The Space Noir Bar by Michael Marino (readict books .TXT) 📖

breakfast burrito that you could only get once inside the Geo/Time  barrier at a place called “For Whom the Taco Bell Tolls”

 

Then the whining of the wailing wall began as Hymie Hymen Swartz, one of Che’s platoon leaders declared that the Breakfast Blintz at the “Cheeses of Nazareth” deli was to die for but only available by taking the Bris Boulevard exit after entering the Golda Meir Gateway Rift.  Dublin Donohue suggested the Irish Eyes-Danny Boy Rift where  everything was bright and gay...Long Wang agreed, for obvious reasons and Gino Dino Gambino wanted to go made guy all the way and take the Fongool Forgettaboutit Freeway rift near the Santa Luciano Coney Island where the gelato gushes from geysers and the Meyer Lansky Memorial Hot Dog Stand where a chili dog is not just a frozen chihuahua.

 

I knew this trip was gonna be a real Alice in Wonderland bitch! Rabbit Hole. What kind of a name for a Vortex Hole in the Wall gang of revolutionaries is that? Was I really going to finally meet this illusory bombastic babe who was giving the universe a kick in the status quo balls in the name of revolution? Would we actually get our hands on the famed Falcon? Would we even come out of this alive?

 

While I was lost in my own conundrum contemplating our quandary my Vidpod rang. It was Sandoz back at the office. “Doc, you’re still alive.  Arthur hadn’t heard anything for days from you and I normally wouldn’t call but something happened you might be interested in.”

 

By now my curiosity was getting curiouser and curiouser. “We got a client who actually paid us cash?” I could sense the muffled guffaw stuck in his craw. “”Ha, no way. I man came by last night with a package for you. Actually some kind of object wrapped in old newspaper. Said you would be glad to have it but I should hide it until you got back, so I gave it to Ivana to stash at her place.”

 

I acknowledged his news but he continued somewhat cautiously. “Then this morning the police found him dead in our alley. Vaped. All ID missing. Inspector Bill Burroughs came by earlier nosing around to see if we knew anything about it and also...also...he wanted to know why you skipped the planet? I think he thinks you had something to with it. The murder I mean.”

 

I guess I got a little more than defensive. “Sandoz, don’t tell him a thing. About me, the Falcon and especially where I am. I’ll clear it all up when we get back. Give him a couple of space bucks if he comes around again. He likes a good bribe as well as the next cop. Look gotta go. Heading into a vortex rift and may lose my signal.  We’ll be back in a couple of days and hopefully with good news...hopefully alive and not in an acrylic pine box.” Goddamn Burroughs..always riding my ass. No time to figure out who the dead man in the alley was or what he brought to the office in a pseudo cloak and dagger Dashiell Hammett reenactment. All that was missing was a battered trench coat, heavy fog and and that damned blues saxophone music I keep hearing since I began telling this story!

 

Asrini knew there was trouble. She could read my face as well as Helen Keller could finger her way through a braille lesbian porn mag. “Trouble?” she asked. “Real trouble sister,” I replied. “I’ll deal with it later. Just a dead guy in an alley and a mysterious package, and it ain’t even my birthday.”

 

We arrived at the vortex rift Che Stadium had chosen democratically by eliminating Long Wang and Wang Chung’s suggestions scientifically by a few rounds of paper, rock, scissors.

 

I was beginning to hate these vortex forays. It was like passing through a wall of Jello and placenta and when you got through it you were momentarily dizzy and confused. Art Deco was the only one who seemed to enjoy the experience. But then again he’d probably enjoy putting his head in a cannon to see how far it would travel without his body attached.

 

Into the Vortex we went and emerged in a verifiable mental institution of fantasy. I was waiting to see my first Cheshire Cat or Mad Hatter. I remember the tale from long ago.  A newer version called  “Wonderland Does Alice!” In this fantastic tale a young girl falls down the rabbit hole of puberty (code for loosing her virginity and lands in a fantasia world that would have been Mainstreet USA to Timothy Leary. The imagery and characters have a certain psychedelic panache surrounding them.

The story is just one in a long line of storybook children that would end up as a missing child on a milk carton with a full Amber Alert "Don't talk to strangers" ...yeah Alice, that Mad Hatter is about as strange as they come..."Just Say NO to Drugs" and here is your DARE t-shirt Alice...so what does she do...spends time with a hookah smoking caterpillar. Promiscuous? Of course she was...she only got larger so those below could peek up her gingham and gander. Watch out...that rabbit is looking for a hole! So save those milk cartons...you never know when they might become part of your family album. Drop a hit of acid or mescaline and turn on and tune into Wonderland...don't forget to bring the hookah and the condoms Amigos, along with Alice's training bra!

