Chapter Two: Emathios Vallarta

 

 

Chapter Two: Emathios Vallarta

 

“SACERLOCUS

SACRILEGE

CAVEMALU”

 

– Catacombe de Domitilla,

posted at the entrance

 

 

In which Frank and Gia go south.

 

It was the big day, just barely, the wee, dark hours of Friday morn.

Early Thursday, when he was at the grocery store, he saw a retarded kid with his dink hanging out. Just standing by the payphones, head full of sand and twigs, pants halfway down his thighs, not a fucking clue in the blue world. It seemed like a pretty good way to be. His grandfather, Dan, got to be the same way a couple years before he died. Lost every last one of his marbles. It must have been something like Nirvana, he figured, to have nothing left upstairs.

A two-gallon bucket of worries washing right down the drain-pipe and off to sea.

Adios.

The same thing was happening with Oscar Fendiuk, now reduced from Pork Maven to a lowly delivery-man at a courier company he didn't own.  Blue Sky had gone utterly bankrupt about a year and a half after the pig/cardboard debacle. He lost everything he had. Now he worked alongside Frank, grabbing bank bags at the airport in the wee hours of the morning.

Two days earlier, Oscar's brain turned to strawberry-flavored slush. The man had been looney-toons for miles. Frank saw it coming from way off. A few signs here and there. A few broken windshields. Jabbering about Saturn and tributes, about Frenchmen and barbarians preparing to attack the city. Naked and hostile in his seventies. A one-way trip to the freaking psych ward. Oscar Fendiuk went the way of Grandfather Dan and that was the end of it.

Maybe the mud-hole in space was making people crazy. Some kind of super-cosmic ray, shooting out from the basement of the galaxy, microwaving the brains of stupid Earthlings.

It could happen.

...

 

Frank sat at his desk and considered busying himself with a meaningless activity. Anything to pass the time. Reading, doing a crossword, or the grid with the numbers that never fit into it. He considered sex—a nice, careful fuck with the woman in his bed—or jacking off, instead. Or watching some good old American porno. There was a folder in his computer library labelled Educational Materials that held all of his favorites—Anal Miracle, Anal Stockpile, Anal Petting Zoo, Anal Cavalry, Anal Geographic, Ass Cavity, Ass Pressure, Anal Holiday, From Ass to Anus, Anal Periphery, Anal Misery, Asses of Maladjustment, Anal Survey, Anal Treachery, Tasty Piss-Ass Piracy, Total Ass Crisis, Anal Ass, Asses of Purgatory, Asses to Anus, Lunatic Ass, Anal Whore Caveat, Society Anal, Ass Crackers, Anal Legion, Inside Sweet Ass, Total Ass Hello, Ass Birth Cam, Fuckers of Big Ass, Anal Coach, Anal Evaluation, Ass to Basics, Anus Plunder, Anal Ricochet, Rim Job Christmas and Butt Luge, Part Two—but he was genuinely surprised by how much of it was concerned with buggery, and, feeling somewhat ashamed of himself, suddenly lost all interest. (Gia would kick his ass if she knew!)

A thudding sound from above—the Idiot was awake, traipsing across the floor, off to piss.

Jezus Christ.

He checked his email. Something in the SPAM folder from Bingo Cabin (“The number one destination for Bingo players on the internet!”) They wanted to give him $20 worth of free playtime in exchange for his credit card number. And there was also an update to a national news feed he subscribed to: Cops shot a 14 year-old kid for acting like an asshole at a city bus stop, somewhere. That was the state of things. In addition, Jake Pavelka, one of the bachelors from the show The Bachelor, on television, was falling out or in or out of love again with an angry-looking woman named Vienna Girardi. (Dead kids and Reality TV romances were somehow equally newsworthy.)

Other than these two items, which he deleted after reading, there was nothing. He was staring down the gun-barrel of 40, but there wasn't a birthday greeting to be found. That was his own fault, really—he had always maintained that celebrations of age were irritating and frivolous. Those people that were withholding their electronic salutations were merely respecting his wishes.

The upstairs toilet flushed.

