5 nights later, lost in music and sadness, illuminated by florescent light refracted in revolverising disco mirrors and trying to drown his sorrows in drinking double strength Caiphrinas on Ice, Scarton met a local woman called Sophistia at an Internet Singles Dating Bar Disco & Falafel Kebab Stand. Looking deep at their own reflections in the deep of each others eyes in that Place, they fell, as the poets say ‘deep in love at first sight’ © and later, on the litter strewn Placa del Thromboisis, to the distant strains of Lana Dull Ray that thumped from some cars at far off traffic lights, Scarton, the Touristic, proposed marriage.

To Scarton, Sophistia was the very Apple of his Heart, the End of his Chains, and she was Viagra to his Cock, and he said also she was The Milk to His Eyes after Long Years of Getting Hit with the Tear Gas of the World but she told him to be quiet, and that that was too complicated. Sophistia, he murmured at any opportunity, Sophistia etc etc repeatedly until after several nights the people in the neighbouring apartment felt sure that he had gone mad. Indeed, Sophistia was the name that Scarton had on his lips in the morning and night, and the name what he quickly got done as a tattoo on his shoulders, just above where it said ‘Narcoleptic Barmy Army’ which was a loose-knit zombie teenage fashion thing with affiliations to soccer hooliganism that he had been part of when he was younger. ‘Sophistia Forever’ it said, in a typeface the Tattooist called BureauGrotesque 130pt.

*

Before the marriage could be done though Scarton reported to the Police of Lisboa, as was the custom then, seeking news about his stolen rucksack in effort to resolve his affairs in time for the ceremony.

The cop he spoke to was absent-minded and seemingly close to retirement, stooping only in his duties to weep a little for no real reason and furthermore calling to his colleagues in the back room of the cop shop to ask them to stop larking about and please turn the TV down, and also to stop mishandling evidence and also to stop yelling lewd and anatomically challenging suggestions to the girls in their early 20s, that were often passing by, from time to time, below the balcony of the privatised police station.