Chester Anderson - The Butterfly Kid

Laszlo arrived at half-past ten with his last consignment of Reality Pills and, being Laszlo, made a warped beeline for Michael, sneering, “Hallo, Michael the Bare-assed Theodore. How’s about a little taste of ol’ Reality on Laszlo, huh, baby? Wanna get High?”

So Mike grabbed him by one padded shoulder, yelling, “What’ve you done to Chester!? C’mon, talk, you goddamn freak! Where is he!?” — sweet music for the Laszlo ears.

“Anderson?” a nasty purr. “How do I know where your buddy’s at, man? He’s your buddy, ain’t he? Hey, man, turn me loose!” It was his moment of glory, and I hope he made the most of it.

But Mike was too worried to be cool. He shook Laszlo briskly, ripping his jacket, and said, “I’m going to beat the living Shit out of you, man,” loudly enough to be clearly heard on the sidewalk outside.

“Lemme go!” screamed Laszlo, grinning. “Halp! Call the fuzz, somebody. Halp!” enjoying every second of it.

Nobody rallied to Laszlo’s defense, but Joe came over and said, “Take ’im outside, will ya, Mike? I don’ wan’ no trouble inna Club, y’unnerstan’?”

“Forget it.” Mike released the Bard. “It couldn’t possibly be worth it.”

Laszlo backed a prudent four feet off and extended an unkempt hand, saying, “No hard feelings, Mike, okay?” — a line he must’ve copped from The Hardy Boys a hundred years ago and never found a use for until then.

Mike winced nobly and turned away. “Oh, go paint yourself purple and moo,” he ordered. “Go away.”

Laszlo didn’t get it, but he went — with Michael hot and hidden on his trail. The game was afoot, or vice versa.

I, meanwhile, had troubles of my own. The Magnificent Duck had abandoned his biography to play endless Brahms sonatas on a do-it-yourself-kit homemade harpsichord, which came closer to what I’d call torture than I really liked and prompted intermittent second thoughts about what the lobsters could possibly do to me with all those alien gadgets of theirs. I like Brahms, you understand — but played by a paranoid duck?

Ktch himself remained offstage for a while yet, and Laszlo — had I but known — was already getting his arcane jollies on MacDougal Street.

I was hungry. Highly entertained, after a fashion, but mainly hungry. Hunger is a notorious drag.

And everybody else was having good times, too.

Acting on the principle that that’s where he usually went when he was lost, Andy took the E train to Forty-second Street and sought me out in every semidirty-book emporium between Forty-first and Forty-seventh Streets, where he was well-known and respected as the pseudonymous author of classics beyond counting. It hardly mattered that I wasn’t there.

“I wasn’t really worried,” he explained. “I knew you could take care of yourself, and I supposed that if nobody knew where you were, it was mainly because you didn’t want them to. I mean, Every man has a Need to get away from People Who Know Him once in a while. It’s perfectly natural. You see, I understand these things, and that’s what I thought you were doing. Right? Now, if Michael had only bothered to explain…”

And Sean, taking my place at The Mess on MacDougal Street, was discovering, to his lasting surprise, just how well he played and how much fun an audience could be.

“He was Great!” Chaz reported. “Fabulous! I mean, he really grabbed them. Understand? They wouldn’t let him off the stage. Really. Encores for hours, honest to God, and a standing ovation and all that. I’ve never seen anything like it before. Never. I mean to tell you, son,” slower and more serious, “I was sorely tempted to hire him on the spot, get it?”

And, “Yeah, the kid’s pretty good,” Al Mamlet seconded. Al’s a very funny man whose taste I trust implicitly.

“Shucks. All I done was play a few old songs I learned in Fort Worth,” was all Sean had to say about it, but he was hooked, all right. Utterly hooked and instantly addicted, and it showed. He was sporadically insufferable for weeks afterward.

Gary the Frog and Harriet combed the Village streets and parks, saying alternately, “Hey! Have you seen Chester?” and, “Hey, mister, got an extra dime you can spare?” more or less depending on whether they were bracing friends or strangers.

They made $1.37 in coins plus a Boston subway token in this manner, and gradually evolved their line on me through, “Hey, have you heard about Chester? He’s been Kidnapped!” to, finally, “Hey, what happened to Chester? I mean, somebody told me he was Dead or something” — all the market would bear — which took a lot of explaining to clear up afterward.

Sativa and the boys, with impeccable logic, hunted for me in every high-class teapad in the Village and still don’t know whether they found me or not; and Karen, for a wonder, spent the whole night in the front pew of Our Lady of Pompeii Catholic Church praying for my safety.

All told, it was quite a night, and I’m still kind of sorry I missed it.

Ktch came back at twelve or so, read the dials, looked very grave, made further adjustments, and said, “You are very brave, Spy. Very brave.”

No comment but a tight-lipped grin of indomitable courage.

“Please,” haltingly, “believe me when I tell you how sorry I am about having to do this to you. I assure you, sir, I have no personal motive in doing this to you, none whatsoever. It is the Rules, you understand. The Rules say I must put you to the torture if you will not talk. The Rules Must Be Obeyed. But if I had my way…” He made a percussive noise roughly equal to a sob. I was touched.

“You are very brave,” he repeated after a solemn brief pause. “But now I must leave you alone here for some time. It is my shift to sleep — The Rules. I have programmed you for eight hours of increasing intensity, as prescribed, but I trust, Sir, that your courage will not fail you. Spy, adieu!” He extended his upper three left limbs and feeler in a crustacean salute, then stiffly marched away.

And that’s when all the fun began.

I HAD to think! Ktch and his cohorts were snugly tucked away in their slumber tanks or whatever — it was difficult to imagine them using anything I’d recognize as a bed — and Laszlo was safely gone about his usual business of soiling the Village. This was my big chance — maybe my last chance — to dream up some way to foil the lobsters and save the world, or at least to escape from that loft and find Mike and let him save the world. I had to think!

However, I was still being tortured. All around me I could see tiny noises intertwining like spaghetti in the air. My body was covered with acute perceptions of color in flux — solemn reds, introspective blues, pulsating greens and browns — all intimate and not to be ignored. My ears were full of the flavor of hot buttered corn with salt and lemon juice. (And oh, yes, I was still hungry, which felt a bit like being underwater.) I could taste smoothness and abrasiveness and sharpness alternating in intricate patterns of what was not quite motion, and the temperature of the air — night-cool, growing cooler — smelled… I don’t have a word for how it smelled. Like calculus, perhaps?

This was not at all unpleasant. In fact, I’d spent lots of money in my day for exotic Pharmaceuticals I’d hoped would produce some such effects. No, it wasn’t unpleasant (though the taste is probably an acquired one), but it interfered with thinking something fierce.

“I’ve got to ignore all this,” I told myself in a moment of fleeting clarity. But the only sensation I’d ever practiced ignoring was pain, the one sensation I wasn’t currently experiencing.