Magnificent Vibration (28 page)

“Murray!! Come here!!” I shout at his retreating fuzzy red-golden butt. The squirrel is long gone. But the car is not.

It hits him so hard that I hear his sweet noggin crack against the car’s fender. The squeal of tires drowns out my howl of pain and Murray’s yelp of shock. “Murray!!” is all I can scream as I run to him. He’s lying on the black asphalt, his legs kicking spasmodically, his back broken, blood running from his nose and mouth. I fall to my knees at his side. A kid runs up to us professing his innocence and begging forgiveness. I barely hear him as I lay my face on my dying boy’s side.

“Murray, no, no,” is all I can say.

His breathing is belabored and clearly painful as his lungs fill with blood. I cradle his shattered head in my hands as he leaves this earth.

I think he looks at me once with a sad sideways glance. We see all the years we will not be spending together. Then his eyes defocus and he is gone.

The driver is beside me talking nervously.

“I didn’t see him. Honestly. I’m so sorry. Let me take him to a vet.”

But there is no need. I stare hopelessly at his broken, lifeless form.

“
Murray, Murray, bo Burray, Banana fana fo Furray . . .
” runs through my head.

I couldn’t protect him. I couldn’t save him. I couldn’t stop what was about to happen from happening.

Murray is gone to where all good dogs go. And at this point I don’t even know where that is.

My final words to him replay themselves in my head:

“Murray!! Come here!!”

How I wish.

Shit happens.

Dear Miss Young,

We are in receipt of your most recent email dated 3/21/14 and are pleased to hear of your imminent arrival in Inverness so that we may settle the estate of your uncle, Ronan Bon Young.

Once you sign the necessary documentation you are within your legal rights to take up residence at Mr. Young’s house, although there are still some formalities remaining in order to complete execution and distribution of the estate. Please stop by our offices when you reach Inverness—the address is included at the bottom of this email with our company hallmark—and we will have the appropriate legal papers ready for you to sign and shall supply you with keys
and directions. Or I would be happy to drive you to the house myself.

Provided you have all the correct documentation noted in the previous email, this matter should be resolved fairly quickly.

Please call my cellular phone when you arrive. The number from your U.S. device is: 011 44 1463 3789 131.

Looking forward to meeting you. Your uncle was quite a fixture around this part of the Highlands.

Your faithful servant,

Clive McGivney

of

McGivney, McGivney, & McGivney Law Offices, Inverness, Scotland 41 Church Street, Inverness, Highlands, IV1 1EH

L
os Angeles International is so crowded at 7:30 in the evening that there’s not even enough room to change your mind. And we are all thinking about doing just that as the three of us head to Security on our way to Immigration (where I will be forced to display my inhuman, zombie passport photo) that will then take us to the gate that will take us to the plane that will take us to London and then Glasgow,
where we will rent a car that will take us to McGivney, McGivney, and McGivney of Inverness. And who knows where else? We’re all at the point of thinking this could really just be just some wild, stoned-goose chase. Or maybe not. I guess at the very least, Alice gets a new house and I get to dip my imagination into the cold and awesome Loch Ness, “home of the world’s coolest creature,” to quote twelve-year-old Horatio Cotton. Not sure what Lexington Vargas’s hopes for this trip would be. He doesn’t say much.

All this excitement, however, is tempered by the brick of pain that sits on my chest. Murray died on my watch. I’m heartsick to have lost him like that. We made a deal a long time ago, we humans and dogs. They would give up their wild, wandering ways to idolize us and keep us good company, and we would love them and protect them from harm. Murray lived up to his part of the bargain; I did not. I’m still so mad at God for not looking out for us. I know it’s ironic, given my recent conversations with the entity, that I still seem to be able to blame him/her for shit happening, but old habits die hard and my boy Murray just . . . died.

I am glad to be going somewhere new and away from the scene of my pain, if not from the pain itself. It’s welcomingly distracting to consider what we might find at the end of this wild-ass rainbow, although a big part of me is dreading flying twelve-plus hours sitting next to a traveler’s worst nightmare, the very large and space-consuming Lexington Vargas. I got the best price I could on the round-trip fares, and the best price was, unfortunately but obviously, coach. So the three of us will be squished into a space that wouldn’t fit three
normal
-sized people very comfortably and certainly not for as many long hours as we will be so ensconced. But we’ll endure.

