The Ferret Looks for and Finds ZZ at Soiree’s
The Ferret, back in the last stretch of the short month of February, 2018, having somehow gotten wind, as usual, of a possible HOLLYWOOD deal directly involving Zippy Zamazda that could potentially earn Zamazda millions of dollars, said, “Not if I can help it, heh.”
Hiding himself away in his own chest where his manically racing, Davies-enhanced, mostly frontal-lobe mind felt freer to rapidly review in secret the practical viability of his exponentially germinating plans, the Ferret now thought: “It will therefore be reasonable of me to manipulate this newly arisen situation and development to my advantage – heh-heh…”
So that we get as close as possible to seeing the situation, and therefore the problem, as the Ferret sees it, we now shift his thought and speech into the present tense, to help bring us in line with this exact moment of the Ferret’s past cogitations in what is without a doubt a key scene, of which no one has known about for years – a circumstance that, together, You, Patient Reader, and I, are now trying, with great effort, to correct.
Pushing his head out of his shell, having thoroughly examined his plans and thoughts, the Ferret now confidently vocalizing, adds (that we may again hear him):
“Heh, Zamazda doesn’t deserve to make that kind of money. He’s too stupid. Maybe I’ll give him something. He always does whatever I say, so this should be pretty easy. I could’ve been a doctor… and a professional hockey player – heh-heh-heh…”
“Besides, heh,” the Ferret continues, “I’m not doing it for the money that Zamazda might get in this deal, if he plays his cards right, which is to say, ‘MY cards’ – heh-heh… No. I’m doing it, which is to say, actually controlling the whole situation, heh, to make sure that Ukrainian nationalists, of which I am one, don’t get a bad name, which is to say, in general, heh, but more specifically, that Ukrainian Diaspora in America and its descendants, of which I am also one, heh-heh, end up looking good to the world when all this gets out into the movies, and all, and because Zippy Zamazda, with the way he looks and the way he talks, and a lot of other things, can’t be counted on to ah, aaahh… warrant the consummation of such a lofty and honorable objective – heh-heh-heh…”
The Ferret concludes:
“Yeah, heh, and knowing Zamazda, he’ll probably fuckin’ ruin the whole thing. And anyway, if I hadn’t gotten him in as chief editor of the Kyiv Poster to replace Saint Stephan, whose career, but nothing more, I effectively killed in one sweeping fall, Zippy wouldn’t have been getting this Hollywood deal in the first place, so in actual matter of fact, it belongs to me…
“… heh-heh-heh…”
And so, upon the dark-blue crisp and frosty Ukrainian evening of Thursday, the 22nd, the Ferret tumbles noisily in through the kitchen window of Rico Soiree’s swank Kyiv penthouse suite, after easily prying open one of the high-quality frames, featuring Euro-grade installation, using his Davies-reinforced claws, after having just as easily climbed up the side of the relevant apartment building in perpendicular fashion using the advanced, Davies-engineered suction action of his cloven-hooved feet.
“Heh! This is going even easier than I thought…”
From where he is, lying (which is something he does best) on his turtle-shell back (which can save him from annihilation even if he lands on it from a height of 21 stories in, say, Kyiv’s city center, as one of the possible risks he faces when spying on the activities of Ukrainian oligarchs through their boardroom [and bedroom, heh-heh] windows as part of his job reporting on them for an internationally recognized broadsheet), the Ferret takes a few seconds to admire Soiree’s kitchen’s classically chessboard-tiled floor: “Heh, I could have been a chess master… and a Latinist…”
Meanwhile, beyond the kitchen pantry door, Soiree is in the midst of hosting a friendly dinner event for his exclusive assemblage of Agatha-Christie-like guests, invited by Soiree to help him ponder, of all things, the fate of his missing “wife”, Kate Mustard, being presumed at that very moment by the gathering to not just be dead, but to have been murdered; group discussion pertaining thereto being led by one Senor Gonzales [De Santa Maria (first name thus far unknown)].
Back in the pantry adjoining the kitchen, where a short, fat, red-faced, and sweating houseboy has been immersed in the act of selectively pilfering Soiree’s sweetmeats from the shelves, the recklessly arrogant petty thief is shocked off-balance from a three-legged stool by the sudden racket of invasion, which finds him instantly ass-down on the floor, from where his startled mind takes in fallen Ferret form with confusion, horror, and disbelief.
And thus, Soiree’s stately plump tuxedoed houseboy, Zamazda, quietly cries, “The Ferret!” through muffled swallows of a pastry he’s been all along stuffing in his mouth, though not allowed to have.
Back through the door in the fete room, upon hearing the continual tumult of colliding kitchen furniture adjoining the pantry, a guilty looking Soiree sheepishly shrugs his shoulders before his guests as a way of begging their pardon for the clumsy oafishness of his houseboy, Zippy Zamazda. He feels it necessary to repeat to them again that, despite his best efforts, he’d simply not been able to find better help.
