This morning I awoke to the sporadic, grating tone of something that sounded like the “wrong answer” buzzer on a game show. The one that lets you know you just lost the $25,000 jackpot and houseful of prizes you’d accumulated before your greed overtook your sense of reason (and rhyme), but instead of winding up with more more more, you have nothing and may as well just thumb it back to Shmoetown, U.S.A. with a shredded bandana tied to the end of a stick because face it, you’re a pauper now and no one loves you.
It was not a game show buzzer, though. As much as I wanted it to be one, so I could realize my lifelong fantasy of having a game show host in close proxmity to me as I lay in bed fantasizing about jackpots and fame (and the love that goes along with it!), it was not. I came to that conclusion because I did not hear cheering or booing. And I did not smell the sweet-smelling aroma of success or recoil from the fetid stench of failure. It had to be something else. And I, the ever curious Nancy Jew, just had to know. It was time for some sleuthing!
On my way out to the gym this morning, I noticed the apartment’s door was ajar (of pickles!), so I was compelled to push it open and take a little peek around. That’s why doors are left ajar, after all. No one leaves a door that way if the goings-on behind it are really top secret. A door ajar is like a locked diary wrapped in an old pair of flannel pajama bottoms and stuffed between your hot 16-year-old sister’s mattress and bedspring: just begging to be noticed.
So what did I see?
You’ll just have to wait. It’s a real page-turner!