Generation X

private world—a magic and handsome room that only he could inhabit—a room in the proportion of a double cube, as defined by the British architect Adam. This room could only be entered through darkly stained doors that were padded with leather and horsehair that muffled the knocking of anyone who tried to enter and possibly disturb Edward's concentration.

In this room he had spent ten endless years. Large sections of its walls were lined with oak bookshelves, overflowing with volumes; framed maps covered other sections of walls that were painted the sapphire color of deep deep swimming pools. Imperial blue oriental carpets layered all of the floor and were frosted with the shed ivory hairs of Edward's trusty and faithful spanieJ, Ludwig, who followed Edward everywhere. Ludwig would loyally listen to all Edward's piquant little observations on life, which he found himself not infrequently making while seated at his desk much of the day. At this desk he would also read and smoke a calabash pipe, while gazing out through leaded windows over a landscape that was forever a rainy fall afternoon in Scotland.

Of course, visitors were forbidden in this magic room, and only a Mrs. York was allowed in to bring him his rations — a bun-headed and betweeded grandmother. Handcarverd by central casting, who would de-liver to Edward his daily (what else) cherry brandy, or, as time wore on, a forty-ounce bottle of Jack Daniels and a glass of milk.

Yes, Edward's was a sophisticated room, sometimes so sophisticated that it was only allowed to exist in black and white, reminiscent of an old drawing room comedy. How's that for elegance? So. What happened?

One day Edward was up on his wheeled bookshelf ladder and reaching for an old book he wanted to reread, in an attempt to take his mind off his concern that Mrs. York was late with his day's drink. But when he stepped down from the ladder, his feet went smack into a mound of Ludwig's Jog mess and he got very angry. He walked toward the satin chaise longue behind which Ludwig was napping. "Ludwig," he shouted,

"You bad dog, you...."

But Edward didn't get far, for behind the sofa Ludwig had magically and (believe me) unexpectedly turned from a spunky, affectionate little, funmoppet with an optimistically jittery little stub of tail into a flaring, black-gummed sepia gloss rottweiler that pounced at Edward's throat, missing the jugular vein by a hair as Edward recoiled in horror. The

new Ludwig-cum-Cerberus then went for Edward's shins with foaming fangs and the desperate wrenched offal howl of a dozen dogs being run over by trucks on the freeway.

Edward hopped epileptically onto the ladder and hollered for Mrs. York who, as fate would have it, he noticed just then out the window. She was wearing a blond wig and a terry cloth robe and hopping into the little red sports car of a tennis pro, abandoning Edward's service forever. She looked quite smashing—dramatically lit under a harsh new sky that was scorching and ozoneless— certainly not at all an autumn sky in Scotland. Well.

Poor Edward.

He was trapped in the room, able only to roll back and forth across the bookshelves on the heights of his wheeled ladder. Life in his once charmed room had become profoundly dreadful. The thermostat was out of reach and the air became muggy, fetid and Calcuttan. And of course, with Mrs. York gone, so were the cocktails to make this situation bear-able.

Meanwhile, millipedes and earwigs, long asleep behind obscure top-shelf books, were awakened by Edward as he grimly reached for volumes to throw at Ludwig in an attempt to keep the monster at bay— from continually lunging at his pale trembling toes. These insects would crawl over Edward's hands. And books thrown at Ludwig would bounce insouciantly off his back, with the resulting pepper-colored shimmy of bugs that sprinkled onto the carpet being lapped up by Ludwig with his long pink tongue.

Edward's situation was indeed dire.

There was only one option of course, and that was to leave the room, and so, to the enraged thwarted howls of Ludwig who charged at Edward from across the room, Edward breathlessly opened his heavy oak doors, his tongue galvanized with the ferric taste of adrenalin, and frantic but sad, left his once magic room for the first time in what seemed

Дата добавления: 2014-12-23