It was finally starting to warm up in these parts as Holy Week got underway. Because of this, Miss Mabel and I were very happy, like baby chicks and bunny rabbits are happy in a meadow full of sunshine and fresh clover.

Miss Mabel had just left to visit the tanning salon when I heard sobbing outside the front door. I thought she'd returned a little early, and expected to find her asking me to give her the tanning accelerator she'd left on the kitchen table.

But it was Citizen Jim, and by the time I opened the door, he was wailing, tears flying from eyes and snot running out of his nose. "I'm so maaaaaaaaaad!" he said, grabbing my shoulders and shaking me. "Oooooh, I-I-I'm sooooooo maaaaaaaaaad!"

"Come inside and tell me what's wrong," I said, reaching for his arm.

He pulled away and stomped his foot. "I can walk by myself!" he shouted.

"Now, what has you so upset?" I asked. "And by the way, I have to say you look very nice today."

Citizen Jim was wearing a pair of olive drab parachute pants and a short-sleeved purple button down shirt made of silk. This new "look" was completed with an orange- and pink-striped clip-on neck tie. All that I recognized from his wardrobe were his white wrestling shoes.

"This is the kind of monkey suit they make me wear every day at Hoochie Koochie Press," he said, looking down disgustedly. "They say I gotta dress like a goddamn professional."

"And you do, that's true enough," I said. "Now tell me what's wrong."

"It's my job! I'm sick of it!" he said.

I patted his leg. "I know, Jim. We're all sick of our jobs," I said.

"No, I really, really hate mine! I loved it until this morning. But now . . ." he trailed off, staring at the floor.

"What happened?" I said.

"Well, I got a letter from a guy who hates me," Jim said.

"I can't believe that," I said. "I don't think anyone could ever hate you."

Jim pulled his hand back, preparing to pimp slap me. "Well, once again, you are WRONG! This guy hates me. And he doesn't just halfway hate me—he hates me like a cat hates a bath, or like a zombie hates a witch doctor. Pure, concentrated hate, I tell ya!"

At this, he began wailing again. Once he pulled himself together and dried his eyes and blew his nose on my shirt sleeve, he went on to tell me what happened, stopping every few sentences to cry some more.

"Precious Lamb, I have a feeling you shouldn't take this e-mail you received so personally," I said when he finished. "I've heard of this Gerard Jones, and I read that exact e-mail on his web site. He's mean like that to everyone, especially everyone who's anyone. And he's proud of it. You're just an innocent bystander."

"But—"

"Listen. He's got a whole web site dedicated to ranting and raving at agents and publishers and movie execs and various other people who don't care much for his work," I said. "He likes to berate and deride people for being money-grubby idiots because they won't pay him any of the money they're always grubbing after for the various rights to his work."

"Yeah, but—"

I took Jim's hand in mine. He raised my hand to his mouth and clamped his teeth on my knuckles like a bulldog chomping a soup bone, but I continued: "Remember the guy who used to go down to the Municipal Pier and fire a pistol at the boats on the water and purposely leave raw bait and fish guts on the wooden railing and then scream about being demoralized and oppressed by uptight capitalist pigs when the police would finally come and drag him away?"

"Oh my God! That was Gerard Jones?" Jim said, standing up and shoving the heels of his hands against his eyes. "It all makes sense, now!"

"No, that wasn't Gerard Jones. But that guy's a lot like Gerard Jones," I said.

A Confederacy of Dunces John Kennedy Toole

"Well, I aim to help this fellow out, even if it costs me my job," Jim said, sitting back down. "He says he's written the best book since Lolita, and that it's a thousand times better than A Confederacy of Dunces! If this guy's as good as he says he is, I could get me a nice, fat promotion at Hoochie Koochie Press when we sign him on and publish his book! If we hold him back from greatness, maybe we are a bunch of money-grubbing idiots without sense or reason."

I shook my head sadly. "Gerard Jones has a publisher," I told Jim. "His book is already in print, available at amazon.com and Barnes and Noble and a bunch of other places. It's even available from the Wal Mart web site, and he sells it from his own web site, too. This masterpiece isn't exactly stuck under a rock somewhere away from the eyes of an appreciative public. Lots of books sell well without being reviewed. And, anyway, I don't think he actually cares. I think he just likes cracking himself up by appearing to be a human cartoon. "

Jim turned red, my cue to get far away from him. "You're full of SHIT! You're trying to keep me from making a great discovery that could propel my career at Hoochie Koochie Press!" Jim screamed. "But you won't succeed! I'll show you! I'll prove to you and to all the 150,000 people who've rejected Gerard Jones that you're all wrong!"

"Maybe we are," I said, and shrugged.

"Damn right you're wrong!" Jim said, smacking my arm. "And when I'm through, Gerard Jones is going to be a household name, and he's gonna win all the awards denied him by a closed-minded, numbskull, nitwit bunch of elitist claptrap who wouldn't know a good piece of literature if it flew off a slush pile and bit them on the ASS!"

"That's the spirit! Rah rah rah! You go out there and make the world see that everyone who's anyone is dead wrong-wrong-wrong about Gerard Jones!" I said, shaking invisible pom poms in Jim's face. I stopped cheering and scowled. "Idiot."

Ginny Good Gerard Jones

"Yeahyeah. Like you care! You don't know shit about shit," Jim said. "And don't come crying to me when you need help getting your awful book published, because it ain't gonna be under any Hoochie Koochie Press imprint, that's for sure!"

Jim stalked out just as Miss Mabel returned. Her teeth were glowing in the dim light of the now-quiet kitchen. "What's the matter with him?" she asked.

"He's on a mission to prove me wrong," I said, shaking my head. "Again."

"Well, that probably won't take long," Miss Mabel said. "Is he coming back for dinner?"

!