Meaning and Origin of the Surname Chavez

Which means and Origin of the Surname Chavez Chaves is an antiquated Portuguese family name that actually implies keys, from the Portuguese Chavesâ and Spanish laves (Latinâ clavis). Frequently a word related last name was given to somebody who made keys professionally. Chavez is additionally a substitute spelling of the Chaves last name, which in Portugal was frequently aâ habitational name from the town of Chaves, Tras-os-Montes, from the Latin acquis Flaviis, which means [at the] waters of Flavius.â Chavez is the 22nd most regular Hispanic last name. Last name Origin: Spanish, Portuguese Interchange Surname Spellings: CHAVEZ Celebrated People With the Surname Cesar Chavez: American social equality leaderHugo Chavez: President of VenezuelaNicole Chavez: Hollywood big name beautician Where in the World Do People With the Surname Live? As indicated by last name circulation information from Forebears, Chaves is the 358th most regular family name on the planet discovered most generally in Mexico, with the most noteworthy thickness of the family name present in Peru. Chavez is likewise a typical last name in Bolivia, where it positions eighteenth generally famous in the country, just as Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Philippines, Honduras, and Nicaragua. WorldNames PublicProfiler also has the family name as generally basic in Argentina, particularly Northwest and Gran Chaco, just as New Mexico in the United States, and southwest Spain (Andalucia and Extremadura areas). Family history Resources for the Surname CHAVES Family DNA ProjectA Y-DNA venture concentrated on family and hereditary connections between the different Chaves families around the globe. This incorporates the Chavez and Caceres family names of Spain. Chavez Family Crest - Its Not What You ThinkContrary to what you may hear, there is nothing of the sort as a Chavez family peak or emblem for the Chavez surname. Coats of arms are allowed to people, not families, and may legitimately be utilized uniquely by the continuous male-line relatives of the individual to whom the ensign was initially conceded. Source: Cottle, Basil. Penguin Dictionary of Surnames. Baltimore, MD: Penguin Books, 1967. Dorward, David. Scottish Surnames. Collins Celtic (Pocket release), 1998. Fucilla, Joseph. Our Italian Surnames. Genealogical Publishing Company, 2003. Hanks, Patrick, and Flavia Hodges. A Dictionary of Surnames. Oxford University Press, 1989. Hanks, Patrick. Dictionary of American Family Names. Oxford University Press, 2003. Reaney, P.H. A Dictionary of English Surnames. Oxford University Press, 1997. Smith, Elsdon C. American Surnames. Genealogical Publishing Company, 1997.

Tomato Plants Growing

Conceptual Different examinations have demonstrated that tomato (Lycopersicon esculenturn Mill) is one of the most favored vegetable sources far and wide (Birhanu Tilahun 2010, p. 1239). This natural products give individuals nutrient An and C which they are seen as rich in. Water is a critical segment in deciding in the nature of collected tomato fruits.Advertising We will compose a custom report test on Tomato Plants Growing explicitly for you for just $16.05 $11/page Learn More Water related pressure antagonistically influences tomato yield, indeed, â€Å"studies have indicated that an excessive amount of water and too little water are both hurtful to the tomato plant† (Nahar Ullah 2011, p. 680. The tomato chose plants and gauging them; the mother plants were then removed, cleaned, put in independent sacks and gauged. The weighing was rehashed after the plants had dried for a time of seven days in a dehydrator set at 70 degrees Celsius. The aftereffects of this examination show that diverse tomato plant credits are legitimately identified with one another as long as the ecological conditions are concerned Introduction Tomato (Lycopersicon esculenturn Mill) is one of the most favored vegetable sources the world over (Birhanu Tilahun 2010, p. 1239) Tomato organic products are a rich wellspring of both nutrient An and C and in this manner are utilized in human eating regimens as a significant wellspring of these supplements. Tomatoes are expended crude or cooked. They might be eaten alone or joined with other food items. Tomatoes might be eaten as serving of mixed greens in their crude state or made into soups, juice, ketchup or pickels (Nahar Ullah 2011) Water assumes an essential job in the nature of gathered tomato organic products. Water related pressure unfavorably influences tomato yield, truth be told, â€Å"studies have demonstrated that an excessive amount of water and too little water are both unsafe to the tomato plant† (Nahar Ullah 201 1, p. 680) . Different factors, for example, â€Å"constant high temperatures, dampness and poor soil disintegration may likewise negatively affect the yield of the tomato crop† (Birhanu Tilahun 2010, p. 12340).Advertising Looking for report on agribusiness? How about we check whether we can support you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More The eco-physiological and morphological investigations of tomato and different plants have helped in the formation of fundamental systems to counter unfriendly ecological impacts (Birhanu Tilahun 2010). All plant examines have frequently been led basing on the healthful elements of the plants, in this way from a nourishing viewpoint, plant investigation depends on the rule that the grouping of supplement inside the plant is indispensable estimation of the considerable number of variables that have connected to influence it(Nahar Ullah 2011, p. 680). Research with respect to soil richness has been completed for such huge numbers of years. This information has created some dependable inspecting systems that can be applied to all harvests that are delivered monetarily. For a few fruiting harvests, the organic products are regularly picked however petioles are typically chosen in certain examples eg for yields, for example, cotton (Birhanu Tilahun 2010, p. 1242). Inspecting of organic products includes choosing natural products that have as of late developed for better investigation. Plant tests are immediately moved to the research facility promptly in appropriately named paper packs that take into account transpiration, as this decreases the chance of decaying (Nahar Ullah 2011, p. 680). In dampness examination, broiler dried examples are normally gauged, however this is a bulky procedure as plant materials may assimilate more dampness during the gauging procedure. Dampness factor, which is determined by broiler drying just a couple of sub-tests from the part, is utilized to address the blunder that may come be cause of dampness retention. Dampness factor is recognized by partitioning the heaviness of air dried examples with that of broiler dried examples (Nahar Ullah 2011, p. 683). The vacuolated idea of most vegetable plants causes the proportion of dry load to new weight to be a significant anatomical file measure (Birhanu Tilahun 2010, p. 1247). The new weight gives data on the idea of the entire plant framework: cell dividers, protoplasts, vacuoles of living cells, dividers and every other substance in their ordinary state.Advertising We will compose a custom report test on Tomato Plants Growing explicitly for you for just $16.05 $11/page Learn More The wet and dry â€Å"weight investigation is of farming significance as in the new weight speaks to the states of the development and water status† (Birhanu Tilahun 2010, p. 1247. In fluctuating climatic conditions, this can be believed to change all the more every now and again on everyday premise or now and then on hourly premise . This perception has made a significant situation in horticultural efficiency in that numerous investigators have placed in question the qualities gave by the assurance of wet weight. In the current handy, tomato plants were tested and their dampness content estimated notwithstanding different viewpoints (Nahar Ullah 2011, p. 683). The functional essentially included choosing reasonable tomato plants; getting and checking the quantity of tomato organic products on the chose plants and gauging them; the mother plants were then removed, cleaned, put in independent packs and gauged. The weighing was rehashed after the plants had dried for a time of seven days in a dehydrator set at 70 degrees Celsius. Goals The goal of this reasonable was to recognize whether controlled development of tomato plants impacts on the dampness substance, stature and the absolute yield. Materials and Methods Materials Tomato plants Tape measure Empty paper packs Dehydrator Weighing machine Thermometer Metho ds 1. The tomato plants to be utilized in the investigation were grown 10 weeks prior and the class was later partitioned into gatherings of 5 individuals with 5 tomato plants each. 2. The fitting tomato plants were chosen.Advertising Searching for report on horticulture? How about we check whether we can support you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Find out More 3.The statures of the plants were then estimated from the highest point of the plant to the start of the root framework. 4. Void paper packs (Smaller ones for the products of the soil ones for the plants) to be utilized in the down to earth were marked by plant number, gauged and their loads recorded. 5. Tomatoes from the diverse chose plants were gathered and said something separate named packs. 6. The plants were then removed cautiously and all dirt washed from the root framework. 7. The leaves, stems and underlying foundations of each plant were cut and the areas set into discrete paper sacks for each plant. 8. Subsequent to filling separate paper packs with all the substance from a whole plant, gaps were jabbed, weight taken and recorded as the wet plant weight. 9. The plants were then positioned in a dehydrator for 7 days at 70 °C, after which the loads were estimated and recorded as the dry plant weight. 10. The rate dampness of the plant was determined by deducting the dry p lant weight from the weight plant weight, at that point separating the appropriate response with the weight plant weight and afterward duplicating by 100. Results Prior to the weighing of the tomato plant materials, the plants had been exposed to controlled development conditions. This may have been liable for the â€Å"narrow extend saw in the dampness content results† (Nahar Ullah 2011, p. 679). The dampness substance of the chose tomato plant is demonstrated in table 1 underneath. The outcomes demonstrate that the dampness substance of the tomato plants was about the equivalent paying little heed to the quantity of leafy foods stature of the plant. More clarification on this finding is caught in the conversation. Part. The dampness rate was determined as follows: Plant 16 Plant 17 Plant 18 Plant 19 Pant 26 Figure 1 Plant No. Plant high (cm) Number of organic product Wet weight (g) Dry weight (g) % water in plant. 16 160 13 909 165 81.84 17 173 9 929 171.5 81.10 18 162 21 8 72.5 205.5 76.44 19 158 20 930 169.5 81.77 26 157 13 733.5 151.5 79.34 Average 162 15.5 874.8 172.6 80.098 Discussion This commonsense was conveyed to essentially recognize the dampness substance of plants and how it identifies with the stature and number of natural products. Tomato plants were utilized where the statures of various examples were taken, the quantity of organic products estimated and the dampness content examined. The stature of the plants went from 157 to 173 and this found the middle value of to 162. The tallness of the plants had no relationship with the quantity of natural products on the plants. In any case, the stature had some connection to the dampness content as it was commonly seen that tall plants had more dampness. Be that as it may, this was not generally the situation as some shorter plants had substantial stems than other longer plants. The greater part of the dissected tomato plants had dampness substance of around 81%, a couple were underneath this w orth. The normal rate dampness content was 80.098(Nahar Ullah 2011, p. 682). The discoveries affirm what most researchers state about dampness substance of tomato plants(Birhanu Tilahun 2010). The expansion in the yield demonstrates how decrease of pressure related with tomato plants sway crop creation. Different examinations that have focused on the impact of water system reduction have demonstrated a gigantic increment in the all out attractive yields (Nahar Ullah 2011, p. 682). Notwithstanding, yields that outcome into high worth additional huge natural products typically increment with water system in a specific way (Birhanu Tilahun 2010). For tomato handling, it’s frequently saw that the higher the strong substance, the simpler the preparing and in this manner the more noteworthy the benefits. End The goal of this commonsense was to recognize whether controlled development of tomato plants impacts on the dampness substance, stature and the absolute yield. The aftereffect s of this investigation show that distinctive tomato plant ascribes are straightforwardly identified with one another as long as the ecological conditions are concerned. The plants utilized in this trial were become under comparative controlled

