The Fictional Homeless Society

The second the guy told me his name I knew I was in trouble: Joey Danvers. He looked just like I had imagined. Tall, dark and devilishly handsome. I knew his mother and father had been killed in a light aircraft accident when he was eight years old. There were many things I knew about him, except the answer to the first of many questions I would be confronted with that night.

         "What happens to me?"

         As a general rule I steer clear of conventions. They're full of back-slapping, self-congratulating, egotistical wannabes. There's enough of that shit on TV these days without giving yourself an up close and personal dose. It was the words 'Guest Speaker' on the invitation that ruffled the feathers of intrigue.

         I rang the number on the invite. A young lady by the name of Nancy Cartwright took my confirmation of attendance.

         "Oh, Mr Smith! What a pleasant surprise!" she chirped. "I'm such a fan of yours. Will you be bringing Mrs Smith?"

         If she had been such a fan she would have known that Mrs Smith was currently seeking a divorce. I was pissed off that she used my real surname, too. So much so that I forgot to ask where she had come by that name. I have not used Smith in fifteen years.

         After I hung up, the name Nancy Cartwright worried my brain like a tongue working a strand of chicken stuck between two teeth. I was convinced I had met her. Certain she had three cats called Tom, Dick and Harry. Utterly absurd, but I could not shake the feeling.

         The following day I received the itinerary in the post, accompanied by an A3 poster that read:

The Fictional Homeless Society

Presents

An Evening With

Neville Roberts

         Then in bold italics below this:

Literary Genius

         The date, venue and start time decorated the foot of the page.

         Writers like to be stroked. They're not dissimilar to cats. Most of the time they're out there, giving two fucks what the general consensus thinks, but every now and then they seek the hand of approval. Literary genius? I was having no trouble purring.

         I'm no literary genius. I have three novels to my name, all of which have been published. None of them are particularly any good yet I have an audience. The demand isn't great but it's enough to save me from a normal nine to five existence.

         I write horror stories. Sorry, that's not right. I publish horror stories. I pretty much write anything, I'm not genre specific; I just seem to do horror better than anything else. I have an office full of incomplete manuscripts, short stories and poetry. Twenty years worth of unfinished ideas. Some writers experience a block in the part of the brain that feeds them their fictional nourishment. Not me. That tube is always well lubed. My problem seems to be commitment.

         I bore too easily.

         Ideas pop into my head quicker than I can transfer them to paper. I'll be twenty or thirty pages into a story and I'll start yawning. Another idea will present itself and we're off again, the previous notion and its content a paper pile destined for the 'PENDING' filing cabinet.

         Until yesterday, that's where Joey Danvers lived, one drawer up from Nancy Cartwright.


"Good evening, Mr Roberts, I'm Joey Danvers." A hand the size of a chopping block was thrust towards me. "I have to say, this is a real honour."

         He wore a black tuxedo, bow tie impeccably knotted. His skin felt dry and coarse, like a fine grade sand paper. He was smiling and looking at me intently, like he was expecting me to say something. My eyes fixed on the name tag pinned to his leaft breast pocket: Joey Danvers. An inexplicable feeling of unease immediately followed. I knew this guy. I had never met him before, I was sure of that, but somehow I knew him.

         Danvers...Danvers...

         "Let me show you to your table, Mr Roberts. There's a room full of people just itching to meet you."

         I was expecting a low key affair. Just some over zealous book club excited at meeting a published author, fielding the usual questions: Where do you get your ideas from, yada yada yada. I had the answers ready to fire back as quickly as the questions came. What I wasn't prepared for was a room full of two hundred people, seated ten to a table, all looking at me as I entered the room.

         I stopped. Joey Danvers continued to walk towards a solitary table accompanied by two chairs in the centre of a stage. Resting on the table were two stick like contraptions positioned in front of each chair. I looked down at the table nearest to me and saw similar devices, four to a table. Joey Danvers sat down, pulled the stick towards him and spoke into it.

         "Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Neville Roberts!"

         Joey started the clapping. For a while it was just him, then someone else joined in and the rest followed. Enthusiastic it was not.

         I felt like a bug under a magnifying glass: one being prepared for dissection.

