DROUGHT ON THE CASH FLOW RIVER
WHAT I’M DOING IN THIS ROOM will not make us rich. Sorry about that.
A black Jaguar will not park in our driveway unless it’s that magical one from South America that eschews all reason. Instead, our 1982 beater, overflowing with reasons, like us, will have to wheeze through another year.
There won’t be long vacations or two hundred dollar shirts or savings accounts or new barbeques, either. But what if I write a story in which you’re a tanned and elegant aristocrat sipping rare Bordeaux on a yacht anchored in some Mediterranean bay? Will that do? Fiction to the rescue again?
Our children, naturally, will have to make their own stories. “Look,” I’ll tell them, “Start right in the middle, forget about beginnings and endings. Cash in a lifetime of love and full attention. It’s worth something. Really. No, I mean it, really!”
I mean this too: it’s a mystery. As ever, the doors of lucre are closed to me. I’ve stopped knocking. Dollars flee from me like panic’d birds. There’s a terrible drought on the Cash Flow River.
I’m enslaved to a vagrant art that rewards fine sentences with a nod of recognition only. There really is a gun to my head. I put it there myself.
I hate to break the news but here it is: Eliminate the idea of retirement. That concept will be the death of you. Please don’t pull the trigger.
As it is, bitter old people scream at me in my dreams. They want to be cradled and entertained. I tell them to shut up. I tell them it’s a crapshoot. I tell them to go hungry; I can’t feed them. Sorry, but this is the nightlife I’m offering right now. As much fun as playing volleyball against a team of cadavers, I know.
Okay, let’s shake things up and take a ride in the wreck. Go to China Beach for the day, groove like the times when it was all clearly the middle, bitterness and want sliding past us like an Otis Redding song.
We’ll cash in the beer bottles for gas.
DOUBLE-WIDE
BY ACCIDENT I ESCORTED JACKIE ONASSIS on a tour through Mexico. She was dead but she looked great. Thin, but it was all there—the big hair, big sunglasses. She wore a black and white mini suit—short sleeves, short skirt—and high heels. I saw her sauntering along on the other side of the street, alone. So I walked over and joined her. It was a hot day. Overhead, a corner of the full blue sky was punctuated with tiny white clouds like a trail of periods.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hi yourself,” she said, friendly, taking my arm.
“Do you mind if I walk with you,” I asked.
“Not at all,” she replied, laughing. “I’ve already had a man. Now I need some company.”
“Is getting a man easy for you?” I asked, “Considering your dead condition?”
“It’s never been a problem,” Jackie declared.
I gasped. The sexual possibilities of being dead had never before occurred to me, and I felt great relief, as when a burden is lifted. It was beginning to look like death was just another socially constructed reality.
“Men,” Jackie continued, extending her arm to indicate the world. “They’re all mine for the taking.”
“You know, I’ve never done this,” I said, meaning escort a dead celebrity on a tour through Mexico.
“What!” Jackie was incredulous. “That’s like claiming a virtuoso guitarist has never picked up a guitar!”
I took this to signify approval. We walked on. Up ahead I saw a red carpet leading to an auditorium. A crowd lined both sides of the street. People waved brightly coloured paper flowers in Jackie’s honour. There was Latin music playing and I wanted to fling off my hiking boots and walking shorts and dance. This is a far howl from life in the trailer park, I was thinking as we entered the auditorium.
Once inside we took our seats on stage. A short fat man advanced towards the podium.
“The President,” Jackie whispered, leaning over.
The President made an enthusiastic speech, gesticulating, shouting. I don’t remember what he said because I was too busy being dazzled by the cheering audience, the military guard posted at the door, the glare from the spotlights, my accidental place of honour seated on stage beside Jackie Onassis. While the president held the stage, Jackie cooled herself with a lovely embroidered fan and scrutinized the men in the audience, all of them looking like Southern gentlemen in their white suits and Panama hats.
When the speech was over we were escorted to a waiting limo, then left the city, driving for a time through barren countryside—dust and scrub trees, everything beige in colour, hot, dry. Eventually a battered blue van pulled alongside the limo. At first I worried about assassins and kidnappers and wondered how you could assassinate or kidnap a dead person. Was such a thing possible? And was this what I was doing myself? Then I saw it was my husband. He’d tracked me down.
“Stop the limo!” I shouted through the partition. Jackie and I got out.
My husband climbed from the van clutching a handful of papers. He was excited.
“The results of the Municipal election!” he cried. “I won! I won! I’m an Alderman!”
“I know how you feel,” Jackie remarked wearily. “It was the same for me when Jack … ” Then she sighed and pivoting on her heel returned to the limo. The driver climbed in the back seat behind her.
“Who was that?” My husband asked.
“Jackie Onassis!” I said. “Didn’t you recognize her?” When the limo started shaking I explained: “The insatiable dead are at it again!”
But my husband wanted to talk about his win. “I got fifteen hundred votes. Not bad for a twelve percent turnout.”
I was riveted. “Does this mean a new trailer?”
“Baby,” he said, “this means a double-wide with all the bells and whistles. A cement pad with a view.”
We stood there grinning, our double-wide finally coming in, hauling itself across the desert to meet us.
ATTILA THE BOOKSELLER
I ANSWERED THE AD: SWM likes to dance. Called him up (said his name was Jay), suggested we meet at the local cafe Tuesday night, something different, a performance poet performing. Free coffee and cookies, the place rocking with middle-aged angst.
He shows up, dark haired, pink-cheeked, somewhere in his forties, wearing a yellow plastic rape alarm attached to his waist. “I’ll be wearing a black turtleneck,” I’d said. Watch him approaching several other women first, also in black turtlenecks, fresh lipstick, clean nails. Finally catch his eye, wave him over; we shake damp hands. Tell him my name is Serena.
The
