Bilocations, Chapter Three: Anarchists, Comics, and Vampires!

We are now back with Frank, who has crossed the border back into the States and is feeling disoriented, thinking about Stray, his nephew's mother. He runs into Linnet Dawes, whom I see I didn't even consider a significant enough character to mention last time. She's a schoolteacher whom Frank had met when he was there to kind of help Reef with his romantic difficulties; they had a little chat. She doesn't particularly like Stray: "that young lady . . . created more damned drama around here. Who needed an opera house when she was performing?" (462). Anyway, she tells him where she is, and that Reef has apparently fucked off to Europe somewhere.

He finds a room in "the Hotel Noctámbulo, where insomnia prevailed." Everyone staying awake working on "some impossible midnight project." There are a bunch of bikers in town, including a Hungarian named Zoltan who, it's implied, is a vampire: he freaks out when presented with X shapes and he doesn't like mirrors. He doesn't really do anything here, but I felt that a probably vampire should not go unmentioned. He sees Stray, apparently with some new boyfriend, but they don't interact and it's not clear if she even recognizes him.

Going back to Denver, he encounters Moss Gatlin, the anarchist preacher who'd influenced his father's thinking. Gatlin's driving a church car thingie which he'd borrowed from a more conventional preacher and added the word "Anarchist" so it says "Anarchist Heaven" instead of just "Heaven." That's cool. He naturally sympathizes with Frank over his father's murder, although Frank confides that "sometimes . . . I feel funny about Sloat. It should've been the other one, 'cause Pa was nothin Sloat would've gone out and done on his own" (466). This question of blame is one that you will really drive yourself nuts trying to suss out: true, Deuce was the "brains" of the operation, and generally more venal than Sloat, but still, the kind of person who's willing to commit a political murder just 'cause his pal tells him to...? That's a bit...ungreat.

They get to Cripple Creek, where "the owners sure had won" (466), with scabs everywhere and generally a bad situation. But hey! Now we have Anarchist Heaven, so maybe we'll make some progress. Frank gets a room, but is awakened late at night by a boy, about fifteen years old: "he worked his eyebrows energetically and pretended to brandish a horsewhip." He's "from New York, part of a song, dance, and comedy act touring the country." He "pretended to look around wildly, eyes rolling a mile a minute." His name is Julius. Have you guessed? I didn't my first time through the book, but as we've seen I wasn't necessarily the most perspicacious at the time. But yes, this is a young Groucho Marx, né Julius. He's just here as an Easter egg, really. But if he's about fifteen, that would put us in 1905 or thereabouts, which seems too early. The chronology here is just impossible.

He goes back home and sees Mayva for the first time in a while. She's running an ice cream shop, which people patronize but still look down on her. He stays for a while. She already knows the news about Sloat. Then...he goes.

Nothing overly fancy about this chapter--which is no doubt reflected in this entry--but I like it. I like Frank, I like Mayva...just a likable section, dammit!