"It was," Persephone thought, after reading AI's summary of F. Scott Fitzgerald's favorite snacks, "as if your grandmother learned that you liked a certain food when you were five and she kept preparing it for you over the years and you didn't dare say that you didn't like that food anymore."
Why was Persephone thinking this? Just to be sure about her facts, she googled whether the Great Gatsby author was allergic to peanuts and what were his preferred snacks. Which was, of course, before she wrote that Ernest Hemingway harpooned a hospital vending machine to line Scottie's stomach with something a bit more solid than booze in the surrealistic section of chapter twenty-seven in Routine Apparitions. Which is the very novel that you are now reading.
To resume: as per an article Fitzgerald wrote for Esquire in 1936, he enjoyed potted meat with apples.
"But did he enjoy potted meat with apples all his life? Or in the period around 1936?" Persephone asked herself. She stuck to the peanuts.
Persephone was now on a sidetrack. What was she meaning to do?
Ah, she needed to clarify the business plan between El-Don, the fellows from 'S Natch Funeral Home and Buck Rogers.
El-Don Mast: The initiator of a project entitled Intergalatical Telepathic Interface System (ITIS) which was initially a no frills internet service with admitted sketchy coverage. But then the project morphed into part of a new data center real estate deal.
Meth T and Goody: Heard about the data center real estate deal and already had an idea to launch griefbots so that people could communicate with their lost ones in a controlled environment (they controlled the environment). They immediately bought the domain names itis.shoptalk and itis.death and then they tried to think of what other domain names they could use without blowing the budget.
Buck Rogers: Heard about the data center real estate deal and the griefbots. Instantly Buck thought he alone could supply the unconventional data mining support for the griefbots. He had the patented recipe for Hero Pills, that super power pharmaceutical aid that enabled people to talk to ghosts. Buck meant to get a hefty slice of El-Don's pie. Sensing potential problems with 'S Natch Funeral Home's insistance on holding the upgraded non-death status of their departed customers under their tight control, Buck introduced the idea of the Forgiveness Plan. Only $37.99 per month to have a dead relative verbalize their forgiveness of any transgressions and, on the other end, only $14.99 per month to speak to the griefbot and express any regrets and hope for forgiveness "in person." The best deal was the two-way communication package with maximum two dead humans and their associated griefbots for under one hundred dollars a month.
Meth T and Goody: After meeting with Buck the funeral parlor men understood that there could be no objection on their part at all concerning the Forgiveness Plan since they were harboring known domestic abusers in their clienteel list. They signed off on the plan after El-Don was convinced that this was a great way to make sure that everyone was happy in heaven. Truth be told, Meth T and Goody didn't know how El-Don could be so easily led to this pat conclusion, but they were merely riding the wave. And they wanted the total pie.
El-Don: After a short intermission, a few questions about the whole plan began to creep into El-Don's consciousness. He had some concerns. He did not wholy approve of the domain names, for one.
And now, back to the story.
The Rhino Ritz Detective Agency was bar hopping in Washington DC.
"Boys, what crimes have we solved recently?" Gertrude Stein wanted to know.
"What are you getting at, Gertrude?" Ernest Hemingway asked.
"We just have to find Lolly," Keith interjected, trying to lead the discussion back to his missing archives.
"Scottie," Gertrude turned to Fitzgerald, "what's really going on in Longmont?"
"....mmmm....sitting shiva organization....baked goods.....support for murderesses....keeping low profile......" Scott moaned in his chair. He was nearly unconscious.
"Those female rabbis and cohorts," Ernest finalized. "Accomplices in eliminating writers."
"Are the Longmont authorities looking into this?"
"Nooooo......real estate....insider trading...." Scott moaned again.
"Undercut the value, possible re-zoning and flip for double. The Mannughnites," Ernest summed it up.
Keith nodded. He'd sat zazen in at least three such meetings on Kimbark Street.
"Sounds like a lot of suspicious death and corruption," Gertrude said. She was ready to call it an evening in Washington DC.
"... crazy woman pretending to be Jew-Sami.....writing letters....." Scott tossed his leg to one side.
"Hey, how about you guys find and return someone's pooch?" Mike Sowl suggested. "It's good clean PR."
Big Foot had ripped the moose head off the wall. The last thing Lolly witnessed through his camera app was Big Foot segueing into the Tai Chi move called Snake Creeps Through Grass. And then the screen went blank.
