Page 81 - The Myth and the Moment

Evening

proceedings. Oh, maybe not; I’ve got it down pat, don’t I? Better
start jotting it down soon, before it really does start to fade. I’d have
to work for Al Hodges another six months to afford my original plan;
and even that would mean heading for the desert in late spring or
early summer. Makes L.A. heat look pretty mild. And time may run
out on the Big Fuse. The momentum I built up doing this thing kept
me from pessimism; who can believe his brain-child will not see the
light of day when it’s almost come to term? I’ll be a nervous wreck,
have to avoid newspapers, not even listen to the radio: the slightest
sabre-rattle would set me twitching like a seismograph on the slopes
of an active volcano. So, Mistah Hamilton Jefferson, I thank you
most kindly for your advice—but to hell with it! But what if Kolpak
and his Dragon Lady really were about to do me in with a TV dinner
laced with arsenic? Okay, keep away from those turkeys, deal with
them by remote control from Aestheria’s apartment. Yeah.
God, anger is toxic! Drug, poison, hormone: all the same, in
various doses. This much activity in a day would have knocked me
out, ordinarily. Adrenalin keeps me going, but the piper will be paid;
emotional hangover, complete with headache and remorse. But, but,
but. But Ham may be right; Confucius said the superior man knows
when not to act. Too bad he has to find out by tossing yarrow stalks
in the dust. If I don’t press on, let it go, let that bastard triumph, then
what? Reconstruction time. What if I can’t precisely remember the
text? Hypnosis? Yeah. Just pay some store-front swami to put me
under and get the whole thing recited word-for-word into a tape
recorder. Nah, I’m a lousy subject for hypnosis, can’t take
suggestions. Or advice. Wouldn’t have gotten this far if I could. Nate
the loner. Nate the prophet of doom ejected from a cinema showing
films of disaster. I could scream at the world for its paranoid idiocy; I
could spit on the whole tribe of anthropoid somnambulists; I could
say, ‘To hell with you all: you don’t deserve a legacy! Crumble into
dust with the rest of the failed civilizations! The less that’s known of
you the better! I’m going to drown my sorrow more effectively! If
you want me I’ll be down at the tavern with Omar Khayyam.’
Yes, and I could justify not continuing by pointing to the
consistent distortion of historic texts by degenerate heirs. Oh, haven’t
I already beaten this to death? The Myth could never be victim of such
a disgusting fate. It will indeed become an ancient codex, but it’s

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