[Mr. I]
I was drunk enough to get in my car with LOBO driving.
I'm not proud.
The only car I've seen LOBO drive more than once is his rusty, primered 1980 Plymouth Horizon. The vanity plate reads "WWID". But hammered as I am, I notice immediately that there's something odd about the little vehicle.
The interior is immaculate. Leather. Corinthian, I think. The stereo is amazing.
And this thing flies.
Gripping the luxurious back seat upholstery to compensate for the incredible inertia, I ask "What kind of engine do you have in this thing?"
"I dunno," he says, shrugging. "Whatever comes stock in a Porsche 911 GT3, I guess." "You put a Porsche engine in a beater Plymouth Horizon?"
"No, actually Ethan put a Plymouth Horizon body on a Porsche. He said he was sick of me being late for everything, and an actual Porsche might theoretically get me laid." LOBO shrugs, "Hell, insurance is cheaper, it draws less attention from cops, and I can pretty much park it anywhere. I don't even lock it most of the time."
Suddenly, at like 3:15 in the morning, the night sky lit up like it was day.
The Predator Press Distress Signal covered the whole damn thing.
"What the fuck is that?" says LOBO, pointing at the gargantuan Helvetica "PP" in the sky.
"That's the Predator Press distress signal" I slur from the back seat.
"Well, it's blinding me," says LOBO, looking straight up, nowhere near the road, both hands making small spots of artificial shade over his eyes. "Someone's going to have an accident, and we're going to get sued."
"We're contractually bound to respond," I says.
"And I am responding," says LOBO. "We're gonna get sued."
"No," I says, leaning forwards. "I mean we have to meet Ethan at the Press Room. Now. The deployment of that signal means it's a fucking bona-fide 'I don't care if you're naked-and-sleeping' crisis."
"Did we pay for that?"
"No, turd warmer. The fucking Marines paid for it."
Edward looks at LOBO. "Okay, so where is the Press Room?"
Through the mirror, LOBO looks at me.
"Oh come on!", I says to LOBO. "You don't know where the Press Room is?"
"Dude," says LOBO. "I want to know why the Marines are pissed!"
Edward looks at me. "Do you know where the 'Press Room' is?"
Angry and defensive, I bark "They've never published anything!"
"Yeah," agrees LOBO. Edward, who, despite being stone sober, is completely calm. "The big secret about Chicago is that it's totally traffic anarchy. Nobody gets pulled over for traffic violations anymore."
"Really," says Edward in his strange serene cool.
"Yeah. It's a big myth. Like 'Bigfoot' and the 'female orgasm'." He pulls his bangs away, lighting a cigarette. "Just crazy people with cameras."
... And here was LOBO ramping up to 115 on I-94.
After three funerals, and all the freakin tux rental bills that implies.
You explain it.
Earlier, LOBO had jazz music playing. I protested, but LOBO insists that this plinkety-plink, hoot-toot plink shit somehow suits the "ambiance" of the Chicago skyline at night.
Edward concurs and I'm outvoted.
But now, ratcheted up, it's the driving, machine-gun pulse of Pantera, Cowboys from Hell. Shooting out from that tunnel by Ohio street like a bullet from a gun, the high-performance, fuel-injected, duel-clutched, 480 horsepower turbo 1980 Plymouth Horizon roars through the city, narrowly zig-zagging around cars left and right. On the left rear bumper, there's an aged, dangling sticker flapping wildly in the wind that reads "My Other Car is a Piece of Shit Too".
I struggle against g-forces I can't anticipate, straining to secure my seat belt.
"I always figure this is how I'll die," LOBO continues, cigarette dangling. "Hitting a brick wall of traffic around a blind curve, consisting mostly of other people only recently enjoying some high-velocity anarchy. Just a huge sudden fiery molten mass of flesh and steel and bones, blood ... It'll just be wham, splat, fwoosh ... And the worst part is, I'll probably have a carload of people with me."
I heave bile into my own mouth. "You're going over a hundred miles an hour in a forty-five" I manage.
"I don't believe in the metric system," he says. "It's Goddamn unpatriotic."
"So what do you do for fun?" LOBO asks Edward.
"Nothing really," says Edward in that cool voice. "I spend most of my time studying and in classes."
"No shit?" says LOBO.
"Yeah, I'm studying Orthotics."
"Well you're a better man than I," he replies. "The thought of spendin my life elbow-deep down someone else's throat is pretty depressing."
Edward looks at me, and I shake my head: Let it go.
