Dr Jew

until the "interested" accomplice arrived, brought on by a call and some hand waving on Adam's part.
    "Ah, hello, Sergio," I said. "Now aren't we a merry three musketeers? Happy 2013."
    "Dr. Jew, I 'm very good at masking my anger. But you need to start talking. Both Adam and I have grievances against you."
    "Can 't imagine what," I said. "Do enlighten."
    "Like for instance what you did to my wife," said Sergio.
    "I thought that obvious. I saved her."
    " You led me to believe so. You delivered someone to me who resembles her. Superficially. But there are too many differences. Little changes. You did something. Her body is… different."
    "Well , naturally some changes occurred. The Swine-AIDS just ravishes its way through a person, no accounting for taste and being the first survivor of that monster it's only natural she changed somewhat in ways we'll only begin to catalog as the roster of those who persevere rises and statistical artifacts emerge and patterns can be scoured. Et cetera."
    "That woman is not my wife. She knows things only my wife would know, yet she behaves… differently. What exactly did you do?"
    I ignored his question and turned to the other. "And you, Adam? What is your complaint?"
    "Eve."
    "Ah, Eve. What about her?"
    "We learned what we are. That you made us."
    " That unauthorized break-in, yes? So you learned. What of it?"
    "It disturbed her badly. I think she went to you."
    "That 's what you think, eh? And why would she come to me?"
    "I 'm not interested in why!" said Adam. "Stop toying with us and tell us what you know."
    "Even though you won't like what you hear?"
    "If it 's the truth, tell us," said Sergio.
    "Alright, gentlemen. Be assured that neither of you will be satisfied. I suppose I do owe you some satisfaction though. Will you retire with me to my quarters?"
    I rose, threw the remaining loaf at a duck and bricked it with a squawk before the bread came to water and floated a moment, and then began its slow Titanic into muddy depths.
    I walked home and didn 't look to see if they followed.

    We were in my office. I offered them coffee, tea, absinthe, vermouth, and drinking water. All were rudely refused.
    "The answer , if you wish to call the asymmetrical accounting of the way things land an answer – and really that is a man-made frame that does not interest the universe one iota – the answer to each of your puzzles is firmly interlocked with the other fellow's dilemma. For you both seek a woman. One has the woman he seeks immediately available to him, can hold her and see her face when he wakes in the morning. And yet he sighs and says something is awry. Were not her eyes a distinct brown color and not this green hue? And what has become of that birthmark that made a miniature India on her left leg? Surely the Swine-AIDS could not have taken this away as some kind of Old Testament tribute. And surely she has gained a kind of weight, shifting her from sporty thinness to a slightly sedentary but highly appealing pearishness that no doubt gives you, my dear Sergio, a sensation akin to sticking it inside a brand new factory-sealed woman altogether, fascinating and frightening, for if this is a new woman, what has happened to and where gone the woman you once knew and stroked for many a year? What a queer dilemma – to seek a woman you can see right before you. So you go inside her – figuratively – and probe her mind and try to find the woman you once had. Her memories ring true, and she knows the mannerisms and ways of being that made her the Lise you once knew… and yet her voice is a twang off-key from what it had once been and who can forget a voice? But this too can merely be the ravaged effects of minute-by-minute coughing contained and expired in the hoary Mexico suspiration, the mealy desert resort smog effervescence.
    "And what of those breast s plumed up and meloned out? Surely the swiny Swine-AIDS did not leave gifts in its wake… but such are the ways surely and such, did I not in fact read it here in a devilishly clever propaganda pamphletto by one Dr. Jew, M.D., urban shaman and to Shakespeare what Shakespeare was to the feces-smeared walls of some far off French countryside veneered attempt at buffalo-slaughtering narrative. One foot she had resting in the grave but here she is again! Should you not best count your blessings? Tempt not the gods on Olympus high with your bleating importunate questions, questions, why, why, why, me, me, me, ego, ego, ego. Fall into