CH 17: KISSING RED MADONNA

The second to last thing Verge Fountainebleute did on this earth was lock lips with Red Madonna. He followed her out to the deck behind the club and lit her cigarette. He took the cigarette from her before she could take the first puff and threw it in the harbor. He kissed her for all he was worth. He kissed her so that she would stay kissed for all eternity.

"You choose me over powerful politician's beautiful daughter? I heard your wealthy mother insist you dance with girl or else," Red Madonna could not believe her luck.

"I choose you over everyone and everything. Oh my love, I choose you," Verge became his own man at last. In spite of the language barrier, he quickly confessed to Red Madonna that he was not the man he used to pretend to be.

"I'm just meeting you, so I have not the pleasure to meet the men you used to be but not really," she complained. 

"And you never will! I am not my mother's son! I am not my sister's brother!" Verge spilled the beans as fast as he could before Red Madonna had to go back on stage for the last set. He told her how the Countess was a total fraud. She used to be the cleaning woman of Jules Verne, the writer who invented science fiction. At first she only borrowed his time machine to satisfy her greed, but her greed only grew bigger. She ended up stealing the time machine and began ransacking time, never satisfied, always wanting more. When she learned that Merlin had first invented the time machine, she went back in time and made him her flunky.

"This is a lot. I am dedicating new song to you about half of these things you are telling me for big song finale tonight. I am writing in my head as you speak," Red Madonna confessed her overwhelming distraction.

"The self-proclaimed "Countess" kidnapped me in the 1930's, then she kidnapped a sister for me from the 1960's. She brought us to 2001 to help her become the ruler of California! We began in Manhattan Beach. Ordinarily they don't like strangers in Manhattan Beach, but they welcomed her. She took care of an embarrassing need and she was discreet. She satisfied the need quickly, without fuss. The business of exporting the homeless was relatively new and the "Countess" had the means to corner the budding market.

Her first job was a homeless man who had the habit of taking a nap inside the public library. He liked to read and then sleep as long as they would let him. Sleeping in the library during the day was safer than sleeping on the street at night, not to mention the heating and air-conditioning, the restroom and the water fountain. He snored rather loudly. A wealthy man might have gotten away with it but he smelled bad.

For a reasonable fee, the "Countess" got rid of this embarrassing man without creating a scene. No one asked how she did it, they were just thrilled with the results.

Her second "export" was an annoying married couple. They were not homeless but they had the audacity to put on puppet shows on the pier that often insulted money. Mr. and Mrs. Merci had committed the unforgivable crime of making fun of money. They disappeared without a trace. The powers that be sighed with relief and soon the Countess found her dance card was full.

The thing the beach cities cherished most about Countess Fountainebleute's work was that there was no fallout. No one wanted the sort of backlash that this sort of business usually generated. The countess never failed. There were no returns. The communities sparkled and became more and more perfect. The undesirables simply vanished and unlike the programs which PAID the homeless to disappear, the Countess had a set up which allowed her to pocket 100% of the money. And it wasn't against the law. There was no law in this virgin territory. Transporting the homeless to the future was unheard of. In no time she added barking dogs. Real redwoods and palm trees vanished to make way for muddy-olive-green fake trees with panels jutting out of them. Whatever needed to go, went." Verge came up for air.

"Not to disrupt, but please a kiss to break my leg singing my new song about you, darling," Red Madonna laid one on him and then backed into the nightclub throwing kisses at Verge until she tripped on the amplifier wiring.

Mr. Greenpants Le Roux emerged from shadows sporting a kitchen knife he stole from the restaurant.

~ To Be Continued ~ 

CH 16: MR. GREEN PANTS LE ROUX | CRAZY AND DECKED IN FINERY

Toi qui,comme un coup de couteau,
Dans mon coeur plaintif es est entree;
Toi qui forte, comme un troupeau
De demons, vins ,folle et paree

                             ~Charles Baudelaire

Le Roux tried to blend into the crowd while he imagined what he would say to the countess. It would have to be brief and very good. She had keen reflexes. That was one of many traits he adored in her but tonight it seemed to be working against his cause.

