A Billion Years Before This Ocean Rolled
For JK
…The fragility of those bare arms of yours—how I longed to enfold them, all your four limpid, lovely limbs, a folded colt, and take your head between my unworthy hands …and—“Puhlease, leave me alone, will you,” you would say, “For Christ’s sake, leave me alone.”
—Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita, 1958
“Surprised you didn’t kick my door in and lynch me,” said the kiddie book author, Orson Moony. Was the baseball cap supposed to make him look hip? Doug resisted – barely – shattering the guy’s thyroid. Think of your brother.
“Pleasant surprise? Cuz‘ don’t get me wrong. You will be sprayed with the jumbo can of Raid. Good Night, Roaches—Buenas Noches! Not by me, though. I’m Mason’s father—not Our Father. You’ll survive tonight—many Snuggly-Buggly nights, maybe. If, like I say, we can … finagle.”
“So you’ve … alluded. But I fail to—”
“He fails to. For someone schooled in—Hey, you wanna Make Way for Ducklings? One Boy, Two Boys, New Boy, Screw Boys? With absolutely No Noise?”
“Are you—? A bribe?”
“A bargain.”
“For Mason? Your—?”
“Look, you gotta feed the Very Hungry Caterpillar, Orson, Old Bean—and I got my own shit needs feedin‘.”
He slumped onto his Williams-Sonoma settee, where surely Mason’s face had pressed. “You lost me, Man.”
“No, I lost him. The Little Prince. Long ago. Too Curious, that George. Finders keepers.”
“He said you were a low-rent scumbag.”
“Well ain’t that the pot calling the kettle Nigger Jim. I’m conceding, Brother O-Face. Frog and Toad are Friends here. Don’t fucking look at me like that. What, he don’t like it with you? You ain’t goin‘ all Dahmer and hack—?”
“No, I love Mason.”
And Doug nearly vomited fish-tacos onto an Oriental rug. There’s a case needs making, a deal cut. Keep control. Don’t Let the Pigeon drive the Motherfucking Bus. “Well, there you go, Orson Wesleyan: Amor Vincit Omnia.”
“What do you want?”
“Swanky, this joint. The Hobbit and Holes biz pays a bugger, huh? Go Dog, Go! [Doug had done his homework]. It’s negotiable. Are we talkin‘ sale or lease?”
“I cannot—”
And he began to rise, but with a single finger, Doug prolapsed him. “You wanna haggle instead with a coupla‘ tatted-up Vice cocks with Cuban-daddy issues? “You buyin‘ outright—or makin‘ goddamn payments?”
“Fuck. OK … It depends. How much?”
“Brass tacks. Nice. Lessee …New model … Cherry, right? Make me an offer.”
“Cash?”
“Too crass? Creative financing then. What’s on the table, Orson Scott Cad?”
“Hold on—I know. I gotta cabin. In Georgia. Inheritance thing. On a lake—it’s yours. But I never fucking see you again. Mase and I—”
“Now allow me to interrupt—Don’t resist.”
“Don’t—?”
“Resist the arrest, Orson—or …the savage ass-pillages in prison. Oh, the Places You’ll Go, My O!”
Whereupon the copious Boys in Blue busted through to pounce the perv prejudicially for the gross misuse of one Mason Harcourt, 11.
“Cap. ain’t gonna commend hearin‘ N-words on the wire, Dougie.”
“That, Partner, is what you call ‘the air of authenticity.’”
Detective Douglas Pace – Fate’s lieutenant – could never resurrect his baby brother, Butchie—but he could bury men like Orson in a grisly abyss, and when he’d left a billion bitches bleeding there, he would weigh their worth against half his brother’s heart.