Read Pluto Walks the Earth, Chapter 2: Who Doesn’t Have Baggage?
Welcome back to Pluto Walks the Earth, my mystery novel/social satire serialized here over the course of approximately 60 weeks. This is the third of five free chapters. Thereafter, Pluto will become a premium for paid subscribers only. A better reason to pony up, however, if you ask me, is to support my work in the shrinking speaking-truth-to-power sector (which will continue to be published at the beginning of every week and remain available to ALL subscribers). Pluto, for its part, is a picaresque adventure, narrated by an eccentric cast of characters in the telling of some positively strange events. Should you decide to give me your financial support, I shall be most grateful: BullyPulpit.Substack.com.
Lotus
Do you know what a macadamia pyramid is?
I don’t even know if it’s a thing in the outside world, you know, but at Mary Lou’s it was our way of displaying our macadamias. We also did it for Brazil nuts. Don’t ask me why. These tree nuts are inherently slippery and irregular in shape. It’s tedious work to pile them up in any kind of cohesive mound, and almost impossible to keep the structures from collapsing the moment a customer sticks a hand in. Or breathes. It was like some sort of Jedi-level Jenga and it drove me bonkers. I have this look about me that seems so placid — I can’t do anything about that — but half the time I was on the verge of a panic attack. Sometimes I’d go into the stock room and yoga it out, or drink vodka, or both. Mary Lou insisted the nut pyramids were powerful energy transmitters, but, trained as I was in sensing the magnetic pulses of aura, I never felt that. An analogy would be endorphins. I’ve been a runner for nine years, and I’ve never felt that hormonal surge that’s supposed to make me all euphoric. Mainly my thighs burn.
But I was the produce and nut manager at Chakra ’n’ Awe, and pyramiding was a big part of the job description. Whether it was a true healing medium, or just merchandising, clearly Mary Lou paid very close attention to my architecture. She paid very close attention to me in general, and not just as my boss or energy master. I almost want to say she was smitten. She always went on and on about my looks and my supposed serenity, and she was obsessed with the idea that I myself had some sort of siren effect on the customers when really — look, I have no reason to be fake humble here — I was just another college-dropout in a smock. Seriously, I’m OK looking enough, I suppose, but also pretty basic. Sure, men pay attention because they are disgusting beasts who sniff out basically any female mammal, but, believe me, you pass me on the street, you probably wouldn’t look twice. Except maybe at my nose, which is off center, as if I had fallen off a pommel horse when I was eight and face planted like a KO’ed boxer. Which is exactly what happened, and no surgery, either, because my parents were freaked out about anesthesia. Now it’s sort of a family joke, unfortunately. When I told my dad I was heading for New Mexico, he said, “Honey, you’ve gotta follow your nose. But be careful not to walk into a wall.” My mom laughed at that crack a little harder than I did. I’ll give them this, though. Even though I pissed away my tuition payments at Oregon State on a sociology major that didn’t take, they didn’t try to stop me from seeking my happiness. They worry about me, but they’re letting me live my own life. Props for that.
Mary Lou doesn’t seem worried. She thinks I’m all that. “Dear me,” she said when I applied for the job. “If it ain’t the second coming of Twiggy.” (You may want to look that one up. I had to.) It’s kind of awkward. Still, I sure don’t want to alienate the lady. She is, after all, both my paycheck and my spirit master, and I learned a lot from her about syncing with the channels and focusing aura vibrations and opening the crown-chakra portal. Those learnings are really and truly my passion, my vision of myself and for myself. I even embrace the name she bestowed on me, Lotus, which seems so much more profound than Staci. On the other hand, sometimes she just stares at me and idealizes me to an uncomfortable degree. I mean, if I can be honest here, we’re talking Creepy Town.
Then this guy Pluto shows up. Yikes.
