Dear diary,
So, after the events depicted in that prior post, Officer Usted drives home thru the highways and byways of France. When he reaches his house, he enters and places his cop visor into the hat box; then shuffles into the dining room and sits down at the table with his wife and their daughter Columbia.
“Where’s Pierre and Jean-Paul?” he asks, referring to his twin sons.
“Here am I,” say the twins as they hasten into the room.
“Sorry we’re late,” sez Pierre.
“We had a meeting after our shift at the glove-making factory, and it ran late, due to heated arguments,” explains Jean-Paul.
“Well, sit down; the food’s getting cold,” sez the father. “We can hear all about your workday after supper.”
“Aren’t you going to kiss your mother?” sez the mother.
The twins kiss their mother on either side of her face & then take their seats & close their eyes & bow their heads & join their hands for the pre-meal séance.
“Dear journal in the sky,” prays father Usted, “we don’t know what to say to you today, so we’ll just rap for a while and hope something tickles your fancy. Without your help, we’ll be duller than dirt. Amen.”
“Amen,” repeat the rest of the family members.
“Who wants roast duck?” asks the mother, as she cuts and serves what looks like a loaf of bread.
“This is really good,” sez Columbia before eating.
*
After the meal, they each take turns telling about their workday: Mom starts. She announces that she worked hard at her office.
Columbia goes next. She claims that she and her co-worker Vanessa sunbathed on top of the roof of their shop instead of opening its doors this afternoon:
“We put a sign before the entryway that said ‘Out to lunch: Will return in ____’ and then there’s this blank line where you can fill in a time, so I wrote ‘5 min.’; then we went on the roof and disrobed. And we positioned our lawn chairs on either side of the rain-gutter trumpet, so that we could eavesdrop on what was happening down below, outside the front doors; and, every once in a while, either me or Vee would stand up and peer over the edge of the roof, cuz, from there, we had a clear view of our shop’s entrance, and we saw that, after a few hours, there was a whole line of people waiting for the shop to reopen (cuz they all probably thot it would only be five more minutes till me and Vee would return, cuz of what we wrote on the sign); and this queue of impatient customers was so long that it reached around the corner and blocked the entryways of many of the nearby establishments, so folks couldn’t even get into the clinic where they were offering free tests for the pandemic. — So, all in all, it was a pretty decent day. How about you, dad? Did you end up processing any interesting paperwork?”
“Actually,” sez Columbia’s father, “I had a real rip-roarin adventure today. I pulled over an administrative assistant driving a jet-black Porsche 911 and gave him a working over until he revealed the location of his Chief Executive, who turned out to be this guy named Tony Montana. So I went to his office and waited for what seemed like an eternity; then he comes out with guns blastin, so I grab him by the neck and shout ‘Take me to your leader,’ and guess who the kingpin of this operation turned out to be!”
“We know you’re an office cop, daddy. Forget it,” sighs Columbia; “can you just briefly (and honestly) summarize your workday for us, so that we can proceed around the table and hear from everyone — I’m curious how Pierre-and-Jean-Paul’s day went.”
But, knowing how much the point of his story will please her, Officer Usted ignores his daughter’s insouciance and answers his own question by slowly lifting up an oblong object from where it was hiding beneath the table, while humming the notes of the famous opening of “Also sprach Zarathustra” by Richard Strauss. When the object is finally revealed to be a thick paperback: The Collected Self-Amusements of Bryan Ray, Columbia perks up but looks slightly confused — she still can’t guess why her father is making such a show of her favorite book.
“I bet you’re wondering why I’m making such a big show of our favorite book,” sez Officer Usted. Then he slams the volume down on the table before her: BAM! “Open the cover,” he smiles.
Columbia gingerly turns the worn, cheap pasteboard aside and sets her focus on the chicken-scratch before her. Her eyes grow wide:
“Is this what I think it is?”
“Sure thing, honey. A personal message from the emperor himself,” boasts Officer Usted. “And, no: you’re not dreaming.”
“Ah, I could tell by the little bird here… but I can’t make out what the writing sez — if that even is writing?” Columbia cocks her head and squints at the scribbles, trying to decipher them alternatively with and without her monocle.
