Saving a savior

For today's new installment of BRYAN THE TYGER, I started from where yesterday's episode left off and added more to flesh out the thing. So this is now the conclusion of the prior chapter. If forced to give a 7-word gist of the episode, I would say: HEREIN WE SAVE THE ONE WHO SAVES.

[I got tired of graffiti-ing tygers onto junk ads, so, for the next few days, the obligatory images that accompany these announcements will be just lazy attempts at hand-drawing copies of ad photos with felt tip marker.]

P.S.

In other news: my Public Private Diary is fully printed; also I made a list of my latest novels that have been printed but not included in any collection.

§

So I return to the other side of the tent and unzip the entry flap.

“Well,” sez Myala, “what’s the verdict? Was your vision prophetic? Did you find anything out there?”

“Nope: nothing,” I say. “Neither stall nor motor-coach.”

After a brief silence, Myala sez: “What do you suppose such a non-sign means? That we should expect no troubles? Or maybe that our next adventure will be boring?”

“No, no, no,” I say; “adventures cannot be boring. By definition, adventures are fun. — I’m not sure why I dreamt a bum hunch. Maybe one of the local deities is playing trix on me. Or perhaps I’m just the lucky victim of an overactive imagination.”

“Do you think that this make-believe theft that you’re half-sure you didn’t witness,” Myala sez, “might be a summons from one of your admirers in another dimension — one that mentally overlaps our present encampment?”

“A dreamy summons,” I repeat, “from a secret admirer, you say? But what in the world could they be urging me to do, that required the use of such convoluted symbolism?”

“Maybe they just want you to help them get their own car back,” sez Myala, matter-of-factly. “But not in our reality; instead, they’re praying for you to come sleuth around in the visionary domain. You dreamt of a vehicle being stolen, correct?”

“Correctamundo.”

“Alright, then,” Myala nods firmly: “there’s your next mission. Go back inside your dream and seek out and chase down and catch the culprit of this crime. Return the machine to its rightful owner; then address this person as well as the thief, at once, since they shall both be standing before you as a captive audience, and teach them the gospel of Elisha ben Abuyah.”

“How do you know that the thief shall be a ‘she’?” I ask.

Myala cocks her head, “I was careful to leave both plaintiff and defendant sexless, when I spoke of them just now — even tho it pained me to mar my speech’s style by doing so, I made a point to use only the gender-neutral pronouns ‘they’ and ‘their’ — did it sound otherwise? Are you starting to hear other voices being edited over the top of my lines in our dialogue?”

“I think I am,” my Tyger-eyes widen: “For I heard you say ‘She might just want you to help them get her car back.’ And then you told me to ‘address this damsel who owns the Time-Travel Device as well as the seductress who stole it: preach unto them until they are converted to the wisdom of The Stranger’.”

Myala reaches forth with her mighty paw and closes my eyelids: “Quick! Sleep! The vision is beckoning! Don’t let it begin without you!”

§

So I force myself to dream that same dream again. I re-envision the empty garage where the car should be, and I start to look for clues. As I move my magnifying glass from one fingerprint to the next, I realize that, gripping the handle, what should be my mighty right forepaw is instead a human hand.

“Strange! I wish you could see this!” I say, surfacing up out of the vision momentarily to share my findings with Myala, who is reclining at my side in the tent, back here in reality. “It is uncanny,” I report with enthusiasm: “In the dream, I am a human being, not a Tyger; I am wearing a trench coat and a deerstalker cap, just like a run-of-the-mill detective. And you are posing right there with me, along for the journey — now, this next detail might sound weird, because it’s according to the dictates of goofy dream-logic, but, instead of a Panther, you’re a femme fatale named Vanessa!”

Myala reaches forth again and gently closes my eyes: “Sleep!” she sez.

So I go back into the dream again and finish looking at all the clues with my magnifying glass. Providentially, there is an oil stain on the floor of the garage where the stolen car had been parked. Boldly impressed on this blot are five clear fingerprints — in fact, I now notice that the spot contains the image of an entire human hand­print: both hands, in fact; accompanied by shoe-sole-prints and an autograph, just like the type of display that one finds celebrities leaving in the concrete squares of the forecourt of that historic movie palace on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

“Can you read that signature?” I ask Vanessa (whom, I repeat, is somehow played by Myala in this dream); “I forgot my spectacles, and this lens isn’t the proper prescription.”

“Sure,” sez Vanessa, after exhaling a gorgeous plume of smoke and then flicking away her cigarette, which action causes the cherry to expel a mini-firework of sparks as it soars to the ground, “What’s written is actually not just a name but a message — it reads: ‘Mrs. Evilman was here’.”

I inhale sharply; then stand upright and announce: “I think I can solve this mystery.”

§

Thus we meet up with Mrs. Evilman, and she’s wearing the black latex suit that so exquisitely becomes her.

“Vee! Bry! I feel like ages have passed since we last met! Come, give me a kiss! How have you been!” Mrs. Evilman is reclining in the stolen automobile with the driver seat elegantly tilted too far back. Her legs are crossed, and her boot-soles are propped upon the vehicle’s steering column. As we approach her, we notice that she is casually fondling the gems in a jewelry box. She holds up this solid-gold receptacle to us: “You want some?”

