The Paradise War Read Online Free PDF Page A

and Yamaha and Suzuki and Honda and Hitachi and Toshiba and Kawasaki and Nissan and Minolta and Panasonic and Mitsu-bloody-bishi!
    “Do we care?” he demanded rhetorically. “Hell, no! We don’t bat an eye. We don’t turn a hair. We don’t twitch a solitary sedentary muscle. We sit transfixed before the Tube Almighty, lulled into a false Nirvana by a stupefying combination of pernicious banality and blather while nocuous cathode rays transform our healthy gray cells into jellied veal!”
    As harangues go, it was one of Simon’s better efforts. But his dolorous litanies could endure ad infinitum, and I was growing weary. He paused for breath and I saw my chance. “If you’re unhappy,” I said, throwing myself into the withering flow of invective, “why do you stay here?”
    Curiously, that stopped him. He turned his face to me. “What did you say?”
    “You heard me. If you’re as miserable as you make yourself out to be, and if things are as bad as you say—why not leave? You could go anywhere.”
    Simon smiled his thin, superior smile. “Show me a place where it’s better,” he challenged, “and I’m on my way.”
    Offhand, I could not think of any place perfect enough for Simon. I might have suggested the States, but the same demons infesting Britain were running rampant in America as well. The last time I was back home, I hardly recognized the place—it wasn’t at all as I remembered. Even in my own small, mid-American town the sense of community had all but vanished, gobbled up by ravening corporations and the townsfolks’ own blind addiction to a quick-buck economy and voracious consumerism. “We might not have a Fourth of July parade down Main Street anymore, or Christmas carols in the park,” my dad had said, “but we sure as hell got McDonald’s and Pizza Hut and Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Wal-Mart mini-mall that’s open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week!”
    That was the way of the world: greedy, grim, and ghastly. It was like that everywhere, and I was tired of being reminded of it every time I looked around. So I rounded on Simon, looked him in the eye, and I threw his challenge back in his face. “Do you mean to tell me that if you found a place that suited you better, you’d leave?”
    “Like a shot!”
    “Ha!” I gloated. “You never would. I know you, Simon, you’re a classic malcontent. You’re not happy unless you’re miserable.”
    “Oh, really?”
    “It’s true, Simon,” I declared. “If everything was perfect, you’d be depressed. That’s right. You actually like things the way they are.”
    “Well, thank you very much, Dr. Freud,” Simon snarled. “I deeply appreciate your incisive analysis.” He punched the accelerator to the floor.
    I thrust home my point. “You might as well admit it, Simon— you’re a crap hound, and you love it. You are a connoisseur of misery: doom on the halfshell! Bring it on! The worse things get, the better you like it. Decadence suits you—in fact, you prefer it. You delight in decline; you revel in rot.”
    “Watch out,” he replied softly—so softly I almost didn’t hear him. “I just might surprise you one day, friend.”

3
T HE G REEN M AN
     
    I had hoped to see Loch Ness. But all I saw was my own bleary-eyed reflection in the car window, made lurid by the map light in the dashboard. It was dark. And late. I was hungry, bored, and tired, aching to stop and silently cursing myself for being a party to this idiotic outing.
     
    The things I said about Simon were essentially true. He came from a long line of manic depressives, megalomaniacs, and megalomaniac depressives. Still, I had only hoped to get him off his whining binge. Instead, my impromptu psychoanalysis produced a strained and heavy silence between us. Simon lapsed into sullen withdrawal and would speak only in monosyllabic grunts for the next seven hours. I carried out my navigational duties nevertheless, disregarding his sulk.
    The map in my lap