(GUY NOIR THEME & GK SINGS)
TR: A dark night in a city that knows how to keep its secrets, but high above the empty streets, on the twelfth floor of the Acme Building, one man is still trying to find the answers to life's persistent questions --- Guy Noir, Private Eye ---
(PIANO)
GK: It was a cold day in January, a day when steam comes up out of cracks in the street and your face hurts and you think of maybe checking yourself into a Home for the Weak of Character and letting large sympathetic women nurture you for a few months, but I had too much to do. My old landlord Lou had given me a call and said I could move back into my old office at the Acme Building --- he'd renovated the place so I could hardly recognize it. (FOOTSTEPS) Boy, that's a lot of plants for one lobby, Lou.
TR: Yeah. Six truckloads. Lots of ficus. That's what lawyers go for, is ficus.
GK: Who's gonna water 'em, Lou?
TR: The concierge. Mister Mishimo.
GK: I see.
TR: Morning, Mister Mishimo. (TR JAPANESE SALUTATION, BOW)
GK: Does he speak English too?
TR: Sometimes, yes.
GK: Nice lighting too. Ah. A coffee bar. Great. Kinda miss Jimmy's Blast Off Lounge being there, but-----. Ah, here's your directory. (FOOTSTEPS STOP) Adonis & Athena Health Club. Hair, Hair, The Gang's All Here. The law firm of Batter, Barter, Tussle & Buck. Looks like the building's pretty well occupied.
TR: It is. I got a whole different clientele now, Guy.
GK: I can see that.
TR: I'm taking you back for old times' sake. But only til you find another place, okay?
GK: Right.
TR: So don't put your foot in it or you're out on your ear. You dig?
GK: I dig.
TR: I won't ask you to pay the rent in advance because I've heard all your stories and I don't want to hear any more of them. Okay?
GK: Okay.
TR: But pay me sometime, okay?
GK: Right.
TR: And if you're not going to, then at least tell me a story I ain't heard before, okay?
GK: It's only fair, Lou. (FOOTSTEPS AWAY)
(MUSIC)
GK: Over in the corner where Vinnie had his newsstand, where I used to buy trashy magazines, there was just a tree and a wall hanging. And where my old watering hole was, where I used to try to make time with girls, was a coffee bar, called Coyote Caffe --- Caffe with two f's....(DOOR OPEN, FOOTSTEPS, CLOSE, FOOTSTEPS, AND STOP, AND PAUSE).
SS: Yes? may I help you?
GK: I'm just sort of stunned by the variety of the menu, that's all.
SS: Well, take your time. Any questions, don't hesitate to ask.
GK: How did we ever get to this point in this country where your coffee selections could take up an entire wall of a room?
SS: What do you mean?
GK: I mean, coffee used to be one line at the bottom of the menu, right above tea and lemonade and soda pop.
SS: Well, it's because of the recovery movement, if you really want to know.
GK: What do you mean?
SS: People in recovery, they go to their weekly meetings in basements sitting on folding chairs in a circle and drinking coffee out of styrofoam cups. And as they go through the twelve steps of recovery, that coffee becomes more and more important to them....
GK: You talking about alkies?
SS: Recovering alcoholics, recovering enablers, recovering co-dependents, recovering controlling personalities, recovering overeaters, recovering obsessives, recovering passives, all of them. As people gave up whatever gave them pleasure, they realized that most of their pleasure now would have to come from coffee. Either from coffee or from sitting on folding chairs.
GK: I see. So that's why coffee expanded....
SS: Three-thousand four-hundred and fifty-seven different possibilities of coffee up there.
GK: Are you in recovery?
SS: I'm a recovering English major.
GK: I see.
SS: I'm recovering from enabling my own sensibility.
GK: Right. Well, how about fixing me a plain coffee to go?
SS: A cup of American?
GK: Cup of American.
SS: Caf, decaf, double caf.....
GK: How about with cream? Fatted caf.
SS: CUPPA AMERICAN, FATTED CAF. (TK REPEAT SERIES THREE TIMES) (MUSIC BRIDGE)
GK: I took the cup up to the twelfth floor (ELEVATOR DING, DOOR OPEN. FOOTSTEPS), and walked to my office. There were prints all over and the old green walls had been painted a soft beige tone that reminded me of the back of a woman I used to know in Poughkeepsie. A woman named Daphne. (KEY IN LOCK, DOOR OPEN) My old office, however, was exactly the same. (DOOR CLOSE, FOOTSTEPS) Same old sofa, same file drawers (OPEN DRAWER), and the whiskey bottle in the top drawer was still a quarter full (CLUNK OF BOTTLE BEING PUT BACK, DRAWER CLOSE), and the old swivel chair (CREAK) still swiveled back so you could put your brogans up on the desk. (HE SIGHS. KNOCK ON DOOR) Yeah, come in. Who is it? (DOOR OPEN, CLOSE)
TR: Mr. Noir?
