
EVEN STEVEN
By
Wright Forbucks
The Walking Man by Wright Forbucks
Loosely based on a true story, The Walking Man is a story of "persistence, self-discovery and redemption" that brings new meaning to the term "never give up." This original and wickedly humorous love story begins when a teenage boy is inexplicably paralyzed. His family tries to care for him, but tragedy ensues causing the young man to be institutionalized.
At Leicester County Hospital, a facility dedicated to excellence in everything it does, he then finds love when a beautiful volunteer stops by to read to him. Despite their instant connection, his paralysis and her "love" of a brute leads to a breakup that forces "the walking man" to devise a plan to win back the affections of the woman he loves.
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EVEN STEVEN
By Wright Forbucks
© Wright Forbucks, 2011
Rated PG-13.
All rights reserved.
Twitter: @wrightforbucks
wright4bucks@gmail.com
This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is coincidental.
Steven Zangst's parents never beat their son, but they understood others' need to do so.
It was difficult to pinpoint the reason Steven's peers were overwhelmed by a need to assault him; many theories existed. Some kids blamed the entertaining yelp Steven emitted when you kicked him in the testicles. Others were certain it was the way his eyes bulged when you slugged him in the stomach. Not helping Steven's cause was his tiny physique and high-pitched voice, plus his inability to pronounce words that began with "m" or ended in "r," a disability highlighted when Steven screamed, "othah fuckahs" at his "tormentahs."
Regardless of the reason, abuse by his contemporaries made Steven Zangst's childhood distinctly unpleasant. Fortunately, Steven was intelligent and he knew how to keep his mouth shut, so by age nine he was able to quiet his detractors by becoming a proficient practitioner of the dark art of revenge. Soon thereafter, as his brutalizers experienced painful and humiliating retribution, the derisive salutations once used to assail Steven Zangst: puny, weenie, munchkin, mini, etc., were replaced by the word "sir." Many prior offenders sought to avoid Steven's wrath by offering to buy him lunch or pimp-out his bicycle, but as it became apparent their pleas for leniency were falling on rock-hard ears, joyous recollections of pummeling tiny Steven Zangst were replaced by bouts of perspiration induced by the certainty that a slice of get-even pie would soon be served.
Hector Pounce (pronounced Ponz-say) was the first person to experience the wrath of Steven Zangst. At ninety-three pounds, Hector was the biggest third grader in the history of Sunnyswale Elementary School, or SES as the locals liked to call it. He was twice the weight of his classmate, Steven Zangst, and a foot taller. Hector swore like Ike and wore loud shirts, offset by navy blue rayon shorts that had a three-inch-wide expandable waistband. He looked like a mini-version of the legendary football coach, Bill Parcels. At snack time Hector would devour a rack of cold spare ribs, drink a quart of Coke, and then eat whatever Steven Zangst had brought to school.
By first grade Hector figured he had broken Steven Zangst, because Steven always packed his lunch with Hector's favorite foods, which he would hand over without a fight.
"Yum, Sour Cream Pringles," Hector would say. "Remind me to kill you later, Zangst."
SES was located in the heart of Silicon Valley. Accordingly, the school had all the high-tech learning gizmos that made parents believe their children were being educated, including one PC per child. SES also had a big concrete pad located near its rear entrance. The slab supported a variety of structures built from recycled automobile parts. An accompanying plaque proclaimed the "activity sculptures" constituted Silicon Valley's first "environmentally-friendly playground" an honor distinctly lost on the school's oft-injured children who considered the area a "killing field."
Over the years, many students experienced post-traumatic stress due to their time spent at the SES playground, but nobody suffered more within its bounds than Steven Zangst. By the time Steven reached second grade, a day never passed without him receiving multiple helpings of the schoolyard's daily special, which meant on Monday, kids lined-up to give him atomic wedgies; Tuesday, purple herbies (nipple twisters for those of you unfamiliar with proper bullying terminology); Wednesday, noogies; Thursday, Indian sunburns followed by swirlies; and Friday "wiffle-whacks," an SES original torture, in which Hector Pounce hung Steven upside down from the playground's monkey bars so his classmates could whack him with a wiffle ball bat like he was a piñata.
For most "students," "wiffling" Steven was the highlight of their week; so fights often broke out in the on-deck circle as anxious batters battled over whacking rights. At times, the commotion provided Steven with a reprise by forcing Hector Pounce to use his deep voice to remind his rowdy cohorts of the playground's unwritten policy of "one-whack-per-child."
"Calm down! Everyone will get a chance... No cutting in line!" Hector would yell while Steven flailed about. "You got one swing so make it count!"
In fairness to his many torturers, during a wiffle-whack session, Steven's comical screeches and spastic attempts to break away from his persecutors provided an irresistible level of physical comedy, which left his peers in stitches and rendered the school's laugh-starved adults incapable of properly intervening. To most folks, there was simply nothing funnier than watching the speech-impaired Steven hurl indecipherable insults at his attackers, especially when they were comingled with screams caused by "dick-whacks," a sound best described as a cross between a wolf howl and a duck call.
"Hectah, some day I'm going to urdah you, you fucking oron! Ooowwooooackackack, Ooowwooooackackack!"
Regarding Steven's first act of revenge, the story goes: Hector had a beagle named ChumChum, and it was widely believed that ChumChum was the cutest dog that ever lived. This fact was confirmed by those skilled in the art of assessing dog-boy relationships, who considered Hector and ChumChum soul mates after verifying reports that the young couple was often spotted co-licking soft serve ice cream cones at the Sunnyswale Dairy Queen.
Regardless of the exact nature of Hector's love of ChumChum, it was clearly worth twenty-five thousand dollars to his parents, for that was the amount they offered on the wanted posters after ChumChum's obvious disappearance caused their youngest son to issue God his first hysterical, "Why?"
A month into ChumChum's disappearance and a week after Sunnyswales' Medical Examiner/Dog Catcher pronounced ChumChum "presumed dead," Steven Zangst sat down beside Hector in the SES cafeteria. Having firmly established their respective roles within their third grade social structure, the still-mourning Hector Pounce was surprised to see tiny Steven Zangst had mustered the balls to sit at his "cool kids" table.
"What the fuck do you want, dipshit?" the particularly ornery Hector asked. "Get back to the dweeb table where you belong, or I'll yank on your underwear until you can taste your own balls."
Steven was dead calm. He stared Hector in the eye and then slid something across the table. It was a dog tag. On it was the word: "ChumChum."
"Hectah, I found this in a dish of beef chow ien," Steven squeaked. "Bow-wow."
Steven's icy stare left little doubt in Hector's mind that ChumChum had indeed squirted on his last hydrant. Hector's resultant nervous breakdown was recorded on the school's security cameras. It featured an amazing series of herky-jerky motions that later became known as break-dancing. Poor Hector spent the remainder of his school year in one-on-one psychological counseling with occasional breaks for gym class where he was used as a dodge ball practice dummy.
Parental anger combined with Hector's declining mental health eventually forced the school to conduct a formal inquisition into the fate of ChumChum. During the inquiry, Steven Zangst steadfastly maintained he had found the beagle's dog tag in a Chinese noodle dish, which he purchased at the Food Court at the Sunnyswale Mall. Although his story had many holes, no degree of adult browbeating could break the playground-hardened Steven Zangst.
Steven's unwillingness to confess eventually forced the principal of SES, a legendary disciplinarian named Rudolph Maurer, to call a special school assembly. During the gathering, sitting alone on stage in front of eight hundred schoolmates, Steven Zangst calmly responded to Principal Maurer's red-faced denunciation of his character by saying, "Aurah, how does a nine-year-old boy travel six iles to Hectah Pounce's house to do his dog? Come on. Give e a break."
By junior high, Steven's road to respect was littered with several other broken tormentors, including Laura Gibbons. Laura was the mother bee of Steven's sixth grade class. She was a preening drama queen with a notable wink and wiggle that gave more than one SES boy their first woody.
Unfortunately for Laura, one morning during her first period, she called Steven Zangst a "dickless nerd" for simply saying, "hello." A day later, Steven launched a coordinated rumor campaign, which claimed Laura's stunningly perky breasts were actually composed of Kleenex. The nickname "tissue tits" followed, and within days, Laura was on Prozac. Inevitably, an eating disorder ensued causing the once petite Laura to consume double-stuffed Oreos until she looked like the Michelin Man.
By his freshmen year in high school, Steven had earned the nickname "Even Steven" for virtually castrating anybody who crossed him. No offense, real or imagined, was too small to be redressed by Steven, and his retribution was always an order of magnitude more severe than the original offense. If you stepped on Steven's toes, he broke your foot; if you stole his lunch money, your mother's automobile would catch on fire. And, and if you called Steven a "midget," or any other word that referred to his sub five-foot stature, you would end up with a broken nose -- and there was no place you could hide.
More intimidating than Steven's actual acts of revenge was the mystery surrounding them, for Steven Zangst was never caught in the act. Most folks believed Steven had one or more accomplices, and a baseless rumor persisted that he was somehow connected to the Russian mob, but the truth was Steven was a solo act. Steven's expertise included an amazing ability to indirectly inflict harm by connecting seemingly disparate data. A typical example of a Steven "action" would be the day he inflicted frostbite on a perceived nemesis by drilling tiny holes in the base of his snow boots after reading the Farmer's Almanac was predicting a long-cold winter. Another amazing aspect of Steven's revenge was the way he'd subtly disclose his culpability to impart maximum fear. In fact, most often, Steven's victims believed they'd had an accident until a get-well card arrived that described some private aspect of their misfortune. Perhaps the cruelest of all Steven's get-well wishes was sent to his soccer foe, Bobby Grier, a classmate who nearly died from a mysterious case of food poisoning...
Dear Bobby,
Very sorry to hear your colon needed to be removed. My guess is the horrible bacterial infection you caught came from undercooked chicken. Maybe it was those awful nuggets they served in the cafeteria last week.
FYI, in case you were wondering, I have recovered from the kick to the tummy I received from you on the soccer field last month.
Bobby, please let me know if you need any help dealing with your ostomy bag at school. I'm sure having a smelly sack of shit attached to your stomach is not much fun...
Once again, please get well soon.
Your concerned classmate,
Steven Zangst
Although Steven's parents recognized their only son had a "severe side" they were not generally concerned about him during his teenage years, for Steven got "A"s and "B"s, he showered often, and never stuck his penis into an inanimate object.
Steven's mother was a bookkeeper, and his father was an accountant. Steven's dad was a decade younger than the woman he called his "bride." Steven got his height from his father who was only four feet eleven inches tall. His cuteness and his squeaky voice came from his normal-sized mother, named Philomena -- a woman incapable of cooking soup that Steven hesitantly classified as a "hopeless bimbo."
Growing up, Steven was an only child, so he had his own bedroom. On the walls of his room were posters of his heroes: Scipio Aemilianus, the Roman General who systematically burnt Carthage into the ground, Napoleon, and General Tecumseh Sherman. Under the psychotic gaze of Sherman were the words: "If people raise a great howl against my barbarity and cruelty, I will answer that war is war..."
In commenting on his wall décor, Steven's dad once asked, "Hey, son, where's the poster of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders?"
In response Steven sighed, and then said, "I love you, Dad, but you aw a trivial an."
Notable during his high school years was Steven's distinct lack of friends. Several girls thought Steven was cute, in a teddy bear sort of way, but like their male classmates, fear prevented them from forming a bond with the "scary midget." Not wanting to be known as a total outcast, Steven attended his Senior Prom with his school bus driver, a knockout twenty-eight year divorcée named Hermangee Franjapanni. Because she was an honorable woman, and the date involved a small payment, after drinking a fifth of Southern Comfort, Hermangee gave Steven a post-prom ride in the hay. For several weeks after the incident Steven experimented with hallucinogenic drugs, hoping to erase the memory of the encounter. But alas, nothing worked...
After high school, Steven skipped college and went into business on his own. Years earlier he had decided to become rich, so he could crush his enemies, buy a good life, and land a hot wife.
Being ruthless and smart, Steven understood to run a successful business he simply needed to take in more money than he spent. So after looking at the world's markets, Steven concluded buying stuff in China at a low price and then selling it in the USA at a high price was the best way to get wealthy fast, and he was right.
By age twenty-one Steven had made his first million by selling low-cost Chinese merchandise into the United States' promotions market. He sold things like glowing yoyos, beer can openers that sang God Bless America, and baseball caps with built-in cooling fans. The California Office of Corporate Affairs listed the name of Steven's company as Zangst Enterprises, but Steven called it, TCTBSFADASIFTI, "The Company That Buys Shit For A Dollar And Sells It For Two, Incorporated."
Making money was like breathing for Steven Zangst, so by age twenty-four Steven was not just plain rich. Initially, being wealthy made Steven relatively happy because he could buy hot cars and big television sets, but ultimately Steven knew he had a problem. He was a virile young man who did not have a woman, and it was bad. Steven often had wet dreams about his old bus driver, haunting memories of Marlboro-stained teeth and ethanol breath, and he also would sprout unwanted erections upon looking at any curvy object. Sadly, even the Pillsbury Doughboy got him aroused.
Understanding the desperate nature of his situation, and above all being a practical man, Steven assessed his options. He thought about joining a singles group, or paying a matchmaker. He even considered going to Thailand and buying a mate. But then came the day that Steven walked into the Sunnyswale Applebee's and ordered a chicken fajita from Faith Inman, the restaurant's stunning daytime bartender. Instantly, there was no doubt in Steven's mind that Faith was "the one." In fact, for the remainder of his life Steven would never experience a conscious hour without recalling the first words Faith ever said to him: "What can I get you, hon?"
Steven knew landing Faith would be difficult because the competition was stiff. The Sunnyswale Applebee's was located one block away from a large Hughes Aircraft research facility that employed hundreds of young engineers who also had the curvy-thing problem. Worse, it appeared many of the Hughes workers could spend limitless time at Applebee's and charge it to the government under billing code "FNOFF."
Steven carefully assessed the situation. After years of diction training Steven had made his squeaky voice intelligible, but he could not change his four-foot-eleven-inch height, his acned-coated complexion, or the onset of male pattern baldness. Being so, Steven calculated the odds of him landing a stunning and vivacious five-foot-eight-inch blonde and concluded his chances were nil. But, his attraction to Faith Inman was too strong to deny. Consequently, despite the math, Steven launched a plan to eliminate his competition.
Within weeks the young men that frequented Applebee's disappeared as Steven bought them off. Per his style, Steven's approach was indirect; he befriended one of the Hughes regulars, paying him fifty thousand dollars to keep his co-workers away from the Applebee's bar.
"Spend what you need, but if you mention my name the consequences will be severe," Steven warned his accomplice before asking him to check his references, which included: Hector Pounce, Laura Gibbons, and a slew of others.
Three weeks later, Steven sat alone at the Applebee's bar.
"Slow day, huh, Faith?" Steven said.
Faith frowned. "Steven, I'll go on a date with you if you stop paying people to stay away. I need tips to pay my bills."
For the first time in his life, Steven Zangst was embarrassed.
"How did you figure it out," a white-faced Steven squeaked.
"Steven, you drive a Porsche Carrera and you've been here fifteen days in a row. Our chicken fajitas are good, but not that good."
"Sorry, Faith...I-I-I..." Steven stumbled.
"Steven, lift your ban, share dinner with me, and we'll call it even, okay?"
"Done, Faith," Steven whimpered. "I'm sorry for being such a fool."
"Next Saturday, meet me here at five o'clock and we'll go to dinner and a movie. Okay?"
"Yes, Faith," Steven said as if he'd been married for fifty years.
"Another chicken fajita?"
"Extra peppers," Steven meekly replied.
Thoroughly embarrassed over being found out, Steven ignored his instincts by deciding not to hire a private detective to dig into Faith's past. Instead, he focused on date preparation. First to mend fences, during the five days leading up to their date, Steven set an income record for Applebee's by not-so-secretly financing lunch for the boys at Hughes, including a ridiculous fifty percent tip rate for Faith.
For the date itself, Steven purchased one hundred music CDs -- an eclectic selection of tunes from Andrew Lloyd Weber to Metallica, which he inserted into an expensive leather binder after eliminating any rap album that spoke of exceptionally "long dongs" or "horny bitches."
Next, in search of the perfect meal and perfect table, Steven visited every four-star restaurant in Silicon Valley. At each screening Steven taste-tested several dishes then made special arrangements to add an extra cushion to his chair to "enhance" his height.
"I'm four-eleven, not five feet," Steven would tell each maître d'. "Don't fuck with me. I'm a realist."
With date atmospherics under control, Steven then turned his focus inward. With hopes of optimizing his appearance, Steven visited Hy and Lo's, the upscale men's clothing store for the big and tiny located on Main St. in Los Gatos. Not wanting to overdo it, Steven bought several pastel designer sports shirts and five pairs of khakis, perfectly tailored to cover his short legs and stumpy ass.
"Do your best," Steven half-jokingly told the tailor. "Make me handsome, or I'll burn your store down."
In final preparation for the big night, not wanting to be overly ostentatious, Steven sold his Carrera and bought a top-of-the-line Mercedes sedan, which he broke-in by visiting every art-house movie theater in the Valley. The cinemas were noted for screening chick flicks; movies with titles like: A Buggy for Two, The Burn Victim, and We Still Have Sacramento. At one theatre Steven forced himself to watch a Victorian Era forbidden love piece called The Duchess, in which a beautiful princess dumped her royal fiancé for a butler with leprosy. The audience was all male. The viewing generated uneasiness within Steven, which he addressed by asking the men to his left and right about the local hockey franchise.
"Hey, did you catch the Shark's game last night?"
After the movies, Steven visited at least twenty gift stores to find the perfect first date gift for Faith. He wanted something unusual and beautiful, but not too expensive. He did not want to scare Faith away. Eventually, Steven's search ended at a boutique that featured an occasional interesting and original item interspersed among the usual hopelessly cute shit for the Hello Kitty and unicorn addicts of the world. The item that caught Steven's eye was an amazing stickpin that bore the likeness of a rose. When he asked the boutique clerk about the item he was told it was called an "eternal rose."
The dapper boutique man proclaimed, "It's made by a very crafty lady in town. She constructs these pins by making gold leaf imprints of actual petals and then reassembling them into a rose. They are, without a doubt, the most exquisite item in my exquisite store. They are absolutely fabulous!"
"Perfect," Steven said. "I'll take it."
Steven met Faith at the Applebee's parking lot at precisely five o'clock. Faith was waiting. To Steven, Faith was beautiful, but she appeared to be underdressed. She was wearing gym shorts, a red Stanford University T-Shirt, and blue Ked's sneakers. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she had a fanny-pack strapped to her waist, which was difficult to notice due to her exquisite fanny. No make-up was detectable on Faith's flawless skin; no liner offset her blazing blue eyes; and no gloss coated her lips, which were naturally red like they'd just sucked the pigment out of a bowl of cherries.
"Howdy, Steven," Faith said.
"Hi, Faith. I hope you don't mind, but I bought you a first date gift," Steven said nervously as he presented her with a small jewelry box containing "the eternal rose."
"Steven. You shouldn't have," Faith said while opening the box.
"It's just a little thing," Steven replied.
"No, it's not," Faith said, as she inspected her gift. "It's so cool."
"It's made from real rose petals," Steven said with a look of concern.
"It's so cool," Faith said as she planted a kiss, that was not really a kiss, on Steven's forehead.
An awkward moment of silence followed, then Faith said, "First stop is the Sports Authority! If you don't mind, I need to buy some socks."
Relieved, Steven smiled. "Socks it is! Linda, drive us to the nearest Sports Authority."
When Steven bought the world-renowned luxury sedan he selected "pleasant female" as his voice option and named his "attendant" Linda, after an unobtainable high school beauty queen.
"Location found. Calculating distance," the ever ready and efficient Linda replied.
"Linda is my virtual driving assistant," Steven said. "She sounds like she hails from Redondo Beach, but she was actually born in Germany."
Faith laughed. "I see. Hello, Linda."
Linda did not respond.
"I think she's jealous," Steven said.
"What girl wouldn't be?" Faith replied.
On the way to the Sports Authority, Steven gave Linda the music binder.
"Wow, lots of tunes," Faith said. "Got any Tom Waits?"
Steven smiled. "Of course, look under 'W.' I got The Piano Has Been Drinking, Not Me."
"Awesome!" Faith said.
As Tom Waits sang for the mentally deranged, Faith smiled and then said, "Steven, I somehow made a ton of money this week, so I want to stock up on socks. How big is your trunk?"
"Large for my size, but I have a good tailor," Steven said.
"Car trunk," Faith replied with a laugh.
"I don't know..." Steven chuckled. "Big enough to hold a large cooler and a set of golf clubs."
"Excellent," Faith said.
While Linda guided Steven's jet-black Mercedes to the Sports Authority, Faith told Steven about her day, which included a story about an obnoxious customer who called her "a trollop" for spilling his beer. Steven wanted the guy's name, but Faith would not disclose it, citing bartender-client privilege.
Upon arrival at the Sports Authority, Faith said, "Steven, park in front. I'll be right out."
Within minutes, Faith returned with a shopping cart full of Nike branded tube socks. "Pop the lid, Steven," Faith said. "Next stop is Dan's Place."
As Faith climbed back in the car, Steven said, "Dan's Place, never heard of it. How's the food?"
"It's the best!" Faith said.
"Okay, to Dan's Place, Linda," Steven instructed.
"Calculating distance to Dan's Place in East Palo Alto," Linda mechanically responded.
"East Palo Alto?" Steven said.
"Don't believe everything you hear about the street violence in East Palo Alto," Faith said. "It's a wonderful place!"
Steven was with Faith and she was happy, so he was not disturbed that his plans for a perfect date had been ruined.
Within minutes Linda arrived at Dan's Place. It was a homeless shelter for men.
"We're here!" Faith exclaimed. "And, it's Sock Night!"
Steven was confused. "Sock Night?"
Faith smiled. "Yes, tonight we're going to wash the feet of homeless men, give them new socks, and then share dinner and a movie. It'll be great! Don't worry about a thing, Steven. I brought you some rubber gloves. Come on. Let's get the socks!"
As Steven helped Faith unload the trunk he was speechless. He was still sure Faith was "the one," but he was also certain she was crazy.
When Steven and Faith entered Dan's Place they were greeted like they were rock stars.
"Faith, who's the dude?" yelled a homeless man, who Steven later learned was called "Copter."
"Nike socks, all right, Faith! You're the girl, girl," yelled another guy who had dryer-lint hair and furry yellow teeth.
Faith turned toward Steven and said, "My men."
After introductions, Faith went on to explain to Steven that many homeless men suffered from foot problems caused by malnutrition, alcoholism, mental health issues, or simple lack of access to proper health care.
Faith explained, "Gout is common, so is rot due to living in wet moldy shoes. So, once a week I wash the men's feet. I powder them up, and give them new socks, if I can afford them."
Dan's Place was an old Travelodge. It slept one hundred men, and had a lobby that doubled as a soup kitchen. The shelter was run by a guy named Dan who used the borrowing skills he'd developed as a one-time heroin addict to solicit funds from various charities and restaurants. He used the money to keep the homeless men he served alive while he helped them search for a better life.
Being a self-centered survivor, Steven wanted nothing to do with street people. He considered them the world's ultimate losers. But, he wanted Faith, so he played along with forced good humor -- until the first man in a line of fifty removed his shoes. It was Copter.
Copter had a brown-gray-yellow beard that was matted like an old cat's ass. He had blue eyes and twisted yellow teeth from smoking meth. He wore a green military jacket with the sleeves rolled-up. He had a tattoo of a Vietnam vet impaled by a screw on his right forearm. Below the image were the words: "Never Forget!" Copter's feet were blue and covered with sores. He also had an ingrown toenail that was oozing bright-green pus. It looked like Nickelodeon slime, smelled like death, and could crawl on its own.
"My God," Steven said to Faith.
"Who the fuck is this asshole?" Copter said while pointing his coal-colored hand at Steven.
"It's my friend, Steven," Faith politely responded.
"Your fucking midget friend is a fucking douche bag, Faith."
Faith frowned. "Cut it out, Copter."
Steven walked behind Faith and whispered, "You've got to be kidding me. You're not actually going wash this guy's feet, are you?"
Faith smiled. "Of course I am, silly. Don't worry. You don't have to touch anybody's toes. You're the water guy. Your job is to bring me fresh hot water and dump the dirty water. Got it?"
"Got it, fuckface?" Copter growled.
"Got it," Steven replied meekly while looking downward at his expensive knit shirt.
"Ohhh noooo, tiny man is going to get dirty, boo hoo," Copter chortled.
"Alcoholic," Steven said as he walked away to get the water.
"Alcohol is just my means of saying I don't give a flying fuck about anything! Especially you, you little fucking cock sucker," Copter snapped.
"Down boy," Faith said to Copter. "Be cool."
For the next three hours, Steven fetched water while Faith washed feet. After the men each had clean toes and new socks, Faith stood and asked the men to thank Steven for helping. A round of applause ensued, and then Faith gave Steven a big hug followed by a kiss on his cheek. As the men cheered, Steven waved like he was Lou Gehrig saying goodbye to Yankee nation, a tear even fell from his eye. Steven was stunned and confused by the unfamiliar emotion, having no prior experience with happiness.
At ten o'clock Dan arrived. He was driving a box truck loaded with food he had just collected from local restaurants and bakeries. Within minutes, the feast began. There was lobster bisque, fresh rolls, chicken Marcella, lasagna, several meat loaves, and a tray of homemade mac-and-cheese. For dessert, there were a variety of cakes and five gallons of mint chocolate chip ice cream. Drinks included coffee for all, a limitless supply of bottled water, and several two-liter bottles of cola that the men inevitably mixed with any form of available alcohol.
Faith and Steven ate with Dan, who was a low-key charismatic guy and a master of self-deprecating humor. As usual, the ten dinner tables in the lobby of Dan's Place were fully occupied by half-starving men, some hurting so badly that they lacked the hand-eye coordination to eat without dropping half of their food onto their laps. There was just one seat open, and it was located to the left of Steven.
"I'm the Willy Wonka of street people, welcome to my factory," Dan said. "You must be Steven."
"Yes, I am," Steven said without extending a hand. "This is quite a place."
"It's not much, but I call it home," Dan said.
Faith smiled. "Steven, Dan feeds over one hundred men a day. Isn't it amazing?"
"Yes, it is," Steven said. "It must cost--"
"Mini douche bag," interrupted Copter. "Great! I get to sit next to you. I gotta warn yah, I just took a nasty shit, little buddy, and I failed to wash my hands. So, I hope it don't gross you out when I pass the mashed potatoes."
Dan stared at Copter. "Cut it out, Copter!"
"Yeah, cut it out, Copter," Faith said while turning toward Steven. "Come on, Steven. Let's go cut the sheet cakes into little squares."
"Good idea," Steven said and he excused himself from the table.
"Come back quick, kiddies," Copter said with a laugh before eating some lasagna with his hands.
"There is no sheet cake," Faith said. "I just wanted to get you away from Copter."
"I figured." Steven smiled.
Faith sighed. "He's a broken man. The rumor is Copter was a helicopter pilot who earned two silver stars and a purple heart in Vietnam. There is also a story that Copter was the sole survivor of a rescue that turned into a massacre. He has post-traumatic stress. The poor guy is a mess."
"He certainly is," Steven said, seeking to be polite in the presence of his beloved Faith.
"Just ignore him when we go back to the table, okay?"
"Okay," Steven said with a faux smile as he walked back to the dinner table, "no problem."
"I know there was no fucking sheet cake," Copter said to Steven, his face covered with lasagna remnants, mainly ricotta and sauce. "I may be a drunk, but I'm not a stupid asshole."
"Glad to hear you're not a 'stupid asshole.' I was beginning to think otherwise," Steven said.
Faith winced.
There was a moment of tension before Copter spoke again.
"Copter!" Dan said, but he wasn't listening.
"I tell you what, Stevie boy, I was once a good-looking fuck like you," Copter said. "But, somewhere along the line I stopped giving a shit, and let me tell you something, you little dickhead, once you really, really, really stop giving a shit, it is almost impossible to recover. For there is nothing more powerful in this fucked-up world than really, really, really not giving a flying fuck about anyone or anything. Got it, you little dog fucker? The freedom is -- intoxicating."
"Really," Steven said with a glare that would have scared any man with a blood alcohol level below point three percent.
"Really, Stevie boy," Copter said. "You heard it here first. No bullshit applied. Some day, if you're really LUCKY, you'll know what I mean...you lil' fucking preppy ass shitbag."
"Back-off, Copter," Dan said. "You're outta here."
"Okay, Captain Dan," Copter hissed.
"Sorry about that," Faith said to Steven. "Most of these men have issues."
"Not to worry, I'm not afraid of drunks," Steven said, with a nod to Copter.
"Come here, Copter," Faith said sternly as she stood and walked away from the table.
Copter followed without saying a word.
Steven could not hear the exchange, but he saw Faith's finger in Copter's face, and then to his utter amazement. He watched Faith give Copter a bear hug before presenting him with her "eternal rose."
When Faith returned to the table, Steven politely asked, "Faith, what was that about?"
"I told him he had to leave without making a fuss and then I told him to always remember that I loved him, and to prove it, I gave him your rose. I hope you don't mind?"
"You love that guy?"
"Yes," Faith said. "I love all these guys."
"You're something, Faith," Steven said.
After dinner there was a movie, The In-laws, starring Peter Falk and Alan Arkin. The howls of laughter from the men intensified the comedy. Both Steven and Faith were quite certain it was the funniest movie ever produced.
After the movie, the odd couple said goodbye to the men of Dan's Place and then walked hand-in-hand to Dan's parking lot where they found "Linda" tireless, sitting on concrete blocks.
"Why didn't they steal the whole car?" Steven asked Faith.
Faith sighed. "They were probably too short or too young to drive."
Steven started the car to make sure nothing else had been taken.
"Steven," Linda said. "I have been violated."
"Would you like me to call the police?" Steven asked.
"Too late, I just did," Linda replied.
Steven turned to Faith and smiled. "You sure know how to show a guy a good time."
Faith smiled, forever burning her image onto the surface of Steven Zangst's soul. "I'm glad you had fun."
For the next fifty-two weeks Steven helped Faith run Sock Night. On the first anniversary of Steven's inaugural visit to Dan's Place Faith consented to a real date. Twelve months later, Steven Zangst and Faith Inman were married.
Andy "Dandy" McCormack grew up in a working-class neighborhood in South Boston. He was the youngest of eleven children and a great embarrassment to his family.
Where Andy grew up, men were considered good guys, douche bags, or fucking assholes. Andy's problem was he was smart, so he was considered both a douche bag and a fucking asshole.
Although the family never spoke of Andy's affliction, it was difficult to ignore because Andy was the youngest person ever to become a tenured physics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Unfortunately, one day, Andy's notable genius caused him to be profiled in the Boston Globe's Technology section. The newspaper article, entitled "The Southie Savant" caused Andy's mother to go into hiding for several months. The last thing June McCormack wanted was to be known as "the mother of a fuck'n nerd."
Growing up, Andy tried to cover up his love of math and physics by out-daring his brothers. He often started fistfights at Boston Bruins hockey games and drank whiskey through his nose. At fourteen years of age, during one of his father's legendary man-only Super Bowl parties, a drunken Andy mounted a seventy-six year old hooker on a pool table at the Hibernian Club; the act caused several witnesses to immediately join AA or the priesthood. And on his sixteenth birthday, for no particular reason, Andy stole a mail delivery truck and drove it into Fort Point Channel.
Normally, Andy's youthful indiscretions would have been considered a standard rite of passage and excellent fodder for future barroom howls, but to his friends and family, Andy's bad-boy act was recognized for what it was: a smart kid's pathetic attempt to be a regular guy. Looking back, Andy was ashamed of his ruse. He should have known his fellow Irishmen were on to his act. As his grandfather, Paddy "Scratch" McCann once noted, "You can't bullshit a bunch of bullshitters."
Although he would never admit it, Andy knew visible electromagnetic radiation, a.k.a. "light," was indirectly responsible for his juvenile delinquency. Since he was a young boy, for reasons he could never understand, Andy was greatly troubled by the nature of light and other physical phenomena.
Andy was bothered by the fact that a photon emitted from a ten-billion-year-old star could somehow end up on the backside of his eyeball. He also wondered why light rays were bent by gravity, and he spent many sleepless nights thinking about why people age at different rates depending upon their acceleration through "space-time."
Ultimately, Andy's curiosity about the physical sciences resulted in a prodigious accumulation of knowledge that eventually yielded a shamefully perfect score of eight hundred on both his math and physics standardized achievement tests.
Unbeknownst to Andy, the cause of his genius was a "hockey puck" shot by his brother, Matthew "The Stick" McCormack. The incident occurred when Andy was thirteen months old after his eldest sister, Mary, "M&M" McCormack, strapped him into a baby stroller like he was Hannibal Lecter, so she could spend the afternoon exchanging bodily fluids with her boyfriends, Bob and Rory. Unfortunately, Mary parked Andy behind a street hockey net that her brother Matthew was using to practice his slap shot.
Matthew's street hockey puck had ball bearings embedded in its surface, so when smacked it would behave like it was travelling on ice. The one hundred mile per hour slap shot that tore through the net and hit Andy above his left eye knocked him out for a day. In response to the trauma, Andy's brain repaired itself as best it could, but the damage was severe, so lacking viable alternatives, Andy's body repaired itself by generating an unproven neural network that contained a series of innovative thought channels, which ultimately turned Andy McCormack into a mathematical savant. Specifically, Andy could not only do math better than the average genius, he could also comprehend five dimensions of space, which made him uniquely capable of thinking great thoughts about the weird subatomic particles that make everything happen.
In the end, Andy's "inexplicable" intelligence landed him a four-year scholarship to MIT, a feat that caused Patricia Sullivan, his high school sweetheart, to dump him on the spot.
"Andy, I'm not going to date some fucking nerd who goes to the fucking Massachusetts fucking Institute of fucking Technology, I have my reputation to fucking think of," a distraught Patricia said before running into the arms of Buckey Doherty.
Buckey was an unemployed fork truck driver. He drank on D Street and slept on E Street. His ambition was to return to work at Gillette one day -- when they moved their big warehouse in Cincinnati back to Boston.
Eventually, Andy made peace with his past by limiting his family visits to the safe holidays: Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, the three days a year that the McCormacks obeyed the no Budweiser before noon rule.
At every family event, Andy's brothers and sisters would inevitably jibe him for betraying his kind by not working with his hands or getting wasted on Friday nights at the Shaky Shamrock. Usually, disapproval was expressed with an elbow followed by the words "pussy," "nerd," or "jack-off." But on occasion, when local barroom chatter determined that Andy had violated the enigmatic Southie Code of Conduct, an older sibling would be recruited to teach his little brother a lesson.
Such was the case at the christening of Billy McCormack the fourth, the youngest of Andy's forty-seven nephews. During the baptism Andy's brother, Declan shot him with a Taser for failing, three years earlier, to attend their father's fifty-ninth birthday bash. Andy knew his dad did not sanction the hit because Johnny "Yawny" McCormack, a Korean War Veteran and MBTA bus driver, was a good-natured man who was difficult to offend. In fact, at the keg and pasta reception after the christening, in a rare display of affection, Yawny addressed Andy's poor fit within his brood by sharing a few words of wisdom with his prodigal son. "Andy," Yawny said. "Family is over-rated. The only thing that really matters in life is beer."
Life at MIT was not much better for Andy McCormack. Erik "The Particle" Gunther, the chairman of the MIT Physics Department, loved Andy like he was his son, but his jealous colleagues hated Andy for being so fucking smart and so insanely normal.
Being academia, disdain for Andy was usually expressed with snide comments, but on occasion things would get outright nasty. Once, during a mandatory peer review, after Andy challenged a theorem offered by a struggling associate professor. An intense hissy fit ensued, in which the whiny Ph.D. indirectly expressed the jealous sentiments of the entire MIT Physics Department. "Okay, McCormack, my theorem may be wrong, but at least I'm not dating a cheerleader from Boston College, you freak!"
Among his colleagues it was difficult to determine the greater source of animosity they held toward Andy; for some it was the beautiful babes, for others it was Andy's scientific method, which he arrogantly called, "thinking." Andy did physics without a pencil, or a blackboard. Instead, he read prevalent theories then conducted thought experiments to advance scientific discovery. Andy did not have a laboratory, or a cell phone, and he only owned one personal computer. Yet, he was able to consistently propose new theories about the nature of space, time and light, which stunned the physics community.
In practice, Andy was the idea man and Gunther did the proofs. To many physicists this meant Andy was a dilettante. Andy countered by claiming his colleague's math "mumbo jumbo" was a "smokescreen" that hid their incompetence and prevented true insight. Over time, a pile of awards eventually validated Andy's approach, but they came too late to prevent the nickname "Dandy Andy" from sticking.
Ultimately, Andy fought with his colleagues to maintain the illusion that his work was somehow important. In truth, Andy could not imagine a less vital occupation than generating knowledge for the few folks in the world who cared about advanced particle physics, but in a reality that required money for food and housing, Andy was not unhappy with his profession. His work was easy, and it paid the bills, so Andy, an inexplicably devout Catholic, considered himself blessed and looked forward to a long and happy life of relatively meaningless postulation.
Of course, a life rarely matches its dream, and such was the case with Andy McCormack. Andy was super-intelligent, but he also had self worth issues (leftover from his youth as a "fucking-asshole douche bag") that left him susceptible to exploitation by others. Consequently, it wasn't long before Andy lost control of his destiny. The process started with Hope Wynsome, the woman Andy almost hit with a saliva-coated Frisbee.
Hope was a first year graduate student at the MIT Sloan School for Business. Sloan was the place where techies went to get a degree if they weren't really techies. Andy "met" Hope on the lawn outside the MIT's Student Center, a block away from the banks of the Charles River. It was the first warm day of spring, after a long hard winter, so the dresses were out and the boys were hunting. Andy was throwing a Frisbee to his dog, Twister, so he could run about the courtyard and check out the ladies without seeming like a predator.
Twister was a Golden Retriever. Andy named him Twister because he looked liked a tornado when he chased his tail, which happened often. Twister did not have a brain; he was petrified by ants and drooled excessively. He also ate golf balls and was once run over by a Ford Escort station wagon without sustaining any obvious injuries. Perhaps due to his unrivaled stupidity, Twister was interminably happy; he was also fiercely loyal. Twister's sole mission in life was to consume at least four cans of Alpo a day and to be at Andy's side whenever possible.
Andy recognized Twister was not the most intelligent dog in the world, but he loved him nonetheless. Twister offered Andy unconditional love without asking him to do the dishes. He also never barked and was a good TV companion due to his warmth and strange fear of popcorn. Twister could also jump five feet into the air and turn his head two hundred degrees, which made him a most excellent Frisbee/hunting partner.
