Piggleyland: All is not well at home, either.
The Plot is to twist at this point!

    

I went walking back though some dry culverts and ditches and stopped for awhile in the dark dead orange orchard under the raised freeway, near the burned and leveled camp of the Lost Pigs. I drank from a bottle of mineral water and listened to the hot night wind rustling through the dead branches, hung with scraps of paper and discarded plastic sheeting. Some dim stars were visible through the haze of exhaust, in patches of sky visible between the ramps and loops of the freeway overhead.

      It was only just after 9 PM, but I was beat. My back was up against the trunk of a dead orange tree, and I thought I’d just close my eyes for a minute, but then I saw an alligator eyeing me balefully from a pile of soft-drink cups in a drainage ditch, and I got up and started walking again. I gave Piggleyland’s loading docks  a wide berth, which turned out to add about an extra mile to the trip back to Alligator Al’s Central Florida Jungle Fun Compound, but it was worth avoiding.

     I dragged back into my Motel Room, showered off the woodsmoke from the barbecues and remaining traces of Pam’s cloying Tygermusk perfume, then sat down on the squashy motel bed to call home. I felt just lousy about the whole Pam McWainscoting spectacle, but I was sure that Vampirella would find it hilarious. Probably. Unless she found it despicable. It was a little after 10 PM and I hoped I wouldn’t wake anyone up, but it had been three nights since I’d spoken to Vampirella and I missed her and my kids dreadfully.

 

     The phone connection clicked through, but it didn’t ring because the phone was picked up at just that moment for an outgoing call: beepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeep. I waited a second to make sure the dialing had stopped and said, “Hello?”

     I did not at first recognise the voice that came over the phone to say, “Is this Hunan Resources? I’d like to order some food to be delivered? Chop chop!”

     And then I did recognise the voice, when he said “Chop chop!” like some kind of asshole. It was Vampirella’s loathsome suitboy boss, Brick Marrow. “Hello?” he said again, peevishly,         “are you there?”    

     I was still kind of drunk, and easily confused. What was Brick Marrow doing in my Quonset hut, ordering Chinese food? The question intrigued and unsettled me. I could have asked him outright, but I decided to jerk his chain a little and slyly switched into the most reprehensible lousy Chinese accent I could muster, “excruse prease. Had roose wonton on sripper. Wha you want?”

     “One Mongolian beef, extra spicy, one order of sweet and sour pork. A spring roll…hey, you want a spring roll? They’re dynamite! Yeah? OK, two spring rolls, and a quart of wonton soup. How long will it take your delivery guy to get it here?”

     “Ahh, I carrot say unress you shoord choose to tear me whel you aull.”

     “What?”

     “Whel to Derivel to?”   

     “1134 Quidproquonset. So how long?”
     “Ereventhiltyfoal Quirldplockronset shoord be thel in foalty five mirruts. How many foalchun coorkie?”

     “What?”

     “FOALTY FIVE MIRRUT. HOW MANY FOALCHUN COORKIE? HOW MANY EAT?”

     “What? Two.”

     “Tank roo foal caurring Hunan Lesoulces. Goorbye.” I hung up the phone. I called the actual Hunan Resources restaurant and placed the order for delivery, then sat back with my drunkenness to think it over.

     It was 10:25. The kids were likely  to be asleep, unless they were over at their grandparents again.

     I dialed again. The phone rang once, and Vampirella answered and I knew that she’d tell me what was going on as soon as I heard her beautiful voice.

     “Oh, hi, sweetheart. It’s so good to hear from you, finally. I’m sorry I missed your calls. Work’s been a bitch. I guess you heard that from my Dad, right?” she did sound a little stiff.

     “Yeah, I hear you’ve got a lot going on…so what’s happening? What are you doing now?”  I should have just asked her what Brick was doing there.

     “What?” She said, startled, “Now? Now? You woke me up, actually. I was just going to sleep in front of the TV. I sure have been busy at work though. You know Brick. He’s really been pushing me hard.”

