Heavenly Pleasure

Chapter One

Sky-blue-pink is a color. You won’t find it in the big box of Crayolas, you won’t find it at any hardware store paint counter, but it is a color. It is the color the sky becomes in the early evening when cosmic fingers rake across the darkening indigo, gouging streaks of pink into the dusky heavens. Sky-blue pink is the color of cosmic conjugals, the coupling of heavenly bodies, as fiery-red passion drains the indigo from the firmament.

As sky-blue-pink faded to black over Parkwood Avenue, Angel watched Kali Sen pull up in front of her house and walk to her porch. As she watched, Angel heard the distinctive voice of Tom Waits radiating from a passing ice cream truck as it rounded the corner of Robinson Street, turned right onto Perilous Parkwood Avenue, and headed west. Angel smiled, reassured that things were indeed going as planned. Watching was what Angel did; watching was why she was here; that, and making sure synchronicity worked as intended.

Angel, painfully pale, with flaxen hair and emerald-green eyes, and a mysterious recent arrival, stood out in the seedy neighborhood like a tiara at a drive-by shooting. Angel hummed along with the song that came from the speakers mounted on top of the ice cream truck, thinking, I knew you’d be along sooner or later, old man. Something brewing on this scale would have no choice but to grab your attention.

Angel shifted her gaze and watched Kali, standing with her key poised at the lock of her front door, watching over her shoulder, as the Ice Cream Man set up his cash box in the truck’s serving window. The gravelly voice of Tom Waits belched from the ice cream truck’s speakers, reverberating up and down Parkwood Avenue. Things were indeed going as planned. She smiled.

And there is the other one, Angel thought to herself as she looked down on a sandy-haired man in his mid-thirties strolling up Parkwood Avenue. Angel smiled down at John Wye, local writer, recently estranged from his girlfriend, Eve Savage. Angel watched his progress as he made his way down Parkwood toward his ex’s new residence carrying two large paper shopping bags.

She watched John stop and look up and down the street in bewilderment, as though he could feel someone watching. She locked eyes with John as he managed to trace the feeling to Angel’s bedroom window.

Angel smiled again, her eyes never leaving his as she let the curtains fall back, hiding her face. Angel’s smile grew wider, tilting up at the edges as she saw a look of uncertain recognition pass across John’s face.

Yes, Angel thought, he recognizes me, he doesn’t know it yet, but he does. As John stepped up on Eve’s porch, Angel shifted her attention back to Kali who was now staring at the Ice Cream Man, transfixed, listening to the music wafting from the speakers mounted on top of his truck.

Come git yer ice-cream. The Ice Cream Man voiced his singsong invitation in time with the rhythm of the music, as the children of Parkwood Avenue gathered around and he exchanged ice cream for coins. Silver-streaked dreadlocks snaked out from underneath his red, green, and black knit Rasta cap, worn tipped back on his head. When he smiled, the fading sunlight glinted off a gold front tooth with a tiny black and white yin and yang symbol in its center.

What’s your name, little girl? the Ice Cream man asked one deeply tanned child with curly black ringlets, barely able to reach up to the window of the ice cream truck and slap a dollar bill on the counter.

Sarah, she answered, with a huge smile. One of her front baby teeth was missing.

I got me a granddaughter by dat name, the Ice Cream Man said, returning her smile, and she looked a lot like you when she was your age.

The Ice Cream Man called out again, with the cadence of a fishmonger, You cain’t git ice cream like this at no store!

Kali Sen opened her door and glanced back over her shoulder at the man. The Ice Cream Man caught her eye, held it tightly, smiled broadly, and called out to her, Hey, Miss, I got some ice cream for ya.

Kali looked the Ice Cream Man up and down. This was not the usual ice cream man, she thought. The usual guy was white, puffy, and obnoxious, but this man was black, rail thin, and looked like the ghost of Bob Marley. Kali felt an intense amount of power radiating from him but it was as if all that power was behind a thick, translucent glass wall and out of reach.

No thanks, Kali said and glanced again over her shoulder at the Ice Cream Man as she twisted the key from the lock.

I got Blood Orange, Miss, the Ice Cream Man called, or maybe Tantra Tiger Tail … it’s got rose petals, saffron, pistachios, and almonds. The Ice Cream Man continued grinning as if he were in on some cosmic joke. You won’t find ice cream like dis anywhere else, Miss. The stuff you git at the store, or in those ice cream parlors, is all processed, homogenized, prepackaged, assembly-line crap. This is real, old-time ice cream.