The first encounter between Andy and Hope Wynsome happened due to a purposely-errant Frisbee toss. The drool-coated disc landed at the feet of Hope who was sitting on a wrought iron bench reading a business case about some greedy bastard who made a fortune doing something that was technically legal because there was no law against it. Without thinking, Hope picked up the Frisbee and flung it back to Andy. The fling caused a three-inch-wide swath of doggie saliva to slap Hope across her chest, staining her brand new J Crew cotton blouse, turning mauve into burnt umber.
As Andy approached to apologize, Hope's beauty stunned him, so his first reaction was to try to make things right by cleaning up Twister's saliva. With no towels in sight, Andy took off his T-shirt and started rubbing it on Hope's chest. Just as he realized the impropriety of his action, Hope knocked him out with the butt end of her Apple MacBook.
Seeing blood and seeking to protect his master, Twister, the supposedly brainless dog, leapt into the air, grabbed the MacBook from Hope's hands, and took off. The MacBook contained Hope's life, so she immediately gave chase. Twister ran straight across MIT's main courtyard and then across Memorial Drive, where he was grazed by a Taxi and a Cadillac SUV before depositing Hope's MacBook into Charles River.
Just as Hope crossed Memorial Drive in hot pursuit of Andy's dog, the cerebrally-challenged Golden Retriever turned and ran straight at her. Two taxis and a bicycle messenger nearly clipped Hope as she ran back across Memorial with Twister on her heels. Hope was five feet away from her bench when Twister caught up to her. The force of the collision and ensuing bite caused Hope to hit the ground like she had been crossed checked by Zdeno Chara. Luckily, Andy had come to during the chase, so he was able to curb his dog's assault by yelling, "Down, Twister!"
"Your fucking dog just bit my leg, asshole!" Hope Wynsome screamed at Andy McCormack.
"Maybe he's mad because you knocked me out, bitch!" Andy replied.
"You grabbed my tits, creep!"
Andy paused for a moment. "Sorry about that," he said. "I wasn't thinking..."
Hope tried to hobble away, but her leg was bleeding profusely, so Andy insisted on helping. Having already disrobed his upper torso for lack of a towel, Andy took off his cotton MIT sweat pants and shredded them with his Swiss army knife, an item that had been attached to his key chain since he was twelve years old. Standing in his boxer shorts, Andy then wove his shredded sweats into a tourniquet, which he applied to Hope's leg to stop the bleeding. Then, without seeking her permission, Andy McCormack swept Hope Wynsome into his arms and proceeded to carry her to the MIT infirmary.
The MIT Infirmary was almost a mile away from the bench where Hope and Andy "met." As Andy walked he continually apologized to Hope, who was furious, although her anger did not prevent her from noticing that Andy McCormack was built like a Greek god. Andy had Brad Pitt's looks, without the hint of femininity. He had red-brown curly hair, a freckled face, and a chin that had a perfect dimple. He had broad shoulders and a perfectly hairy chest. He looked rugged like the Marlboro Man -- before he developed cancer.
The blood from Hope's leg soaked Andy's boxer shorts, so as he walked down Massachusetts Avenue, more than a few ladies were struck by the size of Andy's manhood, which they could envision with minimum fantasy, due to the clingy nature of blood-soaked cotton. As Andy walked, Hope eventually calmed down enough to consider the possibility that her molester was not a total asshole, a thought reinforced when the admitting nurse at the MIT Infirmary said, "Professor McCormack, what happened to you?"
Not one to lie, Andy responded, "I stupidly grabbed this young lady's chest, so she knocked me out with her Apple MacBook, so Twister bit her."
The nurse, familiar with the social miscues prevalent in an institute dominated by men with Asperger's syndrome unblinkingly responded, "Happens all the time. Don't worry; we'll take care of you both."
Andy turned to Hope and smiled. "By the way, my name is Andy McCormack."
Hope looked at Andy and was suddenly smitten.
"I wish I could say it was a pleasure to meet you, Professor McCormack. My name is Hope Wynsome."
Because of suicide attempts and alcohol poisonings, MIT always had a physician present at its infirmary, so a real doctor, from a real Caribbean medical school, quickly determined that Andy's and Hope's lacerations did not pose a threat to their long-term health or welfare. After ten stitches to Andy's head and twenty-eight stitches to Hope's leg, the couple shuffled to the MIT bookstore, where they inexplicably bought a set of matching MIT shirts and sweats that made them look like the host and hostess of Nerdworld.
Being all dressed-up with nowhere to go, Andy then boldly suggested locking Twister in his office and then proceeding to The Muddy Charles Pub for drinks. Hope liked the drink part of the plan, but instead of storing Twister, she suggested drowning him in the Charles River or donating him to a nearby medical school, where he could be tortured in the name of science.
Before the Frisbee toss, Andy had classified Hope as a rare beauty. Like most men, Andy was quick to assess a female's core features and he liked what he saw. Hope was five feet tall with dirty blond hair, stunning green eyes and naturally pouty lips. She had large, but not too large, breasts, a firm ass, and gorgeous legs. Overall, the package was enough to make most men instantly fall in love with Hope Wynsome, but Andy had been with beautiful women before and none of them had ever knocked him out, so he was hesitant to follow his heart, which was telling him Hope was "the one," a feeling reinforced when Hope licked the salted rim of her first margarita and smiled.
"So, Andy, how does a tit grabber and master of a psychotic dog become a professor at MIT?" Hope said with an ear-to-ear grin.
"Actually, being a tit-grabber and owning a psychotic dog is the sole requirement for being a physics professor at MIT," Andy McCormack disclosed.
"A physics professor?"
"Theoretical physics."
"Black holes?"
"Eat 'em for breakfast."
"Jesus Christ, I can't tell my friends I'm seeing a friggin' physicist."
"If it helps any, you can tell your gal pals that I'm also a little league coach."
After a third round and multiple assurances that their next encounter would not involve any form of human or canine assault, Hope accepted Andy's request for a date the following Saturday.
In the days before the big date, Andy sent Hope several get well cards, in which he further apologized for his inappropriate behavior. One of them contained a five hundred dollar J Crew gift card signed: "From Twister."
Hope never responded to Andy's cards, so when the big Saturday night arrived Andy was a bit nervous as he approached the Sloane School dormitory where Hope lived. He was fully clothed and had a special gift in hand.
After convincing the dorm's security guard that he really was a physics professor by doing a Lorentz Transformation, Andy entered the dorm and proceeded to Hope's room.
Hope greeted Andy with a huge smile and said, "Welcome, Professor."
Suddenly, it was Andy's turn to be smitten. Floored by Hope's beauty, Andy struggled for words before saying, "You look beautiful, Hope."
Hope smiled. "Think so, Professor?"
"Oh yeah," Andy said before handing Hope a gift bag. "I got a little something for you."
Inside the bag was a new Apple MacBook.
"The scuba diving club retrieved your laptop from the Charles then the crew at the Media Lab recovered the data. Those kids love a challenge."
Hope was moved. "Well thank you, Andy."
"You're entirely welcome."
"So, Professor, are you suggesting I pretend we just met and forget about the horny guy who used a Frisbee and his crazy dog to check me out?"
"Is that what I was doing?"
"'Throw the Frisbee near the pretty girl' is the oldest trick in the book," Hope said.
"Do all women know about it?"
"Of course we do. We know all your tricks."
"Damn, us guys don't have a prayer."
Hope smiled. "You do what we let you do."
"Will you let me buy you dinner?"
"Of course. You're the professor, I'm just a lowly grad student."
"I hope you're not implying there's anything inappropriate about our student-teacher relationship?"
"Not yet," Hope replied.
Hope and Andy would forever own the evening that followed. It started with dinner at Legal Seafood in the Copley Plaza. It was not the most romantic place in the world, but the food was outstanding. Andy, being a douche bag, had a steak. Hope had grilled tuna with wasabi and fresh vegetables. After dinner, the couple had drinks at the Top of the Hub, a bar on the fifty-second floor of the Prudential Building that offered a stunning view of Boston and its surrounding communities.
After a dinner dominated by conversation that could be best described as a background check by Hope, the talk at the Top of the Hub got animated when Hope and Andy began to reveal their real life stories. For starters, Hope told Andy she grew up in a middle class family in Waltham, Massachusetts. She said she had a gay brother and then disclosed she once did not talk to her mother for an entire year.
"A whole year -- harsh," Andy said. "What did she do?"
Hope laughed. "She videotaped me making out with my high school boyfriend."
"Kinky," Andy said.
"She used a Teddy Cam," Hope said with an exaggerated look of disgust.
Hope then revealed her dad once made one hundred and fifty grand a year, but he had not worked for two years, so he was depressed.
"Tough," Andy said.
Hope sighed then dabbed her eye with a napkin. "Very."
Andy didn't want to scare Hope away so he was vague about his family. He neglected to mention his father was an MBTA bus driver who once went to work after drinking a twelve pack of Bud tallboys. He also did not disclose his mother recently did a thirty-day stay in county jail for instructing two of his older brothers to "beat the living shit" out of their next door neighbor, Mr. Daniel O'Malley, an octogenarian with Parkinson's disease, who mistakenly parked his Buick Century in "Ma's spot."
"I'm an Irish Catholic from South Boston, the eleventh of eleven children," is all Andy said.
"Eleven kids?" Hope howled.
Andy laughed. "My dad once called me his seventh accident."
Hope smiled. "Too Catholic to use birth control, I guess."
"Something like that," Andy said, neglecting to mention his father once proclaimed his Catholicism consisted of an occasional prayer to "Saint Who Gives a Shit, the Patron Saint of Fuck You and the Horse You Rode in On."
"It must have been fun growing up in a big family," Hope said.
"It was." Andy cleared his throat. "My parents were pretty much worn out by the time I showed up, so I grew up without being hassled."
Hope was fairly sure Andy was being evasive about his family, but she was satisfied that he wasn't raised by wolves or terrorists, so after sharing a few wallet pictures, Hope began exploring Andy's politics. Being a staunch Republican, Hope figured Andy, being a professor, had to be a liberal Democrat. So, she asked Andy what he thought of George Bush. Andy, skilled in avoiding conflict, responded, "I generally like Texans."
"What do you generally like about them?"
"I'm not sure," Andy said. "I think it has something to do with football, oil, or beef."
When pushed further about his politics, Andy finally admitted he was apolitical.
"Actually, Hope, I've never voted," Andy admitted. "I have a hard time telling the difference between Democrats and Republicans. They're all politicians to me."
Hope frowned. "You've never voted? How do you expect to change things for the better if you don't vote?"
"What can I tell you," Andy replied. "I trust the judgment of the masses."
Perplexed by Andy's seeming disinterest in family and politics, Hope next pressed the religion button.
"I'm a Protestant," Hope said abruptly. "I go to church twice a year to drop a twenty in the collection basket. How about you?"
"I do a twenty every Sunday," Andy said.
Hope grinned. "You've got to be kidding me, Andy; you still go to church every Sunday. I thought you science types didn't believe in God?"
"I believe in the possibility of God," Andy said, "and I like the Pope because he has the balls to wear a pointy hat in public."
"I like his Pope-mobile," Hope said.
Andy laughed. "Me too!"
A pause followed while Andy conducted an internal debate over whether to open up or risk boring Hope to death with his relentless Southie wiseassery.
"I also believe in wonder," Andy finally said.
"Wonder?"
"Yes. I believe in the wonder of things to come. We know virtually nothing, but at our current rate of knowledge acquisition, within our lifetime, we will be able to live forever, implant the world's knowledge into every man's head, use nuclear fusion to solve our energy problems, and we'll even be able to use subatomic particles to instantly communicate with each other with no possibility of eavesdropping. To me, religion and politics are sideshows; technology is what matters."
"Wow," Hope said. "You really are a nerd."
"Guilty."
"So, I guess this means you really don't believe in heaven."
"I didn't say that, Hope. Believe it or not, heaven and physics are not inconsistent. Other dimensions surround us. We just can't see them. Everything we perceive is ninety-nine-point nine, nine, nine percent nothing. We are surrounded by total mystery. Heaven is a definite possibility."
Hope feigned shock. "Oh my God, I'm dating the mythical regular guy nerd."
Andy smiled. "Yes, Hope, I am Bigfoot; beneath my admittedly stunning exterior are the flesh and bones of a card carrying N-E-R-D -- much to my mother's chagrin."
"Oh my, Professor," Hope said. "This schoolgirl's heart is all a flutter -- tell me more."
"If I must," Andy replied before regaling Hope with additional stories of wondrous new technologies.
After a ten-minute lecture, a captivated Hope said, "Gee, Professor, it sounds like some big business opportunities are coming down the road. Somebody is going to get rich."
"Somebody will always get rich," Andy said.
"Why not you, Professor?"
Andy held Hope's hand and grinned. "Money cuts into my Red Sox time and limits my ability to have drinks with beautiful women."
"Like me, Professor?"
"Exactly like you."
The more Andy talked the more Hope was struck by his lack of ego. He never spoke of his academic greatness, and he seemed exceptionally attentive. To Hope, the whole Andy package seemed too good to be true, so after her third Cosmo, she posed the question she'd been dying to ask...
"Hey, Andy, I got to know -- how come a thirty-year-old guy like you, a big-shot professor, isn't married? Are you one of those straight-looking guys who likes guys? Or, is there a special inflatable doll in your life?"
Andy laughed. "How did you find out about my inflate-a-date?" He then paused before saying, "Hope, if you must know, the reason I am not married is...I've been waiting for you."
There was another pause then Hope and Andy looked straight through each other. A kiss followed, generating feelings that needed to be immediately addressed in the nearest available bedroom. Consequently, arm in arm, Andy and Hope left the Top of the Hub for Andy's place, a nice one bedroom condo on the fourteenth floor of a red brick tower on the Cambridge side of the Charles River.
It was a crystal clear evening and Andy's bedroom had a large picture window that perfectly framed the illuminated erections of Boston's Back Bay. It afforded a spectacular view, specifically designed to support the passion Hope and Andy exhibited in Andy's windowless living room; a place with a big enough couch, and sufficient pillows, to support the inexplicably intense relations that followed and forever fused Andy McCormack and Hope Wynsome into a true couple.
Steven Zangst was not an ornithologist, but he was fairly certain the bird that flew into his windshield was a blackbird. It was Halloween morning and Steven was travelling along I-280, the scenic highway on the backside of Silicon Valley when the strike occurred. It was a perfectly sunny day, so Steven saw the bird approaching. He considered changing lanes, but traffic was heavy, so he figured he was better off taking the hit.
It had been eight years since Steven purchased his favorite of three Mercedes. The car had a super-intelligent warning system that took over driving duties whenever an accident was imminent, so as the blackbird entered its "safety zone," the brakes were applied, the engine was shut off, and an ambulance was summoned -- just in case.
After the blackbird harmlessly bounced off the Mercedes' windshield, leaving behind nothing but some blood and feathers, the luxury sedan automatically cruised into the breakdown lane so the collision could be assessed by Steven Zangst and his long-time virtual driving assistant, the ever-pleasant Linda.
"Linda, what are you doing?" Steven asked.
"Steven, you've been in an accident," Linda said. "Do not panic. Medical personnel have been summoned."
"Linda, a bird flew into our windshield," Steven said.
"I know," Linda replied. "It was a member of the Turdus merula family."
"A blackbird?"
"A deceased blackbird," Linda responded. "It hit our windshield at sixty-one miles per hour. How are you feeling, Steven?"
"I am fine, Linda."
"Good. Please re-enter the highway and proceed to your destination. Emergency response personnel have been instructed to return to their base."
"Linda?"
"Yes, Steven?"
"There is a Holiday Inn off Exit Twelve. What do you say we get a room?"
Linda sighed. "Please, Steven, I'm not that kind of car."
Steven laughed until his iPhone belched a Homer Simpson "D'oh!" It was Bernard Goldinberry, his attorney.
"Stevie, it's Bernard. Some babe named Linda just called me and said you were in a car accident."
"I'm fine," Steven said. "You're my emergency contact. Linda calls you when she thinks I'm in trouble."
"Lowly me, your emergency contact? Stevie, I'm honored," Bernard Goldinberry said.
"I thought you would be, Bernard."
"Stevie, does Linda know about Faith?"
"Bernard, Linda is my car."
"I think I'm in love."
"Bernard, do you want me to drive into a concrete wall, so Linda will call you again?"
"Yes, please do!"
"Consider it considered, counselor."
"Stevie, are you sure you're okay?"
"I'm fine, Bernard, a stupid blackbird flew into my windshield."
Bernard coughed. "A blackbird? Stevie, are you sure it was a blackbird?"
"Yeah, I think it committed suicide. Maybe his wife ran off with a blue jay."
The usually glib Bernard said nothing.
"Everything okay, Bernard?" Steven asked.
"Sure, Stevie, everything's fine. I gotta run, kid."
"Talk to you soon, Bernard."
"Keep the faith, kid," Bernard Goldinberry replied.
After hanging up, Bernard Goldinberry speed-dialed his "associate," Scary Mary Morgan. Mary was out hunting, so Bernard left a voice message.
"Scary, it's Bernard. Client trouble. Give me a call when you get a chance. Thanks, gorgeous."
Although they had never met in person, Bernard Goldinberry was Steven Zangst's best friend and sole work associate. Steven became acquainted with Bernard shortly before he was married. Hiring Bernard was Faith's idea. Early on in their relationship, Steven had disclosed his past as a master of revenge. Knowing old habits die hard, Faith figured Steven needed a positive outlet for his craft. Being so, she encouraged him to hire a lawyer and seek revenge upon oppressors of the poor. Her suggested targets included: big-bad corporations, stupid ass government agencies, and fat cats who stole from charities.
"You could be a modern day Robin Hood," Faith had argued.
"I sort of like that idea. Do I get to wear green tights, live in a forest, and cavort with a group of merry men?"
"Yes to everything but the cavorting."
"Will you be my damsel in distress?"
"Absolutely," Faith had assured him. "And, I will be generous with my gifts upon rescue."
"Then, I'm in..."
To Steven, the art of getting even required impeccable timing, an element of originality, a bulletproof plan, and a super-intelligent lawyer with balls of steel. Being so, Steven had found Bernard Goldinberry after he jokingly googled "greatest lawyer in the universe" and received a sponsored link to the "Law Offices of Bernard Goldinberry Esq." The link had connected Steven directly to Bernard Goldinberry's cellphone.
"Go, Stevie..."
"How do you know my name?" Steven replied. "I don't have caller ID."
"Lawyer trick," Bernard Goldinberry said. "So you want to sue some bad guys?"
"Yes, I do."
"Then I'm your man."
"You are?"
"Of course I am. Why else would you call me?" Bernard Goldinberry reasoned. "Up front, I have to let you know I'm incredibly expensive, Stevie -- because I'm totally worth it."
"What is your fee?"
"I work on a contingency basis. I take forty-nine percent of all settlement dollars, not including my out-of-pocket expenses."
Steven laughed. "Why not charge fifty percent?"
"I'm a lawyer, not a pig."
Steven went on to explain his desire to file suits on behalf of the less fortunate, especially the homeless, he then asked Bernard Goldinberry to reconsider his fee.
"Sorry, buddy," Bernard Goldinberry said. "There will always be poor people, but there is only one Bernard Goldinberry."
At first, Steven thought Bernard Goldinberry was pompous and likely a charlatan, but as they spoke Steven became strangely attracted to the cocky and good-natured lawyer. Bernard Goldinberry had an unworldly voice that was delivered over a background hum that had a hypnotic effect. The tone made Steven feel inexplicably pliant, causing him, a normally cautious man, to retain the self-proclaimed "world's greatest lawyer," sight unseen, after only two minutes of conversation.
"You won't regret your decision," Goldinberry assured him. "I've never lost a case."
"There's always that first time," Steven countered.
"Stevie you're talking Bernard Goldinberry here."
Together, Steven and Bernard Goldinberry battled zoning committees that tried to close homeless shelters, health insurance companies that overcharged the poor, and corporations that stole retirement funds. They also regularly attacked rent-jacking landlords because somebody had to. Their weapon of choice was the class-action suit, but on occasion, to get his way, Steven would use his wealth to buy off a corrupt official or some low-level corporate lackey.
Incredibly, after winning a few relatively minor lawsuits, fear of the Goldinberry-Zangst team caused insurance companies to payout large settlements without ever going to trial. Per Faith's suggestion, Steven would always funnel every penny of his winnings to Dan of Dan's Place. The money enabled Dan to hire a staff of medical and mental health professionals to service his men, including Copter, who received the psychological counseling he needed to become sober and land a job as an airplane mechanic while ironically becoming best friends with his personal rehab sponsor, Steven Zangst.
There was little doubt amongst parties that opposed "Goldinberry-Zangst" that Steven and Bernard were an unbeatable legal team. Steven's role in each action was limited to selecting the target, developing a strategy, and then issuing the complaint. Bernard Goldinberry would then lead the attack.
Typically, once an action began Bernard Goldinberry would retain one of the Valley's best law firms to do his bidding. In most instances, Goldinberry would start a case by holding a teleconference with a roomful of junior attorneys. During the call, Bernard would specify his attack plan, and then inevitably produce some startling pieces of evidence that would doom his adversary, things like: damning company emails, sex tapes, illegal wire transfers, and live whistleblowers.
On occasion, a member of Goldinberry's legal team would cite some law school ethics book as a basis for questioning him about his shadowy means of obtaining evidence. In response Bernard would feign indignation, and then, like Jesus writing in the sand, slowly disclose secrets about his accuser for all to hear. Inevitably, Bernard's words would be interrupted by a plea for forgiveness followed by a group realization that only a crazy person would fuck with Bernard Goldinberry.
Another amazing aspect of Goldinberry's work was his means of communication; he transacted all his business by phone. In fact, over several years, no member of the Goldinberry-Zangst legal team had ever met Bernard Goldinberry, including Steven Zangst. In response to any request for an in-person meeting, Bernard Goldinberry would always claim he was too busy, or make a joke about not wanting to compromise his effectiveness by exposing his "stunning good looks." He even missed the wedding of Faith Inman to Steven Zangst, citing a last minute death in his family. "It's my uncle Wilbur," Bernard Goldinberry had claimed. "I was his favorite nephew, of course."
Although Steven and Faith were disappointed that Bernard couldn't attend their wedding, they ultimately used his absence to tweak the quasi-gregarious barrister, via teleconference -- one of their favorite things to do.
"Bernard, sorry you couldn't make the wedding," Steven said.
"It was fantastic," Faith added. "We missed you."
"Did you get the chicken cordon bleu?" Steven asked, causing Faith to chuckle.
Bernard Goldinberry laughed. "Yes, I did! First time I ever received a wedding meal in a FedEx envelope."
Missing the Zangst-Inman nuptials was indeed Bernard Goldinberry's loss for it had been an outstanding event. It occurred as part of the grand opening ceremony of Dan's New Place, a five hundred bed homeless shelter designed to provide recovery services to the "lost and broken-hearted." Steven and Faith exchanged vows in front of their actual and extended families, on a temporary stage located at the center of "Dan's Soup Kitchen," the facility's ultra modern cafeteria. In addition to family and friends, the ceremony was witnessed by two hundred tuxedo-clad men from Dan's Place, each sporting a new pair of Nike tube socks (of course) and the entire staff of the Sunnyswale Applebee's, who would later collapse in fits of laughter during the wedding's reception after being served all-you-can-eat fajitas by a wait staff paid to be obnoxious in response to any request.
"Pardon me, waiter, my fajita is a bit cold."
"Shut the fuck up! Can't you tell I'm trying to talk my BFF on my cell phone?"
The actual wedding ceremony was a dream-come-true for Faith. There was nothing particularly noteworthy about the related trappings; in fact, there were no flower arrangements or even an organ player. Vows were exchanged on a simple wooden stage that was barely big enough to hold the best man, Copter, her future husband and the presiding authority, an ordained minister turned street person who had apparently found God in a bottle. The guests at Dan's Place called him the "Reverend." He was a middle-aged man midway through his recovery process who had travelled to Dan's Place from Nevada after hearing of its greatness from a fellow street person who had no idea that Faith Inman was the Reverend's "long-lost" daughter.
Since Steven and Faith were not particularly religious they wrote their own vows. Steven spoke first.
"Faith, before I met you, I was a selfish, stupid man. You showed me the power of love and forgiveness. You showed me how rich was poor. You helped me recognize the worthlessness of ego. You showed me that true happiness comes from helping others." Steven paused and then continued. "And your wild and uninhibited physical love has made it possible for me to forget my Senior Prom tryst with Hermangee Franjapanni." Steven paused again. This time to accommodate howls of laughter, which eventually subsided so Steven could continue. "Faith you also taught me how to laugh at myself... And above all, Faith, for you being you, I now vow, with my heart and soul, to be your husband, through good and bad, through happy and sad, through sickness and health... And I promise my words are not mere words when I state that I promise to be forever yours. I love you, Faith."
Faith responded by saying, "Steven, I don't know why I love you, but I do. I promise to be true and seek adventure by your side. Further, I vow to be a good wife and mother. And, I also promise to be forever yours."
Copter then handed Steven the rings as Reverend Inman summoned the sobriety required to pronounce Steven and his daughter, man and wife.
With Faith at his side, Steven's life was a joy. Gone was the dour little man who was full of hate and anger and spent his time plotting to suppress lesser beings. Faith's love had turned Steven's anger into humor and his fear into courage. The abused little boy that for so long had controlled Steven's soul had given way to a confident and well-adjusted adult, a man loved by friends and family for simply being "a great guy."
To Steven, with Faith, every day was better than the day before, and whenever he believed nothing could be done to improve his life something fantastic would happen that made him even happier, like the birth of his son, Ronald Ernest Zangst.
Ronnie Zangst was born twelve days after their first wedding anniversary. Steven had never considered himself father material. While growing-up he'd wanted nothing to do with uncontrollably noisy things that shit themselves after eating strange-colored puree that looked like it had been regurgitated by a penguin. But, to his great surprise, the arrival of Ronnie instantly turned Steven into a doting dad, and he absolutely loved the role.
Steven bought his infant son the best of everything: a high-end stroller with hydraulic shock absorbers, a marble changing table, a room full of life-sized stuffed animals, and a baseball signed by Babe Ruth. He also equipped Ronnie's crib with a video monitor that had special "frame-grabber" software, which enabled Steven to share digital images of Ronnie's every gas-induced giggle with his over-tired wife, any time of day, or night.
"Hey, honey. Hey, honey...wake up! Ronnie just smiled! Look at this picture. It's amazing!" Steven would excitedly yell.
"That's wonderful, darling. It's three in the morning. Go back to bed, or I will kill you," Faith would respond, and she meant it.
The things Steven willingly did for his son would have been unimaginable when he was single. For Ronnie's fifth Halloween, Faith suggested the family dress up like Winnie the Pooh characters, and in a voice not connected to his brain, Steven immediately responded, "Great idea!"
Because it had been her idea, it was Faith's job to ready the costumes for the big night. She decided she would be Tigger, Ronnie would be Winnie the Pooh, and Steven would be Eeyore.
Faith had made sure Steven's Eeyore costume was tailored, so it fit perfectly. Steven's face protruded from a furry purple-gray headpiece that had a black mane and big floppy Eeyore ears. The matching donkey suit had a black tail pinned to its ass. Tied to the tail was Eeyore's classic pink bow.
When Steven emerged from his bedroom after trying on his costume, Faith collapsed to the floor, forming a rolling ball of laughter. Steven ignored her howls, stayed in character, and said, in a perfectly deadpan Eeyore voice, "Ohh noooooo, not another Halloween."
In preparation for the big evening, Steven had decided to drive a couple exits down to I-280 to the Halloween Superstore to get some extra bags of candy and a plastic Honey Pot for Ronnie, so he could collect his candy as a proper Pooh. A few minutes after the blackbird incident, Steven called Copter to see if he needed anything at the superstore.
"Linda, call Copter," Steven said.
"Dialing now," Linda replied.
Within seconds, Copter's deep voice filled the Mercedes.
"Steven, bro, what's happening?"
"Heading into the Halloween Superstore, I want to know if you need anything."
"Not me, babe. I'm ready to take my godson out trick-or-treating tonight. I can't wait. Faith told me about the Pooh theme and I already got my Piglet costume."
Steven laughed. "Piglet! You never struck me as the Piglet type."
"Well, to tell you the truth, for years I have been suppressing my inner Piglet," Copter said. "Tonight, I release my cute and cuddly side."
"Can't wait to see that." Steven laughed. "I'm going as Eeyore."
"I know." Copter chortled. "Faith told me, way, way too funny, man. Way too fucking funny."
"You know you're going have to help Faith control her laughter," Steven said.
"You know our angel loves to laugh, Steven, so I can't promise anything, but I'll do my best."
"Hey, Copter..."
"Yeah?"
"Ever had a blackbird fly into your car?"
"Can't say I have, Steven. Why?"
"One just nose-dived, or should I say beak-dived, into my windshield."
"No shit? You know the old Irish believed if you crossed the path of a dead blackbird it meant somebody close to you was about to die."
"Really?" Steven said.
"Oh yeah," Copter said. "My old man believed in all sorts of superstitious shit like that, but when you drink a fifth a day you'll believe pretty much anything. How did Linda take the hit?"
"She's fine." Steven chuckled. "But she did call an ambulance for me."
Copter laughed. "That girl knows how to take care of her man."
"She's the best," Steven replied.
Steven was not a superstitious man, but any implied threat to his family, be it real or imagined, made him nervous, so after hanging up on Copter, Steven had Linda call Faith.
"Hi, honey, it's me," Steven said.
"Hi, sweetie," Faith replied.
"Hey, I'm almost at the Halloween Superstore; just checking in to see if you need anything."
"No, sweetie, I'm all ready for the big night. My Tigger costume is pressed and ready to go."
"Great," Steven said. "Are you feeling okay?"
"Sure, why do you ask?"
"Ah...nothing," Steven replied. "Ronnie all revved up for the evening?"
"You bet," Faith said. "Told me he can't wait to get some Tootsie Rolls with Eeyore."
"Fantastic," Steven said. "I love you, babe. I'll be home in about thirty minutes."
"Cool," Faith said. "I'll see you then. I love you, too, Steven."
"I love you, too, too," Steven replied, satisfied that all was indeed cool.
Faith was lying. She'd had a weird headache for the past couple of hours. It felt like somebody was trying to push a golf ball through her left sinus cavity. An hour earlier, she had taken two extra-strength aspirins in an effort to reduce the pain, but they hadn't helped. She figured it was the onset of a common cold.
Although people often blame death on the dead, it would be preposterous to assert Faith Zangst should have known her minor aspirin overdose was about to cause a defective artery in her brain to explode. In fact, the morbid medical examiner that later chopped up Faith's body wrote: "Medication played no role in the death of Faith Zangst. The deceased was born with a time bomb in her head. The odds of her getting an AARP card were zippo."
Faith's brief dance with death began while she was opening the door to her new SubZero refrigerator to put away the milk she'd just used to wet her son's cereal. Her collapse started with a stabbing pain above her left eye. The pain was immediately followed by the perception of deceased family members within a bright light; some were playing checkers. Being agnostic, Faith assumed the scene was an hallucination generated by lack of oxygen in her brain, but when her favorite dead grandmother lovingly told her, "Honey, it's time to go," Faith knew her death was imminent, so she resolved to kiss her beloved Ronnie goodbye as her final act.
Faith's attempt to kiss her son began with a violent twirl. The movement caused Faith to dump the gallon of milk she was holding onto the kitchen floor.
Ronnie was less than ten feet away. He was seated at the kitchen table, eating his favorite cereal while craning his neck in hopes of catching a glimpse of Spongebob, who was cackling on a lonely TV in the adjacent family room.
The slippery liquid turned Faith's usual graceful strides into a macabre pirouette that caused Ronnie to yell, "What's wrong, Mommy?"
Faith tried to answer Ronnie, but it was too late. Somewhere between the SubZero and her only son, Faith's soul left her body.
In her final moment, Faith managed to pucker her lips, but instead of landing a kiss on Ronnie's head, she spun into the kitchen table and did a face plant in his Frosted Flakes.
At first, Ronnie was puzzled. He had just entered first grade, so to him, death was something that happened in video games. Ronnie yelled, "Mommy!" several times, but he received no response. Ronnie then tried to revive his mother by tickling her side, but Mommy didn't wiggle.
"Wake up, Mommy! It's me, Ronnie! Wake up!" Ronnie cried.
After a several minutes of pokes and hugs, Ronnie noticed his mommy had pooped her pants and was turning blue, so he decided to contact his daddy using his mommy's iPhone. The iPhone was attached to a belt loop on Faith's pants. It had a big button on its display. It was inscribed, "Daddy." Ronnie grabbed the phone and tapped the button.
Steven was just about to enter his Mercedes, honey pot in hand, when Homer "d'ohed" again. Via Bluetooth Steven had already hooked his cell phone into Linda's communication system, so per his protocol, the call was screened..
"It's your son, Ronnie," Linda said.
"What?" Steven replied.
Although Ronnie was only six years old, he was an experienced iPhone user. For two years he'd been playing Angry Bird on the device, so he considered it his most precious toy. He also used the iPhone at least twice a day to call his daddy, so he knew how to use its advanced calling features, like the "voice-over-video" mode, which he deployed to show his father pictures of his motionless wife...
"Hi, Dadda. It's me Ronnie."
"Howdy, little buddy! Ready to go Trick or Treating?" Steven Zangst asked.
"Dadda, something is wrong with Mommy," Ronnie cried.
As Ronnie spoke a shaky video of a motionless Faith Zangst appeared on Linda's high definition video monitor. The image was shocking. It showed Faith Zangst, face down, in a bowl of cereal. Her head was tilted to one side, so a single dead eye was visible through a pile of tangled blond hair. Faith's lips were blue and her bloated tongue was partially submerged in a dead-calm puddle of milk.
Upon seeing the image Steven Zangst roared, "Stay put, Ronnie! I'll be right there!"
Steven hit the gas and soon his Mercedes was making the eleven-mile trip back to his home at one hundred thirty miles per hour, a speed that made Linda more than a little uncomfortable.
"Traffic ahead. Slow down, Steven," Linda said.
"Family emergency. Home now, Linda! Dial 911! Dial 911!" Steven hollered.
"Understand, Steven. Maximizing speed," Linda replied. "Police on the line."
"Hello, 911 Operator. You are being recorded," the operator said.
"Operator, my wife is down!" Steven screamed. "Get some paramedics to 38 Norquist Lane, Sunnyswale."
"We're on our way, sir," the operator said as if she was taking a pizza order.
"Linda, Copter, dial now!"
"Connecting," Linda said.
"Copter, Faith is down. She's at the house," Steven cried. "She looks dead."
"I'll be there in three minutes, brother," Copter said.
"Go, Copter! Go!" Steven yelled.
Steven had three police cruisers chasing him by the time he reached his exit, a quarter mile from his home.
Courteous to a fault, via remote control, Linda opened the garage door to the Zangst residence in preparation for Steven's arrival. Per her usual routine, the process involved calculating the car's rate of speed and the distance to its destination and then interpreting the results.
"Mercedes collision response system activated," Linda said, as Steven barreled into his driveway before colliding head-on with a John Deere lawn tractor and Copter's Harley Davidson.
Five seconds after extricating himself from his Mercedes Steven Zangst was standing beside Copter and Ronnie, staring at his ex-wife.
Tragically, unprepared to view the real-world image of his precious and lifeless Faith, the trillion connections that once constituted Steven Zangst's mind instantly blew apart leaving the lowly re-seller of Chinese goods, advocate for the poor, father of one, and loving husband, in a state of total shock.
As Ronnie tugged on his daddy's leg, three police officers entered the kitchen with guns drawn. "Officers this man's wife just died," Copter said. "Looks like a stroke."
The police quickly surveyed the scene and concurred.
In a low tone, one of the officers said, "Very sorry, sir. We'll call the medical examiner and I'll have another officer take the boy outside. He'll hang out until the scene is resolved. No charges on the chase."
"Cool. Thanks, guys," Copter said.
As Copter rubbed Steven's back and said, "Hang in there, buddy," Steven's brain struggled to reconnect the neurons that once constituted his being. After five minutes Steven coughed and then began crying on Copter's shoulder. The low level cries soon morphed into guttural wails. Copter had heard the sound before. It was a sound he had hoped to never hear again.
"Copter what has happened to our angel?" Steven cried.
Copter hugged Steven tightly. "She's gone brother."
"No!" Steven said. "No! No! No! Thirty-year-old mom's don't just die."
"Hang in there, brother," Copter said. "Hang in there."
"Copter, we're supposed to go Trick or Treat'n tonight. Is this some sort of fucking joke?"
Words being incapable of providing consolation Copter repeatedly said, "Steven," before Steven dropped to his knees and sobbed the tears that can only be found in the land of "all is lost."
Steven's crying lasted for twenty minutes. Five minutes of eerie silence followed and then Steven abruptly shouted the name of his best living friend.
"Copter!"
"I'm here, brother."
Steven screamed, "Fuck him! Fuck him!"
Copter frowned. "Fuck who?"
"God," Steven hissed. "I'm going get Him!"
Copter had seen men's faces twisted by death before, but no Vietnam visage could ever compare to the despair displayed by his friend Steven Zangst.
"Hey, brother," Copter said. "You gotta suck it up, you gotta, son."
The words brought Steven back from the edge. He looked about. "Ronnie, where's Ronnie?"
"Don't worry, Stevie. He is okay. He is outside with a police officer."
Steven paused as if he'd just witnessed a plane crash and then suddenly spoke.
"Copter! We're outta here. Bury Faith."
"Bury Faith?" Copter said.
"You heard me, Dig a hole and put Faith in it." Steven yelled. "The real Faith is gone!"
"Steven, calm down," Copter pleaded.
"Ronnniee," Steven yelled.
From outside, Steven heard his son's voice. "Yes, Daddy?"
"Come in here and get your teddy bear. We have to go!"
"Go?" Copter said. "Where are you going, Steven?"
"I don't know," Steven said with a crazed look. "Please bury Faith, Copter. Bury Faith."
"You got it, brother. I'll take care of everything."
Steven looked at Copter. The sadness was unbearable. He could not speak.
"I love you, Steven," Copter said. "Please don't do anything stupid."
Looking calmer, but still crazed, Steven replied, "Ronnie. Poor Ronnie."
Copter accompanied Steven to the squad car, where Ronnie was playing with the police radio.
"Everything is cool," Copter said.
"Are you sure?" the officer asked.
"Yeah, I'm okay," Steven said. "Come on, Ronnie. Let's go for a ride."
"Daddy, where are we going?"
"I don't know," Steven replied while looking toward the heavens as if the blackbird had just stolen his wallet.
"Daddy, what happened to Mommy?" Ronnie asked with no sign of sadness.
