Savage Tales

for it and then it'll come to you."
    "I'm pretty sure I was gonna get paid first. It's just so hard to remember."
    "You can't even remember what payment will be. That's why you need to stay here a while before we render payment. Get your feet on the ground. Get with it. It'll all sort out."
    "Something's wrong here," I say. I remove my gun and aim it at him.
    "Put that thing away," he whispers. "You want them to draw a bead on us?"
    The old lady is in back, but she's bound to see the gun before long.
    "I'm leaving," I say, rise, back up to the door while keeping my gun aimed at the guy.
    "We need the item now!" he says. "Put that thing away and sit down!"
    I push through the door and run, cutting through alleys till I'm sure he can't follow. I'm sad I didn't get to wait for my gimbab. Fortunately, such restaurants are a dime a million and I find a replacement ere long.

    SLOW
    I'd climbed a hill that gave me a good view of the town. Forty or fifty thousand people, I'd guess. It was a warm spring day. The hills were beginning to change from green to the brown of dry summer.
    "Beautiful, isn't it?"
    I turned around. A man who looked something like Samuel L. Jackson, wearing a trench coat.
    "I suppose it is," I said. "But having a fellow sneak up behind you to comment on it subtracts from its luster."
    "Oh?" said the man. "I can't think abstractly. I can't see myself."
    "I feel like I've seen this place before," I said.
    "Not sure?"
    "Not sure."
    "Perhaps I can help. I think you have something that we want."
    "I've always felt that way. These last few minutes. I can't remember before that."
    "All those people down below. Too bad about them."
    "What do you mean?" I said.
    He pointed over the hills. "Over there, a nuclear power plant."
    "So?"
    "If we don't get what we need..."
    "What?"
    "Boom."
    He wasn't bluffing. He had no reason to. I knew their power. And if force couldn't overcome me... if they really wanted me to come over to their side... wasn't that worth the lives of thousands?
    "What do I need to do?" I said.
    "You'll cooperate?"
    "Yes."
    He tilted his head. He didn't believe me. "Follow me."
    We descended the hill till we came to a street, and followed it through rows of houses. We came to a convenience store. We went inside. A coffee-colored Indian behind the counter looked us over.
    "He's surrendered," said Jackson.
    "Has he?" the Indian said. "You've got the item?"
    "Not yet," said Jackson.
    "You fool."
    "If I may interrupt," I interrupted, "I think you gentlemen may have me confused with someone like me. I've searched my pockets and crannies thoroughly and don't have any item."
    "It's implanted in your hip," said Jackson.
    "I hope you're not serious," I said.
    "We're always serious," said the Indian. "It's our nature. Take him in back."
    Jackson led me behind the counter into an office. There was something like a teleporter.
    "Step on," said Jackson.
    "Are you beaming me away?" I said.
    "No, we're melting the flesh off."
    "But that sounds painful."
    "You said you had surrendered."
    "I would like to go on living."
    "It's not always an option."
    "I feel we've bonded," I said. "Help me find a way."
    "There's nothing in it for me," he said.
    "Friendship."
    "That went out the door when I signed up for this job."
    "Why did you sign up?'
    "I had a bad mother."
    "I'm sorry. Did she beat you?"
    "Worse," he said. "Neglected."
    I let some tears out. They were semi-real. "Go on, if you must."
    "I must," he said. "I've held it in for so long."
    "And now you'd like to break away."
    "What?"
    "You've had it up to here," I said.
    "Have I?"
    "It must get lonely, working in an organization like this, being so different from the rest of them."
    "I guess."
    "Ready to defect at a moment's notice."
    "Now hold on there!" He whipped out a gun. I'd gone too far.
    I hurled myself onto him and we wrestled on a cardboard box. He fired his gun. It missed me and went through the chest of the Indian, who had come in to see what the ruckus was about. He would never find out.
    We stopped fighting and checked out the Indian.
    "It went straight through his heart," I said. "It's symbolic."
    "I guess I've had enough," said Jackson. "Let's get out of here."
    It always feels like you've found peace. It never lasts.

ANATOMY O F A JOKE

    And a joke is something we tell to relieve the tension, to frame a narrative with the sensation that we are after all not living in a meaningless mash of void despite the horror and random lusty change that