Patty Cake

I stopped Pat in mid-babble.

"Wait, sorry. Who is Cody?"

Pat turned from the stove. He was wearing an apron and flipping me some flapjacks. I was in the kitchen of his parents' house, on Latin assignment. My Latin textbook was beside my syrup, orange juice, coffee cake and utensils. We'd get to those declensions at some point.

"Cody is the dog I was going to shoot."

"Oh, right."

A few weeks ago Pat had taken me to his bedroom to show me his two rifles, and the sighting on each. Yes, they would do magnificently for dog murder.

"So Cody is gone. I don't know what they did with him, but he's gone."

"Okay." I tried not to get crumbs on Cicero. "Which means...?"

"I talked to my neighbor through the fence," Pat said. He set a plate before me stacked with warm griddlecake. "I told her I was sorry about Cody. But that dog was vicious. He tore up that little dog. Its guts were all over the alley. I slipped in it when I put out my trash."

I nodded over my forkful of flap. "I hate it when I slip in dog guts."

"Anyway, that lady is crazy. She started yelling at me that she could hear me talking 'shit' about her, that I was spreading rumors about her in the neighborhood. Which is crazy, since I haven't been at my house in weeks. Not to mention she claims she can hear me somehow through the walls."

"Mm." I helped myself to more Jemima.

"I think she's the one who killed my bird. She sprayed something through the screen and killed Simon with some kind of poison. And now she hates me because I got her dog shipped off somewhere."

"Right."

"Now I have neighbors flipping me off. I'm out in my yard and people are driving by and flipping me off, people I don't know at all. And what's the common cause of all this? It has to be her! So I talked to her through the fence, I was sorry I had triggered some sort of psychotic episode in her, but she was impossible. So now I need you to meet with my social worker and civil rights attorney."

I raised my eyebrows, cheeks packed with jack. "Social... civil... whu?"

"Yes, can you? I have an appointment with both of them this Thursday, and you're off on Thursdays, right? So can you?"

I looked down at my golden griddle. I looked up at Pat as if he were a funny, funny riddle. He grinned in his weirdly creepy way.

"Uh... sure. This Thursday? I should be able to."

"Great! I want to talk to the social worker about going around the neighborhood and talking to people about these rumors. That lady has been getting on the message board on the internet and spreading rumors about me. I want to sue her for libel, but as usual my dad shoots me down and says it's not really libel. But what else would it be? Why else would all these strangers be flipping me off?"

"Message board? Internet? More pancake, please."

"Yes, there's a neighborhood website and the message board has all these rumors and gossip. You know how it is. But I don't want to move to California and have people Google my name and see all these lies about me."

I belched in my hand. "Of course."

A few days ago Pat had been walking his dog at dawn when he had a seizure because of a leaf blower. He lost his vision and as he sat under a tree in someone's yard a car stopped. A lady asked if he was all right, but he couldn't talk, and so she called 911. Pat managed to escape before the police got there.

"So you still want to move to California?"

"Yes. There's a judo master there, in San Jose. I just need to make sure they have the right accommodations."

"Hm! Anyway, let us dive into our passive periphrastics, and..."

Pat sighed loudly and opened his Latin book. Then he looked at me. "Do you think we can get the social worker to go around the neighborhood and tell people not to believe those things about me?"

I had a vision of a woman going door-to-door, asking whoever came to the door to stop putting lies on the internet about their obscure neighbor who lived down the block. She might have more luck trying to sell vacuums.

"My civil rights attorney says she can get me the accommodations in San Jose, but I just need to get my penis surgery first, and then..."

Pat talked for another hour. For the final five minutes we translated a sentence. I left, and when I got home I charged Pat's dad for the lesson. That's right, folks. I'm being paid to eat pancakes AND I have a bed in the shape of a race car!! WINNING