It’s dark in the house. Sitting at the black glass triangular table in the middle of the large, ultramodern dining room are Frank, Adrian and Skylark. Each sits on their respective 2.40m wide side of the equilateral thick glass triangle with the sharp, unbeveled corners. The sole active light source in the entire house right now is the six-inch high flame at the center of the table on a kind of diorama that’s placed on an inch-thick, foot-and-a-half in diameter planter, with bonsai and moss on it, involving primitive peoples hunting. Frank’s clearly the man of the house. He’s wearing a dark blue and black, alternating stretcher bond and soldier course-patterned yukata. The pretty amazing housewife and the angst-ridden teenage daughter are each wearing silk kimonos, Adrian’s deep pink with cream polka dots, Skylark’s grey with a light yellow art-nouveauesque trellis pattern. Physically, Skylark is a carbon copy of Adrian, just full of zits. While their hairstyles are purely consistent with their dress, their makeups are purely consistent with glam goth.
The song ‘El día que me quieras’ by Carlos Gardel, from the 1935 movie of the same name, has just started playing softly all around them. On to the hors-d oeuvres, consisting of caviar and crème fraîche tartlets, brie, fig, and prosciutto crostini, and bacon-wrapped jalapeño peppers.
“Oh, I love this song,” chirps Adrian, then pops a full crostino in her mouth and sways and hums along as she chews, now with her eyes closed, brow furrowed, as in agony. She finishes gulping the crostino down and starts singing: “Todo todo se olviiiiidaaaaa!! El día que me quieras, la rosa que engalana, se vestirá de fiesta con su mejor color! Y al viento las campanas dirán que ya eres míaaaaa… y locas las fontanas, nos contarán su amoooooooor!”
“Yes, beautiful,” says Frank, popping back a crostino of his own.
“Yes.” Skylark, sipping from a glass of Krug Grande Cuvée.
“You know, that song’s actually from a movie. Not really recorded for an LP,” says Frank. “‘El día que me quieras.’ Same name as the song. Paramount Pictures. Co-starring Rosita Moreno, who was truly exquisite in it, actually.”
“Yeah,” says Skylark, “he wrote a letter to his publicist, all excited, saying how Paramount loved the picture, how they were gonna, like, show it like on twenty theaters, in a city that only had like fifty theaters, and that he was so happy about that, you know?” She’d briefly nibbled on a piece of bacon after each of the commas.
“Yeah, then four days later you’re dead,” sentences Frank. “Nice.”
Adrian: “El día que me quieras, endulzará sus cuerdas el pájaro cantor! Florecerá la vida! No existirá el dolor.”
“Anyway,” says Frank, “bunch of people died. His star guitarist among them. And nothing remotely romantic even, that accident.” He lets out a chuckle. “Takeoff.”
“Yeah, I heard something like that,” says Skylark, as she spreads some of the caviar on her upper lip with a butter knife, then licks it off, then washes it down with another, longer sip of the champagne. “He was French-born right? Of all places?” she asks.
“Yes,” Frank responds, now sipping from a spoonful of his steaming three-onion soup with stilton croutons. “Argentinian, though. A French-born Argentinian.”
“Bourne of assholes, raised by assholes,” now Skylark scoffs. “My god.”
“Come on,” rebukes Adrian, silver spoon to her lips, sipping in some soup of her own. “He must have been a class act.”
“Maybe, but still. I hear they got that a-hole reputation,” insists Skylark, squashing an onion against a crouton against the concave wall of her bowl with the convex underside of the floor of her spoon.
“Well, they were practically swarmed by Italians for almost a century, starting in the mid-eighteen hundreds,” says Frank. “Italians. I mean, what can you expect? Did you know they used to be a world economic power?”
“Really, a W.E.P.? Italy or Argentina?” asks Skylark.
“Well, don’t know about the former. The latter was. For a brief stretch there,” Frank.
“Whaaaaat? You’re joking. I did not know that,” Skylark.
