The Best of Electric Velocipede Read Online Free PDF Page A

have no idea what he means but am somehow scared of it. “How? What’s going to happen to me?”
    “Left untreated, you will probably feel mild irritation, the dementia, until you die. It’s a virus—”
    “I thought you said this was a curse. And besides, there are no such things as curses.”
    He gives that patient, patient I’m-a-doctor smile. “Well, our new manuals have a new ergonomics towards disease disclosure for doctors—I mean, shamen. We are urged to prescribe the most superstitious names and causes possible. It’s supposed to quell tension.”
    I’m not quelled. “What do I have to do then?”
    He looks at me, as if not sure on how to phrase a delicate question. “Have you been sexed with your employer before?”
    “No, I mean, yes. But not for a long time.” At least I thought.
    “Anyone else? Have you been with a keeper?”
    I look at my veined bare feet. I am prone. “Maybe. Wait,” and I remember the woman who has been calling me lately, “yes, it’s very possible. So what do I do?”
    He gives another smile, this time with a tinge of pity. “First of all, pull up your pants and put on your socks. Second, you need to find her. Only she can remove the curse, give the password to heal you.”
    “In other words, I have to find out why she gave me the virus, and get a blood sample from her so that you can remove the virus from my cell system without killing me.”
    He puts his stethoscope in a drawer. “If you want to put it that way,” he mutters.
    I walk out to pay.
    “Be careful; she may be a witch,” I hear the doctor calling out after me.
    *
    I call in to take the rest of the afternoon off, and I sit in a cafeteria on the west end (but Brasilia has no center, really), trying to envision a plan of action. But nothing comes to mind while chewing slowly on a piece of American apple pie.
    Anyways, she calls before I can take another bite. “Where are you, she asks?” she says. Someone laughs behind her.
    “I’m in the, um, Dresden. Where are you? I need to talk to you.”
    A pause. “You are talking to me.”
    “I mean, face to face.”
    “The cheery cherry trees. It’s the cool fire of the month.”
    “Listen—”
    “No, you listen. Did you open the windows of the Americas like I asked you to?”
    This time, I’m the one who pauses. “No, but—”
    She tones off. A shapely man comes in selling flowers and I buy nine dozen peonies.
    *
    “OK, OK,” Paula says. “It’s fine to take a couple days off if it’s a medical condition.” Evening time, and I find my way to Paula’s office in the Center for the Arts. Her office is in the third basement and smaller than that of most of her subordinates. King Juan Juan, of course, hovered behind her in paint. I think Jesse did that one. The King is giving his constituents a thumbs up.
    “Though of course,” I say, wondering if Paula is snickering inside her head, “I have no idea where to begin.”
    “Begin what?”
    “I have to find a keeper.”
    She begins to laugh through her nose and stretches back on her recliner. “Now I see what the problem is. How long has she been like this?” Paula was a keeper too, before she took up her lover and married. From what she told me (and she was never shy about these matters), she was one of the more passive I could remember. At least more passive than the ones on television.
    “I don’t know. I guess I stayed with her once, maybe two weeks ago? It’s hard to say. But she diseased me.”
    She hmms. “Why don’t you try the dog market?”
    “I was afraid you’d say that.”
    *
    The next morning, smoggy, I am in the dog market. I really hate the dog market, and hate dogs, in fact. Luckily, the name is deceiving—there are more than just dogs here. It’s situated halfway between old Brasilia and what I like to call Brasilia Brasilia, or Brasilia squared, the Guyanese English section that I call home and work. The dog market is in a wide alleyway since it is, technically,