avant god: III. Serial Logic

Around and around and around

Spinning. At every turn, at every angle my life took on some new significance. My head whirled.

When we got home from our honeymoon, we spent the afternoon and evening recreating by the pool. I was so fatigued, so drained and tired, I barely resisted when Knuckles brought out some papers for me to sign.

“What are these?” I asked, unconcerned.

“Adoption papers.”

“What do we need to adopt for? We already have one in the oven?”

“We already have one on the plate, as well.”

I rolled over, looking her in the eye. “What?”

She blushed, took a breath and started again. “I already have a daughter.”

I couldn't speak. I couldn't think. I must have been too pumped full of endorphins or something. All I said was, “Oh.”

“Her name is Maggie Mae. She's nine years old. She's been at the Trust for three years.”

“I don't remember you visiting anyone in the Trust.”

“They discourage visitation. It's disorienting for the children.”

“Why haven't you told me about this before?”

“I wasn't sure you were ready.”

“And now I am?”

“You don't have to stick around,” she said angrily. “You can mail in the card.”

I rolled on my back with a groan, looking up at the stars. So, I was already a father by marriage, too? Who was the real father? Nine years ago I was sixteen, opening my first exhibition, involved with Hetta. “Who's the real father?”

Knuckles sighed. “I'd rather not say. But don't worry, he's out of the picture.”

“Is he dead?”

“Sort of.”

“And Maggie may come live with us, at some point?”

“Or Maggie may not. Until she's eighteen, she belongs to the Public Trust.”

That was nine years from now, an eternity. I signed the papers.

We signed a deal with the Big Kahoona to buy our townhouse. Knuckles was so high up in government, higher than I ever suspected, the loan was interest free. It was only fair, since she sacrificed so much time and effort to the Forces of Change. We painted the guest room to look like an aquarium. Knuckles thought it would be soothing for our little guppy.

By the way, this is how Knuckles trapped me.

On her first visit to the Health Superintendent's Office they told her the fetal tissue was the size, shape and weight of a guppy. In compliance with Population Management Ordinance C-234-F56-FE789 of the ZPCs, they did the amniocentesis to find out the guppy's gender, then told her she could abort and they would pay her one hundred dollars. She said she'd think about it, then came to my studio and asked me to marry her. When we got back, we asked them not to tell us the gender so we could be surprised, like in the olden days. Since no other coital by-product was present, they kept its sex a secret, telling us it wasn't malformed and had an intelligence quotient of 118, within viable IQ parameters. I was quite proud, only having an IQ of 79. Being the idiot-savant artist of the family, I painted the guppy's room.

And so, without further excitement, we slipped into a non-threatening, familial suburban existence. We pretty much stayed at home and watched Knuckles' belly swell. There was a short time when she wasn't around that much. There was an election, or something. After a few months the President won again, like he always did, and Knuckles was back home. I tried to stay busy down at the studio, but I grew restless. Every Saturday night we entertained Esther and Peggy and their various dates. Peggy often brought her secretary, a tall man about fifteen years older than us, and Esther brought women she picked up at her spa. She was going through her Burley Cross Trainer Stage that year. What I was doing with my life was always the topic of discussion, now that my latest foray into the art universe had flopped, and that I would soon bear the responsibility of children.

“All I'm saying is that there's a world of opportunity out there for someone with your unique looks,” Peggy went on and on. “We talent search for people like you continuously, but you're hard to come by.”

“Yeah, yeah.” I picked at the soup. Knuckles tried her hand at my mother's frothy gopher gonad gumbo. She had to use oysters, so it wasn't as tasty. She tried to make three-eyed possum pie and rabbit bisque, but after showing her how to clean the carcasses she was too disgusted to even try. No matter. After all those years away from Westphalia, I was growing out of the rabbit habit. “I really don't have much interest in being a celebrity,” I said lamely. “I already tried that, and the outcome was a little disappointing.”

“Pish paw, Maynard,” Peggy said. “It's not like I'm offering you a position in which you can change the world. There's no responsibility here, just fun.”

“He's already had enough fun,” Esther sneered. “Maybe he needs to settle down and take some responsibility, like working for the government. It's been a good career for Virginia and myself.”

Peggy laughed. “You can't be serious. Who would give up a six digit salary on a nationally syndicated game or talk show to become a faceless buristocrat? Only a retar--” She stopped short, blushing. I chewed an oyster.

“There's one little problem,” I reasoned. “Just a few years ago I was branded a criminal in an extremely publicized trial. Whose gonna want to see a game show host who's a criminal?”

Peggy nearly choked. “Are you kidding? That's not the problem, that's the hook. What better insurance of instant success than name recognition? Most people won't even remember why they remember your name, just that you're interesting.”

I chewed an oyster for a while, mulling it over. “What kind of show is it?”

Peggy slipped right into her best sales pitch. “It capitalizes on current market trends, a trivia quiz show based on that old hang-man game, except we hang a real man. We pick someone from history, some misogynistic Whitemale militaristic baby killer, like Arnold Raygun, and we wheel him out on stage all tied up with his head covered in a white hood. One contestant is the Defense Lawyer, and she's the only one who knows who the hog-tied butchering sadist is. The other contestant is the Prosecutor, and she has to try to figure out who the killer is by cross examining him about his political career and how many people he killed and how many orphans he starved while the Defense Lawyer tries to muddle her up by objecting and generally confusing the whole process. The audience is the jury, they decide who wins the case. If the Prosecution Lawyer wins, she gets fabulous cash and prizes. If the Defense Lawyer wins, she gets fabulous cash and prizes. And the audience always gets a nice door prize for helping out, an Inside the Egg Scrambler, or something. It will be very popular.”

“What if the Whitemale from history is already dead?”

“There's a surplus of Whitemale murderers and rapists in the world. We take one of the millions of them from prison and bring him down to take the place of Arnold Raygun, or Humphrey Ix, or whomever we're putting on trial that night. Either way, he gets shipped off to the AZ. That's where they all wind up, anyway.”

“It sounds very complicated.”

“Teaching history always is.”

I frowned. “And what's the name of this game.”

“'What's My Crime.' It will be very popular.”

“Uh huh.” I took a sip of wine, then turned to Esther. “And what do you think, Esther? Why should I go into government?”

“Stability, Maynard,” she said, aloof, static. “You won't have to rely on ratings to stay in government. I know of a position in The Civil Agency for the Arts that's open right now.”

“But what if I don't want to work for the government?” I said, picking at my soup.

“Why?” Esther suddenly sounded offended. “What on earth is wrong with the Cooperative? Eight out of ten citizens works for the Fed. Your own wife does, what's the matter with you doing it?”

“I have nothing against our Cooperative, or any government, really.”

“Then what's your problem?”

“Insiders. Buristocrats. They allow artists to live among them because they need to feel sophisticated. They need to look at our work, or listen to our music and nod their little buristocratic heads and tell their little buristocratic friends they think they understand. They need to chat about us at their little dinner parties so everyone knows how cultured they are--”

Esther balked. “Please. What makes you think artists have the corner on esoteric meaning?”

“Eso--”

“Listen.” She leaned over the table, speaking slowly, with her hands. “You can't define culture meaningfully, so don't even try. Ultimately, I don't think anyone really cares, as long as they're happy. No one will talk about you, because no one cares. All we have to do is doctor up your records and raise your IQ to the minimum, 100. I'll authorize a recommendation for the position. Start as a critic, and within a year you'll be a coordinator. Within five you'll be advisor to the BK himself.”

I looked around the table, at the Triad, looking at me with their six glaring eyes, six arms crossed over six cold bussoms, six legs clenched and tense, waiting to spring. I turned back to Peggy. “You're in entertainment, don't you think it would be compromising my artistic principles to leave my work and do something as crass as work for government, or even in the television business. No offense, Peggy, but TV is TV, and art is art--”

“Hah! I can't believe it,” Peggy rolled her eyes. “Where are your loyalties, Maynard, to the Bohemian art crowd? Hetta and the rest of those phonies? They told you it was noble to suffer for your art, right? Well, do you know where they are right now? They're down at The Fritz eating caviar bought with your money, and all the while you're sitting here fretting about artistic principles and having to wash dishes or turn burgers to pay your rent, they're out smoking Blaze bought with your money. In television, I'm offering you the chance to be a somebody again.”

I looked over to my wife for support. She sat staring down at her belly, contentedly rubbing it in little circles.

“You're about to be a father,” Esther said. “When are you going to grow up and assume some responsibility?”

“I did. I married Virginia.”

“Another stupid move. Now you're in a higher tax-bracket. I told her not--” Knuckles glanced up angrily, her eyes fierce and threatening. “Well,” Esther hemmed. “What's done is done. At least you can get a good Federal job, like the rest of us. At least you can do that.”

I sat there for a long while, mulling it over. Buristocrat. Game-show host. Buristocrat. Game-show host. The choice was so difficult.

“Yes,” I heard my voice say, looking at Esther. “I can do that.”

“Good,” Knuckles blurted. “Well, now that that's out of the way, we can have desert.”

I got up, clearing the table, and from the kitchen I heard Knuckles thank the others for their help.

We played pinochle that night, and later, while practicing breathing exercises, Knuckles told me she was overjoyed, almost too excited to sleep, thrilled that I would be getting involved with the art world again, that I would stop fooling around with these novel ideas that no one in their right mind would want to buy or publish anyway. We would move to a higher tier in our Insurance Alliance. We could buy a summer home. We could get a second car, with a second driver. And so I went to work for the Big Kahoona.

? € ¥ $ ‰ £ ?

I reported to work at the FAD, the Fine Arts Department, Lower Visual Division of the CAA. Ester pulled strings to get me a fantastic job. I heard that many buristocrats waited years to get the position I received over night. Critics are petty buristocrats moving through the system like piss through a kidney, the waste product of all other production. They pool in their departments until they become too burdensome on the system, which filters them out by ejecting them into another department to criticize someone else's work. Their release is usually voluntary as they climb their various ladders, but every once in a while some lodge like stones until the Fed removes them, tossing them out of the system entirely. Such were the new openings.

All day long we looked at art films, deciding entitlements for the producers, to ensure continued involvement in American Fine Arts. We used indexes to evaluate the worth of each piece, everything from configuring PRF-PMF (partner rotation frequencies per minute of film) and counting copulative positions, to assessing cultural significance and deciding which Public Trust system to send what film to as part of their Sex as Art Education, or SAE. We had to be discerning, since some Public Trusts focused their SAE on unisexual relationships, while others preferred controlled polygamy; but most liked what we called Variety Packs, a kind of grab bag of whatever we had in stock. The usual endowment to the film maker was fifteen hundred dollars. Every day we all came together in this small, dark room to screen and categorize the material. I hate to confess, but after several thousand hours of viewing, it all looked the same to me. Of course, I never let on to my peers in the film department. I tried to blend right in with their comments and criticisms, hooting and making them laugh just as hard as any of the other critics.

Dinner was usually a silent affair, unless Knuckles decided to play her favorite game, Name the Guppy. In nine months the guppy had grown into a rockfish, and she had narrowed it down to Martha for a girl and Stewart for a boy. She had her heart set on a boy.

One afternoon I stayed home from work to take Knuckles uptown to her OBGYN. She was the personal doctor of Knuckles department head, so her office was a plush high-rise overlooking Partnership Park. It was the usual thing: we went in, waited, Knuckles got poked and probed while I read a magazine, Knuckles came out and said, “Any day now,” we paid our fair share of the cost, 3.491%, and we left.

“Any day now. Any day now. We're three weeks overdue and that's all she ever says.”

“Don't worry,” Knuckles said, looking off into the crowd of pedestrians swarming around our car. “Dr. Neateater is the best in her field, with the highest Cooperative rating. We're better off than all these cattle.” She smiled. I saw nothing funny in her snobbery, which was why she loved to be a snob. “Could you go downtown? I promised Peggy we'd stop by the gallery and drop off some tax forms.”

“I don't think we should be driving all over the city now, do you?”

She rolled her head toward me, smirking. “I think I know what I'm capable of withstanding. An hour trip into the city won't stop the world.”

I pulled off exit 30 and headed downtown. The traffic grew heavier and heavier, the temperature hotter and hotter as we eased deeper and deeper into noontime gridlock. By the time we got to Trader's Circus, Knuckles began sweating like a pig; turning gray, she began panting. I pulled the car into a handicapped spot.

“Water,” she said.

“You want water?” I heard this little splashing whoosh down the seat to the floor. As I scrambled to wipe it off the leather seat, Knuckles began squirming as if getting little electric shocks. I had to get her out of this heat. I ran around to her side of the car and lifted her out, then head straight for the first open doorway I could find. We slipped into the cool darkness of a huge restaurant and I laid Knuckles into a chair. It was the lunchtime rush, crowded and busy. No one even noticed us come in, so I went over to the bus cart and tried to take a stack of cloth towels. As I turned away, the busboy grabbed my arm. Just as I was about to hit him, Knuckles began screaming.

I pushed my way through the crowd, yelling that I was the father, no one listened. When I finally got a glimpse through the crowd, I found Knuckles all but naked, red faced, panting in labor between two men holding her on the floor between them. The men were dressed all in white, their hands quick and professional. They were cooks. Huddled between Knuckles' legs was this little woman, her back to me. I dropped the towels as two men yanked me back into the gawking throng. Knuckles screamed in agony; I wept for joy.

The crowd grew dense and intense. Snared, trapped, faceless, impotent I stood watching in awe as my offspring sprang. As if in a dream, the crowd chanted “Push push push” hypnotically, until the big moment when they all “Oooed” collectively and the guppy's head crowned. With another whoosh of water, its little head and body slipped into the world. Knuckles lay there exhausted, then suddenly looked up at all the people around her. She tried feebly to cover herself, but the little woman slapped her hands away, placing a cake pan between her legs to gather the placenta. I knew how Knuckles felt, exposed, legs spread wide as a baby and all its attending ooze came slipping out on the floor of a dank little eatery, surrounded by dozens of leering strangers, exposed at the most vulnerable moment of her life. It was just like my trial. They handed her the baby, all wrapped up in a red and white checkered table cloth; Knuckles laughed and cried all at once. Finally, the little woman covered the placenta and slid it aside respectfully, then covered my wife with a table cloth, the baby swaddled to her chest. After a short round of applause, the crowd wandered back to finish their lunches. And so our daughter was born on the floor of Cappy Burgers; Knuckles named her Ruth, after her deliverer, my ex-boss's leathery little knot of a wife.

Knuckles and the two Ruths were getting along great by the time the ambulance showed up, laughing and cooing over the purple baby, apparently forgetting their past differences in the trauma of their shared maternal experience. I didn't ask Knuckles if she knew where it was that Ruth was born. She was too distraught, too excited, too caught up in the whirl of postpartum exhaustion. By the time we got back to the hospital, cleaned up and put mother and daughter to bed, no one cared.

? € ¥ $ ‰ £ ?

So began parenthood, with the usual legal formalities. Being a Whitemale, and because Ruth was a girl, I had to sign a whole pile of papers and contracts at the hospital stating that I would never bath the girl or be present when she was being bathed, changed, dressed or in any state of undress, including outer clothing; that I would only hold her in the presence of my wife in such a way that both of my hands were visible; and, if Knuckles happened to be breast feeding, I couldn't be around to watch that either, without the written consent of my wife, signed by a Notary Public and two lawyers, just in case Ruth decided to sue me in the future for sexual abuse. These are just the details I remember.

The paralegal on duty insisted that the Big Kahoona was in no way discriminating against me personally, but taking steps towards the safety and wellness of its female population, my daughter especially, from the statistical pitfalls of Whitemale fatherhood. Statistically, males were increasingly hostile, incapable of the kinds of nurturing behavior necessary to effectively raise their children. Conversely, statistics showed female children were becoming increasingly abused, so it was the intention of the Fed to insure as many healthy female upbringings as possible, and limiting Whitemale paternal access in a controlled manner was a proven effective strategy, and so on and so forth, ad infinitum.

When she finished her little speech, the nurse had me initial in seven places, proving I understood. She smiled, reassuring me that the paperwork for a boy was less stringent, since we would both be the same gender and statistics showed I would be less inclined to molest my son. She also showed me, for future reference, the contracts for a baby boy, which stated that I had partial privileges of bathing and dressing, provided I was not a sex offender, didn't drink, smoke, eat too much or too quickly, wasn't overweight, didn't drive too fast or go to church too often, that I voted with the common interest, and had never been audited by the IRS.

After they made me sign all those papers for my daughter, they came out and inspected our baby car seat. We had the wrong brand, so I had them install the right one at the hospital Pharmacy, charged to our Insurance Alliance. They finally released my wife and child. I brought them home, and as soon as we arrived, Knuckles passed out from exhaustion. Little Ruth began crying, so I decided to change her. It was against the rules, but how could they tell? Besides, I was king, this was my castle.

I don’t know how long she needed a change, but when I picked her up under the arms, her little footie pajamas seemed to squish in my hands. That couldn’t be good. I carefully unzipped her jammies, and nothing in my life’s experience had prepared me for what I found. From chin to jammie footies she was covered in a velvety layer of nut-brown poopy. She was just like one of those M&Ms, a little peanut completely surrounded by milk chocolate, encased by a pink jammie crust. It took seventeen wipes, but I finally got her clean. Just as I lifted her bottom to put her in a new diaper, she shut her little eyes, balled her fists and sneezed. Another stream of chocolate spewed from her behind, spraying the dinning room wall in an interesting downward streak. As quickly as I could, I wiped her, stuck a diaper on her and put her in bed with Knuckles. I could see there was rhyme and reason to not allowing fathers to do this sort of thing.

At work the following Monday I passed out cigars, the pink bubble-gum kind. My Department was smoke free. I wouldn't smoke a cigar anyway. Someday I wanted to bring home a son.

? € ¥ $ ‰ £ ?

A year passed. I turned twenty-six. Knuckles got older, too. We started trying to have a son. Another year passed.

By the time Ruth was crawling around breaking things, I had worked my way up in the department, promoted from a passive, critical position to a more involved creative assignment, all the while remaining focused on Esther's dinner promise, that I would someday advise the Big Kahoona himself.

We got pregnant again. Dr. Neateater followed the letter of the law, sending us immediately over to the hospital where the Fed conducted its own tests; they determined it was another female guppy floating around, and before we could get a second opinion, they aborted the tissue, in accordance with PMO C-234-F56-FE237 of the ZPCs. They paid Knuckles a one hundred dollar stipend for the removal of non-viable tissue to use in the Fed's Genetics Development Program. GDP. Knuckles seemed a little sad, so on the way home I insisted we stop at Emacies and pick her out a fine red dress, size 4, to cheer her up.

Later that night my little Peanut was crying, and since there was no one to chaperone my changing the baby, I had to wake Knuckles. She was sobbing softly, alone in the dark. I left her there, remembering the nurse's warning that the mother and/or father sometimes have post-operative depression, caused by hormones. I went up to Ruth's room and peeked in. Ruth stood in her crib, looking out at the hall light with an angry pout.

“Mama?”

“No, honey. It's daddy.”

“Mama?”

“Mama doesn't feel good.”

“Mama.”

I lifted the little girl out of her clothes and wiped her off with a moist towelette, my hands trembling as I moved as quickly as I could, then turned to leave the room.

“Mama. Story.”

“Oh.” I looked around the room, but there wasn't a book in sight. “Where are your stories?”

“Mama.”

I sighed. “I don't know any baby stories.”

“Please.” She jumped up and down in her crib, trying to hug me fiercely. Wait. I did know a story. A nursery rhyme I remembered from somewhere. What was it called? The Spider and the Fly. I hadn't thought of it in years, my favorite in Westphalia.

“OK, honey,” I said, crouching beside her crib. “I know a story. My father told this to me when I was a little boy.”

She lay down in her blankets, looking up at me happily. I closed my eyes and began to recite:

I opened my eyes and found that I was trembling. I didn't remember it being like that. Ruth was sound asleep. I stood and let myself out quietly. Later that night I took Knuckles in my arms and held her, stroking her hair; she finally slept too.

? € ¥ $ ‰ £ ?

I was assigned to the Graphic Arts Department, which was mostly concerned with posters and prints touting the various Cooperative programs and activities. We designed flyers. We instituted entertaining programming and art fairs. And in the middle of all this creative activity was Maynard Ix, one of the most sought after designers whose posters and lithographs were considered nearly works of art.

We got pregnant again; this time we bought red shoes to go with her dress.

By this time my art took on a Neo-classical motif, coalescing current cubist trends with traditional neo-Heroic elements of the classical periods, culminating in a strange, computer generated antiquity fused with techno-modernity. One poster, designed exclusively for an up-coming Earth Day celebration, pictured a Herculean figure balancing a huge globe on his back. This was the classic element, his musculature classical in execution, but on closer inspection one saw the strange peculiar angularity of his form, his body was going through an alienation of original form from the traditional sense to a more progressive modernity. Little festering cancers roiled on the surface of the feminine Gaia, earth-mother-globe-Life Goddess where she touched the sweaty, sinewy back of the Whitemale-human-War God-aberration, suggesting a genetic-level transfusion into Mother Earth of degenerate Whitemaleness, culminating in her potential overpowering by the growing force of the destructive Human/Male Infestation. I was quite proud of its subtlety, but many critics thought it too derivative of the current Fed spin of ecology. What did they know, shaking their little drips and drabs of criticism from the ends of their useless pens, faceless heads locked forever in the dank bowels of the Oligarchy? Besides, I found out through unofficial channels that the Big Kahoona himself was a fan of mine.

