Caution! This episode contains material that may not be suitable for children or discerning adults.

    I considered carefully before responding. Gail, her eyes literally splitting her attention between the slowly warming coffee maker and studying my body, seemed to puff on her cigarette in a manner best described as ‘expectant’. I tried my best to look nonchalant by leaning against the counter top and crossing my arms, surreptitiously drawing my loose bathrobe closed just a little tighter around me. I felt quite exposed, and thought there was a definite fishbowl effect going on.
    We stood together in my small galley style kitchen and the pale blue painted walls lent everything a subtly washed out appearance. The bright morning sun, spearing through the window over the sink, shone like a harsh square spotlight onto the wall above the small wooden table. Gail’s normally gray skin tone seemed almost green in the reflected light. I licked my lips nervously.
     “Well, actually,” I said, “I think it could probably please more than a dozen people-”
     “Shush, Joe. Just shush.” I stopped, letting my eyes slip away from hers and nervously looked to the floor. Boba Fett’s severed cardboard head looked back at me accusingly from where it rested atop the somewhat sticky mass of my discarded work shirt beneath the table. A few seconds ticked by, marked by Gail’s periodic drags on her cigarette through those tight, cracked lips, and the occasional tick of her misaligned yellowed eyes. She shifted her weight, what there was of it, from one foot to the other, but continued staring and smoking in silence; would she stand there looking at me forever, or just until the coffee was done? Presently, the coffee pot began wheezing. I wondered how long would take for the huge percolator to do its thing. Would Gail leave after that? I needed to lie down and sleep, my head was pounding like last summer’s touring company of Tycho Dance*, and I still needed to think about Boba Fett–what his presence in my mailbox meant. What about Bruce?
     My thoughts were interrupted by the sudden intrusion of a tinny stream of Latin dance music coming from somewhere in the living-room.
    As one, we both jumped, and Gail’s cigarette wiggled in her fingers and almost went flying as she twisted herself around to face the direction of the music.
     “What the hell’s that?” she demanded as orphaned ashes drifted like filthy snow onto my linoleum floor.
     “The Macarena,” I answered the empty room, as she had already walked out into the living room and had begun searching for the source of the catchy music. Alone in the kitchen for the moment, I closed my eyes and squeezed my head with my hands, willing the pain to go away. The sound of the Macarena grew noticeably louder, though not a bit less Latin, and I opened my eyes to see Gail walking the two steps back into the kitchen carrying my ringing cell phone in front of her while reading the display.
     “I found this in your pants,” she said, “you’re a slob, you know that? This thing is sticky as hell, and why does it smell.. (sniff) like strawberries?”
     “Uh..,” I managed.
     “It says, ‘out of area.’ Here,” she handed me the ringing phone. I stood dumbly staring at the thing, ignoring its desperately implied cries of ‘hey, Macarena!.’ Head…hurts…
     “Wake up and answer it! Oh, and I’m not here, got that?” I slowly nodded, pressed the answer button, and held it up to my left ear.
    A pleasant woman’s voice spoke,
    ”Please hold while we connect your call to,” there was a pause, and then an impossibly gruff voice declared, “BANANAS.” There was a series of clicks. I waited.
    Cocking her head, Gail asked, “Who is it?”
    Still listening to the seemingly endless series of random clicks, I answered listlessly, “No one, yet. But I think its going to be Bananas.”
     “What?” Then, in an invasion of my personal space which, honestly, was par for the course, Gail sidled up next to me and leaned in close, pressing her ear against my phone to listen in from the other side. Steadying herself, she wrapped her bony arm around my shoulders with her lit cigarette going along for the ride. I could feel the heat from her cheek warming my hand where it held the phone and only my exhausted, pain fogged state prevented me from drawing away in revulsion.
    The smell of her breath was a moist, dusty thing, and I was thrown back to an earlier time; a time in my childhood when I and several other kids bravely explored Mr and Mrs Mayfield’s burnt-out house at the end of the block. The Mayfields had suffered a big house fire the night before, and I had stayed up staring from my room at the flashing lights of the firemen and trying to make out the words from their excited, shouting voices. The next morning we violated the caution tape, entered the house and found that it had been soaked thoroughly by the fire-hoses. It presented a complex arrangement of charred timbers, melted plastics and dampness all around.
    Mrs. Mayfield had been a collector of “Precocious Moments” figurines, which were small ceramic children with huge, sad eyes and disproportionately large heads doing god-knows-what to each other. Usually they would be mounted on small bases or pedestals embossed with phrases like, “Hang in there,” or “God Loves you More than Bunnies!”
    I remember collecting the smudged and broken Precocious Moments figurines from the wreckage of Mrs. Mayfield’s curio cabinet and carrying them home in a paper shopping bag. The smell of smoke and wet consumed the bag and, when the dampness from the figures soaked the bag to the point of failing, the contents precociously tumbled out of the resulting rupture and rolled across the sidewalk. The vacant eyes of their roly-poly heads exuded the perfume of last-night’s flames. I gathered them up with my bare hands and continued on my way. My mother was quite unhappy with the collection when I walked into the house hugging the armload of golf-ball sized heads, torsos and bases.
     Now, years later, I found myself standing cheek to cheek with that same smell while in my basement lay the decidedly unprecocious severed torso of my friend Chuck. His head and eyes, however, were exquisitely proportionate and the embossing on his tongue implored me to hide him–seemingly withholding any possible opinion on the relative love of Bunnies in the eyes of the Lord.
