rise!”
“And maybe Piers Akerman was here last night.”
“Not likely, mate. He’s 15,989 kilometers away—”
“You Brits are all the same. Why can’t you just give it to me in miles?”
“I’m not a Brit, mate. I’m just a lucky Irish lad who happened to be born in jolly old England.”
“If I’d been there at the time I would’ve checked your father’s dick with my hockey stick and stopped the inception. Don’t create unnecessary trouble here. Everything’s under control.”
At that precise moment, a great tumult ensued upon the land. From my dank little bedroom, it sounded very much like the barbarians were at the gate. Moments later, I realized that, indeed, they were.
“Mother of God!” shouted Ratso. “Look down on the sidewalk!”
“Sweet leapin’ Jesus!” shouted Brennan.
Screams and shrieks of an altogether unearthly nature could clearly be heard from the street. The sound of a windowpane smashing filled the cat and me with anxiety. We cringed in our little back bedroom, torn between mortal fear and feline curiosity.
“Do we throw them down the puppethead?” asked Ratso.
“Might as well, mate,” said Mick Brennan. “When Piers Akerman and Mike McGovern get this heavily monstered, the entire Polish Army couldn’t stand in their way.”
Chapter Twelve
F or the next several days a Mardi Gras–like atmosphere seemed to reign in the loft at 199B Vandam Street. Some of the lesbians from Winnie Katz’s dance class on the floor above even dropped in to join the festivities. You might think this rather outrageous behavior might not be in the better interests of a malaria patient, but you’d be wrong. Actually, it was just what the doctor ordered. For a while, at least, it lifted me out of my fevered and melancholy state and put me into very high spirits indeed. I wasn’t over the malaria. Even I understood that. But, just possibly, I was over feeling sorry for myself. And that, gentile reader, is a giant step for any man to take.
The cat, to be sure, was not as understanding. Cats never are. She longed for the days when I’d sit at my desk, cobwebs attaching themselves from cigar to my cowboy hat, waiting for a case to materialize. I could hardly remember these days myself. Solving a crime, staking out a building with Rambam, pounding the pavement in search of bad guys, pounding my penis in an effort at self-gratification—all these were now things of the past. Fighting crime was the furthest thing from my mind. I was currently fighting merely to retain what was left of my mind and to survive this stubborn and unforgiving malady. It was rather fortunate, indeed, that no investigation had recently come my way. I wouldn’t have had a clue how to deal with it.
Not only did the cat despise the party-making atmosphere that now often perpetrated itself upon the formerly peaceful confines of the loft, the loft itself looked like it’d taken a direct hit from a daisy-cutter. Beer cans and liquor bottles and plates containing half-eaten dinners were strewn all over the place. Mick Brennan kept promising he’d clean everything up, but so far very little progress appeared to have been made. To add to the clutter, the cat, perhaps understandably, had returned to her previous format of vindictively dumping upon practically every clean surface that my care-providers had somehow managed to miss. The result of all this was not a pleasant one to observe, much less to live amongst, but somehow the human spirit triumphed and we all managed. I managed to periodically even forget that I was a spiritual shut-in. I got out of bed fairly often now, puttered about the loft, looked for something or someone to do, found nothing, and often as not, returned to my bed in a surprisingly weakened state.
Malaria is a whore. Malaria is a tar baby. It is a noxious housepest, one of many, I might add, who stays and stays and stays. After periods of feeling relatively normal, I would suddenly find the fever
“And maybe Piers Akerman was here last night.”
“Not likely, mate. He’s 15,989 kilometers away—”
“You Brits are all the same. Why can’t you just give it to me in miles?”
“I’m not a Brit, mate. I’m just a lucky Irish lad who happened to be born in jolly old England.”
“If I’d been there at the time I would’ve checked your father’s dick with my hockey stick and stopped the inception. Don’t create unnecessary trouble here. Everything’s under control.”
At that precise moment, a great tumult ensued upon the land. From my dank little bedroom, it sounded very much like the barbarians were at the gate. Moments later, I realized that, indeed, they were.
“Mother of God!” shouted Ratso. “Look down on the sidewalk!”
“Sweet leapin’ Jesus!” shouted Brennan.
Screams and shrieks of an altogether unearthly nature could clearly be heard from the street. The sound of a windowpane smashing filled the cat and me with anxiety. We cringed in our little back bedroom, torn between mortal fear and feline curiosity.
“Do we throw them down the puppethead?” asked Ratso.
“Might as well, mate,” said Mick Brennan. “When Piers Akerman and Mike McGovern get this heavily monstered, the entire Polish Army couldn’t stand in their way.”
Chapter Twelve
F or the next several days a Mardi Gras–like atmosphere seemed to reign in the loft at 199B Vandam Street. Some of the lesbians from Winnie Katz’s dance class on the floor above even dropped in to join the festivities. You might think this rather outrageous behavior might not be in the better interests of a malaria patient, but you’d be wrong. Actually, it was just what the doctor ordered. For a while, at least, it lifted me out of my fevered and melancholy state and put me into very high spirits indeed. I wasn’t over the malaria. Even I understood that. But, just possibly, I was over feeling sorry for myself. And that, gentile reader, is a giant step for any man to take.
The cat, to be sure, was not as understanding. Cats never are. She longed for the days when I’d sit at my desk, cobwebs attaching themselves from cigar to my cowboy hat, waiting for a case to materialize. I could hardly remember these days myself. Solving a crime, staking out a building with Rambam, pounding the pavement in search of bad guys, pounding my penis in an effort at self-gratification—all these were now things of the past. Fighting crime was the furthest thing from my mind. I was currently fighting merely to retain what was left of my mind and to survive this stubborn and unforgiving malady. It was rather fortunate, indeed, that no investigation had recently come my way. I wouldn’t have had a clue how to deal with it.
Not only did the cat despise the party-making atmosphere that now often perpetrated itself upon the formerly peaceful confines of the loft, the loft itself looked like it’d taken a direct hit from a daisy-cutter. Beer cans and liquor bottles and plates containing half-eaten dinners were strewn all over the place. Mick Brennan kept promising he’d clean everything up, but so far very little progress appeared to have been made. To add to the clutter, the cat, perhaps understandably, had returned to her previous format of vindictively dumping upon practically every clean surface that my care-providers had somehow managed to miss. The result of all this was not a pleasant one to observe, much less to live amongst, but somehow the human spirit triumphed and we all managed. I managed to periodically even forget that I was a spiritual shut-in. I got out of bed fairly often now, puttered about the loft, looked for something or someone to do, found nothing, and often as not, returned to my bed in a surprisingly weakened state.
Malaria is a whore. Malaria is a tar baby. It is a noxious housepest, one of many, I might add, who stays and stays and stays. After periods of feeling relatively normal, I would suddenly find the fever