My work work seemed to progress, but my home work was starting to take on a strange, surrealistic, ethereal feel of the macabre, and I didn't like it. At work I created tall, strong and healthy statues of the ideal American worker, lifting her load, brimming breasts bare and perfect, all very Neo-classical, but at home I produced very different works, miniatures, little people peeking out of walnut shells, their little fingers pulling the shell apart just enough to see out, and for us to see in, their little jade or turquoise eyes large and frightened. I carved little feet and legs in marble, severed neatly at the joints. I started dreaming about faces and people I never knew, bustling like locust through my brain at night. And in the day I caught glimpses of their faces, in the crease of a curtain, in the shadowy layers of tree bark, in the stucco on the ceiling over our bed, a crag mouth skewed in an angry smirk, a bump nose and two sunken eyes glaring in silent reproach at me from my scrambled eggs. Endless facial iterations plagued my vision, following me everywhere as I caught a fleeting glimpse of a sardonic grin that instantly vanished in the background of the greater chaos of perception. Was I going mad?

Just when I thought my mind would snap, my administrator pulled me aside and offered me a chance to exhibit my work, a retrospective, from the deviant bohemian stages through the poverty years into my Cooperative “Enlightenment.” I accepted.

Rushing home early that night, I let myself in the back door, creeping through the house, trying to surprise Knuckles with the news of my coming show. I found her in the den, talking on the phone, so I stopped, not wanting to interrupt.

“Nothing,” she sighed, tiredly. “No. I haven't heard a thing from them.” She paused for a long time, then said, “Uh huh.” I almost retreated into the living room, to let her finish, when she said something shocking. “Well, I wouldn't cut his funding just yet. The investment will be worth it in the long run. You'll have Maynard in your back pocket.” I nearly dropped my portfolio. She was talking about me? Cutting my funding? Without thinking, I stepped into the den and looked at her, standing with her back to me, chewing her nails, staring down into the fire. “Her?” she said, shuddering. “I can't believe she's still around making trouble. No, I haven't heard from her in twelve years, since the Trust, and I never want to either--”

“Who's her?” I said, standing behind her.

Knuckles jumped so she nearly dropped the phone. “Maynard! What are you doing here? You shouldn't be home for another hour.” She looked panicked, as if caught in bed with another man.

“Who is that?” I said coldly. She held the phone to her chest breathlessly.

“How long have you been standing there?”

“'I wouldn't cut his funding just yet.' That long.”

“You just got home?”

“Just now.” She turned to hang up the phone without saying goodnight to her caller, so I snatched the phone from her hand before it touched the cradle. “Who is this?” I snapped into the phone.

“Who's this?” the voice responded cheerfully. It sounded familiar.

“This is Maynard Ix. With whom am I speaking?”

“Well, Maynard, how the hell are you! Virginia didn't say you were home.” My jaw dropped. I recognized that drawl now. It was the President, the Big Kahoona himself, talking to me on my own phone, in my own home.

“Uh,” I said.

“I'll tell you, son, I've been looking forward to seeing your work in person next week. I'm a great admirer of yours.”

“Thank you.”

“Virginia tells me you've been having trouble with some critics down at the Department.”

“What do they know?”

“I couldn't agree more. We were just talking about cutting their funding and closing their departments to shut them up.”

“You can do that?”

“Sure. I can do anything, but Virginia thought it would be better if we just let them have their say and let your work speak for itself.”

“Who's 'her'?”

“What's that?”

“Her. You were talking about a her.”

“Oh that. Just a little political matter. You just worry about your art, son. It's what you do well. We'll take care of the politics and you take care of the art.”

“OK.”

“I'll be at your exhibition next week, to open it personally. Isn't that great?”

“Yes.”

“Why don't you put your wife back on the phone and I'll say good night.”

“OK.”

“Good night, Maynard.”

“Good night, Mr. President.”

I handed Knuckles the phone, stepping back to catch my breath. It wasn't every day you talked to The Most Powerful Being In The Universe on the phone in your own home. And it was true, he was a fan. Knuckles mumbled something and hung up.

“Well,” she said uneasily, clapping her thin hands. “What are you doing home so early?”

“You were talking to the President.”

“Yes. I often do.”

“Why?”

“I'm one of his aids, his Special Interest Adjunct on Affairs of the State. I deal with all these political matters with him, like the election.”

I was shocked. I knew Knuckles was rather high up, but I had no idea she was so involved with the President, and she was talking to him about me!

“He told you my good news?”

“I've known about the exhibition for some time. Congratulations.”

I was more than a little deflated. “This is all a little disconcerting,” I said, pouring a cognac. She nodded and I poured her one as well. We tossed them back, sitting side by side on the couch, our hands hanging limply between our knees, unable to touch or hold. I was a little put out, my surprise growing limp and useless.

“Well,” she said. “It's been a long day. I'm going to bed.”

She stood over me, looking down, gaunt, drawn, tired, waiting. I wanted to comfort her, but she was different now. She was this powerful being to me, all-knowing, deeply involved in the “Insiders” thing. We were of two different universes. I smiled lamely; she turned away, sighing as she walked slowly out.

Depressed, disappointed, listening to Knuckles take care of Ruth, I opened the secret drawer under my desk and pulled out a little glass vile, my secret stash. Three little rocks of Blaze rattled around inside. I took out a little pipe from my humidor and sparked the first rock. Immediately my body came alive, my senses ignited, my face burning, my scalp tingling as the room came alive with writhing faces and smiles. I was surrounded by the hundreds of faces of my existence, most without names, some I knew. Hetta. Ida. Maurice. Stan. They were all there, winking and nodding, leering and seeing. And she was there as well, a face I had not seen yet in all my dreams. Livia. The long dead face of my Livia, her teeth bright, her eyes green sparks. Nothing would ever bring her back. They were all the past, cut off, meaningless.

I sparked the second rock, feeling my body slip deeper into the long black bag of semi-consciousness. Emerging from the twisting faces rose a long, silky visage, arms outstretched, face lovely, sad. She was real, tangible, needing. I resolved to make up with Knuckles, for she was the present.

I sparked the third stone and the room exploded into light. All around me little devils dressed like judges danced to this slow, pulsing throb. A voice chanted, deep and fearful, warning me. Understand, I heard, as every few beats the devils turned in unison, pointing to the door, to the hall, up the stairs to her bedroom. Ruth was the future.

Somehow I was there, standing over her bed. I was naked. So was Knuckles. I lowered myself onto her, she looked up.

“Go brush your teeth,” she said.

? € ¥ $ ‰ £ ?

My exhibition finally came, and not a moment too soon.

It was just like the old days. I arrived at the hall early, having more to do with production now than I ever did before. Nervous, excited, I vomited all morning, unable to shake the feeling that something really big was going to happen. The Big Kahoona Himself was coming down to my exhibition to admire my work. No bigger complement could be paid an artist in the Department. Esther was right. What did the Bohemians know that was any different or any more esoteric than anyone else out there? The Bohemians just knew their little slant on truth. No one was right or wrong, they were just different, and that was fair.

Anyway, I was running around like a maniac when all the festivities got under way. Knuckles pulled me aside, trying to wash my face with a napkin and straighten my hair, but it was no use. We would just have to go with it. I didn't care anyway. I was just too excited.

Knuckles, Ruth and I received the guests. Knuckles insisted on bringing Ruth and holding her there for all the world to see. I thought it was a little unprofessional, but there was no arguing with Knuckles once she latched on to an idea. Distinguished guests filed by, stopping to chat with me and the Mrs.: the Secretery of Art and Music, followed by the Secretary of Ecology and his wife, the Director of the National Education Alliance. Several Senators and Representatives followed, joined by their spouses. They were all new faces to me, so Knuckles held up the baby and whispered little details about the our guests.

“Senator Remmedy was caught drunk out of his mind the other day at the Capital Motel with two minors,” she whispered, just after I shook his hand. “The Representative is under indictment for seventeen felonies for theft, but she'll be re-elected. She's been in office for thirty-two years.” And so on.

Finally, after all the dignitaries were assembled, a long black limousine pulled to the curb and the guest of honor arrived. He stepped out and waved immediately, working his way up the voters who gathered to get a glimpse of him. He stood about six four, and I could tell even at a distance he had hands the size of baseball mitts. It was The Big Kahoona, The BK, The Most Powerful Man In The Universe, The MPMITU Himself. He looked even more boyish in person than he did on the television, with his slightly mussed, sandy blonde hair and his naive grin that he flashed at the voters. His eyes were a little puffy, as if he was up late last night with Knuckles, leading the Forces of Change. And tagging along behind him was his escort for the evening, a tiny little woman who stood a good foot and a half shorter. I recognized her from the papers, Patrice Hoossie, Secretary of the Interior. Knuckles snickered.

“What's so funny?” She smiled at me; one of those innocent, side-long glances she flashed at me before were first married.

“Maynard Ix!” a voice boomed just next to my head. I turned and stood face to face with The MPMITU. My heart jumped. “Well it certainly is a pleasure to meet the man himself.” The Big Kahoona held out his huge hand and, when I reached out to shake, my hand disappeared inside his. He smiled. “Your lovely wife has been keeping me abreast of your achievements for the longest time. I've been an admirer of your work since your Bohemian Hey Days.”

“Really?” I said, smiling.

“That's what I said.” He turned to the press and winked. “It's right what they say about those crazy eyes of yours.”

“What's that?”

He leaned forward and grinned. “It's like looking into the abyss.”

I smiled back. “Be careful. Maybe the abyss can look back into you.”

He clapped me on the shoulder and said too loudly, “We're all looking forward to the show.” He flashed a smile at me. I smiled back. Before he turned away, he glanced over at Knuckles and winked. Knuckles bounced our baby in her arms.

Once the Big Kahoona was inside, we all ambled in ourselves to be served hours' devours, wines and conversation. Knuckles and I milled about, chatting with all the various dignitaries. I didn't say much, and Knuckles kept informing me about the lives of all these powerful people. Three Senators were having affairs. Two Representatives were under indictment for felonies. Three Diplomats were under indictment for misdemeanors. The Secretary of Defense's Undersecretary was having a tryst with the Director of Fiscal Relations. One Supreme Court Justice was under investigation for insider trading and pornography trafficking on the Internet. The funny thing was, the accused were all assembled here chatting amiably with their accusers. It was all so civilized I marveled at it. It was like wandering through the halls of the Great Gods of Antiquity, all of them incestuously related through their lofty, omnipotent positions, observing Fed propriety in public, all the while conspiring amongst themselves in little groups on the side, their adversaries counter-conspiring with other groups who did the same with still other little groups. They were all family springing from the mind, the commissions, of the Big Kahoona, all taking the greatest pleasure in bedding each other, around and around in endless circles of power-mating. Many even amused themselves with the occasional common mortal on the side, for sport. And all the while these political demi-gods milled and flirted, lording regally in their tuxedoes and evening gowns, crowds of little people gathered outside, pressing their faces to the windows, hoping to glimpse their passing.

While I was lost in thoughts like this, Knuckles took Ruth home, apparently bored with this kind of glamour. After we ran the course of the exhibition, the Secret Service began ushering all these reporters into the hall. The Big Kahoona stepped up to a podium and made a little speech.

“Mr. Ix, all the distinguished Civil Servants gathered around you tonight would like to wish you the best in your retrospective here in the Federal Museum of Art, and would like to take time now to express our appreciation for your talent.” They all turned to me and clapped politely. “We are honored to have your work representative of the Forces of Change. It delights me every time I meet a convert from the Agents of the Status Quo, who want nothing more than to suck dry the resources of American people and cause disorder among the citizen Alliances with their subversive disinformation about the real nature of the Cooperative Partnership between the People and their concerned government.” I didn't know what he was talking about. “We care about you, Maynard, and we're glad to be here to help you celebrate your success.” They all turned to me and clapped politely again. “For it is now that the American people need to come together, to realize that the Agents of Disinformation are raging against them...”

Off he went on this long speech about some scandal teetering his administration. The longer he talked, the more people gathered around him, and I was steadily pushed into the back. He talked for nearly an hour, and by then I was pushed all the way up against the windows. Then he took questions. I could see why Knuckles left, but I wanted to stay to the bitter end. This, after all, was my night.

While the press railed on the Big Kahoona about this woman and that land deal, I wandered over to get a glass of champagne. No one came over to talk to me. No one even noticed me. I was no match for the President. All the reporter faces were turned to the BK. Growing bored, I scanned the faces clamoring outside, and then I saw her, all the way in the back, across the room, levitating there with the hundreds of other faces pressed against the window. Huge, green eyes, I hadn't seen that shade of wild green since the last day I saw her alive. The face moved away from the window; I bolted for the door. I ran through the crowd towards the window, looking for the face, then saw her moving off deliberately, her hair bobbed, carved to look like a man's. She was thin, petite, moving gracefully across the street, cradling a package in her arms. She turned her head, I saw her profile. Her skin was dark, like my mother's, but it was as clear as cool water. She crossed the street; I ran to catch up to her. Just at the other side, I jumped in front of her. She gasped as if I had terrified her, clutching her package tightly. We both stopped, staring at each other.
“Hello, Peepers.”

“Hello, Livia.”

“How's the wife and children?”

“What are you doing here?” I blurted, so bewildered I could barely breath.

She looked at me strangely, her eyes searching mine. “I live here,” she said, pointing over her shoulder. “I've lived here for ten years. What are you doing down here, among the little people?”

I was dumbfounded, thunderstruck. Imagine how I felt, standing there in the middle of the street with a woman whom I believed dead for twelve years. My Livia. My ideal. A flood of emotions overwhelmed me as I looked at her. She was kind of the same as I remembered her, but she was different. She still had those striking green eyes, but her face was tired, weary, as if she fretted away her youth by worrying. There were even bits of gray in her now shortened black hair. She was old.

“You cut your hair.”

She looked up and smiled. “My hair? I cut my hair off years ago. Long hair was so... Trust-ish.”

“Can I carry that for you?”

She jerked her package away from my hands. “No. I'm fine.”

What do you say to a ghost? What do you say to the dead resurrected? How do you verbalize twelve years of longing, of loss, of pain so deep and constant it seemed to be just part of your personality? She smiled again and began to back away from me. I reached for her arm. “Let's do lunch.”

“It's night time, silly. I have to go.”

“But Livia... I thought you were dead?”

“I am dead,” she grinned. “I'm dead, you're dead. Everyone's dead.” She turned and began to run away from me. I just stood there, watching her. Just as she reached the corner I stepped forward, just a single step. If she looked back, I would follow her; if she didn't, I would not. Without looking back, she disappeared. I stood there rather numbly. So that was it? She was just going to prance out of my life, dumped cold in the street like bad meat? No way. I bolted off after her, ready to cry out her name, but by the time I rounded the corner the crowd was too dense. I pushed my way in the direction she said she lived, but there were no apartments up that street, only shops and warehouses, and further up was the financial district, The Trader's Circus. I stood in the crowd for a long time, scanning faces, waiting for her to pop up. She never did.

I wandered back to the reception, moving around the celebrities there as if in a dream. Livia was dead for twelve years, and now she was alive. Her face danced before my eyes. The Big Kahoona said something to me about the up-coming election, something about a judge running against him and would I like to join Virginia on his re-election team. I was dizzy. “Election? Sure,” I said. Had it been four years since Knuckles disappeared on the last election? That would make Ruth three now. I was married for four years? Hetta had a head of hair twelve years ago. Livia was back from the dead; so was I.

I was so entranced I barely noticed the building shake, or the low rumble that made all the crystal sing tingle happily. People rushed around, dancing frantically; two men whisked the BK away before I had a chance to thank him for coming, off they went out to his big stretch limo. Suddenly, my mind music stopped. SS men moved all through the place, whispering into their lapels. One big man, wearing dark glasses, grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and moved me back towards the rear of the hall.

“What's going on?”

“Just a second, Mr. Ix,” he officiated.

I didn't like his looks, dark glasses, stone-set jaw, a weird disfigurement on his face, like an old scar or burn or something. I couldn't hold that against him. I had a scar, and I wasn't evil. Fingering my face I leaned against the rear wall and watched as dignitaries were removed from the scene in the order of their importance: the BK's personal staff, Senators and the Representatives, Secretaries and Ministers. A dark woman, dressed in a General's uniform, barked orders in the chaos, waving a tongue depressor maniacally, but no one listened to her. She was just a figurehead. Finally, my man returned and motioned for me to follow him out the back.

“What's happening,” I said, trying to keep up.

“Just follow me, Maynard. I'll get you someplace safe.”

“What do you mean, follow you? What's going on?”

The tall SS man stopped, looking down on me. “The SRs just exploded a bomb down in the Trader's Circus. Nuclear. They took out half the Circus.”

“What are SRs?”

He turned and moved off down an alley behind the Exhibition Hall. “Serve Resistance,” he said.

We came out into the street on the other side of the block. The SS man waved and a black car pulled up through the confused crowd. He shoved me in the back seat, glaring fiercely at me through his dark glasses, his face red and full of rage.

“Take him home.” He barked at the driver.

I slid onto the long leather seat, looking back at that face. “Do I know you?”

“We are not important, Maynard. We'll contact you when things are safe.” The door slammed and the long, black car slid into the city. I leaned to the front to ask the driver who “we” was, but a glass partition slid up, sealing me in.

It was a long drive back to the suburbs, detouring around the devastation in the Circus. It was late, so I stretched out, watching the city lights slide by. Livia. Elections. Bombs. Scars. I just couldn't put it all together. I slipped into an uneasy sleep, dreaming of Knuckles, the gangly, stalky Knuckles who lived at the Trust, a little girl holding a baby in her arms. Not Ruth. I stepped closer. It wore a little pink ribbon in its hair. It was so gray, so pale, so still, grunting as it sucked a golden pacifier, eyes vacant through slit eyelids; green eyes, glowing. As I stepped closer, the baby spit out the pacifier, cleared its throat, and sang.

On and on and on and on the little gray baby sang, all the while looking at me with those lifeless, green eyes. I dreamed all the way back to our house, things that crawled around in the muck of my subconscious, screaming, writhing, unhappy things, but when I awoke, all I remembered was that little gray girl.

Faces, faces, faces.

I let myself in. The house was silent. Dark. I went to the den, poured myself a stiff cognac and sat by the cold fireplace, my mind vacant, numb.

“Maynard?”

I jumped, turning to Knuckles, thin, pale, frightened.

“Will you come to bed?”

“Did you hear? They blew up the Circus.”

“I heard.” She sat on the couch across from me. “I also heard they planned to bomb the museum downtown, to kill the BK and the rest of us, but when someone caught on to them while they were trying to plant the bomb, she panicked and decided to blow up the circus instead.” Knuckles looked down at her hands, cold and white. The room was cold and white.

“Have you ever heard of a group called the SR?” I said.

Knuckles looked up irritably. “Yes, I've heard of them.”

“Who are they?”

“Don't worry about them.”

“Why? They just blew up the downtown. Our studio may not even be there right now. Who are they?”

She shook her head, not looking at me. I was tired of this. Some scarred ape could push me around and keep me in the dark, but I refused to be treated like that by my own wife. “Well?!”

“They're a terrorist group, out of Westphalia. Conservative Reactionaries.”

“Westphalia? The Western Province? What are terrorists from Westphalia doing here in New Gaia?”

Knuckles tried every evasive maneuver in the book, but I pressed her until she told me everything. SR, a resistance group of ultra conservative terrorists waging an underground war in order to reinsert themselves into American politics, controlled by a fanatic named Arnold Raygun, second cousin of the deposed President Raygun and the last generation of anarchists born before the Civil War. He wanted to destroy everything.

“Why don't I know about this?” I asked in disbelief. “Why aren't these people and their bombings reported in the news?”

“The press hates them. They don't report on them, as if they didn't exist. No press coverage, no support. Their cause will fail without support. No one will know why they're fighting. No one will care.”

I shook my head. “And the government approves of this?”

“We authorize it.”

“How often do these terrorists strike?”

“Too often.” To my utter amazement, she began to cry. “When I heard about this attack I thought you were dead.”

“I'm not dead. I am alive.”

Knuckles clung to me that night while I cleaned up, showered and dressed, even dragging me down to her bedroom to spend the night. In the dim I lay in quiet contemplation, unable to escape Livia's bright green eyes, her dark skin, her white teeth smiling as she said 'Trust-ish' over and over. I felt a warm gush of new life flooding into my chest. I promised myself I would find her, I promised myself I wouldn't live out my existence squirreling around in Knuckles' shadow, compromising my art, afraid of faces I didn't even recognize. I looked over at Knuckles, humming some stupid little tune to herself, one of Ruth's finger counting songs. We slept seamlessly.

Over breakfast, Knuckles fixedly read a fax, absorbed by rows of numbers.

“What's that?”

“Casualty Report,” she said offhandedly, sipping coffee.

“I thought you were in charge of the election. Why are you all of a sudden involved with all this SR stuff?”

She looked up, smiling cockily. “Top secret stuff, hon.”

“Oh really,” I snapped angrily. “It seems I'm only just beginning to find out how top secret you are. What else aren't you telling me about?”

“OK, at least seven hundred people died in the Circus last night. No way to tell who they were, just a count of body parts. Bags and bags of em. Would you like to see the pictures?”

“Not over breakfast.”

“I'll send you a report,” she smiled sardonically, rising from the table. “Promise me you'll stay in today, that you'll stay home with the baby.”

“Huh,” I said. “I promise.”

? € ¥ $ ‰ £ ?

