I found this story fragment in my Twitter archive. It’s of interest only because it was composed to order. The protagonist had to be a cactus called Johnny Ninefingers who investigates roadkill incidents.
Ninefingers wakes up in the desert. He’s got two limbs missing. Some kind of oozing going on. He figures it didn’t work out with Carmen.
“You need some help, old timer?” Some junkyard lifer. Maybe nine years old.
“I fucking ask you? Go to school. Get a shirt on first.”
“Suit jourself. Not like you got a arm problem, right?”
Cute. Ninefingers has seen cute. Cute gets you bagged. Cute gets you slabbed.
Ninefingers steadies himself, draws out his hipflask. It falls immediately to the desert floor. The kid picks it up, slugs from it.
“What’s your name, kid?” The kid wipes her mouth with an ancient baseball glove. She spits Wrigley’s and vomit on a rock.
“They call me Esperanza,” she says. “It means fuck you.”
“There a diner around here? Some place with a phone?” Ninefingers asks the kid.
“Depends if you got ten bucks,” Esperanza says.
“I’ll buy you a milkshake when we get there.”
“Lactose intolerant,” says Esperanza.
“Ah, bullshit,” says Ninefingers. “You just ain’t doing it right.”
Esperanza scratches her bellybutton with a spork.
“Why can’t you put a shirt on?” says Ninefingers. “It ain’t right.”
“Fucking Taliban up in here,” says Esperanza. “I’m nine. It’s hot.”
“Anyway,” says Esperanza. “Real reason is I got this.” She turns and shows him her back. A tattoo of a butterfly, the size of a man’s hand.
“It sure is pretty,” says Ninefingers. “It means change, right? Butterflies?”
“It means I got fucked up in Tijuana is all.”
Esperanza starts walking. “It’s this way. Maybe three miles. Meter’s running, man.”
This kid is something new. Ninefingers follows her.
When they get to the diner, Ninefingers calls it in. Coyote. Two hours, maybe three. No, he can’t be more goddam precise.
When he gets back to the table, Esperanza is emptying his hip flask into her milkshake. She glances up. “What up, Ninety-Nine?”
“You wanna lay off my booze? It’s eleven in the morning. Also, you’re nine.”
“I’m just taking the edge off. Off this nasty-ass milkshake.”
“The fuck you using payphones for anyhow?” Esperanza says. “Y’all can’t use a Blackberry?”
“I stay off-grid. Plus, I’m a cactus.”
Esperanza downs the milkshake. “Shit. Taste like a cow once saw a fucking Hershey bar. What you investigating anyways?”
Ninefingers looks at her. “What do you care?”
Esperanza shrugs. “I had my way, I’d be on TMZ or some shit. But we here, right?”
“Roadkill,” says Ninefingers. “I’m investigating a roadkill case.”
“The fuck out of here,” says Esperanza. “Who pays for that shit?”
“Maybe I’m doing it pro bono,” says Ninefingers. “You know what that is?”
“Fuck you,” says Esperanza. “He’s that little blind Irish dude.”
Ninefingers looks out at the desert. He feels like he’s on the road. On the way to someplace he doesn’t like. He feels old.
“Esperanza finishes her milkshake and lights a Kool. “So, what was it?”
“What was what?” Ninefingers says. “And put that thing out.”
“The roadkill. What all got killed?”
“Coyote. Young one. Are you blowing rings? What the hell is wrong with you, child?”
“They menthol. I was in a hurry this morning. Forgot to brush my teeth. What you care about a coyote? They endangered or some shit?”
“No, they’re not endangered. But this one shouldn’t have died.”
Esperanza blows smoke at her bellybutton. “He gonna cure cancer?”
“She. No, she wasn’t. Listen, we got to get into town. There’s this guy I need a favour from.”
“He a cop?”
“Pet store owner.”
“So,” says Esperanza. “Y’all need a ride.” She turns to scan the parking lot. The butterfly wings on her narrow shoulders.
“You know somebody might give us a ride?”
Esperanza turns, slides from her seat. “More like I know some things might give us a ride.”
