She
was a dame. She talked like a dame, moved like a dame, smelled like a dame,
breathed like a dame, slept like a dame, yawned like a dame, coughed like a
dame, dusted like a dame, cooked like a dame, had the metabolism of a dame,
knew about as much astrophysics as a dame would, had a selection of hats
typical of a dame. She was a dame.
No
doubt about it. A dame through and through. Her hips were as wide and curvy as
a concert piano and her feet were like pedals, so if you stood on one while she
was talking her voice would become a swelling overlapping echo and if you stood
on the other her voice would be muted and soft. But no man could play her well.
She was out of tune.
Her
lipstick was a dame’s lipstick and it was the colour of the edges of a bullet
wound or some sort of massive head trauma. It could even be said that it was
the shade of blood that gushes from a busted lip. It wasn’t the lipstick of a
homunculus or panda. She left her apartment and swayed down the length of this
sentence to the end of the paragraph.
Her
hips kept getting stuck between the margins of the story, that’s how wide they
were, but she finally arrived on the street and headed downtown, a part of town
under uptown. She was going there because the plot told her to and she had no
choice. She was without choice, without even a dame’s choice, but she had
everything else a dame should.
Yes,
she was a dame. She was also a broad. A broad is a certain kind of dame and in
fact I don’t think there’s any difference between them, but I’m not really an
expert. Maybe there is a miniscule arcane difference, something to do with the
atoms of the ankles. Who knows? I don’t. Maybe you do. Maybe you are a dame or
broad who knows. Well done.
I
am a private eye. That’s who I am. I used to be a public eye, but people got
upset and complained to the authorities about my appearance. They didn’t like
to see a gigantic eye rolling along the pavement towards them. It disturbed
them that the rest of my head was missing, that I had no body or limbs, that I
was just an eye with the diameter of a cottage.
So
the authorities forced me to go private and encased me inside a brick pyramid
and now I blink out near the summit of the structure and you can find me on the
hill overlooking the town. I don’t solve many cases these days, to be honest,
but that’s because I’m too busy living a fantasy life. In my fantasy life I’m a
man with all my parts fully functional.
These
daydreams are starting to occupy all my waking hours. I imagine that my name is
Sergio Surges and I have a moustache so big that a policeman can conceal himself
inside it. This is helpful when confronting lethal criminals with their deeds.
For example, at this precise instant I’m about to enter a bar where a notorious
gangster is playing pool.
I
watch him splashing about with the rubber ducks and toy boats but it’s rude and
dangerous to stare so I turn away and order a drink from the barman, who
happens to be a midget pygmy.“Rum.”
Pygmies
are quite small already, but the midgets amongst them are really tiny, no higher
than the knees of a freak spider.
“What
kind?” he asks.
“The
kind that begins with the letter B,” I reply.
“Brandy,
you mean?”
“Sure!
Make it a double on the rocks.”
He
places a selection of pebbles on the bar and slowly pours the alcohol over
them. I nod and pay him. I also tip him. Over the edge of the tall stool on
which he stands. He plummets through an open trapdoor that leads to a very long
passage that passes through the world all the way back to where he came from,
which is the Pygmalion Republic.
That
passage is so long it goes on for umpteen hundred thousand pages. This is the
highly condensed version.
“What
did you do that for?” cries the notorious gangster.
“He
was corrupt,” I answer coolly.
“And
what the hell do you think you are?”
“I
am Sergio Surges, the private eye who is more than just an eye, and I am not
corrupt at all, partly because this is just a daydream, but I know for an
unchecked fact that he, the barman, was taking bribes from you in order to let
wicked things happen on the premises.”
“Oh
yeah? What sort of wicked things, buddy?”
“No
idea. I don’t bother with little details like that. It’s too much effort. Maybe
he allowed you to fight the shadows of gibbons on that wall over there. Or
maybe he let you to use a freshly baked pizza as an indoor Frisbee and the
toppings were pineapple and chocolate.”
“Is
this some kind of joke?”
“Do
I look like an Englishman and Scotsman and Irishman? Of course it’s no joke.
You are under arrest.”
“I’m
going to kill ya with my heater!”
He
gets out of the pool and plugs a portable electric heater into a socket on the
wall, taking care not to drip on the wires, and waits for the filaments to
start glowing. But he is far too slow. The policeman in my moustache instantly
reveals himself and blasts him with a truncheon that is actually a mini-bazooka
and I watch him burst like applause.
