The following day, the ubiquitous chaos in Murphy’s home greeted me in full force. There was not a single thing in its usual place. The clutter had reached such a critical level that I found my safety razor and toothbrush on the TV set and my toothpaste and shaving brush on the couch. Because of the coffee they had absorbed, my magazines in the kitchen corner were entirely consumed by mold now, and the bag of garbage under the sink, which I regularly forgot to take out, stank awfully. It made me dream of one of these marvelous garbage disposal things they had in the big houses in the suburban areas.

Since I had already discovered my shaving tools, I stopped my explorations and sat on the couch for a brief rest. Then I grabbed the remote. I secretly hoped my cable company had grown tired of punishing me for not paying them and turned on my television, but I was wrong. They obviously weren’t tired enough yet. It was good that my telephone still worked, though. The device suddenly rang—probably for the last time before my telephone company cut me off too—and I stood up to answer it.

“How are you, sweetheart?” A soft woman’s voice asked me from the other end of the line. Sandra was the only one who called me that.

“I’m super peachy!” I replied cheerfully. “I’ve been so busy lately that I feel like my life’s slipping by. I didn’t have time to call you, you know.”

“Really? I thought it was the opposite.”

“Opposite how?” I was surprised she knew my schedule so well.

“I’ve got the impression you trembled with excitement about me.”

“Well, I’m a pretty tough guy; you know me! Sometimes, I tremble just to burn the excessive testosterone I have.” I started fooling around.

Sandra remained silent for a while, trying to decide whether my stupid attempt to say something funny was worth answering, but eventually, she approved of it and quickly went on, “But it’s such a shame to waste your product for no purpose! I’d be very delighted to sweeten my cake with it, you know. And if you have some extra cream, I might even scream!”

“In fact, I always have something on the side,” I mumbled, suddenly confused because my little arachnid had never been into vulgar allegories as far as I knew. I obviously had a superpower to pervert women, which I was unaware of. “However, the secret’s not about the cream but how I serve it. I’d like to think I’m so good at it that turning it into a trick might be an excellent idea, just like Bambo did with the bowler hat.”

“Bambo? And who’s that?”

“It’s Bambo from ‘Bimbo, Bambo, and the Bowler’! Remember the circus act?”

“You like circus performances?” Sandra asked, intrigued.

“Yes, I love it,” I grunted, uncertain because I already had increasing doubts about whether I really talked to the right person.

“In this case, you can take me to see one sometime,” the woman on the other end, whoever she was, replied. By the way, I was starting to guess already.

“Yeah, I might do that,” I answered evasively. “But you should promise Greensboro will never know about it! I suspect I’ve been too much for him lately.”

“Don’t worry; he doesn’t need to know! But you know what? Wouldn’t it be better if we met for a drink first? I mean, why jump straight into the circus ring?”

“Of course!” I surprised myself by agreeing to it without thinking. “What do you say about tonight at eight? I can take you from—”

“32A Saratoga Avenue,” the inspector’s office beauty readily gave me her address. “Push the buzzer for Jill DeLuca.”

“Okay, sweetheart.”

“Okay.”

“And one last question. Can I?” I asked.

“Of course. Shoot it!”

“How did you get my phone number?”

The woman giggled soundly and hung up on me without answering. It was a stupid question, really! It was her job.

I hung up too and worriedly looked around, now really desperate. Suddenly, I had so many urgent things to do that I had to put myself into turbo mode right away if I wanted to receive guests tonight. I quickly made a list in my mind, and after a brief calculation of the available time, I was dumbfounded. There was no reasonable chance to check everything off, even if I lived on Mercury and had its exotically long days at my disposal.

Despite that, I enthusiastically embarked on bringing order to my house—at least to some extent—but since the avalanche of chores grew exponentially, it eventually overwhelmed me. At some point, very tired, I opened the fridge, which obviously didn’t work because the only beer inside was insanely warm, and I grabbed it. I slumped on the couch and tried to calm myself down. Soon, I realized it wouldn’t happen, so I turned on the TV to help. Of course, there was no chance to watch Tom and Jerry or anything else for that matter, but at least I could stare at the static noise until I got totally bored and forgot about my to-do list. Then, after experiencing so many intense and contradictory emotions for such a short time, I put the remote away, stood up, got dressed, and left my apartment, climbing down the stairs. A few minutes later, I opened the door on the ground floor and stuck my head outside.