Sensing an adversary in the moose head, Big Foot had acted accordingly.
He settled back down in the chair that was set before the fireplace. The legs of the chair had given way and the armrests were bent outwards. He reached down to read the next chapter of Keith Kumasen Abbott's autobiography that had two words in the title. The first word was Whack. The other word was Jobs. The autobiography focused on Keith's university years circa 1963 in Washington State. The chapter that Big Foot held in his hands was called From Hell Week - 1 Weekend.
After Sunday brunch Keith returned to Delphi. As the elevator approached the fourth floor he smelled something chemical, something acid. The doors slid back.
In the lounge Lemuelson was sitting on a couch wearing his russet colored fuzzy sweater and sweat pants. He was holding the head of a tennis racket with its handle inserted inside a white pillow. The pillow's bottom was turning a mellow brown as it was held over a round blue wastebasket with flames emerging from it.
Lemuelson looked up at Keith in the elevator. "Big picnic. Me and Frieda got a marshmallow roast."
Vitale came flying past with a wastebasket full of water. He held it high, the water sloshing in from side to side, and poured the water over the fire. Keith heard a hiss and a cloud of white smoke rose up. Vitale jammed his wastebasket into the top of the burning wastebasket to stifle the smoke. He whipped off his t-shirt and wrapped it around his left hand.
With his right hand he tipped the wastebaskets to one side by touching the rim of the cold one. Using his protected hand, he picked up the hot end.
"Run ahead and open the stairway door!"
Keith raced down the hallway with Vitale close behind him, the remaining water sloshing in the bottom of the wastebasket, keeping time with their run. He hit the exit bar and Vitale was through the open door and down the stairs. Keith was about to shout at him, then decided no. The dorm was completely quiet.
Mack Dillard was standing in the hallway near the entrance to the lounge. "What the fuck just happened? Are we on fire?"
"You don't want to know."
Keith and Mack went into the lounge. Lemuelson was now stretched out face down on the couch, the toasted brown pillow wedged under him. The tennis racket was jammed between the couch cushion and the arm of the sofa. The racket stuck out, just over Lemuelson's head. He was humping the warm pillow slowly and moaning. "Oh Frieda, ohhhh Frieda, oh." And then his right leg shook and he went limp.
Keith restrained Mack from getting any closer until they were sure that Lemuelson had passed out for good, his honeymoon hump a thing of the past.
Mack pointed down at the wooden floor. "What can we do about that?"
The burning wastebasket had left a faint brown ring.
"Drag that Ravens rug over here and we'll put the sofa legs on it to keep it there for a while."
Mack flopped the rug down over the ring and it was as if nothing had gone on at all.
"We never saw this or did this, right Mack?"
"Yeah, but whatta we gonna do to get the stink out of here? And him?" Mack stared down at a snoring Lemuelson. "Oh shit, who's that?"
They heard the stairway door open and close. Keith drifted over to the hallway and glanced that way. Vitale was running back into the hallway with the dripping wastebasket. He passed by and jerked his head for them to follow.
In the fourth floor community bathroom, the floor was littered with brown paper towels. The towel dispenser by the last sink in the row of sinks had been ripped off the wall. It was deeply dented in the middle. A sledgehammer might have done the damage or a lovesick Swede headbutting it.
Broken glass was visible near the divider wall between the two shower stalls. One of the larger shards had a red label on it, Smirnoff Vodka.
"Frieda sent him a Dear John letter?"
Vitale shook his head. "No, worse. She sent him an I-can't-wait-letter. Lit him up. He was blubbering and groaning. I was talking and talking and talking him down for about an hour. Then he got gloomy, said he was unworthy of Frieda. I finally told him to go take a cold shower. I hoped he might beat that bratwurst bishop of his and calm the fuck down."
"What happend here?" Mack said.
"I don't know. He was gone a long time. And when he stormed by our room, he had that wastebasket in his hand. He borrowed my tennis racket. Now it's wrecked. I went to take a piss and the place looked like this. Obviously he had stashed some vodka...."
"Where could he get - "
"Must have been in the paper towel dispenser, obviously, since he tore it off the wall." Vitale pointed at the ruins on the floor. "Drank the whole pint, went nutso, tried to burn down the dorm. Lucky the sprinkler didn't go off. Let's get our stories straight, okay? We, like none of us, nobody ever had any vodka in our dorm room."
