Guy Noir and the Straight Skinny by Garrison Keillor Page B

dachshund, tan with tattoo of rosebud on left ear, answers to name “Rigatoni,” belonging to Desdemona and Jonah the Shoshone duo-trombonists from Sedona, Arizona, who perform pro bono with their palomino Corona and Rigatoni in a kimono.
    2. Woman needed to know if a couple she’d invited for dinner that night were Republicans so she should seat them away from her husband, who is still livid about George W. Bush and gets all flushed and talks about war crimes and saliva flies out of his mouth.
    3. Woman wanted me to drive to Decorah, Iowa, to spy on her daughter at Luther College to ascertain if she was getting enough sleep and who is the man she hears clearing his throat in the background when she calls Lori in the morning.
    4. A young guy with long, backswept hair swept into my office, black cape swirling around him and clouds of cologne—a tenor from Minnesota Opera. “They try to kill me! The director.
Direttore.
He wants acting, not just singing!
Realismo.
Wrestle the soprano to the floor and roll around. Some sopranos roll better than others. Okay, I do this. Now I’m Rodolfo in
La Bohème.
Artist in the garret. Snow falling. He makes the stage so cold I can’t sing
Che gelida manina.
I am too
gelido.
Like
gelato. Terribile! Non è possibile. Idioto! Stupido!
And Mimi is skinny. String bean.
Fagiolo verde.
Nothing to grab hold of.” He wanted me to follow the opera director home after rehearsal and hold a knife to his throat and yell, “
Questa è la fine. Morte à te, un traditore.“
(This is the end. Death to you, treacherous one.)
    5. A woman wanted me to locate a lesbian couple she saw two minutes before on West Seventh Street walking into Cossetta’s who she was sure she used to know but she’d forgotten their names—one woman was wearing a yellow nylon jacket that said GACK! on it, and the other was in black tights and a tanktop—and what if she ran into them again?
    6. A man called and asked for a huckleberry pie. “This is Guy Noir, P.I., not Guy Noir Pies,” I said, having gotten calls of this nature in the past. “Then how about banana cream?” he said. “I’m a private investigator, sir.” “Great. How about you go track down a pie for me, then?”
    7. A man wanted me to go to Gary’s House of Hair on West Larpenteur and pick up a toupee for him—he was too embarrassed to do it himself. Black, not too long on the sides.
    8. A woman called who had finally finished reading
Moby-Dick
after ten years and had forgotten what the book was about, and could I help?
    9. Plus the usual lost car keys and misplaced glasses. The umbrella forgotten in a bar called Michael’s or Mitchell’s that used to be on Ford Parkway, then went somewhere else, maybe shelling.
    Marvin had told me, “Get it in writing,” and I left a message on Naomi’s voice mail, asking when we might discuss some sort of formal agreement—that I was happy with a handshake blah blah blah but I had some big cases in the works, Microsoft, Google, Bloomberg, Apple—lie lie lie—and my staff was pushing me to regularize the arrangement—and just then I heard big steel-toed boots in the hall and the growl of industrial-strength testosterone and my name shouted and a big fist banged on the door. “Open up, or we’ll bust your thumbs!” somebody yelled. Somebody who sounded quite capable of thumb-busting. And he had colleagues. I heard them muttering,
Gumbagumbagumbagumba.
    “Put a hanky over your face—we’re fumigating with cyanide!” I yelled, and made a hissy sound through the keyhole. That stopped them for a moment. Gave me time to open up the Q-T drawer and take the bag of queens and deposit it into a White Owl cigar box and set it out on the desk, in the open. Sometimes Obvious is your best strategy. And I grabbed the spider out of Emily Dickinson and held it up as the gentlemen in the hall hit the door with their shoulders—once, twice—and
krrrrrrackkkk
busted it off the hinges and
ker-whammo
it smacked flat on