A Mild Crust Is Forming, Part II.

 

Torrencio and Madagabla—the pair had created such an innocuous yet innovative presentation that we barely were inclined to shift in our seats—the way they had indelibly planted their feet on all fours took all of us by complete surprise. Now I know that by the first of six scheduled breaks, it was my task to reach behind a barrier and stroke a cord to initiate the slightest of breezes, the kind that we can all recall fondly from our respective formative eras. I had a word with the Captor's son, a native born Andalusian, now over five feet tall, still covered in the markings which confirm his unique lineage. I was asked by higher-ups to inform him that any penalty that we would offer to reduce could be redeemed for a pocket full of valuable ancient sand. When he began to imperceptibly caress my right shoulder with a small tufted subpar bag, and whispered a known word, I realized that I could have excised it permanently in my head within minutes of my arrival in the Dutch capital. Thankfully I had yet to register even the slightest incongruity on my aching face.

Once an agreement has been signed, there will still remain a lovable morsel to be reframed as a charming cocktail nicety and sent on its way like so many before. I will need the rivuletted tuning forge which was gifted to my Father before me in the late 1980s. He is said to have sold very precise directions to our hiding place in open defiance of words that had been exchanged prior to our picking up stakes and forgoing a novel insight into A World of Places. Some of these people think that we can be pushed past our limit with very few consequences. They could not be more wrong. But what would stop them from trying? Not anyone I've ever heard of, is all I'm trying to say. Why do you ask?

Once back on a drier spit of land, we resolved to lure Torrencio and Madagabla into a used furniture distributorship and show them a common courtesy to determine if they were easily swayed. Each was given a choice of numbers and asked to select wisely. Torrencio was asked to go into the other room and change. Madagabla stayed with us while we eyed her suspiciously. We exchanged troubled glances and realized that some disturbance was in the offing. I brought in a coffee ring and a bucket of Wisteria flavored paint. My wife made herself comfortable against all indications. As I sat and smoked in the car it occurred to me that my pet project was almost at completion. Once my ascendance into a higher level was a thing of the past, I knew that no amount of roughage would quell my bonhomie where two lacquered frontispieces would go the distance just as well. Why was I being like this? Can anyone tell? Should other methods be applied? Doesn't this go without saying? Is this all you could come up with? Say it.

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Autobiographical Notes from an Alternate Timeline.

 

Younger strangers who are thought to appear to be 'well liked' are often the last to know. I should know because I was one myself once. Problem was, I didn't find out until everyone had already gone. I was left in an opponent's gymnasium even though it was dark outside and I remembered a lot of people saying that no one could be expected back until after eleven. I decided to use my fabled brain and call this kid a liar. He wasn't there either so I ditched my nukes behind a Pastor's toolshed, started selling drugs in the inner city and got a cheerleader pregnant even though I was secretly gay. The baby, who I never saw, was named after my Grandpa who died in the War.

I went on to edit my College newspaper. After graduation I got a job in marketing, rose through the ranks to become Senior Executive Vice Assistant and retired early at age 37 in Boca Raton, Florida. By the time I made it plain to the United States Government that I had every intention of defecting to the People's Democratic Republic of Korea (AKA North Korea), I swore that I would never again risk exposure by pretending to throw a baseball in a way that made me look like I wasn't a girl. Because, you know what? Some people like to go around saying things. Even talking about stuff that can't be proven—unless you're a goddamn psychic or something!

I sold my Ford SUV to an Ohio mortgage delinquent, threw away some spoiled food and decided to make a clean break of it. No one was getting any younger. That said, someone I saw just the other day looked in my direction when I pretended to be standing somewhere. Once I achieved a long neglected orgasm, I decided to help my sister, Mervy Flimtar, clean out her garage. It took us all day and into the night. Since she was leaving later that evening, we had a lot of catching up to do. The next day she caught the flu and, unfortunately, passed away in her sleep. Now I run a private investigations company in Pyongyang, North Korea and I couldn't be happier. Why should any of this be a surprise, is all I'm asking. What is it? 

Expectation Can Be a Cruel Master.

 

We who live with a long term prospect can be expected to always inspect a less-than-solid person's scattershot approach. Once our vanity is appealed to, anyone who goes by the 'silent name' can be counted upon to issue a terse injunction against any and all soporific trailer plants. The word still irks, but sometimes, when a leak is upended and our suspicions confirmed, a three-day delay can be helpful, even if behind all notions of trust one can find a likable dingbat to harvest their fair share in the warbling hours just after the cars arrive, as if on cue. Even less so, our current Occupant, now that she rotates each limb in accord with a newfound spatial perdiguity, can be observed listening intently behind all of the men who remember to climb each wicket with a tooth and a nail on anyone's personal Eastern Seaboard.

