Mere Anarchy (2 page)

“What gives?” I said. “Are you Houdini?”

“Oh, well,” he sighed benevolently, “since I’m deigning to converse with practically a paramecium, I may as well give
you
the whole schmear. Let’s repair to the Stage Deli and decimate some schnecken while I hold court.” With that there was an audible pop and Endorphine vanished. I sucked in my breath and clasped my hand to my open mouth like a startled Gish sister. Seconds later he reappeared, contrite.

“Sorry. I forgot you bottom-feeders can’t dematerialize and translocate. My error. Let’s just hoof it.” I was still pinching myself when Endorphine began his tale.

“OK,” he said. “Flashback six months prior, when Mrs. Endorphine’s little boy Max was at emotional ducks and drakes over a series of tribulations, which, if you count my misplaced beret, topped Job’s. First, this fortune cookie from Taiwan I was tutoring in anatomical hydraulics eighty-sixes me for an apprentice pie maker, then I get sued to the tune of many dead presidents for backing my Jaguar through a Christian Science Reading Room. Add to that my one son from a previous connubial holocaust gives up his lucrative law practice to become a ventriloquist. So here I am, blue and funky, scouring the town for a raison d’être, a spiritual center as it were, when suddenly, out of the ether, I come across this ad in the latest issue of
Vibes Illustrated
. A spa type of joint that liposuctions off your bad karma, raising you to a higher frequency wherein you can at last hold sway over nature à la Faust. As a rule I’m too savvy to bite on a scam like that, but when I dig the CEO is an actual goddess in human form, I figure what could be bad? And there’s no charge. They don’t take dough. The system’s based on some variation of slavery, but in return you get these crystals, which empower you, and
all
the Saint-John’s-wort you can scarf up. Oh, I’m leaving out she humiliates you. But it’s part of the therapy. So her minions frenched my bed and affixed an ass’s tail to the back of my trousers unbeknownst to me. Sure I was a laughingstock for a while, but let me tell you, it dissolved my ego. Suddenly I realized I had lived in previous lives—first as a simple burgomaster and then as Lucas Cranach the Elder … or no, I forget, maybe it was the kid. Anyhow, the next thing I know, I wake up on my crude pallet and my frequency is in the stratosphere. I got like this nimbus around my occiput and I’m omniscient. I mean right off I hit the double at Belmont and within a week I draw crowds every time I show up at the Bellagio in Vegas. If I’m ever unsure about a nag or whether to hit or stick at blackjack, there’s this consortium of angels I tap into. I mean, just ’cause someone’s got wings and is made of ectoplasm don’t mean they can’t handicap. Clock this wad.”

Endorphine extracted several bale-sized bundles of thousand-dollar bills from each pocket.

“Oops, excuse me,” he said, fumbling to retrieve some rubies that had fallen out of his jacket when he produced the cornucopia of greenbacks.

“And she doesn’t take any remuneration for this service?” I inquired, my heart taking wing like a peregrine falcon.

“Well, you know, that’s how it is with avatars. They’re all big sports.”

That night, despite a welter of imprecations from the distaff side plus a quick call by her to the firm of Shmeikel and Sons to check if our pre-nup covered the sudden onset of dementia
praecox,
I found myself skying west to the Sublime Ascension Center with its divinity in residence, a vision in Frederick’s of Hollywood named Galaxie Sunstroke. Bidding me enter the shrine that dominated her compound, an abandoned farm curiously resembling the Spahn ranch of Manson lore, she put down her emery board and got comfortable on a divan.

“Take a load off your feet, honey,” she said to me in tones less Martha Graham than Iris Adrian. “So, you want to get in touch with your spiritual center.”

“Yes. I’d like my frequency turned up, the ability to levitate, translocate, dematerialize, and sufficient omniscience to divine in advance the randomly selected numerals that comprise the New York State Lottery.”

“What do you do for a living?” she inquired, oddly un-omniscient for a creature of her reputed majesty.

