There's Just No Other Way to Put This!

 

I walked through a town yesterday. Before that, my wife offered both myself and my bodyguard a sip of water. Even though the day was kind of warm, we felt that refusing the offer could possibly put things in a new light. The vestments which are usually inserted diagonally between the window frame and a heavy cardboard seating ratchet, on this day were nowhere to be found. So, we decided to follow on with our normal course of activity and looked through the windows of some of our neighbors' vehicles in the hope that something might turn up. I gave her five minutes to light a fire under my butt, all the while knowing full well that she was still  diligently working on her figure. You've got to hand it to a broad like that. The only thing is, I see no reason to involve myself in useless debates about the upcoming election. This can only lead one place but my shirt just isn't dry yet.

Now that one of us has been apprised of an apparently terminal report, I am giving myself five days to complete a Program. If anyone thinks that they would enjoy seeing us let our hair down, I can promise that any future disappointment will be balanced by a Summary Judgment in the Lucas Knowles affair. Some of us know that any time you raise your voice, all we can do is sit quietly in our room and play for time. When I make a hand-off in a parking facility after hours on a rainy Wednesday night, the least you could do is follow my lead and evacuate a tower very close to your residence and pray to God that no one shows up without a license. If there's one thing that people in my boat are painfully aware of, it's how many years it takes to build up a feeling of genuine good will in the community writ large. Unfortunately, I don't have the time to get into it with you. If you want a knock-down-drag-out, I'm just not your guy. Sorry.

Unless I've got my signals crossed, there will be a payment disguised as an in-kind offer. Each floor reveals its secrets on a case-by-case basis. An urn will occupy its pride of place at the center of the Atrium. My daughter, Jennifer Wilcox, should be home from school by the time we get started. I know that any kind of 'feel-good' remedy can only be revealed on the night of the 16th. After that, one of my oldest frauds is expected to exert its benign influence on foreign factions in Our Nation's Capital. They have promised me in an invisible recording that any molten substance not taking up space on the far side of our Activity Shed can be safely sloughed off in preparation for a damaged individual mounting a rostrum and inhaling from a vial of deracinated cough chips. By this time, I'll pull around in front and, if you can sneak in before a flotilla of evidence is unveiled, I'll see to it that your cape is given a master treatment in the Obelisk. Would you, or anyone else for that matter, have it any other way? (asking for a friend)

____________________________________

Legacy Construction Imperatives.

 

There was a lepandic oak beam about 'yay' big, temporarily buffeting the spot in our portico where my dash-hound sweater kept its own counsel while I saw fit to carouse with the bottom-feeders in our home-broth distillery klavern. The name on everyone's lips made me want to lift an additional piece of twine into place so that the masks on display wouldn't scare anyone with their preternatural droopiness. I called my cousin, Clyde Hopkins, from the shadow overlooking Swindler's Meadow and asked him if he'd be interested in leaving town some time in the middle of the night. I knew he'd say 'no' because of his allergies. Still, I wanted to pin something on him so that he wouldn't be tempted to talk out of turn. I admit, it was a crapshoot. But, if anyone had ever told me three years ago that I would whip through the entire booklet in less than a day and a half, you'd have to pry my fingers off of him with a Mack Truck. It was that kind of 'scary'.

Once I entered my room after the game, I noticed that my shirt had seen better days. As I began to unbutton myself at her request, I came across an address in an unused pastry box which sat not-so-innocently on the dresser just to the right of the closet door. It turned out that the address was one I'll have a hard time forgetting, if I ever do. If not, I can always apply for benefits through my employer. It turns out that I've been on the plan longer than most folks my age. By the time the rest of the kids in my form run out of pincers, I can arrange to make a brash discovery of some new way to prance with second hand gizmos in an unlikely combination. Everyone here says that the color 'red' is their favorite flavor. Now that I know that, I can plan accordingly. The way they laugh at night makes our elderly neighbor grouse. It's a sight to behold. Just don't tell that to our temporary person. He can be quite a prick. And, not in a good way, I hasten to add. It's for your safety. No one is sure how you hold your urine. I'll be right back.