“Yeah, that country’s a total mystery, prime material for a case study on how you fuck a power up. I mean, developing countries, at least they’re developing. Supposedly moving up. These guys… I mean, do they get the award for being the only country in recent history to be demoted to sub-developed? That heck of an influx of peoples of European descent – and not being ethnocentric here but the work ethics and values of the emigrating working class from that part of the world happened to be consistent with development and progress under a capitalistic liberal-leaning model -- we’re talking over sixty percent of the population has Italian roots and they also got Spanish and British among others – I mean, once led to a level of prosperity that took them to number seven or eight on the list of the wealthiest countries on earth.” The potage is apparently already cool enough to be taken without any I-could-burn-my-lips-off apprehensions. He swallows a spoonful that had had decimeter-long sautéed onions dangling from its sides, then goes on, a singular strand of the translucent amberish grub now dangling from the side of his mouth, “Back in the late nineteenth century it even surpassed the United States, at least as far as GDP is concerned. But, and here’s a big but – ah,” he glances at Adrian then Skylark, “not talking about anyone’s fat ass here, by the way – but… the model was never sustainable. So those numbers were really misleading. The reasons are complex, but fundamentally, in short, the wealthy landowning criollos saw no need to innovate for centuries, and a handful of them owned all the land. So, while places like Australia had, like, a gazillion thriving farmers each claiming and exploting the hell off of his own little lot of land -- leading to competition and innovation -- in Argentina the few exploited the many and the economy depended on farming exports, not much else. So sure, GDP numbers were up in the late nineteenth century. But.” He finally gets the dangling piece of onion inside his mouth with the help of the tip of his tongue and right index knuckle. “It was all downhill from there. Still, Buenos Aires – I mean, it’s just got one city, but it’s the city – Buenos Aires is really something. Like a cross between Chicago and… Barcelona.” He raises his right index finger. “Slightly less safe than years ago, though… the influx of Venezuelans, you know. Among other things.”
“Take me there for the meat, man!” Adrian.
“Totally,” responds Frank. “Great beef.”
“So but back to their humble, modest, self-effacing nature, here’s a joke,” says Skylark, her own soup untouched. “This plane taking off from Buenos Aires, a full flight, all Argentine nationals, back in the seventies. So the plane takes off, and after a few minutes the pilot announces, ‘Buenos días, señoras y señores.’”
Adrian chortles. Skylark’s version of an Argentine airline pilot’s accent is almost over the top.
Skylark goes on, “’En esta mañana, nos encontramos sobrevolando, la magnífica capital de nuestro país, la metrópolis de Buenos Aires. Y nuestro destino esta mañana, como sabén, son las diminutas aldeas de Londres y París.’” She smiles, then takes a sip of the Krug, then looks at Frank, then at Adrian, then back at Frank again.
Adrian says, “So at this church in like Paraguay they appoint this new priest.” She finishes the last of her soup, continues. “The previous one died or something, right, and this new father… hated Argentinians. Hated them with everything he got. Right? So on his first sermon, he says, ‘stay steer, brothers and sisters, from women like Delilah. As you all know, this deceptive woman, she tricked Samson. She made him tell her the secret behind his strength. She cut off his nice, long, thick, powerful mane of hair. And gave him away to the Philistines, and she got rich at his expense. This was a very bad woman... and, as you all know, of course… she was Argentinian.’ And you know, a few Argentines here and there, got up, left. And this went on and on so pretty soon word got out to the bishop, who had him called up, and he told him, “Father Pedro, we cannot have this. We are a fine institution. We cannot be seen as an institution that’s xenophobic or bigoted in any way. Please, no mention of Argentinians ever again.’ And the priest says, ‘That’s okay, Father, I understand. It won’t happen again.’ Then the next morning during his sermon, the priest says, ‘Jealousy is a sin, folks. Take Cain. He didn’t take too well our lord Father’s favoring of Abel’s offering over his. And then he killed his brother, and even lied to God about it. This is, without saying, very, very bad. These are shameful, non-catholic attitudes. And of course, as you all know… Cain was Argentinian.”
Skylark giggles as she tilts some more champagne to her favor. Frank looks on at Adrian, a weak smile on his face.
