When you relax at home, you know that sooner or later, your destiny will catch up with you.  All you must do is wait.

On bright Tuesday morning as I watched Saint Louie Squirrel stealing crops, I heard somebody at the front door.  ​By the time I got to the living you, there stood Lord Caligula with Constance wrapped inside his left arm.  I noticed Fielding and Bart were giving them the evil eye.  Chicago and Quine had rushed off to hide in the basement.  Roberta was at the uni and mike was in GLWACH, which housed his clinic at Fort Leonard Wood.  

When his Lordship noticed I looked puzzled about his entrance, he reassured me.  “Look, Chaucer.  I carry a bump key and other tools wherever I go.  People have stopped trusting their fellow man.  Sad, very sad.  This little key let me right in.  Constance and I came to Saint Louis to fetch Wolverine. The lad has been gathering materials at NGA and the latest news from CBRNE at Fort Leonard Wood.  It occurred to me that you might like to join us.”

Constance broke from Lord Caligula’s arm.  Without losing a stride, she scooped me into her arms.  I got a kiss on the head as she told me how much she loved “her little piglet, her little roast.”  Whisked in seconds into a stretched limo in the house’s driveway, Constance and his Lordship sat down with me.  Within 10-minutes, the limo pulled in front of the Southwest Diner.  Wolverine sat at a table inside sipping coffee as he devoured a plate of sopapilla.  When we sat down, Constance ordered country fried steak with two eggs home fries.  His Lordship ordered the Grits on Fire, described as cheesys stone ground grits topped with carne adovada, red chile, corn, two eggs and queso fresco.  After they ordered, Wolverine demanded the Southwest Slinger: two quarter-pound burgers, home fries, two eggs, chile, and longhorn cheese.  They all asked for a big plate with sopapilla and calabacitas.  Finally somebody thought of me.  She ordered me a poached egg with thick sliced bacon that she sliced into bite-size pieces for me.  I also got some vanilla milkshake, but felt disappointed that the place didn’t have fried-check on offer.  Lucky would never have taken me here unless she planned to force them to get me whatever She decided I wanted.  When it came to knowing and catering to my wants, Lucky has no equal.  At least Constance was trying.

As breakfast ended, we went onto the pavement where we promised to meet up soon in Manhattan.  Wolverine bragged to his Lordship about the quality of the intelligence and associated images he ha wrangled or stolen at the Fort Leonard and NGA.  His Lordship, despite the good intelligence, decided he would do well to check with old associates at the UN.  Besides, when in America insist on the best bagels and lox.  Everybody ignored my request to go back to Webster.  ‘Nonsense, lad, you’ll have a jolly time in Manhattan.  You’re with me so you know fun is around the corner.  And, even better, you have fans in Manhattan.”  

I felt offended.  I have fans everywhere.  So, the limo took me, LC, and Constance to the aeroport where a private jet awaited.  I felt better about it when John Travolta walked in wearing his pilot’s getup.  Who doesn’t want the experience of having Travolta fly you somewhere.  As you all surely know, the man has a hard-on for piloting jets.  Once he took his seat, he tended to the work, and then sent us hurtling down the runway and into the Missouri sky.  After he hung a uterus, we headed east across the Mississippi toward La Guardia.  

I slept under the cabin’s bed for the whole of the trip.  I woke when I was being placed into another limo. The driver got us to The Pierre where his Lordship had reserved the residential suite.  I must say the joint was swank.  As soon as Constance saw I needed a snack, she had smoked salmon with creme fraiche sent to the suite.  It was tasty enough that I softened on the choice of a Mexican restaurant for breakfast.  Constance also asked that Oysters on a half shell be sent up.  I disliked that she gave me two and kept four for herself.  

Meanwhile, Lord Caligula was chugging Pappy van Winkle bourbon whilst he spoke to Peregrine on a coded video call.  Peregrine is shameless.

Behind him on the screen, i could see an Etonian uniform strewn about the room.  A naked, hairless boy of about 13 or so lay strewn on the bed, but with 10 pound notes all about him.  He looked hard used.  Lord Caligula looked annoyed that Peregrne himself had done little to cover up.  “Is this what you do with your money?”

