Another time-filler

“Let me slip into something more comfortable,” she said. 

“I can’t believe she used that cliché phrase,” I thought to myself, as I stood up from my chair & lit my cannabis-filled cigarette, then walked over to the window & took a drag. I looked out at the world. It was a dark and stormy night.

“Here am I,” she said, as she returned to the front room wearing a…

“You look wonderful,” I said. “Now why’d you call me here?”

“I want you to solve my case,” she said. “My husband is dead, and everyone suspects that I killed him because of all the affairs that I’ve been having with executives from the life insurance company that carried my husband’s policy, which was so lucrative that it rendered me a multimillionaire. I want you to clear my name and reinstate my good reputation.” Then she pulled a stack of hundred dollar bills from her purse, fanned it out and offered it to me. “This is just a start,” she added; “it’s the tip of the iceberg.”

I pocketed the cash, took a long sip of my vodka, then muttered: “It’s gonna be hard to make you look good if you keep acting bad.”

“I’m not bad,” she said.

“Oh, really?” I said. Then I walked over and took her hand in mine and raised it to my lips. I looked in her eyes and added: “I’ll take your case, but only because I’m in love with you.”

“Thank you,” she said, smiling. “Now, how much shall it cost? — I don’t mean money, of course; THAT’s no concern: as I said, I promise to keep you well supplied. I mean, how much of my heart, mind, body, and free time will you demand in order to make this case worth your while.”

“Well, for starters,” I said while holding in as much of my breath as possible from the marijuana cigarette, “I will want the deeds to all of your private property.”

She gasped; and I continued: “That means: any time in the past when you drew a line around a section of the Earth and said ‘This is mine’, that place henceforward shall belong to me myself. When people pass it, forever after, they shall remark: ‘That is Bryan Ray’s land, tho it formerly belonged to Cynthia.’ And children will weep at the sight — it shall appear desolate: only owls and jackals shall live there.”

Cynthia sulked and poured herself another whiskey. “Why must you always be so difficult.”

“I was trained by the British Secret Police, honey,” I said, while drawing my hand around her shoulder. “Being difficult is our specialty.”

I left Cynthia’s apartment chuckling softly to myself while fanning the large wad of banknotes in my hands, with my cigarette dangling from my lips. I wore my hat tilted; and my trench coat appeared as the color that tan becomes when filmed in black-and-white.

Two cops now emerge from darkness and confront me:

“That’s a lotta cash for a detective to be counting in plain sight,” said the taller officer. 

“Dan, please go away,” I replied.

“Hey, yeah; where’d you get all the bread?” said the heavier cop. “Maybe you’d like to share with us?”

“That’s the last thing I’d ever want to do,” I said, carefully placing the money back into my breast-pocket. “I’d die before giving you coppers the satisfaction of receiving a bribe from me.”

“Aw, come on, Bry,” said Officer Dan, “play nice.”

“Yeah,” added the heavier cop, “give a dog a bone.”

I stopped short and made an angry face. “Look,” I said, “here’s the deal. I’m supposed to celebrate Mother’s Day with my family this coming weekend. I think it’s May 8. If you two will go there dressed as me, and do your best impersonation of a loving son — give a card and a gift to my mom, and also have one ready to offer to my sister-in-law — then I’ll forgive you for being so rude this evening, and I’ll split my fortune among you. Dan gets one half, and the other half will be placed in an account under your name,” I gestured to the shorter, heavier cop. “What IS your name, by the way?”

“Agamemnon,” said King Agamemnon.

“Alright, so Agamemnon gets fifty percent, and I’ll give you the other fifty, Dan. Sound fair?” I began to reach into my breast-pocket and haul out the enormous stack of banknotes again.

“Wait,” said Officer Dan; “when you say that you’ll split your fortune between us, do you mean only this fat roll of bills that we caught you fondling, or are you talking about every square inch of land that you own, including all of your personal property, as well as any natural resources that might be discovered therewithin?”

“I’m willing to give you guys everything — even my soul,” I said, holding out the evenly divided stack of banknotes to each officer; “I’m talking the whole enchilada. Just indulge my biological and extended family’s holiday expectations, and perform upon my person a retroactive abortion.”

The officers stepped forth and took the proffered cash. “That’s all?” said Dan.

“That’s all,” I said, then I took an extra-long drag on my cannabis-filled cigarette.

The cops counted their cash and looked at each other and smiled. 

“Are we all satisfied?” I said, then I took another extra-long drag.

Each officer carefully placed his half of the cash into his respective uniform’s breast-pocket; then Dan held out his arm for a handshake: “Deal,” he said.