“Heh, shut up, Zippy,” back in the kitchen pantry says the Ferret, as he bounces up from the classically chessboard-tiled kitchen floor onto his tadpole legs, the hems of his puppet pants hitting his special orthopedic, hoof-molded shoes with a sharp parachute snap. “Don’t you know you’re not supposed to eat and talk at the same time. Bad things can happen… except, aaahh, I don’t have that problem, heh-heh…”
“But, Ferret, I –”
“I said keep quiet, because I don’t know what you’re talking about, dude, so just listen to me, and then you gotta follow the plan exactly as I say. Because I know all about that big Hollywood deal you’re almost being offered, by, ah… ah… Goldstein – yeah, that’s right, heh-heh – so that sounds really good, so you gotta follow my instructions, and get over there, to California, I mean, ASAP! So you can clinch it – see, heh! Otherwise, without me, you won’t get it…”
“But I don’t remember telling you anything about that!” Zamazda, with expected difficulty, gets up. “That’s supposed to be information privy exclusively to me, having been received as such!” He attempts to brush himself off, but most of the flour and confectioner’s sugar that he’d been rolling in stays on him.
“Heh, stupid… not only don’t you remember, but you don’t know what you’re talking about. Why… you told me all about it, ah… just last week! Yeah, that’s right… I can even pull out my phone and… and, ah… heh-heh. Shit, I must’ve not taken it with me, or maybe it fell out of my pocket when I was climbing the building. But I proved it, so it doesn’t matter. What matters is –”
“No! Ferret! I…”
“Shh… keep your voice down, idiot…”
Soiree, from the fete room: Zippy?! Is everything all right in there? Who are you talking to?
ZZ: Oh, aaahh… no one… no one, Mr. Soiree, sir… just, ah, my wife, because, ah, I just wanted to see if she got to her relatives okay, you know, with the kids, and all, aaahh…
While Zippy’s wife has indeed dropped their kids off with a set of her relatives in a village so small, it is not even marked on a map, it is because the wife herself has just taken off on a trip to Tibet, using a tranche of Zippy’s father’s money, wired in monthly installments to his son, which she managed to finally squeeze out of Zippy for her long-cherished purpose of “one week’s transcendental experience through deep spiritual immersion in rigorously enforced high-altitude isolation, continual cleansing rituals, and traditional bell-ringing alternating hourly with profound silence,” precisely as described in a brochure she picked up at a KyiAvia travel agency.
Soiree: Well, Zippy… I thought I told you, and not once, mind you, that you were to reserve your worktime for work, and indulge in the vicissitudes, or what-have-you, of your personal life, such as it may be, on your own time!
ZZ: Ye-yes, sir… ah… yessir, I –
Soiree: Well, let’s make sure of that, shall we? And after tonight, I think you and I will have a little talk… (Aside, to his guests, in a lower tone, as, somewhat unnerved, his fingers fumble a little to readjust back over a mutilated ear the yellow turban he wears, which had shifted off-center during this latest Z2-episode of momentary pique: “It’s truly hard to find good help these days…” The two in the kitchen sense the moment with Soiree is now over.)
The Ferret: Heh… fool! I told you… Now this makes what I have to say to you regarding your possible deal with, ah, with Goldstein – yeah, that’s right; heh-heh-heh – even MORE imperative!
ZZ: But you said I told you about it last week, and I don’t even remember talking to you the last time, except for maybe like a month ago!
Ferret: Oh, you… FOOL!!! Of COURSE you –
ZZ: No, Ferret – because I don’t have it on MY phone, except like I said, a month ago. And besides, I only got the Goldstein email with the large attachment… yesterday!
Ferret: Heh, I never said anything about last week. Don’t forget, unlike you, who was unable to hold on to the chief editor position at a second-rate tabloid with very low circulation – meaning the Kyiv Poster, which I put right into your hands – for more than three months (talk about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory), I work for a major international broadsheet, writing about oligarchs in Ukraine, heh. I got lots of connections. I have more connections in a day than you can hope to achieve in a lifetime. So, of course, I know. How ELSE do you THINK I know?!
Naturally, the Ferret is simply hacked into all of Zamazda’s online activities.
Defeated by the Ferret’s ironclad argumentation, Zippy Zamazda stands with his chunky, squarish feet planted pigeon-toed into the kitchen tile; his head hangs down in dejection and shame, like a very tired baby rhino. His black-rimmed glasses fall lower onto his seed-potato schnoz, almost slipping off by agency of its surface grease.
Filed by The Man of Reason (formerly of the Man on Earth section of Kyiv Unedited), 4.17.25