“What of it, ” came the sassy answer.

“I’ll tell you what of it,” screamed his Lordship, “you’re a disgrace.  Those young boys are for the six formers, not for the jaded likes of you.”

Peregrine stood his ground. ‘If you had learnt to read Latin and Greek when you were at Eton, you’d know that boys are for gentleman of all ages.  For older boys, they’re just a pre Oxbridge convenience for the older boys.”  Peregrine then carried on about how parochial his sperm donor’s attitudes were for an educated man.  Besides, if you run with the likes of Constance, you’re unseemly expert on morals.”  

When Caligula looked over his own shoulder, Constance was waving her pantiless, well-oiled bottom at him whilst wearing a red and black merry widow.  She clenched a cat-of-nines in her teeth. Containers of superglide littered the bed.  You might not imagine it possible, but his Lordship blushed.  Constance began to giggle, let go of the whip for the moment, and then murmured, “Such a shy boy is Cliggy.”  She then bit back down on her cat-of-nines

With that, his Lordship concluded he should get back to doing business and drinking bourbon. Peregrine had the high ground  Ethics was such a struggle for his Lordship.  Money was not.

About an hour later, “Cliggy” and Constance had finished their depravities.  It came as no surprise that they wanted a drink, though I wondered how either of them was by then capable of anything more strenuous than sitting battered bums on thick pillows. But the Pierre’s Two E Bar is a handsome room.  As I looked about, I felt my eyes pop when at a table near an exist, I saw a tall, thin man in a midnight blue Brioni suit whose left leg was amputated below the knee, though he had a prosthesis. Our eyes locked.  After a moment, he put down his copy of the salmon-coloured FT he had been seeming to read, and made his way over to me.  “So, good to see you, Crockett.  In this dangerous world, you look spectacular.  Alas, as you see, I had a mishap.”  I stared at the left leg.  

“Perhaps you don’t recall our meeting.  Je suis enchante’ de refaire ta connaissance.  Je m’appelle Charles, Charles de Guerre.”

His eyes swept around the table, turning to hard gaze  as he surveyed Constance and Lord Caligula.  Charles recommenced, “Est-ce qu’ils sont ces amis, mon ami? Quand tu visites monsieur et madame, tu engages une liaison dangereux. Tes amis sont sales.  Ils sont aussi fous.”  

His Lordship whispered a translation of Charles words into Constance’s ear.  She smiled at Charles.  “So nice to see you again, even if you’re now short a leg.  You should learn to fight better if you make a habit of trespassing.  If you keep at it, you may have no legs and all . . . perhaps no tongue at all either.”

Constance was being rude, but Charles had, after all, called them both dirty and crazy, which was not very continental of him.  I also felt my anxiety alarm ringing when Constance but her hand in her handbag.  If you know her as I know her, she never had a handbag without a pistol or straight razor in it.  When his Lordship placed his hand over Constance’s, I heard him say, “How nice to meet you in a sedate place, Charles.  May I buy you a drink?”

Charles declined.  He wished to go back to his copy of the FT and he also wanted to read a column I had written for Le Monde Diplomatique.  It was a think piece that Peregrine had dictated and I had signed. 

Just in case you don’t know, both Presidents Putin and Trump, as well as Emperor Xi read anything with my byline.  They adored my wry wit and comprehensive comprehension of world diplomacy. Nobody had a richer Weltanschauung  than I.  Kissinger’s day is past. I’m the future.Before Charles walked away, he turned to me and remarked, “

C’est curieux.  Il y beaucoup de tes amis  à  New York. Pourquoi, mon ami, pourquoi?”Okay, I admit it, that comment scared me.  What was Charles in Manhattan and at the Pierre.  What had he said many of my friends were here.  I wondered if Melania was at the Trump Plaza. It’s less than a half-mile walk from the Pierre.  Could dough boy, Trump himself, be here?  More generally, though, what was going down?  Why were his Lordship, Constance, Wolverine, and maybe even Peregrine all in or bound for Manhattan.