Free Swimming in the Volcano by Bob Shacochis Page A

generator to the battery of the fire truck. The cables were attached carelessly to their posts and the battery blew up. One man was trundled away to the hospital, his face sprayed with acid. A belated inspection of the old generator’s spark plugs revealed they were corroded beyond use; a new set was procured. Another triumph in the day-by-day siege of technology upon the collective wit. The plane was invited down from its holding pattern over Los Muertos Channel.
    Tillman was at the airport to collect his latest arrivals, among them the newest recruit in a seemingly inexhaustible supply of girls he haddated in New York City. He pointed her out to Mitchell and Saconi, a mere wafer of womanhood, blond hair and a face shaped like a strawberry. She was at Johnnie’s side, sharing confidential laughter, jitter-bugging, not ashamed of her energy or the excitement of being a newcomer. She was one of the first to claim her luggage and escape through the queue, dashing into Tillman’s arms to bestow a genuine kiss, one of her legs raised like a flamingo’s while she delivered it. “What a flight,” she exclaimed. Her voice was sharp with urban assertiveness. She whirled around, her hair elevating with girlish flair off the slopes of her cheeks. “It was strictly the twilight zone. We could see the pilot fall asleep reading the newspaper. What’s going on here anyway? Is there a war?” You could tell from the eagerness of her smile that a war would be just the thing. Her name was Adrian. She was the publicist for a syndicate of galleries in Soho, an impresario of special events. Dressed in Eddie Bauer sportswear, safari garb from the young boy’s rack, she looked lifted from the pages of
Seventeen
, Miss Global Frolic, her lips with an acrylic shine, her skin unblemished but for the splatter of butterscotch freckles on each pink cheek and brow, altogether too cute for the world outside of vanity magazines and so, Mitchell surmised, a woman who saw pampering as an inalienable right.
    â€œAre you two meeting somebody?” Tillman asked, looking from Saconi to Mitchell.
    â€œHis girlfriend,” Adrian volunteered. “I met her on the plane.”
    â€œI didn’t know you had a girlfriend,” said Tillman.
    â€œI don’t.”
    Adrian’s eyes widened. “Oh, terrific,” she said tartly. “That’s news to Johanna.”
    â€œSounds like you’re in for some fun,” Tillman grinned, tugging Adrian backward. He picked up her canvas suitcase and directed her toward a group of pale and weary North Americans filing through the Customs door.
    â€œWait and meet her,” Mitchell said. He wanted them there as insulation against the rising goose bumps, the dwindling oxygen, the cool agony and the deadpan heart that were the messengers of Johnnie’s imminence. But Tillman’s flock was waiting, they had to go, and Saconi begged off too to catch a charter flight to Cotton Island where the Princess kept him on retainer to entertain at her playpen for terminal bloodlines and her pukka friends. He swaggered off to the airport’s only gate where an official was taking down the number 1 and replacing it with the number 2. No baggage but his guitar in a scuffed case. Whatever the musician needed, Princess’ staff wouldprovide and Saconi didn’t want to underuse the privilege. People stepped into his way for a word, island women turned their heads brazenly, called to him,
eh, eh, tek me where you goin, mahn, sing baby sweet fah me
. Mitchell turned back to his own object of private fame,
femme vital
and
femme fatale
, the love that had slipped through his fingers, the celebrity of his one great personal disaster.
    What Mitchell watched through the glass wall was all too familiar: Johnnie dicking around, the exclusive style of behavior as if her timing, like Greenwich’s, set the pace for everyone else, oblivious not to people but to what was