     My scalp tingled and all the blood withdrew from my extremities. I lost 70 percent of my lung capacity. My eyes and tongue swelled up. A hole opened up in my chest, and small loose objects nearby were tugged toward the vacuum.  I should have just asked her what Brick was doing there, but again I didn’t.

     “Oh? Well, fuck him.” I said. There was a long pause, “I mean, quit, already. You don’t need that lousy job.  I’ve got enough lousy job for both of us until you find some other lousy job. I don’t like Brick, you know? Are the kids there?”

     “Y-no. They’re at my parents. I was working up until after their bedtime.”

     “So you’re alone?” I asked, just to clarify the issue.

     “Yeah.  I wish you were here,” she said, softly. I wished that, also. “So how’s Orlando? Is it hot there?”
     My throat was starting to close up, “It’s terrible here. Look, Vampirella, I have to go. I had too much to drink tonight, and I gotta get up early tomorrow morning. So, um, goodnight.”

     She knew something was wrong. “What’s the matter, Fang, honey?” I could imagine Brick Marrow watching her lying to me and it made the veins in my wrists and temples pound. And my eyes were actually tearing a little. OK, I was sure there was some reason she was lying to me. Some reason that was really reasonable. I felt suddenly drunker, or mildly concussed.

     “Oh, uh, nothing, nothing. I’ll be home in a couple days and we can talk then.” I said.

     “OK, then,” she said, “Well, goodnight. I love y…”

     “G’night.” I said and put down the phone, delicately.

 

     I sat there for about another two hours, trying to think of reasonable explanations, and I wasn’t really getting anywhere. I’d never known Vampirella to lie to me before, and while she often hid the soup spoons or my shaving cream, she wouldn’t, she couldn’t, hide something like this from me. I was almost out of my mind with worry. And I just kept drinking, which did little to clear my mind.

     I understand that Americans take affairs too seriously. It’s no big deal if your spouse fools around a little. We’re all animals, right? It’s only natural. If I was more Worldly, if I was French, I’d probably be delighted to discover that my wife was having an affair. I’d probably have several mistresses myself. I’d probably buy the guy a celebratory baguette or something. She couldn’t be having an affair with Brick Marrow, anyway. Not him. He was unworthy of Vampirella, in his four-hundred dollar shirts and tanning-booth tans and shiny shoes and with his hair full of styling mousse, driving his bloated yellow SUV to go high-fiving people while talking on his cellphone while his beeper went off, drinking frappuchinos and eating nouvelle cuisine in restaurants where they give you the big square plates with delicate piles of wilted leaves, listening to tinkly new age music while reading books called  Inflate Your Ego and Be Rich!

     Finally I fell over miserably asleep, and I dreamed that Brick Marrow and I were racing bikes in the Tour De France. I was on my same old brakeless, beat-up black mountain bike, dressed like an organ grinder’s monkey, while Brick wore fancy yellow spandex covered with endorsements from condom companies, with a yellow helmet, and was on a yellow racing bike so thin it was practically invisible from behind, which was where I was, struggling to push my heavy bike through picturesque European villages, where beautiful red-haired girls waved from windows and bistros, trailing farther behind as he sailed  up an Alp, pedaling so fast that his legs were a blur, effortlessly gliding to the crest of the mountain and starting down, and he was drawing away but now I was going down too, faster and faster, and the pitch of the road grew steeper and steeper until I suddenly realized that I was on an almost completely vertical surface, losing contact with the ground, falling into space, and as I fell Brick Marrow sailed past on a yellow hang glider and said, “Get the memo! Did you get my email? Make a copy! Get the memo! You owe me $2000! Get the memo, smartie?”

     It wasn’t a brilliant dream or anything, and I can’t interpret the $2000 part, but I found it deeply disturbing. There were other dreams, and in all of them I was dressed like an organ grinder’s monkey, right down to the little red cap.