Roadkill Paperback - 1998

First line

YOU COULD SAY the whole adventure began the day I looked in the bathroom mirror and saw the gypsy.

Excerpt

You could say the whole adventure began the day I looked in the bathroom mirror and saw the gypsy. That explanation might not hold up in a court of law, but as far as I'm concerned it's close enough for country dancing. I'd come in rather late the night before and as I slept I was visited by a strange and singularly vivid dream. Without going into graphic details, let me just say that I finally came across the girl in the peach-colored dress who was being held captive by a remote tribe deep in the jungles of Borneo. By disguising myself as a middle-aged orangutan, I was at last able to secure her release but not, however, before they took two Frisbees and used them to make her lips big.

By the time I woke up it was already late in the afternoon. Hell, I thought, if I'd been a banker I'd have been through for the day. Of course, if I'd been a banker I probably wouldn't have been living in a cold, drafty loft with a little black puppet head sitting wistfully on top of the refrigerator with the key to the building wedged in its mouth. If I'd been a banker I wouldn't wake up to garbage trucks grumbling bitterly outside my window. Or a lesbian dance class pounding away on the ceiling above. Or a cat performing tai-chi exercises upon my sleeping scrotum. On the positive side of the ledger, of course, was the fact that if I'd been a banker I probably wouldn't have been able to remember my dreams.

I leaped sideways out of bed, put on my purple Robert Louis Stevenson bathrobe, went into the kitchen, and located a wayward can of Southern Gourmet Dinner. As I opened the can, I glanced down at Vandam Street through the frost and the grime on the kitchen window. It was not clear precisely how much of this mucouslike obfuscation was on the outside or how much was on the inside of the window. As far as the outside went, you could probably blame most of the crap upon cars, people, pigeons, and God, none of whom have been known to be greatly concerned about the messes they've created on the outside of windows.

To be completely fair, it must be noted that incessant cigar smoking can occasionally lend a subtle, yellow-brownish, stained-glass-like appearance to the inside of windows. Whether this phenomenon manifests itself as Flemish or merely phlegmish is arguable. Beauty, as they say, is strictly in the eye of the beer holder.

I fed the cat the Southern Gourmet Dinner, opened diplomatic relations with the espresso machine, then bounded into the bathroom to go about my various morning ablutions. I climbed into the rainroom for my annual shower and as I washed the temple of my body, which, in some areas required the painstaking efforts of an archaeological dig, I began to sense a certain cleansing of the windows of my soul. It was time I got out of New York for a while, I figured.

My career as a country singer-turned-private-investigator appeared to be taking a turn for the worse. After a promising little string of successfully solved cases, for some unknown reason clients now seemed to be staying away in droves. Not only was my professional life moving along with all the fluid grace of a midtown traffic jam, but my personal life had slowed to a virtual standstill as well. My entire existence, I reflected as I washed my left armpit, was currently about as exciting as rich people watching bats.

I jumped out of the rainroom dried myself off with a colorful towel left over from a recent Hawaiian adventure, and segued smoothly over to the dump machine, where I donned my hydrogen mask and took a prodigious Nixon which I won't go into too graphically so as not to step on Chaucer's toes. It is enough to say that when I got off the dumper I felt better about cars, people, pigeons, and God, in, of course, a random and haphazard order.

Like any other post-Nixon morning, I got back inside my purple bathrobe and walked over to the sink. Like any other post-Nixon morning, I expected to cross the miles and miles of bathroom tiles only to stare into the silver distance of the bathroom mirror at those waving fields of emptiness that had become the country of my heart. Alas, this was not to be the case.

There, staring back at me, was a countenance very similar to my own, except that it appeared to be slightly more real and substantial than I felt at the moment. The face was almost mine but the eyes seemed different. They burned with the intensity of campfire embers, remembering everything I'd thought I'd forgotten. Nor was the figure wearing my purple bathrobe; he was swathed in a flaming tunic from a long-ago era. His hair was not a Hebrew natural like my own; he wore it long and dark and shiny and all wrapped up in a bright red sash. A silver earring hung from his left ear. Not like those commonly worn today by athletes, homosexuals, and teenagers, soon, perhaps, to hang themselves while masturbating and die from autoerotic death syndrome. This gypsy had been born with his earring, and it fairly gleamed with all the stolen mischief of dreams.

I blinked my eyes several times but the image in the bathroom mirror did not go away. They never really do. The bathroom mirror is the perfect place for you to one day see the gypsy in your soul.

"Who the fuck are you?" I said, in some dream state of mild hysteria. If you can talk to a cat, I figured, you can talk to a bathroom mirror.

"I am the gypsy in your soul," he said, "and I have come to tell you a little story that makes, I'm afraid, about as much sense as your life."

At that precise moment, I was pretty sure he was going to be right. Still I tried to preserve reality, to save sanity.

"Hold the weddin'," I said. "I don't even know your name. Do you have a card?"

"My name is Antonio," said the gypsy, "and this is my card."

Clearly in the bathroom mirror I could see him holding up the king of hearts.

"Start talkin'," I said.

"One dark, stormy night," the figure intoned, "a band of gypsies was gathered around the campfire. The leader stood up and said, Antonio tell us a tale, and Antonio stood up and said, one dark stormy night a band of gypsies was gathered round the campfire and the leader stood up and said, Antonio tell us a tale, and Antonio stood up and said, one dark stormy night a band of gypsies was gathered round the campfire -- "

"I see the problem," I said. "Not only do I have a gypsy in the bathroom mirror, but he happens to be the most tedious gypsy in the world and he appears to be talking to me on an endless loop."

"Now you understand. Come away from there. Come travel the world with me. Leave your loft and your village and your friends and your cat and Stephanie DuPont -- "

"How'd you know about Stephanie DuPont?"

The gypsy said nothing, but his eyes sparkled like Romanian stars.

I felt many things just then as, mesmerized, I gazed into the mirror. Fear, curiosity, disbelief, desire. When I finally spoke again it was to voice a sentiment that was not uncommon amongst many New Yorkers.

"But how can you travel so far away?" I said.

"From where?" said the gypsy.