“Night watchman at a wax museum,” I replied, “but it’s not as fulfilling as it sounds.”

Turning to one of the Nubians who fanned her with palm fronds, she said, “What do you think, boys? He looks like he’d make a good groundskeeper. Maybe take care of the septic tank.”

“Thank you,” I said as I knelt, pressing my face to the ground in abasement.

“OK,” she said, clapping her hands as a quincunx of loyal minions scurried forward from behind beaded curtains. “Give him a rice bowl and shave his head. Till a bed opens up he can sleep with the chickens.”

“I hear and obey,” I murmured, averting my eyes lest a
direct
look at Ms. Sunstroke could distract her from the crossword puzzle she had begun. With that I was hurried away, slightly apprehensive with the thought that I might be branded.

As far as I could discern in the days following, the compound was awash with losers of every description: poltroons and nudniks, actresses who guided their each move by the planets, the overweight, a man who had been involved in some kind of taxidermy scandal, a midget in denial. All sought to ascend to a higher plane while they labored around the clock in lobotomized submission to the supreme goddess, who occasionally was seen on the grounds dancing like Isadora Duncan or inhaling from a long pipe and then laughing like Seabiscuit. In return for a few spells and passes now and then from the compound’s chief shaman, an ex-bouncer I thought I recognized from a documentary on Megan’s Law, the faithful were expected to toil twelve to sixteen hours a day harvesting fruits and vegetables for the staff to consume and to manufacture assorted salable commodities such as nude playing cards, foam-rubber dashboard dice, and restaurant crumbers. In addition to my responsibilities maintaining the drainage system, as groundskeeper I was expected to spear and bag the discarded carob-bar wrappers and cigarette papers that dotted the landscape. The daily fare, which leaned heavily on alfalfa seeds, miso, and ionized water, was a little difficult to get used to, but a sawbuck laid on one of the less committed lamas whose brother ran a nearby diner secured an intermittent tuna melt. Discipline was lax and one was
expected
to act responsibly, although breaking the dietary rules or shirking on the job could lead to a flogging or being hooked up to a field telephone. Humiliation followed humiliation as part of an ego-cleansing ritual, and finally when it was decreed that I was to make love to a karmic priestess who was a dead ringer for Bill Parcells, I decided it was time to pack it in. Inching on my back underneath the barbed-wire fence, I lit out in the dead of night and flagged down the last 747 to the Upper West Side.

“So,” my wife said, with the benign tolerance of one addressing the prematurely senile, “did you dematerialize and translocate here, or is that a Continental Airlines cocktail napkin I see dangling from your collar?”

“I didn’t stay long enough for that,” I parried, fuming at her subtle contumely, “but I sweated enough to pick up
this
little tour de force.” And with that I levitated six inches off the floor and hovered while her mouth spread like the shark’s in
Jaws
.

“You lower-frequency know-it-alls just don’t get it,” I said, rubbing it in to her with unrestrained glee yet forgivingly. The woman let out a piercing shriek of the type that alerts to enemy bombardment and bid our children run and take refuge from this nightmarish voodoo. It was at this moment I began to realize I couldn’t get down, and try as I might to deelevate, I found the maneuver impossible. Pandemonium akin to the stateroom scene in
A Night at the Opera
ensued, the children shaking and bellowing hysterically as neighbors ran in to save us from what must have sounded like a bloodbath.
All
the while I strained mightily to lower myself, grimacing and twisting like a mime. Finally, leaping into action, the better half took it upon herself to master this warp in conventional physics by procuring a neighbor’s ski, which she brought down hard on the top of my head, sending me earthbound in a thrice.

The last I heard, Max Endorphine had dematerialized never to rematerialize again. As far as Galaxie Sunstroke and her Sublime Ascension Center, rumor has it they were dismantled by Treasury agents and reincarnated, or was it reincarcerated? As for me, I never was able to gain loft again or guess in advance the name of a single horse at Aqueduct that would run better than sixth.

