A Good Lie Ain't Easy: Extract
So the opening pages of the novel, and only a month to go before publication...
1. Ad Astra
All across Old Glory’s Western Seaboard, from tattered edge to shining reverie, out spread the Golden State’s sour serendipity, as cherry black and star spangled as the onset of a New Year’s night can be, pregnant with misplaced metaphor and fumbled chances, bloated on root beer, Twinkie bars, jumbo bags of corn chips and the expectant promise that we were about to witness the greatest spectacle of human endeavor since Marco Polo landed on the Great Wall of China and shot fireworks at the moon.
“You know, for this, I thought he’d keep his pants on.”
“It’s the only way he knows how to salute the flag...”
“…kinda reminds me of Evel Knievel...”
“God Bless America and the right to bare ass?”
“More the sideburns…”
“…didn’t he die?”
“Just the once.”
Only time will tell if our own hirsute hero will be as lucky.
You’d think so.
After all, over 150,000 people do die every day.
Just probably not like this...
Upon leaving the makeshift ramp, the wheels do their best to mimic the atonal whine of jet take-off. Still laboring under the full weight of a 120lb Seven Eleven cashier, the office-chair takes wing directly over the badly creased pink, off-white and decidedly bygone-blue stars and bars banner that was hung way up here just to yell there’s nothing more American than a convenience store, the plastic casters ceasing to spin with the ferocious inevitability of a boulder barreling through the guts of a booby-trapped Mayan temple, and now, with the help of good old-fashioned wind resistance, delivering tonight’s first and only fanfare for the common maniac.
Who would have thought they could produce a sound that shrill?
A single wailing tone, with all the comforting warmth of an Aztec death whistle. Still, if this is truly how it has to end? Then I can’t think of a more suitably tuneless epitaph than that solitary keening note, certainly not for one as deaf to the sweet music of good sense as our would-be king of the wild blue rodeo.
Except ‘Who Let the Dogs Out’ by the Baha Men.
But that goes without saying. I mean, let’s face it, it’s got to be the go-to choice when throwing oneself off the roof of a building. Surely? Perhaps you could even argue that this three-minute musical marvel has already taken its place in the pantheon of disposable pop as the de rigueur soundtrack to any act of life-threatening stupidity. I know I’ve rarely heard its plaintive strains without the accompaniment of someone yelling, “Holy fucking shit, my leg, it’s got my leg!” or the perennial favorite, “Is this supposed to be on fire?”
Previously you’d have to guess when you were in the presence of impending doom, but, as we all know, its clarion call has come to preclude speculation.
Sadly, none of us owned a copy.
So, instead, bereft of that musical succor, we were filled with such regret as tinges the ages with the tears of the damned...
To be honest?
It wasn’t as if we needed its neo-calypso caress to signpost the way.
Even Boyd, grasping the sweaty headband of the battered chapeau he time-shared with his brother, is suddenly and most finally realizing that, in not letting go of his mobile throne before the edge of the roof, he has probably committed his last and most spectacular act of daredevil joie de vivre.
Still, at least he wasn’t wearing dirty underwear.
I mean, he wasn’t wearing any, but it’s the thought that counts, right?
Especially when one is facing down mortality.
That this day’s short journey into night will be far worse than the whiplash from the time they strapped nitrous to their neighbor’s lawnmower, and far less predictable than the ‘misunderstanding’ with the snakes, is, after all, by now a given.
Ever since they saw Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom as kids, Boyd and his brother William had sworn that when the hat, both literal and metaphorical, was thrown into the ring, then one of them would have to rise to the other’s challenge. The shallow parabola Boyd was currently carving through the early evening ether was surely inscribing the final arc of that covenant.
