The Prisoner of Vandam Street Read Online Free PDF Page A

dead keep on living. So I traded one Ratso and one McGovern for everyone else I’d ever loved and lost. It was a good trade, actually, but it wasn’t quite enough to win the pennant.

Chapter Six
    U nfortunately, Jim the Ferry Boatman on Vancouver Island refused to punch my ticket to the Grateful Dead concert. My number wasn’t up yet, apparently, so I had to go on living whether I wanted to or not. Reflecting back on those close moments, I don’t think I really wanted to die. I just wanted a little time away from Ratso and McGovern. That’s not asking so fucking much, is it? I mean I wouldn’t have minded dying, and I probably will die some day, but at the time I had a few projects I was working on and frankly I was getting damn tired of leaving the cat with the lesbians upstairs. If I kept doing that, the cat was going to turn into a lesbian, and if there’s one thing everybody hates it’s a lesbian cat.
    Yet the health, education, and welfare of the cat had been nagging at me quite a bit lately. People tend not to be too concerned about other people’s pets unless they vomit in your shoes or bite you in the ass. I’d already been in the horsepital for several days, and there was no sign I could detect that I was improving or about to be discharged, and if I left it up to Ratso and McGovern to remember to take care of the cat, there’d be a small set of skeletal remains to greet me when and if I ever returned to 199B Vandam Street.
    I vowed that if I ever opened my eyes again and returned to what we like to think of as consciousness, I’d make sure in no uncertain terms that either Ratso or McGovern went right over to the loft and fed the cat. Whether the cat should be taken upstairs to Winnie Katz’s was an open question. Would it be better to have the cat neglected by the Village Irregulars or corrupted by Winnie? That’s what it all came down to. And I could just imagine what the loft looked like. The cat by this time would be setting about in a feline fugue, vindictively dumping on everything I held dear. There would no doubt be cat shit on my pillow, cat shit on the espresso machine, cat shit on the two blowers, cat shit on the puppethead, cat shit on Sherlock Holmes’s head. Some day scientists would probably discover that the world was made of cat shit. Probably the moon was made of cat shit. Pâté was made of cat shit. Einstein was made of cat shit. Princess Di was made of cat shit. Mother Teresa was made of cat shit. Jerry Lewis was made of cat shit. Gibraltar was made of cat shit. Mt. Everest was made of cat shit. Palestine was made of cat shit. The pope was made of cat shit. Jesus was made of cat shit. God was made of cat shit. Peter Jennings was made of cat shit. Scientists will some day discover that all of mankind is made of cat shit except for one man. That man is John Ashcroft. Scientists will some day discover that John Ashcroft is made of horseshit. Just another reason not to open your eyes.
    “Kinkstah! Kinkstah!” shouted Ratso. “Leap sideways, Kinkstah!”
    I opened my eyes. Ratso’s large head darted away from me, soon to be magically replaced by McGovern’s even larger head. It looked like a very bad puppet show.
    “Kink!” said McGovern, with all the excitement of a small child at Christmastime. “Dr. Pickaninny’s here!”
    “Audrey Hepburn’s made of cat shit,” I said.
    Like two pistons in the engine of humanity, McGovern’s head disappeared again, only to be replaced once more by Ratso’s head, his frightening face smiling like an idiot.
    “Dr. Skinnipipi’s got something to tell you, Kinkstah!” he shouted.
    “John Wayne’s made of cat shit,” I said.
    “Poor fellow’s obviously delirious,” said Dr. Skinnipipi, “but that’s to be expected with malarrrrria—”
    “Eleanor Roosevelt’s made of cat shit,” I said.
    “We’re sending you home, Mr. Friedman,” said the doctor smoothly. “These two gentlemen have graciously agreed to take turns being