THE MONKEYSHINES CASE, ENTRY 3
I have made two startling determinations during the pursuit of this case: the ink in red pens does not in any way contain traces of cherry-flavouring, no matter how much is consumed in the name of research, and you can’t go home again.
In the latter instance I am referring particularly to my beloved parking spot, which had been utterly defiled by the leaking despair of that clown car only recently removed from the premises by an altogether unsympathetic tow truck driver now fat on the meats of my misery . . . presumably now in a physician’s care as the health risks associated with gorging on schadenfreude are well-known to be lengthy and deleterious. In the former, well, let’s just say that I’m glad my tongue was already red from all the cinnamon hearts I ate prior to my arrival at work and leave it at that.
Pouring out half a pot of coffee onto the ruined remains of my former spot in tribute to my longtime comrade-in-arms, I watched the steaming liquid follow the cracked tendrils of failed asphalt-upkeep into a pattern unrecognizable yet deeply intriguing, like the glimpse of a tattoo caught in the fleeting shards of a disco-ball light. Shapes and colours swam in my head, with new ideas begging to be considered and reconsidered, in a galaxy of spinning weightlessness almost real enough to actually be the result of knocking myself in the head with the empty coffee pot as I convulsively yelled at Randy to put another pot on. As a result of this head trauma, and more than likely a number of repressed feelings I had compartmentalized until that moment, I almost went to pieces at his suggestion that he take my empty coffee pot, the one that had been guiding me through this period of pain and suffering—this torment—because we were then down to just the one, and it felt for all the world that he was taking my coffee pot puppy away to be euthanized.
God I miss you, Count Snugula.
In retrospect, and suffice it to say, I couldn’t have hit my head harder if I was trying to break the case open on it . . . but break the case open I did, as a coffee-stained flyer depicting a three-fingered monkey’s paw—a single finger extended—was found caught in the muck of oily asphalt residue and some sort of cinnamon-y vomit recently expelled from the stomach of person or persons unknown.
Randy was well into explaining concussion protocols when he swam into focus, dictating that I should busy myself with nothing more strenuous than taste-testing pen ink for the remainder of the day and, like the loyal and hardworking minion he was, cheerfully handed me a bag of multicoloured pens, entirely ecstatic when I nodded in agreement that green pens undoubtedly tasted of green apples. It was heartening, and a little humbling, to see a man so enthusiastically embracing the role of caregiver that I almost made it through two whole pens before realizing that green apple was much more of a digestif than would be, say, blueberry, so I made Randy round up all the office’s blue pens to rightly dig in to an aperitif of the ages.
It was Randy’s tears of joy, and laughter, and more laughter, and more laughter still, that transformed my opinion of him from minion to manion . . . and as I consumed my umpteenth blue pen in search of that elusive berry-flavour, I hoped he knew what it felt like to be loved, and that it very much resembled being slowly poisoned with gratitude.
