The Laundry Room Tango

a work in progress by Aaron Louie

God

The curtains closed again, the light from the sodium street lamps outside casting a sallow pink mist into a space known by most as the Blythe Port Trailer Park and to an unfortunate few as home. The two inches left between the hanging ripples of flaking white rubber-backed woven polyester palisade reluctantly let pass this pallid puce guest into one such disheveled residence. a tethered ferret, a porcelain garage sale relic, and a breakfast cereal-infested stack of newspapers, junkmail, and ignored bills teetered unseemly atop a pop-out table. In the center of this depressing couch of neglect lay the resting lump of God.

God, in all his tambourine days and harmonica nights, was, excepting for the pet ferret and a half-eaten box of Oreos, utterly alone. Being shortish, lumpish, and catasrophically untrustworthy, this was not a surprising fact. The street urchins of Valhalla would watch him each morning, emptying his thermos of day-old coffee onto the mutant petunias to the left of his door, twisted and malformed by generations of poorly brewed too weak or too strong or too cold or too hot or too grainy cacao bean extract, never escaping the daily rain of brown, until, after seeming eons of torturous sleepless nights, could not seem to exist without it. The hands of God weaved in and out of the rust-scented stream of garden-hose water, ready to tackle yet another day of futile dreams of world domination.

S. J. The Ferret smiled in her captivity, welcoming the new morning as one greets a great pleasure cruiser from the starving shores of a desert isle. To be the sole companion of the ruler of this great palace, where milk flowed from the ice cold springs of the refrigerator and honey flavored tidbits of golden crunchy nuggets were to be found in every corner, was a luxury unknown by any other mammal in the universe.

God finished his morning ritual and untied S. J. The Ferret from the bedpost. "Come, beloved," said he, "we have things to do."

Affixing a rhinestone-studded leash to S. J.'s nylon collar and dragging her, half-choking, into the smoggy morning starlight, God stepped into the soggy graveled walk between the dilapidated hulks of avocado and white trailers, searching for the street. S. J. looked at him questioningly, dodging the gargantuan feet of God as he lumbered toward the park entrance. God spread his arms like great, hairy wings and yawned massively, releasing a noxious cloud of coffee-scented morning breath.

"Know what we're gonna do today, Surly Jessica (for that was her full name), my one and only?" God scratched his belly oafishly. The ferret wagged her undulating body in incoherent gaity. "We're gonna find me a job." He halted in the middle of the sidewalk, gesturing to the early morning trafficless Valhalla streets with pudgy, sticky hands. "Somewhere in this city, my sweet, someone very lucky is going to hire me to do their most important work. Someone very lucky, indeed." S. J. inspected a decaying beetle carcass. Her bandit whiskered nose twitched in ecstasy. God yanked her off her feet and pantingly galumphed into the street. "It's a frickin' new day for me, my lovechild," he wheezed, "I'm turning over a frickin' new stone, yes, very lucky, indeed."

What little traffic roamed the early morning streets halted impatiently as God waddled across the boulevard. The driver of the Valhalla Camping Supplies Home Delivery Service van leaned on his horn. The secretary of the CEO of Jonco & Matco & Co. revved the four-cylinder engine of her sedan, frickin' this and frickin' that. Mr. Ikalam in his $700 station wagon leaned his bald head out of his permanently-open driver's side window and flipped God off in seven different languages. God noticed none of this, of course, oblivious as usual to all others but those in his head. Jesus Christ, who was God's son, obviously, was saying something completely inappropriate to the Holy Ghost, who was always drifting in and out of a tiny keyhole somewhere between and a little behind God's nostrils. "You getting all this?" said God to the archangel. Gabriel glowed a very soothing pinkish color and sang a little ditty that sounded very like a children's playground taunt, embellished with Lucifer's exceptional orchestral accompaniment. Jesus Christ, who tended to be a brat, took over and kicked Luke in the gonads, causing the violins to play something in D minor while the brass section started in on a ragtime jig. Gabriel suddenly started throbbing neon yellow and electric blue, trilling in an annoyingly high voice.

Mr. Joe Hassen the paramedic grabbed God's limp arm and dragged him onto the sidewalk with the help of fourteen other police officers and paramedics, dodging the ferocious snapping jaws of Surly Jessie the Ferret, who was eventually allowed to accompany her massive master to the cardiac unit.

"Jesus Christ!" Hassen groaned, straining until the vast network of bluish veins bulged from his temples. With one final push, the gurney slid into the ambulance, whose muffler hovered dangerously close to the pavement. Joe the paramedic, the part-time department store catalog model, the terminally opressed, the bored, strapped God into place, checking his now feeble pulse.

"Just take it easy, Mister Godfrey. We'll take care of your ferret."

