Who Is Brian Quinn?

Goodbye, Manfred Milner

"How is he?" I quipped.

Karl pulled his eyebrows together and stood on one foot, scratching the back of his leg with the other.

"How's Reggie? How's our huge bleeding fictional character in the living room doing?" I could tell Karl was hiding something. Or else trying to decide between tactful answer and snide remark.

"Dead," replied Karl. He twisted his lips up into a mawkish sneer and then exhaled like he'd been up all night digging a ditch.

"What?" I said. "You killed him? I can't believe this. I mean, I can believe you killed him. That's no surprise. What I can't believe is that I'm still here. This is madness!"

Edna sat the kitchen counter beside Esmeralda, smoking, wearing a kimono, "I have to agree with Mannie. We're going insane here."

"Hey look Mannie, I didn't kill anybody. He was the one hanging out in a tree with a couple of gangster types taking pot shots at him. We read it together. Remember, he got shot. With a tooth okay, so don't go laying all this heavy stuff on my shoulders."

"I'll lay as much of this on your shoulders as I want, it's your fault. We should have taken him to the hospital. Had him worked on by real physicians. I blame you completely, hold you fully responsible." This was just too much. Not only had we lost Genevieve and Nina, now we had some crazy kid named Esmeralda and a massive dead guy to deal with. "What are you planning to do with him?" I asked. "Throw him off the balcony? Wedge him in the neighbor's chimney?"

Karl tapped his chin, "Hadn't thought of that. Neighbor's chimney. He's very bulky, Mannie. No, out of the question. Listen, what we really need to do is send him back."

"Back?" I said.

"Back to where he came from. Back to the land of hack fiction, moderately respectable pulp. You see what I'm getting at Mannie. We gotta send him back into the book."

"But that's not even the right book," quipped Edna.

"I don't care," said Karl. "We've got a dead guy in the living room. Sooner or later all that blood is going to make its way through the floor and start dripping onto someone's dinning room table. That will not be a good scene."

I had to agree with him. My nerves were crackling like thorns in a crock pot. I eyed Esmeralda. She made a placid remark in Spanish and smiled.

"Okay," I said calmly. "So what do you propose we do?"

"Stan Bernie. Get Stan Bernie."

I thought about this for a moment. Get Stan Bernie. Wouldn't be a bad title for a book. A real manic twisted corkscrew of a book.

"He's the one that got us into this," chirped Karl.

"Well, no actually, technically," I said. "You got us into this by picking up a stray girl on the esplanade and then picking up all her friends on the way home. The reality is that you should be made to pay for this entire lunatic plot, it was your fault from the beginning. If there were any justice I'd turn you in, hand you over to those hot cops you seem so fond of."

He seemed to be pondering this possibility for a moment, then he snapped out of it. "You don't mean that," stammered Karl. His eyes got real big then real small, squinting at me like a trapped alley cat. "Besides they'd never catch me. I'm innocent. I haven't killed anyone. You told me to keep reading, keep reading you said. Keep reading Karl. I don't even like to read. And then wham! this," he gestured toward the living room.

I could see Esmeralda glancing past him. Her eyes got big. Edna cocked her head to the side, gazing past us into the living room.

"What?" barked Karl.