Episode #5
Surreal Estate
Aqueduct was dead. A cigarette had killed him quick. The lucky bastard wouldn't have to wait thirty more annums before his hideously plundered alveoli wheezed to a pulmonary neg funk. But that wasn't my problem. My problem was that the man who had taken me into the CIA wasn't in the CIA. So what in the name of the Bay of Pigs had I been taken into? A counter plot? A double criss-cross whammy with a full twist? A bait and switch tactic?
After fleeing the New Mexico motel where Aqueduct had cashed in his spy shades, I picked up an illegal alien shuttle bus into Truth or Consequences.
"What American town or city are you from? You have ten seconds to answer," ribbed Bob Barker as we deboarded.
But it was only one second before a tremendous buzzer shook the whole town and a bevy of girls dressed up like magician's assistants pulled me toward a giant tub of slaw.
"You didn't tell the truth and now yer gonna hafta pay the consequences!" Barker rolled the words off his lips like silver balls on a marble table.
That was too bad. I didn't have time for a dying town's promotional extravaganzas. They would have to throw some other patsy in their swimming pool sized salad.
"Let me go, I'm on official business for the United States Government, and I didn't even like the show when it was on the air, bimbo." My mood was turning nasty, and vituperation was heavy in my speech.
That's when they threw me in the giant tub of slaw. About six dozen would-be U.S. citizens laughed their asses off as I struggled with an oily Australian crawl. Pretty soon they pulled me out and a third rate Don Pardo voice boomed out of nowhere to tell me what I'd won.
"You'll be flying non-stop to fabulous -- Little Rock, Arkansas! Home of desegregation! You'll spend two daze and two nights at the Hyatt Whitewater in downtown Little Rock! And be the guest of honor at a gala razorback hog slaughter. Plus! All the gumbo and fatback you can eat or stuff in a suitcase. Trip courtesy of the Florida C'mon Down T'see Us and Don't B'lieve All Them Stories Ya' Hear Tourist Bored."
At first I thought, hell no, I won't go. But then I started to think about my current sitch-e-yation. I was on the lam. I didn't know what I was mixed up in. I didn't know who wanted to kill me like they'd killed Aqueduct. I could take their seamy door prize and dust my broom.
From Little Rock with no one on my tail I'd work my way back to Cleveland and go back to work at the jock factory. I'd been crazy to leave in the first place. I'd been holding things up pretty good. Then my raw ambition to be in the Post Office had taken over and now look at me. The hapless buffoon of a TV show that didn't exist anymore.
I don't want to go into a lot of superlatives when describing the Truth or Consequences Municipal Airport. The passenger lounge was a pickup truck canopy nailed over some old theater seats. To get up on the plane you had to crawl up on the control tower which was kind of a petrified teepee. I'd come a long way since jetting first class all over hell with my CIA American Express card.
It was a crowded flight. I was jammed in between a cage full of Mexican fighting cocks and enough Navajo blankets to cover up Watergate. At least nobody knew who I was.
"Dolan Smith. This is your captain speaking. Nice going. You played along perfectly."
I didn't know from what he was talking about. Played along with what? My great wazoo?
"No, your lesser wazoo. Now Smith, that was close. We were afraid Aqueduct wasgoing to kill you before he had time to smoke one of those poison coffin nails."
I couldn't believe my ears. They stuck out quite a ways and had caused me big pain in high school. What the Captain was telling me over the intercom was a little hard to believe too. First of all, there were a lot of other people on the plane who were hearing him.
"They're all with us, Smith. Agent Smith. Yes, you're still with the company. And you're still going to be on that welfare mission. We let Aqueduct recruit you. By the way, his real name was Lawrence Sheepdipovitch, KGB. They desperately want welfare to win. You'll be working for me now, Smith. I'm sorry we don't have time for a Q&A but it's time for you to hit the silk. We're over Lubbock."
My mind balked. Fortunately there was no one on base. All I could think of was Buddy Holly skydiving. I saw his big horn-rimmed glasses and that toothy smile. He had his guitar and he was playing "Rave On" and just then the Crickets, the Big Bopper, and Ritchie Valens all floated by. And pretty soon it was a big rock `n roll hootenanny, with Bill Haley and the Comets, Fats Domino, and Carl Perkins all falling, falling, falling...
They'd gassed me. And dumped me out. I guess the parachute opened automatically. I woke up in the desert, or at least that's what I thought. It turned out to be the sand trap on the fifteenth green at the Peggy Sue Memorial Golf Course. Things were happening pretty fast these days. I was having trouble keeping up.
"Get the hail outta there, boy! I just contoured that trap this morning," yelled an old cowboy who'd apparently sunk a putt in the birdie of life.
I scrambled up but didn't know how to get out of the parachute straps. Did I forget to say that I'd never been in one before? That I'd never been thrown from a plane in flight? Gassed? Thrown in a tub of slaw?
"I'll hep ya, dag blame a gol dern consarnment. I'll bet yer another Jim dandy G-men they dropped down here to spy on the white trash."
After he'd untangled me, I asked directions to the clubhouse and made my way to the bar. It was done up in a fifties motif with a jukebox full of Sun records and of course all the classics by Buddy himself on Coral and Brunswick. I had to pull myself together. I had to go on. There was more to this. It wouldn't stop here. It couldn't. I dared not let it.
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