I am truly sorry, my friends, that I haven’t been communicating with you lately, but I’ve been awfully busy. Once you hear my tale, I’m sure you will agree that my tardiness is readily excused. Of course, you might just wonder if I have gone off the deep end. I suppose I would if I were in your shoes. But I assure you, every word I say to you is true. Please just hear me out. Then, if you feel so inclined, you may send the men in the white coats to take me away. At times lately, I’ve been wondering if perhaps I should call them myself. But, I shall let you be the judge, and I shall abide by your verdict.
After our adventure in
I felt quite guilty over the fish, since Pat and I had taken
pains to ensure their vitality in the back of the truck during the long
drive. I could only think back to that
other occasion, two years ago on the reverse journey, when Don and I failed you
and allowed your fish, may they rest in peace, to spend the cold
This time, we had high hopes. This time you had gone Budget rather than
U-Haul, and I felt sure the difference would be telling, and that your fish
would arrive in as high spirits as we humans had. I talked to them, and reassured them, and
tried to convey to them some sense of the serenity and majesty of
You cannot imagine the joy I felt when we backed the truck
to your new house and opened the cooler, and saw your charges happily swimming,
tails a’flutter and fins churning. Despite his gruff and mischievous manner, I
am sure Pat felt the same grand parade of emotions. As you discharged your finny friends into
their new home, and revived them with fresh
Equally unimaginable was my agony when you told me the day after that they had passed away during the night. After your loving provisioning and travel accommodations. After Pat and I constantly looked in on them, and cooed to them like they were little babies traveling in the back of the rented truck. After all of that, and being so close to the resumption of their watery paradise, they up and died on us. It was a human failure, but it was also a fishly failure. My first thoughts were “How dare they do this to us?” We, who had been so careful, and so caring. We didn’t have to be so felicitous. We could just have easily deposited them into the lake and been done with them, allowing them to fend for themselves in the cruel wild. We didn’t have to care. But we did, and they let us down.
All during the drive back to my home, this incident preyed on my mind. My hard attitude softened. I eventually came to the conclusion that the fish were not at fault. I tried to chalk it up to blind fate. But whenever I tried to take this avenue, my memory hearkened back to two years ago, and the image of a poor helpless Red Top Zebra shivering in its nakedness flowed through my mind. It cursed God as it drifted toward oblivion. I imagined its view of God, the great apparition who looked into its world from the rarefied air above its universe, who cooed at it soothingly and fed it manna from heaven but did nothing to alleviate its suffering. Is that all we all are, just kept creatures looking up in awe at our supposed Creator, asking why this suffering and receiving only His baleful stare in return? Is God as clueless as the rest of us? I occupied myself in these cogitations during the drive.
Once home, I returned to my regular life, to its harried pace which left little time for such ponderings. The memory and grief faded. I turned my attentions to other things, and thoughts of fish vanished beneath the silt at the bottom of my mind. Only, somehow, they were never completely submerged. I would wake up in the middle of the night, gasping for breath after forgotten nightmares, covered in a fine sheen of sweat. I would be reluctant to go back to sleep, dreading a return to whatever dreams awaited me. I would spend a lonely night’s vigil, trying to divert my mind with 4:00 AM paid programming on the TV. TBS once broadcast the same half-hour episode of Seinfeld for 3 hours straight, and I watched every single minute.
Modern life does this to us. It turns us into mindless drones whose only desire is to find out what zany new scheme George has cooked up to stay comfortably unemployed. We avoid the larger questions. We no longer ponder our fates and our origins. And the fates of a few hapless fish drop from our consciousness. I had successfully buried all thoughts of the grievous incident. The nightmares had faded for the most part, leaving only an occasional night when I would wake up muttering “What was that?” to myself, only to immediately drift off until morning.
This state of affairs might have continued unabated forever. I would have happily not looked another fish in the eye ever again. As far as I was concerned, my universe was one where that creature called fish did not exist. I was fish free. However, a cruel fate intervened.