Fantasy Novels That Will Take Your Breath Away

5 Sci-Fi/Fantasy Novels That Will Take Your Breath Away Martin Cahill is a writer working in Manhattan and living in Astoria, Queens. He is a graduate of the 2014 Clarion Writers’ Workshop and a member of the New York City based writing group, Altered Fluid. He has had fiction published in Fireside Fiction, Nightmare Magazine, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Shimmer Magazine. Martin also writes non-fiction reviews, articles, and essays for Tor.com, the Barnes Noble Sci-fi and Fantasy Blog, and Strange Horizons. Twitter Handle:  @McflyCahill90 Some books just take your breath away. Whether it’s a series that builds and builds over the course of books until the final volume leaves you gasping for air, a brilliant take on a tried and true genre or narrative, or a tiny slice of fiction that pierces your heart like a needle, leaving no mark on the skin but injecting you with emotion all the same, some books leave you panting, adrenaline pumping, and craving more. In the world of science fiction and fantasy, we’ve especially begun to see a revolution in the way these stories are told. Below, find some sci-fi/fantasy novels and series that have make me shake my head in admiration and pride.     The Broken Earth Trilogy by N. K. Jemisin Every book Jemisin has written strikes with a thunderous boom, a split of lightning through the sky, leaving the air itself feeling charged, electric. Her latest series, The Broken Earth, is no exception. A series that examines rage, social injustice, cultures of use and abuse, power dynamics, what an apocalypse would really look like, and a struggle for both freedom of self and freedom of identity, Jemisin’s three book epic delivers, as a mother from an oppressed community in society must find her daughter in a world that is ending faster than either of them anticipate. Jemisin succeeds in creating a narrative that is brutal, harrowing, and filled with moments large and small that made me gasp from page one. The Craft Series by Max Gladstone I always love when writers push fantasy out of their regular milieu. Much like the way Jemisin tinkers with conventionâ€"setting a fantasy novel in a precarious, apocalyptic world with a middle-aged mother protagonistâ€"Gladstone is equally as happy to superimpose our 21st century ideas, cultures, and fears onto a world of monsters, myths, and magicians. Necromantic lawyers? Call us at your convenience! Got demons in the water supply? Hang on, we’ll send someone out there. Is your temple disintegrating because no one can agree upon its shared reality? Well, let’s get the board together and talk about it. Gladstone gleefully orchestrates the world of the Craft, picking and choosing where to interrogate finance as faith, investment as idolatry, or law as magic. Whether he’s discussing gentrification in Last First Snow, or space travel in Ruin of Angels, Gladstone backs down from nothing, and through his Craft Series, tells us a truth we can only see through a certain angle. The Changeling by Victor LaValle New York City is alive in a way only a certain handful of writers can capture, and Victor LaValle is absolutely one of them. Through his words, he brings to light the magic inherent in the streets of the city; the way that skyscrapers become icons of faith, the way Central Park can be just as haunted and ethereal and lovely as any faerie wood, how the subway thrums through the veins of the boroughs like blood vessels of grating sound and harsh light. In The Changeling, LaValle twines together myth and Manhattan, sacrifice and subways, as a man journeys into the world beneath this world to find out the truth of his wife and child, both of whom he believes he’s lost. LaValle captures these two worlds and braids them together effortlessly, and by the end of the novel, as he pulls away from the story to let you look at how he did it, even now, I can’t see; I only know it was magic, and this man is well-versed in the spells of narrative, mystery, horror, and myth. The Only Great Harmless Thing by Brooke Bolander Bolander is well known for her searing, lyrical, bittersweet short stories that are less a meander through a meadow and more a rocket burning fuel, desperate to escape orbit and bring you along for the ride. Her prose is gorgeous and hits with the kinetic power of a heavyweight champion, and there hasn’t been a story of hers that I’ve finished where I haven’t put a hand to my forehead, suddenly feeling as though I’ve come down with fever. The Only Great Harmless Thing, her new novella, is no different. Set up like mirrors through time, Bolander weaves together the story of an alternate world where Topsy, an abused and mistreated elephant, meets with Regan, one of the radium girls currently facing her own death by the glow of the element they were working with, which executives did not tell them was poison. And through it all, the haunting deep-myth history of Topsy and her ilk, told to us through the triumphant trumpeting of history, as well as a far future where the sins of the past are eager to be forgiven. Except elephants never forget. All of these tales come crashing together in a crescendo that is tragic and horrible and angry, so angry, and justifiable in that anger, as together, Topsy and Regan sing a song of rage that will shake the pillars of the world. Though this is a slim tale, its impact on me was enormous.   The Tensorate Series by JY Yang THESE BOOKS Y’ALL. Ahem. My apologies. It’s just that these books by JY Yang are such a breath of fresh air, that it’s tough for me to talk about them without getting a little…energetic. But that energy is earned, as Yang does everything in their power to make these stories sing. Beginning with the duology The Black Tides of Heaven and The Red Threads of Fortune, and continuing with this summer’s The Descent of Monsters, we follow the twins of the Protector: brash, stubborn, and sensitive Akeha, and his sister, Mokoya, whose powers of prophecy made her distant, cautious, and strong. Their stories braid throughout the first two novellas, and continue on into the third story; no matter what the plot may be, Yang manages to keep things fresh and exciting; they’re equally as gifted at interrogating aspects of gender, sexuality, power, imperialism, hierarchy, family, and love, as they are at crafting a fully lived in world full of intricate magic and massive monsters and deep history. The Tensorate is full of mystery but none of it would be half as interesting without Yang’s deft prose and their rich, complicated characters giving this world life. Sign up to Swords Spaceships to  receive news and recommendations from the world of science fiction and fantasy. Thank you for signing up! Keep an eye on your inbox.

Do Fracking Really Bring For The Practice - 762 Words

Do EHRs really bring in efficiency for the practice? (Practical Issues a Practice Faces While Using EHR) Electronic Health Records (EHRs) are an important component in health care reform, but do they really bring efficiency to the practice? The extent to which practices use EHRs vary from the very basic (entering clinical notes and viewing results) to the intermediate (using e-Prescribing to indicate adverse drug prevention and provide suggestions for alternative drugs) to the advanced use (including lab and radiology order entry with testing guidance, capture of electronic charge, and evidence-based guidelines). The Positives EHRs can positively influence workplace efficiency and communication and improve productivity with better access to and organization of patient data (McGinn, et al., 2011). EHRs can improve operational efficiency by providing the capability of sharing of information within the practice. Additionally, health information can be shared with external health care organizations provided the proper interoperability infrastructure is in place. Physicians can access patient information anytime and anywhere the system is enabled, enhancing patient safety as well as quality and continuity of care, particularly for physicians on call or working at multiple sites. They also can have access to drug recalls or other alerts provided through the EHR. Practices using EHR systems accredited by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) andShow MoreRelatedFracking : A Modern Technique1680 Words   |  7 PagesFracking is a modern technique to explore natural gas through a controversial procedure. The controversy about scientific evidence for the impact of fracking has raged unabated for over a decade. It has now become one of the most popular debates between the supporters of Greenpeace or environmentalists and the energy companies. Now it’s a centrepiece of discussion in the context of the energy solution and considered as a really important source of energy by last few decades. Recent developments inRead MoreFracking And The Drilling Community966 Words   |  4 Pagescompanies were using a process called hydraulic fracturing to extract oil out of the ground at nearby farms. This practice is a very controversial in the drilling community because it has longer lasting effects and it poses a greater risk to t he people who surround the well site. Hydraulic Fracturing or â€Å"Fracking† is a new innovated way to get fossil fuels out of the ground. Companies use fracking when there is shale gas or tight gas and oil trapped in the ground below. The crews of these wells drillRead MoreThe Effects Of Fracking On The And Gas Industry1431 Words   |  6 PagesThe Ethicacy of Fracking Changes with the process of fracking often called slick water high pressure horizontal drilling have become common in recent years are having devastating effects on people, their livestock as well as on communities as a whole. The toxic and often carcinogenic chemicals used in the process and as a result of the methods used are often contaminating water supplies. Air quality is also being greatly affected due to side effects from this method of resource extraction and greenhouseRead MoreFracking: Greenhouse Gas and Water1429 Words   |  6 PagesWhats the Fracking Problem? W hy does everyone care so much about natural gas? Why is it such an essential part of modern culture? Sure, its an exciting and up and coming technology, which is fuel for the technological generation that weve grown up in, but we need to take a closer look to see the methods and impacts that could affect generations after us. Water is one of our important resources that were given to us by mother nature. We see water as a source for survival and many more advantagesRead MoreWhat Are The Five Main Mechanisms Of Sustainability?1251 Words   |  6 Pagesjust as much of a piece of the environment as the wind and soil themselves. On a grand timeline, only recently did we begin to understand and practice the principle of sustainability. Today, untenable production methods, over consumption and an ever increasing population test our use of finite materials like never before. That’s all sustainability is really, reaching a reasonable balance between what makes us prosper as a society and our depletion of earths limited assets. One can fall on either sideRead MoreFracking: Natural Gas1936 Words   |  8 PagesFracking is a modern technique to explore natural gas through a controversial procedure. The controversy about scientific evidence for the impact of fracking has raged unabated for over a decade. It has now become one of the most popular debates between the supporters of Greenpeace or environmentalists and the energy companies. Now it’s a centrepiece of discussion in the context of the energy solution and considered as a really important source of energy by last few decades. Recent developments inRead MoreHydraulic Fracking : The Oil Industry2025 Words   |  9 Pagesgases, a process called Hydraulic Fracturing, informally known as fracking, was invented. Hydraulic Fracking â€Å"is a controversial oil and gas extraction technique developed in the late 1940s to gain access to fossil energy deposits previously inaccessible to drilling operations. The process†¦literally involves the smashing of rock with millions of gallons of water- along with sand and an undisclosed assortment of chemicals in order to bring gas to the surface. (serc-carelton.edu).