GK: Right. Who are you?
TR: You don't know?
GK: No. Should I?
TR: You really don't know?
GK: I don't.
TR: I take it you don't watch television.
GK: I gave it up about fifteen years ago. I kept falling asleep.
TR: Brad Gale is my name. I do the six and ten o'clock weather on Channel 6.
GK: I see. Weather guy, huh?
TR: I'm a television meteorologist.
GK: Even better. So what can I do for you, Brad?
TR: Well---- do you mind if I sit down?
GK: Be my guest. (FOOTSTEPS, CREAK OF SOFA SPRINGS)
TR: It's like this, Mr. Noir. The weather we've been getting--- it's not our weather. But unfortunately, we don't know if we're going to start getting our weather pretty soon, or what's going on. We need help. That's why I came to you.
GK: I thought that was what you guys did, was forecast weather.
TR: We used to, but --- we haven't been having much luck lately. We keep forecasting partly cloudy, and people have to shovel a couple feet of partly cloudy off their sidewalks. People are angry at us.
GK: But I thought you were a meteorologist....
TR: I did my training in Hawaii..
GK: I see.
TR: The Kanawahamahimahi Academy of Meteorology.
GK: Must've been a breeze, huh?
TR: My years at Kanawahamahimahi were the easiest four years I spent in my life. Went surfing, dancing, ate a lot of fresh fruit. Went to class about two hours a month. All they taught you was, High of 84, low of 62.
GK: And then they assigned you to Minnesota. The Middle East of Meteorology.
TR: I did okay for awhile. Used the National Weather Service forecasts. They weren't that bad most of the time.
GK: Uh huh. What happened with them?
TR: Guess you don't read papers either, huh?
GK: I do but I only read old ones now. Much cheaper and the writing is better.
TR: Well, the National Weather Service was privatized about two years ago.
GK: Really.
TR: The low bid was from a well drilling company in Montana.
GK: I see.
TR: And then they subcontracted it to an Indian tribe in the Black Hills.
GK: Uh huh.
TR: This tribe is still a little bitter about what happened there back in the 1870s and --- anyway, they held a Snow Dance and they shook their rattles and chanted their Snow Chants and suddenly Minnesota's weather got changed with Saskatchewan's.
GK: So up in Saskatchewan they have----
TR: Saskatchewan has partly cloudy, scattered flurries, highs in the twenties.
GK: And their weather wound up here.
TR: It's terrible. Fifty inches of snow. Winds. Incredible cold. Glaciers are moving down the Interstate. In Minneapolis, people's hairlines are starting to advance down their foreheads.
GK: So have you spoken to this Indian tribe in the Black Hills?
TR: We've gotten some e-mail from them, yes.
GK: And?
TR: Next week they've scheduled a Permafrost Dance.
GK: Getting serious, huh? So what do they want as the price for calling off this onslaught?
TR: They want South Dakota.
GK: I see.
TR: In Minneapolis, people are starting to walk with their hands almost touching the ground. They're eating tree bark and rodents. In the Minneapolis schools, they're teaching kids the grammar of grunting; they call it bubonics.
GK: And all they want is South Dakota?
TR: That's it.
GK: I guess I don't see a problem here.
TR: Well, some people feel that if you give in to them, they'll just ask for more.
GK: North Dakota?
TR: Exactly.
GK: You know, I think a society has got to be prepared to accept change, Brad. I don't think we ought to try to hold on and keep things the same. South Dakota, huh?
TR: They're willing to create two reservations --- one in Vermillion, for liberals, and one in Sioux Falls, for Lutherans.
GK: I see. And will the Lutherans be allowed to carry on their sacred coffee and hot dish rituals?
TR: The Indians consider melted cheese to be an offense against nature, but they're willing to look the other way.
GK: I think you've got a deal there.
TR: What about North Dakota? Do we tell them North Dakota is off the table?
GK: You can't take North Dakota off the table, North Dakota is a table. But we can cross North Dakota when we come to it.
TR: Well, I'll tell them what you said, Mr. Noir. Thanks. (MUSIC)
GK: He left and a few minutes later, I realized: I never gave him a bill. So I wrote out a bill for $120 for services rendered, Guy Noir, Private Investigator, and addressed it to Brad Gale, Channel Six. And then I thought: naw. Hundred and twenty, that's going to look suspicious. Four hundred and twenty. That looks more like a bill. Times are changing here at the Acme Building. Time for me to change with em. (THEME)
SS: A dark night in a city that keeps its secrets, but one guy is still trying to find the answers, Guy Noir, Private Eye.
(MUSIC OUT)
© 1996 BY GARRISON KEILLOR, JOHN KNOERLE AND RICH PROCTER