The Post Office of Doctor Moreau (1/2) Kenton Hall

(1/2), (2/2). Part 2.

I was lying on my back - hands tucked neatly behind my head - and staring at the ceiling, where the Visigoths who had decorated the hotel room had utterly neglected to place a slow-moving fan. Sometimes, a protagonist just can't get an even break. I mean, I could feel it in my bones. I was about to be summoned on an adventure that would utterly and irrevocably alter my view of the world and some curtain-obsessed motherfucker had robbed my inner Coppola of a suitable opening frame.

Sure, there were nice curtains in the room. Very nice curtains indeed. In fact, they were some of the most beautiful motherfucking curtains I'd ever seen in my life. To wipe one's dick on those particular curtains would be an act of eroticism unto itself.

Not that I make a habit of such revolting and inelegant behaviour, but I'm trying to establish a tone here. I'm trying to impress upon you that I, your narrator, am a bad-ass, take-no-prisoners type who knows more than his fair share of Anglo-Saxon curses and has no problem using them - quim, for example - provided there are no children or easily offended members of the Religious Right present. This is one of the reasons why I am not going to describe the curtains to you. That and they have absolutely no bearing on what was to happen to me. They have simply been mentioned to add colour to the opening passages. Blue, as it happens, but that's all you're getting.

Okay, there may have been some embroidered edging.

My name is Jonas McCloud, which I think is a fine, fine name for a narrator to bear. It speaks of family history, of cultural upbringing, of class. And Jonas, well, Jonas is a name that both inspires the requisite amount of respect from librarians and city council planners and is easily shouted in moments of passion. Try it.

'Oh, Jonas!' you might begin, 'Harder, harder, you outwardly gruff but inwardly decent stud you!' It's perfect, isn't it? It also contains, in its second syllable, the possibility that despite my leading man cheekbones, I was teased mercilessly as a child. With youth's natural predilection for discovering rhymes, it is a wonder that the world is not overrun by poets.

The hotel room's telephone rang with an insistent buzz that no doubt engenders in you, the reader, as much narrative relief now as it did confusion and apprehension for me then. No one knew I was there. I had recently liberated myself from a rather tricky situation involving four Puerto Rican 'ladies of the evening', an Israeli agent named Goff and the original manuscript for Gore Vidal's The City and the Pillar and I was dog-tired.

Oh, I didn't mention the dog, did I? During the course of my previous adventure, I had been molested by a large over-sexed bloodhound and it had left emotional scars that I was conveniently hiding behind my macho façade, yet which were sure to make lasting relationships difficult. I find it difficult to talk about, but surprisingly easy to type. All and all, I wasn't looking forward to the conversation I knew I was about to have. 'McCloud?'

Continued...Next Page (2/2)

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