of my mind. It didn’t work. I was too much in love with Martina, or maybe just obsessed for over 20 years. She was the most powerful drug in my life. Yeah, a drug. Oh yeah, the way she would whisper in my ear early in the morning. The way she would look at me with her sleep-heavy eyes. They were perfect almond shaped hypnotizers and her lips with that beautiful double curl like two little waves that ran across her mouth. I could hardly stay away, wanting my tongue caressing them.
The way she would get out of bed in the morning, not looking at me, her naked and the sway of her hips, easy and feminine as she walked to run a bath. There always was a long hashish joint hanging in her fingers, the smell of its spicy aroma drifting into my nostrils. I was drugged, hypnotized, infatuated and crazy in love with her. She said I was only the one in life, told me I was the only one who had ever known her, had ever pleased her. All of that was so long ago, in another world, when I was really alive.
Other people’s spirits are alive and their flesh is gone, yet my body breathes and my soul has vanished. Life is a depressing emptiness. Even so, on this morning, it is not just the vacuum of depression; there is something else. The best label I can give it is haunted.
I know what haunts me. What kind of person I am after all of the years since Vietnam? All of the self-help and soul-work I have gone through has not taken off the tarnished and corrupted person I have become over the course of a murderous life. I wonder if in the first breath I ever took it loosened a pebble on top of a mountain that once it began to roll, sent down that entire avalanche of human betrayal on top of me.
I feel betrayed yet the betrayal is something I perpetrated on the ones I have loved. I have the emotional complexity of a child. That is absurd. I am racing towards my 60th year, the same way a brakeless car doing 90 runs into a 5 o’clock LA traffic jam on a Friday afternoon. The crash is inevitable.
Still alive, kicking and complaining. Oh yeah, I have survived war, love, disease and alcohol. All I have to survive now is the symptoms of alcohol withdrawal and the holocaust of a bitter mind.
She put me in the Lovers Hall of Fame with her words. I heard what I wanted to hear. I was deluded by every movement. I conditioned myself to live a lie as the truth and nothing could stop me—nothing that is, until I felt the crash of a car that had no brakes and I saw her for the first time as backed up traffic. The moment of the crash, it was the sound of crunched metal and splintering glass—at that precise point of time, I saw the truth. It was so obvious. Truth always is. I was a fool and for split-second I could see perfectly. I was fascinated with my ability to be duplicitous—to ignore all of the road signs of danger and drive on like a maniac towards blocked freeways. I drove on faster, faster. I had to get to the end. Reality is the best fantasy. Even so I panicked and jumped around in my head but I thought I could bluff her out. It was a fool’s game of jumping and what better place to be a fool than Paris.
“OK so you don’t want me in your life—I get it—I’ll leave in the morning.”
I expected her immediately to deny what I had just said, but she just looked at me. Her eyes had all the love of a dead fish yet it was me who felt the hook in my heart. I thought about my wife and child and how I had just lost everything.
Martina just stood there and looked at me with those cold eyes. I looked like the fool I was. I looked at her with desperate eyes. She just looked at me and watched as I died in the crash I designed. I turned from that look, opened a fresh pack Marlboros and smoked at the desk in the corner of the hotel room.
Martina went to bed and it wasn’t even 10 p.m. She hardly ever went to sleep before three in the morning. I set at the desk smoking trying to figure out what the hell I was going to do. I kept hoping she would open her eyes and come to me with that hungry look again and say, I love you. Her eyes never opened. There was no sound from the bed, not even her opening the squeaky lid of the dope box, or turning in the bed as she drifted to sleep. Only silence.
I sat at the desk, living a death sentence. I sentenced myself. My mind screamed. I couldn’t stand the pain. I had to find refuge.
My art was the only sanctuary I had ever known. I got up and dug out paintbrushes from the luggage. I had a small canvass and a few tubes of acrylic. I put the canvass on the desk propped up with a book. In a matter of seconds I was away on a journey.
The line, the power of a line, the magic of a line took me away from my mind. I was watching my hand and brush as color was pushed and molded around a two-dimensional world. At first there was no image, just shapes and then slowly they began to come together into a human form. Then a woman with one hand falling gently into her sex and the other hand raised with the index finger pointing to the side—then the face emerged and the eyes came alive, hypnotizing. I saw Martina’s eyes. Then her mouth, that delicious mouth, and on I went until she was there looking at me in paint. Pain submerged my soul.
I couldn’t stand looking at the painting and took a kitchen knife and held it half-inch away from the surface, then stopped. No. I couldn’t murder my own creation. I would change it. Her hair was jet black. I took the knife and scraped it away. I laid down yellow and ochre and within minutes she was a blonde. Her eyes turned to sky blue. The mouth, the turn of her mouth had to change and in three strokes the crescent smile changed to a sardonic dip rising at the opposite side. The cheeks were too healthy but with a dark pool the cheeks turned into concentration camp depression. The eyes went from a look of enchantment to being haunted, cursed.
The hands. Something had to be done with the hands and fingers. Five minutes later, blood was flowing from long scratches that crossed over the faint scar I remembered on her neck—blood dripping off the index finger that was now pointing to a dark shape in the background—a shape that had horns and a tail shaped like a penis. It was Lucifer coming. I stopped.
My eyes turned. I looked at the clock. It was 6:45 in the morning. I had been painting since midnight. It seemed like minutes—like years. I looked at the painting as though someone else had painted it. I could see faint reminders of the lover who was gone, yet there she was, sleeping in our rented bed, only a few feet away.
Martina was the painting—even with a different color of hair and eyes. Even with cadaver looking skin. She was still in the painting. It was mysterious and I began to think, perhaps I had painted the true portrait of Martina—the Goddess of Destruction. “Kali,” I said out loud, again and again.
I didn’t realize I was shouting at the top of my voice. I kept screaming, “Kali.” I had no idea what I was doing. I picked up the painting, raised it over my head and was about to smash it down over the chair when a hand fell on my shoulder. There she was in flesh, Kali, Martina herself.
I stood there with the painting over my head. My mouth open, my voice arrested.
Martina said with that hungry look in her eyes, “You know if you really would like to make me happy there is something you can do for me today.”
I just stood there. Suddenly a glimmer of hope came into my mind.
“You know, I have never had a Christmas tree, not ever. I would really love to have a Christmas tree. Do you think he could find one for me?”