The brim of my hand painted tooler's hat is what keeps them out of my eyes when the lighting becomes a major issue. We give out free vat-access on the first Thursday of every other month. The one who intends to strike early gives us pause just like in the old days. He resembles some kind of medieval penitent. He drags a vinyl pouch behind his wife's car just before it starts to rain. There are big ones associated with his Master's cake but it somehow just doesn't seem right that he refuses to check in during off-loading hours. I know that he can't mean what he says but I have it on good authority that he pays people to jump out of the way. From the time he first assembled a crew of out-of-towners  to heckle my presentation, I knew that he would be my 'go-to' if I ever needed help getting out of a jam. There are always people in his orbit who like to stare at me suggestively. I do my best to keep up appearances, but please. Does anyone know of a place where I can get a socket repaired before the Monday after last? If so, I'd much obliged to enter you in my scroll. It won't hurt if you're not ready.

____________________________  

Averting Your Eyes Won't Solve a Thing!

 

The chain for which I risked my life is—just now!—in the office of a pockmarked genius who thinks he's got the world sewn up by the skin of its teeth. I've been with him on multiple occasions when things got out of hand. He makes it a habit of turning to my next-of-kin and testing their stability in a time of crisis. I've known for quite a while that if one of us ever gets lost in the Florida Everglades, all we have to do is sit motionless in a moonlit clearing and submerge one or more devices in a serviceable cider tank while back in town no one will think twice about bracing for a societal inversion. They prefer to appear more vivid if the color scheme in the original tent focuses on a magenta tamarind chord. The children of my third standard-bearer in as many epochs have stated quite boldly that they will see to it, single handedly if needs be, that a display case for colonial parchments will be put at the disposal of a peculiar gentlemen from North of the border. When you hear us cry like teenage babies, then you'll know that more of them are on the way.

I'm always being warned not to bracket my default mode network in the type of cheesecloth for which some of my more insouciant colleagues repel such unjustified upbraiding. Each has been asked a series of pertinent questions. One by one they fall to the side and I'm the one left to pick up the pieces and send them off to a re-glueing operation down on Interstate 1191.  When I get back from busting my nuts in the hexagonal reception gulch, you can bet your bottom dollar that some wiseguy will think it's a great idea to transform some of the least among us into 21st Century meat finders. There's just no going back when you see where fat comes from. From the way their hair is adjusted on bi-weekly basis, some might infer that half the battle is far from won. Now that we sit in your reserved box, does anyone think it wise to go on plundering national plenaries in search of a cobbled together shit-ticket? From what I've seen, no one who currently resides on one of the roofs in my neighborhood would seek cover if their names were ever published topside.

You can alert me all you want, but, if you go on to invent the kind of filtration system which uses no monotonous source of powder, then one or more of my mentors might find it necessary to (figuratively speaking) stab you in the back just when you're about to turn in your paper. They quite specifically warned us in 38th Term that people who are officially designated by a multi-lingual trap sign are to be taken to the inflection point of jihadi suction grunts. In other words, please stop placing an errant hand near an oblique service entrance to a rear-guard activity swamp. If you know what's good for you, you won't let this opportunity go to waste while we settle our final affairs in the battle of life. We'd like to help you get back on your feet but there just doesn't seem to be any sensible way to do that without raising red flags in the dustbin of mystery. Could you be any more rude?

______________________________ 

Please Keep Priorities Front of Mind.

 

The name on the box of Peterborough Chocolates didn't ring any bells with me. Still though, I felt it was important to get my coat from the other room. I usually don't mind engaging in the flattery which comes with the territory, but tonight—of all nights!—I was sure if I looked long and hard enough, I'd find just the multicolored wad I'd had my eyes on from the very beginning. It was soon plain as day that this was not to be. The truss started to itch and my goniff became fully inflamed. This is usually the part of the story where a very eligible stranger enters the action and one or another of us has to make a decision which we may regret for the rest of our natural life. In this account, however, you should expect nothing of the kind.