Fortunately, the heat wasn’t unbearable yet. It was hot, but not as much as the previous day. When I remembered the terror I had experienced, I shuddered involuntarily and wondered if Earth and Venus had actually swapped their orbits without anyone noticing. The unbroken period of devastatingly hot weather had lasted so long that I wasn’t sure I would bear one more week.

I cautiously stepped outside and sprinted to my car as fast as possible to avoid unnecessary risks. Then, I hopped into it before receiving heavy burns or other injuries and drove down the street on my way to Cacadulu. I had approximately eight hours until my date with Jill DeLuca, and in the meantime, I wanted to see if Lara had appeared in our hotel room. She worried me, and I was afraid she was conducting a parallel investigation, which might get her into serious trouble. I had no idea why she would do that. It seemed unreasonable because she had already hired me to do it for her, and her actions totally undermined my efforts in this respect. I even wondered why I was still working on her case.

Apart from the terrible weather and the fear that my assistant was missing permanently now, the unfortunate death of the bum also shook me up. In fact, his murder wasn’t a big mystery because he had so little in life, and the little he had was so worthless that the list of suspects wasn’t too long. Except for Cleopatra, I couldn’t think of other people who might want him dead. On the other hand, though, maybe I was wrong. The guy probably had some friends in the improvised slum under the highway, and many of them might have been envious of his “valuable” possessions—like the radio-frequency shield, for example, or the drug treats he used to pick up at the seaport. There was also a third option—the extraterrestrials! Their screenwriters might have decided to end his role in our movie production because he tried to educate people on shielding themselves from the aliens’ poisonous whispering. As the little man with the weird necklace of tiny skeletons put it, nothing could be left out of the equation until chemical and microbiological examinations were done.

About forty-five minutes later, still caught up in my dark thoughts, I reached Cacadulu and stopped the Ford outside the parking lot. Sandra’s Porsche was nowhere in sight, and when I stepped out of my car and walked into the hotel, I didn’t find its owner behind the reception desk either.

I moved on, heading toward the stairs and the elevator. The door of the later was wide open, and the bellhop—quite understandably—was missing inside. Instead, a note was attached to the cabin’s back wall, reading “Self-service!” I didn’t follow the instructions and turned to the left to take the stairs because I didn’t want to think about the guy all the way up while riding his “vehicle.” When I reached the fifth floor, I turned to the right and walked to our room, standing for a moment in front of the door, listening. Then I quietly pushed it open and entered.

Thank god I didn’t find Lara inside, sprawled dead on the floor. There were no signs she had been in the place after my last visit, and the terrible splotch our elevator buddy had left in this world before heading for the next was still there—abhorrent and sickening. Even if the sugar had initially attracted some roaches, they obviously left the feast before poisoning themselves.

I turned on the lights and approached the mess for a better look. In the bright light, the situation didn’t actually seem so terrible. Apart from the toothpaste and the sugar, Lara had also used something green and sticky, and the mixture, although disgusting, definitely didn’t look like blood now. The cleaning lady would probably swear for two days in a row when she saw it, but she would eventually clean it without suspecting anything.

I turned around and started gathering our stuff. It was an easy task because there wasn’t much to collect except for a pile of dirty clothes and a stash of grass. I emptied the bathroom cabinet, too. After diligently removing every clue that led to us, I scrubbed the green splotch with a towel until it turned into something you would expect to see in an abandoned pigsty, and then—totally satisfied by the result—I stomped on it a couple of times until even the term “pigsty” became inapplicable to it. Finally, I put our stuff in a black plastic bag and took everything onto the balcony, saving only a few of Lara’s belongings.

I cautiously looked over the railing. Since there was no one on the street, I furtively dropped the bag with the hypocrisy of a slutty Renaissance bride trying to get rid of her dangerously clean bed sheet after the night of consummation. It fell right into one of the dumpsters. Then I quickly stepped back inside, wrote a meaningful note to my assistant so she would be the only one who could understand it, put it on the nightstand, grabbed Lara’s shit, and left the room.

On my way back, I decided to stop by the bar too. I didn’t mean to stay there because I needed to be fresh in the evening and only wanted to say “hello” to my friend. However, until I reached the place, I had already changed my mind, considering a quick drink. It’s interesting how I always swear it would be quick or small—as if I need to justify myself—but I usually have a couple of them, which are actually large!