T
ANDOORI
R
ANSOM

The legendary outlaw Veerappan, a lean man with a twirling, jet black mustache, has ranged through the jungles of South India for a generation. … Mr. Veerappan stands accused of 141 murders. … On Sunday he put into action what the police are calling his boldest, most diabolical plan. … He abducted Rajkumar, 72, a beloved movie star whose half-century-long career portraying Hindu gods, kings of yore and heroes of every kind has endowed him with a mystical stature of his own.

—
The New York Times
, August 3, 2000

OTHESPIS, MY MUSE,
my blessing, my curse! Like you I have been graced by the gods with a vivid and abundant gift for the performing arts. A born talent with heroic lineaments, the aquiline profile of a Barrymore, and the corybantic suppleness of a strutter and fretter in the Kabuki, I was not content to settle merely for the bounteous hand dealt me by providence but immersed myself assiduously in the dramatic arts of classical theater, of dance and mime. It has been said that I can do more with the raising of an eyebrow than most actors can do with their entire bodies. To this day,
denizens
of the Neighborhood Playhouse recount in hushed tones the psychological detail with which I imbued Parson Manders during a summer workshop. The downside of a histrionic life is that beneath a certain minimum figure, the number of calories required each day to postpone starvation demands that I bus the tables at Taco-Pox, a burrito palace that languishes before the unsuspecting on La Cienega Boulevard like a Venus flytrap. That’s why when I received a message on my PhoneMate from Pontius Perry, the high-powered agent at Career Busters, Hollywood’s hottest talent emporium, I sensed that maybe it was finally my time to taste a little back end. This notion was reinforced when Perry told me I could use the private elevator reserved for top box-office draws and wouldn’t have to put my lungs at risk inhaling next to a supporting player. I divined that the business at hand just might revolve around the bestselling novel
Row Mutant, Row
, in which the role of Josh Airhead was coveted by every male star in SAG. I was perfect for the tragic intellectual, possessing just the right admixture of nobility and sangfroid.

“I think I got something for you, kid,” Pontius Perry told me as I faced him in his office, which had been decorated by two
très chic
new Hollywood designers in a combination of postmodern and Visigoth.

“If it’s the part of Josh Airhead, I want the director to know I’ll be using a prosthesis. I see him with a miser’s hump, embittered from years of rejection and perhaps even with some layered wattles.”

“Actually, they’re talking to Dustin about Airhead. No, this is a whole nother project. It’s a thriller about some wino who looks to boost a moonstone-type rock from betwixt the eyes of a Buddha or some such idol of that nature. I only gave the script a perfunctory read, but I managed to glom sufficient gist before merciful Morpheus did a number on me.”

“I see, so I play a soldier of fortune. A role that gives me a chance to utilize some of my old gymnastic training. All those classes in theatrical swordplay stand poised to bear fruit.”

“Let me level with you, boychick,” Perry said, peering out the six-foot picture window at the molasses-colored smog that the citizens of Los Angeles favor over actual air. “Harvey Afflatus is playing the lead.”

“Oh, then they see me in a character role—the hero’s best friend, a trusted confidant who propels the plot from within.”

“Er, not exactly. See, Afflatus needs a lighting double.”

“A what?”

“Someone to stand on a mark for the tedious hours it takes the cameraman to light the scene, someone who vaguely resembles the star so the lamps and shadows won’t be too far out of whack. Then, at the last second, when they’re ready to call action and make the shot, the zombie—er, the double—takes a hike and the money comes on and plays the part.”

“But why me?” I asked. “Do they really need an actor of genius for that?”

“ ’Cause you vaguely resemble Afflatus—oh, you’ll never be in his class lookswise, but the morphology meshes.”

“I’d have to think about it,” I said. “I am up for the voice of Waffles in a puppet rendition of
Uncle Vanya
.”

“Think quick,” Perry said. “The plane leaves for Thiruvananthapuram in two hours. It’s better than minesweeping the used enchiladas off the tabletops in some Tex-Mex tamale factory. Who knows, you could get discovered.”