264 pages. Transreal Books, November, 2025.
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The project consists of two books. A novel, Sqinks. And a book-length a volume of journal entries and notes, The Sqinks Journal.
Sqinks is a visionary tale of aliens in today's San Francisco. The sqinks. In some ways they're like our new AIs. But in other ways, they're a thing nobody's ever seen. Nobody except Rudy. And, um, these aliens seem to have an interest in replacing human brains. It's a surreal rollercoaster, rich with ideas, scares, and laughs.
The narrator is, in a way, Rudy himself. The character is a seasoned SF author who's also writing a novel about the odd world he's in. A touch of what Rudy calls transrealism. Yes, it's science-fiction, but, yes, it's about our real world.
Rudy being who he is, the novel is cybperpunk---2020s style, faster and funnier than before. New mind tech, and new struggles for human freedom.
And it's a love story. A transreal cyberpunk love story. It'll make you laugh, and it'll make you feel good.
The Sqinks Journal is an author’s journey, a master's struggle with their craft.
It begins with the death of Rudy's wife. After a year of heavy grief, he begins writing again: a visionary and unshackled novel, born from the dailyness of life itself.
A woman appears---a human character from the cosmic novel, the same as Rudy. A gift from the muse..
The journey is a struggle and a dance---incomprehensible and meaningful. With steady comfort from the writing itself. And rich with a master’s insights into technique and process.
Rudy Rucker is a writer and a mathematician who worked for twenty years as a Silicon Valley computer science professor. Rucker is regarded as contemporary master of science-fiction, and received the Philip K. Dick awards for his cyberpunk novels Software and Wetware.
It’s worth noting that his novel Software (2020), was the very first SF work to introduce the by-now-very-familiar notion of transferring a human personality to a bot. What’s more, Software was the first SF novel in which robot minds are evolved, rather than being designed.
As well as writing cyberpunk, Rucker writes SF in a realistic style known as transrealism—where the author uses SF archetypes to symbolize the concerns of the characters. This is an increasingly common style among mainstream authors.
Rucker’s forty published books include non-fiction books on the fourth dimension, infinity, and the meaning of computation.
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I’m a writer, not that I get paid anymore. I’m old, almost eighty. My wife is gone. My friends are dropping like flies. We’re circling the drain, spiraling into the void.
But hold on. I’ve got another story to tell!
I’m not necessarily the best financial organizer, which is why I’m living in a shipping container by the San Francisco Bay, down past the city’s south-end jumble.
This isn’t a tragic, bare, dead-end container, you understand. It’s a spray-painted habitat assembled by rogue artists. Younger than me—that is to say, they’re middle-aged. I know them through my kids.
The Box Farm includes about six containers, some of them welded together, with windows and skylights butchered in. Pirated water, sewage, and electricity. Sticks of scavenged furniture.
My mattress rests on plywood on four round stones on a painted metal floor. I have a big, bright quilt from my dead wife, Sybil. Cozy, after a fashion. No mail, no bills, no hassle. I have a walled-off corner for my room, a private bathroom, and a lock on my door. My son got it done.
And, even though my royalties have died off, I get social security, plus retirement from when I was a math prof.
To my way of thinking, I’ve got it made.
I awaken, looking through a skylight at the cloudy gray. The rogue artists threw a Box Farm party last night, and it was fun. I know a lot of their faces from over the years. They’ve heard of my books, they’ve seen me around, and they’re nice to me.
I don’t drink or do drugs anymore. But I’m high all the time. It’s an old man’s style of being. So I’m enlightened? I’d like to say that. My head’s a crystal ball, wrapping the warp. The world is beautiful.
Except when I’m irked, which is more often than I like. Old fool trembling with impotent rage. The guy I try not to be.
I kept it together at the party last night. Put my best foot forward. I dug the punk/noise music, blended in, danced, and jabbered. A lot of the time, I can’t understand what people are talking about. Bad hearing, slow brain, sparse contextual database. The world I think I live in is gone.
I met a woman approximately my age. Makes me happy to think about her. A possible girlfriend? I didn’t catch her name, and hardly managed to talk to her. Too noisy. Lost opportunity. And not many chances come by.
I use a tweak that lets me write in my head, actually seeing the pages, and now I flip over to this mode, and begin describing some of last night’s scenes in my journal.
Before long, as if summoned by my words, someone scratches on my room’s door.
“Hold on,” I say, or rather croak. I take a drink of water, repeat what I said, then rock my way off my mattress, find my footing, and shrug on my plaid wool robe. Beneath it, I’m wearing pajamas, old coot that I am: a high-quality pinpoint-polka-dot blue pair from Nordstrom. I buy them myself these days, instead of getting them from dear gone Sybil at Christmas, oh sob. But it’s been two years now, and in some ways, I’m getting past it. And what about that woman at the party last night? I was just writing about her.