Anyway, there was no need to beat myself this time because the bar turned out empty of people. When I looked around the place, though, I saw a ton of olives scattered all over the floor, among which broken glass glittered. The situation was weird and even worrisome, but I decided not to look for the shooting master and bother him with my stupid questions right now. Instead, I silently sneaked back outside since it was clear enough that my friend had gotten too far with counting.

I swiftly left the hotel, got to my car, and then drove back to my place, spending the rest of my day doing laundry. I did two cycles, and since my tumble dryer was broken again, I had to hang my threads on the balcony railing like a Sicilian housewife from the last century. I thought I would need to turn them over every half an hour if I wanted to wear something clean tonight, but, of course, my worries were in vain because I practically lived in hell. The weather was so hot that my clothes were dry after just a few minutes, and I quickly took them back inside before they coughed fire and burned.

Eventually, two hours before sunset, I was ready to head out on my date. I felt slightly nervous about it, but I was also thrilled. I dressed up, walked down to hail a cab, and slumped in the backseat, promising to take it easy that night because I deserved at least a few hours of rest from my stupid case. I gave the guy Jill’s address and informed him where we would go next—I considered a visit to Midnight Ride—and then leaned back in the seat, resting.

My cab driver turned out to be a Punjabi, as he proudly informed me when we set off, and he wore such a huge turban decorated with a fake diamond and a peacock feather that I could barely see the front windshield behind it. The man stomped on the gas right away and hurled the car forward, but strangely enough, he kept shaking his head inexplicably the entire time as he drove. And he also never stopped talking! I found the combination of the two very disturbing because he didn’t seem to pay enough attention to his job, and his turban jigged so wildly that at some point, I feared—quite reasonably, I think—it would jump off his head and settle on mine.

The South Asian persisted with his weird ritual all the way to Jill’s apartment and lengthily explained to me that he wasn’t a member of the cab drivers union and, therefore, had no intention of observing their price list. He assured me that these bastards were as shameless and dishonorable as the Anjuvannans in the Malabar Coast and that he filled his tank at the only gas station in America where the price wasn’t pumped up. The place was owned by one of his cousins, who bought his product from his other cousin, who, in turn, smuggled it from Trinidad with his third cousin’s boat. He also added that he would take me to Chandrapur, Maharashtra, for only a dollar if I wanted him to.

About half an hour later, he sharply pulled up at the curb on 32A Saratoga Avenue and said it was nine bucks so far. He reminded me too much of another Asian who sold the truest and tastiest hotdog ever, and that was probably why I tried to be careful not to replicate him. If you listened to all these guys and took their words at face value, you could easily get the impression that their only mission in this world was to make people happy and destroy the market economy. Interestingly enough, their deeds proved the opposite, though!

I told the Punjabi to wait for a second, stepping out of the car, and he shook his turban again and reached his massive hand to punch the meter to wait time. I briskly went to push the buzzer for Jill DeLuca, and it turned out my lady was already waiting for me, her voice chirping that she would be down in a minute. I said, “Okay!” and stood by the door to hold it for her like a true gentleman when she arrived. Besides, I didn’t want to return to the cab yet because, out of my experience, I knew South Asians were quite touchy, and they had the habit of blowing a gasket for no reason at all. After all, I didn’t want to make Jill walk to Midnight Ride!

Not long after that, my date appeared in the doorway, making me gasp. She wore a high-slit black dress with an ultra-deep V-neck going down to under her belly button on the front, and on the back, it was half an inch from revealing her butt cleavage. Naturally, such a thing wouldn’t allow her to wear underwear, so she had none. Her hairstyle was very impressive, and her makeup was pretty lovely, too, but combined with the dress, they looked almost trivial. I was sure even if she walked out of her place with a cucumber mask applied to her face and an Angora rabbit wig on her head, no one would have actually noticed. In this regard, I seriously started worrying about my choice of venue for the night. Maybe I should have taken her to a fancy casino restaurant across the ocean instead—say, in Monte Carlo or something.

When I opened the cab door for her, she hopped inside, giving me clear visual proof of her nakedness under the dress. Then, I followed her in the backseat and informed the Anjuvannan hater again where we were going. He promptly accelerated the car and did it so sharply that my date and I nearly rolled back and crawled over the back window. I had the feeling the bastard thought a whole gang of fighters from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam was chasing him!