Galileo

LouAnne Medula held her coffee cup gingerly, as if it were the wrist of a feather-light child, which she grasped just between her fingertips to feel its pulse. Spirals of steam raced in arcs across the surface of the charred liquid where her breath blew soft from her nostrils over the cauldron's lip, sending chaotic microscopic typhoons spinning. If only she could spend her life staring into that ocean. She set down her coffee and aligned it perfectly with the monitor and the pile of papers on her desk. She placed her pen alongside it. Like a knife and spoon. Little table setting.

The phone rang. She grabbed the pen and a small notepad.

"Hello, Jonco, Matco, and Company, Legal and Rights of Way Department, this is LouAnne. How may I direct your call?" Pen poised.

"Yeah, Lou, this uh--this is Tom down in the uh--mailroom." She wrote two words. Oh, Tom. How little they know of you down in the mailroom. What you are behind the doors at the Hotel Galileo. In the basement, in the mailroom, no one knows. I wonder if his wife knows. At the hotel, Tom is in charge. Not an errand boy anymore. I wonder.

"Hey, Tom! How's the wife and kid?" Make small talk, give him something to work off of.

"Yeah, uh--good. Lissen, Lou, I got this uh--suspicious lookin' package down here for Mister Tarsus. What's the uh--policy on such matters?" Hope I can remember all this. I wonder if all this security is necessary. No, his wife probably has no clue.

"Well, Tom, the official policy on parcels that may be bombs, poisonous foods, intoxicating beverages and the like are deferred to security, where I think Pedro is the man you're looking for." She ran her hand through her hair, trying to appear casual to nobody in particular.

"Arright, Lou. We still on for uh--Friday night?" Okay. End of transmission.

"Yep, 9pm at the usual place. See you, Tom." The Hotel Galileo being the usual.

"Take care, Lou. Bye now."

"Wait. Wait, Tom." LouAnne ran her hand through her hair once more. "Tom, is this going to be like uh... last time? Do I need to... uh... dress up?" Silence on the other end.

"Tom?" LouAnne whispered.

"Uh... no. No. Informal this time. See ya." Click. LouAnne read the page she had been writing on. Remember cipher. Had to memorize without reading.

Tom had said "This-mailroom-good-suspicious-policy-Friday". She had answered "last-dress". He had answered "no". Or was it "know"? I wonder if anyone -- the FBI, the CIA, the conspiracy theorists -- knew what Tom had said. LouAnne smiled to herself. Only me and eleven others on this planet could have translated what Tom said. Tom down in the mailroom.

Auntie Koon

Fu's Grocer, open for business for about two hours now, proudly displayed its hand written signs on flattened corrugated cardboard boxes, taped to the inside surface of the storefront windows, just above the innumerable bins of myriad vegetables, dried goods, and squirming contraband exotic animals.

SHOP CLOSE TO 9 AM
COME BACK 9 AM
NOT OPEN AFTER 11 PM
CLEAN SHRIMP FRY OR FRESH
1.99 CENT PER POUND
WEAR CLOTHES

Ms. Fu, an upbeat elderly Chinese woman, pretended to write in her ledger, watching her customers over the rims of her reading glasses. The glasses, attached to her neck by a dime store chain, pinched her button nose, which now flared in anticipation of a confrontation. A little half-breed Asian punk was strolling through the aisles, knocking over displays, opening boxes, littering the freshly mopped floor with empty pistachio shells. Ms. Fu trembled with rage, hand hovering over the phone, index finger on the speed dial button for the Vahalla police station. If she could only get a good look at the little miscreant. . .

He emerged from among the towering rows of seaweed and bean curd, squeaking the black soles of his bargain-bin shoes across the tile, admiring the greyish streaks trailing behind him. Ms. Fu finally snatched a glimpse of his bemused grin. She knew that mischevious, crooked smile. He looked up at her and waved excitedly, sending a basket of haw flakes spinning to the floor.

"Hiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeee, Auntie Koooooooonnnn!!" he sang from the far side of the store.

"ah-Levi!! You always such a bad boy!!" Ms. Fu called across the room. "Where you mother?!?" Levi shrugged his shoulders like an ape and danced off into the back room, barely avoiding dismemberment by a rank of garden rakes and pruning saws. He danced back out a few seconds later.

"Nope. Not there!" Levi gamboled through each aisle, squeaking his shoes with every step. After scanning the entire store in this fashion, he sauntered in front of the cash register and hopped in place.

"I-yai-yai-yai (thump) ca-ya-ya-yan't (thump) fi-yai-yai-yai-yaind her-err-err-errr (thump)" Auntie Koon was about to lose a nephew. She breathed tensely through her flared nostrils and counted to twenty forwards and backwards, first in Cantonese, then in Mandarin, then in English.

