I am a Storyteller, first and foremost. This is my blog for poetry, prose, stories, excerpts of my novels and videos. Life poetry, prophetic poetry, poetry for all genres. I think you'll find yourself here if you read long enough.
I remember waking up on a Thursday morning and the whole damned world was in black and white. Black and white, as in a black and white movie. As dark and morbid and strange as Peter Lorre in “Mad Love.” I remember stretching my arms and looking toward my usually yellow striped bedroom curtains and thinking that it was still dark and that the moon was shining outside and that I had awakened much too early for my afternoonish tastes. I switched on the lamp that stood on the bedside table piled high with Raymond Chandler paperbacks and cat toys and phone numbers written on odd pieces of anything and everything. Manny the mouse peeked his little head out of his matchbox and looked at me sleepily, (he was a late sleeper too, as he stayed up half the night playing hide and seek with Weiner, his beloved arch nemesis) and looked at me, whiskers twitching.
I eyeballed the yellow room and noticed it wasn’t eyeballing me back. I knew something was off but so much of my life was off that a new kind of “off” couldn’t be immediately determined. I threw back the covers, hurried to the window and looked out at the neighborhood. Way down below I noticed Fred Meck the mailman delivering mail and I thought that was a funny thing to do in the middle of the night. Then I saw people rushing into Clapsaddle's carrying newspapers and men in suits jaywalking in traffic and women with shopping bags and cops arresting the usual suspects down on the corner and I said to myself, “What the h…..?!” So I pulled the window back down and went to the bathroom, rubbing my eyes as I stumbled down the hallway, tripping over various animals along the way.
I stared at myself in the mirror for a good three minutes before I realized that my face looked different. Then I turned round and stared at the room and then I scowled at Weiner who was standing there purring in the doorway with a puzzled look on his face. I also noticed that he was no longer bright orange but a darkish gray. The wallpaper was no longer pink with little red rosettes and gold champagne glasses. The towels were colorless. The floor was colorless. I was colorless. Heck, the whole apartment was colorless!! The only thing that looked normal to me was the parrot and he had never looked normal to me. I ran into the kitchen and slung the cover off his cage and he yawned at me and said in a menacing tone, “Yeah, whatdaya want? You askin’ for trouble, I’ll give ya trouble!” “What time is it?” I asked him stupidly and he shrugged and turned his back to me. “How should I know? I can’t see the clock from here.”
I ran to the living room and turned on the television set and waited for the tubes to heat up. I clicked on the radio and the news was starting. I listened nervously, wondering if there had been a Martian invasion or a new German threat or if God had suddenly decided to suck all the color out of the planet. Nothing. Just the usual. Stick ups and hold ups and blow ups and show ups. Crime in the streets and movie stars on the marquees. Governmental bores and glamorous gangsters. Death and taxes. Taxes and death. Nothing about the world going black and white and the sun hanging as pale as a Harvest moon over New York City at noon.
There was a tidbit that I almost missed about Si, the Shellac salesman on the TV but it was nearly drowned out by the radio. I was staring out the window at a blue bird singing on the window sill who was no longer blue, (the bird, that is) and barely heard it but caught the tail end of the story. Said there had been new developments in the case and showed a big blowzy blonde covering her face and being ushered away by cops. She looked vaguely familiar. Distinctly vaguely familiar. Like the dame-down-the hallway-familiar. “What gives?” I said and shook my head. Then I saw my own face flashed for a moment across the screen but the sounds of Glenn Miller came blasting out of the radio and I couldn’t hear what they said about me. I snapped off the thing but it was too late. The newscast was over. And I had looked as black and white on the television as I had in my bathroom mirror moments before.
I turned off all the lights, pulled down the shades and jumped back into bed. I snuggled so far down under the covers that my long legs stuck out of the bed about two feet but I refused to pull myself back up on the pillows. I wasn’t about to believe that this wasn’t just a bad dream. Or a fever. I wasn’t buying this reality. No sir! This was merely the result of eating my mother’s week old caviar on month old soda crackers and that was all there was to it! I had cleaned out the Frigidaire in the middle of the night last night on a whim and what I hadn’t eaten, Weiner, Toulouse and the ferret had scarfed down. We had turned it into quite the little party.
