The Ecstasy was kicking in. I ventured, “I’m squalling. These islanders sont squalling. Nous nous squallons.”
Neal pulled up to a cinder-block grocery store and parked. Sarah and Elspeth vanished inside, while we sat there transfixed by a shiny piece of red plastic hanging from the store’s eaves. It turned sort of rainbow colours the longer we stared at it. Then it started to make faint chiming sounds. A wind chime was our initial musing.
“Neal, that piece of plastic is fucking amazing.”
“It is magnificent. It wouldn’t be out of place in a New York art gallery.”
We got out of the car to better appreciate the plastic. Its magnificence blossomed ever outward, fractally, and I felt connected to all life—not just my own, but also the lives of all human beings on the planet, and possibly the universe.
Neal said, “Ray, we’re just grains of sand in the scheme of things.”
“Neal, you are so right.”
“All we are is dust in the wind.”
“Look, it’s turning blue—laser beam blue.”
We stood there gawping until a fly landed in my mouth and I horked it out, laughing. It was terribly funny. It just was. Neal thought so too, and we both laughed to the point where our stomachs dry-heaved. Small children with sticks stopped and stared at us, while stray dogs avoided us, rightly fearing our magnificent grasp of the true fabric of the universe.
We were shitfuck stoned.
“I must own that piece of plastic, Neal.”
“To the victors belong the spoils.”
“Give me a leg up.”
“Sure thing, Ray.”
Neal kneeled and offered me his cupped hands. I stuck a foot in and he lifted me up to make a swipe at our piece of sacred plastic, but I overreached and fell onto my butt, my elbow landing in, of all things, an octopus somebody had abandoned, goopy and smegmacious. I shrieked like a wee girl. Neal found this utterly hilarious—it wasn’t. I frantically removed the fine linen shirt that had once belonged to poor, doomed Arnaud du Puis, while Neal sat doubled over atop some plastic milk crates from Australia until he could catch his breath. As I scraped the worst of the octopular sludge from my arms, Neal hopped on one of the crates and grabbed the piece of sacred red plastic from its string, placing it in his dapper linen jacket’s inside pocket.
“Neal, that’s my piece of red plastic.”
“Sorry, Ray. Fate gave you one chance to grab the brass ring, and you missed. Then fate gave me a chance, and the sacred talisman is mine.”
“You thieving bastard.”
“Sorry, Ray. Law of the seas.”
“It’s no such thing.”
“Ray, I’ll let you look at the plastic every so often, but fair’s fair.”
One thought went through my head: Neal must die. As he turned to walk back to the van, I jumped him from behind. To this, he said, “Oh Christ. Ray, just cool down. Maybe they have some ice cream in the store. Let’s go get some.”
“Die, you smarmy bastard.” I tried strangling him.
“Okay, Ray, but I’m telling you, this’ll hurt you more than it does me.” He effortlessly unclamped my arms and hurled me into the ashen remains of what must have once been a sizable pile of snack cake wrappers and fishbones.
I coughed salty dust and watched Neal enter the Island Mart. Suddenly, feelings of love and brotherhood welled up in me for my slave friend. “Neal! Brother! I love you!” But Neal was already inside. I followed, shouting, “Neal! I love you! You’re my brother! I’m sorry I tried to kill you,” as I pushed through the door.
Neal was staring at a pile of tinned goods at the end of an aisle. Elspeth approached me with a cart full of tinned meats and whispered, “Raymond, for fuck sake, get your shit together. Stop shouting, we’re trying to fly under the radar.”
Sarah was speaking with the manager. She turned to look at me: shirtless, raving, enslimed and sugar-frosted with ashes of trash. I waved at her. A glint in her eyes told me she had a plan afoot, and that I’d better not interfere. In a voice loud enough for the ten other customers in the store to overhear, Sarah explained, “That’s Raymond. He’s in the final stage of AIDS. Just look how red his head is. The TV network volunteered to take him to a hospice in Brisbane, but, as you can see, the virus has gone to his brain. Poor thing. It’s the fantastically contagious strain of the disease, too. I have no idea why he’s not wearing a shirt, but I think that goo on his arms might be leakage from suppurating lymph nodes.”
Elspeth parked her shopping cart next to Sarah. “And that person staring at the tinned luncheon meats is Neal, Raymond’s fuckbuddy. It’s a modern, liberated term that bespeaks the proud man love of those two brave souls. They’re political, those two are. It’s inspiring the way they still go at it, even in Raymond’s final, sad, wildly infectious days.”