3.1

It is still early enough for Fiat Street to be deserted, so Walter Easter's limousine is parked right out in front of Piggy Longstocking's. But the term 'limousine' does not do this vehicle justice. The chariot before me is an enormous daffodil-yellow marshmallow peep. Long sinusoidal tendrils of royal blue, lavender, and orange paint weave and crisscross the yellow at regular intervals. The over-all shape of the bird is more like that of a short bus than your classic elongated limo, with the driver's cab imbedded within the proud swelling chest of the engine-impregnated peep. Gary opens the door, and he and Tao load David Vrunk into the backseat, then graciously stand aside to allow Walter, Mouse, and I to enter. I test the peep-flesh along the chassis of the limo as I climb inside. It has a certain superficial degree of spongy give, belying a steely resilience beneath. This is a sturdy peep, capable of absorbing a direct hit from another vehicle and therefore Hashton roadworthy.

Descending into the lush and claustrophobic jungle world of the limousine interior elicits a stark change of affect within my own interiors. We are no longer in my domain, but in Easter's, and his essence is ubiquitous here, reeking out of the polka dot seat covers like the off-gassing of axillary bacteria. Walter Easter is king everywhere, but within the tinted windows of this comfortably darkened rolling ovum he is king especially, and this pleases him. Baring his prodigious incisors, Easter smiles at me with quiet menace, his eyes gleaming with an imperial spark more befitting a lion than a lagomorph. The floor of the spacious rear of the limousine is filled to the level of the seats with the stringy sort of plastic grass in which chocolate rabbits sleep. Upon first glance, the grass appears to be breathing, but as I bushwhack my way to my seat, my hooves discover no hidden beasts beneath, confectionary or otherwise. Painted eggs roll about this synthetic meadow, enormous ones, bigger than my head and radiantly colorful. I knock one out of the way as Mouse and I sit down across from Walter, and the amanita-spotted egg proves heavier than I expect it to be. Gary Jupiter sits down next to Walter, and Tao Jones gets into the driver's seat up front.

“I like to stay on brand,” says Easter.

“As do I,” I reply. Burrowing my hooves into the tangly strands of plastic grass, I withdraw the marshmallow I'd been saving from my pocket. “Please keep in mind that I am a professional, and do not try this at home.”

“You're not,” says Easter. “And I won't.”

Holding firm eye contact with Easter, I place the marshmallow upon my tongue.

“Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” he says, with more teeth in his voice than in his mouth.

“It is both performance-enhancin' and medicinal,” I declare.

“I'm sorry to hear you need medicine,” says Tao Jones, from the driver's seat. He turns the ignition and the limo-peep rumbles to life. “What is it you are suffering from?” he asks.

“Issues of cranial vascularity, due to the presence of these vestigial satyr horns,” I say, indicating both horns.

“You do not have horns,” Easter insists, firmly.

“And yet the headaches persist,” I counter, and the limo begins to move, sending the heavy painted eggs rolling about.

“This was a mistake,” grumbles Easter.

I lick my finger and hold it up to check the wind. There is none, because we are inside a car. “There are no mistakes, only near misses. Though I do empathize. If I were most people, you'd be right to be skeptical,” I say. “But I am not most people, Mr. Easter. I am the butterfly in yer ointment. I am the kraken in yer koi pond. I am the crop circle in yer merkin. Mr. Easter, I may not be the singularity, but I am its herald. And twenty-four hours from now, you will be compelled to agree.”

“And if I don't?” says Walter Easter, a man who does not allow anyone to compel him to do anything.

“Then don't pay me,” I recommend. “That's generally my offer with new clients anyway. Do not pay me one red cent 'til I have succeeded. I cannot, in good conscience, ask regular folk to pay up front for a thing they do not understand.”

“Oh, I understand you perfectly, Morell,” says Easter. “You are a slippery detergent-snorfing fraud doing the shaman dance for suckers in Never Never Land, where no one ever grows up and nobody ever has to be a real boy. If you got a real job, you wouldn't be able to masturbate six times a day anymore, and you'd die in a frenzy of spastic lust, dry-humping some poor unsuspecting piece of industrial machinery. And I'll tell you right now, when your obituary hits the papers, it's the machine you violated that I'll feel bad for, not you.”

“If you're so convinced of my lack of pelvic control, then why did ya come to my office?” I counter with a smile.

Easter winces, clenching his left fist tightly. “Because none of the real doctors could offer me any solutions. Not on my timeframe anyway. Now, I won't say that you came highly recommended. Because you didn't. But you've built yourself a little bit of a reputation in this town. A certain kind of wayward soul seems to think you've got answers that nobody else has. On the other hand, Morell, there are people in Hashton who swear up and down that you're nothing more then a dangerous moron with stars in his eyes and crumbs beneath his fingernails.”

