Dream Six!!

The White Knight and I opened an antique shop called Antique Disposition. This was to be one of our bases of operation, which I guess made the Headquarters the mobile home on the fringes of the Reservoir, which we had christened with the code name “Shell Station”. The building was formerly a restaurant, so we had a giant freezer to avail ourselves of just so long as we could keep the electricity necessary running. To make additional ends meet towards this end, we would sell a privately published newspaper called Penseés, a French word for “Thoughts”. The idea was mine to publish all of our thoughts in a Communist Newsletter of our own independent publication. At first, the White Knight proposed the title “Gedanken”, based on a book that his great-great-grandfather had once published when Marxism was first becoming popular, but we decided that in the wake of World War One a French title would be more appealing to the Leftist Readership. The business scheme was tricky; we had to sell enough antiques to keep the magazine in publication, so that we could keep the freezer running. The triangle was complete only if we used the freezer for something that could then help us in turn to sell antiques. We were of course most comfortable breaking even, so as neither to defile our reputation nor our collective (and collectivist) conscience.

We figured out a way. Nearby was a restaurant called Happy Chang’s, as in Actuality. After Randy was run out of business for selling undercooked Duck, his wife Sue took over the business. This put former customers of Randy, who had had to wade through several years of corporate ownership as the establishment shifted hands time and again, in a unique position of privilege, because Sue would hook old regulars up with discounts and free tea and bread and McDonald’s-style apple pies if she remembered them. I would know; I once worked in their kitchen. And the duck thing was real.

The immediate result of Sue’s generosity is that starving students (a Communist Entrepreneur’s Sacred Cow) would need a place to store their leftovers overnight so as not to be wasteful of their scarce resources. And that was where we, for a price affordable in proportion to the student’s Needs and Abilities, came in. Antique Disposition was all so a sort of Rental Freezer and Storage. We made ends meet.

One day, we were visited by Hank Schroeder. Officer Schroeder was apparently investigating something, yet he would not tell us what, nor even would he confess to the obviousness of his intentions. He brought in the head of a Goat that he claimed to have acquired at Sue’s. We agreed tacitly to store the ugly, staring head. As my comrade took it back into the Freezer, Hank stood, mad-dogging me and making conversation. I offered him a newspaper. He looked through the rack, doing a poor imitation of consumer indecision, and finally withdrew an old copy of Gedanken. He plopped it down on the counter and then asked why we were peddling a radical German paper. I felt dry lines forming on the inside of my throat, so reflexively I stammered: “These Thoughts are old.” I pointed him to the latest copy. He flipped through it stridently, impressed with the French title, did a corny imitation of a nasal laugh, and finally put it back on the rack, upside-down.

“Some real antiques you guys got here,” he said.

My comrade returned. He told Hank that we could store the Goat for up to a week before we had to throw it out, since it could be diseased and its neck still had wet blood in it. Hank rushed my comrade along, insisting that he did not need a lesson in “Dryology”. He asked for our sum. Intimidated, I said it was On the House. He eyed us, intently, and muttered: “Figures.” He left then.

We waited for his car to have been gone for five entire minutes. We waited in silence so mutual and uncalculated that it could have counted for consent. Then in one motion we both went for the freezers.

It took us only ten minutes to find a Tape Recorder in the Left Eye of the Goat. In the process, I realized something: this was the same goat that had been in the Mylonakis Residence. Hank had gotten this from Kyle. What did Kyle have to do with it?

We destroyed the evidence. I called up Mike, but I was met with a metallic voice that informed me that Mike was “currently roaming”. Wondering where the hell Mike might be, I decided to call Rob instead. Rob would not pick up. Frantic, I asked the White Knight to drive me. He agreed. We locked up shop, and not unlike Randall and Dante, we hit the road.

Kyle asked the White Knight to use the bathroom. White Knight agreed to. Kyle then asked me in private what the guy’s name was. I replied “W.K.” He asked, smiling, “like ANDREW W.K?” I smiled back. Kyle’s old sense of humour made me feel at home. I told him that we were visited by a Drug Enforcement Agent who brought in the head of Kyle’s Father’s Goat. Kyle replied that his father was a longtime sponsor for their Fun Runs. I asked if Kyle knew any thing about a recording device. Kyle told me that he had himself planted that device in order to spy on the D.E.A, who he suspected of having it in for his dad.

When W.K. and I returned home to our antique shop, the place had been ransacked. Apparently, Hank had known what he was doing. Or at least someone did. Upon the walls, in lines of blood (most probably goat’s blood) that had all ready dried, read the words “Pinko Gringos”.

It took us the rest of the day to clean.

Dm.A.A.