silkroadcowboy

Jordan ends his brother’s 2AM call and stares at the blank phone. He puts the water on for tea. He will not sleep again tonight. His father has died, and the family needs him back in Nebraska to help with their ailing mother.

Jordan is reviewing the past twenty-five years in Singapore. A grad student abroad, he was there to polish his Mandarin. Then he meets Priya and they begin their beautiful family. Losing Priya to cancer was excruciating but being part of his wife’s family saved him. Seeing the girls as accomplished professional women brought joy to his life.

In the twenty-five years he has been here, never once did his parents come to meet their Asian daughters. He did not have the money for long distance travel, so he grew apart from The Americans, as he called them.

After his third cup of tea, listening to his neighbor’s air conditioners grinding away the muggy air, he starts dials his eldest, who is up by now. He tells her that he needs to go to America, just for a couple months. She reminds him that he came to Singapore for just a couple months twenty-five years ago.

“If you stay there, where will our home be? Without you and Mama?” They hang up with promises to think carefully on the matter.

He starts to get angry, wondering how they could ignore him and the girls all these years and only now, when they needed his help, call and disrupt his life.

The sky is getting pink when he makes his online ticket purchase. He is too wired to sleep, so he cleans the tiny kitchen. He swears to the gods of this place, to his daughters, and to Priya that he will come back. He sees the framed photo of Priya and him and the girls on the counter.

“I promise”, he says to the memories in the kitchen.

Battle

I fight for king and country.

My wife mends my cloak in the dim firelight.

She hums an old tune.

I cannot remember the name.

The lines are formed, the flags fly.

The sun is high and bright, the breeze is light.

I have seen this dream before.

In the chaos, I fall.

We, the dead and dying, lie together beneath the perfect sky.

No, crow, not yet.

Dream

No, crow, not yet.

We, the dead and dying, lie together beneath the perfect sky.

I fight for king and country.

In the chaos, I fall.

The sun is high and bright, the breeze is light.

The lines are formed, the flags fly.

I have seen this dream before.

My wife mends my cloak in the dim firelight.

She hums an old tune.

I cannot remember the name.

In my broken Russian I say, “This melon, please.”

The old Tajik woman points to another, “This one is better.”

I take the Somoni from my pocket.

“My daughter’s husband fell from the roof and died yesterday”, she says to the air.

Her soft words echo off the distant mountains.

“Why did Allah let this happen to my beautiful daughter?”

There are no tears in her eyes.

I don’t have enough Russian to reply.

I look down at my feet.

Here at the corner produce stall we stand together beneath the hot sun.

The way she carried on about it, you would be excused for thinking that steampunk was really a thing.

Victoria Bryce, Queen Vickie, as she referred to herself, was all into it. Black Victorian corset showing plenty of thigh, top hat, goggles and a meerschaum pipe, Queen Vickie was ready for Ambrose to take her out. She closed the front door behind her as much to shut out her parents’ objections as to exit the Barking house.

Once on the street, she lit the pipe and waited under the streetlamp for Ambrose. She wanted a reefer, but he had that. Queen Vic hated waiting.

Her father just had to make a scene, opening the door and shouting, “Just what the fuck do you think you’re doing with your life?” She didn’t even bother to give him the fig. She learned it from her Russian boyfriend, the one before Ambrose.

Ambrose arrives on his scooter and they’re off to the club. He hands her a blunt and she’s happily toking away, her left arm around his waist, head tilted back taking a long drag.

Inside the club, Ambrose wanders off while the Queen is cradling a beer and rolling another joint. She’s just getting ready to light it when she looks across the club and her heart stops. A magnificent vision in white lace with a cascade of blonde curls halfway down her back is staring at her. Queen Vickie stares back, joint hanging from her lips.

The Vision crosses the floor to QV and takes the joint from her lips, lights it, and places it back between Vickie’s now glistening lips.

“Elizabeth”, says The Vision.

“Vickie”, says QV.

“I think we have to create something new and beautiful”, says E.

“Old but boldly new”, says QV.

Ambrose forgotten, E and QV walk, hand in hand, out into the London night.

