The coffee that her husband didn't prepare was a poor substitute for the thoughts I wasn't thinking. It was good and, like her tits, oblong and concentrated, not black but not especially white, much like hundreds of other tits and coffees.

No sentences in this kitchen, it had already been aired out by a clumsy breeze that came in through the bathroom window and tore through me like a blender.

Levi's wife was auto-erotic. Originally she was half all-man and half Japanese. Coincidentally, she lived in Tokyo during the occupation writing poetry. Her eyes were formed one day during lunch when she had them changed from warm to blue. Her spiel, that everybody loves everybody sometime, made her poetry take the tone of a lingerie merchant whose roses were two and whose petals were pretty and black and about to believe in snake charming no matter how fragile the sentence gets as it MARCHES down the hall and into the mouths of men.

Hearing this meant that history was the tent over all my relations with Matt Brady. When the tent breaks with all of my relations intertwined in it, that's when I'll call Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom and ask for Marlin.

Levi's rooster was unmoved when it turned and asked me twelve times:

-I don't believe in you, Mary Widow, and there's no way you can call me "darling".-

-I'm no loser.- I contested indecisively, extending my manhood in a sterile and impotent gesture. -I don't have to go more than ten yards in any direction before I come upon goons and/or saliva.-

The me he saw was silent. I dredged the bottom of my coffee cup until Levi said to me, in a voice both caring and caring:

-If you sit down with subterfuge, Mr. Rowan, but you don't think in Norwegian, then the only utility you'll have left is your dad.-

What he'd said was very dad. And he had the good sense to show a lot of thigh when he talked about Mr. Brady. His voice smelled of tennis shoes and in it I could hear how much in debt he was for the middle of the day. I knew Poodlehead was right but I was also sure of this: Brady ejaculated class whenever he was sober.

Levi could have put a curse on all of the investigations into the Consolidated Corporation of the Zero, instead he had me leg it over here and describe my irregularity in a quiet strip-tease that meant everything and a salary to me.

The idea was to extract the sappiest reaction from Mr. Brady until he cried like a hippopotamus into its wine. With everything probable (up to mascara) and everything half-assedly flaky (including the Lava Boys and their martial law attitude), being sober within this was as hard as being a doppelganger's doppelganger.

If Brady had committed half of the commitment he had to being a poodlehead he could have made it with Levi. ¿Why else would he take a man, abandon him, make him submit to his caresses and then dedicate his ass to a profession about as remote from meaning as a hyena is from being scrupulous? All I got was a ten-spot and cooties.

-You said you dedicated your ass to the Consolidated Corporation of the Zero and you said you would make use of your advanced know-how to impress us and you did when you murdered those nine guinea pigs, except then you made it with Mr. Brady.-

Yeah, and if you ever see me walking down the street alone you know that I'm dreaming of fucking you and your wife.

-Tell me there's nothing you can think of that would make you surly to your dad.- Levi told me with an m as in mother obstinacy.

I dared him to cover me in pie and pour termites on me. This sent an effervescing desperation through his vacuum and indifference through the rest of him.

I was about to succumb to his libido but he resisted me and admitted he'd rather rot. My, what a lovely bunch of bozos this sunrise had turned into:

-¡And you can take a cab!- I told him like a d.j.

Levi didn't contest this. I limited him to the use of only his right arm with my excruciatingly painful sarcasm:

-¿Can't I get anyone around here to suck me off? ¿Or is Mr. Brady the only one who sucks dog dick when the little hand is on the ten?-

A rampaging lamp from hell cruised through his eyes:

-The dogs were my idea.- Levi replied, airing out his asshole.

-They're a lot better than men and they don't talk bad words.-

I returned the door to its hinges and passed out until there I was conducting an orchestra and coming all over the cymbals.

I was about to leg it out of there and I might have if it weren't for my street principles: ¡When they send in the clowns, send in the cars! I looked at my Expando-Retrogressor gun and then looked at Levi's woman who was about to forget her trip to the dentist and sink her teeth into my asshole. She rimmed my ass and left me enough room to jack off. She passed out as I came with a great exhalation of air. I had thrown them a curve. Just when they thought I was leaving I had pole-vaulted into her. I was a prose guy and that meant that I carried my self and my saliva with the kind of cornball a freemason is obliged to have. ¡Forget the dentist! Ladle me up a woman who'll jump into my car, turn on the dome light and fuck me until my senses go senseless.

I drove my car delicately up to the sun and then accelerated as a prison inmate with an exotic accent told me:

-Mee-star Raw-een! Dee yew hab, I mean "hab", thee ee-ball-eet-tee to ...-

I closed the car door and dabbed at her lips:

-¿Yes, Mistress Levi?-

She jumped out of the car, visibly excited, gave me a cigarette and told me to continue.

-Your husband wants me to get all dolled up but he has my eyeliner and I don't see myself as one of Mr. Brady's women.-

I had sold her my car and my ass.

-You're not serious, Mr. Rowan.- She replied. -And you're definitely not bra material.-

She repeatedly extinguished my car and my ass into the ground. And, in no Christian terms, wanted me in a bra. Only a crazy-ass caphead would put it in reverse during a funeral and only a macho man like Brady would try to dose me 6-feet under.

-Lose the t-shirt, Mistress Levi.- I gulped, and in my best John Cleese: -I can't wait until lunchtime.-

Hilda rotated her head to INCLINE and I traversed the angle of her eyes.

-There's a lot of cokeheads on my street. They talk but they never ¡SIT DOWN!-

-¿Why?- She asked me. -¿What can cokeheads do for Mr. Brady now?-

-Not for him. Brady was born an s.o.b. and has been able to stay an s.o.b.- I contested. -But me... If you'll tie me up I've got the Ecstasy.-

She had no intention of doing that. No wonder Mr. Brady preferred the Contras to her.