† This process combinesRead MoreOil And Gas Site Conservation Essay3097 Words   |  13 PagesWSES-4090-010 Fall 2017 Oil and Gas Site Restoration By: Cameo Hagger Project: This project involves the restoration of drilling and fracking sites in Texas. Texas currently has millions of acers under lease for drilling of oil and gas wells. These leases typically include a 1-2-acre pad site and an access road. 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As more and more companies step forward to join in their footsteps, the cost of using sustainable practices will decrease, hopefully leading to even more companies making the switch until eventually sustainable, environmentally friendly green IT practices become the norm. GREEN IT The term ‘green IT’ refers to the practice of sustainable and environmentally friendly computing/IT. This includes things such as design, manufacturing, use, and disposal of computers

The Lost Secret of Research Paper Apa Template

The Lost Secret of Research Paper Apa Template The Nuiances of Research Paper Apa Template While there are invariably an unlimited number of suggestions to grab, a number of them have been overused. It is helpful to compose an outline so as to organize your ideas and your source material before you start reviewing the reference material. Thus you should choose an approach point of view in which you control over your work. When you've already decided what topic you are going to be writing about, the following thing you ought to pay attention to is the range of your paper or what you're going to be including in your discussion. Attempt not to procrastinate, the more time you must work on the paper the simpler it will be. Then write the abstract part of your paper only after you're completely finished writing your paper. Making a research paper is not a simple matter to do. Writing a research paper is sort of interesting as you dig into various interesting material to place in your paper. Nobody will argue that It's quite challenging to compose an academic paper if there's no structure for it. Your name appears double-spaced too, under the paper title. If you would like to compose a productive assignment, you need to take very great care of all the features, layout, structure, grammar etc.. Additionally, anyone interested in the topic matter of the research paper can look to the section to discover extra sources to find out more. Not only are you going to be in a position to better understand the works you're building on, but your network of citations may supply you with further fuel to make your own one of a kind work. Your document may have an intricate structure, especially in the event the principal body will be big. How to Get Started with Research Paper Apa Template? You could also use a citation maker to aid you in formatting your references. A citation is comparatively easy to make. The citation is only going to be sorted right after the document is ex ported to the internet generator. A more complete citation should show up in the reference list at the close of the paper. For your work to be accepted in the area of academia, it's very critical for you to structure your paper according to a certain research writing format whether it's an MLA or APA writing style. Writing a research paper may be challenging and time consuming approach. The academic writing falls in the class of formal as it's impersonal. Much like a math problem, a diagram helps students learn to implement MLA format by themselves. Generally speaking, it is nearly not possible for a student to understand how to compose a superb academic paper. Students could rather seek the help of writing companies. They need to be able to communicate effectively with their supervisor and panelists in a way that conflict is not stirred. The Hidden Secret of Research Paper Apa Template There are many advantages to hiring APA editing services. An APA editor makes certain that the prepared document follows the appropriate style. The abstract may be quite brief, but it's so essential that the official APA style manual identifies it as the most significant paragraph in your whole paper. MLA research style doesn't comprise a unique software, but it allows several possibilities meant for recording main qualities of a work. There are a number of MLA title rules. Should you need help formatting citations in MLA, you may also seek th e services of a professional an academic editor to assist. Writing using the MLA format works cited generator is essential. You might be accustomed to writing papers in another format like MLA or Chicago style, so it may take a while to find the hang of writing in APA format. Research Paper Apa Template Can Be Fun for Everyone The paper must increase the present body of knowledge in the subject of research. In case you're not able to do the research paper as a result of any reason, you can rely on ProfEssays to write for you in accordance to your requirements. There various steps one must follow so as to create a very good research paper. A research paper represents a person's own perceptions and how an individual comprehends a particular topic. The Ultimate Research Paper Apa Template Trick The editor's communication may also indicate how well the both of you will get the job done together. The editors can utilize Microsoft track changes so that you will have the ability to find out what has been changed. The absolute most important thing when selecting an editor through an on-line editing service is to locate somebody who keeps your voice in the manuscript while at the exact same time improving the flow, clarity, and grammar. An APA editor with a huge repertoire of writing skills will understand how to present the ideas in the strongest way.

The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove Chapter 9~10 Free Essays

string(106) " She pounded on the window and the kid looked up, not startled, but with a dreamy expression on his face\." Nine When Mikey â€Å"the Collector† Plotznik wheeled into town and saw that the Texaco station had blown up, leaving a charred circle two hundred yards wide around it, he knew that it was going to be a great day. It was a shame about the burger stand going up too, and he’d miss their spicy fries, but hey, you don’t often get to see the toasting of a major landmark like the Texaco. The fire was all out now, but several firemen were still sifting through the wreck-age. We will write a custom essay sample on The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove Chapter 9~10 or any similar topic only for you Order Now The Collector waved to them as he wheeled by. They waved back, somewhat reticently, for the Collector’s reputation preceded him and made them nervous. Today would be the day, Mikey thought. The Texaco was an omen, the star in the sky over his lifelong dream. Today he’d catch Molly Michon naked, and when he did (and brought back the proof), his reputation would grow to mythic proportions. He patted the disposable camera he carried in the front pouch of his hooded sweatshirt. Oh yes, he’d have evidence to back up his story. They would believe him – and bow to him. At this point in his life, the Collector was more interested in explosions than in naked women. He was only ten, and it would be a couple of years before his interests moved to girls. Freud never identified a stage of devel-opment known as â€Å"pyrotechnic fascination,† but that was only because there wasn’t an abundant supply of disposable lighters in nineteenth-cen-tury Vienna. Ten-year-old boys blow shit up. It’s what they do. But today a strange new feeling had come over Mikey, a feeling he couldn’t put a word to, but if he could, the word would have been â€Å"horny.† As he Rollerbladed through town, tossing the Los Angeles Times into the shrubs and gutters of businesses along Cypress Street, he felt a tightness in his shorts that until now he had associated with having to take a raging pee in the morning. Today it signified a need to see the Crazy Lady in a state of undress. Paperboys are the carriers of preadolescent myth. On every paper route, there is a haunted house, a kid-eating dog, an old woman who tips with twenties, and a woman who answers the door in the nude. Mikey had never actually seen any of these things, but that never stopped him from spinning wild stories for his buddies at school. Today he would get proof, he could feel it in his loins. He skated down the driveway into the Fly Rod Trailer Court, chucked a paper into the rose bushes in front of Mr. Nunez’s trailer, then made a beeline for the Crazy Lady’s house. He could see a blue glow coming through her windows, a TV. She was home and awake. Yes! He pulled up a couple of doors down and noticed that a new trailer had moved in next to the Crazy Lady. A new customer? Why not give it a try? The Crazy Lady didn’t receive the paper, so his pretense for knocking on her door was to get her to subscribe. He could practice on these new people. As he skated up to the front door of the new trailer, lights came on in the two front windows. Yes! Someone was home. Strange curtains – they looked like cat’s eyes. Through a part in the curtains, Molly watched the kid come down the road into the trailer park. She liked kids, but she didn’t like this kid. At least once a week he knocked on her door and tried to get her to subscribe to the paper, and once a week she told him to go away and never come back. Sometimes he would bring one of his little buddies along. She could hear them skulking around her trailer, trying to peek in the windows. â€Å"Swear to God, she’s got a dead guy in there that she does it with. I’ve seen him. And she ate a kid once.† The kid was heading for the monster trailer. In the background, a videotape was playing on her TV – Mechanized Death: Warrior Babe VII – and THE SCENE was coming up. Molly looked away from the window and watched THE SCENE for the thousandth time. Kendra is standing in the back of a jeep, manning a rack of net guns as the jeep pursues the Evil Warlord across the desert. The driver turns, as he is supposed to, throwing up a fishtail of dust, but the front wheel of the jeep hits a rock and the jeep rolls. Kendra is thrown fifty feet in the air and lands in a heap. The steel bra she is wearing cuts deep into her chest and blood sprays out across the dust. The bastards! Every time she watches THE SCENE she can’t believe the bastards left it in. The accident was real, the blood was Molly’s, and when she returned to the set ten days later, a security guard escorted her to the producer’s trailer. â€Å"I can pay you extra’s wages as a mutant,† the producer said, â€Å"but let’s face it, babe, you didn’t get your billing because of your acting ability. You think I’m gonna hold up filming for ten days when the whole schedule is only three weeks long? We got a new Kendra. Wrote the accident and the facial reconstruction into the script. She’s a cyborg now. Now you can get in line with the mutants to pick up your bag of rags, or you can get the fuck off the set. My audience wants perfect bodies, and you were getting up there anyway. With that scar you don’t sell anymore.