Every year, we pay homage to the hallowed summer as it rollicks down its Neoclassical arcade, conveying with it a coupe of carbonated sunlight and buffoonery by the bucketful. Throughout this tricolon of months, celebrants pipe sonatinas into flutes of nightly Dom Pérignon Brut Rose. Sweltering days strip naked of their blouses to expose their skin and breeze to the sea, the weed, the popsicle firecrackers liquefying on our fingers before takeoff. Comedian crickets uphold the social concourses in the deep twilights bookended by downsliding sunsets and sunrises that peak over the horizon like giant agnolotti pastas. Beyond the exosphere, constellations host rooftop parties; some guests arrive earlier, others later, but someone (probably Orion) brings the space-grass, and on such occasions, the sky is opaque with clouds.

           The carnival tents, depending on the weather, plume cerebral cockscomb in shape or decompose, erected to fumigate contagions. Unfound either in the wilds of a greenhouse or at the Winchester Mystery House, only are we reminded of civilization when a commuter train whistles along easterly rails. Employees living on the grounds may contract flesh-eating disease from rivalries in close quarters or develop familial friendships in what may be a viscid jar of pickled peaches, wherein all ferment with perspiration and sanguineous red 40. In this unprivate commune you learn to love those with whom you mock the world, not only for the characters they wear for work, but also for the identities who appear by Merlin’s magic after the closing of the amusement park gates.

           For a modest fellow like myself, vacation comprises the palatable swathes of Stanley Clarke in amber, honeybee static; Bill Hicks wrapped around cocktail wieners; Count Dracula besmeared in the face with sparkling punch; blue mystic in neatly-tied sheafs; Spaghetti Westerns, especially, on hot pocket nights.

Hour by hour, the pneuma of time transforms. Wednesday morning could be stacked with Thiebaud’s confections, while Friday evening might promise beer, oysters on the half shell, and laughing lemons1. The following Monday could lead you down into the twilight zone of the pavilion lights where you loiter around a simulacrum of Dogs Playing Poker. The moment you wake from somnolent sleep, you might be standing before raging callithumps of Storm Thorgerson’s bouncy balls, balloons, levitant eyeballs, or people hanging upside down by invisible yarns. You witness the adventures of strangers from miles away, though their voices miss your ears by mere inches.

          Believe it or not, Durante—Beelzebub—is beginning to like me. What I have learned during my stay at the Inferno is that kindness and compromise make the overlord somewhat less hellish. One week in May, it was raining harder than the storm on the Galilean Sea2, and as a result of the flash floods, Durante’s cousin, Luc, was unable to come over for the remainder of the month. Having taken notice of Durante’s melancholy and especial bitterness toward his less moneyed clients (including myself), I decided to purchase him some pastries from La Musa, arguably the best bakeshop in the city. Having sacrificed my dinner money, Durante taking his late smoke in the nearby park, I placed the doilied box on his desk and went to bed. The following morning, my landlord was sipping Oolong over a bombolone cioccolato and a zeppola, the box, by then, well broken-in. The single indication that Durante knew of my altruicity was an extra window fan that sat in a package at the foot of my door. Durante’s parsimony, however, persisted; the fan, too, was well broken-in.

          Last winter, I was able to pinch my entire savings account between my thumb and index finger. My unpromising emoluments made me fear the necessity to demote my lifestyle to the third floor. However, when Durante had seen how in a swivet I was, the fiend bargained that he would exempt me from rent under the condition that I permitted him free drinks at Monroe’s Paparazzo, the club at which I sing weeknights. Mr. Ruslan minds not at all about taking the Screaming Nazis out of my pay and tips, which leaves me bereft except for half a bologna sandwich to sustain me through my shifts. To muster bus money, I have to cut it close with my earnings at the comic book store (where I entertain myself with The Tick and Black Panther).

          Durante is nothing, if not a swindler that always gets George III’s share of a deal.

          And so, I dealt the deal. From one prison to the next.

          August is the month that climbs the fire escape onto my balcony, sits down on my lawn chair, and opens a can of Copenhagen tobacco, compelling me to spare a little more time for ruminating on the aggregate fruit—and strawberry rots—the loamy future farms. While the first flounces of cold trapeze their way through the warm winds that scout me here, my thoughts sidetrack to promising ideas tied with ribbon and lifelong insignificance.

          Most often I envision myself webbed in the center of a peculiar galaxy, sporting the fashion of a lost planet around which strangers of endless sorts come into orbit. Some are comets, and others, moons traveling in retrograde motion. Beyond these are moonlets and fleeting space rovers. A continuum of stars is farthest away, yet they pull me into their own massive collection of celestial objects. This model calls for a chaotic order at which Ptolemy would faint, yet there tends to be a singular body that frantically chases its own rings, unable to steady itself, ungraspable for the visuals overruling secondary school science textbooks.

