“Aagh!” he cried, then smiled. “Good! Pain! It’s the only authentic!”
As he fell into a sitting position his joints all cracked. It sounded like
the collapsing of a tinkertoy house.
Roy thanked him for the loan and Partment replied, “Don’t thank
me. Thank the automatons.” He meant the bad parkers.
“But we can do our own advertising,” Leona insisted, “The old
fashioned way. I can design some flyers and we can paste them all
over town. We can throw a big party…”
“In celebration of what?” said Colin. “Going out of business?”
“I don’t know. Some holiday. Bennie?”
Bennie, possibly the most superstitious human in all of Los
Angeles, knew of countless holidays by which gods and lesser deities
might be appeased. But he did not have to think very hard this time.
In a week it would be the birthday of San Simon.
“It’s his birthday,” he said solemnly, pointing to the mask on the
far wall of the room, “And he likes to party.” They all looked over at
the worn wooden curio on the wall, impaled by an old cigar.
San Simon did indeed like to party. His followers in Guatemala
plied him regularly with tobacco and whiskey for favors rendered.
Wooden effigies were paraded through the streets in flamboyant
scarves, impregnated with booze. Bennie knew him as a crucial
interloper in a church that tried to whitewash what the poor knew
only too well: Without darkness there can be no light, and there are
bills to be paid for both. For Bennie, asking God for success in
business was like asking the Devil for the keys to heaven. If Jesus’
kingdom was not of this world then surely someone else was taking
care of the commerce.
Roy agreed that a festive party, properly executed, would be a
good way to build some notoriety. He climbed aboard the
bandwagon. He marked the date on a large calendar which featured
both the Gregorian and Ethiopic dating systems. The incongruity
between the two impelled the Ethiopian tourist board to adopt the
motto, “Thirteen Months of Sunshine”—an awkward boast coming
from a country infamous for catastrophic drought and famine.
But bad weather was seldom a concern in Southern California.
The water problem there was more or less under control.
ABYSSINIA
18
 |
 |
 |
 |