† Molly had just turned twenty-seven years old. She pulled herself from THE SCENE and looked out the window again. The kid was there, right there in front of the monster trailer. She should warn him or something. She pounded on the window and the kid looked up, not startled, but with a dreamy expression on his face. Molly gestured for him to move away. The window she was looking out of didn’t open. (Trailers built in those days were designed so people would burn up in case of a fire. The manufacturers thought it would keep the lawsuits down.) The kid just stood there, his fist poised before the door as if he were frozen in the middle of knocking. As Molly watched, the door began to open. Not on the hinges, but vertically, like a garage door. Molly pounded furiously on the window with the hilt of her sword. The kid smiled. A huge red tongue snaked out of the door, wrapped around the kid, and slurped him in, Rollerblades, paper satchel, and all. Molly screamed. The door slammed shut. Molly watched, stunned, not knowing what to do. A few seconds later the mouth opened and expectorated a soccer-ball-sized wad of newspaper. Theo The hours of Theo’s day had moved like slugs crawling on razor wire. By four in the afternoon, he felt as if he’d been awake for a week and the cups of French roast he’d been drinking had turned to foaming acid in his stomach. Mercifully, there hadn’t been a single call for a bar fight or do-mestic dispute, so he had spent the entire day at the scene of the fuel truck explosion, talking to firemen, representatives from Texaco Oil, and an arson investigator sent up from the San Junipero Fire Department. Much to his surprise, going all day without a hit from his Sneaky Pete pot pipe had not sent him into fits of anxiety as it usually did. He was a little paranoid, but he wasn’t sure that that wasn’t just an informed response to the world anyway. At a quarter past four, the arson investigator crossed the charred parking lot to where Theo was leaning on the hood of his Volvo. The investigator was in his late twenties, clean-cut, and carried himself like an athlete, even in the orange toxic waste suit. He carried a plastic space helmet under his arm like a tumorous football. â€Å"Constable Crowe, I think that’s about all I can do today. It’ll be dark soon, and as long as we keep the area closed off, I’m sure everything will still be here in the morning.† â€Å"What’s your call so far? â€Å"Well, we generally look for evidence of accelerants, gas, kerosene, paint thinner – and I’d say there were definitely some flammable liquids involved here.† He smiled a weary smile. â€Å"So you don’t know what happened?† â€Å"Offhand, I’d say a fuel truck blew up, but without further investigation I’d hate to make a commitment at this time.† Again the smile. Theo smiled back. â€Å"So no cause?† â€Å"The driver probably didn’t seal the hose correctly and a cloud of fumes got set off. There wasn’t much wind last night, so the fumes would have just clung to the ground and built up. Anything could have set it off: the driver could have been smoking, the pilot lights at the hamburger place, a spark in the truck exhaust. Right now I’d say it was totally accidental. It was a company-owned store, and it was turning a profit, so there really isn’t a financial motive for arson. Texaco will definitely be building your town a new burger stand and probably paying off some nuisance settlements from people claiming trauma, duress, and irritation.† â€Å"I have the information on the driver,† Theo said. â€Å"I’ll check to see if he was a smoker.† â€Å"I asked him. He’s keeping quiet† came a voice from a few yards away. Theo and the arson investigator looked up to see Vance McNally coming toward them holding up a Ziploc bag full of white and gray powder. â€Å"I’ve got him right here,† the EMT said. â€Å"You want to interrogate him?† â€Å"Very funny, Vance,† Theo said. â€Å"They’re going to have to do the autopsy with a flour sifter,† Vance said. The investigator took the Ziploc from Vance and examined it. â€Å"You find any remains of a cigarette lighter? Anything like that?† â€Å"Not my job,† Vance said. â€Å"The fire was so hot it turned the seat springs to liquid. Even incinerated the bones, except for those little bits of calcium in there. Honestly, this might not all be our boy. We might be giving his wife a bag full of burnt-up truck parts to put in an urn on the mantel.† The investigator shrugged and handed the bag back to Vance. Then to Theo he said, â€Å"I’m going home. I’ll come back tomorrow and look around some more. As soon as I give the okay, the oil company will send in a crew to drain the ground tanks.† â€Å"Thanks,† Theo said. The investigator left in a county car. Vance McNally turned the Ziploc bag of truck driver in the air. â€Å"Theo, this ever happens to me, I want you to get all my friends together, have a big party, and snort me, okay?† â€Å"You have friends, Vance?† â€Å"Okay, it was just an idea,† Vance said. He turned and carried his bag to the waiting ambulance. Theo sipped his coffee and noticed something moving in the charred brush beyond the Texaco. It looked as if someone was holding up a TV antenna and getting altogether too close to the yellow tape he had run around the perimeter. Jeez, was he going to have to stay here all night guarding the scene? He pried himself off the Volvo and headed for the offender. â€Å"Hey there!† Theo called. Gabe Fenton, the biologist, emerged from the brush, indeed holding up some kind of antenna, followed by his Labrador retriever, Skinner. The dog ran to meet Theo and greeted him with two muddy paw prints on the chest. Theo rubbed Skinner’s ears to hold him at bay, the classic slobbering Labrador control move. â€Å"Gabe, what in the hell are you doing down here?† The biologist was covered with burrs and foxtails, his face striped with soot from the charred brush. He looked exhausted, yet there was a note of excitement bordering on ecstasy in his voice. â€Å"You won’t believe this, Theo. My rats moved en masse this morning.† Theo tried, but couldn’t match Gabe’s enthusiasm. â€Å"That’s swell, Gabe. Texaco blew up last night.† Gabe Fenton looked around at the surrounding area as if seeing the destruction for the first time. â€Å"What time?† â€Å"About four in the morning.† â€Å"Hmmm, maybe they sensed it.† â€Å"They?† â€Å"The rats. Around 2 A.M. they all started moving west. I can’t figure out what caused it. Here, look at the screen.† Gabe had a laptop computer strapped into a harness around his waist. He turned it so Theo could see the screen. â€Å"Each of these dots represents an animal I have implanted with a tracking chip. Here’s their location at 1 A.M.† He clicked a key and the screen drew a topographical map of the area. Green dots were scattered pretty much evenly along the creek bed and the business district of Pine Cove. Gabe hit another key. â€Å"Now here they are at two.† All but a few of the dots had moved into the ranchland east of Pine Cove. â€Å"Uh-huh,† Theo said. Gabe was a nice guy. Spent too much time with vermin, but he was a nice guy. Gabe needs to talk to humans occasionally, Theo thought. â€Å"Well, don’t you see? They all moved at once, except for these ten over here that moved to the shore.† â€Å"Uh-huh,† Theo said. â€Å"Gabe, the Texaco blew up. A guy was killed. I was talking to firemen in space suits all day. Every paper in the county has called me. The battery is almost out on my cell phone. I haven’t eaten since yesterday and I only slept an hour last night. Help me find the significance in rat migration, okay?† Gabe looked crestfallen. â€Å"Well, I don’t know the significance yet. I’m tracking the ten that didn’t move east, hoping the anomalies will give a clue to the behavior of the larger group. Strange thing is, four of the ten disappeared off my screen a little after two. Even if they were killed, the chips should still transmit. I need to find them.† â€Å"And I wish you the best of luck, but this area may still be dangerous. You can’t be here, buddy.† â€Å"Maybe there were fumes,† Gabe said. â€Å"But that doesn’t explain why they all moved in the same direction. Some even came through this area from the shore.† Theo couldn’t bear to express to Gabe how little he cared. â€Å"You had any dinner, Gabe?† â€Å"No, I’ve been doing this since last night.† â€Å"Pizza, Gabe. We need pizza and beer. I’ll buy.† â€Å"But I need to†¦Ã¢â‚¬  â€Å"You’re a single guy, Gabe. You need pizza every eighteen hours or you can’t function properly. And I have a question to ask you about footprints, but I want you to watch me drink a few beers before I ask so I can claim diminished capacity. Come, Gabe, let me take you to the land of pizza and beer.† Theo gestured to his Volvo. â€Å"You can stick the antenna out the sunroof.† â€Å"I guess I could take a break.† Theo opened the passenger door and Skinner leapt into the car, leaving sooty paw prints on the seat. â€Å"Your dog needs pizza. It’s the humane thing to do.† â€Å"Okay,† Gabe said. â€Å"I want to show you something over by the creek bed.† â€Å"What.† â€Å"A footprint. Or what’s left of one.† Ten minutes later they sat over frosty mugs of beer at Pizza in the Pines, Pine Cove’s only pizza parlor. They’d taken a window table so Gabe could keep an eye on Skinner, who was bouncing up and down outside, giving them an ever-changing view of the street, then the street with dog face (ears akimbo), then the street, then the street with dog face again. Other than to order a beer, Gabe Fenton hadn’t said a word since they’d gone to the creek bed. â€Å"Will he just keep doing that?† Theo asked. â€Å"Until we take him a slice of pizza, yes.† â€Å"Amazing.† Gabe shrugged. â€Å"He’s a dog.† â€Å"Always the biologist.† â€Å"One needs to keep the mind limber.† â€Å"Well, what do you think?† â€Å"I think that you obliterated most of what you thought was a footprint.† â€Å"Gabe, it was a footprint. A talon or something.† â€Å"There are a thousand explanations for a depression in the mud like that, Theo, but one of them is not an animal track.† â€Å"Why not?† â€Å"Well, for one, there hasn’t been anything that large on this continent for about sixty million years, and for another, animals tend to leave more than one track, unless it’s a creature especially adapted for hopping.† Gabe grinned. The flying dog head pogoed by the windowsill. â€Å"There were a lot of people and vehicles around there, the other tracks might have been wiped out.† â€Å"Theo, don’t let your imagination run away with you. You’ve had a long day and†¦Ã¢â‚¬  â€Å"And I’m a pothead.† â€Å"I wasn’t going to say that.† â€Å"I know, I’m saying it. Tell me about your rats. What will you do when you find them?† â€Å"Well, first I’m going to keep searching for the stimulus of their behavior, then I’ll catch a few of the group that migrated and compare their brain chemistry to those that headed toward the shore.† â€Å"Does that hurt them?† â€Å"You have to blend up their brains and run the liquid in a centrifuge.† â€Å"I guess so then.† The waitress brought their pizza and Gabe was severing cables of cheese from his first slice when Theo’s cell phone rang. The constable listened for a second, then stood and dug into his pocket for money. â€Å"I’ve got to go, Gabe.† â€Å"What’s up?† â€Å"The Plotznik kid is missing. No one’s seen him since he left on his paper route this morning.† â€Å"Probably hiding. That kid is evil. He rigged up something with his remote control car that affected the chips in my rats once. I spent three weeks trying to figure out why they were running figure eights in the parking lot outside the grocery story before I found him lurking in the weeds with the controller.† â€Å"I know,† Theo said. â€Å"Mikey told me that if he wired ten of your rats together, he could pick up the Discovery Channel. I still have to find him. He has parents.† â€Å"Skinner is a pretty good tracker. Want to take him?† â€Å"Thanks, but I doubt that the kid had a pizza in his pocket.