I spent more and more time in the downtown office, worried for Livia's safety. I lived out in the burbs, away from all the bombings and fire-fights. She was trapped in the middle of it. I never told Knuckles of my encounter with Livia. There was no need. Every day I got up extra early and went down to spend the morning wandering the streets, looking. I didn't find her. I decided she didn't really live in the area, since I went to every apartment manager in a twenty block radius and interrogated them with descriptions of her and her name. Nothing. After a month, I eased my search. Why did she lie? Wasn't she just as happy and surprised to see me? Wouldn't she be just as excited to get together after so many years? I had so many questions, and next time we met I would not waste time stammering at her like a moron.

I began a series of portraits of Livia, in my private studio, working out every emotion I ever had for her, painting busts of how I remembered her as a child, then profiles of how she looked now, so I could contrast the changes to see what kind of life she must have had. I painted small portraits on the bottom of coffee cups, on the back of my wrist watch. I painted several reclining nudes. Just as I was really getting somewhere in reconstructing the nexus of my search, I was interrupted.

Before the month was out a courier delivered a packet of contracts and instructions for the up-coming election. I was in charge of advertising for the campaign. Well, not myself entirely. I did all the posters and visuals, including television spots and leaflets. A Deputy Director supervised my efforts. By the time the summer was in full swing I was on the campaign trail with Knuckles and the Big Kahoona. As swept up in the festivities as I was, I still kept my eyes peeled for Livia every time we went in the streets.

Knuckles put Ruth into Fed Care and we were off, traveling from city to city. Most of BK's effort was concentrated in Fornicalia, the state with the most electoral votes, but sometimes we would hit the other states, taking a bus trip across country, campaigning like they used to in the olden days, shaking hands and seeing as many people as possible. The BK made his typical speech, promising his good intentioned efforts were sincerely directed at the voters' betterment, at building roads and old folks' homes, at water projects and schools. He promised to institute government programs to curb the rising inflation rate, programs to take care of children at risk of a life of crime; government programs to teach a more equitable morality and safer sexual practices to those pursuing their constitutional right to congregate; programs to distribute Welfare support to every citizen who wanted it; the “Food for Fetus” Program, supplying nourishment to the needy and clothes to the destitute while allowing them to join the rest of us good stewards of the environment; he promised government programs to educate our kids to be compassionate to those in society who were temporarily dislocated from wellness, like drug-addicts, prostitutes and pedophilian serial killers, all who could be reformed into dynamic, vital contributors to society, so no one would be exposed to undue narrow-minded biases, prejudices or general conservative mean-spiritedness; he promised programs to help understand and embrace those of other lifestyles who made up a complex, advanced, enlightened society like ours, such as homosexual activists, lesbian lawyers, hermaphrodite judges and pedophile school teachers and scout masters; he promised to help absolutely everyone help themselves to a slice of the Federal pie, as well as support from all the other Public Agency Services supplied by the endless flow of Cooperative Assistance. After all, they were entitled to all of this.

BK commissioned me to come up with a visual to suggest all these things. I painted a picture of the Big Kahoona standing on a mountain side, bathed in light, his arms spread wide, women and children of all races and physicalities coming to him as he took them in and they were fed and nourished by that huge, boyish grin of his. And one of the little girls coming to him, the one in the light blue baby doll dress and the leg-braces, that was Livia, just like I remembered her that first day at the Trust.

Life on the road was hard, and the assassination attempts didn't help any. Knuckles was acting weirder and weirder all the time. One night we climbed into bed at our hotel after a sixteen hour day and turned out the lights; just as I was drifting off to sleep, she rolled over and bit me!

“Oww! What was that for?”

She drew away from me in the dark, curling into a little ball. “I know,” she said.

“You know what?” That was all she said. I lay there in bed for a long time, wondering what she knew. I remembered the explosion in the Circus, that she knew about it before I even got home, that she knew about all the explosions and all the things that had been happening around us for all these years and that she had never told me any of it. Top Secret. Knuckles could know anything.

? € ¥ $ ‰ £ ?

Six weeks out on the campaign trail I finally realized who BK's opponent was, a New Gaian Supreme Court Judge, Ida Hammerhym. We were all attending their third debate, my first. Knuckles explained that the first two debates were fairly cordial, but the Judge was getting intimate and kept bringing up tough questions about BK's personal finances and his character. She said it was time to pull out the big guns. The usher read our name tags and put Knuckles and me in front row. When the candidates came out and the crowd rose to applaud, the good judge looked down on me, so I waved. Her eyebrows shot up, then she glanced over at the Big Kahoona, who stood smiling at her. All around us everyone clapped.

They debated all night about economics and law and government programming and all the while Judge Ida kept glancing down at me. Near the end the BK brought up the point of personal character. He made a remark about the use of power for personal gain and Ida shot a nasty glare right at him, then one down at me, obviously miffed. And then something amazing happened. The Big Kahoona mentioned my name.

“...like in the case of Maynard Ix. It has been well documented that Mr. Ix was accused of misogyny, among an array of other crimes, but we must remember that a man is not tried in the papers. We are a nation of laws, not a nation of personalities, and yet my opponent tried the good Mr. Ix to the full extent of the law with nothing more than hear-say evidence. I quote her closing remarks.” He recited words, vaguely familiar words, ones I remembered that were so damning to my life. And at the end, he said, 'No man can go about in a civilized society as nothing more than an errant sensualist.' And yet that is exactly what my opponent did to Mr. Ix, stripping away every dime of Mr. Ix's savings, stripping away every shred of dignity, stripping away every hope for his future. He spent the next several months living at the taxpayer's expense, completely incapable of supporting himself, completely uninterested in rehabilitation. Why him? Why should we care about a reprehensible misogynist? Simply because, for all his faults, he is a human being. But what is more important, because he was completely innocent.”

He paused, sipping his water. “We have documentation that the evidence presented against Mr. Ix was falsified, that the testimony of many witnesses against him was solicited. We also have documented evidence that Judge Hammerhym knew about this tampering before the outcome of the trial and was solely responsible for carrying out the sentencing as she saw fit. The good judge was hailed a hero to the Women's Movement, which is an honor I myself have born many times, but to gain this title she sacrificed Mr. Ix's right to the pursuit of pleasure as guaranteed in the very Constitution she pretends to uphold as her ideological base. He was, in effect, the sacrificial lamb on the alter of her career.”

The room exploded in excitement. The red faced Judge Ida and the Big Kahoona snapped viciously at each other while the mediator slapped his gavel uselessly. I felt quite naked, my private past exposed for all the world to see. The thing that bothered me most was the look on Knuckles' face, not of shock or surprise, as my face no doubt looked, but she looked resolute, in control, aware.

The debate raged on for another half hour, about me I think, or things about my case. It was ugly. I tried to slip out of the hall, but the press beleaguered me like ravening rats. We would have been torn apart if Knuckles hadn't summoned two SS men to escort us out through the crowd. It was a nightmare, a madhouse. And standing there in the middle of it, high above everyone else, smiling like a cat, was the Big Kahoona.

The SS men whisked me down to a room below the grand ballroom and slammed me into a chair. Suddenly there were advisors and lawyers and Knuckles all around me, all taking at once.

“Don't say any more about yourself than what the President alluded to in his comments.”

“Emphasize your achievements since joining the President's Rehab Program.”

“Mention your success in the art world, but only mention it. Let your success speak for itself.”

“Mention your strong marriage.” That was Knuckles.

All of a sudden I was propped up in front of burning lights, Knuckles to the right of me, an SS man to the left.

“Mr. Ix,” an old woman called out. “Were you aware that the President intended to bring up your case tonight in front of the entire nation?”

“No.”

“Is it true you only have an IQ of 59?” another asked.

“No.”

“He was originally tested at the Trust at a rating of 79,” Knuckles said over my shoulder. “But subsequent testing revealed a corrected IQ of 101.”

“So he's not an idiot savant, like he's been advertising all these years?”

“Biologically no,” the SS man said, leaning into the microphone. “But he was denied an education at the Trust, an experience that every American is guaranteed in the Constitution, and his subsequent success in the face of his glaring educational deficiencies, coupled with his stilting mental mediocrity, can only really be attributed to some kind of latent artistic genius.”

“So if he isn't even mildly retarded,” a weasely little reporter asked. “Then how does the BK justify hiring him into the highest paid tier of government under the mandate program of the American with Disabilities Act?”

Knuckles stepped up to the microphone. “Once he was hired by the government, he was re-tested and re-evaluated to work at the ACC. Though his disability is not apparently physical, he is a victim of mental deprivation, nevertheless. Due to buristocratic oversights, he is functionally illiterate, emotionally dysfunctional, and cognitively amorphous. He has no comprehension of politics or history or society, or anything else but his art. Without government assistance, there is no doubt he would die. Though he may not be retarded in the strictest biological sense of the word, he is unequivocally disabled. To question that would be mean-spirited.”

With Knuckles' threat the crowd chilled considerably.

“Mr. Ix,” a little fat man said. “The President alleged that after Judge Hammerhym ruined you, you spent several months in the streets, until you wandered into a Fed Rehab Center. Which Rehab Center did you contact?”

“The YMCA.”

Several of the press laughed. “That's not a Rehab Center--”

“No,” Knuckles cut in, “but their ties to the programs are well documented. We have for your information records of the treatment programs which Mr. Ix attended, including several sessions of mid-night basketball and pre-dawn tennis that Mr. Ix supervised towards the end of his stay at the Y.”

“Mr. Ix,” a nasty little man snapped. “Would you be a different person today if the Judge hadn't bankrupted your accounts in settling the damages you incurred? Did the Judge really ruin your life, or were you responsible?”

I stood there for a few seconds, unaware that I wasn't speaking. Had she ruined my life? I didn't know. I wasn't aware that life could be any different from what it is. Had I done it to myself? Certainly.

“I think we're all responsible for the things we do and for the things we believe. I made some mistakes, I'm sure, but so did she, but I never lived in the streets before I met her.”

They seemed to like that. They asked me so many questions that it all seems like a blur now. Finally we got a message from the BK that it was over and the SS man hurried us out of the room. We entered a little elevator and whizzed up to the penthouse, the President's Suite. Knuckles didn't say a word.

We entered the suite and found a pre-victory party going on, the whole bunch of them assembling to watch our little press conference. I recognized all the faces, the Vice-President and his wife, the Secretary of State. The Chief of Staff and his boyfriend. They all greeted us at the door with a warm round of applause. BK came over and slipped his arm around Knuckles and myself and gathered us all in the center of the room. I was nearly overloading.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” The Big Kahoona said, raising his arms. “A warm welcome to the man of the hour, Maynard Ix.” All the beaming, happy people clapped warmly.

“Maynard,” BK said, raising a glass of champagne. “I'd like to toast you for the work you've done.” He beamed another smile at me, winked at Knuckles and downed his champagne. We mingled in the crowd and everyone had nice things to say to me, but it was all too much. All I wanted was to go back to our room and rest my head. I looked around the room, but Knuckles was no where around. I started peeking in to the side rooms, but she was no where. Finally, I looked into the President's private suite.

She and the Big Kahoona were standing over next to the bathroom, the BK hiking her dress up around her hips as they kissed. She pushed away, but I couldn't see her face.

“It's over. The deal is done. You got what you wanted.”

He put his arm around her, lifting her in the air. “It's over when I say it's over.”

“But you have a wife. I have Maynard.”

“My wife likes girls, and surely Maynard is too stupid for you. How can you waste your life on such a dullard?”

“He's not as stupid as you take him for,” she scoffed. “Besides, Clint, we had a deal. You have to let me go now.” He pulled her dress up higher around her waist. I shut the door, excused myself from the party and went up to my room alone, tired after a long day out on the campaign trail. Knuckles came in late that night, took a long, hot shower and finally got into bed. I wanted to roll over and bite her; I wanted to look at her in the dark and whisper, I know. I didn't. She tried to snuggle up to me in the dark, but I rolled away from her. I dreamed that night. I dreamed of a little girl in a blue dress. I dreamed of green eyes. I dreamed of spiders.

? € ¥ $ ‰ £ ?

After the debate, we finally descended on The Fritz Hotel in New Gaia to watch the election returns. I sat in a huge chair across from three huge-screen TVs, each broadcasting one of the networks, NPC, APC and PCBS. I drank Scotch, a rarity for me, but it was a grand event. Knuckles flirted openly with the President. The Big Kahoona won the election in a landslide.

When the whole election was over, I limped home and tried to slip back into my old routine, but it was not to be. The objective press did not forget my part in the downfall of their beloved champion, the Good Judge Ida Hammerhym. I told them, all I did was be at the wrong place at the wrong time, that when Ida malevolently destroyed me, she destroyed herself. Yeah, yeah, right, they said. The press got more incensed, pestering me all the more, waiting outside our house, digging through our garbage, following me to work and back, peeking in our windows. There was even speculation in the press about Knuckles and the Big Kahoona, but that was quieted right down. I don't know where Knuckles and the BK were during all this.

Life at work changed dramatically, as well. I rocketed up in the Agency, receiving a promotion to the new post of Provincial Executive Assistant, whatever that was. Basically, I was relieved of all previous duties and given a huge office in which I mainly entertained foreign dignitaries. What fun. I was to oversee all cultural events in the entire Eastern Province, which meant that every once in a while I was called down to the Rainbow House for photo-ops with the BK and whoever he happened to be entertaining who liked my work. I moved into this strange new life, politician, advisor, entertainer, artist, celebrity and dignitary, all with a nice office, a Cooperative paycheck, a medical benefits package and our own private doctor. Only the most important Buristocrats were assigned their own personal physicians. I should have been happy, but...

I became restless. Something was missing, I only noticed once I realized how much the fulfillment of Esther's dinner promise would cost. I had power, but I missed freedom, anonymity, the unattached, carefree nothingness of my youth. I missed Livia. I hadn't looked for her in over six months, being so caught up in being Maynard Ix. I started to drift from my family again, to fulfill my own promise.

Over the next six months I slept regularly down at the office. I had a suite of rooms built there, an art studio along the outside wall, complete with a wall of mirrored windows, so I could look out at the city complexes and no one could look in at me. I told the Maintenance Supervisor I was working on the latest masterpieces of American Culture and no one could be allowed in, to protect my artistic integrity, authorizing the most advance security system they had, the Multi Retinal-Phazic Relief Interlocking Sonic Scanning Intranet, The MR-PRISSI. Only I, and my guests, could egress the inner sanctum. And there, tucked away in the secret interior of my official capacities, deep within the cocoon of my artistic mind, my double life began.

I moved out of the house in the suburbs. It was nicer, safer to live at the office. I only went out there to attend the occasional formal dinner function set up by Knuckles and the Big Kahoona. My life downtown took on a whole new dimension.

? € ¥ $ ‰ £ ?

During the afternoon and evenings I worked diligently around the department, the committed workaholic Department Head, always there, always available. And every night, when the last employee left, I'd still be there, working away. Standing in my darkened studio, changing into my disguise, I would watch them drive away, off to their little homes or their drunken night life to their waiting mistresses. But not me. After darkening the department, checking that security was on the other side of the building, I slipped out, melting into the city, slicking onto its greasy underbelly, becoming faceless in the dark mass, eyes open, searching. She was out there, hiding from me. I wanted to know why. I wanted her. I looked all night, wandering the streets, restless, wide awake until even the city grew tired and dragged itself off to drunken sleep. Finally at dawn, exhausted but not daunted, I dragged myself back to the studio, as well, to smoke a little Blaze, turn off the lights, dream of her. After a few hours sleep, a hot shower and a pot of coffee, the whole thing cranked back up again. I did this for a year. Nothing. I didn't hear much from Knuckles during that time, either, but I heard through the grapevine that she received another promotion. She was indispensable to the Big Kahoona.

Just after the Spring Festival in the city I had some luck. Terrific luck. I pulled on my gray clothes, the overcoat and loose shoes, and slipped out into the city just after midnight. The city was still in high gear, people dancing drunkenly in the streets, Midnight Balls still roaring in the fancy hotels and clubs while herds of eager onlookers gathered to drink out in the night, waiting to glimpse political celebs. Down by the Fritz there was a Cooperative function of the highest magnitude.

I was supposed to go with Knuckles, but I told them I had more important things to do down at the office. The good citizens gathered there in throngs to pop-ogle the celebs, and I drifted through them, drinking a beer, not really expecting anything. I worked my way over to the huge windows and stood looking in. When I saw her standing there, down by the huge windows, her head down, her eyes closed, clutching a briefcase to her chest, I nearly dropped my beer. She looked just like she did a year and a half ago, but her hair was longer now, shoulder length. I fastened my eyes on her, pushing my way through the crowd.

Just as I reached her, she looked up.

“Peepers!”

“Livia. We meet again.”

“Yeah.” She looked around nervously. “Why aren't you inside?”

“I just decided to come out and play in the city tonight. Spur of the moment kind of thing.”

She looked suspiciously at my dark clothes. “Are you alone?”

“Of course.”

“Where's Virginia?”

“Probably inside, with the President.” Livia ignored my derisive tone. “Let's go get a cup of coffee, or a drink?” I reached out and took her arm, not about to lose her again.

“I can't right now, Peepers. I'm busy.”

“Busy my foot. Whose too busy to get a drink? What else is there to do?” I began pulling her away from The Fritz. She tried to struggle at first, but on seeing I had a hold on her, she just followed along.

We broke away from the crowd and moved all the way down the street before I let go of her arm. If she tried to ditch me now I could easily regain her.

“Well, what will it be? We have so much catching up to do.” Livia smiled, looking even older now than when I saw her before the election. She had circles around her eyes, and the bright green-ness of them faded to a dull olive. There were even streaks of gray in her hair.

“Peepers. Do you have any idea what you just did?”

“I rescued you from a dull night of pop-ogling. You don't need to watch politicians to pop-ogle. I'm a celebrity myself, the Great Maynard Ix.” I was joking, but she just frowned. “Let's stop in here.” I pulled her into the first little bar we came along, sliding into a booth in the rear by the exit. I had waited so long, wandering the streets, looking, imagining what to say at this moment. It had finally arrived. We ordered beers. “Well, isn't this nice?”

“Well,” she echoed. “I hear you're quite a cog in the machine. Provincial Executive Assistant. And your wife is high up in government, as well.”

I was mildly surprised, at first I was suspicious that she knew so much, but I remembered who we were. Celebrities. “Well, we did pretty well after leaving the Trust. Remember that old Trustee? The one who loved to torture me? She said I would never be anything but a dishwasher. I could buy and sell her now.”

“You mean Mary Rocinante. She's dead, you know.”

“No, I didn't know.”

“She died of a heart attack in prison.”

“What was an old Trustee doing in prison?”

“Didn't Virginia tell you? They arrested her for insurrection by taking part in a food riot.”

“Food riots? Where are there food riots? I’ve never heard of anything like that happening…”

Livia shook her head. We sat in silence

“So I never found out where you lived after our last meeting,” I said. “I tried to come for a visit, but I never found a Livia Gates listed anywhere.”

“That's because I'm not Livia Gates. Up until a year ago I was Livia Guérilla.” My heart fell. I hoped I would never hear that name again. “Alex and I lived in a studio right near there.”

“Up until a year ago?”

“Alexander died in prison last year, of a heart attack.” She downed her beer. I nodded to the waitress and we got another round. We sat in silence for a long time after that, Livia staring at a pinball machine while I stared at her.

Finally, I had to ask. “Livia, what happened to you? I heard you died at the Trust, then I found you in the city eighteen months ago. Alex is dead. What happened?”

She smiled, a cocky half smile that was neither angry nor delighted. “You know what happened, don't you, Peepers?”

“No, I don't... Really.”

She reached over and patted my hand. “All right. After I left the Trust, I got a room at the YMCA. I was ruined, with expulsion from the Public Trust on my record, and attempted suicide. I lost my whole future in one week. Out there on the street there was nothing to do but wait tables or trick, so I collected the Welfare. The Super at the Y got me hooked on Blaze, taking all my Welfare benefits as credit. In six months I was so far in debt I had no choice, so I tricked. I was pretty good, and pretty lucky. I did it seventy-one times before I got beat up really bad and they had to take me to the hospital. They sewed me back together and put me in the civic ward with all the other prostitutes and drunks and a miracle happened. Alex was working there, as an orderly as part of his parole. He cried when he saw me, all battered and stitched up. He took me home to his little apartment, then went down to the Y to pay off my debts. When he came back, he was all beat up. He never told me what happened. We were married within the month.”

“Gee, sorry. I mean, sorry it all happened. I mean, it's such a shock. I never thought...”

Livia squeezed my hand. “Alex found out all about what you and Virginia did.” I reeled back, shocked by her disclosure. “Virginia herself came out to the hospital and told Alex all about it, after you disappeared from the infirmary and she had the baby. I don't know why she thought we would know where you were.”

“Virginia told you about the plan?” I turned beet red, I could feel it.

“She was pretty scared herself, with a baby and all. Don't worry, Peepers. We forgave you a long time ago. Chip is the one who never forgave you.”

“Chip?” I laughed, changing the subject. “I haven't thought about him in ten years. What's he doing now?”

“He works for the Fed.”

“We all work for the Cooperative.”

“Almost all of us.” She paused a long minute, then said, “Alex rescued me, and he forgave me. He spared me a terrible existence, and I loved him. He's dead now. I'm here now. I forgive you, so there's nothing you have to worry about.”

“I never meant for anything bad to happen to you, Livia. Or to Alexander. I just wanted to be with you. That's all I ever wanted. I...” I could feel my face flush, the shortness of breath, the panic. How could I have lived all those years with this love for her and not died of its great burden?

“I know. You did just what you had to do. They abused you at school. You defended yourself the only way you knew how.”

