An Unwarmed Fish

“Hey, Kathleen,

make the mouse do his trick for Frankie!” That from Lee Frelinghuyser, irrepressible free spirit. It was eleven o’clock in the morning and, as it was Thursday, Lee was potzed. Me? I had spoken out of turn, once, and was now condemned to spend all Eternity in a barroom with a meatball buffet.

The word among the bar’s regulars was that Kathleen McLaughlin, proprietress of Ferguson and McLaughlin's Family Bar, Tables for Ladies, lived in fear of a government raid. The TV over the bar, while it played the usual fare—Irish football, the World Series, soap operas, and Jeopardy—daily frayed Kathleen’s jangled nerves with the evening news, said news being highlighted by Immigration sweeps for undocumented aliens. Guatemalans, Asians, Sikhs, swamis, babus and bubbas—in short most anyone with chin whiskers and a suntan—were shown being herded into waiting busses, to be packed off for deportation back to the Hindu Kush, Quetzaltenango or Tuscaloosa. While thus far red hair and freckles did not yet dominate the 6:30 news, Kathleen had the long-term jitters. For years, Kathleen had never gone out into the street except to dump her mop water.

Ah, but I am getting ahead of our story.

If you have been following these adventures as assiduously as my publisher hopes you have, you will recall that while I had not exactly sold my soul to the devil, I was close. A mouse demon had gotten his hooks into my psychic e-mail, and my name was now etched on the spamming list of the damned. Do not click the “Click to Remove” link; remember that. You’ll be on their list forever if you do.

Now, where was I? Oh, yes. Jim Everhardy, how do you do? And as usual, I was minding my own business.

Then, I was standing in the rain on the corner of Eighth Avenue on Manhattan’s West Side. That's the part of town they used to call Hell’s Kitchen, before the local boosters decided to upgrade its image. I was naked and wet. A large gray mouse came strutting up from West 55th Street. He sported a green derby and a “Kiss Me I'm Irish” button.

“PROSPER!” I screamed, for that was the name of my very own personal representative from Sminthian Apollo, an eight-inch high mouse demon with limited powers.

”Jim, Jim, my old and rare! So happy you could come.” The mouse demon was looking decidedly shopworn and dejected. “It’s a fine mess you've gotten us into this time, Jim Everhardy,” said Prosper. “They have stripped me of my powers and, worst of all, my hat.”

This was not just any old hat. The mouse demon's powers were concentrated in a magic hat, the Helmet of Cleptath. Prosper had lost said chapeau to the goddess Artemis, sister of Apollo, in a tussle I wrote about. It's called The Perfect Homburg. Read it, and get educated.

I should say right up front that Prosper was not the devil. He was a mouse demon with good prospects for advancement, until he pissed off a Personage and blew both our careers to smithereens. And I, as I mentioned, am Jim Everhardy, would-be writer and full-time hack at the pleasure of the old Greek gods. I had been raking in the big bucks, having found favor in the eyes of Apollo, driver of the Chariot of the Sun. Ever glance at the reams, quires and folios of blurbs and coupons stuffing your mailbox and ask yourself who writes this crap? I do, or I did, and thanks for your concern.