Dear diary,
This animal that I am petting now grows bored and creeps off. I follow after it, out of curiosity. The beast slinks down the concrete stairway that leads to the subway. Then it dives into a conduit that ends up winding thru the city’s sewer system. We now find ourselves in the employees’ restroom of a workshop that makes artisanal miniature wooden politician statues. Here, I part ways with the creature that I’ve been following, because I feel that the animal does not have a clue where it is going — I suspect we’ve just been wandering aimlessly, whereas my initial hope was that the thing would lead me to a buried treasure. So I exit the shop. Now two saleswomen at the front desk begin discussing in hushed tones how I managed to leave their establishment without ever having entered it. They spend the rest of the afternoon carefully studying that morning’s security-cam footage; and, by evening, they are in bed together, moaning with passion.
I walk across the hallway to the Silver Chain Shop and buy two thick necklaces and a cinnamon roll. The shop’s owner allows me to start a tab and thus purchase these items on credit. I then sit on the countertop and keep opening and closing the cash drawer of the register while I eat, because the owner said “Sure, go ahead,” when I asked for permission to do this. The front window of his shop is glass, and I enjoy watching the people that keep passing by:
Now a clergyman steps out of the Pet Store holding a plastic bag of minnows and reading a newspaper. I hasten forth, stick my leg out and trip the man. Then I race back to my station at the countertop and continue playing with the register and eating my roll, as I watch the clergyman grope around on the ground to find his wire-rimmed spectacles and retrieve his New York Times, which is now sopping wet and has tiny fish squiggling and flopping all over it.
I laugh at this. Then I nudge the Chain Shop’s owner with my elbow and nod to the hallway outside, where the priest is still struggling after his fall, and the owner laughs too. The owner now reaches under the countertop and pulls out a shotgun and aims it at the clergyman; but I place my hand on the barrel and lower it gently and say, “No, resist the temptation — you’ll break your window.” (The place where I clutched the shotgun’s barrel now displays a perfect set of my left hand’s fingerprints, due to the residue of natural oils left by my skin.) “Ah, good call,” sez the owner; then he puts the shotgun away.
Just then, a 1980 Chevrolet Suburban zooms past and speeds down the carpeted hallway. It smashes out of the front doors of the building and continues driving onto the paved road outside. It soon stops at a traffic lamp, displays its right blinker, and then begins to drive again when the lamp turns green. I leap down from the countertop, wave goodbye to my new friend the Shop Owner, and run after the Chevy Suburban waving my arms. My thick silver chains are bouncing on my neck as I sprint down the street. The driver then slams on the brakes and puts the vehicle in reverse.
“Whoa, you almost hit me when you drove backwards just now,” I say, after the driver rolls down her window.” I stand there panting for a while, trying to catch my breath. (I was running pretty fast, for me — I’m really out of shape.)
“Is there something wrong?” the driver sez. “You looked panicked, waving your arms like that.”
“No, there’s no emergency or anything,” I say; “I had just made a mental note to flag down the next tan-colored vehicle that passes. You see, I left my horse at the school, and my second favorite color is tan.”
“What color is your horse?” sez the driver of the Suburban.
“Black and white,” I say; “she’s The Real Pegasus. She’s actually a zebra, so she’s technically two-toned.”
“Jesus,” sez the driver; “that’s really something.”
“I know,” I say. “Black and white is my favorite color; and then tan is my second, like I explained. I had a car earlier today — now I’ve forgotten what make and model it was, but I think its color was beige; either that or rust; but then I saw you drive past, and I just knew that I needed at least to try making an offer. So… are you selling?”
“Perhaps,” sez the driver. “If the price is right.”
I pull my coin purse out and push its caesers around with my fingers to guess the total amount. “I got about an even thousand to work with,” I announce; “will you take, say, ninety?”
“Ninety caesars?” sez the driver. “Do you mean nine hundred?”
“Nine hundred, yes,” I say, “that’s what I meant — I’m a little winded after chasing you.”
“Well, knowing that you’ve got a full thousand there,” sez the driver of the Suburban, “I’d rather that you offered me 100% of your savings.” (She smiles.) “I mean, consider my dilemma: For who among us nuns of the ascetic persuasion does not want the whole enchilada, when luck permits?”
“Alright, I’ll give you all that I got,” I hand over the purse, and the woman undoes her seatbelt and begins to climb out of the vehicle while its engine is still idling.
“Are you sure?” she sez, holding the purse as if her hand is a scale and she’s weighing the coins. “If this is truly all of your money, then you’ll need to get a job in order to afford to purchase your next meal. I would hate to inflict that fate upon you. Maybe you should keep a few hundred caesars for yourself — I don’t want you to go hungry.” She now starts to pour coins from the purse until it looks like about three or four hundred caesars have spilled out, then she holds them in her cupped hand for me to retrieve:
“Take, eat,” she quips; “this is my fortune, broken for you.”
I raise both hands with palms facing forward, in the position that universally means “stop your current action”, as if, instead of offering money, the woman is pointing a firearm at me:
“No, no,” I shake my head soberly, “I can’t take back what I’ve paid for this vehicle — it wouldn’t sit well with my code of morality. Don’t worry about where my next meal is coming from — I’m good at finding plant-based substitutes for beef or mutton at the roadside. You wouldn’t believe what God provides for his simplest fanatics.” Then I climb into the driver seat and shut the door. “Bye-bye, for now!” I wave my left fingers while driving away.
The woman stands there with a puzzled expression, still holding her coin purse in one hand and the loose caesars in the other. My guess is that she’s impressed by my saintly decision-making skills.
§
I come to a place in the road where you can either turn right or go straight; so I make a sharp left and head directly into the woods. The trees are thin enough that I can ram right into them and they topple like toothpicks. I cut a path thru the forest in this fashion. No animals were injured during the writing of this scene.
I pop out on the far side of the woods and find that I’m driving thru a crowded parking lot. “Whoa, I didn’t expect to see so many stationary sedans,” I shout out loud, over the roar of my engine (for some reason, the lot contains notchback sedans exclusively); “I assumed that the woods would discharge me upon a lengthy strip of highway, and then I would eventually end up at Miami Beach in Florida.” I narrowly miss hitting a ten-point buck who is bounding amid the parked sedans as well.
I then find that I am heading straight for a skateboard ramp. No doubt if I were to take this ramp, it would send me soaring over the top of the shopping mall that lies ahead; so I tap the brakes and turn slightly left, to avoid further trouble. I then park in the restricted area before the sign that reads “FIRE LANE / EMERGENCY VEHICLES ONLY”; and I exit my Suburban by its passenger door. (I parked too close to the sign, so my driver side door will not open wide enough for me to slide past. I have a rather large waistline.)
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