It started with a call from my daughter, Marisa. She and her husband were going on a trip for
a week, and she wanted to know if I would take care of her pets for her. This would mainly entail feeding her 3
cats. She also had a low maintenance
hamster, or “rat” as I liked to call it, and an aquarium full of fish. Uh oh, I thought, fish. Now, I will do anything for my daughter, and
if she wanted me to take care of her fish, I guessed I would. I asked her about it, and she said “don’t
worry about the fish. We’ve got
something to take care of them.” Now, I
had told my daughter the tale of the
So, my daughter went on her trip, and I started visiting her house twice a day to feed the cats, take in the mail, and water the rat. This task I handled with my usual aplomb. I am perfectly adept at all forms of pet care, as long as it doesn’t involve those of the water-breathing persuasion. I love animals. One of my best friends is a dog. The cats knew me, and I like to think they considered me their foster grand-dad. They certainly were not shy when it came time to be fed. It was a busy week for me, fighting the traffic to make my rounds of animal care while still putting in the hours at work. Since I was off the hook as far as the fish were concerned, I didn’t even bother going upstairs to the aquarium. I stuck to the downstairs and the haunts of the felines.
Marisa had also asked my other daughter, Kacie, to come over a couple times to play with the cats. You see, I am allergic to cats, and whenever I come over to Marisa’s house, I end up sneezing up a storm. It’s not a particular bother to me; it’s well worth it because I get to spend time with my daughter. A little sneezing has never stopped me from doing the things I love. I’m also allergic to the outdoors, but I don’t let it stop me from playing and refereeing soccer, and taking walks with my canine friend, and other endeavors which expose me to the allergens to which I react. Sneezing and watery eyes have become a way of life for me. At any rate, my daughter is quite conscious of my infirmities, and she asked her sister to come over and play with the cats in order to spare me as much suffering as possible. A sensible precaution, since Marisa knew that Kacie could provide far more playtime than I ever could.
I discharged my duties without incident for the first several days. About midweek, I received a call from Kacie. She told me the aquarium water was black. There were dead fish floating belly up in the aquarium. She had tried calling Marisa on her cell phone but had not gotten through. I contemplated asking her to flush the dead fish in order to alleviate the odor, but I thought maybe Marisa could make a claim against whatever company made whatever product she had employed to keep the fish alive for a week. So, I had no advice to offer Kacie. Her mother had much better ideas. Kacie was to wrap the dead fish in bags and put them in the freezer. She was then to photograph the aquarium. This she did with her typical efficiency. The only task left for me was to continue feeding the cats, and to consider carefully how best to explain to Marisa how her pets ended up in the freezer.
But, ah, here I was again! I had been witness to a third fishly genocide! I could no longer attribute this to Fate’s cruel ravages. I had failed my friends and family. I was distraught beyond belief. My friends, I am hesitant to reveal my frame of mind to you, but I must. I had descended to the depths. You know me. You are aware how sacred I view life in all of its forms. I, who never stomp on so much as a spider, but tenderly wrap it in paper towel and deposit it in a new and more natural home outside of my house, was responsible for the massacre of not one, not two, but three separate families of aquatic tenants. I didn’t know how or why, but somehow I had participated in the slaughter of innocents. It was unthinkable. It was unimaginable. I tumbled down into the lowliest depths of depression.
I took to my car; to an afternoon of soul searching. It is where I do some of my best thinking. I needed to reason this out. I headed out in a random direction, while I carefully laid out the facts before myself. Examining the incidents in isolation, one might be tempted to lay the blame at the feet of Lady Luck. I had been at the periphery each time. I was not the primary care-giver to the entities in question. In my ignorance, I could not be expected to know the dangers lurking below the surface. Could one then invoke the vagaries of misfortune? Could I just count myself unlucky enough to have been a bystander at the three events? No, I concluded. One incident might stand, but three? The probabilities are independent and multiplicative. The expectation of innocence goes as the third power of the likelihood of non-involvement. I could only conclude that I must bear the responsibility.
I broke out of my reverie to find myself crossing the long
bridge over
A sprinkle of rain struck my windshield, and I turned on the wipers. The sprinkle erupted into a torrent, forcing me to slow down. This kind of sudden change in the weather is common enough here. This particular downpour was perhaps a trifle perverse in its sudden viciousness, but experience had led me to postulate the axiom that the harder the rain came, the sooner it would be over with. I continued on across the bridge. The traffic was heavy, a circumstance unexplainable at this time of day and in this direction but all too unsurprising in this area these days. Now that I had slowed down, impatient motorists flew past me on the left, as if fleeing disaster behind them.
