Nine Kinds of Naked (17 page)

“Why don't you get your own car? You probably could have bought half a used car with the money you left back there.”

Billy Pronto shrugged. “Resources are easy to come by if you understand the nature of the universe.”

Diablo laughed. “And the nature of the universe would be?”

“You either know it or you don't. I can't explain it. It's right in front of everyone.”

Diablo paused. “So how did you come by all that money that you don't miss?”

“Roulette, mainly. It's a matter of attention. The entire universe presents itself to everyone always. Absent distraction by categories, expectations, and the definitions of others, every bit
of information you require is at hand.” Billy paused. “You are infinitely more powerful when you realize that you are indistinct from the rest of the universe. It flows through you, it finds a moment of self-awareness within you, and everything that happens anywhere is indistinguishable from you. But you do not know the world as it is, you only know the world as you think it is, as an assemblage of pieces and parts rather than an interconnected infinity where no thing exists apart from everything else. Of course, most people filter the onslaught of perception through various illusions, the most prevalent being their own private control-freak egos, and that prevents them from accessing the information necessary to just
know
which number the ball lands on. Perceive the harmony that serenades the illusion. That's all there is to it.”

“Is that why you didn't react to me almost hitting you?”

Billy shrugged. “Maybe. That's different.”

“Different?” Diablo asked. “Different how?”

“In time, things become apparent.”

What the heck is that supposed to mean?
Diablo might have deemed Billy an acid-addled lunatic with a colossal spiritual conceit if he hadn't witnessed his calm, if he hadn't seen the money, and if this wasn't the same guy who'd given him a ride five years ago. And now that he thought about it, he didn't look a day older, and was still wearing his correctional officer's uniform. Like a cartoon character, his clothes seemed as much a part of his presence as his face and his hair. Fascinated and intrigued, Diablo was willing to let the vagaries slide for now. After a while, he spoke again. “Why are you still wearing your jail guard uniform? Didn't you quit that job five years ago?”
Billy yawned. “It is less remarkable than you think.”

“Why's that?”

“In time, things become apparent.”

Again with that shit?
Irritated, Diablo decided to go on the offensive. “You talk funny, do you know that?”

“I only speak in the present tense.”

“Of course.” Diablo nodded, chuckling. “And how's that work? I suppose in time, that will become apparent as well?”

“To be precise, I only speak in the omnipresent tense,” Billy explained, his enthusiasm impervious to Diablo's sarcasm. “The present is not a series of events,” he continued. “It's one event. There is only one moment, and that moment is right now.”

Diablo fell silent as a vague
whoom
of déjà vu prickled over him. He didn't realize Billy Pronto had just pronounced Diablo's own words from five years ago back to him. But Billy had not paused in his exposition. “Fortunately for you, the present is as patient as a perpetually rising sun. Steadfast it remains, persistently it presents itself to all passersby. The present is here, whether or not you are, and the only mystery is where else there is to be. Here it is, the gift of the moment, the present. To speak of anything else is an exercise in make-believe. I am here. Now. There is no there. There is no then.” Billy gestured with his left hand as he said this, and for the first time, Diablo noticed that Billy Pronto had no middle finger on his left hand, either.

 

49
U
PON DISCOVERING
Billy Pronto's missing digit, Diablo was the second pin in a 7–10 split, and he wasn't just bowled over, he was flattened by a piratical cannonball.
“Your—” Diablo stammered. “You don't have a middle finger on your left hand.”

“It is impolite to point out the flaws of another,” Billy Pronto replied as he studied his own hand. “And in any event,” he continued, pointing toward Diablo's hand, “neither do you.”

“I know that!” Diablo yelled, waving his hand and becoming agitated. “I'm the one who told you about it! But why the hell didn't you mention your finger? That's quite a coincidence, don't you think?”

“Everything is a coincidence,” Billy replied.

Diablo snorted. “No sir! Me running into you after five years is a coincidence. You missing the same finger as me is one in a fucking trillion.”

