I’m driving west through the Lincoln Tunnel when I sense there’s someone in the back seat of my car. A glance in the rear view mirror confirms it. A dragon is sitting there, its snout open in what is either a lewd grin or an indication of hunger. It appears to be half alligator, half nightmare on the verge of happening. I have some experience with stalkers of uncertain ilk, and so remain calm as I consider my options. I can ignore this quasi reptile on the theory that it will get bored and go the way it came. I can drive to a police station and order it to get out of my car under pain of arrest. I can drive home, take my 357 Magnum from its hiding place and shoot the bugger. These options, though sound in principle, are fundamentally flawed. The creature might not give a damn about being ignored and stick with me anyhow. It might refuse to leave when we got to the police station, take off while I go inside and, accordingly, make me look like a screwball. Finally, since 357 ammo is powerful, the bullet could pass right through the beast, right through the wall behind it, and hit some unlucky person outside innocently out walking a dog.
“What the hell are you grinning about?” I demand, deciding to confront the problem head on. The “problem” doesn’t answer–whether out of contempt or inability is hard to guage without turning around for a good look. As I tend to drive in whatever direction I’m looking, to turn would be inadvisable right now. “Are you deaf?” I ask.
No answer.
“Do you speak English?”
Silence.
“Cat got your tongue?” Embarrassed at having descended to spouting cliches, I lapse into silence myself.
We are out of the tunnel, stopped at a red light. I take the opportunity to swivel about and look the dragon straight in the eye. The insolent thing sticks its tongue out at me–a particularly hideous tongue: green, forked, and glistening with saliva. It’s not a tongue I would have chosen to display if it were mine. I turn back around and focus on the road ahead. Someone is manically blowing the horn. It’s a guy in a car right next to me. I give him a ‘What’s your problem?’ look. He jabs his index finger toward the rear of my car. I suppose he thinks I don’t know what’s hunkering back there. I nod and flash him a toothpaste ad smile. The light changes. I press my foot down on the gas pedal and take off.
The gas tank icon on the dashboard glows red. I don’t care to stop for gas at this point. I care even less to run out of gas on I-95 with a dragon in the back seat. I may have enough gas to get home. I may also NOT have enough.
“Regular. Cash,” I say to the gas station attendant, and press the lever that pops gas tank door open.
“Fill up?” he asks, in a business-as-usual tone.
I know he’s spotted the dragon. He’s squinting right at it. Conceivably, this is not an unusual sight for him. I wonder how come I’ve never seen any before. I am extraordinarily unobservant, but to have missed dragons in the back seats of coupes or sedans is a bit much. I pay for my gas, pull out onto the turnpike, and make an effort to see who or what occupies the back seats of passing cars. No dragons, as far as I can determine. Now what? In lieu of a concrete answer, I say, “I hope you have plans for the evening, because I don’t feel like taking you to my place.”
Silence.
“My boyfriend is coming over.”
More silence.
Maybe it assumes I’m only bluffing. “Do you intend to play barnacle and keep sticking to me?” I ask.
Yet more silence.
“My boyfriend is a cop. If you don’t get away from me, he’ll arrest you.
This evokes an eerie chuckle that raises the fine hairs on the back of my neck, and I lapse into silence myself.
Once at my house, I park the car in my driveway and get out. The dragon stays right in the back seat. Not having been able to do anything so far, I leave it where it is. No sooner do I open my front door however, it leaps out of the car with (I must say) impressive agility, and charges past me straight into the living room, plops its scaly green ass on my fairly pristine white couch, and rests its clawed feet on my glass coffee table. As if this wasn’t just the limit, it leans over, plucks a lily from the vase of lilies on the table, stuffs it, stem and all into its razor-toothed mouth, and chows down.
“Just who in hell do you think you are?” I shriek in a sudden state of major agitation.
An impish gleam sparkles in its piss-yellow eyes, which it rolls toward the ceiling as if to say, ‘Some people are seriously uncool.’
“This happens to be my house, not some cave you’ve probably crawled out of. And, for your information, YOU ARE NOT WELCOME HERE!”
The dragon belches loudly. A puff of orange lily pollen plumes from between its jaws, settles on its chest, and gets brushed off onto my cream colored carpet. This is beyond unnerving. It makes me wild enough to rush upstairs to get my.357 Magnum from the night stand where it’s housed for sundry emergencies–both possible and imagined. What gives me pause is imagining the hole I’d put in my couch if I shot the damned beast while it was sitting there. Could I scare it enough to get it off the couch and shoot it then? Suppose the bullet goes through it and hits the wall? Bullet holes in the wall are not exactly decorator touches. Nor are blood stains on the carpet, for that matter. If I take the vase of lilies away, it might get hungry enough to leave. But there’s no counting on that, realistically speaking. And, who’s to say it wouldn’t just go and raid the refrigerator?
Meanwhile, the dragon continues to lunch on my flowers.
To get some ideas other than my own about dealing with this problem, I call my son.
After telling him about this dragon I can’t get rid of, and what does he think, he says, “I think you have too much time on your hands.” .
“What’s that supposed to mean? That you don’t believe in dragons?”
“Dragons, assuming they truly exist, would belong in the phylum of vampires. As such, they could only invade your space if you invited them in. I wouldn’t do that. So, I wouldn’t have a dragon problem.”
Mercifully, the doorbell rings , eliminating any need for further discourse. “Goodbye,” I say, hang up, and go open the door.
“Hey, gorgeous,” my current beloved says, wraps his arms around me, and crushes me against his well toned, 6’3″, warm body. “Ya know ya got a dragon on your couch,” he says after we kiss.
I extract myself from his embrace. “I’ve been counting on you to get it out of here because I can’t.”
“Ya gotta be kidding, pretty lady,” he says, goes to the couch, and motions for the dragon to scoot over. The intractable horror actually does. He sits right down next to it, checks it out for a half second, and says, “The little fella’s kinda cute if you ask me.”
Exasperation doesn’t begin to cover what I’m feeling. By what criteria does he judge the blasted thing to be cute? Has he ever seen other dragons to compare it with? “I have an uninvited, unwanted dragon in my house and I’d like you to get it out of here.” I glare at the dragon as I’m speaking. Objectively, it is colorful with its green and gold scales. I could go as far as admitting it’s jewel-like in appearance if I were speaking in terms of aesthetic appeal instead of aversion.
“Dragons are facts of life, like the common cold,” says my hero, whose chosen profession is To Serve and Protect.
“If I had a cold I’d take Alka-Seltzer Plus. What do you suggest I do about this dragon?”
“Fuck it,” he says,. “No sweat.”
At first I think he means this literally. Of course, his vocabulary is unduly weighted with epithets, so he obviously doesn’t mean it.
“Honey cakes, life is too short to get hung up with crap. Call Pizza Hut and have them deliver a pie before this fugitive from Toys ‘R Us finishes off your flowers,” he says and, turning to the dragon, adds, “Right, pal? You’re into pizza?”
The dragon picks at its jagged teeth with a lily stem and nods.
“Pizza is loaded with empty calories!” .
He shrugs his shoulders, reaches for me, pulls me onto his lap, and laughingly says, “What are ya gonna do?”
What am I going to do? What can I do? What should I do? Ignore the blasted thing? Consider it an attribute if I can’t get rid of it, because it could serve as a deterrent to would-be burglars? Do charcoal sketches of it, should I be inspired to draw from life and don’t feel like paying for a human model? Life may be short, all right. But it sure does present a laundry list of choices.