The Second Circle
A large man with a shaven skull a stood in the doorway to the next level. ‘Stand on the scale’, he said. ‘I don’t have all day.’
‘Kiss my ass, Minos’, Vergil said. ‘You have eternity.’
Minos narrowed his eyes and blocked the opening.
‘The man’s a prospie’, Vergil said. ‘Stand aside’. As they walked past, the Founder got a whiff of Minos’ breath. It smelled like halitosis, pork roll, and Elizabeth. At the bottom of the stairway, the passage opened onto a curved terrace that was battered by wind.
‘This is for people who were governed by lust’, Vergil said.
‘It must be packed’, the Founder said.
‘Sadly, no’, Vergil said. ‘Not a lot of young people these days.’
‘Is the new polyamorous trend good for business?’
‘Not really. Have you seen those people?’
As ducks will scatter before a large wave, a group of people fluttered by on the wings of an eddy. The founder recognized a man named J.B., who had been the maintenance guy at his park in Central New York. J.B. had kicked his wife out when he had found her in bed with his eldest son. Shortly thereafter, he had taken up with the wife’s younger sister. When the Founder spoke Mandarin, he fumbled for the term to describe the relationship between the daughter J.B. fathered with his ex-wife’s sister and the granddaughter who was fathered by the son who was rogering his step-mother. J.B.’s lips collapsed inward over the place usually occupied by his false teeth. Orifice, the Founder thought. Hard to find replacements here.
‘J.B.!’, the Founder said. J.B. turned his attention from the shade on his right shoulder. She was a woman of thirty-nine or so with blue hair, black lipstick and a dirty white robe that fell slatternly from one shoulder. The shade on his other side twisted her torso when she walked in a way that made it look like she had narrow hips, a steatopygian butt, and enormous breasts.
‘Hey’, J.B. said. He did not seem surprised to see the Founder. The shade to his right brushed a strand of hair from his forehead.
‘I hear Saul passed’, the Founder said. Saul was the son who had caused it all.
‘We lost touch’, J.B. said. ‘I believe he is on a lower level. Violence or wrath, they told me.’
‘I couldn’t imagine’, the Founder said. A child going before you.
‘You win some, you lose some.’
The shade to J.B.s left stuck her hand into the back of J.B.’s waistband, on top of his coccyx bone. J.B. looked into the middle distance.
‘You going to introduce me’, the Founder asked.
‘This is – what’s your name?’, J.B. asked the shade next to him.
The shade giggled. ‘Semiramis’, she said. Not to be ignored, the shade on J.B’s right stepped forward and stuck her hand out. When the Founder moved to shake it, his hand passed through hers, like a hologram. ‘Dido’, she said.
‘How long are you around’, J.B. asked the Founder.
The Founder glanced back at Vergil, who folded his arms and shook his head. ‘Just passing through’, he said.
‘Come by the clap clinic after nine’, J.B. said. ‘It’s off the hook.’
‘You have a clap clinic here’, the founder asked.
‘Fuck yeah’, J.B. said. And then a bunch of women with Texas accents and Junior League apparel walked by. J.B. looked toward them and flitted away. The Founder thought he smelled something – natural gas, peppermint, or smoked mozzarella – and then lost consciousness.
.
The Third Circle
When The Founder woke, Vergil was standing next to him saying, ‘You good?’ The Founder sat up and said, ‘Where are we?’
‘Careful where you put your hands’, Vergil said. When the Founder looked down, he saw that the ground he was sitting on was a checkerboard of dirty baby wipes and dog shit. “You might want to stand up’, Vergil said.
‘What the fuck is that’, the Founder asked.
‘Don’t worry’, Vergil said.
In front of them, slobbering green bile and baring its teeth, stood a three-headed pit bull. Its eyes were red and when it growled, phlegm dripped and matted its fur. It smelled like a home in the park in central New York that smelled like gangrene. The Founder remembered that, when he lived in Brooklyn, a pit bull that lived across the street from him would tear apart traffic cones when it got hungry. This one held a kettlebell in its middle mouth and the hind feet of a golden retriever in its right. The left head looked like Joe Rogan. From the center collar hung an official-looking paper.
‘He says we can’t pass’, the Founder said. ‘He is an emotional support animal.’
‘Fuck that’, Vergil said. From the folds of his tunic, he produced a paper and waved it in front of the dog. The dog whimpered, put its tail between its legs, and stood aside.
‘What was that’, the Founder asked.
