Just a Couple of Days (23 page)

THE BOOK O' BILLETS-DOUX

 

77
And so we returned uneventfully to the observation lounge. Upon entering, we were greeted with the sight of Tynee leaping across the sofa from Miss Mary. He moved with the speed and grace of a hobbledehoy adolescent nearly caught
stealing third base, and landed in a sitting position as awkward as a hypertensive attempting a yoga posture. His back, along with other parts of his anatomy, was erect, and he sat frozen with one hand on his knee and the other across his chest. He turned to us only after some seconds had passed, as if he had just then noticed our arrival.

“Hello!” He tried to imitate pleasant surprise as he stood up stiffly. Miss Mary still had not turned to acknowledge our presence. Instead, she was fumbling with her lighter, trying to light a cigarette.

General Kiljoy wagged his finger at Tynee, shaking his head in mock disapproval at their bumpery. “Hello indeed,” he said, causing Tynee's ridiculous pretensions to evaporate as fast as the cryogenic helium from the golf cart, and leaving him with an expression more timorous than that of an ochlophobic who suddenly and inexplicably finds himself naked and on third base at the World Series opener with a hundred thousand drunken sports fans pointing at him and guffawing. “Your fly's open,” General Kiljoy added mercilessly.

“Greetings, gentlemen.” Miss Mary stood and casually exhaled a lungful of poison in our direction. “How was your tour, Doctor?” She exuded a supreme nicotine confidence.

“Good,” I answered, not at all meaning it, and not at all sure why I said it. Tynee struggled with his zipper.

“Wonderful,” Miss Mary continued with her preposterous pleasantries.

General Kiljoy sighed impatiently at the fatuity of the situation. “What's happening with the subjects?” He walked toward the observation window and turned on the audio, drawing our party's attention there as well. Blip, Brother Zebediah, and
Manny were sitting around the table, catching yawns from one another, and looking exhausted but slaphappy. Apparently, they had been laughing for the entire duration of our absence. The topic of their conversation had not changed.

“What?” Brother Zebediah asked. “What are you talking about?”

“When I came in you were saying ‘receive him today, sinner,' to Manny, right?”

“‘Receive him
today
, sinner!'” Manny imitated, giggling and smiling.

“Who?” Brother Zebediah asked, confused.

“Yes. Who do you want him to receive?”

“Him?” Brother Zebediah pointed to Manny. “Receive
him
today?”

“Aooww!” Manny said, massaging his cheeks. “Goddamn, man. I think I sprained my face.”

“Is that what you meant?” Blip continued.

“When did I say this?”

“What are we talking about?” Manny, still trying to wipe the smirk off his face, entered the conversation. No one answered immediately, and an awkward silence ensued.

“Him?” Brother Zebediah pointed at Manny after a few moments.

“That's what I'm trying . . . ,” Blip replied, looking exasperated. “What is this ‘him' you keep referring to?”

“Never mind.” Brother Zebediah attempted to swat the confusion away as if it were a cloud of no-see-ums. “Just never mind.” They fell into silence once again, each appearing to be lost in their own thoughts. Brother Zebediah fidgeted uneasily, rubbing his nose, perhaps wishing he could duck out of sight for
a quick pick. In an effort to maintain a lack of expression, his face bore a grimace that would frighten the horns off a demon. “It's not my fart, you know,” he said abruptly, but neither Blip nor Manny paid him any heed. “Fault,” he immediately corrected himself. “It's not my
fault
.” He brushed frantically at his ear, as if a mosquito had flown into it.

Blip and Manny were absorbed in other things. Manny was massaging the cramped muscles in his face, still grinning as if he were trying to see all his teeth in a mirror. Blip, meanwhile, was leaning back in his chair, hands behind his head, lower lip pursed, thinking. His eyes were unfocused, or rather, were focused inward, and periodically, as his thoughts bore fruit from some tree he'd been irrigating with his stream of consciousness, he raised his eyebrows and smiled. The fruit was sweet, but also tart, like a firm plum, and his smile was the smile of an aesthete. It was accompanied by a pucker playing a sassy bass line with his lips and a sunny squint twanging a cheerful banjo with the crow's feet of his eyes, and his foot was a-tappin'.

