“When I die, I want it to happen while I’m reading. I want to fall into an open book in my lap and sink down into the white spaces between the black lines of type. That’s where Heaven is…”
Dalt sat on the metal guard rail at the foot of The Lot, staring into the smeared fuchsia sunset. A ray of golden light was playing off the silver can of Coors in his hand. The roar of the sea was like a fuzzy wool blanket of noise and the air temperature was no temperature at all.
Suz sat next to him, hooking her bare legs behind her so that the sharp edges of the rail pinched them. It helped to keep her awake.
“What book?" she asked. "I’d like to fall into Catcher in the Rye
“Robert’s Rule of Order,” Dalt said. “Absolute peace and stability. You could float in it forever. God is in the details and that’s where I want to be: the really fine print…”
Dalt sipped from the can. Suz scratched an itch she had forgotten about. They watched the sun get sloppy as it dissolved into the waves, all runny hot yellowness. They were silent for a long time.
“My Dad is Poppin' Fresh,” she finally said in a meek, slightly cracked voice.
“Huh? What is your Dad doing?”
“No, I mean Poppin’ Fresh, the Pillsbury Doughboy – the little cartoon guy on the TV commercials. They based him on my Dad. He worked for the ad agency.” She gulped softly. “I never told you that…”
Dalt almost lost his cool. He turned and looked at Suz as if she’d give him money from a country he’d never dreamed existed.
“That’s insane,” he said in a voice as flat as the beer he’d been drinking. “I met him once, remember? When you had to get bailed out that time. He did seem a little fat and soft…”
“Squishy,” she shot back. “You've never heard him laugh – I mean giggle. People used to love my Dad. I think they wanted to roll him into a big ball and poke him all day long. Can you imagine?”
There really wasn’t more to discuss. “What have you been reading?” Dalt finally said.
“A telephone book I found in my parents’ attic when I cleaned it out last year. It’s amazing – like a book of spells. There is a power in names. You can control anything if you know its name…”
“What if you died while reading it, Suz? What if you fell in there?”
Suz squeezed her legs under the rail. She was as awake as she had been in weeks.
“I’d just swim around in the letters and numbers. I’d get inside a zero and float forever.” Then she giggled, like a big finger was making a big dimple in her stomach.
Spork was behind the wheel of the JESUS HATES YOUR STUPID FACE bus gazing upon the assorted locals, interchangeable egocentrics. He squinted and pretended he was a bottle cap flung by a proper thumb and forefinger , spinning toward a crashing wave getting foamy like porn drool on the impacted sand. When I die I wanna fall into the Dewey Decimal System he thought, there's a place for me somewhere in this land of trace elements.
