"Mickey McGillicuddy's Ashes" By: Michael Steinberg

The following story is a work of fiction. Any resemblance
to persons living, dead, or otherwise is purely coincidental.

_____________________________________________________________________________

Mickey McGillicuddy has apparently put his Dauphine Street home—once owned by
Ayn Rand—on the market.  New Orleans Real Estate Investor April
15, 2009

Never let it be said that Mickey McGillicuddy was not good
to his employees. In life, and, as it turned out, in the afterlife as well.

You see, when his gardener of two decades attachment passed
away—years before his rightful time, everyone said—Mick saw to it that he was
well taken care of.

The gardener was once from New Orleans, or so the same
everyone said, and the famous Irish film star made all the arrangements
for the
return of his remains to his beloved high water table town.


Those remains consisted of ashes reposing in an ornate, decidedly
Hibernian, if
not authentically Celtic (rumor had it) urn that reportedly yearned to return
to the Crescent City.


Mr. McGillicuddy also employed a certain Ms. _____, who fortunately was still
very much alive and kicking. Especially when she found out that she had been
chosen for the solemn and sacred duty of returning the gardener’s ashes in
the
ornate Hibernian urn to the Big Easy for interment in his final resting
place.


Though there was some uncertainty about how restful or final that might be.
This was due to the lack of such locales that were not below sea level there,
and so susceptible to disgorging their moldering wares in times of typhoonic
turmoil.


But course the masterful actor of In a Pig’s Eye notoriety had a
solution for this eventuality too. He remembered that the gardener’s favorite
cultivated plot was in the back of one of his properties there.


Was it the St. Charles Avenue, or the Faubourg Marigny one though? He
couldn’t
quite recall. So he made it another one of the tasks for Ms. _____ to sort
out
once she’d arrived in the Bend in the River.


Neither that nor any of the other responsibilities bestowed upon her
caused the
Category 4 emotional tempest that then beset her, however. The real and only
cause of that was simply returning to The City That Care Forgot at all.


Because there was nothing simple about it. All kinds of complications
arose in
her mind the instant she learned of her impending, if temporary, uprootment
from her beloved San Francisco to a place that meant nothing to her but
rampant
public alcohol-induced upchucking, the constant threat of murder and mayhem,
and airborne oversized cockroaches that always seemed to be on a mission.


She looked out her north facing window at the dull purple fog that was
blotting
out the glowering Golden Gate Bridge as the sun set into the uncertain sea to
the west. A cool breeze barged into the apartment and whirled around until
Ms.
_____ slammed her window shut emphatically.


As emphatically as she would’ve liked to have said NO to Mick. That was
out of
the question of course. And besides, he’d said, who wouldn’t want to vacate
Ricearoni Town in early August, when the winds swept off the Pacific to whorl
the seven sacred hills without mercy.


Mercy. That’s what he’d touched her with. She’d known the gardener for many
years herself, and was nursing a summer cold she feared would turn into
something worse if she didn’t see some sun and feel some natural born warmth
soon.


But wasn’t that what the place in Crete was for? She couldn’t remember if
Mick
had more houses than John McCain, but she was sure her employer had earned
his
extravagance honestly and as a true artist.


And so she was on a late morning direct flight the next day, the urn hugged
tight to her bosom. Mick had insisted that it be a carry-on.


The rain started just as they crossed the aerial border between W’s state and
Huey Long’s at 50,000 feet. The flight attendants told the passengers to
buckle
up and prepare for landing. As they descended, the heavens pitched the
jetliner
about like a Palmetto bug in a Category 5. Lightning and thunder insisted on
first class attention, blobs of water the size of libations on Bourbon Street
crashed the windows.


Ms. _____ hugged the urn tighter to her, trying not to let the turbulence tip
its contents out. The flight attendants offered her one more complimentary
Hand
Grenade alcoholic beverage, courtesy of her boss’ celebrity. She declined and
closed her eyes instead, searching for the gardener’s face. But when she
found
it, it was dripping with …what in heaven’s name was it?


Just when it seemed the descent was about to become a certified disaster, the
pilot pulled sharply up, and the jet roared nose first back through the
storm,
until it was above it all. Then they circled around and around the gloom
below
for endless time. Ms. _____ almost felt as if she were back home, looking out
that north facing window at the end of the rainbow and everything else.


“Sorry folks, there’s a bit of a backup at Armstrong,” the pilot purred
like a
severely elevated used car salesman. Ms. _____ wondered if what she’d
heard was
true, that the world’s most famous cornet player hated to fly too. “We’ll let
you know as soon as we get permission to land.”