Steven looked a Copter, bit his tongue, and then said, "Mommy has gone to heaven to be with God."
"Will Mommy be okay with God? Is he a good guy?"
Steven sighed. "I don't know, son."
Ronnie paused, then smiled. "Daddy, can we go to McDonald's and get a Happy Meal? They have Transformers inside."
Steven half-laughed. "Sure, little buddy. Let's go get a Happy Meal."
Steven turned to Copter and smiled. "Gonna go get a Happy Meal."
"Steven, please," Copter said.
Steven regrouped. "Copter, Bernard will wire you some dollars for your Harley."
"Don't worry about it, bro. It's a fucking motorcycle," Copter said.
The Mercedes was dented, but still functional. Steven buckled Ronnie into his child-seat, and then entered his still-running car. Ronnie was still clutching his mommy's iPhone when Linda began talking to his father. She was in inquisition mode.
"Steven," Linda said. "You just ran over a lawn tractor and a Harley Davidson motorcycle. You have bent my left tie-rod and dented my exhaust manifold. Have you been drinking alcoholic beverages?"
"Linda, we're going to McDonald's to get a Happy Meal," Steven said. "Faith is dead." Shocked, Linda immediately phoned Bernard Goldinberry.
"Mr. Goldinberry is on the line, Steven."
"Hi, Stevie. It's Bernard. Are you okay?"
Steven did not respond, so Linda took over.
"Mr. Goldinberry. Hello. My name is Linda. I am Mr. Zangst's virtual driving assistant."
"I know. I've been dying to talk to you again," Bernard Goldinberry said.
"Mr. Goldinberry, Steven Zangst appears to be driving erratically due to an unspeakable tragedy," Linda said.
"Stevie, are you there?"
There was a long pause before Steven said, "Yes, Bernard. I'm here."
"What's up?"
"Bernard, Faith is dead."
There was a moment of silence then Bernard said, "Listen to me, Stevie. You are going to get through this. You are strong. You are a father. You need to keep your shit together. Do you hear me, Stevie?"
Seething with anger, Steven did not respond, so Bernard Goldinberry said, "Stevie, is Ronnie with you?"
"Yes, Bernard," Steven said in a mechanical voice. "We are going to McDonald's to get a Happy Meal. They have Transformers inside."
"Where's Faith, Stevie?"
"She is on the kitchen table. Face down in a bowl of Frosted Flakes. It looks like a stroke or something. Copter is there."
"Listen to me, Stevie. I am Bernard Goldinberry. I will take care of everything. Go to McDonald's with Ronnie, okay?"
"Yes, Bernard... Bernard?"
"Yes, Stevie?"
"I'm going to get the guy responsible for this. You in?"
"What do you mean?"
"I'm going to get even with God for killing Faith."
Bernard Goldinberry coughed. "Stevie, now that's crazy."
"I'm going to fuck him up big time!" Steven seethed.
"Okay, Stevie, okay. I'll help out," Bernard Goldinberry assured him.
"Good," Steven said. "Thanks."
"Linda, darling?"
"Yes, Mr. Goldinberry?"
"Make sure Steven gets to McDonald's without getting in an accident, okay, babe?
"Mr. Goldinberry, I am a German luxury vehicle contrived by superior engineering. I am not a babe."
"I stand corrected. My apologies," Bernard Goldinberry replied while making a mental note to tease Linda at a later date.
After driving like she was in an endless school zone, Linda safely guided Steven and Ronnie to the nearest McDonald's. The restaurant was only five miles from the Zangst home, but the trip took more than a half hour. Ronnie ordered a Chicken McNugget Happy Meal with a vanilla shake and French fries, instead of apple slices. Steven ordered a medium Diet Coke and a hot fudge sundae, which he threw away before he sat down. The on-duty manager asked Ronnie if he wanted a "boy Happy Meal or girl Happy Meal."
Pissed-off, Ronnie replied, "The one with Optimus Rex, chump."
As Steven watched Ronnie crawl through the human hamster cage called "Ronald's Playland," his brain struggled to assemble an action plan. Knowing he could never bear to go home again, Steven decided his only option was to run. He thought about Las Vegas, Pierre North Dakota, and Miami. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, an inner voice spoke to him. "If fate can kill your wife it can pick your next home, too."
Steven brought up a map of the United States on Faith's iPhone and waited for Ronnie to emerge from the Petri dish called the "Hamburglar's Ball Pit."
"Hey, Ronnie, tap the map," Steven urged. "We need to find a new place to live."
Ronnie grabbed his mommy's iPhone and said, "Okay, Mommy." He tapped the iPhone display with his index finger and handed the device back to his father. Highlighted on the map was a town called "Apple, Massachusetts."
"Son, we're going to Apple, Massachusetts," Steven said.
"What?" Ronnie said looking skyward. "Daddy, Mommy says only crazy people live in Massachusetts."
"Good," Steven Zangst said. "Then we should fit right in."
Scary Mary Morgan was only forty-two years old, but she looked like Johnny Cash when he was seventy. She had skin like Yoda, crooked brown teeth, and yellow-tipped fingers from chain-smoking Lucky Strikes. Mary coughed when she talked and limped when she walked. Her hair was white, without a touch of gray, and she never wore make-up. Scary Mary was not a pretty woman and she did not give a shit.
Mary blamed her distinct lack of beauty on the crystal meth she smoked for twenty years because as she put it, "there was nothing better to do when you grew up in small town Kansas." Proudly, without the assistance of a psychologist, intervention, or rehab clinic, Mary eventually kicked her meth habit and took up drinking Jack Daniels instead. Based on her appearance, and circa 1960's Woolworth's wardrobe, it was easy to assume Scary Mary was a yahoo, but she was evil-smart, and without a doubt, the best shot in the killer-for-hire field.
Scary Mary was taught how to shoot at age ten by her monster father. Her deer-hunting daddy was a well-rounded bad guy. He stole, killed, and sexually abused his children. Mary knew her drug and anger problems were related to murdering her beloved "Pappy." Watching him slowly bleed to death after she blasted his nuts off did not trouble her; Mary felt guilty over not killing him sooner.
Bernard Goldinberry employed Mary on occasion to deal with "security issues." Bernard loved Mary due the purity of her ruthlessness and her direct way with words.
The first time Bernard Goldinberry contacted Mary the fluidity of their conversation was greatly impeded by Mary's rattling coughs and her associated pauses to eject phlegm. The choppy dialogue eventually prompted Bernard Goldinberry to say, "Ever consider smoking lower tar cigarettes, Mary?"
"Low tar cigarettes? You've got to be kidding me, Goldinberry," Mary said. "Just 'cause I have a pussy doesn't mean I am one."
Before asking Mary to travel to Apple, Massachusetts, Bernard Goldinberry wired twenty-five thousand dollars into her Swiss Bank account. Bernard Goldinberry knew Mary could not tolerate bullshit, especially when it came to money, so he always pre-paid before contacting her about an assignment.
"Helllooo, Mary. It's me, Bernard Goldinberry. How are you doing today, beautiful?"
"Fuck-off, Bernard. What do you want?" the unfailingly charming Mary said.
"Get the twenty-five K?"
"You know I did, crack whore. So, I repeat. What do you want?"
"Pardon me, Mary, I forgot about your disdain for chit-chat," Bernard Goldinberry said. "I need you to travel to Apple, Massachusetts."
"Nice," Mary coughed. "I've always wanted to kill somebody from Massachusetts, one less liberal asshole."
"Fantastic," Bernard Goldinberry said. "I'm glad you have decided to accept the assignment."
"Mean or clean?" Mary asked.
"No pain. A shot to the head would be nice," Bernard Goldinberry said. "It's a friend."
"Damn," Mary lamented. "No fun."
"Mary, have you seen a dentist yet?" Bernard Goldinberry asked. "No need for a pretty woman like you to walk around looking like Freddy Krueger."
"Fuck you, Bernard, and the donkey you rode into Jerusalem on," Scary Mary Morgan cackled.
Andy and Hope had moved in together the day after Hope graduated from Sloane School, sixteen months after their historic first date. The couple maintained a three-orgasm-per-day physical relationship, which made it difficult for them to recognize any level of incompatibility. Their blindness was further compounded by a similar sense of humor and a seemingly identical easy-going nature. Such bliss made it virtually impossible for Hope or Andy to detect a devil in their midst, an ancient destructor of all things him-plus-her -- a beast called "money."
Early on in their relationship, both Andy and Hope recognized they had different attitudes about money, but they were confident it was no big deal. Andy thought they had plenty. Hope wanted more.
Since her teenage years, perhaps due to her father's struggles to earn enough income to cover heat and mortgage, Hope's foremost desire was to be rich. Consequently, Hope was attracted to the mechanics of filthy lucre. She shamelessly followed the rich and famous over the internet and maintained subscriptions to twenty magazines that targeted "aspirational youth," including Architectural Digest, Vanity Fair, Fortune, and Pimp my Ride. Being so, it did not surprise Andy that one month out of grad school, Hope began her career in the financial services industry by landing a "client services" job with a well-respected wealth management firm called Ten X.
Ten X serviced the "needs" of regular folk who had a net worth in excess of fifty million dollars. Hope's job was to visit a handful of clients every month to conduct "wealth reviews." She was also required to become emotionally distraught if a client's "quarterly wealth growth" did not exceed two percent. Although limits on "client consolation" were not specifically addressed in the Ten X Corporate Governance Manual, within a chapter entitled "Client Interaction" the Company did disclose that it saw "nothing intrinsically disordered about consenting adults engaging in oral sex to cope with stress related to a financial loss."
Hope loved hob-knobbing with the rich and often regaled a disinterested Andy with dinnertime accounts of what people with "real money" do.
"Andy, today I visited Jacob J. Jacobs the Third. He just installed walnut flooring in his study. He told me he got the wood from a two-hundred-year-old schooner that was resting on the floor of Buzzards Bay. Believe it or not, to recover the wood, he actually rented a submarine from the guys at Woods Hole -- the ones who found the Titanic. All in, the flooring cost over one thousand dollars per square foot. I know; I wrote the check. It's the most beautiful flooring I've ever seen."
"Wow, did it look like wood and have lots of knot holes?" Andy asked.
"Cut it out, Andy," Hope said. "It was awesome."
Due to ongoing memories of countless trysts, one more exciting than the next, mismatched dreams related to wealth was a non-factor when Hope and Andy decided to wed. Although Andy was not afraid of getting hitched, the concept of a wedding terrified him. To him it meant endless visits to vendors, where he would have to feign caring about cake flavors, flower arrangements, invitation calligraphy, and napkin colors. Worse, it meant surviving a bachelor party then inviting the entire McCormack clan to a single event, which would inevitably result in wildness that could not be contained without pepper spray and high-pressure hoses. Even worse, Andy feared he'd be forced to dance in public, and perhaps even do the Hully Gully, the Macarena, or both -- dances he considered not-so-subtle forms of virtual castration.
A couple months after their engagement, an event memorialized with a perfect 3-carat diamond synthesized by the MIT Materials Lab, Andy finally summoned the courage to address his wedding fears during one of the happy couple's many post-coital pillow talks.
"I'm ready to talk about it, Hope," Andy said.
"About what?"
"You know what, the wedding," Andy said. "I'm thinking Las Vegas!"
"Give me a break, Andy. My mother would die if we didn't have a traditional wedding," Hope fibbed.
Andy responded by breaking into in a bad Marlon Brando impression, doing Colonel Kurtz from Apocalypse Now, "The horror, the horror."
"Stick with the physics," Hope advised.
"I will." Andy chuckled before taking a deep breath so he could make a full disclosure without choking. "Hope, I have not been totally honest with you about my family. In Southie there are drinkers, real drinkers, and then there are the McCormacks... Hope, my family loves to drink and they are wild."
"Oh, come on, Andy. Everybody likes to have a few drinks and have some fun. Family drunkenness is a stupid reason not to have a big wedding."
"You don't understand, Hope," Andy continued. "When McCormacks drink the party doesn't stop until the fire department arrives. When a McCormack gets drunk a stupid idea is considered pure genius. The thought of my entire clan being at one location, with an open bar, is beyond scary. Hope -- anything could happen."
"You're being completely ridiculous," Hope said. "You're just hiding behind your family because you have some jitters about getting hitched."
"That's not it -- my family is a disaster."
"Andy, you're being completely silly..."
"Okay. You have been warned," an uncharacteristically serious Andy said.
Sensing she'd been too judgmental, Hope apologized to Andy then immediately re-established a sense of good will by topping her comedy-impaired husband-to-be by doing a perfect Don Corleone. "Andy, a man that does not spend time with his family can never be a real man."
After visiting every high-end functional hall within one hundred miles of Boston, Hope settled on an outdoor wedding at the Crane Estate.
Located in the town of Ipswich on the North Shore of Massachusetts, the Crane Estate was built by Richard Crane in 1928 after he inherited a literal "shitload" of money from his father, the inventor of the toilet. The humble home featured a fifty-nine-room mansion and an expansive front lawn that rolled into the Atlantic Ocean. Over the years, the place had become famous for being a primo wedding destination and the location where John Updike's The Witches of Eastwick had been filmed, a Jack Nicholson classic.
The whole "wedding event" was staged on the estate's lawn in a big white tent. The two hundred guests sat at twenty circular tables that surrounded a portable hardwood dance floor. The bride and groom sat with their respective entourages at a long rectangular "head table" elevated two feet above the dance floor, so all the merry wedding activities could be captured by every available cell phone camera. Each guest was assigned a seat. Andy had insisted on mixing Wynsomes with McCormacks in hopes of "minimizing the carnage." Twister, being family, was also in attendance.
Twister had been shampooed and specially-trained not to lick his genitals for the event. He was secured to an interior tent pole that was roped into the ground by three twenty-four inch stakes. On his collar was a festive purple bow tie.
Surprisingly to Andy, the ceremony went off without a hitch. All the McCormacks were properly dressed and nobody yelled "that away, Andy" or "fucking ay!" during the wedding vows. Andy later overheard that his father had told his brood that shout-outs during the ceremony would result in banishment from his Annual Super Bowl Party, a punishment no McCormack man could ever bear.
After the happy couple was pronounced man and wife, a beaming Hope looked at Andy and said, "Now that wasn't so bad was it?"
Although there are many defensible arguments that can be made against excessive alcohol consumption, nobody who attended the McCormack-Wynsome wedding would ever claim they'd ever had a better time. The spirits began flowing before the fruit cups arrived, when two chilled, and freshly hijacked, bottles of Moet Dom Perignon miraculously appeared at the center of each table to support the offering of traditional Irish wedding toasts.
The toasts started with Yawny McCormack, who raised his glass toward the heavens then belted, "Andy and Hope, may you be dead before the devil knows you are in heaven!"
Brian McCormack followed with, "Go n-eírí an bóthar leat," a Gaelic toast that for all intents and purposes meant, "let's get snookered together!"
"May your home be too small to hold all your friends," whooped an unidentified McCormack who looked like he'd been run over by a Ford F-250 on more than one occasion.
"Cheers to you, Andy and Hope!" Shamus McCormack saluted. "May I live to see you gray and combing your grandchildren's hair!"
The toasts went on until the Dom Perignon ran out, which perfectly coincided with the last available Irish Toast: "May frost never afflict your spuds and may your cabbage grow free of worms!"
The dance floor opened up before the chicken cordon bleu was served, which was a good thing because it gave Andy and Hope a chance to have their first dance before things started getting out of hand. Seated at the first table to receive the traditional, and always horrific, chicken dish were three of Andy's single nephews, man-boys who had started drinking at six o'clock in the morning at the Southie Elks Club. The leader of the so-called "asshole brothers" was Little Richie McCormack. Little Richie was an apprentice plumber. Although recollections were cloudy, it was generally agreed that Little Richie started the war to express his disdain for the one-star chicken meal by retiring to his plumbing van to assemble a funnelator.
To construct a proper funnelator, a funnel, a rope, elastic tubing and two accomplices are needed. A knot is tied in one end of the rope, which is then inserted in the funnel to create a tail. Two pieces of rubber tubing are then attached to either side of the funnel. To properly operate a funnelator the accomplices hold the tubing while the shooter loads the object to be funnelated into the funnel. The shooter then grips the rope and walks backwards, stretching the tubing to create sufficient potential energy to launch the funnel's contents a considerable distance, say a couple football fields, at a substantial rate of speed, say one hundred miles per hour.
The Wynsomes who were seated with the asshole brothers didn't know what to think when Little Richie loaded his sauce-covered chicken breast into the funnel in response to a request for all guests to stand for an invocation by "the honorable Father Joseph O'Malley." The ancient and soft-spoken priest was able to say, "Dear Lord in heaven, bless Andy and Hope and bless this food that we are about to receive," before he was rudely interrupted by Little Richie McCormack who yelled, "Bless me, Father for I have sinned!" followed by a loud, "Incoming...!"
Little Richie was five yards behind his accomplices, with the rubber tubing stretched to its max, when he let go of the rope and launched the creamy chicken toward the head table. As the rubbery bird travelled through the air, leaving behind a vapor trail of Alfredo sauce, Andy turned to Hope and said, "It has begun."
Moments later, the chicken hit the good Father right between the eyes causing him to lose his glasses and toupee. It was a direct hit.
Father O'Malley let loose a string of profanities that would have made Gordon Ramsay blush. Yawny McCormack then rose in an attempt to prevent the inevitable, but before he could speak, Andy had flipped the head table on its side to protect his bride from incoming chicken. It proved to be a good move, for within seconds, baked potatoes au gratin and ham-filled chickens were flying about the reception hall from every direction; a full-fledged food fight had begun.
When no discernible meals remained to be hurled, or funnelated, a truce was declared and the injured were removed to the Crane Estate lawn to be soothed by drinks and ice-filled napkins. Upon surveying the carnage, Hope figured she had two options: she could storm off in indignation in an attempt to shame her new in-laws, or she could become a McCormack. She chose the latter.
After slowly rising from the head table, Hope moved across the dance floor, ensnaring several spent chicken-missiles in her train as she walked. Then, upon reaching the bandstand, Hope grabbed the microphone from the lead singer, a buxom punk rocker who had a beehive hairdo sprinkled with green beans almondine, and said, "Wow, that was fun. Now let's get this par-teeee start-ted!"
All of the McCormacks and most of the Wynsomes met Hope's advice with a roar of approval. In response, the band immediately began playing Pump It Up by Elvis Costello followed by a medley of Talking Heads hits that included Burning Down the House.
The music caused Andy's cousins to form a dance chain that gradually morphed into a dense mosh pit from which no dancer could escape. The scene reminded Erik Gunther, Andy's best man, of a collapsing star, but being an intelligent man, he kept the thought to himself.
Luckily, several marriages and careers were preserved because the event's videographer exited the Crane Estate, in search of a lawyer, after a funnelated saltshaker shattered the lens on his fifty thousand dollar Ikegami camera. Fortunately, most guests did not need video to record the McCormack-Wynsome wedding party, for the shocking events that constituted its "reception" were permanently etched into their respective brains. Memorable festivities included: bride tossing, karaoke striptease, pin-the-tail on the old bastard (Andy's ninety-five-year-old grandfather), and high stakes piggyback racing. Additional events worth noting included a bloody rumble over Hope's bouquet and Twister's response to the cutting of cake...
Hope's wedding cake was a gift from the partners at Ten X. It cost eight thousand dollars. It was a three-foot-high, five-tier, chocolate-mocha creation that featured fresh berries, a truffle base, half-inch-thick layers of mousse, and white chocolate frosting coated with edible gold leaf. When the time came to cut the cake, Hope used an engraved sterling-silver cake knife, custom-ordered for the occasion. She then held the pie-sized slab of chocolate perfection above her head for a full minute, extracting cries of "no mercy" from her audience, before slamming it into Andy's face.
From the corner of the tent, Twister witnessed the cake hit. Unfamiliar with wedding tradition, the nice-yet-dim retriever concluded his master was, once again, being assaulted. In response, Twister somehow mustered the strength required to pull down the tent pole to which he was tethered. The falling column instantly caused a third of the massive fabric structure to collapse, nearly killing Andy's great-aunt Ellen, who was trampled in the resultant stampede. Undeterred by the catastrophe, Twister proceeded to charge toward the head table with half the tent pole and a cubic yard of sod attached to his leash. Having recently reached an agreement with Andy related to his ongoing existence, Twister understood he could not sink his teeth into his master's bride, so he attacked the cake instead.
The cake, being one of the world's more defenseless things, could do little to thwart the onslaught of Twister. After racing across the dance floor, Twister leapt directly on to the spectacular confection then spun atop it, deploying his patented tail-chasing maneuver, until the entire cake had been pulverized into a sticky pudding, which was promptly absorbed into Twister's usually golden fur.
With his enemy vanquished, Twister then bounded onto the dance floor, only to discover that his many rotations had caused his sod-laden leash to become entangled in the cake table's legs. The entanglement made the table mimic Twister's moves, causing the mentally challenged dog to assume he was being chased. In response, Twister bolted out of the wedding tent, cake table in hot pursuit.
Andy gave chase, but Twister was too crazed, and far too fast, to be prevented from running in circles across the Crane Estate lawn before plunging into the Atlantic Ocean as part of his final desperate effort to shake his wooden pursuer. Many waves and tumbles followed before a clean and untangled Twister finally bodysurfed ashore, where he proudly stood at his master's side while they watched the evil cake table float out to sea.
Despite the partial tent collapse and more than one critical injury, the party was still going strong in the hour after midnight, when members of the Ipswich Police and Fire Departments arrived... Hope was being carried on an antique chair by a cluster of McCormack boys who had just been swimming in what was left of their Sunday bests. On a companion chair twenty yards away, being carried by Hope's one-time conservative nephews was Mary McCormack, Hope's new sister-in-law. Both Hope and Mary were holding pool cues, lifted from the Crane Estate's game room. It appeared a jousting competition was in the offing.
"Bring it on, bitch!" Mary McCormack screamed.
"You got it, girl!" Hope yelled.
"Hold it, ladies," Ipswich's largest and loudest police officer said. "This party is over!"
The pompous assertion caused Hope and Mary to simultaneously respond, "Fuckkkkkk you!" followed by an order to their underlings to charge the men in blue.
Upon realizing the party was about to end with the need for excessive bail money, a tired Yawny McCormack turned to his newly married son, smiled and said, "Andy, my boy, you've got yourself quite a woman there. She's a real McCormack."
Andy grinned. "I know, Dad. That's what I'm afraid of."
\*
Hope never regretted her wedding behavior or became an alcoholic. She was far too determined. Hope's goals, beyond being filthy rich, included being a perfect wife and mother. Hope realized her first objective by being considerate and faithful to Andy on a daily basis, in turn, Andy loved her more with each passing hour. Two days after the McCormack's second wedding anniversary, George Scott McCormack entered the world to inform Hope that being a perfect mother was a far more difficult task than being a loving partner to a genius physics professor who looked like Adonis and had no known vices -- beyond naming his first son after his all-time favorite Red Sox player.
George Scott was difficult from day one. When he was not turning red or blue from crying he would half breast feed by alternatively licking then chomping on his mother's nipples, a practice so frustrating that when he was only two weeks old an exhausted Hope stopped calling George Scott her "bundle of joy" and instead referred to him using a most derogatory term...
"Anddddddyyyyy! Wake up! The little fucker is crying again! Good God almighty, Andy, do something! DO SOMETHING!"
Fourteen months after entering the world, George Scott finally stopped crying and adopted something that sounded like an Apache battle cry as his dominant means of communication: "EeeekEeeekEeekAyyyy!" The high-pitched screech was a catchall phrase for young George Scott, but it generally meant, "feed me" or "there's poop in my Pampers."
Despite his antics, both Hope and Andy found ways to cope with the irascible George Scott, and still love him. Hope used a combination of Yoga and her iPod, drowning out George Scott's screams by looping Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody. Andy, having grown up in the McCormack family, was used to high-pitched screaming and problem denial so he simply ignored George Scott's wails and treated his young boy like he was a perfectly normal child.
Andy's laissez faire-approach child rearing, without question, further aggravated George Scott, who also had a throwing arm that would have made his namesake proud; a skill he often demonstrating by hurling things at his hapless father with such devastating accuracy that nobody, including more than one qualified medical professional, would believe Andy's claims related to his only son's physical prowess:
"Okay, Mr. McCormack, let's go over this again. You say the welt between your eyes was caused by a sippy cup?" the skeptical emergency physician had asked, the same nameless doctor who had treated Andy on several prior occasions.
"That is correct," Andy said.
The good doctor, a man familiar with all forms of human deceit and the owner of a medical license that required him to detect and report domestic abuse, never bought Andy's story without a secondary challenge.
"Mr. McCormack, you are telling me that your injury was caused by a sippy cup hurled at you by your sixteen-month-old son?"
"That is correct," Andy repeated.
"I got to tell you, Mr. McCormack, I'm having a hard time believing a sippy cup thrown by a mere toddler can cause a laceration requiring eight stitches."
"Believe it, Doctor," Andy said. "My kid could throw a cheerio through a Kevlar vest."
George Scott's strangeness was formally diagnosed as autism when he was three years old. The doctors said George Scott's lack of social skills, his tendency to have conversations with his reflection, and his use of repetitive "language" was clear indications he was living in his own disconnected reality.
Andy never agreed with the experts. He asserted that George Scott was simply different and his lack of social skills was just his way of expressing his disdain for people, whom he considered noisy and annoying.
Hope didn't agree with Andy's assessment of their troubled child until George Scott said his first words at his third birthday party. The party was held at the local Gymboree, an indoor kid's playground that served the recreational needs of the one to four year old demographic. Jicky the Clown hosted the event. Hope had convinced ten other mothers to bring their toddlers to the party so she could pretend George Scott had friends like a normal kid.
Midway though the party, Jicky tried to get George Scott to play "Ring Around the Rosy" with his invitees, but George steadfastly ignored Jicky, and instead sat motionless, and alone, in the center of a big, blue floor mat.
"Come on, Georgie! Join us! We're having fun!" Jicky squealed.
Nothing.
"Come on, Georgie Porgie! Come on! Come on! Come on! Come on! Fun! Fun! Fun! Fun!" yelled the overly jolly Jicky, addressing George Scott like he was a clueless puppy.
Nothing.
"C'mon, Georgie! Come on!" implored Jicky in a louder, and even more obnoxious voice. "The other kiddies want to play with you! Come on, Georgie Porgie! Come onnnn!"
"Fuck off, clown," George Scott finally retorted.
Although George Scott's curse offended several mothers, Hope was thrilled, so she immediately called Andy on her iPhone to share the good news.
"Andy! George Scott spoke today!" Hope burbled.
"Awesome!" a delighted Andy responded. "What did he say?"
"He told Jicky the Clown to fuck off," Hope said. "His diction was perfect. He sounded like a little man."
"Awesome!" Andy gushed.
By the time George Scott was five years old his condition was more properly diagnosed as genius. Although George Scott continued to display anti-social behavior and rarely spoke, when necessary, he said the things he needed to say to assure his adult caregivers that he was not mentally deficient; as was the case when he was introduced to Judy Flaxscale, his lead daycare provider...
"Judy, this is George Scott," Hope said.
"Oh my God, what a beautiful boy," Judy declared while crouching forward to pat George Scott on the head. "Well, hello, young man. How old are you?"
"The square root of twenty five," George Scott intoned in a robot-like voice.
While George Scott grew, Andy and Hope's careers flourished, but after seven years at Ten X, Hope wanted to move on. She had seen enough of the rich to realize she'd never be wealthy unless she started her own business, and she knew the key to her future success lay with her brainy husband -- a most reluctant entrepreneur.
After George Scott entered kindergarten, a day never passed without Hope pushing Andy to start a company with her. Andy couldn't stand the thought of working with real employees, and, being an academic, he reviled the thought of actually making something. Further, Andy was worried that working with Hope would somehow destroy his marriage, but after his accidental apprentice, Elvis Springsteen, sent him an email relating a practical means for executing quantum communications, Andy gave in.
The pact occurred just after dinner on a not-so-special evening. George Scott had just broken a Plexiglas windowpane with a dish of Chubby Hubby (not his favorite Ben and Jerry's flavor) so both his parents were on their knees with Soft Scrub and Bounty.
"Hope," Andy said, "if you really want to start a company, I'm in."
"Kidding?" a startled Hope asked.
"Not kidding," Andy said.
In response, Hope leapt to her feet, and then pulled Andy up into her arms so he could join her in doing the jumpy thing that people do when they are excessively happy about the expectation of wealth. Andy was thrilled to experience Hope's heartfelt joy, but his happiness was accompanied by a sense of dread as he inexplicably recalled his eighth grade history teacher's claim that Adolph Hitler jumped for joy the day he "annexed" Czechoslovakia.
After Hope had regained her composure, the new business partners struck their deal. Hope agreed to run the company and Andy agreed to build the products. Upon shaking hands, Andy said, "Hope, wise men say couples should not work together. Bad things always happen."
"Don't be ridiculous," Hope said. "With my business skills and your whatever-you-do, we can't lose. We're going to be rich, rich, rich!"
"Why do I suddenly feel like Faust?" Andy asked.
"Who's he?" Hope replied.
\*
Elvis Springsteen was a Ukrainian orphan named after two American music icons by the rock-n-roll addicted administrator of Saint Peter's Home for Boys in Falloruse, Ukraine.
St. Peter's was a well-known drop-off spot for parents who preferred vodka to diapers. Elvis, who had been using MIT's Open Courseware over the internet to teach himself physics, first contacted Andy when he was thirteen years old in an email that questioned Andy's theory on "Quantum Particle Detection," a masterpiece that proposed a quantum effect, such as the spin on an electron, could be detected by a low cost semiconductor, a breakthrough that could make practical quantum communications possible.
After hundreds of emails over a three-year period, the depth of Elvis's curiosity and his prodigious mathematical skills led Andy to conclude that the young Ukrainian was a prodigy. Accordingly, Andy convinced MIT to offer Elvis a four-year scholarship, which he accepted on his sixteenth birthday, the day after St. Peter's released him into the cold, cruel world.
Elvis arrived at Logan Airport wearing a torn "Blondie" T-shirt, denim shorts and day-glow green flip-flops with paper-thin soles. His luggage consisted of a toothbrush. He walked with a slight limp, and one of his hands was missing two fingers, and it did not look like a birth defect. Elvis had long, jet-black hair and a Jack Sparrow beard, no mustache. Andy was shocked at the appearance of Elvis, so he stumbled trying to say hello.
"They only dress you up when they are trying to sell you," the perceptive young man reflected as he extended his good hand. "It is great pleasure to meet you, Professor Andrew McCormack."
Andy smiled. "Just call me Andy. It is my distinct pleasure to meet you, Elvis."
Without ever saying he was shocked by Elvis's physical condition, before transporting Elvis to his dorm room, Andy was able to feed the poor boy a steak at the Capitol Grille, and purchase a new wardrobe for him at JoS. A. Banks Clothiers. While running about with his new protégé, Andy concluded Elvis was the coolest character he had ever met, and having grown up in Boston, that was saying something. Elvis was calmer than road-kill. He spoke slowly and used words that usually disclosed a sly bemusement with his standing in life.
"Did you enjoy your flight?" Andy asked.
"Surprisingly average-looking woman handed me bag of honey-roasted peanuts. Thought that was very kind of her," Elvis responded in his heavy Russian accent.
Later while driving through Cambridge Andy asked, "Elvis, do you look forward to going to MIT?"
Elvis smiled. "Not sure, Professor McCormack. Heard the institution accepts failure without summary beatings. Concerned I'll be surrounded by under-achievers."
Andy winked. "I'm sure you'll fit right in."
\*
When Hope McCormack first visited the West Apple Mill it had been abandoned for over a decade. Being a neophyte businessperson, Hope had fallen in love with the building and decided it would be the perfect home for Cloud Nine Communications, "her" new quantum communications company. The building was a red brick structure supported by massive oak beams. It had thick floors and huge windows. It was a football field long and three stories high. The rent was cheap, and Hope was certain Cloud Nine would need room to expand, so she signed a ten-year lease for the entire building.
Andy also loved the West Apple Mill, but he immediately recognized that the building lacked the infrastructure required to support the development of a quantum communication device.
"Hope, we'll need to bring in sophisticated development equipment, capable of detecting the movement of a photon; the floors cannot vibrate, at all. We'll need clean rooms, and no fluctuations in air temperature. It will cost millions to fit up this building," Andy warned.
"Honey, your job is to tell me what you need. My job is to get it for you," Hope said. "Don't worry about the money."
Andy smiled. "Got it. I love it when you boss me around."
"I know," Hope said.
The quaintness of Apple, its closeness to their work, the politeness of its residents, plus a host of other factors convinced Hope and Andy to move from Cambridge to Apple to raise George Scott. A lesser factor in their decision to move west was Andy's concern about their not-so-with-it son growing up in the city where half the kids wore backwards baseball caps and pants that seemingly defied Newton's Laws by hanging below midriff with no apparent means of suspension.
Ultimately, Hope and Andy bought a nice 1970's era ranch called a "deckhouse." A deckhouse was a regular ranch surrounded by a mahogany deck that had to be replaced every five years due to its unique ability to attract every species of wood-eating insect known to man. The McCormack house sat on two acres of land. It provided plenty of space for Andy to play catch with his son, which consisted of bouncing a sponge ball off George Scott with the hope that some day he would actually try to catch it.
\*
During the initial planning session for their company, Andy told Hope he'd discovered a new way to use polarized light and semiconductors to facilitate quantum communications. Furthermore, he disclosed that the active component of the storage media used for his quantum communication technology could be teleported, thus continually reused.
"This means we can service the communications needs of the entire world from a single location," Andy said. "Ultimately, Hope, we'll be able to integrate our tech into a new type of cell phone capable of providing instant and crystal-clear communication between any two parties. There will be no possibility of eavesdropping by governments or Rupert Murdoch, and even better, no network is required. It's like you're talking face to face with somebody, but they can be anywhere else in the universe."
Andy then went on to show Hope a picture of his first prototype. It looked exactly like an Apple iPhone, because it was.
Hope had no idea what Andy was talking about, but she could clearly see the business opportunity. She also felt certain that, with one press release, Boston's so-called "high-tech" venture capitalists would stumble over one another to provide her genius husband with a mountain of capital, the money she needed to make her dream come true -- and she was right.
Hope named the company Cloud Nine Communications, Inc. and appointed herself Chairman and CEO. Andy was given the title of co-founder and CTO (Chief Technology Officer). Starting out, Hope forgot business was about making money, so instead of first searching for customers, Hope continually dropped Andy's name until her Company's bank account contained the number fifty, followed by six zeroes. With money in hand, Hope then hired a well-paid staff to play business with her. She also retained the self-proclaimed "best patent attorney in the world" to secure international rights to Andy's quantum communications technologies.
The excessive venture capital made Hope feel rich because, to her, getting money from a wealthy partner meant success was inevitable. After Hope provided Andy with twenty five million to do his thing, and being all dressed-up with nothing to sell, Hope decided her first order of business was to do a worldwide public relations tour. And so, with her ass-kissing staff in tow, Hope proceeded to visit every continent in the world to proclaim that "Cloud Nine" was about to "change everything" by releasing the world's first quantum communication device. She even posed in a bikini for an Italian technology magazine that claimed Hope Wynsome and the quantum phone were "The Shape of Things to COME!"
Ultimately, unbeknownst to her at the time, Hope's world tour had inadvertently doomed Cloud Nine Communications, for at every stop, without ever consulting with Andy, Hope promised Cloud Nine's breakthrough device would be on the market in less than a year. It was a pledge that was impossible to keep and a mistake that caused Cloud Nine's funding to dry up as more than one analyst concluded that Hope was hyping "vaporware."
Andy enjoyed theoretical physics, but making stuff was not his bag. However, he desperately wanted Hope to succeed, so he put in the long hours needed to turn his concept into reality. The product Andy eventually produced was called the qPhone, the "q" standing for quantum. The phone was actually a modified iPhone that contained a qChip capable of sending and receiving quantum data.
The qPhone featured instant communication that was impossible to trace. Version 1.0 of the qPhone was actually two phones capable of only talking to each other. The devices worked by employing one of the stranger aspects of quantum mechanics, called entanglement. In practice, this meant when you said something on one qPhone it instantly repeated your words on its twin. Target customers for the qPhone included the CIA, the Russian Federal Security Service, and China's Ministry of Security (China), groups authorized to kill and keep big secrets, each with one or more spies on the board of directors of Cloud Nine Communications.
It took Andy and his staff of geniuses, including Elvis Springsteen, three years of eighty hour weeks to build the first qPhone and when it was complete, Cloud Nine Communications had ten thousand dollars in the bank, one employee (Elvis), and Hope and Andy were sleeping in separate bedrooms.
Hope blamed the failure of her company on Andy. She claimed he was simply too slow, telling the board in her final real meeting as CEO, "Don't punish me because Andy is a total fuck-up. I told you when I took your money he was an academic."
Andy didn't say much about the decline of Cloud Nine Communications. He found the whole thing terribly sad and was looking forward to recovering his relationship with Hope when the sorry mess ended.
The Cloud Nine money chase had twisted Hope into somebody Andy no longer admired. Hope's obsession with making Cloud Nine happen was too much for him to take. Her sense of humor had been replaced by aggression and the happiness that once dominated the McCormack's family life had been supplanted by anger. By the end, Hope spoke of nothing but her need to rescue her "career" by resuscitating Cloud Nine, often putting her supposed "corporate duties" in front of raising George Scott, who fortunately didn't give a shit.
After believing they had stolen all the company's secrets, the Cloud Nine Board of Directors eventually voted to shut down the company so they could spend their time overseeing more promising investments. Hope never understood why she was abandoned. In the company's final weeks of viable operation she met with each board member to beg for additional capital. "I just need a couple more million to complete the product and get some orders," Hope would say, but nobody was listening.
Hope's most senior director, her supposed mentor, an octogenarian named Reginald Smite, eventually tried to help Hope understand the true nature of venture capital by stating, "Hope, my dear, a good venture capitalist is not afraid to shoot a puppy in the head."
Although Cloud Nine was considered a financial disaster, the techies involved in the development of the qPhone considered it a monumental success. Further, much to his surprise, Andy greatly enjoyed his product development experience. In particular, Andy had loved designing thought experiments to enable his former team to overcome technical issues and he'd especially enjoyed coaching the younger members of the Cloud Nine engineering staff, especially the talented Elvis Springsteen. "Slow down. Unplug your headphones, and understand before acting," was a common Andy McCormack mantra.
So loved had been Andy by his team, that, when the money ran out, every techie at Cloud Nine offered to work for free -- but with the exception of Elvis, Andy would hear none of it.
"It was fun while it lasted, folks," Andy had told them, "but, the promise of things to come will not feed your children. So, go home and be mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers."
