slapstick

“Smiling on smiling.  Smile forward, land smiling.  Smile a simile worth smiling.  Smile like reduction of smile for smiling forward.”

  - apocryphal Gertrude Stein

“It’s a long way back to Boston,” said Hoover, flipping his wrist over the steering wheel in nonchalance.  “Won’t be seeing that city for like . . .” he threw fingers out of his palm as if he were counting something, “A long time.”

“Boston?  What are you talking about Boston?”

“It’s running out behind us, man, weaving further away, flowing its sinewy course over that a ways, back to where it needs to be,” and Hoover looks into the rear view mirror while his chin droops down to his chest, “I didn’t ask it to stay, you know, stick-”

“Stick,” I said.  “Stick.”

“Yeah, dude, stick.”

“Stick?”  Mickey’s voice came from so close that it triggered a violent reaction taking a sharp breath and pushing myself towards the door, against the window, Mickey’s jack-in-the-box intrusion . . . he had his head leaned into the front compartment, between me and Hoover’s seats, his hair a complete mess of crawling tangles, a tightknitschoolofeels weaving around the coral, straining forward over the gear shift to squint through the windshield.  “A stick?” 

Hoover was laughing real loud and the car swerved a little, I think, and Mickey continued incredulously “Won’t believe it until you show me some evidence” and I’m gripping the handle on the door thinking about mortal danger and life and how I don’t want to say good night so soon and this thought echoes and echoes and my chest heaves more quickly until I realize that I’m shouting all this and Mickey has his hand on my shoulder and the police that line the narrow, massively wide road have my attention but Hoover assures me this isn’t the case.

“Calmly,” he commands, “Shut your eyes and think about the moon.”  Into the calm the cold, picking up a pillowy holey piece of basaltic nothingness and give it the ol’ heft test and a jump that keeps carrying me higher, softly, slowly, the grey landscape stretches off, dotted with craters like the wax stamps of meteors and at the horizon the grey curves downwards in both directions like a gently sloped parabola underneath the vast expanse of darkness “The stars” says Hoover “Are everywhere” I believe him because that is all I can see is this massive littering of stars but Hoover doesn’t stop and his voice narrates my mission in the Rover

“Holy shit!” yelled Hoover and the car pitched suddenly and fishtailed briefly with a screech like an eagle on prey and my eyes burst wide open to the mess of the world while Mickey blathered on talking about total sensory deprivation tanks and stress relief and I felt life pumping in me, like a piston, like a piston, like a piston, that thing in the hood, just below the hood, I can see its metal glint and spraypainted plastic when I stare at the hood, see right through the translucent hood, my liver, my appendix, my brother had his removed by them cutting right into his flesh with a chainsaw, blood spurting, Dr. Benway looking real pleased, his face dripping red, his surgeon’s mask dangling around his neck, spittle between his teeth, a cold sore that was never mentioned nor even noticed until now like instant revelation and I realized that Burroughs had had me hoodwinked like a fairy.

“The literature in the back,” a thumb tossed over my shoulder, a tinge of trepidation ringing in my voice andsuddenlytime has  slowed   down

“Cool” said Mickey, “It’s cool, all safe, I have my arms wrapped around the precious” I lean back and sighed a sigh of relief, relief is what it not was, however, it was what I think it is . . . and my ribcage collapsed in on itself.

Things were less chaotic once the car was safely parked and we were back in Hoover’s kitchen, playing connect the dots with a scattering of breadcrumbs on the dinner table, last night’s mess, “It went haywire in that vehicle.”

“Yeah,” giggled Mickey, sipping hot soup, piss yellow glimmers with oil splotches and rising steam.  He giggled again.  The warm feeling of soup settling in his stomach was such a pleasant sensation.  I watched his eyes dance in the candle light.