Fools

By Kol

All anyone wants is to be read like a page-turneropened, flipped through, enjoyed. People want to be connected with, used, loved, if only privately by an exclusive person or set of people. We want to be read like books because we write ourselves like books; narratives of character, theme, plot. And we read ourselves, too, what weve written in our minds.

Its scary, says Ana; her brow coldly sweats.

Imagine its a dreamscape, I say, squinching. The trees are sleepwalkers. They sway and breathe. Their canopies are the umbragical skulls of scatterbrained giants.

from Fools

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 15, 2012
• ISBN: 9781479742172

Book preview

Copyright © 2012 by K• ol.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012920410

ISBN: Hardcover 978-1-4797-4216-5

Softcover 978-1-4797-4215-8

Ebook 978-1-4797-4217-2

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Rev. date: 02/23/2013

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

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120838

Contents

6581

Spiel One

6397

6427

Spiel Two

6469

6481

6491

6529

6551

6553

656⁹J⁹

6571

6577

Spiel Three

658¹⁴²

6599

Epilogue

Musings, Cadenzas, Pornographies and Philosophical Ramblings

Journal

Christopher

Ana

Bami

Hodge

Hannah

The Garden

Carnival: An Act of Parallel Processing

"Take this kiss upon the brow!

And, in parting from you now,

Thus much let me avow—

You are not wrong, who deem

That my days have been a dream."

—Poe

6581

Mother says it plainly . . . something about Savannah. I drop the pen where the denim wrinkles on the upper left thigh, which I assign the human quality of a deeply furrowed brow. The pen rolls back and forth—once, twice, like a pendulum.

Young, beautifully haunting, she spellbinds me—her son, her unsuspecting audience—with the cryptic eloquence of her abrupt simplicity. Having spoken, she disconnects as if we have nothing else to talk about; so I rehearse her statement, not what she says, but how she says it, something of an interjection, but easily, almost casual, like the random escape of a subconscious idea. It’s how she takes me unawares, in the way of gunshots, advancing on my world even as she retreats into her own; and it’s how, once returned to herself, she stares into the distance.

What’s that? I ask, blinking.

It’s hard to hear the simple things. Mother’s voice echoes through me, and although it resonates like a song, it does so wordlessly, humming a tune that’s catchier than the lyrics. She swings on a porch swing, and as she drapes forward, a golden stab of lamplight reveals her far eye, ring-of-sapphire, spotlighted in the dark of her face. Her motion, swayful, becomes the stroke of an old bell—tongueless, as I forge it—ringing in the ruins of a clock tower; the tricks of a wind sound the hauntings of its chime. I look to her because she might speak again, preferring to watch her lips when they mouth her words, to read them like captions, but she stares through me, or over a sweep of matter, onto the next thought while I’m still lost in sixty seconds ago.

Savannah, I think she says.

Yea? I ask. What about it?

The fair, I assume she says. She says something about the fair.

Laissez-faire? Savoir-faire? Farewell? I ask. Or do you mean carnival?

From elsewhere, she speaks. My dream.

Are you listening? I ask. I dropped out of school. I bought a one-way ticket to Lima.

Mother isn’t here right now. The wind blows through her hair, and she observes her winter breath; while deeply I inhale, flaring nostrils in the cool dead of February.

Carnival, says a voice. What to do about carnival?

Another asks: What about Bami and Ana?

Visualizing first Ana, her smile, then Bami, his grin, I look them in the eyes, and say: I can lie like you can now.

Plucking the pen from the lap, and applying it to my unlined journal, I scrawl letters into words that scratch over paper, each sentence punctuated by a long and vacant pause. Wantingly, I write.J1

Spiel One

6397

This moment is a juncture of minds. I reread the italics and close the schoolbook, thumbing at its deckle edge as I lean back in the desk chair. My thoughts blur musingly, looking left, right, through the windows, to either side of Lafayette Square.

I spin round, tapping the schoolbook on a thigh as I inspect the Room for Improvement, recently rearranged. The harpsichord—a sort of keyboard playing at a piano—now centers the back wall, and bookshelves sideline the flanks; in each corner roosts a wingback chair, perched there like large birds of prey. The desk behind me clutters with pens and doodles, its length jammed into the width between two window frames. Above it, nailed to the white-brick wall, hangs an upside-down world map, titled: Perspective.

Bami? I ask, through the door, startled by the metallic clamor of kitchenware.

It isn’t me.

You just told me it’s you.