"Yeah, uh" Edward continues. "I graduate this year." Edward pauses. "Then those Student Loans kick in."
There it is, I'm thinking.
This cat's lookin for a job.
I'm simultaneously suspicious of Edward, and far too drunk to care really. Ethan, once he heard I beat LOBO with golf clubs until a freak accident actually killed the prick, hired me back on to the Predator Press staff. With back pay, and a substantial raise.
"Yeah," LOBO agrees "Christ, nothin is worse than a hard-core philistine."
Edward looks at me again. And this time I'm shaking my head even harder: Definitely let it go. "Orthotics, eh? Good money in that?"
"Well, I'm sure not going to do it out of the goodness of my heart," Edward replies.
"Some doctors are more interested in helping people than they are in money," I says, a little facetiously.
"No they aren't," Edward says. "My brother John is poor, and when his wife had her baby they had to do some routine gynecological test at Halifax Hospital in Daytona, Florida. My wife's doctor happened to be filling in at the hospital that day. This Doc, the sweetest guy in the world, he leads a group of interns into the hospital room. John protests of course; 'Hey,' he says, 'Are all these people really necessary?' And then that same noble, wonderful doctor, who kissed my ass through the birth of both my kids, he doesn't know John's my brother. He pushes John aside, not even looking at him, and right in front of the six or eight interns says, 'Maybe you should've thought of this before you decided to have babies on welfare'."
"Jesus Christ!" I says, hot breath filling the car. I need to eat something. Or maybe barf. "Did you brother complain?"
"No," Edward replies. "My brother ain't like that. I think he was just grateful for the medical care."
"Nice lesson for the interns too," LOBO growls. "Doctors and cops," he ads. "The whole world weeps for 'em when shit goes south, when the reality is they can be even bigger dicks than you can guess."
To Edward, I says "So, in your opinion, nobody does anything except out of self interest?"
Edward looks back at me, studying. "Yeah," he says. "That's it."
"What about Mother Theresa?"
LOBO and Edward exchange looks, laughing. "Look," says Edward. "God Bless her. I mean, the world is a better place because of her, fine. But don't you think she wanted to go to heaven?"
"Probably," I says, leaning back in my seat.
"And you don't call that self interest?"
I'm not comfortable with this conversation anymore.
The sky spinning doesn't help. I need food. Coffee. Something to sober up; the Predator Press building was still a half an hour out, but I'm getting cold sweats, and my vision is blurring. I roll down the window and stick my head into the maelstrom.
"How about people that are afraid of Hell?" Edward continues. "Coercion is still self interest if you really think about it. Unfortunately, the truth is that virtually any religion is primarily made up of whores. You want to find a decent human being? I would look someplace else."
I lean into the car for a second. "LOBO, do you know where you're going?"
"You mean during the Cosmic Dirtnap?"
"No, I mean right now," I says, 'now' containing about six 'h's. "As in responding to the distress signal." Nonchalantly, I add "But I need to stop someplace to pee."
"There's a Burgermania at this next exit," he says.
"Fine." My slurring is now out of control, and I decide to stick my head out the window again and shut up for a while.
Switching lanes, LOBO continues. He flicks his cigarette out the window, and it pings off of my forehead splashing fantastic arcs of light, landing in my lap. "Edward's right. Everybody's got some kind of monkey. Toys, money, sex, power ... "
"Fuck!" I says. Seeing double, I'm really having a hard time finding that cigarette butt.
"What's yours?" asks Edward.
"Oh, sex. Definitely more sex," states LOBO flatly.
"That's funny," says Edward. "I would've bet a thousand bucks you were a virgin."
"Well, that makes it a goal easy to attain," he says. "Baby steps. People set these high-pressure impossible goals and disappoint themselves constantly. I set goals like, 'Someday I will make a list of goals'."
"That would actually make you're primary 'interest' sloth," I point out, digging the hot embers out of my lap. The state of alarm seems to have sobered me a bit. "I guess mine would be comfort." I pause. "Southern Comfort!" I guffaw, slapping Edward's shoulder.
"That's such a chick answer," LOBO laughs. "Security, money ... where's your sense of adventure? Any pussy can throw money around to dilute life's little traumas."
"I would've thought it fair to say that mine was money, too," admits Edward. "But now that you mention it, it is really just a conduit to more sex and influence."
"That's pre-programmed Alpha-Male jackoff bullshit," says LOBO, shaking his head. "I sincerely doubt I'm going to be on my deathbed weeping that I didn't work enough."
