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Issue 73 begins a new serial, San Tropez.
San Tropez
Chapter 1: Axe of Devotion
The New Orleans summer felt plush and steamy like a bed of banana leaves in the heart of the Amazon. By midmorning the sunrise rain-clouds had stretched, thinned, and dissipated as if vacuumed away, leaving a disrobed sky of rich violet that seemed wrapped in cellophane.
Snoz Stalwart smiled through clenched teeth, nodding his head to the indie pop on rotation in his iPod. His usual state of frantic uncertainty was replaced by a slack-shoulder mosey thanks to some hits and the breeze cutting through the calm humidity. Work was over, the days were long, and he was on his way to the elephant pen. Moms and dads pushed strollers and held hands and read the encyclopedic bullet points on the info markers to their children. Snoz had come alone but he had a reason to be there, and in being there he was making an effort to engage with the families wandering beside and around him. This kept him from feeling lonely. His smile widened. Snoz was a lanky young man.
Three Asian elephants clustered under a shade canopy tossing snoutfuls of dirt and straw over their backs and under their bellies. Snoz watched in patient rapture, senses overwhelmed: the scent of foreign farms, the sunshine almost sandpapery in its brilliance, the squawks of irritable macaws and toucans. When the boys and girls standing in a row on the log fence hopped down and ran for the next pen Snoz got close.
“Hear me, Ganesh,” he said. “I am about to embark on a great journey. I come to ask for your help. For your all-pupil ebony eye. I can’t help it, I need your wisdom. I have to get her back. I don’t know how.”
The biggest of the three opened its mouth slowly. Snoz’s stomach dropped. He thought it was going to speak. But the bull’s eyes closed in what was plainly a yawn. It made a slow turn away, presenting a tail that brushed flies from its hindquarters. Snoz was mortified. He went home and put in a Python DVD. It didn’t help. Hours passed and the phone rang.
It was Elio Mum. “Snozzer! Get down here. Get dressed and come on.”
“What? I am dressed. Where are you?”
“Fucking Tips, man. Come on. I’ve met these amazing people. Incoming.”
Snoz downloaded a picture of Elio with his arms around two striking young ladies. “Got it?” Elio asked.
“Yeah.”
“One is Emily, and one is Angelique.”
“One would be an Emily.”
Emily wore a dark blouse with neon-colored stripes across the chest and she had the most natural pleasant smile Snoz had seen. Angelique wore a solid print shirt and bluejeans, nice but utilitarian. Both had hats with their hair pulled into ponytails in the back.
“They’re in the service,” Elio said.
“Which branch?”
“Ask them when you get here.”
“I can’t go out. You have no idea what happened to me today.”
Snoz told him about visiting the elephants.
“You’ve cracked up,” Elio said laughing.
“Right, and it’s time for my medication. Bye now.”
“Don’t be that way,” said Elio. “Come have a drink.”
“I have something better. Don’t you get it, ma-an?” Snoz whined. “It yawned. I just bored the flies off the most powerful Hindu deity with my problems. I feel like a kid in the stands getting dissed for an autograph by his favorite player. Or worse, because now I’m probably going to Hell, or whatever they call it in Hindi.”
“C’mon, fuck Cupid. You talk to anything with horns, man? Cause Pan has set-you-up!”
“I’m playing Mars.”
“There ain’t nothing wrong with you. Look man, y’know, I know how it is. When Marie left me it was like… It just takes a try, trying to get back into things.”
Snoz paused. “Uptown or downtown?”
“What?”
“Tips.”
“Uptown. The uptown one. You coming?”
“Yeah.”
“Right on. Listen to this.”
The latest track from Fizzy Bill started playing through his phone. Snoz stood, it did give him some energy. He washed up in the basin, scented, and left.
Chapter 2: A Romantic Interlude
The two-toned wail of a guitar player noodling on a funk fusion riff met Snoz like the wind off the ocean. Inside Tipitina’s the music was crashing loud and it kept on like a piano splintering down twenty flights of stairs. He spotted Elio hunched over the front bar with nothing in front of him.
“Hey man!!” * Snoz said.
* [!! = yelling over the music]
As he turned Elio’s face lit up. He was of average height but had a thick build, like a plumber. His skin was of wet sand, though Elio tonight had gym bags under his eyes and looked a little ashen. He took Snoz’s hand, and then his shoulder, and then he shook both.
“So where are the girls!!” Snoz asked.
“Dirk T. Bathwater!! Your artist friend?!!”
“Not mine!! You know who’s!!”
“Was that asshole for real?!!”
“Let me guess!!” Snoz said shaking his head with resign. “He walked in and showed them his a fucking prop!! Whatever it is!!”
“A hubcap!!” Elio informed him. “Said he found it on the side of the curb walking over here!! It was off a Mercedes!!”
“‘Ladies would you believe this is one just like my grandfather Edmund C. Bathwater had on his 350S?!! Isn’t this the most fascinating thing ever!! Aren’t I the most fascinating man ever!!’ Brandishing a stupid hubcap!!”
“What!!”
“I’m just saying her friend is a bullshit artist!!”
“Dirk T. Bathwater!! I know, it’s unreal!!” Elio stood up and motioned Snoz to the door.
“I guess they aren’t still in there,” Snoz said.
