Citizen Jim couldn't have decided to visit at a worse time: I'd promised Farmer C. I'd help him write a speech for the annual Western Auto Spark Plug Convention, and I had five stories to write for the newspaper, not counting my weekly column. Plus I'd just started work on a new web site for Brewster "The Rooster" Robertson, and it was always hard to ignore the $25 per hour difference between what the newspaper paid me versus what I made doing web work.

I was already torn between duty and untold riches when I heard Jim outside my window.

"I've got your cat down here and he's gonna get kicked to death if you don't let me in!" Citizen Jim shouted, then said, "Stand still, Jay! I mean it!"

A quick head-count of the felines in my apartment told me that Jim was, in his desperation to get my attention, bluffing without doing any research. Typical. In response, I turned up the volume on my computer speakers. This made it almost impossible to split my concentration between a story about the drug bust during a recent Historical Society meeting and serious remarks about how "clean spark plugs can save lives."

I opened the window and stuck my head out, telling Jim, "Precious lamb, I love you. But you've got to go away! I'm busy!"

"Bullfrogs—you're never really busy! I hear that Lloyd Cole crap you're listening to, and I know what that means," he shouted. "I bet a million bucks you're up there crying over your old girlfriends! I bet an extra $500 you're up there drinking yourself into pervasive oblivion—and the clock ticks on!"

I slammed the window shut, and rolled my eyes as he began throwing pebbles—then dirt, followed by handfuls of grass—in my direction. All the while, he hurled threats at me that were so creative I had to stop what I was doing and write down a few just for future reference.

But the comment he made about hearing the music I was playing gave me a great idea, one that I was sure would get Citizen Jim out of my hair for at least an hour or two.

Sister Sweetly Big Head Todd and the Monsters

I selected the song "Sister Sweetly" by Big Head Todd and the Monsters from my MP3 playlist. Then I set the song to repeat ad infinitum and blasted it out the window.

Within seconds, Citizen Jim shouted, "Well, hell, Stimpy! You said you were busy! You didn't say you had a girl up there! Is it someone I know?"

"No! Go AWAY!" I shouted.

"Okay, okay. You ladies just pretend I never showed up," he said. "I'll go down to that video store and see if they've got a copy of Kissing Jessica Stein they'll let me watch while you're kissing whoever's up there."

Then he disappeared. Or so I thought.

Thus, lowering the volume of my music, I went back to work. It wasn't easy trying to seize upon anything interesting for my story. Obviously, if you've heard about one methamphetamine lab run by senior citizens that was initially financed by the sale of unregistered guns to felons and escaped mental patients, you've heard about them all.

If I knew Citizen Jim, I knew he would leave me in peace by walking around the block or telling the neighbors lies about me until he believed that I and the girl he imagined was in my apartment with me were "finished."

Eventually he did, indeed, return. But I didn't expect him to have such a crowd of people with him! Many were leaning against my car, and some were sitting on the branches of the tree outside my office window. Others were sprawled on the little patch of grass along the sidewalk.

I was struck dumb when I noticed the pencil-necked geek from the Parkersburg newspaper. Worse, he was running in wide circles behind Elsie, a lady I recognized from the Board of Education. With her arms flapping and her hands slapping at the air above her head, she shouted, "No comment! You tricked me once, but never again, Curtis! I don't know anything about this! I've got no scoops for you, so go on, now, and leave me alone!"

Then I realized an entire army of print and broadcast media-types, including my own boss, was beating on my front door. My worst fears became reality when I turned on the TV and saw a Channel 5 news personality interviewing Citizen Jim right outside my apartment.

"You say you know for sure that someone is upstairs 'fooling around' with Chicken Sheets. Do you have any idea who it might be?" the reporter asked Citizen Jim.

He shrugged. "No telling with her. She goes through the womens like a nursing home goes through prune juice and adult diapers."

