There's No Place Like Home For the Holidays. For some reason, the
fulfillment department manager from
my last job is visiting up here for the
Christmas holidays. I am preparing to leave the
store, she
collars me and wrings a long
soul kiss out of me.
Iw, what about my
breath?
Nikki is with her, and submits to a
frigid "happy holidays"
kiss, but there is
no tongue forthcoming from her.
Thank God.
I am not a crook. Either I am just out
prowling, or I have a legitimate reason for
breaking into the house of the Polish family up the block. Too bad I don't remember. I can't find whatever has drawn me in here, and I am
trapped in the kitchen when
the father rounds the corner, holding a
shotgun. I
reach for the sky. In what seems like an hours-long sequence, I eventually persuade him that I meant no harm, I was looking for a mis-delivered
Xmas gift, a breaking-and-entering
record is going to needlessly screw up my whole life... He lets me go, to
philosophize with one of the neighborhood kids. My parents don't even have to know.
Slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. In a
penniless back alley production of
Romeo and Juliet, I fall through the roof and have to recite my part of the "Wherefore art thou, Romeo"
dialogue with a
mouthful of shards of very thin glass
mirror. Spitting it out, careful not to
cut my lips or
tongue on the way out, there is one piece that doesn't fit out my mouth! How did it get in there? I start to
choke (I was probably
snoring), and wake. It's 2 minutes to when my alarm normally alarms.