[Mr. I]
Napoleon, in full non-Napoleonic attire, was just getting back when I woke.
I decided, last night, that it would just be safer and more convenient to keep an eye on them from my place. The roommate thing hasn't really turned up anything so far, so it wasn't like I didn't have the space. So I gave Napoleon the extra bedroom, and went into the basement to clear out a spot for the other lunatic.
Luckily, I found a nasty old flea-ridden dog bed that has been there since I moved in.
Hearing the sounds of glass breaking, LOBO followed me down. He already had his footie Gi Joe pajamas on, and was gingerly toting a mug of hot chocolate.
"No marshmallows?"
"No," I says, sprinkling salt everywhere. "Now try not to break any more of this glass lying around. It's very valuable."
"Gotcha," he says, alternating the hot mug in his hands. "This'll be just like when we went camping in Chicago."
"Yes," I says absently as I climb the cobwebby stairs. "Minus the shooting," I add hopefully. When in Chicago, we got four parking tickets at $120 bucks apiece because of some snafu in parking permit paperwork. For once, LOBO and I were in complete agreement: the City of Chicago was a bloodsucking parasite, greedily feasting upon its hapless denizens.
While we inevitably had to pay the $480 in fines eventually, we did so with the peace of mind of knowing we had ruthlessly doled out at least $48,000 worth of vandalism, theft, and various other acts of healthy, righteous payback.
You know how mile marker '69' keeps disappearing?
That's us.
It was pointless, yet not somehow; we were "canceling out" whatever benefits this faceless evil enjoyed from this criminal exploitation, and then some. It was almost noble in a way, and it gave us a weird, visceral satisfaction. Fighting tyranny by playing a less-than-zero sum game. To this day, LOBO parks diagonally across three parking spaces, smashing the meter with his bumper, and is disappointed if the colorful paper under the windshield wiper is merely a flyer or a restaurant menu.
"Thank you," LOBO called up after me from the damp and dusty oppressive gloom.
"You're welcome, now go to sleep!" I yelled.
So, as I was saying, Napoleon walks into the kitchen this morning hauling two huge grocery bags as I'm blearily following the smell of brewing coffee. I'm in a bathrobe still, barefoot. Meanwhile, Napoleon is wearing a custom-fitted gray suit, complete with a thin red tie and expensive looking cufflinks. He looks like he's straight off of Wall Street.
And with the groceries in tow, he makes one of the best breakfasts I've ever had. Sausage. Bacon. Eggs florentine. Expresso. Real butter, and milk and cream tasting like the cow was right outside. When Napoleon is distracted, I sneak a peek at the receipts, bundled tightly around a credit card and sitting neatly on the kitchen counter. The breakfast ran an impressive $110. The suit was an even more impressive $760 after the alterations, and the Bruno Mali shoes a mere pittance at $280.
The credit card was a VISA Platinum.
And the name on it was Edward R. Harrows, PhD.
"You don't need to do that, uh, Napoleon" I says to him as he sets out a third place-setting for the vast breakfast spread. "He'll wake up and head straight for the Frosted Flakes."
"Please call me Edward," says Napoleon. "LOBO won't eat a hot breakfast?"
"Firstly, it has spinach in it. Secondly, he's saving box tops for a microscope."
Edward scowled slightly. "Do cereal companies still do that kind of thing?"
"Who knows?" I says.
"When does he get up?"
"Noonish."
"Well, he's on his own then."
I cave into my curiosity. "Edward, eh?" I ask cautiously. This guy is a mental patient after all. For all I know, the real 'Doctor Harrows' is being hauled out of a ditch by police and cadaver dogs this very moment.
"Yes," Edward replies. He has a deep, captivating baritone voice, pleasant to listen to. He could do movie narratives. "The 'Napoleon' thing keeps my wife down to two visits a month."
"Huh," I says.
We eat breakfast in a quiet solitude rarely enjoyed in LOBO's presence. I'm on my third scotch, working up my courage, when LOBO emerges, holding his balls through his PJs, dancing from foot to foot. He looks alternately at a pack of cigarettes, the box of Frosted Flakes, and the bathroom door, frantic and confused.
"I would recommend the bathroom first," I says.
"Yes," he says, relieved as he scurries off.
Edward was on the couch reading quietly. He had read Chuck Palahniuk's Choke in it's entirety overnight, and was just starting Haunted. After a few minutes, he sets the book down in his lap and massages the top of his nose, under where his glasses settle. "This is the second book in a row where by page twelve people are sticking things up their butts," he says finally. "What is it with white Pop Culture?"
"Beats me," I says as LOBO emerges again.
To LOBO I says, "Did you wash your hands?"
He proudly displays his palms to me. "I'm running a bath now too," he says.
"Good," I reply.
"I found your birth certificate in a box down there. Did you know your middle name is Chainsaw?"
"Yes I did. And I would appreciate you minding your own fucking business from now on."
Another scotch, and I'm ready.
To Edward, "So the whole 'Napoleon' thing is an act?"
"Yes," Edward says as sets the book down again.
"But acting like Napoleon is crazy," I says.
"I'd be crazy not to," says Edward.
"Is that how you ended up in the asylum?"
"No. I'm in for substance abuse."
A card carrying multiple personality-addled drug addict. Peachy.
"It's a long story," says Edward.