Still, now that it was upon him, 40 seemed huge—and worthy of note. It keeping him awake during these wee hours. For a change, it wasn't acid reflux. It was anxiety, pure and true, and difficult to laugh off. Hell, one of his childhood pals was already in the ground. That was Billy Poke, just seven months ago. He hung himself in his tool shed when he found out he had brain cancer.

Same thing with Roger Nelson. (Not that he gave much of a shit about Roger Nelson.) The piss-drunk cocksucker wound up with a tumor in his ass and decided to rectify the situation with a length of rope. Terrible way to go. Why these guys didn't bleed themselves or put plastic bags over their heads—or load up on morphine—no one could say. Rope and guns were big with men.

The whole world was turned on its ear!

This was Frank Burczyk. In his prime, apparently. Life begins at 40, people liked to say. They also said 40 is the new 30. And anyway, like death itself, there was no escaping it. The time was 3:17 in the morning and going back to sleep was out of the question. In terms of 20^th Century history, the Great Depression preceded the Forties, but in Frank's own life he was certain that the two would exist simultaneously. Hand in hand, like doomed Japanese lovers leaping into Mount Fuji.

He didn't want to be dramatic about it.

He looked at online pictures of breasts. PG-rated stuff, mostly; boobs tucked into bikinis and tube tops and the like. Just a bit of nipple poking through the fabric—certainly more wholesome than All-Anal Triple-D Titty-Bangers, almost like Walt fucking Disney in comparison. And then he looked at pictures of wiener dogs. He'd always wanted one. Dachshunds, as they were properly called. Strange, beautiful things. Dogs and breasts, both.

He figured it was high time he had a dachshund of his own. And why not? He'd come pretty close, recently, when the wife of a co-worker was offering to give one away. (Alas, Queen Gia was not terribly receptive to the idea of shit-making house critters.)

There was a new statue in Hector Park. He thought he should check it out sometime.

Killing himself crossed his mind, once again. Thinking of Billy Poke and Roger Nelson hanging from the rafters. Rope and guns. Maybe shooting himself through the brain or brain-stem or whatever, the cerebral cortex, whichever was hip these days. He had the resources to pull it off but he doubted he would follow through. Just a fleeting urge, suicide. It came and went like yellow butterflies flittering through the garden. Something, a tiny, secret voice inside of him suggested that he try to go “into the bubbles,” but, given that he'd very recently bathed, he had no idea what that meant.

People liked to say that suicide was for cowards—an easy way out—but Frank thought they only said stupid crap like that because they didn't know what else to say. Blowing your brains out took balls the size of melons. The ones who were able to follow all the way through with suicide, Frank figured, were some of the bravest people who ever lived.

“Maybe I can sleep now,” he announced to himself.

The asteroid-sized bolus in his colon moved about a sixteenth of an inch, like a steamship titan squeezing into a undersized lock, groaning in protest. Things were tightening up, down below. Things were grinding to a disconcerting halt. Fuckballs! Frank had been down this road before. It was familiar ground. It wasn't merely the gun-barrel of 40, it was the gun-barrel of his third (or fourth) midlife crisis, and this one, he was already thinking, was going to be a doozy.

“Let's go, big fella.” The voice was his but it sounded like it came from elsewhere.

He passed the Idiot's bedroom at the top of the stairs—closed up tight and the sound of young, wheezy snoring from within. He thought he might like to padlock and deadbolt the door. Ideas like that could only get him into trouble. Get his ass kicked.

Just thirteen more steps to his own bed, to the small, foetal lump that was already slumbering there, radiating heat and love and light, and every other good thing about the universe. Frank kissed her hot, damp hair as he worked himself under the covers. He said, “I love you,” and she muttered something quick and typically unintelligible in return. Something about seahorses and cheddar.

Ridiculous.

...

 

 

He got back into bed.

He thought about something his friend, Bob Scieszka, had said, once upon a time: “Perception starts in the brain. Red and blue, all the colors, those things aren't real until we see them, until our brains process them. Same goes for time. Time is an illusion. It doesn't exist. Our minds have tricked us into thinking of time as something that rolls by. It's bullshit. Time and color, hurt and anger, these things are just voodoo.”