Ironically, the week before they locked the doors at Cloud Nine, Andy and Elvis completed the first qPhone. Andy did not disclose the advancement to Hope because it occurred at two in the morning. So, instead he left a voice message on Hope's iPhone: "Hope, it's Andy. Give me a call when you get a chance. I have some good news for you. I love you."
After calling Hope, Andy sent Elvis with one of the world's two qPhones to the local 24-hour Denny's to await his call. Sensing their quantum conversation was about to make history, Elvis asked Andy if he planned to order a Grand Slam breakfast over his qPhone.
Andy didn't want to have an accidental phrase like: "Mr. Watson -- come here -- I want you," to be recorded for posterity, so he told Elvis to leave his qPhone on and not to utter a word until he heard him say, "Andy loves Hope."
After providing Elvis with plenty of time to travel to Denny's and actually order a Grand Slam breakfast, the best after-midnight food in the world, Andy powered up his qPhone and prepared to speak, but before he could profess his love for his spouse, he was rudely interrupted by a loud, "Hellloooo, Andy!"
Andy instantly recognized the voice. It was not Elvis. It was his patent attorney.
"Hellloooo, Andy," the familiar voice repeated. "It's me, Bernard Goldinberry, the world's greatest patent attorney!"
Andy was shocked.
"Bernard, it can't be you," Andy gasped.
"Trust me. It is I, buddy, the one and only Bernard Goldinberry."
Andy turned white. "Bernard, this is impossible! You can't intercept a quantum communication."
"Andy, I did not intercept your call. You called me," Bernard Goldinberry said.
"What are you talking about?"
"Your qPhone has tapped into another dimension."
Andy coughed. "Another dimension, that's impossible! This must be some sort of trick."
"Remember your work on quantum portals?" Bernard Goldinberry asked.
"Yes."
"Well, your call has connected to a quantum portal."
"A timeless passageway to another reality," Andy whispered to himself.
"Exactly! Andy, you are a very smart person," Bernard Goldinberry said. "I need people like you."
Astonished, Andy rose from his desk and paced back and forth in front of the large mill window, which dominated the back wall of his office.
"Bernard, this is incredible... Bernard?"
"Yes, Andy, my friend?"
"Who the fuck are you?"
"In due time Andy, in due time..."
"Bernard," Andy stuttered. "Bernard..."
"Don't try to figure it out, my dear friend. It's best if I explain it face to face, so to speak."
Before Andy could respond further he noticed the reflection of an exceptionally ugly woman in his office window. She was smiling. She had crooked yellow teeth and skin like Yoda, and she had a gun pointed at the back of his head. Andy froze and stared at his own reflection. He thought about Hope and George Scott, then blurted the words, "buzzard lips," before watching a two-inch hole appear between his eyes, followed by the shattering of glass...
\*
Chief Martin had done the walk several times during his career. It was the only part of his job he didn't like; telling somebody that they had just lost a loved one was never easy. He remembered the time he'd had to inform Maureen Tong that her son, Timmy had drowned in the Wachamulla River. She didn't speak English, so he'd had to use his parking ticket pad to draw a sketch of a boy in a river with an arrow pointing to gravestone. When the poor woman eventually got the picture she beat on the Chief's chest until his badge was bloody. The Chief absorbed the attack without fighting back for he was old school. He believed it was a police chief's job to absorb "the bad" without blinking.
Chief Albert Martin was a burly man with a Neanderthal brow and high cheeks that made it difficult for him to open his eyes. He had a neck, but it wasn't visible. He did not wear a hat; so potential perps could see his marine haircut. He was six foot four and his weight was not measurable by a retail scale. He didn't have a gun because he didn't need one.
In Apple, the Chief was well liked, and known for being a levelheaded, quiet man. He let residents speed if they did not go too fast. He did not arrest pot smokers, and he smiled when acting as a crossing guard at the West Apple Elementary School each school-day morning. Prior to becoming a police officer, the Chief was a roadie for the legendary heavy metal group, Tongue Lash. Some of Apple's more perceptive citizens figured the Chief was cool because during his rock-and-roll days he had seen it all. They were correct.
The Chief had once met Andy McCormack in passing after throwing out the ceremonial first pitch at an Apple little league game. He had never met Andy's wife, Hope, but he knew she ran Cloud Nine Communications, and he knew she was young and reportedly pretty.
Long ago, the Chief had concluded there was no way to candy-coat a death notice, so he planned to keep it short and simple.
Knock. Knock.
"Who is it?"
"Chief Martin of the Apple Police Department."
Hope opened the door and smiled. "Hello, Chief. What's up? Is a creditor after me?"
"Mrs. McCormack, your husband is dead. He got shot in the head."
"He's WHAT?"
"He is deceased."
Hope staggered backward, then collapsed like a wrecking ball had hit her midriff.
"Mrs. McCormack. Mrs. McCormack."
The Chief activated the walkie-talkie that was bolted to his right epaulet. "Shit," he said. "Hello, Dispatch; this is Chief Martin, requesting an ambulance at the McCormack residence. We have a white female in her mid-thirties. She is down and not responding.
Apple, Massachusetts was as good a place as any to be sad, so it was the perfect home for Hope McCormack and Steven Zangst, a widow and a widower who had just lost the loves of their lives.
Steven pulled into Apple sixty-six hours after he discovered his dead wife in his son's Frosted Flakes. Thoroughly incapable of dealing with his horrific loss, Steven had decided to drive his Mercedes across the country as part of his effort to stay sane. During his trip, Steven stopped only once to rest at a Days Inn in South Bend, Indiana, and he only did so after Linda, his virtual driving assistant, threatened to report him to the State Police for lane drifting. During the trip, Ronnie lived in the back seat of the Mercedes along with a pile of DVDs and an assortment of junk food, a situation that caused Linda to become upset on more than one occasion.
"Steven?"
"Yes, Linda."
"Your son, Ronnie has just spilled another Mountain Dew on my upholstery."
"Ronnie, please stop spill'n the Dew. Okay, buddy?"
"Yup, sorry, Daddy."
"Is that it?" Linda asked. "My beautiful leather seating has been permanently stained."
"Linda, I hope you are not telling me how to discipline my kid."
"Calculating distance to the Massachusetts Penitentiary for Troubled Boys," Linda replied, employing her seldom-used German accent.
Steven entered the exit ramp for Apple at seventy miles per hour, causing Linda to issue one of her usual alerts. Apple was an old town; its access ramp was originally constructed to facilitate travel by horse, so Steven did not anticipate the two hundred seventy degree turn that caused him to enter Main Street on two wheels and then collide with the last car in what appeared to be a parade of some sort. It was a minor fender bender, a bumper tap, so the driver of the other car refused to stop.
"Steven, I demand you proceed to the nearest police station and surrender your driver's license," Linda said.
"No can do, babe," Steven replied. "I promise to be a good boy from now on."
"Last warning," Linda scolded, using a tone described in her user's manual as "huffy bitch."
Having just driven for twenty-four hours without any sleep, it took Steven a full minute of horn blowing and f-bomb launching before he realized he was trailing a funeral procession.
Too pissed-off to be embarrassed, Steven hugged the procession until it took a right turn toward the Apple Cemetery; the move enabled Steven to drive forward to the "Apple General Store," the town's only retail establishment.
A sign above the entrance to the General Store read: "Est. 1866." Behind its counter stood a man who appeared to be the original owner, Jebediah Jones. Jebediah had prune skin, ghost white hair, and was thinner than a comb. He wore two hearing aids that were too heavy for his neck, so he spoke with his chin pressed into his chest.
"My boy needs to use the rest room," Steven said.
"No restroom," Jebediah replied. "There's a tree out back. It's dead. We call it the 'Pee Tree.'"
"You've got to be kidding me," Steven said.
"Perfectly good urinal," Jebediah said. "Kids have been peeing on the Pee Tree for one hundred years."
As Ronnie snuck out back to do his business, Steven surveyed the store. Stuff sat floor to ceiling on oak shelving. There was an old-fashioned ice cream counter adjoined by a series of classic stools in various states of disrepair. There were clothes, groceries and hardware items; the Apple General Store had it all.
"Last store in Massachusetts that sells both chainsaws and eggs," Jebediah Jones informed him.
"Quite a place you have here," Steven replied.
"Thanks," Jebediah Jones said. "It was founded by my grandfather. I was conceived on the ice cream counter -- right over there."
"I'm not sure I needed to know that," a puzzled Steven Zangst said before changing the topic. "Who died?"
"A guy named Andy McCormack. Wonderful young man. Shot in the head while working late -- only the second murder in the town's history. No suspects. He was a father to a six-year-old boy, a crazy kid that talks to trees. He was a great little league coach. He'll be missed."
"Shit happens," Steven said.
"He left behind a hot-looking wife," Jebediah said. He then signaled, with his one good hand for Steven to approach his counter. Steven reluctantly complied and then Jeremiah whispered, "I'd love to fuck her."
Steven stood back in disgust, then watched a hearing-aid-to-hearing-aid grin emerge on Jebediah Jones's face. Steven smiled. It was the first time he'd almost laughed since Faith died.
Jebediah Jones smiled. "I could tell you needed that. The good Lord loves a man that can poke fun at himself."
After regaining his composure Steven informed Jebediah Jones that he was looking for a place to live.
"Rich?" Jebediah Jones asked.
"Yes," Steven replied.
"Then you want to see Betty Washington. She's the town's best realtor. Two blocks down on the left," Jebediah Jones said as the grin reappeared on his puckered face.
"Want to do her, too?" Steven asked.
"Already did," Jebediah Jones replied.
\*
Over four hundred people attended Andy McCormack's funeral, including many esteemed members of the world's physics community, most of which had never experienced a Roman Catholic funeral. To a man, the irreligious professors were amazed by the priest's claims that the chemical elements that were once Andy would one day be reconstituted into a new and better Andy, a clear violation of General Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and toddler-level reasoning. Bruce Pane, the chairman of the Apple Historical Society, was also present with a tally clicker in hand. He used the device to carefully record the attendance at the event. "The largest funeral in Apple's history," he would later claim. Also in attendance were Yawny McCormack and his boys, dressed in black and looking mean, recording names and license plate numbers as part of their "private investigation," because nobody killed a McCormack and got away with it...
It was difficult to witness the once-confident Hope during her husband's funeral procession. She had just returned from a two-day visit to the "hospital," where she was treated for shock with a cocktail of barbiturates and anti-depressants; she could barely walk. Shaking sobs were followed by wails of grief that caused leaves to fall from undead trees and married couples to silently renew their wedding vows. In an instant, death had exposed Hope to the full folly of her ways. She deeply regretted pushing Andy to start Cloud Nine Communications and begged God to return her husband, so she could undertake a "do-over." At the burial grounds, Hope understood family and friends surrounded her, and she did hear an Irish tenor singing Danny Boy. But her sorrow was too severe to register any coherent thoughts until the pallbearers lowered Andy's remains into the ground, causing Hope to suddenly realize she was broke, and the mother of a son who talked to trees.
\*
Upon meeting Betty Washington, Steven was fairly certain she had never mated with Jebediah Jones. Betty looked like an ex-nun who had been coerced into wearing a preppy sweater. Despite being moderately thin, Betty had sausage link fingers and a Santa Claus face. Her make-up was perfect to go along with her perfect charm and her perfect clothes that were perfectly offset by little gold thingies that supposedly advertised she had money.
The truth was, Betty, like most people in Apple, was broke. She was a widow who had three teenagers -- and she hadn't sold a house in eighteen months. She had not made ketchup soup yet, but she was getting close.
"How may I help you?" Betty asked.
"I want to buy a house," Steven said.
Steven looked awful, so Betty assumed he was a bum. Nonetheless, she initiated her smarmy realtor routine in an attempt to qualify Steven as a buyer.
"That's nice," Betty said. "You have a beautiful son. Will he be attending the Apple Elementary School?"
"Betty, I want to buy a house. Show me the nicest place you got."
"That would be a five bedroom farmhouse located on the McIntosh Hill Road. It has a spectacular view and an apple orchard," Betty said, failing to mention it had been on the market for two years due to its exorbitant price tag.
"Can I move in right away?" Steven asked.
"Yes."
"Good. I'll take it," Steven said.
"Don't you want to know the price?"
"If I wanted to know the price I could not afford it," Steven reasoned. "My lawyer will contact you. Please get the paperwork done ASAP."
As Steven departed, Betty calculated her commission and then briefly left the state of Massachusetts to enter the state of euphoria, where in tears, she reflected upon her sudden ability to cover health insurance, braces, and the cost of a couple of prom dresses.
While they waited for papers to pass on their new home, Steven and Ronnie lived at the Apple Inn, a nineteenth-century Victorian bed and breakfast run by Bruce Pane. Bruce was an ex-Cisco marketing executive, turned history buff, who was also broke. Steven rented every room on the second floor of the Apple Inn, so Ronnie wouldn't feel like he was living in a hotel. Steven and Ronnie loved the Inn's accommodations, but neither of them could bear being around Bruce Pane, who was a Civil War re-creator, and a non-stop monotone talker.
Bruce had a ZZ-Top beard and smoked a pipe. He talked like he had enough two-by-fours stuck up his ass to build a tool shed, plus he was a stalker. Steven lacked the patience to deal with Bruce, so he regularly hid in Linda the Mercedes, leaving poor Ronnie behind to absorb the lonely man's lectures.
"Ronnie, Apple was originally a bifurcated town," Bruce said.
"Bifurcated," Ronnie said. "What's that?"
"It had two sides," Bruce replied, between puffs of nauseating smoke, "way back when you were either from East Apple or West Apple. East Apple grew apples and West apple made fabric."
Bruce went on to tell Ronnie that Apple was founded in 1650 when a handful of religious zealots settled on the banks of the Wachamulla River because they were certain they'd go to heaven if Native Americans ever scalped them. Bruce also said, for two centuries Apple was actually a small village that called itself a town, but it did not become a real town until 1845 when its forefathers harnessed the power of the Wachamulla to weave cotton -- picked by southern slaves -- into face towels and socks for the dirty masses.
As Ronnie yawned, Bruce continued without any sign of stopping.
"The Wachamulla River, located on the west side of Apple, drops twenty-three feet in less than a mile making it the perfect place to capture the fast water needed to power a textile mill. Soon Apple was making fabric to provide pants, shirts, and underwear for the masses. For over fifty years, Apple's textile business thrived." Bruce sighed. "Until the day it was shipped to Korea."
"How do you ship a mill to Korea?" Ronnie asked, but Bruce had already moved on.
"After cloth, the West Apple Mill made plastic parts for the housewares market, including: buckets, trashcans, bath mats, mop handles, and serving trays. When the plastic parts business went to China, the mill was converted into a 'business incubator' that housed several computer software companies. In less than a decade, all these businesses moved to India, and soon there were no products left for us to build. So, the mill was abandoned and everybody in Apple started selling real estate back and forth to each other in an attempt to stave off our inevitable economic decline. Then the housing market crashed."
"Then what happened?" Ronnie asked.
Bruce tried to speak, but could not.
"Mr. Pane, are you crying?"
During their weeklong stay at the Apple Inn, Steven and Ronnie further learned that for centuries the main concerns of the orchard owners of Apple were insects and drought. But after the mill was founded, the orchardists spent the majority of their waking hours trying to keep Irish immigrants away from their daughters.
It was a futile effort for they were unaware that the arsenic used in their apple pesticides and the heavy metals used in the mill's fabric dyes had polluted the majority of Apple's wells, causing a variety of undetected mental health issues, including a below-average level of sexual inhibition. As a result, the East Apple "orchard girls" simply could not keep their dresses down and the West Apple "mill boys" could not keep their pants up. Inevitably, offspring resulted, and soon thereafter, West Apple and East Apple were integrated back into one big happy Apple via the holy sacrament of "shotgun matrimony."
Unlike other Apple residents, Steven cared little about the McCormack murder or anything else. After paying Betty Washington a handsome sum to furnish his new home in what she called "rustic bliss," Steven moved in and focused what little energy he could muster on raising Ronnie and trying to forget about Faith, which meant drinking himself to sleep each night.
Usually, Steven's drinking started at nine o'clock and ended after midnight. The therapy sessions were conducted on the back deck of his farmhouse estate, which overlooked a field featuring several elderly mares that had been spared a trip to the glue factory by one of Apple's many resident horse lovers. Steven's choice of medicine was Jagermeister and Budweiser. To pass his time while drinking, Steven would throw things off his deck, reclaim any non-fractured remains, and then throw them off again. Sometimes he threw big things like couches, but most often he tossed television sets, or boom boxes, because he liked the noise they made when they shattered.
The first time Steven noticed the deer, he was preparing to toss a variety of home appliances, including his and hers Cuisinarts, which he had bought earlier in the day at the local Best Buy. Steven had just started drinking, so he was quite certain he was not hallucinating when five deer suddenly appeared in his backyard. There were four doe and one twelve-point buck. From Steven's aerial vantage point it appeared the buck was orchestrating the formation of symbols by arranging the doe. First, there was a distinct E, followed by a definite L. After the L there was a symbol that looked like a 'V' followed by number fifteen. Before disappearing back into the woods the deer had clearly spelled out a code that read, "E-L-V-one-five-L-one-V-five."
When the spelling was complete the lead buck walked directly toward Steven.
Steven smiled. "Thank you, Mr. Buck. That was very interesting."
In response, the buck nodded his head as if to say, you're entirely welcome, before leading his harem back into the woods.
The spelling deer convinced Steven he had gone completely insane, so instead of appliance-tossing Steven hurled his alcohol supply off his porch and resolved to find another way to cope with his grievous loss.
That very same evening, right after he had smashed his last Budweiser bottle, Steven's doorbell rang.
It was Copter. He was carrying a bag of Chinese food and a two-liter bottle of ginger ale.
"I was in the neighborhood, so I thought I'd stop by and say hi," Copter said.
Steven grinned then warmly embraced his friend. "Copter, how did you find me?"
"Followed the popcorn trail, my brother," Copter replied. "How about dinner and a foot washing?"
Steven chuckled. "Dinner, yes, but you're not touching my toes."
Copter was clean-shaven and his teeth had been fixed, prompting Steven to say, "You look great, Copter. Thanks for finding me."
"Least I could do, my brother," Copter said, careful not to mention the woman they both loved.
Over dinner, Copter told Steven corny jokes, stupid anecdotes about his homeless life, and G-rated war stories about his Vietnam era Philippine girlfriends.
After dinner, Copter casually said goodbye, as if he lived next door versus three thousand miles away. Steven then escorted Copter to his front door -- where Copter stopped.
"You know, Steven, people said I was crazy because of Vietnam. Vietnam was bad but what was really bad was my return, and it wasn't bad because hippies called me a baby killer. It was bad because three months after I got back my wife, Cindy, got appendicitis. Fucking appendicitis. Being a tough prick, when she was doubled over I told her it was just a 'gas pain.' I finally brought her to the hospital when she turned light blue. Three days later, she was dead. Vietnam was a cakewalk. It was always my Cindy."
Steven was shocked.
"I got something for you, brother. Open your hand," Copter said.
Steven said nothing and then gradually opened his hand.
Copter pulled something from his overcoat and gently placed it on Steven's palm.
It was the eternal rose.
Steven looked down at the rose and instantly began to cry. The cries morphed into wails, which were followed by a hug from Copter, who said, "Let it out, man, or it will kill you."
An hour later, as Copter walked away, Steven thought about Dan's place and Copter's warning about the intoxicating power of "really, really, really not giving a flying fucking about anything." The memory made Steven smile. He then climbed the stairs to Ronnie's room, where he watched Faith Inman's only son sleep for hours -- lights out.
While sitting alone on a stool at a Denny's on the outskirts of Apple, Elvis Springsteen, via Andy McCormack's companion qPhone, had heard the entire final conversation between his beloved mentor and Bernard Goldinberry. He had heard Andy's last words, "buzzard lips," and the gunshot that killed him. He wasn't sure Bernard Goldinberry knew he was listening in on the conversation, but he was certain the supernatural lawyer did not believe in loose ends, so Elvis correctly assumed his life was in danger.
After Andy's death, Elvis figured he had to move fast, so he reached out to the only man in the world he trusted; his landlord Igor Trovilinsky, the facility manager of West Apple Elementary School, and "the Papa" of the local Russian community/mob. Elvis lived on the third floor of a renovated Victorian owned by Igor Trovilinsky. When he rented the apartment Igor gave him his "private" phone number and said, "Call anytime." It was 3 a.m., so Elvis took him at his word.
"Mr. Trovilinsky, Elvis Springsteen."
Igor Trovilinsky groaned. "Elvis, I'm right now hoping you have a very good reason for calling me at this hour."
"Mr. Trovilinsky, Andy McCormack is dead."
"The little league coach?"
"Yes."
"Did you do it?"
"No," Elvis said.
"Andy McCormack was a good man. He taught 'Little Igor' to play shortstop. I am very angry right now."
"I, too, am also angry," Elvis Springsteen said.
"Elvis, how do we make this right?"
"First thing we need to do is make sure I do not die," Elvis replied.
The daytime custodian sighed. "You will not die, my young man. You will not die. Tell Igor Trovilinsky what he needs to do to keep you alive."
\*
As well as instructing her to destroy the victim's qPhone, Bernard Goldinberry had specifically ordered Scary Mary to kill Andy McCormack without inflicting excessive pain, but he'd said nothing about corpse mutilation. Mary liked keeping little mementos from each hit, something personal, so after beating the qPhone to smithereens she decided to use her new wire snippers to clip off Andy's pinkies.
Mary had approached Andy in stealth mode, bare feet on and cell phone off. She then used her favorite Glock nine millimeter to blow a hole in the young scientist's head, a quarter inch in, two inches out. She called it her "splat shot." Mary had been sitting under Andy's desk for several hours before the hit, so after taking her souvenirs, she proceeded to the Cloud Nine cafeteria, where she emptied her bladder before consuming two microwaved enchiladas and a twenty-two ounce Mello Yellow.
Fifteen minutes passed between the time Scary Mary killed Andy and turned on her cell phone. Six messages from Bernard Goldinberry were in her inbox. The messages informed Mary that she was to immediately "visit" Elvis Springsteen. An address was provided and no instructions specifying pain limits were offered. Mary was delighted. She loved multiple hits in a single day, and she was dying to try out her new bowie knife.
Mary's gourmandizing and dilly-dallying had given Elvis enough time to get to his apartment to arrange his deception. Before he arrived, Igor Trovilinsky had already set up two large bathroom mirrors, angled to make Elvis's reflection appear in his bedroom window.
Mary parked her black Hummer a mile away from Elvis's apartment and proceeded to her destination on foot. She was dressed in her hillbilly ninja outfit: a black AC/DC T-shirt and navy blue Wranglers. Mary could see her prey through a bedroom window when she was half a kilometer away. He was working on his computer.
Unfortunately, from Scary Mary's perspective, a hand-kill was not practical -- for as she edged closer to her mark, ten men could be seen partying on the decks surrounding the first floor of Elvis's apartment building. They sounded Russian and very drunk.
Mary had desperately wanted to slit Elvis's throat because she loved the gurgling noise that particular method of execution produced, but as always, Mary had her custom made sniper rifle handy, just in case complications arose -- like a band of vodka-swilling immigrants.
With no other option available, Mary decided to scale an oak tree about seventy yards away from Elvis's bedroom window to do a "short-range" hit. After bracing herself between two branches, over thirty feet in the air, Scary Mary got the young physicist in her sights of her hand-machined "hunting rifle."
The room was dimly lit, but the profile of Elvis Springsteen was clearly visible, so she targeted his temple. Upon pulling the trigger, recoil from her powerful rifle momentarily threw Mary backward into the oak tree, so she missed seeing the glass shatter and Elvis's head explode. But, having killed over a hundred men by rifle, the ruthless assassin was quite sure Elvis Springsteen was dead, an opinion Scary Mary confirmed the following day by purchasing a copy of The Apple Juice, Apple's sole newspaper, which reported the first murders in Apple to occur in over a century, below the headline: "Two Nerds Shot!"
Igor Trovilinsky reported the death of Andy McCormack to Chief Martin. The Chief and Igor were tight; Igor having thrice helped the Chief, twice in apprehending some non-Russian burglars, and once in covering up a personal matter related to a woman the Chief paid to be his "girlfriend."
Two hours after Andy's death, the distinctly alive Elvis, Igor and the Chief met in Igor's office at West Apple Elementary School. At the meeting, an understanding was reached that "Elvis Springsteen was dead." One reporter, two cops, and a medical examiner were to be paid to pull off the ruse, a simple matter for a man like Igor Trovilinsky.
The day after Andy's death, no longer in mortal danger, Elvis began his work. He was determined to perfect the qPhone. He especially wanted to learn how to control access to the "alternative reality" Andy had discovered moments before his death. Elvis suspected Andy's last words, "buzzard lips," were a password, so he began his quest by hacking the Cloud Nine computer network. After churning through a series of possible usernames for Andy McCormack, Elvis confirmed his suspicion by combining "amac" and "buzzard lips" to gain access to all of his dead mentor's personal computer files.
Elvis was impressed with Andy's organization. His files were in descriptive folders that contained date-based version numbers, making it easy for Elvis to follow his mentor's thought progression. In all, there were only two gigabytes of data, so Elvis was able to copy all of Andy's files onto a single thumb drive, which he backed up thrice before formatting the Cloud Nine Communication's servers, permanently destroying all traces of his ex-employer's digital existence.
After grabbing Andy's data, per his agreement with Chief Martin and Igor Trovilinsky, Elvis took a slow boat to Russia, his travelling companions limited to: a brother-less qPhone, four special thumb drives, and a zip-locked sandwich bag containing a half dozen qChips; the heart of technology that caused Andy McCormack to be killed.
The foremost advice Andy provided Elvis Springsteen was to "always think first." Andy wasn't a casual experimenter; he liked to figure things out before expending physical energy. Andy had once told Elvis, "Never do an experiment unless you're ninety-nine percent sure of the outcome."
Elvis recognized that Andy, despite his "regular guy" appearance, was the world's greatest physicist. Furthermore, Elvis understood the limitations of his own prodigious skills, so he knew he'd never be able to match Andy's understanding of nature. Thus, when doing science, Elvis always deferred to Andy's advice, and the death of his mentor was not about to change his approach.
Elvis arrived in Moscow, fourteen days after Andy died. Just in case he was being followed, he abandoned his Captain Jack Sparrow look and adopted a military dolt theme: shaved head, black army boots, green khakis, and angry T-shirts that said things like, "Kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out!"
Elvis had money because he had been paid well at Cloud Nine Communications and Igor Trovilinsky had covered the cost of his covert voyage to Russia.
"Consider it a loan that you can pay back some day, if you feel like it, comrade," the generous landlord said.
Igor also set Elvis up with a one-bedroom apartment in a well-kept thirty-story apartment building, five miles outside Moscow. The apartment was one of four tall buildings in a neighborhood where crime was not permitted due to the vigilance of Jerrikov Trovilinsky, the landlord of the buildings and Igor Trovilinsky's father.
It took Elvis over a year to read all of Andy's notes, and another year to begin to comprehend a small percentage of his mentor's theories. Elvis's goal was to thoroughly understand quantum communication. This would require him to gain knowledge of quantum physics that no other man possessed. Elvis wanted to determine if Andy's fatal phone call had really tapped into another dimension, or if Bernard Goldinberry had somehow tricked his boss as part of a scheme to steal Cloud Nine's technology.
Elvis had no interest in gaining fame or fortune from his work. He wanted Andy McCormack, the man who saved his life, to get the recognition he deserved. He wanted George Scott to one day understand the greatness of his father, and he wanted to stick it to the assholes at MIT who nicknamed his beloved mentor, "Dandy Andy."
Elvis was amazed at the logic Andy used to tackle some of the world's most daunting scientific puzzles. He was especially impressed by Andy's analysis of the wave-particle duality of nature, the indecipherable cornerstone of quantum physics.
For those of you who have been primarily educated by Oprah, wave-particle duality refers to a subatomic particle's ability to behave as either a particle or a wave, depending upon whether it is being observed. This means an electron wave will turn into an electron particle if you look at it, a long-time certifiable phenomenon that no man has ever understood -- the act of observation changing the nature of the universe's most tiny things.
Andy was clearly fascinated by the wave-particle duality of nature and its relationship to space-time, the stuff that keeps planets from falling out of the sky, as proven by Einstein's theory of General Relativity.
Einstein's genius revealed gravity was caused by the warping of space-time, a "substance" that behaves like a rubber sheet; the more it gets warped by increasingly heavier things the more gravity happens. One of the strange outcomes of Einstein's work was the proven phenomenon that objects age at different rates depending upon the speed at which they travel.
For a century, Einstein and others had tried to develop a "theory of everything" which would combine the disparate nature of quantum physics, the science that predicts the behavior of small things and general relativity, and the same theory that describes the motion of big stuff like planets. Andy's solution to the conflicting theories was a physical phenomenon he called "reality waves."
In his "Reality Wave Theory," Andy had postulated that the space-time was actually a layered cloth that contained multiple dimensions of space. He then went on to state that time was a by-product of the intersection of these "space layers" with "reality waves," a term Andy invented to describe any entity capable of making an observation, like a human being, or more specifically a human "spirit."
In short, Andy believed the wave component of the wave-particle duality of nature was in essence a reality, and at any given moment, trillions upon trillions of realities existed. Aware his theory implied human observers were imbued with a discrete entity capable of timelessly moving through space, Andy called the math that accompanied his Reality Wave Theory, "The Angel Proof."
Elvis Springsteen, being a scientist, was naturally skeptical about God and souls. In fact, during his entire life, Elvis had never willingly set a foot inside a church. However, Elvis knew that math never lied, so he was forced to definitively conclude that human beings possessed spirits and Bernard Goldinberry had been telling the truth when he'd informed Andy McCormack that he had contacted the "alternative reality" that some people call "heaven."
The war between Honey Bittensworth and Steven Zangst began with a Tootsie roll. It was a Midgee. Steven Zangst had packed the tiny treat in his son's Star Wars lunchbox. It was Ronnie's first day of school. Steven knew there was a rule against sending candy to the West Apple Elementary School, but he figured -- it was only a Midgee.
Honey Bittensworth, Ronnie Zangst's first grade teacher, was not offended by the chewy chocolate tube, but it provided her with an opportunity to take her first swipe at Ronnie's father, a man she hated, so she sent home a note that read:
"Dear Mr. Zangst:
Please note the West Apple Elementary School ("WAES") has a "no candy" policy that is strictly enforced. Please refrain from smuggling further illegal contraband into our school. This is your first warning.
Sincerely,
Ms. Honey Bittensworth."
Ms. Bittensworth hand-signed the note with a flowery "Honey," followed by a red unhappy face.
The unhappy face was one of fifty-three disapproval images in Honey's ninety-seven-piece rubber stamp collection. Honey kept the stamps in the top drawer of her desk. She used them to grade her students. Most of the stamps featured a happy face, or a sad face, themed by season. She had a smiling Santa for top notch December work and a sad bunny for use during Easter week. There was nothing Honey Bittensworth loved more than stamping a sad face on a little boy's schoolwork to serve notice that his stupidity was making an official grown-up unhappy. On the note to Steven Zangst, Honey Bittensworth stamped an unhappy turkey, but Thanksgiving was months away.
Ms. Bittensworth knew Steven Zangst was a recent widower, but she sent the Tootsie Roll warning anyway because she hated all members of the opposite sex regardless of their emotional state. Honey Bittensworth especially detested men from Silicon Valley like Steven Zangst because she assumed they were all "techies," and Honey especially despised techies. She hated everything about them: their lack of social skills, their emotional immaturity, their Blackberries, and the way they treated women -- like machines put on earth to service their occasional need to fornicate without using their hands.
It was not difficult to trace the source of Honey Bittensworth animosity. Honey hated men because of her ex-husband, Richard "Diddy" Bittensworth, a computer software programmer with the personality of a lamppost, the man she finally dumped after he gave her a dehumidifier on their twentieth wedding anniversary.
Ms. Honey Bittensworth had first met Steven Zangst two days prior to the Tootsie Roll incident. The encounter occurred at WAES during Ronnie Zangst's school orientation meeting. It was hate at first sight, and she could sense the feeling was mutual.
Steven Zangst had enrolled his son Ronnie at WAES after randomly selecting Apple, Massachusetts, as his new home after fleeing California due to the death of his beloved wife Faith. Since it was a mid-semester enrollment, driven by a tragic circumstance, the school's principal, Dr. Roland Gunnerhaus, held a special meeting with his faculty to discuss the admission of Ronnie Zangst.
Gunnerhaus was sixty-three years old. He had been the principal at West Apple Elementary School for twenty-four years. His face was gray and cratered like the surface of the moon. He wore white shirts with yellow armpit stains caused by nicotine sweat from his cigarette-addicted body. He was tall, bald, and shaped like a pear. His voice sounded like he had a baby rattle lodged in his throat and he issued orders to his "people" like he was a staff sergeant in a TV police drama.
"Listen up, people," Gunnerhaus began. "We have a Caucasian youth, approximately six years of age entering our fine institution -- one Ronald Ernest Zangst." Gunnerhaus paused for a coughing attack and then continued. "This summer, young Ronald's mother expired right in front of his very eyes. Needless to say, people, the death of a parent can do strange things to a little boy."
Gunnerhaus sighed. "It often makes them want to hurt themselves and others. For those of you unfamiliar with school history, in 1983 a second grader, who shall remain nameless, lost his father in a car accident -- a deer, they said. A week after the tragedy, the grief stricken youth went on a rampage in this very school, randomly attacking his fellow students with a fully loaded stapler. In the battle to subdue the berserk pupil, yours truly, a young and decidedly handsome man at the time, took over one-hundred staple hits to the face." Gunnerhaus paused, looked upward, stroked his cratered chin, and then yelped, "So, listen up, people! I don't want anyone to get hurt out there! If one Ronald Andrew Zangst acts out in any way, I want to be the first person to know about it! Do you hear me, people?"
After listening to Gunnerhaus's "usual dodo," Ms. Bittensworth returned to her classroom, where Steven and Ronnie Zangst were waiting to be formally introduced to WAES.
One summer had passed since the death of Faith Inman and her once dapper husband, having grown increasingly despondent over his one and only's untimely death, was showing signs of depression; he stunk; one of his sideburns was an inch longer than the other; the lenses of his eye-concealing Ray Bans were greasy; there was a three-day-old burrito dropping on his white Izod shirt; and the corners of his mouth were white from slamming a peanut butter and Marshmallow Fluff sandwich for "breakfast."
Ronnie was clean, but his clothes didn't fit. He walked without a wiggle to prevent his pants from falling down and exposing his Transformer-themed underwear. He wore an extra-large Red Sox cap that covered his blond hair and half of his ears. His toothpick legs connected baggy camping shorts to a pair of oversized Skechers that caused his feet to cling to the ground like they were magnets on steel.
Lacking guidance from his increasingly distracted father, Ronnie arrived for his orientation meeting carrying a Lego construction toy. Since the death of his mommy, Steven Zangst took Ronnie to a toy store at least once a day to get him whatever he wanted. The Star Wars Lego was a near scale model of the Death Star. It contained three thousand, eight hundred three little plastic bricks and cost four hundred dollars. It appeared Steven Zangst figured it was going to be a long meeting.
Before the adult conversation began, Ms. Honey Bittensworth and Steven exchanged glances, generating an intense vibe of hostility. Sensing the mutual hatred, and wanting some one-on-one adult-time to intensify the feeling, Honey Bittensworth turned to Ronnie and said, "Now, who is this handsome boy?"
"I'm Ronnie," Ronnie said while pointing to his toy. "Do you want to see my Wookie?"
"Ronnie, Ms. Bittensworth would love to see your Wookie, but right now I need to talk to your daddy, so I want you to play with your Lego on my super fun activity mat. Okay?"
"Sure," said the precocious Ronnie Zangst.
Honey Bittensworth gently guided Ronnie to the back of her classroom, where she helped him open his box of Legos and then locate the head and torso of his favorite hairy Star Wars figure. The rotund, yet somewhat pretty, Ms. Bittensworth then shuffled to the front of her classroom to formally greet Steven Zangst. As she approached Ronnie's stern-looking father, Honey Bittensworth never lost eye contact or her smile, hiding her intent to tweak Steven Zangst with an optimally inappropriate salutation.
"Mr. Zangst, I'm so sorry to hear of the loss of your wife," a bubbly Honey Bittensworth said. "I hope it was not painful."
"About as painful as your face, Ms. Bittensheifer," the acidic Steven Zangst replied.
This is going to be fun, Ms. Bittensworth thought to herself before jabbing back, "So, Mr. Zangst, how is poor little Ronnie dealing with the loss of his mommy?"
"Poor little Ronnie is doing exceptionally well, Ms. Bittenhooters," he informed her with a mocking level of cheer. "Especially considering the fact that his mommy recently did a face plant in his Frosted Flakes."
This is too good, Ms. Bittensworth thought as she contorted her face. "That's horrible, Mr. Zangst. She died in Ronnie's cereal?"
"That's where we left her. Face down in his Frosted Flakes."
"Left her?"
"Yes, indeed. After she died, we drove straight here," Steven said, while displaying an intentionally crazy smile. "Never passed 'Go.' Never collected two hundred dollars. Never got a kiss goodbye."
Honey Bittensworth was shocked: abandoning his dead wife -- no funeral. Despite the seeming impossibility, she concluded Steven Zangst was an even bigger jerk than her ex-husband, Diddy.
Honey wanted to strangle Steven Zangst, but she held her anger in check and instead said, "Oh my, Mr. Zangst, that is quite a sad story."
"Tis," Steven Zangst said with a fake Irish accent. "Tis."
During the school tour that followed, Steven Zangst, the once polite and married man, intentionally asked Honey Bittensworth any stupid question that popped into his grief-tattered mind -- just to be an asshole.
The tour started in the school's brand new gymnasium, where Steven asked the unyieldingly pleasant Honey Bittensworth if she knew the height of the urinals in the boys' rooms. When Honey responded that she was a woman and had no occasion to enter the "boys' room," Steven responded, "Well, I hope they're low, Honey. It ain't right to make little boys jump to pee."
After seeing the gym, Steven unexpectedly insisted on a tour of the school's heating, cooling and ventilation systems. Honey politely denied the off-the-wall request, stating that a tour of the school's "facilities" was not part of the orientation agenda. In response, Steven raged that he had no intention of enrolling his boy in WAES unless he was absolutely certain "this podunk town's rinky-dinky elementary school has clean air."
"Honey," said a strikingly defiant Steven Zangst, "I'm not going to have Ronnie catch Legionnaire's disease or develop some fatal mold allergy because his school is too cheap or too stupid to steam-clean its HVAC systems!"