It’s Friday, just on the cusp of June. Kind of a bad day. In the stock room we have a 60-gallon barrel of sunflower seeds that just came in, on schedule, but it’s god-awful gross with mold and stinks to high heaven. There’s a long-ago splotch of spilled white paint on the concrete floor, and the red fiber-drum barrel is resting smack in the middle of it like a damned bullseye. Ugh. So I’m trying to get the jobber to come back and fetch it, and trying to get a fresh shipment and, meantime, keep my sales floor in order. Because God forbid my fucking pyramids should slide flat. Yeah, so I’m in a mood. It’s the end of the day — still no seed pickup — and this cute high-school kid comes in carrying very fancy suitcases for some reason, looking confused and highly out of place. Did you ever see Dead Poet’s Society? He looks like one of those brats. The thing is, I happen to glance over at Mary Lou, and it’s as if she’s seen a ghost. So I’m distracted that she’s distracted and when I turn back around, I accidentally elbow my pyramid and it just crumbles. The sound that makes, like a tiny puff of wind through a maple tree, will make you just about want to cry. And I’m like, “Fuck this shit.”
Don’t worry; not out loud. As I say, I’m not demonstrative or emotional on the outside, but at this point I’m just fuming. I go kind of limp. Then I watch as Mary Lou walks across the store, grasps Pluto literally by the hand and leads him back to the manager’s counter. I don’t know what she says to him, but my disgust is rising, so I skulk out to the loading dock and knock back about a half flask of vodka. Please don’t judge me. Just because I’m expressionless doesn’t make me beatific, or whatever. You can’t tell a book by its cover. Honestly, I would not be at all surprised if Mona Lisa was dying inside. Leonardo’s all “Bella! Bravissima!” And she’s, like, “Just paint, for fuck’s sake. My culo has been asleep for due ore!” Anyway, the luggage parade promises to be an indelible memory of what will be Pluto, Day 1. The evening is pretty vivid, too.
By the time I get back to my floor, Mary Lou and Pluto are both gone, bag and baggage. She’s setting up housekeeping for him in her and Candy’s place ’til he can get situated. This is, like, 5:30 pm or so, and it’s awkward because Mary Lou and I have an appointment for 6:30 at the home of Mr. R_ , who we’re to treat for carpal tunnel. I’m supposed to assist, of course, not perform the Peghwar surgery, which is good because I’m half shitfaced. So I grab a quick snack of probably almonds and sprouts and run back to my place for a shower and then scoot to the R_’s place at 6:30 on the dot. It’s a condo apartment — La Mesa at Desert Vista or some horseshit — which should be called La Mesa at Parking Lot Vista. Ding dong. Mrs. R_ lets me in, and there I find Mary Lou and Pluto. The place seems all right, but kind of cluttered, with a sort of odd assortment of items stacked and scattered in the entryway. They include nine cubic feet of Costco paper towels, a 20-pound Costco bag of frijoles negros, a 2½-pound bag of candy corn, 5 brand-new fully shrink-wrapped Twister games, a handle of store-brand vodka, two replacement automatic dryer belts, a waist-high stack of old Santa Fe New Mexican newspapers and, of course, an outboard motor. Metallic gold, for what it’s worth. And the whole entryway stinks of coriander. Once you get by the warehouse, I find out why: there are coriander and sage candles burning in a semi-circle around the patient, who’s supine on the floor next to the coffee table, and the new psychic sheriff in town is kneeling in his goddamn blue blazer rimming circles around a crystal bowl with a rubber stopper to produce the haunting sonic ambience favored by Karmastophes, our ancient guide. Ever heard a theremin? It’s like that, but the sound vibrates your tonsils. Sort of eerie gorgeous, especially the way this kid is doing it. And I’m like, “WTF. That’s my job.” Again, I don’t say it, but I think it — even though this new kid is much better at it than I ever was. Truth be told, he’s a natural. He’s found the steady, resonating B note that has been used since the days of the Shakyamuni Buddha 2,700 years ago.
