but alas! the creature grows degenerate.

You have nothing in your apartment but a yellow davenport, a small fold-out table, and fourteen bottles of Scotch.

You only carry a .32 caliber gun with a white-bone grip because you are a lady and that is a gun for ladies.

You are a blonde who is neither icy nor languid, which makes you unclassifiable.

You are always many steps ahead of the cops, whom you do not respect.

My boss always tells me that a thirty-two caliber pistol is no gun for a lady, because it is no gun for anyone. I tell him that it is absolutely a gun for a lady such as myself, because it has polished white bone grips that fit my hand just so. He tells me that he was shot once with a thirty-two, and it did not even slow him down. I tell him that not everyone is lucky enough to be shot in the ear, especially not when I am doing the shooting, and that if the person who shot him had done the job properly, he would not be complaining. We have this conversation at least once a week. If I ever have to shoot my boss, I will not shoot him in the ear, because that is a part of his body he does not use and will not miss if I do shoot him there.

Today we are having this conversation in my apartment. We are at my apartment because the cops are at my boss’s apartment, and they wish very urgently to speak with him. My boss is not at his apartment, because he wishes very urgently to not speak with the cops there, or indeed any cops whatsoever. If the cops knew anything at all about my boss, they would look for him here, but the only things the cops know how to do in this town are take bribes and run protection rackets. At this they are almost as good as my boss.

I am sitting on my davenport, which is a brighter yellow than my hair, but not nearly so pretty. My boss is not sitting on the davenport. He is standing, because even my boss can be a gentleman at times, such as when a lady does not wish to share her davenport, at least if she explains this to him with small words and many gestures, some of which involve a thirty-two caliber pistol. He is also not sitting on my fold-out table, because he would break it, and also because there would be no room for the fourteen bottles of Scotch whisky. My boss is something in the line of an importer of Scotch whisky, which is a very important job in these times, now that the Volstead Act has made it very illegal to make Scotch whisky or indeed any other kind of whisky here. There were sixteen bottles when my boss arrived, but we have been putting this Scotch whisky to the use for which it was intended, namely drinking. There is no other furniture in my apartment, because only a sucker spends the night at her own apartment when she can be spending it in more interesting places, like nightclubs and dance halls and other peoples’ apartments.

Tablet depicting Agathodaemon, Graeco-Roman Period, Roman Period, Reign of Hadrian (117-138 CE)

the pottery i just bought with my husband's drachmas featuring an owl dressed up like a soldier: