Magnificent Vibration (24 page)

I drive Alice to the Oakwood Apartments (Really? Isn’t that place full of divorced guys, too?) and then aim the Oriental Batmobile for my office.

I enter the Whale’s den with misgivings and my videophone on “record” and peeking out of the top of my T-shirt pocket (yes, I wear T-shirts with pockets). I’m anticipating a megaton outburst the instant I ask for holiday leave—and I am not disappointed.

“You little sucking asswipe,” is his opening salvo after I apologize for showing up late for work, citing the snarled traffic. And then I ask for my due days off. Maybe I could have broached the subject a little more diplomatically, but I am highly stressed from the previous night’s crazy-assed goings-on, so I say, “I haven’t had a vacation since my honeymoon! I know you don’t like me, but I actually couldn’t care less. I would like some days off so I can deal with . . . ah . . . certain issues at home,” I improvise.

He tells me to close his door, and then he turns on me. I think I’m seeing weeks of paid vacation flying through the air every time he opens the biomass infecting his lips.

“I think you and your whore of a goddamn wife are the worst pieces of shit I have ever encountered. I fired her because she wouldn’t fuck me even though she fucked just about every other guy in this
goddamned building. And YOU were totally clueless!! Hahaha! It was fuckin’ hilarious.”

He is definitely on a roll. This has obviously been building in him, and although it hurts, I bear it, keeping the Human Resources folks in mind. And I have done my best to keep out of this guy’s way, but he has zeroed in on me like a heat-seeking missile on a camel fart in the desert.

I’m sure there is a cussword limit to what the human mind can comprehend and mine is certainly breached during his fifteen-minute tirade. All of which is being filmed from my handy-dandy top pocket. At the end of it, baleen spewing from his lactose-tolerant lips, I exit with my hat in my hand, bowing and apologizing, and then, as a parting shot (once I’ve switched the video off), I say, “Got it all on film. Really appreciate the award-winning performance, dickface.”

A dumbstruck look twists his features for a fraction of a second, and then he charges at me as if he means to crush my narrow frame in his gaping, curd-laced maw. I slam the door shut and run for the Human Resources office AFAP (as fast as possible), pretty sure he isn’t running after me. But he does call, as I am playing the video for the older and apparently very by-the-book HR lady who looks on in absolute horror, her mouth hanging open in disbelief. There are cuss phrases I’m sure neither of us has ever heard before, and I have to hand it to him, the guy has a gift. What the hell is a “twatwaffle”?

She answers the HR phone and I hear her say, “Yes, Mr. Cotton is sitting in my office right now.” And then in a delightful piece of theater, she holds the earpiece to my cell phone so the Right Whale can listen back to his own rant as he hits one of his many, many crescendos. His voice is tinny and thin coming through the minuscule phone speaker, but his words are crystal-clear:

“You, you fucking bumblefuck and your ball-gargling douche-canoe of a wife can kiss my Captain Craptastic and his Brown Dirt Butthairs if you think you’re getting any rat-fucking vacation time outta me so you can go holiday on Gayboy Island and suck the love-snot out of young boys’ blue-veined skin-monkeys all day long while your cum-sucking slut of a wife blows the local natives!” Obviously he hasn’t heard that my wife and I are no longer vacationing together.

I must say, this moment is almost worth the years of abuse I have had to put up with. Why didn’t I think of this video thing before? The look on Ms. Human Resources’ face tells me I am most certainly getting my paid vacation days. And that the Right Whale will be appropriately chastised and could even be forced to abdicate his self-vaunted position as sovereign of shitty cinema. And I thought putting cameras in cell phones was a dumb idea when they first came up with it. What do I know?

On my way home in the amazing life-saving Kia, the amazing paid-vacation-giving cell phone chimes to alert me to an incoming message. I grab the superb invention and check it. There is no return or identifying number of any kind and the message simply says,
“Trobhad gu Caledonia.”
Is that even English? And what’s a “Trobhad”?