“I’ll tell you what it sez — I know its contents, cuz I was there when he wrote it; plus he asked me to memorize it in case the ink of the words gets smeared & washed away by your teardrops. It simply sez: Hi there true fan Columbia, this is Bryan Ray the author of these books, speaking to you from the fuselage of my landcraft, I send you my warmest greetings, I really like the mural that you painted, and I ask you to forgive your father for being such a big ol’ jerk.”
“O! You’re lying about that last part,” laughs Columbia. “Nevertheless, I do forgive you. Or rather, there’s now no need for forgiveness! because this gift totally cancels out your debt to me.”
“As they say,” sez Officer Usted, “infinite indebtedness can only be amnestied with an evil that’s priceless.”
“Yes, and just think,” sez Columbia: “I was this close to selling your ugly mug into slavery.”
“Jeesh!” swears Officer Usted, “I guess I’m luckier than I thot!—But, no: realistically, if you had gone thru with your plan, then you’d have needed to invent some sort of super-police to police the ex-police who had thus become property.”
“Yeah, we could make a TV show called ‘Runaway Cops’ where we document Super-Cops restoring owned coppers to owner coppers,” giggles Columbia. “It would be a real tearjerker.”
“Careful about the secret message!” Officer Usted gestures urgently at the book’s autograph, which already appears in soft focus, due to Columbia’s brimming eyes.
“Down, pity!” Columbia humorously thumps her chest. Then she turns to her brothers: “Enough about father. What about you two — how was your workday?”
“Well,” sez Pierre, “as Jean-Paul said earlier, we both had a pretty bad day. The team meeting that followed our shift turned sour.”
“Yes,” adds Jean-Paul. “It was because there was a rift among the workforce.”
“Please continue,” sez their mother. “Conflict intrigues me.”
Pierre explains: “We slated this meeting to discuss the possibility of going on strike, because we all hate every last pixel about this factory where we’re employed; but just as we were about to take a vote on which of the bigwigs’ houses we should carol at first, both bigwigs stepped out from the shadows where they had been spying on us and began to give us their spiel. Now I can’t remember if we’ve ever told you this fact, but the glove-making factory is owned by two guys whose names are Heck and Jeck. So these two bigwigs emerged from the gloom just moments before we were ready to vote on counter-bothering them, and, before we knew what hit us, they had already hard-sold half of our workforce on some new type of spirituality, and they hard-sold the rival half on a totally nother unquestionably sacred faith.”
“Spirituality? Faith?” gasps their mother. “Has France gone mad?”
“On the contrary,” sez Jean-Paul. Then he stands up formally and bows deeply to his nameless Matrairch, “I don’t believe we’ve been properly introduced: My name is Jean-Paul.”
“I know your name,” sez the mother; “You’re my son! and so is he!” (here she points in the direction of Pierre,) “—I carried BOTH of you in my womb for eleven full months!”
“My apologies,” sez Jean-Paul, still deeply bowing.
“Better finish up quick, she’s about to explode,” whispers Pierre to his smiling-&-winking brother.
“What we’re trying to relay is the official C.I.A. talking-point that our local glove-making factory has been divided in twain by a pernicious gospel,” Jean-Paul orates, upon regaining his composure. “But unfortunately not even the workforce itself can decide what exactly this divisive pamphlet or tract is proclaiming unto us. Half of our workforce — that is, the faction that Pierre here belongs to — believes in The Gospel according to Heck (which draws heavily on Saint Saul); while the other half of us — that is, the faction to which I, Jean-Paul, son of Usted, will put my life on the line to support — accepts only The Gospel according to Jeck (which draws heavily on Monseigneur Sophocles, the ancient Athenian dramatist; specifically his rendering of The Myth of Oedipus, Chief Executive Officer).”
“I’ve had enough,” declares the mother of Columbia. “I don’t give a fig about Heck or Jeck. I wanna hear the GRAND UNIFIED gospel, according to whoever is the most trustworthy charlatan. So you better speak both in tandem and do some good footwork.”
Thus Pierre & Jean-Paul stand up & fabricate The Gospel according to Didymus, to please their mother. They speak in unison:
[To be continued...]
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