I had just put on my pajamas and taken off my face when the Sheriff battered down my door. “Lace up your boots. We have to hunt a man.”
“But I just took my face off,” I cried.
“Well, slap ‘er back on. It’s man-huntin’ time.”
This was to be my third manhunt since the Sheriff moved in across the hall last week. And as much as I had grown to appreciate a good manhunt, I really just felt like getting cozy with a chalice of scotch and some old episodes of “Murder, She Wrote.”
But I couldn’t tell the Sheriff that. I needed to buoy his spirits with a good manhunt. Some recent jurisdiction problems at work had made him melancholic. He also hated “Murder, She Wrote.” Jessica Fletcher’s crime-solving philosophy was anathema to him, and whenever he caught the muffled sounds of the show’s catchy piano and strings theme music coming from under my covers, he’d batter down the door in a rage, screaming about illegal immigrants. “The Mexicans did it! Not the jealous real estate agent! Those dirty illegal immigrants did it!”
I tried to explain to the Sheriff that this was impossible because there weren’t Mexicans, let alone illegal ones, in Cabot Cove, Maine, where Mrs. Fletcher did her sleuthing. But the Sheriff was beyond persuasion, busy bloodying my rug with his raw knuckles. “When will that old crone get it? We gotta build a giant wall to stop this murder spree in Maine!” he shouted, heaving his battering ram through my walls.
I don’t mind the Sheriff’s company, but I do wish he would leave his battering ram next door. If only because Lardbottom, my domestic partner, suffers from hypertension, and every time the Sheriff pays a visit, the flying door and drywall splinters spike his heart rate. Fearing for Lardbottom’s tranquility, I resigned myself to the manhunt. I put my face back on, made some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and created a mix tape to put us in the right mood for hunting men. We drove into the Arizona night with hunger in our hearts and Hall and Oates on our stereo.
As the Sheriff had taught me, the secret to a good manhunt is surprise. Just as we had swooped from the rafters on an unsuspecting John Tesh mid-concert on our first manhunt, and waited for three hours in the sweltering backseat of Charles Barkley’s car during a promotional event at Footlocker on our last manhunt, we would disguise ourselves as American Idol contestants and pounce on an unwitting Ryan Seacrest on this manhunt. It was thanks to this kind of cunning that the Sheriff had hunted down dozens of famous men (and women on his womanhunts) and amassed his impressive collection of celebrity photos and autographs–or, as he called them, his scalps.
As usual, in route to our manhunt, the Sheriff pulled over anyone he reckoned was an illegal immigrant and threw them in the back of the truck. Some might call this reckless racial profiling. But, I assure you, the Sheriff employed the latest techniques in physiognomical and phrenological science. The occipital calipers he wielded so deftly had once adorned the desks of such legendary men of science as Count Gobineau and Josef Mengele. Of course, the calipers only confirmed what his nose already told him. According to the Sheriff, illegal residence in the United States had a specific smell. He said it was redolent of sorghum molasses, smoked birch wood and traces of artificial cherry.
We cruised through town, tracking the sweet scent of illegality. This particular night, illegal immigration must have been rampant, as the Sheriff found the smell on nearly everyone we passed. We filled truckload after truckload of illegal aliens, dressed them in pink lingerie and herded them off to jail. Meanwhile, Ryan Seacrest was wrapping up at the convention center. Our manhunt was slipping through the cracks.
I pulled out a sandwich and offered it to the Sheriff, hoping to calm his nerves. But he declined, unwrapping one of his own.
“What kind of sandwich is that?” I asked.
“Sorghum molasses and cherry jelly on smoked birch wood.”
Unfortunately, food seemed to aggravate the Sheriff only more. Seacrest was long gone and the Sheriff was returning from his manhunt without a scalp. In his impotent fury, he turned to immigration. He said the smell of it was everywhere, even right here in this car. On the way home, I caught him measuring my skull with his calipers.
By the time we got to the apartment, the Sheriff was beside himself. He had turned his suspicion on himself and was measuring his own skull. Then his gaze fell on Lardbottom, my domestic partner.
“What kind of cat is that?” he asked me, his eyes slowly coming aflame.
“…Mexican hairless,” I whispered. A tear rolled down my cheek.
No comments:
Post a Comment