Land? Ms. _____ mused. How could there be any left above the deluge at the
bottom of all this? She was considering the one more Hand Grenade 15 minutes
later when they suddenly plunged at some mad warp speed towards all that. The
urn wobbled and Ms. _____ thought she saw a few puffs jettison into the
agitated air.

   Ms. _____ tried to collect her
wits once inside, but she knew that was becoming impossible, what with
some of
them still haunting Haight Street, others vaulted into the stratosphere, and
those few left spinning faster and faster within here.


She did have enough left though, to notice her name repeatedly boomed over
the
PA system. With her one small bag slung over her shaky shoulders, and
clutching
the urn like there was another tomorrow, but just the one, she stumbled
around
as funky good time music blared from above, until she encountered the
Courtesy
Desk.


There several unsavory looking security officers were waiting for her.
Without
identifying themselves, or even uttering a grunt, they immediately surrounded
Ms. _____ and stretched a rain repellant bag over the urn. Then they hurried
her through the airport until halting at an unmarked exit door.


Outside Ms. _____ could barely make out a green, yellow and purple limo
stretched out at the curb. The waters that were obscuring her vision were
also
splashing over that curb.


One of the officers fooped an umbrella open right there in the terminal (more
bad luck, Ms. _____ silently sighed), as the other ran out into the torrents.
The officer with the umbrella nudged Ms. _____ and her sacred cargo out the
door. Both officers hustled her and the HIbernian container hastily but
cautiously into the back seat, then vanished.

   “Afternoon, Ms._____,” the driver
drawled. Then he hit the gas, and they sped away while the rest of the
traffic
idled in the rising waters. Mick’s pull was truly everywhere.


“What the fuck is going on here?” Ms. _____ screamed.


“Goin’ on, ma’am?” the driver laughed. “Oh, just some rains from that her-cun
out in the Gulf.”


“Hurricane! And it’s heading here?”


“No, no, no,” he assured here. “Sposed to make landfall in Flor-da bout
midnite.”


Ms. _____ blew a puny pant of relief. “Oh, at least there’s some good
news.”


“Yes ma’am,” the driver said. “Course there’s another one out in the Atlantic
might possible hit us, and another one or two lined up behind it further out.
Welcome to New Orleans, Ms. _____.”

    When the limo dropped her off, the air outside was as wet
and warm as Mick’s kisses in World Wide Fart.

The house manager greeted her with another
opened umbrella and hurried her into the mansion. Was it the one in the
Marigny
or the other on St. Charles?  “Oh, he sold that one months ago,” the house
manager assured her once they were inside. The AC was working nicely, which
made Ms. _____ feel right at home and totally out of place.

“Now,” the house manager went on, “I’m sure
you’ve had quite a journey, Ms. _____. It looks like the service scheduled
for
tomorrow might well be postponed. After all, water and, uh, you know, don’t
mix. So you’ll get to relax for a bit.”

“What!” Ms. _____ shouted. “I’m supposed to be
on a plane headed back home tomorrow night!”

“So pitiful!” the house manager exclaimed
back. “This weather just will not let up. And then they might have to
close the airport too. Here, let me take care of that,” she gestured at the
urn. It was still in Ms. _____’s arms, still covered with the waterproof
material stretched over it like some monstrous necrophiliac’s condom.

“Close the airport!” Ms. _____ screeched.
“Why? When?”

“Oh, for the evacuation, of course,” the house
manager sniffed.

“Evacuation! But the driver said…”

“Not for this one, my dear, not for this
little puddle dripper. Didn’t he tell you?”

“Tell me? Tell me what?”

“The next one’s coming right at us, darlin.
Then again it might deviate.”

“Deviate!” Ms. _____ howled. “This whole place
is one big perverse deviation, sick, a swamp slime bug biting gumbo of
depravity. I need to get out of here!”

“Now, now, calm yourself, Ms _____,” the house
manager suggested. “What you need are some good strong hot drinks and a nice
long nap. When you wake up it’ll be a whole ‘nother day, and you’ll feel
oh so
much better. I do believe you’ve watched too many of Mr. McGillicuddy’s
darker
themed movies a few too many time, baby.”

“I want to go …”

“Ms _____, we just don’t do things that way
here. You’ve got to relax and let time have its way with you. Mr. Mick
told me
personally that you’re to have a good time, and not fret about the
unfortunate
duties that have brought you here just now to be with us.”

