“…Look what the jackhammer vibrations are doing!” He points to Sally and her three friends.
Alice and I look. The vibrations, carried into the car, are causing the other women’s tank-tops to slip down! This turns Tommy on, but not me–I’m still cuddling with Alice.
And thereby hangs a tale; it almost seems like there are pictures of Alice and me on the outside of the car with the caption, “They just had sex in a deserted farmhouse!” The bystanders’ reactions are varied, but there are plenty of wiseguys giving us catcalls (ignored by the cats we see) and making odd, obscene gestures with their arms. We stop to park at a service station, for snacks. as Alice and I step out, there are hardly any people around. But we look at the outside of the doors–and guess what!..:eek:
…that camera angle makes me look heavy.
But, that’s not what shocked us…
It’s that I had guessed the message exactly right!
This is traumatic for Alice–all over again. She gets back in the car–and cries really hard. No shortage of people to comfort her–including Tommy Smothers, angry about the message even he didn’t know was on the doors. The driver gets a can of cheap poster-paint–gummy watercolor–out of the trunk and hastily smears the dark-blue goop over the doors.
And we see a man snickering in a sinister manner nearby.
Alice happenes to see him. “Professor John McGowan!” she says, in a voice expressing equally anger and grief.
“I wish I had that samurai sword right now, I mutter.
“Here it is,” Says Sally. Her three friends stay in the back seat to confort Alice while Sally and I and Tom Smothers and Leary, still at the wheel, get out of the car, all of us indignant at McGowan’s cruel prank. Sally, at 5’10,” is statuesque enough to flatten a man all by herself. But Leary, Tom Smothers and I advance on him along with Sally.
His blood turns white at the sight of us. and now…
out of nowhere, Alice jumps on his back and digs her fingers into his eyes.
“Hi, Jack!” she says with a sneer that barely conceals her grief.
As McGowan struggles to get Alice’s fingers out of his eyes, he reels around unsteadily and falls to the ground just after Alice leaps off his back. When McGowan tries to get back up, Alice lets go with a kick to his groin.
McGowan grabs his crotch and crumples to the ground in a fetal position. The three of us back off. Alice seems to have everything in hand.
Unfortunately, Alice is not done.
As McGowan lies on the ground wimpering, she kicks him in the back of the head and then in the front.
“Having fun?” she says tauntingly to McGowan. “I know I am.”
Alice spits on McGowan and prepares to kick him again. Since this getting way out of hand, Leary, Sally, Smothers, and I intervene and try to get Alice off of McGowan before she kills him.
We all grab Alice but, amazingly, she’s too strong. She breaks free of us and aims another kick for McGowan’s head. We manage to grab her and pull her back so that her foot just skims McGowan’s ear. Alice almost breaks free again but we manage to restrain her by each grabbing one of her limbs. I take her right leg, Sally her left leg, Tom Smothers her right arm, and Leary her left arm.
McGowan is lying in a bloody mess on the ground. He’s almost still except for some labored breathing.
We hold Alice down. She’s crying again.
Without talking to one another, Sally, Tom, Leary, and I all agree on what we have to do next: get the Hell out of here! We move Alice to the back seat and put her in. Tom, Sally, and I stay with Alice in the back seat while Leary takes the wheel. We’re 50 miles down the road before Alice stops crying and falls asleep.
At that point, I finally relax and look out the window. I am surprised to see…
(Well, before I looked out the window. I did ask the other three friends in the car why they didn’t stop Alice. They said she was just too fast for them. I guess Lorna was right about Alice in that she wasn’t somebody you trifiled with.) So, anyway, I was looking out the car window again and was suprised to see…
…Louise driving Stan’s big rig toward the site of Alice’s vicious attack on McGowan. She hasn’t seen us and has not a clue who is in the limousine. With Louise is her old friend, Jane Bradley. Their only concern is to give first aid to this person they don’t know from Adam, and use a cell phone to call for a rescue unit. McGowan is treated for his injuries at a local hospital. It’s fortunate for Alice–as we find from Jock, whose sisters work in the emergency ward–that McGowan had retrograde amnesia and remembered nothing about the incident, with Sally and me and the others as the only witnesses. Jock’s sister Fionnula Dumfries (named for an Irish ancestor) told us that McGowan suffered cuts and scrapes to the eyes, cheeks, ears, stomach, groin, genitalia, and limbs; he would be recovering for quite some time and would never be able to identify the small but furiously vicious woman who had attacked him.