On the day after Western Christmas, 1991, the country known as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) dissolved. Mikhail Gorbachev, namesake (but no relation) of the Soviet leader at the time remembers exactly where he was that day. He was in the sack, late, after a night of raucous sex with a very cute classmate in his Harvard poli-sci class. Christmas night, she had pushed him back on the bed, pulled off her nighty and said, “Merry Christmas, Misha”. Misha believed he was up to the task, but she had worn him out.

On the morning of the twenty-sixth, through a fog of sleeplessness, he received a call placed in Odessa by his father to inform him that his country was dissolving and that he needed to get his ass on the next flight back to Ukraine. His father, also Mikhail Gorbachev, was the local Communist Party leader in Odessa. As the Communists no longer (formally) existed, they had to figure something out, fast.

“No more schoolboy, Misha”, he said. “Get home now.”

Misha was still trying to process what his father had shouted through the phone when it rang again. This time, his mother.

“Mishishka!”, she implored, “get to the Immigration department and request asylum! Then bring your poor, old mother to America!”

Ironically for Misha, who now goes by Mike Gorby, owner and CEO of a highly successful patio furniture manufacturing company, that day more than thirty years ago comes flooding back as he sits down to write a check for Ukraine aid to the World Food Kitchen. His mother had died after joining him in the US. His father had been killed just last week by a Russian missile. Little Miss Merry Christmas was his wife and the mother of their four children.

A Soviet kid, at Harvard via the connections of his Communist Party father, was writing checks to fight back against Putin’s war. Mike shook his head and got back to work.

From the time he was four, Charles Evan Hapgood III was told, assured, promised even, that he would be a superstar. As the precocious Chaz of CHAZ! he was a household name for as long as he was cute and precocious. When his voice dropped an octave, that all changed. There were no secondary gigs for Chaz.

There was, however, social media. His publicist was savvy and Chaz became an influencer. When that publicist died, the new one was even better at the grift and Chaz became the Leader of The Ones Who Are Chosen. He is grossing twenty mil a year off his podcast, his product and personal donations to his “cause”. Which is whatever anybody wants that to be.

He has made it.

But Chaz has two big problems:

Wife.

GF.

Neither knows about other. That’s the way he’d like it to stay. But there are danger signs. Big ones.

As Chaz sees it, one of them has to go. That, however, will be very ugly. Next option is that Chaz needs to exit, solo. He actually likes that option.

Plenty of cash offshore to start again. He’s crafted a farewell message to his fanbase about his ascension to the Pleiades to be delivered tonight. Flight is booked to BA. He’s outa here.

Except he’s not. Quite.

GF comes through the door about an hour ago to announce that she’s scheduled a presser to accuse him of sexual abuse unless he coughs up twenty mil, pronto.

“I ain’t fuckin’ ‘round”, says GF. “I’m tawkin right the fuck now.”

“Baby”, he says.

Phone rings, an hour later. Wife.

“What am I hearin’ ‘bout a flight to BA? And I’m not on it!”

“Baby”, he says to a phone he wishes was dead.

He’s watching TV in his office when he see’s it. The Message.

“Love Conquers All”. Foundation for a Good Life.

“That’s it”, he says to the empty room.

Picks up the phone and calls GF. “Baby”, he says. “Love Conquers All.”

“Don’t gimme that shit”. The line goes dead.

“Lucky me”, he says to the empty space. Lucky Me.

It always takes two days in Cairo to get visas on the way to work in Ethiopia. It may be 1985, but that doesn’t mean the bureaucracy is streamlined.

With Evie along on this trip, that does mean mandatory tourism. Tourism means the Pyramids, even though we saw them quite well out the airplane window on the approach to the airport.

Tourism is not my cup of tea.

On the way to the hotel:

“Let’s take a tour of the Pyramids”, she said.

“Let’s not”.

“Honey, seriously”.

“Seriously, let’s not.”

“It’ll be fun! We’ll ride camels!”

“It’ll be a shit-show. We’ll be hustled to buy all sorts of stuff we don’t need.”

“Honeeeee…”

“You know I hate this sort of thing.”

“It’ll be fun!”

Yeah.

So, we sit in the shop belonging to the brother-in-law of the camel tour-guide being hard-sold perfume essence. After what seems like hours, just to get it over with, I shell out enough money for a week of fine dining and we mercifully escape to a cab.