We had just slid back to the seat, and I was wondering how to start a conversation when Jill suddenly launched herself at me without further ado. Usually, when people meet for the first time, there is an awkward silence between them, lots of clumsy gestures, and even exaggerated courtesies, but my date decided to skip these unnecessary conventions. Instead, she started casting glances at me, thrusting herself into my lap at every turn, rubbing her hip into mine, and she didn’t miss her chance to press her right breast against my left elbow every now and then. On top of that, very soon, she initiated a series of lustful sounds as if we were stuck in a terribly overheated sauna and she couldn’t breathe. Eventually, her moaning distracted our Punjabi driver completely and turned him on so badly that he stopped looking ahead altogether and nearly scooched back to sit with us.

About twenty-five minutes later, we reached our destination, and he had to stop the car. He completely forgot to ask for his money, though, and only stared in the rearview mirror, hypnotized and unable to move or speak. To distract him for a moment and give Jill a chance to survive, I pulled a twenty-dollar bill out of my wallet and shoved it into his hands, after which I pushed my date outside. Then I stepped out, too, and we hurried to the bar, where I finally sighed, relieved.

By the way, Midnight Ride hadn’t changed much from what I remembered when Lara and I visited it more than a week ago. After hanging around Cacadulu and Eternity for so long, I had forgotten how refreshingly weird the place was. It was already crowded, and in the main hall, a bunch of hookers attacked us right away, pulling me in different directions. They tried to persuade me to a threesome, foursome, gangbang, anal, dominance, bukkake, and all the other configurations and sexual deviations that came to mind, even though I already had company. I was rather annoyed by their nagging and roughly pushed them away because they obviously wouldn’t give up. I thought my brutal gesture would alienate my girl, but that wasn’t the case—she was actually impressed by my rough approach.

“You’re so tough!” She cried in my ear, expressing her high opinion of me, when we finally walked away from them. “Your species is going extinct these days!”

“Well, it means you’re lucky!” Before managing to stop myself, I got carried away, building on my style with the hookers. “I may let the tyrannosaur out of the cage then. Watch your panties!”

Any other woman in this situation would have stared weirdly at me after such a brainless declaration of masculinity at the very beginning of our date, but not Greensboro’s secretary! Instead, she lovingly rubbed her hip into mine as if she were a humble farmer girl from the Dakotas, and the Marlboro Man had just arrived in her town to shoot another stupid commercial, agreeing to take a picture with her. Her weird veneration encouraged me further, and I took the liberty to put my arm around the waist of a waitress who idled at the counter. She had her back turned to us, and I only wanted to attract her attention and order some drinks, but the girl totally misunderstood my intentions and sharply turned around, winking at me naughtily. Then, she tugged at the base of her tank top, and its square neckline slid down, revealing the upper part of her blessings. Her right nipple promptly used the chance to slip out of prison and pop up over the edge. By the way, the chick had a really gorgeous pair of boobs; they were like Hoover Dams of breasts! I smiled awkwardly and decided to move on and bother the bartender instead because disturbing such an overqualified waitress with my insignificant drinks felt totally wrong.

Well, I moved on, but Jill actually didn’t. She lingered behind, and when I turned around to urge her to come with me, she unexpectedly reached out and pinched the girl’s nipple, plucking it slightly until it slipped off her fingers. The shocked victim of her sexual assault goggled her eyes in disbelief and sharply pulled the neckline back up to hide her boobs. Then she turned around and quickly walked away, offended. I promptly grabbed the hooligan by the elbow and hauled her toward the other end of the counter, embarrassed.

“Why did you do that?” I asked her, astonished, as we walked.

“I thought it was what people would normally do here,” she explained without shame. “I did it out of politeness.”

I didn’t say anything else but secretly decided to keep an eye on her for future brutalities of this sort because she obviously tended to behave weirdly sometimes. Then, I found two vacant stools and signaled the bartender to come around. Unlike the zombie I remembered from my previous visit, this guy was almost as quick and devastating as a spring tornado. He ran over to us but tripped and knocked over a box of beer cans and a crate of lime fruits. He never bothered to clean up the mess, though, and instead asked us what we wanted to have. I ordered a vodka soda for myself, and Jill settled on some sweet bullshit containing Curacao. I had never been into such shit, but since the cocktail had a very exotic name—Caracas Nights—I decided to try one as an appetizer for my vodka.

