The Unwelcome Guest Plus Nin and Nan Read Online Free PDF Page B

it. And we formed a resistance.
I’m their unwilling scribe, Jacobus.
Excuse me—the President’s back on. The power outages in the city are no cause for concern, he says. The city police, as always, have everything completely under control.
Control.
What a word. Buck Henry and Mel Brooks, in Get Smart , seem to have thought the word positive: Control were the good guys, CHAOS the bad. Others might posit "freedom" as positive, "control" as negative. What do you make of that?
Staying at Suzette’s (Suzette H., not my wife, Suzette M.) was a delightful respite from the world’s woes. That’s what I’m supposed to say. The truth is, that it was hell. My wife’s jealousy got worse. She began to imagine I was referring to the other Suzette when I called out her name in bed. It was crazy. I only think about my Suzette. Her face. Her smile. Her freckles. Her dimples. The curve of her mouth. The expression in her eyebrow. Her deep brown, almost black, eyes that are the abyss that can engulf a man forever. Now do you see how much I love her? My Suzette, I mean.
I must pause here.
    I must panic here. The philosophy of the city: "I’m no longer myself. I’m exactly who you want."
I have been assigned to find Lubjec. I de-atomize tonight.
The process is simple. Each of my atoms will be programmed to find him. When one locates him, the rest receive the message and reassemble before him.
That should freak him out. Hopefully that alone will be enough to make him surrender.
My atoms speed into the entryway to the underground, then they disperse. They zoom down corridors.
"Halt! You can’t go in there," led to I did. A few air conditioning vents later, I found him. I was behind him, so I started toward him.
He was wearing a baseball uniform. His name was sewn onto the back. I saw a team name, the Hawkinsville Homers, so I dispersed and rethought my strategy before he saw me.
I wondered what he was doing in the city. On a hunch, I bought a paper. Sure enough, the Homers were in town to play the city’s minor league team. Lubjec was listed as P.J. Ribl, but I read anagrams. I recognized him.
Why take him so fast? I wondered. I could jinx his game, have some fun.
Great Googlymoogly! There. That ought to fix him. Now to take a seat in the stands. "Ladies and Gentlemen! Welcome to William Weaver Field!"
Oh, good. The starting line-ups. Excellent! Ribl was starting at second. That was a little odd, because he was normally the shortstop. But the regular second baseman, Legron, was nowhere to be seen, and the game had to be played on time. One thing for sure, Skipper Leo "Minnie" Dumocher wouldn’t have gone easy on Legron even if he had been killed in a car accident.
Oh, look at that. On a hit-and-run fly to left, on an attempt to double-up the base runner, who was already past second, Ribl had tried to back up first base. However, the pitcher had the same idea. Ribl and the pitcher collided on the other side of the first baseman, and Ribl’s staying down. The pitcher seems to be okay. He’d hit his head into Ribl’s temple. Ribl’s out. Man, a concussion at least. I hope he’s okay. Oh—better get up and go to the concession stand now. There’ll be a long wait in a few minutes. Plus there’ll be too many people in the men’s room for me to get into a stall, and I hate competition urination. Oh, that’s right. The stalls here don’t even have doors. I hate public defecation, also. I see little to be gained by humiliating the fans, but then that’s me. Others seem to get off on it.
However, there are those who try to get off on humiliating me. One favorite play is to insult me. Another is to insult my children. Any insult leveled at my children is leveled at me. My advice is not to go there.
Of course, no one listens to me. A favorite sport of those whom I know is to pretend they care about me, but when the crunch is on, to deny any knowledge of me. Before my cock crows twice, they’ve condemned me. Of course.
Not my cock of