Magnificent Vibration (17 page)

“It’s called a glioblastoma multiforme. It is, unfortunately, the most aggressive form of brain cancer, and it occurs predominantly in young people,” is what we hear from him.

He points to a series of cranial MRI’s on the desktop of a computer sitting to the side of his hard oak desk. We’d all missed these when we
came in, such is our collective state of mind. The soft-tissue outline is so obviously my sister’s face that I audibly gasp. There is a diffused white mass at the base of her skull.

“What we are seeing here is a stage-four tumor on her brain stem. Our options are pretty limited at this point, I’m afraid.”

“What are the options?” I manage. I assume my mother’s in shock.

He looks to her to see if this is her question also. She nods silently, sadly. He seems to be a regular guy who is just doing his best to deliver this awful news, but we’ve already been set up to expect some “options.” Like there will be a couple of reasonable choices.

He takes a breath. “Honestly? I would suggest that you take Josephine home and make her as comfortable as possible,” is the first “option” he offers.

“That’s it?!!” I respond, maybe with a little too much energy for the small room. He shifts in his seat ever so slightly and I sense that I’ve made him more uneasy.

“Well, we could try chemotherapy and that might add a few weeks, perhaps even a few months to her life, but it would certainly make her quite sick and with a relatively insignificant result,” he says. “Truthfully, I don’t think it’s worth it.”

We sit there in silence, trying to grasp the death sentence he has just delivered.

“How long does she have?” My voice sounds far away to me, and I think I’m just parroting a line I heard in some movie, but it’s the only thing I can think to say. And it
feels
like a movie we are all in. Where the worst that could possibly happen, does.

“At best, I’d say three to six months.” He has a gentle and understanding expression on his face and his eyes are kind, but the words hit us like a hammer blow.

So we will go from four Cottons to two Cottons in a matter of half a year.

“Sho mom love smile,” our girl blurts out into the quiet room. And I begin to think she understands more than I suspected.

I wrap my arm around her. She rests her sweet head on my shoulder. I try really hard not to cry.

I
n the small, ancestral law offices of McGivney, McGivney, and McGivney in the city of Inverness, where the shelves are overstuffed with the myriad of paperwork and legal volumes that are the necessary evils of the profession, the shrill ring of a phone pierces the quiet. Weak afternoon sunlight filters in through four-hundred-year-old windows that looked upon this same room when Shakespeare was a contemporary playwright. They distort the light, creating diffused shadows and imbuing the furnishings with muted edges. Clive McGivney rises and answers the phone, his voice colored with a warm Scottish burr. He listens and grunts a short, satisfied reply, then sets the phone back in its cradle. Turning to his father, who is sitting across the room, he shouts for the benefit of the old man’s rapidly declining auditory faculties. “Dad, they think they’ve found Devin Young’s kid in the United States. Apparently it’s a lass named Alice.”

“T
hen get the gun out of my face,” says Lexington Vargas, reasonably enough.

“Dude, there’s no need to threaten us. Really,” I add, shooting
furtive looks in the rearview mirror at gonzo Gorgeous George, who still has the large weapon pointed at the large man’s large head.

“I am here to help,” Merikh repeats as if it were a mantra.

I slow the muscular Kia, the Rolls-Royce of the Korean auto industry, down to a stop at an intersection as the light changes from green to yellow to red. The rain has subsided a little but it’s still a downpour.

“If you really mean us no harm, then put the gun down. Please. I’m not going to the cops, I promise.” Again I am trying the role of negotiator on for size. I must be getting better at it because Merikh slowly lowers the angst-inducing firearm until the business end is no longer aimed at its former and sizable target. He looks skittishly at Lexington Vargas, as though trying to judge if this is the right move or not. Then he puts the gun back inside the brown leather jacket from which it first appeared.

It’s the right move for us but possibly the wrong one for him, because L.V. is suddenly all over him like a cheap suit, wrestling Merikh for the now-concealed weapon, accompanied by grunts and much seat-kicking. Alice, bless her heart, starts whacking the handsome intruder with a small, balled-up fist, inflicting limited damage I’m sure.