The bar virtuoso enthusiastically approved our choice and launched himself on the shelf behind his back. I saw him doing three somersaults, four pirouettes, and five Wushu poses, after which he threw a few bottles at himself, let a couple of glasses chase them, broke half of the glassware in the process, and soon two cocktails and a vodka soda appeared on the counter. Right after that, the acrobat took a mutated banana bigger than an English cucumber, cut the tips off with a mini-machete like a skillful coconut harvester, chopped up a slice into each cocktail glass like a master samurai, set the drinks on fire like a devoted pyromaniac, extinguished them feverishly like a broken fireman who was saving the Federal Reserve Bank of New York from the flames, and finally pushed the cocktails to us, showing us that all his fingers were still intact. We gasped with amazement, grabbed our drinks, said “cheers” to each other, and drank. I actually gulped down my Caracas all at once. Then I coughed loudly.

Oh, my gosh! Such a disgusting thing I had never tasted in my entire life. The liquid slipped down my throat and drove every last air bubble out of my system, like copper alloy in a mold cavity. I was sure I would never be able to burp again and felt like my head was attached to the shoulders of a lifeless bronze statue in the park.

Since I couldn’t breathe and was afraid I would suffocate and faint, I grabbed a forgotten lime that rolled around the counter and chewed half of it off as it was, spitting seeds and pieces of peel. I was only an inch away from making a complete inventory of my stomach contents, as I used to do in my shameful past. Fortunately, the lime juice did its job well enough, and the emerging chain reaction was soon stopped.

“Well, how do you like it here?” I asked Jill after a while, still coughing.

She looked around with greedy eyes like a crusader’s wife who had accidentally found herself in a harbor pub without her chastity belt and turned her eyes back at me, licking her lips. I was almost sure the only places Greensboro had taken her so far were the opera house and the ballet theater.

“It’s so wild! I like it very much!” she cried, trying to overcome the increasing racket. “Do you come here often?”

“Ha! I sometimes sleep here!” I cried back, taking on the enthusiasm of the crowd around us. “I even puked into a stripper’s pants once!”

Right after making this incredibly stupid confession, I stopped talking, embarrassed. It was utterly unnecessary to share such a shameful memory with her, and I wondered what was wrong with me. I suspected it was due to Lara’s poisonous influence, but she wasn’t here now, so I had no excuse. In an attempt to cover my blunder with a casual gesture, I grabbed my vodka and tried to drink it, but unfortunately, it was too late for damage control.

“Was it you?” I suddenly heard someone asking me, which interrupted my drinking.

I shuddered unpleasantly because I thought it was the disgraced stripper—the victim of my unfortunate mistake—who said that. It was going to be a monumentally awkward situation if she was here. Fortunately, it was only the bartender. He still idled around, looking at me like I were a Broadway star who knocked back a couple of drinks and decided to tell people a few spicy stories from New York’s high life.

“Well, it happened accidentally. I didn’t mean it!” I mumbled, ashamed as if anyone could actually mean such a horrible thing. I was also afraid the bastard might jump into intimate details and reveal more about my “heroism”—particularly the fact that it wasn’t the poor girl’s pants where I actually puked but her vagina.

“Are you kidding me? You’re a celebrity here; everybody knows you!” My new friend promptly smashed my hope for discretion to smithereens. “Every guy who works at Midnight tells the story about Sessile and what you did to her to the rookies that come after him!”

“Is Sessile… still around?” I looked at the crowd nervously, now seriously worrying about the situation.

“No. She moved to Eternity to work as a restroom attendant because, after the incident, people started calling her Dirty Vag, and she couldn’t take it.”

I literally wanted to dig a hole for myself after hearing this. I felt so bad that I thought, devastated, “Poor girl! That’s what excessive drinking of Johnnie Walker does to people and their unfortunate victims!” Then I anxiously turned to Jill to see how she felt about it. Needless to say, she wasn’t shocked at all, which backed up my conviction that a man could never wrap his head around women. They were creatures from another planet!

“So, what happened to the guy who worked here before you?” I quickly asked the bartender, attempting to steer the subject away from Dirty Vag before it was too late. “I mean, he seemed to like his job pretty much. Why did he leave?”

“Oh, no! He died.” My admirer informed me in a tone that was too casual for what he said. “He was so big on inventing new drinks that it was just inevitable to screw up in the end. And he screwed up big time!”

“What do you mean, big time?” I wanted to know.