Music was playing, the mouse flickered the light switch up and down, up and down, we finished off several half-full bottles of MiMi’s home made wine, we wore old New Year’s Eve party hats, at one point someone started a conga line, we ate unidentifiable bowls of leftover food, laughed a lot and generally made fools of ourselves while having a high ole time. The parrot kept threatening to call the cops but we ignored him and taped his beak closed and covered his cage with a Mexican serape and a pair of my old pajamas. But then, we usually did that on Wednesday nights.
I kept hoping that Lance would show up as he sometimes did at unexpected moments but he didn’t. I hadn’t seen him in quite a while, not since the zipper incident. He was always going off on trips, sometimes for weeks on end and hinting that he was working for the government. (Of what country, I had noidea) but I didn’t believe him. He was too, I don’t know, devil-may-care-ladies-mannish-come-hitherish-too-lazy-to-do-his-own-laundryish-ish, to me. He drank my coffee by the gallon, ate my bacon by the skillet full, borrowed my shampoo by the……..but I didn’t care. He entertained me and irritated the heck out of the parrot. He was always joking that the parrot acted like a jealous lover when he was around but I told him that the parrot was just a sorehead and had never gotten over being dispatched from my mother’s mansion.
He found my apartment beneath his dignity and my various pets not worth his scorn. I did not consider him a pet. I considered him a pest and an intellectual snob. I didn’t want him and he didn’t want me. He worked for my mother and I aimed to prove it but so far, I was only armed with my suspicions. My mother insisted that she’d given him to me out of love (for me) and concern for (his) safety as her high bred Persian kitty cat kept trying to eat him but I had never seen that chubby little fur ball eat anything but filet mignon and catnip so I wasn’t buying that falderal. (One of my father’s words.) He was a spy, plain and simple. But he kept me on my toes.
I think the Si murder mystery was bothering me more than I cared to admit. I didn’t like the fact that those two cops kept hanging around outside watching my apartment while pretending to be badly dressed tourists from China. Who were they fooling? They didn’t even look Chinese. And the tall one with the white beard certainly looked nothing like a Chinese woman. I didn’t like the mysterious phone calls I kept getting either where no one said anything but I could hear them breathing. Of course, a couple of times, I knew it was the parrot calling my office because I recognized his snicker. But they were coming at all hours of the day and night now and only half of them were from my mother. I was worried. I smelled a frame up. I hadn’t killed that salesman and didn’t know who did but I had a bad feeling about the whole thing. Things didn’t add up. They never had. Mainly, because I had never been good in math but that was just the way it was. Not good at modeling, though I had given it a shot to please my mother, not good at dancing on stage (because I usually ended up falling off stage) not good at singing (except along with Larry, Curly and Moe) not good at being an obedient and respectful daughter, not good with high or low society, terrible at keeping boyfriends and driving. I didn’t know what I was good at, but I darned sure gave it my all! Nobody could say I didn’t give it my all! I guess private-eyeing was about the only thing I was good at but Lord knows, half of that success just turned out to be dumb luck. I did have plenty of luck, I couldn’t deny that. Good, bad or worse, I did have luck. I got that from MiMi and Poppi Voo, I think. They were full of it............ and I was their heir.
To be continued in Episode 9 somewhere, sometime...... ( BEG ME....OH, PLEASE BEG ME!!!)
Detective Yettiman in disguise as an unconvincing Chinese lady
Detective John Coyote (with disguise in the background)
(Actually Mickey Rooney in his role in Breakfast At Tiffany's)
Aachoo Voo, Private Eye Episode Seven So, I’m sitting there watching “Howdy Doody” and eating a banana sandwich, when there came a sharp knock on the front door. I wasn’t expecting anybody. I had taken the last three days off to recuperate from my non-existent head wound and I was enjoying the relative peace and quiet. I had almost convinced my mother to stop calling me every time her fingers got the itch, pleading a terrible headache and needing silence to recover. She had been pretty good, (for her anyway,) paring the calls down to every four and a half hours instead of the usual hourly check in. Once, I had ripped the phone out of the wall in frustration but within minutes, her butler had arrived with a new phone and had it installed before I could think to slam the door in his face. Peter K. McPeters, his name was, dignified, calm to the point of dead, and full of upper crust piety and disapproval. (Later on, I would discover that he was the son of an undertaker and a scrub woman, but that’s somewhere in the future at the present…. . When he.............uh....... I mean, let’s face it, the butler always does something, doesn’t he?) Before he left, he brought in a box full of Beef