Chapter 17
Whoever said that laughter is the best medicine didn’t have a row of surgical staples marching across his belly. Well-meaning friends would invariably try to cheer me up with jokes and convoluted shaggy-dog stories, the kind that always seem to be streaking their way around the world on the Internet. “Stop!” I’d yell, the therapeutic pillow pressed firmly against my stomach to keep it from hurting like hell whenever I laughed.
I’d been recuperating at home for nearly a week, installed on the sofa in the living room, when Ms. Bromley brought me all twelve episodes of Fawlty Towers on tape. I cheerfully accused the mystery novelist of trying to kill me.
Otherwise, I was bored out of my skull with nothing better to do than brood over what might have been a botched attempt on my
