Chapter 10, Moonwalker

“Where’s your helmet?” Zoe asked when I rolled up to the back door of Chaos.

“Some gulls stole it.” I tucked my bike behind the dumpster hoping the anarchists didn’t think it was up for grabs and shuffled through my backpack for my keys. “Come on, we’ve got a lot of organic Ethiopian Estate Guatemalan Shade Grown Kona Mocha Java to brew. And you look super cute today, by the way,” I said, swiping her glasses off her face and putting them on my nose. “Can I wear these?”

“No,” she said, swiping them back. Not unless you want me get lost when I have to venture out into the jungle to fill the creamers.”

And that’s how we passed the day after I’d received my mission to save the man on the moon and saved a crazy, homeless-red-haired kid’s life with starlight that had streamed through my hands like the dollar bills we put in and took out of the register all day. I didn’t say a word to Zoe, but I could tell she wanted to ask me why I was in such a good mood, but didn’t want to jinx it in case I was manic instead of my usual depressed.

“You want to come over and watch a movie with Cally and me tonight?

“You mean leave my apartment two nights in a row? I don’t know about that. That seems pretty risky.”

“We’re going to make popcorn with Bragg’s and nutritional yeast.”

“Wow, you’re trying to lure me with the taste of fake cheese.”

“Would you prefer partially hydrogenated oil that stays in your body for the rest of your life?"

“Well, if you put it that way—sure, I’ll come over. But only if you give me any leftovers to feed the seagulls.”

“I thought they stole your helmet. What are you feeding them for?"

“They did me a favor. I should have ditched that thing a long time ago.”

“Hey, check this out,” Zoe said. She had a print-out in her hand someone had left on one of our tables. We had a few particularly zealous ones who casually “forgot” their propaganda in the coffeehouse. People left all sorts of crazy “information”--everything from pamphlets promoting the latest jungle superfood berry drink to articles about aliens who looked like lizards that were actually running the world. Supposedly George Bush was one—an alien. This guy saw his real lizard face one time when he smoked DMT. I would have left it around for someone else to read, but later he started claiming Obama was a lizard, too, and I just wasn’t ready to let go of that little ray of hope for the world he’d brought into my dark existence. Obama was not a lizard. There had to be something sacrosanct.

“It says here there’s a solar eclipse today,” Zoe said, pulling herself away from the article to look at the clock on the back wall that drove us crazy because it ticked off the minutes and neither of us could stand the sound of each second of our lives passing by in Chaos, even if it was just a café. Of course, when it was busy, we couldn’t hear it. We weren’t sure if that was a better or worse way to go through the day, which was a bigger waste.

“And it’s happening right now!” She ran to the door, peering out through the pane. “I’m too scared to go outside,” she whispered. “What if something gets me!”

“I don’t see anything,” I mumbled, pretending I had no idea what she was talking about. I wasn’t ready to decide if I was in denial about the morning’s events or just wanted to keep them as a secret to hold tight.

“That’s because you can only see it in Asia where they’re a lot more superstitious than we are.”

“You’re Asian,” I reminded her.

“No, I’m Chinese. We’re a continent to ourselves.”

“Well you have a rabbit foot key chain and cross yourself when a black cat crosses your path.”

“Yeah, but I wouldn’t let anyone tell me I had to stay indoors all day so my baby wouldn’t get birth defects like they make women do in India. If I was pregnant, that is.”

“You’re talking about a country that burns brides.”

“Look who’s superstitious now.”

“Or prejudiced.”

“Wow, you really don’t have any pride left.”

“I’m too old to be pc. Let me see that.” I grabbed the paper out of her hands and scanned it, looking for some confirmation that I wasn’t crazy, that it was the eclipse’s fault, that the morning’s fantastical scene could be reduced to a scientific phenomenon and I didn’t have to worry about werewolves on top of the whole Michael Jackson thing.

Everyone knew how the brain responded to light. They’d done all sorts of experiments with rats and there was that sick Werner Herzog film based on a true story about a guy that grew up in a basement and had no memory of anything until one day he found himself stumbling down a street. Supposedly the actor that played him wasn’t acting. Herzog had cast a real lunatic in the part and didn’t even care that people condemned him for taking advantage of the poor guy. I’d just read an article about him in The New York Times “catching up” with where he was today. God, these ironic quotations make me sick. I make myself sick for using them in the first place, but how else can I express my disgust at the human race? He played the accordion on the street in Berlin. People stopped to gawk at him because he’d been in a movie. Nobody told him he played badly. You really just couldn’t trust anyone. Especially the sane.

I wasn’t going crazy. I was just feeling the effects of the eclipse on a biochemical level because I was extremely sensitive to variations in light. Of course this implied I was also sensitive to the dark, but I didn’t want to go there. Not today. Not when I ran the risk of giving birth to a deformed baby if I ventured out on the street.

“Did you get to the part where the astrologers predict a rise in communal and regional violence in the days after and a devastating natural disaster?” Zoe asked me.

“Skipped it. I like this part. ‘There’s no need to get too alarmed about the eclipse,’ I read aloud. ‘They are a natural phenomenon,’ the astrologer told the Associated Foreign Press.”

“Who said that?”

“Siva Prasad Tata from the Astro Jyoti website. He straddles the two worlds, you know. Or at least that’s what this article says. I don’t trust the internet. How do you know it’s a reliable source? It’s not like Deep Throat in Watergate. He had a real voice. He wasn’t some disembodied robot of a machine anyone can program to say anything.”

“Who?”

“Never mind.”

“Sometimes you treat me like such a baby! I can’t help it if I wasn’t born in the 60s. By the way, it’s also the 40th anniversary of Woodstock. Were you at that, too?”

“I’m not that old!”

“Not even in utero? Maybe you were conceived there?”

“I told you my parents weren’t hippies. They were in the army and a general caught me when my mother squeezed me out of her. That’s why I’m such a strict boss.”

“Talk about straddling dimensions. How many worlds does that guy in India straddle? I bet you’ve got him beat.”

“No shit. Just two.”

“I think both of us are straddling a few more than that. Wanna name some?”

“I’m having a hard enough time with this one.”

“There’s no cream left,” whined one of the customers.

“Back to work, peon,” I commanded Zoe.

“Yes, boss. Very good, boss,” she said in a bad Indian accent, bowing all the way to the ground to kiss my feet. The cream-deprived customer didn’t think it was funny when she got back up and informed him, “You know in India where cows are sacred you wouldn’t be allowed to put cream in your coffee. You could only have soy milk.”

“I should fire you for that,” I reprimanded her, holding in my laughter for the customer’s benefit for about three seconds. “Sorry, sir,” I choked. “We’re all a little crazy today because of an eclipse on the other side of the world. Your coffee’s on the house. Make that free for everyone!” I announced. The customers clamored toward the counter, tossing dollar bills in our tip jar. If I got fired it would be worth it at least, in other dimensions besides this one.

Zoe beamed at me. “You’ll be a dumpster diver yet.”

“What time is dinner again?”

“Dinner? I thought I invited you over for popcorn and a movie.”

“Since I’m not going to fire you and will probably be the one who gets fired myself, you two better feed me more than popcorn.”

“I’ll go see what’s out back in the dumpster.”