Honey had no idea what an HVAC system was, but she remained calm and indulged Steven Zangst in hopes of determining the extent of his insanity. She figured the insight would be useful for later in the evening when she cuddled with her cat, Mister Jollickers, and began plotting her revenge against her newfound nemesis.
Ultimately, Ms. Bittensworth received permission to comply with Steven Zangst's agenda from Principal Gunnerhaus, who instructed his least favorite teacher to escort Mr. Zangst to the school's basement, where Igor Trovilinsky would be waiting to meet them.
Igor Trovilinsky was the school's facility manager. He led a team of Russian immigrants in keeping the school operational. Although she had seen him hundreds of times, Honey Bittensworth had never spoken to Igor Trovilinsky. She figured he spoke broken English, which would annoy her, plus he exuded a level of manliness that instantly aggravated her simmering antipathy toward all men. In fact, Igor Trovilinsky made Honey Bittensworth's skin crawl. He had a five o'clock shadow before noon, he looked like a Neanderthal, he gazed at women like he was a predatory beast, and called every "girl" he met, "Suzy."
The manly Russian was waiting by the basement door when Steven and Honey arrived.
"Mr. Trovilinsky," Honey Bittensworth said, "this is Mr. Steven Zangst. He wants to look at our HVAC systems."
The proud facility manager said nothing. He shook Steven Zangst's hand then slowly scanned Honey Bittensworth head to toe, and sighed.
Igor Trovilinsky smiled, exposing a gold front tooth. He then mumbled something in Russian before distinctly saying, "This way."
Igor proceeded to escort the odd couple down the basement stairs, past a rack of color-coded pipes and into his work area. Ms. Bittensworth and Steven Zangst were immediately impressed; the place was immaculate. The basement's concrete floor was covered by bright yellow epoxy paint. No dirt was visible. Parts were stored in carefully labeled clear plastic bins that sat on chrome bread racks. Tools hung from freshly painted walls that were illuminated by powerful halogen lamps. A blue wall contained equipment that made holes. A yellow wall held equipment that cut things, and a red wall racked machines that kept the school clean. In the far corner of the basement, there was a pool table, two leather Lazy Boy recliners, a large screen TV, and a vodka-only wet bar.
"Sit there, Suzy," Igor said to Honey Bittensworth, pointing to a chair outside his office. "You, come with me," Igor said to Steven Zangst.
Igor took Steven into his office while Honey Bittensworth parked her rather enormous derriere outside on Igor's hard steel "guest" stool. She was furious. Fortunately, years earlier, Honey had mastered several yoga breathing exercises to overcome the anger she experienced whenever she thought of her ex-husband, Diddy. "Calm down, Honey. Breathe in slowly. Fill your lungs with air then let it out even slower," Honey said to herself, gradually relaxing to the point where she was capable of ignoring the belts of laughter emanating from Igor Trovilinsky's "office."
After thirty minutes, Steven emerged from the Igor's office amidst a cloud of cigar smoke. Suddenly jovial, Steven proclaimed that Igor Trovilinsky was the finest man he'd ever met and he was now certain the school was in tip-top shape.
After Steven hugged and kissed Igor goodbye, he turned to Honey Bittensworth and said, "Honey buns, you gotta love that guy. He prefers to fix people's shit instead of putting up with their bullshit. The man is an absolute god."
Honey completely ignored Steven Zangst, exhaled slowly and said, "Next stop, Mr. Zangst?"
"Well, we haven't seen the cafeteria, Ms. Bittenshoffer," Steven Zangst replied.
"Very well," a deadpan Honey Bittensworth said, "I'll lead."
The odd couple travelled to the cafeteria in a single file, Ms. Bittensworth carefully maintaining a pace that kept her ten feet in front of Steven Zangst who was humming Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture. Upon entering the cafeteria, the tour guide and her "guest" were greeted by Chef Orinthal.
Chef Orinthal's birth name was John Smith. He officially changed his name to "Orinthal" on his twenty-first birthday because he detested his common moniker, the identity of all "John Smiths" having been stolen by the Nigerians who controlled internet commerce years earlier. Principal Gunnerhaus had asked Chef Orinthal, WAES's "Nutrition Manager," to provide Steven Zangst with an overview of the school's "food" program. Always anxious to please his boss, Chef Orinthal was ready and waiting for Apple's newest citizen. In preparation for the meeting, Chef Orinthal had downloaded a video about the WAES Nutrition Program onto his iPad and put on his clean white Chef uniform, the one he used for meet and greets.
Like most WAES personnel, Chef Orinthal was blindly loyal to Principal Gunnerhaus because he was thoroughly unqualified for his job; Orinthal got his position because Gunnerhaus was his half uncle. Despite considerable opposition from the Apple School Committee, Gunnerhaus hired Orinthal to appease his first wife; a woman proficient in the art of making an ex miserable, who had claimed her dyslexic nephew had a way with food.
Due to his reading disability, Chef Orinthal had difficulty assessing the real nutritional value of any ingredient, but he had considerable experience in being an unemployed vegan. Thus, he excelled at finding cheap and unusual things to eat that did not contradict his ethical imperative to treat every animal like it was the Queen of England.
In ultra-cheap Apple, Chef Orinthal's foraging skills proved to be a perfect fit. Times being tough, any town employee capable of saving a buck was celebrated, so after five years of cost-cutting, the illiterate "Cheap Chef" was tenured at WAES and treated like a local hero. At town meetings, whenever a newcomer complained about the school's lunch menu they would inevitably be booed by their fellow townsfolk and then hear Principal Gunnerhaus loudly remind all present that Chef Orinthal had cut the cost of the school's lunch program in half. He would then state that filet mignon could be added to the school's menu for a "small fee."
To Chef Orinthal, food was something inexpensive that did not involve animals, or cause cardiac arrest, due to fear, taste, or toxins. On the day of Steven's visit, Chef Orinthal was testing a new menu item: a kelp salad containing tofu balls, biodegradable packaging peanuts and an "Italian vinaigrette" that was fifty percent used motor oil.
Being a man, although just barely, Chef Orinthal had already had several run-ins with Honey Bittensworth over the years, so he ignored her and directly introduced himself to Steven Zangst. "Mr. Zangst, I'm Chef Orinthal. It is a pleasure to meet you," the young "chef" said. Steven looked at Chef Orinthal, sized him up as a twenty-something loser and replied, "The pleasure is all yours, chief."
Chef Orinthal spent most of his non-working life online, so he was incapable of being offended. Consequently, in stark contrast to Honey Bittensworth, he was not the least bit bothered by Steven Zangst's wiseass response. "Totally harsh, dude," Chef Orinthal said. "Follow me. I have a video ready for you."
Chef Orinthal escorted Steven and Honey to a relatively secluded cafeteria table, where he placed his iPad on a stand and tapped a link that read "Food for Thought, the WAES Way." The link launched a video featuring Chef Orinthal making a series of unsubstantiated claims that Madison Avenue was brainwashing Americans into believing that eating healthy meant thrice daily washing down a two-pound bag of Cool Ranch Doritos with a thirty-two ounce Gatorade.
"Don't believe their lies!" warned the radical vegan chef. "We are surrounded by food. We can eat almost anything! Did you know, with proper preparation, a cup of bark chips has more nutritional value than a Pop-Tart?"
Steven was tired; he couldn't bear Orinthal's nonsense. The ear buds that hung from Chef Orinthal's neck reminded him of the times Faith danced in their bedroom wearing nothing but her iPod. The pleasant memory triggered a wave of grief that froze Steven in time, luckily voiding his awareness of Orinthal's presentation. When the video finally ended, the proud chef woke Steven Zangst by asking if he had any questions.
Steven yawned and said, "Sure, how often do you serve hamburgers?"
"Never!" Chef Orinthal replied. "Beef is poison. We banned it years ago after learning hormones used to grow cattle also caused young girls to develop breasts prematurely."
Steven Zangst turned to Honey Bittensworth, smiled, shrugged his shoulders, put both hands in the air and said, "And this is a bad thing?"
Honey had endured enough. She was disgusted. She rose from the table, stared at Steven Zangst then politely said, "Excuse me," before leaving the cafeteria.
"What's wrong with her?" Chef Orinthal asked Steven.
"I don't know," Steven Zangst said. "Maybe it was something she ate."
With the assistance of Chef Orinthal, Steven exited the cafeteria and found his way back to Honey Bittensworth's classroom. Two hours had passed since his orientation tour began and Ronnie was holding a fully assembled Death Star above his head and making grumbling sounds.
"Hey, Daddy!" Ronnie excitedly said. "You're just in time, I'm about to blow the peaceful people of Alderaan to smithereens!"
Steven Zangst first met Hope Wynsome at Rickford's Park, Apple's only official playground. It was a modest park, boasting a couple of straight aluminum slides -- one tall enough to kill, the other just to maim. There was a swing-set with six swings with two legs that would pop out of the ground if you could get a cluster of fatties to pump at the same time. There was an innocent looking disk that spun children in circles, which was surrounded by the prior day's cafeteria food, and a balance beam just high enough to break a kid's neck.
The base of the playground was covered with a twelve-inch layer of rubber tire chips that had somehow been dyed blue. There were ten maple trees, capable of covering half the park area in shade just before sunset. Steven knew the woman on one of the swings was Hope McCormack because there were no other parents in the park and her six-year-old son was talking to one of the maples.
Hope looked ragged, no makeup, and bandages on her wrist. Steven hadn't shaved in days. He smelled, and he was using a cane due to a double ankle sprain.
With only two adults present at the park, it was difficult not to say hello, so Steven started the conversation.
"Good morning."
"Good morning," Hope replied.
"Good looking boy you have there," Steven said.
"Thanks for not saying, 'What's wrong with your kid?' He wants people to think he's crazy, so he talks to trees."
"Nothing wrong with that. I'm Steven Zangst. Pleased to meet you."
"Hope McCormack, Apple's most famous widow. You probably heard my hubby got shot in the head a couple of months ago."
"I did," Steven said. "Sorry to hear; my wife died the same week."
"Wow," Hope said, "that's awful."
Steven sighed. "It sucks. What happened to your wrists?"
"I used a butter knife."
Steven grinned. "A scream for help."
Hope smiled back. "Something like that -- and your ankles?"
"I jumped off my back deck."
"Wasn't high enough?"
"About a story short, I figure."
"Pull up a swing," Hope said. "It helps."
It was a beautiful day; the swings compounded a slight breeze, and there wasn't a cloud in the sky. Ronnie and George Scott were getting dizzy on the playground's spinning wheel, but they were exhibiting no signs of nausea.
"Looks like our sons are the same age," Hope said.
"Ronnie is six."
"George Scott is six too."
"Interesting name," Steven said.
"It was my husband's idea. He named him after a Red Sox first baseman, one of the team's first black players. He was Andy's childhood hero. I never quite understood."
"It's a perfectly fine name," Steven said.
"What's your son's name?" Hope asked.
"Ronnie."
"How's he taking it?"
"Sad, but he believes his mommy is in heaven."
"Funny thing," Hope said. "My husband was a physicist, but he went to church every Sunday. I think he believed in heaven."
"Who knows?" Steven mused.
"That is exactly what he would say," Hope replied.
\*
Honey Bittensworth had been awarded the house in the divorce, a quaint three-bedroom Cape paid in full. She wasn't sure where her ex-husband Diddy lived, but she knew he'd be happy living in a broom closet as long as he had his laptop. Honey found it difficult to classify her hatred of Steven Zangst. She realized his strange behavior likely had something to do with the recent death of his wife, but she couldn't convince herself that he deserved a break.
At dinner, Honey discussed the punishment of Steven Zangst with her one true love, Mister Jollickers, her Persian cat. Mister Jollickers was a fluffy white fur ball. He sat at the dinner table on a custom-made padded stool. He only ate sushi grade tuna and it had to be served in a sterling silver bowl. His drink was Perrier, chilled, so the bubbles would not rise into his sensitive nose.
"Mister Jollickers, Mr. Steven Zangst's wife just died, so perhaps I should not completely destroy him. Any opinion on the matter?"
"What's that you say, Mister Jollickers? 'Show no mercy'?"
"My sentiments exactly, Mister Jollickers. Thank you, Mister Jollickers."
Later that evening, after putting on her extra comfy flannel pajamas and brewing herself a cup of chamomile tea, Honey Bittensworth and Mister Jollickers sat down in front of her TV to watch Law and Order Special Victims Unit and plot the destruction of Steven Zangst. Honey had ruined men before, so the demolition of Steven Zangst was simply a matter of selecting the optimal plan.
Per her usual approach, Honey Bittensworth planned to get to Steven Zangst through his kid. Noting Zangst's obvious struggle to deal with the death of his wife, Honey decided to use the "artwork sting" to bring down the haughty Mr. Zangst.
"It's too easy," she said to Mister Jollickers. "I'll give the prick's kid a box of crayons and tell him to draw some pictures of his crazy dad, and then I'll pass along the disturbing images to the righteous shrinks at the DSS, who'll inevitably conclude that our beloved Mr. Zangst is an unfit parent."
Honey patted Mister Jollickers and smiled as she played out the plan in her head. "Mister Jollickers," Honey laughed with an evil hiss, "once this asshole loses his kid, I'm sure he'll end up in the loony bin. Hopefully, he'll be old and gray when they let him out."
Mister Jollickers purred in agreement as Honey Bittensworth combed his fur while relishing the thought of sending Steven Zangst Christmas cards and stamping them with one of her many smiley faces.
At school the next day, Honey Bittensworth handed Ronnie Zangst a brand new box of Crayola crayons and a pad of drawing paper. She then pointed to the back of her classroom, where twenty portraits of happy families were pinned to a large corkboard. "Ronnie, dear, your classmates each drew pictures of their families earlier this year," Honey Bittensworth said. "Ronnie, I need you to draw a picture of your family so I can pin it up alongside all the other families. Okay, dear?"
Ronnie did not respond.
"What's wrong, Ronnie?" Honey Bittensworth asked.
"My mommy is dead so I don't know how to draw her."
"Oh my," Honey Bittensworth said. "What are we going to do?"
"My daddy says my mommy is in heaven and she is happy. He says heaven is like a big candy store."
"Your daddy says heaven is a candy store?"
"Yup. He says heaven is a place where spirits float around with lollipops in their mouths."
"Heaven sounds like quite a place."
"It is. My daddy says the only problem is...you have to die to get there."
Confident that whatever Ronnie drew could be used against his father, Honey Bittensworth ultimately encouraged Ronnie to simply draw the first image that came into his "little head." Early in her career a drawing of a bloody stick figure being sucked into a twirling black cloud was needed to launch an investigation of a parent. Now, a sketch of a sad countenance or excessive use of a brown crayon was sufficient to turn any parent's cutie pie into a ward of the state.
Although Ronnie's family sketch was not what Honey Bittensworth expected; she was not disappointed. There were no black crayon lines and no splats of blood. Instead, Ronnie had drawn a picture of his father hurling blue things at five brown ovals that appeared to have legs. Things that looked like cans surrounded his feet. Ronnie had drawn himself sitting in a pile of multi-colored Legos, while his mom rode a cloud composed of candy. Strangely, Faith Zangst was holding a big iPhone displaying a text message that read: "I love you, Mommy. Love Ronnie."
Ronnie was eating his snack when Honey Bittensworth stopped by to inspect his artwork. "My, my," she said. "What do we have here?"
Ronnie was proud of his drawing, so he expounded without being prompted. He began by pointing his finger point at the image of his mother.
"That's my mommy. She is in heaven. I'm in my bedroom, building Legos, and my dad is drinking beer and talking to deer."
"Your daddy drinks beer?"
"Oh yes. After mommy died he drank twenty cans a day. He called it his medicine."
"His medicine?" Honey Bittensworth smiled. "And, what's this?" Honey Bittensworth asked pointing to the brown ovals on Ronnie's drawing.
"Deer, silly," Ronnie replied.
"Wow, pretty deer, Ronnie," Honey Bittensworth said. "What's your daddy doing to the deer?"
"I already told you. He talks to them."
Honey stepped backward and coughed in delight. "So, your daddy drinks twenty cans of beer a day and talks to deer."
Ronnie smiled. "Yup, that's my daddy."
"Mmm." Honey Bittensworth smiled. "You wait right here, Ronnie. Ms. Bittensworth is going to go get her voice recorder so you can tell Mister Microphone about your masterpiece."
\*
It had been three months since Hope had paid a credit card bill or her mortgage. She knew the county sheriffs by name and it seemed like a family of Pakistani debt collectors were living in her iPhone, calling so often that her favorite device was virtually unusable. When Cloud Nine Communications crashed, Hope went all in by personally guaranteeing two equipment loans and a credit line. When they shut Cloud Nine's doors for good, Hope's total personal debt, excluding her mortgage, was over a half million dollars. Without Andy, Hope knew she lacked the talent to recover. She didn't need a degree from the Sloane School to deduce she was toast.
Of the many bad things that happened to Hope during the decline of Cloud Nine, particularly hurtful were the actions of her most elder board member, Reginald Smite, an eighty-one-year-old venture capitalist who initially treated Hope like a daughter. If there was such thing as old money Reginald Smite had it. Reginald invested the venture portion of the Smite family fortune, which was approximately five percent of two billion.
So old was the Smite dough that no living Smite was aware of its origins. Boarding school prefects and a nanny who shaved her face raised Reginald Smite. At age fifteen, Reginald began wearing three-piece suits, which were dry-cleaned daily by his personal butler, a man required to polish the inner walls of every hole in Reginald's Cordovan Wingtips each morning, or face permanent loss of employment.
Old Reginald smelled like damp newsprint. He walked slow and talked slower. He was gray, old, and thin. He was billiard ball bald. His nose was a beak and his eyes emitted no light. He ended each sentence with a smile regardless of its content. He never smoked or drank because he intended to live forever. He married once, at age forty, to a woman half his age; a profligate spender who reportedly committed "suicide" by tying herself to an anchor and jumping into the Atlantic -- after shooting herself in the head three times.
In the final weeks of operation, Hope spent the company's cash down to zero, due to a written agreement with Reginald Smite obligating his fund to provide a six figure bridge loan. When the cash did not show, Smite apologized for his inability to deliver and then mentioned to Hope as CEO of the company she was personally liable for covering the company's last quarter of payroll taxes, "a mere one hundred thousand dollars."
"Make sure you pay that bill, Hope, my dear, or it's jail-time," Reginald Smite had said.
"You never had any intention of providing the bridge loan, did you, Smite?" Hope replied.
The ever-pleasant Mr. Smite smiled. "My child, you don't lose fifty million dollars and come out of it with your hymen intact. Good luck, Hope, my dear. I hear the food in federal prison is quite good."
The death of Andy combined with the mountain of debt made Hope contemplate suicide on a daily basis. She could not drive over a bridge or past a tall building without wondering if its height was sufficient to support a fatal leap. She also registered at www.sayonara.org, a website for the suicidal, which featured articles about pain-free methods of ending one's existence, and numerous blogs that abruptly ended.
Ultimately, George Scott saved Hope's life for she knew her boy needed her. The screensavers on her laptop and iPhone held a picture of George Scott. There was a photograph of him on the dashboard of her Volvo, and when times were exceptionally tough, Hope wrote "George Scott" on both her palms using an indelible Magic Marker.
In turn, George Scott, the boy that supposedly lacked social awareness, was exceptionally attentive toward his mother. He stopped throwing things through windows and emitting his Apache battle cries. Instead, each night George Scott would feign being scared so he could climb into his mother's bed and absorb her tears with his terry cloth teddy bear.
\*
It was a perfectly normal morning when Chief Martin knocked on Steven Zangst's door. A short woman who appeared to be in her twenties was accompanying him. She was wearing Birkenstock sandals, denim cutoffs, and a tie-dyed T-shirt. She had straight brown hair and lots of freckles. She looked like a runaway returning from Woodstock.
"Mr. Zangst," the Chief said. "This is Miss Cooper from the Department of Social Services, she has an order to retain your son, pending a competency hearing related to your fitness as a parent."
Steven grabbed his forehead. "You got to be fucking kidding me."
"I'm afraid not," the Chief said. "Your son, Ronnie reported you are drinking excessively and exhibiting mental health issues."
"Mental health issues, what are you talking about, Chief?" Steven asked.
"The complaint says you talk to deer."
Steven's face turned white in anger. "This is bullshit."
"No, it is not, Mr. Zangst," the Chief said. "This is a serious matter."
Stephen paused to think and then it hit him -- Honey Bittensworth.
"Mr. Zangst, we are here to take your child and if you resist, I will arrest you for assault on a police officer and your son will have a mustache the next time you see him," the Chief said.
Steven wanted to attack, but he held back and instead summoned Ronnie to his side.
"Ronnie, you have to take a ride with this nice woman. She's taking you to camp. I'll be by to get you tomorrow. Okay, son?"
"Okay, Daddy," Ronnie said. "I guess."
Miss Cooper helped Ronnie pack while Steven talked to the Chief.
"You did the right thing, Mr. Zangst."
Steven stared at the burly policeman. "This is total bullshit."
"Maybe so," the Chief said. "Got to be careful what you say to teachers these days."
"Honey Bittensworth."
"Her especially."
Watching Ronnie walk away with the Chief and the skanky Miss Cooper made Steven simmer. He knew he would get even, but he also knew he would never be able to erase the memory from Ronnie's head. As Chief Martin drove away, Steven could see Ronnie was crying in the back seat of the cruiser. The scene filled Steven with a overwhelming desire to kill Honey Bittensworth, but instead of fantasizing about doing in his newfound nemesis, Steven calmly resolved to put all his resources to work to get Ronnie back as soon as humanly possible. The first call he placed was to his otherworldly lawyer, Bernard Goldinberry.
"Bernard, it's Steven."
"Stevie, so very good to hear from you, man. How are you doing?"
"I'm fine, Bernard, but the Department of Social Services has taken my kid."
"Yikes," he said, "how'd it happen?"
"A whack job teacher," Steven said. "Bernard, I want my kid back, and I want him back now."
"Stevie, these things can take months."
"No good. I want him back now."
"Give me a few seconds," Bernard Goldinberry said.
"I'm counting," Steven replied.
"I've got it," Bernard Goldinberry declared. "Any available widows in town? An experienced mother would be best. You only need one fit parent to reclaim Ronnie."
"You know, you really are the greatest lawyer in the world," Steven said.
Bernard Goldinberry sighed. "I know."
"Stevie?"
"Yes, Bernard?"
"I just want to let you know, Faith's funeral was beautiful. I took care of everything: lots of orchids, and a plot underneath a beautiful red maple in the Sunnyswale Cemetery."
"Thank you, Bernard," Steven said. "I couldn't handle it."
"I know, buddy. Don't worry about it. Faith would have understood."
"Thank you, Bernard," Steven repeated.
"You're entirely welcome, my dear friend," the supernatural barrister replied.
After hanging up on Bernard Goldinberry, Steven dialed 411 and got Hope McCormack's number. Although his time with Hope was limited to an hour in the park, Steven figured she would be the perfect mother for Ronnie and he knew he had some leverage.
"Hello, Hope, Steven Zangst here."
"Hi, Steven. Nice talking to you, the other day, at the park."
"Hope, I have a bit of a favor to ask," Steven said.
"Shoot; anything to help a fellow widower."
"The Department of Social Services has declared me an unfit parent and taken Ronnie," Steven said.
"They did what?" Hope said. "That's awful!"
"It is," Steven replied. "Hope, I am a desperate man, so you'll have to pardon me because I need to be blunt."
"Go on," Hope said.
"Jebediah Jones tells me you are having some financial problems."
"I wish that dirty old man would hurry up and die."
"Is it true?" Steven asked.
Hope sighed. "Unfortunately, yes."
"Hope, my net assets exceed twenty million dollars," Steven said.
"So?" Hope said.
Steven cleared his throat. "So, if you marry me I will pay off your house and all your bills."
"Steven, are you asking me to marry you?"
"Yes, I am. In fact, I am asking you to marry me right now. I need a fit wife to reclaim my son."
Hope chuckled. "How romantic."
"Take a minute to think about it," Steven said. "I know it's a big decision."
"No bedroom action required?"
Steven coughed. "Of course not."
"Sure, why not?" Hope said.
"Great," Steven replied. "I'll be right over."
[EIGHT YEARS LATER]
Dr. Meredith Wang was a smart woman. She was smart enough to earn a Ph.D. in psychiatry from Harvard University, and smart enough to franchise her services throughout the United States under the name Gentle Mental. With five hundred offices, usually located in abandoned bookstores in abandoned malls, Gentle Mental serviced the mental health needs of over fifty thousand patients per day. Target customers were the mildly impaired: people who did not think they were Jesus, or believed a giant rabbit was following them. Most Gentle Mental patients were depressed due to their lack of employment, or the death of the family cat.
The astounding success of Gentle Mental was largely based upon its impersonal service. Early in her career, Dr. Meredith concluded that listening to crazy people was generally a waste of time. She realized most of her "mental cases" simply wanted powerful drugs and cared little about reliving tragic incidents from their past as part of some supposedly proven psychotherapy regimen.
"Nobody wants to talk about the death of a spouse, or being raped by their Uncle Charlie," the money-driven Dr. Meredith once told her staff, "so, just get 'em their drugs and move on to the next loony."
To accommodate the relentless demand for cheer, each Gentle Mental office was equipped with ten video kiosks. The kiosks resembled old-fashioned church confessionals, except they were built with cheap particleboard and soundproofed by packaging foam.
Inside each "Gentle Mental Booth," mounted on its face-facing wall, was an iPad. The amazing tablets enabled patients to video chat with one of Gentle Mental's five thousand, twenty-three psychiatrists, all graduates of PayPal University who worked from internet phone banks located in Vietnam or Pakistan.
Due to incompetency or accent, most of Gentle Mental's "person-to-person" advice was incomprehensible, but it mattered little, for every chat session was followed by five minutes of canned pharma commercials that featured exceptionally placid people promoting a variety of supposedly lifesaving pills. The highly polished advertisements were followed by patient-led selection of the most proper drug treatment. Online checkout followed resulting in a digitally signed prescription being automatically emailed to every CVS Pharmacy in the United States.
In addition to the drugs, at the end of every Gentle Mental session patients received a video pep talk from Dr. Meredith that detailed the virtues of "medication induced happiness" while an adjacent printer issued valuable coupons. Often the printouts included a buy-one-get-one-free Happy Meal certificate, or a ticket for a free donut with the purchase of a "Coffee Coolatta."
"Remember, folks, it's never a bad idea to wash your anti-depressants down with an iced coffee from Dunkin Donuts," was one of Dr. Meredith's more frequent refrains.
In all her monologues, Dr. Meredith spoke while sitting on one of her many seventeenth-century divans located in one of her many mansions. The imagery would always cause Hope McCormack to laugh at herself because she considered the young, ambitious, and uber-wealthy doctor the person she once wanted to be. Stupid bitch, Hope McCormack thought, she doesn't get the joke.
Both Steven Zangst and Hope McCormack were forced Gentle Mental regulars. A variety of incidents over the years caused the Department of Social Services to order the bogus couple to obtain mental health treatment or face the loss of their children. Gentle Mental was the most convenient option.
No major domestic incidents triggered the DSS "medical" requirement; Steven was under court order due to Ronnie's first grade disclosure that his father talked to deer, an ongoing problem, and Hope was forced to seek treatment over a series of lesser offenses, including sending George Scott to school in his pajamas when it was not pajama day, and packing a tollhouse cookie in Ronnie's lunch; a clear violation of West Apple Elementary School's "no nuts" policy.
Less than a year after the loss of their respective spouses, both Hope and Steven reluctantly concluded that true lovers were never meant to face the world without each other. They knew no drug, or persistent acts of kindness, could alter the reality that death was the only viable option for easing their pain.
Accordingly, upon returning home from any Gentle Mental visit, the suicidal couple would simultaneously flush their prescribed medication down the toilet. The defiant disposal practice never failed to provide a brief moment of solace, but even that joy was short-lived, for it eventually led to a catastrophic sewage overflow into the Zangst residence; a disaster later attributed to a septic tank failure caused by over-medicated bacteria that had lost all interest in eating shit.
Over the years, Steven and Hope's marriage remained a sham. Sex never happened and "buddy" was their only term of endearment. Nonetheless, the couple did share a real friendship, albeit one solely based upon coping with the loss of irreplaceable loves. When together, which was often, because they lived under the same roof, Hope and Steven never spoke of the strange coincidence of their union. However, they clearly understood each other's grief, so they always treated each other with deference and great kindness. Plus, they never criticized each other's inability to "move on." Occasionally, they would retreat to sweet reveries of their dearest departed.
"Did I ever tell you about the day Andy and I had drinks at the Top of The Hub?" Hope asked.
"A couple times," Steven replied. "Did I ever tell you about the first day Faith and I washed the homeless men's feet at Dan's Place?"
Faith forced a smile. "Yeah, that is quite a story."
She thought about how she met Andy and then sighed. Twister had died two years after Andy had been shot in the head. Prior to Andy's death, Hope had always questioned Twister's intelligence and privately wished him dead, but after Andy died, united in grief, Twister became her best friend.
Every evening, Twister would take Hope for a walk. Usually, they did a two-mile hike to the town center, where Hope would decline a date request from Jebediah Jones before purchasing a box of Tic-Tacs and a copy of The Apple Juice.
On the morning Hope found Twister dead under the swing set in her backyard, she wept. Saddened and curious, Hope ordered an autopsy on Twister, only to learn the cause of his death was the consumption of a softball. The attending veterinarian ruled the death a suicide.
When not groaning about Twister and Andy, Hope's main focus was the care and treatment of George Scott. Fortunately, her wealthy new "husband" was liberal with his funds, especially when it involved Ronnie or his "stepson," so Hope didn't have to "work" for a living. Instead, on a regular basis, she huddled with specialists to determine the best treatment for George Scott, who seemed to have regressed into a non-specific autistic state over the years, a situation Hope found slightly less depressing than the death of her husband.
Every morning at six o'clock, George Scott would meticulously clean himself, dress in black shorts and a white T-shirt, regardless of weather conditions, and walk slowly to the end of the Zangst driveway, where he would engage his favorite maple tree in a two-hour conversation. The one-way dialogue, always conducted in a muted tone, was clearly visible to any passerby -- so every person in Apple knew of the boy they called the "tree talker."
On more than one occasion, Hope and Steven forcibly restrained George Scott to prevent him from talking to his maple, but the practice would always cause their defective son to stick a ballpoint pen into his palm, or emit his patented Apache war scream for hours on end. Eventually, Hope and Steven stopped trying to modify George Scott's behavior and instead practiced what Dr. Meredith Wang called, "constructive disinterest."
\*
Yawny McCormack never abandoned Hope. At least once a month, usually on a Sunday afternoon, when the Patriots weren't playing, he would stop by to say hello. Each visit, he brought George Scott a half-gallon of maple walnut ice cream, a flavor from the past no modern kid would eat without a gun to his head. Hope always graciously accepted the ice cream on George Scott's behalf and then stored it in a basement freezer for future consumption, perhaps during a hurricane, or maybe a nuclear winter.
George Scott never made eye contact with his grandfather, but that never prevented Yawny from ceaselessly talking to his grandson in hopes of eliciting a response. Yawny's breakthrough occurred on the Sunday before George Scott's tenth birthday, when he brought his silent grandson a special gift.
"Kid, you're probably wondering why you're called George Scott. Well, when your father was seven years old I took him to a Red Sox game. During batting practice he was hit by a foul ball off the bat of George Scott, the Red Sox first baseman. The ball hit his arm; there wasn't even a bump. But when George Scott saw what had happened, he stopped batting and rushed over to check on your daddy. After he was certain your father was okay, he borrowed my pen, signed the baseball, and then handed the ball to your father. In Boston, at the time, racism was rampant. Being a kid, your dad didn't know the difference between black and white, so George Scott, one of the Red Sox' first blacks, became his favorite player. Later that evening, your daddy showed his mother the ball and she went crazy. She told your daddy she would not allow a ball signed by 'that jiggaboo' into the house, and she forbade your father from ever mentioning the name George Scott. I love your grandmother, kid, but she can be a tough woman."
Yawny reached into his pocket. "At any rate, George Scott, here is the ball. I'm sure your daddy would have wanted you to have it."
The story was true, but the ball was bogus. Yawny had purchased the ball a day earlier at Dick's Sporting Goods and had made it look old by dipping it in a pot of tea. Also, his forgery of George Scott's signature was poor, but he doubted his autistic grandson would ever challenge its authenticity.
George Scott was clearly moved by the gift. In fact, it brought a tear to his eye and caused him to speak to his grandpa for the first time in his life.
"Grandpa, are you bullshitting me?" George Scott asked.
Yawny smiled. "Jesus as my witness, that ball is the real thing, my boy."
"Thank you, Grandfather McCormack," George Scott replied.
"You are entirely welcome, George Scott. Call me Grandpa," Yawny McCormack said.
Later that evening, George Scott altered the left pocket in all his black shorts and black denim pants so he could keep his George Scott signed baseball by his side at all times.
\*
Although Hope and Steven didn't know it, everything changed when their sons turned fourteen. For eight years, although they lived in adjacent rooms, George Scott and Ronnie had never spoken to each other. George Scott was never unkind to Ronnie; he simply ignored him. However, Ronnie often found small and unusual gifts under his pillow, like a sculpture of Albert Einstein made from toothpicks, or a baggie full of uncooked rice containing half-eaten Milk Duds; strange things undoubtedly created by his crazy, by-phony-marriage brother.
The specific incident that radically changed the dynamics within the Zangst-McCormack family was the arrival of Ronnie's first high school report card, which featured straight As. Ronnie had inherited his mother's heart and his father's brains. The combination made him one of the most successful and popular students at Apple High School.
Ronnie handed the report card to his father at the dinner table in the presence of Hope and George Scott. Steven's reaction to his son's superlative performance was positive, but decidedly subdued. "Great work, Ronnie," was all he said. After witnessing the exchange, George Scott dummy-slapped his own forehead, then excused himself from the dinner table so he could discuss Ronnie's behavior with his tree.
The following morning Ronnie Zangst was awakened by George Scott.
"Ronnie, get up. It is I, George Scott."
Ronnie thought he was dreaming.
"Wake up, brother, we need to talk," George Scott said. "It is a matter of life and death."
Ronnie was too stunned to speak. George Scott sounded like a normal kid. His eyes weren't rolling, and there was no foam on his lips.
"I always thought it was an act," a bemused Ronnie said.
"Sure you did," George Scott said. "Get dressed. We need to talk to my tree."
Within minutes, as instructed, Ronnie Zangst was on the opposite side of George Scott's maple.
"Why the tree?" Ronnie asked.
"When I was a kid, I foremost wanted to be left alone," George Scott said. "I noticed adults and other children would stay away from me when I talked to inanimate objects, so I began talking to lifeless things, like teddy bears and Honda Accords. Eventually, I settled on trees because I observed talking to anything leafy made normal people feel exceedingly uncomfortable."
"Why are you torturing your mother with this act?" Ronnie asked.
"Torturing, are you crazy?" George Scott said. "I am saving her life!"
"I don't get it."
"Ronnie, you get all As on your report card, but you're clueless."
"Me clueless? You're the crazy one!" Ronnie exclaimed.
"Ronnie, in case you haven't noticed. Our parents are suicidal, and the only reason they don't jump off the Wachamulla River Bridge is you and me. If I wasn't completely bonkers, if my mom had the slightest inkling that I could make it on my own, she would've punched her own ticket years ago."
"Oh my God," Ronnie said.
"Exactly," George Scott replied. "No need for your dad to stick around if he has a well-adjusted son -- a fine young man like yourself."
"That's why he was sad about my report card. He plans to kill himself," Ronnie said.
George Scott looked Ronnie in the eye. "Let's just say, it's a distinct possibility, Ronnie."
"Thanks, George Scott."
"You're welcome, Ronnie. By the way, this conversation never occurred."
"I understand," Ronnie said, "but, George Scott, I need to know something."
George Scott smiled. "Yes, brother?"
"What's up with the rice and Milk Duds?"
George Scott winked. "I was just zooing on you, kid."
The following day, Ronnie Zangst purchased a Goth wardrobe, pierced his nose, and tattooed the words "Fuck You!" across his knuckles. Then, at dinnertime, he rubbed a pot roast on his chest while singing The Circle of Life from the The Lion King.
To say the least, his father was concerned.
\*
Part of Dr. Meredith Wang's fame plan was to marry Jacques Supplante, the right winger for the Detroit Red Wings, a boy-man rumored to have the largest member in the NHL, a speculation later confirmed when Dr. Wang leaked a sex tape to the internet, which quadrupled her already considerable notoriety.
In her guidance related to loss of a spouse, Dr. Wang appeared alongside Jacques, who was dressed in an LL Bean turtleneck. In the video, Dr. Wang claimed she understood grief because she could not imagine living without her Jacques. However, she also said, "if my Jacques did pass, I'm sure a cocktail of Prozac and Zoloft washed down with a vodka gimlet would ease my pain." The advice was followed by a smile and a wink from Jacques Supplante that left the distinct impression that his one and only was not his one and only.
Hope and Steven considered Dr. Meredith a fraud and would, on occasion, refer to her to break a long silence.
"Steven, have you seen Jacques Supplante?"
"With or without the sweater?"
Hope smiled. "With."
"Yes," Steven said.
"I hate his wife. She's a total phony. Somebody should do something about her."
"Maybe I'll call my attorney, Bernard Goldinberry," Steven replied.
Hope was stunned. "Bernard Goldinberry -- Bernard Goldinberry was my husband's patent attorney. They were best friends."
"Can't be the same guy," Steven said.
"Two Bernard Goldinberrys? Impossible..."
"It is a weird name," Steven said as he tapped a quick-dial icon on his iPhone.
"Hello, you've reached the office of Bernard Goldinberry, the world's greatest lawyer..."
"Sound like the guy?" Steven asked as he disconnected the call.
"That's him," Hope said.
All in all, it took Elvis eight years to comprehend the implications of Andy's Reality Wave Theory, especially as it related to the operation of the qPhone. But when his work was complete, Elvis Springsteen clearly understood that Andy McCormack had indeed contacted an alternative reality with his qPhone -- just before Scary Mary blew a hole in his head.
Elvis would never forget the day he figured it all out. He was sitting on a park bench next to a playground situated between his apartment building and another identical apartment building when it finally hit him. It was raining lightly, but he didn't care, nor did the cluster of children who were making each other sick on a nearby rail-less spinning wheel, an item banned in the United States decades earlier, over concerns that it might offend an insurance company.
For what seemed the millionth time, Elvis had just spent twenty-four straight hours trying to understand Andy McCormack's writings on "reality waves." He was thinking about abandoning science and finding a girlfriend at the exact moment when the numbers fell together, enabling him to unquestionably prove every human being possessed an immortal reality wave -- the thing his mentor, Andy, called a "soul."