Kali stopped as she was about to step through the door and cocked her head. Did he say saffron? She shook her head and sent her long jet-black hair swinging side to side. Without turning around, she pushed the door the rest of the way and stepped inside. She turned to close the door to find the Ice Cream Man standing in the doorway holding a Chinese take-out type of carton, a film of frost clinging around the container.

For your party, he said as he handed it to her. No charge. You cain’t git ice cream like this at no store. The real stuff comes to you.

As Kali closed her door, the Ice Cream man loped back toward his ice cream truck, slipped behind the serving window to serve the growing line of waiting children.

John caught only a brief glimpse of the woman’s face he’d seen watching him from her upstairs window, but he saw that she was beautiful. Her skin was very pale and her shoulder-length flaxen hair swirled around her face as a breeze riffled the curtains. John could swear that he had seen that face before, somewhere. Was it in the paper? Or at a book signing? A milk carton?

Hey, you! the Ice Cream Man shouted at John over the heads of the children crowded at his serving window.

John shook his head to clear it of her image and turned his attention toward the man shouting at him. Me? John mouthed at the Ice Cream Man.

Yeah, you! the Ice Cream Man said. Quit starin’ off into space and git over here for some ice cream.

John caught the Ice Cream Man’s eye as the crowd of children wandered away holding ice cream cones, heading off east and west down Parkwood Avenue. There are some strange things happening around here, John thought, as he strolled toward the ice cream truck. Might even be the makings of a book. I’m going do a little field research and I think I’ll start with this guy.

As John approached the ice cream truck, he noticed two signs painted on either side of the serving window. One was a list of flavors, the other a plaque which read:

The Ten Commandments of Ice Cream

1. Thou shalt not take ice cream too seriously. It’s supposed to make you feel good, not take over your life.

2. Thou shalt try all kinds of ice cream. Don’t stick to one flavor because it is comfortable, or because you grew up with it.

3. Thou shalt choose your own flavor. It’s a Rocky Road but worth it.

4. Thou shalt share your ice cream only when asked and not go around knocking on people’s doors or harassing people in airports, talking about your particular flavor – it only annoys people.

5. Thou shalt not fight over what flavor is best or try to convince others that your flavor is better. They are all good and bad, depends on your taste. Lighten up; it’s only ice cream for God’s sake.

6. Thou shalt not take ice cream from fast talking, slick haired, charismatic con men, trying to convince you that one particular flavor is the one and only flavor – they are lying.

7. Thou shalt not eat the institutionalized, franchised, store brand ice cream, for it is not true ice cream.

8. Thou shalt not get all worked up and eat ice cream too fast for it will give you a brain freeze – take it slow. What’s your hurry? You’ll get to the next ice cream cone soon enough.

9. Thou shalt not eat too much ice cream for it will make you fat and complacent. Embrace moderation.

10. Thou shalt be polite to others when eating your ice cream. Your table manners are more important than what flavor you are eating.

Interesting, said John, I didn’t know there were rules for ice cream.

Too many rules for too many tings, the Ice Cream Man said, these are mo’ like guidelines. The purpose of rules is so you gotta tink about ’em before you break ’em. Guidelines are jus’ suggestions for your own good. I do kinda wonder ’bout the moderation ting though, you gotta kick up yo’ heels every once in a while, raise a little hell. I guess you even gotta have moderation in moderation. But ice cream transcends the rules.

The Ice Cream Man paused, looked thoughtful for a second, then continued. Most people search for happiness and dey never find it. People have difficult lives. They have jobs, children, credit card bills, mortgages, relationship problems, and health problems. There’s pollution, terrorism, global warming, sexually transmitted diseases and transfat. People are stressed out, consumed by havin’ to cope in a world where nuthin’ is certain, nuthin’ is permanent and not much is sane. Ice cream provides a brief escape from the reality of the world. When dat cold, sweet, refreshing bit of ice cream melts in your mouth, all your concerns melt away with it. Life, for one brief moment, is sweet, tranquil, and all is right with the world. Now pick you out a flavor.

