Nine Kinds of Naked (32 page)

“That's for you,” Diablo indicated, pointing to the present.

“What is it?” Billy Pronto asked, with no discernible change in his perpetual elation.

“It's for you. Just open it. It's a present.”

“This is very generous of you, but I am in no need of the present. I
am
the present.”

“Not
the
present.
A
present. It's a gift.”

“
A
present?” Billy Pronto repeated. “Don't be absurd. There is only one moment.”

Diablo shook his head. He didn't have the energy for this bicker blather today. He decided to change the subject. “So what are you up to, man? What's the story?”

“Whatever you want is the story, of course. You know this by now.”

“The usual, I see.”

“Actually, I am the definition of unusual, at least from the point of view of the reality you people like to think you're in control of.”

Diablo shook his head. There was no way he was getting drawn into another one of Billy Pronto's dialogues. Diablo felt that he got along in life pretty serenely until whenever Billy Pronto showed up and turned him into an ill-tempered and cynical grouse. He decided to remain silent until he arrived at his destination. To his inevitable aggravation, however, this did not seem to upset Billy Pronto in the least. Diablo was doubly aggravated when, upon parking, Billy Pronto actually followed him out of the truck, leaving his present behind.

“Where do you think you're going?” Diablo demanded, and a passing woman with impossibly long harvest brown hair streaked sexy with a few strands of silver heard his rhetorical inquiry as if it were intended for her. She stopped long enough
for Diablo to catch a smirk from the
ARGUE NAKED
emblazoned across the front of her T-shirt, hesitantly touched the side of her nose, and changed her direction, whispering “Walk away” to herself. An hour later, she happened to run into her estranged boyfriend, over whom she'd wept because of their separation just that morning. Both of them discovered a transcendental sexuality that night, but their love is for another story, a story of love and other pranks.

“You need me for this,” Billy Pronto answered.

“I need you for what?”

“You need me for what you are about to do.”

“What am I about to do?”

Billy Pronto stopped. They were standing in front of a bookstore, the same bookstore Elizabeth had yesterday wandered into. Billy Pronto pointed to the door. “Walk in there, find a random book, open it to a random page, and read the words that your eyes fall upon.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because there is only one moment, and you know that this is merely the necessary unfurling.”

Diablo sighed. “This is what I need you for? To give me vague directions?”

Billy Pronto grinned and held Diablo's eyes unwaveringly. Diablo could muster no dispute against such indefatigable confidence, and so he strode into the bookstore and found a slim volume,
The Collected Short Stories of Jim Azmeyer.
Recoiling from such a wheezy suburban name, he pulled it off the shelf nonetheless and opened it, fully expecting to guffaw at
the stupidity that would surely confront him. But instead, he only read the following words:

You are fooling yourself.

 

83
E
LIZABETH GUSHED
with good cheer like a songbird with newfound song. Fountains of synchronicity cascaded from everywhere, every experience ushering her along with nods and blown kisses. And because it is impossible to surprise someone who is already astonished, it did not surprise her in the least when she happened to see Diablo walking along with a companion, quite a distance from his usual haunt on Bourbon Street. Further, despite the synchronicity of his friend being costumed identical to the crusader from the end of her dream, not to mention the curious fact that his crusader friend was leading a mule, the only hiccup in her dither was that Diablo looked curiously taller as he strode down the street, primarily because she had only ever seen him seated next to his table of seashell pipes.

Following from a distance, Elizabeth spied at least two passersby touch the side of their respective noses as they passed Diablo and the crusader, although neither replied in turn.
Yeah right
, Elizabeth snuffled to herself, knowing that she was seeing through Diablo's ruse,
as if they're not in on what's going down in this town.
Elizabeth acknowledged the two passersby with the subtle salute as they passed her, and they replied in turn, so cool. She didn't recognize them, but that was the way it went. Sometimes you'd seen them before, if only farther on down the street. Sometimes you just had a hunch and swiped
the side of your nose hoping for a response. And sometimes you had an impulse and perpetrated it.

