The Road Narrows As You Go (15 page)

Well, sir … a bank account.

But call me Doug. He offered to decant her a drink from his extensive wetbar. And congratulations, I see … When are you due?

Any minute, Wendy told him without flinching. She took the watereddown rye he offered in a cut-crystal tumbler in the hand not holding a milkshake.

I must tell you it's been a real pleasure doing business with Hexen Diamond Mistral's high-yield department. Chimney sat back down at his desk with a drink and stitched his hands together in front of him and looked penetratingly into Wendy's eyes. She had recently dyed three candyfloss streaks of pink, blue, and green through the tight curls of her dark brown hair, to match her wardrobe. Her blouse was more of an artist's smock cinched with a wide leather belt to give it shape,
and her pink skirt with vegetal print didn't match her diamond-pattern purple tights, green legwarmers, or the orange cowboy boots. Add a whisky and a milkshake to that look and you had Wendy at her first bank meeting.

Miss … Ashbubble, I read your file. It says you're a cartoonist. That's terrific. I'll make sure to look for you the next time I open the papers.

Watch for me in the
San Jose Sentinel
, the
Palo Alto Weekly
, and in San Francisco, I'm in
The Tenderloin Times
.

Well, the future is full of opportunities, then. Quite remarkable. I'm beginning to see why Hexen has made an investment in your career. You're obviously funny. I mean, you
are
funny. Art is so fascinating, isn't it? said Douglas Chimney, manager. Kind of like a lottery, would you say?

Not so much. My job's more like backbreaking lonely work.

Financial growth is inevitable.

Since I have nothing, I hope so.

We value business like yours. In some ways, I'm not sure, but you're the ideal client, miss.

All I want is a chequing and savings account. The milkshake gargled as she sucked up the froth at the bottom of the wax cup. Do you have a garbage can?

No.

She held on to the empty cup and switched over to drinking the whisky.

It's about your outlook, said Chimney as he made circles in the air with his hands. You are part of the Solus First National family now. And as we embark on this account, I see before me a self-starter with her sights set on the big picture, and the horizon is a long ways away, but I wonder what we'll say to each other in ten years. So, best of luck to you on this voyage, dear, and I'm pleased to provide a safe place to invest your American dream. You have our full support at Solus First National from now on, day or night.

Day or night, wow. So I have a money emergency at four in the morning …

Chimney handed her his business card; it was embossed there in script under his name:
Day or night
. That's our policy, he said. And listen, you could not ask for a better partner for your investments than Hexen Diamond Mistral. You're still young, this might seem unreal. But be mature. Don't blow it all on drugs. You'll look back on these days proud of yourself for the steps you took. All I know is what I see, and the investments Hexen makes, that Frank Fleecen makes, these change businesses. If Fleecen has designs for your comic strip then before you know it you'll be collecting antiquities someday soon too, ha ha. That's my passion, so you can see. Do you speak with Frank Fleecen on a regular basis?

Occasionally he calls to frighten me with grand promises.

Believe him. He can deliver. You be sure and tell him next time you speak that he played a significant role in the development of our investment portfolio here at Solus First National.

Will do. So you don't know Frank?

Well, we've spoken once or twice. Usually when I call or they call I speak with a top salesman of Frank's, Ed Bulabasna, whom I like very much. Frank could cold-call a dead man and make a sale. Sell water to a whale. Our bank got in early—incredible. Started buying his bonds in seventy-seven and three years later, we're sitting on a small fortune. Paid for this building's erection and then some.

Sheesh. She shot back the whisky and had to suppress a fiery reflux of milkshake and burgers as if her body was a science fair volcano, then up through a throat full of acidic prevomit came the needs of a big gassy belch. It was almost too much.

His bonds are ingenious instruments. He can spin a debt obligation so many different directions, his salesmen are loaded with an arsenal of options to suit every kind of investor.

No idea what you're talking about, she said.

Hexen bonds provide the best returns of any product on the financial market, no question. That's all you need to know. That, and he mitigates risk with the blending of his derivatives, and that risk is usually our jobs at the S&Ls to take, we take all the risk. And I must admit his sales team host some outrageous Super 8 hotel parties.

Oh hey by the way. Wendy remembered to tell Doug that Frank needed access to her account for withdrawal, deposit, and transfer purposes.

Of course, I'll add his name to your file. The bank manager raised his fingertips off his desk in a delicate but clumsy search for a pen on his desk. He took a drink of rye first.

