Falstaff Glimpses

[Falstaff]

Half an hour he'd been in Sacramento, and already he'd lost his pants in a Mahjong game against three old Cambodian ladies in the back of a laundromat. As soon as he'd gotten off the bus, they'd been there, chain smoking on the corner with their walkers and their vicious motives. He'd thought Mahjong and Chinese Checkers were the same game. Anyway, it had seem fated, what with them being there getting lung cancer at the same time as the bus drop-off, challenging him to a game of Chinese Checkers, or Mahjong rather--a game of chance. How was that a coincidence? Fate demanded an oblation. And what kind of jovial Acanthus fool would he be to refuse such an open door, even if there were lions or demons or hustling Cambodian senior citizens on the other side?

Now, he's standing on a ledge above the laundromat in his mostly-clean tighty-whities doing his best impression of a pigeon. "Coo . . . Coo." The all-white pigeon was very valuable, those ladies had told him, at least valuable enough to get his pants back. They'd shown him the ladder, and the rest was history. "Coo." He dropped into a crouch, picked up the gait of a pigeon as he slunk his way to the edge of the building, balanced precariously above a thirty-foot fall to miserable and embarrassing death. Of course, he would catch the pigeon. Fate had led him there. She might have been a bitch but she sure was funny. "Coo."

The pigeon strutted faster, fluttered its wings. Falstaff dove, slipped, tumbled, fell . . . thirty feet into a cart of dirty laundry. Imagine the surprise on the Cambodian kid's face who'd been pushing the cart, to see a pantless short man fall from the roof. Falstaff looked up, watched the white pigeon fly away against the backdrop of blue sky and bright sun. "Coo." Fate . . . had never intended him to catch the pigeon. He should be dead, but he'd trusted her, and she'd saved him. He smiled, rolled around until he tumbled the laundry cart over, and the marched back to the Mahjong ladies. Free, the pigeon was free, like the Free Council.

No pigeon, no pants, they'd told him. It didn't matter. Like that pigeon, he was free too--he could feel it on the fresh breeze: in his lungs, on his pantless private parts. Double or nothing, they told him.

What was double a pair of pants? Who was he to ask? "Pass me the checkers, ladies."

There were no checkers in Mahjong, they told him, right before they took his shoes. Fate: cruel mistress, cold-hearted comedian . . . but never a dull moment.

[Falstaff]

Life itself is a bad joke; all Falstaff does is emulate it--at least that's what he tells himself, staggering drunk up the railroad tracks.

Fate, she would prove that they were wrong, those serious others with their secret contempt and their clickish snobbery, like they'd never known an Acanthus--dutiful boors. "Who's the fool now?" He howls at the moon. He is, he knows. And he's fooling everybody. You didn't have to read much Shakespeare to know the fool is not all he seems, that he's wise in his own way. Fate, you see, works out everything in Time. He's about to prove it to himself. Where's a train when you need one?

There were other mages who made their way in the world by batting their eyes or cracking their knuckles, but not him, no. He hiccups, burps--it tastes like rum. There were plenty of pretty boys and tough women in the world, carbon copies with slight variations. But Falstaff is original, and very drunk. He could see, with magic, the movements and machinations of fate, time. If others saw, they wouldn't try so hard either, wouldn't be so eager--they'd ride the wave, relax a little, have fun, and not take themselves so seriously.

He pauses to piss; it's easy because his fly is already down. Urine splatters on iron rail, shoe sole. A bright light blinds him. "Woot! Woot!" it says.

He finishes up, leaves his fly down so he doesn't have to unzip it the next time. "Woot! Woot! yourself, you big dumb train."

Tons of metal rush forward, enough to flatten him, erase his memory from the earth.

Falstaff summons Fate, musters his gnosis, casts: nothing.

The train barrels forth, closing the distance, smoke rising in its trail.

He'd felt the spell go off. What had happened? Was Fate finished with him, him who trusts her so well, who seldom lifts a finger, knowing the scope of her authority. So be it. "Alea iacta est--the die is cast; so said Caesar, so says Falstaff, Fate's Fool." He advances on the train.

As he feels the rush of its forewinds he trips on an untied shoelace--why tie them if you're only going to take them back off in several hours--twists, lands right on his back in the middle of the tracks.

WHOOSH! Tons of metal pass, fast as fast can be, inches from his nose. He shudders beneath its cold wind, stays stiff, still . . . starts laughing, though none are around to hear it, and none could over the roaring of the train. Fate had intervened.

When it had passed, he felt his hair standing on end. He pulled the card from his pocket, tarot, The Fool: weather-worn and wrinkly. He'd tell folk it was his business card, hand it to them, and then ask for it back because he only had the one. The Fool, Acanthus, perched on the edge of a cliff, smiling. Falstaff understands where most never will: The Fool smiles because he knows he won't fall until Fate decrees.

Falstaff exhales, pukes out a pint of rum, and then continues down the railroad tracks.

[Falstaff]

It's a problem with the bus seats: they're too comfortable--perfect for napping. It's serendipitous, the opportunity to demonstrate his absolute trust in Fate and Time.

  Rote: Fortunate Timing

Date		Action		Roll		Result
2014-10-31 17:08:44		Falstaff rolls 7 to 3 (Wits) + Persuasion (1) + Fate (3) = 7 DP (10 Again)		5, 4, 9, 4, 7, 3, 1		1 success

His spell would ensure that he would wake at just the right Time; it's better than an alarm clock.

While he sleeps, he dreams (O O Dream): about the Banishers, and the Sumo he never met, and Asp hitting him in the dick with a nightstick, and the ensuing erection, and Zodiac fiddling in her purse . . .

