HUMILIATION of a SAMURAI

five VINCENT

"We went every year for our anniversary," she said.  "Have you been?  It's a shorter trip than going clear to Las Vegas and the buffets are just as good."

The veins in her hand ran like basic wiring, forked circuits of blue filament strung under wet paper skin.

Clearly this was Mrs. Howell. Her widow wealth would be useless to me unless we were rescued, but her patronage and support might prove valuable in some kind of conch-based provisional system of government if the elderly were allowed suffrage.

She flicked gold-ringed fingers toward the black glass phone on my folding tray.

"So let's see who's back home missing you."

Her face avalanched into this bad-news frown when I told her I didn't have any photos like that.

"No, it's okay, I said.  New phone."

The Atlantic underneath us went from gray to black and blended with the moonless sky.

Guy in the window finished his third Crown and Coke, put his temple to the bulkhead and fell asleep.  His brick-thick hands were scarred specimens from a horror film with pieces missing like they'd been hacked off and fed to something hungry.  His remaining fingers ended in broken stone-tool edges embedded with dirt dense as pigment.  This was no Gilligan.  Fucking Skipper for sure.

I resisted, then caved and checked our YouTube hits again.

Take the validation of one gummed gold star and tie a shot of heroin to it.  That's how half a million hits feel, and that's the moment I swallowed the last of the Blue Pill.  And I'm not saying I've done heroin.  I haven't but I'll sure suck the scabs off a sailor's cock if you're handing out gold stars.

I had long despised the cellphone for killing off all the quiet places.  Ruining libraries cafes and restaurants, weaponizing careless drivers and defiling the unwritten sanctity of movie manners.  I'd instantly abhorred social media for corrupting, schizo-affecting the power of the Internet to amplify the things I most dislike about other people.  And I hated the motherfuckers who breathed life into the whole sick system by being empty, needy enough to click and pretend to belong to something they thought was true.

Yet my mind bobbled in place as I understood the fact that a bunch of morons' mouseclicks and germy screenswipes had rescued me from unemployment and a basement bunk, put me in this airline seat with money in my pocket and sent me winging toward fifty-five engagements over sixty-five days across Europe and the United Kingdom as a warm-up act for an aging British boy band's reunion tour.  Not quite as dramatic as children clapping their little mitts raw to resurrect Tinker Bell but I did not hesitate to sell out and join the merry zombie mob online.  

That morning at the airport was the first time I'd drank since the day I was fired.  I'd gone almost one week without a drop living at Carl's house, helping care for his mom until the morning Margaret tracked me down.

I was deep in a dream.  A single frame of it remained when I awoke, the last flash of a coin flipped into a dark wishing well:  a tall building, long and sandy gray.  Green grass meeting stacked blocks of stone.

I rolled to one side in a saggy hammock of giggling springs to find Margaret standing over me.

"Vincent.  I need your passport."

Her face was empty of anything that could be interpreted as expression, positive or negative.  I scooted back and made sure I could see both of Margaret's hands.

She dumped my backpack, found my passport and photographed it with her phone, snapped it into her purse.  Flatly rejected giving me a moment to get cleaned up, wouldn't consider going someplace to talk over coffee and refused to wait while I got dressed.