† Theo folded his phone, snagged a slice of pizza for the road, and headed out the door. Ten Val Riordan leaned against her office door, trying to catch her breath and maintain her temper. Nothing in her clinical experience compared to the sessions she held on the day after the Texaco exploded. She had seen twenty patients in ten hours, and every one of them had wanted to talk about sex. And not abstract sex either, not issues or attitudes about sex, just squishy, thumping sex itself. It was unnerving. She’d anticipated a spike in libido among her patients (it was a common symptom of withdrawal from antidepressants), but the books said not more than five to fifteen percent would have a reaction – about the same number that experienced a loss of libido upon taking the drugs. But today she’d hit one hundred percent. It was as if she were running a kennel for hopeless horndogs rather than a psychiatric practice. After the last patient, she’d come out of her office to find her new receptionist, Chloe, furiously masturbating, her feet hooked into the edge of the desk, her steno chair squeaking like a tortured squirrel. Val had excused herself, turned on her heel, walked back into her office, and shut the door. Chloe, twenty-one, had maroon hair, an entire wardrobe rendered in black, and a sapphire nose ring. Val had begun treating the girl in her teens for bulimia, then hired her when the volume of appointments skyrocketed after the placebo went into effect. Chloe worked in exchange for therapy; Val had thought it would be a good financial move. Frankly, she’d liked her better when she just threw up a lot. Val was still trying to figure out exactly what to do when there was a soft knock on the door. â€Å"Yes?† â€Å"Sorry,† Chloe said through the door. â€Å"Uh, Chloe, that is not appropriate office behavior.† â€Å"Well, your last appointment had left. I thought that you would be working on your notes or something for a while. I’m really sorry.† â€Å"That’s it? My last appointment leaves, so let the wild rumpus begin?† â€Å"Am I fired?† Val thought for a second. There were twenty more patients to see tomorrow and twenty the day after that. If the weirdness didn’t kill her, the workload would. She couldn’t afford to lose Chloe now. â€Å"No, you’re not fired. But please, no more of that in the office.† â€Å"Do you have time to talk? I know my next session isn’t until next week, but I really need to talk to you.† â€Å"Wouldn’t you prefer to go home and, uh, think about things?† â€Å"You mean finish? No, I’m finished for now. That’s what I want to talk to you about. That wasn’t the first time today.† Val gulped. It was highly unprofessional to talk to a patient through a door. She steeled herself and opened it. â€Å"Come in.† She returned to her desk without looking at the girl. Chloe took a seat across from her. â€Å"So this wasn’t the first time today?† Val was the psychotherapist now, not the boss. If she’d been the boss, she would have come over the desk and strangled the little slut. â€Å"No, I can’t seem to get enough. I, well, it started about two in the morning, and I went straight though until time to get ready for work. Then once or twice while each patient was in session.† Val’s jaw dropped. Sixteen hours of intermittent masturbation? The other patients she had seen had cited two in the morning as when their sexual adventures had started too. She said, â€Å"And how do you feel about that?† â€Å"I feel okay. My wrist hurts a little. Do you think I could have carpal tunnel?† â€Å"Chloe, if you think that you’re going to file a workmen’s compensation claim for this†¦Ã¢â‚¬  â€Å"No no no, I just want to stop.† â€Å"Did something happen to set this off? Something at two in the morning? A dream perhaps?† Her other patients had described various sexual dreams. Winston Krauss, the pharmacist with the sexual obsession for marine mammals, confessed to dreaming of having sex with a blue whale, riding it through the depths like Ahab with a hard-on. Upon awakening, he’d abused his inflatable Flipper until it would no longer hold air. Chloe shifted uncomfortably in her chair. Her long maroon hair hid her face. â€Å"I dreamed I was having sex with a tank truck, and it blew up.† â€Å"A tank truck?† â€Å"I came.† â€Å"Sexual dreams are completely normal, Chloe.† Right, a tank truck? That’s normal. â€Å"Tell me, was there fire in your dream?† Pyromaniacs de-rived sexual pleasure from setting and watching fires. That’s how they caught them, look in the crowd for a grinning guy with a woody and gas stains on his shoes. â€Å"No, no fire. I woke up at the explosion. Val, what’s wrong with me? All I want to do is, you know, do it.† â€Å"And you feel that you might do something impulsive?† Chloe put on her cynical Goth-girl face. â€Å"If you mean something like buffing the muffin while I’m at work, yes, Dr. Riordan, I’m a little worried. Can’t you adjust my medication or something?† There it was. In the past, that would have been the answer. Increase the Prozac to eighty milligrams, about four times the dose for the average de-pressed patient, and let the side effect of reduced libido do the work. Val had used the method to treat a nymphomaniac when she was an intern and it had worked marvelously. But what now? Duct tape oven mitts to her receptionist’s hands? Although her typing probably wouldn’t suffer much, it might make the patients nervous. Val said. â€Å"Chloe, masturbation is a natural thing. Everyone does it. But obviously there are appropriate times and places. Perhaps you should just cut back. Allow yourself to masturbate as a reward for controlling your urges.† Chloe’s face went slack. â€Å"Cut down? I’m worried about driving home safely. I have a stick shift. I need both hands to drive, but I don’t think I’m going to have them. Do you have a patch you can prescribe, like they do for smoking?† â€Å"A patch?† Val suppressed a laugh. She imagined a twitching, moaning line of people around the block at the pharmacy, there to pick up their prescriptions for the orgasm patch. It would make heroin look like Gummi Bears. â€Å"No, there’s no patch, Chloe. You’re just going to have to try to control yourself. I have a feeling that this is a side effect of your medication. It should pass in a day or two. I want to hear more about this dream of yours. We’ll talk tomorrow, okay?† Chloe stood, obviously not satisfied with the help her therapist was offering, which was none. â€Å"I’ll try.† She left the office, closing the door behind her. Val let her head fall to the desk. Jesus, Joseph, and Mary, why didn’t I go into pathology? she thought. It would be so peaceful sitting around, boiling up beakers of urine and culturing bugs. No wackos. No stress. Okay, occasionally you’d be exposed to some deadly anthrax spores, but at least other people’s sex lives stay in the bedroom and the tabloids where they belong. Her appointment with Martin and Lisbeth Luder rose in her head. They were in their seventies, had been in counseling because they hadn’t had a decent conversation since 1958, and today they had come in and dumped a half hour of explicit sexual narrative on her, an account of perversions they’d indulged in the night before, starting at around 2 A.M. The visual conjured in Val’s mind – all that parched, wrinkled flesh in furious fric-tion – culminated in flames, as if some giant cosmic Boy Scout had decided to rub two old people together to make a fire. The worst of it, the absolute worst of it, is that she’d found herself getting turned on while listening. She’d had to change her panties between appointments four times today. She considered pouring herself a hefty tumbler of brandy and settling down in front of the television, but that wasn’t going to do it. Batteries; she needed four C-cell batteries and she needed them now. Then it was time to dig through her lingerie drawers and find a long-forgotten friend – and hope that it still worked. Molly Long past dark and Molly was still staring though the gap in the curtains at the trailer that ate the kid. The problem with being nuts, she thought, is that you don’t always feel as if you’re nuts. Sometimes, in fact, you feel perfectly sane, and there just happens to be a trailer-shaped dragon crouching in the lot next door. Not that she was ready to go out and pro-claim that fact to anyone, because no matter how sane you feel, some stuff just sounds too crazy. So she watched, still wearing her Warrior Babe outfit, hoping someone else would come along and notice. Around eight, someone did. She saw Theophilus Crowe going from door to door in the park. He came into view two trailers down at the Morales home, spoke briefly with Mr. Morales at the door, then headed for the dragon trailer. Molly was torn. She liked Theo. Yes, he’d taken her to County once or twice, but he’d always been kind to her – warned her about the guy in the day room who cheated at Parcheesi by eating the marbles. And he never spoke to her like she was a crazy woman. Theo was a fan. As Theo was raising his black Mag lite to tap on the dragon trailer’s door, Molly saw the two windows on the end slowly open, revealing the cat’seye pupils. Theo obviously didn’t see them. He was looking at his shoes. She threw up the aluminum sash and shouted, â€Å"They’re not home!† The constable turned toward Molly. â€Å"Just a second,† she said. She bolted out the door of her trailer and stopped by the street where Theo could see her. â€Å"They aren’t home. Come here a second,† she repeated. Theo tucked his Mag lite into his belt. â€Å"Molly, how are you?† â€Å"Fine, fine, fine. I need to talk to you, okay? Over here, okay?† She didn’t want to tell him why. what if the eyes weren’t there? What if it was just a trailer? She’d be on her way to County in a heartbeat. â€Å"They’re not home then?† Theo said, pointing over his shoulder to the dragon trailer. He was staring at her now, at the same time trying not to stare. He had a goofy grin on his face, the same sort Molly had seen on the kid right before he got slurped. â€Å"Nope, gone all day.† â€Å"What’s with the sword? Oh shit! She forgot she’d grabbed the sword on the way out. â€Å"I was just making some stir-fry. Chopping up some veggies.† â€Å"That ought to do it.† â€Å"Broccoli stems,† she said, as if that explained everything. He was looking at the leather bikini, and she watched his eyes stop on the scar above her breast, then look away. She covered the scar with her hand. â€Å"One of my old Kendra costumes. Everything else is in the dryer.† â€Å"Sure. Hey, you don’t get the Times, do you?† â€Å"Nope. Why?† â€Å"The kid that delivers it, Mikey Plotznik, left for his route this morning and no one has seen him since. Looks like the last paper he delivered was a few doors down. You didn’t happen to see him, did you?† â€Å"About ten, blond kid, Rollerblades? Kinda evil?† â€Å"That’s him.† â€Å"Nope, haven’t seen him.† She watched the eyes of the dragon trailer close behind Theo and took a deep breath. â€Å"You seem a little tense, Molly. You okay?† â€Å"Fine, fine, just wanted to get back to my stir-fry. You hungry?† â€Å"Did Val Riordan get hold of you?† â€Å"Yep, she called. I’m not nuts.† â€Å"Of course not. I’d like you to keep an eye out for this kid, Molly. One of his buddies fessed up that Mikey had a little bit of an obsession with you.† â€Å"Me? No kidding?† â€Å"He might be creeping around your trailer.† â€Å"Really?† â€Å"If you see him, give me a call, would you? His folks are worried about him.† â€Å"I’ll do that.† â€Å"Thanks. And ask your neighbors when they get home, would you?† â€Å"You betcha.† Molly realized he was stalling. Just staring at her with that goofy grin on his face. â€Å"They just moved in. I don’t know them very well, but I’ll ask.† â€Å"Thanks.† He said, still just standing there, like a twelve-year-old ready to make an assault on the wall-flowers at his first dance. â€Å"I’d better go, Theo. I have broccoli in the dryer.† No, she had wanted to say she had to get back to dinner, or to her laundry, not both. â€Å"Okay. See ya.