The address was 3372 33rd St., Astoria, Queens. It was a small two-family house with a redbrick façade, balconies on the second floor, verandas on the first, a little garden in front with ugly gnomes everywhere, a line of garbage cans lined against a stainless steel railing, all very ordinary, residential, middle-class. I was beginning to wonder if Abe had given me a false address. Wasn't this Jeff guy a millionaire? Maybe not. In any case, there was a limo on the other side of the street. Maybe it was Jeff's. I waited till six o'clock and Zelda did not show. I waited another five minutes, then another five, till ten-after-six, and that's when I looked overhead and saw Zelda's sneakers hanging from the electrical wires. Bright yellow Converse All-Stars with the Chuck Taylor ankle-sticker torn off. These were, without the faintest shadow of doubt, my sister's shoes. I was filled with the uncontrollable urge to knock them down. But how? I needed a rod of some kind, a long stick. I looked in the garbage cans by the stainless steel railing and found nothing suitable. Then I saw, in the garden next to one of the gnomes, a brick. I would throw it at the shoes and dislodge them. I tried this several times, but I missed the shoes again and again, or if I did hit them, it wasn't hard enough. So finally I hurled that brick with all my might, and it went over the shoes and flew across the street and landed on the limousine and broke its roof window. A second later a man's head surfaced from that broken window, a gray-haired gentleman with wobbly jowls and big ears and big bags under his eyes. For some reason, though frowning, he was sticking his tongue out a little, and for an instant I thought that it was the mayor of New York; he looked exactly like Michael Bloomberg, till he was done sticking his tongue; then he no longer looked like Michael Bloomberg; but then he laid his index finger on his throat and made a slicing gesture, back and forth, like a Z, and he looked like Michael Bloomberg again. I ran for my life. I bounded onto the veranda stairs of 3372 and banged on the door and rang the bell and banged again and rang again. I looked back. The man had come out of the limo and was advancing toward me. I banged again. Finally I kicked the door in and shut it behind me.
And that's the last thing I remember. I don't know how, but I was knocked unconscious. When I came to, I was lying on the living room floor, and who do you imagine was looking down at me, grinning, naked as the day she was born but for those bright yellow Chuck Taylors I had tried to dislodge? Dana, the shrink. I said, "What the hell?"
"Shsh," she said. "Relax."
"What are you doing here?" I said.
"Take it easy," she said. "How do you feel? How's your vision? Is it still blurry?"
Blurry? What was she talking about? My vision wasn't blurry in the least. Hers was a real bush, an African jungle. I could almost see the animals. I said, "What's going on? Where's Jeff?"
"Who's Jeff?" she said.
"Jeff," I said. "He was going to meet--"
"Relax," she said. "You were knocked out."
"Where's Jeff?" I said. "Where's my sister?"
"Relax," she said.
"How'd you get those sneakers down?" I said. She just smiled. "Those are Zelda's sneakers," I said. And she continued to look at me as if I were talking nonsense. Then she sat down beside me and began to stroke my chest hair. It was kind of weird, but it felt good, so I let her. This lasted about ten minutes. I said nothing and she said nothing; she just stroked my chest hair. She smelled like a cream cheese and jelly sandwich. Finally I said, "Where's my sister? What did you do with her?"
She sighed and said, "Louis, you're sister's a very sensitive girl. Very sensitive. She's a good girl too, but she's always falling in with the wrong crowd. I have counseled her many times to stay away from men like Bill and Dan. They take advantage of her blindness and her good nature. They're going to come to no good and she's going to come to no good with them. Did you know she lived in my house for three months? Under one very strict condition, that she have no consort whatsoever with those criminals. But she couldn't handle it. She brought Dan over. They did heroin in my living room."
I said, "Where is she?"
She sighed again. She avoided my eyes.
"Where is she?" I said again.
She sighed again and said, "Have you heard of the Museum for Jewish Heritage?"
I had never heard of it. "What about it?" I said.
"They have a substantial collection," she said, "of authentic yellow badges."
"Yellow badges?" I said. "What are yellow badges?"
She looked at me as if I had asked her what chocolate was or what a foot was or what an alarm clock was. "Yellow stars," she said, as to a child, "the cloth badges the Nazis made the Jews wear."
"Yeah?" I said. "So?"
"So," she said, "your sister stole the entire collection."
"Huh," I said.
"It's worth millions," she said. "They substituted the originals with imitations, not even good imitations because Abe wouldn't do it; they got some guy in Chinatown to do it."
