― Thomas Ligotti
I’m scared—very scared, and need to drop out of sight for a while—maybe disappear for a few years and bury myself in an obscure research project I know about, up in Nunavut.
I wish I never answered Zav Rosenzweig’s call or gone out to the New Mexico desert to meet him.
I’ve known Zav for ten years. I met him after he graduated Hebrew University and he worked with me a few years at UCLA.
He was a patient researcher, a hard worker and very independent—it was his independent spirit that led him to New Mexico, where last I heard he was living out of a battered orange pick up truck on the edge of the desert.
I continued to stay on in California working in Neuro Imaging and Cognitive Functioning.
There were days when I envied my friends—Zav and his exotic lifestyle and Hershel Oliver, another former colleague, who went on to work with the FBI in field intelligence, analyzing and tracking foreign threats.
My life had fallen into a comfortable, if not mind-numbing routine, until one fatal Friday, just after work, when I picked up my cell and heard Zav’s exited voice.
“Hey, Mark—Man, am I glad I got you. What are you doing right now?”
I looked at the seventy year-old retiree beside me lazily lifting 2-pound dumbbells and the tired housewives going through the motions on the gym’s treadmills.
“Nothing, buddy—absolutely nothing.”
“I’ve got a proposition for you—jump on a plane and jet down to New Mexico. I’ll meet you at the Santa Fe Municipal Airport. I’m onto something really big—it’ll knock your socks off.”
“Look Zav—I just can’t run down there on a whim—What’s up?”
“I can’t tell you over the phone—it’s that big. You’ll have to take my word—you won’t be sorry.”
I was speechless.
“Oh, by the way, I’ve already booked your flight and you’ve got just over ninety minutes to get to the airport.”
“Are you nuts? I haven’t had time to pack, or anything!”
“Just grab an overnight case and come on down. You won’t be sorry.”
There was a long pause while I weighed my options—stay in L.A. and be bored out of my skull, or take a ride on the friendly skies.
“So, what do you say?”
“I’ll be there and you better buy the Margaritas.”
“You’re on, chum—See you when you touch down. I’ll be in a yellow Avis rental car.”
And that was that. I was in and out of the shower, packed and on my way to the airport in twenty minutes.
An hour and a half later I was looking down on white cloud fields and wondering what the hell I was doing.
Truth was, I was having an adventure. A novel way for me to spend the weekend.
Zav was waiting as promised and we drove to some ramshackle bar and he ordered Guacamole Rita’s.
I arched an eyebrow and he just smiled his big white-toothed grin. “Don’t worry, Bro—it’s not a lady’s drink—made with Blanco and see—”
He ran his pinky around the rim—“Kosher salt, of course!”
“Of course,” I laughed.
We sat and talked and I filled him in on the campus scuttlebutt—Finally, I came round to discussing the elephant in the room.
“This better be good, dude. I’ve got some nice chicks waiting for me on a treadmill back in L.A.”
His eyes grew wide as the Moon. “Good? This is friggin’ nuts, Man! Wait ‘till you hear the details.”
I sat back and sipped my Rita. “I’m all ears.”
He glances round the empty bar, and then leans in conspiratorially across the table. “I met this Aztec bio-researcher—crazy old coot, I figured—always out in the desert for weeks, collecting plants specimens.”
“Yeah,” I said, trying to egg him on.
“Anyway, I bring him here one night for drinks and he gets sloshed. He confides he’s found some really weird desert plant that only blooms in moonlight. Says it’s got weird hallucinogenic powers.”
“Go on,” I say, already feeling let down—all I can think is, I jetted all this way just to hear about another peyote type hallucinogen.
Zav’s excited though and needs to tell his story.
“Anyway, I’m kind of half-listening to this researcher’s story because I’m not into that Carlo Castaneda shit and I’m bored hearing about mescaline dreams.”
My ears prick up.
“Then, this old guy reaches into this satchel he wears round his shoulder and takes some of these dried leaves between his thumb and forefinger—“Don’t look like much, does it?” he says. I nod. It doesn’t.”
He sips from his Margarita. He’s got a bit of a flair for the dramatic, so I let him milk his moment.
Then, the old guy puts a couple of pinches in an envelope and tells me to try it when I sober up. “What’s it gonna do?” I ask him. He just shrugs and says, “You tell me when you come back.”
“Then, he gets up and walks out into the desert and disappears right before my eyes, like he’s some kind of shape-shifter or something.”
I had a chance right there and then to tell Zav where to go and take the next plane back to L. A. and maybe as things turned out, I should have done that.
I mean, shape-shifters and disappearing desert hermits? It all seemed so incredulous, but knowing Zav and his nuts and bolts down-to-earth nature, it made it all so damn irresistible.