No, if it's possible, I'd rather his name didn't appear anywhere in the paperwork, Wendy said and handed him the bank wire number Frank had told her to use instead.

Chimney's head jerked to the side and he slapped his neck as if she nicked him while shaving his Adam's apple, then he put on a small and unimpressive smile. I see, that's fine. A wire number is not a problem. Chimney added the number to this page of the files and that one. His hands feathered the paperwork one more time as if looking for any reason to inquire further. Miss Ashbubble, everything is in order then. Please sign here and here.

That night Wendy piled us into her lime-green Gremlin and took us down to Chinatown for wontons and bought us tickets to see Biz Aziz perform in her two-queen show at Valencia Tool & Tie.
JR & The Minotaur
was her loose adaptation of the TV show
Dallas
combined with the Greek myth, featuring the beloved Castro queen Lil Morphine Annie in the role of the minotaur. We bumped into old Vaughn Staedtler at the wonton house. He was eating a large bowl alone at a table near the kitchen, reading an issue of Biz's comic memoir, and also on his way to her performance later. He, too, had to make a stop for some of these incredible wontons, he said, and offered to have us join him at his open table. The restaurant was
full, so we accepted his invitation. Vaughn had another small bowl of four wontons as well, he loved the wontons as much as we did. The place was a classic hangout for cartoonists. Looking around the room, we could see as many as half the tables were going to the show later. Vaughn Staedtler had seen Biz perform four or five times before and was shocked every time and seduced again and again by her beautiful voice and extravagantly costumed alien presence eating up the stage, hypnotizing her audience. With those fiery eyes and doublejointed swagger. Handmade sculptural headpieces worthy of exhibition. Doing seductively off-kilter renditions of lesserknown masterpieces from the history of pop music. All wrapped in a story concept adapted from literature and her vivid, provocative imagination. Vaughn knew he was at least twice the age of the average Biz fan, maybe the only one in the audience with grandchildren, but he didn't care, and the surrealism of youth fashion was not going to intimidate the creator of
The Mischiefs
, one of the most enduring comic icons of teen rebellion. Few men Vaughn's age could pull off wearing a black leather jacket and be so unselfconscious about it. He still wore steel-toed boots and jeans and combed his long, white hair straight back despite his hairline, it was receding at a rather handsome pace anyway. He was reading a copy of issue number five. He showed us—it was part three of three in the Vietnam issues, where Biz Aziz gets enlisted into the ill-fated and fully redacted CAT-X program as an artist-soldier to depict in charcoal the days and nights after her combat group crossed the border into Cambodia. Vaughn Staedtler showed us one page of panels featuring the silhouetted remains of a village after napalm. Each panel featured part of a poem. One caption read:
and she would rather be frozen alone on the moon
.

Remarkable individual, said Vaughn. She puts herself in harm's way and survives, she gets thrown into all the worst situations and climbs out unscathed. Like the snail who can inch along the edge of a razor blade, she's blessed with a scary kind of indestructibility that I fear could expire at any moment.

The waiter came and took our order. Not what, but size. There was an entire menu, many items, but no one in the restaurant's hundred-and-oneyear history had ordered anything other than the daily special, wonton soup. The only reason we were here was for the wontons. Why anyone came here. Wontons were why Vaughn was here. Why the restaurant was completely full and a line was forming out the door. A wonton of such poetic flavours, a heartwarming, energizing, life-sustaining wonton. Our eyes wept, our noses watered, we drooled when we ate a bowlful. Six wontons was a significant meal. More than a meal, it was a rejuvenating body purifier. Over this handpressed noodle, we broke out in a sweat. Over this fresh wonton, we restored our inner vigour. What was in those wontons, what kind of meat had such a juicy texture and taste? Unicorn? Gryphon? Kooloomooloomavlock? A little bit of salvation? Its pastry was almost translucent and yet in chewing, the wonton's casing was a substantial protection for the deliciousness inside, and against plenty of chews kept its form as a flavourful packaging around the pale, wrinkly meatball bursting with its savoury juices. All submerged in a wholesome hot broth, steaming and spiced and oily that only the gauche and misinformed drink as a soup.