"They?" I said.
"The blind girl," she said, "never works alone."
Suddenly I wasn't sure I trusted this chick with her thick, enormous bush who smelled like cream cheese and jelly. "And how are you involved in all of this?" I wanted to know.
"I'm not involved in anything," she said.
"Yeah?" I said. "How'd you get uncuffed?"
"Uncuffed?" she said.
"Uncuffed," I said.
"What are you talking about?" she said.
"Uncuffed," I said again. "You were cuffed to a statue."
"Relax," she said, and she kissed me on the forehead. "You were knocked out and you're confusing dreams with reality. It's normal. It's called confabulation, a condition whereby the afflicted forms false memories, observations, and beliefs about the self or the environment, usually as a result of neurological dysfunction. Head trauma often triggers--"
"You're full of shit, doc," I said.
"Try to relax," she said. "I'll fix you something to drink. What would you like?"
"Bottled water," I said. I did not trust this chick.
She went to the kitchen and came back a minute later with a glass of what looked like blood. "Drink," she said. "It'll do you good."
"I said bottled water," I said.
"I don't have bottled water," she said. "Drink it. It's good for you."
"What is it?" I said.
"Orange juice," she said.
"It looks like blood," I said.
"It's blood orange juice," she said.
"I'm not drinking your bullshit blood orange juice," I said.
"Louis," she said, like a schoolmistress, "don't be stubborn and drink your orange juice."
I remind you that save for those shoes she was totally naked.
"Drink," she reiterated.
I drank it, and what do you know? It tasted all right. In fact it was delicious. I asked for another glass of the same, and she brought me another glass of the same. I drank it all, and she sat down beside me and stroked my chest again, and she began to murmur sweet things in my ear, or just to hum or whistle. I couldn't quite tell because I couldn't understand what she was saying, but it felt good, and I was beginning to feel very well all over, like I'm floating down a Jell-O river and it's warm and it's dusk and the fish can talk but all they say is bubble bubble bubble and everything that you thought was real is false and everything that you thought was a dream is very real and right in front of you and smiling and licking your ear and it feels so good and you feel very well and you want to scream that you've never felt so well before but there's no need to scream because everybody's nodding and smiling and you can even eat the fish that go bubble bubble bubble and they don't even mind and they continue to smile and they taste like huge jellybeans and you begin to cry because it feels so good and the warm Jell-O water carries you gently down the stream only you know you're going in circles around an island and a cockatoo swings down from above and lands on your belly and cries Gihon Gihon Gihon and then flies away and you fly away with it and the cockatoo tells you a story about a tiny giant named Button who lives in a matchbox and the cockatoo flies his way and you're flying alone and then you fall. You land in the jungle, in the middle of the island, and it's full of snakes, and you know you're in the thick of Dana's bush. It's dark. It's sultry. The snakes hiss and sting. You're running, you're running away from the snakes, but the snakes are everywhere. Then, through the dense vegetation, you see a blinking light in the distance. There's a clearing in the jungle. You run toward it, you run from the snakes. You see a hut. There's a hut in the clearing, with a smoking chimney. You knock on the door. They don't answer. You knock again. Again nobody answers. You look through the window and you see a Jew with a hat and a beard and side locks and everything, and he's reading a book and swinging back and forth like he's making love to it. You say, Dude, let me in, it's full of snakes out here! He doesn't answer. He continues to fuck his book. You break in, through the window, and you grab that book and you dash it against the wall. And the Jew says, Come with me, we're in mortal danger. You say, I'm not going out there, it's full of snakes out there. He says, Come. And he dashes out of the house and into the jungle and the snakes, and you follow him. He takes you to another hut, in another little clearing in the middle of the jungle, and in the hut there's a man-sized toad. And you scream, A monster toad! A monster toad! And the Jew says, Lick the toad. And you say, No way, man, I'm not licking that fucking toad. And the Jew says, You have to, it's in the stage directions. And you say, What stage directions? What are you talking about? And he says, Don't you know? And you say, Know what? And the toad is going ribbit ribbit ribbit and he smells like the sewer. And the Jew hits you over the head with a hammer, but it doesn't hurt because it's one of those funny hammers that honk. And then the Jew takes off his shirt and starts touching his bellybutton, sticking his finger in it and scratching and amusing himself with the flakes of dead skin. You tell him not to be gross, to quit that shit. He tells you to mind your own business and to go lick the toad already. So you go lick