THE NATURAL STRANGER :: BOOK 1, "THE AEON" :: CHAPTER 10, EPISODE 6

Michael intends to wait for Melanie, so I walk to the door with Kara while Berto's bringing the T-Bird round. "What a charming man!" she observes. "Did you have to break him out of prison somewhere?"

"Of course not! Mike used to be Air Force, applied to be one of the astronauts but tested so high they put him on the theoretical end, inside... pissed him off terminally. After they sent him out to Utah, he began to hang with Wilson Leonard, who persuaded him to quit. He did stuff for Leonard in Japan, then privately when T. bought Will out... once I was able to, a couple of years back, I offered him more money."

"That doesn't seem like a creature able to be influenced by money."

"Part of it was that Will had turned into a dabbler, Lentex here Wendell Pet there... so what challenges arose tended towards the flaky," I acknowledged. "But money matters too... Mike has a couple of bad ex-wives, one of them in some sort of a facility, another out in California, always wanting more money."

Kara flicks the umbrella atop her drink. "He seems one of those neat, organized sorts who becomes violent towards women."

"Only when he's been drinking." I shrug. Melanie's old enough to learn from her mistakes. Besides, aren't punkers supposed to like such pain as is found on the shadowy side of streets, now and again?

Bert drives up, also wrinkling his nose. This heat! I feel a little sick myself... La Grua's in; I'd planned on going upstairs, lying down with the windows shut tightly until my lungs are thoroughly lavaged by air conditioning. Then... a long, hot shower. "Tom isn't coming," I assure the publisher. Eighteen months ago Wendell came down to bribe Junior's minister for natural resources... a man whose name I can't remember, too stupid to be seriously corrupt. Wendell flew him to Dallas to meet with the religious fellows, taught him cheap oil for the West is the best defense against Communism and its wicked troika, Tom raged: "Freud! Elvis! Keynes!"

It gets a little funny... strange, mostly, a little ha-ha... that Tess thinks Tom's people are sniffing out Baku. "The great oilfields of Zorzania, praised by Marco Polo himself... it was cure for distemper, oil, also unguent highly prized for heal the burns. A few of our physicists there... not Kapitza but other, younger men who like practical joke... these tell Wendell oil people Russia no exception to sell petroleum once great perpetual mobilium centers at Tobolsk and Magnitogorsk having become operationed... one named 1984, more Russian humor... oil would be useful and valuable as... what you call, fluid to shine shoes?"

Tom evidently told McCutcheon because Oz sent me a memo last September... "people wondering about perpetual motion devices behind the Iron Curtain. Anything to fear, here?"

So selling Junior on ecology with Juventud raging's like Jeff trying to sell that fishing gear he stole in Utah. Pitiful!

Kara gives me a Hollywood kiss in front of the hotel. "Is it true you're reopening your disco?" She was going to come to New York, just after New Year, but Brendan sure took care of that!

"I guess. Except it's not going to be Aeon, we're renaming it Daimon... sounds like the devil, but not actually. Eileen wants to open with a benefit, there's a priest or what they call them in the Episcopals or Unitarians... he wants to do a benefit for the hostages." Bud and I already have met with him, we drove up to Connecticut and find a surf bum, a Mad Hatter with a fertility ankh and crucifix, both, nestled in uneasy conjecture beneath his green down vest. Brunch isn't bread and wine... champagne and croissants, rather, eggs and little duck sausages, even fresh April papaya at what must have been abominable expense, epiphany in its own regard.

The only problem is Mitchell, whose mind races like a rat's, he says the hostage crisis is passe. "Afghanistan!" he whispers covetously, "that's where tomorrow's action's gonna be. A land stinking of drugs, drugged-up Soviet troops and religious nuts, awaiting exploitation in a Gothic sort of way, another Vietnam all over again with protests, music... only this time we get to win!" We, we, we... Mitch!... all the fucking way home.

I guess that descent into voodoo became inevitable once we elected an actor to the White House. Next come the directors, then special effects people and make-up artists... serious beach folding chairs implanted on the artificial turf of statesmanship. Plenty of noise, a little blood... peace and quiet being, I gather, counterrevolutionary. Junior, perhaps, could work off his IMF debts hosting a splendid little war, lay off some of the expense of the IAP as by-products of the black-budget blowout. It worked for his father... sort of...

Maybe I never should have come out of the Meat House! White snow in the mountains, like an autistic children's home you can ski over, clear to Tibet. White noise.