A desperate man will walk off into a mirage. I didn’t think about the odd request. Why shouldn’t I buy her Christmas tree? Christmas was only a few days away. The season to be jolly—not an unusual request.
I went out into the streets of Paris like I was newly born. Rain glistened on the sidewalks like satin ribbons. The sky wasn’t gray—it was periwinkle. I disregarded the fashion-shop snobs and only saw laughing children. The world was beautiful again. I was pardoned from execution. My Martina had a request and that was all that was important—all that I could think about. I was as crazy as I had ever been –as crazy as I was in My Lai.
I saw myself bringing her the most fantastic Christmas tree in Paris. It was decorated like a queen’s crown– perfect, symmetrical and glimmering. The electric lights were gleaming as I was greeted by my lover. She swept the tree out of my arms as our clothes fell off and she hungrily bit into my neck and knocked me down—her beautiful pussy sucking in my cock as we lay on the floor fucking and sweating. “I love you,” she said.
There was only one problem. I was nearly broke. Three days in Paris. $3,000 spent in ecstasy. I had a hundred dollar bill in my pocket—my entire estate—my total life savings. It was four in the afternoon and it was already beginning to get dark before I found trees under a hundred bucks. They were crippled bushes. If I had waited until Christmas I could have got a better deal. But my Goddess of Destruction had a request. It had to be answered not tomorrow or next week but today. I thought about finding Neil, my friend, who had come to Paris with Martina and me. But I did not want him around her again.
I had to get her back. I was fucked-up – I saw shapes green and bushy. I thought about stealing a tree. How do you shoplift a fucking tree? Right, steal a tree, walk down the street. I have nothing in my coat pocket but a hundred dollar bill.
The best tree was ninety-five bucks equivalent in Francs. No chance of hiring a taxi with five bucks. I picked one for fifty bucks and gave the man money. The dollar works everywhere. I walked away rationalizing Martina never had a Christmas tree. How would she know a perfect tree if she saw one? It was her first Christmas tree. It would be the best.
By the time I got to the hotel I was panting from the strain of carrying the tree and imagining the lust to come. I keyed open the door, put the tree down next to the umbrella basket and walked into my rainbow future.
“Martina,” I called out.
I heard a moan in the bathroom. I thought she was ready, waiting for me as I walked towards her sound. I swung open the bathroom door. She lay deep, in bath bubbles, exploding over the side of the tub. Something wasn’t right. I couldn’t get the picture together. All I could think was, Christmas tree, equals prize – I get laid by the Goddess.
“What is it?” The Goddess shrieked at me.
“I’ve got it,” I said, knowing it wasn’t the way, I wanted.
“What is it?” she screamed again.
“A tree—a Christmas tree.”
She looked at me like I was a cockroach. Where was that hungry look, she gave me in the morning?
I retrieved the trophy at the hallway door. I came back, the bush in my arms.
Martina was out of the bath and had put a strange T-shirt over her naked body. Her hair was a mess. I smelled musky familiar odors. It didn’t click. I stood like the village idiot with a denuded skeleton of a Christmas tree.
“What exactly is that?” She said. Her eyes, wide open, staring at the tree.
“It’s a Christmas tree,” I began.
“I don’t want a thing like that. I want a white Christmas tree! A white Christmas tree made out of plastic. I don’t want this ugly thing!” She screamed.
I stood there stunned. Anger burnt over me.
“I want that thing out of here! I’m allergic to trees.” Her eyes were demented.
“You’re allergic to trees? How did you live in the mountains?”
“Oh don’t act like a fool. You know I was above timberline, all the time I was there. But that’s not a tree. Get it out of here, it’s ugly. Couldn’t you have found one that had needles on it?” She slammed the bathroom door.
I stood there angry, getting more angry. I considered her neck, strangling it as I fucked her for the last time. I felt rape and murder—but suddenly the consequences came to me—to give up one more thing—for this woman—this fucking woman I had never understood—this woman who could turn love on and off—this woman who never once concerned herself with the results of her actions, the pain she inflicted on people, without the slightest care. To give up my life, to go to jail, to face shame of being a monster, was unbearable. But revenge is sometimes too sweet to stop.
There was a small axe by the ceramic fireplace– just for decoration, but it was there. I picked it up with one hand and ran my fingers across the edge. It was dull. I went back to the bathroom door, swung it open, and saw a strange thing.
There, in the bubbly bath, with Martina, was Neil. Him naked, leaning against the faucets. His back must have hurt. He looked at me, the axe in my hand. I saw the whites of his eyes as they opened into big white saucers.
“Don’t do anything foolish, Santiago,” Neil whispered.
“Foolish.” I repeated. “Foolish, foolish…” I began to laugh and repeat the word like a small child‘s sing-song. Martina said nothing. The color of her skin grew very white, as white as the whites of Neil’s saucer eyes. My laughter grew hysterical, until, without a word, I raised the axe over my head, both hands on the end of the handle, looking at their eyes. They began screaming, “No, No, No,” which only made my laughter more crazy.
I took one step forward, they scooted their bodies under the water as if swimming to another world. The sensation of making them terrified was completely delicious. I could feel the satisfaction of chopping them into small pieces. I could see blood dripping off the walls. I took one more step.
“I have only one thing to say to you,” I said, bending towards Martina, “and that is, you are too much of a bitch, to kill– you have already killed what human, you ever had.”
I turned and chopped the Christmas tree into a hundred pieces. I threw the beaten shreds over the dirty lovers squirming in the bath. I walked out of Martina’s life and back into my own death sentence.
Santiago sat in the only home he had; a 1977 Dodge van. He put down the pen and looked at his feet. The dog that had showed up out of nowhere had his head on his foot using it for a pillow. Santiago named him Shadow because no matter where he went the dog was always there. Shadow was a Blue Heeler breed—just a little over a year old judging from his teeth.
“I had an idea Shadow and was just about to write down that amazing insight when you lay on my foot. Damned if you didn’t break my whole train of thought.” Santiago reached down and rubbed the dog’s ears.
Santiago returned to his journal and was thinking of how to continue the next sentence when suddenly gale winds began blowing and a cloudburst beat down on his tin home. Rain began blowing into all of the open windows and water poured through an open roof vent. Santiago leaped up and ran outside to cover his belongings that were packed in cardboard boxes stacked around the van. By the time he pulled a large plastic sheet over his belonging, he was soaking wet. He jumped back in the van to discover Shadow snuggled in his bed.