“Ninefingers sighs. “I can’t be a party to that.”
Esperanza’s butterfly shrugs. “Sit tight, then. Maybe FedEx do a special on cactuses.”
Ninefingers takes a drink. The tequila tastes like somebody crashed a fucking Camaro into the agave first. He follows Esperanza outside.
The Cocktail Hour was a series of improvised fiction that I published on Twitter from late 2011 until it eventually petered out earlier this year. Each episode was tweeted on a Friday, beginning at about 4 in the afternoon and eventually ending as late as midnight, by which time the effects of the author’s own cocktail intake were often disgracefully apparent.
Its popularity was something I found genuinely surprising, and the responses it generated were among the most rewarding and touching that I have ever received. It became a kind of spontaneous and shared experience, and though I often had to go to extraordinary lengths to ensure stories were finished (I once tweeted an ending from a lay-by during a thunderstorm), it was never anything other than a joy to work on.
Like all such things, it reached a natural end. Though I resisted posting episodes here for a long time because I wanted to preserve the spontaneity of the form, it feels wrong that it should vanish entirely. Here, then, is a small but perhaps fitting coda.
The video is a retrospective of the “first series”. The post below is the last ever episode.
Goodbye, CH. I miss you.
Until six.
September has, rather tiresomely, seen fit to arrive. On the lawns, the shadows of the cedars are about the dull business of lengthening.
The light, though still rather glad and fetching in its way, has taken to dashing off skittishly at barely seven o’clock.
Things have, in short, taken a frankly autumnal turn. A chap confined to his study might be inclined to take rather a gloomy view of matters.
Still, even as one passes the cheerless milestone of the equinox and trudges reluctantly towards midwinter, certain consolations remain.
For instance, there is the whisper and scrape of stockinged feet in the passageway outside. A light, feline tread. A familiar one.
There is the perfunctory knock. The half beat of hesitation. Then, everywhere in the dull air, the delicate pervasion of jasmine.
There are the hands, as sure and stealthy as frost, suddenly occluding my eyes. There is the voice–that voice–silvered, solicitous.
“Guess who,” she says. She breathes.
The Cocktail Hour.
And not a moment too soon. What a dismal and dispiriting age, in fact, it seems to have been. Naturally, however, one has a certain reserve.
“Honestly,” I say. “I do, contrary to certain speculation, have an occupation. I do not for naught shutter myself against the bright day.”
“Piffle,” says the Cocktail Hour. “You don’t shutter yourself at all. You were staring out the window when I came in. And scratching.”
“Yes, well,” I reply. “I was speaking figuratively. Besides, the labours of the mind go unglimpsed by the untutored world.”
“Do they indeed?” says the Cocktail Hour. “They sound a bit like certain undergarments. But never mind all that. We have an aunt problem.”
“Do we? Well, inform the gardener. Surely he has preparations he can scatter about the place?”
“An aunt problem, dear. All this sepulchral dust seems to be clogging up your ears.”
“Ah,” I say. “A matter of an entirely different complexion. And there are, to my knowledge, no efficacious preparations to be had.”
“No,” agrees the Cocktail Hour. “It eludes science. And Aunt Persephone could stir a pound of ant powder into her tea and run for a train.”
“Aunt Persephone?” I say. “Is it as bad as that?”
“I fear so,” says the Cocktail Hour. “To say nothing of Aunt Jemima.”
“I see,” I say. “Of course, Aunts Persphone and Jemima are rarely observed in isolation. They’re practically a syndrome.”
“Well, quite. And to further compound matters, they have in their midst a young charge.”
“Do they? How very Brontëesque of them. Are they heaving the poor thing into a convent? Farming her out to a stern cove in a cloak?”
“I rather doubt,” says the Cocktail Hour, “that Millicent would countenance either fate.”
“You think not? Our Millicent doesn’t occupy the meek and biddable regions of the young charge spectrum, then?”
“Quite the contrary. Something of a handful, I’m afraid. And then there is the small matter of her attachment.”
“Attachment? What is Millicent attached to? The diplomatic corps? A neighbouring dwelling? A twin?”