Wellington, caviar, pate’, lobster bisque and an assortment of vitamins and tonics. My mother burdened herself with the notion that people who lived in apartment buildings were slowly starving to death. I had been raised properly in high society, (at least I had been after my mother had received her inheritance) gone to charm school for an entire week, had the best education money could buy, done the whole “coming out” thing (and then turned around and went back in) and had even been presented to royalty. (The Queen’s third cousin.) Yet, in spite of all my mother’s best intentions and my father’s low profile-standing-in-the-background mumblings, here I was, making my living with the dregs of society. All those summers in Louisiana with my grandparents had rubbed off on me in ways that could never be erased. MiMi and Poppi Voo were my heroes. MiMi was a country girl, Cajun through and through and Poppi was a transplanted Englishman with a dubious pedigree, who loved her, raising vegetables, the challenge of detection, (his father’s father’s father’s uncle had been a protege’ of (as we now know) the non-existent Sherlock Homes) (not a typo) and me, more than life itself. My father had been a late-in-life surprise and not quite a bundle of joy, but nevertheless, mercifully loved, if not actually liked. Three years ago after a terrible flooding of the family estate, excuse me, the swamp land known as Voo Bayou and the run-down but comfortable cabin that Poppi referred to as The House of Voo, MiMi and Poppi had been forced to move to New York, much to the chagrin of my parents but to my everlasting delight, and so now family get-togethers are no longer the boring, tedious affairs that they have been in times past. MiMi is convinced that my mother, Patricia LaVonne Paramore Voo is indeed too good for my father and she despises her with a passion that only a Cajun can produce. She’s a sweet old lady full of fire and vinegar and has never passed up the chance to humiliate “the Lady of the Manor” as she says in a fake hysterically funny English accent. Never mind the fact that for the first three years of their marriage, my parents had actually lived with MiMi and Poppi down south after “the incident.” I’m just glad that I wasn’t there to witness the atrocities that I’ve been told about by both sides. Knowing my mother, I’m sure she made MiMi’s simple life a living hell. Knowing MiMi, I’m sure she gave back just as good as she got and saved up enough vengeance to last her for the rest of her life. Three years in a row now, she has shown up at my mother’s inherited Fifth Avenue mansion, on Christmas morning, carrying a live chicken. Like I said, I’m sitting there wasting the afternoon with my cat, Weiner and my dog, Toulouse, the parrot is in his cage in the kitchen carving a handgun out of a peanut, the fish are trying to watch television through an inch of algae encrusting the sides of their tank, and there’s this knock on the door. I finish my sandwich, swallow a swig of coffee and take a quick look-see in the mirror in case it’s Andy calling. (Surely he was out of the hospital by now. Hopefully, he has gotten my flowers and all my messages. I thought the Singing Clown get- well- telegram was inspired.) Dabbing on some lipstick and smoothing back my hair, I tripped over Phantom, the ferret and opened the twelve locks on the sturdy front door. There were two men in hats standing on the stoop. Looked like detectives. Probably Homicide. You could usually tell by their wary expressions and the fact that they were wearing badges that said.... Homicide. “Afternoon, ma’am.” the taller of the two said, pushing back the brim of his hat and taking a snapshot of me with his worldly eyes. “Name’s Coyote, John Coyote, Third Precinct. This is my partner, Neil Yettimann. May we come in?” I was momentarily flustered. “What’s this all about?” I asked, pushing the door closer to closed than open. The guy cleared his throat and gave a look around. “You are Miss Voo, aren’t ya? Miss Aachoo Voo? You have an office in this building, don’t ya?” “Well, yeah,” I replied, “So I do. What’s it to you?” The other guy spoke up, “We just need to ask you a few questions about a homicide, miss. It’ll only take a couple minutes.” Feeling on the defensive, I opened the door and the two men stepped inside the apartment. Weiner was standing upright on the coffee table as he was wont to do and Toulouse gave them a sniff and remained where he was on the divan.
“You’ll never take me alive, Copper!” the parrot warned from the kitchen and a peanut came flying through the doorway. I turned red with embarrassment and bent to pick it up. “I’m sorry. He’s been watching too many arrests outside the window. Please, sit down. What can I do for you fellas?” Toulouse gave me a dirty look and climbed down from the couch and ambled across the room on his tiny hairy legs. The detectives watched him go and one of them said, scratching his face, “That’s the shortest dog I’ve ever seen in my life! His chin hair actually drags on the floor. Where did you get that thing?” “He’s from France.” I said haughtily. “His name is Toulouse, after the painter. He’s sweet as honey but he’s got a mean bite when he thinks you’re making fun of him so be forewarned!”
