Read Kill Two Birds & Get Stoned Online
Authors: Kinky Friedman
Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Novelists, #Humorous, #Authorship
thirty
The best people you'll ever meet will often come to you like stray dogs and cats, moving with graceful evanescence through your life, then leaving you forever with empty spaces that only you can fill. After Teddy's death, I saw Fox and Clyde only one more time, then they moved on to the streets and alleyways of the world, leaving me no choice but to relegate them to the blameless pages of the manuscript in progress, nearing completion, but in a larger sense, never really ending. About four nights after the disaster at Starbucks, Fox came by my apartment. As you can imagine, I was quite surprised to see him. He hugged me as he came in the door. He looked pale and wan and a bit shaky but he still had that infectious, world-beating smile. This time, however, the smile did not seem quite able to reach up into his eyes.
"How's the book coming?" he asked, immediately breaking out the one-hitter and the locket filled with Malabimbi Madness.
"Fox!" I shouted. "How'd you get out of jail?"
"Clyde brought me a copy of your manuscript with a hacksaw in it."
"Then you know I'm almost finished."
"I am, too," said Fox.
I smoked more dope with Fox that night than I ever have in my life, before or since, and when we were through, he gave me the one-hitter and the silver locket, like a man on his deathbed passing on the most precious trinkets of his existence. It was almost two in the morning when he got up to leave. He stopped at the door and asked me if I wanted to go for a little ride.
"Where'd you get the car?" I asked as I followed him outside.
"Same place I got the Ryder truck," he said.
I guess you'd expect an author to have an eye for detail, but I couldn't tell you what kind of car it was that Fox had evidently "requisitioned." It was a late model, it was a dark car, and it was a dark night. That's about all I remember except that I got in and Fox started cruising slowly around the neighborhood. I was out of cigarettes and I mentioned that fact to Fox.
"Check the glove compartment," he said.
I opened the glove compartment and found a pack of cigarettes. I also found a gun.
"Jesus, Fox," I said. "Where'd you get this gun?"
"Came with the car," he said.
Fox drove around for a while longer, then stopped along the curb across the street from where Teddy had died in front of Starbucks. The window had been fixed, I noticed. Starbucks looked dark and deserted. The whole street looked dark and deserted. Suddenly, I was overwhelmed with a cold and unforgiving rage that came from somewhere deeper in my dark and deserted soul than I ever cared to know about. I opened the glove compartment, took out the gun, and lowered my passenger-side window. The night air came into the car and it was cold and unforgiving, too. It was a one-way street and it was a one-way life and you do it their way or you don't do it at all. There was nothing between me and Starbucks now. There never had been anything between me and Starbucks. I aimed the gun at the Starbucks window and I fired methodically six times, shattering the glass again. Then Fox took the gun away from me, rubbing off my fingerprints with his own hands, placing it back in the glove compartment. He quickly pulled away from the curb and drove me back to my apartment. He checked in the rearview several times but there was no sign of cops. As I got out of the car, in front of my building, Fox leaned over from the wheel and uttered the last words I would ever hear him say.
"You know something, Walter," he said. "You're all right."
It was late the following afternoon when I finally got up, wandered over to a nearby little Greek coffee shop, and read the newspaper.
"TWO KILLED IN DRIVE-BY SHOOTING AT STARBUCKS
," it said. Employees working late, repairing damage from previous protests. Suspect apprehended with murder weapon bearing his fingerprints. Suspect makes full confession to the police.
thirty-one
That night Clyde came over with her suitcase. She said she was shipping out. Things were getting too hot since Fox's arrest. There was a moment when I saw the sparkle in her eyes, dimmed recently by tears, during which I almost told her who the real triggerman was. But that moment passed and I let it. It was then that I truly felt Clyde and Fox slipping through the fingers of my life, consigned, for better or worse, to the pages of a book. What was it that Fox once said? I asked myself. "The only things you really keep in life are the things you let slip through your fingers." Something like that. "There's not much time," she said, taking off her clothes. "I've got a plane to catch in a few hours."
"You're not traveling like that, I hope."
"That's very funny, Walter. Your wit seems to have sharpened noticeably in the time you've been around Fox and myself."
"How could it not?" I said truthfully. "Aren't you going to take your clothes off?"
"Well," I said, fumbling with a button on my shirt.
"There's not time to be modest, Sunshine. This is something you've been wanting to do for a long time now."
She turned off the lamp on my desk and the room took on an almost subterranean dimness, bathing her skin with the ambient glow of the light from the street. Bending gracefully, like a tree in a storm, she removed two religious candles from her purse, placed them carefully on the windowsill, and borrowing my lighter for one last time, she lit them reverentially, prayerfully, in the manner of a supplicant at the altar of a god she trusted in spite of everything. The candlelight touched her skin like fireflies, like roses, like little fingers of light and lightness through which would slip a memory I would surely keep.
"Take off your clothes, Walter," she ordered in a soft, husky voice, and I obeyed.
"Get on the floor," she said.