Naturally, it’s her at my door.
“You slept over,” I say.
“In a puddle of vomit on the floor? Just kidding. On a couch. Not easy to get home from here. You don’t know my name, do you? Even though I told it to you. I’m Carol Cee, and you’re Oliver Strunk.”
“Indeed, indeed. Come on in. The others are still asleep?”
“The wee tykes,” says Carol Cee. “Still growing.” We’re old people talking about thirty and forty-year-olds, right. She enters and takes a chair.
She’s weathered, but not drugged or insane. Pretty face, tightly curled white hair, blue cashmere sweater, a creamy blouse. Black jeans and a black wool duffle coat. Jewelry here and there. Not penniless. She carries a tan leather knapsack. Good quality. It might be pigskin.
I fill a kettle and put it on my range, a portable unit with two electric burners. “Tea?”
“Love some. Did you catch what Loulou said about sqinks last night? About me bringing food for them?”
I smile. “I don’t hear all that well. Particularly at parties. Particularly if there’s a band. To some extent, I’m out of it.”
“You should use twirlware teep. You know. Wireless telepathy.”
“I do use it,” I say. “But not for conversation. Too digital.”
“I thought you were the big author. And a math prof. Ultramodern. Sharp as a tack.”
“I use twirlware for writing my books in the cloud.”
“Twirlware teep isn’t really digital,” says Carol. “It’s more like a meditation practice. You relax into the seemingly imaginary voices in your head. The voices that were always there. And the voices can be real. From other people. If you listen.”
“I’d rather write than talk,” I say. “I have time to revise. Make it sing. Prose can be poetry.”
“I’m sorry, but I haven’t read any of your books.”
“If we hit it off, I’ll give you one.” I glance at her, assessing how this lands. “I might be starting to write a new novel.”
“That would be nice,” says Carol Cee, smoothly returning my serve.
“I like my little worlds,” I say, going for a touch of weary pathos. “It’s like dreaming while I’m awake.”
“What’s in the new one?” asks Carol.
I shrug. “This is an interesting scenario I’m living in right now. Maybe this time, the novel writes itself. And all I have to do is copy down what happens. Here we are in the Box Farm. Old writer Oliver Strunk with the mysterious and fetching Carol Cee. Possible plot element: a giant mutant squid.”
I point at the skylight overhead and raise my voice as if reciting. “Crash-tinkle! The obscene tentacle slimes in, with avid suckers erect. A fleshy loop winds around the waists of the naive peasants within. As the tentacle cinches tight, they moan in—is it ecstasy?”
“Naive peasants?” goes Carol Cee. “Thanks a lot. We’re the cool kids. That’s how it has to be.”
The teapot shrieks. I crumble Yunnan Pu-erh tea from a dense puck the size of a plate.
“Perfect,” says Carol. “That kind is good for your health. I need that.”
I wait for more, but she doesn’t say. She sips from her mug and looks around my room, taking my measure.
I have a lot of paintings on the blank, foam-padded walls. A few are by me, most are by Sibyl. I do like painting. You smear it around. Another plus: I can finish a painting in a week, instead of in a year. Not that I’m painting much anymore. I’m stalled on that. Grief has knocked the wind out of my sails. Even so, there’s this new novel I might write. Maybe I’ll put Carol in it.
“Nice colors in the paintings,” she says. “I can tell Sybil’s from yours. I like the oriental rugs and old furniture too. Cozy.”
“I brought them with me. And the seashells and books and nice plates and silver.”
“Class,” says Carol. “I worried you’d be pathetic. A homeless addict in a culvert. Loulou told me I could come to the party to get a look at you. I’m Loulou’s mother, you know.”
“Didn’t know,” I say. “I like Loulou. She’s looking very lively these days.”
“I agree,” says Carol. “Unusually perky. Do you realize that she wants to fix me up with you?”
“Kind of sensed that,” I admit. “How am I doing?”
“I like that you’re a homebody,” says Carol. “If I can say that. And you’re nice.”
“The naive peasant finds a place among the reckless bohemians,” I say.
“Loulou wonders why you moved in,” says Carol. “She and her friends were talking about it last night.”
“Well, it’s interesting here. My son got me in. Not that he lives here; he has a house in the city. I needed a cheap place because I’m broke. I liquidated all my assets and gave most of my money to my kids. Not that they were asking me to do that. It was my bright idea. Maybe I outsmarted myself. My idea was to stop the leeches from bagging it all when I go into a home.”