I spied the twinkle of blue and red lights ahead of me, near the north end of the bridge. An accident, apparently, and that explained the heavy traffic. One motorist sped past me on the left at an unwise speed. I honked my horn, hoping to alert him to the dangers ahead. He was traveling much too fast for the conditions, and could not hope to react in time. The rain was splattering hard on the windshield, and visibility diminished. I slowed a little more. I leaned forward in my seat, hoping to extend the reach of vision in front of me. I could just barely see the taillights of the cars in front of me.
I realized in this instant that the cars ahead of me had slowed down dramatically. The car in front and to my left swerved suddenly. This was the very car which had seconds ago sped past me with such confidence, and now found himself with nowhere to go. I had left myself plenty of space ahead, and was able to calmly decelerate. That is, until Mario Andretti Junior ahead of me decided to swerve into my lane. As he made his sudden maneuver into my lane, his wheels hit a puddle and his car spun broadside to the traffic. My car slammed into the side of his, and locked momentarily together we both hurtled down the highway. Perhaps by himself he might have recovered, but our inadvertent tandem was impossible to control. The traffic ahead was now completely at a standstill. We slammed into the line of cars still traveling at a good clip.
As it hit broadside, Mario’s car immediately flipped over on its side. My car was vaulted into the air in a crazy cartwheel. Time slowed to a crawl as I frantically stomped on my brakes in mid-air. My car hung in the air, nose pointing straight down. I saw the surprised faces of the motorists below me, as they looked up through their windshields at the majestic vehicle flying above them. My car continued its tumble, and now I was upside down, looking forward at the cars upside down above me. My car seemed to sprout wings, and now I was flying straight up into the dark night, and I saw the same amazed people through my rear view mirror. Finally, my car was near horizontal again, but I could no longer see the roadway. There was the black of night ahead of me, and only a deeper shade of black for a horizon. My car was still tumbling, its nose now pointing straight down again, and I saw the deepest black of all straight ahead of me. At the last moment my headlights showed me the true nature of where I was headed. It was the lake, and I hit it like a brick wall, my body slammed against the seat belts, the big balloon popped out of the steering wheel in front of me, jamming my thumb against the wheel, and the car tumbled onto its back as I plunged into the deep.
I was now in an eerie, silent, black calm, a calm broken only by the bubbles erupting from the side of the car. I was upside down again. I hung in the seat of the car as the seat belts dug into my shoulders. The air bag was deflating. The headlights were still aglow, stabbing into the murk but revealing nothing. I was able to see the interior of the car thanks to the reflected light. A pool of water was forming on the roof, which was now the floor. A bubbling jet of water came from the vicinity of the back seat. The air was getting thick, and I swallowed and my ears popped. I felt the vector of gravity changing as the car slowly pointed its nose straight down into the depths. I felt the first cold tingle of water at my feet. The water was surprisingly cold. It was mid-summer, and I remember thinking inanely that the water really should be warmer than it was.
I had a brief thought that the car would still be near the surface, the air trapped in the passenger compartment providing the necessary buoyancy. But the level of water was visibly rising. I didn’t have much time. I reached for the door latch. I stopped my hand just before it reached the handle. Instead, I started hyperventilating, getting myself ready for the ordeal ahead of me. As soon as I started getting dizzy, I slowed my breathing, grabbed one last breath, and reached for the handle. I hesitated just a second, wondering if there might be some other way. But there were no other options I could see. I pulled the handle and pushed on the door. Nothing happened. I stabbed at the door lock button, and then tried the door again. Nothing. I could not see the door lock in the gloom, and tried to remember if the door lock was a push button or a pull button. I tried pulling on the lock and then trying the door, but could not budge the door. My hand reached out to the window button of its own volition. I pushed it; I pulled it, all to no avail. My ears popped again, and I shivered as the cold water reached my waist. I came to the realization that I was going to drown, and this car would be my crypt.
The headlights finally went out, and I was plunged into total, utter darkness. This was too much for me. I panicked. I started beating on the driver’s side window. I punched it. I beat on it until my hands were raw. I started beating my head against it, ignoring the pain. I raised my legs up out of the water and, straining against the seat belt, kicked at the windshield. It held. My breath was coming in harsh gasps. My head was aching dully. My heart was beating painfully hard in my chest. I was tiring rapidly. My oxygen starved brain hatched one final idea. I unlatched the seat belt and turned myself so that my feet were against the driver’s side window. Working by feel in the inky darkness, I grasped the steering wheel in one hand, and the seat-back in the other, and launched a hard kick against the window. The window held. I tried again, and it held again. The water was now licking coldly at my buttocks. I launched one more kick and all hell broke loose.