Adrian goes on, “So the bishop has him called over again, and this time he tells him, ‘Father Pedro. We cannot have this anymore. We are a serious institution. Please, it’s an order. No more mention of anyone being Argentinian in your sermons again.’ And the priest again says, ‘I understand, Father. It won’t happen again.’ So, the next morning during his sermon, he goes, ‘Y en una cena que celebraron Jesus, y sus discípulos. Y Jesús se volvió a uno de ellos, y dijo: ‘tú me venderás por treinta monedas.’ Y el discípulo le contestó: ‘Pero che, vos la teneis cogida conmigo!!’’” Adrian smiles, drinks some more of her Krug.
Frank says, “I got one too. The pope’s Argentinian.”
All three burst out laughing, Adrian even spraying Krug out all over the diorama, but the fire burns on. “Oh, man, if he could hear us,” she says, smiling, wiping Krug off her chin.
“Well, doesn’t he?” Skylark, laughing, popping into her mouth a large chunk of a soft-boiled egg with pickled chiles, then continuing, chewing, with her mouth full, “Anyway, you remember the days when you could just tell jokes like this and it was no problem at all, right? Your victims, they all laughed right along with you. Nebrera’s Crystal Generation, man. I mean, take the good old liberal prescription of political correctness, the calling the so-called cripples ‘differently abled’; calling the so-called-inmates ‘guests.’ When does it stop being quote unquote considerate? When does it start being patronizing at best; ridicule, a mockery, at worse?”
Frank: “How about… referring to the so-called live shooter as an ‘utmost citizen of developing compassion’?”
Adrian: “To the blue whale as ‘curvy’.”
Frank, eating a second of the soft-boiled egg with pickled chiles: “The problem resides in the incorporation of extremes. The extremists, they live in the fringes. But they make the most noise. End of story. What they’re having, simply, the activists and lobbyists, knowingly and not, are the ones driving public opinion, through what the so-called media portray to the public. Why are the hijadists all over the news? But when has the supposed moral majority of muslims marched or made the news or threw rocks condemning any of the hijadist’s terrorist acts? The fringe-dwelling radicals are louder. It’s just how it is.”
“To the illiterate, as ‘phonically challenged,’” says Skylark.
“To people of color, as ‘people of color,’” says Adrian.
Frank continues, after slurping in several renegade strands of fettuccine that never conformed to the roll on his fork, chewing, swallowing: “No, but yes. The extremes. The outliers. Who cares about what’s in the middle,” he chews, swallows. “What’s exciting to them is to satisfy their morbosity with the extremes,” he continues. “Who’s the richest, the smartest, the most attractive, the most powerful, on the one hand; on the other, who’s the most miserable – the sick, the victimized, the morbidly overweight? The tortured, the homeless, the convicted, the deformed, the starving? The latter to feel better about themselves and about their meaningless lives. The former, to aim their resentment at someone else, someone else who they can then start to love to hate.” He finishes off the sake from his tiny black ceramic teacup, made the more diminutive by the size of his hand.
“Sure,” says Skylark, twirling some thickly-sauced strands of fettuccine of her own on her fork. “Shock value. The jolt.”
“Yes, the fire, the tear gas, police brutality, school shootings, but then of course the whole quote woke thing, whole third-wave-feminism, toxic, feminism discourse alive today,” says Adrian, putting into her mouth a steaming, perfectly-twirled, buttery ball of fettuccine Alfredo, then almost finishing chewing, then continuing, “illegal immigrants. The Wall. Gay rights, tattoos, drones, Greta, the wake of the bailout; Greta again, tattoos of Greta, tattoos of Greta’s miners mining cobalt in fucking Zambia; the trans movement, Newspeak gender-neutral pronouns, and so on and so on, as Žižek would say.”
Skylark: “That’s about the most interesting thing he’s said. And said and said and said.”
“That you understand.” Frank.
Skylark, still twirling fettuccine, fettuccine ball growing: “That whole movement would be nothing were it not for its shock antics and preposterous propositions. Spain is en route to having government-subsidized sex-change operations, mark my effing words.
Adrian: “Dubya POP said!”
Frank: “I heard there’s a proposal in the works now for Air Jordans with the so-called pride flag on them.”
