Monkey's Paw

Quoth the Raven 2
Originally uploaded by evita2005.

Dear Lady Ursula, let me tell you of a quaint stroll that took me to a Shoppe of Odd Repute. There I was, walking down the street on a sunny winters day when my eye fell on a tiny, asif toy playing card on the ground, a two inch by one inch seven of spades as if slapped down by the fine fingers of a vagrant fairy. Except that when I picked up the card, there were nine spades on this seven of spades and I was much struck by the configuration, clearly at odds with the designation: the spades seemed to be sprayed all over the card, with no attention to symmetry at all . As I walked further, pondering the wee card I was pinching in my fingers, my attention was drawn to a bookstore display with an array of books so divergent, bearing titles so anomalous, they lured the eye like a crew of dissolute mountebanks.

Seasoned book rubbed the spine of book, photo album, comic book, an orphanage of peculiar titles and interests:

o Plastics and You
o Concrete Poetry
o The Art and Science of Embalming
o Fencing Comprehensive
o Lesbians in Germany 1890-1920
o Wife Preservers Cartoons
o Pandemonium II
o Orchids
o Conjurers Psychological Secrets
o Captive Husbandry and Propagation of Boa Constrictors
o How to Raise and Train Pigeons
o A Children’s Handbook of Grass: The Official Handbook of Pot Uses
o White Gloves and Party Manners Workbook
o Your First Puppy
o Sex Objects

To the other side of the door perched a raven, a red ribbon smartly adorning his neck, atop a vintage typewriter on whom the spectral hand of Poe had tapped out the immortal lament of eternal regret:

Quoth the Raven, Nevermore!

Behind the raven, full figured women without clothes romped, shanks aflapping, like shameless Graces on a vintage erotica photograph.

Inside sat he, grey-eyed, in black velour jacket, unsmiling, tapping the keyboard among his kingdom of books arcane beautiful absurd and macabre. Vintage Smith-Corona typewriters gloried over the tables set with books on Erect Men and Undulating Women or Camp Recreations and Pageants and insects rested inanimately on the walls, in full wingspan flight yet trapped in lucite, aptly disquieting. An entire collection of De Sade's work weighed down one of the shelves but he also had a handsome 1915 Mrs. Beeton with vividly colorful illustrations--this one he keeps under lock and key.

I did leave him some of my money, of course, spending it on a compendium of manners The Young Man's Companion or Friendly Advisor to Educational Knowledge Worldly Counsel and Gentlemanly Deportment based on sage works compiled in 1866. Also, I must pick up a copy of the slender yet purposeful workbook, White Gloves and Party Manners, which instructs the young ladies in commendable behavior. Certainly, no girl should want for decorous reminders on poise, posture and hair sheen: I DON'T PLOP DOWN--I SIT DOWN GRACEFULLY--I PRACTICE BY SITTING IN FRONT OF A FULL LENGTH MIRROR, THAT WAY I SEE HOW I LOOK TO OTHERS. I WILL BRUSH MY HAIR: 75 STROKES: PROMISE! How many a poise could have been sustained and how fewer belly buttons bared were this kind of book distributed to the young skanks of today, dear Lady Ursula!

At which moment, having handed him, who continued to be calmly unstirred, the money for my purchases, I noted that over his head, protruding at an angle from the hinge in the cabinet in which he stored titles of unique renown, was a card, a true five of spades, to wit. I thereupon spoke to him about the card I found asking if he had left it in the street. He showed a flicker of interest and asked to see it and I showed it to him, telling him it had led me to his museum of titles. He continued not to smile though I think he found that to his satisfaction, then took the wee card from me and affixed it to the cabinet, not far from the true one, as if to join his collection of misaligned artefacts.

If I came here tomorrow and I did not see your shop, I would not be surprised, I said, at parting.

But I would still be here, he replied.

Whereupon I left, clutching my well-acquired books of manners as one does a glove, about the donning of which I read with delight tonight to my new manservant, Antonio.