We returned to the dorm and I did my damnedest to sooth the furious and anguished Alice, along with Jock, Lorna, Fionnula, Sally, Betty, Vera, Olivia, and Phoebe. Tom Smothers had to return to his bookings and Leary returned the limo to Tom’s property. He had it properly repainted.
A few days later Alice was fully recovered from this experience. The semester had ended and we were both preparing our schedules for the next semester, as were Lorna, Fionnula, Betty, and Vera, in, respectively, anthropology, emergency medicine, business administration, and dance.
Anyway, now, Alice was in good humor. And again we visited her family. Her brothers Arthur and Daniel were their with their wives–two English lasses who nearly turned my head!
We went exploring on the Terwilligers’ property; they had a large utility shed she wanted to show me. It was more like a garage and workshop rivaling Norm Abram’s. The doors’ hinges were a little rusty and shoving the door open took all our strength. But it was well worth it. As we opened the wide double doors…
…out stepped Phoebe Atwood, her arm bandaged where I had shot her. With her was a policeman, and she was demanding that I be arrested for attempted murder for shooting her.
Lamely, I try to explain to the cop about the stupid duck quacking myth she was trying to spread.
Fortunately, the policeman is a Doper, and he agrees with me that Phobe deserved to be shot.
Furious, Phoebe shouts a profanity so vile and blasphemous that we all seek cover, lest a lightning bolt strike her down. She then stomps off in the direction of the nearest bar. The cop just smiles and says…
…“Never say Belgium to a Doper cop!”
And we all laugh. Then my lips fell off.
This seems to happen more and more often right after a display of divine power.
I bend down to pick them and, out of the corner of my eye, I spy a glimpse of some black cowboy boots with ivory spurs. I jump back up and look through the crowd, trying to see who has the boots. But there is just too many people milling around.
I re-attatch my lips to my face and tell no one of my uneasy feeling. Maybe, I’m just a little paranoid. (But $5 bills still terrify me)
I turn to Alice and ask, “What would you like for breakfast?”
She looks at me as though I just asked the most revolting thing ever. And she says…"
“Slide.”
I’m puzzled by what she means by this. As a try to grasp what Alice is talking about, I feel my lips. They seem oddly shaped. Then, I figure out why–I’ve put them on the wrong way.
I turn my back to Alice and take my lips off my face. I hear Alice start to softly warble some old Dionne Warwick song that–at the moment–I can’t identify. Also, out of the corner of my eye, I see Lorna arrive at the scene, pick up the cowboy boots and put them on. Well, that’s one mystery solved–the boots are her’s.
“Who took my boots?” I hear Lorna ask. “Somebody’s always taking my stuff just when I need it. Is somebody deliberately trying to vex me?”
Lorna sighs in frustration, pauses for a second, and says, “I think I’m paranoid.”
Welcome to the club.
Meanwhile, I’m stooped over, struggling with my lips, trying to figure out what Alice meant, and suddenly getting a sense of deja vu about Lorna, Alice, what Alice said to me, and the song Alice is singing. Then, it hits me what “slide” means: I supposed to SLIDE my lips back into place and not stick them back on. I follow Alice’s apparent advice and my lips return to their original position on my face. I still can’t identify the old Dionne Warwick song Alice is singing but I do know it’s not one written by Burt Bacharach–I think it’s from some godawful movie from the 60’s.
I straighten up and turn around to face Lorna and Alice. The sense that I’ve seen both these woman before I actually met them is overwhelming but the exact places where still escapes me. Alice, who has just stop singing, then says to me…
“It’s simple. I bear a strong resemblance to Stan Brown’s wife Louise; and Lorna looks a lot like Julie London, who played Dixie McCall in the Emergency! series.”
I finally sense how to reattach my lips. I press them in, and slightly down; and I hear a “click.” If it were only that easy to reattach teeth…
Fully articulate now, I admit, “I’ll have to take your word on that Dionne Warwick song; I never saw any movies she made.”
