November 7 2006 - Chapter 5.01
This has been edited to reflect the new chapter numbering.
So, a little too long between posts, but I was on vacation and then I brought home an airplane cold. But I'm on the mend, and after writing a quick gloss on Washington DC's lack of voting rights for my friend Natalie Bovis-Nelsen at The Liquid Muse I really have no excuse not to post my own work.
My last post has had some serious surgery - I realized it's two separate scenes, so all the stuff about the psychic message-board is getting its own scene later in the chapter. Here's the current start of the same chapter, which is starting to take shape.
Michael went out on a Saturday in the middle of May, his first night out in ... he didn't know when. A while. When he had received Patricia's e-mail on Thursday he had accepted by phone, and after leaving her a message had called her again later to make sure he spoke to her in person. He had been conscious of making a point, of a sense of occasion, like shaving or putting on dressy clothes.
For all his anticipation it was just an open-mike night at a bar in the Mission. Patricia had organized the group to support her brother Allan, whose band had dissolved acrimoniously over sharing the cost of gasoline. Now he hoped to exchange bass for solo guitar and vocals. When he got to the stage, late in the evening and with a third of Patricia's posse more attentive to the foosball table, he offered three lame folky cover songs in a weak reedy voice and hamhanded basic chords, not unlike most of the dully sincere performers. Patricia brought more energy to her applause and remained silently cross the rest of the night.
For Michael however the evening was a success. No sneezing fits, not even when the smokers returned from outside with their stink, and the whiff of chlorine in the ice-waters he drank hadn't upset his stomach. He went to bed in a good mood.
He slept late Sunday morning. In the dream he had on waking, he stood before a warlord he served in some future post-apocalyptic America, collapsed into tribes. Around him in the hall -- really a large teepee of carbon-fiber fabric, once part of the roof of Denver Airport -- the warlord's grimy soldiers fidgeted with the straps of their laser-sighted rifles while Michael presented his case. He argued that the warlord needed to provide services for the people. Moderate power to consolidate power, Michael told him. Create a market to support your military and industry.
The warlord, who was old and looked old, wore a fur cloak over a crisp but faded blue uniform. Michael wondered what it had been once. Repairman? Security guard? Now it was imperial finery. The warlord winced. You want me to give laws, the warlord said, but I broke laws. If I respected laws I would now be nothing, and someone else would rule instead of me.
Dream Michael pleaded, some clever clichˇ about giving people the justice the warlord himself had never... whatever, thought the Michael having the dream, already bored. He looked restlessly around the smoke-stained tent and finally up, through the jerry-rigged skeleton of charred metal and wood. The open point of the cone above him looked like a biohazard symbol, glowing brown translucent. It reminded him of something. Then, gone.
Eleven twenty-three. The room was uncomfortably warm from morning sun. He smelled dust protesting the sunlight, a lazy burnt-plastic smell swirling like milk in coffee. The heat had woken him quickly, for he stank only faintly of vinegar sweat. Above him the pipes in the ceiling knocked a slow rhythm, expanding away from the hot water left over after Denise's shower. Usually the water noise alone would wake him. He got up and turned on the ceiling fan while he yawned long and loudly. He thought of his dream, something out of his adolescent science-fiction books. He wondered where they were now. He had a strange urge to find them and read them again. It had been a while since he'd read a book.
Life was easier, Michael had learned, if he cleaned his nose and mouth thoroughly three times a day. He brushed his teeth with natural fennel toothpaste (a taste he still disliked, but with less aftertaste than the potent mints and saccharin of the commercial brands) and rinsed saltwater through his nostrils twice with a neti pot. As he did so he recalled the evening and was again pleased. He'd talked a bit with Gita, a short elegant brown woman in dark jeans and a black fake-leather vest. As people moved around the table during the evening, they'd wound up in the same conversations more often than not.
