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Mr. Eternity Page 17


  2016

  * * *

  We had not been able to steal the photograph. It was bolted to the wall. But Azar had taken a picture of it with his phone and we examined it on the walk back.

  “Let’s be straight about this,” he said. “The question is not whether it’s a fake. The question is who made the fake.”

  We were walking down a narrow sandy alleyway on the way back to the ancient mariner’s boat. Banana trees and passion fruit vines and ixora and hibiscus and croton. I knew all these plants. I knew this kind of thing. My mind wasn’t just a tin can full of irony and fear.

  “It’s a whole additional aspect of the question,” he said. “Who has perpetrated this fiction? Daniel Defoe, a Key West institution, in whose deception unnamed persons are complicit. How much does Daniel Defoe himself know about it?”

  “Maybe you would want …” I said, fighting for the proper phrase, “maybe you would want to…”

  “What’s the matter with you? You’re walking so slow. You’re walking like you’ve been drugged.”

  “I drugged myself, yeah.”

  “I thought you were sick.”

  “I’m on drugs.”

  “Jeez!” He put his hands on his head and seemed momentarily at a loss for words. “Okay, listen, we should probably have a dramatic confrontation about your pills, and I don’t want you to think I’m dismissing this problem, which is a serious problem, but please can we just pause for now and talk about that photo? How does it change things? We’ve discovered a kind of conspiracy.”

  “The conspiracy,” I said.

  “It’s very discouraging that you’ve chosen this moment to drug yourself. Just try to concentrate. What does this new story mean?”

  “It’s about what people want to believe? What they want an excuse to believe? But that’s making it about us. Our faith and our belief.”

  “But that’s true,” said Azar. “It’s partly about the people who struggle with the meaning of the story.”

  “I feel strongly that it shouldn’t be about us. We’re peripheral.”

  “Maybe we don’t have to force it. How do you make a story a story? It’s just that I actually want to make the movie. I think there’s something here.”

  I didn’t think I counted as a drug addict because I was addicted to a class of drugs that was lawfully prescribed to me, but I often found myself doing things a drug addict might do. For instance, now I was calling my doctor and telling her that the airline had lost my bag. Could she please send a new prescription to the CVS here on Key West?

  We were in the ancient mariner’s backyard, but nothing was happening. The man himself was asleep in his hammock, wretched and becalmed after his ordeal, and Quaco was studying the New Yorker. He would not answer any questions and he still wouldn’t consent to be interviewed, so we were on our own for a while longer. Azar seemed wary of me and sat down to look over the footage we’d shot so far. He had some software that made all of this very easy. I was suspicious. Shouldn’t it be hard to make a movie? And when had he learned to do all of this? It was evidence of an initiative that I assumed neither of us possessed.

  I took another green pill. I had what must have looked like an enormous number of pills, green and blue and white all together in an outsized Tylenol bottle, but the axiomatic truth of the drug person’s life is that for every number x, where x is the number of pills, there exists another number, y, which is the correct and sufficient number of pills, such that y is always greater than x. There is never a time when it’s not advisable to seek more pills. There’s no arguing with math.

  So I went out to the CVS to retrieve a fresh bottle. The flamboyant trees were blooming. The ocean was a distant ribbon of blue at the end of the street. There were many bums, ten or more, in the parking lot. They shouted slogans at me as I went by.

  “Obey your thirst!” shouted one.

  “Swerve,” shouted another, “to avoid stopped emergency vehicles!” He ran beside me for a moment, cheering and pumping his fists. “No trucks in the left lane! Enhanced penalty zone!”

  There was a long line at the pharmacy counter. The man in front of me was wearing a T-shirt that read You’ll Be the First on My List When I Snap, but his mood was buoyant. He grinned from the vast frothy depth of his beard. There was tinfoil poking out from beneath his hat. I was calm and none of this bothered me. He wanted to talk about methamphetamine.

  “What’ll they, snort it?” he said.

  “Sometimes.”

  “Abuse anythang these days. Gasoline. Kerosene.”

  “Kerosene?”