Bob was half drunk when he said that. He was forever explaining things to Frank. Mind, matter, quantum musings. Bob was a writer. He was at least half as smart as he imagined himself.

Frank had another thought, but he was very tired now.

Something about...

Something about...

...

 

Something about the rosy fingertips of Dawn. Pink cotton clouds on a sea of dozey blue. And the slightest chill of autumn, even though there was still plenty of summer left.

Beep.

For the time being he was without a name, just a bare idea of himself, and clad in vibrant red active-wear that he was reasonably certain he didn't own and hadn't owned since grade whatever. Nearby was the great, rumbling old city called Rome, a place he'd never been to in real life, though everything about it—from the cars to the shouting of the shopkeepers to the sweet, surfy aroma that permeated everything—seemed suspiciously to him like a Mexican resort town on the Pacific.

Beep.

He was asleep and dreaming, and, for a change, he was aware that he was dreaming, sort of. Behind him was the promise of filtered daylight and ahead, far ahead, amidst hundreds of stashed corpses, lay the bodies of his long deceased ancestors. Six of them, allegedly, and from his mother's side of the family, which tended, in modern times, to be made up of deadbeats and lunatics. According to the mad, self-guiding plot of this fantasy, these ancient relatives harbored special gifts for him. He was Perseus, for the time being, but without a trace of Greek in his blood.  This was a classic quest, of sorts, a hero's quest—gathering interesting treasures, eluding evil, not unlike any of dozens of video games he'd played, and running entirely on borrowed time. Literally, as the siren of his trusted alarm clock had at last failed to jazz his attention and he was now slumbering through the precious get-ready-for-work minutes. It was 6:17, two minutes past hurry.

At this time, the subconscious he was moving briskly through a crude, dim corridor spiralling gradually into the guts of the Earth and the air was quickly becoming stale and vulgar with must. He had held a flaming torch in his left hand, but it had burnt out or disappeared or evaporated into fairy dust and now he was holding nothing—yet he was still able to see ahead of himself. The ceiling was far too low, causing him to stoop, the rough walls were smotheringly close. Hard to breathe. And if he dwelt on any one of these details for very long he feared the panic and claustrophobia would cause his fat-blotted heart to burst out of his chest. Bang, dead. And his corpse, if it wasn't eaten by rats and millipedes, would probably be forgotten for untold years, eventually becoming part of the filthy scenery. Some fucking tourist would happen along later, much later, years later, and say, “Well, this must be one of the early Christians, here. But why oh why is he wearing Adidas?”

Beep.

Fortunately, where the tunnel forked into three, there was a bit more room and he was finally able to stand fully upright. He stretched out his arms and breathed deep and good. The air now filling his lungs was two thousand years old. Up above, in real life, his body was contorting in the loving beam of the morning sun, but down here things were only getting darker and shittier. The Narrator, his own dream voice, assured him that the items he was seeking lay a mere half-mile down the eastern stope. “You've come a long way, baby. The jackpot is within your grasp. Don't give up now.” He squinted and saw another torch-light flickering red/orange against the walls down there—way down there. He decided that he wasn't going any farther. Terror was quickly flooding his intestines like inky poison.

“I can't do it. I can barely stand this.”

Two almost-unrelated words came together to perfectly summarize his feelings: vomit enema. He'd done exceptionally well up to this point—the real-life him would never venture alone into an underground cemetery, likely wouldn't come within three hundred feet of one unless he was touring with a troupe of gun nuts. All this unease was compounded by the fact that he could hear the beeping of his clock, way up in morning-world, but couldn't bring himself to do anything about it.

Beep.

The Narrator said, “Weigh your options. You can't turn around, can't go back. It's against the rules. And if you stand still for very long you'll sink into the tuff, and that will be the end of you.” This version of himself talked like a sleazy game-show host and spoke pure horseshit, yes, but this was a dream, after all, and he supposed that all this volcanic rock could revert into liquid magma in the blink of a waking eye. “You aren't far from the goal. Just a thousand yards. It's like walking four city blocks. And then you'll win this bloody game.”

