Guy Noir and the Straight Skinny by Garrison Keillor

sensuous sighing, or susurration, like the wind in the silvery cottonwoods by a burbling brook flowing through the whispering prairie grasses by a long two-track dirt road somewhere in Nebraska, not that I’ve been there myself but I read Willa Cather once when I was dating an English major named Leslye who was, in fact, from Lincoln, Nebraska, and I believe “susurration” was the word Willa used.
    “Are you sure the eggs won’t hatch and I’ll be eaten up by ravenous worms like that emperor in the Bible?” I murmured.
    “No, no, no, no, no,” she said. “No chance of that.”
    “My tapeworms won’t kill them?”
    “No, no, no.” And then she said she would do anything for me—I believe a trip to Tuscany was mentioned, and an oceangoing yacht, lunch at the White House, VIP tickets to concerts, health benefits, retiling a bathroom, a pony named Muffin—“Stand tall, darling Guy, and guard the bulwarks and I will make you so happy your heart will turn cartwheels. When you and I are sunbathing on the deck of our yacht anchored in the Aegean off the island of Patmos, sharing a wineskin of retsina and figs wrapped in grape leaves, and we dive off the stern deep into the clear water and embrace in the depths of the ancient sea where Helen of Troy, who was fathered by Zeus in the form of a swan, was abducted by Paris and therewith launched the Trojan war, and O my Guy, you will be glad you did faithful service for our company,” she murmured. My lips were twitching, my forehead was warm and moist. I said yes. How could you say no to a long, lingering underwater embrace in memory of Helen of Troy? Sometimes life is like that. You’re looking for dimes, and it tosses you diamonds.
    MR. ISHIMOTO SHOVELED EGGS INTO the walnuts and sealed them with a soldering iron and handed them to me. Six of them.
    “I’m not sure I can swallow these,” I said. “These are not what the average person would consider small. They are objects of some size. A person could choke to death.”
    “They compress, Mistah Cholly. They are swallowable.”
    I was about to argue the point, and he popped one pod into my mouth and shoved it past the point of no return, and down it went. “See? No problem.”
    He kept popping them in, one after the other, and poking them in past my tonsils. It felt like I was swallowing golf balls. I could feel them all the way down the gullet and into my gut.
    “Excellent job, Mistah Boss!” he cried. Hard as it was to swallow them, it was worse to imagine them coming back up. Or what it would feel like when they shot out the other end. I hyperventilated a little and put a paper bag over my head and thought of the Aegean and Naomi naked with bubbles streaming from her mouth as she kissed me in the azure depths.
    THAT EVENING THE BOGUS BOYS attacked Ishimoto’s laboratory in Robbinsdale and rampaged around, busting down doors, while Mr. Ishimoto lay trembling among the ductwork in the crawl space overhead. They threw petri dishes and fish tanks and mold specimens to the floor, ripped up hoses and wiring, and pulverized his notes, and when they found no worms or eggs, they flew into a towering rage and jumped up and down and screamed like banshees, and eventually the cops arrived, three squad cars and a chopper, and chased the boys over the bushes and down a median strip and across a church parking lot and through a child-infested mall, where the Boguses gave them the slip, and meanwhile I drove out to comfort him. He was sweeping up the debris and grinned when he saw me and patted my stomach. “Treasure chest,” he said. “You take good care, Cholly.” He had spoken to Naomi. He held up five fingers. She had offered him 5 percent of the net for his efforts. I slapped him on the shoulder. “Hey, that’s great. You deserve it,” I said, insincerely.
    I tried not to feel bitter. When the total is up in the millions, a guy ought to be happy with 2 percent, especially when he’s been scraping bottom for