         Joey gestured towards the empty chair but I was unable to move. I had caught sight of a young lady seated near the centre of the room. She returned my stare with one undamaged eye. The other was covered by a thick gauze patch. The eye had been removed with a fishing hook by her crazed boyfriend. I knew this because I had made him do it. I had led him to believe she was cheating on him. Then I made him jump from a ten story building, racked with guilt. He died thinking he had murdered the only person he truly loved. Her name was Gail Potter. She was twenty-two years old. Ten years later and she was still twenty-two years old.

         Hearing Joey Danvers name had shot a distress flare across the bows of my memory. Seeing Gail Potter got the alarm bells ringing full volume. I guess it could have been worse. Her ex-boyfriend could have been sitting next to her.

         The clapping subsided and a low murmur took its place. I looked at Joey Danvers again. His smile was a dentist's dream. Had the lighting been any better it probably would have twinkled - TING! He made an elaborate gesture towards the vacant chair. I crossed the stage slowly and sat down heavily, trying to avoid the eyes of the audience. I picked up the stick object and saw an on/off switch near its base. I flicked the switch to on. Heard my breathing amplify throughout the room. The irony of the moment was not lost on me. I had a growing suspicion that every person in the audience was here because at some point I had breathed life into them. My hand was shaking.

         "On behalf of all of us, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank you for attending this gathering of the Fictional Homeless Society," Joey spoke into the microphone. "There are some of us here that have literally waited years for this opportunity, including myself. In fact, it's common knowledge that I have waited the longest, so it's only fair that I should be the first to fire the many questions we're dying to hear answers to. What I'd like to know is this: What happens to me?"

         It was a good question. Unfortunately, none of the answers I had prepared for this evening could possibly suffice. Joey Danvers looked at me with the limited emotional expression I had been able to imagine when I first put pen to paper twenty years hence. His expression was two-dimensional, pitiful. It wasn't his fault.

         Joey continued, "I mean, I know what I'm supposed to do. I start off at the bottom of a mountain. I climb halfway up the mountain to a balcony. I break into the corresponding room. Then I tear off my climbing outfit to reveal a tuxedo. I take a bow tie out of a pocket and tie it impeccably. This isn't easy to do because my hands are like chopping blocks. But then what?"

         He was supposed to steal the blueprints to a super laser capable of striking at any target, anywhere in the world. His objective was to befriend the sexy hostess, Miss Fanny Poker, who was in the employ of a billionaire suffering from a major bout of megalomania. All of this would have been news - both good and bad, no doubt - to Joey. His character was based loosely on James Bond. I got the idea after watching a rerun of Goldfinger. I doubt Joey Danvers knew who James Bond or Goldfinger were. How could he. He barely knew himself.

         I felt embarrassed. And a little angry, if the truth be told. If I'd had an agent I would have fired him, but I'd done that already after sales of my third novel - The Hangin' Tree - failed to achieve its projected sales target. The critics stopped short of using the word shit on that one, purely as a professional courtesy afforded only because it was no secret my marriage had gone down the toilet, swiftly followed by the book.

         I was embarrassed because the idea had been foolish, that's why it never made it past the second page. I was angry because once again I had let my ego override common sense. I should have stayed at home. Rented a movie. Read a book.

         Instead I said, "I don't know."

         A communal groan broke the silence and pockets of muted conversation started up. I heard somebody say, "I told you so." Further back in the room someone yelled, "Fuckin' limp dick!" and I had a feeling his name was Randall or Ronald, an interstate truck driver with a foul mouth and a bad attitude. His surname eluded me. Perhaps I hadn't given him one.

         Joey was still smiling, like this was the best news he could have received, but the smile did not tally with the dangerous look in his eye. The knuckles on his hands flexed and glowed white. 'I don't know' didn't seem to cut it in the world of subterfuge and espionage.

         Joey reached into the inside pocket of his tuxedo and I tried twice to swallow the dry lump that had suddenly formed behind my tonsils. He was going to pull out a Walther PPK, equipped with silencer, and point it at my head. He was going to give me an ultimatum. Explain what happened to him or the immediate renovation of the inside of my skull would follow. Instinctively I closed my eyes.

         I heard a slap. Felt the tickle of the first bead of sweat on my forehead. Opened my eyes. Saw Joey's hand resting on the table, concealing something, but it was too small to be a gun.

         "You look like you've seen a ghost," Joey said.