“Sure, I’ll take a couple,” I say. Reaching in, I find a few rubies and a sapphire, plus a handful of diamonds; then I kiss Mrs. Evilman.

Vanessa chooses several emeralds and some radiant amber gems that are almost completely invisible. She then lip-locks Mrs. Evilman and their kiss becomes French.

When my partners finish, I say: “Well, I hate to admit it, but the reason we’re here is to take that pretty white hybrid back to its owner.” I nod and gesture at the car. “I mean its lawful owner.”

“That’s fine by me,” Mrs. Evilman winks. “I owe you one anyway.”

I must look bewildered at this remark, for she adds in explanation:

“You rid me of a pesky problem, maybe without even knowing that you were doing so, when, in ‘The Chase Scene’ (the one where you trailed the deceased spirit of a jellyfish) you supped on that saint nearby the Styx River before he could publish his confessions. The one who stole the Pear of Great Price and then cast it to swine. That guy was giving our profession a really bad name.”

I slowly nod while facing Vanessa: “See! I knew my impulse would not prove entirely hapless.”

Vanessa delivers her line in a resplendent stream of smoke after lighting another cigarette: “I was overzealous on behalf of Golgonooza; it did not even cross my mind that, to the thieves of the night, that guy was a noxious daytime burglar—” the smoke continues as she exhales throughout this pause in speech; then she adds, without even needing to take a fresh drag: “bungler, rather.”

Slightly changing the subject due to zing, I now excitedly address Mrs. Evilman: “Hey! how do you like our spirit forms in the waking world? Did you notice that I’m a Tyger, and Vee’s a Black Panther . . .”

“We just thought,” Vanessa sez, “that, as a cat-burglar, you might appreciate our choices. It’s like blowing you a kiss, in homage,” and she inhales deeply from her cigarette and then moves her red lips sensually to make one slow smoke-ring.

Mrs. Evilman smiles very sinisterly. “I love the new look.”

§

So we all go and return the snow-white hybrid automobile to the now-familiar garage stall, which turns out to belong to a rich Florentinian banker named Folco Portinari. He is standing and admiring the commemorative graffiti that remains in the oil stain on the floor, when we drive up. — Startled by the motorcar speeding directly toward him, he lunges to the side wall, to avoid being hit, as Mrs. Evilman screeches the vehicle to a halt.

Old Portinari now rises from the floor and dusts himself off indignantly; but he quickly reconciles himself to the situation, when he realizes that we are returning his stolen property. “Eh! Grazie!” he sez.

So I teach him all about Elisha ben Abuyah and how he destroyed the plants of Paradise (Mrs. Evilman incidentally already knows all this stuff, as we found out in the car, on the ride over; for I attempted to convert her, too, but we were already on the same page – she actually taught me a few things); also I expound on The Stranger’s version of the resurrection of the dead, quoting directly from memory:

Those of us who have failed to realize all of our potential will be reborn in others who will try to do better. For, lo: Who among us has become everything she ought to have been?

Portinari looks hesitant to accept these teachings, as if he needs just a couple more words to persuade him. I think to myself: “However, if this man converts, he might end up with us, on our island, just like that damned saint.” Therefore I summon ME MYSELF, the other I AM, down from the fancy that encompasses our reality; and, after transmogrifying into a Tyger, I maul this moneyman.

Now Vanessa remarks: “But didn’t the prophecy refer to both thief and victim as feminine? Could it be that our late banker here was actually a woman?”

“No,” I say after transmogrifying back into human form, “he tasted distinctly like rooster, not hen.”

Mrs. Evilman now raises her index finger while smiling: “I know what we should do next.” Then she holds out her other hand and makes the “gimme that” motion and sez: “Bry, pass me Portinari’s femur.”

So I hand her the requested bone from the skeleton on the garage floor which has been picked clean of its meat.

Mrs. Evilman now steps backward several paces until she is outside of the garage; then she looks upward at the towering house above. She aims and deftly tosses the femur into the ninth-floor window — the glass shatters at the bone’s impact:

“Bice!” yells Mrs. Evilman. (Her voice is loud yet alluringly feminal. A bambina now gazes down from the broken window.) “Bice, come meet us here in the garage; we’ve removed all obstacles.”

In a moment, the service door that leads out from the house opens gracefully to reveal the form of the banker’s daughter.

So it turns out that, all along, the car in question belonged to this damsel, whose name is Beatrice. Her father the banker (she presently explains to us) bought the vehicle and presented it to her on her ninth birthday; however, shortly after giving her the machine, he forbad her from driving it; because, on the very day that she received this gift, she used it to race over and grant salvation to a notorious poet, whom Portinari did not approve of. Thus, by stealing and reinstating the white hybrid motor coach, we three magi (Evilman, Venessa, and I Bryan the Detective) end up guiding this nymphet’s sweetheart from tragedy to comedy, while smoothing the lovers’ way to attain a new life.