“His last cocktail was supposed to be an enormous hit,” the man explained. “At least he believed so. He ordered ingredients from Burma—the excrement of rare tropical maggots containing an enzyme that makes people relaxed and easygoing. Unfortunately, though, the guy who sold him this shit turned out to be a Vietnamese swindler and pawned him off a bad batch. Now, I don’t know exactly what happened there, but I believe there must have been some living larvae left in the bottle because one evening, as our friend stood at the counter, he just fell on the floor, and his body burst open, letting thousands of worms crawl out. It was a really disgusting thing to see, but at least his cocktail was still in development, and he experimented on himself, so none of the clients were harmed.”

I choked, coughing when he finished his little story because I had never heard something so horrible. I expected such things to happen only in the movies, not in real life! Then I grabbed my drink and took a considerable gulp to disinfect my bowels—just in case. I also secretly checked for escaped maggots lurking under the countertop, waiting for a chance to kill me in a very gruesome way. Fortunately, I found none, and I finally relaxed.

“Well, the dude was a screwball, wasn’t he? It was only natural,” I said after a while, remembering that the guy wanted to make a cocktail with roaches for me. I was so happy that I refused back then. “Curiosity killed the cat, you know.”

“Oh, no! It wasn’t a curiosity. Absolutely not! He actually invented that drink to help Dirty Vag forget her trauma.” The bartender unexpectedly returned to the subject I wanted to forget so desperately. “She was so fucked up that at some point, she couldn’t bear it near men anymore, and that was definitely a problem for a stripper, as you’d expect!”

I looked at him, very frustrated now. I decided I had enough of his bullshit already, swearing I wouldn’t talk to the guy for the rest of the night, even if he were the only man in a hundred-mile radius. However, when I turned my head to Jill, she was still impressed with me, as if I were some kind of superhero—an Assman, Superass, or something like that.

It made me think about Greensboro’s secretary. It was obvious that the inspector had kept this weird chick on a short leash, and now she discovered for the first time in her life that there was a whole world outside, which was also excitingly dirty. On the other hand, seeing what sort of things impressed her, I started to suspect there was nothing more in her head than what you would typically find in a hard-boiled egg! She was actually pretty dumb if I was honest.

After a while, Jill suddenly stood up, grabbing my hand and trying to pull me onto the dance floor. I obeyed reluctantly, but I promised myself this time I would lead. When we found an empty space, I stopped briefly, stretched myself, straightened my shirt, spread my arms aside, and prepared for a passionate tango. Unfortunately, that was all I could do. Right then, the DJ unexpectedly decided it was time to harden the mood and switched to heavy metal music without any warning whatsoever, which reminded me of the previous dance I had on this dance floor. Everybody around me instantly got wild, and I remained the only person standing in the crowd like a crazy prophet who wanted to embrace the world and wrap it in his endless love. The Jesus statue in Rio was nothing compared to me!

And just then, since it took me way too long to retract my arms, the inevitable happened. An overheated fan appeared out of nowhere, recklessly jumping and headbanging, and he accidentally walloped his forehead against my left fist. Due to the heavy impact, his head shook like a church bell and bounced back, his legs entangled like well-done spaghetti, his body reeled to the right, and he finally collapsed on the floor, seemingly unconscious.

“Oh, god! I’m so sorry, dude!” I mumbled worriedly and squatted down to see if he was okay.

“Oh, fuck it! I don’t even care!” I heard someone shout, which made me look up. It was another “dancer” who thought I was talking to him. He jumped around wildly, wielding an imaginary sword like a true Highlander.

I watched him for a few seconds, startled, and after the injured guy at my feet showed signs of life, I stood up and searched for Jill in the crowd. Unfortunately, she had already sunk deep into it at the far end of the dance floor. I could see her head bopping up and down among a sea of overzealous metal fans who obviously thought the end of the fucking world was coming. Since I felt awkward here, I decided to return to our seats and put an end to my dancing career for good. Obviously, these things weren’t for me.

“Oh, man, you really rock! How do you do it every time?” My new bartender friend cried excitedly when I sat on my stool. “You always do something so cool!”

I smiled politely but didn’t answer because I wanted to be true to my promise and not talk to him. Despite that, as a joke, I scribbled a quick autograph for him on a paper napkin, and he thanked me with half a bottle of Absolut for free. Then, he moved away to serve other clients. About ten minutes later, when I had already started using his gift, my lady ran back to me, breathless and butt-naked.