“No, he took off with them already. I was thinking we could head downtown.”
“Downtown? I just came from there.”
“The Italian Pride parade is down there tonight,” Elio said.
“Italians don’t have–“
“Stuff it, you.”
“What do they have to be proud of? Fifty years of mob cinema?”
“Stuff it,” Elio repeated.
“Ah, it’s gonna be a bunch of tourists.”
“Everywhere it’s a bunch of tourists. And I like my chances down there. O Solo Mio.”
“Floats, marching bands from the sticks, dancers, and the homeless armed with open flame. How do you get on those floats you think? Probably make you join something, unless you’re a Medici.”
Elio drove them to the Quarter where they skipped the slow circular crawl for a free spot and went straight to the pay lot behind the Moonwalk. The setting sun took the day’s humidity with it leaving a night shimmering with the crisp warmth found in places like Cairo and Tempe. Snoz lived down here, on the back residential half of the Quarter. He walked through it every day, several times each day. He was without car and without ambition. He loved the narrow streets and the eroding Georgian homes, the termite traps under the sidewalks and the water dripping off crags and gutters in all kinds of weather, the music sauntering out every doorway in a grand dissonant fugue and all the people out at all times of the night always doing something. Maybe they were on vacation or maybe they were living it up on the night before exams. Maybe they were in pain and drunk or maybe they were reunited with old friends on a rare night away from the kids trying to forget something or trying to remember the way it was when they were younger and didn’t know a thing. Whatever the reason they were always there. They never stayed home.
Snoz and Elio joined the crowd in front of Molly’s, scrunching behind a row of Harley’s and a bachelorette party making a young man in J. Crew pull a condom over his head. Molly’s had the alcove open where a pretty girl sat with a keg, a stack of cups, and a hand-printed sign. Float number eight was passing, a giant bust of Caesar complete with laurel leaves and stern toga-wetting stare. The production was a notch below Mardi Gras: the floats were all pulled by tractors, there were no double-deckers, and the throws were little more than schweg. Whenever the floats stopped to let the ones behind catch up, young men in tuxedos would hop up or hobble down and pass out single roses to all the young ladies. Snoz couldn’t believe that it worked.
A heavy man whose jowls spilled over his collar strolled with a beautiful dark-haired woman in a sequined dress on his arm. “See that?” Snoz asked.
“Old money,” was the answer.
“Yeah, well, that would be it, wouldn’t it? To not have to go to work every day.”
“How’s the job going?” Elio asked.
“It’s ridiculous. They pay me all this money to be there but they don’t have enough for me to do so I just end up sitting around all day doing nothing. Meaning playing on the internet and hoping I’ll get laid off so I can collect unemployment and get some writing done for a change. I know, it sounds great right? Beats digging ditches, right? Well, it sucks. It’s killing me. All the boredom, all day, every day.”
“At least you don’t have a busy boss, checking up on you every twenty minutes,” said Elio. “Always under some transparent pretext to disguise she’s making sure I don’t have email open or y’know talking to a coworker in a cube for five fucking minutes. So finally last week I need to call my doctor, y’know, the office is closed by the time I get home so I have to call while I’m there, and weekends!, and there’s no privacy in the cubes. I go walking over to the phone on this desk by the storage area where no one sits. I’m on hold for the guy when my boss just comes on over. ‘I need to see you when you’re done’ like lightly touching my arm. Ah fuck. I go over there and she gives me something else to do. I mean what the fuck?”
“Seriously.”
“I’m gonna quit. You should too.”
“What? I can’t be quitting my job ma-an. Not yet.”
“Why not? I’ve read your stuff. It’s good. You’re getting published.”
“A little. Nothing that’s paid yet.”
“Well it’s starting to happen though right?” Elio said. “I always end up working late and then I’ve got Jenny on the weekends. Shit I haven’t even been to the gym in, well a long time.”
“So? Take it easy. Have a smoke. Vonnegut says we’re here to fart around, and not to let anyone tell you any different.”
Elio turned, took in the parade, but he darkened, and Snoz felt it.
“Sorry man,” Snoz said. “My fault. I know, use the time you’ve got and all that.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“How is it? Heard anything new?”
“I ain’t been back.”
“What?” Snoz paused, not wanting to push the subject. “Are you sure that’s the right thing man?”
“No. But I got no insurance. The prescriptions alone. Shit, I got Sara, y’know who works at St Bridget’s? I got her grabbing me all the free sample packs the drug companies give out.”
“Nice scheme,” Snoz said poking him in the arms with forced brevity.
“Yeah, it’s called surviving.”
Around them everyone seemed to be yelling. Only half were paying attention to the passing parade. It was a nice night to be out on the streets.
“I know I’ve got it easy right now,” Snoz said. “Everything is on such an even keel. My bills are covered and I have enough to eat out whenever I want and still put a chunk away at the end of the month. I mean, I know that. I mean, I’m in Amnesty International. I know how people in other parts of the world have it. I’m a prick for even complaining about it.”
“Which animal would you go to about lingering Catholic guilt?” Elio asked. “Oh right, the dove.”
Snoz didn’t answer, fixing his eyes on the trough of the parade.
“I’m starting to get tired.”
Snoz looked at him. “Let’s go.”
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