Diana had explained this notion of perpetrating impulses to Elizabeth. According to m2 hearsay, which is where Diana drew her information, the impulse was how you invited another to discover their life. Follow an impulse, a true impulse, an idea, an intuition, a glint of light emanating from the deepest parts of your psyche. Not an urge. Urges are shallow, sordid, and potentially violent. An impulse is innocent, headstrong but honest, rude but true, and it's supposed to be exactly what someone around you needs to witness or experience in that moment. An impulse is the active side of synchronicity, providing the meaningful moment for someone else. This was an important part of the m2 manifesto, Diana had explained. Those who passively witness synchronicity without actively participating in its manifestation risk slipping into delusions of reference—believing that every random detail of the world refers specifically to them.

The m2 manifesto did not exist, as such. Since nothing was written down, there was neither dictum nor dogma. It was an entirely open-source oral tradition. Theoretically, anyone could alter the rumors as they saw fit, but such sociopathy is a useless pursuit, as the intent of the masses will nonetheless shake loose. Disinformation was impossible anyway, since you weren't supposed to understand what you heard. The whole point was to create your own meaning rather than consume someone else's commandment.

In any event, Elizabeth had more or less forgotten all of this, though it was nonetheless unquestionable. Passing a door
to a diner, she rhymed the
ENTRANCE
sign with dance.
Entrance.
This invocation of wonder was broadcasting from every other threshold on the street, and it had always been so, hidden portals winking at those who were in on the dream, inviting disillusion and delight.

Beaming at her new vision, Elizabeth paused as Diablo and the crusader came to a halt, the mule pulling at his bridle. They appeared to be bickering, and the crusader was offering a book to Diablo. He ultimately accepted it and opened it immediately, but after a couple of seconds let it drop to the ground. Then he stalked off, his companion nattering along after him. She resumed following, stopping only to retrieve the abandoned book, which turned out to be a very nice heirloom hardcover edition of the King James Bible inscribed with the surname
WILSON.
Perhaps that was Diablo's last name, she wondered? Diablo Wilson? She decided to return it to him in any event.

Elizabeth continued trailing Diablo and his companion as they crossed the street in front of a black pickup truck with a giant
NO FEAR
decal emblazoned across the top of its windshield. Whereas before she would only have seen an ostentatious admission of insecure masculinity, now she saw a mystical memorandum:
No fear.
Not an all-caps braggadocio, in other words, but a straightforward wisdom.
No fear.

No fear
, Elizabeth repeated to herself as she crossed the street in front of the fearless pickup truck. Its turn signal clicked in cadence to her footsteps, and its radio crackled some commercial specifically at her: “It's a big change,” barked the gaudy announcer hawking whatever unknown consumer crapola, “and now it's up to you . . . ”

And then it all came together. The marquee in the front window of the jazz bar across the street flashed
LIVE IN CONCERT
at her, and she knew that
live
rhymed not with
hive
but with
give.
Live in concert, yes of course, and as she reached the curb, a shining couple stepped halfway into her path and asked, in unison, “Real quick, yes or no?” and without even breaking her stride, Elizabeth decided what seemed to her to be the fate of the rest of her life.

“Yes.”

 

84
A
CTUALLY
, E
LIZABETH
had just decided for the couple that they would go out to lunch rather than go home for lunch. But such mundane affairs were unknown to Elizabeth. From her point of view, a pair of angels had just presented her with a decision as to her destiny, and she had answered in the unmistakable affirmative. Yes. Yes!
Yes I said yes I will Yes.

Yessing along thus in the yesness of existence (and Elizabeth had discovered one evening while poring over her dictionary that this is no mere wordplay, that the word
yes
itself derives from the same root as
to be
, that yes is the emphatic contradiction of nothingness, that yes is the very essence of being, that yes is the inescapable act of life itself), Elizabeth continued to follow Diablo at a distance, yes she did. “What do you think will happen?” a passing pedestrian asked his companion, but Elizabeth knew he was really talking to her. She grinned, yielding to the yes, realizing that whatever was happening had already happened, that she was and could only ever be along for the ride.

