Visitors

            I knew they would come.

            A matter of time no doubt, they’d seen the promos, they’d monitored the charts, they knew the spots in the pond where the big fish lounged, and they bar-tended there part-time. They had always known the odds, knew the score before it flashed on the bottom-line, wrote the speech before it was given, passed the note when the teacher wasn’t looking. They didn’t even have teachers They we’re dialed in.

            The crazy fiends, every angle was covered, and I knew it purely.

            So when I heard the helicopter blades whooping in the depths of a dark Wednesday night, it was not surprise that took me, but some level of insult in that it had even taken so long in the first place. Fear played no part; I was the string in the instrument, my notes had already been written. All I had to do was play my hand. Look right and turn left.

            Cool water, deep meditations, freshly baked bread, soft sweet almond skin. A long sunset.

            I was snug in my Blue Room when the lights ripped through the soft screen of my many windows and the scream of hyper-sonic aircraft took refuge in my pores. I was watching the Price is Right, why not, you’ll either win or lose at that point. Might as well drop a few Plinko chips. Feel the air, the salt, the heat of the pavement, become absorbed in the tiny data that makes up the complex. The Price is Right is the perfect television show: brief character sketches, no backgrounds, sadness and joy mixed rapidly, girls in pretty dresses.

            Just before they arrived, 10:52 eastern, I heard from the sly flat-screen: “Tammy Edwards, come on down. You’re the next contestant on the Price is Right.”

            And she came running down the aisle as they all will. Midwestern arms flailing, face red and flushed, Mickey Mouse sweater fitting her like the aluminum shell of a zeppelin.

            “Tammy!”

            Now hugging anyone she could get her hands on, this wonder, not heading to her designated podium in anything resembling a brisk pace. She’s looking around at the lights with a mix of confusion and wonder, it’s like she’s just been told a great secret, maybe the great secret, and it’s only hers to know for a few seconds. What to do with those moments?

            “Tammy, come on sweetheart.”

            She’s giddy, she’ll tell her grand-daughter about this moment at awkward family dinners. Many dinners. But after many years and many dinners and many stories, Tammy will die. The birthday cake will always stay in the freezer. At her funeral her friends and family, those few that remain, will recall this very moment themselves. Maybe she even knows it, somewhere deep in her heart, in her mind, that this event, this bit of luck, this moment where something other then what was planned occurred, much to her benefit, is writing her eulogy in real-time.

            “Tammy. Here we go, your almost there.”

            But for now Tammy is on television, those green hills and grey days are many moons away, so she’s milking it. Living in the moment: writing her memoir. She likes that Drew Carey knows her name, if even for just a day. I can see it on her face. Carey is saying her name for the world, letting the world know that yes, indeed, there is a Tammy Edwards, and god damn it, she’s coming down. Tammy from Minneapolis, close to bidders row now, everyone is still clapping, and what choice do they have? She needs to get there though; Drew Carey knows that time is a factor, that these things move on schedules. The lame horse won’t make the full trail.

            She finally makes it, still giddy, overwhelmed and caught in a true American experience. Tammy hit’s the tape in front of her yellow-bidding podium perfectly, right on spot, maybe a touch late, but we can deal with that in post. She’s center stage now, the camera loves her; nothing is random and God is real. She knows that this moment proves it.

            Carey, now visibly less tense, knowing he’s on time: “Tammy, you made it. Let’s see the next item up for bids, please.”

            Coming down from somewhere above stage are two iPads, with complementary Italian coverings, both a maroon color. Tammy has focused suddenly.

            Carey says: “Closest to the actual retail price without going over wins. Paul you’re going to die tonight.”

            That’s what he said. I pause it, go back and listen again. Clear as day. I light some candles. Then I rewind the tape and listen for a third time. Carey doesn’t mention my name.
            It’s been a long day, strange drops in barometric pressure, to much fish oil; anything could account for my quick double-hallucination. Maybe it’s nothing, I think, and there are easier ways to tell me anyway.

            Back to the game; shake it off. Chris with the pencil mustache and clearly low sex-drive bids nineteen-hundred. Whoa cowboy, way over, not a fan of electronics clearly.

            Stephanie from Colorado Springs is indecisive for a moment. She bites her bright red bottom lip and looks back to the audience behind her, hoping for an epiphany, giving the power to the people. They yell a lot of numbers at her, and hold up many different finger combinations, but it’s hard to discern anything concrete. Do they have skin in the game?

            She stutters five-hundred into the long thin microphone in front of her green podium. For two iPads Stephanie? The audience gasps then cackles. Terrible beasts.

            Suddenly it’s Tammy’s turn. No hesitation; completely composed. God explained to her the price of electronics a long time ago, before I was born, when anti-matter turned to matter, when lizards ate large multi-winged flies and breathed fire. Tammy says twelve hundred. Ice water.

            Candice from Reno is last. She blurts out two-hundred dollars. Whatever.