Santiago felt better with the crash of the monsoon rain. Life wasn’t so bad after all, and from the contents of water that had been dumped on the desert in less than five minutes, it looked like a brand new batch of life was going to start.
“Here we go again, Shadow. All life needs is water.” He smiled believing maybe that was all it meant—water in a dry land, and scratching a dog’s itchy ears. What else could bring such instant results?
In 30 minutes the storm had passed. The dog jumped out of Santiago’s bed and went outside to survey the new wet world that had altered his turf. “Hmmm, brand new places to pee on. I should go tell the man.”
Santiago slept through the night in restless washing machine agitation. He was almost asleep when the sky exploded above his Dodge.
Shadow came to the side of his bed, licked his hand and said,” Is that big man moving furniture around up there in that fuzzy stuff?”
In a minute the rain began to fall and a cool wind blew in through the open window. Santiago reached down and pulled a phony fur blanket up around his shoulders. He petted Shadow said, “Go to sleep. The old man has been eating beans again—you know what that means.”
Later in the morning after coffee and burning a breakfast of French toast, Santiago went to the University where he was finishing his last semester as an undergraduate. He was the oldest student in most of his classes. He was 30 years older than most instructors. He was an honor student, about to graduate Summa Cum Laude. He went about the business of taking notes. In many classes there was no textbook but lots of reading online. The 21st Century had arrived while Santiago barely understood the 20th.
He walked from one building on campus to another wondering why he was still in school as an old man when he hated school so much as a kid. He had to remind himself he had no idea of what to do out in the real world. The Veterans Administration had accepted his application and had reinstated his war time compensation as a wounded-in-the-head-vet. They were sending him back to school, the University of Arizona, famous for astronomy, parties and beautiful young bodies. “By the time you get out you will have another 5 or 10 years to make an honest living,” his counselor said.
Santiago tried to keep his mind centered on being prepared for the next intensive months but every time he turned around, there was another gorgeous young thing with short shorts and a braless top that in certain parts of big cities would suggest they were open for business.
He tried to ignore the fanfare of flesh but each time he dispelled the miasma of one budding temptress, another one would appear that looked better. He was a horny old goat. It was going to be damn tough to focus on words of blithering professors.
At the end of the day Santiago drove back to his vehicle home on his 1100 cc Yamaha. As usual Shadow welcomed him. At least he had someone to come home to even if it was just a dog. Santiago thought about the young beauties of the day and compared them to the women he had known. He knew he would put each and every one of those old loves back into his life a thousand times faster than any of those young things. “Yeah, give me a woman who has some content and a lot of ferocity anytime over a blossoming nymphet who thinks only about hairdos and manicures. I want heat—not hot stuff,” he said to Shadow just before he went to sleep.
Shadow woke up at 2:45 a.m. thinking the words: HOT STUFF. “Hot stuff?” he said out loud. When morning came he had to talk to the man.
“So what is wrong with hot stuff?” Shadow asked at breakfast.
“What the hell are you talking about Shadow? You haven’t even got laid yet. What do you know about females?” Santiago was annoyed the dog could bring up a consideration that he had tried his best the night before to forget.
“Well… I mean you like steak don’t you? Steak is hot stuff,” Shadow persisted.
“I used to, but I’m not that wild about it these days.”
“Okay, you like ice cream, yeah?” Shadow gave the man a sneaky eye.
“Yeah, I like ice cream. So what?”
“Right! Ice cream is hot stuff – see what I mean?” Shadow said sensing some kind of dog-logic victory.
Santiago went to his first class at noon. It was a lecture seminar in astronomy that had over 300 students. He was the only old man there, still outranking the professor by years. He had two more classes and the same pattern continued.
The disappointing aspect of the day was not the age factor, but the reason he returned to the University was to take writing and journalism. The professors were well-meaning fools with principles of concrete description and inverted pyramids. Right, just like life. It made Santiago laugh.
The University experience was a ritual of futility. He had to take prerequisite courses that had no meaning other than trivial knowledge in a large bucket of useless information. He was surrounded by children with party-mode consciousness. The whole idea of being a scholar was just another version of a confused old man having his head firmly jammed up his ass.
Santiago’s cell phone kept ringing all day. He did not bother to answer the calls. All of them were Credit Card people demanding that he call them immediately. What was the point? He had $10.47 in his checking account and $40,000 owed to plastic corporate bandits. It looked like bankruptcy was his only escape. Santiago managed to surround himself with economic and psychic vampires. In that, he had been incredibly successful.
At the end of the day Santiago McBoil discovered outside the climate controlled walls of the university another monsoon downpour. The desert was flooding and somehow the metaphor with his condition seemed synonymous. He had 25 miles to ride home on the motorcycle. The streets flowed with water running a foot deep. He waited around for an hour and finally there was a hole in the sky. He made a dash for it but a hundred yards down the street a young coed passed him in a car, washing him with gutter water. Santiago could only laugh. All he was worried about was keeping the rubber under him.
When he got home, he found in the mail, the 37th rejection from a publisher. He began to wonder if he had the slightest notion of what he was supposed to be.
“Okay,” Shadow the dog asked, “Is there anything out there you can say is positive or at least hopeful?”
Santiago looked at the dog. “Sure. I am alive, kicking, have a roof over my head and family and friends who believe I am worth the time. For a lot of people in the world all of that would be a blessing and you wouldn’t hear a grumble out of them. The problem is I still have high-flying aspirations. Unfortunately, I have to face the fact each day, not one of my dreams has materialized. I have only gone deeper into delusion…”
Shadow bent around and licked his butt, then after a good scratch he said thoughtfully, “You seem to be caught with the perplexity of standing in a dissolving conviction but hey, that it is no more desperate than what most you people think is real... It’s kind of like trying to remember where I bury my bones…”
“Oh God,” Santiago moaned, “I got to get out of here. Now I’m talking to dogs and they’re talking back. Two more years of this bullshit and then I’m gone”
The sun had just come up and Santiago was drinking strong black coffee and smoking cheap tobacco roll-ups. Ten years had passed since Santiago had been with that woman and Neil in Paris. Twenty years had slid by since he first met her in Germany. Her name was Martina. She was half French but had been raised in Corsica by her grandfather, an illiterate Corsican shepherd.