“A lepidopterist. She has conceived rather a passion for him. You know how young girls can be.”
“A lepidopterist? How very tragic. But, of course, one is more compassionate these days. They aren’t packed off to colonies any more.”
“A lepidopterist, you dreadful oaf. A collector of butterflies. You know, with the nets and notebooks and the blinking.”
“Good lord,” I say. “The situation is indeed grim. One perceives the foundation for the auntly concern.”
“Yes, quite so,” says the Cocktail Hour. “Aunt Persephone can be, shall we say, excessive, but in this we are as one.”
“So,” I say. “We are mustering a war party, eh? Marshalling our forces, and what-have-you?”
“So it would appear,” says the Cocktail Hour. “You will flock to the banner?”
“I’ve thought of little but flocking all day. Shall we fall in before dinner? Stiffen our resolve at the drinks tray?”
“It seems the only course open to us. Six o’clock?”
“Six it is.”
* * *
Apprising myself of the aunts and their disposition of forces, I avail of a gin ration far in excess of standard provisions.
Thus emboldened, I take my place opposite the phalanx of variously discommoded female relatives. Aunt Persephone glares.
“Oh,” says Aunt Persephone. “It’s you. Well, I suppose it can’t be helped.”
“I fear not, madam. The condition is irreversible.”
“Wilbur,” Aunt Jemima interjects mildly, “was devoted to those submarines of his. You do remember Wilbur?”
“Do be silent, Jemmy,” Aunt Persephone says with gathering sternness. “One helpless adjunct is enough for anyone.”
“Speaking of which,” says the Cocktail Hour. “You haven’t been introduced to Millicent.”
She directs my attention to a young lady of disputatious aspect consigned to a province of sofa annexed by that of Aunt Persephone.
“Well, then?” I address myself to Millicent. “How are tricks, old thing? Done all your prep and what-not?”
Millicent eyes me with a carefully concerted scepticism. “I prefer Milly,” she says.
“You prefer no such thing,” says Aunt Persephone, whose sternness has assumed an unignorable stature. “The very idea.”
Millicent, I notice, is bedecked in the yearning but thwarted manner of a girl who has not yet come out, yet fiercely intends to.
Her complexion has the distinctively scoured pinkness of expeditiously applied and hastily removed strata of make-up.
“Millicent distinguished herself at a gymkhana last month,” says the Cocktail Hour with diplomatic aplomb. “Isn’t that right.”
“Ponies,” says Millicent with clear malice aforethought, “are ridiculous.”
“I remember,” Aunt Jemima muses mildly, “when my Arthur was matriculating. He came out in hives. A most trying time.”
“For heaven’s sake, Jemmy,” says Aunt Persephone. “Do occupy yourself. What have you done with your libretto?”
“So, I gather there’s a young chap in the offing,” I venture. “What’s all that about, then? Things gone a bit star-crossed, eh?”
Aunt Persephone assumes a minatory aspect. “This is not a subject,” she announces icily, “that need detain us.”
“Madam,” I say, summoning the balm of reason, “if you will permit me. This is, if you will, my bailiwick. I have trodden this very ground.”
“What can you be wittering about, man?”
“My youth, my lady, was a comparatively recent catastrophe. I may have guidance to offer.”
“I rather doubt it,” says the Cocktail Hour, who nonetheless reclines with a certain expectant indulgence.
My views having been sought, I turn again to the ward of court with the ungovernable longings and the war-torn complexion.
“This young charger of yours. He has a name, I take it?”
Millicent bestirs herself with a flurry of organza. “Gogo Arbuthnot,” she says.
“Ah, Shakespeare,” I say. “How heartening to hear the music of the Bard on the lips of the young.”
“That’s his name. Gogo Arbuthnot.”
“Indeed?” I say, deftly concealing any leakage of hilarity. “Gogo Arbuthnot?”
“His given name is Hugo,” Millicent glumly assured me.
“Well, of course it is,” I reply. “And yet he felt that he had been wrongly hugoed? His true nature lay undiscovered?”