“Of course,” I say, doing my best not to check my cuticles. “Ya came to me 'cause ya wanted to watch me fail. Ya heard about me, what I do and how I do it, and the rumors disgust you. If ya can see me fail in front of ya, then yer disgust is validated and yer intellectual superiority unperturbed. But if I succeed, ya get yer guitarist back. It's a win-win.”

“It's a lose-lose,” snarls Easter.

“Really, it's neither,” I confess. “Dualistic thinkin' is the human mind at its lowest ebb. I gotta say, though, I'm surprised how many of my new clients come to me like this: lookin' for help, and lookin' for a fight, and insistin' that it's no contradiction. But I don't blame ya. This town of ours is chock full of charlatans.”

“I know,” says Easter. “I'm looking at one right now.”

I check over my shoulder. Then I realize he was talking about me. But there's no time for this, we've already reached the highway. “Hey, Tao,” I say. “Take the Exodus Turnpike to 23 Heartsong Road. It's across from that shoppin' plaza in South Hashton. Not the one you're thinkin' of, though. The other one.”

“How do you know which one I'm thinking of?” Tao asks, but I ignore him.

“Hungry?” asks Gary Jupiter. He grabs one of the eggs and smashes it over his knee. I'm expecting some kind of massive yellow egg yolk to drip out, but instead, it's something pink and glistening wet and riddled with little black seeds. The eggs are painted watermelons.

“Whoa,” says Mouse.

“Yes, actually. Thank you,” I say, taking the half of the watermelon that he's offering me. I rest the melon half on the seat between Mouse and I so we both can share, digging into the sugary fruit with one hand while operating my cell phone with the other. Felipe Castillo answers on the fourth ring.

“WOMB Nursery,” he croaks, heavy on the pre-dawn throat rasp.

“Lipe! Buddy!” I say, already laying it on too thick.

“Aw, shucks,” he says, still croaking. He sounds tired and ornery, which tracks, given the unwholesomely early hour. “For a second there, I thought ya might be a real client. Whaddaya want, Mujo?”

“Oh, we got a client alright, Lipe. High profile,” I sing. “We're headed yer way right now, ETA ten minutes.”

“Mujo, buddy, I ain't got the juice for yer jokes today,” Lipe croaks. “We're pretty slammed down here.”

“High. Profile,” I reiterate.

“Pretty slammed, dude,” Lipe says. But I can hear the equivocation in his voice.

“Dawg, it's the guitar player from the Basket Cases,” I say. Walter Easter shakes his head, making an X with his hands, but I wave him off with a pink mitt dripping with melon. “They'd prefer somethin' outta the public eye. Can we come up through the rear entrance?”

“Aw, man... Mujo, I'm tellin' you, this ain't a good time for shenanigans,” Lipe says, but we both know he's about to cave. “I got veggies to the left of me, veggies to the right of me, veggies on the table, veggies under the sink, veggies rollin' down the stairs, and every one of them veggies is droolin' on my shoes.”

“I'm glad to hear business is boomin',” I say.

“Yeah, it's, uh, real swell. Maybe I can hire three more pairs of arms, jus' to wipe all the spit offa all them chins,” he says. My boy's just venting now.

“You're doin' holy work, Lipe, I'm proud of ya.”

“I never even got to go home last night. That's how bad it is here,” he says. But his tone of voice is telling me that he'll be ready for us by the time we arrive.

“Sounds like we'll have a lot to talk about,” I say, hanging up the phone. “Apparently, yer guitar player isn't the only hapless schmuck to get his eggs scrambled,” I tell Easter.

“You son of a bitch,” Easter snarls. “Why did you tell him it was one of mine? That friend of yours is going to blab to some friend of his, and by this time tomorrow, everyone in Hashton is going to know that my show is in trouble. People will be demanding refunds. They'll burn the box office down again.”

They did, this past February, burn the box office down. But there were no hard feelings. It was a complicated month.

I remain stoic. “Felipe runs a WOMB incubator, and that's just the least controversial of his various hustles and bustles. Discretion's part of his job, part of his lifestyle, and part of his identity. He won't spill a single bean. If he did, it would obliterate his sterlin' reputation.”

“Mutually assured destruction,” says Gary.

“Smash your face into that watermelon, or you're fired,” says Easter. Gary needs little urging, grinding his nose and mouth messily into the naked flesh of the melon. Easter really does seem to relax a little bit at the sight of Gary's enthusiastic clowning. He pulls a cigarette out of his pants pocket and lights it, and a familiar craving rumbles up inside of me.

“May I toke in here?” I ask, sliding a pinner out of my utility belt.

“No,” says Easter, his lip curling into a lop-sided smile behind the smoke from his cigarette.