DHS

So I've started working a couple evenings at the Danger Hat Society Room. Martine picked up a few new cases; also she said she was tired of smelling the old folks. I can use the extra cash, and besides it's sort of comforting knowing that I'm not alone, especially since I found an empty blue envelope shoved into the mouth of Trix, one of my old underground contacts who I found face down on his couch with an arrow in his back, an episode of the Golden Girls (the one where Blanche's sister strolls onto the lanai and asks her for a kidney) illuminating the gruesome scene.
The funny thing about the Danger Hats is they drool and fart all over the nice leather furniture while they play euchre, just like any other old folks. But I never expect it from a group of their caliber. I mean Ornella Campisi alone has accomplished more in her lifetime than most war generals, yet she belches like a frat boy.
My new job doesn't entail much, and by much I mean nothing. I'm supposed to check newcomer's credentials, but since most of the Hats who frequent the room have been nibbling on scones there since Ford was in office, I mostly doodle and surf the internet. Every once in awhile I have to shoo a parent and child combo out because they mistook the Hat emblem on the door for the foofy children's clothing store Tally Ho!, but it's easy enough to demonstrate that I have no suspenders or petticoats to offer that that aren't already wrapped around the crepe paper skin of the rose petal and sour milk crowd in the next room.
It's been unseasonably warm here, and Martine took me to the zoo yesterday. I wanted to ride the train so badly, to purchase a set of those perforated tickets and wave at passersby, but it wasn't running because it's still technically winter. Martine is an artist in addition to her other responsibilities, and she likes to sketch the prairie dogs as they pop in and out of their tunnel homes. We brought two lawn chairs and were sitting there staring at the little guys, Martine sketching and me shoveling popcorn into my mouth, when they started feeding the sea lions. Like moths to a flame, parents dragged their children over to see the show. There's something about the sound of several dozen giggling children that sets my teeth to grind. I started humming to myself to block out the noise. A big round of applause filled the air. So did the awful croupy bark of the sea lions. The dozen prairie dogs out of their holes ignored the twice daily noise, but I turned my head to check out the scene just in time to get a big fat fish in the face.
I stood up, walked over to the pool, and yelled to the keeper, "What's the big idea?"
He motioned like he couldn't hear me over the din of the rugrats.
I lifted up the fish that hit me and made the universal sign for "Nice aim, zoo asshole."
He lifted up a fish from his bucket, which was about half the size of mine and silver. The one in my hand was red. Martine grabs me by the shoulder, and says, "Physics, Cherie. There's no way that fish made it all the way from the lion pool."
The breeze picked up and carried an answer my way: the acrid smell of a stale stogie. I looked in the fish's mouth, and a tiny piece of blue paper fluttered out.
Guess I finally know who's after me this time.