Please kum in. Haf a seat. How kan I help you?
I’ve been having Ferret fantasies.
I see.
No, you don’t, but listen closely:
He’s sitting behind his desk, all puny-like, with those sissy cigarettes in full view, editing another story… I swear, he looks grotesque tapping away on that keyboard (wipes sweat from his brow). He’s wearing some kind of black sweater – typical for that little turd – trying to recall a gangster or something.
Ahh – so … and what’s his name… er, the little turd?
The Ferret. I already told you. Please don’t interrupt, Doctor.
Oh. Sawee. Please conteenue, Dirk.
And his legs – like those of a tadpole – he’s bandying them about underneath the desk in what only can be described as puppet pants. Do you know what I mean? They’re like baggy or rather formless jeans that he must have bought at some discount store in New Jersey…
Ah you from New Jersey, Dirk?
No, and stop interrupting damn it!
Ok, ok … no offense (presses palms of hands in front of himself like a Christian in prayer). So sorry, kiddo (smiles goofily). Ha ha.
Dickerson kind of looks at him, screwing up his eyes, as if for the first time fully realizing whom he’s talking to, but promptly returns to his narrative.
Anyway, all I can think – or rather imagine – is myself walking purposely up to that desk, reaching over and across it to clutch that fleshy dough-like face – not even his neck – but his face … and then kneading it like real dough between these hands (shows a pair of leather-worn mitts that could have belonged to a centerfielder for the New York Yankees circa 1950, when they didn’t use bright and shiny equipment).
And then… (loses train of thought)
Voice over intercom: Doctor Wu. Your Four O’clock has already arrived…
Wu: Tank you Betty. Just have him wait.
And then, abruptly, he starts to squirm – not like a kid caught by the scruff of the neck stealing something. Not like a human or for that matter even any animal. He’s squirming like a cartoon characterization of a rodent, if you can imagine that…
I kan, Dirk, I think I kan…
But I clutch him harder, ready to snap that fat fleshy face off from the bag-like neck that connects it to the rest of him… to what neither you nor I could honestly call a body.
Oh ho! (then more calmly) oooh.
But somehow he gets away, Doc. I don’t know how, but he squirms right out of my grip and scuttles across the newsroom floor, all short-legged, in between desks occupied by mostly Ukrainian journalists – primarily young women really, and their mouths are rounded and aghast – not so much at my attempts to choke the life out of that little turd…
Little turd… ho, ho… uh, ahem.
… but – I think, anyway – they’re shocked at the way he’s escaping… like a devilish munchkin, an odious elf, a homunculus, if you will, finally revealed before their very eyes. Yes, they are taken aback at my angry-man face, blood vessels bulging at the temples and all that. They’ve been taught to expect more proper behavior from us foreigners – that is Westerners.
Wu blushes.
But – I THINK – the real horror in these people’s faces has been evoked by the sight of that deformity of a half-man, that character from a children’s book now unmasked to reveal real evil – as cowardly as it is cruel, as pathetic as it is sadistic, a lie on the loose yanking the curtains off all the other human stalls that it runs between while trying to save itself, at any cost.
Don’t’ you see, DOCTOR…?
Yes, yes, I think I doo, doo.
No, you don’t, don’t.
The Ferret is our lie, the lie of the expatriate community in Kyiv – possibly of 21st Century Man (if you buy into Publowsky’s recent lecture, that is), and he’s so scary because he’s running amok, out of control, amongst us in a plot that’s being written as we speak.
Intercom: Doctor Wu. I’m afraid your Four O’clock is getting impatient here…
Yes, Betty. I’m just wrapping up here. Gif him a newspaper or sumting…
Dickerson: Yeah Doc, give him a newspaper. Huh!
Doo you feel angry, Dirk?
(Smiling) You might call it that, Doc. You might also call it righteous indignation about to erupt from my guts into a pool of vicious vomit that would cover you so fully that all your newspapers in the lobby there wouldn’t be enough to wipe it up.
Wu pulls out a copy of the Kyiv Poster featuring an air-brushed version of Welsh Losser on the front page surrounded by beautiful women at a Food Security Conference.
What do you feel now?
The sound of rising, heated voices can be heard from the other side of Doctor Wu’s office.
Damn it, Missy, I ain’t got no time to be loitering in this office all afternoon. I’ve got a newspaper to run, books to write, PR to create, recreate and anticipate…
I’m sorry, Mr. Lard, but Doctor Wu is seeing a patient at the moment. You will just have to wait.
Dirk slides his back up the head of the couch until he reaches a sitting position, pushing his fedora from over his eyes to on top of his head in a single, seamless motion that takes him up and on to his feet, toward the door. And then, in complete contrast to these hitherto cool movements, the suited man bolts raggedly toward the window, smashing it with a chair and then awkwardly breaks away the remaining shards of glass so as to even more awkwardly sort of half crawl, half step through it and then jump to the freedom of the street – thankfully only one story below.
Lard enters Wu’s office pie-eyed, with the receptionist looking over his shoulder, as Wu himself simpers in self-satisfaction for some reason.
I take it you’re free now… Doctor Wu?
An older well-built man looking through binoculars from the window of a building across the street: (over his shoulder) That crazy son of a bitch!
Filed by Dirk Dickerson, June 7, 2013