Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates

Even so, they taxied home alone. Alone, and more than meagerly intoxicated. So intoxicated, in fact, that an incautious Switters sang in the cab a medley of refrains from Broadway shows, included among them a seemingly poignant rendition of “Send in the Clowns.” Bobby, fortunately, thought his friend was merely waxing ironic—and to a certain extent irony was involved. The stiff-witted and academic seem not to comprehend that it is entirely possible to be ironic and sincere at the same instant; that a knowing tongue in cheek does not necessarily preclude an affectionate glow in heart.

They awoke the next morning wound in the rusty anchor chains of hangover, but Maestra fixed them a delicious late breakfast of ham biscuits with red-eye gravy, surprising because they’d roused her noisily at 3 A.M., Switters lacking a key to the house, and because Maestra never had been what she contemptuously referred to as a “kitchen chicken.” Bobby told her she made the Galloping Gourmet look like he was stuck in cement and kissed her on the cheek, and although she waved him off as if he were some kind of hopeless lunatic, Switters could tell she was pleased.

Arriving on the side deck just as the mist was lifting (they’d paused on the way to admire the Matisse), Switters suggested a tuft of hair of the dog. “Nope,” countered Bobby, “nothing doing. First, we’re gonna sit. I have a sneaking suspicion you haven’t sat in a coon’s age.”

“However the hell long that is,” said Switters. “I don’t believe small arboreal carnivores are exactly famous for lavish longevity, not judging from the frequency with which they show up as road kill.”

“Mock the folk wisdom of your ancestors if you must, ain’t no concern of mine, but I can sense you haven’t been sitting, son; and while meditation wasn’t designed as therapy, it might do more for you than gravy does for biscuits—at this weird troubling time in your life.”

They sat.

They sat for nearly two hours, in the course of which Switters lost himself so that his essence passed into what some are wont to call, perhaps unrealistically, the Real Reality: that realm of consciousness beyond ego and ambition where mind becomes a silver minnow in a great electric lake of soul, and where the quarks and the gods pick up their mail on their way from nowhere to everywhere (or is it the other way around?).

Afterward, tranquilized and centered by the meditation, and enheartened by the previous evening’s coed recreation, Switters felt better than he had in a fortnight; felt so good that he came to an optimistic decision concerning his next course of action. His instinct, however, was not to share this with Bobby immediately. Instead, he focused on loosening the last remaining loops of hangover’s iron turban. “Young buck like you might not notice,” he said, decapping a beer, “but I find piper inflation to be on the rise.”

“Yep. The bastard’s been charging me twice the price for half the fun. When I avail myself of his services, that is. Since the excessive consumption of alcoholic beverages is the state sport of Alaska—they’d challenge for the gold at the Drunkard Olympics, but’d lose major points to Ireland in the charm category—I’ve been pretty much teetotaling, out of sheer contrariness, not wanting to be just another shitface in the crowd.” Accepting a wet bottle from Switters, he examined it at some length. “Nostalgia’s nice enough in little bitty doses, it puts personal peach fuzz on the hard ass of history, but I’d be lying like a cop in court if I was to tell you Sing Ha was anything but sucky beer.”

Switters nodded. “It went down well enough in Bangkok, where there was hardly any choice, but here in the land of a thousand brewskies, it does come across as rather weak-kneed and effete.”

“Tastes like butterfly piss. Of course, it’s brewed by Buddhists. Guess it takes a Christian to put some muscle in a liquid refreshment.”

“That’s it. It’s the fear and anger that’s missing in Sing Ha. Bereft of those punitive and vindictive qualities we Christers have come to respect and love. No bops in the hops. No assault in the malt. But, Captain Case, if you’re a no-show at Alaska’s finer watering holes, how do you spend your time up there? Needlepoint? Laboring to reach page two of Finnegans Wake?”

“Fly more than you might think.”

“Really? I wouldn’t have thought. With our increased satellite capabilities, why do we fly manned spy missions at all?”

The crosshatched crinkles around Bobby’s eyes stiffened slightly. “Can’t rightly address that, son.”

