When I arrived home after a trip to the Towne Bookstore on Saturday evening, Citizen Jim was sitting outside my door. Straddling her bike and holding an oversized earphone in each hand was Lulu Whippy, singing and bobbing her head in time with music only she could hear.

Whatcha gonna DO
Do you wanna geddown
Whatcha gonna DO
Do you wanna geddown . . .

She paid no attention to me, as she was so caught up in her singing. Citizen Jim didn't pay much attention to me, either, since he was so caught up in cleaning his fingernails with a pirate's cutlass.

"Do you want to come in?" I asked.

Citizen Jim looked up, half-smiling. "No, I don't really have time. I just stopped by to tell you one thing," he said.

Of course, not many people would consider it "just stopping by" to travel 850 miles through five states perched on the bicycle handlebars of a half-wit like Lulu Whippy. But this is why I love Citizen Jim with all my heart.

"Okay. I'm all ears," I said.

Citizen Jim tilted his head and craned his neck to get a better view of my backside. "I'd say you're all ASS these days," he said. "But that's not important right now. What I got to say isn't pretty, but I don't want you to go and get your feelings all hurt and shit so that I have to rap your face with a knotty stick."

"Okay, but—"

"SHUT UP! This is part of the problem!" he shouted. "Listen. These Gentlemen Callers stories are getting out of hand. I couldn't even finish the last few."

I glanced over at Lulu Whippy, whose eyes were closed as she shouted the lyrics to a song to which she seemed pathologically unable to stop gyrating.

GET DOWN ON IT!
Come on and
GET DOWN ON IT!
Baby baby
GET DOWN ON IT!

"I don't understand," I said.

"Well, that's not my problem, if you know what I'm saying," Citizen Jim told me. "To make it a little clearer, just think about that scene in Amadeus when the guy who commissioned Mozart to write some tunes tells him the only thing wrong with his music is that there's 'too many...notes.' That's the problem with your stories: they've got too many words!"

I shrugged. "Well, okay, but—"

"And you keep dragging these other characters into the scenes. We don't need to see that poor pencil-necked geek reporter from the Parkersburg newspaper getting the shit kicked out of him every time we turn around. And don't get me started on Farmer C. and Citizen Dan!"

"I don't know what to say," I admitted. "I didn't realize you had such a problem with all that."

"It's just supposed to be you and me," he said. "Not you and me and a bunch of people I never even met."

"What about Mitchell?" I asked. "You know Mitchell."

"Well, it's okay to mention Mitchell, seeing as there'd be no way to pollute the web with the Gentlemen Callers stories without him," he decided, then cocked his thumb behind him. "And you're allowed to mention Lulu, but only if she happens to ride me up here on her bike."

Lulu Whippy had turned up the volume on her Sony Discman to such a level that we knew she was, at that moment, competing with the recorded voice of Anita Ward:

YOU CAN RING MY BELL-ELL-ELL!
RING MY BELL! MY BELL!
DING DONG DING!

"I'll try to do better. I promise," I said. "Is that all you need to tell me?"

"I think so. You're not pissed off, are you?"

"Not at all. Bye," I said, and stepped inside.

I slammed the door shut and started up the steps to my apartment, but I could still hear Jim talking until I got inside and closed the door at the top of the stairs.

"It's good you're not throwing one of your hissy fits, because I didn't want to have to start cutting off you fingers with this cutlass just to make my

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