At this point, the main character has already operated a business where he exchanged his family members for goods and services, bought an American take-out restaurant, and married an old hag from North Vietnam for two dollars and a bottle cap.
I left with the bottle cap. I began scrounging opium dens looking for wisdom and collecting the ashes. I hate wasters. I wound up washing dishes in some shady riverside bamboo hut that was covering for a secret shooting gallery. The place served as a breeding ground for the types that will cut your borax soap with Kool-Aid, and not the tropical punch one either. No, they use that s@#$ grape stuff that tastes like purple. I wound up talking to a man who looked like Grimace, so sick on this kool-ax stuff that they’ve been pushing on the streets that a gram of Valium couldn’t get this guy to shut up.
“That ‘iacute;s a nice watch,” he complimented me, pointing to my finger jewelry.
“That would be a ring,” I corrected him.
“My English is good.”
“You mean god-awful.”
“Yes.”
“Do you believe in God, Grimace?”
“Well, I sold my soul to the corporate world. The security of knowing that every piece of food would taste the same coming out of each individual store is more satisfying on Maslow’s chart than any 401k can bring. Besides nothing is more American than a Big Mac and a Coke.”
He was right about that. I signed the papers that moment. Sold my soul to the corporate fast food chain. They moved me to Monaco and bought me a house. Beautiful people. Tan bodies constantly touching each other back and forth like a bad case of the shakes or epilepsy. But these people had legitimate accents. They could sell me on my own sexuality if they wanted to. Instead they laughed at my pale flaky skin, my suspenders and my glasses. So I had them burned. Not charming either. Just bought out their suntan oil companies and switched the recipe to Crisco. They all fried in ten minutes.
Now that that was settled I began my work as a private eye settling domestic cases between spouses in distress. I was back off to America. God bless it. Brooklyn no less. Bastards around every corner. Every politician has had sex there, and it ‘iacute;s always politically incorrect too. I love that town, its streets, its buildings and all the nameless people. But I suppose every town has the same thing to offer. Paranoia. McCarthyism, they call it, in the streets littered with human feces.
I met my first client at a windy corner caf’eacute;. We had black coffee and chili cheese fries. He told me he had a lead on a man who was pushing grade F beef in a chain.
Chain is the term in the business for corporate stores. The ones that are high on laws and order, like a bad dictatorship gone good for the people and bad for the government.
My client left me with the tab. The fat bastards always do. I was shocked. He immediately walked outside and lit a cigarette. At the exact same moment that he took his first puff, a prostitute on the street walked by and pinched his ass. The man squeezed his orifice shut in reaction. This along with long inhalation of the cigarette created a dramatic increase of internal air pressure. The man’s bones instantly broke under all the weight, and he collapsed dead, stagnant, like an old leather shoe in a hot iron press. I paid the tab and left. I stepped over my client and made for my office.