You don’t.

And you can’t.

“Looks fine,” I said after a quick read, “except for the part saying that you’re looking for someone who’s ‘drug and decease free.’ ”

“What’s wrong with that?” Amanda asked.

“Well, you do smoke marijuana quite a bit,” I noted.

“Exactly,” she replied, “that’s why I put in the part about the free drugs. I never pay for them.”

“And did you really mean to say ‘decease free’ too?” I continued.

“That’s important,” she confirmed, “necrophilia gives me the creeps.”

Love works in mysterious ways, if you do it right.

Dead drunk, if fact.

“That’s the way he went out and I’m sure that’s the way he wanted to go out because he loved his enemas,” Warner told a Houston Chronicle reporter.

As a result of allegedly pumping over three liters of sherry up Michael Warner’s derrière, Tammy Jean Warner’s been charged with negligent homicide. I don’t know much about the legal system, but that seems like that’s bit harsh for a consensual drinking (so to speak) act.

I shall certainly die one of these days, but it won’t be from butt sherry. I drink various adult beverages of dubious quality but none so bad that they’re unfit to swallow. With the throat, that is.

“Did she give a reason?” I asked.

“She was weird,” Larry replied. “She gave me some inscrutable answer, something about asking where a bird and a fish in love will build their house? What in the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“That’s not inscrutable at all,” I said. “Emiko was telling you in the nicest possible way that you’re slimy.”

“I suppose so,” Larry shrugged.

I shouldn’t have been surprised, since Eva is Swedish. Still, I’d only heard her speak in English for some fifteen years, so I was nevertheless taken aback to hear the indecipherable sounds coming out of her mouth.

Eva marveled at my low entertainment threshold, just as I delighted in the empirical evidence that she really was Swedish, and we enjoyed a lovely afternoon.

“No one moves except for love or money,” I remarked, “which was it for you?”

“Both,” he replied. “My neighbors were moving, and they had room in their truck for my things.”

“And that was why you moved here?” I asked.

“Good neighbors are hard to find,” the clerk remarked, “so I decided to keep them.”

“I once had bad neighbors,” I replied, “so I appreciate the wisdom of your move.”

“It was the right thing to do,” he agreed. “Any move that involves getting out of Kentucky is the right move.”

We zombied around for an hour, then did the only sensible thing. I opened a bottle of champagne, then I opened another bottle of champagne, then we took a nap. When we woke up, we were in San Francisco!

We walked around town gawking like tourists from Oklahoma, as if we’d never been here before! Jet lag, like anything else, can be fun if approached creatively.