“Justinian the Second lost his nose,
Lost his nose, lost his nose.
Justinian II lost his nose—
The Emperor of Byzantium!
They’d loved his father and his grandfather, too.
His great-granddad would more than do.
But he made them hate him strong and true
As Emperor of Byzantium.
So they overthrew him with effortless ease,
Cut off his nose before he could sneeze,
And exiled him to the Chersonese—
Ex-Emperor of Byzantium!
Folks say Jesus is coming, and is He pissed,
But Justinian, he was hardly missed
Until he decided to resist
The new Emperor of Byzantium.
A storm blew up on the high seas.
His friends, they got down on their knees
And said, ‘Justinian, kindly, if you please
Forget about Byzantium!’
‘If I forget, may God drown me now!’
And the storm just stopped—I don’t know how.
And somehow on that wallowing scow
He made it to Byzantium.
He got his throne back with great vim,
Killed the guy who got rid of him
And the one who overthrew him
As Emperor of Byzantium.
Not all stories have happy ends.
He murdered so many, he lost all his friends.
So people turned on him again…
Friendless in Byzantium.
The moral’s simple—keep an eye on your nose.
When you deal with people, watch how it goes
Or you’ll end up like Justinian Number Dos:
A dead man in Byzantium.”
When they finished, Lindsey turned to Rob and said, “You guys are weird, you know?”
“I had heard rumors,” Rob admitted. Justin, by contrast, took a bow. Rob went on, “You need to remember, though—you married me anyway.”
“Oh, yeah.” Lindsey spread her fingers and looked at her ring, as if to remind herself. She went on, “You probably drugged me. Rock-’n’-roll guys are notorious for that, right?”
“At least,” Rob said, and then, “I wish! The last time I had any fun drugs here—well, except for booze—it was the Vicodin the clinic doc gave me when I got shot in the leg. Some things cost more than they’re worth, if you know what I mean.”
“What else could it have been, though?” Lindsey said. “Love?”
“Crazy idea, all right,” Rob agreed. They grinned at each other.
Louise Ferguson often wondered how the hell the Van Slyke Pharmacy stayed in business. For one thing, it was a mom-and-pop up against the chains. Mom-and-pop hamburger stands went belly-up in short order when they butted heads with the Golden Arches and Burger King. They might make better burgers, but they took longer and cost more, and the people who didn’t live in the neighborhood wouldn’t know the burgers were better. Most of the time, being sure what you’d get trumped quality.
The Van Slyke Pharmacy certainly charged more than chains like Rite-Aid and Walgreens, both for prescriptions and for over-the-counter meds. The only people who came in for the stuffed animals and the gaudy ceramic horrors were obvious escapees from the local Home for the Terminally Taste-Impaired. Yes, the place also sold those secondhand books. But no one in the history of the world had ever got rich selling secondhand books. Even Utnapishtim had to declare bankruptcy after his Gently Used Cuneiform Tablets shop failed back in Sumerian days.
Then there was her boss. Jared Watt might be nicer than Mr. Nobashi, but he was also stranger. Considering how squirrely the salaryman from Hiroshima had been, that really took some doing. He not only managed, he passed with flying colors.
His wardrobe had some flying colors, too. He’d never met anything polyester or nylon he didn’t love. The brighter, the better. If colors clashed, he either didn’t notice or didn’t care. His outfits were almost as horrendous as the china figurines clogging the shelves that weren’t full of aspirins or decongestants.
Some people did that kind of thing as shtick. Louise could imagine either of her grown sons wearing some of Jared’s clothes if they decided that was a hoot. But the pharmacist wasn’t doing it to be cool. He did it because those were the clothes he wore.
And his hobbies… ! He was around Louise’s age: in his early fifties. He wasn’t gay, or she didn’t think he was. But his music of choice was Broadway show tunes. He knew how many performances the most obscure musicals had run, and who’d replaced whom in the cast, and when, and often why. He knew songs that had got cut in tryouts, for crying out loud.
Louise had nothing against Broadway musicals, even if they didn’t float her boat. When Jared started going on about European soccer clubs, though, that was when she started looking around for the closest handy blunt instrument.
Not that he cared. He went on and on about how Barcelona played the game the way it should be played, and how they were better than Real Madrid. He told her Barcelona wore blue and red stripes because the Swiss maniac who started the club there came from Basel, which already had a team in blue and red stripes. He talked about Bayer Leverkusen, and about the aspirin tablet on their coat of arms. He bored her with Juventus of Turin, and A.C. Milan, and Inter Milan. He blathered about Sir Alex Ferguson, Manchester United’s longtime coach. He sang the praises of the Gunners of Arsenal, the Blues of Chelsea, and the Iron of Scunthorpe—though that last bunch seemed to be in whatever the Brits called the minor leagues.
His enthusiasm—his mania—didn’t stop at the borders of Europe. He had kind words for the Black Stars of Ghana and the Indomitable Lions of Cameroon and the Elephants of the Ivory Coast. He explained that there was a club called Corinthians in Brazil, a Liverpool in Uruguay, and another Arsenal in Argentina because of tours the original English sides had taken in the early years of the twentieth century. He even occasionally mentioned the L.A. Galaxy of the MLS, who were based in the South Bay (though he used Minor League Soccer as often as Major to spell out the league’s acronym).
He was, in short, a piece of work. Louise cared nothing for any sport, a dislike she’d passed on to Vanessa. She particularly didn’t care for American football. She’d never loathed soccer all that much before, mostly because it hadn’t shown up on her radar screen. Now it did, and she discovered it was at least as annoying as its Yankee cousin.
And, short of using that blunt instrument, she was stuck listening to Jared go on and on about it whenever things got slow in the drugstore. Most of the time, in other words. Combining his obsessions, he even told her there’d been a musical about soccer.
“But only in London,” he assured her. “They never brought it to the States—they didn’t think it would draw.” He sighed, mourning American ignorance. He soon brightened, though. “We did have Good News in the Twenties, about our kind of football. And Damn Yankees, of course.” That last came out with a distinct sniff; he didn’t care for baseball.