The Celestial Instructi0n Read Free

for me to earn some money, Beak. So long.”
    He needed a few dollars to buy his
evening food and drink. Especially if traveling, since almost by definition the
road was between places where he could get a meal, a place to sleep, or the
best of all, a shower and a used-clothing give-away. Once outside he walked
past the parking lot, beyond the underpass and over to the bus station’s
outdoor benches that even at this early hour were filled with a number of
street people—some sullen, some arguing with themselves, some rocking and
twitching. He tipped some his remaining shag into a piece of newsprint, rolled
a homemade, and bummed a light. He was disappointed that it was a butane lighter.
    He was just beginning to relax after
his meal as he finished his smoke when though the underpass he saw the hood
profile a Silver Suburban pull up abruptly in front of the Commissary, the
heavy vehicle rocking back on its springs. A tall, thin man who could have been
Hispanic, or middle eastern or perhaps Indian, got out, casually looked around,
looked at the front door, then went inside the mission. But before he went in,
he adjusted his blazer and made an almost invisible brush of his left hip with
the inside of his elbow. The motion was not lost on Joex.
    “Shit. Joe X, Joe X, Joe X, more
paranoia now? Maybe not. But I’d be crazy to think otherwise,” Joex thought.
“Shit.” He got up and went inside the bus terminal the bus station to
temporarily hide out in the toilet. He rapped at the door to get the attention
of the ticket clerk who controlled the door lock. “Do you got a ticket?” the
clerk shouted out rudely across his counter and across the room. “No, sir” Joex
shouted back, but he rapped again on the toilet door. The clerk scowled and
buzzed Joex in.
    “This doesn’t look so good, Joe baby.”
Joex sat on the toilet with his pants on, thinking about the implication of the
Suburban. “Definitely not police. Nor FBI, nor Marshal's office, nor State
Bureau of Investigation, nor anyone else I have ever heard of. Looks like a
damn drug lord car.” Joex hadn’t been on the road so long that he thought
everything happening was a pure accident or a delusional artifact of a
misfiring mind.
    As a traveler, Joex was getting used to
following life as if it were a disconnected string of basic human needs for
food and shelter and money and drink and smokes as scenes in the world pass by,
unraveling. Planning ahead, as he remembered it, involved too many parts that
could break or get lost. Homeless, it didn’t matter that the parts were
unconnected and rattling. The map was fraying and splitting along its creases.
    Now some ancient part of his mind told
him that everything this morning was in fact related and had to do with him,
and involved people executing deadly force. Intended for him. And there was
absolutely nothing in his life that would explain why.
    He could go to the police. The Mad
Landing police. “Yeah, right, old buddy, that would be comic gold; might as
well shoot myself in the head.” He, somehow, knew that the well-dressed stalker
would take him from the police on some convincing pretext and Joex would
disappear.

Chapter 5
     
    Michael Voide, the first Celestial of
the First Choir, impatiently messaged his assistant Angel, “Where the fuck are
you and why hasn’t Geedam touched bases with me?” Michael, as chief material
representative on Earth of the International Church of the Crux, expected to
meet wealthy donors and celebrities who insisted on face time to go with their
money and endorsements. Not to waste his time in his clerestory waiting for
John Geedam, Esq., a Principality of the Fourth Choir, and goddamn
not-yet-disbarred counselor to call with what had better be the expected news
of the recent passing of Joex Baroco, quondam engineer and now hapless bum.
    “And when he calls, have Kingston
conference us.” Kingston was his Security Throne and, right now, as the person
who managed the