Patton Lee Beaugus | December 9, 2010 4:45pm
I knew Rudy's backyard 'patio' well. In the summer, it was my Hamptons. Or at least, my Jersey Shore. A place where I could get high just on second not-cigarette smoke. There was even an outlet to plug in my computer. What more could one ask but women in skimpy summer outfits. It had that, too. It was heaven in Hell's Kitchen.
The song they molested was “Angels We Have Heard On High” which they sang between sips of brandy. I sipped my beer — a metaphor for my life.
The backyard in winter was a big cold empty space — except for one refugee of summer — a lonely table with a furled Cinzano umbrella giving the world the finger.
Backyard legend had it that this place was once an old Indian burial ground. For old Indians who weren't going to get any older, I suppossed. They say that back in the day, it was haunted. They say there was a giant seqouia where the Cinzano umbrella was, that the Native Americans had carved with deer totems. There was supposed to be Hopi kiva built on a platform high in the tree. If any brave brave from the tribe climbed it like Jack and Beanstalk, they would disappeared into the sky, never to return, which I don't really believe. Or didn't until later that Chrismas Eve, I discovered that there were even more impossible possiblities that were, uh, possible.
As the door closed behind us, the snow flurried in our faces, like a whiteout. I closed my eyes and slid down the steps that were covered in snow, trying not to slip and drop my beer or computer bag.
When the snow blew away, it wasn't Rudy's backyard. It was nothing like Rudy's backyard. It was a winter forest glad bathed in golden moonlight. It was as if it owed its existance to a fairy story, except that the table with the umbrella has survived the whatever it was that got us here. I sure don't remember any fairy story locales with a Cinzano umbrella in them.
The PartyMob looked different, too. They were the same, but different, more colorful, more joyous, more fun. D'Oliya was even more outrageously curvacious. Vinnie looked more like a gnome. HiTone looked taller and more menacing. Molly, oh Molly, Molly looked even younger, more innocent, and more of everything I'd never get my sweaty palms on.
I heard Molly say as she looked at her strange pda, "We've transitioned again."
"You're not in Hell's Kitchen anymore, Dorothy," whispered HiTone in a mad scientist voice.
Did that door still lead back into Rudy's? I wondered. Or to Metropolis, Narnia, or Toontown?
"It looks like we're in a d-range where Clydie can find us and we can make the final jump to the FatMan's world." said Molly.
"Assuming the timing works out correctly." said Vinnie.
They were grinning and giving each other high-fives, hip bumps, except for Vinnie who was beginning to remind me of Grumpy from Snow White.
“We just need an improbable Indian summer,” said Molly.
"Fat chance," whined Vinnie.
She ignored him.
"And if we can't get one, we'll have to make one."
Vinnie broke into one of his soto voice tunes, "Wintertime, and the freezing is easy."
But it wasn't really freezing or snowy or anything like that.
It was gorgeous.
Then Molly smiled at me. At me! "We'll take care of summer when Clydie gets here."
"So we're on plan?" asked Vinnie. "We're not totally lost, yet?"
"On plan and right on schedule. We just need to create a few more improbabilities and we're there." answered Molly.
"We need you, you know?" she said to me. She touched me again. "I need you."
Something was strange. I mean they were sure strange. Improbable, for sure. They clearly wanted to be exiled back here. And wanted me with them. WTF?
The more i looked at them the stranger they looked. Almost cartoon-like.
It’s like they were so happy to be back in this big cold place, they couldn’t help singing.
The song they molested this time was “Angels We Have Heard On High” which people over 80 who know Church Latin call "Gloria In Excelsis Deo." They sang between sips of the brandy they'd carried out.
I watched and sipped my beer, which must be some kind of metaphor for my life.
You angels who want to get high
Sipping sweetly thru the night
Need to find the drink to buy
That will give you warm delight
Courvoisier in a brandy snifter
Courvoisier in a brandy snifter
You can sip it in a coke
Any way that floats your boat.
Any mix you do is cool.
Straight on ice, or brandy float.
Courvoisier in a brandy snifter
Courvoisier in a brandy snifter.
Louie came through Rudy’s back door. Thank the beer gods, it must still be Rudy's. Or if it wasn't, it still served drinks. The mob boss had a bottle of Courvoisier and started filling up the snifters. He even had an extra one for me. “Too cold for beer.”
I couldn’t argue with that. Or with a free drink I could not have afforded even if I sold blood, which they won't let you do if you've been drinking, which is that only thing that had stopped me from selling a gallon a week.
Louie looked around the forest glade and then at his PartyMob. “We're in the right slot, but I couldn't get a hold of Clydie to tell her where we were.”
Their reaction was about the same as my family's the time at Aunt Betty's anniversary when they caught me farting in the punchbowl.
"We're screwed." said Vinnie, always the first to find a glass half full and then to break it.
"All this for nothing." snapped D'Oliya, staring daggers at Molly.
Molly didn't share their misery or anger, "We've still got time."
"How much time?" asked D'Oliya.
"Not much," admitted Molly.
“But she knows what reality we're in, and she’s bringing the axes, right!” said HiTone.
Louie, talking thru his cigar, said what sounded like, "The deer girl wouldn't let us down."
"Besides, it's her dream to do this." said Vinnie. "To dream the impossible..."
Everyone was giving the little guy dirty looks and he stopped mid lyric.
Louie helped me out. “Clydie Deerest. She’s bringing our instruments and stuff."
Golly-gee. Why didn't I believe him any more than the guys who came into Rudy's to sell Rolexes that had fallen off the proverbial truck?
Molly gulped down her brandy and coca cola and turned to me. “I bet you’re wondering how we can pull it off.”
Pull what off, I wondered, also wondering how tipsy she could get on brandy and Coke.
“We can do it because of String Theory and the alternate realities that really exist in 16-space. We just needed to transition into the correct potential reality.”
"Huh?" My inner score started playing those notes from the Twilight Zone.