Two people in stylish frilly uniforms entered,
one pushing a steam table, the other carrying a tray of garishly colored
beverages.

“Shrimp Creole and Crawfish Etouffe for you,”
Ms. _____, the house manager announced. There was also, she further
explained,
potatoes vichy souisse, garlic butter, corn bread with diced shrimp, red
beans
and rice, collard greens, green beans, macaroni and cheese and butter beans.
“And, for desert, bourbon merange pie and Bananas Foster,” she concluded
with a
stiff flourish.

Ms. ____had never even heard of, much less
tasted, most of these culinary curiosities during her innumerable Bay Area
restaurant crawls. The very sight of them, after her rambunctious ride in the
air getting there, began to make her ill. She excused herself to go throw
up in
the bathroom. And she hadn’t even laid eyes on Bourbon Street yet.

She awoke at what seemed very early the next
morning without knowing the true time. Something beating on the
windowpanes had
brought her to. The first thing she focused on after becoming conscious
enough
were the liquefied looking huge panes, set in windows that reached from
almost
the bottom of the wall to the too high ceiling.

The view outside was not pretty, unless you
liked unabated hammering downpours. There the pitiful light was
unsuccessfully
resisting being pulverized into lonely low energy photons.

Once Ms. _____’s pupils adjusted to the
dimness and din of the day, she was able to make out what she surmised might
become the final resting place of Mr. Magillicuddy’s gardener. If that was
true, her room looked out on the formally arranged rear yard, usually a nice
touch and gracious gift.

There was what until recently must have been a
raised bed, flourishing with drenched Confederate roses, bedraggled begonias,
doddering birds of paradise, and other exotic species of which Ms. _____
recognized none. Figurines of fauns and satyrs and miniature over-endowed
women
in the nude were purposefully scattered among the formerly distinguished
flora.

Unmistakably the work of the gardener. Of
course, Ms _____ mused. The perfect place for the service, above and
beside his
favorite plot. Just like Mick to arrange for such a Southern Gothic farewell.

Except that all outside was now, in a word (or
two) flooded and mudded. Ms. _____ could even see that the waters had risen a
little in the short spate of time since she’d been battered out of her
dreams.

She remembered specks of the last one. There
he’d been, in his Mohair suit, with that Joycean leer on his face, telling
her
something with that overwhelming sincerity. But what had it been?

A faint hiss caught her attention, and she
realized that it’s soothing apathy had been keeping her without any desire to
arise any further. Slowly it dawned on her that it was the air conditioning.
Again it reminded her of home, its cool oozing airs. But there was certainly
something more than just curious going on outside here, sinisterly different
than the raging Pacific storms she was accustomed to.

This was a wild windblown affair too, but at
the same time as calm and calculated as a slow secretive seduction.

Drowsiness was overtaking her. Then the
frightening thought seized her, of the perhaps pseudo Hibernian urn, and its
capped contents, being out in the elements. Since clearly, or somewhat so,
the
necessary arrangements for interment had turned from meticulous to
ridiculous.

Ms. _____’s eyes flew open again, and shot to
the outside images for its presence. But it just wasn’t there. She took
several
deep breaths and tried to relax that least little bit her overarching anxiety
would allow. Then here eyes jumped to the sideboard, where she’d reluctantly
let go of it last night. After she’d rejected the sumptuous repast and then
(after her stomach had settled some) accepted a few—how many had it
been?—emptyings of the accompanying garishly tinted beverages. But only to
somewhat calm her turbulent nerves, of course.

But it wasn’t out there either!

Ms. _____ immediately came to her feet, and
broke into a sprint that took her around the room several times and all in
vain. The urn simply wasn’t anywhere!

“No, no, nooo!” she pealed into the past that
had brought her here today. The furious rains pounding on the windows and the
unnatural relief of the AC drove her to yank one of the transparent too tall
windows wide open. Whereupon she plunged into the rains gone wrong, and raced
around in the mess calling out for the missing remains. As if they would come
to her if only she could invoke the improper spirits.



They were all standing around looking down
upon her. The endearing endangering house manager, the two frilly
servants, the
shamanistic driver. And the one she didn’t recognize. He appeared a little
bit
too debonair and decidedly too dry.

“She’s perfectly alright, I tell you,” he
propounded to the house manager. “All she needs is a long hot bath and some
good greasy food in her.”

“Of course you are correct, Dr. Dubonne,” she
responded. “And I am so sorry that we brought you out in this horrid dreadful
weather.”