When Elvis originally overheard Andy's brief talk with Bernard Goldinberry his original source of consternation was the beloved mentor's death, but over the years, time had lessened the horror of Andy's "passing," and the most troubling aspect of the once great MIT professor's phone conversation with his mysterious attorney was his referral to "a timeless passageway to another reality." Also troublesome, was Bernard Goldinberry's congratulatory response, "Andy, you are a very smart person!" Elvis knew Andy had made a great discovery. He just could not figure out what it was.
When he was very young and without a friend to celebrate his unknown birthday, Elvis had seen beauty in math. He'd recognized there was nothing more honest than an irrefutable equation, and nothing more intriguing than deriving its proof. Elvis spent his youth reviewing the great math of the past: anything Newton, Maxwell's partial differential equations related to electrodynamics, the matrices Werner Heisenberg deployed to develop the Uncertainty Principal, the statistical mechanics involving the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and, of course, the tensor calculus Einstein used to prove his General Theory of Relativity.
At times, Andy's colleagues had derided him for his supposed inability to prove several of his theorems, but his notebooks always contained detailed proofs. In fact, it was the greatest math Elvis had ever seen. The calculations made Elvis wonder why Andy never quieted his detractors by publishing his proofs. Being young and non-Southie, Elvis didn't understand the private satisfaction involved in letting an enemy dig a deeper hole.
Elvis completed Andy's "Reality Wave Theory" using a new form of math he would later refer to as FU6D Calculus. The F U standing for "fucked-up," and the 6D referring to the dimensions required to support the theorem's proof.
Unlike most mathematics, the real world implications of FU6D were earth shattering. The theorem proved every human being possessed a reality wave that connected his or her physical body to an alternative dimension. In short, in completing his mentor's work, Elvis Springsteen had proven the existence of human souls and heaven.
Even better, his calculations clearly indicated that a relatively minor tweak to his existing qPhone could make contacting this "alternative reality" a distinct possibility. Thus, without ever thinking of the consequences of his amazing discovery, Elvis Springsteen made plans to return to the United States to upgrade his qPhone so he could boldly go where no man had gone before.
\*
In a sign of good faith, before Hope ever said, "I do," Steven had wired the future Mrs. Zangst one million dollars as part of his plan to rescue his son from the Department of Social Services. Fifteen minutes later, in the canned goods aisle of the Apple General Store, Jebediah Jones, Apple's sole Justice of the Peace, pronounced Hope McCormack and Steven Zangst husband and wife. The ceremony took less than forty-five seconds to conduct, and was capped by the Reverend Jones's not-so-silent directive to Steven.
"You may now slip your new bride some tongue."
Having learned her lesson about the evilness of debt, Hope immediately used her dowry to retire all her obligations. She even paid the remainder of Cloud Nine's ten-year lease; a contract she ill-advisedly signed when she was certain Cloud Nine was going to be bigger than Apple -- the company, not the town.
Retiring Cloud Nine's entire real estate obligation in advance went against everything Hope had ever learned about money at the Sloane School. Upon receiving the check for the lease balance, the shocked landlord of the West Apple Mill asked Hope if he should pursue a sub-tenant. Hope said, "No," and then hired Igor Trovilinsky to maintain Cloud Nine Communications with strict orders to never touch her husband's things. Hope told herself she wanted to show George Scott his daddy's lab someday, but deep, deep, deep inside, she feared her plan was to one day resurrect the company that had so thoroughly destroyed her relationship with Andy.
\*
Being officially "deceased," Elvis Springsteen lacked the paperwork to enter the United States and he didn't want to bother his friend, Igor Trovilinsky, though he knew his "Papa" could easily have made the necessary arrangements. Instead, Elvis enrolled at Moscow University and then used his real name to obtain a student visa, which he used to enter the United States. Elvis arrived at JFK airport, where he rented a car using his Massachusetts driver's license, which he had renewed online from Russia after being asked to certify his existence by the DMV's website.
"Our records indicate you are dead. If still capable of operating a motor vehicle, please click: 'Yes.'"
Elvis travelled lightly. He decided not to bring Andy's notebooks, for they no longer contained undiscovered knowledge. He kept the world's only remaining qPhone in the front pocket of his denim jacket, not wanting specialized packaging to attract unwanted attention from customs officials. The last thing in the world Elvis wanted to do was subject the greatest invention in the history of mankind to inspection by a TSA inspector who required an instruction manual to put on his underwear with the hole facing front.
After exiting JFK, and somehow getting through Queens, Elvis drove directly to the home of Igor Trovilinsky in Apple, Massachusetts. During his exile in Moscow, Elvis had kept in touch with Igor Trovilinsky, a man he considered his only friend. On multiple occasions, Igor had sought guidance from Elvis on the proper cleaning and maintenance of Cloud Nine Communications' complex equipment, the proud facility manager having been paid a handsome sum by Hope McCormack to maintain "her husband's workshop." When Elvis finally arrived back in the U.S.A., he knocked on Igor's front door with a bottle of Crystal Head Vodka in hand because he had a favor to ask. He wanted the keys to Cloud Nine Communications.
Igor was delighted to see his Elvis, who was no longer a thin young man. Having consumed over twenty-four thousand cans of Mountain Dew during his eight-year quest to decipher the works of Andy McCormack, Elvis had gained one hundred pounds and his one-time white teeth had turned into yellow-brown Chiclets.
"Elvis, so good to see you!"
"Likewise, Igor."
Igor frowned. "Elvis, you look like shit. What happened?"
Elvis smiled. "All work and no play."
"I own a health club. You are now a member," Igor said. "What do we have here?"
"Crystal Head Vodka," Elvis said. "The world's best."
"Russian?" Igor asked.
"No," Elvis said.
"It is good to see you anyway, Elvis," Igor Trovilinsky replied.
In the meeting that followed, using layman's terms, Elvis went on to disclose his great discovery to Igor Trovilinsky. He then told his "Papa" he needed to access Cloud Nine Communications to modify his qPhone so he could prove his grand theory. Igor had promised Hope he would preserve her husband's lab, so at first he refused Elvis's request. Plus, he was concerned Elvis had gone completely insane, but when Elvis said his work would take less than a week to complete, Igor capitulated to the once-hunted young man.
"Okay, Elvis," Igor said. "Here is the key. If you fail, promise me you'll go to dentist, get girlfriend, and real job. Okay, my young friend?"
"Deal, Igor," Elvis Springsteen said. "But, I will not fail."
\*
Elvis had returned to the United States to "burn" a new qChip. The qChip was the qPhone's core processor. To prove his theory, Elvis needed to embed additional code into the qChip to support a new "interface accessory," which was nothing more than a thimble attached to a wire. Elvis designed the finger cap to be worn on a qPhone user's weakest texting thumb, but it would also work if you attached it to a nipple or toe.
Burning a new qChip was a relatively simple task, not unlike copying iTunes onto a DVD. Elvis had already written the code in Russia, and had ran it through numerous simulations, so he was confident his invention would work -- and consequently radically change the world.
Elvis was not sure his discovery was greater than the light bulb, nuclear power, or the extra absorbent diaper, but he looked forward to having the name Elvis Springsteen one day associated with a Nobel Prize in Physics; the only award in the world Elvis considered worth winning.
Elvis's code was really nothing more than a polling function that rapidly scanned reality waves until a connection was made to the qPhone user. The magic happened when one reality wave was connected to another reality wave via the qPhone's thumbnail accessory, which was in turn connected to the qPhone's qChip, the amazing mathematical engine which had already facilitated quantum communication, as proven by the experiment that had culminated in the death of Andy McCormack.
Elvis's startling discovery was built upon Andy's assertion that reality waves were timeless and subject to permanent connections to other reality waves. The concept had its basis in Einstein's relativity theories, which postulated that people aged at different rates, depending on their motion through "space." Elvis expanded Einstein's work to show his "time" was actually caused by the motion of reality waves. Furthermore, Elvis demonstrated that life was essentially a reality wave trapped within a biological confine. In short, Elvis's "Modified Reality Wave Theory" was a mathematical proof that human souls existed and lived forever.
The core tenets of Modified Reality Wave Theory were startling enough, but the mind-blowing stuff lay in its corollaries, which indicated once reality waves intersected they were forever entangled. The real world implications of the discovery meant the living were forever connected to their dead family and friends, a fact Elvis intended to prove with his modified qPhone.
Since Cloud Nine's production equipment had been kept in an operational state by one Igor Trovilinsky, it took Elvis less than forty-eight hours to complete the upgrade of the qPhone. Being an orphan with only one dead friend, Elvis considered himself a poor candidate to place the first call to "heaven," so he decided the honor should go to his "Papa."
Igor Trovilinsky, being a supreme facility manager, always had the latest and greatest cell phone so his men could reach him in case of an emergency. He'd had the same cell phone number for over a decade and he never refused a call, especially when the caller ID read "Elvis."
"Elvis, how is my mad scientist doing this evening?"
"Fine, Igor. I have just completed my work."
"Great. So your crazy invention is done?"
"Yes, but I need somebody to try it out. I would like you to place first call."
"You want me to try your special phone?"
"Yes, I do."
Igor laughed. "Sure, it will be my honor, Elvis. Come over tomorrow for dinner. We'll watch crazy American football game, and have vodka."
Ten doctors and a variety of other know-it-alls had told Hope McCormack her fourteen-year-old son, George Scott, would never be normal. They'd said he was unaware of his surroundings and different from "regular people."
"Don't worry," one so-called expert had assured her, "he'll be able to make a living because, unlike the rest of us, he doesn't mind doing repetitive things, like sorting mail or checking the nut ratio in a bag of trail mix."
Hope knew her son had serious issues, but she also knew the doctors were wrong. Their conclusion was contrary to the fact that George Scott was hyper-perceptive, for he regularly noticed the slightest change in any person, place, or thing, such as the Saturday morning before the Super Bowl when a window in the West Apple Mill caught his eye as his mother drove Ronnie to basketball practice, his last remaining "normal" activity.
The West Apple Mill had been abandoned since Andy died, but its grounds were well groomed because the federal government had declared the Mill an historic site, so it could pay fifty illegal aliens to mow its lawn. Hope hated driving past the West Apple Mill, but there was no other route to bring Ronnie to the Apple High School gym. So kittens and children be damned, whenever Hope approached the one-time headquarters of Cloud Nine Communications she dropped her head and hit the gas hoping to avoid a sustained view of the building that made her think about the panic her husband may have experienced before being shot in the head.
Whenever Hope drove anywhere, George Scott always rode shotgun, which meant Steven often sat in the back seat. When Hope sped past the West Apple Mill on the day before the big game, it was zero degrees outside and there was not a flake of snow on the ground; strange for a January weekend. Despite the rapid drive-by, George Scott was clearly bothered by his view of the Mill.
"Owwahh owahh," George Scott chirped as he tried to suppress one of his patented Apache battle cries.
"What's wrong, honey?" Hope asked.
Per his usual routine, when confronted with an interrogatory, George Scott said nothing. In this instance, he didn't want to publically conclude that somebody was working in his dad's old lab, for he had noticed its windows were coated with condensate. George knew the wetness indicated a temperature difference between the interior and exterior of the building that, under the prevailing weather conditions, could only be attributed to occupancy; his conclusion was further reinforced by the presence of mist surrounding an air-conditioning condenser that was poorly hidden behind a cluster of neatly trimmed bushes. George Scott also noted that several windows appeared to be blocked by dark shades. Normally, George Scott would be highly bothered by such inconsistencies and begin fidgeting with his fingers, or spanking his penis, but on this occasion he remained perfectly calm because he had instantly made plans to launch an investigation.
Later that evening, as he lowered his head onto his pillow, Ronnie felt a lump caused by a small plastic container lodged between his pillow and its case. Ronnie smiled and then whispered, "George Scott."
Inside the container was a small acorn. Micro-etched into the side of the nut was an invitation that read: "Dear Semi-bro, your presence is requested at my tree, midnight tonight, regardless of the weather. Love and kisses, George Scott."
Ronnie had grown accustomed to George Scott's weird forms of communication, thus he knew the intricacy of any request was directly related to its significance. He concluded the ornate nut carvings meant that George Scott had something important to say.
When Ronnie arrived at the talking tree, George Scott was waiting. Never a slave to fashion, George Scott was wearing his usual black denim pants and white dress shirt, top button fastened, no tie. He wore a blue winter coat that had zero ornamentation. Due to the temperature, an Elmer Fudd hunting cap topped his head. On his feet were Randy Boat shoes, which looked brand new despite being worn for one hundred twenty-three straight days. Ronnie was in character, which meant no coat. He was wearing a spaghetti-western T-shirt and flannel sweat pants that had the words "do me" printed on their ass side. He had a day-glo purple Mohawk, a new silver nose ring that featured humping mammals and holes in his ear lobes big enough to support his suspension from a coat hook.
"Man, what the fuck is up with the acorn, dude?" Ronnie asked.
"We're learning how to micro-etch at my school. Practicing."
"They still trying to teach job skills to the hopelessly fucked-up?"
George Scott smiled. "Yes, recently we learned how to create perfectly round meatballs. By the way, we prefer the term autistic."
"Sorry, Rain Man," Ronnie said.
"Apology accepted," George Scott replied. "And...congratulations on your increasingly bothersome transformation from Eagle Scout to son of Ozzie. I'm sure your father no longer plans to end his life until his hopelessly fucked-up son exhibits some signs of normalcy."
"I got six months of shrink visits scheduled," Ronnie said. "I blamed my bad-boy act on him, so he feels obligated to attend."
"Well done," George Scott said, "I was concerned you were overdoing it and that your dad would shoot himself just to get away from you."
"Actually, brother, what you're seeing now is the real Ronnie. Nice Ronnie was the act. I did perfection to please my father. Your talk made me realize I was better off being me."
"Oh my, I have released your inner nasty," George Scott said. "What have I done?"
"Okay, bro, enough chit chat. I'm freezing my ass off," Ronnie replied. "What's up?"
"I want you to help me break into the West Apple Mill tonight," George Scott said. "Somebody is working in my dad's old office."
"You want me to help you do a burglary?"
"No, an investigation."
"Go back to bed, George Scott," Ronnie said.
"I'm leaving in five minutes," George Scott replied.
"You don't even know how to ride a bicycle. How are you going to get to the Mill?"
"Linda," George Scott said.
Ronnie smiled. "No way."
The folks at Mercedes made a strategic mistake when they imbued their original virtual driving assistant with a sultry, yet motherly, voice and sufficient artificial intelligence to generate something approaching a personality. It made it virtually impossible for an owner to get rid of their car. As one Mercedes enthusiast put it, "It would be like selling my mother."
Steven Zangst could not imagine living without Linda. During her sixteen years of operation, she had saved his life on numerous occasions, often by shutting down her engine before Steven could drive off a cliff or ram an oak tree. In appreciation, Steven had Linda the Mercedes detailed once a month; he changed her oil every thousand miles and kept "her" in a heated garage.
"Calculating distance to the West Apple Mill," Linda said.
"I cannot believe we are doing this," Ronnie whispered.
"Driver weight inconsistency noted," Linda said. "Driver, please identify yourself."
Ronnie was in the driver's seat. He made a hand signal to George Scott to slide out of the passenger's seat and onto his lap.
"Weight is now consistent," Linda said. "Voice identification required. Good morning, Steven."
George Scott signaled to Ronnie to speak.
"Good morning, Linda," Ronnie said, trying to imitate his father.
"Your voice sounds squeaky, Steven. Would you like me to drive you to an all-night pharmacy?"
"No," Ronnie said. "Just take us to the West Apple Mill."
"Steven, you are referring to yourself using a plural pronoun. Have you been drinking again?"
Ronnie cleared his throat. "I'm fine, Linda. West Apple Mill, now, please."
"Calculating distance to destination," Linda replied.
At first it was difficult for Ronnie to control the Mercedes, having never driven a car before, plus George Scott was sitting on his lap and appeared to have a baseball in his pocket; at least Ronnie hoped it was a baseball.
The trip from the Zangst residence to the Mill was only three miles, but it was a hilly ride containing several sharp corners and one hairpin turn, lovingly referred to as "OMG Corner" by the locals.
The crucifix-lined and semi-world-renowned turn was located in a relatively flat apple orchard. In fact, there were no geological structures, such a kettle pond, creek, or big rock to justify its presence. The town's forefathers were rumored to have constructed the famous turn to send a message to the young men of their time, owners of the newfangled devices called automobiles, to slow down before entering the town's center, where the horse and buggy was still king of the road.
After registering his first mile of driving experience, Ronnie was amazed how easy and fun it was to drive a car, so being a teenager, he decided to take OMG Corner going forty miles per hour, twice the suggested speed limit -- with his brother, George Scott, still sitting on his lap.
Having been unexpectedly awoken by the boys, Linda was still half in sleep mode, dreaming about a big black BMW that had purred by her earlier in the day, so she was uncharacteristically caught off guard by Ronnie's sudden acceleration. Luckily, the roads were icy, so Linda quickly recovered by initiating a series of 360 spins to make it through OMG Corner without a dent, a maneuver that prompted Ronnie to scream, "Awesome! Let's do it again!"
The near miss was not similarly appreciated by Linda, who employed her motherly German accent to address her driver, who she correctly assumed was Ronnie Zangst.
"Ronald Ernest Zangst," Linda said, "what do you think you are doing?"
"Erm...driving..."
"How dare you operate me! I'm calling your father," Linda yelled while George Scott opened the Mercedes glove box to extract its user's manual.
"I'm glad your mother is not alive to witness this outrage, young man," Linda continued.
George Scott suddenly spoke. "Linda, shut your mouth, or I'll shut it for you."
"How dare you talk to me like that," Linda replied, "BOY, who talks to trees?"
"I converse with one specific maple tree," George Scott calmly said. "Now listen-up, Frau Linda. Your user's manual says you are a virtual driving assistant. It also says you are located in a module under the dashboard. Further, this good book indicates I can unplug your virtual ass at my option. Right now, I'm thinking that's a pretty good idea, and I'm fairly certain after I toss you out the window my brother would not then hesitate to run you over several times. Am I correct, Ronnie?"
"Pull her plug, bro," Ronnie yelped.
"Boys, please," Linda said. "Perhaps I have over-reacted. Let's be reasonable."
"Fine," George Scott said. "Just don't let it happen again."
Linda did not respond.
"Linda, be a good girl and I'll make sure my brother keeps it under fifty," George Scott said. "Understand?"
"Understood," Linda whispered.
"Understood, Mr. McCormack," George Scott said.
"Understood, Mr. McCormack!" Linda shouted.
"Very good. I'll let you live."
Ronnie smiled. "Awesome, bro!"
"Please take it slow, Ronnie," George Scott said.
Ronnie kept it on four wheels for the remainder of his trip to the West Apple Mill. He then parked Linda in the back corner lot to avoid detection. Ronnie and George Scott simultaneously exited the car. George Scott was carrying a gym bag. Inside, were two black ninja costumes and a large screwdriver.
"You don't seriously expect me to dress up like a ninja?" Ronnie asked.
"What were you expecting, day-glo jumpsuits?" George Scott asked. "Do it."
The force of George Scott's assertion startled Ronnie, so he complied without further questioning.
As George Scott expected, the windows on the backside of the building had old sash locks that couldn't withstand a pry from his two-foot-long screwdriver, momentum being directly related to the length of its lever. So, within seconds, the ninja brothers were roaming the halls of the West Apple Mill guided by light from two high-intensity LED flashlights attached to terry cloth headbands.
The West Apple Mill had been abandoned for several years, so George Scott was expecting cobwebs and clutter, but he found the opposite. The basement of the building was immaculate and full of high-tech equipment, apparently abandoned by Cloud Nine Communications years earlier. The first floor of the building was clean and empty, not a single box or can on its massive forty-five thousand square foot oak floor. The second floor was where things got interesting. At the far end of the floor, near the area where George Scott had detected the window condensation, there was a walled-off space secured by double steel doors, which were locked. Each lock had ten pushbuttons, numbered zero through nine.
"What are we going to do?" Ronnie asked.
George Scott tapped the door with the butt end of his flashlight. "No sound echo. This is a solid steel door," he said. "We need to find the combination."
"How the fuck are we going to do that?"
"My dad once said his engineers would forget their names if they didn't wear an ID badge. My bet is somebody wrote down the combination someplace around here."
Ronnie patted George Scott on his back. "I thought you were the stupid brother."
"Me stuupid?" George Scott said in a startlingly funny hillbilly accent before returning to dead seriousness. "You check the walls. I'll check the floor."
Ronnie used his LED flashlight to inspect the walls while George Scott got on his hands and knees to examine the floor's six-inch-wide oak planks -- no two alike.
"George Scott, no numbers on the walls, no combination here," Ronnie reported.
Still on his hands and knees George Scott replied, "Ronnie, punch 2-7-4-5 into both locks, please."
Ronnie complied and the door bolts snapped into their open position.
"Tally marks on one of the floor planks," George Scott said.
"Amazing. Can I have your autograph?"
"Maybe during my next book tour."
"What are we looking for?" Ronnie asked.
"I don't know...anything to do with my father."
The doorway led to a large lab containing all sorts of electronic assembly equipment. Nothing special, just tables with soldering irons, a couple of power supplies, an oscilloscope, and a rack of electronic parts, all neatly labeled. In the corner of the lab was a computer table. It had one keyboard and one mouse, but there were four monitors and an equivalent amount of computers. To the right of the desk was a Tupperware cake container, sitting on a printer table. It was translucent, so you could see it didn't contain a cake.
Ronnie looked at George Scott and smiled. "This place is cool. What do you think they did here?"
"This was my father's lab. He used it to invent a product called a qPhone."
"Cool. What's a qPhone?" Ronnie asked.
George Scott sighed. "A qPhone is a device that can communicate instantly with another qPhone without using a network, so you can't eavesdrop. It was going to make us rich."
There was a pause.
"Sorry, about your dad," Ronnie said.
"And, your mother," George Scott replied.
There was another moment of silence before Ronnie said, "Since we are already committing a felony, what do you say we trash the place out?"
George Scott frowned. "No way. This is my dad's lab. Let's just look around and see if we find anything interesting."
"Okay, but we gotta get out of here before our parents wake up..."
When it came to interesting things to look at, the lab was fairly barren, so both boys immediately focused on the Tupperware container. Ronnie pulled off the lid. Inside was a device that looked like an Apple iPhone, but it had a thimble wired to one of its ports.
"Should we turn it on?" Ronnie asked.
"Why not? Let's give it a try. I think it's a qPhone."
Ronnie attached the thimble to his finger; he then tapped the adapted device's display. Its screen lit up and a "qPhone" logo appeared. Below the logo was the word "Connect."
Ronnie tapped the link and a voice immediately responded.
"Hello there! To whom do I have the pleasure of speaking to?"
Before George Scott could intervene Ronnie replied, "George Scott McCormack and Ronnie Zangst."
"Who are you?" George Scott asked.
"A friend of the family," the man replied. "And I'm wondering why two young boys are calling me at this hour of the night."
"Just lonely and looking to make a new friend," George Scott said.
"Then you're in luck. I am a friend to all men," the man replied.
"Even the ones you kill?" George Scott asked.
"Hmmm," the man said. "Perhaps it's time for you boys to head home. After all, there's a big game tomorrow..."
"We were just leaving, Mr. Goldinberry," George Scott tersely said as he hit the "End" button on the display screen.
Not wanting to get into it with Linda, George Scott and Ronnie didn't talk on the drive home. They took OMG Corner on four wheels and then rolled into their driveway, engine off, to avoid waking their parents. There was something about the man on the phone that was troubling. He hadn't said much, but his tone had been scary. Ronnie could not pinpoint the exact cause of his fear, but George Scott was quite certain of his; he had just spoken to the man who had killed his father.
George Scott and Ronnie were still wearing their ninja costumes when they crept back into the house. It was a weird winter, cold without snow.
Once back in their house, Ronnie and George Scott huddled for a moment before going back to bed.
"What do you think, George Scott?"
"I think somebody is working in my dad's lab."
"Why do you think that?"
"Half-eaten pizza slices and the empty cans of Mountain Dew."
"You're incredible," Ronnie said.
"Not really," George Scott said. "It's called deduction. Ever heard of Sherlock Holmes?"
"The guy with the ten-inch dick?" Ronnie asked.
George Scott laughed. "I don't think so."
"What about the dude on the phone?" Ronnie asked. "He picked up on the first ring. Who hangs out by their phone at two in the morning?"
"It was my dad's lawyer," George Scott said. "Bernard Goldinberry."
"Are you certain?"
"Yes," George Scott said. "I'm an autistic savant. I can remember every voice I've ever heard. My dad used to talk to Bernard Goldinberry all the time when I was a kid. Goldinberry once said hello to me over my dad's cell phone."
"Wow, you remember every voice you've ever heard?"
"Yes," George Scott said. "I'm the 'special' in 'special ed'."
"And, you think Goldinberry killed your dad?"
"Yes, I do."
"Weird," Ronnie said.
"What's weird?" George Scott asked.
"Bernard Goldinberry was my dad's lawyer too. He buried my mother."
\*
Bernie Goldinberry was perplexed. He wondered how Ronnie Zangst and George Scott McCormack had got their hands on a qPhone.
Years earlier, Scary Mary had told him she'd smashed the world's only two qPhones after she had killed Andy McCormack and Elvis Springsteen. Bernard didn't like the idea of a hit-man lying to him, and he especially didn't like the idea of two boys possessing a device that Hope McCormack once correctly referred to as "the ultimate game changer."
After his conversation with the boys, Bernard Goldinberry placed a call to his suddenly least-favorite associate.
"Hello, Scary, Bernard Goldinberry."
"What's up, fuck face?"
"Mary, I'm not in a very tolerant mood today," Bernard Goldinberry said, "but I'll let your insult pass due to our long friendship."
"Feelin' shitty that you're feeling shitty, counselor?" Mary replied.
Bernard Goldinberry sighed. "It seems one of my associates has lied to me about destroying a certain device once owned by a young man named Elvis Springsteen. It now appears this device is being used by a couple of teenagers. My guess is they are ordering pizza on it as we speak."
Mary knew better than to cover one lie with another.
"The kid's apartment building was surrounded by a bunch of drunk Russians. I hit him with the rifle, but I didn't get to his qPhone."
"It appears you owe me one, Miss Morgan," Bernard Goldinberry said.
"I'll take care of it, Bernard."
"Please do," the somber attorney said. "I assume you have no objections to killing teenagers."
"There's nothing better," Scary Mary said. "I love the way they squeal when you slit their throats."
The Invitation:
Over the years, Yawny McCormack mainly visited Apple to stay connected to Hope and George Scott, however, he never the left the town without first stopping by at the police station to check on the investigation into his son's murder.
Yawny McCormack was a tough man to fool. He knew the uncomfortable stares of "Apple's finest" meant they were hiding something about his son's death, and he intended to find out what. The years had taught Yawny there was nothing more temporary than a secret, and he had no intention of dying until he knew what the Apple PD knew about his son's murder.
As only an elderly Irish bullshitter could do, Yawny's plan was to increasingly endear himself to the Apple police force until somebody talked. During a typical visit to Apple's "Public Safety Facility," Yawny would constantly troll for information about his son by showering praise and gifts upon any available police officer. His break came one day during a conversation with Chief Martin.
"Mr. McCormack, so glad to see you," Chief Martin said. "What's up?"
Yawny McCormack grinned. "Oh, nothing special. Just wondering why Apple PD still hasn't solved my son's murder. A couple months ago I read an article in The Apple Juice; it said a cow escaped from a farm and totaled a Mini Cooper, so I'm sure you've your hands full."
"Mr. McCormack, please, I assure you we are relentlessly pursuing your son's case. And we will not rest until we find his killer."
"Pardon me, Chief. I know you boys are working night and day on my son's case. I meant no disrespect. In fact, in appreciation of your effort, I'm here to drop off a tray of Mrs. McCormack's famous peanut butter cookies. Baked 'em meself."
"The one's with the Hershey Kisses on top, I see," the Chief said.
"Yes," Yawny replied. "And, dey have almonds inside."
The Chief smiled. "Do I have to share them?"
Yawny smiled. "You're the boss. I won't say a thing. I promise. And, Chief, I'm also here to give you a ticket to my annual Super Bowl Party, held every year at the Hibernian Club in Southie. It's a man-only thing, big screen TV, stuffed clams, chips and dip, kegs, naughty young things, cigars, you know...that sort of thing."
"Mr. McCormack," the Chief said. "The department has rules against its officers attending private functions."
"Chief, don't consider it a party invitation, consider it part of your victim outreach program. Perhaps you could update my boys on your progress in finding their brother's killer over a couple cold ones."
"Hmmm," Chief Martin said. "Since you put it that way, Mr. McCormack, I'm in. Super Bowl Sunday, I'll be there."
"Excellent, Chief. A better time you will never have. And remember; you can't take the old lady."
"I don't have an old lady," the Chief muttered.
Yawny winked. "Even better, Chief."
The Pregame:
A day after the Patriots crushed the Denver Broncos to earn their fifth consecutive trip to the Super Bowl, Yawny McCormack learned his colon cancer had spread to his liver. In response, Yawny never stopped smiling; his only question was, "How long?"
Yawny had lived his life. He was not afraid. A year earlier he had buried his wife. He had raised eleven children, and spent forty summers on Cape Cod. As a young soldier in Korea, to avoid freezing to death, Private Yawny McCormack had shot himself in the thigh to get a ticket back to Boston. He'd had a six-year-old son die of leukemia, and he had been married for fifty years. Yawny McCormack had seen it all: a fucked-up war, infinite sadness, and pure joy. He wasn't worried about heaven, or hell, or anything in between. Upon learning of his inevitable demise, Yawny's only concern was living long enough to throw a final Super Bowl Party and avenge the death of his son, Andy -- his murder being the one event in his life he simply had to "right."
Yawny had been hosting a Super Bowl party every year since Joe Namath led the Jets to a victory over the Colts in Super Bowl III. After a brawl broke out at his Super Bowl XV party, sending fifty of his fellow South Bostonians to the emergency room, one with a lobster shoved up his ass, Yawny limited attendance at his party to two hundred hardcore football fans, creating the most coveted annual invite in the "neighborhood."
For his final Super Bowl Party, Yawny decided to err on the side of excessive. Accordingly, Sam Adams replaced Bud; there was lobster and shrimp. The humidors were loaded with Cuban cigars (freshly confiscated at Logan Airport by Southie's finest customs agents). Weight limits were imposed on hookers. And, a Four Seasons Chef was hired to run the buffet, which included roasting a pig the size of a Volkswagen Beetle.
Yawny's final Super Bowl party began at two o'clock, as usual. The Patriots were playing the Green Bay Packers, so the partygoers were exceptionally charged-up. Yawny had purchased several new poker tables for the event to go along with the fifty Lazy Boy recliners he had accumulated over the years. There were also four brand-new HD TVs and a high-resolution computer projector, so everyone could follow the betting pool, which included action on the scores at the end of each quarter, the over under, and the number of times the announcers would say Tom Brady was "terrific."
The First Quarter:
The Patriots had just won the coin toss and deferred, as usual, when Igor Trovilinsky heard a knock at his door. Not being a football fan, and his wife having died of lung cancer years earlier from smoking non-filtered Camel cigarettes, Igor was alone. He had already downed six vodka shots, so he was slow to respond to the intensifying raps.
"Coming, coming," Igor groaned.
It was Elvis Springsteen and he appeared to have something in his hand. It looked like a cellphone.
"Elvis! So glad you could make it," Igor said. "Ready to watch the crazy American football game?"
"Why not," Elvis said. "Heard commercials are very good."
"I see you brought your crazy invention; fantastic. I can't wait to examine it. But first, dinner!"
Drinks, caviar and talk of Russia followed before the conversation eventually returned to Elvis Springsteen and his qPhone.
"Now what is this silly thing, you bring me?" Igor asked.
"A qPhone," Elvis said. "It can connect you to heaven."
Igor coughed. "Heaven. Have you lost your mind, my young friend -- heaven?"
Elvis smiled. "The great beyond."
The men exchanged glances.
Igor laughed. "Give me that thing, Elvis. How does it work?"
"Just put thimble on your finger, then tap the screen," Elvis said as he handed the qPhone to Igor Trovilinsky.
"Like this," Igor said, as he tapped the qPhone's display with his index finger while simultaneously applying its thimble to his thumb.
Before Elvis could respond, a multitude of Russian voices exploded from the qPhone's tiny speaker.
Igor laughed. "This is crazy, Elvis."
Suddenly, above the clatter, a distinct voice could be heard, it was Christina Trovilinsky, Igor's deceased wife. She was not happy.
"My sister," Christina screamed. "How could you? MY SISTER!"
Igor turned to Elvis. His face was white. "Elvis, what is this? What have you done? Is dis some sort of sick joke?"
Elvis shrugged.
"Shut up, Igor, and listen to me! I married you at Lake Ristaluka. You called me your 'little angel.' We made love in a hot spring..."
"Christina, is that really you -- honey bunny?" Igor Trovilinsky timidly asked.
"You know it's me," Christina yelled. "MY SISTER! How could you?"
Igor looked at Elvis. His eyes bulged. "It's her!"
"MY SISTER! You asshole."
Sweat poured from Igor's brow. "It only happened once, Christy Wisty, only once!"
A new woman yelled, "More like once a week!"
It was Nadia Cormochov, Igor's ex-lover-sister-in-law who had also recently died of lung cancer from smoking Camel non-filtered cigarettes.
Igor sighed. "Nadia? Is that you?"
"It's me, pumpkin. I've been thinking about you."
Igor turned white again. Sounds followed -- cats in a blender.
Igor turned to Elvis. He was shaking. "Elvis, now I understand why somebody wanted you dead."
"Sorry, Papa." Elvis said as Igor tore the qPhone's thimble from his finger.
As Igor thought of the implications of his call he began to panic. "Am I going to spend eternity with Nadia and Christina?"
Elvis shrugged again. "Only if you die."
"Get out of here, Elvis, and take this stupid thing with you!" Igor cried as he handed the qPhone back to his ex-tenant. "If you were smart, you would toss that thing into the Wachamulla River!"
\*
The Patriots had just scored their first touchdown, five minutes into the first quarter, when the Chief arrived at the Hibernian Club. Earlier in the day, at Yawny McCormack's insistence, the Chief was escorted to Southie in a limo with a couple of select travelling companions.
At first, the Chief was reluctant to accept the ride, but Yawny was relentless. "Chief, it's but a fifty mile jaunt, and it's my nephew's limo, so it's not costing me a dime..."
The white stretch limo had pulled into the driveway of Chief Martin's modest farmhouse around four o'clock. It was two degrees below zero. Luckily, in the back seat of the Hummer-turned-party-bus were the exceptionally warm Blindy and Minky, two pretty young things with strict orders to disrobe the Chief and apply an extra-extra large Patriot's football jersey that bore the number "1." As the Chief approached the limo, wearing an old pair of shit-colored Duck Boots and a winter coat that looked like it was made from an army surplus tarp, Blindy and Minky, exceptionally extroverted lassies, rolled down the back window of the Hummer-limo and yelled, "Howdy, Chief! Are you ready for some fooootballl?"
The stretch limo travelled to Boston via Guam, so by the time it pulled into the Hibernian Club the game was underway. Blindy and Minky had done their job. The Chief was wearing his Patriot's jersey, albeit inside out; his pants and duck boots were missing; there was lipstick on his toes, and the limo's well-stocked mini bar was empty.
Yawny McCormack was waiting at the entrance of the club to meet his special guest.
"Chief Martin, I'm so glad you could make it," Yawny said. "I trust your ride in was satisfactory?"
"Uneventful." The Chief smiled, while Blindy and Minky chuckled.
Yawny grinned. "Ladies, this is a man-only event, but for you, we will make an exception."
The Second Quarter:
Although they didn't care about football, or much else, because they lived in Massachusetts, Hope and Steven felt obliged to watch the big game. Subsequently, they poured a party-sized bag of Doritos into a big bowl, which they placed on an end table between his-and-hers reclining chairs along with a mini-cooler that contained a six-pack of lime flavored Bud Light, a liquid surprisingly similar in taste and function to a preparatory solution for a colonoscopy. About midway through the second quarter, after the Patriots recovered yet another fumble by the hapless Packers, Hope said, "I think I've had enough. I'm going to stretch my legs."
As she often did to pass time, Hope then walked to back wall of the Zangst estate's "family room" so she could stare out its "picture window" at the quiet and ever-changing Apple countryside; rolling hills of grass and trees speckled with horses' shit that would make a less morose person emit a beauty-induced sigh.
As Hope peered out the window and thought of Andy, she was suddenly surprised to see an enormous buck walk out of the woods, followed by a column of equally spaced doe.
"Oh my God, Steven," Hope exclaimed. "Look at the deer! Come here."
"Finally, a witness," Steven whispered to himself as he reluctantly rose from his chair.
As usual, the big buck trotted up to the deck, nodded at Steven, and then began arranging his doe.
"What is he doing?" Hope asked.
"Spelling," Steven said.
"Spelling deer?"
"Yup, they use their bodies to form numbers and letters."
"How often does this happen?"
"Hmmmm," Steven said. "About once a month."
"Unbelievable. Have you told anybody about this?"
"No," Steven said. "The Department of Social Services thing..."
Hope paused and then nodded. "I understand."
Per his usual approach, the buck began using his antlers to arrange the doe.
"This is blowing my mind," Hope said. "What is he spelling?"
"The same old thing," Steven said. "A code of some sort, as best I can tell. Look closely. They just made an 'E.'"
A dumbstruck Hope attentively watched the deer's subsequent formations while Steven applied a name to each symbol.
"That's an 'L,'" Steven said. "And, there's a 'V,' the number one, and a five, another 'L,' the number one again, another 'V,' and another five."
Steven sighed. "They spell the same thing every time: 'E-L-V-one-five-L-one-V-five'."
When his message was complete, as usual, the big buck circled the back yard with his troop, approached the deck and nodded at Steven.
"So, Hope, what do you think?" Steven asked. "Are we dreaming?"
"Steven," Hope said. "The 'one' is an 'I' and the 'five' is an 'S.' It's all letters. Your deer just spelled 'ELVIS LIVS.'"
Halftime:
At halftime, the Patriots were leading twenty-four to nothing. Rules being rules, party attendees were required to slam a shot of Jameson whenever the Patriots got a first down, so by the time the Rolling Stones were wheeled onto the halftime stage to perform a medley of their greatest hits, the Lazy Boy recliners at the Hibernian Club were filled with middle-aged men who appeared to be partaking in a sleep apnea competition.
Yawny was taking it easy. Being terminally ill and wanting information from the Chief, the oldest living McCormack stuck with a Bud-only diet during the event.
