napalmerski wrote:As I read my Tolstoy with one eye, I keep my other eye on the flickering TV screen and my third eye on the rat noses which are sniffing the air through the opening of the kitchen door. Above the little noses and whiskers are set black beady eyes, and behind them - nervous ears which move around like tiny radars. I pretend not to notice the rats, as not to encourage them.
But then the portrait of Ronald Reagan as a young artist fills the TV screen dangerously. His broad shoulders seem on the verge of slipping through the plazma #FF4080 ">(plasma)and into my room. I think briefly of slapping him with the Tolstoy, but that seems somehow unfitting. Instead I slowly get up from the couch, pretending to be looking at my magazines. I roll one and then turn and swat Reagan on the forehead, "git back, git back you critter!"
He fliches #FF4080 ">(flinches)and draws back, looking hurt, as if trying to show that he had never intended to invade my privacy. I hate these celebrity stalkers.
"And you too!" I shout at the rats and for them I save the heavier prose - I throw the Tolstoy at the door. Opening during its flight, pages fluttering like thoughts, the book reaches the door and freezes a foot from its target. The rats are impressed, their leader, a fat brown one with grey whiskers, scuttles forward and prostrates itself in front of me.
"That's better," I mutter and walk over to the book. It is still suspended in the air and refuses to budge even as I press it with one hand, then with two hands. Finally I decide to sit cross-legged on it, appearing to be a levitating yoga, meditating a floor above the floor.
The rats bring me a dead cat, but I know that this is their idea of a gift. I nod with royal absentmindedness and look at the TV. I don't trust it. The last time I was having wild sex with my girlfriend on the couch, a penis appeared on the screen and a hairy male hand proceeded to jerk it off. Almost made me lose my concentration, I tell you. Good thing there's Tolstoy to keep me up.