At this, I smacked the TV so hard that I thought I burst a blood vessel in my hand. A noisy, unruly line of people had formed to take turns on a mini-trampoline set up in the middle of the street. Bouncing straight through the air, these people were, to my horror, at eye-level with the windows of my apartment every few seconds.

I shouted at the top of my lungs, "I'm up here BY MYSELF, people!"

But nobody seemed to hear me. Afraid to make eye contact with the trampoline jumpers and too embarrassed to go outside, I focused my attention back on the TV.

"Has she mentioned anyone lately that she might be seeing?" the news reporter asked.

"Nah. I just I know it's not Freaky Deaky Kiki, because everyone knows she's never gonna like Chicken Sheets THAT WAY," he said. "And I'm sure it isn't Ashley Judd, because they broke up a while back. Heck, if she's the only lesbo in this town like she's always saying she is, it could be a guy up there for all I know."

This got the attention of the stick-limbed rumor monger from the Parkersburg newspaper, prompting him to cut short his pursuit of the lady from the Board of Education. With one side-thrust of his bony hip, geek-boy managed to knock the woman from Channel 5 out of the frame she shared with Citizen Jim.

Elsie finally stopped running and fell sobbing across the hood of my car. Farmer C., who was standing nearby waiting for his turn on the trampoline, said, "I don't know why you're crying. I need that speech for the Spark Plug Convention real bad!"

"How do you know, how are you so certain, that Chicken Sheets is breaking her pattern of accidental celibacy as we speak?" the geek reporter asked, shoving a tape recorder in Citizen Jim's face.

"Ever since we were in our 20s, there's been this secret code, see," he said. "We've always had a deal that if one of us showed up at the home of the other and heard the song 'Sister Sweetly' by Big Head Todd and the Monsters playing. . ."

I turned off the TV and howled at the ceiling. I didn't need to watch to know how that explanation of our now-not-secret-code was supposed to end: the "deal" was that whoever showed up while "Sister Sweetly" was playing would creep away very quietly and wait for the other person to call him or her well after the coast was clear of whatever sexual escapade was going on during the aborted visit.

I could have kicked myself, now, for thinking I'd had such a "great idea" less than an hour before.

On one hand, Citizen Jim's excitement was understandable since, due to timing and the miles between us, neither of us had ever received this private signal from the other person.

On the other hand, Citizen Jim had clearly substituted the "creep away quietly" part of the promise with calling the news and gathering a horde of rubbernecks outside the door of whoever it was who'd "got lucky," in this case, "Chicken Sheets." Never mind that it was still just me and the cats and a pile of work in my little apartment while the crowd outside continued to grow.

I stepped away from the TV and glanced out toward the street again. And there was my priest, Father Ed, standing alongside his archenemy, Pastor Keenan; the men were staring up at my window with their arms crossed over their chests. I groaned aloud to realize that they were both looking very sour, seeming to be in agreement for the first time ever.

Then I noticed Elsie standing in the center of a group of people: she was talking a mile a minute and gesticulating wildly until she stopped suddenly and pointed to her left. The whole crew whose attention she commanded turned in one well-choreographed move to look at the geek reporter from the Parkersburg newspaper.

Just as he raised his digital camera to snap a photo of Citizen Jim, the angry mob overtook the reporter. In the meantime, Elsie climbed atop my car and broke off a skinny branch from the tree limb directly above her head. With it—and with all the spunk of a cheerleader during a half-time show—she directed the pencil-necked geek's systematic trouncing.

"There's my comment, Curtis! I hope you've got your tape recorder on!" she yelled.

As soon as the police, the fire department and the Emergency Medical Services team responded to my frantic 911 call, Citizen Jim opened my door and shouted up the stairs, "If you girls aren't decent, you better cover your eyes cuz I'm coming up there!"

I immediately cued an endless loop of "Midnight at the Oasis" on my MP3 player.

From now on, I decided, this would be the "secret code" to let Citizen Jim know that someone was hiding behind the door with an iron skillet in one hand and a sledge hammer in the other . . .

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