Phoebe is getting her arm treated at the local emergency clinic. I may still face a citation for discharging a firearm–a .357 magnum I owned–in an automobile. But I know that, according to the local law, Tom Smothers and Timothy Leary would share the charge with me, so it doesn’t look to bad…
Professor Fields appears. He had Alice’s address and came out to the garage. He tells Alice that since he filed suit on her behalf, against Professor John McGowan, the court had set a date for a preliminary hearing. “McGowan is recuperating at home; it is now feasible to pursue the harassment matter.”
Alice mulls this over. She remembers, of course, her fierce attack on McGowan, and says “Mr. Fields, I’ll want to discuss this with you later.” Fields departs after giving Alice his business card.
I’m now standing there with Alice, Lorna, Jock (still with his leg in a cast), and Sally, who has returned; she has a .357 magnum herself–a good idea considering the 48s she has to protect.
And it’s a good thing, too. We hear gunfire, and see where bullets have just hit the corner of the garage roof!
“GET DOWN!” hollers Sally in her powerful contralto voice.
We all duck behind rocks and a huge fountain shaped like a covered wagon. Someone is shooting at us with a rifle! Who and where? :eek:
Crouched behind a boulder, next to me, Alice suggests:
“It’s Rita Waterford!”
“Who’s Rita Waterford?” I asked trying to get out the riflewoman’s site.
“Rita is this really obsessive Christina Aguilara fan who was in the same class with Lorna and me,” Alice explains. We hear a couple bullets ricochet around the yard. So far no one’s been hit…yet.
“Lorna once made some nasty comments about Christina Aguilara to Rita,” further explained Alice. “Rita, of course, turned red with anger and stomped off vowing to Lorna that she’d pay for what she said.” I feel a bullet whiz less than an inch from my head. It’s not safe to stay here much longer.
“So why’s she shooting at us?” I ask. “Her beef is with Lorna.”
“Did I mention how obsessive Rita is?” Alice asks rhetorically. “She’s gotten into trouble many times for sending music critics who slam Christina Aguilara letters smeared with dog crap. By her logic, anybody who hates Christina Aguilara is her enemy. And friends of her enemies are her enemies as well. I know first-hand; she’s keyed my car several times and stuck a banana in my tail pipe.”
The bullets have stopped for now. Apparently Rita is reloading. Alice and I look at one another and we silently agree to make our brake for shelter.
We move out into the yard and signal the others to join us.
“Serpentine!” Alice yells. We serpentine.
I hear the almost inaudible sound of a box full of bullets spilling onto the ground. It seems as though Rita’s fumbling in her effort to reload. That buys us a little more time.
We each try to get to the shelter that’s nearest to us. Alice and I move toward the utility shed. Everybody else moves toward the house.
Alice and I quickly open the door to the shed and rush in. Just as we shut the door, I hear a bullet skim it from the outside.
“It’s about time we did something about this,” says Alice as we walk towards the back of the shed.
“Call 9-1-1,” I suggest.
“We can’t,” Alice says. “I don’t have my cell phone with me.”
I reach in my pockets. I’ve forgotten my cell also.
“Besides, there’s something bigger at work here,” Alice adds. “Stopping Rita won’t end it. We’ve got to take REAL action.” By now, Alice and I are in the back of the shed by a door. Alice opens the door, turns on the light, and reveals that it’s a closet filled with shelves and boxes labeled “Pipe-Cleaners” and “Shoe Trees.” Alice goes in and then pulls me inside.
“I don’t think this is the right time…” I say.
“Oh, get your mind out of the gutter,” responds Alice. She’s reaches into a “Pipe-Cleaner” box on the third shelf from the top. She fumbles around the box before I hear the distinct sound of a button being pushed.
“Hold on,” she says. The closet floor starts to go down. This is an elevator.
We slowly go down the shaft. I can’t think of anything to say. Alice looks strangely calm like she’s done this thing many times before.
The elevator stops. Alice and I get out and emerge into…
(Oh, that should be “break for shelter.”)
…the base of a tower about 85 feet away from the front of the shed. I reckon that the tower, which I have seen, is about 10 feet back of where Rita has pinned herself down.
“What’s the tower for?” I aske Alice, as we ascend in another lift in the tower.
“My dad has had livestock and wild animals on the property. We even trap, tag, and release ferrets, weasels, skunks…”
“SKUNKS?!” I ask.
“Yes. We learned to tame them…”
“Do you have any more around here?”
“Yes, in the cages in the shed behind the tower. We just keep them for a week then release them…”
“I have an idea!” I say in a voice made electric by inspiration.