When Martina disappeared in ’94 with Neil, Santiago stayed in Paris waiting for money he had hustled from old connections. While in Paris he met a whore he called Dark Eyes on Rue St. Denis. She helped him forget about being made a fool by Martina and betrayed by Neil. He departed for Scotland with the Dark Eyes in mid January and stayed until the end of a tourist visa in March. Santiago returned alone to America.
In America, Santiago went deeper down in alcohol. He returned to the university trying to get Martina out of his soul. In the summers he returned to Corsica looking for her, but none of his old friends ever knew where she was. During his last semester at the University of Arizona, Oscar wrote he had seen Martina and she looked older. After a summer graduation, Santiago returned in the fall to the island.
Murder or suicide. It didn’t really matter either way. If he killed himself it would replace the terminal disease that was supposed to have killed him ten years before. If he murdered Martina, he would be no doubt be dead long before he spent any time in a jail. He played with the possibilities but everything seemed absurd—but most of all, love. The thought kept running in his head, I am going crazy with these fucking voices…dogs, rivers, fucking everything talks to me…
Daily on the farm, Santiago wore a red sleeveless T shirt emblazoned with Che Guevara’s famous portrait, baggy olive drab shorts and cheap rainbow colored rubber flip-flops. He smoked while sitting at a green metal table under the shade of an avocado tree. The sun cut through the Mediterranean summer haze that had only been up an hour but it was already hot on his shoulders.
Santiago reached under his T shirt and pulled out the revolver he had tucked into his shorts. He was not ready yet. He looked at the 38 caliber pistol his father had given him when he was a boy. He put it back down on the table. He was not afraid to die, but an angry sadness stopped him from putting the gun in his mouth. Maybe once again, he was killing the wrong person.
How ironic it was the way things had worked out. Martina had pegged him right from the very beginning. He remembered what she said. You have an assassin’s face. He should have killed her the first time she betrayed him in Frankfurt or for sure in Paris. What the hell did it matter? Everybody was going to die anyway and as it looked; his own natural death sentence was just around the corner.
The number six kept circling his life. Six Vietnamese villagers dying for nothing. His pistol was a six-shooter. The doctors said six months and that seemed like sixty years ago. That had been without the complication Lady Luck had just dealt. The only luck he ever had was dodging bullets and now he was even dodging his own. Luck with women and love never had been good cards. Six loves gone to hell—I’m a damned weird six-card stud, he thought. Six years since he last heard of Martina. Six years since his death sentence.
Santiago thought about the cards that war and love had dealt. He could forget the six he murdered in the war. They would have probably been dead from poverty by now anyway. He didn’t give the command. He just followed orders. He was young and stupid. But six others he could not forget. He got older and the faces of love’s betrayal would not disappear.
One. His first love was Teen Baby. She was his steady all through High School, they were going to get married, have kids. She ran off with a Marine before he even had a chance to stick his dick in her.
Two. The Stripper showed him how to fuck in two dozen different kinky ways, but she had trouble leaving old men alone who had lots of money and bought her mouth a suck at a time.
Three. After Vietnam, he met a little hippy chick in the mountains of Colorado who he called Gypsy. She was as good of a woman as he would ever find, but the problem was he was still too pissed off from the first two love wounds, and it was the time of Free Love. There was just too much good pussy around for him to ignore. Gypsy left with the endearing shout, “You’re a dirty son-of-a-bitch!”
Four. He went to Europe and there met a woman that followed him no matter how unfaithful and uncaring he was. It seemed to work. The more he did not love her the closer she stuck to him. He married her because she would not go away. She became the Wife and they had a daughter. After 20 years she could not take another day of his depression or disloyalty. “Get out of my life,” she screamed. He put his tail between his legs and slinked away. He knew that she had been the winning hand worth holding onto but she had been bluffed out by Martina.
Five. Martina like the Beatle’s song came in through the bathroom window, that is, in 1982 she was a ten day love affair in Germany. In 1986 she magically reappeared in Corsica as the lover of a Corsican friend. Shortly after he and Martina disappeared together for another ten days. Santiago returned to the Wife and she forgave him. But Santiago could not forget Martina and found her the last time on a mountain before he lost her again when she jumped into the bed of his best friend. He lost the Wife too.
Six. Then entered Dark Eyes who was the wild card. She gave him shelter but also gave him a second death sentence after he outlived the first. Dark Eyes who appeared at the loneliest moment of his life had disappeared back into the mean streets of Paris. For all he knew she was already dead from the gift she had passed to him.
But of them all, it was Martina who was the hand he wished he still could hold. Santiago thought, this ain’t no card game, it’s a fuck’n comedy…who ever heard of six-card poker.
The frogs in the pond were making their morning song of Whee-Whee and Rhug-Ghup. On a shoulder beyond the trees was the low drone of Oscar’s big red Russian farm tractor. Birds slipped in sharp notes chipping away at the silent spaces. There was the large cup of coffee, strong, thick and black as Africa in front of him. Its aroma mixed into the acrid smell of the manure Oscar was spreading over the newly plowed field.
He took a pencil out of the rusty tin can that also served as an ashtray and scribbled his thoughts into a cheap notebook he had brought from the guest house. He was thinking of what to do next. It was a ritual in the morning that he had done since he was a young soldier in Vietnam—sitting and pondering the maze of existence, one day at a time. No matter what event surrounded his life; each day’s content was loneliness – a faithful companion during comfort and torture.
He stubbed out the roll-up and thought about making another one but decided against it. The pistol that lay near his hand reflected a dull sun off the barrel. The second cup of coffee was growing cold. He slurped the black sludge then threw the remainder into the fallen dead leaves of the avocado tree. The coffee was doing its trick. He could feel the caffeine beginning to agitate his sleepy body. His nervous system was bump started again. I’ll kill this bastard yet, he thought, but he knew he never would.
Dogs were barking up on the side of the mountain and their echoes were bouncing down the Gravone Valley. Cars shushed by on the village road. The sun was growing hot.
Santiago had been on the farm for two weeks. It was a place he often returned to trying to escape the catastrophe of his life, but more than any other reason it was because Corsica was the only place where the melodrama of life seemed just fine.
He had no idea really how much time he had left. The doctors said he should have been dead by now, but his condition was no worse. Physically, he felt as good as he ever did. It was his mind that was crumbling. He had to do something vital with what was left of his life and he had to be in a place that had meaning.