Don’t tell me you’re stupid, he says. "I said it isn’t me."

Right, I say, as Hodge, my twin, appears in the doorway, peeking into the dining hall.

The implication of the voice contradicts the explication of its statement, says Hodge, methodically, so his words don’t jumble up. I don’t believe we phished a pirate.

Yes, it’s obviously Bami, I say, as Hodge gumshoes down the hall.

The garden plays a song, and when aromas cook up, I waft into the kitchen, narrow and rectangular, dodging Bami as he whips about and forages for breakfast items; still wearing his backpack, he oils pans, invents recipes and estimates measurements all slapdash. In the bathroom, through the widely open door, Hodge grips a novel close to his face, squinting in the dim light. He has no idea that he is standing at the toilet reading a book with his penis hanging out, tucked over the lip of his boxers. Hodge has no idea because he forgets himself.

Proofread my paper, says Bami, jabbing me with a folder.

Sure, I say, cutting across the kitchen and into the living room. The front door is open and I stand in the doorsill, wiggling the toes over pavement as pedestrians drop off snippets of conversation, their volumes drowned out by the frequency of motorcars.

It’s August in Savannah, and I perspire in the unnatural heat of sunrise. A breeze, light and warm, blows cool as it tousles the hair. Breathing deep, I grin involuntarily, a smile which, accentuated by my low and quaking laughter, is widened by a much deeper breath that yawns, so that I stretch out the arms and bearhug the day.

Excellent, I mouth, refreshed, waking up early after nights drinking late. I feel like the night owl who gets the worm.

I wipe the forehead, flick off the early-morning sweat and stroll half a block down Abercorn Street. Across Lafayette, the Cathedral of St. John towers high above the foliage, and the elderly gather on the front steps, gossiping before daily mass. Cupping a handful of water from the public fountain, crisp and splashing, I dig out the sleep, walking circles around the square. Streets feed into and wind around it like a large traffic rotary, or the quads that center small college campuses—used for recreating outdoors, and as village greens for social functions: weddings, luncheons and impromptu gatherings. Outlined by the high-rise of old mansions and townhomes, there are no horizons to speak of but for the escape of roads into the spaces between buildings, passageways that lead to other grassy commons.

Savannah’s squares are orderly scenes of constant locomotion, but illustrate a sylvan quality foreign to most downtown settings, reminding me of those weird silences while walking in the woods, when it is dusk and there are shadows.

Lafayette itself is light and shady beneath its arbor ceiling of oak leaf, tree limb, and Spanish moss. Here is a city in the underbrush, everywhere water-colored with beige, brick, and the deep-vivid forestry of greens and browns; where the colors are dream-quality, as if intensified by an incorporate darkness. Chewing on it, searching for that elusive sense of white, I discover it to be physically imperceptible; rather, detected in how the scenery reacts with the atmosphere, seen in the lighting, in the air.

Nearly half a foot over six feet, Bami crosses into the square, shouldering a tray with the veteran ease of a cocktail waiter. He chews on a pancake, whole, his cheeks squirrely and puffed with excess, and smiles outrageously, moving into the crumble that dribbles from his mouth.

He is a specimen of lean magnitude, and his footsteps fall softer than snow, melting into the ground like snowflakes on a warm and out-stuck tongue. He walks with an athletic bounce, ever directional, swift and lengthy, almost bobbing on the balls of his feet; it’s as if each stride is an act of defiance against gravity, so that one suspects he might break into a moonhop down the sidewalk, or take to the air to cross a busy road.

Bami snaps his fingers where he taps them against his thigh, directing me, with his gaze, to the point of its fixity—an attractive woman filing up Abercorn, passing through Lafayette.

Bright with sex, he smiles unabashedly, but she is a deflector, blushing as she counts her own footsteps; perhaps she thinks that her shoes require attention, the shoestrings loose and dragging on the brick; but no, they are heels she wears, not shoes, although there might be a scuff in the polish; now checking her blouse for wrinkles, then rummaging her waistline, sucking in, tucking her shirttail in tight and form-fitting. The while Bami stares, aware of how he unnerves her with his uncommon penetration, teasing the sensibilities of the criminally sane.

Sex on heels, he says, as she passes. He sucks through his teeth.

Or is it hell on wheels? I ask. It looks like she’s getting away.

She’ll be back, he says. Planet Earth is a gnarly spheroid.

I laugh. The Earth may be spheroidal, but illusions make the world go round.

Bami, however, has diverted his attention to the Suites on Lafayette, where Mother sits on the balcony above the Garden apartment.