All he had to do was collect the rings from their peanut-brittle fingers. Six mummified relatives with six gold rings. But this narrative, like the rules, was constantly evolving. Subject to change. In the first place, those rings had been swords (or passports, or pocket-watches) and the catacombs had been the lime-green corridors of the city hospital. Or maybe it was a rollicking pirate ship. Didn't matter anymore. The story was utterly fluid. And now, perhaps, the barest notion of something absolutely dreadful lurking close behind him.

Death. Syphilis. Hell and ex-girlfriends. Highwaymen, beasts and lymphatic cancer.

Beep.

A broken scream, only barely human, came bellowing down the east tunnel. It was the sound, he supposed, of falling into a chasm, or being gnawed by a lion, or of the Spanish Inquisition. It was the sound of blood turning to ice water. He had another notion that the screamer was being peeled and cored like an apple, and since he was the reluctant author of this realm he knew he was probably right. His nerve endings, real and imagined, all turned to mushroom soup. This was true, perfect horror—nothing in real life, up there, even came close. Electric terror surged through him and he wondered, quite briefly, what mechanism was preventing him from sitting bolt upright in his bed.

“I'm not playing this game anymore,” he told himself. “I should be awake. I have a heavy day ahead of me. No time, no time. I'm not doing this.”

“But you have no choice,” said the Narrator. “It's nothing but a skipping, hopping jump to the final square. Where are your cojones, eh? Man, you can make first place, really beat this game. And what are your alternatives, anyway?”

“I can wake up if I want to.”

“What makes you think you're asleep?”

“Back there, I can hear my phone ringing.” (He had his gadgets mixed up.)

“You can't ever go back to that place.”

“I'm not so naive or stupid that I actually believe you.”

Beep.

It seemed to him that the Narrator's voice had changed. It was only slight, to be sure, but enough that it could no longer be his own. Somebody else was in charge of things now. That couldn't possibly be true, he knew, but it was a detail that nagged at him. Who was doing the talking? And there were more voices, too, many at once, emanating from the vicinity of the scream. Voices of the dead, most likely, beckoning him into the vortex—

Here, he awoke. All the fear and current that had coursed in his veins diverted directly into his bladder and turned to piss there.

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.

...

 

She said, “Jezus, Frank, your alarm.”

...

 

She had a book on her night table. Men and Women and some such shit. The cover graphic was of two purple shadows holding hands, but with a lightning bolt-shaped crack splitting them apart. Self-help, apparently. Relationship advice. Nothing good could come from a book like that.

...

 

“Your marriage is crumbling, big fella, and you don't even know it.”

...

 

“Well, you do now.”

...

 

He washing his face in the bathroom sink at 6:21 and could barely remember the details of the dream. Something about fingers, broken fingers, gold rings and maybe a pack of hounds. The longer he was awake, the more it faded. It was gone, almost entirely gone, before he dressed and got his shoes on.

He stooped to kiss her cheek and his wife mumbled more gibberish in her half-sleep. It might have been, “I love you,” or, “Have a good day,” or, “Make lunch,” or, “Happy birthday,” or, possibly, “Remember that it's the weekend.”

His spirits soared when he realized, “Oh my God, it's Saturday and I don't have to go to work!” And then those spirits withered up and died when he realized, more correctly, “Oh fuck, it's only Friday and I'm going to be late.” Morning traffic was shit, but Friday morning traffic was especially shit.

He was 40 today, this Frank Burczyk.

40 and closer to death than ever.

But aren't we all?

...

 

[Lacunae]

...

 

Sitting behind the wheel of the truck, 6:39 in the morning, he decided that he wasn't going to work, after all. He wasn't even going to phone in with some bullshit excuse. “I can't be there today because I think I have spinal meningitis.” Calling in sick was never his bag, even when it was legitimate, even when he was puking his guts out or shitting blood (Made him think of Mexico.) Those times, he'd drag his ass in to work, just so everyone could see that he wasn't faking, and then get sent home. “Sorry, I can't be there today because it's Friday, my birthday, and I'm going to celebrate.” In the last five years he figured he'd missed maybe six days of scheduled work. “Boss, I won't be in today because I'm feeling pretty down on myself. I think I'm going to blow my fucking brains out.”

