Chapter 2: Another Day on Urantia

The Moon Food Cafe is fixed in the universe on a side street of no man's land between the crumbling edge of downtown and the newly restored glitter of Old Town. A few blocks from the county jail and flanked on either side by two bail bonds agencies, The Good Buddy and Hell's Handbasket, the cafe stands as a beacon to its stubbled and stuporous clientele. What the place looks like from outside the regulars can never remember. Inside, reality alters to safety and suspension, an ersatz womb for a processed human product spluttering through fried lives.

It doesn't matter if you're on the skids as long as you're half sane and sober; no reeling off your seat like an exiting Muppet, the floor winking back at those little raisins in your white-sauce eyes. You can eat your fill, the food always up to the exacting standards of the homeless, and stacks of greasy, days-old newspapers can be had for the asking. The Moon Food is usually quiet and always warm and sometimes this image is like a blanket in the boxcars and flatbeds over from Reno or up from Delano on those long fugitive rides in the scarifying night.

Highly acclaimed in freight yards and riverside camps throughout the Western States, the Moon Food is a Mecca for the urban remaindered as well. Joining today's lunchtime lumpen sum is perennial income-neutral and chronic job seeker, Olney Garkle.

The morning's fruitless attempts to regain a prideful place among the servants of productivity have left his crybaby selves and their harried whipmaster--that fopdoodle of an ego--in a state of inner insurgency bordering on self-terrorism. All hands are beating at the plates of his skull for a coffee and a cigarette. Too bad for them, but that's all they'll get: their vehicle is dead broke. Worse, Olney's friends, to whom he owes the last few weeks of his life, are about to foreclose. It's the kind of situation that just dares gravity to double its force.

Olney tries to catch the attention of the only waitress on duty, but she's a blur in the sea of faces. He checks out the counter-sitters instead. A wheyfaced barbituomaniac looks up from his stool at the end of the counter. His eyes are all iris, nullified and alien. Nearby, an old crone with long spiky hair fixes Olney with a sodden leer issuing from no focused address.

He swivels away from the counter for a look at the booths. At the back, a couple of polyesters are chatting it up, fresh from a shopping spree at the K Mart. The women are discussing peter heaters over coffee and jam donuts. The casual observer, one: Olney Garkle, now passing their booth on his way to the toilet, does a joint-unhinging doubletake as two pairs of masseters convulse, setting the ladies' corrugated cheeks in motion. Pausing to oculate the hell-o-scope of a self-flagellating imagination, he lingers a moment for the hoary thrills of the zoom-in closeup. Scintillas of sugar, rumbling through forests of stiff black hairs, carouse the upper lips of the chattering women. The observer's inner aesthetes protest in vain as fibroid and rubbery gobs of flesh lash the grainy air. They are made to writhe in horror as ceiling fluorescence descends through vapors of Lysol and sweat to highlight four cheeks, the rouged and scalloped ridges separated by deep, glistening runkles where ghastly lipid oils roil furiously. Shrieking now, the abused cognoscenti watch helplessly as gale-flapping lips are blown wide open by booming sonancies howling up from hellhag vocal cords: in a duet of stomatic apocalypse the women expel bits of donut and tobacco shards mixed with saliva while voicing regret over the flasks of vodka in their purses they so fervently wish were 40 ouncers. The observer, one: Garkle, Olney, damp now and ill from his foul japery, gains the toilet just in time.

Back at the counter after multiple evacuations, the sweating penitent beseeches his inmates, in particular those given to refinement, to be patient, there'll be coffee soon.

Two stools from the senile strumpet, a surly hoon slaps his unopened pack of cigarettes on the counter, end over end over end. The ashtray, bursting with butts from the last pack, is whisked away by the Chinese waitress, whose nametag reads: Helga. She's dropped a clean one in passing, her eyes following a route miles from Olney's beckoning finger, which, left wagging in a barrens, is hauled in sheepishly. His inner jitters are whining and kicking their feet.