A
round of. Very satisfying.
The
door swings open and the dame walks in like a baby grand. My jaw drops open. What
is she doing here?
“This
is my daydream. Get out!” I bellow.
Her
lipsticked lips curl in a sneer that is half smile. “A daydream? Fine. I am a
day-dame, so I belong here.”
I
despise it when confusions arise and unplanned things happen in what is
supposed to be my personal fantasy. I usually escape them by going into the
next level of daydream, by closing my eyes and imagining I am Hugo Lobes, a
private eye with ears so large that a couple of pygmy midgets can hide behind
each one, both armed with blowpipes.
I
am sitting on the top deck of a tram and reading the newspaper and the front
page headline screams at me that a terrible gangster is sitting downstairs on
the same tram at this very moment, so I get up to make my way down the curving
set of metal steps, but my way is blocked by a woman who is coming up. To my
dismay I recognise her...
The
dame! She followed me into this fantasy!
“This
is most unfair!” I roar.
“I
go wherever I please,” she retorts.
“But
I thought you didn’t have a choice. It said earlier in this story that you were
a dame without choice.”
“Precisely.
I have no choice but to go where I
please.”
“You
mean that your free will is—”
“Predetermined,”
she says.
So
I vanish into the third level of daydream, the level where I am Bogie Clubs, a
private eye with such a big mouth that gibbons could bake pizzas in there
without anyone getting suspicious, and I am on the deck of a cruise ship that
is heading to the Bermuda Shorts, a pair of islands where a gangster has taken
refuge in one of the deep pockets.
A
steward approaches. “Would monsieur care for a drink?””
“Gin,”
I answer languidly.
“What
kind?” he asks in a high voice.
“The
kind that begins with the letter V,” I reply.
“Vodka,
you mean?”
“No
thanks. Vermouth please.”
But
he doesn’t go to fetch me my beverage. Instead he pulls off his cap and
unbuttons his jacket to reveal—
The
dame! It’s the dame again! That damned dame!
I
vanish into the next level.
Now
I am Griswald Jerkins, the private eye with a chin dimple so deep that a tram
driver with a halberd could conceal himself and pop out and swing it most
effectively at the drop of a hat, especially one of those very heavy hats that
make a clanging noise when it lands. I am furiously pedalling a unicycle up a
mountain path in pursuit of a gangster.
Another
unicycle catches up with me, draws level.
The
rider is the dame again!
I
escape into the next level. I am Morton Punchbowl and—
The
dame, the dame, the dame!
Through
all the daydreams she follows me and each subsequent fantasy has slightly less
detail in it, is less fleshed out, sparser, bleaker, less real then the one
that preceded it, and each private eye is less convincing, because I’ve spent
less time working on their identities and environments than I might have done.
But fleeing this way is my only hope.
Here’s
a short list of some of the private eyes I become:
Mickey
Stains.
Hercule
Pompbustus.
Heston
Furball.
Flippy
Masters.
Duckbreath
Chumptaster.
Ratleg
Smashy.
Occidental
Brushtooth.
Ajax
van Scruba.
Chickpea
Bunkerlove.
Zippy
Buttons.
Gusty
Nuts.
Lemontoe
Thumbrag.
And
then I run out of daydreams and run out of names and run out of big body parts
and run out of time, energy and space, and I find myself, as I’m sure you have
already anticipated, completing the circle, closing the loop and becoming
myself again, a colossal eyeball inside a pyramid and I glance down and see her
climbing the hill towards me.
“Leave
me alone!” I scream.
“I
will now,” she says. “I just wanted to go on a journey, that’s all, out of this
story and around the world. I wanted to go abroad. I was a dame but a
stay-at-home dame. And now I’ve been abroad, so I’m a dame abroad and a broad
at home, and it feels just fine. I climbed up here to thank you but also to ask
your advice. I really need to know.”
“What
is it?” I am frantic to get rid of her. I’ll say anything to make her go away,
answer any question. And then it comes, she hits me with it, and I’m more
acutely aware than ever before that she’s a dame, that she has the soul of a
dame, the heart of a dame, the plot of a dame, the metaphors of a dame, the
grammar of a dame, the power of a dame.
“How
do you curl your lashes?”