“But I never meant any harm. I was devastated when I found out you died. I never thought I would get over it. It took me years to recover.”

“But you did. I hear you're a daddy twice over? Two girls? How did you manage that?”

“No, not two girls. The older is Virginia's from before we were married. Her name is Margaret. We call her Maggie. Maggie Mae. She's been at the Trust since before Virginia and I were married. I've never met her. The other is our real daughter, Ruth. She'll be following Maggie Mae in a year or two.”

Livia shook her head in wonder, then shrugged. “Oh well, she must have just thought Maggie was yours.”

“Oh yeah, we worked that out a long time ago.” I didn't have the heart to tell her Maggie was Alex's. What good would that do now? Alex was dead and gone. “And what about you? Do you have a set of children?”

Livia frowned, then looked away. “No, Peepers. We have no children.”

“But I thought you were pregnant, with his child, and that was why you were going to run away together?”

“That would have been nice. But after they sent him to jail, I was left alone with no place to go, no help, no one but the people at the Y. They talked me into using the Fetus for Food program. I used the money for Blaze.” It seemed like something painful to her, so I dropped it.

“So what are you doing now, where are you staying? Are you still in the same place as when I saw you last time?”

“Oh, no. I had to move in with my mother after Alex died. Right now I'm working as a lobbyist.”

“Your mother? You still have contact with your mother?”

“Sure, it's not against the law. After Alex died, I looked her up. We're like old friends.”

“And what about your father? Wasn't he responsible for ruining your life the first time?”

“He's dead,” she said, her eyes expressionless.

“Wow, well, I haven't thought about my parents in years. I don't even remember what they look like.”

Livia looked at me distractedly, apparently trying to remember something. “Wasn't your father a bad man? A criminal?”

“That’s a general requirement of paternity,” I laughed, changing the subject. “Well, I have an idea. I have three places in the city you can stay. You can stay in the rooms I have set up down at my office at the department, or I have an old studio over by the Circus above a shop I own, or there's a little furnished studio apartment I keep on hand for visiting dignitaries.” I didn't really have the studio, but if she decided to pick that option, I could have the whole thing set up by morning. “Why don't you pick one and I can help you out.”

She smiled. “OK. I could use a change of pace. My mother is getting a little sick of me.”

“Which will it be?”

“Where do you live?”

“Well, we have a townhouse out in the suburbs, but I hardly ever get out that way anymore...”

“Uh hun.”

“So I stay at the office quite often.”

“I don't want to put you out, so let's look at the office.”

I nodded. We finished our beers and stepped out into the night. Walking down the boulevard, Livia gripped my arm tightly, so I held her close. It was as if we were strolling through a dream.

We hailed a cab and went across town to my Department Headquarters, getting out a few blocks away and strolling there arm in arm. We had to play this cool, to avoid the guard. It was a little after three AM, and I had come in enough times this late to know where the guard was. We hurried to the elevator, waited for it to open, punched the top floor button and shot up the insides of the building. Livia looked around at all the security devices and cameras, all the locked doors and palm screens with a certain childish awe. I just stood there beside her, silently allowing her to be amazed by my position. We slipped into my office, safe and sound.

“Wow,” she said, craning her neck to look around at the extravagance of my situation. I lived there for nearly a year, but I don't think I ever saw it the way she was seeing it then. The first thing she saw was my office, thick plush carpet, tan, wall to wall (comfortable for my corns); over stuffed leather chairs surrounding a long mahogany table (where I ate all my meals); in the corner stood my desk, so large three people could sleep on it (though I never sat there); on the walls hung oils of people I never knew (but they looked cool in the Department catalogue of office furnishings, I made up names for them); and behind my desk was a huge window with a view of the Potomac River.

“This is your office?” she said, running her fingers along the smooth, polished top of my desk.

“Yup. This is where all the cultural decisions of the State occur. I make all the decisions myself.”

“I'll bet you have a direct line to the President.”

“I'm not allowed to say,” I winked. “Why don't you step into my private chambers.” We stepped through the tall doors into my bedroom and she was even more impressed. In the center of the room stood my four post bed atop a three-stepped platform, behind which was another huge window viewing the river. Another desk, smaller, covered with papers, stood in the opposite corner. In between was a small dinette set made of fine cherry, and a matching living room set surrounding a cherry coffee table. On the tables were spread out all the sketches and contracts I was working on earlier that day. I grabbed a portfolio and went around the room, sweeping up the work. “Please excuse the mess. I wasn't expecting a guest.”

“Peepers. I don't mind the mess. You should see where I'm living.”

“Wait,” I looked around the room, then out the door. “Livia, I hate to tell you this, but I think you left your brief case at the bar.” She looked down at her hands, then sighed.

“Don't worry, Peepers. All that was in it was a little food, a box of

Fed issue condoms and a change of clothes.” She blushed. “I've had to do some pretty awful things to keep myself afloat since Alex died.” She smiled weakly. “Do you have a bathroom? I could use a shower.”

“Sure, but I haven't even showed you the best part.”

“What's that?”

I walked over to the fireplace and ran my fingers along the inside edge, hitting the little switch to make the fireplace slid to the side. We both peered into the dark void beyond.

“What's in there?”

I moved her into the darkness and stepped back to flip on the switch, making the fireplace slide closed. We stood breathlessly, touching finger tips in the wan.

“Are you ready?”

“I guess so.”

I turned on the lights. Livia jumped. We stood facing my wall of faces, hundreds of little faces peering out at her with glowing blue and green and fuchsia eyes. They were her, or the closest I could come to remembering her, but she didn't recognize that. And when she turned her head, there stood a full body life-sized nude of her in pure, white marble, looking askance, demurely pouring a stream of nectar form a slender pitcher she tipped in her graceful upheld hands, hair flowing down over bare shoulders, eyes sleepily pondering a long lost love, or the simple work of her hands. The real Livia stood entranced by her marble visage, breathing deeply.

And up on the wall was a huge mural depicting people dancing, moving gracefully about each other in sedate golds, rich greens and burnt umber reds. Off to one side Mary Rocinante served a platter of delectable body parts to reclining naked girls, Peggy Armendecki and Ester Ghen, dining impassively, tittering as they watched over the gallery of hunters culling their prey below, a band of naked hunters gathered around a white deer, all of them raising their spears, Alex and Chip and Stan and Donald and Maurice. Off to the other side a group of mentors stood, Otto and Caesar and Diedra Little and Ida, all pointing to the hunt, commenting on the prowess and skill of the hunters, praising their deftness, criticizing their flaws. And hovering over them all were three deities, omnipotent, aloof, a bearded god, the Big Kahoona carelessly clutching at the bared breasts of Knuckles, who looked down on the slaying with mild interest as the hunters disembowel their prey. An evil waif hovered nearby, scowling down angrily from under piles of wild black hair. Staring out in terror from the exact center of this chaos, was the white deer's bright green eye.

“Very Impressive,” she said. “I recognize some of these people. Alex and Chip. Hunters. And that's Virginia. But I don't recognize the guy groping her.”

“Zeus.”

“The Big Kahoona? Where am I, and who is the deer? You?”

“Not me. What do you think of the marble statue?”

“That I recognize.” She blushed. “Very classical. I thought you were a modernist?”

“That's what the press calls me, but what do they know?”

“They always have something to say about you. 'This showing was particularly Ixesque.' 'That painting seemed to have none of the Ixian elements that made the artist famous.'“

“Ixistential is my favorite.”

She laughed. I hadn't heard that sweet laugh in so many years. I wanted to take her in my arms. I didn't. “Would you like to get a little shut eye? How long has it been since you got a good night's sleep?”

“Too long. It seems like I haven't slept since I got word that Alex died. What I'd love is a hot shower.”

We left the studio. “Just use the shower over there. You'll find clean clothes in the walk-in dressing room.” She smiled, touching my cheek.

“Don't peek.” She slipped off into the bathroom, pushing the door shut carelessly with her finger. I stood looking after her for a second, then began to turn when the door cracked open slightly. I could just catch a glimpse of her in the little room, standing with her back to me as she let her dress slip to the floor. Trembling, I stepped quickly from the room.

I had time to kill before going to sleep that night, and I didn't even really know where I would be sleeping. I decided to occupy myself with work. I checked my messages; there were three. The first was from the Big Kahoona, to meet with him for a business breakfast. No problem. The second was from Peggy. Apparently the police uncovered a plot to bomb the studio. More problems with those reactionary fanatics. The third message was from Knuckles.

“Maynard, it's Virginia,” her voice was thin, tired. “I was just going through the house and came across some papers I think you ought to see.” A long pause. “When are you coming home, honey? Ruth is always asking for you... and she'll be going off the Trust in a few months.” Another long pause. “And then things can be like they used to be. I'm making some changes at work, so I'll have more time around the house, if you want to come home and see me... Anyway, Maynard. We're here, and we love you. Can you at least call?” There was one last long pause. “Good-bye.” I pushed the erase button and hung up.

By now I could hear the shower in the other room. I poured myself a cognac and settled into my big chair, swiveling around to look out on the city. It was all there below me, stretched out at my feet. Esther's promise had all come true, and more. Out on the River I could see a barge sledging its way out to sea. I sighed relief at my success. So many months of looking, and now it was all done. I had Livia here, safe with me. Knuckles seemed to be interested in me again, so even if Livia decided she didn't want to stay here with me, I could still go home to Knuckles. Everything could be like it was. But she wasn't what I wanted. I put Knuckles out of my mind, tried to imagined what would come next with Livia, but at the same time I tried to stop myself from hoping. As I looked out on the city, the moon rose through the dark skyline, blurred by the city's decay, burning red, a hair's width shy of wholeness. A light appeared from the cracked bedroom door behind me, impaling the moon with a slash of light. I was too afraid to turn around.

“Peepers…”

The slash widened, and a darkened figure emerged within it; I could see her contour in the glowing doorway, clutching the jam above her head, legs spread, braced for me; her silhouette appeared before me, above me, an image hovering over the city of my darkened window, the bloody ellipse, the flawed moon imbedded within her breast.

“Where are you going tonight?”

“I was thinking of sleeping on the couch.”

“You didn't go to all this trouble to sleep on the couch, did you?” She laughed to herself, disappearing back into the bedroom. After a second, the light clicked off and the doorway disappeared as well, swallowed by the river. In the silence I could hear my own heart, and the sound of sheets being slowly stripped from my bed.

I rose, downed my cognac and moved deliberately into the room. It was completely dark. I reached to turn on the lights.

“Ah ah ah,” she chided. “You don't want to do that. It's so nice here in the dark.” I was naked before I reached the bed, slipping down beside her. She was hot, feverish as she pulled over my covers. Livia was on top of me before my head hit the pillow, smothering my face in kisses. She was a machine, moving from exercise to exercise so quickly I could barely comprehend what she was doing to me. I barely got my hands on her before she squirmed into another position and the machinations began all over again. We clawed at one another in breathless rhythmic compression, gliding in perfect silence through array after array, as if the whole acrobatic methodology were performed for the thousandth time. I barely recognized that the room was growing light, but when she saw the coming day she looked at her watch, finally rolled off me, gave me one last systemic kiss, pressing her tongue deep into my mouth, rolled over without a word and fell instantly asleep.

I lay there for a long while, watching her sleep, struck by her childlike face, sunk deep into the gray pillow, so different from the face I imagined in my fantasies of Livia all these years. I wanted to pull the covers down, to look at her beautiful resting nakedness, but she clutched the covers to her throat, fully protected even in sleep. I could wait. We had an endless succession of nights lying before us, and I had a busy day ahead of me. I got up and took a long, hot shower as quietly as I could, wrote her a note explaining that I had to lock her in my inner quarters for secrecy, that there was food in the pantry and more movies under the VCR than she could watch in a year, then I slipped out.

? € ¥ $ ‰ £ ?

Breakfast with the Big Kahoona was worse than root canal, always so intense, no way to start a day. I arrived a little late, but he wasn't concerned, welcoming me into his big, round office, beaming warmly as we sat down together over breakfast, alone. It was still early, so he wore his shirt hanging open and his sleeves rolled up. It was a strange meeting.

“You're a little late,” he said, tucking his napkin into his undershirt. “And you look exhausted. The little woman keeping you up late?” He said it with a wink. It was the kind of testicular male insider joke that I hadn't heard since my editing critic days.

“She sure did.” I smiled, shoving a big wad of eggs into my mouth.

“You're a lucky man, Maynard. That Virginia is quite a woman.” He winked again, shoving an improbably huge piece of waffle into his mouth. Waffles were his favorite dish. “I don't know what we'd do without her around here.”

“Uh hun. So, what's on the agenda for today? Where's the rest of the staff?”

The Big Kahoona set down his fork, wiped his face and looked guiltily at me. “Son, this isn't exactly a business meeting. This is more of a personal meeting, if you know what I mean?”

I set down my fork. “What do you mean?”

“It's about your wife. She's been under... duress lately. You must have noticed?”

“Yes. But she's a little high strung when it comes to work. It's all her little extra duties, I suppose.”

“Well, we're trying to rectify some of those. Virginia is getting a little nonplused, if you get my meaning.”

“No, I don't.” I was starting to get a little indignant. What was he saying, that Virginia was becoming unstable? “What exactly do you mean, nonplused?”

“She's reached an impasse, a barrier. She's blocked. She hasn't had a vacation in several years. Surely you must see how tired she is?”

“I see how committed she is to her job. That's always been an obstacle for us.”

“Well, it isn't anymore. She needs you at home now, Maynard. You can't be pursuing any... extra curricular nocturnal activities right now, son. At least not at work.” He winked. Thankfully my face was a total blank as he spoke. It wasn't safe to let on anything one way or another with the BK. You never knew where he stood on anything, so it was best to stand nowhere yourself. All I could do was sit and wait to see what fate he was offering. “We all have our trivial indulgences from time to time, Presidents and artists alike. You and Virginia are like family, so I don't want to see anyone burnt.”

What was he driving at? Did he know about Livia? “I'm still not following you,” I mumbled.

“Of course you aren't. You're Maynard Ix! Listen, I'm giving you the next two weeks off. Take Virginia away for a rest. When you get back, we'll see if we can't make some arrangements for your extra work away from the Department, a place where you can get those creative juices gushing. Maybe another art studio. We'll worry about all the details when you get back.”

I looked suspiciously around the office. “Are you talking about... her?” I whispered. The BK winked with a nod, a huge lecherous grin crossing his face.

“For the time being, go home,” he boomed amiably. “When you get back you can make your arrangements, if you still need to, and Virginia can come back to work with me, like she always did, all rested and reassured.”

He rose and took me paternally by the shoulder, ushering me from the office. “I hear it's your birthday next week? Is that right?”

He knew everything. “Yes.”

“How old are you now, Maynard?”

“Thirty.”

“Thirty? Whoa, seems like just yesterday you were just starting out in your department, and now look at you. King of the Hill. Life, Maynard. It's unpredictable.” He slapped me on the back once, for emphasis. “You take your wife out on that cruise and you wine and dine her. Get her all rested and re-adjusted. Then come on back and we'll make arrangements for our new partnership. Business as usual.” The door clicked shut behind me.

With dread, I left the Rainbow House and was shuttled home to suburbia by the President's own personal driver. I hadn't been home in months. The house was silent. I slipped off my shoes and mounted the stairs slowly. Knuckles was probably upstairs, packing. At the head of the stairs I looked into Ruth's empty room. She was off somewhere with her nanny, no doubt. At the end of the hall our bedroom door stood cracked. I peeked inside. It was dim, smelled stale. I let myself in and sat in a chair by the side of the bed. She was there, all bundled up, hidden beneath a mountain of covers.

“How are you, honey?” I said,

She sniffed. “Sick and tired.” Knuckles sat up and looked at me, her face red and swollen, slick with tears. “I'm sorry, Maynard. I've done a terrible thing.” She began clawing her way through the covers to me, wearing only a torn and dirty nightgown. Repulsed, I moved over to the edge of the bed and took her in my arms. She blubbered uncontrollably for quite a while as I patted her shoulder and stroked her hair.

“What could you be sorry for?” I soothed, cooing in her smelly hair. She blubbered something about her job, something about the BK. I hardly heard her, too concerned about how I was going to let Livia out of the office, then to hide her form the BK. When Knuckles finally calmed down, I gave her several sleeping pills and waited until she passed out. I went down to the den and flipped through the phone numbers. I made the first call.

“Peggy, this is Maynard.”

“Hello, Maynard, what do I do about these bomb threats?”

“I've got something in the works. In the mean time, I'd like make a change in the management of the studio. You've been doing a great job, but I have something else in mind for you.”

“Really, what's that?”

“Well, I can't go into details right now. Virginia and I are going away on a cruise. When I get back I'll call you about your new position. You must be getting tired of that place by now anyway.”

“I could use a change.”

I made the second call.

“Livia, it's Maynard.”

“Hey, lover, what's--”

“Listen. We need to make a change. How would you like to manage my studio downtown? Rent included.”

“Sure.”

“I'll be by this afternoon to go get things set up.”

I made the third call.

“I'd like to buy a cruise, yes, for two.”

I went back up stairs and sat at the end of the bed, watching Knuckles sleep. Her face drawn, gray, tired. I hoped she would not be destroyed by this. I set the universe balancing on a pin point, hoping no one would be hurt. With three phone calls I set in motion the final stage of my life, The Secret Stage.

? € ¥ $ ‰ £ ?

With trepidation I accompanied my wife on a short cruise around the continent, feeling and acting like this was just another assignment from the BK. Knuckles and I were man and wife, but only until the end of the cruise. Then, everything would be just like it was. For such a progressive and free thinking leader of the Free World, he liked things to remain the same.

We went down to the docks to board the Carnal Queen, a huge, white luxury liner famous for toting rich and famous people all around the big, blue ocean, where they fell in love love love. I made arrangements for a modest cabin along the Colonnade, but when we checked in, we found someone had changed our reservation. We were on the Main Promenade, Cabin 1-A, The Presidential Suite. Knuckles threw her arms around my neck, kissing me delightedly, surprised and overjoyed I had gone to all this trouble for her. It was no surprise to me who had made these arrangements.

We entered the Presidential Suite and, I have to admit, I was taken by the regality of it. It had a huge sunken living room, all done in white leather with gold trim, marble lamps standing at attention on mahogany tables at either end of the extra long leather couch, a glass and gold coffee table stretching the length of the couch, equally regal and impressive. In the corners of the room were little intimate areas, for meetings of state, or simply trivial indulgences. Opulent oil paintings of Lords and their Ladies hung on the walls all around us. The doors all along the walls were disguised as the paintings themselves, to give the effect that the King's throne room was without escape.

“Hey, Hon?”

“Yeah,” she said from the couch, lying back with her eyes covered.

“Did you see these doors? How do they open?”

“You just touch them where a door handle should be. They open automatically.”

I looked down on her as she slipped into a semi-conscious state. “Would you like to do that in private?”

She stood without opening her eyes and staggered over to a painting of a reclining nude. As if sleep walking, she jabbed the nude in the belly-button and a door popped open. She slipped inside, the door clicking shut behind her. She was no novice here. I guessed the Presidential Suite was behind the painting next to Knuckles nude, the one of an elder king with flowing white hair and white beard, posed with one hand on his hilt and the other on a globe, ready for world conquest in his silvery armor. It was. I decided to explore the BK's lair later, strolling back out onto the Promenade, down past the restaurants and night clubs over to the port side. We were still preparing to leave; hundreds of passengers milled about on the decks and docks.

I entered a lounge, The Captain's Loft, and when the Steward saw who I was, he escorted me to a fine, private booth by the window, high above the throng below. I ordered a drink, club soda with a twist. I felt like a god way up there, looking down on all the little plebes, writhing all over one another, squirming up the plank, pushing, shoving, running away from all their little plebe troubles by taking a cruise, hoping to glimpse some star or magistrate.

Just as the waiter set down my drink, I saw him down below. A tall man in dark glasses with a scar, pushing through the crowd. I don't know how I picked him out of all those repetitive faces, but I did. There was something familiar in the way he moved, methodically, professionally. Then a small woman, also in dark glasses, came up to him. There was something even more familiar about her. She wore a light, summer outfit, a double-breasted cotton Seersucker Suit, a large, floppy straw hat. With sinister nods, they split up and merged with the crowd, egressing the plank separately. Once on the ship, they moved off in different directions, each scanning the crowd, as if looking for someone.

I shuddered. What if they were Serve Terrorists? What if their intention was to sink this ship, to blow a hole in the hull under the water line, to murder all these good citizens as some kind of macabre message to a world that wasn't listening, all on the one cruise in my life. They were probably SS, making sure there were no terrorists on board. Maybe even the BK sent them along to protect us.

I sipped my soda with a little more ease. The flies crawling around below finally finished boarding and they drew up the gangplank. I sighed. There was no going back now. Without any sensation of movement, the ship slowly drifted sideways, away from the pier, then the docks gradually slipped behind us as we tugged out to sea. I left a five dollar tip and began to rise. I had to get back and see if Knuckles was still comatose. A hand pushed me gently back down into my seat. I looked up, half annoyed, half curious, and there was the young SS man from below. Up close I immediately recognized him as the sun-glassed, angry SS man who rescued me at the reception so long ago.

“Hello, SS man,” I said with a smile. He looked around uneasily, then slid into the seat across from me.

“Sshh,” he said. “Don't be such a retard, Maynard.”

That voice rang in my head like a giant, gonging bell. My heart clenched in my chest as I looked more closely. It was Chip.

“That's where I know you from, the Trust.” I said, half terrified. I must have paled sitting across from him. He reached over and took my arm forcefully.