Everything is going as swimmingly as I imagine it could until we
get to Security and they find L.V.’s hunting knife in his backpack. I look at him in disbelief as they yank the wicked-looking man-killer out of his carry-on.

“Dude, what were you thinking?” I say, possibly in an attempt to publicly distance Alice and myself from this globetrotter’s faux pas.

“What? I’m not allowed to carry a knife?” says Lexington Vargas, nonplussed.

“Sir, it’s illegal to board an airplane with a weapon,” says the stern young woman in the blue shirt, and every time someone in authority says “Sir” like that it sounds like what they really mean is “Hey, dipshit.” Am I the only one who picks up on this? Ms. Blue Shirt has a look on her face as though she were holding a bag of heroin, a block of C4 plastic explosive, and a certificate of transit for the eight white-slave-trade hookers we have drugged-up, bound, and stashed in our checked luggage, rather than a small hunting knife. We’re all glad she is keeping the skies safe by patting down little kids and strip-searching grandmas.

“This is clearly on the list of banned carry-ons,” she continues, pointing to a large sign that also contains illustrations of explosives (really?) guns, chainsaws (no way!) and fire extinguishers. “Please step over here.” She points to a spot right next to the lethal-dose-emitting X-ray machines that they work beside day in and day out, and announces over her walkie-talkie: “Male assist. Male assist.”

“What does that mean?” I ask her.

“Are you three travelling together?” she replies sharply. It’s not quite the response I’m looking for.

“Er . . . yes,” I say. I guess it’s pretty obvious. Ms. TSA looks at Alice and speaks again into her intercom.

“One female assist. I need two male assists and a single female assist.”

We wait by the death-dealing radioactive machines in silence, thinking that this trip just got a whole lot more complicated. Eventually three more Blue Shirts approach us and signal us forward with a commanding and slightly demeaning wave of their blue-rubber-gloved hands.

“Oh, shit, are they going to body-cavity search us?” I think, seeing they are
all
wearing the same “rectal exam” rubber gloves.

But it’s not
that
bad. They rummage through our carry-ons, pulling out each article and inspecting it as though they were monkeys that have never seen an iPod or a Sudafed inhaler before. Then they run everything
back
through the X-ray machines! We are subjected to a hand-search and are told they will only touch our “sensitive areas” with the backs of their gloved hands. So no rectal exam, but some strange dude rubs Woody with the back of his hand as I send mental signals to the aforementioned penis to ignore the stimulation because (a) it’s coming from a man, (b) I’d be mortified if he (Woody) moved a muscle, and (c) do not, repeat, do NOT look over at Alice as the lucky female Blue Shirt rubs the back of
her
hands over Alice’s “sensitive areas.”

Soon, after much wiping of rubber gloves with strips of cloth and consequent processing of those strips, we are free to go. Lexington Vargas wants to know if he can have his knife back.

“Tell me the address of the rock you’ve been living under since the whole 9/11 thing, and I’ll have them mail the knife to you,” I say, maybe a bit heatedly, but honestly . . . “Can I have my knife back”? Fuck!

Lexington Vargas’s response is an expectedly low-key “I don’t know, I thought we might need it.”

Which actually may have more truth to it than I’d like to admit to myself.

We’re herded with the other cattle and board the aircraft inch by inch, bit by bit, as people mindlessly whack us with luggage, take forever to stow their bags, sit in the wrong seats, and generally make me wish I wasn’t a part of the same human race. Jesus, some of them smell bad already! What’s it going to be like after twelve or so hours with them all snoring and farting and generally causing me to yearn for Lexington Vargas’s hunting knife to put either them or me out of our misery?

The aircraft takes off with an explosive and thundering noise, jolting the three of us into fearful flashbacks of the plane crash on the 101 that will probably never leave our fear receptors.

Alice grips my hand until her knuckles show white. On the other side of me (yep, I got the middle seat), L.V. does the same. His giant hand engulfs and crushes my little mitt in his panic. He gives me a furtive look that speaks volumes. It says “Sorry, man. I’m totally freaked out about flying, and that whole plane-crash thing the other night didn’t help any. Hold me, Daddy.” Wow, when did I become the rock in this weird partnership?

