__________________

I was slumped on my bed in the Flamingo,
feeling dangerously out of phase with my surroundings.
Something ugly was about to happen. I was sure of it. The room looked like the
site of some disastrous zoological experiment involving whiskey and gorillas.
The ten-foot mirror was shattered, but still hanging together – bad evidence of that afternoon when my attorney ran
amok with the coconut hammer, smashing mirror and all the lightbulbs.
We’d replaced the lights with a package of red and blue Christmas tree lights from
Safeway, but there was no hope of saving the mirror.
My attorney’s bed looked like a burnedrat’s nest.
Fire had consumed the top half, and the rest a mass of wire and charred stuffing.
Luckily, the maids had’nt come near the room since that awful confrontation on Tuesday.
I been asleep when the maid came in that morning.
We’d forgotten to hang out the “Do Not Disturb” sign… so she wandered into the room and startled my attorney,
who kneeling, stark naked, in the closet, vomiting into his shoes… thinking he was actually in the bathroom, and
then suddenly looking up to see a woman with a face like Mickey Rooney staring down at him,
unable to speak, trembling with fear and confusion.