† She ran into her trailer, slammed the door, and leaned against it. Through the window she could see the dragon trailer open an eye and close it quickly. She could have sworn it was winking at her. Theo A niggling voice in Theo’s head told him that finding the Crazy Lady attractive – extremely attractive – was an indicator that he was less than sane himself. On the other hand, he didn’t feel that bad about it. He didn’t feel bad about anything, not since he’d walked into the trailer park anyway. He had to deal with an explosion, a lost kid, the recent increase in general nuttiness in town – a virtual shit storm of responsibility – but he didn’t feel all that bad. And in that moment outside of Molly’s trailer, reflecting and waiting for the tide of lust to ebb, he realized that he hadn’t smoked any pot all day. Strange. Normally this long without nursing from his Sneaky Pete and his skin would be crawling. He was heading back to his Volvo to resume the search for the lost boy when his cell phone rang. Sheriff John Burton didn’t say hello. â€Å"Get to a land line,† Burton said. â€Å"I’m in the middle of trying to find a lost kid,† Theo replied. â€Å"A land line now, Crowe. My private line. You have five minutes.† Theo drove to a pay phone outside the Head of the Slug Saloon and checked his watch. When fifteen minutes had passed, he dialed Burton’s number. â€Å"I said five minutes.† â€Å"Yes, you did.† Theo smiled to himself in spite of Burton’s tone, which was on the verge of screaming. â€Å"No one goes on the ranch, Crowe. The lost kid is not on the ranch, do you hear me?† â€Å"It’s standard procedure to search all the ranchland. Emergency services has the area gridded out. We have to cover the whole grid. I was going to call in some deputies to help us. The volunteer fire guys are exhausted from the explosion this morning.† â€Å"No. None of my guys. Don’t call the Highway Patrol or the CCC either. And no aircraft. If the grid on the ranch has to be checked off, then check it off. No one goes on that land, is that clear?† â€Å"And what if the kid actually is on the ranch. You’re talking about a thousand acres of pasture and forest that won’t be searched.† â€Å"Oh bullshit, the kid is probably in a tree house somewhere with a stack of Playboys. He’s only been missing for what, twelve hours?† â€Å"What if he’s not?† There was silence on the line for a moment. Theo waited, watching three new couples leave the Head of the Slug in less than a minute. New couples: in Pine Cove everyone knew who everyone else was dating, and these were people who didn’t go together. Not that unusual a phenomenon perhaps on a Friday night at 2 A.M., but this was Wednesday, and it was barely eight o’clock. Maybe he wasn’t the only one feeling a wave of horniness. The couples were groping each other as if trying to get all the foreplay out of the way before they reached the car. Burton came back on the line. â€Å"I’ll see that the ranchland is searched and call you if they find the kid. But I want to be the first to know if you find him.† â€Å"That it?† â€Å"Find that little fucker, Crowe.† Burton hung up. Theo got into his Volvo and drove to his cabin at the edge of the ranch. There were at least twenty citizen volunteers searching for Mikey Plotznik. The effort could spare him long enough to catch a shower and change his smoke-saturated clothes. As he parked the Volvo, an expensive, tricked-out red pickup truck pulled into the ranch entrance and rolled slowly by. As they passed, a Hispanic man sitting in the bed laughed and saluted Theo with the barrel of an AK-47 assault rifle. Theo looked away and walked to the dark cabin, wishing that there was someone there waiting for him. How to cite The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove Chapter 9~10, Essay examples

The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove Chapter 9~10 Free Essays

string(106) " She pounded on the window and the kid looked up, not startled, but with a dreamy expression on his face\." Nine When Mikey â€Å"the Collector† Plotznik wheeled into town and saw that the Texaco station had blown up, leaving a charred circle two hundred yards wide around it, he knew that it was going to be a great day. It was a shame about the burger stand going up too, and he’d miss their spicy fries, but hey, you don’t often get to see the toasting of a major landmark like the Texaco. The fire was all out now, but several firemen were still sifting through the wreck-age. We will write a custom essay sample on The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove Chapter 9~10 or any similar topic only for you Order Now The Collector waved to them as he wheeled by. They waved back, somewhat reticently, for the Collector’s reputation preceded him and made them nervous. Today would be the day, Mikey thought. The Texaco was an omen, the star in the sky over his lifelong dream. Today he’d catch Molly Michon naked, and when he did (and brought back the proof), his reputation would grow to mythic proportions. He patted the disposable camera he carried in the front pouch of his hooded sweatshirt. Oh yes, he’d have evidence to back up his story. They would believe him – and bow to him. At this point in his life, the Collector was more interested in explosions than in naked women. He was only ten, and it would be a couple of years before his interests moved to girls. Freud never identified a stage of devel-opment known as â€Å"pyrotechnic fascination,† but that was only because there wasn’t an abundant supply of disposable lighters in nineteenth-cen-tury Vienna. Ten-year-old boys blow shit up. It’s what they do. But today a strange new feeling had come over Mikey, a feeling he couldn’t put a word to, but if he could, the word would have been â€Å"horny.† As he Rollerbladed through town, tossing the Los Angeles Times into the shrubs and gutters of businesses along Cypress Street, he felt a tightness in his shorts that until now he had associated with having to take a raging pee in the morning. Today it signified a need to see the Crazy Lady in a state of undress. Paperboys are the carriers of preadolescent myth. On every paper route, there is a haunted house, a kid-eating dog, an old woman who tips with twenties, and a woman who answers the door in the nude. Mikey had never actually seen any of these things, but that never stopped him from spinning wild stories for his buddies at school. Today he would get proof, he could feel it in his loins. He skated down the driveway into the Fly Rod Trailer Court, chucked a paper into the rose bushes in front of Mr. Nunez’s trailer, then made a beeline for the Crazy Lady’s house. He could see a blue glow coming through her windows, a TV. She was home and awake. Yes! He pulled up a couple of doors down and noticed that a new trailer had moved in next to the Crazy Lady. A new customer? Why not give it a try? The Crazy Lady didn’t receive the paper, so his pretense for knocking on her door was to get her to subscribe. He could practice on these new people. As he skated up to the front door of the new trailer, lights came on in the two front windows. Yes! Someone was home. Strange curtains – they looked like cat’s eyes. Through a part in the curtains, Molly watched the kid come down the road into the trailer park. She liked kids, but she didn’t like this kid. At least once a week he knocked on her door and tried to get her to subscribe to the paper, and once a week she told him to go away and never come back. Sometimes he would bring one of his little buddies along. She could hear them skulking around her trailer, trying to peek in the windows. â€Å"Swear to God, she’s got a dead guy in there that she does it with. I’ve seen him. And she ate a kid once.† The kid was heading for the monster trailer. In the background, a videotape was playing on her TV – Mechanized Death: Warrior Babe VII – and THE SCENE was coming up. Molly looked away from the window and watched THE SCENE for the thousandth time. Kendra is standing in the back of a jeep, manning a rack of net guns as the jeep pursues the Evil Warlord across the desert. The driver turns, as he is supposed to, throwing up a fishtail of dust, but the front wheel of the jeep hits a rock and the jeep rolls. Kendra is thrown fifty feet in the air and lands in a heap. The steel bra she is wearing cuts deep into her chest and blood sprays out across the dust. The bastards! Every time she watches THE SCENE she can’t believe the bastards left it in. The accident was real, the blood was Molly’s, and when she returned to the set ten days later, a security guard escorted her to the producer’s trailer. â€Å"I can pay you extra’s wages as a mutant,† the producer said, â€Å"but let’s face it, babe, you didn’t get your billing because of your acting ability. You think I’m gonna hold up filming for ten days when the whole schedule is only three weeks long? We got a new Kendra. Wrote the accident and the facial reconstruction into the script. She’s a cyborg now. Now you can get in line with the mutants to pick up your bag of rags, or you can get the fuck off the set. My audience wants perfect bodies, and you were getting up there anyway. With that scar you don’t sell anymore.† Molly had just turned twenty-seven years old. She pulled herself from THE SCENE and looked out the window again. The kid was there, right there in front of the monster trailer. She should warn him or something. She pounded on the window and the kid looked up, not startled, but with a dreamy expression on his face. Molly gestured for him to move away. The window she was looking out of didn’t open. (Trailers built in those days were designed so people would burn up in case of a fire. The manufacturers thought it would keep the lawsuits down.) The kid just stood there, his fist poised before the door as if he were frozen in the middle of knocking. As Molly watched, the door began to open. Not on the hinges, but vertically, like a garage door. Molly pounded furiously on the window with the hilt of her sword. The kid smiled. A huge red tongue snaked out of the door, wrapped around the kid, and slurped him in, Rollerblades, paper satchel, and all. Molly screamed. The door slammed shut. Molly watched, stunned, not knowing what to do. A few seconds later the mouth opened and expectorated a soccer-ball-sized wad of newspaper. Theo The hours of Theo’s day had moved like slugs crawling on razor wire. By four in the afternoon, he felt as if he’d been awake for a week and the cups of French roast he’d been drinking had turned to foaming acid in his stomach. Mercifully, there hadn’t been a single call for a bar fight or do-mestic dispute, so he had spent the entire day at the scene of the fuel truck explosion, talking to firemen, representatives from Texaco Oil, and an arson investigator sent up from the San Junipero Fire Department. Much to his surprise, going all day without a hit from his Sneaky Pete pot pipe had not sent him into fits of anxiety as it usually did. He was a little paranoid, but he wasn’t sure that that wasn’t just an informed response to the world anyway. At a quarter past four, the arson investigator crossed the charred parking lot to where Theo was leaning on the hood of his Volvo. The investigator was in his late twenties, clean-cut, and carried himself like an athlete, even in the orange toxic waste suit. He carried a plastic space helmet under his arm like a tumorous football. â€Å"Constable Crowe, I think that’s about all I can do today. It’ll be dark soon, and as long as we keep the area closed off, I’m sure everything will still be here in the morning.† â€Å"What’s your call so far? â€Å"Well, we generally look for evidence of accelerants, gas, kerosene, paint thinner – and I’d say there were definitely some flammable liquids involved here.† He smiled a weary smile. â€Å"So you don’t know what happened?† â€Å"Offhand, I’d say a fuel truck blew up, but without further investigation I’d hate to make a commitment at this time.† Again the smile. Theo smiled back. â€Å"So no cause?† â€Å"The driver probably didn’t seal the hose correctly and a cloud of fumes got set off. There wasn’t much wind last night, so the fumes would have just clung to the ground and built up. Anything could have set it off: the driver could have been smoking, the pilot lights at the hamburger place, a spark in the truck exhaust. Right now I’d say it was totally accidental. It was a company-owned store, and it was turning a profit, so there really isn’t a financial motive for arson. Texaco will definitely be building your town a new burger stand and probably paying off some nuisance settlements from people claiming trauma, duress, and irritation.