“Have a little guts, you idiot. Do I look like I want to kill you? Just relax and order us a couple drinks, whatever you're having.”

I ordered a couple sodas, then settled back, hopelessly caught there by the man I maimed for life. I don't know why I didn't recognize him before, at the reception. He still had that boyish look about him, around the huge scar that ran from his temple to his jaw line. He reached up and pulled off his glasses. My heart jumped again. His eye was white and gnarled, the iris looking as if it had been unevenly stitched back together.

“You did this to me,” he said in a low voice. “You killed Alex and ruined Livia, as well. I swore that I would kill you someday.”

“I believe it.”

“But I won't kill you now, Maynard. No matter what misery you've caused, I swear I won't kill you now. There are bigger things in life than ourselves, Maynard, so take it easy. Do you understand?”

I wanted to heave a sigh of relief, but I didn't dare. I didn't dare show him a bit of what I was feeling. I looked up at his maimed face, he merely smiled.

“Someone has their eye on you,” he continued. “Someone very big.”

“Who could have their eye on me? I'm just a low level buristocrat, just an artist. All I do is draw and paint and tell others what to draw and paint.”

“That's not all you do.” He glared at me. I wanted him to stop, to put his glasses back on or to go away, but he wouldn't. He just sat there, staring. After about ten minutes he looked at his watch, sucked down his drink, motioned for me to do the same, then rose to leave. I tried to stay behind, but he loomed over me. “Don't be difficult, Maynard.”

I got up weakly and started to walk out. I could feel that he was right behind me. What could I do? I could run, as soon as we hit the Promenade I could break into a run and try to make it to my cabin. But he was right behind me, so close he could easily reach out and nab me. And he was probably armed as well. The metal detectors never went off for the SS.

Just as we approached my cabin, Chip put his hand on my shoulder and leaned close. “Don't get any funny ideas, Maynard. Just go to the Main Staircase and get in elevator number three. Press STD 3 and get off there.” We walked a few feet further and I got up the courage to look over my shoulder. He was gone. I could turn and run back to my cabin, but what if he did something to Knuckles?

I entered the Grand Pavilion, magnificently embellished in gold and the finest hardwoods crafted by the most skilled craftsmen of America. Hanging over the Grand Staircase was a crystal chandelier spanning at least fifteen feet, covered with thousands of tear-shaped leaden opaque droplets. It glowed brilliantly as I descended the staircase, nodding to admirers as I went. At the bottom I crossed the red carpeted expanse and pressed the down button at elevator number three. While I waited, several journalists from the society pages came over and asked me how I was enjoying the cruise and if we would be attending the ball that night. Of course, I said, not knowing if I would be alive later that night, or decaying hundreds of feet below on the ocean's floor. They suspected nothing. It was my finest moment.

I stepped into the elevator and bid them good-bye, then stood in silence as the elevator slowly sank. I was alone, thank goodness; I would have hated to be seen getting off at Sub-Tier Deck 3, the cheapest economy accommodations the ship provided, roughly twenty-five feet below the waterline, back near the screws. The hall was narrow and cramped, and even though I had to be several meters from the hull I could still hear the screws outside, and the washing hiss of ocean, a nebulous sound that made my skin crawl.

I stood in the causeway, looking one way, then the other, waiting impatiently. Just as I was ready to leave, a door opened about half way down the hall. I looked down there, but no one came out.

“Hello? Is anybody there?”

Nothing. I backed away. Just as I neared the elevator, someone stepped into the hall. I recognized her immediately. Livia. She didn't say anything, motioning with her head for me to come over. I nearly ran. I was so overjoyed I completely forgot the trauma of going down to her level.

“Livia? What are you doing here?” I gushed rushing into her room. “I thought I told you I'd be back in a week?”

“I know, but I couldn't wait a week.” She pulled me into her arms, kissing me hard, kicking the door shut with her foot. “I missed you right away.” We fell on the floor, wildly tearing clothes from each other's bodies. I wanted to see her, to take in her beauty with my eyes, but she was too caught up in our passion to be stopped long enough for me to drink her in. Besides, she shut off the lights. Like a magician she produced devices and lineaments from nowhere, applying them masterfully. In the darkness of her cabin I barely recognized the things she did to me. How she made me feel that afternoon was unparalleled to anything that had happened to me in my life so far. Several hours later we lay there breathlessly, having traveled in darkness from the floor to the bed to the desk, into the shower, to the table, on the sink, on the other bed, against the door, back to the first bed, on the desk again and eventually somehow winding up back on the floor. I was so near exhaustion, and very nearly asleep, I barely understood her questioning.

“Where do you think you will be sleeping in the Presidential Suite? In the Presidential Chambers, or with her in the guest quarters?”

I rolled over, kissing her on the mouth. “I'm sleeping down here every night. Knuckles is taking so many sedatives these days she'll never even miss me.”

“Knuckles?”

“I mean Virginia. Maybe if she sleeps in her rooms, you can come up for a little sleep over?” I tried to tickle her, but she lay there like stone.

“Maybe,” she said, rising from the floor and stretching her back. I could see her in the darkness, but only her shape in the dark “It depends on how nice it is up there. This room is a tough act to follow.” She pulled me to my feet and we collapsed with each other on to the narrow twin bed. “What time did you say she passes out?”

“Whatever time is good for you.” We kissed, and unbelievably we repeated the whole machination again, moving proficiently from the floor to the bed to the desk, into the shower, to the table, on the sink, on the other bed, against the door, back to the first bed, on the desk again and eventually somehow winding up back on the floor again. In pain, panting for breath and sweating weakly, we finally both slipped into a climacterically induced catatonic delirium. I don't know how much later I awoke. I could see in the dimness that the cabin was empty, I was alone.

I moved up onto one of the beds and tried to go back to sleep, but I had a bad feeling something was about to happen. After showering and dressing, I noticed several buttons torn from my shirt, so I crawled around on the floor, looking for them along the walls and in the furniture. As I crouched prostrate on my hands and knees, the door flung open and in walked a long pair of legs balanced effortlessly in red stiletto heels. I looked up the calves, muscular under smooth black nylons, over her knees and strong thighs to the red mini, the black silk blouse and her long neck, strung with pearls, to Livia's smiling face. It was as if I were taking in a vision, for the first time seeing her in the full exposure of her beauty. I burned every curve into my memory.

“What are you doing down there, Peepers?” she said, half laughing as she helped me to my feet.

“You ripped my clothes off and lost four buttons,” I said, trying not to be annoyed.

“You didn't seem to mind when I was ripping.” She tossed a small boutique bag on the bed and went into the bathroom. “There are some men's shirts hanging in the closet. I think they'll fit you.”

I looked in the closet and, sure enough, there were several men's shirts and a few suits hanging neatly. “Whose stuff is this? Don't tell me you're a cross dresser?”

“Don't be coarse, dear,” she said, poking her head out to scowl at me. “Those are Chip's things.”

“What are Chip's things doing in your cabin?”

“This is not my cabin. This is Chip's cabin. He's been assigned by the SS to protect you and 'Knuckles' on the cruise.” She smiled, disappearing into the bathroom.

“What are you talking about? This is Chip's room? How did you wind up on board?”

“I stowed away,” her voice lilted from the bathroom. “Chip did it because he's like a brother to me, and he knows how I feel about you.” I could hear the neat, methodical clicking as she re-applied her make-up and sprayed her hair. “And as far as the SS is concerned, someone up there likes the two of you. Someone wanted to be sure you had a nice, safe vacation. Someone important.”

“Won't Chip get in trouble sneaking aboard another passenger? Won't he get caught fooling around by the Secret Service?”

“Fooling around is a perk to the SS.” She came back out looking perplexed. “It's a good thing you took a shower, but you better get dressed. It's nearly dinner time, and I'll bet Knuckles has been looking for you.” She took a long, black pleated skirt from the closet and laid it out on the bed, then wiggled out of her mini and dropped it to her feet, stepping out and slipping into the other. She did it so quickly I didn't have time to stop her. She took her purse, slung it over her shoulder, kissed me on the mouth and moved toward the door.

“Where are you going?”

“To dinner with a friend.”

“With Chip?”

“No, Chip will be watching over you tonight. I'm meeting with an old friend of ours. He's looking forward to meeting you tomorrow. He's a great admirer.”

I stopped her by the door. “When will I see you again?”

“You'll see me as often as possible.” She kissed me hard, wrapping her hands behind my head, opening her mouth. “Promise you'll meet my friend tomorrow?”

“I promise.”

She winked, stepped through the door and left me. A friend. A Fan. Was there never getting away from fans? I found my watch under the bed and looked at the time. Six o'clock! I was late. I rushed to the elevator, then bolted up the Grand Staircase like a gazelle. It seemed everyone on the staircase and Promenade was dressed in tuxedoes and evening gowns, except for me. I let myself into our suite and tried to slip into my room, but Knuckles came out to greet me. She wore a long white gown with glittering jewels around her neck.

“Well, you've been gone a long time. Did you have fun?”

“Oh sure,” I said, moving across the other side of the room. “I met up with some old friends from The Voyeur. No one you'd know.”

“Someone with the initials CM?” I stopped and looked at her. How did she know? She pointed at my shirt. There were little initials on the breast pocket, very light, nearly the same color as the shirt.

“Oh, that. Well, we were playing handball earlier and I sent my shirt out to be pressed while I played and they tore some buttons off so they gave me a loaner to get back to the room.”

“And what does CM stand for?”

“It stands for...” I looked down at my shirt, then at her, shaking my head. “I don't know.”

She frowned, turning her back to me and receding into her own rooms. “Go get dressed, Maynard. We were supposed to be there fifteen minutes ago.”

? € ¥ $ ‰ £ ?

I hate to admit it, but I got drunk that night. I went down to the Salon with Knuckles, greeting the various dignitaries cruising around with us, shaking hands, drinking champagne. Knuckles looked wonderful, tall and thin in her flowing white gown, neck so long and regal, graced by a necklace of fine diamonds probably given to her by the Big Kahoona, smooth arms gracefully alighted on my arm, hair swept up in fine coils around her head, topped with a small diamond tiara. I wore a black tuxedo with leopard cummerbund and tie and swilled champagne. There was a fan club of mine attending who sent over bottle after bottle of the ship's finest chilled champagne.

As the night grew progressively blurred we sat at the captain's table listening to many speeches. At one point they asked me to come to the podium to say a few words, but I was in the bathroom when they called my name, splashing water on my face and talking politics to someone I never saw before when a waiter came in and dragged me out. All I remember from my speech was, “I remember when the Carnal Queen had dirt floors!” Whatever that meant. After dinner I danced like a maniac with Knuckles, slamming into the other guests and laughing wildly. I think I hit someone. The last thing I remember is lying under the long glass coffee table in the Presidential Suite, looking up at Knuckles. She was crying. I could barely hear her under glass, miles of cold, wet glass. I saw her mouth, wet and trembling. “I love you. You!”

I heard myself say it, but I didn't mean it. “I love you, too, Knuckles.” She left the room crying. I got sick.

The next morning, Knuckles left early; I heard her go out around seven AM. My heart was racing so fast I could barely sleep. I lay in agony, wondering what had I done the night before. What I said. Did I tell her about Livia? No. Impossible. Livia was too important to me to jeopardize losing her so soon. I seemed to remember something about the BK. I spent that day in the President's huge oval bed, curtains drawn, watching television from beneath cool silk sheets, cold glasses of water on the bedside. My head ached; this was nothing like Blaze. Blaze simply made you a little fuzzy the next day, but it was painless. As I dry-heaved all over the fine gold fixtures, I swore I would never drink again.

By lunch time I cleaned out my system well enough to doze off. I had a nursery rhyme ripping through my head, repeating endlessly, ruthlessly.

As soon as I came to the end it started right back at the beginning.

“Oh no,” Fly squeaked, “Please don’t eat me...” It was awful. After hours of this torture, I finally dozed off when Knuckles appeared at the foot of my bed. She was tall and stern, wearing a dark, double-breasted business suit that showed off her pure, white skin. Her face and hands glowed in the dim.

“It’s all taken care of,” she said.

“What’s all taken care of?”

“Everything. We’re logical, civilized people. There’s no need to be violent or make scenes.” She turned on her heel and stalked out of the room. I slept the rest of the day and ate dinner alone in my room.

? € ¥ $ ‰ £ ?

By the time I awoke on the third day out, everything seemed all right. When I came out, there was no sign of Knuckles anywhere, but there was a small envelope with my name on it by the breakfast nook. I sat and opened it.

“Dear Peepers,” it read. “Meet me by the spa for brunch. Livia.”

I nearly had a heart attack. How did this get here?! I tucked it in my shirt and headed for the spa. Livia was there, just like her letter promised. I slid into the seat across from here and ordered coffee.

“What are you doing here? Out in public? Leaving messages for me in my breakfast nook?”

She batted her eyes at me innocently, comically. “Who me?” She smiled, biting her toast. “Peepers, really. I’m not a real stow away. I was just kidding. We’re logical, civilized people. We can eat in public.” She reached over and patted my hand. I pulled it away, looking around to make sure we were not seen. “Dear,” she said. “What are you afraid of, the paparazzi? You’re just here having lunch with an old friend from the Trust. Relax, if you look guilty in public, you’ll look guilty in the papers.” She took a sausage and brushed her lower lip. “I’ve got a wonderful afternoon planned. We’ll be stopping over in Hanging Whiteman Creek for lunch. I made arrangements for us to go ashore.”

“What about Virginia?”

“You’ll be seeing Knuckles for dinner,” she smiled again, then flung the link down on her plate. “Let’s get ready,” she said, taking a knapsack from the floor as she rose. “I’ll bet you haven’t been to this side of the continent since they took you away from your parents.” She took my hand as we merged with the crowd on deck.

“Did you say Hanging Whiteman Creek, Westphalia?” I whispered in her ear. “That means we’re only about ten miles South of Red Hook.”

She turned and pressed her finger to my lips. “Shhh. Even you can get in trouble talking about your parents.”

We went to the Fore Lounge and watched as the ship called to port. As Livia sat across from me, rubbing my thigh under the table with her bare foot, darkly smeared tugs came out and took control of our vessel with tow lines and drug it passively into port. After all the lines were tied off and the ship secured, they dropped the plank and tourists started their exodus to shore. It was the first stop of the cruise, so many people milled around down below.

Hanging Whiteman Creek would have been nothing more than a mud-hole with low, dirty two-story houses and bars peppering the streets, if it weren’t for the tourists. Westphalia was well known for its wild frontier town reputation. The danger and intrigue made it an ideal stop over for the tourist-laden cruise ships. Imagine the excitement of actually seeing Serve Agents, or Political Exiles moving stealthily through the streets. Of course, they were mainly locals, but a tourist’s imagination does half the work of the tale-spinning travel agents.

Livia and I stopped at a small bike shop and rented two rickety three-speed bicycles and made off for a picnic somewhere in the hills overlooking the harbor. She was in much better shape than I, so she rode ahead of me most of the way. I was still sweating out the champagne from two nights before. We finally crested a hill that looked down on the harbor, now miles away. I was exhausted and leaned against a tree on the edge of a great forest while Livia spread out a blanket and some food and drinks in the pasture. We ate, drank, even smoked a little Blaze I brought along. I wanted to make love, so I climbed next to her, slipped my arm around her and deftly undid her bra while kissing her neck.

“Now Peepers,” she said, squirming away. “We may be miles away from the ship, but there it is right down there. For all we know someone is watching us right now.” She turned and waved down at the ship, laughing.

“Maybe we should go into the woods there,” I said, pointing over my shoulder.

Livia looked down at her watch, then sighed. “OK.”

We got up and wandered casually into the woods, as if it was the most natural thing to do after a nice picnic. We weren’t ten feet in when I took her by the hand and pulled her down to the leaves. We labored in the leaves, groaning over sticks and rocks. It was a little less mechanical this time; I think because we kept pausing to re-adjust ourselves on the cold ground. I thought I heard noises off to the right, but she assured me it was us making all that racket. After about an hour we were tired out, saving just enough energy for the ride home. We dressed and wandered out of the woods, stopping abruptly at the edge. Someone was sitting at our picnic spot. We stood silently looking at the stranger, a rather big, sandy hared man. After a slight pause, Livia sighed, turning to me.

“That’s Chip. He followed us.”

I flushed. “Do you think he saw us?”

“Certainly. He’s SS. He sees everything.” She shrugged and pulled me from the trees. “Besides, he already knows about us, remember?”

We sauntered down the slope, calling to Chip.

“I thought you were going to be all day,” he laughed. Livia blushed; I cleared my throat. Chip came over and shook my hand. “Maynard Ix, this is your lucky day.”

I was stunned at the change in Chip’s demeanor. Last time I saw him, Chip acted like he wanted to kill me, but now he was acting like an excited teenybopper about to be ushered into the presence of a pop idol. “Why?”

“Well,” Livia said, taking my arm. “Remember when you promised to meet my friend, two days ago? We moved the meeting to today, out here.”

I sat down on the blanket, looking up at them in disbelief. “You brought a fan all the way out here, to meet me?”

“He’s a very special fan,” Livia said.

“He must be. Well, where is he?”

Chip lifted me back up again. “He’s not coming to you. You have to go to him.”

Before I could argue, Chip sauntered me back up the slope into the forest. There was an old man sitting there, on the spot where Livia had I had just coupled five minutes before. He was a wrinkled old man, about seventy-five years old, pointy nose, a square jaw and a little, feminine mouth. He was big for his age, though. As we approached, he rose and held out his hand; I could see he was still broad shouldered for his advanced age. The strange thing about him, though, was his hair. He seemed ancient, but his hair, oleaginously scooped back on his wrinkled old head, was still shiny jet-black.

“Hello there, young man,” he said, shaking my hand vigorously. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you. I feel I’ve been watching your career from afar for so long now, well, it’s a real pleasure to finally meet you face to face.”

“Hello,” I said. “You’re an admirer of my work?”

“Well, you could say I’m an admirer of your work,” he said, winking at Livia. “But not exactly your art work.”

“Really. What work is it then? My film? My writing?”

“Not your writing, son,” he said, pulling me along with him toward a big rock. “I’m an admirer of your political career.” Livia and Chip followed obediently.

“I don’t have a political career.”

“Sure you do, you and Virginia both do. I’ve been watching you since you were socially dismantled the first time around, by that judge… What was her name?”

“Hammerhym, and that was eons ago.” We sat side by side. “I didn’t have a political career then, and I don’t have one now—”

The old man laughed. “Everyone has a political career. Some careers are just a little less conventional, like yours.” He smiled warmly at me, like a big, greasy grandpa. “We’ve noticed you, son, you and your wife both. You were both helped by him.” Out of nowhere he produced a picture of The Big Kahoona.

“Where did you get that?” They all smiled.

“I know how you feel seeing his face on this cruise. He’s responsible.”

“What do you mean, responsible?”

“We know things, Maynard. We see things.” He pulled out another picture and handed it to me. It was of Knuckles, lying on the oval bed back in the Carnal Queen’s Presidential Suite, smiling up at a man kneeling over her on the bed. They were both naked.

“What is this? You took pictures of us?”

“Look closely, Maynard. Is that you?” I did look closely. It was the BK. I recognized his profile. “We took this photograph over two years ago, before the last election. Do you remember when Virginia went away on a three day weekend for a seminar on gastro-political revenue micro-management?”

“She said it was seminal.”

“She’s been at his side for every campaign in recent memory, and even when he wasn’t campaigning…” He handed me another picture. It was of the two of them in our bedroom back at the townhouse, doing something Knuckles and I had never even done. He had other pictures, some in hotel rooms, some in limos, some even outside in the great outdoors. I looked for a while, then let the photos drop on the ground, then looked up at the old man. “I already know about all this. I’m not stupid, you know. What thrill does it give you to show me these things?”

“I get no thrills from campaigns, at least not the kinds the Big Kahoona enjoys.” We sat is silence for a moment, then he sighed. “It’s well known you have your suspicions, and we even know how depressed you were, right up until you found Livia again. All I wanted you to know is that there are people out here who know about injustice, and who keep track of such things. You may be helpless, but you are not alone.”

A strange idea dawned on me. If they had pictures of the Leader of the Free World and my wife, then they could have pictures of anybody. I looked over at Livia. “What about us? Are there pictures of us as well?”

“Maynard… This is an egalitarian community,” the old man said. “We have records on everyone.”

I stood up slowly, glaring at Livia. “So what is this? Blackmail?”

All three of them broke into laughter. “Oh goodness, no, Mr. Ix,” the old man said. “These pictures, and the ones of you and Livia and you and Virginia, and you and all those bimbos you dated, and you and Hetta even, are all part of the public record. Upon your death, they’ll be released to the highest bidder, for scholarly examination, of course. It’s all part of the Public Interest. There’s nothing illegal about what I showed you, except for the premature nature of it.”

Livia came over and took my arm. “The SS record everything. It’s what they do. They have records of every indiscretion you ever committed, and me, and everyone, but they can’t use them until you’re dead. That makes it fair.“
“Are you all SS?”

“Goodness, no,” the old man scoffed. “Only Chip here is SS. We are all part of another group, one that thinks that all this craziness is wrong. We want to do something about it.”

“Like what?”

He shrugged his broad shoulders. “Who knows? We have to wait and see.”

I stood up slowly, looking nervously from face to face. My heart ached as I said it. “You’re terrorists.” Were they there to assassinate me? Could Livia, my Livia, the ideal human born just for me, be nothing more than a murdering terrorist? I looked at her the longest. “Please don’t kill me.”

