I was sitting in Ganesha’s lap. My legs embraced the elephant’s hips. My heels massaged his buttocks. My nipples rubbed his chest. I smiled, but held my lips enticingly distant. The Indian behind the wheel stroked my back.
Or perhaps I was from Pakistan. I was irritated at Izzy. I, the driver, said, “If I had wanted like this, I would have stayed at my motel, Izzy. Do we have to pick up everybody?”
“Exactly, Sarvaduhka,” One-brow shot back. “That’s who this piece of merchandise is: everybody! Ain’t you, Jack?”
I pulled my sleeve across my face to erase the tears. The car, a warm shell of light, seemed heaven, but I couldn’t find where to say yes from. When I tried to speak, the car door groaned instead. It closed. I was inside, in front, squeezed between the door and the man with one long eyebrow. “How did you know?” I tried to say; instead, the sun rose.
4. Relic Background Radiation
Sarvaduhka pressed a button, and there was the United States of America: news, music, tractor pull ads?”SUNDAYYYYYY!”?static, evangelist patter, a song by Johnny Abilene . . .
There’s a splash across the southern sky
Named “I love you-oo!”
And I know just what a big man
Ought to do-yodelayhee-do.
I’m sorry I left you somewhere in the blue-boo-hoo-hoo
With your mama singing lullabies to baby-boo . . .
. . . used automobiles, paid political announcements, weather reports . . .
“Wait a damn minute,” Izzy said. “Turn it back to the Haymakers, Duke. I wanna hear that song.”
“Haymakers, Izzy?”
“Gimme that.” He pushed Sarvaduhka’s hand away and manned the radio dial himself. I felt as if someone were reaming my navel. The smears of sound as the needle skimmed the tuner scale were gurgles of cud surging up my throat. Finally he found it. There were the slightly off-key notes and bad mixing that signal a live performance:
I’m gonna bring you right back some day.
Though you may be far away,
I can always pull a little stunt
That the folks call “epochй”
“Epochй?” Sarvaduhka took his eyes off the road?me, a flat, black triangle long as the desert, wide as the squareback here, beetling to a point out there, and dotted with my Bott’s dot vertebrae?to frown at Izzy. “Did the Haymaker say epochй, Izzy?”
“Shut up! I gotta hear this.”
Take a long lost dad’s advice:
Though yore mama’s Guldang nice,
Save a little bit of love for yodelodelayhee-me!
Just then Izzy’s beeper went off. I’d never seen one before. I don’t think anyone had at that time. But Izzy’s was beeping. “Not good,” he said. He pulled it out of his belt, then held it up close. “Four degrees Kelvin. Shit. It’s up a whole degree. He’s actually tried it.”
“Tried what?”
“Epochй, for crissakes. What have we been talking about?salami? Sarvaduhka, who’s President?”
“McCarthy. Why?”
“McCarthy? Still? What color is the American flag?”
“Red, white, and yellow.”
“Unchanged. Okay. This wasn’t the big one. He didn’t manage it. And Mel’s still here beside us. Okay. Good. We got time. Johnny’s out looking, and we’re in the pink. I’m taking a nap.”
“Wait. What is four degrees that was three before?”
“Relic background radiation, Savvy. I never told you this? It’s like a pilot light. It flares up when somebody does an epochй. It didn’t work though. I’m taking a nap.” Brooking no protest, Izzy turned off the radio and scooted down in his seat.
“I am driving with a mad man, and still no female action.”
5. The Temporary
Thoughts smoked from my skin.
“Is he a werewolf, Izzy?” Sarvaduhka whispered.
Izzy said, “Let me snooze.”
I squeezed Mel’s eyes shut to keep from slashing too brutally the delicate inner membrane, with my light. Rising open-armed before Sarvaduhka’s VW Squareback heading east out of Albuquerque, I bathed them, squinting in the munificence and splendor, till Izzy yanked down the visors.
“Snooze, he wants to snooze!” Sarvaduhka said. “Snooze, Izzy, but when do I get my female action? Everything you want to do, we do. Now we have the boy and you are satisfied. But I still have no female action. I never should have left my videos.” He pinched a cone of incense from a slot under the ashtray, stuffed it into a compartment in Ganesha’s back, and lit it clumsily with a cheap butane lighter. Smoke spouted from Ganesha’s trunk.