We got the distinct picture from all his complaining that Vaughn was not impressed that his lawyers weren't having any luck negotiating with his former assistants to lower their ask—half a million in back pay for twenty years' work. The next stop in this hellish journey of reprisal was court. His former assistants were greedy pirates, vultures, brats, and knownothings, he said. How does it feel, Wendy, to be starting out a career in such a decrepit, devalued industry, with venal competition and vampire lawyers, comics shrinking on the page
and
in the brain, less and less attention from readers, editors, and a big zip from the critics? I'm glad I retired with my wits. I believe in resurrection. Now there's so many better options for a talented artist to make a living. Computers, Wendy, that's where you should focus. Computer art. Imagine that. What false hopes and blinkered view of the world inspired your retrograde insanity?

The comics are what I love, Wendy shrugged. I know what you mean. You find a pretty seashell and turn it over and discover a lot of creepy legs wiggling underneath. Give me a few more years and maybe I'll be as grossed out.

Promise not to say a word, said Staedtler with a conspiratorial growl, but I'm painting clowns. I swear these damn paintings are so good, fuck
The Mischiefs
, these clowns are going to put me in the history books. I'll be next to Andy Warhol. Vaughn invited us to come visit his studio any time.
Make sure to bring pot
.

Biz Aziz's drag shows had gained legendary status in the five years since her first performance in seventy-five, after returning from Cambodia and the war. For there was always the chance the cast or more likely the audience might go berserk and the night would end up in an upcoming issue of her comic memoir. This night it started with a drunk who drove his Datsun B210 up on the sidewalk right in front of the Tool & Die and mowed down five people standing in line at the door, sending three to the hospital with broken bones while the other two got away with minor bruises and concussions—tonight was a good enough example of how that legend was formed. Wendy ran to a payphone in the lobby and called for ambulances to handle four mouth-frothing, nose-bleeding ODs after a crazy-pure batch of booger sugar kicked in. So much coke had hit the streets recently, prices were down, and a rumour was going around that someone was flying shipments of uncut directly into the Bay from an outpost of Nicaragua. Before the show and during the intermission, the drag queen Taj Mahal Delusion worked the merchandise table dressed in a gold-lamé sari, erotic henna tattoos, and a foot-tall frightwig decorated with figurines playing croquet. Taj Mahal was surrounded by Biz Aziz's young fans buying back issues of
The Mizadventurez
comics. If you knew to ask, Taj Mahal Delusion also sold five-dollar tabs from a page of blotter printed with Reagan's face. This too was incredibly pure Delysid Sandoz LSD 25. Combined with the booger sugar and the equally easy access to
'ludes, everyone in the crowd was on a manic kaleidoscope high when Biz Aziz took the stage at around one in the morning.

She wore a silver fishscale cocktail dress, a massive flower corsage on her wrist and another pinned to her breast, and an upside-down chandelier balanced on her head, cut-glass teardrops twinkling under the Klieg lights. She sang like a dream, our collective dream, and her dress sparkled and shone with its million sequins. Her presence was not at all what we expected—back at the manor she was a prickly, moody perfectionist who spoke little and worked hard. But here, in front of an audience, she was a radiant exhibit, a fountain of a person who showered us with light, she embraced the stage, embraced the light, embraced every line she sang, embraced her audience, she was this all-enveloping power, and her sensuality was that of a goddess—no sooner had she stepped into the spotlight, fans started screaming, the front row lost their pants, went hysterical, and the highest threw themselves at the stage with loose-limbed fishlike abandon, almost fainting, heaving with emotions, a slobbering mob. The maze projected intermittently on a screen behind Biz was so convincing that after encountering too many dead ends it triggered an anxiety attack in someone, who ran for the corner to hide and quiver like a baby. When not a maze, images on the screen showed edits of
Dallas
episodes featuring J.R., the evil J.R., the cunning J.R., the horny J.R. Speaking from the point of view of the Ewing mansion, Biz recited lines from a short rhyming poem about J.R.'s battle with the minotaur. Her song choices added to the disorienting mood; she did a slowed-down, dragged-out, woozier version of
The Big Hurt
and a faster, rock version of
The End of the World.
Young men stormed the stage to lavish Biz with kisses and bask at her feet, and the show was halted more than once to sweep the stage of glass and due to the general rowdiness. When it came time for duets, the moment Lil Morphine Annie entered stage left to the sounds of Funkadelic's
Biological Speculation
dressed as a glitzy pink funfur minotaur, a riot broke out. A riot of giddy gay college students, stripping off their fashions—that's what too much Nicaraguan
import plus acid plus a methaqualone will do to you—the stage was all of a sudden filled with mad dancing nudists. The screen behind them got torn down and parts of the PA system toppled off the stage, killing the sound.