“Well, here we are. One in a fucking trillion. No more unlikely than anything else.”

Diablo looked at him, astounded. “That's it? That's your reaction? What the hell's the matter with you?”

“Stranger things happen.”

“Like what?”

“Like life.”

“Life?” Diablo snorted. “Are you serious?”

“If life is possible,” Billy Pronto replied, “then anything is possible. And no, I'm not remotely serious. Life is neither solemn nor somber.”

“Oh that's rich.” Diablo shook his head, not knowing whether to bat himself on the head with a mallet or crap in his pants. After a few moments, he asked, “How did you lose your finger, then?”

“The same way as you,” Billy replied.

“Ah, but I thought you said you didn't remember the tornado.” Diablo was interested to hear Billy try to account for this contradiction.

“Which tornado?”

Diablo took a deep breath before continuing. “Listen. You just said you lost your finger the same way I did. Well, I lost my finger in the tornado that you claim not to remember. How do you know you lost your finger the same way as I did if you don't remember the tornado?”

“For reasons I cannot fully comprehend,” Billy explained patiently, “I only claim that what happens to me in some way happens to you.”

“What the heck is that supposed to mean?”

“Undivided unity,” Billy said. “Creation is God's multiple personality, the many faces of Eve, so to speak. Life is the unfolding drama of those personalities engaging one another, most of them unaware that they're merely shadows cast from the Tree of Life.”

“Fine, sure.” Diablo nodded impatiently. “I can agree with that. But how does that account for your finger?”

“Try to appreciate what I say. We're all of us just the same, reverberations of the same thunderclap, echoes of the same Bang. That Bang delights in spinning fractal iterations of itself, countless vantages and viewpoints, just because it is possible.”

“Yeah, I got that,” Diablo interrupted. “Fractal iterations. We're all facets of the godhead, subjectivities of the divine objectivity. Everybody understands that Mickey Mouse mysticism. What's that got to do with your finger?”

Billy Pronto remained silent for several moments before asking, “Everybody understands that we're all temporary aspects of the eternal impulse?”

“Everybody who's ever sung ‘Row, Row, Row Your Boat' understands.”

“What do you mean?”

Diablo's skeleton was at risk of collapsing upon itself from sheer impatience. Christ, this guy was annoying to talk to. “Life is but a dream!” he bellowed. “Merrily, merrily, merrily, fer cry in' out loud!”

“Oh, interesting.” Billy Pronto nodded. “Well, nonetheless, I don't think everybody understands that. I don't even think you understand that.”

Diablo took a deep breath. “Are you going to explain about your finger?”

“I am,” he replied. “The universe is God's multiple personality, with an infinity of perspectives in the same space, and here we are, two of those personalities in synchronicity. It happens, literally
all
the time. The only amazing thing is how rarely we notice it.” Billy Pronto waved his left hand—sans middle finger—at Diablo. “For lack of a better description, we are two personalities of the same underlying event.”

Abruptly, Diablo pulled the car over to the side of the road. “This has been fascinating, Mr. Pronto, but this is as far as I can take you.”

Billy Pronto nodded enthusiastic and opened the door. “Think of it this way,” he suggested. “Perhaps I am an imaginary friend. This is not to admit that I don't exist, but only to indicate that I am a creation of the imagination. Of course, this
is all perfectly obvious, isn't it? After all, it is not so much the case that God creates man in his image as it is the case that God creates man in his imagination. Don't you think?”

Exasperated, Diablo waved him off. Billy thanked him for the ride nonetheless and departed. Driving away, Diablo watched Billy recede in the rearview mirror, ambling down the highway, swinging his gas can at his side, shrinking into the distance exactly like a personified memory properly ought. Once he disappeared around a bend, Diablo turned his attention ahead, where he immediately spied another pedestrian a ways up the road.

As he drew nearer, Diablo tried to ignore the peculiarity that the pedestrian was wearing what looked like a correctional officer's uniform. But in the next moment, he swerved like a breakneck dragster when it became undeniable that this correctional officer was also carrying a five-gallon plastic gas can at his side.