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“You know what?” says Skylark. “I’m Michael Jordan? Just swoosh that crap initiative right off that conference room table. What’s he to lose? I mean what’s he worth? Like one and a half billion? You know? Who gives a crap? I’m worth that much I do whatever the fuck I want.”
“Just disgusting,” chews Adrian; chews some more. “What some of those athletes make. A pure reflection on the ignorance of the proletariat.”
“Well, it’s their ruling class needing something other than sex, religion and news to keep would-be revolutionaries at bay. True revolutionaries.” says Frank, downing more sake. He gulps down, continues, “Not the ones fighting their puny little battles, the ones standing no chance to change the world order. The ones condemned to a life of debt. The slaves to the king.”
Her eyes glued to the fettuccine friggen’ softball now rotating on her plate, a quarter-turn per second -- her fork is the axis, naturally -- contemplates Skylark: “Speaking of rich individuals. Multiply Mike’s fortune by around eighty-seven and you get that thing called Bezos.”
Frank and Adrian eat on, eyes on their food on their plates. Skylark looks at Frank, then at Adrian. “Yeah,” She goes on. “Just like a little kid. ‘Ma, I wanna go to the moon.’ Just recently announced he wants to be up there an’ Chuck-E-Cheessin’ by 2024. So nineteen-sixties, right. Why don’t you announce plans to, saaaayyy… find a cure for cancer? Huh? By 2030?”
Adrian: “Not sexy enough.”
Frank: “Not in the king’s agenda.”
Adrian: “No phallic symbols involved, launching, landing.”
Frank: “Harder.”
“Or end world hunger?” insists Skylark, eyes back to glued to the now-gargantuan, slowly rotating fettuccine ball on her plate.
“Even more naïve and infantile than going to the moon,” ordains Adrian. “You’d do well to remember, ah… Mother, ah, Theresa? Died.” She shovels a forkful of sole Meuniere with green rice pilaf into her mouth and chews on, eyes locked on Skylark.
“And oh,” adds Frank, “the king simply won’t allow for that quote unquote, end world hunger ideal you mention. Unquote.”
“You already unquoted.” Adrian.
“But wouldn’t it be nice,” starts Skylark, a tiny piece of green-rice-sprinkled sole at the tip of her fork, “wouldn’t it be nice for humankind – see, some of these terms do make sense – wouldn’t it be nice for humankind… I mean, this is hypothetical, completely utopic, but, like, wouldn’t it be nice for humankind to be… eliminated? For it to vanish, be banished, be effaced, obliterated… from the face of the planet, every last one of them? And then, us three, like, roam the planet and shit? Like fucking gods, and insects, disease, predators, the elements, those are all non-issues. Roam the tundra, behold the incomparable beauty of those frozen fields melting and the grasslands coming back in patches as winter gives way to spring; explore the depths of the ocean, daytime or night, the light from our eyes guiding the way; look up, not down, from mount Everest at the starry, deep purple night sky at our zenith and spend a night in the cool damp shade of the Darien rainforest, in the clutch of those two grandiose oceans, under the nest of the harpy eagle, as the rain thunders down upon us for the entire night… travel at the speed of sound, over the Caribbean at dawn, at millimeters from the surface, and bask up along with the crocodiles, they at our side, us belly up just like they are, on the Floridian sawgrass marshes, the day’s first few rays of sun? Humankind?” She finally puts the green rice-sprinkled piece of fish in her mouth and chews briefly, swallows. “Vanished. Effaced. Obliterated.”
“What?” booms Frank. “And no Gardel? No kimonos? No PETA-harassing foie gras manufacturers? No flat floors and transparent wind barriers, or micro suns at your behest, at the proverbial flick of a switch, not to mention blenders, for crying the hell out loud, and not having to walk on your own, or, worse yet, others’, hours-old, days-old, weeks-old, turds, every time you need to step from point a to point b?”
“No,” responds Skylark, popping a second small piece of rice-sprinkled sole in her mouth. “All that, too.”
“There you go,” says Frank, raising his sake cup, and Adrian and Skylark raise their Krug glasses, and all three of them toss back some drink.
