|
Saturday:
Valise Gets Treed
I am a genius.
Like, really. Not just because I’m, like, a genius. I’m a genius because I transferred my Super Mario Sunshine data over to my bigger memory card, and started another town on the other memory card. This town is Sleepville. I enter Sleepville, initially, as H-ko, a plucky girl in a horizontal purple-striped shirt. I save and quit. It’s time to bring Billy in.
The monkey porter at Naptown Station is pleased to know I’m going somewhere.
“It’s a good thing, to know people,” he tells me.
That it is, I agree.
In Sleepville, they have an elephant. She’s big and purple and I don’t even learn her name. I go straight to the pear trees. I pick eighteen pears, and head back to Naptown.
The indigenous fruit of Naptown is the apple. Pears fetch a higher price. Apples are worth 100B; pears are worth 500B. Rather than sell them to Tom, I figure I can plant them, and have a steady income. Immediately after Billy pats the shovel atop the buried pear, a little sprout pops up, and I think: rock.
What are the chances I’ll ever visit Sleepville again? I wonder, as I plant all the pears back in Naptown. Probably not too likely. I’ll erase it later, if I get the energy -- and make a new town. Maybe they’ll have oranges there?
One acre south of my house, there’s a kangaroo. She scares the hell out of me when I see her for the first time. I’m scared she’s going to come up and eat me alive or something. I have this deep foreboding feeling that this game could get wicked at any second.
I step into her house without talking to her. She’s got a double bed. Damn it, I don’t even have a single bed. I lay in her bed, and roll around. She’s got log-cabin-floors, and a couple paintings. I have . . . pockets full of fossils that I haven't sent out to the museum yet. I go outside, and talk to the kangaroo. Her name is Valise, and she affixes the word “tadder” to the end of every sentence. I don’t ask her why. I open my inventory, take a piece of snowflake stationery, and take a letter:
“Valise, you suck bigtime. Here is a present.”
I don’t bother hyphenating “bigtime.”
I attach a “painter’s smock” that Lobo had given me for free after I brained him with the bug net, exited the screen, and came back. I then dig a hole in the middle of Valise’s lawn, right in front of her door, and I drop the pear in it. Yeah, how do you like them . . . pears?
Wandering around near my house is a camel. She asks me if I have a carpet. I tell her I have a “playroom floor” that some stupid dog gave me when I returned his “picture book” the day before. I give the camel the carpet and 3,000B. In return, she gives me a “music room floor.” I take it home, and put it on the floor. I then go sell my “regal carpet,” just because. I’m past the question-asking point at this stage.
Not that this game has “stages.”
I save my game, and turn it off.
At approximately eight in the evening, my Complicated PastaTM is grilling. It smells like olive oil and Tabasco. This Complicated PastaTM is real. It is the real culinary treat I make for all the real citizens of the real world. It is as friendly to carnivores as it is to vegetarians. With the right soy cheese, you vegans can enjoy the hell out of it, too.
I feel sorry for Billy -- poor guy has nothing to eat. Just apples -- which exist only to be sold. Sure, he can eat them if he wants -- that’s not going to make that loan any friendlier.
As my pasta grills complicatedly, I switch on the old GC. In a minute, we’ve got what we all want: Billy, live and in crayon color. It takes me a second to realize why I’m here. I know -- I have a date with a guitar-playing dog. Someone on IRC had tipped me off to his schedule.
And there he is, out in front of Naptown Station just like I heard he would be. He’s got his guitar, and he calls me a “cat.” I tell him I don’t have any specific requests, so he starts to play, all quiet and smooth-like. And he sings, in that sick, sick voice.
And the credits roll, as Billy stands before the dog -- KK, though his name means nothing: he is a guitar-playing dog -- and the background fades to black, and Billy glows, and all is right in the world, and my pasta sizzles.
I’ve got dinner on the dinner table, and the Wavebird is there, too. I talk to KK as I season my dish of pasta. He offers me the “air check” of the song he just played. In other words: I now have something to put in my stereo. It’s “KK Jazz.”
Home is starting to feel like home. Well, home without a bed. A ping-pong table, a lime-shaped chair, a painting of flowers, a urinating statue, yes. Paper all over the floors, yes. Just no bed, not yet.
No food, either.
[Next: Day 5; Knifejaw]
|