         Summer, as I previously implied, owns a special niche in my spice cabinet where dwell sacrosanctities and the finer things. Sometimes, there are exceptions. Anomalous ill can slither its way into the cinnamon powder—the idylls in work and play—and despoil just about everything.

 

~

 

          Thursday, nine twenty-seven post meridiem, is most definitely a Dogs Playing Poker kind of night: cigars, Boneyard Pale Ale, Bicycles black and blue. An otiose fug bearhugs the pavilion and scumbles the string lights woven into the lattices of the pergola: a quintet occupies a picnic table and plays a betting round of cards. Each player fans a hand under his or her own exclusive scrutiny save for two, who share secretive messages through kicks underneath the bench. Predominant sound sources from the thwip of darts, hurled by two men in alternate turns at a target mounted to the side of the kitchen-house.

           At another table are myself and fortune teller Gianna, who currently determines whether my lottery tickets will earn me two dollars apiece or forty-five million. Adjacent me is Seany, sifting through the bundle of bills he had scammed out of many a denim pocket. At a third table, Candace, a face-painter, is contending in a drinking showdown against Brewer, the hulkiest strongman in the park. Evidently, by the manner with which             Candace polishes her fingernails, she is winning. Refereeing the contest is Louise, the transgendered Madame Harmonique.

          “Sorry, Wayne. Both are duds, I’m afraid,” Gianna declares after her thorough appraisal of my numbers.

          “Dammit!” I curse. The players cackle behind their cards. I could hear Rutherford and his apprentice, Dominic, howling from the kitchen while they prepare a caloric feast.

          “Better luck next time. Maybe you should have studied more,” Quidel says over his hearts and diamonds. Easy for him to say! Quidel is a bookkeeper during his summer off before enrolling in his first fall semester for university. Interning at an accounting firm is an objective of his before graduating.

           “Not everyone is smart enough to get accepted to Columbia,” I grumble.

Nari deals her turn in simultaneity with Rollo’s four successive taps on Quidel’s foot. The other two players, Chasca and Winnie, study the two young men’s deliberate expressions and begin to suspect an alliance.

           A dart-thrower whistles for me his sympathy.

          “Expenses: if only we could find a way out of life’s taxingness and our being taxed for living!” mourns Vardan, who sends the dart riffling into the bullseye. Besides taxes, Vardan’s versedness in escape could get him out of anything.

          “Tell us about it,” agrees just about everyone in the pavilion. Vardan’s opponent, whose turn brings him into the lead, makes for rigid competition.

          No one usually associates with mimes, especially clowns, but Fulbert is the greatest exception I am willing to make. His antic subtleties and interests in all the drama have established a place for the mime in my circle. What everyone thinks is pretty cool is the fact that he does his face paint like Gene Simmons, which accommodates for the fact that Fulbert never breaks character, even after the carnival closes.

          When Rollo shuffles his cards in wait of his own mischievous turn, Winnie whisks her lovely head in my direction and sticks out her tongue. I return a sarcastic glare as I dispose of the meaningless scratch numbers in a waste bin.

          Winnie and I have become friendly to the point of coquettishness, but both of us are hesitant to offer one another a date. Besides, my housing situation is not at all ideal for romance; Durante would never get over my bringing a model-like woman into the Inferno. On the other hand, Winnie still holds a tenuous relationship with her wealthy parents, who are adrently opposed to her preference for contortionism over criminal law. Their boyfriend standards do not deviate very much from the expectations they hold over their daughter.

          Dinner is almost ready. Conversations volumize in proportion to the aromas bloating the kitchen. People startle whenever a dart-thrower misses the target or Brewer coughs over a particularly scalding shot of whiskey; the massive man is rocking like a soporific sofa, whereas Candace, bubbly with Laffy Taffy giggles, kicks off her flip flops and proceeds to paint her toes. Louise sings a Beach Boys song with operatic overtones as she splashes water into Brewer’s face with an effort to defog his consciousness. Chasca, having given a triumphant guffaw at the picnic table, overthrows the plans of Rollo and Quidel, winning her the round and fifty-five dollars.

          When Rutherford rings the culinary bell with a cathedral campanologist’s wrist, everyone rises to help Dominic carry out trays of dinnerware, condiments, and the choicest, heart-stopping delights: triple decker, pub-style cheeseburgers, a convection of curly fries and onion rings, frankfurters, a vat of house salad, soft pretzels, corn on the cob, bacon-wrapped biscuits, buffalo tenders, and sodas. Rutherford himself bears his multi-platinum milkshakes—more hyperbolic than those at Manhattan’s Black Tap—before sitting down with the rest of us to dine.

          Engrossed in pepper jack and paunchy beef patties, I partake in topical gossip with Rollo, Winnie, Nari, and Gianna. Lamya, the lead archer, joins us after moving her targets into storage. Not many moments later come the dual Francis and Mr. Bugle, having finished packing away their instruments after a long day of soloing onstage. A humbled demeanor and hands in pockets indicate the shy presence of Francis.