 

50
D
IABLO LOST TRACK
of where he was going, and he had forgotten how he had arrived where he was. Aside from the seams in the road echoing his own thunderstruck heartbeat, the only constant was this perpetual pedestrian every mile or so, jaunting down the highway like Johnny Potseed, wearing a jailer's uniform, swinging a five-gallon gas can at his side like a comma in a run-on sentence, there receding in the rearview mirror, here appearing just up ahead like some preposterous patrol of mile-marker guards. Diablo considered his options. He could try running over one of these nagging Billy Pronto clones, but he wasn't willing to risk clipping an
innocent bystander at the caprice of an apparent delusion. He could pull off at the next exit, but then what? Hang out at the Waffle House for the rest of his life comparing the depths of his own cowardice to their bottomless cup of rancid coffee?

Forty-five Billy Prontos later, Diablo accepted that these apparitions weren't going to disappear any time soon. He would confront this prankish hallucination, come what may. At the next version of Billy Pronto, he veered off the road, blaring his horn but taking care to not actually run him down. He swerved, missed the gas can this time, and roused an impressive cloud of dust as he skidded to a halt ahead of Billy. Diablo had hoped this would unsettle Billy, but it was just as before. Billy was as unflinching as the horizon, as relentless as the ocean, as cool as the breeze, and as cheerful as the sunrise.

“Synchronicity on the sultry soothe of your day!” Billy Pronto greeted him again at the open passenger window, shining like a Cheshire moon over Eden.

“Where you headed?” Diablo tried to act as if nothing were out of the ordinary, still hoping to buck this phantom off his pink elephant.

Billy cocked his head. “My only destination is here and now.”

“Ah.” Diablo nodded, rolling his eyes. “Where exactly would that be?”

“
That?
” Billy asked. “
That
is there and then.
This
is here and now.”

Diablo, baffled beyond upside-out and inside-down, gave up trying to outwit this triptasm. “Well, do you want a ride?”

“I want for nothing,” Billy began. “Desire is the root—”

“Yeah, I got that,” Diablo interrupted. After formulating
for a moment, he pronounced, “If it pleases you, a ride is hereupon available.”

“A ride into the here and now?”

“That's right.” Diablo nodded, confident despite the absurdity of the question posed. “A ride into the here and now.”

Billy bowed and opened the door. “This is very generous of you. How far do you plan on going?”

“How far?” Diablo puffed his cheeks full of air, bobbing his head to an unheard beat. After several moments, he shrugged.

“All the way, I suppose.”

 

51
“S
O LET'S DEFINE
some parameters,” Diablo began once he and Billy Pronto were again on their way. “You're an illusion—”

“Actually, you're the illusion,” Billy interrupted.

“Impossible,” Diablo stated flatly. “I'm driving, hence I must be real.”

“Don't be such a materialist. Clearly, I do not sit in this car, nor do I walk along this highway. If you insist on your own primacy, I am a figment of your imagination. But that is mistaken. At the end of the day, it is you who are a figment of my imagination.”

“What's this then?” Diablo demanded, knocking on the side of the plastic gas can. “Another figment of my imagination?”

“No, that's your gas can. And technically, it's another figment of
my
imagination.”

“
My
gas can? I suppose that's
my
money as well?”

“I am incapable of roulette. I have no physical existence.”

“Then where did this gas can come from?”

Billy shrugged. “The question is not where it comes from. The question is where it goes. If you can hallucinate me, it appears you can de-hallucinate a gas can as well.”

“Fine. So how can I be certain of anything? How do I know this money isn't a hallucination?”

“You can't be certain of anything, of course. But if it makes you relax, in terms of the assumptions of the reality you take as given, then yes, the money is real. I am the only aberration in your experience. You de-hallucinate the money when you de-hallucinate me, it seems.”

“Why would I do that?”