Evie dabs some musky scent on her wrist which she holds under my nose.

“Nice, huh?”

Nice, I have to admit.

Now a dab behind her ear. She leans in to me.

In a huskier voice, “Nice, huh?”

Much as I want to get straight back to the hotel right now, I tell the cabbie to take us to the Gold Souk.

Evie leans back, smiles and scrunches up her nose.

I am such a sucker.

It was not his habit to rise so early, but he was up before the sun on this Monday.

November at this latitude was crisp and today was no exception. There was no snow, but a heavy hoarfrost blanketed the field which dropped away to the wood beyond.

Light shone through the bare branches of the larch and birch and filtered through the hemlock and white pine. The sliver of the crescent moon graced its beams on the field, and the hoarfrost shimmered in thanks.

It was still very early. Twilight had not yet blanched the stars.

His father, once a navigator in his youth, had taught him the stars and their significance when he was a boy.

His mother, ever the romantic, the origins of the names of the days of the week. This was Monday, Lundi in her native French. The moon’s day.

How fitting, he thought, to stand here beneath the stars before dawn and watch the moon rise on the moon’s very day. That this moon day was one year to the day since Papa and Mama had passed, together, seemed mystical.

This mystical morning lovingly cradled the cynic he had become in middle age.

It held him close to its bosom, nestled him and whispered that he was still the bright-eyed child of wonder he had once been.

Keys in hand, Joe is most of the way to the front door when he hears Claudia from the kitchen.

“Mask”. One word.

“Yep.”

He grabs one from the box in the coat closet and leaves for work.

The white N95, with its nifty protruding filter, sits there next to him on the front seat like some bizarre nosecone for a miniature space shuttle. Wouldn’t that be nice, he thinks. Escape the third rock from the sun for somewhere sane.

“Beam me up, Scotty. No intelligent life down here”, he says out-loud and shakes his head.

In the months since “The Great Lockdown” ended, he has returned to work under the rule that these masks were mandatory to get into the building. Everyone had to wear them at all times. Joe has grown to detest the fucking things.

He hates the way his glasses fog. The humidity of his breath, trapped in the confines of the mask, make his nose itch. He had to shave off his droopy mustache, which he had since college days, because the masks are so irritating. He dreads putting one on. It pisses him off.

Two blocks from the office building, Joe thinks about the shitty work which he now depends on to keep the house and get the kids into some university program that is not attended from the kitchen table. So now he sings from the company hymnal, loud and clear, so that the higher-ups know he loves his job.

Pulling into the underground garage he takes a deep breath and puts on his game face.

His work mask.

He grabs the N95 off the seat and slips it on. Properly disguised, he steps out of the car, into the new normal.

Leo and Simba were lying on the Savannah protecting their kill. Leo broke into song:

“Hey Bungalow Bill, what did you kill Bungalow Bill?” Of course, to passersby (there were none) it would have sounded like a lion’s roar.

“What’s that song?” asked Simba. He was all grown up from his Lion King days. He had a bone as large as a human femur held under his paws. He was gnawing on it.

“Bungalow Bill? You don’t know Bungalow Bill?”

“No, should I?”

“Only the most famous Beatles song in Africa,” said Leo. “Though, of course, it’s about a tiger.”

“I hate tigers,” said Simba. “Too solitary.” He paused. “I don’t get why you’re singing about tigers.”

“I’m not singing about tigers. It’s a victory song. We bagged one of them today, instead of the other way ‘round. That snack of yours,” Leo gestured to the pile of guts in front of them “is somebody who wanted you or me or one of the girls on his wall back in the UK or America. Instead, we get some tasty eats and the girls and little ones get a couple of haunches to share. Big day.” Leo buried his snout in the gut pile and came up grinning.

“Wow, I didn’t know,” said Simba. “So, what are the lyrics again?”

“Hey Bungalow Bill, what did you kill Bungalow Bill?” sang Leo. Then Simba joined in.

“Hey Bungalow Bill, what did you kill Bungalow Bill?” The two lion friends, the leaders of their pride, sang together.

Of course, to passersby, it would have sounded like two lions roaring.

©2018 Tom Nichols