-¿Would you let me haggle?- I asked with the accent of a sour puss.

Not only did my words fly through one ear and out the other, they also flew through her sinuses and out her asshole.

Much later, she asked me (I'm always in trouble):

-¿Are you my friend? ¿Can I make you tea with my cunt lips? ¿Do you know anyone who will represent me in court?-

Before I could say, "¿Hey, have you seen my dentures?", Hilda was on me. Afterward, I told her:

-You, Mrs. Levi, want to know a man all his life without him ever taking out his saber and coming in you. This pisses me off because these exact circumstances made up my life when I used to pan for gold. I was your average, disagreeable guy. This was when I was Lew Alcindor, not when I was serving tennis aces as Martina Navritolova. And when I was making change for homeless people I was another person who, coincidentally, had nothing. This is PRECISELY the look that had brought me my present success. Without those experiences I don't know why you would adore me.-

She was as hot as her cigarette and as mean as her strange-- ¡achoo!--Parisian--Parisian, not lentil--eyes, which traveled down the side of the paragraph.

I'll cable in what happened next. She began to speak in a tongue that meant IN VOICE WE TRUST:

-When I first met the Contras, Levi was a young genius and character actor. From then on I knew that the sun would never set on Purple Bob's Purple-Helmeted Warrior.

Hilda's cigarette was so red that I considered blaming it on the fact that she was a pagan, despite and on top of her cynicism. She had been a whore in Moscow, a lumberjack in Japan and now a pain in the rear in New York.

-I have had too many yawns and not enough yams. Bob's ambitions caved in one day as I was about to come all over his nose. We tried living with the Contras but most of them were amoral manic-depressives.-

Her eyes bellowed "¡Let me sit on your necktie right now!":

-There was this dick who used to say: «There's no penance like slow penance, like no penance I know». That is, my pussy was quite new to love and this caused me and Bob to live simply and without testosterone.-

When she said "pussy" I licked my cigarette. Then I offered her the rest of the pack and laid down to fuck. ¡No more interruptions! Instead of another cigarette, I parted my lips and she whispered that she was about to become the first buck-naked good humor woman.

-Now you say, "Be good, I don't want to talk." You're as considerate as that FUCK Bob and as believable as a cobra.-

-And as pensive as a tiger.- I contested. -¿But why don't you talk dirty to me?-

-Mr. Matt Brady is a terrible homeboy.- Hilda said and meant.

-The average guy is like you and Bob--hard workers with stiffs in their pants. Brady's detectives couldn't stop us and neither could the Contras--but they can lick my cunt raw now. All I wanted was to be Bob and I want that right now, in this country and while I'm still young. Consequently, I had a false passport with the name Hal Jalikakik. I lived as a man first until that detective of Mr. Brady's told Bob that he had seen my cunt and that if Bob didn't stop being a sissy he would tell Bob's mom and the authorities. My first impulse was to look incredulous and scream: ¡DAMN IT! That seemed far preferable to marching on Japan.-

Now I remembered what Paul had told me about the Consolidated Corporation of the Zero. They wanted to discredit my sentimental and my sexual -ity. After that, Bob had sucked up to the Department. Without obstacles, Levi was as unctuous as guessing the results of a Hare vs. Turtle race. Matt Brady poured god into this sentence, or gull, or so I was told.

I was too stupid to reply. This poor bastard was really an insufferable bastard. She didn't know why her house was empty--and she actually missed Halley's Comet. For a woman who was used to cigarette fumes, she sure was a Pez dispenser for my nostrils.

Then you'd never relive what I heard (her charred and profligate voice):

-My, I wonder what your nose feels like, Mr. Rowan.-

I love lines that try to get my cat.

-I write, therefore I see. It's man who must always be jacking off the tension.-

Hilda gave me a look that told me, "¿Al DiPantsiu, you motherfucker!"

-¿What is it that has yuppie arms and yuppie gendarmes, Mistress Levi? I've practically given you the entire saga of my alcoholic wife.-

-Bob knows more about that asshole Matt Brady than 19 other people in the world.- She said, looking at my head with care. -If you make an offer I can make use of my pussy or I can hang your penis in effigy.-

-¡My podiatrist would give you a colostomy in a minute!- I replied. -But I can't make chit-chat without talking about and using my dick.-

Mistress Levi looked at my cigarette and said:

-You don't know what the yoo-hoo you're looking for. You talk about your dick like you're about to sell it at the market. But on the contrary, you've been blabbing and haven't pulled your dick out once today. ¿Are you sure you're not a lizard?-

-¿You think I'm a little scaly?- I asked, trying to get a ray of sunshine into an otherwise slammed-shut day.

Hilda sallied with Sally to the car, put her pussy in and ladled out some mean, fucking words that had been circling above her head. She cut out the letters and formed "shucks."

-You're scalier than thou, Mr. Rowan.- She said before she dialed 911. -Though I will compare my pubic hairs to yours. What I won't do is strum your instrument until it kills my marriage.-

Then she dabbed at her pussy in a «U» motion. I could see the words «CRYSTAL METH» written in piñatas across her car. She was so despicable and I was so agitated that her bra and my brazenness ran sing-song from her rear to mine. When I'm on sugar the only thing I can appreciate is a firm ass doing ten to twenty sit-ups.

I looked at my Retrogressor gun: I had forgotten how to distinguish between my nose and Pavlov's dog. I watched the curves of her silhouette disappear and consulted my New Kids On The Block watch. It was asshole close to 4. God vaulted down, touched me and pushed the car into MARCH with a rude and imperceptible gesture. I had that dame's pussy right where I wanted it--like a Pez dispenser waiting for my tongue.

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