         I suffer from Deja Vu frequently. I say suffer because I see it as an affliction. That which you feel you can remember but have no previous memory of cannot be healthy. I knew what Joey's words were going to be before he said them. Not because of a cerebral short-circuit but a nostalgic revelation. Joey had just spoken the first piece of dialogue I ever thought of but didn't write. In fact, that's where I stopped and moved on to something else. It was too corny, contrived, I guess unbelievable covers what I'm trying to say. That got me thinking about where Joey must have heard it. If I didn't write it, how did he know to say it?

         Joey was staring at me, eyebrows raised, as if expecting an answer to the unspoken question. How indeed? I noticed the temperature in the room had risen by a couple of degrees. There didn't appear to be any air conditioning. This didn't seem to affect Joey or the audience assembled before us. I took a cursory glance around the room and noticed something else: I was the only one sweating. I looked at Joey's hand and wondered what was beneath it.

         "All in good time, Mr Roberts," Joey said, "All in good time. Now, your answer is unsatisfactory but understandable, given the circumstances. I can see how all of this must seem somewhat surreal to you, so I'm gonna translate the 'I don't know' into an 'I'm not sure' and let you work with that."

         Joey Danvers was certainly a heck of a lot more articulate than I remembered or ever meant him to be. Having said that, twenty years ago I didn't have the same command of the English language then as I do now. Somehow the two were connected. Anyhow, that sounded like a threat. I don't react well to threats.

         I looked Joey in the eye and said, "Your surname was a typo."

         The puzzled expression on his face almost made me smile, but I wasn't that stupid. He looked to the audience for help and got none. I don't know why I enjoyed it but I did. I gave him a hand.

         "You should have been a Dancer, Joey," I told him.

         That got some people in the audience trying to muffle their laughter. It was funny, but not that funny, at least not in the way they thought it was funny. The look of puzzlement on Joey's face was dissolving into resentment.

         I used to own an old Olympia manual, back when Jesus Christ was learning to walk. I say used to. I've still got it up in the attic, caked in numerous layers of dust. Most of my earliest attempts were tapped out on that old thing: clunk-clunk-clunk-clunk-clunk! Used to drive anyone within earshot crazy. I loved it. It made me feel like I was really writing. It really bloody hurt, too, when your finger slipped off the circular discs and lodged itself between keys. In those days I was a double digit typist. I don't think my forefingers have ever forgiven me.

         Back then Tippex reigned supreme. Liquid paper. Whoever thought of that deserved to get rich. Later some bright spark would invent the word processor, negating the need for correction fluid, but Tippex was the original delete key. What Joey Danvers didn't know, but was on the verge of learning, was that the night his name made it into print, my trusty bottle of Tippex had run out.

         "I hit the letter V instead of C," I explained, but the stick must have been too close to my lips because some serious feedback filled the room. I apologised. Joey's puzzled look returned. The information must have caught a wave and sailed right over his head.

         "I don't understand," Joey said, shaking his head.

         A number of people groaned but I wasn't one of them. I gave him the less cryptic version. I saw him mouth his intended surname and I answered the question I could see forming in his eyes.

         "I pluralised it," I said. "Danver reads like a dyslexic from Colorado."

         "What about my stillborn baby, motherfucker, was she a dyslexic typo too!"


         A black woman stood defiant at the back of the room. Arms crossed, ample chest heaving, eyes bulging with hatred. I recognised that baleful glare. It reminded me of a place and time only a labotomy could erase. Her anguish was real and all consuming. I could feel it. Had felt it. When Kirsty was born blue.

         Sometimes the things you write about are the things that scare you the most. You put them into words in the vain hope that fiction doesn't mirror fact. But sometimes fact is transformed into fiction in the vain hope that by doing so your sanity will remain intact. Fiction is fact in fancy dress. I needed to explain this to Dolores Dean.

         "Your baby died for no reason," I told her, but I had a feeling she knew this already. Of course she did. "I can't explain why it happened. I wish I could. All I know is that one day I knew what it was to feel like becoming a father, and the same day I'm mourning a child I never even held in my arms."

         "You still killed my baby, motherfucker!" Dolores screamed. "If it weren't for choo she'd still be alive!"

         "The first thing I did when I got home from the hospital was grab a pen and notepad," I told Dolores. "The next two hours were spent writing about a young black lady trying to come to terms with a stillborn birth. It was my way of dealing with my loss. It wasn't perhaps the best way, but it was the only way I knew how. I never finished the story because I was crying so damn much I could no longer see the page."