Moments slip by (each one scrapped unflinchingly by the Akashic Recorder) as the hoon operates his phalangeal pile driver. Each smite is accompanied by an explosion of air from his rhino-sized nostrils. At length the job is done. He removes the cellophane top, rips off half the foil, pounds the other half against the obverse karate chop of his left hand and enjoys a brief integration of circuits as the first three cigarettes propel into view. (This unexpected unity gooses the A.R., who, pencils and paper flying, has to jump up and pull the plug until order is restored--one of those unobserved moments when every jaw on the planet goes slack.) He pulls out the winning cigarette by its label and taps it on his thumbnail, again and again and again.

Back to the booths, a couple of Jehovah's Witnesses are taking ten from the store fronts. Near the salt and pepper shakers several copies of the morning's tensely clenched AWAKE!s are trying to secure their atoms before a splotch of soy sauce--left by the last customer and missed by Hong Kong Helga--turns them to pulp.

Sitting near Olney is that Moon Food phenomenon, the odd Chinaman. There's nothing wrong with him, it's just that, although the place is run by Chinese (and the regulars have only Helga to offer as evidence; the cook has never been seen), folks of that racial persuasion just never seem to drop in. Except, once in awhile, the odd Chinaman. Like this gent. But is he always the same gent? Every time you look at him, he (or they) seems to be on the brink of some essential revelation, lips ever poised to sip from cup ever lifted.

Local substance abusers, Ruy Moreno and Chuy Chemainus, at their usual stools near the front, look upon the Odd Chinaman as an oriental matrix. They've just smoked a joint in the car, and now, stoned to the pits of their pineals, are gleefully trying to will the waitress their way. Helga usually limits them to a refill each before pointing to the door. Their roisterous giggling makes the other Moon Fooders uneasy, especially the gaunt shoe salesman from the dying end of J Street. He's got himself the window booth, facial ticks a-quiver as he thumbs through the morning paper for lingerie ads from Macys. After so many years in the trade, his torso has taken a peculiar set: his right shoulder is permanently hunched forward while his hands are forever dangling in the vicinity of an invisible pair of shoelaces. As a result, the man's right pelvic joint has gone awry and caused the development of a singular limp. Every other step signals a dramatic round of movement, with each unit of his body responding to its wild displacement by nearly hurling the whole to the ground. Ruy Moreno, whispering to his friend, likens the salesman to a rotating miracle wrench in Hush Puppies. Chuy spews a mouthful of coffee back to its cup before succumbing to a frenzy of the usual giggles. The shoe salesman's eyes, already bulging like two pickled eggs from a full page spread of lace camisoles and bikini briefs, momentarily vacate their sockets to hardboil the backs of his tormentors. To him, the limp is an irritating but minor affliction associated, not simply with selling shoes, but with the selling of a certain pair of shoes. Indeed, his limp, the precipitous hunch of his shoulder, and his dangling, apelike arms are his body's nostalgic way of replaying one youthful day in the shoe shop when fate stepped in to bewitch, bother and bewilder him forever: in the process of bending over to fit a pair of snow-white Joyce's to the bobby-soxed feet of a randy student nurse, beheld he God's Winking Persimmon. Over the many years since then, his eyes have ceaselessly cross-countried up creamy slopes for glimpses of white avalanche or, too, too rarely, the thingy itself, hirsute and lippery, that hideaway scissure to ambrosial epiphany.

A shimmering stalactite of drool is about to connect his pointed jaw to the table as Helga comes over to take his order. She's used to his lunchtime nympholepsies by now, and anyway, she's more concerned with the ruckus at the counter, where Ruy 'n' Chuy are sword fighting with forks.

Sitting at the counter's L is another salesman. He's decked out in the ill-fitting texturized polyester gabardine noteworthy of car lots and, sure enough, he's on lunch break from Hal's Off-Ramp Auto Sales near the freeway. His 'that-which-never-dies' may soon be one of the world's first to from too many years of closing deals with the poverty stricken, from watching them drive away in used Biscaynes, Furys, Meteors and Galaxies.