I motioned for them to sit down and made a half-hearted offer of coffee or tea. “No thanks,” they declined. “We’re here to investigate the murder of a man found dead at Marshall’s Hardware and Hat Emporium a few days ago. We’re following up all leads. Your name was found on about thirty-two receipts for Shellac and various other furniture refinishing chemicals, tools and products. Also, your name and number was on the back of a matchbook in the dead man’s pocket. Plus, there was a grainy photograph of you going into a sandwich shop in his wallet and several mentions of you notated on a calendar in his locker. Name was Si. Si Philbrook. What can you tell us about him?” I frowned and touched my hand to my forehead. “I’m sorry. I just got out of the hospital. You must excuse me but I have no idea why the man would have any of those things except the receipts. He occasionally delivered purchases to my home here, at his insistence, of course, when they were too heavy for me to carry. He was a salesman, nothing more. We had no personal relationship and I really have no idea why he was killed or who killed him. I certainly had nothing to do with it, I can assure you.” Forty minutes later they left, after many questions, looks around the apartment, checking out the furniture refinishing projects, equipment and chemicals in the back room where I always had one thing or another going on. At the moment, my neighbor’s old hope chest stood half finished in the late afternoon sunlight. I made a mental note to get that project done and get it back to him. What an old guy named George needed with a hope chest I had no clue, but it seemed to mean a lot to him and it was quite a valuable piece. There was also that buffet belonging to MiMi in the corner that needed work. It looked like a sway-backed mule, having seen way too many buffets served there upon it’s tired, stained finish. I didn’t know if I could save it or not but it had come through the flood and a fire and forty years of Cajun cooking and deserved a chance to be restored. There was a small table that I had made myself, carved and polished and displayed proudly atop a larger table waiting to completely dry. I didn’t know who I would give it to or if I would keep it myself but it was a beauty. “Made that yourself, did ya?” Coyote asked with appreciation on his whiskered face. “You’re quite the carpenter. I’m impressed. Don’t see that much, a female furniture maker. I’d like to send you over to my ex-wife’s place. Maybe restore all the stuff she took in the divorce back to it’s original condition: Kindling!” And he snickered and the other guy snickered and somewhere in the kitchen the parrot snickered, which was his favorite thing to do. (Besides blessing me.) I saw them out, locked the door and pulled Weiner into my arms and snuggled up with Toulouse on the couch. Phantom made himself a nest in my hair and Manny, the mouse climbed into my lap, much to Weiner’s chagrin. “You boys will protect me, won’t you? You won’t let the big bad policemen get me, will ya, fellas? I’m innocent, I swear it! I wouldn’t hurt a fly. You believe me, don’t you?” They all gave me stunned looks and ducked their heads and made little whining noises that could be interpreted in any of several dozen ways. I was hurt. But that didn’t bother me half as much as what the parrot did. He began making trumpet sounds (for he was quite the mimic.) Slowly, I began to recognize Chopin’s 'Funeral March' and when we all trouped into the kitchen to see what was up, the bird was out of his cage turning the pages of my scrapbook full of pictures of old boyfriends and acquaintances and pointing an evil eye toward a heap of dead flies that I had dispatched to another world only this morning and placed in a bowl for the Venus Flytrap’s supper. I was properly chastised. And worried that my reputation had preceded me. “Get packed!” the bird cried, flying back to his cage and locking himself in, “You’re on your way to the Big House!”
(Funeral March played badly on a trumpet) too funny!
To Be Continued in Episode 8.........................
……..my mother’s butler, Peter K. McPeters with his ever present tray
and my dear friend, Peter Kelly as Peter K. McPeters....
Detective John Coyote
and........ 'John Coyote' (John C) of Myspace
And..............you know who.........lol
if you were on Myspace years ago...
Neil the Yeti....Man as Detective Neil Yettiman
the still deceased Shellac salesman, Si, Si Philbrook.......
MiMi Voo wearing her usual expression Marjorie Main as MiMi**
AND **Poppi Voo….. trying to detect if there are any more stamps
Peter Cushing as Poppi Voo
and lastly...................... My favorite snapshot of MiMi Voo and Beulah the chicken down in Voo Bayou, Louisiana on the farm when I was a girl…
Special thanks for the use of names: George, Si Philbrook, John Coyote, Peter Kelly, Chopin,
Neil, Beulah, Sherlock Holmes, Peter Cushing, Marjorie Main..........and the anonymous trumpet player
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