“It was all a big misunderstanding,” you say, tearing into some free corned beef eggrolls that the waiter has placed on your table in a Trixie Collins lunchbox, and it does not go without your attention that around you, your peers are eating out of vintage Batmans, vintage Spider-Mans, Supermans, Aquamans, and Green Lanterns, but you didn’t get any of those lunchboxes. The waiter, pissed off at your poem, has given you Trixie Collins.
“Who the hell is Trixie Collins,” you say to the waiter, who’s now at the next table, and he just looks at you, scowls, and mouths, google it.
“Anyway,” you say, “the officer did not and does not understand the Lacey Act, and any time a cop wants to go up against me in terms of who knows their statutes, I just say: bring it.”
“What is the Lacey Act,” Toby Castle says, and it’s her most bored voice ever.
“The Lacey Act,” you explain, paraphrasing what cursory info you gleaned from your phone before Anderson took it, “was, like, established in 1900 to prevent poachers from transporting birds and animals and plants and all kinds of wildlife—basically anything living—across state lines. Now it’s, like, illegal to import or export an animal or, in this case, send illegally poached big game to taxidermists.”
“So your aardvark was illegally poached.”
“It’s not my aardvark,” you say as you watch Toby Castle examining her egg roll, flicking off the fatty bits with her manicured fingernails, and really wish she’d, like, make more of an effort because there are 1267 unread text messages and 899 unread emails on your phone, and Nancy Fucking Beavers is right on your heels, you have work to do for Chrissakes, but here you are at this dumb-ass restaurant, and it’s all for her and she doesn’t care, and you are beginning to wonder if the idea about Finding A Wife isn’t totally stupid after all when Toby says, “Let’s just drop it,” snaps her fingers, and orders from the waiter two gin and mashed cucumber gimlets, which instantly helps.
You apologize. You tell Toby how great she looks, you just didn’t expect to spend the day in a police precinct. It took your staffers another three hours to deal with the paperwork, get back your phone, and it’s all you can do right now to deal with the fact that tomorrow’s headline all over the world is going to read something akin to REPRESENTATIVE ALEX WILSON (R) ARRESTED FOR ILLEGAL POSSESSION OF TAXIDERMIED AARDVARK, and despite the fact that you’re totally innocent, you say, it’s going to be hell on Earth for your staffers if it isn’t already.
You hold up your phone. You show Toby Castle all of your unread messages, and Toby smiles at you, and what she says next is the reason you like this girl.
“That’s tomorrow,” she says, sliding her hands over the table, fingering the buttons on your wrinkled cuffs. “Not tonight,” and it’s clear then and there that you are going to bring Toby back to your place and you both are going to take a steam shower underneath your Kohler Vibrant Brushed Bronze WaterTile Ambient Rain Overhead Rain Shower showerhead and you are going to make up for this god-awful day by fucking the living daylights—if you can—out of Brian Castle’s daughter.