Jessica Winter - Break in Case of Emergency

Confusingly, Unity, not Star, was the doppelgänger with the giant red star on one bicep and an interlocking gold chain of stars winding around one leg. Given the electrical charge of competition that sparked and hummed between the two young women, Jen wondered if Unity had gotten the tattoos to undermine Star’s chosen name, or if Star had chosen her name to undermine Unity’s tattoos.

“If it’s hot here in this country, you feel that it’s hot,” Baz Angler was saying. After decades abroad, his strong Australian accent sounded emphatic, well practiced. “You don’t hide from it. The bodily waste that we produce every day, well, if the sewage system breaks down — and things are always breaking down around here, fact of life — there it is, you face it. Out there in the world — in that other world, your world of cities and suburbs and skyscrapers and highways — we literally shield ourselves from ourselves, every minute of every day. All that infrastructure is one big hiding place. Here, that’s not possible. Your five senses are totally engaged. No room for denial. Maybe it’s not always pretty.” He locked eyes meaningfully with Unity as he drove and twisted the machete into the table’s battered surface. “I admit, it’s often very pretty. But it’s always real.”

“Right, right,” Jen said. Star glared at Jen ferociously. “So, Baz, how do you know Leora?” Jen asked.

“Yeah, Leora and me, we go way back,” Baz Angler said. Why bake. “We used to have the best conversations. Leora and I used to talk about the power of the speech act — the abracadabra. The practice of making a resolution and then sticking to that vow so closely that saying it makes it so. Imagine being that honest, that true with yourself.”

“Oh, yeah, like a marriage vow,” Jen said. “ ‘I do’ makes it true.”

Baz Angler chortled and spun the blade around on its tip. “Yeah, you only have to look at the divorce rates to know how well that works,” he said.

“Well, it’s like anything else — depends on the resolve of the people making the resolution,” Jen said, rocking slightly in her seat to help convey cheery agreeability.

“Marriage, monogamy — just more of those truisms where we deny reality, thinking that we’re keeping ourselves safe, hidden from harm, when we overlook the greatest danger of them all, which would be to deny ourselves the right to conjure our own best and brightest reality. Monogamy is a lie. I look at Star. I love Star. I look at Unity. I love Unity. I look at a woman I haven’t met yet. I love that woman I haven’t met yet. What could be more dangerous than denying ourselves love? What could be more harmful than to blind ourselves to life?”

Baz Angler was carving notches into the table, almost sawing at it.

“You’re curious about this here beautiful blade, aren’t you?” he asked Jen. “You can’t stop staring at it.”

“I sure can’t!” Jen said.

“It belonged to Carlos Manuel de Céspedes,” he said. “I bet you don’t know who Carlos Manuel de Céspedes was, do ya?”

“He — let’s see, he was the sugar plantation owner in Cuba who freed his slaves, which led to the Cuban wars of independence against Spain?” Jen said. “Did I get that right?”

“Ho-ho- ho, whoa, we’ve got a live one here,” Baz Angler said, pantomiming a round of applause and rearing around to look at Star, who sucked her teeth and rolled her eyes. “Okay, Ms. Historian,” he said as he turned back to Jen, the blade puncturing and spinning, puncturing and spinning, “in that case, why don’t you tell me about this here beautiful blade?”

Jen blushed and cushion-laughed. “Oh, now, that I couldn’t help you with.”

Baz Angler pulsed his head slowly up and down, allowing Jen’s admission of ignorance to hang in the air, to spread and settle. “The criollos had two things in their favor against the peninsulares, ” he said after a judicious silence. His tongue danced wantonly around the unfamiliar Spanish l ’s and r ’s. “One of the things in their favor, of course, was yellow fever. And two was the machete charge.” The blade thunk ed and spun, thunk ed and spun.

“The peninsulares, they had superior forces, superior resources, the infrastructure, the riches,” he said. The blade went pock pock pock pock against the table to underline each item on the list. “But you know what they didn’t have? They didn’t have that sense of real life. That’s why their bodies betrayed them. That’s why they couldn’t handle hand-to-hand combat, the flesh against flesh, the blade against bone — the intimacy of the real, they couldn’t take it.” The spinning machete slipped partway from Baz Angler’s grasp and sliced a fresh arc into the battered table before he regained a firm grasp on its brilliant green handle. He gazed at it much as he’d gazed at Unity.

“I can see why it’s so meaningful to you,” Jen said.

“Got it at auction in Havana years ago,” Baz Angler said. “Don’t think they knew what they had here.”

“Do you know what you have? I mean, is it verified — do you know for sure that it’s really real?” Jen asked. The Animexa had catapulted the question out of her mouth. Animexa always lowered Jen’s threshold of inhibition, which sometimes had the double-negative effect of rendering Jen mute: Aware that Animexa compromised her ability to judge the appropriateness of any given comment, she often erred on the side of silence.

“Verified?” Baz asked. “Do I know what I have? I know what I have. It’s in my hand. Here it is.” Pock pock pock.

“You should take the machete to the guys on Pawn Stars, ” Jen said. “Or Antiques Roadshow. ” Her time away from full-dose Animexa left her fumbling to find the mute button.

Baz balanced the blade on his teeth and lifted his palms toward the heavens. “What do we need TV for when we’ve got real life?” he asked, the machete blocking and gagging his consonants.

“We’ve got TV here,” Star broke in. “He doesn’t let us have it in his house,” she added, pouting, “but we have a satellite hookup out back.”

“What I can verify, ” Baz said over Star, palming the machete again, “is that this here beautiful blade isn’t just a beautiful blade. It’s a message, from Céspedes to me. Maybe he didn’t write the message down. Maybe he didn’t telegraph it to me in 1870 for me to receive here in 2009. But I can interpret the message all the same. I can verify it.”

“What is the message of the machete?” Jen asked.

“Who cares, ” Unity whined from the couch, not looking up from her toes.

“Maybe the message is a secret between him and me,” Baz Angler said. His smirk revealed that the pleasure of disclosure couldn’t snuff out the corresponding pleasure of withholding — that he could enjoy them both, if only he silently twirled the machete on the table for just a few more revolutions before he continued.

“Céspedes was betrayed,” Baz finally said. “Booted. A bloody coup. The Cubans wouldn’t let him leave and wouldn’t give him security. He was a sitting duck for the Spaniards. Never had a chance. His death is a cautionary tale for any leader, any visionary, anybody with balls, and this”— pock pock pock pock —“this is the warning and the salvation.”

“Darn, I don’t have balls,” Jen said. The Animexa continued to surprise her with its japes and pranks.

“Anybody can have balls,” Baz said.

“So I’m conjuring a best and brightest reality in which I have testicles and your machete is a metaphor,” Jen said, laughing. “Cool!”