29. THE LAST TIME GUY'S MOM AND DAD ATE AT THE PINE CLUB, THE NIGHT BEFORE THE KOREAN CHECK-CASHING FIASCO, ALBEIT A COUPLE OF THOUSAND MILES AWAY

Should have seen the look on his face. I'm telling you.

-I'm sure it was something.

-You bet it was something. I told that f.u.c.ker ...

-Language ...

-Oh, f.u.c.k the f.u.c.king language. I'm celebrating. You know how much commission I get off this deal?

-You're always celebrating, dear. There are other people in this restaurant. It's a public place.

-Yeah, whatever, okay. But you should have seen it.

-I'm sure it was something.

-You're sure it was ... Do you even listen to me when I'm talking?

-I'm sorry.

-This is a big day for me. Wouldn't hurt you to pay some G.o.dd.a.m.n attention when I'm talking.

-I said I was sorry.

Guy's mom drifted back into her reverie. The usual one: where she'd made a different choice, thirty-five years ago, and was now in Buenos Aires running a small, secondhand, English-language bookstore. There weren't many customers, but enough, and her Spanish had acquired sufficient polish that she was able to order food at the local markets without embarra.s.sment, and in any case was well-known enough to the vendors that before she even arrived at their stall they'd have laid out exactly the sort of thing she imagined they imagined she'd want. She'd go back to her small apartment above the bookstore and cook dinner for herself, fresh vegetables and fish, nothing fancy, and watch the sun set on her balcony, the heat shimmering on the periphery of her vision as she paged idly through a recent best seller about a man having a heart attack in a steak restaurant in Dayton, Ohio ...

-Robert? she asked, seeing the odd expression on his face, just after he dropped his steak knife with a soundless clatter in the suddenly silent restaurant.

This is strange, she thought. This is both part of and apart from my fantasy.

Her husband clutched at his chest and mouthed with great effort some words. Were the words meant for her?

-For. f.u.c.k. Sake. The words popped one by one like little balloons in the air. Experiments have been done on this, she thought. I remember reading. If you take the words out of the ambient noise they lose all meaning. Then if you add back the noise, the words make sense.

The noise came back. The rush of concerned voices from the surrounding booths felt to Laura like a physical blow, like the face slap that Robert had never once administered, not even close, their entire life together.

She watched as her husband slumped in his seat, gasping for breath and clawing at the table as he fell.

-Robert! she exclaimed, and hurried to his side just in time to catch his head in her hands before it hit the wooden floor.

Her husband was muttering something through a thin foam of blood and spittle. She leaned close to hear.

-Should have seen his f.u.c.king face, mumbled Robert.

Tears were streaming down Laura's cheeks. -I should have, Robert, I should have seen his face. I should have seen anyone's face but yours, right now, like this. I'm not ready.

-No one's ever ready, whispered Robert weakly. -I'm not ready. But you'll be all right.

-Shut up! she shrieked, uncharacteristically. Aspirin, she thought. Mrs. Sanderson said she read somewhere. Laura scrabbled desperately through her purse, clutched at a plastic bottle. Advil. Does that have the same ...?

She tried to shove two red pills into her husband's mouth, but he had lost consciousness. A young man identified himself as a doctor, bent over Robert's body. Laura stepped away and sank back down in her seat, dazed.

The ceremony was beautiful, she thought. I never expected Guy to show up, but he did, and Marcus and Constance, and the Sandersons, and everyone from Robert's work, and the priest gave a lovely eulogy or homily or whatever it was that priests did at a funeral, a proper Catholic burial, the plot at St. Anne's long ago chosen, a shady corner of the quiet cemetery. Except that St. Anne's had been razed to make way for a parking structure.

-I'm afraid it's too late, said the young doctor, quietly, taking Laura's hand in his, a practiced move.

-Too late for what? she asked.

30. SQUIRREL VS. CAT: A DISCUSSION IN THE PROBABLY STOLEN CAR BETWEEN GUY AND BILLY IN THE PARKING LOT OF THE KOREAN CHECK-CASHING PLACE, ONE HOUR BEFORE THE KOREAN CHECK-CASHING FIASCO.

Let me ask you a question: who do you think would win in a fight between a squirrel and a cat? said Guy -Depends on the cat, obviously, said Billy. -But in general the cat. I had a cat once, used to kill squirrels and bring them back to the house, as presents, or trophies or something ...

-I don't mean a regular fight. I mean if the squirrel was on a skateboard and had a little helmet on, like a Roman centurion's helmet except squirrel-size. And you pushed the skateboard squirrel toward the cat, who was maybe asleep. And you filmed the whole thing on a camcorder and posted it on a website.