† â€Å"I have the information on the driver,† Theo said. â€Å"I’ll check to see if he was a smoker.† â€Å"I asked him. He’s keeping quiet† came a voice from a few yards away. Theo and the arson investigator looked up to see Vance McNally coming toward them holding up a Ziploc bag full of white and gray powder. â€Å"I’ve got him right here,† the EMT said. â€Å"You want to interrogate him?† â€Å"Very funny, Vance,† Theo said. â€Å"They’re going to have to do the autopsy with a flour sifter,† Vance said. The investigator took the Ziploc from Vance and examined it. â€Å"You find any remains of a cigarette lighter? Anything like that?† â€Å"Not my job,† Vance said. â€Å"The fire was so hot it turned the seat springs to liquid. Even incinerated the bones, except for those little bits of calcium in there. Honestly, this might not all be our boy. We might be giving his wife a bag full of burnt-up truck parts to put in an urn on the mantel.† The investigator shrugged and handed the bag back to Vance. Then to Theo he said, â€Å"I’m going home. I’ll come back tomorrow and look around some more. As soon as I give the okay, the oil company will send in a crew to drain the ground tanks.† â€Å"Thanks,† Theo said. The investigator left in a county car. Vance McNally turned the Ziploc bag of truck driver in the air. â€Å"Theo, this ever happens to me, I want you to get all my friends together, have a big party, and snort me, okay?† â€Å"You have friends, Vance?† â€Å"Okay, it was just an idea,† Vance said. He turned and carried his bag to the waiting ambulance. Theo sipped his coffee and noticed something moving in the charred brush beyond the Texaco. It looked as if someone was holding up a TV antenna and getting altogether too close to the yellow tape he had run around the perimeter. Jeez, was he going to have to stay here all night guarding the scene? He pried himself off the Volvo and headed for the offender. â€Å"Hey there!† Theo called. Gabe Fenton, the biologist, emerged from the brush, indeed holding up some kind of antenna, followed by his Labrador retriever, Skinner. The dog ran to meet Theo and greeted him with two muddy paw prints on the chest. Theo rubbed Skinner’s ears to hold him at bay, the classic slobbering Labrador control move. â€Å"Gabe, what in the hell are you doing down here?† The biologist was covered with burrs and foxtails, his face striped with soot from the charred brush. He looked exhausted, yet there was a note of excitement bordering on ecstasy in his voice. â€Å"You won’t believe this, Theo. My rats moved en masse this morning.† Theo tried, but couldn’t match Gabe’s enthusiasm. â€Å"That’s swell, Gabe. Texaco blew up last night.† Gabe Fenton looked around at the surrounding area as if seeing the destruction for the first time. â€Å"What time?† â€Å"About four in the morning.† â€Å"Hmmm, maybe they sensed it.† â€Å"They?† â€Å"The rats. Around 2 A.M. they all started moving west. I can’t figure out what caused it. Here, look at the screen.† Gabe had a laptop computer strapped into a harness around his waist. He turned it so Theo could see the screen. â€Å"Each of these dots represents an animal I have implanted with a tracking chip. Here’s their location at 1 A.M.† He clicked a key and the screen drew a topographical map of the area. Green dots were scattered pretty much evenly along the creek bed and the business district of Pine Cove. Gabe hit another key. â€Å"Now here they are at two.† All but a few of the dots had moved into the ranchland east of Pine Cove. â€Å"Uh-huh,† Theo said. Gabe was a nice guy. Spent too much time with vermin, but he was a nice guy. Gabe needs to talk to humans occasionally, Theo thought. â€Å"Well, don’t you see? They all moved at once, except for these ten over here that moved to the shore.† â€Å"Uh-huh,† Theo said. â€Å"Gabe, the Texaco blew up. A guy was killed. I was talking to firemen in space suits all day. Every paper in the county has called me. The battery is almost out on my cell phone. I haven’t eaten since yesterday and I only slept an hour last night. Help me find the significance in rat migration, okay?† Gabe looked crestfallen. â€Å"Well, I don’t know the significance yet. I’m tracking the ten that didn’t move east, hoping the anomalies will give a clue to the behavior of the larger group. Strange thing is, four of the ten disappeared off my screen a little after two. Even if they were killed, the chips should still transmit. I need to find them.† â€Å"And I wish you the best of luck, but this area may still be dangerous. You can’t be here, buddy.† â€Å"Maybe there were fumes,† Gabe said. â€Å"But that doesn’t explain why they all moved in the same direction. Some even came through this area from the shore.† Theo couldn’t bear to express to Gabe how little he cared. â€Å"You had any dinner, Gabe?† â€Å"No, I’ve been doing this since last night.† â€Å"Pizza, Gabe. We need pizza and beer. I’ll buy.† â€Å"But I need to†¦Ã¢â‚¬  â€Å"You’re a single guy, Gabe. You need pizza every eighteen hours or you can’t function properly. And I have a question to ask you about footprints, but I want you to watch me drink a few beers before I ask so I can claim diminished capacity. Come, Gabe, let me take you to the land of pizza and beer.† Theo gestured to his Volvo. â€Å"You can stick the antenna out the sunroof.† â€Å"I guess I could take a break.† Theo opened the passenger door and Skinner leapt into the car, leaving sooty paw prints on the seat. â€Å"Your dog needs pizza. It’s the humane thing to do.† â€Å"Okay,† Gabe said. â€Å"I want to show you something over by the creek bed.† â€Å"What.† â€Å"A footprint. Or what’s left of one.† Ten minutes later they sat over frosty mugs of beer at Pizza in the Pines, Pine Cove’s only pizza parlor. They’d taken a window table so Gabe could keep an eye on Skinner, who was bouncing up and down outside, giving them an ever-changing view of the street, then the street with dog face (ears akimbo), then the street, then the street with dog face again. Other than to order a beer, Gabe Fenton hadn’t said a word since they’d gone to the creek bed. â€Å"Will he just keep doing that?† Theo asked. â€Å"Until we take him a slice of pizza, yes.† â€Å"Amazing.† Gabe shrugged. â€Å"He’s a dog.† â€Å"Always the biologist.† â€Å"One needs to keep the mind limber.† â€Å"Well, what do you think?† â€Å"I think that you obliterated most of what you thought was a footprint.† â€Å"Gabe, it was a footprint. A talon or something.† â€Å"There are a thousand explanations for a depression in the mud like that, Theo, but one of them is not an animal track.† â€Å"Why not?† â€Å"Well, for one, there hasn’t been anything that large on this continent for about sixty million years, and for another, animals tend to leave more than one track, unless it’s a creature especially adapted for hopping.† Gabe grinned. The flying dog head pogoed by the windowsill. â€Å"There were a lot of people and vehicles around there, the other tracks might have been wiped out.† â€Å"Theo, don’t let your imagination run away with you. You’ve had a long day and†¦Ã¢â‚¬  â€Å"And I’m a pothead.† â€Å"I wasn’t going to say that.† â€Å"I know, I’m saying it. Tell me about your rats. What will you do when you find them?† â€Å"Well, first I’m going to keep searching for the stimulus of their behavior, then I’ll catch a few of the group that migrated and compare their brain chemistry to those that headed toward the shore.† â€Å"Does that hurt them?† â€Å"You have to blend up their brains and run the liquid in a centrifuge.† â€Å"I guess so then.† The waitress brought their pizza and Gabe was severing cables of cheese from his first slice when Theo’s cell phone rang. The constable listened for a second, then stood and dug into his pocket for money. â€Å"I’ve got to go, Gabe.† â€Å"What’s up?† â€Å"The Plotznik kid is missing. No one’s seen him since he left on his paper route this morning.† â€Å"Probably hiding. That kid is evil. He rigged up something with his remote control car that affected the chips in my rats once. I spent three weeks trying to figure out why they were running figure eights in the parking lot outside the grocery story before I found him lurking in the weeds with the controller.† â€Å"I know,† Theo said. â€Å"Mikey told me that if he wired ten of your rats together, he could pick up the Discovery Channel. I still have to find him. He has parents.† â€Å"Skinner is a pretty good tracker. Want to take him?† â€Å"Thanks, but I doubt that the kid had a pizza in his pocket.† Theo folded his phone, snagged a slice of pizza for the road, and headed out the door. Ten Val Riordan leaned against her office door, trying to catch her breath and maintain her temper. Nothing in her clinical experience compared to the sessions she held on the day after the Texaco exploded. She had seen twenty patients in ten hours, and every one of them had wanted to talk about sex. And not abstract sex either, not issues or attitudes about sex, just squishy, thumping sex itself. It was unnerving. She’d anticipated a spike in libido among her patients (it was a common symptom of withdrawal from antidepressants), but the books said not more than five to fifteen percent would have a reaction – about the same number that experienced a loss of libido upon taking the drugs. But today she’d hit one hundred percent. It was as if she were running a kennel for hopeless horndogs rather than a psychiatric practice. After the last patient, she’d come out of her office to find her new receptionist, Chloe, furiously masturbating, her feet hooked into the edge of the desk, her steno chair squeaking like a tortured squirrel. Val had excused herself, turned on her heel, walked back into her office, and shut the door. Chloe, twenty-one, had maroon hair, an entire wardrobe rendered in black, and a sapphire nose ring. Val had begun treating the girl in her teens for bulimia, then hired her when the volume of appointments skyrocketed after the placebo went into effect. Chloe worked in exchange for therapy; Val had thought it would be a good financial move. Frankly, she’d liked her better when she just threw up a lot. Val was still trying to figure out exactly what to do when there was a soft knock on the door. â€Å"Yes?† â€Å"Sorry,† Chloe said through the door. â€Å"Uh, Chloe, that is not appropriate office behavior.† â€Å"Well, your last appointment had left. I thought that you would be working on your notes or something for a while. I’m really sorry.† â€Å"That’s it? My last appointment leaves, so let the wild rumpus begin?† â€Å"Am I fired?† Val thought for a second. There were twenty more patients to see tomorrow and twenty the day after that. If the weirdness didn’t kill her, the workload would. She couldn’t afford to lose Chloe now. â€Å"No, you’re not fired. But please, no more of that in the office.† â€Å"Do you have time to talk? I know my next session isn’t until next week, but I really need to talk to you.† â€Å"Wouldn’t you prefer to go home and, uh, think about things?† â€Å"You mean finish? No, I’m finished for now. That’s what I want to talk to you about. That wasn’t the first time today.† Val gulped. It was highly unprofessional to talk to a patient through a door. She steeled herself and opened it. â€Å"Come in.† She returned to her desk without looking at the girl. Chloe took a seat across from her. â€Å"So this wasn’t the first time today?† Val was the psychotherapist now, not the boss. If she’d been the boss, she would have come over the desk and strangled the little slut. â€Å"No, I can’t seem to get enough. I, well, it started about two in the morning, and I went straight though until time to get ready for work. Then once or twice while each patient was in session.† Val’s jaw dropped. Sixteen hours of intermittent masturbation? The other patients she had seen had cited two in the morning as when their sexual adventures had started too. She said, â€Å"And how do you feel about that?† â€Å"I feel okay. My wrist hurts a little. Do you think I could have carpal tunnel?† â€Å"Chloe, if you think that you’re going to file a workmen’s compensation claim for this†¦Ã¢â‚¬  â€Å"No no no, I just want to stop.