           Along the way, Francis spots one of the carnival cats that scavenges more on fish sticks than it hunts mice. The teenager comes right down to his knees and rolls the ginger feline onto its back. I can hear it purr all the way from my table like a Mack truck as Francis scratches its bulbous, peach-fluff underside. It’s a real sight, that cat, because you would mistake the thing for a hybrid between a feather duster and a pumpkin that would qualify at a gourd weigh-off competition. Nevertheless, Stimpy is a friendly socialite and, of course, loves Francis best.

          Although teenagers, the congregation welcomes Francis and Mr. Bugle at outings and indulges them very often with the big scoop. Francis, our willing participant, is more of an auditor than a talker. Winnie scoots over to include Francis in the current discussion about an arriving act.

          “He’s a very famous daredevil, I think,” Nari comments.

          “Management says they have him on a one-month contract,” appends Gianna, finishing a pretzel. “His popularity will bring in a lot of money.”

          “I’ll be curious to see what his performances are like,” Rollo wonders, then grins. “Maybe The Sky is Falling will be his grand finale.”

          If the wooden roller coaster were not so frighteningly unstable, the rest of us would have commended the jester’s dark humor.

          The conversation shifts from the nebulous daredevil to another interesting case study by the name of Jansen. Jansen, who speaks with the worst stammer heard by anyone, has just turned twenty and refreshed his pyrotechnics license. He has worked here about a year before my arrival, but I must have seen the guy only a handful of times. Apparently, Jansen is always toiling away at tools and mechanical contraptions whenever he is not lighting up fireworks or performing hazardous fire tricks. Lamya pipes in,

          “Did you see Jansen’s new innovation yesterday? He converted a leaf blower into a functioning flamethrower! He demonstrated it to four dozen impressionable children.”

          I glance around the pavilion to make sure the pyrotechnician is not present. Deducing that he is hiding in his tent and cosseting all his flammables, I turn my attention back to my friends and divulge a long-stewing theory:

          “I may be a clown, folks, but I can put together jigsaw pieces in ways you’ve never known. According to my observations and what Lamya has just said about the leaf blower, I believe that Jansen is up to serious trouble.”

          My friends are amused by my tone of voice, but nevertheless intrigued.

         “Tell me, anybody: what was this week’s biggest scare?”

         Thoughtful replies:

         “When Chasca nearly messed up a client’s tattoo design?”

         “Millard’s ankle sprain?”

         “When the porta potties ran out of toilet paper?”

         “When Rutherford tricked us into thinking that he served us Seany?”

         Seany makes a noise at the opposite end of the bench. I roll my eyes.

         “A tent burned down Tuesday afternoon!”

         This, strange to say, is typical news.

         “A skee ball tent just an aisle away from the pavilion went up in flames. Someone was even playing the game when it combusted! The past burnings have not been anywhere close to public traffic. A culprit might be getting brazen on us.

         “Coincidentally, Jansen, the morning of that same Tuesday, was transporting a wagon full of fireworks to a storeroom at the end of the lane, just paces away from the targeted tent. I can’t be the only one who agrees that his inventions are becoming more advanced by the passing weeks.

          “Let’s think about it. Jansen is the only soul on these fairgrounds who knows how to handle fire, and have you ever noticed how stealthy he is? For safety’s sake, put a bell on him! Which is more, the guy can’t enunce a three-lettered word without choking on it! Could it only be his stammer, or is his sociopathic brain blueprinting our demise in the privacy of his tent?

          “In conclusion, we have a young man who cannot express himself through words, but through the immolation of tents in areas more and more crowded by each burning. If I had money on me, I would bet at this table right now that Jansen is our pyromaniac nuthouse: Smokey!”

          My listeners pause. Winnie, who gives her burger a thorough cavity check before taking a bite, is the first to laugh.

          “You are very convinced by this, Mr. Holmes!”

          “I assume you have counterevidence, Dr. Watson?”

          Rollo inserts, “I don’t really doubt it, to be honest…”

          Suddenly, Francis, immaterial for the prior fraction of the conversation, looks up from his Mount Fudgy milkshake and cocks his head to the side.

          “You have interesting observations, Wayne, but I don’t think they point to the person you’re suspecting.”

         We jump. Francis’ unfragmented statement could be analogous to finding the missing characters of an artifactual text.

          “Jansen likes to talk to me when I unrig,” Francis clarifies, squeamish. “His having a personality issue is possible, but he is not the type of person to burn down tents the way Smokey does. From what Mr. Bugle and I have witnessed, Smokey lights messy, uncontained fires in random places. The skee ball tent was jammed between a lot of other tents, so it was likely very easy for Smokey to hide and dispense an easy flare. Jansen would have had an agenda, a more methodical approach to burning which locations are most prominent.

          “I don’t believe Jansen to be our maniac. In fact, I think he is rather nice...I’ve given him speech advice a couple times. You have to let him finish what he wants to say.”