And what a ride it was! The sheer unlikelihood of life, the
vastness of its scale and our own peewee points of view, can such a trifling glimmer of perception really carry any significance? Can there be such an audacity of awareness? Dare we answer
yes?

Oh yes we dare yes
, thought Elizabeth, and she twirled around and suddenly sang at the stern man with a black eye she found a few feet behind her: “If the universe bangs big and no one's around to hear it, does it make a sound?” She touched the side of her nose as she did so, oh yes she most certainly did, momentarily noticed the Day-Glo orange Frisbee he was carrying under his arm, then pointed at him and said, “Walk away.” It was an impulse, bona fide and beautiful, her victory over quiet desperation, her invocation to riot and exaltation. For his part, the stern man with a black eye and a Day-Glo orange Frisbee under his arm appeared irritated by her outburst, but at least he seemed to find some contentment when he glanced down at her breasts.

Pleased with her fluster at every level, Elizabeth carried on with her tailing of Diablo and the crusader and immediately noticed that a black-and-white cat had been trotting along just next to her. She hadn't paid it any heed at first, though now it appeared to her as though the cat was not so much matching pace with her as it was following Diablo on its own predatory quest. The cat, in other words, seemed absolutely oblivious to her and concerned only with its objective of keeping up with Diablo.

Elizabeth scarcely had time to muse this over before the cat suddenly took off ahead of her, racing nimbly through the gauntlet of pedestrian legs. Looking to where she'd last spied
Diablo, Elizabeth was momentarily startled to see that neither he, the crusader, nor the mule were anywhere to be seen. But she did happen to see the black-and-white cat dart down an alley, and so the obvious path forward seemed to be to follow the cat following Diablo. She hurried to the alley, and when she turned the corner was pleased to spy the cat making its way up a flight of access steps off the alleyway. There was an awning over the stairs, and Elizabeth was not surprised to see a sizable number nine printed upon it.

She did not notice that the stern man with a black eye and a Day-Glo orange Frisbee under his arm was still behind her.

 

85
“A
POPHENIA
!” Diablo yelled at Billy Pronto, not caring that from all appearances he was barking jargon at nobody at all. “Borderline schizophrenic, as a matter of fact!”

Billy Pronto snickered. “You are hardly one to judge, Mr. Imaginary Friend.”

“Yeah whatever, Mr. Imaginary Asshole. Who cares if I open a book and it seems to be directed at me? It's still nothing more than a delusion of reference, seeing random connections amidst unrelated phenomena. Type I error, it's called.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc.
Solipsistic, even.”

“You can gavel your skepticism or you can do it again,” Billy Pronto dared.

“No, not with this one,” Diablo replied soberly. He had purchased the copy of
The Collected Short Stories of Jim Azmeyer.

“Why not?”

“Because I want to read it first and find the context for the first phrase, that's why, fer chrissakes.”

“Oh, well I can tell you that,” Billy Pronto jovially replied. “It's from the short story ‘Nobility.' Basically, there's this writer who notices that everything he writes happens to his neighbor, whom he dislikes after some minor disagreement. So he gets increasingly vengeful and mean and writes all kinds of random adversity for his neighbor to suffer. A tree falls on his house, someone keys his car, his girlfriend dumps him, you name it. But then a strange thing happens. The more adversity his neighbor suffers, the more humble—and the more noble—he becomes. His eyes shine brighter with each passing day, his insurance overpays for the repairs on both his house and his car, and he soon meets and falls in love with another woman. Meanwhile, as his neighbor grows more and more noble, the writer grows more and more depraved, desperately trying to control his neighbor's life but watching every adversity flip into a blessing in disguise. Finally, the writer goes mad when he realizes that he is not in control after all, and that he is recording the events of his neighbor's life rather than creating them.” Billy Pronto paused contemplative. “The illusion of control is what ruins the human soul. That's what that line means.”