I look and sure enough there is an exterior dumbwaiter on the tower wall, facing Rita. I also notice an electrically-powered bell on the top of the tower, controlled by some switches on the wall inside the tower, including for length of signal.
“We use that for an alarm,” said Alice. “It’s like calling 911…oh, I see what you mean!”
We put the plan in operation. We take two skunks from the cages and set them in the dumbwaiter, which Alice sets to lower to the ground–it’s well-lubricated and Rita could never hear it–as I stand next to the bell controls and watch.
The dumbwaiter gently touches the ground. Alice pulls a cord opening the box, and the skunks walk out.
I quickly switch the bell to sound for about 30 seconds. We’re inside the tower and we don’t hear it, but Rita sure does. She turns around and sees the skunks, and shrieks, panicking the animals, who don’t pay any attention to the bell. Now Rita has blown her cover, and Arthur and Daniel, Alice’s brothers–who heard the gunfire and approached with their shotguns–stop Rita in her tracks. And now the local police arrive. The Terwilliger boys, shotguns down, escort the bewildered Rita to the car. The cops see Rita’s high-powered rifle and the spilled ammo, and bullet holes in the shed roof. The cops handcuff and Mirandize Rita, and Alice and I, still a bit shaken, exit the tower in time to identify Rita. Lorna, Jock and Sally approach too. The police take statements from all of us and haul Rita in.
Meanwhile Paul and Eda Terwilliger, Alice’s parents, who had also heard the shots (and the bell), come out. Alice and her brothers are still a bit shaken and they go to their parents–not crying, but to catch their breath after this episode.
Now I approach the senior Terwilligers and Alice returns to me, taking my arm. She tells her parents what we did.
Paul laughs. “I wish I could have done something like that against the Germans in '45. What happened to the skunks?”
“They just scooted back down to the wooded field,” says Alice.
We go into the house. This naturally calls for drinks, and Paulk and Eda serve us ale or wine. I sip a glass of sherry furtively. Alice prefers Guinness stout.
Later on Daniel and I take a look at some tools in the shed, while Alice is inside at the piano, playing Liszt–she likes stuff that’s hard to play. And she does it well. 
Daniel and I raise an interior overhead door in the shed. He proudly shows me…
his collection of garden gnomes.
“I’ve been collecting them since I was seven,” he says. “I had them shipped all the way from England.”
“That’s…really interesting,” I say politely trying to conceal the fact that I find garden gnomes a somewhat off thing for a 30ish male to collect. “How many do you have?”
“529 and growing,” Daniel answers. “Although I do find it hard to get new ones here in the States. So many are alike. I only collect different ones.”
I look at the population of plaster elfin figurines with their fairy-tale style clothes and expressions of fixed jolliness. They’re all surprisingly clean and well-maintained. I don’t any of them has spent much time in an actual garden.
“Does your wife know about this?” I ask.
“A little,” he says. “She just knows I buy an occasional gnome now-and-then. I don’t think she has any idea of how big my collection is or how much time I pore into it.”
“You spend a lot of time on this collection?”
“About every fortnight I check and clean every gnome. I don’t dare leave any outside lest they fall victim to the weather, dogs, vandals, thieves, and all that. In here, they’re all nice and safe.”
Suddenly, to me, Daniel’s hobby was moving from eccentric to creepy. I’ve always been a little disturbed by artificial miniature humanoids like ventriliquist dummies and garden gnomes. The degree of Daniel’s obsession with his collection was starting to bother me. It also didn’t help when I thought I saw a few of the little eyes blink and noses twitch (of course, it might’ve been the sherry).
“That’s very interesting,” I say again. I’m at a blank to say anything else.
“Yes,” says Daniel as he shuts the interior overhead door. “It takes some effort but, to me, it’s worth it.” Just as the door shuts, I’m sure I hear a sneeze from inside.
Daniel and I go back to the house. Alice, with a radiant smile that’s framed by the cheekbones on her heart-shaped face, greets us at the door.
“Well, where have you been?” she slyly asks.
“Oh, just putting away some things in the shed,” says Daniel. Daniel then turns to me and draws me aside.
“By the way,” Daniel whispers to me. “Not a word about the gnome collection to Alice.”
“She doesn’t know?” I say.