"Right," Keith said. "How about you, Mack?"
"I never. Where the hell did he get it on a dry Sunday?"
"Hell, maybe he had it stashed from Saturday. He didn't even go out today. Just talked to the soppy snapshots of Frieda on the wall," Vitale said.
"We gotta check for more booze," Mack said. "If he's got any more hidden, he'll be thrown out of school."
"No, no time," Keith said. "The first thing is to get everyone on this floor to open their windows and air out this place. The dorm proctor or janitor comes in here, he'll crap green pickles. And how the hell are we going to move him back?"
"Let's get a blanket," Vitale said. "We got to get him back to his room. Maybe roll him in the blanket and drag him back."
Keith turned to Mack. "Take that big trash can between those sinks and get the glass and towels off the floor. Hurry!"
Keith picked up the dented towel dispenser and put it on top of the toilet in the last stall, closed the stall door from inside and crawled out under the door.
Mack was picking up glass fragments using wadded up paper towels as gloves. Keith ran to his room, dumped the contents of his new box of books on his desk, and returned to the bathroom to use the box as a shovel. He scooped up the paper towels.
When they had thrown all the debris in the big trashcan, they stopped and listened. Either everyone was still asleep or out. They'd dump the trashcan later. They needed to air out the fourth floor.
Keith and Mack went back to their rooms and flung the windows wide open. They left their doors open.
"Where's Russ?" Keith asked Mack.
"Yelverton got brain-tired reading those old math books. He keeps saying I'm gonna get it. I'm gonna get it. The guy is getting weirder and weirder."
"Quick sometimes as linebacker."
"Yeah, well he is that."
The chemical smell of the burning wastebasket still hung in the air. Keith and Mack returned to the lounge.
Vitale was standing over the blanketed mound of Lemuelson on the sofa. The head of the tennis racket still stuck out of the end of the sofa like a gravemarker.
"Can you get the toasted pillow out from under him?"
Vitale lifted the edge of the blanket. "Nah, not without waking him up. It's crammed between his legs."
Just then, below them, the sound of the elevator started. Someone was coming up.
The guys panicked but there was nothing much they could do. They were all screwed. Vitale grabbed the tennis racket and slid it under the couch.
The elevator stopped and the doors opened. Royko stood facing them. Royko's weekend bags were in a pile around his feet. Under one arm he held a huge green thermos with a chrome top. He looked past Vitale at the blanketed snoring mound. Then he sniffed. He didn't step out of the elevator. He stood there looking at Vitale, Mack and Keith. And then the sofa.
Vitale pulled the blanket off Lemuelson. He told Royko the short version of the effects of Frieda's letter and their plan of rolling Lemuelson in the blanket to drag him back to his dorm room.
Without saying anything, Royko stepped out of the elevator, jamming the door open with a bag so no one could ride up. Then he put down his giant thermos. "Well, forget the blanket. Let's get the sick dummy out of here."
Royko squatted down with his back to Lemuelson and flopped Lemuelson's arms over his shoulders and then dragged the Swede over his back as if he were a coat. Royko leaned forward, straightened up and hoisted Lemuelson a little higher.
The three men were awed at how easy Royko hoisted the dead weight of the large Swede.
Lemuelson's open-mouthed slobber slimed Royko's left shoulder and the brown toasted pillow dropped from between Lemuelson's legs.
"He just slobbered ya, man," Vitale pointed out.
"Yeah, right! Thanks for letting me know. Doesn't he ever take this sweater off?" Royko adjusted Lemuelson's arm so the Swede's mouth was off his shoulder. "Someone tell him sending smoke signals for Frieda is not the way to go. Tell him to use the telephone next time."
Royko looked over at the guys. "Did he piss his pants? There's something wet on my back.."
"No!" Keith broke in. "Sloppy drunk. Spilled all over his sweater and pants."
"Well then, don't just stand there. Somebody grab his feet!"
Big Foot wondered what had happened to Keith Kumasen Abbott and why Keith's autobiography was stored in a remote cabin in the woods, guarded by a moose head, and off the grid.
#longmont #colorado #loveland #funeralhome #rabbitirzah #keithkumasenabbott #keithabbott #gertrudestein #ernesthemingway #rhinoritz #buckrogers
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