The list of flavors included Rastafarian Ripple, Holy Mary Cherry, Kwanzaa Double Chocolate, Cookies and Christ, Krishna Kream, Vishnu Vanilla Bean, Pentecostal Prayline, Strawberry Shiva Swirl, Buddhist Brûlé, Kosher Karamel Knosh, Mecca Mocha, Wicca Wild Berry, The Passion Fruit, Zesty Zen, Taoist Black Pearl Truffle, Tantra Tiger Tail, Shinto Sherbet, Heavenly Hindu Hash, Fundamentalist Fudge Ripple, Muhammad Macadamia, Deliciously Dao, Rocky Roman Road, Jehovah Jamoka, Holy Roller Rum Raisin, Moonie Marzipan Mint, Dali Lama Lemon Custard, Zoroastrian Zinger, Angelic Ambrosia, Pagan Peach, Ganish Ganoshe, Baptist Bubblegum Blast, Scientology Sundae, Reincarnation Raspberry, Druid Daiquiri, Jihad Gelato, Spanish Inquisition Surprise, and Stigmata Blood Orange.

There are some unusual flavors here to choose from, John said.

Take yo’ time. You know the history of ice cream?

John shook his head and continued to read the list of flavors.

The Ice Cream Man took a deep breath and wound up for a lecture. ’Bout four hundred BC, de ancient Persians poured grape-juice concentrate over snow. Later, dey added rose water and vermicelli. Arabs were perhaps the first to use milk sweetened with sugar and fruit juices in the production of ice cream. The Chinese, dey mixed milk with mashed up rice, packed it in snow to make it hard, and then dey added flavors. That was around ’bout 200 BC durin’ the Han dynasty, or maybe it was the Tang dynasty. It’s bin a long time, I fergit. The Roman Emperor Nero had ice brought from the mountains and combine’ it with fruit toppings. Anyway, when Marco Polo returned to Italy from Kublai Khan’s court, he took dat Chinese formula for makin’ ice cream home with him. From Italy, ice cream spread ’cross Europe and to de four corners of de world.

Really? said John.

Oh, ice cream has a long history, said the Ice Cream Man. You picked you out a flavor yet?

What is that Tiger Tail ice cream you were telling that woman about?

You wouldn’t like it. You should try de Reincarnation Raspberry, it might surprise ya.

Okay, John said. Make it a double.

The Ice Cream Man pulled a sugar cone from the dispenser, found the right container in the huge freezer, and scooped two perfectly round globes of bright red ice cream into the cone. He wrapped a paper napkin around the base and passed it through the window. That’ll be two dollars.

John took the cone with his left hand and passed the bills through the window with his right. You play some pretty unusual music for an ice cream truck.

Beats burnin’ bushes, don’t you tink?

Uh, yeah, whatever, said John as he turned to walk up Parkwood Avenue toward Eve’s place. After three licks from the crimson cone, John’s vision blurred.

He closed his eyes and when he opened them again, he was standing on the blood-soaked ground of an ancient battlefield. He looked up into the face of what could only be a demon. Horns protruded from the creature’s head, his leather wings beat the air behind him, and he brandished a burning sword, swinging it menacingly in an arc from his left side to point it at John. The fiend thrust the sword toward him and John felt it enter his chest. He felt a moment of agonizing pain and then nothing as darkness closed in on him.

John opened his eyes to a stark white room with no doors, only couches and chairs, coffee tables and magazines. People sat reading magazines, chatting and waiting, reminding him of a dentist’s waiting room. On some level, he knew he was dead and caught between dimensions, in limbo between life and death, heaven and hell.

Scanning the room, he recognized the woman who sat in a corner reading a Highlights magazine, as the same person he had seen earlier, peering at him from the window on Parkwood Avenue. She stood up and walked over to him. As she reached out to hug him, she dissolved in his arms.

John then found himself standing in a hospital maternity ward, beside a bassinet. An infant peered up at him, wide-eyed. John knew he was face to face with the next body his soul would occupy. A nurse came bustling through the doors in rumpled scrubs. She brushed by John as though he wasn’t there, scooped up the child, and hurried out of the room. He felt compelled to follow.

Falling in behind her, he almost stepped into the nurse when she stopped and placed the infant in the lap of a short, chubby woman with frizzy blonde hair, sitting in a wheelchair. John realized he’d passed away and was invisible to them. The nurse smiled, wished the woman well with her new baby, turned on her crêpe-soled shoes, and scurried off down a long corridor. An orderly wheeled the woman to the front of the hospital where a car waited and helped her from the chair and into the passenger seat. John glided through the car door and into the back seat.