          Francis becomes more awkward, subdued, possibly, by Mr. Bugle’s fury of Amon shrieking inside their head. Casually, the adolescent slides his legs out from beneath the picnic table, still slurping his shake, and hurries off to play with Stimpy.

          I have a hunch that no one else at the table is anymore convinced.

 

~

 

          Dessert, Rutherford announces with a wink, is his new special, “Strawberry Surprise”. When Dominic reemerges from the kitchen with trays of what resemble grasshopper cupcakes, however, everyone furrows an eyebrow.

          “Where are the strawberries?” Brewer asks with maudlin sorrow, a weeping frog ready to hop out of his throat. Candace, who is in a less severe state of inebriation, kisses a lick of icing off her finger and snickers at her troubled friend. Rutherford, having overheard the universal confusion, bursts out of the kitchen with raised arms:

          “Surprise! There aren’t any strawberries!”

Some of us fall off the bench with hilarity while the rest either plant their faces in their hands or shrug away the irony and bare down on the mint-chocolate concoctions. Afterwards, Vardan, the traveling wine connoisseur that he is, brings out three bottles of chianti and we all play one of our favorite games, Tipsy Charades, which have us all wetting our pants. The best round is Brewer’s impersonation of Sonny the cuckoo bird, which we allow to continue for at most ten minutes until Candace spares Brewer another spastic jig across the picnic tables.

          Most depart from the pavilion by eleven thirty. Those remaining—the card-mongering quintet—bid me goodnight before I begin wending back to my tent. I, among the employees who works most days of the week at the carnival, have a place in which to reside. Whenever I have the following day off, I take the bus back to the Inferno to make sure Durante hasn’t taken another victim into his organized hell system in lieu of my absence. For fortune’s sake, I have yet another two weeks before I must repay Beelzebub another visit.

          Tomorrow would entail a Thorgerson afternoon of balloon sculpting and antics with Rollo and the stilt-walkers. There is also this mime that wanders around my station and constantly encloses me in an invisible box. Rutherford promised to fix me some artillery projectiles to repel this pestilence: cream pies adulterated with burrs and ghost peppers.

          That bastard is going to be sorry.

          ...

~

 

          The last Saturday in July is an Animal House party festooned with Silly String, water blasters, and tubs of cotton candy. Everywhere, tents are at risk of exploding mushroom clouds of people and plush. A large enough assembly of balloons looms above all else to successfully invade and conquer the state of Vermont. It is a miracle to see the grass at your shoes in the jungled legs and shorts and open-toed shoes.

          I happen to find solace in the quieter vicinity of the outdoor stage. Earlier in the day, Francis, Madame Harmonique, and a couple of Candace’s musicales held a jazz spectacular. The concert was popular among the middle-aged and older folks. Louise gave children her autograph. Now, only the dual instrumentalists strum and sing quietly to a tune’s skeletal lining, which they later tell me is “Long Gone Day3”:    

          (“Lord it's a storm and I'm heading to fall,

          these sins are mine and I've done wrong

          oh babe, come on down…Long Gone Day!

          Whoever said we wash away with the rain?

          See you all from time to time, isn't it so strange

          how far away we all are now? Am I the only one

          who remembers that summer? Oh, I remember,

          everyday each time the place was saved, the music

          that we made, the wind has carried all of that away…”)

          A minute passes before they resurface from a well of shared imagination and still their fingers. The teenagers stare a bit uncomfortably at my semi-costumed self. I feel too tired and famished to change.

         “I have a gift for you,” I announce. In one hand, I ostend a polka dotted balloon octopus. This design is one of which I am particularly proud; shades of light and dark orange with bulging white eyes and wacky pupils. Clear balloons trail away from the cephalopod’s eyes like bubbles. Francis expresses interest. My obvious dissenter wrinkles his nose.

          “I also have food,” I offer, motioning toward the warm paper bag, moist in some places with heat, in the acute angle of my arm. “Chinese cuisine…” One of the adolescents sighs. Another tries to hide their stomach’s loud outcry. Finally, by some unspoken agreement, they set the bass aside and invite me to sit cross-legged on the stage.

          Francis and Mr. Bugle have undergone significant changes from when they first rushed onto the carnival scene. They transformed from a marasmic, blemished urchin wearing tattered tennis shoes and and an overstretched sweater to a schizoid punk, maybe in a beautifully incongruous sense: athletic, all pierced and tatted up by Chasca’s design, colored contact lenses, wardrobe of band merchandise and showman’s clothes, bouquets of admirers, capable of roughing someone up, but also unusually equivocal in action and in words. Mr. Bugle probably wanted the rings and ink. In turn, the balanced, soft spoken Francis complements the eccentricity of his counterpart.

