Dr Jew

that trip and misery is your reward. But you go ahead with it and I shall judge thee not! Lest I be myself judged. Do I understand your complaint correctly? You wish to know why her ears are bigger and her toes smaller and why she herself questions none of it and when you try to bring it before her own attention, she, with keen and critically attuned brainage and critical faculty to rival the sharpest katana blade, she who no doubt once looked into the eyeball of one of her children and could spot a lie and discover where the girl had thieved off with a crumbly granola molasses cookie or morsel of cheesecake bladed nimbly between Black Beauty and Nancy Drew Vol. 84 on a Chinese bookshelf and call the child liar and bring it to tears while inwardly laughing – and perhaps I overestimate the lady's abilities since I myself only knew her for the briefest span and mayhap failed to suss out the full contours of her character. But nevertheless you have no doubt found in her a piece is missing, flawed, degenerated to nothing it once was and far beyond pointing and positing 'Swine-AIDS' this and that, these are changes you cannot account for. For we can anthropomorphize the disease's dimensions only so far and dare not suppose malignant intent from what is really a silent disease – all diseases silent, I suppose – when you told her your suspicions she feigned ignorance or shrugged it off or looked the other way and said, 'Now, now, see here, Sergio dear, you worry overmuch,' and she called that your answer and answer it was not, not to you, Sergio Simpatico, finest cinematic sculptor of this – or any – era and documenter of Anne Frank and her environs and playmates, that girl, aye, who would no doubt be utterly forgotten and history repeat itself with some unwholesome new blight to march us into internment camps and construct useless buttons in a kiln never meant for such a thing, only to later learn bwahaha they are not in fact plastic or metal or wooden buttons at all but in fact human belly buttons – and they have held their sweaters together for how many moons – and they will be next in the process of evaporation, disintegration, whatever science fictional process used to remove all of a person's person save for that compact omphalos and petrify it into a non-biodegradable spore to affix on jackets, mukluks and the like. Yes, all of this to transpire and The Diary of Anne Frank surely going out of print and forgotten, unsalable and harvesting dust on a library book sale rack of 'cheapies' sandwiched between a 1986 guide to the salamanders of New Mexico and a photojournal of young boys modeling the latest in sporting fashion. Do I hear a quarter for these drizzly wares, wot? And not a buyer slash reader in sight. Such would be the gloaming alternate plane we'd inhabit this very moment were it not for you, sir. So yes, I suppose an explanation is in order, O savior of these times."
    "Why won 't you speak like normal people?" said Adam. "Talk like the people on TV. At least I can understand them."
    "Oh, you poor, poor child," I said. "Now listen. Perk up your ears and understand well and deep truly. When in swarthy Mexico your humble narrator did arrive fixed on his purpose and enflamed with desire to heal, and all the local inhabitants tried to ply me with ponchos and burrititos as souvenirs and I could only say no – Spanish for no – so enfocused was I on my mission that neither a shapely señorita or taco otherwise could steer me off my tracks and sap my full engagement in the task at hand. I shot like the Batmobile to my appointed task, scalpel in hand and carbonated mask limning my jawlines, the filtered arabesques of art postponed for the urgencies of utility, life! Aye!"
    "G et to the point, Doctor," said Sergio.
    "Nay, let them eat cake! All shall live but one! You see, my dear, dear Sergipatomo – nice, yes? Just thought of that one – the moment has ripened and what's done shall not be undone by you or me and however tragic or comic those events turn out to be is largely to be determined and found in the telling. You of all people should know that. The telling. So let me have my fill and do it right and fix it with a kind of justice. I forgive your intrusion into the narrative voice and let us carry on.
    "I arrived at that mongrel feeding ground for the white ones in the land of brown and after a drink or two I made my way to my hotel room and made my necessary readiments. A note or word was