It was the best of busts; it was the worst of busts, the day I took down Tony Sarducci.

There was once a time when we had such hopes for the man. It was nearly ten years ago now that he made the announcement. “I’m goin’ clean,” he said. Even the papers picked it up. Front page news: “Sarducci runs a new game.” He gave us the feeling that anything was possible.
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Although the Swedes aren’t known as a warlike people, the marketing department had launched their latest campaign with military precision. They softened the beachhead – in a manner of speaking – by deliberately leaking all kinds of rumours that exploded like mortar shells in the trenches of America. The result was buzz. The air crackled with anticipation. The world was about to witness the latest in Swedish innovation from Yeskia.

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I’ve lived in this neighbourhood for nearly ten years now.  Not alone, of course;  I have the requisite wife with her weekly manicure appointments, and the requisite dog with her poufy tail, and the requisite two point four children.  Two of the children are easy to find.  They each have a bedroom on either side of our bedroom, one pink, one blue, in day-glo shades that would burn out your eyes if you stared too long at the walls.  As for the other four tenths, he’s not so easy to find – at least not if you’re looking for him.  But he pops up in odd ways.  He’s there in the vestiges of a teen-aged immaturity.  He’s there in a spate of disappointed hopes, the sense, as we survey the lovely homes above and below us, that it’ll never get any better than this.  He’s there, too, in the pressure to strut, to buy bigger toys, to program our kids with lessons and play groups and sports teams until our days are one long breathless sprint.  Point four.

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Willy Wonka loves the Oompa-Loompas and they love him back.  You see, they’re funny looking:  they’re short and have orange skin, with rotten teeth and bad breath, and they sing the damnedest song.  The first time he ever saw them, Willy’s heart brimmed with compassion.  It was a sordid business, off-loading kegs from the local brewery and finding themselves (there in the alley behind the Detroit Eatery) the unwilling participants in an impromptu dwarf-throwing contest.

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Doctor Horvath motioned for Jack to take a seat by the round, low coffee table while he settled himself in a swiveling chair in front of the bare desk, and then he turned to face Jack while resting his right elbow on the desk.  He tore a marked page from his pad (with the logo of a pharmaceutical company in the lower right corner) and dated a fresh page.  Jack’s file lay close at hand.

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