          Francis, I assume, assorts the little boxes of pork fried rice, gingery wontons, shrimp tempura, and General Tso's chicken while I adjust the blissful mess of my rainbow coiffure. I finish the setup by distributing chintzy utensils, duck and soy sauces in plastic cups, and a fortune cookie each. Francis retrieves sparkling lemonades from his cooler and we begin to feast.

          The meal commences in silence. We rarely share eye contact to avoid initiating conversation. Rather, we divert our eyes from one another with the tremendous amounts of litter that tie shoelace knots with the trodden grass. From where I sit, I bear witness to a slaughtering-floor of striped bags covered in their own amalgamated adipose tissue, looking not unlike buttered popcorn chunks; popped balloons, their strings matted around torn latex flesh; placental funnel cake sticky with raspberry sauce; yellow snow cone slush mistakable for piss; broken rose windows, which glisten in the shards of swirl lollipops; corn dogs drawn and quartered; a sporadic napkin fluttering like a browsing chickadee; soda cups, bendy straws erect and dripping grape artificials; teeth marks distinct on forgotten fudge bricks; an open can of magic jumping beans ticking against the tin; beside this, a polyester rabbit in wonder of where its owner has gone. All of the sudden, I witness a ghost of myself scavenging these grounds, clothed by dark of night and what outfit I had on my back. On those precipitating nights I would find such sad rejects as these.

          My eyes slide over Jell-Os in various molds, fallen everywhere, exploded bombshells. Suddenly, a movement is made by the body beside me; we glance, for the briefest second, at the same red clump of gelatin.

         “So, are you keeping your intake of elephant ears low? You don’t want them all to grow deaf, do you?” The adolescent asks with the authoritative tone of an eco-nutritionist. I whip my head toward the one speaking and hear him add,

          “Francis is beginning to worry about the welfare of jumping beans. Make sure not to buy any of those, either.”

          I am stunned.

          Could it be…?

          “...Mr. Bugle...?”

          “Yes?” The boy sounds impatient.

          “I-I...Well...,” I hesitate while he submarines a crispy wonton in the duck sauce and takes an ambitious bite out of it. Mr. Bugle waits upon my pause with heightening reproach.

          “Look here!” he shouts to the barrens with a ringleader’s mock ceremony. “Now that he finds me, he has nothing more to say. Tongue-tied twat, trying to talk up the cryptid like he’s an archaeologist.”

          Mr. Bugle then folds a napkin into a perfunctory airplane and launches it at my face.

          “When will I stop being a game to all of you?”

          I raise my hands to counter,

          “When will you stop treating my efforts to befriend you like a game?” Though, for a guilty admission, perhaps Mr. Bugle is right. To my response, the teenager sniffs and turns away. His preconception has me feeling rather ashamed.

          “Hello,” I try. “I think this is the first time I’ve actually met you...”

          I show him a hand. Mr. Bugle is reluctant, but he shakes it with a devious glint in his eyes.

          “Really? This must be the first time I’ve actually had resignation enough to tolerate your pursuit of my true genius.”

          Almost immediately after pitying him, I want to tug the rings right out of the teen’s grinning lips.

True genius? What a maniacal little bitch!

          “Hey, no more speaking the Queen’s English or the witch’s cauldron at me. It’s starting to piss me off,” I warn. “Can’t you just indulge me for at least two goddamn seconds?”

          Mr. Bugle lends me a hard expression, devours a morsel of chicken, and spares himself some lemonade.

          “Are you afraid that my prophecies will come true?” Mr. Bugle jazzes his fingers to shed imaginary pixie dust all over my lap. Nodding, I reply,

          “Actually, I am. Your sorcery might just summon Mephistopheles out of the earth.” An expression—a bitter smirk or a mortified wince—rattles Mr. Bugle’s face.

          “Or, more likely, out of the portable toilet.”

          We laugh, the both of us.

          ...

         “Besides the bedevilment, how are you? Nobody has been able to ask.”

         The kid cracks the Dickens out of his neck and knuckles before showing me his palms. A calloused, blistered rubescence on his skin writhes with a pulse.

         “I got blisters on my fingers,” replies Bugle in goofy British. “I’ve told Francis to go easy on the drums for a few days. Might go back to clarinet or sax, who knows. Perhaps the bassoon. There’s always comfort in strings, though,” Bugle fiddles with one of the bass’ knobs as he speaks. “We ordered a cello and a mandola two weeks ago; they should be arriving any day now.”

          In Francis and Bugle’s performance tent, the most beautiful grand piano sits backstage. Having played a little myself as a youngster, I always forget to ask them for a lesson or two.

          “Why not play the piano?” I say aloud. “You have fingers that could fly across the keyboard.”

          To repel a gnat or to banish my suggestion, Mr. Bugle shakes his head and does not answer. He instead asks with quizzicality,

          “Do you ever glance up at the sky and see crows with human faces? They could be Harpies or mere phosphenes, for all we know.”

          I find no birds.

          “Upon the trees,” Bugle continues, “do you see songbirds? Does a hunt lurk behind the foliage?”

