Chapter 9
Liping Ralphie, now cruelly renamed Speech Impediment Raphie by your narrator, had been prophetic. I was tending toward reclusive. I went to Platte. I came home. Thank God for the unconditional love of an animal. Our unkempt Petie’s excited yips, even when accompanied by a little pee, gladdened me. I stuck to what was DVR’ed. Live TV was treacherous. Live TV needed filtering.
I was the captain of The Flying Dutchman. I and the skeletal crew in my command—I’d reduced even more to part-time—continued our misbegotten voyage, gliding by other vessels populated by the sated, no land in sight or us. That’s what it felt like, hunched over in my office, hoping for just a sliver of esprit de corps as the nighttime Platte staff listlessly straggled in. Instead, what I got was Les Miserab