 

78
People do not tap their feet. Feet are tapped. Passive voice. To say people tap their feet implies some sort of conscious activity. Foot tapping is not willed, or if it is, it isn't in rhythm. You may try to will your feet to stop tapping, but this is never successful for long, and soon your feet are tapping away even more furiously than before. Thus, the foot of Blip was tapping. This was not terribly unusual for him. He was forever pulsing with some cadence or another. His grade school teachers undoubtedly tried to embarrass him into sitting still by asking him if he had ants in his pants, but they never had to tell
him to shake a leg. When he got really stimulated by a discussion, he was liable to get up and tap-dance around your sombrero. What made this particular foot-tapping situation significant, however, is that the feet of Brother Zebediah and Manny were tapping as well. Moreover, they were in perfect time with Blip, although none of them seemed to be aware of it.

“I love when women wear makeup,” Manny said dreamily. “How 'bout you, Zachariah?”

“I think Mr. Fancy-Pants Professor wears makeup.” Brother Zebediah, beginning to perk up, leered at Blip. “Look at his hair. He looks like a girl.”

“Girls are cool,” said Blip. “Besides, Jesus had long hair.”

“Jeyzus most certainly did not have long hair, you homo, and he definitely wasn't a vegetarian!”

“Vegetarian?” Blip looked at Manny, then back at Brother Zebediah. “What?”

“Do I have to spell it out for you, you ho-mo-sex-u-al?” Brother Zebediah's pious energy was fast returning. “Doesn't work, does it?” He gestured broadly with his arms, pointing his index fingers, apparently intended to represent erect penises, toward each other.

Manny suddenly sneezed three times in a row, only momentarily interrupting their synchronous foot tapping.

“A triple,” General Kiljoy quipped, nudging Tynee.

“God bless you,” said Blip.

“Oh no!” said Brother Zebediah. “God can't spare a blessing for someone who doesn't even know how to wear a hat.” He pointed to Manny's cap, which was purposefully turned around. “Hey,” he addressed Manny directly. “You got your hat on backwards, son, must mean your head's not on straight.”

“Zachariah was a bullfrog,” Manny sing-songed.

“The name is
Brother Zebediah
.”

“I think it's
Jeremiah
was a bullfrog,” Blip added.

“Ribbet, ribbet,” Manny taunted Brother Zebediah, flapping his elbows as if he were imitating a chicken.

Brother Zebediah ignored Manny's mockery and turned back to Blip. “You!” he said. “You said, ‘God bless you!'”

Blip nodded affably. “I did.”

“I love sneezing,” said Manny.

“I didn't expect you to admit that you believe in God,” Brother Zebediah said to Blip.

“I'm not talkin' 'bout weak wheezes,” Manny continued, addressing no one at all.

“Maybe you shouldn't have any expectations,” Blip replied to Brother Zebediah.

“I'm sayin' strong sneezes,” Manny persisted with his soliloquy. “Now that's what pleases.” All three tapped out a punch line.

“It pleases Jeyzus to know that you believe in Him.”

“Please us Jesus?” Manny rhymed. “Sneeze us Jesus?”

“Whatever,” Blip yawned. “All you've got to do is be honest and kind. How's it go? ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God?'
⁷
I've always liked that sentiment.”

“Read on, false prophet! On judgment day, Jeyzus will rebuke those who think they've served Him, saying, ‘Depart from Me, ye that work iniquity.'
⁸
That's
the conclusion of the semen on the mount.”

“Semen on the mount?” Manny spoke loudly. “Semen on the mount? Did'ja hear that, Doc? Semen on the mount!” Blip nodded and chuckled in weary but unflagging amusement.

“Blasphemy!” Brother Zebediah stammered, mortified. “Your evil is unspeakable!”

