I was sitting out on the balcony, watching puffs of smoke dance between me and a moon half gone from full.  It was cold, sometime in mid-March.  They call it jacket weather because you'd have to be insane to be outside in it without a jacket.  Sanity, I always say, is like the weather: it's just a matter of degrees.  And there I sat enjoying the cold steel pinch of freshly falling snow on my awesomely chiseled and generously wooly Alec Baldwin he-chest when I thought of her again.

     Veronica Winslow.  She had me wrapped around her finger like a cheap piece of carnival jewelry.  She was just too classy to be seen wearing me, and I was likely to leave a rash wherever I made skin contact.  Veronica Wislow.  That one in a million gal that stepped into the limelight of my world.

     I took the memory of that first intoxicating breath of her perfume and let my hands dance all over it, shaping and molding it into something in this moment and bringing her into fantasies that I had long promised myself I would try to avoid indulging in.  I promised to make some kind of amends with the universe for the horrible, horrible things my imagination was doing to her.  I'd plant a tree.  Adopt a puppy.  Carbon credits.  Anything.

     It took me half an hour and a fifth of Jameson after she walked out of my house before I jumped onto Craigslist and put up my ad:

Do You Like Alec Baldwin? Then You're In Luck, Weirdo! - 44 (Colorado Springs, CO)

I'm a disturbingly handsome surgeon in Colorado Springs with a sudden need to indulge in a disturbing sexual fantasy that just might require a hospital stay on my part. Keyword: Disturbing.

Not to worry... this is considered perfectly legal between two consenting adults in most of the western world, however it would be beneficial if you could provide some form of recent MRI and/or blood work as proof of your eligibility to partake in this festival of throbs and fluids. You may also be required to sign a legal release form.

So whatta ya say, freak? Wanna test the boundaries of human endurance with a man whose chiseled good looks, fluffy and abundant chest hair, and seductive eyes may just bring you to the first of many, many heights of ecstasy all by themselves? Then drop me a line, and make peace with the God of your parent's choosing, because things just won't be the same after this!

Oh yeah! No uggo's!

     Evangeline answered the ad within ten minutes.  She was a short young college co-ed with a tribal tramp stamp that I found myself snorting lines of crushed Provigil off of.  Her face was a tackle-box variety of piercings sweetly resting beneathe hair that was like the paint isle at Home Depot came under shotgun attack.  She was on her fifth DUI so she caught a ride from her dumpy little bleach-blonde roommate Bethany that cried quietly in the dark corner and watched as I acted out my foul, foul fantasy.  Somehow the seething jealousy of Bethany only added to the new depths of personal depravity I was exploring.  I found myself fascinated at the seemingly limitless depths which I was able to imagine, verbalize and ultimately act out and I would occasionaly throw Bethany a wink of appreciation.

     After the act was completed and Bethany and Evangeline robbed me of pretty much every piece of electronic equipment in this quadrant of the Compound, I found my way back out onto the balcony to soothe the rapidly blistering friction burns on my exposed flesh in the cool glaze of snow.  I watched the two roommates from the balcony as they loaded up their truck with my personal possessions, but found no will, energy, or desire to chase after them despite their also being at a disadvantage due to Evangeline's new bowlegged swagger and Bethany being the proportions of a tick about to pop.  Evangeline had earned what she was stealing from me, and anything she can sell it for could help pay for any delayed unintended "consequences".  Rights ain't rights unless you exercise them once in a while.  Something in how absolutely calm and poised Evangeline was upon discovering the subterranean salt mines of my sexual requests tells me that she was to the "right to choose" what Charlton Heston was to the second amendment.  This night with the Doc was just another night at the firing range for her, and time would tell if I hit a bullseye.

     I had just about drifted to sleep when there was another knock at the door.  I was just starting to fly through the clouds, cushioned miles above and looking down on cityscapes lit up into mosaics of the Brothers Baldwin.  Stephen winking from below, Daniel gently licking his lips, William with that smile, and Alec.  Sweet Alec.  A million lights from a million homes twinkling into something a million times more beautiful than the sum of its parts.  The eyes were too beautiful for me to look into directly, and they fired up at me like beams of light and then... then came the knock.