Your mom is a goddess, he says, casually informative.

She doesn’t know you exist.

Come on, she knows, he says, confident in this knowledge.

No, I say, considering it. I don’t think so.

And laughing, I ask: I don’t want you to think these things bother me, as I’m purely curious, but would you dislike it if I broke into your house every morning, left the door open, ate your food and cooked breakfast for your mom?

"Oh, right, I say. I always . . . I forgot."

Forget it, he says, waving me off.

Yea, but circumstantially, that was borderline distasteful.

Don’t bewilder me with Oliver Twist, he says. I’m absurdly rich.

Abruptly, Bami cuts through the square, trots up the front steps and enters the Suites; he picks the lock to Mother’s apartment and ducks onto the balcony through a tall, single-hung window. Curtains billow out after him, and he sets breakfast for two, talking and eating while she stares off; cold but blissful, perceptive yet nonresponsive.

Tybee? I ask Hodge, as he joins me at the fountain.

I prefer not to skip school today, he says.

The beach will be empty, I say, dangling the words as if selling a vacation.

Why do you hate school? he asks.

Because the formal education system is starving, I say. Teachers will eat your brains.

Our teachers are zombies? he asks.

Yes, I say. If you think you’re prepared for zombies, you aren’t prepared for zombies. But come to think of it, what if you had a reason to skip school?

I don’t have a reason, says Hodge.

Wait, you don’t know?! There’s a lecture on quantum mechanics today at Tybee. I jump up and pat around the pockets, feeling for car keys. It starts at nine on the pier! Let’s go!

"Liquid crystal! he says excitedly, but shows the evidence of indecision, weighing the pros and cons of either/or. Excitement falling, he asks: James, are you spoofing me?"

Yes, I say.

He consults the sky. I’m going to school now.

But it’s only seven, I say.

He reads his watch. The position of the sun disproves the accuracy of my timepiece.

Dammit, you caught me, I say, laughing. I dialed it back an hour.

Why do you recursively infect me with malware? he asks.

Stop talking like you’re a computer.

Hodge frowns and walks to the car, waiting for Bami, who snags a pancake from Mother’s plate and folds it twice into a wedge. It drizzles with butter-freckled maple syrup, catching the drippage with his mouth as he waits for her to acknowledge his departure, but she doesn’t see him, and he hops off the balcony, driving off. Having nestled into the roots of a tree, I flip through my journal, reflecting on passages of who I am on other days; at times a person I recognize, at others, someone with whom I fail to identify. To my rear creeps a vehicle through the square, heard in the soft purr of its engine, and the report of tires over twigs and grass.

I conceal a grin when Bami pulls up beside me. No! I say, as he jumps out.

I juke like squirrels, suddenly run upon, but he picks me up and wrestles me into the passenger seat. A magazine falls onto the lap, which I toss back onto the dashboard.

Well, when you put it that way, I say, handing him his essay.

Now get out, he says, collating a sheaf of classy nudes: Renaissance paintings, Greek statues, Incan erotica. He holds up two printouts. Aphrodite of Milos or Headless Aphrodite?

The beheaded, I say.

Road rager, he says, ogling. Imagination trumps porn.

If you expected me not to come, then why did you force me in the car? I ask.

Because it was hilarious.

Actually, I’m coming, I say, barefoot. But I think I burned my shoes last night.

All of them, he says, laughing. It was butchery.

Rolling down the window, Bami smiles hugely at bystanders.

Check it, he says, "the sheep."

I know, I say, eyes downcast. Everyone is staring.

. . .

I believe you are draining my power supply, says Hodge, implying that I should sleep because just looking at me is making him tired. You need ten hours of power sleep per night for optimal cognitive processing.

You’re an analytical engine, I say, but I disagree, dropping the forehead to the table, drifting off, semiaware of erratic activity in and out of subconscious terrain.

This is a wakeup call! says Bami, slamming the table.

What the— I say, groggy-eyed.

Please tell me you napped through two lunches, he says, sitting.

I faceplant the tabletop, groaning.

Life’s so hard when you’re seventeen, he says, patting me on the back.

Wait, where’s your halfwit? I ask, glancing up.

"Johnny favors Court Jester, but you can call him Wizardly Quipster."

Hey, Shakespeare wrote, I say. He wants his fool back.

Don’t hate me because I’m a visionary, says Bami. But wake up, because the new girls are certified vintage.

New girls? I ask.

