The Adventure of the Speckled Egg

It was a dark and stormy night when Boodles, the talking kitten, ran up to her master.

“I’ve found the key to the cupboard under the stairs!” squeaked Boodles.

“That’s excellent!” replied Nacho, her loving owner, “Now we can solve the Case of the Speckled Egg!”

Man,
was I ever on a roll when I heard my front door open. That’s not usually cause
for concern, but it was 3am. I listened to heavily booted feet pace through my
house, down the hall, and then kick open the door to my study. It was my old
friend James, skunk as a drunk, and looking for destruction. Thank God it
wasn’t Saddam Hussein, that might have been boring.

James plowed
into my office, fell against the desk with his arms supporting him, then
grinned malevolently.

“Been
to a party?” I asked.

“Yep!”
he shouted, “Though I’ve come here to wind down!” He pulled a bottle
of $150 scotch from the shelf above my computer, uncorked it, tipped it to his
lips, and swallowed. Unless his mouth can hold about six ounces of fluid, it appeared
that he was shotgunning it.

“You’d
best take a breather,” I muttered.

He ripped
the bottle away from his mouth, a stream of peaty brown following it as he
struggled to get it upright and jam the cork in, then he fell to the floor
without a hint of grace and stared at me with glittering eyes. “Let’s get
some pussy.”

I glanced
around my study.

“Let’s
get our dicks in some fucking pussy!” At least, I think he said that. He
was slurring a bit.

I looked
around my study again.

“Hookers,
maybe?” James suggested.

I looked out
at the dark, wooded acre behind my house.

“Maybe…maybe…”
James raised his arm, then, as if it were too heavy, he let it fall against his
side. “Is Doctor Who on?”

“Nope.
Maybe you should lie down or something. Sleep it off?”

“What…writing,
you?”

“I’m
sorry?”

James
pointed at my computer with his heavy arm and grunted.

“The
big project – Boodles the talking cat and her mystery solving owner, Nacho
Sasha.”

“You’re
kidding.”

“Nope.
I’m on page 2000 of the Adventure of the Speckled Egg.”

He closed
one eye and glared at me. I hung my head in shame.

“You
drunk?”

I nodded.
“Actually, it’s just the intro to another stupid Greatsociety
article.”

“What’s
the rest of the article about?”

“Well,
now, this.”

“What?”

“This.”

“This
what?”

“All of
this, right now.”

“Right
now?”

“Right.”

“What?”

“This.”

James closed
both his eyes, then leaned against my desk. I turned back to the computer and
began adding to the Adventure of the Speckled Egg which, in truth, was my big
project. Boodles was leading her loving owner, Nacho, to the cupboard under the
basement stairs to get the key to the safe at Evil Dr. Gundrun’s house so that
they may retrieve the speckled egg and win the hearts of the beautiful Julia
von Stroschneider and her pet cat, Mr. Pitty Paws. But this was just the end of
act two, the adventure was –

“Fuck!”
James shouted, falling forward and crawling towards me like some little girl
monster from a Japanese horror flick. He reached my chair, grabbed my legs and
stared with hard, drunken eyes. “Stop typing!”

“I’m on
a roll.” I replied calmly, “Boodles and – “

James
screamed. It was the sound of ultimate suffering and all that, you know? Like
when the Buddha was just about to achieve enlightenment and, suddenly, he had
to pee. Remember that? I decided to stop typing, for the sake of friendship, so
I picked up my pen and pad and moved to the couch, letting James pass out
again, curled around my desk chair as if it was a very small woman with one
stubby leg and four wheels.

So Boodles and Nacho took the key and were rushing up the stairs when…
No, what, I was doing it again. “Stares” for “stairs.” What the fuck?
My friend’s brother’s fiancé’s editor’s friend has this theory that,
when someone uses the English language on a daily, intimate, strangely
sexual basis they start to fuck things up. Like, we get used to
skimming stuff. That’s how that old trick works – how many times was
the word “the” in the paragraph you just read. Twelve! AHAHAHA! Please
forward this email to 10 of your friends. It gets you every time, and
you feel like a retard, but it happens because, unless you are a
retard, you read and write every single day. So there’s so much to the
English language, and so many flexible rules, that your mind is trained
from youth to fill stuff in. You read a sentence and you don’t actually
read the words, you start to read it for the meaning. So if someone
shows you a flashcard with three sentences, then suddenly takes it
away, you know what they said but you only remember certain keywords
and can rarely recite the sentences as they appeared.

This doesn’t happen to everyone, but it’s a common problem with the
editor types. Over familiarity leads to odd, child-like mistakes.

Well, whatever.

Boodles and Nacho ran up the stares when, suddenly, there was the
evil Dr. Gundrun. He was standing up there with his vicious android
guards.

