The Malicious Monocle

Why?

Because I bloody well drank it, that’s why.

The rum isn’t all gone, but I have made some of it disappear. I made more of it disappear last night than I have tonight, but the rum I drank last night wasn’t my own. I’m not sure if that means it doesn’t count or it counts more.  I’ll leave the solution of that question to the quantum physicists.

A highlight of yesterday evening was fresh-baked apple pie.  My friend Hurler had brought some McDonald’s with him for dinner. Somehow, and I’m convinced drugs or post-hypnotic suggestion was involved, the smell of his food combined with the scent from the candles burning on the coffee table to make Bayeux and Lamb think he was eating an apple pie from McDonald’s. He wasn’t, but the scent seemed to get to them. The next thing any of us knew, the two of them were peeling and chopping apples for an apple pie.

Captain and Coke goes amazingly well with fresh apple pie and two scoops of vanilla ice cream. They go so well together that I had two slices. Of course both slices were accompanied with ice cream. Yummy.

The evening was fun. Bayeux is going to defend her dissertation in Madison on Monday. She’ll be Dr. Bayeux then. So last night was a sort of pre-defense celebration. We drank, talked sex, education, literature and even a bit of religious history. Yeah, we talk about some strange shit when the booze is flowing.

Well, my drink is empty so it must be time for sleep.

Sweet dreams everyone.

Rhesus would have run all the way to Patna if she could have. She fought with herself to walk slowly, normally. In her heart, she raced swung from branch to branch over the road. The letter had said not to arouse any suspicion as she kept the forced appointment it had made for her. How could she keep from going mad before she reached Patna?

Reaching Patna, reaching Rhesus pulled the crumpled letter from inside her sari and triple-checked the address. The address took her through some of the poorest and most dangerous sections of Patna. Her adrenalin-spiked journey ended at the stall owned by Hanuman Langur, the Scrivener. Hanuman made his living writing letters for the poor and unlettered in Patna.

  Mongoose peered through the barred window into Orangutan’s cell. After just one night in Hedgehog’s gaol Orangutan looked broken. His shoulders looked like they were at his waist, they were so slumped. The moldy straw Orangutan had slept fitfully on had turned his gleaming orange fur into dirty clumps.