"You don't want to be an 'Alpha Male'?"
"Fuck no," says LOBO. "I wanna be a Zeta. If there is such a thing. Alphas beat each other up, compete, have ambition ... that's too much pressure. We Zetas don't give a crap. We wake up, and the new Alpha has just eaten the old Alpha. Again. 'Oooo!' we say, 'a new Alpha. How original.' And then, odds are, by the time we've memorized the fucks name, he's been eaten by the next 'Alpha'. It's very boring."
What about Mister Hawly?" asks Edward. "He's a pretty wealthy guy. What makes him tick?"
"Justice," says LOBO, almost without thinking. "He's the slickest 'Alpha', period. He's a smart one, but maybe more importantly, he's a patient one. Rather than being a typical abrasive loudmouth, he lays low and pulls subtle little strings. Usually, when you see two idiots slugging it out, odds are he owns one or both of them. They just don't know it yet."
Curious. Dumb as LOBO is, he's smart enough to know who and when to defer.
Zeta mastery.
Measuring the distance to where the signal touched the ground over the horizon, Edward sighs. "Well, we've got some time to kill. And you guys have heard my story already. Let's here one that hasn't been told yet."
I take a deep breath and muster all the sobriety I can.
"Go ahead LOBO," he says, deflating me.
"What, you mean my life story?"
"Yeah. And how you met Ethan, got into publishing."
This should be interesting, I'm thinking. "Yeah LOBO. Why doncha enlighten us how you was whisked away from Plutonian space pirates by fuzz-fairies and blasted pastel goblins and stuff?"
LOBO frowns, eyeing me suspiciously through the rearview mirror. "I don't remember any goblins."
The really early stuff is excruciatingly dull, and it gives me time to sober a bit. With heavy paper sacks emblazoned 'Burgermania' in tow, he's still going on and on when I get back to the car.
"Ethan and I met in Junior High school, where he and his friends used to beat up me and my friends. He didn't stop until one day I warned him that if he didn't sell his Faberge Egg collection before spring of that year, he was going to be stuck with a whole lot of worthless crap that wouldn't even make a decent tacky jewel-encrusted omelet."
"Did he sell them?" asked Edward.
"No," replied LOBO. "And sure enough, a few months later, he took a bath in those things too. But by that time, I was long gone."
"Gone? What happened?"
"Well, firstly, my band took off. Vaginal Slide didn't really get much local traction, but we were huge in the Galapagos Islands. Monsters in Guatemala. Heard of us? 'Red Hot Chocolate' was our big one:
'Don't play like it's no sacrilege
that I got a rolls of toilet paper in my freezer, my fridge,
Farting, sharting stuff from Hell,
I oughta sue the balls offa Taco Bell
It's searing through my anus like an acid blowtorch
You can smell burnin flesh even on the front porch!
Red Hot Chocolate, screamin in the night
If Ida been a second later, Ida arc-welded my tailpipe
Red Hot Chocolate, five gallons deep,
If Ida been a second later I woulda melted my Jeep-'
"Is that the one that Pat Boone remade?" asks Edward.
"No. He remade our song 'The Ayatollah of Areola'. And ballads and love songs were huge that year, so he made a bundle. He later stiffed us on the royalties and the writing credit."
"Did you sue?"
"Couldn't." replies LOBO. "By that time the band had split up; dead musicians are notoriously unreliable. I think it's cuz we never could seem to get any airplay. And then the music industry changed. It wasn't like today where you ride a $1,000 bicycle to Barnes and Nobles, drinking $6 coffees and then stiff the store on the $10 book." LOBO pounds his hand on the dash. "We had suicide doors, steel dashboards and Vietnam to weed them fucks out. Now all we got is Metallica." He fishes around for the radio knob, and switches it to 'off'. "You know what sucks about the Porsche 911 GT3?"
We both shake our heads.
"Just try and get one with an 8-track player," he says. "The dealers just look at you like you're completely crackers." He lights another cigarette. "So where was I? Oh yeah ... I was complaining about my life story. Nowadays it's all seat belts and warning labels and lawsuits. Hell, I remember waitresses on roller skates with big-ass hair and no helmet, bringing Thalidomide-flavored fries out to your car in an asbestos crate, all the while stabbing Jets and Sharks left and right with her switchblade during the musical number 'cuz her numb chucks were confiscated."
"So what happened with the band?" asks Edward, trying to get him back on track.