Come on, you solitaire, join the social curve, he says. I swear you’re a prokaryote.

Untrue.

And by prokaryote I meant faggot.

Also untrue.

"Specify one time you gave a damn for a girl," he says.

Asha Greyjoy.

Not applicable.

How come? I ask.

Because Asha Greyjoy is a fictional character.

How do you know?

"Because her name is Asha-fucking-Greyjoy."

Fine, but don’t let her fictional qualities undermine her realness, I say, frowning. It doesn’t change how I feel about her.

Let’s hear it, real girls.

Joelle van Dyne and Holly Golightly.

One, they’re mine, he says. Two, not fucking applicable.

Fine, Lili. She’s the real mean reds.

Come on, you’re inventing first names.

Amanda.

Sex isn’t giving a damn, he says, impatiently.

It is, kind of . . . if you give her a damming?

Buttfuck it, he says. You don’t give a damn for games, girls—nothing.

No, I do, I say.

Don’t you dare say Lady Montagu, he says. I told you, she’s mine.

Bami looks around the cafeteria and clucks his tongue.

Hannah Warlock, he says. The furtive minx, check her checking you out.

I don’t know, I say. She’s too innocent.

"Fuck-ably innocent," he says, looking to where she hunches over a book in the corner, hyperextending her double-jointed elbows, sitting on her hands. A mane of caramel locks tangles about her face—attractive in that racy, provocative charm that naivety exudes when the naïve person is sexually stimulating.

Hannah, I think; reclusive actor, renowned bookworm, notoriously indefinite.

Bami laughs. "Big tits, bookish bedroom eyes, and that hourglass waist—mmm, look at it. Better than a fucking corset."

Does Johnny know you dream-boff his sister? I ask.

Ruin her or I will ruin her in your name, he says.

By ruin do you mean deflower? I ask. I’m not—

"I will ruin her in your name," he says.

Okay, I know what you’re talking about, but I have no idea what you’re trying to say.

Basically, you don’t want to know, he says. "But I like the sound of christen. He subtitles the air with hands like revelation: The Christener."

Yea, no, I don’t know what you’re talking about.

"Sex, he says, as the bell rings. Don’t miss English or I’ll sick Mrs. Ramblin on you."

That’s a terrible idea, I say. She’ll petition for my expulsion again.

He thinks about it. "No, rewind, do miss English—because that was cinematic."

. . .

But I’m the night owl who gets the worm! I say, escorted briskly out of the cafeteria.

Mrs. Ramblin steers me into the front office and commands me to sit as she confers with the secretary. She takes a seat beside me and crosses her legs, convinced I’m high on marijuana. Irresistibly, I laugh to myself, to which she glares.

Mrs. Ramblin, I say, for the hell of it.

"The b is silent, she hisses. Silent."

So you’re not a Ramblin’ man? I ask.

Silent! Silent B!

"Oh, silent bee, I say. Like, without the bzzzzzzz."

God help you, boy, the rot that comes from out your mouth. It makes me believe, no, no, it benumbs me to wonder why you don’t fail.

Where’s the rest of our class? I ask.

You content yourself now with you and me.

"Okay, but I’m trying to understand what’s happening here. You abandoned your classroom because I was missing and went out in search of me. Why? It wasn’t to bring me back to the flock, to speak your language, or else we’d be in class, learning, instead of in the office. It’s more like you want to expel me from the flock. Do you have it out for me? And if so, why? I’m not trying to piss you off. I’m not going out of my way to disrespect you. And I wasn’t sleeping in the cafeteria because I’m high on marijuana. Although, I am messed up on sleeplessness and an excess of verisimilar drugs: like thinking, and related misuses of the brain.

"This is about that persuasive speech you assigned last year. Let me off this once and I’ll write an essay in defense of religion and deliver it to the class. I’m not saying I’ll believe it, but neither am I saying that I believed what I promulgated last year. It was an assignment. I didn’t mean to turn anyone into an atheist, as I’m agnostic myself; well, ignostic, but agnostic in general, as I don’t have a point of view. I mean, I do—but I’d never let on. As for my speech, I contended against religion because my argument was logically probable, highly controversial, and liable to make people think. I thought it was fair to present both sides of the issue, or is fair and balanced news just a catchphrase you people use?"

She glares, and I say: "Jk-joking! Funny. That was a funny."

I aimed to save you, she says, looking me over with prudence, the face of conservative disgust. I aimed to show you God’s way. We’re all called to lead a meaningful life on this earth. The problem with you godless folk is you ask so many questions you don’t know how to ask for answers.