          There are no trees among the tents. Satisfied without a reply, Mr. Bugle returns to planet Earth from his digressive trance.

          “It’s art, and all about the art. Juvenilia that won’t matter in the next four or so years. Francis and I are just about done with a candid of Rutherford’s kitchen and two pieces away from completing a thesis on figure-drawing. I still have to ask Louise if she could model for us.

          “We’re writing a little bit of music here and there; it’s mostly jams and extended solos to a few of our favorite songs. Sometime last week, I decided to study Maillard’s reaction for backstreet science. Francis was in for it to eat whatever I crisped. Those pursuits ended when Rutherford caught me with the goat.” He laughs at his blunder. “Vardan, dashing man, was right about the burgundy. A little dribble made the heart taste divine.” I nearly spit out a dumpling.

          “Wait. You got advice from Vardan about preparing that heart?”

          “Sure. He’s respected at the Forum Roboreus, a voice people warm up to very quickly. I’m a little shocked that you haven’t shot the breeze with our escapist. You’d like him.”

          Forum Roboreus? What the…?

          “Are you and Vardan doing sheets now?”

          Bugle shifts as if tree sap sticks to his clothes, as if he has shared too much. He ultimately deigns to explain:

          “The Forum Roboreus is the formal name I give the hideout in the surrounding woods. If you follow the mossy stone wall as far as the historic mason had laid it out, you’ll find an old barn and an oaken orchard. I happened upon the site while streaking on a warm June night. From one of the streams I could see the barn aglow with a bonfire and a few lanterns. Hidden behind a pine log, I mulled over the scene with whatever my senses could allow from such a vantage point. Several benches and tables were arranged around a fire pit. Goods and merchandise were spread out on blankets and carts. Money talk was crisp in the crinklings of bills and in the spoken language of spare change. Someone was making venison stew over the fire and ladling it into marketable tupperware. The orchard, decked with Christmas lights, held more of business and well-meaning exchanges. When I spied into one of the shed’s windows, there was the soapbox and those surrounding. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it besides Pompeii. This is where the Pompeians must have gone after Vesuvius.”

          “That sounds...pretty cool…” I conclude.

          Mr. Bugle nods.

          “I was pleased to see Farmer Jay with his wares on display. He likes to sell jams, honeys, maple bourbon syrup, pot, and meats. Jay was my organ provider. Did you ever try his marijuana? It’s some of the strongest stuff on earth!

          “Vardan trades bottles with a nearby viticulturist. He’s allowed me to taste samples of decade-old wine. I’ve met an Indira who translates languages and codes for people in private affairs. She studies the Rosetta Stone in her spare time.

          “What do I contribute, might you ask? I introduced my assets to the Forum with some of my ink drawings and Francis’ original compositions which I transcribed to measures. Customers are bidding on my chapbooks and paying me for guitar tutorials. A fifty was thrown my way as I played Matt Elliott. One night, I took a stand on that soapbox and recited a spontaneous monologue about Journal of the Plague Year before the Roboreus scholars and walked away from the Forum with a thousand dollars. Besides the profits, I’ve bought from there my gramophone and records: some of the best vintage I’ve ever touched have smelled the Forum tablewood and fireside meals.” Bugle wiggles the intricate webworkings in his right ear.

          “See these? A jeweller swapped earrings for a mixtape filled with live recordings of Francis and me behind the kit. The pearls along my cartilage are real.”

           I must say that it all intrigues me. What money! What news to tell Rollo! The only thing Mr. Bugle refuses to tell me, however, is at what times the Forum Roboreus convenes.

          (“That,” the bastard taunts, “will have to be a question answered by your own devices.”)

          Mr. Bugle continues.

          “I’ve recently gotten so sick of poeticizing dactylic hexameter that I burned my draft. Maillard’s reaction of the finest strain. Eight hundred lines read better in ashes.”

          “What were you writing about?” I wonder, fearing to learn.

          “What was I writing about? I’ve had an obsession with camera obscura lately, so I was probably hoping to elucidate parallels between pinhole imaging and the way our retinae turn objects in our sight upside down before being processed by our occipital lobe, meaning, possibly, that we thrive in disorder, or most favorably, a funhouse. Maybe I tried to write about something even more humiliatingly stupid...Anyway, after the summer ends, Francis and I plan on getting jobs at the local bookstore or that venue little ways off. If we save enough, we’ll find a hamlet somewhere in New Hampshire or find cheap rent in the city. We’re drifters, you know.

          “Besides that, it’s the teenage grenade. Drinking Rittenhouse Rye from a bottle like hormones from our pituitary gland, smoking after a meal, working, working out, tripping, gambling, self-pleasuring. I cleaned out my fridge four times in two days.” Mr. Bugle realizes that he has devoured a majority of the wontons and slides the box back over to me.

          “I’ve rambled,” Bugle confesses, then asks, “So, how…how are you?”