         Dolores's arms unfolded and dropped to her sides. "You still killed my baby," she said, but the anger and conviction had drained from her voice.

         "No, I didn't," I responded. "Your baby was the figment of a traumatised imagination and a bleeding heart. Just like Kirsty, it never stood a chance."

         I expected another outburst from Dolores but instead the strangest thing happened. She started to fade.

         The other nine people seated at her table pushed their chairs back and gazed slack-jawed in astonishment. I felt sorry for her but at the same time relieved. I was feeling things I had spent years trying to supress but which were always just below the surface, like cold water flowing beneath a thin layer of ice.

         I watched as Dolores Dean slowly turned translucent, and when the microphone she had been holding clattered onto the table, she was truly gone. I was glad to see her go. She was fact dressed up to the nines in fiction.


         "What happened to her?"

         I didn't see who asked the question but Joey took it upon himself to provide an answer.

         "She's gone home," he said.

         Everybody started nodding their heads and looking around at each other as if they shared an understanding. Home. Of course. Home was the Starship Enterprise. Dolores was on her way to see Scotty. Beam me up, fella. These guys were regular Churchill dogs. Oh yes.

         I found it hard not to laugh. I mean, this was real funny shit. Here I was, in the midst of I didn't know the fuck what, and the head honcho comes out with a statement that makes him sound like when it suits him he'll take one up the arse for the good of the game. It took a huge amount of effort not to get started. Would have been harder to stop, but one look at Joey's mallet of a hand resting on the table held everything together. It was capable of causing some serious damage. James Bond would have been envious. I was still wondering what lay beneath the shovel-shaped flesh.

         "It's a picture," Joey said.

         This was starting to freak me out. It was like Joey had a handle on my thoughts.

         "Of who?" I asked.

         Joey raised a finger to his nose and tapped it three times. If it hadn't been the size of a small rolling pin I might have tried to grab it and snap it. Joey's eyes dared me to do it.

         "Tell him!" Another anonymous voice.

         "Put that sumbitch out of his misery!" Ronald/Randall, I presumed.

         Joey glared at the audience. That seemed enough to shut everyone up for the time being. This was his show. He was in command. I got the feeling it was his responsibility to make sure everyone got home safely, wherever home might be.

         "What happens to me?" Joey asked again, and I could see the patience in his eyes running out, like sand sifting southwards in an hour glass.

         I could have cared less. I didn't know what happened to him. If I did he wouldn't be here now. We wouldn't be here now. I was beginning to feel like a character in one of my own stories: frustrated. Where was this going? Where would it end? But most important of all: What was the point? I couldn't tell Joey I didn't know. I wanted to find out what was beneath his hand. No, not what, but who. Perhaps I didn't know what happened to him, but I was a writer for Christsake, surely I could make something up.

         "You were - are - a spy," I told him. "You're a secret agent for a government department that doesn't exist. Officially, you were a high ranking officer of an elite SAS outfit but was given a dishonourable discharge for behaviour unbecoming an officer. You accidentally killed a grunt in a training operation that went wrong. It wasn't your fault, the grunt was a liability, everybody thought so, but you couldn't handle the guilt and shot yourself. Officially, you're dead. Unofficially, you're a secret weapon."

         It sounded shit but Joey was chewing on it. His eyes had a dreamy, distant look about them, like his most vivid fantasy was being realised. It lasted all of five seconds.

         "Then what?"

         You know, Joey, there's always a 'Then what?', even when the credits are rolling and the lights are back on and the exit door is everybody's sole intention. I was thinking it but Joey was past the point of hearing it.

         "There is no 'Then what?'" I told him. "Your train terminates at Cerebral Central. I had an idea that caught the rails of intrigue and derailed shortly afterwards."

         Someone in the crowd actually booed. What next? Rotten fruit?

         Joey's right hand rose six inches, clenched into a fist, and came crashing down on the table.

         "Bullshit!" The word sounded like steam escaping an iron.

         I looked at Joey's fist, no longer fascinated by the sheer size of it, but the portion of the picture it failed to conceal. Half of the face of a young girl, dressed in her school uniform, one eye looking right at me, and a dimple below her cheek like a punctuation mark where the sentence of her smile ended.