Caught off guard, Switters very nearly flinched. “Oh. Not my need to know?”

“There you go.”

In the CIA, there existed a pervasive and perpetual rule that a company employee, no matter how light his or her cover, no matter if coverless, must never divulge to anyone—spouse, parent, lover, friend, or even fellow CIAnik—more about his or her job than that person had a need, not an abiding interest but an actual need, to know. With Maestra and to a lesser extent with Suzy, Switters had been somewhat lax in adhering to that rule, which was why he may have been so surprised to find Bad Bobby, flaunter of a fair number of society’s more firmly held conventions and active critic of the multinational commercial entities to whose Muzak the company, with escalating frequency, now danced, strictly obeying it. Switters had long ago come to accept if not appreciate the fact that he himself was a study in contradictions, blaming the incongruities in his personality on his having been born on the cusp between Cancer and Leo, pulled in opposite directions by lunar and solar forces (that he maintained severe reservations about the reliability of astrology only reinforced the evidence). Now, he was starting to notice glaring inconsistencies in Bobby, as well. Maybe most people were fundamentally contradictory. The real people, at any rate. Maybe those among us ever steadfast and predictable, those whose yang did not intermittently slop over into their yin, maybe those were candidates for Maestra’s subhuman category of “missing link.”

“Well. Then. Forgetting your official duties, in which I was only feigning a polite interest in the first place, can I ask if you’ve got anything drawn up on the monkey wrench board, anything that might be causing John Foster Dulles to rotate in his sarcophagus?” Upon uttering the name, Dulles, Switters spat. Upon hearing it, Bobby spat as well. Two molten pearls of Dulles-inspired spittle shimmered on the tiles. (It may or may not be instructive to note that the Dulles who stimulated this derogatory salute was the so-called statesman, John Foster, and not his brother, Allen, the very first director of the CIA.)

“You mean angelic aces up my sleeve? Nothing new. Cook some books, so to speak; jam a few signals here and there, and then the usual archival stuff. Still collecting data on Guatemalan smack squads, on company drug running, the Manson setup, UFO coverups, et cetera. Not much corporate, which is where the dirt is nowadays. Got more than enough, though, to make ’em think twice about ever sacking me. Otherwise, I’m not sure when or if I’ll play them cards.”

“You wouldn’t want to end up like Audubon Poe.”

“Aw, ol’ Audubon Poe’s doing fine and dandy, for a man with a blue sticker on his head. Leading a more productive life than me or you. At this flaccid moment of our personal histories.”

Before Switters could inquire after ex-agent Poe, Maestra appeared at the French doors to remind the two men that they’d promised to play her newest video games with her as soon as they’d finished their post-breakfast breather. It was now past noon, and Apocalyptic Ack-Ack was set up and ready to roll.

Bobby proved to be unbeatable at Apocalyptic Ack-Ack, but Switters was victorious at New World Order and Maestra creamed them both at Armies of Armageddon, so everyone was cheerful and devoured an extra large vegetarian pizza garrulously together before Maestra retired for a nap. The men peed, washed up, and changed clothes: Switters into his ginger Irish tweeds, Bobby into Wrangler jeans and a sweater so bulky and thick it must have taken a woolly mammoth and two Shetland ponies to make it. Then, after stopping once again to approve the brushwork of Henri M., they returned to the safety of the deck. There, in a grayish November glow that might have been filtered through frozen squid bladders, a kind of sunlight substitute invented by Norwegian chemists, Switters sat wondering how to broach the subject of his next move. It wasn’t long before Bobby provided a segue.

“So, son, what’re you gonna tell ’em back at the pickle factory?”

“Excellent question. My leave’s up in ten days. I’ll concoct something before I go rolling into the spookmeister’s oracle. He certainly couldn’t accommodate anything remotely resembling the truth. Not Mayflower Cabot Fitzgerald. Meanwhile, I have to decide on what to tell Maestra.” He paused. “And Suzy.”

“Suzy?”

“Yes.”

“Your little stepsister?”

“Yes. I’ve decided to fly down to see her on Monday.” (It was then Saturday afternoon.)