I look up to see that the cars twenty feet in front of me have stopped at a red light and I absolutely cannot brake in time. I had promised myself I’d never read or write texts while driving! Well, now I know why. But it’s a bit fucking late. The only opening I can see is between the two stationary vehicles at the crosswalk, so I steer wildly in that direction and careen through the gap with a half-inch to spare on either side. A truck, pulling out into the opposing intersection in perceived safety, screeches to a halt as I accelerate and whip the mighty Lamborghini in cheap Asiatic clothing around the front end
of said truck, missing it by an easy half-millimeter or so, and roar to the other side, running two sets of red lights, thank you very much. Miraculously there is no police car nearby to monitor my lucky idiocy, only the blaring horns of fellow motorists eager to tell me what a butt-plug I am. I drive like a stunned mullet for a minute or two, trying to grasp the awful mess I have just avoided.

I say out loud, “Wow, Arthur, was that you?”

My cell phone, still clutched in a death-grip in my sweaty hand, remains silent.

“And what the hell does
Trobhad gu Caledonia
mean?” I add to no one in particular as I speed away, highly embarrassed, from the almost-tragic-accident scene. But there is obviously someone in particular listening because suddenly words appear on the “heads up” display across my windshield, which is strange because there is no “heads-up” display on this model Kia. Nor any model Kia, for that matter. The words read:
NO, THAT WAS JUST YOUR DUMB LUCK, AND I DID NOT SEND THAT LAST MESSAGE. KEEP YOUR EYES ON THE ROAD, IDIOT.

Great, now God thinks I’m an idiot. And who sent the first message?

I drop the phone onto the seat beside me and swear anew never to drive and text again. Unless it’s Arthur. But he seems to have the means to bypass the technology anyway.

I’m still shaking from the near-possibly-fatal car crash, especially given that the front end of the great Kia appears to be constructed of tin foil.

Again, shit happens. Or in some cases, thankfully, doesn’t.

I swing by the Oakwood and pick up Alice and her overnight bag. She looks fresh and revitalized, but I thought she looked pretty great
before too, with her red-rimmed eyes and bed hair. Am I falling in love? Does it happen this quickly? No, it’s probably just Woody messing with me.

She climbs into the car and without a word shows me her cell phone. The screen says
“Trobhad gu Caledonia.”

“Is it from . . .” she doesn’t finish the sentence.

“No, I already asked. Arthur said it wasn’t from him/her,” I answer as if it’s an everyday occurrence, God directly responding to my petty questions. And I have a vague feeling that my life will never be the same after this inconceivable experience we three are involved in.

At this point I don’t know just how prophetic I am.

We speed on, working our way through the discombobulated traffic. The 101 is still closed in the aftermath of the plane crash and now it’s rush hour (whoever named it “rush” hour should be found and whipped). We maneuver our way around it all.

“What’s a
Trobhad
?” is the first thing out of Lexington Vargas’s mouth as we enter my now-crowded bachelor pad. Obviously he got the same message on his cell phone, too, although he never said he
had
a cell phone.

“Is it . . . ?”

“No, it’s not from Arthur,” I say anticipating that his question is the same one Alice had.

And her pale, delicate fingers are already working the keys on my computer looking for the phrase
“Trobhad gu Caledonia”
as I struggle to push away the image of myself, late at night on the very same laptop, searching for free porn to ease my heat. Honestly I can’t wait till I’m seventy and—as Willie Nelson says—I finally outlive my dick, such are the constant interruptions to my life that Woody causes. Focus Cotton, focus.

“It’s Scottish Gaelic. A language that peaked in the ninth to eleventh centuries,” says Alice.

“Can you translate it?” I ask. I’ve often used the English-to-Spanish translator on the spank-a-tron PC to talk to that cuckolding bastard Gabriel, my ex-gardener, who is no longer mowing my lawn but probably still mowing my ex-wife. Again, focus, Cotton, focus.

“I seriously doubt there’s an English-to-Scottish-Gaelic translator,” I venture.

“There’re translators for pretty much any language on the Internet. Latin, Zulu, Yupik, Khmer,” replies Alice.

Okay, I don’t need an English-to-Khmer translator, since I already know how to say “I’m diabetic” in that language, so I am fully good, I think to myself. Honestly, how fucking lame is my job? But how amazing have become its paid vacations!! [First-pumping action inserted here.]

I hear Alice tap, tap, tapping around on the keyboard, and we huddle in to see what she comes up with. Finally, after some false starts and links that take us to weight-loss programs and (blush) porn sites, we strike gold.

“It means ‘Come to Caledonia,’ ” she says at last.

