It was getting late on a Wednesday night, but I was still awake, happy that the regularly scheduled County Commission meeting had been canceled for the next day.

Just as I'd lowered myself into a tub of scalding water, the portable phone I'd carried into the bathroom with me started ringing.

My cat, Mister Meme, ran to the doorway of the bathroom. "You want me to get that?" he asked, then cackled and loped off sideways with his tail sticking straight up. This is his favorite joke, offering to answer the phone when I'm indisposed.

"Hello?"

"What kind of question is that?" Citizen Jim asked.

"Can I call you back when I finish my bath?" I said.

"Here's the answer to that stupid question: get down here and answer this door I've been pounding on for the last fifteen minutes!" he shouted before the line went dead.

It was dark outside, of course, but even so, I could see when I opened the door that Citizen Jim had let a full beard grow out on his face. He appeared to be dressed in some sort of Halloween costume.

When we got upstairs, I turned around to look at Citizen Jim and he burst into tears!

"Don't look at me!" he wailed. "Don't look at what a fool I am!"

Naturally, my heart was breaking to see Citizen Jim so upset. But I was still fighting the urge to laugh: he'd somehow squeezed himself into a ragged, moth-eaten tuxedo that was at least two sizes too small for him. On his head was a beaten up bowler hat with tufts of hair sticking out from beneath it, while his feet appeared to be covered in bread bags and stuffed inside leather sandals that had seen better days.

It was the beard, though, that kept me silent. It was a wild, bushy growth of wiry hair covering Citizen Jim's cheeks and neck, beginning less than half an inch from his eyes and creeping downward and outward like a scientific experiment gone wrong on the face of some doomed, working class protagonist in a Stephen King novel.

"Precious lamb, what's wrong?" I asked him.

"You're my only TRUE FRIEND IN THE WORLD!" he sobbed.

"What happened?" I asked. "Did ********* pretend she was blind again when you were supposed to watch girl-on-girl porn together?"

"No! No! The others. . . Worthless pieces of . . . Rat bastards . . . Make me
look . . . And left me . . .Then all those drag queens came and . . . Aaaaauuuugh!"

"Please try to pull yourself together," I said, stroking his arm until he slugged me.

He finally calmed down enough to speak coherently. "It wasn't *********," he said. "It was Martin and Sonny and Rick. They stood me up."

All Over but the Shoutin' Rick

I should have known! Martin, Sonny and Rick were constantly playing tricks on Citizen Jim as part of his initiation into their "secret club," which I've never believed is real. Citizen Jim and I had gone round and round about this on many occasions, but he was so obviously miserable that I decided to let it go this time.

"You probably read in People magazine how Rick and Jessica Lynch broke up, right? That's the whole reason he's in Fairhope, to try and get over Jessie. It like to killed him when she started dating Bruce Willis, as if Bruce is ever going to commit to another woman until he knows for sure Demi won't take his ass back," Jim said.

"What does this have to do with why you're here interrupting my bath?" I asked.

"I'm gonna interrupt your breathing when I strangle you if you don't pipe down. Anyway, Rick loves Fannie Flagg, and he was reading that Fried Green Tomatoes book like he does once every three months. He says he'd give his Pulitzer Prize to Winston Groom if he could write even one thing as moving as the all the nursing home scenes in Fannie's book."

"Are you going anywhere with this? Because—" I said.

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistlestop Café Fannie Flagg

"SHUT UP! I am pouring my HEART OUT here, and that takes TIME!" Citizen Jim yelled. "After he's done with Fannie's book for the hundred and fiftieth time, Rick gets this quote-unquote 'great idea, fellas!' He said we should all hop on a freight rain like Railroad Bill in Fried Green Tomatoes and throw food to all the poor people in Point Clear."

First of all, there's not a set of train tracks that runs within thirty miles of Point Clear. Secondly, there are no poor people in Point Clear. There might be a few families who benefit somewhat less than others from President Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy; however, the only hint of destitution in that area exists solely in the form of nightmares suffered by women in their 40s who know they're going to be traded out for trophy wives faster than they can say "Botox®."

But I didn't dare utter any of what I was thinking.

"Rick said we'd all meet by the railroad tracks that cross over Dauphin Street down by the canon, because he knew a boxcar was passing through there full of canned hams and whatnot. He said we needed to disguise ourselves like hobos so that people would think it was Railroad Bill and not us."

I gave Citizen Jim the once-over, satisfied with this explanation for the godawful way he looked.

"I was real excited! I didn't shave for two days, and got this outfit from the dumpster behind John Nelson's house. I had ********* drive me over to Mobile so I could wait on the guys," he said. "********* kept telling me it was just another trick, but that sounded like something you'd say, so I told her to shut up or that I'd shut her up with a punch to the mouth."

"No you didn't," I said, smirking and shaking my head. "You wouldn't dare say something like that to *********. She'd smack the living ca-ca out of you."

Citizen Jim looked at the ceiling and pursed his lips, then yelled, "Okay, but the rest of the story is TRUE! Now let me FINISH or I'm gonna POUND YOU!"

I sighed and said, "Fine. Go on."

"So I waited and waited and waited, and finally, a train starts coming down the track. I got ready to grab hold of Martin and Sonny and Rick so they could pull me onto the boxcar full of canned hams and whatnot."

"Do you have any idea what the whatnot was supposed to be?" I asked.

"I know I'm about to shove a fist full of knuckles down your throat if you don't shut the whatnot up. The train was moving too fast to hop on by myself, but I didn't see the guys. So I figured they must have gotten the date or the time mixed up or something. I started walking back toward town and when I got to the Bankhead Tunnel, a car full of drag queens pulled up beside me and taunted me and said I needed me some queer eye for the homeless guy and peeled away!"

He broke down again at the memory of this. "That's when I decided . . . and I
said . . . and I knew I was tired of being made a fool of by those fuckers and I hitchhiked here."

"Oh, Jim! I'm sorry they played such a rotten joke on you."

"Well, at least they didn't beat me up like they do those downtown hobos that hang around outside the queer bars in the Fruit Loop," he said, obviously missing my point.

"I meant I was sorry about Rick and Sonny and Martin being mean to you," I said.

Noticing a familiar flash of rage in his eyes, I instantly recoiled.

He stomped his foot. "BULLSHIT! Nothing makes you happier than to see me in agony like this, especially when it has to do with the guys. You want me all to yourself! You won't be happy until I don't have any other friends," Citizen Jim pouted. "Well, forget it! I'm gonna go back there and be with my pals just to spite you."

"You do whatever you need to do, precious lamb. I love you no matter what," I said to Citizen Jim as he stomped down the stairs.

He turned around and shook his fist at me. "You thought you'd get away with this, but you won't, Missy! You just watch."

A moment after he slammed the door, I heard tires screeching outside my apartment. Then the sound of a fist thumping metal echoed down the quiet street and Citizen Jim screamed, "I'm walking here! I'm walking here!"

I smiled inside, missing Citizen Jim already.

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