“No need to apologize,” he assured her. “I
find such weather immensely stimulating, and Monsieur McGillicuddy’s generous
retainer even more so.” He chuckled, a little too debonairly.

They made similarly trite farewells, and then
Ms. _____ was left alone with the house manager. “You certainly threw a
fright
into us, floundering around out there half naked and soaked to the
marrow,” she
told Ms. _____. “And the poor servants, oh how wretchedly their uniforms were
ruined in the rescue of you.”

Ms. _____ wanted to say something, but the
house manager wasn’t done yet. “Yes, I know, the shock of I all. But you must
rest, rest. And first, drink this.” She handed Ms. _____ a mottled green,
yellow and purple concoction that tasted of mint and mustard and lost
moonbeams.

“But the urn!” she cried.

“The urn?” the house manager asked in an
unnecessarily irritated tone.

“Yes, the urn!” Ms _____ wailed. “I can’t find
it anywhere!”

“Find it, my dear? Why, it’s just where it’s
supposed to be.”

“Nowhere! Not inside! Not outside! Not any…”

“Oh, the strain, the strain, I know,” the
house manager clucked. “Surely you read Michael’s instructions.”

“Yes, but…”

“The urn and its sacredness are reposing in
the Reptile Room, just as Mr. McGillicuddy intended.”

“The Reptile Room! I don’t remember that
being…”

“Oh my poor dear. Perhaps Michael neglected to
include that slight detail of utmost importance in your set of
instructions. Isn’t that just like him? And of course you wouldn’t have known
that the gardener was very fond of Giganticus and Komodicon.”

“Giganticus and…?”

“Oh yes, the gardener spent endless hours in
there with them, feeding them cuttings from the plot and all the voracious
furry
little pets he caught out there. Right out of his hand! Oh he was very
fond of them. Some even said too much so, but that was just envy speaking,
I’m
sure. And so Mr. McGillicuddy thought it would be perfectly fitting for
them to
spend some time together before…”

Ms. _____ began to feel ill again. “Oh dear,
Ms. _____ , we must get a grip!” the house manager insisted. “Here, have a
beignet and some of this.” She shoved the sugared roll down Ms. _____’s
throat
and chased it with a pale brown hot beverage that tasted too much of chicory.

But it did make her feel better. “Why…why
didn’t you tell me,” she demanded “instead of sneaking in and…”

“Oh, but you were so worn out,” the
house manager explained. “We dared not rouse you, even though breakfast and
lunch times had come and gone. Oh, and then that wicked, um, meteorologist
kept
assuring us that the storm would break any ol’ second. Leading us to believe
that the service would go on. Of course we were only being deceived, and so
utterly.”

“That’s absurd!” Ms. _____ exploded. “This
place is going back to the swamp it crawled out of!”

“If I’m not being mistaken,” Ms _____,” the
house manager observed, “that’s a line right out of one of Michael’s early
cult
films, Night of the Noodnicks. But of course you are quite right. There
can be no service today.”

“Fine,” Ms. _____ said, attempting to rise.
“I’m going to the airport.”

“But Ms. _____,” the house manager
procrastinated, “your duties! The poor pitiful unfortunate remains of the
gardener!”

“I’ve got a flight to catch. Feed them to his
loony lizard buddies.”

“I’m afraid that’s impossible, as well as
immoral, and most definitely in very bad taste, as I’m sure you well
know. I know this is all quite upsetting, but still, I’m very surprised
at your behavior. I’m quite sure I must inform Mr. McGillicuddy of this at
once.”

“No problem. I’ll take a taxi. Just get out my
way if you don’t want to get hurt.”

The house manager put a palm on Ms.
_____’s shoulder, firm but not overly forceful. “I’m so sorry to tell
you,” she
informed Ms. _____, “that the airport has already been shut down. The
Governor
has already sent his National Guard troops there to secure it and run
around in
their darlin’ uniforms. Oh, they just shut it down and cancel all the flights
at the least little threat of levee rupture now. Oh, it’s all so sad, Ms.
_____.”

“I don’t care. Call me a cab!”

“I’d be glad to, Ms. _____, but they aren’t
running either. Nor are the buses or trains. Why, I’ve seen storms 10 times
stronger that this little ol’ dewdroppin grisgris. And the phones don’t
seem to
be working just now as well.”

“Oh, is that so,” Ms. _____ sneered. She
pulled out her Cali cell and punched at it furiously. No dial tone, no
static,
no nothing. She tried to text next, but that was hexed too.