Frank continues. “Kill or be killed. They had it so much easier, back up on those trees. Just reach out and grab some papaya. Spit or shit the seeds out to the ground below and more trees and more fruit and more of them up on them. They become a space-faring species, it’s because they chose to leave paradise, and fight it out down there with the lions and the tigers.”
“Take me there for the meat, man!” trilled Adrian.
“Maybe smilodons. Surely not tigers.” Skylark.
“You get the idea,” Frank, glaring at Skylark, mock pissed-off, sawing at the sole with his steak knife. “You get your anthrozoology degree yet, by any chance?” He feeds his mouth half of the sole on his plate in one forkful, chews some, still glaring at gleeful Skylark, finally looks back at his rice-sprinkled sole, swallows some, goes on: “But back to the new space race. That romantic view of an earth without humans you described. At least virtually human-free. That’s surely something an elite of some type could experience some day. The closest they have to that is either, a: a global pandemic -- a SARS-like virus but worse, for example, manmade or not, wipes out ninety-nine point nine nine nine nine nine nine percent of humanity, so you leave a seven and a half thousand or so surviving elite, or, b, …”
“They’re living in a sort of, really, germ-free paradise,” interrupts Skylark. “I mean, after taking out smallpox in the late seventies. Nothing really tough like the Spanish flu or big bad Black Death has hit them in almost thirty friggen years.”
“AIDS,” says Adrian, smirking.
“I know,” laughs Skylark. “The ones contracted without them doing anything out of the ordinary, right? Like, breathing?”
“Like, laying down to sleep on some hay on the ground and a freaking rat bites them,” says Adrian, then immediately amends herself: “Wait, it was the germ in the fleas on the rats doing the damage. So rather freaking flea bites them.”
Skylark: “Anyway. Zoologist. I would not be surprised at all if some killer fever hits them soon.”
“I would not be surprised at all,” consents Frank. “Though of course you mean pathogen, not killer fever.” He shoots her a glance. Then glances at Adrian. “And you meant HIV. Anyways, so.” He throws back his sake, then holds out the empty porcelain cup between thumb and forefinger with his right arm fully extended out to his side, and sets it down with a loud clang!, porcelain on glass, near the sharp corner at his right on his side of the triangular tabletop, continues: “This ideal of a virtually human-free earth: A, your killer virus, you leave a few people alive. Or B, a virgin earthlike planet on the other side of the galaxy, one where no intelligent life has developed yet. Like, say, Earth, during, for example, the Paleocene. And to get there, humans would have to be space-faring, and presently, those private companies, like Blue Ho Reachin’ and Space Sex, the ones spearheading those efforts… the great advantage of B over A is that, obviously, you don’t have to deal with the questionable morals associated with literally murdering everybody; two, less organic waste to deal with; three, you don’t start this new era out with an already polluted and climate-compromised, resource-depleted planet. B is also more controlled. In theory you can map out a task list and when you’re done you got your new world. You don’t depend on a virus doing the dirty work – unless you create it, of course. Option A is naturally, or should I say, artificially, uglier. Plus you’d be lacking this whole pioneering and exploratory aura of heroism that usually accompanies conquering new worlds, which their past generations, in their case sea-faring, enjoyed: the sheer triumph as a species humans would be endowed with were they to become a multi-planet species.”
Adrian, after swallowing what was just-until-recently a thick, juicy forkful of porchetta: “They should be able to develop the technology necessary to harness the energy that becoming interplanetary requires within 200 years.”
“Yes, but sadly ,” says Skylark, also just swallowing her own thick forkful of porchetta, “when we use words like ‘interplanetary’ in that context we are really just talking: Jeff gets to the moon, and his space stations; Elon to Mars, and that’s it. I mean, even getting to somewhere like the TRAPPIST-1 planets would take thirty-nine years, assuming they could travel there at the speed of light, which they can’t.”
“You got to start somewhere,” Frank, managing to cut a piece of his own porchetta with a butter knife, putting the ensuing forkful in his mouth.
“That you do.” Adrian.