“Funny how home can be good or bad,” says Carol.
“Sunday puzzle,” I say. “Make a list of autoantonyms.”
“Spare me,” says Carol. “I’ve done my time with geeks—I did graphic design for companies, and freelanced at how-to seminars, and then I became a photographer. Let’s go look for sqinks. Loulou keeps talking about them. She spells sqink with a Q, by the way. She told me that if I visited, she’d tell us how to find them.” She titters. “A get-acquainted activity for you and me.”
“Will we be good at it?”
“We’re creatives, which ought to help. Photographers have good eyes. We frame the telling details. The pop, the wow, the sigh, the what. I distribute them through stock image banks. I licensed the same photo of a tumbleweed five thousand times.”
“Where’s your camera?”
“I do most of it with my eye. Thanks to twirlware. Eidetic capture. Without the equipment, I’m selling my taste. How I see.” She looks around. “How do you write without a keyboard?”
“I do like you. I write in my head. I can see a twirlware page in front of me. Couples with my brain for storage. That word you used. Eidetic. And you mentioned music?”
“Image-based sounds. Twirlware upgrade. I can sing what I see.”
With a charming, languid gesture, Carol leans toward me and says, “Click, click, click.” And now she sings, her lips lovely.
A nursery rhyme tune that speeds up, circles around, and segues into the sound of a big band’s grand finale. How she’s able to get that out of her throat, I have no idea. It’s fascinating, and I’m struck still when she’s done.
“Well, thanks,” I say. “I guess. That’s the sound of my look?”
“You’re easy on the eyes, Oliver. I don’t plan my music. It just grows. I was jamming with the band last night. After your bedtime. Playing my images of the musicians. I kept it slow and drifty. You have to be a pro to look at the right things in the right order, and you feed that to your twirlware. Everyone liked my jam. I was glad.”
Perhaps, in my sleep, I’d heard Carol’s drones and riffs, overlaid upon my slide into sleep. Slippery sounds, innuendo trombones.
“I’m liking our meet-up,” I say, pouring us more tea. “Hooray for Loulou. And what are sqinks?”
“Some critters that Loulou found. She’s been making art prints of them. The pictures sell pretty well. They’re so odd.”
“What a creative family,” I say. “I think I’ve seen those pictures around the Box Farm. I didn’t know Loulou calls them sqinks. She makes them with the latest twirlware art tool, right?”
“Expensive,” says Carol. “She was using the free version, but my ex-husband bought her a pro license. Loulou’s father. Acting generous for once in his stingy-prick life.”
“Let’s hold off on that part. Remind me about how an artist makes twirlware pictures look like something they really see?”
“Trial and error,” says Carol with a shrug. “Practice. It’s about finding the right prompts. That’s the whole art of it. Crafting a prompt can take days or weeks. You need skill and luck. And Loulou—somehow she’s turned very lucky. Have you noticed that?”
I’m feeling a little lost. Carol’s images seed her songs, and Loulou’s phrases seed her prints. Everything flowing together. Nothing really real.
“Sqink luck for Loulou?” I say. “Maybe?”
“Do you notice anything?” Carol asks me. “How old are you anyway?”
“Less than eighty.”
“Me too. But I’m doing my best to have fun. And so should you. We get ourselves dressed, we wake Loulou, and she tells us where to look for her sqinks.”
“I’ll feed you first,” I suggest.
Carol has expressive eyes, and a charming way of rolling them to one side. Looking things over just now.
“I see eggs, oil, bread, an onion, and green peppers. We’ll eat, and bring a snack to Loulou. That helps her mood in the morning. You’ll see how healthy she looks.”
“I never notice anything,” I say. “It’s true. I’m functionally deaf and blind.”
“Alertness is my specialty,” says Carol, sounding like Sybil. I’m in the dark without Sybil, always looking for things, my possessions gliding around my house like leaves on water. I have to buy a new pair of glasses every two months. They run away fast … on those little legs.
“Frying pan,” I say, seeing it and picking it up. Getting into Carol’s game. A solid object. “Knife and board. I’ll chop.”
“Denver omelet?” says Carol.
“Smart cookie.” Breakfast goes fine.
Fed and clad, we enter the central part of the container. Carol has her mug of tea in one hand, and a plate for Loulou in the other.
Three or four Box Farmers lie sleeping. Subliminally sensing our presence, they shift and sigh like sleeping seals.
Loulou is in a puffy hammock, her bleached hair resembling thistledown, and her sleeping face in a wry twist. Yes indeed, there is a certain … health to her. I wish I looked that good.
Carol wakes her daughter by kissing her. Loulou startles and glares. Like, leave me alone, Mom.