Gazing absent-mindedly at the menu, he rolls a toothpick over his dentures, causing the lowers to dislodge with a sucking sound, as if they were tiny boots being pulled from a tiny bog. He looks around quickly, but what the hell, he doesn't care any more and no one else does either. The filing cabinet in his office is bursting with open-crotch mags long forgotten. In the desk drawer usually reserved for blank contracts, a penis pump nestles beside a plug-in AutoSuck; together they help nibble the hours away.

The toothpick clings for a moment to his lower lip. His right hand, on the move as reflex, goes to the rescue but, lost now and free falling, the toothpick glances off the counter and into the gap between his knees, coming to rest on the running board of an inward-pointing brogue, into which is thrust a large foot clad in a whiskey-stained white sock.

Capping off the late-morning wave of assembled displaced is ... "Hey!" whispers Chuy at a shout. "Looks like Mr. Common Good's gotta get his scumbag kid outta jail again. Hangin' around with them chingasos from Tahoe Park, she pro'bly got busted for shootin' at empties again." Ruy 'n' Chuy chortle like the Katzenjammer Kids, a cupped hand over each mouth, four eyes veering from side to side. Helga stomps over, throws her dishrag on the counter. "Awww," they plead, but out they go.

The object of their attention, sitting near the till, is highly motivated Larval Party political whip, Younger Unwood. And he's looking none too good. Indeed, were America's Future in attendance and working over the daily special a few stools away it would be duly alarmed, for Younger's normally composed sense-of-self face looks like the aftermath of a cosmetic terrorist party.

As karma would have it, his sixteen-year-old daughter is not only a hop-head and a nymphomaniac, but a two-time loser; of no help at all to an aggressively moral politician like himself. And crass? Younger hates to remember the time she spooned Cheez Whiz right out of the jar at the Governor's mansion, without even asking. His Nibs nearly had a stroke, she was eating his breakfast! Worst of all, Younger has never dared to let himself think of the election night celebration, the night his party took over the country and she gave the new President's grandson a dose of the clap. Thanks to her, he'll be the laughing-stock of Capitol Hill when he gets to the White House.

Oops! Well, it's still a secret, but Congressman Unwood wants to be the Leader of the Free World. For years he has been assiduously building a following of greased palms directed to this glorious end, to the realization of his great vision. Yes, when it's his turn to stride like a Colossus upon the world stage he intends to turn these United States into the successful Banana Republic its ruling class so richly deserves. Above all, he wants to become a lifetime member of the Beelzebub Club so he too can wield enormous economic power over the wretched of Earth.

But now that girl has up and gotten herself arrested again, and for what? For lifting processors from the laptops in her private school! Hell, he could have gotten her all the processor's she wanted. Didn't his government close nearly a thousand schools so his cronies could buy the land for housing developments? Was this for nothing?

Too bad she's not in a position to commit respectable old-boy-approved crimes, like cutting social programs to build golf courses or breaking conflict of interest guidelines like her dad. Younger's own highly successful contribution to political graft was the time he put all his stocks and assets into a blind trust and hired his wife to control them. Then he was free to guide government contracts toward the companies that just happened to be ... well, nobody had to know the rest. And besides, what rigged jury and bribed judge would ever dare suggest that he and his wife discussed such matters at the breakfast table? Hell, these were crimes any honorable free enterpriser would be proud to commit.

If she were just old enough to be in politics, this processor business wouldn't have happened. She could have used her talents for ... er ... wealth creation. The bottomless well of taxpayer funds makes it as easy as stealing candy from immigrant babies. Speaking of which, his party's skimming of great gobs of it to invest in neighborhood gambling centers for the immigrant suburbs was applauded in boardrooms around the world. But the government's cutting-edge coup was surely the creation of a wholly corporate-owned public school system. Talk about maximizing returns! But wait, there was more. With the State's electricity generation, water and sewage systems already sold to private consortiums, Unwood's tireless party was working on their latest and greatest project: the privatization of air. Lateral thinking and the entire year's budget for Ten High Bourbon had produced the dazzling solution: a simple base rate per twenty-four-hour projected lung intake, multiplied by the number of days in the year and billed quarterly. Wasn't simplicity always found at the bottom of a whiskey glass? And weren't they proud of their concession rate for asthma sufferers. Talk about social conscience.