“Fun fact? Did you know that neither one of them’s got any tattoos?” asks Skylark, through a mouthful of nance sorbet. “That they’ve reported, at least.”
Adrian, after washing down another thick chunk of porchetta with some Krug: “Tattoos. I almost thought there that we could get through the evening without a mention of that most disgusting of yeechynesses. Here, hold on to this as I barf six courses out,” she tells Skylark, mockingly handing her Krug glass to her.
“But that’s telling, isn’t it?” asks Skylark, mock-accepting Adrian’s glass. “Really, I measure both their self-regard and their sanity based on how much ink they pollute their dermis with.”
“Lars,” notes Frank, after swallowing a whole plum-size ball of sorbet, “his lowering of Jason’s bass on the ‘Justice’ mix and his snare sound on that album the name of which I forget, oh, yes, St. Anger, notwithstanding -- once dropped a hell of a lot of wisdom on them when in an interview he compared getting a tattoo to eating coal.”
Adrian, finishing up her own sorbet, “Or to jumping off the Empire State building. I’m sure some tree-hugger somewhere’s got a big, long, thigh-too of Greta’s face. There’s this Venezuelan who did this like life-size headshot of Dali that’s so realistic you’d think it’s a picture… on some guy’s waist.”
“I’ve seen it,” says Skylark, licking the yellow remains of sorbet off her lips, continuing: “But see, the matter is, while the integrity of an individual’s image is always compromised by a tattoo, as it trivializes their body and mind by using said individuals as living canvases, living billboards for artwork and or text and or symbols with whatever meaning they are supposed to have, what happens in cases like this where you’re dealing with work of this caliber, I mean this level of rather extraordinary, hyper-realistic artwork, is the artwork itself is also compromised through its trivialization in the form of a tattoo. The body is impermanent and small. Work that good belongs in a mural or on a piece of canvas.” She swills in more Krug. “It’s like, since a human being is supposed to have value, then the question of the value of the individual and the art on him or her or har or ham or it – y’know, watch your pronouns -- in respect to each other, becomes an issue. A great oil painting on canvas, it’s the disposition of the paint on the canvas which holds the value, the canvas itself is in reality practically worthless. The same goes, in the context of art, and not, for instance, of a real estate appraisal, for art on a nondescript urban wall. The value is the art, the wall in that context is worthless – a blank canvas in the context of graffiti or mural art. Art on living human skin? Which is more valuable? The affected area of dermal tissue or the artwork? The individual? Or the tattoo?”
“That would depend case by case, for sure,” says Frank, the greasy rib bone of his Wagyu tomahawk gripped firmly inside his fist. He bites off half the rib crown and slowly chews.
“Wouldn’t it be cool like if someday people were bought and sold as you do art at an auction?” asks Adrian. “Collectors coveting the ownership of the particular, exponentially unique combination of a given person’s physical features and the tattoo art on them? And so like with NFT’s, you own a particular tattoo on a particular location on a particular person’s body? That person’s allowed to go about their puny life, and you can pay them a fee, too, you know, for their, quote unquote, trouble.”
“But then you go back to what you said about the body being impermanent. Vulnerable. What if they lose weight? Gain weight? Tan to a crisp? Lose the tattoo arm in an accident? Or just plain get old? Or just plain die?” asks Frank, as he’s finishing off his steak, as he’s gnawing on the bone, apparently to get every last possible remaining soft tissue fiber available.
“Insurance! And you penalize the tattoo bearer. Another opportunity for big money,” Adrian is biting off the last of the meat off her own tomahawk bone at her now greasy fingertips.
