One cool, clear morning, I sat in my flat gazing through a panel of glass tracking cars and light trucks coming and going in the parking lot below my balcony.  I like car watching but wondered why I saw so few expensive rides.  Where were the Escalades, the S-class Mercedes Benzes, the Land Rovers, the Jaguars?  It was something to think about.  Had Roberta moved us into a tenement?

Feeling tense, I retreated to my kitchen.  When I want to relax, I go to my water bowl to drink clean, cold water, especially if no catnip’s at hand.  I always encourage Roberta to drop ice cubes in my water before she goes out to earn money for me.  It’s among my lifelong habits.

As I peered into my bowl as a prelude to my drinking, I shuddered as a saw an image of Chaucer’s sneering face on the surface of the water.  The bowl spoke.  “Fear not, vassal.  Before I died, I promised you a haunting.  You will never escape my voice in your grubby world.  I have news for you.  Beware of Mr Wolverine Lawless!” 

The image disappeared at those words.  What might the ghost of Chaucer mean?  Chaucer had encounters with Wolverine when they both had coinciding visits to Windsor Castle or Balmoral.  I knew the Queen Mother thought Chaucer was a real dear and even felt love for him (so he told me), perhaps in the grip of the false belief that Chaucer was gay.  Chaucer wasn’t gay, but would, I grant, do just about anything for a large enough stack of money.  Being gay was also an irresistible quality to the Queen Mother.  It was almost as good as being a fat aesthete.  Chaucer liked pleasing royalty. If you aim for a baronetcy, you got to be pleasing to top-tier royalty.

What, though, would lead Chaucer to warn me about Wolverine? In fact, I doubted Chaucer meant it as a warning.  He preferred to put fresh fears in my head.  And what was Wolverine capable of?  Well, let’s be honest, just about anything and everything.  He loves money more than Chaucer did if that’s possible. 

Not long after Chaucer’s revenant’s visitation, Wolverine Skyped me.  Well-tailored as always when not frolicking in the woods or rutting with somebody, Wolverine told me he had sensed a crack in the world’s moral space and an urge to telephone to me. He took off his cocke hat, lit a Sherman, and continued. “Don’t imagine all I do is throw parties for perverts.  Parties and videos are the fertilizers of my trade. They are paying dividends.  Did you know that I have obtained a Top Secret SCI clearance from the Army?”  Of course, I didn’t know that until he told me.  I learnt he had even finagled himself into having HRP (Human Reliability Program) status.  Even I shuddered at the idea of Wolverine with access to nukes.

Wolverine bragged these clearances and tickets were fruits of his soirees.  “No matter what it is or where it is, somebody somewhere had the god keys to the objects of my desire. It’s just a matter of getting the keyholder to use the keys,” remarked Wolverine.  I gathered as he elaborated that he had clearances both as a contractor and as an Army intelligence officer.  “I only put myself up as a lieutenant colonel (LTC) intelligence officer working with the 82^nd Airborne as a G-2 for my CAC.*  Fort Leonard Wood is a training site, so it’s unremarkable for me to be there.  LTCs stationed at Leonard Wood might get noticed, but I trusted my status as a visitor would keep me invisible when I went in for my CAC and various badges.  I repeated the process when a different soldier was doing the work of creating the cards to obtain my civilian card. It’s child’s play once you have cowed marks with the god keys who are too scared to decline to do your bidding.”  Wolverine had an immense toothy smile as he conveyed gloating descriptions of his just-picked fruits.  As I already knew, nobody, not even I, should trifle with Wolverine.  More were learning that lesson.

He surprised me by making no demands of me that day.  I did wonder about his larger goals whilst also considering how it was possible, given the soirees he liked, that Wolverine had escaped the clutches of HIV.   I keep Chaucer’s “Beware” alert in my head.  Still, I wished Chaucer’s ghost had stayed put in San Antonio.

• editor’s note: CAC = Common Access Card