Scott Nichols THE TASSEL ON THE DOOR (or, THE MESOPOTAMIAN DRUG DEALER) a novel in progress Chapter One The end of the world one day happened just after I was taking out the trash for my uncle Tim. It came fast and sweet, like a jellybean at the end of a long day selling dynamite at Pershing Square. I had plans to go to the mall and search for a new drug dealer but I guess I didn’t because God had other plans for the day. I felt kind of like I had a date with that drug dealer I didn’t even know yet and I had to break it for a date with God, who’s there kind of all the time. It was the end of the world, but everything still looked like nothing had happened. The stores were still open and the people in them were still buying things except when I went to the mall the drug dealer wasn’t there. Chapter Two The end of the world reminded me of the time I went out with a girl who wanted to live at the Colonial Motel if the Colonial Motel had brass beds. I remember asking the attendant about the brass beds, but I don’t remember what he said. I thought about the brass beds all in a ring, dancing around a table in a pizza pub, as long as the pizza pub wasn’t the Colonial Motel, and as long as the pizza pub had a tassel on the door. Sure enough, the innkeeper didn’t know about the tassel either, or the brass beds, or the pizza pub, or the inn. The girl spun around thinking of brass beds, I guess. She had an invisible ocean around her in her dreams, an invisible ocean with painted-on fins. Chapter Three The tassel was still on my mind when I drove through the security arm at the faculty parking lot at Glendale College and paid $150 to fix it. I decided at that point the tassel was to be red, red with black streaks, kind of like a fish. The tassel would flutter about like an invisible ocean and I would pop it like a balloon. The birds flying past the ocean as it fizzled away would look at me and think, That’s some tough shit, like all birds do. After the ocean popped, I could take it out to dinner. We’d split the bill. Or something. Chapter Four Now there aren’t so many days that remind me of the end of the world. Sometimes, when I’m walking somewhere, I try to look for a drug dealer who looks a little like me. If that’s not successful, I look for one that looks like me if I were a drug dealer. (chapter four continued) One day, I decided I was too fat to look for a drug dealer, so I sat down for a while looking at a little blue hummingbird. Too bad you’re not a falcon, I said. The bird looked at me like I was speaking Mandarin and he was a Cantonese hummingbird. I saw his bags were marked for Denmark. Europe, eh? The bird looked at me like, Look, motherfucker, I’m a bird. Like clockwork my lover showed up, and the bird’s lover showed up, and they both looked at us like tourists. I felt like a wino reading a catechism in another language. I gave it to the bird. Maybe you can read this. The bird started in again. Look, stupid motherfucker, I’m a bird. It was tense, kind of like mountains poking each other in the chest, as we walked outside. All the shoppers looked at us like empty guns as we walked by. Chapter Five It was a pretty good day, I guess. It was a day sometime after 6:00pm and I decided it was a good day to write a book, even if everything else was shot. TAR BABIES CRAWL UP MY ASS AGAIN by Scott Nichols Once I had a story. It was a story and then it was over. THE END