I felt the window give way. Almost in the same instant, it exploded inward, propelled by a wall of cold water. I felt shards of glass digging into my face. What little air I had in my lungs was involuntarily expelled as the freezing water hit me. I was launched by the torrent to the passenger side of the car. The jet of water held me against the passenger side door, even against the force of gravity. Before I knew it, I was engulfed in water. I was submerged. My lungs burned, yearning to take in one last final breath. The pressure on me eased slightly, but not enough to allow me to reach the window. I reached for the passenger side door handle, and pulled on it. The door held.
At that moment, I felt a jarring thud as the nose of the car hit bottom, slightly akilter. I was flung hard against the door, and it finally gave way. I was launched out of the car and into the dark nothingness. I was totally panicked now, and started kicking randomly, hoping that whatever way I was propelling myself was up. My lungs were telling me; just one tiny breath. That’s all I need. I will survive this if I can just get one gulp of oxygen. I resisted as long as I could, but finally my body betrayed me, and I opened my mouth to take in one small breath and received only cold water. I immediately felt pain. I expected maybe a burning sensation; not the sharp eruption of pain in my chest.
My exertions slowed.
My body no longer obeyed my will.
Let it be. I was ready to meet my
Maker as I floated in the darkness.
Please God, just let it be quick.
But it was not quick. I remained
suspended in the dark forever. My body
came to rest face down in the silty mud at the
bottom. I lay there for a long
time. The pain in my lungs eased. The yearning for air abated. I rested.
A small thought formed in the back of my mind; how could this be? Why was I not dead? I immediately suppressed the thought. I didn’t want to question. I only wanted to rest. I didn’t want to disturb the
equilibrium. Even the smallest doubt
might bring back the pain. I lay on the
bottom of
But presently, my curiosity got the better of me. I raised my head from the muck and opened my eyes. There was a dim greenish phosphorescence all around; providing enough light to examine my surroundings. In my weakened and shocked state I forgot to wonder why I needed to take no breath. There was a scene before me, a tableau which should have evoked wonder and delight but which I merely took in witlessly. There was a green castle before me, shimmering in the soft green illumination. Bubbles floated out of its interior. Small silver fish floated in and out among its spires which towered above me. I saw only a small portion of the castle. It extended to either side of me and disappeared into the murk. Before me was a barnacle covered wall and an open gate nestled in the wall. Inside the gate, I spied small green buildings with windows and doors, and thick marine vegetation, and they disappeared into the gloom. I pulled myself out of the mud and sat cross legged as my wonder increased.
My wits started returning. What should I do? My every instinct told me to exit this alien environment and follow the bubbles to the surface. I should do this before my strange condition returned to normal and I needed to breathe again. But I was entranced. I wanted to see what was inside that castle. I launched myself toward the gate. The wall appeared to be green stone, or maybe its color was an effect of the lighting. The door had been flung outward where it rested on rusted hinges. I entered into a courtyard, where gay green shops surrounded me. There was a profusion of marine plants swaying softly in the currents, some anchored to the muddy bottom, others growing out of the very stone of the castle walls and buildings. I heard a strange grating noise, distorted and amplified by watery conduction. I looked behind me, and the gate door was now closed. I crossed the courtyard, looking into windows here and there and seeing only aquatic life going about its business. I came to the entrance of a palace.
Again, the thought came to me that I should just launch myself to the surface. Again, the strange compulsion came to continue my examination of this surreal scenery. I submitted to the latter and came to the closed entry to the palace. It was a large double door, made of water-logged and encrusted wood. It had a pair of knockers, fashioned out of stone into the shape of twin dolphins. I pushed on the door with no luck. Despite its immersion, it seemed quite solid. With no thoughts of anything else to do, I pulled up on one of the knockers and released it. It was quite heavy, and as it slowly floated down and made contact, it made a solid thump. At once the doors opened slowly in front of me. I peered into a shadowy hall which extended to the limits of my vision.
