The TV in my apartment flickered as I sat on my couch with a slice of cold mushroom pizza, idling away the hours on another lonely Friday night.

I missed Lisa. It felt like it had been months since I'd seen her. Not as many months as, say, Graham's number, which is the largest number ever used in a mathematical proof and can be constructed by taking the value of G(64) where G(1)=3^^^^3 (using Knuth's up-arrow notation, in which a double up-arrow operator denotes iterated exponentiation and in general an N-arrow operator expands into a right-associative series of N-minus-1-arrow operators) and G(n) for n>1 equals 3^^^^...^^^^3 where the number of up-arrows in each term is equal to G(n-1), because even calculating 3^^^3 (with only three arrows instead of four) produces a tower of 7,625,597,484,987 stacked exponents, and the value of G(64) itself couldn't be written even if you had really tiny handwriting and a piece of paper the size of all the universes that could ever possibly be imagined to exist even in a "Star Trek" movie, but still a long time. And yes, I know those are carets and not actual up-arrows. If it bothers you that much, print out a copy of this paragraph and draw a little vertical line under each one. Anyway, I did miss her, and as I sat on my couch pondering exactly what purpose a number as large as G(64) could possibly have, and whether my phone number would occur in any ten consecutive digits if you could somehow write out the entire value, the TV continued to flicker and the pizza got even colder.

... certainly as dark and stormy as anyone in the village could remember, even the really old people who did nothing but sit in the park playing backgammon and reminiscing about the old days, which had never seemed as dark and stormy. The fluffy, menacing clouds seemed to roll in across the sky like bouncers gliding across a sawdust-covered bar after one drink-fuelled red-neck bumps into another spilling beer over his cowboy boots, and would have scared the sun out of the sky if it had not already been night time. Suddenly there was a flash of lightning that made the children watching from out of the window behind a raised corner of their bedroom curtains recoil in fright and consider sidling off to their parents' room for comfort, before deciding that it would be a sissy thing to do. The children silently counted aloud the tense seconds before the thunder thundered around the valley and made them hide under their eiderdowns wishing that society wasn't quite so macho and that they could be sissies after all. Lightning struck again, not in the same place of course as that would be beyond all believable coincidence, but quite nearby, lighting up the road into town and revealing the dark figure of a rain-drenched man fighting against the wind, and losing badly as he, for the figure was unmistakably male, though quite out of shape and obviously unused to battling the elements of nature in this way, which made his presence there all the more intriguing, staggered past the disused post office and headed towards the brightest building in this small town, the bingo hall. The man was plunged back into relative darkness, the sound of his trudging through the muddy puddles drained out by the return of the thunder.

Suzy watched him from across the room and thought that her heart might burst like an overripe tomato put in a microwave on high. He was the most perfect man she'd ever seen. His hair was the color of a pale egg yolk and gleamed brightly in the sun, reminding her of the shiny yellow 1-ball in her grandfather's pool set that they used to play every Sunday after eating overcooked roast beef with that strange blue-green tinge accompanied by undercooked potatoes. She couldn't see his eyes because she was too far away and his eyes really weren't that big, at least not big enough to see from thirty feet away in a smoky room that wasn't very brightly lit, but she knew that they were that special shade of green that you only see on the bark of trees, or occasionally on Chinese food that has gotten pushed to the back of the refrigerator for several months. The muddy brown cashmere sweater he wore highlighted his broad shoulders and made her long for the day when he would hold her tight and whisper sweet nothings into her ear, or maybe nuzzle her neck, but definitely not chew on her earlobe because she couldn't stand the feel of that, it was in the same category as fingernails on a chalkboard, not that kids knew what that was like anymore because chalkboards had been replaced with the dry erase kind with the markers that made the teachers happy all day long. But she longed to hear what he'd say because she was pretty sure that it would be better than her wildest imagination, which could be pretty wild after a couple of glasses of wine sipped in front of her flickering Sugar Cookie-scented candle.

Jesse James was clearly overhung and allowing his impatience to show when he banged on the door of the old shack where Calamity Jane was snoring off a jar of moonshine downed in the company of Scarlet O'Hara and Brett Butler; these Southern belles having celebrated the fact that Jesse had just robbed Fort Knox and he had run Pinkerton's men ragged all over the country and they still hadn't caught him and watching Pinkerton's men running ragged was always good for a laugh because they took themselves so very seriously - Pinkerton's men that is, not Calamity and Co.

