Geoffrey Adams

Vengeance Shall Be His, and He Shall Inherit the Voice of the Man with the Russian Last Name

"Varoom!" Paul Todorov yells.

The exclamation is inexplicable to Maggie Flick.  "Excuse me?"

"Varoom!" he repeats, raising his head as would a dog when howling at an unexpected moon.

Maggie shoots him a cockeyed glance, an are-you-alright kind of look.

Paul shakes his head and snickers.  "Sorry.  I've been getting these things stuck in my head recently, and then, all of a sudden, they just come out."

"Huh?"

"It's like I've developed a strange kind of Tourette's Syndrome, but this one has taken on a literary quality, and when I say literary, I mean to say my, ahem, new affliction, tends to gravitate towards the absurd.  In a literary manner."

"Um, what?"

"What, you ask.  Okay, is a proper question, given our current parameters, and I use the word parameters in the nicest possible context."

Maggie Flick reels back and clears her throat.

"What?" he asks reflexively.  "When one clears their throat in your direction, one is pretty sure that the person clearing their throat is insinuating the gray matter in one's head has suffered a temporary meltdown, which, in this case, is partially true."

"You sound like a dictionary salesman," Maggie offers.  "One on the most addictive form of crack."

Paul lifts his glass and slowly takes a drink.  He pauses long enough to let the alcohol pour through his esophagus, and then continues.  "It's inexplicable," he says, shaking his head.  "Okay," he says, attempting to explain, "I've been reading this novella.  And in said novella, a character yells 'Varoom!' over and over again.  And for some reason, I'll just be sitting here, minding my own business, and the words will jump from the page, into my brain and out through my mouth."

"Um..."

"Yeah," Paul agrees, nodding, "it's crazy, and I have no control over it, but, at the same time, I feel passionate about these words, as if I am here to channel... I don't know, it's like I'm supposed to do it, supposed to repeat... words... I've read."

"Oh."

"And I get your response.  You have no correlative experience from which to empathize or, at least, sympathize with my plight."

"There it is again, that vocabulary thing."
"I know," Paul Todorov bellows.  "What is with that?  I mean, I understand the words, but would I use them in a casual sentence, you know, just you and me commiserating...  damn it! sitting here just... shooting the shit?"

"That looked painful."

"What did?"

"That last bit, when you forced yourself to say 'shooting the shit.'"

"Arduous.  Laborious.  Exigent."

"I see."

January 19, 2010