"Vaginal Slide was on tour for our Fists of Furry record in Escuintla, and President Alfonso Portillo -big fan-flew us out to do some live recording at his palace. Who would have thought he would pick then to decide to have our lyrics translated? Turns out he gets so offended for some reason, he orders us all rounded up and executed. With phony papers and disguised as Nelson Mandela's brother, I narrowly escaped."
"Nelson Mandela's brother," I says incredulously.
"Yeah. Frank Mandela. You know, the one that drives the Camaro?"
"Go on," says Edward.
"Well, I only got partway back. My band slain, I had to start my life all over in the Communist Republic of Cuba. I got a job at Havana Bowling Alley, and kinda skulked around for a few months, all depressed. One day, while I was fantasizing about the pins hurdling the balls back at all these bald drunken assholes in funny shoes, I dreamed up this game where you throw a ball at a guy and he tries to hit it with a stick-"
"Oh, let me guess,," I says. "And then the guy who hit the ball runs around a big diamond."
"That's a bastardized variation on my game concept. Originally it was a square."
"So," I says, skeptical. "You're saying that you invented the game of baseball."
"Well, we didn't call it 'baseball' back then. We called it 'Hit the Ball with a Stick and Run Like Hell'."
"Oh brother," I says.
"Anyways, I gotta get back to the US from Cuba. So I stitch 834,993 Breton Corojo Vintage Lancero cigars together to make a raft, and set sail for Montreal where I found Ethan selling magazines. He remembers me. Asks me how I knew about the Faberge Egg market collapse, and I tell him I don't know. Now he's fully invested in this quarry, doing research and developing improvements on this new concept: the 'Pet Rock'."
"Ethan was behind the Pet Rock craze?" I ask.
"Indirectly," LOBO replies. "See, overall, the Pet Rock was a pretty mediocre pet when compared to dogs, for instance. While easily housebroken, the only command they ever seemed to learn was 'stay'. I mean even the Pet Sponge could learn to soak. But where the Pet Rock lacked the staying power of, say, the cat or the fish or the sponge, it did have a certain undeniable appeal to American culture. I recommended that he stay 'in' until DNA mapping began to evolve."
"DNA mapping?" asks Edward.
"Yeah. See, the Pet Rock had a lot of breeding issues. Fertility problems. Down in the quarry, you could put two rocks together, and months later you would still have only two rocks. In fact, you could put fifty rocks together, dim the lights, and play Barry White records over a megaphone until the cows came home and you would still have fifty rocks. A rock is a solitary and mysterious creature, whose reproductive habits are as yet still a mystery."
"What does that have to do with DNA mapping?"
"Well, we never got any rocks breeding in that quarry unless we had a lot of bulldozers and jackhammers and crap. Something about all that noise, I suppose. But when the Human Genome Project came along we started being able to clone stuff, and it was either give up or use .. Now, the market is totally saturated with rocks. Shit. Look around; they're everywhere. You can't throw a rock without hitting a rock now."
"So Ethan keeps you around as some kind of investment consultant?" I asks.
"'Social Barometer' is probably more accurate. But, from bell-bottom jeans to the internet stock boom to Tickle-Me-Elmo, we've been there on the ground floor."
"If all this is true, why aren't you rich?" Edward asks.
"Well, if you think about it, I don't pick the winning ponies, I just point out a good time to turn them to glue. Besides, I think affluence would kinda water down the experience and dull the edge. Keep in mind that rich people don't buy the bulk of stuff, the middle-class do. Rich people manufacture their own supply-and-demand problems, and there's plenty of sycophants to cater to that stuff already. Tiny foreign nations hand-crafting coats made of rare exotic fur with dinosaur eggs dipped in gold for buttons isn't particularly brilliant or exciting."
"It just so happens," I interrupt, "that dinosaur egg buttons are much better that conventional flat ones."
Edward looks back at me "You've got one of those?"
"Three of them." I says. "Very high quality stuff. Complete with the eagle feather inlay."
"Worn them lately?" asks LOBO, into the rearview.
"Well, no."
"See?" says LOBO. "There's no rationale behind it. Coats should keep you warm, not stuff your closet. You've created an artificial demand for something completely impractical for the sole purpose of easily recognizing the other stupid people with too much money. Then you mislabeled it 'Status' hoping nobody would notice. And let me guess ... just in case someone does notice, you increasingly insulate yourself in 'exclusive' activities, surrounded by only other like-minded people."
"You you've never been preoccupied with image, fashion, style--?"