    Chuck, I thought as my head spoke of agony, the smell of my unwelcome companion sunk into my olfactory passages, and the coffee pot hissed and burbled, did you really want me to go through all this?
    A final click was heard from my phone and the voice I had come to know as ‘Bananas’ spoke in my ear. It was a sound like gravel running down a hill with a slight Indian accent.**
     “Good time of day, sir. I am Bananas with Franklin Mint activation tech support. You may remember speaking to me,” there was the sound of a keyboard clacking away for a moment and then, “Do you?”
    Gail whispered under her breath, “hang up on him.” Distracted, I did my best to piece together the context of Banana’s last question in my head.
     I gave up. “Do what?”
     “Uhh, uhh,” he grunted/panted, “Do you remember speaking to me?”
     “Yeah, I guess,” it was at that moment that I began to smell a different brand of smoke than the usual putrescence pouring from Gail’s mouth and, at the same time, realized that my right shoulder was beginning to feel very, very hot, “I think I’m on fire now, bye!”
    I’m pretty sure I heard Bananas yell “Wait-Mr. Minnetola!” as I tossed the phone aside and attended to the matter of the fire on my robe.
    Gail’s cigarette had inconsiderately ignited the shoulder of my bathrobe and licks of flame were now dancing mere inches from my head. I frantically batted her hand away and unsuccessfully tried to pat the conflagration out, burning my palm in the process.
    ”Damn,” said I.
     “Shit,” said Gail, “You are on fire!” Reacting swiftly, Gail moved in front of me and wrenched the collar of the bathrobe off my shoulders with both hands, exposing my bare chest and binding my arms against me in the process. The fire was now behind my back, and presently I felt my shoulder blade roasting slightly.
    I screamed involuntarily from the pain, and stupidly tried to twist away from the flames, bumping into Gail. My arms were securely trapped in their sleeves and bound against me, so the effort was futile; I began to panic in earnest.
     Impatiently, she commanded, “quit squirming.”
    Moving quickly now, Gail wrapped her arms around me in a rough embrace, reaching around behind my back to turn on the kitchen faucet, grab the burning fabric and shove the flaming bits beneath the running water. I was forced to arch my back painfully in order for the terry cloth collar to get that far into the sink, and as the seconds–and the danger–passed I realized with some amount of horror that my body was now pressed firmly against Gail’s bony frame. I felt completely powerless, off-balance and bent backwards over my own kitchen counter with my arms trapped in the tightly bound sleeves of my robe. Further, back when I was twisting around like an idiot my bathrobe had partially fallen open, and I now felt the rough fabric of her jeans rubbing against my exposed genitals. I am ashamed to admit it, but I let out a pitiful, mewling little sob right then and there.
    Misunderstanding the cry, her raspy voice spoke with insincere, gentle reassurance in my ear, “You’re fine, you big, stupid weasel.”
    Gail’s head was over my shoulder now, and I felt her arms working behind me, still dousing the robe with cold water. Some of the liquid splashed against my exposed back in a tickling spray, forcing me to jerk a little. Her waxy hair got in my face and mouth and smelled of sweat and tar and tasted of bitter salt. I spluttered and phiffed a bit and by the time I stopped phiffing and spluttering the faucet had been turned off and I felt Gail’s warm, leathery face press against my neck.*** I froze, petrified by circumstance as well as by a perverse sense of unwelcome arousal. A moment passed by, and then another. I was acutely aware of my exposed parts, the most prominent of which was doing its best to regretfully telegraph my physical interest through the material of her jeans.
     The tableau ended suddenly as the coffee pot enthusiastically burbled and hissed. Gail’s hand traced a line up the center of my back and what I can only assume was a cracked fingernail scratched my spine uncomfortably and gave rise to a shivering crop of goose-flesh. In desperation I looked to Boba Fett, but from his floor-level vantage point he seemed far too sanguine and disinterested in the proceedings to help me out.
    The scent of coffee was now wafting through the room in earnest and served to cover, partially, the continuous low-level stink of Gail’s applied carcinogens. My back hurt, and I longed to straighten up.
     “Gail..” I began, without a clear idea of where I how I’d finish, “uh..”
     She actually nuzzled me then, and her craggy teeth nipped the nape of my neck. I clenched my teeth, biting my tongue hard enough to draw blood, and as she reached up and wrapped her arm around my head I came face to face with a teddy bear. Its furry arms were raised in victory above the wrecked body of a small helmeted man who, in turn, lay atop the freshest nicotine patch on Gail’s body. The cute little bear’s teeth dripped blood, and his little ATV had crushed the tiny man. I studied that bear quite intensely, hoping it could take me to another place, and I felt her other hand slip from behind me, trace the line of my belt and reach…down…
     “Pour us a cup,” she demanded, and tugged.

* Tycho Dance is a psuedo-artistic combination of kobuki theater, tycho drumming, ice skating and lap dancing and is continually improving and adding new elements. Next year’s production is supposed to come complete with an Andrew Loydd Weber soundtrack and a watered down plot involving a romance between a dilapidated dance slipper and one of the larger tycho drums.
** Yes, the rocks tumbled with an Indian accent. You’d have to hear Bananas to understand.
*** Disclaimer: ‘Phiffed’ is Not Actually a Real Word
**** The fabulous illustration of Gail’s arm is an interpretation by Jagd Kunst.