?????

The event in and of itself is not significant, or at least at the time I didn't think so, just another loony Cajun who doesn't like books. So I moved on to other parts of the Gator Farm. No matter where I went in the farm I could see the kimono-girl.

Thus I didn't notice the man in the gator suit who collected the pieces of paper that swam in the swamp. And that is usually a fun part of my journey to the gator farm, watching the paper collector dodge gators and live chickens.

Later on that day they found the real paper collector handcuffed in the rattle
snake terrarium. So who was this man of mystery who collected the pages from
the book of the lady in the kimono?

I threw down the newspaper excitedly after reading that the *real* paper collector was found chained to the snakes. Hmm, I wondered, as I watched the *fake* paper collector I felt that he was actually looking for something in those pages that kimono-girl threw out. What could it have been?

My curiosity had now been throughly roused from it's slumber. The answer had to be with kimono-girl. I had to find kimono-girl. Where would one find a girl wearing a feather boa and a kimono? Where else but the...

French Quarter!

On Bourbon Street the crowd swayed back and forth. The music was loud, way too loud for a Texan detective like me... I wished I was back home in Fredricksburg, sipping a cold beer on the porch of a restaurant, watching the cars of the tourists go by, slow and easy - I missed
Cathryn. But then out of the sudden I saw this man in  the gator suit; he looked straight into my eyes, and I knew, that it was too late to turn around.

It only took me a second to make my decision, run or confront. Confront, of course. After all I am a Texan and we stood our ground at the Alamo.

I approached gator-suit-man cautiously, after all he was one of the many unknown elements in this affair. He saw me acoming and rather than running from me he pushed the crowd aside and made his way towards me. For a man in a gator suit he really didn't seem to out of place in the hustle and bustle of Bourbon Street, just really green for a gator.

'Hey! I am looking for that lady wearing the purple kimono and the feather boa that was at the gator farm yesterday. Have you seen her?', I asked my green companion.

'You need to leave her alone. Now go back where you came from,' he hissed at me and turned to leave, swatting me with his overdramatic tail.

'Hey wait a minute, why is she married or something?'

He ignored my query and just kept on awalking. Now for some reason he looked a little silly with his tail bouncing up and down with the rhythm of his steps.

I decided to return to my search for the purple-kimono-feather-boa girl, but first a stop at the La Cage aux Faux Bar...

"Who was this kangaroo in the green leather suit", the bartender asked. I gulped down my San Pedro Torpedo, an elephantastic drink that I've been drinking  frequently during my days on San Pedro de Nada, when I was just a young mathematician and the future was bright. "Who cares," I grunted, feeling slightly depressed. Because no-one cared once I had proven the existance of an tiny island that... yawn. Whatever.

"Gimme one more drop of poison."

"San Pedro Torpedoes?" she asked, and her smile shot me down. Err, where did she come from? My head was swimming. The Bayou, the bears, the ducks, the devils,  handcuffed paper collectors, or something... too many drinks.

I'd never seen a face as sweet as her's. Her feather boa, her perfume... damned booze. I felt almost lifeless.

'Buy a lady a drink, Tex?,' she asked with sweet Carolina accent and a come hither look in her eyes which drives men wild, 'A San Pedro Torpedo, please,' she said to the barkeep.

She turned back to me, her every move sending electric thrills through me. She smiled. I smiled. The Barkeep smiled. We were all very happy.

The Barkeep handed her the drink which she swallowed in one long gulp.

'Oh yeah,' she said, 'that is what I remember the Torpedo being like. Good stuff.'

'You like the Torpedo?,' I asked somewhat surprised that anybody in New Orleans aside from me had ever heard of the native drink of San Pedro.

'Yes. It has been a long time since I had one though.'

'Why is that?'

'I haven't been in San Pedro in years. I was there doing research, you see I am a pachydermologist and I was sent to San Pedro to study a rare elephant that lives there. The elephant would toot "La Isla Bonita" three times a day everyday. In B-flat no less.'