          “So far this summer, I’ve been quite content,” I admit. “It’s always the best to reunite with the crew and tell all our stories. The people here are some of the most beautiful and genuine I’ve ever met.”

          “Have you and Winnie decided to become a couple yet?” Bugle implores, pierced eyebrows crooked with inquiry. The temperature rises in my face.

          “We’re going to wait for the right time.”

          “For a woman as rare as Winnie, the right time is now. Everyone must be bewildered by your patience. Winnie still has invitations to attend Princeton and Oxford! Broadway wants her to dance! Athleta and Eileen Fisher want her to model their apparel!”

          “That might be the point, Bugle. She is a kind, brilliant, and successful person, but who am I?”

          Mr. Bugle frowns.

          “If she likes you the way she does, then you must be someone. Are you going to finish the rice?”

 

~

 

          I pile the leftover Chinese food into the paper bag and crinkle open my fortune cookie. Bugle follows suit, and as we munch on the shards, we recite aloud the banal axioms.

          My cookie foretells,“If ever you want to find wealth, look all about you.” Mr. Bugle’s is not much better:             “An artist’s mistake may be, in the eyes of others, a masterpiece.”

          I let out a sigh.

          “I’ve thieved, trespassed, and held jobs long enough to know what money-hunting entails. Nothing new.” I let the roll of paper tumble to the massacred ground below. For a little longer, the adolescent watches its mothlike descent. Bugle terminates his observation with an interrogative shrug, as if to say, might there be more to what the typed font reads? “Maybe,” I suggest, “despite your piercings and impudent behavior, you’ll attract a bunch of lovers and choose to marry them all in Vanderbilt’s cottage, there. The Breakers, isn’t it? Yeah, The Breakers. That ginormous palace and its swanky Grand Hall, where a lot of economically significant people partied like crazy...”

          In that instant, Mr. Bugle is stunned. I can liken his shock to an epiphanic moment in a drama where the protagonist enters a room filled with bloody bones and old industrial scissors with the harrowing realization that his friend is a psychopathic murderer. Alas, too late: behind the doorway stands but he himself, the murderer!

          “Hey, bud, are you alright?” I reach out a hand to shake sense back into his cold forearm. Blood must have transfused into the boy’s body from my touch; he wakes and begins to philosophise:

          “To that party you go, by which invitation you don’t remember having received. Once you arrive, the dressy rich regrets its choice and abuses your existence. Seconds before someone throws an empty glass at you, you think that you are part of the magnificent gold leaf frame, a foregrounder in those famous paintings that dominate every room in that huge fucking house where you are aware that not enough fuckings take place; few to no spawnlings will lap up the inheritance Atlas would bemoan to lift! In that untouched, utopian moment, you discover yourself in the ballroom painting as a man upholding a victorious bastard sword, at ready for the enemy charge; as a feaster about to entreat himself with a meal mountains beyond his earnings’ worth; as a huntsman eyeing down a stag; as a mortal, outstanding in body, rapt in the deepest stages of making love to a god; as something much greater than what the paint ostensibly offers you, captured in those movements, stilled.

          “But, when that besmirched glass shatters against your cranium, you vomit everything you’ve devoured and get the munchies again. You realize that you burn in a brazen bull and allow the bluebloods to shove you, the benthos, deeper into the coals.

          “The painting is not meant for our eyes; rather, the windswept heavens chip off the ceiling and tango down our throats to choke and compel us to wonder in the throes of our dejection why life introduces us to these forsaken places when we know that we will neither smell nor taste nor feel of the same oils that liven the rest. When the blood crawls up our necks, it’s not paint, but pure guava.

          (“How is this, that lifeblood tastes like warm pennies, and all the blood that welcomes our death tastes sweeter than a fruit drink we can buy at a local hippie health food store?)

          “There is always an intrusive somebody who continues to scrape away the canvas until the topmost layer vanishes to reveal all the artist’s mistakes. We continue to exploit everything we fear and hate about ourselves until our bodies become the substance of the monsterpiece our own faulty engineering blueprints; the paint, the layers, the errors we cannot unsee!” Mr. Bugle assails his lemonade, index finger pointed heavenward to indicate a breather. After a couple gulps, he resumes:

          “Have you ever prepared an over hard egg before?”

          “What?”

          “Just say yes.”

          I obey.    

          “Do you remember continually flipping that egg? Do you recall frying and frying it until all the free-flowing yolk is completely solidified? Just so are our thoughts! Just so is the egg tempera nevermore to run! Imagine all that dried yolk sealed by the white, the albumen white, how the sclerae seem to spill into our pigmented limbuses in our dying grips. Is our breakfast trying to tell us something? Have the chickens become too tired of menstruating by the timed light switch?

          “Do we just splay ourselves out on the earth’s crust to fry in the grease of our over hard eggs? Do we really let our minds become so denatured, our perceptions so stunted?” The deliberation in Mr. Bugle’s voice falters to a pensive whisper.