He was hardly noticed in the crowd that was mesmerized 
by RED MADONNA AND THE RED MADONNAS. No one batted an eye when he exhibited crustacean behaviours from force of habit. He had, after all, been a scavenger longer than he had been a man and these transitions could make anyone forget how to behave under the circumstances. He was busy eating the lint from his bellybutton but spit it out quickly when he realized it wasn't organic and no one else was doing it.

Meanwhile on the sports fishing pier, Petunia just about had enough. She had waited for what seemed like an eternity. The crab stood her up. She searched the wharf in vain for Mr. "green pants" Le Roux and then marched off to check the bedpan in the bay window just in case Le Roux had become his old self again.

Petunia was just about to give into frustration and go tell Dr. OMG what she'd done and how everything went wrong. She decided to tidy up first, emptied the bed pan and hid the Dom Perignon bottles so that she would not be bogged down in too many explanations. It was then that she glanced out of the alcove window and saw her brother being murdered by Mr. Green Pants, aka Henry Merci, occupied by the horrid Louis Le Roux V.

~ To Be Continued ~

CH 15: TWAIN AND TESLA FIND A FLOATER

"As I was saying, you talk as if you believe we live in a literate society! I'm prepared to pay these young men to conduct an opinion poll, starting with them! Boys, what does the name painted on this boat make you think of?" Dr. OMG nodded at his good friend Bart and winked at the boys, sure that his point was about to be made.

"The deceitful, self-aggrandizing wretch who was sentenced to rolling a boulder uphill for eternity," 12 year old Tesla blurted without thinking.

"Ah, er, what I meant was, what might most people accidentally think of a boat named Sisyphus?" Dr. OMG cringed at Tesla and looked hopefully to 12 year old Mark Twain.

"Well, I could see how someone in a hurry might mistakenly think of the frenzied oracular utterances of the Greek prophetesses, the Sybils of the Oracula Sibyllina, written in Greek hexameters," Twain mused.

"It could happen," Tesla agreed.

Dr. OMG was so blindsided he dropped the can of paint on his toe and hopped around the deck on one foot. Bart Gusto laughed so hard that his folding chair collapsed underneath him.

"That's definitely Merlin, but he ain't right," Tesla elbowed Twain and showed him the device that was blinking because the man hopping before them had a constitution that matched the hair from Merlin's cave.

"Come here!" Twain dragged Tesla to the taffrail of the stern and pointed at a dead body floating in the harbor.

~ To Be Continued ~

CH 14: PLAN B | GETTING READY FOR LOVE

Le Roux regained consciousness on the sand under the pier. He still occupied Henry Merci's shell and it was smarting like hell from the blow he'd received from the love of his life, Countess Victoria Von Van Dee De La Fountainebleute. 

"Perhaps I should have spruced up before I declared my love. I shall make the necessary repairs to win her!" Le Roux was more determined than ever.

First he barged into Ivana's IVANA CUT YOUR HAIR salon and demanded a fetching do. He was drawn to the style a fellow in a magazine was sporting and asked about it. He hated the silky hair he had inherited from Henry Merci. It fell into his new face and hampered his vision. The fellow in the magazine had great blue spikes that stood straight up and seemed to please him.

"Can you see through the tips when they are arranged that way?" He asked Ivanna. She wasn't sure what he meant.

"If someone sit behind you at the opera, they can probably still see the opera. Or they can move. I don't know." Ivanna had never been asked this question before so she had to think on the spur of her toes.

Le Roux grew even more impatient. Time was moving with wicked speed and he had to rescue his proud dream from the rocks.

"Well then, bother it all! Shave my head and be done with it!" he snapped since he couldn't see thru the tips of his hair when they pointed down and no one could tell him if he would be able to see through them if they were stationed up.

Le Roux was so rude they mistook him for a rich man and did what he said. When his head was clean shaven he looked in the mirror and out of habit spit. Then he ran out without paying the bill or leaving a tip.

He repeated this behaviour in various shops up and down the pier until nearly everyone wished they could get their hands on him.

Marcel was the only one who didn't light out after Le Roux. He simply reported the incident to the pier police and allowed them handle it.

"Did the perpetrator have any identifying marks," the officer inquired.

Marcel informed the officer that there was a broken heart tattoo with the name "Vicky" right in the middle of the young man's forehead. Marcel had just finished putting it there at the young man's request.