“She doesn’t know it’s in the shed and she doesn’t know how big it is,” continues Daniel. “I can’t exactly tell you why it’s important that Alice does not know. Just let me say that it would be very dire for her if she found out.”
Now, I am really disturbed. I wonder why Daniel bothered to show me his collection and wish he hadn’t.
I turn back toward Alice who’s talking with Lorna. I hear her smoky laugh and, for a moment, I forget the unsettling episode with Daniel.
Alice, stops laughing, and says to me…
“I know what Daniel was doing. He showed you his gnome collection, didn’t he?”
“You knew about it, eh?”
“Sure I did. Six months ago–when Daniel was in London–Dad had to have a building inspector come out here–fire regulations, termite abatement, so on. Dad showed the inspector every room in that structure.”
“It sure gave me the creeps.”
“That’s what the inspector said. But he can’t cite someone for collecting statuary.”
“Well, statutes don’t faze me. I had a nagging suspicion there was something alive in that room!”
“Maybe you’re letting your imagination run away with you.” Alice clung closely to me; I put an arm around her. We were nearly face-to-face.
"Possibly. Did you see that Vincent Price movie House of Wax?"
She’s puzzled. “Yes I did, but–what are you leading up to?”
“Don’t get me wrong. I just think it’s weird. Why he would keep those gnomes in a vault, practically. And some of them were quite large–when did you see them last?”
“When the inspector was here, last July. He wondered why Daniel would keep sixty dozen gnomes…”
“Sixty dozen? That’s 720. He told me there were 529!”
Alice’s face now radiated deeps suspicion–but not necessarily of her brother or other kin. We checked the inspector’s report–her dad’s copy he kept in a box in the den. Sure enough, the sentence “large anteroom containing 60 dozen garden gnomes of various sizes, colors and descriptions” was in the inspector’s report.
“It’s time for some sleuthing,” she decided. “Mum and Dad will be in town until Saturday. You come here tomorrow morning and we’ll take pictures, sound recording, chemical samples–we’ll get to the bottom of this. I’ve had suspicions about the inspector’s office.”
We have a long necking session then and I leave the Terwilligers’ home for my dorm. I return bright and early Friday morning; Alice is waiting.
She’s outside on the front porch. Alice is wearing some kind of “beatnik chick” ensemble: a snug black long-sleeve pullover and black jeans. The outfit looked like one that was worn by Audrey Hepburn from some movie from the 1950’s. The clothes look a little like they were bought Goodwill or some other type of thrift store. She’s also wearing her round owl eyeglasses and has her brown hair tied up in a pony tail. She looks quite fetching.
As I approach, I see Alice take a quick drag from a cigarette, throw it to the ground, and stomp on it. Some habits are hard to break.
“Nice to see you,” she smiles and says while walking up to me and wrapping her arms around my neck. “I’ve been thinking about this whole garden gnome mystery and I’ve just noticed some things. They may not be all that important though.”
“Like what?” I say curiously.
“Well, did you know that the squrare root of 529 is 23?”
“So?”
“23 is a number that’s associated with a lot of weird stuff. If you don’t mind, before we leave, I can show you what this book I have says about it.”
“I think we should get started with our investigation of the building inspector’s office first.”
“I understand that it’s important that we get started on the inspection. But it really won’t take much time for me look the book up.”
“I’m sorry but I don’t see anything so significant in the 529-23 connection that warrants we look that up first. To me, it just seems irrelevent.”
“Well, I’m not necessarily committed to looking up the significance of the number 23 first,” Alice says with a sigh. “I’ll leave it up to you what we should do first.”
The ball’s in my court. Had it been only a few seconds before, I would’ve started with the seach of the inspector’s office. However, now I think that it really wouldn’t hurt if we look up Alice’s book first. (Of course, it might be I just find any suggestion accentuated by those intense big brown eyes persuasive.) I pause for a few seconds then decide.
“Alice,” I state. "Let’s start by…
“…getting those cameras you have–the Minolta and that infrared camera–you know, the ones you were using for your photography courses. And I’d like to set up some bugging equipment I saw in the shed, in those overhead ducts where it can’t be seen or detected from inside the gnome room.”
“You must have a theory of your own,” she comments."
“Yes I do–but I’ve only–OOFF! Damn! I almost broke a toe!”
“I’m sorry. Arthur was clearing shale from this area last year…”
I look at what I struck with my foot. “I don’t think this is shale.”
