Chapter Unum

In which a comma-tary runs on, preventing running from the comments ...

To Nikolas Kado, Director, Domestic Marketing , waking up at precisely 5:07 AM was not what was unusual about the morning.

A savant about numbers, measurement and mathematics in general, Nik needed a time that felt unique to him so it would stick. Five am seemed too harsh and 5:15 too slack. So, for his whole adult corporate life (excluding 27 hungover mornings while on business trips) he woke at 5:07 AM. He didn’t even need the alarm clock anymore, but he set it as part of his nightly ritual.

Nor was it unusual for the October morning to be so cool. The night before, an unseasonable but welcome sponge of rain clouds had scrubbed the Los Angeles sky clean of smog. The day would be sunny and clear, he could tell from the cool breeze straining through the very crinkled screen of his French windows. He’d often wondered why the landlord didn’t just buy new screens – these had obviously been bent and re-smoothed at least twice. Surely the labor had been more costly than new aluminum screens.

It was also not unusual to hear the squirrels in the trees beside the second story apartment begin their daily squabbling. It was a bit early, but no doubt one of them had strayed into hostile territory and was being told off rather forcibly by the offended squirrel, who hadn’t had his morning coffee yet. Nik could relate. An early riser, he was still not to be trifled with before at least two cups of coffee.

Now was the strange comma in his title unusual. It took the place of an important preposition, of, but the comma symbolized importance at Hyperion Studios for some reason. No one was a Director or VP of Something Very Important, they were all Directors and VP, comma, Something Very Important.

It was definitely not unusual to wake with someone in bed with him. Since he had broken up with Tad eleven months, one week, three days and fifteen hours ago (Nik’s internal clock left him approximately 50% more obsessive than he wished to be, and he appeared [by his estimates] 75% more obsessive than he actually was to others – particularly Tad), Nik averaged a new casual sex partner once a week, with a rotating base of buddies to supplement a second night of the week.

What was unusual was that instead of the muscular, yet relatively hairless body of the Slavic-looking coffee barista he had seduced the night before, his bare leg brushed up against something scaly. This, Nik reasoned, was not good. He didn’t remember the Coffee Guy wearing clothes to bed, and certainly none of their sex play had incorporated any outfit that felt this dry, scaly and yet maintained an estimated temperature of 98 degrees. Whatever he was touching was probably best faced one eye at a time. He counted to 100 by fives, then slowly raised one eyelid.
An enormous snake slept beside him.
This, of course, was unusual to the extreme in Nik’s mind. Directors, comma, Domestic Marketing for major independent film studios, as a rule, did not wake up with snakes in their bed. Especially serpents roughly the length and thickness of an average Australian rugby player. Nik’s other eye opened tentatively, reluctant to join its brother in the horrifying assessment of the situation.
The snake was there. Snoring.
Clearly, Nik told himself, this was not possible. He was no zoology major, nor did he watch any of the plethora of animal documentaries available on cable television – but snakes didn’t snore. He was 98% certain of this. Several questions presented themselves. How did the snake get in here? What had happened to the dark-haired, very-athletic-in-bed Coffee Guy? Was this a poisonous snake? A snake that liked to slowly squeeze the life out of its victims before biting their heads off with a sickening, cereal-like snap?
One question elbowed the others out of its way and asked in the most impatient, rich-Connecticut-housewife tone it could manage “What are you going to do now?”
Nik had to admit to himself, he didn’t know quite what to do.
As disturbing as the sheer snaky presence and size of the snake was, the snake’s scales shone with a dazzling burgundy sheen, which under other circumstances (such as seeing it properly from behind a very thick glass in a zoo) might be called attractive. Subtle muscular contractions as it snored riveted Nik's eyes. This set off another round of disturbing thoughts pounding in his skull. Vague drunken recollections of carnal relations the night slithered around in his head. The relations seemed more reptilian the more he struggled at not remembering them.
Nik’s consciousness promptly ordered a cab to Borneo. Realizing that, in fact, Borneo housed rather a large reptilian population, Nik’s consciousness promptly rerouted the mental cabbie towards New Zealand. When Nik came to the second time, he felt rather tossed about, and still hadn’t managed to get out of bed and away from the snake yet.
Quietly, he (there was no other word) snaked out from under his covers. The movement painfully triggered a pounding in his head from the particular lack of hydration that only excessive shots of tequila can bring. Nik stood up, and pulled on the cotton pajama bottoms crumpled on the floor next to the bedside table. He glanced around for a weapon, but really – what would work on this monstrosity? He inched toward the door and tried to collect his thoughts, despite the fact that a rather disruptive cast of Riverdance had suddenly appeared in his head and was jigging with gusto on his cerebellum.

He would have imagined tequila hangovers having a more Mexican tempo, but perhaps the worm got tired of hat dances. He clearly remembered picking Coffee Guy up for their date, and some tequila shots, but the rest blurred into one of those word problems at the back of each chapter of his Algebra 1 textbook in Pop’s class. As much as he loved math proper, there were two things Nik loathed in seventh grade – Pop being his teacher, and word problems. The two were inextricably linked in his mind.

Word problems were simply feeble attempts at grounding math in the real world. Nik tried not to think about how that perception might apply to Nikolas Kado, Senior as well. Lamely labeled “guided practices,” they consisted of inane premises.
Generally, if you were in a speeding train going from point A and passing the ones from point B, you wouldn’t know the speed unless you asked the conductor. Every conductor Nik had ever seen sported bushy and frightening moustaches and mumbled things about the dining car being to his left. Nik also wondered why the relativistic speed of the two trains passing was of use to anyone unless the trains were about to collide. And at that point, you really should be caring more about how relatively fast you could jump over the screaming people in the cabin and jump out of the train before you ended up as a soggy soufflé of gristle.
Nik suspected Pop, a respected algebraic topologist, felt the same about the guided practices. Nevertheless, they obstinately remained on the curriculum the entire year. Consequently, Nik obstinately refused to do them, even though he was more than capable. The singular advantage of having Pop teach the class, was that Nik knew where Pop hid the Teacher’s Manual, and the combination of the safe.
This, Nik realized, had guided practices beat to hell. When S= gigantic, shouldn’t-be-in-my-bed snake, and it has been lying there for X hours, where previously it was H (the value of a hot Slavic-looking coffee barista), at what point had Nik (N) made a horrible mistake?

Tomorrow:

In which mistakes are counted up, and counting is mistaken ...