"Git yer rear in gear, Calam, Ima here to git married and mah shotgun is loaded ter force yer if necessary. (Check cowboy dialect). He figured that it was a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. (Check source of quotation - try Seven Brides for Seven Brothers). Jesse was rich now and he wanted a wife but he drew the line at dancing and prancing with planks of wood, so nobody better make him.

"Come on, Calam, I'll take you to places you've never been before," he cajoled, smiling inwardly at this double-entendre but not having a clue at the same time what a double-entendre was, since he was not into high-falootin' fussy foreign language having only ever used Anglo-Saxon words for descriptive cussing.

Calamity pushed her tousled head through the crack of a loose board in the shack and blinked as Jesse looked on in deep rapture, taking in her bedraggled hair, her blotched skin and her strawberry lips, all the while his heart throbbing in concert with someplace else; his head was ready to explode.

"Are yer coming or not?" he ejaculated.

Jocelyn had sunk into an ever deeper depression since her second cousin's brother-in-law, Tony, had jilted her for his best friend's third wife. Her depression was at first tinged with hope that he would return to her, but in no time at all it turned from the sort of depression that could be termed a love disappointment into a dark, swirling, depression that could be likened to walking through treacle; and not a light, honey-hued treacle of the sort that is used to make that coffee-with-cream tinted light toffee, but that dark, almost black, treacle that goes to make old fashioned toffee - the color of molasses - dark, black and sticky; only darker and stickier, so that walking through it was like wading through mud--only not ordinary dirt-mixed-with-water mud, but that gloopy, quicksand type of mud where it's difficult to get yourself out without someone throwing a rope and pulling you out; yet, somehow, even worse than that.

It took a hold of Jocelyn's mind like an invisible mist that descends and engulfs the brain so that it cannot think straight; this swirling, suffocating, mist moved into her very soul, like something from a horror film, covering her every miserable thought of Tony in cotton wool so that it smothered her will to function; sapped her energy, and turned her into a veritable Zombie so that she could barely rise from her bed. This mist, not light and airy, like smoke or steam, but dense like a thick fog on a dark night, invaded and enveloped and encircled her very being, leaving her limp and in a very dark, lonely and miserable place.

This, then, is where we find our heroine and where our story begins.

I knew the sexy dame was big trouble as soon as she walked into my office, though it was less of a walk and more of a saunter or maybe a prowl, like a big cat hunting a fat deer in the middle of an icy winter after all of the other game is gone and it's on the verge of starving. She had sweet, gently-rounded curves like the Hindenburg before it caught fire and was still queen of the skies, but she had more curves than the Hindenburg, which only had one really big curve and she wasn't quite so cylindrical so she more resembled a trio of perfectly placed Hindenburgs flying in a very sexy formation. The way her dress clung to those curves made me think that she might catch fire in the same way as the famous dirigible and I hoped she didn't do it in my office since the only thing I had on hand was half a bottle of Jack Daniels that was guaranteed to make the flames burn even hotter, not that she could get any hotter than she already was. Her blonde hair was too bleached to be her natural color, but it looked good on her anyway and I decided not to give her fashion advice, since she had a rock the size of a silver dollar on her finger and the defining piece of my wardrobe was a trench coat that wasn't worth the mud that had splashed up the back of her fishnet stockings. The whole package was tied up with full, pouty lips that looked like they'd done 3 or 4 rounds with Joe Louis, but definitely not more than 5 rounds or they'd have been too big for her sultry face.

Call me an old man, a mad recluse who knows your world only through the time-yellowed pages of long-forgotten books. Call me a dreamer, a lost prophet, I have been all of these during my jaded life, as well as a hairdresser and a typewriter repairman. You can call me Daniel, Roy or Edna or any of the begotten Biblical names, for I too am a descendant of Adam as was my father and his before him and so on as ye shall see in chapter 3 to 785 of this tome where I shall give but a breviloquent recapitulation of my impecunious family, immigrants from south Eden who came to this country with only lavender-colored lint in their pockets-- and bellybuttons. Call me these names, but you dostn't ever never call me Ishmael, for that name makes my soul weep! How shall I begin? Perhaps twas that stormy November's eve when Satan, that most unwelcome guest, first set foot upon my newly painted doorstep, soiling my varnished mahogany. He had forgotten to wipe his boots on the squirrel-shaped boot scraper I'd lovingly set outside for that purpose. But I digress-- my eyes were beholding a most astounding demonstration on the home shopping network when this impolite interloping imp, Satan, interrupted with a gravelly voice whose soniferousness replicated the discordant cacophony of freshwater pearl cufflinks when you've ensnared them in a Westinghouse can opener. "Ishmael", said he, "Your soul for an onion dicer!" I paused for a moment, for I already had a kitchen full of the best food processors that have ever flickered onto channel 62. But then I contemplated, "What if perchance there is something that would dice onions without making me cry." A tear rolled down my grizzled cheek just thinking about that.