The man driving the car leaned over and smiled at the infant, raised his eyes, smiled at the woman and pulled the car into traffic. A short time later, the driver turned down a narrow street and parallel parked. John noticed the street sign read Sheppard Street. Slipping again through the side of the car John approached a small but well-kept house with a large Dalmatian asleep on the front porch.

Say hello to your new friend, Eli, the mother said, as she tilted the baby so the dog could sniff the new arrival. John followed as she carried the baby through the living room and placed him gingerly into a high-sided baby bed. The child looked up at John and made eye contact. Recognition passed between them. Well, at least you can see me.

For what seemed like eternity, John and the child stared at each other as bright afternoon sunlight streamed through the window. John caught shadows moving on the floor beside the bed and diverted his eyes to the golden shadows.

The shadows formed and dissolved, as they showed him images of the new life to come. He saw birthday parties, siblings yet to be born, high school graduation, marriage. He saw an old man staring back at him. As his new life flashed by, he was able make out a familiar face in the parade of shadows, someone he had loved, someone going through the same transformation. He could feel this soul nearby, in the same neighborhood, maybe even at the house next door. When the shadows stopped, John simply dissolved into the tiny body of the baby.

He kept trying to think. He wanted to try to hold on to bits and pieces, to keep some trace memories of people he wanted to find again in the new life. He wanted to recognize them if he ever saw them again but he couldn’t hold on to his thoughts. Memories, skills, facts, ideas slipped away piece by piece.

John felt a wave of nausea wash over him as he stumbled, disoriented. When his vision cleared, he saw that he was once again standing in the street on Parkwood Avenue. He reached out to a street sign to steady himself as he watched the ice cream truck pull away from the curb. He could barely make out the face of the Ice Cream Man in the large square mirror bolted to the driver’s door of the truck. The Ice Cream Man grinned.

What the hell was in that ice cream? John thought as he watched the ice cream truck roll slowly west down Parkwood Avenue. The music from the speakers faded as the truck turned the corner on to Sheppard Street.

Chapter Two

He noticed that the front door to Eve’s row house on Perilous Parkwood Avenue was vibrating like a sex toy as he placed the two grocery bags on her porch. John’s knuckles tingled as he knocked on her door. While he waited for Eve to answer, still shaken from his experience after tasting the ice cream, he felt eyes on him again. He looked across the street and saw the curtains of the upstairs window part. In the shadows behind the curtains he could just make out the blonde woman’s face peering down at him. She was definitely the same woman from his dream or vision or hallucination, whatever it was.

Eve answered the door, looking bedraggled, like an overworked, self-driven shadow of the woman John had fallen in love with only two years ago.

John nodded to his shaking hand as he held the door. What’s the buzz?

Oh, the vibration. I left my experiment running in the basement. It’ll stop in a minute. It always stops. I don’t know why. Hell, I don’t know why it starts. It’s still a work in progress.

I brought some more of your stuff. John nodded to the two grocery bags he had deposited on her stoop, then reached inside his jacket pocket and produced a small package.

There are still a dozen or so boxes in the basement. I figure I’ll bring over a bit at a time.

Eve took the package from John’s hand. My resistors. I’ve been wondering where they were. You bringing stuff over a little at a time is a very clever ruse to drop by unannounced for the next few months, Eve said, smiling. I’m all right John, you don’t need to keep checking on me. Besides, a separation is supposed to mean we don’t see each other. At least not more often than when we were together.

Yeah, well, I kind of miss seeing you, even if it’s only once a week or so. Can I come in? John asked.

I suppose you can come in and have a drink. One drink, said Eve as she turned back into her house. John lifted the paper handles of the grocery bags and followed. But I’m only letting you in for a minute because you are so pathetic, then I have to go back to work, she said over her shoulder. These resistors are going to come in handy.

I have a feeling you have more than enough resistance already, said John, taking a seat on her couch.

Eve gave him a crooked smile, tossed the box of resistors down on the coffee table, and crossed the room toward the kitchen.

You look good, John lied as Eve attacked a wine bottle with a corkscrew.

I look like a huckleberry on a bear’s ass, Eve said as she struggled with the cork. But thanks, a sweet lie is sometimes better than the hard truth. I’ve been up all night, trying to make my damned experiment work, but all I have managed to do is make the house shake. She returned to the living room with two glasses of red wine and sat beside John on the sofa.