Livia came over, taking my hands and pressing them to her bosom. “We don’t want to kill you, Peepers. We admire you.”

I wanted to run. I wanted to go back to the ship. I wanted hide and never see these people again. I wanted to bash Livia in the face for making me love her and then doing this to me! I let go of Livia, stepping away from them when the old man stood.

“Wait. Before you go I think you should see two last pictures.”

“Of what? The First Womyn in bed with her dog trainer? I don’t want to see your dirty pictures.”

“These aren’t dirty pictures.” He chuckled, handing them to Livia, who brought them right to me. They looked like passport photos, old black and white bust photos of a man and a woman. He had a crew cut, a tall forehead and large ears, droopy, sad gray eyes beneath bushy eyebrows, a pointed nose and yellowish, slightly bucked teeth. She wore her hair in the old style, curled in waves on either side of her head, light eyes in the black and white, a small face with large white teeth, like a horse. I recognized them.

“These are my parents,” I said in wonder. “Where’d you get pictures like these of my parents?”

“Look at this,” the old man said, holding out a small snapshot. I rushed over and grabbed it. It was of a little old man and woman, standing in front of a shanty shack wearing dusty, baggy clothes, gray hared, sun-faded nearly white, dark tans from living under the hot sun all those years. He held a magazine, my favorite, The Voyeur, the issue with my face was on the cover, “Nix Ix” across my forehead.

“Are they alive?” I demanded. “Are they still alive?”

The old man nodded slowly. “They live about fifteen miles from here, that way.”

I lowered the pictures, shook my head and tried to hand it back to him. “I hoped they were dead—“

“What do you know about your parents, son?”

“What’s not to know? He’s a mass murderer. She helped him. They were exiled to the AZ, where they cheated their sentence and had me. I’ve paid for their vices my whole life.”

“That’s what they taught you, but what do you remember?”

“As little as possible.”

He smiled sadly. “Your father was once the President of this nation. He is a great man, and was a great leader. He didn’t like what they were doing, especially the reforms after the Civil War. Against my advice, he started repealing them with a series of Executive orders. The Fed stepped in, framed him and exiled him to the AZ. The rest is ‘history’, if you can call it that.”

“Why should I believe you?”

“Why shouldn’t you? These are your parents we’re talking about. Whatever you’ve been taught about your parents, they’re innocent.”

I looked off to the right, to where they lived. I didn’t know what to think. If any of what these people were telling me was remotely true, then... Suddenly I missed them. Suddenly I felt terribly empty and alone. Suddenly I felt like something great, really unique and special had been taken from me. I turned on Livia.

“You knew this?” I said. “You knew that my parents are alive, that I could have seen them all this time, and didn’t tell me? How could you?”

“Peepers,” she said softly. “Look at what’s happened here today. Look at how you’ve reacted. Without thinking. That’s the way they want everyone to react, out of emotion, without thinking. Listen, what am I?”

“A Serve Resister?”

“Right. And what are you?”

I sighed. “A Bral?”

“When have you ever voted Bral?”

“I don’t vote.”

“What are you really?”

“A buristocrat?”

“A miserable, petty buristocrat. If I came to you and told you all these things before you knew everything you needed to know, you would have had to turn me in. But now you can’t. You’ve never liked the BK. You’ve never liked the way he controls your life, the way he controls your wife. I know you loved her once, that you had a wonderful life together in the beginning, that you miss her. Your compassion is one of the things I love about you. But now you’ve lost her to him. He’s corrupted her. He’s corrupting you. Think of your whole life, Peepers. Think of what it would have been like if they just let you stay out here in Westphalia.”

“I would never have met you.”

“It would have been better for you, for all of us, if you never had.”

“What?”

She looked deeply into my eyes. My rage disappeared. The others disappeared. It was just Livia and me. I couldn’t hide from her now. “You hurt me and Alexander once a long time ago,” she said. “But I hurt you more. A thousand times more. The Fed used me to fool you, to trick you, to get you off guard so they could begin the indoctrination.”

“What are you talking about—“

“Remember when they brought you in? When you came to my office and we talked? You were frightened, and I told you about my upbringing, about how horrible it was, and about how my father raped me.”

“And the Fed saved you.”

“It was all a lie. My father never raped me. I never knew my father. He was a small business man. A year after I was born, he tried to sue the Cooperative Economic Alliance to repeal some business regulations that were crushing his business. The Fed detained him in a prison on the frontier, taking everything he owned, crushing him and breaking up his family. After they made of drunken bum out of him, they released him, when I was about ten. He lived in the streets on Welfare and begging. A few years later they found him stabbed to death in an alley.”

“But you remembered him touching you?”

“It was all a lie. The quicker I got you assimilated, the more bonuses and rewards I got at the end of my next pay period.”

I was horrified. I pulled away, but she clung to me all the harder.

“You’re as bad as Hetta, and Ida and Knuckles, and all the rest of them—“ I said weakly.

“Listen, son” the old man said reassuringly. “There’s more.”

“You were too old when they brought you in. They wanted to kill you, but they couldn’t, so they asked me to talk to you, to tell you about my father, to suggest your father did the same, that the Fed was going to fix everything for you and for you not to worry. They had plans for you right from the start, and it was part of my job to flirt with you, to make you believe in me, so they could get you out of the way.”

“I did believe in you—“

“And look what happened. They made a dishwasher out of you. And when I was no longer under their control, after I messed up with Alex, they crushed me. We’re just disposable little parts in their machine. They corrupt everything they touch.”

“Not my art. They didn’t corrupt that?”

“Are you still an artist, now?”

“Yes—”

“The same kind of artist? A bohemian?”

“No.”

“You found happiness in your talent, and they took it away. You found solace in love, and the BK corrupted your wife. Now you have me, and I love you. They can’t corrupt me, because now I think for myself. They can’t corrupt you either, because now you know. We don’t want to hurt you, Maynard, because I know, in your heart of hearts, you’re one of us. Deep in your soul, you want to be with them.”

I looked down at the pictures. They were still alive. So that’s what they looked like. My head hurt. I wanted to go lie down. I tucked the pictures into my jacket and turned, but Chip took my arm.

“You don’t want to get caught with those, Maynard.” I handed them back.

“Wait,” the old man said. “Before you go, I want you to think about something else. ‘Thoughts move hands to shape the life you only once receive, pause long enough to understand the things that you believe.’“ I stood thunderstruck, staring at the old man like he was a ghost. “Your mother asked me to tell you that, if I ever met you. Think before you leap. Don’t say a word to Virginia, Maynard. Don’t say a word to The Big Kahoona. This little tête-à-tête never happened. If they find out we ever spoke, you will die.”

“Who are you,” I said.

The old man grinned. “A friend of the family.”

“You’re that Raygun guy, leader of the Serve Terrorists. You’re their President.”

“Mere political terms. I’m just a concerned citizen. It was nice to meet you, young man. Hopefully, we’ll meet again, under friendlier circumstances.” He turned and walked back into the woods. We stood there, watching him disappear. Finally, Chip spoke up.

“We need to get back.” He walked back out into the pasture, climbed on a bike and peddled away.

“Come on, Peepers,” Livia said, pulling me over to clean up our picnic.

“Why didn’t you tell me? Why make me wait.”

“You didn’t have to wait for anything, Peepers. I’ve been the one waiting, carrying the burden and the pain of knowing and having to remain silent. Now, all our lives depend on your silence.” She hugged me, kissed me hard on the lips, then hugged me again. We stood there in silence and I could feel her shuddering slightly against me. Livia’s tears fell hot on my throat. We did it again, albeit uneasily, then rode back to the ship in silence.

? € ¥ $ ‰ £ ?

So resumed my education. After so long, after so many years, it was as if my mind, my consciousness, my life was numb and dead for nearly two decades, and only Livia was able to stroke it back into life. I left her on the deck of the Carnal Queen and wandered back to my cabin like a zombie. I poured myself a cognac, but was still unable to drink. I just sat there on the huge white couch, watching it swirl round and round in the snifter, his snifter, his cognac, his couch, his cabin, his ship, his country. The Big Kahoona. And what was I? His employee. His lapdog. His cuckold. What was Knuckles? His mistress. His concubine. His partner. I sniffed the brown brew; it made my stomach convulse. Poison. I set the snifter on the table and lay down in his room, staring at the smoked mirror over the bed, thinking of my parents. I envisioned their faces above me, in the nooks and crannies of the smoky, textured glass; I could see them both, little bits of each of them in my own mottled face.

So that’s what they looked like now? They looked so old. It was twenty years since I last saw them, there in the front yard. He was shorter than she was. Dad was so ugly; mom was so plain. The Fed made them that way. Humphrey and Lauren Ix, political dissidents. Traitors. Exiles. Ghosts. And they were still alive! It was too much to grasp, that these figures from another time, another millennium were still alive, still eating and sleeping and breathing every day, just like I was. Did they still farm that little pile of rocks? Was I so close and didn’t even know it? Was life hard for them? All the while I was rich and famous, while my wife and child and I were living like buristocratic royalty, were they starving and cold in their political exile? I didn’t want to think of any of this, but something awoke inside me. I knew what I wanted to do. I had to see them. At that moment I began to plan, in the deepest recesses of my mind, to see my parents again.

Sometime during the afternoon Knuckles returned from where ever. I barely noticed when she poked her head in to see if I was awake. I pretended to sleep and she left me alone. Later that night we went to a string quartet with the Captain and his wife. Knuckles and I made the good show of things when we arrived, arm in arm, the happy couple, the well-balanced Administrators of the Public Good, but when I sat next to her during the recital, I could not refrain from trembling from her chill, as if I was sitting next to a stranger on the subway. Where was Livia? I had my eye out for her all evening, but she was no where. I saw Chip, hovering dutifully, as usual, but she was completely absent. We were publicly amiable enough for the remainder of the night, but once we returned to the cabin, we separated, retiring alone to our own quarters. I locked my door, showered.

I finally fell asleep to visions of my parents waving from their front yard, old and bent and white, too far away to make out the details of their existence. Then, suddenly his face appeared in front of me, moving. He was young, like I remembered him, with dark hair and fewer creases around his sad eyes. He tried to cover his big teeth with his upper lip when he spoke, but it always seemed like a twitch to me. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, his voice lost somewhere in the deep recess of my memory, but I knew what he said. It was that old nursery rhyme, the one he made up just for me. I moved closer to him, so I could see him, so I could touch him, but as I approached, I could see it wasn’t my father at all. It was the Big Kahoona, dressed in my father’s clothes. He sang to me, his voice deep and terrible.

I awoke in the dark, a little noise in the room bringing me back, a scratching, a tinking, coming from over by the door. I turned on my night light, looking around. There in the dim, I saw the doorknob moving back and forth, gently clinking against the lock. After a moment she stopped, turned and went back to her own bed. I lay there alone, naked, crying.

The next morning I barely remembered my dreams. I met Knuckles and we had a civil breakfast before she rushed off, promptly at nine. At nine o'five the bell rang. It was Livia. We spent the day together, amusing ourselves, and promptly at five she excused herself. At five o'five Knuckles returned to the cabin, her arms full of boxes, joyfully recounting to me her adventures in shopping with the Captain's wife. So this was the way it was to be: Livia from nine to five, Knuckles from five to nine. So be it. The remainder of the cruise was a repetition of this schedule, and I was comfortable with the redundancy of it.

? € ¥ $ ‰ £ ?

We returned from the cruise in the exact condition the BK thought we should, rested, re-adjusted, ready. Now that expectations were well defined, the next year and a half passed wonderfully. Knuckles returned to her work duties with renewed vigor; the few times I saw her around the house she seemed completely preoccupied with government; I was able to set up Livia in the studio above the boutique. Now that things were arranged as they always should have been, Livia directed that I move back into the townhouse with my family. Livia was so wrapped up in the political end of everything that she said she would rather see less of me if that meant we had more to talk about when we did meet, things like foreign policy, executive decisions on economic recovery and minor details to whatever functions Knuckles and I were involved with. Besides, Knuckles and I had to maintain the appearance of stability, since we were still both endowed with the Public Faith. Livia always pointed out that our jobs were too vital to be jeopardize by our various personal relationships. But even living at home, I had no complaints, my needs were seen to in our arrangement. I spent four nights a week downtown. The rest of the time I rested up at home. It seemed to me Knuckles' arrangement with the BK was similar, but opposite, since she never slept at home the nights I did, except once a week.

It was one of the golden times of our marriage, true wedded bliss, familial Nirvana. By the time Ruth was of age to attend Public Trust, Knuckles and I began seeing one another more often, mostly preparing to send Ruth away. We put our personal lives on hold long enough to be conventional and throw Ruth a Coming Out party. She was six, after all. All the highest government dignitaries, and their children, were invited. Even the BK and his wife were attending, together.

I was mostly concerned with party preparations, like food and entertainment, but for this party there was the added elements of security to contend with, which was paramount in everything the BK did. It was unsettling to have all those dark-glassed men and women walking around mumbling into their shirt cuffs, but Knuckles seemed to thrive in this atmosphere. Being the primary love-interest of the Leader of the Free World, she was used to it.

I saw Chip again; he was SS assigned to the First Womyn. She arrived just a little before the President did, in a separate limo. She stood tensely in her smart, red business suit, her short, blonde hair cropped close to her head, lips pursed seriously as she scanned the crowd, seemingly annoyed that her husband wasn't there to greet her. But it was just a passing grimace; she made a good show for the cameras, smiling a tight lipped grin at the press, waving, and, once inside, disappearing into my study. Chip stood guard outside her door.

“Hey Chip,” I said, coming up with a glass of punch. He didn't seem to notice me, but I could swear his face paled. “I brought you some punch.”

He reached up into his jacket and I heard a little click, then he looked at me quickly. “Get the hell away from me, you twit.” Then I heard the click again and he didn't look at me again. I wandered off, and before we knew it the BK arrived.
There was quite a fanfare. The press camped out on our front lawn, as they always did when the ultimate celebrity was involved. He waved and came in, asked about his wife, then went to my study. They were in there for about five minutes, then emerged together, holding each other warmly, greeting everyone as they passed. They were the focal point of the party. I barely saw Knuckles. She seemed to be just a step ahead of the President and the First Womyn, never really in the same room with them, except for one or two photo-ops that everyone posed for on the back lawn. No one even noticed poor little Peanut as she blew out her candles and opened her presents. But she was only six, so what would she remember?

Towards four o'clock I was standing out by the fountain in back, talking with the Director of Information, when a woman in dark glasses approached me.

“The First Womyn would like a word with you, Mr. Ix,” she said coldly. “To compliment you on such a wonderful party.”

“I'll be right with you,” I said, turning back to the Director. The SS agent took my arm and pulled me aside.

“The First Womyn would like a word with you, Mr. Ix,” she said again, this time through gritting teeth. “To compliment you on such a wonderful party.” I turned and looked at her, a little shocked at her tone. For a female operative she was almost attractive, with her short cropped hair, pale skin and hidden eyes.

“OK,” I said, excusing myself, then following the agent through my own house to my own study for an audience with the First Womyn. As I followed along, watching the female operative's muscular calves, I grew more and more nervous. I heard of the people she had “a word with.” Many of them disappeared into the AZ.

I entered the office and found a little communications center set up, people gathered around various communications equipment, speaking in hushed tones. In the center of it all, connected by thin white cords, was the First Womyn, serenely looking from subordinate to subordinate, waiting for any kind of distress in her network that she would readily deal with. By her feet set a small, black ovular case. When I came in the room she slowly looked over at me. Under the scrutiny of that gaze I felt my testicles shrivel up into my body.

“Mr. Ix,” she said regally. “Come sit with me.” I went over and sat on an ottoman at her feet. She sat there for a long time, staring into my eyes. Finally she smiled, turning to the female operative who brought me there. “You were right, Diedra. It's like looking into the eyes of a husky dog.” She turned to me and addressed me as if I had suddenly been turned on. “Mr. Ix. You and I have much in common,” she said, resting her cold hand on my shoulder.

I looked at her in shock. “What could we possibly have in common?”

She smiled. “Taste. Do you like the setup here in your den?”

“Yes. This room has never seen so much action.”

She laughed. “Oh, Maynard, you have no idea how wrong you are. But that's not why I called you here. I need to talk to you about something of national importance.” I was quite dumbfounded. “There's a situation growing that I think is becoming something of a concern to you, me, and the nation as a whole.”

“What's that?”

“Our spouses. As you may be aware, they have cultivated a special partnership in executing the welfare of the Common Good. But recently many have become concerned that this partnership may be having special influences. Undue influences.”

“Virginia likes her job.”

“Indeed she does. And there's nothing wrong with liking her job. The problem is the President liking her job. Usually he just requires the services of his aides for a short period of time, and then, in the interest of national security, his aides are rotated and assigned satellite duties, a little less influential in terms of having the President's… ear. This ensures there is no undue lobbying of the Leader of the Free World.”

“It sounds lonely.”

“It is, I suppose. But your wife seems to have a mind to change this arrangement. She has been passed over rotation four times, and that, Maynard, smacks of undue influence. Do you understand what I'm saying?”

She was talking to me like I was an idiot, so I pulled a duh. “Not really.”

She sighed. “Listen. Some people have more control over their glands, and some people have less. People like you and me, the good spouses, we have more control. People like them, the bad spouses, they have less control. People like us need to watch people like them to make sure that no one gets hurt and no one gets too big for her own good. People who think they're too big are the in the most jeopardy of developing... diseases. Do you follow me now?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Now, we have a problem. Virginia has been the President's right hand aide for a very long time. As such, she has derived from that position a certain amount of… authority. Do you know what the problem is with that?”

“No.”

“Who elected your wife, Mr. Ix?”

“No one.”

“So how did she derive that power?”

“The bad spouse’s glands?”

“That's right. There are few people in government who have real power,” she looked down at her oval case. “People who do not appreciate the undue influence of un-elected lobbyists. People who see those influences as part of the growing resistance to our on-going Progressive Cultural Revolution for the Forces of Change. There are some who would rather just silence the Forces of Change. There are some who suspect your wife may be one of those negative influences.”

“Virginia?!” I felt all the blood rush from my head when she said that. I nearly fell from my ottoman.

She reached over and clamped the scruff of my neck, steadying me. “I would like you to do something for me, Mr. Ix. I'd like you to be my eyes. I'd like you to see for me. Nothing will happen to you and your wife as long as I know what's going on.”

“How,” I said breathlessly.

“It seems you already know Mr. Munke.”

“We worked together in the Trust kitchen.”

“Yes, we know.” She smiled broadly, pleased that I confessed knowing Chip. Her teeth were ugly, small and stained. That was why she never smiled toothy grins at the press. “He'll be your contact.”

“You want me to stay here all the time?”

“Oh no, Mr. Ix. Maintain you romantic schedule with your lovely, talented manager. I won't stop you. But I would like to know what's going on in terms of pillow talk with your wife.”

“We don't sleep together.”

“Then it’s high time you start. Don't be a moron, Mr. Ix. I'm not asking for great detail now, but when we need more detailed information, we'll contact you.” She sat back in her chair, looking at me as if she intended me to rise, so I did. “Please keep this little tête-à-tête to yourself. We would all hate to see something happen to Mrs. Gates-Guerrilla, now that the two of you are finding such success in your business relationship.” She turned away from me without further to-do and the female operative pulled me to the door. It opened, I was ejected and it clicked shut behind me. I stood in the hall alone, ignored, as if the whole audience had never happened.

I went out to the fountain and found the Director of Information. I told him all about the First Womyn's adoration for our party, and how she was enjoying herself so much. He congratulated me. Scanning the crowd, I noticed for the first time that the BK and Virginia were nowhere to be seen. Just as I turned, I spotted Chip over by the gazebo. He nodded to me, then flicked his head slightly to the side. I sauntered over.

“Meet me by the garage, five minutes,” he said, turning away as I approached. Five minutes later I was at the garage with Chip.

“Chip, what's happening here?”

He motioned me to shut up and pointed to a little device under his lapel. “Maynard, we need to set some ground rules.” On and on he went, telling me schedules for this and rendezvous for that, all the while motioning to me with his hands that we were in big trouble and to play along. While he babbled on and on, he took out a notebook and wrote something on it.

“The Sahara with Livia tomorrow 9 PM.” I nodded. He touched his lighter to the edge of the paper and it disappeared in a flash of smokeless flame. He nodded and smiled as he finished his little speech. “And if you happen to be wondering where your wife and the President have been for the last half hour, they've been up in your bedroom, making love on the floor, between the wall and the bed.” I was jarred by that, having not listened to anything else he said.

“In our own house? During Ruth's birthday party?” I whined, pained by the amateurishness of it.

“Don't worry. They won't get caught. They're under SS guard. Much to the First Womyn's chagrin, the President likes to live a little on the daring side, but it's a fairly common occurrence around here.”

“A fairly common occurrence around here?”

Chip laughed. “Get a grip, Maynard. What do you think happens when you're sleeping around downtown? We understand you intend to take your manager instead of your wife to the Grand Opening tomorrow night. Is that correct?”

I was shocked. We made those arrangements in secret. “Yes. It's true.”

“The First Womyn feels it would be a bad show. Reconsider.”

I went back to the party and watched for them to come back downstairs. By this time the First Womyn had slipped out, begging the press's forgiveness, but she had two more engagements before her day was through. During the hub-bub of her exit, the BK and Knuckles simultaneously slipped back in to the crowd from different parts of the house. I didn't know how I felt. I was angry. How could they be so callous to Ruth? I was disappointed. How could they be so blatant about sating their passions now, jeopardizing our positions? Couldn't they wait until the crowd was gone, until I was back downtown?