A tremor of amusement disturbs Millicent’s features, and is swiftly suppressed. She resumes her disdainful surveillance.
“So, this Gogo of yours. What does he do when he’s not writing home from the upper fourth? What’s his ruling passion?”
“Millicent’s expression is evasive. “Well, there’s rugger, naturally. And that sort of thing.”
“What sort? Elaborate, do.”
The Cocktail Hour, calmly encased in iridescent satin and impartiality, endures a minor disturbance of entertainment.
“Well,” says Millicent, picking at an errant tendril of crepe, “there’s the lepidoptery thing, but you wouldn’t–”
“Oh, a butterfly man!”
“Well, I don’t know that I’d–”
“Yes, butterflies. Gosh, that takes me back. Aldous L’Estrange, there was another noted netter.”
“Aldous Le?”
“L’Estrange. Ancient line. Had a good day at Agincourt. It was all going swimmingly until the thing with Clarinda.”
“Clarinda?”
“Trent-ffrench. Cherished and only issue of the undersecretary at the Foreign Office of the same name.”
Millicent withholds any intelligence she may possess under this heading. She worries an area of shot silk. “So, what happened?”
“With Aldous and Clarinda? Well, dreaminess ensued. At least at first.”
“At first?”
“Well, yes. Before the disappearance.”
“The disappearance. The union of Aldous and Clarinda, you see, was forged upon a shared love of exotic climes. Or so it went.”
“So it went?” A good deal of fidgeting is now occurring amidst Millicent’s assorted fabrics.
“So it is told.” I take a portentous sip.
“Aldous, you see, had evinced a affinity for the far-flung. Wanted to see the world. Gave it to be understood that diplomacy beckoned.”
“And Clarinda’s papa–” Millicent supplied.
“Was admirably placed to further these aims. All seemed to be well in Christendom.”
“I do hope,” Aunt Persephone interrupted, “that this rather wearying obstacle to dinner has a purpose other than your own diversion.”
“Leander, you know,” Aunt Jemima resumed mildly, “had a cactus he wished to show at the Great Exhibition. But Perversity intervened.”
“And so, there everyone was,” I continue. “There being, for our purposes, Buenos Aires. Aldous and Clarinda being enviably ensconced.”
“Well, well,” says the Cocktail Hour, arranging herself in softly lucent vertex of splendour, “what could possibly go wrong?”
“What, indeed? Well, there Aldous and Clarinda were, agreeably quartered, it would seem, in the Argentine. She having secured a box.”
“A box?” Millicent retreats visibly.
“At the Teatro Colón. One had to satisfy certain proprieties, you see.”
“Aldous,” the Cocktail Hour speculates, “began, one assumes, to ingratiate himself among the great and the good of the city.”
“So one might expect,” I say. “The better to launch himself as an interlocutor of repute, serving only the whims of Empire.”
“The whims of Empire?” the Cocktail Hour inquires, attending to her gin.
“Entirely unserved. Fell on deaf etcetera. Transmission ends.”
Millicent is much agitated. “What do you mean? What became of Aldous?”
I sustain myself at the drinks tray before proceeding further.
“The record falls silent,” I say. “Aldous surrendered himself to the forest.”
INT. Day (MS) A corridor. O’RINGTONE, wearing a loincloth, is limbering up, ignored by an imposing priestess with a headset and clipboard.
MVO: Having convinced the apothecary that he is now nit-free, Denis has been readmitted to the Archimandrite’s palace.
MVO: He will have precisely five minutes on the catwalk to model his loincloth range. He is nervous but upbeat.
O’RINGTONE: The thing with me is: what you see is what you get, you know? Heart on my sleeve. Take it or leave it.
MVO: Denis must await his cue from the Abbess Lachryma, the Archimandrite’s powerful PA and Head of Purchasing.
O’RINGTONE: All you can do is give it your all. You only get one shot. Gotta lose yourself in the moment. Be all you can be.
LACHRYMA: I am Abbess Lachryma. Shut fuck up. No further yip-yap. O’RINGTONE takes a seat on a bench, toys with a safety pin.