“Wayne, do we refuse so readily to ascertain whether or not we are already dead?”

 

~

 

          Nothing is said for what must be shy of an hour. Any sound or motion gleans from the fireflies and wandering raccoons, while, in the meantime, everything around us takes a deep blue complexion that tells of warmth and nostalgic crickets. Soon, there will be stars.

          The dark nebula between Mr. Bugle and me implodes with a flare. Within seconds, a glowing eye gapes open on the end of a long cigar and probes the vivacious garments of my outfit. Smoke wings out of Bugle’ mouth, his nose. Abruptly,

          “Clown, how old are you?” Mr. Bugle asks. The teen sounds casual again, more relaxed than he was during our prior exchange.

          “Twenty-four,” I say. “I’m old. Do you have any more?” I motion toward Bugle’s smoke, but he tells me that this is his last in supply.

          “Honestly, I am not sure of how old Francis and I are. Francis says that he’s eighteen and I’m sixteen, since I was born two years after Francis. But, knowing that one, he is poor at determining time.”

          “You think like a faded man of eighty-nine.” A smirk weaves its way around the cigar.

          “I like you, Wayne. In fact, you might be my favorite. You fathom a lot more than you think. From the first time I...spoke out at you—that evening did not look much different from this Messina scattered around us (Doesn’t that pile of pinwheels remind you of a whirlpool?)—what astounded me was your continued effort to sue for peace. I acted in that way to figure out whether you indeed were aware of our standing on a large frying pan. Once you confronted my Derringer the next morning with a box of pastries, I knew that something about you existed beyond the tangential jollity. There was something you demonstrated which warlike life has failed to ever show me. It is a wonder how humanity can be so forgiving.

          “What you did from the beginning was accept it. You accepted us. You accepted everything right and wrong with how life has dropped our volatile chips…”

          Is the stoned Easter egg accepting my prospect of friendship?

          “I think Francis likes you, too,” Mr. Bugle assures me quickly. “He appreciates your audiency during the slow hours.” Warmed by this remark,

          “I wasn’t ever worried about Francis taking a dislike toward me,” I breathe. “Have you fully regaled me with the essence of your true genius?” For a moment, the musician allows this question to hide in the dark before answering.

          “Actually...Would you like to know something confidential?”

          What could it be? The possibilities!

          “What is it, Mr. Bugle?” The teenager looks away for a moment, cigar entangled in blistry fingers, then tilts his head slightly downward.

          “...Everyone believes that I am the source of all this talent and intellectuality. All the music and the artistic retention and the ideas…But, honestly, everyone’s wrong. I am no genius, Wayne. I am no Enlightened revivalist. In fact, the commentary is my voice. So, who’s the schema holding the flake in line?

          “It is Francis, he who can play any instrument he wants and sound like a lifelong expert. It is Francis, he who can illustrate a landscape at which he has only taken a glimpse on a walk. Francis can Sherlock Holmes you like tugging your pants down to your ankles. He’s done it to complete strangers before and has been accused of sorcery. Sorcery!

          On my bed lies Chaucer, The House of Fame, with bindings hardly spent, whereas Francis’ newest read is titled Jansen Ek. Francis has grown bored of turning through the tomes of Rollo’s medical background, the thrillers of Rigmaster Seany’s hunts and taxidermies at his mountain house, the verses of Millard’s growing infatuation for Lamya, the comic strips of Brewer’s weightlifting regimen—books, volumes, compendiums originating from a phrase, a mannerism, an unshaven whisker!

          “Do you ever hear me count rhythms by the color wheel? Do I record unit measurements with obscure street names? Can I quantify a person’s untruths by manner of condensed droplets on a Cola? Can I discover how someone feels by the rate at which his ice cream thaws?

          “I can comply with what conventionality wants. Essays, algorithms, laboratories. Hell, I could probably write an exam that would make Mensa run for its fucking money. But not Francis. Nothing on limited paper could suffice for him.”

          “Mr. Bugle…” I begin, but he interrupts.

          “Don’t call Francis the dumb one. If you are predisposed to think one dumb, think of me. I, instead, am the world’s greatest—or worst—philosophaster: Aristotle the Wrong! And you, balloon man, are my paint-smeared disciple!”

          “Excuse me?”

          Again, the false thinker interjects,

          “Follower, do you promise not to tell anyone about my secret identity?”

          Something in Mr. Bugle’s tone sounds almost modest. I promise him,

          “I won’t tell a soul.”

          The unusual adolescent nods quietly. I hear a mumble.

         “Thanks.”

         He smiles.

 

 

 

1: “Laughing Lemons” is a still life by Kelly Birkenruth featuring lemons and newspaper comic strips.

2: Reference to Rembrandt’s “Storm on the Sea of Galilee”.

3: A song by Mad Season. (https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/madseason/longgoneday.html)