"That helps," the officer put on his helmet and as he walked toward his bicycle, Marcel called out.

"Officer, you didn't ask me what his name was," Marcel complained.

"You know his name?" the officer squinted.

"Everybody knows Henry Merci, the pier gondalier," Marcel squinted back.

~ To Be Continued ~

CHAPTER 13: TESLA AND TWAIN DO LUNCH IN 2035

It had started as an innocent Christmas gift. Nikola Tesla and Mark Twain used the time machine to travel to the year 2035 to enjoy a break from the whipping wind, sleet, snow and prying eyes.

They were enjoying a meal at an outdoor cafe overlooking a sleepy harbor in California.

"This was a wonderful idea!  I admit I was worried at first. Worried what we might find.  But this is nice," Tesla confessed to Twain.

"It's a comfort to know mankind made such strides. There are no wars. Everyone uses solar power. The entire world is clean, healthy and happy!  Imagine that! I never would have believed it! Thank you my friend. This was a marvelous!  Of course, it presents one problem. How do I explain my new found optimism when we return to our time?" Mark Twain laughed.

"By Jove!" Tesla exclaimed.

"What is it?" Twain asked.

"That boat! A dog just materialized on deck out of thin air!" Tesla started and before he finished, a second dog, then a third dog landed on the deck.

Suddenly it was raining dogs, palm trees, cars, buses, and buildings.

"Look out Sam!" Tesla cried, but it was too late. A lady and her husband fell out of the sky and landed right on Mark Twain and his leg snapped.

Mark Twain and Nikola Tesla transported back to 1894 to sort out what they had witnessed.

"According to my calculations, at the rate all these people, plants, animals and objects are slamming into the earth, the earth will be knocked out of orbit, freeze solid and then hurl into the unknown in a matter of hours," Tesla informed Mark without looking up from his papers.

"What does this mean?" Mark asked.

"It means we have travel back in time to Merlin's cave," Tesla started.

"How can we find it?"  Twain tried to stand but moaned and sat down fast because his broken leg was killing him.

"First we have to fix your leg," Tesla started flipping through his journals.

Under the duress of the moment, Tesla hardly had time to enjoy having taken the first x-ray and launching the world's first bone and soft tissue mender on the same afternoon.  

Tesla re-calibrated the time machine to match matter instead of time.

"We are going to travel to where this book came from," Tesla held Merlin's book of magic, the very same book he had used to build the time machine.

Twain and Tesla materialized in the mysterious crystal cave where Merlin was said to have become a hermit.

"He isn't here!" Mark Twain was alarmed. "Now what?"

Tesla ripped a page out of one of Merlin's journals.

"He's probably with this woman.  She was stealing from him," Tesla showed Twain the sketch of a woman Merlin had drawn. "In fact, from the way this place looks, she may have kidnapped Merlin!"

"We're not going to be able to find her with that sketch!" Twain exclaimed.

"Then we'll have to calibrate the machine to take us to the rest of this!" Tesla held up a two foot long gleaming silver stand of Merlin's hair.

~ TO BE CONTINUED ~

CHAPTER 12: IT IS YOU I LOVE! ZUT ALORS!

Countess Fountainebleute fluttered about at Mayor Miller's gala event.  She said all the right things to all the right people but they hardly heard her.  She kept her rage hidden behind a nauseating demi-smile.

Everyone had crowded the stage between sets to have their photo taken with Red Madonna And The Red Madonnas. All iPhones were on the racy Russian rockers.

Even Verge was smitten by Red Madonna.  When she returned to the stage for the next set, she threw her headband and Verge caught it and clutched it to his heart.  The countess took him aside and demanded to know why he wasn't with Julia Miller, the Mayor's daughter.

"She has a boyfriend. She's in love with Henry Merci," Verge whined and tiptoed so he could see what Red Madonna was doing.

There was so much commotion in the club and on the pier that Mayor Miller was being pulled in all directions.  Reporters tried to corner him to ask if the helicopter that just landed on the roof was the FBI or the CIA and how he supposed harboring international fugitives was going to effect his political career.

Mayor Miller flatly remarked that he did not book bands, that his employee Henry Merci booked the talent. He pulled away from the nest of reporters and ran right into the countess. She demanded the head of Henry Merci on a plate.  Mayor Miller went out to the deck to fetch it for her.

