the zeppelins of desire

by Jon Wesick

“Buy me a drink, sailor.” An armadillo in a skin-tight bodysuit slid onto the barstool next to me. Or was she an armadilla? Her ears were long, her snout pointy, and her teeth were peg-like molars.

I felt the oak leaves that designated me an officer on my collar. This aggravated my imposter syndrome because I didn’t recall joining the Navy. I didn’t recall my name either but that was only a label society put on me. I glanced out the window. The saguaro cactuses in sombreros surrounding the parking lot reassured me that no one would confront my lack of nautical knowledge anytime soon. The bartender brought her a mescal garnished with an agave stalk, which she downed in one gulp.

“Slow down! You don’t want that alcohol to hit you on an empty stomach.” I motioned for the bartender to bring her insects, grubs, and invertebrates.

She jumped off the stool, landed next to the pile of peanut shells on the floor, and rolled into a ball.

“Just my luck,” I muttered as I swept the pill bugs from my path on the way to the parking lot.

I used the remote unlock button on my key fob to locate my vehicle. It was a Prius with a Coexist bumper sticker and a gun rack. Before I could get behind the wheel, the USS Lakehurst, a helium-filled zeppelin, descended from the stratosphere. I remember reading about it in the Poughkeepsie Free Press. When Washington demanded reparations for all the shipping U-boats sunk during the First World War, Germany responded, “How about we give you this zeppelin and call it even, jah?” The president accepted because he was more concerned with the artery, gushing faster than the Monticello Dam’s Morning Glory spillway, in his brain. A rope ladder descended from the gondola and a sailor in cumulonimbus camouflage climbed down.

“Commander, you need to get aboard.”

“Sure. Just let me get my shotgun out of the gun rack. Can’t let a unique opportunity to hunt Andean condors from altitude go to waste.”

“No time for that, sir. The admiral wants to cast off for Katmandu at zero-ten-thirty. Two-dozen Seabees are eager to build an escalator to the top of K2 and we can’t let the Sherpas beat us to it.”

I climbed the swaying ladder after him. Before we reached the gondola, the Lakehurst dumped ballast and its eight Maybach engines turned double-bladed propellers accelerating the airship to the speed of a roadrunner on the highway below. Prop wash blew off my peaked cap as we dangled over Interstate 10. When we approached the trailer parks east of Yuma, I finally clambered aboard and the sailor showed me to my cabin. It was a small space with room for a sink, mirror, cot covered with a wool blanket, and an interior door, much like those that connect to adjoining suites. I tried the handle, it opened, and I entered a motel room. The complimentary shampoo, conditioner, and body wash were better than anything I could get on the zeppelin and since the hallway door was chained from the inside, I had the room to myself. I took advantage, adjusted the shower head to a needle spray, and used the coconut-scented toiletries to wash the stench of helium from my pores. Then, dressed in a plush robe, I poured tap water into the coffee machine. The K2-cups were decaf and the instructions were in Swedish but I made do. I added artificial creamer to my brouhaha, swished the hot liquid in my mouth, and began to feel drowsy as if starved for oxygen in an unpressurized cabin at twenty-thousand feet. I turned on the cable TV, got under the covers, and drifted off to a documentary about men who love lawnmowers.

“Injuries used to be rare,” said Dr. C.D. Rolodex, head of emergency medicine at Cedar Suez. He had a pencil mustache, eraser eyebrows, and his bald head resembling a soft-boiled egg that had been cooked for three to five minutes and then cooled in ice water before peeling. “We’d get a few husbands looking embarrassed in early May and send them home with a prescription for cheeseburgers. With the advent of automatic mowers, we’ve seen an uptick of injuries, requiring surgery to reattach severed uvulas. Homeowners need to remember that just because they can program a lawnmower, doesn’t mean it will love them back.”

“If you or someone you know is having an unhealthy relationship with an appliance, dial 555 for the Home and Garden Hotline,” the host concluded.

After exchanging his lab coat for a sombrero and camel-hair overcoat, Dr. Rolodex took the elevator to the parking garage. He had twenty minutes for lunch so every second counted. He raced his Plymouth Barracuda to Home Depot, hurried to aisle forty-one, stopped in front of a Muntjac riding mower, and admired its sensuous green-and-yellow livery in a state of rapture. He recited the specs as if chanting a love poem. “500 cc, 17.5 horsepower engine. Welded steel frame. 42-inch cutting system. Adjustable mowing height.”

“May I help you?” a woman in an orange vest asked.

“No!” The man in the sombrero grabbed a seat cover and hurried away.