Healthy or not, Loulou is in no mood to eat; she sets her plate on the floor for the dogs. But she does drink from Carol’s mug. And now she talks a little, lying on her side.
“You two made friends, see?” says Loulou. “I told you, Mom. There’s still time. And you want me to tell you and Oliver about the sqinks. Fine. But—” She winces like she has a headache. “I was stupid to run my mouth about the sqinks being real. I mean, sure, I’m selling pictures of them, but I’ve been saying I made them up. I don’t want a bunch of strangers to be slobbering over them.” She looks around the room, assessing the slow-breathing forms of her cohorts. “You know, and Oliver. And Tobin knows, too. He says the sqinks could be a huge deal.”
“Or very small,” says Carol Cee, unable to resist teasing her daughter.
Loulou takes it in stride. “Did you notice which one was Tobin, Mom? Shaved head and a neck wrinkle in the back. Always serious. Such the poser. He went to law school for about ten minutes. Pomposity incarnate. But somehow, he’s cute. Like a little boy.”
“He’s after you, isn’t he,” says Carol.
“Code red option zebra null,” says Loulou. Imitatng a sentinel’s report of a spy threat.
“Why haven’t I ever heard you talking about sqinks?” I ask her.
“It helps not to be deaf,” puts in Carol. “And to heed your twirlware teep.”
“I’m always busy writing,” I say.
“Don’t go writing about me and my sqinks,” puts in Loulou.
“It’s a good story,” I say. “How could I not?”
Loulou shakes her head and takes another long swig of the tea. “I totally don’t know what the sqinks are,” she says. “A new species? Elves? Aliens? They started manifesting a month ago. They wriggle out of the ground. The head is like a lizard’s, but the body isn’t. Here.” She reaches over to a table and finds a postcard-sized print. “I’m amazed how easy it is for me to prompt for these pictures. Usually, it’s way harder. Lately, I’m in the zone. I’m lucky. This is my sqink friend Doink. He says he’s the one giving me good luck.”
“The sqinks are leading us down a strange path,” says Carol.
Doink resembles a string of balls floating in front of the Bay. A garland. The balls are silver and gold, in alternating sizes. At one end is a gold crocodile head, with glittering eyes. Friendly? Hard to say.
“Tobin hasn’t even seen a sqink yet,” says Loulou. “But he’s already grubbing for a business plan. Bottom-feeder that he is. My friend Sailey and I feed Doink and his sister Flubsy.”
“I bet you get more luck than Sailey,” puts in Carol.
“Mom,” says Loulou. “Don’t always imagine I’m special. Back to feeding the sqinks, okay? They never want the same thing twice. We’ve done cabbages, beets, oranges, lemons, and chicken bones. Always something new.
“And the sqinks give you luck,” I say, starting to wonder about angles. I’m thinking like that grubber Tobin. “That’s how they pay you for the food?”
“They don’t have to pay,” snaps Loulou. “Sailey and I do it for fun. The sqinks are cute. And they have good vibes. I might let them move in with us. They’d like that.”
“They’re powerful aliens,” says Carol. “Here to live among us. Like anthropologists in a crude backwater.” Almost sounds like she knows some facts.
“Don’t go yapping about this to everyone,” cautions Loulou. “You always overdo it, Mom. Making yourself the center of attention. The sqinks are mine, okay?”
“Fine,” says Carol. “And look at this, dear. I brought goodies for your sqinks. Like I said I would.” She holds up her tan leather sack. The sack is full, but it doesn’t look heavy. “Nothing growing in my garden,” continues Carol. “And the supermarket produce is ick. So, I found something special in the woods.”
“Please don’t tell me you’re into shrooms again,” goes Loulou. “Speaking of magical thinking.”
“God no,” says Carol. “Give me a break. That was twenty years ago.” She opens the flap of her sack. “Chestnut tree buds!” She sets the sack on the floor and makes a behold gesture. “Fixing to open! Early birds.”
I see pale green buds of folded-up leaves with purple highlights. The buds are attached to sappy, broken branch stubs.
“Doink should like that,” allows Loulou. “Bursting with life.” Her voice trails off. She’s tired, and not up for conversation with old people. “Bye now, lovebirds.”
That last word is a dig, but it thrills me. I hide my smile. I dare to pose one more question. “Loulou, you didn’t say where we can look for sqinks?”
“Look at the frikkin ground,” mumbles Loulou, snuggling herself in. “Open your eyes.”
Carol takes her knapsack of chestnut buds, and we make our way outdoors. It’s late March, a misty day, almost raining. I can barely see Oakland across the water. I put my arm around Carol’s waist, and she doesn’t mind. We walk along the narrow strip of wet and somewhat grotty sand that edges the Bay.