         Joey caught my stare and his fist sprung open, swallowing the image.

         "He's bluffing!" This from the table nearest the stage. I recognised the guy as soon as I saw him. His name was Tom Jerry, a getaway driver with a weakness for whiskey and the spatial awareness of a deaf bat.

         "You were two sentences short of a fatal accident," I told him. "Boloxed on Bells, Tom saw two sets of headlights before him. His eyes squinted, trying to focus, but the impact tore his head off."

         Tom Jerry vanished. I heard the air rushing in to fill the space he had so suddenly left behind. Bon voyage, Tom. Home sweet home.

         "Who's the girl?" I asked Joey. I tried to look at him with meaning. Gave him the kind of stare that said: fuck with me and you're history.

         Joey burst out laughing. Seconds later sections of the audience joined in, but nervously.

         "I'm already history, Neville," Joey said. "That's the fucking problem. It's the future that concerns me." He picked up the photograph so that I could see the back of it. "It also concerns you."

         There was a date stamp on the bottom left corner: 6th June 1996. Joey caught me squinting and slammed the photo down on the table.

         "Tell that motherfucker or I will!"

         Randall Fox, that was his name. An interstate truck driver, roaming the highways of America, his existence a constant mystery and his destination never reached. Randall was the guy I turned to when I needed to let off steam. Foul mouthed, vulgar and socially inept, but as reliable as blue-tac. I scanned the room, trying to see if I could pick him out from the sea of faces. Where are you, old fella?

         He was four tables back, perched on the edge of his seat, thick lines creasing his forehead. His jaw worked, chewing stale tobacco. He regarded me like a cat who has just shit on your lawn, confident and carefree, fuck the cream.

         Every writer creates a character they consider to be their confidant. It's not an alter ego but a voice, an adopted accent only the writer understands. Randall Fox was mine. Only this time he was speaking for himself. It had been at least six months since Randall and I had vented any steam and he was obviously pissed. His eyes flicked between Joey and me.

         "One more outburst, old man," Joey threatened, "and I swear-"

         "Her name is Kirsty. She's your daughter."

         The woman's voice sounded familiar.

         "Shut up, Nancy! Shut the fuck up!" Joey stood suddenly, lashing out at his chair and sending it skittering across the stage. In his anger he had forgotten the picture on the table.

         "I - I don't understand." I said, but the date on the back of the photograph, those eyes, that smile...realisation came with the speed of a flash flood. "It's not possible."

         I looked at Joey. He was glaring at someone in the crowd. A lone figure was making her way towards the stage, weaving in and out of the tables. She wore a dark blue suit, her hair tied tightly in a bun, dark glasses covering her eyes. Nancy Cartwright. She was a P.A. No nonsense. Got the job done. Reliable. Dependable. And she loved cats. Had three of them: Tom, Dick and Harry. She stopped in front of the stage. I could see her suit was covered in cat hairs.

         "You're losing it, Joey," she said. "This isn't just about you. We all have an agenda here, including Mr. Smith." She looked directly at me. I could see myself reflected in her dark glasses. "Paul Smith, the pretense stops here."

         "Fuckin' A!"

         Joey collapsed into his chair, cradling his shaking head. He looked like a man might feel if he had just been told his daughter had died. Sympathy was beyond me.

         "There are two hundred and eighteen people in this room," Nancy told me. "Some of us you might remember, some you may not, but we all have one thing in common. Do you know what that is?" As she asked the question she removed her glasses. Her eyes had once been a piercing blue but were now filmed with white cataracts. Nancy was a blind P.A. Fat lot of -"

         "- fucking good. Yeah, I know." Nancy finished the thought for me. "Who needs a blind P.A?"

         Joey had stopped feeling sorry for himself and lifted his head out of his hands, sensing something.

         "I mean," she continued, "What a stupid idea? Who would hire a blind P.A? You still haven't answered my question, Paul."

         That's because I'm not sure if any of this is happening, Nancy, can I dictate that shit to you? 'Cause if it is I must be scribbling on padded walls with a crayon jammed between my toes.

         "Paul?"

         "Yes?"

         "What do we have in common?"

         I was struggling to breathe let alone think.

         "Me?" I offered.

         Nancy replaced the sunglasses and shook her head - no - three times. She then looked at Joey. He slowly stood and puffed out his chest. "Tell him, Joey."

