THE WEASEL AND THE RACOON (nancy & me)

“All paid employments absorb and degrade the mind.”
-- Aristotle, 384-322 B.C.


…Nancy’s written exams were completed at the Angel College Undergraduate Library. She found an empty filing cabinet in one of the study rooms and would hide her printer there. The two Danes (is that what I said they were?) would gather up the legal pads I was furiously filling with longhand drafts of Nancy’s responses to her dissertation committee’s questions. Ironically, even though I am composing this on the computer, I’m really in a data entry mode, since I’m transcribing material I wrote earlier on a legal pad. I’ll tell you when I’m freewheeling. Once they had transcribed Nancy’s exam answers, I would revisit the material in search of errors related to form and content. We completed the written exams over a period of about three weekends, and that was that. I had probably made a grand or three and only regretted the thought of lost income.

…So about a year later I’m walking my trusty doggie, Shadow, when all of a sudden my cell phone goes off. As I live and breathe, I swear the ring-tone that erupted from that infernal device was the whinny, yes, that’s right, whinny, of a horse! Instead of a ring, or buzz, or ultra-hip, Radiohead cool jam, it was literally the whinny of a horse, like something out of a Gene Autry, or Roy Rodgers, or Hoppalong Cassidy movie. By thunder, I was so flabbergasted I dropped the evil thing on the trail. After composing myself, I made that slow motion reach to answer a call that could only be trouble. It was Nancy. She was back in my life. She sounded so happy to hear my voice. Her glee was akin to that of someone on the verge of being saved, someone about to be baptized into the rapture of academe. She knew no one else could take on the Herculean task she had assigned herself. I don’t answer, and her graduate days are over. I was happy too, I needed the dough, and we were back in business.

(Back to computer freestylin here)

…Perhaps the seediest, sleaziest, fleabag hotel you can find in this fair city is the Hotel Thai. I recall using the urinals in the lobby bathroom and writing my name in the cigarette butts that clogged the drain. Hotel Thai lies at the southwest corner of U.S. 24 and Tekonsha Boulevard. This was just one, and far and away the filthiest, of the places where our devil’s bargain was accomplished. Nancy was a master of the sneak and wheedle. After phoning ahead and determining which hotels were most amenable to her subterfuge, she would pull up and case the joint before entering the lobby and observing the front desk routine. Upon being shown the banquet room at Hotel Thai, for instance, she noticed that its sliding doors had access to a hidden parking lot in the back. After casually inquiring about which low budget religious groups reserved this space, and when, she would then leave and come back when a gullible fill-in was at the check-in desk. One Sunday, knowing full well that the church group was getting there at three, she arrived at nine, saying she was doing a preliminary setup for the service. She then moved her traveling freak show into the room and called me. I was, of course, parked in the back alley, awaiting her all-clear signal, after which I skulked up to the glass like an inquisitive racoon, and was, once again, ushered into her insane world. She was like a furtive weasel, her beady eyes darting gleefully around, as if congratulating herself on this petty, and pathetic, deception.

Knowing that I was an inveterate, and incorrigible gambler, particularly on NFL football, she would watch me like a hawk, lest I find an excuse to pass by the T.V. in the lobby, and thus keep track of the losses her money would inevitably pay for.