After about fifteen minutes, the Box Farm is small behind us, and we’re coming up on the remains of a shipyard, with scattered sheds and outbuildings beside a vast, corroded pier and a monstrous lift. Everything is dark and significant against the pearlescent gray sky. Very WWII. In the silence, I take a moment to look into my mental manuscript and make some notes.
“No sqinks yet,” says Carol Cee.
“Turn back?” I suggest. It’s raining a little more seriously now.
“Okay,” says Carol. “And we move inland.”
The beach abuts an unused field with boulders and floppy tussocks. And beyond the field is an abandoned parking lot, with the potholed pavement gray and cracked.
Random plants are everywhere, dotted with tender buds. The winter-stilled world is coming to life.
“In the Middle Ages, March was considered the first month of the year,” I tell Carol.
“And you like that because your birthday’s in March,” she says.
“Stalker much?”
“Know your prey.”
“Okay, fine. Glad you cared enough to check. Did you read the reviews of my books?”
Carol laughs. “Don’t flatter yourself. We’re hunting for sqinks!”
“According to Loulou,” I say, “a sqink’s head is like a lizard’s, but the body, not.”
“Just look for anything that moves, Oliver.”
We proceed cautiously through the field, among briars, soggy spots, and slippery stones. It seems we’re holding hands. I’m happier than I’ve been in a long time.
“Wait, wait!” Carol suddenly exclaims. “I see one! Look, look!”
Of course I see nothing, but she leads me to a low spot, some twenty feet off, where the dank, matted weeds are heaving and forming a gap and—yes!
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A little snout pokes out. A head several inches long, a miniature crocodile head, with a long mouth that runs along the sides.
Its eyes are shiny black beads with white pupils. Lively and alert. Somehow feminine. Rising above the weeds. Faintly luminous. The black eyes track us. The sqink’s head itself is pale violet. And the next segment of her body is a purple sphere, and then a violet one. Alternating back and forth like that, with the purple balls smaller.
“Hello, sqink,” says Carol Cee in a sweet baby voice. She crouches, extracts a chestnut-flower bud from her knapsack, and waggles it.
The sqink opens her jaws and pipes a sound.
“Do you hear that?” exclaims Carol, turning to me. “So cute. She said, ‘Hello, I’m Lilac.’”
I’m not at all sure about that, but I go, “Hello, Lilac, I’m Oliver Strunk.”
I prudently have one hand covering my throat—just in case the thing darts at me. But, no, Lilac the sqink is satisfied with the chestnut bud; she’s crunching it right down. She doesn’t have teeth. Her mouth is like a long beak with sharp edges.
And Loulou was right; despite the look of her head, Lilac is not like a lizard at all. As I say, her body is a string of colored balls, the balls alternating in size like grapes and plums. The little ones are dark purple, and the large ones are pale violet.
More and more of the sqink emerges as Carol Cee keeps the chestnut buds coming. The sqink holds her body erect, like a charmed cobra. The newer segments are bigger than the first ones, that is, the body is wider in the middle.
Carol’s motions are dainty and alert—she’s keeping her fingers well away from those sharp, snappy jaws.
“Looks almost like a garland for a holiday tree,” Carol merrily says. “Isn’t Lilac cute?”
Me, I wonder if I shouldn’t turn around and run like hell. Like ⋯ what happens when Carol has no more chestnut buds? The freaking sqink is nearly a yard high by now, and, oh lord, she’s entirely out of the sqink hole. To me, her gleaming eyes have taken on a hard, pitiless air. Like a snake’s eyes.
The garland sqink is floating in the air, a series of balls, alternately big and small, and tapering down at either end. Floating, as in levitating? Whatever that means. For sure, Lilac doesn’t have wings. It’s like her body is repelling the ground. Even the plants beneath her seem to bend down a little bit.
So okay, Lilac is a string of balls hanging in the air, and she has razor-sharp jaws, and we’re out of food with which to placate her.
“Our throats,” I mutter to Carol. “She’ll rip out our throats and eat our flesh. Come on now. Move slowly. Let’s get down to the beach where we can run. You go first. I’ll protect you.” It’s not an offer I really want to make, but you know, I have to be polite.
I look around for some kind of protection. “A stick!” I say, “I’ll grab that stick and—.”
Lilac rocks her head up and down. Makes a warble with a stutter at the end.
“She’s laughing at you, Oliver,” says Carol. “She says she’d need helpers to eat you all up. I guess that’s encouraging?”
“Maybe,” I mutter, still wondering how to get out of here.
Lilac rocks and talks some more.
