This is part of a serialization I am working on, dear reader.

Here is a summary of what has transpired…

When I got out of jail for DUI, I went to live with my parents again. My dad, 85, has been principal of the local high school for 40 years, and found a spot for me as a substitute teacher. At work, I met my new love, Rena Oblong, school psychologist.

We began a torrid affair. Rena took me to see her mother , Gladys Oblong, a widow with a companion-parrot, named Rudolf. At our meeting, Gladys served us all some beer. Alas, she gave Rudolf too much. He succumbed to alcohol poisoning. I volunteered to take him to the family vet, Dr. Nibbling, for treatment. Along with the Emmerling family dog Joseph, a 12 yr old lab with lymphoma .

Both animals were revived. Gladys called me and asked if I might take temporary custody of Rudolf. I agreed.

~

Rudolf was asleep in his corner of Rena’s bed. He was talking in his sleep , about General Petraeus of all things, and the widening sex scandal centered on our much decorated national hero. “emails, emails, too many thousands of emails to ignore, “ he was muttering.

Rena was sleeping on my chest, a very tricky postion for a guy to deal with, especially when he is awake and ready to start the day, with a full bladder. A gentleman doesn’t wish to disturb his lady when she is taking her rest. Until it becomes utterly unbearable, and he makes some subtle repositioning of his lover’s head and limbs, hoping he does not disrupt her slumber.

I began moving, and of course Rena woke up with a start. “Hey! I was sleeping!”

There was no way she was gonna go back to sleep, so I figured, it was time for us to begin a new day, together. I said, “Oh, I am sorry dear . Your brother woke me up. “ If you got a parrot sleeping in the bed with you, might as well cast the blame on him. He can hardly deny it . I gave him a quick kick with my leg to bring him to consciousness, to back up my ruse.

He jumped up and said, “ The details of the story will trickle out!”

Rena yawned and said, “Oh. Ok. What the fuck is he talking about, anyway? I never know…” She pulled the covers off of her and rubbed her eyes and looked down at her awakening body. “Hey. How come I don’t have panties on?” She insisted on sleeping in at least panties, for “bodily aesthetic reasons.”

“I dunno, “ I lied again. She’d continued with the beer long after Rudolf and I had taken our fill. There had been some sex, which I hope she remembered, because I’d tried a new move she seemed to enjoy at the time. She had thrown her panties off into the corner afterwards, then succumbed to the sandman. Grabbing onto my chest. Sleeping there all night. Usually she’d find a far corner of the bed to sleep in post-coitally, but not last night. I remembered everything…

“So here I am naked, huh? Well I guess it aint the end of the world,” she said.

“Hardly,” I told her. Rudolf was watching us, fluttering his feathers.

He said, “we must maintain relationship hygiene.”

Some dimwitted psychologist lady on Cnn had said that last night, when asked how such a debacle as the Petraeus thing had happened, and how we as citizens might avoid it.

“What’s that all about, “ Rena asked me.

“I dunno. He’s your brother, not mine. “

“Yuh. I guess so. Shit, I don’t wanna get up. I need more sleep. “

“Not coffee?” I asked, my guts screaming for caffeine.

“no,no,no…” she said, dreamily…

“Well, then, go back to bed. I am gonna get up, myself” I said..

“And do what?”

“Well, coffee, and a smoke , and maybe call Dad and see how he is.”

“yuh, ok…good luck with that…tell the parrot to keep it down. “

“Sure!”

I got up and Rudolf leaped off the bed to follow me. Rena snuggled back down for more z’s. I shushed Rudolf with the universal forefinger to the nose. He seemed to understand.

We went to the kitchen and I put on the coffee and the tv, at low volume. I sat at the kitchen table and sucked down a rich bold blend of coffee. Rudolf eyed me, and I knew that look, so I took out a measuring cup and filled it with coffee. He slurped it down. “The extent of the scandal is widening,” he said.

True, but I was not terribly interested. First of all, I had better things to do with my mental energy than trace out the weird widening web of weird kinky activity in our top military echelon. I changed the channel to my favorite show, Law and order, where shit was more clear cut. A mentally ill man was on trial for murder. The DA, Jack McCoy, wasn’t sure the poor fucker had done it. It was maybe his father, of all people, who had killed the poor woman.

Rudolf , having finished his coffee, told me, “we don’t have reasonable doubt.”

I said, “Man, you got that one right. “

Rudolf eyed his sister, asleep in the bed, and said, “Who’s the judge on this one?”

Repeating what he’d heard from Law and Order…

I took a glance over at Rena, her exquisite upper body nude, a hint of her buttocks showing above the sheet. I admit I have been trying to make a Dylan fan of the boy, so I quoted some lyrics to him, to further disorganize his rather too sharp mind:

“The judge, he holds a grudge
He's gonna call on you
But he's badly built
And he walks on stilts
Watch out he don't fall on you.”

Rudolf had been left alone for quite some time with only Dylan to listen to, on the cd player, so he was enraptured and thankfully distracted by these lines from an old Dylan tune, “Most likely you go your way and I go mine”.

He said, “I just can't do what I done before
I just can't beg you any more
I'm gonna let your pass
And I'll go last
Then time will tell just who has fell
And who's been left behind
When you go your way and I go mine.”

Rena stirred. Rudolf had woken her.

She said, sleepily, “ All you stupid headed men gonna be left behind, ha ha.”

Rudolf looked at me in alarm. I shushed him again, and Rena fell back asleep.

We boys watched the end of Law & Order.

It was one of the ones where justice prevailed.