         Joey told me: "We know where Kirsty is."


         This time I did laugh. It came out of me like a bark. I couldn't help it. I saw Joey's smug expression melt into a scowl and that got me going even harder. Of course they knew where Kirsty was. She was dead. Buried in a tiny grave in a tiny box not much bigger than a size 11 shoe. Her tombstone had this epitaph etched on it:

Kirsty Smith

A Brief Moment

Of Happiness

Lasts Eternal

         She should have been twelve years old.

         Tears were streaming down my face and blurring my vision. I seemed to be laughing and crying simultaneously. Becasue of this I didn't see Joey's fist closing in on my face.I felt it, though, and it was a toss up between the pain exploding in my cheek and the base of my spine connecting with the stage as to which was responsible for the blackout. Either or both it didn't matter. I blacked out.

         In the darkness there was nothing. No dream, no visual representation of angst, just a wall of darkness whose proximity was indiscernible. Strangely, there was sound, like listening to a radio play in the dark but with the volume turned way down so you couldn't tell if it was voices or static.

         Sssstupid...shhsst...shsst...why...shhsst...you...shhsst...him...shhsst...

         White noise filling the blackness.

         At some point vision was restored, at first watery, shimmering and shifting, an image of a face floating like a mirage directly above me. Features swam into focus and at first I thought I was looking at the photograph Joey had tried to conceal. Until the eyes blinked and the mouth stretched into a smile.

         "Daddy?"

         A sense of disappointment filled me like cold, dank water rushing to replace the air in a sinking vessel. Daddy? That wasn't me. Once upon a time there had been the briefest glimmer of what might have been, but it had been cruelly snuffed out, like a flame pinched out of existence.

         I tried to sit up but my body wasn't having any of it. The resulting grimace sent fresh pain through my features. My nose and right lip felt moist. I was vaguely aware of some commotion taking place but my brain felt like veinerschnitzel thanks to Joey's pummeling. Something warm briefly touched my forehead, as if a hand were taking my temperature. I managed to open my eyes and saw the blurred outline of what looked like three people dancing intimately together. I blinked twice - hard - and the image became more focussed. There were three people but they weren't dancing. Nancy and Joey were struggling with a third party between them. They had an arm apiece and legs dangled between them, kicking and fighting for purchase on the stage floor.

         I closed my eyes tightly and breathed deep, exhaling heavily, trying to shake the fuzziness. I heard a door slam, then heavy footsteps heading towards me, followed by hands roughly seizing my shoulders and yanking me upright. My left knee buckled but the hands kept me steady. I opened my eyes and Joey's face was inches from mine. I could see the capilliaries in his eyes. He dragged me to my chair and made sure I sat down before I fell down. The microphone was thrust rudely into my lap.

         Joey remained standing, breathing heavily into the micrphone, pacing back and forth whilst struggling to gain control. Nacy had disappeared but not like Dolores or Tom Jerry. She was backstage somewhere with -

         {(Daddy?)

         "Where is she, Joey?" He had hit me hard but not enough to block out the last few seconds of memory. Joey ignored me. I guess with all that pacing back and forth and his heavy breathing he hadn't heard. I spoke the question into the microphone.

         There was a brief commotion towards the centre of the room. Even without the benefit of amplification it was not difficult to hear the deluge of obscenity gushing out of Randall like a burst pipe.

         "You truly are the dimmest shit I ever had to pass through the crack of my arse!"

         He had surmounted the table and stood precariously in its middle. The others at the table gazed reverantly up at him. I recognised three of them but the rest remained annymous for now. Joey had ceased his pacing and his mouth was a perfect O beneath his quizzical eyes.

         Randall was struggling to activate the microphone and in his frustration he threw it towards the stage, narrowly missing missing the occupants of the table nearest me.

         "Fuck that shit to hell and back! This has gone on longer than a series of Dallas. I've almost forgot why the fuck I bothered comin' here in the first place."

         This caused a stir of laughter.

         "You!" He levelled a finger at Joey, "are a pathetic disgrace! It's no wonder he gave up on you on the second page. What makes you so special? Because you were the first? Boo-fuckin-hoo. My fictitious heart bleeds for you. Whatever passes for a plot in this shit-stickers mind you, Doofus Danvers, have lost it."