The door nearest Merikh abruptly flies open and he is unceremoniously shoved out of the car and onto the roadway by way of Lexington Vargas’s substantial foot. The fact that he got it all the way up to Merikh’s chest in the first place, restricted by the confines of this tiny car, impresses the hell out of me. He reaches over and yanks the door shut, wrenching the whole interior side panel off in the process. Okay, it’s a puny car, but it still saved our lives—and it seems to be doing it again as L.V. yells, “Go man, GO! Let’s get the fuck away from this guy, excuse my language, Miss.”

He is a gentleman to the end.

I gun the Kia’s hamster and we roar through the red light at a hair-raising twenty-one MPH. Mercifully, because of the late hour, there is no intersecting eighteen-wheeler there barreling through to smash us to smithereens. Merikh is already up on his feet and running after the car just like the damn T-1000 robot in
Terminator 2.
He’s shouting something, but it’s inaudible to us over the hamster’s heavy breathing.

Inch by anxious, nail-biting inch, the Kia pulls away, and once again this impressive Asian automobile delivers us from possible annihilation.

I watch in the side mirror to see if Merikh whips out the gun to take a pot-shot at our retreating, slightly rumpled butt, but he does not. I turn my eyes back to the road as our brawny Kia gobbles up the highway.

“That’s so weird,” says Lexington Vargas, looking back at the fast-disappearing figure on the street.

“Yeah, totally,” I agree. “What a nutjob.”

“No, I mean . . . I couldn’t find the gun. It was nowhere on him.”

“Is it on the backseat . . . or the floor?” asks Alice.

“No,” says our giant friend and bodyguard.

“Where did he put it?” I’m having a hard time with this now, too.

“He didn’t ‘put’ it anywhere. I think it disappeared.”

I give Alice that “WTF” look you see on kid-actors’ faces in bad teen TV sitcoms and then suggest to our small group that, since it would now be a logistical nightmare to get Lexington Vargas to La Crescenta due to the exploding plane, and if Alice is good with it (please God, please oh please!) maybe we should all crash at my place so we can discuss what, if anything, we should do now about our curious coming-together, it being the weekend and all.

L.V. is only too happy to finally find a bed now that his own has been rendered fairly inaccessible, but Alice hesitates, understandably.

“It’s cool if you want to go back to your own place,” I offer unconvincingly as I ease on the brakes in anticipation of changing course yet again.

“I don’t think I want to be alone right now,” says Alice. “And since we’ve all been through this weird night together, it’s probably a good idea to circle the wagons at your place.” (Insert “smiley face” re: Alice.)

I turn the proud Kia toward the part of town that harbors my divorcee’s home-away-from-home and put the pedal to the rodent. The Kia fairly hums in agreement.

Alice is dialing a number on her cell phone (nuns have cell phones?!) and I hear a thin, faint, scratchy voice say, “What is the nature of your emergency?” I realize she’s dialed 911.

“We picked up a guy in our car and he pulled a gun on us,” Alice says breathlessly.

Scratchy voice in the earpiece.

Alice answers, “No, we pushed him out and drove off.”

Scratchy voice again.

“I don’t know. I wasn’t really paying attention to the street names.” Alice turns to me. “Where were we when we kicked him out?” she asks.

“Yeah, I was kind of focused more on the gun, too, and the fact that he might possibly blow my brains out the side of my head,” I answer.

“Somewhere on Barham. Before the studios. I was a little busy, too,” answers the ever-cool Lexington Vargas.

Alice relates what little information we have. Then she adds, “Wait
a minute! What am I thinking? He’s one of the people from the airplane that crashed on the freeway tonight. He came down an evacuation slide and got into our car. That should help you locate him. It didn’t look like there were very many people who got out before the plane exploded,” she continues.

“Funny what small details escape you when someone points a gun in your face,” I say with no slight irony. Self-preservation comes first, right? But Alice isn’t listening to
me.

“What?” she says into the phone. There is an odd note to her voice.

Scratchy, barely audible voice.

“But we saw him jump out of the plane. It happened right in front of us.”

Scratchy voice again.

“Are you sure?” asks Alice.

Scratchy voice one final time.

“No, no never mind. I’ll go in and file a report tomorrow,” she finishes and disconnects the call, looking a bit lost.

“What’d they say?” I ask.

“She said all the news channels are reporting that there
were
no survivors,” is what Alice answers.

