Why?

I want to be alone.

I can relax now, and maybe make it past level sixty-eight if I apply diligence and discipline.

David:
I think you should know about this.
—Kurt

Of course. Collies do heroic, suicidal stunts to save humans. My dear friend Susan is still alive because of her selfless collie Shane, who leapt over a meter on the air to block a poisoned arrow fired by a KGB assassin. The stupid Russian didn’t know about collies; imagine that!

But that was then and this is now. Robert and Elsie Whitson are alive because their collie was smart enough to wake them up when their house caught on fire. Unfortunately, Lassie suffered an operatic death when she died in the flames. Here’s the best line from the news report: “Anderson Fire Department Battalion Chief Larry Towne said firefighters found the dog’s remains underneath some collapsed roofing.” Way to go, Lassie!

This story has two lessons. Get a collie if you want to be protected from fires and assassins, but don’t get attached to the gallant, suicidal beasts.

That doesn’t matter; not much does.

For all but a day or two a year, all museums and galleries may as well be in Antarctica. I suppose I could go there, but why bother?

I gave her a big hug when she arrived, and that’s when it happened. I don’t know if it’s because she gave me a firm embrace, or because I relaxed with my arms around her, but I involuntarily belched a long, loud, basso profundo, pickled herring, garlic, and Rainier Ale breath bomb.

“Ewww!” she exclaimed, “That even makes me sick, and I just came from working at the morgue.”

I might have been offended, but that remark proved to be a lovely segue to her monologue on all the smorgasbord of gasses a corpse can emit. And to think I managed to be so disgusting after a modest repast! If I can do that well when I’m alive, I can only imagine things will be better when I’m dead.

“Thanks,” I replied, “but I probably haven’t listed to several thousand of the thirty-eight thousand songs I already have on my computer.”

“No no no no no,” Alphonse said with a distinctly Parisian rolling of his eyes, “no, this Train Wreck.”

And with that, he produced a small, plastic bag of marijuana with a photograph of the famous 1895 crash at Gare Montparnasse. The Studio Lévy & Fils image shows what happened when the Granville-Paris Express overran the buffers, careened through the station, and landed up on the street below with the engine of the train hanging out of the building at a forty-degree angle.

Oops!

(Historical afterword: The crash killed an unfortunate newspaper vendor on Place de Rennes underneath the locomotive; the crew was fined a total of seventy-five francs.)

Meanwhile, back in 2007, I told Alphonse I wasn’t interested in either prescribed or recreational drugs. I didn’t tell him that I liked the drug dealers’ marketing campaign; one should never encourage the French.