The Scratchy Noose is mobbed with people Tug wouldn’t let attend his funeral earlier in the day. Budge is at the door stamping hands and is worried about capacity and fire codes. Hope is working the bar and is serving tonight’s drink special, a concoction of her own creation she’s calling Thanatonic. As fate would have it, Tug’s wake falls on my night off. That Tug launched himself into eternity with a bottle of horse calmatives was a big surprise to no one. The surprise was the 13-page note he left, filled with high-flying expectations and planning of events.
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The mystery of birth in death is a big one. If you’re into that sort of thing. I thought the “destroyer as creator” concept had fizzled out with junk bonds. Still, for a first-time project Tug’s done very well. “A” for effort at least. He found a funeral director who’s also a film director, one B. Stern Griffin, and friends have been assigned various roles to reenact Tug’s version of reality. I don’t know where he found a troupe of dancing midgets for hire, but they looked great in their little chimera costumes, each a miniature fire-breathing donkey with goat horns and bat wings on the body of a tree sloth wearing the tail of a beaver. If I didn’t know better I’d swear they were the real thing.
The set was complex. Materials are expensive. Pray Tug got a grant for all this. A series of screens that fold and refold like a Chinese money-hiding wallet gave us a “now you see it, now you don’t” effect. Now you see a Minotaur peering out from a thorny-hedged maze, now you don’t. Now you see an icy necropolis with a crumbling tower in the rear, now you don’t. Tug even made sure that the florist used only narcissus. I thought Tug’s favorite flower was the daffodil and mentioned this to Mrs. Monfreid. “A narcissus is a daffodil,” she told me. I didn’t know that.
“Who are you to say?” he barked at me, waving his yellow-highlighted script in the air. “Sit and watch? Watch what? My life go by? Sit and watch. How can I? It’s written.” He waved the script in my face. I told him to check the free-will clause on page eight.
One afternoon at the Scratchy Noose Tug and I were joined by a gentleman who took our silence as a cue to start in on airy, feeble small talk. He asked if I had any ambitions. All I could do was look at him. As a steward of conviviality I rarely have the occasion to speak my own mind. This man, however, was really pushing the limit. Fortunately, Tug did my talking for me. He said, “Can’t a person just be what’s in front of you? Can’t this just be the moment you were meant to see without your having to search for layers of hidden meaning? Damn it, man, glean what you will and then move on.” The man said I looked as if I might have something else in the cooker. I assured him I did not. “Ambition is for pigs in a trough,” Tug said, “rooting for a truffle and calling it accomplishment.”
Mrs. Monfreid agreed to do my makeup for the taping of my haiku segment. She lined my lips and colored them in with the same Pomegranate Power she wore, and I could smell her sweet breath on me as she said up close, “Do like this,” stretching her mouth flat across her face. I mimicked her huge fake grin. When the camera was ready I took my place in front of an altar Tug made with empty orange juice and milk cartons covered with crepe.
Outside the Scratchy Noose the Tug fury is raving on. “We want in! We want in!” This is one happy hour that will last well into the night. Where are the cameras now? Budge has set out candles all over the place, which is also drowning in poppies. Mrs. Monfreid gave Hope the snagged sari and she’s wearing it as a turban. A wispy shred dangles into the flame of a votive and ignites, and I watch the burning tatter consume itself, gaining momentum in less than no time, then, with an abrupt flash–as if Hope’s head were not a few more inches up to fuel it–the reckless little spark puts itself out.