“She talks so fast,” says Carol. “Maybe I should use my air guitar. Lilac and I could do a jam. I think Lilac just told me that sqinks can learn about things by eating them, and that they can, in fact, rebuild the things afterward. Can you follow what she’s saying, Oliver?”
Well, no, I can’t, not at all. I wonder if I might honorably take a position behind Carol after all. Keeping her between me and the sqink.
The drizzle is picking up, and the wind is steady. I can’t see across the Bay anymore, and even the Box Farm is indistinct. My chic cloth raincoat is soaking through. Carol’s heavy wool coat is waterproof, with a nice hood. I’m glad for that.
Before we leave, I want to hit Lilac sqink with our original, as yet unspoken, plan.
“What do we get?” I yell at the hovering garland of balls. “Carol gave you munchies, Lilac. What do you give us?”
“Give us something nice,” echoes Carol, right on the beam. “That’s how it works, Lilac. Loulou’s been getting AI prompts from Doink.”
Is Lilac nodding yes? I have no idea what to hope for. A diamond, a bar of gold, a wad of counterfeit cash?
Two chirps from the garland of bobbling balls. And for once, I understand. “Good luck,” is what Lilac says. And then she drifts over to Carol and presses herself against Carol’s chest. Like a hug. Except Carol winces as if it hurts.
The contact breaks, the sqink whistles farewell, and now, angling into the wobbly wind, she wriggles back to where she came from, beneath the sodden mat of dead weeds. I’m not quite sure what’s happened.
It’s raining even harder: cats-and-dogs, pineapple-express, atmospheric-river, cyclone-bomb type rain. Idiot that I am, I’m not wearing a hat, and my fashionable trench coat has no hood. The rain streams through my hair, down my face, and down the back of my neck. Around the edges of Carol’s hood, stray raindrops bead her curly white hair.
We make our way to the strip of sand by the Bay and blunder along, our shoes squelching. I’m half blind. Carol is holding her hand against her chest as if it hurts. But under it all, I feel a sense of calm good vibes. Lilac’s blessing.
Carol picks up on this as well. “The sqink luck,” she says. “Lilac is working for us. She’s my pet.”
And now, sure as shit, here’s a nice top hat, tumbling across the field, driven by the wind. It comes to a stop on the shore. In some way, this feels natural. I brush sand off the hat and set it atop my head. A perfect fit. Of course.
“Abraham Lincoln,” says Carol. “What about me? Or—”
She comes to a stop. Stands stock still with her hand still on her chest. “It’s gone, Oliver. The pain. It’s been coming and going for weeks, and it kicked up just now when Lilac touched me. I was scheduled for an operation this week, you know, but—”
Carol fumbles at a toggle on her duffel coat and shoves her hand inside. Bending over to make room, she worms her hand under her sweater and inside her blouse and—
“Yes!” she says, drawing her hand out. Stands straight, stunned. “Oh, thank you, thank you, Lilac! The lump in my breast is gone! I can’t believe it. I’m well, Oliver.”
She’s sobbing and laughing, even dancing around. She reaches under her coat again. “It’s really gone! It’s over!”
I hug her and hold her, and after a while, I kiss her, which is something I’ve been wanting to do all morning, or even since last night.
“Lucky,” I murmur under the splash of the rain.
“Sqink luck,” she says.
And it’s back to the Box Farm.
“What happened?” jokes Loulou at the sight of our dripping forms. “Did Doink throw you in the bay?”
“It wasn’t Doink,” says Carol. “The squink we met today was called Lilac.”
“Nice,” says Loulou. “Didn’t know about her. Don’t know how many sqinks there are. Let me give you some dry pants and shoes, Mom. And why not take a hot shower?”
“In a minute,” says Carol. “I have to tell you some news.” She glances at me, wanting me out of the picture.
I get it. “You two talk while I change.”
“I like your hat,” Loulou tells me.
“That’s part of the news,” says Carol. “A small part.”
“And listen,” I tell Loulou, unable to hold myself back. “Sqink luck is real. It did stuff. And I feel it. Don’t you?”
Slowly, Loulou nods.
And then I’m in my room. As I mentioned, thanks to my clever son, I have my own private shower, which is important. There’s a limit to how bohemian a guy my age wants to be. I shed my wet rags, and get under the spray.
In my head, sqink scenarios are hurtling at me like oafs in a mosh pit, or like lawyers raising issues. What if, what if?
At the same time, I’m liking the hot water, and I’m so very glad that I kissed Carol. She’s the first woman I’ve truly kissed in two years.
The first year after Sybil died, I picked up two different women at the San Francisco Opera, of all places. And I did kiss those women, kind of, but it never went further. I was too eager, or they didn’t like me, or whatever. I tried e-dating as well, but never hit a winner. I gave up.
