It was only a

January 06, 2003

It was only a toy and he was a grown man. His rationalization was that it was the only one left. There was one other...a guy, last name Feligno, in Dayton Ohio had found it five years ago and had dedicated a massive website to his find...it had been in a humidity controlled glass enclosure. Feligno's whole place went up in flames yesterday. Bad wiring. You scrimp on the wrong things and you pay. Now there was only one specimen unaccounted for.
He’d always had one eye peeled. Every garage sale. Hourly on Ebay. The last man in the world to read every item in the “miscellaneous” column of the classifieds -- in all papers, everyday. Embarrassingly it came to him in his dreams. It talked to him. Embarrassing not because it talked or that it was a doll but that it was a quasi racist image. The black butler who handed you your Pez on a platter. It was the prototype Pez. The only Pez where the almost tart rectangular candy loaf didn’t emerge from an open mouth. It slid out on a little silver tray. The butler talked to him in his dream in the voice of Al Jolson. He woke up wishing it didn’t do that. He wanted it to be a voice that didn’t condemn his obsession. This voice poisoned the underground river of his desires by drawing in that shameful tainted morsel of history.
Here he was hoping that the sweat from the palms of his hands would not in any way eat into the plastic that still encased the DNA of his fetish. Pornography that was once real and pure love. He put on the white gloves and lay his hands face up, thumbs out (he carried the gloves in his hipsack in case this moment ever came). The translucent fleshed and carbohydrate fed trekkie placed the still wrapped figure in his hands like a pianist gently but surely places a high C on the last note of the quietest and slowest movement to end the concert. This was it. The only one...and it was...perfect. Not a mark. It had obviously been kept in a dark and dry place because all the colours and materials were vivid and flawless.
His heart beat too hard to hear the radio or the doppler sweeps and flying pink noises of traffic. His blood rushed around like a cyclone and he was driving by homing instinct alone. He stole glances at it sitting on the passenger seat as he divined his way across familiar terrain. In fact, it was always in his peripheral vision. It was a part of him now.
The seller had known it was a collectible. He hadn’t known its true value when he handed it over. The Pez corporation had private detectives looking for the last missing prototype for at least twenty years. Speculators were confident (but they were speculators after all) that it could fetch at least $5,000,000.00. That’s what his mole had told him the Pez Corporation would pay for it. That was for the perfect specimen. A ratty and repairable figure would net a cool $3,000,000.00. He paid the hunched half man at the folding table the perfect decoy. The perfect decoy in “the impossible deal” was always $500. You offered $150 and when they laughed that particular knowing but not really knowing laugh ...you laughed too and said, “OK . . . You got me. Four seventy five”. If they narrowed their gaze and paused you knew you had someone who hadn’t a clue what it was really worth. It was in a flea market booth for chrissakes. Of course he had no idea. $500 is always the perfect amount to just suggest serious money. Its the breaking point before the big leagues and the worry and the mortgages money. Its huge “breaking 30 and still living at home with mom” money. No receipts and only wrinkled plastic bags from the grocery store near the university. This guy was barely out of short pants and lifting children’s Pokemon money. The man was wearing a “Spawn.com” T-shirt.
He wondered if he began to salivate more heavily when he spotted the butler. When he was transfixed he had a tendency to inadvertently drool. This was something that he had noticed happening more frequently. Maybe he stopped swallowing for a few too many cycles. It wasn’t exactly a teething drool in the baby sense but if he turned his head quickly, and the corner of his mouth was relaxed in the slightest, a glistening string would swing out in the way a tetherball does on the opening serve. A wet pendulum would break away and land across the side of his cheek and the top of his shoulder. Noticing this on his own made him feel he knew himself better than others knew him. Nobody had spotted one of these episodes and teased him mercilessly. This was the usual way. He made note of it first and knew how to hide it. Finding the butler was mesmerizing enough that he worried, only slightly, that he had slipped up and let his guard down. Telltale drooling could have given away the poker face required for the deal. None of that mattered now.

part one of a serial piece