“Don't try to blame me, Brother. You said it. You said ‘semen on the mount.'”

“I said no such thing!” Brother Zebediah insisted, reddening from embarrassment or anger. “I said
sermon
on the mount.”

“No, not quite. You said ‘semen on the mount.' That's exactly what you said.” Manny rocked back and forth in his chair, uncontainably delighted at Brother Zebediah's slip of the lip. “I can see where your mind is at. You
still
enjoy lookin' at women in a sinful way. Semen on the mount. Hoo-wee! Yeah! Right on! Semen on the mount. Semen on the mount. You're blushin', Brother. If your mouth was a semi, a runaway truck ramp on the interstate couldn't've slowed you down a few minutes ago. Now you've hit a roadblock. Semen on the mount.”

Blip leaned forward and posed a riddle. “What do you call a rerun of the semen on the mount?”

“A rerun of the semen on the mount,” Manny repeated. “What do you call it?”

Blip made the sign of the cross and grinned. “The second coming.”

 

79
There was a tangible beat after Blip's heretical punch line, followed immediately by the uproarious laughter of everyone present, Brother Zebediah included. The studio audience chuckled as well, though our laughter was quick to fade. Blip, Brother Zebediah, and Manny, however, continued to laugh far past the point of lethargy. After several minutes, their fatigue finally subdued their hilarity, and they sat about in lassitude.

“Here's something interesting.” Blip abruptly stood up after a few minutes had passed and began addressing the mirror. He was trying to look at us but was instead lecturing the bottle of Wild Turkey behind us on the bar. “Language is a piss-poor attempt at telepathy is what it is. We try to put our thoughts in each other's heads through language.” He laughed and yawned, but continued talking through them both, making his voice high and strained. “But half the intended meaning gets lost in the transmission, and the other half is filtered through existing assumptions. Everything is a half truth!”

“He's mad,” Brother Zebediah declared, looking woefully at Blip, whose feet were tapping like an insecticidal maniac on an anthill.

At that remark, Blip pivoted on his heels and pointed victoriously at him. “See!” He drew close to Brother Zebediah. “That's the whole problem! You can't understand me through the smog of your presumptions and prejudices. Multiply that six billion times and you'll begin to understand the desperation of our global situation.”

 

80
Evening was falling, though it was as graceful and subtle as a wink from a figure skater. The fiber optic cable tips that had been piping in lumens and lumens of Indian summer sunshine all day were now fading considerably in their intensity. The room dimmed further when General Kiljoy caused the curtains in front of the observation window to hush together, and it became indisputable that the near side of twilight was upon us.

“That's the last you'll see of your friend until your work is finished, Fountain.” General Kiljoy walked over to where I was
leaning on the bar. I had moved from the sofa to the bar in order to stand in Blip's line of sight, so I wouldn't have to watch him lecture at a liquor bottle. I entertained a fleeting notion of kicking General Kiljoy in the shins as he stood before me juggling his jalopy, but did not follow through with it. In retrospect, that was probably fortunate, since it conceivably may have set into motion an entirely different sequence of events than the ones you are soon to read. As it turned out, he was wrong anyway. I would see Blip again just after the far side of twilight tonight, in less than an hour.

The cellular phone built into Tynee's remote control buzzed, and after taking the call, he strode over to the bar as well. “General, my presence as university president is required immediately upstairs.”

“Required?” General Kiljoy turned to Tynee. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“Some students are trying to throw an illegal Halloween party tonight on the Green.”

“Halloween party? Why should I give a jack-o'-lantern's shit about a Halloween party?”

“It's not me. The board of trustees has banned the party. I was only to be contacted to manage a crisis. I'm expected to be there. It's part of the role of university president.”

“Oh fer cryin' out loud,” General Kiljoy snorted. He paced to and fro, temperamentally twiddling his tiddlywinks. Abruptly, he paused, smirking wickedly. “Give me a minute. I need to use the john.”