Maybe Carol will sit in my room and chat with me all afternoon, watching me from the corners of her eyes in that special way she has. It would be cozy. Or, better, we could go to a museum or a café. Get away from the Box Fram posse. It’s probably too early to ask for sex.
I’m out of the shower now, drying myself, and admiring the new luster of my sqink-lucky skin. It’s like Lilac gave me a spa treatment. But then I flip back into worry mode. Visions of bad scenarios.
Crowds of seekers with grapefruits and rutabagas and radishes. Tobin with a bullhorn; he’s collecting fees. City officials are writing up violations. And here come humorless researchers, born-again believers, rabid xenophobes, con artists, invalids, news crews, gunmen, and the long-suffering police.
As for the sqinks—what’s their plan for us? Physical invasion? Demonic possession? Random destruction?
Someone’s scratching on my door. Cute, ironic scratching. Kittenish, almost.
“Come in, Carol.”
Over Carol’s shoulder, I can hear Tobin lecturing Loulou. Talking rapidly, with chiaroscuro in his vocal colors. Some dumb-ass plan.
“The hassles begin,” I say to Carol.
“He’s a moron,” says Carol, closing the door behind her. “I hope Loulou is not at all attached to him. But never mind them. I have to see my doctor. To check if the cure is real. I called her, and she said I can come right now.”
“Did you drive here?”
Carol shakes her head. Her white curls bounce.
“I’ll take you,” I say. “I have a nice old car. Non-robotic. I drive it myself.”
“I’d like that,” says Carol. And she kisses me again. “My new friend.”
Yes, I know that you, the younger reader, don’t want to read about hideously old people courting, but what can I say? Hope springs eternal. It’s never too late for spring. But don’t worry—if Carol and I ever get in bed, I’ll draw a veil. I’m not out to torment you.
I bundle up, and we go out in the big room, heading for my car. I’m wearing my lucky top hat, and I have an umbrella. Tobin’s voice fills the big room like a circling stream.
“Quiet,” says lucky Loulou. “I have to talk to Mom.”
“Hold on,” says Tobin, striking a pose, unwilling to cede the floor. “I’m making the crucial point that—”
Carol darts over and grabs the man by the throat. Her grip appears very strong. Tobin makes a choking noise. For the moment, he’s too shocked to strike back. Taking advantage of the man’s confusion, Carol gives him an effortless, tai-chi-type shove that sends him flailing backward, and he lands sprawled on the couch. She’s stronger than I realized.
“My daughter and I want to talk,” says Carol very calmly. “Don’t interrupt.”
Tobin holds up one hand in a calm-down gesture and rubs his throat with the other.
“Tell me more about your good luck with your art,” Carol says to Loulou. “I was so busy talking about myself that I forgot to ask for details. I know, I know, I know. I do that.”
“Well—if you’ll let me tell you—yes. I think I told you that my art prompts come faster. I don’t have to grope and tweak and iterate. I nail them all at once. Like the Muse whispers them in my ear. And, get this, I found a hundred-dollar bill on the sidewalk yesterday.” Loulou pauses and looks at Carol.
“Sqink luck!” the two of them say in unison.
“Tell me one of the art prompts,” I say, curious.
Loulou gives me an odd look. “Usually, we keep them private,” she says. “Like secret formulas. Or magic spells.”
“You can trust me,” I say, meaning to strike a bluff, jocular tone. “I’m hoping to seduce your mother.”
“Ew! Sick! You’re a disgusting man.”
“Oh, let him dream,” says Carol. “But don’t get cocky, Oliver. Or I’m gone.”
Loulou lets out a sudden guffaw. Flipping her mood. “Crazy times. Okay, here’s my prompt for an image of my sqink friend Doink: shuffle skewer floppy dome phonic dumbo eel marry me wheenk. Weirdly, that just popped into my head. The wheenk is crucial, and who knows why.”
Kind of a conversation stopper, that.
“You’re putting me on?” I finally say. “That’s a prompt?”
“Buy a license for the app,” Loulou airily says. “Try for yourself, Mister Nosy. Mister big bad motherfucker.” Then she starts laughing again.
Carol Cee is laughing, too. Maybe I’ve overreached myself with these women. We say goodbye to Loulou, and Carol leads me outside.
“Still raining for sure,” she says as we walk to my car.
“This is my faithful twenty-seven-year-old Beemer,” I tell her. I hold the umbrella over her as she gets in, the rain sounding a lovely, taut, drum-tattoo.
“It’s nice,” says Carol, comfortably inside with me. Good sqink-luck vibes fill the car. “I know how to drive, too. You hardly see a car like this anymore.”