A screech: Bus brakes. Last stop. There's no one left on the bus. He gets off, doesn't know where he is, shrugs, starts walking. He does neck rotations while he walks--sometime bus-naps make his neck stiff. That's when he sees them: a ganged out bunch of teenagers: jean jackets, bandanas, boots with the laces undone. They're spinning, so he stops doing neck rotations.

"Hello, jail-bound lower-class teenagers of marginal education and minimal paternal influence!" Falstaff greets.

"What the fuck did you just say?" the alpha degenerate asks.

Falstaff begins to repeat himself, this time very slowly. "He-llo, jail-bound low-er-class teen-a-gers of mar-gin-al--"

He cut off. "I heard what you said the first time, mother fucker."

"Then why'd you ask? I'm not your daddy, by the way, if that's what you're asking with the whole 'mother fucker' bit."

They look at one another. One twirls the point of his index finger around his temple. "Give me your wallet!" the alpha says.

Falstaff reaches for his wallet, finds it missing. Must have left it at the Consilium. He pulls out the lining of all his pockets. "Have you getting jobs? Companies have hiring quotas for minorities, not that white trash is a minority, at least not around here it looks like . . ."

"Shut up!" the alpha draws his gun. "And give your damn watch."

Falstaff unclasps his Mickey-Mouse Timex and hands it to him. "It's got Roman numerals; are you sure you'll be able to read it?"

The kid cold-cocks him with the butt of his pistol, and then they run off with his watch.

As Falstaff lies on his back on the cold pavement, without watch or wallet, he meditates on how right he'd been to trust Fate and Time. Because his wallet was gone, they couldn't steal it. And there is something symbolic to the theft of his watch. It seems it's Time's way of saying that Falstaff is unbound by time, that for him it should always be: right now.

He gets up, and continues walking. As he resumes his neck rotations, his world spins.

[Falstaff]

Boring: Fate had fastened him to a bench. How is this tribute? No daring. No excitement. He'd done everything he could think of, sitting there . . . sitting still: looked for the shapes of animal crackers in the clouds, tried to lure pigeons to roost upon his head, even wondered how much weight he would lose if he could convert his bald pate into a solar panel. It had been minutes! Minutes of inactivity, of sitting there with all the nothing and the silence and . . . if he had a magic marker he could make up Sudoku puzzles on the wooden panels of the bench. But who would solve them? Certainly not him.

What is Fate up to? He'd sooner swim with sharks while wearing a bacon swimsuit, sooner juggle chainsaws with shoes made of butter . . . on grease-covered ice. There were others with stagnant souls for stagnant work, subject matter experts on sloth--not that he wasn't. Sure, he got next to nothing done, but that wasn't the same as doing nothing.

Alright. Fate is trying to teach him something. The sooner he learns it, the sooner he can see about bacon and sharks and butter and chainsaws. He puts on his learning cap, not literally--that's ridiculous. What would Fate have him learn? Falstaff spies a pigeon, hooting, strutting around, mistaking a straw wrapper for a spaghetti noodle. That's it: straw wrappers aren't spaghetti noodles. But what does it mean?

Joggers jog about him. Businessmen busy themselves by him. And bikers bike on by. The world keeps on moving, always, even when Falstaff isn't? What does that have to do with straw wrappers? He thinks . . . he thinks he hears the voice of Time as well from the front of the classroom. He strains to hear. Straw wrappers do not equal spaghetti noodles. Yes . . . Falstaff sits on his head on the bench and screams, "Eureka!"

Busyness does not equal productivity. Falstaff was neither, so it mattered little to him practically. But magically, the world keeps on moving . . . he might use that to take his magic to the next level. Use the already forward momentum of Time and Fate . . . like Mage judo! There's something to it. No more thought required. Busyness does not equal productivity, after all, especially for Falstaff when that busyness is of the thinking sort.

Class adjourned. Falstaff leaves the bench.

[Falstaff]

Supernal Glimpse

Magnets--he'd seen it on Bill Nye the Science Guy: something, something science; magnets break watches. Clearly, Falstaff's seeing the episode, or at least hearing how to break watches, was Fated--it was pretty much a missive from Fate itself to become a pocket-watch terrorist.

The guy at the scrapyard sold him a brick magnet for fifty bucks. It's a magnet . . . shaped like a brick. Complicated stuff.

First he tried a drive-by, covertly tried to swipe his brick-magnet over a woman's watch in passing. Failure. All her bracelets stuck to the brick-magnet and she thought he was trying to rob her. She smacked him with a purse as he ran away and he smelled like flower perfume for hours. No way to know if her watch still worked.

Next, he slipped into an antique clock store. It was cool to see all the clocks there, dusty and old and wooden--like a vintage termite smorgasbord. When the clerk wasn't watching, Falstaff did his magnet thing and . . . few of them really even worked, and the ones that did were wrong. His work had already been done, by Time itself. Time had worn down its own measuring stick. Clocks had become ornaments, decorations. The Lie was already being exposed!

Next, he saw a guy on a cellphone. Cell phones are like the new watches, he thought. Falstaff put his brick-magnet to his ear like it was an old Nokia brick cellphone and tried standing next to the guy. Maybe it would scramble the guys phone and he would know from the universe that Time was part of the Lie. But Falstaff was too short. His ear got stuck to the guys belt buckle and, well . . . cuss words.

"Time is a lie!" Falstaff said, while running away and abandoning his magnet. The guy must have got it, because he chucked his phone and broke it on the side of Falstaff's head.

Mission accomplished: the man knew now, and Falstaff learned something too--the Lie hurts.