Ten thousand journalists descended on the Black Cat Bar & Grille
for breakfast, discomfiting greatly one Celsius Grande (born Carey Gurwitz
in Iowa 22 years earlier) who had had no greater aspiration for the morn-
ing than to chill out and maybe crack open his French textbook while the
tandoor warmed up. One bulldog from Entertainment Weekly pushed his way to
the front muttering "fries... garlic fries... hot stuff... spice it up..."
Celsius gave him warm vinegar intended for a house dressing and tried to
send him off. "No charge," he said. The big guy grunted and sank back into
the throng.

	Unbeknownst to Mr. Grande, the overflow was not mere bad luck, but
the result of tight security at a convention of forensics experts else-
where in the Marriott. They had been granted collective access to papers
from the investigation into Pepe Cardiff's death and his house's subse-
quent ransacking, so only badgeholders were allowed into the event rooms. 
A myriad of hacks with nothing better to do then decided as one to relax
on their employers' tabs until fake IDs came through. None of them, as
yet, were relaxed.

	Pepe shot some bad junk toward the end of his fifteen minutes of
fame and retired to Queens with endocarditis and $10,000 in the bank. His
death surprised everyone but Felix Noir, uptown art impresario and Cardiff's
sometime lover, who thought, incorrectly, that Pepe got in bad with the
vendors of certain black-market dictionary software products and had to be
rubbed out. New York's finest didn't pay any attention to him, but the
tabloids did.

	Tom Powell of VerbaTom Enterprises regarded his phone skeptically
for a moment before giving it the what-for. "Do you think I have nothing
better to do than answer ten thousand lurid questions from you people?
I haven't struggled to create the epitome of automatic vocabulary-lookup
programs just to be hounded by grave-robbers. My dear friend Pepe's death
was tragic. Tragic!" He knew his phone was tapped, so he added "Fuck
Hoover!" and slammed the receiver down.

	In the corner of the Black Cat, two federal copyright enforcement
agents were scowling. "I think it's a joke," one said, "like 'J. Edgar
Hoover.'" The other did not stop scowling. "That's pretty fucking allusive,
don't you think, for a guy who claims not to be illegally indexing ten
thousand copyrighted documents each day?" Their waitress's gorgeous hair
weave drew no attention from them whatsoever--nor did the unsavory gent
filtering through the crowd handing out forged coroner's licenses.

	"How's my hair?" asked Jill, swirling around for Celsius. "Fab-
ulous," he answered. "Can you take these samosas over to the two stiffs by
the jukebox and tell them that government tab they're eating on is about
to break five figures?"
	"Sure," said Jill, "but what's with the hippo stampede just now?"
	"Je ne sais pas, bro. Je ne sais pas."

written for the magnificent Rachel & Randy at Au Bon Pain #1 10/8/01

Rachel and Randy approached me before I was even done setting up in Harvard Square. I'd been frightened of writing in a place that was both public and potentially unfriendly, so it was doubly great to meet people so nice right off the bat.

It might seem like too much of a gimmick if I do it again, but the Slacker-like shifting from each paragraph to the next was fun, and it let me write something that (I think) was pretty good even while constantly talking to folks passing by who wanted to know what I was doing.

You may recognize the EW writer as Termite from several stories ago. Actually, you're more likely to recognize the Hoover joke, which I stole from George Carlin. I mean, I was alluding to Carlin. Paying homage. You know.

- everything is by Aaron Mandel; please ask first if you're about to steal something -

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