And I did. And she was on top of me, fucking my brains out, sitting on my face, sucking my cock like a Dreamsicle on a dusty summer day. And I was all over her, wanting her love, her passion, her scent to stay with me forever. And on it went, her fingers pulling my hair, her fingernails raking my back, her very essence becoming a part of me as our bodies rolled across the floor in the flickering shadows of the candlelight. After we came together, we slept in each other's arms, with me still inside her, wanting more, wanting everything, wanting what I knew I would never have again.
When we woke from our little reverie, we dressed quickly and spoke briefly in oddly hushed tones. She talked of going to South America. I talked of completing the novel, editing, book tours. She had looked beautiful without any clothes on and she looked just as beautiful standing at the door with her suitcase in her hand. I believed I saw a bit more of that old sparkle back in her eyes. It made me happy to see it.
"I promise you I'll always be a vegetarian," I said.
"I know you will," said Clyde.
"The two religious candles," I said. "Are they for Fox and Teddy?"
"They're just for two chirpies," she said.
"Chirpies?"
"Two birds. They could be for Fox and Teddy. They could be for the two people who Fox didn't know were inside Starbucks when he shot up the place like a crazy cowboy. They could be for Fox and me, who once were your partners in crime and now are your creations."
I didn't say a word. I just stood there and watched the candlelight dancing in her eyes.
"The candles could be for you and me, Walter. They could be for all of us."
She opened the door and she walked out into the little hallway. I think there were tears in her eyes.
"Or they could just be," she said, "for any two birds who want to fly."
thirty-two
A year has passed since the night Clyde left and a lot of things have happened in the parallel worlds of fiction and nonfiction. I finished the book almost before Clyde's candles burned out and, believe it or not, it immediately started leaping off bookshelves all over the country. One critic actually said: "The characters leap off the page." In the process, I've made quite a leap myself. I've moved from the old basement apartment in the Village to a large, airy, spacious place overlooking Central Park. And why not? I can certainly afford it. At this writing, not only are book and author doing well, the book's on the best-seller list and Sylvia Lowell is telling everybody that Walter Snow's a genius and she knew it the whole time. Steve Samet loves me, too, and now Hollywood's considering turning the book into a movie except they want the three central characters to be black and they want Teddy to be white and they want the story set in a small town in rural Mississippi. They do like the Starbucks angle, however. As they were quick to point out, even small towns in rural Mississippi have a Starbucks these days.
Fox is on death row, and this bothers me sometimes but there's nothing I can do about it. I haven't visited him or spoken to him since the night he was arrested but I do have my reasons. For one thing, he might decide to change his story, but I don't worry about that too much because nobody would believe him. The other reason I don't feel guilty about not visiting him is because I've already admitted in the book that I shot the people in Starbucks. No one believes it, of course, because the book is fiction and no one believes fiction even if it's the truth.
I have agreed nonetheless, through lawyers, that I would go along with Fox's request that I take formal custody of his tropical fish, which are now swimming around in a large aquarium in my large living room. They don't seem to care much whether they're in a basement apartment or a penthouse. In an odd way, neither do I. I've got the one-hitter still and the silver locket and a large supply of the best dope in town and I find myself smoking a lot these days and watching Fox's fish. Tropical fish don't really belong in New York, I think, any more than we do. They should be swimming around in some beautiful coral reef in some crystal-clear tropical ocean. Instead, they just swim round and round in their glass-enclosed prison until they drown in their own sorrows like the rest of us poor bastards. But don't get the idea I'm not happy. It's just that when you're successful, important, and famous, happy doesn't really come into the picture.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot. I got a postcard from Clyde this afternoon. First time I've heard from her. No return address. I miss Clyde. Sometimes when I get stoned, I miss her so much I almost forget to feed the fish. Sometimes I think I should have gone with Clyde instead of going to cocktail parties and late dinners at Elaine's and then out on book tours. I miss Clyde. I miss Fox, too. And I miss who I was when I was with them. But I'm not that person anymore and maybe I never was and anyway I can't afford to be. Now all I do is feed Fox's fucking fish, sign checks, and inscribe books to people who tell me I have a wonderful imagination. Can you imagine that?
Anyway, here's Clyde's postcard. Here. I'll read it to you.
Dear
Walter,
I live on a secluded island called Moro de Sao Paulo off the coast of Brazil. My heart is happy here. My soul is at peace. I don't think I'm
coming
back.
I wish
you all the
success in
the world. Love,
Clyde
PS. I have a beautiful baby boy now. His name is Walter. He's almost three months old. Sometimes I call him Sunshine.
Acknowledgments
The divine spirit within the author salutes the divine spirit within his agent, David Vigliano. The author would also like to express his gratitude to the editors who worked on this book: Mauro DiPreta, Joelle Yudin, and Diane Reverand. Thanks also go to Ted Mann and Goat Carson. The author extends a special salute to the memories of Fox Harris (Peace be with you, Fox) and Clyde Potts (Wherever you are).