He had returned to the farm because his friend Oscar had written that Martina and Neil were back on the island. Santiago felt like the elephant that walks itself to the graveyard.
He had known Oscar since his early days in Corsica when he lived with his wife Leila and daughter Tara. After Leila had kicked him out of her life, Oscar’s farm had become his private paradise. It was only there, loneliness became sympathetic with the earth around him. Reality was just beyond the perimeter of the farm.
The river was the natural guardian at the backside of the farm. It kept intruders from arriving by the rear door. The river was an Angel spirit who chaperoned his exile.
The table under the avocado tree was only 100 steps away from his River Angel. Santiago would move from one sacred spot to the other avoiding the minor distractions of the farm, like Oscar starting a two-cycle water pump engine that sounded like Chinese firecrackers. The sanctuary under the avocado tree would be shot full of holes so he would have to move to his River Angel and let her voice wash away the noise. It was paradise with shifting parameters.
The voice of the River Angel spoke to him. “It is all right Santiago”
He would often sit in the course granite sand of the river banks leaning against one of the rounded boulders letting his eyes take his mind up through the gold and emerald leaves of the oak forests that covered the shoulders of the river.
“It is all right Santiago everything is okay,” River Angel said.
“Thank you sweetheart I knew you would be here,” he said.
Santiago became accustomed to this short intimate greeting with the river. It never occurred to him that these words were anything more than his own crazed condition until on this day when Oscar started the noisy machine earlier than normal. Santiago gulped the dregs of his second cup of coffee, picked up his notebook and tobacco bag and walked to the sandbanks of the river.
It had rained heavily the night before so he had to find a place where the sun dried the sand. A shaft of light cutting through the tree limbs indicated a perfect golden circle. It was only a few feet away from the rapids where the voice of River Angel spoke most often. Santiago set down, rolled a cigarette, lit it and leaned into a granite rock armchair that was snuggled into the shore. He looked up through the frayed holes of leaves and saw that most of the sky was a hazy summer blue with only a few shredded clouds hanging on after the storm.
In the distant sky came the rumble of a motored aircraft, something big like a World War II bomber. Santiago thought about that sound and how it had thrilled him as a child when he lived only a few miles from the Army Air Corps training field. The sound triggered a mechanical reaction in him like Pavlov’s dog and bell. When he heard the throb of the bombers he would stop what every was doing, then go to his mother‘s old upright piano, gently raise the keyboard cover and place both his hands flat-palmed down on the base notes. If he stretched his short legs he could depress the string damper pedal. Then he would push down as many keys as his small hands could cover and create his own earthly rumble that would lace up into the air and join and the sound in the sky. At that moment he would have the clear sensation that he was flying and he would see beautiful billowing white clouds all around him. When the bomber passed and the sound in the sky stopped, it would disconnect him from the experience. Suddenly he would just be sitting at the piano that was making a bell like ringing. He would look up at the portrait of a dead brother that had been shot down in the Pacific, and he felt as though they were connected. The sensation would remain within him and only leave when his mother asked, Santiago what are you doing? Nothing, he would say, then get up from the piano and go outside and play.
The sound of the plane on this day faded and Santiago watched the clear water of the river roll past him. Sometimes he sat at the river for hours, as if it was his job, his place to be until the cool shade indicated the sun was down and his duty was over.
On this particular day River Angel said something new.
“What?” Santiago was completely surprised. He turned around to see if someone had come down the path to the river behind him. There was nobody.
“Did you hear me Santiago?” River Angel spoke softly but with a slight urgency.
Santiago looked at the rapids and only saw the usual black and silver world passing over the rocks.
“Santiago what is wrong this morning?” River Angel asked in a concerned voice.
Santiago waited a moment before he began to speak going along with a joke he thought his mind was playing on him.
“Uh, yeah, there is something wrong - you’re right.”
“I...I guess…I’m really lonely...no, not lonely. No. I want a woman. I want the woman who has never stayed...I want the love I lost...I want what’s gone...”
“What do you mean when do I want her? I want her now, God damn it!” Santiago said angrily.
Santiago nearly jumped out of his skin when he felt at hand on his shoulder and a delicate voice said, “Bon jour, ça va?”
Santiago scrambled to his feet and saw the most beautiful woman he had seen in years, that is, the kind of beauty that especially appealed to him. She had dark walnut hair, skin almost mulatto, large brown cat-like eyes, a long graceful nose slightly upturned, full sensual lips, a gorgeous neck that flowed into squared boyish shoulders. She had on a low cut pale yellow blouse that revealed firm breasts—just short enough to show a sliver of muscled belly. She wore faded Levi’s that fit her like a rodeo queen. The top button was undone and the belt was rolled over making her waistline very feminine and very sexy. On her feet were small but very macho looking brown hiking boots,
Shocked to be discovered talking to himself and embarrassed to be found in his private crazy space, Santiago stumbled over his words.
“Uh, yeah, ...uh, I… oui, oui, ça va, ça va...”
“It’s okay Santiago, you can speak English,” the young woman said to him.
Santiago looked at her, wary that perhaps his mind was really slipping and he was beginning to hallucinate. “How do you know me...I’m sorry, I mean, do I know you?” Santiago said.
The young woman smiled at him for just a bit longer than a moment teasing him with her eyes that seem to invite anything. “Your friend the farmer, Oscar, said you were down here, and I have wanted to meet you for such a long, long time.”
“Oscar? Oh yes! Oscar...of course...” Santiago was so stunned by this sudden appearance of the young woman that Oscar might as well have been on another planet. “Oh yes, I didn’t think he knew I was down here...”
“Yes I know. He said you may not want to be disturbed, but I couldn’t wait to see you.” She smiled almost like a little girl, but she looked in her mid 20s.
“I guess you know me, but I’m sorry I can’t seem to place...have we met to before? Forgive me what is your name?”
She laughed a delicious laugh. The sound of her voice was almost like a song that was in harmony with the rapids of the river. “You don’t remember then do you?”
“No...I’m sorry, I don’t know how I could forget you - but I don’t seem to remember you, uh...”
“I am Angel,” she said. “You knew my sister when I was little—but I have never forgotten you.”
Santiago felt like he had been punched in the brain. “Angel…your name it is Angel?” His legs seemed to quake and he could feel the spasm of nervous muscles collapse underneath him. He set down quickly on the nearest boulder.