I came over and spoke to Knuckles privately for the first time that day, for weeks. “They know where you were,” I whispered over her shoulder. She wheeled around, looking quite surprised at me. “Couldn't you have just waited one more hour?”

“You don't know Clint very well, Maynard,” she said, slipping past me and heading for the fountain. She ignored me the rest of the night. The BK left about an hour after the First Womyn, and after he left the rest of the crowd virtually disappeared. All who were left were Knuckles, Ruth and myself.

Little Peanut was still so excited, so charmed by her own innocence, she just babbled away incoherently while Knuckles cleaned her up and I cleaned up the house. I wandered the house aimlessly while Knuckles bathed and put Ruth down for the night. I could have just left right then, since it was my night to stay downtown, but I couldn't. I felt there was something that needed to be done. I sat in my study, looking around at the mess the First Womyn's entourage left behind. She wanted me to spy on my own wife's affair. I felt soiled, corrupted, trapped. I barely noticed when Knuckles came in and sat on the couch across from me.

“Oh Maynard. What are we going to do?”

I looked up at her, blank faced, blank minded. I looked at her for the first time in what seemed like ages. She was still beautiful, just as austere and noble as the first night when we made love, so many years ago. But there was a change in her. She was thinner, more pale, a little translucent even, as if she were fading before my eyes. “What do you mean 'do'?” I said tiredly.

“I felt so bad when I said that to you about Clint before. It was so hurtful.” I said nothing; just sat there waiting for her to get to her point. “I don't want to hurt you, Maynard. I still love you. You're my first love. I'll always love you, but everything is so messed up right now.”

“Messed up?”

“I don't feel like I'm in control anymore.” She got up and came over to me, crawling into my lap like a little child. “I want to stop, Maynard. I wanted it all to stop on the cruise, but it just gets messier and messier. I want us to be like we used to be. But we aren't in control of all this. It's like there's this force out there, controlling everything we do, sitting at some kind of giant computer terminal pushing buttons that make us go here and there and do this or that and fall in love with people we should never even talk to.” She shut here eyes and rested her head against my chest. “And all the while we're just hurting each other.”

“You don't mean like a god, do you?”

“No,” she laughed, putting her hand in my shirt and rubbing my chest. “More like a cheap romance novelist.”

“Well, I feel in control. I never felt so in control in my life.” I tried to get up, but Knuckles clung to me, hugging me with all her might. I would have felt repulsed by her clinginess, except that it felt so good for her to hold me again. Once I settled back under her, she began to kiss my neck and nibble on my ear. I found myself kissing her. We necked like teenagers before going upstairs, slowly undressing each other and climbing into the shower. The water was hot and soapy, wet and cleansing, but we felt nothing but our own rejuvenation. After an hour or two of gentle massage and kisses, we found ourselves down in the Jacuzzi. We spent the night there, entwined arms and legs, re-discovering our lost passion and need. And when the sun finally rose, I carried her up to our bed and laid her out to sleep. Brushing the damp hair from her face, I watched her for a while, breathing deeply there on her pillow, then showered again and went to work. Little did I know that this was the beginning of the last normal day of my life…

? € ¥ $ ‰ £ ?

I was deeply moved; after all our years of marriage, I could still be moved to emotion by my wife. I was shocked there was still a spark between us, and this realization disturbed me to my very foundations. I canceled all my appointments, all except for the Grand Opening banquet for the new Museum erected in my honor, sponsored by the Uniform Youth, and receded into my inner studio, sealing the vault behind me. Once in my inner sanctum I could not be disturbed, nor even be found.

I dug out plaster and clay and began sculpting. I had no idea what I was doing, just whatever sprang to my fingers from my confused mind. Before I knew it, I stood face to face with a bust of my father. I didn't even realize I was looking at him while I dug his face out of the clay mound. He looked sad, gray, dead. For all of my great talent, this humorless, lifeless monstrosity was as close as I could come to breathing life into my shattered memories of him.

Under my father’s lifeless gaze, I made a series of small figures, nudes writhing in the throws of passion, or pain. One I made lying on his back, spine arched upward, inhumanely bowed outward as if being shocked by a million volts. I fashioned a female, bowing down, arms extended in either direction, coupled with the shocking male, trying to hold his writhing body, an amorous equestrian breaking her wild stallion. I called it “Warriage.” I made dozens of little figures, naked, writhing in agony or trembling on the brink of ecstasy, their faces capturing glimpses of their experiences, mouths gape screaming in terror and smiling gasps of pleasure, frozen memories pouring into these little clay people: murdered Mary Rocinante, her long horse-face, fang mouthed sucking O, crouching over a frightened little boy; President Clint Kennedy Williams III, The Big Kahoona, TMPMITU, Leader of the Free World scowling, angrily backward bending her naked torso over his knee; Virginia Anteranté Ix, my lover, my wife, mother of my child, begging for mercy as her spine shatters; Alexander Guerrilla, heart attack victim, raping a young woman, choking her as he pins her to the floor; Livia Gates Guerrilla, my first love, my ideal, another man's wife, smiling as her husband strangles her; Chester Monke, government agent, cupping his unit with both hands, standing off to the side, watching; Hetta Kujl, long and scaly, wraps herself around a hairless pre-pubescent, sucking the life from both ends. I made many, many more; they covered the studio floor, a vast miniature gray bacchanal of clay stretching across the darkening room. I stood breathlessly looking down on them, exposed, clawing, clutching, using, surviving. Life. And I was their petty god.

I didn't hear her come in; I was so absorbed in all my little subjects that she was beside me before I could stop her.

“What is this?” she said.

I wheeled around, nearly bashing Livia in the face with a self-defensive reflex. “What are you doing here?” I snapped angrily. Before I could stop myself, I cornered her by the door, shaking her wildly. “How did you find me? How did you get in?”

She shrank away, shocked at my sudden hostility. “Whoa, Sparky. Relax. You showed me how to get in, that first night. Remember?”

Yes, that was right. I showed her this room. The faces and her statue were still here, in the storeroom. I let her go and took a step back. What was I thinking, taking her in here that first night? Was I insane? “You have to go,” I said, flushing wildly, trying to get her away from my allegorical guts spread out across the studio floor. “I'm not done with this yet.”

Seeing I was my old self again, she stepped around me, lightly shoving me out of the way. “I'll say you're not done. What is this?” She crouched down, looking closely at one of the figures, two women whose bodies were joined just above the waist, two heads, four arms, four breasts, one navel, two hips, two legs. The upper part of their body wrestled with itself. She picked the figure up, looking closely at their faces.

“This is Knuckles and me. But you joined us at the waist. Why?”

I blushed again. “I can't say. I can't tell you why about everything, Livia. For some things there is no why.”

“I don't like how you divided up our bodies, Maynard. What is this supposed to mean?”

“Call it Passion.”

“Passion? This is passion? Is that what this orgy is?” She dropped the figure on the floor, looking out across the whole of my existence. “This looks more like Hell.”

“This isn't Hell. This is art.”

“Art? I never studied art, but I've been around you long enough to know that art should make you feel happy. It should be beautiful. That statue of me you had in here before. That was art. But this? This is sick.”

“Life isn't always about feeling good, Livia. Sometimes this is art, because sometimes this is life.”

She looked at me incredulously, shaking her head. “They were right about you. Sometimes you're not all there.” She came over and took me in her arms, resting my head on her shoulder. “This has been a hard year for you, hasn't it? And now you hurt. I feel your pain. The posters and the statues in front of the Public buildings, that's your art. That's what's made you famous. If you're feeling sad, don't come in here by yourself and do things like this. This is... perverted.” She held me at arm's length, reassuringly. “I know how to cheer you up, and I don't mean this perverted crap.”

She turned and left the studio, finally, and I followed, eagerly shutting off the light and locking the door behind us. When I turned from locking the fireplace, I was startled by the darkness of the room. All the curtains were drawn, the only light flickering from several candles lit around the head of the bed. She must have prepared this before she even ferreted me out of my studio. She pulled off her clothes as she crossed the room. “Peepers, I've been around long enough to know a thing or two about you, and I know what makes you tick. It's not our pain that makes the world go round; it's our pleasure.” I crossed the room, almost entranced by her dark shape floating in the flickering lights. Before I could say a word she was naked, clawing at my belt, drawing me over to the bed.

“I don't know,” I whined. “I have appointments to keep, and I have to get home to get ready for the speech tonight. Virginia is expecting me.”

“Like I was expecting you last night?” she said, yanking my belt from its loops. “Where were you last night, Peepers?”
I stepped back. “Home. Virginia needed me.”

“But it wasn't her night last night, was it?”

“She was sick. I had to be there. I'm her husband, and it's only fair that I--”

“Fair? What's fair got to do with anything?” She unsnapped my trousers, sliding them down before I could even think to reach out and stop her. “Our deal defines fair.”

“I don't have time, Livia,” I whined, pants around my ankles. “I have to get home so we can get ready for the reception tonight.”

“We?” She stopped. “As in, you and Knuckles? You promised to escort me to the speech tonight.”

“There's been a change in plans. I have to spend more time with my wife--”

“There's no change in plans,” she said, her voice rising. “Things will go just like we arranged them. There are bigger forces at work here than you can fathom.” She thumbed over towards my studio behind the fireplace. “I have to be there, Ix. Understand! I have to be there.”

“Chip is going to be there. He ordered me to bring Virginia. He must have made plans for you to be there.”

“I'll be there,” she said, reaching for my boxers. “You and I are meant for each other.”

I bent down to grab at my trousers just as she reached for my shorts. Our heads bashed together and we both fell back, she on the steps up to bed and I across the floor. I hardly knew what happened when she began screaming and crying. I pulled my pants back on and got to my feet, trying to comfort her. Livia was furious. She punched me in the mouth, in the eye and on the nose. Before I could get away, she started pulling out my hair. I grabbed my briefcase and ran for my life, Livia chasing me out of the dark bedroom into my bright office.

“Stop!” she screamed, just as I reached the door. I turned to see her. She stood in the middle of the bright room, panting, her face contorted in anger. “I don't want you to leave, Maynard. I want you here with me. We have to prepare for this evening.” My breath left me; there, in the brightness of my office, I saw her full nakedness for the first time. We had always joined in darkness, or dim candle light; it made her more romantic, more mysterious. I envisioned her body was milky and pure, smooth, ideal, but what I saw in the glare of my office lights staggered my mind. Her form was perfect, as my probing hands always reassured me in the dark, but her skin was... mottled, spotted. A tanned discoloration spread from her thighs across her stomach and up to her neck. It almost looked like some kind of fungus was tattooed on her body. She stood panting, then looked down at herself. I put down my briefcase. She wept quietly.

“What is that on you?” I said, crossing slowly over to her. “A birth mark?”

“Haven't you seen this on all the others? Haven't you seen the Mark?”

“No. What is it?”

“It's an STD, stupid,” she said, circling the desk and sitting heavily in my leather chair. “Alex brought it back from prison.”

“Is it contagious?”

“In a fashion,” she smirked.

I moved over to the desk and leaned across, glaring angrily. “What does 'in a fashion' mean? Is that supposed to be funny?”

“You don't understand, Peepers. It's not something you get just from having sex. Everyone has this. It's in the food, the water. It's in the air you breathe. It's not a disease. Not having it is the disease.”

I looked down at myself. Was this growing on me, on my own private parts? “Did you give this to me?”

“It's nothing bad. Don't you understand? Everyone has it. It's just a by-product--”

“Knuckles doesn't have it. Ruth doesn't have it. I've seen both of them. They're clean.”

“Are they? Next time you give Knuckles a hug, look closely at her hairline, behind her ears. She probably just treats it with Zül. The BK is a major carrier; she has to be infected.”

“ Zül? Carrier? Infected? What do you mean?”

“What do words mean? Look beyond traditional meanings and values. This is change. This is the future.”

“How could you infect me? I thought you loved me?”

She stepped over and took both my hands, and looking into my eyes she said, “I do love you, Peepers. But you have to understand. I'm normal. The first time we made love, I looked at your body, and you’re normal too. You already had it before I ever came along.”

“But you never mentioned it. Virginia never mentioned it. No one ever mentioned it…”

“Virginia told me you didn't know. She thinks you're so simple that you wouldn't understand. We were trying to protect you.”

“Virginia knows?”

“She may have given it to you.”

I backed away from her; she didn't follow. “Everyone has it?”

“Everyone.”

I backed out of the room, turned and walked down the corridor, into the elevator and down to the street. I walked down a block and went into a restaurant, all the way to the back, into the men's room. Sitting in a stall with my briefcase on my lap, I flipped it open and took out a little mirror to look at Livia's damage. She had blackened one eye. I dabbed my eye with make-up, then applied one of the false beards I carried around. I looked through my selection of contact lenses and picked a pair of green eyes, cleaned up and applied the final dabs of cover-up to the edges of the beard. Once done, I slipped back out into the city.

Out in the streets I imagined that everyone I saw had some kind of growth creeping around on their bodies. I went down into the sub-way and got on the uptown train. Standing there in the mass of people, I looked at them all. No one seemed mottled. The man next to me had a particularly dark scalp, but I couldn't get close enough to tell. A boy across the way had a brown patch on his neck, small, it could have been a birthmark, and he was just a boy. A couple sitting hand in hand had little spots at the edge of their jacket cuffs, but they were obviously homeless, it could have been dirt. A very young woman in a red dress near the doors watched me scan the crowd; her dress was cut low, and I could easily see the top of her lacy, black bra. There was a nothing there, just clear, creamy flesh bulging at the seams of her clothing. I looked down at the hem-line across her upper thigh. She wore dark hose, but the skin underneath seemed uniformly clear. She didn't seem to be infected either. Glancing up at her face, she smiled at me, winking, apparently pleased I was enjoying her apparel. I smiled back, thinking maybe I should go ask a doctor? The train heaved to a stop and I got off.

I moved down the street slowly, my mind flooding with thoughts and revelations. Was that why my work was received so sentimentally, because I was representing a pure, spotless human form no longer prevalent in society? Did they think I was consciously commemorating something I didn't even know was obsolete? I stopped short in the middle of the sidewalk. It was only on Livia that I saw this Mark. And I hadn't even checked myself yet! What was I getting so excited about? No one on the subway seemed to be infected. Livia was probably lying! Someone came up and took my arm, leading me to the side out of the flow of people. I looked down. It was the little girl in red from the subway.

I smiled. She smiled up at me. “You look lost,” she said. “Can I give you a hand?” She was very young, eighteen maybe. She was lovely, her eyes bright blue and happy, her complexion clear and smooth, her smile innocent and white.

“A hand? Yes, I could use a hand. Where am I?”

“42nd and 11th. Not a very nice place to get lost.”

I looked up at the high-rises. The sun wasn't even overhead any more. “What time is it? I don't even know what time it is?”

“It's just after two,” she said, pulling me down the street. “It's not too early yet. Would you like a drink?”

“Sure.” Why not? Who didn't have time for a drink? I was free. Alone. And it felt good for a young girl to pick me up. I was a one-woman kind of guy. We went to a little bar and ordered cold drinks, then laughed and talked about stupid idiocies. This young woman was coming on to me. And why not? I was only in my mid-thirties. It wasn't so long ago that I was young and virile, living on these streets myself. After a few drinks she produced a key and waved it in my face. Would I like to have a drink upstairs? Yes, I was infected. I would go with this woman, up to her room and I would see this Mark for myself. She seemed to like men; if anyone had the Mark, she would.

We staggered up the street together, arm in arm, up to her room, a cheesy little apartment she seemed to share with several others, all out to work just then. She mixed me a strong drink and pushed me down into an old chair. I hesitated, a coward when it came right down to it. She sensed my hesitation, climbing into my lap, caressing my fears away, not about to let me go. So we sat in a chair, necking like kids for a while, until she got up and danced for me, stripping away her clothes, letting them slide to the floor. Piece by piece she peeled herself before my eyes, flinging her clothes on me as she writhed. I sat entranced as she danced in her underwear, a black teddy and garter belt. Once she was naked, I got up and danced with her, letting her take off my clothes as well. Before long we were dancing naked in each other's arms.

“Let me look at you,” I heard myself say, and she stopped dancing, stepping away from me. I slumped back into my chair and looked up at her, posing there in front of me. She looked strangely familiar, her hips turned to the right, one leg crossed in front of the other, shoulders turned slightly to the left, breasts small and firm, stomach flat and taught. I saw under the hair below her flat stomach the mottled darkness of the Mark. I looked down at myself. There it was! A small round spot. I thought that was a mole. So, I did have the Mark too? What did it matter? Livia was right. We were all adults. We were all affected. We were all consenting. It was all the same, we were all the same, and because we were all “we,” “I” was meaningless. If all are in pain, traditional pain is meaningless, and the absence of pain becomes pain? Shouldn't the Mark be pleasure? Marriage was meaningless, loyalty and devotion interfered with pleasure. Love was meaningless, unless it was sensual gratification. What did any of it matter? I wanted this girl. She wanted me. Pleasure. Everything else was meaningless.

“You look like you're ready,” she cooed, reaching down to take my hand. Then it occurred to me. I didn't even know this girl's name.

“What's your name, sweetheart,” I laughed. “I like to know my lover's names.”

“What do names matter?”

She was right, of course, but I was still curious. Besides, this was becoming like a game. “I may be extra generous, and you may gain a very powerful regular, if I know your name.”

She pulled me up from the chair and led me over to her bed. “In that case, you can call me May,” she said, laughing. “And what Maggie May do for you will--”

I stopped dead, looking down on her bare backside. “Maggie May, as in Margaret Mae?”

She turned and looked up at me like I was crazy. “No. As in, I may go to bed with you if you don't get too weird on me.” She laughed, pushing me down on her bed and climbing on top of me. “Oh no! You're losing it.”

“What's your last name?” I demanded.

She straddled me, looking down half annoyed. “What are you, some kind of Truant from the Public Trust? I have my license, you know, signed by the President.”

“No, no. I'm a nobody.” I had a terrible hunch that I knew this little girl. “I just thought you looked familiar,” I said, trying to get out from under her. “What's your last name?”

She pushed me back down, reaching around to tickle my thighs. “Don't get any rash ideas about skipping out now, daddy. My boyfriend is just on the other side of that door, and all I have to do is call his name.”

“Sure he is.”

She turned towards what I thought was a closet door and called out, “Caesar?”

“What?” came a deep man's voice. “You got trouble?”

“No, nothing, baby. Just checking.” She turned back and smiled deviously. “You’re a weird little man, but there’s something I like about you. Just lay back and enjoy the ride.” She started working on me, moaning and licking her teeth. “Pray or play, you pay either way.”

My heart was racing, but I lay still. The last thing I needed was a scandal now, right before a huge ceremony and award from the Uniform Youth Organization. She started rubbing my legs again, smiling slyly down on me. “You like riddles, huh?” She laughed to herself. “We can make a wager. You have to guess my name, double the fee or nothing.”

I didn't believe in gambling. It was bad enough that she reminded me of Knuckles, in light of what we were about to do, but what choice did I have? “Sure,” I said. “It's a bet. Give me three hints.”

She looked up at the ceiling, then down with a grin. “You want to know my family name? My father is a maestro, clutching culture by the balls. My mother is the concubine to the master of the walls.”

My blood cooled, a sinking sickness oozed into my stomach. “I don't know. Give me the next one.”

She laughed. “This is fun. Most men don't even talk to me.” She bounced up and down on me a few times, making me wince. “OK, let's see. I was born a bastard under the sign of Pisces, but after years of work my sign is rather pricey.”

“You're not eighteen, are you.”

She looked down on me suggestively. “Close enough for you. Anyway, that was your second clue. Want to guess?”

“Give me the last clue.”

“This one's easy. Rhymes with tricks.”

I tried to hide the look of horror that must have crossed my face, but she intuited something was wrong. I felt her body tense, clamping her thighs to my ribs so hard I nearly lost my breath. I sighed deeply, watching her rise and fall above me, then smiled sadly up at her. So this was what came of Virginia’s Maggie Mae? So this was the fruit of Alex and Virginia's affair? I had never meet her, but she had to be only sixteen. I couldn't believe how grown up she acted. What was I going to do?

“Where do I know you from?” she asked suspiciously. “You look familiar, but I've never seen you before. What are you, a nark?”

“No. I'm just another customer. I don't know your parents, but I know your real father. He's not who you think he is.”

“My real father?” She laughed hatefully. “The father from the riddle is my real father. I'm my own father's bastard, and he doesn't even know it.”

“Impossible. I know you may think you were the artist's real daughter, but it was all just a story they told you. Your real father was a man I knew in the Public Trust, a waiter. I'm sorry to tell you, but he's dead now.”

She looked at me like I was insane, shaking her head. “I don't know who you're talking about, but I know who I am.”

“I know who you are, too. I may be your oldest friend.”

“Okay, then who is my father?”

“Alex--”

“Eehh, wrong answer. My father is a real saint, and his name ain't Alex. Listen.” She clamped me tightly between her thighs and put one hand on my chest, pointing out each detail above my face with her other hand as she explained, as if I was an idiot. “I'm his first, but they weren't married. He took off. I was born. We lived in the gutter until mom landed a government job, then she dumped me in the Trust and went off looking for him. She found him, married him, surprised him with me, but she never told him I was his so he would adopt me and she could keep trying to have more children by him on account of that she's obsessed with him. She wants a son. I never heard from either of them again. That's what I call family values.”

“What evidence do you have?”

She pulled her hair back. “I have his big, ugly ears.”

My mind reeled. “I have to go,” I said, heaving her off and scrambling to get my clothes back on.