I didn’t want to enter into the darkness. I had had enough of darkness. I wanted only light. And yet I wanted to see what lay within. A small voice inside told me that the answers to all of the puzzles I had witnessed were at the end of that hall. So I entered. My eyes adjusted, and as I proceeded I could make out details in the hall. There were serene paintings of watery scenes on the walls. There were stone busts and sculptures arrayed at intervals, not of humans but of a variety of underwater creatures. There were fish, and dolphins, and octopi, and manta rays, and sharks, and whales. There were luminescent nettles attached to the walls at intervals, providing just enough light to prevent total blindness. As I proceeded, the hall extended before me, and its end was ever out of sight. I cannot say how long I traveled, nor how many sculptures I passed, but eventually I realized I was nearing the end of the hall. It ended in an enlarged chamber. Suddenly, a huge array of nettles on the walls lit up the scene. I saw a tall throne before me, again fashioned out of the same green stone, but festooned with gems of every color.
A large door opened behind the throne. A shiver of fear overcame me. I dreaded what would come through that door, but I steeled myself to await its revelations. I didn’t have long to wait. Presently, a dull gray shape appeared on the other side of the doorway. Something started coming through into the chamber. In my state of confusion, I couldn’t tell what it was. My battered mind refused to classify it. The dull cloud emerged fully, and came around to the throne. My mind took in its contours, and I finally recognized it for what it was. It was a fish. I was the largest fish I had ever personally seen, easily as large as a small whale. It had a great gulping mouth and large bulbous eyes, eyes which evinced no warmth. Barbs of whiskers depended from its upper lip and chin. It had a smooth skin and I could detect no scales on its gray body. From between its eyes emerged a long stalk, or other such appendage, and at the end was a bulb. An iris opened in the bulb and an intense light emerged from it, cast upon me so that it might examine me all the more closely. It was a blinding light, but I felt no warmth from it. I covered my eyes as the beast conducted its examination. Finally, the light was extinguished and I opened my eyes again.
The creature opened its great mouth. I peered into its depths. I saw no teeth, but this yawning chasm could easily swallow me whole. There were stringy filaments within its gullet, swaying in the currents as it sucked water into its mouth and past its gills. I acknowledged defeat. I closed my eyes and prepared myself to be swallowed and slowly digested. This was to be my fate, then. Perhaps this was what I deserved.
But the creature merely exhaled a rush of water, and I was awash in the stench from its breath. At the nadir of this exhalation I heard its voice speak to me. Its voice was deep and resonant, but gentle. The voice was modulated by the aqueous environment into a warble.
“I am the King Fish. You have been brought before me to be judged for your crimes against my brethren. Have you anything to say in your defense?”
I was, needless to say, speechless. A small stream of incredulous bubbles was all that escaped from my mouth.
“Come now”, continued the King Fish. “Our time together is limited. We must make the best of it. Please state your case.”
This time, I managed to form a single syllable out of the foamy water escaping from my mouth, which I repeated over and over again.
“What’s the matter”, it said. “Catfish got your tongue?” At this, it opened its mouth once more and a hoarse bubbly laughter erupted from within its cavernous craw.
I had better luck in my next attempts. “Y-Y-Y-Y-Your M-M-M-M-Majesty”, I managed to say. I thought maybe I was getting the hang of speaking underwater. It is not all that easy. You should try it sometime. It is quite easy to allow bubbling cavitation to overcome whatever message you need to deliver.
“Now we’re getting somewhere”, it said. “Please, continue.”
“Your Majesty”, I said, managing to compose myself. “I have no defense for my crimes other than to plead ignorance and misfortune.”
“Misfortune?” it asked in an annoyed tone. “Does lightning strike the same place three times in a row? Does the Orca strike the same school in the same place three times in a row?”
“I realize that the probabilities border on the incredible, your majesty” I said half-heartedly. “Yet I can come up with no other explanation.”
“And ignorance?” the fish continued. “Ignorance of the law is no excuse.”
“Then I have no defense for my actions”, I replied in defeat.
“And you are judged guilty of your crimes. Do you have anything more to say before I pass sentence?”
I bowed my head. I composed myself, and silently recited a small prayer. “No, your majesty. Let justice take its course.”
“There are many in my court who would say let the punishment fit the crime. They would have you frozen in the cold arctic wastes, then sunk to the great volcanic vent Cataractus where you would boil in your own juices. Finally you would be tossed into the great vent, there to be suffocated in the sulphurous atmosphere. Do you think this would be just?”