“Where did you disappear?” she asked me, all sweat. Her cheeks were blushing red.

I looked at her, bewildered. While in the melee, someone had ripped apart the ultra-deep neck of her dress on the back, and now the garment was sagging, revealing half of her bare ass. She didn’t seem to care too much, though. A cocktail glass of Caracas Nights had obviously provided enough fuel for her not to worry.

“I just remembered that someone had to watch our seats,” I replied, making her turn around so I could help her. I clipped the edges of her dress together using a champagne stopper wrapped in a wire cage, which I found lost on the counter. While I was working, she kept squirming in my arms and made sure I groped her entire body, leaving no part of it untouched. Eventually, despite her sabotaging efforts, I managed to do the job, and the stopper made a pretty decent brooch, I should say. My date turned her head back to look at it, and she was ecstatic when she saw the result of my work.

“Where did you learn to do this?” she asked me, walking on air with joy like a female bowerbird seeing a colorful cocktail straw in the nest her partner had built for her.

“One learns a lot of things in Nam!” I pompously smiled, although my only contact with this country was a very boring documentary about the monsoon season in South Asia, which I saw almost a thousand years ago.

“You fought in Vietnam?” Jill was astonished.

“It’s a long story,” I grunted, reluctant to say more as if I were Captain Willard, who had killed a battalion of Kurtz’s copies but didn’t want to brag about it.

This last piece of information literally swept my date off her feet. She clearly hadn’t seen a more interesting person than me in her entire life, and it wasn’t even such a hard thing to achieve—it only took me watching a single television program! Nevertheless, I prudently decided to change the subject because I was afraid she might want to learn more details about my heroic past, and then I would have to kill her to keep the secrets of the American government safe.

“You know what? I don’t really believe I’ve never sent any report to your boss.” After sipping my drink, I maneuvered to swerve the conversation toward a more helpful subject. I tried to sound as casual as possible, but I didn’t do a great job. “Are you sure it’s not lost somewhere in the red tape?”

Jill smiled flirtatiously, leaning toward me, putting her hands on my knees, and looking me in the eyes. By the way, she seemed pretty cute when she kept her mouth shut.

“Do we have to talk business right now?” Her lips sulked as her hands slowly moved up and down my thighs.

“No, of course not, but this forfeit of five grand bugs me a lot, you know. I would be much happier if I could turn it into an eight-grand bounty!”

“Well, I don’t think you’ve sent anything,” my girlfriend said, letting go of me and returning to her cocktail. “But you know what? I can’t know for sure. After all, it’s not my job.”

I looked at her, puzzled. It seemed strange for her to say it because I thought that was precisely her job, but maybe I was wrong. Maybe her actual job in Greensboro’s office boiled down to just making tea and giving late-afternoon blowjobs under her boss’s desk.

“Anyway, I don’t even understand why you took this complicated case in the first place! What did you expect to gain by poking your nose into the business of these big shots?” She asked me after a while, still annoyed by the sudden turn in our conversation.

I wondered what to answer. In fact, I had no idea what I expected to gain. I probably just wanted to make a few bucks to pay my apartment’s rent. In any case, I thought I would gain absolutely nothing from this evening either if I kept asking Jill questions like these.

“I’m not exactly sure why I did it,” I admitted dismally. “Is the triumph of justice a good enough reason?”

My companion smiled commiseratingly when she heard about my naïve dream. I couldn’t blame her for that; it was indeed a stupid thing to believe. It made me feel like a third grader who thought Indiana Jones won World War II for us by stealing the lost Ark.

“Where do you think you live?” Greensboro’s favorite secretary attempted to instill some common sense in me and relieve me of my newly bloomed proletarian illusions. “This is America here! First, you’ll need to talk to the U.S. AG’s PR agent or the Secretary of State’s sister-in-law’s nephew, and then you could try changing anything in this country!”

“Why would I need to talk to any of them?” I was surprised.

“Because these two cute little boys are very, very close, that’s why! And when I say close, I mean more than the relationship between you and your pillow!”

“So?” I asked, still confused and embarrassed. I just couldn’t get her point, and I obviously needed extra help understanding the structure of our contemporary political system.