“All these tribulations are quite temporary, I
assure you, Ms. _____,” the house manager said. “Your service will return,
and
the gardener’s will go on too, tomorrow. It promises to be a beautiful day.”

“Right, ‘Tomorrow’s another day’ and all that other
Southern fried crap. This is the hurricane, now, the one that was headed
right
at us all the time, isn’t it? And I’m outta here.” All she wanted was a
double
latte with a triple shot of espresso at Café Condo, and soon.

“Our Café Demond is far superior, as you will
learn tomorrow, after the service,” the house manager telepathed.

There was no more time for this, Ms. _____
suddenly knew. It was all a lie, or one of Mick’s sick jokes. But he’d gone
away this time. And now she was going to be gone too.

Both the house manager’s palms were pushing
down hard on her now. “Ms ____,” she sputtered, “I promise you, I talked to
Michael not an hour ago, when the lines were still in order. He is on his way
here now, as we speak. He will be here, tomorrow, for the service. Now you
just
relax. All will be well. Just think of tomorrow.”

The servants appeared again at just that
instant, in uniform, but with no frills this time.

“Ma’am,” one of them reported, “the driver is
here for Ms. _____.”

“Nonsense,” the house manager sniffed. “I already
told her the airport is open only to our brave soldiers, the taxis have been
grounded, and the trains and buses…”

“Excuse me y’all, this is per Mr. Mick’s direct orders,
only just 10 minutes ago,” the other servant piped up.

“Don’t be so insolent and common,” the house manager
hissed. “You know very well that the phones are out of…”

“Ain’t no phone message, ma’am,” the servant corrected.

“How dare you sass me! Don’t you know your place!”

“Yes ma’am, in the kitchen. But you mind that ol’ fax machine
Mr. Mick had put in the pantry for a rainy day? It connected to some
satellite
way above it all. And now that rainy day come. ‘Cause it go into action
not 15
minutes back, and this come through.” She pointed to a filmy piece of paper
rolled into a ball that the other servant was holding.

“You give that to me immediately, you darky trash!” the
house manager demanded. He obeyed and put it out in his palm for her. She
grabbed it and unrolled it just enough so she could tear it to bits.

Ms. _____ imagined she was seeing the hurricane rain deep
freezed by the house manager’s icy manner into astonished snowflakes
fluttering
to the mansion’s immaculate floor.

“He say you gonna do that,” the other servant sounded. “So
we run off another copy, like he instruct us, and now I’m gonna read it out
loud, and that his last and final order.”

“Are you insane?” the house manager bellowed. “Give me that
this instant or…” She took two steps toward the servant. But then her
co-worker, in his no frill uniform, blocked her way and displayed an
oversized
butcher knife.

“ ‘First off,” the other servant went on, ‘tell her to shut
the hell up and listen. Otherwise I’ll send her off to take care of my Orkney
goat farm, whose most endearing feature is its rock-bound desolation.

‘As you all know, our story has taken a turn for the worst.
But the final reel is still not finished. I thought it would be nice to do
all
this on one of my favorite locations—how wrong I was! But hell, it ain’t like
you’re Heaving Towards Heaven. And The Rain Gutter Affair? What
more can I say?

‘OK, they’re calling me back to the set. I’m supposed
to do some sappy duet with Amy Winehouse. They just flew her in from Betty
Ford. This should be sweet. She can’t act for shit and I can’t sing for shit.
Well, I can a passable version of “Love’s A Bollocks Game,” but only if I’m
drunk enough.

‘Look Ms. _____, Weather Underground says the eye should be
coming through just about now. I strongly suggest you go for a ride and
get the
hell out of Dublin, or wherever you might be as we, actually I, speak.

‘And keep the cameras rolling across the bloody bog, at all
costs!’ ”

While this recitation had been going on, the house manager
had gone to her room to pack. Her grandfather had been a goat farmer from
Grants Tomb, Utah.

“How you learn to talk like that, baby?” the meat cleaver
bearing servant asked.

“Watchin’ Mr. Mick’s movies, how else?” she quipped.

The green, gold and purple limo was waiting for Ms.
____ at what was left of the curb. The servants, swathed in silver rain gear,
had to carry Ms. _____ across the waters to deposit her in the back seat.

As Ms. _____ shook the rain off and smoothed her flustered
feathers, she heard the hood slam shut and turned just in time, as the limo
parted the waters, to see the servants scamper back into the mansion.

And then, just as the limo was about to turn and disappear
into it all, the clouds parted too and a single beam lit up the mansion.