Why do those who thrust mildly and who refuse to install a much needed railing brake in their Winter moulding, more often than not, insist on colliding gently when not impelled to retract a less-than-colorful account for the benefit of egregious time-servers without ever availing them or their, quite frankly, nervous spouses, of the chance to harness split-second technology in the  interest of generalized pudential neutrality? This is one of the many questions that occupied the attentions of our over worked staff of de-spaculated matrons. Some of them prefer fo sit with their feet pointed skyward while skewering lifelike opponents in their dream-laden voices of yore.

We feel primly afflicted by the notice we gain from slumping in a pale field of antique organ meats. Our wellness is not to be taken for granted in any event. A sanitized field hand is given to dust around our carpenter's odd blistering shrub. We look to his heritage to explain his icy movements which propound the gumptious freedom which we all take for granted when one is beaten into many. The sandy walk is hewn with a money-crushing utility ship and I praise your planetary awareness to the high half-pins. This still can't get me arrested in this 'two-horse' liverburg. I tell them all the time to please stop by my hostel, expand my showplace and pet my cowels under a two-tone lancing buldge. The lawyers alone will make sure that they are stuck in a foreign room. This one is for draining our pump. The other one braces for a mild impact. I've seen both but only one makes the difference which counts in the end. Why can't anyone see that? Is it something we ate? Or, would that be pushing things? You have my boat. 

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Memorandum of Interest.

 

In view of the increasingly dull recognition as to the limited duration availences during which to score our processes, I have been tasked at this morning's meeting of principals, stakeholders and a skeletal assemblage of their various functional robots, to inquire as to whether, if, when and ever you and the other segments that comprise our 'Third Floor Project' could be expected to exhibit or even sustain a level of interest concomitant with a so far unheralded notion of conducting an Enterprise Search of our latest female example's sterling pencil to ascertain whether or not an ammonia-enabled pendulum can be located somewhere within.

This proposal has been enskeptulating, in seed form at least, for the better part of the sixty-one days that our presence has been detected by the remaining Floor Staff who have survived all our efforts to render them blandly and crucially ineffective in their efforts to dissolve our track-positive modalities.

Under the covering of a false chartreuse envelopiture, and receipt of blue identity profiles from a majority of your segments, we will act with our characteristic stealth to secure a maiden hobby-horse the primary plectitude that constitutes its remaining due. You will then find the opportunity to bring closest familial relations of our subjects (and a random selection of former dumblexes) into one of the newest state-specific Open Space Dullness Portals for mass influction at the interval of our choice. Upon final bisection the Task is expected to encounter a blistering of autonomous tissues which will usher into existence the Final Grade.

Your reply to this proposal is expected—and yes, mandatory!—within six and one half minutes of the receipt of this communiqué. Short of that, please anticipate that any and all evidence of the existence, past, present and future, of you and your prime segments will be permanently erased.

Good day.

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Public Notice: Announcement.

 

If anyone has noticed traces of very fine sand around the perimeter of this or any building, there's a question which needs to be asked before a notice is posted. In addition, one of our untrained lackeys has sustained major fentibular damage and will need various provisions from a central location if any of us are to be afforded the chance to feel hope anew as our struggle ascends its vital avenscrypt. We all look with eyes focused on a mere legend. His demeanor is not one to be sneered at, regardless of which side of the candle is deemed suitable for a fenticious lavermont. My objontuous assistant, Klevon O'Toole, will likely arrive at your doorstep in the coming days fresh out of soluble water pills and you will be expected to make good on the one promise which could bring all solid ground into a ringing saltessence. Nutrition in all its various forms is not to be taken lightly in any event. By their chairs you will know if they are one of ours or one of theirs. If it's the latter, please try to delay any soporific reaction until we've had time to examine your road scores and impart your hand into a layered pacing yeild. After this, no one can pretend that your axis is the stiff end of a monument to ever more feelthy tracer scores.

The life we lead in the Plaza after dusk sets in is one which is not unfamiliar to the unpretentious braggarts who mottle our faith community into a rust-belt sogar at the i-bent of a treacly stuncore. As each of us speaks with a rueful stupidity about the impressions which our graven images have made on hyperactive youth pastors, we are observed to sink ever so slightly in our seats and hum the Anthem even more quietly and assiduously than our naive fellows. That's because our beliefs are on the line. But the problem is, the very line which looms so large in our minds isn't one we feel any comfort in shaping for the delight of visiting offisuaries. Each of them has their own private problem and this doesn't make it any easier to get involved in 'ground-floor' projectiles and their place in future baffins. Now I will remove a wireless relay from beneath my cardigan and begin switching providers until I find one who meets my precious denials with dubiously phrased entreaties. This should make for good 'appointment television'. At least that's what I've heard as per now. If this describes anyone you know, there will be a paper outside that you can sign in total confidence. This should not in any way be interpreted as the petty scam we've planned all along since Day One. No. It should be seen for what it so manifestly is. And that's not what you think. So there!

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A Friendship is Tested: Daylight Odors.

