Purple Haze

The purple truck was parked again on G Street. Sebastian L'Arche stopped his bicycle for a minute to read what was painted garishly on the back.

I live in a world of fantasy so keep your reality away from me.
I see what I want
I want what I see
and that is all OKAY by me

He smiled and resumed cycling, on his way to do a pet-grooming house call in a downtown luxury apartment building. I play with their pets all day while they're at the office, and that is all OKAY by me. He was slowly building up his roster of D.C. and Maryland clients--trying to get out of the pet courier business and stay away from the Potomac River for good, after his old friend had been found dead there. At least he told himself that was the reason, trying to repress and forget the memories of so many animals' going berserk while crossing that river in his pet courier van. He stopped his bicycle again to let a motorcade go by, and caught his breath.

Karl Rove looked out his tinted limousine window, reading the odd message painted on the purple truck. He thought about jotting down the license plate to pass to the National Security Agency, but then the limo was already past the truck. He made a mental note to have some agents come back later, not realizing that the owner of this truck had already been under a fruitless wiretap surveillance for three years. On the seat across from him, former Senator Evermore Breadman was pretending to jot down notes on the lined legal pad inside his embossed leather portfolio while it was all he could do to contain his hissing intestines until they reached the private box at the Verizon Center. He was glad Rove was not prone to pointless chatter. Breadman tried to muster a smile, thinking about the matchmaking fee he might get out of this deal, but his belly was screaming at him, and he feared that Rove was just playing him to get a better counter-offer in Texas. The limo ride with face-to-face seating was supposed to be the excuse to stare a man in the eyes and get a read, but Breadman felt nauseous every time he tried to look up. His thoughts turned to Tony Snow. What kind of damned fool trumpets to the world that he's leaving public office because he wants more money? Breadman was not sure he could place a moron like that, who was only a talking head, after all. Or had the world changed so much that people could actually announce such a thing nowadays? His thoughts wandered back to the day he had announced he would not run for another Senate term, because he needed to devote more time to his family. That was ALWAYS the thing to say! The limo pulled up to the Verizon Center, and the two men silently gathered their accessories and waited for the driver to open their door.

A block away, Charles Wu was on his way back from Lynnette Wong's shop, where they had traded information on the new Chinese embassy under construction. Wu had been in it several times as an invited guest, but he knew the Ambassador would not show him much. Wong had made some herbal deliveries there, and had seen plenty herself, though she saw no importance in the questons Wu posed to her. At one point, she had commented quietly on how the construction workers were so isolated at the hotel camp, with no internet access or telephone lines, but Wu's professed sympathy had seemed a little too plastic to her. Wu frowned, coming to the reluctant conclusion that she was probably reading him better than he was reading her. How did she read him so well? He stopped for a moment at the sight of the purple truck and read the bizarre manifesto. He wondered if a country that let its mentally ill roam freely around really needed to be taken down from the outside? He kept walking, a bag of Chinese herbs in one hand, a Burberry umbrella in the other. He started thinking that the purple truck philosophy might actually apply to a lot of people he knew, though he did not include himself in the category.

A few minutes later, the driver of the purple truck came out of Cosi with a half-dozen Power Arctic Mochas to take to the afternoon meeting of the Heurich Society. He also had a cup of ice for Condoleezza Rice, who always mixed her own drinks. He drove the truck west, listening to a Sudanese-run radio station discussing the slaughter of Darfur refugees by Egyptian authorities at the Israeli border. World War III was well on its way. A flock of starlings flew above him, on their way to the Brewmaster's Castle before reporting back to Ardua of the Potomac.