In the room I notice a second sweet aroma, with notes of orange, eucalyptus and lavender, as if emanating from the singing bowl. Nothing I’ve ever noticed in past surgeries. Am I hallucinating? Maybe drinking and psychic-ing is not such a good idea.
Without going into too much detail (patient privacy and Peghwari Sacred Secrets both come into play here) a bit about the particular case: Even though Mr. R_’s symptom is sharp pain in his right wrist, the intervention is conducted through his crown chakra. This requires a tremendous amount of concentration, including the patient blotting out all sensory inputs apart from the crystal tone, which facilitates both deep focus and relaxation. Mr. R_ must be at one with his resonance. But he and Mary Lou are both having difficulty, because although Pluto is quite a crystal-bowl prodigy, there’s another sound intruding on the environment. It’s the bathroom toilet running. Every minute or so there’s this high-pitched whistle of the water flowing, then a clunk of the fill valve reaching its level. It’s going to ruin the surgery. But then Pluto stands up, places the singing bowl lovingly on the (seriously!) shag carpet, walks into the bathroom and closes the door. He emerges three minutes later. Fixed. Now we’re able to proceed with the surgery.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t go all that well, due to some confusion (again, confidentiality) I might feel better about discussing later. It’s really not the point at this point, is it? The point is that by the time we’re leaving that appointment, Pluto has also put the patio door back on its runner and replaced the belt in the R_’s clothes dryer. This leads to our first conversation. Instead of focusing on the surgery itself — because I’m kind of drunk and not even super sure I’ve seen what I’ve just seen — I mutter something like, “You sure are mechanically minded for a preppy type.”
He looks at me with those big, hooded eyes and what I take to be a great deal of pride. “Uh-huh,” he says. “I live in a very, very big house. It has a lot of, you know, systems and appliances. I can’t stand my family, so since I was a kid, just to have my own, like, stuff, I spent a lot of time taking things apart and putting them back together. So I kind of learned how stuff works.”
More info than I really need, but whatever. Then he smiles, I must say, a most dazzling smile, and says this:
“You ever see that old show, MacGyver? From the ’80s, I think. In Philly, when I was in 7th grade, it was on in the afternoons before Wheel of Fortune. The guy was always getting in situations where he needed to jerry-rig a device from available ordinary items to save someone’s ass. That’s what I want to do. I want to do with spiritual loose items what MacGyver did with ballpoint pens and soda cans.”
I look at him probably a little blankly, because I don’t quite get how you’re supposed to improvise with psychic energy. Nothing I just witnessed in the R_ condo exactly instills confidence about this boy just winging it. My silence seems to frustrate him.
“OK, OK. How about Apollo 13? You’ve seen that. The spacecraft is crippled, and the flight director in Houston empties a cardboard box full of components on a table and says to his engineers, ‘These are the things that can be safely removed from inside that command module. Figure out a way to turn this heap into a working CO2 scrubber, and how to explain it to the crew. You have about 12 hours. Get to work.’ Or something like that. And they wind up fixing the spaceship with, like, duct tape and tube socks. OK, my idea: Instead of a box of metal and plastic gizmos, I use spare resonance or whatever. I’m really handy like that. This is gonna be my path.”
And I suppose it was, for the eventful 30 days when he graced us with his presence. For one beautiful, highly weird month, Pluto was the It Boy of the Chakra Industrial Complex. He was a celebrity. He was wined and dined by the governor of New Mexico. He made a stinking fortune, although not as big as the one he’d left behind.
So let me ask you this. Is the guy stupid, like the late-night comedians say? Or is he a genius? I mean, I don’t even know myself. But do you know anyone else who placed one casino bet and walked out with $1 million? Myself, I do not. I do, however, know this. As Pluto brushes by me, that floral fragrance is more pronounced, like I’d walked past the perfume counter at Nordstrom.
“Pluto, are you wearing cologne?”
He smiles like the cat who caught the canary.
“It’s called Shaman,” he says. “An aromatic fougère. I got it at the airport.”