great wall 10

 Seems to me that it well could have been the boogie woogie flu?  How can you know unless you are tested and I don't believe they can test you after the fact?  Pink, why yes of course, the whole reason plants are green is because they absorb rather than reflect red light.  Makes you wonder why all grow lights aren't pink.  I remember that ricin was a lot more in the news when you were growing it, and I was worried for you about cops dropping in for some lawful reason and then asking, "What is that you're growing Lad?"

That rule to work thing sounds a lot like the blue flu.  Legally cops can't strike, so they call in sick a lot, and when they are on the clock they do their job in a minimal manner, just enough to not get legally fired.  I suspect the Canadians also are not legally allowed to strike.

And here is the ending of The Great Wall.  I would love to get your impressions after you have read it, and I will have a few words to say about it.

I was thinking my next story will be nonfiction along the lines of how I dodged the draft back in the day.  Have a pleasant weekend Gentlemen, and as the cop in Hill Street advised his charges, be careful out there.

I was going to drive her home first thing, like I had pantomimed to Vincent, but the police station was closer and maybe the first thing I should do was bail out Leon.  But when I got there they were going to need another half hour to finish booking him. 

I couldn’t leave her in the car while I sat in the police station waiting for the procedures.  I could have sat in the car with her, but it had been a long day and night and I sure could use a drink myself.  There was this crumby little bar across the street from the police station, and she was doing pretty good by then, so I took her in with me.

I settled her into a booth, got myself a beer, and when I came back Dawn asked, “Where’s mine?”

Startled, I started, “Dawn, I really don’t think you need…”

“Where’s my drink?” she cut me off.

Well what more harm could one more drink do?  “Glenlivet?” I asked.

“Sure, that will do.”

I’d left my cigarettes and lighter on the table and when I got back with her Glenlivet, she was smoking one. She kind of just blew the smoke out and coughed, but she kept right at it.

I sat the glass down in front of her, leaned over, and touched her shoulder, “Dawn, what’s happened to you?  Is it because of those little bottles?  Because you were thinking about your dad’s death?”

She looked up from her cigarette.  “That fucker,” she said, “I wish he was dead.”

I watched as she took a healthy sip, made a little face, set the glass down, took a puff, coughed.

“He’s not dead then?” It was all I could think to say.

“Fuck I don’t know.   He wasn’t the last time I saw him. Unfortunately.  I suppose you want to hear the story.”

“If you want to tell it.”

She stubbed out her cigarette, lit another one right away.  “Okay,” she said.  “Why not?  I was in the third grade when he ran off.  No warning, he just didn’t come home one night.  Mom said he took up with booze and hookers.”

I cringed a little thinking of Raven and Ruby.  They had seemed nice enough girls.

“He was drinking Glenlivet?” I asked, just to keep up my part of the conversation, just to keep things straight.

“I guess he did.  I guess he was drinking all the scotch in the glen, and all the gin in the mill.  Mom taught me that one.  I don’t know how he kept his job, but he did, not that that helped us, all the money went for the booze and the hookers, he never sent us a fucking dime.  For a little while, I was a little girl, I would miss him, miss him kind of taking care of me when something bad happened.”

“He’d say, ‘shrug it off?” I prompted.

And that made her laugh, “Shrug it off?  Maybe he said that.  He sure shrugged us off.  That fucker!  And then nine years, nine years later, on my seventeenth birthday, my aunt, his sister, though I didn’t put that together until too late, invited me to her house for dinner, and when I walked in there he was sitting at the table.  That fucker!”

She paused for a quick puff and a gulp.  “And he had this package, this gift-wrapped package, wrapped up professionally like the store will do if you ask them to, and it was my birthday present!  Nine years not a fucking dime and here’s a fucking birthday present.  I was shocked, too shocked to do or say anything so I just took the package, opened it up, and it was a make-up kit.  I never wore make-up.  And it wasn’t even a real make-up kit.  It was a toy make-up kit, like for little girls.  It was so stupid.  That fucker!  I broke it over his head, and then I kept beating him with the pieces of it, and he had his arm over his head, and underneath it he was trying to say something and I just kept beating him until all the pieces were broken too small.  And I haven’t seen him since then.  That fucker!”

The Heroine of The Great Wall finished her story. I looked at her in her red dress stained with soy sauce now and sticky from sweet and sour, sitting in a crumby bar, drinking whiskey, smoking cigarettes, saying ‘fuck.’

“What about the Peaceable Kingdom?” I asked her.

“The Peaceable Kingdom?”

“You know, the lion laying down with the lamb.”

She seemed to be giving it some thought.  She lit another cigarette and didn’t cough at all.  “They were just posing for the picture,” she said.  “As soon as the painter put in his last brush stroke the lion ate the lamb.”

She finished her Glenlivet, plunked the empty glass in front of me.  “What’s a gal got to do to get another drink around here?” she asked.

Coming back with her next drink I noticed that she had all the little Glenlivet bottles lined up along the edge of the table, and one by one she addressed them, “Shrug this off Fucker,” and flicked them to the floor.

As soon as I set her scotch on the table she grabbed it and took a big gulp.

I leaned over her to settle her down and she put her hands in the hair behind my neck and drew my face down to hers and gave me a big deep kiss full of scotch and smoke, and with her stained red dress and some low blues song on the jukebox of the crumby bar, it was like kissing the devil.