  He was picking up a prescription for his mother, but he didn’t have any documentation. He had to call her up and ask her some questions.

  “Ma!” he shouted. “Ma! Remember give Carlos his heartworm chew!” He nodded. The pharmacist waited patiently, with a guarded expression. “Yeah yeah yeah,” the man said. He rolled his eyes and gave me a conspiratorial look. “Yeah yeah good. Ma! What’s your driver’s license number?” He nodded for a while longer and then he covered the phone and whispered to the pharmacist, “She’s letting Pansy use her license. Pansy’s my sister in case you get any ideas.”

  At the other register, a slow-moving black woman was being denied the posted discounts on a bottle of Coke and some Band-Aids. She kept retreating to check the prices on these items. Her own T-shirt said Gator Dad and she had compression socks and big clunky black shoes. She never got her Coke, and instead of Band-Aids she settled on a travel-size tube of Crest. I wanted to buy her whatever she wanted, but I didn’t have the courage to offer. She needed history to have happened differently. She needed Quaco to poison someone for her.

  Later I stood outside in the warm wind and tried to reorient myself. It was good to think about those less privileged than myself. It was not good to think exclusively of pain and suffering and hardship. In this as in all things it was good to strike a balance. I took another green pill. The sun had come out again and there were small white clouds dashing across the sky. Climate change would sweep all of this away. I was exhilarated by the largeness and strangeness of this thought.

  While I was standing there looking at my shadow and trying to remember who I was and what I cared about, I saw Lena coming toward me. I smiled, but it didn’t feel natural or persuasive. She walked right by and then stopped and turned around.

  “I got addicted to these green anxiety pills,” I said. I held up my CVS bag. “The blues and whites are good too but the greens are the best. It’s the pills themselves that make me admit it.”

  She stared at me for a moment and I worried that she might walk away and pretend she’d never seen me before. Then she said, “I’ve taken a lot of pills myself. At other times. Not these days.”

  “I was in the CVS with all the saddest people, but I was one of them.”

  “Aha. A tough thing to figure out.”

  “But I had this insight. Maybe all of this—” And here I gestured at the people, the CVS, the palm trees. “Maybe all of this is part of someone else’s story. Maybe I’m playing a bit part. Maybe I’m a minor character.”

  She considered this. Then she said, “It would take the pressure off.”

  “Wouldn’t it?”

  “It would be nice to know that the main problem doesn’t involve you. Are you okay?”

  “I was doing pretty good earlier but now I’m a little the worse for wear.”

  “Do you want to go to the beach?” she said.

  “How about some coffee?”

  “I have to meet Bee at the beach. I also have a craving for a Moon Pie. Or any of those squishy chemical desserts. Gas station desserts.”

  “We could have some Moon Pies. Why not? We’d just be two minor characters eating Moon Pies. One scene. Half a scene. The main characters would mention that we were off somewhere. They wouldn’t know where. They wouldn’t know we were eating Moon Pies.”

  “That’s a good insight. For a minor character, I mean. But I guess we’re not allo
wed to have Moon Pies.”

  We went inside again and I bought a towel and a bathing suit so I didn’t have to go back to the boat. She was right that we were not allowed to have Moon Pies. We were not allowed because of high-fructose corn syrup, disposable packaging, globalization, etc.

  “This is good,” she said. “Now we’re two minor characters walking to the beach. Somewhere out there are more important characters having conflicts, and in the course of their dialogue maybe the two of us are said to be at the beach and that’s the end of it. Nothing more is said about us. We’re free.”

  “We’re free. But I should admit that I didn’t come up with this myself. It was this guy I met on the street. A con man. He says he’s the main character.”

  “Even better,” said Lena. “The main character delivers a bit of wisdom that sends us pinging off in all directions.” She paused. “I’m talking like you. Your ridiculous way of talking is contagious.”