The gravid storm clouds, pregnant with rain, gave birth to wind as well (a bawling wind strong enough to tear apart the fragile aluminum skin of an airliner), and were also delivered of hail, which danced across the falling pieces of TransGlobal Flight 27, a brand-new A-340 making its maiden journey, bound from London but now not to New York, the city that never sleeps, where no one yet knew of its plight, but to the storm-tossed depths of the North Atlantic, where cod swam curiously among the shattered remnants thrust there by the angry gale, staring into the eyes of the deceased.

Of course Captain Jack O'Rourke, Senior Captain of TransGlobal Airlines, reaching across the slumbering curves of his wife, National Transportation Safety Board Accident Investigator Kathy O'Rouke, to turn off the alarm clock, and silence its incessant pleas, did not know this would be his fate in less than five hours. Nor did Kathy. Had they known, they might have slept in.

There had been a day before, just like the day before the one yesterday. But I'm just having trouble remembering what I should be able to remember quite easily, given that I am only attempting to remember 'yesterday' which, if I remember correctly, I last encountered less than 12 hours previously.

But on this second day of the weekend, a sleepy Sunday morning, I stirred softly from the deepest slumber I never asked for. So profoundly deep, I couldn't climb out of it. Even now in my awakened state, an unwelcome dreamscape smothers my memory like a clouded veil, awash with ripples of watercolour grey. I couldn't remember anything concrete, the images returned to me in a random patchwork of static pictures; fresh but with no fluidity, only weight and stiffness; like a big boulder stone. This dream lingers heavily inside me, like cold curry.

I persisted with my arduous mental walk back to conciousness. I blinked, until my eyes found focus. They were warmly welcomed by the shimmer of sunlight, instantly brightening my day. Glad for the sun, I plumped up my pillow in child-like excitement, causing a blizzard of activity you only see in the brightest light. The orange and gold rays highlighted the swirling particles of dust I had agitated, they floated and bounced everywhere like microscopic bubbles frozen in chilled apple cider.

It's taking me a lifetime to fully wake up, even though part of me doesn't want to be awoken, which is why I am not too sure if I am actually awake. I could still be asleep, dreaming that I am awake, but dreaming.

Not intending to state the obvious, Sunday is a day of rest. So, without a second thought, I turned around 360 degrees precisely and let my head nod back off.

She asked for Detective Acme, while I saw only legs, probably because my Fedora was real low, as I like to look mysterious because I'm a detective, which is now obvious. Plus, I beat up people for cash.

She carried a broom, which probably wouldn't kill, but the bristles would be annoying, particularly because they were made of stiff hay. I tried lighting a match on my 5 o'clock, but I'm a detective, not a cowboy. So I used my pink Bic.

She was new in town, in trouble: Jerry. He was outside, somewhere. She flashed almighty dollars, so I went outside to take care of business. A Chapparal cock sped by. And there: Jerry. A mouse with a short man complex. He saw us, we him. The broad screamed, as did an elephant carrying money sacks marked with dollar signs. It ran, but slipped on a banana peel and took me out. Detective, elephant: done. Peanut vendor: displeased.

Budgies or plump boobies -- I hope they were those ones -- flew equidistantly-spaced around my head. My black eye needed a ribeye.

Money bags spilled. Now, Jerry's eyes had dollar signs, not literally because that would indicate ocular dysfunction, but metaphorically, like how Dumbo was actually tripping when he saw pink elephants, but they can't say that in Disney films. Jerry: dazzled by loot --" he wouldn't be bothering anyone just yet. The broad was up a tree, scared of hurting herself coming down.

"Use the umbrella," I said. She floated down while three flautists and a harpist played a descending glissando thing. It was pleasant.

"Stay put," I said. "Everyone's a character here," I said. "Animated clichés. You, me, everyone. Learn the patterns, you'll be alright." With the broad safe, I turned to Jerry, dynamite and concertina boxing glove ready.