Orpheus Weaponry

Friendzo and I have been exchanging words via post lately — large ones for round ones, red ones for spiky ones, etc. The last time I saw him was September, down by the docks. He was walking bowlegged in a light sunshower, trademark golden spats gleaming like a Christmas bicycle. He asked me what the matter was.

- What’s the matter?

- Cow done gone.

- Mhm

- Rabbit stew for supper again. Cribbage at the pool hall.

- Did you hear the one about the lady preacher from Tennessee?

- Yup.

We walked together back toward the sighing city. Mama Cass came out of the drugstore and waved a handkerchief at us, but Frienzo kept walking.

- What was that about?

- She owes me twenty bucks.

- Maybe she was flagging you down so she could pay you back.

Friendzo looked at me, dumb as an ox.

- Don’t you call me an ox!

- Sorry. Let’s go see what she wants.

We retraced our steps but Mama Cass was nowhere to be seen. Then I spotted a note under a welcome mat.

Dear Friendzo,

Lovingly,
“Mama” Cass Elliot (from the Mamas and the Papas (the fat one (sorry)))

I looked at Friendzo, but he was still reading the letter. Dumbass hooked-on-phonics Friendzo. Come on. He finally finished reading and looked up at me. We were silent for a moment, until the guy whose doormat we were standing on came out of his apartment and told us to scram. As we hightailed it out of there I looked at Friendzo again, and he looked at me. Then he tripped on the curb. Goddamn clumsy Friendzo. We sat down on a bench outside the drugstore.

- There sure are a lot of drugstores this part of town.

- Mhm. So what’re you gonna do about Mama Cass?

Friendzo stood up.

- I have to go to her.

I knew it was coming, but that didn’t make it any easier. We’d been down this road before, when Mary Lou Retton told me I needed to stop seeing Friendzo so often. I stood up and shook his hand, slipped a stick of Juicy Fruit in his shirt pocket. Like old times. He walked away and I realized I was going the same way, so I hung around a bit and played count-the-rabbits. At sixteen I headed toward the subway station while all around me the city hummed and bustled, imperious and indifferent.

Everyone told me Friendzo had done it, but I didn’t believe a one of them. Because if I had believed a one of them, why wouldn’t I just believe a two of them? Or a three of them? Or all of them, for that matter? They were, after all, telling me the same thing — that Friendzo had done it. But I didn’t believe that could be true.

The evidence was there, I suppose. The top hat. The cane. The musket. The train.

The bratwurst. The egg.
The cornmeal. The peg

But I couldn’t wrap my head around it. This wasn’t Friendzo. This wasn’t right. I held my breath for a couple of minutes to clear my head, exhaled, and realized that I was stepping on my cat’s tail, and had been for the past few hours. Sorry, Jakob Dylan.

I went into my study for some quiet reflection. Could the Friendzo I have known ever done it? Was his heart so cold? Was his conscience so deficient? Was his garage even big enough for such a mass suicide? I thought about all the times I’d been to Friendzo’s house — for drinks, for barbeques, for weekly cult meetings. I don’t remember once thinking to myself, “Hey, you know, that garage Friendzo’s got would be just the right size for a gathering of 412 people, a gathering that would turn into a mass suicide once Friendzo stood upon the high altar and announced that it was time for everyone present to take his or her cyanide capsule, the one Friendzo and I had given to each person (attached to a keychain, so there’d be no excuse to be without it) upon his or her entry into the cult.” That thought just never occurred to me. And I was on the lookout for those things! Hell, it was my job to find the perfect “mass suicide spot.” We thought about renting out a hotel ballroom, but then how would we sneak the altar in? It’s a huge altar, you know.

Friendzo bought an ice cream maker this evening, and brought it over to my place for some experiments. I told him that my electricity had gone out, but he wasn’t concerned. He had a generator in his trunk, as always. We built a fire in my living room and got to work.
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Stormy rainbow houses parade at the seashore as Friendzo rides his chestnut mare. The seafoam laps the harbor and I sit watching, silent. A fire on the beach lights itself. I leap up lifted and sprint. I’m not nearly as fast as the chestnut mare, of course. She has been ahead of me before heel hit sand, and is not about to relent. I don’t mind, though, and I pound across the dunes. I meet them, Friendzo and his mare. We speak. The mare listens.
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