puttering about the living room I discovered that none of my supposed care-givers were anywhere in sight. Far from disturbing my fragile constitution, this unusual occurrence caused a small wave of peace to billow over my heart. I had not been alone in the loft since the whole ordeal had begun, and now I was positively luxuriating in my solitude.
To borrow a colorful Aussie expression from Piers Akerman, the loft did look rather “shithouse,” but at least for the moment we now had the population explosion somewhat under control. Piers’s huge appetite for food, alcohol, and life did not have to be constantly attended to. There were no sounds of bickering between Brennan and McGovern or Brennan and Ratso. All in all, the place seemed pretty peaceful. This is not to say that I was ungrateful for the care and concern of the Village Irregulars. The medical practice well understands that malaria patients, like many other patients of many other disorders, tend to overdo things when they think they’re getting better. The result is invariably a discouraging and damaging relapse, placing the patient’s prognosis further in jeopardy than it previously had been. This is what the members of the medical practice believe, but they are only correct about half the time. That’s why the practice of medicine is called a practice.
I hadn’t smoked a cigar in a long time, so I thought I’d give it a try. I wandered over to my old desk, sat down heavily in the chair, and lifted the deerstalker cap off the top of Sherlock Holmes’s porcelain head. I carefully extracted one Epicure Number 2 Cuban cigar from the depths of Sherlock’s cranium, lopped off the butt with a silver butt-cutter given to me by Billy Joe Shaver on our most recent musical tour of Australia, and set fire to it with a kitchen match. The cat, who was now positioned on the desk perfectly equidistant between my two red telephones, watched with quiet encouragement. To her it seemed as if I were getting back to normal. To me, the two little Statue of Liberty torches that I saw reflected in the eyes of the cat reminded me of the wistful freedom I currently did not enjoy. I puffed peacefully on the cigar for a time and wished fervently that I could be my old self again. But deep in my soul I felt as ephemeral and insubstantial as the blue-gray smoke of my cigar, dissipating slowly into the lesbian sky. If my faculties, both physical and spiritual, did not return to me soon, I would not survive my confinement in this loft. Claustrophobia, not malaria, would eventually do me in.
“Will the game ever be afoot again?” I said to the plaster saint, the ceramic muse, the whatever-the-hell-he-was-made-of god that was Sherlock Holmes.
He did not answer. This was good. Maybe I was getting better.
“I hate to say it,” I said to the cat, “but I’m almost ready to tackle an investigation.”
The cat was conducting her own investigation at the moment. She was investigating her anus. Possibly, she was just trying to get the taste out of her mouth after sampling some of the plates of leftover food lying about. At any rate, she did not understand that smoking the cigar, at least momentarily, put me in touch with myself, brought me to my senses, made me realize that my life was nothing without a mystery.
Maybe this was why I soon found myself standing at the kitchen window, scanning the narrow horizons of Vandam Street, looking through a pair of old, not to say archaic, opera glasses. This museum relic had been given to me by my old friend, Aunt Anita. Aunt Anita had a little dog named Ipo, which means “sweet-heart” in Hawaiian. Both Aunt Anita and Ipo had long since gone to Jesus. Now, only I remained, looking at the world through her old opera glasses, searching, searching, for something I’d lost on yesterday street.
Chapter Thirteen
I f I hadn’t have been in a state of malarial unfocusment, I probably never would have seen it in the first place. I also probably
To borrow a colorful Aussie expression from Piers Akerman, the loft did look rather “shithouse,” but at least for the moment we now had the population explosion somewhat under control. Piers’s huge appetite for food, alcohol, and life did not have to be constantly attended to. There were no sounds of bickering between Brennan and McGovern or Brennan and Ratso. All in all, the place seemed pretty peaceful. This is not to say that I was ungrateful for the care and concern of the Village Irregulars. The medical practice well understands that malaria patients, like many other patients of many other disorders, tend to overdo things when they think they’re getting better. The result is invariably a discouraging and damaging relapse, placing the patient’s prognosis further in jeopardy than it previously had been. This is what the members of the medical practice believe, but they are only correct about half the time. That’s why the practice of medicine is called a practice.
I hadn’t smoked a cigar in a long time, so I thought I’d give it a try. I wandered over to my old desk, sat down heavily in the chair, and lifted the deerstalker cap off the top of Sherlock Holmes’s porcelain head. I carefully extracted one Epicure Number 2 Cuban cigar from the depths of Sherlock’s cranium, lopped off the butt with a silver butt-cutter given to me by Billy Joe Shaver on our most recent musical tour of Australia, and set fire to it with a kitchen match. The cat, who was now positioned on the desk perfectly equidistant between my two red telephones, watched with quiet encouragement. To her it seemed as if I were getting back to normal. To me, the two little Statue of Liberty torches that I saw reflected in the eyes of the cat reminded me of the wistful freedom I currently did not enjoy. I puffed peacefully on the cigar for a time and wished fervently that I could be my old self again. But deep in my soul I felt as ephemeral and insubstantial as the blue-gray smoke of my cigar, dissipating slowly into the lesbian sky. If my faculties, both physical and spiritual, did not return to me soon, I would not survive my confinement in this loft. Claustrophobia, not malaria, would eventually do me in.
“Will the game ever be afoot again?” I said to the plaster saint, the ceramic muse, the whatever-the-hell-he-was-made-of god that was Sherlock Holmes.
He did not answer. This was good. Maybe I was getting better.
“I hate to say it,” I said to the cat, “but I’m almost ready to tackle an investigation.”
The cat was conducting her own investigation at the moment. She was investigating her anus. Possibly, she was just trying to get the taste out of her mouth after sampling some of the plates of leftover food lying about. At any rate, she did not understand that smoking the cigar, at least momentarily, put me in touch with myself, brought me to my senses, made me realize that my life was nothing without a mystery.
Maybe this was why I soon found myself standing at the kitchen window, scanning the narrow horizons of Vandam Street, looking through a pair of old, not to say archaic, opera glasses. This museum relic had been given to me by my old friend, Aunt Anita. Aunt Anita had a little dog named Ipo, which means “sweet-heart” in Hawaiian. Both Aunt Anita and Ipo had long since gone to Jesus. Now, only I remained, looking at the world through her old opera glasses, searching, searching, for something I’d lost on yesterday street.
Chapter Thirteen
I f I hadn’t have been in a state of malarial unfocusment, I probably never would have seen it in the first place. I also probably
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