     It was the knock of a cop.  You can tell it's them knocking.  They knock like they want to punish the door.  They're tired, they're pissed, maybe they've got a little bit of a drinking problem and it's just about time for that mid-shift nip.  Any which way you cut it, when a cop is knocking on your door they're not there to make friends.  And I wasn't too excited to be the thing standing between whoever this flatfoot was and his Gentleman Jack with a Budweiser back.

     "I'm naked."  I shouted, casually strolling into the entry hall with a can of air freshener.  Even though the Boddicker Compound is technically and legally an Iraqi embassy due to a few paperwork glitches a few years back, I didn't feel like getting hassled by some cops for a little weed stink.

     "Open the door!"  A deep, rough voice bellowed.

     "Are you here to respond to my Craigslist ad?  Can you come back in an hour or so?  I gotta drink a protein shake and some raw eggs to get another round in the chamber."

     I walked over to the security monitor and saw two plainclothes cops standing there in the soft flurries of snow.  I recognized these two.  Detective Hubley and Detective Nauls.  Hubley was the fat one.  You'd think he swallowed a third partner in the group and Nauls was just too chickenshit to say something about it.  Not that Nauls could do much about it anyway.  He was one of those little guys with a big chip on his shoulder.  He was bald on top with a band of wispy red hair circling the back of his head and strangely joining under his lip in one of the most accomplished mutton-chop moustache configurations ever witnessed in recorded history.  He liked to think he was a bad-ass when he hauled his Harley Davidson to bike rallies on a trailer behind his compact Fiat on the weekends.  Most of the time the bikers would smell Narc all over him and stomp him within an inch of organ failure but for the most part he enjoyed the human contact.

     I could barely register my complete disappointment at seeing those two thugs when the door suddenly burst in, throwing splinters and clanging door hinges across the opulent marble entry-way.  Hubley had kicked the door in with one swoop of his mighty hind paw.  Nauls was a big man when he had Hubley around.  You could see him grow a full foot taller when he was with his rotund behemoth partner.   Hubley, however, was only good for tasks which involved leveraging gravity to one's advantage.  Nauls walked in behind the giant orb of Hubley and shook his head, preparing to speak in that dumb hick speak he was known for.  I promised myself that I would smoke one joint for every "Y'all" he dropped during his ramblings.

     "Well shit my britches, y'all," he twanged out.  Score one J for Doc.

     "What the fuck do you want, Nauls?"  I yawned and motioned for them to follow me into the living room which was freshly without it's antique vases and flat-screen television with 100 disk DVD changer loaded to the gills with Baldwin movies and porn.  I dropped to the couch, wincing at the chafing.  Lanolin would need to be applied liberally once I 86'ed these yahoos.

     "Looks like you got fuck-burn."  Nauls dropped himself onto the recliner and proceeded to much on a nearby open bag of Doritos.

     "That's very observant of you, Nauls.  You may just make detective yet."

     "I am a detective, y'all.  See?"  He pulled out his badge and showed it proudly in front of my face.  "I know you're tryin' to make fun of me, y'all.  I ain't no idiot.  I know what the fuck two plus two equals."

     "Yellow?"

     "You think you're cute.  Is that it?  Well tell me, mister enjoyer-of-things-that-appear-to-be-cute.  Tell me what you think of this."  He tossed a business card across the coffee table, landing it in a bowl of fresh salsa that was only slightly befouled in this evening's events.  I picked it up, flicking away a stray piece of onion from the corner, and noticed a particularly foul odor emanating from it.  It was one of my cards, with the address clear as day, and the supple lips of Alec Baldwin slightly obscured by a small speck of Habanero pepper.

     "This card smells like ass."

     "That's 'cause we found it up the ass of a dead guy."

     "I see."  I gently laid the card down and made my way to the kitchen to retrieve tongs, a plastic bag, a lighter, and hand sanitizer.  "Go on."  I offered as I proceeded to run my fingertips over open flame, sanitize, flame, sanitize, rinse, dry, weep, and repeat and then place the card in the zip-lock bag.

