“Cash or credit card,” said the clerk. “Buy it!”
“OK, stop playing around,” said Ray.
An older clerk came around the counter.
The whippersnapper got lost.
“We bought that directly from the owner. It’s probably from about 1961.”
“Looks just like the one I gave my son.”
“Usually, the engine and caboose are what you’re buying — in this case, we’re just throwing them in. It’s the cars in the middle that you’re paying for. See that aquarium? That’s $600 right there. And the scraper on the flatbed — scrapers are rare, but this one’s rare-on-rare cause the flatbed is black instead of red. So that’s 400. See? So we’re actually throwing the engine and caboose in.”
Ray pointed to the set below, a string of Pullman cars with an observation deck.
“That’s not the California Zephyr, is it?” he asked.
The clerk looked at him blankly.
“Well, of course it isn’t. It says ‘Pennsylvania.’ ”
The tag on the Pennsylvania said 45-hundred.
The whippersnapper darted past.
“Cash or credit card! Get in! Get it! Get in and get it, right now!”
The old man scowled at him as he disappeared.
Maybe when the city paid the settlement, he would come “get it.” That punk was really getting Ray’s goat.
As he left he thought about his own defunct emporium, and miniature golfing with the kids — then it occurred to him another son might be on the way. He’d do right by this one, see this one through. He’d have the money to, anyway; it certainly cost a chunk o’ change to raise a kid. Besides, he was a different man now. He wouldn’t walk away. He had Ghulpa, and she was no Marj. She was no ballbuster.
Ray headed back to the hospital. He wondered how a place like that — they sold toy trains, for chrissake — managed to have such a lavish building. How in hell did it stay in business? The owner must be rich: only explanation. A computer geek probably bought it on a whim, for his own personal sandbox. That’s why the folks working there were so rude. Didn’t matter if they made a sale or not.
Yes, I will have a son. Not “Chester.” I couldn’t do that again. We’ll call him Lionel…
He would tell Ghulpa it was an honorable name, and came from “lion.” Well, it did, didn’t it? In a way. Not such a good thing, though, come to think of it, when it came to his BG. She might allow it, because the hearts and souls and strength of lions were so important to her, even though she feared them. Didn’t her beloved Durga, her bloodcurdling Kali, ride atop one?
They would have a lion for a son. What more could she ask for to beat back her terrors than a lionhearted boy?
XLVII.Chester
CHESS and Laxmi went to the zoo. Though she didn’t like the idea of them being caged, she wanted to show him “the Ganeshas.” They smoked weed before driving over, and he dropped 2 Inderals and 4 vikes. They took her car.
He read aloud from the newspaper as they wended their way through Griffith Park. They were laughing so hard it was tough for Laxmi to steer. Chess had the full-page ad in his hand and declaimed from it, telling Laxmi she should use it for a monologue in her acting class:
What does Mc® mean to me? Everything that I love…to me, Mc means McDonald’s®. So I’m cool with Mc and Mc is cool with me.
Mc is cool with me!
Underneath the Golden Arches, it said, “I’m lovin it.”
“Oh my God!” said Laxmi. “McDonald’s is selling fruit salad with yogurt now! I’m so sure the fruit is cloned!”
“Look at this chick,” said Chess, staring at the graphics. “Here’s what she’s saying: ‘I don’t know who loves this salad more. Me? Or my fork.’ Fork this.”
“It’s so creepy. And the drawings. They’re like from chick-lit novels! Anorexic girls in stilettos with chihuahuas — the chihuahua accessory is so over—they’re just staring at you, and, like, sitting in Eames chairs.”
“Are we spending too much time thinking about MickeyD’s?”
“Yes! Yes! They’ve won! They’ve totally won!”
Laxmi laughed in that abandoned, guttural way she saw Cameron Diaz laugh on reruns of Trippin’.
Chess did some more dramatizing.
“ ‘Having one makes even a bad hair day feel good.’ That’s what it says! I’m serious! Having one makes even a bad hair day feel good!”
“ ‘I’m lovin it’!”
“What the fuck do they mean, ‘I’m lovin it’?”
“They are lovin it!”
“Love this,” said Chess, grabbing his crotch. Theme of the day.
Laxmi whooped then Chess winced and ouched from a shooting pain. She was laughing so hard she almost swerved off the road into a girl on horseback, which seemed totally surreal.
“Oops,” said Laxmi. Then: “Bad hair day!”
“Do you see these people?” said Chess, holding up the ad so Laxmi could cop another look. “They’re like in some loft, a hip loft with Levelor blinds and red brick—”
“The Pacific Electric Building!”
“—some marketing fool’s idea of a hip loft! It looks like a bad comedy-club set. Check out the shag carpeting! It’s lime. And, what is that, a turntable?”
“They don’t even sell those at Restoration anymore. I went in. I really wanted one. But you know who still has LPs? Amoeba, in Hollywood. They even sell 8-tracks.”
“This fucking ad looks like it was production designed by UNICEF! See the kids on the couch? One’s a spade, right?”
“Kate Spade! And her brother!”
“A cuddly-assed African-American. And there’s a Latino on the end who looks like she’s ready to have her burrito McMunched. Munch munch, munch-a-bunch o’ Fritos…a TJ donkey’s gonna give her oral — a McBurro! Waiter! Bring me a McBurrito, smothered in underwear! And special sauce! Bring me the head of Alfredo McDonald! Laxmi, look at this! It’s the fucking Jesse Jackson Rainbow Coalition munch-a-Latino-for-lunch bunch!” The driver split a gut, futilely waving her hand that she could take no more. “And the guy in the middle? Check out his hair! It’s long. A Filipino mix who thinks he’s hot! Like a reject from Project: Runway!”
Laxmi peered over at the page.
“Wilmer Valderrama, look out!”
“Wilma who?”
“He’s, like, everybody’s boyfriend—”
“Fred and Wilma?”
“—from That 70s Show?”
“Hey, Laxmi…you better be glad you’re doing FNF and not print ads for Ron McDon. This shit is low.”
“But their Dollar Menu is hot.”
They were already near the end of Zoo Drive. Their high-frequency stoner jag petered out but Chess still scanned the paper, looking for residual laughs. He read aloud a small item about how some pharmaceutical company admitted harvesting pituitary glands from dead kids in Ireland without their parents’ consent. There’s a horror film for ya. Used em to make human growth hormone; the hospitals got “just a few dollars for each.”