What we'd like to keep close to our vest is the way certain people are triggered into an intimidating silence if any of us so much as looks the wrong way while we listen to instructions over an old short wave radio set out in the garage. When my wife arranges to bring an oversized tablecloth into a high-end shopping emporium in lieu of a budget-busting leukemia outreach campaign, I finally feel free to operate on all cylinders. My mind is racing but my pacing is secure. I know that if even one package is to be found back at the lodge, I will be asked to supply one or more cable TV executives with data-centric compound herbivores before anyone else arrives with an infant broadband solution writ large. Also, it's quite plain that if any of us ever stop giving one hundred and ten percent of our victims' retirement funds to the war effort, then the socially binding sense of shared sacrifice could become just another relic of a more innocent time. That would not be a desired outcome.

The sales slip was all but ironed out, my cardboard cutout was placed on the promontory and a small ration of lip serpos was left under an overwrought beach piling at just the right angle to engage the random passerby in a fruitless search for answers. I was in my 5 o'clock best and the kids were stuck in the back yard trying to remove a suspicious stick from an enigmatic hole. I told my wife that I'd meet with her later at the diner once the flooding became unavoidably serious. She moved back in with her estranged family. I made do with a pre-cut portion of freeze-dried French toast. On or about the thirty-seventh I got it through my thick skull that no one would be showing up for Bible practice anymore. I asked around and learned to my dismay that my bench privileges had seen better days. By which I mean that if you or anyone else squints very hard, they might not have the slightest difficulty digesting some troubling highlights from our quarterly bulletin. As if.

___________________________ 

Deborah Fuentes Wants You to Read This.

 

Yes, it's true: most of us here still live in the shadow of our initial exposure. I've stored some of the parts which I pilfered in the nearby ruins. The rest were sold at auction to recoup expenses. The two boys who were tardy caught up eventually. We were so lucky that it never occurred to them to dream about what we'd been through. If it had, then they might've been in a better position to provide a more accurate oral history than the one for which they were originally cited in the charging documents. It may sound funny coming from a person like me, but I'll never get over the weird sounds they made when we pulled in later the next day, seemingly without a care in the world.

I took her temperature the following week, and, just as I suspected, her exposure was minimal at best. This alone counted for a lot since she'd sworn up and down that she'd never spent more than five or ten seconds finalizing her plan to look through my things for a non-descript item just to get my goat. Due to my allergies, whenever it appeared that the Sun would emerge victorious from a malific cloudbank, I'd have to transfer some funds to an off-shore account as a kind of 'insurance policy'. I was guaranteed five weeks a year on the mainland. In the event of a man-made disaster, only one or two of us were to be released into the general population. I'd placed all my cards at the bottom of the deck. To infer otherwise would mark you as grossly insensitive at best. At worst, some of the guys who work in the mess hall are under my direct control. Please, just do the math. It won't let you down, is all I'm trying to say.

A pair of dilapidated slippers provided the last piece of the puzzle. I'd gone over and over the color scheme of our boldest outfits. Anyone who wanted to play ball with us wouldn't fare so well without at least one salient diagram under their belts. To live in such a way that folks on the outskirts start to get even the mildest inkling became a sort of 'prime directive' as we moved forward. I let it be known that any controversial opinions should be left at the entryway. Either way, after we culled a disingenuous supervisor from the Gang of Eight, anyone still experiencing cold feet would now be able to skate through to a definitive appointment. For my own part, I'll never forgot those who had tried and failed to injure my pride at the expense of a week or two in an improvised infirmary. One day I expect to see them holding a cotton ball behind each ear, looking for all the world like every intransigent Coach it's been my distinct pleasure to throw head first out of the back door of an ambulance racing to stanch yet another troubling incident. Does that help you?

____________________________  

A Novel Harm Reduction Strategy.

