A few clicks up the high dry you bet Jurassic it once was a river — now only a moat without the water or bridging courtesy to freeze, a snowedover safeguard of the turreted monstrosity above: a forbiddingly outlandish stucco manse, pinkening with the dawn though perched resident heavens higher out on that thar mesa, which juts up majestically from the very middle of an enormous cañon sunk around it, a socket of this cold and blinded earth. This the estate of the legendary Lee Sure, a former Holywood actor, producer, director you name it who’d retired his own household name for a new home out here only a moon ago, deserted his career in its recent crisis to zone this plot his own; dedicating the future development of this scenic openness around him as a sanctuary for fellow moviefolk blacklisted for their refusal to convert. He’s a hefty and tanned goy, threechinned, fourbanked, presently a mere two laps and a length or so into his daily routine in his pool dramatically overheated when what do you know the poolside numberless telephone rings. His wife, Lara née Busch of the once prominent militaryindustrial Buschs, maybe you know them or better — she sits alongside the unit ringing without registering any interest, even awareness: a woman sunned to small under artificial lamps, pruned, heated to petite…the morning is, in her words to her Kush of almost every morning when and if the medication takes, perfect, am I right? Above the sun a yolk hidden forever within its cloudy shell, never to crack down upon us its warmth, though as she says she only eats the whites, dear, she reminds again her servant who she’s just sounding him out for the umptillionth time and only today, I only eat the whites…this the first day for her outside in a week: the new agoraphobia drug’s finally spaced her (a tumult, a whirlwind of late the reconstruction of its disaster psychologically requiring a host of special prescriptions and proscriptions both phoned in and forged: how they’d finally cashed out of the city, which’d meant Angels, last moon, headed out to the desert to get away from this next generation of players like Spielgrob, Kinoff, Joshuabaum, P. A. Yuccabaum, all the freest agency of their wives present and ex, to live heightened security and alone in this mansion they’ve been renovating forever, it already seems, what with memory, way back since the beginning of western time, ever since this mesa had been no more than a dunghill, and the immigrants laboring no more than dark scurrying dreams), she’s dulled insensate though perched purty in a freshly oiled chaiselounge under sunlamps set in the shade of the umbrellad highdiving platform facing her darting husband deaf to the telephone again with its insistent rattle, a needy baby cribbed upon an elegantly fineboned wicker cart to her side that also holds, on its topmost shelf, the remains of her brunch: bacon and sausages and slices of contraband ham for the protein, hold the salt, with blood pressure onefortysomething over a hundred causes heart disease served up still beating if slowing apropos a white plate trimmed with three eggs scrambled to the texture of her brains; dear, I only eat the whites (cholesterol)…can’t be bothered to answer the phone, too much trouble, how could she on a day as perfect as this, so stressfree, am I right, and so the Kush obliges — how can’t he and keep his employ, still run his illegal smuggling operation of goyim fleeing, running, swimming, over to Mexico out of the caves of the valley below; he drags Sure in to the concrete shore with a hook used to retrieve cocktail glasses sunk to pool’s bottom.
Telephone for you, sir, the Kush says and, is it important? is what Sure yells strangled, his ears sloshingly full up with scald, I gave specific instructions only to be disturbed if it’s important.
Is it important? the Kush asks into the business end, the receiver black and lost under the lobe of his ear, the glint of its enslaving stud. A moment of bated listening to the breathless way they still talk it back east, which Sure should be able to hear even from where he’s sitting suited, goggled, and waterlogged, at the lip of the pool with his feet dangling in the water it costs him don’t even ask what a fortune to heat. Keep it just at 100º. And then, it’s important, the Kush vouches, tucking the phone under his jaw.
Is it urgent, though? Sure asks as he towels his pecs, kicking up with his toes small waves against the filter.
One moment, sir, the Kush asks, is it urgent? another moment for the Kush to say,
