“Dreadfully sorry to inconvenience you, sir, but we are collecting for Rag Week.”
She giggled.
“Even though Rag Week is no longer officially recognized, we like to organize some charity events for the homeless.”
The boy was smirking, stared amused at the silent Park. He thought,
“Old fellah is out of it.”
Park focused on the girl, said,
“I very much doubt you are.”
She looked at the boy, like, hello, did she miss, like, something? Park’s mind wandered for a moment amid a jungle of vowels, then he re-clicked, said,
“Dreadfully. You said you are dreadfully sorry but that is just simply misuse of an adjective. And...”
He had to think for a moment, then,
“There is really no call for that.”
The girl was going to give some cheek but then went,
“Anyways, you want to give a donation to help the homeless?”
Park debated punching her in the face but it would require more energy that he could expend. He said,
“How could you possibly care for the homeless when you don’t care for the rudiments of language?”
Slammed the door in her face.
The girl, named Kiera, one of the generation who had left Irish names like
Mary
Siobhan
Maura
Back with the notion of Mass on a Sunday,
Looked back at Park’s house, something tickling at the edge of her consciousness.
The boy, whose interest ranged no further than The Big Bang Theory, was, in his mind, a surfer dude/stoner on some beach in
Daytona.
Like he knew Daytona from a hole in his Red Bulled brain. Kiera said,
“Dude, something off back there.”
The boy went,
“Duh.”
She racked her brain for something she’d been hearing around the town, had a moment, then said to the boy,
“He seemed a bit hung up on language.”
The boy was already trying to decide on thick or thin crust from Domino’s.
She reached the answer, said,
“Holy shite, the grammar guy.”
She took out her phone, checked a number, waited, then said,
“I need to talk to a detective about the dude who’s been offing people.”
The young Guard thought she was speaking to an American but was clued enough to shout for Ridge, said,
“You need to take this.”
I was listening to Jimmy Norman. He had just received his master’s in business and continued to do his radio show.
Impressive.
Ebola was increasingly on a par with the generated paranoia, so any flight from West Africa was close to being shot down. The only light humor in this was Sarah Palin urging Obama to invade Ebola.
The pup was avoiding me as he strongly suspected it was wash day. His own paranoia at play. The local news featured a serious fire on Dockland and loss of life was feared. I wasn’t paying full attention. Had been reading David Foster Wallace’s first novel,
The Broom of the System
And had to smile at his own dismissal of it as
... in many ways it was a
Fuck-off
Enterprise.
You had to love a guy who said that.
“My dog is usually pleased with what
I do because
She is not infected
With the concept
Of what I
Should
Be doing.”
(Lonzo Idolswine)
“It seems perverse to insist on using a capital C for New England Cheddar on the basis that the cheese is named after a place in Somerset, England.”
(Caroline Taggart, My Grammar and I
(Or Should That Be ‘Me’?):
Old-School Ways to Sharpen Your English)
I was having breakfast in the GBC, the neon nightmare.
Two fried eggs
Fat heartaches sausages
Fried tomatoes (at the green café)
Fried mushrooms
Black pudding
Kidding about the last one
Pot of scalding tea.
You can’t, just can’t, have coffee with a fry-up.
Halfway through this feast, a shadow fell over me. Looked up.
Emily.
Pissed, in the American sense, launched,
“What did I tell you, eh? Follow my lead, what was not to understand about that?”
I put my fork down. It’s impolite to point with it, never mind sticking it in her fucking eyes. I said, quietly,
“F-u-c-k off.”
Worked.
She went docile, said,
“If I could just sit a moment.”
She reached into her bag, took out an e-cig, and I spotted a book, part of the title, about grammar, by
Sally Wallace.
WTF?
Sally Wallace, mother of David Foster?
No way.
I went,
“Why are you reading about grammar?”
She was still staring at the remnants of my breakfast in a sort of fascinated horror. She said,
“If we’re going to catch the Grammarian we need to know about motivation.”
Jesus.
I asked,
“The fuck is with the we?”
Her eyes took on that hard hue, she hissed,
“You owe me, buster.”
Ah, fuck, she was just plain flat-out nuts but she wasn’t finished, said,
“Bedsides, I’m writing a mystery novel.”
Well, why not, if every literary hack was taking time out from the serious vocation of literature and slumming in genre, she would be just one more opportunist. I said,
“Crime.”
“Excuse me?”
In that sharp edgy interrogatory tone we’d imported from American sitcoms. I said,
“This is Europe, we call the genre crime.”
Would she concede, would she fuck?
Said,
“The mystery is why the hell I’m bothering to tell you, fellah.”
Whack-o.
Easing up, I tried,
“You got a title?”
Big satisfied smile.
No
One
Weeps
on
Sesame
Street.
“Catchy,”
I said.
She seemed pleased with that, and then,
“I’m going to write a crime novel channeling David Foster Wallace, blend in the rules of grammar, have a broken-down PI, an enigmatic femme fatale, and oh, for the punters, a lovable scamp, as in the dog, not the PI.”
I smiled with no feeling of amusement, said,
“You really love to mind-fuck.”
She shook the e-cig as if that would miraculously provide the needed hit, said,
“Not just the mind.”
Before I could counter that, a man came bustling in, walked rapidly to the table, extended his hand, said,
“You did it, big man. Didn’t think you had it in you.”
It was Tom Shea, who had recently fired me from the investigation into his daughter’s death, and he seemed genuinely delighted. I asked,
“What are you talking about?”
He gave Emily a quizzical look, asking,