I clear dirt away. I find what looks like a metal-and-rubber plate. “This is some kind of treadle!”
I clear away some more dirt and find a name plate. “‘V. A. Lemoyne & Co., Builders…’”
Alice’s eyes flash. “Lemoyne! He tried to buy this place from Dad and Mum last year. He runs a huge building and electronics place upstate. They must have sneaked in and put this here when were in London last year!”
I think about this. Why would a builder like Lemoyne want the property? “Alice, how long has your family lived here?”
“Since about 1948. Dad and Mum moved here from London. There was hardly anything else around when he closed the sale.”
“And now…I think I get it. Isn’t this end of town mostly low-income, with a high incidence of unemployment?”
“Yes…what is the connection?”
“I read about a year ago that Lemoyne’s company went through an acrimnious strike! I bet he wants to relocate here where the potential work force is more docile…”
"Alice’s face lights up. “You know, my Uncle Phil is a shipping foreman there…”
“He might be able to help us. But I think I’d like to ask the police about Rita Waterford and that professor–you know, the one you beat the stuffing out of.”
Alice giggles nervously. “Well, let’s get on with the photography and bugging, and so on. We may be able to put two and two together, especially if Lemoyne still has his eye on this property.” We carefully cover the treadles over again, a little more than before so nobody else stumbles on them.
I go get my .357 magnum. Alice brings Arthur’s shotgun. She takes pictures of about 30 views inside the gnome room, with each camera, and gets the prints later that day. I set up a bugging system the Watergate plumbers would envy. We also make calls to the office of the attorney Professor Fields, concerning Rita Waterford’s employment, the professorships and status of Professor John McGowan, who has recovered from Alice’s attack but is still suspended indefinitely, and complaints about Lemoyne’s corporation, all data gathered for us by Field’s detectives. Our work is only interrupted by–uh…some personal contact, if you know what I mean…
A few days later we painstakingly scrutinize the sound recordings we make, and evaluate the data the lawyer has gathered for us.
Furthermore, Alice has given me a full description of her own theories the whole while we were setting it up–and I take down a long series of handwritten notes. Among other things, Alice contends that…
“‘Start by’ what?” asks Alice. She’s just come back from inside the house and has a book with her titled: NUMEROLOGY, MYSTICISM, AND THE OCCULT. Apparently while I was contemplating what we should do, Alice figured out a way to do both together.
“I’ll just take the book with us,” she says. “If, during our inspection, anything else comes up involving the number 23, we’ll have it on hand.”
“Good,” I say wondering I didn’t think of this option earlier. “We shouldn’t have to get bogged down any further.”
We walk over to Alice’s car, a blue new model VW Beetle. Alice puts all our necessary equipment (i.e., camera, tape recorder, etc.) in the back seat and hands me her car keys.
“Can you drive?” she asks. “I want to look at this book on the way over.”
“Sure,” I say getting in the front seat–and noticing the car’s a stick shift. “No problem.” It’s been awhile since I drove a stick.
I awkwardly and hesitantly pull out of the drive way and onto the street. Alice is going through the numerology book and tagging pages for possible future reference with blue post-it notes. She also begins softly singing that old Dionne Warwick song again. I would’ve asked her the title but I was too focused on the road and making sure I wouldn’t ruin the transmission in Alice’s car.
We drive out of her neighborhood and onto a typical suburban boulevard lined with franchise fast-food places and strip malls. At first glance, there’s nothing unusual about this stretch of road–most towns have strips of roadway like this. However, the fast-food joints along side the road have names like Burger Chef, Herfy’s, and Wimpy’s–franchises that I thought had gone out of business years ago. The familiar fast-food places like McDonald’s, KFC, and Taco Bell are also there but they all have their old logos on their signs and their stores all have their old style of architecture (e.g., McDonald’s is just an outdoor stand and had a HUGE golden arches, Taco Bell is still in an outdoor mission-style building, and the KFC still has its old red-and-white pavillion with a big statue of the Colonel out front).
I pause from tour down Nostalgia Lane and wonder aloud, “Why would anyone want to steal garden gnomes?”
Alice stops singing and says in response, “Why would anyone want to collect garden gnomes and meticulously take care of them?”
“Well, he’s your brother,” I say. “You know him better than I do.”
