We ran parallel for a time, but after a few months I couldn’t bear to watch or listen any longer.
I began spending more and more time wandering about the campus, conversing with my bereft self about various world events.
I found myself returning again and again to thoughts of Rico and the nervous system—had I made a mistake somewhere?
I’m sure you’re wondering, dear readers: why did I take such a liking to Rico?
Why did I so prefer this bonehead to the other?
A feeling, friends. I went on a gut feeling.
Also, of course, I had studied T.E. Lawrence, and so I knew where I needed to attack if I had any hopes of winning.
Corn was clearly the head of the operation, Rachil the heart, and poor, sensitive Rico the nervous system.
I would have no luck with direct action against the head or heart, but I had just the resources and resolve to attack the nervous system.
I knew he was fragile, but I didn’t quite know how fragile, how confused, how on the precipice of total collapse he was.
True, he had seemed ungainly and unstable, not only in matters of dress—he had at this point taken to making his own brand of bewildering T-shirts with nonsensical slogans and illustrations on them—but in temperament as well.
He may have simply still been suffering from the effects of his auditory hallucinations. I’m not sure.
He also could have been exhausted from overwork, for while Corn had landed a cherry projection-booth gig as some kind of nefarious quid pro quo with the university’s technical services department, Rico had been forced to labor outside the confines of the academy, at the “Parkside Loco” Bar and Grill, AND for the city’s recreation services department.
It was in this latter capacity that fate once again threw us together.