Claire Voyant watched him join the checkout line before she walked past the two-by-fours in aisle forty-two and entered the ladies’ room. She closed a stall door behind her, removed an inhaler from her purse, and breathed a mixture of pumpkin-spice helium and methane. As part of her training in interstellar espionage, she’d learned to hold her breath for hours but still needed to inhale the atmosphere of planet Styganor Prime twice a day. So far, she’d kept her gas cylinders hidden from her human husband, Ned. They’d been married for three years and she hadn’t worked up the courage to tell him she was part of the advance force for an alien invasion. Her instructors had warned her about romantic relationships but how could she resist a man whose breath reminded her of the balloon sharks that prey on seven-legged bovines back home. Her grandQ8ZV always said communication was crucial to a successful marriage and Claire had let Ned down. The news would be less of a shock if she told him before Earth’s subjugation. She resolved to confess after work. Vietnamese take out might soften the blow.

Claire adjusted her vest, after scratching the scars left from amputating her tentacles. On her way back to the lawncare department, she spotted a man in a black suit and sunglasses. He dressed too formally for a hardware store and could only be an agent from Area 52, the government installation even more secret than its predecessor. Another man in identical dress feigned interest in garden gnomes. Claire hoisted a fifty-pound sack of fertilizer onto her shoulder to hide her face and carried it outdoors.

After dropping the bag, she shed her vest and walked away, outwardly nonchalant even through her six-chambered heart was beating faster than an overclocked 3.2 GHz Core i9 processor. A black SUV with tinted windows rolled past so she ducked into a No Pho King Way and exited into an alley through the back door. The dumpsters smelled of basil stems and she slipped on a puddle of fish sauce. Claire took a series of random turns, joined a crowd of worshippers entering a church, and sat in a pew near the front. Reverend Doctor Ludwig Buzzsaw began his sermon after the congregation sang “A Mighty Fortress is Our God.”

“As part of my pastoral duties, I ministered to a woman at Cedar Suez who suffered from stage-four bone cancer. Her pelvis was shattered and even morphine couldn’t ease her pain. She asked me, ‘How can a loving God put me through so much torment?’ I replied, ‘How can you be so selfish to deny God’s love to the cancer cells in your body?’

“You see, friends. God is universal love. He loves Edna and the malignancy, equally. He loves the armadillo and the cougar, the howler monkey and the ocelot, the roadrunner and the coyote. He loves the gardener and the lawnmower, the toilet seat and the herpes, the chimneysweep and testicular cancer.” He gestured to dozens of plastic cups. “Here are thousands of tapeworms in need of a home. Come drink and emulate God’s love.”

Jean Claude Petard rose from a rear pew as dozens of men in black suits entered. After taking the escalator to the basement, he set out lutefisk and loaded the coffee machine with K2-cups. Addicts filed in and arranged folding chairs in a circle. At quarter past, Jean Claude called the meeting to order and asked if anyone wanted to share. A man in a sombrero stood.

“I’m C.D. and I’m a lawncare addict. I’ve been six-weeks clean.”

“Hello, C.D.”

“It started innocently enough. After working long hours in the emergency room, I needed something to take the edge off. I started pulling weeds with a trowel and felt an immediate release like a warm shower of love. Soon, I was buying lawn spreaders and fifty-pound bags of fertilizer. It came to a head when I installed a drip-irrigation system. June told me about Jimmy’s basketball recital but I didn’t attend because I had to set the timers just right. You’d think I hit bottom when she filed for divorce but that just meant I could spend more time on my lawn. Work suffered. I lost a patient while contemplating organic pesticides during uvula reattachment surgery. I called the Lawn and Garden helpline and they referred me to this program.”

The neighing of zebra stripes painted on the walls by the sun woke me to a morning TV show helmed by anchors with acrylic smiles and polypropylene hair.

“The Navy’s last remaining airship, the USS Lakehurst, crashed while bisecting the Maginot Line. Initial reports indicate that the crew of twenty-five perished.”

The door connecting to the adjoining cabin loomed like a gate to hell. I didn’t open it.

Photo of Jon Wesick

BIO: Hundreds of Jon Wesick’s poems and stories have appeared in journals such as the I-70 Review, New Verse News, Paterson Literary Review, and Unlikely Stories. He is a regional editor of the San Diego Poetry Annual and host of the Gelato East Fiction Open Mic as well as the NAV Arts poetry reading. His latest short story collection is Saint John the Blasphemer. He lives in Manchester, New Hampshire and longs for gene editing to bring giant wombats back from extinction. http://jonwesick.com