adolescent ideologies. Bean and Partment instinctively dove down to
the floor of the car. “Did you press the fucking button?” Partment
yelled, but it was clear that neither of them had. The remote-control
was still hanging untouched from the Jesus doll on the dashboard.
They bought the car that day from an out-of work Mexican family
and planned to discard it that afternoon. They hadn’t time to
redecorate. “Let’s get out of here!” Bean said, pushing Partment aside
and stomping on the gas pedal. They squealed away, an inferno
behind them, an inferno ahead.
“Poor kid,” Bean said.
But Partment was unfazed. “Our first martyr!” he exulted.
On the other side of town a fiesta was in full swing at the new
Undergrounds. In many ways it resembled the celebration that
Biddenbrooks had thrown several weeks prior, the same one that
sparked Roy on his quest for the ineffable, that circuitously brought
him to this point. It was as if he had walked through a mirror and
after a long and exotic dream, emerged back into a similar but
improved world. Yet here the broken symmetry broke in his favor.
There were crowds and coffee and jubilation and a new drug of sorts.
But there were no rock bands or banners or advertising or free
gimmicks. There was only the honest and unmediated experience of
the coffee and the convivial. For the people who had been lucky
enough to be there, it had been a truly memorable event.
“This is the new age of coffee!” a middle-aged, buxom, amulet-
bedecked woman said. She was the manager at the Crystal Ship,
where Leona once worked. Here was a new voodoo to pin her hopes
upon.
“A chaotic bifurcation is imminent!” exclaimed a loyal patron of
the Deep Blue Bookstore. He meant there was a motherfork in the
road.
“Viva la Bebida!” trumpeted a loyal patron of the Seeing Red
Bookstore. He meant that a soft drink revolution was nigh.
“Holy moly!” cried a lunatic who had thought he was a dog and
now realized he was a monkey.
“I love everybody!” a weatherbeaten vagrant announced. For the
moment, everyone else loved him too.
“This is sweet!” Bennie chimed in. He couldn’t believe how happy
everyone was.
“This is nuts,” Izzy said. He too had sampled the brew but proved
ABYSSINIA
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