“What do you mean, you have to go?” she said, grabbing at my arms as I tried to dress.

I stopped, looking at her fearfully. “Listen, Maggie, you don't know what you're doing. You're--”

“Hah. I do it twenty times a day, you amateur, and we aren't even done yet. Don't think that just because you didn't finish or you say your a friend of the family that you don't have to pay me. Double! Alex is the wrong answer.” Before I knew it she was waving a knife in my face. “You owe me a hundred bucks, pal.”

“My name isn't pal, Maggie Mae,” I said sickly, turning to look her in the eye. “Margaret Mae Ix. That's who you are.”

“Caesar!” she screamed. “Nark!”

The closet door swung open and Caesar stalked into the room, clutching a knife. “We got you on film, Nark. You made a bad mis-” He stopped in his tracks when he got a good look at me. It was Caesar, all right, but he was old now, wizened and knotty, his face pinched and cruel. A sick, disgusting smile cracked slowly across his face. “Well, well, well,” he said. “Maynard Ix. I didn't recognize you in your little disguise.”

“Ix,” Maggie said, lowering the knife. “Dad?” I zipped up my pants. We stood there in silence, then she came over and ripped off my beard. She stared at me, her eyes moving over my features. “You're wearing contacts?” she said, shaking her head.

Caesar started to laugh. “Isn't this the family reunion?” he said, rushing off and coming back with a camera. “Smile!”

“Turn it off, you pig,” I yelled. “Isn't it bad enough you ruined me once?”

Caesar just laughed, circling with his blinking camera. “Hell, I ran out of that money a long time ago, Maynard, but I'm still living off the family talent,” he rasped in a slick, wet chortle.

I wanted to go over to Maggie, to cover her nakedness, to take her in my arms and comfort her, but I felt too sick, too ashamed, too disgusted with what we were about to do. I was thankful that we didn't, that's for sure. I turned to my daughter, trying to explain. I wanted to tell her I was sorry, that I didn't know it was her. I thought the same thing about her that she no doubt thought about me, that we were both just two consenting adults pursuing another meaningless diversion. “Sometimes I wear a disguise because I'm so famous,” I started to say. “It's hard to go out and have fun--”

Before I knew what was happening she was on me, slashing at me with her knife. “You pervert! You scum bag! Does it make you feel good to come up here and knock up your own daughter?! Did you get bored with mom?” Thankfully I had pulled on my coat, because she would have opened my arms up like sausages. I reached out and grabbed the knife, but not before she delivered a crashing blow to my groin with her shin. I slumped to the floor as she circled, kicking viciously and screaming obscenities. Caesar circled, filming from every angle. I climbed to my feet, not fending off any more of her blows, and fell backwards out the door, hoping she wouldn't follow me naked out into the hall. She did. She chased me down two flights of stairs screaming, “Pervert! Pervert! Pervert!” with Caesar following right behind, his little red camera light flashing. Finally, I came crashing out into the street. I was never so glad to collapse in the street before in my life. Several scummy people stood there, looking at me. One laughed and said my name. I stood, brushed myself off and, without a word, moved on.

About three blocks away I slowed down and finally looked behind me. None of them were following. My head ached. I looked into the mirrored windows of a restaurant and faced myself. There, standing in my reflection, was a monster: his hair a mess, his eyes blackened, his nose bloody, half his beard hanging from his chin, one eye blue, one eye green, his clothes disheveled and blood smeared. I took out the other green contact and dropped it in the street. No wonder the passersby looked at me with such disgust.

I wandered in a daze downtown, not knowing what to make of the afternoon. The day started out so wonderfully, in Knuckles' warm bed. Now, this. I stood for a long time, watching a department store burn down. I hailed a cab and collapsed in the back. The effects of the cold drinks I had with my daughter were wearing off. My head ached.

“Downtown, the Ix Studio,” I said, and nearly fell asleep.

When we arrived I stepped out, tossed the cabby a twenty and rushed inside. Fortunately there were no paparazzi, and I was able to slip into the apartment with minimal resistance. Livia wasn't home. She must have been waiting for me back at the office. I took a long, hot shower, dressed and wandered over to the window to look down Constitution Avenue, to the Rainbow House. My brain throbbed inside my skull. My mind, my life was slowly, surely spinning out of control. This Avenue, this city fed on itself, slowly chewing out its own guts. Somehow, my family had been dragged into it. I wanted to go home, to the AZ, to see my parents, to bring Maggie back with me and teach her to farm, to make a living harvesting the land and not her own body. I wanted to take Ruth away, before they got their hands on her. I wanted to bring Knuckles, to start our marriage over again, away from the BK and Livia and the disease. Disease. I wanted it to go away. I didn't want to feel their pain and think it pleasure, to have their Mark creep over my body, to infect my soul. I didn't want to be their normal.

Never in a million years. I was Maynard Ix, Minister of Progressive Culture and Civic Virtue. I had duties. Responsibilities. I had to give a speech that very night, to stand there in front of The Big Kahoona and the First Womyn, praising them, accepting an award for Civic Virtue, dedicating the new American Arts & Crafts Institute in my honor, The Ix Center, opening the exhibition, a panoramic perspective on Gay and Lesbian erotic art. They owned me.

I jumped. A taxi pulled up in front of the studio and out jumped Livia. She tossed the driver some money. I fled. I ran down the back stairs and burst out the back door before she was even inside the studio. I turned and ran up the alley, turned on the street and ran for my life.

I ducked into the Regal Beagle. It was just the same. The same decor embracing the same people. I sat at the end of the bar, behind the TV, and ordered a shot of Rye and a beer. Downing them both immediately, I ordered another, and another and another. I was pretty looped by the time the bar grew dark and the city slipped into another night. I called the limo service and gave them the address where they could pick me up for the banquet, then ordered another round of drinks. The limo was there immediately, so I had to pound my drinks as they carried me away.

My secretary, Max, was waiting for me in the back, and when he smelled me he nearly had a heart attack.

“Mr. Ix,” he said. “Are you going to give a speech on Civic Virtue in this condition? You can hardly walk.”

I looked at him and wanted to vomit. They owned him, too. I owned him. “I haven't slept in two days,” I sighed. “Tired, that's all.” The limo stopped in traffic and we waited for some time. Finally Max asked the driver what was wrong and he said there was another protest up ahead. We slid the roof back and stood to watch.

Up ahead there were a few thousand protesters on one side of the street, screaming something about bugs. One the other side there were a few thousand more, screaming something about coffee. The bug screamers held signs that read, “Save Another Endangered Species!” and “Is A Cup Of Coffee Worth The Extinction Of The Brazentinian Coffee Weevil?” On the other side of the street the signs read, “Weevil Tax Is Still A Tax!” and “They're Only Bugs!”

I called to a boy passing by and had him get us a six of beer. He came back, not because of the inherent good of my fellow citizenry, but because I offered his reward after he did the work. We cracked a couple beers and watched the protest. Standing side by side, my secretary felt brave and asked me a personal question. “Where have you been all day, sir? We've been looking for you since this morning.”

I turned to him and smiled. “Max, I found out today that my daughter is a prostitute on 42nd street. And, on top of that, I still love my wife. Go figure.”

Just then the bug supporting crowd screamed like a rabid beast, charging across the street into the coffee supporting crowd. The riot police stood there for a second in their baby blue helmets, as if waiting to see who would get the upper hand before rushing in. Maybe they had bets. Stretching out at my feet were thousands of people clubbing each other to death with their ecology and tax signs, tearing and biting, slashing and trampling, all to save a little brown bug ten thousand miles away. I smiled.

? € ¥ $ ‰ £ ?

The next thing I knew, I was in a tuxedo, sitting in a make-up chair. Some woman was dabbing crap on my face and shaking her head, saying something about cool pancakes don't mix. The BK was there, I think. I seem to remember him being furious. The bugs lost out, they gave me a thousand cups of hot, black coffee. It burned, but they dumped it into me endlessly. Off in the corner I saw Knuckles talking with Livia. They ignored me.

Bing bang bing, we were eating, all of us sitting together at a large and round table. Knuckles sat next to me, silent. Ruth sat next to her, dazzled. Livia sat across from me, nervous. She wouldn't even look at me, but kept whispering something to Chip. My head ached. I avoided the coffee they kept sticking in front of me. The taste, the smell, the sight of coffee made me want to wretch. It reminded me of the one absent member of my family. Did Knuckles know where her other daughter was? No. The Anteranté and Ix seniors didn't know where their children were, so why should we? But I did. It didn't seem fair that I had to know about my daughter’s and wife’s chosen careers.

Up on the stage there was a long table, a podium at its center. On one side sat the Big Kahoona and the First Womyn. A number of people made a series of speeches, which I ignored. Somewhat sober by now, I was in great pain, breathing heavily, smothered under the pack of clay on my face used to hide the evidence of my day's discoveries. Finally, after an eternity of droll speeches, the emcee announced my name and I made my way up to the stage. Just as I passed the President, he reached out and took my arm.

“Make it good, son.” I smiled and shook his hand. From far away it probably didn't even seem like a threat.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” I said, chucking my prepared speech. “Welcome to our gala celebration of free expression in the arts. I am deeply honored to have this museum named after me, but in reality, this museum has little to do with me, but everything to do with you, the good people of America.” I paused, feeling the gooey heat of my face sweating under the many layers of make-up. “I feel lucky to be here, but luck, my friends, has nothing to do with it. The under-girding of our egalitarian empire is not luck, but rather the flourishing pursuit of esthetic pleasure, and its natural climax, gratification. It is because we are able to so vigorously pursue pleasure that we are the embodiment of egalitarian destiny. In effect, this museum is a monument to our love of pleasure.” I looked down at the podium. A little blob of sweaty goo dribbled from my nose.

“We are the generation chosen by history to, at long last, rise above the toil of our ancestors. We are the super-beings our ancestors intended us to be, all enjoying our various pleasures together. There are no 'I's in Utopia, for if one achieves our cause, all achieve. In the same way, if one is tainted, all are tainted. There are no innocents.” No applause. I saw myself reflected in the brass lamp, eyes ringed with black. The crowd had no idea what I was talking about. Neither did I.

“I came here tonight to accept a great honor, but I realized on the way here that art is only a lifeless expression, a shadow of the truth which is life itself. We are gods of the temporal sphere, crafting a universe in our own image. We the celebrities who live in the public eye, we ourselves are the real artworks, the real entertainment, the real escape, playing out for you all the fantasies you are too afraid or tired or unimaginative to play out yourselves, and for this you have rewarded us with riches and power beyond measure. And the greatest artists, the mightiest gods of them all, are these two people seated beside me tonight.” I turned and gestured amiably down at the First Couple. Polite applause.
“Without these two people at the cultural helm of our age, there could be no free expression, no free thought or free love, and I dare say, there would be no truly modern art as we know it today.” The crowd broke into polite applause. I took out my handkerchief and whipped my eyes; the cool air soothed my hot, blackened eyes.

“The President and the First Womyn have done more for modern art than all of their predecessors combined, for which all humanity is eternally indebted. But I want to say more tonight. I want to take you inside my life, for just a moment, and share with you what these people mean to me at the deepest, most personal level.” I turned and looked down on the First couple with the warmest, most gracious smile I could manufacture. They looked up at me uneasily, I could tell, but for all outward appearances they seemed touched and appreciative. “These people are more than simple public servants to me; they are my family, my loving parents. A mom and dad who took my wife and me in when we were struggling, and who helped us rise to the positions in which we now fully enjoy the fruits of liberty and equality.” Polite applause.

“And because I understand the nature of pleasure, the burden of fame, and the complexity of family, even among gods, I don’t blame them for the things they do, for they do what comes natural to them. It’s only natural for the President to bed my young wife. He’s been doing her for years.” Total silence. Both the BK and the FW glared up at me in disbelief. “And it’s even more natural for the First Womyn to blackmail me into spying on them, providing her with the information she needs to destroy them both. What mother wouldn’t be a little miffed that her husband is sleeping with his beautiful, young daughter; she’s only human.” I felt a hard pinch on my left thigh. I looked down and saw the Big Kahoona's big hand grabbing at my leg. I smiled.

“But you already know that my wife is the President’s personal concubine. You’ve known this for years. Their little tryst is entertaining, and our very public lives have been crafted into the finest entertainment. But the real masterpiece is my daughter, a prostitute who turns tricks in the streets of New Gaia. She taught me tonight that our minds, our souls, our very bodies are the living, breathing canvases on which we smear the most interesting designs of venereal disease and decay… all for you.” I felt free, freer than I ever had before.

“This museum is a monument to all of you, because all of you have played the greatest role in this stunning new world of modern art, for none of us could exist without you, our audience. We would be nothing without you, a nation of contented children, entertained by full-bellied insensibility, glutted with the toys of sensuality, fully embracing the path of least resistance while purposefully denying its consequence. To keep you entertained, we in the public eye sink deeper and deeper into the sleaze, and when you grow bored with our excess, we sink deeper still, just so you will clap your chubby little hands and smile, for when you’re distracted by our public passions, you don’t notice our private vices, and that is the true reward.”

I smiled broadly. On either side of the stage I could see the SS coming. Chip moved decisively towards me from the right, and behind him came Livia.

“I stand before you tonight to deliver a simple message on behalf of all the artists and entertainers, the politicians and public servants who make your lives meaningful. I say, simply... don’t touch that dial--”

Just then the SS men reached me. Chip came up from the right, grabbing at me, trying to pull me down. I turned to him and smiled. “Hi, Chip,” I said.

“Get down, you idiot,” he said, but he wasn't quick enough. Just as he got to me, Livia came up behind him and held a gun over his shoulder. I saw her face. She looked right through me at the Big Kahoona.

Instantly I saw the flash. The bullet entered my mouth, breaking all my teeth, passing through my cheek near my ear, exiting the back of my head and entering the BK’s throat. At that moment, I realized I was insane. We were all insane. Everyone around me was completely insane. Nothing meant anything. I was thrown back into the Big Kahoona, pinning him to the table. Livia squeezed off five more shots, emptying her revolver through my face into the BK's chest. We slumped together to the floor, awash in each other's blood. The stage erupted into a barrage of gunfire. From the floor I saw Livia and Chip cut to shreds as bullets tore them apart from every direction. The First Womyn fell across us on the floor, her gown soaked in blood.

People began screaming. They always scream. Several SS men came up and tried to take control, but it was too chaotic.

“Who's in charge here!?” one man kept demanding as he pulled me from the president's body. “Who's in command?”

“Chaos!” I tried to say. “Entropy!” But no one heard me. When I tried to speak, all I did was spray blood and chips of teeth up at them; I could see the red mist rising. They couldn't hear me. What did it matter? Let the SS take control of everything. We were all dead. We were all equal; entropy was the ultimate equalizer; everything succumbs to madness. I lay there very still among the corpses, pretending I was one of them, floating in a pool of our collective contamination. It was nice, warm. I passed out, glad to finally sleep.

? € ¥ $ ‰ £ ?

When I awoke, a man was pushing heavily on my chest. I hurt like hell, but I knew I was alive. A steady stream of salty goo poured down my throat. I tried to spit it out, but my face was wrapped up in gauze. I tried to sit up, but I was tied down. We were in a little room that rocked back and forth. I remember seeing Knuckles, but I may have dreamed her. I saw my father. He was in the front yard, barbecuing a piece of dog, singing a little song.

I tried to go to him, but I couldn't. Something was holding me back. I tried to wrestle myself free, but something held me down. He looked up at me, smiling as he sang.

My father walked toward the fence, looking at me as he sang. He looked sad.

? € ¥ $ ‰ £ ?

They sewed my face back together like a soccer ball; the prison doctors weren't paid to do a nice job. Somehow I was implicated with the assassination. I don't think it could have been the things I said in my speech. From the hospital I found out they closed down my two studios, impounding everything as evidence. The price of my works nearly tripled. Again, someone was becoming very rich off me. They tried me in my hospital bed.

Livia Gates was dead, but they wheeled in cartons of her possessions: journals, letters, drawings, pictures, reams and scads of naughty pictures, anything they could find that linked her and me. They brilliantly illustrated how Livia got our relationship off the ground, working her way into my confidence, closer and closer to the seat of power. She would never have been able to get so close to the President if she wasn't the lover of one of his top executives. A definitive strike against me.

Chip Monke was dead, but they brought in his SS journals, in which he described every detail of my meeting with Arnold Raygun, implicating me with the Serves and their little assassination even from the grave.

The Feds connected my nocturnal comings and goings while I searched for Livia with a multitude of bombings in the city, blaming me for them all, accusing me of the deaths of thousands of people.

Ester Ghen testified that I brought Livia into the business, moving Peggy Armendecki out so we could be alone together downtown, away from work and home, closer to the President. She even went so far as to impugn that I intended to buy them out and use the capital to finance various bombings and the government's overthrow.

Hetta Kujl, still alive to my amazement, testified that my politics were anti-government and violent from the start, and even produced some of my early experimental writing and notes on the benefit of being raised an outcast. She even entered as evidence some of her own brutally misogynistic sculptures she passed off as mine during the original Trust exhibits. I heard that after the trial she sold them for millions.

Otto Van de Camp testified that I was a disturbance to his kitchen, instigating a riot in which I maimed one of his best waiters, for which he fired me.

Dr. Maria Van de Camp and Dr. Diedra Little, noted Trust Critics and tenured Trustees, analyzed my works from the very earliest pieces to the clay figures I made the day of the assassination. Their testimony took several months, as they detailed the artistic significance of every piece, thousands in all. In the end I was presented as the perfect model of a sociopathic anarchist.

Stan Testostaronski replayed his whole testimony from the Hammerhym trial. Though that trial was discredited in the last election, no one bothered to discredit his evidence.

Maurice Cabal, under great protest, and no doubt modest financial recompense, was forced to reveal, in great length, taped interviews from our secret consultations from the last trial, which he happened to still have on record, which indicated that I was a mentally unstable individual, a politically incorrect theoretician and, in his opinion, an extreme societal outsider.

Donald MacRonald insisted I still owed him money, so the judge ordered all of my assets be seized until fair redistribution could be enacted.

Ida Hammerhym declined any involvement.

They dredged Caesar Snarglewallup from the slimy bowels of wherever he came from. He was more than happy to be there, providing video of my daughter and me kissing and heavy petting. Everyone watched in thunderstruck silence as poor little Maggie Mae danced unwittingly for me, as she undressed me, as she led me to her bed and we bantered just off camera, only our legs protruding on the left of the screen. He had already sold the rights to the video to The Voyeur for tens of millions of dollars. My court-appointed attorney didn't even cross examine.

Maggie Mae Ix Snarglewallup was called to the stand. She testified that I came to her room on that day and forcibly raped her, filling in the details of our actions just off camera of how I forced myself on her as we bantered about her identity. She even complained that I didn't pay her for her services. The lawyers wanted more, the audience wanted more, the press wanted more, so the judge had them replay the video, over and over, encouraging Maggie to give a blow by blow account of what physically happened just off screen. Her testimony was nationally televised, as was our video, which was snipped, looped and played over and over again, endlessly amusing all the little viewers out there in TV land.

After the startling revelations from my first daughter, the court ordered psychiatric examinations of my little Peanut. After several dozen treatments under hypnosis, it was revealed through recovered memories that I molested little Ruth at every turn. She gave detailed evidence, reciting as if she had every detail memorized by heart.

And after all this, after all this humiliating evidence was publicly brought before me, they called to the stand Virginia Anteranté Ix. She refused to say a word. They held her in contempt of court. After two days of silence, they threw the book at her. They didn't have to do that, but the world was mad at her for successfully keeping secret her affair with the now dead President.

The whole trial took over a year. By that time I could say a few words through my new mouth. Just before the trial went to the jury, I made an appearance in court. It was the last day of closing arguments, and I sat there in silence. The jury squirmed in disgust when I first entered, the reddened, pulpy wreckage of my face left uncovered, my nose lumpy and discolored, the large, glowing white government choppers they issued me to wear in public, my twisted, deformed, grafted lips sneering immorally at them. They refused to look at me, which didn't surprise me. Only the photographers snapped my picture, blanketing my new face on the tabloids and TV news everywhere. Once the judge saw me, he declined to let me speak.

Guess what the verdict was! Correct. Exile to the AZ. They wanted the death sentence, but it wasn't fair to put another human being to death. So they did the next best thing, they buried me, sterilized and alone in the Abortive Zone. They sentenced Knuckles to a thousand years without parole, to be lived out in another sector than where I lived.

And so I sit here now, a hero. Every victim is a hero. But I don't complain. I can speak as well as anyone who still has most of his face. I retired a rich man here in the AZ. Just after I arrived, I made a small killing by publishing The Spider and the Fly, under the pseudonym Miguel Iglesia. (Who would buy a children's story written by a misshapen stump-headed, incestuous pimp, murderous national traitor, monstrous molester of women and children, boy faced serial killer, Whitemale rapist of the most vulnerable people in society? I guess I do take after my father.) Now I write about two or three ditties a year and send them back to my publisher in New Gaia. People love little ditties that don't require thought. It's useful work, providing us a good life here. Just as restful as you please. Nothing ever explodes. No one ever bothers me, except you occasional thrill seekers. So I sit here all day, telling stories, whistling melodically through the little holes in my cheek the little spider ditty that my father sings even still. I know it well. He and I sing it together sometimes, when we go down the road to their house for barbecued dog, or when they come here on Tuesdays for some of Knuckles' AZ famous three-eyed possum pie.

avant god

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

III. Serial Logic

No comments:

Post a Comment

Who am I...