“Where’s Caledonia?” Lexington Vargas speaks for us all.

Alice dives back into the computer and brings up the world-famous and highly informative, though often mistaken, Wikipedia.

Alice and I both exhale in wonder at what we see.

Caledonia, unless Wikipedia is lying to us, is an old Roman name (were the Romans
everywhere
, for crying out loud?) for Scotland.

Come to Scotland. The awesome Urquhart Castle on the banks of Loch Ness poster on the travel agent/magic bookstore’s window leaps into my brain in a sharp mental image.
Come to Scotland.

I ask them if they saw the same poster I did in the travel agent/bookseller’s window last night. They don’t remember.

But it is another call to come to the land of ice, snow, and vast deposits of North Sea oil.

“So, are we all going to Scotland?” asks L.V., sounding almost childlike.

“How can we all go to Scotland? It’s on the other side of the world,” says Alice. “I don’t have that kind of money.”

Having, I imagine, just come off a vow of poverty, I would guess she wouldn’t be exactly rolling in assets. Apart from her stunning looks and burning body, that is. (Wooooodyyyy!!!)

“Wait, wait, let’s think here for a minute,” I say, trying to be rational in this very irrational situation.

“A lot of signs are pointing us toward making this trip to Scotland. And Inverness in particular,” I begin, with some degree of understatement. I look to the inheritance-worthy nun.

“You’ve already had emails from ‘Your faithful servants MacGyver, MacGyver, and MacGyver—about having to show up in person to claim some house and a bunch of fishing tackle or whatever, right?”

“But we don’t know who sent that last text to us. It could have been anybody. Totally unrelated.” Alice is unconvinced. And Arthur’s disavowed it.

“No one in my small circle of friends speaks Scottish Gaelic . . . or Old Roman. No return sender on the text, either. It seems to be from ‘somewhere else,’ though where that is I have no clue, which makes it part and parcel of this whole freaking freak show, wouldn’t you say?” I counter.

Lexington Vargas nods his assent. Alice is staring at the computer
screen, both hands to her face. It’s as if she was contemplating a trip to Pluto.

“I just don’t know,” she whispers. “How would we get there? It just seems so . . . impossible.”

“Haven’t we already gone a little north of ‘impossible’?” says Lexington Vargas with one of his brief, self-restrained moments of clarity and insight.

“How would we get there?” repeats Alice, almost whispering.

We all sit in silence, running all the probabilities through our collective minds. Could I really live the rest of my life in peace without seeing this thing through? I make a decision, grab my wallet, and whip out my MasterCard. I think I hear it whimper like a gutless weasel.

“Let’s max this baby out,” I say with the bravado of someone who is okay with taking on more mountainous debt than he can ever repay and being charged 21 percent interest for the privilege. My credit is totally screwed anyway, thanks to the divorce.

“Something’s going on, and we need to follow it through,” I say decisively, though I’m actually not as convinced as I sound.

“Won’t we all need passports and visas and things?” Alice is resisting with some fair and honest questions.

“I still have my Mexican passport from when my family moved here in the ’nineties. I renew it just in case anything goes down in the States and I need to get out of Dodge,” says L.V.

“You came here legally?” I ask. Really, is there no end to my prejudice? Lexington Vargas again takes no issue with my ignorance, but he does smile.

“My father was a pretty famous guy,” is all he says.

“I have mine too,” answers Sister Alice. “We needed to be ready in case of missionary work. I think it’s still good.”

Mr. Gung-ho-let’s-all-go-to-Scotland-tomorrow is the only one without a passport.

“Okay, I guess I’ll have to get one,” I say meekly.

I hear Alice’s flying fingers again as she pulls up a government website. She is SLAMMIN’ on this thing. And I thought its main function was to help lonely guys get a restful night’s sleep.

“You can get one in five to seven days, according to the Department of State’s website,” says Alice.

I want to go sit in the Kia and ask Arthur if this is the right move or not. Pretty sure the “heads up” display no longer exists in my rent-a-car.

I pull out my cell and hit “redial” on the West Virginia number. It rings twice and a smarmy voice recording says, “Sorry, Charlie,” and disconnects. We are on our own again.

“Looks like we’re going to Scotland,” I announce like a dad to his kids on spring break.