Suddenly, Levi's exasperated mother crashed through the door, hauling six large plastic bags full of garment-district-factory-outlet-store clothes, useless trinkets from the bazaar, sourdough bread, frozen fish, and several pink boxes that undoubtedly held leukwarm dim sum pastries from that greasy spoon next door. "Hiiiiiiiiiiieeeeee!! How are you Auntie Koon?" she sang from the door and smiled at Ms. Fu until her eyeballs disappeared. Mrs. Ning trotted behind the counter and dropped her bags to give Ms. Fu a stifling hug.

"How you, Anna?" Ms. Fu said cordially, supressing the urge to run screaming out into the crowded street as Levi violently poked at the keys on the cash register. Mrs. Ning grabbed Levi by the arm and hissed into her son's ear.

"Stop that! Stop that now, or your father will hear about it! Now go sit down!" Levi sulked around to the other side of the counter, and Anna turned back to Ms Fu.

"Oh, just wonderful!" Anna Ning lied, trying to avoid mentioning her impossible son, who was now disassembling a cardboard display of key chains. "I just made a great buy on Chinese Christmas cards in my favorite stationary store in Chinatown!"

"That good, that good," Ms. Fu also lied.

They continued to make small lies in this manner, back and forth, with Ms. Fu restraining herself from mentioning Levi and Mrs. Ning attempting to win Auntie Koon's respect by acting like the perfect Chinese wife, although she was obviously an all-white cowgirl from rural Idaho. Ms. Fu's disdain for Mrs. Ning's constant ass-kissing was even greater than her annoyance of Levi, who would probably grow up to be just as messed up as his parents.

Meanwhile, Levi succeeded in destroying the entire store, at which point Ms. Fu suffered a minor stroke and was taken to the hospital. Levi was also transported to the emergency room shortly after, after careening into a strategically placed cleaver display.

God watched the cracks in the ceiling as the walls slid around him, not seeing tiles or flourescent light tubes in their crystal facet plastic cages. He only saw bleak white and heard the counsel of the archangels and the music of the host of heaven. A multitude of voices, which spoke to him, all at once, in a fuguical cacophany of conversation. Lucifer's voice rose above the din.

"Try not to think too much," he sang singsongingly, "or else, at any moment, red corrugated steel and yellow plastic cascade into the spaces between your knees and, before you know it, before you can stop it, the mumble of autumn has blown out blues into grays and..."

"Where is my beloved?" interrupted God. "Where is the breeze going when it knocks those wispy threads across her brow and nose? Whence from did come this squiggled visitor to my death white domain?"

"There," soothed Lucifer, "behind glass. Behind her impenetrable yet translucent cage is your beloved, flanked by plates and plates of glass. So many colors." With each phrase which bubbled from the Morningstar's lips, the choreographed drill of the multitudinous retinal angels split and weaved and spun in response, the greatest marching band ever assembled. God smiled and extended his right hand to each one as they flashed past, quick as light.

"If I made it my occupation," said God, "to create such works, would they hang about this window, framing her with shine glisten twinkle which catch the eye which... what the devil?" God paused as a vision interrupted his paradise.

"Here now," said Lucifer, "is a ship of plastic fools, white coats spattered with red paint and other horrifying hues, spilled about the hull, which is half sunk in its own leavings." Just then, the double doors swung wide, and cut off the music of heaven. A curtain was pulled, and the lights dimmed. God was asleep in the hospital of Valhalla, and the nurses and the doctors and the orderlies went about their business, wheeling gurneys, folding blankets, pricking skin with tungsten needles, draining blood, replacing blood, filling veins with clear liquid in gelating bags, putting on and taking off their rubber gloves, washing sweat and powder encrusted hands with pungent medical soap, squeaking white soled comfort shoes on white tiled floors, and with soft voices stat creaking bearings on crash carts stat whining curtains strained in their tracks stat patient patients waited for an answer.

There in the lobby sat an old old lady, tending to her old old man. With every word she said he scooted further further down into his slump. With a bittersweet expression for the numbness shoulders down, he watched her tongue slid over her teeth, deep into her throat where once long ago he had been. Remember that one time when she took you in, he thought, how bitter, how sweet? Now she could form words about your entire body and nothing would feel so bitter as the lack and the time scooting further further down.

She told him about the little ones, the seeds which, without him, live happy doldrum lives. Without him, the sky too lived, but dimmed every tick, and she formed the words with each memory and he thought only of the slump. Where is your taste now, old man, he said to himself. I can at least move my hand to touch my thigh.

Ha! I am not dead yet, thought God, elsewhere. I am not dead, but what of my beloved? Where is my beloved?