The Fan Man

The Fan Man by William Kotzwinkle

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Authors: William Kotzwinkle
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here.”
    “Art materials, baby, serving as camouflage for a secret passageway, which you will see momentarily. Follow me through that pile of trash cans and old rags, step over that mound of dirt and broken dishes crawling with roaches and come over here and help me move this tremendous wardrobe chest stuffed with bottles and rags. That’s it, shove it out from the wall, and what, baby, do you see before you?”
    “A hole in the wall.”
    “That is correct, baby, a hole in the wall, which I took the precaution of chopping out yesterday. If the landlord should by any chance discover that I am living in this number two pad, it won’t matter, because we will now slip through this secret passage–go ahead, baby, through those broken slats and falling plaster–through this hole in the wall to my Horse Badorties number three pad.”
    “Gee, there’s a lot of junk in here too.”
    “Yes, baby, and it was not easy to get these piles of sheet music and garbage bags through that little hole in the wall. Now help me swing the wardrobe back in place to cover the hole, baby, that’s it, and now we are safe from the landlord, here in the number three pad, just keep your voice low.”
    “Doesn’t anybody else live here?”
    “I have the whole floor now, baby.”
    And now, man, we can eat our vegetable soup, if we can locate the stove. Feeling around through old cardboard boxes and empty cans, here it is, man. Kick, send flying different piles of crap, getting precious valuable objects out of the way, man, and lighting the stove. “And now, baby, out of my satchel comes a handy can opener, and we can cook the soup right in the cans as there are no pots available that are not already filled with scientific mold experiments. We just sit the cans directly on the flames.”
    “The labels are on fire.”
    “Yes, baby, it cooks quicker that way. We’ll be eating in no time, canned soup, of no possible value to the human system. Have a seat, baby, anywhere at all. The altitude is completely informal, take off your knapsack and relax, Horse Badorties will watch over it for you, baby. Where are you coming from, baby?”
    “I was in Provincetown.”
    “Do they have any mail trucks for sale there, do you know?”
    The soup, man, is bubbling up, it is hot.
    “I have some spoons in my knapsack.”
    “Great, baby, this is the life, with soup and spoons and I think I hear the landlord outside in the hall, going nuts.”
    Creep quietly over to the door and listen to the sounds in the hallway:
    “… sonamabitch … no come back … kill de sonnabitch… .”
    And away he goes, man, down the steps, thinking I am gone, man. We are safe. Life is good.
    “And now, baby, let us partake of an after-soup smoke, inhaled directly through this specially imported Hindustani coconut-bowl dope-hookah. Of course I never use it for such criminal activity. Instead, I am loading it with tiny nutritious flour-based alphabet noodles, made of ground-up artichokes and spinach … drag deep, baby, let’s get healthy.”
    Chick and Horse Badorties smoking alphabets and passing into the alpha-waves, and I see stretching before me my entire life from when I was a little Horse Badorties in Van Cortlandt Park, which reminds me, man, I must go there tomorrow. After I sue the landlord, man. I must call my lawyer this evening, man. A simple suit based on a stuffed-up toilet in the hallway, down which some thoughtless tenant flushed a Turkish bath-mat. Landlord has refused to repair; privation of tenant, violation of sanitation code, A through B.
    “This is good smoke, man.”
    “Yes, it is manufactured by three little old Italian ladies, based on a time-honored recipe. Let us fill the bowl again and enjoy their family secret.”
    And now for a little music from the moon-lute, man, sweet gentle Horse Badorties love songs, man, to put the chick in the mood.
    “You play nice.”
    What a sweet blonde chick, what beautiful blue eyes, what nice skin, what gorgeous

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