Big pile of shit in the green grass of the front lawn. Big, black and sweating fresh morning dew. Frank wondered what fucking beast had pyoped there, and that's exactly how his brain had spelled and pronounced it—”pyoped” instead of “pooped.” No sense at all in that. Must have been the fatigue.

Frank went around to the passenger side of the truck and fumbled under the seat, brushing discarded candy wrappers and empty Starbucks coffee cups aside, and located his secret pack of unfiltered cigarettes. Smoking one, from time to time, as needed, in his opinion, did nothing to diminish his amazing quitting streak—two and a half years now. Besides, the breakdowns were so infrequent, these days, they could barely be said to have taken place. One in February, after a domestic dispute, three in March, after the Idiot moved in, none in April, maybe one, and one in May, after another domestic dispute, initiated by the presence of the Idiot...

June, July, August...

The tip of the cigarette glowed hot and pure joy filled Frank's lungs.

“Happy birthday me,” he said.

...

 

Someone wrote, “Bleed out, you grease-ball freaking planet,” in green spray-paint on the elementary school at the end of the block. Huge, legible Roman letters, nine feet high.

...

 

 

His mind drifted backward, two years:

Frank and Gia, married after just nine months of dating. They were vacationing in Jalisco.

This was the first time. They would be back. It was the best vacation in all of human history, they were sure of it, even though they practically starved while they were there because the food was basically inedible.

Chicken was too yellow. Cheese was too bland. Everything smelled and tasted of turtle. It might have been the salt in the air or the spices in the pot—and the onions, too many onions—but it befouled the palate and Frank and Gia decided it was probably how a turtle tasted. Turtle semen, turtle soup. A dying turtle's jaundiced eyeball slime.

It was in everything, from the bacon to the waffles. Nothing was unsullied. Onion, turtle, and the sick-sweet stink of the Pacific Ocean, permeating everything. Gia was sticking to white bread and Frank was subsisting on beer. Technically, they were dying from malnutrition.

It was breakfast time and the buffet line stretched all the way to the towel kiosk.

As chance would have it, one of the tourists was talking turtles. He was small guy with a handlebar moustache, and he was chatting with his boyfriend, a tall Greek with virtually no buttocks.  He said, “There used to be one on the property. A turtle. No kidding—one of those huge, prehistoric fuckers. That was the last time I came here. He was the size of a Volkswagen. He hobbled around like he owned the place. I don't know what has become of him.”

The tall Greek said, “I think they are adorable,” and the small guy agreed, saying, “Absolutely. Turtles freaking rock, man.”

Gia said to Frank, privately, “I think there's one working in the kitchen.”

Frank wanted to laugh out loud but his guts ached. The bad whatever he'd eaten the night before had mixed with the bad whatever from the night before that, and now his insides were a slogging morass of illness and peptic bismuth. Gia was ribbing him, saying, “The turtle, get it? He's in the kitchen. He's got his feet in everything.”

“Yes Gia,” Frank huffed, “it's very funny. I'm merely unwell. Difficult to excite.”

They were seated at the south end of the open-air restaurant, nearer to the beach, where the birds danced and sang their loudest for meal scraps. The tourist who'd seen a turtle once, long ago, headed in the opposite direction with his tall friend, looking for a morning shot of tequila. That guy was wearing white cotton shorts with a dull yellow stain in the front and a shit-stripe up the back. Drunk for days, too wasted to bother changing into clean clothes. American. One of the party gluttons.

Gia said, “Maybe we should have listened to your mother.” (She was kidding.)

Frank nodded. Nodding was easier than talking and didn't require saliva, which was in short supply. Unfortunately, Gia missed the motion and said, “Don't you agree?”

“What?” Frank said.

“Your mother.”

“What about her?”

“We should have listened to her. Do you think so?”

“Yes, of course. That's funny. Never listen to my mother. If she says west, go east. If she says savory, expect sweet. She's like that.”

“Sometimes I think she does it on purpose.”

