The debate screeches to a halt and Charlie looks me up and down, scoping head to hip—confounded, yes, amazed even, ensnared in some kind of curiosity as if viewing an incomprehensible Dada painting.
In the silence of her contemplation the TV babbles on about theories of identity. Doreen has moved to the street and is polling the average citizen. The nominations are imbecilery: Colin Jepson, a jewel specialist. Dez “the Clock” Keeler, a former member of the intelligence community. I hear a Crummy Markovich or two, and while it’s true that Crummy has blue eyes, he’s also about a hundred pounds heavier than the Rat Burglar. There’s a Simon McCord, even though his ball pythons have all been remanded to the custody of a children’s zoo and he’s serving ten to twelve upstate. Someone else thinks it’s Pituitary Jones, an absurd nomination not only because he doesn’t have the skills40 but because I have reported many times that the Rat Burglar is nearly twenty inches shorter than the seven-footer, no matter what that French cop says.
But what really gets me is when Doreen holds the mike up to a guy’s face and he says “Jimmy the Hat” while making a swashbuckling gesture meant to evoke the flourish of Jimmy taking off someone’s hat, a pantomime that produces in me both marvel and disgust: first the Rat Burglar gets all that cult celebrity and now Jimmy the Hat, a bloodthirsty killer who scalps people and dismembers innocent dogs, gets people on the street raving for him like a rock star and impersonating his murder style like it’s the freaking Macarena.
I am also outraged because while, yes, it’s technically conceivable that the Rat Burglar could be Jimmy the Hat,41 it is insulting to me to suggest that muscle could roll a pulse with my qualifications. It is my professional opinion that Jimmy the Hat couldn’t rob a tip jar, much less the Prado.
The imputation offends my entire canon. I have had enough. That it is impossible to manifest an air of injured majesty while arguing with a mutinous, questing phallus pointering about the room does not stop me from trying. Huffily I snatch the remote from Charlie and shut off the TV.
But Charlie protests—she isn’t done watching; this is her whole career being stolen right in front of her on national TV—and thrice I am offered a chance at détente and yet again, as in some biblical parable of pride and consequences, I refuse it. I do not surrender the remote. She grabs at it, with surprising alacrity, and obtains a handhold. A brief struggle ensues, which terminates in me losing purchase on the remote in a way that causes my hand to slap, accidentally but with considerable force, the gracile angle of her jawbone where it meets her ear.
Charlie makes a tiny sound, so remote it sounds as if it’s a deep subspace signal picked up by outdated astronomical machinery. It’s unclear if her emission is of injury or rage. She rubs her jaw. Her eyes, dilated to wet black nickels, stare at me in a way I hope they never do again.