Linda Perdido: A Novel

Seventeen.

linda perdido 107 Seventeen. and that, muses Spider Getuli, is the bare bones beginning of the whole, damn thing. Hedges, his car says to him, bringing him back to reality and to the monkey puzzle of hedges that surround and enmesh the Mad dangle Hedge Fund at 23007 north Shenanigan Boulevard in West Water Witch, a place not only known for her monkey puzzle hedges but for her bewildering hedge mazes and other mazes of funds and bets, and all the other hedgiest hollows and hallows our tri-state money funds answer to. even Spider Getuli’s Jord senses the thrill of other people’s money. indeed , Spider has the distinct impression that the automobile has driven itself to this place almost against the will of the solo occupant , so far afield has his consciousness led. Why hedges? Because now Spider Getuli has recalled an evening not that long ago, at The Toy World, and a particular conversation between himself, Spider Getuli, the helpful mixologist and proprietor and someone else who claimed only to work for the government and had the look of being nervously embedded in surveillance; and another 108 MaC WellMan somewhat frequent customer, also like most customers, slank and of dubious reputation, one Slow Burn Slipp, a small man with a snake of a name. old family, the Slipps, lulu reassures him. Slipp is from Slype, an old dutch name for someone who tunnels or designs them and other secret passageways and paths. From over in new Meteor, by the Metaphysical pond, a place recently recovered by the prosperous from those in care: The subrural poor, semi-toothed and semi-stymied; when one comes under the thrall of the hedges, the semi-semi must move on down the road some. That’s it. Further on, if you don’t mind. Just a little more. Thank you, that’s just fine. To places like Dead Wolf and Moron’s Plug: places without electricity, toilets and grocery stores. places conducive to shadow, incest and perpetual holleration (of the lower kind). The Slipps however have prospered as only the propertied can, and therefore lu lu and Spider can agree on the sly fact of virtue justly rewarded. (legend has it Slow Burn’s remote ancestor, one nicholaes Slype, was an artist, a painter, and a keen rival of Carel Fabritius whose Putterje (Goldfinch), 1654, was painted, at least according to Slype family legend, in imitation of nicholaes’ now lost Papegaaitje (Het Perdido Macaw). a still darker legend has it the Slype’s of delft had something to do with the explosion of the town’s gun powder magazine that same year, which both leveled the entire town, and snuffed out the life of that young genius, Carel Fabritius, Slype’s hated rival.) But another person was present on that night, when the who the hell was it? Can’t seem to keep dates straight in my mind and it is like time has become as slippery as a live eel, the kind they have down south in Moon dip lake, eels with heads at both ends. and oh the ah a an other person, other who was the perdido girl, Qua. linda perdido 109 Said she was Qua, sure she did. Said she was Qua so she must have been Qua. Qua qua Qua. But what if, what? Slow Burn Slipp was there and might have a fix on the matter and that is why I am here. Ipse dixit. I have recalled myself to my self. Guess I’d like to know. Guess i’d like to. and as he pulls into the parking lot he sees another car, a car with government plates alas, pull in (there isn’t much government around here as people disapprove of waste, and so The national Rifle Association and the Proclamation Church can and do fill the void). a car with government plates, a car painted government gray, a car that carefully parks itself so as to take up four spaces. Spider Getuli stops his Jord in the shadow of a Calamus pine, otherwise known as the dithering Tree, applies glasses to the porch of his forehead, and plays monitor. Becomes Cagliostro, another. The badly parked (and wasteful) government car sits there for a time, not doing much. evidently the government car is considering whether or not to park itself properly or not. But, being at heart a wasteful and...