The Best of Electric Velocipede Read Online Free PDF Page B

hurts—hurts worse than the first time, a burning like a little dwarf star—but I finish it in the cup and walk out to my table. The family, blessedly, has left.
    All right now. Good. Now dump it in.
    I hesitate.
    Go on! You have to do it if you’re going to ever get better.
    I sigh and tip the cup into the bowl. The water gets milky and the goldfish swims around faster, even frenzied. After a half minute, when the water settles, he sploshes up, nearly out of the bowl. Can a goldfish be in ecstasy?
    Great. I got the scent. So to speak. I don’t know whether to be relieved or frightened.
    “So do I carry you around, while you . . . trace her?”
    No, no, no. It’s going to be a lot easier for you. For me, it’ll be a bitch, but hey, it’s my job. It pauses. I want you to throw me into the toilet.
    “What?”
    That’s the only way. The fastest. I swear, I’ll find her. All you need to do is sit pretty and wait. Then I’ll give the signal.
    “Look, I mean, this is too weird—”
    Do you want to help yourself or not? The fish sounds angry, even a little disappointed, in me. I’ll be jacking into the network at the same time, which runs parallel with the plumbing lines. Believe it or not. They’re like roads. I’m not going to force you, but . . . It trails off.
    I breathe deep, pick up the goldfish bowl, and head towards the bathroom. The cashier is doing his best to ignore me and I know I can’t enter into the Dresden again for another year or two.
    The toilet is dingy, small, and brown on the inside.
    All rightey. Dump me in.
    I slowly pour, and the goldfish whirls out, almost spinning.
    Now flush. And like I said, I’ll give you the signal. Just wait.
    Dutifully, I flush. I almost hear the goldfish laughing as it spirals down the pipes and disappears, but then I realize it’s the cashier.
    *
    So what do I do, when I find my life confused beyond description? I paint. Off the street, just in front of the gated, Yale commons I peel off a newspaper from the back of a vendor boy. I lay out the snake skin foil in my studio and dash off four quick Juan Juan portraits, the head only, all nearly exactly alike. I am my own forgery. The airbrushes have good pressure and the paint flows well from the tubes. A very productive morning. I look down at the newspaper, which I didn’t buy to read, just to cover the ground. Queen Abierta mysteriously sick—or detained? Analysts are confused. A flickering image of her, her lashes long as butterflies. Three Guerillas Hanged in Sao Paolo. Government accuses Bolivia of the sanctioning of terrorism. I weld the paint onto the canvas all morning. Paula drifts in and out occasionally, grunting, but assenting to leave my member alone, at least for awhile. Twice, though, I have to escape to the toilet room, doubled over in pain. A Dozen Keepers Killed in Illegal Black Mass, another column says. Court geneticists still hope to retrieve keeper fluid for reuse.
    I don’t go home that night; I order out a gyro, eat at my canvas, curl asleep there, counting goldfish leaping over a fence instead of sheep.
    The night passes slowly, like an argument. I wonder whether Clown Man has returned home. Most likely. I foggily realize that, most likely, I will die by the end of the week.
    I wake up at about six. Peering at the painting, I notice something that wasn’t there when I finished the painting and drifted off.
    King Juan Juan’s face is rubbed out, scumbled. There are enough lines of flesh to let the viewer know that it was a deliberate act. I must have arose in the middle of my sleep and done this, somnambulant terrorism against the state. If nothing else, this would finish me quick. King Juan Juan is a punisher. He funds the keepers.
    Hey.
    I start, turn around; I’m suddenly heaving for air, as if my lungs are wounded by breath. “What?” I say.
    No, look, it’s me. I found her. I found your keeper.
    I pause, on all fours. “Where are you?”
    You’ll never believe me.
    “Where?