Behind the club on the deck, Julia Miller and Henry Merci were on the verge of their first kiss.  Julia tied a ribbon from her hair around his wrist. Henry gave her his ponytail band and she put it on her wrist as if it was a bracelet of incalculable worth. 

As they leaned in for the first kiss, Petunia's wish, Mayor Miller and the countess collided in the space time continuum and prevented the kiss.

"Yuck! You are ugly, stupid and you have a bad smell! I never want to see you again," Crab Louis Le Roux V's consciousness was now inhabiting Henry Merci's body and these were his first words in his new body.

Henry Merci found his consciousness in a crab soaking in a bedpan full of Dom Perignon. In addition to the shock of being instantly transformed into a crab, he was slammed by acute alcohol poisoning as well. He lost his wits for a bit and made sounds like an old ice machine in a run down motel.

"God! Oh God! If ever, NOT NOW! NOT TONIGHT!" were Henry's first words as a crab. Helpless and horrified, he looked down and in the distance saw his former face rudely barking at his beloved Julia. That and the Dom Perignon were more than he could take. He passed out.

Julia wondered if Henry was saying the awful words to throw off her father. She held her wrist that wore his hair band to her heart.

"It is YOU I love!" Louis Le Roux spun his new body around so he was face to face with the furious Countess Victoria Fountanibleute.

The countess reared back and punched him so hard that he was knocked out cold.

~ TO BE CONTINUED ~

CRAB LOUIE V CH 11: MARCEL IS FULL OF NIETZSCHE! MARINATE ME AT ONCE!

"Do you think he loves her?" Petunia sighed and got more comfortable on her bay window cushion.

"He loves the pizza,"  Louis Le Roux cracked.  He was sitting in a bedpan on the window sill.  From this cozy alcove they could see most of what was going on in the harbor. They could hear Dean Martin's voice coming from the jukebox in the pizza shop next to Marcel's Tattoo Parlor.  A fat man was eating a slice of pizza and supervising Marcel the tattooist as he engraved a delicate rosebud on a young lady's derriere.

"Not him. Marcel. Does Marcel love her?" Petunia pondered.

"You've had too much champagne. Pardon me but you are a silly girl!" Louis commented.

"It was your idea that we should fortify our nerves with this stuff before entering the night," Petunia scooted a few inches away to express her displeasure and took a long sip straight from the Dom Perignon bottle.

"Come back, little flower petal! I regret having offended you. Excuse me.  I did not mean to imply that you cannot hold your liquor when it is obvious to me that you can. I was merely suggesting that your are innocent of the crime we call 'love'," Louis explained.

"I'm a lonely little petunia in an onion patch..." Petunia sang, ignoring him.

"Mercy! What nonsense! Now you are being silly!  When have you ever been alone or experienced loneliness? Marinate me at once!  I have had a shock! More wine!" Louis Le Roux motioned with his claw for Petunia to pour more champagne into the bedpan.  She complied.  He sighed with relief and spit a little on the windowpane, as is a crab's habit.

"I forgive you, Your Royal Rudeness," Petunia reluctantly forgave him.

"Then I am fortunate once again and will take more care," Louis promised.

"See that you do," Petunia scolded.

"Oh, I will. I must. I am love's fool and I must obey,"

"You said I get three wishes provided the first wish is to wish you inside the body of a loveable man," Petunia repeated the terms of their deal.

"Yes. A man that any woman will not be able to resist. That is the gist of it," Louis confirmed.

"Why can't you give yourself wishes?" She shot him a suspicious look.

"My mistress installed the one way wishing magic mainly to protect me from predators.  There was never a chef built that would boil a fellow who offered him three wishes if he wouldn't.  Except, of course, that deaf chef, Otis! I bit his thumbs, alright! I bit his thumbs!"  The memory of being held over that great kettle of boiling water made Louis clatter like loose nails in his bedpan.

"You mustn't let yourself get all steamed over it again! You're safe now.  Just stay away from Otis," Petunia poured more Dom Perignon over him.  She was too young to understand why he was marinating himself.

"Thank you, my dear.  You are too kind,"  Louis began to focus on the job at hand.