“Subject acquired,” spoke the first android guard in his clicking, clattering voice.

“Confirmed,” spoke the second android, “subject acquired.”

Dr. Gundrum, smiling, crossed his arms and nodded, “Well, well, well, Nacho Sasha. And Boodles, too!”

“What do we do?” Boodles asked

“Delta 3!” Nacho shouted, and they sprung into action. Boodles took the
one on the left and Nacho took the one on the right, the androids
falling to the ground with a noise that reminded Nacho of that time he
dropped the vacuum cleaner down the stairs and it hit the stereo which
toppled over into the TV and that fell against the freezer.

Gundrum, obviously surprised, was screaming for his androids to get up
as Boodles whipped her tail around, caught him by the leg, and tripped
him but good!

“Good show, Boodles!” Nacho said, pumping his fist in the air.

“Delta 3 always works!” Boodles replied. “Let’s away!”

“Let’s away!” Nacho replied, pumping his fist in the air again.

They ran down the hall to the front door, then hopped into the always reliable Chevy Nova and took off.

I
stopped writing when I heard the front door open again, then I listened to the
pitter-patter of delicate, creamy white feet move through my house. The scent
of vanilla hit me long before Natasha appeared in the doorway of my office,
leaning luxuriously against the frame. She was wearing a sarong, of all things,
her black hair a little unkempt and her wildly painted eyes creating soulful
shadows upon shadows. Her hand trailed up her thigh, parting the outfit so I
could see the creamy skin beneath. “Found James,” she whispered,
pointing her little fingers at my drunken friend.

“He’s
blasted.” I replied.

She nodded,
“Heck of a party. You should go out more. Every party needs nachos.”
Her hand moved over and pushed the flowing sarong in between her legs,
“Every girl, too.” Her latest thing was to put on an affectation so
she sounded like those 1930’s and 40’s movie stars, the Northeast Elite voice
that fancy women learned in overly strict prep schools and with the assistance
of old style Hollywood studio voice coaches. It suited her well, even if she
was a tiny thing with blue-black hair.

I cleared my
throat. “No time for a party. I’m working on – “

“Boodles?
That story is so hot, it makes me think of anal sex.”

In a normal
situation, that would have been an outlandish, inappropriate and unexpected
thing to say. But you get used to Natasha after the first six months. She
didn’t really mean it, anyway. Well, she did, but not right now. You get to
figure that out, too. There’s a way she stands, a scent that she gives off, so
you can gauge her moods. For instance, I could tell that tonight was a blow job
night followed by a drama queen rant about the women at the party, an hour of
tearful self reflection about love and love lost, and then dry humping.

I put the
pad and pen down and walked with her to the TV room, well away from the
slumbering James. Without preamble, Natasha began rubbing me and nibbling at my
ear, but then she hesitated and moved away, letting herself sink into the couch
next to me, her lips turning down into a pout. Now this was unexpected,
bypassing blowjob and drama and lapsing right into tearful reflection. She was
drunk, or high, or tired. Maybe all three. Sometimes you had to tell Natasha,
like a child, that she was obviously tired and should go to bed. I leaned
forward with the intent of doing just this when she turned her pout towards me.

“Do you
love me?”

Fuck.
Serious engagement. No use calling in artillery to soften her up, I’ll just end
up killing my own troops. This is what happens when you perform every position
in the Kama Sutra with a girl for 15 months and never call her during the week
or mention anything personal to her. A dangerous situation. I must ask a
searching question: What do I need more? Freedom or a really good pussy?

The best
solution is to placate. “Of course I do.”

“Say
it, then.”

“Say
what?”

“It.”

“It.”
I said.

“No,
that you love me.”

“Why do
you need to hear it?”

“I just
do.”

“This
isn’t the Natasha I know.”

She punched
me, hard, and I tumbled backward out of the couch. Now that was the Natasha I
knew. Rubbing my jaw, I didn’t have time to sit up before she leapt on me and
began pounding me in the stomach, her teeth set in a vicious snarl, until I was
screeching “I love you, I love you!”

She took a
breath, shook her hair out of her eyes, stood up and brushed herself off.
“Good, I knew that you loved me.” Then she walked to the guest room
and, while I was pissing blood in my pants, I heard her gentle snore.

James came
out sometime around dawn, told me I had blood running down the front of my
pants, said he was feeling much better, took my car keys as I was unable to
speak or move anything besides the little finger on my left hand, and went out
into the day. Shortly after that, Natasha came out, kissed me on the cheek,
said ‘Good morning, my love,’ then told me to get the fuck up, stop being a
lazy man, and fix her breakfast.

I wiggled
the little finger on my left hand in response and she nodded, satisfied, and
scurried off to take a shower.