Mister Squirrel

The Rudy Schwartz Project

Madrid, 1953. Workers stacked dried fish behind Adolpho's small grocery store, and the pungent odor cut through the aroma of fresh baked goods at a nearby panadería, like Shemp Howard introducing himself at a cocktail party. Upstairs, going over the previous day's receipts, Adolpho wondered how long he'd be able to keep the store open. Expenses were going up, and sales hadn't yet recovered from the previous autumn, when the gorillas were freed from their circus cages and allowed to roam the streets, overturning fruit carts and organizing unwanted poetry recitals. Order was eventually restored when Franco sent in the military and ordered mass executions, but for Adolpho, the damage was done. He wondered how it had all come to this, as he nervously held the knife at his own throat, took his last swallow, and slid the blade through his jugular vein. His blood spurted across his desk, covering a map of Andalusia, where he had grown up and met Mitzi, a waitress at a tapas restaurant who would spend the next twenty-five years tormenting Adolpho. After finally agreeing to marry him, it had been Mitzi who'd freed the gorillas, and it would be Mitzi who would discover Adolpho in a pool of his own blood, then arrange to have his cadaver used in medical experiments aimed at curing her recurring shingles. She lit a cigarette and slapped another layer of calamine lotion between her thighs, then thought about dinner.