If a cow ever got the chance...

My friend With Shoes has a blog now. [Greetings, visitors.] Unfortunately for me and my ego, he linked to this diary on a day in which I had nothing to tell the world. All I want to do is drink some Scotch and fall asleep early, with the air conditioner on as high as it will go.

Before I do that, I'll tell you a story.

WS and I used to live in a house with (officially) seven other people. Unofficially, it was occupied by at least three other permanent houseguests, a contraband cat, and any of about thirty regular but short-term visitors. Because the long-term residents were split into little factions (roughly: po-mo, hippie, and high-functioning depressive), we didn't always get along with each other and we definitely didn't get along with each other's friends. WS had a particular problem with one of the hippie-leaning visitors, River. River was always holding peace-activist meetings in the living room and putting up Marxist flyers around the house, and WS thought he was one of those glib annoying prep-school types in rebellion against his parents. (I thought he was really cute, but whatever.)

Anyway, one night WS became extremely angry with me, because he has good taste in movies and because the movie I'd rented sucked ass. (I know that now, but how was I supposed to know it then? It had Wallace Shawn in it, and everything.) So we were sitting on the couch fighting about whether or not I could just shut it off right then because it was so predictable and smug that you could figure out the entire plot in the first ten minutes, when cute River walked in wearing a polo shirt, khakis, and Birkenstocks. He said, "Hey guys, what's up?" which enraged WS so much that he retreated to the kitchen, snorting to himself. I made some sort of noncommittal wave, and River drifted off in search of the hippie faction. I belatedly realized that my movie did, indeed, suck ass, and went up to my bedroom to write suicidal poetry.

About three hours later, I went back downstairs for a cigarette and found River in the deserted living room, trying to upend one of the couches. He said, "Have you seen my other sandal?" I said, "No." He said, "The other one is right here where I took them off, I didn't move them at all." Since I was feeling altruistic, I helped him turn over the couch and look in various other places like the porch, underneath the piles of textbooks, the back stairs, and inside the defunct record player. Eventually we had to admit defeat, and he left, carrying his one remaining Birkenstock.

River reappeared every few days for the next two months. Gradually, his visits became shorter, less social, and more pointed. He asked me, "Are you sure you didn't see anyone take it? I mean, you were home the whole time." I said, "River, I didn't take your shoe." I was finding him less cute. Still, there was no doubt that the shoe was somewhere in our house, and that he had a right to its safe return.

Eventually, everyone in the house was enlisted to search for it. River shouted from the porch (he wouldn't come in past the front entrance anymore), "I hate to be a jerk, but these are not cheap sandals we're talking about." Although we all understood his plight, we were unable to help him.

A few months later, I was poking around behind the TV, trying to retrieve a poster that had fallen down. The TV was on a little wheeled cart, which one of the housemates had covered with an old sheet in an attempt at beautification. I lifted up the sheet and there it was, River's sandal, placed neatly and maliciously in the center of the lower shelf. There was no way it could have gotten there by accident. I started thinking: Which of us was widely known to dislike River? (Motive!) Which of us was in the living room at the time? (Opportunity!) Which of us was so enraged by my crappy video rental that fateful night that, in a separate but not unrelated incident, he threw a clock radio at my head?

Okay, so it was more like "in my general vicinity" than "at my head". And he didn't really throw it, he sort of flung his arm out and knocked it off the shelf accidentally. Still, it never worked properly after that (the alarm wouldn't go off unless the clock was upside-down). And I say to you, With Shoes, that you will never live down the crimes you committed that night. Even if I'll never really be able to prove any of them.

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