The young woman laughed again, taking delight in her taunt. She smiled and looked toward the river before she said, “What do you call it? Oh yes, my nickname. My real name is Angelica. I think it means almost the same - a little angel, yes?” She played her eyes over Santiago’s bewildered face.
“Sounds right to me,” Santiago said. “Who’s your sister? I’m really sorry—I still can’t place you...”
The young woman just smiled at him, then reached the small space between them and put her index finger on Santiago’s open mouth. She let it slowly drop, tracing down his chin to his neck. She opened her hand and let it slide naturally until she held it over his heart. “Hello,” Angel said. She looked at him in a way that said only one thing.
Santiago put his hand on Angel’s hand as she slowly kneeled down and set beside him. She put her other hand around his neck and gently pulled his face to hers until their eyes were only inches away. He looked into her eyes so brown and golden all at once and he could hear the voice in the river whisper yes, yes, yes. Without a word he let his lips come to hers as each fell into the others arms like a slow motion dance they had rehearsed for years.
Angel’s lips were full, electric and soft as her tongue lightly brushed at the edge of Santiago’s mouth until their tongues spiraled together. Santiago felt as though he was floating off into a vast dark celestial room that was filled with thousands of candles flickering light across objects of gold encrusted with glittering jewels. He was gone.
The bank of the river was suddenly the softest of satin sheets but the sheets were not cloth, but like clouds that had no form, no firmness, yet held their bodies as they sifted into each other, their separate entities becoming one living breathing being. He was her, she was him. There was nothing left of a person that had been sitting talking to himself only minutes before. She was the river. He was the bank of the shore. They rolled together. He was the land and she was the liquid current pulling them both to the mother ocean.
It was not love-making; it was the creation of the earth and everything living and moving on it. There was no time. It was Infinity. The waters were pulled by the stars and balanced by the counter pull of gravity deep down in the folds of land. They were lost in each other—there was no other, no self, no being alone—they were together in one. They were all things mineral, organic, liquid and stone, fire and air. There were no arms, no legs, no cunt and no cock.
There was only the back and forth ebb of time and space, where it was light and only light that created material and sound. The light was music; the rumble that came from their center also came from every point outside of a sphere. They were inside and outside, and all of it was moving with the sound of a celestial chorus—a symphonic orchestra of musicians that were sparkling planets that hung in the velvet black – and their world turned and rolled and burned and moaned in unending joyful falling - falling and floating in, over and around the inside center, around the sphere, in the middle of being, and being nothing and nowhere at the same moment.
There was no self, no other being. There was no world, no river, no breathing. It was a freedom beyond dreaming, beyond fantasy or thinking. There was only the sense of a sway—a dance going without hesitation changing direction—the movement was as easy as the water slipping around the boulders in the river bed.
It was the ring and the roar—the rolling of water and air. Their love-making was the mixing and billowing of cumulous clouds raising miles high, sunbeam’s breaking and penetrating long shafts of gold through a purple horizon. No time and all of time, as though it was the first moment a creature pulled itself from the primordial waters and by miracle of evolution , a wedge of light like a slice of pie, revealed the shores of the long white beach glittering with a diamond facet reflection from the eye of God—the sun shining down inventing the shoreline of a brand-new world, to be explored, to be colonized, to bury the eggs of one’s own re-creation along those sands, deep down in the solar heat granules—eggs in the earth at the edge of an infinite ocean—an ocean that was a sea of sperm that washed those eggs with the water of life inventing the birth of the new day—back and forth—flowing over and around.
They moved together into the roaring music that rose like flames, flicking dream sparks that became points of light in the infinite darkness at the edge of the minds horizon. They rolled and moaned and came into each other and coming together, coming as one.
There was a sound. It was the river, or was it just the rumble that came from the world slowly turning. The sound was music but not from any instrument of man. It was a long note that became longer, then rattling; raking at a deep sleep, like a buzzer that shakes one out of a dream.
It was a blue colored bird, high up on the top branch of tree that suddenly sprouted into a world that a moment before, or was it a century, or a millennium before that had no shape, no form. The blue bird screeched again in the tree and then it was answered by the voice of another bird from an opposite point.
There were now two poles of distance in the mind of being, and light came floating over all that separation of distance - was it feet, miles or light seconds between those two points. Then another sound came.
First it was a soft low moan so completely released—a sigh of ecstasy—the sound of letting go—the moan of a soul as it relaxes into death. The sounds disappeared, then returned and began to build into a low throb and then like rippling liquid whispers of water kissing stones.
The river was singing and rolling past the banks through the deep forest. The blue bird called its mate across the river, then dropped down from the top branch and skimmed across the rapids and landed on a rock at the shore.
Santiago was startled by the bird. It was only an arms length away from him. The bird suddenly looked up as though it was equally surprised. It made a loud shrill call, then beat it‘s wings into the air and disappeared down the tunnel of the canopied river.
Santiago’s eye quivered in a rapid blinking as though salt had been blown into them. He shook his head and immediately looked to the right and to the left of his shoulders as he put his hand out to touch the beautiful body that only a moment before had been in his arms. There was nobody, no one.
Panic seized Santiago’s mind and at the same instant a blinding flash of light, like lightning that illuminates the blackest of nights for a millisecond, he saw the organic liquid chaos of the river framed by a tangle of botanical banks and what appeared to be several hundred people clearly nude but intertwined together as the warp and waft over forest.
He closed his eyes involuntarily and screamed a terrified sound that a man would make if he fell a thousand feet. He swirled inside the horrid sound of his own voice waiting to hit the reality of the earth that was at the bottom of his fall. The scream began to form a word in his mind. NOOOOOOO...
A sorrow more painful than anything he had ever known came into the center of his being. He could feel the wetness of tears flowing out of his eyes and stream down his cheeks. NO! NO! NO!
Santiago cried, and then was choked into sobbing and grief. It was like the Vietnam medic-evacuation, when his body was in pieces. Grief that was both terrible and joyful. A point of consciousness, or was it a mechanical release of pressure as though a logjam on river suddenly gave into the reservoir of weight it held back. The river burst tearing and shredding the driftwood away and crashed down the corridor of its natural channel.
Santiago felt arms around him. They were warm, comforting, kind and gentle. He felt his back being rubbed the way his buddy Neil had massaged him when he carried his broken body to the chopper as the mortar rounds came down hard and close. Joy of life came over his fear that just a split second before had been terrifying. He could hear a voice almost as if it were music.