“I don't know. Plenty of people love the taste of turtle.”

Hah, hah, hah.

Har, har, har.

“I love it here.”

“Me too.”

“I'm hungry. I need Midol and a Valium. I want cappuccino.”

Gia was dressed in a hot orange two-piece under a white sarong. She was like sexy Athena, dark goddess of wisdom, but slightly bitchy with PMS. Did the Immortals menstruate? Likely not. Frank was wearing red Budweiser shorts.

That day was like a film that never went out of focus—a perfect memory of a beautiful day. Frank and Gia in love, at their very best, even better than JFK and Jackie O. And they still had the photographs to prove it, too, framed and hanging above their queen-size bed, just in case Alzheimer's came calling. Gia lounging in a sun-chair. Frank drinking from a green coconut.

How could two humans ever be that happy again?

Ill and cramped and starving, but living entirely for each other.

Good times. It couldn't ever get old.

...

 

Frank could hold it all in his mind, forever—he was certain of it.

...

 

Gia was porno beautiful.

She lived in a porno body and wore a porno face.

He wouldn't ever put it to her that way. He didn't think she'd appreciate the severe compliment buried in it all.

...

 

He thought about their second trip to Mexico:

After months of premarital cohabitation and a full year of wedded joy, Gia was feeling like it  wasn't so easy living with Frank Burczyk. Little things, annoying things, nuisance things. He worked hard, she knew it, and she loved the bejezus out of him, but their union had moved into its next phase—the after-honeymoon phase. The let's-fucking-stab-each-other phase.

It happens.

Gia needed the break. At home, she'd removed the piss-stained hinges from the toilet seat and left them to soak in bleach water. Said they were bloody disgusting—further evidence that she shared accommodations with a man-shaped swine. There were three dozen household jobs of the same variety, all waiting to be done.

And she was tired of her environment—moving back to Discord, getting back into the workforce, Jezus-spewing neighbors, the famous disappearance of the Little girl, another homegrown nightmare—any reason would do.

“I want to go back to Mexico,” she announced.

She called Catrina Suns because their Yellow Page ad was biggest, and they promised to be “the best travel company you keep coming back to and back again, since 1959.”

She thought they had an interesting way with English.

...

 

They had attempted to spend one week in Nuevo Vallarta and three days in Sayulita, visiting Gia's ex-pat friends, the Bishops. That's what they paid for—seven nights at Cairo Palace, plus return airfare for two, economy class. But someone at Catrina Suns missed a couple vowels, or crossed one too many tees, or plainly came to work shit-faced and puked margaritas into the company iMac, and by the time they made right by the Burczyks, ten ordinary days became a whopping three weeks in Jalisco province, on the Bay of Banderas.

It was a place called Emathios.

Gia said she'd never heard of it. She swore up and down it hadn't been there before, the last time they came to Mexico, just one year earlier. Frank told her she was panicking.

“I'm sure it didn't just fall from the sky, overnight,” he told her.

According to the official hooplah, Emathios was a pre-Columbian fishing village built on top of a mineral-laden freshwater lake, north and east of Puerto Vallarta, just five miles inland, hidden from the coast by a small mountain of broken granite and heavy morning fog. If Gia had never heard of the place, neither, apparently, had the map-makers, who placed a WWF bird sanctuary at G-5, where Emathios should have been.

The sign over the iron gate said “Emathios is Love” and Gia's guts turned over the instant she read it. Beyond, the road went winding through the bushes, leading to God-only-knows. It was the sort of place, she was quite sure, where idiot wayfarers got hatcheted up into luncheon meat.

Frank said, “What? How bad can it be?”

“Read the sign,” said Gia. “Emathios is Love. It's the worst deja vu I've ever had.”

“My mother said this would happen.” (He was kidding.)

“Jezus, Frank—leave her the hell out of it.”

Two hours earlier, they'd gone to the Cairo Palace in Paradise Flats and found out that the Cairo had no reservations for them or anyone else named Burczyk. Nor Boychuks or Berksons or Berkowitzes or any possible soundalike name. No zyks or chuks or skis, nothing starting with a B, nothing, nothing, nothing at all.  The Cairo was booked solid.

