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LOOKING FOR MILES
When I emerged safely from house-sitting at the Parker and the heat wave had subsided, my first instinct was to slam back a drink.
I walked for almost an hour before entering a liquor store, where I treated myself to a liter of dark beer to quench my wild thirst. As soon as I'd finished, I grabbed another. I hadn't stolen it. The owner started chatting to me in Russian, thinking I'd come from Moscow. He told me I looked like I'd come from Moscow, with a square jaw, blond hair and the body of a gymnast.
Then he asked me what I was doing here. I told him about my adventure at the hotel and he suddenly started crying, telling me that he had lost his wife last month. That he'd lost her in the supermarket and that no one ever called him on the mic to come and get her. Then he started smiling at me, seeing me break down. He apologized and told me that he was enrolled in a drama class run by Alcoholics Anonymous, where he went four times a week for heavy therapy. When he found out I was French, he asked me if I'd like to come and stay with him, as he'd heard that French women are not afraid of the cold. Out of curiosity, I accepted his offer. Two minutes later, he had pulled down his curtain and pants, and asked me to do the same. My parents had taught me to be polite, to be on time, to be funny sometimes, but above all they had taught me a few full-contact moves which, here, would take on their full meaning. But instead, my first reaction was to laugh at the tiny size of his cocktail sausage like attribute. He then turned raspberry with rage and started to advance towards me with the obvious desire to kill me, to cut me into pieces to feed me to his dogs that I could hear barking behind the storeroom door.
Fortunately, the jeans around his ankles tripped him to the ground. He dragged a wine rack with him and a corkscrew lodged itself right in his eye, killing him instantly. Horrified but relieved, I went behind the counter to call the police to come and remove the guy's carcass. While I waited for them, and to recover from my bad moment, I opened a new beer, trembling as I was. Suddenly, a squadron of cop cars rolled up in front of my dead assailant's liquor store. One of them got out of his car, jumped out, slid down the hood, rolled forward and, as he stood up, drew an automatic weapon and shot his way through the store's iron curtain. He ran towards me as if I were a terrorist and held me at gunpoint. The last thing I remember is feeling the butt of his gun against my chin. I passed out and woke up the next day behind bars in the county jail.