“Majesty, your sense of justice necessarily overrides mine.”
“Indeed. Yet you strike me as a hapless creature. Your crimes were not done in the heat of passion, nor do I detect malice in your heart. I sense remorse and a willingness to be rehabilitated. Therefore, I will grant you a mercy in my sentence.”
“Majesty, I am overcome at the magnitude of your generosity.”
“Quite so. I hereby sentence you to community service. You must perform three tasks for me. First, you will bring to me the eye of the Sturgeon Theodore. Second, you will bring a pint of fluid from the ink sac of the Squalamastoid Justifer. Finally, you will bring to me a complete Elasmosaurus skeleton. Do these tasks and you shall be pardoned.”
“And if I refuse to perform these tasks?”
“Then I shall have your essence reduced to individual motes, and these motes shall be cast into the scrota of various sea-going mollusks, there to mix with seminal fluid and ejected into the cloaca of their mates, whence will come tiny new denizens to redress the balance of the sea which you have so upset with your crimes.”
“Then, Majesty, I have only to ask: What is a Squalamastoid?”
“That you shall find out on your own. Go now, and begin your labors. I have spoken.”
With that, the iris on the stalk opened again, and the light beamed forth, brighter than before. I was again blinded. The searing light tore through my closed eyelids and scorched my retina. A zig-zag bolt of red flew through my brain. A deafening thunderclap erupted, and my body convulsed and I tried to scream but only vomited watery slime into the air and onto my body. The pain in my chest was back. I opened my eyes.
I looked up into the black rainy night. A helicopter was circling overhead, shining
intense beacons down at me where I lay.
I looked around. I was lying on a
stretch of shoreline, and the bridge over
Now they were putting me on a stretcher. Now they were carrying me up the bank to the waiting ambulance. The noise of the helicopter had been reduced to a soft thwok-thwok, even though it was still directly over me. The people around me; their lips were moving but I heard no words. I smiled at them, to thank them for their labors in rescuing me. I thanked the clouds for the beautiful soothing blue and red lights they offered me. I thanked the lake for spewing me out at the shoreline, rather than far out where I had gone in. I thanked the King Fish for extending its mercy to me. There was something I must do, and I felt an intense urgency to begin, but I could not get my body to obey my wishes. I could only smile at the EMTs as they loaded me into the ambulance. Then I slept.
I awoke in the hospital. My daughters were there, and they hugged and kissed and babied me. I was still weak, and my throat and lungs were sore. I was on oxygen, and the mask covered my face. Talking was out of the question, and so I gestured for pencil and paper. I started writing everything out, but stopped as I realized how crazy it all sounded. My daughters implored me to rest. I couldn’t argue with them. I had been through a lot, and was still weak. I felt the sense of urgency again, and I argued with myself, that I must rest and recuperate before I began on the first of the tasks assigned to me.
My daughter brought me my laptop the very next day, and I used it to facilitate communications. I stuck to banalities; how was she doing in school, how were the cats, sorry about the fish, etc. After she left, I started writing down my adventures to date, the results of which you are reading this very moment.
I’m feeling better after 2 days in the hospital, and I feel I must begin my tasks soon. However, the doctor is insistent that I stay at least a week. The King Fish did not specify any time constraints for the completion of my tasks, but I couldn’t help feeling that time was of the essence. I have spent my time researching, and now feel certain I know where to find a Sturgeon, although I confess it will be difficult to ascertain its name. The matter of the Squalamastoid is a different story. I can find no references to any such creature, although the allusion to an ink sac is a very important hint. I have pinpointed several locations which house Elasmosaurus skeletons, but I have no idea as to how I can obtain one for my own personal use. Surely the King Fish would factor these difficulties in, and grant me extra time to overcome the very serious obstacles I face.
The first obstacle is to get out of this place. I therefore temporarily pause in my narrative. I have signed and sealed a copy and have sent it to you, my friends. I hope its arrival finds you well. As for me, I will be well on my way by the time you read this. I hope to catch you up on events as time allows. Look for another report soon. Until then, let me reassure you that all is well and I have not cracked. By the way, you may receive some of my mail, which I have arranged to be forwarded to you after I sold my house.
Somewhere on the road…Your Friend James.