Gia said, “That's impossible,” and the receptionist said, “Next, please,” and Gia said, “Go bleep yourself,” in the tiniest of deeply meaningful whispers, and Frank was amazed that she'd found the ability to censor her own F-bombs, under the circumstances. So the Burczyks took a taxi up to the Alexander, which was owned by the same company that owned the Cairo, and they found that the Alexander had no reservations, either. For that matter, the Alexander wasn't fully built yet. The men in the lobby were not bellhops—they wore yellow hardhats and carried framing hammers on their belts.

So far, fifty US bucks in taxi rides and they were knee-deep in nowhere.

They went back to the airport and Gia had a breakdown. A real one, with fists and spittle and black scuff marks on the floor. Pure fear, that, driven by frustration and the instantaneous dread that accompanies being helpless and homeless in a foreign country. Frank didn't know what to do.

“Should we fly home? Should we phone the embassy?”

Being abroad was not completely new to him, but he was still pretty green about it. Their honeymoon had gone off without a hitch and he hadn't needed to adapt to sticky Mexican situations. He felt like a fresh virgin. Then it dawned on him that, worst case scenario, Gia could call the Bishops and arrange to visit them a week ahead of schedule, and follow that with a brief stay in some two-bit Comfort Inn, somewhere. But Gia wouldn't hear it, and was adamant that the travel company owed them “some bleeping, bleeping, bleeping, bleeping courtesy.”

 She kicked up such a fuming stink that Catrina Suns had to send three of its people to placate and get her calm. These reps arrived quickly (by Mexican standards) and were nothing but apologetic—two young guys and a thirty-something lady named Moria. They assured Frank that their company had never in its history misplaced two people so utterly. “Not ever,” said Moria. “It's as if the computer lost its marbles and jettisoned you into the dark trash bin of the universe.”

Her English was strong yet off and he had to laugh a bit. Into the dark trash bin of the universe. That was a good one. And he was familiar enough with computers to know that they were constantly losing their marbles. 

“Yes,” I said, “I know how it happens.”

“It's not just the computer, Mr. Burczyk. These things are double- and triple-checked by human eyes and hands. Such a mix-up is almost galactic. Proportionately, you know? A galactic coincidence of terrible error. But Catrina Suns recognizes the mistake while fully acknowledging the fallibility of systems, and we want you to know that your vacation is all on us. Gratis.”

The word brought Gia halfway out of hysteria.

“Gratis, like free?”

“Ci, senora. And we will gladly extend your vacation and pay for the extra monies for your return flight back to your home country. You will fly first class, of course, but not until after you have experienced the wonders of the Nero at Emathios. Twenty days of rest and bliss. Twenty and not an hour less. We will take care of everything.”

“The Nero? What about the Cairo?”

“As I said, senora, the Cairo is above capacity and there is nothing on this world that can be done to change that fact.  This is our error and this is why we are making such a generous offer for you. Instead of Nuevo Vallarta, we will take you to Emathios, which is a town built upon a healing spring. It is not on the ocean, but it is very close. Very, very close. The staff at the Nero will please you with the very best service, and they have a shuttle-bus that can take you to the beach. Or to the boardwalk, if you would like to shop.”

Frank couldn't take his eyes off Moria's pert nipples, dark and jutting under her silky white blouse. Tasty nipples, tasty lips, tasty everything—

“Please,” Moria implored, “this is a very fair offer, the best I can do for you. The best.”

Frank could no longer hesitate when he said, “We'll take it.” Their vacation was being extended by two weeks, and that was perfect because he had a whole month's worth of overtime hours banked exclusively for these holiday situations.

...

 

His cock was rock hard. He thought about Moria's nipples, her grapefruit tits, how much he wanted to stick his tongue in her asshole, and he had to jack off in the suite's bidet.

He told Gia he had gas and cramps.

It felt bad, tangibly evil, to lie like that.

“Fuck, what am I doing? I'm acting like a retard.”

...

