Chapter 7: Clouded Past

You see, Jane needed to know the real Gosen, not the story of the man told in his four page autobiography Confessions of A Kangaroo, which was a best seller in East Timor where they ingest books instead of reading them. It wasn't that Gosen was disinclined to reveal a majority of his life. He just happened to be terse. In fact, when informed of Jane's credit card heist, he responded by saying "gee" and resumed eating what he thought was his Cobb Salad. Later on, it was revealed that he was actually eating fruit salad. Failing to remember whether he ordered the wrong food or the waitress was merely inept, the entire restaurant staff was fired and the building was set ablaze as a precautionary measure.

While the book proved a staple side dish in all East Timorian restaurants, most preferred it be served with key passages highlighted before it was sautéed with paprika - for the chemicals in the highlighter (when combined with searing hot oil) were purported to aid fertility, though many claimed side effects of sterility. An interesting side bar - a savvy East Timor businessman attempted to export imported Gosen autobiographies to American restaurants as an exotic appetizer, only to be dismayed when the Americans complained about the size of any food smaller than a Norman Mailer book.

Jane initially found Gosen to be enigmatic and his every movement perplexed him, something she normally reserved for people who ordered ice with their bottled water. Eventually, she realized that he was neither enigmatic, nor a bottle of water - he was a philandering philanthropist with a heart of unknown metals. No longer content to be his little love morsel, she swiped his credit card the night before and engaged in a spending spree worthy of a Republican on PCP shopping for the defense budget. But, she knew that he had a piggy bank in his possession that contained $43 and, thusly, knew that taking his money would never have the effect on him that he deserved.

She considered making love to the first person she saw, but realized that he constantly urged her to have sex with as many partners as possible so he would have something in common with a stranger. Clearly one with such a dissolute disposition could not easily be unnerved. The misfortune of such malicious thinking is that it forced Jane to consider the good times with the bad, thus creating a scale of justice for her former paramour. Uncertainly crept in and, aided by the unlock door, manic rage and sangfroid followed agreeing to not combat each other for the time being. How could one want to hurt the man who took her to the petting zoo, Chernobyl Plant and the spot where James Naismith invented basketball. Although she never expressed any interest in visiting these locations, the ebullience he exhibited while acting as tour guide made up for the molestation at the hooves of a sexually-frustrated llama, elevated radiation levels and indefatigable boredom that resulted from her respective visits. At the end of her pondering, however, these pros were trumped by the alpha-con: his unwillingness to remove his pants during intercourse.

Once she ascertained for certain that she needed to punish Gosen, her myriad solutions made it difficult to determine the best. She first considered dying someday, but she could not be certain that her death would not be the consequence of some tragic fate that he could use for sympathy. So, she resolved right then and there to never die.

She attempted to join the Scientologists knowing that Gosen hated all organized religions, but left the organization when John Travolta repeated tried to fly her places on his jet. Daunted and depressed, she organized a meeting between herself and Gosen. He refused to come unless he could bring his lawyer and garbage man. The garbage man was taciturn, but the lawyer threatened legal action and Action Jackson unless she relinquished the credit card immediately. While Jane was worried about a lawsuit, she correctly called the lawyer's other bluff - claiming that she herself tried to get Carl Weathers to reprise the role to no avail. Inevitably, the conversation took a deviation down the subject path of African Americans in the Cinema. The lawyer and Jane agreed that Samuel L. Jackson peaked at Pulp Fiction, but the garbage man's silence at this claim caused them to reverse their decision and dump pitchers of water on their heads.

Sensing that the meeting was going nowhere, Gosen asked her to forgive him for his past trespass as we forgive those who trespass against us. For the first time, the garbage man spoke: "And deliver us from evil." Although uncertain at first, the garbage man's bellowing sermon reminded her of her days in church. He was not sincerely; he was quoting "Our Father" a prayer for a religion he decried. And, then and only then, she realized that he was not really Gosen. He was Father Paulson.

Continue on to the next chapter, following Jane's plotline...
Continue on to the next chapter, following the original storyline...