We shook hands, and I called my lawyer and had him draw up the paperwork to transfer the rest of my fortune over to this pair of police officers. When the meeting concluded, after we finished the arduous task of signing all the paperwork, I stepped out of the office building feeling much lighter and happier.

I inhaled deeply of the clean air of the city and remarked: “Ah, that’s nice. This is a pretty world. I think I’m going to stop smoking cannabis and change over to herbal cigarettes. Or perhaps I’ll just stop smoking altogether and simply breathe the city’s air, since it’s so naturally satisfying. Plus it’s cheaper. Which is good, for I’ll be needing to find new ways to sustain my existence, now that I’ve given away my riches in order to avoid the next family get-together. Christ, what a nightmare.”

A taxi pulled up, and, while seating myself, I said to the driver: “Please drop me off at the doorstep of the original Eve.” The driver flipped the little handle that starts the meter running, and he sped off into the gloomy streets of New York.

We drove for a long while, very recklessly. Then, all of  a sudden, the cabbie slammed on the brakes, causing the next three vehicles behind us to crash and burst into flames; and the driver turned around and looked at me and said:

“But there is no original Eve. We do not all stem from one common mother — no, there were multiple different styles of humans in the early days of mankind: some were like giants, some were like elves, some were like apes; and all these varied sources got mixed together. Life is a mystery. It’s worse than her apartment proving vacant: your requested coordinates are nonexistent. If you were an envelope, and I were a mailman, I would need to stamp the word ‘UNDELIVERABLE’ upon your face.”

I stared at the cab driver incredulously and replied: “You tell me this NOW!? After driving for ninety-nine miles, you stop on a whim, provoking a pileup of vehicles behind us (and certainly killing all of their passengers), because I asked you to find my lost love? Why couldn’t you just tell me that my request was absurd at the start, back when we were parked, before merging into traffic?”

The cab driver put his hand over his ribcage, to prove his sincerity, as he answered: “I swear, I would have warned you about the impossible nature of your mission, if I had thought about it more carefully and not been so eager to increase my revenue; but I took off speeding after you vocalized your desired destination, because I assumed that it would be easy to reach, as most places are. It only just now struck me that there was no primordial ur-womb that bore us all; therefore I stopped the cab and told you, as soon as I realized this. For I truly believe that honesty is the best policy. Some of us are the result of evil aliens infiltrating the human line. Lizard people, et cetera.”

My countenance fell. I stared at the floor sadly for a while, as the muffled sounds of panic and disaster continued in the background (ambulances and firefighters had shown up at the scene of our accident). Then I said to the cabbie: 

“Fine; just take me back to my office in Manhattan.”

When we arrived before the building, I got out of the taxi and realized that I’d given away my fortune. I leaned over and addressed the cab driver, saying:

“I forgot that I’m broke. Is it OK if I don’t pay you?”

The cabbie thought I was joking at first. He said: “Ha! The total is twenty dollars, sir.”

I pulled out the insides of my pockets, to prove that I was not kidding. “Look,” I said; “I seriously don’t have a dime — I legally signed away my entire net worth to a pair of cops this morning. The fact slipped my mind until now.”

The cab driver’s mood noticeably changed when he heard this. He thought for a moment, and then he answered:

“Just write me out an I.O.U.”

“Seriously? You’ll take an I.O.U.? Alright — here you go,” I said, while handwriting out the following sentence on my detective’s notepad: 

Bryan Ray owes Monsieur Taxicab Driver two ten‑dollar bills; plus interest, fees & service charges.

The cabbie looked at the piece of paper and began to smile. Then he began to laugh. Then he placed the paper into his breast-pocket and extended his arm for a handshake. We shook hands, and I saluted him and said: “Goodbye!”

“Goodbye, Bryan,” replied the cabbie; then he drove into the Pacific Ocean and a whirlpool sucked him away.

I bounded into my skyscraper office-building and then groaned with disappointment because, after pressing the upward-arrow button many times impatiently, I noticed a sign hanging before the doors of the elevator — it said: “Lift out of order: Please use stairs.”

So I tramped up the stairwell to my office, tossed my briefcase onto my desk, and sat down in my leather swivel-chair. “Home, sweet home,” I sighed to myself; then I nudged the file cabinet with my loafer to set the chair spinning, closed my eyes & fell asleep…

While dreaming of dining with my favorite harlot, the gentle reader (you were Tamar while I was Judah, and the restaurant was a place called Timnath — see Genesis 38:13 forward), I enjoyed a massive heart attack and died on the spot. So I got everything that I wanted.