Mr. Pelican woke up on the kitchen counter between the toaster and the sink. As he rolled over, the toaster and a stack of dishes crashed to the floor with a most un-morninglike sound.
He opened his eyes to the sight of walls and corners orbiting his head.They gave the illusion of standing still, but they didn’t fool Ambrose Pelican. The more he stared at the patterns on the tiles, the more they fell in and out of proportion as they jostled with one another to conform to Mr. Pelican’s sense of reality in the universe. He grabbed the edge of the counter lest he be flung off into space.
There had been a party last night, yes, a party. Mr. Pelican remembered now. Details returned slowly. The drinks women mixed for him, each one hoping to get him intoxicated enough to take the smartest man in the world upstairs. Alas, his duties as host precluded him from partaking of his naughty guests’ desires. Nonetheless he’d gotten so drunk he’d have passed out had he attempted to take any such lucky lady upstairs, probably, he on top of her, or her on top of him, as the case may be.
Then there were the space aliens. Yes, he’d let one lonely alien move into his attic out of pity. But that alien had invited all of its buddies to the party. Mr. Pelican quickly learned how obnoxious space aliens were when intoxicated: dancing on the ceiling, passing out in the punch bowl. Three of them had swung from a chandelier until it crashed to the carpet. Now, the pieces lay strewn across the living room.
Mr. Pelican slid off the countertop. Not an easy task with the room still spinning. His terra-cotta floor tiles had a sticky film on them, not unlike fly paper. Dried beer, it was. The tiles themselves lined up in regimented rows and columns, like proper tiles should. But when he stared at them, they undulated back and forth, snakelike, especially those in his peripheral vision.
“This is bad,” Mr. Pelican told himself. “Either reality is fraying around the edges, or I’m hopelessly hung over.”
“ You’re hung over,” the space alien said, appearing out of nowhere.
“Oh, go away,” Mr. Pelican said. “I’m in no mood for you this morning.”
With a raspberry “fpthrrrrrrt,” the space alien waddled down the hall and up the pull-down stair to the attic. He pulled up the stairs behind him, like a tenant would otherwise close the door to his room.
“One less annoyance,” Mr. Pelican grumbled. “What I need now desperately is aspirin and a hot chai latte.”
As he found his way to the tea kettle and filled it with a day’s worth of chai tea, he noticed the cat. Under normal circumstances it was an ordinary nondescript cat he’d have trouble describing due to its ordinariness, but this morning the cat was rather un-ordinarycovered head to toe in feathers.
Feathers?
Yes, feathers.
Oh, right! The space aliens at it again having jolly fun. As he was playing party games with his beautiful female guests, more on that later, the sophomoric space alien buddies of his tenant space alien enticed the house cat with a plate of honey. A large plate, a serving tray, really, spread thick with honey and left on the floor for the poor stupid cat to step in and get all sticky as it was licking what it thought was a bonanza of a treat.
Once sufficiently covered with honey, that being, snout to tail, the space aliens let lose a blizzard of goose down from one of Mr. Pelican’s all-organic goose down pillow collection. The cat had not been amused. Furthermore, it was also not in an amused state in the morning. It sat on the arm of a sofa watching Mr. Pelican, as if hexing him with an evil-eye.
“No two ways about it,” Mr. Pelican said. “I’ve got to shave that cat.”
The cat did not want to be shaved.
Mr. Pelican read somewhere, in some helpful household hints magazine, that if you have to shave your cat, don’t use shaving cream, use mustard instead. Or maybe it was mayonnaise. Or maybe that was a cure for sunburn. Anyway, no time to ponder the fine points. As the water for the tea started to warm, Mr. Pelican swam over to the refrigerator and eyed the mustard. His motions were single minded, like an AI algorithm in a drone homing in on a seek and destroy mission, only for Mr. Pelican, it was seek and grab.
Even in his hungover state, he managed to grab the mustard. Then he grabbed the cat by the scruff of the neck. “Fssss, fssss, yowl!” the cat complained. to no avail. Mr. Pelican squeezed the plastic jar of mustard, covering the cat.
Razors? Where does one keep razors? Ah, yes, the bathroom. Unless he doesn’t shave, in which case he wouldn’t have one. He checked his face. It had only an overnight growth. That meant he did shave and there would surely be a razor in the bathroom.
But, where is the bathroom, Mr. Pelican wondered. All of a sudden he had to think about that, but he should know, after all he’d lived in this townhouse for… For how long? It wasn’t important, but it had been a long while. So, he should know where the bathroom is.
Of course, it was right where it was supposed to be. Down the hall on the right. His razor was there, too. In the medicine cabinet.
He’d let the cat go somewhere between the kitchen and the bathroom. And now the cat was wary. It pounced when Mr. Pelican approached a second time. The stupid cat ran off, under a sofa, out the other end, and climbed the drapes on his bay window looking out over Main Street.