‘It’s two things. First, it’s informal guidance in the form of a HUD letter dated June 12, 2006. It is also official guidance in the form of FHEO Notice FHEO 2020-01. In these documents, HUD states that a landlord need not accommodate a service animal if that service animal constitutes a direct threat to the health or safety of individuals other than the owner thereof.’
‘You are a genius.’
‘So I have been told.’
The weather had taken a turn for the worse. It was snowing – the kind of heavy, globally-warmed snow that turns to ice at night and mud during the day. A large structure at the edge of the field where they stood looked like a water riser with a heat tape wrapped around it. The pipe had burst and the water from the pipe fed the clouds that dropped the snow. When the Founder pulled his foot out of some muck to take a step, his foot came up but his shoe remained in the ground.
‘Those are Air Jordans’, the Founder said. ‘Fuck.’
‘Watch where you step’, Vergil said.
In front of them, the Founder saw an open septic tank. Inside, he saw two people. One was a young woman named Rachel, who had flushed cat litter down the toilet in the park in northern New York. The other was an older woman named Maureen. She had lived next to a Y in the sewer main in the park in central New York State that had often clogged with baby wipes.
‘Rachel!’ the Founder said. ‘I have a question for you. Were you rogering Mike?’ Mike was the manager at that park. Rachel had left under a cloud.
‘How is the park’, Rachel asked. She put her hand on the side of the tank in an effort to climb out. Instead of solid matter, her hand fell on something grainy and earth-colored – flushable cat litter, the Founder thought – and slipped. Terrified of being left alone in the tank, Maureen picked a clump of baby wipes from the soup, wrapped it around Rachel’s eyes, and pulled her back into the tank. Maureen slugged Rachel in the eye. Rachel grabbed the back of Maureen’s head with pushed her face down into the liquid. After a minute, Maureen surfaced and bit Rachel’s ear. Rachel pushed her away and the two women trod water. Both looked up at the visitors.
‘Mike has found another woman’, the Founder said. ‘They seem happy.’
‘The bitch’, Rachel said. ‘I think I know who it is.’
‘Any predictions for the future’, the Founder said.
‘In Washington, the Ghibellines will win the executive branch and both houses of Congress.’
‘Fuck you.’
‘But in the state legislature, the Guelphs will retain their supermajority. In reaction to the Ghibelline victory, they will tighten their state-law stranglehold on the manufactured housing space. Lot rents will be frozen. Property owners who file a motion to evict a resident will be required to create an AirBNB in their own place of abode, where they will be required to house the evictee until the evictee finds rent-free accommodations. Park owners will be required to hold all-hands meetings with residents at which the owners will be required to engage in extensive self-criticism. Owners who refuse to do that will be beaten and liquidated, and their property distributed to residents. The government will get a cut, of course.’
Maureen raked her fingernails – long, sharp, red and artificial – across Rachel’s back. Rachel batted her away and continued. ‘There will be a window during which park owners will be able to cash out before the shit really hits the fan. The Ghibelline leader will bankrupt the Treasury with reckless tax cuts and discretionary spending, but until the bond market tanks, interest rates will be low, equities will go up and the Florin will be strong. Manufactured housing is interest rate arbitrage. When interest rates fall, so do cap rates. Sell before you become a kulak! Qui ose gagne! Sauve qui peut!’
The Founder looked at Maureen. I would hate to run into those fingernails, he thought. Particularly during a re-education session. ‘I have to ask’, he said. ‘Did you flush those baby wipes down the toilet? We couldn’t snake them or jet them. We had to tear up that run of pipe and replace it completely.’
‘It wasn’t me’, she said.
‘But yours was the only home on that line.’
Maureen ducked her head into the liquid, broke the surface, shook her hair and smiled. ‘Must have been someone else’, she said. ‘We never used baby wipes.
Rachel crooked her knee around Maureen’s neck and grabbed her hand in an effort to pull her elbow into an arm-lock. The last the Founder saw of them was Rachel’s legs wrapped around Maureen’s neck locked at the ankles and squeezing. Maureen was struggling to keep her head in the air and Rachel’s head was fully submerged.
‘Will they ever learn’, the Founder asked Vergil. ‘I mean – will they learn from their mistakes and perhaps progress to someplace else? People should be given the chance to redeem themselves.’
‘If they came back, would you trust them not to flush baby wipes down the toilet?’
‘Fuck no.’
‘Well, there you go.’