  Bee was already there when we arrived. Lena pulled out her sun hat and hunched up underneath it, as before, and Bee lay on her back like she’d been dropped out of the sky. I sat on my towel holding my CVS bag in both hands and squinting into the distance. I wasn’t wearing sunglasses because I thought they made me look like a creep. Everyone else on the beach had sunglasses. Even the little kids had sunglasses. The glare was unbearable.

  “We took your advice and visited John Baxter,” I said. “Do you think it was him who doctored the photo?”

  “Yes,” said Lena.

  Bee said, “I don’t think so. That guy is an idiot.”

  “Has Daniel Defoe told you about Anna Gloria?” said Lena.

  “He mentioned her but he didn’t really go into it.”

  “Anna Gloria is the woman he’s been after all this time. It’s unrequited love that keeps him alive. He meets her in different ages of the world. Fate drives them apart. You know how the story goes. She’s literally the woman of his dreams.”

  They went swimming. I went swimming. We all lay in the sun for a while longer. There was nothing to say. I watched Lena walk down to the water. Hips, breasts, shoulders, red hair. I tried not to think indecent thoughts about her. Each moment I had a stronger and more joyful sense of my peripheral role, and I knew that if we were to fall in love, there could be nothing indecent about it. Nothing complex or troubling. It would have to be a charming subplot.

  I must have slept, or else I succumbed to a sleeplike trance. When I came around I saw Azar squatting next to me, signaling obscurely and mouthing unintelligible phrases. Suddenly Bee opened her eyes and sat up. Azar was only a foot away. He grinned. She screamed.

  “It’s just Azar,” I said. “Don’t worry.”

  “Don’t worry about Azar,” said Azar. “Why should you worry about Azar? Just wander away in a drug stupor and don’t even think about him. Just go to the beach, for instance.”

  “Sorry I screamed,” Bee said.

  “Sorry I wandered away,” I said. “It was a last-minute change of plans. Didn’t I send a text?”

  “I just want to feel I’m part of the organization and planning process. It doesn’t matter. I filmed Quaco chanting and clapping for a while. The ancient mariner is still sleeping.”

  I explained that Quaco had poisoned Daniel Defoe.

  “Is he going to be okay?” said Lena.

  “Quaco says so. They’re looking for buried treasure.”

  “They’re always looking for buried treasure.”

  “When I was small,” said Bee, “he would tell me stories about the island of Maldive.”

  “Maldive,” Azar said. “Interesting. The thing for us is when is he telling the truth and when isn’t he? We want to believe whatever it’s possible to believe, if possible. We are done with cynicism and irony.”

  “Irony,” said Bee.

  “Irony,” said Azar. “Correct. You want to know what irony is?”

  Bee said nothing. She seemed irritated.

  “I’ll tell you what it is,” he said. “It’s when you wear a Minnie Mouse T-shirt, something you’d never wear, and then someone looks at you and thinks, What an idiot, but actually they’re the idiot because they don’t realize that you’d never wear something like that.”

  “Even though you’re wearing it,” said Bee.

  “Even though you’re wearing it, yeah. You’re wearing it but it’s not something you’d wear. That’s what makes the irony.”

  “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “You can see why we’re done with it.”

  “As for me,” I said, “I’m just trying not to be so gloomy.”

  “You guys are nuts,” said Bee. She turned to Lena. “Aren’t they nuts?”

  She’d had enough. She got up and went for a swim. I thought everything was going well, but now Lena was angry.

  “I don’t like you guys making fun of Bee. You don’t know anything about her. So what if she doesn’t know where the Maldives are?”

  Azar was instantly contrite. “Did it seem like we were making fun of her?”

  “I don’t know. Never mind. Just don’t think she’s an idiot because she doesn’t know it’s Maldives plural.”

  Azar looked down at his hands. “I had no idea,” he said. “I had no idea. I’ll make it good.”

  “It’s fine. It doesn’t matter. I overreacted.”

  But Azar wouldn’t listen. He peeled off his shirt, took his wallet and phone out of his shorts, and ran down to the water. In a moment he and Bee were laughing.

  “He really took that to heart,” said Lena.

  “He did.”

  “I overreacted. I feel bad.”

