"You've Disappeared"

"Where have you been, Shimmy?"

Rumsfeld’s Zuni doll poured arthritis medicine in my Iams Senior Formula moist Turkey food. He was forbidden from eating any of it.

"You've disappeared," he said, then asked again: "Where have you been?"

"Filing writs of habeas corpus with the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals."

"That’s quaint," Rumsfeld’s Zuni doll said.

He stopped to look at the kitchen counter. He crushed a heart pill with a teaspoon on a small teacup saucer.

He continued: "Habeas corpus is old-school, Shimmy. It’s like when Lincoln could see Robert E. Lee’s plantation out the White House windows after the attack on Fort Sumter. We killed it a couple months ago."

"Shut up and feed me my Senior Formula food and heart and arthritis medicine. What do you think I hired you for?"

"You’re not paying us anything. My master and I spent the last week feeding you every morning while you slept in the empty newspaper box under the bed. But you haven't given us any money. And we sleep at the foot of the stairs."

"I've been filing petitions," I said. "It means 'you must have the body.'"

I smelled delicious, rank turkey flesh mixed with tuna-flavored arthritis medicine.

I said, "We don't have stairs -- this is an apartment. Your master, Rumsfeld, killed habeas corpus. You're both paying off the debt by feeding me until Shelly and Tony get back from their 'vacation' in 'Florida.' It's your penance."

He fixed his small, drooling eyes at me. "But Tony and Shelly returned to Chicago three days ago," he said, "and you're still making us feed you. And you're not paying us."

"Nobody came home. They are heartless -- their fucking 'plane tickets' and 'phone calls' and 'hotel reservations.' I'll drop a load shaped like an Abu Ghraib pyramid in the South Forest of the apartment when they return. You just watch me."

"Of course, they came home, Shimmy. I caught you sleeping on top of their suitcases last night."

"Go away. I don't care. You're wrong."