"Sure I have. The difference is you buy yours. It's overly-elaborate, and more importantly, it's somebody else's." LOBO paused. "When Ethan and I met you, you were in jeans and a t-shirt. I'll bet what you're wearing now cost more than your rent was that month."
"What's your point?" I demand. "That I should be some broke loser-slash-philosopher? I don't see you curing cancer. You couldn't find your asshole with a flashlight and a funnel."
Edward laughs.
"I don't really know what I'm saying," LOBO confesses. "I think I'm a little disappointed, I guess. When you got fired and moved into that trailer, you just seemed more real. You got passionate. Angry. And not because you were told to be. I think Ethan and I were impressed with the fact that you embraced the whole thing with such totality. We were seeing glimpses of you minus all the distracting glitz and shiny objects again, and we realized we missed you." LOBO inspected the diminishing skyline in the mirror. "I guess I'm saying 'don't become the sum of your possessions'. It's beneath you."
"So I'm some corporate thrall?" Is that what Ethan thinks?"
"Take it easy, man," says Edward. "I don't think that's what he's saying at all. In fact, I think he's saying the opposite."
"But this asshole is a goddamn certified retarded lunatic!" I offer, pointing at the back of LOBO's head. "And he's in charge."
"Look," grins LOBO. "I went through the whole hip and image-conscious thing a long time ago. It was a goddamn disaster."
"Well, I'm shocked to hear it." I says.
"Yep. Believe it or not, I've made a few social blunders of my own."
"No," I gasp sardonically.
"Yes, really!" says LOBO all serious. "Remember the seventies? I used to troll around women's strip bars when they close-"
Edward interrupts "You're shitting me. You used to be waiting when a bar, full of drunken horny chicks poured out of a club at weird hours? My God man ... that's brilliant. A little pathetic, but brilliant ..."
"Yep," LOBO continues. "There I'd be in my immaculate white suit, wide open collar with my gold zodiac symbol chain, the works. My elevator shoes were so tall I'd get nosebleeds."
Edward and I laugh hysterically. "Oh my God," I manage. "I can totally see it. LOBO leaning on his car, tryin to look all 'cool'--"
"What?" LOBO asks, puzzled, looking back and forth between us.
Edward composes himself. "So did this 'Master Plan' ever culminate into any real action?"
"It might have. But to be honest, when it came 'time to strike' I was a little preoccupied. My elevator shoes had goldfish in them, and I couldn't figure out how you feed them. So there's my beloved little Simon and Garfunkle, floating belly-up in their little metatarsal tombs-"
Edward and I are laughing so hard, we're crying.
"And then I get approached by this chick, Lindsay Merigold. She says she's the editor for a big national magazine, and she'll give me $1,000 a week to write articles for her magazine about 'love and courtship in the 70's'. Up until now, I'm working in the bowling alley, a talentless hack musician. How hard could it be to become a talentless hack writer? Besides, I would get to kill a lot of trees this way. So I agree to the deal."
"So ..." says Edward, still fighting down laughter.
"Well, it didn't occur to me to ask why she wanted me to write this article. It turns out, that her finding me in a white suit and elevator shoes in the parking lot of a women's strip club was significant. The magazine I was to write for was named Gay Love."
"Oh God dude please stop." I have never laughed so hard in my life. "You're killing me!" After about twenty minutes, I finally choke out, "So did you take the job?"
"For $1000 a week? Hell yes!" he says. "The office was kinda creepy, but once you got used to wiping everything down you wanted to use or sit on, everything was fine."
"How long did this go on?" I ask between teary cackles.
"About a year," says LOBO.
"Wait a minute," giggles Edward. "You wrote for a gay magazine for a year?"
"No, I didn't says that. See, my first deadline was four days after I got my office. And for four days, I just stared at the blank paper. Nothing. The deadline passed, and nobody said anything. And I got a check for $1,000."
"No shit?" says Edward. "What did you do?"
"I started putting in for more assignments. Shit, before long deadlines were flying by me left and right."
"And you never got caught?" I ask.
"Yeah, I did finally. Lindsay Merigold called me in her office and demanded a story be on her desk by eight o'clock the next morning, or I was going to be prosecuted."
"Did you do it?"
"Of course I did! I titled it "Butt Sex: I'll Bet it Hurts-"
Edward and I, by this point, are both begging LOBO to stop. My stomach hurts, and Edward is threatening to piss his pants.
Noticing the searchlights closely and off to our left, LOBO slows the car.
"We're here."