The Harrows family had it all.
According to Edward, James Harrows, Edward's great-great grandfather, had invented the vulcanization of rubber, but was mugged by Charles Goodyear on the way to the patent office. Goodyear, late for a Klan rally, failed to rub his fingerprints off of the baseball bat, and the forensic evidence would bear this out to be factual many years later. Goodyear, now a multi-billion dollar company, was forced to offer an out-of-court settlement of eighteen bucks to the Harrow family by a white jury reluctant to go changing a lot of rather inconvenient history books.
Plus retroactive interest.
This made for quite a bit of money.
The Harrows, for generations, have subsequently been millionaires. Edward, never having worked a day in his life, was a top 5% Yale graduate, having received his PhD in music theory in 1994.
And then he puttered around Julliard for another two years, perfecting the mastery over his chosen instrument. Before long, he was one of the most widely-sought after triangle players in the world.
When he played with the London Symphony Orchestra, people eight rows deep wept at his predanatural gift. Journalists in dozens of languages decried that Edward must have made a deal with Satan himself to chime with such innate and mesmerizing talent. In his heyday, it was calculated by Forbes Magazine that he was flown all over the globe to chime for kings and queens at a rate of roughly $600,000 per heart-wrenching ting.
He then met his true love, Bethany Anne Bellefonte; before long the loving pair were married and proud parents of two beautiful children, Alicia and Carlton.
And it was at Carlton's first birthday party that things went so terribly awry.
Bethany decided she wanted the kind of party suitable for their elevated social stature. The petting zoo, the clowns, the works. And she wanted a sheik retro theme, complete with aerosol cans of Silly String and big bowls of giant Jawbreakers.
And Pop Rocks.
Edward, beguiled by the colorful packaging, ate a packet of orange Pop Rocks while he was setting up the party. He ate two packets of grape while the clowns made balloon animals.
By the end of the day, he had consumed thirty-four packets. Fresh out, he shopped for them bulk online with trembling hands, paying the extraordinary fee to have them Fed-Exed the next day because he couldn't pick them up at the warehouse tonight.
Four months later, when he crashed his 1954 Bentley Type R, the cops found the floorboards covered in Pop Rocks packets.
Bethany, watching millions of dollars evaporate due to Edward's rapidly accelerating habit, finally confronted him, and Edward swore he would never touch a single Pop Rock ever again. But that very night, she woke him screaming that she couldn't sleep because he was crackling so loud. Days later, a perfunctory cleaning in the bathroom by the maid revealed Edward's stash: a thick, tight brick of Pop Rocks sealed in a waterproof ziplock bag floating in the upper toilet tank.
Bethany packed up the kids and left him to the inevitable ruin that was to follow.
Edward's music suffered. Stuff that was supposed to go "bum bum bum ting" would come out "bum bum-ting-bum". The surgical precision required to hit a triangle with just the right force seemed to escape him, and it was either far too loud and buzzing or completely inaudible altogether. And the sound engineers never seemed to be able to identify and fix the mysterious sizzling static Edward's microphone would constantly seem to emulate.
Soon, he would show up late for symphony performances, play his single note, and then leave immediately --before the end of the show-- in pursuit of the nearest fix. Rather than counting out measures on sheets and sheets of blank sheet music for the single note on page 98, he would sleep through shows, missing his cue completely. Once, he accidentally grabbed the violin sheet music by accident and played the whole concert like it was dinnertime at the chuck wagon, earning him a promising spot on a hip, irreverent episode of Hee Haw. But his downward spiral was impossible to mask even from them, and he was fired for calling Tom Wopat an asshole on live television.
His hygiene suffered, and his flesh seethed and bubbled visibly like a live thing under filthy, neglected clothing.
Six months later, a guilt-ridden Bethany tracked him to a cheap motel room. Unemployed, Edward was pouring a packet of Pop Rocks into a spoon, tonguing the inside of the packet. Eyes darting and bulgy, Edward had a lighter and a syringe, prepared for the Mother-of-All Pop Rocks high.
"I think it's time you faced the fact that you have a problem," said Bethany.
"Nonsense," replied Edward, twisting the thick rubber band over his elbow. "I can quit anytime I want."
"I knew you would say that," says Bethany. "That's why I brought these people from Bertram."
Six big guys in white outfits entered the room. Each opened a straight jacket, a chain, some unrecognizable restraining gadget, a syringe.
"I don't need a goddamned intervention!" Edward screamed through purple teeth.
Then, blammo.
"Blammo?" asks LOBO, chewing loudly.
"Yes," says Edward. "Distracted by everybody, I accidentally touched the Pop Rocks in the spoon to the open flame. Bethany Anne Bellefonte-Harrows and I survived by some incalculable miracle, having been thrown clear of the blast. But the six orderlies and the rest of the entire floor of the motel were blown to smithereens. Hence, 'Napoleon'. It was either that or face eleven counts of reckless homicide."
Suddenly, the lights went out.
In the ensuing quiet, we could hear the bathtub running.
"Fuck!" I says. "Goddamnit LOBO, you left the tub running!"
LOBO offered me a painful Frosted Flake-riddled smile as he ran for the bathroom.
"I'm sure the water just tripped the circuit breaker," offered Edward.
I ran downstairs to flip the circuit breaker switch, and screamed when I hit the salted glass.
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