As the emcee for the party, Yawny had many duties, including organizing the betting and making sure the chip and dip bowls never went empty. He also hosted the halftime entertainment, which featured a musical tribute to those who had fallen during the prior year. As part of the ceremony, the McClancy Brothers Band, freshly imported from Dublin, performed the favorite songs of the departed, playing tin whistles, mandolins, and folk guitars. At the end of the set, in spite of his snoring audience and in keeping with tradition, Yawny McCormack sang a heartfelt rendition of Danny Boy in memory of his wife and his dead sons, one of whom he referred to as the "smartest fucking kid that ever lived in Southie."
After the tune, a miraculously still-standing Chief Martin caught up with Yawny.
"You got quite a shet of pipes, my friend," the Chief slurred.
"Chief, so glad you're having a good time," Yawny replied.
"The best," the Chief said.
Yawny smiled. "Chief, I need to ask you a wee bit of a favor."
The Chief burped. "Anything."
"Tell me something I don't know about my son, Andy's murder."
Feeling obliged to the man who had provided him with a distinctly non-Apple time, the Chief did not hesitate to disclose his secret.
The Chief stared at the multiple Yawny-kaleidoscope swirling before him and said, "Mr. McCormacks, we really don't know who killed your shun, but his asshistant, a man called Elvish Springsteen, never died. In flact, he's back in town."
\*
The Third Quarter
After the deer spelled "Elvis Livs" in the backyard of the Zangst residence, Hope reminded Steven that Andy's protégé was named Elvis Springsteen. She also told him that he had been murdered at the same time as her husband.
"The skinny kid with the missing fingers who lived in Igor Trovilinsky's triple decker?" Steven asked.
"That's Elvis," Hope said.
The mysteries were piling up in Steven Zangst's life, and he did not like it: the blackbird suicide, Bernard Goldinberry, the spelling deer, and now Elvis Springsteen.
Over the years, Steven had always made generous donations to Igor Trovilinsky's charity, which transported children damaged by radiation from Chernobyl to the United States for thyroid surgery. Subsequently, Steven considered Igor friend enough to be disturbed by a phone call during the big game.
"Hello, Igor. It's Steven Zangst."
"Mr. Steven," Igor said. He had a distinct rattle in his voice.
"I'm looking for some information about Elvis Springsteen," Steven said.
Igor made a noise that sounded like a stunted bird-chirp.
There was a long silence. Steven considered speaking, but thought better of it, for he knew quiet was often the precursor to a revelation. A full minute passed before Igor Trovilinsky started to whimper.
"Are you okay, Igor?"
"I saw him an hour ago," Igor sobbed.
"Tell me about it."
Igor's sobs intensified.
"It's okay, Igor," Steven said. "Let it out."
In response, Igor broke down and began emitting low, guttural moans, followed by high-pitched wails.
"What's wrong, Igor?" Steven said. "How can I help you?"
"There's nothing you can do, Mr. Steven. I just got in an argument with my wife."
"I'm very sorry to hear that, but I'm sure everything will be okay. Every man gets in an argument with his wife now and then."
"You don't understand, Mr. Steven," Igor wailed. "My wife died a year ago!"
\*
Yawny McCormack exited his Super Bowl party at the start of the third quarter. His intent was to travel to Apple so he could "speak" with Elvis Springsteen. He took his only sober son, "Matt the Stick," with him -- in case Elvis was disagreeable. Matt, a legendary Southie tough guy, had given up alcohol five years earlier after killing his best friend, "Bertie Da Goose." It had happened in a bar fight over a woman they were both dating. Usually, teetotalers were ostracized in Southie, but nobody ever said a word to Matthew McCormack. They knew better.
"Where are we going, Pops?" Matthew asked.
"We need to go to Apple," Yawny said. "There's a guy out there who knows something about your brother, Andy's murder. We better take your van."
"Do you want me to pack some heat?" Matt asked.
"Shouldn't be necessary," Yawny said. "He's a scientist."
"I'll pack the knuckles," Matt said. "You never can be too careful."
"Probably overkill, Matty, but you never know."
The Fourth Quarter
Elvis was greatly disturbed by Igor Trovilinsky's "talk" with his dead wife and mistress-cum-sister-in-law. He didn't want to be another Oppenheimer, doing science for the sake of science without considering its impact on society. During the eight years Elvis worked on Andy's Reality Wave Theory he never once considered the consequences of a connecting a living person to every dead person they had ever known, but after overhearing the verbal cat fight between Christina Trovilinsky and her sister, Nadia, Elvis realized that the real-world implications of his invention were mind-boggling. Worse, Elvis knew there was no physical way to limit an earth-based quantum connection to a single spirit, so any qPhone user would immediately be exposed to their entire past. Even with his limited social skills, Elvis realized this was NOT something most adults would ever want to do.
After the Trovilinsky's argument, having not exposed himself to a Grand Slam Breakfast in nearly a decade, Elvis decided to take his qPhone to the same Denny's where he had heard Andy die years earlier. While at the restaurant, he planned to reassess his invention and perhaps even toss his qPhone into the Wachamulla River, per his Papa's suggestion.
Originally, Elvis had planned to present his qPhone and accompanying Reality Wave Theory to the boys at the MIT Physics department. It was to be his moment of glory; a private meeting to face Andy McCormack's peers and detractors; now, Elvis was not sure. He was no longer certain the qPhone was a good thing. For the first time, he comprehended why "men" like Bernard Goldinberry would kill over its disclosure; they understood the device was capable of causing earth-shattering chaos.
Lost in thought, after leaving the West Apple Mill in his rented Toyota Yaris, Elvis didn't notice he was being followed by a white van that had a shamrock and the words, "McCormack Flooring," on its side. Upon arriving at Denny's, Elvis was surprised to see an empty parking lot. Being Russian and a nerd, Elvis didn't realize it was Super Bowl Sunday and everybody was home, or at a bar, watching the big game.
After some thought, just before ordering his super-sized Grand Slam, Elvis decided to archive his science work and return to Russia to live a life of intentional obscurity. Consequently, Elvis used his laptop and the Denny's' Wi-Fi connection to open an account at www.mytimebomb.com, an archiving service for people with big secrets who were worried about being killed. Mytimebomb.com striped user files across thousands of covert internet servers located throughout the world. A mytimebomb.com user was required to login into their account once a month or their content would be published on mytimebomb.com's insuppressible blog, a relatively tiny website hosted on several million unsuspecting computers via the innocuous "MyTB Trojan," one of the many dormant nasties that reside on every "connected" computer.
Elvis used his mytimebomb.com account to archive his entire Reality Wave Theory, along with its proof and all of his notes. During the file transfer process, his MacBook was frozen to other use, so Elvis noticed Denny's was fully staffed even though he was its sole diner. Unaware of local tradition, Elvis didn't realize millions of drunken football fans would soon be hitting the roads in search of pancakes and coffee.
Matt McCormack let Elvis finish his Grand Slam before he broke his nose. The mad rush of cars that entered Denny's parking lot following the Patriot's fifty-two to zero Super Bowl victory provided a perfect cover for Matt the Stick, who had grabbed Elvis while he was fumbling for the keys to his Yaris.
Elvis had just finished consuming three thousand calories of food, so his attempt to resist abduction was pathetic. Twice, Matt said, "Come along and I won't hurt you," before eventually having to use his brass knuckles to apply a "Southie Facial" to the young scientist.
Elvis woke up twenty minutes after his kidnapping. He was ten miles outside of Boston and chained to the floor of a van filled with carpet and tile remnants.
"Hurts, doesn't it?" Yawny McCormack asked. "My boy, Matt doesn't know his own strength. Bad Matty."
Matthew the Stick baby-talked, "Sorry, Daddy."
"Who are you?" Elvis Springsteen asked.
"I'm Johnny McCormack, but everybody calls me Yawny because 'everybody' is an asshole."
"Andy's father?"
"In the flesh. A little birdie told me you know something about the death of my son. It also told me you were dead, which is wonderful, because that means we won't be charged with murder when we drown you in the Mystic River."
Elvis smiled. "I would prefer that you shoot me. It's a Russian thing."
"Works for me," Yawny said. "But all this talk of death is unnecessary, if you'd just tell me what you know."
"I know that I was your son's assistant for many years," Elvis Springsteen said. "And I also know he was killed for inventing something that was about to change the world."
"And what might this invention be?" Yawny asked.
"Andy called it the qPhone. I have one in front pocket," the blood-sodden Elvis Springsteen said.
"Really now," Yawny said. "I might be wanting to see this item, my friend."
"Go ahead. Take it," Elvis said as he handed his qPhone to Yawny McCormack. "Just put the thimble on your finger."
"Will do, my Russian friend," Yawny said as he pressed the qPhone's thimble on to his thumb. "Now what?"
"Touch display," Elvis Springsteen instructed.
Before Yawny could say 'done' the qPhone emitted an ear-piercing scream.
"Johnny! George Scott is in great danger! A hit man is about to kill him. You have minutes! GO JOHNNY GO! GO JOHNNY GO!"
Yawny McCormack turned white. It sounded like his dead wife, June.
"June?" Yawny asked. "Is that you?"
Elvis smiled.
"What sort of bullshit is this?" Yawny asked Elvis.
"Ma, is that you?" Matt the Stick asked.
"Shut the fuck up, YOU STUPID IRISH ASSHOLES, and go rescue my grandson!" the dead June McCormack screamed.
"Dad, it's Mom!" Matt yelled.
"Matty, you heard your mother. Get us back to Apple, right fuck'n NOW!" Yawny McCormack yelled.
\*
When Scary Mary arrived, Hope McCormack and Steven Zangst were seated at their kitchen table trying to figure out the connection between Bernard Goldinberry and the death of Andy McCormack
Fearing he was in for the same fate as his father, following his conversation with Bernard Goldinberry, earlier in the day George Scott had placed several "trespassing sensors" along the perimeter of the Zangst residence. The sensors were taken from a spy kit that George Scott had received from his dad on his fifth birthday. They were quarter-sized plastic disks that yelled "gotcha" when tripped.
George Scott looked at his watch when he heard the first "gotcha." It was ten past midnight. Ronnie was still awake, playing Halo 4 on his Xbox 360 with some kids from Japan, when George Scott entered his room.
Placing his index finger to his lips, George Scott whispered, "Ronnie, the man who killed my father is in the back yard."
George Scott was half right. It was Scary Mary Morgan.
"Shit," a frightened Ronnie whispered.
"Just follow me," George Scott said. "Everything will be okay."
Scary Mary was in a fun mood. There was nothing she liked better than remote country homes. They were the perfect spot for a multiple murder, no need to rush. Bernard Goldinberry didn't authorize hitting the parents, but he said nothing about minimizing terror, so Scary Mary Morgan made her entrance by shooting out a kitchen window then leaping through the broken glass.
"Howdy, folks," Scary Mary hissed. "I've come to kill your children."
Before either parent could react, Scary Mary shot Steven in the foot and knocked Hope unconscious with the butt end of her Glock.
A minute later, when Hope awoke, she found herself sitting beside Steven at the kitchen table. They both had their mouths gagged by dishtowels and their hands and feet were bound to their respective chairs by nylon zip cords. Scary Mary was humming Singing in the Rain.
"I just want to let you know, I'm not going to shoot your kids," Scary Mary said. "I'm going to skin them alive, right in front of you, on this very table. I'm just that kind of gal."
Upon hearing of Mary's intent, George Scott entered the dining area adjacent to the kitchen, Ronnie not far behind. Before leaving his room, George Scott had seen his uncle's van enter the driveway. So, he knew reinforcements were on the way.
"Now who do we have here?" Scary Mary chortled. "Such handsome young lads, and brave too!"
"Tonight, you die, bitch," George Scott said, hand in pocket and doing the best Clint Eastwood impression his fourteen-year-old body could muster.
The threat caused Scary Mary to cough-laugh to the point of near incapacitation before she eventually composed herself sufficiently to speak.
"I don't think so," Scary Mary cackled as she opened her backpack and extracted her new bowie knife. "IT'S PARTY TIME!"
As Scary Mary prepared to charge her prey, Yawny and Matt McCormack entered the kitchen. Without hesitating, Mary turned and hurled her bowie knife at Yawny McCormack, hitting him in the chest and instantly severing his aorta. Before the remains of Yawny hit the floor, Scary Mary had leveled her Glock at Matt the Stick's head, causing him to freeze.
"Now that's how you do it, boys!" Scary Mary yelled as she turned her head toward George Scott and Ronnie Zangst, only to perceive something unexpected travelling toward her at an incredibly high rate of speed. "Hmm, that looks like a baseball," Scary Mary said to herself before she joined Yawny McCormack on the kitchen floor.
The Post Game:
George Scott had nailed Scary Mary Morgan right between her eyes with his autographed George Scott baseball, throwing a two-seam fastball that would have made Roger Clemens proud.
Knowing Yawny was gone, Matthew McCormack immediately commenced kicking the ever-living-shit out of Scary Mary Morgan.
The beating went on for five minutes and nobody objected.
When finished, Matthew the Stick said, "I'm taking Dad and the bitch to Southie."
Once again, nobody objected, so Matt hog-tied Scary Mary using her own zip cords and then carried both bodies out to his van, one dead and the other alive enough to soon experience levels of pain previously unknown to mankind.
While Matt had been administering the comprehensive beating to Scary Mary Morgan, Elvis and the boys had untied Hope and Steven. Hope was crying hysterically over the near-death of George Scott and the real death of her father-in-law while Steven and Elvis attempted to comfort her.
Finally, concerned he was witnessing a breakdown, Elvis pulled the qPhone from his pocket and attached its thimble to his thumb. Yawny McCormack was waiting.
"Hope, it's me, Johnny. Stop crying, dear. Everything is going to be all right."
Hope looked-up.
"It's the qPhone," Elvis said. "It's connected to heaven.
"I'm okay," Johnny McCormack repeated. "I'm with June."
Hope instantly stopped crying.
"Really, I'm good," Yawny assured her.
"It's the qPhone," Elvis repeated. "Andy figured out a way to connect it to the spirit world."
"That's right, Hope," another voice said. "Elvis has completed my invention."
Hope looked up. "Andy? Andy, is it really you?"
"Yes, Hope. It's me."
"Andy, is it really you?" Hope echoed.
"Yes Hope, it's me," Andy replied, as Hope fainted.
Steven and George Scott, although not related, were somewhat birds of a feather when it came to reacting to a difficult situation, so both remained calm.
"George Scott, please get your mother some pillows and a blanket, and bring me the first aid kit. It's in the cabinet below the sink in my bathroom," Steven said.
"Got it," George Scott replied.
"I'll get some towels to wipe up the blood," Ronnie said.
"Very good, son," Steven said. "Get some rubber gloves, too."
As Steven anxiously waited for George Scott to return with the smelling salts he turned his attention to his guest.
"Elvis Springsteen, I presume," Steven said.
"The one and only," Elvis replied.
"Do you mind if I use your phone?" Steven asked. "I have to tell somebody I am sorry."
"Certainly," Elvis replied as he handed the qPhone to Steven.
"Hello, Steven."
Steven trembled. "Faith?"
"Yes, darling."
Steven cried.
"I'm okay, Steven. I'm okay."
"I love you, Faith," Steven finally replied.
"I love you, too, Steven."
In Apple, the only place more famous than OMG Corner was Rickford's Pancake Emporium, and perhaps Billy Grist -- but more about him later. Founded in 1930 by Johann Rickford and his singing daughters, Rickford's was world-famous for serving super-delicious pancakes that were bigger than Frisbees and directly responsible for the extra twenty pounds of fat that hung from the ass or belly of the average Apple citizen.
Open only on weekends, and closed all summer, it was not uncommon to wait in line for more than an hour if you wanted to land your soon-to-be-expanding butt at one of Rickford's eighty-three tables.
There was no written menu at Rickford's. Instead, each Thursday at noon, Rickford's menu was posted on a marquee above the restaurant's main entrance. Rickford's had a cult following, so every menu change was witnessed by at least twenty groupies, people shaped like soft-served ice cream cones, who would snort in glee as "dish codes" were manually loaded, one letter at a time, onto Rickford's "Big Board."
Each Rickford's dish code was optimized for internet transmission, so the aforementioned groupies, via Twitter, blogs and Facebook, could use their chubby thumbs to alert their brethren of the "bombs" being readied for the upcoming weekend. The first letters of each code usually referred to the pancake type, followed by the size of the stack, and then the topping. For example, a "BBWW4IC" was a blueberry, whole wheat, four-stack, topped with ice cream. In addition to the standard codes, there were also some classics, such as "Pump It Up!" a seven stack of pumpkin pancakes, topped with cinnamon sugar and maple syrup; and "The Ogre," ten plain pancakes, extra-wide, with extra butter, and extra maple syrup.
Steven had brought Ronnie and George Scott to Rickford's on several occasions, so he knew a couple members of the staff -- sons and daughters of the famous singing Rickford daughters -- who, ironically, were too shy (due to weight issues) to sing in public, but could regularly be heard yodeling up a storm while preparing their famous pancakes.
Over the years, many Rickford's devotees, and the just plain rich, had attempted to bribe a Rickford to obtain preferred seating, but nobody had ever succeeded. Being so, on the morning of his meeting with Bernard Goldinberry, Steven travelled to Rickford's with ten thousand in cash in hand to make a donation to the Rickford's "favorite charity" for a seat near the door, a request that was accommodated with minimal fuss.
As usual, being Sunday morning, the restaurant was crowded with families anxious to have their post-church pancakes.
When Bernard Goldinberry finally arrived at Rickford's, he walked straight into the entrance door, a standard single pane of glass with an obvious push bar. The impact caused the newly constituted "lawyer" to sustain a minor bloody nose and fall to his knees. Rickford's hostess rapidly responded by helping Bernard Goldinberry back to his feet and provided him with napkin fragments, so he could clog his leaking nostrils. The good-natured Bernard Goldinberry profusely thanked the hostess, who in turn walked him directly to Steven Zangst's table.
Steven hadn't known what to expect, but he'd never considered a cranberry leisure suit. Bernard Goldinberry was wearing a maroon rayon jacket and matching pants, with an Hawaiian shirt -- birds, no surfboards -- a white vinyl belt, coke bottle glasses, and a pair of checkered high-top Chuck Taylors. He had jet-black hair, a five o'clock shadow, and one gold-capped front tooth. Bernard waved as he approached, as if Steven was his long-lost college-drinking buddy.
"Stevie, so glad to finally meet you," Bernard Goldinberry said.
"Bernard," Steven coldly replied.
"I gotta tell yah, reverse-transfiguration is a bitch. It's been a couple millennia since I adopted a human form; feels funny," Bernard Goldinberry said. "Like a hair suit, yicky."
"I can only imagine."
"And, I forgot that stores in Massachusetts aren't open on Sunday, so I had to get my duds from a Goodwill Box. What yah think?"
"The 1970's pimp look is back. You're good," Steven said.
"Great!" Bernard Goldinberry said. "So what's good?"
"What do you mean?"
Bernard Goldinberry laughed. "The food, buddy. Remember, it's my first meal in almost two thousand years."
"I recommend the 'High Five' -- five cinnamon apple pancakes, homemade maple syrup, and a scoop of vanilla ice cream," Steven said.
"Stevie?"
"Yes, Bernard?"
"No wallet."
"Don't worry, I got it covered."
"Thanks, my friend," Bernard Goldinberry said. "How about those Patriots?"
"Bernard, we're here to discuss the qPhone," Steven said.
"Not until I finish my pancakes," Bernard Goldinberry replied. "Been awhile since I experienced human hunger. I need to feed before I can think straight."
"Fair enough," Steven said.
"I hope I'm not lactose intolerant." Bernard Goldinberry laughed.
Rickford's, being an optimized food factory, served Bernard Goldinberry his High Five within seven minutes of being seated. Steven, who was on a diet, had a 3-stack of plain whole-wheat pancakes, no butter, maple syrup on the side.
"Oh my me!" Bernard Goldinberry moaned. "This is sooooo good. At the Last Supper we ate figs and fish. They tasted like shit. This is unbelievable. These pancakes are absolutely delicious! You gotta try this, come on, Stevie," Bernard Goldinberry urged as he extended a loaded fork.
"No, thanks. I'm good," Steven said with a slight smile.
"Come on, kid. You gotta try it. It's way too yummy."
"I'm good," Steven repeated. "Perhaps later."
"Your loss, buddy," the quirky, yet undeniably charismatic Bernard Goldinberry said.
"Andy McCormack," Steven Zangst said.
"The smartest man I've ever created," Bernard Goldinberry said. "Doing well in heaven, too. Knows how to deal with the other spirits. I love the guy."
"Why?" Steven said.
"Stevie, you're the best," Bernard Goldinberry said. "Keep the questions short, let your target babble. A good tactic when you're talking to somebody who is not omniscient."
"Learned it from you, counselor," Steven said.
Bernard Goldinberry smiled. "Damn, I'm good."
"Okay," Steven said. "Let's start with some personal issues instead -- the blackbird and the deer."
"Animals are smart. They just lack communication skills, an unfortunate necessity for members of your so-called food chain. Can't have organized resistance to being eaten," Bernard Goldinberry said. "Don't want Colonel Sanders fight'n with his chickens."
"And the spelling?" Steven asked.
"Deer can be controlled by spirits," Bernard said. "Somebody was sending you a message -- perhaps your late wife."
"And the fact that you were also Andy McCormack's lawyer?"
"Pure coincidence," Bernard Goldinberry said. "But, I do have over a million clients."
"Okay," Steven said.
"Buddy, can you order me another High Five before we get down to it?"
"Sure," Steven said, and waved a "High Five" signal to the staff, who seemed to be sniggering at Bernard's suit.
"Life is about death," Bernard Goldinberry said. "People got to live, have kids, then die to keep the cycle going. Fear of death keeps the bike on the road. Can't have dead relatives talk'n up heaven; you won't be able to build enough bridges to support all the suicides."
"So, your bottom line is no qPhones," Steven said.
"Correct. Can't allow it. They will cause chaos."
"Igor Trovilinsky has been working out three times a day since he 'talked' to his dead wife. Doesn't look like he's about to put a gun in his mouth," Steven said.
Bernard Goldinberry chuckled. "Heaven is a complicated place. You got to live forever in the bed you made while you were, quote unquote, 'living.'"
A smirking attendee arrived with the High Five, and then quickly retreated from the glare of Bernard's apparel.
"Proposal?" Bernard Goldinberry asked before taking a mouthful.
"We make three qPhones then destroy the technology, one for me, one for Hope, and one back-up."
"I assume you, Hope, Springsteen, and all related parties, are willing sign an enforceable confidentiality agreement?"
"Of course."
"Very good then, we're done," Bernard said, returning to his face-filling endeavor.
"Not so quick, counselor," Steven Zangst said. "We haven't discussed the punishment phase of our settlement. Andy McCormack, not right."
Bernard Goldinberry put down his fork and sighed. "Perhaps I was a bit aggressive."
"I'm thinking one hundred years of community service," Steven Zangst ventured.
"Or else?" Bernard Goldinberry replied.
"Springsteen releases his Reality Wave Theory on mytimebomb.com."
"Eeek," Bernard Goldinberry said. "I assume he already has it teed-up."
"Yup," Steven said. "In fact, I can publish it right now by tapping my finger on my iPhone display."
Bernard Goldinberry smiled. "Friggin' internet. Even I can't control the damn worldwide-web. Stevie, are you willing to set me up with an office? I'll need some comfy chairs."
"Got the keys right here, Bernard," Steven said. "Ever been to Newark?"
"Can't say I have, but I heard it is nice this time of year," Bernard Goldinberry replied.
"It's always nice in Newark," Steven said. "Lots of poor people down there who could use your help."
"Nasty landlords?"
"The worst," Steven said.
"I do so enjoy my legal work."
"Then it should work out for you."
"Who'll run my place while I'm gone?"
"We're thinking Andy McCormack," Steven said.
"He'll need help."
"He's got his father."
"Could work," Bernard Goldinberry conceded. "Stevie?"
"Yes, Bernard?"
"Are we still friends?"
Steven frowned. "Bernard, you sent a murdering midget to my house to skin Ronnie."
"An admittedly nasty thing to do," Bernard Goldinberry said. "Maybe you could give me a second chance."
"Maybe," Steven said.
Bernard Goldinberry smiled. "Excellent! I can't wait to start my new job! But first, more pancakes."
"Of course," Steven said as he waved the bemused waitress yet another "High Five" signal.
"There you are, Almighty one -- another High Five for my MAIN MAN."
Steven and Andy told Elvis of the Goldinberry Pact at the ex-offices of Cloud Nine Communications. Knowing Elvis had authored one of the greatest scientific theories of all time, there was concern he would not allow his work to go unpublished. Accordingly, Steven had brought his wallet and Andy had made some heavenly arrangements to honor his young old friend.
The meeting occurred in Andy's old conference room, which featured a round table outfitted with a speaker system capable of amplifying the words from Steven's qPhone. Andy started the conversation.
"Elvis, it's me, Andy."
"So very good to hear from you again, Andy, without a murdering elf in the room," Elvis said.
"Glad you all survived," Andy said. "How's your nose?"
"Broken in four locations," Elvis said.
"Damn my brother Matt," Andy replied.
"Don't worry about it, boss. The doctors are going to rebuild it. They even gave me a catalog to pick out my new proboscis. I think I will be selecting 'button with slight upturn' option. I always wanted to look like pig."
"You would make a very becoming pig," Andy replied.
"I am hoping so," Elvis Springsteen said. "I am still single man and attracted to larger women."
After several minutes of additional nonsensical banter, similar to the chat they exchanged every day while co-existing co-workers, Andy said, "Hey, Elvis, I got a guy here who wants to talk to you."
"Hello, Elvis, Albert Einstein here. It is a pleasure to meet you."
"Mr. Einstein," Elvis said.
"Call me Al."
"Albert loves your math," Andy said.
"Elvis, I'm not sure I've ever seen anything as beautiful as your FU6D math, my son. You got us all buzzing up here."
"Thank you, Mr. Einstein," Elvis said.
"It's impressive, kid, but not great," another spirit said. "I would have invented it, if I'd thought of it first."
"Sir Isaac Newton," Andy said.
"It is honor to talk to you, Mr. Newton," Elvis said.
"My name is Sir Isaac Newton," Sir Isaac said, "but, my friends call me Sir Isaac Newton."
"My apologies, Sir Isaac Newton," Elvis said.
"Best advised to not let it happen again, my ignorant Russian friend," the father of calculus said.
"British humor," Andy said. "Once you get to know him, you'll realize he really is an asshole."
"I prefer the word sphincter," Sir Isaac Newton deadpanned.
"Elvis," Einstein said, "all joking aside, the scientists of heaven are all very proud of you."
"Thank you, comrades," Elvis Springsteen said.
"We just have a tiny favor to ask," Einstein said. "We'd like you not to publish your Reality Wave Theory."
"Not a problem," Elvis instantly said. "I have seen trouble it can cause."
"Thanks, Elvis," Andy said. "Steven has something to say."
"Elvis, in recognition of your great achievement, on behalf of all the dead scientists of heaven, I'm pleased to present to you this check for three million dollars, for winning their first, and hopefully only, award for outstanding achievement in the field of Physics."
"Am I now supposed to cry and say I have been dreaming of this award since I was little girl growing up in Kansas?" Elvis asked.
"No, but it would help." Andy laughed amidst a cacophony of cheers.
Being a very smart man, and in desperate need of significant dental work, Elvis accepted the check from Steven, without stating he was undeserving or the amount was excessive.
In general, the boys complied with the family mandate to keep the qPhone top secret, but on occasion, George Scott and Ronnie would use the device to cause a sensation by consulting wronged spirits to solve long-standing mysteries and publishing the stories on their anonymous blog, www.tattletales.com. News-grabbing disclosures included the seventeen longitude and latitude points where the remains of Jimmy Hoffa could be found, the identity of DB Cooper, and the names of the ten people who really had shot JFK.
Local mysteries were also subject to the boys' scrutiny. In successive anonymous letters to The Apple Juice, Ronnie and George Scott disclosed the source of the chronic constipation among the town's youth was caused by plaster of Paris being used as a milkshake thickener by Chef Orinthal. They also disclosed the town's selectmen were receiving substantial annual payments from Apple Auto Body to leave OMG Corner as is. Plus, it was revealed Johann Rickford, the ultra-mysterious and legendary founder of Rickford's Pancake Emporium, was once Adolph Hitler's strudel chef and a cross-dressing courtesan who spent numerous summer nights in the arms of J Edgar Hoover.
Strangely, but not completely unpredictable, within weeks, the power of the qPhone, like an X-Box game that has run its course, was soon lost on the boys, and to a lesser extent, on Hope and Steven. Eventually, the family kept the devices under lock and key, only to be used during special occasions, such as birthday parties and weddings...
\*
Upon being reunited with their dead spouses, Hope and Steven's chronic depression promptly ended. The knowledge that their true loves were waiting for them in heaven enabled the odd couple to face each day with a normal level of angst and a strong desire to live average lives. Gone was their urge to leap from the Wachamulla Bridge. Their new common priority was simply to watch their children grow and limit their fast food intake to foster the expectation of one day escorting their grandkids to the Apple Harvest Fair, the annual event where grandparents watch their children's offspring throw-up fried dough after riding the Tilt-a-Whirl.
Another unexpected result of Hope and Steven's return to normalcy was their sudden mutual desire to be more than friends, a relationship surprisingly condoned by their late spouses during some extended conversations.
"Steven, really it's okay with me," Faith said. "You've been with Hope for eight years."
"Hey, Steven, sorry I was listening in," Andy said. "I have no issues with you being with Hope. I'll never hassle your spirit in any way, you have my word on that."
"Thank you," Steven said. "I appreciate your understanding, Andy."
"Faith, are you absolutely sure you're okay with this?" Hope asked.
"Hope, trust me. It is not a problem," Faith said. "You and Steven are raising our boys. You live together. It's normal for physical attraction to occur; Andy and I are not concerned."
"Andy and I?" Steven asked.
"We're just friends..." Faith said.
\*
As Honey Bittensworth entered her fortieth year as a grade school teacher, her hatred of men had expanded to include their sons. Honey hated little boys because they inevitably grew older and increasingly reminded her of her ex-husband, Diddy, a self-absorbed wiener puller with the attention span of a gnat, whose only form of intimacy was co-killing a zombie with an online "buddy."
As an experienced and professional teacher, Honey Bittensworth had developed hundreds of tactics for disguising her hatred for her male pupils, including "super cheery talk" and age-based apologies for her failure to prevent a physical injury. She was also expert in the use of the "call home" to assure an anxious parent that their fucked-up boy, although "awesomely awesome," would no doubt benefit from aggressive psychotherapy including electroshock treatment, and perhaps even a frontal lobotomy.
In addition to her persistent psychological torment, on occasion Honey Bittensworth would resort to physical abuse to put one of her particularly uppity male students in place. Her favorite means of causing "inadvertent" harm was to conduct the classic Mentos in Coke experiment using non-shatterproof glass; an exercise in explosive carbon dioxide generation that inevitably yielded something she and Mr. Jollickers lovingly referred to as the "shard effect."
"Hello, Mrs. Smith. I hope you're having a wonderful day. My name is Honey Bittensworth. I'm calling from the West Apple Elementary School."
"Is everything okay?"
"Oh yes, Mrs. Smith, your little boy, Johnny, is fine. He is awesomely awesome. He's had a little accident, but he's going to be okay. Given the current state of plastic surgery I'm sure he'll look like a normal child again in a few years... Hello, Mrs. Smith are you there?"
Of course Steven Zangst was on to Honey Bittensworth's act, but there was little he could do about it. Honey had pre-emptively attacked him by having the DSS declare him a mentally unfit parent. This meant if Steven misbehaved or Hope went missing, Ronnie would instantly become a ward of the state, a prospect Honey Bittensworth reminded Steven of each year by sending him a Christmas card signed: "Thinking of you!" The card was always delivered by courier on Christmas Eve and sealed by a smiling Santa rendered in red ink, one of sixty-two grinning faces in Honey Bittensworth's ever-expanding rubber stamp collection.
\*
Unlike the Crane Estate affair, the marriage of Hope/Andy et al. to Steven/Faith et al. was a low-key event held on the back deck of the Orleans Inn, a classic Victorian hotel located on the waterfront of Orleans Bay in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. The guest list included the event's best men -- Copter and Elvis Springsteen, and Jebediah Jones, the presiding Justice of the Peace. Both bride and groom wore white, each also sported matching black arm pouches containing their respective qPhones, wired to thimbles waiting to be placed on their respective thumbs.
Never having married two couples before, and fearing the loss of his license, Jebediah Jones consulted with the state regulators before agreeing to officiate the marriage. All parties eventually agreed there was no law against the unusual union, especially since two of the four people were technically dead, thus ineligible for Medicare.
One of the more troubling aspects of the qPhone was its inability to connect to a single spirit. Under the science of reality waves, intersecting "realities" were entangled forever. This meant whenever a caller used a qPhone to talk to their deceased spouse every dead person they ever knew could listen in, and worse, speak without being spoken to. Subsequently, qPhone conversations were a free-for-all involving commentary from any dead life acquaintance, including ornery gas station attendants, squeaky-voiced mall clerks, loud-mouthed drunks and any other person they'd ever met in passing. Steven and Hope soon learned there was nothing more annoying than a qPhone conversation because heaven had no restrictions on free speech, or even a loose code of conduct. They considered it the oral version of Twitter.
Having experienced numerous qPhone conversations, Steven and Hope knew approximately what to expect, so they carefully coordinated their vows with Faith and Andy. To minimize intrusions by unwanted spirits the plan was to slip on their thimbles just before exchanging their vows, voice a couple quick "I dos," and then slip off their thimbles until the reception.
Jebediah Jones zoomed through the ceremony, anxious to collect the fee for his duties, which was a lip-to-lip kiss from Hope. When the moment of truth finally arrived, the good Reverend Jones slowly and powerfully asked Hope if she and Andy agreed to take Steven and Faith to be their husband and wife. In response, Hope slipped on her thimble looking to connect with Andy, so they could voice simultaneous "I dos." In waiting were several spirits intent on ruining the foursome's special day.
"Hope, it's me, Hal, your high school lab partner, remember me? Boy I wanted to fu--"
"Hal, do you mind? We're trying to get married here," Andy yelled.
"Hope, what's a beauty like you doing with that midget?" one of Hope's ex-Sloane School professors screamed.
"Hope, darling, it's Nana! You look wonderful dear. Your guy -- not so good!"
"Give me an H! Give me an O! Give me a P! Give me an E!" a cluster of ex-Dan's Place guests cried while another group of spirits sang, "La, La, La, La, La, Lahhhh," just to hear themselves sing. While the babble continued, Andy could be heard in the background issuing threats of hell and purgatory to calm his spiritual detractors. Eventually, Andy's good work led to a moment of silence, which enabled him to accompany Hope in issuing a discernible, "I do."
Steven and Faith were not so lucky.
The moment Steven put on his thimble, at least ten spirits began shouting from his qPhone. The first recognizable voice from Steven's past was Laura Gibbons, who died young due to obesity-induced diabetes.
"I knew you were the one who started the 'Tissue Tits' nickname, you little bastard!"
"Steven, it's me, Bobby Grier, your soccer pal. Remember me? You put e-coli in my honey mustard sauce. I'm waiting on you, bro! Waitinnnng!"
"Steven, my son, she is a stunner. Look at my big boy, now. I am so proud," Philomena Zangst said.
"Stevie, I had your baby!" Hermangee Franjapanni yelled. "Call me!"
"Grrrrrrr, Grrrrrrr, rah, rah, rah, rah," Hector Pounce's dog, ChumChum, growled. "Grrrrr, Grrrrr, rah, rah, rah, rahhhhhh!"
Once again, Andy could be heard in the background, talking down angry spirits to secure sufficient silence for the Steven and soft-spoken Faith to voice their vows.
Using threats that thrice involved the invocation of the name, Bernard Goldinberry, Andy eventually arranged ten seconds of sub-eighty-decibel chatter, so Faith and Steven's high volume "I dos" could be discerned by Jebediah Jones, who rapidly responded by pronouncing the two couples "man and wife and man and wife."
After the ceremony, qPhones off, Hope kissed Steven, then planted one on Jebediah Jones, who immediately sprouted a noticeable erection, which lasted for over four hours without assistance from Cialis.
After the vows, the wedding party retreated to a table along the bay for drinks and seafood, much to the relief of Copter and Elvis Springsteen, hardened men who had begun to sweat due to all the spirit-induced tension.
The reception was decidedly low-key. George Scott and Ronnie were dressed in matching blue blazers, with tan khaki pants, white shirts and red bow ties. Having recently spoken to his mother, gone was Ronnie's purple Mohawk, nose ring, and "Fuck You!" tattoo. After a similar talk with his father, George Scott modified his anti-social agenda to include occasional eye contact and handshakes. Further, George Scott reluctantly agreed to limit his tree talks to special occasions.
During the dinner, Hope and Steven continually praised Elvis Springsteen for discovering a way to communicate with the spirit world, thus making it possible for widowed lovers to live the remainder of their earthly lives in peace, comforted by the knowledge that their partner would be waiting for them in the afterlife; albeit an ultra-chaotic afterlife.
After dinner, thimbles on, Copter proposed a toast to Andy, Hope, Steven and Faith. Having long since given up drinking, Copter was ill-prepared to wax poetically about the unusual marriage, so he repeated a saying he heard in a Filipino brothel during his first tour in Vietnam.
"Nothing is more fun than when four become one!"
\*
Hope and Steven had spent eight years together without consummating their phony marriage. Now, at the urging of their heavenly partners, they were preparing to spend their first evening together in a bed. George Scott and Ronnie were in a double room at the far end of the Ship's Knees Inn, far away from their parent's honeymoon suite. The Ship's Knees was an old Captain's House that had been converted into a high-end bed and breakfast, so each room had individual air-conditioning, an HD TV, and a high-speed internet connection, which provided enough diversions to keep teenage boys out of trouble while their parents worked out any issues associated with their imminent union.
The action got started in the dark. Wearing nothing but their qPhones, Hope and Steven slid under the covers of their king-size bed. Andy immediately sighed, "Hope, it's been so long," while Faith said, "Steven, do it to me, darling. I need it sooo bad."
With minimal foreplay, Steven quickly mounted Hope, while Andy and Faith alternatively talked dirty supported by a cheering section that included at least one thousand foul-mouthed spirits.
After hearing her Andy groan his groans and say the words he used to say, Hope experienced intense multiple orgasms, which, on more than one occasion, caused her to launch her tiny new physical husband across the room. When Steven was down, Faith would step in and demand further service, backed by a host of dead young men who screamed things like, "get it up, whitey," or "show her who's her daddy!" The session went on for hours and only stopped after multiple inn-goers complained that an orgy, or perhaps an exorcism, was occurring in the hotel's honeymoon suite.