Those were good drapes, too. Now they had cat claws trekking all the way up.
“Get down, you accursed beast!” Mr. Pelican said.
“Yowl!” the cat replied in contempt.
Mr. Pelican grabbed an umbrella and attempted to poke the cat loose with that. The cat clung on for dear life. Mr. Pelican turned the umbrella over and tried to whack the cat loose as if it were a golf ball stuck to a vertical fairway.
The cat hissed but stubbornly hung on. Mr. Pelican pulled on the curtains, attempting to bring them crashing down. But the cat jumped from the curtain to the top window, which was a long and narrow affair that ran the length of the frame. It had been left open two inches for fresh air, but that was enough for the feline fugitive.
the cat was out. It jumped to the ground and took off down the street, in a feathered state and all.
The water tea was nowhere near boiling, so Mr. Pelican decided to run after that fugitive from a violin string factory and show him who was boss.
Of course he locked himself out.
Mr. Pelican found himself on the street with passers-by doing what they do, namely passing by, staring at his exposed Michelangelo in all its morning-after glory. It wasn’t so small and compact the night before with all his beautiful party guests and his being in a drunken state. He nodded polite greetings and smiled whenever he made eye contact with one of the said passers-byers.
He quickly forgot about that accursed feline monster, deciding then-and-there that he was through with that cat. Let nature wash off the damn feathers. He glanced to see Mrs. Farquar, the old kook next door, pull down the shade. Forget her, and all the other odd-balls. His immediate problem was getting back inside. It was a tad nippy, and being slightly exposed didn’t help matters.
Some guys sniggered as they walked past. A gaggle of schoolgirls shrieked and ran in the opposite direction. “Ew, gross,” a congenial young lady commented as she hurried by, averting her eyes.
Thinking for a moment she was speaking German, he answered proudly, “Danke.”
Mr. Pelican looked up at the same window the cat-from-hell had squeezed through. If he could reach it, he could open it all the way and scamper in. Albeit a tight fit. Unfortunately, it was higher on the outside than from the inside owing to the fact that the ground was lower on the outside than the parquet within. Strange, he thought. He made a mental note to do something about that someday: either to raise the outside or lower the inside. But that was neither here nor there.
Mr. Pelican made an executive decision on the spot: he’d need a step ladder.
His neighbor, Arnold, was always good for things like that in a pinch. He marched across the street, stopping traffic in both directions. (“Daddy, look, a naked man!”) Arnold wasn’t at home, although Mr. Pelican swore he saw the curtains move. But there was a Plan “B.” There always is a Plan “B.” It’s all about figuring out what said Plan “B” was.
Upon much deliberation, Mr. Pelican decided that his particular Plan “B” was to march down to the local mom-n-pop hardware store and buy his own stepladder. He’s always meant to get one of those darned things, anyway. He hoped mom or pop would let him pay for it when he returned (fully clothed) with wallet in hand.
The problem with this Plan “B” was that mom-n-pop hadn’t arrived to open the shop yet, the hour being between six and seven in the morning. He stood in front of their storefront wondering if there was such a Plan “C” in his particular situation. The foot traffic was getting quite congested, this being downtown East Westport, and people were making their way to work. (“Pervert!” someone said, “Good day, sir,” he replied with a smile, putting his best face forward.)
Mr. Pelican began to feel embarrassed by the stares. He admitted it did seem a teensy bit strange from their perspective. Then a revelation hit him.
“Wait a minute,” he shouted with hands in the air. “This is all a dream. Yes, of course, what else would it be: a dream.” His shouts brought all the more attention than he already cared for. “Dreaming oneself naked in a crowd is the mind’s way of acknowledging insecurities and working through them at a subconscious level. Wonderful, how the mind works, don’t you think?” he said to the strapping young police officer in a crisp blue uniform who’d pushed his way through the crowd.
“I hate to break it to you, bud, but you’re not dreaming,” the strapping young officer in the crisp blue uniform said.
“Of course I am,” Mr. Pelican insisted. “See if I pinch myself I’ll – ouch!” He became a tad concerned when he didn’t wake up after a good-n-hardy pinch on the ol’ spare tire. The crowd laughed. Even the space aliens dangling from the street lights laughed.
Mr. Pelican received a free blanket and a ride in the back of a police cruiser. Then he got to see the inside of a jail cell. “Just until your competency hearing,” the nice court psychiatrist told him.
That’s when it hit him, “Oh, my God, no!” Mr. Pelican cried. “This is terrible.”
“What?” the jailer said. His name was McMellon. It said so on his brass nameplate on a triangular shaped thingie on his jailer’s desk. He sat with his feet up on the said same jailer’s desk.
“I left the water boiling.”
“I’d send someone by,” McMellon said, “but you said yourself you locked yourself out. And we’re not allowed to force our way in.”