“I guess, yes,” says Frank, still gnawing, then finally loudly dropping the shining, squeaky-clean rib bone back on his plate, a fuzzier clang!, this time: bone on porcelain on glass. He takes a deep breath, then continues: “So Jeff gets to his moon, gets to this planet on the other side of the galaxy, gets out of his spaceship and walks around this alien planet, and out of nowhere this group of aliens appear, and he tells them, he goes: ‘Take me to your leader.’ And the aliens shrug, arrest him, and take him to their boss, right? So their boss is like this fat, giant, fly-eyed, antennaed, slimy, hairy, black, purple and green alien with like 10 arms, up on his throne, right, and he says, ‘Strip!’ and Jeff’s like ‘hell no’ and the alien boss points to his sentries and says, ‘If you don’t strip I’ll tell these bad mothers to go intergalactic on your ass,’ and so Jeff reluctantly takes off his space suit and is left in his undies, and but there’s – surprise! -- this tattoo of Elon Musk up on Jeff’s chest. And the alien boss points to it and says, ‘Him. I want to talk to him.’ And Jeff’s like, ‘Bro, dude, like, I’m here, this is just a tattoo, like, talk to me, bro.’ And the alien boss says, ‘Nonesense. I want to talk to him. Or I tell these mad brothers to go intergalactic on your ass.’ And so Jeff doesn’t want that, right, so he says, ‘Ok, go ahead. But he only talks through me. I’m his messenger. That’s why we landed here. He wanted to talk to you, too.’ And the alien boss says ‘Good.’ And he leans forward and looks straight at the tattoo and says, ‘Earthling leader of Mars, we have but one demand, or we laser-beam both Earth and Mars right out of the night sky.’ And Jeff, eyebrows raised, making his best Elon impression, says, ‘What would that be, oh, great master?’ And the alien pulls back this slimy hairy patch from his own chest, revealing a tattoo of his own, this big, red heart with the cupid arrow across it and in its center, the stern face of a certain someone glaring back at Jeff. And the alien boss says, ‘Bring my Greta back home!’”
All three burst out laughing. The sole source of light in the dining room by the slightly curved, concave-from-inside, continuous, floor-to-ceiling glass curtain wall and in fact the entire house at present is still the six-inch high flame at the center of the diorama at the center of the black triangular glass table at the center of the dining room. The music had devolved from Cardel to Edmundo Rivero to Roberto Goyeneche to Julio Sosa to contemporary nondescript quasi-tango to other latin to gradually more and more modern non-tango other latin to, currently, inexplicably, Ana Tijoux, specifically her hit song ‘1977’, from her 2019 full-length effort of the same name. Skylark downs some more Krug. Adrian, staring into the flame, raps hushedly along with Ana, under her breath, smiling, also hitting the Krug after every few verses. Frank just sitting, looking on, legs crossed, in his yukata, chair pushed slightly away from his edge of the equilateral triangular table, his right wrist resting on it. When ‘Fever’ by La Lupe from her 1967 full-length Reina de la Canción Latina comes on, both kimonoed women stand up to dance and sing along and get over to Frank’s side of the table, and eventually lure him up and he gingerly dances with each of the singing, beaming, laughing women, and but soon sits back down. While their hairstyles are purely consistent with their dress, their makeups are purely consistent with glam goth, with Skylark’s countenance boasting the added richness of texture: a lunar landscape of tiny nicks, bumps and craters, made even more fascinating inside the current chiaroscuro context of the dining room. Below the firelight at the edge of the forest at the center of the triangle, a die-hard, all-beige saber-toothed tiger with three spears on it had just finished bleeding out. The hunters around it had proceeded to skin the tiger right then and there; gut it, cut the meat up and cook it. After the Wagyu tomahawk, the trio had pan-seared duck breast with blueberry sauce, sesame and peanut tempeh skewers over white rice, a Cesar salad, Wagyu beef carpaccio, chocolate banana crepes, anchovies on toasted baguettes, mini fondue with toasted marbled rye bread, and, for dessert, ground pistachio-topped pear pie with vanilla ice cream. They are conversing now over their Boquete Geisha triple espressos. Frank is saying, “Now, assuming you wanted to have such an experience in human form – let’s leave flying at the speed of sound at inches from the surface of the ocean out of the equation since knowing you I believe you intend to do that not on Chuck Yeager’s Bell X-1 on third, but rather completely naked or…”
“Wearing a Superwoman costume,” the two women interrupt in unison.
“Right,” Frank scoffs. “So, leaving that out for now, the closest an elite, or to be more democratic, a certain reduced group within humankind, can come to having the experience of having at their feet a virtually intelligent life-less-free planet, would be