We had stepped through more than a rift in a vortex. It was a strange and mysterious land. It took time for my head to clear and when I was fully aware of where we were a thin man with a thin tie holding a thin cigarette with voice with an edge and staccato delivery of words that have been carefully crafted and formulated into sentences as powerful as a literary Gatling machine gun.

 

“Welcome.  You're traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind; a journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination.” What the hell was he talking about? He was obviously high on something. He never cracked a smile. “Che, who is this guy? Is he crazy?” I asked in a high soprano voice of disbelief.

"Look Yucatan, there is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area we call the Rabbit Hole Twilight Zone,” Che explained just as Art Deco cried out, “Look! That's the signpost up ahead ...our next stop, the Twilight Zone!"

 

The thin man with the thin tie led us along a thin patch through a small village worthy of P.T. Barnum.  We met a plethora of amazing and bizarre characters. Mock Turtles, flamingos doubling  as croquet mallets, a dope smoking caterpillar and everywhere signs...Eat Me! Drink Me! but none that said Bite Me or Fuck You.

 

I only hoped I had time to get loaded on some of their hallucinatory inventory. I could only imagine   growing in size and shrink in size (how cool is that?).

At the edge of the village there was a caterpillar smoking a multi-stemmed pipe, the kind Turks use (it must have been the hookah that hooked me) and a Cheshire cat sporting a Lenny Bruce shit eating grin as if he just got back from Disneyland and had a corn dog and ate Mickey on a stick  in one giant gulp.

 

Finally we came up on the Rabbits encampment. We moved at parade pace and as carefully as possible so as not to alarm anyone and have a phalanx of phallic removing lasers shot at our midsection

 

Then, for the first time I saw her….the Rabbit sitting on a riverbank with one of her captains passing a hash pipe back and forth as spoke with a fully clothed talking rabbit with a pocket watch. I know a few of us out there have experienced the same thing or something similar while in a drug induced altered state ourselves but in this rift it was a reality.

 

She notices us and gets up  to leave with the rabbit down a  hole. “Follow her,” Che said and we did,  free falling all the way. When we landed we ended up in a hallway with more doors to open then Monty Hall has. Or even the Halls of Montezuma.

 

We found keys,  lots of keys,  and found one that unlocked a door that led to a garden,  of marijuana but we were too big, in fact we were  giants by comparison and can't reach the ganja so we have  to go gonzo to get the goods. Art Deco sees a bottle that says Drink Me, probably a bottle of skid row booze from a Bukowsk bum wine stash. We  empty the bottle with the style and grace of Tom Waits on downers, and damned if we don’t begin to shrink and our qualms are calmed like a handful of Quaaludes. The problem now is that we are too small to reach the key to the garden on the table high above now that we are the size of Thumbelina. Thankfully there is a piece of cake that says "Eat Me" on it...I've said that myself a time or two, both in anger on the street as well as passion in bed. I prefer the bedtime version.

 

We eventually gain entry to the Ninth Gate of Wonderland Hell

Now it gets real Cheech and Chongy as we run into a blue caterpillar this time with a purple hookah. The damn thing also talks and like any good pusher in a school yard offers us free samples of a mushroom guaranteed to get us blasted higher than a kite, while the other piece will bring us down to normal size. All this growing and shrinking has played havoc with us….imagine how the Rabbit feels as her tampon which doesn’t shrink her body does...especially during the shrink process ..she probably looks like a bomb pop popsicle on a stick or as a sexy lollipop  to whet my appetite.

This vortex rabbit hole Wonderland was no Woodstock, you can be certain of that. I've taken mucho Soma and Anterian acid in my time and saw the Space Needle in Seattle melt before my very blood shot eyes...I saw Haight Street lift up off the ground and fly into the air...and I even floated encased in a soap bubble over Golden Gate Park, but ,damned if I ever smoked a bowl with a blue caterpillar or did smack with a talking cat. I don't know what Alice was on but we would have paid any price for a hit of that shit…

 

We were now officially in the hole and Art Deco did a little victory dance while Asrini smiled as if she were Yoda hiding a secret and Maddie was breathing heavily in anticipation of something. Wang and Long hugged each other and Che Stadium looked about ever vigilant for anything wrong. I on the other hand kept thinking about a mysterious bundle delivered to my office and a dead man in the alley that I was sure Inspector Burroughs felt I had something to do with. I don’t vape delivery boys. In fact, I tip them with petty cash in my desk  just as I do a waitress or a hooker.

 

Now that we were within arms reach of the Falcon we were approached by one hell of a good looking rumpled female revolutionary ...the Rabbit herself. I wanted to be in her hutch from my first look. Damn she looked familiar. She noticed my salivating  look and disguised heavy breathing. She walked up to me smelling of gunpowder and