Mr. Delicious wakes up on the psych ward of Stamford Hospital and Mr. Delicious says:  “I don’t want to die.”

Mr. Delicious changes out of his mother moldy shirt and becomes Mos Def, or rather changes into the shirt from the day before.  Back in Black, he thinks.  Even Mos Def can hear Bad Vibrations on the ward.  A strange disturbance in the The Force.

He marches down the hall, past the nurses’ station, around the day room to the activity room.  There, the new clock radio is pinging away… a window open.

A paranoid thought dances to the front of his consciousness that this could be a signal.  If he can hear it so could an outside intruder, conspirator, whatever…CIA, NSA Google Glass Ninjas!

Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean that they’re not out to get you.

Twisted, drugged, limping in a rough footed teeter he returns to the glass cage and tells nurse Nathalia that something is wrong.  Nurse Nathalia is the precisely vague color of the caramel sauce on a vanilla sundae.  Her face the proverbial cherry on whole dessert.

“Something seems out of sorts in the group room,” he says.

“How so?”

“An alarm is going off… With the window open.  It could be a signal.  I assume it is.  It probably isn’t, but let’s assume it is a break out, or a break in?  What with Ebola as a vector, you know…”

“I’ll look into it,” she says and smiles and the world turns right side up for a precise toothsome moment of beauty.

But then she doesn’t look into it.  Instead, she sends Nurse Ratchet … not her perfect self.  Ratchet is Ratchet with an ass like a mini fridge but unlike Ratchet from cuckoo’s nest, she’s quiet and distant and vague and seemingly burnt out on crazy.  She’s not evil, she just doesn’t really pay much attention to the loonies any more.  It’s a job.  Like walking dogs… but less rewarding.

She opens the door and blamp blamp blamp it is the new clock radio.

“Thanks,” I say.
She shrugs.

I walk back up to the hall to see Nathalia sitting like a jewel in a  glass vitrine.  She smiles at me and all of a sudden life is infinite and worth living in.

“Where are you from?” Mos Def asks.

Harbor Point Nathalia said.  And Mos Def remembers the ALE chimney of the Yale Lock Factory and Jesus shot down in the street and Cowboy and the Lost Wax Residue paintings.

“No I mean ethnically.  Where are your PEOPLE from?” I ask.

“Jamaica,” Nathalia says..

“Ting.  Ting,” He says.  “There had to be a Jamaican named Nathalia on this ship.  Nice casting gentlemen… and Ladies.”

And then he walks on down the hall wondering who is playing her in the movie.

“She plays herself!  The Engenu roll,”  He announces to the surveillance equipment on the ceiling.

Maybe Mr. Delicious is directing?

Mr. Delicious wishes he’d packed a James Brown or a  Bruce Springsteen T. Shirt.  He has paid the cost to be the boss.  Maybe a Sinatra shirt… naaaah too Guido.

Later I ran into Prudence Le Roc, or Molly Ringworm, or whatever you call her.  Crystal Meth.  Prudence had on a fright face of makeup and pink silk pajamas and her fashion glasses.

She says in the phone, “I’m not going up to see you.  You owe me two dollars and fifty cents!”  She hangs up and tells me, “He likes his cigars, but he was supposed to pay me back.”