 

When we reached the bottom of the stairs, I remembered that I'd once shown her a picture of a man whose name sounded very much like a word which most people are hesitant to use, at least not if they were meeting a new acquaintance for drinks out of state. Later, at my parents house, she went through the motions of appearing aloof, all the while patiently scheming whenever I re-entered the vestibule to retrieve one or another item from my coat which was hanging there, where I'd placed it in shame not hours before. I'd been counting on her for more than this and she didn't let me down. She didn't even let me go on believing that my version of a somewhat important event had a ring all its own. I could go on explain how and why it came to be that I repeatedly had to wash nickel dust off my trouser leg while she bandied her alternative sexual theories in the company of some very dubious characters, but that would be redundant, at best.

Each of them had slid down a ramp in a crumpled sort of manner which only added to my feeling of betrayal. One of them (the shortest of the three) carried a laminated Authorization Letter. Whenever I opened my mouth to issue a studious bromide, he'd wave the letter in my very face, as if that somehow excused their role in helping my wife limit her role in an admittedly temporary process to no more than a few seconds at best. When, later that month, I found what appeared to be some telltale office supplies in the hutch they shared with an alcoholic dentist, I resolved to take the calm approach of a seasoned observer of human frailty which I know myself to be. At least on a day like this. But, when people lie to your face and bring up all kinds of nutty subjects which nevertheless fail to get to the heart of the root of faulty decision-making, then there's a word for that. It's not a word that'll win me any friends in high places. But, at this late date, is anyone under the erroneous impression that I still care? Because, if so, please. Okay?

When I dared to show my face at the local constabulary, my voice took on the pitch of a recondite Pastor. I had mixed all the ingredients in a glass bowl which we'd received as a Holiday gift from her parents' therapist. She notified me via an errant text message that the crucial element was not to be found on this, or any other, major body of water. I pleaded with a well known winner of the Stewardship Award to have her brought into compliance at his own expense. This led to a a very telling screaming match in which he threatened to have me short-listed for the Booker Prize. I'd known from the beginning that this was a major misstep on the part of his Advisory Council. They never stopped looking for ways to have me implicated in shocking water event of the first magnitude. I've tried like the dickens to help her get over the loss of her puppy. All I've got to show for my efforts is a stained necktie. Anyone out there considering issuing a stop-payment order should perhaps sleep on it. There couldn't be any harm in that, right? Well?

_______________________ 

Stability Is Its Own Reward.

 

At the tasklet over which we've labored so hard to pretend, I sat with my mouth open. The mind is clouded but the feet are swift. She paid for my decision so now I am due to be released into a sanctified natural aroma. All who desire are able to stake their emotional intelligence to a common frond. In the looming puzzle, the meaning of a feature is not long to befall a geriatric scofflaw. To be trained in the art of living is to be told of wise, pure necks and the angle to which they crane eagerly, even as abruptness fails, yet again, to enter an elementary picture. I go with one now, but in a day, two at most, all solidified traces will find their way onto my bonified doorstep. This will not take a team of three to analyze succinctly. At this juncture we can scarcely hope for as much.

More to it, our brow is festooned with a recently acquired Habukker Thread. As the lines spread with icy contiguity, I make it my duty to conform to the dictates of the reigning bovine princette. By her goal-setting prowess, all sentient spungiforms are gifted with a semi-permeable membrane to die for. If only. But now we move in pairs through to the Baker's study. He, though a master of the idiolated palinquer, moves swiftly to offer the least among us temporal exigents which strike us by turns dumb, blind, broad and garrulous, each speck reflective of its ongoing peripheral status in the eyes of any communist blob.

Posted on the floor of our gantry room is what appears to be a minuscule result of the least appeasing vocabule. I strain to announce my prickling treat, tantamount as it is to an angular rescue squat. The doors we enjoin with rapt x-vision. And only now a barely absentient cunieform tablet is hoist from the joiners and we ply the extraneous manjour until all anentic jimsons are now safely on display at the crown of the undertable's wifely extrusion. It's only the dream of lofty bromads which keeps us to absolving a paltry stain from the robe of a vainglorious Rector. He recites our plum. We encode his pain. As for the others, what of it could but render a salient movement in the breezeway where the signage is of no purported delinquery?

_____________________________