And what exactly is this experiment you are trying to make work?

Eve crinkled her brow. You never seemed very interested in my work before … why now?

Maybe that was one of our problems. We were both so wrapped up in our own work that we stopped listening to each other. I’m as much to blame as you are, so I figured I’d stop by to see how you are doing, what you’re working on and, of course, bring some more of your stuff. Maybe talk.

It’s too late for that kind of talk, John, we both need to move on. I have my research, you have your books. Let’s leave it at that.

Yeah, yeah, I know, but I had nothing else to do tonight and the house is kind of lonely, so I figured I’d pay you a friendly visit, try to at least keep the friendship going … we were very good friends once.

Friendly works for me. But not too friendly. If you’re interested in my research, I’d love a sounding board. Sometimes you have to say things out loud, hear how they sound, to find answers. If you want to listen to my mad scientist ravings, I’d love to tell you about them.

Rave away, said John, taking a sip of his wine.

Okay, I’m working with brain waves, trying to build a device that absorbs psychic energy from one part of the human brain, amplifies it, and directs it at another part of the brain.

That sounds biochemical – I thought you were a physicist.

"Energy is physics, and I’m working in quantum physics. It’s kind of complex."

Well, enlighten me. If you get too complex for this poor stupid writer, I’ll let you know.

I didn’t say you were stupid … exactly. Quantum physics is a complex discipline and anybody who claims to fully understand it is probably lying.

John grinned and raised an eyebrow. Brain energy? he prompted.

Okay, people generate psychic energy all the time, mostly from the back portion of their brains, the reptilian part where the strongest emotions come from – greed, avarice, and violence – the part of the brain humans use the most. I’m trying to siphon off that negative dark energy and use it to stimulate the amygdala, the little section of the brain that triggers pleasure and bliss. I’m trying to find a catalyst to transubstantiate dark energy into light energy, turn man’s baser instincts into a higher consciousness. You’ve heard that people only use ten-percent of their brains – this is the ninety per cent they don’t use.

I’m with you so far. You’re trying to bliss out the world.

It’s too early to go into all the applications, Eve continued. But imagine being able take away people’s anger and violence and swap it for peace, tranquility, and contentment. It would be amazing.

Don’t people already try that with alcohol and drugs?

That’s synthetic and temporary. And you lose your cognition as a result. Eve took a sip of wine. No, I’m trying for a change in the psychological paradigm, while not affecting people’s ability to think and act.

So how close are you to making your little bliss machine work?

There are two problems with that. Trying to hit the exact portions of the brain, among all the other types of brain waves, and trying to find a source of energy to amplify the reptilian brain waves, before I send them back to the amygdala. I think I’m close to zeroing in on the right sections of the brain, but the energy source, that’s the problem. I’m using a small particle beam accelerator right now to amplify the brain waves – light energy – but I need a stronger power source to reach lots of people at once and to do so I need to reach over long distances, maybe a whole continent. Right now, it’s limited to one person at a time.

I can see you with at a little kiosk in the mall, your own little bliss booth selling joy across from the food court. Blissing people out, one person at a time. John smiled. There would be lines around the mall.

Right, said Eve. "I’m trying to bring bliss, not cause a mob scene, which would defeat the whole purpose. I’ve been toying with the idea of using a quantum version of cold fusion, but I keep opening holes in space-time and creating a vacuum. Then air rushes in to fill the nature-hated vacuum and … boom! I leave half the neighborhood shaking and I end up on my ass. Maybe I’ll look into good old AC and DC current."

"So you have been causing all those little earthquakes in the area?"

I’ve been rattling a few windows, said Eve. Nothing major, but such is the price of science.

I hope you have the price of a good lawyer if you get caught.

It’s no big deal. So I shake things up a bit. It’s not enough to hurt anyone and in this neighborhood, nobody is going to notice much anyway.

This neighborhood does have a certain dodgy, rundown ambiance, observed John. Have you met your neighbors?

Most of them.

Who lives next door, in the house with all the Halloween stuff in the front yard? It looks like the second coming of the Great Pumpkin.

That’s Eric and Ted’s place. They like to decorate. Nice couple, been together for years. They own an adult bookstore in Carytown.

Across the street, a door slammed and a woman screeched, You lousy son of a bitch, I’m gonna break this fucking wine bottle over your cheating head! The threat was followed by the sound of a car starting up