We do not crash in a fiery ball of boiling jet fuel on takeoff, and eventually the whole aircraft settles into the strange and restless lethargy that is part and parcel of flying across continents and time zones.

Alice has the window seat and the interior wall of the fuselage to sleep against. Lexington Vargas has the aisle and can stretch out to some degree, with his heavy head lolling into the walkway, although sporadic collisions with drink carts steered by aggressive flight attendants occasionally smack him into wakefulness. I have the choice of either Alice’s or L.V.’s shoulder. And although L.V. is more padded and would provide a fairly comfortable pillow (given the fact that his
body also takes up half of my seat’s real estate already), I’m more than happy to lean my head on the fragile surface of Alice’s shoulder, even though I know it will leave me with a neck-ache for days. I think it’s a fair exchange. She is the only person on the whole airplane who smells good. She smells more than good. I slowly drift off.

“Wake up! Bobby, wake up!!” someone is prodding and poking me and yelling in my ear. Where am I? Is it raining? I hear thunder. And it’s really stinky. Suddenly I am awake and trying to grasp
why
I am awake. The thunder is the jet noise, the awful smell is my fellow passengers, the shoulder I have been drooling, yes drooling on, is Alice’s, and the face in my face is large and looks like a giant about to eat me, but I quickly realize it’s Lexington Vargas. I’m immediately on high alert. Something is going on. Are we crashing? “Bobby, wake up!!!” L.V. keeps yelling, although he’s not really yelling, but it sure feels like it. My neck hurts.

“What? What is it? I’m awake. Stop yelling. What’s the matter?”

“I just went to the bathroom,” L.V. begins.

“You woke me up to tell me you just went to the bathroom?”

“No, no, listen to me.”

“Stop shouting at me,” I plead.

“I’m not shouting,” whispers Lexington Vargas.

He sits up straight in his seat. The seat groans audibly. So do I as he leans in.

“The coach bathrooms were all busy or clogged up or something, and I really had to go, man . . .”

“Please, I don’t need to hear this.”

He continues anyway.

“So I walked down to the business-class toilets and one of the flight attendants asked me which section I was sitting in. I pointed
to the back of the bus, so she said I had to use those bathrooms, but I told her they were full or out of service, and she said that the business-class restrooms were for business-class passengers only, and I said that I really needed to go and that it was “turtle-headin’,” and she said she didn’t understand what I meant by that and should she get one of the male flight attendants and did we have a problem here? and I said “
Oye, hermana
, I’ve got a brick knocking at the back door and—”

I stop him with an actual hand over his mouth, so close is he.

“Okay, stop. I need to sleep.”

“Merikh is on the plane!” says Lexington Vargas with some force, though muffled, through my hand.

“What?” I remove my hand and wipe it on my pant leg.

“He’s sitting in business class.”

“What?” Why does this seem to be my “go-to” word of choice?

“I saw him just as I was turning to come back here. He’s kind of unmistakable.”

I am awake!

“
Our
Merikh?” is all I can muster.

“He’s on the plane, man. With us!” says L.V.

“No fucking way,” I return.

“Come on. I’ll show you.”

He leads me to the business-class/cheap-seats barrier where the really fortunate upper class is sleeping luxuriously in exotic modular chairs that look incredibly comfortable.

“Are they sleeping in
pods
?” I ask, momentarily distracted by the opulence of business class.

L.V. ignores me and points to a profile that I have only seen once but recognize in an instant. It is perfect, flawless, beautiful, and it chills my heart. Sitting in the section we are not allowed to enter, even
if the
Titanic
hits an iceberg and the only lifeboats are in business class, is the Angel of Death himself.

“Is he going to crash this plane?” asks Lexington Vargas, like I friggin’ know. “Should we tell a flight attendant?”

“Tell them what?” I reason. “That we saw this guy jump from a burning plane crash that no one was supposed to have survived and that he held us up with a gun right out of
Pirates of the Caribbean
and we think he might be the Angel of Death but we’re not really sure?”