     "Well, technically it was half an ass we found it up.  One of the ass cheeks was sanded off.  I mean clean off.  Face too.  Hands were lopped off.  And a big hole was cut out of the lower back.  It was sick, y'all."

     "You don't say?" Rinse, flame, dry, weep.  "Say... I don't want to tell you guys how to do your job or anything.  And I know that you've probably given this a whole bunch of thought already which is why you felt comfortable in approaching the way you did with the card and all... but shouldn't you have put this card in an evidence bag?  You know... instead of flicking it into my salsa.  I really was enjoying this bowl of salsa.  And I kind of feel like you ruined it.  Even if I could section off the spot where the card landed to try and isolate the area and perhaps salvage some of the salsa, there will be always be that underlying doubt in my head.   You know?  It's a thick, chunky salsa, I will grant you that.  But it does have some liquidity to it.  So anything that might have washed off of the card... you know... little flakes of dead-guy ass and all that that entails... that could very well be roaming free within the salsa that I thought I salvaged."

     "What's your point?"

     "Well, my point is, Detective Nauls, that I feel this could have all been avoided if you had followed some elementary evidence gathering procedures and placed this card in a bag.  It kind of seems like an important clue to your little murder mystery."

     "Woah, woah, woah, y'all!"  He snatched the bagged card out of my hand.  "Now who the hell said anything about a murder? "

     "You're right.  My mistake.  But you will grant me that I'm a little bit right for being suspicious, even if I didn't kill him?"

     "So did you kill him?"

     "I'm gonna go ahead and lock into a story right now.  No.  Chances are I was gettin' the good ol' egg treatment when your guy checked out.  You know?  Laid and then fried."

     "I like eggs."  Hubley burped.

     "Then y'all got any idea as to why we found this card in his posterior when every other method of identification removed so deliberately?"

     "Maybe to frame me?"

     "Really?  Well somethin' like that would take a little bit more evidence.  I don't suppose you'd let me have a look around this place?"  He started flipping through some magazines, showing me that he was just getting warmed up.  I figured I'd let him get half way through the really hard-core porn stack before I raised my objection.

     "Look... usually when I kill someone I like to toss the murder weapon and all that evidence into the river.  Oh shit..."  I shrugged.  "Well, I can tell you with a fairly moderate to acceptable degree of certainty that I didn't kill your guy."

     "Y'all keep makin' with your funny jokes, you fuckin' quack.  One day that smart mouth is gonna get y'all into a predicament."

     "I usually just pay cash for my predicaments."  I stood up and waved to the door.  Nauls took the hint and stood up but Hubley was a little slower on the uptake.  "Hey, Kong.  Make with the walk-walk and get the fuck out of here with this Clint-Howard-with-a-mutton-stache partner of yours."

     Nauls and Hubley got to the door after Hubley indulged in a few helpings of chips and salsa.  I could only look over to Nauls and register an expression somewhere between "I'm terrified right now" and "I blame you for this".  Nauls simply looked at me, blinked and then prodded his lumbering partner along, warning him of the probability of e-coli.

     "We'll be in touch."  Nauls said as he walked out into the night.

     "You owe me a new fuckin' door."  I shouted out to them.  It was too late, and a moment later they were simply two distant taillights driving into an icy cold night.

     I had time to take a look at the card through the plastic bag before Nauls returned to collect it (and receive a further warning of my intent to pursue a replacement door).  On the back, smeared words written in felt-tip pen appeared to spell out "Groovy Loads", but through the running of the ink and the dark, thick salsa it was hard to make out.

     I quit counting the number of "y'alls" after six, so I rounded up the number of joints I'd smoke to ten just to be safe and baked myself into a nice foggy nap.  It had been an interesting day, and I was anxious to find out what the morning had in store.  My chafing friction burns tingled as the cold air of the broken front door danced gently over them and I fell asleep to thoughts of Veronica Winslow.  Morning couldn't come soon enough.