Chapter Two: Introduction (chapter one is over heir)
LoneWacko pondered the cumin connection, fingers hovering over his sticky keyboard. Slowly his thoughts drifted to the day when he first began his quest...A small, solitary boy hangs on the fence surrounding a playground, gazing morosely through the wire diamonds. Inside, raucous laughter and shrieks of joy ring out. An ecstatic mob of brown children swarms over the grass, hotly contesting possession of a bedraggled soccer ball. The ball rolls to the fence in front of him. A pursuing girl stops and looks at him. "Come play with us," she calls, flashing a brilliant joyful smile, white teeth blazingly bright in contrast to her cinnamon-colored cheeks. The boy's face flushes a deep, deep red, his ears burn, and terror seizes his gut. He whirls, wordlessly, and sprints away down the empty street. As he runs, hot tears stream down his cheeks.
He jerked awake, a small puddle of spittle and vomit pooling on his keyboard. The apartment reeked of corn oil and semen. The ejaculate in his pants had formed a crusty scab gluing his shriveled penis to his underwear. The only white doctor he could find in LA told him it was normal for middle-aged virgins, but he never felt normal. How could it get worse?
He realized it was light out. He had slept all night. The time on the computer said it was noon and the date was 5/5/2009.
"Cinco de Mayo. The fifth of May. What could it mean? Really mean?" LoneWacko shivered a little and farted like a bass guitar.
Chapter Two, Con't: Related passages but disconnected
Lone Wacko approached his 1988 Chrysler LeBaron, running his eyes over its K-frame lines that he adored so much--American engineering at its finest. As he opened the door, the familiar female voice, as always, said "the door is ajar". How he loved that voice. He would dream sometimes that it was the voice of a woman who loved him. He'd never had a woman love him, of course, but that made it all the more special.
He pulled away from the curb, warily looking out for agents of Vincente Fox or careening taco vans, but the road was clear. It was time to track down the next lead Hugh Jazz had given him: a supposed informant by the name of I. P. Knightley who had information on the NAFTA superhighway.
It was time to break this case wide open.
*****
Lone Wacko stood in front of the door and glanced around, making sure the coast was clear. He pulled out his worn lockpicking equipment, made from street cleaner bristles, his old nail clippings, and superglue.
He worked the lock like he would work an aged hooker, but couldn't get the tumblers lined up. He had to get in there--that's where Hugh Jazz had told him to go for a clue regarding David Weigel's ties to Vincente Fox and Salma Hayek. He could practically smell the cumin, and though it turned his stomach, he was quivering with anticipation that this might be the break he needed in this case.
*****
Lone Whacko had some time to kill before he met with Hugh Jazz’s contact so he decided to leave his beloved LeBaron and walk the mean streets of LA. He spent several minutes shaking his fists in impotent rage at random Univision and Galavision billboards, but even this wasn’t giving him the usual ejaculatory thrill that it did. The memory of the prior night in his apartment was still casting a gloomy pall over him. Why not engage in some sabotage and bring the bastards down one brick at a time, he thought to himself.
He walked into the nearest toy store and went directly to the Handy Manny aisle. Lone Whacko took a rusted Craftsman mini-Phillips-head screwdriver, circa 1974, and began removing the screw that held the right arm of the Handy Manny doll to its body. When he finished with the last one on the aisle his mouth contorted into a twisted smile as he thought about all the postage charges the toy company would have to pay to fix the dolls, and how all the Hispanic and Anglo collaborator children, whose parents dared to want them to learn a second language, were going to cry tears of sadness as their Handy Manny toys broke after their first use.
“Who’s handy now, Manny?” He said as he kneeled down and stared at one of the dolls eye-to-eye.
“Sir, do you need any help?” asked a store worker.
“No. My work here is done.” Lone Whacko said in a gravely Christian Bale-as-Batman voice. He walked past the worker with a sneer and headed for the door.
“What a prick,” the worker said as Whacko walked out of the store.
Chapter Two: P Brooks Rising
LoneWacko shifted nervously from one foot to the other; he had concealed himself somewhat by lurking in a small group of trees in the garden department of Home Depot. He peered through the leaves of a spindly young maple tree at the group of day laborers on the far side of the parking lot.
"Shopping for a tree?"
He whirled around. "Huh?"
"Are you shopping for a tree, sir?" asked the young man. His brow furrowed nervously as he took in the sweaty, disheveled man before him. "If you have any questions, I'll do my best to answer them..."
The young man stopped, and peered closely at the Wacko. "Are you okay? Shit, you're not having a heart attack or something, are you?" Or jacking off, he thought to himself. He barely squelched his sudden urge to guffaw.
LoneWacko frantically shook his head. "N-n-no. No. I'm okay. I, uh... I was thinking about something else. You kinda of took me by surprise."
"Let me call Lisa, the manager. She knows a lot more about this stuff." He chuckled nervously. "I should be in the roofing department, but the other guy in this department called in sick. He's at the beach, the fucker. Oooh, sorry; we're not supposed to use the "F" word in front of customers"
LoneWacko looked quickly around. "No, seriously, don't bother."
Lisa had threatened to file a restraining order against him, once, and he knew he had to get out of there before she spotted him.
He shot one last baleful look toward the jabbering foreigners. Smoking cigarettes, telling stories, stealing jobs. How dare they act as if they belong here?
How dare they ignore him? He brusquely swept past the baffled sales clerk.
"Another time," he thought to himself. "Another time."
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