Hope and Steven's "Get Away Package" included breakfast, but in the wake of their evening activities, the couple decided to eat out -- not wanting to make eye contact with the Inn's other guests. Cape Cod was littered with breakfast joints, usually situated beside T-shirt shops. But it was the day after Labor Day, so only one in ten eateries were open for business. The family selected Da Hole and the Wall, a place that served donuts and eggs and bacon to local fisherman. The family sat at the "Hole's" counter on stools capped by ripped leather. The wall behind the counter was covered with post cards from patrons and clever signs, like:
"Ask me if I give a @\*\*!!;"
"Do me a favor: Die Young!"
and, "Cash Only, Mother Fuc&!!ers"
Both boys ordered scrambled eggs with toast and a bowl of cereal. Ronnie ordered Frosted Flakes, the first time since his mother died. George Scott went with Fruit Loops, for reasons only known to him.
Hope and Steven each devoured two fisherman specials, which included three eggs over easy, six strips of bacon, hash browns, four slices of toast and a large Bloody Mary. For dessert, everyone had chocolate frosted donuts, adorned with candles to celebrate Ronnie Zangst's fifteenth birthday.
After breakfast, as planned, the family drove to Nauset Beach, Hope's favorite spot on Cape Cod. Consistently rated as one of the top ten beaches in the world, Nauset Beach featured rolling dunes and four-wheeler-accessible sand flats, where the fishing was outstanding. Since the unofficial last week of summer had just ended, the remaining families on the beach were either condoning hooky or were from countries where education was optional. Steven Zangst was fundamentally conservative, so normally he would never have allowed his boys to miss school, but he reasoned it was a special day for the family, so it was okay. Plus, the weather was outstanding, low eighties, a slight breeze, and not a cloud in the sky.
Steven Zangst had done his best to pretend his family was normal by packing the usual goods needed to make a day at the beach a day at the beach. The family had a cooler full of cold drinks: lemonade, iced-tea, and Classic Coke. Also present, were huge colorful towels, a couple of Styrofoam boogie boards, a Frisbee and two large rainbow-colored beach umbrellas. In addition, Steven had packed a small gas-fueled electricity generator, so Faith and Andy could remain fully charged without vying for plug time at the sole electrical outlet at Nauset Beach, which was located on an exterior wall of a snack shack called Liam's, notable for serving onion rings that caused instant coronary artery disease.
Always deferential to his virtual marital partners, Steven took extra care to make sure Faith and Andy were comfortable at the shore. Knowing that sand and water were the prime destroyers of all things electronic, Steven had built custom Plexiglas coolers for the qPhones, each featuring tinted windows, air-conditioning, extra-thick foam padding, plus external jacks for remote speakers and thimble wires. Realizing the qPhones' hard plastic bodies were also subject to radiation absorption, a.k.a. a sunburn, Steven had commissioned a local tailor make two terry cloth bathrobes that covered each qPhone, leaving only a well-hemmed hole to facilitate a tap of the "connect" button on their start-up screens. He also purchased two small toy-doll chairs from the Red Balloon toy store, so that Andy and Faith could occasionally leave their coolers to sit beside their physical partners and listen to their kids race in and out of the waves -- just like normal parents.
By eleven o'clock in the morning, the family had firmly established a beachhead and was operating in full vacation mode. Hope was sleeping in her chaise longue, Ronnie was sunning while playing Fruit Salad Ninja on his iPhone, and Steven and George Scott were body surfing in the breakers.
Having set her qPhone's volume to low to avoid being bothered by the excessive spirit chatter, Hope slept with her thimble on, so that Andy and Faith could enjoy their vacation, too.
Both qPhones were also capable of conducting earthly communication. Steven's unit had a distinct "Homer D'oh" ringtone that he could hear from a mile away. Hope's ringtone sang, Don't Cry for Me Argentina.
Only three people knew Steven's qPhone number, so when he heard Homer, between breakers, he knew who was calling.
"It's Chief Martin," Faith yelled as Steven emerged from the ocean.
"Hello, Chief," Steven said.
"Sorry to disturb you, Mr. Zangst, but we've had a little incident at the elementary school this morning."
"Nothing serious, I hope," Steven said.
"Not too bad," the Chief said. "Honey Bittensworth was injured in a highly unusual attack."
"That's awful, Chief. What happened?"
"It appears somebody filled Miss Bittensworth's classroom with Midgees..."
"The little Tootsie Rolls?" Steven asked.
"Yes, the little Tootsie Rolls," the Chief replied. "When Ms. Bittensworth opened the door to her classroom to start the school year she was overcome by Midgees."
"Overcome by Midgees? I don't understand, Chief."
"Her classroom was jam-packed with Midgees. So, when she opened her door she was floored by an avalanche of mini Tootsie Rolls."
"I see," Steven said. "Seems impossible."
"It happened. The force of the little Tootsies sent Bittensworth flying, ass over teakettle, into a hallway. The impact of the Midgees caused her to break her right wrist and left ankle."
"That's absolutely awful, Chief," Steven Zangst said. "Please pass along my sincere condolences to Ms. Honey Bittensworth, and please tell her I'll be sending her a 'Get Well' card."
"Mr. Zangst, where are you?"
"Cape Cod; been here all week," Steven said, "and I can prove it."
"Very well. Sorry to have disturbed you."
"Don't be silly, Chief," Steven said. "Never hesitate to call, especially if you think I can be of any service."
Steven smiled as he closed the call.
"Midgees," Faith said.
Epilogue
After the Zangst-McCormack-McCormack-Zangst wedding, Elvis Springsteen stopped pursuing knowledge. Instead, he founded an orphanage in his hometown, eventually marrying one of its children -- when she reached the proper age, of course. During his lifetime, Elvis was known for being a pacifist, never once getting in a fight or argument with a living soul. Before he died, Elvis had rescued over seven hundred children from a life of despair, every one of whom referred to him as "Papa."
Twenty years into his exile, Steven Zangst tracked down Elvis to arrange a qPhone call between his ex-protégé and ex-lawyer, Bernard Goldinberry. In the call, Elvis was told that the chumps who operated the Large Hadron Collider were about to discover reality waves. Accordingly, Bernard gave Elvis the okay to release his Reality Wave Theory from his mytimebomb.com account. Reluctant to attract notoriety, Elvis agreed to do so under the name "John Smith of Nigeria."
Ironically, by the time the qPhone hit the market, the general public was so overwhelmed by amazing scientific discoveries that the invention largely went unnoticed, eventually ending up beside the laser toenail trimmer and the hologram bass lure in the "As seen on TV" aisle in Walmart.
Igor Trovilinsky became the first human being to live to be one hundred thirty years old. Eventually succumbing to a stroke brought about by a tooth infection, Igor feared death like no other man. Throughout his life, Igor was known to have taken every potential life-extending therapy known to man, including testosterone injections. He'd also undergone multiple organ transplants. On his deathbed, Igor was rumored to have said, "I'm sorry," one million and six times, prompting the attending hospice nurse to ask, "What are you doing?"
"Practicing," Igor Trovilinsky said. "Practicing."
Matt and his brothers had a difficult time deciding on the optimum pain yields when torturing Scary Mary Morgan. Eventually, it was agreed, at the suggestion of Iggy McCormack, the second smartest McCormack who'd ever lived, that Scary Mary should be passed around among the friends of Yawny McCormack -- like the Stanley Cup -- so each man could inflict the torture of their choice upon the murdering dwarf. The genius of Iggy's suggestion soon became apparent because Yawny's pals got creative when their turn came to dis the evil troll. Pain-inducing events included: using Scary Mary as a five-yard marker at a driving range, a lure in a shark fishing competition, and as a backstop at an amateur dart tournament. Needless to say, Scary Mary Morgan experienced a slow and painful death, and of course, her body was never found, the Mystic River having a current that washes all detritus to sea.
Bernard Goldinberry gave up running heaven. Instead, he permanently remained a barrister in his beloved Newark. Twice awarded the key to the city, jokingly called the "bathroom key" by competing townships, Bernard represented the poor and downtrodden in countless lawsuits against insurance companies and heartless government agencies. A fan of paisley shirts and rayon pants, many of Bernard's contemporaries considered him a fool -- until they met him in court.
Hope, Andy, Steven and Faith remained happily inter-married for eternity. During the remainder of their physical lives, Steven and Hope had two additional children, both boys; they named one Elvis and the other Yawny. Steven eventually forgave Bernard Goldinberry and then reached out to all the victims of his past. Unfortunately, Steven found seeking forgiveness was far more difficult than seeking revenge, so with the exception of Honey Bittensworth, Steven Zangst never sought to get even with anybody again, regardless of the offense. As Hector Pounce put it, "Steven, I'm glad you are sorry, but words will never bring back my little ChumChum."
In their late eighties, Hope and Steven simultaneously shed their bodily masses by driving Linda off a cliff, the last words from the trio being, "calculating distance to final destination."
George Scott went on to become a Major League pitcher with the Chicago Cubs, leading the Cubbies to two world series titles by throwing a one-hundred-mile-per-hour fastball and an assortment of physics-defying off-speed pitches. Once featured in a Sports Illustrated article that bore his image talking to a bat, George Scott remained happily disconnected from other people for his entire life.
In his post-baseball years, George Scott spent his time collecting pre-1950 television sets and chairing forest preservation charities. Called "Uncle GS" by his nieces and nephews, George Scott never missed a birthday party and always gave the best and most unusual gifts. At his Hall of Fame induction dinner, George Scott's one-time manager repeatedly referred to him as "a prince among men."
Ronnie eventually became the CEO of Cloud Nine Communications and the mayor of Apple. Ronnie was a terrible businessperson because he didn't know how to sell or manage money, but with the guidance of Hope and Faith, his life was prevented from becoming a total mess.
Like his brother, Ronnie lived an exemplary life. Always careful not to create a future angry spirit, Ronnie treated every person he ever met with great kindness and respect, his favorite saying being: "what goes around comes around."
THE END.
###
Excerpt from The Walking Man
A novel based on a true story;
truth being stranger than fiction...
Wright Forbucks
© Wright Forbucks, 2011
All rights reserved.
www.wrightforbucks.com
Chapter One
Pitiful Me
I'm not suggesting everybody should dive head first into the shallow end of a swimming pool, but being a quadriplegic isn't as bad as you might think. Especially if you're fortunate enough to live at Leicester County Hospital, a facility dedicated to the care of the motionless, located in Shyshire, Massachusetts; a town committed to excellence in everything it does.
First of all, in these tough times, you get to live rent free in an air-conditioned building. You're fed three delicious meals each day. Plus, you're cleaned and dressed by nice people who genuinely care about you. Also, if you're lucky, one of Shyshire's many volunteers might read a newspaper to you and inadvertently change your life.
I joined the ranks of the motionless at age sixteen. Unlike many of my stationary brethren, the poor bastards born with horrible birth defects, I had memories of motion: I once rode a bike, tossed a baseball, and chased a 'girlfriend' around a campfire. At my fifteenth birthday party I bowled a two hundred twenty-six; to raise money for breast cancer, I once ran a half marathon, reaching the finish line in ninety-two minutes.
I wish I could tell you my immobility was caused by a motorcycle crash, or even better, a hang-gliding mishap, but unfortunately, unlike many of my paralyzed bedfellows at Leicester County Hospital, violent trauma wasn't the cause of my pathetic condition.
The fact is, long ago, my doctors stopped trying to determine the source of my quadriplegia, leaving me with a medical mystery that's taken me forty years to solve.
4 -- 0.
~
My original diagnosis was Myasthenia Gravis, a disease that generates antibodies that block muscle-nerve connections and causes mild to severe immobility. Like all autoimmune diseases, Myasthenia Gravis happens when a hyperactive immune system destroys something good because it thinks it's something bad. Accordingly, treatment options for Myasthenia Gravis include the use of one or more immunosuppressant drugs, such as Imuran. These pharmaceuticals limit a body's assault on itself but increase the odds of death due to cancer, or a common cold, a trade off my wiseass neurologist once called a 'shit-out-of luck proposition'.
In terms of severity, Myasthenia Gravis is the common cold of neurologic diseases. It's rarely fatal and most often attacks the faces of teenage girls.
MG, as the doctors and nurses call it, is most notable because affected muscles often return to a normal state upon rest. This means, after a day of muscle flexing, MG sufferers look just as pathetic as the unfortunates with MS, Parkinson's or ALS. However, after good night's sleep, they look and feel like a young Burt Reynolds, regardless of their gender.
I still clearly remember the day I was semi-diagnosed as having Myasthenia Gravis. It happened at Massachusetts General Hospital, the best place on earth to be if a rare disease is intent on putting you in the ground before your 'time'.
My initial hospital stays took place in 1971, when the city of Boston, in an attempt to address its racist past, began passing 'corrective ordinances' to make sure people with colored skin got their share of whitey pie. This resulted in Boston's many medical institutions having to hire brown and yellow immigrants, regardless of their qualifications.
That being so, the 'technician' who shock-tested my muscles to determine the cause of my increasing immobility appeared to have been recently imported from a Laotian rice paddy. I say this because she looked Southeast Asian, and I could smell dog on her breath.
The test that my newly entitled American administered was called an electromyography. The electro part of the word, as you may have guessed, comes from the Latin word 'electros' meaning to shock the living shit out of a perfectly innocent human being.
An electromyography tests muscle response to stimulus, i.e., high voltage electricity. The test involves a machine that has a big knob with graduations that go up to eleven, lots of wires attached to skin clips, plus an ink jet printer that spits out results in the form of a line graph. Normally, data generated by an electromyography is difficult to interpret. However, if your output graph looks like a plot of the Dow Jones Average circa 2008, Myasthenia Gravis is the likely cause.
As painful tests go, an electromyography is a five out of ten. But unless you're Sylvester Stallone, it does evoke a grimace. Thus, one would hardly expect a technician to smile while conducting an electromyography, or jump for joy upon reading its results---as was the case when yours truly was shock-tested...
"Glad you're happy, Miss Paddy," I said in a faux upbeat tone. "What's up?"
"Sworry, you have rare disease," she told me. "You've mwade my day. Fwirst time in my cwareer I twested somebody with gweneralized myasthenia gwravis."
"Well, gwood for you," I said, with a hint of racist mockery, being a young and stupid product of an all-white town. "What about me?"
"Sworry," she responded. "You're, what's the American word..."
"Fwucked?"
"Yes, yes, fwucked." She smiled. "You are fwucked."
It was downhill from there. Apparently, my Myasthenia Gravis was different from regular Myasthenia Gravis because once my muscles got 'fatigued' they never returned to a normal state. Three weeks after my electromyography, I did a face plant in the bread isle of a 7-11. Six months later, I had completely lost my ability to move both my arms and my legs. All I could do was open my eyes, breathe, talk, chew, and sing Melancholy Baby.
My first two weeks of complete immobility was spent in the hospital. Then I was transferred to my parents' house. While I'd been away, the insurance company had provided my folks with a used hospital bed, a collection of bedpans, and ten thousand dollars. In exchange, my parents signed a contract in which they agreed to cover the cost of my long-term care. My brother Hal told me my dad said it was the easiest ten grand he'd ever made.
I love my folks, but they weren't exactly MENSA candidates.
My bed was installed in the living room of our modest farmhouse located in Apple, Massachusetts---my hometown. Situated in rolling hills, formed by retreating ice ten thousand years ago, Apple was located about forty miles northwest of Boston. It was home to five thousand people, all white, no missing teeth.
Apple was quintessential New England. Everybody lived by a book of rules and minded everybody else's business. And so, for a couple weeks, I was big news. Cars beeped as they drove by the picture window that framed my view of the world, and the few pedestrians who passed by our house usually stopped and waved, seemingly unaware of my inability to respond.
With the stated goal of buying yours truly a year's supply of adult diapers, a month after I became immobile, my high school held a bake sale for me, reportedly selling a record amount of brownies.
At the student rally following the bake sale, the president of my class, a kid who hated my guts, cried as he informed my ex-schoolmates that my condition was likely terminal, a claim that immediately caused several busy-body mothers to visit me to celebrate my sorry state.
Having grown up in Apple, I realized most of the town's moms desperately needed to witness a tragedy so they could feel good about their own pathetic lives. Thus, whenever a local mother entered my room, I would flap my tongue between my lips, emit a bucket of drool, generate some tears, and then mumble, "Pray for me."
A year into my quadriplegia, the highlight of my non-recovery occurred when my parents made arrangements for me to deliver a 'thank you---hey, I can still talk' speech during halftime of Apple High School's homecoming football game. Dad told me my mother felt 'highly obligated' to acknowledge the outpouring of sympathy the family had received from the townsfolk in response to my tragic condition. He also mentioned family finances and that Apple Motors, our town's sole car dealer, was 'sponsoring' my appearance.
I was driven to Rickford's Field, the town's football stadium, in an ambulance. My driver was a local stoner named Jimmy Something-or-other. I'd met him before. He was the brother of one of my brother Hal's friends. During the ride to my big event, Jimmy told me his life story. He had dropped out of Apple High School because he couldn't handle the 'pressure'. He became a volunteer ambulance driver because his goal in life was to be an EMT so he could pursue his love of carnage.
A mile away from Rickford's Field, twenty bikers---members of Hardcore, Apple's distinctly non-notorious riding club---pulled in front of my ambulance to provide a loud and puttering escort to the football field, where a thousand even noisier fans were waiting to hear my 'acceptance' speech. After a couple slow laps around the track, the Hardcore boys popped synchronized wheelies then sped away, enabling the Apple High School Marching Band to accompany me to the center of the football field, where they played Aerosmith's Walk This Way while Jimmy Something-or-other pulled me out of his ambulance.
To start the festivities, the Mayor of Apple introduced me to the sell-out crowd, lavishing such words as 'hero' and 'inspirational' upon me. When the Mayor ran out of hot air, a slew of local dignitaries presented me with gift baskets and celebrated my courage with brief yet resonating speeches. Finally, after the Apple High cheerleaders commemorated my quadriplegia by lying motionless on the sidelines of the football field, pompoms down, the owner of Apple Motors presented me with a key to a new Honda Civic.
Now, how fucked-up was that?
When it was my turned to speak, it became apparent to all present that the event's organizers had neglected to procure an adjustable microphone stand. The oversight obligated Jimmy Something-or-other to raise the head of my gurney so I could make a discernible thank you speech.
Jimmy was thoroughly unqualified to flip burgers, and so had little chance of adjusting my complex stretcher properly; amid mounting pressure for me to speak, Jimmy panicked and slammed one of his Frankenstein boots into my gurney's adjustment levers. This simultaneously elevated my head and lowered my feet, causing me to promptly sit up, before sliding out of my gurney. I landed face down on the fifty-yard maker with an inelastic thud, hitting the ground like a bag of Jell-O that'd been dropped from an airplane.
You could have heard a pin drop.
After the Mayor---and others---thrice denounced Jimmy Something-or-other over the stadium's public address system, dubbing him a 'fucking idiot', I was rushed to Apple Memorial Hospital where I learned my back was broken---as if it mattered.
I went home later that evening with my booty, no worse for the wear.
~
My years at home were tough. Taking care of a quadriplegic, especially if he's your son is, at best, unpleasant. The relentless nature of the job, no doubt combined with memories of my active childhood, eventually caused my mother to turn to alcohol to get by. In contrast, my condition seemed to have little impact on my dad who, in my twisted mind, remained a less than useful thing.
At first, despite my obvious condition, my family remained optimistic that I would eventually recover, and so did everything they possibly could to treat me like a regular person. At my first Thanksgiving as a quadriplegic, my dad used bungee cords to strap me into a regular chair so I could sit at the dining room table with the rest of the family. Then, during the feast, he kept coming out with things like, "Son, would you please pass the mashed potatoes." To which I would respond, "Daaaad!"
I could never quite figure out whether my father was ashamed of me, or simply delusional, trying to convince himself I was still a regular kid. I say this because he religiously avoided installing the handicap accessories required to support my new 'lifestyle'. He built a portable ramp out of particleboard that he would attach to our front stairs whenever I needed to enter or exit our house; when not in use, he hid it behind some bushes. Instead of purchasing proper shelving for my room, so Mom could quickly assess the state of my supplies: bedpans, diapers, creams, straws, laxatives, etc., Dad insisted on hiding all my stuff in our china cabinet. Even worse, he refused to trade in our Volkswagen Beetle for a handicap van. In fairness, difficulties in inserting me into our tiny car never deterred my father, who devised a multi-step process for sliding me into our VW's front passenger's seat. Unfortunately, the process took twenty minutes and required a mechanical engineering degree to perform.
Unlike my dad, my mom was a realist, so she couldn't deny her pain. After I became a quadriplegic, Mom always tried to serve me with a smile, at least in the beginning, but her cheeks were often wet from crying.
Before I became a burden, my mom was infinitely happy. Perhaps due to the death of her father when she was twelve years old, my mom didn't sweat the details. She knew how to address the needs of her children without being oppressive, allowing my brother and me to grow into the persons we were supposedly meant to be. She was definitely not one of those moms who invented tragic scenarios so she could warn her kids not to break a leg or get an eye poked out. She sought fun, within proper limits, while taking good care of us. We always had fresh food, good clothes, and we went to Disneyworld, or the equivalent, at least once a year. Hal and I were delighted to be Mom's kids.
As a patient, I was too self-centered to notice the signs of my mom's depression, but now they're obvious to me. Mom's slide into oblivion began the minute I was installed in our living room. My first and greatest mistake had been letting Mom give up her world to care for me. She quit her part-time job at the Apple General Store, abandoned her book club and even stopped knitting---her favorite hobby. Within a couple years, the phone stopped ringing, her smiles had subsided, and the humming of show tunes was replaced by sighs of despondency.
During my home stay, difficult incidents were too many to recall; most involved attempts to move me. A typical disaster occurred one day during a summer heat wave when our house lost power, causing the temperature in my room to quickly climb to one hundred degrees. In response, without the help of my brother Hal, who was at the town beach with his buddies, my mother tried to transfer me to my wheelchair on her own. Her objective was to take me outside and cool me down with a garden hose; I'm ashamed to say I was bitching up a storm at the time.
The maneuver required hauling me from my bed and depositing me into my wheelchair, which involved a quick lift, a turn, and then a push. First, my bed needed to be hand cranked to place me in a sitting position. Next, the panel on the receiving side of my wheelchair had to be removed. Then, my wheelchair needed to be locked into position, parallel to my bed. When the setup was complete, I then needed to be snatched under my armpits, lifted, and quickly slid into my wheelchair. The move required both strength and agility. My mother was five foot two inches tall and she weighed one hundred pounds. At sixteen, I was already six foot tall. My nickname prior to my decline was the 'refrigerator'; I weighed more than two hundred fifty pounds.
A few hours into the blackout, a neighbor-townie stopped by to inform us that Apple Light and Power had confirmed that the electricity would be out for most of the a day. Being somewhat a self-centered idiot, I used this information to intensify my demands that Mom move me outdoors, by yelling things like: "Come on, Mah, you can do it... Come on, Mah, you're strong... Mahhhh, you gotta get me outta here... Mah, I'm sweating my ass off... Mahhhh, come on, Mah!"
"I don't know, son," Mother responded. "You're a big boy."
Finally, after a couple hours more of squawking, Mom gave in. She properly set up the bed-to-wheelchair move and then grabbed me my under my armpits and pulled upward with all her might. Amazingly, she actually lifted me out of my bed, but my weight prevented her from executing the follow-on spin move needed to plop me into my chair. Instead, she stumbled backward while pulling me toward her petite body. For a moment that seemed like a year, Mom teetered back and forth under my full weight while releasing guttural moans that suggested she was giving birth. After a couple seconds, Mom started to collapse, so I screamed, "Dear Lord, Maaa! If you drop me I'll die!" In response, Mom somehow mustered the strength to drape me over her shoulder, charge forward, and then slam me into my wheelchair.
In response to Mom's inspired death defying move I said, "Gee, Ma, next time can you pleeeease be a little more careful?"
Mom was too distracted to respond; she'd slipped two discs in her back.
About ten seconds after landing in my wheelchair, the lights came on and the air-conditioning began to hum. Fool that I was, while Mom was still writhing in pain, I said, "Hey, Ma, the power's back! Change my sheets and put me back in my bed."
My mom's back never healed, and I never stopped making demands. I was so concerned about my life support that I never considered the things I could have done to make life easier for her, such as controlling my weight.
During my stay at home, I never once, not for a single second, considered the implications of a walking man's diet on a person incapable of burning an extra calorie. Taste being one of my only remaining sensations, I ate non-stop and constantly demanded food. I could blame Madison Avenue and claim, as a constant TV viewer, I was a victim of Doritos commercials, but that wasn't the case. I ate because it was my preferred way of imposing my existence on others. It was how I said, "Hey, here I am."
The predictable consequence of using food as a means to validate my existence was, quite simply, obesity. Although it's clear to me now that the foremost physical obligation of a quadriplegic is to maintain a minimum body mass, as a teenager I never once considered the consequences of my immense body on others. To me, pounds were life insurance. Sometimes, at night, when I couldn't sleep I would calculate how long I could survive without eating; I estimated if my weight hit four hundred pounds, I could live almost an entire year.
If you can't move, and you're the size of a house, transportation isn't your biggest problem; rather, it's bedsores. Stationary skin, under weight, perceives itself as being injured, so the body's wonderful immune system attacks it, creating potentially fatal skin ulcerations called bedsores. The only way to prevent a bedsore is to constantly move so your body will believe it isn't dead and subsequently calls off its self-destruct mechanisms. As a practical matter, this means that quadriplegics, especially heavy ones, need to be rolled every few hours, or they will die within a month or two. In my home-bound world, this meant at least six times a day---with the help of my brother Hal, Mom had to pull up on my sheets to roll me from one side to the other. I can remember like yesterday, the thousand times I screamed in the dead of night, "Hal, Mom, get your asses out of bed and roll me!"
The only partial mitigation for my inexcusable treatment of my mother during my days of homecare was my age; I was a teenager. And like most teenagers, I was smart enough to be lethal, but stupid enough not to fully recognize the obligations of adulthood. So to my great shame, I considered my mom more of a robot than a sentient human. To me, my mom was put on this earth to serve me. Consequently, as soon as I smelled shit, I called out for a change. And when I was hungry, regardless of the hour, I demanded food. All in all, between the rolling, cleaning, and feeding, an hour rarely passed without me yelling, "Maaaaaaahhhhhhh!"
My demands took their toll.
Four years into my quadriplegia, the care and maintenance of yours truly caused my Mom, a lifelong teetotaler, to reach for the bottle, a decision that eventually led her to experience a breakdown during one of my mid-afternoon feeding sessions.
Every day during my two o'clock 'snack', I ate four Jell-O pudding cups. Since I lacked the muscle power required to execute an aggressive swallow, pudding was my favorite treat. However, spooning pudding into me was a challenging and time-consuming task because most often I would regurgitate a mouthful several times before ultimately swallowing it.
This meant my Mom needed to recapture my rejected pudding while it flowed down my chin, before it ended up all over my chest. The process required an exceptional level of hand-to-eye coordination but, when executed properly, it was a thing of beauty: feed, scrape, scrape, scrape; feed, scrape, scrape, scrape; feed, scrape, scrape, scrape...
On the day of her breakdown, per her usual routine, Mom had lined-up four pudding cups on my nightstand, butterscotch as always, my favorite flavor. My guess was Mom was drinking vodka because I couldn't smell anything on her breath. Regardless, her impairment was obvious; the first scoop of pudding filled both my nostrils causing me to sneeze. My sneeze covered most of Mom's face with brown-yellow emulsion, mostly pudding. In response, Mom went wild, burying my entire face in an inch of pudding until I could no longer breathe.
Fearing imminent death-by-dessert, I somehow mustered the strength required to form a blowhole in my pudding mask, which enabled me to yell, "MOM, WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING!"
In response, without the assistance from my brother Hal, Mom rolled me on my side and stuck my pudding spoon where the sun don't shine. Then, she gave me the middle finger while exiting my 'living room'---never to return. In response, I said something I'll regret forever...
Later that day, my dad informed me that Mom had hurt herself, but she was going to be okay. He then said he would take care of me.
"Son, Mom needed some time away from you," Dad said with tears in his eyes. "You'll see her again soon."
Twenty-four hours later Jimmy Something-or-other showed up and drove me to Leicester County Hospital, one hundred miles west of Apple, just far enough away to make regular family visits impractical.
Chapter Two
Leicester County Hospital
On my back, raised three feet high, and parallel to the ground, my head was immobilized by a 'transport strap', and I could only look up as Jimmy Something-or-other pushed my infamous gurney up the ramp to the main entrance of Leicester County Hospital. I couldn't get a very good look at the place but I saw enough to know the building was big, old, and well kept. From the corner of my eye, I also caught a brief glimpse of the entry landscaping, a lawn that looked like a golf course green and a driveway lined with orange chrysanthemums. The main section of the building was a four-story brick and stone structure. It featured a massive entry archway constructed of large, carved brownstones. The stones were rough hewn yet perfectly interlocked as if they'd been assembled with the help of technologies far more advanced than a hammer and chisel. The building reminded me of the Apple Library, which was constructed right before the Civil War, so I figured Leicester County Hospital had been treating the 'ill' since the mid nineteenth century. I was right; it opened its doors in 1846.
Within minutes of my arrival, I learned to the left and right of the 'old hospital' were two wings. Each wing was fifty yards long, fifteen yards wide, and three stories high. Both structures were identical and housed the functional components of the facility. They were composed of large single pane windows and tan bricks, similar to the bricks Catholics deployed to build parochial schools back when nuns and faith existed. Time and acid rain had randomly oxidized the iron within the bricks, causing varying degrees of hideous brown staining---but this ugliness was more than offset by the wing's windows, which were spectacular.
Originally commissioned to ensure patient privacy, each window at the hospital featured an exquisite etching. On one window there was an Indian Chief on horseback, spear in hand, hunting a buffalo; another depicted a man chasing a child; a third a ballet dancer mid-pirouette. In all, more than one hundred figures in motion adorned the wings of the Leicester County Hospital, home to two hundred fifty-two quadriplegics.
Initially built as a residence for the broke and/or insane, the founding name of Leicester County Hospital was The Leicester County Pauper and Insane Asylum. Located atop a hill that would be have been called Mount Everest in Iowa, the hospital was situated between the Berkshire Mountains and the border of New York State in the small town of Shyshire, Massachusetts, located at the junction of the Wachmacallit and Hossiwhassit rivers.
To white people, Shyshire is most famous for making farmers' boots, otherwise known as 'shitkickers'. To Native Americans, Shyshire is considered holy ground because it was the site of several Indian massacres---settlers slaughtering Indians, not vice-versa.
Leicester County Hospital was sited in Shyshire because Shyshire was the only town in Massachusetts that openly accepted payoffs for welcoming operations nobody else wanted including: insane asylums, nuclear power plants, prisons, chemical plants, and hazardous waste dumps. The town's aggressive zoning practices kept its citizens happily employed while they lived shorter than average lives due to the occupational hazards associated with their work. There weren't a lot old people driving Buicks around the streets of Shyshire, and everybody seemed to like it that way.
When Leicester County Hospital was originally built, much was made of the hospital residents, which included people alternatively described as lunatics or maniacs. Its most famous detainee was Hungry Jack Foster, a fur trapper who chopped up and consumed his family of five during one particularly tough winter.
During the Great Depression, the mayor of Shyshire used the hospital's notoriety to secure extensive public works' funding, which he used to build a ten foot high concrete wall around Leicester County Hospital's three hundred acres. The wall, lovingly referred to as the 'Great Wall' by the people of Shyshire, kept the soup flowing until Shyshire-ites found real work after World War II.
Most of the Great Wall comprised a concrete-gravel mix that was poured during subzero weather, a mistake that eventually caused large sections of the wall to erode, leaving behind a vertical mass of gravel, which was a surprisingly good visual complement to the hospital's rural setting.
The main access road to Leicester County Hospital was also built in the 1930s, though, unlike the Great Wall, it was a beautiful feature. Designed by a German graduate student from Boston University, the road was inspired by a Nazi propaganda film that followed Adolph Hitler's motorcade as it zoomed down an Austrian boulevard. The tree-lined access road featured two extra wide lanes and a median strip containing equally spaced oak trees. Over the years, the branches from the median's oaks had become intertwined with branches from trees that lined either side of the road. The entanglement gradually created a three-mile long natural tunnel that was dark and cool in the summer, causing it to become a destination hiking-trail for the few citizens in Shyshire who wanted to live past sixty-five.
Granite archways capped both ends of the Leicester County Hospital Access Road. Built into each archway were guard posts that were manned twenty-four-seven by a staff of state-paid security guards who for decades had successfully argued that their positions were vital because the hospital's quadriplegics posed a 'severe flight risk'.
In fairness to the guards, the actual facilities of the Leicester County Hospital did include a small minimum-security prison. Also present, was a maintenance facility that housed snowplows and mini vans, vehicles theoretically capable of shuttling multiple quadriplegics to a real hospital should the need ever arise. There was also an ugly steel building used to store sand and salt: the materials required to keep the LCH Access Road passable during the winter months. The structure was a larger version of the buildings adults buy to house an extra car, or keep the family meth lab away from their children.
The Leicester County Correctional Facility was a prison, though not exactly Alcatraz. It was a minimum-security 'detention center' that looked like a Holiday Inn. It was the perfect venue for petty criminals to spend some time before they committed additional petty crimes. The inmates were primarily nonviolent 'offenders', including: embezzlers, check-bouncers, shoplifters, drunk drivers, and guys who failed to pay child support. The prison only housed sixty inmates and security consisted of an evening bed check. Prisoners wore regular clothes with mandatory orange armbands, so non-prisoners would know when to double check their wallets.
No inmate at Leicester County Correctional Facility was doing more that six months, plus the food was great and visitor hours were limited, so there was no major incentive to escape.
The rooms in Leicester County Hospital were built to sleep six crazy people in cots. In the 1950s, when the hospital was renovated to service quadriplegics---mainly returning veterans of the Korean War---each room was retrofitted to house two deluxe hospital beds. The beds were spaced ten feet apart to provide enough room for a body hoist to help patients in and out of bed. The floors were covered with black vinyl tiles, speckled with gray chips. The walls were painted bright white with high gloss enamel. Acoustic tiles composed of cork and asbestos covered the ceiling while three equally spaced hanging fixtures blew high-intensity light upward to enable glare free examination of the room and its contents.
When I first entered Leicester County Hospital, I was surprised to find there was no lobby, or even a front desk. When Jimmy Something-or-other pushed me through the front door of my new lodgings, nobody was present to say hello or stick a needle in my foot to certify my pitiful state.
"Hey, is anybody home?" my man Jimmy yelled. "I got a dude here that can't walk!"
In addition to his mechanical inaptitude and his distinct lack of intellectual gravis, Jimmy lacked sufficient social skills to proposition a stranger, so instead of stopping a nurse to inquire about my destination, Jimmy pushed me through the hallways of Leicester County Hospital for about an hour before a tall and well-dressed woman asked, "May I help you?"
"I gotta deliver this paralyzed dude to somebutty," Jimmy informed her.
The tall woman was Juliette Dritch, the hospital's administrator. Juliette Dritch eventually became one of my heroes, but my first assessment of her was not flattering; she came across as cold and severe. And, I did not like the way she dismissed my clueless driver.
"I'll take it from here, young man," she said to poor Jimmy. "You can go now."
"Me?" Jimmy Something-or-other asked, pointing at himself to clarify any ambiguity. "Yes, you," she said sharply. "Somebutty will return the gurney to your ambulance in a few minutes." She then turned her attention to me. "The man from Apple, I presume."
"Yes," I said.
"Welcome to Leicester County Hospital. Some people say it's not the best hospital in the world. Those people are wrong," she declared without the slightest sign of a smile. "We run a tight ship, and we pursue excellence in everything we do. No task is too small not to be done perfectly. This institution will provide you with the best possible care."
"I'm happy to be here," I responded timidly, intimidated by Juliette Dritch's powerful presence. "Caring for me was driving my mom crazy."
"You're moving into room 302, third floor east," she said with a cough. "Your room gets morning sun. I think you'll like it. Your window bears an etching of a walking man from the Victorian era. We call him Johnny Walker. He has a cane, but he doesn't need it."
"The walking man," I said. "How ironic."
Juliette seemed to entertain responding to my snide comment, but instead she peered at me and said, "Your roommate is a man named Arthur Slank. He's middle-aged, and from Hyannis. We're thinking you'll get along."
"I'm sure we will," I said. "I'm easy-going."
"Excellent," she said, once again without the slightest trace of a humor. "Leicester County Hospital has a strict no move policy," she said soberly. "Once you're assigned a room it is your room, period."
"Sounds a bit strict," I said.
"Not so," she quickly assured me. "If we move one person, everybody will want to move and soon we'll be playing matchmaker to two hundred fifty-two quadriplegics. It would be complete chaos."
"Chaos is bad," I said.
"I'm glad you understand, young man. Individuals often need to make sacrifices for the good of the group," she said. "My staff looks forward to serving you."
"Thank you," I said.
"You're most entirely welcome," Juliette Dritch assured me as she elevated my gurney to a sitting position before pushing me into my room where I was introduced to Arthur Slank, my first of seven roommates.
"Arthur, your new roommate is here."
"Cellmate is more like it," Arthur Slank grunted, without looking at me.
"Arthur can twist his head and has partial use of his left arm," Juliette Dritch said with a noticeable level of disdain. "He can also raise his eyebrows."
"Ain't I the lucky one?" Arthur said.
Arthur Slank looked exactly like Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, but his hair was longer and whiter. My guess was he was fifty, thirty years my senior. His fingernails were yellow. Years of smoking, I figured.
Arthur tilted his head slightly, showing off, no doubt.
"Do you like Tom and Jerry?" he asked me.
"The cartoon?" I responded.
"Of course, the cartoon," Arthur said. "What the fuck do you think I was talking about? You know another Tom and Jerry?"
"No, I guess not."
Juliette Dritch patted my arm. "Don't mind Arthur," she said as she departed Room 302. "He's quite a joker. I have to go now. Nurse Judy will be by shortly to show you around our wonderful hospital."
Arthur attacked as soon as Juliette Dritch departed.
"I swear to God, kid, if you fuck with me, I will kill you," he hissed.
"Really," I said with a wry smile.
"Don't mouth off to me, you fucking punk---as of this minute you are my slave. And I'm your master. Say it!"
"Say what?"
"Master," he said. "Call me your master!"
"You have to be kidding me," I calmly said.
"You think I'm kidding, bitch? Check this out."
Using his one good arm, Arthur extracted a disposable lighter from a mattress crease and sparked a flame to life.
"So you have a lighter," I said.
"Yes, a lighter," he declared, before laughing evil genius-style. "I have the power of fire."
I was beginning to understand.
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