Ann Coulter: A Quinn-Martin Production

I stretched in a ribbon of sunbeam at the edge of the South Forest of the apartment. The moth I killed last night was still on the floor, its wings crisscrossed with light gray lines.

Its eyes were bronze until I swatted it from the sky.

"Come in, Mannix," I said. "Can I fix you a drink?"

"Scotch."

Joe Mannix moved his tan, checkered sport coat slightly, revealing a palm-sized pistol tucked in his waistband.

I said, "The water in my bowl on the floor in the kitchen was just filled an hour ago."

"I'll pass on the drink, Shimmy. Just tell me why I'm here."

"I'd say the bathtub. But no one's home to turn on the spigot."

"What did you call me for?" He rubbed a bruise on the left side of his chin. The wave of his hair was caused by an instantaneous change in droplet concentration in the clouds. If I had a bag of moths, they'd be ten times tastier than butterflies.

"I need to know if Ann Coulter really killed that guy or not."

"You're wasting my time, Shimmy."

Mannix turned and walked back toward the door. He swerved to avoid a hairball on the rug.

He added, "Everyone knows that Ann Coulter killed that guy. She ran him over on a clear night at 8:00 p.m. on November 6, 1963. She hit him so hard with her car that he was thrown from his small 1962 Corvair sedan and broke his neck."

"That's the furiously flesh-elemental Laura Bush. Not Ann Coulter. I need to know if Ann Coulter really killed that other guy."

"I don't think you can afford me," Mannix said. "My fee is 200 dollars a day plus expenses."

"Ann Coulter thinks about dead people when she's making love," I said.

"Ann Coulter threatens this twilight world, Shimmy. She pushes us as closely as possible to motionless monotony."