the fucking toad because who are you to question the stage directions. But the toad starts hissing at you. He doesn't want to be licked. You say, Fine, you didn't want to lick him anyway, you were just trying to observe the stage directions. And then you begin to wonder, Who's writing this? Who wants me to lick this fucking smelly toad? And then Jew grabs you by the arm and says, Let's go. You say, Where? He says, We have to save Zarathustra from the vagina fish. You say, Vagina fish? You've never heard of vagina fish. He says, Yeah, don't you know about the vagina fish? You say, What the fuck are vagina fish? He says, The vagina fish are some mean fucking hombres. You say, Who's Zarathustra? He says, Your sister. You say, I don't have a sister named Zarathustra. He says, You do now. And he runs out of the hut, and you run after him and back into the thick jungle, Dana's bush, and you run and you run and soon you're running out of breath and you scream to the Jew, who's running way ahead of you, that you have to take a break, to catch your breath, but he tells you to shut your mouth and continue to run or the vagina fish will kill your sister. You tell him again your sister's name isn't Zarathustra, but as you're saying that, you suddenly realize that her name is Zarathustra and that she's in mortal danger. And finally you arrive at another clearing in the jungle, a huge clearing this time, a vast grassy field, and in the middle of it is a collection of massive blocks of stone. You know this site. You've been here. It's Stonehenge. You say to the Jew, I've been here, I know this site, it's Stonehenge. And the Jew says, Shut your mouth, this isn't Stonehenge. And as he's saying that you hear a whirr overhead, getting louder and louder, like the fluttering of a thousand wings, and then you see it, in the sky, a flock of eagles. There must be a thousand of them and they're circling the site like vultures, but they're not vultures, they're eagles, and you're amazed because you never knew eagles flew in flocks, and they start shitting on you and their shit is marmalade. And the Jew says, Eat it, it's kosher. And you say, Fuck you, I'm not eating eagle shit, and I fucking hate marmalade. And the Jew says, You know the etymology of marmalade? It means sick lagoon in French, mare malade. And you say, No it doesn't, it comes from Latin, marmelada, which means quince jam, from marmelus, which means quince, based on melimelon in Greek. And the Jew says, Shut your mouth, you don't even know French. And by the time you're done arguing about the etymology of marmalade the flock of eagles has flown away and you're all covered in eagle excrement, and the truth is, it doesn't taste that bad, a bit sour but not bad. And the Jew says, Quick, we have to find Zarathustra. She's ensnared in the stones, shackled and gagged. We need to find her before the vagina fish do. And you start running toward the stones. And you ask, Why do the vagina fish want to kill Zarathustra? And the Jew answers, Shut your mouth. There's no why in this story. Just follow the stage directions. You get to the stones and it's like a labyrinth and you hear a gurgled moan like a growl echoing everywhere and you run toward the growl but you don't find anybody because of the echo. And you say, That doesn't sound like my sister. And the Jew says, Don't be an idiot. That's Zarathustra, as sure as shit. Quick, if we don't find her soon, the vagina fish will. You go that way and I'll go this way, that'll double our chances of finding her. So you go your way and the Jew goes his way. And you're running around in circles and you don't find anybody, you don't even see the Jew again, and thank God you don't run into any vagina fish. But then, you come to an archway you haven't seen before and the growling grows louder and more distinct, and you enter the archway and you hear a growl, very distinct, and you see a dog, a dachshund, bouncing and foaming and growling, and you kick him like a football and send him flying, and you continue down the humid, nitrous archway and now the walls are mirrors, twisted deforming mirrors, you're in a funhouse and you're crashing into your distorted reflections, till you find your way out and now you're in a clearing, another clearing in the jungle, another massive grassy field with a massive collection of massive stones in the middle of it, and you run toward this new Stonehenge in the middle of Stonehenge and you're crying, Zarathustra! Zarathustra! and you know you're never going to find Zarathustra because there's going to be a third Stonehenge within this second Stonehenge and a fourth Stonehenge within the third Stonehenge and so on and so forth, but then everything vanishes, the field, the stones, the sky, and you're floating in a blank cosmos and the constant growl of Zarathustra is now a contorted cantata, Wine fester burger yeast and sewer goat! and you can't fly toward it because it's everywhere and you're floating, you don't move because there's nowhere to go and so you join in, you sing it, you scream it, Wine fester burger yeast and sewer goat! Wine fester burger yeast and sewer goat! and you haven't the faintest idea what you are saying.
