The
Undeniable Ravana Vajpayee by Paul Toth
It all happened this morning. It was a clear blue day. No
use giving warning. It was damn humid for sunny Southern California,
and that was a clue. The forecasters said it would turn partly
cloudy and that thunderstorms were a possibility. That was
an even bigger clue. Anyone who could stay at home should
have done so, not because of what I would do, but because
Southern Californians drive like they're on roller skates
if it rains fifteen seconds. We Midwestern transplants have
no problem. A little rain is nothing to us.
My
name is Ravana Vajpayee. I don't speak like the guy on the
Simpsons but have a Midwest accent, flat and corny as a tortilla.
My deep brown skin and eyes may seem exotic, but to me they're
travel posters for a place I've never been, as I was born
in Wabash, Indiana and later moved to Los Angeles. Today,
I was going to do something very bad, but it was also very
good in a way no one but me would admit.
I've
spent most of my life designing missile guidance systems in
a building near Los Angeles. I do not have a thousand gods,
nor even one. I believe in nothing, not even Ravana Vajpayee.
I know the gods exist, believe me, but to pretend they don't
makes me feel better.
I
consider myself beyond selfish, so monstrously nonexistent
my mother's womb's must weep at the waste of effort in my
production. She died a twisted tree, her only fruit one sour
green apple even a worm wouldn't eat.
I
never married. I can remember every one of my seventeen dates,
all of which ended with something like, "Well, Ravana,
it was -- but -- " It's okay: Anyone who tried to love
me would have disappeared inside the hole in my zero.
I
was lucky to have had so many dates, all with women at work.
Plenty of secretaries passed through. It was a boring place
to work, brightly lit and filled with numbers and numbers,
spinning and turning, jumping through hoops, like mathematical
poodles. The scientists were poodles, too. We had no leashes.
Our job was to unleash. Our bite was worse than our bark.
If
Barry Manilow wrote the songs that made the whole world sing,
we built the bombs that made the widows weep. It was not something
that bothered us. Much more brilliant scientists invented
weapons that made ours look like model rockets. My lack of
status showed. Perhaps that's why the women scientists wouldn't
even look at me, and I never asked them out. They dated confident
scientists only. They would have laughed in my face.
One time I went out with a secretary named Sally. That was
the closest I ever got to sex. She looked at me while we laid
on her bed. She said I had angry eyes. The comment angered
me. It was a hell of a thing to say. But it was true and I
left soon after.
Yes,
I'm a virgin, at least in real life. It's a good thing. If
I had done in real life what I did in my imagination, there
would be a hundred billion Ravana Vajpayee's, all with angry
eyes.
Let's
get to the disaster. I was, to be honest, feeling pretty charged
up that morning, as if I had drank eight pots of coffee. I
felt like a drug addict who couldn't get his drug of choice,
and my path was best avoided. All manner of random destruction
was possible, the result of interior forces walking down the
street beyond detection. It all reminded me of my mother's
last dreams, which pressed down on her like a roof of sorrow.
In the hospital, she actually told me those dreams, whispering
them in my ear. "Ravana, I see terrible things..."
Did she know from the start? Did she think I could just admit
it? How could I? I'm a little tricky. It's my nature.
Hollywood
had never seen a sky like me, a weird shade of my angry eyes
and deep brown skin, not the black clouds they would cast
in their movies. The birds were so quiet, and the coyotes
burrowed into shrubs, and the cats leapt for cover, and the
cockroaches ducked into the deepest crevices. The people,
though, could not be stopped. They spent their time worrying
about earthquakes, never guessing a tornado was on its way.
When I whirled through the canyons, it was with a force that
shocked even me. I took in Mercedes, BMW's, Porches, license
plates, palm tree leaves, cigarette butts, bottlecaps, sunglasses,
cassette tapes, compact disks and 1,232 cell phones, all of
which I spat into a cloud of debris that could choke every
president on Mount Rushmore.
Most
of the animals survived, especially my friends the snakes
and deer. Not so many of my friends from the weapons industry
survived. A lot of them lived in the Hollywood Hills. My intentions
were not pure; they just bothered me, the way they slept with
all those secretaries who spurned my advances. It was my pleasure
to maim and kill them.
Oh, mother, I'm so glad you were not alive to see it, for
it was far worse than your dreams. Yet there was beauty to
a twister zooming down Laurel Canyon faster than a Porsche,
so completely unguided until I turned toward the residences
and took my revenge. Then Ravana Vajpayee drifted to earth
like dust, the world transformed. It was not something that
could please a mother, but there was beauty in the destruction.
It cannot be denied.
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