They had sat together during the night's one distinctive performer, a young white man, teenager-thin and tan, in a blue thrift-store suit with wide lapels, his bleach-streaked black hair swept up into a crest befitting a king of birds. His only instrument was a snare drum and brushes. On the drum's post he'd mounted a large round sign styled like those in the bass drums of 1960s pop bands -- HUGH MANATEE, in colorful blobby letters. Everyone instinctively grew quiet for him, and he didn't disappoint, singing light-hearted catchy songs with doggerel lyrics over fast rhythms. Michael remembered one verse, from the song Gita had liked best:
Fishes make love in the ocean
Fishes make love in the sea
In silver moonlight fish love
You swam up to me
Gita had swayed her shoulders in little circles, hips shifting on the chair, head bobbing to the beat. Michael had read an article online claiming that dance had evolved for men to show women their fitness. He didn't believe it. Only women looked good dancing, and Gita better than many. He resolved to get digits from Patricia, which would be three kinds of tedious but worth the effort.
He tried whistling the song while he dressed and found an approximation by the time he went downstairs. Denise was in the living room, bleary-eyed, watching television. She wore stained clothes for working, loose jeans and a white long-sleeved shirt. "Hey."
"Hey there," she said. "You slept late."
"You went shopping." The usual smells of coffee and clay (some coffee still, a French roast starting to burn on the warming plate) had been replaced with a riot of plant and dairy odors. His sense of smell took some surprise out of life, draping the world with subtitles and help balloons.
"Good job, Supernose." She tapped the spacebar on the wireless keyboard to pause the video. "I was over at Ferry Plaza helping Jim with his stand. Decided to splurge for tonight's dinner party. Go check it out. They had great eggplant."
Despite the preview Denise's shopping cheered him, lively colors and aromas spread across the counter like a giant toy xylophone. Giant orange and tiny yellow tomatoes, small red bell peppers, purple and jade baby lettuces, wrist-thick leeks. Eggplant, celery, brussels sprouts, baby cucumbers, sprigs of basil and oregano and a sparsely-leaved plant that was new to Michael. Purslane. It had a moist nutritious scent, like vitamins after gentle rain. He hefted the larger vegetables, felt their wet and waxy skins, opened the lids on tubs of goat cheese and tofu. It made him giddy.
He poured himself the last of the coffee and filled the rest with soymilk to cut the burnt taste. From the television he heard applause and laughter, too loud for a Sunday morning show. A loaf of pumpernickel sat in the open breadbox in a clear plastic bag dotted with tiny holes. He could smell it, dark and caramel, and when he picked up the loaf he was surprised it wasn't warm. Unthinkingly he opened the bag and ate a slice. The bread was light, a fine foam like a head of stout beer, with tiny crystals of salt that boiled dryly on his tongue like carbonated childhood candies. He tasted yeast and another faint bitterness, like coffee grounds, a balance to the sweetly roasted sugars. He allowed himself another slice, and when that was finished he took a third. It was heavenly.
"Your recording thing is turning me into a TV junkie," Denise said, walking into the kitchen. "All these late-night shows --" She stopped and looked at him crossly. "Michael, what the fuck?"
He'd eaten half the loaf.
"I'm sorry," he said, his mouth full. He swallowed and brushed the dark crumbs off his chest. "I don't know, it just smelled so good. I couldn't stop."
Denise shook her head. "You're so weird."
"I'll replace it."
"Better get going then. The market closes at one today." She described where her preferred bakery's stand was. "They're the only ones with pumpernickel. You better hope they still have it."
He jogged upstairs, where the ceiling fan wobbled more loudly and scary than usual. He imagined returning to a room wrecked by a thrown blade and turned it off. He picked up last night's shirt but somehow it had a faint stink of smoke.
He threw it in the hamper. The t-shirt on top of the pile unfolded into fake lavender. Better than cigarettes. He grabbed his messenger bag.
Denise was back in the living room now, and saw him get his front bicycle wheel from the closet. "You want to take my car?" she called. "That way you can shop for yourself too."
He started to say yes and opened the door. The day was bright and inviting. He considered. A car meant traffic lights and parking. "No, I'll be all right," he said, fishing his earphones from the bag's front pocket.