Choke

At first,I tell De

"But you never sleep on that side," De

I say, "That's not the point. No rocks go in my bed, that's the point."

I come home from a couple hours of group therapy with Nico or Leeza or Tanya, and there's rocks inside the microwave oven. There's rocks in the clothes dryer. Rocks inside the washing machine.

Sometimes it's three or four in the morning before De

This is De

De

"Like the smoke vanisheth, so shall thou drive them away and like as wax melteth at the fire," he read, "so let the ungodly perish at the presence of God."

De

At one o'clock in the town square, His Lord High Charlie, the Colonial Governor, was reading to us, standing with his face bowed into his little book. A cold wind pulled the smoke out sideways from every chimney pot. The milkmaids were there. Cobblers were there. The blacksmith was there. All of them, their clothes and hair, their breath and wigs reeking of hash. Reeking of reefer. All of their eyes, red and wasted.

Goodwife Landson and Mistress Plain wept into their aprons, but only because mourning was in their job descriptions. A guard of men stood with muskets braced in both hands, ready to escort De

"Instead of banishing me," De

All the wasted colonists jumped when De

"We therefore commit his body to the earth, to be turned into corruption . . . ," the governor read as a jetliner roared low, coming in for a landing, drowning out his little speech.

The guard escorted De

"So, dude," I shout from the colony gates, "now that you're dead, what are you going to do with all your free time?"

"It's what I'm not going to do," De

This meant hunting rocks instead of jacking off. Staying so busy, hungry, tired, and poor he won't have any energy left to hunt porno and wham the ham.

The night after he's banished, De

The cop says, "Excuse me, but do you know this man?"

Then the cop says, "Victor? Victor Mancini? Hey, Victor, how's it going? Your life, I mean." And he holds one hand up with the big flat palm facing me.

I figure the cop means for me to high-five him, so I do, but I have to jump a little, since he's so tall. Still, my hand misses his. Then I say, "Yeah, that's De

Talking to De

Of course.

"That time I almost choked!" I say.

And the cop says, "You remember!"

"Well," I say, "thanks for bringing old De

And the cop says, "You doing okay now, Victor? Is there any­thing you need?"

I go to the dining-room table and write a name on a slip of paper. I hand it to the cop and say, "Could you arrange to make this guy's life a living hell? Maybe you could pull some strings and get him in for a rectal cavity search?"

The name on the paper is His Lord High Charlie, the Colo­nial Governor.

What would Jesus NOT do?

And the cop smiles and says, "I'll see what's possible."

And I shut the door in his face.

Now De

"A rock is a rock," he says, "but a square rock is a blessing."

The living room looks filled up by an avalanche. First the rocks were up around the bottom of the sofa. Then the end tables were buried with just the lampshades poking up out of the rocks. Granite and sandstone. Gray and blue and black and brown rocks. In some rooms, we walk around stooped against the ceil­ing.

So I ask, what's he going to build?

And De

"All these stupid rocks," I say, "what's your goal?"

"This isn't about getting something done," De

"But what are you going to do with all these rocks?"

And De

"But what's enough?" I say.

"I don't know, dude," De

The way every day of your life, the way it can just disappear in front of the television, De

"Tombstone" isn't the right word, but it's the first word that comes to mind.

"This way, maybe my life will add up to something," he says, "something that will last."

I say there needs to be a twelve-step program for rock addicts.

And De

Chapter 30

The Mommy and the stupid little shit-heel kid, they stopped at a zoo one time. This zoo was so famous it was surrounded by acres of parking lot. This was in some city you can drive to, where a line of kids and moms were waiting to get inside with their money.