which gods would those be?â
âDead ones, obviously.â
âRight, God is dead, in both the singular and the plural. But you have a rosary.â I point to the beads twisting wildly in your hands.
âI have a fear of flying, so I prefer not to take chances.â
âI have a fear of flying too.â I walk you over to an airport bar, conveniently located a mere promenade from the machine that will hurtle us into the sky with all the fury of those dead animals that have become increasingly combustible over the past few million years. It is a kind of recycling program: ashes to ashes, dust to dust. This is what our dead gods intended.
âIâll have a martini,â you say.
âWe donât do martinis here,â the bartender says with a look in his eye that seems to suggest he doesnât trust fashionably dressed men in Italian leather shoes.
âWhat do you do?â you ask.
âBeer,â he says proudly. Apparently he invented the drink himself.
We sip our beers and for some strange reason this causes both of us to feel more connected to the earth: rotten plants and dead animals. Planes into air. Bodies into pulp. God into death. Robots with beeping batons. âThe circle of life!â I say, and we drink to that. âSpeed!â you say, and we drink to that. âDeath!â I say, and we drink to that. âART!â we say together, and drink to that, intoxicated by what we suspect is much
more than pilsner lager. As we drink we become our own work of art, writing ourselves with every laugh and slurp, wondering how it is that so many people refuse to be their own authors.
âThatâs just it,â you say. âThere are no more people. Only robots. And robots canât write worth a damn!â You smash your glass on the floor, a gesture I respect: you always know how to round out a good idea. The bartender, however, does not appreciate the finer qualities of the English language. There is some suggestion that uniformed robots will be coming soon to deal with us, and as neither of us feels particularly interested in dealing with any more artificial life than is absolutely necessary to sustain our own, we run. This, I suggest, shows that we have a sense of humour and are therefore not robots, but rather animals. Indeed, we run with the reckless abandon of animals who one day will be dead; of animals who will use dead animals to launch themselves, dying as they are, closer to the sun, which is only partially visible from the double-paned window of a jumbo jet with exits located at the front, side, and back. Take note of the safety card in your seat pocket. In the unlikely event of a water landing, put on your lifejacket, slide down one of the rubber slides. Refrain from jumping about like animals close to death.
âI wanted the aisle seat,â you say, and I come to understand sacrilege.
3. Antelopes and Other Fashionable Ladies
Someone famous is now two and a half hours late, and so consequently young people with clipboards and headsets
are frantic and a woman with an unseen and exotic pet in her purse is demanding a dish and a bottle of distilled water. Of course, no one is naming names, but we anticipate a lady of a certain age and British accent who will be wearing a short skirt of the style designed to make people say, My God, I wish I had thighs like that, even though nobody has thighs like that, not even the lady in question. But still we want to see her in the hopes that a flake of her shed skin will land on us as she breezes by, and we will imagine that it is a piece of her halo breaking off. Despite the fact that there must be girls backstage taping their breasts into mesh halter tops, we feel compelled to look at the empty chair that is cordoned off with a ribbon of white silk. From our previous experiences with giant hamburgers, we know that a cordon means art. We didnât fly here defying unknown, potentially dead gods for
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