† â€Å"Did something happen to set this off? Something at two in the morning? A dream perhaps?† Her other patients had described various sexual dreams. Winston Krauss, the pharmacist with the sexual obsession for marine mammals, confessed to dreaming of having sex with a blue whale, riding it through the depths like Ahab with a hard-on. Upon awakening, he’d abused his inflatable Flipper until it would no longer hold air. Chloe shifted uncomfortably in her chair. Her long maroon hair hid her face. â€Å"I dreamed I was having sex with a tank truck, and it blew up.† â€Å"A tank truck?† â€Å"I came.† â€Å"Sexual dreams are completely normal, Chloe.† Right, a tank truck? That’s normal. â€Å"Tell me, was there fire in your dream?† Pyromaniacs de-rived sexual pleasure from setting and watching fires. That’s how they caught them, look in the crowd for a grinning guy with a woody and gas stains on his shoes. â€Å"No, no fire. I woke up at the explosion. Val, what’s wrong with me? All I want to do is, you know, do it.† â€Å"And you feel that you might do something impulsive?† Chloe put on her cynical Goth-girl face. â€Å"If you mean something like buffing the muffin while I’m at work, yes, Dr. Riordan, I’m a little worried. Can’t you adjust my medication or something?† There it was. In the past, that would have been the answer. Increase the Prozac to eighty milligrams, about four times the dose for the average de-pressed patient, and let the side effect of reduced libido do the work. Val had used the method to treat a nymphomaniac when she was an intern and it had worked marvelously. But what now? Duct tape oven mitts to her receptionist’s hands? Although her typing probably wouldn’t suffer much, it might make the patients nervous. Val said. â€Å"Chloe, masturbation is a natural thing. Everyone does it. But obviously there are appropriate times and places. Perhaps you should just cut back. Allow yourself to masturbate as a reward for controlling your urges.† Chloe’s face went slack. â€Å"Cut down? I’m worried about driving home safely. I have a stick shift. I need both hands to drive, but I don’t think I’m going to have them. Do you have a patch you can prescribe, like they do for smoking?† â€Å"A patch?† Val suppressed a laugh. She imagined a twitching, moaning line of people around the block at the pharmacy, there to pick up their prescriptions for the orgasm patch. It would make heroin look like Gummi Bears. â€Å"No, there’s no patch, Chloe. You’re just going to have to try to control yourself. I have a feeling that this is a side effect of your medication. It should pass in a day or two. I want to hear more about this dream of yours. We’ll talk tomorrow, okay?† Chloe stood, obviously not satisfied with the help her therapist was offering, which was none. â€Å"I’ll try.† She left the office, closing the door behind her. Val let her head fall to the desk. Jesus, Joseph, and Mary, why didn’t I go into pathology? she thought. It would be so peaceful sitting around, boiling up beakers of urine and culturing bugs. No wackos. No stress. Okay, occasionally you’d be exposed to some deadly anthrax spores, but at least other people’s sex lives stay in the bedroom and the tabloids where they belong. Her appointment with Martin and Lisbeth Luder rose in her head. They were in their seventies, had been in counseling because they hadn’t had a decent conversation since 1958, and today they had come in and dumped a half hour of explicit sexual narrative on her, an account of perversions they’d indulged in the night before, starting at around 2 A.M. The visual conjured in Val’s mind – all that parched, wrinkled flesh in furious fric-tion – culminated in flames, as if some giant cosmic Boy Scout had decided to rub two old people together to make a fire. The worst of it, the absolute worst of it, is that she’d found herself getting turned on while listening. She’d had to change her panties between appointments four times today. She considered pouring herself a hefty tumbler of brandy and settling down in front of the television, but that wasn’t going to do it. Batteries; she needed four C-cell batteries and she needed them now. Then it was time to dig through her lingerie drawers and find a long-forgotten friend – and hope that it still worked. Molly Long past dark and Molly was still staring though the gap in the curtains at the trailer that ate the kid. The problem with being nuts, she thought, is that you don’t always feel as if you’re nuts. Sometimes, in fact, you feel perfectly sane, and there just happens to be a trailer-shaped dragon crouching in the lot next door. Not that she was ready to go out and pro-claim that fact to anyone, because no matter how sane you feel, some stuff just sounds too crazy. So she watched, still wearing her Warrior Babe outfit, hoping someone else would come along and notice. Around eight, someone did. She saw Theophilus Crowe going from door to door in the park. He came into view two trailers down at the Morales home, spoke briefly with Mr. Morales at the door, then headed for the dragon trailer. Molly was torn. She liked Theo. Yes, he’d taken her to County once or twice, but he’d always been kind to her – warned her about the guy in the day room who cheated at Parcheesi by eating the marbles. And he never spoke to her like she was a crazy woman. Theo was a fan. As Theo was raising his black Mag lite to tap on the dragon trailer’s door, Molly saw the two windows on the end slowly open, revealing the cat’seye pupils. Theo obviously didn’t see them. He was looking at his shoes. She threw up the aluminum sash and shouted, â€Å"They’re not home!† The constable turned toward Molly. â€Å"Just a second,† she said. She bolted out the door of her trailer and stopped by the street where Theo could see her. â€Å"They aren’t home. Come here a second,† she repeated. Theo tucked his Mag lite into his belt. â€Å"Molly, how are you?† â€Å"Fine, fine, fine. I need to talk to you, okay? Over here, okay?† She didn’t want to tell him why. what if the eyes weren’t there? What if it was just a trailer? She’d be on her way to County in a heartbeat. â€Å"They’re not home then?† Theo said, pointing over his shoulder to the dragon trailer. He was staring at her now, at the same time trying not to stare. He had a goofy grin on his face, the same sort Molly had seen on the kid right before he got slurped. â€Å"Nope, gone all day.† â€Å"What’s with the sword? Oh shit! She forgot she’d grabbed the sword on the way out. â€Å"I was just making some stir-fry. Chopping up some veggies.† â€Å"That ought to do it.† â€Å"Broccoli stems,† she said, as if that explained everything. He was looking at the leather bikini, and she watched his eyes stop on the scar above her breast, then look away. She covered the scar with her hand. â€Å"One of my old Kendra costumes. Everything else is in the dryer.† â€Å"Sure. Hey, you don’t get the Times, do you?† â€Å"Nope. Why?† â€Å"The kid that delivers it, Mikey Plotznik, left for his route this morning and no one has seen him since. Looks like the last paper he delivered was a few doors down. You didn’t happen to see him, did you?† â€Å"About ten, blond kid, Rollerblades? Kinda evil?† â€Å"That’s him.† â€Å"Nope, haven’t seen him.† She watched the eyes of the dragon trailer close behind Theo and took a deep breath. â€Å"You seem a little tense, Molly. You okay?† â€Å"Fine, fine, just wanted to get back to my stir-fry. You hungry?† â€Å"Did Val Riordan get hold of you?† â€Å"Yep, she called. I’m not nuts.† â€Å"Of course not. I’d like you to keep an eye out for this kid, Molly. One of his buddies fessed up that Mikey had a little bit of an obsession with you.† â€Å"Me? No kidding?† â€Å"He might be creeping around your trailer.† â€Å"Really?† â€Å"If you see him, give me a call, would you? His folks are worried about him.† â€Å"I’ll do that.† â€Å"Thanks. And ask your neighbors when they get home, would you?† â€Å"You betcha.† Molly realized he was stalling. Just staring at her with that goofy grin on his face. â€Å"They just moved in. I don’t know them very well, but I’ll ask.† â€Å"Thanks.† He said, still just standing there, like a twelve-year-old ready to make an assault on the wall-flowers at his first dance. â€Å"I’d better go, Theo. I have broccoli in the dryer.† No, she had wanted to say she had to get back to dinner, or to her laundry, not both. â€Å"Okay. See ya.† She ran into her trailer, slammed the door, and leaned against it. Through the window she could see the dragon trailer open an eye and close it quickly. She could have sworn it was winking at her. Theo A niggling voice in Theo’s head told him that finding the Crazy Lady attractive – extremely attractive – was an indicator that he was less than sane himself. On the other hand, he didn’t feel that bad about it. He didn’t feel bad about anything, not since he’d walked into the trailer park anyway. He had to deal with an explosion, a lost kid, the recent increase in general nuttiness in town – a virtual shit storm of responsibility – but he didn’t feel all that bad. And in that moment outside of Molly’s trailer, reflecting and waiting for the tide of lust to ebb, he realized that he hadn’t smoked any pot all day. Strange. Normally this long without nursing from his Sneaky Pete and his skin would be crawling. He was heading back to his Volvo to resume the search for the lost boy when his cell phone rang. Sheriff John Burton didn’t say hello. â€Å"Get to a land line,† Burton said. â€Å"I’m in the middle of trying to find a lost kid,† Theo replied. â€Å"A land line now, Crowe. My private line. You have five minutes.† Theo drove to a pay phone outside the Head of the Slug Saloon and checked his watch. When fifteen minutes had passed, he dialed Burton’s number. â€Å"I said five minutes.† â€Å"Yes, you did.† Theo smiled to himself in spite of Burton’s tone, which was on the verge of screaming. â€Å"No one goes on the ranch, Crowe. The lost kid is not on the ranch, do you hear me?† â€Å"It’s standard procedure to search all the ranchland. Emergency services has the area gridded out. We have to cover the whole grid. I was going to call in some deputies to help us. The volunteer fire guys are exhausted from the explosion this morning.† â€Å"No. None of my guys. Don’t call the Highway Patrol or the CCC either. And no aircraft. If the grid on the ranch has to be checked off, then check it off. No one goes on that land, is that clear?† â€Å"And what if the kid actually is on the ranch. You’re talking about a thousand acres of pasture and forest that won’t be searched.† â€Å"Oh bullshit, the kid is probably in a tree house somewhere with a stack of Playboys. He’s only been missing for what, twelve hours?† â€Å"What if he’s not?† There was silence on the line for a moment. Theo waited, watching three new couples leave the Head of the Slug in less than a minute. New couples: in Pine Cove everyone knew who everyone else was dating, and these were people who didn’t go together. Not that unusual a phenomenon perhaps on a Friday night at 2 A.M., but this was Wednesday, and it was barely eight o’clock. Maybe he wasn’t the only one feeling a wave of horniness. The couples were groping each other as if trying to get all the foreplay out of the way before they reached the car. Burton came back on the line. â€Å"I’ll see that the ranchland is searched and call you if they find the kid. But I want to be the first to know if you find him.† â€Å"That it?† â€Å"Find that little fucker, Crowe.† Burton hung up. Theo got into his Volvo and drove to his cabin at the edge of the ranch. There were at least twenty citizen volunteers searching for Mikey Plotznik. The effort could spare him long enough to catch a shower and change his smoke-saturated clothes. As he parked the Volvo, an expensive, tricked-out red pickup truck pulled into the ranch entrance and rolled slowly by. As they passed, a Hispanic man sitting in the bed laughed and saluted Theo with the barrel of an AK-47 assault rifle. Theo looked away and walked to the dark cabin, wishing that there was someone there waiting for him. How to cite The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove Chapter 9~10, Essay examples