“And there gotta be some rainbow somewhere out
there, Ms. _____,” the driver supposed.

“You mean this is the eye?”

“Yes ma’am, the all seeing eye.”

“How long does it last?”

“Until we can’t see no more. You mean, how much time we
got, ma’am?”

“Time? For what?”

“The tour, Ms. _____.”

“Tour! At a time like this?”

“Ain’t no better time than this. That just what Mr.
Mick say.”

“What else did he say? When did you talk to him?”

“Not five minutes ago, Ms. _____.”

“Five! How did you…?

“It all come from above, ma’am. But we gotta get movin’
now.”

He floored it, like after her arrival at the airport, and
they rose above it all, just like in Calling All Shileihlis.

“Some call it The Misery Tour, Ms. _____. Me, I like to
think of it as The Magical Misery Tour.”

Ms. _____ gave up. There was no sense in trying to do
anything here but go along for the ride.

“You remember how in Rock Me Like a Shamrock Shaker
Mr. Mick have to keep going back to the last place he ever wanna be?”

She couldn’t answer. The sky was the bluest blue now, the
sun at its shiniest. They swooped down over neighborhoods that only some kind
of miracle was keeping from totally collapsing into themselves.

There were no roofs for people to cling to awaiting rescue
this time, because, with some very few exceptions, there were no roofs,
period.

“Yeah, all that left from more than three years back now,”
the driver explained, then sang, “Ain’t that a shame, you the one to blame!”

Ms. _____ started crying. “No ma’am, I ain’t talking bout
you. It too late to cry now anyway.”

“It’s never too late to cry!” she disagreed. “How could it
be like this?”

“Oh, these the lucky ones, ma’am,” the driver said. “These
the ones they ain’t knocked down yet.”

“But the people, where…?”

“Well Ms. _____, mostly they still scattered. Ain’t welcome
here now, never much was before, and now they lost they place here, well…”

“I’ve seen enough!” Ms. _____ caterwauled. “I want to go
home!”

“Yes ma’am.” The driver nodded, and turned around to
further show his agreement. “You want to see that Golden Gate and them little
cable cars again, I know.”

“Even though it costs and arm and both legs,” she muttered,
“and the people are crazy and its cold and…”

“Yes ma’am, and Mr. Mick agree 110%. Though I got to say
you can’t beat this city for savoir faire and all that.”

“But I can’t just leave until…”

“Mr. M got that covered too. He say you and the props all
going back, and they start shooting it all over there again first thing
tomorrow morning.”

“Again? Filming? What are you talking about?”

The sun was disappearing again, the winds whipping colossal
drops of rain into the limo’s windshield.

“This here show about to get nasty again right here and
now,” the driver warned. “Time to take her down.”

The limo descended slowly. Ms _____ felt like she was
floating, and then it looked like there was a wavy runway looming below.

“That house manager, Ms ____?” the driver said. “She OK,
but just now she as crazy as the Monday before Mardi Gras. She think it all
real, that why. She don’t realize ain’t nuthin in that big jug but some
pulverized Ricearoni.”

“Jug? You mean—the urn?” They were close enough to the ground
now to see the massive jet that seemed to be waiting for her, emblazoned with
Nick’s character in Zombie From West Belfast.

“What you call it, Ms. _____. To me, just another prop.”

“You mean I went through all this, just so…!

“Mr. Mick, he the producer, and director, make no
mistake.” Then they touched down, sliding and thrashed by the hurricane winds
that had retuned one more time, and, as always, with a vengeance.

“I told Mr. Mick them brakes needed some attention,” the
driver claimed. “But sometimes he just don’t listen.”

“You mean all this was just him playing with me, with us,
to make some goddamn movie!”

“You don’t fret, Ms. ____. All this just gonna end up on
the cutting room floor. Well, you know them disaster flicks are all the rage
these days. That last one with Mr. Mick sure done well for him.” They came
to a
stop right in front of the jet, with his IRA character superimposed over the
Guinness Brewery glaring down at them.

“And the gardener didn’t…?”

          “Oh, he
lovin’ his new job at the place in Paree,” the driver chuckled.

“So all this was just a ruse to make a friggin’ movie,” Ms.
_____seethed.

The same two security officers were coming for her now. But
first they opened the trunk, and then she saw them trundling away the prop
and her
things.

“The way some folks see it,” the driver concluded, “that
all life really is anyway. At least you know there gonna be some end to it
then. With this though,” he said, looking out on the storm, “you never so
sure.”