LACHRYMA (to headset): What I fucking know? Sushi is fucking sushi, no? Make decision, crying baby man.
O’RINGTONE silently traces his routine on the bench with his fingertips. LACHRYMA doodles a crucifixion on her clipboard.
LACHRYMA (to headset): Da? All is prepared? Da. Good, I send him in. (To O’RINGTONE) Nappy man! On feet! Cue is coming!
LACHRYMA: Obey all instructions. Do not look Archimandrite in eye. At all times smile. Is shark pool under runway.
Enormous, gold-inlaid doors swing open.
LACHRYMA: And we are on in five, four, three– She holds up two fingers, then one.
—
INT. Day (LS) An immense and opulent ballroom, dominated by a pool traversed by a narrow, glass catwalk.
At the far end of the catwalk is a huge dais surmounted by an elaborate throne fashioned from bones.
The Archimandrite, a stupendously obese man wearing chiffon ecclesiastical robes, is seated on the throne of bones.
A piece of music is played on the PA system. It is Whigfield’s Saturday Night. O’RINGTONE sprints onto the catwalk.
O’RINGTONE drops to his knees in a long disco slide. The Archimandrite yawns and summons a eunuch. O’RINGTONE begins his routine.
O’RINGTONE boogies and sashays, now and then holding out the fabric of his loincloth for inspection. The Archimandrite belches.
O’RINGTONE rips off his loin cloth to reveal another sequinned one underneath, timed to a track change (Dollar’s Oh L’Amour!).
The Archimandrite nibbles a kitten canapé and has a eunuch fellate him. A dorsal fin appears in the pool, then a second.
MVO: Denis’s routine has been technically faultless, but the Archimandrite’s reaction will be unpredictable.
The Archimandrite strikes the floor violently with his crozier. The music stops. O’RINGTONE skids and falls over with a squeak.
ARCHIMANDRITE (over the PA, his voice is a chilling, dessicated whisper): How amusing you are, filthy pedlar. Get up.
O’RINGTONE stands uncertainly. ARCHIMANDRITE: Come. You may approach. O’RINGTONE tiptoes slowly to the end of the catwalk.
ARCHIMANDRITE: The truth, my scantily clad little ragamuffin, is that I have not the slightest interest in loincloths.
ARCHIMANDRITE: As you see, my own sartorial tastes run to the, shall we say, unrestrained. And these aren’t even my night things.
ARCHIMANDRITE: Nonetheless, we do require a reliable supplier of loincloths for these…these pitiful geldings.
ARCHIMANDRITE: And as you have not entirely suffused me with ennui, I may look favourably upon your bid.
O’RINGTONE trembles.
ARCHIMANDRITE: However, you must first indulge me a little further. Does this sound agreeable?
O’RINGTONE nods mutely.
ARCHIMANDRITE: Splendid. Abbess Lachryma! Retract the catwalk, if you please.
The catwalk is slowly retracted from the doorway. When it stops, there is a gap of about eight feet. LACHRYMA appears at the doorway with a bucket of bloody chum.
LACHRYMA begins tossing bloody chunks of fish into the pool below. From the ceiling a tiny scooter is lowered.
ARCHIMANDRITE: Even for one of your meagre gifts, peasant, your task can scarcely require elaboration, I think.
O’RINGTONE hesitantly sets the scooter upright, places one foot on its platform. He looks questioningly at the Archimandrite, who nods.
O’RINGTONE peers at the end of the catwalk. LACHRYMA has emptied her bucket. The water froths with blood and fins.
O’RINGTONE scratches his crotch and makes the sign of the cross. He turns and bows briefly to the Archimandrite, who is masturbating.
O’RINGTONE steadies the scooter, looks determinedly at the doorway, and begins to push furiously. There is loud, periodic squeaking.
O’RINGTONE hurtles towards the end of the catwalk. LACHRYMA smiles almost imperceptibly and stirs a Bloody Mary with celery.
O’RINGTONE shoots off the end of the catwalk on the scooter. He cries out Trundlebert’s name. We go to slo-mo, track him halfway.