 

One of my friends, Harlin Blasfer, worked his way out of a plotless marriage the old fashioned way: he just went ahead and blurted things out. Untold and unsaid things which sometimes cause a man to be looked at in a short-fisted manner. He had even written letters to the then Governor-General and all he ever got back was a coupon for discount batteries. Now that he lives in my car every third weekend, as per Court mandated insufferance, I have taken it upon myself to groom him for a role in an upcoming kitchenette drama to premier at the 5th Annual Negro Women's Baccanal and Postal Release Tributary. Everyone has been signing on left and right and I believe at current levels, no one should ever feel forced to back out of a trading plan by the Winter's end. If a 'certain somebody' does his (or her?) part, we can virtually guarantee that a fully stocked basket will be placed squarely in the line of fire down a road which snakes directly off Our Nation's Highway.

When it comes to smaller registrants, one only has to include a packet of odorless hairs to insure that  their negligible attention remains upright throughout the concourse. One or another of them (usually the latter, if I'm being honest) will normally hang out after the others have gone to sleep for good. That's when all sorts of buzzers go off. Quite a racket, but nonetheless, we feel obligated to bring their secular patterns to the notice of League officials who have promised to do their darnedest to insure that even the most minor colloquy won't interfere with the habitual sogginess which we prize beyond all else. Why? Because that's the only way to bring others under our sway. The faces they expose at sundown make it all worthwhile in the end. But even before the final twiddle, when we look out over the thousands of impatient, partially solidified yammerers, we can sense the opening of an incessant pathway to painless simulations of aquatic warfare gone rogue. 

It has been alleged that I've never blamed anyone when the third person in line would do just as well. I will go to my grave reciting a secret oath or die trying. When it comes to playacting in a fantasy grill-room hobby, I leave it up to my Second-in-Command to brief me on all manner of hypothexical tissues which are usually scattered in an inscrutable pattern on our deck while I have my morning tea and scones. He acts like he's never heard of a person who doesn't trip over his own feet before. When I ask him, 'before what?', he often becomes very bitter and withdrawn. What he doesn't seem to be aware of, however, is that I know for a fact that he's only 'faking it'. He couldn't be farther from the truth if a bird hit him with a baseball bat. You get the idea. But there's only one little problem: I've lost my place. Which place? The one down in [DELETED], you dingbat!

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This is the title which some of you have requested. You're welcome.

 

She keeps us to herself while tearing up. I live in a one-room house near a school yard. The companion who we share in common is not one to compete for our affections. It dithers and it dathers, but still we behave as old friends have come to expect. 'Circumspection' doesn't begin to describe our approach. On the other hand, if either of the three of us feels neglected or otherwise held apart from our fellows, all we need to do is issue a proprietary rejoinder, wait a few minutes and then resume our studies at the field house under the guidance of experienced mental laborers. Their own coatings still hold clues to the events leading up to a precarious climax. No one is the fonder for having held any old package for this long. Quite the contrary, in fact. I try not to go there much anymore on the slight chance of a not-so-random rebuke. But then again, why should this cause alarm at the end of a long and gruesome day?

It's plain to me now that if I leave her under the care of a loathesome surgical resident, I will only have myself to blame if she feels justified in scrimping on the deployment of strategic affections. A photograph of a minor child in need of psychological assessment is what brought us together in the first place. This was years ago, before either of my parents learned to drive. Yes, that minor child in the photo is yours truly. But no, you continue to be quite mistaken in your sweeping assumptions. It wasn't for nothing that when we first moved to the Coast, I made it known that anyone who issued a statement in her presence could expect a major winnowing in the months and years to come. And, in case that wasn't clear enough, I made it a practice to expose the remaining spouses to some harmless bacteria to see how they liked it. By now we've agreed to patch up the garage we share and ask someone to make an offer. If I am prodded by any more false alerts, you might try asking me to sit lengthwise in an Army Surplus tent. I've heard they're having a clearance downtown. Please look into it.

I've already glued a surfeit of pages into our handbook. These will comprise the addendum that so many have found lacking from the opening boomlet. But, it's very important to tread carefully so as not to offer false comfort to defective stragglers. They could come at you with all manner of hooks and scythes. In the event that we decide to purchase a vacation home in which to conduct 'the experiment', we both intend to keep ourselves at arm's length in the expectation of another penitent breaking out first. There's one particular party who excites our instinct for survival. He's obviously the kind of bloke who trods roughly and garrots a big wimp. But even if our postural learning curve has flattened to a bare incline, why would it be anyone's business if and when we see fit to settle our affairs in the most  public way imaginable? It's not for nothing that the morning trend line is all that people talk about anymore. They just can't get it out of their system, is all I'd like to avoid saying. But, if anybody sees me scurrying through a Carbonetta HQ while the others avert their eyes, then you'll know that my work is far from complete. Please approach the bench.  

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