Leila.
Around eleven Ratso went out for a while to check on things at his apartment. When you’ve got a stuffed polar bear’s head, a four-foot-tall statue of the Virgin Mary, ten thousand books relating to Jesus, Bob Dylan, and Hitler, and a couch with skid marks on it, you can’t just run off and leave things.
After Ratso had departed I hopped off the espresso and poured a stiff shot of Jameson into the bull’s horn. I toasted the cat rather briefly and killed the shot. I called Leila’s old number and got a recorded message saying that it had been disconnected.
I called Rambam. He wasn’t home, so I left a message for his machine to call my machine and maybe the two machines could get together and have lunch at the Four Seasons. I also mentioned for Rambam to be sure to read page 2 of the Daily News and let me know what he thought about it.
The more I thought about it myself, the less likely I believed it was that members of a major Colombian cocaine cartel, as the Daily News described the operation, would take the time and effort to identify one country-singer-turned-amateur-detective. It seemed to me, as I sat in the loft that Thursday afternoon and knocked back another shot of Jameson, that it was even less likely that they would take any action. They had plenty of bulls to fight, and if they ran out of bulls there was always each other.
As the morning wore on, I started to feel a bit more secure about the whole thing. I just wouldn’t throw the puppet head down to anybody wearing a big mustache.
About noon I opened the refrigerator and was able to locate a residual bagel behind a small city of Chinese take-out cartons, some of them dating back to before the Ming Dynasty. The bagel was in surprisingly good shape. In fact, it felt better than I did.
I took the bagel and a bottle of Dr. Brown’s black cherry soda over to the desk, and with the cat, two telephones, and an old typewriter, I had lunch. Fairly pleasant dinner companions, as they go.
After lunch I opened the day’s correspondence with my Smith & Wesson knife. There wasn’t a hell of a lot to open. If you want a pen pal, you’ve got to be a pen pal.
There was something that looked unpleasantly like a wedding invitation. I slit it open and sure enough it was. A girl I used to know named Nina Kong was getting married. In order to do this she must have straightened out her act in more ways than one. The guy she was marrying was Edward S. Pincus, a rising young urologist. The wedding was at the Pierre Hotel. Reception to follow.
Apparently the happy event had taken place two days ago. You know the mails.
I started to throw the invitation out and then thought better of it. Placed flat on the desk, it made a pretty fair coaster for the Dr. Brown’s black cherry soda.
A house isn’t really a home without a coaster. I gave the cat a crooked smile. The cat smiled back.
It was downhill from there. A form letter from a Catholic priest in Nicaragua, which had come addressed to “Occupant.” A bill from Con Ed. A letter from a militant lesbian coalition called Sisters of Sappho, which I inadvertently opened before I realized it was for Winnie Katz.
Bringing up the tail end of the day’s correspondence was a postcard from the Pilgrim Psychiatric Center. It was from my old friend Cleve, the former manager of the Lone Star Cafe. It read as follows: “Don’t believe the doctors. There’s nothing lamp carrot rocking-horse wrong with me. Wish you were here.”
That was the lot. One of these days I’ll reverse my zip code and see what happens.
I called McGovern at the Daily News and he vehemently denied having anything to do with the story on page 2. He asked me if I’d been at the scene of the bust. I vehemently denied having anything to do with it. We both vehemently hung up.
I got a screwdriver and turned the old black-and-white television set that was missing a knob on to Wild Kingdom. I moved to Ratso’s couch and the cat moved to her
Around eleven Ratso went out for a while to check on things at his apartment. When you’ve got a stuffed polar bear’s head, a four-foot-tall statue of the Virgin Mary, ten thousand books relating to Jesus, Bob Dylan, and Hitler, and a couch with skid marks on it, you can’t just run off and leave things.
After Ratso had departed I hopped off the espresso and poured a stiff shot of Jameson into the bull’s horn. I toasted the cat rather briefly and killed the shot. I called Leila’s old number and got a recorded message saying that it had been disconnected.
I called Rambam. He wasn’t home, so I left a message for his machine to call my machine and maybe the two machines could get together and have lunch at the Four Seasons. I also mentioned for Rambam to be sure to read page 2 of the Daily News and let me know what he thought about it.
The more I thought about it myself, the less likely I believed it was that members of a major Colombian cocaine cartel, as the Daily News described the operation, would take the time and effort to identify one country-singer-turned-amateur-detective. It seemed to me, as I sat in the loft that Thursday afternoon and knocked back another shot of Jameson, that it was even less likely that they would take any action. They had plenty of bulls to fight, and if they ran out of bulls there was always each other.
As the morning wore on, I started to feel a bit more secure about the whole thing. I just wouldn’t throw the puppet head down to anybody wearing a big mustache.
About noon I opened the refrigerator and was able to locate a residual bagel behind a small city of Chinese take-out cartons, some of them dating back to before the Ming Dynasty. The bagel was in surprisingly good shape. In fact, it felt better than I did.
I took the bagel and a bottle of Dr. Brown’s black cherry soda over to the desk, and with the cat, two telephones, and an old typewriter, I had lunch. Fairly pleasant dinner companions, as they go.
After lunch I opened the day’s correspondence with my Smith & Wesson knife. There wasn’t a hell of a lot to open. If you want a pen pal, you’ve got to be a pen pal.
There was something that looked unpleasantly like a wedding invitation. I slit it open and sure enough it was. A girl I used to know named Nina Kong was getting married. In order to do this she must have straightened out her act in more ways than one. The guy she was marrying was Edward S. Pincus, a rising young urologist. The wedding was at the Pierre Hotel. Reception to follow.
Apparently the happy event had taken place two days ago. You know the mails.
I started to throw the invitation out and then thought better of it. Placed flat on the desk, it made a pretty fair coaster for the Dr. Brown’s black cherry soda.
A house isn’t really a home without a coaster. I gave the cat a crooked smile. The cat smiled back.
It was downhill from there. A form letter from a Catholic priest in Nicaragua, which had come addressed to “Occupant.” A bill from Con Ed. A letter from a militant lesbian coalition called Sisters of Sappho, which I inadvertently opened before I realized it was for Winnie Katz.
Bringing up the tail end of the day’s correspondence was a postcard from the Pilgrim Psychiatric Center. It was from my old friend Cleve, the former manager of the Lone Star Cafe. It read as follows: “Don’t believe the doctors. There’s nothing lamp carrot rocking-horse wrong with me. Wish you were here.”
That was the lot. One of these days I’ll reverse my zip code and see what happens.
I called McGovern at the Daily News and he vehemently denied having anything to do with the story on page 2. He asked me if I’d been at the scene of the bust. I vehemently denied having anything to do with it. We both vehemently hung up.
I got a screwdriver and turned the old black-and-white television set that was missing a knob on to Wild Kingdom. I moved to Ratso’s couch and the cat moved to her
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