Vietnam Central Highlands
April 1969
Their parachutes buried, the POW
rescue team assembles at the edge of a clearing.
Dread of landing behind enemy
lines becomes reality when:
The fog of war descends.
The Alamo.
Little Big Horn.
Armageddon.
A Yankee Go Home message from a
Hanoi delegation.
A staccato of the AK-47s, and a
grenade shower.
Twilight becomes noon.
Who said war is hell?
He's right.
War IS Hell.
***
In awe of the opulence, Masterson
blurts out, “Wow,” in admiration of the many fragrant flowering plants all
around the entranceway, art masterpieces on the walls, and pointedly, at a
clone of Michelangelo’s David in the middle of the main room to the left of the
stairway.
There’s money.
There are riches.
There’s wealth
Then there is a citizen’s version
of Ft. Knox
***
Jessica smiles provocatively,
gives each of them their drink, and then turns to walk away.
Masterson's eyes switch from
being riveted to her cleavage, when she’d bent down to serve the drinks, to the
soft tissue activity in her bottom as she leaves the area.
He knows he should pay attention
to Thomson and not be focused on the cheeks that launched a thousand ships.
Masterson says, “Definitely; what
man wouldn't be? All right, now that my libido has finished its run in orbit
and made a soft landing, let's get down to business…if I can concentrate.”
***
Sometimes a man looks at the face
of an exceptionally beautiful woman and all thought processes end up in
gridlock.
It’s not aesthetic.
It’s not erotic.
The only tool of his five senses
responding to commands are his eyes.
He just...looks.
***
Mel’s 22nd birthday, he’s a
changed man.
His memory is gone.
Scorpion venom, months of
drowning in Asian herb therapy and a voltage tsunami have mutated his
metabolism and genetic structure.
The face in the mirror says to
him. “Get out of here. You’re a walking freak show.”
Ponce De Leon couldn’t find it.
Mel Stone didn’t look for the
Fountain of Youth.
It had found him.
***
The fly finds refuge on a long
finger in El Greco’s Via Crucis masterpiece; one of many in the Frank Lloyd
Wright emulation home of Drug Lord, Pedro Ramirez.
It feels safer there.
Ready to move.
There’s a Shock and Awe version
of Daddy Spank at the other end of the room.
Ramirez glares through spastic
eyelids at his son, Cesar.
***
A heavy, pulsating beat.
Strobe lights like fireflies on a
nude girl as she flies around a pole.
Miss No-Bra puts her hands on his
thigh as she rubs her breast against an apple-cheeked sailor’s shoulder at the
bar.
She moves a drink over to him.
Miss Glory enters the stage
tossing her breasts around like a windsock at the airport to the cheers of the
biker types and geezers.
The watering hole of the higher
life forms of La La Land?
***
Mel, in one of Mark’s old
T-shirts looks as if he can barely breathe.
Alexis swallows in shame at the
level her brain’s infidelity is controlling her pulse rate—in addition to
what’s happening down below.
Her face grabs a shade of pink,
as she stares at a Bowflex trained block of granite.
Boy toy time?
