Chester Anderson - The Butterfly Kid

At just past five, when Laszlo’d led me to lobster headquarters on Canal Street, Michael was still engaged in an air-conditioned hotel room with Yvonne, possibly discussing politics. (He was very anti-Kennedy that year, for reasons unknown to me.) Ten minutes later, when I was discovering that Laszlo’s Reality Pill connection was a deep blue shellfish, Michael and Yvonne were just leaving her room en route to The Garden of Eden.

“You see, she was very eager to meet you, Chester. I mean, she’d heard so much about you and all, the usual thing. But I knew you wouldn’t want her at the pad — she being just a little bit stupid, among other things — so I took her to The Garden. Where else?”

And at something like six o’clock, when I was in the claws of one lobster and being threatened by the other whilst Laszlo gloated moistly, Mike and Yvonne were well established at The Garden, talking with Andrew Blake and Karen about me — or so Mike claims.

“The thing about Chester,” Andy’s supposed to have said, “is that his genius works in so many different directions at once.”

“Right,” from Mike, theoretically. “Music, poetry, novels — the only things he can’t do well are things he hasn’t tried yet.”

And so improbably on and on, Mike still insists, for several hours in a choral recitation of my varied virtues that, if I could only believe it really happened, might almost have made my captivity worthwhile.

And if I work hard enough, I may believe it yet.

ANYHOW, THERE I was, tied hand and foot to a pillar in the middle of the loft, being surveyed with varying kinds and degrees of avid interest by two blue lobsters and Laszlo Scott.

One of the lobsters — they all looked alike to me — said something that sounded like popcorn popping, and the other lobster went away. I could hear him, out in the hall, pushing heavy packing cases around like so much air. I worried.

“Yes indeed,” the remaining lobster said. “We know how to deal with spies. Oh my, yes.”

“Kill the wiseass mother,” Laszlo hinted. “C’mon, Chief, tear ’im up. Yeah, man, yeah! Kill the bastard.”

Being basically unprepared to believe in a pacifist lobster, I expected it to act on Laszlo’s suggestions, but, “Oh my, Laszlo Scott!” the lobster quaked, turning light azure in distress. “Kill? You know…” It couldn’t go on.

This was encouraging. Getting killed would’ve spoiled my chances to foil the lobsters’ plot, among other things, and getting killed with Laszlo in the audience would’ve been distressing. Instead, I allowed myself to hope. Hope is good for you.

Still shaken by the thought of killing, the lobster said, “Excuse me, please,” and went out to the hall to consult, like a snare drumming contest, with its colleague. This left me alone and helpless with Laszlo.

“Nyah! Nyah! Nyah!” he chanted, war-dancing around me in clumsy circles. “Now you’re gonna Get It, an’ I’m Glad! Nyah!”

“Cool it,” I said.

“Nyah!”

The lobsters were wheeling large electronic devices into the loft, most likely for my entertainment. I gave them all my worried attention, leaving Laszlo to his own damp devices.

He went on nyahing furiously for a while, until he saw that I wasn’t watching. “Nyah?” he said.

He looked furtively about and saw that the lobsters weren’t watching him, either. (By then, knowing Laszlo, I was.) He clenched his pudgy fist, shouted Nyah! lunged for my solar plexus — and was gone! Of this, at least, I heartily approved.

But, “Hey?” came a frightened Laszlo noise from overhead. I looked up, grinned, and said a nyah or two of my own. Laszlo was spread-eagled on the ceiling, face down, and his terror and discomfort were a pleasure to behold.

“Now there, youthful Laszlo,” said the English-speaking lobster solemnly, “you know you ought not do such things. Feel shame, Laszlo Scott, transgressor: feel regret.”

After the briefest little resistance, he obviously felt just that.

I, on the other hand, suddenly felt a good deal more respect for these blue crawdads than I’d meant to. That levitation stunt was even more impressive than Sean’s butterflies. How, I wondered, had such highly gifted lobsters taken up with Loathsome Laszlo? And why?

“Violence,” the lobster went on sternly, “is intrinsically bad. Say that.”

He didn’t want to and he tried not to, but, “Violence is intrinsically bad,” he choked out just the same.

“Very good. Now believe it,” the lobster ordered.

Saying to myself, “Oh Yeah?” I watched Laszlo’s putty face go through uncommon changes for almost a minute, until, against his own will and most likely without knowing what intrinsically meant, he obviously believed, without the slightest reservation, that violence is intrinsically bad.

“That’s better,” said the lobster. Laszlo sank slowly, feet first, to the floor.

I was impressed. Anyone who could do a thing like that to a thing like Laszlo was clearly someone to reckon with. Furthermore, I recalled with a start, I myself was about to have to reckon with that someone. This did not comfort me.

Still, I wasn’t as worried as I had been. I couldn’t believe that so firm, deep-rooted, and irrational a prejudice against violence was likely to prove healthy on this planet. And nothing, I hoped, is intrinsically anything.

“Nyah?” I asked Laszlo when he reached the floor, but he didn’t answer me. He just looked at me wide-eyed and scared, and then skittered off to someplace out of sight. I nearly laughed.

Then it was my turn.

“What is your name, Spy?” the lobster asked.

I didn’t answer. I wasn’t going to give him anything for nothing. Then I felt a pressure in my head, discomfiting rather than uncomfortable, a very gentle pressure, and I heard my mouth say, “Chester Anderson.” The pressure went away. Oh?

“Indeed. And I am Ktch. I am in charge here.” I didn’t doubt it for an instant. “You shall answer my questions.”

I certainly hoped not, but the odds were on his side.

“What,” he said ill-advisedly, “do you do?”

After a moment of pressure, my mouth started telling him, in alarming detail, what I did. It began on the metabolic level describing with some oversimplification the process whereby I changed food into feces with myself as an inconsequential by-product. The lobster — Ktch — listened to all this drivel with rapt attention.

I stopped listening whilst my mouth was still describing the process of salivation, and discovered, to my delight, that I didn’t have to listen at all. My mind, that is to say, was not engaged in this activity. Aha. A possible weakness in the lobster’s plans.

I carefully imagined a hundred-piece rock-n-roll orchestra — fifty guitars, twenty basses, fifteen harpsichords and organs, five harmonicas, ten drummers drumming: all, including the drums, highly amplified — with a two-hundred voice chorus: an impressive ensemble. I set these three hundred imaginary noisemakers to work on “Love Sold in Doses,” one of Wild Bill Mosley’s better tunes, in a gloriously impractical endless arrangement I’d been toying with since 1966.

“I offered you riches an’ all of them things;

For all of your fingers I offered you rings;

To cover your body, silk fabric that clings:

And you gave me Love Sold in Doses.”

The noise inside my skull was something awesome, but my fool mouth was still chattering away. It had gotten to the treatment of fatty acids in the upper intestine, a basically uninspiring topic.

I turned my imaginary amplifiers up a notch. My idiot mouth rattled on. Maybe, I resigned myself, this wouldn’t work.