“The back door is unlocked,” Mr. Pelican said. Then the absurdity of the situation hit him. There was Plan “C” all along. He felt slightly foolish that moment.
The jailer, McMellon, the one with his feet up on the desk, merely raised an eyebrow.
“Is this a nice place to work?” Mr. Pelican asked after a while.
“T’s okay,” the sergeant shrugged. He shifted his feet on the table. “You make what you want of it.”
“Sergeant McMellon? You think I can get a job here?” Mr. Pelican asked. “Maybe a senior detective or something? How do you get your foot in the door in a place like this?”
“Looks like you already did,” the sergeant said.
“No, really,” Mr. Pelican pressed.
“Well, you can’t have a criminal record, for starters.”
“I don’t have a record,” Mr. Pelican said, jumping up. “I haven’t been charged with anything yet, much less found guilty.”
“Hmmm,” Sergeant McMellon grumbled.
“I have a degree in English,” Mr. Pelican countered.
“Whoopie, you can read and write.”
“I also have a masters in anthropology and a doctorate in mathematics as well as—”
“Wait,” Sergeant McMellon said, standing up, “if you insist. I’ll get you an application. At least it’ll keep you busy and I won’t have to listen to you.”
As soon as the sergeant left, Mr. Pelican heard a commotion from down the hallway. Then two female officers marched Mrs. Pelican through and escorted her into the adjacent cell. He didn’t know she was Mrs. Pelican at the time, never having met her; and it was a tad presumptuous to think of this red haired lady as his wife so early in their relationship. All he saw was a naked woman being led into the adjacent cell wrapped in a complementary police-issued blanket, just like his. not to base a relationship on,
Before continuing, this might be a good time to circle back to last night’s party. The fact that it degenerated to drunken chaos was not a part of Mr. Pelican’s plan. Although a festive time was availed to all, and Mr. Pelican provided nothing but top shelf bottles for drinks, and hors d’oeuvres personally prepared from scratch from the best locally sourced ingredients, sandwiches for those who wanted to nibble, and a full meal for those who wanted to indulge, again, using nothing but the best organic ingredients. There was a purpose to the affair. Oh, did I mentioned he baked three desserts for the women?
Mr. Pelican had invited as many intelligent, attractive, and successful single women as he could. Besides himself, there was his old war time buddy, Sal Alphonzo, and a hired barman — that was as far as the male of the species went. The purpose of the party was to select one from one of those intelligent, attractive, and single women who would get a one-time chance to combine DNA and produce an offspring with the most intelligent man in the world. That being, of course, Mr. Pelican.
They came knowing full well the agenda. There would be no surprises pulled on unsuspecting damsels at the end of the night. Mr. Pelican made his purposes well known when he advertised his fête. Advertising mostly to the exclusive Ivy and Little Ivy colleges and universities that dotted the coast between two major metropolises to the north and south. Truth-be-told, he’d expected maybe one or two older professor types to show up: thinking better of their own looks than warranted, hiding their wrinkles around the eyes with slathers of makeup, desperate for a partner. But to his pleasant surprise, Mr. Pelican found himself ushering in one car-full after another of the most luscious college women-girls he had seen in his life.
He had a houseful of them, maybe thirty, thirty five, of said beautiful, attractive, successful single women to choose from. In fact, he saw the hunky barman taking down more than one girl’s phone number, and was sure Sal got a date or two after spinning his yarns of adventures in the Foreign Legion — in which he’d served alongside with Mr. Pelican.
There were games. Yes, games galore. Party drinking games, but with a twist. Answer a question and throw back a shot. The questions started out easy, the Trivial Pursuit type. But they quickly advanced into economics, physics, chemistry, engineering, philosophy, medicine, molecular biology. A wrong answer wouldn’t eliminate any one contestant, for an intelligent, attractive, and successful single woman may be knowledgeable in several disciplines, but certainly not all. Instead, there was a point system which moved the woman up or down the rankings. It wasn’t lost on Mr. Pelican that men often rank women by their looks, but he was ranking them based on their intelligence. He wondered if he were really that different after all from the common base man.
There was an icelandic blonde with almost white, whisp-like hair with the bluest of blue eyes. Another strawberry blonde in curls, she had with luscious lips and well endowed breasts which begged to burst free of her tight red dress. Then there was the petite brunette, hardly anything speak of for breast: lithe, limber, and athletic. Her answers were quick and sharp, even after downing too many shots, she seemed strongest in engineering, chemistry, and physics. She also had a firm grasp of Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem, explaining in terms of dreams: that you can’t know for certain that you’re dreaming until you wake up and then realize that it was all a dream, yet you still don’t know if after waking you’re in another dream, and so on. That way, you can never really prove you’re awake. Mr. Pelican thought her explanation quirky and odd, but admired the novel way she approached her understanding of this concept.