“It’s okay Santiago. Everything is all right,” Neil said.
He opened his eyes and saw that he was sitting underneath the avocado tree—at a green table with his notepad and a very cold cup of coffee, as black as Africa.
It was another perfect beautiful summer day in Corsica. The only reminder that another reality existed was the sound of the water-bombing fire planes somewhere off in the distance. The pyromaniacs of Corsica were still trying to burn the forests to the ground. Santiago got up from the green table under the avocado tree and walked back to the guesthouse.
He walked into his bedroom and reached up on the shelf where he had placed the three journals he brought with him from America. He picked up the one that had 1992 on the binding. He sat down at the desk in front of the large picture window and flipped the cover open to a worn familiar page. He began to read his nervous slanted hand writing.
I walked into the bar and there was Neil and Martina. They were talking to some old American dude they had met. They looked up at me, like they were embarrassed but asked me to sit down.
The old man didn’t interrupt the story he had been telling them. He was talking about his French ex-wife that he had met again for the first time in 10 years.
My ears perked up and I listened for his response. The old dude went on, “0h, I wasn’t afraid because I had all my armor—knives, guns and brass knuckles—the whole caboodle. She wasn’t going to get me this time. Yeah, so I guess it was okay and we managed to get through it without any damage. Yeah, I got closure.”
“That’s what I need, some closure,’ I said. “I have to close the file on some old stuff.”
“Either close it or delete it,” the old dude said.
“I thought I had deleted it,” I said, “but it keeps coming back up.” I looked at Martina and Neil. She looked out the window. Neil seemed to be even more uncomfortable.
“That’s what you call a Ghost File,” The old dude said. “Yeah, you think you got rid of it, but a good computer guy can dig them up again.”
I looked at the old dude and felt very weird. “A Ghost File, huh? I guess that’s what I got. I see the face. I can almost reach out and touch it—my Ghost File lover. I’ve had her inside me for years…” I stared at Martina. She turned her face from the window and gave me an angry burning look.
Santiago put the journal down for a moment. He thought about the plane journey from Corsica to the Paris eight years before. He could see and smell Martina next to him. Neil sat in the seat across the passageway. They all got pleasantly smashed during the layover at Nice and two hours later they were in a five star hotel in Paris. Santiago could not even remember Neil being around for the first week. He buried himself in Martina.
“Martina, you bitch,” Santiago whispered to himself. He picked up the journal and flipped through pages and continued reading entries.
It is another morning waking up with emptiness—feeling adrift and no hope. Martina has been gone for three days. So has Neil. I got up at sunrise and made coffee in this flea bitten room I’m renting. I had coffee in bed, waiting for the nervous jolt of caffeine to hit me. This morning, I thought all I needed was a woman with money who can support me while I do my art. Fuck that shit.
If Martina can be such a whore, maybe I should be one too. There is one woman I know who has money and an enormous sexual appetite—but she doesn’t do of thing to fill up this empty hole in me…
I have not received the upfront money from the job I hustled in Scotland—another fucking mural. I no longer have heart for painting, but I need the money. Two thousand British Pounds are supposed to be in the mail.
Right! The check is in the mail. How many God damn times have I heard that? What does it mean?
1. The mail is really slow.
2. My old Scottish patron doesn’t have two thousand pounds worth of trust in me.
3. What the fuck will I do now?
4. The Art World sucks.
Last night I was at the birthday party of Parisian artist who knew about the Count de Pascal mural.
He came up to me and said in a totally condescending tone, “Hello Monsieur Billboard.”
I reacted, I didn’t think. I stepped in front of him and placed my hands on his shoulders and said, “Please don’t call me Monsieur Billboard again—I really, and let me emphasize really, don’t like that name.”
He laughed and said, “How will I remember you when I always give little names to...”
“Just call me Santiago. Monsieur Billboard is demeaning,” I said.
He protested, “I never meant to...”
“Look, I just don’t like the name.”
He suddenly became very flustered and said, “I will certainly do my best to...”
I cut him off and said, “Thank you.” I walked away. BASTARD, I heard muttered behind my back.
Right, who is the bastard? I am through dealing with bastards and bitches. I can’t believe what Martina did to me, again…and Neil. I want to kill them…
I never knew Paris could be so depressing. I moved from the rat-trap I was in, to a dungeon that is worse on Rue St. Denis. The whores fuck their johns in the rooms on both sides of mine. All night long, I hear water running in the sinks; beds banging the walls and the assholes always piss in the stairwells on their way out.
I’m worried about the check in the mail. If it doesn’t come soon, I am fucked.
What is new? Two more mail days before I really panic.
I guess that is one reason Martina split. Once she saw I had no more money, Neil became very attractive. Neil is a bigger sucker than I was.
Yet…I don’t know how I’ve been so completely obsessed with Martina all these years and not ever seen how crazy she is… no, I am the crazy one.
In the meantime, the little side venues of this self imposed prison of poverty are curious…
A new kind of fantasy has jumped in front of me, although I would say there have been the reasons for me to fantasize.
A woman is on the horizon again.
I am sure of my motives (horny and lonely) but she is interesting even if she is a whore.
She has a very peculiar presence and the more I look at her the more I like her.
I know she is only convenient. Bury My Heart at Wounded Assholes and forget Martina. But nothing what so ever has begun and judging the way I’m going nothing will.
Sobriety has its downside. I have not had a drink since Martina and Neil disappeared two weeks ago.
The journal was beginning to make Santiago feel numb. How would he ever know what a woman was about? All of the women in his life had been disasters created by his own foolish steps of pride – that is except for Leila who had been his wife, given birth to their daughter and had stuck with him when he had shit up to his nose.
But irony, always irony. He was never really in love—not passionate consuming burning love like he had for Martina. Had love stabbed him in the heart or had he murdered love by arrogance? He had loved his wife Leila as a comrade, but passion was something that never happened. Yet, Leila had always stood at his side, until he destroyed his chance to find love with haunted memories.
Santiago was still sitting at the table in front of the big window in the guest house that looked out on the turquoise pool. He looked at his father’s pistol that he had smuggled through customs by hiding it deep in the checked luggage. He had changed his mind already three times and he was back to his original plan. He would kill Martina and then kill himself. He wavered again.
Martina, the more he thought about her the more he began to realize she was her own worst enemy. Martina would find her own hell soon enough. Santiago picked up his journal and continued to read.