Of course, Younger and a few others had initially complained about this latter 'soft option,' reminding party liberals of the financial burden left by the previous mob of degenerate Socialists. The whingers were still bleating about democracy and human rights, but how was democracy going to insure the siphoning off of those taxpayer funds needed to secure the future of his party's children?

Ah, but now it was all threatening to collapse around him. How, oh how, was he going to get her off and cover this up? He'd had enough trouble with her arrest two years ago for trying to sell cut-rate glue-sniffing kits to first graders, but far worse was her abortion just last year. If anyone had found out, his leading role in the 'Unborn or Die' crusade--advocating the rights of the unborn and the death penalty for those opposed--would have been severely compromised. And now his high profile advocacy of 'One Strike and You're Out', with Tattle-Tale bracelets for everyone else, could be in jeopardy.

It seems God's will works in funny, some say downright peculiar, ways. Younger's mind often gives way to the nagging suspicion that he was tricked into birth by a different sort of god, a franchise-hustling High-Flier bent on bulk distribution. Mostly though, the Congressman thinks of himself as one of the real God's charter good ol' boys, and he aims to serve that Almighty to the best of his ability, no matter how often the Good Lord sees fit to strike him down and then stomp on him and, while He's at it, kick him in the balls, roll him in dog shit, and even cancel his subscription to Armchair Child Molester: "Oh no, Lord, not muh darlin's!"

Younger would rather dwell on a future of his own design, without the reality fate might be trying to sell him. He has great plans for his people when he gets to the oval office. Give 'em TV's and enough wages to drink themselves stupid every night and this country could bust them interfacing parameters right in their paradigms! Hells bells, the time is ripe. Why, the people only recently returned his party's candidate, the man who's gone on record saying he'd gladly send the CIA to kill dissident babies if that would eventually rid the free world of Liberalism. It's only a matter of time until the old fool croaks, hell, he's nearly 80. And then, with the help of the Lord, it will be Younger Unwood's turn to order the execution of free thinking children ... and all for the common good!

Younger is just daring to fantasize on the glory of having power over babies and small animals when Ruy 'n' Chuy rush back for the pack of cigarettes they forgot. Leaving again on the run, Ruy calls out, "Say man, how's the scuz?" They exit cackling.

Unwood has to admit the name applies, even if attributed by loathsome Spics. That this worrisome child may be the result of his wife's having addressed the wrong point by copulating with the foreign janitor at Dot's Beauty Salon--where she worked for years putting him through Mount Mumpsimus Bible College--has more than once ruined his appetite for Kraft Dinner.

He shudders, pushing the idea into the gas chamber of his mind. Americans can ill afford an unhappy Younger Unwood. After all, he's going to be President. His face lurches into the beaming, evangelical smile that won him the hearts and votes of his blinkered constituency. A tear moistens his eye as he recalls the great rallies, when his people raised their voices in the thousands to chant the Larval Party's winning slogan: America is worth slaving for!

In the meantime, here he is at the Moon Food Cafe, waiting for that Good Buddy to bail the girl out. His smile fades as he droops at the counter muttering "what-have-I-done's?" into the murky surface of his cup of robusta-bean coffee.

Olney Garkle, still without coffee and under siege from a grass roots revolt within, is giddily dreaming of a different ambience. Say, that of Rocco's Italian Restaurant, with its red wickered candlelight, the usual checkered tablecloths and plastered drywall arches, where the tables are always empty except for Olney and a beautiful salesgirl, and the big dark manager sits at a big dark desk in the shadows of the foyer, talking quietly on the telephone ... in Greek.

Unlike the troubled politician, Olney's dreamy smile doesn't fade. It's stuck on his face like a mask. Furtively, he glances around to see if the others have noticed. To his grinning astonishment he finds that each face has the same expression: the rictus of the downsized, the soon-to-be's and the long since done-over.

Yep, it's another day on Urantia, with a whole slew of indigenes in from the fringes to slurp, snuffle and snicker at the Moon Food Cafe; reserved seat ticket holders for ballgame America in its last innings.

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Chapter 3: Off the Band

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