I stared at her in amazement trying to decide if she was nuts or I was, but either way the boa was tickling me and the accent was driving me wild.

My head started to spin, the room started to spin. I realised I'd seen her before.

Those eyes, that smile, that lyrical voice. the woman removed her mask and clothing and there in front of me stood my old friend the elephant, whom I was convinced had drowned in the briney deep off the coast of San Pedro de Nada.

'My God'

He stood before me, grinning mischeviously.

'One for the good ol' times'?

He trumpeted... and let out the most memorable rendition of "La Isla Bonita" in B-Flat that I'd ever heard.

That I ever will hear again.

Ah, these New Orleans nights, magic in the air, gris-gris...

... the psychedelic pachyderm was honking and tooting his trunk, a marching band of
grass-green gators came into the room, playing on congas, wiggling and bouncing their
tails synchronously...

... and in the very moment before I passed out I realized that there must
have been something in the Torpedo. The broadside hit me and I sank in no time,
falling off the barstool.

*BLACK DARKNESS*

I have no idea how long I was out. When I awoke I was sitting in an outhouse somewhere, I have no idea where. Needless to say I wasn't smiling anymore.

What the hell happened to me? Why did my mouth feel like the entire Chinese army had walked through it barefoot? Why did my head feel like the Chinese aremy had marched on it all night? Why was "La Isla Bonita" running through my mind like a freight train? What is the price of tea in Bangladesh?

I cautiously opened the outhouse door and much to my chagrin and surprise I was in an outhouse that was in the middle of nowhere. Nothing was nearby but some sagebrush and the faint smell of cinnamon.

Last nights events slowly resurrected themselves into my mind. Now the mystery deepens. Who slipped the mickey into my Torpedo? The Barkeep or Kimono-girl?

I walked from the outhouse into the pond, so to speak, since I stumbled over this big bad dog. Splash! There we all were, the mallard ducks, the bullfrogs and I, sitting in this little happy swampy wet world in the middle of - what exactly? The dog bared
his fangs, while the ducks and the frogs began to squeak notes of protest and rebellion.

No, the dog was just smirking at me, I suppose. I felt like the jackass of the universe, and probably looked like that, because out of the sudden I had a certain feeling that I wasn't in Louisiana anymore.

I wasn't very sure where I was at all. I would presume I was in the Bayou somewhere, seeing as how last night I was in Nwalens, (which for the illiterati is New Orleans, Texified.)

I was surrounded by a vastness of nothing. Well that ain't entirely truthful, a couple of trees spied on me from above and then there was this dog still smirking at me.

I decided moving might be a good choice so I began to walk across this swamp, ever mindful of the fact that as far as I knew I was in gator country.

Just as I was begining to tire from the strain of walking in the sultry air I noticed, and I know you shall be surprised by this, the man in the gator suit sitting up against a tree.

'I told you not to mess with her,' he said sneeringly.

'Yeah, but you never told me why.'

'You dont know?' quizzed my oddly attired companion. 'Really?'

'Really.' I replied not mentioning how much I hate that sort of question.

'The lady is attempting to get every sponge in the world, by any means at her disposal.'

'Sponges?' OK now this was too bizarre of a twist for my little brain to wrap around. 'Why? Does she have an investment in a sponge company and now she is trying to see to a profit?'

'I probably shouldn't tell you this but_____...' Out of the sudden a freight train passed by on a railroad track that I hadn't noticed before, right behind the trees. The rumbling of the waggons deafened my ears, I just saw that this guy was still talking to me - like a character in a silent movie.

Oh, irony. Once the train had finally passed the geographical point of our little rendezvous, the gator suit man smiled at me, assumedly proud of all the sophisticated conclusions of his long speech, that had been distorted by the noise of the train.

"See?", he laughed, winking an eye. - "I saw it," I growled, "but__________________