"The matter with Marcel is that he has the expression on his face that one gets from reading too much Nietzsche. Marcel does not love the little lady in his lap at the moment.  Marcel does not love any woman in any moment.  I'm quite certain that he goes about saying things like, 'Art and nothing but art, we have art in order not to die of the truth.' I am convinced from our observations that Marcel is full of Nietzsche. I don't want you to wish me into Marcel and I certainly do not want to exchange places with that fat man," Louis told her.

The fat man looked up when the music stopped, fished in his pockets for more quarters and grabbed another slice of pizza to accompany him to the jukebox.  Again the air was repaired with song.  The fat man wandered over to get a closer look at the work Marcel was doing on his lady's posterior. He was so pleased that he made a bouquet with his fingertips, kissed them and threw the kiss to the heavens. He began to sing along with the jukebox, "There's no tomorrow! There's just tonight!"

"If you wish me into that ridiculous man..." Louis began to concoct a menacing threat.

"We agreed you would choose, but for the sake of argument, why couldn't you move into his shell and simply give up pizza?  You're awfully picky," Petunia could hardly wait to be done with this and move on to wishes two and three.

Louis Le Roux spit more than the usual amount of champagne on the windowpane.

"I don't have the time to tell you all the reasons why that would be a stupid course of action!  Don't be offended again, my dear, but you are an imbecile," Louis held himself in check.

"I still don't see why you couldn't move into him and lose weight," Petunia pushed.

"Move into a fixer-upper when tonight is the night I wish to bid for my love?"  Louis was incensed.

"You have an impossible mind! I don't know why I put up with you!  Can you imagine a man proposing to the love of his life with that little rosebud down there in the background demanding explanations?  We don't have time for all this!  The fat man won't do because he does not have the physical memory of love in his bones.  The atoms of his body are not drenched in the memory of how to love a woman!" Louis ranted.

"You yourself said that you saw love in his eyes!"  Petunia clearly did not know when to quit. 

"Are you trying to drive me mad?  Were you born to argue with me?  Is that what you are good for?  I shall have to bite you if you attempt to turn me against myself like that again! What I said was that there was evidence of love in that man.  I didn't say what kind and how much.  Your fat man loves everything in a diluted way.  I am looking for a residence that has in it's walls the memory of undying, immortal love for one woman, love that defies everything, love...."

"I just remembered that I have something to do.  I'll be right back," Petunia interrupted, jumped down from the window seat and went to the kitchen.

While she was gone, Louis Le Roux spied what he was looking for on the deck behind the 101 Crabs Jazz Club.  It was most certainly a man in love, a man in nothing but love, pacing like a tiger in a cage for the want of the woman.  This was the body he would ask Petunia to wish him into when she returned.

Petunia was busy pouring potions out of the kitchen window into the ocean below. She washed and rinsed the bottles and then carefully replaced the hyperactivity cures with distilled water.  The sea lions made strange groans. Lobsters became loopy. Flabbergasted fish grew cross-eyed, ran into each other. They quit darting about and became very easy for the fishermen to catch.

When Petunia returned to the bay window, Louis Le Roux had his mind set.

"Wish me into that fellow over there in the green trousers!  And wish it exactly so that my shell remains here in this pan and the man shell stays where it is.  It wouldn't do for me to be seen leaving this shop.  I might be accused of breaking and exiting.  Meet me on the sport fishing pier and I'll give you the rest of your wishes.  Watch the whales and think very carefully.  I may be a while getting my affairs in order. Promise me you will wait for me there so I can find you," Sly Louis Le Roux counted on her lack of experience in these matters.

"I will," Petunia agreed. She did not hesitate to wish Louis into Mr green pants. All she could see was the back of his head and how he was removing the band that held his hair back in a neat ponytail. 

Louis never told her what lady he was trying to win and it wouldn't have mattered much if he did. Petunia was not interested in her mother's love life. It never occurred to her that his tattoo of the broken heart with the name, 'Vicky', was a testimonial of his love for Victoria, Countess Victoria Von Van Dee La Fountainbleute, her very own mother.

Petunia's eyes danced to a different melody now. She knew that this would be the very last time she would sit in this bay window watching life go by. Her adventure was about to begin. Such were the thoughts that occupied her mind as she headed for the sport fishing pier.

~ TO BE CONTINUED ~