  “You were looking out for your friend. As recovering cynics, we appreciate any kind of genuine sentiment.”

  “Is that a joke?”

  “It’s no joke. It’s just the way I talk. It’s ridiculous, like you say. Years from now I’ll look back and think, Oh Christ, what an idiot. But it doesn’t help to know that. It doesn’t make any difference.”

  She pulled her dress over her knees and lifted the brim of her hat to look at me.

  “Are you okay?” she said. “Your eyes are pretty red.”

  “It’s the salt. And I need some sunglasses. I’m out of my zone here.”

  She fished around in the Victoria’s Secret bag, but there were no extra pairs of sunglasses. She asked if I wanted a drink.

  “It has a terrible effect on me,” I said.

  “What’s the matter, anyway? What are you so worked up about?”

  “It’s the Maldives, for instance. They’ll be underwater. And we won’t do so much better here at home. Goodbye Key West. And the Great Plains will turn to desert. Nebraskans will need to learn how to drink camel milk.”

  “This is what, cynicism?”

  “Gloom.”

  “But don’t you see? You’re worried about the future. You’re not despairing of there being a future.”

  “There’s this other thing too. It’s that I’m excited about it. I’m excited that we might live to see the end of the world.”

  She thought about this. We heard Bee laughing. The sun was high and hot and even the seagulls were subdued. She said, “Who isn’t?”

  When we got back, the ancient mariner was awake and partially coherent. He had drawn a treasure map on the wall with a piece of charcoal. Azar thought he could take a picture with his phone and then generate a small printout at the copy store around the corner.

  “I’ve seen men in the East with one giant foot,” said the ancient mariner, “which they used to shade themselves from the sun. I’ve seen the great cities of the Orinoco, which vanished without a trace.”

  “Okay,” said Azar, getting the video camera out of its case. “Just hang on.”

  “I’ve seen the enormous mokèlé-mbèmbé in the jungles of the Congo, and I’ve seen the banana-toothed terror-bird of Madagascar, which science teaches us to call Tyrannosaurus rex. On a riverbank in the province of El Dorado I saw three women w
hose faces were set right into their torsos, below their shoulders and just above their breasts. I was a pirate in the Caribbean. I’ve been up every dark feverish river on earth. I crossed to the other side of death and came back again. In Tierra del Fuego, beneath the blue glaciers, Magellan had me whipped until the sky was green. I’ve been everywhere and it was all as hot and buggy and beautiful as you can imagine. It was cold like the dark side of the moon. The sea was like a pane of glass and the waves were as high as the cathedral at Ulm. The sun was hot enough to kill a man right where he stood on the deck at noon and the sun had no more heat in it than a paper plate. The sun never set and it never rose. The sea was never the same. It was always the same.”

  His eyes were bright. He was waving his arms. We followed him out into the yard. Another Key West sunset, smooth and pink and soft.

  “The thought you have today at noon is the same thought you had in a dugout on the Pirahao River in the year 1558. You can have the same identical life-changing revelation year after year.”

  “I believe it,” said Azar.

  I did too, but I was having trouble keeping my eyes open. Drugs and sunshine and soft tropic air. I was thinking about Lena.

  “Every time, you think life will never be same,” said the ancient mariner, “and you’re right. It never is.”

  1560

  * * *

  Supporters of Miguel Oreja murder Domingos Alvarado in the night, and the next morning the vicar general denounces Castellana. Then Castellana gets him pinned over a moldering tree trunk and cuts his arm off, screaming that whoever excommunicates him also excommunicates God.

  But the men respect the vicar general. They feel a superstitious regard for him. When he speaks out against Castellana he is not only confirming their own suspicions about their commander, he is also absolving them. He is setting Castellana apart. And when Castellana cuts his arm off, Miguel Oreja orders the men to place the captain general in irons. A number of them wrestle him to the ground and bind his arms. Maybe they intend to take him prisoner, but in the confusion a poniard finds its way into Castellana’s belly. More than one poniard. He lies bleeding in the dust and the smell of his distress attracts small black ants, which begin to devour him.