Athanasius Finch: Private Dick | ONC 2020

Life Is A Cereal, And All I Have Is A Pasta Strainer and Orange Juice

Life is a soup, and I am a fork. 

Sure, there are some fine forkable bits floating in there, but I just miss out on the warm, nourishing meat-water surrounding it. This would be the part that I blame society for dealing me a bad hand, but this is more of a case of society playing Poker while I thought we were playing Uno. I can't even keep my analogies straight. 

The point I am trying to make is that whatever hardship that comes my way is my fault most of the time. For example, there was the time I was contacted by the IRS for some unpaid taxes and offered me to pay them in iTunes cards, of which I later learned are not refundable. Sure, my mother said that the IRS doesn't hire Indian people with obviously civilian phone numbers, but I took a calculated risk to avoid any issue with the fuzz. And turns out I suck at math. 

More on that in my oncoming biography, "How To Ask For A Refund From A Nigerian Prince And Not Die Trying."

What I'm trying to say is, like many New Yorkers before me, I am my biggest enemy. Also like most New Yorkers before me, I am too quick to jump into an opportunity I didn't think through. Just ask all those schmucks that bought the Brooklyn Bridge for $200 back in the '60s. One of which, if a plaque in his office next to the apparently printed "Title of Knighthood" by the Principality of Sealand is to be believed, was one Athanasius Finch. 

"A gentleman of utmost respect gave me a bargain for it," he said when I asked him about it. "He even allowed me to buy it using those newflanged meTunes cards or something sordid of that sort. Me, being a man of exceptional altruism, has refused to collect a toll on it. Everyone has a right to walk on the Finch Bridge to their heart's desire!" 

I would've laughed at him, but I got played just as worst by signing a contract without reading the fine print first. Or any other print. Hell, the contract might've been written in Latin for all I know. The promise of a big check and lodgings were enough to star-struck me. Turns out, you can stuck me just as well with a rock that with a star. 

First, let's talk about the "bedroom," for that was it. A room with nothing on it but a twin-sized bed. No windows, no fan, no A.C, nothing. It wouldn't be that bad if it weren't for the fact that it was the only bed in the entire house, which we had to share. Whoever named twin beds as such failed to grasp the concept of twins as two different individuals in the same way Bill Gates failed to realize that you can't name your company after your penis: spectacularly. 

We had to play human Tetris every night to fit the three of us in the bed. Between Athanasius allergy to basic hygiene and Mrs. Wormwood's allergy to pretending to be alive for five minutes, it was just like being homeless again, only with a worse smell and less square footage.

I was worried that Athanasius would try to cop a feel, but those worries were quickly squashed by Mrs. Wormwood on the first night. 

"Boy's a virgin, so don't be afraid of him trying to pull a sneaky on you," she said between mouthfuls of ashes, because there were no ashtrays in the bedroom, so she simply swallowed the whole thing, butt and all. She called it "getting more bang for her buck." 

"Somehow, I don't doubt it," I commented. 

"Silence, wench!" said Athanasius, who was cradled like a Z-block at the foot of the bed. "The only acumen of my refusability to lose my virginity is because I never lose, period." 

At least I was safe from the elements, no least of them the element of surprise, like that time we were surprised that a momma raccoon claimed our orgy dumpster as the best place to have her babies. A fact we didn't realize until Jonny The Nose slipped on the placenta and we had to wrestle his nose from the clutches of motherhood and rabies. Now we call him Jonny the Hee-Hee because they had to put a plastic nose that made him look like a meathead Michael Jackson.

What it didn't protect us from, purely because Athanasius was a cheap bastard who would sell his mother for a slightly used Chevy, was the chilling wind. The walls had no insulation, there was no warming, and I refused to use the only blanket we had to share because it stank to high hell.

When I mentioned the searing cold, Athanasius scoffed at me. 

"If you are experimenting cold, go stand in the corner. I made sure it is precisely 90°." 

My dumb ass went to stand in the corner before I realized that he meant that it as at a 90° angle. 

Life is a box of chocolate, and I'm a dog who is deadly allergic to them. 

Then came the book itself. I want to find the poor soul that was paid to go through that gargling verbose diarrhea that was "The Fantabulous Adventures of Sir Athanasius Finch, The True Successor And Reincarnation of Hephaestus, And Carpentry 101" and kiss them in the mouth and a nice cold dinner, because the restraint it took for them not to call the police for the multiple crimes against culture that it was. 

The book opens with an 80-pages flashback to ancient Greece from the perspective of Hephaestus, God of the forge, fire, masonry, and sculpture. Except when it shifts perspectives into a third-person omniscient narrator with several tense slips. He would also randomly change the name of Hephaestus for his own, because he believes he is the reincarnation of the God himself. 

Seeing that Hephaestus was also a malformed piece of flesh too ugly to be even watched on, I could see how he came to that conclusion. 

The book would also go into frequent tirades and stream-of-consciousness rants about everything from the Falkland Islands, and how Greece had a better claim to them than the United Kingdom and Argentina, followed by a rant about how why the S in Island is silent because of the Jews, and lastly on why Balsa is the best wood to make a chopping board. All that in chapter one. 

There was nothing I could salvage from that wreck, which I made known to him on day two. 

"You can't expect a horse to walk in a glass store and not break something," is all he said about it, which apparently meant that we were making a new book as he began to speak his thoughts aloud for me to write. Which I will come back to later. 

The last thing I should've pushed to know more was the paid, because, as it turns out, 30% of 0 is still zero. 

Math is the bane of my existence.

The fact that we could subsist without a single client was something that was both elegant and surprisingly sad. We would only eat two meals a day: Brunch, and a midnight snack. Brunch, because it was an excuse to skip both breakfast and lunch, and a midnight snack that consisted of the pan drippings of the brunch + a piece of bread.

It was there that I understood Athanasius's appearance and stinginess. It wasn't because he was a cheap bastard, but it was because he was poor. 

"We are not poor!" he told me during brunch, which consisted of a single slab of pork fat, a water omelet with a third of an egg, and what I assumed was grass clippings with ashes from Mrs. Wormwood's cigarette. "Being poor is a mentality. We are broke, and that is a choice. Austerity has always been a staple of a great detective. Sherlock Holmes always lived at the edge of poverty." 

"He had Kings as clients," said Mrs. Wormwood. "Our biggest client is that old coot down the street that misplaced her glasses every ten minutes."

"She has loyalty beyond any man!" 

"You overcharge her, and you know as well as me that her glasses are always over her head!" 

Athanasius twirled his mustache with the same air of superiority as a Chihuahua would display inside the purse of his bimbo owner. "What are a few hundred dollars to borrow the ingenious of the world's 3rd best detective? Anyone would kill for that privilege." 

"Whoever is desperate enough to come her for help is either stupid or with more money you can shake a stick at, and if you're shaking a stick at your money, you're probably dumb enough to come here anyways," said the old coot.

It was then that something happened. Something that shook our world. Literally. 

Someone knocked at the door.