-Which website?

-You're missing the point. It's like the difference between a Francophone and a Francophile. The former can speak French, the latter loves France, or the French or anything and everything to do with French culture.

-I didn't know you spoke French.

-I don't. I p.r.o.nounce French. It's the same with Russian. I know the Cyrillic alphabet and I'm told my Russian accent is very good, but I don't know what a single word means. Well, I know one or two, but not much beyond "h.e.l.lo" and "goodbye."

-So you could read an entire page of a Russian book out loud in the original ...

-And not know the meaning of even one sentence. But if I were reading to an audience of native speakers, they'd understand perfectly. I can also do this with Latin and ancient Greek. It's an unusually useless talent.

-I kind of like that.

-Who wouldn't? You're starting to see things my way.

-I am. I admit it.

-That's very gratifying.

-I really wish we didn't have to go through with this, sighed Billy.

-Your wishes are the engine that will drive this economy out of its present recession.

-I'm not sure that's true, but thanks.

-You always read about these crazy revolutionary ideas that were funded by eccentric millionaires ...

-Or billionaires ...

-I tell you what, and you can have this idea for free after Pandemonium takes off: someone should start a site that lists names and contact info of eccentric millionaires.

-And billionaires.

-It might be harder to get the proper information with billionaires. Especially eccentric ones. I have a feeling they're probably pretty reclusive.

-Like Howard Hughes.

-Well, I mean, he's like the summa of eccentric billionaires. In the movie The Plane Magnate, the actor who played Hughes invested him with a number of tics, even as a young man. He had some form of obsessive-compulsive disorder, clearly.

-For which they have medications now.

-They have medications for everything. That's why everyone's so ordinary.

-Do you think so?

-Don't get me wrong. I'm not antimeds. At this very moment I'm on two different kinds of antianxiety medicine.

-Wow.

-Yes-but this is important-medications are only useful when abused. Drugs are only any good to anyone when you take too many or too much of one kind; in other words, when you derive some pleasure from them. Otherwise ... what's the point?

-I'm sure there are some people who really do need them. You know, to function.

-Function? Why function? Who needs more functioning human beings? It's really quite astounding, if you ask me, the sheer quant.i.ty of normal in the world today. I think that's the real horror of modern life.

-All the more reason for Pandemonium.

-You know, it's funny. Just when I think you don't understand anything I'm saying, ever, you say something that shows you understand perfectly.

-I'm glad you think so.

-If only more people had your att.i.tude. Not everyone, obviously, because we need and have always needed a certain number of normals. But ye G.o.ds! You walk down the street-okay, you don't walk down the street, because n.o.body walks down the street in Los Angeles, obviously, that was a cliche even before it was a ridiculous New Wave pop song by a terrible New Wave band-but you go somewhere like a shopping mall where there's just tons of people, and what do you see?

-Shopping.

-Shopping. Exactly. Most normal thing in the world. Crowds of normals bunched together like blood cells, moving in rhythm to some great bio-mechanical heart under the streets or up in the sky.

-Hard to say where the heart lies.

-What is that, poetry?

-I don't think so.

-You should start writing down everything you say. Sometimes you say things that could be construed as, I don't know, aphoristic.

-Aphoristic?

-At worst gnomic. Gnomic is always good because rarely will you get called on it. People are too scared to admit they might not understand what you're saying. The normals, I mean.

-Did you just start calling them normals?

-Pretty much.

-Good. Because I don't remember you using that word before and I was worried about losing my mind.

-As you do.

-Well, everyone worries about losing his mind at some point, don't they?

-No. No they don't. And to think I was beginning to trust you.

-You don't trust me? said Billy, eyeing Guy incredulously.

-I do. I do trust you. Except when I don't. Which, and don't get angry, is sometimes.

-Sometimes you don't trust me. Why?

-It's hard to put into words.

-No it's not, Guy. I know why you don't trust me.

-You do.

-It's because I'm black.

-It's ... wow.

-Admit that you don't trust me because I'm black.

-Well, if you're going to back me into a corner like that, okay. I don't trust you because a) you're an incompetent, idiotic, untrustworthy f.u.c.k-up, and b) you actually believe you're black.

-I am. I'm part African American.

-Which part? Your lungs? Your kidneys? Because it's not an exteriorly obvious part. You're pale as any English rose.

-Skin color has nothing to do with it. Black is an outlook.

-In your case it would seem to be an overlook.