            “And the actual retail price is…..1249. Tammy, get up here!” Drew Carey stares through the camera and points at me directly. He’s either off-script now or perfectly on it, I can’t know for sure, but I think he says: “And you fucking heard me.”

            Then curtain comes up. Infectious flood-lighting blows into every inch of my virtual reality; my cocoon has been punctured. Twin futuristic Apaches show themselves from low-overhead. Fully armed. The gig is up, the fat is in the fire. I smash the whiskey bottle I’d been nursing into the wall and consider weeping. It occurs to me that there is always fear. In those first few moments, I wait for the smooth release of a snipers warm and effective bullet. The helicopter’s vibrate the entire house with a deep power that inspires holy men to lie and the pure to become baptized.

            Instead my door bell rings. Twice. Both in polite intervals. They had cut the power, but perhaps they had left a hot line for the bell. I can only assume. They have the angles covered.

            My guard was ripped away long ago. I dreamed of this night the day before I was born. I sleep next to a room that is empty and always will be, no matter where it really is that I sleep. The gutters are filled with pieces of paper that have my face on them and I use them as a soft cushion. All that is left to do is melt the wax and shape the candles.

            So I shuffle towards the front door, I know the path well, but the flood lighting has cracked open the chestnut and the virus is spreading. As I move towards the door I can see every picture that hangs on those walls. What they don’t know, those stalking me outside these walls, what they will never know, is that that I don’t need light to see them.

            I open the door and the sound is tremendous. They have men stationed at every one of my neighbor’s houses, but they all face me. I look at the two Google Mercenaries standing on my cluttered doorway. Its number two and number three, they don’t have numbers or nametags actually on, but I read the Rolling Stone growing up. Some things explain themselves.

            “So I didn’t quite hit the peak did I?” I hear myself say.

            They quickly exchange a glance that contains not an ounce of discernable emotion. Tightly pressed suits, concealed weapons, microphones, wondercoats of maxims infinity: possessors of depth. Sunglasses in the middle of the night. Lighthouses whose bulbs never burn out. Skeletons made of diamond bones.

            “We’ve heard some disturbing things,” Google Mercenary No. 2 says.

            “Very disturbing,” three mimes. Well, not quite mimes. He didn’t exactly repeat it.

            Then he says into his coat: “Don’t take the shot, yet.”

            “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say. Blades still whirling, pythons deep in sewers below us, hungry ones, lights in full bloom everywhere. Play dumb if you don’t know the rules.

            “A real crack up.”
            “Cracks me up.”

            “Laugh track not necessary.”
            “Dan Akroyd before the Berlin Wall.”

            “Cute, but I’ve seen better.”

            “I did laugh.”

            They go silent.

            Number two has my childhood teddy-bear hidden in that slick ensemble of his, and he produces it with a magician’s sly flash. Neither has broken eye-contact with me, not that I can actually see it, but I know.

            He takes Teddy (that was his name) and tosses him with a flick twenty-seven feet into the air above my house. Like highly trained Siberian vipers, a barrage of bullets hits the stuffed animal at every angle, right at the apex of the ascent. I watch as he’s torn to shreds, and white stuffing, decades old, begins to float down around us like light early fall snow.

            “You didn’t think we’d notice? Do you realize how long we’ve protected you?” Number three yells at me. He’s dropped his professionalism: it’s purely personal.

            I have a new bottle of whiskey in my hand, somehow, it just appeared. It’s half empty, but I pass it to him and he drinks it mightily. I think he might be crying.

            “Publishing on another site?” Number two is still on message, full of steel. There’s a reason he’s the second best. I am honored to be in his presence.

            “A cardinal sin. A shock to us all. A let down.”

            We stand in static. Moles stop burrowing below us, songbirds wake briefly and stare at us from short trimmed trees, mullet in the radioactive river and the deep chaste ocean on either side of us stop swimming and the moon holds in its rotation against gravity and god. The helicopters vanish, grapefruits start raining down around us, the flood lights go out. All that is now left in this void of motion are my Google Mercenaries, myself, a bottle of whiskey, an orange porch lamp and the eyes of nature. And they all focus on me. The world is silent. They want answers.

            “Will Tammy win?”

            Number three drops to his knees weeping, number two shakes his head glumly and with clear disapproval. I still haven’t gotten it, I still don’t deliver, I’m not ready for the spotlight. I’ll never make it; I don’t have it. They should have known.

            And with that they disappear, taking my whiskey bottle with them somehow, and I’m left alone again. The mullet resume swimming, those sweet songbirds go back to sleep and the moon rolls on again, fully unimpressed. Why would they be?

            After they mercenary team leaves, and I’m still standing in the doorway, dazed and directionless, all the lights in town go out. It’s more then a blackout and I know it.

            “I still need you,” I whisper, now to myself. It’s what I wanted to say in the first place. It is what I said. In front of me, for miles and miles the earth stretches on. True infinity. Pure distance. Stitches in wounds.

            I’ll never stop saying it, even when it’s never heard. Even if it’s not true.

            Choose your own adventure.