“I’m not necessarily asking a question,” Alice replies. “I’m just saying that if there are people who want to collect certain items, there are also probably people who–for whatever reason–are willing to acquire those same items through any means.”
Alice goes back to looking at her book and is now humming the Dionne Warwick song. We are now driving through a thickly forested area. The city we were in has abruptly given way to wilderness. I suddenly remember to ask about somethng important.
“Alice?” I ask. “Do you know the address to this place?”
Alice stops humming and pauses for a second.
“I think I wrote it down somewhere,” she says slowly as though she’s not quite sure.
“What about where it is?” I further inquire. “What part of town is it in? Are we on the right road?”
“I think we’re okay,” I hear Alice say. She’s now reaching into the back seat where all the equipment is.
The road has narrowed to two lanes and the forest is denser. I begin to worry that we’re lost.
“I’m sure I wrote it down,” Alice says trying to assure both of us. “It’s just with this stuff back here.”
There are no other vehicles on the road. I think maybe I should turn around but the road isn’t wide enough. Also, the forest is now murky, thick, and encroaching onto the roadway. I’m afraid that if I pull the car over to the shoulder, it’ll be swallowed by the darkness. My sense of dread grows exponentially. Then, I hear a muffled voice from the back seat.
“Oh, here it is.”
Alice has found the piece of paper with the inspector’s address.
“Bluestone Building, 23 North 23rd Street, Room 23,” Alice reads. “I know where that is.”
I should relax a bit upon finding out this bit of information. However, we seem to lost in the densest unpopulated and unexplored wilds of Siberia. Somewhere out of the corner of my eye, I swear I see a giant ground sloth and sabre toothed tiger.
“Well, are we on the right road?” I ask.
“Yes,” says Alice confidently. “We’re almost there.”
“You’re sure?”
“Oh yes. I’ve been in this part of town many times before.”
“What town?” I say starting to lose my temper. “This is most primeval stretch of road on earth!”
“Just around the curve past this hill,” Alice says calmly.
She starts humming the Dionne Warwicke song again. However, I’m now so upset, I don’t care what the title is.
A few minutes ago, I was afraid we were about to vanish forever. Now, as I drive around the hill, my mood has shifted to instense fury. As my anger grows, I realize I’ve never fought with Alice before so I don’t know what kind of a woman I’m up against. However, that little beat-down she laid on McGowan might give my some idea. We’re now almost around the curve and come out at…a busy intersection downtown.
I look at the street sign. It read “N. 23rd St.” I look at the addresses on the multi-story buildings alongside the road. They read in succession “11…13…15…17…” Alice is right. There’s no need to be upset. Everything is working out.
We find an empty parallel parking spot in front of the Bluestone Building and get out. I get the box full of equipment in the back seat and Alice plugs the meter. She’s now softly singing the Dionne Warwick song. As we walk toward the entrance, I say to her, “What’s the name of that song? I know it’s the theme to a really bad 1960’s movie but the exact title escapes me.”
“Well, for one thing, Dionne Warwick wasn’t actually in the movie,” says Alice as she reaches for the door. “She just sang the theme. It’s…”
Just as Alice is about answer, she stops silent. I’m silent too. We’ve just gone through the front door of the Bluestone Building and discovered that…
:smack:[Note: this is a link that goes after Monty’s and before my last posting.–NDP]
this book she has on numerology might be helpful. I think there might be some interesting things found at the inspector’s office and we should head down there first. (I also still think this whole “23” business is a waste of time.)
“Do you know how to get downtown?” she asks.
“Not really,” I say as we both step outside.
“We could go downtown now,” Alice says, “Or, we could see what that book says. It’s your choice.”
The ball’s in my court again. I pause to decide. Again, I state, “Let’s start by…”
[Note to later posters: don’t reply to this entry. Instead, reply to the one that ended with the writer and Alice entering the Bluestone Building.]
everyone is wearing cravattes. Everyone. Which is odd, because everyones heads have been evacuated and their brains replaced with a viscous fluid the color of grape jelly. It’s leaking out their ears, making you think back to that time in Junior High when the class bully poured syrup all over you and screamed “Hey, look at the moron!” He wasn’t very creative, which is probably why he always looked over your shoulder on tests. Rather, he held you down until you gave him the answers. Same outcome.
All this thought of school places your REM butt right into the principle’s office, where you have been sent by an outraged English teacher for …