We drive on through the wee hours, all our minds working overtime, trying to make sense of all of this or glean some understanding, or at the very least wake up from this
non compos mentis
freak of a dream.

I run a second red light just to be sure we further distance ourselves from the whacko, Merikh. Or ghost of Merikh; whatever he is. Alice lets out a shriek. “STOP!”

“Shit!!” I answer because she scares the hell out of me. But I have
obediently slammed on the brakes again, thinking, “Jesus, not another airplane.” But there are no more crash-landing jets in our future, at least not tonight.

“Go back and turn right down Fairfax,” commands Alice.

“Why? My apartment’s
this
way, on Sunset.”

Alice holds up her copy of
Magnificent Vibration.

“The bookshop where we all got these is just down the street.”

“Pretty sure it’s not going to be open at three o’clock in the morning,” I reply. I’m tired, so the heat I’m feeling for Alice is tempered somewhat by the late hour. A look from her, however, convinces me to come to my senses.

“But hey, let’s check it out,” I add, literally and figuratively turning on a dime.

“Maybe we’ll learn something.” I spin the wheel and head the Kia in the general direction of Fairfax High School.

We are already in the neighborhood, and we arrive at our destination a few minutes later. I think this is time well spent as I eye the outlines of the sizzling nun’s thighs through her skirt. Woody, not now. Please! Jesus!

I park in one of the metered spaces that—at this late hour—isn’t occupied by a car full of rapists, drug dealers, or couples innocently making out and waiting to be the next victims of the Westside Slasher. The scarce-as-hen’s-teeth Los Angeles rain has started to fall a little heavier again, but we all exit the Kia and head to the bookstore where we all bought (or stole)
Magnificent Vibration
“Discover your true purpose.”

Not surprisingly, considering the way the night has generally gone, we can’t find it. The building that we all concur housed the missing bookstore sports a sign announcing that it is now a travel agency!

FAIRFAX GLOBETROTTERS

Your partner in travel for 35 years.

The “35” looks pasted in, as though it’s been added at some point to update the claim.

The shabby marquee and general design of the store add credence to the boast that this business has indeed operated here for the advertised three decades plus. We all stand there staring in slightly jaded awe as if the bookstore will suddenly materialize before us like some genie from a bottle if we just psychically rub the fucker hard enough.

It doesn’t.

And we are getting soaked to the skin. Alice wears it well. Lexington Vargas and I, not so well.

The shop is very bare-bones. I peer through the be-dusted window. In the relative interior gloom I can make out two desks, some chairs, and a set of shelves housing a selection of books—but none of them look like
our
book.

“Figures,” says Lexington Vargas.

“This is freaky,” breathes Alice.

“You mean compared to the
rest
of the night?” I reply, and yes, my tone is somewhat sardonic.

If Alice hears me, she doesn’t respond.

As we head, wet and weary, back to the car, I turn to look one last time just to make sure we didn’t miss anything in our present, highly tweaked state. I notice a single travel poster taped to the agency window that I guess I’d missed before.

“COME TO SCOTLAND,” is all it says, and I’ll be damned if the photo isn’t of Urquhart Castle, perched on a low hill overlooking Loch
Ness. Somewhere inside me I am still the twelve-year-old boy who loves monsters. Especially
that
monster.

“Fuck me,” I exclaim softly. I am, of course, referring to the whole night, as well as to the serendipity of seeing this awesome poster in the window, but I may also be projecting and referencing something a little more intimate and unholy, considering I just accidentally touched Alice’s fairly soaked-through butt as she got into the Kia via the door I am holding open for her.

Thankfully, Lexington Vargas is already in the car and out of earshot because he’d probably beat me to a bloody pulp for swearing in spitting distance of a nun, now that he knows she is indeed a cross-carrying member of the sisterhood. Alice has already shown a proclivity for the occasional cuss-word herself and doesn’t seem to mind my lapses. It being the extraordinary evening it has been, I think she’d agree—although she may not be quite so on board with my secondary, more intimate meaning. I don’t know. I
have
caught her looking at me. Sideways glances when there hasn’t been a giant anthropoid blocking our path, a plane crashing, or a gun being held to our collective heads by an extraordinarily lovely madman. Maybe she’s wondering why I wear my hair so long. Unless she’s already caught sight of the twin sidecars I jestingly refer to as my ears, and put it together.