Episode #11
Rama on the Lama
Manhattan, The Big Apple, Gotham, whatever you called it, it was where they buried the body. New York had all the action. All the money, All the cabs. I'd dreamed of making it in Metropolis since I was knee-high to a crazed gunman kills six. Now here I was.
But how could I be? How had I gotten here? From there? There was a Midwestern wheatfield where I blew the lid off a fake haystack and Philanthropist rounded up the kingpins in a farm welfare hustle.
"Smith," Philanthropist addressed me from inside an outhouse he'd commandeered during the raid, "You're too sharp an agent to waste out here in the sticks".
"That's okay, sir, cuz I'd really just like to quit the whole bag and go back to like I was before you..."
"How does a little trip to the big city sound," he completely ignored my resignation.
"The big city, sir?" He'd hit my weak spot. You could take Chicago, El Lay, San Francisco and squash 'em in yer ditty bag. But New York had draw.
"The World Trade Center, Central Park, the Village", his voice drifted through the half moon cut into the side of the out house.
"What would I be doing in New York City, sir?" I knew what I’d be doing. I'd be the pungent bait on the hook of another freeloading megabust. I just wanted to hear him say it.
"You'll be the pungent bait on the hook of another freeloading megabust." I heard pages being fairly ripped from what was probably a Sears and Roebuck catalog from the previous year. It wouldn't be Downey soft, but neither were corncobs.
At first it had been a keen trip: there I was going underground for the red, white and blue with my own open-ended credit card and more raw power than Anita Eckbert. I was going to help the Central Intelligence Agency fight the welfare system and I believed I was on the right side. The good side. The white side. Versus the nether backside of an economy gone koo, then still further koo. But I didn't really believe I was on the side of law and order and justice and freedom and equality and mom and apple pie and skin popping anymore.
For one thing, I needed at least a scorecard to tell the players. Everytime I turned around everybody had switched jerseys and called themselves by another cute codename. I was sick to death of the whole trite farce. I wanted out. O-U-T. Oklahoma University Troopers. Oil under table. Olga's ugly tits.
And if my advanced case of ennui wasn't enough, I really was beginning to wonder if welfare was so bad that a force like the C.I.A. really had to go after it like a wounded eagle ripping up the cheap tent of a family on vacation. How had "welfare" become such a dirty word anyway? Welfare, well being, what was the horror of that. Orwell had been right about one thing: He never should have dunked his dipstick in that one from Tahiti . He'd also been right about double-think. Double-think was here and welfare was double-plus ungood in double-speak. Welfare meant welfare about as much as defense meant defense or art meant anything Andy Warhol took a Polaroid of.
It was really pretty simple the way I saw it. There were all these rich bastards. Guys who knew how to make bux. Usually the way they made buckos was to have a bunch of saps working for them for peanuts. That old line. So all the boss hosses used their dollars to run the government. It was just another corporation to be co-opted. Not a very important corp as corpses go, but somewhere in the heavy one-hundred.
But everybody couldn't or wouldn't work so they had to put them on the dole or put them in prison or something. The dole was cheaper. I doubted they minded giving away the money. It was people who paid taxes who paid for the welfare give-aways anyhow, not the rich bosses. I figured what scared the oinkers on top was the commie-spirit of the whole deal.
These rich guys were afraid of the big C. It wasn't cancer. They all had that and they didn't care. It wasn't cocaine. That made people work faster. They were scared of communism like a pool player is afraid of scratching on the eight. They were afraid commies would creep under their bed and make them give back all their shit. That's what really had them worried. And welfare was like a commie country where nobody was supposed to get fucked over totally (hardeeharhar) and starve or freeze. So welfare had to go and they put the C.I.A. on it. And it so happened that I was the turd in the bowl when the toilet flushed.
I was sitting and thinking about all these things in a bar near Central Park. I was thinking how much I wanted out from under the whole unkind schtick when I just simply decided would leave the country . It was brilliant because all my troubles were connected to the fact that no matter where I went in America, there was a welfare plot being hatched or destroyed. I still had my Moneycard, I'd just been too busy to use it lately. Paying for all the drinks I drank while I sat there thinking about the nasty world of politics reminded me of the incredible vistas that were open to me with that thin plate of plastic.
"Call me a cab!" I announced to the bar. Several patrons did call me one, laughing like Trigger could do before he died and Roy and Dale had him stuffed like a deer. I ignored their jocular sport and lurched curbside where I met Ralph a smidgen and then boarded taxi.
"Where to Jungle Jim?" asked the usual in why sea hack for hire.
"Take me to Kennedy", I managed to croak.
"Teddy, Ethel or Rose?" said the driver with a tone that bespoke recitations too numerous to put numbers on each one and remember or catalog individually. Passing out in the backseat and shielded from further attempts at black humor by a filthy plexiglas divider bearing a sign reading DO NOT SPEAK TO THE DRIVER UNLESS SPOKEN TO I hurtled toward the airport and my escape.
When I woke up, I was only a few short blocks from my starting point, yet the meter said $612.50 not-including-gratuity,
"What the hell's going on?" I demanded smelling a cheap ploy to boost my fare unnecessarily.
"Relax Rube. Traffic was heavy while you were sleeping it off. You oughta be glad you got an honest cabbie like me. You coulda been wakin' up dead with some drivers."
"That's a comforting thought" I blistered sarcastically. I didn't really mean it. It wasn't the least little bit comforting. I just said almost the exact opposite of what I was really thinking to get back at him.
We went to the airport by a direct route from then on I can assure you. Although I still don't understand why they put a major world air center in a place that you have to drive through New Jersey and Connecticut to reach a New York airport.
"Which terminal?" asked the driver who was getting as civil as a servant of the public like a county assessor or something.
"I know you are", I further tormented him. It would be a long, long time before that cab driver ever got cocky with a tourist again.
But it had actually been a damn good question. I hadn't really given any thought to which airline I was about to ride to a new life in some place where they didn't care who was on welfare. I finally got off at TWA. They flew everywhere. All the time.
I scanned the foreign departure screen for a suitable abode. There was a flight leaving for Lisbon in thirty minutes but the movie had Meryl Streep, I'm sick of that bitch and her phoney accents.
Then my eye caught a city I'd always been fascinated with.
"Make it the two-fifteen to Zurich." Switzerland was neutral. I could make watches and climb the Alps. It would be a good life.
I sat aboard the plane and listened to the multi-lingual ditching instructions. The jumbo body then lifted high above New York City and veered away toward the Atlantic. And like the mythic island for which that overgrown ocean was named, I felt myself sinking beneath the fathoms of my former life as a United States government operative.
The moon glanced off the pristine unglass so many thousands of feet below me that I didn't even want to know. Man was never meant to fly. Man was meant to have welfare, the word not the political payoff. But all that was behind me now. No more dangerous exploits chasing naughty moochers around the countryside. No more unusual meetings with top government honchos with their face hidden by the wall of a nefarious outhouse. No more tubs o'slaw.
The huge machine stopped its whining climb and a plethora of tones sounded and signs some ad agency had worked hard to color co-ordinate all came on saying "unbuckle 'em" in five fancy languages.
I decided to put my seat back and drift off to sleep. When I awoke the nightmare would be over. I'd never have to do anything brave again as long as I lived.
"Ladies and Gentleman, Mesdames et Monsuiers," came the stewardess's angelic voice over the p.a., "we regret to inform you that your TWA snooze coach to Zurich has been skyjacked."
Back