I stand and pace. If I understand you correctly, your definition of godless is happiness without a cause. Why? Life is absurd. Absurdities without explanations are like random, causeless pleasures—they feel good, and they make you laugh, but you can’t say why. Besides, if parents wanted to be like God, they would let their children do what they wanted. That goes for teachers, too. God gave us free will, right? To figure life out for ourselves? But you Abrahamic caregivers go out of your way to be unlike God. Why not present children with two slabs of stone inscribed with ten commandments and abandon them to free will? You do want to emulate God, right, as he’s the moral apex, or so I hear? Oh, and I have a question: Do you ever feel as if he is simply observing us? You know, that God is a people-watcher or something?

Mrs. Ramblin speaks, is speaking, has spoken. After a silence, she concludes: God doesn’t lead a horse to water and not allow it to eat its fruit.

Wait, what?! I ask. Why is there fruit in the water? Is the horse bobbing for apples?

Clearly you haven’t been touched by Jesus.

"Actually, Jesus dandled me chastely on his knee, once. Well, to clarify, it was a priest named Jesus—Jesús if you translate it to the Mexican."

Mrs. Ramblin crosses her arms, making it apparent that she doesn’t negotiate with high school terrorists of the irreligious variety.

All kidding aside, I know you think I’m a heathen, but that’s not what I’m after. I don’t think I’m privileged, special, above your command or any such probable misconception. I just, I don’t know, it’s the system. School’s difficult.

James Christopher, says the secretary. Mr. Naps will see you now.

Opening the door to the back offices, I turn to Mrs. Ramblin, pronounce her name properly, and say: I do want to believe in something, but I won’t make it easy for myself.

The principal closes the door and speaks at length until I headnod, sitting me back in the front office. You’re a bright young man, he says. You think about that in detention.

I’m pacing, thinking, wondering what I’m not doing and why I’m not doing it when a girl enters the front office. Redness flashes and I am brutally introduced to the headfuck moment of: To take one’s breath away. It’s the aha! experience of a cliché, when it clicks for the first time. And I try to catch my breath, breathe—staring because she’s holding open the door to the back offices, paused there, likewise staring; but reality plays us and suddenly it’s double time, moving through each other in a whirligig of impressions. Then pacing more fiercely I gesticulate and swear in repetitive malfunction: what the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck. Spellbound by an incantation of mechanical overload, that of dysfunctional technologies, I smoke like short-circuit. Wetted computer chips. Coffee on the circuit board. Mindless F4. The while repeating: what the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck.

Okay, I say, exhaling slowly, closing the eyes in order to visualize the qualia of her features. I picture her eyeful smile, but the rest of her eludes me like the contents of a dream.

The rest of her, I think, as if the whole consists in the remainder.

Abdominally I breathe as the munchiest sensation starves me, fully gastric, as if a host of minified bakers are frantically whisking batter in the hollow of my vacuum.

"The butterflies, I say, naming the sensation. We meet at last."

The secretary shushes me, disapproving of students who talk to themselves.

Do you know her name? I ask, pointing to the door. "That girl? No? Shit. Okay, she’s tall, right? With olive skin . . . and hair, she has dark brunette hair. What else will they need? Ah, yes. Her eyes are motes of hazel—muddy waters topped with lily pads."

"Wait, I tell myself. What is this? Fuck, what’s happening."

Emotionally incontinent, I pace. Abnormal behavior. I like abnormal. Yes, abnormal is good. Abnormal is out of the ordinary. Abnormal is new.

"The new girl!" I say, running out of the front office and up the main hall, drifting into a side hall, slamming into a row of lockers and exploding into English.

The new girl, I say, appealing to Bami. The tall brunette. What’s her name?

He smirks, and Mrs. Ramblin has me by the underarm carting me down the hall.

"Mrs. Ramblin, seriously. Let me go and I’ll recommend my own expulsion. Better yet, I won’t show up. Expulsion by default. Final terms? No? No?! What do you mean, no?!"

Mrs. Ramblin wheels me into the principal’s office, and I’m vis-à-vis with the tall brunette. Your name, I say. My expulsion is imminent, but tell me your name.

Ana, she says, smiling oddly, almost blushing.

I’m James, I say. But they call me Christopher.

Christopher, she says; her syllables sing like songbirds. I’ll call you Christopher.

"This might sound like a strange question, but do you spell your name with one n or two? I have to see it or I won’t know exactly