with this deadpan, steady expression and said quietly and colorlessly, “Don’t you?”
“Uh, well, yeah,” I mumbled. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess. I mean, I’m sure. My treat. I insist, in fact. I insist! ” I straightened up and we ordered some stuff and then took it outside to a bench looking out to the sea. There was a breeze and these jillions of gulls all circling and squawking forlornly but with great agitation and high excitement as if they were in factions that were blaming one another for the loss of some unspoiled world, some paradise where every automobile was a convertible and where hats and awnings did not exist. Meantime, Jane ate a hot dog washed down with sarsaparilla, perhaps if only to prove that she was real and not a ghost like some future scripture scholars, “The Completely Independent-Minded Seminar for the Truth About the Resurrection Scam,” as they called themselves, would be saying about Christ, as if the twelve apostles were in fact the Twelve Morons who even in the middle of a sunlit day weren’t able to tell a ghost from either Lou Costello or a pepperoni pizza or were just happy to be tortured and killed for what they knew was a lie. The seminar’s leader was a celebrated movie director who got famous with Skyless, a Norwegian film about a nuclear sub on patrol for three years without ever once surfacing and whose crew members never got irritable or raised their voices to one another. Crammed with subliminal advertisements for Prozac, the movie was a monster hit and the director quickly followed it up with Sieve, his controversial “film of supernatural terror” about a condom dispensing machine that’s possessed by the spirit of a drill punch. The seminar group used different-colored painted lima beans to vote on the meaning of various enigmatic statements by Christ, such as “Feed the hungry” and “Visit the sick.”
God knows what else they did.
“Now, then, Joey, I think we need to talk.”
Hands in the pockets of my dashing “genuine Zelan” Windbreaker that I’d whined Pop into buying for me from Davega’s on 42nd Street even after he’d explained to me that “Zelan” was a word that Davega’s had invented meaning “Nylon for Idiot Children,” I turned my soft gaze from the gulls to look down at this pigtailed…What? Hallucination? Apparition?
But Baloqui saw her too. Which meant what?
That he was just another part of my delusion?
“Yeah, we do need to talk,” I agreed.
Boy, did we!
“Hold on.”
She got up off the bench and with her racing little steps thumping lightly on the wood of the boardwalk, she made a dash to a nearby trash can into which she dumped her napkin, paper plate and the empty sarsaparilla bottle, trotted back to the bench, sat down, clasped her hands in her lap and looked up at me gravely. The bounce of blue light from the ocean tinted her eyes to an aquamarine that seemed much less a color than a memory of seas on some other world.
“Joey, why are you so cheap?” she said.
I almost fell off the bench.
I said, “Huh?”
“You heard me. You’re a cheapskate, Joey. The worst! Haven’t you learned yet that money can’t buy you happiness?”
At this I relaxed a bit, for I was now on familiar ground inasmuch as I was greatly experienced in dealing with “Cliché Experts” and I thought about snappy retorts like, “I presume you are speaking of Confederate money,” but then decided to be prudent and withhold my friendly fire.
“I’ve got a few questions of my own,” I said.
“Such as what?” she demanded in that piping, sulky voice, her lower lip pouting upward like her muppety doppelgänger/aka Shirley Temple in Wee Willie Winkie asking Victor McLaglen why she couldn’t go along with him to fight the naughty Thugee assassins who were busy strangling everyone in sight who wasn’t wearing a dhoti and a turban.
“Well, for one,” I said firmly, “did you or did you not ever float about six feet in the air in
“Uh, well, yeah,” I mumbled. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess. I mean, I’m sure. My treat. I insist, in fact. I insist! ” I straightened up and we ordered some stuff and then took it outside to a bench looking out to the sea. There was a breeze and these jillions of gulls all circling and squawking forlornly but with great agitation and high excitement as if they were in factions that were blaming one another for the loss of some unspoiled world, some paradise where every automobile was a convertible and where hats and awnings did not exist. Meantime, Jane ate a hot dog washed down with sarsaparilla, perhaps if only to prove that she was real and not a ghost like some future scripture scholars, “The Completely Independent-Minded Seminar for the Truth About the Resurrection Scam,” as they called themselves, would be saying about Christ, as if the twelve apostles were in fact the Twelve Morons who even in the middle of a sunlit day weren’t able to tell a ghost from either Lou Costello or a pepperoni pizza or were just happy to be tortured and killed for what they knew was a lie. The seminar’s leader was a celebrated movie director who got famous with Skyless, a Norwegian film about a nuclear sub on patrol for three years without ever once surfacing and whose crew members never got irritable or raised their voices to one another. Crammed with subliminal advertisements for Prozac, the movie was a monster hit and the director quickly followed it up with Sieve, his controversial “film of supernatural terror” about a condom dispensing machine that’s possessed by the spirit of a drill punch. The seminar group used different-colored painted lima beans to vote on the meaning of various enigmatic statements by Christ, such as “Feed the hungry” and “Visit the sick.”
God knows what else they did.
“Now, then, Joey, I think we need to talk.”
Hands in the pockets of my dashing “genuine Zelan” Windbreaker that I’d whined Pop into buying for me from Davega’s on 42nd Street even after he’d explained to me that “Zelan” was a word that Davega’s had invented meaning “Nylon for Idiot Children,” I turned my soft gaze from the gulls to look down at this pigtailed…What? Hallucination? Apparition?
But Baloqui saw her too. Which meant what?
That he was just another part of my delusion?
“Yeah, we do need to talk,” I agreed.
Boy, did we!
“Hold on.”
She got up off the bench and with her racing little steps thumping lightly on the wood of the boardwalk, she made a dash to a nearby trash can into which she dumped her napkin, paper plate and the empty sarsaparilla bottle, trotted back to the bench, sat down, clasped her hands in her lap and looked up at me gravely. The bounce of blue light from the ocean tinted her eyes to an aquamarine that seemed much less a color than a memory of seas on some other world.
“Joey, why are you so cheap?” she said.
I almost fell off the bench.
I said, “Huh?”
“You heard me. You’re a cheapskate, Joey. The worst! Haven’t you learned yet that money can’t buy you happiness?”
At this I relaxed a bit, for I was now on familiar ground inasmuch as I was greatly experienced in dealing with “Cliché Experts” and I thought about snappy retorts like, “I presume you are speaking of Confederate money,” but then decided to be prudent and withhold my friendly fire.
“I’ve got a few questions of my own,” I said.
“Such as what?” she demanded in that piping, sulky voice, her lower lip pouting upward like her muppety doppelgänger/aka Shirley Temple in Wee Willie Winkie asking Victor McLaglen why she couldn’t go along with him to fight the naughty Thugee assassins who were busy strangling everyone in sight who wasn’t wearing a dhoti and a turban.
“Well, for one,” I said firmly, “did you or did you not ever float about six feet in the air in
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