“Sybil bought me this car for my sixtieth birthday,” I say. “It was the last year they sold drive-it-yourself models.” Probably I shouldn’t talk about my dead wife while on a date, if this is a date. But Carol’s a level-headed woman of the world. She won’t spook all that easily. “Sybil was a professor teaching English as a second language,” I continue. “And I was teaching mathematics at San Francisco State. Even though I was writing SF. We needed the money. I had the energy. We were young.”
“I’d give anything to be sixty,” says Carol with a rueful laugh.
She guides me to a brick building on Potrero Street near 20th. It’s hard to park there, so I wait in the car, watching the rain on my windshield, which is something I like to do. Admiring the ambient gnarl.
The world’s natural processes are, if you’ll forgive an edifying interruption, impossible to predict. Breezes, rocking leaves, flowing water, your body, your mind—all of them are equally complex, all of them are mathematically chaotic. Chaos isn’t rare. It’s not a disease. It’s the norm. It’s health.
“Health,” says Carol, getting back in the car. She’s been gone—forty-five minutes. “They scanned me. I’m clear. They say it’s as if I had a holographic radiation treatment.”
“Do you think—” I begin.
Carol puts a finger on my lips. “Let’s not think. I don’t want the luck to go away.” She gives me another kiss. I’m very happy.
“Celebrate?” I say. “It’s not even two o’clock. Lunch at the SFMOMA café? And we can look at the art.”
“Just like you’d do with Sybil?” says Carol, mocking me a little bit. “Don’t try to make me into her.”
“I don’t expect that,” I say. “Not at all. It’s good that you’re different. I like it.” A strained pause. “What would you do now if you were with your old husband?”
“Get drunk in a bar on a high building,” says Carol. “But, no, I’m trying not to do that as much. I already had a lot last night with Loulou. Isn’t that girl something? My little twin. But god forbid I say that. Museum café sounds sweet, Oliver. Intellectual and eager. And yes, I’ve been to SFMOMA before; I’m not a complete biz drone. Is the food good?”
“Sure. And they sell wine. And they’ve got paintings I’d love to show you. A giant Rosenquist called Leaky Ride for Dr. Leaky, with a lot of pencils and stars and a lipstick mouth, and a car part with a big drop of oil. The oil is sex, you understand.”
“Of course.”
“My favorite right now is this grid of portraits by Andy Warhol, doctored prints, hung next to each other. One of the best things Andy ever did.” I’m heading into town, happy to be getting my way, holding forth, with the water splashing up on both sides of the car, like we’re in a speedboat. There’s not much traffic today, and it’s all self-driving vehicles. Staying out of my way.
“Aaandy,” goes Carol, playfully dragging out the first syllable, saying it like ahh. “Aaandy. He’s a god for graphic artists. Made it over the wall into art land.” On a whim, she takes the sentence and extends it into a song. Her voice is rough and vibrant. I’m overwhelmed with lust.
“In a museum like this, there’s always a room that’s dark because they’re showing videos,” I say. “One of those rooms might be empty today. Maybe we can find one. You and me.”
Carol stops singing. “Why do you say a thing like that? Don’t be so forward.”
Forward is the word. I press on. “Where do you live, anyway? I can’t see us closing the deal in my room at the Box Farm with Loulou right outside.”
“You just get worse, don’t you,” says Carol, slightly amused. “A man on a mission. Like a dog. Where do I live? In a cabin in the mountains near La Honda.” She gives me a look. “Alone.”
“I don’t want to go there today. Freaks. Bikers. Too far in the rain.”
“The city’s full of hotels with people closing their deals.” Carol flicks a glance over at me, teasing. But before I take the bait, she cuts me short. “And it cannot be a place where you went with Sibyl.”
“Oh, um, yes, wow. Do you know a hotel?”
“Let’s be friends first,” says Carol. “And if it comes to that, I’d be okay with your room. Assuming that I would consider something physical with such a forward man. And it would be none of Loulou’s business. And aside from all that, I do want to check back at Box Farm to see what’s next with the sqinks.”
“Sqinkageddon. Sqinkathon. Sqinkadelic,” I say.
Carol runs with it. “Sqinkorama. Sqinkastic. Sqinka-doodle-doo,” and now she’s into song again. Utterly enchanting.
Someone’s honking at me. I guess I cut in front of them. More cars now, clouds of spray. I’m on track for the SFMOMA parking garage. A tricky left turn here, an unexpected right, and, yes, we’re on the homeward glide. I hope to god the museum’s open. They have these weird, random days off. But, yes, the lights are on inside.
Go to the Kickstarter here.