I saw the face of a man today that reminded me of something I saw long ago. I had gone to the French Army fortress town of Bonifaccio, Corsica. At the time it was one of the few places that the Foreign Legion had a post within the provinces of France. I was walking up the winding road that goes from the harbor up into the walled city of the old town. I was just at the sharp corner which hangs on the side of the hill when suddenly a smog belching Renault army truck came lugging up the road. It seemed to be in its slowest gear, barely moving faster than a fat man can walk.
I couldn’t help but stop and look as it approached—it brought back all those old times of riding in the back of army transport trucks—me and a bunch of other grunts groaning at the injustice and absurdity of jumping through circles for the illusion of American patriotism.
So I’m standing there with a thousand flashes running through my brain when the truck slowly passed me. I looked up into the bed of the truck, which was at my shoulder level and at first I only see the boots of 30 men. They shine like diamonds. Then my eyes went up the creases of their starched fatigues, then to their hands holding automatic weapons at upright rest. My eyes continued to rise until I stopped at the faces of the men. Shivers ran down my back.
I have never had seen 30 uglier, meaner, lonelier faces.
They all had it. They all had that fucking look.
The guy I saw today gave me the same shivers. But he looked meaner than all thirty of the Legionnaires. His face was fluid, like a river which has ripple patterns that are always the same but are constantly different. Damn! I want to get that face down in words. Maybe it is what Martina meant when she said, “You have an assassin’s face…”
The whole damn thing of his face took me back to the fucking army. That was that other time, my other life. It was the time of a war that wasn’t supposed to be a war. It was a CONFLICT. Politicians back then loved that equivocation. It was their best attempt at getting around the impressive number of body-bags that were coming home daily.
I was lucky for awhile. For the first year in the army, I was stationed in the most combat ready infantry regiment in all of nice safe Germany.
Our regiment was what the Marines call Gung Ho, but it was only the Army. Get serious! We weren’t Marines and it wasn’t Vietnam. The worst thing we had to do was get out of bed at two in the morning, go load up trucks and chase around in the fucking freezing woods for a day or so. It’s spoiled everyone’s beer drinking schedule which of course was our real mission in Germany.
My unit was fanatic about being Gung Ho. The Sergeants tucked us into bed before midnight. We had physical training every day. Even worse, we had to march in close order drill. We suffered.
Because my unit was so military minded we had a special privilege. We got to be hosts for the L. R. R. P. S. (Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol Service) returning from Vietnam.
These guys had to chill out for a few weeks before the Army would allow them to go back to the states. The Army called it Debriefing. The Brass wanted to be sure these programmed-homicidal-psychopaths had come down off their killing mode before they were allowed to walk on the streets of America. Anything could set them off.
These weird and strange men who went out into the CONFLICT would be parachuted alone deep inside enemy territory. They would be supplied camouflage clothes, a canteen, and a pistol with a silencer, a razor sharp knife, a garroting cord, and a suicide pill.
No food was necessary. It was rumored they ate the men they murdered in the middle of the night who lay sleeping in underground bunkers. If there was a shortage of fresh human flesh, they could always pull off one of the bloated bloodsuckers that were attached to some part of their body, thus not only consuming bug meat, but their own mortal juices.
The rumor was that a real LURP (as we fondly called them) never bothered chewing flesh. He just popped off his victim’s head, sucked the juices out, and threw the skin away.
That was a LURP—a killing machine that lived on blood. But there was something more. You could see it. We all could see it when these LURP’S would come back to be guided into reality. It was that look. We called it the Thousand Yard Stare. It was just that, like they were looking at something way over your shoulder. What they were seeing was death.
The guy I saw today had it. When he looked at me, his eyes reflected death. Yeah, he gave me the shivers.
Santiago read the words thinking about what they meant. He closed the book and looked at a mirror on the table that reflected his image. “Yeah, it’s still there,” he said.
The morning had turned into the heat of noon. Santiago heard the familiar sound of someone diving into the swimming pool. Oscar always had a quick dip to refresh himself before the midday lunch. Sometimes Santiago would join him in the pool. But today, he just set at the table looking through the big window and watched Oscar swim laps in the pool.
He was too numb to move, that haunting numbness he had felt after the second firefight in Vietnam. It was a numbness where everything happens on the outside but nothing is felt on the inside – it is as if life has become a wrap-around movie and the spectator is inside a darkened theater.
The one way to get a phantom out of his head was to replace it with another. He thought of Martina again. She had rarely left his mind since the first day he had met her in Germany 20 years before. He thought she was in her mid twenties on that occasion, but it was only years later he discovered she had only been eighteen. There was a hardness about her that made him think she was older.
Now he wished he would have believed her when she said then, “I am really a bitch.”
No, he did not want to believe her. She felt too good.
He also tried to convince himself he would not fall in love with her.
Looking back, he knew that he was in love with her the very first morning he woke up and saw her bare shoulder of tan skin silhouetted by the warm yellow color of the bedroom wall. He remembered the indigo bed spread that lay loosely over her hip. The shape of her body was perfect and it took his breath away.
Yes, he fell in love that very moment and in the next ten days she completely seduced his mind without once making love to him.
Oscar jumped out of the pool and came to the door of the guest house. He stood like a black hole, his enormous frame blocking nearly all of the light that came through the door. Santiago looked up at him and once again thought how similar Oscar’s face was to the busts of Alexander the Great, with his curly dark hair and thick grayed beard, muscled neck and broad shoulders.
But there was a peculiar contrast in his voice which was deep and manly, yet when he spoke it was always almost a whisper, as though he was afraid something wrong would be said.
Santiago flicked his eyes down at the pistol on the table, because when Oscar spoke, his eyes were also on the pistol. “Uh, yes…I’ll come up in a minute. I was just cleaning my father’s pistol…”
“Did you actually bring that with you? I thought it was illegal…” Oscar had a frown on his face.
“Yes of course it’s illegal. But I got it through customs, so I presume no one knows about it, but you and me now,” Santiago said.
“No, not at all…it’s the only thing my father left me. I just didn’t want to leave it behind. I am not sure if I am going to go back this time.”
“I don’t know, Oscar. I just don’t know what I will do or where I will go next.”
“Why don’t you come to the house for lunch, and that will solve the problem for the time being. It will be ready in a half hour.” Oscar smiled and walked towards his large house that was on the other side of the pool and garden.