 

His thoughts came back to the present. He'd been to Mexico and back, twice, with his lovely wife (in her orange two-piece) and he hadn't quite burned through a full cigarette. There were no plans to travel this fall. Bills to pay, renovations on the house, et cetera, and, of course, they had the Idiot to deal with. The Idiot was the big monkey-wrench in the system.

It was September 23 and summer was officially over. Frank could smell a crisp, spiteful chill breezing in from the north. He was 40 today, and in three weeks he and Gia would celebrate their second wedding anniversary, and then—who knows? The thought of not getting out of the country, away from the weather, for a week or two, even for a day or two, was like a pyroclastic cloud of melancholy.

It wasn't full daylight yet and one of the neighbor-ladies was up and raking leaves into little piles. It was either Mrs. Coombs or Mrs. Marshall—or maybe the widow Krantz—Frank couldn't recall which was which. They all looked the same. White hair and old bodies.

“Good morning, Frank Burczyk.”

“Good morning, Missus...”

He wondered what she knew or thought about mud-holes in deep space.

Did old ladies have opinions about such things?

He decided to go for a stroll around the block, maybe smoke another cigarette. Two days earlier, driving home, he saw that the Carolingians had erected a new white marble statue at Hector Park. It had looked to him, in that fleeting glance, like a very nude Perseus was holding aloft the severed head of Medusa. Twelve feet tall, at the very least—pretty freaking elaborate for the town of Discord, where digging a new public wading pool for the tots, last May, would have drained the city coffers, according to Mayor Fancy-Pants. He thought he'd like to get a closer look.

He caught himself singing one of his father's favorite ditties, to the tune of Glory, Glory Hallelujah:

 

Jezus saves his money at the Bank of Montreal,

Jezus saves his money at the Bank of Montreal,

Jezus saves his money at the Bank of Montreal,

Jezus saves, Jezus saves, Jezus saves.

 

He walks upon the water; He's the lifeguard at our pool,

He walks upon the water; He's the lifeguard at our pool,

He walks upon the water; He's the lifeguard at our pool,

Jezus saves, Jezus saves, Jezus saves.

 

It was Piotr Francis Burczyk's greatest hit. One of them.

There was also a version of Great Green Gobs of Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts, but re-written with racial epithets and dirty words.

And more, plenty more.

...

 

Something weird was coming down the pipeline.

Maybe it had already arrived.

He thought he could still use a spa day. Gia had been hinting about driving up to Rebowken on the weekend, getting naked massages and soaking in the healing waters of the lake. It was a bit of a drive but better than staying home. Discord itself had the Bithynian Spa, that titanic bathhouse from prehistory, but it was dirty and dark, overrun with oldsters, teenagers and homosexuals. Made Frank's skin crawl, usually.

...

 

In most people's minds, Discord always had a public bath house, since the time before time began. It was a gift from Lex Poetilia, founder of the original Caroling Club, that loose federation of middle-class do-gooders and upper-crust egomaniacs, in 1926. And it was based on the classic Roman model, with three individually enclosed baths—warm steam, hot and cold pools—and an exercise room. Poetilia named it the Bithynian Spa because it sounded authentic, even though no authentic Roman structure could possibly exist in the New World.

The cost, in early-century dollars, was $250,000—about $3,000,000 in modern terms—which Poetilia paid out of pocket.

The quasi-philanthropist died of cancer the next year, after languishing for six brutal months in a private hospice, having never patronized his own facility. A forested park at the northern tip of town was named for him, and the maternal side of his family (where his wealth came from) was memorialized in the Audet Bridge, spanning the Ghost River. Poetilia Park caught fire in 1955, burned down to nothing, and eventually became the site of an unsightly apartment complex for low-income families.

The Bithynian Spa closed in 1983, requiring an extensive makeover of its novel plumbing system and a new roof—the Carolingians were pouring their charitable efforts into other causes—and it stayed closed until 1991. After the horrific train disaster of 1989, and with health and wellness becoming faddish again, the provincial government dumped a metric tonne of cash into Discord's coffers to renovate the hospital, repair the Audet Bridge, resurface Main Street, and re-open the spa.

The town never looked better than it did in the nineties.

It was all downhill again after that.

...