“Well, here’s the deal: back in the day, the Secretary of State’s sister-in-law was actually one of the bridesmaids at the Vice President’s sister’s wedding, who, in turn, is thought to have a secret affair with the President’s brother nowadays, who, in turn, is a longtime fishing buddy with the Attorney General. Now, since the President is very eager to return to his acting career when his term is over, as everybody knows, and since the Secretary of State’s sister-in-law’s nephew is a very successful and well-connected Hollywood agent, it’s only natural that the President would be very fond of him. Right? But apart from having the attention of the President and being a nephew of the Secretary of State’s sister-in-law, this guy, as I said, also has a gay relationship with the United States Attorney General’s PR agent, and, of course, the PR agent has the attention of the AG himself. Besides, the PR agent is also a Latino dance buddy of the House speaker’s wife. You follow me? You should just do a quick math, and you’ll see how much power is concentrated in the hands of these two little motherfuckers!”

I looked at her thoughtfully and felt even more confused. Until now, I had absolutely no idea of these viciously close connections between the key figures in the U.S. administration, and although I had never believed we were the most advanced democracy in the world, I thought we were a democracy, at least! Actually, Jill and I talked about different things here, and she got me completely wrong when I mentioned the triumph of justice. I simply meant that I wanted to take my money for the case, and I cared very little about world justice, if not at all, but it didn’t matter. I didn’t find it necessary to explain myself.

Besides, after a while, when we touched on more abstract subjects, I realized it would be best to cut off the bullshit and start planning for the rest of the night because my office beauty and bowerbird showed clear signs that she was ready for me. Her eyes became sparkling and impatient, and her hands on my knees were restive. It was obvious that she had already approved of my love nest decoration.

I bought one final drink for my lady—just to ensure there would be no bumps on the road—and when she finished it, I said a few more flattering words to her, took her out, and threw her in the backseat of the first cab I saw on the street. Thank god, this time, our driver was quite an ordinary American citizen—obese, narrow-minded, and dull—and after half an hour of nagging about a whole list of things that didn’t concern us, he dumped us in front of my apartment building, sulking like a spoiled child. I helped my turtledove get out of the car, slammed the backdoor as hard as possible, and saw the guy off without tipping him. He was so furious that the tires of his cab smoked as he revved the engine, peeling out. With this, he probably wanted to express his bitter resentment of the cruel capitalist system, or maybe just of us, but this didn’t concern us either.

I grabbed my beauty and took her upstairs to my place, trying to suppress my concerns about the mess we would find there. My apartment looked worse than a barn in an abandoned village, and I feared she might be shocked. Fortunately, all my worries were in vain. Jill didn’t even bother to open her eyes and look around to see where she was.

As soon as we stepped inside, my little bowerbird transformed into a furious grizzly bear starving for three years in a row. She immediately threw herself on me, and her first—still restrained—moans, I took as a positive sign. However, after a few minutes, when she lay naked on the bed and started squirming in my hands like a garden hose under pressure, and she howled like an elephant cow that had just lost her only calf, I really began to worry about her. I was afraid I was actually doing something terrible to her! The jerky situation was so frustrating and confusing—at least to me—that at some point, I began having great trouble finding my way in. Once I thrust inside, once I missed, once inside, then I missed…

Eventually, Jill entangled herself in the bed sheets so severely from all the squirming that when she braced for the climax, she almost tied herself in a knot. I never knew if she really had an orgasm or just tore a hamstring! If it was the second thing, now Greensboro would have a really good reason to hate me, aside from the small ones he already had.

The weirdest thing, though, happened right after the act was over. I hadn’t even managed to leave the worksite officially when Jill DeLuca jumped off the bed and quickly ran to the bathroom, where she washed for probably thirty seconds at most. Then she returned to the bedroom and grabbed an old pajama from the wardrobe, although right next to it, I always kept a brand-new nighty, ready for occasions like this one. After that, she put the thing on and tightly buttoned it up to her chin as if it were a diving suit, and she would use it to visit the bottom of the Barents Sea. She hadn’t even returned to bed when she was already fast asleep.

I looked at her, surprised, and suddenly felt like the loneliest person in the world. She was the first woman I had seen in my life who hated cuddling after sex so badly that she barred and bolted all the doors in her house, including the yard gate, for fear that someone might want to caress her. I lay next to her for a while, but since I was bored, I eventually got up and went to the balcony for a cigarette.

About a quarter of an hour later, still feeling rejected by my Ice Queen, I returned inside and gladly rummaged through Lara’s stuff, hoping to revive the image of her rough but somehow warmer and more humane personality.

And that was how I actually found the picture.

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