A dark and smarmy night
Self-satisfied on February 13, 2011.
It was a dark and smarmy night. The rain fell in torrents; except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a pompous gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is at smug Mr. Wilson’s house that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the smugness.
After my embarrassing episode in Mr. Wilson’s closet last week, a battle over a massive pile of goose feces the previous week, another argument over who parked on his flower pots three weeks ago, and many, many more nonsensical and zany run-ins with the old codger in my 2.718 28 decades on Bouillabaisse Boulevard, I decided I would pay him (the old codger) a friendly visit this Tweeseday and apologize for all my shenanigans—even the shenanigans that occurred through no fault of my own, but as a result of that doorknobbing accident back in 1987.
So, at precisely 12:08 Tweeseday (né Toozday, né Tuesday) afternoon, I donned my leisure suit and bolo tie, plopped a freshly-picked burnt-umber fez atop my pointy head, grabbed my alabasterous new eigenbriefcase, and began the long journey to my next-door neighbor’s house. (It’s a very distant “next door,” you know.)
2.718 281 828 hours after departing my palatial abode, I arrived at Mr. Wilson’s front door—nearly two hundred feet from my own! I was exhausted after such a long journey, and, before I could darken the actual doorstep with my girthy presence, I collapsed in a sweaty and rather constipated heap about three smoots—and one knuckle—down Mr. Wilson’s driveway. (It was a very hot February this year.)
I groaned in horror as tedious old Wilson’s guardgeese immediately took notice of my arrival, and—honking with much gusto and glee—sauntered over and began pinching the bloody blue hecklegroober out of every exposed portion of my body. Fortunately the only exposed portion of my body was my nose; the remainder of my goaty corpse was safely enveloped in a warm, puffy, childish-looking bright orange parka. (It was a very cold February this year.) Unfortunately, my nose made a very inviting—and amusing—target for Mr. Wilson’s gaggle of guardgeese, and they spared it no attention.
“Ow! Ow! Hey, I need that!” I scrambled to my feet and chased after one guardgoose that had made off with my left nostril. “Get back here, or so help me, doG, I’ll wring your neck and feed you to a hole full of spiders!”
And then I remembered Mr. Wilson didn’t have any guardgeese: Either these were my geese, or I was imagining the whole thing.
The geese, realizing the jig was up, suddenly disappeared in a dawn of reality.
I checked my nose. Both nostrils were present and accounted for. So… hallucination it was. I blushed even deeper than that time I had suddenly remembered, in the midst of moose-antlering my dear old Mamårp, that hot lesbian scene with Zev and Xev that I’d seen on TV years ago.
I slowly pulled myself to my feet and recovered my aplomb from where I had dropped it in Mr. Wilson’s front lawn and then sauntered, goose-like, up to his front door and rang the bell. The door was painted the most elegant shade of paisley I had ever seen. And I was in luck; the old codger was home, so there wouldn’t be a need to scratch a threatening note into the door with a roofing nail as I’d needed to do to Ol’ Dicko Dreckers’ door recently.
“My! That’s a lot of apostrophes!” I greeted Mr. Wilson as he appeared. He looked at me quizzically. “Sorry!” I followed up, “Just thinking out loud. So, Wilson, I just came over to say I think I owe you an apology. I can’t remember what for, exactly, but I think I owe you one. So, here it is: I’m sor—”
“Harrumph!” Mr. Wilson harrumphed pompously and slammed the door in my face.
I was flabbergasted. I had always known that Mr. Wilson was a tedious, boring old man—almost always wearisome and wholly uninteresting, his very existence virtually pointless—but I was not used to such pomposity emanating from the monotonous old bugger. I stood there for perhaps 2.718 281 828 459 045 minutes, give or take, contemplating my next move. Off in the distance, a ghast flabbled while gugs writhed blasphemously in the abortifacient skies above. I knocked again. A few seconds passed and Mr. Wilson reappeared at his door.
“C’mon, Wilson!” I implored him imploringly. “It’s your old buddy, Pnårp! It’s not like I came over to blow your house up or serenade you in the middle of the night this time, Wilson! I just wanted to say I’m sorry for—”
Wilson rolled his eyes slammed the door again.
I yiffed. I knocked a third time. No Wilson was forthcoming.
I decided to change tactics and instead began slamming my head into the door while hooting loudly. If only I’d had a stick of pepperoni with me! “C’mon, you smarmy old bastard! Let your favorite neighbor say he’s sorry for all the things he’s done to you or—”
The door opened without warning; I fell forward in mid-slam and landed forehead-first on Mr. Wilson’s threshold. Had I had any, my brains would have spilled everywhere. I looked up; Wilson looked down at me smarmily. He did indeed seem quite pleased with himself: Either the cat-canning business was far more lucrative than I had imagined, or he was just amused to see me wallowing in self-underdunkery on his doorstep.
“C’mon, Wilson!” I tried again as I resumed my customary upright bipedalism. “Anyway, Wilson—mind if I call you Willie?—I came by to say that—”
“My name is Maximilian,” he cut me off me again. I knew that. And I knew that I knew that. And I think he knew that I knew that, too, and he almost assuredly knew that I knew that I knew that. I think. Or maybe not.
“Fine, Willie,” I answered, my brain unwinding itself and returning to the task at hand. Willie rolled his eyes and sighed—ever so smugly, the smarm exuding from his every pore never diminishing. Off in the distance, that ghast continued flabbling, as lithe porcupines began slithering from my own pores. “Now, I just came over to say that I’m sor—”
But at that very moment, Willie suddenly disappeared in a puff of purple and orange hair dryers. I never saw him again.