Since the Shadow Lords have chased me out of my apartment with their wicked ways, I’ve been flopping with whoever Elvis, Mary, or Saysamore have been able to talk into letting me crash with for a few days. I’ve been a couch hopper before but I was the one choosing the couches. I don’t like being at the mercy of others like this but there’s not much I can do about it. Also most people here don’t have couches, so it’s more like borrowing some floor.
Since I have no income I’ve been mooching food as well, which normally wouldn’t bother me too much but I need a trucker’s buffet worth of food just to feel like I’m not going to pass out. Something’s got to give here or I’m going to use up all the goodwill of Elvis and his friends and be left to die in the gutter. It’s a precarious position when every day things get a little worse.
Sidenote, Elvis has a lot of girl friends for me to stay with. Not girlfriends, he doesn’t seem to have any of those, but a lot of friends that are girls. So many that it seems like something is going on. I don’t know what that something could be, but it’s odd. I’ll have to figure that out one of those days.
Last night I slept in the store room of a bar in touristville. The deal was that I could stay there for a couple days if I got this giant oil drum out of the basement. I don’t mean like a 50 gallon barrel, I mean like a rusty old hunk of metal that used to hold fuel oil. It looked kind of like a giant BBQ smoker. Or just a normal BBQ smoker in Lone Star.
I ripped it out of the concrete and crumpled it up like a wad of tinfoil which was good. I cut the shit out of my hands doing so which was bad. I need to get used to being super strong. Things like that keep catching me by surprise. My skin certainly isn’t super-strong. Hopefully my super metabolism can protect me from tetanus. The owner, who I think is Russian, watched me do all this with a cigarette in his mouth and little to no reaction. Like a woman ripping a half ton of old metal out of the ground was something he’s seen so much it’s become tedious. These Madripoor folk seem like they’re pretty jaded.
In the morning he made me some kind of spicy egg dish and then we sat around the bar staring at each other. He doesn’t speak much English and I don’t speak any Russian (or whatever) so there wasn’t much to say. I found an old guitar and was messing around with that for a while. When I started to sing he said “przestań robić” and waved for me to stop. Everyone’s a critic. I had a top 40 hit damn it!
I’ll grant you that most bars aren’t really hopping during the day, but for a tourist bar this place was absolutely dead. Which didn’t seem to bother the owner and seeming only employee in the slightest. Probably a front for money laundering or something. Everything here seems to be a little crooked at least.
No one came in until around five o’clock and the person who did come in wasn’t looking to drink. It was my friend the blue alligator-rhino man from the other day. The fact that he was able to find me so easily calls into question the effectiveness of my Shadow Lord evasion strategy. Perhaps they’re not hunting for me as ruthlessly as I think.
I was ready to duck out the side door, figuring Big Blue was there for round 2, but it wasn’t that at all. He’s one of these guys where if you kick his ass then you’re his friend. Usually with this kind of guy, that doesn’t cross gender lines but when superpowers get in the mix the lines are blurry. Nice to know that he doesn’t discriminate.
He started ordering whiskey sours and once he found out that I could out-drink him as well as out-fight him, I think he fell in love with me. His French was funny sounding to my ear but we understood each other well enough. He loves basketball. And, as you all know, the only thing I love as much as music is the Tropics. We sat there drinking and talking hoops all night long. He thinks Willis Reed is better than Mel Daniels but he was watching the game where Jackie Moon got thirty rebounds against San Diego so I’ll let that slide.
He seems kind of sad. You know, on the inside. I guess being a seven foot tall blue dinosaur man is about as lonely as being a CS girl stranded in a foreign land hunted by a ruthless international criminal syndicate and presumed dead by everyone back home. We freaks have to stick together.