Then, there was the fiery redhead. Charming, with freckles and green eyes. Sharp and witty. But, she wasn’t the right red haired woman. There was another woman out there in the world somewhere and he’d know her when he sees her. Mr. Pelican had hoped that this woman of his dreams would make her way to his party, but despite all the beautiful women he could avail himself of, the right woman was not one of them. He began to wonder if this was the right venue to find this one.
Sal kept score. Mr. Pelican asked the questions and assessed the answers. The barman kept pouring shots. The women decided half way through, that if they had to each take a shot, so did Mr. Pelican.
Something you should know about Mr. Pelican, that although he may enjoy a finely crafted beer or two on a weekend afternoon, or take great care in pairing wine, he was not an avid drinker. These girls were in college. College equals drinking. Their tolerance was much greater than his.
In the end the score was down to the wire. The moment of truth was approaching for the lucky lady. It came down to the next question deciding the contest. Mr. Pelican, slurring his words for a long while by that time was hardly able to focus on the little card. As he tried to decipher the blurry gobbledygook that was printed in place of the question, Mr. Pelican passed out.
Yes, passed out. Fell over. Hit the floor.
What happened after that, Mr. Pelican did not know. He remembered snatches of consciousness where the women tried to revive him. Failing that, several tried to see get his flagpole to rise in his said same unconscious state. He remembered the space aliens laughing at his shriveled manhood with all those beautiful women around him, so disappointed, so willing.
He remembered one of the ladies saying, “Hey, Sal, tell me again about that beach house of yours.”
But that was all last night. He swore he’d never again try to keep up with college girls when doing shots. Not ever. Not ever in eternity. No way. No how. At least he was lucky he didn’t puke. Nonetheless, he was now sitting naked in a jail cell.
The hangover was wearing off, thanks mainly to the coffee Sergeant McMellon insisted he drink. It didn’t have the same beneficial effects as a rousing chai latte, but it did help clear his mind. Clear enough to appreciate the naked woman in the cell next to his, covered only in a police issued blanket, just like him. Yes, this was the redhead, the real one, the future Mrs. Pelican.
The future Mrs. Pelican slumped onto the bench and pulled the blanket around her shoulders. Still, he glanced at her Mona Lisa’s: soft, dainty, yet round and well formed, all on a smooth, clear canvas of hard-bodied, toned skin. Despite that, he couldn’t help gravitate his eyes to her fiery red hair and cute cheekbones, even though more prurient vistas of her lay open for his perusal.
She caught him looking. Mr. Pelican thought she’d say, “What are you staring at, jerk?” Or, something to that effect.
Instead she said, “Don’t tell me you got locked out, too?”
“Um, yes,” he replied.
“Let me guess, shaving your cat?” she ventured. She nodded towards the sergeant’s desk with his Bic razor and jar of mustard on the corner not yet filed away as evidence. “Try mayonnaise next time,” she added as she turned to him. “You get a much smoother cat for your effort.”
Mr. Pelican noticed that next to his pile of evidence, lay another razor. Hers, no doubt.
“Shaving your cat, too?”
“Doesn’t everyone?” was her matter-of-fact comeback.
He snatched a glance of her Venus on the Half Shell as she turned to him and let her blanket part.
“Like what you see?” she asked, all smarty-pants.
Mr. Pelican felt his face turn red. He was too embarrassed to say anything at the moment.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I let you have a peek.”
She had the same pleasing red fuzz as on the top of her head, but only curly and nicely trimmed. This woman, the future Mrs. Pelican, doesn’t color her hair, it really is authentically red. Perfect. How could such a perfect women even exist? And, on top of that, meet her at a chance encounter under like circumstances, that being they were both arrested for public nudity throughno fault of their own.
Doing an about face from his intentions towards the women of the previous night, he decided, then and there, that this genetic stuff is overrated, genius is developed through a sum of one’s life experience, not parentage. A contest in smarts was not the way to decide the perfect woman for him. He would know the right one if he sees her. And here, he see’s her. This is the woman he’d always knew would be the one for him. He only wished he’d have the power to freeze her in time so she’d look like she does now, sitting across from him in the jail cell, but he knew that was impossible. All he could really ask is she’d age gracefully along with him over the decades to come. That would be beautiful, too.
“It may be forward of me,” Mr. Pelican said, “and you more-than-likely have other things on your mind, but would you care to join me in a cup of coffee when we get out of here?”
“Don’t like coffee,” she said. “I’m not the coffee kind.”
“Oh, I see,” he said, disappointed.
“I’d kill for a steaming cup of chai though,” she added with eyes perked up.
“You can’t get chai tea just anywhere,” Mr. Pelican answered. “Not around here. But you’re in luck, I know of one place that serves it every morning, dear Mrs. Pelican.”